Jocko Podcast 163 w/ Jason Redman: The Trident. Overcoming Adversity

2019-02-06T19:12:39Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @jasonredmanww @echocharles 0:00:00 – Opening 0:05:24 – Jason Redman, “The Trident”. 1:55:18 - Wounded. 2:05:00 - Recovery and Aftermath 2:42:32 – Final Thoughts and take-aways. 2:44:44 – Support: How to Stay on THE PATH. 3:01:52 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

but it also gave me a decent amount of time at this point it was another year before we started the medical retirement process which actually took two years so it carried me to 21 years and it gave me a lot of time to really look at you know where does my future go from here and kind of lay out what are my new passions what is my purpose and where do I go from this life after the military what can I do with all these lessons that I've learned and you know how do I pay it forward how do I honor Ryan how do I honor all these guys that every day I walk by this granite wall and they didn't get a choice they didn't get a choice to come home so thankfully you know I had that time it's still within the community but also coming to grips with the fact that you know like I talked to those young men about so many people are so strongly tied to what they do for a living that they cannot function if suddenly it's taken away from them there's a lot of a lot of me to a lot of police officers and firefighters or professional athletes that if suddenly their career is over they don't know how to function without that they've they've tied their identity so much around what they've done and I realized that the lessons that I learned in the the the seal teams and this journey that I been on was incredibly relatable and it was had nothing to do with tactical lessons you know I didn't need to be the guy that got out and taught you how to shoot or do anything and that like that what I realized is there were amazing life lessons the lessons human lessons lessons in leadership and teamwork and overcoming adversity in this idea of helping people you know not only survive but thrive from crisis and ambushes so that really started to become the path that I was walking and to help other wounded warriors well I just want to wrap this last little section of the book because we're talking about the identity and what you invested your life into and you say this I held the trident in my hand this golden emblem had driven my life I focused on it I coveted it but you know the process of the mission is the same I mean I know probably you up talked other people you know the guys that did the bin Laden raid the mechanics of that mission were the same it was just a level you know how we take down a target is pretty much the same regardless of where you go and it was the same for this case there were just some things that made us go maybe we should prepare a little more you guys roll on the target and the thing is get pretty intense pretty quick once you've once you've hit the target you've got it secured now we got some squirgers meaning some folks that we think have run away from the target building again I'm not going to go into the full detail of the mission which you did a beautiful job of explaining what this was like in the book and that's why people get the books they can read it but as we mentioned earlier this ends up in a firefight in your in it going back to the book I keyed my radio and called J.P. troops and contact troops and contact I have three wounded including me the machine guns were still blazing away at us and they walked their barrels right and left Chris crossing our positions with hundreds of 7.62 millimeter bullets I recognize that if I didn't get a turner kit on what I thought was the stump of my left arm I was going to bleed out I looked back at Al and the rest of my team behind the tire yeah you know and this is an interesting fact you know I talked to a lot of other team guys about this I think a lot of us we do a really good job in the seal teams and you know I'd like to assume other military units do the same we do a really good job of preparing guys if they get killed you know page two we make sure they're all taken care of I don't think any of us ever give much thought I should if I was severely wounded I think most of us think one side of the coin is you know it'll be merely a flesh wound you know and I was like no way am I going to allow that to happen it is a choice and that's what people need to understand you know having a positive attitude on how you handle the situations you're in is a choice and the more you accept positivity and drive it forward the more you actually start to believe it and it will create momentum and that's really what happened with that sign I said I will not allow that to happen again no one will come in here and be sad because I refuse I will not allow it and you never know the impact of the decision that you're going to make you you never know how even though deep down inside you were like you know holy shit how do I get out of this situation but you project that positivity who you can bring with you and bring up and how much you can leave an impact of the last of lifetime that sign has gone on to help hundreds of thousands of people I've had people write me that have had cancer I've had people that have written me that have had major horrific accidents I didn't keep the sign I had it framed and it hangs in the wounded ward at Walter Reed and the bottom of the sign is like rub clean now and I'm told that all these wounded warriors whenever they go to a surgery they go by and they rub it but you know you're trying to make calls you're trying to let people know what's going on you're trying to decipher the situation because it was a rough situation that you guys were in and you end up you know get next-directed your boys took care of you they did I owe my life to those guys I mean they fought back that gunship overhead you know for special operations squadron I owe my life to those guys that was the closest fire mission ever in the Iraq war we were well well they wouldn't bring in that mission because we were we were literally within any danger growth close programmer there were the machine guns that had me pinned down we're about 45 feet 50 feet away so Al did an amazing job I mean this was his third combat deployment you know experience jac experience team leader and you know really you too there's a good on the video version of this podcast too by the way so you know you can see what everybody looks like if you hear about that sort of thing people watch people watch ones with guests because they want to see what they know what I look like they know what echo looks like they want to see what Jay Redmond looks like they want to see what a what does a man look like that took a round three of the face right there come on at that point they stop the podcast and press play on YouTube that's what you're saying so what it is got a brand problem going on good opportunity look forward actually I like that like a for you know because there's a lot of different approaches you know like you say get off the X and like look forward absolutely you have to show any people look back they look back what they've lost yeah back what's going on right now kind of thing which is natural by the way and I tell people that you know you have to push yourself into those zones and discomfort so that you can handle these hard situations when they come because if you've never forge yourself if you've never been put into these areas it discomfort you're going to be crushed when they come because you're not going to be ready I was so ready for that moment when it came I mean you know took me about 36 hours after I got home to figure it out but still that's pretty quick for a devastating injury like that and I never looked back you're your in Bethesda and just just to kind of give a little bit of detail around that you got some doctor named female doctor named Dr. Malard and here we go back to the book kind of she's about to list your kind of your situation that you're in with energetic bluntness she laid out the extent to my wounds the machine gun bullet entered just in front of my right ear it shattered my job vaporized my right or burrow floor destroyed my cheek and exit through my nose I'd suffered nerve damage as well virtually nothing was left to my cheek bone or ocular floor bones on the right side of my face she and her team was amazed I didn't suffer greater I damage but you know it's a great school everyone I know that the range is that I know are awesome guys so great school but oftentimes we use it in the seal teams maybe punishment is the wrong word in some cases I know it's been punishment occasionally a guy I want to go there but generally guys I mean generally guys are working so I'm not going to go to range your school you end up getting the range of school and here we go sick hungry burning with resentment because as you said you're not at this point you're still like yeah just kind of learning from him well one of the this this was another bit of a of a surprise to me again this is the kind of thing that I never had to think about but here you go go back to book in the months that followed I knew that I was in for the long game the slog through surgeries and setbacks continue and again you got to read this book to realize the absolute just medical uh medical trauma that you're going through day in day out and this really drove it home to me I called it medical bud there you go it's really what it was medical buds and here's here's one thing that just hit me like a ton of bricks by the summer of 2009 I was starting to run low on the available patches of skin for grafting my body was rope with scars from surgical sites and over a dozen graphs that to me I'm thinking myself I mean you're running out of skin to graft to do to do damage repair to your face what is that process like so a lot of times they harvest the skin from you know your thighs and areas and and it wasn't that I was just running out of skin they were running on the skin because I've got quite a few tattoos so my back is totally tattooed you know I called the Fred and asked if the western Overwatch team was still in place gunfire erupted over the radio as he heat his mic and answered I think so okay good that gave us eyes above and control over the high ground over there this is the moment Jay go prove yourself as we dropped off the lip senior chief carry called to me over the radio and wanted to know what I was doing we're going down I told him he went ballistic absolutely not we need to link back up fall back the boys needed help and we were closest if it had been anybody else I might have thought twice about his call but my own personal quest to prove myself coupled with my intense hatred for him clouded my judgment I ignored him and we pressed on as we dropped further into the valley we lost all communication with the headquarters team I began to realize what a hairy situation I had just placed the two of us in we had given up the high ground to move down a thousand feet of vertical terrain to try and link up with an element under fire with an enemy force almost one kilometer away I pushed this thought to the back of my mind the boys need help focus on that but where was the fight the sounds of battle echoed all across the valley making it difficult to calculate distance and direction a broken transmission filled my earpiece I couldn't tell what it was but I recognized Jaydee's voice I tried to establish contact a moment later through washers of static Jaydee's voice came back where the hell are you Jaydee demanded I told him we were at the tea intersection on the valley floor get your ass out of the valley now he said with so much anger I could almost feel a blast of fire shoot out of the earpiece I was about to explain my intent when he added those guys are in a major fight and we can't call in close air support because we don't know where you are that shook me there were aircraft over head waiting to join the battle with rockets and bombs yet they could not make their runs because of my decision to go into the valley I should have thought about art air assets it was exciting because it suddenly rangerschool suddenly became a new opportunity and really I set my sights on you know kind of interestingly enough I think all of us are super gold ribbon people and for the first time I saw an opportunity and and set a goal you know which is what I think all of us do so well at you know we we have a target to move to and now I have a path to go after it and that that path became I want to graduate the honor man of this course and set it set you know woke up the next morning firing up the guys around me and hey man we're getting ready to start up again it's going to be awesome let's go do this the the trust when broken is extremely hard to rebuild and I get asked a lot how do you build trust with people either whether it's been broken or whether you don't know them and it's very clear in the book and again this is why people should get the book the way that you're asking to commander and I'm trying to think of the alias because I know them to jp the way that you're asking to commander is very common to what a guy does he gives you a little bit of responsibility and let you let you earn a little bit of trust and then once you've earned a little bit of trust gives you a little bit more responsibility once you earned a little bit more trust and that continued going this is this is now a six month appointment plus a year long work up or whatever so keys been giving you a little bit of trust and you've been earning and earning and earning back your trust and you are digging out of a deficit right and you know when I when I kick off the book that I wrote with a extreme ownership you know kicks off with a blue on blue and you know it was it was a lot of bad things happening there was a lot of moving parts going on it was a horrible situation and a rocky soldier got killed several more got wounded one of my guys got wounded and I can tell you right now like I think if I would have said hey this wasn't my fault blame it on someone else yeah burning with resentment I went into the first few days without my heart or mind engaged the first week of Ranger School is nothing but a gut check long days with minimal sleep exposure the elements in constant physical and mental evolutions to get those who don't want to be there to quit teamwork leadership within a circle of peers and decision making under stressful conditions where the objective of this first phase as a seal I should have represented my community in the best possible manner while by displaying leadership a commitment to teamwork and a willingness to overcome obstacles instead my actions showed me to be arrogant ill tempered and unwilling to work with others many soldiers falsely believe that seals are like that and my actions re-simply reinforced it I failed to represent my community as anything but that stereotype so you have this bad attitude you go out on a compass course you're pretty good at land nav you think you're gonna kick ass you don't kick ass you do a bad job the black hat to the Ranger instructors here we go the black hat's chuckled with laughter damn squid got lost we should have given you a boat swabby another growl not surprising seals know how to navigate anyways I failed at something I once took great pride in not so good without your Gucci gear are you another sneered I lost it all my pent up fury frothed out of me screw this course and screw you kiss my ass I walked up to my company instructor and told them I'm out of here I quit are you sure you want to do that without thinking I said yes I was reading this book and I was like day I was thinking damn and it it just manifested itself in that moment where I failed the land nav course because of my own arrogance and then you know I allowed those Ranger instructors to get under my skin in that failure instead of immediately saying well hey no big deal I could have gone back and done it again like three days later because there I wasn't the only guy that failed there were other guys that failed but instead of that I instantly just it was one additional blow that I had sustained and being at this tipping point you know I allowed them to get under my skin and snapped and it is the only thing I have ever quit in my life that I have verbally quit I mean for all intense and purposes I rang the bell in that moment and so angry and frustrated and listened to that demon that said your career is over you will never recover from this you know this is the final straw you know you had an opportunity and you missed it man I they're like I don't even know how your arms work and the way it is so when I met the guy from Duke who was one of the premier you know hand and arm guys literally the guy that put my arm together was probably the premier hand and arm going I tried to get him to go back and do more and he said no he said there's no way in hell he said your arm he said going into your arm and getting what we got is a miracle he's like I am not going back in and it was at that point that I really started to analyze myself and this something I talked to a lot of people about you know you truly have to know yourself you cannot because our weaknesses manifested themselves in the hardest times they don't come out in the good times and the good times there's no issues with it and the only way you could manage that you know it's to a mental leadership and emotional leadership at the highest level because in the hardest times and usually those in the times you've got to be managing the most is when it comes up and it was by really starting to rip myself apart and look at you know all these things that I had done and understanding and I think you continue to do that obviously every day with what you're doing and how you're doing it and how you're taking the lessons that you learned and bringing them to more people spreading the word broadly what did that transition look like like the you know from the time you got out into where you are now because you know I mean obviously everyone that's in the military right now one day I hate to break the news to y'all one day you're gonna be not in the military anymore bring us from you know the end of your career into where you are now and where your focus right now and what you're doing and so you escalate the deep confliction to a visible laser and then you know they realize that that both sides were friendly and you was a marine core colonel that you were lacing and he wasn't too happy about that and when you when when your commander brought you in and said hey what that'll happen you took ownership of it and said hey here's the mistakes I made instead of blaming everyone else so big big turning point and and I think this is an important point you know you you know I mean within our community it's pretty hard to turn around when you've made a major mistake like that I mean all of you guys get out we've had guys that have been sent to the fleet and some never come back and you know the funny thing is you know I tried to paint it in that moment arguing with J.D that I was doing the right thing I'm taking the fight to the enemy I'm you know supporting my brothers and all this BS you know the reality was I wanted to get in the fight at that point I had been on the edge of a lot of fire fights and you know and even fighting I'm in until you get in there you haven't proved yourself

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocopotcast number 163.
[00:00:02] The Coacherals and me, Jocco Whilling.
[00:00:05] Bitty-ding-accom.
[00:00:06] Good evening.
[00:00:07] I am bleeding out.
[00:00:13] I can feel my life,
[00:00:16] and being away as blood seeps from my body into the Iraqi soil.
[00:00:21] A few brown weeds splashed crimson now,
[00:00:26] or crushed around me as I lay sprawled on my back in the middle of this ambush.
[00:00:33] The weeds offer no concealment.
[00:00:36] I'm in the open, alone, and wounded.
[00:00:41] Sizzles of pain hit me in waves like pulses of electricity.
[00:00:47] A bullet has torn off my left arm.
[00:00:51] After I get hit, I reach over to grab my left hand.
[00:00:57] It isn't there.
[00:01:00] I hunt around feeling only the gear on the far left side of my body.
[00:01:04] No arm.
[00:01:07] I try to move the fingers on my left hand,
[00:01:09] but my mind sends signals to a station that doesn't exist.
[00:01:14] Now I can't feel anything, but pain.
[00:01:19] The bullets kick dirt in my face.
[00:01:22] Through my night vision goggles, I see green blooms of light strobing the darkness.
[00:01:28] Muscle flashes from automatic weapons.
[00:01:32] Ten meters away, and enemy machine gun opens fire again.
[00:01:37] It is a belt-fed Russian-made crew-served weapon, probably a PKM.
[00:01:43] They sound like giant zippers tearing open when the gunners go cyclic.
[00:01:48] Right now, the air around me erupts with sharp cracks.
[00:01:53] The miniature sonic booms of 7.62 millimeter bullet speeding past me at 2,500 feet per second.
[00:02:02] The terrorist gunner lowers his aim.
[00:02:06] A spurred of dust blows across my face again.
[00:02:09] Several bullets pass so close to my head that I feel shock waves as they go by.
[00:02:16] Through the left and AK-47 a sole rifle opens up, then another.
[00:02:20] I'm pinned in a crossfire without cover or concealment.
[00:02:23] A crippled sitting duck in a kill zone at least 100 meters long and 75 deep.
[00:02:32] With my right hand, I key the radio hands that I have mounted on my chest.
[00:02:36] Troops and contact, troops and contact, I call to my command.
[00:02:39] We have three severely wounded, including me.
[00:02:44] I'm a static, greets my words.
[00:02:50] I can't duck.
[00:02:52] I can't crawl away.
[00:02:54] There's no place to hide.
[00:02:55] All I can do is ignore the incoming fire and stay focused.
[00:03:01] The PKM gunner, PKM gunner finds the range.
[00:03:05] Bullets crack around me.
[00:03:09] Dirt flies.
[00:03:12] The terrorist eases up on the trigger, but only for a second.
[00:03:17] I hear him unleash another burst.
[00:03:22] Then I hear nothing at all.
[00:03:32] Those right there are some excerpts from the opening chapter of a book called The Trident,
[00:03:42] which is written by a retired seal officer by the name of Jason J. Redman.
[00:03:52] This book does an incredible job, not only of bringing the reader to the front lines
[00:04:00] in some pretty chaotic combat situations, but equally important, it brings the reader into
[00:04:08] the challenges of leadership and the challenges of life, especially the challenges of facing
[00:04:15] significant adversity.
[00:04:19] And J's book humbly displays those challenges wide open for all to see.
[00:04:31] And that humility from J is what makes this book so beneficial.
[00:04:40] He tells us plainly and bluntly of his personal triumphs and tragedies, his victories
[00:04:51] and his defeats and how he eventually found success and overcame by traveling.
[00:05:00] And the path of humility.
[00:05:05] And since I have the honor of actually knowing J, he has been kind enough to come by this
[00:05:13] evening and talk about his experiences with us.
[00:05:20] So with that, Mr. J Redman.
[00:05:23] Thanks for stopping by, brother.
[00:05:25] Jaco, brother, echo.
[00:05:26] Thank you.
[00:05:27] Thank you both.
[00:05:28] Have me on.
[00:05:29] Awesome to have you sitting here, man.
[00:05:31] Hey, man, honor to still be here.
[00:05:34] Bless.
[00:05:35] That's for sure.
[00:05:36] I tell so many people, I'm living on a second chance.
[00:05:39] You and I got too many brothers who are not, I don't know why the big man decided to give
[00:05:44] me a chance, but I'm making the most of it outstanding.
[00:05:48] So I want to try and start a little bit at the beginning, because people get a little bit
[00:05:54] familiar with where you are, everyone always wants to know where people are.
[00:05:58] People came from how they grew up.
[00:05:59] I'm going to the book right here.
[00:06:01] I came from a family with a rich tradition of service.
[00:06:03] So in retrospect, this made sense.
[00:06:05] My dad was a US Army airborne rigour at Fort Campbell during the Vietnam War.
[00:06:10] My paternal grandfather earned a distinguished fine cross while piloting a B-24 liberator
[00:06:16] bomber over the flat filled skies of Hitler's Europe.
[00:06:19] I also had a great uncle who flew fighter aircraft in the southwest Pacific during World
[00:06:23] War II.
[00:06:24] He made the ultimate sacrifice in battle against the Japanese.
[00:06:30] I dreamed of adding to that legacy, a life of combat, medals, and service.
[00:06:36] I was young and naive and had a long road to travel before I could truly understand what
[00:06:41] my grandfather and great uncle gave for the country.
[00:06:46] But that idealism became a very big part of me.
[00:06:50] I wanted to carry a rifle for a living.
[00:06:53] My dad watched this desire grow in me and decided to focus it.
[00:06:57] My freshman year in high school, he sat me down in our tiny living room and said, you
[00:07:01] know Jay, we had these guys come through airborne school.
[00:07:05] They were US Navy called Seals.
[00:07:09] They jumped out of airplanes, swam.
[00:07:11] They blew stuff up, given how you love the water.
[00:07:15] Maybe you ought to look into them.
[00:07:19] So your dad planted the seed, huh?
[00:07:21] It did.
[00:07:23] Young age.
[00:07:25] This was 90, probably 89, 88, 89.
[00:07:34] Back then, you really couldn't find hardly anything about the Seal teams.
[00:07:41] This was at a point in time where GI Joe was big.
[00:07:46] And I'm a 12, 13 year old kid into that.
[00:07:50] I was probably about 14 when my dad told me about the Seal teams.
[00:07:55] And started researching it, found almost nothing.
[00:07:59] By sheer happenstance, one of the guys in our church was a huge special operations buff.
[00:08:06] He was a guy that was unable to go on the military.
[00:08:08] He had had polio actually when he was a kid.
[00:08:12] He was just in batch-awaited by it and he had done tons of research.
[00:08:16] And he actually had collected some things about the Seal teams.
[00:08:19] He had an old soldier of fortune magazine.
[00:08:23] And you have those awesome.
[00:08:26] It's so different nowadays.
[00:08:27] No nowadays, you just Google it.
[00:08:29] Exactly.
[00:08:30] Back in the day, you had to be lucky enough to know some dude in church who happened to have
[00:08:33] a copy of the issue of soldier of fortune magazine.
[00:08:36] Is that still a thing?
[00:08:37] Is that what your fortune is still out there?
[00:08:38] Dude, it actually is.
[00:08:40] As a matter of fact, somehow in some weird twist of fate, I ended up being on the cover
[00:08:45] of soldier of fortune.
[00:08:46] I have to look, came out.
[00:08:48] And it was the most bizarre thing.
[00:08:49] Because now you're in the military and you look at this thing.
[00:08:52] You kind of laugh at soldier of fortune.
[00:08:53] It's a little bit of, you know, really focuses on probably the gung-ho aspect of soft
[00:09:00] as opposed to you came full circle.
[00:09:02] Yeah, full circle.
[00:09:03] That's what you're filled.
[00:09:04] Yeah.
[00:09:05] The soldier of fortune.
[00:09:06] It was pretty funny.
[00:09:07] But that magazine and that journey of coming to understand who these guys were that you
[00:09:14] really couldn't find much about them.
[00:09:16] It just drew me in even more.
[00:09:19] And the only thing, the core thread that I found over and over again was toughest training
[00:09:24] in the military.
[00:09:26] And you know, I was a young kid.
[00:09:27] I was a small kid and I just had this inner fire that if you told me I couldn't do
[00:09:33] something, it just drove me even more to want to do it.
