208: March Forward, One Foot In Front Of The Other. With Jason McCarthy

2019-12-18T09:35:56Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @goruck 0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:29 - Jason McCarthy from GoRuck. 3:21:46 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:26:42 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO STORE Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com/collections/men Jocko Supplements: https://originmaine.com/origin-labs/ Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/

AI summary of episode

and I want something that's kind of like these and got a response back from this team in Montana that was basically trolling the internet for work because in 2009 the economy was not in a good place so you have to put yourself into those kinds of perspectives you know you like to say good about a lot of stuff you know bad stuff happens good And you know, this is one of the reasons that, you know, I've got my kind of personal mentor who have never met before, but Colonel David Hacworth, who came out at the end of the Vietnam war and said, you know, if we don't change the way we're fighting, we're going to lose. So I was thinking, I didn't really know, but I thought I would do something in business or consulting or I had these, you know, these, it's a really tough state to be in when you're in your early 20s and you're going to college or you're trying to figure out your life and you don't know where it's going to go. And so there were some startup costs to this though, you know, traveling around and, you know, the events were 12 and then 14 hours and, you know, they were really, really challenging and every single time it was like a little fight club that happened. and then when did that develop into or how long was business school so business school was from 2009 to 2011 and so even business school is I applied to a couple schools and it's like I don't even know if I want to go to business school I mean that it's like it's so weird to think about now I've got these chapters in my life I'm applying for more stuff trying to do something I mean the idea of filling out an application to go to grad school was just a hugely daunting task this should take you know two or three hours it was months in decisiveness in inability to function and you know we talk about military transitions are hard like whoever you are if you lose all of your support structures everyone's got a break in point. And, and, and so then by the time it really started to, to pick up by the time we got to the hospital with our, or with our, or rackies, and, you know, we got our Humbies and they got their pickup trucks and there's, you know, It's, how many Humbies would you guys have in a 12-man team? So even when I hear a plane hit the, you know, one of the twin towers, I'm like, oh, Sessna, you know, pilot doesn't know what he's doing. and so you know didn't know anything about manufacturing didn't know anything about anything but eventually was like You know, people are always looking for kind of this sound, a good sound by a good clickbait, title, for an article, but someone asked me something along the lines of, like, what was the moment that all this leadership stuff came, like, we came clear to you. Like this every time I see like a person in the tropics, looking at fish, they're in, they're a little fin, yeah, and they're just like, you know, no idea. And then, you know, she's in West Africa and I'm in Iraq and then I'm in Colorado and it's, you know, you're, we're, a mediums were the thing back then, you know, these sort of, because it wasn't as simple as everyone's got data connections just pull up FaceTime or Skype or whatever the case may be. And I mean, when the Marine Corps pushed into nausea, you know, three, it was, you know, like a legitimate war battle going on. I guess I'll try to figure out how to design a backpack or a rucksack and thankfully I actually unbeknownst to me almost knew a lot about this topic that I just sort of gravitated toward it because I knew a lot about it even though I didn't have some conversation that said I really know about rocking and rucksack I was not my own id boosting my own you know sense of self worth through something that I thought would be a great way to spend time it was just something to do You know, like, you know, I was like an E4 in the teams. And if people don't understand that, you know, I get asked sometimes you, well, I don't know what my next mission is, I don't know what to focus on. Like you have certain dates and you have to re-enlist prior or you do all these things and, you know, they were really trying to keep guys in because they had invested a lot in us and, you know, the mission wasn't stopping. And yet, you know, when I have these kind of, these times when I think and reflect, usually outside with a ruck on, like, am I doing what I can do to make my community, my family, my community, my country stronger, because I just, I feel like I owe, and that's the, the bug that I caught through, through service. You know, this is important because, and you know, they had just, they were dive, they were dive guys within SF, which is just, it's just another suck school that you go to down in Key West, and it's a real suck school, not gentlemen's course at all, and you're already a greenbrain, you go do that, and then you join a dive team, and it's just another sort of notch, right, that you have. Because for me, it's, it's got nothing to do at this point about, oh, well, you know, the specifics of, well, a career or however many years in army and it's got everything to do about the way of life that I want to lead, that I want others to lead with me, which is based upon the time that I spent in special forces. And it sort of made the rounds and the people that did it, they told the people that they thought, I know, because when you're done, you say, I know just the person that needs to do this, right? You're not on, you know, it's kind of like kind of like standing on the dang cables at airborne school. I mean, and then on the officer side is like, well, you know, you're going to, if you go in as an officer, you're going to obviously be put in charge earlier. Yeah, because like once again, I'm picturing these girls playing your mom and you know, they're worried if there's, there's some distraction over on the side is like a camera going off. And this is where this was the beginning of my life turning into that bad country song where a guy's got his dog and you know, his sort of bottle of whiskey and all of his sorrows and you know, I ended up only being in Africa for about two months. If you, if the rock sack was like stream lined, I don't know like how, but I mean, they get, there's varying levels of bulk. and it's hard to relate to myself now in some of those chapters it's like when I think about deploying to war and all the training that I went through and the people that I served with it feels like I'm reading my own book sometimes right my own kind of narrative in my head And you know, I mean, it was just a really, it was just a really hard time, you know, it's, and it's also hard when you're fighting and my, my family was hugely supportive. But he posted like he just got, I don't know, like an entire palette of dac savage to his house. And then, you know, she's got a second layer of, quote, security and it's a renocop basically and they've got a stick, you know, they're not doing anything with that stick, but it's, it's faux security. And he says, and you know, it's a hard job being a bocens mate because you're doing all this kind of work of, you know, bloating vehicles, unloading vehicles, loading boats, unloading boats, you're in charge of making sure that the equipment is maintained. And this is something else that people ask me, you know, oh, should I do this now or I got a good job offer, but I really want to be in the military or I want to go to college, but I went over there. And it, it, it sort of just felt like this guillotine that I was facing as I, you know, because it's not like you just show up one day So you know there were a couple, you know, hey, I had to learn how to make sure they locked arms when the serve was coming, right? Well, it was like, you know, so we talk a lot about PTSD and all that stuff this day and age and it's become this kind of thing where every veteran probably has it. and I know all the right people through through Emily, which you know, because I'm her dependent now. yeah, this is, did you leave on hey, this is probably not going to work or did you leave on like, okay, well, I'm going to go figure some stuff out in America, she's going to stay. And so that means just, I mean, we have seals, green berets, delta guys, we have, you know, PJs from the, the air, we have all, you know, we have forced reconnaissance Marines. You know, you start to activate the intelligence networks that, you know, other guys on our team had been developing throughout that time. And there's no doubt expectations that family and loved ones, they have for what your life should be, you know, the perfect life like Edward Norton in Fight Club, right? So you guys need to go to a place like Hawaii or, you know, the Bahamas, you guys keep going random African nations that are in turmoil. I think what you're doing well and what I'm glad that you already figured out is like you're focused on helping people out and you're exposing them to, I don't know if I want to call it a form of exercise because it's really a lot more than that. So drive back, you know, second year she's going through, she's working out of the, the Langley and then, you know, out of, out of the farm. And he had been on, you know, so just to put some of her work and perspective, you know, she's going as 110-pound girl out to go on termination meetings with assets. well look the economy was in a really bad spot good good if you're looking for work good if you're trying to do something awesome because there's a lot more opportunity whereas when nobody's looking for work and everything's really expensive and you can't find any deals because the economy is just purring forward it's harder you got to you got to speed things up faster so anyway found this great team out there and basically worked on the rocks and how to do them throughout my first year in business school Just the way that they face, I mean, Travis Mills, I don't know if you know Travis Mills is I mean, it kind of makes sense if you look at it practically because if you're going to be in a situation where the weather and the temperature is this thing, you're not going to be like, yeah, But it's like, you know, like that you could, you could isolate that as a work. And so, you know, part of what going through elite style of training brings is the confidence to know when not to pull the trigger. You know, and, you know, she fell in love, got remarried and had Natalie, who is just the world's greatest big sister. and so it's like, you know, she's like, hey, I'm done. You know, like if you're not mortally aware of what's going on, there's probably something not quite right.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Podcast number 208.
[00:00:04] With echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink.
[00:00:07] Good evening echo.
[00:00:08] Good evening.
[00:00:12] Let me have your attention.
[00:00:15] At this point, you must complete a 12-mile tactical foot march in three hours.
[00:00:21] You must wear all equipment properly.
[00:00:24] You must have Kevlar helmet on your head and you must carry your M16 rifle at the ready
[00:00:29] position.
[00:00:31] This means that the rifle must be ready for use against the enemy.
[00:00:39] Discuss appropriate safety precautions and candidates' responsibilities for helping injured
[00:00:45] candidates.
[00:00:47] Then say what are your questions?
[00:00:52] If anyone has questions, repeat the instructions, but do not elaborate on what you have
[00:00:59] read.
[00:01:01] Pause five seconds and then say begin.
[00:01:10] And those right there are the instructions to be given by the Cadre to candidates for the
[00:01:20] EIB, the expert infantry badge in the US Army.
[00:01:25] That's a qualification that requires knowledge and a plethora of different weapons,
[00:01:31] including pistols, rifles, machine guns, grenades, anti-tank weapons.
[00:01:37] It requires skill in combat medical care, skills in coordinating and calling for supporting
[00:01:44] arms, land navigation, chemical and biological operations amongst other things.
[00:01:51] And he 12-mile foot march.
[00:01:57] That is one of the evolutions that you are not allowed to retest on.
[00:02:03] You either make it or you don't.
[00:02:05] And that makes sense because the foot march, and I think that's really a nice way of saying
[00:02:13] it.
[00:02:14] So what we used to call a forced road march is a physical and mental test of will.
[00:02:24] And I talked about, I talked about the road march in podcast 38, the patrol, patroling
[00:02:34] in teams, patrolling with my family.
[00:02:38] And I started off that podcast with a little reading of infantry columns by Kipling.
[00:02:47] Boots.
[00:02:51] And I explained that marching or humping or patrolling or rocking.
[00:02:57] I explained what it meant to me.
[00:03:01] How it impacted me and how in many ways it can be a bit of a metaphor.
[00:03:07] For life.
[00:03:11] And I'm not the only one who feels that way.
[00:03:15] And with me on the program tonight is a former special forces soldier who is also impacted
[00:03:25] by the patrol, by the hump, by the rock.
[00:03:31] And who has made his new mission to spread the power of the rock.
[00:03:39] So here we go.
[00:03:40] Jason McCarthy.
[00:03:41] Welcome to program.
[00:03:42] Thanks for having me, Jaco.
[00:03:44] Thanks for coming on, man.
[00:03:45] Good to meet you.
[00:03:46] Likewise.
[00:03:47] Likewise.
[00:03:48] So let's just jump into figure out sort of how you ended up, how you ended up.
[00:03:55] Where did all start?
[00:03:57] Where are you born?
[00:03:58] Where are you raised?
[00:03:59] Born in Dayton, Ohio.
[00:04:00] So Southern, Ohio.
[00:04:01] And but never really lived there.
[00:04:03] Mom and Dad were both really young when they had me.
[00:04:05] Mom was like, how young?
[00:04:07] Mom was 18 and five days.
[00:04:08] Dang.
[00:04:09] Right.
[00:04:10] So how old was Dad?
[00:04:11] Dad was 19.
[00:04:12] Okay.
[00:04:13] Right.
[00:04:14] And you know, as you might expect, marriage didn't last super long.
[00:04:20] Grandparents weren't super happy about this, but you know, they ended up taking very
[00:04:23] vested interest in me.
[00:04:25] But my mom was actually, she was the real athlete in the family.
[00:04:29] She won Junior College Nationals in tennis after having me at Singlether Community College.
[00:04:34] Wow.
[00:04:35] Right there.
[00:04:36] And then got a full ride to go play for the Gators Downing Gainesville.
[00:04:38] So we moved to Florida and then just bounced around.
[00:04:41] And so who was raising you?
[00:04:42] Why was my mom?
[00:04:44] And she's going to college winning national level tournaments in tennis and raising you.
[00:04:51] Yes.
[00:04:52] And so she's a bit of a trooper, huh?
[00:04:54] She's very much a trooper.
[00:04:57] Very much.
[00:04:58] You know, I mean, some of my earliest memories are going to her tennis practices and
[00:05:02] her tennis matches and my grandparents flying down to take care of me while she's.
[00:05:06] Now was she raised like a tennis kid?
[00:05:09] Yeah, sort of him in an athlete.
[00:05:12] And just across the board.
[00:05:13] Just across the board.
[00:05:14] And then she ended up being really good at tennis.
[00:05:16] She was number one in Ohio, her whole youth.
[00:05:18] And so it just extended from there.
[00:05:21] When you're really good at something, you just have a kid.
[00:05:25] So was she in high school?
[00:05:26] Was she managed to do?
[00:05:27] Yeah, I mean, managed to.
[00:05:29] Was that like your senior year?
[00:05:31] Yes.
[00:05:32] So she ended up graduating early and then almost went into hiding sort of at my dad's house
[00:05:40] with my dad's parents who were a little more okay with the situation than my mom's parents.
[00:05:46] It was tough.
[00:05:47] No doubt.
[00:05:48] Yeah, no, it's tough.
[00:05:49] Can't even imagine.
[00:05:50] What year were you born?
[00:05:51] 1979.
[00:05:52] Yeah.
[00:05:53] So society was still a lot more, I'd say, hard to deal with from that perspective
[00:06:02] of like a young mom in high school.
[00:06:04] I mean, single moms.
[00:06:06] I mean, that's tough.
[00:06:09] And the older I get, the more respect I have for how tough kids are and especially, you know,
[00:06:14] especially a single mom with a young kid and still trying to live your life and go to college
[00:06:20] and then get a job and do those kinds of things.
[00:06:23] So you have memories early on.
[00:06:25] You're like one year old and you're going to tennis tournaments with your mom.
[00:06:29] Well, I was at all the other little 18, 19 year old college girls are like worried about their
[00:06:35] hair and your mom's like, hold on.
[00:06:37] I'm just like, you're going to feed my kid.
[00:06:38] It's something like that.
[00:06:39] It's like a massive thing.
[00:06:40] I was two or three and I remember the tennis coach at Florida used to always pull my ear.
[00:06:46] Same as Andy Brandy and he would pull my ear before the matches and you say, are you going
[00:06:50] to behave today?
[00:06:51] Right?
[00:06:52] It was, it inspired behavior that was good for me.
[00:06:58] Yeah, because like once again, I'm picturing these girls playing your mom and you know,
[00:07:04] they're worried if there's, there's some distraction over on the side is like a camera
[00:07:08] going off.
[00:07:09] Meanwhile, your mom's got the screaming baby.
[00:07:13] That's not, man.
[00:07:14] She had a lot on her plate.
[00:07:16] Yes, she did.
[00:07:17] And so then, and so at what point did she kind of give up tennis and move into?
[00:07:22] Or did she like become a tennis pro at a club or something like that?
[00:07:25] Yeah, so I mean, I'm convinced that without me, she would have at least tried to go pro.
[00:07:29] And she was really good, you know, and she just, she had me and graduated in like 85.
[00:07:36] So I would have been six years old when she graduated from Florida and you can't go
[00:07:41] graduate from Florida University of Florida in the States.
[00:07:45] And so instead, you know, she ended up getting remarried and did become a teaching
[00:07:51] tennis professional and did that for about 20 years.
[00:07:54] So yeah, we moved, we moved to Texas and Tennessee and back to Texas and then settled
[00:07:59] in in Jack's Beach floor.
[00:08:00] How old are you settled in Jack's Beach, Florida?
[00:08:03] We moved there in 1992.
[00:08:05] And what about how old were you?
[00:08:07] So I was eighth grade.
[00:08:08] That's why I first year in school there.
[00:08:11] Sort of how I associate, I remember the grades where I was in which city.
[00:08:15] Yeah, but so you did your full high school career in Jacksonville, Florida?
[00:08:19] I did.
[00:08:20] You were born and raised kind of with a tennis racket in your hand.
[00:08:23] I assume.
[00:08:24] Tennis racket in a basketball.
[00:08:25] Yeah.
[00:08:26] Tennis eventually won out.
[00:08:27] But how?
[00:08:28] I got caught from the eighth grade basketball team.
[00:08:31] So it's weird because that's the new kid.
[00:08:33] And I did really well in basketball when I'd moved from Texas.
[00:08:38] And I just moved to Florida and it just didn't click for tryouts and didn't know anybody.
[00:08:43] And they're like, sorry.
[00:08:45] And it was kind of a crushing blow.
[00:08:47] And this is not one of those things where the Michael Jordan story takes place.
[00:08:51] And I doubled down on my training in practice and became a great basketball player.
[00:08:54] I just gave up.
[00:08:55] Pick up, pick up so.
[00:08:56] But yeah, I quit.
[00:08:58] Jack, I quit.
[00:08:59] I quit in his forever.
[00:09:00] And I quit.
[00:09:03] But I still played tennis and that was easier to make the team and stuff.
[00:09:07] So I did that and did that through college.
[00:09:09] So you played tennis in college?
[00:09:10] I did.
[00:09:11] One of my friends played tennis at the Naval Academy.
[00:09:14] And his sophomore year, he lost a match.
[00:09:19] And he stood in the court and threw his five tennis rackets out of the court into the woods
[00:09:25] and never played tennis again.
[00:09:27] Quitting forever.
[00:09:28] Yeah.
[00:09:29] Now I've been using the team.
[00:09:30] He was a great guy, but he just he never wanted to pick up a tennis racket again.
[00:09:35] And he had to be in the obviously to play at the Naval Academy.
[00:09:37] It had been a big focus in his life for a frustrating sport.
[00:09:42] It's a frustrating sport.
[00:09:46] It teaches you to make you very sensitive to what you think or your needs to.
[00:09:51] Because you're alone in your individual and you're out there and you take everything so
[00:09:55] seriously.
[00:09:56] And one of the things that the military culture would bring out is that you have to be
[00:10:02] able to overcome the little stuff.
[00:10:04] Someone clapping to loud two courts over that can just ruin your life if you're playing
[00:10:09] tennis.
[00:10:10] You know, like be quiet, be quiet.
[00:10:13] It's ridiculous.
[00:10:14] And you know, you have to learn how to fight through that kind of adversity.
[00:10:18] Yeah.
[00:10:19] The other thing about tennis, like in jujitsu, if you make generally, if you make a little
[00:10:25] mistake, you can kind of recover from it.
[00:10:27] You can make adaptations and usually one mistake.
[00:10:30] Now look, you can make a mistake in jujitsu and that's it.
[00:10:32] You can get armed locked or you can get choked.
