Jocko Podcast - 487: How Being a “New Guy” Can Help You in Life. W Bobby Holland

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< Bobby Holland joins the pod to discuss what we can all learn from the guidelines of being a "New Guy" in the SEAL Teams. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Podcast number 487 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko, Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So I got asked a question the other day. What can I do to be a good new guy in a platoon? And this is a pretty common question because when you show up at a seal team, you want to be a good guy. But as I thought about answering that question, being a good new guy in a seal platoon is actually the same as being a good human being, right?

Yeah, and listen, being a good, good new guy in a seal platoon, there's some things, right? You got to have weapons proficiency, you know, you want to be a good shot. You got to have tactical knowledge. You got to understand how to utilize terrain. You got to know your demo. Like there's some skills that you need. But beyond those skills of the job, to be a good seal, to be a good frog man, you've got to have more than just the skills.

And so as I thought about the things that I was told when I was a new guy, because you're going to get guidance. What's that, what's that thing they say now? Unrequested guidance? Unsolicited advice. You're going to get some of that. But I'll tell you what,

some of that stuff that I got told and that young new guys get told, and that then I told and other older guys told the new guys, It's stuff that is, can be very powerful if you take it to heart and you carry it through. And some of those things carry through my entire life. And so I wanted, as I started thinking about some of those things, I wanted to do a little podcast about things that land on you as a new guy that you can carry through your whole career. And so I actually reached out to Bobby Holland, lead Bob, who was a retired. He's a retired seal. He's a member of the E5 Mafia and Task Unit.

Roosier went on to be a platoon LPO, a platoon chief, eventually became a warrant officer. Rick retired after 21 years in the teams. He was on podcast 416 originally. And if you want to hear his backstory, then go listen to Podcast 416. He's now the founder and the CEO of Huli Golf, making what, badass apparel for badass people. That's it? Hooligolf.com. Yeah, that's what, that's what lead Bob is doing now.

but like me he once was a new guy and then he raised new guys and so Bob we're going to talk about some of that then coming back yeah man thank you for having me back and I look forward to have this conversation man it's uh you know something especially with where I'm at now it's very much in my headspace because I'm basically a new guy all over again well how long ago did you did you retire summer of 21 okay it's been a couple years yeah yeah and it really is the new guy some of the new guy and mantras that if you keep those in your head, it will make everything better. It really will.

They're fundamentals that last a lifetime. Yeah, and you sometimes don't realize until you're thrust back right into that mode. Yeah, so I mean, obviously, look, there's principles of combat leadership that we talk about all the time. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, and execute decentralized command. The things that you've heard me say a million times, discipline equals freedom, the attitude of extreme ownership.

Those are clearly things that are fundamental. to everything that I've done. And those are the things that I've passed on. But there's like some brass tax things that you hear when you're a new guy that stick with you. Now, I got to tell you the story about me being a new guy. I was with a couple other new guys. We were checking into SEAL Team 1. And we had to go see the Master Chief.

And we walked into the Master Chief's office. and the command master chief and we were actually standing at attention outside of his office and he called us and he said, get in here. And so we go in and we're standing in tension in front of his desk.

And he points at each one of us one at a time and he goes, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And I was like, okay. And he said, everyone here has made it through training. No one gives a shit that you made it. It doesn't mean shit. You have to earn your trin here and you have to earn your reputation.

Get the fuck out of here. And we were like, Okay. So that's my first day at SEAL Team 1 from the command master chief. And what a way to take, look, when you're coming out of buds, you know, you've been told that this is the most difficult training in the U.S. military and you made it. And they put a big American flag up behind you and you, you know, we didn't get our tridents. But you graduated buds, man. So you're feeling good.

and you might be feeling a little bit cocky. Well, Master Chief took that right out of us. So we had that happen. And then a couple days later, we had all the new guys that had now checked in, maybe it was a few weeks later, but guys were on leave or whatever. And I think, do we go to jump school?

Yeah, we had already go. So we went to jump school. So we had gone to jump school in Fort Benning, Georgia, and then traveled back across the country. Guys are showing up in ones, twos, and threes or whatever. So finally we get all the new guys. We all get assembled. and we get our various indoctrination briefs from whoever,

but the Maastrichter comes in again, and he says, keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, don't be late, don't forget any gear, and he left. That's all he said.

Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, don't be late, don't forget any gear. So, cool. Again, his first statement, keep your mouth shut,

keep your ears open. What a, it's so, it's like, you know, You hear that all the time, right? Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open. What he's saying is be humble and listen.

And to this day, listen, listen, listen, listen is so important. And you think when you're in a leadership position, that's the time you run your mouth? Nope, it's actually time you listen more. So keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, be humble. The next one, don't be late. Now I was always very paranoid about being late. I would not be late. I would rather be five hours early than 30 seconds late for something.

The only waiver I gave myself on that one was when I was going to college. I was going to college with another team guy at the university of San Diego. And the parking was so difficult to get, but you might get lucky and get a parking spot, or you'd have to get there two hours early. And so we had, we like shook hands and made a deal, because he was a squared away guy too. And we were like, okay, listen, I'll be here around 10.

It might be 1008, it might be 1004. And he's like, I, get it so occasionally you give a waiver like that but I think if you're late it's just such a reflection of kind of of everything you know what I mean yeah it's kind of a betrayal to the team you know just signals that you straight up betrayal Bobby's going hot dude but trail aren't prioritizing your life accordingly yeah if you can't show up on time like can we count on you that's it that's a problem maybe You know, I got that thing where I say,

if you can't control your temper, right, how can you control anything? Well, if you can't show up on time, how can you execute a mission? Well, there was traffic. Well, didn't you plan for that, bro? We all had traffic. Or whatever the case may be.

It's kind of a sign of bad judgment. It's kind of a sign of a lack of understanding of the way the world works. Yeah, or it just may signal that you don't give a shit. As a new guy, you're not, that's not really a good signal you want to put out to the team. Yeah.

Well, remember Tony used to say everything takes half an hour. I know. And I was thinking this morning, we both showed up 15 minutes or late. So I think, you know, Tony is the 30 minute standard and everyone else,

probably 15 minutes. Yeah. Unless it's something really, really important. Like you said, I mean, there's certain things that you just can't be laid on that. You can wait around two hours.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's also something in the Navy, which is pretty important. It's missing movement. Yep. which is like a ship leaves and you're not on it. And if that happens, bro, you're in big trouble.

Maybe 30 minutes early for that. Yeah, you want to be 30 minutes early for you don't want to miss movement at all. So that's really important. And then the third thing was don't forget any gear, which again, if you're forgetting gear, it's kind of a reflection of just sort of you, right? Like you had, you forgot this thing. The other thing I think is important about that is you can't go back in time and get that thing. Like when you don't have something, it's, it's too late. And missing one piece of gear

is can really disrupt an operation depending on what's missing. I had actually Giff, remember Giff was on the podcast? Yes. Well, he was, we were both new guys together. We were both radio and one time he forgot something. He forgot, I forget if he forgot a antenna or an antenna base or something that was very critical to making communications. And he came to me afterwards and Giff, forgive me for blasting you right now. But he came to, he, the credit to him was, he came to me. He was like, bro, I forgot this thing. And I don't remember.

Maybe he had a secondary and he was like, hey, I forgot one, but thank God I had a second. Or maybe he just didn't make comms. But either way, it was like, because Giff was squared away. So for him to forget something, it made me even more hyper paranoid about making sure I had my gear. So, you know, a lot of people see the sexy stuff that we do and, you know, highly choreographed, whatever. A lot of people don't see the behind the scenes and the very simple things we do that seem like redundant and kind of ridiculous. But one of the things Tony and I used to do, so on that Ramadi deployment, every single time before we went out on an

op, every single op, we went out, we looked at each other and we went helmet, nods, primary, secondary. We went through our whole load out there. Because, yeah, you can't be stepping out the door, missing something critical, whether that's for, you know, for the team effort or for you to fight as an individual. So it seems really, really basic. But, yeah, you got to make sure you have all your stuff. And, you know, two is one, one is none. Have some redundancy there. You know, I'm not ruling out on an op with one battery.

That's in my nods. No. You know, or laser or whatever. and one thing that I did that was cool is I would have like all my gear staged on a cot so yeah when the cot was empty I had my gear that was sort of like the preliminary check now actually this happened on my deployment my first deployment to Iraq I was out on this op and I've I we were a rush to leave I think it was a TST whatever excuse you want to throw at it but as we're out there I'm like all all of a sudden I felt my back pocket.

So on your cammy pants, the old cammy pants, there was a back pocket that had a button on it. So you could like seal the thing. And that's where I would keep my blood shit. And like I had like $200 cash in there. And I had my military idea. Had like one of those little plastic seat through things. And I'm out there and I'm like, dude,

I don't have that with me right now. And I was so pissed at myself. And I was like, how did I do this? And it was like mind boggling to me. And luckily, you know, that's stuff that you only need in a really extreme situation. Luckily, we came back. But what it happened was my back pocket had like folded up when I put my pants on and it was actually just tucked up under my waist. So I had it.

But it was one of those things where I got away with, it gave me the guilty feeling that I had screwed up and I became even more paranoid. So, yeah. I used to have nightmares. Like, like, no shit. I remember being a platoon chief because the last thing you wanted to be is the, you know, decked up platoon chief is for getting his stuff. So I would have this recurring dream to where like I forgot my gun and I'm on a mission. You know, the guys are looking at man. I'm just like, uh, uh, that's, that's the nightmare.

Yeah. That's the true nightmare. Uh, so that was kind of like, we'll get in some more of mine, but those are some of the, those are the first things that I remember when I got to the team was fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And then keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open. Don't be late. Don't forget any gear.

And those things, right? there clued me in from the whole career to this day. Don't be late. Don't be forget any gear. Keep your mouth shut. Keep your ears open. Those are those, that is outstanding advice for a new guy in a seal up tune and it's outstanding advice for any human being out there.

Um, and I still check my gear. I'm still, I'm, I'm a little bit too paranoid. You know what I mean? A little bit too paranoid. Echo, you seem to be nodding enthusiastically at that. I know what you mean. Yeah. Check.

All right. So let's get into some of your, uh, Some of your stuff, what do you got? Look for work. Okay. It's a good one. Yeah, this originates for folks listening, and this is a killhouse term. At least it was when we were coming up.

I'm not sure if it still is. But essentially what that means from the team guy parlance is you do your primary scan, secondary scan, and then you're looking around with your eyeballs looking for work. So you're looking for people I need help. You know, you may have someone who's dealing with an unknown, you're wrestling and unknown. They're dropping. something else that you're going to have to draw down on so you're looking for work and uh you know

obviously that beyond the kill house that just applies to all sorts of things in life you know business uh just everything just being a part of a team you know do your job look around if you're committed to the team and the mission um you know put them above yourself uh and yeah that's That's honed in, I mean, man, in buds. You know, it's just, it's hammered. Everything we do, every evolution that we have, there's a, there's a post-stop to be done. You know, there's work that needs to be done. We've got to clean the boats.

We've got to clean this. And it's very easy if you're looking very narrow focus, like, oh, I'm good. My gear's good. I'm going to go turn in. Yeah, that's bad. Yeah, yeah, very bad. That's bad. You know, there's a little bit of decentralized command.

This is sort of a, this is sort of the new guy version of decentralized command. Like, hey, dude, step up and look for work. Oh, you get into a perimeter and you're carrying a 60. Don't wait for someone to tell you what to do. Go find a little bit of high ground or find that little noel, find that piece of cover, and set up your position. Because, and the reason this comes out is because when, and it usually is directed at new guys in the beginning, because you're coming out of buds, you're in a platoon,

you're so used to being told what to do, but that is not a good seal. A good seal is not a robot that has to be directed on what to do. A good seal looks for work and goes and executes on it. That's what a good frogman is going to do. And so that's why you'd hear like guys up in the rafters in the killhouse going, you know, hey, look for work, look for work. And you see a guy that's a, he's just standing there with his gun at the low ready,

not doing anything. Well, like you said, there's a security threat that needs to be picked up. There's a hallway that needs to be held. There's a person that needs to get cuffed. There's all these other things that are happening. And you have to look for work. And the extreme example is like you don't want to be the guy with your hands in your pockets as freaking a pallet is being unloaded.

Like you don't want to be that guy. You want to be freaking working. And there's always work to be done. So it's a good one. Yeah. And, you know, in the teams, if you're not that guy, you are going to suffer. Like you're not going to get away with that and that can find its way in many forms. But I was also a thing about the base principle of that.

It's, I mean, helping your teammate. And, you know, one story I didn't get to tell the last time I was on, which I think this applies to just being a really solid teammate is a time when Laif helped me out when I was going down. And I mean that like in the literal sense. But, you know, looking for your teammates when they're struggling. trying to find ways to help them out. And this... Oh, this heat exhaustion?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So in this particular case, we were doing... We'd done a series of just, you know, patrols during... Coming from the PTF house. So it's like multi-day operation. We're just exhausted and smoked.

And anyways, I was a pig gunner on this one operation, and we were like sprinting in the streets and we're doing bounding. You know, when you're the rear of the patrol, like you are moving. So I'm doing these sprints, you know, wearing, you know, 60 pounds of gear and it's 120 out. And, you know, these are all my excuses, by the way. But I'm super smoked. I have, you know, just excreted every bit of sweat that I have. And we get to, we end up bouncing into a house, take that down just to, you know, I don't even know the purpose, honestly. But our terp, one of the turps that we had with was starting to go down. And, you

he reached out to me. He's like, hey, Bob, I'm not doing so hot. And I took some water, threw it over his neck. I'm like, you're good. And then no sooner did that happen that, I was like, wonk, wonk, and this is the first time I've ever had, like, any sort of, you know, heat issue at all through all the training, three platoons of training, buds, nothing coming up, you know, summer football. I saw the world, like, starting to close down. And I don't know if I went over to Laif or if he saw me just in a bad place but uh I told him I was like man uh I'm about to go down like this is happening I think we were still a click out from the BTF house and he made the call um he's like give me your gun and we swapped guns so it's uh emasculating as

it was as a frogman I gave him my my pig my AW he carried that damn thing um got us home and I stumbled in, made it in, and then kind of like totally collapse once we got there. So, I mean, you know, obviously not one of my finer moments, but that's what you got to do to win sometimes is you got to help out your team, especially when they're really, really struggling. And, yeah, and I think Johnny Kim hooked me up with like, you know, eight bags of fluid. I was about to say. After that, as I was in a full body cramp, you know, for 12 hours.

