Jocko Podcast - 510: The Ego Trap In Leadership. The Need To Lead Pt.2. With Dave Berke.

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground<The second part to The Need to Lead, by Dave Berke. How ego quietly sabotages leaders and teams. When we see others’ failures as our wins, frustration and judgment take over. We talk about how that mindset damages trust, limits growth, and creates division. The conversation shows how shifting from ego to ownership not only builds stronger relationships but also unlocks the real strength of leadership—helping others rise instead of hoping they fall.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocco podcast number 510 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Also joining us once again is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. We are continuing the conversation about Dave's new book. The book is called The Need to Lead.

It is available for pre-order right now. Release date is October 21st, 2025. 10 years after the book Extreme Ownership came out. It also comes out on the same day. I left the city of Ramadi with Lafab and Seth Stone on our way home and the rest of the guys that remain there. So it's kind of an interesting date for me, a meaningful date for me.

So if you're listening to this, we started the conversation about this book on the last podcast, number 509. So if you haven't listened to that one yet, go back and listen to it. And on that first podcast that we did, number 509, we cover the first half of the book. And the first half of the book is called the mindset of a good leader. And that's the first five chapters.

And now we're gonna look at the second half of the book, the second five chapters, which is called the actions of a good leader. So we have the mindset and we have the actions. And Dave Burke. Top Gun Pilot, F-18 pilot, F-16 pilot, F-22 pilot, F-35 pilot. And you and I were talking, you flew the Raptor. You went up there for like three years flying the Raptor.

Yeah, more than that. And a flight in the Raptor for, let's say, how long is a flight in the Raptor? Hour and a half, hour, hour and a half. How much does that cost? I don't know the number, but it costs the taxpayers a decent amount of money. How much, I mean, how much gas do you burn? You probably, you know, depending on it, if you refuel between 18 and 30,000 pounds of gas, depending on what you're doing.

So this is, you're talking 50 grand an hour, something like that? Yeah, sounds about right. How many sorties would you fly a day while you're up there? Usually up at Nell's week, I do one a day. One a day. Yeah. Top gun, you're flying. a different pace, but up in Fallon, or up at Nellis with the Raptor.

One flight a day was pretty common. When did you fly at Top Gun? A lot. There are times. Four hours a day? Five hours a day? Hours is not necessarily the best way to measure it, but I would routinely at Top Gun fly two, sometimes three a day, and you could burn a tank of gas at Top Gun in like 30 minutes.

Because you're putting the pedals to the metal? Yeah, you're just firewalling it all time. What about off of a carrier over Afghanistan? How long are those flights? Those are seven, six, seven hour flights. There's a long flights. How many times you have to refuel in six hours or seven hours? Four or five times.

Those things just suck gas. They're just, they're burning gas. Once you get up to altitude, they're much better, but it takes a lot of gas, especially a heavy combat loaded jet to get it off the carrier. Up to altitude takes a lot of gas.

Don't you refuel as soon as you get off the carrier? Yeah, traditionally, like the carrier will give you some gas to get you. Afghanistan was unique because it took a whole hour flying over land over Pakistan to get into Afghanistan. and it's a landlock country. It's way off the coast.

So flying off carriers, or really from anywhere, you had a long way to go. So you had to get gas from the ship before you left. So you get gas from the ship. What does that mean? Back then, it was S3s now. It's F-18s, but a jet that's configured to take off, has a bunch of tanks of gas,

a pod or probe, a basket you could plug into, and they would just transfer. So you take off, you top off to whatever you burn from starting up to getting up to altitude, Whatever that amount was you'd burn you'd get that in the front you'd get refueled by another F-18 sometimes That's that's how the carrier does it and F-18 will take off with they call it five wet five tanks of gas Twenty four hundred pounds each so twelve thirteen thousand pounds You take off let's see you burned four thousand pounds from your total internal fuel

You get you fill that back up up at altitude which is nice because it's an airplane's much more efficient up there than you could go for a long time God the logistics is a lot It's insane. Carrier aviation, there's nothing like it. Nothing like it in the world. Yeah. There's a sea, the Navy Seal Museum has opened up down in downtown San Diego. So it's right by the USS Midway. So if you're interested in carrier aviation, you have to go to the midway. You have to go to the midway. It's so it's so awesome to see. And after the last time we talked, I was got a little bit sucked down into the YouTube algorithm. watching some stuff and watching some carrier landings and whatnot and it gets yeah it's it's just a bizarre world it's like bizarre that we even thought of all this yeah but here we are here we are awesome all right well let's get into the book then um the the book obviously it's called the need to

lead a top gun instructors lessons on how leadership solves every challenge written by dave bork Forward by Johnco Willink. Check. A lot of people think that's the best part of the book. People are saying, a lot of people are saying the reviews are incredible about the forward. All right. Part two, actions of a good leader. This is chapter six is called take ownership.

Ramadi Iraq barracks room, June 20th, 2006. This was the second interruption in as many hours. A young Marine stood in my room. He'd entered without knocking his face telegraphing concern. Sir, there's a call for you in the radio room. I think it's important. A wave of adrenaline rushed through my body. In the silence, I could hear the click of my laptop closing.

After a deep breath, I followed him out the door to the operations room. And there's a, I'm going to refer to a call sign here, which is the call sign is simple. This is another Marine captain that was in charge of an FC. Which is a fire fire power control team. These are This is your guys, right? This is my guys. Continuing on on this trip to the radio room,

my heart rate was elevated and I had to consciously elongate each breath. Whatever was on the other end of that call, I had to be calm. My emotions were contagious and right then, the only thing I could do was not let them affect my team. Simple. Chip here. What's up? I asked.

My chest tightened. during the second it took for a response. Chris was hit. We're loading him into Bradley and headed back. We're going straight to Charlie Medical. Simple replied. Simple's voice remained steady even as he relayed this distressing news about Chris Leon, the model Marine, who was his radio operator.

This was why Simple was so effective in combat. Emotion doesn't help. He was in problem solving mode, and this was the guy you wanted in your foxhole. Rock steady in every situation. Roger, I'm heading there now. I'll keep a radio with me so you can update me on the way, I said. I jumped into the pickup truck I had at my disposal to get around base

and headed to the medical facility just a few hundred yards away. During the short drive, I got a follow-up call. Chip, he's in route. The Army has him. He's stable and breathing. We're about five minutes out. I exhaled for what felt like the first time since hearing the news. Simple was preparing the medical team for what to

expect and knew I would relay everything he told me. Mere minutes after I got there and coordinated with the medical team, an Army Humvee burst through the vehicle entrance followed by the massive Bradley, its diesel engine announcing its arrival with raucous authority. Doc and I watched the ramp drop from the back. As planned, Doc climbed into the troop compartment to help lift the stretcher. Two soldiers already had control of the bottom handles so I waited at the base of the ramp for them to pass with Chris I would grab Chris's hand I thought and walk with him to one of the operating tables inside the facility as the stretcher passed passed I saw Chris's face his head wrapped in field gauze

a plastic mask covering his face his helmet and body armor had been removed the entrance wound from the bullet was visible above his left temple. There was no need to reach for his hand. So you go from the terror of one of your guys being wounded. You have no idea how bad it is as a leader and a military commander. You assume the worst. And then you get a radio call that he's stable. and I can't even imagine the complete ecstatic emotions that ran through your body then you're expecting like hey it's like the world between you know someone being badly wounded and someone being dead that's that's everything and then you see him and you realize he's he's dead I had um there were some seals overseas and I was at traded at the time and there was a seal that had been really badly wounded and I got a call from the guys overseas and you know they were telling me they were kind of they were very very emotional and telling me about the guy's condition and you know I said like is he going to live

and they were like yeah and I said nothing else matters First, you know, it's interesting. I always refer to the fact that Mark Lee was the first seal killed in Iraq. And Corporal Chris Leon, the first Anglico Marine killed in Iraq. And Anglico had been there just as long as the seals have been there since the beginning, 2003. What's going through your mind at this juncture? I mean, I think you captured it pretty well. You know, the Marine that came in, obviously, the story is much longer in the book.

I cover all the detail. but we always had someone manning the radio in case something was going on. I had a team out in the, in sector, Adam and his guys were there. So when the Marine came in, he'd been in, I'd been interrupted a thousand times in that deployment. It was fine. Hey, sir, you know, this, whatever, just updates. I knew, I just knew the, every way he cared himself, I knew it was a problem. I didn't know the extent of it, but I could just tell by the way he cared himself, the look on his face.

He's like, hey, sir, you need to take this call. And I just, I just had a feeling like, hey, this is going to be really bad. And when I talked to on the radio and Simple was bringing his team in, it was the first time I was able to piece it. Like, I knew it was bad, but I knew he'd been shot. And, you know, it's just, it's, that's always bad. And it's, it's probably, Jocko, it's, I've got this in my head. You could probably picture the route.

It's, it's, I don't know, a three minute drop. from my where I lived to where the hospital was Charlie Med in that three-minute drive I get the call we're on our way in he's stable and he's breathing and I'm like I kind of have the same reaction I was like oh like okay well we're gonna figure this out but but the worst case scenario I now don't have to consider what I'm going to how I'm going to react to the worst case scenario because he's okay and obviously when you see when you see that like I just I could tell I just you could I just knew he was dead um it was it was it was much more shocking I think to me had I not gotten the call I was kind of prepared for that but there

was this moment of like relief and I was sitting there with relief like I was like I know it's I don't if it sounds weird to say this I was excited to see him because I was looking forward to being a comfort to him like I was excited for him to see me to be like hey dude we got you and I had built that scenario in my head like I'm going to hold his hand and Doc and I'd kind of rehearse like okay you go to the top of the stretcher I'll be down here I'm going to talk to him like it was all built on putting him at ease making him calm and giving him a friendly face of like hey dude we got you and so when he came down the ramp and I saw what it looked like and what he looked like I kind of I mean I just I just froze there and I do remember this feeling of of just a combination I

guess you describe it of like shock and denial like it uh i think the reality of that war i was probably always operating at like 98% reality and the piece that i wasn't operating it was like this was going to ever happen to me you and i had been to charlie med i don't know how many times i've been in the memorial which that facility sat right next door to the to the hospital dozens and dozens of times and this was there was no escape in this one did you you think, so you just mentioned 98% reality, did you have in your mind that you would, like your guys, you wouldn't take casualties?

I had it in my mind that we're all going to come home. No Anglico had ever lost a Marine. We'd had, we'd get casualties, we got people hurt, we had people shot, we had, we had had all sorts of things happen in Anglico. No one had never been killed. And, you know, I was, I guess, in quotes, I was prepared for that.

But I wasn't until when that happened, I was like, oh, this is, I never really thought was going to happen. Yeah, it's weird to kind of the opposite story, Ryan Job. So when he got shot, it was like, you know, I talked to Laif. And Laif, like, you know, he was being as positive as he could humanly be. But he'd just, you know, seen Ryan's, you know, face blown apart. And Yeah

And then when he ended up You know Making it back to Charlie Medd and making it home It was like Very You know I haven't really thought about that much Because you know Mark was killed the same day But yeah there was like a

The opposite that you had which was you know I thought Ryan Was you know Was dead And then he turned out To to have made it back and and, you know, eventually made it back to America before he died. But, you know, I definitely had the feeling that it didn't make sense to me from an odds perspective

that we could go through deployment, you know, without taking some significant casualties. And part of that for me was, you know, someone getting killed. And just, you know, again, you cover a lot of this stuff in the book. and I'm reading some of the various parts of this, but we had gone into South Central Armadi for the first time, set up cop iron, combat outpost iron, which we had done a big joint, you know, that was a big joint mission with the 137.

It was actually Laf's platoon that went over there, crossed the river. I think we talk about this in one of the books, but it was, you know, there was a village there. that was called Muge Village, which we eventually cleared, which was, that was again,

that was Leif's platoon, because that was on the western side of Ramadi. And you and I were running C2 on that one. It was like everyone thought, you know, Moogh Village was going to be crazy. But just north of Muge Village was where we put combat outpost iron.

And we went in there, built the combat outpost. I don't know what the date was. but we were there for, we were there for maybe a day or two days the seals were. And then we left to go back and start getting stuff ready. And your guys either took our place or, you know, showed up there. And so now Chris was on the roof of that combat outpost. And he got shot by a, by an enemy.

You know, I hate to use the word sniper because it's almost like you're giving credit to them. But somebody that knew how to shoot decently shot Chris. Fast forward a little bit. Within a few hours, I found myself standing on the same helicopter pad I had arrived on four months earlier. This time watching Chris's body rise into the sky aboard a Marine Corps helo. I'd hoped never to witness an angel flight what the Marines honorably call such a somber occasion.

Yet there I was. This was the worst moment in my 23 years of service and the lowest point of my life as a Marine I was devastated to realize as a leader that I could not protect one of my own. The morning of the following day, I brought my entire team together to talk about our mindset moving forward. Chris was the first Anglico Marine killed in Iraq and it sent shock waves through the entire community. I didn't want to lose anyone else. But we had a job to do. While I don't remember my remarks specifically, the gist of my speech was that Chris's death was tragic and unfortunate, but that no one should blame themselves.

It was a lucky shot by an insurgent sniper, one of many that claimed the lives of hundreds of American service members. We couldn't and shouldn't dwell on it. We needed to stay vigilant and committed to supporting the army for the final three months, just like we'd done before June 20. 20th and with that the war continued for us all while filled with continued fighting and sustained combat thankfully the rest of my men survived and made it home but the burden of losing Chris has never left me I carried the memory of him and his sacrifice and everything I did throughout the rest of my military career I carry it to this day at every opportunity I recognize Chris Leon's sacrifice he deserves to have his story kept alive by due to

Doing so, we can remember the heartache of the unavoidable cost of war. Nearly 10 years to the day I returned home from Ramadi, I read Extreme Ownership. Before I'd even finished the last chapter, I felt as though, before I'd even finished the first chapter, I felt as though I'd been punched in the gut. Like a tsunami, a sense of failure washed over me as I read how Jocko told his team that the failure of the fateful Blue on Blue mission was his and his alone. He stood in front of his subordinates, peers, and superiors, and took complete ownership for everything that had happened. Having been in the exact room where he spoke, I could picture it perfectly.

I could imagine his words, body language, tone, and voice. Then I thought back to the moments I spoke with my team immediately after Chris's death. I thought about what I did and didn't do as a leader and what I said and didn't say. and didn't say. I never fully took ownership of what happened. Instead, I deflected blame. It was a life-changing experience for me to read extreme ownership and recognize that. In the most critical failure of my entire life, I hadn't accepted complete responsibility.

In doing so, I failed the team I led. Chris's death was 100% my responsibility. When I first spoke to my men about Chris, I served up cliches and banal platitudes. I wanted to assure them that it wasn't their fault, that they couldn't have done anything differently. I thought that hearing those words would somehow make it make sense for them. It did not. What my men needed was to see their leader take ownership of Chris's death.