[00:10:34] It happens.
[00:10:35] But you can also make a mistake and you can recover from it and it's not and it will
[00:10:40] have not a big factor.
[00:10:41] But you can you can hit a ball into the net.
[00:10:44] That's it.
[00:10:45] You just lost that point.
[00:10:46] Yeah, the point, but not the not the game, not the set, not the match.
[00:10:49] You can, I mean, you can come back from huge deficits in tennis.
[00:10:55] And it's, it's, it's, it's, it's really like everything else.
[00:10:57] It's, it's, it's mental.
[00:10:59] So, so you played tennis in college?
[00:11:01] I did.
[00:11:02] I went to Emory in, in Atlanta.
[00:11:04] And then were you thinking that you could be some kind of a pro tennis player?
[00:11:08] Absolutely not.
[00:11:09] I was just, I mean, so I love the team element of tennis.
[00:11:14] I kind of stopped enjoying the individual part of it.
[00:11:19] It's just, it's a lot of travel.
[00:11:20] It's a lot of, you know, it's just the process of playing tennis in my youth was, I really
[00:11:28] enjoyed the team part of it.
[00:11:29] And so that continued through college and I really enjoyed it with my team and in
[00:11:34] college, I just, I wasn't good enough.
[00:11:36] It just wasn't going to happen.
[00:11:37] Now, I did consider, hey, maybe I'll go down to South America and like try to place
[00:11:43] in tournaments or something after college.
[00:11:45] But I tore my rotator cuff my senior year and couldn't, you know.
[00:11:49] So when you're, when you're trying to measure yourself at that juncture in life, are you
[00:11:56] looking at, hey, this powerful or you're serving, let's just try and break it into something
[00:12:02] that a normal, non-tenous player human can understand.
[00:12:05] Let's say you're serve a good serve as 120 miles an hour.
[00:12:10] That's a big serve.
[00:12:11] Yeah.
[00:12:12] Okay.
[00:12:13] Or let's say 100 miles an hour is like the minimum to get pro.
[00:12:16] And you're serving, let's just say I'm not saying you, I'm just saying I'm human serving
[00:12:21] 90.
[00:12:23] And they're trying and they're trying all these different things and they just can't really
[00:12:25] make it happen.
[00:12:26] Does that, is that basically what happens?
[00:12:28] I mean, at some point are you saying look, it doesn't matter how much I practice.
[00:12:31] I don't have the physical aptitude to be top level.
[00:12:36] Yeah, I mean, you get into really, really thin air, you know.
[00:12:40] And just like in buds or in the training that I went through, there's physical capabilities
[00:12:47] that will limit certain people.
[00:12:50] But there's also mental stuff that will limit certain people.
[00:12:53] And mine were mostly physical.
[00:12:56] I just wasn't fast enough on the court.
[00:12:58] I wasn't, I mean, you get into really thin air where, I mean, these guys that are great
[00:13:03] at tennis and girls that are great at tennis, I mean, they were kind of always really
[00:13:07] great.
[00:13:08] You know?
[00:13:09] But I think that it's important to find something to be a part of a team throughout
[00:13:14] your life and to do more of that.
[00:13:17] And so for me, it was really just a vessel.
[00:13:19] I mean, I don't want to confuse myself even with my mother.
[00:13:21] My mother was a great athlete.
[00:13:23] And when it came to tennis.
[00:13:25] And I just didn't get the same degree.
[00:13:29] My grandfather was in played basketball growing up, you know.
[00:13:32] He was drafted to go play for the, for the lakers, but couldn't afford the bus ticket from
[00:13:39] Colorado to California.
[00:13:42] And so went and got a job.
[00:13:44] I mean, times were very different back then.
[00:13:47] Can you imagine?
[00:13:48] Yeah.
[00:13:49] That's crazy.
[00:13:50] And so when you go to college, are you, would you go to college for?
[00:13:55] What are your other economics?
[00:13:56] And what were you thinking?
[00:13:57] Your future look like.
[00:13:59] Yeah.
[00:14:00] So I was thinking, I didn't really know, but I thought I would do something in business
[00:14:03] or consulting or I had these, you know, these, it's a really tough state to be in when
[00:14:10] you're in your early 20s and you're going to college or you're trying to figure out your
[00:14:17] life and you don't know where it's going to go.
[00:14:19] Like, though, those are hard years and you look at them from an older vantage point and
[00:14:25] you say, you kind of had to go through that and it doesn't make it any easier when you're
[00:14:29] going through it though.
[00:14:30] And so I just, I really didn't know.
[00:14:32] I wanted to do something special.
[00:14:35] I wanted to do something more.
[00:14:37] And I just had no idea what that would mean.
[00:14:40] And so, you know, you just sort of say, oh, maybe I'll go work at Goldman Sachs.
[00:14:44] That's a great place to work.
[00:14:46] Or I'll go work at McKinsey and be a problem solver.
[00:14:49] Something to that effect.
[00:14:50] And I just didn't, I didn't know.
[00:14:54] I didn't know.
[00:14:55] And so, graduated 2001, May and still didn't know.
[00:15:00] But you know, a few months after that, it was going to be a very different world.
[00:15:04] So did you get a job right after college?
[00:15:07] I did.
[00:15:08] I went and traveled a little bit around Central America for like a month or two and that
[00:15:12] type of stuff gets, it gets kind of old.
[00:15:16] You don't really find yourself when you go far away, which is sort of amplifies what
[00:15:21] you're already thinking.
[00:15:22] And I needed to do something.
[00:15:24] I needed a mission.
[00:15:25] I needed purpose.
[00:15:27] And I needed a community.
[00:15:28] And did you, I mean, obviously your mom wasn't in the military, your dad, your
[00:15:33] grandparents are any military roots that you had in your family?
[00:15:36] So my, my grandfather was an artillery officer in Korea.
[00:15:41] Never talked about it.
[00:15:43] Ever.
[00:15:44] Right?
[00:15:45] Uncle was a naval aviator.
[00:15:48] He was a class of 77, anapolis grad, but never really saw him.
[00:15:53] So it wasn't part of my, the decision-making process of my life.
[00:15:58] This is what I can go do.
[00:15:59] It was just, it was a bridge too far.
[00:16:02] I didn't understand what the military did, frankly.
[00:16:07] I mean, yeah, defend America, but how, what does that mean for a life?
[00:16:12] Right?
[00:16:13] I mean, when I grew up, it was peacetime.
[00:16:14] I mean, it was, I mean, a side of what year did you graduate high school?
[00:16:19] 97.
[00:16:20] Sure.
[00:16:21] Right?
[00:16:22] So, I mean, this is not a time when the military is front and center as it is now.
[00:16:27] And in fact, if anything, what was the military's purpose at that time?
[00:16:32] It didn't have a ton of, what wars being fought?
[00:16:37] I basically, what I'm saying is, I didn't get it.
[00:16:40] It was naive.
[00:16:42] But I didn't get it.
[00:16:43] And it seems like it was just kind of outside your purview of the world, right?
[00:16:48] I mean, it wasn't on the news every day.
[00:16:49] You weren't seeing military operations on the news every day like you'd see now.
[00:16:53] So it just, you're growing up and it wasn't a thing that was really part of your world.
[00:16:58] Look, there was no John F. Kennedy at the time.
[00:17:00] You know, ask not what your country can do for you.
[00:17:03] Ask what you can do for your country.
[00:17:04] That wasn't part of the discussion in our country.
[00:17:08] And I think that's a problem.
[00:17:10] And that should always be a part of the discussion.
[00:17:12] That just wasn't the landscape where we are.
[00:17:15] So, or where we were.
[00:17:17] So it took 9-11 to really bring that to the forefront.
[00:17:22] So wait a second, South America.
[00:17:23] Do you go solo down there?
[00:17:24] Who'd you go?
[00:17:25] I went with a buddy.
[00:17:26] We just sort of back back, quote, quote, around.
[00:17:29] And you're thinking you're going to see the light and find your future?
[00:17:32] But we know.
[00:17:33] I'm going to just find this magical adventure like D'Caprio did in the beach or whatever.
[00:17:40] And it's going to be life-changing.
[00:17:41] Whatever.
[00:17:42] You know, all who wander or not lost.
[00:17:46] Yeah, that's true, but some that wander are lost.
[00:17:50] And you know, part of it is you want to have an adventure.
[00:17:52] You don't know exactly how to do it.
[00:17:53] But you've got to do something.
[00:17:55] You can't just sit around and do nothing.
[00:17:58] So did you come to any conclusions on your backpack?
[00:18:01] I did.
[00:18:02] I needed a mission.
[00:18:04] I needed to do something.
[00:18:05] I just figured that out.
[00:18:06] You were like, I just, it was awesome, but so boring.
[00:18:10] I just, I needed to be part of something bigger than myself.
[00:18:14] You can't backpack around the world for the rest of your life.
[00:18:17] You just can't do it.
[00:18:19] It's, it's easy to sort of glamorize.
[00:18:21] And you know, but it's, it gets old.
[00:18:24] Yeah.
[00:18:25] Too much freedom.
[00:18:27] Too much freedom.
[00:18:28] Too much freedom.
[00:18:29] There's a lot of time in the day.
[00:18:31] And we, we oftentimes think, oh man, this happens so fast.
[00:18:35] And, you know, today's gone tomorrow's gone.
[00:18:38] I don't have time for anything.
[00:18:40] You have a lot of time.
[00:18:41] It's just how you prioritize it.
[00:18:45] So you, sort of, when you came back from that trip, did you actually get a job somewhere?
[00:18:49] I did.
[00:18:50] And where was that?
[00:18:51] So I was working at a call center in Daytona Beach and was doing kind of research
[00:18:55] around card dealerships and who we could call and target for stuff.
[00:19:00] Like, you're sensing my enthusiasm.
[00:19:02] But at the same time, I was grateful to have a job.
[00:19:05] And I needed a job.
[00:19:07] And so that, so were you hammering the phone lines?
[00:19:10] I was.
[00:19:11] So you started off as a nugget.
[00:19:13] Okay, call these call these numbers, ask these people what kind of interior they'd
[00:19:18] like in their vehicles or whatever.
[00:19:20] It was actually directed to the dealerships.
[00:19:21] So I was trying to figure out, you know, I am barely remember.
[00:19:27] Trying to get more dealers onto this marketing campaign that the company was running.
[00:19:33] And it's actually Vaquus thinking here, I am.
[00:19:37] I found it.
[00:19:39] I had very much not arrived.
[00:19:44] You had that job.
[00:19:45] Is that when you had that job is when September the leavened happen?
[00:19:48] Correct.
[00:19:49] And what was your, what was your thought pattern?
[00:19:52] Once September, once you saw the towers get hit.
[00:19:55] So if you remember, JFK Jr had died in a session, a plane I think was a
[00:20:02] that he was piloting and it went down.
[00:20:05] And like off the coast along Island.
[00:20:07] Something like that, right?
[00:20:09] And so that was kind of the initial reaction.
[00:20:13] And I think there was just general confusion.
[00:20:15] And I woke up, I was getting ready to go to work with my button down
[00:20:19] and my cackies and stuff, eating my cereal.
[00:20:23] And I had the news on.
[00:20:25] And so I remember watching stuff go down.
[00:20:29] And it just there was just general confusion.
[00:20:31] And so I was confused as well.
[00:20:33] Like, oh, this is an accident.
[00:20:35] And then you just sort of watch it escalate.
[00:20:38] And it was obviously very clear that it wasn't an accident.
[00:20:41] Yeah.
[00:20:42] For me, first plane hits, which I think I heard on the radio.
[00:20:45] So even when I hear a plane hit the, you know, one of the twin towers, I'm like, oh,
[00:20:50] Sessna, you know, pilot doesn't know what he's doing.
[00:20:53] It was probably foggy.
[00:20:54] Whatever.
[00:20:55] He's taking a joy rod.
[00:20:56] That's horrible.
[00:20:57] And then I saw the images like somewhere, you know,
[00:21:01] saw the images on TV or something.
[00:21:03] And of the first building of the first tower getting hit.
[00:21:06] And I thought, oh, wow.
[00:21:08] How does that happen?
[00:21:09] As soon as I saw the second, you see that plane come in.
[00:21:12] Yeah.
[00:21:13] As soon as I saw the second one hit, I was like, oh,
[00:21:15] where are those?
[00:21:16] That was this is preplanteras of time.
[00:21:17] And I just got goosebumps thinking about how much rage I felt
[00:21:21] at that moment in time.
[00:21:24] So how long did it take you to say to yourself,
[00:21:27] you're going to go in the military?
[00:21:29] Right.
[00:21:29] So the initial reaction was, I got it.
[00:21:33] This is my mission.
[00:21:35] I got to figure out how to serve America,
[00:21:37] something greater than myself.
[00:21:39] The more practical side was joining the military
[00:21:43] in a time of war was scary.
[00:21:46] There was fear, human fear that was running through my veins
[00:21:50] about this is, that's a real decision.
[00:21:54] And the other part of it was, you know,
[00:21:56] the first death was Mike Span.
[00:22:00] So Mike Span was in work for the CIA.
[00:22:04] And you know, before that was a Marine,
[00:22:06] they sort of glossed over that in the telling of it.
[00:22:09] You know, he was work for the CIA
[00:22:11] and he was in Afghanistan, one of the first in.
[00:22:14] And so I took a lot of inspiration from that
[00:22:17] and sent my packet in to the CIA
[00:22:19] and a couple other of the alphabet suit agencies
[00:22:21] that were generally speaking in the DC area.
[00:22:24] And that's a really long process.
[00:22:27] So you know, went through that entire process
[00:22:30] and met some good people along the way,
[00:22:34] met some of the hiring folks at the agency.
[00:22:37] And I kept asking about, I didn't know anything, okay.
[00:22:41] I heard about, you know, sog.
[00:22:43] Like the, it's called Ground Branch.
[00:22:45] Right. That's the paramilitary branch of the CIA.
[00:22:49] That's where I wanted to be.
[00:22:51] And so I didn't know how to get there.
[00:22:55] And finally, you know, you make it through
[00:22:56] Round after Round after Round of interviews
[00:22:59] with the agency and they get more sort of specific
[00:23:01] and you have one on one time with interviewers
[00:23:03] and you're encouraged to ask questions, which you should.
[00:23:07] I'm like, hey, so how do I get to do that kind of stuff?
[00:23:11] Like the mission that Mike Span got, how do I do that?
[00:23:14] And there was this guy and we were in, you know,
[00:23:17] some office space, very, as you might expect,
[00:23:23] sterile looking office space in Northern Virginia.
[00:23:26] And this guy sitting at a desk, not too dissimilar
[00:23:30] to how we're sitting right now, looked right up
[00:23:32] and he's like, look, we don't train our guys
[00:23:36] in the military.
[00:23:37] We take from the special operations branches
[00:23:39] and then they come and work for us.
[00:23:41] And I had this moment in my head, I'm like, dammit.
[00:23:44] And why didn't you tell me this like a year ago, right?
[00:23:47] And so that's when it clicked for me.
[00:23:50] And so now I'm resetting the clock though
[00:23:53] because I start going through military application
[00:23:56] processes at that time and that's, you know,
[00:23:58] 2008, 2002.
[00:24:01] And there's this perception out there was this perception.
[00:24:06] I think there's a lot of us who are working really hard
[00:24:08] to dispel it that you either go to war or you go to jail.
[00:24:11] The military has a last option, resort of,
[00:24:15] you can't get a job somewhere else.
[00:24:16] So you should go join the military.
[00:24:18] And that's just patently false.
[00:24:20] And so, you know, it was one of those things
[00:24:23] where a lot of people wanted to join the military.
[00:24:28] A lot of people with really, really stellar resumes
[00:24:31] in the aftermath of 9-11, we had a nation of people
[00:24:34] who said, send me, I want to go to war to fight for my country.
[00:24:38] Now, that's great for the country.
[00:24:40] It's hard if you want to go join the military.
[00:24:42] So, you know, I just graduated from college
[00:24:45] of course I'm going to become an officer.
[00:24:47] And of course, I don't tell anyone
[00:24:48] in my family anything that's going on, right?
[00:24:50] So my hair was grown out.
[00:24:52] I was working out a lot to sort of do the kind of physical training
[00:24:56] or physical fitness that I thought I needed to do
[00:24:58] in order to join the military and be of some value to someone
[00:25:03] in some God forsaken place down range.
[00:25:06] And so they thought I was just going off the defense.
[00:25:10] I just graduated from this expensive college.
[00:25:12] I sort of didn't really have direction or purpose.
[00:25:16] What was that work in the call center this whole time?
[00:25:20] No, so I actually moved up to be closer to DC.
[00:25:23] I wanted to be closer to where I thought the action was.
[00:25:26] And by action, I met where service was happening.
[00:25:31] And to me, that was New York and DC.
[00:25:34] And so I moved up to DC.
[00:25:35] I had some family up there.
[00:25:37] I worked as an analyst at a bank then, right?
[00:25:40] Which is a great way to work 100 hours a week by Wednesday, right?
[00:25:44] And sleep on the floor, you know, for a couple hours before your
[00:25:48] boss is all 18 of them come in the next morning with more stuff for you to do.
[00:25:54] And so I was up in DC for that period.
[00:25:57] Because the interview processes were long and drawn out.
[00:26:01] And I didn't know where I wanted to go, but all those places were in DC.
[00:26:03] So it was like going through those processes there was a little bit easier.
[00:26:08] And also the military process.
[00:26:10] So my first place that I applied was to become a Marine Corps officer.
[00:26:14] And that just kept going through, hey, you've been selected to go to basic officer
[00:26:22] candidates.
[00:26:23] Officer, the officer, right?
[00:26:25] And that just kept not happening.
[00:26:28] And eventually, I was like, man, the wars are just passing me by.
[00:26:32] It's time.
[00:26:34] So do what you got to do, but you need to do it now, or you will regret this for the
[00:26:37] rest of your life.
[00:26:39] So I went down and then I started talking to a win, was going to go to the Navy
[00:26:45] Recruiting Center, which I did and asked about becoming an officer in the Navy and
[00:26:50] how do I become a seal?
[00:26:51] And they're like, well, that takes forever, right?
[00:26:54] And I'm like, well, I don't have forever because I want to go fight a war.
[00:26:58] So what next door to the Army recruiter?
[00:27:02] And he said the same thing, right?
[00:27:04] He's like, this takes forever, right?
[00:27:06] If you want to go be in special forces, that's you can do that when you're a captain,
[00:27:11] promotable or O3, promotable or sorry, O2, promotable about to be a captain.
[00:27:15] I think was the time frame on that.
[00:27:17] So that's years away.