Yeah. So that's a good one. start good to one start with look for work yeah what do you got next i i think maybe you you kind of hit on this a little bit but uh be teachable be eager to learn and you know have a notepad in hand so those all i'll go hand-to-hand there and um you know it goes into being humble show up humble ready to learn and you know show up prepared too it doesn't mean you're showing up to training i'm going to get everything i need there um it means doing some of the work, doing the homework prior. That may mean, you know, so one thing as it applies

to new guys is, you know, particularly when I was in a leadership position, LPO and Chief later, is we did a lot of pre-work with our new guys before starting unit level training, right? So rather than, you know, take these guys fresh-eyed SQT straight to the killhouse and let them, you know, drink through a fire hose like what I did going through training is let's go through the basics. Let's talk through in a much calmer environment, you know, learning environment when we can reach them, get them acclimated. And people don't learn well when they're freaking totally freaked out. Yeah. And that's part of it.

I mean, a lot of our training, the merit is, you know, stressing us out the pressure and working under that pressure. But in terms of learning some of the fundamentals, it's not a great way to start. So, yeah, we would build those fundamentals and they would show up ready to learn. and that always propelled us to a higher level of performance, you know, as a unit. Yeah, that's a huge one. The notebook thing is like such a trick up down and across the chain and command. You know, I'd have my little wheelbook. And if like my boss tells me to do something and I break out my notebook and I'm like, hey,

let me just make sure I got this. That is such a good sign. When one of my subordinates goes, hey, you know, hey boss, what's going on with this? And I pull up my notebook and say, hold on. Let me just make sure I understand what you're saying. It is such a good sign. And I'll tell you, I didn't initially do it because it would make the person think I'm paying attention. I initially did it because when if I don't, you get so much information during a day.

People are constantly telling you things. If I didn't write it down, it would, I'd lose it. So initially it's like, oh, let me pull out my notebook so I can write down what you're saying to make sure I'm tracking it. And so I think that's not only a good thing to do, but it's, And it also, the image it projects is like, hey, I'm paying attention. Yeah. But the same thing when I was running trade at and we would have guys coming through. And it was weird.

You never know what you're going to get, right? I might have some guy that has a ton of experience and thinks he's the best person in the world and comes in like, you can't teach me anything. And they do terrible. They just would do terrible. And as a matter of fact, there's an officer that's portrayed in the movie warfare. who is the guy that comes in and the officer that was on site kind of got rocked and he was a little bit messed up. And so he goes, he tells the officer that shows up, hey, you got this. And that officer's like, cool.

And he just starts running stuff. And that guy came through after that had happened. And after the rest of that whole deployment, that individual officer came through training with me to prepare his platoon. He was then a platoon commander because he was an assistant platoon commander. because he was an assistant platoon commander. He became a platoon commander. And that guy was, even though he'd been through all that, don't perform well, had a great reputation of doing all that.

When he showed up, he was like, exactly, no book in hand like, hey, hey, sir, you know, what did you think of that? What could I do better? Just a totally humble attitude. And because of that humble attitude, guess what? He did great. His platoon did great. Now I would have other guys that would have either less experience,

more experience, but they didn't think they could learn anything. They thought they knew everything. And it was such a bummer, man. I'd be like, well, hey man, I know that might have worked or I know you might have been through this before, but, and it was just like, well, I've always done it this way or whatever. And it was just so painful to try and get through that. And the bottom line is people that were teachable and eager to learn would perform outstanding. And people that were unteachable and didn't want to learn would do freaking terrible.

And so no matter where you are, no matter how much experience you think you have, no matter how many times you've done the thing, just freaking be teachable. and be eager to learn and it's going to have such a huge impact. Yeah, man. And, you know, stay curious, right? Like the best performers are intensely curious and they're trying to get better each and every day.

So you're only going to do that if you show up, humble, ready to learn, and think that you don't know it all, you know? How much have you learned in a startup scenario with HooliGolf.com? How much time do we have? Man, I'll tell you what, when I started out this, and when you first came,

to me, we were having this conversation about what we're going to talk about here. I was like, man, I am, I'm living the new guy life. So I've had to, since leaving the military, I went to business school and I was a new guy there. You know, I'm showing up one of the rare people that don't have any business background. So I have no disciplinary experience in anything, right? So I'm doing all this stuff. I'm showing up with a no bad. Other than blowing shit up and machine gunning people.

How does my experience as a breach? work in the border room here. But yeah, so I mean, I had to do all these things. I had to ask her help. You know, they give you all these modules to teach yourself advanced math and like precalculus stuff. Like all this, it's like overboard stuff. But yeah, I dug into all that.

And it just continued. It's like once, you know, we had our sites on Huli, okay, how do I do the job, you know, of a CEO? How do I do the job? How do we launch this thing? How do we market it? Suddenly I'm a sales guy. I'm cutting videos.

I'm doing design shit. I'm doing accounting. It's like you're wearing all these damn hats. And no one's hand holding you to do this. So it's either, you know, you have the cash. If you're fortunate enough as a startup to have the cash, you can hire all this talent and you can handle those things. That's great.

But if not, you're going to have to figure it out. Yeah. But for everyone else. For everyone else. Get on that YouTube. Start checking out tutorials. you know reach within your network and get smart and yeah man I've been doing that and you know that that's you know worked out really well to this point I each day I just tried to get a little bit

better tried to get Huli you know just in a little bit better footing more efficient try to learn from our customers and all that and yeah you know and also it's the same methodology this the shit just it translates to life and how I've applied myself to golf in general so golf is insanely hard and you got to be eager to learn you got to dig in there you got to figure out there's uh you know just a lot of parts of the golf swing that take a lot of time to work through a lot of youtube videos a lot of instruction a lot of nerding out but uh you know if you want to get better at anything in life uh golf business um being a good team guy you got to be eager to learn and uh you got to put in the work man that all right so be teachable be eager to learn what's next

way. And closely related is do it right or do it again. Yeah. There's always that temptation, right? There's always a shortcut that you think you're going to get away with. It's always there. Luckily, you know, you got BTF Tony. BTF Tony is not doing it the easy way.

No, I mean, he's what comes in my mind, like immediately whenever I saw that, I was like, oh, that's Tony. I mean, the things that he instilled, man, I remember doing planning stuff for training and operations and just, you know, watching him, you know, plan and talk about infill. And, you know, his thing was always, we got to do the hardest, the hardest way is generally the best because generally the enemy is not expecting you to come through that shitty, muddy bog. So, you know, yeah, that sucks, but tactically, it's putting you in much better footing. Yeah. I've, where I guess I learned this, not necessarily the hard way, but doing the right thing at the right time. And I was working, we were doing hydrographic reconnaissance for the Marine Corps.

I was in an ARG platoon off the coast of Southern California. We went out in the middle of the night and did like the five hour freaking hydrogram. Reconnocence in a big sea state. It was a total nightmare. We get all of our soundings. We do the freaking stuff. We gather our slates back up. We drive back out to the big ship.

The cartographer, which is the guy that makes the charts. Echo Charles, the two cartographers take all the information. They build the little map or the little chart. Turn it over to the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps then comes. We go back in. the water, go back in the boats, back in the water, we go on the beach, we call in the Marines, the Marines come in. It's now been, you know, 48 hours of being awake and freaking being freezing

cold and swimming and all this shit. And the Marines come in and they land and they get on the shore and the colonel in charge of the Marines is like, that was not good. We're doing it again. Go back to the boats. So all the Marines turn around, they go back to the boats. We go back to the boats. We got on the boats. They're like, hey, the Marines did not like the landing. They want to do it again. They want to do the whole thing again, starting with your hydrographic reconnaissance. We're like, okay. So we all freaking load the boats again, get our wet tuit's on, drive over the horizon with our little boats, you know, three hour transit, whatever, get our boat pool set up. And we're getting ready to get in the water to do a hydrographic reconnaissance that we

had just done like, whatever, 36 hours before. So it's not like that. the beach had changed. And we're all freezing. And we're all tired. And it's still a big, giant, crappy sea state. And we're in our boat pool. And we're about to get in the water.

And someone says to our platoon commander, who was a prior enlisted freaking stud. And one of the best guys ever, someone goes, are we going to do this thing again? And thank God it wasn't me. But someone said, are we going to do this thing again and our OIC said well we don't have to but would that be the right thing to do and it was all quiet just like that and we said getting in the water swimmer in and and it's so true

like you know just you got to do the right thing and no Marines never would have known the big navy would never would have known we could have turned in the same chart that we had made the night before but it would not have been the right thing to do. And that is like the true frog man is not looking to cut those corners. And the only reason we didn't want to go is like cold, wet, tired, right? Like that's where you go through buds. Because cold, wet, and tired is just part of life. And that's how you do your job.

So shut up and get in the water. Yeah, sometimes you got those demons, though, that are chirping at you, right? Oh, the weakness. Maybe we can, maybe we can just skip this one. Yeah. It's always that little weakness is in there. And especially from a leadership perspective, it's like, you better do the right thing. You better do it the hard way.

The hard way is usually the right. Hey, not always. It's not like you do something hard just because it's hard. If there's a better way to do, there's a smarter way. Cool. We're all about that. But if it's the right thing to do, do the right thing. Good one.

All right. What next? Don't make the same mistake twice. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of, I almost say a lot. I mean, you're expected to make mistakes as a new guy. And obviously, we're going to make mistakes throughout our lives and careers and all that.

But there's a way to handle these mistakes. And it's very important, particularly in the teams as a new guy, and you've got to own it. You've got to own the shit out of it. Because if there's any resistance, you know, and it's clear that you're not taking ownership, you're not learning your lesson, you're going to suffer. And I mean, again, this applies to everything else. It's just, you know, you guys talk about ownership all the time. And that's what this is.

It's owning up to your mistakes. And then most importantly, you know, the debrief. What did I do wrong? How do I avoid it again? And then, you know, doing the remediation or whatever that is to make sure it never happens again. the escalation between your first mistake and your second mistake of the same thing and the teams is a lot.

Like you make a mistake. It's like, hey, dude, here's what you did wrong. Like, make sure you don't do that again. And like you said, it's kind of expected. If you make that same mistake again, it escalates quickly because now you're just being dumb. I was on a trip back in the day. And we were, I was in training cell

with a couple of the guys. We were like ad vaughn to a certain area And there was it was an area where there was Bars and clubs and nightlife as they say echo Charles So you know I was a young single team guy And was with some of the boys and there was a master chief A Vietnam master chief that worked in this particular area And he was you know like a Vietnam master chief

And so we go out and one of the guys got into like fight you know and he kind of like scraped up his knuckles and the next day we're at work and you know it's not a huge town so you know word travels around and you know of course the seal master chiefs kind of kind of know some of the law enforcement or whatever but anyways we show up to work the next day and this buddy of mine has like you know scratched bruised knuckles right from cracking somebody and the master chief's like hey he's like one of those master chiefs he's like hey what happened you're hand and the dude's like oh i i think i fell down the stairs or something stupid like that and the match chief looked him and goes i've been in that team for 28 years what happened to your hand

he's like i punched someone in the face it's like totally good to go like just tell the truth own it you or your things are going to get worse because of course you know he knows police like it's all going to they're going to get you like it's going to you just don't you can't cover things up own it you make a mistake don't make it again and carry on. Yeah. You know, one thing that comes to mind. It's easier to make mistakes as new guys

because you're expected to make certain amounts of mistakes. It's harder when you're more experienced guy, even a leader to make a mistake. And how you handle that is even more important. I had a case where, you know, I'm just going to be diamond myself out today. Just all good. Just repenting on a,

I have some of my team got mistakes, but I was on my fourth platoon. So this was after, after Ramadi. I went to a training command. I was perhaps a smidge rusty coming back. And we were doing a jump. Oh, you're a smidge rusty on jumping. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Check. Yeah, when you're at a training command, you're sucked into, I was at Buds. So I was doing, you know, very basic training there. And we had done some qual jumps or whatnot. But anyways,

we were doing this jump, normal kind of profile. I was a little bit rusty. And they had me normally being a bigger, heavier guy, you're at the back of the train jumping out because you fall faster than everyone else. For whatever reason, they put me out front. And anyways, they're given the signals.

And one of the signals, which is the standby signal, is a thumbs up. So they hit the bottom of the floor and they thumbs up. And I was like, fuck yeah, let's roll. And basically I just jumped out 15 seconds early. and the entire train jumped out. So we were hovering probably over Mexico a little bit. But after that, I didn't even realize what I'd done.

When we jumped out, I was like, damn, we're kind of far from the DZ. We all made it back. And then the guys were polite enough to let me know, hey, why'd you jump on standby? And then standby Bob was born. So there's been many bobs, but for a while I was standby Bob. And you got to take it on the chin, man. You know, you got to own it up. And especially if you're in a leadership position, you know, it sucks sometimes to take that.

But you got to just take it, man. Yeah, there's a very decent chance if you do something like that. You're going to end up with a modified or new nickname. But if you fight it, the nickname lasts forever. Oh, yeah. If you fight it, it's going to stick even more. But no one knows me to stand by Bobby anymore, except for a select few. Maybe now a couple more.

I'll get a couple more. There was a video of it wasn't me. It was in my platoon. wasn't free fall qualified, but it was in, this is my first platoon. And like, there was a whole debate on the ramp of a guy saying like, go, no, no, no, no, go. No, no. It was like, it was all in video. It was just comical.

So that's why we rehearse, you know, that's why we rehearse. Well, you know, I mean, this goes to, uh, we're talking about humility. And, you know, the longer you're in, the more likelihood you are to get complacent. And, you know, I've had a couple periods of my. career where I got a little complacent and complacency kills and that's why yeah you got to fight it at all cost the there's another we'll throw this in the mistake category here but uh watched warfare this last week um fantastic movie man uh yeah watched the episode with uh joan l-a man and uh really powerful stuff but i when i was watching that movie i've seen so many of the sights and sounds and feels that i was

familiar with. It was blown my mind, but there was one scene in particular that is like, holy shit, I feel like I've seen this. And no spoilers here. You've already had them on. Yeah, but anyways, there's a scene where they're looking through the scope and you see these people scampering into the building. Like, I saw that. And I saw that. And so I was on, I was on a gun. I wasn't a sniper, wasn't trained sniper but you know we all rotated through um you know watch rotations essentially so i spent a lot of my time on a nudge up looking down the sector but i would rotate through sniper rifles um you know i was trying to shoot rifles but not as proficient as a sniper but anyways i was i was i saw this movement and i zoomed in and was looking at that and right

when i did that out of my periphery i saw a puff of smoke from across the street and I looked and I locked eyes, you know, not beyond the scope, but with this fucker shooting an RPG like right in my face. And that thing zoomed in. And I, you know, swept the scope over and it was zoomed in because I'm looking, you know, a thousand yards down. And it was just blackness, nothing. I was basically, you know, not able to get that guy. And, yeah, we got hit by PQM soon after. But yeah, you know, those are the mistakes that you don't want to don't want to have to learn, but, you know, luckily we didn't get hit and just, you know, don't make that mistake again. And, you know, and whether or not that was a mistake or they

just got one up on me from being zoomed in or not being, being aware of the immediate part of our sector. Combat's hard, man. And sometimes, you know, even you're trying to do all the right things, you're just going to get gotten sometimes. Yeah. What did you, um, I had a, uh, my first Pullman to Iraq we were in this position and do you remember when they had fleer on the on the on the humvees for a little while and so we were in this position and I had my Humvee in this kind of like bunkered position and we were looking across the river this was in Baghdad and we're looking across the river and we're scanning for a while and all of a sudden this this this um and we had snipers out but I had the flare you know so I was like okay I can help the snipers a lot and so I'm looking across the river and all of a sudden you know this kind of this kind of vehicle rolls by the And then it kind of rolls by again and then it stops. And then like guys get out and I'm like, oh, it's, you know, these guys are definitely setting up and they start like, they open the trunk. You know, so now I'm like, okay, cool.