While the world they inhabited certainly involved random chaos and disorder, I needed to take ownership of everything that I could. I failed to do that. I should have told my team that moving forward, I'd train each FCT on adjustments to our rooftop operations, or that I'd engage with Jocko's seals to learn from their ongoing counter-sniper tactics. We could implement different protocols, change procedures, something, anything. Instead, I did nothing but assigned blame to the randomness of war, the chaos of the situation, which meant I, as their leader, had nothing.

to change which meant there were no corrections to be made but there were and I did not address them that day after Chris was killed I needed to make changes I didn't because I was comfortable excusing this strategy strat tragedy as an inevitable consequence of war we were in combat with unavoidable danger and risks around any corner yet I gave up the most powerful tool in my arsenal control I surrendered it not only Chris's death but before when I could have preemptively stopped those dangers prior to that fateful day in June I should have responded to looming risks and fought against them we knew

sniper activity had been increasing throughout the war and seals were conducting counter-sniper operations as it was reaching fever pitch I missed opportunities to be proactive and although it may not have guaranteed Chris's survival I would have had more control over the outcome I didn't want Chris's death to be real. That's the reason that halfway to the barracks to tell my men about him, I drove back to the hospital to confirm it. It certainly wasn't something I wanted to own or admit could happen again. I didn't accept the depth of my responsibility as a leader, so I relinquished my most critical opportunity to lead. I just never understood that until I read the book.

yeah, I was reading that and it was definitely very heavy to read very heavy to read. And you know, you and I have had conversations about that. And that is it's the burden. It's the burden of combat leadership.

And that is when you lose people in combat, it is your fault. And are there random things that happen and does the enemy get a vote? and yes, there's chaos and there's disorder, but you're in charge. And when you're in charge, you have that responsibility.

And that's the lesson that you put here is the takeaway. Take ownership of everything and don't wait. Leaning into some preemptive ownership with that. Yeah, I mean, it is hard to hear you read my words. I mean, it takes me back to that moment and it takes me back to the whole arc of the experience of losing Chris. I don't remember what I said, but I can picture it fairly well. I know where I was standing.

I know what I was saying. And I know what I was thinking, too. I certainly know what I felt. Man, I got probably a lot of my mind. I don't want to wait too much time on it, but, you know, there's a balance. There are things beyond our control. That is the world that we live in. And combat is a place by which things are going to happen.

You can't control. And, you know, I don't want to overstate, like, I listed a bunch of things I could have done before and a bunch of things I could have done after. That was part of my own reckoning of realizing where my failures were. That wasn't, that's not a recipe to guarantee with the outcome. I could have done all those same things,

and the outcome could have been the same. And the point isn't, that isn't even the point. But, you know, that ground combat experience, for me was a whatever the word is for a out of my comfort zone experience. I mean, there's the contrast between being the senior instructor at Top Gun months earlier to being a ground combat leader in Ramadi with your seals. That's a, that's a, there's a big difference there. Um, you know, for me, if I think about, God, so many thoughts, you cannot write a leadership book if you don't talk about the concepts of humility, ownership, and teamwork.

They belong in every book. I also wasn't going to write a leadership book that just restated the concept of ownership that you articulated in the very first chapter of that book. And as I thought about how I was going to discuss or explain the lesson that meant to me, what I had to do is be really honest with myself of when the concept of ownership really, I think, made sense to me. And it was when I was reading it. And reading that book was like, oh, I'm going to read, I'm going to read Jocco and Leath's book.

This would be cool because these are my friends. We serve together. And I'm really excited to read what they wrote. And then it's like, holy crap. It's humbling, but I think also very required for me to be, for me to be, for me to have been successful at that shone front, for me to truly understand what we are trying to do with what you made. I had to be honest with how that landed with me was that chapter wasn't you talking about your story. That chapter was talking to me about mine. And my story was at the hardest thing I've ever done, the lowest point I've ever been in.

Did I actually do the things that you were teaching? And I didn't. And that was a really hard thing to accept. Writing that, it was really the first time I really put in the words, but I've carried that feeling with me for a long time of what I didn't do. And I don't like that feeling. I don't like that feeling. And I don't live where I like, had I done this, it would have been okay. I don't live like that.

I don't have that sense of I could have changed the outcome. But if you really think about what I did in the wake of that experience, or I guess a better way to put as what I didn't do, is I attribute the rest of us coming home, I can't take, I can't take credit for that because I didn't do the things that I should have done. I just like, hey, this is what happens in this war. Just carry on. And there's some truth to that. There's some truth to that.

But there's so much that was missing there. And I felt I had to capture what that meant to me. So it's relatable in a way that people can go, hey, this applies to every aspect of your life. And our tendency is to just avoid that. And it took me 10 years to figure out that that's what I've been doing. Well, I'm teaching the young junior officers. One of the things that I've talked about with them is, hey, You can, you know, you gotta make a call to go left or right.

You can make a call to go left. And you guys take a left and they step on an ID and three guys get killed. And that was a, is that a bad call that you made? Well, or you told them to go right and everyone walked off and you made it back to base. Or you told them to go right, they hit an ID and, you know, you lose three guys. Or you told them a little left and everyone made it back to base. good decision, bad decision, with the information that you had at the time,

the piece of it that doesn't change is it that it was your decision. And another very similar thing to that is the whole idea of being on rooftops. So being on rooftops in Ramadi carried an amount of risk to it. But the risk was there was two major risks, One of them was snipers and the other one was having grenades thrown on the rooftop,

which soldiers were killed by grenades thrown on rooftops. Mike Monster was killed by a grenade thrown on a rooftop and three of other guys were wounded. So there's an argument, well, hey, why would you go up on the roof? Well, the answer is very simple. When you're on a rooftop, you can cover more angles than you can when you're looking through windows. So everything is a tradeoff. And by the way, if you've seen the movie warfare, those guys were not on the rooftop. They were inside the building on the upper deck and someone put a grenade through the window.

So it's one of those things where, well, did you decide to go on the rooftop or did you decide to go in the building? Maybe you got away with it. Maybe you got caught. But regardless of that outcome, you have to, that was your decision that you made as a leader. No one talked to you in. Hey, they tried to talk to you. Patoon chief said this. Patoon chief told us to go up there.

Yeah, but it was your call. And you're up there and this is the consequences. And here's where I actually think that, and, you know, as we mentioned, there is randomness that is completely beyond our control. There are things that we truly cannot control. And can you stop, you know, can you truly stop? Can you never go on a roof if you're taking,

if you're walking through Ramadi? Nope, you have to go on rooftop sometimes. Do you have to move down the street where there's IDs? Yes, if you're going to accomplish, if you're going to do your job, you have there's going to be risks. You can't completely eliminate those risks and you have to know that as a leader and you have to own that as a leader and I think as hard as that is and as brutal as that is I actually believe that that is the healthiest thing that you can do because if you just throw it to chance, and look, there's some things that are chance, but if you know that you did ever,

you made your decisions based on the information that you had at the time, you own that decision, I think that is more healthy than putting your hands up in the air and saying, well, it was just bad luck that day. Does bad luck play a role? Oh, absolutely.

Bad luck plays a role. But everything outside that, One, that one element, everything outside that element, we did everything we could. And I think that is a healthier way than shrugging your shoulders and saying, well, that's just bad luck. There's going to be bad luck. There's going to be things you can't control. That's the way life is and that certainly is the way combat is.

But you have to take ownership of everything that you can. of everything that you can. And I believe that when you take ownership of that, instead of pointing the fingers and blaming the circumstances and blaming bad luck, I think that actually hurts in the long run more than knowing that you're doing your job. And by the way, people will make mistakes in combat too. People will say, hey, they'll, they're,

they'll send people in the wrong spot they'll assault the wrong building you know you read those chapters in in when when Laif was with Chris and Chris or Leif could have easily said go ahead and engage that the you know late Chris saw somebody with a scope weapon Chris saw someone of the scope weapon reported the building Laif ran it up the chain of command Deconflicted the army said there's no friendlies in that building take the shot kill that enemy sniper and it would have been totally understandable if layford said yes chris there's no friendly in that building that's an enemy fighter shoot him and it would have been completely understandable if chris said

roger that boss and taking that shot and if he would have done that he would have killed an american soldier because there was a problem with the deconfliction that can happen those things can happen and if you leave it to chance and you shrug your shoulders those things are much more likely to happen. So yeah, I think the healthiest thing to do, even though it's painful, is to take ownership. And, you know, for, you know, I was the, I was the senior seal in Armadi. Every operation that we did was mine. Was mine. And that's the way things work. Yeah. You go forward a little bit you talk about the ultimate form of ownership is what we call preemptive ownership and this again this is you know one of the problems with extreme ownership is it's looking to the past hey a mistake was made

it was my fault well preemptive ownership is hey if a mistake gets made it is going to be my fault therefore i'm going to implement these things to prevent a mistake from happening as much as we possibly can strange thing about your job is a single seat fighter aircraft. What happens in that bird is literally yours. There's no, there's no finger pointing to be done. Even down to the maintenance.

I mean, you do a walk through. You, I mean, I guess someone could make a real bad mistake with some kind of maintenance protocol. It's hard to, when you're by yourself in a jet, it's really hard to find someone else to blame for anything goes wrong in that jet. So yeah, there's always, you know, some crazy thing, but I mean, generically speaking, who are you going to blame? You know, and that's, that's 100% true.

And everything you just said about that, I mean, that was really what, that's really what reading that chapter did to me. You know, it's everything. You got to take ownership of everything. I don't know, well, I know for me that I wasn't doing that. And I think I had gotten to a place where I was comfortable. you know, I wasn't running around like point the finger and blame me. I haven't been living my life. I hadn't been living my life or I'm some sort of victim of things going on around me.

But when you read that and you think about what that means to you, part of it for me is recognizing if I need to be able to cross the bridge on that moment. And if there's one good thing that that has done for me, it's really hard for me to find another circumstance now and be like, well, that's not really my fault with this as a backdrop. Right? Like, this is the ultimate for me. And the benefit of that is you can look around,

I can look around and everything else and be like, hey, dude, this is not going to be that hard. Find out what you did wrong and fix it. Look in the future, prevent it from happening. It's just what you got to do. And by the way, you know, I think I think the only part about Chris that I read was, I think you called him the ultimate marine or something like that.

And then you give, you know, more detail. in the book but um just a total stud total stud just a total stud um just outstanding across the board and doing his job and loving doing his job by the way you know which is it's um something you know you'll hear the phrase like oh he died doing what he loved right you hear that kind of sounds like what you call it a cliche or a platitude but man i take a lot of comfort in that fact that you know um you know i just just was with uh up at mikey's grave and like knowing knowing i mean i know 100 percent 100 that mike he wanted to be doing exactly what he was doing exactly what he was doing that's what he wanted to be doing mark same

exact thing. Ryan Job, we actually got to hear him say, you know, even though he got shot in the face, even though he's blind. He's like, I want to come back. Because that's exactly what he wanted to be doing. And Chris Leon's the exact same way. You can go look at a picture of him right now on the internet and you will not see one ounce or one, the slightest indication of any hesitation of any kind whatsoever that is a united states marine in combat supporting his brothers and that you can see it 100% in his face with no not even any indication of any kind of anything other than that and like you mentioned in the book the opportunity to share his story and let people know as is an is a pretty it's an honor to be able to do that and you did a great job of it in the book and yeah is your leaders out

there whatever little tiny excuse you're grasping on to and look look the moge the moge the enemy fighters yeah they're they're the ones you know they're the ones that pulled the trigger they're the ones that killed chris killed mark Killed Ryan. They're the ones that killed Mikey. Like, yes. But we have to take ownership of everything that we can. As much as it, right?

And it does apply to everything. And you get here into the real world application, which once again, you start off with a quote. And the quote is completely applicable to what we're talking about. The quote that starts off with from one of our clients at Eschlawn Fund is, how am I supposed to take ownership of something

I didn't even do? right and you know this guy goes on I'm not trying to be difficult and I know it's time for a break I like what you're saying but some things are just not my fault and so you break that down and you actually break it down in this one in this chapter's like uh in in a family scenario you know someone's like you know they're having problems with their wife and of course how well does it out when you push you know place the blame on your wife for something that went wrong instead of taking ownership yourself i guarantee you know i've been married for coming up on i think 28 29 years something like that people like you know what's the secret i tell you the secret straight up

is extreme ownership that's straight up the secret and that's one of the stories that you tell in the application yeah um fast forward here to the next chapter is called listen. Pacific Beach, California, one mile west of Interstate 5, September 26th, 2006. It was the middle of the afternoon and the blinding sun lit up

every side alley and driveway. My eyes scanned left to right and back again as my vehicle moved methodically down the street. A kid on a bike wore a backpack. I instinctively changed lanes giving a wide berth. there could be danger anywhere an iED in a trash can a sniper on a rooftop observing watching

everything for potential threats was an inexorable part of my life in romadi during the height of the insurgency so much so that it was as much a reflex as blinking on that drive that bright sunny day i wasn't thinking as much as i was anticipating and ready to act so there you are And you'll notice the date, September 26th, 2006. What day did you get home? That's the day. That's the day. That's the hour.

And so you're driving in the car. And, you know, I'll fast forward a little bit. I heard the din of arbitrary chit-chat grow because with your family, the vehicle filled with background noise and voices, but the words were indiscernible. And I was losing focus. What were they talking about? There was nothing to discuss. We should have been closely observing everything exactly as we'd always.

He's operated everything else was superfluous. I could feel myself becoming agitated The cacophony grew until I couldn't take it anymore stop talking I barked Abruptly and loudly everyone froze my sharp words had sliced through the chatter like a blade But the inhabitants of this car were not my troops So there you go a little Decompression happening a little a little PTSD That's what that is actually It's the short fuse.

And these are textbook PTSD, by the way. Bad dreams, which you mentioned. I didn't cover them, but you mentioned the bad dreams, the short fuse, which is textbook and hyper alert. Three for three. Yeah. How was it? How was when you got home?

Well, chapter tells quite an interesting story. I mean, it's funny hearing you listen, listening to you tell the story that I wrote. And you do this really well. You pick certain, you can read the whole chapter it's going to take forever. But, you know, I land,

I get in the car. I got to drive from the San Diego airport to our house and P.B. It's like, I don't know. 12 minutes, I mean, it's a short drive, dude. And it's like a gorgeous day. You know, September in San Diego is just like epic, perfect. And I'm in the car with my mom and my wife.

Like the two most important people in my whole world that I just have been missing. I just wanted to get home to. And I'm home. I'm home. I'm home from Romani. And you know that feeling of like, when you come home from Ramadi,

it's like, it's a, it's a big deal. What was your, what was your decompression on the way home like? Remember, I mean, my buddy,

the first deployment to Iraq and my buddy, Johnny, who's my brother. And he was, he was on a long deployment and he was at the ragged end of it. And he goes, dude,

bro, tomorrow we're going to be on a, metal tube and then 24 hours later we're going to be in BB. So that's pretty much what you were dealing with. We went to like Kuwait for like two days or something, you know, waiting for the, I think we flew in out of Kuwait, if I'm not mistaken. I'm almost positive. And I remember like Kuwait was like a thousand degrees.