[00:27:19] Now the idea of going and joining an infantry unit or something, it didn't appeal to
[00:27:24] me.
[00:27:25] I wanted to be, and you have these grandiose notions of what you're capable of.
[00:27:29] And I wanted to be the guy in the mountains hunting bin Laden.
[00:27:34] That's what I wanted to do with my life.
[00:27:36] And so the guy sends this, you know, these recruiters, they know when they've got something.
[00:27:41] He's like, well, we've got this special program, right?
[00:27:44] You can go straight off the street and join special forces.
[00:27:48] It's in enlistment.
[00:27:49] I'm like, oh, that kind of sounded like a bad word to me.
[00:27:55] In enlist, right?
[00:27:56] I mean, college degree, you have all these senses of what you're entitled to or what
[00:28:01] you should be doing with your life.
[00:28:03] And part of those are pressures that you're felt from outside forces.
[00:28:07] And there's no doubt expectations that family and loved ones, they have for what your life
[00:28:12] should be, you know, the perfect life like Edward Norton in Fight Club, right?
[00:28:16] Assigning value to the furniture in your house and what apartment you have.
[00:28:20] And all these things that really don't matter, but you think about what you should do in
[00:28:25] life in order to be happy.
[00:28:27] In listing to go be a ground pounder in the army was a little bit removed from what I
[00:28:34] thought my direction should be.
[00:28:37] And yet that was my choice.
[00:28:39] It was do this or sit around and wait forever until they call and say, okay, now you're
[00:28:45] validated and can go to become an officer.
[00:28:49] And I didn't know anything about this process.
[00:28:53] I didn't have anybody that I talked to about what people did in these jobs.
[00:28:58] Did you know any SF guys at all?
[00:29:00] No, and the two-
[00:29:02] Oh, the two-
[00:29:02] Oh, the Marine Corps officers.
[00:29:03] No, no.
[00:29:04] No, and so it's like, what you see in the movie.
[00:29:07] The one you see in the movie.
[00:29:09] So the irony is that my next door neighbor that I lived next to in Florida growing up
[00:29:18] for, you know, since 92 was an officer, a special forces officer in the army.
[00:29:25] And it took until my mom found out because I told her that I didn't list it, which
[00:29:32] just jumped to the end a little bit here.
[00:29:36] I ended up signing a five-year contract in listing into the army where they guarantee
[00:29:41] that you can go to the schools.
[00:29:42] They of course don't guarantee that you'll pass.
[00:29:45] And it's 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, so extra.
[00:29:47] Just basically means that 18 series is the MOS and the X-rays, the designator for we don't
[00:29:54] know what your job specifically within the special forces will be.
[00:29:59] If you pass, it will assign it to you later.
[00:30:01] This is one of those questions I get asked all the time by people, which is, you know,
[00:30:04] should I go off a search?
[00:30:06] Should I go and list it?
[00:30:07] You know, this is just really common for people to ask.
[00:30:10] And, you know, I was really lucky because I wouldn't change this.
[00:30:14] I am listed and I wouldn't change anything about my career.
[00:30:18] My career was ridiculously awesome and super lucky.
[00:30:24] And people ask me that question all the time.
[00:30:26] It's really hard to get a seal officer billet, like as you join the Navy.
[00:30:32] I think there's about 30 a year and there's thousands of people that apply for it.
[00:30:38] Like the Naval Academy takes 15.
[00:30:40] I think it's 15 from the Naval Academy and then 15 from ROTC and OCS combined.
[00:30:47] So this is a tiny number.
[00:30:50] And so I always tell people, look, you can apply for that, but if you want to be a seal,
[00:30:55] do you manned up just having to enlist?
[00:30:57] And the same token is, I'm so glad I didn't want to go to college.
[00:31:03] Like I wanted to, the same as you.
[00:31:05] I mean, there was no war going on, but I wasn't smart enough to figure that out.
[00:31:07] And I thought that there was seals all over the globe conducting covert operations.
[00:31:13] And I was going to go get some of that exactly.
[00:31:16] But you know, so I was like ready to do enlist and I wouldn't do it any other way.
[00:31:19] And I ended up going to college when I was like 28 years old.
[00:31:22] And by then I was like, okay, I can sit in the classroom now.
[00:31:25] When I was 18, 19, 20, I didn't want to sit in the classroom.
[00:31:29] I wanted a machine gun, you know, like a normal kid.
[00:31:32] So yeah.
[00:31:33] So I think for people that are on that fence for anybody that knows me or it listens to me at all.
[00:31:41] I mean, all day long, I'll tell you that being a infantry soldier,
[00:31:48] being an infantry Marine, I mean those are being a machine gunner in the Marine Corps.
[00:31:52] I mean, any of those jobs are awesome.
[00:31:55] And they'll lead to real leadership in listed leadership positions.
[00:31:58] And it's a great experience and a great jobs.
[00:32:01] And I wouldn't have it any other way.
[00:32:04] I mean, and then on the officer side is like, well, you know, you're going to, if you go in as an
[00:32:10] officer, you're going to obviously be put in charge earlier.
[00:32:14] You'll end up with more leadership situations sooner.
[00:32:17] So there's there's benefits to it.
[00:32:19] But at the end of the day, I think what happened to you is what happens to a lot of people.
[00:32:23] It's like the path becomes clear, not because of what you want.
[00:32:29] But because of the way the world works.
[00:32:31] And so when you know, figure out what your path that path should become clear at some point.
[00:32:36] And then you say, okay, cool, that looks like my path.
[00:32:38] I'm going to go.
[00:32:39] And one thing that I will say is in the seal teams for sure, I'm pretty sure it's this
[00:32:43] way in the Army and the Marine Corps.
[00:32:46] If you're a good and listed human, and you make an effort to become an officer, it's easier
[00:32:53] to become an officer when you're an enlisted person than it is to do it coming from straight
[00:32:58] out.
[00:32:59] That's 100% true in the Army and the Marine Corps.
[00:33:01] But in the seal teams, it's absolutely true.
[00:33:04] It's you know, you will have an easier time getting selected if you are already in the seal
[00:33:08] teams for six years.
[00:33:10] And now you want to become an officer.
[00:33:11] It's a little easier.
[00:33:12] But you can't count on it because the program that I did, they took 50 people to become
[00:33:17] officers out of the whole Navy.
[00:33:19] So out of 250,000 people in the Navy, they took 50.
[00:33:24] That's not those aren't great odds.
[00:33:25] But I don't know, I think the path, I think what happened to you is what happens to a
[00:33:30] lot of people.
[00:33:31] And you've got to say, OK, my path has been revealed by circumstances.
[00:33:36] And I'm going to go for it.
[00:33:37] Yeah, you've got to do something.
[00:33:39] I mean, there's lots of other alternatives.
[00:33:41] You can do nothing and you can regret it.
[00:33:44] And that's a really, that's the worst path of all.
[00:33:46] Yeah, well, that's another good point that you bring up.
[00:33:49] And this is something else that people ask me, you know, oh, should I do this now or
[00:33:53] I got a good job offer, but I really want to be in the military or I want to go to college,
[00:33:58] but I went over there.
[00:33:59] They have a million, I don't want to call them.
[00:34:01] Because you see, they have a million legitimate what they believe to be reasons on
[00:34:04] why they should postpone or possibly not even go into the military.
[00:34:10] And from my perspective, all these other opportunities you have in life will be there for
[00:34:15] a long time, but the military will not be.
[00:34:17] You know, that's a very true, I mean, I've yet to meet the person who served in the military
[00:34:21] that regretted it.
[00:34:22] Oh, yeah.
[00:34:23] Everybody says I learned so much and what you really learn is a perspective on life.
[00:34:28] I don't care if you're an officer or you're an enlisted or whatever.
[00:34:32] You learn about teamwork and camaraderie, not as posters on a, on a, words on a poster
[00:34:38] in a bathroom, but as just what it feels like.
[00:34:42] And that becomes your northern star in life.
[00:34:46] You want to chase that for the rest of your life.
[00:34:49] I want to be a part of a team.
[00:34:51] I want to feel that reward of service to, to a higher purpose than just myself.
[00:34:57] I want to help other people.
[00:34:59] And when you connect those dots, you, you just, you need to go do it.
[00:35:03] Now, I, I really, I caution people against thinking, oh, I'm going to enlist so that
[00:35:09] I can become an officer.
[00:35:10] It's, it's very rare.
[00:35:12] And so you sort of say, it's not about the actual mechanics.
[00:35:18] It's about service and you, you get to pick your path.
[00:35:23] And you need to pick your path wisely and you need to do it when you're young.
[00:35:26] When you're 20, here's what nobody tells you.
[00:35:29] You graduate from college or your 20 years older, whatever.
[00:35:31] You're, your basic value in, in the universe is nothing.
[00:35:37] You're just, you don't have wisdom or perspective.
[00:35:39] You don't know yourself.
[00:35:41] And that's the biggest part of this.
[00:35:43] You haven't been through enough adversity at a mature enough age.
[00:35:48] Even if you've got a horrific childhood, you're not at a mature enough age to know yourself
[00:35:54] well enough as you get older.
[00:35:56] And so what the military does is it forces you through adversity to learn more about yourself,
[00:36:03] to how you'll respond to these kinds of challenges in life.
[00:36:08] And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
[00:36:10] really hard place for for all of us.
[00:36:13] And you don't get good at doing hard things by only doing easy things.
[00:36:18] So take this job offer and this push whatever that you got and watered up and throw it away
[00:36:24] and find some cause that you really believe in to serve.
[00:36:28] And go, go do that and see what path that leads you to.
[00:36:31] Because for me, it's, it's got nothing to do at this point about, oh, well, you know,
[00:36:39] the specifics of, well, a career or however many years in army and it's got everything to do
[00:36:45] about the way of life that I want to lead, that I want others to lead with me, which is
[00:36:52] based upon the time that I spent in special forces.
[00:36:57] You talked about a five year enlistment, which when I joined the Navy, I signed a six year contract.
[00:37:04] God bless you.
[00:37:05] You're a crude or a gotten, you, you got some high five.
[00:37:07] That was not a boys on that.
[00:37:08] Yeah, this, the program that he was called the dive fairer program and it was a six year
[00:37:13] enlistment that same thing, it gave you an opportunity to do the screening test to go to
[00:37:20] Buds.
[00:37:21] So this is just completely ridiculous.
[00:37:23] But I remember thinking it seemed like a lot of people just couldn't, especially people
[00:37:28] like you're saying that were my age, whatever, 18, 19, 20 years old for them, for them.
[00:37:35] And a little bit of me was like six years seem like this eternal length of time.
[00:37:41] And the reality is, man, six years is a joke.
[00:37:43] I mean, six years of my 20 year career went by and I can't barely even remember six years.
[00:37:48] So that's another thing that people got to overcome.
[00:37:50] They got to overcome the fact that this seems like a huge chunk of your life, but the value
[00:37:56] that you're going to get out of it is infinitely worth way more than for the rest of your life.
[00:38:02] For the rest of your life, you get the question.
[00:38:03] Where else are you going to find this in your 20s?
[00:38:06] Where else?
[00:38:07] You're not.
[00:38:08] You're not.
[00:38:09] And it doesn't just have to be the military.
[00:38:11] There are a lot of other organizations that you can serve that are American needs.
[00:38:16] You can go be a teacher.
[00:38:17] You can go.
[00:38:18] There's lots of things that you can do.
[00:38:21] But ultimately, you need to find something with a mission and purpose that you really believe
[00:38:26] in.
[00:38:27] And just pour your heart into it.
[00:38:30] Work really, really hard.
[00:38:31] Learn what that feels like.
[00:38:32] Yeah, and I think you make a good point of working really hard at something.
[00:38:39] Well, working really hard at being a soldier.
[00:38:42] If that's what you are passionate about is a lot easier than working really hard in a call
[00:38:46] center when you don't like it or working really hard as an analyst when it's like,
[00:38:52] it's not what you want to do.
[00:38:53] And you don't see any greater purpose behind it.
[00:38:56] I mean, you give me all day long to teach people about leadership, which is what I do
[00:39:00] right now.
[00:39:01] I do that and I can't even stop doing it.
[00:39:03] I mean, it's like I work with a company and I'm so engaged with them.
[00:39:08] It's like awesome.
[00:39:10] But then you, if you were to remove me from that and put me into a, you know, staring at
[00:39:14] spreadsheets and for a bank, it would be hard for me to, you know, really find the passion
[00:39:21] and doing that.
[00:39:22] Yeah, and people are built differently as well.
[00:39:24] Well, some people are, you know, some people love the idea of going straight to college
[00:39:28] at 18 and working really hard at college.
[00:39:31] And doing really well and they could do that.
[00:39:33] And that was me as well.
[00:39:35] I was, I was, I was working with a company that made candy.
[00:39:42] Candy.
[00:39:43] Good candy?
[00:39:44] Um, not really like what you think of when you think of a good candy, more like just sort
[00:39:48] of the normal, when you go to restaurant and you leave and they have like, men's.
[00:39:53] Oh, I see.
[00:39:54] And you grab a handful of men's or whatever.
[00:39:56] They make that kind of candy.
[00:39:57] So this isn't like some gourmet candy that they put on a pedestal and talk about.
[00:40:03] No, it's not that.
[00:40:04] But anyways, I'm, I'm, I'm some speaking this company.
[00:40:06] I'm with them and working with them.
[00:40:09] And they were talking about this candy and all their different variants of candy and what
[00:40:14] they're going to do strategically and where they need it and prove the market share.
[00:40:17] Man, they were into it.
[00:40:19] They were into it.
[00:40:20] And so that's, that's, they found something and they were into it.
[00:40:25] I was like, okay, I was like, this is awesome.
[00:40:27] I'm glad that these folks are totally into this.
[00:40:30] And so I guess to your point, if you are into, you know, if you're into economics and you
[00:40:37] go to a bank and that's what you're into and you love trying to figure out trends and you,
[00:40:41] hey, that's awesome.
[00:40:42] And, and you should proceed down that path.
[00:40:46] But if you're not into it, then maybe you should look for a different path.
[00:40:52] So I'll tell one more story about this because it, this is important.
[00:40:55] I think, I can't, I can't, I can't understand.
[00:40:57] So I'm in the Navy, I'm in the SEAL teams.
[00:41:00] I'm on a ship.
[00:41:02] We're out in the middle of the ocean.
[00:41:04] It's pitch black.
[00:41:06] There's massive waves.
[00:41:07] It's raining.
[00:41:09] And we're getting ready to launch our little zodiac boats.
[00:41:12] You know, and you're just, you're just launching into death.
[00:41:14] I mean, you're not, you're launching into just complete darkness, right?
[00:41:18] And there's huge waves.
[00:41:19] And it's on a ship that has a well-deck.
[00:41:22] So the ramp is going to go down on this thing and we're just going to have our boats
[00:41:27] there and just jump into the ocean.
[00:41:29] And there's a, there's a Navy guy, a bocens mate, which means he's like a deck hand guy.
[00:41:35] But he runs all the, all the launching of, you know, ships are launching of the little boats
[00:41:40] and bringing boats back on.
[00:41:41] You know, he runs all that stuff.
[00:41:42] It's important job in the Navy, a bocens mate.
[00:41:45] So as the ramp's going down, the rains pouring in, the waves are crashing.
[00:41:52] And this guy looks at me.
[00:41:55] And he says, and you know, it's a hard job being a bocens mate because you're doing
[00:41:59] all this kind of work of, you know, bloating vehicles, unloading vehicles, loading boats,
[00:42:06] unloading boats, you're in charge of making sure that the equipment is maintained.
[00:42:10] I mean, it's like a hard job.
[00:42:13] The boat's everything smashing and crashing and water.
[00:42:17] And the guy looks at me and he goes, man, I'm glad I don't have your job.
[00:42:24] And I looked back at him and I said, well, you know what, I'm glad I don't have your job.
[00:42:28] So let's make a deal.
[00:42:29] You do your job and I'll be mine.
[00:42:31] And it was totally, it was awesome.
[00:42:32] It made sense.
[00:42:33] And the guy kind of laughed and we smiled and then I launched out of the middle of the ocean
[00:42:36] to go out and spend, you know, four hours in a transit to get to the beach to swim across
[00:42:41] the beach to get onto the beach to do a three day reconnaissance freezing cold.
[00:42:45] Hey, that's what we do.
[00:42:47] And that guy was going to, you know, be on that ship.
[00:42:50] But that's another thing that just, I was in a perfect place.
[00:42:53] I love doing what I was doing.
[00:42:55] And he was in a perfect place because he loved doing, you know, he was part of something
[00:42:58] that was big and part of something that was bigger to himself, you know, being in the Navy,
[00:43:02] it was cool.
[00:43:03] But you've got to find, if you can, find something that you really like doing.
[00:43:08] And just don't hate your life.
[00:43:10] Yes.
[00:43:11] We do not recommend hating your life.
[00:43:14] Never.
[00:43:15] Change.
[00:43:16] If something goes on for too long and you do not like waking up in the morning, then you've
[00:43:21] got to change something.
[00:43:22] Yes.
[00:43:23] And just to make sure, because I'll get asked this about a million times and I've been
[00:43:27] asked it, that doesn't mean you walk into work tomorrow and throw your computer at your
[00:43:33] supervisor and tell them, I'm going to do something I love and then you're homeless.
[00:43:37] No, don't do that.
[00:43:38] What you do is you figure out an exit strategy.
[00:43:40] You come up with a plan, you actually think about it, you take a year to save money, you
[00:43:45] figure out what you're going to do.
[00:43:46] That's what you do.
[00:43:47] Two jobs one paycheck.
[00:43:48] Sometimes the second job is moonlighting is a passion, a hobby.
[00:43:52] Try to turn that into reality.
[00:43:54] Work really hard.
[00:43:55] Yeah.
[00:43:56] There's not shortcuts in this.
[00:43:58] It's not, hey, let me, let me fire up a brand new Instagram account and that's my new
[00:44:01] passion in life and I'm going to become a millionaire.
[00:44:03] It's ridiculous.
[00:44:04] Right.
[00:44:05] Find something that you really love to do.
[00:44:08] And two jobs one paycheck.
[00:44:10] That's the deal.
[00:44:11] Or four jobs one paycheck.
[00:44:13] Or more sure.
[00:44:15] Ten jobs one do.
[00:44:16] We figure it out.
[00:44:17] And by the way, traveling the world in hopes of finding yourself is not a good plan.
[00:44:23] That's my general experience.
[00:44:24] That's my general experience.
[00:44:26] Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:44:27] You actually found yourself while you're sitting in a being an analyst or sitting there on
[00:44:31] a call center, you're like, okay, this much I know.