This is, we're about to, we're about to kill some bad guys. Because we're on this fob that had been getting attacked a lot. And so now I'm like zooming in. I'm like trying to PID weapons, trying to PID weapons. I'm talking, you know, snipers like, hey guys, right, you know, there was a bridge right there. And I was like, right by the bridge. And they were like, we got it. and we're tracking. And as I'm sitting there, like, totally focused on that, boom, we get hit

with RPGs from like another spot. And it was so, as soon as it happened, I was like, dude, I just got so played because they did, made the total obvious thing for to draw all of our attention, including mine. And then we got hit from probably 300 meters away, which is, I did not see any of it. We just, boom, I'm like, oh, yeah, we just got played. That is, You know, the enemy is going to be smart. What do you remember? I know you're on that podcast I did with Joe and Elliott. We did a, you know, we kind of talked about the turnover and how, you know, what my feelings were when we turned over.

It was like you felt like you were letting your kid go like for the first time in the deep end or whatever. And it felt really hard to leave. How did you feel? Yeah. I think that's the sentiment there is, you know, because you know, because you know, that there's a learning curve. And I knew where we were in April 2006 and then where we were by October

we were completely different humans and operators. And yeah, you just, you feel for the guys and you wish them the best in not knowing what they're going to face. You just hope that, you know, they're going to learn the lessons they need to learn the easier way.

Yeah. Yeah. Tough one. Yeah. All right, what's your next? What's your next? New guy. Life advice. Yep. We talked about humility. I think we're good on that one.

Slow is smooth and smooth as fast. One of my favorite team guys things. Love that. So from a, from team guy perspective, this is a shooting term. And it's really about being smooth to draw your sights and a smooth trigger squeeze. And that that is preferable to being fast, jerky, throwing your rounds off target, missing, and having to take. follow-on shots. So that's kind of the you know the

principle that applies to shooting but I think in a broader context, you know, maybe stretching it a little bit, but you guys talk about you know, Oudaloup and detaching and I think those are closely related in terms of just being smooth, right? Being

observing, orienting, smooth and deliberate in some of the decisions that you're making so you're not being hasty and emotional all. Yeah. That's such a classic team guy saying, and I don't even know where I think it might have

originated from one of the shooting schools that we went to, but I'm not sure. Maybe it came from the Vietnam guys. I don't know. But, you know, when you shoot, and especially when you're a new guy and you're trying to beat one of the older guys until you're going to fat, and the faster you try and go, the more shots you throw in the worst job you do. And just to be like, all right, just do what you're supposed to do. slow as smooth smooth as fast is a huge benefit and I think it also applies like what you're

saying is not rushing decision making and look you're going to have to make decisions but sometimes and again as as much as we talk about being default aggressive and making things happen there's sometimes it's like okay hold on a second let's let's see where this let's let's let this evolve a little bit let's let this play out a little bit let's see where this is let's see if this is the real problem because just like I just talked about a guy that's in the vicinity of this FOB that has been getting attacked in the nighttime when there's a curfew and he's out and he's opening up his trunk of his car that seems like the biggest problem and it got me totally sucked in but if I would have been like okay cool let's take let's take a bit just just widen the parameter

of the Fleer thermal imager and I would have seen the other other dudes popping up with a couple RPGs that they're about to get slam into us. So taking a step back, not getting target fixation, not rushing to judgment is a good policy, not just when you're shooting, but when you're living. Be smooth. Chuck. Next. Take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you.

Ain't that the truth? Yep. Yeah, man. So seems, you know, pretty common sense in the statement. But one thing I think about in particular being a breacher, just to give the level of like attention to detail on my gear, just to get an example of being a seal and being a sealed breacher. But we have to operate our systems at night. We, you know, primarily do direct action missions at night. So everything that we do is under darkness, under nods.

So when you're part of a breach team in particular, you're dealing with a charge. a number of charges, you know, no-n-no firing devices, and, you know, not to get too much into procedures, but there may be a procedures where, you know, it's a two-man job, and there's some orchestration of that stuff. And, I mean, this could be a total goat rodeo. If you're not, you know, applying the attention to detail where it needs to be and how your gear is set up, But, you know, these charges have, there's a booster connected to it, there's this. And if it's not placed in your pouch the right way and you, at the dark, you're going to pull that out. Like, I had this folded an exact, precise way.

It wasn't upside down. It wasn't this. So I can reach in. I know when I'm grabbing it exactly where it's at. And I know there's like an adhesive to it. I've pre-stage like a tape ball at the end of it because I don't want to be looking down. I want to feel, you know, but I don't have the dexterity in my gloves. So, you know, you know exactly where everything's at.

You got the no-no wrapped this side. You know, if I'm passing it off this way or that way, the firing device is laid on just this way so that, you know, everything comes out and it's maximum efficiency on target. So, yeah, that's just one example of the level of attention to detail on the gear that I applied. But, you know, in the teams in general, our gear is king, man, from

day one our weapon systems, keeping them up and running, you know, the post-op, the pre-op, making sure they're ready to go, opt-testing them, all of our life-saving equipment. I was probably, you know, if there was an award

for the slowest parachute packer in the teams, it was probably this guy. I wasn't putting anything to chance, man. I was always the last one. They were packing my shoe, you know, sweat,

just pouring off. But take care of you. gear and your gear will take care of you. Yeah, I was over jumping and I was on deployment back in the day. And, uh, and, and we were jumping into some desert location. And, you know, we land and we pack and, you know, cool. And we're kind of like, you know, you know, we had a couple very proficient like leap frog type jumpers in the platoon.

They're like, come on, guys. Like, hurry up. I'm like, okay, of course, you know. And so I kind of like, you know. rush through a pack job and then you know we jump again and like okay my parachute still opened well now we get down to the ground again and now the wind's picked up so now we're out in the desert trying to pack our rigs and the you know things blown and we're literally like taking rocks and putting them onto the shoots and dude i completely trash packed this rig and uh the shit didn't

open damn so yeah i had a cut away and really didn't feel good about it um but you know i was like you know is that smart and it was also part of of it, you know, it was not only, hey, like, I'm trying to hurry because I'm trying to get it done, but like that peer pressure of like, come on, dude. Like you don't want to be, you do not want to be the guy that's holding up the helo. Like a helo, a whole helicopter is waiting on you. And, you know, so I wasn't, and I wasn't the last guy done packing. Of course I wasn't because I trash packed that thing and it didn't open.

So this is the teams right here. Rather than doing the deliberate thing to take care of yourself, you don't want to let down your buddies. Yeah, it's 100% it. Maybe not the best call in that particular scenario. And the other piece of gear you got to take care of is your body. Like you're 100% you're, you know, and you're just, you know, the seal teams and the military is very rough on your on your body. And a lot of times guys don't help it. Right. They don't help the process. Like they eat like crap, drink alcohol. I think one of the worst things that that people do is stop working out for three weeks. Stop working out for a month.

Whatever the case may be, oh, you went on a trip or you got back from a trip or your family this or you. And guys stop working out for six weeks. And all of a sudden when you get back to working out or you get back to the field, you think you can still do what you were doing. And it's like, you know what? That works when you're 20. like when I was when I was got out of buds bro I could show up what it didn't matter you're you're in shape

from buds for a while like they just it just it just is part of you but then eventually you're like oh I would see guys not work out and who do you think's going to get hurt like you if you haven't worked out and then all of a sudden you're sprinting carrying a freaking down man like you're getting hurt so yeah especially dues of our advanced stage I mean once you get over 40 you got to keep moving because if you don't move it you're going to lose it and you may not get it back yeah you got it you got to fight it every day you got to get it you got to get it done every day you got to move every day I really do think like I've been very lucky on you know training and you know jujitsu like I mean I get I've gotten dinged up from jitzu but I'm still training

and I'm still training hard I'm still lifting still running still doing stuff hard and I think one of the main reasons for that is the fact that I don't stop moving and I never go you know It's been a few months since I worked out. Dude. That's when you're getting hurt. Do you still do muscle ups? Yes. Yes.

Actually, technically right now I have some tendonitis in my right arm that we're getting there. But so it's not at this moment. But yes, muscle ups are part of the thing. Good for you, man. I was never a muscle guy. My shoulder mobility never.

I've only done a couple in my entire life. But I was always impressed. I remember back in the day, yeah, muscle ups. Yeah, we had a one of the new guy officers came over, uh, to Ramadi. And I don't if you remember, I had rings in the like gym there. And this guy came up to me. He's a good, he's a good dupies and ensign, you know, brand new officer. He's like, he's like, hey, sir, you know, I've been having some troubles with my shoulder. Do you have any recommendations? And I was like, yeah, muscle

ups. So, uh, yeah, on that, the, uh, the teams are getting a lot smarter. You know, I mean, when we come up, when we came up, there was no. There was no. There was no. thought of taking care of yourself. It was just run yourself into the ground. And that's why everyone in our generation just became broken at some point. But now it's built in, you know, they got, they got touch points throughout. You got, you got nutritionists, you got trainers. Yeah, it's pretty good.

Yeah. And they don't like, they're not as abusive to their bodies as we were, which is awesome. So there's progress there. And then the other thing I'll say on this is I've taken this, take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. I've also changed that to take care of your people and your people will take care of you. So if you treat your team like shit,

they're not going to care about you. But if you take care of them, they'll take care of you. So this applies to everything. All right, what's next? What do you got? Become an asset and make yourself indispensable. So, yeah, in the teams, especially as a new guy,

that's what you're trying to do. As fast as humanly possible, has become a reliable, entity that people trust and that, you know, they'll bring you on the mission because it's not guaranteed that you're going on the mission and or if you do go that you're not going to get marginalized into some position, you know, in the back of the train or whatever else. So, you know, it's about putting in the work to get yourself there, a lot of work on your own, finding the mentors that you need, and then taking advantage of opportunities, you know, when they come.

there was one one uh fin yet um i could think of as a new guy i had a new guy buddy with me that uh we we'd done uh butts together um until i got rolled and then uh you know i met him he we joined the samplatoon um charley and anyways uh he was a comms guy and you know he wasn't super happy with the level of like comms training and support at that time, like early 2000s. So we had some new, like, emerging technologies, and we just weren't where he thought we should be. And as a new guy, he just, like, geeked out.

And he got all the manuals. He started reaching out to SMEs. And on that deployment, he actually ended up creating some innovation. I won't get too into the details, but it had to do with... Basically, we got tasks to do the exploitation of, like, a strategic level operation. So after the operation went down, we went and did some exploitation and we're sending photos at like high level folks from seeing. And he was able to do this in an environment that had never been done before. You know, so just because you're a new guy, it doesn't mean you can't

innovate and bring value. You know, it's the ball's in your court. It's just, you know, how far can you get, how fast, you know. Yeah. In fact, as a new guy, you might have a little bit more of an open mind than other people. And especially when it comes to technology, like people like me may not be all that technologically savvy. But if you roll in there and you can make things happen. Yeah, it's, it's so critical. And it's so, it's oftentimes it's like the, you know, hey, this is, this is how someone

does the business, right? This is how we do it. And they don't see the holes or the gaps that you might be able to see when you go, wait a second, why are we doing, why do we have this one? we just get this app over here or why don't we just program this thing or whatever the case may be why don't that wouldn't it be more efficient to do this and they just don't see it sometimes and so rolling in there and of course you got to be humble but if you roll in there and you can say hey we can we can we can make this more efficient we can you know accelerate our progress here by doing these things it's it's very

beneficial that's um a huge part of it and then you know as simple as this might sound like you the first thing you said was if you're reliable. Like being a reliable human that is going to do the right things on the right time and be on time and have the right gear, like that is, believe it or not, a legit freaking asset. If I can count on this dude to be here at this time with the right gear, a hundred percent, man,

that is, that's huge in its own right. So good way to become an asset. Yeah, damn right. What's next? Keep your world small. What does that mean? What do you mean by that?

So as a new guy in this kind of, you know, from training to being a new guy is don't, don't get overwhelmed with, you know, the big picture and all these things. Keep your world small, you know, focus on the procedure. The teams, everything we deal with in close quarters combat, you know, media action, driven. drills, maneuver warfare. You know, it's all, if this, then that, it's all a set of procedures. So looking at, you know, I think pool comp is like the best example that people know about in our training pipeline of, you know, pool comp is this series of underwater, or it's, it's an underwater test where they're stressing you the hell out, they're taking away your

air source, you know, getting you near drowning. and letting you work yourself out of that procedure there. And, you know, if we go all the way back to there, it's keeping your world small and, okay, I don't have an error. First, I got to check, you know, make sure the error is on. Okay, the error is on tracing the hoses. So it's easy to get overwhelmed in, you know, extremely stressful situations, but keeping your world small,

especially as a new guy when you're not as familiar with all the things that you're doing, you know, the more you could focus on the procedure. And, yeah, you know, it's led me to, you know, get through a lot of stuff beyond, beyond just being a team guy. You know, business is a roller coaster. And, you know, like, you can get jerked around a lot emotionally.

If every little thing that happens, you're, you know, kind of losing your shit. So, you know, focusing on the fundamentals, the things you've got to do to get better. recognizing where to make the adjustments and uh you know i mean man translates it's life and everything else and um yeah you know one one thing that uh one team guy vignette that is a very strong one you talk about having a cutaway i had i had myself a little free fall issue once as well and good times i believe keeping my world small like saved my damn life um so like a little

backstory here is uh this is like circa 2012 I was dealing with some really bad back issues. A platoon chief, I was just fighting through it. And we had a jump week, and we were progressing through that jump week and culminating in a combat equipment jump. And, yeah, I wasn't going to not train. It's just everything I did hurt really bad. And so, you know, maybe this pertains to something else we've already talked about here.