It was just miserable. And you're out of Ramadi. And like I think we went through some decompression thing. But in your brain, like I don't want to be here. I want to be home. This is ridiculous. Anyway, you know, it takes all like six or seven minutes on the drive home that I, I don't have a really good sense of like, you know, the, the arc of getting to the point where I, like, screamed at them.

But it kind of, when I yelled at them, like, kind of startled myself. Like, whoa. And I can still, I mean, that's a, that's a hard chapter to write. It's a very hard chapter to listen to because I can really, I can show you the street on the map. I can place it. And my wife is in the passenger seat. My mom's in the backseat. But when I say it, I turn to the right.

And I can still to this day, like, see the look at my wife's face. which probably, you know, had like 10 different emotions. Like she felt bad. She was sorry. But underneath that was like almost like a look of like she didn't recognize me. So you got to remember, I met my wife when I, when I checked into Top Gun. So she meets me and, you know, it's like, oh, my boyfriend's a Top Gun instructor, which we like, it's like, it's like. With a Corvette.

Yeah. I mean, like it is the most idyllic, ridiculous, fun. You could not have a better. scenario to start a relationship weekends like just all of it dude all of it all of it and there was like a moment of like a lack of recognition on her face to me and I could see her seeing I could see that in her face looking at me like did she understand what was going on in Ramadi I mean I think to a degree there's I mean no as much as a 20-something year old girl who's we got married in you know the the previous

May I deployed in September. So as much as that person can know, yeah, she knew all of it, which is essentially nothing. She certainly didn't have any sense of like, I was going to carry that. You just write three textbook things. She didn't have no, she had no frame of reference for that. But, you know, that was a moment like kind of came and went. And I was like, I think I apologize profusely. I'm like, I'm sorry.

I kind of lost track of things. And no, all good. We're good. No problem. You know, she goes, my mom goes home and I'm back home with my wife. And I, you know, it's the first night we're back home. and I wake up that night with that nightmare. And it's a very vivid nightmare to me.

I can replay very clearly. But it was like, I mean, it's like crap out of the movies. Like I sit up like in a cold sweat. I'm hyperventilating. She's, she, her eyes are like saucers. Very quickly, like, she's realizing, like, something's going on. And I am too. You know, I'm like, I know this is not normal behavior.

Or I guess it's not standard behavior, if that makes sense. So like it was like, welcome home. You know, like welcome home to this, this, this whole act that I brought with me. You have to adjust. Yeah. And I'm going to fast forward to the adjustment. Totally. While not necessarily easy at first, the correction was simple.

I needed to listen more. That was it. I had to recognize, identify and intercept my typical path to be the first, loudest and often the only voice in the room. And that's exactly what I did. I just stopped talking so much. Instead, I got back in the habit of inviting her to be herself just as she had been before Ramadi. Ironically, it led to a discovery I hadn't anticipated shifting.

My talking to listening ratio also taught me to listen to myself. This is where I was kind of, oh, when I read that, I was like, okay, Dave's going to take a little exploration here. For months, I'd been trying to silence the voices in my head that felt frustrated and angry. I did everything possible to stifle those emotions, but it proved impossible. So instead of trying to block them out, I turned them on their head. The more I listened to my own internal voice, the more I was able to recognize and diagnose whatever emotions I was feeling. Listening to myself, acknowledging what I was feeling and dealing with whatever that issue was almost immediately improved my own mental state. Just as it improved our marriage when I listened to Whitney more.

Listening was how I understood what was going on and what allowed me to get past it. Ignoring my own voice was as dumb as ignoring Whitney's. So there you go There you go It's funny we were just answering another question on On the underground podcast And it's like you've heard me say this before Like you got to tell yourself the truth

But it's really important You've got to listen to yourself too You got to listen to what the What are what is going on in your head And you got to listen to it Because you can't you can't ignore it Right you have to have the conversation And you can say okay I'm listening to you

And what you're saying doesn't make sense and therefore I'm not going to act on it, but I understand it. And now I can deal with it. You say something else occurred to me too. Whitney had been the better leader throughout our impasse because she had been listening to me to what I needed. So a little credit to Whitney.

Yeah. Ignoring what's going on in your head is not going to work out well. And you know what's interesting is I wonder, I wonder how close, you know, you know the the feelings that you had about chris and you know i wonder i wonder how close you got to uncovering those thoughts at that time you know like hmm what is this what is this feeling that i have right now why don't why don't i why do i feel this and why is this bothering me why is this keeping me up why is my having bad like all those things you know it's hard yeah yeah i mean i mean i

think about even why I wrote that and why that story was so important. I mean, one thing I know for sure, totally independent of my story there that I was telling is like, just in general, in life, listening is such a good thing to do. Like, it's such a, it seems so obvious to say that, but it is such an overlooked and underappreciated behavior, just in life in general. Just stop talking so much and just listen. Just listen. Even people that are upsetting you, or frustrating, you are disagreeing,

like just listen to them and how so much better your life is in every aspect of your life, personally, professionally, your marriage, your kids. And obviously, I alluded to this in there, yourself. I'm just listening.

People just talk so much. And this, you know, this was a key lesson. Like, hey, you gotta just listen more. You know, you didn't talk to it. one of the, I had just created, I had to recognize that I had fallen into this habit. And in my world, like, talking made sense. And I give some examples like, okay, when you're by yourself in a jet, it's obvious you are the primary talker.

You're the only talker. When you are the vehicle commander of a Humvee and you're controlling the aircraft, you're, you're communicating to the airplanes. You are the primary talker. Makes sense. When you are an instructor at Top Gun and you are teaching classes and giving debriefs, clearly, you are the primary talker and I had just I had just created a habit by which that was just kind of normal and so I'm this I'm in this primary talking role and then I come home and you said it like you know PTSD the baggage like and listen I gotta make it clear like what I endured people have gone through so much worse and I don't want to overstate like the significance of this but this was what happened to me and and there's a lot of all sorts of different ways, I think, to approach this. But in my mind, like, what I came to

realize is just about all of the solution to my problem that I came home with, I had control over. Like, I had so much control over solving my frustration. What was the only thing you said, like heightened, you know, awareness, you know, trigger. And I think one of the things are somewhat comforting was like, oh, this is all in my, this is, I am, I can control all of this. And I know it sounds like almost like, too simple to say just listen to yourself, but I don't think, I think that's correct. That's, that is the whole conclusion of this is like, oh, I'm, I'm mad about something or I'm frustrated or I'm getting anxious or whatever those things are like stifling out with, like,

I'm just going to ignore that. Like, well, that's dumb. Just listen to it. It's like, why? And there's so much more inside there, but two main things happen. One is like, just remind us. Like, just stop talking, dude. Like, the last thing you should be doing is telling your wife anything.

Like, this is insane. And it wasn't like that before. Our relationship wasn't like that before I left. I came back and all of a sudden, she's in this like hyper deferential mode. She just scared shitless about what's going on with me. She just wants to take care of me. And she just kind of like deferred to me

and whatever I needed to help get through this. And in that period of time, like she kind of lost who she was in our marriage. And I'm like, this is, I came to the, like this is not a functional relationship. It'd been, like, I cannot, we can't survive like this. And the other part too was like,

hey, this stuff's going on in my head. Like, why would you ignore that? Why would you ignore what you were feeling and thinking? And to your point, like, I don't have to react to that, but I can't pretend it's not going on. And I don't want to say it was like overnight, but once I cracked the code on that, like, it was very, very quickly things normalized, stabilized,

and got very much back to normal. Once I learned that habit of like, oh, okay, I got it. And it was just, it was so much easier. And that stuff applies everywhere, man. Yeah, I know we, I know we have the saying default aggressive at Eschleon Front, but here's another good default. Listen. Just listen.

And I'll tell you, a lot of times, if you actually, a lot of times we are ego, our ego is sitting there telling you like everyone wants to hear what you have to say. There was some pretty freaking hilarious clips that rolled into my algorithm. And it's like a guy who's like inside voice is telling him to do stuff. And they're like, I think one of them was like, he's at a wedding party. and the voice is like, hey, everyone wants to see you do the worm, the worm dance. And he's like, yeah, yeah, well, I don't know. He's like, oh, they definitely want to.

And so we have that voice in our head that's going, oh, everyone wants to hear your opinion. Everyone's just waiting for you to give your opinion. No, no, actually they don't. They don't. Your default should be no one actually wants to hear what I have to say. Yep. That should be your default mode. That's part one.

And by the way, if you hear me say that and you go, gosh, that must be so bad for other people. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's actually you that I'm talking about. You. No one wants to hear what you have to say. No one. So don't say anything.

The other thing is, and this is such an awesome answer, is people will, you know, we'll be working with a company and someone will tell me, you know, well, how do you do when someone's really mad, how you do someone's really frustrated, how you do when someone's really upset, how do you do with someone's pushing back, how do you deal with someone has a different idea than yours? and it's like, oh, it's all the same answer. Listen to them. When someone's angry and they're raising their voice, listen to them.

When someone's frustrated and they're attacking, listen to them. When someone has a different idea, listen them. When someone is pushing back, listen them. And if you learn how to listen, and by the way, you also have to put your ego and check in that whatever they're saying might be right. And, oh, yeah, they're mad because you did something stupid or you did something that was egotistical or you did something that looked out for yourself or you did something that hurt them like all those things listen is the best way to diffuse emotions so keep that in mind

and also you know you mentioned that you know what you'd been through was minuscule and what all of us went through you know was minuscule compared to you know any pick an island you know pick a European village that you know all those things but and also but you know your reaction to was also, you know, relatively not that big of a deal, you know? They're kind of the, what I say, three for three on these PTSD things, but they weren't exaggerated to a point where it was, you know, some huge problem. But, you know, you don't want to exist in a relationship with your wife and make her feel like nervous and whatever. So the lesson, listening is the most overlooked and underestimated leadership behavior.

And then you go through the five components of. a relationship trust respect listening influence and care you have listening you add in an i and g of that as opposed to listen right on they wanted us we discussed doing that with the four laws of combat leadership changing simple to simplify so you have cover move that's an action to take, simplify, that's an action to take, prioritize and execute, that's an action take. And decentralized command is actually an action that you can take. Hey, decentralized command. But we decided that since that's what we actually taught, that's what we stuck with. Just simple. Plus it's a little simpler.

Fast forward a little bit. Self-awareness isn't always easy, but it's critical, it's crucial to being a successful leader in business and life. Often it's difficult. It's difficult. to comprehend just how much time we're talking but there's a simple test the next time you're around others at a dinner table or anywhere else take stock of the conversation actively pay attention to the dynamic calculate how long you are talking relative to how long others are if you're the one with more food on their plate than anyone else stop talking and let someone else share even if you're the best storyteller everyone still everyone else still wants to be heard so keep

it short and don't overdo it just be quiet And listen. That's classic. Yeah. Do check your plate. Still got food on it? Shut your trap. Yep.

That's right. Real world application. This one. Erica was the charged nurse. That meant she was responsible for scheduling, compliance, and making sure all other nurses were doing their job. I'm the charged nurse for a reason, Erica declared. I have the most experience and I have seen these problems more than anyone.

Believe me, I get it. so Eric is fired up Eric is fired up yeah and yeah man put a muzzle put a muzzle on yourself it's going to be helpful

oh am I saying that right Tyndall this is the next chapter this is the chapter called change Tyndall Air Force Base Florida F-22 Raptor training March 2008 so the Raptor you described to me at one point the Raptor is like a Porsche

Is that accurate? Yeah. Totally. It's just not a, not a GTO judge with an eight cylinder, you know, not a drag racer, but a Porsche. Because it's powerful, but maneuverable. Can you, and it's a dog fight. It is. It's a dog fight machine, right?

It can dog fight. Yes. Better than an F-16? Yes. Better than an F-20, better than F-18? Yes. Better than F-35. Keep going.

The answer is yes. Yeah. Is it the optimal machine? If you're going to get a dog fight, do it in F-22. 100%. It's the most, it's like you said, it is insanely powerful, but it is so nimble and can be so light. So how it combines all those attributes is, makes it very unique.

And it can out climb these other aircraft? Yep. It's just a beast. It's just a beast. It's just better at everything. It's just a beast. Is there an F-22 squadron? Yeah, several

And their purpose Is the dog fight Their purpose is air dominance How you achieve that There's a whole range of ways to do it But yeah, there's a bunch of F-22 squadrons How the hell that you get to an F-22 squadron? Your nickname is the good deal Dave, man

So fill us in. Echo. All right, the short version, it's a long story I'll try to keep it as short as I can Is this an Air Force squadron? This is an Air Force only airplane No other country has it. No other. It's only just the Air Force.

So the, the, around 2008 timeframe, the Marine Corps is like, okay, we're going to buy a new airplane. The airplane's called the F-35. It's coming in a couple years. They were kind of doing some math that's going to be here in a few years. That F-35 was what's called a fifth generation fighter. It was going to replace F-18s and Harriers, which we had had since, like, the early 80s. So the Marine Corps hadn't bought and introduced a new airplane in decades. like almost 40 years.

The Air Force had bought and started introducing the F-22 in 2005. And there was all sorts of problems introducing a new jet. They hadn't bought, built, and introduced a new airplane. And also decades. And it's just friction, man. It's new. New technology. It's stealth.

It's something they had never seen before. And so the Air Force had all sorts of issues introducing this new airplane. The Marine Corps is like, okay, well, we don't want to learn these lessons. sons ourselves, we're going to take a guy, send him to the Air Force to the F-22 for about three or four years. And his number one job is like, learn all these nuances and all these challenges of introducing a fifth-gen fighter to a service. And that guy will come back to the Marine Corps. And as we start standing up the F-35, he'll have all this resident knowledge. So it was like the ultimate good deal is this guy, whoever this guy was going to be, and I said

in the book, it wasn't going to be me, it was going to be somebody, goes, flies Raptors, learns how the Air Force introduced a brand new fifth generation fighter, the first of its kind, first time in decades. He'll take all that institutional knowledge. He'll stand up the first F-35 squadron, and he'll help us not make a bunch of those mistakes. So it was not only a ticket to fly the F-22, it was a ticket to go to the F-35. It's all but guarantee. I mean, it's the closest you can ever get to a guarantee that I knew I was going to go from F-22s to F-35s,

which is exactly what happened. And that was the ultimate good deal. How big is an F-22 compared to an F-35? It's big. It's noticeably bigger. It's probably- It's bigger. F-22 is significant.

If you put an F-22 next to an F-35, the F-35 will look small. No kidding. Yes. The F-22 is a big airplane compared to an F-35. But it still can out-maneuver it? It's unmatched. And is that just the design? Yeah.

Because that's what it's designed for. It's all sorts of things. Yes. You're correct. There's some long engineering story The short answer is exactly what you said That's how it's built and if you've ever seen speaking to YouTube Just Google or I'm sorry just YouTube F-22 air show

And you'll see an airplane do something no the airplane can do It's just like it's just ridiculous And I got to fly it and you got to fly it for like four years man Yep just about just under all out of Vegas Well I did all my training in Tyndall was where this chapter starts So in Fed I go to Tyndall. I think I probably spent maybe three years. How mad was every other Marine Corps pilot at you at this point?