[00:09:37] And everyone, you know, at that point in my life, I was probably four, four, eleven and about
[00:09:42] ninety five pounds.
[00:09:44] So when I told people I was going to become a seal.
[00:09:47] They laughed me out of the room.
[00:09:49] And that just fueled me even harder.
[00:09:51] And I set my sights on that dream.
[00:09:54] And that's where I was going.
[00:09:56] And you, some of the things you did, you started playing football.
[00:09:59] You started getting involved in sports to make sure you were physically fit and all that.
[00:10:02] So that was part of the driving factor and a good way to sort of prepare at least in a
[00:10:08] minimum way for buds.
[00:10:10] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:10:12] I mean, I wanted to build a mindset.
[00:10:14] I knew that fitness.
[00:10:15] I knew that being part of a team.
[00:10:17] I knew that pushing myself in different areas.
[00:10:19] So I started wrestling and I started playing football.
[00:10:21] And I was a small-ass guy on our team.
[00:10:23] But man, I just, I love football.
[00:10:25] I've always loved football.
[00:10:26] My dad had always told me, now you're too small.
[00:10:29] You're too small.
[00:10:30] You're going to get hurt.
[00:10:31] And so probably my 10th grade year, I said, I don't care what you're telling me.
[00:10:36] I'm going out for the team.
[00:10:38] And thankfully, we lived in a really small town.
[00:10:42] And I think they would take anyone and they looked at me and they said, well, we can
[00:10:45] at least use you as a tackling, don't we?
[00:10:48] And I said, Roger that, I'll do it, man.
[00:10:50] So, I will, you know, I'll hit somebody as hard as my 95 pounds camp.
[00:10:56] And got out there and just I loved the sport.
[00:10:58] And I know I was, you know, not a starter in any way, but I was out there every day.
[00:11:02] Just grinding and I'd trying to lay the hardest hits I could on people.
[00:11:06] And I played receiver and corner back.
[00:11:08] Nice.
[00:11:09] Now, I was also a little bit as I read through the book and it was kind of piecing
[00:11:14] together what you were like when you were a kid.
[00:11:16] I got to this point here.
[00:11:17] And she's kind of a little bit of a different direction going back to the book.
[00:11:21] At the same time, I fell in with the wrong crowd.
[00:11:24] I got a job my junior year and my work friends were drinkers.
[00:11:28] I started sneaking out of the house by sliding down the antenna pole outside my window.
[00:11:32] I'd meet with friends.
[00:11:33] We'd go drink at stagger home, drunk at odd hours the night scaling the side of the house
[00:11:38] with the help of that pole.
[00:11:39] My family tried to nudge me into course correction.
[00:11:43] But I had a chip on my shoulder and refused to listen, especially to my dad.
[00:11:46] Things got worse.
[00:11:47] My relationship with my father and step mom spiraled out of control into the ground.
[00:11:53] And instead of this war us all down as that slide continued.
[00:11:59] That happens.
[00:12:00] I mean, that straight up happens to kids, especially boys.
[00:12:05] And I think it has to do with I'm going to prove myself.
[00:12:07] I guess what I think.
[00:12:08] Hey, I'm going to prove myself.
[00:12:10] And one of the ways that you prove yourself is by proving that you're willing to sacrifice
[00:12:16] in a way and what better way when you're 16 years old to prove is like, oh, watch what
[00:12:22] I'll do.
[00:12:23] I'll drink all drink this whole bottle.
[00:12:26] And I think that leads to young males doing a lot of dumb stuff.
[00:12:29] And it sounds like you're right on board.
[00:12:32] Absolutely.
[00:12:33] You know, the thing that saved me though, this is where I got really lucky is I was smart
[00:12:38] enough and disciplined enough to understand that if I got myself in any kind of major trouble,
[00:12:47] I wouldn't be able to go on this yield to you.
[00:12:49] So like I said, we lived in a real small town in rural North Carolina and drugs were prevalent.
[00:12:57] And a lot of my friends were starting to get into that.
[00:13:00] And I just said, man, if I get, you know, that'll stop me from going in the Navy.
[00:13:03] So at least there was kind of a line I wasn't willing to cross.
[00:13:07] And I'm unfortunate.
[00:13:08] There were a couple of times we got ourselves in trouble where, you know, we were right
[00:13:12] on the edge of the law being involved.
[00:13:14] And, you know, we managed to dodge that bullet.
[00:13:18] But yeah, I wanted to get out there.
[00:13:20] I wanted to fit in.
[00:13:21] So I think it's a combination of both peer pressure as a young man, you know, I want
[00:13:24] to finish with this group.
[00:13:26] But I have my hopes and dreams so this direction I'm going.
[00:13:29] And I think that's where a lot of young men get off track.
[00:13:32] They want to fit in so much that they give up on their hopes and dreams and they get sucked
[00:13:36] down this path.
[00:13:38] For me, I had such a little laser focus on what I wanted to do that at least kept me in
[00:13:44] check.
[00:13:45] Yeah.
[00:13:46] I'm going to say this just to kind of add to that point from my perspective.
[00:13:51] If you, if you've got someone that's aspiring to do something, you know, higher, the people
[00:13:57] that don't have those aspirations are more than happy to try and crush that dream for
[00:14:01] and more than happy to pull them down.
[00:14:04] And so I've found that throughout life, if you have some high aspiration that you're
[00:14:09] trying to achieve or you see someone that's got high aspirations that they're trying
[00:14:12] to achieve, you can watch the people around them.
[00:14:15] If they're not good people, we'll try to rip those things and pull them down and pull them
[00:14:19] off that track.
[00:14:21] Scary.
[00:14:22] And it's unequivocally true.
[00:14:23] I mean, it's one of the tenants, you know, I now speak on something I call the Pentagon
[00:14:27] of peak performance and the fifth level is, or I'm sorry, the fourth level is social
[00:14:32] leadership.
[00:14:33] So how we lead ourselves, how we build our ring of friends and influencers.
[00:14:37] And you're unequivocally right, a great influencer and entrepreneur I've been recently
[00:14:42] working with.
[00:14:43] He gives an amazing analogy of he was up in Alaska on a vacation.
[00:14:49] He was walking the beach and there was a fisherman that was fishing with a net and catching
[00:14:54] crabs and he was putting the crabs into bucket.
[00:14:56] And you know, it's early morning and the guy's name, Pedro's Cooleyen.
[00:15:01] And Pedro's was watching this happen, you know, early in the morning, looked in the bucket.
[00:15:05] There was about 10 crabs and probably about, you know, five gallon bucket and probably about
[00:15:10] eight inches of water.
[00:15:11] And he kept watching as one crab would climb up and grab onto the edge of the bucket and
[00:15:16] try and pull itself out.
[00:15:18] And he like tells the fisherman, hey, hey man, I want to let you know, you're going to lose
[00:15:21] one of your crabs.
[00:15:22] And the fisherman doesn't even turn around and look at him.
[00:15:25] Keeps drawn his net and he goes, watch what happens.
[00:15:29] And Pedro's kind of steps back and he looks down into the bucket and he watches his all
[00:15:34] the other crabs grab onto that other crab and pull him back down.
[00:15:39] And he had this epiphany moment of the circles of influence he had in his life and he was
[00:15:44] like, oh my god, I have crabs in my life.
[00:15:47] He's like, I have people that I want to climb up and be better and they're pulling me down.
[00:15:52] And it is unequivocally true.
[00:15:54] I mean, it's something I brought up to the bud students yesterday.
[00:15:56] I said, if you want to be the best seal, you need to surround yourself with the guys who
[00:16:02] are driven, disciplined and they're pushing themselves to the edge.
[00:16:05] If you want to go to the next level, you need to surround yourself with the guys who are
[00:16:08] either already there or they are inspired to get there.
[00:16:11] Because if you're going to surround yourself with people who are content to just drink and
[00:16:16] not move forward at all, they're going to try and pull you into that circle.
[00:16:20] Because they're going to feel threatened that you don't want to do what they're doing.
[00:16:24] And they want you to assimilate with them, verse driving forward and being successful.
[00:16:29] It's unfortunate.
[00:16:30] It's just kind of a way of life.
[00:16:31] It's a horrible situation.
[00:16:34] So watch out for it because it's everywhere.
[00:16:38] So any you end up, so you graduate high school and go to recruiter and boom, right?
[00:16:42] I mean, any other particular things around the recruitment process?
[00:16:46] Yeah, the recruitment process was actually, I actually kind of got off track a little.
[00:16:52] So I went to the recruiting station.
[00:16:54] As soon as I decided, I want to be a seal.
[00:16:56] I went to the recruiting station.
[00:16:57] It's just 15 years old.
[00:16:58] It's 95 pound weekling.
[00:17:00] And I walk into the recruiting station.
[00:17:02] And I'm like, how I want to be a seal.
[00:17:05] And there was an old crusty. I mean, he was like an old school, probably 25 year e6.
[00:17:12] And just crusty is all get out.
[00:17:15] Boatons may.
[00:17:16] And that dude basically laughed me out of the office.
[00:17:19] It was like, get out of here, stop wasting our time.
[00:17:24] You couldn't even carry the paddle much less the boat.
[00:17:27] Get out of my office.
[00:17:29] And it didn't phase me in the least.
[00:17:31] I came back next week and was like, I want to be a seal.
[00:17:34] And this guy chased me out of the office.
[00:17:38] I came back about four or five times and he just continued to not even give me the time
[00:17:42] a day.
[00:17:43] So finally, I was kind of tired of that.
[00:17:47] Either way, things are real rough when the recruiter won't give a kid the time of
[00:17:50] day.
[00:17:51] Yeah, he's trying to make that quota.
[00:17:53] This is hard core.
[00:17:54] Oh, man.
[00:17:55] Yeah.
[00:17:56] Well, I mean, you think about a 25 year e6.
[00:17:57] Yeah, yeah.
[00:17:58] He was at a point.
[00:17:59] He didn't really care.
[00:18:01] So you know, when I got to the point, I came back again, probably about eight months later.
[00:18:07] And at this point, I had, you know, really started training.
[00:18:09] I was focused on it.
[00:18:10] I didn't let him deter me.
[00:18:13] And I came back and he had left just by sheer happenstance.
[00:18:16] He was gone.
[00:18:17] And there was a new recruiter in there, a guy by the name Henry Horn.
[00:18:21] Henry, if you're out there and you listen to this, I've never been able to track him down.
[00:18:24] And thank him.
[00:18:25] But Henry took me in and was like, yeah, man, absolutely.
[00:18:28] Sit down and add this video.
[00:18:30] You may remember this.
[00:18:31] It was a B-SOME one special.
[00:18:32] And it was the cheesyest.
[00:18:35] It was like 1980s video and it's best.
[00:18:39] And it was this high speed.
[00:18:41] You know, the shields come in on a helicopter and they get out and they take down this target
[00:18:46] and take out these terrorists.
[00:18:47] And you know, the tagline is B-SOME one special.
[00:18:51] And I just ate it up, man.
[00:18:53] And came back on a regular basis and Henry was fantastic.
[00:18:58] He told me these are the things you need to do, you know, as bad fitness, this is what's
[00:19:02] going to happen.
[00:19:03] So went to go sign up.
[00:19:07] Right as I was turning 17, I was going to do the delayed entry program and I went to
[00:19:11] go sign up and went, I got back up for a second.
[00:19:18] There was a glitch.
[00:19:20] I'm sorry, I got my facts backwards here.
[00:19:22] I actually because of the deal with the crusty E-6, I was in him being a block to me.
[00:19:31] I changed my mind as I decided to go army at first.
[00:19:33] Henry happened after this, I'm sorry.
[00:19:35] I got that backwards.
[00:19:36] Henry happened after this.
[00:19:37] And when I went back, I decided to join the army.
[00:19:40] I said, well, fine, my dad, you know, he was army.
[00:19:42] The Rangers, I'll go the Greenberry route.
[00:19:45] So I went to maps to do my intake screening for the army delayed entry program.
[00:19:51] And I failed the physical because when I was a kid, I'd ruptured my ear drum.
[00:19:56] And I had a lot of scar tissue on my ear drum.
[00:19:58] And the army said, oh, well, you're not going to be able to equalize.
[00:20:01] So they tried to convince me to still go in.
[00:20:04] They were like, oh, well, you don't have to be an airborne Ranger.
[00:20:07] You know, you can do this.
[00:20:08] So you can do that.
[00:20:09] You can drive trucks.
[00:20:10] And I was like, no, man, that's not what I want to do.
[00:20:13] So I left.
[00:20:14] And I didn't sign up.
[00:20:16] And probably a couple months went by.
[00:20:18] And that's when I came back.
[00:20:21] And the crusty E6 was gone.
[00:20:22] And Henry Horn was there and really helped pave that path.
[00:20:25] So kind of an interesting road.
[00:20:27] And I think the lesson is this is there's always going to be roadblocks that are going
[00:20:32] to deter you from your dreams.
[00:20:33] You know, don't let it stop you.
[00:20:35] Keep driving forward.
[00:20:37] Because by, you know, if I just listened to that guy right for the beginning, you know,
[00:20:41] I never would have been to see a shark.
[00:20:43] So you go in and you show up at Buds.
[00:20:46] Because I like this is a good going back to the book.
[00:20:48] Your intro to Buds.
[00:20:50] One night I was asked, order to escort a member of class 199 back to his room building in 602.
[00:20:57] He'd quit the program.
[00:20:58] And the neighbor required an escort for anyone who rang the bell during hell week.
[00:21:03] I went off to find him in the darkness.
[00:21:04] He was waiting for me a smaller guy like me wrapped in a blanket.
[00:21:08] He was shivering so badly.
[00:21:09] He seemed ready to fly apart.
[00:21:11] He put the blanket over his head like a hood, giving him a monastic look.
[00:21:17] He said little so we made our way to the barracks and silence.
[00:21:20] I walked alongside him fit fit to burst wanting to get any details on what I'd
[00:21:26] soon experienced.
[00:21:27] Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore.
[00:21:29] As he reached his door and opened it, I blurred it out.
[00:21:33] So come on, man.
[00:21:34] What was it like?
[00:21:36] He turned to me and looked me in the eyes.
[00:21:38] His room's nightlight cast an orange glow across his face.
[00:21:43] His skin was waxing and he looked hollowed out.
[00:21:47] At length he answered in a slow earnest tone.
[00:21:50] Dude, it was so cold.
[00:21:52] I would have poured gasoline all over myself and little match just so I could have been warm
[00:21:57] for a few seconds before I burned to death.
[00:22:02] He stepped back without another word and slammed his door.
[00:22:05] For the first time, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into.
[00:22:11] That's legit right there.
[00:22:14] He's wrote a buzz.
[00:22:16] So there's a, so not only did that blow my mind, you know, there's a funny little side
[00:22:21] story.
[00:22:22] We actually had to edit that.
[00:22:24] So the fire thing we actually created because what he actually, he told me that exact
[00:22:30] thing.
[00:22:31] The dialogue is the same, but what he told me was about his vulgar as all get out.
[00:22:37] It would have made the bull rated triple X.
[00:22:40] And it was so mind-blowing.
[00:22:42] Because I mean, you know, the fire thing we try to come up with what is as impactful
[00:22:45] as possible.
[00:22:46] But it does not convey.
[00:22:47] I'll let your imaginations run mild.
[00:22:49] But what he told me and he slammed the door in my face left me so stunned that I was like,
[00:22:55] what the hell did I get myself into?
[00:22:57] I mean, it was, but we could not put it in the bulldozer.
[00:22:59] It was so bad. I mean, I was like, my kids can never read that.
[00:23:03] Check.
[00:23:05] Check.
[00:23:06] So anyways, I mean, then you get the butt.
[00:23:08] You go through buds and buds is cool.
[00:23:13] And you write about buds a little bit in here, but you don't spend a bunch of time on it.
[00:23:17] Because as we know, buds is not a huge part of our careers and the seal teams.
[00:23:21] And I'm going to jump right right ahead to the book here.
[00:23:27] Seven years in three South American deployments, into my career as a seal, I found myself
[00:23:31] in Fort Knox, Kentucky, working as a basic warfare instructor with a small group of fellow
[00:23:36] operators.
[00:23:37] We worked 18 hour days, but being 20 something in single, once the gear was stowed, all we wanted
[00:23:43] to do was get out on the town and blow off some steam.
[00:23:47] Work hard, play hard.
[00:23:49] That was our pre-911 mantra.
[00:23:54] The 90s teams.
[00:23:58] Work hard, play hard.
[00:24:00] I always have to explain to people how cool it is being in the teams, being in E5 and the
[00:24:06] teams.
[00:24:07] You know, what were you in E5 or any sex at this point?
[00:24:09] I was in E5.
[00:24:11] E5 and the teams.
[00:24:13] And I was telling the story the other day, this when I got to seal team one, there was,
[00:24:17] I was a new guy and I was quietly walking through the locker room trying to keep my eyes
[00:24:21] inverted from looking at anyone and I heard this guy go.
[00:24:25] Oh, yes.
[00:24:28] And I was like, oh my God.
[00:24:29] And it was this barbaric yell from this human being who is, and then I looked at him.
[00:24:36] And he was this monster guy, probably six, seven, six, six, two hundred and eighty pounds
[00:24:43] of tattooed flesh.
[00:24:46] And someone's like, what happened?
[00:24:48] And he goes, I just made E5, master chief as far as I'm concerned.
[00:24:58] So, yeah, you know, you're getting to be in E5 in a seal-patoon.
[00:25:02] You know, you've got, if you're not looking for a lot of responsibility, you won't find
[00:25:06] it.
[00:25:07] But you won't, you know, you're a little bit above some of the crap work.
[00:25:09] So it's not a bad place to be.
[00:25:12] And that's where you were doing, doing deployment after deployment, three deployments to
[00:25:17] South America.
[00:25:18] And doing the training gig.
[00:25:21] Yeah.
[00:25:22] We went training cell at the team at this time, was it already consolidated?
[00:25:26] No.
[00:25:27] Each team had a Joan individual training, still.
[00:25:29] Yep.
[00:25:30] I did that too.
[00:25:31] And this is also the time during one of these trips where you met your future one.
[00:25:36] That's right.
[00:25:37] So, you know, the seal teams are in an interesting place because being an all-male unit,
[00:25:43] you know, the only time you have an opportunity to meet people, ladies, is typically in the
[00:25:47] bars.
[00:25:49] And because we did such a good job, you know, I tell people, the mindset of the early teams
[00:25:55] really was, you know, you know, more single captured that mindset in his book, The World
[00:26:01] Warrior.
[00:26:02] But it's interesting to see post-9-11 how guys are so laser focused on combat, you
[00:26:07] know, but for us, you know, literally we trained hard.
[00:26:10] And then, you know, you were actually looked down on.
[00:26:12] If you didn't go out and party and burn it down to like four in the morning and then
[00:26:15] get an hour of sleep and get up and start training in the next day, you know, which was just
[00:26:19] stupid, you know, you weren't operating it up to more efficiency.
[00:26:23] But that was just the way it was.
[00:26:24] That was life.
[00:26:25] And, uh, accepted it and drove through.
[00:26:28] So, yeah, I was fortunate enough one night.
[00:26:30] We went into a crazy, huge bar that somebody had scouted out and said, hey, man, this
[00:26:36] is a target rich environment.
[00:26:38] And, uh, the Phoenix Hill Tavern.
[00:26:40] And, uh, went in there and yeah, beautiful, blonde walked in and I was like, I need to
[00:26:46] get to know this.
[00:26:47] She hung me.
[00:26:48] So, you did all right, man.
[00:26:52] Along, along the course of this, um, you applied for the Seaman to Admin program, which
[00:26:58] is the same program I did.
[00:26:59] I think you were a couple years behind me.
[00:27:01] And we're going to the book.
[00:27:02] I had applied to the Seaman to Admin program.
[00:27:05] Something the Navy started to encourage top performing and listed to become officers.
[00:27:09] Only 50 candidates a year were accepted back then.
[00:27:11] So, the competition was fierce.
[00:27:12] I gained a slot in the Navy sent me to college just in time to miss the outbreak of
[00:27:17] the war.
[00:27:19] I watched the towers fall.
[00:27:21] I recognized the magnitude of the moment and left school in a days fully aware that
[00:27:25] our country was heading to war with three years of college ahead of me.
[00:27:30] I feared I'd miss my chance to be a part of it.
[00:27:34] A few days later, I drove back to my old seal team to see my former CEO and mentor,
[00:27:40] Commander Vince Peterson.
[00:27:43] He had stuck his neck out for me more than once and had been instrumental in getting
[00:27:47] me a shot a slot in the Seaman Admin program.
[00:27:50] I told him I wanted to drop out of school so I could get back to a platoon and help with
[00:27:54] the war effort.
[00:27:55] Commander Peterson sat listening quietly as he, as I explained my desire to come back.
[00:28:00] He was a legend in the seal teams.
[00:28:01] He had been a former Marine before joining the Navy and headed to seal training at the age
[00:28:06] of 36.
[00:28:08] He was highly respected both up and down the chain of command.
[00:28:12] In my leadership, fence analogy, most men fell on one side of the fence or the other,
[00:28:16] while there were those small few who had the unique ability to stand on top and move back
[00:28:21] and forth.
[00:28:22] For Vince Peterson, there was no fence.
[00:28:25] As I sat down with him and asked him to put me back in the platoon, he looked me dead
[00:28:30] and the eye and said, red, this will not be a short war.
[00:28:34] It's going to go on for years and we're going to need strong warriors and leaders for
[00:28:38] upcoming battles.
[00:28:40] You need to stay in school.
[00:28:42] Then come back and lead.
[00:28:47] Check.
[00:28:50] When I read that, of course, I thought about, guess what I was doing, when 9-11 happened.
