Jocko Podcast 195 w/ Rob Jones - Take Everything Thrown Your Way

2019-09-20T11:01:33Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @robjonesforcongress 0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:37 - Rob Jones.  The new battle. 1:58:11 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:15:11 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO STORE Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com/collections/men All Supplements: https://originmaine.com/nutrition/jocko-fuel/ Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ Onnit Stuff: http://www.onnit.com/jocko 2:51:10 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

And so we do need to make sure that, you know, a lot of people are going to, I know that a lot of the people that listen to this podcast, I'm not going to directly represent them in Virginia 10, which is, you know, Northern Virginia. And you know, I kind of have an advantage where people have kind of heard of me, you know, people aren't coming up to me every day and you know, asking who I am or anything. Like, maybe I could have been in one of those rooms and ran out the guy and, I don't know, given, people some time, you know, like a lot of people did. Yeah, you know, it was just, uh, yeah, popped into my head like a lot of these other crazy ideas that I have, you know, you just out one time and, you know, a lot of it has to do with, I thought of the idea initially when I was training for the month of marathon's. I think it's just getting a feel, it's getting to know somebody, getting a, it's like, you know, hiring somebody for a job, you get to know who they are and they just decide if they want to work with you or not. and I was like, well, you know, you have a great story and it's the same thing I feel like saying to you, like, man, you, you've got a good story, right? Because these people kind of know, you know, they know the people on a granular level because they're local representatives. And that's that thing that you say, too, right, where you're like, hey, put them in the right, if they're like in a leadership situation at work or whatever, right, like you're like, hey, if they're overconfident, give them something just beyond their level. And the only way we're going to get leaders there is if leaders step up and they put themselves into that arena, take the risk of, you know, being under fire from these people, you know, kind of harkens back to, I think I talked about this last time. Yeah, and the reason that a lot of the times people get elected that have these kind of extreme views is because it gets coverage, it gets their name out there, people find out who they are and what they're saying kind of scares the person and the person is kind of reacting and, you know, from that fear. He brought me into his office and kind of gave me a rundown of, you know, what it takes and what you got to do and he set me up with his consultants and they talked to me a little bit and like, you know what, maybe I, I think I can't do this. So, you know, kind of always trying to think ahead of, you know, what's the next thing going to be, what's the next thing going to be? And then you just kind of slow the call through your friends and family, like every phone, every phone number you have in your phone, you know, like, so I started with kind of people that I talked to regularly. And when she definitely was like, you know, how you know, sometimes things are unfolding and you can tell people they're just doing their best just to like detach from it. They think they can, you know, get a paycheck that they can try and help you, but in a lot of the cases in the case here is I think they look at, you know, whether or not you have a good story, whether or not you, they think you can get elected and they kind of believe in you as well. So I, you know, I walked over to campus to see if I, without any kind of protection or anything to see if I could find this guy or whatever, walked around a little bit, but you know, I didn't see anybody because, you know, it was all happening in the building and it was all over by the time, I even left my apartment. You know, and that's the other weird thing about politics is you know, I used to think of the officers that were in the military and most of the time, much of the time, the officers that you wanted to work for were the kind of officers that didn't really care as not the right word, but I'm not sure how to explain it. If they had to double check my work all the time, you know, that's kind of the the whole purpose of a representative, you know, governmental system is that we're trusting, we're depending upon this one person to represent our, you know, our issues and what we need. We have evidence, we have theories, but we don't know what's going to happen when we pass, you know, some legislation, and you can see that over the course of the entirety of our country's history, we pass the level, like, oh, this is, this is what it's going to do. And another reason that's kind of hard right now is because we have, you know, there's going to be a primary and a lot of people don't want to support in a primary because these people have money. This podcast, okay, you're on here, you get to tell, you get to talk about people know your story, they hear it on a broad basis, you know, you got your own social media that you can talk directly to people and there's no filter, doesn't cost any money to put up a social media post. It interested in what Rob Jones looks like if you don't know already, which I think is going to be sorely disappointed if you want to know. That you know, you got blown up and lost both your legs and both your arms and even same thing with you, like, hey, and you're saying it, too, you're like, hey, I've got a good story. Like, you know, you said earlier, you make laws, but you don't actually know what they're going to do when they hit the books and when they start getting an act in the world. And then, you know, human beings, these big old brains that we can adapt to when people figure out, you know, ways to maneuver and, you know, this is what you get. And you think, well, and I said, halfway through this conversation with Travis, I'm like, hey, bro, I just want to let you know, like, I get that it's not exactly your great story. Yeah, so I think I decided, you know, I committed to it and we started setting things in motion, you know, probably in April or something like that earlier in the year. So, you know, if everybody that listens to this podcast, if you, I know a lot of people write in questions, saying when is John, why don't you go and life, going to start running for office? It's like a crazy battleground where people on the friend you, if you make a statement or you like someone's political post that they don't agree with, it's like crazy people. But I do think that I can start taking it back in that, that other direction, you know, get what they and cringe, I'll get with Brian Mass and form these, you know, these coalitions that we can start having a positive effect on, on the way things are going in Congress. And honestly, when we first started trying to, when we were first talking about how we would get money to buy what we're doing, to support what we're doing, I said, you know, well, maybe we just make some t-shirts, you know, and you're like, You kind of were in a difficult period, you know, in our country and we have what we were talking about with the poison is slowly making its way into the government and feeding out into the society and it's kind of breaking apart, you know, the glue that holds us together. And then he's right, you know, Jim, so good to talk with another person that, you know, grew up in the fine state of Maryland and I appreciate the support that you all gave us when I was up there going to Naval Academy. I got to admit, you know, but was it like the kind of surprise throw you in or it's like, hey, don't worry. And so I think, you know, that I have a little bit of an advantage here where I can be kind of with this attitude and I can still get coverage because, you know, I am a wounded veteran and I've done so much service and I've done all these things that I've done. You know, I don't want to, that's, but also, you know, it's just like being self-sufficient, right? But in when you look at a big picture, like that's a specific scenario where you knew her like capability and limitations or whatever because sometimes like you get someone maybe not comfortable in the water or something like this. It definitely, you know, it would be it'd be a bonus to have the 8,000, you know, Instagram followers that I have all getting my, you know, political stuff. Even if it is, you know, what I said before where you don't know, I know for sure. yeah, you have your, you know, kind of so-called default aggressive type of opinion or position on that default, you know, good guy or whatever, maybe. You seem saying and it's kind of obvious like being like afraid of something then you say then somebody will be like, hey, what are you really afraid of the thing about what I'm really afraid of just feels scary. And I said this, I said this on a podcast and every someone's like, well, there's all these extremists out there and I was like, you know what, I travel the country all the time. So kind of your first quarter that you raise is kind of a bit of an indicator, like if you raise enough money in the first quarter, that's a lot of people kind of use that as a gauge on how much of a chance you have. So you know, I'm sure there's, you know, you have to file as a candidate and all this stuff, you know, at the convention. And when we got the first reports, it was kind of like, they were just saying that somebody was roaming around campus, you know, shooting people. and they had experience, you know, they worked on previous campaigns, they had a lot of experience, they got him elected, but I think the vast majority of the time you, you know, you approach a consultant, it's a position, you do campaign consulting, that's your business. I don't know if it actually happened, but I know because this sounds like there could be some urban legend to this whole thing.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocopotcast number 195 with echo Charles and me, Jocob Willick. Good evening,
[00:00:06] you're good evening. How much? How much is enough? I mean, how much does a person have to give
[00:00:21] before they can say that they've given enough? I think that answer is different for
[00:00:33] different people. There are some people that don't give very much at all. Maybe they
[00:00:39] give just enough to be called a participant at best. When some people don't even get there,
[00:00:49] they aren't even in the game. But then if you go to the other end of the spectrum,
[00:00:58] there are other people who give and give and give and make sacrifice after sacrifice. And that's
[00:01:06] still isn't enough. They remain ready and willing to give even more to make more
[00:01:18] sacrifice. As sacrifices, that many of us can't even comprehend. And then they look up and say,
[00:01:27] what else can I do? These are rare people. And it's an honor to have one of those people here
[00:01:41] with us tonight. One of those people who has served with honor, deployed repeatedly to war zones
[00:01:48] and Iraq and Afghanistan, a man who suffered devastating wounds, lost both of his legs, but that didn't
[00:01:59] stop him. He never felt sorry for himself. Instead, he used the pain to make himself stronger and tougher
[00:02:11] and better. And he represented America in the Paralympic Games, bringing home the bronze metal
[00:02:21] for rowing. He wrote a bike across America from Maine to California to raise money for
[00:02:26] veteran causes. But that still wasn't enough. So to raise even more money and raise more awareness
[00:02:33] for veterans charities, he ran 31 marathons in 31 days. And yes, you heard that correctly, 31
[00:02:42] marathons in 31 days. But he decided that he still hadn't given enough. And after his
[00:02:55] all this, all these accomplishments, his service in the Marine Corps, he still wants to serve. So now
[00:03:04] he's taken on another challenge. He is running for the 10th congressional seat in his home state
[00:03:13] of Virginia, which it might not be the toughest battle that he's ever fought, but it will certainly
[00:03:21] or almost certainly could be the nastiest. But you know what? He is game, of course, his name is
[00:03:31] Rob Jones. He's a Marine. He's a wounded warrior. He's an Olympian. He's an inspiration to everyone's
[00:03:38] ever met him. He's been on this podcast twice before number 92 and number 1116. So if you haven't
[00:03:45] listened to those, go back and do so. But if you have, well, here he is. Once again, my brother, Rob Jones.
[00:03:54] Rob, welcome back, man. You know, I would say that I've been asked that several times. Have
[00:04:01] you given enough. And I always say, it's not going to be enough until six Marines carry me in a
[00:04:09] coffin, put me in the ground in Arlington. So I'll make you do it. So what led you to make this decision
[00:04:19] to make this political run? What, what, what the hell happened? Because let's face it, signing up for
[00:04:27] politics. That that is like signing up for just extreme punishment, extreme mental punishment of
[00:04:40] people coming after you all the time. People don't care about your, you know, the way it affects you,
[00:04:46] the way it affects your family. I mean, it gets crazy in politics. So what was it that made you
[00:04:54] say to yourself, okay, you know what, it's time for me to do this? Yeah, you know, I've just noticed over
[00:04:59] the last few years the deteriorating environment in Congress and the federal government. And
[00:05:09] I disall that we need leaders there. And the only way we're going to get leaders there is if
[00:05:14] leaders step up and they put themselves into that arena, take the risk of, you know, being under fire
[00:05:23] from these people, you know, kind of harkens back to, I think I talked about this last time.
[00:05:29] When I told it, I talked about proof the lane, kind of how I was, you know, when you
[00:05:33] use searching for IEDs, you have to go out there and you have to step on the ground and make sure
[00:05:39] that there's not an IED there. So you just kind of step on it and if it blows up, well, guess what,
[00:05:44] there's an IED there if it doesn't, you get to take another step. And what I learned from that is that
[00:05:49] in Afghanistan, every single day, and I racked to every single day, there are times, count this
[00:05:58] times where somebody has to step forward and do the dangerous thing, do the difficult thing for the
[00:06:04] good of everybody else. And life is no different. And, you know, politics is no different. Somebody has
[00:06:11] to step forward and take that risk and turn to the arena if we want to see meaningful change. So,
[00:06:17] you know, in with respect to what you said, I'm just trying to continue my service in that way
[00:06:25] and have the best impact I can. Yeah, well, that's definitely a different kind of mine field,
[00:06:30] but it's a mine field indeed, you're stepping into. And I think one of the things in you and I
[00:06:34] were talking about this earlier, when I talk to people and I talk to, I do pretty good in talking
[00:06:41] to people from all different kind of political viewpoints. But one thing that I've seen, and I think
[00:06:48] this has a lot to do with kind of where we've gotten this completely divisive culture in politics,
[00:06:56] is that people lack humility, like the normal person that years ago, what I said, oh, well,
[00:07:04] let me hear you out. Now that person, a normal person, you can talk to them and they, they're
[00:07:12] they lack humility to say, you know what, maybe this person has a viewpoint that makes some kind
[00:07:17] of sense, maybe there's some portion. Instead of thinking, you know what, I am 100% right.
[00:07:24] My political viewpoint is 100% right, which means that your political viewpoint is 100% 100%
[00:07:32] 100% wrong. There's no value in anything that you're going to say, you're 100% wrong,
[00:07:37] and I'm 100% right. And that's the line is drawn. It's not even like the, oh, of the line gets drawn.
[00:07:43] The line is drawn that, and it starts with, hey, I'm 19 years old or 26 years old or 38 years old,
[00:07:54] and I, everything that I believe is 100% right. And that means everyone else is 100% wrong.
[00:07:58] Unless you agree with me, if you agree with me, 100% you're okay. By the way, you've seen it on both sides,
[00:08:06] somebody, if somebody makes a step outside of the traditional views of the left or the
[00:08:12] traditional views of the right, these are people that are on the left or are on the right,
[00:08:16] they get shredded by their own side, because everyone's attitude is, I am 100% right. You don't know anything.
[00:08:24] Yeah, I mean, and we have to remember, we have to be aware of what the humility piece is that nobody
[00:08:31] actually knows for sure. Nobody does. We have evidence, we have theories, but we don't know what's
[00:08:39] going to happen when we pass, you know, some legislation, and you can see that over the course of the
[00:08:44] entirety of our country's history, we pass the level, like, oh, this is, this is what it's going to do.
[00:08:48] It's going to do this, this, this, this, this, this, pass the bill, and then that that and that happens.
[00:08:53] You know, like, oh, unintended consequences, there's no way to predict it. So we have to go in there with the
[00:08:58] best knowledge that we can and all the preparation that we can, but, you know, keep in mind that we don't
[00:09:05] actually know everything. And we also have to remember that that person that disagrees with you,
[00:09:12] they just, they're just coming from a different perspective from you. You know, they, you have to,
[00:09:17] what it really boils down to is you both want the same thing. I think, usually, if you disagree with
[00:09:22] somebody, you both want, you know, the American people to have the best lives they can and have the
[00:09:26] most meaningful lives they can, you just want to go about it in a different way. And so, as long as you
[00:09:33] can maintain that attitude, like, this person really, they want the best for these people.
[00:09:42] And then that's how you can kind of disagree with them in a civil manner.
[00:09:45] Mm-hmm. What was the, who put the idea in your head? How did that, that, that, that,
[00:09:52] did someone plant the seed? Did you sit in a watching TV, watching somebody speak? And you were like,
[00:09:56] no, I got to get in this game. Yeah, you know, it was just, uh, yeah, popped into my head like a lot of
[00:10:02] these other crazy ideas that I have, you know, you just out one time and, you know, a lot of it has to
[00:10:08] do with, I thought of the idea initially when I was training for the month of marathon's.
[00:10:12] So, you know, kind of always trying to think ahead of, you know, what's the next thing going to be,
[00:10:16] what's the next thing going to be? And I didn't do the month of marathon's to prepare me for, for this.
[00:10:22] It was this kind of an idea that I had, like, maybe after the month of marathon's is done,
[00:10:26] maybe I'll, you know, take the next step and try and do a little bit more, and I'll try and run
[00:10:30] for Congress. And so, you know, I thought of the idea then, and then I kind of, you know, I was doing
[00:10:36] other things. I ran the month of marathon's came back, still didn't really know what to do or whether
[00:10:41] or not it was possible. And then after the 2018 election, I texted a buddy that I had from,
[00:10:48] from the hospital named Brian Mass, who's a double above knee amputee, and I just, he ran in Florida
[00:10:53] for reelection, he won. So, what a sensible, a tech saying, congratulations on winning. And he said,
[00:10:59] send me something back saying, I loved to have you up here. Let's talk. And I was like, you know,
[00:11:04] what, I actually am, I have been thinking about going that route. He brought me into his office and kind of
[00:11:09] gave me a rundown of, you know, what it takes and what you got to do and he set me up with his consultants
[00:11:15] and they talked to me a little bit and like, you know what, maybe I, I think I can't do this. So,
[00:11:19] he kind of gave me the belief that it was going to be possible. That's awesome. All right,
[00:11:24] let me do this. Let me dig into this a little bit because from the outside,
[00:11:30] what it looks like when we see people entering the political arena, it's like, all of a sudden,
[00:11:34] they just kind of magically appear. Right. What actually happens, you know, when you talk to your friend,
[00:11:39] when you talk to these consultants and people start looking at you as a potential candidate,
[00:11:44] what does all that look like behind the scenes behind the, what do they call the sausage maker?
[00:11:49] Right. Right. Use eat the sausage, but you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. What's
[00:11:52] going on behind the scenes there? Yeah. So, I think the way that I'm kind of in a unique position where
[00:11:58] I'm friends with Brian and he already had some folks that, you know, consult on his campaign
[00:12:03] that were close friends of his and they had experience, you know, they worked on previous campaigns,
[00:12:08] they had a lot of experience, they got him elected, but I think the vast majority of the time you,
[00:12:13] you know, you approach a consultant, it's a position, you do campaign consulting, that's your business.
[00:12:20] So, that's how it's going to make their money. They make their money through campaign consulting.
[00:12:24] Yeah. So, it's a business and there's consultants all over the place for everything you want to do
[00:12:30] in the campaign world getting elected. So, you know, in some cases, it might just be the consultant,
[00:12:38] you know, they just want to paycheck. They think they can, you know, get a paycheck that they can
[00:12:42] try and help you, but in a lot of the cases in the case here is I think they look at,
[00:12:48] you know, whether or not you have a good story, whether or not you, they think you can get elected
[00:12:53] and they kind of believe in you as well. And so, I think when they saw me and I kind of told them
[00:12:58] about myself, they said, okay, here's a good story that we think can get traction and then they
[00:13:04] guys just, you know, it just seems like he's going to be a selfless individual and he'd be a good
[00:13:08] in Congress. And so, those two kind of things combined, I think, in this particular case, but, you know,
[00:13:14] that being said, there's a dichotomy, of course, on Jocco podcast.
[00:13:19] And where there might be, you know, some people that, they're just in it for the paycheck, too.
[00:13:24] This is the consultants are just in it for the paycheck. Sometimes, not all, I mean, I think.
[00:13:28] Where they can be. Yeah, I think the vast majority of the time, you know, they, they want to
[00:13:33] get behind somebody they believe in. What kind of process did they put you through for
[00:13:39] vetting you? I mean, like you said, okay, the interview, they have a good story. Your story is
[00:13:44] kind of public, so it's not really hard to figure out. Yeah. Did they get you, all right, we're going to
[00:13:48] do a Q&A with you. We're going to hammer you with question, did you all that kind of thing?
[00:13:51] Geek simulator? Yeah, a little bit. I, well, I met with Brian and then, you know, so I've just
[00:13:59] he vows for me. So, these two guys that are his friends and ran this campaigns, they, I don't
[00:14:04] think they really need to divet me too much more after that after Brian vows for me. But we did
[00:14:08] meet up and we talked a little bit. And I didn't even, honestly, I didn't even know if they were
[00:14:13] going to help me or not. I thought they were just kind of answering a few questions that I had,
[00:14:17] but then after that they, they said, yeah, we want to, we want to help you run your campaign.
[00:14:23] And so, yeah, I think it's just getting a feel, it's getting to know somebody, getting a, it's like,
[00:14:26] you know, hiring somebody for a job, you get to know who they are and they just decide if they
[00:14:31] want to work with you or not. And, you know, I'm lucky enough that they decide they did.
[00:14:35] And so then, so then what happens next? Yeah, so what happened? A big plan preparation, I mean,
[00:14:40] imagine they want the announcement to be a big deal, right? Yeah. So, so how did all that go down?
[00:14:46] Yeah, so I think I decided, you know, I committed to it and we started setting things in motion,
[00:14:54] you know, probably in April or something like that earlier in the year. And they said, okay,
[00:14:58] so we're going to do an announcement. And so that's kind of a good way to get press and get
[00:15:02] you name out there. It's all about just getting people knowing who you are and knowing your story
[00:15:07] so that they can decide whether or not they think that you're a person that they can support.
[00:15:11] So part of that is making this big announcement because you get a lot of press coverage when you
[00:15:14] announce officially. So we kind of plan this out. You make a video and you prepare press and you
[00:15:23] do a little bit of practice with, you know, answering some of the questions you're going to get on
[00:15:27] announcement day. But mostly it's just about getting kind of the sausage-making stuff in place too.
[00:15:33] You got to find, you have to, there's all sorts of rules about, you know, but the FEC, the
[00:15:41] Federal Election Committee or Commission or whatever. Yeah, some really crazy rules. All sorts of rules.
[00:15:47] So next thing you do is you kind of you hire a compliance, you guys. I was going to say a
[00:15:53] lead team. Like somebody that knows how these things work and then you kind of prepare the paper
[00:15:58] work to file and then you get all these, you kind of get your apparatus in place. So once you announce
[00:16:03] boom, it's like an assault. So some of those rules that you have to be compliant with, like you can
[00:16:10] only take a certain amount of donations, right? I mean, with this and with, after come from certain places.
[00:16:14] Yeah. So individuals can only donate $2,800 per election. And then if there's a primary and a
[00:16:24] general election. So that's $5,600 per election cycle. But if a person donates $5,600 now,
[00:16:31] I can only use $2,800 for the primary and then the other $2,800, I can use in the general
[00:16:37] election. There's all sorts of rules. And then you can't take money from corporations unless there's,
[00:16:44] you can take money from a pack, a political action committee. They can only donate $10,000. And then
[00:16:50] there's things called superpacks that are kind of their own entity. You can't talk with them. They
[00:16:56] can support you, but you can't talk directly with them. So you can't like plan things out with them.