Mad. Mad. I mean, the craziest part is I said it in the chapter. I just said it on this thing. Like, I wasn't going to do it. I was on a deployment in the F-18 as the XO and the number two of a squadron. I had already dropped my letter and already put in to get out. And I'd gotten accepted into grad school.

So on this deployment, I extended on this deployment to make the deployment. and I was getting out of the Marine Corps. On the deployment, the notification comes down that are going to accept applications for this Raptor job. But I'd already like, I was getting out. And my boss already, everybody knew. I'm like, well, you know.

Where'd you get accepted to college? Dartmouth, Tuck School of Business is going to go get an MBA at an Ivy League school. Sounded cool at the time. And then they dangled that F-22 in front of that. Then I applied. It is still kind of weird that they even selected you

knowing that you were going to get out. It was very weird. Freaking good deal, Dave has arrived. No complaints, man. It worked out. I was about to ask you about what it was like getting into the new bird, but we're about to get into that. So here we are.

Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, F-22 Raptor Training March 2008. My tantrum was epic. It rivaled that of a sleep-deprived toddler being told he can't have any, the toy he wants. Only I added a stream of explicit. expletives that would make a sailor blush in keeping with the tone of this book and the fact that my children will likely read it I'll let you fill in the blanks what the are you doing what the is wrong with you how in how in the is this happening what the is going on why the is this so hard after the first outburst I started thinking bigger why the can't you do this how the did you even get here how the are you going to figure this out what the Are you going to do now? In the moment, I felt as though my brain might be disintegrating, and I couldn't understand why.

By the time I hit the 10-minute mark of training, I'd essentially given up on the mission and started to rant. To that point, nothing I tried to do worked. And because I was inside a modern flight simulator, it was all on camera for my instructor, a relatively young Air Force captain to watch. Out of shock, morbid curiosity, or perhaps sheer entertainment, he let me go on until I'd gotten everything out of my system. Thank goodness, Instagram didn't exist yet.

Whatever it looked like from his point of view, the display couldn't have been flattering. There I was, in high definition, the first and only Marine ever to fly the world's deadliest fighter, completely losing it during a simulator training event. It was awful. So what's going on with that? Like, are the controls backwards? Are they... I can explain it. Yeah.

every, you know, this is the third chapter of this second half of the book. And it's just a reminder of like, these are the most unflattering stories. So if you, if you think you're going to get some hero story in this book, you can attest for me on behalf of having written this. Like, every one of these stories I look back on, it just cannot help it shake my head. Like, it's so embarrassing to picture me in that situation. And I explained it in great detail in the book, all the reasons why, like, what is going on with this dude? And the backdrop is you already got to it. It's like, what got me to the cockpit of the Raptor was, dude, top of my class in the basic school to get a flight training spot.

Top my class and flight school, get selected for Hornets. Combat deployments in the carrier, top gun, number one student, top gun, like, all this stuff. Senior Instructor Topgun, ground combat leader, been in Ramadi, flew the F-16. And I get handpicked for this job with maybe 150 other applicants. I'm the dude. and I get there and it's like on paper there is not a more qualified naval aviator to be doing this job and I get in the first part of rapture training is like how the systems work like how the engines work and how the hydraulics work and like navigating around very easy just there's nothing tactical about

it just this pipe and this lever and this this battery like you learn this stuff super easy so I got through the first phase of training very quickly in the rapture because it wasn't you just listen and take notes and study and it's fine This was the tactics phase. How do you employ this jet? And I can't go in like a ton of detail, but I'll just, I'll explain it this way is I had built in the F-18 and the F-16

a lot of habits. I had done things so many. I could basically fly those jets in my sleep. Like I just, I knew what to do. I had been an instructor at Top Gun. I knew everything there was tactically to do. I was so comfortable. It'd probably be like at the height of you're like,

hey, go take your seals and clear out this building. You'd be like, Roger, no factor. You just know what to do. It doesn't mean it's not hard, but you're not like, you're not insecure about understanding what you're supposed to do. Very, very simply put, the two things that makes the F-22 unique, unlike any other. Remember, this is the first and only fifth-generation airplane in the world at the time. The first one is something that's really hard to understand is this is a stealth airplane.

When you're in an F-18 or an F-16, you don't spend any time wondering if people can see you. You are visible from the second you take off. Everybody good, bad, radars, everybody sees you. In a Raptor, you are number one, the biggest benefit you have is that it can't see you. So all of your decisions, where you point, where you move, all the things that you do, the number one criteria that you're considering

for your movements is to stay invisible. You don't even, there's not a brain cell that you use in an F-18, to avoid detection. You just know that they see you. So every decision you make is different. And the problem is, is like once you start getting into the tactics,

what you rely on is tactics. It'd be like if I told you everything you knew about Jiu-Jitsu, like there's a new thing now and it doesn't work. You're like, and I go, hey, just forget all the stuff that you learn. You're like, so I actually have an exact comparison. Well, I know it'll be good and you can, you'll have to elaborate on that.

Picture me in the cockpit. He's like, okay, we're going to do an intercept, a very basic tactic against this other enemy aircraft. And like, everything I do on habit, he's like, that's wrong. Don't do that. Like, and I'm paraphrasing, it's a little more complex than that. But ultimately, every bias, every tendency, every inclination, every instinct I had was wrong.

And so not only is all my experience not a benefit, it actually, it's a liability. It's the opposite. It's worse. If I had shown up, had never been in an airplane, I would have learned quicker, if that makes sense.

So I'm in this thing, like, and I'm realizing, like, I don't know what to, I had not felt like that in an airplane in a decade. And I'm in an airplane, I'm like,

I don't know what to do. And intercept after intercept, and I get to a point, and I'm like, I kind of like in the cockpit, like, I don't, and I had like,

I kind of said something, like, the fuck is going on. Like, I said that out loud. And like, Then the next intercept and it's like, oh my, and that's it at some point. I'm just like, I kind of like drop the, you know, I'm just in a sim. I don't think it was like kind of just like, and I just just like lost it.

And thank God the instructor was as a really cool dude. And you, there's like there's like there's some comms in there. Like I get through this whole thing. And he's like, are you okay? And I'm like, I need a minute. You know, he's like, hey, dude, take all the time you need. Like he was super cool with that whole thing. But it was a realization of all the things I thought were the benefit.

The reason I was there was all these things that I had all these experiences all this knowledge all this capability all this skill and like I said it wasn't that it wasn't helpful It was actually the opposite it was it was a liability and it got into a place was like it was a it was a absolute low point and like Maybe I don't even belong like this is bad. It was it was an epic meltdown. It was rough My exact comparison to that so as you know I spent my my adult life in the SEAL teams. And when you're in the SEAL teams, you know, you're either, you know, obviously go on deployment, you're going against bad guys, humans, but also, you know, I spent 20 years training and approaching targets and setting up on targets and, you know, avoiding being

seen and, you know, operating, trying to kill other human beings. So I end up getting into hunting. and I'm elk hunting. And so I'm kind of like out in the woods for the first time with my buddy John Dudley. And this is the exact same thing. So my whole life I've been, you know, trying to hunt humans.

And now I'm trying to hunt elk. Well, there is the most significant difference. The number one priority when it comes to hunting humans is you don't want them to see you and you don't want them to hear you, right? So you're, you know, you learn how to use the terrain. You're watching where your feet go, like all that stuff.

You know what you have to watch out for with elk? Like far into way, the biggest thing that you have to be concerned with is smell. So like everything that I had learned and their vision isn't that good. Their hearing is good, but they don't, they don't really react to it as much as a human does. and so you have to you take all the tactics that you learn about terrain and movement and all this stuff and dead space all these things

that you look camouflage you throw all that out the window and it's all about hey you you have to be you know you have to have the wind in the right direction you have to be walking into the wind so the wind's blowing your scent away from them and so everything that you learned is just blown out the window so that's exactly the situation you're in everything that you would do to avoid you know

contact and all this stuff is just gone because they can't see you anymore and that's the same thing with an elk and elk literally can't see you They really can't see. I mean, you've got to be really obvious. You're going to be moving, like, actively, and they'll see you. But their eyesight sucks, but their sense of smell is incredible.

So there you go. That's my, uh, that's my deal. That being said, there are a bunch of similarities. Because once you figure that out, then you are playing a very similar game. Yeah. Which did that come into play eventually? Of course. I mean, clearly at some point, I cracked the code.

Right. And a lot of it was. all my instructors are like, hey, take all the time you need. We've all been there. They all gone through that same transition. And I think the coolest part about that was they also understood it was like twice as hard for me because I'm now a Marine. And you know this. If you take how like the Navy and the Marine Corps and the Air Force, just the language is like,

whatever we say that, we don't say that. We say this instead. So you have like this constant like this translation of like all the words that you use, they Oh, we have a different word for that. And so I'm in this really tough spot where I'm having to learn all these new things. And then this whole, like take everything I know and throw it out the window. They were very patient. And yeah, it took a little bit longer, you know, a couple of months than I would have liked.

But then like with everything like, oh, I got it. Once you get it like, oh, then you got it. And once you get it, you get it. And I did eventually get it. And my Raptor experience was nothing but positive. But this moment, I can't even remember his name. I wish I could. if this guy, who my instructor, reads this book,

he's gonna be like, that was me, I was there, I remember it. I wish I could remember his name. I hope he does. And as soon as he says his name, like, I'll remember it. He was a young captain. You know, he's probably out of the Air Force at this point. He's gonna, I guarantee you he went back as like, dudes. You should have seen what the Marine did.

Like, I'm sure it was a story that got out and well deserved. But to their credit, all those guys were like so cool to me and help me. And then the light comes on. And like, cool. And then I spent the rest of my career loving. This new like it was awesome. I loved it, but it was a painful humbling. I was just so So resistant to admit that everything I'd done to put me in the seat of that airplane no longer mattered and it was just I just I couldn't do it. I just had a hard time accepting what got me

there wasn't going to get me any farther and that's a it was a tough day man. Does this increase our respect level for Chuck Yeager and like the test pilot It'll be like, oh, what? You got a jet? Let me get in that thing. I'll fly it. I figured out, yeah. I have high regard for that mentality of like,

you don't know what you're doing. Be open-minded. Be willing to be flexible. Don't take your preconceived notions. And whatever you do, don't take the answer into the cockpit before the problem reveals itself. And that's what I like, I know,

this tactical problem, I know exactly what to do. I've seen this tactical problem 50 times. 500 times, no factor. And that didn't work. Okay, run it again. Hey, that didn't work. Okay, and by like run for him like I literally don't know what to do I keep dying. Why am I dying? This is ridiculous The mechanics of flying tactics

Out the window like tactics don't count mechanics of flying are like the same the same It takes you about 10 minutes ago. Okay, the stick the throw like the mechanics of getting good like being really good at takes a little bit of time But the mechanics of flying F18 16 20 like it's all the same and tactics are everything and then how long is it to switch from one aircraft to the other one like go so this is the story of going from the the f18 f-16 they're very similar kind of keeping them together to the f-22 was really hard when i went from 22 to 35 it was like no factor no factor super easy because the what makes them similar is 95 percent there's a there's a couple small difference you get used to those little things but those two airplanes are so much more alike than they are different and the flying part is just not that's not the hard part

knowing what to do. And it's like if it like is take 15 years and every instinct you have and it's now wrong. And that is just it's it's in a place where like you don't want to spend a lot of time like, you know, going to a thousand like thinking about what you're doing when you're going that fast. You don't want to have to be thinking too often. You want to be pretty quick on the decision making matrix. And I had gotten good at that like boom.

I can decide for something. You know me. I talk too fast. I think too fast. Like I'm comfortable. in those settings. And so the time to decide what to do, things were getting past me.

And I was like, bad situation, dying, failing before my brain could even, like, even though what's going on. And so it wasn't like, oh, I didn't know what to do. It was like, I don't know what's happening right now. And that led to like the most epic tantrum of a grown man, you know, in high deaf in front of this other dude who was like probably eight years junior to me. Just like, keep going, sir, just get out of your system. You're good.

Thanks, bro. He was awesome. He's a great dude. Thank God. Yeah. With my ego in check, you go on to say, I found myself listening and learning from people who are younger and younger and less experienced, less and less experience to my surprise and delight it helped. Embracing the change came quickly in part because the results presented themselves immediately.

My performance and tactical training improved dramatically as I demonstrated the ability to execute maneuvers that made the F-22 so lethal. I was eventually selected as, the commander of the F-22 division at Nellus. It's crazy. An unheard of opportunity for a Marine, but one which I took seriously and for which I will forever be thankful.

Things have come full circle. I was now leading a crop of newly transitioned Raptor pilots still struggling with change. So you ended up being the commander of the F-22 division and that's an Air Force division? Yes. Bro. I know, dude.

It's crazy. That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And how long did you have that billet for about a year? You took a Air Force officers. What level is that? A lieutenant colonel slot. Trigger vulgar.

If you're listening, thank you. That was all trigger. Dang, awesome. Freaking epic. Good deal, Dave. We are learning it all over again, bro. There's a reason. Here's the lesson.

We resist change, but we shouldn't. And I'll start this one off with a quote as well. Well, what happens to companies that don't innovate and adapt over time. What happens to people when they refuse change in almost every case, companies that don't change collapse, just as people who don't change are doomed to fail. Your real world application starts off with a quote. It really is how we've always done it.

God. People should choke themselves when they hear that, but they don't. They still say it. That time-worn phrase was quickly, followed by and I know how that sounds. He nearly went to his own comment. He knew. So there you go. Yeah.

What was his deal? Dude, this is a company man that had been like dominating their their space for like a long time. And like they kind of rolled up some other competitors. Like they were doing great. And like in the previous couple years like really in the last 18 months like their numbers started to drop.

They're kind of a tech based company and they they were marketing in like a pretty niche area. And they'd hired a bunch of new people. I'm like, oh, we had this awesome recruiting process from the best schools and some of the best minds in this, this kind of like tech marketing space to try to win in their feel that they had been the best company. But for the last 18 months, like, oh, our numbers are going down. And the craziest thing is they had this whole story about who they brought in, how smart these kids were, how much they, you know, they were going to contribute. And every time one of these new kids had an idea that, like, we're not doing that. And I'm paraphrasing.

There's obviously a win more depth. And when they would, when these young kids had the audacity to say, why not? Instead of just doing what they're told, the answer was essentially this, we know what we're doing. We've always done it this way and it's worked. And what they're dealing was like, they were dealing with the muny where these young kids were like, oh, I'm going to leave. I'm not going to work for you. This is stupid. You don't listen to anything I said.

And, you know, you're in this meeting and you're kind of talking through like, what's the problem? And the problem was like, oh, they don't. know what they're doing and then you you know you ask a couple earnest questions and then at some point they go oh my god and they kind of look around like oh my god we're not we're not letting we're not listening to what they're saying they're telling us we have to make these changes and we're not doing it so it's so obvious from the outside I know how and and the point is like I know how that's much easier said than done from the inside but dude resisting change is gonna kill you it you

resist change over time it's gonna kill you in your company yeah and there's even in a more extreme irony, besides like hiring freaking young people that have all these great ideas because they have great ideas and then not listening to them. It's crazy, right? It's crazy. Well, that's the stuff we see. And the fun part is taking like, oh, that reminds me of when I got on the F-22. I'm like, I don't need to listen to you.