[00:28:58] I was in college as well.
[00:29:00] On the same program, I was probably a year or two ahead of you.
[00:29:03] Guess what I did?
[00:29:05] Same thing.
[00:29:06] I called the Detailer who was a friend of mine who I had worked for.
[00:29:11] I said, hey, I don't care about college.
[00:29:14] I'll do online.
[00:29:16] I don't care about any of this.
[00:29:17] Send me back to a seal team right now.
[00:29:20] Please.
[00:29:22] You know who this individual is as well.
[00:29:24] And I know who this guy is and they told me the exact same thing.
[00:29:28] He said, this war is going to last a long time.
[00:29:31] Yeah.
[00:29:32] Of course, I didn't believe it.
[00:29:34] And this is what's interesting.
[00:29:38] I recently saw the guy that I called and I saw him in his wife who I know is wife and
[00:29:43] she's a great person.
[00:29:46] And I was telling her this, telling her this.
[00:29:48] And you know what she said?
[00:29:49] It was so awesome to hear.
[00:29:52] She goes, do you know how many calls he
[00:29:54] got that day?
[00:29:56] So there was zero unique about Jocco calling the
[00:30:01] the seal detail and saying, sir, get me back to a team right now.
[00:30:05] Every single guy that wasn't in a seal team in the teams or everyone that would be
[00:30:09] built in of any kind was calling the detail and saying, get me back to a team.
[00:30:14] Put me in coach.
[00:30:15] Yeah.
[00:30:16] And it goes to that mentality.
[00:30:17] You're talking about we were.
[00:30:20] You were just training and training and training and be like training for a game and
[00:30:26] training for the Super Bowl never getting play.
[00:30:28] Yeah.
[00:30:30] So you actually did a great job in college and you were an ROTC too, right?
[00:30:38] I was.
[00:30:39] Yeah.
[00:30:40] So I got the real scam deal where I just went to college and wasn't wearing a uniform.
[00:30:43] I was like far enough ahead of you that I got the deal.
[00:30:46] You were in the original program.
[00:30:48] So you got a commission and went to school as an officer.
[00:30:50] So you were getting paid off your page.
[00:30:52] I got to school.
[00:30:53] I got the most ridiculous deal.
[00:30:55] I apologize to the tax payers.
[00:30:56] Yeah.
[00:30:57] I think and the Navy quickly realized.
[00:30:59] Yeah.
[00:31:00] Okay.
[00:31:01] Yeah.
[00:31:02] We screwed this one up.
[00:31:03] I think it took them two iterations.
[00:31:04] Yeah.
[00:31:05] I was in because I think I was in the third iteration, third or fourth.
[00:31:07] But no.
[00:31:08] We actually were required to be a part of ROTC.
[00:31:12] So you know, every day we were up early and we and the Hampton Road General T.C.
[00:31:17] At that time, it was the largest ROTC consortium on the East Coast.
[00:31:21] So you had Hampton University.
[00:31:23] You had O.D.
[00:31:24] You old and mid-New University and you had Norfolk State.
[00:31:26] And they had at that time probably about I think we were at about 330 midshipmen and
[00:31:33] officer candidates.
[00:31:34] And we had a huge contingent of ex-inlisted.
[00:31:38] So there was actually, it was probably six or seven seals in the program there at that
[00:31:43] time.
[00:31:44] So it was good.
[00:31:49] We played all the games.
[00:31:50] Real quickly, I realized I said, okay, you know, they want it.
[00:31:53] You've got to step up.
[00:31:54] You know, they're going to put you into these different positions.
[00:31:57] And a lot of the guys had come there before me were kind of like, no, dude, we don't
[00:32:01] want to do anything.
[00:32:02] We don't want to be involved.
[00:32:03] We just want to, you know, a lot of times typical team guys.
[00:32:05] We want to create our own little circle of trust.
[00:32:09] And we don't want to let anybody else in the circle.
[00:32:11] And I was like, no, man.
[00:32:13] We had chains at mindset.
[00:32:14] There's young kids here that we could influence to become future frog men.
[00:32:18] I said, and because there was no, that all these communities at the school, they had,
[00:32:23] they had, you know, surface warfare community, they had the aviation club, they had the submariner
[00:32:28] club.
[00:32:29] But there was no special operations club.
[00:32:32] And there were young kids who were interested.
[00:32:34] And I said, what we need to create this, you know, we have the experience.
[00:32:37] We can help these kids.
[00:32:38] And then the other thing I said is I said, well, you know, I'm going to try and
[00:32:43] step up into leadership positions.
[00:32:45] And I think all the rest of us should do the same.
[00:32:47] And thankfully, you know, it worked.
[00:32:49] We all jumped on board.
[00:32:50] And, you know, I was fortunate.
[00:32:52] I did excel in school.
[00:32:54] And I ended up leaving the school as the student Italian commanding officer prior to being commissioned.
[00:33:00] Damn.
[00:33:02] I was the regimental commander at Officer Candidate School.
[00:33:07] And that was, you know, the number one position.
[00:33:10] Yeah.
[00:33:11] And I was.
[00:33:12] Yeah, I was talking to my mom.
[00:33:17] And I, I mentioned to which I shouldn't have done because my mom just doesn't understand.
[00:33:22] I was like, well, yeah, I'm, you know, I'm the, the regiment.
[00:33:25] She's, because at the last couple of weeks, I was yes.
[00:33:27] And I, she said, oh, so what's going on now?
[00:33:30] Because then I could call, because you weren't allowed to call.
[00:33:32] So I said, well, we're doing this.
[00:33:33] And I'm in charge of the thing here.
[00:33:35] It's called the regimental commander.
[00:33:37] And she goes, oh, what?
[00:33:39] What? But so you're the commander. And I said, yeah, the regimental commander.
[00:33:43] She goes, what do you in charge of?
[00:33:45] And I said, I am overseeing the cleaning of every toilet.
[00:33:50] And Officer Candidate School.
[00:33:51] And it's going quite well.
[00:33:52] So spotless spotless.
[00:33:56] Uh, you, so you do a great job in college.
[00:34:00] And now you go back to the teams after college going back to the book.
[00:34:05] Instead of having an advantage, I found myself left behind.
[00:34:10] Everything had changed.
[00:34:11] And as our platoon went through its training cycle, I always felt like I was playing catch-up.
[00:34:16] I made mistakes and exercises that I never made in the 90s.
[00:34:20] They made me edgy and tense, feeling the pressure of trying to be a leader and drinking from
[00:34:25] that training fire hose at the same time.
[00:34:28] I got tight and held on even harder, which only made things worse.
[00:34:34] And our time off, I drowned my frustrations and booze and routinely made an ass of myself.
[00:34:40] None of this was helping my credibility with the men I was supposed to be leading.
[00:34:44] But I didn't see that at the moment.
[00:34:47] It also didn't help that senior chief Pete Kerry and I despised each other almost from
[00:34:52] our introduction.
[00:34:54] He was a good skilled seal and I respected his tactical abilities, but I felt his people
[00:34:59] skills were lacking.
[00:35:00] And I was afraid of a lot of abrasive at times, his leadership style clashed with mine,
[00:35:03] which set us on a collision course.
[00:35:07] While I privately railed against Kerry, I was too blinded by arrogance to see my own flaws.
[00:35:13] I wasn't making a good transition to being an officer.
[00:35:16] I'd been enlisted for so long.
[00:35:17] I identified with mine listed teammates more as one of them, rather than as one of their
[00:35:22] leaders.
[00:35:24] It put me too far away from the fence.
[00:35:27] The senior chief and the AOIC are supposed to work closely together to make sure the team
[00:35:32] functions effectively.
[00:35:34] The AOIC and that's a system officer in charge is also supposed to learn from the chief's
[00:35:39] tactical experience.
[00:35:41] That never happened in Arpaltoon.
[00:35:42] Instead, I refused to humble myself and listen to the senior chief.
[00:35:46] As the pre-depulment work up war on, we couldn't conceal our dislike for each other.
[00:35:52] The feud spilled out into the open and culminated with a public screaming match in Europe after
[00:35:58] a tactical exercise with some NATO allies.
[00:36:03] In the weeks that followed my arrival within the team, our relationship became the cancer
[00:36:07] in our locker room.
[00:36:08] By the time we got to Afghanistan, we refused to be civilly to each other.
[00:36:12] I had lost touch entirely with what it meant to be a leader.
[00:36:15] During the daily briefs, we would openly take shots at each other.
[00:36:18] I talked about this dynamic many times with my superior, the Patoons Officer in charge.
[00:36:23] One day, the AOIC finally said, look, you do have to work to this out.
[00:36:28] I'm tired of it.
[00:36:29] We never could or did work things out.
[00:36:33] Different Patoons, structure things in different ways.
[00:36:35] In Arpaltoon, senior and elistic members acted as fire team leaders with chiefs and some
[00:36:39] more experienced officers acting as the assault force commanders.
[00:36:42] I'd been assigned as neither.
[00:36:44] If I'd taken a step back, I might have realized that I hadn't given my bosses much
[00:36:48] confidence in my leadership, but I didn't see that.
[00:36:51] I only felt slighted and in bitter.
[00:36:56] Rough tour.
[00:36:59] But all brought on by myself.
[00:37:01] The dynamics obviously created some interesting problems.
[00:37:09] As often happens, I wasn't taking ownership of my own actions.
[00:37:15] Instead, I was just trying to point fingers externally.
[00:37:18] It's peak Gary's fault that these things are happening.
[00:37:22] When the reality was 80% of it was me.
[00:37:27] 80% of it.
[00:37:29] It's one of the things that I talk to a lot of individuals about.
[00:37:32] I think you see it in special operations.
[00:37:34] You and I have both of spoken to professional sports teams.
[00:37:39] I see it there where young men accelerate quickly and achieve this elite status.
[00:37:44] And then get a little bit of enamored with who they are and their abilities.
[00:37:49] And lose sight of the end state, which is to be an effective part of the team to do their
[00:37:55] job so ruthlessly well, it plays this huge part in the team.
[00:37:59] At the end of the day, whether you're in professional sports, whether you're in the
[00:38:03] SEAL teams, or either whether you're in some elite business, that's what has to happen.
[00:38:09] And I lost sight of that.
[00:38:16] And more focused externally, instead of internally.
[00:38:19] And really, now I speak a lot on what my three rules of leadership is and the foundational
[00:38:21] the first rule is lead yourself.
[00:38:25] And how you lead yourself, 80% of leadership is leading yourself.
[00:38:30] You talk so much about discipline.
[00:38:31] It's how you discipline yourself.
[00:38:33] It's how you structure yourself.
[00:38:34] It's how you push yourself.
[00:38:35] It's how you set the example.
[00:38:41] And in doing so, it automatically leads to rule number two, lead others.
[00:38:43] It almost makes it easy to lead others because you've already done all the work.
[00:38:46] They want to follow you because you're setting the example.
[00:38:49] I kind of had it backwards.
[00:38:50] I was trying to lead others, but I wasn't leading myself.
[00:38:54] And it's almost impossible to do.
[00:38:56] And I meet all these people that have gone out in business and talked to them and they say,
[00:39:01] hey man, how do I be a better leader?
[00:39:07] Because that's where I really, really failed.
[00:39:12] We talk in several times you've mentioned a principle I talk about called the leadership
[00:39:16] fence.
[00:39:18] And a leadership fence was just kind of a concept that came up with after watching a lot
[00:39:22] of really good leaders and bad leaders, including myself in that category.
[00:39:28] Years later, I looked back.
[00:39:29] And the idea was this, that imagine a chain link fence.
[00:39:33] And that fence represents where you are in your leadership journey.
[00:39:37] And on one side of the fence are all those you lead and on the other side are those
[00:39:42] you report to your peers.
[00:39:45] Everybody has a natural tendency to kind of fall on one side of the fence or the other
[00:39:49] depending on how they grew up or how they came into the organization.
[00:39:53] For me, obviously, when you start out as anyone, I connected a lot more with the guys
[00:39:59] on the side of the fence that I was leading.
[00:40:02] As a matter of fact, the teams back then typically wanted to switch coasts with guys.
[00:40:09] Bjorn and Lys guy, they wanted to send you out to the opposite coast.
[00:40:12] And that didn't happen for me.
[00:40:14] And I tell you what, I look back on that now and I think that was a mistake.
[00:40:18] I created a lot of my own problems and the seal teams were right in there thinking
[00:40:23] on how to do that.
[00:40:24] Because now the hardest leadership often is peer leadership to break through those bonds
[00:40:30] of hey, you and I were both friends, but now I'm in charge of you.
[00:40:34] So how do we navigate that water?
[00:40:36] And if you're close with those people, it makes it a lot more difficult.
[00:40:40] You have to be the one that really has to break those bonds.
[00:40:43] And sometimes a can damage friendships if you're not careful with that.
[00:40:47] And I think I was more focused on retaining that.
[00:40:49] So that was on one side of the fence.
[00:40:51] And those side of fence a lot of times, you see individuals that come into an organization
[00:40:55] later at a higher leadership position.
[00:40:58] So they get brought in as an officer, they get brought in as a leader to a company.
[00:41:02] And they're more focused on that leadership position that they don't take the time to get
[00:41:07] to know the people they're leading.
[00:41:10] So they're too far away from the fence.
[00:41:11] It's a chain link fence so that you can talk through it so that you can communicate through
[00:41:16] it.
[00:41:17] And the best leaders have the ability to be right up against that fence.
[00:41:20] So whether they're on either side, they're able to turn around and gain guidance from the
[00:41:26] individuals, whether it's their leadership and communicate it through to those they lead,
[00:41:30] or whether they're on the side of communicating and interacting with those they lead and
[00:41:34] communicating through and getting guidance from who they follow.
[00:41:40] Problems arise when you're too far away from the fence.
[00:41:43] The leaders who are so far on the other side of the fence and all they're thinking about
[00:41:47] is how do I make the next rank?
[00:41:50] We know who they are.
[00:41:51] I mean we've seen those guys who literally you think, man, you would like kill your mother
[00:41:55] to make the next rank to be this or be that.
[00:41:59] And then we also know those guys who they have no aspirations to try and get better on the
[00:42:04] other side of the fence.
[00:42:05] I mean we joke about the career E5s, the perfectly content.
[00:42:10] The magic position and the seal teams where you're at that level where you're high enough
[00:42:16] above to not do the groundwork but you don't really have tremendous responsibilities.
[00:42:20] I was way too far away.
[00:42:22] That was the bottom line and this is where I was tremendously failing and not setting the
[00:42:26] example.
[00:42:27] I wasn't communicating with the leadership.
[00:42:32] They were trying to provide me guidance and basically saying, hey dude, you're screwing things
[00:42:36] up and even Pete Carrey himself was trying to convey to me in his very abrasive way.
[00:42:43] They do it, you know, this is not the way you do things but I was blinded both by having
[00:42:50] excelled at this point in my career really rocketing up and thinking, oh I know these things,
[00:42:57] you know I'm the man.
[00:43:00] So humility is such a critical component of leadership to take that step back and if anybody
[00:43:04] is given you advice, always take a second to think through it and evaluate, hey, even
[00:43:11] if maybe you don't think it applies, there's probably pieces of it that do.
[00:43:15] That's the reality.
[00:43:16] Yeah, I was with someone's giving me critique points, you know and of course and it's
[00:43:21] every single I say every single person on earth doesn't like receiving critique like
[00:43:27] and I always joke about the fact that even when someone asks for criticism, when they get
[00:43:32] it, they still get mad.
[00:43:33] Even I say, hey Jay, would you, you know, read this thing that I just wrote and tell me
[00:43:36] what you think of it and then you read it and you say, you know, I thought it was a little
[00:43:39] you could do this a little bit better. I'm going to be mad, right? Everyone gets mad.
[00:43:44] And so that's so what I do is the same thing. I take a step back when somebody gives
[00:43:48] me a critique point, even though I'm completely offended and I don't agree with them
[00:43:52] and I think I'm right because I'm an egotistical maniac.
[00:43:55] I put all that aside and I say, wait a second, there's a reason that they're telling
[00:43:58] me this, there's gotta be some truth to it.
[00:44:01] I like, I'm one of my favorite things about this book is the fact that it reveals the
[00:44:09] difficulties that we have in the Syltimes which are the same difficulties that I see all
[00:44:14] the time. So people think, oh, and you're in the Syltimes, everyone's just perfect.
[00:44:18] And you know, this, this, p, carry would be the perfect mentor and you'd just be able to
[00:44:24] come along and then you'd be the perfect recipient, the perfect mentee, ready to learn
[00:44:30] and everything's just perfect and it's actually completely untrue and what you have in
[00:44:35] the Syltimes actually in the, like, in the civilian sector and companies and organizations,
[00:44:41] they have these personality, you know, different personalities in the Syltimes and so you
[00:44:45] think, oh, in the Syltimes, you don't have that. No, you actually have it worse because
[00:44:48] you got these guys that have, that have really built their egos been built up and we all
[00:44:53] think we're great. We all think we're tactical genius. We all think we don't have anything
[00:44:56] to learn and so we have a lot of issues around this exact kind of thing and it does completely
[00:45:05] derail, not just leaders, but it derails, p, tunes and I mean, we would disband p, tunes.
[00:45:11] And when we were disband, p, tune, that means the p, tune is no longer going to exist.
[00:45:14] We'd have a p, tune coming through training. The p, tune would get disbanded. It doesn't
[00:45:18] happen very often, but it happens. Yeah. And when it happens, it has zero to do with the
[00:45:25] e-force e-fives and usually the e-sixes and it has a hundred percent to do with the senior
[00:45:29] e-sixes, the chiefs and the officers inside the p, tune that just our disasters. And it
[00:45:36] does happen and I think the fact that you, the fact that you talk through some of these
[00:45:40] issues are, I mean, that's what that's what's very revealing about the Syltimes in this
[00:45:46] book is like, hey, we got, you know, we got the same issues that they have in other
[00:45:52] or any other team, any other organization. And that, that, you know, that thing that you
[00:45:58] talk about this, this fence, you know, that's to me. That's the dichotomy leadership, right?
[00:46:02] That's like, you can go to foreign one direction or the other. And if you go to foreign
[00:46:05] one direction or the other, you're going to fall apart. Yeah. So check. All right. Now you're
[00:46:14] on deployment. And I've got to say, and I always, I always mentioned this. I haven't
[00:46:19] mentioned it yet, but I'll mention it right now because I'm only reading small portions
[00:46:24] of this book and there's so much more great detail in the book. And you'll have a better
[00:46:29] understanding of these lessons when you, when you read the whole thing. So if it seems a
[00:46:34] little bit, you know, it seems it's jumping around a little bit. It's just because I'm
[00:46:37] only reading chunks of it because I'm not going to read the whole damn book. You can read
[00:46:40] it yourself. All right. So now speaking of jumping around, you're in Afghanistan. You had
[00:46:46] a mission go down where it sounded like you guys got some bad intel and it caused a little
[00:46:53] of a problem. You hit the target pretty hard and you guys got put on an operational pause.
[00:46:58] Meaning, hey, you guys aren't going to do anything. And that's a great story and how that
[00:47:03] unfolds is great and people should read so they can learn lessons from that. But then I'm
[00:47:08] going to go skip a lesson here. You are in the chow hall and you're sitting with some
[00:47:15] of your boys. And I'm specifically using that term because at this point, you definitely
[00:47:20] are, we're boys with the boys and I'm going to the book. I've been searching for a way
[00:47:24] to prove myself ever since I'd come aboard. Now the opportunity to do so had just fallen
[00:47:30] into my lap. I had to take it. In time, I learned there was nothing more dangerous on the
[00:47:35] battlefield than an immature and arrogant officer who feels he needs to prove himself. It
[00:47:41] can lead men to their death. And what you're looking at is you happen to be sitting in the
[00:47:45] chow hall with the commanding general. And these guys kind of, your, your boys kind of
[00:47:52] egg you on to go talk to him about, hey, why are we, why are we standing down in your
[00:47:58] and incident at this point? Yeah. Oh, Jesus. Okay. So here we go. I walked over and stood
[00:48:04] beside the general's table. Excuse me, general. Encin redmond, naval special warfare. Do
[00:48:09] you have a couple of minutes? His aides gloured up at me stamped on their faces is a
[00:48:14] crew the hell are you. Look, that made me momentarily waver. The general invited me to sit
[00:48:20] down. His aides looked frosted and grew more so after I began to talk. Sorry, I just wanted
[00:48:25] to talk to you about this operational pause. We still seem to be in. I began. The general's
[00:48:30] face registering nothing but interest. I continued. I know there was a miscommunication
[00:48:35] with our first mission, but we know the enemies out there and we'd really like to take the
[00:48:38] opportunity to go after them. The general heard me out, then replied diplomatically. Well,
[00:48:43] Johnson, I've got to look at all the strategic factors here. We must always weigh the
[00:48:47] strategic impact with the impact on the civilian populace and there are implications
[00:48:51] to going out and operating at night. I understand that, sir. Right now, we're at a crazy
[00:48:56] time in the war and we have to balance what we're doing. Well, general, I said, I can hardly
[00:49:02] read that with a straight face. Well, general, I said, we really feel like we can contribute
[00:49:07] in a positive way to by going after the men who pose a clear and present threat to coalition
[00:49:11] forces. General's non-committal, but remained polite. I don't think his AIDS took their eyes
[00:49:16] off me through the entire conversation. I could feel them boring holes through me. I
[00:49:20] thanked them for their time got up and headed back to my table. The other two operators
[00:49:25] were gone. Why hadn't they stuck around? Get some. Yeah, beware of peer pressure.
[00:49:40] Beware, once again, it comes back to that lead yourself, lead yourself that founding principle.
[00:49:47] Because this was a dangerous thing and I did this several times during that deployment.
