Shawn Ryan Show - #162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Leif Babin is a decorated former Navy SEAL officer who served for 13 years, including 9 in the SEAL Teams. He is a recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart for his service, which included leading major combat operations in the Battle of Ramadi as a SEAL platoon commander in Task Unit Bruiser. After his military career, he co-founded Echelon Front, currently serving as President and Chief Operating Officer to bring world-class leadership consulting to the private sector. Babin is also the co-author of two #1 New York Times bestsellers: "Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win" and "The Dichotomy of Leadership," both written with his Echelon Front co-founder, Jocko Willink. He continues to share his leadership expertise through speaking engagements, executive coaching, and leadership training programs, helping organizations across various industries build high-performance teams. Leif Babin Links:  Website - https://echelonfront.com/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leif-babin-2a43b631 X - https://twitter.com/leifbabin Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/leifbabin/ Extreme Ownership - https://extremeownership.com/ Dichotomy of Leadership - https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250195777/thedichotomyofleadership/ Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://lumen.me/srs https://PrepareWithShawn.com https://amac.us/srs https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://helixsleep.com/srs https://blackbuffalo.com/ https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Lafe Babin, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to have you here. It's an honor to be here. And man, we've got history together. We went through buzz together. I'm sure we'll get into some of that. But man, I just, man we've got history together we went through buds together i'm sure we'll get into some of that but um

man i just i've been following you for a long time man and and what you're doing and um, you just put down amazing stuff and i think you're a great example for for veterans and And seals coming out of the teams and anybody coming out of the military. You know, it's, we both know it's a big struggle for a lot of people and to have, you know, good examples to follow and good leaders like yourself. It's just, it's really cool, man, what you've accomplished and what you've done

after the teams. And I just, I want wanna commend you for that. Thank you, Sean. That means a ton to me. That means so much coming from you. And I keep, I'm so proud of you and your success and the powerful voice that you have been for so many great stories and how you've represented,

you know, as a teammate, how you represent the SEAL teams, how you represent the veteran community. And it's great to reconnect with you. It's been way too long. And man, I was thinking about all the history that we had through our time together, Buds, and what a great time that was. Like what an incredible time.

And our class and what people went on to do and the combat that you saw and so many others saw and were a part of, but just can't tell you how excited I am to be here with you and I'm proud of you and all that you're doing and honored to call your friend. Thank you, brother. Feelings are definitely mutual.

And like I said, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. So, but everybody starts off with an introduction here. So let me get to yours. Leif Babin, former US Navy SEAL officer, served 13 years in the Navy, nine of which were in the SEAL team's several deployments to Iraq with the infamous task unit bruiser.

You are the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller extreme ownership the number one New York Times bestseller extreme ownership How us Navy SEALs led and win and the number one national bestseller bestseller the dichotomy of leadership with Jocko You are the co-founder of echelon front and currently serving as president You are the co-founder of Echelon Front and currently serving as president. You're the recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart. You're a husband, a father to three kids

and a Christian man. Am I missing anything? I'm sure I'm missing quite a bit, but. No, that's it, man. I think being a husband, father and a Christian, I think are the most important aspects of that entire bio there. I think those a husband, father, and a Christian, I think are the most important aspects of that entire bio there. I think those are the most important jobs I've had.

And I was lucky enough to serve with some incredible people, like yourself going through training and then on the battlefield. And I'm just honored to be able to share some of those lessons learned with others around the world and to see people that can take and apply some of the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield and their lives.

It's, I'm humbling and mystified about how, just the, how far and wide that has spread and the impact it's had. And it's incredible to me to see that. And that's kind of what keeps us going. That's our mission of why. And then I get to honor the teammates that I lost and talk about their legacies and all that they did

and how they lived. We have a lot to dive into. We have a lot to dive into. And so in the interview, I want to, that's what I want to do. I want to cover your life story, your time in the teams. I mean, I've heard, I wasn't there, but I've heard a lot, a lot of amazing things

about tasking a bruiser. I had several friends that we went through Buds with that wound up serving with you and under you. And, you know, once again, I just, you hear a lot of shit about a lot of people, you know, in the teams and especially officers and man, I've just, you always come like highly recommended and your guys just, you guys fucking love you, man.

And it's really cool to see that. You don't see that in a lot of platoons, I don't think. Not like what I hear about yours. And so I can't wait to dive into that. But. That's the highest compliment you could ever pay me, man. And I love those guys. I'd do anything for them.

And it's just to honor my lifetime was to serve with some awesome, awesome teammates. So we have a Patreon and Patreon is our, they are, it's our subscription network and they are top supporters. A lot of them have been with us since the beginning. And one of the things- I'm proud to be a member.

Yeah, thank you for being a member. They will be ecstatic to know that you're in there. But so, you know, I offer them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. And usually I only pick one, but for you there were a lot of good questions. And so I think we might do three here. First question is from Charlton Clark.

First question is from Charlton Clark. What are three words that encapsulate a powerful leader and why? Three words that encapsulate a powerful leader and why? I think the three words, the three most powerful words are, it's my fault. It's my fault. And I think as a leader, recognizing that you are responsible for everything that your team does or doesn't do,

just as a dad, you know, or a spouse, you're responsible for everything that your family does. And I think that understanding this concept that we call extreme ownership, man, our ego is such a powerful driver in the world and it wants us to point fingers or cast blame or make excuses or say, hey, look at that guy over there,

he's more successful than me. Well, he got lucky or he got this break or he started with some advantage that I didn't have. Instead of actually, and when you do that, what you do is you don't actually take action to correct the problem, to actually implement solutions to fix that going forward. And so I think when you accept ownership for every single thing that happens in your world, every single thing that impacts your mission, then you could actually take action to solve problems, constantly learn, constantly grow, constantly improve.

And I think that makes all the difference. Man, that's great advice. Thank you. Stephen Casey, what is the most significant leadership principle you've seen that is essential, but has problems transitioning or translating from the military to civilian situations? That's a great question.

I think initially I thought that this concept that we call cover and move, which is teamwork, right? We're working together as a team. You and I are trying to move across the street under fire. You're laying down suppressive fire so I can move. And then when I get across the street, I lay down suppressor fire so that you can move. Like we're covering and moving, we're leapfrogging,

we're mutually supporting one another. And when Joppa and I first launched Escalon Front, our leadership consulting company, we went in to talk to a corporate business and we thought, man, should we even talk about this concept? How does that even apply? And we're talking, this is a gunfighting tactic

from the battlefield and the moment that the senior executive team is telling us how the sales team and the production team are like, they're not on the same page and they're blaming each other and they're pointing fingers at each other. The marketing team is saying, well, the sales isn't telling that. And the sales team is saying,

well, marketing is not actually setting us up for success. You got a bunch of finger pointing, a bunch of blame casting. And we said, okay, let's talk about this concept of cover and move. And they said, hey, that's exactly what I need you to teach to my team. And so it's really just the recognition

that it's not about you, it's about the overall team and the overall mission. And that applies to your family. I mean, when you see your wife or your spouse, it's like struggling or frustrated with the kids or something that's going on in the home front, and you can say, hey, okay, those school applications are taking a long time and you got a bunch of stuff on

your plate. Why don't you let me just take that off your plate? I'll take that. I'll run with it. It's that's, that's cover move and action. You can actually, you're working together as a team, mutually supporting one another in order to accomplish a mission and win. And I think initially we weren't sure how that would apply in the, in the, um, you know, in the civilian world, and it absolutely does. I think one that's harder to apply is what we call our fourth law of combat, and that's decentralized command.

Decentralized command is obviously something you're familiar with being in the military. It just simply means that everybody leads. And I think a lot of times when you talk to a leader that wants to control everything, they wanna do everything, obviously that doesn't work on the battlefield. And that's one of the strength of the SEAL teams

and special operations units, you've got thinking shooters. I mean, even going through buds together when you were 18 years old, you're a smart, capable, talented individual that just because I'm the officer and I'm in charge, like I need you to be able to step up and make calls. I need you to be able to solve problems. I need you to be able to step up and make calls. I need you to be able to solve problems. I need you to be able to move the team forward

in a positive direction. I can't make all the calls. I can't, if you're just sitting and waiting for me to tell you what to do, that doesn't work. So that's a concept that's hard to get across in the civilian world. People say, well, I don't trust my team or they don't have a strong relationship.

So we help them work to build those relationships. It's all based on the strength of relationships. It's built on trust. When people understand not just what to do, but why they're doing it, what we call commander's attempt, the military, the purpose and the goal and the end state. But oftentimes now we start to see leaders

when in this big world, they release the authority, they give people ownership and they kind of let people run with stuff. The problem is they get too detached. They get too far away. And so it's always a balance, right? It's a dichotomy and you're getting pulled in different directions.

So you wanna be detached as a leader. You wanna step back. You wanna let your people step up and lead and run with a plan and execute the plan. Give them ownership of the plan, but you can't be so detached. You can't be so detached that you don't know what's going on, you're too attached

from the challenges or problems. And then you can't actually support your team, you can't guide your team, you can't actually step in and help them, if you're not even familiar with the challenges or you can't see when they're getting off track and you maybe need to help redirect them. When you're talking, I'm just curious,

this is a personal question, when you're talking about, when you're talking, I'm just curious, this is a personal question, when you're talking about, when you're relating stuff back to Ramadi or gunfighting scenarios, because it sounds like you guys kind of do that, how quick, I mean, how fast do civilian types wrap their head around what you're teaching them when you're using those analogies?

Pretty fast, pretty fast usually. I think initially some people will think, I guess I can put it this way, that the biggest excuse is that, I think the biggest excuse that any of us give ourselves, me included, is that it's harder for me than it is for other people. And so yeah, Sean's maybe experienced some things

in the battlefield, well, how does that really apply to me? Or, hey, you've done some things in your life and you have some good lessons learned, but that doesn't really apply to me. I have a different situation. Instead of keeping an open mind, instead of saying, oh, what can I learn from Sean? What is he experienced?

How can that apply to my world? What lesson can I take and apply to that? And before Jocklin and I wrote the book, Extreme Ownership, I'd have a lot of that. Businesses would say things like, well, how are you gonna translate this to the business world? They would say that over and over again.

Tell me how you're gonna translate these combat leadership lessons to the business world. And I think once they read Extreme Ownership, they realized that the hardest part about combat leadership is, it's not about planning, executing missions under fire. It's not about maneuvering troops with bullets flying over your head.

The hardest part about combat leadership is getting a diverse group of people with different skill sets and different agendas and different perspectives to work together as a team to accomplish a mission. And obviously that applies to any team in any situation. It's people, it's actually getting people actually work together as a team,

put their own egos and their own agendas aside and put the mission first. And I think that's what makes the SEAL teams great. Certainly the best units in the SEAL teams have that, right? They put the team and the mission before anything else. It's not about them as an individual, right? It's about the team. They're going to sacrifice for the team. They're going to sacrifice for their brothers on that team.

And so I think that when people realize that that's how these concepts translate, it's just about getting people to work together as a team, to mutually support one another, to accomplish a strategic goal. That applies to everything, everywhere. Makes a whole lot of sense. That's good to hear that they can comprehend it that fast. That's really cool. We do have people to push back.

You know, they'll come into a company, I was with the company a few weeks ago, and they were, there was half the company a few weeks ago, and they were, there was half the room of several hundred leaders were female executives, and these lady executives, some of them were pretty skeptical, they told me afterward, I was pretty skeptical about how this applies to me, how we were going to take these leadership concepts

and apply them in our world. And they came up and said, this absolutely applies. We need more of this. Wow. And so I think once people are just willing to open their mind, they realize that every problem that you face in life is a leadership problem. Your frustrations with your spouse,

your frustrations with your kids, your friction points in the community, the frustration you have with your boss or the people on your team for not doing what you want them to do, or the people outside of your immediate team that you depend on for support, these are all leadership problems.

And I think once we think about those problems as leadership problems, then we can start to apply leadership to the point of friction, as the Marine Corps would say, to get those problems solved. But you see that what might seem like a hopeless problem actually is a solvable problem. Interesting. If you're my boss and you're micromanaging me,

and I'm feeling like Sean just needs to get off my back, I'm being micromanaged. And I feel like I'm in a hopeless situation. Well, Sean doesn't trust me, what can I do about that? He just needs to back off and trust me, let me do my job. But if I realize that actually I control that situation, if I take extreme ownership of that situation and realize if what I'm feeling is micromanaging,

you're asking me questions about what's going on. Well, that's because you care about the situation. If I, and you don't have enough information, you need some more information. So I start to take action to push more information your way, to build a better relationship with you, to talk to you about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, to get some guidance on you,

to get some guidance from you. So I understand the strategic goal and that we can be aligned. And if we do that, then I can get that problem solved. All of a sudden you're like, hey, Leif, you got it, good to go. Let me know how you wanna do this. And so those check-ins become less frequent. And so what seems like an impossible situation

actually is easily solvable. The moment I put my ego in check and the moment I actually take ownership and I start to lead up the chain of command and apply leadership to get problem solved. Wow, that's great advice. Thank you, thank you. Hey folks, if you're over 21 and use nicotine or tobacco, I want to tell you about an American company

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Last one, I promise. We're getting to your story, but just a little something for the ride home. Those are Vigilance League gummy bears. That's awesome. I've been looking forward to sampling this. I'm fried on. Well, now you got some.

Outstanding, man. I appreciate it. Thanks, brother. You're welcome. But all right, Laph, we're gonna, like I said, we're gonna go into your life story. And I have a feeling this is gonna get really heavy and I think people are gonna get a lot out of this episode and so I once again

I just want to say that I've really been looking forward to this and so let's start let's start at the beginning where did you grow up I grew up in a small town in southeast Texas and the Piney Woods called Woodville, Texas. And it was an awesome community to grow up. And it was a small town, about 3,000 people. We had two stoplights. We had two Dairy Queens, which made us, I guess, big time at the time.

But it was just a great place to grow up. If you wanted to go to a fancy restaurant or a movie theater, you had to drive more than an hour away, but I loved it. I mean, I spent all my childhood playing in the woods, playing some kind of combat, the woods, throwing spears at each other, building forts. People sometimes ask me if we played cowboys and Indians. We actually were all Indians all the time.

No one wanted to be a cowboy. Everyone was an Indian. And so we were the Native American warriors out there patrolling the woods, setting booby traps for my mom to fall in our backyard. And we lived in a great neighborhood with just kind of woods behind the neighborhood. And we were just constantly in the woods playing

and out from like sunup to sundown. My mom had a whistle that she would blow and we had to be within hearing distance of the whistle, which was, I pushed that pretty regularly, but you could hear that whistle would come back. And I grew up in a great household. My mom and dad were loving, wonderful parents. They really took their job seriously

as my dad was the town dentist and he had a busy job. My mom was a stay at home mom and then a part-time school teacher and a school librarian. But they really just poured into me and my brother and three sisters. We had a big family and they just, they took that as their primary job, as raising us right, upright.

You know, the Proverbs, train up a child in the way he will go and when he's older and not depart from that, I think they took that very seriously and really set an amazing example for me, you know, as a mother and dad and just were constantly there to support me. And I was my, always my dad's like fishing and hunting buddy. He had friends that he'd help with, but we spent so much time together on the lake, on the ocean, fishing and hunting out in the woods. And it was an amazing place to grow up. And I didn't fully appreciate the town of Woodville

and the community until after I left school, I went off to the Naval Academy and when I was really deployed overseas, because the amount of care packages that would come in from not only my family, but friends and just members of the community. I mean, it was stuff that we would share with the rest of the task unit,

because it was so much stuff that was coming in. And it just, there were some great communities across the United States, but it was just a quantitative measure of just how awesome that community was to grow up here, just how supportive and patriotic and amazing. The church was a big part of our life growing up. We started going to the First Baptist Church of Woodville

when I was in third grade. My dad became a deacon there and church was mandatory every Sunday. When I started being a little wild man, you know, in my high school days and partied a little too hard. My dad would come in and drag me out of bed and say, you're going to church, boy? Here we go.

So then we get home from church and it was put on your working gloves and working clothes. And I remember trying to push back and saying, hey dad, are we supposed to not work on the Sabbath? And he said, this isn't work, this is fun. So we'd be out chainsawing brush and clearing land. We grew up on, when I was about 12, we moved to some acreage kind of out in the woods.

We lived in a neighborhood before that with woods behind it, like I mentioned, but then it was constantly just working to clear that place and keep it nice, build fence and repair fence and clear brush. And it was just an awesome way to grow up. It was an amazing community. Five kids.

Five kids in my family. Where'd you fall on the birth order? I was the second. My sister and I are very close. We're 16 months apart. So she was, she'll never let me live down that she was in those 16 months, I guess she lived a lifetime of experience

that she was older than me. And then I have a twin brother and sister. My parents weren't at three. They had me and my sister, then the third child was twins. My brother and sister were fraternal twins. And then they had a surprise about eight years after that, my baby sister. But it was, I was the only one that served the military.

I always wanted to do that. My dad had been in the army and then in the Air Force. And so I spent my first couple of years on a Ramstein Air Base. He was stationed there as an Air Force dentist. And I was the only one that went in the military of my five siblings. But for me, that's all I ever wanted to do

was be in the military. What'd your that went in the military in my five seventies, but for me, that's all I ever wanted to do was be in the military. What'd your dad do in the military? He was in the National Guard and in the army. And then they paid for his dental school and he served his, I think four years after dental school. So he was stationed at Ramstein for, I think for three of that. Right on. My first kind of six months to, we came back when think for three of that. Right on.

My first kind of six months to, we came back when I was three years old. Wow, I lived there too when I was a kid. Okay. My dad was in the army too as a pharmacist. Wow, our upbringing is very similar. I never knew that, that's awesome. Yeah, but are you tight with all your siblings or?

I am, I am. They're a great family and we all keep each other in check. But yeah, they're a wonderful family. Everybody's got kids. We have a huge, I think my parents have 17 grandkids. Holy cow, that's awesome. From like 18 to two or three, I think. That is awesome.

So it's a pile of cousins every time my kids go. It's magical. And they scream, why can't we live in Woodville every time we go there? They get to just run around the woods. That's awesome, man. Does everybody in Texas? Everybody's in Texas, no.

Nice, nice, nice. What were you a star athlete or anything like that and growing up? I played probably like a lot of people. I played soccer and baseball and basketball. Were you a star athlete or anything like that growing up? I played probably like a lot of people. I played soccer and baseball and I was horrible at basketball. I realized that wasn't my sport. I got a rebound, I think I was in fourth grade or fifth grade,

and I immediately shot the basket, scoring a goal for the other team. I was like, basketball is not for me. So when I started playing football in seventh grade and tackle football, it was like everything. And in small town Texas, it's, you know, we'd have 3000 people in the town and we'd have like, you know, probably nearly that many people at the game, you know, on Friday nights.

It was just a, it was an awesome thing. I loved it, man. It was the closest thing to suiting up, you know, and gearing up for combat that you could do, I think, in the civilian world. And it was a super, it was a fun time. We had in our high school, the head coach, our head football coach,

Coach Melvin Houston, he'd been there for years, awesome guy. And he was a real mentor to so many people on the team, particularly for some of the star athletes who were raised in homes that maybe didn't have a father there, he was an incredible guy. And his wife was also the choir director. So all of us, like the entire starting line up in football

was like in choir as well, was mandatory. He was in track, so we all ran track also to keep in shape. But you know we had some of the star football players that are like marching in the band at halftime. Everyone kind of did everything. Wow. And it was just it was just a fantastic place to grow up. Awesome community. Very cool. What got your interest in the military?

I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I mean, from the time that I can remember wanting to do anything, I wanted to be in the military. I was painting my face and crawling through the, you know, the backyard jungle. And it was, I just, I wanted to be some kind of combat leader. I had a little stint where we had these F4 Phantoms

that would come fly over from some of the bases in Louisiana. I remember a couple of like B-52, like tree top level flights that were pretty awesome. So there was like a small step where I was like, oh man, maybe being a pilot would be cool. But then I quickly went back to like, now I want to be some kind of a ground combat leader in some capacity.

And then when I was like in probably, I was probably in junior high school when I started hearing about the SEAL teams and the Marcinko books came out, Red Rogue Warrior. You probably read it probably about the same time. I did and that was one that really, I started reading about the SEALs in Vietnam and learning about the Rung Sat Special Zone

and Cam Ranh Bay and Nga Bay and all these places that our SEAL forefathers were operating out of. And I was just smitten with that. And then the movie Navy SEALs with Charlie Sheen came out. Oh yeah. And while I was in high school, and it just, that kind of cemented it for me that I wanted to be in the SEAL teams.

And so I wanted to go to the Naval Academy to pursue that dream. And so I put in a patch for the Naval Academy, I put in a patch for West Point as well. And we had a super strong West Point alumni association in Southeast Texas. And one of the head guys, he was a Silver Star recipient from the Korean War. Amazing guy, he was really close friends

with my grandfather. And he was a big advocate of West Point, his West Point grad. And he was pretty heartbroken when I chose Navy. But I chose that because I wanted to be in the SEAL teams. And my dad and I did a lot of fishing growing up on the Texas coast. There's fantastic inshore fishing fishing growing up on the Texas coast. There's fantastic inshore fishing,

offshore fishing on the Texas coast. And we were going out on the Galveston jetties. And I remember just watching all these, I'd accepted my appointment to West Point because I got picked up in like, it was like January of my senior year. And so I accepted my appointment. I still hadn't heard back from Navy.

It was like, and finally in like late April when I was graduating in May, I finally, I got accepted to West Point. Oh, sorry, I got accepted to Navy. So I'd already accepted my appointment to West Point. I finally got an appointment to the Naval Academy. And so then I was like, man, what do I do now? Like, I don't know what I want to do.

The alumni network told me, they said, they said the West Point alumni network said, they said, all right, you got a decision to make here. Dwight D. Eisenhower went to West Point. Jimmy Carter went to Navy. Which they went to Navy. I was like, man, that's a tough one. You're putting it on me here.

That was a strong statement. But I was out fishing. My dad had a little center console fishing, but we were out there trying to catch some speckled trout and redfish on the Galveston jetties. And I remember looking at these, just these oil tankers, you know, the Houston Ship Channel comes in through the Galveston there.

It's one of the busiest ports in North America. And just watching these different tankers come in and all the different flags, you know, sail from around the world. And I just remember turning to turn to my dad and saying, I'm going to Naval Academy. I wanted to be in the Navy and I wanted to be in the SEAL teams.

That was the purpose. And after four long years at Navy, I did not get selected for the SEAL program. Damn. You know, it's why did you, I know you said all throughout your childhood, you wanted to be a leader in a ground unit, but why, I'm just curious, why didn't you go

the enlisted route? Why did you, why were you hell bent on the Academy? Man, that's a great question, Sean. I, there are many times as an officer when I was sitting in a tactical operations center and when I was, you know, when we were passing out the PowerPoint Ranger patch, you know, 3000 hours, where I was like, maybe I should have listed in the SEAL teams.

I definitely questioned it when I graduated from Navy because when I didn't get service elected, I, you know, and man, they made the right call, to be honest. Like they only took 16 guys out of the Naval Academy and there was a prior unlisted seal in my class. So they took 15 guys. And, you know, there was 200 people

that went out for the screener. It was probably 80 guys that graduated from the screener and probably 40 or 50 of those guys could have gone and done really well, any of them. And so they only took 15 and I was not one of those 15. And that was based on my grade point average, which was atrocious. I was part of that half of the class

that made the top half possible. And I had a terrible conduct record because when you get a midshipman that was two years older than me who was kind of barking orders at me and telling me what to do, I let them know that I was not too pleased about that. I was pretty strong-willed and hard-headed

as you know me to be. And I think that didn't serve me well there. So I had a conduct record, I got in a bunch of trouble. And so I wouldn't selected. But actually it was the best thing that ever happened to me because my time in the service fleet was awesome. I was instantly thrown into a position of responsibility and leadership. And I served three different deployments on two different ships, got to sail all over the world

and see some amazing things, worked with some incredible people. So what was, so you tried out- Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say, to answer your question, I think what my parents were pushing me to like go to college first,

and that was probably a bigger factor, but it was, it was a, I don't know, like there were, when I got service selected out of, for the service fleet out of the academy, I was like, man, I probably should have listed the Navy. So, but it was, it was, I think my parents just kind of encouraged me to go to college.

I was interested in the Naval Academy. You know, I was interested in having a degree under my belt. If I hadn't gotten one of the academies, I would have gone up Texas A&M and been on the Corps of Cadets there and the RTC program. So I think that was probably more their encouragement than anything else. But there's certainly times that I regretted that. And what I loved about the SEAL teams was, you know, man, while the college degree might

have separated officers from enlisted at some point, I mean, the college degree might've separated officers from enlisted at some point, I mean, the post 9-11 world, that wasn't even the case for a lot of guys. And Brian Bill in our bloods class had an electrical engineering degree, probably a way better GPA than I ever had. And so many guys that I served with like you

were just super smart guys, and were way smarter than I would ever be. So it was, there wasn't a lot of differentiation. It was just something like a different role. Interesting, interesting. So, so I didn't, so they're recruiting right out of the academy. I didn't realize there was that much,

but 200 people tried, roughly 200 people trying out. That's, well, that's pretty stiff competition. What, so when you found out that you didn't, how did they tell you you didn't make the cut? Do you find out immediately? They announced, it's like service selection night. And so they kind of, they announced you. And so I had put, my first choice was Naval Special Warfare.

My second choice was Marine ground. I was like, if I can't be in, you know, a SEAL, I'll go be a Marine infantry officer. Maybe I can try to go for sports recon and that route. And then my third choice was service warfare, the ship drivers. And so when they basically like just, you distribute a piece of paper that gives you the service selection with all the seniors,

the firsties there, and then you have the service selection So when they basically like just, you distribute a piece of paper that gives you the service selection with all the seniors, the firsties there. And you're sitting there in like the ward room on, and it's, I saw my best friend and roommate, just his head, just, he was really disappointed to not get served. We were both going out for the, you know,

the SEAL program, that's what we wanted. And so when he didn't get it, I didn't get it. And we were right there in the room together sitting next to each other. You know, it was an encouragement, you know, to keep going. And, but again, it was the best thing ever happened. I loved my time in the surface fleet.

And I wanted to be a SEAL the whole time, but I instantly, I flew out to, I went to about six months of school in Rhode Island and then I flew out and met a ship and we were in force in sanctions against the Against Iraq that before before the war kicked off So these were the UN sanctions that had been in place since the Persian Gulf War and and so I got to work alongside See the seals would go take down these ships for and so I got to work alongside, Seals would go take down these ships, our boarding team would go alongside and take over the ship and just vector them over to a holding

area. It was super cool. I forgot you were on a boarding team, correct? Yeah, we did dozens of boarding ships. How did you get involved in that? They just, the ship just selected me to be a part of it. I was lucky enough to be a part of that and it was really, it was a neat thing to be a part of it. I was lucky enough to be a part of that. And it was a neat thing to be able to see and do. And I think just being able to navigate a ship

across the world, it required a lot of responsibility. I mean, when you're the officer of the deck, you're in charge of the ship when the captain's asleep in his stateroom at nighttime, or if he's elsewhere, you're responsible for the entire wellbeing of that ship. I mean, it's massive responsibility on your shoulders. What kind of ship were you on? I was on a destroyer, DD-972 USS Oldendorf. I did two years on that. We had an awesome wardroom of great officers and the listed sailors were outstanding that were on that thing.

And it was just a great leadership opportunity for me. I learned a ton of lessons, I learned a ton of things wrong, came in kind of the strong-willed instant and got shut down, realized like, look, I need to rely on my experience, chiefs and sailors to actually lead this team and learn from them.

And so I got to see like what good leadership looks like. It's not the person that's barking orders at people. It's actually being the silent leader that listens to the team and lets them run with things. And then I went to a different ship, FG-38 USS Kurtz. I did about a year on that there as a training officer. So I did the first ship, I did two deployments to the Persian Gulf,

I kind of transited that, you know, Indian Ocean, you know, Pacific transits. And then I did a Western Pacific deployment with the Kurds, the frigate. Both of those were great experiences and awesome group. And I got selected probably halfway through my time at being on that second ship, the USS Kurds, I got selected, this was September, 2001,

and I got selected finally on my second package that I put in for the SEAL program. And so right as September 11th happened. Wow. And so we knew this was real, we knew we were going to war. I knew after Buds we were going straight to a, you know, to a, to a seal platoon and deploying overseas. And so probably by the time that you were, you know,

going, going through your boot camp and just starting your Navy journey, I was, for me, it was interesting because some of the sailors, you know, there's so many sailors in the fleet with a 70 to 80% attrition rate that didn't make it through Buds. I remember one of the sailors is a great guy asking me like, you got selected for Buds,

how far do you think you'll make it through the program? I thought that was a crazy question. I was like all the way through the program. Why would I be even going if I didn't think I was gonna make it all the way through? I think in his mind, having gone there and not made it through, it just was like impossible. You're not gonna make it through the program.

And I think I was so appreciative of the experience. When I got to Buzz and you and I going through Buzz together, it enabled me to think about what it took to actually get there, all the effort that it took. And I had some amazing people that pulled so many strings for me, to write letters of recommendation,

to train me and prepare me and get me ready physically and stuck their neck out to get me selected out of dozens of people that applied. And so I was never gonna let them down in any way. And it gave me some great perspective. Man, I didn't realize you got picked up in September of 2001. Where were you when the towers went down? I was on duty to Peer side in San Diego

at 32nd Street Naval Station aboard the USS Curt. So I was the duty officer and we were just, you know, I was just waking up in the morning and, you know, obviously that's, you know, six in the morning, you know, on the West Coast when nine o'clock, you know, when it went down and on the East Coast. And I got a call from the incoming duty officer

who was listening to the news on his way into work. And he said, hey, hey a planes just hit the World Trade Center and I thought I'm thinking it's like a little Cessna sightseeing plane or something You know that got too close. So I'm like, what are you talking about? So I went in and we turned on the news In the wardroom and I turned on the news and I'm sitting there watching like man Just smoke going out and we just watched in on live TV as the second plane hit. And we knew instantly, this is an attack. Like, this is real, we're at war.

And it just was, changed everything. Wow, wow. And so you were selected right after that or right before that? I don't remember the exact date that I found out that it was right around then. And I can't remember if it date that I found out that it was it was right around then And I can't remember if it was just before just after but I know I got the news like like like in September 2001 and

and so it was I Knew this is real and I was lucky enough. I had a great commanding officer on on board the USS Kurtz and he was kind enough to Send me TAD over to SEAL Team 5. And so I was TAD to SEAL Team 5. I went over there, I helped out wherever I could, you know, the administrator side, but they assigned us to a senior chief. And he was all he did with me,

he just trained us all the time. And so we were like six straight months before I went to Bud's. I was spending most of my time over at Cilty Five, just training and preparing. And some of my friends were there who had helped pull some strings for me to be there. In fact, that very same CEO who'd got service selected.