How do you think I got here, dude? You know, I know what I'm doing. It's like, oh, actually, you don't. And it's not good. Check. Chapter 9, put the team first. Sea of Japan 23 miles behind the carrier

February 2000 and by the way the font that's used for those little date time settings is like a military top gun looking font which I appreciate I'm a font effectiando affectionato affectionato yeah

so I like that you get that vibe it's like the vibe from any military movie that's going to tell you where it's taken place 100% what is that courier new or something yeah that sounds about it I can picture like the little ditches. Yeah.

99 taxi lights on. My stomach immediately turned inside out. If another carrier pilot is reading this, they get it. Because 99 taxi lights on is possibly the most dreaded call of all of naval aviation. On the ship, radio calls are normally preceded by your aircraft number. And the information that is communicated after that number applies to only you. 203. you're cleared to climb to 4,000 feet.

107, descend and maintain 1,200 feet. Other pilots may hear the call directed at you, but if you don't hear your aircraft number, it's just background information for them and not paid much heed. When a radio call is preceded by 99, however, it means the information about to be transmitted applies to everyone. It's an efficient way to share critical information needed by all airborne jets to coordinate their recovery back to the ship.

99, the carrier is in a turn. 99, expected final bearing is 3.50 degrees. Everyone pays attention to typical 99 calls, but no one gets nauseated. 99 taxi lights on, however, has the same effect on the stomach as week old sushi. It's not a call that helps anyone do any coordinating or adjusting. It just tells everyone that weather the weather is bad End of days apocalyptic bad. Yeah, bro, you did a good job writing this book.

This is such a good chapter. So 99, what it means is everyone listen. And then turn your lights on means we can't see any of you guys at all. The weather freaking sucks. So dude, you go through this story. It's like, it's like edgy your seat reading because it just sucks. Get the book. Get the book.

I'm going to fast forward a little bit. So you basically, now you're coming in. You're on a, what is that? Okay, so you can't, you can't, let's set the stage a little bit. You can't see the ship. Can't see anything. You can't. There's no, where you're at the South China Sea.

Is that where you are? See Japan. See Japan. there's no other option. Nope, no divert. It's like when my first child was born, my wife was in labor. And my wife looks at my mother-in-law and says something along the lines of like,

I don't think I can do this. And my mother-in-law looked at her and like, this is what's happening, you know? And so this is the same thing. Like there's no like, hey, I don't think I can do this. Oh, and by the way, we have a podcast guest coming who didn't get a board. Nope, he didn't get a board.

And he caused a problem and he didn't get a board. And he got ejected from the pipeline after all the training. And he went to the, he was a Navy guy, academy guy, couldn't get a board, didn't get a board, went to the detailer, flew to the detailer and said, do not send me to a ship. He's like, well, I got something else for you. Yep. He said, send me to buds. And he goes, well, right now I got a ship for you in Hawaii.

It's not going to be that bad. He goes, I'm not going on a ship. I'll take buds. And he goes, well, when you wash out, when you wash out a bud since you just washed out of carrier training, when you wash out of buds, it ain't going to be pretty orders. Like you got right now to Hawaii. He said, send me to buds. So he ended up Vietnam seal, epic seal in Vietnam.

So I would kill to be. To listen to his story. Yeah. It's coming. It's coming. It'll be out on the next couple podcasts. But what a great guy. Great leader.

And, you know, he was like extremely humbling, you know. The ship is no joke, man. The ship is no joke. The ship is no joke. So you can't see the ship. So what do you just, it's pure instrument, pure instruments, 100%. And are you seeing, does it paint like a fake picture of where the ship is? No.

You're just looking at the horizon. What's that instrument called the HUD? The HUD. The heads up display. The heads up display is showing you what? It's a computer read out of the horizon, your angle of bank, your altitude. So that's my point is you see the horizon, but it's not the real horizon. It's a fake horizon.

So you see a fake horizon. Yep. You see kind of where you are. And does it give you any indication of where the ship is? Yes. You have a little computer generated thing. It tells you like end distance. It's called DME.

Yes. So you have all the information you need. And we get good at this. So that's like that by itself is not disorienting. It's just a skill you learn like, okay, this arrow means this, this number means that. And like, it's fine. And by the way, even on a clear night, quote unquote, night, you can't see the ship until maybe the last, you know, a really nice night. You know, on a really nice night, you could see the ship six, seven miles away, which is cool.

Which is how many minutes? Four or five. Okay. Like, you know, I see it out on the horizon and it's certain the last two minutes, you have a really nice clear picture. And ironically, like, the darker it is, the more clear the ship is. the ship is because the contrast of the lights. But up until like the last, literally the last 20 seconds for the most part, even when you do see the ship, you're still flying those instruments.

So flying the instruments is fine. It's just you get used to it. Bro, is some of this aircraft carrier landing? I just realized some of this is faith-based. You know what I'm saying? Like if you're not seeing something until 20 seconds, that is a faith-based evolution. Yes. There's a lot of faith being put in.

all sorts of things, your technology, your procedures. But other than, I think I had one, and I had one other landing like this in right off the, right off San Diego, every other landing at some point, you see it with your eyes. And you're like, okay, it's no more, it's, it's, you see it, which is, I don't care who, like, that's human instinct.

Once you see something for better for worse, like, that's what you want, I just want to see this thing. I can see the boat, I can see the ball, I can see the lineup, I can, I can land. So normally you get, At best case scenario, you get five minutes of seeing the ship. Sometimes it gets down to two bad scenarios. It's going to be like 20 seconds.

Right there. There is cool. Yep, that's right. So all you can see is black. It's kind of an interesting thing. I talk about it. The first thing I see is like green streaks. Remember I was talking about that?

Like there's these, I'm in the clouds, but everything is off. Like it's dark. So it's just pitch black. But I see these green. streaks going up over the cockpit can't the glass and I can't figure out what those are they almost look like electrical like staticy things and what it was was a snow snow would build up and fly off in chunks and little white streaks were flying up over the can and because your lights are on it's hitting the snow or is it just the lights from inside the the cockpit yeah it just it's just

the way it was reflecting off the like the little din the little glow of that so I'm like oh we're like I understood before the landing that we were in a snowstorm I understood that Can't see anything, but you can see the snow pile up and just these little it's hard to describe I could just call them white streaks So you're in you're seeing little white streaks your visibility is zero zero zero visibility literally zero Zero, correct you're from California But you but you did live in in Nevada so you drove in the snow before I Virginia I'd yes I it's weird echo Charles never driven in the snow before in a snowstorm? In a yeah, yeah, I have actually at night

No, no it was not at night So if it's at night, it's a bad snowstorm, you turn on your lights and you can see less. Because it just makes bright white, like bright white things in front of your face, basically. Yeah, like super, super thick fog. Same thing. Yeah, probably similar.

And it's like brighter. Probably something similar to that. So you can see nothing. They're talking you on. I'm trying to figure out where to pick this up. The three mile mark. I began my final disson. sent toward the ship.

Normally by this point, I would have seen the visual cues on the carrier to validate my alignment and confirm I was set up for a good final approach. Not tonight. There's nothing to see but flashes of snow, my HUD, and the glow of my taxi light shining up from the nose of my jet reminding me of how deep in the weeds we all were. My eyes never left my instrument readouts. Again, this is a faith-based operation. I was so paranoid I would get off course or altitude and make a fatal mistake

While I dropped through 450 feet a shrieking whoop-whoop blared in my headset as my jet notified me of my descent through my final altitude check So that's a normal warning correct like you get to 450 feet and it goes peep be you set the route out on purpose you set it to 450 as like that is your final alert like hey you're you're you're getting really close to the ground to the water yep it's by you do it by design as part of the SOP, you know it's there. Normally, I would have anticipated the startling alert, a sign I was mentally focused and toggled it off right as it sounded, but I was so overwhelmed, it completely caught me off guard. Next was the call from air traffic control. 203 on course, on glide scope, three quarters of a mile, call the ball.

So he's saying to you, okay, dude, we got you, and he's just watching you on radar because they can't see anything at all. They're in the bottom of the ship on radar. 203. What's Clara mean? Clara means I do not see the ball. 203, Clara, I replied, trying to hide it. Hey, do us all a favor right now.

Just make that call right now. What did you say it like? 203, Clara. And Claire is the term used to inform the LSO. I didn't see the ball or the ship or on this night, anything. 203, keep it coming. And that's how they're talking, right? Yeah.

shit they didn't see me either because otherwise what would they have said to you they'd say paddles contact you're high you're low you're on they'd say i see you you're on glide slope and they're like their way of saying i don't see you is keep it coming like we're looking eventually we'll see you so you're about this is about the 18 seconds from landing your three quarters of mile behind the ship i tell them i don't see them and they say in navy speak and i they say we don't see you either roger that coming shit They didn't see me either. I continued to fly the instruments,

having never been this close to a ship without seeing it. 203 paddles contact, they finally saw me. So what does paddles mean? The LSOs, the landing signals officer, they have a radio and they're talking to you. Back in the day World War II, see those old videos, a guy stand out, and they're holding on their hands, these paddles,

and they'd hold them up and down and flip them around, and those visual cues from the paddles would tell the pilots is before the day, There's radios, it was a visual, they were holding these paddles, red, white, and they flip them around. So the nickname of an LSO is, they called them, hey, you're a paddles. So I was an LSO. And part of my job on the ship was I was a lead, I trained and led an LSO team.

Your nickname is paddles. So that's his call sign, his paddles. So two or three paddles contact. So that means I see you. LSO is the, is paddle saying, we see you. Yeah. They finally saw me. Right for lineup.

Power. Is that you? That's that. No, you're just listening. Yeah. And you say P-O-W-E-E-R. Yeah. Like power.

That's exactly. Is there a little, you'd be a great L-S-O. That was exactly right. And are they, is there like even a smidgen of like a little bit like power? Like you are taught. And we learn this as L-S-O's. If I say, little power. Power.

Power. You can tell. Same word. And you, the inflection is built into what I want you to hear. Because if I say power, you're like, okay, cool. Like that's a small shot of power. If I say power, that's a long blast on power. So that extended E, E, E, E, E, there's an inflection with that with him, which is saying, like,

you have to do this immediately and a lot. And way more than a little power would be like almost an indiscernible little shot of power. He's seeing something you don't see and he's just keeping you from settling. That call was like, holy shit, dude. You need this like I just Instinctively just like through the left hand and why is he telling you to do that? Because by the time he sees me and recognizes where I am I'm I'm Dangerously low and power is going to

Climb me back up lift you up a little bit. That's right and that's just because you're going slow Err and so when you add power or is the angle of your aircraft pointed slightly up at this point? So when you add power just immediately heads up a little bit Yeah, so you set in carrier aviation, different than Air Force and commercial and civilian flying is, when you land in the carrier, you set the angle. We call it angle of attack. The whole point of setting the angle is, and, you know, on the screen you'll see it, but like, when the tail hook comes down, the hook has to be in a certain place to grab the wire.

And so if your jet is flat, the nose is down, the hook is up, the hook will go over the wires. If you're too cocked up, if your nose is really high and the hook is really low, you'll hit the ship. So you set this angle. What is it like 10 degrees? You're on a three degrees glide slope and an 8.1 degree. Why I know that. It's 8.1 degrees. Sounds like a good thing to know.

Yeah, yeah, we know all this. Yeah, totally. We taught train all it. So that 8.1 degrees sets the perfect angle of the hook. And so your entire descent, you maintain that. And all power does is if you add power, the jet rises. If you take power down, the jet lowers. But you never change the angle.

The instinct is if you're low, as you can imagine, is you want to pull back. back in the stick to bring the nose up. That's the worst thing you can do because it gets you slower, you'll fall more. And the hook goes even farther down. You increase your chances of hitting the ship. So you do not mess with the nose.

You gotta keep the nose exactly perfectly trimmed. So if you get low, the only solution then is adding power will bring you up on the glide slope. That call is his way of saying like, dude, you need to add a lot of power right now. And I was a little bit off, I was a little bit lined up in the wrong. So right for a lineup. If you can picture as you roll the jet, when you roll the

jet, you lose a little bit of lift because your wings aren't flat anymore. So you're going to fall even more. So he's saying right for lineup, you're going to get even lower. So you really need to add power. Dude, what is the qualification course to become an LSO? Just like everything else in the Navy, man. You go out, you take a bunch of classes. You get some academics and some sims and then you go shadow an experience LSO. How long do you shadow an experience LSO for? So my, I got selected to be an LSO before my first cruise. I did a bunch of field, a bunch of field training with qualified LSOs.

And then eventually, you know, they make you watch. Then they, like, you sit next to them. Then you talk and they're next to you. And then at some point,

you've proven that you can do it. By my second deployment, I was a team lead. Like, I ran my own team. So took a full deployment. But by my second deployment, I was in charge of a team.

Does everyone become an LSO? Negative, dude. LSO, especially for the Navy, like, they'll pick like two or three guys. It's it's it's it's their best guys are LSOs. It's a it's a very coveted call in the Navy The Marine Corps doesn't you know the Marine Corps's always kind of like whatever but it is if you're an LSO at the ship that is a coveted qual that people really want and they they give it to the guys

They put a lot of faith in it's a call that I am really look back on with very fondly that was a win called and a team lead LSO It was awesome you're the guy bringing home all the Jets and you know what yeah 99 times out of you don't need to do anything no factor every now and then you are the difference between Dave Burke crashing in the back of ship and Dave Burke landing that guy that's what it sounds like here that's that's what he did right for lineup power my response was pure reflex as I shoved the the throttles forward not all the way but just enough for a good shot of thrust trying to give the LSO what he wanted bam tug wait what holy crap I was aboard and I never saw a thing. Faith-based landing, instrument-based landing, team trust landing. That's nuts.

And you only had one other complete, complete, no visual landing. I had another zero-zero landing. It was day San Diego, just one of those days where the, you know, the, the marine layer rolled in, caught us off guard, and like the ship, I got aboard in zero-zero. And that was, was kind of crazy because it was in training. Training is a wrong work. Workups, not training. Work as a Hornet Squadron. And it just, when I launched, it was like, man, it's totally good day.

This one we kind of took off like, it's kind of a sketchy day. Or at night, you know, it's two in the morning kind of thing. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this. The other one was like middle of the day, work up and totally caught the whole ship off guard. Does it on that, like on that day? Anyone to go, hey, dude, go ahead and land at North Island. How do I say this? That sounded like a total tool.