But we're jumping with a ruck, and I thought it best to lighten up that ruck a little bit. Really just to alleviate, you know, the sitting around having that thing. It sits in between your legs for, you know, your sin for hour, hour and a half. Just excruciating pain to have anything pulling on me. So anyways, I lightened up that ruck and then we went out and proceeded to do the jump. And, you know, I waddled up to the door and I threw myself out. And I don't know if it was a combination of the lightness of the ruck or how the straps became loose, but that damn thing turned into a sail.

It caught air. And I started violently flipping, essentially for like 7,000 feet. So I was violently forward flipping. Forward flipping? Yes. That's bizarre. It is bizarre. Yeah.

So the ruck had basically caught, you know, it's in between your legs. And it had like dropped down and was catching wind like a sail. so I was trying to counterbalance it and trying to like basically sit fly and do some other things and I was having a hard time getting stable I would basically get stable for a second and then I would flip again

and so like through this whole time I was surprisingly like pretty calm through it although I knew like if I didn't get my shit together really really fast this was going to be bad and I also knew like I can't pull this as I'm flipping you know because we'll get tangled and and I'll be down so you know it's very keen that I had to figure this out and pull at a precise moment and I did just that I found a sit fly position I was stable for like

three seconds I pulled that damn thing into pulling at the right altitude and floating down with everyone else no one else had a clue what the hell I'd been through but uh you know I think just one of many examples of you know high stress pressure situations where you know just focus on the procedure trying to correct your position and not because if you're just worried about death, you're going to die. Yeah, you're going to die. That's it. Yeah, I've always, when I first saw that, I was like, keep your world small. I've heard people talk about like training, like Bud's training.

Don't think of six months. Don't think of one month. Don't think of first phase. Think of like, I'm going to make it through this log PT right now and make it to breakfast or whatever. So that's one. But the way you're describing it really makes me think of like prioritize and execute. Like, okay. there's a lot of shit going on right now.

I could die, but right now what I need to focus on is getting stable so I can pull my rip cord. That's the most important thing in the world. None of this other shit matters, and that's what I'm going to take care of. So, yeah,

that's when there's a lot of crazy things going on, like what's the most important thing? What do I need to actually focus on right now? I can't do four things at once. You know, you probably couldn't even, at that point, you're probably done checking your altimeter.

You've like, I've just got to get stable and freaking pull my rip cord. Like, not worried about this. not worried about that. I don't care where the DZ is. Like, I need to get stable and pull my ripcord. That's a little prioritizing execute act. That was it, man. Yeah. All right, next. Rehearsals in visualizing to enhance performance. So, like, this is definitely something as our

pipeline has evolved that has been more aggrined into the training. At least it had been when I left basic training back in 2021. And I know the team's got a lot better about this. We kind of hit on this earlier, you know, about the value of doing rehearsals, but at that micro level, as an individual, you know, running yourself through, you know, if you're doing a training evolution, if you're doing an operation, whatever that is, running through the procedure, rehearsing that and actually visualizing, you know, as close as you can replicate, whatever it is you're going to be doing. There's a lot of value in that. And obviously, I've seen a lot of this in sports nowadays. There's just a big movement towards.

visualization performance. It's, I mean, it's big in golf. Professional golfers are doing it. Obviously, a lot of the other athletes have been doing this for a while. One thing that was something that kind of got lost for a while was when I first got to the teams, it was for a mission you were supposed to prep gear

one third of the time, plan one third of the time, and rehearse one third a third, one third, one third, one third. And for a while, it became like 90% planning, which really translated to 90% sitting around making PowerPoint slides that the commanding officer could be impressed with your, your fonts and whatnot. And we really got away. I saw, I saw people getting away from rehearsals. And luckily, I was always very, you know, as adamant as I could be about that one third, one third, one third. And look, there was a certain time where there was a certain things where it's like, you know, you're going to have to freaking put this major PowerPoint thing together so that the,

whoever is going to see it and go, wow, it looks like you really aren't prepared for this. It's like, no, we haven't rehearsed at all. We're not ready for shit. No, actually, the deal is one third, one third, one third, one third. One third gear prep, which we would get pretty efficient at gear prep. We really wouldn't take that much time. You know, maybe if you got back in the day,

if you got hit with some mission that you hadn't been doing, right? Like if you get suddenly hit with a duck drop, OTP, it's going to take you a third of the time to get that gear ready. And then the next day you're doing a, you know, a target assault. And the next day you're doing a combat swimmer op. Like, it will take you more time. But we get in that rhythm of like, oh, we're doing a, we're doing a DA. We're doing a DA.

We're doing a driving DA. We're doing a, uh, we're doing a, uh, an overwatch and overwatch. We're like you, you don't, it doesn't take one third of the time to prep your gear. Uh, but rehearsals. And, and that also goes with rehearsals too. Like we rehearsed getting in and out of the vehicles. Well, if you haven't done a land, a vehicle op. before or you're working with people you haven't worked before.

Yeah, you need to spend a third of that time getting in and out of the vehicles. How are you going to line up the vehicles? What are you going to do if there's a down vehicle? What's your tow, your rig for toe situation? Who's changing tires? Like all that stuff you do. But we would do like just operation after operation after operation where you could do a three-minute walkthrough, getting out of the vehicles one time.

And everyone's like, yep, cool, we're good. Everyone knows what vehicles are in. Yep, cool, got it. So you could spend a little more time planning and a little less time with rehearsals and a little less time with gear prep. But ultimately knowing what those numbers are and understanding the importance of rehearsal, which man, walking through something one time is it increases people's capabilities like five times. Yeah, man. This is something we did a lot in Ramadi too. So like every time we did a DA, we would do exactly what you're talking about.

it seems, you know, from an outsider looking in, like, amateur level shit, you know, pulling up, vehicles are in this order, they're looking this direction, guys are stepping out, fields of fire, and then, you know, the assault is moving this way or whatever. We did that every single time. And you know what? Every single time I also did was every breach that I did, every single breach I did overseas is we did a walkthrough like that. So, you've done dozens, hundreds of breaches, guys all experienced.

dudes and we're doing very basic level walkthroughs because if nothing else, you're creating muscle memory, right? So that it's instinctive that when we're on target, we know what the target looks like. We know we're going right. And obviously, anything could change, right? You know, you train to your plan A and then you're reading React based on your SOPs after that. but what we did is we came like really efficient about breaching and assaulting

and we're minimizing our time on the X because we've rehearsed this over and over again. I know I'm going left, you're going right. This is what's happening. And bam, that charges, you know, off and we're inside before anyone knows what's happened. Yeah, yeah. That applies to, you know, so many different things. Doing walkthroughs. Could.

Next. This is another popular team guy, won. And two is one, one is none. Yeah. Check. Yeah. Make sure you got your gear. Yeah, got your gear. You didn't have some redundant gear.

Yeah, I got a good story here. So when I was on last time, I told a story. I won't recount the entire thing. But basically we were doing a training operation, big Navy exercise, training with a submarine. I had like a near-death experience. Zodiac flipped, yada, yada. well after that whole thing transpired we still had the entire operation to do that was just the insert and so we um what it what it happened at that we flipped the zodiac on uh you know pulling the

zodiac off the submarine launching uh all of our shit got soaked and we got some gear that basically got damaged uh so we inserted our our swimmers and our uh our radio had been uh you know just soaked So basically it was inoperable. And we had had an issue. C-State had kicked up. And so we had to change our link up with the Mark V's we were supposed to pick us up in the middle of the ocean, essentially. And due to C-State, we had some changes.

We were relying on this communication to get relayed. Well, it never did or it never got back to us. And come that morning, we're floating out in the ocean waiting for pickup. It just never came. This is just such a freaking typical, freaking team guy disaster. It just adds up Like every little thing Oh yeah we flip the boat

Which is no big deal Except for the radio flood Except we need to drive It's like I've just yo And it turned into a lot more So we missed our link up our extract Night becomes day We're just flown out there

We're super smoked Chris was out there with me too He was one of the After Zodang drivers We're just smoke And flowed out of the ocean all night And we were all you know Soed from the sea state

And anyways We made the decision It's like, all right, well, I guess we go back to land. You know, we can't talk to anyone. We're floating out here in the ocean. We went back. This island that we were on was like, there was like thousands of seals and sea lions. And we just pulled up amongst them.

We just racked out, you know, set her stuff out, tried to drive the radio. Where was this? Was it like around San Diego? He's near, I want to say like San Nicolas. St. Nick, okay. Yeah. I've been there. That's what, there's freaking elephant seals on there.

there and stuff? Yeah, yeah. It's like a little wild out there. It's a little western. Yeah, there were zero shits by the time. We were so smoked. We just pulled up to this. I mean, it was like the National Geographic filming. Yeah. Thousands of these guys and we laid out and basically had no columns with anyone and, you know, just hoping people were going to find us. Who was with you? Um, was it like a platoon? No, no, well, we dropped off, uh, it was a platoon. We dropped off a couple of SR teams and I think two Zodiacs. So there were like four of us, two per boat, four of us alone enough, right? And so we were stranded on this island throughout the day and then we saw a P3 flying overhead.

And I think we got them on a bidder or something at some point. But we notified the Mark V's where we were and then they came to pick us up that evening showed up. We thought our night was over. Sea State kicked up, weather kicked up, it's storming, bowel breakers. And the boat got stuck out in the middle. Like, I guess we ran off her kelp and went in the jets. So we were stuck out there all night through the next morning. So, yeah, I mean, going back to his one, one is none, right?

If we have two radios, if we have a redundant capability, our night is two days less long, you know. Rob, spent a lot of time out there, that little San Diego A.O. of operations. We could drive in back down motors, tolling with a 35 horsepower spare engine, like just drifting into Mexican waters coming up on HF radio calling like port facilities

trying to see if we can help, yeah. But water don't play around. Don't play around. All right, next. If you're not going to be smart, be hard. It's a good one. I mean, I think you should be both, really. Yeah, yeah.

But definitely as a new guy, you're going to have to be hard. You can have to carry more weight than everyone else. You're going to be working longer hours than everyone else. So, you know, that's it. If you're going to be stupid, you've got to be tough. Yeah. Check. Conquer.

Yep. Yeah, man, you mentioned with the, you know, pod with Joan Elliott about the overwatches, like how hard those actually were. Now that was captured, I think, you know, pretty well in that movie. warfare but um yeah those were some long gnarly ops man and um you know long patrols in super hot nasty um you know carrying a shit ton of weight and then and then you get there in your standing watch essentially waiting for bad shit happen um yeah those are some some long gnarly ops and uh our new guys were studs man they they handle that again um you know exactly as they were

trying to do and uh represented but But yeah, just kind of came to mind. Yeah, I remember sitting in like a cop falcon and I was just sitting there and I had been sitting there downstairs. Like the army had moved in. They're starting to build the combat outpost. You guys pushed down to forced or I think it was forced or you guys pushed down there. And I'm like sitting there. And I am in a full athletic sweat.

Like I'm sitting, I've been sitting there for like two hours. Like I'm not moving. I'm just sitting there. and I'm in a full athletic like drip drip drip drip drip and that's how hot it is I mean it's 120 degrees it's freaking totally ridiculous and yeah that's the way it is man the yard yep check next attention to detail so I mean this is in that phrase is just hammered in buds but I mean that's this is actually hammered in Navy boot camp yeah really like because he's Navy boot camp.

You know, this is a kid that's 17 years old in Navy boot camp, and he's going to be, you know, loading the ordinance onto an aircraft and making sure that it's done correctly. And so they really want to make sure that you have attention to detail. And the team's the same damn thing. It's it, man. Everything we do is high risk,

whether that's training or operations and all of it. It's a lot of little details, man. And all those details matter. The orders matter. Sometimes, yeah. Yeah. And one thing that you notice is that's part of your reputation. You know, if you're not, if you're constantly dropping the ball and the little things,

you know, how can I count on you to do the big things if you can't even get the little things right? And, you know, someone might be like, well, you know, this isn't that important. Well, it is that important. Like the little things, that's like that's saying how you do anything is how you do everything. Yep. That's one of those, another little like team guy isish saying. of the little things are going to matter. That's how you get your reputation.

You know, if you show up late, you forget things, you forget that little thing. You're not in the right uniform. All those little things add up, man. They all add up. Yeah. And, you know, before you become the leader as you're progressing through whatever career that is,

you know, if you don't know the details, you don't know the jobs and the smaller parts, points of performance of the job, then you can't really lead that. So it all starts from the fundamentals of the attention detail. yeah man they matter yeah anymore uh yeah um be a good follower you know i know you you guys talk a little bit about this the uh you know the the dichotomy of being a good leader the the opposite of that there was several goal of that is being being a good follower and uh you know

sometimes that could be challenging uh but it's super important and um yeah man you got to you know part of that is, especially as a new guy, like learning the mission. Like you may not understand all the things, but it's, you know, getting yourself informed, getting plugged in, you know, understanding the chain of command. And, you know, knowing how to respect leadership and how to, you know, I mean, just be a good teammate. You know, so one example of thinking with Laif, Lave made it really easy to be a good follower because he was a really tremendous leader

and I really appreciated his style you know as leaders you pick and pull from different leaders that you have and you know he was less experience in the teams than I was but like super mature great great leader and you know he had a this is like a superpower in terms of leadership

but just a way of connecting with his people at a very human level and you know he's funny as shit and that's a you know I'm not sure if everyone gets to see that really really funny guy uh engaging dude but um and and he's willing to have you know discussions with you but in the same sense uh you know he knows how to make a call and you know when it's time to to fall in line and and listen to that And one such case I had is we were doing an operation. I think this was a, was that village right outside of, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. So we were doing an operation there and we had a, you know, normal direct action mission there and we hit the target. Actually, the breach went off and we rushed, you know, the room. kind of like a mud room and fireworks started going off in there. I'm not sure if you remember this, but the Jossum incident. So essentially we come into this room and, you know, gunshots are happening. Like, it's like, damn, this is a hot target.

Guys are starting to prep frags. Like, it's on. You know, sucking out of the doorway and make entry and ends up being like an old guy in kind of a dry hole. And, you know, I'm certainly perplexed. like what that'll happen. It turned out one of our Iraqis in the back of the train, had an AD, almost smoked all this.

But anyways, after that whole event, we got the intel, okay, the guys over here. A couple houses down. A couple houses down. Kind of like in an apartment complex. And, you know, being the preacher that I was, I wanted to blow up everything, just standard. And Leif had seen something that I hadn't seen.

He had seen some small shoes sent out the... Yeah. Like multiple pairs of kids' shoes outside the door. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, Leif kind of gave me the initial guidance day, this is what we're doing. And, you know, there was a little bit of not pushback, but I think we should do this. Leif was like, you know, negative, not doing that.

So, and I immediately backed off because I, once you get that signal that this is not a discussion, this is a call. So I think that's part of straddling that, being, being a good follower, no one. knowing when you got to get in line yeah it's part of it yeah and the laf being funny part so i on that podcast i did with joe and elliiffe had sent me a bunch of emails between him and elliott and because they were they were real tight bros yeah and um the funny thing is so i got him and i'm like all right so i had to like edit them down because there's like inappropriate stuff in there and so and then i told lief i was like hey man i thanks for sending those emails yeah i i edit him down you know just to clean him up.