[00:49:54] This misunderstanding or this idea that somehow there's this shortcut to being an effective
[00:50:01] leader that there's this push button easy button that, look at me, now I'm a great leader
[00:50:06] and this really was this moment. People understand this was an interesting time. This was
[00:50:16] July of 2005. June 28, the 2005 operation Red Wings had just happened and that was our
[00:50:25] troop. We had lost five of our guys including our troop commander. We had lost my error
[00:50:33] Christian sin. We had lost my good friend in the OIC at that platoon, Mike McGreevey.
[00:50:38] I originally was in Echo Platoon. We had trained alongside those guys. We were all grieving
[00:50:46] and we all wanted revenge. We all wanted to go after the enemy. The very first mission we
[00:50:53] did was the mission you talked about that got us in a little bit of trouble. Now take the
[00:50:59] dynamics of everybody grieving because of the loss of our teammates and then doing our
[00:51:08] first mission and being put in hack because of really some outstanding issues that you
[00:51:14] can read about in the book. We had actually done everything right but it kind of got
[00:51:18] placed back on us. I just, it's these moments that as a young leader, whether you're in
[00:51:24] the business, whether you're in the military law enforcement, whatever you do that you
[00:51:29] see this shortcut. Oh look what I can do. It got fueled when my teammates and I sat there
[00:51:37] and started talking and teammates were the biggest chitalkers on the planet. They definitely
[00:51:46] were agonized and I ate it up. Hook line and sinker and I was like you are absolutely right.
[00:51:50] There is a great opportunity for me to shed some amazing wisdom and insight to this general
[00:51:58] where he now is going to be like oh young innocent you're so right. We should absolutely
[00:52:02] allow you guys to go out and conduct all these operations because I'm not smart enough
[00:52:08] to allow this to happen. The arrogance that I had and really sad that I didn't think
[00:52:14] through what are the implications of this for you to go do that.
[00:52:19] It was just a stupid decision and I realized it. As soon as those guys were gone like
[00:52:26] all the sudden I'm like, huh. What did you just do more on? And as I walk back from
[00:52:35] the chial hall to our camp, I was like this isn't going to go on. You didn't told your
[00:52:43] boss that you did it right. I did it. I was straight back to my CEO and I said hey I want
[00:52:47] to let you know what just happened. I thought it was a good idea and I don't think it
[00:52:56] was. It was funny. He kind of looked at me and he said why did you think that was a good
[00:53:03] idea? And I said why I was doing it for the boys. It was about the boys. You really
[00:53:13] wasn't. At the end of the day it was about me and that's where you know really understanding
[00:53:20] that you know in leadership you are the last point in the equation and don't get me wrong.
[00:53:27] You know there's an overlap of everything that happens that we do. So oftentimes you're
[00:53:31] focused on the mission you're focused on the man and of course by doing that well there
[00:53:35] is a positive impact for you and there's nothing wrong with that. But that thought process
[00:53:40] it should be it should be by sequence if you will not because you're focused on it.
[00:53:46] Yeah no 100% and you're right the by product of focusing on your people and focusing on
[00:53:51] your mission the by product of that is you'll be successful and the contrary the contrary
[00:53:56] in situation is literally if you focus on yourself instead of your people and your mission
[00:54:02] you will fail you will you and you know what fails a strong word because there's people
[00:54:08] and you and I know them who have focused on themselves and they they they they can win
[00:54:12] this battle and they can win this tactical battle and they can win this tactical battle
[00:54:15] and they can get to a certain point but eventually it will come back on them and you won't
[00:54:21] be as truly successful as if you would as you would have been had you focused on the
[00:54:26] man the mission and not focused on yourself. I call those people leadership wrecking balls
[00:54:33] they're good at what they do you know in some ways peak carriers one of those people
[00:54:38] he was very good at what he did and he got things done but he had a tendency to leave
[00:54:44] and a lot of organizations have these individuals and they keep them around because
[00:54:49] they do get things done but they leave a path of destruction behind them and over time
[00:54:53] people don't want to work with them and you know that's why I call them the leadership
[00:54:57] wrecking ball so you know I tell people you need to evaluate yourself are you one of those
[00:55:01] people do you turn around you know forward you look at the successes you have but you turn
[00:55:05] around and look and there's a path of destruction going away there no doubt about it.
[00:55:10] All right so you guys eventually do get back in the game you the the pause operational
[00:55:16] pause gets lifted and you guys are operating again and here you are out on an operation
[00:55:22] you're in an Overwatch position on a hilltop going back to the book between bursts
[00:55:27] of gunfire I heard in report troops and contact troops and contact we're facing at least
[00:55:32] 20 enemy fighters a wash of static followed then I heard Joker add one of our afghan soldiers
[00:55:38] is wounded we need reinforcements.
[00:55:42] Jay here's your chance your teammates are in trouble I looked down into the value thousand
[00:55:47] feet below the slope was steep perhaps 60 degrees in places getting down there would be a
[00:55:52] serious climb once at the bottom we'd have to maneuver to the sound of the guns through broken
[00:55:58] terrain and vegetation that would complicate approaching our guys without getting shot by accident.
[00:56:03] I called the Fred and asked if the western Overwatch team was still in place gunfire erupted
[00:56:09] over the radio as he heat his mic and answered I think so okay good that gave us eyes above
[00:56:15] and control over the high ground over there this is the moment Jay go prove yourself
[00:56:20] as we dropped off the lip senior chief carry called to me over the radio and wanted to know
[00:56:27] what I was doing we're going down I told him he went ballistic absolutely not we need to link
[00:56:34] back up fall back the boys needed help and we were closest if it had been anybody else I might
[00:56:42] have thought twice about his call but my own personal quest to prove myself coupled with my
[00:56:47] intense hatred for him clouded my judgment I ignored him and we pressed on as we dropped further into
[00:56:55] the valley we lost all communication with the headquarters team I began to realize what a
[00:57:00] hairy situation I had just placed the two of us in we had given up the high ground to move down
[00:57:05] a thousand feet of vertical terrain to try and link up with an element under fire with an enemy
[00:57:10] force almost one kilometer away I pushed this thought to the back of my mind the boys need help
[00:57:16] focus on that but where was the fight the sounds of battle echoed all across the valley making it
[00:57:22] difficult to calculate distance and direction a broken transmission filled my earpiece I couldn't
[00:57:28] tell what it was but I recognized Jaydee's voice I tried to establish contact a moment later
[00:57:34] through washers of static Jaydee's voice came back where the hell are you Jaydee demanded
[00:57:40] I told him we were at the tea intersection on the valley floor get your ass out of the valley now
[00:57:45] he said with so much anger I could almost feel a blast of fire shoot out of the earpiece I was
[00:57:50] about to explain my intent when he added those guys are in a major fight and we can't call in
[00:57:55] close air support because we don't know where you are that shook me there were aircraft over
[00:58:03] head waiting to join the battle with rockets and bombs yet they could not make their runs because
[00:58:08] of my decision to go into the valley I should have thought about art air assets but I was too blinded
[00:58:15] by my own ambition with my combat experience on full display it started to dawn on me at last
[00:58:22] had I made a mistake what if somebody got hit during the delay I'd caused I'd keep my radio and
[00:58:27] reported that we would be pulling out of the valley and climbing up the north face of the
[00:58:31] tea intersection to link up with our element there once we were consolidated on the north ridge
[00:58:37] and our security was set for what was surely be a long night ahead Jaydee came looking for me
[00:58:42] as he approached I could see he was livid what the hell were you doing and dignitely I told him I
[00:58:48] was trying to go to the aid of my brothers he looked at me like I just spit on his wife
[00:58:54] that was a stupid thing you did red you could have gotten people killed his words made me even
[00:59:00] more right to sleep in dignity I fired back at him the boys were in trouble and I went to their
[00:59:05] aid I did what I needed to be done in the moment Jaydee refused to accept that I tossed out a
[00:59:11] similar situation that occurred in Afghanistan a few years before as if established establishing
[00:59:16] precedence would help my case Jaydee knew the mission too and he cut me off with not the
[00:59:21] same at all red they didn't have air support available I didn't know I know he did I shouted back
[00:59:27] you delayed it with what you did Jaydee roared at last when it was clear to Jaydee that his words
[00:59:33] were not sinking in he ended the argument currently he said we'll deal this when we after when we
[00:59:38] get back to Canada hard he turned and stalked off I watched him leave and struggled with my own
[00:59:44] thoughts had I really made that big of a mistake no no way I went to help when is that ever wrong
[00:59:58] bro that's rough you know a lot of people read that section who don't have
[01:00:07] tactical background and they don't fully understand they're like oh man no you did the heroic thing
[01:00:13] you went down into the battle you know you tried to take the fight to the enemy but
[01:00:17] no I tried to explain to them you know you don't have a tactical understanding you know there are so
[01:00:21] many things that were done wrong there that it literally and this story would be so different
[01:00:29] if something had actually happened and the potential for something to have gone wrong is true
[01:00:34] the roof I mean you've been an Afghanist and I mean you know the fighting positions and basically
[01:00:39] I took myself off a very advantageous high ground position that we owned down into the valley
[01:00:45] a thousand feet below I mean there could have been hundreds of fighting positions and caves above
[01:00:50] me that any one single fighter could have just decimated us and I know what have been one thing
[01:00:55] if I got myself killed but I pulled a young team guy machine gunner down with me so I placed this
[01:01:02] guy's life in jeopardy and you know the funny thing is you know I tried to paint it in that moment
[01:01:09] arguing with J.D that I was doing the right thing I'm taking the fight to the enemy I'm you know
[01:01:14] supporting my brothers and all this BS you know the reality was I wanted to get in the fight
[01:01:20] at that point I had been on the edge of a lot of fire fights and you know and even
[01:01:26] fighting I'm in until you get in there you haven't proved yourself and I wanted to prove myself
[01:01:33] I wanted to prove myself both as a seal as a fighter and as a leader and this was another moment
[01:01:40] just like the general where I thought here's my opportunity and and I was so unwilling to listen
[01:01:51] you know that I had made a mistake and the reality is if I had owned it in that moment it probably
[01:01:57] would not have been as bad as it was but the mere fact that I just planted my flag on that spot and
[01:02:04] was like screw you you're wrong I'm right and I did the right thing I think just turned what was
[01:02:11] a fire into a raging inferno yeah yeah no that's definitely rough and I think also
[01:02:22] from a from a tactical perspective people make mistakes like this like it can happen and it can
[01:02:28] happen and you know I talk about being able to detach and that's something that I definitely learned
[01:02:33] in the seal teams and it was I think one of the most advantageous skills for a leader especially
[01:02:40] a combat leader to have is to be able to to step back from the situation as it's unfolding
[01:02:46] because if you fully knew hey we've got air overhead and they're in a firefight and if I go
[01:02:54] down there we won't be able to use air support you wouldn't have done this even even a 60
[01:03:01] gunner you know even a pig gunner would say oh okay no I need to I need to let that that unfold
[01:03:06] but you know you're excited to get down there and and get in the fight is definitely you know
[01:03:13] let's something that that can grab a hold of of anyone if they're not careful and and again
[01:03:20] it's what we just talked about with you at that moment put yourself ahead of the mission ahead of
[01:03:25] the team and and then yeah I mean this idea of ownership and you know when I when I
[01:03:32] kick off the book that I wrote with a extreme ownership you know kicks off with a blue on blue
[01:03:38] and you know it was it was a lot of bad things happening there was a lot of moving parts going on
[01:03:43] it was a horrible situation and a rocky soldier got killed several more got wounded one of my
[01:03:47] guys got wounded and I can tell you right now like I think if I would have said hey this wasn't
[01:03:54] my fault blame it on someone else I think I would have gotten fired about in about three seconds
[01:03:59] because it's just a it's a bad situation unfold and yeah you plant in the flag on that is
[01:04:08] is rough and and I mean your humility and putting this out there is awesome and people can
[01:04:15] learn so much from that because if you recognize how easily you and you know okay let's let's
[01:04:20] let's paint you in a bad light that you were young and you were but let's paint you in a good
[01:04:24] light even with you had those qualities of being hyper aggressive and you wanted to get in the
[01:04:28] fight and and you're you were a little bit arrogant you're still a team guy that's trying to do
[01:04:32] good job but wasn't like you were trying to do a bad job so to recognize like hey even if you're
[01:04:37] well-intentioned if you don't pay attention to these things they can grab hold of you and they can
[01:04:43] pull you in a wrong direction and and you look up and and you're you're you're planting your flag
[01:04:48] and and putting up your defenses around an indefensible position which is where you ended up here
[01:04:54] and and you nailed it with the idea you know it's something I know you talked people about a business
[01:05:00] I talk about I think it's no different probably and fighting you know you've got to let the
[01:05:05] battle feel developed sometimes we have this natural instinct that when something bad happens when
[01:05:11] a crisis happens we feel this you know oh my god I got to react immediately before we actually
[01:05:16] take the time and even in a gunfight you typically have a few seconds and it's amazing how much
[01:05:22] information we can process in a few seconds before we react and move and so that was one problem
[01:05:31] and the other problem and you know was I was driven by this relationship
[01:05:39] issue and it's funny you know the individual the retired master chief that you were with on you know
[01:05:45] Thursday who was I served under him twice later we had talked about that exact situation
[01:05:52] and he had given me advice later and he said never let your personal feelings get in the way of
[01:05:57] your professional relationships and I had I absolutely let my personal feelings drive that and that
[01:06:03] was probably the biggest eff you moment you know like I said if it'd been anybody else but my
[01:06:08] hatred for him had grown to the point that I was just like you know let me show you buddy you know and
[01:06:14] so all these things you know dangerous you know that not only did you know all these things you
[01:06:19] have to be careful of I mean this is what falls under you know a lot of people call these different
[01:06:24] things and my Pentagon of peak performance I call it emotional leadership so your ability to
[01:06:29] attach yourself for a second and say okay I'm not going to let my own personal feelings drive this
[01:06:33] because what's going on around me my ability to lead and make the right decisions is more critical
[01:06:38] than what I feel and obviously you know I had not learned those lessons yet I was on that
[01:06:45] on that glide path and at this point I was on the glide path down I was crashing and burning rough rough
[01:06:52] going back to the book back at Canahar I heard the first whispers about me floating around the team
[01:06:57] the men had nicknamed me Rambo Red though some may think being compared to Stallone's lone wolf
[01:07:03] silver screen icon was a compliment with our community it was a supreme insult in the seal teams there's
[01:07:09] no room for individualism foundations of our success rest on mutual cooperation and communication
[01:07:17] alone wolf like Rambo could destroy a team with catastrophic effects on the battlefield
[01:07:24] after we debriefed the mission J.D. Richardson took me into his makeshift's office and said
[01:07:30] red your operational abilities have been called into question we're sending you back to
[01:07:33] the bathroom to meet with the seal and we'll discuss this further when the rest of the team gets back. I was stunned
[01:07:40] at worst I was starting to expect something more than a wrist slap but nothing like that.
[01:07:46] I was being sent back to the rear out of combat nothing can ever be more humiliating for a warrior
[01:07:54] I trained my entire adult life for this and now I had been told I didn't measure up.
[01:07:58] I felt like a mule kick to the gut. I heard rumblings that senior chief carry wanted to see my
[01:08:06] triedent taken away. Behind the scenes he was pushing for a triedent review board to determine my
[01:08:13] fate the months of infighting between us had been bad enough now he was trying to destroy my career.
[01:08:20] I was sick at the thought of losing my triedent over a single bad moment in a valley whose
[01:08:30] name nobody back home would ever know and whose location would not matter to anyone but a handful
[01:08:35] of men who had fought in it. Ensign Redmond had demonstrated a consistent pattern of bad decision
[01:08:42] making. I fought again about my screaming match with senior chief carry during the NATO exercise.
[01:08:47] When it ended what did I see in the eyes of what did I see in the eyes of my teammates?
[01:08:53] Embarrassment. This wasn't really about one moment in the valley was it Jay. I had to face that
[01:09:00] fact I rubbed my ankle temples. I felt like my head was going to explode from the pressure building
[01:09:06] inside of it my life was being destroyed and I had made myself vulnerable to these attacks with my
[01:09:10] own actions. If I was allowed to continue to operate stories of this deployment which circulate through
[01:09:16] the teams. If I go to my next platoon with my reputation and tatters who would follow my lead.
[01:09:24] Sitting neatly on the wooden crossbar on the floor beside my bed my holstered
[01:09:30] sick sour p226 sat well-oiled and cleaned. I leaned over and pulled it out.
[01:09:38] I knew around was already in the chamber but I drew back the slide and took a look to make sure.
[01:09:46] We called this a press check and it confirmed what I already knew. My gun was ready to go.
[01:09:53] As I held the pistol I fought of the great samurai warriors who if disgraced would commit ritual suicide.
[01:10:02] Part of me willed my hand to raise the sig to press it firmly to my temple.
[01:10:06] My life is over. There's nothing left but an honorable exit.
[01:10:14] I glanced over at the desk and saw a picture of my beautiful life, Erica.
[01:10:18] The image of her face riveted my attention. Her easy-going smile, her eyes, a light and lively,
[01:10:24] always quick to laugh and offer love and compassion. What would this do to her? After all she
[01:10:32] sacrificed for me, would my death snuff out the life of her gorgeous eyes? With the bullet
[01:10:39] I put in my temple. I'd leave her the burden of my failed career and it took it to a lifetime
[01:10:45] of grief. The kids would live under that cloud as well.
[01:10:50] You know it's interesting a lot of people who have not read my book or maybe they have read it
[01:11:06] in the gloss over this but they will wrongly assume that my injuries and that ambush and the
[01:11:18] aftermath of that ambush were the hardest thing I've ever been through. And I tell them absolutely
[01:11:25] not. By far that moment right there and that period of time in my life about a,
[01:11:32] that was about a four month period, maybe five months that journey to the bottom.
[01:11:38] And I was almost at rock bottom at that point and this is where the psychology of humans is an
[01:11:50] interesting thing because all of us have that little voice that lives inside of us. I call mine
[01:11:58] my demon and my demon has been my greatest pusher because he tells me what I can't do and he also at
[01:12:08] times can be the most dangerous thing out there because they will push you to do things or wrong,
[01:12:14] they will push you to do things and tell you you can't do things. And it was in that moment that I
[01:12:19] literally was listening to that that you know you will never recover. You know your career is over.
[01:12:26] There's no way you're going to come back from this. The guys are never going to follow you again.
