Jocko Podcast - 65: What to Carry to Be Prepared for Battle and Life: With Leif Babin

Episode Date: March 7, 2017

0:00:00 - Opening "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien. 0:05:30 - Weapons & Equipment we carried in Ramadi. 0:1230 - A hard lesson with Over-packing Equipment for Patrol. 0:28:04 - Training for adversity. 0:39:57 - How Adversity Training Payed off in Ramadi. 0:47:12 - Heat, Stink, and Moon Dust in Ramadi. 1:03:16 - The Strain of Being in Battle: Physical and Mental. 1:23:57 - How Complacency can Creep in And Kill. 1:36:50 - Reflecting on The Muster 001, and Thoughts on Upcoming Muster 002. 1:50:38 - 1:40:13 - Support, Cool Onnit, Amazon, JockoStore stuff, with Jocko White Tea and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid, and The Muster002   2:22:18 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 65 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink Good evening echo good evening the things they carried were largely determined by necessity Among the necessities or near necessities were P38 can openers pocket knives heat tabs wrist watches dog tags Mosquito repellent chewing gum candy cigarettes salt tablets packets packets of Kool-Aid lighters matches sewing kits military payment certificates sea rations and two or three canteens of water Together these items weighed between 12 and 18 pounds depending on a man's habits or rate of metabolism Henry Dobbins who was a big man carried extra rations he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake Dave Jensen who practiced field hygiene carried a toothbrush dental floss and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney Australia

Ted Lavender who was scared carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Thayette Kay in mid-April by necessity and because it was SOP they all carried tranquilizers. They all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds including the liner and camouflage cover they carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers very few carried underwear on their feet they carried jungle boots 2.1 pounds and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of dr. Scholes foot powder as a precaution against trench foot until he was shot Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope which for him was a necessity Mitchell Sanders the RTO carried condoms Norman Boucher carried a diary

Rat Kylie carried comic books Kiowa a devout Baptist carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father who told Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man and his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined in booby trap,

there was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered nylon-covered flack jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compressed bandage, usually in the helmet band, for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or ground sheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce.

In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him onto the chopper, that took him away. And that excerpt is from a book called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.

and the book is about the Vietnam War and it's actually a blend of nonfiction and fiction and part of that blend comes from what he actually experienced for real as a soldier in Vietnam in third platoon Alpha Company 5th Battalion 46th Infantry Regiment and incidentally

he was in the same division and the same area of operations where the mili massacre took place and then that reality is intermingled with his thoughts and ideas and stories that put together a unique perspective on war but the book is considered fiction and i don't like to dig too deep on fictional books So I'm not gonna go too deep on this one, but I was having a little conversation with my brother Laif Babin With whom I wrote a little book Called Extreme Ownership and Leif and I were talking about The things that we carried and Tonight we have the good fortune of having my brother Laif Babin and I here with us again today and I figured a good way to begin talking about what we carried was to kind of compare and contrast what we did carry with what men like Tim O'Brien

carried in Vietnam Leif Babin my brother welcome to the show for the third time thanks for having me on good to be back on again and for those of you that Don't know who Laif is if you haven't been listening or you this is if this is basically the first time you've ever listened to this podcast for some reason is if you're not going to know who Laif is Leif was in the SEAL teams with me we were in the battle Armadi together and when we both got out of the military I retired and late Leif got out and we ended up working together we have a little business called echelon front where we work with companies and teach leadership and management and we wrote a little book like I just said called extreme ownership And actually, if you want to know about Laif, well, you can read Extreme Ownership. You can listen to podcast number 11 and podcast number 34. Laf was the first guest.

And here he is back again. So, Leif Babin, what did you carry? Talk to me about that. Compared to what these guys in Vietnam carried. I mean, obviously there's a lot of similarities, and there's a lot of differences, too. What do you think? Definitely. I mean, it brings back so many memories just thinking about all the stuff that we carried with us and And the burden of the you know, just the heavy you know, we used to joke about stuff the body armor back, you know, and the body armor is just biting into your traps after you've had it on for hours and hours and hours of the helmets just the vice down on your head

And obviously we had a training prepare so that we could we could prepare to have those things on for hours and hours on in and be able to deal with that and in fact I remember you being the only The only guy in the universe that actually liked a certain type of headset that we were using because it actually crushed down on your skull and you're like bring it good Everyone else is complaining about it. You're like you're like I actually like this That thing hurt my head. I would never have admitted it back then, but yeah it hurt bad it would squeeze your head in that awkward way That was a those a gnarly old headset, but A lot heavier because the body armor where we're wearing how much did how much did our body armor away? It was like seven pounds of plate and you got a front and back plate and then you got the nine mill body armor and You're that that right there is heavy and then the funny thing is we were able to make our weapons a little bit later over time, but then we've decked them all out with lasers and optics and everything so the weapons I bet your our weapons were actually heavier definitely and then like for me

You know we had trained to carry those little 10-inch barreled Our look we have an in four with a ten-inch barrel which we use for close quarters combat you know house clearance and and and as you know that was like the primary weapon and we get to her body. I was like, hey, I got to carry my 14-inch barrel, which is longer. And it's got an M-203 grenade launcher on it. So you got a 40-millimeter grenade and that's what becomes, comes a lot heavier based on that. I just, I needed that to be able to throw some 40 mic-mike-mike down. Now, one of the things that I know was, I mean, we all learned a lot in combat. And actually, Andy Stump was just on and I know you're friends with him too, but we were talking about the learning curve of how quickly you learn things. And

I know you learned some pretty solid and rough lessons out of the gate going on some big patrols right right when we got there. And it's specifically about what you carried. Absolutely. I mean, we had focused so much on doing a roll-up assault. We were loading up in vehicles. So you're not, you don't have to carry much on your person because we're trained to drive up in vehicles. And so we get to Ramadi. And of course, we've done our patrol.

out in the desert, done that training and prepared for that. But we think we're going to go to Iraq and we're going to drive in vehicles. And we get to Ramadi and these IDs are so dangerous and killing people. So what do you do? You get out of the vehicle and you patrol, which means if you're going into an area and you've got to carry everything on your back and you've got to carry enough water and all the stuff you've got to have for the next 24, even 48 hours, it's a lot of stuff. And one of the first patrols, I've done a few patrols on kind of the outskirts of town,

But that city center where it was al-Qaeda control battle space and U.S. troops were dying almost every day in this horrible, violent place. We've been on the ground for, I think, a couple weeks in, and we were teaming up with a Marine unit from 3-8 Marines, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines, outstanding group of warriors who've been on the ground for a month or two prior to us getting there. And these guys were in the thick of the fight. And they had adjusted their tactics and learned how to go out there and conduct these patrols. And so we were teaming up with them to go into an area called Firecracker Circle as firecracker as in, hey, this is a happy place with Fourth of July or Firecracker is in massive bombs. As in there's a 400 pound explosive in the road that's going to blow your vehicle 100 feet in the air and kill everybody. That was that area of firecracker, they did not. As a matter of fact, when we even later than this, when you were looking at doing operations in there,

And I remember sitting there with the Marines going, hey, what's the QRF situation? Who can come in to get us? And they were like, hey, we're not coming in there with vehicles unless they're like, hey, if it's an absolute worst case scenario and you've got to get somebody Kazivak immediately. But if you get a guy get shot in the leg and you can stop the bleeding, you're going to wait until nighttime. They were adamant about not going in there because it was so bad.

I mean, they patrolled in there all the time, which you're about to talk about, but nobody wanted to bring vehicles up in those streets. And actually, part of that reason is because just before we got it. there. They took a massive I. The Marine Corps took a massive ID hit, and I think they lost four or five Marines in one shot, just a total travesty. That was right as we were arriving. We were hearing the stories about that and reading the reports on it and a horrible, horrible deal. But that was a great tactic that we learned from the Marines, which is, listen, the bad guys, they want to blow you up in the streets. They're going to try to target your vehicles. They're

going to try to ambush you. So when you're in a building in a sniper overwatch position and you're behind concrete walls, like stay in that position. Stay in that position. Stay in that position. unless you have an urgent surgical casual that you've got to get out right now or you're going to be overrun only in an extreme situation so we're not going to call in the QRF because they're going to blow up the vehicles and that's what they want you to do and and and they taught us some of those things that were that helped keep our guys alive and certainly helped us perfect our our our tactics techniques and procedures to be able to go deep into those areas and and do some real damage to the enemy and most of the time bring our guys home so so speaking of going deep How deep did you have to dig on that first patrol out with three-eight Marines? So we're going into this area. I mean, you know, these Marines have just lost guys. And we were going in with Lima Company, outstanding group of warriors. And, you know, we were excited to go in and work with them.

So I've got a, you know, we got about a squad of seals going in. We've got some Iraqi soldiers. And we're going to team up and we're going to put in some mutually supporting sniper overwatch positions and remain, you know, through the, we'd go in nighttime. We'd remain through the day and we come out the next night. So I'm like, hey, I'm going in there. We may be in there for 24 hours. It could even be longer if we get delayed.

And you know what? This is a bad area. Nobody can come get us out. So I'm loading out for World War III. And, you know, my first time going to these areas, I mean, I'm packing hand grenades and extra mags. And, you know, our typical load out was two hand grenades. And I think I added a, I added like three or five extra hand grenades that I was bringing. So I put that in my bag.

I'm bringing, I've got, you know, my typical way. I was actually laughing about this because. We've done a lot talking about World War I and they had grenade battles like trench to trench grenade battles and I don't even think if I was going into our grenade battle where that was my primary weapon I would have seven grenades like Leif was carried right into Romani. Bring it. That's awesome. So I'm getting, I'm getting ready.

I'm getting ready to get some and, you know, I'm thinking that if we're getting overrun and we're loading up on it. So it's like one more thing, one more thing, you know, extra mag here, extra mag there. So, you know, I've got I've got those. extra hand grenades. I've got the extra smoke grenades. I've got flashbang grenades. I've got four or five extra magazines

in addition to like the seven magazines each of these are 30 round magazines we carry You must have a hundred pounds. At least a hundred pounds. Crazy amount of... And then of course I'm carrying my 40 mic mic right. So I've got 40mm grenades as well and I was typically I'm loading that out so I've got a bandalier of 12 of those things. I think I had

six more on me. in a pouch on my waist. So literally, I mean, I'm rolling in like John J. Rambo style, ready to get some. So seriously, you know, as I'm sitting here thinking, that must have been 100 pounds worth of gear. With your body armor, all those grenades, smoke grenades, 40 mic, Mike, you must have had at least close to 100 pounds. I think, I think easy, because then you tack on water. You know, that was the biggest limiting factor for us. And, you know, and you got the summertime heat over there.

It's just unbearable, you know, it may hit 115, 120 degrees. And so here we are remain over day. You're not going to drink the water out of the faucet, you know, unless you want to be visiting, making some frequent head calls and having some dissontery for the next few days. And what that's going to bring you. So you got to carry that water in. You know, we carry these liter and a half bottles that they had.

I think I had probably 10 or 12 of those bottles, too. So I'm like, I don't want to run out of water. so I got a bunch more. You know, that even thought I needed. So it's ridiculous amount of weight than I'm carried. And so we load up. I mean, I'm having a hard time even just, you know, picking this bag up, putting it in. So we load up in our vehicles.

We drive. We meet up with the Marines. We're loading up into their big seven-ton trucks that they took in. And they put the troops in the back, these huge vehicles. And that was, they would kind of drive you on the outskirts of the bad areas on roads they'd cleared. And hopefully you were protected in those, in those vehicles from the armor. Then we unloaded. And we unloaded from the vehicles once we got to a point.

And just so everyone knows, these are like Mad Max scenario vehicles that people, that people, military guys had had put steel on the sides, you know, half inch steel on the side to protect from rounds, sandbags on the floor, you know, just put sandbags all over the floor. So it's not like when he's talking about an armored vehicle, don't think of a tank or a Bradley fighting field. He's talking about a Mad Max scenario, big giant seven-ton truck. It looks like a construction truck, basically, but it's got big steel walls on it, and now they put sandbags on the floor to prevent from IEDs. And that's going to war in the fun way.

Straight out of the road warrior, definitely. And so we get dropped off from those vehicles, and of course, we're getting up. And, you know, as soon as I'm putting this thing on, like, man, I'm carried. I can't wait to drink this water, you know. I can't wait to try to shoot some of these rounds, you know, get rid of some of this weight. Because I realize, like, it's crazy. It's a crazy man. Of course, you're like, you know, you don't want to run an ammo, but you also, you know,

you can't, if you can't move, then it becomes even more dangerous. So we start the patrol and we're moving in the area. And the Marines who spent time on the ground, as I talked about, I mean, they're, their method of patrol because there were a lot of enemy snipers out there. And even though it's nighttime, you know, there's still some streetlights and things like that. So their method of patrol is two man shooter pairs, and those guys got each other's back, so you've got two guys covering two different directions, and they're holding on a street corner, and then they're waiting for the next shooter pair that's up to the next block from them,

and they sprint, all out, mad dash sprint as fast as you can go, as fast as you can run from one corner to the next corner. So it's maybe a hundred yards. It's covering a hundred yards. It's covering sprint as hard as you can. And some of those blocks, maybe it's 50 yards, some of them it's 100 yards. But, you know, and this is how they patrol into the city. So it's, it is your sprint hold, sprint hold, sprint hold.

And, you know, a few blocks are going into that and we're kind of moving around the city and in this direction is like, man, I am smoked. I'm having so hard a time to keep it out. And just my hats, these young Marines that are just getting after it, carrying heavy, heavy equipment and gear and the, the radio men and the guy carrying his, you know, his 40 mic, Mike, and they're, of course, they're carrying the two, uh, two, two, uh, 40 Bravo machine gun, which is a belt-fin machine gun that was much heavier than what our, you know, Mark 48's lighter machine guns were for our meeting machine guns. But these guys were just awesome, just awesome trying to, you know, trying to work with them. But I am having one hell of a time trying to keep up with these guys. So what does that do to your, what does that do to your leadership capability when you're, when you're tired?