I was the only guy to get aboard every other jet diverted to North Island. Maybe you earn in some of those good deals. And for any of the like the coolest part about that story I just told you, Ron Rostick, if you're listening, he just like hit me up on like LinkedIn. He was on the flight deck when I had that zero zero landing on the ship. And he's like, sir, totally remember that other landing like your eyes were as big as saucers, but you're the only guy that like he just messaged. me I have that I should probably show it to you but like as you can imagine like I'm I'm

kind of shaking right now we recalling that stuff those are like some of the most memorable experiences of my entire lifetime this is zero zero landing that is a absolute like you I didn't use the words before that the concept of being faith based like you kind of like what just happened the margin for error is so small and the and the if you get outside the margin for error it is I mean we're talking jets exploding like it's just death it's death it's it is so the fact that when I'm like what just happened that is I'm like I was like what just happened like if I was somebody next to me I would have looked at him like what just happened it was it's so hard to describe like you were just like

I cannot believe that just happened how did I land and that's how I felt I talked about Like crazy. And if people couldn't get aboard, is there, like a sea of Japan, do they just, I mean, have there been situations like that have occurred in a world where it's like we had to send tankers down there and get people like transition to another area or whatever? It's very uncommon. We also, there are what we call blue water ops. Like the ship has to be certified, the pilots have to be certified for no divert operations.

No divert meaning you can't divert anywhere else. There's sometimes the nearest land is... Can't freaking bring it over to North Island, bro. That other one was like... Rickett Dave Birx out there and just feed up on the desk. Yo. The craziest thing about that one is like, they all went to the beach and like went home. And I'm like, I'm like stuck in the ship.

You know, it was like ridiculous. But it's very uncommon. The ship is well equipped to handle that stuff. So like they're the tanker like... But dude, every now and then it's a thing it's every now and then it's a problem it's it's just goes with the territory zero zero daytime san diego and when did the aircraft pick you up did when did paddles same thing whereas like moments very moments before very similar i think that the the the difference

in the daytime and the night time and that's and the um the north island or the san diego one and the sea of japan one when we started coming back on that daytime one here in San Diego two things one it's daytime so it just feels different it just it just feels different I don't care who you are it's easier during the day this okay I was gonna say and so that one is an interesting landing you know this like the marine layer

typically around here the marine layer is like starts around 800 and stops around 1,500 so it's crystal clear above and crystal clear below and so we spent the whole flight like above it like it's a clear blue sky day we're training we're fighting hard and when you're coming back to land you're like okay, I'm going to go in at 1500. I'll break through it. And I'm going to break out it. You know, I'll break out with like a half a mile, no factor.

Or maybe the full thing. And it's one of those you're like, Clara. And like, paddles is like, makes a quick call. I get a board. Kind of a similar situation. The difference between those two is on that one, I'm just a young guy listening, just doing what I'm told. On the same time.

On the same day. On the same day going to. You also, I had no sense that this was going to happen. There's no like fear. There's no anxiety. You're like, whatever. Marine layer is just a thing. thing around here. You just go in at some altitude and come on another. So when that happened,

I landed. It was like, holy crap. And like the next jet behind me didn't get a board. You hear the jet flying away and you look up, you don't see anything. And on the radio, they're like, 99, your signal is divert. Everybody go to North Island, which is like, or maybe they even went to Miramar. Like the Marines probably went to Miramar and the Navy guys went to North Island. It's beautiful. Like, it wasn't some big thing. This one was like, everybody has to get a border. They're going to, they're gonna crash or run out of gas or it's gonna be a major thing. I knew that for like 45 minutes.

And so like that 99 tax light on call probably came 30 minutes before my landing. So you're just sitting up there in the cockpit. Heart rate's like at 150. You're just like nauseous. Like how am I going to do this? I will, this is the only way for me to like say I know what your wife was talking about.

Having not done it. That's exactly how I felt. It was like, I don't think I can do this. And I think even mentioned there, I'm like, I don't think, I don't think I can do this. That's, that was the feeling ahead. The other one's like, it just happened. Like, I don't know what happened. Just kind of came and went and like, it was crazy.

My buddy Ron was on the flight. He's like, oh my God, dude, that was crazy. Your eyes were like saucers. I'm like, I know, right? This was totally different. Totally totally. We're deployed. We're underway.

We're, it's on my friend. We're taking the, you know, our sweet time to get there. But we're going to go to Iraq. Like, it's a totally different scenario. This was like way worse. Anyway. Fucking chaos. Naval aviation, man.

Did you, so, you might have heard me talk about this a couple times, what I've been talking about how like mindset wise, like humble, humble, humble, when it's time to execute, put my night vision goggles on, like, dude, I'm, I'm getting it done. I'm going to make the shot. I'm going to do the thing. We're going to make it happen. But you didn't have that feeling. You were like, dude, I'm scared shitless the entire time.

This is my first deployment. It's the first month of deployment. We had left San Diego. The first stop is Japan. This is like one of maybe like I wouldn't be surprised if I look back in my logbook. This is like the fifth or sixth night landing of my entire operational career. And I'm just and also like I won't lie. Like the night carrier like I'm so at some point you get you you learn to manage it.

I am at the basically the absolute very beginning of my night carrier landing career. So on a perfect night, I'm scared. On a perfect night, I'm scared. So this is just like, this is insane for me. Young Chip, like, there is definitely a time. I'm in that cockpit. I can feel it. I can feel myself right now feeling this like,

I don't know if I can do this. And you want to talk about the worst possible mindset to have in the cockpit of a single seat fighter. Like, I don't know if I can do this. And I carry that with me all the way to landing. Like, it's a very,

that's why this chapter's in the, Look, that's why I wrote this story is this was a, that was a major hurdle for me. Yeah. Big, big thing. It's weird. I'm kind of surprised. Like, you know, I would expect you to be like, look, I was all nervous. And then, you know, a certain point, I turned my downwind turn, took that final, you know, left turn, Starbara or whatever, port side turn.

And I was like, I'm going to make this happen. But you were just like horrified. Horrified. And I, as you know, like, I expand in great detail. and what I'm thinking during this whole thing. Like this is not a, this is another like this dude is kind of barely hanging on,

like barely hanging on. Good times. And here's the whole point of this chapter. You say literally nothing happened to my jet on that ship without that entire team. And you talk about it, everyone did. I couldn't start an engine,

taxi one inch of the flight deck, take off land, or launch a weapon in combat without the support of countless people. And while it was me and my F-18 dropping bombs who got the recognition in the newspapers and on TV I was only one cog

in a machine of 5,500 men and women doing the miraculous. It was the epitome of team effort. Is this the, this is 2000? 2000. And this is where you dropped guided munitions for the first time? Later in this deployment,

I dropped the first J-DAM in Iraq, big time. And there's a little piece in there. I think it's one. Yeah, good deal there. one man there's a little thing I think is worth mentioning is because so I land and I eventually make my way down to the ready room and dudes are like high five and like bro good job like I'm getting all this congratulations and there's a little part of that I write in there and I'm like

I was so stoked I was so freaking stoke so I'm like hell yeah dude I am I am now etched in the in the annals of naval aviation I did the impossible and then like a couple hours later I'm in my room and I'm like, when I'm alone, I'm like, I felt like a fraud because I'm like, I didn't, that was like, I literally like, I don't know what happened. And what happened was I just, I flew my instruments and the guy's like, power rifle line up. Roger, click, I'm in. But to say like, oh, I did that, I really, I had a hard time. I struggle with that. And what I came to realize, like, dude, first of all, obviously the LSO, clearly. But 20 other things happened that made I was I certainly played a role in it no doubt But like to say that like I did that I really had a hard time with that I could not get that out of my head like

Dude and there was a very humbling moment because up until that point you're like I'm the man you know how I know I'm the man look everybody look around what he's Dave Burke in that cockpit He's the man and that one like I just couldn't get past like damn dude I just kind of felt like a lot I felt and I wrote it in there I felt like a passenger I was a weird feeling. And that was like, dude, you gotta get out and see what's going on. That's when I started to learn about the ship and the jobs and the people and what they're doing.

I'm like, oh man, this thing is so much bigger than me. Hard a lesson to learn to teach you a brand new young fighter pilot. Hey, this is not about you. What do you mean? It's not about me. That movie, that's me. And so it was a very humbling thing to realize all these other things are going on

and that landing is what got me to think about that. Like, damn dude. You know what? Again, going back to this idea of dealing with like a high stress And like humble, humble, humble and then kind of, you know, execute as I thought about how I figured that out part of it was like, oh, and then when you join the military like, okay, you're going to climb over the top of the cargo net at buds. That's, I don't know, 50 feet up in the air. Like it's not comfortable if you're, you know, even if you are comfortable with heights,

you're, you're basically flipping over the top of this thing and like you can fall and die. Okay, cool. If you fall, you die. Let me just put it to you that way. then the slide for life is the same thing like you're you know you're going to get badly injured if you fall but you you know you do it and it's actually before that you're going over like the low wall and then the high wall and then you go over the cargo net and then you do the slide for life and then you're going to repel off the tower and then you're going to repel then you're going to fast rope off the tower and then you're going to repel out of a helicopter and then you're going to fast rope out of a helicopter and then you're going to jump out of an aircraft

static line then you're going to jump out free fall so you're doing like all these things and Each time, you know, let's say you're a little bit scared when you're going over the high wall. A little bit, but you learn how to suppress it. And then you go over the cargo net. You're a little scared going on it, but you learn how to suppress it. You go off the side for life, learn how to suppress it. And I don't know what you're doing with those feelings, but, you know, how Echo Charles deals with it, how Dave Burke deals with it and how I deal with it. We might, I don't know what we all do individually, but we all figure out that there's this thing that's going to come over us and we're going to make, we're not going to pay attention to it or we're going to deal with this way.

We're going to breathe. We're going to look. We're going to tell ourselves we're badass Or say I'm going to follow the protocols Whatever you're going to do you're going to do But at some point And I'm thinking about all the wickets That you have to go through

To be in that position They knew I mean because you think about I mean how many aircraft were in the air Yeah 12 So all 12 people got aboard 12 out of 12 Yep

Like that's pretty freaking awesome To do something that is So difficult and so horrifying And yet 12 out of 12 guys got aboard Yeah. And got it done. And who knows? You know, I bet if we interviewed all 12 of them,

some got to be like, oh, yeah, whenever I got in those pressure situations, I would tell myself, look at the instruments, pay attention to this. You know, they all have these little protocols. Yeah. Of what they're going to do, how they're going to get through it.

I'm the baddest guy on the planet. You know, I'm ready for this. I've trained for this. Whatever those things are. And some of it might also be like, dude, I'm following. Like, I have one cutaway from parachuting, like where I got rid of my main parachute

because it was not functioning. and like if you asked me what I didn't like what was what was I thinking I was just like literally just doing what the things you know like oh yep look at my ultimatur look up again check it shake it out nope nothing look at the altimeter okay this is this is decision time yep 2,000 feet cool arch arch look grab look grab pull pull check check okay we're good like it was that there was absolutely no uh uh fear yeah now I was that same jump trip I was watching one of my friends and his parachute wasn't opening.

And I'm yelling at him. I'm under canopy. And I'm, he can't hear me. And I'm like, Paul, I'm like, caught away.

I caught away. And like, I'm scared for him. Yeah. But two hours earlier, I'd cut away with no emotions. And I'm watching my friends go low. And he just got lucky because he didn't cut away.

He should have. But his parachute eventually like opened kind of. And he landed. But my reaction to that, watching him was like, dude, Paul. Paul, you're caught away.

And I was scared for him, but when I was in the situation, I wasn't scared. I was just following the protocol. So you have that little procedure. And I did also break that down is like, what do I do in those situations? I'm not gonna go. Like, oh, I'm looking at something and it's,

I'm hesitant of like, oh, wait a second, I feel that that fear in doing something. I'm like, I'm going. I was skiing at Mammoth. And I was up on like, Like for me a very sketchy situation and I was skiing with another dude and We get out like we walk out to this end and do a little hike up and now we're sitting over standing over this thing and there's rocks and snow and ice And I can this does not feel safe a this does not feel like a good decision B

and I can I can kind of tell by what the other individual is saying that he might not do in fact likely is not going to do this drop in and like in those 1.5 seconds I freaking launched and did it and pulled it but I got back to thinking about I was like oh yeah that was me executing that thing I did even in the moment I wasn't like hey when you're a situation like this you go no no I was just like oh fear rocks ice snow drop boom boom go like that's what we're doing and I honestly when I looked back on I was like I don't think I was in a in a mode of thought yeah it was just like I know what to do when this feeling comes you go yeah and that's what I did so it'd be interesting as you think

about this like think about what was what like was actually going through your mind and it might be like me cutting away a free fall just like nope power up Good, cool, toggle up, watch the horizon. It's in the right spot. And you've been taught those things. You're going to follow the protocol, and that's what you're going to do. Yeah. The worst part about definitely was when you're in holding and you're just doing laps for probably 25 minutes.

It's like, oh, my God, oh, my God. And then, you know, then you start the process. Like you said, like you're, it's all, I talked about the, you know, the rat out went off. I'm like, oh, crap. I should have not, like, that's a bad sign. I should have not have been caught off guard by that. So there's all the indicators, but definitely just sitting up there, like, waiting for your turn.

It's the worst because she's up there. It's like, I talked to a young kid that was, uh, he just got his, you know, like free fall and, you know, he was all fired up. Like, oh, yeah, I got, you know, four jumps today. My first day, free fall, freaking awesome being up there, blah, blah, blah. And I go, oh, that's cool. Yeah. Do you like it?

And he goes, oh, yeah, it's freaking awesome. I go, oh, I go, were you scared? He goes, I was scared. Shitless. So, you know, it's like one of those things. Tell you, man. Scared shit. Let's go.

Go. All right, lesson for this chapter again, we kind of mentioned it, but it's the most important thing is it's not about you. It's about the team. A leader owns the responsibility for everything the team does and fails to do. You talk about cover and move here. Team work together, no silos. If the team wins, everybody wins, talk about relationships.

And I'm sure you must have an incredible like, like when you're working with the people. What do they call a plane captain? Is that right? Yeah. That's the individual that's in charge of your aircraft. Is he in charge of just one aircraft? No, he's got multiple. That must be your bro.

He's your boy. The Powerline guys, those are your boys. Those are your boys. You buy McCase of Beer on Fridays and take care of them. I was the Powerline. Oh, I see. It was my first like real job with Marines was I was in the officer in charge of the Powerline team. Those dudes, you, you take care of those guys.

Those are the guys. They're awesome. Chuck. Real world application. Once again, starting with a quote. Last year was the best we've ever had. and I'm facing what feels like a mutiny, the chief people officer was beside herself

as she walked me through the recent personnel changes her company was facing. And you go into a story about a pharmaceutical company. And this is a good one. They have like a conference and you're like talking about the conference who was there. All 12 sales leads for regional managers and the entire executive team.

Teresa explains, you know, you're talking about the conference, what was the focus? We went through all the growth numbers, clients, production, revenue, profit. It was a bit of a celebration for all the successes. Heck yeah.

And fast forward a little bit. Did you keep the rest of the team aware of everything that happened at the conference? Or let them in on the great results? We didn't really do that. But they're paid well and that paycheck is an acknowledgement of those results. And you say, let me ask you this. What message do you think it sends when you bring a few people in a supervisory roles to the offsite in Las Vegas and leave the rest at home?