And- No kidding. Yeah, he got picked up just the year before. So they went through the year before that you and I went through B.U.T.S. together. And he was just there as a new guy, assistant platoon commander. And so, man, he'd take me out for runs. The runs that he took me on were harder than anything we did in B.U.T.S. Like I would puke my guts up. And as a result of that, I was a horrible runner that was a thing I probably struggled with most and

And I didn't fall back and end the runs in buds just cuz you know, thankfully I hadn't had that opportunity How long was it in prepare? How long was it after you got the word that you showed up at buds? We classed up 241 classed up in April of 2002. So that was, yeah, it was pushing six months of kind of prep and training. And I knew that when I got picked up,

that was the last time. I was already a Lieutenant JG, and I knew I was gonna make Lieutenant at the four-year mark, which if you remember, I put that on in first phase. I got quite the promotion party, if you remember, the beat down.

But yeah, I knew that was like the last shot. So I was already training for it, I was already preparing for it, but I had about six months of people that really, and it's so hard to train when you're underway on a ship you know as far as running and swimming and doing the thing you just can't do it so well so it was just awesome to have you know my commanding officer and the senior leadership on that ship support me and be excited for me and on my previous ship I mean they wrote

super powerful letters of recommendation as well you know know, that enabled that to happen. And if I didn't have the seals that were pulling for me, that wrote me a letter of recommendation, you know, and more than anything probably was Admiral Smith, who was a retired CO Admiral, his son, and our friends. And he had our close friend who's still serving, I won't name him you know was was probably my biggest advocate an amazing guy and Pulled so many strings for me trained with me got me ready, you know

Connected me with with Adam and then Admiral Smith and Admiral Smith wrote me a just incredibly powerful letter of recommendation That that if people hadn't pulled those strings for me man man, I would have never, ever had the opportunity to serve. Lack of quality sleep can really affect every area of your life and Helix mattress can help change that. They can help with snoring, back pain, sleep apnea, or even if you sleep too hot. The best night's sleep I've ever had is on a Helix mattress. It's been amazing

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What are they, what's the selection process look like? I think the bill is, I think there's 24 bill at the Academy today. And I think there's something like that for all of like ROTC. And then there's like a handful. So they take 48 a year. Something like that.

I don't know what the numbers are. I have to double check that. I think that was it for a while, but it's highly competitive, right? Interesting, so they only take 48 men. It's something like that. Yeah. Program.

Yeah, don't quote me on the numbers of that. Maybe half of that. But it's very highly competitive. And then there's a handful of officers that come in, like our mutual friend Travis, that will come in with a officer candidate school billet and who went through with us. It's very competitive as an officer.

So you're training with people like, I mean, I was competing at the Naval Academy with the captain of the water polo team. Like I was never a competitive swimmer. That guy's gonna destroy me. Like somebody who's on the cross country team, somebody who's on the triathlon team. They gotta be looking for more than that though.

I mean, they can find physical fitness anywhere. What are they looking for specifically in an officer? I mean, because it sounds like you weren't even, no offense, but it doesn't sound like you were a superstar athlete at the Naval Academy. I definitely was not. Problems running, you weren't a swimmer, you know, and then you have all these guys that were.

Maybe that's not why you got picked up, I don't know, but I mean, they have to be looking for more than athleticism. That was a part of it. I think it was a major factor. I think they're also looking for grade point average. They're looking for, you know, student leadership opportunities.

I was never a student leadership because I was always in trouble for some. So I think, you know, there's just, I mean, I wouldn't trade it. My time at the Naval Academy was awesome. I really enjoyed my experience there. There were some negative examples, right? That showed me like the leader

that I didn't wanna be as well. I think that's always the case, right? I think good leadership is rare no matter where you are, but there also were some amazing leaders there who poured into me and then set a great example. And frankly, Sean, I wouldn't trade that for anything. I mean, the fact that I didn't get service selected for the SEAL program, I had to work my ass off.

I had to train, I had to go out and build relationships. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and making excuses because that would have been easy to do, right? Well, this person knew that person or this person got picked up or that person happened to make better grades than me or this person is a better athlete and that shouldn't be what it's based on.

I can make all those excuses. What I had to do was before I even understood this concept we now call it stream ownership, I actually, I didn't take extreme ownership to say if this is what I want to do with my life, I'm going to have to actually do the work to make this possible, to open the door. And when I put in my very first lateral transfer package,

so I had to get fully qualified as a service worker officer. And so that took me about a year and a half on my first ship. That's a huge qualification to get right. You have to study, you have to prepare. It takes a long time and effort. And when I finally got that qualification,

I put together, I met every requirement possible. And I put in a package that I thought was a strong package, didn't get service elected. Wow. I got turned down again. And that was crushing to me. I thought, what, you know, this is, and I, the senior officer, he was a captain at the time,

and he was the chief of staff over at WarCom, the Naval Special Warfare Command, so very senior officer. And I reached out, just tracked down his content info, scheduled a meeting with him, and went over and sat down to talk to him. And I said, hey sir, Lieutenant J.G. Babin, I wanna be in the SEAL teams. This is what I wanna do.

I think I can contribute to this community. What do I need to do to make this happen? And he told me, he said, he was like, no one has ever scheduled a meeting like this with me. I think that shows a lot of initiative on your part. You know, keep trying, you know, get your scores better, get some better, you know, go get some strong letters of recommendation,

put in a package again, and I think you'll do better next time. So I think just, we call this concept default aggressive, that problems aren't gonna solve themselves, like you actually gotta go solve problems. You actually have to make things happen. Things aren't gonna just fall in your lap, like you gotta go make it happen.

And that applies on the battlefield, it also applies anywhere in life. And the opportunities, I think it's real easy for us to look at people and be like, well, you know, that person got lucky or this person just stumbled upon that or this person had that door open for them. And more often than not, man,

people make their luck through hard work, you know, discipline, preparation, effort, all the years and years of effort behind the scenes that people don't see. And so I think that to me was a tremendous life lesson of like, hey, this isn't going to happen unless you go and do the work to make it happen. And that required training,

being the best service warfare officer I could be. I knew that instead of complaining about not being in the SEAL teams, if I wanted to be in the SEAL teams, the best path for that for me was to be the best service warfare officer I could be. And there was, I mean, people would say things that, well, you don't want to be, they won't want to let you go.

You know, if you're too critical for a member of the team, that's total bullshit, right? You got to, the better that you are on your team, the more, the higher you perform, the more that your leadership's going to want to write you a strong letter of recommendation, right? The more that people are actually going to want to take care of you and help you out.

So the more I could contribute to my team, that happened to be a ship that I was assigned to, the better it would be for me. Going and building relationships with people, reaching out to folks that could write powerful letters of recommendation. I think for anything in life, it's the opportunities are not gonna come your way.

You gotta go make things happen. You've gotta be default aggressive. And it's, again, if you wait for problems to go away on their own, they just, they don't get worse. So I'm thankful that happened. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I can tell you, Sean, years later, after I was serving as a senior executive

for the business world, but calling right at the operations officer and executive officer position. And I was frustrated with the employment of SEALs or lack of employment with SEALs in combat at the time. And I would get super frustrated about things that were way above me in the chain of command. There, I can remember at least three different occasions where I jumped in my truck,

I drove across the Coronado Bay Bridge, I went over to 32nd Naval, I went over to 32nd Street Naval Station, which is where all the ships in San Diego are. And I walked out on one of those piers, I loved to cross it at the Coronado, at Naval Amphibious Base where the SEAL teams are. And I remembered what it was like.

And it just put that on perspective for me. Wow. You know, this is, I can't ever forget what it was like to And it just put that on perspective for me. Wow. You know, I can't ever forget what it was like to be over here, wanting to be there, and wanting to do anything I could to get over there. So no matter how frustrated I am, I'm in the single teams and I got to do the best I can and impact the people around me,

and try to make whatever, you know, I happen to be assigned, we'll try to make life as good as I can for those people that I'm with. Well, that's interesting. So you would go back to what you couldn't wait to leave, to reset. Just to give me a perspective on what it was like,

to remember what it was like to want to be in the SEAL teams and not be there. Man, that's cool. That's cool, Laif. So correct me if I'm wrong, but at breakfast, I think we had a discussion where, are you mentoring junior officers in the SEAL teams, or junior officers that are wanting to go to the SEAL teams?

When I got back from my second combat deployment to Ramadi, I took over the junior officer training course. It's over two years I ran that training program for every single civil officer that graduated from BUDS. So before they go to BUDS, before they go on to their, you know, the advanced training, the civil qualification training, they would go through a four week classroom,

week long field training exercise. And so I'd been through that program. That's where you and I broke off together, right? After we graduated BUDS and then you went on to SEAL Qualification Training. And so I, you know, the officers from our class went to SEAR school and some other schools, and then we went to the Junior Officer Training Course together.

And so I got a chance to run that four years later. And I got, it was a great program and I went through it, but I think it was focused on trying to help you understand how it was organized. And what I got to do was really, I think, try to revamp it to just try to set those leaders up for success, you know, and to help those leaders be ready for the most difficult combat situations

that they might come up against. We'll get into more details with that at a more appropriate time in the interview, but the reason I'm bringing it up is what are you looking for in junior SEAL leadership? What are some of the top attributes that you've identified that great leaders inside of Naval Special Warfare all seem to have?

Number one, humility. Humility is the most important quality in a leader. And the reason I say that is because, look, if you don't have an ego, you don't care about winning, right? You just mail it in. You don't care about outperform right? You just mail it in. You don't care about outperforming the other, other people or doing well.

Like ego drives us to be successful. So you gotta have an ego, but so often ego is the, it just absolutely destroys people. It destroys careers. It destroys teams. It destroys relationships. It destroys lives. And when people can't put their ego in check,

you just, you can never get better. You can never improve. And I think, you know, the biggest lesson that I've learned in life through some extremely humbling combat operations and then beyond is that it's be humble or get humbled. And anytime that I'm feeling like, oh, I got things figured out,

oh, I've got a, you know, oh, I'm ready for, you know, for the worst case scenario, life might throw me, man, you get humbled and you get put in check. So I think that humility is number one, the most important quality, because without humility, you can't learn from anybody else. You can't get better, right?

You can't evolve, you can't adapt or innovate. You can't listen to other people's ideas or learn from them in any capacity. And worst of all, you can't look yourself in the mirror and conduct an honest self-assessment, a brutally honest self-assessment, because that's what's key. If you can't do that,

there's no way you're ever gonna improve. What's required is an honest self-assessment of like, okay, I need to do these things to improve. I need to do these things to actually fix myself going forward. Okay, these might be my strengths, but these are my weaknesses. I need to work on those to get better. Hey, we might've gotten lucky on that common operation, but we better be prepared for that worst case scenario

next time in case we don't get so lucky. And so I think number one, humility. Number two, ownership. And that goes right along with each other, right? If you're gonna point fingers and cast blame and make excuses, it's right there with humility. The driver of that is ego. But oftentimes, the reason I say ownership is because

if I'm gonna wait for you to solve my problem, that problem's not gonna get solved. So let's say you and I have a conflict and we don't see eye to eye on something. I can say, well, Sean, I don't like the way Sean talked to me. Or Sean needs to come apologize to me. Or Sean, that's Sean's fault for not seeing the world from my perspective.

Or I can actually take ownership of saying, you know what, Sean, there's some reason that Sean disagrees with me on this. Let me actually learn from his perspective. Let me actually take ownership of fixing this problem by taking some action, you know, to actually get his perspective and see his perspective on things

and see what I could have done better to better communicate, you know, what my perspective was and ask more questions so I could see the world through his eyes. And so I think those things are super critical. Teamwork is a great example of that, right? If you're just about yourself and you can't actually put the team,

at the overall team and the mission first, I think that's not someone that's gonna do well. And particularly in high performing organizations, whether you're talking to like a SEAL unit or a special operations unit or a SWAT team, or frankly like a super high performing sales team in the corporate world. A lot of times you'll talk to them

about the concept of cover move and teamwork and they'll say, oh, we're doing awesome. We're doing awesome. But our admin department sucks and supply sucks and they're not getting us what we need. The senior leaders up in their corporate high job, they don't know what's going on down here. And so they, and what you realize is like,

they think about teamwork within just their immediate team, not about the other teams that they actually depend on to be successful. So, you know, when you start realizing like, hey, I need a better relationship with the admin department so that we can get paid, so that we can actually get the paperwork taken care of, so that we can actually do what we need to do

and focus on our job. You know, I need a better relationship with supplies so they can give me the tools that I need to be successful. I need a good relationship with my chain of command. One of the biggest lessons I learned from Jaco is not having a good relationship with your chain of command doesn't help you. And it certainly doesn't help your team.

So you gotta build a good relationship with your chain of command just to make sure you're aligned with them, make sure they understand You know what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it and why you yeah And and they have the information they need, you know to better support you and make better decisions So I think when you're looking at humility ownership teamwork, I think those are crucial things

Discipline I think is something else, you know if you have people that are not disciplined I mean, I I think is something else. If you have people that are not disciplined, I mean, I think about somebody in our Buds class like Brian Bill, for instance, who probably wasn't born great at everything. That guy was so, he was the only guy in our entire Buds class that was first time every time in die phase through the pool competency test which is you know if you don't know pull comp is it is miserable right where they're tying

your hoses and knots and and and that was that's a terrifying test right for so many people that that you know even people that are comfortable in the water and it was we had so many rollbacks for the previous you know class as you know you know I was one of you were one of those. And the stories you guys told us, it was terrifying. And so I think that Brian was the only dude on that wall this first time every time. Why is that?

Well, he was methodical in his preparation and he was disciplined and that enabled him to be successful in everything he's trying to do. So I think somebody, you know, it's great to have some innate qualities and natural abilities and those things are great. When you can combine natural ability and discipline, that's unstoppable.

But, you know, hard work is gonna beat natural ability over time if you've got somebody who's disciplined is gonna put in the work. So, you know, I think those are the qualities that I think apply not just to a SEAL leader, but I think to any leader in any situation. You know, somebody who's humble, somebody who will take ownership,

somebody who's a team player, it puts the team first as somebody who's disciplined. And that's great. That's great to hear. Thank you. I got a ton of questions, but I'm gonna save them for the leadership section. But, so let's get back to Buds.

So you show up to Buds, we're classing up in April of, was it 2001? 2002. 2002, correct. And so what, I mean, what was it like for you walking in the compound as a Buds candidate, Buds student? Man, I might've been different from a lot of us. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. I mean, to me, just to have a candidate, blood student. Man, I might've been different from a lot of us. I loved it.

I thought it was awesome. I mean, to me, just to have in the, not that you weren't, certainly we were walking on eggshells all the time, right? Any, and I remember afterward, particularly as the class officer in charge, right? As the senior person in the class, it didn't matter what happened, right?

I don't think I failed a single room inspection the entire time. Actually, I did. We had one spot inspection in don't think I failed a single room inspection the entire time. Actually, we had one spot inspection in die phase that I failed. And me and my roommate failed. It was like one is, but every other inspection I passed. Every other personnel inspection I passed, which was unheard of.

And yeah, I got beaten. I was the first guy to get beaten every time, right? Cause you're just, anybody in the class fails, you as the leader are responsible. And so you're going to you're going to pay the man for it. That was just part of the game. You know, I embrace that with a sense of humor, you know, so. So there was, you know, there was it took a couple of years to be able

to walk on the grinder before you're kind of like, who's looking at me? You feel like you need to be running and calling cadence. But by the way, they don't call cadence across the grinder anymore, man. It's, I miss that was so freaking cool. Like just to my left, to my, you know, I just, just yelling at our class as we came across the grinder.

For me, just knowing the history of that place, you know, knowing not only through the SEAL teams, but for our, the Underwater Demolition teams, our Frogman Forefathers before them. And knowing all of that took place right there, right? I mean, it's Coronado, Naval Amphibious Base. I mean, this is where the, you know, the guys that were going out and swimming up on, you know,

beaches like Iwo Jima, you know, and Guam and Saipan. I mean, just amazing, amazing history. And I just, I thought it was awesome. And, you know, checking in, I mean, you know, for guys like you that were class ahead of me, you know, initially it was like, you might as well have been there for 30 years of experience, right? Cause you, I'm just showing up

and you don't know like what to do. I quickly like just try to just have a sense of humor. I remember they, I walked into the in-doc office, right? Those first few weeks that they used to call in-doc, the indoctrination before you started first phase. And one of the instructors was like, Babin, just walked up to me and was like, hey, they had like their coffee mess there

and they had like this fancy coffee and I came from the fleet, there's no fancy coffee. Everybody's, these chiefs, you know, the fleet are drinking like black tar coffee that was, you know, reheated coffee from like five days ago. So they had this like fancy coffee mess in there and they had a pile of like sugar cubes. I mean, and it was probably like, I don't know, 50 of them.

He's like, how many of those sugar cubes, can you eat it once, Babin? I'm like, all of them. I just like shoved them all in my mouth. And yeah, I think from that on, I just tried to just have a good sense of humor about it. And it was, yeah, to me, I thought it was, I mean, it was the quality of people that we got to serve with there was, yeah, to me, I thought it was, I mean, it was the quality of people that we got to

serve with there was, you know, I think in that post 9-11 era of people that, you know, like you, that are like enlisted in the Navy, this is what they want to do, I'm going to go serve my country in a time of war. You know, it was just an incredible man. And I just, I wouldn't trade that for anything. It was just incredible, man. And I just, I wouldn't trade that for anything. It was awesome. What about the intimidation factor? Were you intimidated coming in, checking in there?

Totally, man. Of course. You know, I mean, you're kind of like, do I make eye contact with people? Do you not? You know, you're trying to just figure that out. You know, and we talk a lot, you know, the dichotomy of leadership, right?

You've got to try to find that balance. You got to be confident, but not cocky right and I said humility is the most important part in leader So you've got to have some confidence, but you also you can't be cocky and I think just trying to find that balance was like, you know knowing that like it's structure staff that Some of the guys that would you know say I hate officers and give us the hard time more than anything else, they ended up being my favorite instructors. And they just, even though they dished out the worst physical punishments of pain,

they were just, they were awesome. And some of those guys who were like looking to give the officers a hard time. One of the things I loved about Indoc too, do you remember the officer belly flop contest off the high dive? Oh yeah, oh yeah. Off like the 15 foot board, that was so awesome.

Just, you're like, okay, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna win, like I'm going all in to this thing. I want to make it so painful. I'm gonna like knock the wind out of myself and someone's gonna have to like haul me to the staff. But that to me was like, it was fun. I think you just try to make the best of it. What was the, usually everybody I know has some type of,

they're worried about a hangup in Buds, whether it's the pool comp or the 50 meter underwater swim or the two mile swims or whatever it may be. Mine was the 50 meter underwater swim was the first one I was really nervous about. Whoop. How'd you do on that? Crushed it.

I didn't think that was hard. It was easy. You know what was crazy? So we, I'm sure you watched the Discovery Channel like Oh yeah, like 50 times. I did too. And they, what I realized later, some things like Hell Week,

like they really can't show you just how hard Hell Week's gonna be, right? So like it's, I thought Hell Week's way harder than, you know, than I even envisioned it could be, just kind of based on watching that show. But some of the other things like the ocean swims, the cold water, like the underwater swim, they were, I realized they were focusing on people

that were struggling. And so it made it look like it was impossible. So yeah, I mean, I thought the 50 meter underwater swim was like no factor, you know? But some of the things that kicked my ass, man, were... Before though, before we did them, what were you worried about? What was your biggest fear?

I worried about it. I sweated every single evolution. No kidding. Every single one, and I had a friend tell me that, sweat every evolution. Like just, you better be worried about preparing. We're going to spend our weekends prepping, planning. We were doing stupid stuff too. Like pool comping each other in like the, you know,

in the like local like apartment complex pools, you know, into like civilian dive rigs that we rented from the local apartment complex pools, civilian dive rigs that we rented from the local, stupid stuff, dangerous stuff. If you're listening to this, don't, or watching this, don't do that, that's stupid. You're going to AGE yourself, you definitely need a dive master there

to make sure stuff like that's not going on. But we just tried to sweat every evolution. I was worried about the runs because I struggled with runs. And I found the runs were like, the runs were hard. I mean, they definitely were, you know, all out spread for, but I don't, I don't think I, I don't think I got in the goon squad even one time.

That was also because our, our good friend and classmate Seth Stone had made the egregious error of marrying one of the Buds instructors. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. So we, the officers would get regularly pulled out and just beat on for that and then the entire class would get beat on and then wherever Stoner was, we call him, Seth would call him Stoner, but wherever Stoner was in the lineup of the runs, if you remember, they would just find him and be like, goon squad, here I'm back. And he would just embrace it, you know, and just start barricroaling.

The goon squad, everyone's just getting beat on and everyone else is like circling up. But you were a good runner, right? You weren't, I don't think you were in a good squad. I was good. That was the one thing I was really good at was running. Yeah, I remember you being a good runner. The swims for me, I was like one bad swim.

Our mutual friend who I won't say his name, but we got put together. It was another officer and he was not a great swimmer and I was not a great swimmer. So we were like one bad conditions away from failing the swim. I think the only swim I failed was the ones where they forced us to wear like the new fins.

Remember that one? And like half the class failed. Because we had to wear these new fins that were supposed to be so much better. And we all went back to the old school, like World War II, like Duck Feed. UDT, Duck Feed, yeah. But that was one where I wasn't a fast swimmer.

I'm not going to go for a while, but I knew I was kind of one where I was I wasn't a fast swimmer. I'm not gonna go for a while but But I knew I was kind of one bass one way, but I think one of those the hardest things for me That I didn't anticipate was a drown proofing people thought drown proofing was easy. Did you did you have no problem with job? I thought drought I thought drought proofing was easy. So many people did drown proofing was horrible. No shit That was hard for you when I after we did like you're bouncing off the bottom was fine But once we had to do like the traverse, you know with your hands and feet time And my heart rate got up and then I started doing the flips So just for the audience that doesn't know what drown proofing is basically what they do is they tie your feet

the tire feet together, they tie your hands together behind your back. And you start off just in the deep end, right? Bouncing up and down, kind of getting a rhythm into breathing. Then you have to float, then you have to swim, was it a hundred meters? You have to swim a hundred meters

with your hands tied behind your back and your feet tied together. And it is challenging. The swim is definitely challenging. Well, I've struggled with it. And I was really struggling with it. And one of those buzz instructors who was the meanest instructor,

you know, when it came to officers and just hammering them, he just pulled me aside and put me in like, he put me in like the forefoot section. I was like, he's like, hands and feet tied, you just, you're gonna do your bounding in the four foot section. And he just like left me there. And then he moved me over to the,

to the nine foot section. And it was like a, it was just like a progression and that really helped me. And then actually one of the other instructors, remember we had to like, you were supposed to, so after you do the, that, you know, you do that to like, you were supposed to, so after you do the, that you know, you do that traverse, then you were supposed to like,

you do like a flip and then go down and grab the mask and then you, you were supposed to do like three flips and then like five bounds and then that was the end of the test. And one of the instructors on the side was like, I think I was probably 30 flips in. He was like, again, again, again. Yeah, and finally that same instructor that helped me out

came over and was like, Baven, you're good, get out of the pool. And so it was, he kind of helped me out. But I mean, you knew you were going to get the full benefit on it, like no factor. And that was, so that to me was harder than I thought it was going to be for whatever reason. And then life saving was, life saving was a challenge to you.

That was a kick in the ass, man. The smallest instructor we had, so if you remember we had our, you had your unconscious victim for the, I don't think life saving is like that anymore. What do you mean it's not like that? I don't think it's like a pass fail evolution, like it was. Like I don't think you can like that anymore. I don't think it's like a pass fail evolution like it was. Like I don't think you can get kicked out of the program.

Remember for us, like if you didn't pass it. Oh yeah, I remember. You got kicked out. And so the unconscious victim, I got the smallest buds instructor we had. He was like probably 150 pounds. He was the unconscious victim, which means he's laying there. I just grabbed him, haul him across the pool.

And then the very next one was, if you remember this instructor who had started at, he had played starting linebacker at Arizona State University. Oh yeah, I remember him. And man, he was an awesome instructor, I loved him, but he kicked my ass in the, like I swam over to him and realized like,

he's like, save me. And I grabbed him. I think it took me. Was this Scotty Walker? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we could say his name. He's in the Buds thing.

Yeah. He's in the 234 thing. So. I don't know if you could say Scotty. Scotty was hilarious, but he just attacked me underwater. And it was a giant wrestling match. We probably weighed 250 at the time. I was like, the fucking size.

I remember watching that guy when we were doing log PT, pick up the fucking log by himself and just start running up the berm with it. And I was like, holy shit. I remember that too. And we were all like, dude, that guy's an animal. And I remember I it was probably It felt like it felt like a 20-minute evolution for me to get him to the side

I don't even probably wasn't near that long, right? But I finally get him the side and I crawled out the combat training tank just outside and I just puked my guts up And then I just and I crawl back in there and it was like the next one the next one the next one So that was that was a tough evolution but it was also I mean you also knew that like What was cool about that is? There's nobody that I can't save if I can scape if I can save Scotty attacking me, you know Those conditions and this monstrous human

And I could get him to the side and fight him the whole way like I could save anybody Yeah, it was and just the training program itself was just awesome. Do you remember when Ben, do you remember the armpit hair tactic that Ben created? I do remember that. I had forgotten about that, yeah. Genius move. That was a genius move. I don't think that I, I can't remember if instructors, I don't think that I,

I can't remember if instructors shaved their armpits for that or if they stopped, but it was. He, I remember he had, what did they call that victim? You had like the passive victim, you had the unconscious victim, you had the one that's going to fight everything you do, basically beat the shit out of you as you're trying to save them.

And I think it was Pranger. Was it Pranger? Ben went out to save Pranger, and he just reached all the way around his chest, grabbed a big handful of armpit hair, just yanked it. And the instructor was like, I'm good, I'm good. And what a genius move. Dude, I remember instructor Nave had me,

I didn't even know what a triangle choke was. He had me in a triangle choke on the bottom of like 15 foot section of the combat training tank. I'm like trying to go underwater to get away from him. And he just like locks me up in this triangle and I'm like down on the bottom. Man, man. That was crazy. When did you find out you were going to be the class OIC? I'm jumping this triangle on my down on the bottom. Man, man.

That was crazy. When did you find out you were going to be the class OIC? So in Indoc, I was the senior guy. I was the only officer for a little while. We had a few officers that ended up getting rolled back. So I think I was the, there were 18 of us in Bud's class 241 that like started with 241 and made it through in one shot. I think I was the only officer from that group.

And the rest of our like 44 guys that graduated, you know, were rollbacks. And man, thank God for you guys, because when you got rolled back in the class, like y'all were, y'all brought in this like, okay, we've been here before. We understand how to prep for these things. Because at the time we didn't,

other than the Discovery Channel show, you don't even know what's coming, right? The schedule's secret. You can't, it's not like you can walk in and ask the instructors that, you know? So that was massive. But we had several O's that were like rolled in. And so I think when you got rolled back into the class,

that was, I got, there was a senior officer who took that role through Hell Week. And then shortly after Hell Week, he got rolled out. And so then I became the senior officer again. So most of the class, I was the senior officer. What did that, I mean, what did that feel like for you to be the OIC of, I mean, that's a lot of induced pressure, I would imagine. Yeah, it definitely is.

I mean, I think it instantly, luckily I'd learned the lesson of like, hey, I can't do everything. I'm here to rely on my teammates to make this happen. I need to use my senior list of leadership. If I'm running around trying to count everyone, that doesn't work. You have to have a, and if the LPO,

the leading petty officer is doing that, that doesn't work. We need to quarter-weight boat crew leaders. You know, you need people in those boat crews that are helping those boat crew leaders out. This is how decentralized command actually works. And so I think it was, that to me was like, the thing that I was, you know, I would get, sometimes people would come up with ideas and say,

hey, let's go ask the instructors if we can do this, or we can do that. And, you know, people wanted to kind of try to cut corners. I was, I think, I know I frustrated some of the class sometimes when I was like, yeah, we're not gonna, we're not gonna expend the leadership capital on something like that. We're gonna just show up when they told us to do it.

We're not gonna ask if we can come 15 minutes later. We're gonna, like, it's not worth it. And I think for people people that at that time I know some sometimes particularly some of the owes and both leaders got frustrated with me Um, you know with some of that stuff But you have to just I think really prioritize like what you're gonna put push back on what you're not Um, and and like we we had a phenomenal class. I mean it was awesome um, and uh

It was um Awesome. And it was, I mean, you joined in our classes, it was one of my favorite stories of the whole thing, man. The whole week kick off. Yeah, yeah, that was. That was that thing. Yeah, I got rolled because I failed the first phase exam. Genius move, Sean.

But it all worked out. Everything happened for a reason. It was an awesome class. And I do think my most memorable experience in Bud's with Leif Babin was the O-course wrestling match when I got a little too far out in front of my skis and challenged you to a wrestling match. It didn't come out on top.

But... Dude, that was so awesome. No, we, so we show up to the O course and we show up to the obstacle course. And, you know, if you don't know anything about the Buzz obstacle course, it's a notorious obstacle course. These things have been around for a long time.

All these obstacles are named. And before even CrossFit or these kind of high intensity, you know, interval training was even a thing. The old course was that, right? You're gonna do seven or eight minutes of like max put out effort, when you're done with that thing. And then you add the soft sand runs

and to the demo pits and back, that's a mile and a half down, mile and a half back. And then add a ruck run in that soft sand on top of that dirt face. So we were out there for that evolution and I can't remember what happened. Something got screwed up, the schedule got screwed up. I know I cleared the proctor we were supposed to be there,

but the instructors never showed up. And of course, there's nothing worse than like bored bud students standing around. So somehow it started with these wrestling matches that were going on and we had some wrestlers in the class and people were calling each other out like WWE SmackDown style. And I remember I was just kind of trying to stay above the fray and making sure, you know, because it's in the sand. We didn't want people's head hitting rocks or, you know, obviously at this point you

get injured, right? You're going to be rolled from the program, but just we don't even graduate So I wanted to try to prevent that I was trying to say above the fray and all of a sudden You know, I got shot out there you like walked out in the middle. It looked it looked like Apollo Creed from the Rocky movie I want you you you were like bad, but I want you And like just challenged me. I was like, okay, I guess I got no choice here. So they like drew a ring in the sand like kumite and we had a big round stuff there.

So that was awesome. I think it was probably more of a stalemate than anything. But I stuffed the tape out. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you choked me out. I think I just held you in place until it was like, okay, let's move on to the next. Everybody got bored. But dude, my favorite story from you

was that Hell Week experience, because we were, no one knows, it's kind of like combat, right? No one knows. Hell Week was, I think it was the fifth week for us going through first phase. So we've been in five weeks to end doc. We've already been in four weeks of first phase

at that point. And I think we started our class, we started with 193 guys. And then I think we started with, I think we started a whole week with 101 guys. So our automatically was just get, already a bunch of people had quit, right. It's getting whittled down And I remember those numbers well because it was so you're already losing a bunch of people, you know in those first few weeks

No, hold on. Let me just I just 193 guys at one one day or 193 guys in in doc 193 guys in in doc. Okay is what started with Bud's class 241. That's what classed up Okay, the original class now some of those guys left others got rolled back in You know the numbers are kind of switched around and by the time we were in we were about to start Hell Week We had 101. Oh We'd already lost, you know, well guys a lot of guys who quit watching, you know injuries things people enrolled things like that But you you were a brown shirt roll, people enrolled, things like that.