[00:17:02] But they can kind of pick up on what you're doing in your commercials and your advertisements
[00:17:06] and they can kind of into it what they should do to help your campaign. But you can't work directly
[00:17:10] with them. So yeah, there's also, and then usually what you'll do is you'll fly me out and you'll pay
[00:17:17] for a really, really nice hotel. So you're talking about when you're talking about you, you're saying
[00:17:21] Jocco podcast. Jocco on the fort. It's like, hey, yeah, we, we fly you out here and pay for your hotel.
[00:17:28] It's really real nice. Yeah, get you dinner or whatever. But since I'm coming and I'm talking about
[00:17:34] being a political candidate, if I want, if you, if I want to do to pay for the, for my travel out here,
[00:17:40] then you have to do like some kind of in kind donation paperwork and all sorts of stuff. So,
[00:17:45] yeah, there's this all of these different rules. So you kind of have to have somebody that you can
[00:17:50] send an email to really quick. Can we, can we do this? And they say, you probably shouldn't,
[00:17:55] or they, and they handle the, the filing of the paperwork and they do all that. And they handle
[00:17:59] all my donations that come in. So there's so many rules that donations. So all the donations,
[00:18:05] if it's a check, they go down to this guy where he is, he reviews it, make sure you have all the
[00:18:11] stuff like over $200 people have to report their employment information and that kind of thing.
[00:18:16] And then so he makes sure you have all the stuff and it's okay. This is a valid donation.
[00:18:20] We donate that. And if one comes in without the right stuff, and he's like, this is invalid.
[00:18:24] And you can't have it. How big is the staff that you have? I mean, this sounds like,
[00:18:30] I mean, a decent sized operation. Yeah. I mean, it's, and right now it's kind of a skeleton crew
[00:18:37] for the most part. I have my consultants who have been with me, you know, since a before I even announced,
[00:18:43] we have the compliance guy. We have digital consultants that kind of do websites and
[00:18:49] they kind of handle some of the digital fundraising stuff. And then I have an individual
[00:18:54] person fundraiser. So this somebody that knows has a lot of personal connections as experience
[00:19:01] raising money, you know, for political campaigns and other stuff. So I have her. And then she kind
[00:19:07] of helps me raise with the raising money. And then I also have the compliance guy. And then eventually
[00:19:15] you kind of bring on more and more people like a campaign manager and as time goes on. But yes,
[00:19:20] so you kind of right now we have a skeleton crew and then we're just going to keep building and building.
[00:19:23] And, and they're obviously raising money is is, unfortunately.
[00:19:30] That's basically how you get elected. I mean, it's, it's got to be a giant percentage of
[00:19:38] the mechanism that gets elected. So if you don't get, if you don't raise enough money,
[00:19:41] you don't even get the platform to say what, for people to hear what it is that you're going
[00:19:45] to do, what you're going to say, what your beliefs are. So you kind of have to get this
[00:19:50] money raising machine moving. Yeah. So it's more, it's more, more for some people less for other
[00:19:58] people important. So the better story you have, the less money you're going to need to get your
[00:20:07] story out there. And you know, I kind of have an advantage where people have kind of heard of me,
[00:20:12] you know, people aren't coming up to me every day and you know, asking who I am or anything. But
[00:20:17] when somebody hears the guy that ran through a marathon, I was like, oh yeah, I know that guy.
[00:20:22] And then so I can kind of put the face to that, to that name. But yeah, so the, the big part of it is
[00:20:30] people knowing that you're running, knowing you exist, knowing enough about you to decide whether
[00:20:36] or not they want to vote for you. And so you have to look at how we'll help you, how do people
[00:20:41] get their information? They get it through watching TV, they get it through doing through
[00:20:45] the paper, they're going online, podcasts, you know, things of that nature, Facebook ads,
[00:20:51] things like that. And so all those things cost money. So if you want, you're not going to go up to,
[00:20:57] you know, my district has 800,000 people in it. And if I went to every single house for 10 minutes,
[00:21:04] that's what, 8 million minutes. There's just not that many minutes. And so, you know, you should
[00:21:10] run your 31 minutes. Yeah, 31 minutes. Yeah, it's around in circles right now. I know, I would. But yeah,
[00:21:16] so as I, how do people get their information? And that's, that's the way they do it. All those things
[00:21:20] they cost money. And in the DC area, especially, they cost a lot of money. And then, in order to get
[00:21:27] your face and name out there at the most optimum time, the most efficient time, cost even more money.
[00:21:33] If you want to have your ad on, you know, during Fox News or whatever in the morning, that cost a lot more
[00:21:39] money. So yeah, so unfortunately, it's one of those things that you have to raise the money in order
[00:21:45] to just to get your name out there, so people know you exist. So what is the, what is the process
[00:21:50] from here on out? What does it look like? I mean, take me all the way, well, as to the best of your
[00:21:55] knowledge, what happens next? So your, your obviously you spend the next however many months,
[00:22:00] raising money to get this thing going forward. What does it rest of this time look like? Yeah, so
[00:22:04] you want to make milestones along the way, bring you to Election Day victory. Oh, yeah, the money
[00:22:11] raising now. So kind of your first quarter that you raise is kind of a bit of an indicator, like
[00:22:17] if you raise enough money in the first quarter, that's a lot of people kind of use that as a gauge
[00:22:22] on how much of a chance you have. And so that's kind of something. So you want to get, you want to
[00:22:28] have a good raise in your first quarter. When did your first quarter start? July 1st. So it's good
[00:22:33] kind of goes on the fiscal quarters. Okay. So July 1st is September 30th. So we're kind of coming
[00:22:37] up to it. And then I'm kind of at a little bit of a disadvantage because we did our announcement
[00:22:41] on the same be that I got Wundo, which was July 22nd, kind of to make the announcement a little
[00:22:46] bit more special. Right. And so we kind of, so you gave up. Give up three weeks. Yeah. And so,
[00:22:51] yeah, so that's one milestone. And then while you're doing that, you're raising money,
[00:22:56] raise your money and then it's going to first quarter right now. It's going to be, it's been a
[00:23:02] little bit difficult because there's a lot of different factors. It's summertime. So people are,
[00:23:08] you know, on vacation. There's also a local election in Virginia coming up. So a lot of people are kind
[00:23:15] of more focused on that than are really focusing on next year yet, understandably so. And then at
[00:23:20] the same time, I don't, I'm my politician. You know, I have no political apparatus before this.
[00:23:26] And a lot of people that run for office at this level, you know, they've ran for county seat.
[00:23:31] Then they run for state seat. And they run another state seat. So they have, you know, people that
[00:23:36] have donated to them consistently over the years. So they can kind of go back to these people
[00:23:41] over and over again every time they have an election. So they have those people that have already
[00:23:46] donated, so they can raise money kind of quit. I don't have that. So I kind of have to build that
[00:23:50] donor base from scratch. The other thing that I must imagine is a little bit weird is like
[00:23:55] learning how to ask for money. I mean, I know I feel weird to ask anyone for help at anything.
[00:24:04] Right? The guy would rather just do something myself than have to say, hey, could I help?
[00:24:08] Maybe that's an ego thing a little bit of, hey, I don't need anyone to help. Maybe it's an ego
[00:24:12] thing of, I don't want to give that person the little one up on me. You know, I don't want to,
[00:24:18] that's, but also, you know, it's just like being self-sufficient, right? And not wanting to ask
[00:24:23] for a handout. I mean, even when we started this podcast, there was the whole, the whole,
[00:24:30] what is it? Like donation thing was out there, right? It was out there. It was kind of a thing.
[00:24:35] And there was a lot of people that that's how they were running their podcast was by just taking
[00:24:40] donations. And we, we actually still have like a little thing where you can, you can don't want to
[00:24:46] have something on the website where you can donate through PayPal or something like that. Then we've
[00:24:50] had a couple people that have done that, but we probably talked about it twice or whatever,
[00:24:56] like barely ever. Because to me, it feels kind of weird to say, hey, hey, can you give me some money,
[00:25:05] right? And honestly, when we first started trying to, when we were first talking about
[00:25:11] how we would get money to buy what we're doing, to support what we're doing,
[00:25:15] I said, you know, well, maybe we just make some t-shirts, you know, and you're like, yeah,
[00:25:20] we can make t-shirts all day. Cool. Because that way, where, you know, we're not just saying,
[00:25:25] give me something, right? We're saying, hey, you buy this thing and it helps support.
[00:25:31] So you got, you had to overcome the, the idea of I'm going to ask people for money.
[00:25:39] Yeah. It's extremely, it's very, very, very much. And yeah, so what you do first is you go to friends
[00:25:47] and family and you say, look, I'm thinking about that's another one of the rules. You can't say
[00:25:53] before you went out, you can't say you're actually running, you can only say I'm strongly considering
[00:25:58] running for Congress. Would you donate, if I do decide to do this, even if you've already,
[00:26:04] you know, decided that you're going to, you can't actually say it because then you technically,
[00:26:08] you have to file. So all you can say is I'm, you see, so you go to your mom, your dad,
[00:26:12] your close friends and family, I'm strongly considering running for Congress. I'm laughing because
[00:26:17] in my family, those are the last people you'd be asking for money. I don't ask, but, you know,
[00:26:22] that's not happening. We're getting zero from friends. My first two calls were my dad and then my
[00:26:26] mom. Yeah, that's so they were, they were supportive. And then you just kind of slow the call
[00:26:31] through your friends and family, like every phone, every phone number you have in your phone,
[00:26:35] you know, like, so I started with kind of people that I talked to regularly. You know,
[00:26:40] I'll believe what you donate and they say yes. And then you kind of just go through.
[00:26:44] And that's kind of weird, too, because now you're like asking the question, but not even close
[00:26:49] the next one. And you're going to go back to the best. You have to go back to the purpose of saying that.
[00:26:52] What's the purpose? Just to, do you go back to your consultants and say, hey, listen, I'm getting up,
[00:26:56] I'm getting a 50% feedback that people will donate. Yeah, well, the thing about asking people for donations is,
[00:27:02] I had a good buddy, a good name, Frank, that I called him. I texted him or called him or whatever before
[00:27:08] I had, and I said, I'm going to think about running for Congress, will you donate? He's like, oh, yeah,
[00:27:12] definitely. I will definitely donate. And then I'm saying, okay, well, we're trying to donate.
[00:27:16] I get everybody to donate on Monday. We want everybody to donate on Monday because we want to raise
[00:27:20] a bunch of money like on day one. So that's kind of a thing in the political sphere. You'll see,
[00:27:25] like I think recently, a couple of the Democratic presidential candidates, they announced and they said,
[00:27:30] oh, we raised hundreds of thousands of dollars on day one. And they think that's really cool.
[00:27:35] And it's kind of a big deal. And so I say, trying to get everybody to donate on Monday, July 22nd,
[00:27:42] you know, if I run or whatever. So then my fund, I gave my fundraiser all the
[00:27:48] text messages that I contacted. She sent them all a text on Monday reminding him, here's the link.
[00:27:54] And then this guy, Frank, he didn't donate. And then so I called him again, you know, a week later,
[00:27:59] like, hey, just wanted to remind you, you know, I've announced now raising money. And he calls me back
[00:28:04] a couple of weeks later and he says, okay, I finally donated. And I said, and he wrote, he, he, uh,
[00:28:10] he was calling me. Yeah, yeah, something. And he runs the rowing program for UVA,
[00:28:17] the men's rowing program. And so he has to get a lot of donations. I said, so all you got any,
[00:28:22] got any tips for me on raising money, you know, how to ask for money. I'm not very good at it.
[00:28:25] And you said, listen, you got to remember, I'm a close friend. And it took me three weeks and three
[00:28:31] reminders to donate to you. So you hit somebody up the first time. And they want to support you, but
[00:28:38] you just hit them, you know, when they're about to get in the car or, you know, they're,
[00:28:43] take drop in the kids off at school or something like that. And they just forget, you know,
[00:28:46] and see, you got to remind them again. And then you see, you kind of have to make sure you hit them
[00:28:50] at the right time where they're okay. I'm just sitting around watching TV or whatever, eating dinner,
[00:28:54] I can do it right now. So you kind of have to just keep following up with people. So you,
[00:29:02] friends of family first, and then once you get through all that, then you start kind of calling,
[00:29:08] people that have donated previously. So you kind of, you can get these lists.
[00:29:12] I'm sitting here trying to think if you, if what you hit me up before, I didn't get you on this
[00:29:17] event. You hit me up. I think you said, hey, I'm going to run or I'm thinking about it for Congress.
[00:29:22] Maybe I could come back on the podcast. And I was like, oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I think I don't think
[00:29:27] you actually hit me up for the cash though. I didn't hit you up for the cash because
[00:29:32] friendship capital, like on a like a leadership capital. Okay. Yeah, I figure you're kind of
[00:29:36] already helping me out. So you, you've helped me out this so much already with, have me on, you know,
[00:29:41] before the month, the month, the month, the month, the month and all that stuff. And now you're going
[00:29:44] to help me out again with this podcast. And I just kind of figure, you know, I don't want to ask too much of
[00:29:49] you. Well, right on, but you're not going to get anything if you don't ask. Yeah, exactly. I'm saying
[00:29:54] over here. Not to mention that. That's the thing that you remember too. You have to ask even though it's
[00:29:59] uncomfortable. So yeah, then you start. You start a product. Can you sell a t-shirt and use that,
[00:30:09] the profits from that? I don't know. I'm not sure. I'd have to ask. What about personal money?
[00:30:15] Like, you always get about the rich politicians, they just spend a lot of money. You can sell fun as much as you want.
[00:30:19] So you can donate to your campaign as much as you want. But if you're doing, I don't, you know,
[00:30:24] I don't have enough money anyway. So it wouldn't really be a drop in the bucket for me to sell
[00:30:28] all the cars. So in carrots, yeah, for me. It's not enough carrots to pay for this.
[00:30:35] We did just start getting eggs. So maybe that'll be, you know, something that we can add to it. But
[00:30:41] yes, why simply just don't have enough money. But yeah, there's some people that take
[00:30:44] mortgages out on their homes. And they kind of loan the campaign $200, $300,000. And then
[00:30:54] they get paid back after they really start raising money. I can't do that either because I don't
[00:30:58] have a mortgage on my home because it was given to me by a new veteran charity. So there's no mortgage.
[00:31:03] And I can't take out a mortgage for five years as a part of our contract. But yeah, so
[00:31:09] yes, the people close to you, they donate. And then you start kind of going through these lists of
[00:31:14] people that have donated to campaigns before. They're politically active. A lot of the times they
[00:31:20] have a little bit more cash to spare. You start calling them. But that's unpleasant too because a
[00:31:24] lot of the times it's just cold calls. And you go, you know, you have to listen to it. This is,
[00:31:29] yeah, this is me. So my fundraiser, she just basically just sends me call sheets. So she gets
[00:31:35] these lists of, it's all publicly available if they donate averse certain amount. So this goes online.
[00:31:40] They, they donate to this other Republican candidate for this other Democratic candidate. So they
[00:31:45] might like you. So you just kind of, and there's a bunch of phone numbers on there. And a lot of the
[00:31:50] times it doesn't work. Or it's like a main number to their business. And you kind of have to go in and
[00:31:56] go into the directory and call it. And you call them up and you just go, you know, you do your little
[00:32:01] 22nd spiel. How many of these phone calls have you made? Oh, and it's like my schedule is 9 to 11
[00:32:10] campaign fundraising phone calls work out at 11, eat lunch at 12, 1 to 3, make phone calls. What are you
[00:32:18] doing from 430 in the morning until 9? 430 in more until 9. Usually 430 to 630,
[00:32:24] cutting old saw and logs. And then 7 is usually when I start, I'll start reading.
[00:32:31] Or I'll start doing some writing, kind of flushing out my thoughts on things. And then between
[00:32:36] 7 and 9. Because you can't call people for 9 to clock at that. So 9 to 11 you're making phone calls.
[00:32:42] And then you said from 1 to 3 you're also making phone calls. Yeah, if I have a hammering through a list.
[00:32:46] Yeah. So my fundraiser will sell me 20, 25 at a time. And these lists and you just kind of look at it.
[00:32:52] This is what's the contact rate? Very low. If you make 100 calls, how many people do you talk to?
[00:32:58] I'd say maybe 10 like directly when I call 10% of the chance of you have of me picking up a
[00:33:08] phone phone number. I don't recognize is zero. Yeah, exactly. It's zero. And a lot of
[00:33:12] it's not what you do is you call and the vast majority of the time you're calling their place to work.
[00:33:16] And so they have an assistant. And so you have to kind of... You have to kind of craft a little script almost.
[00:33:27] That gets them to... That kind of intrigues them. And it has to be short because you can't be too long.
[00:33:33] Oh, when I first started out I was doing this for 30 seconds. Okay. Let's hear it. All right. So ring ring ring.
[00:33:40] I'll call Echo. Ring ring ring ring. Hello. Oh, hi. This is Rob Jones. I'm calling for Mr. Charles. Yes,
[00:33:47] is it? Oh, hi, Mr. Charles. My name is Rob Jones. I'm a wooden ring from Middleberg, Virginia.
[00:33:52] And I'm calling today because I'm running for Congress in Virginia's 10th District. And
[00:33:55] this is how many you might have a few minutes to speak with me about my campaign to see if you
[00:34:00] might be willing to support me. Yeah. And that's what I said. Yeah. Pretty straightforward. Yeah. So
[00:34:06] I kind of... And it's been kind of... And your fundraiser, they're kind of good at that. So they
[00:34:12] kind of advise you on what to say. And so I kind of when I first started out I kind of had like this
[00:34:17] minute long monologue. They're like, hello. Hi, I'm Rob Jones. And I ran 31 marathon 31 days.
[00:34:22] And I did all this stuff. And then I'd buy the end of it. You know, they haven't spoken like a minute and a half.
[00:34:27] You know, so you got to bring that down. We're not with life. And I wrote extreme ownership.
[00:34:32] Then we did our first event that the book was at. And it's a big event. Or it's like maybe
[00:34:38] 1,000 to 1,500 people there. And we got done. We got offstage. And they had a bunch of books for us to
[00:34:45] sell. And people were going to buy. And then they could we could sign them. And as soon as we got off
[00:34:50] stage, it was like, mayhem. Everyone was really fired up. And here's this brand new book. And
[00:34:57] the big message you just come from us. And so the end they got the two little tables for us to sign on.
[00:35:03] There's a stack of books for us to to give to the people. And the very first person. And you know,
[00:35:11] let life like the joke is that life is like a nice person. And I'm not. And so the first
[00:35:19] immediately as I looked at the line, this was, you know, one of the, this is like one of the
[00:35:23] few things that I'm naturally gifted at. Like looking at a scenario and kind of figure not really
[00:35:28] quick what needs to happen to get this done. So I see people lined up. And I say to myself,
[00:35:35] all right, I need to be signing these books as fast as humanly possible. So I immediately start signing
[00:35:40] the extreme ownership book, just own it, Jocco. That's that's all I'm right. Yeah. So I get like
[00:35:46] two, three people. Hey, I don't like to meet a gym gym, own it, Jocco, boom, hand it to life, boom.
[00:35:50] Next person, I get through five or six people. And all of a sudden, there's all, there's a,
[00:35:56] there's a, there's a, there's a roadblock right next to me. His name is Lave Babin. And he's such a nice guy
[00:36:04] that, you know, he says, hey, Jim, how you doing? Where about you from? And you know, the person's like,
[00:36:09] I'm from wherever I'm from Maryland. Ah, you know, I went to Naval Academy up there,
[00:36:15] that was man, what a beautiful thing. So what, you know, what would you do for living? And he's
[00:36:18] having legit conversation. And then he's right, you know, Jim, so good to talk with another person
[00:36:24] that, you know, grew up in the fine state of Maryland and I appreciate the support that you all
[00:36:28] gave us when I was up there going to Naval Academy. And I hope that everything goes well with your
[00:36:31] business. Appreciate it. Lead and win. And man, it took him, it was like, it took him, by the time
[00:36:42] he, I had handed him the, the, you know, 17th book and he wasn't done with his first one. He just,
[00:36:48] he started writing lead wins and they're not. But yeah, you know, it's like the, the, the, the ability to
[00:36:56] really be nice in a situation like that is a little bit tougher. And also, you know, people,
[00:37:02] but you don't want to waste people's time. You know what I mean? You know, you got to get to the point,
[00:37:05] like you said, you got to get, you got to get at least the initial message of, hey, this is who I am.
[00:37:10] And this is what I'm doing. And do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah. And I got,
[00:37:14] it's a strange balance because I want to, I want to keep it short, but also say something that
[00:37:20] makes them give me the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. So it's kind of figuring out what that is. And I decided
[00:37:26] saying I'm a wounded Marine running for Congress. That was kind of a good balance of that. Well,
[00:37:30] that's a big statement, right? That's it. You're in the Marine Corps. You obviously have served.