Here I am supposed to be in charge of this thing. So I'm in charge of this. I'm in charge of my guys. You know, we got a squad of eight of our guys, eight seals and, you know, a dozen Iraqi soldiers. So, and I'm supposed to be in charge. I'm supposed to be thinking about the bigger picture and be able to detach and all the things that we talk about sitting back and thinking about, you know, what's going on, you know, a half mile up the road and making, you know, radio calls back to the tactical operation center

and talking to you and telling you where we are and what's going on. And I can't, I'm focused at this point on putting one foot in front of the other. Just head down one foot in front of the other and just try to keep up. And here I am the guy just having a hard time keeping up. And it was humbling, humbling experience for me. Here I am a seal, a team guy thinking I'm in shape. And I'm in an area where I'm not acclimatized to this kind of brutal heat. Even at nighttime, it's 95 degrees outside.

You know, and there's no wind. No wind. And you think, oh, it's a dry heat in the desert? No. The river's like, you know, just. It's not a dry heat. Not in Ramadi's not a dry heat. Yeah, we were half, you know, half mile off the river.

So it's, it's humid along the river. So, uh, it was, it was horrible. And I was realizing like this, I got my ass kicked. I mean, it was, by the time we got back from that, it was, I knew I was going into a heavy, like, heat exhaustion. Like, I was, I was hitting the, like, the heat exhaustion point where it was like, this is rough. This is rough stuff. And that's, the thing that's scary about heat exhaustion scenarios is, it's like a cliff you're walking off of. And when you're getting close to the cliff and when you go off of it, it's not like you say, okay, let me get a sip of water. No, you're in big trouble. You've got guys carrying you now because you, you know, if you get heat stroke or heat exhaustion, it's a bad, bad situation. And it doesn't matter how tough you are. You're not going to be able to power through that, right? Physically. And so that's what, you know, that's a nightmare scenario for me that here I am the leader. And yet if I can't keep up, someone has to carry me, right? That was, that was just going to be a horrific disaster. So, you know, we went through that operation. We were out there for.

for, you know, remain throughout the course that the daylight. We got shot at, we shot at some bad guys. And then we came out, you know, the next night. And I got back from that. Were you aggressively returning fire to get rid of those rounds? We definitely aggressively returned fire. Unfortunately, it didn't get a chance to throw any of the hand grenades, which was a real bummer.

But, yeah, I mean, it was a real rude awakening for me. Just being humble by that experience to come back and think, I'm carrying way too much stuff. I can't, you know, it's, sure, I don't want to run out of ammo, you know, and, but, but how much more dangerous is it for me to be carrying so much stuff that I can't even keep up on a patrol? I can't move fast when I need to, and if bad guys start shooting at us, I can't get my guys off the street, you know, or I can't move, run across the street or run up the stairs. And, and, and so I recognize right away, like, I've got to, I've got to, I got to pair this down, and I got to

carry just the essential stuff and maybe a couple of contingency plans. Like, maybe I got one extra grenade in my in my backpack. And maybe I don't even need that. What do I really absolutely need? You know, don't want to run out of water out there, so maybe I got one extra bottle. Don't need four, you know, with me. And that enabled me

to recognize that I've got to carry only the essential stuff because you can absolutely get overwhelmed. And part of that, too, if you're, you know, we were training, we trained at land warfare at the time. You know, the attitude was we do land warfare in the SEAL teams.

So we don't, we don't wear helmet and body armor for land warfare. So we'll go out and patrol across the desert and do that stuff. We wear helmet body armor when we do CQC, close quarters combat in the, in the kill house. And, you know, here we are in an urban environment. Like, got to be able to do both. I'm foot patrolling and then we're clearing houses. So got to have that stuff. And you just recognize how you just cannot carry all that stuff with you.

So that was the rude awakening for me. And the other piece of that was physical training. You know, here I was thinking I'm in shape. I'm a team guy. you know, we train hard, we push the envelope, and yet I am not in good enough shape to be able to to perform at the level I need to in this kind of heat, in this kind of environment. You know, and after that, you know, you would see, I was a lesson not just me learned, but I saw so many of us.

You know, T.U. Bruiser, you showed up, if you showed up at like noon at the heat of the day, you'd see guys out doing tire flips, doing, you know, sprints, running, working out to get acclimatized, to be ready for those worst-case scenarios. And we recognized that we thought we were good and we had to step it up to an even I actually took one of those workouts and I would do it at at victory MMA training fighters But the workout was it was a a dummy carry because we had a big old heavy bag so it was a dummy carry carry It carry it down and back sprint as hard as you can then grab the tire it was a tire pull down and back and then a sprint down and back And what that was simulating was like okay you might have to pick up a guy and carry him down or carry him somewhere then you also might have to grab a guy

and drag him and then you might just have to sprint. But that was, we do that, like you said, we do that stuff at high noon because, because like you said, everyone wanted to be acclimated for the worst case scenario. And that was something we saw over and over again, even the, by the way, I remember you running those, I remember you running Dean through that, uh, do that training. It was brutal. He didn't like that too much, did he. That's rough.

That's a rough thing. Good training. Awesome training. Yeah. Prepare you for those worst case scenarios. But we, it was humbling. And we'd see, you know, we'd have great team guys, brothers who showed up, you in Ramadi and want to go out on patrol with us,

guys who we knew were incredibly fit. Great athletes kept themselves in shape. These certainly weren't the guys that let themselves go. And we'd take them out on a patrol and, like, they'd be falling back. You know, they'd be having a hard time keeping up. They'd have, they had to learn that same lesson that I learned, and then you'd see them out there getting after it,

like training and pushing the envelope. And I think that was a lesson that, you know, we learned some great tactics from the Marines. And also got, it was my hats off for those young Marines that were getting out there in the thick of, of it. They taught me some great lessons there that enabled us to go forward and really push, you know, push the envelope, going deep in areas that nobody could get into and setting up the sniper overwatches and helping protect the soldiers and Marines that were building those combat

outposts. But we had to be physically fit and we had to carry only the essential gear that we needed. And you know what's interesting. I'm sitting over here because we're in a business, consulting business but same thing that we'll see with businesses when they want to they want to do the same thing they want to build their infrastructure so much that they can handle any scenario that's going to happen so they're going to hire three more people in case of this and they'll hire six more people for that and they'll hire four more people for that for that contingency right it's like you saying well I might run out a magazine so I'm going to put five more in my backpack and I might throw these four grenades so I need three

more and next thing you know these companies they're so overburdened with with overhead and with cost structure that the same thing happens what happens they lose their ability to maneuver and so it's the same thing you take that combat principle of carry what you need think about it and don't carry too much and you apply that to the business world if you don't need to bring that extra person on board and you can get away with a contractor for a little while you can pay somebody some overtime do that until you have to make that this decision and you'll know so that's something you actually taught me in in Ramadi you know we

you can't you had been a bad guy and had those good the experiences of these capture kill raids and and it always seemed like where we're going in this house we don't know what's in that house we know we believe a bad guy to be there and maybe yes some people so so I'm gonna put 25 assaulters in that house and you know I'm gonna put as many people as I can and then you're like hey Laif I don't think you need that many people initially I was like that's crazy why would I not want to take them all And then you recognize like 25 people in the house. There's a lot more mayhem.

There's a lot more chaos. There's people bumping into each other. And you're like, yeah, maybe 14 guys is all I need, you know, for this particular target. And guess what else? When you're on this target, where's the biggest threat? The biggest threat actually oftentimes isn't in the building you're taken down because you're doing that aggressively. You have a good force. The harder threat to cut.

You know where the threat is. A building is, you know, 480 square feet or 1,400 square feet. You know how big that puts it's a it's a finite area whereas when you're in the street 360 degrees that threats there so where do you actually need people to cover a threat that you don't know and don't understand You need them in the streets. That's where you need them and that's where we always went heavy on the streets and at the assault team is a smaller package and plus it's very easy and very controlled To be able to say jaco. I need four more guys in here boom you got him super doing the opposite. Hey, send four guys out in the street. We're We don't know where, but send guys out. It's totally, it's much more hard, it's much harder to do that because it's a much less

controlled situation out in the streets. And I think for leaders, that planning piece, right, to think about where is that contingency? What are the likely tendencies that may happen? So yeah, keep that essential personnel, essential resources and focus. You can't plan for every contingency. And if you do, you're going to overwhelm your team. And it's going to, it's going to cause more problems trying to solve every contingency than it wouldn't otherwise.

Yeah, yeah. All right, that's good, that's good stuff. You know what I'm doing? Go back to the book right now. Here we go. They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to hump it. As when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps.

Almost everyone humped photographs. in his wallet lieutenant cross carried two photographs of Martha as a first lieutenant and platoon leader Jimmy Cross carried a compass map code books binoculars and a 45 caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded he carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men as an RTO Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC 25 radio a killer 26 pounds with its battery as a medic rat kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry including m&Ms for especially

bad wounds for a total weight of nearly 18 pounds as a big man therefore a machine gunner Henry Dobbins carried the M60 which weighed 23 pounds unloaded but which was almost always loaded in addition Dobbins carried between 10 15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders they all carried ghosts when dark came they would move out single file across the meadows and patties to their ambush coordinates where they would quietly set up the clays and lied down and spend the night waiting in that section when I was reading that clearly this is very similar to the operations that you conducted a ton of which was

you know they're calling them ambushes here and we called them sniper overwatches but the idea you know the idea for those of what was happening is very very similar you know you guys are patrolling out to a location just like you talked about and setting up for a remain over day or for the night. How did you feel like, you know, you kind of talked about it, but did you feel like you were ready for that stuff? And, you know, a lot of times, like you said, we were, we trained to drive a lot, and we ended up walking so much because of the IAD threat.

How did you manage that once you got on the ground? Well, I think, thank God we had actually trained, and, you know, it's been a part of the SEAL team since Vietnam, you know, going out in the Southern California, desert and training and you know land warfare you know is that that awesome block where you go out and learn how to patrol which we've talked you know you talked a lot about the podcast and certainly we talk about with that's not front you know where it's man camp out in the southern california desert in this rugged environment with just sharp rocks and and cactus with spines and rattlesnakes

so so real quick everybody in the world when they hear the term southern california they think of Baywatch, right? Yeah. They think of Baywatch. We ain't talking about Baywatch. So when you go East from the coast in Southern California, you enter a place places that have names like Death Valley, right? Those are the kind of areas we're talking about. We're not talking about SoCal Baywatch. We're talking about inland in the in the deserts, the hard deserts of California. And it's where it's one of the primary places where we train for for combat and it is I always used to say that our desert training facility is where men become frogmen even though there's no water out there it's where men become frogman because it'll test you no doubt and I you know thank God that we

we get tested like that and that put you know that that kind of training um is uh is something that's that's kept seals alive on the battlefield and enabled us to to accomplish some some great things for a long time and I remember that first shakeout patrol you know that was a good one. The land warfare instructors, we're fired up and get out in the desert to train, get our land warfare on, dial it in our procedures and learn how to work together as a team and patrol. And we show up to the camp. It was funny because generally, I mean, I'm not going to say that you have this immense trust with the cadre. But like, you know, we're kind of friends with all these guys. We know them.

And so they did a really good job of suckering us in on that first patrol because they said, hey, we're just going to send you guys out a little shakeout patrol tonight. And so a shakeout patrol in the SEAL teams means you're going to put your gear on. You want to see how everything rides on your body. You want to make sure that it's comfortable. You want to make sure that there's no tags that are wearing on you or anything like that. That's just a shakeout patrol. Get your little hand signals.

Make sure we're all good to go. Get to know each other a little bit. It's just like a little it's basically like a little walk like like a little walk I mean you think it's probably gonna take a shakeout patrol should probably take you Our maybe two hours at the most we're just gonna be you know kind of relaxed mode doing a little shakeout patrol And that was the setup and it's it's administrative right so you're like hey let's work on this it's that so it's not like you're you're in the game Acting like you're in the enemy territory the whole time and it's you know so you're kind of talking with instructors and figuring things out So yeah so they're like oh yeah just the the the Lamwar

for a cadre like yeah just just a little shakeout patrol no big deal so we're just showing up you know no one's got there I know I didn't have my gear situation I grabbed some stuff that I had from advanced training uh what we call SQT so qualification training from from like two years before that um and uh I had these two canteens that had been filled with water um in that gear and I don't think I'd emptied that water in like two years so there's probably a little algae growth and some massiness going on in these canteens. So I just like throw it, a cool, shakeout patrol.

You know, and then we were rushed because they were, they were like, hey, we got to get this going, we got to get this going. So we arrive, you know, guys are trying to get settled. They're like, hey,

get your gear on. Let's get over there. So we throw our gear on, and I throw on that gear with those canteens. You know, there's two-year-old water in it. And we're, and we go,

we take off from the patrol. And what we didn't know was that, uh, this shakeout patrol was, uh, was a, was a man test. It was a man test.

It was a man test. What, what, uh, a word we like to use in the seal themes called the mud suck, which is basically a sucker punch, right? They, they put together a patrol that was, it took hours and hours. Well, it took the whole night. The whole night. The whole night. And, and no one had, I mean, several guys didn't have any water. I remember, I remember Ryan Joe had like no water at all.

And I remember him like, you know, just struggle. It was like, hey, hey, uh, sir, do you have, do you have some water? And I actually came up I came up to you I think right Because you said no one had water And actually I had water I had water I was going on it To me it was like shakeout patrol of course

Even though I was like it's kind of administrative Of course in my mind I'm like hey it's a shakeout patrol But I'm doing everything the way I would do it normally Because I'm super hardcore So I got all my stuff the way it's supposed And also I had the advantage of having Done a lot of these trips in my time So for me I didn't it wasn't trying anything new

It wasn't a shakeout patrol for me It was just a patrol. But yeah, I went, got good water in my canteens, my camelback, and I was all good to go. And I was ready for this. And because discipline equals freedom, you had the freedom to go out and execute with your water. Meanwhile, I'm carrying these canteens that I know. Did you say, like, you first sip, you spit it out? I actually, I got so thirsty, right, that finally I was like, I got to drink something.

And so I pull one of these canteens out. Again, you know, it's just nasty algae. I open it up. I like smell it. I was like, man, it smells like a, it smells like a fish aquarium, you know? And I like just, but I'm at this point, I'm desperate. I'm desperate. We're like two or three, four hours into this thing.