But you were a brown shirt rollback, which is like that coveted brown shirt was had to be awesome, right? You'd made it through hell week. And so we- If you don't remember, right, they actually took our brown shirts and gave us the white shirt back. Well, and I think that's what's so,

I know people who in the previous years have been given a chance, they screwed up something in buzz, in dive phase or third phase, and were given a chance to go back and start day one. And they're like, no, thank you, I won't do it. They turned down a career in the SEALT because they were not willing to go back.

And so once you made it through hell, I mean, Hell Week is close to combat as you're gonna get. I mean, it was designed by Draper Kaufman and his staff at Fort Pierce back in World War II, you know, for the naval combat demolition units that were hitting the beaches at Normandy and, you know, and blowing up all the, I mean, these were the first waves at Omaha and Utah,

and they were trying to create as much mayhem as possible for them. And so they tried to combine all this training down, weeks of training into just five continuous 24-hour days, these guys up all night, no sleep, explosions going off everywhere, chaos and mayhem. And just like combat, nobody knows how they're gonna do until they get in that situation. And I remember just reading the Bible, having Bible study. You were having Bible study? Totally, man. In Buds?

Totally, yeah. Wow. Andrew Paul and I on our team, several others, we've got issued those Bibles, those little Buds Bibles that were in IV translation and in the camo. I still have that one, man. And we were reading from judges about the story of Gideon. And the story of Gideon is this reluctant warrior, like the angel of the Lord appears

to Gideon and says, hey, you're going to go fight the Midianites. And Gideon is like, what are you talking about? I'm the least of my family. I'm not even the biggest and strongest guy in my whole family. Midian is so much stronger and more powerful than Israel. What are you talking about? I can't do that.

And the angel continually assures Gideon that, and he says, some translation, it's, it was, you are a mighty warrior and God is with you. And those are just such powerful words. In some translations, it's God is with you, mighty warrior. And it's getting us this reluctant warrior. And of course, he is empowered to, he calls out to Israel, thousands of people come to the call.

He has thousands of Israelite warriors that have answered the call and God says, that's too many. People aren't gonna believe in the miracle of this. So he like whittles it down to just a few hundred and Gideon goes and destroys the Midianites with just a few hundred warriors, through the power of God.

And so it was, we were reading that verse. And in fact, Andrew, Paul and I, like during Hell Week, when in the darkest hour, like the second day, like Tuesday night, and probably the largest number of quitters, I remember quoting that verse to Andrew, him quoting it to me. Like it was- In the middle of it? In the middle of it, yeah.

Wow. Like I said, I told him, you're a mighty warrior, God is with you now. Go get back under your bow. So like those things are, those verses were super powerful to make it through. But even then, like I'm nervous. Like I didn't sleep at all, man.

Prior to Hell Week, like most people probably didn't. You probably didn't before your first Hell Week. And what's crazy is you guys at 240 had like the worst hell week of all. I remember it was like, I was going into SEAL Team Five, because I was TAD there before we classed up. Actually, maybe I was already an Indoc, I can't remember.

But I was scraping the ice. I scraped the ice off of my windshield. That was 239. The 239? I would love to take credit for that, but I can't. But that was class 239. Okay, maybe that was 239 the 239 I would love to take credit for that but I can't but that was class 230 I remember watching that okay, it's like It's fucking snowing in San Diego right now and these guys are in the water and I was like, holy shit And I remember watching like all these badass guys just like quitting quitting

Okay, I guess I remember just going what 240, you guys had a huge amount of guys that got pneumonia. I think it was a particularly miserable one. It certainly wasn't the June hell week that we had, which the water wasn't as cold, the weather was cold, it just meant we ran more, you know? But you definitely went through a tough hell week for sure in 240.

And so when you got assigned to come back in that brown shirt, so you get a white shirt, you got a white shirt, you make it through hell week, you get that brown shirt. I mean, this is a super coveted thing. We're all looking at you and the guys that have made it through, like, oh man, those guys made it through hell week.

And we're talking, the vast majority of the 70 to 80% of the people that don't make it through training quit during hell week. And so when they took away your brown shirt and like sent you back, you know, as a white shirt. And I just remember, like I was in awe, man, of like the attitude that you had. You were like, all right, this is what it is. Like we're going to do it, you know, and I'm going to go through this thing. I'm going to be a team player for 241. I'm going to tell them what I know. I'm going to support the team.

And we're all nervous, man. We've been up for nights on end. Everyone's kind of freaking out. We're reading these Bible verses. They're trying to like strengthen each other. And right as they kick off, they come into the tents and they have an amazing way. I think I hadn't slept for easy 24 hours prior to that,

just as I was able to kind of relax enough to like fall asleep for 10 minutes, right? They come in, all of a sudden the blank fire's going off, Belfast machine guns and grenade sims are being thrown. And I remember running out there. We had instantly had quitters from the team that had been thinking about it. It got to their head and they're already ringing the bell within minutes.

And we're running after the grinder, we're running around and I remember them calling you out by name and pulling you out of the class and then giving you your Brown shirt back and now you got the support. And it was one of the coolest things I ever saw, man, because there were so many people who would have been like, no, why am I doing that?

I just did this, this is supposedly the toughest military training in the world. You're gonna make me go through it again. And like, that's what you were willing to do. And you were a team player the entire time. And then even as a Brownshirt rollback, man, you were checking on us, you were looking at us. You're like, hey guys, you were just strengthening us,

giving us some encouragement. It was freaking cool, man. And I remember later, you gave me some photos were just strengthening us, giving us some encouragement. It was freaking cool, man. And I remember later you gave me some photos of all of us just like, we look like just, just disaster, like wet, sandy, all like contorted on these cogs. Three days in when we get like our first chance to sleep for 45 minutes or an hour or whatever.

And you're like taking photos for us, like just helping us out, looking out for us. And it was awesome, man. It just was a, it was like the consummate team player and the person's gonna put the mission first. And you were like, hey, they're telling me to do this? Cool, I'm gonna do it. And even you were willing to go into that

with such a great attitude. And you could tell the instructor staff was like fired up by that. And you know, the respected admiration that they had for you to be willing to do that and you were like because I don't know how much you were it wasn't immediate right like it was I mean you were running around the grinder. Yeah we did the whole I think we did the whole break they we did the whole breakout and then they they they called me and the other two gents out, first surf torture.

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certain states prices subject to underwriting in health questions. Yeah, so it was, we were probably 45 minutes or hour of like solid physical beat down. At this point, you probably are a hundred percent convinced that I was the entire next five days of no sleep. Cause Holcomb had actually told us like, they're probably gonna pull you guys out. We're like, like right before.

And we're like, all right, whatever. And then I remember seeing him and break out and I was like, they're not fucking pulling us out. And- Like he was just playing mind games with them. Yeah. But, well, thank you for saying that, man. I will say,

I think the thing that sticks out the most uh, and you were a great fucking leader by the way, I really uh, I've really looked up to you, you know going through buds and amazing love and uh, I had a A terrible mistake in third phase right before right before we were done on the island I had an ad with a blank round and Talk about a one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire fucking life and Yeah, I didn't in a D as an is an ex accidental discharge Yeah, I had an AD is an accidental discharge.

And I just remember getting called out immediately. And I was like, fuck man, we're like a week away from getting out of here and we're done and I'm probably gonna get kicked out. And I don't know what the conversations were, behind the scenes I never asked, but I just, I always respected you for not making, for not making more of a thing out of it. And, cause it could, man, that's,

when you make a mistake like that, it's, you feel like the entire world's crashing down, you know, and, and, and, I've never talked about it before, but. I haven't thought about that in a long time. Yeah. And you know what though Sean, like to me, like it was failure is the best teacher, right?

And I think that those are the things that I can't imagine that that helped you as a shooter and as an operator, you know, as teaching tactics, you know, down the road, you know, those kinds of lessons learned and the weight and pressure after all that you've been through, weighing on you, but for, you were always like exactly the kind of person

that we wanted in the SEAL teams. Like exactly the kind of person I wanted. I remember at one point the instructor staff going through hell weeks saying like, who's not performing in your boat crew? Like, who's, you know, always trying to solicit like info. And I'd always be like me, I'm not performing. You know, I wasn't going to throw guys

on the bus or things like that. And then you, but you start to realize like, hey, they're, they want good people to serve in the SEAL teams. And if you don't want somebody, if you wouldn't want somebody on your platoon, you know, if you wouldn't want to want to go to war with somebody, then that's like you owe it to the SEAL teams

that like these guys should be weeding out the program, right? That's what the program is actually for. And so I think that was somebody like you were always an absolute standout performer, always somebody who put the team first. And I mean, to me, like, I don't think that was ever a question in any of these strikers' minds.

And, you know, and everything I could say positive about you was always said, man, because you were a go-getter, you got things done, you're smart, you're capable, you're talented, you're innovative, you're a hard worker, you're a physical put-out guy all the time, and you absolutely the kind of guy, you know, that I wanted to serve in the SEAL teams with,

that other SEALs you would want to serve with as well. And frankly, my hats off to you brother, because I was 26 years old, man. I was an old man. There were a couple of guys that were older than me, our leading petty officer and a couple of our non-commissioned officers.

But man, I had 26 years of maturity experience for you to do that as an 18 year old, But man, I had 26 years of maturity experience for you to do that as an 18 year old, to have the maturity to train and the discipline to actually train and to put out and to be able to make the turning point. I don't think I could have done that at 18, man. So, I mean, that's to me, that's what I loved about the SEAL teams.

It was always about the guys and the quality of the people that I got to serve with and guys like you, man. And that's what I love most about Buds is like, hey, we might be getting beat on, this might be physically punishing, but we can look at each other and just laugh about how ridiculous this situation was and how funny it was or how much we were actually suffering.

And that's the best of the Seal of Thins, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you, man. And like I said, your reputation preceded you and went with you everywhere you went. And so moving out of Buds, I mean, where did you, we all get a dream sheet. Where did you wanna go? What team?

I wanted to be on the West Coast, you know, just because I'd been stationed in San Diego. My friends were out there. It just, you know, I had spent some time on a ship during a midshipment cruise in Virginia Beach. And I just, I liked San Diego, you know, I'd gotten to know it better. And my closest friends were there.

So I think I'd put West Coast SEAL teams and I got service selected, or I say service selected, I got selected for, I was gonna be sent to SEAL Team 1. Excuse me. So I got sent to SEAL Team 1 and I had orders to SEAL Team 1. And that was a problem for me because in their rotation, like as you know,

I put on Lieutenant in Buds. So I was already a senior guy. What that was gonna do was I was gonna start as a one-time platoon commander. So I would have had issues of being an assistive platoon commander under my belt. And that was a problem. I was gonna like, instead of having a full workup cycle and deployment

as an assistant platoon commander, which will give me some experience in the SEAL teams and give me some perspective. I just didn't think that was good for me. It wasn't good for the SEAL teams. And so luckily I had some good friends. It was my same friend that was at SEAL team five and several other friends that were there.

They went in and talked to the executive officer and commanding officer at SEAL team five and several other friends that were there, they went in and talked to the executive officer and commanding officer at SEAL Team 5. And they pulled some strength for me and got the D-Threaded Company some new orders. So I went to SEAL Team 5 as an assistant platoon commander. So even though I was a lieutenant, I was- And I never thought of that.

I got a chance to be a platoon commander. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. And I'm so thankful for my friends that were there, for the senior leaders that were there that pulled strings for me and made that happen and really opened some doors for me. So we got a chance to go through and got a chance to serve with some of our mutual friends,

Elliot from our Buds class, who maybe, Elliot may be the most senior, the most significantly wounded living seal like through the GWOD era. Yeah. You know, who got wounded in Ramadi and TBI, you know, and lost his leg wheelchair bound, like, you know, significant injuries,

but just an amazing guy, man, and such an awesome dude. And always love like stories from Buds I pulled strings to get him over to CLT five and try to stack the opportunity was coming out of you know the 18 Delta Combat Medic Course Special Forces Combat Medic Course and our corpsman went to but it was it was great to be there with Elliot some of the guys that were in you know classes just just before us and and behind us. We'll get into deployment cycles and everything that happened, but just real quick, I mean,

when you pinned your Trident on, you'd been passed up, you didn't get selected two different times, one in the Academy, one a couple years after the Academy, then you make it through straight with no hangups. I mean, who was your first phone call when you passed Bud's, when you got through? My first phone call was to my dad.

My dad's mom were praying for me the whole time and knew that's what I wanted to do. And, you know, just wanted to thank them for their love and support, and all the prayers. I think my dad has since disappeared, but he had a voicemail for me after Hell Week that I called and left for him too as well. But it was a proud moment, man,

and getting that trident. And you and I, we didn't get pinned together It was a proud moment, man, and getting that trident. And you and I, we didn't get pinned together because that was at SQT during the time, but I remember well, Ty Woods, who was our instructor at SEAL Qualification Training, that he probably pinned your trident on your chest, just like he did for me as well, man, that we later lost in Bogasi.

He was an awesome guy. And yeah, that blood-penning ceremony was something that we had a full-on Navy investigation on. I had to answer all these questions. Oh man, really? Yeah, and they were like, you know, this can't happen, this is hazing. And so an officer was like doing an investigation.

And I was like, I wasn't hazing. Like this is completely voluntary. This wasn't hazing in any way, shape or form. Like I saw that as a ritual. There was like, this is what I wanted to be a part of. And so I asked him, the investigating officer was like, hey, did you get your trident bin on? He was like, that was a different time.

Oh shit, he was a seal? Yeah, I was like, that was a different time. Oh shit, he was a seal? Yeah, I was like, that was a different time. I was like, there was no hazing whatsoever took place. That's awesome, man. That's awesome. Well, I do have one other question. I had no idea you guys were studying the Bible on buds. And I think, at least for me, faith in general

kind of dissipated into nothing for a very long time until recently. And I'm just curious, did that stick with you throughout your entire career? Man, I've fallen so far, Sean. I've stumbled as much as anyone out there. And I'm glad I had the foundation built in me. I think, and by the way, man,

I love that you share your faith with people. I think that's an incredible thing. I don't know how people who have been through dark times in their life make it through without faith, man. People ask me, how is it that you're doing okay? And I think knowing that there is a creator that's in charge of the universe that has all things planned out

and has a plan for each one of us, right? That to me is everything. And knowing that you can screw everything up and all you have to do is simply just ask for forgiveness and strive to follow the righteous path as best you can, knowing that we're all gonna fall short of the mark. But that's all it takes. And I think that to me is everything.

And I think, thank God that was instilled in me at an early age. I didn't realize or fully appreciate that. I went to the public school, I went to a private school at a small like three room log cabin schoolhouse I went to the public school, I went to a private school at a small like three room log cabin schoolhouse until I was in like fifth grade. And then I went to public school in a small, you know, East Texas public school.

And then before my junior, I transferred to a public school or I'm sorry, a private Catholic school in the bigger town of Beaumont, that was about an hour away in Southeast Texas. And so, you know, it was, the level of education there, I think was gonna open some more opportunities for me.

It was probably easier to get accepted into the Naval Academy, you know, as a result of that, or one of the service academies. But it wasn't until I started going to school, and you know, I was going to school. And I was going to school in the, Catholic school was an outstanding school. We had a religious class every semester. And I was going to school with kids

that had been in a religious class every, from kindergarten on. And I remember, so this is my junior year and it was my first ever like religious class because in public school we didn't have that. But I went to Sunday school every Sunday with the First Baptist Church of Woodville. I was involved in the youth group

and we were constantly, my dad would study the Bible and talk about it at home. It was constantly something that we referenced and talked about. And so I remember the teacher in high school in this Monsignor Kelly High School asking like in the spiritual class there, like, how did the Israelites get to Egypt?

And I was like, I was kind of looking around the room. I was ready for somebody to jump in. And I was like, I just raised my hand. And I thought, I talked about Joseph, the coat of many colors and his brother sold him into slavery. And then he's, which is an amazing story from the Bible, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers that are jealous of him.

His brothers think he's dead. He goes to Egypt, years later, there's a famine in the land of Canaan, his brothers bow down before him and are asking for food supplies. And what he says to him is that, what you used for good, what you meant for evil, God chose to use for good. And so all the Israelites come

and they start to become populous in Egypt. They eventually slay 400 years of slavery that results from that in Egypt until Moses lays them out. And I was kind of looking around the room, like everyone knows the answer to that question. And afterward people were like, dude, like, how did you know that? And I was like, I was like halfway paying attention in like Baptist Sunday school, you know,

like getting kicked out because I was bad and cutting up and punching people in the back of the head. But I realized like studying the Bible was, that had been great to me, that that's something my family did, that's something that we did in church and in my youth group, like opening the word, studying the word, and I'm so thankful for that foundation

that was built in me. And there's times when I strayed very, very far from that. But I thank God that that always has brought me back to like the truth, right? Always understanding that there's forgiveness or anything and that all it takes is to recognize your own failures and flaws and none of us are actually good enough to achieve righteousness on our own

and only through the blood of Jesus can we do that. And that's all it takes. So that to me is, I've shared that with many people. When I talk about it, we don't need an openly secular organization, Ashland-Fraun, but I think there's so many foundations that are biblically rooted, right? When it talks to being humble,

I mean, you can't study scripture and not realize, like, abject humility is continually the theme. You know, the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. And that's throughout the scripture, and particularly in the New Testament. But I think the idea that like, if we gotta take ownership of our problems, like we're never gonna actually be good enough

and that's what prevents us from achieving salvation. So that to me, I think to me, faith is everything. And I think having that foundation that's built in and study of the word, I try to be like the, Paul talks about the noble Bereans, who after he would preach to them in the synagogue would study the word to see if these things were so. So, right, you hear something in a sermon, you hear something from a pastor,

you hear something from somebody in the world, we would actually search the word, open up the Bible, study scripture, make sure that that actually is the truth and that it's open for any of us to study and know. But I just, it's been really cool to hear about your spiritual journey. And I thank you for sharing that. Cause I think for so many people out there,

they're trying to find some answer in the secular world. They're trying to find whether it's fame or fortune or money, power, followers on social media, whatever it may be. And they're never gonna find that. We all know that that doesn't lead to happiness. It is the, and I think being grounded in that. By the way, have you ever been to the palace at Versailles?

I don't think so. So the Palace of Versailles? I don't think so. So the Palace of Versailles, I got a chance to go to France this summer just before the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasions. Oh, man. And I did a Go-Ruck event there. We did the 80 kilometer rock, you know, about 50 miles. It was brutal, man, 19 hour, get some evolution,

but awesome to do that with a Go-Ruck team. And, but we went to the Palace of Versailles and my wife and I took our kids there and we have a nanny there that came and helped us with the kids and she did some great reporting there. And the Palace of Versailles is probably the greatest monument to the idea that money and power and fame and fortune cannot buy you happiness.

It is the most magnificent place you could ever go, like Golden Gates. And I mean, this was the seat of power, right, for the French kingdom. From Louis XIV, it was the Sun King at the height of France's power, one of the most powerful people in the entire world, all the way through Louis XVI,

to eventually, he and his wife Marie Antoinette were led to the guillotine. And I think one of the reasons that happened is because I don't think they had a clue what was going on outside the palace, man. It is, I think they're surrounded by people who you can walk around these amazing gardens and this incredible, just ornate palace

that would have just eclipsed, it's mind blowing to think about the power and fame and fortune and influence and you know, that was going on. The reality show, right? TV at the time that everybody wants to be a part of. And you just sense that it's probably the most miserable place you could be, right? You can't trust anybody.

Everybody's got their agenda. Everyone's trying to, you know, to undermine the other. And it's, I think it's just a living monument to that. I think it's worth going and worth seeing for that. But it's, again, just leading us back to the faith of like, what buys you happiness, right? It's the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. And only through recognizing my own failures,

abject failures, and flaws and weaknesses, can I actually find salvation through Jesus? And I hope that's something that others can turn to and see because that is how you find peace in this world. I'm not like extremely wealthy or anything, but I'm working towards it. And so, doesn't the Bible say something

like a rich man has like a fucking... It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Yeah. What do you think about that? Yeah, those are great questions, man. I think Abraham was very wealthy. I had massive herds. So did Isaac, so did Jacob.

Joseph became second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, the most powerful empire of the time and the day. I think, I think God, I mean, Job was given a tremendous wealth. That's one of the things that was taken away from him that when Satan was trying to get him to curse God. So I think there's, I think God, I think God gives us, I think as long as you remember that it belongs to God, it belongs to God. And so you can choose that to do good with it,

or you can choose it to be selfish with it. I think God has given you the means to help people. And I think I kind of like Dave Ramsey's take on it. You know that when you have like the, you can't help anybody else out, right? If you came to me and you're like, hey, Leif, I'm having trouble paying my bills and I might lose my house here if I can't pay my mortgage.

And if I don't have my own finances in order, like I can't help you. I can't do anything for you. So like, I need to, if I have my finances in order, like I can't help you. I can't do anything for you. So like, I need to, if I have my finances in order, then I have the ability to actually have the means to help you, it enables me to help other people. So I think when it becomes the object of worship, as like, no, no, I want more money,

it's money for the sake of money, I think that's where it becomes a problem. And then when you know that it's all, man, it's all like, it's just all dust, right? You can't take any of it with you. I think when people kind of hold that up as like, this is what success looks like, I think you do have to be careful that it's... I think that Jesus talks about the Jewish culture of the day was like, hey, if someone was poor, well, that means that God, like, they did something bad. If someone was rich, then God had blessed them.

They did something good. And Jesus threw that on its head. Like that thinking is not true at all. In fact, when his disciples had asked him, when he encountered a blind man, who sinned, this man or his parents? And Jesus said, neither, this man is blind so that God could be glorified and then he healed him.

So, I mean, I think it just throws out the idea that bad things could happen to us at any time, right? All of this can be given and taken away. And I think as long as you use the means that are given to you for good, you know, to help those in need, to help others in need. And I love what you're doing that, man, with like the veterans advocacy groups

and bringing people into the fold, like not working yourself, right? So you can actually help people and get them into the fold so they can get taken care of and get the benefits they deserve, you know, through the VA. I just think, I think those things, using the platform that you've been given for good, man, like that's,

that's, you've been given this platform for a reason, man. God has placed you in that position for a reason. And you can choose to use it for good or ill, right? And when you share your faith with people, when you try to help those in need and try to actually reach out to those that are struggling you in hard times, like you're using it for good, man. And that's what I think has been so awesome about seeing your success. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, it's just something I don't know, man. I think about it all the time because I want to set future generations of my family up is, you know, I want to, I want to set future generations of my family up to tell you don't get pushed around. You know what I mean? In my opinion is, is you, you, you create enough wealth to where you can't be fucking pushed around anymore. And that's like something that's really important to me. I don't want, I just, I just don't want to see you. Look, you see all these fucking families and everybody's

getting pushed around, man, pushed around in their beliefs. You know, you see it and you see it everywhere. And, and it just like, from the, I mean, it just looks like the people that don't get pushed around are the ones that work themselves up to be wealthy so that they can afford to, you know what I mean, pull their fucking kids out of school and put them over here.

I think there's definitely something to do that, man. Right, I mean, if you become uncancelable, you know, like where somebody, they're trying to put the pressure on you and you can say like, I'm not going to do that. Or hey, I'm going to, oh, yeah, that might be a big paycheck, but I'm not actually going to take that sponsorship

because I don't want you dictating what I get to say. I'm never fucking like that. I think that's what's been awesome, man. That's what's driven the success of your show, man. I mean, there's no question in my fucking like that. I think that's what's been awesome, man. That's what's driven the success of your show, man. There's no question in my mind about that. You get to talk to people you want to talk to. You don't pull punches. You say what you want to say.

And not that you're not smart about it or professional about it, but I think there's... I think the self-censorship, I think you were talking about with Joe, on the Rogan, Joe Rogan experience was like, that's the worst of all, right? Or like, oh, I shouldn't say that because someone doesn't want to say that.

I mean, I just think it's, I think that's the kind of thing where, I think there's enough people pushing back on things now where that pendulum is starting to swing back, where people are like, yeah, we've had enough of that. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, is that something you think about though, when you're building your business?

Totally. The wealth stuff and what the Bible says about... Totally, man. What was the passage again? The camel. It's easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle is the passage that Jesus talks about. Now there's some controversy about whether

he's talking about an actual geographic place or an actual needle himself. Like what, and then he was asked about it, his disciples were asked about it. He says, he's saying it's not impossible. And there clearly are many, many examples of wealthy people, including Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy man that Jesus was laid in his tomb.

Nicodemus, who was one of the Pharisees, and Jesus called him the teacher in Israel, in John, where he comes to Jesus by night and asks like, you know, how do you get to heaven? You know, how do you be born again? And so those are things that these were believers that were wealthy and positioned to power and use their power for good, you know. Interesting.

Yeah, it's just, you know, it's something I always think about. And I know Jesus is, you know, all about family. And so if the goal is to, you know, protect your family with it, and everybody around you, then I just don't see how it could be bad. But, you know, I don't know, I get wrapped up in these little. I struggle with it too, man. I struggle with it too. You know, as we started to gain some success as well. But I mean, the cool thing is like, as you're, I mean, you've got to grow in business, right? You're employing people.

Like you're creating livelihood for people. I think that's huge, man. That builds our economy. And you're promoting, you know, the sponsors in those companies that employ people. I mean, those things all have huge impact. So you can't lose track of that. I think we live in a society where you kind of get demonized, right, of success. And you shouldn't be apologetic for it.

I think you should be, again, confident, not cocky, right? Like you're confident knowing like, hey, this is what I'm supposed to do. This is God's given me the opportunity to do this. I'm gonna use this platform for good. And then I'm gonna help people in need. If I see someone in need, I can help them, cool. I'm gonna absolutely help them. And I'm gonna use that,

the means that I've been given for good. And I think also, again, knowing that like, ultimately our faith is not in money or savings or even our firearm stash, as much as I hate to admit that in our house. Our faith is in the almighty creator of the universe who's in charge of all things, man. And even if he lost everything, like Job did,

he's still on the throne, he still has a plan. And that's where your faith lies. So a lot of people looking for that right now. A lot of people looking for that. It's really It's cool to see you know, how many people are coming to the word but well, let's take a break and When we come back, we'll pick up at seal team 5 As you've heard on my show before There are bad guys out there who want to try to take us down

It's all they think about. And if you ask me, this could happen at any time. Will it be terrorists, hackers? We don't know. I just think there's a possibility that something's coming. That's why I'm asking you to get prepared and I'm making it easy. Go right now to preparewithshawn.com

and you'll see a three month emergency food kit from my Patriot Supply for $100 off. Their three month kit provides 2000 calories a day, the amount most people need in an emergency, down to the calorie. They've studied survival and know what they're doing. If you're like me and wanna help take control of your family's safety, this could be your chance. Go to preparewithsean.com and get $100 off a three-month emergency food kit from my

Patriot Supply. Preparewithsean.com. I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source. It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan show is we are developing our newsletter. show is we are developing our newsletter. And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams,

call sign super bad. She's made two different appearances here on The Sean Ryan Show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind-blowing. And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. This is going to be all things terrorists, how terrorists are coming up through the southern

border, how they're entering the country, how they're traveling, what these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to. And here's the best part, the newsletter is actually free. We're not gonna spam you. It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two, if we release two shows. The only other thing that's gonna be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product

or something like that. But, like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up. Links in the description or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter. All right, Leif, we're back from the break. You're getting into, you're getting ready to check into SEAL Team 5 as a brand new guy, but in 03. And so let's just talk about, you know, what that experience was like checking in. Let's go to day one.

Yeah, it was awesome. Walk across the corner deck there at SEAL Team 5. And we were in the old kind of Quonset huts, you know, then, and we ended up building like a new building that was all kind of fancy. And some of those old Quonset huts have been out there since the World War II, you know, underwater demolition team days, but it was awesome.

I knew a bunch of people at SEAL Team Five. It was great to be a new guy there. There was a bunch of pipe hitters there. There were people that were just, they had just come back. I checked in and we came back from Alaska, our winter war for training trip, which I did in August of 2003, which was actually miserable.

It was like 40 degrees and raining on us, you know, for a lot of the time. But we had a great time up there, you know, on the awesome fishing and we came back, excuse me, we came back from that and I immediately went on like an elk hunting trip with my dad and my brother. We went up to the mountain to Colorado and went and pursued some elk with our bows. And then I came in, I checked it as SEAL Team 5 and the guys were just, a couple of people had just come back, but the team was deployed.

So Iraq war had just kicked off. And so, SEAL team five had taken over from team three that had done kind of the initial takedowns of the oil platforms off the coast. And then SEAL team five had really gotten into the mix with the DAs, right? The direct action missions, the capture kill raids. And they started using vehicles and jumping in,

using those vehicles as like their mobility element. I think they initially had to borrow vehicles from the National Guard unit, because we didn't have the capability in the SEAL teams at the time. And so that became like, I came back and the guys that were coming back from that deployment started trickling back, you know, over the,

in the fall were highly experienced. I mean, they had more experience than any seal units in Vietnam at that point. So it was really cool to learn from them and talk about the real world experiences that they were, that they were getting. And it was just a lot of great mentors, a lot of open up notebooks and asking a lot of questions.

So, I mean, what was, it's just such a different experience than, you know, from what I experienced. I mean, you're, you're going, especially going to team five, I didn't know that they were the kind of the first ones out the door doing it and, um, in Iraq. And so, you know, is a, is a lieutenant and Oh three. I mean, we've already discussed the fact that you were gonna have to do a platoon commander which means you're in charge of everyone in the platoon for those that are listening and You were able to you know finagle your way into kind of an AOA

We're not kind of an AOIC slot is what it sounds like. So second in charge in your your you know, from your words, you're getting ready to lead men who have the most experience out of the entire SEAL team organization, all of Naval Special Warfare since Vietnam. I mean, what is that? What is that like for, to walk into that, you know, with, I mean, a junior guy right out of SQT. What is that like for to walk into that? You know with the with with

I mean a junior guy right out of sqt. I mean we basically Yeah, we're seals, but we really don't know shit, you know, and we haven't really experienced Anything other than training and you got these guys coming back who you just mentioned capture kill missions They're getting after it. It was very intimidating, man. When I graduated BUDS, when you and I graduated BUDS together, we felt like, hey, we just graduated BUDS. Like, we're ready to go take on the world, right?

Then you start going into SQTs, Hill Qualification Training, you start getting some of the fundamentals of close quarters combat and land warfare and maritime operations. You realize, man, there's a lot I don't know. And then you start getting that first workup, you're like, I don't know anything. I know absolutely nothing.

And then I deployed to combat, I deployed to Iraq, and when I was leading my first combat missions, I know absolutely nothing at all. It's even less than nothing. So it definitely was very humbling. It was cool though, because there was, I think just realizing that like, hey, I can learn from these guys.