He's all, I already edited him down. So I had to edit it down the edited down version, you know, but there were a bunch of, a bunch of smack talking in there and stuff like that. And yeah, and that's, I always,

you know, I always joked that Laif is like a lot nicer than I am. You know what I mean? Like he's just nice. You know, he's just a nice, whatever, what's that like southern etiquette type dude,

you know, he's just super nice to people. And I'm, I'm not. I'm like a New Englander who are born. like you know angry and cold you know that's sort of my more my more my general uh atmospherics that i give off i guess even though you know i like to have fun too occasionally just not while we're at work so uh all right is that is that is that your list i have one more okay let's go funny one

Okay. So this has no context beyond the context I'm giving it here, but never miss an opportunity to take a piss. Okay. I think this does apply. This is a good one. It's a team guy. But I got a story as a new guy.

We were doing a, I believe we're working in a Fallon. We're doing back then we did a lot of SR training. I'm like hardcore SR training, long inserts, long infills. This was supposed to be a 20 minute insert. And, you know, multi-day op. We're carrying a bunch of shit. So I'm like. Did you prehydrate?

Oh, dude. You know what I was a big one. So Echo Charles, you're going to go in the field for two days, three days, and you got to carry a shit ton of water. You can actually drink enough water before you go that you won't need water for the first day. Yeah. Like, I'm serious. That seems crazy, but you can do it.

And generally speaking, you kind of want to do it because you don't want to, there's nothing worse than being thirsty talking about, you know, when Bob was going through heat exhaustion or Ramada, you don't, that's a terrible thing. You're a total, you're a total disaster soup sandwich. It's just terrible. So, like the prehydroids, of just pounding water is what everyone does.

And you think, cool, I'll piss right before I get on the airplane, hopefully, or right before I get on the helo, and then it's a 20 minute insert, cool, no, you don't even think about it that much. Yeah. Because normally, if you gotta take a piss, you take a piss. You don't always have those opportunities. All right, proceed. Yeah, so we're moving and I did exactly that, a prehydrate, because we had a long patrol

after that. And so if 15 minutes comes by, I'm like, okay, we're getting close 20 comes by. I'm like, we're really close. And 30, it's like, okay, this is Mnit, but I'm starting to, I got to piss. 30 becomes 45, now we're in an hour, and I'm doing the pee-pee dance, and I'm hurting. And so, like, we get, I think we're 90 minutes in, and we get to a hover, and I'm like, oh, my God, thank God. It's now time. And we're hovering for about five minutes, and I'm like, it's happening.

And then we take off. and we're another half an hour. I'm beside myself. And eventually two hours in, we land and, you know, whatever. I go admin for a couple of minutes here. But the funny part, and when you were mentioning earlier about,

you know, we're never going to stop a helo for this one guy. Well, when we hovered that 90 minutes in, it's because the other helo actually had them land because the guy had to piss really bad. And so. And they didn't tell you. They didn't tell me.

Freaking bastards. Yeah, for the young team guys out there, bring a gatorie bottle when you're on a helo. Just bring a gatorial bottle and you're all good. Yeah, good go. And that's it for me. All right. I got some here. Some, again, I was just kind of like going through my thoughts and of life.

All right. And some of these we kind of hit on a little bit, but I'll bring them up again just as a little bit of an angle. Here's one. Team gear, platoon gear, personal gear, then yourself. Yeah. So when you come back from an operation, you take care of the team gear, first, which is like the, the freaking boats or whatever. Then you do platoon gear, which is like your boats.

Then you do your personal gear, then yourself. So don't be getting in the shower before your weapons cleaned. And don't clean your weapon until the Humvee is refueled and prepped. And if you, if you break this procedure, it's a freaking mortal sin in the teams. It's a mortal sin to take care of your own shit before you took care of the platoon shit. That's the way it is. So that's my, that's my number one. Number two, this came from my LPO in my first platoon,

always go out. And what he meant, because he was a partier, what he meant was always go out, like, to the bar, to the pub. You land somewhere in some foreign city, and the, you know, the plane's going to be on the ground for three hours. Go out. That's what he meant. I, like, rearranged it in my head to mean like, hey, you go out.

Like, you get a chance to do training, you get a chance to do a mission, you get a chance to, I don't care if you're going to go out I'm going to be the freaking backup boat driver. But if that's what I, if that's a job I'm going to be able to get, I'm going to take it. You always go out.

If there's a training mission, because I know it sounds crazy, but you get that point in the teams where you're on your third, fourth, fifth deployment and you're like, well, you know, there's an SR teams going out. You know what?

They only need six guys. There's eight guys in our squad. I can, I can stay back in the talk and do comm. It's like, no, always go out. And that's a good. attitude to have.

There's the old one. Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can lie down? There is validity to that. Like if you get a chance to take a rest, take a rest. If there's a chance where nothing's going on, lay down, put your feet up, elevate your feet above your heart, you know, and sleep. You're going to need sleep sometimes.

Yeah, in buds, and I'm not sure if this was a tradition that you guys had or if it still goes on, but there used to be this hideout spot that the class. There was no hideout spots when I was in bites. After chow, like the, the trick was the hack was we would eat fast and then we would go to this hideout spot. And you would take a 15 minute nap. And that 15 minute nap was like, like a million minutes. Man, boss. But yeah, like, you know, you want to see a whole platoon of sleeping team guys.

Just take him up in the plane getting ready to jump. Every single dude is a rocked out. out? I made one, which is don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest. So the leaning rest is the army term for like being in the push-up position. They call it the front leaning rest. And yet you'd have these like officers that would be like, hey, we want to be forward leaning on this. And they would be so far forward leaning like, hey, we need to prep the gear and do the rehearsing and do this, all the stuff. You haven't even gotten tasked with a damn mission yet and you're so far forward leaning that we're prepping for stuff that's not going to happen

or could change radically. So it's good to be forward leaning, but don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest. Hey, use the chain of command. I know this might sound crazy. Use the chain of command up and down. And where I remember about this is guys would come to me, because I was bros with a lot of different dudes and like guys that were four or five levels below me in the chain of command,

they come up be like, hey, can we get this piece of gear? and I would always say like, did you talk to your LPO? Did you talk to your chief? Like, you know, go talk to your chief because your chief probably can make this happen without me and by the way, your chief might have a reason

why he doesn't want to do that. So go talk to your chief. And same thing, if guys doing something jacked up, I'm not, my initial instinct isn't be like, go right to them. No, I'm going to talk to a chief and say, hey, have you seen what Echo's doing? He seems like he's a little off track.

Oh, let me find out what's going on. Just use the chain of command. No big deal. Never turn down a school you're offered. And then when you get to the school, be number one in the school. Yep. That's a good one.

Your reputation is everything, and everything you do is your reputation. Everything you do. Everything you do is your reputation. And your reputation is everything. So when you're doing dumb shit, don't do it. When there's an opportunity to cut a corner

that you think no one's going to see, everyone's going to see it. They're going to find out about it and they're going to hold it against you forever. Yeah, sure. So just be careful. This was one that I learned early on. Avoid where, I think this was in Marsenko's book too. I think that's where I remember it from.

Avoid wearing a uniform at all cost, but if you have to wear it, look perfect. That was 100% the way I operated. Like I would do pretty much jump through hoops to avoid putting on a uniform. form, but if you got to put it on, you look freaking 100% squared away. Don't show up looking like a dipshit. Yeah, I think like to that, just to drill down on that, it's a part of showing people that you can play at the game, right? Yeah.

So it's not about being this, you know, prim and proper. It's about doing what you need to do at that moment. And yeah, I think that's part of them. Yeah. And I mean, this, there's certainly, as you remember, you know, in tasking a bruiser, I was like, Hey, when you leave, I didn't care what you look like on Shark Base, which became Camp Markley. I didn't care if you wore flip flops, a freaking pair of surf shorts and a Metallica T-shirt when it's just seals.

But when you left the base and you went to the Chow Hall or you went to work with one of the battalions, you got to be in a freaking squared-away uniform. And a squared-away uniform for us is like the bare minimum for the Army or the Marine Corps. Like they are more squared away than us with their uniforms. But at least you're going to be in a proper military uniform. Yeah, it's a, I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time I was on, but I worked with the guy. He was the CMC, maybe the group at that time, and he came out to visit us in Ramadi. I worked with him later at Buds, and he was taken back.

Like, he remembered it vividly. When he came to visit us, he's like, you know what really impressed me was you guys were so squared away looking when I arrived, right? So, like, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to, you know, send these signals to your change. Chenicpan leadership that you're squared away. You can follow directives and you can be reliable and trustworthy. And what does that cost you? It costs you.

Nothing looks squared away. Just being professional. And people are judgmental. And look, what's the saying? We didn't put it in this thing, but you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Look, a military human who's been wearing a uniform, if it's a master chief or a command sergeant major or a battalion commander, like they've been in the military for 20. 20 years if they they cannot help looking at someone and judging them based on how they look and how squared away their uniform is or how shitty their uniform is so you freaking square your shit away

and they go oh cool these guys are at least you know the professional unit so totally important um and you know there's this old uh document floating around um it's huck harbors 69 steps to frog man perfection i love it yeah and i'm definitely some of these are some of these are from that i got give the shout out to that. One of them was, don't get mad, get a degree. And look, what it's basically saying is when you're in the military, the military is going to take a lot from you. You know what I mean?

Like you're going to sacrifice for the military. And don't get mad about that. The military has programs where you can go to college, where you can get a degree, where you can get housing allowances. Like there's all these things that the military can do, but you got to have to take advantage of them. So don't get pissed off. at the military, just figure out how to take advantage of it.

But what I like about that is you can apply that to anything. You can apply that to anything. Like you can get mad about stuff or you can figure out how to utilize it. Stay with your swim buddy, of course. And what's, you know, this is, this is such an important foundation of the seal teams as you always have a swim buddy. And the reason you always have a swim buddy. And I think it's more prominent because in the army, they have battle butt.

There's similar ideas in the rest of the military, but in the seal teams, because we're in the water and the water is such a high risk environment, you have to have a swim buddy. You have to have a swim buddy. And so we get that, you know, pushed onto our brains while we're going through basic steel training. and part of the embedded portion of that is that your buddy comes first. Like your buddy comes first. This is like cover move, which is one of the things that you mentioned, is I am going to take care of my friend.

And, you know, it's funny because we always used to talk about like, it would be, I would much rather get shot in the killhouse by one of my friends than shoot one of my friends. Like not even, not even a question. And so the fact that that's that's one of these things like you always put your your buddy first You put your squad your fire team first you put your squad first you put your platoon first you put the team first

All of that comes before you so that's part of it the other part of it is there's this thing With communications and your Cryptological gear and it's the old safes that we used to have had two combinations on them which meant that you needed two people to open the safe. TPI. TPI, two person integrity. Here's what's kind of cool about that is if I'm about to do some knucklehead shit, Bob, like two person integrity for me to be like, hey, this seems like I think I've got a good idea.

You know? And if you, if I do it solo, cool. I have no two person integrity. But to have at least someone that goes, hey, hey, knocko, yeah. Are you sure about this? Or like maybe the consequences of what you're thinking might not be worth the effort here. So I think that's another important component. And it doesn't always save us in the SEAL teams because sometimes like, hey, Bob, I got a great idea.

And you go, that sounds great to me. But oftentimes it's like, hey, I think I got a good idea. And it's like, well, we might want to rethink that before we roll on it. So stick with your swim buddy. Here's another one from Hawk Harbor. A miserable day in the teams is better than the best day of the office. Or maybe that one's not. Maybe that one's mine.

But there's something similar to that. And again, this is just framing up life. Worst case scenario, you're at the team and there is an inspection. And you got to put your uniform on for 40 minutes while there's an inspection. It's like, and team guys will bitch about that stuff too. Are you kidding me? What the hell? Like, what kind of tyrannical rear echelon?

bullshit is this and it's like bro you you you haven't even been to work in three days well if the guys aren't complaining then I start worrying yeah um another one from huck harbor breaking contact is not surrender good thing to remember breaking contact is not surrender just because you disengage from a fight doesn't mean you're surrendering it just means you're disengaging from that particular fight at that particular moment So there's times where the prudent move is to back down. There's times when the prudent move is to leave. I know even, even, like we got ambushed a few times

my first deployment to Iraq and, you know, their temptation would always be like, stop, go back in assault. But it's like, oh, we're okay. We, they fired two RPGs and they missed with both and they fired a bunch of machine gun rounds at us. And now we're gonna, like we made it through, unscathed, the temptation is like, oh, AC130 can see them.

Okay, cool. Let's turn around and go back and get them when we never did. It was always tempting. We always had another mission that we were going on, but it was always very tempting. But just thinking like, you know what? I think we'll be all right. This is their terrain too, and you don't know what IDs lurk in front of you. Yep.

Have a plan. Isn't it interesting? Seems so obvious. Have a plan. Like, oh, yeah. But I'll tell you where this would come into play with me when guys would be getting out at the 10-year mark or the 8-year mark or the 12-year mark. And I'd be like, cool, what's your plan? And they'd kind of give me the tilted head look because they didn't have a plan.

Well, how are you going to pay your rent in three months? You know, like how are you going to pay your car payment? By the way, I saw you just pull up in your new freaking Super Duty Harley-Davidson version F-3-50. that you paid $88,000 for. Well, you didn't pay at all because you only put a $4,000 down payments or your car payments like $1,100 a month. How are you going to pay for that?

So what is your plan? And as much time as we spend in the SEAL team's planning for us to roll out and execute things with no plan whatsoever. And look, it's cool. You can do this with your kids. Like, here's the plan. Here's what we're doing.

And having a plan will keep you out of trouble. having a plan will keep you efficient. Having a plan will make everything better in your life. Now, you've got to be able to react, when things don't go as planned, but have a baseline. With some reasonable contingencies. Yeah, with a couple contingencies,

just in case this, just in case that, we're covered. And right along with that is another good one. Plan your dive and dive your plan. So you come up with a plan, this comes from diving. You know, you come up with a plan. Bob and I are swim buddies here. we're going to dive this through that, do that. And then when we get underwater, it's like,

well, actually, I think I'm in a different spot. So I'm going to do something radically different and everything goes to shit. So as much as possible, plan your dive and try and stick to it. You can't always stick to it because this is contrary to like, oh, the plan goes out the window at the first contact. Look, there's, that's a little bit of, that's an exaggeration, right? And can that happen?