[01:12:32] All these lies. These are lies that we tell ourselves and I think it's really important you know
[01:12:37] if there's anything about me. I tell people that I am an expert on overcoming adversity failure
[01:12:44] and crisis and it doesn't matter how bad things have been you always can recover and goes back
[01:12:50] to those three rules of leadership. You just once again go back to leading yourself and in
[01:12:56] that moment though I was so crushed, so crushed because I had convinced myself that I had done the right
[01:13:06] thing and unfortunately I still believe that and I just saw myself as a victim who had no way
[01:13:12] that I could recover and you know it's sad and you know you know that God moment that I glance
[01:13:19] to over because I don't think if I had made them a stake or wherever I was I'm not having pictures
[01:13:24] of my wife and kids right there I probably wouldn't have done it because I just felt so hopeless
[01:13:30] and then I was ashamed honestly for thinking that and thinking about the impact I would even
[01:13:36] them. So I'd love to say that was the catalyst of starting to climb out of that hole but I
[01:13:42] actually continued to spiral down over the next couple of months until finally you know my you know
[01:13:49] that moment occurred right after you know my judgment had been set upon me which really I was
[01:13:56] very fortunate because I should have been grateful because really what they could have done is said
[01:14:01] you're out of here you know we're sending you out of the teams you're going to go before
[01:14:04] try to review board and they didn't you know the CEO believed in me he said you know you've done
[01:14:09] a lot of great things you've had some amazing moments you've just you've got some flaws you've got some
[01:14:14] arrogant flaws and you definitely we need to work on your decision making
[01:14:23] leadership abilities so that's what they did it's it's you know when I was reading this part
[01:14:33] it's it's it's I don't I don't think you could have I don't think a human being I don't think you
[01:14:38] could explain I don't think will Shakespeare could explain to someone that's not in the teams
[01:14:46] what it feels like to be in the teams and to feel like maybe that's not going to be your life anymore
[01:14:54] that's rough man and I don't think I mean you did your best and like I said I don't think it's just
[01:15:00] too to explain and I mean I guess you do it because you explain listen you were at a point where
[01:15:05] if you couldn't be in the teams you didn't want to be alive that's where you were at right there
[01:15:12] and I guess that does explain it I think it might be hard for people to relate to but like for people
[01:15:18] like you and me that grew up literally whole adult life in the sealed teams I can't even imagine
[01:15:26] if at the in the in the in the in the highlight of that moment of being deployed in combat you just
[01:15:33] lost your your comrades and arms from your task unit and to be told okay you can't do this job anymore
[01:15:41] I mean like you said and again I think it's going to be hard for people to understand
[01:15:46] that it seems like you you would never want to you wouldn't want to live at all and then just
[01:15:51] to add this on to what you're saying and I say this every time that I talk about these kind of personal
[01:15:57] storms that people get into and I've just got to say this in case someone hasn't heard me say it before
[01:16:06] when you're in that storm it seems like it's goes forever in every direction anyone on the outside
[01:16:13] would anyone ten feet away from you would look at you and say oh yeah you you made some mistakes
[01:16:17] you need to you need to get back on the horse you need to get back out there here's what's going
[01:16:20] to help you get fixed here's what gets you back on but when we're it we every direction you look
[01:16:25] is black and you think you're not getting out and team guys don't play around either at all going
[01:16:31] back to the book so you decide okay I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna stick it out you're on your way back
[01:16:37] I've made my way my way back to my hooch when I entered our living quarters I walked by our
[01:16:42] message board and saw notes crawled next to my name why don't you go ahead and kill yourself
[01:16:48] I stared at the words for I don't know how long the hallway was empty nobody had been standing
[01:16:54] around waiting to see my reaction that's team guys there's no mercy in a seal too there's not you
[01:17:03] know I've often thought about that and you know the deal we have incredibly dark humor so I
[01:17:09] often wonder what somebody just tried to lighten the mood and kind of shock me into hey dude come
[01:17:17] out of it you know go fix yourself I've always I've often wondered that or were they serious and
[01:17:23] just like dude you're a disgrace yeah we don't and and I know for a fact I mean there was a point
[01:17:28] right before we left on that deployment a couple weeks later where you know guys were being
[01:17:34] divvyed up and where they were going next so next well tune next leadership and they were asked you know
[01:17:39] who who do you want to work with you know who do you want to work under and and they unacquipically
[01:17:47] wrote we don't want to work with red so this was an additional blow that really kind of reinforced
[01:17:52] team and you you you you got some you got some work to do except I'll be honest I wasn't at that point
[01:18:00] yet you weren't there yeah I was still at rock bottom you know you talk about the storms
[01:18:03] I talk about life ambushes and this was a major life ambush one of the first major life
[01:18:10] ambushes I'd ever encountered and I literally was on the axe taking withering fire and I couldn't
[01:18:19] figure out how to get out of it and you were doing your best to return fire with your pistol yes
[01:18:24] and in this case I was going to return one round thinking that was going to fix things I'm going
[01:18:29] to I'm going to I'm right yeah I'm going to maintain this position right here and I'm going to win
[01:18:34] no actually you're not you need to you need to look around you need to maneuver so you do end up
[01:18:41] keeping your tried it because obviously there were some guys that that believed like you said
[01:18:46] believed in you and saw that you had the potential and actually sometimes people ask me what makes
[01:18:53] a guy get fired or not get fired and for me it's like almost 100% if the guy
[01:19:00] lacks humility they're going to get fired or if they if they if no one if I would see a guy that
[01:19:05] had no humility whatsoever and I didn't see a crack it'd be like okay this guy's a lost cause
[01:19:10] he's never going to listen to anyone you can't coach someone that lacks humility completely
[01:19:14] so or you can't help though they think they're going to sit on the axe and just get shot up
[01:19:19] that's the way it's going to be so somebody saw that hey we can get through to this guy you know he's a
[01:19:24] good team guy and more importantly to that point and this is a great leadership point and
[01:19:28] organizational point not only are they going to sit there and take those hits because they're
[01:19:33] too arrogant to be willing to move they're going to pull everybody else down with them and that's
[01:19:38] where it gets really dangerous I mean especially in our community where lives are on the line
[01:19:42] yeah I mean if they're unwilling to learn or humble themselves enough they're going to get somebody
[01:19:47] else killed and that was the big concern at that point and man I've got to give Kudos to my
[01:19:52] commanding officer who is a friend of this day he saved my career because I wasn't exhibiting humility
[01:19:58] you know I was fighting back I was I did the right thing I'm the victim here you know I'm just
[01:20:03] being thrown under the bus and thankfully he had enough faith in me I guess he had seen enough good
[01:20:10] that he said I think we can fix him yeah good man and one of the things that they do to fix you
[01:20:17] in the seal teams is send you to range your school I want to full vacation and I would say
[01:20:24] there's a small there's some people that go to range your school because they want to go to
[01:20:28] range your school right on but oftentimes in the seal teams range your school and I wouldn't even
[01:20:33] call it punishment but it's it's like a reeducation and that's definitely something that has always
[01:20:42] been and that's what they do with you okay they're going to they're going to send you to a really
[01:20:46] tough training school where it's not just a tough training school where you get weeded out you learn
[01:20:50] some tactics you learn to you learn leadership and I did not go to range your school but you know
[01:20:56] it's a great school everyone I know that the range is that I know are awesome guys so great school
[01:21:00] but oftentimes we use it in the seal teams maybe punishment is the wrong word in some cases I know
[01:21:07] it's been punishment occasionally a guy I want to go there but generally guys I mean generally
[01:21:13] guys are working so I'm not going to go to range your school you end up getting the range of
[01:21:18] school and here we go sick hungry burning with resentment because as you said you're not at this point
[01:21:23] you're still like oh this is this this is crap I don't deserve this yeah I was to say I was better
[01:21:31] is it understatement yeah burning with resentment I went into the first few days without my
[01:21:38] heart or mind engaged the first week of Ranger School is nothing but a gut check long days with
[01:21:42] minimal sleep exposure the elements in constant physical and mental evolutions to get those who
[01:21:46] don't want to be there to quit teamwork leadership within a circle of peers and decision making
[01:21:52] under stressful conditions where the objective of this first phase as a seal I should have
[01:21:55] represented my community in the best possible manner while by displaying leadership a commitment
[01:22:00] to teamwork and a willingness to overcome obstacles instead my actions showed me to be arrogant
[01:22:05] ill tempered and unwilling to work with others many soldiers falsely believe that seals are like
[01:22:09] that and my actions re-simply reinforced it I failed to represent my community as anything but
[01:22:16] that stereotype so you have this bad attitude you go out on a compass course you're pretty good at
[01:22:22] land nav you think you're gonna kick ass you don't kick ass you do a bad job the black
[01:22:28] hat to the Ranger instructors here we go the black hat's chuckled with laughter damn squid got lost
[01:22:34] we should have given you a boat swabby another growl not surprising seals know how to
[01:22:38] navigate anyways I failed at something I once took great pride in not so good without your Gucci
[01:22:44] gear are you another sneered I lost it all my pent up fury frothed out of me screw this course
[01:22:50] and screw you kiss my ass I walked up to my company instructor and told them I'm out of here I
[01:22:55] quit are you sure you want to do that without thinking I said yes I was reading this book and I was like
[01:23:08] day I was thinking damn I mean holy shit yeah talk about a total breakdown of emotional
[01:23:17] leadership I mean that's your reality I had died and and here's the problem with that I had
[01:23:23] allowed this to happen by not managing myself I had allowed this I was like a pressure cooker
[01:23:32] waiting to pop off and instead of managing it and recognizing it come to grips with it I didn't
[01:23:39] and it it just manifested itself in that moment where I failed the land nav course because of my own
[01:23:48] arrogance and then you know I allowed those Ranger instructors to get under my skin in that
[01:23:52] failure instead of immediately saying well hey no big deal I could have gone back and done it again
[01:23:56] like three days later because there I wasn't the only guy that failed there were other guys that failed
[01:24:01] but instead of that I instantly just it was one additional blow that I had sustained and being at
[01:24:10] this tipping point you know I allowed them to get under my skin and snapped and it is the only
[01:24:15] thing I have ever quit in my life that I have verbally quit I mean for all intense and purposes I
[01:24:20] rang the bell in that moment and so angry and frustrated and listened to that demon that said your
[01:24:27] career is over you will never recover from this you know this is the final straw you know you had
[01:24:33] an opportunity and you missed it man so you know nobody's ever going to follow you again and everyone
[01:24:39] screwed you over and put you in this point absolutely that's why you know victim victim mentality
[01:24:46] now this is a miracle this is a miracle this is a big it's god moment that and I people don't
[01:24:53] understand this this is a miracle the kernel in charge of Ranger School happens to be friends with
[01:25:01] Vince Peterson who we talked about earlier and that's not his real name but he's a legendary
[01:25:07] seal officer and a prior Vietnam Marine battle away city by the way just a just an awesome guy
[01:25:17] and for whatever reason miracle the kernel that's in charge of Ranger School is friends with
[01:25:28] with Captain Peterson and here we go go in back to the book you're sitting there talking to the
[01:25:33] kernel Vince Peterson was the greatest natural leader I'd ever known he had a knack of expressing
[01:25:39] where the team needed to go with just a few words he'd plant seeds like his men taking ownership of the
[01:25:44] plan then watched as everything went forward with the plan when the plan succeeded and it almost
[01:25:51] always did he never took the credit he gave it to everyone else in retrospect I'm not proud that all
[01:25:57] I could manage was the fable and this goes back to something you talked about earlier in the book
[01:26:02] but at this point I was still unable to face the truth myself let alone admit it to the leader I
[01:26:07] respected above all others and so here you go your conversation with Captain Vince Peterson red
[01:26:16] do you really think Ranger School is punishment it is sir red have you ever thought that maybe
[01:26:23] there is an opportunity here sir you have a chance to learn something of value if you're willing to
[01:26:30] take it I didn't know what to say to that I'd not been trying to learn anything since I've
[01:26:35] Afghanistan I'd been trying to defend and justify you're getting ready to throw your career away red
[01:26:42] I'm not sure I have a career left sir red he said firmly what are you going to do if you get out
[01:26:49] if you come back you'll be out of the navy in a month how are you going to support your family
[01:26:54] he let that sink in I had no answer in state silent besides do you really want to go through your
[01:27:01] life having ended your career this way you can recover you control your destiny and your future
[01:27:08] you can earn back the respect of the guys if you give them something to respect if your actions demand
[01:27:14] respect I hadn't looked at it my situation from that angle red get back in that course finish it
[01:27:23] then come back with your head held high and show that you have the ability to lead that'll leave a mark
[01:27:35] yeah well and you know for people to understand I I didn't sleep a wink that night after I
[01:27:42] after I quit and I was so ashamed of what I had done and I was so convinced that there was no way I could
[01:27:50] undo it that I literally was just resigned to the fact that my career was over and when I went into that
[01:28:00] office I first spoke to the sergeant major in the sergeant major asked if I wanted to speak to anybody
[01:28:05] in the field team I don't know man I don't want to talk to anybody you know I am the failure I am
[01:28:11] broken and and then it was the kernel who asked me and I said the same thing so the mere fact
[01:28:17] and this is he didn't even offer he just started dialing so the and the mere fact he talked about
[01:28:24] this bait moment that that Vince Petersen happened to be at his phone and answered right then
[01:28:32] and and saying be on the phone and him to hand it to me and there was no way in hell I mean I had
[01:28:37] such respect for this this man there was no way I could say no and you know that conversation you
[01:28:45] know this is this is the highest levels of leadership to be able to quickly analyze the situation
[01:28:51] especially when you're working with people to understand you know okay this is where we're at
[01:28:55] this is the battlefield I'm looking at this is what I have to work with and this is what I need to
[01:29:00] do to move this person to where we're going to motivate and inspire them and I mean he did it flawlessly
[01:29:05] he'll exactly what to tell me he he told me both the good and the bad he gave me hope
[01:29:10] and he told me what happens if you don't which would be hopeless you know I will have you out of the
[01:29:15] military in less than a month and then you know I tell people that is the most succinct and powerful
[01:29:20] leadership advice I've ever been given you know people will follow you if you give them a reason to
[01:29:24] if you give them something to respect and that really is the foundation of you know the three
[01:29:30] rules of leadership I talk about lead yourself that's 80% of it you know leading others comes naturally and he was
[01:29:37] right because I left that office and the the funny thing about it though is I got off the phone
[01:29:44] and I asked the Colonel I said serve which put me back in class and he didn't miss a beat no
[01:29:55] he said instead you will go to the holding company and we will class you up with a new class a month later
[01:30:02] which is just what you needed you get rolled back for 30 days going back to the book I
[01:30:08] bent down and picked up the cigarette butt lying in the grass at my feet with a flick the butt
[01:30:14] spun into the garbage bag I'd been dragging across post with me so here you are a combat seal
[01:30:19] officer picking up cigarette butts 13 years and 13 years in as I filled my bag with litter the
[01:30:26] bit bitterness flared again I put 13 and I put in 13 and a half years I was a member of one of the
[01:30:31] most elite special operations units in modern history millions of dollars were spent preparing me
[01:30:36] training me out fitting me to handle the toughest battlefield tasks our nation can face and my
[01:30:41] own brothers have reduced me to this I stopped and thought about that statement where was the personal
[01:30:49] responsibility in it Vince Petersen's word came back to me you have an opportunity to learn here
[01:30:57] if you're willing to take it I served with good men whom I respected they turned their back on me
[01:31:06] or did they what did all this say about me a door suddenly opened in my mind the place it led to
[01:31:15] was a dark room that I had never entered inside I could see the truth about myself through the
[01:31:22] facade of lies I had built I stood at its threshold not really wanting to walk through
[01:31:30] Sunsu once said if you know your enemies and you know yourself you'll never be defeated
[01:31:36] I didn't know myself I was running blindly through life refusing to even acknowledge my weaknesses
[01:31:44] I have been an arrogant ass most of my career clearly I needed to come down to earth
[01:31:50] maybe trash detail did serve a purpose after all I guess I needed to mentally flatline before I
[01:31:59] could reconstruct myself for leadership I found another cigarette button flickered into my back the
[01:32:07] bitterness over being forced into this sort of work evaporated far from a humiliating burden it was
[01:32:14] giving me clarity I surely needed for years my attitude at hobbled relationships and endangered my
[01:32:20] career I suddenly recalled a moment years before I'd worked my tail off for months on a special
[01:32:26] project when I finished it I knew I was going to receive a significant award for the effort
[01:32:30] for whatever reason it got downgraded to a lesser award what did you do after you found out I
[01:32:36] thrown a temper tantrum I went off on one of our admin guys who had congratulated me after I
[01:32:42] received it instead of being grateful receiving any sort of acknowledgement I'd thrown the
[01:32:47] award at him I might as well have thrown it in the face of Captain Peterson who was my CEO at the time
[01:32:53] that incident stuck with my peers who witnessed it and for years after when I ran into one of them
[01:32:59] they'd remind me of it Jason Redmond Navy Achievement Medal Throar Vanguard of Leadership
[01:33:07] I can't say I looked forward to picking up trash the next morning but I didn't start the
[01:33:12] day despising what would come next I was ashamed that I'd fought so highly of myself that I saw
[01:33:18] myself as above picking up trash I realized that as a seal leader it was my responsibility to accept
[01:33:24] the example with everything I undertook there you go there you go it was you know so this is
[01:33:38] probably the point and I talked to a lot of people about this like I wish I could say that after I
[01:33:44] hung up the phone with Captain Peterson that I went back and was like you know yeah let's go let's
[01:33:52] do this you know let's crush this and instead I still was kind of finished I was on that slope
[01:33:59] down to crash that plane and I finally crashed that plane and hit really the bottom of the barrel
[01:34:07] and it was at that point that I really started to analyze myself and this something I talked to a
[01:34:11] lot of people about you know you truly have to know yourself you cannot because our weaknesses
[01:34:16] manifested themselves in the hardest times they don't come out in the good times and the good times
[01:34:22] there's no issues with it and the only way you could manage that you know it's to a mental leadership
[01:34:27] and emotional leadership at the highest level because in the hardest times and usually those
[01:34:32] in the times you've got to be managing the most is when it comes up and it was by really starting to
[01:34:38] rip myself apart and look at you know all these things that I had done and understanding
[01:34:44] oh yeah when I get into these situations I feel that you know that melt down with the
[01:34:49] Ranger instructors you know I felt that coming on I could have stopped it but I didn't I let it go
[01:34:55] you know they let the fuse and instead of tamping it you know out I let it burn and blow up
[01:35:02] so it was you know really it was these moments and this is probably the biggest thing that I can
[01:35:07] tell anybody out there it is never too late you can always come back so for for months I had convinced
[01:35:16] myself that I was a victim for months I had convinced myself there was no way to do this and for the
[01:35:21] first time when I finally looked at you know these are your weaknesses but all by the way man you
[01:35:26] got some amazing strengths and you know you need to figure out how to amplify these strengths minimize
[01:35:32] these weaknesses and and what an opportunity you have you are a seal that's in Ranger School that
[01:35:38] could crush this course set the example and come back every day is another opportunity you're going
[01:35:45] to screw up again and that's okay but you know so for the first time I saw hope standing at the
[01:35:51] front block bottom and looking up through this tunnel I saw a glimmer of light well what's what's
[01:35:58] when when you say that what I think about is what people get themselves into they box themselves
[01:36:07] into this scenario and it's exactly where you had boxed yourself into which was hey look this guy
[01:36:14] doesn't like me this guy's blaming me for that this these people have a bad attitude and you're
[01:36:20] and guess what other people you can't control and so you end up in a hopeless situation because I
[01:36:26] can't change this guy's attitude he's an asshole he doesn't like me he whatever we had to run in
[01:36:30] this person they don't trust me and I can't change that and so when you're in a situation where
[01:36:36] you can't change the situation at all because you don't have control over any of it well then guess what
[01:36:42] you're hopeless but the minute you look at yourself and you say wait a second I actually control
[01:36:50] everything that's going on right now everything people's perception of me is based on my behavior
[01:36:58] not theirs and that's what that's what I like to what Peter said you you control your destiny
[01:37:06] in your future that's that to me I highlighted that 98 times you control your destiny in your future
[01:37:14] and at this point in the book is where you saw and it took you picking up cigarette butts
[01:37:20] and it took you to that point where you say wait a second all these things that have happened to me
[01:37:25] I can get control of them and I can turn them in a better direction and yeah
[01:37:31] that's awesome and the journey began yeah that you kind of expanded a little bit more here
[01:37:41] I could not I could not change my decision but I should you're talking about this is when you're talking
[01:37:46] about you're reflecting now on what happened on your decision to go into the valley and Afghanistan
[01:37:51] that whole scenario that you got trouble for here's what you said about it I could not change my
[01:37:56] decision but I should have owned it in its aftermath I should have listened to those with more
[01:38:02] experience taking my lumps and moved forward that is how leaders grow I was so desperate to justify
[01:38:09] and defend my actions I lost sight of what to do of what I was there to do I was there to lead
[01:38:14] when necessary and to follow and call upon but above all else to accomplish the mission as part of
[01:38:18] the team instead in the aftermath I made it all about me and the defense of my ego
[01:38:24] again when you come into the office and say this wasn't my fault I was doing the right thing
[01:38:31] everyone that's looking at you is thinking he's he doesn't even see what he did wrong and that's
[01:38:36] where you talk about in this book you talk about the fact that one of the most
[01:38:41] one of the most horrible things on the battlefield is an arrogant young person that thinks
[01:38:46] there's not going to listen to anyone and you when you sit there and put up your defenses you're
[01:38:51] showing everyone that back to the book yes senior chief carry hated me we load each other but the
[01:38:56] truth he was a damn good operator in a firefight I would have wanted him there as a tactical leader
[01:39:00] in his own abrasive way he attempted to mentor me if I had put down my pride I would have seen it
[01:39:06] and I would have learned a lot from him that never happened I failed to manage our relationship
[01:39:10] and it poisoned the entire cartoon it also hurt my reputation with my teammates myself to see
[01:39:15] finally collapse to carry had not done this to me I done this all to myself I was being punished
[01:39:23] less for the decision I'd made and more for the way I'd fiercely refused to take responsibility for it
[01:39:31] the more I railed against those aligned against me the more I deserved to be punished
[01:39:36] I wasn't betrayed by my teammates I betrayed them with my selfishness it was time to grow up
[01:39:46] damn
[01:39:53] yeah it was exciting because it suddenly rangerschool suddenly became a new opportunity and
[01:39:58] really I set my sights on you know kind of interestingly enough I think all of us are super
[01:40:03] gold ribbon people and for the first time I saw an opportunity and and set a goal you know
[01:40:10] which is what I think all of us do so well at you know we we have a target to move to
[01:40:16] and now I have a path to go after it and that that path became I want to graduate the honor man
[01:40:23] of this course and set it set you know woke up the next morning firing up the guys around me
[01:40:30] and hey man we're getting ready to start up again it's going to be awesome let's go do this
[01:40:35] so yeah again I'm harping on this a little bit but just the fact that this book is so powerful
[01:40:42] because to to walk through that transition I'll tell you anybody that's red extreme ownership
[01:40:49] or anyone that listens to this podcast is going to be especially
[01:40:55] they're they're going to be having even deeper understanding because they they I talk about
[01:40:59] this all the time and to see you go down that path see where it leads and then be able to come
[01:41:05] back out be no comeback out is awesome but but it's so powerful to actually here from your perspective
[01:41:14] from someone that was in that exact position and doing those things to hear you saying it
[01:41:20] and be able to witness the turnaround it's uh it's powerful powerful stuff next morning I hit the
[01:41:27] ground running and never looked back the company I joined was full of strangers no matter I
[01:41:30] did everything full bore made sure I helped but made sure I help everyone in my squad whenever I could
[01:41:35] I was going to be the dis I was not going to be the disconnected selfish jerk I had been this
[01:41:41] go around my heart was fully invested and you kick ass in range of school you're not honor man
[01:41:50] because you find out that yeah I only find out at the very end that uh if you're rolled back
[01:41:55] you're not eligible but I didn't really well I was ranked at the top of my period of
[01:42:00] hours I mean all the instructors gave me about a man your dirge is crushing it and uh so no matter
[01:42:07] yeah it was a goal you know another great guy earned it and well deserved you end up back
[01:42:14] at the back of the teams you go back into a task unit and you're an assistant platoon commander now
[01:42:19] yeah again is this a reroll as a is it a re-reload as an assistant platoon commander or you
[01:42:25] still just super junior because you were a Steven Admiral guy no I had just made jg at this point
[01:42:32] so back then we still you know now they're kind of doing it differently a lot of us uh
[01:42:36] Steven Admiral guys did have the ability to do two pumps yeah they made me do two pumps yeah
[01:42:42] they wanted me to do two pumps and this is I mean for those who are not aware there was a little bit of
[01:42:48] uh impetus on me because they basically so as officers if you ever get a letter
[01:42:56] or a reprimand and you're record it effectively ends your career I mean if it that official letter
[01:43:01] goes into your record you're done you'll remember you won't make the next rank you're going to be
[01:43:04] out and they basically wrote this letter uh my outgoing CEO who was an afghanist and to my
[01:43:10] incoming CEO who was taken over the team and they basically said you made some mistakes and we
[01:43:17] questioned your tactical decision making and leadership abilities but we're going to give you a second
[01:43:22] chance so this letter and I was you know I was in the office with the CEO and he put it into
[01:43:28] his safe and basically said this will be burned or shredded at the end of the deployment
[01:43:35] if you show us you have the ability and if you don't it will go into your current and they had
[01:43:39] my officer record right there and they were like it will go right here into your record so and I
[01:43:45] think they knew the power of that also and it gave me additional momentum and I think this is
[01:43:50] important in leadership you know it's I mean same way we raise our kids there's got to be accountability
[01:43:54] you can't just tell somebody hey this what I want you to go out and do we have to let
[01:43:58] lay out the right and left limits and tell them this is where you're going to go and you have to
[01:44:02] have those things that hold you accountable so I don't know if I necessarily needed that I was