Let me talk to them. Let me understand what they know. And I think everyone was trying to get into the war effort. Everyone wanted a chance to go forward and be in the fight. And for me, right off the bat, our very first training block was the assaults block. And so we started going through and learning that and doing our close quarters combat. And then we did our visit board search in Caesar block, shortly thereafter that. And it was, that was,

I had had a bunch of experience boarding ships as we talked about in the Persian Gulf. So I'd climb down these ships onto, climb down the Jacob's Ladder, right? The rope ladder and the plastic rungs that you lower from the side of the ship. I've climbed up and down those things a thousand times. And in my very first VBSS training block,

we're doing some hook and climbs from the 11 meter ribs, from the special boat team, the attachment that took us out, we're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego, and we're boarding the duty order, right? It's like 800 foot long, US Navy service ship. This is the ship that like the other, that's refueling the Navy warships and the carriers.

And so we're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego and we're doing the hook and climbs, climbing up that little caving ladder just as you've done. And I remember I was about to walk off the deck. I was like the first down on the ladder to climb back down onto the rib. And we'd had a guy that was driving the boat. They clearly had a new coxswain at the helm.

Like he was somebody who was having a tough time, you know, and you remember what it's like when you're climbing up that little, you know, caving ladder, right? You're getting, if your boat's going, you know, left and right, like, you know, are moving out, hauling out from the ship. Like it's treacherous as you're trying to climb up the 25 foot freeboard and you're bouncing up and down

the waves. And so we kind of complained about it, you know, I thought, this guy can't drive the boat. And people were kind of complaining about it, but no one, no one said anything. I didn't say anything. And so I'm about to climb down. So now the caving ladder, we climbed up,

we cleared the ship, we took down the bridge. And so now we're gonna do another run and they threw the Jacob's ladder over the side, this big heavy rope ladder with the plastic rungs. This is now admin, right? We're just climbing down back onto the rib. So I'm climbing down this thing. And right before I go,

one of the trading detachment instructors that's running the training says, "'Don't be scared, Bab.'" And he made some comment like that. I'm like, whatever. You know, I just like, I was like, man, I've done this a thousand times, dude. I walked out, so I get down to the bottom,

running the ladder, right, the water line, the waves are going up and down. The rib comes in, as the rib's about to haul out from the side of the ship, I go to step on, as the rib comes in, I'm about to go step onto the ship and the rib hauls out probably 10 or 12 feet from the side of the ship. And I went right down in between the rib and the ship.

And it would have been fine if I had a positive floatation and we went and did our dip test, the combat turning tank, you know, just like we're supposed to be a positive floatation on. Man, if not, I'd have been 2000 feet on the bottom, off the coast of San Diego out there. But it was, I go, I got my leg wrapped up in the painter line. Oh, shit.

So now I'm getting dragged upside down underwater by this 800 foot long vessel. And I mean, I didn't know what to do. I mean, this was, they're going like 12 knots, which is a lot of pressure. You know, if you're underwater, and my leg is like suspended, but my body's like underwater. I got my helmet body armor, radio, all that stuff on me.

Luckily we had a weapon shape, not a real weapon. Cause I ditched that, you know, as soon as I could, I was trying to get to my, you know, my little scuba bottle, the Heeds bottle, that got just ripped away by the force of the water. So I couldn't get to that. The rib comes in and just, and they're trying to rescue me and they just smashed me between the rib and the ship.

And luckily I had, if I'd had a, if I'd had a Pro-Tec on a plastic helmet, I'd have been killed. Almost certainly would have smashed my head. And it, I had my Kevlar on. And so it, the boat smashed my nose. It just kind of like filleted my nose open. But the rib realized they can't help me,

so they just kind of hauled off, and they were sitting probably 200 yards off the quarter. Just kind of, no one knew what to do. The guys on the ladder didn't know what to do. And I'm trying to reach the water. Every time I tried to get my hand, I would just get ripped right back down with the force of the wave.

So within probably, you know, it felt like an hour, right? It probably was two or three minutes, but I very quickly realized like, I'm not going to survive this, man. This is over. Wow, holy shit. And it just happened like that. And it was, I just remember thinking, what a stupid way to go this man. This is over. Wow. Holy shit. And it just happened like that. And it was, I just remember thinking,

what a stupid way to go, man. This is, like this is so dumb. I've done this a thousand times. And luckily some heads up guys on the ladder, my teammates above me on the ladder, they realized, you know, climb back, they climbed back up the Jacob's ladder and everyone was kind of just wondering what to do

and they started, one guy was like, hey, let's haul this thing and they started hauling it in by hand. And they lifted me, I mean, that was a massive feat of strength and very heads up for them to do because it was a contingency that they hadn't really even thought about.

And so they started hauling the ladder in and as it lifted me up out of the water, the painter rope popped free off my leg and I floated down the side of the ship. Damn. I mean, I could see just blood pouring down my face. The rib, so the rib driver, let me know rib comes over to pick me up.

I just float right down the side of the ship. They, I'm kind of in the stern wash, you know, as they come pick me up. And they, their faces were white. I mean, they were like, eyes this big. I must've just looked- and their faces were white. I mean, they were like, eyes this big. I must've just looked- Probably thought you were dead. Blood just pouring everywhere.

And I probably looked especially crazy, Sean, cause I had a gigantic smile on my face. I was laughing. Cause I was so happy to be alive, man. And I did not think I was going to live through that. And I was stoked. And actually, Elliot Miller was the corpsman on that, man. Elliot treated me and I was going to live through that. And I was, I was stoking and actually Elliott Miller was the corpsman on that man.

Elliott treated me and I was keeping pressure on my face. Took me to Balboa, you know, they got me stitched up. I sat out for another couple of weeks till the stitches healed, you know, and got our go plaits on. Holy shit. So how did you, how did you, how did you gain the respect of the guys, of the seasoned guys coming back from combat? Man, I don't know if I did a great job.

I'll tell you, I learned, I made a lot of mistakes. And as I said earlier, like mistakes are the best teacher. And I think so many of the, you know, when you asked me, like, what are you looking for in a leader? Humility is number one, because I think so many of the mistakes that you ask me like, what are you looking for in a leader? Humility is number one, because I think so many of the mistakes that I made, particularly early on, were when I was really trying to prove myself.

When I was like, I need to show people that I'm a competent leader, and I need to show people that I know what I'm doing, and I'm in charge of this, or that, and I made all kinds of mistakes like that. Instead of actually, what you need to do is show people that you're humble. What you need to do is show people that you're humble. What you need to do is show people that you can listen. What you need

to do is show people that you can lean on the most experienced people. We were lucky, we had a super scored away crew in our, in my first platoon, Cilteam Five Bravo platoon, and they were awesome, man. Like it was a great crew of guys. We had a stellar crew of new guys and we had some experienced guys that just come back from combat. And it was, and we had a, we had, we had a, our platoon was tough as nails, man, because our physical training coordinator was Dave Goggins, who was, he ran all our training and Dave was exactly who you see Dave today? But it was you could always tell our platoon because no one had any

Skin on their shins because we're constantly climbing ropes doing, you know Hundreds of pull-ups and running like crazy and he worked as all the pts and it was good man. It was a good time I'll bet it was good With that guy running it. Holy shit, man Well, when did you find out so you check into team five We talked about that. When did you find out where you're deploying to? We were all fighting to go to chance, you know to get a chance to go to Iraq And we we've we learned that we were gonna get surged, you know forward with they were gonna combine

We were gonna be part of SEAL Team 3's deployment. So they took some of the platoons from Team 5 and split them up. And so the plan was to go half of that to Iraq and then half of the Pacific Theater, to run JSATS with our partners. And so we knew we were gonna go to Iraq, first of all, and then all of a sudden,

the SEALs got handed the personal security detail mission for the top five interim Iraqi officials. I don't know, did you get tied up in that for your first of all? We did. Well, not for my first one. We talked about my first one at breakfast. When I went to Baghdad, the whole team was tasked with it. And we had a very, just a really fucking cool OIC.

And I don't want to say his name because I don't know what he's doing nowadays. He might still be in. But he started farming us out to, he started farming us out to conventional units and who were having problems with the IED stuff going on. And so they sent us, he got us into all these different locations helping train and going

on operations with conventional units, primarily army units. And we would do like a mini workup training course on sniper operations, take the guys out and then get rid of the problem, you know, kill the bad guys. And so I never had to do any PTSD, personal security details in Iraq because he had farmed us out. That's awesome.

Yeah. Well, I can't tell you that, I mean, having done a bunch of that on that first deployment for a few weeks. And then on our second deployment to Ramadi, just seeing, you know, so much of that war was a defensive war, for those guys that were,

when the enemies, 70 to 80% of attacks are IEDs, roadside bombs, and when there's nothing to shoot back at, and you don't even know who placed it there, and you're losing guys, and you're hauling your dead and wounded comrades out of the street. There was nothing, I think, more powerful for a morale booster than for those conventional units that know the soldiers and Marines that were out there in the streets running those convoys knowing that they had frogmen on the high ground, snipers that had their backs

and were covering for them so they could move. I think it was phenomenal to be able to do that and support those guys. And I think it was it was phenomenal to be able to do that support those guys Yeah, yeah, and I think it was it was it was just game-changer You know and if you think about every every bad guy you eliminated right is more soldiers and Marines are coming home to their families as a result and and I don't I don't think we did near enough of it and Some of the people that criticized us, you know later of like that's not a special operations mission. I was like maybe You know what you're talking about man? This is these are Americans that are getting killed.

Like whatever we can do to try to help win this thing and help more of them come home to their families is what we're gonna do. It was awesome, man. I mean, not only the operations that we did, but we ran into, and several of these, I've talked about this before, and a lot of the conventional, a lot of the conventional guys

that we worked with emailed in saying, hey, I was the 18 year old that got that kill that day or thanking us. And we ran into, I think it was, I think it was the 10th Mountain guys that we worked with. They were the first ones we got co-located with. And we ran, and they were the last ones that we saw. We ran into them at the Chao Hall

at the end of the deployment. And one of the sniper teams that we had trained and taken out came up and they were like, hey, we've killed X amount of more bad guys. teams that we had trained and taken out came up and they were like, Hey, we've killed X amount of, you know, more bad guys. We have not had any casualties since you guys put us through that. And we just want to like all of our equipment's different. Well, they've changed everything. They took all the recommendations that we had and implemented just about

everything and, and it was just cool to see, man, like the impact after you're gone, you know, like we went there, these guys were getting blown up like every day. Um, we killed the guys in the first 12 hours, I think. Uh, and, and then moved on to the next unit anded like to run into those guys through four months later Whatever it was and and just to see him like still doing the job effectively probably even more effectively and And taking zero casualties when they were every other day. I

was like It's fucking cool, man. You know what I mean? I mean, how many guys are still walking around today that would have been killed if we not gone there and trained with them? And then they have kids and their kids will have kids. I mean, when that kind of shit happens,

like you're not just saving a life, it's an entire fucking line of lineage, you know, that is gonna be roaming the earth because 16 guys from a seal platoon went and trained with that unit and brought them on a real world operation. And it's cool to think about. That's awesome, man. That's outstanding.

And I think you, sometimes when you think what it's all about and like all this loss of life and friends that we lost and families that have been destroyed and in the wake of it. And even those guys that are seriously wounded as well, lives are changed and altered forever. It's really good to remember that, man. It's good to remember they impacted that. It's good to remember the impact of that.

I think it's a little bit like that. It's kind of like, it's a wonderful life, right? With George Bailey there and getting a chance to see what it would have been like if you didn't do that stuff. And I think it's a good reminder, man, of the impact that it has. And it's just, it's so much bigger than us. Like for me, like, I was going to do everything in my power, always right to help try to, try to bring as many Americans

home as we could do everything we could do as much damage to the enemy as we could. And, and I think that's, that's just an obligation that we all have. And so for me, like it was, I was lucky enough, we got assigned that security detail mission and the team right before us had been given it. And man, that was not what we wanted, as you remember. But I think Blackwater came in with like a bid, it was like a hundred million dollars per guy. And the Bush administration said negative, that's too expensive seals. You got it

but I think the Seeing that like, you know, two of those guys have been assassinated You know in the months prior to the seal teams taking over it And so when this is like a no-fail mission, we have to keep these five interim Iraqi government officials alive. I Loved one of the guys that passed down to me, you know, for the previous SEAL team said, you know, we know there's bad guys looking at us. We know they're gonna try to, you know, they're gonna try to take us out at some point. Our whole goal is just to make them say not today, not today. They look at us, not today, and we're gonna be, you know, we're gonna be a hard target. They're

gonna look at us, not today. We'll try somewhere else. We'll go hit some softer targets somewhere. And I thought that was something that always stuck with me and the SEALs did that amazingly well. I kept all those guys alive. It was frustrating for me as a, I got to go out with the detail every once in a while, but most of the time I was assigned to the Tactile Operations Center.

So I'm in there as the liaison officer, just tracking their movements and kind of setting up their logistics. Not what I wanted to do, but it was a job that needed to be done. And I felt like I was probably the best guy to be able to do it for my platoon and help them and support them.

Learned a ton about passing information back to the talk and how they can best support you. And luckily I had a great executive officer who sent me out. He tasked 12 of us, a bunch of us from, you know, from SIL Team 5, SIL Team 8. Got a chance to go and be a part of some sniper operations up at Samara supporting the big red one, First Infantry Division up there. You know, didn't see a lot of cops, got shot at a few times, kind of small little teams, kind of going through the city, little four, six man teams

and climbing up on rooftops and trying to do the sneaky frog mess. It was pretty fun. You know, we engaged a few guys. I think we had one confirmed kill from that and you know, a few problems, but we definitely disrupted the IDs that were being laid and the mines were being put in the street.

And it also gave me an appreciation. You know, obviously I love the SEAL things, man. And I'm so proud of the training that we went through and the guys that we served with. But when I flew up to Samara, and it was funny because we left Baghdad, we had 12 guys with us. It was like 82 degrees on the tar we left Baghdad. We had 12 guys with us. It was like 82 degrees on the tarmac in Baghdad.

We landed tomorrow after a couple other stops. It's nighttime. It was 39 degrees. I had five guys with no warmies. Yeah, bad. And it was like, so we're trying to piece together this stuff. We're living in this like burned out building. And I didn't realize, you know,

our guys are complaining about that Baghdad and they're eating at the Al Rashid hotel with ice sculptures and stuff. And I remember jumping in, we're rolling around these up armored vehicles and it was a lot of times in and out of the green zone. Obviously there was dangers. I mean, people were trying to attack the guys.

I'm not saying the risks were limited but I remember sitting in the cab of a big like five ton truck There's like, you know quarter-inch steel plates welded on the back. They didn't have doors on the cab It was it was a Arkansas national guard unit And they're giving us a ride from the airfield over to like in in the in the The downtown city center where there's an oda team. We were gonna stay with them And I was just like, man, here we are. Like these dudes around here are roughing it, right? They're in the fight, they're getting attacked all the time. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them.

And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm gonna go get them. And I was like, man, I'm my good little charm. And I was just like, man, here we are. Like these dudes around here are roughing it, right? They're in the fight, they're getting attacked all the time.

They don't have near the equipment that we have. They don't have near the training that we have. And that to me was like, I'm going to do everything I can to help every American that's on the ground here in every way that I possibly can. Yeah. I thought you were going to say he looked at you and said,

I'm not the one hanging it out, that's your vehicle. But yeah, it was pretty bare bones there at the beginning. When did Elliot get hurt? Was it this platoon? It was the next platoon. So he stayed in that same platoon. I rotated to a different platoon at Seal Team Three. We ended up getting rotated out of Iraq.

So we went up to Samara for like three weeks. Then we came back, did our turnover. And then we did the relief in place between the squadrons. And so we got sent to the Pacific Theater. So we went around doing the J-sets with the Royal Thai Seals and the Republic of Korea Seals. And, excuse me, we spent a little time in Okinawa.

I got to see a different theater, got to train a little bit, spent most of the time in Guam, surfing and partying. And basically we just trained like mad men the whole time and got in really good shape. And we're itching for a chance to go back. So I came back with SEAL Team Five and luckily my commanding officer at SEAL Team Five

at the time, he said, you're going to SEAL Team Three. And I was so pissed about that, Sean. I was like, these are my guys. I want to take over this platoon. I want to be their platoon commander. And he was detached from this and he said, look, you're already senior. It's important that you'll be six months ahead

in the workup cycle, you know, that you deploy so that you'll be eligible, you know, for promotion down the road. And like, this is best for your career path. And I was like, I pitched a fit about it, man. I was like, are you kidding me? You know, like I was the kind of argument and pushback type and he was like, nope, it me? I was the kind of argumented pushback type,

and he was like, nope, it's happening, you're going to SEAL Team 3. And thank God he did that, man, because I love those guys at SEAL Team 5, they were awesome, and still some of my closest friends in the world, and they relieved us in Ramadi. But thank God I got a chance to go serve in Casio Bruiser and SEAL Team 3,

and so I showed up at the end of that deployment, I came back, did a little, got a chance to go serve in Task Force in a bruiser in SEAL Team 3. And so I showed up at the end of that deployment. I came back, did a little, you know, got a little bit of a leave and then went straight to SEAL Team 3, checked in as the platoon commander, got assigned as Charlie Platoon. We heard about this guy, Jocko Willink, who was our platoon, our Task Force commander.

He was in charge and I had heard about Jocko. I'd never seen Jaco, I didn't know anything about Jaco. What did you hear about him? I heard he was pretty intense. My platoon chief, Tony Afrati, was phenomenal, phenomenal SEAL. And I think probably one of the best SEAL chiefs that,

one of the best platoon chiefs that, one of the best platoon chiefs that the SEAL teams has ever produced. No kidding. Like phenomenal battlefield leader. Wow. I'm talking like, hey, we're taking massive fire from that building across the street. Give me two guys on me, let's go.

Wow. And he is absolutely the guy that you want in a gun fight. And so he was like, he had a reputation. Everyone loved Tony, been around for a long time. And he'd been busted down multiple times for shenanigans, just old school teams. And so here he is in the platoon ship. He's like, trust me, Jocko is the one guy

that we want as our tasking commander. He's like, he's like, trust me, Jaco is the one guy that we want as our task to get the commander. I was like, all right. And then when, so when Jaco, Jaco had been the Admiral's aide, so we got assigned as the Admiral's aide. He gets, he comes over. And when I met it for the first time, you know,

Seth Stone, our brother from, you know, from Buds, he was the Delta platoon commander. So we were platoon commanders together. We had a bunch of guys from our Buds class in there, as well. I knew a ton of these guys. I've been deployed with Hill Team 3 just before this. So I got to meet Chris Kyle and some of the other guys,

just prior to that, they'd been in Baghdad doing a bunch of sniper ops on Haifa Street and supporting the Fallujah offensive that went down while we were deployed in the fall of 2004. And so now we're here in the spring of 2005, standing up the task unit. And so Jaco shows up and I was like, man, this dude looks like an ax murderer.

He doesn't smile at us. He just walks up like just mean mugs, like, hi, I'm Jaco. Like no smile whatsoever and like just walks away. And then dude, you remember Stoner, like you know, who's, it was an emotional guy. Man, I love Stoner so much. And he was like, that dude hates me, man. I can see it.

You know, he's like, and I was like, hey man, listen, I hear he's the guy that we want. I was like, let's, we knew he trained Jiu-Jitsu. You know, we knew he just got his black belt. You know, he's a big Jiu-Jitsu guy. Like we knew he had a ton of operations. You know, he'd come from SEAL Team Seven as a platoon commander.

He'd had a bunch of operations that he'd done. And so he probably had as much experience as anybody in the team at that point. And so I was like, hey man, come on, let's work hard, let's train Jiu- jitsu, you know, and after a couple months, like, yeah, I didn't have to be like super close. Right. So, uh, in fact, I think, you know, it was, uh, Seth was probably the little little brother that the jocco never had, you know, to jocco and, and, um, but jocco was like, I, he set the tone for our entire task.

We had an awesome crew of pipe hitters in there, man. They were excellent. They were just coming back from Iraq. A lot of experience. Chris Kyle was our lead sniper point man and he had a ton of experience coming from Fallujah, coming from Haifa Street, some of the other places and Baghdad.

And then the new guys that we got in were studs too, man. We sent them to schools, it was an awesome team. But Jaco really set the tone for our entire team and of like, hey, right away he was like, we're not tasking a Bravo, we're tasking a Bruiser. Interesting. So we had three task units, ABC, Alpha Bravo Charlie, and the phonetic alphabet, and I was like, so, you know, we had three task units, ABC, right? Alpha Bravo Charlie and the phonetic alphabet. And I was like, I thought that was weird for like 24 hours, like task unit bruiser.

And then like 24 hours later, we're like, we're task unit bruiser. So like, it was actually, I learned later, this is something that he got from a book by a US Army, a retired colonel named David Hackworth called The Bout Face. If you haven't read this book, it is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. Hackworth joined the Army when he was a private, he lied on his paperwork and listed when he was 17 to try to make it into World War II, just missed World War II, but was brought up to the ranks as, you know, learned from all his mentors who had just defeated the Germans and Japanese in World

War II. And then he served in Korea and was eventually commissioned as an officer, made it up to Colonel multiple deployments to Korea, multiple deployments to Vietnam. I think he was the, when he died, he died in the early 2000s. I think, I think it might have been while we were deployed to Iraq that first time. And I think he was the, he was the, the highest, the most decorated like living soldier at the time. Wow. I mean like crazy, crazy awards, but like they call him like Mr. Infantry and there's

so much of, he changed the names of his units Interesting. Yeah, so why give them like a personality? So You know, I'm gonna I'm just gonna Task unit bruiser is like a legendary unit and you just you don't hear And you just, you don't hear, look, there's no other, there's no other task unit that has a, that has a call sign that I'm aware of. You hear people talk about tasking a bruiser all over the place. But I mean, it seems like you guys have really created or did create like some type of very strong culture in that platoon. The culture was massively strong, you know,

in Harplatoon, Charter platoon, in Delta platoon, with Sass platoon, you know, and the entire task unit. And, you know, there's two 16-man seal platoons and a five-man half-a-quartered helmet that Jaco was in charge of that we started out with. And he set the tone right from the beginning, like we're tasking a bruiser, we're gonna work harder than everybody else,

we're gonna train harder than everybody else, we're gonna be ready for the worst-case scenarios, you know, on the battlefield. And that was the culture of our team. And what's interesting about Jaco is you look at him and he's got this like super stern kind of look to him. But he actually, and even though he didn't smile at us for the first couple of months that we weren't together,

in fact, the first time we were all training jiu-jitsu, we'd come in at five o'clock in the morning and train jiu-jitsu. He'd lay mats out in the high bay at SEAL Team Three. It was mandatory for all the officers. And we had a bunch of, unless the guys would come in to train too. And you could tell us at officer's call,

the morning meeting, because you'd say, if you said like, hey, Leif or Asaf, everyone would kind of turn their head, their whole body, because their necks are all jacked up, because we're cranking on each other and hurting each other and everyone's going just full bore, level 19 berserker mode. But the first time that I realized that Jaco was like actually, you know,

not super serious all the time. Like I'm demo, he's like demoing a Jiu-Jitsu move at five o'clock in the morning. We're in the high bay. He's like, he's like, Babin, get over here. You know, he's like, grab my hand. Yeah. My other hand. Yeah. My other hand. And he's like bow to your sensei, bow to your sensei. And I'm like, wait, that's Napoleon Dynamo. He's quoting Rex Quantau from Napoleon Dynamo, but he's doing it with a straight face. And he's not like, he doesn't even smile. And I'm like, okay, this dude's joking around.

So like, that was the first time I got to see, you know, Jaco, who's totally, like totally jokes around, you know, like, and is obviously professional when he needs to. But what I think what Jaco did for us was, I think channel aggression and guys that wanted to go get after it into like, he really taught me to be what we call, and I was calling for the silent leader,

that that's what good leadership looks like. You would look at someone like Jaco and think, Jaco's in charge, Jaco's a prior enlisted SEAL, Jaco's got more common experience than anybody else here. So he's going to dictate everything and run everything and tell you what to do. And he did the complete opposite. It was, he said, hey, here's the goal.

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Join AMAC and be part of a movement that stands for you, your family, and your future. You know, and it was the first time that I saw like, we draw on operations, well, he doesn't say anything. He's letting the team run it. So I realized that's what I need to do as a leader, is let my team step up and lead. And so when my team is leading,

now I can look up and out, right? Every leader should be trying to look up and out down the road. So instead of me solving the immediate tactical problem, I'm thinking about the next step or the next step or the next step beyond that. You're thinking about the long-term strategic problems down the road.

And that's what every leader should be trying to do. And Jaco also, he used what we call the indirect approach, which is, you know, instead of saying, hey, listen, you know, I had one platoon under my belt, didn't really have, I had a handful of combat operations. I had zero DA missions, right? Capture kill rates at that point, zero. Seth had done a couple of them.

You know, I'd done a handful of sniper operations, but I didn't really have any experience. And, but instead of saying, for us, when the training detachment instructors who obviously drive a very high standard of performance, when they would say things like, hey, you guys are good to go. You met the standard, we're out here at land warfare.

Okay, your patrol is good to go. Hey, your immediate action drills when we act a contract and those are good to go. Hey, you guys can take it back to the camp. Instead of Jaco saying like, you knuckleheads aren't as good as you think you are, combat's harder than you think it is, we're gonna keep pushing the standard even higher.

We're gonna do this again. He actually just called us over and he said, hey, Lave Stoner, do you think we're ready for the worst case scenario on the battlefield? And we looked at each other and we're like, no, man, no, let's do another run. Let's do another run after that. Let's do three more runs.

And it was us doing it. If we'd have said yes, he would have been cool. Sounds good, let's go back to the camp. But he would ask us an earnest question, a question that he wanted the answer to and let us reveal the truth of ourselves. And I think it's such a powerful leadership concept instead of, this works on your kids, right?

This works with your spouse, with members of your community, with your team at work, anywhere in life. When you can ask someone a question and allow them to reveal the truth to themselves instead of trying to just bash them over the head with the truth. Because what good is telling people the truth if they don't listen?

But when you can ask someone a question like that, now it's not Jaco saying, do two more runs and everyone's complaining about it. It's actually me saying we needed two more runs so that we're ready for that worst case scenario. I'm talking that over with my potential. They understand it as well. And I think that was the kind of culture

that became part of the team of like, hey, we have to be ready for the absolute worst case scenario that we might come up against. And so I think that was, it was a culture of always striving to do better. And immediately, I think what set our tasking apart was in my previous tasking, it was kind of like most steel task units where we did,

we had some really talented people. We had some experienced people. We did some things well. We did some things not so well. But the things that we didn't do well when training detachment would say, hey, you should improve on this, there was pushback. You know, we were kind of like,

ah, I'd like to see them do better. Yeah, we're good to go. We'll play the game and just get through this and get overseas. And in Tasking a Bruiser, it wasn't like that. We were our own harshest critic. It was really critiquing ourselves. And when these training instructors said,

hey, look, your head counts are taking too long. You need to figure out a way to be more efficient. We're like, absolutely, let's figure this out. Let's work on that. And we were our own harshest critic. We're always trying to get better and improve all the time. And that became the culture of the team. Whether you're a brand new guy,

that was trying to contribute in some way to, managing your fire team, all the way up to me as the platoon commander, to Jaco as the tasking commander, and figuring out ways to be more efficient and effective all the way up to me as the platoon commander, to Jaco as the tasking commander, and figuring out ways to be more efficient and effective all the time. And I think that's the strength of the SEAL teams, right? Is always that innovation,

that like always trying to get better in what we're trying to do, always trying to improve and seeking inputs from everybody, no matter if they're in a leadership position or if they're simply just a shooter, you know, who's in charge of just themselves and their piece of the mission. I think when you've got a,

when that becomes the culture of the team, that makes all the difference. You've got a team that's constantly improving, constantly learning, constantly growing. We made all kinds of mistakes in tasking a bruiser. We screwed all kinds of stuff up, but we learn from those mistakes and we would implement solutions to try to fix them

and to prevent them from happening going forward. I mean, are we ready for the worst case scenario? That is a, that's a tough question. Was there ever a yes? I don't think so. I think we were honest enough with ourselves, right, to know like, hey man, I've never been in the worst case scenario.

So are you ready for it? Like, are you going to be ready for it? And I think, you know, I've never been in the worst case scenario. So are you ready for it? Like, are you going to be ready for it? And I think, you know, when you show up to something and you're overtrained, like, hey, we didn't get trained that hard. Cool, it's easy, you know, it's easy. Like that's no fact, like that's what you want it to be. You know, if you can make training harder

than actual combat, like that's the way, that's awesome, that's IT. You know, and that's one of the lessons that we brought back to Ramadi with us, after we deployed, if you'd have asked me, if you'd have asked me as young Lieutenant Leif Babin, Charlie Lieutenant Commander in Task Force, hey Leif, are you gonna be in,

do you think you'll get in a blue on blue, like friendly fire situation? And I told you like that happens to losers who don't know how to plan to execute missions. And the book is called, like that's chapter one. That's chapter one, the very first major combat operation that I was a part of, massive blue on blue, massive blue on blue issue.

And we talked about before, like the idea that like we had to, if we didn't take extreme measures to mitigate the risk of that happening, it was absolutely going to happen, particularly in the urban environment, where it's confusing with so many different units that are out there, particularly with our SEAL snipers

that were going out undercover darkness beyond the forward line of advance. And you've got, you know, US tanks and Humvees SEAL snipers that were going out undercover darkness beyond the forward line of advance. And you've got, you know, US tanks and Humvees and units that are coming into an enemy held area and they're getting shot at by enemy fighters. You know, it just, the idea that like

that is absolutely going to happen unless you take massive steps to mitigate the risk of it happening. And then it was, it was just one of those things where like, I just realized that combat is so much harder than I thought it was ever gonna be. And those things can happen so much easier than you ever thought it could be.

And once you're in it, you can't just peek your, if you're taking an effective fire, man, you can't just peek your head up over the wall and say, hey, who's shooting at us? You know, like your head's gonna be gone. That's gonna be the end of you. So if you're getting suppressed, man, that's all you us? You know, like your head's gonna be gone. That's gonna be the end of you. So if you're getting suppressed, man, that's all you can do, you know?

And I think it's, you know, we had such a close call on that first situation where we had about that whole squad of my guys on that operation. Let's rewind real quick. So this is your first operation. That was the first major operation. First kinetic operation of the deployment.

Let's just walk, what were you guys doing? What was the op? Yeah, if you will, maybe it's better to go to the backup to talk about what it was like to arrive in Ramadi and start there. When we were, we thought we were gonna go work with the, with the ICTF in Baghdad and do the, this high speed Iraqi commando unit

that probably had the most training, right, of any Iraqi unit out there. And that's what we thought we were gonna do. We're gonna do these kinetic operations. It was gonna be super fun. We were excited about it. Everyone left to go on pre-deployment leave. And while we were on pre-deployment leave,

we got a change of orders. They decided to consolidate the two different squadrons that were deploying. And we found out we were going to Ramadi. So at the time, Ramadi was just a violent hell hole. I mean, it was a city of 400,000 people, it was the capital of Anbar province. And it's a fraction of the size of Baghdad.

I think the whole greater area of Baghdad has something like two and a half or three million people in Baghdad. There would be more significant attacks, right? Or enemy attacks that happened in and around the city of Ramadi this Small city of 400,000 people just a few miles across the city center There would be as many or more attacks in Ramadi on a daily basis there were why why was Ramadi such a strategic location?