[00:44:34] I don't want to do this.
[00:44:35] Yeah, I mean, I kind of knew I didn't want to do that.
[00:44:38] I just think there's a lot of people out there that want especially in America where there's
[00:44:45] so much opportunity, we can do so many things with our lives here.
[00:44:50] There's just so much freedom we don't even realize.
[00:44:54] And yet we feel enslaved to other people's expectations.
[00:44:58] And so we start falling into that trap of, well, I got to go do this and I got to
[00:45:02] earn this much and I got to chase that.
[00:45:04] Did you, did your family, meaning your mom, your grandparents?
[00:45:08] Your friends, did they have enough understanding of the military to realize that when
[00:45:13] they disappointed when you enlisted, when they like, oh, no, your officer material son,
[00:45:18] they were absolutely my mom cried in the kitchen.
[00:45:21] She would have cried if she would have cried if I wanted, if I thought I was becoming
[00:45:26] an officer either as well.
[00:45:28] I mean, it was just one of those things where it was a time of war and that's hard
[00:45:34] for moms and God bless moms.
[00:45:36] I think they have the hardest job on the planet.
[00:45:39] And so that was just a really difficult time.
[00:45:44] It was October of 2003 that I enlisted and the war and a racket kicked off.
[00:45:52] I felt like I'd missed it.
[00:45:54] You see them toppling the statue of Saddam.
[00:45:58] I felt like I'd missed it.
[00:46:00] And yes, so I came back from the recruiting station and I told my mom in the kitchen,
[00:46:05] my brother was sitting on the, my brother's younger and he was sitting on the counter and
[00:46:10] I had missed some calls and some stuff and my mom was upset with me and generally my
[00:46:15] mom just didn't know what I was doing with my life either, right?
[00:46:18] Because she had expectations that I was going to do something important with my life
[00:46:21] and I wasn't doing that.
[00:46:23] And I told her that I didn't enlisted to go join special forces and she just lost it.
[00:46:30] And then there were this sort of, how long was it between your enlistment when you left
[00:46:34] for boot camp three weeks?
[00:46:36] Oh, really.
[00:46:37] So maybe I'm going to sit around October 1st and I left 28th of October.
[00:46:42] Pretty quick, turn, turn, turn.
[00:46:44] Yeah.
[00:46:45] Okay, so mom's soul is crushed.
[00:46:47] Yeah, and then there's the aftermath with the grandparents and my, just the family.
[00:46:53] So as we talked about earlier, my mom was really young when she had me and so a lot
[00:46:58] of the rest of my family took a very vested interest in me.
[00:47:02] And I'm the person that I am, and there's such things a self-made man and I'm a product
[00:47:07] of the time and effort that they spent to help raise me.
[00:47:12] And including my dad, I've visited, spent tons of time with my dad in Ohio in the summer
[00:47:15] and his parents.
[00:47:17] And I just had a lot of people in my life.
[00:47:20] And there was just a lot of questioning about this decision.
[00:47:24] Is there anyone that said right on good call?
[00:47:28] My dad was actually almost relieved.
[00:47:31] He just said, okay, that sounds about right.
[00:47:34] Yeah.
[00:47:35] But you know, everyone worries that you have to just accept that.
[00:47:41] So selfishness is something that gets thrown around as a very negative thing.
[00:47:47] And you know, part of what you have to do to make yourself happy is you have to be selfish.
[00:47:55] You have to say, and call it whatever you want.
[00:47:57] But this makes me happy. I need to do this regardless of the consequences.
[00:48:02] And it's not just a soldier that goes to war.
[00:48:04] The family is very much a part of that experience.
[00:48:07] And I completely shut them out throughout this entire process and then just dropped a bomb
[00:48:14] on them and said, I'm leaving in a month.
[00:48:17] I'm going to go to boot camp and then I'm going to war.
[00:48:21] And you know, there was a part of me that really felt like that.
[00:48:25] I knew I needed to do it. But it's a scary thing.
[00:48:29] I mean, it's a lot less scary to me now.
[00:48:32] I mean, the idea of hey, you've got to go back on the next smoke and bird to Afghanistan or Iraq.
[00:48:38] I mean, it's still something.
[00:48:39] If you're not scared, at least a little bit, if you don't get in adrenaline rush,
[00:48:44] if someone's shooting at you, there's a problem.
[00:48:47] You know, like if you're not mortally aware of what's going on,
[00:48:53] there's probably something not quite right.
[00:48:56] And yet at that time, it was just so unknown.
[00:49:01] I mean, I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die.
[00:49:06] And I'm sure my mom did.
[00:49:08] All right.
[00:49:11] So you show up at boot camp.
[00:49:14] How many hours or days was it in the boot camp that you said to yourself,
[00:49:20] oh, man, I screwed up. I could not believe how hard boot camp was.
[00:49:26] I mean, how miserable it was.
[00:49:29] It was, and I was a little older, so I was 24.
[00:49:33] And I was like, had a little bit more perspective, maybe.
[00:49:37] Then some of the guys were 17 and 18, which maybe that wasn't a good thing.
[00:49:43] I love the fact that I was really young going through all because
[00:49:47] you're just too dumb to figure out.
[00:49:50] I mean, I just, I would not want to go through, when I was 24 years old,
[00:49:54] I wouldn't have wanted to go through boot camp.
[00:49:55] I mean, I would have done it, of course.
[00:49:57] But it would have sucked even more, because you understand the world a little bit better.
[00:50:01] You've had some kind of a taste of freedom.
[00:50:04] And I mean, I just was like, hey, okay, you want me to do this.
[00:50:06] I'm going to do it.
[00:50:07] It was like, I was the perfect recruit really in a way.
[00:50:11] Because I was just young and dumb.
[00:50:14] So I suffered the biggest thing I suffered from was just overthinking stuff.
[00:50:21] Because I would sit and why are they doing this?
[00:50:23] That's the worst thing you can ask yourself.
[00:50:25] Yeah.
[00:50:26] Why?
[00:50:27] It doesn't matter.
[00:50:28] You have to learn how to just do.
[00:50:30] And so this is one of those things that you need to learn in your 20s.
[00:50:33] So what will make a huge impact is who is telling you what to do?
[00:50:39] Because if you align yourself with something that you don't believe in with a person
[00:50:42] you don't really respect and they're telling you what to do, you're going to adapt your life
[00:50:47] to their way at that time.
[00:50:49] And the military, it's got a very powerful way of creating very strong people.
[00:50:58] Wherever you started, you will end up stronger for your time in the military.
[00:51:02] And that all begins with this basic, common experience of basic training.
[00:51:06] And I just, I couldn't believe how hard it was and how just it was.
[00:51:12] It was completely void of all social norms and etiquettes and all of those things.
[00:51:19] I mean, nothing was off limits in terms of their ability to denigrate you for any reason
[00:51:26] whatsoever.
[00:51:27] In Navy Bootcamp, you are an open bay barracks, obviously.
[00:51:33] And then the toilets are just on the wall.
[00:51:36] There's 20 toilets in a row.
[00:51:38] Like you're going to sit down on a toilet and they're going to be looking at 19 other
[00:51:43] people that are also saying there's no privacy whatsoever.
[00:51:45] Zero.
[00:51:46] It's all gone.
[00:51:47] It's just zero.
[00:51:49] And then the other thing is, because this is people always, you know, they listen to
[00:51:52] podcast and they, hey, I just didn't listen to them.
[00:51:54] And go ahead, just listen to the army.
[00:51:56] They'll send me that message.
[00:51:58] And I'm like, okay, 72 hours in the bootcamp, you're going to hate me.
[00:52:05] And I'm like, just give it another few more weeks, because the thing that we're not used
[00:52:10] to, even as an 18 year old, is you're not used to your freedom being completely gone.
[00:52:18] Completely, there's zero freedom when you get to bootcamp, none zero.
[00:52:21] You're going to be doing what someone else tells you do.
[00:52:23] You have no freedom to do anything.
[00:52:25] You can't even go to the bathroom when you want to go to the bathroom.
[00:52:28] You throw a sergeant.
[00:52:29] Can I go use the loophany?
[00:52:30] You have me.
[00:52:31] It's no freedom whatsoever.
[00:52:33] And that is, as you said, very important lesson to learn on life.
[00:52:40] You learn to appreciate your freedom.
[00:52:42] And you also learn to deal with the fact that, hey, just because I can't control this
[00:52:47] aspect of my life doesn't mean I can't control other aspects of my life.
[00:52:51] And that's an important thing to figure out as a young person.
[00:52:54] And you kind of learn to play the game too, right?
[00:52:57] Like, look, there's no way around this.
[00:52:59] This drill instructor, this instructor is going to do this.
[00:53:04] And the only possible thing I can do, I mean, other than quitting is just a shut up
[00:53:11] and just do what you're supposed to do.
[00:53:12] It's like, okay, cool.
[00:53:13] That's no option.
[00:53:14] It's a great option.
[00:53:16] Do it or quit.
[00:53:17] Do it or quit.
[00:53:18] And you can't quit, bootcamp.
[00:53:21] You can quit, buds or special sports qualification course.
[00:53:24] You can't quit.
[00:53:25] You literally go a wall.
[00:53:27] And then they go find you and one guy went, well, they found him at the gas station,
[00:53:32] you know, off base or whatever, trying to get someone to buy him some coffee or something,
[00:53:36] whatever, and they brought him back.
[00:53:38] And then he was back into it.
[00:53:40] Except he was like, I was a bull's eye on him because he's the guy that went a wall.
[00:53:44] And they dragged him back.
[00:53:46] And it's, I can't stress enough what you just said.
[00:53:49] You have zero privacy.
[00:53:51] And this is a culture shock for a lot of people because this is the whole
[00:53:57] everything that we do.
[00:53:58] Our system is based around a culture of eye.
[00:54:02] Right?
[00:54:02] At its basic level now, you have your iPhone, you have your individually wrapped
[00:54:07] everything, you have, you know, me, me, me.
[00:54:10] Right?
[00:54:10] And that's going to make you happy or that's, you know, you, everything is,
[00:54:15] is just centered around the individual.
[00:54:18] And the army just doesn't prescribe to that privacy.
[00:54:23] I mean, there's all these privacy debates now, social media,
[00:54:25] and you're data and all of the privacy.
[00:54:28] As if that's just some right that you have.
[00:54:31] And that's fine, there's some nuance to that.
[00:54:34] Well, let me just tell you, zero percent of that exists in the military.
[00:54:38] Zero.
[00:54:39] Like you said, I mean, there's just a lot of naked dudes, you know,
[00:54:41] it opened the trains and it's just, that's what it is.
[00:54:45] And you learn that that's kind of a primordial way to exist.
[00:54:49] And you are much more in touch with how our species evolved
[00:54:55] over our entire evolution of homo sapiens when you join the military.
[00:55:01] And you just become in tune with that.
[00:55:03] Yeah.
[00:55:03] And I think the most important message that gets relayed into your brain,
[00:55:08] whether you're conscious of it or not, is crystal clear.
[00:55:12] And that is this team and this organization is more important than you are.
[00:55:18] And your little wants and needs and desires and your personality
[00:55:22] doesn't matter when it's compared to the needs of this team and this group and this mission.
[00:55:29] And that's important.
[00:55:30] Another very important thing to learn as a young person.
[00:55:34] You're not at the center of the universe.
[00:55:36] Period.
[00:55:37] The end.
[00:55:38] And so now as that evolved for me, one of the most important lessons.
[00:55:45] And this is where you have to spend a lifetime mastering it.
[00:55:49] Is to understand that to be a great teammate, first you have to be a great individual.
[00:55:55] And then you have to submit to the team.
[00:55:58] Because anybody on your SEAL teams or my special forces teams,
[00:56:02] they're these are people that can do anything with their lives.
[00:56:06] They commit themselves, they will do it.
[00:56:09] And so you have to become a master of your trade, a true professional.
[00:56:13] And that requires the discipline that you have as an individual
[00:56:18] when nobody's looking over your shoulder to just continually refine and sharpen the blade,
[00:56:25] right your own.
[00:56:26] And then though you have to realize that it's not about you.
[00:56:31] It's a balancing act for an entire lifetime.
[00:56:35] And the more that you do both of those in concert,
[00:56:39] the more rewarding life will be.
[00:56:41] Yeah, and really the thing that drives you to be as good as you can
[00:56:47] is because you know your teammates are going to be relying on you.
[00:56:50] And if you can't deliver, that's like the worst thing in the world,
[00:56:53] me being in the SEAL teams.
[00:56:55] Like the worst thing in the world for someone in the teams for a good SEAL is like,
[00:57:00] oh, my teammates were counting on me and I couldn't deliver form.
[00:57:04] That's the that's the lowest of the low.
[00:57:06] Hey, look, somebody looks at me and says, oh,
[00:57:08] Jockel is not that faster.
[00:57:09] Jockel couldn't do enough pull-ups or whatever.
[00:57:11] It's like, oh, yeah, that's on me.
[00:57:12] No big deal, but when they needed me to climb that ladder,
[00:57:15] they needed me to finish that road marcher,
[00:57:18] moved to that position and I couldn't do it.
[00:57:22] That's what always drives like a good team guy to be better.
[00:57:28] It's like they don't want to let their friends down.
[00:57:30] Period.
[00:57:30] So the ultimate motivation.
[00:57:32] Yeah.
[00:57:32] They to be a part of that community.
[00:57:34] And in the community, sharpens itself.
[00:57:37] I mean, you get guys and competition breeds excellence.
[00:57:40] They're for sure.
[00:57:41] And so you've got this world where as iron sharpens iron,
[00:57:44] so a friend sharpens a friend.
[00:57:46] And that is just every day on the team.
[00:57:48] Everything's a competition.
[00:57:49] Everything's a competition.
[00:57:52] So when you get done with boot camp,
[00:57:55] and then what, you go to AIT?
[00:57:57] Yeah, for me, they kind of were lumped in together
[00:58:00] because it was infantry, boot camp,
[00:58:03] and infantry, AIT, whatever.
[00:58:05] It was just the same entire crew at the same place
[00:58:08] in Fort Benning over the winner in Georgia, which was just,
[00:58:13] I mean, it's horrible.
[00:58:14] It's really, really cold.
[00:58:16] And they just, they put you in formation at O'Dark 34,
[00:58:20] whatever.
[00:58:21] Stand there.
[00:58:22] You just stand there and shiver.
[00:58:23] I mean, it is just horrific.
[00:58:25] The army beats the, the navy at that,
[00:58:28] as far as just formations and just standing there.
[00:58:33] Because I, the only, the only real,
[00:58:35] I guess the only real army school I ever did,
[00:58:38] that's like sort of a basic army school.
[00:58:40] So I went to Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia,
[00:58:43] and like, hey, we're gonna get a formation,
[00:58:46] and we're gonna stand out here until when,
[00:58:49] until we're done standing out here,
[00:58:51] just standing at a position of attention.
[00:58:53] That's another thing you like,
[00:58:55] the run-and-to-deal with the fact that
[00:58:57] you've not always gonna be in control of what's happening,
[00:59:00] and how you're gonna deal with it,
[00:59:01] you're gonna suck it up and stand there.
[00:59:03] Guess what?
[00:59:04] Stand there.
[00:59:04] So for an silence, yeah.
[00:59:06] You know, this is where all of these phrases come from.
[00:59:08] Yeah.
[00:59:09] But you've got so much creativity,
[00:59:12] because from these guys standing in this formation
[00:59:15] with all this available time,
[00:59:16] it's sitting think about how miserable their life is, right?
[00:59:20] And then you say, how do you come up with something sort of cute?
[00:59:23] Oh, suffer in silence.
[00:59:24] You know, just stuff like that.
[00:59:25] And yeah, there's a lot of lines for this.
[00:59:27] There's a lot of lines for this.
[00:59:28] Like the more horrible things that happened to you,
[00:59:31] the more proud you are,
[00:59:32] and the more you relish in those old days,
[00:59:35] and that's where pride comes from.
[00:59:37] You know, pride comes from like,
[00:59:38] oh, we did really hard things, and they sucked.
[00:59:42] They were proud of them.
[00:59:43] Yes.
[00:59:44] And so the other part is,
[00:59:46] this is how you become a better leader,
[00:59:48] how you become more confident.
[00:59:50] It's incremental.
[00:59:52] You don't just wake up one day
[00:59:53] and all of a sudden you're Abraham Lincoln, right?
[00:59:56] It doesn't work that way.
[00:59:57] You can't just sit and read books all day.
[00:59:59] You have to actually take books and apply them
[01:00:02] to harder situations incrementally.
[01:00:04] And what the military taught me that teaches all of us
[01:00:07] is what you're capable of doing,
[01:00:10] and what you're capable of enduring,
[01:00:12] and it pushes your body, and it pushes your mind,
[01:00:14] and miserable horrific ways,
[01:00:17] and you gain confidence from that,
[01:00:19] and you just, you climb one wrong higher on the ladder,
[01:00:22] and then when life gets really, really hard,
[01:00:25] then you can draw upon what you learned
[01:00:27] throughout that process of the last wrong that you climbed.
[01:00:31] Yeah, people, I got asked that recently.
[01:00:35] You know, people are always looking
[01:00:36] for kind of this sound, a good sound by a good clickbait,
[01:00:39] title, for an article, but someone asked me something
[01:00:42] along the lines of, like, what was the moment
[01:00:45] that all this leadership stuff came,
[01:00:49] like, we came clear to you.
[01:00:51] And I was like, there wasn't one moment.
[01:00:53] You know, I learned this stuff, one mistake
[01:00:56] over a little mistake, over a big mistake,
[01:00:58] over a little mistake, over years and years and years
[01:01:00] and years and years and going, okay,
[01:01:01] and even now I'll make a mistake tomorrow.
[01:01:03] I'll do something dumb this afternoon,
[01:01:05] and learn something else.
[01:01:07] And that's, you're right, that is what the military does.
[01:01:09] And it is important that when you realize
[01:01:13] something as stupid as, hey, you're gonna stand
[01:01:17] in formation until it stops, and that could be two hours,
[01:01:23] three hours, you don't even know how long it's gonna be.
[01:01:26] And guess what, when you get done with that,
[01:01:28] okay, cool, now we're done with that.
[01:01:29] And now in the next thing you face, you go on, you know what?
[01:01:32] I can get through this.
[01:01:34] I can get through this.
[01:01:36] I can keep my mouth shut, or I can drive forward,
[01:01:40] or I can stand here, or I can stand the push up position,
[01:01:42] or I can stay awake on this patrol,
[01:01:44] or I can sit here and freeze in this cold weather,
[01:01:48] lay up position in the mountains.