[00:37:36] You have made sacrifices for your country already. And now you're willing to serve more. That's a
[00:37:41] pretty big. That's a, that's a short statement, but it's also, it cares. There's a lot of meeting
[00:37:46] behind it. There's a lot of weight behind it. Yeah. Okay. So I'm still sitting here thinking myself
[00:37:51] from a efficiency perspective. You don't have some other three people that are dialing through
[00:37:56] and being like, okay, Rob, we got to live one boom and hand in you the phone. Not really. I mean,
[00:38:01] sometimes my, my fundraisers will have relationships with some people. And she'll say, I've already
[00:38:07] talked to this guy. Just, you just got to call him and talk to him for a couple of minutes and
[00:38:11] he's probably going to donate. But yeah, I guess, you know, the way that it works is people probably
[00:38:17] aren't going to talk to you if you don't call him directly. Yeah. I'm going to tell you what, don't
[00:38:21] ever, I'll donate to your campaign. Don't give my number to any of those lists. I don't want anyone
[00:38:26] else calling me. Well, the best thing about how much you donate. Yeah, depending on how much you donate,
[00:38:31] you just put victories, phone numbers or put, yeah, you've got to put a phone number at some point. And
[00:38:37] I'm going to try and tell this, um, do without, without dropping any dimes on anyone or anything. But
[00:38:44] anyways, there was a, an organization and it's not really a charity organization. But somehow,
[00:38:51] I had donated money to this organization a long time ago. And so they would call me consistently
[00:38:58] all the time. And when they would call my house, I would put them on speaker phones. So my whole
[00:39:02] family could be entertained by what I would say. But anyways, they called one time and they say,
[00:39:09] oh, this is, we're looking for Mr. Willink. I said, yeah, this is, now this is,
[00:39:13] blah, blah, blah, blah, and we're, you know, it's fundraising time again and we're, we're looking to
[00:39:19] up the numbers this year. And this is one of my got a phone speaker phone. And I don't, I forget the
[00:39:25] years it was, but the, the girl says, and I'm looking at your, our records right now and it looks like
[00:39:29] the last time you donate was eight years ago, you donated $10. And I was like, yeah, I said,
[00:39:39] why don't you call me in another eight years and we'll re-op that figure. So I like that. So yeah,
[00:39:44] don't get my name. Don't mind number on that. I wouldn't, I would never give out anybody's phone
[00:39:49] number, but if they don't, if they donate and they report it, then there's a number here and that's
[00:39:54] how you get it. But yeah, so that's, that's kind of where people are coming from with, they get
[00:40:00] donation calls all the time. And I'm just another guy. So you have to figure out how to make yourself
[00:40:06] unique and get through that kind of guardedness in the very beginning that, you know, they're,
[00:40:12] they're automatically probably going to say, no, you know, I get, this is the 50th call I've gotten.
[00:40:17] Right. And I'm busy. I'm calling them and work. And these people, a lot of the times, you know,
[00:40:20] they're a little bit wealthier. So it's not like they just got all their wealth by sitting around,
[00:40:25] watching Netflix, you know, they are working. They're working hard. So yeah, you kind of have to figure
[00:40:32] out away. And a lot of the times it'll be, I'll talk to an assistant and then she'll say, well,
[00:40:37] no, they're not available or they're not here because they're working. I don't leave a message
[00:40:42] to throw or I'll leave a voicemail on their phone. And then I give it a week. If I have an email
[00:40:46] address for them, I'll send them a follow-up email and you can be a little bit more of a boast and an
[00:40:49] email. So I kind of like that where I can kind of mention the 31 marathons and be a little bit
[00:40:54] more of a boast there. Send them a follow-up email if they don't reply to that, then I'll call them
[00:40:59] again. And you just kind of have to, you have a spreadsheet of people you call and you're like,
[00:41:03] call them, okay, I call this person 10 days ago. So today's another good idea.
[00:41:06] And what's weird to me is you could call a billionaire who goes, oh, I absolutely want to support you.
[00:41:11] I got your back 100% I was in the Marine Corps. I was wounded as well in Korea or in Vietnam.
[00:41:18] And you got my support and all you can get from his 20 hundred bucks. Yeah, exactly.
[00:41:24] But yeah, and some other elections like in state elections, if a billionaire likes you,
[00:41:28] you can give you a billion dollars if you want, but federal elections can't do that.
[00:41:34] So yeah, that's, and it's stuff. So you got a call and call and call and call and call and then you
[00:41:38] got to do stuff to get your name out there. And at some point will it beat Will someone else start
[00:41:44] making calls for you? Not really. I mean, so Brian who just continues to help it help me a lot of
[00:41:53] different ways, he'll make calls like he has, he has donors that he goes doing. So lately he's been
[00:41:59] making a few calls to their donors, to his donors and saying, you know, let me tell you about this guy
[00:42:03] Rob Jones, where you consider talking to him. And they say, yes, you're having call me. So then I call them.
[00:42:07] So in a way, yeah. And then if, yeah, I mean, if somebody knows somebody that they think would be
[00:42:13] interested in speaking to me and doing to my campaign, they'll call them. But a lot of these people,
[00:42:19] nobody knows. And so, and a lot of the times my fundraiser should set me up with people that are
[00:42:24] more likely to see things that are more likely to do. And I like I've called several Marines,
[00:42:30] you know, or other veterans. And yeah. And so they have that connection with me immediately because
[00:42:37] we're both veterans. So they're more willing to talk to me. It seems to me like it would be a good
[00:42:41] idea to get someone else to call for two reasons. Number one, efficiency of your time. But number two,
[00:42:51] it's kind of like it's easier for someone else to brag about you than it is for you to brag about
[00:42:57] yourself. Yeah. Yeah. For someone to call up and say, hey, how you doing? My name is Jocca Willink.
[00:43:01] And I'm actually not calling for myself. I'm calling for a great friend of mine that is a former
[00:43:07] Marine. He was wounded in Afghanistan. And he's actually not done serving yet. He's running for
[00:43:13] Congress here in the great state of Virginia. And I was wondering if you could maybe help out or
[00:43:19] are interested in supporting what he's doing. Like it seems like that would be kind of a good way to do it.
[00:43:26] Yeah. No, I agree with you. And you have to have, you know, outside the box ideas like that.
[00:43:32] Because the instinct is, well, because my first instinct is, oh, that's awesome that you're doing
[00:43:36] it yourself. Like that really shows like if you personally called me, I'd be more apt. But then I thought
[00:43:42] about it well, maybe, but someone else called me and saying, hey, this guy's running. He's a great guy.
[00:43:48] It's sort of a, it seems like that would be helpful as well. I'm not sure if you can't pay manager. So
[00:43:54] the consultants, hey, back off everyone, you get no mad at me right now. No, I don't tell Rob not to do that.
[00:44:00] Yeah. No, I think the main difference is probably that the fundraiser kind of knows that these people
[00:44:09] might not go for that kind of thing. But what you're talking about, I think would work great
[00:44:13] on kind of the more of a grassroots level where you're trying to call a lot of people and get
[00:44:17] smaller donations. And that's kind of important too. You want to get all those donations as well.
[00:44:22] Oh, so right now you're going after the big hitters kind of. Yeah. You're kind of go like these
[00:44:26] calls. There are people that have donated, you know, a thousand dollars in the past five thousand.
[00:44:30] And that kind of thing. So those kind of people, usually wouldn't. It's so weird to weigh these
[00:44:35] mechanisms work. Oh yeah. In the world. Like this is, you set up a system and you have no idea.
[00:44:41] Like, you know, you said earlier, you make laws, but you don't actually know what they're
[00:44:45] going to do when they hit the books and when they start getting an act in the world. This is one of
[00:44:50] those things. Like whoever made these laws, probably, or these rules, or when these rules were made,
[00:44:56] people have no idea how it was going to turn out. What it actually, what that actually translates
[00:45:03] to in the real world. Yeah. And one of my favorite examples of that is going through Officer Canada
[00:45:09] School in Officer Canada School. There was things that you did at Officer Canada School that had no,
[00:45:15] there's no possible way that the intention of the drill instructors was to have you doing what
[00:45:22] you're doing. One of the examples is you get a belt buckle. You get a belt buckle that has a
[00:45:29] coating on it. It's like a shiny brass belt buckle, but it's got a coating on this shiny brass
[00:45:34] belt buckle that because, you know, brass turns green or whatever. Yeah. Quick. Well, you get this one
[00:45:38] that's been treated in such a way that it never will get, it just stays shiny all the time. I mean,
[00:45:44] you can get thumb prints on it. If you stick your finger, although your thumb, but you can easily wipe it off.
[00:45:48] Well, what you do is you have to clean these belt buckles with brass so,
[00:45:55] until that lining comes off completely. And then you end up with a thing that you have to constantly
[00:46:01] polish all the time and it doesn't hold its shine. And you think yourself, at some point, someone said,
[00:46:06] hey, make sure there's no fingerprints on your brass belt buckle. And so people started cleaning it,
[00:46:10] and then they started cleaning it until the actual finish was off. And now this thing has become,
[00:46:16] become a totally different game. The game is no longer just keep your belt buckle clean. It's
[00:46:24] go completely psycho with with with brass. So until the thing is, it's not even functionally more.
[00:46:32] When you get done with oxygenated, it's going to throw that thing away because it has no purpose.
[00:46:35] Yeah. They didn't mean it that way. At some point, somewhere along the way, a journalist
[00:46:40] struck her said, hey, you're going to film print. Make sure there's no fingerprints on your belt buckle.
[00:46:44] And that went from that over, however, me 30, 50 years to you polish all the finish completely off that
[00:46:52] thing until it's just pure brass. You get all these weird things that happen like that. And that's what
[00:46:57] this is. You know, it's this environment that's created. And all of a sudden, you've got these
[00:47:02] potential candidates or candidates that are running that are jumping through these random hoops
[00:47:08] that have been built by random laws that were that seem to make sense to somebody at some time.
[00:47:14] Yeah. Well, they're not entirely random, but they have, they have, you know,
[00:47:19] purposes and theories behind them. They want to prevent corruption. They want, they want,
[00:47:24] you know, politicians to be bought off or anything like that. But then you're never going to think
[00:47:30] of absolutely every single contingency that could possibly happen. And then so you have the,
[00:47:35] you know, these are the rules. And then, you know, human beings, these big old brains
[00:47:40] that we can adapt to when people figure out, you know, ways to maneuver and, you know,
[00:47:44] this is what you get. And then so you're like, okay, we can't do this in this. And I will
[00:47:48] they just do a different way. So you can, you know, you, you create a best system you can. And then
[00:47:53] you just have to let people, you know, you, obviously always try and improve upon it. But you
[00:48:01] just have to live within that system. Do you guys do like an analytics to see,
[00:48:07] hey, how much are we getting from the calling center? I just feel like door to door,
[00:48:11] cold calling, like, is just as time goes on. It's like less and less and less of a thing. Yeah.
[00:48:16] Um, well, yeah. So we keep track. So like everybody that I call, I put in a spreadsheet.
[00:48:23] And I talk, you know, I put in there the result of call, what number I call, you know,
[00:48:28] what day I call them. So I can kind of look back. And then, yeah, so we kind of know.
[00:48:34] And so we can kind of analyze that. But kind of as you, as time goes on, a lot of the times
[00:48:42] it'll get easier to raise money because people see that you're raising money in success,
[00:48:46] green success. So they'll check and say, oh, this guy's already raised $200,000 or whatever. Maybe.
[00:48:52] And then, okay, so he's a viable candidate now. So I'm actually going to donate him.
[00:48:55] And another reason that's kind of hard right now is because we have, you know,
[00:48:59] there's going to be a primary and a lot of people don't want to support in a primary because
[00:49:02] these people have money. They want to invest in something that they think is going to,
[00:49:07] you know, be fruitful. So then there's no way to know. And so that's why you kind of have to get your
[00:49:11] story out there. You have to kind of convince them, you know, why you're a viable candidate and why
[00:49:15] they should support you. And it's not the most pleasant thing to have to do. And it's not the easiest
[00:49:21] thing to do. But the more you do it, the more I'm kind of getting used to it now. And I'd rather
[00:49:25] ask a stranger for money than, you know, ask a close friend for money for sure. So then what's
[00:49:32] it? Okay. So we get, we get through this first quarter ends in September. Then what, what's
[00:49:38] what, what does the campaign go from there? Do you have any idea, or are you just kind of like
[00:49:42] on board for the ride? I have no idea of where it's going to go. But yeah, I'm not an expert as my first
[00:49:48] time. So at the same time as you're raising money in these early stages, you are getting, just
[00:49:56] getting out and talking to people, going to events. And it's like I've been going to a
[00:50:02] Republican committee meetings and introducing myself. Like a lot of the times all out candidates
[00:50:06] to come up in the beginning and speak for a few minutes and just so that they know, you know,
[00:50:10] I introduce myself. And then so you kind of building that network of people that know who you are
[00:50:15] and you're creating a little bit of buzz and you're meeting people. And I go out and I talk
[00:50:19] to board a supervisors on counties. And I just kind of taught in mayors and that kind of thing.
[00:50:24] And I just say, I just sit down and then what are the, you know, what are the issues that people
[00:50:28] are talking about here? And Northern Virginia is always traffic. There's like number one.
[00:50:31] And so I just say, what are people talking about tonight? It's kind of getting details on that.
[00:50:36] Because these people kind of know, you know, they know the people on a granular level because
[00:50:41] they're local representatives. So they can kind of tell me. And then you kind of look at that.
[00:50:45] And then you can kind of see, okay, most of the people are talking about this and this and this.
[00:50:50] And so you kind of get a feel for that. And then at the same time as you're doing that, you're doing a lot of
[00:50:54] you know, research on policy. So you got to read up on, you know, all these different
[00:51:01] issues that you're finding out that people care about. You got to figure out, you know,
[00:51:06] what they are, what you can do to change them, what you can do to improve them,
[00:51:09] and that kind of things. So you kind of doing all these things simultaneously.
[00:51:13] And you just kind of go on that trajectory. Raise money, meet people, learn policies.
[00:51:18] When's the primary for you? Uh, so Virginia is kind of unique in that they every year.
[00:51:26] They kind of decide how they're going to select candidates. They're a public
[00:51:30] party. It is how they're going to select their candidates. So they just recently decided that
[00:51:35] they're not going to do a primary. What they're going to do is call a convention. And so they're
[00:51:39] going to have this convention in the 10th district. Uh, sometime next year, they haven't said
[00:51:44] a date for you. I don't probably be spring time spring, maybe early so. Yeah, probably late spring.
[00:51:50] And what they'll do is they'll bring in all these delegates from all over the counties. The
[00:51:58] county is sent a certain number of delegates in. And what they'll do is all the candidates that want to
[00:52:04] try and be the, uh, the Republican candidate. They'll get up and they'll speak in front of the delegation.
[00:52:10] And then the delegates will go vote. And then if they don't have over 50%. If one person doesn't
[00:52:16] have over 50%. They'll knock off the bottom one or the bottom two and they'll vote again.
[00:52:21] And they'll keep doing that. Keep doing that. Keep doing that. And then at the end, they'll
[00:52:24] send white smoke out of the, the top of the building. Uh, no. But they'll have, so
[00:52:31] eventually we'll be one person versus one person, so I'll get the majority. And then that's the
[00:52:35] person. That's it right there. And how many other people are going in the 10th district?
[00:52:39] Against, do you know right now there's one, uh, one other guy, army veteran.
[00:52:45] But there's always rumors. I mean, there's always other people that, you know, come in.
[00:52:48] And so there's rumors about other people that are thinking about coming in. But until they file,
[00:52:53] you don't know. It's just a conjecture. So you know that this just got recently to decide it on the fifth.
[00:53:00] So now that we have that kind of a situation, that's good in bad for us. Um, you know, unlike
[00:53:06] misogy I have no preference. I'll just do whatever the system is. That's what it is.
[00:53:11] Okay, cool. We're going to adapt to that. But uh, it's good for us because it requires less money.
[00:53:20] So you don't have to go out there and do commercials for the primary and that kind of stuff.
[00:53:23] You don't have to do a lot of advertising. You can save all your money for the general election.
[00:53:28] And when you're running against an incumbent, they already have millions and millions and millions
[00:53:31] of dollars. So you're going to be coming from a from a deficit compared to them. So that's good.
[00:53:37] I can kind of save a little bit of money. Uh, but it's also a little bit more difficult because
[00:53:42] now you have to go out and you have to kind of, you have to find out who the delegates are.
[00:53:47] And they make a list of it. But you have to kind of talk to these delegates. And you have to convince
[00:53:52] them why you're the, you know, the best person. If you don't have make a good impression on this one
[00:53:57] person, well, they might not, you know, that's a vote loss. And so there's only so many delegates
[00:54:01] that you can talk to. So yeah, it's kind of pros and cons with it. But that's what we're doing.
[00:54:07] And so that's what I'm adapting to. And that's what we're going to, so we're going to make happen.
[00:54:11] And that's not even, we don't even know when that's going to happen right now.
[00:54:14] It'll be 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20. Yeah. Do you get, will you be making a
[00:54:21] speech at that thing straight up? Yeah, I mean, I think so. That's what I've been told anyway.
[00:54:25] I guess they, they have to come up with all the rules and everything of how it's going to work.
[00:54:31] Well, I guess they have rules in place, but they have to like release them. So you know,
[00:54:35] I'm sure there's, you know, you have to file as a candidate and all this stuff, you know,
[00:54:39] at the convention. But I think what the, what the guy told me that I talk to said is that they're
[00:54:45] going to do it where each person gets up and gives a stump speech before they start voting.
[00:54:49] But a lot of the work is going to be done before ideally you will have all your votes
[00:54:57] before you even ever give that speech. You're going to do the legwork. It's kind of like,
[00:55:01] you know, this is actually something that Pam says. And she's a, you know, four-time
[00:55:04] role champion, due to unparalleled big champion. So I should probably listen to what she says about
[00:55:09] competing. She says the race is one not on the day, but in the months and years that you spent
[00:55:17] training beforehand. So you got to put in the legwork, talk to these delegates, and you can even
[00:55:23] convince friends of yours to go try and be delegates. I see, you kind of, you know, get a team together
[00:55:30] like, yeah, get a team together to go there and try and become delegates. And said,
[00:55:34] they're your friends. So the vote for you. So you have to kind of do that legwork in order to hopefully win
[00:55:41] the vote before you even give your stump speech.
[00:55:43] This is one of the things I was thinking about as, you know, when we start talking about politics
[00:55:51] and in your case in particular, one of the things that comes up all the time in politics is gun control
[00:55:58] and all those issues. One of the things I was thinking about is you're, you went to Virginia Tech
[00:56:05] April 16th, 2007, newest 32 people killed in a mass shooting there. Were you on campus when
[00:56:12] that happened? No, I was a, was in my apartment. Oh, you were. Yeah, I was by Mr. My soon, you
[00:56:18] seen your year. So I was there, ish, but I was in an apartment off campus. I just lived there.
[00:56:23] And when we got the first reports, it was kind of like, they were just saying that somebody
[00:56:30] was roaming around campus, you know, shooting people. So maybe it just, you know, graduated from boot camp
[00:56:37] not too long before. So I like a medial. I would go over there. So I, you know, I walked over to campus
[00:56:43] to see if I, without any kind of protection or anything to see if I could find this guy or whatever,
[00:56:48] walked around a little bit, but you know, I didn't see anybody because, you know, it was all happening
[00:56:52] in the building and it was all over by the time, I even left my apartment.
[00:56:57] And yeah, so I wasn't, you know, I wasn't there there. You know, I wasn't nowhere near the, the shooting,
[00:57:03] but I was there for the, you know, the aftermath and the, you know, just the pain that we felt as a community
[00:57:09] after the fact. What was the, what was the atmosphere afterwards? I mean, what they do with the
[00:57:16] students at school that you guys, what do you do with a, you know, a test you have on on Wednesday,
[00:57:23] what they just like the basic life stuff. Yeah, it is, it's just disbelief, you know, you can't believe
[00:57:28] that it happened at all. And you can't believe that it happened to you, you know, to your community.
[00:57:36] And yeah, it's just one of those, I think they, you know, they, they just have to give you time,
[00:57:44] they give you, they give you, you know, gave everybody the week off. They're at the school. I think
[00:57:48] that a really good job of supporting the students in my opinion, you know, they said no pressure.
[00:57:53] So they actually came out and said, if you want to, you don't have to finish the semester, if you
[00:58:00] don't want to. You can just cut your grades here and your teacher or your professor will, you know,
[00:58:05] have a grade for you based on what you've done to this point. And you don't have to, you don't have to finish
[00:58:10] the year if you don't want to. And so they gave them that option. They had, you know, support available to,
[00:58:16] to anybody that was, you know, was struggling with, with dealing with the situation. They made that
[00:58:21] available, you know, memorials. It's like, there's not a whole lot, you can't deal with the thing
[00:58:26] that everybody wants you to do is go back in time and have somebody tackle that guy, you know,
[00:58:32] before he ever did anything. You know, not to make it about me, but the way I felt about, I felt,
[00:58:39] I felt guilty that I wasn't in the building. You know, that's how I kind of felt about it. Like,
[00:58:43] maybe I could have been in one of those rooms and ran out the guy and, I don't know, given,
[00:58:50] people some time, you know, like a lot of people did. There was one professor that was a Holocaust
[00:58:55] survivor, slammed the door, blocked it. And I think he had his students crawl out the window or something.
[00:59:00] And he gets, you know, he got killed by the, by the shooter. And so that's kind of how I felt at the
[00:59:06] time about it. I wish I had been there to maybe do something. But it's mostly just, you just,
[00:59:13] you know, you just can't believe it. It's kind of indescribable.
[00:59:15] It's an interesting idea of giving, when you first said, oh, they gave people the option of,
[00:59:22] of just taking their grade right there, whatever it happened to be at that time and then you
[00:59:26] don't, I don't have to finish this semester. And at first I thought to myself, yeah, that's a really
[00:59:29] good idea. And then as I thought about it, sitting here as you were talking,
[00:59:34] what that does, what that could do to people is, okay, now what are you going to do? So now what
[00:59:39] do you do? You sit there and you start to dwell on this and that seems to me like a good idea that
[00:59:46] in practice, the best thing to, not the best thing to do. But well, I think it's the best thing to do
[00:59:53] is okay, we're going to, we're going to get a week off, right? Maybe we're going to get two weeks off.