Everyone's sweat. So I was like, I take a big sip of this thing and it just immediately projectile, vomit that up, that stuff back up. And I think I gave one of those canteens to rise. It's so he was desperate. But I asked you for water. How'd that work? I asked you for what I was like you did I was like hey jaco do you have any water and I was like

yes I was like yes I do and you say guy can you is your voice was scratching me the whole nine yards you were dehydrated you like can you give some of that to Ryan he's he didn't bring any water and I said something along the not lines of well firstly I said no you can't have any of my water if if you want water you must hump it in you don't I don't hump in your water and I'm not humping in Ryan's water that doesn't work this way you bring in your own water and then I think I said like if he's going to die I will give you some water if he's not going to die you will get nothing and he got nothing so and it just everybody understands like it is it is pretty if you can't carry your own stuff in right

it's it's pretty to boo to have to have to like depend on somebody else and no kidding at that point we didn't actually know I didn't know how long we were going to be in the field for I mean, we, yeah, they were keeping us in the dark. They didn't tell us what's going on. And they did a really good job of, they brought us into the hills, into the hills of Southern California, where you're going to be going up and down terrain and the terrain is uneven. And they did this whole link up drill. So it wasn't like we were just blindly walking.

It was link up from starting with swim pairs and then fire team link up and then squad link up and then platoon link up. And yeah, so the future was very unknown at this time. So I wasn't, you know, thinking, hey, I'll just give a bunch of my walk. water away because you give all your water away and you got nothing and then you're struggling to keep up too so it's it's it was a bad situation and it was an asshole I think I might just have like peaked a little bit at least getting in the zone little bit it was it was definitely border light but look I think the reality was uh you were helping reinforce the lesson that you got to have your gear squared away you got to be and you got to be ready for a contingency like that

because that happened all the time to us you know we're like hey this is going to be you know obviously We're in Ramadi and we're like hey this will be a 24 hour operation like no now it's a 48 hour operation now it turns into a 72 hour operation we're gonna we're gonna stay here longer than we thought so you gotta have you got to be square away you got to be thinking about that and you know thank God we had such awesome amazing leaders like like Tony a fratty you know that he's been on this podcast and that people love and which is why we can say his name because otherwise we'd name off all the other guys that were out there good you know, the LPO's that getting after it, the E5 mafia in there running things.

So yeah, it's the whole crew. And that's exactly. And just leaders at every level that were stepping up, leading their fire teams, leading their squad. And I think that was it. Thank God I appreciate as much as that sucked. And as much as people were complaining about that at the time, those kind of training scenarios where we didn't see it coming and it was a lot harder than we thought it was

going to be, it got us ready, you know, to, to, uh, for those long-range patrols in Ramadi. And when we got there, like you said, we all thought we were going to drive. And they were like, we can't drive. Man, that's the best way to get killed if you don't try to drive into some of these areas. So park your vehicles and walk in on foot.

And again, we learn we only had to carry the essential stuff. But we also knew we had to carry some firepower too. Because one of the things that we did in Romani was, you know, I think oftentimes special operators can get a little spoiled where, you know, if you're going out on a mission and it's got some higher profile, and you've got aircraft supporting you, and, you know, you're going to have all this,

you've got close air support set up where it's just dedicated to you. You know, and here we are. We're, you know, we had 40 seals in tasking up Roosers, so I'm leading a 16-man seal platoon and maybe a couple other augments, you know, with seals and our EOD bomb disposal technicians

and Iraqi soldiers. And we're just one tiny unit out of 5,600 troops that Marines and soldiers of the First Brigade, First Armored Division, brigade combat team. So there isn't dedicated aircraft to us. You know, there isn't a QRF that's a quick reaction force that's dedicated just to us to come out.

Yeah, because on top of you, you know, we had our unit. And just because you were out with your platoon in a firefight, you were not the only game in town at that time. There would be three or four other units somewhere else on the battlefield that were in a firefight, maybe worse, maybe not as bad. But there was always someone. that's calling the QRF or that needs air support. So it was exactly like you're saying.

We weren't at the top of some food chain. We were just in the food chain and had to learn how to mitigate that stuff. So that massive loadout that you took and you were heavy, it's not like you said, okay, I'm not going to have to carry this stuff anymore. You still had to bring it. We had to make sure that we carried our own firepower into those areas. In an area where we knew that the tanks may have a hard time getting in there to us, even if in the emergency scenario, and we didn't want to be overrun.

You know, 50 enemy fighters trying to overrun our position, and we only got, you know, eight or 10 or 12, 12 guys in this position with, you know, some Iraqi soldiers who were pretty much worthless when it came to beating back an enemy attack like that. So, um,

and by the way, there were many positions, small positions, some, sniper size elements that were overrun and dispensable. I know before we showed up, there was an element that disappeared. And they found their bodies months later, but you know, same thing. It was a smaller element of I don't know

It was five or six guys in a sniper type element they got overrun. They did no no one knew what happened to him and it happened to large Fortified positions as well if you remember some of the checkpoints that were well fortified and built up and they got completely overrun by by by by moosh and so yeah, you might driving a big thousand pound VBI truck bomb into their position horrible we had to carry all kinds of that firepower with us we had to carry it on our back so the belt fed machine guns the guys carrying those those the machine guns that we're going to beat back enemy attacks um Carl Gustav was was our shoulder fired right to recoil this 84 millimeter recoilless rifle that we use and it's heavy super heavy um it's great against enemy tanks uh the the mouge didn't have any tanks so um it was probably a lot heavier than what we needed uh our our leading peti-eat-e officer would just man up BTF and carry that thing in. And he figured out pretty quick, though, that I think the first time he tried to carry it in, he's, they were on a long range full patrol and going into an area that was, this was a rural area a little bit outside the city.

And so now, you know, we were used to patrol on the city streets in this rural area, MC1 that was kind of out east of Vermont. Now you're talking about patrolling in through farm fields and flooded, flooded areas where you might be an ankle or knee-deep mud. It looked like Vietnam. It looked like every war movie that you see about Vietnam. In fact, we used to call it Vietram. Vietram, that's what we call it.

And it was just like that. I mean, my first patrol that I went on out there, we're literally wading through irrigated fields through mud and waiting through canals, because there's all these little canals that are coming off the river to irrigate the fields. And there was some marine support and so we had a Huey helicopter and a cobra gunship, which are Vietnam error platforms.

And I was like, man, am I in Iraq right now or Vietnam? This is great. There were people out tilling the fields with like an ox. I mean, it looked like something straight out of it. It was actually crazy out there in MC1 how much it looked like Vietnam. It was nuts. It was nuts. And it was not anything that we'd expected to do, certainly.

So we just had to prepare for that contingency and figure out a way to, you know, to operate in that environment. But, but, you know, our LPO, is carrying that, you know, carrying that big man rocket. But he recognized right away, like initially he tried to carry some rounds in his backpack. And, you know, each of the, I mean, I don't even know what this thing weighs, but it's got to be what, it's got to be, I think the weapon itself probably weighs 25 pounds. And each of the rounds, because he's got to weigh 10 or 12 pounds. Yeah. And maybe 15 pounds.

I don't know. But so when you put that thing, when you load that thing, initially carried it in, loaded. and then put a round in his backpack and it just weighed him down. He couldn't do it. So, you know, it was hard keeping up. So he recognized, I'm going to carry it empty. I'll carry it in my hand. I'll put one round in my backpack that I can use.

And then we'll put another, I always carried a round in in my rucksack as well, you know, that I could hand off to those gunners if they needed it. But that gave us some firepower to be able to beat back an enemy attack, and we had to carry that stuff in on ourselves. So it just, it took, you know, one or two guys that could man up and do that. And our LPO was the guy to BTF with that. Yeah. You said if you needed it and you needed it a lot because you know I don't know if you remember this but you guys shot the six-month load out of Carl Gustav rounds in about a week and a half

So and then we had to borrow a bunch from the Rangers and we actually shot their load out too So it was awesome we actually got the cool air burst rounds for the Rangers which was awesome Yeah those are those are effective What does that mean air burst air burst? It means that it explodes over the top of so bad guys are shooting edge from a rooftop right like and and and They're hiding behind a wall. You could like, you can, you can, you can determine, like, how far they are and set a timer on there. So it explodes over the top of them. Oh, oh, oh, damn.

So it's pretty devastating. It's pretty awesome. We like devastating. Yeah. To you, good. The loser got after with some Carl G rounds. Yeah, that's kind of advanced, though, you know, like technology-wise. You can set how far you want it to.

It is advanced. It throws another kind of twist into, you know, you got to be. Yeah. But it's good to go. I didn't know it was like that. Well, they have. actually had air burst rounds for a really long time. Well, we don't hear about them, though.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I know. It's a little advanced in the civilian sector, I guess. Yeah, man. It's pretty dope, though. That's good stuff. All right.

Hey, I'm going to go back to the book here. Taking turns, they carried the big PRC 77 scrambler radio. And interestingly, if you remember when Andy Stumpf was just on, and we were talking about being new guys in the SEAL teams, in the 90s, we were still carrying the PRC 77 in our training operations which is pretty crazy we cared in buds there we did did it for our our our comp shots but taking turns they carried the big PRC 77 scramble radio which weighed 30 pounds with its battery they shared the weight of memory they took up what others could no longer bear often they carried each other the wounded or weak they carried infections they

carried chess sets basketballs vietnam English dictionaries insignia of rank bronze stars and purple hearts plastic cards imprinted with the code of conduct they carried diseases among them malaria and dysentery they carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds they carried the land itself Vietnam the place the soil a powdery orange red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces they carried the sky the whole atmosphere they carried it the humidity the monsoons the stink of fungus and decay all of it they carried gravity what a great description I mean that's just and

that's why like I said even though this book is you know part fiction and in a blend of truth and fiction, that clearly is written by someone that was on the ground in Vietnam. And there's a lot of similarities between that environment and the land itself and the atmosphere in Ramadi. What do you think of when you think of the atmosphere

and the land in Ramadi? Just listen to that, I mean, it just takes me right back there, you know, to, oh, some, no one could have been able to write that unless they'd been there, you know, unless they've been a part of that. and, you know, what that was like for us. And the first thing I remember about being in Rottie is just the stench.

You know, there was always the stench of something burning, always the stench of something burning. And whether it was civilians burning trash, because there's no trash pickup in this total war zone city, and you see these giant trash piles everywhere. And certainly there was the stench of that garbage all the time. And so they'd be burning trash, and a lot of the burning was a burning vehicle in the street.

They got IED, you know, that was an explosion that went off. That was a building that was on fire because the tanks hit it with a main gun round. And, you know, or the bad guys had driven a truck bomb into a position and just smoke in the air. And I remember that stench of burning. And I remember the stench of the trash, the garbage and sewage, raw sewage. That was always a stench. as well and that kind of takes me back there and the kind of haze in the air that you get that kind of Iraqi haze it's kind of like all those smells that you talk about it's kind of like

war is hanging in the air because it's fire and it's gunpowder and it's trash and it's like that smell is war in my mind if I smelled that smell I'd think we're at war right now that sometimes if you know sometimes you'll smell a similar smell or things like that I was just kind of take me right back to to be in that environment. Yeah, the stench, I think, is of that. But it was also a stench that we loved as well. Because you know this is what we dreamed about our whole life. And I remember Tony and I talking about that, you know, just, this is where we wanted to be.

Right. I mean, people in T.E. Bruiser, our boys were ready to get after it and be a part of that. And, you know, where else we want to want to be that in that? Incredibly difficult environment, you know, this most dangerous battlefield and We wanted to be a part of that so is that it was it stunk, but it was it was it was a good I remember the first first big operation we did in the moulab and I'm rolling in there and it's it's dark and we kind of turned this main corner and as soon as we turn this main corner There's there's tires in the street on fire and

You know, so you I could smell it before but I was like what's that well? I smell a smell burning tires and sure enough we turn the corner and it screws up your night vision goggles because now they're getting all bled out by the bright light and and then as the sun's coming up a little bit you see the dark smoke and I remember that to me I don't know why but that to me was the switch in my mind because because there's that was the first because in my first big operation that was the first thing that I said to myself though those are the bad guys though the bad guys did that they're here they were just there you know it's like my first moment of saying that and it's also very distracting and hard to see and all that other stuff and and i remember when i was

running training and we would do mount scenarios my one of my big things you know i'd say all right guys how many tires you're going to put out to burn and and i remember one time someone's like you know we're not going to do the tires tonight and i said no we're doing the tires tonight always set tires on fire let that be known because it screws things up and i think it was just my own personal desire to be taken back to that place like you were just talking about. Well, I remember those mouth scenarios and going out there with you. You know, when you're running that training when I was at, you know, when I was an operations officer, an executive officer at a SEAL team.

And it took me right back there. Oh, yeah. It took me the smell, you know, the stench. We'd hear the call, the prayer, you know, comes out. And you'd see the graffitied walls. And it was, it was so much like that. And it was awesome. You know, when you put your night vision?

on out in our when we really got after it with the mount training facility and really did everything we could dissimulate what the guys were going to experience man you couldn't you couldn't tell actually you could you if you if you got transplanted you wouldn't because we did the even the because in Ramadi all the the electrical wires were all knocked down so we'd string these crazy wires up just randomly in our in the streets to make it look because because guess what you'd be running and you get caught up in this wire and you got to make sure it's not an iED so you can't just pull you know it's all these little things to simulate as best you can.

But thank God you didn't have the rivers of raw sewage running through the streets. Every once in a while, our guys would slip and fall down into, which was just horrible. I had one of my first deployment. This guy was walking, and I don't know what this was, but we were just walking, and all of a sudden he walked and he fell through, it was like there was a hardened shell, and he fell through this hardened shell right into a sewage pit. And I was, because all the, I don't know what the shell was made of, but it was, we know what was under it. It was nasty.