[01:01:50] I can get through this, and it will make a difference
[01:01:53] when I'm done.
[01:01:54] So let's just buckle in and get it done.
[01:01:58] So the evolution of that for me was,
[01:02:01] we were the early phases of this special sports qualification course,
[01:02:05] the Cadbury line to solve up and not just for formation,
[01:02:09] but he goes, all right, here's the task at hand.
[01:02:11] You're gonna lunge around this building until I get tired.
[01:02:14] And like so, you know, at that point,
[01:02:17] standing in formation didn't sound so bad.
[01:02:19] You know, lunge around the building until I get tired,
[01:02:22] and you're sitting there thinking,
[01:02:23] of course you don't say it, but Cadbury,
[01:02:25] how are you gonna get tired?
[01:02:25] You're not doing the lunge.
[01:02:27] And of course, that's the point.
[01:02:28] And so you just sort of do it until you don't.
[01:02:33] So that's how you kicked off the Q course.
[01:02:37] Is that the next thing in your room?
[01:02:39] Well, I was here for school.
[01:02:41] So you know, went straight from graduating boot camp to then,
[01:02:46] you know, you're checking in over those barracks at Airborne School,
[01:02:49] and that's three weeks.
[01:02:50] And then I got the, maybe trip to, to,
[01:02:54] for Bragg North Carolina.
[01:02:56] So I drove from Benning to Bragg and checked in.
[01:02:58] And so part of the 18 X-ray program is
[01:03:00] is that there were preparation courses.
[01:03:02] So, you know, special courses selection.
[01:03:05] You've done not at Camp McCall, but there was a prep course
[01:03:07] that happened at Fort Bragg.
[01:03:09] It's a prep course for selection.
[01:03:11] Correct.
[01:03:12] Because you're coming just off straight along.
[01:03:14] Yeah.
[01:03:14] That was three weeks, maybe?
[01:03:16] And were they trying to teach you anything?
[01:03:17] Or are they trying to get you physically ready?
[01:03:19] So the main skill that they had to show you
[01:03:22] was rocking and laying navigation.
[01:03:25] So all land navigation for us is 45 pounds dry
[01:03:28] in the, the pine forest of North Carolina.
[01:03:31] And you do a lot of rocking, but, but the skill is how to,
[01:03:34] how to use map and compass in order to find points.
[01:03:37] And besides that, they just, there was a lot of training,
[01:03:40] quote, quote, to get us ready for, for the real selection.
[01:03:44] Which is what they're making you hump, basically.
[01:03:47] It well, no, there was a ton of, of PT.
[01:03:49] I mean, a ton, right.
[01:03:51] In, in that period of time, and in these were,
[01:03:53] so part of this was, you said, this was called the prep course.
[01:03:56] This was called SOPSY.
[01:03:57] So special operations, preparation and conditioning.
[01:04:00] And so what was really, really cool, in other words,
[01:04:04] get some, get some, get some all the time.
[01:04:08] And, and so what was really, really cool, though,
[01:04:11] was you had, this was early 2004, spring of 2004.
[01:04:16] And our cadre were some of the guys who had been
[01:04:20] first into Afghanistan.
[01:04:22] They were the horse soldiers in there that had literally come back.
[01:04:26] Those are the guys that I wanted to be.
[01:04:29] They were my heroes.
[01:04:31] And everybody gets uncomfortable.
[01:04:34] If they're sitting here, it would be hard to say,
[01:04:36] you're my hero bro, right.
[01:04:38] But, you know, I'll tell you that they were my heroes.
[01:04:41] Because that's where I was in life.
[01:04:43] I mean, they had gone and fought the Taliban for us
[01:04:47] to, to avenge what happened on 9, 11.
[01:04:50] And now they're telling me to go run and rock and do pushups.
[01:04:53] And half the time they're doing it with us.
[01:04:55] Because they're about to go back to war.
[01:04:56] I mean, the way this works is you come back and you do some time
[01:04:59] as a cadre or as an instructor.
[01:05:01] And then you go back on on an ODA on an operational
[01:05:04] to the Hashem Alfa and 18, if you will.
[01:05:07] And you deploy again.
[01:05:08] So, you know, they were going to stay in physical,
[01:05:11] great physical shape as well.
[01:05:13] They didn't do everything with us, of course.
[01:05:15] Roll around in the gig pit.
[01:05:17] Do all that stuff.
[01:05:18] They did it all that stuff.
[01:05:20] They did it all that stuff.
[01:05:22] But, you know, how do you not?
[01:05:24] How do you quit on them?
[01:05:26] These are the things that went through my head.
[01:05:28] I mean, it was just,
[01:05:29] do people quit during the prep course?
[01:05:31] Of course.
[01:05:32] So, it ended up being the prep.
[01:05:33] The prep course was a lot harder than actual,
[01:05:35] special force, a selection for me.
[01:05:37] And for most of us, I mean,
[01:05:38] the pass rate for those of us who went through this prep course
[01:05:41] was something like 95%.
[01:05:44] And how many people did you start the prep course with
[01:05:46] and how many people watched out?
[01:05:48] The prep course there was significant.
[01:05:50] I don't remember all the numbers exactly.
[01:05:52] Let's say we started out with 200 and not,
[01:05:55] you know, maybe 60 passed or something.
[01:05:57] The prep course and then all 60 of us passed selection.
[01:06:00] You know, something to that effect, right?
[01:06:02] Now you've got everyone go through the prep course?
[01:06:04] No, it was only for the guy that he straight off the street.
[01:06:07] And so, the army would pull.
[01:06:10] I mean, any job you have in the army,
[01:06:12] you can put your packet in to go to special forces selection.
[01:06:15] You don't get to go to the prep course,
[01:06:17] because you're supposed to know
[01:06:19] rocking and land navigation or you have to train on your own.
[01:06:22] You know, you want to do that.
[01:06:24] Two jobs, one paycheck.
[01:06:25] You figure it out.
[01:06:26] And you find time when you're at your unit deployed in Korea
[01:06:29] to go rock and the learn land nav,
[01:06:31] because it's, to stay proficient.
[01:06:34] And so, yeah, so the prep course ended up being,
[01:06:37] it was one of my favorite schools in the whole army.
[01:06:39] I mean, I just, how much did you guys rock?
[01:06:42] It was just, it was just, would you guys rock every day?
[01:06:46] So short answer is if it's not every day,
[01:06:49] it's just about every day.
[01:06:51] And, and so, for us, I mean, the mechanics of the Q course
[01:06:55] are all land navigation based in the pine forest of forbregg.
[01:07:00] You always have, you start out on the kind of timed iterations.
[01:07:04] It's 45 pounds dry, right?
[01:07:06] So that means not counting water, not counting consumables,
[01:07:09] stuff like that.
[01:07:10] But land navigation meant, you know, you go from point A to point B,
[01:07:14] point B to point C, and when you meet cadry at the various points,
[01:07:19] or you meet them at the end, and you show them the codes that you found
[01:07:23] on the, the spots that you went to.
[01:07:25] Whatever the case may be, they verified that you did the route correctly.
[01:07:28] You're doing all of that with a rucksack on.
[01:07:31] So you just learn the way of the rock.
[01:07:34] I mean, and it just becomes an extension of your body.
[01:07:37] You're moving with that ruck, and it is just a really powerful experience
[01:07:42] to have that with you, and to get so strong with that ruck on your back all the time.
[01:07:49] And then there's ruck PT, you know, you take your alice pack and put it above your head
[01:07:54] and now start lunging or, you know, your, it's just the ruck is just your thing.
[01:07:58] It's, you have your rifle, but we didn't do a lot of marksmanship stuff
[01:08:02] in the Q course at all.
[01:08:04] I mean, there's a couple days at the range, but once you get to your, once you get to your team,
[01:08:09] there's a ton of, you know, but everything is just with the ruck.
[01:08:14] And then you advanced up a trolling and the rucks get even heavier,
[01:08:18] and then you have, you know, your MOS phase.
[01:08:19] I wouldn't be came a communication sergeant.
[01:08:22] So it's radio.
[01:08:23] Radio.
[01:08:24] 18 echo exactly.
[01:08:25] So that was radios and stuff, but, you know, there was rucks and it was a ton of heat.
[01:08:30] I was a radio mentor and I didn't go to the 18 echo course, but I went to the
[01:08:35] seal equivalent at the time, which was out on the East Coast.
[01:08:40] And yeah, well, to say that you carry a lot of weight is a very broad
[01:08:46] understatement.
[01:08:47] Batteries don't weigh nothing radios don't weigh nothing.
[01:08:50] Just like bullets and, and all of that stuff and they don't weigh nothing.
[01:08:53] So you have to get comfortable moving weight.
[01:08:56] And they don't explicitly teach you how to ruck.
[01:09:00] This is one of the things that I want to help impact that part of it.
[01:09:05] Because they don't, there's not a sit down less than, hey, this is how your body's
[01:09:10] going to adapt to rucking.
[01:09:11] This is the weight you should start at.
[01:09:13] This is how this is how you grow that over time.
[01:09:16] They just say, hey, this is all the stuff you're going to carry.
[01:09:18] Go do it or do it or don't, right?
[01:09:21] Now, when you haven't put a rock on for a while and like, this is something I
[01:09:27] would remember like, let's say I was out doing close quarters combat or
[01:09:32] Mount or something where we weren't really wearing a rock.
[01:09:36] And then all of a sudden, it'd be like, oh, okay, well, now we're going to the
[01:09:39] desert and it's time to ruck up the fur.
[01:09:41] When you put that thing on and you take, because it was me first putting like, oh,
[01:09:44] okay, no factor.
[01:09:45] And then probably like the first 45 minutes of a
[01:09:50] rock comp, you go, this is just going to suck.
[01:09:56] And then over a couple days, you're like, okay, this is just the way it is.
[01:09:59] And then eventually after two weeks or three weeks of that kind of training,
[01:10:04] you actually become accustomed to it and you come used to it.
[01:10:07] And that's where when you're talking about getting strong, you can, you get strong.
[01:10:11] Your body adapts to this, this weight that you're going to have on your shoulders
[01:10:15] and your back, your hips and your legs.
[01:10:17] The other part of this though is the military takes the fun out of just about everything.
[01:10:22] Okay, they can't take the fun out of camaraderie, but everything else, like, oh,
[01:10:26] you want to go jump out of airplanes.
[01:10:27] It'll be awesome.
[01:10:28] Was airborne school awesome because for me, it wasn't awesome.
[01:10:30] No, no, no, no, no, no.
[01:10:31] Right.
[01:10:32] I mean, want to go be scuba diving master, right?
[01:10:35] Was that fun, Jocco?
[01:10:37] Yeah, no, people asked me all the time, like, oh, so do you still dive?
[01:10:40] I'm like, no, that was for me diving is being at 12 feet in the water,
[01:10:45] complete blackness carrying a communist for four hours.
[01:10:48] And freezing, that's what diving is for me.
[01:10:50] Like this every time I see like a person in the tropics,
[01:10:53] looking at fish, they're in, they're a little fin, yeah,
[01:10:56] and they're just like, you know, no idea.
[01:10:59] So rocking is not as simple as, oh, it's, it's just sucks when you first do it.
[01:11:05] I mean, the military 45 dry and you're expected to move really fast.
[01:11:09] That's a, that's not what I would recommend as a beginner's weight, right?
[01:11:12] Now, it's just in the army, that's kind of what it was.
[01:11:15] How good were you at rocking?
[01:11:17] So I was not good at a lot of things.
[01:11:20] I was, I had to learn how to not overthink stuff.
[01:11:24] You know, rocking was my thing.
[01:11:27] I mean, I got really lugs and it just came easy to me.
[01:11:32] So more weight load me up and, you know, when we would go on our patrols,
[01:11:36] they would not put me at point, right?
[01:11:38] Because when you're at point, you're sort of setting the pace and getting the hasty
[01:11:41] slow down.
[01:11:42] I mean, I'm just, I'm six four.
[01:11:44] My legs are really long.
[01:11:45] I don't, you know, other things came a lot harder to me.
[01:11:49] Can you win a sprint?
[01:11:51] That's 200, 100 meter sprint.
[01:11:54] Will you win that?
[01:11:55] No, absolutely not.
[01:11:56] Will you win a, will you win a six mile run?
[01:12:00] No, I would, I would do okay at, at the running part.
[01:12:04] I mean, there is a cardiovascular part to, to rocking.
[01:12:07] And at the time, I would you win a,
[01:12:10] ten mile rock hump.
[01:12:13] So I was, I was always very, very competitive with that.
[01:12:16] I mean, taught a few guys.
[01:12:18] I, I'm similar to that.
[01:12:19] Like I was not the fastest sprinter at all.
[01:12:21] I was not the fastest, you know, six mile run.
[01:12:24] But with a rock sack on, it was like an equalizer for me.
[01:12:27] And ended up, our physiological guys would like, yeah,
[01:12:33] you have medium twitch muscle.
[01:12:36] That's what they said, which they, they didn't really discover this medium twitch.
[01:12:39] They're like, yeah, you're not super fast in a sprint.
[01:12:41] And you're not great with this long endurance.
[01:12:44] But this thing where you have weight to move.
[01:12:47] And for a long time, that's what you're good at.
[01:12:50] And I was like, okay, that's cool.
[01:12:51] Cool with me.
[01:12:52] And it was really good for being a radio man.
[01:12:53] Because I always had all this extra weight.
[01:12:55] And I could always kind of do good with it, you know,
[01:12:58] and not that I'm some stellar rock humber.
[01:13:01] But it was better, I was better at that than I was.
[01:13:03] I was sprinting.
[01:13:04] I was better at that than I was at the distance running.
[01:13:06] And it was something that was very,
[01:13:07] I was very lucky to have that because, like I said,
[01:13:10] carrying a radio is sucks, carrying a radio.
[01:13:13] And if you're not like have, if you don't have some kind of
[01:13:15] propensity for it, it's going to be a real problem.
[01:13:18] Yeah, I mean, you know, the rocks are really heavy.
[01:13:21] I mean, the heaviest rock I carried in the, the Q cores was 125 pounds.
[01:13:25] We had a jump in with that.
[01:13:27] And then rock that for a day.
[01:13:29] And that was the culminating exercise called Rob and Sage.
[01:13:32] And so when a lot of times military folks will say,
[01:13:35] rocking sucks, like yeah, that kind of rock and really sucks, right?
[01:13:38] And then what you do is you show up to where you're supposed to be
[01:13:41] and you dig fighting positions, right?
[01:13:43] And you, you know, and then the cadre comes and he blows you out of
[01:13:47] those fighting positions with already Sims.
[01:13:50] Okay, time to go.
[01:13:52] And then you go and you dig more fighting positions.
[01:13:55] And you don't sleep and you don't eat.
[01:13:57] And you got a rucksack on your back, and you say man,
[01:13:59] rocking sucks.
[01:14:00] Like, well, it's not just the rocking that sucks.
[01:14:03] It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,
[01:14:07] it's, it's, um, another one of those things where, yeah, I guess the military makes it bad, but.
[01:14:13] Yeah, and when you get done with it, you feel good.
[01:14:16] Some of the best physical experiences of my entire life have come after a long rock,
[01:14:23] and you take that rock off and you sit down, sort of the, the rucksack flop.
[01:14:29] It's called, you just sort of sit down on the rock, and then you take the shoulder straps off,
[01:14:35] and you can feel the blood flow just going back everywhere in your body.
[01:14:39] And it's like your whole body feels like it does after you take ski boots off.
[01:14:44] And it's just so awesome.
[01:14:47] You can just feel what you did.
[01:14:49] I just love it.
[01:14:51] So, how long is the communications part of your, like, how long was the 18, 18,
[01:14:59] uh, 18 at the core of the boat?
[01:15:01] It was like three months.
[01:15:02] And so it was, did you learn more scode?
[01:15:04] I was the first class that did not learn more scode.
[01:15:07] So it would have been six months.
[01:15:09] Week.
[01:15:10] Week.
[01:15:11] I learned, I had to learn more scode, which I thought was completely stupid,
[01:15:15] and the guy that was teaching us the class was like,
[01:15:18] any event of a new car all across.
[01:15:21] Morris Codal be the only thing punchin through the ionosphere, and I'm like,
[01:15:25] sound the good to me, bro.
[01:15:28] I mean, look, it's life has risk, right?
[01:15:31] And when you're running the schoolhouse or whatever, you have to weigh,
[01:15:35] however many thousand guys a year, wasting or not wasting, but spending three months of their life
[01:15:41] on a horse coat versus this decision.
[01:15:44] If I were a horse, you know, don't give me wrong. I support this decision.
[01:15:48] It was not very, didn't make it a lot of sense when I did it.
[01:15:51] So it's, so it's a three month school that you went to.
[01:15:53] It was three months, and it was run by these God bless me.
[01:15:56] It was these two third group guys named Blade and Razor.
[01:15:59] I mean, just, you run in your military career and you have these instructors
[01:16:03] that really just teach you things about life, and it's never because they make it easy,
[01:16:09] but they, they give you a why.
[01:16:11] You know, this is important because, and you know, they had just, they were dive,
[01:16:16] they were dive guys within SF, which is just, it's just another suck school that you go to
[01:16:21] down in Key West, and it's a real suck school, not gentlemen's course at all,
[01:16:25] and you're already a greenbrain, you go do that, and then you join a dive team,
[01:16:28] and it's just another sort of notch, right, that you have.
[01:16:31] And so they take their physical fitness within our community, even just a little bit more.
[01:16:35] And they come back and they basically said, hey,
[01:16:38] there's going to be no slugs that come through this course ever, right?
[01:16:43] And so, I mean, it was just you would show up first thing in the morning,
[01:16:46] and Blade would drive his F950 or whatever it was.
[01:16:50] This thing was just enormous, and he was blasting his music,
[01:16:54] and he would say, welcome to Pain Roulette, right?
[01:16:57] And it was basically like, we're going to play a song,
[01:16:59] and you're going to do an exercise for that entire song.
[01:17:02] And, you know, when stairway to heaven comes on, and you're doing push-ups,
[01:17:06] that sucks. But the thing was, is he was doing it with us.
[01:17:10] So I'm going to go back to third group when I'm done here.
[01:17:13] I'm going to take a team, and we're going to go back to Afghanistan,
[01:17:16] and we need to be ready, and you all need to be ready.
[01:17:20] And those who stress the seriousness of the job and the ways that you can become a professional,
[01:17:26] and you're trade, those are the ones that you respect the most that you,
[01:17:29] you, you, you, you, you, you earn to please them because you respect them.
[01:17:33] And, and that was how I felt in that course.