[00:59:58] But we're going to get a week off. We're going to hold ceremonies. We're going to mourn. And then
[01:00:02] we're going to get back to work and we're going to carry on. And because otherwise you're stuck
[01:00:11] with just the thoughts of the loss that you suffered. And it's one of those weird things.
[01:00:20] When you say that you, that you need to move on, right? It sounds like the coldest,
[01:00:27] most horrible thing that a person could say if you, if someone loses a loved one and you look
[01:00:34] at him and you say, well, you know, you've got to move on, right? And that's like, that seems
[01:00:39] like the most horrible and cold thing to say. Yeah. Hey, you've lost the love for them, but guess
[01:00:44] what, you got to move on. That sounds so horrible. But it's kind of what you need to do, right? I mean,
[01:00:53] you, it's what you need to do. Your, your love one that you've lost, they don't want you to sit
[01:00:58] around in mourn for seven months while you wait for the semester to end for summer to end. And then
[01:01:04] you go, what are you going to do during that time period? Yeah. And so that's a rough thing to think about.
[01:01:10] But I think it's, it's definitely one of those hard things that you have, the hard conversation
[01:01:18] that you have to have and sometimes you have to have that conversation with yourself
[01:01:21] is when you say to yourself or you say to someone else, you've got to move on.
[01:01:27] And it seems so cold and heartless, but at the same time, it's what you actually do have to do.
[01:01:36] Yeah. And yeah, I never actually thought about it from that perspective in terms of, you know,
[01:01:40] them allowing people to, to, you know, cut the semester short. But, you know, that's a really
[01:01:45] good point. You have to have something to do. Otherwise, you're just going to sit around and
[01:01:49] just think about it all day, all the time. But at the same time, you know, they didn't want people's
[01:01:54] grades to be affected by, be negatively affected by, you know, for sure. Yeah, for sure.
[01:01:58] For sure. I don't know. It's kind of see where they're coming from for sure.
[01:02:02] Tough decision to make, tough decision to make. Yeah, I don't know.
[01:02:07] You know, another thing that that's that I've definitely thought about since you, you know, entered
[01:02:14] into this arena is thinking about a thing about Lewis Polar Jr. Right? Yeah. Run in for
[01:02:22] running for the House of Representatives in the first district of Virginia. He ran as a Democrat.
[01:02:29] He, as we know, lost the election and he lost it to basically a Republican kind of warhawk. Yeah.
[01:02:39] That had the draft deferment multiple times. So it didn't go to Vietnam, but was kind of, you know,
[01:02:49] a warhawk type guy. Yeah. And one thing that's really interesting when you read
[01:02:57] fortunate son is that there was all these opportunities that Lewis Polar Jr. had to kind of start
[01:03:04] negative campaigning against his opponent and he didn't do it. And he ran that campaign with his
[01:03:12] much dignity and class as you as a as a person could run. Yeah. And any loss, any loss by a
[01:03:19] big big margin, too. I think he lost by like 25% which is crazy to think about.
[01:03:28] Are you thinking about right now? What it looks like where where your own
[01:03:33] personal line of, hey, this is too far and I'm not going to go there. You have to, yeah, you
[01:03:40] have to maintain your more compass and you want, I want to win, but I want to win in the way
[01:03:46] that I set out to win. I don't want to win by being somebody that I'm not. I want to win by being
[01:03:52] the person that I am and then if people want that person to represent them in Congress, then I'd
[01:03:59] be honored to do that. But if the person I am, the people decide that they don't want that in Congress,
[01:04:06] you know, fair enough. I understand no hard feelings. I still love this area. I still love the
[01:04:11] district. This is where you get into a little slippery slope possibility. Yeah. Okay.
[01:04:16] Because here's the question you can ask yourself is listen, I'm Rob Jones. I know I want to do
[01:04:23] the right thing for the right reasons in order for me to have that possibility. I'm going to have to
[01:04:29] have to get a little bit medieval on some people here, right? Yeah. And you think, okay, as soon
[01:04:34] as this is over, though, I'll go right back to, you know, being on the moral high ground.
[01:04:40] But if I stay on the moral high ground this whole time, I might not even get there. So I need
[01:04:47] to position my, like there's a slippery slope there. What do you say? No, what I got to make, I got
[01:04:51] to run this negative at. I got to do this, I got to make this statement about my opponent, right?
[01:04:56] That stuff or, or I'm not going to get the publicity that I need to win. That's a slippery,
[01:05:04] that's a slippery slope. Yeah. Well, that's, yeah, that's the, the gray area that a lot of
[01:05:09] elections are are one in Austin. And, you know, maybe we should write a book after this called the
[01:05:15] decademy of politics, you know, and it's just, yeah, you have your, you know, kind of so-called default
[01:05:23] aggressive type of opinion or position on that default, you know, good guy or whatever, maybe.
[01:05:30] But then yet you have some some gray areas there where, yeah, if the elections go on bad and you
[01:05:37] feel like this person is really going to be bad for the country and for the district, then you might
[01:05:41] have to do something that you wouldn't normally do. But you kind of maintain that moral compass
[01:05:47] even with that. So you take it to a certain level and then you dial it back and you don't do it again
[01:05:52] and you don't let it kind of slip away and you can keep doing it. So you kind of have to take
[01:05:59] every situation as it's your own unique situation and kind of step out and then step back,
[01:06:04] step out and step back as needed, I guess. I think that in the end with situations like that,
[01:06:12] what it, what you have to maintain above all is you have to maintain the truth. And if you
[01:06:17] maintain the truth about what's happening, I think in the in the in the long run and oftentimes
[01:06:23] in the short run, hey, if you're telling the truth about what's going on, that's what that's what
[01:06:29] make you win. Yeah, very true. Yeah, you can kind of go negative. You can say something that's bad about
[01:06:35] the other person. But you can just say, oh, well, this negative at is this person voted for this bill
[01:06:42] that did this and that's kind of going negative, but it's not you're not, you're not, you're not
[01:06:46] just something that adds a person. And you're telling the truth. Yeah, not making something. That's a good,
[01:06:52] that's a good way to approach it. I'll let you know how it goes when I start having to make
[01:06:56] those types of decisions. Hopefully it's so obvious that I'm going to win that I won't even have
[01:07:00] to make those decisions. But what's it? You know, and that's the other weird thing about politics is
[01:07:06] you know, I used to think of the officers that were in the military and most of the time,
[01:07:16] much of the time, the officers that you wanted to work for were the kind of officers that
[01:07:23] didn't really care as not the right word, but I'm not sure how to explain it. Didn't really,
[01:07:29] they weren't all jazzed up because they were an officer. They were jazzed up to work with the
[01:07:35] troops. They were jazzed up to serve the country. They weren't doing it for their own career. Right?
[01:07:41] And it's the same thing with politics. If you think about the type of people that you would actually
[01:07:46] want to have in political power, one of the main reasons why you would want them in that position
[01:07:52] is because they would never want to be there. They're the type of people that say, well,
[01:07:58] there are people like you that say, hey, listen, this is not what I want to do, but this is kind
[01:08:02] of what I have to do. This is the void of leadership and and someone needs to fill that void. So there's
[01:08:08] another kind of dichotomy there that the person that you would actually want in that position is
[01:08:16] the person that fundamentally in their own heart doesn't really want that position. Yeah.
[01:08:21] And you end up with and it's sort of like in in man search for meaning, the book about the concentration
[01:08:28] camps and he says that the best of us didn't make it. The best of us didn't survive because the
[01:08:36] best people in the concentration camp, the purist and most good people were the people that said,
[01:08:43] hey, you take this crust bread instead of me, hey, you take all step up and do this labor that's
[01:08:51] going to push you over the edge and make you sick. I'll give you my blanket at night because we only
[01:08:56] have one for for for us and you're the one that needs it the most. Those good people they didn't
[01:09:02] survive and that's kind of it's kind of what happens in politics or it could very well. It happens
[01:09:10] in many cases in politics where the person that won't cross that line, the person that doesn't just
[01:09:16] look out for themselves first, that's the person that doesn't win because they didn't go negative,
[01:09:24] they didn't mud sling, they didn't undermine and they end up not winning. So this is a tough situation,
[01:09:33] but I think what's good is I think there's more opportunity now and I think there's a lot of things
[01:09:38] out there that level the playing field and I think one of them is social media, right? This podcast,
[01:09:43] okay, you're on here, you get to tell, you get to talk about people know your story, they hear it
[01:09:48] on a broad basis, you know, you got your own social media that you can talk directly to people and
[01:09:55] there's no filter, doesn't cost any money to put up a social media post. Now does it cost money to
[01:10:00] advertise a social media post? Yes, it does. It does. So if somebody can dump more money into that,
[01:10:05] but at least the playing field is more level than it used to be for you to get your voice out there
[01:10:11] and not have to do slimy, shady things to do it. Yeah, and then yeah with respect to what you're
[01:10:20] saying about, you know, some people didn't survive. You also have to wonder whether or not a lot of the
[01:10:26] times are some of the times surviving isn't always the best thing. So if you have to do something
[01:10:35] to just to survive and it's something that's even worse than death, then sometimes you don't want
[01:10:41] to survive and sometimes you can be fine with that. And so it's kind of the same thing with political
[01:10:46] if I have to sling mud and do all that stuff, then maybe that's maybe that's not worth it.
[01:10:52] Yeah, I don't know. I totally agree. All right, you wrote a little something about leadership and
[01:10:57] it's I was going to kind of read some chunks of it here. There's a void of true leadership in Congress.
[01:11:04] It is blatantly evident in all the modern forms of media, print, broadcast and social. It is
[01:11:12] patently obvious that the words and behaviors of many of our elected representatives at all levels
[01:11:17] and in all political parties. One needn't look further than this void to identify the root of
[01:11:22] the rotten climate in politics that is sickening the American public.
[01:11:27] There's a big chunk of the American public that are sickened by that. There's a big chunk that
[01:11:34] actually just full on participates, too. Yeah, that's true. It's crazy. I'm not too
[01:11:44] I'm not an active participant in Facebook. I mean, I have Facebook and I post on Facebook,
[01:11:50] but I don't get involved much in the personal Facebook, right? Yeah.
[01:11:58] But I hear stories about Facebook from people that are on it. It's like a crazy battleground
[01:12:05] where people on the friend you, if you make a statement or you like someone's political post
[01:12:11] that they don't agree with, it's like crazy people. Crazy people. But I like to, you know, I believe
[01:12:19] that truly believe that those people are the minority, the vast minority. I agree with you. And I
[01:12:26] said this, I said this on a podcast and every someone's like, well, there's all these extremists
[01:12:31] out there and I was like, you know what, I travel the country all the time. I work with businesses
[01:12:35] of all sizes. Oh, yeah, this is Ben Shapiro's podcast. I travel the country. I'm all over the place
[01:12:41] all the time. I work with all these companies. I work with frontline troops. I work with lead
[01:12:45] mid-level leaders. I work with CEOs. I work with everyone in the spectrum. And I don't meet people
[01:12:54] regularly that are like that. I don't know who those people are that are going crazy on Facebook.
[01:13:00] I don't meet them. I know they're out there. But yes, you're right. And I agree with you.
[01:13:04] Most people, what are they trying to do with their life? Oh, they, they're trying to, or money,
[01:13:09] they're trying to raise their family. They're trying to spend time with their family. They're trying
[01:13:11] to pay off their house. That's what they're doing. So yes, I agree that I think I will kind of
[01:13:18] retract my statement a little bit and say in that you say it's sickening to the American public. I think
[01:13:23] most people in the American public are definitely sick of it. And that's what I said to Ben Shapiro.
[01:13:28] I said, Ben, I mean, he is at, he is at what is it called? He's at Ground Zero for political fire.
[01:13:38] Yeah. And, and you know, I was on another guy named Brian Coppimman's podcast and he's like the
[01:13:44] other end of the spectrum. And actually we joked about the fact, you know, I was like, if you met Ben
[01:13:48] Shapiro, you'd like to find his a really nice guy. And Brian Coppim said, I'm not even that's cool
[01:13:52] to make sense, but they're they're completely opposite ends of the of the political spectrum.
[01:13:58] But I think that those people at the far, far ends and both of those guys can be a little bit of
[01:14:04] Ground Zero for, you know, impact and people go go crazy. Yeah. There's people that like to just
[01:14:11] stir things up, right? I mean, there's people that like to stir things up. Most people are like to
[01:14:16] stir things up in one way or another. Okay. Not necessarily politically, specifically, some people
[01:14:21] politically, but in one way or another. Oh, yeah, it's fun. Not to do it, but to see it happen. So some
[01:14:27] people they like to take part, you know. All right, moving on with this, this piece you up, the legislative
[01:14:33] branch of the United States government is comprised of 535 legislators. Many of them have begun
[01:14:37] venturing down a path that can only be characterized as the opposite of true leadership.
[01:14:42] A path that displays a lack of respect for anyone with a different worldview from them.
[01:14:47] A path that involves dehumanizing and demonizing people simply because they're a member of an opposing
[01:14:53] party. Many of these legislators have stopped viewing people's individuals and have instead applied
[01:15:00] a group identity and used it to apply group blame. Yeah. That's a Jordan Peterson line that I kind
[01:15:10] of stole. I heard him say that one time I thought was a really good line. Well, the, the, that is a true
[01:15:16] statement. Yeah. And that was, I said many. I didn't say all or anything like that either because
[01:15:23] it's kind of what we were talking about just now. The, uh, maybe sometimes
[01:15:27] you only think that the vast majority of people are doing it because they, you only hear about the
[01:15:33] people that are, that are being, you know, kind of naughty or whatever. So, yeah. So it can be, it
[01:15:39] maybe it can be said that maybe it's the minority of legislators that are, you know, kind of,
[01:15:45] going under this kind of behavior. But I think it's, there's a trend, starting to have more and more
[01:15:52] and more, it's happening. Yeah. So you also get, you also get the mob mentality, just to straight
[01:15:58] up mob mentality where it's blood in the water and the sharks are going to go crazy. And who was it?
[01:16:04] It was, um, Dave Chappelle. I was, I saw little clip of Dave Chappelle's, um, new Netflix special
[01:16:12] and he's making this joke. He says he says, uh, guess who I am? And if you do something wrong,
[01:16:20] every in your life and I find out about it. I don't care if it's in five years, 10 years, 15 years,
[01:16:26] 20 years, if I find out about it, I'm going to ruin everything you have. And he says, guess who I am?
[01:16:32] And people are yelling out different names and he goes, I'm you. Right. Yeah. That's what everyone
[01:16:37] does. That's what everyone does now does. So we get this mob mentality of, oh, you made a mistake.
[01:16:42] Are you said something that was out of line or whatever the case may be? Cool. We're going to
[01:16:46] crucify you now. That's what's going to happen. And unfortunately, in Congress anyway, they're all
[01:16:53] kind of peers. They're all kind of equals. So there's no one leader that can kind of come in,
[01:16:57] like the Meal Eye Massacre and put a stop to things. Um, so yeah, there's no way that that can really
[01:17:05] step forward and do that. Yeah. As I kind of influence. Unless you just take the moral high
[01:17:09] round and people start to see that that's the correct example. Yeah. So you kind of have to start
[01:17:14] leading. Yeah. Laterally. And I think like Dan Crunchy, I was doing a great job of that. He
[01:17:19] yeah, he is just response. He's not emotional. He just kind of, you know, states has a
[01:17:24] opinion, recognizing that there's other views tries to explain around it. Doesn't get personal with
[01:17:28] people. He's just doing a great job from that perspective. Yeah. Doesn't get fired up. No face.
[01:17:33] Does just keeps normal face all the time. He's not getting crazy. And you know, it's it's hard.
[01:17:39] I remember explaining this when we got home from Ramadi. You know, there was inside the
[01:17:46] sealed community. There were some people that were looking at the operations we did and what we did
[01:17:50] that thought, oh, why are you guys going out the daytime? Why are you guys supporting conventional
[01:17:54] operations? They're asking these questions. And basically, it's it's my fault that they were asking
[01:17:59] those questions because it means that I didn't do a good job of letting the community know
[01:18:04] why exactly we were in that position and what the strategic impact of those missions were
[01:18:09] and all those things. But I remember talking to life and Seth because I mean, coming home from
[01:18:15] Ramadi, you know, we suffered some significant casualties and to hear someone say, you know,
[01:18:21] what were you guys even doing? It's really easy to get emotional. And I sat those guys down. I'm
[01:18:25] like, listen, when you discuss this with people, if you get emotional, your your argument goes out
[01:18:33] the window because now you're just they're looking at you going, oh, he's super emotional. That's
[01:18:37] only he's he doesn't make any sense. We can't listen to what he's saying because he's emotional.
[01:18:42] Yeah. And so I said, when we when we talk about this with people, we have to just get
[01:18:47] unemotional just detached and just explain, hey, this is what we're doing here. It's what was going
[01:18:51] on. So what the conventional forces were doing, this is what the strategy was here's how we were
[01:18:55] able to help. You just have to do it like that because if you go, what are you talking? And another
[01:19:00] thing that's really easy to do is you already, but they're like getting really fired up and we can't
[01:19:05] do that. So I think Dan is doing a good job of that. And hopefully that example will continue to
[01:19:11] spread. And I know you'll you'll be doing that as well. All right, moving down. The path leads to an end
[01:19:18] point of limited to no effective communication. A lack of communication produces an environment in
[01:19:24] which no meaningful work can get accomplished. A workless environment in Congress means that
[01:19:28] a miracle will stagnate. The process and systems on which our country runs will not be able to improve.
[01:19:36] The result is that Americans will suffer. Yeah, people can't even talk people can't even talk to
[01:19:44] each other. Yeah. In Congress. Yeah, if you can't come either way. It's crazy. Like you can't,
[01:19:51] the the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the time is going to be close to
[01:19:58] 50% Democrat 50% Republican. And you rely on these other people to pass legislation and to do
[01:20:07] the job of Congress, which is to pass bills that can improve America, improves the lives of Americans.
[01:20:14] So if people can't communicate, so I could have, I could go into a committee or whatever with
[01:20:20] the cure for cancer. Like this bill will cure cancer guarantee. Even if it is, you know, what I said
[01:20:26] before where you don't know, I know for sure. This will cure cancer. But I go into committee that
[01:20:32] day of the week before, you know, representative Charles, I went on Twitter and I said,
[01:20:39] what an idiot. This guy's stupid. You know, I just did a tweet like that. He's got this to the
[01:20:45] cancer. Not voting for it. All his friends aren't voting for it because they're on his team.
[01:20:49] So that cancer bill, even though it's going to cure cancer, it's going to be the best thing ever
[01:20:54] doesn't see the light a day. So it's like you might as well not even have it.
[01:21:01] Continuing on, but there is hope. Despite them getting next to no coverage in the media,
[01:21:06] there are true leaders in Congress. We can learn from their example. A true leader
[01:21:10] recognizes that every person comes for a unique set of experiences, including their
[01:21:15] upbringing, education struggles and environment that forms their worldview, including values,
[01:21:19] priorities and perspectives. The leader also recognizes that even if an individual's an individual
[01:21:25] person's worldview is wholly opposite, then that of the leaders, it is nevertheless equally valid
[01:21:31] and worthy of consideration. The leader knows that the worldview and the person must be shown,
[01:21:38] respect. The leader gives the other person the benefit of believing that they have good intention
[01:21:44] and thoughtful and now and thoughtfully analyzes their ideas before coming to a conclusion as to their
[01:21:49] viability. I gave an answer. I think it was at the last master. So many asked this big crazy
[01:21:56] question about leadership. I will want to say something. What are you doing this about? And
[01:22:00] and I said, oh, we know you do it with that. And one of the most underutilized tools in all
[01:22:08] of leadership is to listen. Actually listen to what other people are saying. Actually listen to
[01:22:15] the people below you in the chain of command. Listen to people above you in the chain of command. Listen
[01:22:18] to your, if you're in a family, listen to what your wife, listen to what you actually listen to what
[01:22:23] people have to say. And that's what you're saying right here. Instead of as soon as your mouth opens
[01:22:28] up, I already am judging what I think you're going to say and shutting it down, is that I actually
[01:22:33] listen? I always, when I'm listening to people, I always think, why, I don't, I don't, my, my first
[01:22:39] instinct when you start saying something isn't why are you wrong. My instinct is, hey, what is
[01:22:46] this person know that I might not know? What, what about this person's perspective? It's correct
[01:22:53] that that doesn't make sense to me or that I don't understand. Continue on a true leader of
[01:23:00] Congress recognizes that America relies on the teamwork of people with opposing viewpoints. The
[01:23:06] idea of a republic is not to have 51% of the people cram an idea around the, throw to 49% of
[01:23:11] the people. Nor is it the opposite. It is to find solutions that as many people as possible can be
[01:23:16] happy with when they go to bed at night. The leader knows that the only way to achieve this is
[01:23:20] do working together. And I think that's, you'd think that that was a common sense statement.
[01:23:27] Hey, somewhere there's a happy medium that will work for a majority of the people. Right?