I I think it was after the it was in the heart of the Sunni triangle, right? And it was the largest is the capital of Anbar province, which is the the Sunni Triangle, right? And it was the largest, it's the capital of Anbar province, which is the Sunni capital. So this is where the Saddam's kind of base of support and operations were. So I think there was a lot of support for Saddam and the insurgency that came out of there. I think after the Marines smashed Fallujah in 2004,

many of the fighters that were there fled and went to Ramadi. And so from like late 2004 into 2005, Ramadi was just really the most violent place in Iraq. Zarqawi, who was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq at the time had declared that Ramadi was the capital of his caliphate and he was gonna establish the capital there in Ramadi. There was something like three to five thousand insurgent fighters that controlled

most of the city and when we arrived in April of 2006, it was man it was I think I landed on the ground it was like April 3rd 2006.. It was instantly, it was apparent that this was a very different deployment than the one I'd been on previously. And I've been hearing about Ramadi. You know, you'd hear every day in the news, you'd hear like, you know, three US soldiers killed in Anbar province or two Marines wounded in Anbar province.

And most of those were coming in and around the city of Ramadi. I think Anbar province was accounting for something like 70% of US casualties in Iraq at the time throughout most of 2005 and 2006 and most of those were coming in and around Ramadi. So it was it was just a violent terror stronghold and when we got when we arrived there right away I mean even in Baghdad like there's you're flying around in a helicopter. If you flew over Ramadi in the daytime,

like you're getting shot down in the sky. Like no one was doing it. So it was like vehicle convoys. And it was every single week there were memorial services going on at the camp. There were US Marines and soldiers getting wounded or killed almost every day. Damn.

Almost every day. And multiple times, I remember there would be like a call of the loudspeaker for like a mass blood drive, come give blood for a mass cash situation. Holy shit. I mean, there were people killed on base in the chow hall with mortars hitting the base. blood drive, you know, come give blood, you know, for a mass cashing situation. I mean, there were people killed on base in the Chow hall with mortars in the base, you know, before he even left the base.

And when we were driving, so the seals were working out of a place they call shark base. It was like an old like Republican guard effort. And after Mark Lee was killed, we renamed it Camp Mark Lee, but it was kind of on the edge of Ramadi, like right on the Euphrates River. And in order to get there,

you had to drive off the main camp. And it was still kind of behind the walls of the camp, but there was a, you would drive through what they call the vehicle graveyard. And the vehicle graveyard was, these vehicles that would have IDs, humvees, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles uh, they would they would drag these these twisted burnt hulks and just

They would just leave them out here in this kind of you know It was just kind of a kind of a junkyard area and uh, man It was a powerful reminder of what was out there waiting for you every time but you're going you're going to uh um, you're driving past that every single time you launch on an operation. Driving to that vehicle graveyard, just knowing that those twisted charred honks of metal that used to be a vehicle, almost all those had soldiers or Marines

that were killed or wounded. And then the gates were like, it was a M88, which is like a, it's basically like a tow truck for tanks. I mean, these things weigh, you know, a tank weighs 70 tons, you know, an M1A Rose tank. And that's what they had blocking the gate because it was such a threat of like a, you know, massive IED threat coming in

and people would be attacking the camp. And I've been on the ground for probably about a week there. We turned over with a crew from SEAL Team 2, outstanding crew there, and they had built awesome relationships. They'd trained a bunch of the Iraqi units, and they were doing a ton of operations, but it was kind of mostly on the outskirts of the city

because there was no U.S. presence inside the city except for the Marine bases that controlled, and the 101st Airborne, first the 506th Battalion that controlled Task Force Red Courier control at the eastern part of the city and the Marines from 38 Marines control the main route to the city that was called Route Michigan and about every kilometer the Marines had a base there. And even still, even though we controlled that road, that road throughout our six month deployment there was overwhelmingly the most heavily attacked road

in all of Iraq. It had seven to 10 IEDs on average in any 24 hour period. This is a road that we controlled. So like U.S. forces controlled that road. Every kilometer there's a Marine or Army checkpoint. And so I mean, it was just, it was nonstop combat that was going on all the time. Nasty, nasty place. And when we showed up, it was just,

I was just in awe of the soldiers and Marines that were there and the fight. There was a National Guard unit that was on the ground. And seeing these National Guard, you know, the National Guard, man, they don't have, they have a fraction of the training and equipment that we have. This was the 228, the second brigade 28th infantry division, the iron soldiers based out of Pennsylvania and they had National Guard from really all over,

they had some Utah National Guard, Vermont National Guard, Pennsylvania National Guard and these guys had, you know, they're part-time soldiers and they And many of them had been on the ground for over a year at that point. And these guys were hardened combat warriors. And sometimes I'd show up and the SEAL Team 2 would introduce us and they'd look at us and our high-speed little 10-inch barrel M4s and our gear and we had better night vision and lasers and stuff like that and They're looking back at us like like oh man. Look at look at that. Look at the seals They've got you know, these guys have all this cool gadgetry and I I just you know for me Sean I was like man this National Guard soldier

You know who's probably 19 years old has fired more rounds through his weapon in his year here Then all of us put together ever gonna fire in our entire careers. And I mean, they were just in the thick of the fight the entire time. The Marines that were manning the checkpoints through that city, and particularly the ones at the government center, that was Kelo Company, 3A Marines, awesome unit of Marines.

We worked really closely with their Lima Company, Kelo Company, and India companies. And man, they were freaking awesome. And the government center was taken an OPVA, which is named after like the Veterans Administration building that was, it was like an Iraqi Veterans Administration building, I guess, under in the Saddam era.

But those two, they would, they get hit once a week by 50, 100 insurgents attacking from three different directions, hitting them with a dozen belt fed machine guns at the same time, lobbing mortars in, a super accurate mortar fire, and then somebody trying to drive a 5,000 pound V bed into their position. I mean, it was every week for them. And so we just, you know, when we showed up there,

it was like, man, how can we help these guys? What can we do to help in any way that we can? And so we just decided to get to work, you know? So what was the work? The work was what can we do? You know, what is our part of this mission? And for us, it was number one, SEAL snipers, just like the work that you were doing.

We can take our guys, we can take a pretty small group. Right away, we were told there was the red areas on the map that were like, don't go there, these are Al-Qaeda, this is Al-Qaeda and Iraq battle space, and if you go there, you're all gonna get killed, nobody can even come recover your body. And so we realized like, hey, that's enemy safe haven. Like, is there a way that we can get into these safe havens

and mitigate the risk of being overrun by a hundred enemy fighters? And so what we did was we started kind of on the edges of the city, pushing in with some of the Marine and Army patrols, we're setting up sniper Overwatch positions, we go in undercover darkness, set up on the rooftops of buildings, in the windows where they wouldn't be expecting us to be.

And if you were in a bad area that had no US presence before, and all of a sudden when the first call of the prayer goes down and the sun rises and the city's moving around, I mean, you got enemy fighters moving around with RPGs and Belfast machine guns and starting to coordinate attacks on nearby friendly patrols and outposts. And it was just a shooting gallery for the snipers.

So you could actually sit in an OP in an area that was black and see the enemy combatants forming up to go outside of that area to engage and ambush US force. Definitely multiple times, yeah. Oh, many, many times. In the daytime. Well, we'd be in there, we'd sneak in at nighttime and try to be hidden as best we could in a position.

And what we did though was we adjusted, my idea before of a sniper mission was like a little small as best we could in a position. And what we did though, was we adjusted, my idea before of a sniper mission was like a little small, like two man, four man element, six man element. Man, these elements, when you're going in there, we had to have, we would go in with a 30 man element and locked down like a four story apartment building, particularly, initially we started working on the outside edges of the city.

And then once the US forces started establishing these combat outposts, they'd build a forward operating base right in the enemy-held neighborhood, a permanent outpost that they could work at up, bring Iraqi soldiers with them. Oftentimes what we'd do is be the first US troops on the ground for that. So we'd sneak in under cover of darkness. And the ID threat was the biggest threat. So how do we mitigate the risk of that? Well, we would full patrol. So I mean it was throw everything on your back We're carrying Carl Gustaf, you know shoulder-fired rockets. We're carrying 40 millimeter grenades. We're carrying

Multiple belt-fed machine guns every squad multiple belt-fed machine guns Because we had to be ready, you know, we would take the the minimum force that we would take, we usually was at least a squad of SEALs. Because that way I at least had two fireteam elements that could bound and if we're going into a super hot area, it would be double that. It'd be like a full implicated guys or even more. So you see you guys are running 30 man teams and with those teams... So you guys are running 30 man teams. And would those teams?

So maybe 18 or 20 of those guys would be SEALs plus EOD. Our EOD bomb technicians were phenomenal. And we're absolutely a critical part of our team, just like the ones you worked with. And we had some awesome shooters too, man, that they could do both. So we also had, sometimes we would plus up with squads from conventional army units or marine units as well,

just because we wanted to have some more Americans out there with us. And we'd always have Iraqi soldiers. So we might have 12, 15, 20 Iraqis with us. I did not, like those guys were out there risking their lives. I did not count on them in the gunfight. So, you know, when it was, we saw that too many times

that when, you know, if you got a hundred enemy fighters trying to overrun your position, like you are, the only thing that's gonna save you is Americans. And the things that saved us was Americans with Belfast machine guns. Those machine gunners carrying the Mark 48 7.62 Belfast machine gun and the Mark 46 5.56 Belfast machine gun, those guys saved our lives over and over and over again.

Just feedback attacks, preventing us from being overrun. If we were on a patrol with Iraqis, if we're getting attacked, like enabling us to be able to keep the enemy's head down so we could get off the street, laying down cover fire for us. I mean, I just, I talked to those Vietnam SEALs about how much they love their machine gunners,

that were carrying the stone or machine gunners in the M60s back in Vietnam, and how that would enable them to push deep into Vietcong territory where nobody could come get them. And the only QRF, you know, a lot of those Vietnam guys had working in like the rungsat and places like that in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam was like another seven man SEAL squad. And they had some, you know, maybe some, they had SEAL, you know, the helicopters that were supporting overhead and some aircraft,

but those machine gunners kept them alive and it was the exact same thing for us in Tasking a Bruiser. Those machine gunners like Mark Lee and Ryan Job and all those guys carrying the heavy belt that machine gun Jake, our mutual, you know, Bud's classmate, man, he was, those guys were awesome and, you know, carrying so, because you're full patrolling in every time and so they're carrying massive heavyweight. And real quick, let me, I wanna get into some specific examples of how they,

how effective the automatic weapons guys were. But from, let's look at a bigger picture real quick. So from, for Ramadi, what was the overall mission? Not just of tasking a bruiser, but what was the overall mission, not just of tasking a bruiser, but what was the overall mission? Was it to infiltrate and occupy the city and take it from AQ, Al-Qaeda? That's a fantastic question, man.

I think what's interesting about it is never did I see a time where the generals in Baghdad or someone from the Pentagon came and said, here's your mission, Ramadi. Bet MGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA has your back all season long. From tip off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of

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with iGaming Ontario. And so the guys in Ramadi figured out what that mission should be. They were close to the problem. And the brigade colonel that was in charge, you know, the colonel and his staff that were in charge of that natural guard unit, they got relieved by, about a month into our deployment

by the Ready First Brigade Combat Team with the 1st Armored Division. And those guys were brought in tanks and firepower, but they brought in a perspective on that as well about what that mission should be. Colonel Sean McFarland was the guy in charge and his staff were just, they were phenomenal, man. And we love that National Guard unit too,

those guys were outstanding, but the ready first brigade combat team is who I spent the bulk of that deployment with, helping them. Many of the Marine units and that task force Red Currie, that one of those airborne unit, those guys stuck around as well for much of that, our deployment.

But what they realized was the mission Ramadi was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace and ultimately lower the level of violence. That was the goal. That was the goal. And I think if you, you know, I think for so long, if you'd asked a SEAL, if it asked me, you know, my first opponent, like, what's the SEAL mission in Iraq? What are you trying to do? I said, kill bad guys.

And I think some of that Jocko really recognizes like, look, either US forces win in Ramadi and we all win, or US forces lose and we all lose. And it doesn't matter how many bad guys we kill or capture, it doesn't matter how many operations we conducted, if US forces lose here, we all lose. So what we have to do is help US forces win. And we understood that that was the mission,

was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace, lower the level of violence. And we realized our part of that was to take a small element that was very heavily armed. I say small, right? It might've been as many as 30 guys if you're locking down a four story apartment building. And many times we tried to put two elements in that were mutually supporting one another

because there's nothing stronger than mutually supporting Overwatch positions with interlocking fields of fire. I mean, that's how you're going to defeat an enemy that way outnumbers you when they're trying to come and attack your position. When that other position could cover move, cover for you and you can cover for them as well. But that's how we mitigated the risk of going into some of those areas. And we knew that we could take a fairly small group of guys

with a lot of firepower, carrying the shoulder-fired rockets, carrying the belt-fed machine guns, carrying the 40-mic grenades, JTACs with aircraft support in Silverhead. We had artillery battery. The artillery battery in Ramadi fired, I think they fired over 5,000 rounds.

Wow. From their 1.55 batteries. So when you're going out with 30 guys, are you breaking them up into 15 two-man teams and putting them in different locations? Sometimes. Seven four-man teams. Sometimes.

And you've got them all in one location. Sometimes, but what we typically would do, we would, I like to be in multiple locations so we can use to support one another. We also found though that when we teamed up, a lot of these operations, we were the very first US troops on the ground. We would even go in and do some reconnaissance in the area.

And as frogmen, right, the river, the Euphrates River runs right through Ramadi and there's a Habaniya Canal kind of breaks off from there as well. So we had access to much of the city and there was a, there was a badass Marine boat unit there called the Dam Support Unit. They had these, uh, Cirque boats, uh, these small, uh, small unit riverine craft that they could stand for, but it kind of like a rib, uh, kind of like a combination between like a rib and a soccer. And, uh And so we teamed up with those guys, man, they would, we'd sneak in there at nighttime,

totally blacked out. And you know, night vision, they just drop us off in the bank. No one have any idea we were in there. No ships, you guys would do a water insertion at night. Did a ton of them. To do a reconnaissance to what? Find your, find where your sniper hides

and know where they're gonna be? Find out where they would be, do reconnaissance to what? Find where your sniper hides and open, is it gonna be? Find out where they would be, do reconnaissance of the area, engage IED layers, which we often did, and then we'd use that as an assertion platform, go in there at nighttime, jump off on the beach, full patrol in, so we could set up a sniper, our sniper hides,

and so we would oftentimes take down the buildings or buildings near those buildings that would eventually be the the the combat outposts. So would you would you insert guys they would they would infiltrate the OPs and then the rest of the team would come and link up later or would you exfil back out of the the the location that you're at and then Get the rest of the team and then go back in. Sometimes we did reconnaissance missions where we'd go in and kind of just probe and do a little recon and they'd come back and kind of use that as part of planning. You know, obviously you have to

hit multiple buildings that don't know exactly where you're going, try to go into different areas and do some misdirection stuff. But usually what we would do, excuse me, usually what we would do is an instruction method. We would go in there and set up in the sniper hide and try to get in position before the first call of prayer. You know, so we could get in position by daylight. Then we would start to like, we would try to get some long axis looks down, you know, some of the main avenues of approach.

And then usually we would be, so we would wait until oftentimes the, you know, the first, some of those larger operations, you're talking over a thousand soldiers and Marines on the ground, 50 tanks, dozens and dozens of heavy, you know, engineering vehicles. I mean, they're trucking in, you know, 70,000 sandbags to, you know, multiple

semi truckloads of, you know, Jersey barriers and Texas T-barrier, you know, those giant concrete barriers to try to, you know, concertina wire rolls to like reinforce these positions because you know you're going to get attacked. I mean, they're coming. And that's usually where we could, we could really help those guys is so we would set up and cover for them as they infiltrated. And there were multiple tests, I remember that. Okay, so you would know,

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the overall mission. So you would know where the conventional units are setting up, then you would conduct reconnaissance around that specific area, find the best vantage points, and then set up the OPs? Well, sometimes we would conduct a reconnaissance provided to the conventional units to maybe record Made a recommendation where they could set up, you know Okay, or take them with us, you know on those reconnaissance missions and then we would plan that thing out

And we became like their go-to as far as like, you know, they they realize the effectiveness of SEAL snipers And what we could do for them, you know, to disrupt attacks because, you know, they're super vulnerable, right? When they're trying, before there's any, they're just out there in these neighborhoods, they're getting shot at, you've got, you know, hundreds of enemy fighters that can muster

and start attacking their positions. And so our snipers were able to disrupt those attacks. Oh, shit. But a lot of times, we'd be sitting in a position, you'd see like the mine clearance element And so our snipers were able to disrupt those attacks. Oh, shit. But a lot of times we'd be sitting in position, you'd see like the mine clearance element in their big like MRAP, you know, this V-Hole vehicles. They were the only guys that had them at that time.

We would ask for them and nobody else had them. But you'd see them slowly like on white lights, like digging IDs out of the road. And there was, to the, one of the first major operations we put in, I mean, they cleared dozens of IDs out on that. I mean, like a, just to tell you how bad things were, there was a route that was coming down off Route Michigan, that main road that I said was

statistically the most heavily ID road. A couple months before we moved into that area, right before we deployed, the Marines had tried to push down a road into where we ended up putting a combat outpost. It was called Route Sunset. And they'd hit something like 13 IEDs in less than 500 meters. So I mean, it was constant. You couldn't even get into these areas. And so we watched those guys clear.

And so it took like four or five, six hours for them to clear all the way down. And we wanted to make sure that ideas weren't Being in place, you know on top of that and so then then all of a sudden tanks Bradley fighting vehicles You know, those troops are coming in, you know in humvees and man I remember this one time we were sitting in the sniper hide and what was gonna be the the buildings that will become the combat Outposts and we're on the third story and I'm looking over the side and I got that mine clearance element I mean they got this it was called the dagger was the call sign for the vehicle.

They got this huge like arm that's like, I think they call it the Buffalo was the vehicle. And they're like digging. It's just this big robotic arm that's like digging in the dirt. And this robotic arm got like blown off like every night, they'd like replace it. And I'm looking down there and I could see these like pro-Jos.

And I mean, I'm looking over the rooftop, I'm like, I was like, this is, all of a sudden it occurs to me that like, if that thing goes off, I mean, this is like one in five, five rounds, you know? Like that thing's gonna take my head off, you know? My face is gonna be gone. I was like, if I could see the explosive, it could see me, I need to get back behind the rooftop.

I mean, it's like right there, like at the base of the building that we're at. And we found a bunch of them too, like along the creek we were patrolling across as the army went and burned out the vegetation later. And they dug, I mean, they found eight or 10 IDs in there. We were patrolling all around. These things are just everywhere.

And then from the combat outpost, once we had that established, so then we could push out deeper into enemy territory. And so initially the army would say like, hey, we want you here in this building so that you could cover our guys. And you're looking 360 for a hundred yards in all directions for blocks.

All you can see is US soldiers and Marines. Like, I can't even engage anybody like them. So we talked them into it. And luckily, Jaco would kind of explain why we needed to do it. And we pushed about 300 meters outside the perimeter. And they were worried about us getting attacked. Well, we pushed 300 meters outside the perimeter, set up in a big four story apartment building, I wanted to go in a different direction. Chris Kyle was like that, we need to go there,

that's the apartment building. And luckily I was at least humble enough as a leader, I made all kinds of terrible mistakes, but at least humble enough to listen to the guy that knows who he's talking about. To say, okay, cool, let's do it, you know, Chris wants to do, thank God we did that, because I mean we had, over the next 48 hours,

we disrupted like all kinds of attacks on that combat outpost and that was just kind of the model for what we did over and over and over again you'd see like a dozen enemy fighters that are trying to like rally to and they know they're gonna attack the combat outpost which you can't see or you get you know right as the sun comes up mortars are landing dead center of the combat outpost, kills the soldier, wounds three others, and the soldiers can't even shoot back, right?

Indirect fire is coming from kilometers away over blocks of the city, and you can't even see the launch point, and so our cybers were able to engage guys loading mortar tubes into the back of a vehicle from 600 yards away. So it was that kind of element were like those soldiers when they started here and like the 300 win back You know, it was like three enemy fighters engaged with 300 win back. I mean you would just hear like they were

They were so stoked about it. They knew the like we were up there on the high ground You know to protect them and help them out and as a result, I mean every single time we called them Because when we're deep in enemy territory, like we got viciously, they always figured out where we were. Sometimes it was like sending like unarmed kids through the neighborhood knocking on gates. I mean, you know, all the standard stuff

and they knew we weren't gonna engage that guy, but they wanted to figure out where we were at. So it would, we just adopted the Marine tactic from three Marines of like, it became an over fighting position. So if you didn't have an urgent surgical casualty, like you weren't calling EVAC, because that's what they wanted you to do.

You were gonna be in the streets, getting ambushed, have an IED clacked off on you, or having multiple machine guns engaging you while you're patrolling out. So we try to wait till undercover of darkness if possible and Sometimes we didn't do that because if I was felt like I was in a position that was not very Defensible if they attacked us

um Like if they could get if we were on we had rooftops, but all the rooftops are kind of equally You know high or even higher around us and they might have the advantage over So there were a couple times when we had to make the tough call, it just, you know, it's kind of like the, you make the least bad decision you can, right? Or you're like, hey man, I know we're going to get attacked, but we can move fast on foot.

We could do some misdirection, and we can get back to the base, and it's going to be better than allowing them to set up a massive attack, you know, on our position where they have all the advantage. So I think we've done a fantastic job of painting what Ramadi was like back in 2006. And so let's rewind back to your first kinetic operation

with the blue on blue. Yeah, man, even before that, when the guys hit the ground, the very first, like I've been, advance, I've been on the ground for like a week, everyone arrives and so they're just offloading in the camp and we got in, there's like a massive multiple, like multiple unit, like well coordinated enemy attack

on the camp. We're talking like, so every single CEO was on the rooftop of the camp just dumping fire across the river. And that was like the first, the very first, I, one of my guys who was our, probably our most senior machine gunner, he'd been, it was his third deployment to Iraq, he'd been a machine gunner, you know, every time he'd done a bunch of assaults,

done a bunch of capture kill raids, those direct action raids. And he was like, this is the first time I've ever fired my machine gun. I mean, he'd been on the ground for like three hours. Are you serious? How many hours? And they shot like 500 rounds off the rooftop.

Oh, yeah. So we knew like, this gonna be different, you know? And then that first particular, the first major operation, first of all, I was so pissed at Jaco for this because he wasn't, I had to be acting task unit commander for that because, and it was the right call, man. It was the right call. But I like, I obviously wanted to be out there

with my guys on the battlefield. And a bunch of guys, the Army, this was the 101st Airborne Division. This was the first of the 506th, Task Force Red Currie. And they live that, the celebrated Band of Brothers tradition from the book that Stephen Ambrose wrote in the HBO mini series. This was the first of 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment.

Awesome, awesome unit. And they just had a phenomenal soldiers, incredible leader of their battalion commander. And they were asking for help. They were doing some operations, pushing in what was called the Malab district. It was a really, really bad area. And so our guys went out there and set up a position.

We had, you know, our job, tasking from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, you know, that was the Green Beret Colonel in charge of all the special operations at Dator at the time, was everything was to be by, with, and through Iraqi soldiers. So we were tasked to train and fight company and battalion size elements of Iraqi soldiers. That was literally our tasking. So that's what we were there to do.

And obviously that was an ODA mission. It was a little bit different for SEALs to kind of adopt that. But we took with us, we took with Iraqi soldiers with us on every mission. And the SEAL Team 2 guys before us had done a great job of training those guys up and trying to mitigate some of the risk of their training. But that's what our guys were doing that very first mission. They said that we had an element of SEALs that was going out as combat advisors to the Iraqi soldiers and we're talking like a like a hundred Iraqi soldiers on the battlefield, you know,

with like a dozen of our guys and some of the army, the military transition team and some Marines that were them. And then we had two different SEAL sniper teams are going out there along with some army sniper teams. And so they went out onto the battlefield, they briefed where everybody was gonna be, you know, everything that the plan made a lot of sense. I'm kind of tracking this mission. I, you know, I'm watching their con ops and I'm listening to be, you know, everything that the plan made a lot of sense. I'm kind of tracking this mission.

I, you know, I'm watching their con ops and I'm listening to it on the radio. And, um, it was pretty clear that like all, all hell kind of broke loose on the operation and we expected it to cause in the Malab district, this was like, and this was our very first major operation is tasking a bruiser. So Jaco felt like he needed to be over there, uh, located with the battalion leadership so he could kind of be the liaison officer to manage that as the command and control with all those different elements out there.

100% the right call to be able to do that. So Jaco's out on the battlefield, but instead of being, you know, there's all these different multiple SEAL units out there, he's co-located with the battalion staff from Task Force Red Currie, you know, try to manage that. And we have this report of like a massive enemy attack

that goes on. So our SEAL sniper is reporting the attack. And then all of a sudden we also get a report that, you know, there's a report that the insurgents are attacking the Iraqi unit that's out there. And there was some issues I won't get into that the insurgents are attacking the Iraqi unit that's out there. And there was some issues I won't get into on the communication side as well that kind of broke down passing communications.

But Jaco's out there on the battlefield. He shows up there. He knows that his guys are in trouble. They're calling for heavy QRF. They want tanks. That means they're in a dire situation. They feel like they're about to be overrun. And so Jaco shows up there, the command and control element. He moves up, sees the Anglico officer, right? The Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer that's there to coordinate an airstrike on a building.

There's red smoke marking where the enemy is. He knows that the sniper team is in there somewhere or should be close by. And so he just, he's kind of trying to de-conflict what's going on. And he went up and kicked the gate open. And it was Tony, my platoon chief on the other side was like, and realized like this is a blue on blue

situation. And no one understood what was going on. This was, meanwhile, I'm monitoring the radio on the other side of the city. I'm getting traffic passed back to me. There's a huge spin up on this, but all of my guys that were in that cyber position, that was a squad of my guys that were there. And it was, they were all convinced, I think that they were about to die. of my guys that were there.

They were all convinced, I think, that they were about to die. I mean, they had moved out to a sniper position under cover of darkness. They realized that where they were was not a good and defendable position. They didn't have visibility on where they needed to see, to cover the road that they were supposed to cover for the soldiers in the Iraqi,

the U.S. Army soldiers, Iraqis, that were moving down that road. So they moved position across the road that they were supposed to cover for the soldiers in the Iraqi, the US Army soldiers, Iraqis that were moving down that road. So they moved position across the road. And they weren't able to pass that information for a series of reasons, a breakdown in communication. Then the Iraqi soldiers were out of sector. So it was supposed to be like hours before they were clearing. Well, some of the Iraqi soldiers, I think, decided like,

hey, we're gonna get killed if we're out here. Let's get this thing over with. They like rushed to the furthest point away from the friendly outpost, Camp Corregidor, and then tried to rush back. And so they were out of sector. So all of a sudden, as our sniper team is setting up, they zip tied the gate to the, and they're setting

up and it's just starting to get light. So like first call the prayer goes down. So night vision doesn't work, but you can't really see. And all of a sudden they've got somebody creeping by the window with an AK-47. Like they see the unmistakable sign of AK-47, like they engaged that guy. And they didn't realize it was an Iraqi soldier that was out of sight. So the Iraqi soldier, you know, that guy gets killed,

several others get wounded, the Iraqis engage back, the Iraqi gets dragged back. They call in for fire support because they're thinking, oh man, there's Al-Qaeda insurgents who are holed up in this building. And man, we got this on video. There was an embedded reporter, I think from Stars and Stripes,

with the unit, the ankle unit. They pulled up a Humvee and they probably dumped 300 rounds of 50 cal into the building. And our mutual friend Matt that we were in buzz with is on the rooftop. And I mean, all he could do is just take cover, rouser coming through the rooftop. Like one round, luckily it went through the concrete wall

enough to slow down, like hit him in the face and like embed it up under his cheekbone. Are you kidding me? He said it was burning him, but he like grabbed it and pulled it out of his face and like threw it down on the roof. And so these guys were like, man, we're about to be overrun, right?

They're calling for that QRF. And they're thinking, man, these guys, this is, they're bringing it. This is our first major operation. So they're calling in for tanks and fire support. Outside, they're calling in for tanks and fire support. So a tank pulls up, when Jaco gets up there, before we kick the gate open,

there's a tank with their gun trained directly on the building where my guys are holed up. And they're just all kind of hunkered down trying to just take cover and not get their head shot off. I mean, you can imagine, right? There's 50 cal rounds coming, you know, and been belt fed, you know, 762 coming right over your head. All you can do is just bury your face

and try to take cover and return fire as best you can. And they think they're about to get overrun. And then on top of that, not only were they going to engage with tanks, they're coordinating an airstrike. So the Anglico, the JTAC, the air controller, he's coordinating an airstrike that's about to just demolish this entire building.

So I'm able to wipe out my entire squad. And so this was the lesson from that of like just how easily, like we thought we had taken every step possible to mitigate the risk of that happening. And so meanwhile, I'm back at the tactical operations center. You know, we're monitoring radio reports. We're hearing that, you know, we've got wounded seals.

And I know it's one of my guys, I know it's Matt at this point, but then we're hearing that it's friendly fire. So like, okay, what's going on? Man, all of a sudden word spreads like wildfire. The webby, like instant chats are going on across the every talk of like friendly fire, friendly fire, like what's going on, what's going on. And so, I mean, there's like massive scrutiny on this operation, you know, right away.

And I remember I jumped in the truck. All I know is that Matt, you know, my brother, our brother, we went through buzz with that I've done, you know, this workup cycle that's in my platoon, I was at his platoon, I know he's been shot in the face. I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means his head's gone, you know, I don't know that's in my platoon, I was at his platoon, I know he's been shot in the face. I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means his head's gone. You know, I don't know if he's gonna die. So I jumped in a truck,

drove across the base to Charlie Med, that was a medical facility, and I went to pick him up. And man, they put him on a morphine drip and patched him up and gave him some antibiotics for infection. And when I was talking to him, obviously he's kind of out of it, right?

It's a morphine. And, but he's like, man, they brought it. Those guys brought it. It's like they were going to overrun our position. He's like, I thought we were all going to die. And he kept saying it over and over again. And I was like, Matt, I was like, Matt, it was friendly fire, man.

It was friendly fire. It was friendly fire. And I probably said, I probably said it was friendly fire probably six times before it like sunk in. And he was like, what? And it was like, he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe it when I said it. And so I think that right there as like,

our commanding officer flew out, we had an investigating officer that flew out. It was, we were so fortunate to not lose any of our guys on that and it was horrible that we lost an Iraqi soldier on that, we took up a big collection for his family and tried to do everything we could for him. There were a couple other Iraqi soldiers wounded,

luckily they recovered from that. But it was so close to being just absolutely catastrophic. We're talking wiping half my platoon out. And then when people were looking, like what heads are gonna roll over this? What heads are gonna roll? Who screwed this up? This is friendly fire, this is the worst,

this is the Cardinal sin, the Cardinal sin that you commit. X-ray platoon in Vietnam, right? That had a friendly fire incident and this is the worst case scenario that can happen. And so we had a big debrief and our commanding officer, our commanding master, he was sitting in there, the investigating officer who was our JAG was in there.