[01:17:36] So it was, again, physical fitness was just the foundation,
[01:17:40] and you have to have it in the community.
[01:17:42] You have to be able to do the work physically in order to fight for your country.
[01:17:47] And so yes, we learned some skills, but most of the training was kind of outdated.
[01:17:52] We didn't deal with gun trucks set-ups.
[01:17:54] We didn't deal with any of the things that we were actually going to go do in war.
[01:17:57] We learned the basics of radio functionality and stuff like that,
[01:18:01] and I carry really heavy rucksacks full of batteries and radio's.
[01:18:04] Did you string up HFN 10?
[01:18:06] We did, trees.
[01:18:07] Yes. That was one of the go-no-go events.
[01:18:10] And it's, you know, there's a lot of excuses that you can actually claim that a reality
[01:18:17] when it comes to being a radio guy because how well that stuff happens.
[01:18:22] It's sun spots, and you know, the universe didn't want this con-
[01:18:26] You're not in your sun spot cycle.
[01:18:28] So there's sun spots in the AO today, and you know, but ultimately you have to just keep trying.
[01:18:34] It's like anything else you have to just persevere and figure out how to make your shots.
[01:18:38] I used to be so kind of psycho and fanatical about making comms.
[01:18:42] Like that was my job, and I was gonna make comms.
[01:18:46] And I had one of my evaluations that said,
[01:18:50] made communications 100% of attempts.
[01:18:55] And I was like, yeah, because they asked, you know, they asked for us to submit bullets.
[01:18:59] You know, like, you know, I was like an E4 in the teams.
[01:19:02] And they're like, I said, made communications 100% of the time,
[01:19:06] which I was very, very proud of because as you know, that was not easy to accomplish.
[01:19:13] That's a lot of a company.
[01:19:14] Yeah, 100% that's the same.
[01:19:16] 100% comms.
[01:19:18] I was like, because I would just be a psycho about, and what that meant was,
[01:19:23] see, what that really meant was, I would come up with communication plans that had, you know, multiple backups,
[01:19:30] where, hey, look, this, this comm window didn't work.
[01:19:33] So that's, then you'd bump to this one, and that one didn't work.
[01:19:36] You could bump to this one. So eventually, I'm gonna get comms.
[01:19:38] I'm gonna make it happen 100% with that.
[01:19:41] But so look, did you gain confidence from that?
[01:19:44] Of course you did, right?
[01:19:45] And is that the kind of confidence that you, you draw upon later in life,
[01:19:49] and life gets really, really hard.
[01:19:51] I mean, all you had to do was figure out how to move a little bit,
[01:19:55] and you know, make sure the canopy wasn't covering wherever your shots had to be made or whatever.
[01:20:00] But later in life, life gets really hard, and you draw upon, hey, I know how to do this.
[01:20:05] I just keep persevering, and I'll get it. We'll get it.
[01:20:09] Yeah.
[01:20:10] Was there anything else in the Q course that kind of surprised you or you had like trouble with?
[01:20:16] So it goes back to kind of overthinking stuff.
[01:20:22] And the best example that I have of this is, you know, you learn the differences in ambushes, right?
[01:20:28] Techniques.
[01:20:29] There's a linear ambush, and there's an L shape ambush, right?
[01:20:31] There's sectors of fire, and where's the enemy coming from?
[01:20:34] You know, it's terrain, and all these various factors dependent.
[01:20:37] And the cadre, there was, you know, our team of, say, 15 or so,
[01:20:41] and he's giving us a class on this, which is sort of what you reference in the intro here.
[01:20:45] Sure, you have the opportunity to ask questions, don't ask questions.
[01:20:49] You know, that kind of deal.
[01:20:50] And of course I ask a question, you know, college boy, right?
[01:20:53] Like so, cadre, I don't really understand the difference
[01:20:56] or why we would choose a linear ambush here instead of an L shape ambush.
[01:21:00] And it was, hey, you go drag your face in the dirt, and until you reach that spot over there,
[01:21:07] and think about it, because this is the ambush as I've taught it.
[01:21:12] Right? And that was one of those moments where I'm like, you know, I'm not going to ask any more questions.
[01:21:16] I'm just going to do exactly what I'm told.
[01:21:18] And that took time to really sink in.
[01:21:24] And you know, special forces in theory is a place where you're supposed to think critically
[01:21:29] and you're supposed to ask questions and you're supposed to do all these things, and you are.
[01:21:33] You just have to learn when to do that and when not to, and you have to trust the judgment of the guys around you.
[01:21:39] And you know, that took some time for me.
[01:21:42] And then the other two big things were that infill in Robin's stage with 125 pound rucksack for a day.
[01:21:49] And then, you know, that was, that was horrific.
[01:21:52] And every green barray you ever talked to.
[01:21:55] If you mentioned the sage in fill, they will cringe just a little bit.
[01:21:59] With the distance.
[01:22:00] I mean, it was, all I remember is, you may be moving a mile an hour.
[01:22:07] I mean, 125 pounds patrolling through the pine forest and you're doing it for 18 hours.
[01:22:13] So they eventually put me in charge of the communication course at sealed team on.
[01:22:18] And I only ran two of my think.
[01:22:22] And we would weigh the guys on insert.
[01:22:24] It was a six day recon.
[01:22:27] And they would all be 120, 110, 230 pounds of gear.
[01:22:33] And it was, it was so savage this course that I put these guys through that, you know, when I look back at my life.
[01:22:45] I think, man, those guys were ready for anything.
[01:22:48] And this is like 1997.
[01:22:51] Like, there was, I was, I was, we'll say, wanted them to be ready.
[01:22:57] And they were ready.
[01:22:58] They probably never got tested that way again for the rest of their lives.
[01:23:02] So I mean, the sage info was the culminating exercise of this special forces qualification.
[01:23:07] Yeah, you know, that's, you got to bring it.
[01:23:09] Right. If you're up there and you're setting the training agenda, you say, this, this needs to be something memorable.
[01:23:15] And it was.
[01:23:16] Yeah.
[01:23:17] Yeah.
[01:23:18] These guys came out of the field like new people.
[01:23:22] And, and had, they, it was pretty awesome.
[01:23:26] It was pretty awesome.
[01:23:28] These one guys lied to me.
[01:23:30] And, um, they, they, they, I got up to their layup point.
[01:23:35] And I said, hey, you guys missed a calm window.
[01:23:38] Well, what happened?
[01:23:39] And they kind of looked at me.
[01:23:41] And so I separated the team.
[01:23:43] And I started asking, what kind of antenna, you know, well, no, we were up for the calm window.
[01:23:47] We just didn't make calm.
[01:23:48] So I was like, oh, because meanwhile I'm monitoring everything.
[01:23:51] And they said, so one group, I said, what kind of antenna did you set up?
[01:23:56] And one guy said, like, a long wire.
[01:23:57] And then I said, they said, like, what kind of antenna did you guys set up?
[01:23:59] He said, oh, a horizontal, die by pole or whatever.
[01:24:04] And I'm like, oh, that's not what the other guy said.
[01:24:07] So they knew they just knew.
[01:24:09] And I was like, get your gear ready.
[01:24:13] Get ready to move out.
[01:24:14] And they're like, oh, God.
[01:24:15] So I had these guys hump to this water tower on the top of a mountain.
[01:24:20] And they were already on the top of a different mountain.
[01:24:24] And then, and then they got to the water tower.
[01:24:26] I didn't let them put the rocks down that got up.
[01:24:29] And I was like, go back to where you just came from.
[01:24:31] And they were like, they went back.
[01:24:33] And then they get back, I'm waiting for them again.
[01:24:35] And they come walking up.
[01:24:37] And I said, go back to the water tower.
[01:24:40] And I saw the look on one guy's face.
[01:24:43] And I said, if you don't want to go, you can just throw your rock in the truck here.
[01:24:47] And we'll be good.
[01:24:48] I'll take you back to camp.
[01:24:49] And the other guy was like, negative jockey.
[01:24:51] We got this.
[01:24:52] And they moved out.
[01:24:53] So I was pretty stoked.
[01:24:54] But yeah, don't lie to the contrary.
[01:24:56] It's what I'm saying.
[01:24:57] No integrity violations are a big deal.
[01:24:59] Yeah, yeah.
[01:25:00] Don't lie to the contrary.
[01:25:01] And anyways, you know, you can't move with a lot of weight.
[01:25:05] You know, those guys humped those guys.
[01:25:07] I forget I measured out.
[01:25:08] They was, I put those guys through a ridiculously punitive road march.
[01:25:13] And they still made their extract, which was cool.
[01:25:16] Yeah, I mean, I think in the higher echelons of leadership,
[01:25:19] there should be thought given to how do you reduce the load of
[01:25:23] soldiers because there's an inherent bravado element that comes from being the guy that
[01:25:28] carried 125 pounds that you don't, the idea.
[01:25:32] We were borderline combat in a fight.
[01:25:34] That's what's good about.
[01:25:35] What's good about carrying 120 pounds is you realize, hey, this is dumb.
[01:25:40] This is actually not smart.
[01:25:41] And if we got into a firefight right now, this rock's act is getting left.
[01:25:45] And if we lose the firefight or if we have to break contact,
[01:25:48] I'm never going to see that thing again with my radio with my water,
[01:25:51] with whatever else.
[01:25:52] So, yeah, you should realize that this is dumb.
[01:25:55] And carrying that much weight is not going to be smart.
[01:25:58] You're going to be fairly ineffective in other times.
[01:26:00] We got to do it.
[01:26:01] Yes, absolutely.
[01:26:02] But you got to really, really think about it.
[01:26:04] So it's a good lesson from that perspective to minimize the amount of weight that you're
[01:26:08] actually getting.
[01:26:09] Like, like, I never, I would carry so little food.
[01:26:13] I'm sure you were like this, too, because we just, I mean, as a radioman,
[01:26:17] you had batteries, you had radios, and I carried water.
[01:26:20] And like, that's it.
[01:26:22] And because I would carry one MRME, just the main meal, just the just the whatever that main thing
[01:26:27] was, I'd carry one of those per day.
[01:26:29] That's it.
[01:26:30] That's what we're going to feel with.
[01:26:31] Because I could carry anything else.
[01:26:32] Any extra weight just didn't want it.
[01:26:34] It wasn't worth it.
[01:26:35] Yeah, I mean, so we just see though,
[01:26:39] even in combat, there's not enough.
[01:26:43] There's planning for everything.
[01:26:45] If you have to have everything on you all the time.
[01:26:48] And speed is security.
[01:26:50] That's one of, that's a foundational doctrine thing.
[01:26:53] Right?
[01:26:54] The faster you can move, the safer that is.
[01:26:57] There's more security and inherently.
[01:26:59] And when you weigh more, you have more stuff weighing you down.
[01:27:03] You're not going to move as fast.
[01:27:05] So, you know, I mean, I think this is just one of those things where
[01:27:08] in the military, some conversation around that is good.
[01:27:13] Because Bravado is great.
[01:27:14] 125 pound training rucks.
[01:27:16] Great.
[01:27:17] That's a lesson in the suck, right?
[01:27:20] We couldn't fight with that.
[01:27:22] It's too much.
[01:27:23] Yeah.
[01:27:23] It's too much.
[01:27:25] So, when you get done with a Q course,
[01:27:27] how do you guys figure out when you get orders?
[01:27:30] How do you get orders?
[01:27:31] Yeah, so they just tell you.
[01:27:33] I mean, so for us, we also have language training and stuff like that.
[01:27:36] Language did you do?
[01:27:37] So I actually passed out of German.
[01:27:39] And so that assigned you to learn German from.
[01:27:42] I lived in Germany for about a year.
[01:27:45] When was that?
[01:27:46] In college, I studied abroad there.
[01:27:48] And then I had a buddy who was a, he was a border,
[01:27:52] a exchange student in America, my high school.
[01:27:55] And so I lived with him for a summer while I was in college and
[01:27:58] lived in their house and picked it up.
[01:28:00] So, just passed out of the language portion.
[01:28:02] And so that got me to 10th group, which the classic area of operations is
[01:28:07] Europe.
[01:28:08] And then there's, you know, in the global war on terror though, you get pulled everywhere.
[01:28:10] And so our, ours ended up being a rack.
[01:28:13] So that's when you showed up there.
[01:28:16] What's it like when you get there?
[01:28:17] Are you just immediately putting to an ODI team?
[01:28:20] You're supposed to be, I hung out on the B team for a little bit because for whatever reason.
[01:28:25] Sometimes you get not the best spot to get put on.
[01:28:29] And there's one B team that supports all the A teams in a company.
[01:28:33] So there's six, six ODIs or six A teams and one B team,
[01:28:37] A headquarter support.
[01:28:39] And so, you know, no matter what, it's,
[01:28:41] it's like you graduate and you think you're this great Billy Badass Green
[01:28:45] Bre, and Ray, and then you find out that in your company where you're showing up,
[01:28:49] everyone's a Green Bre, and they've actually done stuff as a Green Bre in war.
[01:28:53] And you've done none of that.
[01:28:55] And so, you know, the floors are never clean enough.
[01:28:58] The heads never clean enough.
[01:29:00] That's your job and you're supposed to shut up and learn from the people that are around you.
[01:29:05] That's so how much time did you spend in the B team?
[01:29:08] Probably five months and then we deployed.
[01:29:12] Yeah, so about five months.
[01:29:14] And I went to some schools in that process, though, that sent me to a school called SoTac,
[01:29:18] which is the Army Special Forces equivalent of J-Tac.
[01:29:22] So, special operation, terminal attack controller, of course.
[01:29:26] So learn how to call in in bombs, how to human Arizona.
[01:29:30] And so, I spent some time in went to a shooting school and did that type of stuff,
[01:29:34] but didn't join a team until the spring of 2007 in Iraq.
[01:29:42] And then what was that deployment like?
[01:29:45] Right, so this was the, you know, this was the surge, right?
[01:29:49] This was a messy time in Iraq.
[01:29:51] I know, you know, you don't have to tell you that.
[01:29:53] And we were down in South Starterdought and Bosra, which was just, you know,
[01:29:59] I mean, for people out there, I mean, Bosra was more aligned with Iran
[01:30:04] through the Shea connection than it was with the Sunnis that were coming out of Baghdad, right?
[01:30:09] And, and on more province.
[01:30:11] I mean, so anytime historically Saddam had issues, he just sent his henchmen down to Bosra
[01:30:17] and shown what's up.
[01:30:18] And there was just a lot of, it was just a chaotic time in that,
[01:30:23] IEDs, so roadside bombs, and then specifically EFP's.
[01:30:27] So, explosively foreign penetrators, right?
[01:30:29] I mean, yeah, I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a roadside bomb
[01:30:34] rather than that would cut through anything.
[01:30:40] So it would, it would cut a hole through a humvee like you would cut butter with a knife, right?
[01:30:46] And those were coming out of Iran and that's, that was sort of RIO.
[01:30:50] And those, the, the missions out of, out of Bosra were just loaded with I,
[01:30:56] I mean, big convoy stuff, lots of IEDs.
[01:31:00] And then I got sent to a team in, that was operating in out of Tolio,
[01:31:05] Air Force Base.
[01:31:06] So Nazaria area.
[01:31:08] And so were you replacing somebody, did somebody go home to somebody at her?
[01:31:12] So they were basically alone as an ODA.
[01:31:15] And this is, you know, the early days of, this was a pick province.
[01:31:19] So provincial Iraqi control.
[01:31:21] Basically what that meant, and you talked a lot about this in extreme ownership,
[01:31:24] was you couldn't go out without the Iraqis.
[01:31:26] The Iraqis had final say, the governor of, of the province,
[01:31:29] determined the missions that would go out.
[01:31:32] And so there was this one ODA there, and the regular army that was station there was,
[01:31:36] was not infantry or they just didn't have a proves to go out at all.
[01:31:41] And we were working with the local police force there.
[01:31:44] So this by with and through mission that was, that's, that's what,
[01:31:48] that's what special forces is all about, right?
[01:31:51] It's working with local indigenous forces to achieve a greater desired
[01:31:55] in state.
[01:31:56] And so that was our mission.
[01:31:57] We were working there and there, it was, it was not busy until it was.
[01:32:02] But I got sent there because they didn't have the ability to call in
[01:32:06] bombs if they would go out on a mission.
[01:32:09] So I had this designated school that I thought it was a horrible
[01:32:13] fate to get sent to the B team when I first showed up at
[01:32:16] a group at Carson because you know, you can't be Jason born on the B team, right?
[01:32:21] You got to be on the A team guys.
[01:32:24] And so that's another boat that he go, but what do you do?
[01:32:27] You suck it up and you do the best job that you can and you learn how to get
[01:32:31] you got to build trust the guys around you.
[01:32:34] So sometimes that means you do a really good job of cleaning,
[01:32:37] mop in the floors.
[01:32:38] You do a really good job of staying in shape.
[01:32:40] You control what you can control.
[01:32:42] And people will eventually take notice of that.
[01:32:45] And they'll say, hey, we want to give you more responsibility.
[01:32:48] So anyway, I'd been sent to this school and had this
[01:32:51] designator and got sent to a team in in Nassaria.
[01:32:55] And that's why I got sent out there.
[01:32:57] So the guys in Nassaria, you guys are living in like a little tiny
[01:33:01] fog of some kind.
[01:33:02] So we had rotated back and we were in a bunker on base.
[01:33:07] And this was one of those instances where is it?
[01:33:10] And I rackied controlled base or was it American control?
[01:33:12] No, it was American control base.
[01:33:13] So large, you know, large runway, stuff like that for supplies and
[01:33:18] you see what 30s will land there to take your pick.
[01:33:20] There was a hole.
[01:33:21] We were just a 30 minute car ride or truck ride, you know,
[01:33:25] the Hylix is around the whole airfield and stuff.
[01:33:29] And but that was all there's a big American presence there.
[01:33:32] Yes.
[01:33:33] And then you guys were embedded inside the wire with those guys.
[01:33:37] Were there Iraqi troops?
[01:33:39] Were there Iraqi police in there?
[01:33:40] Two or were they in another base?
[01:33:42] They had their own compound in town.
[01:33:44] And this is one of those things.
[01:33:46] It was kind of a coming of age story so they thought, right?
[01:33:49] You know, okay, this is now a pick province and the team before us had lived with
[01:33:53] them and amongst them, but we don't need you guys anymore.
[01:33:56] Go back to your base.
[01:33:57] Well, we got this.
[01:33:58] We're good to go.
[01:34:00] And check.
[01:34:01] Yeah.
[01:34:02] And it just, it's one of those things where then they wanted cash and and
[01:34:06] guns, right?