[01:23:31] It's not way over here. And it's not way over here. There's a little dichotomy between those
[01:23:36] two that you have to balance as a leader. Yeah, anymore it's like everybody on the other side
[01:23:40] is don't move at inch. Don't give up an inch. It's like this country was founded on something called
[01:23:46] the great compromise back in, you know, when they were right in the Constitution. Yeah, well, that
[01:23:52] idea of that every single thing is a slippery slope is something that's very hard to
[01:23:58] contend with. Yeah. Right. And I think the reason it's so hard to contend with is that
[01:24:03] folks on the extremes are so ravenous that when they do get an inch, they go cool. We got an inch.
[01:24:10] We need to take a foot. And we got a foot. Now we'll take a yard. And so both sides have that attitude.
[01:24:16] Yeah. Instead of someone coming to the table, putting the ego and check and saying, okay, you know what?
[01:24:20] But we trust that you'll do this. And you know, I think one of the things that makes America
[01:24:30] stable is that it's a tough, it's a big bureaucratic system that's hard to move. Right.
[01:24:34] It's a big bureaucratic system that's hard to move. No one person has a massive effect.
[01:24:42] They just don't. I mean, like you can steer some stuff. You can make some things happen. You can
[01:24:47] make some, you can put some laws into place, but those laws might get repealed. I mean, it's a hard
[01:24:51] place to move around. And if people understood how hard it is to move around, then maybe they can
[01:24:59] start looking at other viewpoints a little bit more, like, let's, let's actually move forward
[01:25:04] in some direction. That teamwork relies in turn on communication between these people. The leader
[01:25:12] knows the leader knows how to effectively communicate with both people that agree with them and those
[01:25:17] that don't. They communicate directly with the person. They explain their side and genuinely attempt
[01:25:23] to understand the other persons with humility, with respect, without insults. They don't sling mud
[01:25:29] in the public space effectively forever alienating that person on whom they rely for teamwork.
[01:25:35] A true leader acts selflessly in the performance of their duties. They make the decisions and
[01:25:43] implement the actions that they've truthfully think are the best interests of the people that
[01:25:48] they represent and of America. They do so even if the result is damaging to their career.
[01:25:55] They don't care about notoriety and are happy to happy in the simple knowledge that the people
[01:26:00] that do know them believe in them wholeheartedly and they are making a difference. The good news
[01:26:07] is that we have leaders like this throughout our country, summary and congress, but if America
[01:26:11] is going to continue to be the greatest country on earth, Congress needs more. Pretty straightforward.
[01:26:22] Yeah, I mean, we need people to step up and that's real. We talked about it before. That's why
[01:26:27] I decided to do it. Somebody has to be the one to enter into the arena and it's better to have
[01:26:36] somebody that has this kind of attitude, I think, then allow somebody else to do it.
[01:26:43] And I think something else, people with this attitude are going to be able to need to prevail
[01:26:52] and we need to move away from the extremist viewpoints that come out even in Congress.
[01:27:00] Because it's a tough question when you say that you look at the other people as if their intentions
[01:27:10] are good. You look into someone else and go, hey, look, what they want is what's best for America.
[01:27:18] And that's a very pure way to look at it. I will tell you that I've talked to some smart people
[01:27:24] that look at some people in politics and say they have and I've discussed this on a podcast.
[01:27:31] I'm trying to think of with who, but there's people that think, no, they don't actually want
[01:27:36] the best for America or their vision of America is different and outside what
[01:27:45] what the Constitution says. So that's another thing to think about.
[01:27:53] And I think that this attitude of people going into Congress that will actually listen,
[01:28:01] well, this is what I think will happen. The people that will go into Congress that actually
[01:28:05] listen, that actually can have meaningful conversations. I think that, or my hope is that that attitude
[01:28:13] will begin to rise to the surface that people realize that what you want, you know, the very first podcast
[01:28:21] I interviewed I ever did was with Tim Ferriss and he asked something about leadership and I talked
[01:28:26] about humility and then I talked about being balanced. And I think what people, hopefully in America,
[01:28:32] we'll start to realize is that what we want is not, are not people on the extremes, but people
[01:28:39] that are balanced and can communicate and listen, which is what you are bringing to the table.
[01:28:46] Yeah, and the reason that a lot of the times people get elected that have these kind of extreme
[01:28:52] views is because it gets coverage, it gets their name out there, people find out who they are
[01:28:56] and what they're saying kind of scares the person and the person is kind of reacting and, you know,
[01:29:00] from that fear. And so I think, you know, that I have a little bit of an advantage here where
[01:29:06] I can be kind of with this attitude and I can still get coverage because, you know,
[01:29:13] I am a wounded veteran and I've done so much service and I've done all these things that I've done.
[01:29:17] So people are more likely to want to, you know, tell my story because, you know, it's a
[01:29:23] relatively compelling story. It's a very compelling story. I was talking about Travis Mills the other day
[01:29:29] and unfortunately we didn't have time to do a podcast, but we were talking about stuff and I was like,
[01:29:36] well, you know, you have a great story and it's the same thing I feel like saying to you, like, man,
[01:29:40] you, you've got a good story, right? You've got a great story. And you think, well, and I said,
[01:29:44] halfway through this conversation with Travis, I'm like, hey, bro, I just want to let you know, like,
[01:29:48] I get that it's not exactly your great story. That you know, you got blown up and lost both
[01:29:54] your legs and both your arms and even same thing with you, like, hey, and you're saying it, too,
[01:29:58] you're like, hey, I've got a good story. And it's like, okay, I just want to let everyone know,
[01:30:03] I get that losing both your legs and Afghanistan is not exactly a good story. However, what you
[01:30:09] done with it has you've taken what would be in many cases a horrible story. Yeah. And you actually
[01:30:14] truly have turned it into a good story, which is exactly what which is exactly what Travis does.
[01:30:18] Well, it's a good story overall with a really bad inciting incident. Yeah. And so that's what it is,
[01:30:26] you know, the whole story isn't that one day. It's what happens afterwards. And so that's the
[01:30:31] story. But there, yeah, there doesn't mean there's bad. There's not bad things in that story.
[01:30:35] But overall, you know, it's probably, I don't know how Travis feels. Maybe I'll ask him if I ever
[01:30:40] meet him. But if you ask me, if I went back in time and you asked me a week after I got hurt
[01:30:50] or a couple of hours after I got hurt or whatever, whenever I woke up, you know,
[01:30:54] would you go back in time and not step on that idea? I'd say, oh, definitely. I'd go, I'd just say,
[01:30:59] let's not even go through this area. Let's go around. But you know, I'm in my house now and,
[01:31:06] you know, here's a big announcement. We got a baby on the way in Pam. Yeah, thank you.
[01:31:12] So we have a baby coming. There's the real announcement. Yeah, there's the real announcement. I should have
[01:31:16] said that earlier. A little boy doing February. And we got this nice house. I have a great life,
[01:31:25] you know, I think about that. And if somebody asked me right now, if you asked me, if I would go back
[01:31:31] in time and not step in the idea, be like hell, no, I would step on that idea, a thousand times,
[01:31:36] to be where I am today. And I think that's important to remember about, you know,
[01:31:40] so it is a good story. If you can have that attitude at the end of it, that's a good story.
[01:31:45] There's no doubt about that, man. Dang. You know, as we were talking about leadership and
[01:31:51] I was reading through some of the stuff you written, I could not help myself, but to refer back to
[01:31:57] the United States Marine Corps leadership traits. Of course. And these traits are originally,
[01:32:06] I think, I think the first place that I saw is in the Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 6
[01:32:12] TAC 11, which is called leading Marines. And it's in a bunch of other, they quote this all the time.
[01:32:19] Yeah. They quote this all the time. The particular comments that I have around here came from
[01:32:26] the Commander's Leadership Handbook, which was came out. It's a Marine Corps publication. It's not
[01:32:30] it's not an official publication, but it's something that they put out in 2016. And they made some
[01:32:38] comments around the US Marine Corps leadership traits. JGA did tie buckle. Right. What's that
[01:32:47] called when you do that? Is it called the, the NAC? Yeah, it's an acronym, I guess. But it's also an easy
[01:32:52] way to remember things. So they got these, they got these, uh, certain words. That's what it spells out.
[01:32:58] It spells out. JGA did tie buckle. I bet it's a buckle that has all the brass. Yeah, probably.
[01:33:06] First one is justice. Practice being fair and consistent, base rewards and punishment on merit.
[01:33:12] Straight forward, fair and consistent. Judgment. And this is, this is again, as I was thinking
[01:33:19] about these, thinking about you, thinking about what you're going to think about what you're
[01:33:22] out of two days. Here's what they say about judgment. Consider all sides of an issue before making
[01:33:27] a decision. G, what a, what a shocking idea. Yeah. That we would actually consider all sides
[01:33:34] of an issue before making a decision. And as a leader, clearly that's something, it's interesting.
[01:33:41] Right. You think to yourself, judgment means I make good decisions. That's what judgment means.
[01:33:46] I have good judgment. But what they're saying is judgment is you actually just consider the different
[01:33:52] angles before you make a decision. They're talking about how you come to that decision. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:33:57] And how do you come to that decision by listening? Yeah. That's how you come to that decision.
[01:34:02] Dependability. Here's a good one. Beyond time never make your Marines wait on you. What a
[01:34:09] stroke of leadership genius. That is never let you never make your Marines wait on you.
[01:34:16] And that is something that you see with leaders as they get advanced, as they get promoted.
[01:34:22] And all of a sudden, they don't think they need to be on time anymore. They think that everyone
[01:34:26] is there waiting for them. And that is just a horrible example to set. Be dependable. Meet deadlines.
[01:34:37] Ensure paperwork is processed efficiently and effectively in order to best care for your Marines.
[01:34:44] We're here to take care of our Marines. And again, you take this and you apply this to your
[01:34:49] attitude going into Congress. What do you therefore to take care of your constituents?
[01:34:53] Yeah. And they're depending on me to do that. So I have to be dependable to them.
[01:34:56] If they had to double check my work all the time, you know, that's kind of the the whole purpose
[01:35:02] of a representative, you know, governmental system is that we're trusting, we're depending upon
[01:35:07] this one person to represent our, you know, our issues and what we need. And so if they had to
[01:35:14] be double checking me all the time, then they might as well just, they think they're,
[01:35:19] they're not going to have any time because it's a full time job to figure out all the different
[01:35:23] stuff about all these issues and figure out what to do and go in and vote and all that. So they
[01:35:26] wouldn't be able to work. Everybody would just be a representative and nobody would ever get anything
[01:35:30] down besides running the government. Which would not work. Yeah. They have to depend.
[01:35:36] They have to depend on that person. Next up in Tagrity, the most important ingredient of leadership
[01:35:42] tell the truth to both your superiors and your Marines. There you go. We talked about truth already.
[01:35:50] Always use your authority for mission accomplishment, not for personal gain. That would be a big
[01:35:57] one to run across the entire United States government. How much how many people do things for
[01:36:04] their personal gain and not for? Yeah. You wonder. The good of the country. You wonder how many people
[01:36:09] are just concerned about having a political career. And I'll say right now, I'm willing to
[01:36:14] sacrifice any kind of political career and do the right thing. You know, I'll, I'll find something else
[01:36:19] if that's what it takes. I'll run 50 marathons. Next one is decisive.
[01:36:27] This study your alternatives and take the best possible course of action. No win, not to, no win,
[01:36:34] not to step in and make a decision. That's an interesting one from leadership perspective.
[01:36:40] I got a new book coming out in January 2020. And I talk a lot about not a lot. There's a
[01:36:49] couple of sections in there where I talk about how to know when to step up and lead it.
[01:36:52] I went into pretty good detail and it's really cool for me to write this stuff because I
[01:36:57] get to sit there from a detached perspective and think of all these situations that I've been in
[01:37:01] and how I would handle them. But one of them is when there's a little bit of a leadership vacuum.
[01:37:07] When do you step in? And I went into this pretty big explanation of, okay, well, obviously there's
[01:37:13] a leadership vacuum and there's like a emergency situation and you see that vacuum you step in there immediately.
[01:37:18] But and this is as I would think about how I would actually do this. If there's a leadership vacuum,
[01:37:24] but there's no critical emergency, my first instinct isn't just to step right in immediately.
[01:37:29] Because I'm going to let that thing develop a little bit. I'm going to see if somebody else
[01:37:33] I'm actually hoping one of my subordinate steps into that leadership vacuum. And then I get to
[01:37:38] stay detached and I get to watch what the decisions they're making and see with the direction. It's all good.
[01:37:42] And then I talked about what happens if two people step into that leadership vacuum at the same time.
[01:37:49] What do you do? What if I step into the leadership vacuum and so does echo Charles?
[01:37:53] At the same time we step into that leadership vacuum. What do I do? Can you guess what I do echo Charles?
[01:37:58] Let me lead. Yes, I immediately go. You know, if you and I both say,
[01:38:02] I say go left, you say go right. Right at that moment. I say go left, you say go right. I go,
[01:38:06] hey, all right echo, we're going with your plan. I'm going immediately. Going to do that.
[01:38:10] I mean, considering that there's no major catastrophic incident. If if if somebody steps up and
[01:38:15] take lead, I'm happy to follow. Especially if it's my subordinate. Because now as soon as echo is
[01:38:19] now, I'm going to take that problem and he's going to run with it. I can look around and see what else
[01:38:23] a sea would else is going on. Look at the bigger picture. So yeah, it's interesting when you look at
[01:38:29] these leadership vacuum and how you actually handle them. The other thing I talked about is this,
[01:38:33] this is getting detailed. But if we're in a situation, let's say we're in a putoon and there's a leadership
[01:38:39] vacuum and I immediately try and jump into the leadership vacuum as soon as I see it. Guess what?
[01:38:44] Not everyone else saw that vacuum. Not everyone else felt it and there's people. There's going to be
[01:38:48] some resistance to you changing course right now. If I let that situation develop for eight more seconds,
[01:38:56] six more seconds, 20 more seconds, whatever whatever it is, where all of a sudden people go
[01:39:01] way to second, there's a leadership vacuum. Meanwhile, I'm sitting detached and I'm going as soon as
[01:39:06] I, as soon as the moment's right I'm making a call and now everyone is waiting for the call. They're
[01:39:11] waiting to be led in by the way, the decision that I'm about to make. I've already assessed that
[01:39:14] it's a good call. So there's all these little things to think about when it comes to being decisive.
[01:39:20] And another thing I say is, be as make your decisions as late as possible, which is a little bit
[01:39:26] weird, right? It sounds counterintuitive. No, you just make a call immediately. No, actually,
[01:39:32] I'll make a, this is what I say. I will make the smallest decision I need to make
[01:39:37] heading in the right direction of what I think the broader decision that needs to be made is.
[01:39:41] So I want just to meet you say, Frank left. No, the first thing I'm going to say is, okay,
[01:39:45] get online, put some of the machine gunners over to left. We think we're moving that way,
[01:39:48] but we're not going there yet. So this idea of being decisive has got a lot of little nuance to
[01:39:55] it that you need to think about. Next one, tacked, talk with your Marines, not at them.
[01:40:01] That's a good idea with your constituents, right? Treat others as you would like to be treated,
[01:40:06] be steadfast during crisis, stay calm and steer your command and stormy weather. When reacting
[01:40:11] to bad news, know that initial reports are nearly always wrong and then they throw this out. Listen,
[01:40:18] first. And I had, I think I read a different one because I have some quotes down here,
[01:40:24] but I have, there's all kinds of the Marines that have the all kinds of different,
[01:40:28] and not just official Marines, but just people, human beings. Well, the one that I read,
[01:40:34] had a picture of Chester Polar on it, so I think that's probably the most official. Solid.
[01:40:39] But the one of the quotes for tacked that I liked from the one that I read is,
[01:40:45] this difference must be extended under all conditions regardless of true feelings.
[01:40:51] Yes. So I could hate, I could sit across a table and hate physically hate another legislator,
[01:40:59] hate everything they stand for, hate their soul. But I'm going to sit down and listen to them.
[01:41:03] So, okay. That's a good point. Yeah. I'm not going to go on Twitter. Yeah.
[01:41:08] And you actually are listening to. Yeah. I will. Yeah. Actually, I've been just playing the game like
[01:41:12] okay. I just got to do this. No, it's like, I'm actually listening to what you're saying. I,
[01:41:15] I actually want to prove myself wrong. Yeah. It's really, I do, I want to be wrong. I want
[01:41:19] you to be like, how much, how much easier is my life? If you and I want to get a project done,
[01:41:24] you have a way of doing it, and I have a way of doing it. How much easier and better is it for me,
[01:41:28] if your way is works better than mine. Yeah. It makes my whole life easier. Okay, cool. I get you
[01:41:33] got my support 100% of you. Yeah. I know you're voting for you. And as long as it's a good
[01:41:37] plan, guess what? I get to vote for you too. And I'm happy. Yeah. As opposed to me having to argue and
[01:41:42] try and pry your vote from you to meet to do the project the way I said, yeah. That's already
[01:41:47] wasted hours. If not days. If, if you come up with a decent enough plan, brah, Montbord. Yeah.
[01:41:55] And then even at the end, you can, you honestly consider what they said. And then your assessment
[01:42:00] is this person, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. You don't say,
[01:42:05] this is a dumbest idea I've ever heard. It's never going to work. You say, okay.
[01:42:10] All right. Well, I don't know. Maybe that might not be, yeah. How I would go with it,
[01:42:14] well, what can you consider this? Yeah. And you don't just like, you act tactfully. Yes.
[01:42:19] To act tact. Initiative. Take action, even in the absence of orders from a superior, be a self-starter.
[01:42:25] Plan ahead and have three hip pocket plans for contingencies. Always look to improve,
[01:42:30] learn from your mistakes. Initiative.
[01:42:37] Endurance. I actually was laughing when I read about it.
[01:42:41] I'm especially right. Yeah. I think we'll be okay with endurance.
[01:42:44] Maintain mental and physical stamina. No winter recharge. Most people who quit do not give
[01:42:49] up at the bottom of the mountain, they stop halfway up it. So endurance, as I said, I don't think we need
[01:42:57] to even, I think you will, I think you will be the premier endurance person in Congress period.
[01:43:05] I'll become quite good at it. Very good at it.
[01:43:09] Bearing set the example by maintaining high standards and appearance and personal conduct,
[01:43:13] avoid the use of profanity. High-like that, ankle trials. I'm fine with it. At the end of the day,
[01:43:23] be professional, develop gentlemen and ladies and future citizens. Have you heard there's been some
[01:43:29] some pretty high profile politicians that have dropped some language. It gets like immediate press.
[01:43:36] Yeah. Let's see if you drop the F-ball. If you drop the F-ball, I'm on national television.
[01:43:40] You're going to get some coverage. You may not be good. May not be bad. I don't know. You can't be good.
[01:43:45] Yeah. I think one of this general madness recently is a great example for all of these lists.
[01:43:53] Especially lately for this because he came out with his book and he's constantly being
[01:44:00] picked at by people that are doing interviews like say something about Trump. Say something about
[01:44:04] Trump. And he's come out so many times saying, I'm not going to comment about a sitting president
[01:44:09] and they just keep asking and they ask, I'm going to do it for a while. And he's just
[01:44:14] he maintains his bearing. Yeah. He does indeed. Unselfishness, care for your Marines above yourself,
[01:44:22] boom. Once again, that goes back to your constituents. Yeah. Taking care of your constituents,
[01:44:27] not, and you just said, it's not about your political career. Take every action to provide for
[01:44:31] the welfare of your Marines. They always come first. Courage. Take measure risk and combat and
[01:44:40] peace at Combin firmly and stressful situation stand up for what is right. regards what others think.
[01:44:49] Except personal responsibility for your orders and for your mistakes. I think they should
[01:44:54] actually call that something else like extreme owners. I want to run that even in the face of
[01:45:00] popular, disfavor. What you're doing. So you have to do it even when. If you know that it's
[01:45:07] if you believe that it's the right thing to do no matter how many people are telling you,
[01:45:12] it's the wrong thing. You have to have to have the courage to stand out from the group and put
[01:45:17] yourself out there. And what makes that work, what makes that not an extreme is the fact that has to
[01:45:23] be balanced with the humility to listen to other people. Right? Because if I'm just saying, well,
[01:45:28] you know, this is what I believe and I'm sticking with it. But I'm not listening to everyone else.
[01:45:31] That's a problem. If I'm listening to people, but I'm coming up with my judgment and my judgment is the
[01:45:35] same. And I'm listening to more people. And people are telling me, no, that's you shouldn't do it. That
[01:45:40] way it's going to lose your next election. But you believe it's the right thing to do. You do it.
[01:45:46] That's courage. Correct Marines when required. That's that's a good one.
[01:45:54] Because you would think that that's so easy in the military. You know, somebody steps out of line.
[01:46:00] You just straight them out. I mean, it's kind of interesting because in the sealed teams,
[01:46:06] I know that's hard. It's interesting that the Marine Corps finds that hard as well.
[01:46:11] Because the Marine Corps more rank sensitive, right? The sealed teams is not rank sensitive.
[01:46:18] It's basically open. It's almost completely open. But it's definitely
[01:46:24] more open than Marine Corps trust me. But you would think that in the Marine Corps, hey,
[01:46:29] if Lance Corp will do something stupid, you're just going to straighten them out immediately.
[01:46:33] And that's true to some extent. But when you get to, hey, you know, you got somebody maybe that's
[01:46:39] your peer that's doing something wrong. Are you going to say something? And it becomes a lot more
[01:46:45] challenging. Allow some ordinance to make decisions. Yeah, that takes courage as well.
[01:46:50] Knowledge works, works towards technical tactical administrative excellence. Read, study, think,
[01:46:58] write and teach. Think about that. Read, study, think, write and teach. Those things are so
[01:47:07] underrated. Read, study, think, write and teach. And actually, I think think
[01:47:13] should go forth. No, it should go last. Because all those other things allow you to think.