People were wondering like, who's responsible? Like, how did this happen? Who's responsible for this thing? And we knew it was probably some heads were gonna roll over. And Jaco stood up in front of the task and we're all in there. And he said, who whose fault is this?

And man, the radio man stood up and was like, man, I didn't pass the traffic on where we move location. I should have made sure that got passed. That's my fault. The seal that engaged Iraqi soldiers said, I didn't get proper PID. I thought that was an enemy insurgent and I engaged them before I had proper PID.

That's my fault. I should have made that happen before. I mean, over and over, the guy with Iraqi soldiers who had been combat advising them said, this is my fault, those Iraqis were out of sector. And we just went around the room, around the room, and Jocko was like, no, it's not your fault. Like, no, it's not your fault.

No, it's not your fault. He's like, this is my fault. Like, I'm the task unit commander. Everything that, no, it's not your fault. Like, no, it's not your fault. No, it's not your fault. He's like, this is my fault. Like, I'm the task unit commander. Everything that happens to this task unit is my fault. I'm responsible. And we're gonna do everything in our power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. And just to watch that happen,

like the power of extreme ownership in front of everybody in the task unit, our respect for him was already high, man. And it went through the roof after that. Or I realized, and like, and our commanding officer, instead of, he actually left there, he had greater trust in Jaco and in tasking a bruiser because he knew that we were gonna take steps

to make sure that it didn't happen again. And we did prevent it from happening again. Friendly fire happened, probably, friendly fire would erupt, but it never became catastrophic. We were always able to manage it. We could stop it before anybody was killed or wounded. And it was always a constant threat, but we took massive steps to mitigate the risk.

And in fact, even some of the guys, some of your still teammate brethren that plugged into our team, they were an awesome crew that came out and joined us. And they were kind of jokingly calling me the rocket man there for a little bit because I had these two flares on my back. We had a white flare and a red flare.

You know, a white flare was, our red flare was send QRF, white flare was like ceasefire. And so those were signal and device. I was like, man, I want that with me all the time, just in case that we have that happen. I'm gonna carry that thing, those things single and device. I was like, man, I want that with me all the time, just in case that we have that happen. I'm gonna carry that thing, those things around on me. That's supposedly my job is to prevent this from happening.

So we implemented lessons learned at every level of the team. We took massive steps to mitigate it from happening. And when it did happen, you know, like, oh, we get some rounds over our head. We instantly had the radio comms and we had a good comms check with that, you know, the tank that was shooting at us, we could get them to ceasefire, you know, we're

marking our positions, ceasefire. Sometimes we'd throw a freaking giant, you know, Vs-17, Dayglow orange signal panel, you know, half the size of this room over the side of the building and let every insurgent know where we were at just because that was better than taking, you know, 120 millimeter main gun rounds, you know, in your position. Cause the threat of that was significant every time. Damn. Wow. Wow. You know, I heard you talking,

I heard you talking once, I think it was with Jaco about getting shot in the chest, in the plates. Can you run through that? Yeah, man, that was the darkest day of my life. I'm sorry, I didn't know that. That was August 2nd, 2006, man, we lost Mark Lee. And Ryan Jobe had been wounded right before that. And yeah, I took a round, I think it was a ricochet,

otherwise I'd probably have killed him, just flip my spine in half. What were you guys doing? We were, it started as a big, basically a coordinate search operation into what was called the J-Block sector of Ramadi. And so after we'd established those common outputs, we'd push sniper overwatches out,

and then we would push patrols with the Iraqi forces out, to try to patrol into the city, engage with local populace, show them that we were there to actually support them, talk to them about where the insurgents were. These were, the Marine Corps calls them census operations of kind of just showing the local populace that like we were here to support them.

That was that stabilize the city, secure the local populace that like we were here to support them, you know, that was that stabilize the city, secure the local populace, you know, part which which paid huge dividends down the road, you know, to ultimately lower level of violence and, and, you know, the Anbar Awakening, you know, came out once, but all that started with breaking the back of the insurgency, like really lowering their, their, their military capability. But what we would do is push our, push patrols out with the Iraqi soldiers and the military transition teams that they were assigned to them. And we put sniper Overwatchers out there

and we had a bounding Overwatch that was in a sniper position covering. And we were out with an awesome unit from the, this was from the task force bandit team Bulldog. So this was Bravo platoon first, it was Bravo platoon first battalion 37 armored regiment of the first armored division. I mean, this was a unit that had been in the Ardennes, you know, force in the Battle of the Bulge and World War II, like historic unit, incredible group that we built some

awesome relationships with. And we, by the way, we couldn't have done any of these operations without these soldiers and Marines. You know, we push into these areas. The only reason that we could do that, the only reason that we could push so deep in enemy territory is because we knew that the soldiers and Marines were gonna mount up in their tanks, mount up in their Humvees

and come to our rescue and aid. And they did it over and over and over and over again all the time. And we had just an incredible working relationship with those guys. And I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for them. And so we supported them as well. When they asked us to do things,

we helped them, we put in cyber-overwatch positions. And so we were pushing our Iraqis deeper into enemy-held areas. And as we were clearing through an element of the J-Block, we'd done probably, I don't know, six or eight operations like in this area, kind of pushing deeper and deeper in. And Ryan Job was one of our machine gunners, amazing guy, incredible guy. And well, the kind of guy that I don't know how long it took

him to get through Buds, but it was a long time. He was one of those guys that was never going to be the best athlete. It was just absolutely tough as nails. And was just a stud, awesome machine gunner, super strong man of faith as well, and hilarious. But he was the machine gunner basically holding the security for Chris and the sniper team was on the rooftop as we had this kind of bounding Overwatch. And I was with the Iraqi element

that was moving forward to the streets. And we were about an hour and a half or two hours into that operation. Again, one that we conducted many, many like that before. And all of a sudden, I mean, we're a shot right now. I mean, you can hear the impact of it, you know? And I hear, you know, our most experienced, our most common experienced guy was Chris Kyle,

an awesome, awesome teammate and a tremendous sniper. Saved lots of lives on the battlefield and man, I could just hear in Chris' voice, man, he's like, we call Ryan's nickname was Biggles and he was like, Biggles has been hit, I need a corpsman to the rooftop now. And man, I could just hear in his voice how horrific that was. And I literally had been talking to him, both those guys like 30 seconds before that, right? Just walked down the stairs,

we're gonna organize our team and kind of push out to the next building before we take the rooftop there. And man, so we go rushing back up to the rooftop and Mark Lee who rolls right back up there, another awesome machine gunner, just an incredible, incredible guy, steps right into the very position that Ryan got shot.

Like right in the position with his belt-fed Mark 48 machine gun, it just starts laying down, suppressive fire, knowing that we're gonna get shot back at any moment. And we got up to Ryan, you know, Ryan had been hit in the face and just a single shot hit him in the face. You know, you could call an enemy sniper around,

you could call it just, you know, obviously it was not your average like spray and pray, you know, insurgent, somebody that had some good side picture trigger squeeze, engaged him, hit him in him in the head and man it just looked horrific I mean he's you know his eyes gone like his holy have his face look like it's missing you know how blood looks man it's just so I just I ran up to him I just grabbed his hand I was like is he conscious when I rolled up to him he's just he's just laying there and I grabbed I grabbed his hand I was like hanging brother, we're gonna get you out of here.

And I didn't believe that for a second, man. Like it just looked like there was no chance. And meanwhile, Mark is standing there laying down some press fire right over the rooftop wall where he just, Ryan just got hit. Other guys stepped up there too and laying down some press fire. We're calling in the CASAVAC vehicle, the corpsman rolls up there too, and laying down some press fire. You know, we're getting, we're calling in the CASFAC vehicle,

the corpsman rolls up there and is working on him. That corpsman was Johnny Kim, our, you know, just a phenomenal guy in there, you know, going to work, you know, on Ryan. And miraculously, Ryan like sits up. He like sits up and says, I'm okay. And, you know, he was, the blood was kind of going down his throat, right? So he has to kind of sit up to kind of clear that. And, you know, he was, the blood was kind of going down

his throat, right? So he has to kind of sit up to kind of clear that. And we get under his armpits, we're getting him down to the Casavac vehicle. You know, we had a M113, an armed personnel carrier down there, you know, for Casavac. And so we get Johnny, our corpsman,

and we got, you know, guys under each shoulder of Ryan, and we're getting an escort off the roof. And he walks off the roof really by his own power, like down the stairs. And just incredibly, incredibly tough, human being. And we found out later that Ryan got hit in the, when he was in the hospital, he had all this shrapnel on his face

and they were trying to figure out what exactly happened. Because I thought the round just impacted him. But we realized that there was a round impact on the receiver, right at the base of the receiver, where it meets the buttstock for his Mark Forte machine gun. And we were an hour and a half into this operation. He was, it's 117 degrees, you know,

it's miserably hot, repairing all our gear and water. I mean, Ryan must have been sweating profusely. And man, just like the awesome teammate that he was, the awesome machine gunner was, Ryan was on that machine gun. He was on that machine gun, looking down the sides of his weapon, ready to provide cover fire.

And if he hadn't done that, he would have just taken his hat off, you know? That round would have just taken his hat off. That round would have just taken his hat off. So that saved his life. And unfortunately, we didn't figure out till later, it was two weeks later that we realized that the shrapnel had severed his optic nerve to his good eye and he was gonna be blind as a result of that.

And so I didn't know how it was gonna go. At the time we evac'd Ryan, we sent our corpsman with him. We pulled back to the base. And August 2nd, we'd done multiple operations in this area. We'd gotten tons of gunfights in this area. There were definitely a lot of insurgents. But there was something different about August 2nd.

Like this was probably, I think it was the largest single engagement of any of the engagements that made up this eight or nine month battle of Ramadi. And insurgents were just coming out of the woodwork attacking the soldiers that were out there. So we had one sector, they were clearing another sector. After Ryan got hit,

we pulled back and went back to the, we pulled patrol back about a kilometer to the base, kind of refitted and the soldiers were like under attack, man, they, you know, and they asked us if we could help them. And, you know, they were getting attacked from these different positions, so we loaded up in Bradley fighting vehicles and we rolled back out into the city.

And it was, man, there was so much going on that day. Like for guys like Mark Lee, for all the guys that were in Charlie Platoon, like they knew they were going back out on the teeth of it. Like we'd just seen what happened to Ryan. And you know, our brothers in the Army needed our help from Team Bulldog there. And, and nobody hesitated for a second, man. Jocked up in their gear, reloaded mags, refitted with grenades, loaded up into those Brad's and we rolled out.

No shit. To hit those target out. No shit. To hit those target buildings. No hesitation. No hesitation, man. Those guys did everything I asked them. Unbelievable courage. We had the firefight was so bad that day, man.

We had like, I think for the company commander's name is Mike Byam, as a close friend of mine, he's retired now, main gun Mike we called him, he fired over 50 main guns from his tank throughout his time there. And I don't know how many of you have done that since like the World War II Airmen, 50 main guns. But he was a phenomenal guy. I think just about every tank and Bradley fighting vehicle out there was, you was, we would use the term Winchester,

they're out of ammo, like they go black when the tank's out of ammo, they shot every single main gun round that they had. Damn. In that engagement. That is some serious shit. It was right in the teeth of a man. And so I think for me, I talked quickly over with Tony, my platoon chief,

I was like, look, if we're gonna hit a target where we got bad guys that are shooting at us, the best thing we do is soften it up first. So we wanted to go in and try to stay off the street. We knew we had at least one sniper out there. So we wanted to try to use armor to get into these areas. And so we had those Bradley fighter vehicles and the tanks just blast these buildings, man,

before we went into them. And then smashed through the walls and lowered their ramps before we engaged. And we hit one building, the insurgents had already pushed out of it, that the army told us, hey, we're getting engaged from this building. There's insurgents in that building.

So we loaded back up, we hit another building. And in the second engagement, as we went into that building, man, the building was on fire as we went in there, like a main gun round had already hit the building and just blasted it open. As we started moving into the building and clearing through the building, we took fire from the opposite end of the hallway and Mark was killed. And somewhere I was hitting that gauge. I heard the gunfire ring out. I stepped out into the hallway, got hit, and I just grabbed one of our guys who was in the hallway.

It was clearly a hot hallway with bullets and ricochets flying around to push them across the hallway, just to try to get him out of the line of fire. And, you know, I heard the man down call. Mark was 20 feet away from me, you know, when that happened. And, you know, guys came as more assaults were poured in the building. Like, they cleared the rooftop. And it was the absolute worst day of my life, man. And I think the fact that I got hit, just in between the plates and I knew I'd been hit,

but then the guy that I pushed into that room was like, hey, Leif, you're bleeding. Just blood always looks like more than it is. My whole inside of my vest was soaked and I was just trick trickling down, you know you just hear like the tap tap tap tap but like bullet before and and But there just wasn't time to even think about that man You know, it was mark was down that we moved up to him got the Korman on him got him Kazza fact

and For whatever reason like I thought there might be some hope, you know mark was unconscious when we got to him I thought there might be some hope to him and, Mark was unconscious when we got to him. I thought there might be some hope to him, man, but he'd been hit in the head. He was killed instantly. And Mark was just such an incredible, incredible warrior, man. And he was doing exactly what I asked him to do, you know, which was engage enemy insurgents.

He was moving down a hallway, stepped up right into the doorway to engage in me and surgeons that were shooting at us from the building next door, man. And he sacrificed himself for me and the rest of the guys that were coming in there. And he was, I mean, just like Ryan, just the most incredible teammate, just absolutely hilarious, strong as a, just strong as an awesome, incredible athlete, but just the kind of, just represent the absolute best of the SEAL teams, you know?

And I would do anything, Sean, I'd do anything to trade places with them, man. I got lucky, you know, for whatever reason, I got lucky and some ricochet hit me and they patched me up and I, you know, there'll never be a time when I go up to Fort Rose Grand Cemetery and see Mark's grave there.

I don't wish that was me lying on the ground there, man, and not him. And I think that's one of the hardest things that I could have never prepared for, right? When these guys that you love and would do anything for, it's the ultimate dichotomy as a leader. It's the ultimate dichotomy, which is to love your guys

and want to do anything for them and be willing to trade your life for them if you could. And yet sending them out on missions where you know that they might get injured or killed. And I think it was something that I tried to pass on to the next generation of SEAL leaders that I, you know, just to the reminder of like what's at stake.

And we would do a memorial run every junior officer training course that I put through. Like we'd park our vehicles down at Dog Beach and Ocean Beach. And we would ride five miles uphill all the way to Fort Rochcan Cemetery. And we go pay our respects to where Mark Lee is buried and Mikey Montsour, our teammate in Delft-Botton, who was killed about a month later, and pay our respects there and just remind these young

leaders about what's at stake, man, and then the burden of leadership. And I think for me, they'll never be like, it's a burden that never goes away. You know, it's a burden that never goes away. And I think what's as a man of faith, Mark was a tremendous man of faith. And he had wanted to be a pastor, and he had gone to the master's college to study to be a pastor before he decided that he wanted to that he wanted to join the SEAL teams. And I remember quoting scripture and talking about, there was a time when we were out,

when we were engaging targets and we were talking about like the worst case scenarios, you know, these mangy Iraqi dogs that are like, you know, these kind of junkyard dogs that are running around. like the worst case scenarios, these mangy Iraqi dogs that are like, you know, these kind of junkyard dogs that are running around. Like the worst case scenario is that these mangy dogs are like chewing on you on the street, right? And we talked about how this was, you know, that in the Bible, there's numerous examples of that where like the prophet Elijah, you know, in Jezebel, who's trying to kill him,

the prophets of Israel, the dogs are going know, and Jezebel who's trying to kill him, the prophets of Israel, the dogs are gonna chew on Jezebel. When David and Goliath, Goliath says that he's gonna give David's body after he kills him to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. And we're talking about this with Mark, right? This idea of like being a warrior on the battlefield.

And I remember sharing those scriptures, you know, with Mark and talking about his faith and how powerful that was for him. And I know I'm going to see him again one day. And I look forward to that day, man. He was an incredible man. And Ryan Jogue, three years after the surgery, I think it was the 22nd surgery, a wounds that you know when he was wounded We lost him, you know from complications that surgery as well and like him like just like Mark. I was an awesome man of faith You know, he came back from that deployment and being blind to him was like an inconvenience, you know, it was He he climbed 14,000 foot Mount Rainier totally blind,

through this awesome organization called Camp Patriot. I know a number of seals that attempted it and were unsuccessful in their summon attempt with their sight and all their limbs. And he asked me to go on a hunt. I was the spotter for him. He shot this world-class bull elk using this little camera system.

I mean, Ryan was just a phenomenal guy. He married his longtime girlfriend. They were expecting their first child. And when that happened, it was just a tremendous, tremendous loss. But I know that Mark would have wanted us to keep going, to keep operating, to keep doing what we were doing, to try to make a difference there. And I would talk to Ryan on the phone, and Ryan would tell us to keep going, right? To keep operating, to keep doing what we're doing, to try to make a difference there.

And I would talk to Ryan on the phone, and Ryan would tell us to keep going, you know, in those operations, to keep doing what you're doing, keep going out there, keep getting after it, do everything you can, you know, to try to bring more soldiers and Marines home, to try to win this thing in whatever capacity we can.

And, man, I'm just so thankful and fortunate and honored to have been able to serve with guys like that, you know, who were willing to lay down their lives. And Ryan one time told me, he's like, it doesn't make me a hero, just because I got shot in the face, I'm not a hero. That doesn't make me a hero because I got shot. And I told Ryan that what made him a hero is not that he got shot.

It was the fact that he knew that he could get shot at any time. That he could get gravely wounded or killed and yet he jogged up in his gear and he rolled out all those operations over and over and over again. And he did it for me, he did it for his teammates, he did it for the teams, he did it for the soldiers and Marines that we were trying to protect. He did it for the NSI Iraqi people that were out there living under this brutal reign of terror and fear, you know, that Zarqawi's henchmen in Al-Qaeda in Iraq,

later ISIS, you know, ruled over them with, and I know Mark was a hero for the same reason, man. Mark was a hero for the exact same reason,. Mark was a hero for the exact same reason that he was willing to do that over and over and over again. And I just think it's the honor of my lifetime to be able to have served alongside heroes like that and be able to tell their story and share their legacy. Damn, life, that's heavy, that's heavy.

I'm sorry I had to go through that, man. We're gonna see him again one day, life. That's heavy. That's heavy. I'm sorry I had to go through that, man. We're gonna see him again one day, Sean. Yeah. I look forward to that day. Yeah. Yeah, you know, when I first checked into 240 at Bud's, Mark was the... Mark was my my head mate. I'm kidding, man. I didn't know that. I didn't get to know him terribly well, but I am very thankful that I got to meet him and he gave me the ins and outs of buds. What a great guy. I didn't realize that you guys, I guess I should have known that because, I didn't put it together for several months in a Charlie platoon as he started to come,

he joined our platoon and started working with us. And that wasn't in our initial workup, that was several months before we deployed. But somehow we put it together like he knew Brian Bill. So I realized that he had been to Bud's previously. And those guys, Brian was one of the guys that had trained with him. They'd lived together in Virginia Beach. And, you know, Brian was one of the guys

that encouraged him. And I'll tell you what, man, as destroyed as I was, Brian Bill was as close to Mark Lee as you could be. And Brian wasn't close to a lot of people, man. But he was very close friends with Mark Lee. And we talked a lot about Brian. And obviously I was close to Brian and Buds and was a friend of his through that time.

And when we came back, man, I was just, my soul was crushed. My soul was crushed, man, from losing Mark and Ryan being blind. And particularly knowing that I had some minor wound, man, it was like, hey, patch me up and I'm going back to work. You know, like it was, like, why couldn't that have been me? Why couldn't I have been killed and not Mark?

Why couldn't I have been blind and not Ryan? Why couldn't I have been Blanton and not Ryan? And, you know, luckily I had a great commander in Jaco who pulled me aside and said, hey man, we don't have a crystal ball and we don't know when that stuff's gonna happen. And if we did, we wouldn't go on that operation. But we can either choose to do nothing, you know, and take no risk, or we could do everything we can

to try to make a difference here To try to save American lives here That's what mark would want us to do That's what Ryan is telling us to do, you know and encourage me to keep going and that support with from Jaco was Was immense, but I remember sitting in the mission planning space as we're just kind of all reeling, you know from from Mark's loss and as we're just kind of all reeling from Mark's loss. And at this point, we didn't know Ryan was gonna be blind. I knew it was grave.

I knew he was wounded badly. I didn't even know if he was gonna like out of the woods as far as making at that point. And I got a call from Brian Bill, who was in Baghdad, was SEAL teammate. And he said, hey man, I heard about what happened. And I just want you to know, like, I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna take care of the family.

I'm gonna take care of Maya, Mark's wife. You know, I'm gonna be there for Mark's mom, Debbie, and his family, like, don't worry about it. I know you guys are gonna continue to operate. Like, I got this. And man, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me. Like, for, he never questioned a thing. He never like said, what happened?

What are you guys doing? Like all the emotions that you might expect. He just said, hey man, I'm here. I'm here to help. And gave up what was an awesome deployment for those guys. You know, he bagged it doing a bunch of great operations to go and support Mark, man. And it was, that was the kind of guy that Brian was.

And it was, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me, man, just getting that call in like the darkest hour and real lesson, like a teammate just putting his arm around you, you know, cause that was one of the hardest parts is like, hey, we're here. Like the deployments continue and operations are going on. I want to go back. You know, I want to be able to talk to Mark's family

and support them and be there for them. I want to be with the Ryan's family. And yet you can't do that, right? There's still operations going on. So just knowing that teammates like that, you know, we're doing that was, I'll never forget that, Matt, for Brian. That was just, I think a real testament to the man that he was.

How long was it after that, that you guys were on the next stop? We had a stand down. Because we needed it, man. We'd been going hard. We'd been going hard. And Delta Platoon, working across the city out of Camp a camp curricular was going to be on the, they were going to launch an operation like the next day. And Seth Stone called Jaco said, Hey, we're going to roll this 24 hours.

And so he, Jaco said, Hey man, you can still go on the op. And Seth was like, look, I think we need to roll this 24 hours, right? Everybody needs to decompress, everybody's emotional. And so that was an important thing for us, I think, just to realize like we need to allow our guys to decompress, but we had a memorial service for Mark. And man, it was so, guys drove down the most dangerous roads in Iraq, our teammates came from Volusia and Aditha

and from across the Ramadi down that route, Michigan, that deadly road to come pay their respects. And we had a awesome moral service where we said goodbye to Mark. And then 40 hours later, we jocked up in our gear and we rolled back out. Do you want to talk about the service with Mark or do you want to keep that between the platoon?

I think we all just said our goodbyes, man. You know, we all just did our best to honor him and, you know, four guys had gone back with Mark to escort his, you know, Earthly remains home and be there with his family and be there for the moral service, you know, for that. And I think it was an amazing turnout, man. Soldiers, Marines there, Iraqi soldiers.

It was just the kind of person he was, man. He was just the best, man. I've never seen anybody who could use humor in the darkest situation, like to just drop a joke or like a movie quote, you know, and get people laughing and like get them, get them just to kind of shake things off. Like he was, he just was, yeah man, he was awesome. You guys took a lot of losses and the world is very volatile right now.

And we're going to get involved in some more stuff. There's not a doubt in my mind. The US. And so, for the future generations that are going to go through similar experiences, as what you just described, what advice do you have for them? Yeah, I mean, our losses, every time I think I've seen some combat, Sean, I read about Marines at Iwo Jima. I got a chance to visit Normandy this summer, right? And I'm standing on the beaches of Okinawa,

or I'm sorry, the beach at Utah. I've been on the beaches in Okinawa as well, when I was deployed there back in the day. But just being there at Normandy kind of opened up my eyes to some stuff, like some of the inland fighting campaigns and things that were happening. I mean, you realize the kind of losses

that military units have sustained over the years. You go to the battlefield like Gettysburg, or so many of the battles around here in Tennessee that are not far from where we are now. I mean, just massive, massive loss of life that did eclipse anything that I've experienced. And I think what I can say is like, what's helped me is number one faith, man,

knowing that like God has a plan for you, and the survivor's guilt that's so easy for any of us to carry with us is like God has a plan. And so I think you gotta lean on God for his plan. We don't know what that plan is. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We don't know what he has in store for us, but just trusting in him for that plan,

leaning on faith, and knowing too that like, taking extreme ownership of situations, debriefing, learning lessons, even if it's things that, you know, on August 2nd, the enemy fought in a way that we hadn't really expected them to do. Like they brought it, they attacked in huge numbers, and that was a different tactic, right?

The enemy's gonna adjust tactics. So you gotta debrief, you gotta learn lessons to apply that stuff going forward, to make sure that you try to prevent those things from happening again. And I think more than anything else, I think it's about taking care of your people, man. Like your responsibility as a leader goes way beyond,

way beyond just looking out for them in the time that you serve with them. It is about looking out for them and their families, like for the duration of your life. And I will feel that way about the guys that I serve with. And as long as I'm breathing, man, like there's nothing I wouldn't do for them. You know, there's nothing I wouldn't help them out with.

And sometimes, you know, you lose touch with people and you haven't do for them. There's nothing I wouldn't help them out with. And sometimes you lose touch with people and you haven't talked to them in a while and maybe people forget that. And I think it's important to reach out to people and remind them of that. It's important to check in with people. It's important just to be thinking about how you can continue to support them

because it goes way beyond just in the immediate aftermath of some horrible situation like that. And it's not just about showing up and paying your respects at their graveside. It's about checking in with their family, checking in on their kids, reaching out to your teammates, asking them how they're doing, letting them know that you're there for them and that you're all in this thing together and no matter what. And I think that's, when you go to a battlefield like Gettysburg, there's memorials all over that battlefield.

And that's what it's for, man. People put their hands up. Just like in Normandy, there's memorials all over there. The veterans that survived those battles go there and they put their hands on those memorials and they remember their lost teammates and they support each other and they help each other. And I think that's something that goes way beyond beyond the time and service that you have with people. It's lifelong and even beyond that

Thank you for sharing that leaf let's um, I know it's been heavy for and I just I appreciate you going through that man and Let's take a break Let's take a break. All right, Leif, we're back from the break. Once again, I just I really appreciate you digging deep and sharing those stories. Because one, I think it's extremely important to for those guys to live on, you know, through stories. And two, it's a very, very important piece of history

that I'm just honored to be able to document here with you today. So, Well, I appreciate it, man. I'm honored to share it. And anytime I get a chance to talk about the teammates that I lost and honor the legacy of Mark Lee and Ryan Job.

I think it's, I'm happy to do it, John. And I appreciate you. I appreciate you passing on. I think there's so many lessons that we learned from that. And I think for me, I think some Americans though need to understand like sometimes people come up after I speak about leadership and I talk about Ramadi and I talk about Mark and Ryan

and Mikey Masour, and gave his life and our sister, Platoon, another phenomenal team guy and awesome machine gunner, just like Mark and Ryan. And people come up and be like, I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry you went through that. And I think it's important to say that we had some dark days in'm sorry, man. Like, I'm sorry you went through that. And I think it's important to say that, like we had some dark days in Ramadi, man. I think the, you know, it's kind of cliche, right?

The Charles Dickens, Tale of Two Cities, right? The best of times, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But I think it's important to say that, man. Like, I would trade those dark days for anything. I would trade the days when we lost Mark and Ryan, and when Cali was wounded, and when we lost Mikey Monsoor.

I had to trade those days for anything. But most of those days were some of the absolute best days of my life. And knowing that we were working with an awesome crew of warriors, that we were out there fighting against an evil enemy, making a difference and have an impact and making sure more soldiers and Marines

came home to their families as a result. And I think that's something that I think a lot of Americans have a hard time. We kind of live in a day sometimes where it's like, well, is there really good and evil? Like, yeah, there is. There absolutely is. And I think when you see the kind of savagery

that the precursor to ISIS, the Al-Qaeda in Iraq, what they're doing to innocent people, just the butchery and torture and rape and murder and just horrific, horrific stuff. And I think when you know that you can make a difference in the world and rid the world of some of that evil, then it's a great thing, man, to do everything you can in that regard.

And I think America needs to remember that. And so most of the days that I served there were some of the best days of my life. I wouldn't trade them for anything. Is there anything else on this deployment you'd like to cover? No, I mean, I think that's I think just knowing that we You know, there were so many lessons or like so many things that like that I thought I was ready

You know, I thought like hey, we you know combat was so much more difficult than we thought it was gonna be and And we were just humbled like on every single operation. Like something didn't go right. The enemy does something you hadn't planned. You thought you'd de-conflicted that so that all the friendlies knew where you were. And next thing you know, you're taking 50 cal rounds

right over the top of your head. You thought everyone knew what the position was because they could see your marking device and come to find out that they can't see that when they're looking through their tank sites or just so many things like that. It was just over and over again to those lessons that we learned.

And I think probably the biggest lesson that I learned is that it's not about you, man. It's not about me. You know, it's not about Charlie Baton or our SEAL unit. And that's one of the lessons I try to pass on as I went to take over that leadership training course. And one example of that is like, when we first joined the SEAL teams, right?

It's you're training to operate in a SEAL squad or a SEAL platoon. And it's just you, right? And you have assets that are supporting you. And obviously, if you're JSOC, there are times when you've got a whole bunch of assets that are supporting just a special operations unit like that. But on the battlefield for us, we would have,

there might be two aircraft all of Anbar province wide. So if you're gonna declare troops and contacts so that the aircraft will be over your head and you could utilize them just in case you might need them. Where you're pulling them off of a Marine squad that's pinned down and maybe have guys who are gonna bleed out and die. Maybe they get overrun.

Or maybe these soldiers that are in this horrific situation, like you're pulling assets away from them. So I think that really was, that really for me was an eye-opener of like, it's not about me or my platoon or like, we're part of the overall team, the overall mission. And so we gotta share assets, right? We gotta share resources.

Like we gotta actually contribute to the overall success of the mission. And I think sometimes teams get focused on like what they're doing. But I think Jocko really kind of pulled me aside and helping me understand that this is not about us and how many operations we do or how many bad guys we kill or capture. This is about, are US forces winning or losing?