Yes, that can happen. but it really shouldn't happen. Your plan should be good enough that, oh, yeah, we get contacted. Look, our standard operating procedures come into play and we'll execute an immediate action drill. Occasionally, your plan goes out the window. Occasionally, it should be rare that your plan goes completely out the window. Now, listen, if you've planned a hyper-detailed plan and you think everything is going to go according to this hyper-detail plan, that ain't going to work.

That ain't going to work. But if you have a plan, a good plan, a solid plan, a plan that is flexed, then you shouldn't have to abandon your plan just because something didn't go as expected. So plan your dive, dive your plan. Occasionally do you got to very drastically? Yes, occasionally you do. And don't cling to your plan if it's not working. That's a leadership thing where it's like, no, we're going to keep doing, stick to the plan, stick to the plan.

It's like, oh, the plan is not working. If the plan is not working, stop it. But don't abandon your plan too easily. Again, if you have reasonable contingencies along the five stages of the operation there, You know, there's little checkpoints you're hitting that if this happens, we're doing this. If this happens, we're doing that. So, yeah, no reason. You shouldn't be abandoning your plan unless it's completely gone to shit.

Yeah. Here's like one of the most pragmatic things I have on this list. Bring a beanie in a Gortex jacket. Like, I'm telling you what, bring a beanie, bring a wool beanie in a Gortex jacket. I don't care, you know, you're going out for a three-hour operation. and there's a couple different types of Gortex jackets, but you know I'm talking about a shell, and you got like a heavy-duty one,

and you've got a lightweight one. And look, sometimes the lightweight one, like you're going out for three hours, it's pretty moderate temperatures. Cool, no big deal. Bring the lightweight one. But if there's a chance you might be wet, if there's a chance,

bring that heavy, nice, freaking badass Gortex jacket. Because when you get stuck on St. Nicholas Island for 19 hours, for the mark five to come and recover you and you have no possible way of staying warm you're gonna freaking hate your life and possibly get hypothermic so god those those were the best jackets the old school uh extreme wet cold weather vortex jackets their standard military issue they were freaking heavy duty you could put that thing on in the worst weather and and be like pretty okay and in those jackets

they had this big Velcro pocket on the left and right side so where the zipper is you didn't have to undo the zipper but you could just rip this big Velcro thing inside that thing

I had a wool be I always had those things with me now look did I have them in Ramadi was in 120 degrees nope that was the one you know AO but if it's not a if it's not over a hundred degrees

I'm going to say that maybe 90 if it's not a because I'll tell you what go to our desert training facility. I have the story of mine, yeah. Oh, yeah, you'll freeze your nuts off. Go ahead.

What do you got? Yeah, no, I had never gone until my fifth pump out there. I'd never been out there when it wasn't the summer. Oh. And so I did a workup out there. And I think we went in December. And I'd never experienced rain or cold. And we did a training op where it was like, you know,

One platoon's doing a Kali in a village or something, and the other platoon is basically holding, you know, outward security, if you will, external security on the mountains there. And it was supposed to be just a short iteration, like an hour. And it was one of those, you know, trick-fuckery events where it was a remain overnight. And it rained. Check. Our platoon, Charlie, or sorry, was it?

No, it was Bravo. We're stuck on the mountain all night. Get some. Getting pissed on. And that was one of the coldest moments I'd had since Buds. I was there with my OIC and we were just jack hammering and just regretting not having a beanie and some Gortex. God, beanie and a cortex. Let's go a long way.

It's kind of like in Southern California. Bring a hoodie. You know what I'm saying? Bring a hoodie. Now look, I've been trying to explain this to my wife. And I have no idea how it's not landed yet. But, you know, we'll be going out at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Two o'clock in the afternoon, bro, in San Diego, bro, it's 70, 75, it's sunny.

It's a little bit hot. You might want to take your shirt off. Like, you know, you're good. And then you fast forward, the sun goes down. Bro, all of a sudden, it's 48 degrees. It's cold. You have a hoodie. It's no factor.

It's actually meant for a hoodie. Southern California is meant for a hoodie. They made hoodies for Southern California for that very reason. for that very reason. So no, no factor. And I look at my wife, what's she doing?

She's jackhammering. Now I've got to give her my hoodie. So I've surrendered trying to convince her. I put an extra hoodie in the vehicle for... Two is one, one is nine. Yes. Because I'm sick of giving it up

and being like, cool, I'll just freeze. I literally looked right at you and said, bring a hoodie. And you said, it's nice out. Bro, it ain't that nice out. That's the bottom line. So bring a... beanie and bring a Gortex jacket. That's that's my advice to you. Um, and then the last one I got,

I think we talked about this a little bit already, but train and maintain your body and mind. And you know, the Huck Harbor thing says something like train your body and mind. And in the seal teams, uh, and I think in life, we generally tend to get too focused on one or too focused on the other. We either spend all of our time training the physical, physicality of it. And in the seal teams, Like so much is based on your physicality that you people don't people ignore hey the knowledge And then I think in the civilian sector a lot of times it gets focused so much on knowledge that people forget about the physicality And so I think it's important to to train and maintain both and what we're learning now too is In order to maintain especially your brain in order to maintain your brain you got it you got to introduce new things

to your brain. You know, you've got to introduce new things to your brain. Otherwise, it gets going to get stagnant. So learning new skills, learning new languages, learning new instruments, just learning things is beneficial. And you have to, look, sometimes you say you're not that interested in something or you can't find something. You just have to find something that you're interested and you've got to try and learn it as silly as that might sound. And then what we've already talked about physically you got to keep moving you got to keep moving so otherwise you're going to lose it that's what I got you're you're you're you're kind of a learner echo Charles yeah yes I believe you know you're like you know you get these things I mean they're all kind

of computer uh centric generally speak oh is there things that aren't generally speak have you started playing ukulele for real yet because you asked me about it like a year ago dabbling are you dabbling currently yes okay Do you have a ear? Can you play a song? Can you play a song? I do not have a song yet. Bro, there's songs that have one core.

Yeah, yeah, then I can play a song then. Okay. So you're, in principle, yeah. So you're not, you're not playing. No. Dabbling.

I'd say dabbling is accurate. Bro, let's just get you a song down. Yeah, yeah. It's freaking, the ukulele, these past. Yeah. But you spend more of your time learning about the computer techniques, yeah, techniques and procedures.

Yeah. What did you say? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yesterday. That was a good. No, it was interesting about that.

There was a couple things that I noticed about that. What program was that? I forget the program. There's a few of them, but you might be familiar with this where it's like you get a picture. And then you use these new AI tools and it'll start animating the picture into a video, whatever you tell it to do. Like Adobe Firefly, maybe. There's a bunch. But yeah, I mean, we've seen it before you.

Well, I have seen many of them. So, yeah, I looked into that. And yeah, it's pretty, it's fun. It's not there yet. What surprised me about it was as the angle changed, you got to see things that were behind me in the actual photo that you couldn't see at all in the picture. But it made things up to go there. Right.

Well, actually, it's freaking impressive. It grabs elements and it's like, oh, there's a tree back there. And, oh, is there, is that enough? You know, I'm the AI talking. Oh, is there another tree? Oh, I see a road. I see a brick wall.

And then so it zooms out and pans up and whatever. whatever and then yeah to recreate this whole environment yeah yeah it's very interesting but with that it just says since it only can see a face at one angle yeah you know there's a right it gets weird you get this shadow you know weird shifty face thing going it'll turn into a different person is what it'll happen and what'll happen so even with you actually oddly okay so there's this classic photo with jocco like with his gone or whatever and he's all angry or whatever and there's a brick wall behind every single picture he was happy to know but yeah

but and it's like it's not black and white it's like a what you call this is a name for sepia or sepia or something right like more of like a warm yeah it's like brown so he's standing against his wall with a gun more like someone's like hey chocolate let's take a picture and he was actually it's in the take the picture's taken in the streets

of Ramadi so it's not like I was out there freaking coke and joking bro no he was very unhappy to be taking that picture apparently it's what it looked like on the picture but Leap was always smiling yeah in the same pace yeah yeah yeah well this might have been Jocco smiling but either way they look the same in my opinion.

So I took that one and made a video into it. Actually, made a bunch of them, but the one I showed you was like one of the first ones, whatever. And then so I was like, okay, make Jocco start laughing and then something else, right?

And then so he's standing there all mad. Then he just starts laughing all crazy. But he turned into a different person a little bit. Actually, I'll show it to you after this. I have it in my phone. But yeah, that's one of those things where,

you know, when you see that done, you're kind of like, oh, this is going to like take over a bunch of stuff. And I, with this particular one, I was like, I don't see it. I don't see how it'll take over anything, really. When the novelty wears off, it won't really because like in old, this is what they what they kind of introduced when they introduced it.

It was a lot of like old photos. Let's say of your great grandparents, right? The black and white, whatever. And they start animating them or these old, you know. And then after the novelty wears off, you're kind of like, wait a second, they didn't really do that. This is a computer reclassified. creation of something that didn't happen at all.

So it's kind of like, okay, it's fun, it's cute, but no one's going to really, you know, attribute that much value to it. At the end of the day, that was my hypothesis. But, but there are, there are obviously some seriously beneficial things that you could do or productive things because you could make a scene. You know, if, if you were to make a movie and you needed to show something that you didn't, that didn't happen or that you didn't have the budget to put in the movie, then you animated yeah fully and and yeah there are there are certain applications but I didn't see that as

fulfilling the lack of for lack of better term the hype that was behind it at the time I saw a movie that was completely generated by like AI and it looked pretty freaking good it was like a it was like a three minute or maybe like a two minute movie yeah I think it was made by unreal engine oh uh it was a car scene yeah it was like shoot out I think but It looked freaking great. I mean... I don't know that Unreal Engine generates AI stuff.

Okay, well, maybe it wasn't. But... I don't freaking know. I'm not... Yes, that's obvious. Demonstrated that. But... No, no, but I'm saying

that's what I thought at the time. And then when I see like little... I saw little things where I was like, oh, I see where they could go with it. Remember Forrest Gump? Yeah. Okay. Remember the recreated scenes of like JFK and all that stuff?

And if you watch it now, you're like, oh, that's not real or whatever. But the AI stuff now, they could have done that. with that scene and it would have looked way better. You got to kind of tweak it and stuff, but it would have, so there's a little specific applications. Now, my mind has changed, is what I'm saying. So that's why I went in there.

I was like, probably got to get to know this stuff because probably could do some cool stuff. Small stuff. I'm not going to make a whole movie, I don't think, but... The more pictures, the more information you give it, the better it's going to be as well. That's a different thing, yes, but that's another AI thing. That's like, you know, if you're doing a deep fake or something along those lines.

But this one is literally to be like, hey, this photo right here, since it's a special photo, very unique, like, literally one frame out of existence, do something with it, make it into like a fun movie or whatever. And so, yeah, I'm kind of convinced a little bit more now that it's going to have, there's going to be some value there. Yeah, it's definitely helping us on the marketing side. I mean, just coming up with marketing materials and backgrounds

and stuff like that, it's going to be interesting to see where it is in a couple of years. Yeah, fully. Yeah. But yes, I'm a learner, yeah, sure. So that's what you've been learning. Yeah, a few things. other stuff as well.

I feel like when I sit down to try stuff like that, like I don't have enough contextual knowledge that I'm just like, well, you know, it's like trying to learn jujitsu. You're like looking at it and you're like, you know, this is an umapata. And you just go, dude, what, what is happening? Right. You're like that, you're more right than you know. And I know I say that sometimes joking, but that applies to kind of anything. So if it's like, hey, I want to, um, let's say, hey, you're, you're.

You know what I say either move it or lose it kind of a thing? So if it's like, hey, I'm going to do Jiu-Jitsu, right? I'm going to start Jiu-Jitsu. I'm 40 years old or whatever, but I'm way out of shape. Where it's like at the end of the day, that doesn't matter as much as you might think, but it doesn't matter. If you kept staying, if you kept in shape and stuff like that, go to jump into Jiu-Jitsu, no problem. It's way easier, see what I'm saying.

So yeah, you could Jocko, maybe not Jocker. LeBob, you could open up Adobe After Effects, we'll say. I mean, you know what After Effects is? Yeah, I've been in there and I've done a lot of these. things again like what I was sitting on earlier wearing a lot of hats being a small team man like you you got to figure shit out so I've yeah a lot of these technologies like a illustrator right I taught myself out to design an illustrator okay so I'm pretty impressed with your shirt designs too like thanks man I appreciate it yeah like the fact with the first

time you told me that you designed to them I was like oh and you only had a couple at the time but now that I've seen like the full the full spectrum of huli golf shirts including the one you're wearing right now but they like you obviously have figured out how to do it really well because you got kick-ass designs they all look cool yeah it's dope no thanks man and just to be clear there uh we have a designer as well so i haven't done all the designs this was this pattern was done by someone else but yeah it's creating repeatable patterns which is a whole technique in and of itself but um you know i mean kind of circling back to what we're talking about earlier is uh early on in hoolly we were trying to come

up with these kick-ass designs and it started you know I had these concepts and working with the designer who was taking a really long time to get from here's the idea you give me the first draft to back and forth we're taking really long and so I was like why don't I just learn this damn program because then you can give me something I can make a couple tweaks on my own and we're just good you know so we turned something that took like five months to like two weeks yeah I'm laughing because I've had to design things in the past years and I send like the most rudimentary He freaking sketches to echo and then he makes them. It translates.

But see, like, okay, we'll take Illustrator, for example. You know how to use an illustrator, just we'll say the fundamentals of Illustrator. Oh, I'm good now. Okay, okay, good. You're good at Illustrator. So now if you open, like, Photoshop, you're going to be like, oh, I can use Photoshop. It's good in Photoshop. You're hitting the ground running.

As opposed to Jocko, he's going to be like, he's going to open Photoshop and be like, this is literally a different language to me. So it's like, what am I going to spend all this time just learning what I'm looking at? That's a whole, like, that's not even one process. That's a bunch of processes, you know what I'm saying? But then now you go, okay, I can use this Photoshop. It's pretty good. Now you can open like, like, After Effects or something.

And you're like, okay, this is hard, but I can see how hard it is versus jockeys. Everything's just going to look like a different language. You see what I'm saying? So you can't really learn as much. That is how it looks to me. Yeah, yeah. Like, I don't comprehend this at all. Zero comprehension.

That's how it looks for most people. So like, think about code. Do you ever watch or you ever see like code written out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like computer code. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so HTML, you know what HTML is? I, I, it's called hyper, yeah, it's called HTML.

It's not even considered code. That's how like basic it is, right? No one knows what it actually stands for. Just hypertext markup language. Darn. But there's HTML, then there's like JavaScript and there's like C sharp and it's like, then there's like Python. There's all these different codes and they have different levels of it.