[01:47:25] Those are things that make you think. If you want, if you read something you have to think about,
[01:47:29] if you study something you think about it, if when you write out your thoughts or even talk about
[01:47:33] your thoughts, that's going to make you think. And it's going to make you home those thoughts.
[01:47:40] And teaching them absolutely will do that. You learn not in GJC, the more you teach those
[01:47:44] moves, the better you get out of. Loyalty display faithfulness to your country, the core,
[01:47:50] to your unit, to your seniors, to your subordinates and to your peers. Defend your
[01:47:55] Marines against unfair treatment. Display enthusiasm, carrying out an order, even if you
[01:48:01] may privately disagree. Now, here's where I got to, you know, I thought about that one a little bit.
[01:48:07] Because if I privately disagree and it's relatively minor, cool, we're going to carry it out.
[01:48:15] The more, the alls I'm saying is that you reach to a point, you can reach a point where if you're
[01:48:20] telling me to do something that makes no sense whatsoever, it's going to get people killed or it's
[01:48:24] immoral, illegal or unethical, I'm not going to carry it out. And there's a hole, there's a hole,
[01:48:35] just gray area around that one. Because if sometimes if you don't carry it out, you're going to
[01:48:44] get fired. And now you don't have any influence anymore, which is not, which is possibly not a good
[01:48:51] outcome. So enthusiasm. I don't think, I don't think this is another one. I think you just
[01:49:00] win that category. Why wrote this one down is, I wrote, my one note underneath it was belief.
[01:49:07] Based on what I read, and since you have to believe that what you're doing is possible,
[01:49:12] even if you think it maybe there's not a great likelihood, like I believed that when I was going
[01:49:18] through a danger area looking for ideas that I would get to the other side, you know, uningered.
[01:49:24] And I had to have that belief in order to be able to do it. I had to believe that there was
[01:49:29] at least a small chance that I could run 31 back to back Marathons. But I didn't believe it at all.
[01:49:34] I would ran one and then just been like, I quit. So, and then, you know, in Congress, you have to
[01:49:40] believe that you can make a difference. You have to believe that you can convince this other person
[01:49:46] or learn something from that other person that will convince you, you have to actually believe that.
[01:49:50] So that's kind of how I interpreted the enthusiasm one. Yeah, like I said, I think you're,
[01:49:56] I think I think endurance and enthusiasm. I think anyone had a hard time sort of stepping up to the
[01:50:03] plate with you in those respects. And then that wraps up, you know, these leadership traits from the
[01:50:11] Marine Corps. And, you know, it's probably a pretty good place to wrap up what were, you know,
[01:50:18] this podcast, except for one more thing. And that's, we talked a lot about what you're doing right now.
[01:50:22] People are going to want to support you because they listen to the podcast, they're patriots.
[01:50:31] They want to have reasonable human beings running the government, not crazy people. So,
[01:50:39] what's the best way to, for everyone to support what you're doing to get you the, the funds that
[01:50:47] you need to support that you need. How do we do that? Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of different ways.
[01:50:55] You kind of were in a difficult period, you know, in our country and we have what we were talking
[01:51:00] about with the poison is slowly making its way into the government and feeding out into the
[01:51:05] society and it's kind of breaking apart, you know, the glue that holds us together. And so we do need to
[01:51:12] make sure that, you know, a lot of people are going to, I know that a lot of the people that
[01:51:18] listen to this podcast, I'm not going to directly represent them in Virginia 10, which is, you know,
[01:51:23] Northern Virginia. But we have, you know, everybody knows that the decisions that are made
[01:51:31] in the federal government, they affect everybody in some way. So, I do think that we all have a
[01:51:37] responsibility to make sure that the correct people get elected in every office and in every location.
[01:51:46] And I truly believe that I can be, I have the, the JJ did type buckle attributes to be a person
[01:51:55] that can go to Congress and, and how a positive effect I'm not going to do it all by myself. I'm
[01:51:59] not going to go in there and be the one person that saves the world or anything. But I do think that I
[01:52:05] can start taking it back in that, that other direction, you know, get what they and cringe,
[01:52:09] I'll get with Brian Mass and form these, you know, these coalitions that we can start
[01:52:15] having a positive effect on, on the way things are going in Congress. So there's a couple
[01:52:20] different ways that people can help. They can, you know, there's volunteering. If you do live in my
[01:52:24] district, you can, you can volunteer and you can, we will need people to go out and knock on doors
[01:52:30] and pass out stuff and make phone calls and that kind of thing eventually. You can just tell
[01:52:35] people, spread the word about, you know, who I am and that I'm running. But I think the way that
[01:52:42] people can have the greatest impact is what we were talking about before and it is the fundraising.
[01:52:49] You know, if I could, I hate asking for money. And if I could fund this whole thing myself,
[01:52:53] if I had millions of dollars, then I would. But, you know, I'm from humble means, I don't, I simply
[01:53:00] don't have, you know, I don't have the money. And you're doing this on myself. Your wife's run
[01:53:03] the farm right now, right? Yeah, Pam's run in the farm. And so, you know, are you guys selling food?
[01:53:09] Are you guys putting some stuff on the farm? Yeah, she goes down to the farmers market every Saturday
[01:53:12] and she sells vegetables and she'll be selling eggs soon. So yeah, you know, we were how many chickens
[01:53:17] you got? We got 40. Yeah, man. We just started getting, they just started laying eggs.
[01:53:24] So we're starting to get like seven eight eggs. And I'll only eat five every day so I can't keep
[01:53:28] up with them. But they're, we're going to start selling eggs. And then so yeah, the farm is really
[01:53:34] taken off for Pam. And she's, you know, obviously she's a incredibly supportive of what I'm doing
[01:53:39] and I wouldn't be doing it without her support. Yeah. So we're, you know, we're a humble family.
[01:53:45] And you know, it's simply don't have the money. And we are talking, my, you know, the current representative,
[01:53:51] she's raised over a million dollars already just this year. Because he has those apparatus
[01:53:55] in place and she's the incumbent. So she gets a lot of support. So we are talking about that kind of
[01:54:03] dollar sign where it costs millions of dollars to buy the advertising on the TV, on Facebook,
[01:54:11] on Instagram, on Twitter, and all these different places by the road signs, by the flyers, you know,
[01:54:16] by cards, all these things that takes millions of millions of dollars. So, you know, if everybody
[01:54:22] that listens to this podcast, if you, I know a lot of people write in questions,
[01:54:28] saying when is John, why don't you go and life, going to start running for office?
[01:54:32] You know, everybody asks that. And he listened the hard fact is,
[01:54:36] John goes not running for office. He's leading in a different way in a just as important way,
[01:54:41] you know, leading in society and in business too. And so he's not running for office. And
[01:54:47] life isn't running for office either. But so this is your opportunity here. You've heard what I think.
[01:54:52] I've been on the podcast three times. I read the books. I am on board with the extreme ownership
[01:54:57] mentality and the attitudes. So this is an opportunity for people that want to see somebody that
[01:55:02] is bought into this in Congress. This is your opportunity to help make that happen. And so if you
[01:55:09] want to donate, you go to Rob Jones for Congress dot com slash donate. And even if it's a dollar,
[01:55:17] $10 whatever, I know you still get around a million downloads, uh, provide cast on like that.
[01:55:23] John, what about that? Yeah. So let's say a million people donate a dollar. That's a million
[01:55:27] box that is huge. That puts me way, way, way far ahead in the game. And the game. Yeah. And
[01:55:34] so that's the best way. And you know, do it now. As you're listening to this, just get on your
[01:55:43] phone and do it right now. It's it's pretty quick. Don't make me like be like my friend Frank
[01:55:49] and have to chase them out three times Frank, you know, don't be Frank. And do it now. And if you
[01:55:57] really can't do it now, send yourself a notification. So as you remember, call your wife, send
[01:56:04] her voice mail and say, hey, remind me to donate when I get home. So take ownership of that as well.
[01:56:12] And so this is your opportunity. So that's the best way. And that's going to the way that people
[01:56:17] can help them. Something I noticed yesterday that you have, so you had your Facebook, your Twitter,
[01:56:24] your Instagram and your YouTube. And your old one used to be called Rob Jones journey. Yeah.
[01:56:29] Right. And now that is that gone? No, that's still there. Uh, now you have Rob Jones for Congress
[01:56:34] and on Facebook. You have at Rob Jones VA on Twitter and Rob Jones for Congress on the Graham.
[01:56:42] The Graham. Yeah. Yeah. So the reason that I have, I'm trying to keep Rob Jones journey in
[01:56:49] the political stuff separate. Because I know the people that follow me on Rob Jones journey don't
[01:56:53] necessarily want to see political stuff all the time. So I'm trying to keep those two things
[01:56:57] separate. So that's why I have the different handles for, you know, for this project. And yeah,
[01:57:02] it's interesting. That's interesting call. I don't agree with it. Yeah. It definitely, you know,
[01:57:07] it would be it'd be a bonus to have the 8,000, you know, Instagram followers that I have all
[01:57:12] getting my, you know, political stuff. But I can do, I kind of want to make sure that I maintain that
[01:57:17] that separation. Yeah. So that's another thing. It's just follow Rob Jones. Yeah. Follow me on all these
[01:57:23] things. Smash the follow button. Sure. Awesome. Well, that's, that's like, that's where we got to do.
[01:57:34] We got to give you some support and get you the funds that you need to make this happen.
[01:57:42] Yes. And yeah, like I said, I had asked him for money. But it's the the down fortunate part.
[01:57:49] It's the way the system works right now. It's the way you play the game. It's the way you play the game.
[01:57:54] And we play the win. All right. Echo. Yes. Rob, we got Rob here. Obviously he's, you know, on the path
[01:58:04] multiple ways. Is there anything that we need to do kind of get on the path over here on our side?
[01:58:11] Can I bring up a few more things? I had like like just a couple funny things at the end.
[01:58:16] Now that we're doing support. Yeah. Yeah. We're in support mode. Yes. Okay. My first thing. This is
[01:58:23] directed directly at Echo Charles. Sure. You know how you guys were talking. You were doing the
[01:58:29] the Marine Corps, you know, grading system for everybody. Yeah. What was the, the number 174
[01:58:36] Eminemly. Yeah. And any qualifying. And below that. What was the one below that? I don't, I don't know.
[01:58:40] Doesn't matter to you. Yeah. So that's what this is. Anyway, I'm sure a lot of people have this problem.
[01:58:47] Where I'll be listening to the podcast and you guys will be talking about some and I want to
[01:58:51] cut into the podcast. Oh, yeah. Oh, oh. Here's something funny that I could say. So I'm sure a lot of
[01:58:57] people have that problem. And the vast majority of the time, I'm listening to the podcast when I'm
[01:59:01] working out or driving in the car or something. So I can't write it down. But this one stuck in my mind.
[01:59:05] And so it was when Echo Charles, he was talking about. He said the expertly qualified
[01:59:16] Mario player is the, is the, is the, the man, the person that can go through the entire
[01:59:21] Super Mario game with one guy. I won't be working out by the way without warping. And I just wanted
[01:59:28] to bring up that the eminently qualified Super Mario Brothers player would be the people that
[01:59:35] can do the whole game one guy in less than four minutes, which is the world record. Yeah. So that's a
[01:59:43] good thought. But when you go, when you go into these, don't get robbed any money for getting
[01:59:48] you out. It's triggered. I'm not gonna disagree. I'm not gonna disagree. I'll agree, but with additional
[01:59:57] stuff. So I wouldn't say that that would be the standard because you can go, okay, I can go for time
[02:00:02] for sure. Or I could go for points and get all the coins. Same. Same. Then you could go, I can go
[02:00:09] for time and coins or time and points. Same. So because if you just go for coins, you're not killing
[02:00:17] everybody. If you're going for time and coins. Yeah. Yeah. But if you're going for time and points,
[02:00:21] you're going for coins, killing everybody as fast as you can. So I think that might be the, well,
[02:00:27] that's a very good point. You're the same. And maybe we'll let the, let the listeners decide.
[02:00:31] And the thing is I know that because I've tried that for the time. And I remember it. Oh,
[02:00:36] I'm doing it. No, I didn't do it. I did not break the record, but I do remember, hey, I didn't kill
[02:00:40] anybody. I skipped so many coins, which I usually get because I care about how many mana have.
[02:00:44] Same. Same. You know, 100 coins, get an extra man. Okay. I'm saying. Yeah, I don't really,
[02:00:49] I don't know how this ties in 100%. But it does tie in some percent. So when we would be,
[02:00:54] when I first got the teams, we would do like shooting competitions. Yeah. And, you know,
[02:00:59] you'd have to run to this spot, shoot, hear shoot these number of targets, run to a different spot,
[02:01:04] throw the put on the Rucksack, drag it, whatever you do this stuff, and then you shoot more targets.
[02:01:09] And if you missed the target, it was like a certain deduction, right? And there would be somebody
[02:01:15] that would just go, you know what? They would figure it out in their head that the shooting didn't
[02:01:20] really. If the person didn't set up the course correctly, I could just run through this thing, just dump rounds.
[02:01:27] And with that is 100%. And then everyone would look at that guy that did that and just think
[02:01:35] loser, right? To just not eat to just, hey, I'm just going to, I'm going to win the technicality
[02:01:41] of this game, but without, without really truly encompassing the spirit or embracing the spirit of
[02:01:49] the game. So that would almost be like, if you did that, you were going to get shunned from the group.
[02:01:58] Yeah, I can do that. I mean, I'm so far ahead of the doesn't have that spirit of like killing everything.
[02:02:03] You do a kind of because you have to or, you know, it helps you whatever. So I get the time thing.
[02:02:08] And four minutes, I don't think you could do all 32 levels in four minutes. No, they usually want to use glitches in the game.
[02:02:14] Okay, that's a good one. That's a good one. It's a good one. It's a good one.
[02:02:15] We're defeating the spirit. Yeah. So we're all, we're kind of on the level then, right?
[02:02:20] Yeah, we are fully. And so I guess, and I kind of get though too like, okay, you're just going to run
[02:02:25] through the course throw rounds down range and you don't care, but you're going to win, right?
[02:02:28] You can do it. Save the princess. Yeah, save the princess. You can look at it and say,
[02:02:32] you know what, hey, I won. Whatever. Save the princess. Yeah. But then we get back to what we were talking
[02:02:37] about earlier. Are you really going to throw your morals out the window just to get the W.
[02:02:41] Just get the world record. My recommendation is no, don't do that. You have a mark on the
[02:02:47] decision. Okay. You play the game correctly. Yes, my recommendation. Well, okay. So. All right,
[02:02:53] that's point number one off point that point number one. Okay. The next one is a story. And I found
[02:02:58] it to be interesting, but stop me if you've already heard it. And there's a story about an African-American
[02:03:05] boy when Washington was crossing the Delaware. So he was coming up across the Delaware on Christmas
[02:03:13] day. And there were the an African-American man and an African-American son. And he the the man
[02:03:19] wanted to join the army to help General Washington. And the boy wanted to fight as well, but he was
[02:03:24] too young, he was about 11. General Washington said you're too young. But what you can do for us,
[02:03:29] is you can stay back here on this side of the river and you can mind the horses and you can hold
[02:03:36] this, you can make sure that this lantern stays a light to be it so that we know where we can go.
[02:03:42] They would guide us back after the after we win the battle. And that night they they went in
[02:03:48] they they won the battle and it was a freezing cold night and that little boy they came back.
[02:03:53] He had frozen to death, but the lantern was still lit and that little boy's name, Jocco.
[02:04:03] So that's your that before? Well, you know, I don't know, I had not heard that before. You know,
[02:04:08] have you ever seen the little Jockey? Yeah, that's where I saw him. That's yeah, that I know that
[02:04:12] that guy is called Jocco. Well, that's the legend. It came in. He is a little African-American little
[02:04:18] Jockey dude. Yeah. Exactly. No, apparently General Washington, and this is all, you know,
[02:04:24] legend or whatever. I don't know if it actually happened, but I know because this sounds like there could
[02:04:27] be some urban legend to this whole thing. So apparently we don't know if this is true. Apparently General
[02:04:33] Washington, he had a memorial statue built and that's what the little Jockey statue is.
[02:04:39] And then those statues were supposedly used in the underground railroad to tell people
[02:04:44] where they were safe. Okay, so that's that one. Okay. And my last one, it's kind of serious
[02:04:52] because I actually have beef. Jocco and I have beef. I know. So here's what happened.
[02:05:00] We need to squash it. Here's what happened. Moved into a nice little town called Middleburg.
[02:05:06] Actually, I was having a house built in Middleburg and earlier this year was finally finished.
[02:05:14] And while this house is being built, I was living in Vienna, Virginia, and then Leesburg,
[02:05:19] Virginia, which are all kind of around Middleburg, Virginia. And after I went on the podcast
[02:05:24] second time, I was contacted by a guy that I know, and then you know, I think echo Charles and
[02:05:31] Ozam, his name is Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave. It's contacted by this gentleman.
[02:05:40] And he said, let's meet up sometime. Posted, okay, where do you live? He said, I live in Aldi.
[02:05:45] Aldi, Virginia. And I went on that, I was like, oh, that's like five miles from where I live.
[02:05:51] Well, I'm going to be living in a Middleburg. And then like, oh, man, all right, I'm going to have a friend.
[02:05:57] Got a neighbor out in Middleburg. They didn't have a built in neighbor. And then we build the house.
[02:06:03] I'm about to move in. And I see a Facebook post by this Dave Burke says, the the
[02:06:10] Berks are moving. I go, you guys are moving? Right, what I'm moving in? And Dave says,
[02:06:18] yeah, well, you know, Jocco had this big opportunity for me out here in San Diego. So the beef
[02:06:24] is that Jocco stole my friend. Dang, friend and neighbor stole and well, if it makes you
[02:06:30] feel even better, which it probably won't when he did announce to us or to me anyway,
[02:06:34] that he was coming to California. I was fired up too. Like, how you weren't fired up? I was
[02:06:38] in Versus fired up. You know, opposite. And then he moves out of here, moves up to Carl's back.
[02:06:43] So it's like, you know, another one of those deals, man. So think both. Yeah, that's the thing last
[02:06:48] not I was here. Originally, me and Dave were going to meet up at fills. Yeah, yeah. And there was
[02:06:53] a possibility. There was a possibility that you were going to call. Yeah, because fills as we know
[02:06:58] is 200 meters from victory MMA and fitness. It is it is possibly my favorite, um,
[02:07:07] oh, it's definitely my favorite barbecue now. I'm actually not, I'm not going to play around.
[02:07:11] Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we can get Dave going well. No, no, why the burger? No, no,
[02:07:17] Dave's got the Salt Lake. He's got another, he's got a couple. Dave's got a couple, but you know,
[02:07:21] for him being from Texas, anything like to even consider the fact that a barbecue outside of Texas
[02:07:31] could be your number one. You, that is, that is blasphemy for life. 100% blasphemy. So yes,
[02:07:38] fills barbecue. And I'll tell you what, Tim Kennedy came up and he lives in Texas. And I took
[02:07:43] him to fills and I said, hey, bros, just stand by and he had cut weight for like a photo,
[02:07:49] shoot or something. And so he was all starving and I took him over there and, um, yeah, there's no
[02:07:56] tonight. So when you, you said to me, hey, I'm going to go out for dinner with Dave Burka. Can you go?
[02:08:02] And I was like, it's, you know, depends. You know, so I said, possible. Yeah. And I actually knew
[02:08:07] that it was probably not possible, but then I thought, well, if they're going to fills
[02:08:12] and I get done training and I can go over there and get, get it done in 35 to 40 minutes,
[02:08:22] I was thinking maybe I'll just go for it. You make time for fills. Yeah. Well, it's a,
[02:08:26] wouldn't you, the net loss because it's going to take me, it's going to take me, you know,
[02:08:30] 17 minutes to eat anyways, right? Yeah. So the net loss is like probably what, what,
[02:08:36] what, around 15 minutes total. We could have ordered for you. So I was ready to roll right in there.
[02:08:41] It would have been a game changer. Yeah. So now we're talking like a 12 minute scenario.
[02:08:47] So I get in and Dave Burk calls me and he says, oh, hey, you know, the, the wife and kids
[02:08:54] Whitney and the kids that really want to see you, too. I'm like, okay, yeah, that's fair. So
[02:08:58] bring them to fills. Yeah. Yeah. He said, once you come over to our house,
[02:09:03] like, oh, okay, yeah, that, that, that's not where I, he said he was moving to San Diego. He didn't say,
[02:09:08] so I was like, oh, I'll probably just be a couple of minutes away. Yeah. Like, okay, maybe
[02:09:12] Jocca, okay, so come to that. We'll still have a good time. He was like, all right, cool. Maybe you can jump
[02:09:16] into it. And he said, come on up and I look in the address that he gives me, it's 45 minutes away.
[02:09:23] And I'm like, can you still come and drag was like, nope.
[02:09:25] No, like, when you go in for dinner, I'm praying that it's going to say fills, be new,
[02:09:32] cute. But it says Dave was nice enough to invite us over to San Diego. Nope.
[02:09:40] Have a good dinner. That's a juicer. Do you Uber up there? Yeah, Uber up there. And then Uber home?
[02:09:45] Hey. Yeah. Um, you're getting a whole new slew of donations just to cover the Uber
[02:09:51] cost. Well, no, no, no, no, you can't use those funds. You have to, I got to do another speaking
[02:09:59] engagement or something. Yeah. I'm going to have to sell some eggs. Exactly. But to be fair,
[02:10:04] the evening was very pleasant. And obviously Dave's family is great. And his wife made some great
[02:10:10] baked Zidi that we thoroughly enjoyed. So it was a very fun evening. But he did kind of trick me.