[01:34:07] We need cash and guns in order to provide security in the town.
[01:34:10] And we were just, you know, paying them and we were giving them training, which was just sort of part of the deal.
[01:34:16] And train them on basic tactics and all of that stuff.
[01:34:20] And that was our, you know, we were just doing that.
[01:34:23] Did you guys do what are they doing raids or anything where they trying to capture bad guys?
[01:34:28] Yeah.
[01:34:29] So to get to the sort of crux of this, you know, it was, it was quiet until it wasn't.
[01:34:35] And, you know, when you go to war, you want to be in war.
[01:34:38] It's one of those things.
[01:34:39] Be careful with what you whisk, what you wish for.
[01:34:42] But you want to prove your metal.
[01:34:44] I mean, it's just inherent in anybody, especially when you go through the type of training that you go through in that community.
[01:34:50] You're, you've either been to war and seen real combat or you haven't.
[01:34:55] And, and, you know, to really earn the respect of the guys around you, you need to, you need to do that.
[01:35:02] And so we wanted to do that.
[01:35:04] I mean, I was new.
[01:35:05] And I was new.
[01:35:06] Some other guys had kind of been there done that, but they were comfortable in this environment.
[01:35:10] They viewed it as making a difference, getting out and doing stuff in town.
[01:35:14] So there was, there was this one morning I'd woken up from radio watch, which, you know,
[01:35:20] you always have someone on radio watch 24, seven around the clock, the team rotates through.
[01:35:25] And it was, we got an intel, or sorry, the, our local police force called us and said there had been, you know,
[01:35:33] and attack and they tried to assassinate the they, right, had tried to assassinate the, the police chief in town who were training his troops.
[01:35:43] He was the colonel and were training all his troops.
[01:35:46] And what it turned out to be, you know, and, and, oh, by the way, we need you to come and help us, right, because now they need us, right.
[01:35:54] Their, their guys are pinned down, bunch of them got killed.
[01:35:57] They're, they're in a hospital in the middle town and, and chaos, just chaos, right.
[01:36:01] You know, you start to activate the intelligence networks that, you know, other guys on our team had been developing throughout that time.
[01:36:08] And, you know, the intel that we got, of course, later was that Macadal Sauder, Mookie had sent down whatever 1500 troops to assassinate the local police chief and,
[01:36:18] rain chaos down on that part of town, Institute, whatever he wanted to do to destabilize the region.
[01:36:25] And so, our job was to, to make sure that it would stay stable.
[01:36:29] I mean, you don't want to give up ground and war, especially not a whole city.
[01:36:32] Or else you got to go back and retake it. And that's, that's really messy. You got to meet violence with violence sooner.
[01:36:38] So we had to, you know, go through all these approval processes to get out and to go out into the town.
[01:36:44] And, you know, with our partner force, and it just, it turned into a, it was a very wild, wild west type of.
[01:36:54] So did you guys push right into the hospital where they were located?
[01:36:57] Well, you know, the crazy part was the bureaucracy was still just rearing and fooled swing.
[01:37:03] I mean, we had to get the governor of this province to sign something that would let us go outside.
[01:37:11] Like, we went out to the, the police compound and then had to come back in order to get this, this signature or whatever.
[01:37:20] And you can imagine the amount of complaining that's going on from our guys like we're losing momentum here.
[01:37:25] Yeah. Right. You don't want to let more people come in and take more ground in a city.
[01:37:30] And so, you know, we eventually got to go back out and we had our, our partner force there.
[01:37:35] And, you know, we're just working with the, the guy who is in charge of the police colonel.
[01:37:40] And it was like we're pulling out a map on, on the hood of a Humvee saying, where are the bad guys?
[01:37:47] Like, where are they? And then you're getting your, your trucks, your gun trucks and you line up.
[01:37:52] And, you know, there's, realize the, the stakes here. There's three or four gun trucks and there's, you know, 1500 bad guys maybe.
[01:38:00] And that's, that's a, not good odds, right?
[01:38:03] That's a rough one.
[01:38:04] Now, that was the Intel report.
[01:38:07] And of course, you know, the, the headquarters is scrambling to get us any type of support that we needed.
[01:38:13] And, you know, what we needed was obviously air support.
[01:38:16] And so, that was my role on our team was to ensure that we had cover from above from the air force.
[01:38:21] What time of day was was this during the daytime this was happening?
[01:38:24] So it started in, in the morning. This kind of spin up.
[01:38:27] And then we, yeah, so, well, I kept going as the radio flash.
[01:38:32] So it just sort of extended through.
[01:38:35] And, and, and so then by the time it really started to, to pick up by the time we got to the hospital with our,
[01:38:42] or with our, or rackies, and, you know, we got our Humbies and they got their pickup trucks and there's, you know,
[01:38:47] It's, how many Humbies would you guys have in a 12-man team?
[01:38:51] I think we had three maybe four because, yeah, three or four.
[01:38:54] And then it's a little bit of a rackies in the back as well.
[01:38:56] So they had their own pickup trucks.
[01:38:58] Really? And so they're, you know, they're riding around in their pickup trucks and they got you saw.
[01:39:02] You saw the looks on.
[01:39:03] Yeah, exactly. And they got their saw mounted in the back and, you know, their windows are down.
[01:39:08] Yeah. Oh, that's stuff. And, you know, at that time it's, and it still is, but the IEDs were just,
[01:39:14] that was, I mean, it's the same destabilizing battlefield forces as a sniper.
[01:39:18] It's just such an unknown thing.
[01:39:20] You can do absolutely everything right and you will just still die.
[01:39:23] Yeah.
[01:39:24] That's, that's just the reality that you face.
[01:39:27] And so at some point, you know, in this process, everybody has to say, you know, I, I might die.
[01:39:33] I am absolutely 100% mortal. I've seen that this is, this is very much a contact sport.
[01:39:39] Other guys playing it have died in this contact sport.
[01:39:42] And you have to just remove that from your brain.
[01:39:45] And you have to go do your job.
[01:39:47] And you have to be smart and calculating about the risks that you're willing to take.
[01:39:52] Because there's this perception and I certainly had it that green berets and seals and all these types are just out there taking all of these crazy risks
[01:40:02] to take on these crazy missions.
[01:40:04] And that's just patently false.
[01:40:06] There is so much risk mitigation both through training and planning and just the amount of time that you spend working with each other to learn tactics and techniques and procedures.
[01:40:17] In order to reduce risk to achieve the mission.
[01:40:21] And it's, it's, it's a, it's a lot different than what I had expected and it's a lot more effective.
[01:40:29] Yeah, and until your earlier point, you can mitigate that risk. You can train. You can plan. You can do everything possible.
[01:40:38] But you can't mitigate all the risk and you can just roll down the street and you guys, you can have a vehicle.
[01:40:43] Good hit with an ID and everyone in that home, you can be dead.
[01:40:46] And that's what can happen.
[01:40:48] War is just a metaphor for life, right?
[01:40:50] War business love and life are all the same thing to me.
[01:40:53] If you, if you don't risk anything, you will not gain anything.
[01:40:58] No risk, no reward. If you're not willing to quit some job you hate.
[01:41:03] If you're not willing to tell the girl that you love, that you love her and ask her on a date, Romeo, right?
[01:41:09] If you're not willing to go after what you want most in life, you're not going to get it.
[01:41:14] There's risk involved with that of, of what?
[01:41:17] Failure humiliation. None of those is as bad as, as regret.
[01:41:23] And we have regrets when we don't risk anything. So make sure that the mission and the purpose is worth the risk and do everything you can to mitigate the risk and then do everything you have.
[01:41:32] There's a lot worse things than dying.
[01:41:35] So you guys made it to the hospital?
[01:41:37] So we got to the hospital.
[01:41:39] You know, we recovered. There's a lot of wounded guys that were pinned up there.
[01:41:44] They're loading them into the back of the, back of the pickup trucks and it's dark out.
[01:41:49] And there's, you know, I'm scanning because my basic only job.
[01:41:55] Really, is this is my second mission out?
[01:41:59] I mean, it's first mission out. I mean, there's sort of some pseudo missions, but we didn't do sort of recon by fires.
[01:42:07] Like you talked about with, you know, when you had your, your guy has first showed up in Ramadi and he had this really complex plan to drive all over town and you said, hey, how about you go?
[01:42:17] Yeah.
[01:42:18] 600 meters out and 600 meters back or whatever.
[01:42:21] We would do that stuff, but we just weren't getting shot up. So this is my first real mission of any kind.
[01:42:27] Right.
[01:42:28] And it was just, you know, it was one of those things where my only job was to focus on the aircraft.
[01:42:39] I don't know anything about conducting wartime operations yet.
[01:42:43] Nothing.
[01:42:44] I'm going to do my first real mission. So I just had to focus on the task at hand.
[01:42:48] And my job for our team in order for me to not let our team aids down was to do everything I could to trust in the training that I had.
[01:42:58] And, and make sure that the aircraft was doing everything that they could do to support us.
[01:43:03] Because they have a great vantage point of their, they can see lots of stuff.
[01:43:06] And if you've ever had a, you know, hammer was the call sign, the AC 130 gunship.
[01:43:10] I mean, that is just, I mean, that as a battlefield asset is unrivaled.
[01:43:16] It's unrivaled.
[01:43:18] It is unbelievable.
[01:43:20] Yes.
[01:43:20] What's the key to the AC 130?
[01:43:22] I mean, God bless the Air Force.
[01:43:24] Literally.
[01:43:25] I mean, it is just a vital support role that they play.
[01:43:29] I mean, you know, there's this idea of, you want this kind of fair fight in life.
[01:43:35] It's more.
[01:43:36] No, you don't want that.
[01:43:37] I want an AC 130.
[01:43:38] Yes.
[01:43:38] That's it.
[01:43:39] I want the most unfair fight possible.
[01:43:41] Yes.
[01:43:42] And so, you know, they don't play by the rules.
[01:43:44] The enemy doesn't mean the rules are win when you get into combat.
[01:43:47] I mean, there's a reason.
[01:43:48] All's fair and love and war, right?
[01:43:50] All's fair and war.
[01:43:51] There's those such thing as unfair.
[01:43:53] So I want, I want a gunship.
[01:43:55] So you guys had an AC 130?
[01:43:57] We had an AC, we had a huge stack.
[01:43:59] Nice.
[01:44:00] I mean, so you're basically stacking all sorts of different aircraft at different levels.
[01:44:04] Did it turn out that there was this many enemy fighters head in your way?
[01:44:07] Was it 1500 or was it like 40?
[01:44:11] So we'll never fully know what we do know is that the first building, we started taking contact
[01:44:19] as we were moving.
[01:44:20] And the local fighters, we don't, we assumed that they did not think that there was Americans here,
[01:44:27] right, in this section of whoops.
[01:44:30] Where are they were whoops is right?
[01:44:32] Because, you know, the Iraqis also had humvies that we had given them.
[01:44:36] And we're not here.
[01:44:37] I mean, like my favorite color is red, white and blue together in the American flag.
[01:44:42] That's my all time favorite color.
[01:44:43] But when we go to war, we're not going to go fly that proudly on the back of our homvies and say,
[01:44:48] hey, the Americans are here, right?
[01:44:50] We're going to wait until you shoot at us from behind and in front.
[01:44:54] And then that big building where there was lots of barrel fire, that's going to go away.
[01:44:58] Right?
[01:44:59] Or it's going to have, it's going to look like Swiss cheese at the end of it.
[01:45:01] And this was not one of those very complicated war times situations.
[01:45:07] I mean, we were there to support our partner force to provide security in this,
[01:45:13] in this part of the world.
[01:45:15] And, you know, they had been shot up by outside force.
[01:45:20] And we were there to provide stability when we're getting shot at with them with us.
[01:45:26] Like that's obviously an enemy trying to kill us and our job is to kill you.
[01:45:30] And that's basically what it was.
[01:45:32] But it was, you know, a lot of rounds the city where we would go back to the back of his base and put the map back on the trunk of the homvie.
[01:45:43] And I would say, where are the bad guys?
[01:45:45] Well, it's amazing what kind of intel you can get from a source when you're going to help them go do something that they need you to do, right?
[01:45:53] They won't know anything until something like this happens.
[01:45:57] And so, you know, my job was to basically sit there and call the coordinates up to some of the fast movers or some of the jets.
[01:46:05] And they would go recon that part of town and they would say, nope, no activity there.
[01:46:11] What's the next coordinate you want me to go check out?
[01:46:14] And then, you know, they would say, okay, we'll go check out this coordinate point on the map and I'd send that up and be like,
[01:46:18] Yeah, there's a war party there.
[01:46:20] And so, then we go drive over to that war party and that's how the night went.
[01:46:24] There was a lot of loops around the city and then, you know, you pull back into base and you got that, that chemical dump and you're just sort of, you see out there,
[01:46:36] how guys can go on these missions and then just fall asleep.
[01:46:41] It's not because you're just so physically tired.
[01:46:44] I mean, it's part of it, maybe.
[01:46:47] But there's just this huge kind of, okay, we're back on base or we're back wherever and you can just fall asleep so quickly because your body is allowed to relax,
[01:47:00] of sorts, you feel safe again, right?
[01:47:03] And, but we come back and, you know, then it's right back to the priorities of work.
[01:47:07] You've got to gas up the trucks because you're going back out, by the way, because it's not like one night,
[01:47:12] you just, the multi-headed hydra is just dead now. That's not how it works.
[01:47:17] But, you know, our headquarters element had sent all sorts of other atains and, you know, the Iraqi commandos were there.
[01:47:25] And then it was for the week, the next week, it was just a lot of actioning all sorts of new intel that came in and, and, and,
[01:47:34] yeah, it ended up not being some sort of martial law type situation that we were fighting,
[01:47:40] but it's also kind of a doctrine-based thing where if you meet violence with violence and speed of action,
[01:47:46] you can, you can take back the high ground or take back the town itself.
[01:47:53] And so that's, you know, who knows? Who knows what would have happened if they, the, the, the insurgents would have been more successful and would have taken over the police compound and would have done these various things,
[01:48:03] who knows?
[01:48:04] Yeah, then you got to fight to take the, the ground back. Yeah, well, they would have taken over the compound, the vehicles, the weapons, that stuff gets really scary, really quick.
[01:48:13] Yeah.
[01:48:14] So then, so then you guys got the city back under control. This was Nasiria, you said, right?
[01:48:19] Nasiria. Yeah.
[01:48:21] And then once you had it back under control, did things kind of settle down?
[01:48:25] They did what the, the interesting part was that this is how we had developed rapport with our partner force, right? So when you do hard things with people and you do them well,
[01:48:38] and you build trust with them, then they want to work with you.
[01:48:42] And that, that cuts across all different lines, right? So whether it's Navy workin with Army and Marine Corps or whether it's, you know,
[01:48:50] us working with the Iraqis and working with the Australians that were on base at that time as well. And they were, they were great in support of the mission that we were there as well.
[01:49:01] And when you do hard things, you just develop a bond with people and that's foundational in the military.
[01:49:10] And, and so we found that we were much more effective training them. We were much more, they were much more receptive to the intelligence gathering in their town and just working with us in general.
[01:49:27] And so then we could go on patrols with them or go on missions with them in their town, going after the stuff that they wanted to go after.
[01:49:38] You know, and that was effective because we, we were better at the tactics, but they were better.
[01:49:45] They were better as the first guys in the door. They, they speak the local, they have, they know all the local stuff.
[01:49:51] We, we always found it funny like early on in our deployment to a body like our breaches would go up to a door.
[01:49:56] And of course they look at the door. Oh, it's okay. We can't open it, cool, it's a red jammer.
[01:50:00] But sometimes they would just have like these little Iraqi mechanisms. And like on our raccades walk up and like push a switch or whatever pull lever and the thing would open up.
[01:50:10] We were like, okay, cool. And, and also like you just said, they could easily identify if this person was from Ramadi.
[01:50:18] And if they weren't from Ramadi and they were living in a house, they were probably a foreign fighter and probably bad.
[01:50:22] So, but we can't tell the difference anymore than someone from Iraq could come here and tell the difference between someone from New Jersey and someone from Boston and someone from Alabama.
[01:50:32] Like even if even if you speak the language, you don't understand those kind of dialects.
[01:50:37] And so whereas Iraqi people, Iraqi soldiers, they'd walk in the back of all this guys from not from here. He's, you know, I always use the example of what you have for breakfast.
[01:50:45] Because they knew, you know, if you ask what you have for breakfast in South Carolina, you get a different answer than when you say, what did you have for breakfast in in Maine, right?
[01:50:56] Different things in California like out here, it's like, oh, I had a breakfast burrito. If you ask someone from Maine, what they have for breakfast, they're not going to say breakfast burritos not happening.
[01:51:05] So yeah, they can they can identify those things. So did you guys end up doing like just for the rest of the polymer, you guys do in just like targeted raids to go and get rid of bad guys.
[01:51:13] So ours was kind of the full scale all encompassing special forces mission. This was not some hugely kinetic driven operation. We didn't have the commandos. That was a good mission to get. That was not what our team had, right?
[01:51:28] So the commandos were a national level Iraqi person. You would assign one.
[01:51:33] So you guys, was your partner force was a police force?
[01:51:35] Our partner force was a police force and over there, I mean, what's the difference between soldiers and police, you know, very little.
[01:51:42] I mean, in a lot of ways. Yeah, they carry around machine guns. They, you know, it's the difference is one where it's like a blue shirt.
[01:51:50] Exactly. And the other ones don't, that was where I can't be top. That's kind of the difference.
[01:51:55] Yep. And so, you know, we were we were training them up. Was your Iraqi police force from?
[01:52:01] No, Zaria. They were. See, that's another, that is another big difference. Is that the local police forces are generally from that local area, which gives them even more of a sense of what's going on, which is important.
[01:52:14] Whereas, you know, in Romadi, the soldiers, the army soldiers were coming in from, you know, all over the country coming in from Baghdad, also vastly shea.
[01:52:24] And so now you got them coming into, you know, SUNY homes inside Romadi. So there was a little riff there, whereas the police were from Romadi.
[01:52:32] And they were SUNY's. And so they did, they immediately almost have a better relationship. Once we built up that police force. And when I say we, I'm definitely not talking about us just as seals. In fact, I'm talking about everyone else that did more, much more of that than we did.
[01:52:46] But so you guys were more doing this full spectrum to you guys are training them, you guys are teaching them how to gather intel, you're teaching them how to do simple things like logistics and all this kind of thing.
[01:52:57] We're also running our own, and there's a guy on the team whose his job, he's the intelligence sergeant, and he's running, you know, assets and all that stuff in the town.