There was a big metal pipe across, across, what you remember we called it shit creek. That was actually the official name on the map. Yeah, because it was literally like a creek of rossooage. And there was a big metal pipe. And we often patrolled across this pipe. You know, it was the one where you didn't have to jump it. You could actually just walk across. And later, actually, some of the army guys had burned the grueled.

grass out there and there were iEDs all around it we didn't even know we're there when we first patrolled in uh but one one guy was with us he slipped off the pipe and uh fell into the fell into uh shit creek um which and now you know he's he's got to be in that uniform for the next 24 hours it's only a 48 hour operation no uh no shower yeah no shower for a good 24 48 hours that's good times right there i think the the one thing missing too from um you know from uh that we couldn't recreate in that in that mountain area that you were running it was it was so awesome but the just the heat like the the heat was overwhelming and I think that's that's what really got guys even guys that were in really good shape who were you know great athletes if you weren't acclimatized

to that did it just didn't matter until you really got acclimatized um it would crush you and I remember that going in you know even like I said at nighttime it's still like 95 degrees outside and and you know when the sun's coming up there'd be a little bit of breeze kind of early morning, you get a little bit of coolness. And we're talking to it's like high 90s, right? But you know it's going to hit 117, you know, for the high that day. And you're sitting on the rooftop and my my rucksack is still covered with tar where, you know, the tar starts creeping out at the rooftop and just melting into your bag and sticking

onto your weapon and your gear and your uniforms. Now, I sweat a lot. Like, I'm a sweat. I sweat a lot as a person. I remember, but I remember one time, and it wasn't when we did cop Falcon the first time, but it wasn't when they had air conditioning in there yet. It was like in one of those inter-between ops, and I was down there. You guys went out, you guys were working, and I was in there, Cop Falcon.

And I had come down in a Bradley or in a Humvee. Bradley's are hot. Humvee, they're both hot. But then I got in the building and I was coordinating with, you know, the company commander, and I'm sitting there. And now I'm not doing, now I haven't been doing anything physical. In fact, I think I was inside with my gear off just with my body armor on, but I'm just sitting there and I'm sitting there like looking at a battle map and it's just me. No one's with me.

I'm just looking at the battle map. I think I'm trying to you. You're probably heading out in the city and you're going somewhere and I'm looking at where you are. And there is a stream of sweat. I'm not doing anything. I'm just literally sitting looking at a map and there is a of sweat coming off of my nose onto the battle map. And I thought to myself, bro, it's hot. It is hot here. Well, and you were in the shade then and no, this was this was at night

Oh you at night time like we came down at night you guys inserted and I was just sitting there So I've been sitting there for a and that's one thing that I I always know this is the the hottest time of day in the desert Is when the sun goes down. I don't know if this is a true physics thing if you're a scientist and you want to come back at me with the facts Maybe I'm wrong but let me tell you what it feels like and I say this the heat comes out of the ground So all that sun's been beaten down on the ground all day. The heat comes out of the ground and then the wind stops. And so it's just that is the hottest time. It's true here in the Southern California desert and it was true in Iraq that the hottest few hours was after the sun goes down like the next two to three hours is the worst.

Absolutely brutal. On that same operation, I remember we were running out of water because we were out. We had moved out 300 yards or so down the street and set up in that big four-story apartment building. And we were running out of water. So we had to do, so I remember we doing a daytime. I was like, we got a couple guys. We had a stretcher. We had a foldable, like Israeli stretcher that we, we open up.

And me and three other guys are sprinting down the street. Because we know there's snipers out here. I mean, we're right in the, you know, we're outside the perimeter. And we're running back to where you were at the Cop Falcon. And we loaded up a bunch of cases of water and some MREs. And then we're sprinting back. And I remember getting back from that. You know, and we did that at like, it's probably like two.

o'clock in the afternoon. It's literally like 117, 120 degrees. And I was, of course, we had our gear on. And we're doing this 300 yards sprint carrying a stretcher that probably weighs like 150 pounds. We were bringing enough water for like 20 guys. And it was, you know, in food. And it was, I don't think I, I mean, I look like I just got out of the shower for sure. Just sweating through all your gear. And a lot of our eye pro, you know, there was the requirement you had to wear eye protection. So either like ballistic glasses or. And what guys had been wearing previously was the goggles that you wear to protect your eyes. You couldn't wear it because if you had it on, it would be completely fogged up and you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you. And it was like, okay, I can protect my eyes or I can like get shot and killed or trip over something and not be able to get where I need to go. And you, yeah, because you would be completely blinded by the, by the fog.

And nothing where we try to get the high speed ones with like the little. Oh, yeah, the fan inside. What's about high tech? Here's some high tech echo. We got these goggles that had little miniature fans in them to blow fresh air in there They just sucked at all everything sucks nothing works Like windshield wipers, you know those ones? That's what you need something That was another little T you bruiser saying everything sucks nothing works

You know because I'm gonna say like hey man hey you know this this thing's not working I'll be like yeah everything sucks nothing works deal with it You know it's like oh everything sucks nothing works next we know that it's a given everything sucks nothing works BTF BTF BTF And actually we talked about the heat But you know we didn't talk about is the damn moon dust Because you know he's talking about there they had orange red dust the moon dust in Ramadi was nasty and gnarly and it was everywhere I remember specifically Corregador was

Completely covered which was the the camp on the eastern side of Ramadi where the first of the 506 was there and then we had a detachment of seals there and And when you'd go over there, it was just, it was, every step you took, there was a, even trails that were getting walked on all day to the head or, or to the chow hall, those trails that were walked on every single day. Every, it didn't matter. Every time you took a step, there's a little cloud burst of this moon dust, this fine, fine moon dust that covered everything. And it was all over the city, too. It was like talcum powder.

And it was, you know, those tanks would come in, they'd crunch up the concrete. So even if it was, even if it had been previously paved, Now you're going to, you got, you got sand, you know, dirt and, and it just, I remember it getting in everything. So we park our vehicles. I remember in particular at Combat Outposts Grant, you know, right in the heart of just South Central Romadi. And it was patrolling out of there.

You were in like knee-deep moon dust. So, you know, now, and we're patrolling out into a sniper overwatch position, moving out nighttime. And not only is it dusty and getting all over stuff. It gets in your weapons. And, you know, you have to constantly clean them. And, and, but I remember, we get. to where we were going you know get in an overwatch position and you'd often have to take your boots off and just dump out like a pound of sand of that moon dust that had gotten inside your boots that it got in through the little holes in your little tiny tiny holes on your jungle what is moon dust just it's the dust that happens yeah it's this fine fine fine fine it's like layf said it's like talcum powder but it's dirt it's some kind of fine fine sand again I'm sure there's some scientists that's gonna say that what it specifically is

But as far as I'm concerned, it's moon dust. That's where it came from. But this is, we're not talking about, like, on the beach, you know, in Hawaii. Right, right. We're talking, this is like, if you, you walk through this stuff, it's all over you. It gets everywhere. There's literally walking through it, and there's like a cloud of dust coming behind you. It's just so fine.

Oh, yeah. It's getting your mouth in your nose. Yeah, when a vehicle would drive by it, you're same thing. It would be just jog. You be walking in, you're just breathing this moon dust in. It's, and it's nasty. You blow your nose, and it's just like. Oh, it's the color of the moon dust.

It's wet. Yeah. Like when you, if you ride dirt bikes or something, in more of a dry area, I mean, obviously, I'm sure it's way worse than, you know,

in Romani, but same thing. When you breathe, you breathe it in, you breathe it in, you cough, it's going to come out. It's everywhere. Yeah.

Blow your nose is just that. That's just how it is over there. It was awesome. Everywhere. Good times. I'm taking us back to them. They moved like mules. By daylight,

they took sniper fire, At night they were mortared But it was not battle it was just the endless march village to village without purpose nothing won or lost They marched for the sake of the march they plotted along slowly dumbly leaning forward against the heat unthinking all blood and bone Simple grunts soldiering with their legs Toiling up the hills and down into the paddies and across the river and up and down again just humping one step and then the next and then another but no volition no will because it was automatic it was anatomy and the war was entirely a

matter of posture and carriage the hump was everything a kind of inertia a kind of emptiness a dullness of desire and intellect and conscious and hope and human sensibility their principles Were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men,

blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages where it would always be the same. They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flack jackets, walking bear, which was dangerous, but which helped ease the strain. Now, that section obviously paints something different than what we experienced because, and you can see what he's talking about. You know, you've got soldiers that don't know what the mission is, that don't understand what the strategy is.

And, you know, there's all kinds of books about Vietnam. And at the highest, you know, we talk about sometimes how maybe we didn't do a good job of telling people what the strategy was. But at the highest levels in the Vietnam War, there's confusion on what the strategy is. So there's no way that some front-line grunt understands why he's clearing this village and not that village or why it's that village and not this village. They just don't know. So what does it become? It becomes like they are just robots. human robots moving forward.

And I think we were very fortunate to be in a situation where, you know, we had a better understanding. And again, we talk about this in the book. We could have done a better job and should have done a better job of making sure that everybody understood more, but there was understanding. There was at a minimum. Everybody understood at a minimum the evil that was there. The evil that was there in Ramadi in Iraq that was torturing people, raping people, killing people, trying to enslave people.

Everybody understood that. There was evil there, and that's what we were fighting against, trying to help this local populace who was completely at the mercy of this insurgent group, which, by the way, had no mercy. So I think we had that benefit for us But one thing that is completely Unchanged is this talk of this strain The strain that is put on the soldiers on the ground and when you think back to the strain that you felt that your men felt What do you think of what do you think of when you think of the strain? I can absolutely relate to that.

I mean, it's the, it's something you and I talked about, right? When we got home, when we got home, it was, you called it the burden, right? When we got, we got home and we, I didn't even recognize how powerful that was. You know what I remember talking to you about it? We were like, all of a sudden we could relax. Like there weren't, we weren't people trying to kill us, right? There were, when we arrived back from that deployment to her body and we're back San Diego and you and just the recognition that it's not just from our personal like

hey not people aren't trying to kill me but like I no longer am carrying the burden of the decisions that I make and people's lives are on the line right like at this moment right now and I want to make sure that I've thought through all the contingencies you know are we ready you know for for these worst case scenarios have we have we planned you know have we rehearsed these things have we trained have we thought through what the enemy might do how could they hit where we hadn't even foreseen it. You know, that burden that you just carried all the time. And for me, you know, man, after Mark got killed and Ryan got wounded,

it was just, you know, four months into our deployment, it was just this recognition. I'm like, man, that can happen at any time. And I knew it could happen any time prior to that. You know, it wasn't that we got complacent or that, but it was, we've gotten away with it so many times that you all, you start kind of see like maybe we can make it through this thing, you know. without losing people as, and just going out there,

and as you've talked about, you can just only get lucky so many times, like with all that evil and all that horribleness out there, that it can happen anytime. And that's the strain that I think that certainly I felt that for other guys felt. When you see that your brothers killed or wounded, when you've had close calls

and you recognize just how, how close we are to death any time. Anytime we're rolling out there. That is a strain. It is a strain on you and it's something that wears on you. And I think for me, it was just always worried about like just the, and when you see the violence of it, you know, the vehicle graveyard that we rolled out through. Every time we're driving out the gate and just the twisted hulks of metal that used to be a vehicle

that carried men or women in them. You know, and those were U.S. troops that were either killed or horribly wounded that were in that vehicle that were destroyed. Or if you see an ID go off and there's a 100-foot fireball in the air and just frag, you know, the metal fragments raining down, you know, for hundreds of yards in all directions, something like that. Like, just the power of that, you know, the violence of machine gun fire that's coming in close to you. And I often describe as just the, you know, I wrote about in the book,

the biggest, strongest guy you can imagine just smashing the wall with a hammer next to you, as hard as he can. An inch from your head. An inch from your head. Just throwing concrete fragments everywhere. And there's, you know, now it's seven to 800 rounds per minute of that. Of that coming in at you with a belt fed, belt fed machine gun. Maybe there's multiple ones shooting at you.

RPG rockets just this rocking explosion. This rings your bell, you know, even if it's just on the wall outside. You know, if one of those things hits the wall. window and detonates on the bars on the window. It's going to just frag everybody in the room. It's going to be horribly wounded or killed. So that was a strain all the time. And I think the difference for us, though, is the, you know, and there isn't, there were certainly some guys, and you talk about leadership that we learn, right, the guys carrying those heavy machine guns, the belt fed machine guns and all the gear with them. And they're like, man, do I have to

carry this thing? You know, as a leader, we had to remind them why that was important. You know, They got that love-hate relationship. The machine gunners, they love to shoot that machine gun, and they're awesome at it. They hate to carry the machine gun, right? It's that love-hate relationship. So when they're going in on a full patrol that's a mile, a mile-and-a-half full patrol into a tough area

and they're carrying all that heavy weight, they get focused on that. So you've got to help them recognize, like this is why you're such a critical part of the team and why we've got to have these machine guns. So you've got to do, you know, as a leader, something we had to do all the time. But I think for these guys in Vietnam,

They're driving or flying into an area, but throwing into an area that's, it seems like they're seeing new terrain all the time. You know, for us in Ramadi, it was this tiny city. That was, it's like what, three by three miles, you know, across? You're talking about just the central, central Romani piece of it. Very small. And we're going into the same areas all the time, you know,

Jay Street, the J block, you know, Papa 10, you know, these areas that going down baseline road and, you know, to 20th Street, and these areas that we, we, got to know and we understood, you know, where the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, the, the, uh, and we'd been in so many of these buildings and we, so then we had to have the, we had to have the, we had to mix it up and not patrol down the same streets every time and try to come in and do some misdirection stuff. Um, but we got to know these areas. Um, and, you know, even though it was a small area, you know, and these tanks might be less than a mile away from you. Maybe they're

even a half mile down the road, you know, in that environment. If there's, if there's, you know, 35 IEDs that could destroy anyone of which could destroy the tank between you and them half a mile away, they might as well be 100 miles away. It doesn't matter. So, you know, we had to plan for those continues. We had to be ready. But that was a strain that I certainly remember well. And I remember that conversation, as I'm sure you do, coming back and recognizing like, wow, I didn't even realize how heavy that strain was until we got back and it was it was lifted. Yeah. It didn't happen right away. It happened. And like we were, at least I feel like we were conditioned. It would be like going to a planet where there was much, much higher gravity. And you don't even realize how much more weight you're carrying. And then when we came home, it wasn't like instantly the gravity changed. It was like it slowly.