[02:10:16] Here's the crazy thing. So Dave, the chairs all fired up, you know, and I'm fired up because Dave's
[02:10:21] like, one of the best people ever. And he's moving out San Diego, you know, and it's I'm super stoked.
[02:10:26] And then the Carl's bad word comes in. We're a little bit, you know, we're not quite, you know.
[02:10:31] But here's the funny thing. You know, how many times have seen Dave since he moved out here? Like
[02:10:37] three times. I'm not even kidding because he's on the road all the time working. I'm on the road all the time
[02:10:43] working. So it's cool. We've seen each other three times. But, you know, it's not that cool.
[02:10:51] Hopefully you'll improve over time. Yeah. Yeah. So those are pretty good beefs. Any other other beefs
[02:10:55] with me? The beef is squash. You want to hear something weird? Like when you tell me you have beef with me,
[02:11:00] I'm not kidding. Why are you telling me serious? No, no, no, no, but like I was like, okay,
[02:11:05] like, I mean, I got into a. Yeah, you're in the pocket. I was like, you're in the pocket.
[02:11:11] Okay. Hopefully I have this. Yeah, they're one over here. Did you see MazdaVal after his fight?
[02:11:17] And someone's like, you know, you have beef with this guy? He goes, he goes, no, no, no,
[02:11:20] I don't have beef. If I be for the might be waiting for him outside of his house.
[02:11:23] Yeah, that was legit. MazdaVal is fighting. May deas.
[02:11:31] But I thought that was legit when he says, no, I don't have beef. No, if we had beef,
[02:11:36] I would be waiting outside of his house. That's what would be happening. So you and I don't have beef.
[02:11:42] No. Well, that was just a funny thing. Because when you said we had beef, I was like,
[02:11:46] oh, we're getting into the knife. Chopin triggered. You saw.
[02:11:50] Oh, that's all my comments. No, we can get those are good beefs. Those are good. Good comments.
[02:11:58] We're going to do some research about Joko, the plaster lantern holder. I'm not sure.
[02:12:04] What do you think? You think it's urban legend or real? Do you think there was a little
[02:12:10] black kid holding the lantern for George Washington that froze to death? Yes or no?
[02:12:14] Factor fiction. Yes. Oh, you're going with it. Yeah. Well, put it this way. It might not be exactly that.
[02:12:24] But I think it's like something. But it's not nothing. Put it that way. It's not just,
[02:12:28] oh, someone made up. That's what I think. He's thinking. I don't know. That's a free time.
[02:12:31] You know what? That's a free time. I have actually, I actually know this.
[02:12:37] And I cannot remember. Like I can't remember, it's true. No, because it's so pointy. No, I was like,
[02:12:41] no, I'm like at some point, I, I somebody told me that these little statues were called
[02:12:45] Joko and I was like, oh, I wonder why that is? And I figured out where it came from.
[02:12:50] But I can't remember what the story is. So it could be true. It could be not be true. I don't know yet.
[02:12:54] That's just what I heard. We're going to research it. Yeah. And I would, so I wouldn't be surprised
[02:12:58] most likely case scenario in my head right now is that that story overall is true. Maybe some
[02:13:03] details here and there maybe maybe not true. You know, and it all sort of ties in. Yes. So we'll go with it
[02:13:09] in that regard. Oh, yes. Well, that was just one of the Vegas. Yes. It was a very good one.
[02:13:14] But it's not just, it's not just like, oh, here's a statue that means something else.
[02:13:19] You know, some other thing. But this will sound good if we make up this story. You know, based on
[02:13:24] really like some thinly veiled like element that changed what concerns me. I think if it was that
[02:13:31] story that I had read when I researched it in the past, it seems like that would make the connection
[02:13:37] in my neurons and I'd be like, oh, yeah, that's true. Not quite there. You know, feeling not
[02:13:42] not feeling that full. I remember, but I, you know, you're you're subject to your power of your
[02:13:48] memory. Yeah. It was a while ago that I researched that. Yeah. But I do. Yes. Okay. So we got beefs
[02:13:55] settled. We got Dave Burke. Close. Still, you know, we're working through it. Yeah. Dave Burke.
[02:14:04] No, maybe when he's, yeah, because you know how lame I am. Yeah. When you call me and you're like,
[02:14:11] hey, you know, the fights are on, you want to come watch the fights? And you live 17 minutes from me?
[02:14:18] I'm like, oh, I'll buy this. Not watching. Yeah. It's like big thing. Yeah. Yes. So yeah, when you're
[02:14:26] thinking 45. Yeah. It's a strategy. Min, yeah. Halfway to LA, let's face it. Time wise to halfway to LA.
[02:14:34] Absolutely. That's what it's like. Oh, yeah. You know what? It's a really harsh way. If you want to
[02:14:39] think that we really are really like that. To say, oh, you only live halfway to LA. I mean, it's
[02:14:44] like, there was an old Saturday night live, skit. That was just California people talking and
[02:14:52] all they were talking about was the traffic. Like, oh, morning, how was the 405 this morning?
[02:14:57] Oh, my God. It was a nightmare. And then the, you know, they just talked that was about the
[02:15:01] video. Yeah. You want the one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was one, I was one, I was one, I was one, I
[02:15:04] won a one. Got jammed up right around the, you know, exit 48. Oh, I'm glad I got it. You know,
[02:15:09] like that. Yeah. And here you are. Halfway to LA. Can't even go with the 50 miles of LA.
[02:15:16] Yeah, no, no. Yeah. All right. The struggles real. But hey, like, like, like, you, like, we all
[02:15:22] understand now we're powering through it. Not much talk about Gitu. This podcast. In its
[02:15:28] direct form. In its indirect form. It was everywhere. The spirit of Gitu is everywhere. Yes.
[02:15:36] Was that the last time that we, you came here that we trained? First time. That was the first time.
[02:15:40] Yeah. Did you like it? Yeah, I did. Yeah. It's good. I actually have Gitu, Ligs,
[02:15:49] made. So now that I'm in the my new schedule. I've, I've gone and taken a couple of Filipino
[02:15:53] colleague lessons. I was taking those when I was living in Salt Lake City. So now I'm making
[02:15:57] the transition to finding, you know, the, the scheduling time where I can go and find a good
[02:16:02] place to go and start using my Gitu. I like it. Put like hooks on those Gitu legs. Yeah. Like
[02:16:10] butterfly hook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. Well, he's so being on the path
[02:16:17] supporting others and ourselves. We're doing Gitu. Highly recommended required. We'll say
[02:16:23] required already. And let's go with it. Yeah. I'm going with it. We're going to get an origin
[02:16:32] G made in America. 100% in America. The cotton that's grown to make the fibers to make the material
[02:16:39] to make the geek. Mm-hmm. It's a weave to make the geek. All that. All that.
[02:16:43] This is different weeks. 100% made in America. No compromise. No compromise. You know how much
[02:16:48] compromise? None zero. Yeah. Yeah. You're a compromise. 100% no compromise. Boom.
[02:16:54] Uh, origin main.com. That's where you can get your geek. Various levels of G's. I don't even know
[02:16:59] if their levels will just say options. Is there's not like ones not necessarily better? They're just
[02:17:04] that's all matter of opinion. It's like when you you might like you might like this Cadillac
[02:17:10] or you might like that Cadillac. Cadillac. They're both good cars. Yeah. 100% yes. But you might want
[02:17:16] one for certain reasons. That's a bit of another one. Yeah. You're a lifestyle. Yeah. You're
[02:17:22] so. But you cannot only get G's. They're because unfortunately not everyone does
[02:17:29] train G's to and unfortunately G's are not fully accepted as the garment to be worn in all
[02:17:37] occasions at all times. Yeah. We still have to wear other clothes sometimes. And one of those
[02:17:41] clothes that we sometimes wear most often is something called jeans. Yes, sir. And origin makes
[02:17:47] jeans. American denim. Same deal. Same thing. Same thing. From the time that the Adams
[02:17:55] that formed that girl. Right? That Adams are American. Yeah. I don't know if Adams grow. Well,
[02:18:02] you know, they they've formed a girl. Right? And they have little American flags on those
[02:18:06] evidence. Because that's what we do. You're right. Exactly. And so yes, we're talking about patriotism,
[02:18:14] Rob's a patriot, Rob's serving. Guess what we're doing. What we're doing is trying to bring
[02:18:19] manufacturing back to America. We just hired more people by the way. We got more people
[02:18:25] up at the factory up in Maine because we're making boots now because Americans need boots. They
[02:18:30] need jeans. So yeah, if you want to support the United States of America, if you want to bring us
[02:18:38] back to the leaders of manufacturing, go to originmane.com, get jeans, get keys, get rash guards,
[02:18:45] get t-shirts, get joggers. If you are a jogger person, if you're that is a good, uh, obviously
[02:18:54] very significant important disclaimer. Yes, because I'm not a jogger person. Yeah, you're not a lot
[02:19:00] to our noggers. I look really weird in joggers. Yeah. So don't don't get those if you're me. Yeah.
[02:19:07] But if you're interested in maximum comfort and functionality to list be honest, joggers,
[02:19:13] when you actually jog in them, which I have like twice, you, they function well. They don't fly around.
[02:19:20] Never, ever, ever jog in a pair of pants, ever. Yeah. Yeah. Like no matter what.
[02:19:29] So, you know, not everyone's like that. Okay. You know. But yeah, also supplements, right?
[02:19:34] Talk about support. This is like actual physical anatomical support. Do you know what holds
[02:19:41] to see? The whole deal. Building the fibers that support building the atoms. Yeah, we
[02:19:46] add them to that. So we're at a pair of data. Yeah. Or, but well, in this case, it could be not
[02:19:52] a fact. Yeah. Sure. That too. But nonetheless, these are, um, we established the fact that these
[02:20:01] are the most important kind of supplements right there, because they keep you in the game.
[02:20:04] Mm-hmm. Like how we said before, keep you in the game. Yeah. It's not something you're not,
[02:20:07] well, it's like watering the roots rather than watering the leaves. You don't want to leave. No,
[02:20:12] don't want to leave. Unless you do water leaves on it, you don't get any water. The roots. Yes. Exactly.
[02:20:16] Right. So you want those roots to be strong. That's what super,
[02:20:19] Creole oil. Joint warfare. That's what these things do. You want to the roots.
[02:20:25] You grow higher. Also, we got discipline. Yes, sir. Which Dave Burke is a big supporter of.
[02:20:30] He takes discipline. Go capsules. You know, get his brains right. But guess what? You get
[02:20:37] this one in the power out. By the way, Andy Burke has been tripling up his scoops in our
[02:20:42] world with him last night. Again, luckily, that one was non-video. That video actually,
[02:20:50] the one of you in Andy, really, who's like just for like three minutes. What was that like the
[02:20:53] end of the round or something? Yeah. Yeah. Was whatever was left on the round? Yeah. That, that was
[02:20:59] it actually an uncanny, uncannily accurate depiction of rolling with you. It just felt like super heavy.
[02:21:06] And that's that's spazzy. Yeah. You know, just real heavy and just like heavy. Look, we should read the
[02:21:11] comments. We should do a podcast where we just read comments. I know we've talked about that. But that
[02:21:15] has to funny comments. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you talked about political haters. There were some.
[02:21:21] So really funny. They were hating on me. They're hating on Andy. They were hating on
[02:21:25] you. Yeah, too. I mean, most people are super cool. But the funny ones, the ones that would be worse,
[02:21:30] like, comically reading were ones that, you know, people that were just talking smack.
[02:21:35] Yeah. That's how man. Yeah. That's how. Marshall largest is one of those trigger events. You
[02:21:40] know, like, Marshall art diet, raising kids, religions, all at least sleep apparently. Yeah. Like how much
[02:21:46] you do? You're going to actually die. Oh, yeah. It's just in sleep. See if you can speak enough.
[02:21:52] Speaking of discipline, we got new discipline. It's in a can. It's called discipline go. It is
[02:21:58] what I'm going to call clean energy. You know, you got those energy that's that's not clean.
[02:22:06] Oh, yeah. 30 energy. It's called drinks with a bunch of sugar in them and other chemicals.
[02:22:13] This drink has not that in it. Yeah. It's like you, it's clean. And like you can't even call it
[02:22:19] energy. Let me, let me read you the ingredient list. Filtered carbonated water,
[02:22:24] natural flavor, citric acid, monk fruit. Boom. Did you hear that? That's clean. That is it.
[02:22:33] Clean as you can make a drink. And you know why? You know what's revolutionary? What's revolutionary?
[02:22:38] The way we're able to do that is because we are pasteurizing this. Like what they do with milk.
[02:22:42] We are pasteurizing it. We're keeping it to that certain level, killing all the bacteria,
[02:22:46] whatever that's in there. So we can stay on the shelf without putting a bunch of chemicals,
[02:22:50] which whatever else does. So discipline go. We got two flavors right now. We got more common.
[02:22:58] And they're all good. This is my mother. The other one is tropic thunder. Oh, dang.
[02:23:02] I don't think that. And I'll tell you, it's called tropic thunder. And sometimes you know,
[02:23:06] oh, that's cool name, whatever. It was either that or I had to call it what it is. And you
[02:23:10] want to know what it is. Yeah. Pina colance, Pina colance. Let's face it. Yeah, that doesn't match.
[02:23:15] I can't come out with something called Pina colance. No, no. Not happens. So we call the
[02:23:20] tropic thunder. So yeah, you can get that discipline go. Cance all that stuff from origin main.com.
[02:23:27] So milk protein. Yes. Dissert in the or protein form of the dessert. And this work in
[02:23:32] milk protein in the form of dessert for your kid. And a snack. It's like a sweet snack. We'll say
[02:23:36] for the kids, right? Yeah. It's actually an amazing thing. And then what are you? What are you drinking today?
[02:23:42] Oh, my, my little thing now. Yeah. I got some chocolate. And I have never felt more
[02:23:53] mental faculties or just fire. Fire on the other. And you're a tea drinker because your
[02:23:58] wife's from England. Big tea drinker. I'm actually trying to create my own drink. You know,
[02:24:04] how Arnold Palmer. Yeah, you're fan of the all in our Paul. You like to put a little shot of
[02:24:07] lemon. Let me tell you what. I see. We have a little flavor coming out for powdered discipline
[02:24:13] and a flavor coming out for discipline go in the can. And the name of the flavor is
[02:24:20] jaccopommer. And I'm not even kidding. And I'll tell you what, it is the one that both of them.
[02:24:29] They are you like, you like Arnold Palmer's. Yeah. So if you picture the best Arnold Palmer that you
[02:24:34] ever had, that's how good these are. I was like, when I went through whatever eight samples. And
[02:24:42] like, no, no more this more tea less that more. And finally got the when we when I got the good one,
[02:24:46] when I got the final one, I told be little. I'm like, hey, go manufacturer, both these things right now.
[02:24:54] I want this stuff tomorrow. And he's like, it's going to be six weeks a week. Bro,
[02:24:58] I said me more samples. All right, so yes. I'm trying to get my own drink made or not made, but
[02:25:06] I'm going to make it a thing. You know how when the first time I was here, we went and we had ice
[02:25:11] teas and I put a little half an half in there. Little hit or yeah. Yeah. So I kind of got that from
[02:25:17] learning how to drink tea from Pam. So you see, introduced me to the way that English people
[02:25:21] drink tea. They put milk in there. So I came back. I'm American. We like to do the ice tea.
[02:25:27] And I thought I'm thinking outside the box. I'm outside the box. The thing hurts. So I was like,
[02:25:31] you know what? I'm going to have an iced tea and bring a little half in half, too. Poor that in there.
[02:25:36] Delicious. Most people think, little gross. But what I'm going to start doing now, I'm going to start saying,
[02:25:41] I'll have a Rob Jones and the white or be like, oh, you know, I see with half of that. I see what will happen
[02:25:48] in there. I would have been way more supportive of this. If you would have said, oh, so I'm going to
[02:25:53] bring it back a little bit. So I put milk in there vanilla milk because that's face it. That's an option.
[02:25:59] That's an option. I have tried that vanilla. I have tried milk. I've tried protein powders like
[02:26:04] a regular tea. You haven't tried any. Yeah, that's right. That's true. Yeah, it's right. But now you and I have
[02:26:12] at this juncture, it wouldn't be that wise to do the whole thing yet because half and half is going
[02:26:16] to be a little bit more widespread at this point. Yeah. He's trying to step at the role is establishing
[02:26:22] the rob Jones. Yeah. Like the half and half of my own. That's what everybody knows about. Yeah. So
[02:26:28] in a way is kind of up to you, to us, to bolster the availability of milk in a general way.
[02:26:36] To make the milk Jones. Oh, yeah. That's the next level one. Hey, that's a good. Yeah,
[02:26:42] this you know the discipline, the Arnold Palmer flavor, which is called jaccopommer.
[02:26:48] It's so good. It's ridiculous. All right. So that's that. All jaccopoite all mook blah blah blah. Check.
[02:26:59] Origin main.com. Boom. Get it. Yeah. Whatever you need, whatever you like. Also,
[02:27:04] jaccopo has a store. It's called jaccopo store. Yep. So online store. Yeah. If you want to represent
[02:27:10] you go jaccopostore.com, as we can get your deaf course shirts. Come on, let's face it. When you see someone
[02:27:17] representing that. It's good. But yeah, you can get this when he goes free. It's on T-shirt.
[02:27:24] It's hoodies. Lightweight and heavyweight hoodies. But I don't know.
[02:27:28] Trucker hat or Flex fit rub Jones. What is a Flex fit? It's the one that fits in Flex. Oh,
[02:27:36] like the fitted caps. Yeah. Well, no, no, they're fitted. But they they have a little
[02:27:41] asses stretch in there. So you know, yeah. Trucker's bro. Yeah. I have to go to truckers.
[02:27:48] But not by a white margin, apparently. Well, you know, there's certain instances where the
[02:27:54] the Flex might be better. Right. You're out. You're thinking about it. Let's do a work it now.
[02:27:58] If you're outside, you're going to be sweating a lot. I don't know. But we're not against Flex fit.
[02:28:03] I like both. Yeah. But if I had to choose one. That was a very political answer.
[02:28:08] I'm just kidding. I'm just a conversation. I didn't take one. But here's the thing.
[02:28:13] The rest of my life I go trucker. There we go. Thank you. Okay. I'm afraid.
[02:28:16] Yeah. I don't wear hats. I don't even. I'm just waiting in this debate broke.
[02:28:21] Because when I used to wear hats. What made you stop? I don't know. I think he was like
[02:28:27] your head's in the sun. Yes. And you don't wear hats. I'm sorry. Don't.
[02:28:32] I guess it should because fashion sense. No. No. Because lack of hat.
[02:28:36] Lack of preparation for the hat. It's a scenario. I think about it. I have a hat with me everywhere I go.
[02:28:45] Yeah. I don't wear it all the time because I'm not one of those guys. What guys?
[02:28:52] Guys who have to wear it. I don't think about it. If my head isn't hot, I don't think about it for whatever reason.
[02:28:58] Check. But nonetheless. Okay. We got both. That's the good news, Rob Jones. We have both.
[02:29:04] Okay. Let's see. You get a good thing here on the stage. Yes, sir. Yep. You're good.
[02:29:08] This is the one. You are 100% wrong. And I am 100% right. Oh, that's a better. God.
[02:29:15] And if you don't like truckers hat, you're evil. Yes. It's not. You are not.
[02:29:20] Amen. You're a communist. Jockelstore.com. Yes. For you communist or otherwise, you know,
[02:29:27] whatever. No, no, no communist. No communist allowed. No. Yeah, but communist won't represent like that anyway.
[02:29:32] See, I'm saying, so they're just going to do your gun on what he called. They're going to scroll. Yeah.
[02:29:35] That's cool. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, which apparently you haven't done yet.
[02:29:40] According to your echoed Charles, you've listened to 100.
[02:29:44] And they're all said that. You would have a podcast. And you didn't subscribe according to echoed
[02:29:49] Charles. So he says, you should subscribe. If you want. If you want them there. So it's like,
[02:29:56] so that means you don't have to. You don't have to. You don't have to. Yeah. You don't have to. It's all optional. Really at the end of the day.
[02:30:02] Also, where he kid bought cast, subscribe to that one. Mm-hmm. My daughter has a question for Uncle Jake,
[02:30:08] by the way. There's a whole last night that Uncle Jake recommended strongly that she just
[02:30:14] call him on FaceTime or whatever, since she has the direct glance. She felt real good. I sat her video
[02:30:18] today, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. She sent me a video first. Okay. From Sarah Charles's. Okay, cool.
[02:30:24] So she's bringing away the warrior kid to school. Yeah. Show and tell. Yes. She's nice. She sent me a little video.
[02:30:30] I'm bringing this book into school. Thank you. Yeah. And then she was telling me a little bit about the book.
[02:30:35] And then I said, hey, because she said, she said, there's even a picture of you on the back.
[02:30:39] And I informed her that her dad took that picture. Echo Charles. That's really the kind of meat of that book.
[02:30:44] Is that that photograph that you took? That's what I thought a lot of people. And I guess there's some cool lessons or whatever.
[02:30:50] But yes, you are right. That picture. Yeah. Warrior Kid podcast. We are in the process of recording
[02:30:54] couple right now, which is good. I have a story in my brain for the Uncle Jake story. So we're
[02:30:58] getting there. So warrior Kid podcast, subscribe to that. And also don't forget about warrior
[02:31:02] kids soap. We got aiden up in central California speaking of farming, lives on a farm.