Are we going to be successful as a nation here? Are coalition partners or not? So I think that was one of the biggest lessons to bring back for us. It's interesting. I've never heard it put that way, to be honest with you. It's always been about the unit. I think that's what-

Pulling assets. Let me refer. It's always been what assets can we get, not we're pulling them from these units and unique perspective. Well, everybody, I mean, look, we get not we're pulling them from these these these units and Unique perspective well every everybody I mean look you should be trying to get as many assets you can right? Like if you've got an ac 130 gunship use that thing right if you got helicopters use that thing if you got tanks and bradley fighter vehicles Whatever assets you can have that's great, but I think when you start to

one of these I one of the um This this is my favorite thing to do with, so it was, when I came back from that deployment from Ramadi, they sent me to the center and someone decided to put me in charge of the junior officer training course. And so I was happy to pass on whatever lessons I had there,

but we spent four weeks in the classroom in a week long field training exercise. And the thing that I loved to do was I would play the part of like a army company commander. And I use like main gun Mike, the guy I talked about earlier is, is like, this is, you know, he's got tanks, he's got assets. So these seal, you know, these junior officers, they're leading a squad out, you know, on the, onto this training battlefield. They gotta come up with a plan. They gotta come brief me on what they're doing

and what support they need from me. And so they'd come up to talk to me about their mission and I would just be like, hold on, what you got, man. I got some guys, we're actually activating QRF right now. So stand by. And I would just have them like stand there. And just to realize that like, hey, these army units that you're working alongside, And just to realize that like, hey,

these army units that you work alongside, like that company commander's in charge of 200 soldiers and a dozen tanks, like he's got a lot of stuff going on. You're not the only thing that's going on. So you're showing up there thinking it's all about you and hey, my big office that's happening. And I got to witness that with a special operations unit. I was standing right there next to a company commander when a special operations unit rolled in the theater,

rolled up there, handed him like the GRG and said, hey, here's what's going on. And they were actually were blocking the exits to the combat outposts. And the company commander's like, hey, man, I got troops out of the field right now. You got to get your vehicles out of here. I got to be able to use these tanks. You know, and it was kind of a rude awakening for that special operation unit to be like, oh, there's other stuff going on around here. That's my big miss, you know.

So I think that's that was what I try to train those junior officers is just to pass that on to them. You know, it's not that as a leader, you don't try to get every asset that you can for your team, but it's that you realize that it's about the overall team and the overall mission. And so if you are hoarding assets, or you are focused on yourself, there may be things that you're doing

that could negatively impact others who are also trying to carry out their mission. And we're all in this thing together. So I think looking up and out for a leader and thinking about others in those other units that you got to operate in the same battle space where this is crucial. Yeah, before we move on to the rest of your career,

I want to go back and I wanted to ask you, what did you receive the silver star for? I received the silver star for that horrible situation on August 2nd, 2006. And I don't know if I've ever publicly said that before, but I asked Jaco not to write me up for that, man. Really? Yeah.

I was like, I don't want an award for that. This is the worst day of my life. I'm not traded for anything. Mark got killed, Ryan's wounded. I don't want an award for that, man. We did the best that we could in a horrible situation. I'm proud of my platoon and how they responded in the worst situation imaginable.

To get the building cleared, to call in air support, to get casual evacuation, all the things that they did under the worst situation imaginable. But Les, I got no word for that. For whatever reason, he decided that it was deserve an award and he wrote me up for him. So I accepted that award as a as a recognition for the my team, Charlie Platoon and what they were able to accomplish.

Do you feel that there's anything you could have done to prevent that? I think that when you lose guys on the battlefield like that, like I will rethink that for every moment of my life. I know you were gonna say that, and that's why, as tough of a question as it is, have you found anything you could have been different? Or is it a never ending thing where you will always look

for what you could have done different? Yeah, I think that there is, you're constantly thinking, man, what if I had done this or what if I've done that or what if I did this? And that's where I think Jaco's guidance, as my task, get a commander and saying, man, we don't have a crystal ball.

If you had known that stuff was gonna happen, you wouldn't have gone on that op. You wouldn't have lost that operation. And I think the tough thing for me is realizing I can't, we've got the army out there that needs our help and they're in the worst situation, they're in the worst single engagement of the entire battle of Ramadi.

It lasted for nine months. That killed 94 guys, I think 94 guys killed in action in the 228, the National Guard unit. And I think 98 total guys killed in the ready for first brigade combat team. And so of all the combat that those guys saw, this was the worst.

Or this was the single hottest day of gunfire and mayhem and enemy attacks. And so I think for me, it's the recognition, when somebody needs your help, you know, I think you do everything you can to help. And I try to mitigate the risks that we can control, you know, by riding in Bradley fighting vehicles so that we were behind armor and not out in the street

getting shot at by snipers, by smashing through the walls, by softening up targets with 25 millimeter chain gun rounds from the Bradley fighting vehicles and main guns from the tanks before we actually enter those buildings. But there's just never, it's just a burden that never goes away. And I think you have to do the best you can with the information that you have. And I think there's, I would trade that day for anything, to do something different, to bring Mark back or Ryan back. And it's something that will always be with me, you know? I think sometimes too, when you're on the battlefield,

if you're conducting operations, like, there's no, the expectation that you were going to be able to be in significant combat, sustained combat over time without taking casualties, it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. And I remember a question our commanding officer asked us like with any operation that you go on, you should ask yourself like, is it worth it?

Is it worth the loss of one of your guys? And as we thought about that question, I can answer that question right now, no, it's not. I wouldn't trade my guys for Osama Bin Laden. I wouldn't trade my guys for Zarqawi. I wouldn't trade any single one of my guys for any of these insurgent terrorist savages that were fighting.

But that's not the right question to ask. And I don't think it's any different than, I don't think it's any different than a, if you'd have asked a comedy commander at Omaha Beach, like would he trade one of his soldiers for Adolf Hitler? I think he'd have said no. I think he'd have said no. But of course not.

Like this is my soldier I care about. I'm not gonna trade that guy's life. But they were willing to make the sacrifice because they realized that establishing a foothold in fortress Europe was the key to being able to defeat Nazism so that we could live in freedom around, across the globe and maintain our way of life.

And so I think it's the same thing, right? If you're looking at, if you're looking at a mission like that, it's never gonna be worth, you're never gonna make that trade. But the trade is that you do the best you can to try to have the most impact that you can. And in the time that you have,

and you gotta mitigate the risk of being in control. And I think that's all you can do as a leader. And I think sometime the lesson learned is that combat is dangerous, man. It's dangerous business. And if we don't have the will to kill, if we don't have the will to kill the enemy, and if we don't have the will to sacrifice American lives, then we shouldn't be in combat in the first place.

Lief, I just want you to know that I don't take that question that I asked you lightly. I asked it because there's going gonna be people in your shoes. There have been many people in similar situations and just your answer alone might save somebody's life. So thank you. Well, I'm happy to share that, man. I think for every leader, right, we gotta take risks. There's no common operation without risk.

You can't do anything in life without taking a risk. But you got to mitigate the risks that you can control. You don't want to run to your death with your hair on fire. And I think trying to balance that dichotomy of being aggressive but not being reckless is crucial for every leader out there. And it definitely made me think deeply about that. In fact, there was a follow on time where we had,

we had some aircraft overhead that saw like some armed insurgents like run into a building. And so, after losing Mark and losing Ryan, like I wasn't, it was, we were gonna look at alternatives to try to hit them in a different way instead of, even if we smash that building with tanks and blasted it, like we weren't gonna run into that building. We were gonna make some adjustments.

So I think every leader has to make, has to learn the lessons that they can, lessons that they learned. And I did a poor job, I think, of even letting my guys know of even some of the ops that we turned down. I've talked to some of the guys I served with in Charter of a Toon that were blown away

that we turned down operations. Because we looked at it, the risk versus reward wasn't there, we're like, now we're gonna focus elsewhere here, it's too risky, and I think the chance of mission success are limited, so we're not gonna take the risk there. And risky and I think the you know, the chance of mission success or limited so we're not gonna take the risk there and Someone never even knew that you know that we were

That we were doing all we could to try to mitigate those risks, you know Yeah, yeah, but you're not going into combat without taking risks and if we're not willing to take a risk man It's we ought to not even be there in the first place And I think that's the kind of thing like the the idea that we can go to war without taking casualties. You know, it's just not true, man. It's not true. And I think that's more than anything, I wish that we had leaders who have been to war who understand that so that they could think very deeply about whether or not this was worth it. You know, at breakfast we had a small discussion about, I guess there had been some controversy about the special operations mission that you guys were on and people were saying wasn't

special operations missions because you were operating and gunfighting in the daytime. And so I wanted to just give you the floor on that. Yeah, there was all kinds of criticism, you know, like that. I've certainly been the victim of the armchair quarterback stuff. I mean, that's gonna happen, right? When things go wrong and things go bad. And I understand that.

I think that's a function of people just, I think not understanding what we were doing and why we were doing it. And I think I could have done a lot better job of instead of getting angry or frustrated with people of just kind of explaining that, and talking about why we did what we did and the impact that it actually had.

And yeah, I think, you know, Caskey and Bruiser killed a lot of bad guys. And a lot of those, Chris Kyle, our lead cyber appointment at Charter of Bethune, was the ringleader of that, who did a tremendous amount of damage to the insurgent fighters there, disrupted dozens and dozens of attacks

on soldiers and Marines and our own guys, Iraqi troops. It saved a lot of lives, man, and had some huge impact. And when we were in the squadron after action brief, you know, when everyone's standing in there, all the senior officers and non-commissioned officers are in there kind of talking about the lessons learned. Someone stood up and asked Jaco, hey, you guys were out in the daytime for a lot of this

stuff, you know, do you think that's a special operations mission? And Jaco explained that, you explained that 99% of the enemy fighters that we killed were during the daytime. And he said killing bad guys is a special operations mission, that's the question. And I think this is exactly right. This is, I think sometimes

it's special operations units, we need to be innovative. And I think you can be conventionally unconventional sometimes you're like, oh, we can only go out when it's nighttime. We can only go out when we have like the, you know, the what happens when you have a target that shows up in a marketplace in the middle of the daytime, like we have, we have to be able to actually start. We have to be able to figure out ways to, you know, the, well, what happens when you have a target that shows up in a marketplace in the middle of daytime? Like we have, we have to be able to actually start.

We have to be able to figure out ways to, you know, to do things where people aren't expecting, if they're expecting us to come at nighttime with, you know, undercover darkness every time. So I think our best special operations units are constantly innovating and adapting, you know, ways to do things like that. But I looked at what we were doing in,

in Ramadi, we were going out. A lot of what we were doing was undercover darkness and that was going in at nighttime, setting up, remaining over day when the enemy was actually out, when they had freedom of movement, when they were actually running around the streets, because they knew we would dominate at nighttime

and aircraft could take them out and they knew we owned the night. So, and then trying to patrol out, you know, undercover of darkness at nighttime and aircraft could take them out and they knew we owned the night. So, and then trying to patrol out, you know, undercover of darkness at nighttime. But there was, I think that, you know, taking a fairly small group of guys, a lot of firepower, going in deep in enemy territory in a place where people couldn't get, supporting the conventional units that were then coming in, you know, behind us in mass, I think is very closely equivalent to our forefathers from the underwater demolition teams, the Naval Combat Demolition Units, right?

These were the first guys on the beach taking the risk, that were hitting the beaches in landing craft, like Higgins boats, and Naval Combat Demolition Units, or scouts and raiders. And then in the Pacific theater, the frogmen, right? The underwater demolition teams, they were out there doing the reconnaissance, opening up the way, blasting holes in the, you know, the core reefs

and obstacles so that, you know, the Marines and soldiers could land. And I think that's a lot of what we're doing. And there was a shift in World War II where those combat, those underwater demolition teams that UDT went from daytime to, or nighttime to daytime operations. Nighttime, they were trying to do nighttime,

they thought it was safer, and they shifted to daytime because they thought, okay, well, initially they thought it was too dangerous. But they realized that when they got these little frogmen swimming around, even with the Japanese pill boxes blasted them with mortars and artillery and machine guns, most of the time these guys wouldn't be hit. And it was only, I think there was only a handful of UDT men that were wounded or killed throughout the entirety of like daytime, like beach reconnaissance operations.

So they were able to do it to mitigate the risk. And they also were far more effective in the daytime. And so I think that was what we were doing in the daytime was I think very similar, right? To just the making that shift. And then it was the opposite of Vietnam, you know, where the, in the Vietnam War, when SEALs, you know, were going out in the daytime,

initially, right? You're training the Vietnamese frogmen and that's kind of how the mission started. And now all of a sudden we're going out in the daytime initially, right? You're chaining the Vietnamese frogmen and that's kind of how the mission started. And now all of a sudden we're gonna start into some kinetic operations. Well, nobody went out at nighttime because Charlie owned the night. You know, the Viet Cong were out there patrolling,

setting booby traps, setting up ambushes. And I've talked to some of those Vietnam Seals who made that transition and realized like, okay, the enemy's out of the night, in nighttime we've got to shift to being out at night and the conventional units thought that was crazy They thought you're gonna get a bunch of people killed But but the SEALs were able to have massive impact, you know for such a small unit on the battlefields Because they went out at nighttime. They went into areas that nobody else could get into

And they did a lot of damage to the bad guys so I felt like what we were doing in Ramadi was very much in the spirit of Of that, you know, the seals of Vietnam and those same underwater demolition teams in World War II. Great analogies, great analogies. And so, so you get home, let's wrap up tasking a bruiser deployment. You get home, you move into this leadership course.

What's the timeframe here? How fast did you change things? I reported in, I think it was like February 07. And so we got back end of October 2006. And we, I mean, I basically spent a couple months at Seal Team 3, turned over and then went to the center. And we, and so I just, I took over the course. Did you want to go over there?

I was ready for a break. Very different role. I was ready for a break. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to see, you know, do I want to get out? I didn't really know what I wanted to do. That was a heavy deployment, man. And it was, so I wasn't really know what I wanted to do. That was a heavy deployment, man. And it was, so I wasn't seeking that role.

Somebody decided that that was a good place to put me. And what was cool about that is, I loved it, man. I loved every second of it. It was awesome. And the best job in the world has been a Seal of Platoon Commander. There's no better job in the world than that. The next best job in the world has been a SEAL platoon commander. There's no better job in the world than that. The next best job I think was teaching

that junior officer training course. It was, you know, I had some, you know, the, I got to see, it was an amazing leadership laboratory. I got to see different officers that were coming to that training. We had prior enlisted SEALs coming to the training. We had, you know, we had guys coming out of OCS that had been in the civilian world.

And now all of a sudden in the Navy, we had people coming out ROTC programs. We had people coming from the Naval Academy. We had people doing inter-service transfers from the Marines or Air Force or Army that would come to that program. Also put some special operations, or some Air Force special operations officers through there

and some Norwegian Marine Yeagers that came to that program as well. So I just got to see a bunch of different people, a bunch of different styles of leadership. And it really solidified for me, like what works and what doesn't work. Because I'm putting them all in these challenging situations and seeing how they react to things.

And so it really solidified like, this is what works and this doesn't work. And so it was awesome to see. It was a phenomenal learning experience for me. I think if you really want to know something well, you need to teach it. I'm sure just like when you started teaching tactics, all of a sudden you got to,

people are gonna ask you questions. You have to be able to know things from different angles. You have to be able to think deeply about things and how you might react to certain situations and with different variables. And so that I think really solidified my thought process and thinking about leadership. And of course, the first thing I did was bring Jaco over

to give what we call the Jaco brief, and kind of his lessons learned and seeing that over and over again. And I got a chance to bring in Vietnam SEALs and one of my most favorite things was bringing in the most outstanding senior and junior listed SEALs that I worked with and having them talk about the officers that they respected and liked and admired

and the ones that they didn't and what the difference was and give their perspective. And so I think that's something as an officer, you don't often get to see that or hear that. What were the major differences? Many of the ones I talked about, humility, people that were humble, willing to listen. I think the people that wanted to try to act like they have

it all figured out or have to show people that, you know, I've got something to prove. I think that number one is that that's what pisses everybody off. I mean, you got somebody that's not humble that thinks they know everything. Nobody likes that. No one likes to know it all.

Doesn't matter what experience you have. We used to joke, we had an acronym for a weeweeb, which was when I was in Baghdad. I used to joke, we had an acronym for Wee Weeb, which was when I was in Baghdad, and then it became Wee Weir when I was in Ramadi. So when people are dropping these, like when I was there, when I was here, when I was this unit or that unit, and like, man, that's not the way to lead, right?

I think asking people questions, helping people understand the truth for themselves, like I mentioned before, is the truth for themselves. Like I mentioned before is the way to lead. And so I think that's what really rose above is people that were humble, people that were willing to listen and learn. I think, and then the fact that people were gonna like

look out for the team and the mission first, it's amazing to me. I remember the first time I heard the term servant leadership. And I was like, what does that mean? And the idea that like a servant leadership means that, you know, yeah, I'm gonna look, like I'm here to serve the team. I'm here to, they don't work for me.

I actually work for them. I'm here to help them. I'm here to put the team in the mission first before myself. And I thought that was kind of a crazy term the first time I heard it. I mean, obviously that's what good leaders do. That's great. If you're a servant leader, that's awesome.

But I just thought that was weird that there was even a term for that because it's like the worst leadership ever, right? If you're gonna look out for yourself, if you're gonna be one of these ticket punchers that's gonna be like, hey, I'm all about me. I'm gonna put my needs and my wants, you know, before the team or the mission. And I think that's just, that's terrible leadership.

No one wants to work for someone like that. So those are the things that kind of, and then obviously somebody that just puts out, somebody that's gonna try hard, somebody that's gonna have a sense of humor, somebody that's gonna hold the line on things when it actually matters, You know, someone that's gonna hold the line on things when it actually matters.

And let some things slide when it doesn't. How do you, this is a personal question about leadership. And you know, how do I, I gotta, there has to be a line between you and your guys and How do you keep how do you keep? Let me rephrase this. You know, it sounds like your leadership style and and and you know the conversations that we had a breakfast and I mean, you were really fucking close with your guys, like very, very close

relationships, uh, very personal relationships. It sounds like, and so how do you, how do you maintain that respect as a leader at the same time as getting so personal with your guys? Because as a business owner, I found that that line can be very tricky to navigate. It's extremely tricky. And that's a fantastic question, Sean. the line can be very tricky to navigate. It's extremely tricky. And that's a fantastic question, Sean.

I think this is the million dollar question, right? As a leader, you have to be close with your troops, but you can't be so close to them that one becomes more important than the other or more important than the overall team or the overall mission, or that they forget who's in charge. And I think that's a real fine line

because it's different for different people, right? I mean, there's the SEAL teams, I came from the fleet where I was gonna, I was Ensign Babin or Lieutenant J.G. Babin. It wasn't this like first name base. We worked with a lot of the soldiers and Marines and they were like that. Whereas we're on a first name basis.

Charter of a ten, I was a lay lieutenant. That was my, like, I'm a lieutenant, but I'm lay. That's, everyone's on a first name basis. I'm sure your platoon was like that. Your platoons were like that as well. But it's, so the line's a little more blurry, but I think it's different for different people when you realize like, hey guys, we're gonna knock this off

and like get focused on what we need to do so we can get this done. And if people aren't paying attention, then you know like, okay, I'm a little too close. Okay, I've, you know, I need to, I'm gonna have to maybe create some degree of separation, you know, here in some way. So you gotta be close with the team, right?

I think that you gotta know your people, you gotta understand what motivates them, you gotta understand who with the team, right? I think you gotta know your people, you gotta understand what motivates them, you gotta understand who they are, what they do, what their skills are, and what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how you can help them, like where they wanna go in life, what you can do to set them up for success.

And I think that's crucial for any leader to know, but you do have to find that balance. And I think for me, as the AY know, but you do have to like find that balance. And I think for me, as the AYC, right? The Assistant Platoon Commander, you're like one of the boys and you're not quite the OIC, you're not the platoon commander in charge. That was, it's a big step up, I think, to go from AYC to OIC,

and all of a sudden like you're in charge. And then I realized that I probably crossed that line, particularly with guys that I'd gone to Buds with, and I was, or I'd been in SQT with, and I had very close relationships with, and we'd go out drinking and partying and hanging out, and you realize like, oh, okay, I have to, I'm gonna have to create some degree of separation here.

Maybe I go out and spend some time with them, like, all right, guys, stay out of trouble. I'm heading back. But I think it's just trying to create that so that you're close with your troops, you're close with the team, you understand them, you know them, they know you, they know you care about them. But you're not so close that one becomes more important

than the other or the good of the team or that they forget who's in charge. I think that's a tough balance, but it's different for different people. So you have to just, I think if you're aware of it, one thing that Jocko and I say with dichotomy leadership is even just the awareness that there's this dichotomy that exists

and you have to find the balance is one of the most powerful tools you have as a leader. Because then you can start to monitor it. Am I too close? Am I not close enough? And then you can start to find balance and you're never going to be perfectly in equilibrium. It's always kind of constantly trying

to make adjustments all the time. Okay. Makes a lot of sense. Do you, did you ever vent to your guys frustrations? I was probably the chief hater, a drinker and chat tasking a bruiser. Just if you remember the old Dave Chappelle, the Chappelle show, the player haters ball was one of my favorite episodes. And remember they just held up pictures of people

and they would just like, they sit around and go, hey, hey, and just like make fun of them. And I would just throw shade at my chanting command, talk about, I had a great relationship with Jaco. We all love Jaco. But the next level up, the chanting command, our commanding officer and staff, they were always asking for paperwork.

And look, they were good people. I liked them, but they would pile a bunch of paperwork requirements on them. Like, I don't have time for this stuff. We're out here trying to fight the war. I don't need to be doing that stuff. And then you get questions from the siege of Sotif in 80 miles away

and the JAG officer's asking about the rules of engagement and just making sure that everything was followed precisely and you start to, it's really easy to get frustrated and get emotional and push back on that. And I'm lucky that I had, you know, Jaco to ask me, it's like, hey, does it help you to not have a good relationship with your chain of command? And I was like, no, it actually doesn't.

And worse than that, it actually hurts my team. Because if I don't have a good relationship with my chain of command and they don't trust me, well, they're not gonna prove our operations, right? They're not gonna give me the resource I need. They're certainly not gonna be, we're not gonna be the go-to unit that they choose to go action of, you know, a target

if they're gonna pick one platoon out of the entire team, where it's not gonna be us, you know? And so, you know, when I would vent sometimes, Jocko would kind of just allow that and then just ask some questions to kind of turn it back around to kind of think about like what could we do to actually lead up a chain command? Like our commanding officer and staff, what do they want?

Do they want us not to be successful? Do they want us to win? They want us to win. So if they've got questions about what we're doing, about how we're mitigating risk, I haven't pushed enough information up there right there. They don't understand why this mission's important and they're questioning that mission.

I need to actually push some information and talk to them about why we're doing this, pick up the phone and call them and talk them through it. And then the JAG at CJ SOTA, we were writing these like really basic, like engaged military age mail, you know, with AK-47. And the JAG is like, well, every, you know, senior male in the household is allowed to have like one AK,

you know, within their home, if you remember, they had, they were allowed to have one firearm. It was like their second amendment because a lot of people didn't have access to banks. And so they had their valuables in their home. And that was how they defended their valuables. So the JAG is like, hey, this is, is it illegal for them to have an AK?

And, you know, meanwhile, I'm like, are you kidding me? This guy's shooting at us, you know, and you're questioning my decision, but I didn't write that in the report. So that's why you had some questions. And the moment that I put the hater raid down, stopped like, you know, hating on the chain command

and telling them they just need to back off and let us do our job and realize like, oh, I need to push it more information with the chain. And we started to think, okay, what does a JAG, he's never sat behind a sniper rifle. He's never looked through a 22-power night forescope. You know, these snipers were operating with incredible discipline, man, incredible discipline.

I'm talking, you know, watching hundreds of people walk in front of their sniper scope and they're engaging enemy fighters. And we're talking about, like, with minimizing collateral damage in a way, sometimes these savages would use, like, human shields, like children. Like, hold them in front of them

and try to run across the street with their RPG. You know, and snipers like Chris and Tony and others were like able to able to drop those guys and not injured the children I mean amazing in a way that no way with a machine guns gonna be able to do that Nobody with a Bradley fighting vehicle 20 millimeter chain guns gonna be able to do that and so I Was very proud of our snipers and the discipline that they were using. And I realized that the problem was

we weren't describing it in a way that articulated to someone who had never been there, what we were actually seeing. And the moment that we started doing that and putting that into our shooter statements, they were like, awesome, that's great. Keep doing what you're doing. What support do you need from us?

So I think so often we feel like we're in that's great. Keep doing what you're doing. What support do you need from us? So, I think so often we feel like we're in a hopeless situation. If we're getting scrutiny from our chain of command, and if we take ownership and actually just lead up the chain, it makes all the difference. And I realized when I was venting to my guys and kind of throwing hate at the Cedars Soda, for at our task group that was 30 miles down the road

in Fallujah, all that does is just undermine my authority, you know as well Like I did that never helps you right if you're gonna if you're gonna just throw your chain of command under the bus That does that just undercuts everybody in the chain of command if you do that It's it's not good leadership and the best thing you can do is to say hey listen understand. This is frustrating Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna put this paperwork together. We're gonna get this done We're gonna send it our chain to make because they need this information And we're gonna do this so we can build a relationship with our chain of command so that they're gonna support us You know where we need it

And so when you could talk to your chain of command about the realities of it You don't have to just you don't have to like just sugarcoat something that doesn't make sense You know like hey this they're telling us to do this stuff. It's not fun It's a bunch of extraneous work that we us to do this stuff. It's not fun. It's a bunch of extraneous work that we have to do. We're gonna have to put in a bunch of extra hours. Maybe you have to stay long, you know, stay late or stay over the weekend or whatever.

You don't need to, you don't lie to the team, right? You don't say like, oh, this is great. We're gonna do it. Like, they're gonna see right through that. What you have to do is tell them the truth, tell them why you're gonna do that. And then help them see that you're building a relationship up with the chain of command.

You're putting some leadership capital in the bank so that you're not pushing back on everything, so that when it comes time to really push back on the things that matter, you're able to. How much of your decision-making process and the reason that you made certain decisions did you share with your guys, if any? Did you ever feel like,

these are personal questions that I'm asking for myself running as a guy running a company. I feel the need to explain some of the decisions that I make to my guys. I don't necessarily know if I should be doing that. And so I'm just curious, what do you do? I think it's absolutely the right call. This idea of like 100% transparency, not everybody needs to know everything that you know.

You would spend all your time trying to communicate things to people all the time. That's not a good use of your time as the owner of a company. But if that's one of the biggest lessons and the most humbling lessons that I brought back with me, I wrote an entire chapter about that in Extreme Ownership. It's chapter 10 leading up and down the chain.

So I talked about leading up the chain, but this is leading down the chain, which is I don't think you can do it enough to explain why we're doing what we're doing. Because I think when you kind of think people get it, leaders will think, well, maybe they get it like seven out of 10. Like, no, they get it like three out of 10,

maybe one out of 10, maybe zero out of ten and your job as a leader is to connect the dots between the hard work that people are doing the overall success of the mission and And it's because they don't see it right they don't see it when they're out there in the grind You know every day you got to constantly Help them see how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission and how it's gonna ultimately benefit them as well. So I don't think as a leader,

you can remind people of that enough. And I mean, I planned the so many major operations to go and take areas of that city back. And we were the lead element on the ground with this, you know, a thousand soldiers and Marines and all the tanks, everything we talked about. And when we got back, Jaco put this slide together. He was tasked with going and giving a brief to like the,

I think it was the chief of naval operations, the senior admiral in the Navy. And he put the slide together and they showed the map of Ramadi. It showed the red areas that were all kind of battle space where we'd arrive and we told them, don't go there, you're all gonna get killed. And then it showed these blue circles going in

with these combat outposts, the US outpost that went in. And then it showed like, and each one had like what our seal involvement was and how we supported them. And then it would have like yellow and green kind of expanding out. And he put this, it was like a building slide, you know, on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide. And so the map overlay with this building slide,

and before he went to brief, just because Jaco was a great leader, he always was like, hey man, take a look at this, tell me what you think. And he played that slide for me, and I was like, damn dude. Like that's what we freaking did. Like I never put it together like that before. Never.

And it was, I planned and led every single, almost every single one of those operations that are the blue circles that are going in. Like we were the first boots on the ground for these, you know, so I was intimately involved in the planning for these things. Some of them were weeks in planning.

When he saw my reaction to that, he was like, I had never put it all together. Because I mean, I'm coming back from a money bank, we lost Mark, we lost Ryan. I'm like, man, I know we made it, we certainly had some impact there, but do we have any lasting impact? Should we have done what we did? Like all these questions, right?

Then I'm constantly running in my head all the time. And when he put that together, I was like, that's what we did. That's what we contributed. We contributed to take that city back. And you could see it in the combat outpost knowing that hundreds or maybe a thousand soldiers and Marines for each one of those blue circles are going in.

These are people that Dozens of them might have not come home to their families Otherwise, you know and so when you when you start putting that together what's cool about that? Sean is you know, we can all split up and kind of win our separate raise and I have had the chance over the years to pull some of my guys together and show them that slide Do you still have that slide? I do have that slide. Can I put it up on screen? Absolutely.

And it will be, it was when I showed them that slide, they say the exact same thing. Damn, dude, I had no idea that's what we did. That's cool, man. And so I think it's a reminder that like you can't do that enough as a leader. And it's one of the most humbling lessons I learned of like, if I had just taken the time to take a step back, remind people about what they're doing,

how the impact, you know, our mutual friend Jake, you know, that we went through Buds with was a machine gunner for us. I remember him telling me, you know, he's like, man, I'm just carrying this machine gun. He's carrying this 600 round loadout and this machine gun. And we put optics on those machine guns because they needed PID.

They weren't using like the ACOG to shoot the gun, but we needed a PID, a target. So I mean, it's getting heavier, right, with all this gear you're putting on. It probably weighs 20 pounds. You know, and you're carrying 600 rounds. Each of those 100 round boxes is what, seven and a half pounds. And they're carrying, plus you've got helmet, round boxes, what, seven and a half pounds.

They're carrying, plus you've got helmet, body armor, water, all this stuff. And they're patrolling multiple kilometers to get in some of these areas, particularly in the rural areas outside of the city when we were doing some of that work. And I remember Jake coming to me and being like, dude, I'm just security detail for Chris, I'm a snipers man.

And I was like, man, I have just failed him as a leader. I was like, I was like, Jake, when we get attacked, which is pretty much every operation and we have three dozen enemy fighters trying to overrun our position. We're not beating back that attack with a bolt action rifle. We're beating back that attack because of you and your machine gun. And that machine gun has saved our lives over and over and over again. We could do none of this without you carrying that heavy firepower.

And then we talked a little bit about, I was like, how many times have you shot your loadout? You know, your entire loadout. And he was like, I don't even know. I was like, I don't even know. Like he didn't even know. And it was interesting because I talked to, know. I was like, I don't even know. Like he didn't even know. And it was interesting because I talked to some

of the Vietnam SEALs and some guys that were machine gunners including Moki Martin who's a phenomenal SEAL. If you remember Moki was just a legendary West Coast SEAL, six deployments to Vietnam, amazing guy. And he was telling me, like, we were just talking about like how many times they actually like changed the belts on their machine gun, their Stoner, you know, their M60. And it was like, in his six deployments,

he told me it was just a, it was a handful of times. Like, you know, they would break contact and they would break off. And I was like, well, how many times did you guys shoot your, you know, like your entire loadout of belt fed rounds your carry? And he's like, I don't ever remember a time doing that. And so, you know, Jake and our machine gunners did that. I mean, like almost every single operation we went on.