And one day, for me it was about a month that all of a sudden I woke up. And instead of the first thought I had when I woke up of like what's going to happen today, what bad thing can happen today it was like oh I think the waves look good and I'm going surfing and did go from that thought process from like you said it's the horror of the of the imminent danger because like you said you can only get lucky so many times and you go out day after day after day and you got I'm watching guys all over my guys all over Romadi there's no possible way that they can make it through today without taking a casualty and then they and then they make it through that day I got five elements three elements five elements two elements

all out on the battlefield at the same time there's no way they're going to make it through today without a casualty they make it through today and guess what you wake up the next day and now you're carrying that day and today So you make it through that day now you're carrying three days and that just built and built and built and every once in a while obviously We would take a casualty and maybe you get a little reset, but you don't it's just there and it's there heavy all the time and what's really interesting about this Is you might be thinking as Leif explained is you explain you know those feelings and as I'm talking about right now You might think that we were sullen and worried and and and panicking

or but but I'm sitting here thinking about it we would and everybody in the in the task unit we were having fun we were laughing we would have conversations we'd make fun of each other we'd make fun of our friends we'd make fun of our boss we'd make fun of everybody we'd laugh we'd have a great time and the the strain even though there's there's you know fun and good times on top of it that strain is absolutely there and it stays there the whole time and it just builds I think the big illustration for that to me was when an operation was going on, right? And vehicles were lined up. Like, you know, the vehicles are lined up on the, we had this, that main street, you know,

outside of the, the, the TACTor operation center and, you know, where your office was. And I remember that, that bond that we had in TASC unit Bruiser, you know, so often you get what the seals are doing their thing. And you got the support personnel that are running the radios and the CBs that run the camp. And they just do different stuff. and they don't, you know, what was so awesome about tasking a bruiser was like, you line those trucks up and we know we're going out, you know, we're going out at operation. And if you weren't, if you weren't coming on the op, I know you would, you would always be out there, you know, out there shaking everybody's hands and talking to

them. And not in a way of like, you know, not in a way that there was morbid, right? But in a way of like just the respect and knowledge that any time we're going out, like at any one time there may be, there may be. be any of these guys that are rolling out may not be coming back from this. They may be coming back in a body back. And that we had to be ready for that all the time because it was almost a daily, daily thing. And I just, not only, you know, for you know, the support person of the comms guys, you know, our radio one that were out there.

These aren't seals, but they're out there getting the radios ready and helping us out. People just come, you know, our operation specialist, you know, chief coming out there. I remember all those guys just lined up shaking hands, talking to people. It was just that, and for the few opposite, you know, that I didn't go on with another, another, if we had something else going on and another unit's going out with our guys on a different operation, I'm not a part of the same thing, like going out there talking those guys, shaking their hands and knowing that, like, they may not be coming back from that. And I think that was the biggest, that was the biggest to me, like, illustration of, like, that strain. And again, we laughed, we joked. It wasn't, there was nothing morbid. We were telling jokes and laughing and kidding each other.

But that was really there. And I remember we got relieved, you know, by the next SEAL team, Seal Team 5 that came in. And, you know, good, good brothers of mine that I'd serve with because I'd come from SEAL Team 5. And I knew those guys when they were going out too. You know, I knew what they were going out into, you know. And I just remember going out there for that goodbye to them

and shaking their hands and talking about because we knew exactly what they were going into and they're going to keep getting effort. Yeah, that was one of the, I remember when those guys came and I was doing, and like the turnover brief to their whole troop and I was you know I had a sign I put a slide up and I was going through this and that and the other thing and I'm like okay you guys are going to take casualties and and like I never thought in a million years that somebody would be briefing me hey you guys are going to take casualties I'm like oh you guys might hey it's dangerous it's like you guys are going to take casualties that is a way you guys are going to take casualties that is

what is going to happen and that might sound negative but that was the facts that it was a hundred percent true that they were going to take casualties and we knew it we knew it and that's what was so hard to shake their hand and tell them goodbye and good luck and and watch them roll out for the first time alone without us and know that could be tonight and could be tonight hit another section right now this is talking about talking about the men again for the most part they carried themselves with poise a kind of dignity now and then however there were times of panic when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and

said dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers hoping not to die act to what we were just talking about to have guys and you know we we did a podcast about a guy named Colonel Depeake and his his book called battle studies and when he describes men and one of his key points is he's saying that men are horrified and they're scared of death and that they have this just incredible Obviously this under underlying

Will of self-preservation right that's the that's the thing that fuels people and he just talks about this tiny percentage of of men That will overcome that and they'll be brave and to think that we were lucky enough to serve with guys in our task unit and to see the next task unit to come in and to see the soldiers and see the Marines to overcome that strain on a daily basis That is absolutely one of the most humbling things that I think I will ever experience in my life That's what that's what courage all about you know I think Just to to see guys you know that are just in the things you know that are just in the third thick of the fight with bullets missing their heads by inches.

You know, I remember, I remember on the rooftop of building 99, right on 20th Street. And we were getting hammered. I mean, enemy rounds coming in by hundreds and hundreds of rounds coming in, shattering windows. And I remember our EOD bomb disposal technician, awesome, awesome guy. And he's a lane on the rooftop and there's armor piercing rounds coming through the roof, punching through concrete wall that's just like

three inches over his head and he's just laying there and I remember crawling up there trying to figure out is everybody okay and he's like looking at me like thumbs up laughing about it and I mean just the humor of those guys right dealing with that

and knowing you know again that that could happen at any time but you know just seeing the guys guys like Mark Lee or just the most hilarious guy you can imagine just cracking jokes you know and singing the

you know the cheese ball 80s tunes you know I am the warrior and and uh and us laughing about and talking about that stuff and just just that's how they dealt with you know and and and but it just tremendous courage and you know not just our seals not just guys that that we work with those those Marines and the soldiers that we served alongside and just um watching those guys day in and day out you know um who often didn't have as much control over what they were doing as we did you know down at the front line level um but just out of there getting after it with a great attitude and you know no nobody's fearless right nobody you know

some people think oh that we you know we get that question all the time right from business like well it's you know it's you know mortals are you know fearful but you guys are fearless like no nobody's fearless like you you recognize how mortal you are and that can happen at a time and yet you see these guys just just totally selfless you know courage would just incredible courage to overcome that and just amazing that's that's that's that's really to me that is the that is the bright light you know that we brought back from you know from from that conflict to see and witness that and just the the tremendous human spirit that can overcome anything you're gonna kind of wrap up this section right now with one last little

piece of the book here and this is one of the guys named lavender last name lavender he gets killed and the lieutenant takes the blame himself he he feels that that blame and part of it he kind of blames on his his thinking about his girl back home Martha and he's thinking he wasn't doing everything he could do and what could he have done better and where did he let his guys down and what he could do different from now on and I'm going to the book he loved her but he hated her no more fantasies he told himself Henceforth when he thought about Martha it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere He would shut down the daydreams this was not Mount Sebastian it was another world

Where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity Kayao was right boom down And you were dead never partly dead Briefly in the rain lieutenant cross saw Martha's gray eyes gazing back at him He understood it was very sad he thought things men carried inside The things med did or felt they had to do He almost nodded at her but he didn't instead he went back to his maps

He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn't help Lavender. He knew that. But from this point on, he would comport himself as an officer. He would dispose of his good luck pebble, swallow it, maybe, or use least drunk slingshot, or just drop it along the trail. On the march, he would impose strict field. discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at the proper pace and at the proper interval. He would insist on clean

weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavender's dope. Later in the day, perhaps he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it. He would look them in the eyes keeping his chin level and he would issue new SOPs in a calm interpersonal tone of voice a lieutenant's voice leaving no room for argument or discussion commencing immediately he'd tell them they would no longer abandon equipment along the route of March they would police up their acts they would get their shit together and keep it together and maintain it neatly

in a good working order he would not tolerate laxity he would show strength distancing himself so he falls back on what we fall back on all the time on discipline on standard operating procedures on maintaining everything in good working order and one of the things that you can see here and people we get this too is You'd think these guys are in Vietnam. Of course they're going to be paying attention. Of course they're going to keep their weapon. Your weapon keeps you alive in a firefight.

Of course you're going to keep your weapons clean. But he as the leader, he has to lead. And I think that's a common misconception. And we do talk about it all the time. And it's one of the most frequent questions I get asked. Well, you know, in the SEAL teams, you've got everyone's motivated and everyone's focused. And it's a life or death. you know, so they're going to stay sharp

and they're going to follow a procedure no matter what. And, you know, my team's not like that in the business world. Or, you know, people I work with aren't like that. And the best teams, they only follow that procedure, right? Because they've got leaders that are stepping up and making it happen. And look, we have some amazing people in the SEAL teams,

just like we have some amazing people in the military, in Army and Marine units and other special operations units, etc. But even with life or death on the line, people get complacent. People start letting the ball drop, not cleaning their weapons when they need to or are not falling a procedure or letting their guard down because, well, we've done this operation a dozen times and nothing bad's happened, so nothing bad's going to happen, right? It's like this common human emotion that you just make these assumptions. And so the only way that units are going to stay focused and not have that happen

when they've got good leaders, they've got a fire team. leader in charge of his four guys is stepping up and making sure that his guys are squared away and stay in focus. They've got a, you know, they've got a squad leader making sure that his squad is squared, the LPO leading pet officers out there making sure that guys are dialed. They're not cutting corners. I mean, I always saw that with guys, you know, we've been in the cyber overwatch positions. You got like, some of them had like one stairwell in and out. And someone's going to watch that stairwell. Someone's got to have a weapon and looking down that stairwell for 72 hours. Yeah. And so, you know, hopefully we can rotate some guys out so it's not just the same guy. But

But even so, it's going to be several hours are you watching down that stairwell? And it's boring as hell, right? And guess what? You're the only guy watching that stairwell, and everyone else has got their backs to you. So if you're not doing your job, those people are getting shot in the back. And yet, what happens? Hey, I've been here. I've been on the stairwell.

Look, man, we've done this operation a dozen times. We've been in this building multiple times. Nobody's ever come up the stairs. I've been sitting here for hours on in. Like, it hasn't happened. And so people will fall asleep. People will stop paying attention. And only if you've got good leaders who are going to go check on that guy and make sure that he recognizes that, listen, everybody's dependent on you.

You know, not only you're going to get killed if someone slips up the stairs, but the guys, people are going to get shot in the back and they were dependent on you to have their back. And it requires those good leaders at every level stepping up and going and checking on that guy. And if he is tired, he can't stay away, rotate him out, put somebody else in there. But it requires leadership at every level. So even with life and death on line, people get complacent. And this really goes to what you and I talk about all the time, which is, what does it really mean to take care of your people? You know, that year, well, I want to be liked, you know,

so I don't want to be a real hard ass and I don't want to, you know, I don't want to like, you know, I don't want to push too hard in that direction. Or like if they cut this corner, maybe it's not that big of a deal. And obviously, you can go too far in that direction, right? But you become the slave driver. But are you really taking care of your people? if you're allowing them to cut some corners that they shouldn't be, you know, or to get complacent when they shouldn't be.

And the answer is no, of course not. You're setting them up for failure. And so you as a leader have got to step up and make sure that your peer, you know, the peers around you, if you're not in a leadership position, it certainly as a leader, make sure that your team and those around you are towing the line and following those standard operating procedures and achieving that highest standard possible because that's what is going to allow them to stay alive on the battlefield and ultimately accomplish the mission and certainly dominate and win on their battlefield

anywhere, you know, in business and life. Yeah, you can definitely see that all the things that Lieutenant Cross rattles off that he's going to now start imposing. He's going to start taking care. He thought he was taking care of his men before by letting them have dirty weapons and not hounded him about that, by letting him drop gear on the trail, by not sending out flank security because it's a pain in the ass. He thought he was taking care of his guys and he got one of his guys killed and that is

Exactly the point when you're taking care of your people that means you're taking care of them That means you're holding the line you're holding the discipline and you're making sure that they are As safe as you can possibly make them while still accomplishing the mission and that is the Pretty much what we had for this book by the way again. It's called Tim O'Brien the name of the book It's called The Things They Carried. Definitely a solid read. And I would check it out and Echo will have it up on the website. And yeah, I know.

For those of you, they're going to come at me and say it was a fiction book. So now you're going to start submitting to me every fiction war book that's ever been written. I know there's some damn good ones out there. And there's probably some I'm going to end up doing. But yeah, this is one of them that is. And again, it's fiction. But clearly it's based on experiences and it and and once again you can see that even though War evolves and war changes the the fundamental

The fundamentals of human nature in war Don't really change I'm I'm not into fiction books. I don't remember the last time I read a fiction book. I'm gonna read that book because that immediately resonated with me and puts me back in those just the sites and and smells and the stuff that we carry it and opens up some, you know, it's just, I look forward to digging into it in some detail. It's a good one.

And, you know, that's the thing when, when you are dealing with these books and you start to really, really listen to them and read them, there's always so much more than, than you get out of it the first time you go through it. So that's why, for me, you know, reading it, and then going through it again

and then sitting here and reading it and now when I put the headphones on and read it it's they definitely they definitely hit you and you get more out of them in my opinion no doubt there's something magical about putting the headphones on you know because you you had read a couple of those excerpts when we were talking about this over the last couple days and what the podcast is going to be about

and it did not it did not you know once sitting here listening to you read it with the headphones on it's like takes me immediately back to Ramadi thinking about the stuff that we you know the things that we carried with us and the moon dust that we patrolled through and those smells and stanches and the heat and frankly I'm pretty eager to go back and get something right now

I'm ready to make it happen indeed and you know what we got to do is it's the same thing with these other books with with our book and I know you know we were kind of talking about this a little bit you know when you write a book you're confined in in some way

to the structure of the book and to the length of the book and to the balance of the book and so you can't just drill down on some facet that might be it might not be totally pertinent to that particular way that it's laid out but what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to get with next time you come on we gotta do we gotta do our own book we gotta do extreme ownership at least get it through a few chapters because because we we know the authors you know and we know that there's so so much back behind those that it would be awesome to sit there and and kind of give a bunch of those you know a bunch of the backstory behind these things and and I think next time we got to we got to make that happen let's do it I like that idea there's there's there's so much there and it is uh even going back and reviewing the book you're thinking about these little things I'm like oh we should have said that and obviously it doesn't illustrate this you know the the point and

we got to focus it but yeah there's a lot a lot behind that I mean I think about that blue on blusenary you know you know it's just an opening chapter extreme ownership and what that was about and all that went into that. And yeah, be great to talk about that in some detail. We'll have to get that next time. Now, extreme ownership, name of the book. Extreme ownership is also the name of something else that's about to happen. May 4th and 5th, the muster.