You look at any code, it's all. code. But certain people, if they know the basic code, they're going to be like, okay, I know what this code, they're just going to have a platform to kind of stand on. You see what I'm saying, to learn that next thing. And if you don't, bro, you kind of lost. I got a company that I'm involved with called Blackbox. Blackbox.a.I. It's amazing because it is taking English and turning it into code. So you can literally make a program just by telling it what kind of program you want. It will code for you. And we got some stuff from it. I want to do something where I just make to show people how easy it is because it goes from what you just talked about

where I look at Photoshop or whatever you said Adobe Illustrator. And it's completely foreign to me. but black box AI, I look at it and there's just a prompt box and you can start to communicate in English, which I'm very familiar with. Yes. To get it to begin to perform and execute the writing of code, which I don't know anything. I don't even know what HTML stands for. And yet I have this thing programming things for me.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. This is a, so I use chat, uh, GPT in similar fashion. And it's getting better like each each and every month. But it's another tool. Like you can ask it to do that. And it'll get you to a certain level. If you use Black Box, it's better because Black Box is strictly for coding.

Yeah. And they. So if you take all the, if you take all the resources that Chat GPT takes and, you know, they put it towards understanding books and understanding, you know, podcast transcript there's everything but what black box does is it's just code so it just studies code and reinforces code and checks code over and over and over again so when you put stuff in there it's it's infinitely more accurate yeah than what the other AI program programs are doing so money yeah it's pretty sick it's pretty sick to see and in like since i get to see the numbers

behind the scenes and like percentage of accuracy it's incredible yeah it's incredible It is better than human. You know what I mean? And I'm not just talking about jock-oh-human knuckle-drager. I'm talking a human that codes for a living. This thing, they don't make mistakes. You know, it's like that accurate. And the fact that it just checks and re-checked itself,

the world's changing. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how it involves, right? Because, and not talking about this in particular, but just AI, the way it's moving, I mean, has the potential to like copyrighters, people who do, you know, emails and these other things, like, you can just press the button now. So, you know, how that is going to evolve, is that going to, you know, eliminate some sort of industries or, oh, there's definitely going to be industries that are being

eliminated. The interesting thing is, is what's going to be taken away is the creativeness, right? The creative and the, it's going to be interesting. I was, I was tell the story about, you know, the white stripes, the band. Oh, yeah. So Jack White. So he's got this thing where, you know, he explains how they make pop music. And the way that they make pop music, for instance, the way he explains it is they take a snare drum and they'll, like, hit the snare drum a hundred times. And they'll look at the computer, you know, sound dynamics of all of them.

And they pick the one that is most perfect. And they take that one snare hit. and that's the one they use for every hit on the snare and a song. And they do the same thing with a symbol and they do the same thing with the high hat. And they do the same thing with the guitar and the piano and everything else. So everything is perfect. And so when you hear it, a human being can tell that there's something soulless about this music.

Now look, that music is popular. This is like all the popular music that Katie Perry and whoever, like the popular pop music is all computer perfected. And that's why we listen to the white stripes. And he's like, oh, yeah, we recorded our second album in the, in the stairwell of my rented, you know, townhouse. And put mics in the different rooms. And that's why you can hear that there's mistakes. Depth.

There's depth. And there's soul to it. So when you start talking about writing, okay, so we can have, there's going to be things that are so, you. You know what it's like, you know, you can get a diamond. You know, they can tell like a fake diamond versus a real diamond. A fake diamond has no flaws. It's too perfect. And a real diamond has like, doesn't matter how perfect you get.

A 10 out of 10 as a real diamond, you can still go, oh, yeah, there's a little, a little something wrong there. And guess what has more value? The one that's real. And so I think there's going to be some sort of gap between those two, between like a perfectly written piece that was written just to land so perfect with you, Bob, the consumer. This email is going to go out to you and it's going to sound so perfect and you're going to be like, you know, it's this thing real. You know, something in the bad.

You might not even think that consciously, but subconsciously are like, oh, cool, I'm getting, this is the algorithm coming at me. Whereas something that has a human element of like, whether it's humor or irony or drama that a computer, now look, is it going to be able to create it eventually? Can you say like, hey, make this. funny make this shocking have you seen that thing that's talking about Tulsi Gabbard it's it's it's Grock like angry Grock or something like that and it's like Tulsi Gabbard don't give a shit she'll fucking tell people what's what like it you're like oh it sounds like what a human would

say so maybe I'm wrong maybe they'll be able to overcome and maybe you say oh yeah make the snare drum human and it you know add the variations that are needed so I just talk myself out of my my my theory. No, no, no. You're both of your little theories put together is one unified theory. Okay. That is correct. Artificial general intelligence, that's the one that

like the AI becomes self-learning to the point to where it's like very, very human. That's I think what a lot of folks are little concerned about. Like, so even with graphics and video, especially computer generated video, you run into that problem too.

Things are too, like if you you want to do digital camera movement, right? If you want to do a, let's say a pan or a wind pan or something, it'll just go, it's too computerized, right? So it doesn't look like someone was holding that. So after a certain amount of time, whatever people invented a thing or whoever does the code for the program, they have a thing called easy ease. So it's easy ease in and out.

So it just goes, basically it's an acceleration, right? Instead of it kind of accelerates into it, right? But even that's too smooth, just like how you're saying, where it's like, sure the computer can try to fake it you know but you still like a person is so imperfect even to the smallest thing and with some stuff not everything with some stuff people can just tell you know like they need that imperfection to for it to be convincing and it's such it's on such a micro level that if it's not there or even if that's replicated right you can sort of feel it yeah some things more than others so after a while they added a feature called camera shake so it like it feels but even that

If you get really used to it, if you're really used to the camera shake, no matter how much you adjust it, you're like, it's not the same. Too much of a pattern. But they can get there. So this is what they do. Randomized camera shake or something. But even the randomized, it's like, I don't think a human hand camera shake is really randomized at the end of the day. I think it's based on something, something nature, you know.

And we're in touch with that on a level that maybe might not, might go beyond just our consciousness. So this is what they do with a camera shake. they'll take little presets and this is how they're made. Let's say Leibov has a camera. He films a black wall with a white square on it or a white X. He'll just film it with his hand. That's a real camera shake. Now they'll take that footage and base the camera shake in the program on Lead Bob's actual camera shake,

pixel by pixel. You can get these camera shake elements and presets. And then you get millions of those inputs and then it's truly like, you know. It starts to be, yeah. It starts to be. I feel like, I don't know, brother. There's certain things where it's really, I don't know, they'd have to go so deep.

And after a certain amount of time, maybe, but I don't know. I don't know. I mean, at the end of it, you know, it becomes this big argument. Like, what if right now we're living in a simulation? And it's based on that idea where it was like, yeah, there was just computers and people, but the computers were like, hey, we're too computery. We've got to be more like people. Oh, that's not quite as convincing.

Let's, you know, let's refine that into this imperfect thing. And then after a while, it's like, and here we are. I'm saying. Yeah, there's another thing. There's some spark, right? There's some spark of creativity that comes into the world. And, you know, one of the ways that I explain this to people is you may or may not be able to produce a spark. And if you go down to Guitar Center where they sell guitars and you hang up a sign that says,

I need a guitarist that can play the following albums. And you can name the most complex, complicated albums, Rush, Led Zeppelin, just name them all. And you'll get probably five people from every guitar center in America that will say legitimately, yes, I can play all those. And yet when you call them, you're like, what do you do for a living? And they're like, oh, I, you know, I work at, you know, Olive Garden or whatever. like I'm a waiter or I'm a way. And even though they're so skilled that the technical

aspect of playing guitar, they don't have whatever little thing it is that allows them to create music. Now you take like Kurt Cobain, who was, I mean, obviously a skilled guitarist, but he wasn't like some technical genius

or he wasn't a technical expert at guitar. He was a very good guitarist, but he wasn't better than a guy at Guitar Center. that can play every rush song. And so, and yet he could go, d-d-d-ch-ch-ch-ch-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-.

And he had that little spark of creativity. And I'll, you know, he made music. So there is some, and I don't know. This is, I don't know if we can have a computer where, with all the millions of inputs that you just talked about, Bob, like billions of inputs that it get, can it create something totally unique that has the actual spark of creativity,

it's possible, but... What's to distinguish, right? Like, if the AGI comes to fruition, of it developing, like, a human mind, you know? I mean, like, we all develop from babies to where we are now with the... It's a collection of experiences and trial and errors, you know? Yeah, I guess it feels like you'd have to consider

why it would need to be, like, a human mind. Because human mind is like... And I was talking to Dr. Look, about this. like why would a computer want to do whatever it wants to do right it's like okay you answer that question and it's like why does a person want to do what a person wants to do so it was like okay so if I can get a little bit crass here so let's say there's a group of guys right and they're in a room and they're trying to I don't know they're building I don't know some tables or something and a girl walks in now they're there to build the table but a girl walks in some guys are

married, some guys are not, those guys' attention goes to that girl. And so their motivation in being there changes in a lot of ways. So it's sexual motivation. And it's for a bunch of different reasons. So, and then those, those reasons are linked to a bunch of other stuff, right? And it's, and that's it, that's a fundamental, like, roots of being a human, some of them. Now, why would a computer replicate that? Or how would it? You see what I'm saying? Like, can a, can a computer get jealous, you know, you'd kind of have to program that in, you know, can a, can a computer like get distracted in a sexual way, you know, because that's kind of part of our being a little bit. See what I don't know.

You got to mention like hunger and ego and jealousy and anger and all those, like you're going to write some good rock and roll songs when you're angry, right? Yeah. You're going to write some good blues songs when you get dumped, right? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I'm going to paint some good paintings when you're distressed about something. Right.

And when you think about it, computers always have like this mission, right? This computer is there to do something, you know? Even if you say, hey, free associate as a computer. Computer would be like, okay, that's my new mission, free association, right? People will have our mission. Hell yeah, no matter how focused and concentrated, we are on this mission. we can still get distracted in principle you know we can get distracted we can get like all these things can deviate make us deviate from the mission and not to

mention you can get distracted from nothing but be but what's inside your own head and that becomes in and of itself a thing you see what I'm saying so it's like this it's almost like there's two different systems running no matter how advance the AI gets it's like it's almost like something has to be in there to kind of direct it yeah the same way a person is if they start merging you know, sentience with biologics, then maybe that gap is closed down. Yeah, but even that's a different thing, you know.

I think that I don't even think that would be considered general, whatever intelligence. I often compare it to life because, you know, we know what chemicals and molecules and atoms are inside of like an amoeba, but we can't make one. We can't make one come to life. Like we don't have,

we can put all the stuff. Stir it together, mix it all up, but it don't turn into an amoeba, which is the simplest, you know, cell form there is. And so maybe this is one of those, like, things that cannot be crossed. You can't actually ever spark that creativity in AI. But I guess we're gonna find out the coming years.

We will find out real quick too. And, but maybe you can get real close to it. You know, you can get real close to it. Like right now, we can, We can grow, we can graph skin cells. We can make from stem cells. We can make it grow into something. But there's just one line we can't cross.

I feel it. I don't know. We've been talking out of school for the last however long. But I will add this to the mix of ignorance that we're talking about. I feel like there is. I feel like eventually we will be able to. I feel like it's like, you know, that last thing. It's probably not just one thing.

It's probably like a last little group of puzzle pieces. And it's going to have to do with something that we're just not paying attention to right now. You know how like certain things where it's like you put all the ingredients in and you're like, why isn't it happening? Oh wait, I had to put in the oven for half an hour. That's the ingredient. I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about all the ingredients. So it's like it'll be something like that I think. I think like it'll be like, oh wait, maybe some time like like crazy amount of time too. And then after that certain amount of time now this this collection of whatever chemicals has the capability to do this stuff

now or it's time plus something you know something that we're just not paying attention to right now feels like that's going to be the little factor yeah when when we're old man shit is going to get weird you know feels like a couple decades away but we're keeping learning though so yes yes of course that goes learning and and and contemplating contemplating philosophizing over here yeah yeah we'll get some feedback i wonder if people want to hear the philosophization of the whole scenario. Most likely not. All right. In the meantime, some good rules, you know, training, we're getting better, we're getting stronger, training our mind, training our body. You're going to need fuel for that situation. We recommend jackel fuel. Hey, check it out. We got energy drinks. What

you got over there? Pink lemonade? Is it your go-to? Black cherry, vanilla. Okay. Nice. Number one for me. This is number two. Yeah. I'm, that's probably number two for me as well. My number one, One is still iced tea lemonade, which I'm on my second right now, which is kind of cool, because I don't always, you know, I like to come into the podcast. I almost always, well, 99% of the time I'm drinking ago during the podcast or just before the podcast, but getting into two, it's not every time, you know. But that's what we're doing. JoccoFuel.

Check out joccofuel.com. We got energy drink. We got protein. We got greens. We got hydration. We got Cold War. You know, we got everything that you need.

Joint warfare. Some of the things that I feel like we don't draw as much attention as we could, which it has one of those hidden, something that might be interpreted as a hidden value is the magnesium, the krill oil, like that kind of stuff that's not like, oh, hell yeah, protein, get my, like, of course, that's freaking good, of course. But if you look into like, Magnesium for example and the benefits of that and how we're kind of like unhealthy because of lack of magnesium

Think you'd be surprised go check it out docofield.com also check it out at Walmart Wawa vitamin shop GnC military commissaries aphys hand for dash stores wakefront shop right H-Eb down in teos Meyer up in the Midwest Wegmans Harris Tears somebody somebody posted the Harris Teeter like had the full display going on. Publix. Dix's sporting goods. Right now we got a little test scenario going. I think we're in 200 stores. So go clear the shells at Dix. There's one right on the corner here, by the way. Publix down in Florida, which is outstanding. People have been getting into Publix too.

Appreciate it. Appreciate you going into Publix and just buying. I posted the other day before, during after. This is Jiu Jitsu specific, but it's not just Jiu Jitsu specific. Driving to Jiu Jitsu, go. Get to Jiu-Jitsu, have that little nice little energy, right? Sure. During Jiu-Jitsu, hydrate, good to go, because I'm sweating like a damn pig during jiu-jitsu. But just keep hydrated.

Get done, get home, mulk. There it is, before, during, and after. You're good to go. Yeah. Totally good to go. So check that out. If you don't have JoccoFuel at your gym, email JFCL at joccoFuel.com.

We'll get you hooked up. Also, you need clothing, Origin USA.com. We got hunt gear. We got jeans. We got, what, rash guards? We got shorts. We got boots.

Boots. Did you get the new boots yet? You didn't get them yet, did you? No, afraid not. You're gonna like the new boots. I agree. I see them. Freaking GTG.

Yeah, yeah. I look, do I get a little bit of a hookup? Kind of. A little bit, yeah. But I got a pair of blacked out ones. Oh yeah. Why is that not? Murdered out, as they say.