[01:44:07] pre-fired up on wanting to get back and set the example and redeem myself but I will say in the
[01:44:14] back of my mind I knew hey man you you got a you got a crush yeah that's it that's a I don't
[01:44:20] know if that's happens in all the military but in the seal teams there's there's a lot of
[01:44:27] letters that get shredded and part of it is like a cover your ass like when I was a commander
[01:44:34] a part of it's cover your ass because hey look you screwed up and if you screw up again and everyone
[01:44:40] knows that this is happened multiple times and you haven't been counseled about it I look like an idiot
[01:44:44] and not what I look like an idiot I am an idiot if I'm not documented that you screwed something
[01:44:48] up so I'm going to document this and make sure that you know I've got a documented but by the way
[01:44:54] I'm not trying to kill your career if you can turn around and you can get back on the path cool
[01:44:57] this thing's going in the shredder but here it is got to get some ways to go before this thing
[01:45:02] goes in that shredder yeah it's a pretty common thing in the seal teams not too common but um
[01:45:07] so you're in a task unit your assistant between commander and things are going good and you
[01:45:14] you were a lot more self aware and again you have to read the whole book to get all these details
[01:45:20] about that transition you were a lot more self aware and you started off as mobility commander
[01:45:26] and then eventually you started working with the assault team and here we go back to the book
[01:45:32] after that first successful mission on the assault team I had earned a spot in the mix
[01:45:36] and harmonized with the task units battle rhythm, arpotoons, rotated back and forth between
[01:45:40] running mobility or running the assault force the pace was intense and the mission started to blend
[01:45:46] together in a groundhog day sort of way I may have lost my way years ago but through God
[01:45:53] and a willingness to work hard and learn my strengths and weaknesses I had earned my way back
[01:45:58] into the brotherhood and you detail some some good missions some pretty hot missions you know
[01:46:09] you guys got some pretty good gun fights and you're getting towards the end of deployment
[01:46:13] and your TU commander he's he you have a little conversation with him and he says we're going to
[01:46:19] have you run as ground force commander on the next one for a second what this really meant failed
[01:46:25] to register really JP in the date at this point in the book JP is a guy he's your task unit commander
[01:46:32] JP nodded yeah I spoke to Eric and Paul and we all agree you're ready for it besides as
[01:46:36] a help get you up the speed to be a platoon commander at length I finally answered that's awesome
[01:46:42] thanks for the opportunity you earned it bro he turned to leave I had done it my career was back
[01:46:48] on track it last I knew some in our community would always hate me from my mistakes but I had
[01:46:53] earned back the trust of the men I served and fought with since 2004 I'd been an officer within
[01:46:58] our community rank does not automatically make you a leader your character makes you a leader your
[01:47:03] actions make you a leader rank is almost irrelevant after years of self is focused on myself I'd
[01:47:10] finally understood what it meant to lead men of this caliber and what was required of a man in
[01:47:17] order to be part of this most elite of all fraternities the letter in the safe would be destroyed
[01:47:23] for an instant the horizon ahead held no boundaries and again I skipped this was not like an
[01:47:30] easy process man you worked your way right back up you started with small jobs you made some
[01:47:35] mistakes that you you know you you talk about the you late you laced the marine colonel and
[01:47:44] he was not happy yeah not happy so quick story you're doing deep confliction and you can't
[01:47:51] identify and so you escalate the deep confliction to a visible laser and then you know they
[01:47:57] realize that that both sides were friendly and you was a marine core colonel that you were
[01:48:02] lacing and he wasn't too happy about that and when you when when your commander brought you in
[01:48:08] and said hey what that'll happen you took ownership of it and said hey here's the mistakes I made
[01:48:12] instead of blaming everyone else so big big turning point and and I think this is an important point
[01:48:22] you know you you know I mean within our community it's pretty hard to turn around when you've
[01:48:26] made a major mistake like that I mean all of you guys get out we've had guys that have been sent to
[01:48:32] the fleet and some never come back and then some come back and redeem themselves but in a command some
[01:48:38] just get put into a ostracized position of low importance inside the seal teams right and it's like
[01:48:46] oh cool yep we yeah oh yeah you're stationed over there yep we know what you're doing and we know
[01:48:50] all about you and and we get that you still have your tried and and you're still considered a seal but
[01:48:57] you're not a team guy and we all know that yeah you would not be invited to go back to an
[01:49:01] operational billet you know you're relegated to training and all that you know other things so
[01:49:05] I mean it really is for people to understand I mean our community is driven by amazingly talented
[01:49:12] warriors and at the end of the day you know the leader they rely on the guys next to them and their
[01:49:18] leaders to make those good decisions so if you've made bad decisions I mean to be able to come back
[01:49:22] and them say okay you know you've shown us that we can trust you once again to lead and make the right
[01:49:28] decisions so it really I tell people there's a hardest road I've ever walked I mean when I got wounded
[01:49:36] I was like I got this yeah the the trust when broken is extremely hard to rebuild and I get asked
[01:49:46] a lot how do you build trust with people either whether it's been broken or whether you don't know
[01:49:50] them and it's very clear in the book and again this is why people should get the book the way that
[01:49:55] you're asking to commander and I'm trying to think of the alias because I know them to jp the way that
[01:50:01] you're asking to commander is very common to what a guy does he gives you a little bit of
[01:50:04] responsibility and let you let you earn a little bit of trust and then once you've earned a little bit
[01:50:11] of trust gives you a little bit more responsibility once you earned a little bit more trust and that
[01:50:15] continued going this is this is now a six month appointment plus a year long work up or whatever so
[01:50:20] keys been giving you a little bit of trust and you've been earning and earning and earning
[01:50:24] back your trust and you are digging out of a deficit right that's a lot harder so that is a lot harder
[01:50:30] when if you show up as a new guy you're like a zero right because and then you're going to get a
[01:50:34] little trust and then maybe you get to a a point two and then you get a little bit more
[01:50:38] responsibility and you get to a point four you were at like a negative nine and so you had to just
[01:50:44] you don't earn your way back to get to zero and then once you read zero then you had to build up and
[01:50:51] at this point in the book and you did some again I'm sorry I'm not going to go into everything but
[01:50:56] you know you had a pretty dynamic potentially horrible situation unfolding big gunfight going on
[01:51:04] some head counts not accounted for people and you took charge of the situation and that probably
[01:51:09] is what you know jumped you up a bunch of levels in people going okay you know what we can trust this
[01:51:15] guy and and and then you continued these to build that trust and up to the point where and I
[01:51:20] need to explain this because I didn't up to the point where the task unit commander said okay
[01:51:26] one of these next coming missions we're going to make you the ground force commander and what that
[01:51:30] means for civilians is that means you're in charge of everything you're going to go out you're going to be
[01:51:35] the this the main leader the senior leader not even the main they're going to be the senior leader the
[01:51:40] guy in charge of everything that's happening on the battlefield that's what the ground force commander is
[01:51:45] and you're now being it's ended up like you're being told look you've yeah we want you to be
[01:51:50] the ground force commander I want these upcoming operations and that is the ultimate trust for
[01:51:56] someone to give to a subordinate is hey I want you to go out and take my job that I would normally
[01:52:02] do you go do it so pretty amazing come back humbling yeah so you're almost at the end of deployment
[01:52:16] and like an an op comes up we were one week away yeah one week away we were packing up to get ready to go home
[01:52:25] note to self those last operations be careful first and last man the first mission is in the last ones
[01:52:35] getcha you and it's the mission comes down it's one of those missions where you guys are kind of like
[01:52:41] his probably isn't going to go down it's sketchy intel high visibility if it goes and you're thinking
[01:52:46] because we get a lot of those you know this is going to happen and you get used to
[01:52:51] getting all amped up and eventually you don't even get amped up anymore you continue with your daily
[01:52:55] routine go the gym workout whatever and this particular case you guys you you literally went to the gym
[01:53:00] you're working out like normal and I didn't think there was a chance and hell this mission was going to
[01:53:05] happen and some of the guys were looking at it but I just didn't think it was going to happen it was already
[01:53:10] late so we were outside really the window you know to really try and execute and a good manner
[01:53:18] in my opinion and then there were external things you know there's some classified factors to it
[01:53:23] that I don't talk about in the book where which were other some of the really big reasons why
[01:53:27] I did not think there was any chance this was going to happen but but it does and you guys roll
[01:53:35] out on a you know alchita target and definitely you guys had the intel that bad guys expected
[01:53:46] security team expect an enemy security team expected and and again like we would hear that a lot
[01:53:53] I mean it's not like it's not like oh this intel is 100% and you're not going to do anything different
[01:54:00] they tell you there's a security of enemy security team you're like okay check we've heard that
[01:54:05] 27 times they've only been there however many times and so you always always expect it
[01:54:11] that they had there was a little more detailed information about this security detail that
[01:54:16] made it a little bit heavier than some of our regular missions I mean there were things that we knew
[01:54:25] you can't get into the day yeah I can't get into the details of a basic more solid into absolutely
[01:54:30] so it made it a little bit different and kind of raised our hackles a little more than normal
[01:54:34] but you know the process of the mission is the same I mean I know probably you up talked
[01:54:40] other people you know the guys that did the bin Laden raid the mechanics of that mission were the same
[01:54:45] it was just a level you know how we take down a target is pretty much the same regardless of where
[01:54:51] you go and it was the same for this case there were just some things that made us go maybe we should
[01:54:56] prepare a little more you guys roll on the target and the thing is get pretty intense pretty quick once
[01:55:08] you've once you've hit the target you've got it secured now we got some squirgers meaning some
[01:55:12] folks that we think have run away from the target building again I'm not going to go into the full
[01:55:16] detail of the mission which you did a beautiful job of explaining what this was like in the book and that's why
[01:55:21] people get the books they can read it but as we mentioned earlier this ends up in a firefight
[01:55:29] in your in it going back to the book I keyed my radio and called J.P. troops and contact troops
[01:55:34] and contact I have three wounded including me the machine guns were still blazing away at us
[01:55:39] and they walked their barrels right and left Chris crossing our positions with hundreds of 7.62
[01:55:45] millimeter bullets I recognize that if I didn't get a turner kit on what I thought was the
[01:55:50] stump of my left arm I was going to bleed out I looked back at Al and the rest of my team behind
[01:55:55] the tire right then Al Somme gets my feet and trying to run to join them I'll told me this later
[01:56:01] but I have no recollection of standing up after I was hit the first time the P.K.M gunner spotted me
[01:56:06] moving and laid on his trigger according to Al I'd only taken a step or two in my head whip sawed
[01:56:12] forward and my body spun around to the left I fell limp to the ground the team fought I'd been killed
[01:56:22] situation we were in and called in an immediate fire mission the AC 130 crew turned it down the first
[01:56:27] time two times before finally making all acknowledge that if anything happened to us it was Al's fault
[01:56:34] not the gun ships the first 25 millimeter shells hit the thick at behind the enemy
[01:56:38] I lay less than 50 feet from the enemy machine gun that had gaged me I drifted in and out of
[01:56:44] consciousness the entire time awake in a fog of confusion one minute out cold the next
[01:56:51] Al risked his life to save me during a low and fire he rose from behind the tire and charged over to me
[01:56:58] Sean laid down cover fire as Al ran into the teeth of that P.K.M bullets cracked and whitt whined around
[01:57:05] him but he reached me and dragged me back behind the tire where he put a turnic it on my mangled arm
[01:57:10] I remember nothing of this and I didn't know Al had even moved me to the tire until months after the
[01:57:16] fire fight the MetaVac bird arrived a few minutes later and the guys helped us aboard once we were
[01:57:23] airborne and out of harm's way the remainder of the task unit fell back to the original target compound
[01:57:29] to wait for extract but the fight was over the gun shot gun ship detected more movement in the thicket
[01:57:35] enough was enough Al called in 105 millimeter howitzer from the AC 130 in turn the thicket into a smoking
[01:57:41] crater months later when J.P. visited me at home I learned that the Alkai to commander had
[01:57:46] fled the house when he heard our birds coming at the start of the mission he left part of his
[01:57:51] personal security detail behind the fight a battle he had no stomach for himself and they died to the last
[01:57:58] man after inflicting three casualties on us months later another seal team ran the Alkai to
[01:58:04] commander to the ground and killed him justice served so that fire fight and again people should
[01:58:22] read the book to get the details of that fire fight but just reading about you wounded which I've
[01:58:29] covered that part and now you're up and running and get shot in the face and down everything
[01:58:36] guys think you're dead and you know I should have covered this with a little bit more detail but
[01:58:44] you know you're trying to make calls you're trying to let people know what's going on you're trying
[01:58:47] to decipher the situation because it was a rough situation that you guys were in and you end up you know
[01:58:57] get next-directed your boys took care of you they did I owe my life to those guys I mean they
[01:59:05] fought back that gunship overhead you know for special operations squadron I owe my life to those
[01:59:11] guys that was the closest fire mission ever in the Iraq war we were well well they wouldn't
[01:59:17] bring in that mission because we were we were literally within any danger growth close programmer
[01:59:23] there were the machine guns that had me pinned down we're about 45 feet 50 feet away so
[01:59:30] Al did an amazing job I mean this was his third combat deployment you know experience jac experience
[01:59:37] team leader and you know really I mean he hung it all out there exposing himself to get me
[01:59:43] say my life with my turn a kid and the rest of the guys you know fought amazingly to get us
[01:59:49] out of there and get off the axe and survive and yeah I wanted Al to get a navy cross
[01:59:57] they they downgraded it to a silver star to this day you know I'll tell anyone he deserved
[02:00:02] uh navy cross but all those guys did an amazing job I owe my life my life to them and the gunship
[02:00:10] it and obviously you know in the beginning of the book you know the thought that I'd lost my
[02:00:15] arm and what happened is actually I guess my arm was pinned under me so when I reached for it I
[02:00:21] couldn't feel it and you know it just stunned all my nerves there was an earth damage too right yeah yeah
[02:00:27] so when when uh and this is kind of an interesting point that I talked to people about and
[02:00:33] something I'm speaking on all the time now this idea of surviving so having trained in a career
[02:00:39] we we where we learn how to execute ruthless and devastating violence of action in an ambush
[02:00:46] to crush the enemy and destroy the enemy in that kibblesome on the axe and to now be on the
[02:00:53] flip side of that coin and be in a very well executed ambush I mean they had us it was an L-A-A-M-B-O-S
[02:00:59] they had us caught very good crossfire you know and just sheer will for us to fight and at least
[02:01:07] and push back enough that it gave us a window and and by the and sheer we were sheer lock that
[02:01:15] there happened to be that tractor tire back there at least one point of cover because beyond that there
[02:01:20] was nothing but thousands of yards of open Iraqi desert but to be in that ambush in that devastating
[02:01:29] and withering crossfire I stepped out of that ambush into another ambush and the next ambush was
[02:01:37] what I call a life ambush suddenly here I was I'd been on this amazing journey of failure
[02:01:44] growth understanding gaining experience in wisdom and redemption and you know career back on track
[02:01:53] getting ready to screen and go over to the next level seal team was my goal when I came back
[02:02:01] from that deployment I was doing that and suddenly to find myself laying in a hospital bed
[02:02:08] so weak I needed nurses to help me go to the bathroom from the amount of blood loss I had
[02:02:13] the very first thing I woke to was the doctors telling me most likely that we're gonna have to
[02:02:17] empty tape my arm I had no use of my hand I had not seen myself in the mirror my face was totally
[02:02:23] blown apart I had lost my nose cheekbone my eye my bitten the bullet traveled the bullet hit me
[02:02:32] right in front of the ear traveled through my face and exit at the right side of my nose so it took off
[02:02:36] most of my nose took out most of my cheekbone it vaporized my orbital floor so my eye actually
[02:02:44] dropped down into the newfound hole in my face so at damage my eye muscles I broke all the bones
[02:02:50] above my eye it shattered my jaw broke my jaw to my chin so I had not seen myself laying in the
[02:02:58] hospital bed and I'll be honest I was I wasn't ready to look at myself I knew I had tubes coming
[02:03:04] out of everywhere I was tricked I was wired shot at a stomach tube that's how they were feeding me so I
[02:03:09] stepped into this next ambush I was you know with this thought of where do I go from here and
[02:03:20] I'll be honest for the first couple of days I kind of struggled and I think this is natural so
[02:03:24] we talk about this idea being pinned down on the X and how we have to survive in whether it's a real
[02:03:31] world ambush or it's a life ambush for anyone that's out there that's encountered some sort of
[02:03:35] devastating event and I classify life ambushes an event that'll forever leave physical
[02:03:40] mental or emotional scars on you you have to get off the X so I'm laying there in this hospital bed
[02:03:46] and I'm like kicking myself I'm like god man what if I you do the things that humans do when
[02:03:52] bad things happen we start to think well what if I had done this or what if I had done that or
[02:03:57] and you know what if I could go back and change this fact and I did that for probably I don't know
[02:04:05] 36 hours after I got to Bethesda you know just kind of lost in my mind thinking about it and at one
[02:04:10] point I just said stop you can't go back and change the past man what's happens happen the only thing
[02:04:17] you can do is shape the future and I thought back to that journey that I had been on from ground zero
[02:04:24] from that broken man in Afghanistan ready to kill myself to where I had come and I said dude
[02:04:32] the only thing you can do from here is shape the future so get off the X and go and I never
[02:04:39] look back from that point and I tell people that you know you have to push yourself into those
[02:04:45] zones and discomfort so that you can handle these hard situations when they come because if you've
[02:04:50] never forge yourself if you've never been put into these areas it discomfort you're going to be
[02:04:55] crushed when they come because you're not going to be ready I was so ready for that moment when it
[02:05:01] came I mean you know took me about 36 hours after I got home to figure it out but still that's
[02:05:05] pretty quick for a devastating injury like that and I never looked back you're your in Bethesda and just
[02:05:13] just to kind of give a little bit of detail around that you got some doctor named female doctor named
[02:05:19] Dr. Malard and here we go back to the book kind of she's about to list your kind of your situation
[02:05:25] that you're in with energetic bluntness she laid out the extent to my wounds the machine gun bullet
[02:05:31] entered just in front of my right ear it shattered my job vaporized my right or burrow floor destroyed
[02:05:36] my cheek and exit through my nose I'd suffered nerve damage as well virtually nothing was left
[02:05:41] to my cheek bone or ocular floor bones on the right side of my face she and her team was amazed
[02:05:46] I didn't suffer greater I damage so that was a blessing my nose was almost completely destroyed and
[02:05:51] we need a full reconstruction they would need to repair my shattered jaw implant a titanium
[02:05:56] plate to replace the ocular floor and would have to repair the damage to the rest of my facial
[02:06:00] bones on the right side I was still under the impression they could fix me right up and get me back
[02:06:06] into the teams not not now I was not so sure and you at this point your jaw's wires shut in your
[02:06:13] tricks so you can't talk so you write out a note how many weeks are we looking at here dock
[02:06:17] weeks she said surprised no Jay we're talking years a few years at least years it didn't even
[02:06:28] sink in at first there will be progressive surgeries each one will need to be fully healed before we
[02:06:33] can move on to the next one she went on to explain that there was no road map for the extent of the
[02:06:38] extent and nature of my wounds my case was highly complex and I would require extensive bone
[02:06:45] and skin grafts in the years ahead after she left I struggled to keep my spirits up
[02:06:52] this was news I did not want to hear yeah you know and this is an interesting fact you know
[02:07:03] I talked to a lot of other team guys about this I think a lot of us we do a really good job in the
[02:07:08] seal teams and you know I'd like to assume other military units do the same we do a really good
[02:07:13] job of preparing guys if they get killed you know page two we make sure they're all taken care of
[02:07:20] I don't think any of us ever give much thought I should if I was severely wounded I think most of us
[02:07:26] think one side of the coin is you know it'll be merely a flesh wound you know and we'll walk away
[02:07:32] and we'll get back and then the other side of the coin is I'll be killed and I was good with either of
[02:07:38] those side you know it's just kind of resigned myself to that fact so it was a whole another thing
[02:07:43] to be severely wounded and be faced with this fact that hey you may be forever disabled
[02:07:52] and it was tough for you and here's you run into this situation going back to the book one afternoon
[02:07:58] two family members came to visit us Erica took the opportunity to step out and grab some lunch for
[02:08:02] herself I talked with them for a bit which left which quickly fatigued me I started drift off before
[02:08:07] I even realized it while I was dosing I heard them whispering to each other I only got fragments of
[02:08:12] the conversation but it was enough they were full of pity for me when Erica returned and my
[02:08:18] relatives departed I wrote down all that had happened recounting it sent me into a fury again I
[02:08:24] tore off the sheet of paper and handed it to her then I thought for a minute and added never again
[02:08:30] never again would someone seal feel sorry for me I fought for my country and I'll fight to regain
[02:08:36] my health so I will ultimately be able to return to our nation's battlefields I was not here
[02:08:41] for sympathy I was here to recover to be a leader to set an example of mental fortitude it would be
[02:08:47] all too easy to give up into despair but I refused there were men and women in this complex who are
[02:08:52] far more badly wounded than I was missing limbs burned suffering brain trauma or eyesight loss
[02:08:58] I would be grateful for what I had determined to succeed in the days ahead and when you use these
[02:09:04] principles I learned over the last two years to guide me forward I wrote a note to all my visitors
[02:09:09] and asked Erica to hang it up on the door and here's what the note said attention to all who
[02:09:15] enter here if you are coming into this room with sorrow or to feel sorry for my wounds go elsewhere
[02:09:23] the wounds I received I got in a job I love doing it for people I love supporting the freedom of
[02:09:30] a country I deeply love I'm incredibly tough and will make a full recovery what is full
[02:09:38] that is the absolute utmost physically my body has the ability to recover then I will push that
[02:09:46] about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity this room you are about to enter is a room of fun
[02:09:54] optimism and intense rapid regrowth if you are not prepared for that go elsewhere from the management
[02:10:08] and awesome I mean in that picture you got sent to me by someone and eventually it got sent to everyone
[02:10:15] by everyone so it was a viral picture of that sign on your door that you eventually put in bigger
[02:10:22] writing to make sure everyone saw it you eventually you do get home and again you know it
[02:10:33] was I when I want to make a really important point about this because that that was really
[02:10:40] a learning point for me or it was a jump point and it comes back to what we talked about earlier
[02:10:48] in the beginning a little bit of the social leadership idea who you surround yourself with and in
[02:10:54] that moment I had individuals to want to express pity and I realized how dangerous that was
[02:10:59] because if I listened too long to people express that it would be easy to accept that to accept
[02:11:05] this victim mentality and I've walked that road before and I was like no way am I going to allow
[02:11:11] that to happen it is a choice and that's what people need to understand you know having a positive
[02:11:16] attitude on how you handle the situations you're in is a choice and the more you accept positivity
[02:11:23] and drive it forward the more you actually start to believe it and it will create momentum and that's
[02:11:29] really what happened with that sign I said I will not allow that to happen again no one will come
[02:11:34] in here and be sad because I refuse I will not allow it and you never know the impact of the decision
[02:11:43] that you're going to make you you never know how even though deep down inside you were like you
[02:11:48] know holy shit how do I get out of this situation but you project that positivity who you can
[02:11:53] bring with you and bring up and how much you can leave an impact of the last of lifetime
[02:11:58] that sign has gone on to help hundreds of thousands of people I've had people write me
[02:12:06] that have had cancer I've had people that have written me that have had major horrific accidents
[02:12:12] I didn't keep the sign I had it framed and it hangs in the wounded ward at Walter Reed
[02:12:18] and the bottom of the sign is like rub clean now and I'm told that all these wounded warriors
[02:12:23] whenever they go to a surgery they go by and they rub it and it just it continues to have this
[02:12:28] impact Secretary Gates wrote about the sign in his book Michelle Obama's book just came out she wrote
[02:12:35] about the sign and what the impact is so one moment of saying I'm not going to allow someone else to
[02:12:44] drive my thinking makes all the difference and I tell so many people that it is a choice it is a choice
[02:12:50] you can choose to be a victim and feel sorry for yourself or you can choose to be a vector and
[02:12:55] drive for it even if you don't believe it in the moment it doesn't matter you know say it
[02:13:01] live it and start driving forward and that belief will catch fire within you and everybody else
[02:13:07] around you know doubt about it man and and the unfortunate opposite that is when you start
[02:13:16] allowing yourself to be negative and you start listening to people that want to be negative and be
[02:13:21] and drag you down you can easily had to head yourself on that direction as well so when you make
[02:13:28] choice and make a decision on which one of those two directions you want to move in up or down
[02:13:35] we recommend you move up move forward yeah absolutely later that spring Eric and I went out to eat
[02:13:43] at a local outback steak house to celebrate the unwiring of my jaw it been almost seven months
[02:13:50] since I've been able to chew food I was still underway and confined to a wheelchair because of
[02:13:55] the grass but we both needed to night out I just you know I when I was reading this book I was like
[02:14:01] eating something whatever you know and it's just one of those things that we all take for granted
[02:14:07] every single day and you know about how that multiple prisoners of war on this podcast and
[02:14:14] you know they're eating a ball of rice once a day or ball of rice twice a day that has chips
[02:14:18] a wood in it for three years for six years and here here you are you know you're not in the
[02:14:25] prisoner of war but something as simple as eating a steak and that really like hit me hard
[02:14:33] because as you know I take steaks very seriously and to think that like for seven months no steak
[02:14:40] and the daily things and and and that always gets me thinking about the daily things that when I
[02:14:45] talk to my friends that have been wounded it's like it's the daily everyday things and as matter
[02:14:52] fact when we had Jim Web on and he was talking about one of his friends that have been wounded
[02:14:58] in Vietnam and he's like that's the daily courage like that guy was courageous in Vietnam but he's
[02:15:05] courageous every single day takes him X amount of time to get up out of bed takes him X amount of time
[02:15:10] to get his prosthetics to take some X amount of time to do normal functions that people can
[02:15:14] normally do easily he's got a struggle with them all he does in every single day without complaining
[02:15:19] daily courage and so just thinking about you in that situation man
[02:15:23] awesome I flew to Chicago almost once a month in preparation for my first surgery with Dr.