The Extreme Ownership Muster Leadership Conference. I guess is that appropriate to call it a leadership conference? I'm not sure. I guess if you had to classify what it is, then maybe we put in that category. But to me, the muster stands by itself, you know, and I think the definitions that, you know, that we utilize

a gathering together troops to prepare for war. I guess that fits very probably so. So I can't say I go into like big details about the muster, but I just mention it in case people are interested in getting better, especially from a leadership perspective and really from a huge, potential you know getting to where you think you can get getting beyond where you can think you can get I don't talk too much these above it if you so since you're here

and you're sitting here what do you think what's what what did you what like the highlights of the muster because we just did the first one last year in October 2017 I thought it was gonna be cool 2016 or sorry 2016 I what did I say 2017 oh yeah that hasn't happened yet I I I thought that the muster would be cool you know what I mean I thought hey this is gonna be be cool like it's gonna be cool we're gonna you know meet a bunch of cool people and we're gonna talk about all this cool stuff and and and do our best to pass on information and give and receive information all that so I thought it was gonna be cool

but it was a lot better than cool it was it was freaking awesome and what were like some highlights for you when you think about it what are you excited about for New York well you know we talk to so many people all the time right and and And awesome leaders, you know, from companies that we work with and different organizations out there. And it's just love, love working these leaders, love talking to them. I think, but the muster was, there was just something magical about that. You know, I remember, we couldn't have even predicted that, right? Oh, I think you just came up with a new tagline.

Come to the muster. It's magical. Yeah, magical. Come up with a new word. I'm going to take some shit for that. Come to the, we're going to call it the magical muster. Maybe we need to cut that piece out. So what was, what was magical about it?

Look, for me, what was, here's what, here's what, here's what, uh, coming off the stage, where we're talking about, you know, we're leaving people the idea of why, you know, they need to take advantage of every day, the gift that's been given to them by those brave warriors that gave their lives so that they have the ability to pursue that, you know. And I remember coming off the stage, you gave me, you just came up, gave me, big hug you're not a hugger I don't hug people very often not not at all not at all I thought maybe something like that was coming I was getting I was getting ready I was getting getting ready to do to as a sprawl but I remember that just just that emotion of like this was an

amazing event it was an amazing event I think what made it amazing was the you know we were able to interact with so many people you know and so many people that were in the game and had the same goals, the same drive. Exactly. And from so many different walks of life. You know, we had some awesome, we had some really high power, you know, senior executives from some great companies to, you know, mid-level managers and front-line leaders that are just aspiring to take on greater ownership, entrepreneurs, you know, the military, law enforcement,

firefighters, paramedics, I mean, across the space, some people that we couldn't even envisioned or imagine from, you know, from a volunteer, you know, not. nonprofit organizations and things like that, and interacting with so many different people that are eager to learn, to implement the principles of extreme ownership in their lives. That was awesome for me. It was interesting to me. Something I hadn't even thought about is the fact that, you know, after we spent folks, so many people had come up to me and said, you know, it was worth the price of admission

alone just to meet other participants here and learn from them and learn from each other, you know, fellow troopers. And it was just, it was awesome to see that. So for me, all the events, we speak at events all the time, and we speak at great events, and we work with great leaders, but it was the absolute best event of all time that I've ever been a part of, best audience. And I'm so fired up to go back, and it's going to be that much better in New York, right? It's going to be, there'll be a few of the same folks that are going to come and attend that

were there in San Diego, and there'll be a whole new group of people who couldn't come. It'll be even bigger, and it's going to be awesome. One of the things that that was awesome for me, and I know it was awesome for you too because we talked about it, but the interaction that we had with everybody, right? And I remember when we were kind of setting and planning the event, that was one of the things where, you know, we were talking about this. We could, hey, we could do this. We can have this person. And finally, I just was like, hey, bro, you know what we need to do? We need to just be there.

No backstage, no curtain, nothing. And we need to meet and interact and answer questions and get in the game with everybody. And that's exactly what we did. Like, for instance, you know, there's, there's, we'd do a section. We'd be up talking for an hour or answering questions for an hour and a half. When we'd get done with that hour and a half, we would just step forward to the stage and step down onto the floor. And there'd be people lined up to say, hey, what about this? Hey, you just said that.

And what do you think I should do here? And it was like that for, for two straight days. And not just after the sessions, but morning workouts, right? Our 0445 club PTs that were cranking out these awesome workouts. And we, I mean, all levels of athletes. There are some really high-end athletes or black belt-jit jujitsu players to the, you know, just some folks who have just started training or just started hitting the gym, been encouraged to by the podcast or whatnot, and came out and participating in that.

And walking, you know, jogging over to or walking back from those workouts, that's talking to those leaders and people talking about, hey, what would you do in this situation? You know, I remember having those conversations with people and you're helping them apply that stuff. We've heard through social media so many of those people, some of those specific conversations like, I can't believe how good this work. And here's what's going on. I'm now able to, I just got a promotion, you know, based on this. You know, that kind of feedback, we always talk about, right?

There's only two measures that matter, effective and ineffective. And how do you measure that? It's whether the team is accomplishing the mission. You're effective. If you're not accomplished a mission, it doesn't matter how hard you're working, you're not effective. And for us, that measure of effectiveness is that people are actually going out and kicking ass in their world. And they're getting promoted. They're accomplishing their mission.

They're building a better team. They're building better relationships with their boss, you know, with their peers, with the subcontractor they work for. And they're being more engaged members of their community, you know, a better parent, a better coach, a better team member across all walks of life. And I think that's really our measure of effectiveness. And it's just awesome to see so many folks doing extraordinary things that were part of the muster. And so looking forward to that May 4th and 5th in New York, it's going to be awesome. And it's going to be exactly what you described. We're going to keep that.

No matter how long we do this or how big the musters get, I never want to, never want it to be to lose that. Of me and you staying engaged with participants, not hide behind the curtain somewhere. in the green room, but being out front, talking to people, talking with leaders, you know, and helping them apply this stuff to get better what they do. This ain't the Wizard of Oz. We ain't going to be hiding behind the curtain. And, you know, and you talk about measures of success, effective, ineffective. Well, for me, like the biggest reward from doing the muster, it's similar to what we do

with our business of helping businesses, and it's always great to get that feedback. but to get a mass scale of, you know, three or 400 people and get that feedback about the promotions, the advancements, the goals achieved, the fitness goals achieved, the relationship goals. To get that feedback has just been, it's been awesome. So, like you said, we look forward to seeing you there. And, you know, actually speaking of the muster,

you're going to see Leif, yeah, you're going to see me, of course. You're going to see JP and Dave, Dave, Dave Burke, J.P. Danel, they're going to be there. You're also going to see Echo Charles. He's going to be there fully. Fully. And kind of cruising, too.

But he's going to be there fully, cruising hard. So you can get to meet. Most people want to meet Echo the most. He's like the bass player in the band that, like, you know, there's the lead guitarist. And then there's the lead vocalist who's out front with the weird pants on. But everyone looks at the bassist in the back that's hammering down the tracks laying it down Cruising echo Charles cruising you gonna get to meet him

So that was amazing to me actually the number of people lined up to to take pictures with you and talk to you I was getting jealous It was like that was awesome It's funny they don't ask me like real questions though it's more like on a social level Which I liked that You want to keep it that way yeah easy questions if you got like a leadership question you can go to lay if you can go to me if you want to do some socializing Get in that echo Charles line

Go and shake his hand You want to get in that echo Charles line One thing about the Buster in New York in particular Is like anything in New York City Got a limited space And we sold a lot of tickets to that thing already If you want to be there for it May 4th and 5th Get your tickets now

Because I think we're going to sell this thing out And I think that's highly likely So those may not be there I would get those things purchased ASAP If you if you want to be a part of that. Yeah, do it big part that I noticed from the last muster is The P you mentioned this before where people they'll come in they'll learn all this cool stuff and you know like-minded people But they become like real good friends, you know so like like that night when we had a jiu-jitsu training that night You could tell I thought that all these guys came they all came together. Yeah, no they didn't come together. They just became friends and now they're cruising as friends now and there's people and there's people

You know, doing things now. Yeah. We got podcasts. You know, out. Yeah, Brady and Simon. Brady and Simon. Brady and Simon also. Debbie.

Debbie and Sonia. Yeah, they got a podcast going. But there's someone else. Anyways, so there's people that are, that's the, that's the, what, Athena's podcast. You got the Trooper podcast. Trooper Project. Modern Athena.

Modern Athena's. So there's things that are coming out. Those are people that just met. They weren't friends rolling into the buster. They formed relationships. And now they're out just crushing things. Yeah. And that's how, you know how like, I mean, Jiu Jitsu does this a lot where you come in and you're like, you know, by yourself.

And then after a while, hey, this guy likes Jiu Jitsu. This guy likes Jiu Jitsu. Oh, wait. But wait. Hey, you watched, I don't know, you know, same, the same show. And slowly. Like Hawaii FIFO. Slowly.

You start to gravitate towards these people. But in this kind of situation, everyone's kind of like, like they're trying to get better, you know? Better at. This and so it's real similar better at life at life in general So it's almost like a double gravitation effect you know people like that's a scientific thing too by the way You know a lot of people don't know about the double gravitation effect With the muster double gravitation effect across the board and it's funny because you see it you see like everyone's all talking You know like if I step back. I see you in life talking you can kind of tell like all you guys have known each other for a long time

That's kind of what you see, but then you realize, oh, they haven't known each other for a long time. It's just pure double gravitation. Yeah, that double gravitation. I think some of that crossover, too, is, you know, when you realize that, you know, a police officer who's sitting next to you have, has some of the same challenge that you have as a small business, you know, entrepreneur. Who has the same problems as this guy who's the CEO of a big company. Yep. Who has the same problems as this person who's in a startup. Yep.

So, yeah. Who have, by the way, the same problems that Leif and I saw and experience. On the battlefield and there's solution this is the thing Those problems there are solutions to them They're out there this isn't this isn't magic as a matter of fact I know what I'll bust you down here but there ain't no magic there's knowledge to be in it's like jiu jitsu right Jiu jitsu isn't about magic there's no magic to jesus sometimes I do say magic It's magical magical but you do say it's a superpower it's a superpower and speaking of jiu jiu jitza we're gonna be training some

That's right that's right Friday evening we're gonna be getting on boom so if you come to the muster probably gonna go no ghee for travel purposes is that cool yeah okay so we'll go plan the no gee situation plus echo like do you like no gee better oh it goes in phases so right now it's only only so you can wear your uh your trooper your trooper the rash guard yeah yeah yeah for sure rash yeah hash guard yeah for sure so that is gonna happen echo like I said Back to my point, Echo Charles will be there and come and see him. And in the meantime, Echo, if somebody does want to support this podcast,

can you let us know how to do it? Yeah, man, there's a few ways. But I recommend supporting yourself. We talked about being prepared, right? Lefebepin. So a good way to prepare is to train. And with training comes help, which is supplementation. I was one of these guys who wasn't into supplements ever

Like all that's like that's fake I don't need it don't need it And really it's kind of true you kind of don't need it So I thought but if you get the right kind of sub like okay so you you know we talk about creole oil Okay okay okay supplements do matter So I'm gonna talk about some So was uh were you there when I rolled the other day on When's the last time I saw you?

A couple days ago. I don't know. Yeah, anyway, I went in there like training with Chris Ruiz and he's you know I saw you guys rolling. Yes, so I was there that day. Okay, so we, soap fish by the way. Yeah, and he goes hard. Black belt goes hard. Yeah. And I think I did three rounds with him. Soap fish. Yeah. Why do we call him soap? Because he's hard to get a hold of flying around. You can't hold on to him. Yeah. He's like slick and wiry and greasy with a black belt. And has the black. Yeah. It's one thing to be like a, you know, and untrained soap fish which can be hard enough by the way anyway the point is I go with him I did three rounds with him you know in a few more rounds with other people and you know that feeling when you do a workout and you're like oh I feel like I feel like the workout's not done I don't feel like as not like exhausted right as I need to be after workout like this yeah so I kind of had that feeling or I'm like okay I need to do it like who can I go with like a hard you know I need

to go like another round, right? And I remembered I took the Shun Tech. Yeah. You kind of forget about it because I took it. I don't mean this in a bad way. I don't. Yeah. I don't mean this as a backhanded.

This is going to be bad. Comment. Sure. But for everyone that doesn't quite know, I don't normally see you as a guy that's going, I need to get one more round. Yeah. You're right.

A lot of times you're like, Not actually good, you know what that one. No, you're actually not right. Oh. You know, you're talking about the old me. Okay. Yeah. This is the pre-shrum tech.

This is the pre-shrum tech. Pre-Metcon. Oh, yeah. We got you on the back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, that's not me. You know? You know what?

That is, to your full credit, you are different now. Not just because of your skill level in J-Git-2, but also because of your metcon, your endurance and all that. You've definitely, you used to be done. Well, yeah. So, and I talk about this before, where that's a good point, though, because one kind of plays off the other, especially if you don't like being tired. So if you get tired early, you're like, you're going to do less and you're going to try less things.