There you go. A little earnest question activity. Final chapter. Chapter 10. Prepare for your departure. Niceville, Florida. VMFAT. What do you say?

VMFAT? No, you had a right. VAT. 501 commander's office, November 26th, 2012. FMFAT 501 warlords. At the time, we were the first and only operational F-35B squadron in the world. And you give us.

some details on this, $130 million aircraft. Bro. Bro, $130 million aircraft. I was outside the other night, and I was sitting there with my family and we had just eaten dinner. And I see like something on the horizon and I'm like, that's weird.

And it's like going fast and it's like bright. And it realized pretty quickly once it got a little higher up that it was one of Elon's rockets going up in space. And I was like, damn. Like the entire coast of California just watched this dude's plane or aircraft just blast off. What does one of those things cost? Echo Charles, rocket?

I don't know. Apparently, quite a bit. This may not be quite a rocket into space, but $130 million aircraft. How many of them you got in your squadron? I signed for the first 14 ever made. 14 jets. It's a lot of money. That was crazy.

In 2012, no other lieutenant colonel in the world was responsible for more assets than I was. I personally signed custody forms for the first 14 F-35s ever delivered. Three of them purchased by the United Kingdom. It tallied nearly $2 billion an unheard of amount for a commander in my role. Just a little FYI.

The USS Michael Monsore was $2.8 billion just for procurement and $7.5 billion. when they add in the R&D. But I guess in the Marine Corps, they're not going to have anything that big. Not as an 05. Yeah, not as an 10th,

yeah, it's crazy. A typical squadron, you know, an F-18 squadron's 12 jets, you know, I don't know, 50 million or something like that. It was just a different calculus at the time. Well, luckily, there was no pressure. The commandant of the Marine Corps paid me a personal visit to wish me luck. He wanted to emphasize how important it was to fly our new jets as much as they could tolerate to prove their capability.

He also reminded me of how tenuous things were, as if I needed the additional pressure. Chip, I know this isn't fair to say, but if you crash a jet, we will lose the F-35 program. Why would you guys lose the program if you crashed a jet? That jet at the time,

I have a photo of it, of me and him having that conversation in the ready room of my squadron, that my sergeant majors snagged a picture of it, so I've got that for posterity. the program was so far behind and so over budget and so underperforming at that time and it was really the B was the biggest problem of the three variants that in the Marine Corps you know the the Stoble version that we had gotten to is is the Marine Corps version the only one

that does take off vertical takeoff yes it's a major verification of the A variant which is the Air Force horn just a conventional jet the Air Force just can't even do a vertical takeoff at all no it's just a regular airplane they have no need for that So the merrick was like, we'll have the same jet, but put an engine in it where you can land straight up and down. So the marine variant was causing a lot of problems. And I say that comfortably. Like this is known. This is known.

We were on probation and the Department of Defense had gotten to a point. Does it have an extra engine? It has a major extra component called a lift fan and also has the thing that pops up behind the canopy. Yeah, exactly. And also the engine has this thing called the three bearing swivel. so you take an engine and you can like rotate it till it points down. This is major change. I was going to say this.

I didn't know the Air Force couldn't even do this. Neither can the A and the C can't do that. They're just very conventional airplanes. Bro, this is like totally different. Totally different. I mean, what's the price tag increase on the A versus the B? It's probably $30 million different. Okay.

It's changed a lot now. Things are much better now. This is at the time that to your question, like, we were, a point where we were kind of losing the battle to justify this all these changes and we were years behind because couldn't you just put a tail hook on it and just use it for aircraft carrier only well you could have just bought the C the conveyorer version or just gotten rid of the B altogether and the Marine Corps have just relied on the other services there's all sorts of potential risks inside there because what do you need what do you need vertical takeoff for smaller deck carriers

and austere airfields. There's a totally justifiable reason for it. We need it, but we had not proven the worth and the value of that jet at a time where there was a lot of scrutiny, appropriate scrutiny to the point. And also, the other thing, the Marine Corps was all in on one airplane.

We had the Hornet and the Harrier, which were going away. We had no plan B. The Air Force had five other jets. The Navy had super hornet. Like the Marine Corps was in a very tenuous, precarious spot. There was no alternative to have the, you know, the, the inherent flexibility of a Stoval platform, the maritime, all the things that make the Marine Corps unique. This was it. There was no alternative. And so he came down as like, hey, man, I know how this sounds. And I appreciate it.

He was, he was, actually, it was awesome. But he was telling me the truth, the unvarned truth. And he was also telling me, like, it's like, you know, it's like, you can't crash your car. You're like, okay, I want you to know that even without you telling me that, I'm going to do everything in my power to not crash this car. I didn't need that guidance, but it was his way of saying, like, you need to know the magnitude of what's going on. And at the exact same time, you have to fly this way more than people think can it be, you have to prove. And his number two, the deputy comment for aviation was like, you fly the wings off those planes as best you can. So I'm getting like, fly, fly, fly. do not lose an airplane.

How many F-35s have been lost? I can't tell you exactly the number. It's a relatively small number. I can say at least statistically, it is a very safe airplane. Like the mishap rate of that jet is very low, especially for the first 10 years of a jet.

It's probably the safest jet. Statistically speaking, for the first 10 years, probably has one of the lowest mishap rates ever. And the, like, mechanical contribution mishaps is very, very low. But this is 2012.

Totally like, unknown. Dude, under the microscope, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fly the first, like,

okay, by yourself, good luck. Like, we were just, we were uncharted territory, man. It was a crazy time.

And you had trained up the squadron at this point. Yep. And you spend some time in simulators. All of it. Yep. And, but at some point,

like, you put a guy by himself, because there's, is there any two cedars? Nope. And that's another thing in the Marine Corps never done. that's another thing the Raptor did.

The first flight in the Raptor, there's no two seat of 22. So I had gone through that whole experience of like, what does it mean to, it's one thing to like, okay, Jock, we're going to go on your first flight. I'll be in the backseat. Yeah, yeah, of course. Of a jet I've been flying for 30 years.

Like the difference between that and you're just by yourself is insane. It's insane. And nobody else other than me had ever done that. So every other guy's first flight in the F-35 was the first flight in a new jet by themselves. I had done that in the Raptor. So I understood the slightly different approach you take to make someone safe.

Usually, like, it's one thing to get to a criteria where you could follow the instructor. Then you'd get to what we call the safer solo criteria. Like your fourth or fifth flight, like, okay, you can now do this by yourself. First flight, day one, first time you ever get in that jet, you're taking off by yourself. It's just a, it was a point in time in Marine Corps aviation history that I just happened to be where I was at that time. Just a unique circumstance. And the common not wanted me to know the gravity of the situation. He was awesome, man.

It was good to go, but it was tenuous. Jack. And meanwhile, of course, into all this, your daughter gets sick. And it's like kind of one of those worst case scenarios where things are not good and you don't know why. You know, it's like, it's real easy when you go and your doctor says, oh, this is the problem, and now we have something to address. It's not like that. It's unknown.

And I'll fast forward a little bit. Of course, the timing of it all could not have been worse when it came to the $2 billion project I was supposed to be managing pilots needed to be trained. New best practices need to be put in place. The entire new F-35 protocol needed to be developed and learned all while the dogs barked at the gate. And now I was gone because you left. I left. And you didn't even like.

You just left. You left. What was the situation she had to go to a different hospital or something like that? Yeah. There's a bunch of detail. Yeah. But I'm like literally sitting in my desk, Whitney calls me. And she's like something to the effect of like, I'm worried.

And I'm like, me too. This had been gone on over the weekend. We were kind of like, we knew something was up, didn't know what. The other part of the problems, my daughter at the time was 18 months old. So she couldn't talk to us. She couldn't say, I feel this way. She was just acting a way that just. was wrong.

Whatever it was, Whitney had reached her threshold. Like, hey, I'm, her calling me on, I imagine you, and it's like, my wife never called me at work ever.

Like, like, I don't, she just didn't call me at work. It just wasn't a thing. Not because I had like, oh, you don't call. It just,

I just, so if she calls me at like one in the afternoon or something, like, okay. And she's like, hey, it's basically like, I can't do this anymore. I'm like, Roger.

So I went straight home. As soon as I got home, we put her in the car, and went right back to the base because it was it's egglin is a small base um and it has like a little like a little clinic you know and you go there for your little checkups and stuff and you know the pediatrician and we get there i'll make a very long story short the doctor who's this unbelievable guy he's like this doesn't look right he kind of saw he looked at her face looked at her eyes did a quick lab you know took a blood draw did the labs and he's like hey you got to get to a real hospital like immediately i'm like

in my flight suit like i just ran home came back or something you know whatever the logistics were. It's all very blurry, but like that night we're at the Pensacola Hospital, which is about an hour and a half away is the nearest big hospital. And by the next day's morning, the doctor's like,

we can't help you here and put her on a life flight with Whitney at a Pensacola to a hospital up in Atlanta called Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, the Eggleston Hospital. So if you hear this shout out to them, they're freaking awesome. And I'm like watching them fly away on a life flight.

And I'm like, what, you know, like, I actually can't really recall much of what happened in those 36, 48 hours other than I went home and I drove up to Atlanta. It's like a six hour drive. All that's a blur to me from like she calls and then my memory like I certainly remember getting to the hospital having the doctor be like this is bad, getting the other hospital and like this is bad and we can't help you. And then the other hospital of like we show up and and and I now spend like three weeks

sleeping on the floor of that hospital. I have no recollection. I do not have a recollection of even talking to my ex-o or sergeant. major. I know I did. I'm sure I'm like, hey, whatever, but it was so like blurry. I'm like something like probably like, I'm going to the hospital. I'll call you later type thing. I don't even, I have no recollection of what it's. In fact, I probably should ask, I know who the two guys were. I probably should like, do you remember that? I don't know if they do or not. I'm just gone, dude. Like, my daughter is really sick. We don't know what's going on. I share a lot of like details in there,

but I'm just next thing, I'm going to land at this hospital. And then that's, that's, that's, That's what I remember. And how long, like, when did the squadron form up? And when did this happen? Do they like commission the squadron? How does that work? Yeah. The administrative part of the squadron,

like it became a real squadron, like a commissioning and a ceremony had happened, you know, well before I got there. The guy before me stood it up. He went there, this other guy, went there to be the F-35 CO to fly the jets. I told you like, the jet was like three years behind schedule. That's part of the reason why the commandant was calling me.

It was like all this was supposed to be three might be. It was years behind schedule. So the guy I replaced, he should have been the first pilot, the first operator. They should have operationalized. None of it happened. I mean, it was a real squadron. It had a building, had a flag, had an emblem and stuff. He didn't have planes?

Didn't have planes. Is that a real squadron? No. So it's certainly, we, so I was the CEO when we declared it operational, IOC, initial operational capability. So the administration of the squadron, was fine. But in terms of like, I'd have to like double check the timing of it. But like we're talking a relatively short period of time of getting jets flying.

I think I started flying that summer and it's probably, man, I'm guessing. I did up three or four months. Something like that. So you at least had the time to get things up and up. Things were, I had gotten qualified. I probably qualified four or five other guys out of the out of the, you know, we were, we were starting to move. Got it.

Yeah. And then you disappear. And I'm gone. And as you say in the book, I simply left. And fast forwardably, yet the application of decentralized command across 501 paid off. Thankfully, my team thought independently, they focused on the mission. More importantly, they made decisions that were in the best interest of the squadron and prioritized the team's success. In short, they led.

Despite all my experience as a fifth generation fighter pilot and instructor, the ultimate measure of my performance, That would be how well the squadron performed in my absence. True decentralized command. You disappear and they continue to function and you go into some of that in the book. Lesson, good leadership outlasts the leader. One day you will not be around. And in the real world application,

you say this, the caller ID disturbed me immediately. I knew the phone number well and always, enjoyed talking to its owner. She was a client I'd come to love working with as much as any at Eshlam Front. Normally her calls and texts were welcomed and appreciated, but it was Sunday afternoon and we had no event scheduled on the calendar with her or her teams for over a month. I was sitting in a lounge chair in my backyard as Whitney and I enjoyed a lazy day at the pool, watching our kids and a few of their friends enjoy the Southern California weather we had come to love. Already anticipating something bad, I got up and walked around the corner to take the call.

Hey Janet, I said feigning excitement. Janet was the chief administrative officer and it worked directly for Jack for over a decade. The quiet on the other end confirmed what I already suspected. The voice on the line feebly said hello, then delivered news. That was even worse than I expected. Jack passed away yesterday. Oh my God, I'm sorry. What happened?

I don't know what to say. I stammered. What happened? He was at dinner with his family. Janet couldn't get through the story and stop mid-sentence. We shared a long, painful silence. I knew to wait however long Janet needed to regain her composure. It felt like forever.

He said he had a backache and asked to leave early. He collapsed by the entrance and died in the restaurant, she said. It was the worst of situations. Restaurant workers had called 911, but it was too late. He had a massive aneurysm, and there was nothing anyone could do. Janet, I'm heartbroken for everyone. I can't imagine. Janet continued, Jack loved you so much.

Your team has made such an impact on all of us. His entire life changed for the better in the last few years since reading the book and connecting with you all, but we don't know what to do right now. I don't know what to do. You're the first person I called after meeting with the executive team this morning. Most of the firm doesn't even know.

Everyone is in shock. Terrible, terrible situation. And, um, well, fast forward a little bit. A few days later, I landed in C. Adeline made my way to their office anticipating chaos. What I witnessed completely amaze me. I saw a group of people doing exactly what they needed to be doing. Despite how raw the emotions were, the team had rallied around each other, detaching from those emotions as best they could to keep things working. An interim CEO had been put in place to handle day-to-day operations. A task tracker was put up on a

whiteboard in the lunchroom for everyone to see and add to. All major clients had been called. The downstream teams had been informed of what happened and priorities were defined for them. Anything critical to the firm's long term stability was assigned to an owner while less important tasks were identified and put on hold I witnessed decentralized command in action and everywhere I looked I saw the right people doing the right things and making decisions that helped the team Yeah, I mean I remember when all that stuff happened it was it was terrible and and you know I haven't made this what's this a caveat yet but we when we write about the companies that we work with We change the names of the people involved. We changed the industry.

You know, we, we tweak the incident enough that people won't be identified. But, you know, this was a terrible situation where a company we had a great relationship with and still have a great relationship with. They had a terrible thing happened to their founder and leader. But then you got to witness this, what we teach, what they learned. put in action. Yeah, this one, this one's awful. That story is, is so heartbreaking.

And yeah, we, we make very, I made little adjustments to each to not identify who the client is. And then that's a little bit for their protection. This one very obviously is, is even with the little adjustments, it's very close to the mark. And in fact, I wrote this book, I put a little caveat in the front. I said something in the fact of, hey, these are stories based on my imperfect memory. I think they're pretty close.

I was definitely telling stories that were about me. So it wasn't like somebody else's point of view. It didn't put anybody else at risk. This is what I think happened. And it's pretty close. There's two stories that I wasn't totally confident I had right because they involved another person. First was that chapter of Dogfighting Trim.