So I think I had, I did not help him understand just how important he was for the mission and how he was contributing to the mission. We couldn't do any of this without all the work the snipers were doing and making precision shots is not possible without those belt-fed machine gunners. Guys like Jake, guys like Mark, guys like Ryan and Mikey Montsoor that were out there

carrying that heavy equipment. So every leader, I think, has to do that. And then when you can put it in context. You're just consistently empowering your guys every chance you get. Well, I think the lesson is that I wasn't doing a good enough job of, I did not do a good enough job of taking a step back and realizing like,

hey, they don't know that. And they don't know that because I'm not telling them. That's what you did after. That's the lesson I brought back is like, I gotta do a better job of telling them, of letting them know what they're doing, why they're doing it, the impact they're actually having. What's the strategic impact that actually happened?

So, I think when you've got people on your team that are in the grind, they're head down, they're doing a thankless, what seems that kind of thankless work, and whether it's editing videos or posting social media clips or scheduling travel for podcasts, whatever it may be. It is absolutely imperative that you constantly remind them

about how important their job is, and how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission, and how that ultimately is gonna benefit them down the road as your team continues to grow and expand. I think it's every leader's job to do that. Man, there's some great advice in this one. Thank you.

So after the, I'm sorry, the leadership, what was the unit, where did you, I'm sorry, after the next, after your next station. So I went back, I talked to a junior officer course for two years and tried to teach those junior officers everything I wish someone had taught me before I went into a tough combat situation. And then I went to the director of training

was an awesome leader who came to me and said, hey, why don't you come be my operations officer of assault team one. And that was, that was Keith Davids, who was our, just stepped down as our Naval Smith Warfare Admiral. He was a phenomenal leader and was an awesome guy to work for. So got a chance to go and serve with him as operations officer at SEAL Team One, did another deployment to Iraq, supported some guys in Afghanistan.

We sent guys to multiple locations around the world, but I was pretty frustrated on that deployment, man. Like sitting in, we did a... The theme was to like, I had said for all our guys in Iraq, we were trying to embrace mediocrity and not operate a bunch so that we could try to pull our guys and move them to Afghanistan

where the fight was going pretty hot and heavy. That was 2009 and 10. And so things were kind of just ramping up for like the, you know, the Marine push down in Amarja and Helmand province and some of these big operations that were going on and kind of the Taliban strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar province. And we didn't do a good job of embracing mediocrity

because we did a ton of operations. But I don't think I single seal on that operation. In Iraq, we captured a bunch of bad guys and disrupted some terror cells and guys did great work. Man, we had an awesome team. But we didn't have a single seal, fire, weapons, and anger in Iraq on that deployment. And meanwhile, it just was Marines

are getting blown up all the time, soldiers getting killed in Afghanistan. And it was very frustrating to me, every time we tried to say like, hey, we can send more guys to Afghanistan, we can support the conventional units and they're moving into these villages and Taliban stronghold areas. We can do what conventional units and they're moving into these villages and Taliban stronghold areas.

We can do what Task Force Ruser did for the, you know, for the army and Marines in the urban environment. Just from the high ground, you know, on the ridge lines with SEAL snipers. And we would constantly get told like no demand signal for more SEALs. What changed? I think it was the force cap. You know, President Obama approved like the surge, the surge numbers there. And I think there was just a,

I think there was some, there was a force cap limitations. Hey, well surge force is there, but we're only going to serve X number of forces. So people are tracking everybody that's there. And frankly, I don't know that there was a lot of appetite in our senior, in our senior leaders. I think there was more of a, there was kind of an argument going on

that we should be more on the kind of the find fix and let the kind of host nation forces do the finish piece. You know, it was a really interesting time. I mean, I had no idea you were sent a guys down to Marja in Hellmond at the time and I was down there contracted for the agency we had a safe house get hit and

I remember the it was supposed to be the biggest offensive the second biggest offensive force of the entire global war on terrorism since Fallujah. And they had a, amassed a ton of Marines down there to do this push. And then I remember when the ROE's came out for the military that they were somebody could shoot at you and drop their weapon and you, you could not engage them. And you know, I just, I remember hearing that and, and thinking like, holy shit, you just chop the fucking legs out from every Marine down here that you want to conduct this massive offensive

force with. And it was just, it was, it was mind blowing to me. Like talk about demoralizing your fucking people. I can only imagine Sean, there's, there's no way you can win, right? It's what I talked about before, right? If you're going to go to war, man, you got to have the will to kill the enemy and you got to

have the will to die. And, and I mean, there's, this is what it takes to win. And I think the, you know, my frustration was that we couldn't get hardly anybody involved in it. So, you know, we had one troop that was working at a Kandahar at the time and they kind of got split up and tasked with some different provinces. And we had some guys that did some great work there, man.

And made a difference, you know, it made an impact for sure. did awesome awesome work uh did a bunch of common operations that killed a bunch of bad guys and opened up some areas that Taliban had kind of control before and you know enable freedom of movement for us forces and kind of push the white space back around some of those bases where they kind of you know uh kept people you know in where they're attacked the moment they get off the base. But we couldn't get more people there. And we only had a handful of guys that supported

some of the Marines pushing into those areas. And the whole time, there was just a pushback with the Naval Special Warfare. And I just felt like, to me, that was probably the number one driver, our friend Elliot, that a probably the number one driver, our friend Elliot that a month after we left Ramadi, got blown up coming out of a sniper Overwatch position,

he'd been wounded. One of the insurgents had crept up near his position and literally rolled a grenade through a loophole. So he's sitting there on a sniper weapon and they pushed a grenade through the loophole. They snuck up, somehow jumped from rooftop to and they pushed a grenade through the loophole. They like snuck up, like somehow jumped from roof top to roof top, pushed the grenade, grenade goes off, wounds him in the arm.

And so as he's getting cazabacked, you know, they called in the Bradley fighting vehicles as they're getting cazabacked, they clacked off a big ID on him. And they get like ripped a Iraqi soldier in half in front of them and blew him up, you know, really bad. He lost a leg.

I think there were white phosphorous shells, Willie Pete shells, so like horrible burns on his body. And yeah, man, he just was like, man, you remember, Ellie's just as good a dude as there is, you know, just an awesome, awesome team guy. And we'd serve together, still team five, and bend the buds together, serving together, still team five. Then I turned over with him. I remember seeing him and my close friends that were now relieving me, you know, as we went home and I remember seeing him with the turret turret of a 50 cow, man in the 50

gallon and a turret of a Humvee about to make the push across down that horribly dangerous road route Michigan that was the most heavily ID road in all of Iraq. And he was like all smiles, like fired up, you know? And I was just man just said prayers to, you know, protect these guys and look out for them. I knew what they were up against, you know? And I think it was November 19th, like he got hit. And then one of the other SEALs got injured,

like thought he lost both his legs, like just, you know, was like blasted on his back and then he lifted his legs up in the air, but his like, his tip fib is like, like he's got double compound fractures, so like all he sees is like his stomps and he lifts his legs up, they're like hanging down. So thought he lost his legs and that guy, thank God, ended up recovering and had, you know, these titanium inserts in the legs. Look, amazing, amazing guy. But Elliot was in real bad shape, man.

And I, so I spent a bunch of time with him when he came back to the States and he went to Brooke Army Medical Center, which is the primary burn care center for the, for the military. And, you. And just seeing some of the guys were in the ICU there and coming out of Iraq at the time was a horrific, horrific thing, man. Just knowing like, you see these soldiers,

Marines with like their faces burned off, no fingers and like no ears and noses and lips and stuff, gone and just, and many of them still are like, you know, they're making the best of it, man, you know. They're happy to be alive and they're, they're continue on their lives. And it was, it was, man, those, those guys were just, just heroes, man, just heroes, just awesome.

Their, their attitude on life. And, but it made me wish that we put a lot more of those insurgents in the dirt than we did. And we did everything we could. But then when I, you know, as I was serving, I would go over and Elliot then went to, he then went to Balboa Naval Hospital. And so I was going up there and visiting with him

and I'd see a bunch of those Marines that were coming in, coming in from Helmand province and Conorhull provinceore Providence and a place like Sangin and Marja and legs gone, arms gone. And to me it was, I think that was kind of the final straw for me of like, man, this is, we can help these guys and we're not being allowed to do it for political reasons, whatever those are, whoever's responsible. And I felt like it was, that was probably the final straw for me of like,

I think it's time for me to probably get out. Do something different. How was it getting out for you? Lot of people struggle with that. Hard, like I never wanted to do anything else. Had you met your wife yet? I did, a hard time. What's the trouble with that? Hard, like I never wanted to do anything else. Did you met your wife yet? I did, I met her. She put up with a final deployment for me.

We were dating. So you married her in service. Well, we didn't get married until right as I left. Okay. So we got engaged right as I got back from my last deployment. So I was like, you know, we're going to put it to the test, see how she does in the deployment.

But we had met at the Seal Warrior Fund event, you know, which is the big fundraiser for the Seal teams in New York City and in October, 2019. So the financial world had just melted down. And yet we still had some very patriotic Americans that are giving money to support Seals and their families. And it was, Ellie was there for that. Ryan Job was a speaker for that.

In fact, I don't think I would have spoken. I don't think I would have attended if Ryan Job called me and said, dude, if you're not going to this, we're never talking again. So he was a speaker. He gave an amazing speech, and they handed him the speech like the night before

and he's like, hey, knuckleheads, I can't read, I'm blind. Someone's gonna have to read this to me. So you're gonna have to give me the speech, but yeah, he gave a fantastic speech, man. And we were all there because the Montzor family had wanted Mikey's teammates to be there. You know, Mike had received the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save his two teammates

on either side of him and our teammate in Delk Platoon. And so the Montzora family had asked that Mikey's teammates be there to save a bunch of us out there. And it was amazing. I sat right next to Mike's mom, Sally, who's as I met Jennifer the first time at this pretty red hair girl, I was like, what's her deal?

I want to get to know her better. And I told her that we had, you know, she worked at Fox News. I told her that Fox was in our tactical operations center. She's like, well, if you guys want, come by, I'll give you a tour. And so I brought me, Seth Stone, and another one of his guys by who were like the biggest like wannabe lady killers ever.

They were just spitting game at everybody. You know, the interns to the anchors and Jenna, who's just put them up, just put everybody in your place, like didn't take any of that stuff from anybody. And then I took her out that night, like I talked her into coming to meet us for a drink and I took her to meet Elliot. She met Elliot and was instantly like loved Elliot and was fast friends with him.

And so the rest was kind of history there, man. But that was another contributing factor for me, certainly, to get out. I mean, I had, you know, we had been dating two and a half years on the opposite sides of the country. I was stationed in San Diego. She was in New York City. Closest the Navy was gonna get me was the Pentagon. I had zero interest in being a staff officer at the Pentagon.

And so I was like, it's just time for me to move on. What was it about her that got you? Man, she's beautiful, she's smart, and she's got an amazing heart. And she asked me, within like two minutes, three minutes, like she'd probably learned more about the SEAL teams than anybody, like, you know, people might like, oh, you're a SEAL,

like, oh, that's cool, like, oh, that's really neat, or oh, I'm so in awe, you know, like people, you know, that might say something like that, but she was asked, she was like, well, how do you guys train exactly? You know, how often do you employ and where, you know, what is, what's the training like? And, you know, how are you organized? Like she asked all these just like interesting questions.

And I was like, I definitely want to get to know her better. And it was, yeah, man, I just, I knew right away, I texted somebody when I was leaving New York city of like, I just met the future Mrs. Babin. First night, huh? Girls in the phone book, yeah. Right on, man. How long have you guys been married now?

13 years. 13 years, congratulations. What is the secret to a successful marriage? Man, the secret to successful marriage is extreme ownership. It's extreme ownership, man. Because it's also, it's the most important place that you can apply these leadership concepts

we've been talking about. It's also the hardest. Because you're so emotionally tied to someone, and your ego's involved. And I can tell you that when I start pointing fingers and casting blame and making excuses, my wife reminds me that I wrote a book called Extreme Ownership and I should start taking some.

So she definitely puts me in my place. And I'm like, Jack, but all the things that like any team needs to be successful, right? Cover and move, we talked about is like this is, we got to cover and move for each other on the home front with the kids, with work like around the house, whatever it is, we got to be able to cover and move for each other. We got to communicate a matter of house, whatever it is. We gotta be able to cover and move for each other.

We gotta communicate a matter of simple, clear, concise. It's not that, hey, she asked me to do something. I need to use a read back to make sure that I understand what it is that I need to do. I need to ask for some clarification. I need to make sure that just because I asked her to do something, she'll put something out in the morning like,

okay, the kids need to be here, here, and here. And then she thinks that like, that doesn't all process in my brain, right? I gotta write it down, I have to reference it. So prioritize and execute. There's gonna be a billion things going on at the same time. For the family, we gotta be able to pivot and be flexible and shift to emerging priorities.

And stay detached, particularly from our emotions when somebody's like, you know, had enough, like the kids are kind of, you know, they got you at wit's end and you're frustrated. Be like, hey, I got the kids, I got this. I'm gonna take them out for a little bit. You know, just, I don't need to ask what she needs me to do. I don't need to ask her where she needs me to help.

I can just step in, you know? And then decentralized command, I think if we all kind of understand, we understand like what's the goal, what's the goal we're trying to do. And I think when we do that, that enables us to, we can all work together toward that goal.

She may do something that's slightly different than I might've wanted it done or I might've not thought about doing it in that way, but if it gets us toward the goal that we're trying to accomplish, if it helps us to raise some patriotic, God-fearing, competent, kindhearted children that are gonna be good members of,

contributing members to their society and community, that's what we want, man, that's what we're trying to do. So I think letting some things go, sometimes you're like, you these little pet peeves, you know? I think that's the most important thing of like, okay, if she's doing something that's annoying me, it's not her fault, it's actually my fault. It's my fault.

And I need to figure out a way to like take ownership of that and like fix that. Great advice. I think that's the key. Let's move into your transition into civilian life. How was that for you? Did you find it? I mean, you know, there's no secret.

There's a suicide epidemic going on in the veteran community, a lot of addiction, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of drugs, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of drugs, a lot of womanizing, a lot of, I mean, it's really a nasty time in a lot of our lives. And I'm wondering if you experienced any of that. A lot of depression, a lot of resentment, a lot of anxiety. I certainly have experienced some depression,

anxiety, I think when all of a sudden, the thing that I had always wanted to do with my life is like now behind me, you know, and now what? You know? And I think that's a freaking hard thing, man. You know, it's hard for anybody. Do you feel like you wrapped a lot of your identity into being a seal? I?

Don't know if I wrap my identity into being a seal I loved it I mean, I just I just thought it was the best job in the world You know and even though it's like the stuff isn't it's not without frustrations, right? It's not that it's as I as I got further up the chain of command in the seal teams You get further away from the guys you like to be around and the job that you like to do. So, I mean, I just an example that I was at the, I was at the special operations task,

task force like headquarters, and we were in Ramadi, just down the street from Camp Markley, we'd named the shark base Camp Markley. And then, and so the, what had been a former kind of intel base was named after Mike Montzor. So I was at Camp Mike Montzor working out of there and man there was, you know, I think we had 180 people at the Special Operations Task Force headquarters and I think there were like six SEALs there, you know, so it was, we were great people there, all performing an important function, but it was, you're just getting further away

from the guys you like to be around and the things you actually like to do. So I think, you're completely removed from that, right? When you get out. And so then it's like, okay, now what? And I was gonna do like a lot of people do, just go back to school, because it's kind of a transition.

And you can get paid, you get money through the post 9-11 GI bill. And so I was gonna kind of follow that path. And for whatever crazy reason, I decided I was gonna go to law school. And I had some people help me out because my grades were atrocious in college, but hold some strings to like get me into law school.

And like, you know, I was accepted to Fordham Law School in New York City. And so it was just right down the road from where my wife was living at the time. And so we just got married. And man, I started this like two week kind of academic enrichment program they called it, which was like for the people that had been out of school

like me or didn't make good grades like me. And so they, as I started it, I just realized like, man, I had zero in common with the other students in the class. And as we started to study law cases and things like that, I'm like, I don't think this is what I want to do. You know, and this is a three year program. I have to spend three years doing this. And then extortion 17 happened, you know,

And then extortion 17 happened, you know? And, you know, the largest loss of life in the single instance in the history of the SEAL teams, helicopter shot down, Brian Bill, you know, Derek Benson, both in our Buds class, awesome dudes, you know, both lost on that. I knew another handful of guys who were on that too, so I'm sure you did. And Brian, Brian Ville had just been at my wedding

a month before that. You know, it was just crushing, man. It was crushing. And it was, I mean, he actually like finagled a deal. He stayed to like go to like a jump master school so that he could like stay late, go to the wedding and then he like flew, you know, flew overseas to, you know, to meet his, meet his unit.

And, you know, it was just horrible, man. And it was just a reminder of something that you and I both know, right? Which is life is too short, man. You can't waste a day of it, man. Can't waste a day of it. So I immediately deferred law school. I was like, I'm not going to spend three years

going to school. And so then it was like, I'm not gonna spend three years going to school. And so then it was like, well, now what I do. So I go in and defer law school. I'm like, I don't have a job. I'm not employed. I don't know what I wanna do. You know, I had people offer me some positions in like the finance sector and I went in and like saw what they were doing, you know, the traders and I was like, I don't care how much

money they make. I would rather, I would rather shear my testicles off with a rusty-pane, peening scissors than sit here in front of this, like, you know, trading. Like, it just wasn't what I wanted to do. And it was, so we went out to this little place down the way and had some good margaritas. And I was sitting there with my wife, Jenna, and she says, what are you gonna do now?

I was like, I have no idea. She said, well, what is it you love to do? Like, what are you passionate about? And I said, Seal Platoon Commander is the best job in the world. Like, that was the favorite job of the entire world. I'll do that over again in a second, if I could. But I can't.

And even if I could do it I wouldn't be deployed to Ramadi, you know, like there's no there's no I can't go back and relive that again But actually kind of asked me that question. I thought about I was like the next best thing Was teaching leadership to those junior officers that two years that I spent training those junior officers, putting 130 something COO officers through training and trying to pass on all the lessons that someone had taught me. Like it was incredibly rewarding

to see those guys grow as leaders, take on that, the lessons that we learned, apply it, get better, and then I see them go forward. Places that I didn't deploy or didn't have any combat experience with, like Afghanistan, they would come home and say, this was game changer. Thank you for teaching us.

Hey, you taught me this leadership concept. I applied that. It made a huge difference. We focus on building these relationships. It opened up all kinds of opportunities for us. These guys all kept in touch with you. A bunch of them did. A bunch of them did.

Yeah. I've lost touch with some of them, but it was awesome, man. It was so rewarding to see that and to know the lesson that we learned and that we paid such a heavy price for, you know, a task and a bruiser were being passed on. And so when I said that, my wife said, call Jaco, start a company.

So I did and we launched a company that became National Off-Runt. How'd that conversation go call Jaco, start a company. So I did, and we launched a company that became National Off-Runt. How'd that conversation go? With Jaco. Let's start a company. You just said, let's start a leadership company. He said, Roger that, let's do it. Well, what was he doing at the time?

He was working for a mortgage company and then teaching leadership for that mortgage company and kind of helping them kind of in their process. And they kind of, they basically carved out you know, I think they made it. Jaco Willink was working on a mortgage company. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah.

He learned a ton about leadership, right? And how it applied to the business world. It's all the problems that they were having, you know, from the inside. And so from that, he taught me a ton about what he learned, you know, from there. I thought Exile Enf Front was my idea, Sean, for about a year and a half. And then I realized that just like, this is Jaco's way, like about, Jaco retired in October 2010,

so about a year before I left active duty. And he was, I went over and was like cleaning out his cage. I did, I was like, I was like, man, it's a, you know, it's a sad, it's gonna be a sad day and the Jocko Laseel team's here, you know, when you get out. And he said, I forgot about this conversation. We had a conversation and he, we were standing in his office at training detachment, you know, and he said,

he said, what would it take to bring you on board to start like a leadership consulting business? And I threw out some number that I thought was like gargantuan, right? It was like barely, you know, barely six figures, you know, it just seemed like, like, it seemed like the most gargantuan number in the world compared to my like, Navy paycheck. And, and so he had planted that seed, like, probably a year and a half before we had that conversation. And I'd forgotten about it for a long time. And that's kind of Jaco's way, right?

That indirect approach of like planting the seed. He wasn't like, hey, remember when I said that? Like he doesn't care who gets the credit. Like this is what good leadership looks like. That's cool, man. And so how did it develop? It developed the very first year I made less than half my Navy paycheck. And I was like, this thing is never gonna pay the bills.

And thank God my wife had a great job. Let me, let me read. What was the original, what was the original plan? What were you guys doing at the very beginning? The plan was to teach leadership. The plan was to teach leadership the same leadership concepts that I taught in that plan was to teach leadership the same leadership concepts that I taught in that junior officer training course,

the same leadership concepts that he taught when he was running training detachment. To who? To companies? To anybody that wanted to talk about leadership. And the... I had... Just to back up a little bit, I had the first epiphany that I recognized that leadership applies everywhere.

There was a company that did an offsite to San Diego, big corporation, kind of in rapid growth mode. And they had had like a, so they had a leadership offsite, San Diego. And somehow they got connected to someone at the SEAL team, like one of the junior officers that I put through training. And he was one of my, he was one of my, he'd been an assistant platoon commander,

then it was a platoon commander. And he said, hey, this company is gonna come by. There was a retired, I think he'd been in his former, the CEO, because he was allowed to transfer from the service fleet like me. So he'd been on a Navy ship, and the commanding officer of that ship had retired and was running this leadership consulting business.

And so he was bringing this team of, I don't know, 10 or 12 executives by, and so he's like, hey, will you come and talk to them about the stuff that you taught us in the junior officer training course? And I was like, well, how long is it gonna be? He's like, I don't know, man, 20 minutes, whatever, something like that, just short, just put out some, share a thought, answer a question or two, that's about it.

So we went in there and I talked a little bit about, I talked a little bit about leadership and what we were trying to teach these, you know, I mean even just putting the team and the mission first, right, it's not about you sharing resources across the entire organization, they just started firing questions. And we were in there for an hour and a half

of just nonstop questions being fired. And I didn't know anything but the military. I mean, like you, I went to the Naval Academy at a high school, and so I was 18 years old. I never knew anything about the civilian world other than part-time jobs that I worked in high school. But it was the first epiphany for me of like, hey, everything that we learned here applies

and the world needs this. The world needs leadership. Leadership is the solution to people's problems. They don't know that. They don't know it. And what we understood is that leadership is a skill. It's a skill that we're not born with. It's a skill that we have to learn.

And you're not, just like you don't know how to play the piano when you're born or drive a car or, you know, shoot a basketball or wrestle or whatever it is. Like you have to learn that stuff. You might have some innate abilities that give you an advantage over others, you know, that maybe give you a leg up on others, but if you're not willing to learn the skill, you're not going to improve,

you're not going to get better. And I think leadership is exactly the same way. And I witnessed that over and over again when I was teaching that course, because I saw leaders who might have, what you might think are a lot of innate leadership qualities that would be important, right? Like they were charismatic.

They weren't nervous to stand up in front of a room and present an idea or talk to their team. And then you had other leaders that were super introverted, like didn't wanna, like were terrified to stand up in front of a group and present an idea. And of course, I made them do that all the time, just try to get them used to that. But what I realized is that even people

that you might think have all this advantage with these inequalities of charisma or you know, they're kind of a you know loud, you know person that that they're kind of people gravitate toward or they can engage with people and If that person wasn't willing to learn if that person wasn't willing to home them humble themselves and I can get better and apply You know and take ownership of mistakes they made and apply the skill of leadership going forward to improve. They didn't get better, they struggled. And some of them actually got fired. And maybe even had their birds pulled

and left the teams as a result. And yet I watched leaders who were terrified to stand up in front of a group, like super introverted, like the quiet spoken, kind of soft spoken types. Maybe didn't have any of the, what you might define as an innate quality that might give people an advantage in leadership. And they did awesome.

I mean, they were phenomenal. As long as they were willing to learn, they were willing to improve, and they were willing to get better all the time. And I'd see those guys go, some guys who struggled in the field training exercise portion of that course that I ran, and I would see them get better

and then watch them go out on the battlefield and do amazing things. And have their guys talk about what an extraordinary leader they were and how they made, you know, just how they've saved lives or, you know, were able to build relationships or vector resource. I mean, just incredible stuff. And so that to me, it was a recognition of like

every thing that we learned applies, you know, to people in the corporate world, in the business world. We work with people in the nonprofit sector in the education space, you know, first responders. We do a ton of work with first responders. And anywhere that people wanna talk about leadership. I think we take the lessons that we learn and we talk about how it can apply.

And I think we totaled it up last year. At the end of last year, we've worked with something like 1600 companies and organizations over the last. 1600? No. Wow. How many of those, you know, we had talked about a lot of the SEALs that went through

the leadership course with you. You'd heard from, after, later on in their career about what worked and do you get a lot of that in the civilian world as well? We do, we definitely do. And it's super rewarding, man. It's our why, right? Sometimes when you're in the grind and you're traveling

and you're gone from home a lot, and I'm always thankful for the opportunities that we have. It's amazing to see, I mean, even after, we're pushing, this month marks the ninth anniversary of the publication of Extreme Ownership. And the following, but The Economy Leadership that was published in 2018 has now been re-released. But there's still people driving the sales of that book

through word of mouth. People are reading it, buying five copies for their team, buying it for their kids, buying it for their family members. And that kind of word of mouth, I'm like, hey, this has been impactful. And it's been amazing to see that. And when people come back to us and tell us that,

extreme ownership saved their marriage. They were blaming their wife for all their problems. And, or the wife blaming their husband for all their problems, or having issues with their kids. And, or they were frustrated at work that they were in a hopeless situation and didn't feel like they had any influence on the organization.

Didn't think that their leaders cared about them and they were able to start to take ownership of those problems and lead up the chain of command. It's amazing to see, it's amazing to see the impact that has and it's just humbling and mystifying to me, man, to see how, how those lessons continue to be applied. And I just, I'm blown away by it

over and over and over again, and about how people are taking and utilizing this. And it's not me that's doing it, it's not Jaco that's doing it. We just shared some lessons learned that they actually have to apply. That's the hard part. I could share some concept with you that can help you, but it's up to you to actually put your own ego in check,

have an honest assessment with yourself and actually implement a solution to get problem solved going forward. And I think for us, probably the best thing that we do is just help people realize what winning looks like. What does winning look like? What does winning look like for you? And when you start to think about that

from a detached perspective, it's not about how much money you make. It's not about how much money you make, right? It's not about proving that you're right. If you're in a conflict with someone, it's actually about building the strongest relationships that you can with people and having the most impact in the world that you can and spending time with the people

that you love and care about most, that's most important. And so I think when we can get people attached to their emotions, kind of put their ego in check, and like if you and I have a conflict at a company, and let's say we're fighting over resources, and we're two department heads,

I want those resources, you want the resources, I'm in there like lobbying to have the resources taken away from you. Some kids that may be so, it may be, we'll see conflicts that get created so bad that we might have to only, we can only communicate with through like mediated email by HR. This is what happens.

Wow. Human conflicts and you're like, wow, crazy. When you can help someone say like, hey, is it important, is that other department important for like what you're trying to do in your department? Like yeah, it is. Okay Do you think it's important that you have a good relationship with the leader of that department? Like Yeah, it probably is you know, and so like when you when you can't communicate with someone Except through media to email by hr. Does that

Do you think that makes you look, what does that look like to everybody else as a leader? You know, when you can help them start to reveal the truth to them, what's the chairman of the board thinking about? What's the CEO? What's the senior executive team thinking about you? Like, how's that, do you think you're ever gonna get a chance

to be promoted at the chain? You know, if you can't actually get along with people and work alongside and build a friendly coalition so you guys can actually cover and move for each other. We should support one another so that the team can win. And when you get people to start to think about leadership like that and they realize like, oh, you know, they're looking at this little tactical victory of like,

I'm trying to get the best of this person, you know, I'm gonna demand that I get the resources from them and that's what winning looks like. And it's really the opposite, right? What, if I care about the team team? Like I should be in their lobby for you to get the resources. Like, hey, you know what? Sean, we got some limited resources here.

Your team needs these resources more than my, I think my team can probably do without until we can get more resource available. I'm gonna give these resources to you. We're gonna build an awesome relationship, man. I'm gonna help the team win. I'm showing everybody that I put the team and the mission before myself or my team and our own interests.

And it's like, this is what it takes, right? If I want to be a winning member of a high performance winning team, like that's the attitude I got to have. And when you start to just get people to see like what winning actually looks like, it's often very different than, but you know, you start to just get people to see like what winning actually looks like, it's often very different than, but you know, you gotta,

if you can put your emotions in temperature, you go and check it, it just, you free your mind. Man, you know, this sounds like a lot more of a, a lot more than just a leadership training course. Sounds like a way of life and that can help you with all aspects, what you're going through with your family, with your business, wherever, wherever,

in the military, doesn't matter. Sounds like these aspects apply to every aspect of life and that's really cool that you guys put that together. I appreciate it, man. I wanted to be able to share that. And it's, like I said, it's humbling. It's humbling to see how many people have taken in and utilize that, you know?

But if I can help even one person out there in some way to not make the mistakes that I've made as a knucklehead leader, to not lead with ego or try to prove that I know, you know, all the answers. I think that to me makes all the difference, right? It's in life, right? It's be humble or get humble. That's the way it is.

So happy to pass those lessons on. Thank you. Well, Laif, you know, we're wrapping up the interview now and I just wanna say, you know, we're wrapping up the interview now and I just, I just want to say, you know, it really was, man. It was great to reconnect and it was a real honor to have you here to share what you shared with about everything, man, especially, you know, your darkest day. I mean, I really commend you for how you handled that and how you described the guys that have passed.

And you're just a hell of a guy, Leif, and a true leader. And I appreciate you. I wish I was better, Sean. I wish I was better, Sean. I wish I was better, man. And I think I'm just on the path, trying to learn from my mistakes like everybody else. And I hope that people can take those mistakes and learn from it and apply it going forward.

It's an honor to be here with you, brother. I can't, I'm so proud of all that you're doing in the world, man. You got such an important voice on so many topics that other people aren't willing to tackle or take on. And I couldn't be more, we were joking earlier before we started this, I've never guessed we were working together in Buds

with 18 year old Sean, that you would have the wardrobe with so many sport coats out there to put on, but it's awesome, man. And so proud of you, love what you're doing. Keep doing it, man. You're making a huge difference to the world. Thank you, Ben.

And just for the record, I personally learned a ton about leadership talking to you today. And so thank you, Ben. God bless. Thank you. talking to you today. And so thank you, Ben. God bless. Hi, I'm Joe Salci. I hosted the Stacking Benjamins podcast. Every week we talk to experts about saving, investing, about saving investing and personal finance trends crypto can't do it You could have done all that research all the breadcrumbs and thought this company's never going bankrupt

Foiled again, you never knew personal finance could be this fun throwing down the gutter bringing it today I'm only gonna be off by six figures and seven seven every boy has a dream doc I'm only going to be off by six figures instead of seven. Every boy has a dream, Doc. Every boy has a dream. For sure. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.