You're going to, you know, because you're kind of fighting that fight as well, you know. So when that tiredness goes away and you know how to deal with being tired, you're like, okay, now I'm kind of free to. try this if it fails I can try it again I cannot you know if you're if you're not in good shape or if you if you buckle to being tired it's like you only have a few bullets in the clip and once you're done you're kind of like oh my gun's worthless now you know the gun looks good from lifting weights and you know all this stuff but it's done after a few bullets but you load up the bullets endless bullets right you can go shoot targets here anyway well it's it is I will get since I gave you a a

a negative on the old you, I'll say the new you. You got some good. You got that jujitsu. Yeah. Which is way better than it used to be. Even the old Echo Charles though, when we were rolling back in the day with our mutual friend cake nuts and I, he'd go another round, particularly for us,

it was when our skill level was far below his. Oh, he likes those rounds. Way easier. Let's do another round with me smashing you. And keep in mind, in my defense, This is Jocko's evaluation of me when he's like you're done well yeah when you're rolling with Jock you're kind of done, you know But it's not like I was just this sack of potatoes that was just done it wasn't like that with the white belts you have were full of rounds That's what I'm hearing here from the standard that comes out of Jocco is very high I'll say

Understatement of the year right there Not that he's wrong not that he's wrong Listen I mean he's also he's just full of compliments all the time Yeah, Leif just said that to be you this I was like hey did I say I say something like this you know I think it was like something positive about Laif and he's like yeah you did say that and I remember it because it's like the one of the four compliments you give me in the last 12 years I was like oh that's cool don't happen often got to note them got to know them when they have no but that it that is true and it does help and not in just

that way though not in just the way like oh I can I'm in better shape and that's good that's true but you just you can do jiu jiu jitza now without that added enemy in there so you're like free to do more jiu-jitzen you get better at jiu-jitsu so to sum up the last 12 minutes of conversation what you're saying is yes on a dot com slash jocco yeah you know I got into the story is a good one my opinion um yeah no that day that's how I felt I felt like my workout I was physically I was actually I was actually thinking the same thing because the other thing about Chris Chris soapfish is he moves a lot a lot is a mover and when you move you move even if the guy's lighter than you

you have to move with them or you're gonna get you're gonna get caught and so you had to move you couldn't stop moving and he's gonna move all the time on you and that's why I was really impressed

with the fact that I've trained you so well I was impressed with how you kept bringing and you want to do another round I could see it so good on you good on your shroom tech and I did take and Metcon the thing is you forget

you take it Jitsu because I took it like like an hour before even, well, I guess it was about an hour before it actually was rolling. But it was like maybe half hour for it left. I kind of forgot. I'll tell you, in this whole idea of Shroom Tech and what's the other one, performance?

Total strength. The coconut thing or the strawberry banana. Yeah, yeah. Total strength. So if that's considered cheating, then I've been cheating a lot lately. Because I'm rolling in, man. A lot of times I've already worked out in the day. I've been up all day.

I went, sir. I've done a bunch of stuff. So it's not like I'm rolling in. to the gym or to train the jih Tzu being all fresh. I haven't been getting a massage all day. No, I've been actually grinding it out all day and so sometimes I need to get on some of that. Yeah, man. And so I'm gonna call it good.

This is really why I say it's cheating because I'm always saying it while I'm looking at you and it's cheating if it's like me against you who's the batter warrior kind of thing. It's all, but you're on Shroom Tech, okay. So you have a little help then. So, you know, but no, if you're training, And you want to learn jujitsu or you want to you know push performance so you because that's how you get gains you recover from exercise and you want to push exercise and you want to in Jiu Jitsu situation where you want to train be able to train longer without you know the burden of this fatigue where you might have to quit at a certain time or whatever don't have to quit no well you know you know what I mean you don't have to quit it is helpful this shrewing tech

It's some point when you get rabdo and you start pissing blood. No, right, yeah. It's probably time to take some recovery. All right, this is my nonverbal signal for, let's move to the next item when I do this. Yeah, no, but there's still a lot to be said, though. That's the thing. See, and I think that's really the value of this whole thing is that this needs to be talked about. If I knew this, like, back in the, you know, that guy that you were talking about, that echo that you were talking about,

If I knew this kind of stuff. Echo 1.0. Yeah, I would have spent very little time at Echo 1.0. Do you hold that against me? Because I could have told you about this stuff earlier. No, I don't, man. You know, that's life. Maybe I was afraid to.

Anyway. No, I wasn't. If Laif, I don't know if you're on the Shroom Tech or whatever. Crill oil, that's a big one. I haven't tried Shroom Tate, but I just got a new order of krill oil in, actually, from on it. There you go. Just pull that. I got some strong bone as well.

Yeah. Strong bone. It's good. Yeah, those are good because they keep you in. Like you can, yeah, I do like super deep squats and I had knee surgery full on ACL like all this stuff deep deep squats all the way. No problem. No factor. Crill oil just boom taking it through. Nonetheless, if you guys like these types of supplements go to on it.com. If you want 10% off you add a slash jaco. Boom. Get yourself. Keep yourself in the game. Also good way to support Amazon. If you shop Amazon click through our website. jocopodcast.com, this little Amazon banner

there on the site. It's actually in the menu too now. You just, you know, on the top navigation menu is what you call it. Click on there before you do your shopping, whatever you're buying, whether it be these books or whatever. You know, do it like that. You can support small teeny tiny action,

great support. Boom. Another way, of course, is to subscribe if you're on iTunes or any of these other podcasting platforms, whatever they may be Stitcher Google Play all these ones there's other ones too but I'm just saying subscribe That's the point you know even though you probably have already so also YouTube videos

More videos I think I'm gonna release one tomorrow oh cool one little fun one by tomorrow you mean tomorrow from today Yeah so it already have been released. Okay, so there's gonna be a new one out maybe I might not Unpredictable you know we call that variable reward system that I'm delivering right now. Anyway, YouTube channel, we have some videos on there. If you like the video version of the podcast

or you like these other, like, chunks of lessons or whatever that Joko talks about, subscribe, you'll get a little notification when they come up when I upload them. If you want it. If you want, yeah, of course.

Because sometimes people don't like to get notified. Yeah, I actually stop notified. Because sometimes such a long period of time comes between when a event, It's like that before I know man those were hard times You know it's not like that anymore. There's no way I could ever possibly know unless I got that little notification You know jocco podcast has just uploaded a video and then I rejoice

Yeah, you kind of forget about it really then I rejoice situation But yeah and I had to turn off the notifications for that one because it'll go off right when I finish uploading so I already know when they're uploaded seems saying I do see what you're saying Sensitive sense Cool The not the last way, but another way is if you wear t-shirts and you want to represent. Who doesn't wear t-shirts? Not me.

I wear t-s it. That's my whole uniform. T-shirt. Boom. But yeah, if you like T-shirts, you want to represent in this way, boom, Jocka podcast. Shirts. Multiple types of shirts. Rash guards as well for the no-gi situation.

Jiu-Jitsu or like anything where you need range of motion, like running, cycling, cross-fit, all this stuff. Anyway, they're good. May or may not give you 19% improvement in all performance. Why do you say may not? I think that's like the scientifically literate way to put it. No, but it's actually will because there's no one that said, hey, I didn't get the 19% out of this gig. Yeah, I think it, yeah, actually, yeah, you're right, there you go.

I just got 18.7%. Yeah, you know, you get one of these slackers that maybe, you know, I don't know. If you have the rash card, you're probably not a slacker. So I guess that's invalid as well. But yeah, anyway, jocco store.com, that's where you can get all the rash guards and cool shirts. I think they're cool. We made, we went through great lengths to get the good shirts, good quality. One guy emailed me.

Actually, not one guy. I got another recent email said, it's my favorite shirt to wear because of how it fits. And it, because it's good, you know. It's not like a giveaway free shirt you get, you know, when you're. go to the soccer game or wherever you go. Anyway, they're cool. Check them out. If you like them, support that way, get one and represent. And psychological warfare.

Okay, so I'm going to go into psychological warfare. If you don't know, psychological warfare, if you're at a moment of weakness in your diet workout, waking up in the morning, you need a little boost, little like someone there to sort of gently spot you, help you through these moments of weakness. You go on iTunes, maybe Amazon Music, wherever you can buy MP3s. Get psychological warfare Jocco Willink The little tracks you can listen

You can put it as your alarm if you want Or just listen to the whatever track you need And he'll get you through it I'm telling you here's the thing So yes day before yesterday not yesterday Day before yesterday I was about to work out felt like working out Rested boom you know took my pre-workout stuff ready I was like I'm all listen to psychological warfare at my moment of strength

Has this ever been tried before I don't know that's thing that's what I was thinking at the time bro it's kind of like abuse you know how like you know how like you drink coffee or something like fuck I'm kind of tired I'm gonna drink some coffee and when you're not tired you drink it's like I'm buzzing off then you have that good feeling now you're like double coffeeed up ready to get after it that's how you feel it's like I'm abusing the psychological warfare only for moments of weakness for moments of triumph is what it is that's it not even so even if you're feeling weak and you want a moment of triumph

That's what it is. So how was the workout is the question? Workout was dope. Of course it was dumb. Check me out, bro. Pump still on. Anyway. Good.

You know, while you're clicking through Amazon, by the way, you can get on Amazon. You can get jocco white tea. Now there's other reports have come in. And this report, what I found interesting, because this is a side effect, apparently. Of the tea. Of the tea. And that is, and this could be a positive side. effect or could be a negative side effect depending on who you are but one guy reported

that he drank some tea at night and he had 1.5 inches of beard growth overnight so if you want that could be positive could be negative and also we had a police officer out there and and again this is just I'm just given some new some new testament testimonies that have come in this one one police officer he's shooting the El President drill which is a drill where you have two targets and you shoot two rounds at each target and you do reload and his time has decreased which is an improvement right so he's just be able to do this faster 31% which I think is really good especially numbers yeah this is a critical situation right

you got two bad guys and then you got to do a reload you might want to have some jocco white team that's almost double the 19% yeah it's good yeah and a thing is that I want to make sure everybody understands is that this isn't like conjecture Excher and some pseudoscience that I'm talking about here. This is 147% factual. So everyone should know that so order the tea the jockey white tea Also you can order a new book which is called Way the Warrior Kid and I got asked Why I wrote this the other day and One of the things that propelled me to write this book was I was looking for a book when my son was a little young

I was looking for a book for a boy to read Let's get a book and so you know I wanted him to read kind of a book right kind of a book about getting after it Right so I went out and I looked through a couple books and I finally found this pirate book and I got cool pirate book I didn't pay too much attention I didn't like look through it because it's a pirate book right pirates are swords Ships taking over Right good storming vessels all good sea So Going to the book I break bring it home to my son we start reading the book and

They were weak and so now I'm like trying to get my son you know fired up and in the game and he's reading about weak pirates they weren't they didn't even attack anybody right? So I realize that there's a dearth of books for children not just boys but boys and girls That will show someone how to get after it at a young age right which you can start getting after it at birth by the way there's no reason to wait there's no legal minimum age up to be 18 oh can I see your get it get after it license you get after an ID card no you can start getting at after it at birth so true so that's one of the reasons that I wrote a book about a kid who's not gonna be a pansy and not gonna be wimpy he actually is in the beginning

he's feeling pretty weak you know how many pull-ups he can do how many zero pull-ups it's not good you know You know what he's you know you know how well he knows his times tables? How well he doesn't know him doesn't know his times tables That's weak and guess what can he swim no can't swim and last thing is he getting picked on? Yeah Kenny Williamson Kenny Williamson the bully he's all up on him pushing him around He can't stand up to him doesn't know what to do

So is that a good way to go through life? I don't know you tell me zero pull-ups do you want to be able to do zero pull-ups? I No, Leif? No. Not good. Gotta be able to do some pull-ups. Yeah. So that's why I wrote the book. So that the kid out there, they can't do any pull-ups.

Maybe he's getting picked on. Maybe he's, maybe he can't swim, but maybe there's some other thing in his life that he, we all got issues. You know, we all got some, we got to overcome. We all got fear to overcome. Guess what? We talk about fear in the book because everyone, Laif was talking about it today. We all get afraid how you can overcome that. It's true.

Well, luckily for Mark in the book, his Uncle Jake shows up. Uncle Jake was in the seal teams He's got some lessons to teach to young Mark and that's what he does So you can pre-order it right now Way of the Warrior Kid And you know we gotta make some t-shirts on that one Yeah kids t-shirts Yeah the few parts that you did tell me

It's even you explain me like that's a good little Explanation of it and it's good But the little parts that you were telling me were kind of impressive Like there is that's kind of advanced For a kids book even you know in a good way meaning like it's not you know there's certain obvious things that you know you're gonna find in a kids book Right even with stories like this it's like okay. I know the narrative I get it It had it has to be that way to you know to teach the lesson effect of all this stuff But the little hints of complexity

They were impressive I got to say the other thing that is even when I read right now Just finished finalist edits and you're like There's so much in there that's actually from the podcast, but it's for a kid. It's put in a kid's language. Uncle Jake's breaking it down real simple. So that's why, that's why, I don't care who you are. You want that broken down.

That's a law of combat in the book Extreme Ownership written by Lafabbitt, myself. Got to keep things simple. So it's in a simple way. So that's, we're the warrior kid. And also, by the way, just released another book. It's called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. And this is the e-book that I talked about here not a long time ago. I'm going to write an e-book.

Well, it turned into a real book, and it's broken into two parts. One part is called thoughts. The other part is called actions. These are actually my thoughts and my actions. What are thoughts? Well, what do I think about what's going on? What I think about when you run up against weakness? What do you think?

Those are the thoughts. And then actions is, okay, how do you have... Which means workouts are in there which means talks about martial arts talks about what I eat How I sleep and that kind of stuff so Pre-order it check it out and it will help them logistically when the book comes out because see the publishers They don't understand what we're doing here They don't know what we're doing here. They don't know when I'm talking about we I'm not talking about you and me I'm not talking about you and me I'm not talking I'm talking about we I'm talking about we yeah yeah they understand what we're doing here

they understand that there's troopers that want to get after it so when they don't understand that they're like okay well you know I guess we'll print I guess we'll print 400 copies of this and that way you know yeah someone can buy it right but they don't know formula is good they don't know what they're talking about so pre-order so they understand what we are doing here maybe we'll get some of them in the game actually okay So that's that. And, you know, speaking of books, Leif, I always talk about a little book called Extreme Ownership.

What are you hearing from the field on Extreme Ownership right now, the book that we wrote? I'm hearing a lot from the field on Extreme Ownership. I mean, what's awesome to me about Extreme Ownership is just continues to resonate with people, you know. And even, you know, we're over a year and a half out of publication now and that this thing continues to be in the, top 150 or 200 on Amazon and so much of that has word of mouth driven, you know, that people are buying that for their team, you know, and holding training. Wait a minute. Well, did it help with that big ad that we put in the New York Times?