I sent Trim the chapter. I'm like, hey, dude, I got to make sure I get this right. And he was like, you nailed it. He made a couple of changes. It was Bravo 17. But it was important to get it right because I knew he was involved. And I wanted him to read it and go, that's what happened. And so I sent it to him.

And he read it. And he's like, dude, you, you captured it. This one I knew when the real girl who read this, I was, it was really important that I got this right. And I had this sense of like, not anxiety, whatever the word is, like, I was anxious to get to have her read this. And I sent, you know, sent her this copy of the advanced copy of it and had her read it. And I was just kind of waiting. And thankfully, she got the book. and she's like, I was going to go straight to the last chapter,

but I read the whole thing. She kind of read it in one, like, in one night. And then, anyway, she called me and she was kind of in tears. She's like, it's perfect. And she said, like, thank you. Not as a compliment to my writing, but that I had captured what she experienced as kind of his closest friend being so close to that.

And that the way that we captured the lesson, the way we wrote about this in this book, was truly a reflection of what happened to them because this story of that guy who died in this totally unexpected prime of his life in front of his family is the worst story. And yet, the lesson that we got to take away from this, and I really have to give Jamie Cochran credit

because she included this story in her muster brief called the barriers to extreme ownership, and she tells these stories of impact at the very end, and this is the last one she tells, and she coined that phrase when we were just thinking about what this meant, me going there seeing this team like, holy cow. In the worst scenario, this guy's leadership had influenced the company so much that they were,

they were okay without him as she coined that phrase, good leadership outlasts the leader. And there is no better compliment to him and his leadership in that in his totally unexpected absence, his team was okay. It was hurt. It was awful. But they're okay. And this is years ago. This company is thriving.

His memory is alive and well. We are still close to them. They are still important people to us. But it is the ultimate reflection of you better be thinking about this now because you don't get to pick when your team is on their own. You don't pick that date and time. And part of the chapter in my story was I had that thought like, okay, I got my young guys. At this point, I'll start to get them ready for this and underestimated the need for

decentralized command because I had that thought of like, oh, I'll be here for two years. I'll know when the time is right. And my daughter threw that timeline out the window. And it reminded me that it isn't just decentralized command. It's the recognition that your team, your family, whatever it is, success is what they do when you're not there, when you're not around. And you don't get to decide that. And his is the ultimate version of that story.

Like, it is out of left. This is a hell. I mean, extreme ownership changed his life. He loved you. That book. Everything from fitness everything his entire life changed everything attributed to his experience with extreme ownership and I think like maybe two weeks before this happened he came to an FTX Yeah, yeah and I had the thought like what am I had to get on a plan to get out there and I was worried I was worried that it was going to be chaos and I didn't and It was remarkable and it was the ultimate compliment to him is that his leadership outlasted him and it's a huge

lesson for all of us. To close out the book with this little section right here. There is nothing more important than the skill of leadership. It is what allows people to thrive in a world filled with chaos and trauma that we can't always anticipate. The best leadership outlasts the leader. Prepare your team to outlasts you. Give them authority to perform their tasks, make decisions, and stand on their own when

the occasion calls for it. It's the only way you can enjoy. sure they'll win no matter what happens. Be humble and forget about perfection. Don't get complacent or be afraid to change. Listen to the team and put them ahead of yourself. Empower your team and lead yourself. Empower your team and yourself to lead through the worst case scenarios by taking preemptive ownership. Every problem is a leadership problem. From top gun to war and from business to life the solution is you're in your own hands to find it you need to lead so there you go um well another thing that you've got in this book is you've got this application guide um kind of like

an an echelon front type application guide where you go through kind of how to work through the chapters, you know, chapter one, you ask questions that people should be asking. You know, chapter one, every problem is a leadership problem. What are the top challenges you are currently facing in your position? At its core, every problem. We face this leadership problem. How can you view these problems through the lens of leadership? This is always a classic one because people, people say, well, it's, you know, the market or it's the union or whatever you want to say it is. It's the product. It's the thing. The supply chain. It's a leadership problem is what it is. It's a freaking leadership problem.

Chapter two, humility is the most important attribute in a leader. What are some of the common phrases your ego says to protect you? And again, this is like a little application, little things that you can do, little drills that you can do that will help you. You have in some of these things, or in all of them, actually, you have immediate action drills? This one is, who is one person you need to build a relationship with, but have let your ego get in the way? What will you do to put your ego in check and build that relationship?

Again, just earnest questions that if you're not. If you're honest with yourself, they're going to help you. Chapter three, complacency is a killer. In what areas of your life have you become complacent? Chapter four, and then I'm just hitting something like highlights. Chapter four, detachment is a superpower. What routine can you create to better train your mind to detach when necessary? Here's the immediate action drill.

What was the last argument you had about? How can you detach from your point of view to see the other person's perspective? Very smart. Chapter 5, perfection is a lie. Immediate action drill. Take a low impact risk, the next opportunity you get. What was the outcome and how did it ultimately impact execution? Chapter 6, take ownership.

One of your questions here, when you know there's potential for things to go wrong, how can you take preemptive ownership? That's good. Chapter 7, listen, how do you show people you're listening to them? It's a good one. chapter eight change immediate action drill what is one thing in your life you need you know needs to change what is one action you can take to move so there's just a good you know thing a good thing to follow a good thing to guide you the last one is immediate action drill in your next project or

assignment who is one person on your team you can ask to take lead what a brilliant little idea how will this help the person and the team's growth and development so there you go we got We got a ton of good feedback on that application section that we actually pulled it out and created this companion guide that's like bigger and more and like more even more organized than that because people are like how can I use it? Like oh cool, we have to make this its own thing. So just like the extreme ownership and dichotomy companion guides, they'll be one for this to the exact same thing. This is how you use this stuff. Boom. So it's out there if you want it.

Well, we can all use some immediate action drills to get better. And if you do, if you do this stuff, every aspect of your life is getting better. And it's so cool because there's just so many examples of this now, you know, people that have turned their life around, you know, turned their business around, turn their marriage around in a positive way, turn their family and went around, get their kids back in the game, like all these things. Take ownership, listen, change, put the team, like all these things so important. leadership is just the cornerstone of life, really. Mental, physical, vocational. I like that word vocational. You know, because leadership is the cornerstone of your vocation.

What you do for work. Your family, obviously, relationships, it's all leadership. So you need to learn the skills of leadership. You need to understand leadership. And we can thank Dave Burke for making all of that, the understanding and the learning of leadership a little bit easier thanks to this book the need to lead uh the verdict on the title how do you feel now i feel good about the title feel good echo charles top gun fan those you know yeah big time 100% especially how you brought it together at the end there

yeah yeah you like that a little closer there 100% yeah yeah i you know i wasn't i honestly i i i didn't even I'm not that much of a fan of Top Gun the original movie. Not like against it or anything. I probably saw it one time, but I never actually I didn't watch it until the other night when my wife's friend Maggie was in town and like she was she loves Top Gun and so there I was watching Top Gun and and but I didn't I didn't you know the need to lead the first time you said it to me I didn't I didn't connect it to the movie at all. Yeah.

I just thought oh no cool like that's cool. And then it became a little bit less cool when you told me about the movie. And you're like, it's from the topground. And I was like, oh, okay, well, okay. But then once I saw the movie again and read the book, freaking nailed it all day, all day. So if you're listening to this right now, order the book,

get the first edition. Comes out October 21st. Great addition to your leadership knowledge. That's what it is. Dave Burke wrote his first. There's book. Freaking outstanding. Thanks, man.

Got a freaking winner right here. A winner. Dave, anything else? I don't have much else to say other than I, I mean, it's kind of surreal to hear you read the book that I wrote, but all of this comes from what we get to do at Eschlon Front and the lessons that started. If extreme ownership doesn't get written, none of this happens. The way that we communicate, the way that we talk, like none of this happens.

And so to get to be part of that and add something. to that is it's like the coolest thing man it is an honor to have have something to contribute to the the lessons that are out there so I'm grateful man I appreciate it yeah well you know me I'm over here being grateful that you wrote a book and let's get the word out there man all day freaking pumped and it is also you know if you're a person out there that's like got some ideas in your head you want to write you know go for it number one and number two it's hard and it took Dave some grinding work to get this to where it is. And man, you did a great job.

And I could see even Echo Charles, when I was reading about landing on the aircraft carrier, you're getting fired up over there. You know, we can go to the video if you don't believe me. You are shifting in your chairs. You are like rubbing your hands together. That's sketchy dude, zero zero. I felt it for sure. Yeah, yeah.

But the whole book's like that. The whole book's like, we got zero zero scenarios going left and right. All hands. So 99. nine, all hands, the need to lead by Dave Burke. The, what do we call it? The next book in the extreme ownership series. Yeah.

Is that what this thing is? That works. I think it fits well. So, also, you're going to exercise your brain and your leadership skills of the book. I'm going to have to exercise your body as well, you know? It's true. Um, lifting, training, uh, jiu-jitsu. How's that jihitsu going for you?

Like that Charles. How's that last, how's that last session? You know, I'm glad it was there. You know, it was good to, good to, you know, do it. Feel good about that one? Bro, that was like, it was a net positive. There was like pent up scenarios, was there? Yeah, a little bit.

Do you, do you drive home like not liking me? No, well, no. I'll say I have mixed. emotions the whole time about that you know hey I'm happy to be here like everybody else you're in the zone we're in the zone so when you're training you need some fuel you need some you need some fuel you need protein need some energy need some joint supplementation you need creatine we got all those things for you joccofuel dot com check it out joccofuel dot com what do you what do you got out orange hydrate over there

we didn't have any orange that's your flavor that's your your phanta flavor is your orange go anyways you guys know what you need joccoflip.com check it out you can get it at walmart you get a wah-wa vitamin shop gnc military commissaries afees haniford dash stores wakefern shop right hibb mire weggmans harris teeter publics just just all over the high v you can get it lifetime fitness Shields and a bunch of small gyms so that's what we got we got jocco fuel for you check it out get yourself some also origin USA origin USA we got jeans American made 100% new kind of jeans Maverick like pure cotton they're not maverick I think they're called Maverick yeah yeah we think

that's good deal Dave yeah okay all right had you get the nickname chip because that was your actual call sign would it come from I knocked my teeth out in flight school. How'd you do it? I hit myself in the face with my own G-suit. How did you do that? My helmet during a conversation was sitting on a desk, and I knocked the helmet off the desk as I kind of moved my hand to, like, show something.

As the helmet fell, I reached for it. I kind of leaned down and reached, and the G-suit. I was wearing my G-suit. There's a hose with like a buckle on the end of it that plugs into the jet. It's like a metal almost looks like a hose buckle. And as I reached for the helmet, I hit the hose. The hose came up and hit me in the face. And you've ever seen the movie Dumb and Dumber?

Yes. I did that to both of my front teeth. Oh, my God. Knocked a triangle out of both of them. And as you know, if it's not emergent, Navy medicine is like, we'll get to you when we can because you're not going to die. So I had to walk around the squadron for like a week with these two holes in my face. Dumb and Dumb and Dumber.

It could have been way worse than Chip. And some of the options were way worse, but thank God. Like they're like, we'll call them Chip and moved on. But it happened in flight school. Do you remember any other options? Dude, there's, like, all sorts of craziness. But yes, you know. Well, Maverick, was Maverick's, was that Maverick's dad's call sign as well in the movie Top Gun?

Or was his call sign something else? I don't recall that being the case. Okay. But that's a cool call sign that you would never see in the real Navy. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, why not? Too late.

Because it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, he's a Maverick. He's awesome. Like, your call sign is going to be the, hopefully. you know, not too painful, but it's going to be the dumbest thing you've done and they're going to make you remember it. So there are no, to my knowledge, like there's no cool call

signs in the Navy and the Ring Corps. They're all just like either like kind of like not a big deal or like you did something really dumb. Yeah. Or your name. Yeah, your name is kind of requires it. So ice man, viper. No chance. Okay. No chance. If you have a cool call sign, it's probably an acronym and you don't realize it's like it stands for something really unflattered like you know like you know ike like oh he is my buddy ike ike actually stands for i know everything which is them where they're saying like you talk too much and you think you're really smart so even if it sounds cool it's probably has a meaning that is really uncool and they just feel like um well we got maverick jeans which does sound cool does sound cool is cool the whole deal and they're

100% cotton yeah so there's no like there's no stretch they're old That's cool. You have a pair of jeans growing up in a way? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn't have no stretch back then. So we're bringing that back. OriginUSA.com, 100% made in America. What freedom has made these jeans.

American hands have made these hoodies, these t-shirts, these boots. 100% American made, OriginUSA.com. Check it out. Also, obviously, we've got some books. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. Now, Dave Burke has written a book about leadership. The book is called Needle Lead. Order it.

Ashton front, we have a leadership consulting company. This is what we're talking about today. We talk about leadership all the time. This is what we do. We've seen it in every type of environment. Not only we see it, yes, in our military careers, but now that we have been working with civilian companies for over a decade, we have experience in every industry. So if you have issues inside of your organization, those issues are leadership issues.

and we will help you with those leadership issues through leadership, the skills of leadership, the alignment of leadership. That's what we do. Go to eschlamfront.com. We also have an online training academy where you can learn the skills of leadership online. Go to extreme ownership.com for that. If you want to help out service members active and retired, want to help with their families, their gold star families.

Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org. And don't forget about Jimmy Mays organization beyond the brotherhood.org. Now listen up. We talked a little bit about Ramadi today. And we are all going to a reunion.

Go to Ramadi Reunion20.com. If you were connected to the 1-1 AD in 2000, You're invited if you're a Gold Star family. You're invited army Navy Air Force and Marines We were all there. We were all in that battle So if you were there with the one one AD go to Ramadi Reunion 20.com And sign up for the reunion. It's going to be January 16th and 17th down in Texas 2026 our 20 year reunion spent 20 years We'll see you there if you want to connect for days

his Twitter X and his Instagram is at David R. Burke, B-E-R-K-E. And for us, you can check out jocco.com or on social media. I'm at Jocko Willink. Echoes at Echolz. Be careful, the algorithm. Also, thanks to all of our military members around the world right now for holding the line and protecting freedom and our way of life.

Thank you for your service. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for holding the line and protecting us here at home. And for everyone else out there. Once again, from Dave Burke.

Good deal, Dave Burke. Chip, Dave Burke. From his book, The Need to Lead. Here we go. This is a quote. It is in our human nature to find reasons we are not responsible for whatever is going wrong in our lives. Without ownership, when projects fall behind schedule, it can easily be blamed on external forces and factors beyond our control.

Excuses are a satisfying, albeit temporary fix to soothe our ego and exonerate us from blame for the problems we face. We might feel as though they absolve us of responsibility. but they actually rob us of the ability to address and fix what is wrong in our lives. Taking extreme ownership annihilates those excuses, which is a beautiful thing because it destroys the single largest impediment to fixing what is wrong. It gives us the power we need to truly change what undermines our success. so problems get solved and that's what we got keep your ego in check everyone and keep trying to get better and that's all we've got for tonight and until next time this is dave an echo and jocco