[02:31:09] And soap. It's awesome. It is. It is very much so. Totally legit. So go to IrishOx Ranch.com.
[02:31:16] And that way you can stay clean. Also, YouTube channel. We do have a YouTube channel,
[02:31:24] officially. A Rob Jones has a Rob Jones for Congress, YouTube channels. Well, I do want to forget about that.
[02:31:30] Because you written some cool videos up there. That's another way to see what you put.
[02:31:33] Or like what kind of videos so far. Only one of those no exposure. No exposure. No
[02:31:38] exposure. Don't worry. We'll talk about that. Well, there is a real life explosion.
[02:31:41] You do have a real life. You have the actual explosion that you set off? No, no, no. I was going to say,
[02:31:47] well, we set it up and it was so controlled that there was a control button. I stopped on
[02:31:51] really. Yeah. People really, people really, they're cameras out during those shows.
[02:31:55] Which weird though. There's people that have footage of everything. Like some of the
[02:32:00] guys put cameras on the rifle. Yeah, cameras on the rifles on their helmet. There's videos of
[02:32:04] everything out. When we had Ron Scher on here who they like assaulted this hill and
[02:32:13] he's a metal of honor recipient, that almost the whole thing is on video. It's on YouTube.
[02:32:18] You can watch it. It's like, and you watch it. And as bad as it sounds when you read about it,
[02:32:24] as bad as the situation sounds when you read about it, you're like, I'm thinking myself, man,
[02:32:27] this sounds absolutely horrible. You watch the video and you go, oh my god. I mean, I was laughing
[02:32:34] about it with them. Because the guys get out in the valley, it's not even a valley. It's just,
[02:32:40] it's a ravine. No, it's a canyon. They get out at the bottom of the canyon and assault
[02:32:47] up a hill, a freaking giant reinforced castle. It's like out of a prehist or a medieval movie.
[02:32:56] And that's what they did. And they didn't make it all the way up because it was an impossible task.
[02:33:00] But yeah, so there is a video. That's why when you said, oh, there's exposure. And I remember
[02:33:04] to watch that video yesterday. But yeah, not the exposure. Yeah, not the the exposure. No. But
[02:33:09] what, um, as far as like videos or whatever, like I'm going to subscribe, smash the like button,
[02:33:13] all that stuff. What, uh, what am I going to be watching? Um, here you're going to be watching stuff
[02:33:18] like that. You're going to, mostly the videos that we're going to be doing is just getting people to
[02:33:24] know who I am, what I'm about. So there might be some personal stuff on there where I'm going
[02:33:28] around the district and kind of talking about, oh, you know, this is where I went to elementary school.
[02:33:34] This is where I used to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail, you know, stuff like that. So just
[02:33:37] getting people to know what I'm all about as a person. So yeah, there's going to be a lot of that
[02:33:42] stuff. If you need footage from the podcast, you could take little clips of your statements and
[02:33:48] stuff, let echo know. You know, and then you could, you could edit some of those. Yeah, well, yeah,
[02:33:54] stuff like that. But yes, we do have our YouTube channel, talk podcast YouTube channel. It
[02:33:59] interested in what Rob Jones looks like if you don't know already, which I think is going to be
[02:34:04] sorely disappointed if you want to know. Man, and then there's psychological warfare. It's a bunch of
[02:34:10] me in little short recordings about how the decision that you're about to make, which is the wrong
[02:34:16] decision that you know, and you need a little something to get you to make the right decision
[02:34:20] psychological warfare will get it done for you, just press play on your smartphone device device
[02:34:30] and you will literally make the right decision. Yeah, what that does really, and I know literally
[02:34:36] is overused, but I'm saying you will for really literally make the right decision. It makes sense
[02:34:42] because it's you talking about them almost making the short term thing that we covered on
[02:34:48] machete season. When the first thing the when a revolution happens, they take over the radio stations
[02:34:54] because they want to get right into the thoughts of the people. Right? No, you don't have to read it.
[02:35:00] You don't have to interpret anything. It's going into your brain. It's words. That's a psychological
[02:35:04] warfare. It's going to write into your brain. Yeah, but your words are saying, hey, right now you're
[02:35:08] about to make a short term play. Let's just shuffle that over to the long term. That's all we're
[02:35:14] going to do. We're going to make that decision. But instead of short term, we're going to go long
[02:35:17] term. That's all we're going to do right now. And then you go, oh, shit. And well, that's what we're going
[02:35:20] to do. And then you go do it. That's what it does. Yeah. Effectively, by the way. Yeah, yeah, so you can do that.
[02:35:26] You can put a cure of the dot. You're ever heard a cure of the dawn. A cure of the dawn, yeah.
[02:35:31] Yeah, yeah. Because you could just listen to a cure of the dawn tracks. Sure. Eight minute tracks.
[02:35:36] What's a music in the background? What did it just be talking? Yes. Is that weird? No, people know that.
[02:35:44] Yeah, I dig it. I like music in the back of talking. I like that. Oh, yeah. Well, that's what the
[02:35:49] good video is. And people love that. It's all new. Yeah. Yeah. True. Good music there. A lot of people think
[02:35:55] it's maybe what's get said. But then so most people think it's just a video. That's that made
[02:36:00] that video cool. That's where you've told me a lot. Yeah, I'm one of those people. But you know,
[02:36:04] hey, different people. What's all of that. If you want visual reminders of saying on the path
[02:36:10] go to flipsidecampus.com. That's Dakota Myers company and he's making really cool graphic designs
[02:36:18] including to the just got released, which are way the warrior kid. Well, one's way the warrior kid,
[02:36:23] the rules for the warrior kid and then and then also a picture of Mikey, heading out of the
[02:36:28] forest to face the dragons. He's done by John Bosach himself. John by John Bosach himself. So check those
[02:36:34] out flipsidecampus.com. Also on it, on it fitness on it.com slash chocolate. So you can get your kettlebells,
[02:36:42] battle ropes rings, highly essential rings, which I didn't know before I know now, 100% no rings,
[02:36:49] maces steel maces steel bills, all this stuff. Really good stuff on there. Really good stuff on it.
[02:36:54] .com slash got a bunch of books got leadership strategy into actress field manual. I talked a little
[02:36:59] bit about today, but you can pre order it right now if you want to get a first edition, if you don't
[02:37:04] want to get first edition, just wait. Just wait with everything that you do. Go down a path in
[02:37:09] your life where you're just waiting for everything and nothing ever happens. Do that. Or order
[02:37:15] now and get the first edition. Also got way the warrior kid, three where there's a will that's also
[02:37:20] live. You can get that one immediately and that's the way the warrior kid and marks mission.
[02:37:26] Those are all available in the mic in the dragons. That's the best kids book for ages under six.
[02:37:34] Sure. Yes. Maybe even over six sometimes. Yeah, sometimes over six. Because those things you
[02:37:38] forget about that can stuff. You seem saying and it's kind of obvious like being like afraid of something
[02:37:44] then you say then somebody will be like, hey, what are you really afraid of the thing about what I'm
[02:37:49] really afraid of just feels scary. Whatever we had a little incident at the Willink Household two days ago.
[02:37:57] It was time to go for an ocean swim with my youngest daughter. There was a tied scenario that was
[02:38:03] making it the only water entry was a little cliff jump. And my daughter, my daughter,
[02:38:13] was hesitant at the moment of truth. How high? Not high at all depends on where the waves were at
[02:38:18] and you had to time it well. And there's a lot of, let's say, white water activity in the zone,
[02:38:23] which raised the fear of love. Yes. In fact, I asked her, what are you afraid of? And she's like,
[02:38:26] it looks like it's crazy. Yeah, but we had a little talk and then I threw it in.
[02:38:33] I did. I got to admit, you know, but was it like the kind of surprise throw you in or it's like,
[02:38:39] hey, don't worry. You have to make the decision. I gave her, I gave her time to think about it. But
[02:38:42] actually part of the reason that I gave her time to think about it was I wanted her to experience
[02:38:48] the fear for a longer amount of time, right? Not just like, no, we got to do it right now. Let's go.
[02:38:51] I wanted her to stand there and think about it because that's actually the worst part. Yes. And so then
[02:38:55] finally, I said, Liz and I said, she's like, I really don't want to. It really looks, it looks like
[02:38:59] it could be really dangerous. It looks like I'm going to get sucked in those rocks and I said,
[02:39:02] you're not going to get sucked in the rocks. You're going to be fine. And just so you know,
[02:39:08] you are going to do this. So we can wait as long as you want, but this is happening. And when my
[02:39:13] kids know me, like when I say that, it's not there's no like this, it's going to happen. And so I said that to her
[02:39:20] and she kind of got the defeated look on her face because she knew it was going to happen. And the
[02:39:26] the because her tears were like up a little bit. They didn't come out, but I could see it. And my
[02:39:33] youngest daughter, she got these big, big blue eyes and she's real good with that whole play.
[02:39:38] Oh, yeah, she's good. She, my wife, she would break my wife down like a child. I'm going to just snap her
[02:39:46] more out. No chance. No chance. No chance. No chance. When those, she got those big eyes that it can
[02:39:52] it can hold the tear. It can just hold it there. Which is even worse right now. Yes, they're big.
[02:39:58] And so she started doing that with me. Guess what? I don't play that.
[02:40:02] Those tears in the industry, we call those tears falling upon a heart of stone. Yes, that's
[02:40:07] what happened. So she started to get work in that angle. I said, don't even, don't work that
[02:40:12] angle. It's happening. We're going off this cliff. So we get so finally, she's, she looks defeated.
[02:40:19] She knows it's happening. She walks the edge and I said, okay, and it was kind of a tight little
[02:40:23] promenadeary to try and jump off just a little thing jutting out. It's actually not big enough for
[02:40:28] two people. So I kind of put her a little bit in front of me. And then I said, okay, we're going to go on
[02:40:34] three and I knew I couldn't actually go with her because there's rocks down there. You got to watch
[02:40:37] out for so that I just kind of, I go, okay, one, two scooped up grab her through.
[02:40:47] You laughed like that. She was going down. You know, the best thing is she hit the water.
[02:40:53] She started swimming away from the rocks so she could be safe. And then I got a watchter and then
[02:40:59] then she looked up and she had a big smile on her face. She got to her. It's fun. Yeah, she's
[02:41:02] over and then we swam, you know, whatever to back all around the point to the, to the, to the beach.
[02:41:07] Well, that's good though. And I told her, I said, look, that's what that was. That was
[02:41:11] Mike and the dragons. That was, that was, you stood up and faced your fears. That was jumping off
[02:41:15] the bridge from Mark where the warrior kid you just did it. That's what it's about. But in
[02:41:20] when you look at a big picture, like that's a specific scenario where you knew her like capability
[02:41:25] and limitations or whatever because sometimes like you get someone maybe not comfortable in the water
[02:41:29] or something like this. Oh, yeah, that's when you throw them in. Oh, yeah, they're not looking
[02:41:33] back smiling. They are traumatized. And now they can't go in the water at all anymore. You know,
[02:41:38] yeah, I kind of did that with one of my friends kids. No, like the dad is a good friend of mine.
[02:41:45] He was on the ployment. You're not invited to my house. You know, he was on the ployment. Check it out.
[02:41:48] He was on the ployment. And so while he's on the ployment, who guess who's responsible for like making
[02:41:53] sure that the sun is kind of like, you know, legit. It's me. And I didn't get to see him that much because
[02:41:58] I was like working and deploying it all that stuff. So I finally saw him at the beach and I was like,
[02:42:02] cool, we're going in the water. And he's like, I don't really want to go in there. I was like, oh,
[02:42:05] what? And I just picked him up and I hooked him out in the surf zone. He wasn't happy. The mama's crying.
[02:42:13] And I thought she was a cry. And when she definitely was like, you know, how you know,
[02:42:17] sometimes things are unfolding and you can tell people they're just doing their best just to like
[02:42:24] detach from it. Yes. She was in that mood. She's a good friend of mine. She was kind of like,
[02:42:28] look, I know this guy's probably this is probably not right. But he handled or was he like,
[02:42:36] I don't know if I can even hang with chocolate anymore. It was probably not the best.
[02:42:40] Yeah. Yeah. It was probably not the best move on my part. I also did that one time with a real little kid
[02:42:46] where I picked this little kid up. And I said, you know, something was a boy, right? And I said something
[02:42:52] like, oh, there he is. And it's really, oh, yeah. It's like, oh, it's like, oh, it's in acute. I was like, yeah.
[02:42:56] And he needs to get used to, you know, things like machine gun fire. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
[02:42:59] like really loud. And the kids started crying because this kid was like six months old or maybe even a little bit
[02:43:04] younger. Six months. So baby. Yeah. So yeah. So be careful that. Well, hey, so hi, so you
[02:43:12] essentially, and I'm trying to gather like info, so I can actually use in the real work. So you kind of,
[02:43:17] you're like on the on the what he call it on the borderline of two rough. Right. Yes. No, and I'm better now.
[02:43:25] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not to just totally go into like one more little situation. I was
[02:43:32] surfing with my little daughter, same one, right? And it was, we were done. And there's a cliff
[02:43:39] you got to climb up to get out. We're carrying your board. It's a cliff. It's a trail. It's a whole nine yards.
[02:43:44] And so what I did was, she's 10 years old. So I, and it's can be hard. And there's a little parts
[02:43:51] where you could possibly fall off, right? Probably not though. Most likely you're going to be good. If you
[02:43:57] think about what you're doing. So I get done and I got my board. So I run up to the top of
[02:44:02] cliff's carrying my board. I put it down and I turned around so I can go help her carry her board for
[02:44:06] her. Yeah. And I fought to myself if this was my son when my son was that age, there was zero
[02:44:13] chance of me going down and helping him. Zero. You figured out kid. And so I stood there at the top
[02:44:21] and I just watched her and she made it up and when she got to the top, I said, you know, I was going
[02:44:26] to come help you. I said, but if that was your brother, there's no way I would have ever helped him.
[02:44:31] And I don't, I would rather have you do it for yourself. What do you want me to do? Do you want
[02:44:36] me to give you special treatment? Or do you want to be strong? And she's like, I want to be strong.
[02:44:40] And I said, cool, we're good. So there you go. You can have a tendency to lean especially when you
[02:44:48] you got your baby kid, right? The youngest kid, especially when they can make those tears think
[02:44:52] that big giant tears sitting on the edge of the eyeballs. That's it. But that's how you do run
[02:44:58] that risk though of going like touch, you know, sticking one toe over the board. You can definitely
[02:45:03] make it more kid-cross. You can traumatize the kid. You can make them hate the water. There's
[02:45:06] a lot of things you can do. So you got to be careful. You got to lean towards and actually the best
[02:45:10] policy is you lean towards whatever you do with them builds their confidence doesn't break it.
[02:45:14] That's the, that's the line. You say, oh, if I throw them in the water and they get, they get
[02:45:18] done with it in the car. I actually did it. That builds their confidence cool. If you throw them in the
[02:45:22] water and now it freaks them out and you broke their confidence, that's bad. So the line that you
[02:45:27] should be going for is everything that you're doing with your kids builds their confidence until
[02:45:30] they become overconfident. And then we have to start putting them in check. That's when you take them
[02:45:34] for the pool competency. All right. Yeah, I did that with my son. I did that with my son. Like,
[02:45:42] oh, you're good. Okay, cool. I tied his feet, tied his feet together, tied his hands behind his back.
[02:45:46] And I had him do, uh, we call it drown proofing. And the first time he did it, he did not pass.
[02:45:51] What age is this? I don't know, he's probably like seven.
[02:45:54] Oh, damn. All right. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's for seven. He's good now. But, you know,
[02:45:58] the first time I had to, I had to go for the right little rescue. Right. And that's that thing that you say,
[02:46:03] too, right, where you're like, hey, put them in the right, if they're like in a leadership situation at
[02:46:07] work or whatever, right, like you're like, hey, if they're overconfident, give them something just
[02:46:11] beyond their level. And they're underconfident, not going to give them something. That's what this is when
[02:46:15] my son was like starting to get into big waves. And you know, you can start if you start getting
[02:46:20] overconfident with the ocean, the ocean's going to put in the check. So you don't want to let that happen.
[02:46:26] All right, back to what we're doing here. Discipline goes freedom field manual. That's available as well.
[02:46:30] It's how you stay on the path as an adult or as a kid, not the kids are reading that book as well.
[02:46:37] The audio version is on iTunes Amazon, the music and Google Play as an MP3 album with tracks.
[02:46:44] And then finally, we got extreme ownership in the economy of leadership.
[02:46:47] Books about leadership that we experienced in combat. That Rob Jones is going to bring those principles
[02:46:54] to the government, which is outstanding. How many tweets do I get in the day that says about
[02:47:04] whatever politician on either side that says this guy could use your book, these people can
[02:47:08] use your book. They said all the time, send them to Congress. They say, I would say, well, send them.
[02:47:13] Give me an address. Excellent. That's our leadership consultancy. We saw problems through leadership.
[02:47:18] Go to echelonfront.com for details. We got EF online, which is leadership training that you can do
[02:47:27] virtually. It's interactive. There's choose your own adventures decision-making drills in there.
[02:47:34] Four leaders go to EF online.com to check that out. We got the master. The next one is in Sydney.
[02:47:41] Sydney, December 4th and 5th, we will be there. Who knows when we'll be back in Australia.
[02:47:48] In America, the 20-20 dates will be out soon. So go to extremotorship.com to pay attention to that.
[02:47:56] And don't forget that all masters have sold out. And all masters will sell out.
[02:48:02] So we actually rearrange the room in Denver because it sold out so fast. We like needed. We bought
[02:48:09] more space and made got more seats. But we can't do that every time we max it out. So if you want to come
[02:48:16] good extremotorship.com and then EF Overwatch where we are taking proven leaders. I've got some
[02:48:21] really good talking to Mike Surreli. We got some candidates now that we're not candidates, but we got
[02:48:27] some people that were hired. And that it'll just give the best experience. But we're getting the
[02:48:32] best referrals and feedback on the folks that we're placing. These are special operations in combat,
[02:48:38] aviation leaders that are coming off the battlefield and going into civilian companies and
[02:48:45] helping them with their leadership and helping them win.
[02:48:49] Communication. It's important. We talked about that a decent amount today. If you want to communicate
[02:48:54] with us, then you can find us on the inner webs, on Twitter, Instagram, and on Diva, Fruz, and Book.
[02:49:01] Echoes at Echo Charles. I am at jockwillink. Rob Jones. Okay. So Rob Jones for Congress.com.
[02:49:08] Yep. Facebook is at Rob Jones for Congress. Twitter is at Rob Jones VA. Right. As in Virginia.
[02:49:18] Right. Correct. It was OPPVA in Ramadi. And it was OPPVA. It was Virginia.
[02:49:26] Okay. But you could have thought it was the VA. Yeah. Exactly. I wanted to make it Rob Jones
[02:49:32] for Congress, but they don't allow it to be that long for Twitter. So we had to shorten it. Got it.
[02:49:37] Instagram Rob Jones for Congress. YouTube Rob Jones for Congress. Echo. Anything else?
[02:49:42] Thank you. Rob Jones for coming again. Rob. Any final thoughts? Yeah. You know, I've been lucky enough.
[02:49:48] There have been kind of three main influences in my life. External influences. Marine Corps.
[02:49:58] Jim Jones, which maybe we can talk about some day as well. I had a big impact me at the right time.
[02:50:05] Finally, you know, tree ownership, jacco, echo, the podcast and everything. And I've been lucky enough
[02:50:13] to not only interact with all three of those. Become a part of all three of those. Befriend all three
[02:50:21] of those. You know, I'm just, I just remain incredibly grateful that I've had these opportunities.
[02:50:28] So thanks for having me on again. Looking forward to the next time already. Well, as you can imagine,
[02:50:34] the doors always open anytime you want to come on. You know, just knowing you here in your story
[02:50:39] getting to see the way that you're operating out in the world, I throw that out there. Oh,
[02:50:45] he's an inspiration. You're an inspiration, bro. I mean, the fact of what you've done,
[02:50:49] what you continue to do, it's awesome. And it's awesome. You might think it's cool to be here.
[02:50:55] It's even cooler for us for me to have you here and hang out and get to talk to you and hang out with
[02:51:02] you. So thank you for coming back. More important. Thanks for the service and sacrifice that you've made
[02:51:09] for our country and that you continue to make and what you're going to make in the future. You are
[02:51:17] a leader. You are a warrior and thank you. And to the rest of our warriors out there that are
[02:51:25] face to face with the forces of darkness in the world. Thanks to you all and to your families
[02:51:34] for your service and your sacrifice. And here at home, thanks to our police and our law enforcement
[02:51:39] and our firefighters and our paramedics and our EMTs and our dispatchers and our correctional officers
[02:51:45] and our Border Patrol and our ICE agents and our Secret Service and all the first responders out there.
[02:51:52] Thank you for protecting us here at home. And everyone else that's out there,
[02:52:00] if you think you've kind of, you think you've kind of maxed out on what you can do.
[02:52:06] If you think maybe it's time to back off the gas pedal a little bit and relax.
[02:52:16] If you think you've given everything that you can give right now, well, while you're thinking
[02:52:22] that, once you just take a moment and think about Rob Jones, think about Rob Jones, who's still
[02:52:30] going, who's still going strong despite everything that life has thrown his way. He's still going
[02:52:38] no matter what he gets up and he gets after it. And I recommend that you all do the same.
[02:52:46] And until next time, this is Rob Jones, Aneko and Jocco out.