Did that help sell it? Oh, wait, no, we didn't do that. Oh, maybe it's the TV spots that we did. Oh, no, we didn't do that either. So word of mouth. It is. Exactly. And, you know, for that, that's the real testament, I think, for, you know, for me that,

that we wrote a book that's resident with leaders that's helping them. get better, to lead better teams for people to be better teammates and employ these concepts and extreme ownership. You know, when we see the, you know, the fire service training that's going on, you know, and these firefighters are using that as they're training manual, conducting these training. We see police units doing it. We see businesses, you know, and some of them bring us in and have training. Some of them are holding their own training, and they're buying that book and they're learning

out of it. I was working with the business just a couple of weeks. weeks back where they you know each each group in this the leadership team was assigned to study a chapter and talk about how what in that chapter applies to them and they're they're learning out of that and it's inspiring to see that stuff because not only is it is it you know does it say hey we wrote a book that's having some impact but when you see the things that they're doing when they're implementing extreme ownership when they're using cover move and they're not focused on themselves but about the mission and working together as a team and and using decentralized command you know explaining the why to their

teams and the results are amazing you know see that happen and and that's really you know that's really what it's all about for us I think is seeing that kind of impact so it's been awesome to see that and looking forward for that to continue to to grow and expand its reach across the globe you know we we talk about in the book we talk about working with Iraqi soldiers and one of the hardest things obviously even if you took a great soldier but they don't speak the language you speak and you have a language barrier that's a real problem so a lot of times in these teams what the book gives them what the extreme ownership gives them it gives them a language a common language to talk about the issues the leadership problems that

they're having they can identify because how can you fight an enemy that you can't identify so if you know if you don't know that hey our decentralized command is weak and if you don't know what that is and you can't identify it how can you fix it if you got a cover move to solve problems and work together but you don't know what that looks like or you don't even know what to call it How are you gonna get it solved? So that's one of the things that I notice when we show up at a company that already is is

using it and have read it they're immediately saying you know Hey, this is the this is a situation we got we got these divisions over here in this division over here and we're not covered moving for each other We we got to identify and you go okay, so they've already got a grip on it When people that we go and talk to they they haven't read the book yet They can't even really identify what's wrong. They just don't see it They don't have the the ability it's like not having Night Vision they just they just don't see it so the book when you get that book out there and everyone on your team and all of a sudden they all have that common language they all can

identify targets they know what the bad guys look like and they know how to fix it and that's That's what I notice that's awesome about when we work with these companies and they're and they're in the game big time And then the the muster May 4th and 5th New York City Go to extreme ownership.com sign up now at like I said before I think this thing is probably gonna sell out so if you want tickets if you want to be there if you want to be a part of this badass event that we just we were talking about just this amazing group of people of us leaders and aspiring leaders to get in the game sign up now extreme motorship.com I will not get there doing a speech for the record just so you know everyone echo doesn't think

he's going to give a speech we think he probably should how about a side speech no speech work those all the time side Echo was a very laid-back, you know, the good island attitude. When we put him up on stage for the muster, he was not happy about that. No. And that was just to say thanks. Yeah. You went in your shell.

No, man, I got it. You're welcome. Hey, you know, on with the shell. So you know what? We talk about you got to focus on your weaknesses, right? So I think you need to present at least for a couple hours on the stage. So I got to talk about this one thing because it just happened again. So Echo's got this thing where he goes into this alternate voice at the end of some sentences.

And I noticed in one of the last podcasts that I actually started doing it too. So everyone has been saying, hey, Jocko, what have you gotten from Echo? Well, I think the one thing that I could say I definitely got from Echo is doing this thing right here. Because that's what he did it. He just did it. So pay attention to that. I don't know what. You know what I call that?

I'm going to call that the echo voice escalation. So you're just talking normal. And then all of a sudden you go into that echo voice escalation. So that you got your own thing now. It's effective It's effective see see how you do that that one that one a before the muster until the muster if you want to Give us feedbacks or comments or whatever you want to continue this conversation You you can actually find us not hard to find and find us on the interwebs Twitter

Instagram me and of course Of course you're gonna find us on that face. Okay, boy, how are we gonna be there, that one. Laif is at Laif Babin. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jock Willick Echo. Do you have anything else to add right now? No, man. Oh, yeah, actually I do.

And I heard you mentioned this before, where you're talking about in Ramadi, where, you know, the sun comes up, And you say you hear the call to prayer. I know what that is, but what, what does that sound like? What does it the call to prayer? You know what? Is it a person?

Like on a... It is a person. It's a person or a loudspeaker, right? So each mosque has a minaret, which is a tower. And they generally have a loud speaker. And so you've got, I forget what the title is in the Islamic world. There's a specific title for the prayer caller that's going to get up and sing, sing this prayer. But yeah, you just hear these speakers going off all over the city.

And it's like a chant kind of kind of. Yeah, they're it's a they sing. Yeah, it's a song. Oh, dang, okay. So it's something that, you know, when you hear that, you know, like the, so there'll be one early in the morning, so like before the sun comes up and we had to be in place. You know, you're going, you're going in any territory. You had to be in the building, locked down, ready to go.

Because as soon as the call the prayer goes down, you know that the city's going to start awakening. Right, right. People are going to start, you know, coming out of their houses and cars starting up and people moving around and and the sun's going to come up you know pretty soon and so yeah there's there's there's five of those throughout the day and uh you know that would be the you have heard that that morning call the prayer was like we're going to get some yeah because the enemy the enemy in romadi for the most part didn't operate at night time because we had all the advantages of night vision and everything else

so they operated during the day so the indicator that the day was starting is the first morning called a prayer and when you'd hear it you know man that's so crazy how it's like it's like it's like this official beginning of a day, you know. That's like the official fucking commencement of the day. Isn't that crazy? I guess you could think it's crazy. I mean, we have that individually, you know,

your alarm clock or your whatever, but like for everybody. Yeah. It's crazy. That's one of the things that makes it so, so crazy. Yeah. It is the whole city.

Every day. You know, because like one, actually this was funny. At one point they said, hey, you weren't allowed. Then what they said, we weren't allowed to go within a block of a mosque or something like that.

And there's so many mosques in Ramadi. Yeah. We just showed them a map and we're like, okay, so you don't want us to do anything. Because if we can't go within two blocks of a mosque or whatever the rule that they try to throw at us, you know, I said, so you don't want us to do anything else on this deployment. Because here's a mosque, here's a mosque, here's a mosque, here's a mosque. And by the way, Intel says this mosque is okay. Local mosque.

Intel says this one's bad. This one's bad. This one's good. So we had, you know, different, different, you know, because just because some Someone's the mosque some of the some of the neighbors are saying oh great it's called a prayer we're ready to start a beautiful day Some of the people the smaller group of people were saying oh here's the call to prayer let's go and attack Americans and And torture the local populace so and unfortunately because the mosque were protected and we had to get massive approvals all the way up to like the highest levels To be able to enter the mosque the bad guys knew that and they'd use those mosques to to stage attacks out of

You know and they they stockpile weapons and ammunition and and that stuff there. So the bad guys figured out. It was, it was not good. It's crazy, the little details, though. You know what I mean?

That I always hear from, like, you guys, just a little detail. Stuff that you don't necessarily think about. You only think about, oh, yeah, the gun fights and, like, all this stuff. But just those little details

kind of makes it real, man. It's crazy. Any other questions? Echo Charles. Or comments? No. Sorry. Very good to see Life again.

That's it. it. Good. Late, you got anything else, brother? Yeah, just great to be back on here with you guys again. You know, it's awesome.

Thinking back to the, you know, podcast 11. You know, I was the first guest and just getting this thing up and running, you know, and to see the reach that it's, that it's had, you know,

as the expansion and, you know, and where we're sitting the day, you know, versus where it was then, you know, the third time I'm back on, it's pretty awesome,

pretty awesome to see that. And I've, so many people, I've been sitting in jujitsu class before. Someone hears me talk. And I'm like, are you leaf bad? I guess the raspy voice is giving me away. But they're like, I started training jiu-jitsu because of the Joko podcast.

And I've had that happen multiple times, you know, whether in jihitsu class or meeting someone, you know, randomly in an airport or those kind of things. And it's just awesome. It's awesome to see troopers all over the world, you know, all over the place, getting after it, You know through and and loyal listeners to jaco pockets and passing it on to others. I Echo asked me that because a lot of people that on social media they say hey I just enlisted in the army I just listened to the Marine Corps. I've gone to OCS a lot of people you know thanks for

You know pushing me that way or whatever and Echo says you know like hey do you think How many people do you think have actually joined the military because of the podcast and I said you know I don't know what that number looks like but there's the amount of people that have started Jiu Jitsu because the podcast is a big number. It's a big number, which is awesome because obviously Jiu Jitsu is really good for it. I think the number of people join the military is probably substantial as well.

In fact, I was just talking to a young lady last night at the event we were speaking at who came up to me and said, hey, I'm thinking about joining the Navy. And, you know, I said she just started listening to the Jocka podcast. Those are very much related. I told her to go buy a copy of extreme ownership

and, you know, to learn from that and take ownership of everything in the world, she was going to do well. So she was at EMT and, yeah, wanted to be a Navy corpsman. So I think so many people from all walks of life influenced for good by the Jocko podcast. It's definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely awesome for us to be a part of it and get all that feedback all the time. And, and, of course, there's no coincidence to the fact that you were the first guest on here, obviously. I just did an echolaccalation. That was.

That was a good one. It was, you know. I think you're having influence in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, really, finally in life. I hope there's not someone out there that doesn't like it and blames you and then goes on a crazy, like, stalker mission to eliminate you from the world. Yeah. Dang. Luckily, he's pretty good at jiu-jitsu, so I think you take care of them.

And he's got a lot of knives and hatchets, so. No. Nice. Any other closers? Yeah, you know what? I was just thinking, we were having that conversation yesterday, you know, and as a dad of young kids. You know, I've got a toddler and a baby And, you know, I know, Echo, you got

You got young kids as well And, you know, just thinking about It can be, all you parents out there You know what I'm talking about, right? It can be exhausting. You know, we've gone through a time, it's winter time, You've got kids who've got colds and they're sick And they're waking up multiple times the night Cutting into my 445 club workouts, you know,

And it's easy to like, it's easy, you know, When my little baby girl, She just tries to eat everything, you know, picks up the choking hazards and shoves them around. And you've got to keep an eye on constantly, you know? And my son is just a wild man. He's just, he'll just no fear of anything. I'm learning that he's just like me.

And I realize what my parents actually put up with. But he takes off running for the most dangerous thing within a mile radius. And he just, like, without looking back and without heeding any warning or command. to stop for me whatsoever. So, so it's, it is full time. And I'm in the game all the time. And it can be exhausting. You know, it can be, it's something that, you can think, oh, man, I just can't wait until they get a little bit older and I don't have to, you know, I can tell him to stop or he knows not to run on the street or my daughter's not choking on something, you know, and, and the reality is, you know, just being out here with Jocko and seeing his kids, you know, and your oldest daughter's

about to graduate now from high school, which is amazing to me. Because when I left, you know, San Diego here. Your kids, they were kids, they were little, you know, and watch them grow up into teenagers now. And, you know, when we first met, we started working at the other, they were really little. You know, your youngest hadn't even been born,

and your son was just a, I mean, just a baby. It was like two or three years old. Yeah, and so I just realized it doesn't seem like I left the Navy that long ago. You know, it'll be six years of summer. And I realize that time has flown by like that. it is just gone by like that.

And so seeing that, you know, seeing your kids now, I got to take a step back, the detachment that we always talk about, right, to be able to see with a bigger perspective to think, these moments, right, they're awesome.

And I got to relish every nanosecond of them because my kids are going to grow up and they're going to be teenagers and they're going to graduate in high school and they're going to go off. And I got to rest, you know, for me and my wife, we got to cherish those.

moments and people tell you that you know but you still don't even like embrace it you know you still like oh if I can just get to this level you're worried about the diaper the dirty diaper and the applesauce on the floor exactly you know and uh or you know my kid just went through my drawer and threw everything out now I'm gonna clean that up and we're trying to get at the door so I think for me it's a great recognition of like that those moments are fleeting and they're precious and you got to enjoy every second of that so for you parents out there, listen to this. If you're in that boat with me, detach. Take a step back. Think about how wonderful those moments are and just relish it, relish every moment. And don't let yourself get

flustered. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. If your kids getting up at 430th of the morning, maybe it's time to back it up to 0300 club. But embrace every second of that as a parent and cherish those moments because those are the most important things of all. Brad, I'll give you a small tip that help me with that. You know when like certain things get overwhelming? You're trying to do this and they're crying. And then the other one's doing something.

And you're like, you kind of want to yell at them and be like, hey, I need a minute or something. But they're like kids. They're like, a minute. What does that even mean kind of thing?

They don't know. So the tip there is anytime you feel it bubbling up like you're getting frustrated, understand that you're at that moment making it about yourself. and it's not about yourself. You know, it's about the, whether you can look at it, I'm gonna make it about the mission

or I'm gonna make it about these kids. Make it about something other than yourself and you won't be frustrated anymore. I'm telling you anytime, anytime you're like, oh, I've been up all night, this baby's been crying away. You're just making it about yourself right now.

Oh, you, oh, you, poor parent, you know? Meanwhile, everyone, you know how many parents have been through the exact same thing. You're making it about yourself right now. You're feeling sorry or whatever, you know? Just don't make it about yourself. And know that that's what you're doing if you feel that and then it's all that's exactly right Exactly right check the ego

It's not about you essentially yeah it's about the mission yeah exactly it's not about you right now That's a good one yeah, it's great great advice Leif and uh haven't seen my kids grow up and see him about to leave the nest As they say yeah Embrace that whole time and thanks obviously for coming on again I'm sure this won't be the last time and we'll do it again And everyone else out there that's listening, thank you all, especially the military personnel across the globe right now. By the way, they're not getting to enjoy those moments with their family. They're out there in harm's way, standing the watch for us.

So thank you to all of you, to the police and law enforcement. stay proactive and aggressive in your fight against crime and stay safe out in the streets and thank you all for keeping our streets safe and the firefighters and the EMTs and again who we call and we thank only when we need you thanks for being there waiting to help us when we need it and to the rest of you out there doing what you're doing as you go out there and do it don't do it easy don't take it easy and if someone says to you take it easy tell them no tell them you aren't gonna take it easy tell me you're gonna go hard as hard as

you can tell them you're gonna push and grind and fight and work as hard as you can until you have nothing left and then turn around and walk away from that person and go do just that and do it hard until next time this is Laif and Echo and Jocko