[02:15:31] Walton which he'd scheduled for July the airports and their crowds continued to be a torment
[02:15:36] little kids pointed at me and called to their mothers to look at me too people refused to talk to me
[02:15:42] they'd act ashamed or embarrassed or they'd set expressions of pity on their faces internally
[02:15:46] I raged at them are these the people I sacrificed for coming back from a ship of coming back from
[02:15:53] Chicago on one trip I just broke everyone who stared at me I treated with a sudden boo
[02:15:59] by the end of the trip though I realized I needed to do something different or the bitterness would
[02:16:03] eat me alive the game me a thought I came up with an idea I went online and designed a couple
[02:16:08] t-shirts the first one said stop staring I got shot by a machine gun it would have killed you
[02:16:14] I put an American flag on the back and called it wounded wear so
[02:16:18] are you still making wounded wear shirts so when it wears on pause for right now but it will be
[02:16:24] coming back we've got some work we're getting things online in 2019 but yeah a lot of people have
[02:16:32] asked me when it will come back it will be back I assure you yeah so this podcast is eternal so
[02:16:39] most likely when people are listening to this it is live you get it you get your wounded wear t-shirt
[02:16:45] that's right yeah you were talking about that that sign and that sign got so much attention and
[02:16:53] and was so so impactful to so many people you ended up going the overall office you ended up meeting
[02:17:00] president Bush with your family and then you ended up coming back to the White House again and we're
[02:17:07] going back to the book I went to Mike Montsour's metal vowner ceremony in the White House that
[02:17:17] April Mike was a fellow seal who had jumped on a hand grenade thrown onto a rooftop he had
[02:17:26] and saved two of his teammates in a firefighting in Ramadi he shielded his brothers with his own
[02:17:33] body and paid the ultimate price for that devotion it was deeply moving to be there to see Mike's
[02:17:41] family receive his poshmas metal of honor but while I was there I met another seal named Ryan Job
[02:17:49] he'd been part of the team three and had served with legendary sniper Chris Kyle and I rack
[02:17:55] during the 2006 campaign Ryan had been a mark 48 machine gunner for the team and during a firefight
[02:18:02] that spring of bullet head struck his weapon then hit him in the face destroying his right eye
[02:18:08] he survived and reached Bethesda much as I would a year later but nerve damage cost him as vision
[02:18:14] it is left eye the prospect of spending the rest of his life blind had to have been terrifying
[02:18:21] though he never showed it instead he announced that if he had to be blind he would be the best
[02:18:27] damn blind man there was so that's where I met you for the first time obviously uh
[02:18:35] Mikey and Ryan and Chris were all with me and task unit bruiser and you came out for the
[02:18:41] for the metal of honor ceremony for Mikey and I actually remember looking at you guys you know
[02:18:50] looking at you guys talking to each other and I actually thought I had pictures of it but I didn't
[02:18:54] I I thought I had pictures of YouTube talking but I didn't have any pictures but it was it was
[02:19:02] crazy to sit there and look at both you guys that have been you know both in shot unfortunately
[02:19:07] Ryan you know he lost vision and both eyes which obviously could have happened to you very easily
[02:19:13] and thank god you know it didn't um and you guys kind of you know I guess when you have
[02:19:20] getting shot in the head and calm and you guys kind of became bros and uh who continue on here
[02:19:26] Ryan and I bumped into each other on multiple occasions over the next several months
[02:19:29] on one of the occasions Ryan had come out to the East Coast seal teams for a wounded warrior
[02:19:34] uh benevolent organization conference as we made small talk and met different people I Ryan
[02:19:41] and another seal who had been shot in the eye were joking around and came up with the idea for a club
[02:19:46] for seals who had been shot in the head it was a very small club we decided to call the club
[02:19:52] shit seals hit in the head we unanimously voted on our motto this club sucks
[02:20:06] so yeah just just pretty awesome and that's pretty much you know that's definitely Ryan
[02:20:14] uh Backel's Job's attitude was he was just gonna have an awesome time all the time regardless
[02:20:21] what situation he was in he was gonna he was gonna he was gonna get after it and um yeah what's
[02:20:28] called to you guys meet yeah Ryan was awesome and you know he was ahead uh it was interesting because
[02:20:33] the reconstruction process that they were doing with me was the same they were doing with Ryan
[02:20:38] and obviously I was blessed to keep my vision although there were fixing things with this right
[02:20:43] eye so often I'd call him and I'd be like hey you know you had this done how to go you know
[02:20:50] what did you do do you have any recommendations like anything you know you go to the people
[02:20:54] who have experience so Ryan and I got close through that yeah just kind of learning from him
[02:21:00] well one of the this this was another bit of a of a surprise to me again this is the kind of thing
[02:21:05] that I never had to think about but here you go go back to book in the months that followed
[02:21:11] I knew that I was in for the long game the slog through surgeries and setbacks continue and again
[02:21:15] you got to read this book to realize the absolute just medical uh medical trauma that you're going
[02:21:25] through day in day out and this really drove it home to me I called it medical bud there you go
[02:21:30] it's really what it was medical buds and here's here's one thing that just hit me like a ton of
[02:21:36] bricks by the summer of 2009 I was starting to run low on the available patches of skin for
[02:21:42] grafting my body was rope with scars from surgical sites and over a dozen graphs that to me
[02:21:50] I'm thinking myself I mean you're running out of skin to graft to do to do damage repair to your face
[02:21:58] what is that process like so a lot of times they harvest the skin from you know your thighs and
[02:22:07] areas and and it wasn't that I was just running out of skin they were running on the skin because I've
[02:22:12] got quite a few tattoos so my back is totally tattooed you know you know top my arms so that's what
[02:22:19] the problem was becoming putting tattooed skin on other parts of your body is no big deal they
[02:22:24] could have cut that in a second but obviously they were like you know we did I did not want to
[02:22:29] put tattooed skin on my face so that's where we were starting to run into issues and this really
[02:22:37] is something that a lot of people don't understand with with battlefield injuries is their super
[02:22:42] dirty bombs are dirty bullets are dirty and you fall in the soil and you bleed into the soil
[02:22:50] overseas and that's dirty so the vast majority of wound warriors come home especially from this war
[02:22:58] with infection problems and there's so many guys myself included that it's not your initial
[02:23:04] injuries that are as devastating I mean obviously there's levels of devastation but for so many of
[02:23:09] us it's the infection problems so many guys come back with their limbs and end up losing their limbs
[02:23:14] because of the infection I had major infection problems which caused us to continue have to do more
[02:23:20] more graphs they would have to cut out what they had done because it was infected and failed
[02:23:26] they rebuilt my nose three times so the first two they had to totally cut out and start over so
[02:23:32] that's why we were starting to run into issues hey where do we you know where do we get more
[02:23:36] cartilage where do we get more skin they can use cadaver but it does not it does not last it doesn't
[02:23:43] always take so they always want to use your own body and that's where we started to run into issues
[02:23:56] September 24th 2009 Ryan Job is dead I hadn't known Ryan incredibly well I wouldn't
[02:24:07] call him a close friend we talked on the phone occasionally we shared a common experience and discussed
[02:24:12] our notes on recovery and we shared a twisted sense of humor but above all I respected his spirit
[02:24:19] and relentless energy recapture all he could out of life he made the most of every moment and achieved
[02:24:27] things most people with their eyesight intact never would in 2008 he climbed Mount Rainier
[02:24:35] when I heard about that I was blown away in the climbing community the 14,000 foot volcanic mountain
[02:24:40] in Washington state is considered one of the most difficult to summit in all North America it has
[02:24:45] deadly crevices, narrow ledges and glacial ice it is as technical climb as you can find
[02:24:52] Mount Rainier claims on average three lives a year of those who aspire to summit
[02:24:57] and Ryan made it to the top two years after that bullet robbed him of his vision
[02:25:03] he and Kelly who he had married he and Kelly were getting ready to have a daughter together
[02:25:08] Ryan had started a new life found a fresh path to blaze and had built something from the ruins
[02:25:16] he really was being the best damn blind man out there then with the snap of cosmic fingers
[02:25:24] it was all stolen from him and if you don't know the story there was he went through one of his
[02:25:33] many surgeries because he was still going through surgeries and after the surgeries there was complications
[02:25:41] and he died as well they killed him I mean they messed up yeah there was no overdose
[02:25:55] time that was a total mistake and that slayed me Ryan's death rocked me because I know how hard
[02:26:09] it is to stay positive and to drive forward despite these really hard injuries and it just
[02:26:17] it killed me to know that you know it was a medical mistake that killed him you know I mean it's hard
[02:26:26] enough to go through all this and you survive battle and you know all these things so that that
[02:26:35] that really shook me when Ryan had died and you're still looking at unknown numbers of
[02:26:42] surgeries ahead and at the time yeah I was halfway through so this was 2009 I ended up having surgeries
[02:26:49] all the way up until 2011 yeah and the other thing that was crazy about Ryan was I'm not going to say
[02:26:57] he was out of the woods I mean but he was pretty damn far out of the woods and that's why you know
[02:27:05] to lose him like that was just a fucking nightmare yeah you at this point you still want to get back
[02:27:23] to the teams and you're trying to get your arm fixed to the point where you can have enough
[02:27:32] mobility in it to to change magazines to operate your weapon so you're going to a bunch of
[02:27:40] different people trying to see who is who can make this happen you finally find a guy that's you know
[02:27:47] you think you have a good lead on somebody that can make this happen and he you go to see him
[02:27:53] and he says going back to the book jam gonna be frank with you if you were my son I wouldn't let
[02:27:57] you do this what you have now is the best possible outcome if you proceed and have another surgery
[02:28:02] you'll probably lose some of the range of motion you have now worse you'll set yourself up for
[02:28:08] a lifetime of chronic pain the drive home was a quiet one for me as I deliberated whether or not
[02:28:18] to roll the dice one last time by the time I turned off the freeway and for Virginia Beach I knew it
[02:28:24] was not worth the risk my days as an operator were over part of me always suspected this might happen
[02:28:32] this might happen now it was confirmed I had no epiphanys during the drive home about what to do
[02:28:39] now as the that dream to kick doors again slipped away what would I do how would I support my family
[02:28:46] I didn't have any answers but I knew one thing I'd live as Ryan Joe Pat honor his memory
[02:28:56] and never take another day for granted
[02:28:59] Ryan's death reminded me that nothing is guaranteed in life it can be taken away in a heartbeat
[02:29:19] the life you've built with everything you've got can come apart and instant from circumstances
[02:29:25] far beyond your control you either adapt and overcome or you become a casualty of those twists of fate
[02:29:35] I refused to be a casualty
[02:29:44] so you get this news that hey you're not we can't do this this is what you got what you got
[02:29:53] swear you're at and the idea of getting back the operational again is gone and it's funny
[02:30:03] you know we're just talking about you know you were over talking to some students at Buds and
[02:30:08] yet a guy that was was but what a bit injured older guy you said it wasn't real to come back
[02:30:15] yeah it's medically dropped medically dropped not gonna be able to come back and so dream is gone
[02:30:20] and it's interesting you're talking to him and you've been through it and you're attitude was okay
[02:30:30] let me do now and and like I told him I mean so you know this this idea of life ambushes
[02:30:40] I told him I said you just stepped into one and there there are small ones and big ones
[02:30:45] um a lot of times they're totally unexpected but the reality is most ambushes aren't totally unexpected
[02:30:54] they're indicators that we see before we ever get into it whether we're aware of seeing them or not
[02:30:59] sometimes it's after the fact that we look back nine eleven's a good example of there were
[02:31:03] indicators that we missed before nine eleven happened for us as seals when we move into areas
[02:31:10] we know that's a bad area we are in an area where we're getting channealyzed there's high ground above us this
[02:31:16] would be a good area to execute an ambush you know for me I had seen those indicators coming
[02:31:24] so I kind of knew what was coming I had met so many doctors who said
[02:31:30] literally the doctor from Johns Hopkins who put my arm back together
[02:31:33] they actually wrote a medical journal about what he did with my elbow I mean he successfully reconstructed
[02:31:41] an elbow that had been totally destroyed and it was always funny to me there's an arrogance and I
[02:31:47] think there has to be there has to be a little bit level of arrogance and confidence and high level
[02:31:51] orthopedic certainty so every time I go meet one of these guys they'd be like oh yeah I can fix your
[02:31:56] arm and then they slapped that x-ray up and I'd watch it was like the air got sucked out of the
[02:32:03] room as they looked at it and then they would look at me and they'd say yeah man I'm sorry I
[02:32:08] they're like I don't even know how your arms work and the way it is so when I met the guy from Duke
[02:32:14] who was one of the premier you know hand and arm guys literally the guy that put my arm together was
[02:32:20] probably the premier hand and arm going I tried to get him to go back and do more and he said no
[02:32:26] he said there's no way in hell he said your arm he said going into your arm and getting what we
[02:32:32] got is a miracle he's like I am not going back in and I recommend it again stany but he
[02:32:37] all's doing it well I still try to find other doctors and it was this guy from Duke who finally
[02:32:43] convinced me so when that moment came I kind of knew so as opposed to this young man from buds it
[02:32:51] was less unexpected than what I stepped you know for me it was less unexpected so it just became where do I
[02:33:00] go from here and and interestingly enough I'd laid out some different things for myself one I wanted
[02:33:08] to do a 20 year career so that kind of became my first thing can I still stay in and finish my career
[02:33:13] maybe I can't be operational at this point I was at DMNAC and I think I was at 18 years at this point
[02:33:22] so to been four years almost four years from my injury and so over a couple of days I talked to
[02:33:30] I was working in operations and I just said hey what are our options what can we do and they
[02:33:36] actually allowed me to go work some new things different projects and different things so
[02:33:43] it was great they allowed me to finish what I set out to do but it also gave me a decent amount of
[02:33:49] time at this point it was another year before we started the medical retirement process which
[02:33:54] actually took two years so it carried me to 21 years and it gave me a lot of time to really look at
[02:34:00] you know where does my future go from here and kind of lay out what are my new passions what is
[02:34:05] my purpose and where do I go from this life after the military what can I do with all these lessons
[02:34:10] that I've learned and you know how do I pay it forward how do I honor Ryan how do I honor all these
[02:34:16] guys that every day I walk by this granite wall and they didn't get a choice they didn't get a
[02:34:21] choice to come home so thankfully you know I had that time it's still within the community but
[02:34:29] also coming to grips with the fact that you know like I talked to those young men about
[02:34:35] so many people are so strongly tied to what they do for a living that they cannot function
[02:34:41] if suddenly it's taken away from them there's a lot of a lot of me to a lot of police officers
[02:34:46] and firefighters or professional athletes that if suddenly their career is over they don't know
[02:34:52] how to function without that they've they've tied their identity so much around what they've done
[02:34:59] and I realized that the lessons that I learned in the the the seal teams and this journey that I
[02:35:06] been on was incredibly relatable and it was had nothing to do with tactical lessons you know I
[02:35:11] didn't need to be the guy that got out and taught you how to shoot or do anything and that like that
[02:35:16] what I realized is there were amazing life lessons the lessons human lessons lessons in leadership
[02:35:23] and teamwork and overcoming adversity in this idea of helping people you know not only survive but
[02:35:30] thrive from crisis and ambushes so that really started to become the path that I was walking
[02:35:36] and to help other wounded warriors well I just want to wrap this last little section of the book
[02:35:45] because we're talking about the identity and what you invested your life into and
[02:35:52] you say this I held the trident in my hand this golden emblem had driven my life I focused on it
[02:35:59] I coveted it I became enamored by it I almost lost it and then I earned it back
[02:36:06] before I sacrificed my body for it only then did I finally understand what it truly represented
[02:36:14] it carried the spirit of warrior poets like Mike Murphy, Mike Montsour and Chris Kyle
[02:36:21] it carried the spirit of my friends Ryan Job Adam Brown, Mike McGrivi, Kevin Houston
[02:36:27] and the 79 other men who have made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and the brotherhood since 9-11
[02:36:35] I didn't know why God spared me but I did know I would find a way into the future
[02:36:43] what I would use each and every day to honor my brothers who had not made it home
[02:36:58] and I think obviously you've done a lot to honor our brothers and I think you continue to do that
[02:37:10] obviously every day with what you're doing and how you're doing it and how you're taking
[02:37:15] the lessons that you learned and bringing them to more people spreading the word broadly
[02:37:26] what did that transition look like like the you know from the time you got out into where you are now
[02:37:32] because you know I mean obviously everyone that's in the military right now
[02:37:35] one day I hate to break the news to y'all one day you're gonna be not in the military anymore
[02:37:43] bring us from you know the end of your career into where you are now and where your focus right now
[02:37:47] and what you're doing yeah absolutely I think that transition is a lot harder than people realize
[02:37:54] I think a lot of things I'm sure you experience this we take for granted the level of
[02:37:59] structure that exists in the military and suddenly you get out in the spilling world and that's not
[02:38:04] there I was a little bit fortunate enough that I had launched the nonprofit when it
[02:38:09] where later it'd become the combat when the coalition while I was still on active duty but
[02:38:15] so when I got out that kind of became my focus got it I will say that I made the mistake that a lot
[02:38:21] of military members and especially special operations members make when they get out I tried to
[02:38:27] do everything everything I saw was an opportunity that I didn't want to lose out on and I
[02:38:34] falsely convinced myself yeah I have the ability to do that so running the nonprofit we did a
[02:38:39] lot of amazing things you know two and a half million dollars we helped thousands of wounded warriors
[02:38:45] even created a a program specifically to help wounded warriors build structure find their new passion
[02:38:53] but what I started to realize and I was doing all this while I was still trying to speak
[02:38:57] and develop content and work on things and take care of a family and kids and all these things
[02:39:02] and I kind of had an epiphany in 2018 I'd been doing this but you know I had retired in 2013
[02:39:09] so five years I've been doing this and I suddenly realized you've got to find that one thing
[02:39:17] that you truly are going to make a difference at and I took a step back in 2018 and said where can
[02:39:24] I have the most impact and what really is my new mission what drives my passion where is my
[02:39:30] destination where am I going to set that course to go and I realize I look back you know we're doing
[02:39:35] a lot of great things with the nonprofit but there's 43,000 veteran nonprofits out there
[02:39:40] we are losing more guys to suicide right now then we lost to the enemy and I said okay so one
[02:39:48] option is you go create a whole no they're nonprofit but there's a lot of good ones out there and I
[02:39:52] think that's part of the problem it's diluting some of the message so I said maybe
[02:39:57] I'm better off focusing on helping a whole bunch of people with this message and lending my
[02:40:05] support to another organization so myself and the board made the decision that we were going to
[02:40:10] phase down our organization in 2018 and 2019 made that shift that I'm totally focusing on delivering
[02:40:18] this content to help people overcome adversity to to launch themselves out of failure and to not only
[02:40:26] survive which some people just survive from these life ambushes from these massive catastrophic
[02:40:32] events but to thrive from them to use them as a launch point to get better and to understand how to
[02:40:39] do that and because I realize man you know this you've written all this amazing content on it and
[02:40:44] all that is coming into the second book that will come out December called over come so
[02:40:51] I have online courses that are getting ready to come on board here in the next couple of months