Yeah, hell, yeah. And, Well, it's because it's a national on front, you know, it's a professional organization. So you've got to have some professional looking boots. I can't have a big white soul. So I got a blacked out soul from the team. Oh, you got a blacked out soul. And then I blacked out the threads myself with Sharpie.

Good to go. No factor. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah, I remember blacking stuff out. Oh, yeah. Blacking that thing out. So, yeah, all 100% American-made, 100% American-made materials. Check out OriginUSA.com.

You know people are trying to bring manufacturing back to America right now? We brought it back. Already back. So there you go. Check out origin USA.com. More clothing. Merch, if you will,

Jocco store. We got discipline equals freedom stuff, shirts, hats, hoodies. We already knew that. We got socks. We already knew that. But we are,

we do have an upcoming collab. We do? A little brand called Huli. Yeah. That's nice. Hey, look, a lot of people have been for years. Years too, by the way.

I mean, Lee Bob, we already know this. We've been talking about this for a while. But for years, literally years, people have been like, hey, I need, hey, cool, cool shirts. Freaking sweet. But I have a job. I have a job. Exactly right. I got to go to work or whatever.

How can I represent at work? So you'm saying, and I'm like, hey, you know, and I looked into it. Then I stopped looking to it, you know, back and forth as far as like solving that problem. But now we're going to do a collab with Huli. And now we've got some collared shirt, some polos. Pump to do it, man. Yeah. That'd be solid.

Do we decide on the design yet? Yeah. That's just the basic bro represent. Okay. The flag. X flag. Def cord to the core. Nice.

All day. It looks good. It looks good. It's not out right now. But, yes, soon. Be on the lookout for that. Yeah, very good. I was impressed.

I am still. I'm obviously impressed with like the fit. Because that's like a thing. Let's face it. Like, I don't wear polos that much. So when I wear one, I'm like, cool, it's a polo. Like, whatever. But like, all polos aren't created equally.

Like the fit, the material, like the old thing, just like in the other t-shirt. Yeah, thanks, man. We put a lot of time and effort, you know, launching and then iterating from there to, you know, make sure we can, you know, provide the best products possible. You got shirt locker. Oh, yeah, yeah, shirt locker. By the way, Leebup, is a subscription scenario new design every month. The reason I bring this up is because somebody posted a shirt locker shirt.

And I texted you and said, wait a second. Is this one of our shirts? And you said yes. And I said, I need four X, X, L. Yep. Not for, not for, not XXXXL. Not for X, yeah, yeah. Four times.

Four times. X L. Yeah. Who made that? Oh. It's freaking dope. You know. So it's like a skull with the, with the Deaf Corps flag carved into its head.

Yeah, dude. It looks legit. And then you finally got some freaking runic writing done properly. Yeah. Which I've been asking you for a long time. Hey, we made it happen. So that's a dope shirt. Yeah.

Did you get me? Did you set some aside for, for me? Yeah, so we got to wait for the end of the month because everybody got to get theirs. Hey, look, we all love you. But let's face it, you know, our people, they come first. Take care of people and they'll take care of us. Exactly, right. The team comes first.

But, yeah, when they got all, they all have theirs, then you're going to get yours 100%. Okay. So if you need some of those, you need some T-shirts, you can check that out. Oh, wait. On that one, that particular one says, comfort is a curse. Yeah. That's good. And I like that, too, because there's sort of like a whole, like, you know, ritualistic

thing. Kind of a cursy thing. Yeah, it's kind of a cursy thing. Yeah, that's like a voodoo type scenario. So if you want them T-shirts, check that out. Now, also, look, sometimes we got jobs. Sometimes we're going to need to wear a polo shirt. Yeah.

That's, by the way, that was a standard thing in the SEAL teams. Like it was a certain mode of dressing. If you had to go on a, on a commercial flight in civilian clothes, you'd have to put on a collared shirt, they said. Yeah, yeah. Now look, you could get a lame polo shirt. Yeah, like not fitting right. Right.

Just whack or you get yourself a Huli golf shirt. Yeah, 100%. Tell us about Huli, hoollygolf.com. What do you got, Bob? Yeah, first of all, I just want to thank you guys for having me on. You know, real, real honor, privilege to be here. And, yeah, I wanted to take this opportunity just to thank everyone who supported Huli the last couple of years.

So we turned two in April. Yay. Yay, yay, yay. Happy birthday. It's been a hell of a ride. But, I mean, to be honest, we went. be here without our loyal customers and with the help of so many. So I just wanted to take that opportunity. If you're out there and you've played a part in Guinness here, thank you so much.

And for everyone who has been getting the word out, please continue to do that. We really appreciate we're trying to, you know, we make golfwear for action guys. We're trying to reach out to and connect wholy with the action-oriented, competitive-minded people out there. You know, athletes, former athletes, gym rats, crossfitters, hunters, fighters, surfers, like you name it. If you share this mindset, you like to get after it. And you have a pension for golf. It's not a must have, but we are your brand. So please check us out. HuliGolf.com. We got some killer threads, pullos, teas, hats. And we have a whole range of styles, right? So if you don't want to be showing it off like what I got here a little bit, you know, bright pattern here, we got stuff that's

a little bit more chill and relax. I like her just called the freaking subdued tiger stripe black on gray of what'd you call it a loud color? Well, it's it's a pattern. So I mean, if you're not into wearing patterns, we have some non pattern stuff as well. And I got to say, you don't like I don't play golf at all. Like, and I am not going to play golf probably for another, let's say 25 years. Maybe when I'm like 95, I'll start to be like, all right, let me get out there.

But doesn't matter. Huli, look, I still have to wear a polo shirt. I still have to wear a collared shirt. And why would I be wearing a lame polo shirt or a lame collared shirt from somebody that's whack? I would not do that. I would wear something that's dope. So, and you actually have, is a polo shirt and a golf shirt the same thing? Yeah.

So the whole reason why this whole damn thing started first. place is if you golf you have to wear a polo it's like most there's some courses that are that are a little bit more relaxed but you know it was this transformation from you know this knuckle dragging dude that i was most of my life and career to you got to play golf you got to look the part might as well have some fun with it um you know we use high performing materials we got some kick-house designs and uh so yeah if you're gonna golf uh no need to go out there looking like a nerd or if you're just, you know, living life, traveling, going to work, you know, we can elevate that look a little bit and have a little bit of huli flare.

Yep. That adds some character and there's, you know, a story and ethos behind this brand. We're not just pumping out shit. Yeah. Well, what I appreciated was because I was like, hey, Bob, like, I dig the patterns that you're making. I dig the designs and all that stuff. But I got to wear a regular ass polo.

Like, I can't go present to a company and be in a. like you got the one that's a bunch of hand-to-hand combat yeah hand-to-hand bunch of little skeletons all over at fighting each other or like bunch of little men on it like doing hand-to-hand combat with golf clubs like so there's all these things that they're cool but like I don't need that I well I need that but I also need to have a professional shirt which most people or many people that are here I don't care look if you're if you work construction and you got to go in and present to you know one of the owners of the buildings like you got to look professional you're you got to look professional you're you're not you're working construction you're you're working construction you're you got to look professional you Huli, Huli has got you covered. If you work at an energy company and you're, you know, alignment,

but you got to go and talk to the boss and present him about some plan, you got to go in there and like your field wear. You got to have something that steps up a little bit. So regardless of what you do, when you got to,

look, look, we ain't going into freaking Wall Street. We're not bankers, right? We're not wearing a suit and tie. That's not happening. But there are times

where you've got to elevate above a T-shirt. And that's where, That's what we got Huli for. So, and another thing where this plays in is, let's say you own a company. Let's say you own a company and you got a, you got a crew of, you know, 30 dudes that work for you. And you got to have them all look presentable because they got to show up for an event somewhere or they got to go present to clients.

And you don't want to have them all looking different like a soup sandwich. It's like what you mentioned about tasking a bruiser. People notice you look professional. So don't, don't get your team like. a bunch of junk uh polo shirts that are trash get them some professional

looking badass shirts that they go oh yeah and there's a little unity and everyone goes oh yeah we're not hey we're not just representing some freaking lame ass brand you know what I mean yes you want you when you get hey when you give someone a shirt

let's say you own a company and you give someone a shirt you want them to be like oh he thought about this. This is for real. This isn't just like a shirt that, you know, whatever, go down to the, go on the website and order these shirts and do it. No. Yeah, that's a big deal too, by the way. Like, you know how like, you know, a team of people, they show up. They got their polo's on, but like they don't fit right or whatever. You can tell, okay, maybe they went to one of these, uh, thrift stores or, you know, one of these, what he called club stores where they just buy in bulk, right? Yeah. Real cheap. The cheapest, right?

No heart and soul. Give away. Freaking, um, cheap. Stuff or whatever and then yeah they look more like a bunch of slackers and look not not consciously You're not like oh that polo isn't squared away so therefore you're a slacker it's not that you just feel the vibe a little bit yeah a little bit you think oh that that shirt was probably designed by AI But you see someone in a hoolly shirt, you're like, that thing was, that thing was literally designed by lead Bob. And the whole team knows that lead Bob. Lead Bob took, he was attention to detail guy. He was professional. He was on time.

He was squared away. Now he's designing your shirt. Don't you want that shirt? Isn't that what we're doing? That's what we're doing. So you definitely got to keep that in mind. Just to follow up, you hit on something. I just want to be clear to anyone listening out there is we do have a bulk and wholesale

program. So if you do work for that construction company, we'd love to follow. I love doing jobs like that. It's a, yeah. So anyways, check us out. You can either go to the website or email us at info at holeygolf.com. We'd love to get that going for you guys. Hey, I'm going to go.

I'm going to put myself on report here. Kind of. All right. Don't even know if I should bring this up, but I'm going to. This is out of character. Have you ever heard of a Tiffany's bag? Do you know there's a jewelry store called Tiffany's? Yeah, yeah, Tiffany's ankle.

So it's like a jewelry. jewelry store. Yeah. And apparently it's a really nice one. And if you get like your wife something from that store, it doesn't really matter what it is, but if you roll it with that bag, bro, she's happy. Like, oh, in the house, like, after shopping, you got the Tiffany's bag. Oh, yeah.

Or like she opens up the present or whatever for Mother's Day. And she sees a Tiffany bag. Brat, it doesn't really matter. You know what I mean? You're all in that Tiffany bag because it shows like, hey, I'm in the game. I got you the Tiffany bag, the whole thing, right? I understand.

That's kind of like when you give someone a hooly shirt. Right. They're not like, yeah, they're not like, oh, cool, you just went down to freaking whatever S-Mart and got me a polo shirt. It's like, no, we didn't shop smart. It's different. Shop S-mart. We used to shop smart, shop S-mart.

No, we got you the hooly shirt. Yeah, that's true. And so, and they look a nice little bag, the little hooly bag, bag with the little thing on the top. Yeah, impressive. attention detail man i tried to in this next career apply all of that and uh you're right i mean every single polo that we make it's uh it's originated from a thought and uh there's a lot of you know blood sweat and uh heart and soul and everything that we make and we'll continue to get better and make more cool shit right on check hoolygolf dot com okay uh check out primobief.com and

Colorado craft beef.com. Just go get steak. We need steak with that fuel. Look, you can have milk. 100% bro. By the way, milk is a good, good,

freaking dessert, dude. Good dessert. We got a new flavor coming out. I don't know if it's been exposed yet. Has it? I don't know. You don't know. Tell me.

All right, we got a new flavor. Wait, wait, the powder or the RTD? Uh, powder. Okay, yeah, of course. Okay.

There's new, new flavors coming out. But yeah, before you eat your dessert, which is a mold, get some steak, get some Colorado craft beef.com, primal beef.com.

Also, subscribe to the podcast. Also, check out jaco underground. com. And we got YouTube channels. But you got a Huli golf, YouTube channel?

You know, we haven't done much with that. Over the top, Huli was our YouTube channel. We'll work on that here, probably this next year. It's not been a priority at this time. Not a priority right now.

You got to prioritize next year. Yeah, you do. Yeah. Well, we got YouTube channels, right? We got the Jocko podcast official. We got the Jocko podcast clips Echo Charles

He's like all making the clips thing He's put like nine clips on it Good job dude everyone is really appreciative There's more than nine Thank you but you know we're out there Jock Fuel has a podcast has a YouTube channel Origin USA has a YouTube channel Check all those out

Also Written a bunch of books Check out the books I've written Kids books Written a bunch of kids books I get letters from kids That did their first pull up Yeah

I get letters from kids that started Jiu Jitsu I get letters from kids that learn their times tables. I get letters from kids that squared their life away with this book. So get your kids, get your neighbors, kids, get your nieces and nephews. Give them the Warrior Kid Books. Check those out.

Also, Eschonfront, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. These are the principles that we learned in combat on the battlefield, and these are applicable in any leadership endeavor. So if you want to come to one of our events, the next event is in San Antonio. There's still a couple tickets left. It's San Antonio, Texas, April 29th through May 1st.

Come and check it out. We have a bunch of other events. And we can come into your business and we can help you with your leadership situation. And by the way, if you have problems, they're leadership problems. We also have an online leadership training academy, which is not just for like, oh, you're in a leadership position. You're the CEO of a company. You're the chief of a fire department. It's not just for them.

It's for you that's sitting there with, you're at the bottom rung, you've been in your job for a year and a half, no one reports to you. You can learn from the Extreme Ownership Academy and it's going to help you in every aspect. It's going to help you build relationships. It's going to help you interact with other people. It's going to help you advance, get promoted, do better, make more money. It's going to help you with those things through leadership. And that can be found at Extreme Ownership.com.

And finally, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their family. You want to help Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a incredible organization that has helped so many of our friends. Also check out

America's. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org which is Micah Fink's organization helping seals get, and not just seals, helping all veterans or a bunch of veterans

find themselves up in the mountains, find their soul again. And then Jimmy May has got his organization beyond the The Brotherhood.org. So that's America's mighty warriors.org, heroes and horses.org, and beyond the brotherhood. Dot org. If you want to connect with us for Bob and HuliGolf, check out Huligolf.com.

And then on Instagram at HuliGolf and then Bob on Instagram is lead, Bob Holland. Check out episode 416 if you want to learn more about that. And if you want to connect with me, check out jocco.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocka. Echo is at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm. them and once again thanks Bob coming back thank you for having it good to see you uh thanks your service is a frog man and your continued pursuit to building a business here and helping

our economy grow with huli golf thanks to all our military out there veterans who passed down these lessons to help us be better new guys help us be more effective in combat and help us be better people. And then thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you for protecting our way of life here at home. And for everyone else out there, look, we went through some good mantras today that are going to help you in every aspect of your life. So keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, don't be late, don't forget any gear. Look for work. become an asset and you become an asset by always training and maintaining your body and your mind.

And in order to do that, just keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Lead, Bob Holland and Echo and Jock out.