[02:40:56] and I just want to get out there and help as many people as I can and then lend myself to some
[02:41:00] of the organizations that are out there that are helping our wounded warriors specifically with
[02:41:06] post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries one of the things I've started doing a lot of
[02:41:11] research and what we're beginning to understand is I used to think that if we could help guys find a
[02:41:17] new purpose after they got out it would help solve their problems wounded warriors but what we're
[02:41:22] beginning to understand is that we have never the way we train now and the way we have fought
[02:41:29] wars is exposing guys especially in front line combat units and special operation units to
[02:41:36] level of blast that we've never and and up until this point the way we train the military we haven't
[02:41:43] done before so I mean you look at our breachers and how many blasts we expose them to just
[02:41:48] in training and what we're starting to see I mean I've had multiple friends now that have killed
[02:41:54] themselves who I said no way no way and I've watched these downward slides and what we're starting
[02:42:01] to find out is we are creating physiological impacts on the brain from these continued exposures
[02:42:07] to these blasts so we need more research we need you know we need more non-pharmicological solutions
[02:42:13] to these problems and there's a lot of things that are out there that are on the forefront so one
[02:42:19] of the things with research I started doing some stuff with the concussion legacy foundation which
[02:42:23] is the same group working with the NFL or you know highlighting the impact of CTE on NFL
[02:42:28] players and we're beginning to realize that some of our special operations guys like Rob Guzo
[02:42:35] who took his life severe CTE but what they figured out is it's different some of the pre-mear
[02:42:42] neurologists that are out there are figuring out it's different it's blast and the blast goes
[02:42:48] all the way through the brain as opposed to a concussion that creates an impact and there's
[02:42:52] a centralized location now for guys or even Dallas out there that have had multiple concussions that
[02:42:58] creates more but the bottom line is we need this research so I donated my brain to the concussion
[02:43:04] legacy foundation and I'm encouraging all the veterans that are out there if you have been in combat
[02:43:09] don't hate your brain you don't need it you don't need it when you're gone and they're not
[02:43:15] going to come early and collect you know but the bottom line is it is an amazing way to be
[02:43:21] able to give back to the veterans that are coming up behind you because they don't have enough
[02:43:27] veteran brains in the brain banks that are out there to understand the kind of trauma we're
[02:43:31] putting on our brains and until they and and obviously they can't study the brains while we're still
[02:43:37] alive so if if you want a way to get back look up the concussion legacy foundation and don't
[02:43:43] at your brain I did it we need the research twenty thirty years from now we can make a difference to
[02:43:48] save some young lawyer that's out there that got exposed to blasts and now can't figure out why
[02:43:55] his world is falling apart around him so those are my passions that's my purpose and I want to
[02:44:02] help as many people out there I want to make you better help you thrive from adversity help you
[02:44:06] thrive from failure and crisis and for our wounded warriors I want to help try and solve this
[02:44:13] epidemic we're seeing in the suicides in the brain trauma yeah that's I mean that's just
[02:44:18] awesome it's awesome see moving forward with that and I know it would be going for a while here
[02:44:25] and that's probably a pretty good place to wrap where do you where can people find you
[02:44:30] where should people locate you and when they want to when they want to hear from you yeah absolutely
[02:44:35] best place go to Jason Redmond dot com that's my website and you can see what I'm doing
[02:44:40] you can contact me through there I'm on all the major social media platforms Jason Redmond on Facebook
[02:44:46] and Jason Redmond WW on Instagram and Twitter awesome echo speaking of making people better
[02:44:57] you have any quick recommendations on how you know we can improve ourselves sure this is echo
[02:45:03] Charles by the way I have one question in Ranger School when they told you to like all right
[02:45:08] when they asked you you need your Gucci was that the thing that kind of sent you over there when
[02:45:14] they said the Gucci thing no I don't think it was that I really it was it was the land nav
[02:45:20] comments I mean I taught land nav so the funny thing about that Gucci jacket is so the army guys
[02:45:27] were only allowed to wear the army jacket liner well we didn't have those and I had Gucci
[02:45:34] batagonia I had the remember the green for me said came yeah that's what I had so every day I put
[02:45:40] that on the Ranger instructors would lose their mind and and in the beginning I had such a bad
[02:45:47] attitude that I just took it in the negative way but the second time I went through it became the
[02:45:53] how often can I put this on and spend these so I still have it every time I pull it out of my
[02:46:02] closet it puts a smile on my face nice nice what else yeah no that's it for questions yeah yeah
[02:46:08] we can talk about getting better though yeah and and Jay's about to start training jjitsu boom
[02:46:13] so he's gonna need a jjitsu key so we need to get that hooked up where we're gonna hook him up with a key from
[02:46:23] origin 100% not even 99% 100% 100% or an all-made in America that's what we need you know continue to
[02:46:27] grow this country yes sir so yeah origin if you're into jjitsu getting into jjitsu or already
[02:46:33] and jjitsu you want a key a new key or another key i thought you're gonna say used key
[02:46:40] you know you don't use the market for used geese no there's a lot of people who are
[02:46:46] at the parent he there's people out there that would love a jjaco game but that gets a little weird
[02:46:50] yeah that doesn't smell good well yeah maybe some some people maybe if someone like
[02:46:57] lost weight or something you know you use this game you were out these two eventually you were out
[02:47:03] of geese or you get a new one I was talking to Pete the other day the amount of
[02:47:06] geopants or geese period that have been returned is like so as said yeah we get like three
[02:47:14] geese back a year with some of the action warrants about they just don't wear out the
[02:47:17] warrants and geese just do not wear out yeah so get something up yeah you gotta like um yeah
[02:47:23] like if you lose weight or something and then you don't use it anymore or if you're like you get
[02:47:27] the new one and you know all like you turn you back to the old one because the new one that's the
[02:47:31] new hotness you know you don't really wear it anymore so you give it to your friend or something like this
[02:47:35] check that out like there's that you get these rash guards t-shirts uh other stuff yeah supplements
[02:47:43] supplements joint warfare joint warfare and cruel oil turned out to be the most important supplements
[02:47:50] there are in my opinion they thought it was a protein powder and the creatine that's what we thought
[02:47:55] in the beginning many more joint joint warfare hundred percent these we thought that yeah well
[02:48:00] yes I agree we do have Joe Warfare control and if you do want protein you might as well
[02:48:07] enjoy it yes get yourself some milk it's still good for you get on the milk we need the
[02:48:13] protein that's where we have milk which have you tried milk I have okay we need to use some milk
[02:48:19] and especially well it depends what flavors you like I like mint chocolate chip I am a fan of
[02:48:26] okay so each is a mint milk but apparently doc Luke hates mint well apparently he was going
[02:48:32] berserker the other day saying why would you drink something that tastes like toothpaste yeah
[02:48:38] yeah but so as it turns out some you know to back to another fence analogy some it's like you
[02:48:45] either love it or you really don't like it that's what as it turns out that's the situation with them
[02:48:50] we got mint peanut butter chocolate vanilla gorilla I'm a huge fan peanut butter chocolate
[02:48:55] okay okay that's my jam I do like mint chocolate but I got hostile with my whole family the
[02:49:02] other day well not with my whole family with my wife and my youngest daughter because there was
[02:49:08] no I wanted some yogurt and there was no blueberry there was no strawberry there was no coconut
[02:49:14] there was only vanilla and so I started saying why would a human being in 2019 buy vanilla yogurt
[02:49:23] like chewed and all that yeah I get if it comes in the variety pack and you end up with it
[02:49:29] you understood but straight up select it no wrong answer yeah so I had to get hostile super
[02:49:36] hostile and I was telling my wife and my youngest daughter that they are crazy for just
[02:49:40] liking that vanilla yeah they are for sure but at the end of the day you don't get to understand
[02:49:45] I was other people they have other opinions my my youngest daughter nine years old she makes
[02:49:50] so what she does is she takes strawberries caught some up and then she puts a whipped cream on it
[02:49:55] and then she takes warrior kid milk strawberry and sprinkles that nice yeah
[02:50:01] cornmeal so chocolate protein yeah well protein protein from yeah cool yeah it's good
[02:50:07] oh yeah where you can milk that's for the kids right little more formula like that I know
[02:50:12] that possibly do drink it like me they sneak it yes they do also if you want to represent
[02:50:19] while you're on this path to get to working out waking up early I do I get up at five
[02:50:26] okay so the upperly crew if you're on that oh and you want to represent
[02:50:31] aesthetically jocquoise store it's called jocquoise store so go to jocquoise store.com
[02:50:36] that's where you can get shirts this money equals freedom a shirt that has jocquoise face on it
[02:50:42] this is good backwards it's for you to message for you anyway you want to really
[02:50:46] very fitting for today's story right yeah look at yourself yes adversity that's
[02:50:50] what you're saying so what it is got a brand problem going on good
[02:50:53] opportunity look forward actually I like that like a for you know because there's a lot of
[02:50:57] different approaches you know like you say get off the X and like look forward absolutely
[02:51:03] you have to show any people look back they look back what they've lost yeah back what's going on
[02:51:08] right now kind of thing which is natural by the way oh it is right huh but man yeah that's good
[02:51:14] just you look back wrong enough to assess what you did wrong and then you move forward yeah
[02:51:18] learn some lessons and then move forward but yeah so yeah if you want to represent go to
[02:51:22] jocquoise store.com lot of cool stuff on there if you like something get something new hoodies up
[02:51:27] there by the way are they thick rather thick okay that doesn't you know that's not what I'm looking
[02:51:34] for well you know we're making I'm in that thing I'm gonna call them when I finally get the
[02:51:37] hoodies that I want my call Michigan hoodies or men a soda hoodies for them people
[02:51:43] that's come out yeah we're straight enough yop north north polar for there you go
[02:51:50] polar vortex yeah you think they wanted that lightweight hoodie during the polar vortex bro
[02:51:55] no but I'm just saying there's like different regions of the world so you get that line with
[02:52:00] first year in t for 20 below yeah you're on the same thing the region that we're talking about
[02:52:06] is cold yes okay I dig it in that is a good name for sure cool so anyway yes when it gets cold
[02:52:12] you can have hot jocquoise tea yes as opposed to cold jocquoise tea can be on Amazon
[02:52:18] whatever subscribe to the podcast if you want to don't forget about the warrior kid podcast
[02:52:25] yeah it's good a lot of people say that's the best podcast for kids ever yeah you're not a lot
[02:52:31] yeah well so it's from kids and here's why you feel that way you won't be wrong by the way
[02:52:35] you feel this way because it's so simple so you're like thinking of it in terms of yeah when
[02:52:40] my kid listens to this oh they're gonna get it fully and then you listen to it you're like
[02:52:44] dang I'm kind of getting to you know like it's kind of for me so I think it's a problem with adults man
[02:52:49] we complicate yeah every yeah yeah yeah yeah that's the that's why I love the warrior kid books
[02:52:56] this is a message for a 10 year old and guess what I've had I have many adults that say thank you
[02:53:03] for writing that warrior kid book echoes one of one of the other one guys yeah so there's that
[02:53:09] don't forget that warrior kid soap from young aiden 13 year old warrior kid has his own business
[02:53:16] he's getting after it he's got goats up in central California he milk some you can't sell goat
[02:53:22] milk or whatever in California because they got all these rules so what can you do with it you can
[02:53:26] make soap he started making soap and his his motto is stay clean don't worry I gave it to you
[02:53:36] I'm so arrogant and he gets to see what I want to take the credit for the for the name or
[02:53:41] whatever the mantra of aiden soap store yeah that's messed up that's so that's a collaborative thing
[02:53:48] you too channel echoes make sure bunch of videos speaking of arrogant he thinks his videos are
[02:53:53] great and he posts him on there there you go never demonstrated that but yeah oh really thank you okay
[02:53:59] you sure about that yeah I think so yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you too there's a good
[02:54:10] on the video version of this podcast too by the way so you know you can see what everybody looks
[02:54:14] like if you hear about that sort of thing people watch people watch ones with guests because they
[02:54:19] want to see what they know what I look like they know what echo looks like they want to see what
[02:54:23] Jay Redmond looks like they want to see what a what does a man look like that took a round three of the face right there come on at that point they
[02:54:29] stop the podcast and press play on YouTube yeah see what's going on yeah it's a two million dollars
[02:54:38] and sexiness so if you've ever wondered where your American tax dollars went it went to a good cost
[02:54:43] so you're not quite the six million dollar man you're the two million dollar
[02:54:47] yeah that's a hundred psychological warfare you can get that to it's it's a little something to
[02:54:54] help you out look it up on iTunes that's all we're gonna say about it period period period I have more to say
[02:55:00] period you gotta go man Jay's gotta go well maybe Jay doesn't know what psychological warfare
[02:55:05] is what it is it's an album with tracks jockel tracks telling you how to get through moments of
[02:55:11] weakness that you might come across and about instilling that discipline to get up I'd actually
[02:55:15] listen to psychological I thought I got flanks for a second but it actually wasn't I staying corrected
[02:55:24] yeah what else we got we got on it if we're when you add to your home gym situation your home
[02:55:33] fitness situation going on at dot com slash joc will let a good stuff on there
[02:55:38] get a joc rope if you don't like get rings actually rings are hundred percent in my opinion I'm
[02:55:41] signing on hundred percent the best thing that you can get I mean it's a ring there the food
[02:55:45] I know where to go over something think it about that for my home gym you know you definitely
[02:55:49] definitely got to have rings and that's the first thing you need I used to say the first thing
[02:55:52] you need to use a pull-up bar but you can do more with rings and you can do pull-ups so you might
[02:55:57] as well just get rings you know I can't have built it by the way on it has some sort of all
[02:56:02] we got some books okay first of all book I again read a bunch of excerpts today but not even close to
[02:56:09] putting giving justice to this book the trident by Jason Redmond we will have it up on the site
[02:56:16] right yes sir it's on the top of the top of the top of the book on the podcast
[02:56:22] folks from episodes you'll be here with our website and thought oh that looks like a cool website
[02:56:27] from 1996 yeah I was wondering if I was the only guy and I was like that's 96 but that's cool
[02:56:35] maybe echoes just doesn't like me retro yeah retro is it's gonna look cool that's what's happening
[02:56:44] with the website so you know you're ahead of your time the jockel store website looks all cool
[02:56:49] I guess it does why is that well you know there he is okay cool that sounds great we also got some books
[02:56:56] Mikey in the Dragons kids book for kids between the ages of four and 100 yeah one so get
[02:57:06] Mikey in the Dragons way the warrior kid and marks mission those are out and we have book three
[02:57:12] which I completed is being drawn by the artist right now John Bosac we're gonna put that up so you can
[02:57:17] pre-order it so you so I don't sell out of books like we did Mikey in the Dragons immediately so
[02:57:23] I will fix that this time I apologize last time discipline the cool freedom field man you'll get that how to get
[02:57:28] after it audio is on iTunes Amazon music google play the stream ownership first book that I wrote
[02:57:34] with my brother Dave Babin and the follow on to that that I caught a me leadership talking about
[02:57:39] don't go too far in one direction or the other as a leader or you will blow it echelon fronts my
[02:57:46] leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership whatever problems you have in
[02:57:53] your organization I 100% guarantee they are leadership problems that's what they are and that's what we do
[02:58:00] me late Babin japan and they're a dark flint caucro and Mike's your Ellie Mike Bima
[02:58:06] go to echelonfront.com if you need help with leadership in your team or organization
[02:58:11] the master speaking of leadership this is our leadership conference 2019 this is when it's going
[02:58:17] down May 23rd and 24th in Shai town Shai town Shai town Shai cargo we're gonna get stakes
[02:58:26] we're gonna we're gonna talk about leadership September 19th and 20th in Denver
[02:58:31] Colorado we're gonna get stakes there too and then December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia
[02:58:37] we're gonna go there and yes we're gonna get stakes there as well look at all these events have
[02:58:42] sold out completely and all these are gonna sell out too so if you want to come go to extremownership.com
[02:58:48] to register have you where's it's selling a lot right now and I haven't even posted anything about it so
[02:58:56] I'm scared of the post so I don't want people to I don't want non-podcast listeners to get
[02:59:02] crack at it early yeah and I'm gonna have to post soon so let people know what's up yeah
[02:59:07] online so this is online interactive leadership training it is interactive I know it sounds
[02:59:15] like one of those words like a buzz word interactive but you straight up interact yeah
[02:59:21] you like me okay remember those video games back in the day we're all about the same age
[02:59:25] where on the old school computers right where you can you're like oh I'm traveling through the woods
[02:59:32] and I can go down this choose your adventure yeah you know and you can choose one and it'll go do it
[02:59:37] it's kind of like that yes you have to make leadership decisions in the online training
[02:59:41] you do once you learn the principles you have to try and apply them to combat end business
[02:59:46] situations so that's efonline.com check it out you can get it as an individual or you can
[02:59:54] get it enterprise version for your whole company so that's that and ef overwatch where we're
[02:59:59] connecting combat proven leaders from the spec ops community and from the combat aviation
[03:00:05] community with companies in the civilian sector that need leadership proven leadership to
[03:00:13] align and move their company forward go to ef overwatch.com for that and if you want to
[03:00:19] continue this conversation ask questions give us answers tell me what I mispronounced
[03:00:27] tell me what historical fact I got wrong hit us up we're on this social media on twitter instagram
[03:00:36] and on the face okay on the face
[03:00:42] Jason Redmond is at Jason Redmond WW Echo is at echo Charles and I am at jokker willink echo
[03:00:52] anything else thank you so much for coming. Jay Redmond any closing thoughts
[03:00:58] to shout out to everybody out there you know most importantly obviously my beautiful wife who
[03:01:05] our journey is included in this book so if you are one of the lovely females that are out there
[03:01:11] that would say maybe this book isn't for me it absolutely is once again it is not a combat book
[03:01:17] it is a journey of leadership and at a tartan soul it is a love story and my wife never
[03:01:22] batted an eye on this journey and this book is dedicated to her and my kids who's love brought
[03:01:29] me home so big shout out to them and a big shout out to both you guys thank you for having me on
[03:01:35] and forget it out there and we need more leadership out there and you guys are putting it out there
[03:01:40] so it's awesome. Brother thanks for coming on and obviously thanks for your service to our country
[03:01:47] thanks for what you did for the teams and thanks for what you're continuing to do right now you've
[03:01:52] sacrificed a lot and you're still out there every day grinding and making things happen thanks for
[03:01:59] doing that and man over come and of course thanks to all our military personnel that are standing
[03:02:08] watch around the world to protect our freedoms and utmost appreciation for those wounded warriors
[03:02:16] like Jay who continue to sacrifice bravely every day for the freedoms that we all enjoy
[03:02:26] and also thank you to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMT's
[03:02:31] correctional officers board of patrols all the first responders out there who stand watch on the
[03:02:35] home front to keep us all safe and to everyone else out there that's listening there really are
[03:02:45] no excuses they're none men like Jay Redman prove that men like Ryan Job prove that without
[03:02:55] question so don't allow yourself to fall short don't allow yourself to give anything less than
[03:03:05] everything you've got to take the fight to the enemy who ever in whatever that enemy might be
[03:03:16] do what you're supposed to do be who you're supposed to be by going out there every day
[03:03:24] and getting after it. Then until next time this is Jason Redman and Beko and Joko
[03:03:32] out.