[01:53:06] So you know, it's the buy with and through mission. So we're gathering intel and town through random sources, not random, but various sources. And then what you try to do is you try to train your force up by doing stuff, right? You don't just, oh JT.
[01:53:22] On the job training exactly, you don't just gather all your intel and just keep it to yourself. You need to get your force out doing stuff that they can gain confidence from doing stuff in life. That's how this works.
[01:53:35] And so it just sort of turned into, hey, you know, here's some, here's some intel on this, and then we would go out with them and they're the first in, because that's what you want. I mean, you said and think, unless you've got some really high value target,
[01:53:50] you're going to send in your own very best guys, because failure is not an option. I mean, been lawdon raid is, of course, a good example. You're going to send in the people, you're not going to let your partner force go in first.
[01:54:05] You're going to take care of that. You're not even going to tell your partner force exactly. And you're willing to live with those consequences because it's that important. In this case, you know, this was part of the coin strategy, the counter insurgency, right? You need these local trained up police forces to go out and be able to police their own areas. And it's less sexy in some ways than, hey, I got my beard and I got my guns and we're going to go after bad guys in every single night.
[01:54:33] But it's a lot more effective, train the trainer. And so our job is to go out there and basically show them how to do this. And this is how you, here's the tactics and this is what we do. And so they're the first in and you know, you get good. If you're a cop or you're a soldier, it's kind of the same thing. There's that's why there's such a bond even in America between cops and soldiers, you go into a house, you can smell what that house smells like.
[01:55:01] And if the hair on the back of your neck stands up, it's probably not good. And you can walk into some house and you're like, nope, I can just tell this isn't it. Well, their sense of smell, quote, quote, is a lot better than ours. And ours is pretty good at times, but they're able to go into a house. And you know, by the way, the doorways are really narrow. There's 25 people sleeping on the floor. You know, half the time they're on the rooftop naturally because it's cooler because it's a hot country, right?
[01:55:29] How are you kind of assessing, you got everyone's got a rooftop. So if you're dealing with aircraft above, who's on the rooftop, it's not like they're up there as snipers all the time. They're just on the rooftop.
[01:55:41] They're sleeping. They're sleeping. Yeah, with their kids. And so it doesn't work to go into these places with your, you know, just guns and do more than you should.
[01:55:53] And so, you know, part of what going through elite style of training brings is the confidence to know when not to pull the trigger.
[01:56:00] Went to a soon greater risk to your own life because you should not just go out and pull the trigger.
[01:56:08] And the more confidence you have in your weapons in your sense, and that's really important. And it's a much more stabilizing presence there if you don't kill a bunch of innocent people, right?
[01:56:22] There is collateral damage in war. It's just, it happens. But you have to do almost everything that you can to minimize that because the second, third order effects of dead women and children are not good.
[01:56:37] Yeah, that's the US military goes through incredible lengths. We're rent that from happening. And, you know, and you're an environment that this is a good example.
[01:56:46] You know, nausea at that time. This is a good example. It's like a transitional phase. And I mean, when the Marine Corps pushed into nausea, you know, three, it was, you know, like a legitimate war battle going on.
[01:56:59] And now you fast forward four years. It's a different situation. It needs to be handled with more discrepancy. So, so that's, yeah, that's the way it works out, which is the way it's supposed to work out. That's what counter insurgency is.
[01:57:12] The level of violence gets less and less over time. And hopefully, we'll hopefully it does. And then also hopefully the capabilities of the host nation forces get better and better.
[01:57:27] And eventually they reach your point where we're not needed anymore. That's what's supposed to happen.
[01:57:32] That's what's supposed to happen. You know, it's what year is it? We're 18 years later.
[01:57:36] Well, I mean, we made some, you know, we got Iraq to a fairly stable position. And unfortunately, we completely left. And situations like what you just talked about, that's a classic situation where it's like all of a sudden, whoa.
[01:57:48] We're about to, you know, we've got a real problem here. And when we left, there's no one to call. When we're still there, we go, okay, cool. Because what we just said is, hey, if soldiers troops had come in and taking the police building down and gotten those weapons and gotten those vehicles.
[01:58:02] And now they're going to start to empower themselves over the people inside that city. That's where that's where you have a real problem. That's kind of what happened with ISIS after we pulled out of Iraq.
[01:58:12] So, yeah, that's what's supposed to happen. But you have to continue to provide support to that host nation.
[01:58:18] Because even once you mitigate the levels of violence as much as you can, you need to make sure that they're gone. And that takes a long time.
[01:58:27] That could take 10 years. It could take 15 years. We're still in Germany. You know, we're, we're, we're in Japan for a really, really long time.
[01:58:36] And so these things can take a long time. And they shouldn't be, you know, if we were to stay in Iraq in, after 2010, if we were to be there in 2012, 2013, 2014.
[01:58:46] If we were to just stay there, I bet those guys, I mean, even lay for wrote extreme ownership with me. And he went in 2010.
[01:58:53] And in all of Al-Al-Al-Bar Province, when he deployed with Sealtime 1 in 2010, in all of Al-Al-Al-Al-Bar Province for his six-month appointment, there was one friendly casualty.
[01:59:06] And it was from a vehicle roll over. And you compare that to when he and I were there in 2006, when there was a casualty or two or three or four or five every single day, just in the city of Ramadi.
[01:59:19] So we were heading in the right direction. I mean, that's a massive switch. But again, if you assume that, okay, well, it's good enough. And now we can just walk away.
[01:59:31] That might not be the best policy. So you need to think through those things a little bit better than we do.
[01:59:36] I think some of those decisions were made based on political decisions based, instead of based on, you know, everybody that was on the ground that was saying,
[01:59:45] we're not quite ready to leave yet. Need to give a little more time. Need to stay, keep our presence here, be a backup force, you know, be able to support the local Iraqi soldiers and police if they need it, which they probably won't.
[01:59:58] I mean, they already said, hey, we don't need you guys. That was 2007. They said, hey, we don't need you guys living on a anymore.
[02:00:03] That's cool. And Ramadi, they weren't saying that. They wanted us there. And every time we turned over a police station to them, I think, I think every single time that we turned over completely a police station to them.
[02:00:14] In 2006, it got overrun. So they weren't ready for that yet. So it's going to take more time. Eventually, in 2007, 2008, they turned over all those. And there was no more coalition forces outside in the city. It was all Iraqis.
[02:00:29] So we can get there, but a counter insurgency takes time. And you have to, you have to give it time. You're not on, you know, it's kind of like kind of like standing on the dang cables at airborne school.
[02:00:41] This is, you're, you can have to do it. You have to stay there until it's time to, until it's done. Tell us, ready.
[02:00:46] Yeah, that takes some time. Then you start to get into what's the expectation that people back home have for how long this should take and how much does it cost and is it really worth it?
[02:00:57] And you know, I mean, it was just a really, it was just a really hard time, you know, it's, and it's also hard when you're fighting and my, my family was hugely supportive.
[02:01:08] And yet, at that time, it was all about the casualty counts, the body counts of American soldiers in Iraq. And you got a lot of moms.
[02:01:19] And you got a lot of moms who can really relate to the moms that are suffering from losing their children.
[02:01:26] And I mean, what's the, what is the desired in state? Like, what is our actual goal? Is it, is it to turn Iraq into Germany?
[02:01:37] I mean, if so, good luck, or is it, we don't want places to be able to export violence?
[02:01:43] I mean, destabilize, they stabilization. I mean, I, I kind of never fully understood what the actual desired in state was that was realistic.
[02:01:53] Yeah, well, America did a bad job of stating what that was and clarifying the mission and clarifying the goal.
[02:01:59] And then they also have, you, you also have to be able to explain that look as we dive into a situation.
[02:02:09] Our expectations are going to change. And to your point.
[02:02:15] When you look at an Iraqi army unit, let's say, or Iraqi police unit, if you think that you're going to turn them into a Western military unit,
[02:02:26] or a Western police force, you're not going to because they have a different culture.
[02:02:30] But what you can do is figure out how an effective police force or how an effective military unit fits inside their culture.
[02:02:39] And then they can, can do an excellent job. But you have to, you have to be malleable.
[02:02:43] I know, like, for instance, just the way that they would gather in tell.
[02:02:47] And we'd be trying to teach them how to do their intel gathering.
[02:02:51] And it's like, actually let them, these people know how to talk to their own people.
[02:02:56] They don't want to figure this stuff out. They know how to document it. Let them run with it.
[02:03:00] And instead of trying to force our methodology on top of them, take advantage of some of the cultural advantages that they have inside their own country.
[02:03:10] Let's do that. So you, you have to be able to adapt as you see a situation unfold.
[02:03:17] But then you have to, just like, just like as a leader when the priorities change as a leader with your team,
[02:03:22] you have to explain to everybody, hey, okay, I didn't see this comment.
[02:03:26] This is a little different than I thought it was going to be, a little different than we thought it was going to be.
[02:03:30] Here's what we're trying to make happen now. Okay, everyone says, okay, let's, let's move in that direction.
[02:03:36] So I think not only does did America do a bad job of coming out of the gates and hey, hey, okay, here's what we're trying to get done right now.
[02:03:44] It's also okay, look, didn't really see this coming.
[02:03:48] Here's what we're going to try and get done. Here's where, here's the direction we're moving now.
[02:03:52] This is what we're, this is what we're going to do.
[02:03:54] And we did not do a great job of explaining that to the public because man, when I went over in 2006 and it was same way in 2007, like you're talking about the public opinion had massively.
[02:04:08] Not universally, but a lot of public opinion had turned against the war. For sure, that was the TV that was, you know, an entire half of the country was, I go, we shouldn't be there. Okay, so how do we explain to people, okay, if we don't want to be there.
[02:04:26] What do we do to leave? What's the best way to leave? How do we get out of there? How do we get out of there in such a way that it doesn't turn into a problem again?
[02:04:34] So, these are all things from a really grand strategic perspective that hopefully we can learn lessons from.
[02:04:43] And you know, I'm sure you've seen some of the reports coming out of Afghanistan right now about what was being said on the ground and what was being told to America.
[02:04:54] Obviously, some really stark contradictions between those two things and it's horrible to read about. You know, you can look at the entire Vietnam war and you know what the whiz kids were saying about Vietnam and about hey, all we need to do is kill more of them than they do of us and will eventually win. It's like, no, that's not actually true.
[02:05:18] And you know, this is one of the reasons that, you know, I've got my kind of personal mentor who have never met before, but Colonel David Hacworth, who came out at the end of the Vietnam war and said, you know, if we don't change the way we're fighting, we're going to lose.
[02:05:36] We've got Trump out of the army and no one wanted to hear that. And even even in the 90s, he was viewed by the army by some large portions of the army as sort of a trader.
[02:05:49] Strong word, but they saw him as sort of a trader. Well, he was the guy that was telling the truth, he was the guy that was saying, listen, we're not doing this right. And if we keep doing this, we're not going to be able to win.
[02:05:59] So these are all things that, yeah, as a nation, leadership, military and civilian communicating to each other openly and trying to work together to find solutions, trying to work together to adapt your mission to something that's achievable to something that we can do to something that's worthwhile. These are all things that we need to do a better job as a country for sure.
[02:06:26] Yeah, so relating back to Vietnam and then to Iraq though, to our country's credit, and this gets nobody ever likes to say, hey, America, great job, right?
[02:06:36] But when you sit and think about how far we as a nation came from Vietnam, where they would spit on soldiers when they came home, to Iraq, where half the country disagreed with our presence there in 2006, 2007, around that timeframe.
[02:06:50] I mean, there was still separation between the soldiers and Marines, et cetera, and the actual support of the war. And that, you know, I felt very supported.
[02:07:02] And so as far as I knew, did everyone that was there with me did as well. Just the American public was not taking its anger out on us.
[02:07:11] America has definitely learned an incredible lesson from every member's perspective. That meant everything. So, you know, I cannot imagine what those soldiers went through in Vietnam when they would come back and it was just they were spit on.
[02:07:26] Can you imagine? It's insane to think about. It's insane to think about. I mean, I covered a book on here. Guy came home with a severely wounded arm. You know, and he's goes to college and sure enough, he's,
[02:07:39] you know, getting called a baby killer and all that and you just think to yourself, wow, that's, that's just unbelievable.
[02:07:47] And then you had Jim Cersley come on here who is in Vietnam as a soldier in Vietnam, who, who, on in his 11th month of his deployment to Vietnam, stepped on an ID, lost both of his legs, like basically at the hips or most lost one of his arms.
[02:08:05] And I don't know if a human being can face adversity.
[02:08:16] I'll let me put it this way. If that guy is not a model of how to face adversity, I don't know who he is because he came home.
[02:08:22] Did nine months of rehab, got done, left his rehab, went to college, got a job, started a roofing company, started doing real estate and carried on with the rest of his life.
[02:08:34] I mean, just like the most unbelievable face to adversity and you know, we've had plenty of other guys on here that have been incredible.
[02:08:44] Just the way that they face, I mean, Travis Mills, I don't know if you know Travis Mills is but, you know, he's a quadruple amputee.
[02:08:52] The guy is his, his, his just unbreakable spirit. I mean, just facing adversity every single day that we can't even fathom.
[02:09:01] We can't even fathom the tiny little things in his life that he has to struggle with that he wants to never say a word about and he does it and he carries on and when you meet him, you think, man, I wish I could be as happy as he is.
[02:09:17] I wish I could go, I wish I could get along in life as well as he is doing right now.
[02:09:22] So, a lot of that does come from the fact that America learned its lesson from Vietnam at least from the perspective that you just gave, which is, we treat our service men and women with respect, regardless of what you feel about the war.
[02:09:41] Okay, got it, but we treat our service men and women with respect, which is a, which is a high praise for the way that we are operating American out for sure.
[02:09:50] I think it would be great to even take that one step further and just those who serve.
[02:09:56] Those who, that's the fabric of what makes America America strong communities.
[02:10:02] We have aligned purpose or values are really clear, you know, as an American, as an, as America, what we stand for.
[02:10:10] And yet there's a lot of people that make that happen at the local level, there's teachers, there's fire, there's cops, there's first responders, there's all sorts of people that work in.
[02:10:22] Also dangerous jobs out of DC and it's just, we need a call to service.
[02:10:30] In, in this culture where there's just a lot of emphasis and value placed on being the best individual, we need to reawaken those calls to where it's, it's a very noble thing to go and serve your country.
[02:10:45] Yeah, and I'll tell you right now, I mean, the idea that you're going to get real satisfaction from taking care of yourself.
[02:10:55] It pales in comparison to the satisfaction that you get when you help other people, no doubt about it.
[02:11:02] And if people don't understand that, you know, I get asked sometimes you, well, I don't know what my next mission is, I don't know what to focus on.
[02:11:09] I'm like, okay, if you don't know that, cool, go help other people go down to a damn soup kitchen and volunteer and you'll start to figure something out.
[02:11:17] And if you don't, cool, you're helping other people either way, we're in a better place because of it.
[02:11:22] It's kind of counterintuitive, though. It is because it's so people and I did this as well. We struggle to make that connection where we say, I've got to be better. Me, me, me.
[02:11:36] Now, how do you do that is you find a mission.
[02:11:40] And if, if you have a purpose and then you have a mission on top of that purpose, that's your, your hit-n-home runs.
[02:11:47] Regardless of that, if you just dedicate your life to serving something greater than yourself, it just opens up a way of life that leads to a lot of great things with a lot of great people.
[02:11:59] And I just, I've never met the person at the end of their days who said, you know, I was just, I served too much.
[02:12:08] I gave too much to other people. I wish I had just done more for me, me, me.
[02:12:13] I just haven't met that person. And so, you know, we have the ability and the potential to change our lives for the better with just a mindset shift.
[02:12:25] Just to say, we dedicate yourself to a greater cause. There's lots of ways to do it.
[02:12:30] The military is a very romanticized way, especially in our society.
[02:12:37] So we uniquely love our military. And I do too. And there's just, it's not for everyone. And it doesn't have to be, and it shouldn't be.
[02:12:47] So instead of kind of using this old, the military only affects 1% of the population, like it's some sort of judgment on our entire country.
[02:12:57] That's okay. The military is 1% that's, that's awesome, right?
[02:13:02] And if it needed to be more, it would be. But it's 1% that's okay. There's a lot of ways to serve.
[02:13:09] And that's where the bridges between the Americas that we love that represents the best America and where maybe we come up a little bit short from time to time.
[02:13:22] If we just dedicate ourselves to serving instead of to being angry at the TV news at night,
[02:13:28] like, go turn the TV off and go find something to serve that will benefit your community in our country.
[02:13:34] Go do that. That would be helpful. Yeah. But, you know, instead, let me see how many dopamine hits I can get through my brain from the likes that I'm going to get on Facebook.
[02:13:45] If I go publish some anger, written ad that's divide and conquer tactics, we're, you're just a pawn.
[02:13:52] Someone's, someone's written some article that's, that's gonna just divide people and we share that stuff and people like it.
[02:14:00] And we think, wow, I'm, I'm part of a community that's, that's talking about these important things.
[02:14:05] How about you go, stop doing that first and how about you go do something that actually helps other people.
[02:14:13] And I don't say, here saying, this is all I do with my life. I don't just, you know, go from orphanage to orphanage, right?
[02:14:19] All day long, every day, right? I'm, I'm human like all of us.
[02:14:24] And yet, you know, when I have these kind of, these times when I think and reflect,
[02:14:31] usually outside with a ruck on, like, am I doing what I can do to make my community, my family, my community, my country stronger,
[02:14:41] because I just, I feel like I owe, and that's the, the bug that I caught through, through service.
[02:14:47] I did not foresee that. I thought it was going to be about me and me getting my revenge for what happened over 9-11.
[02:14:54] And what I got instead was this, this really basic primordial reaction that I just, I owe more.
[02:15:01] And I can't shake it, and I'm grateful that I can't.
[02:15:05] Makes me just want to keep doing the things that are rewarding.
[02:15:08] And that involves other people and building communities and building a bridge between the military and civilian worlds.
[02:15:14] Instead of using these divide and conquer tactics.
[02:15:19] Yeah.
[02:15:22] So, how long is this deployment to Iraq to take us back to Iraq? How long were you over there?
[02:15:28] That was 2007, and, I don't know, seven months.
[02:15:32] So you guys were on, like, a seven month rotation.
[02:15:35] Right? And then we, we came back, and that was, coming back was a weird thing.
[02:15:42] I mean, we stopped in Shannon Airport in Ireland and Drankl bunch of beers.
[02:15:48] There was in the, the airport there, because we'd rented a civilian aircraft.
[02:15:52] And there was a bunch of green brazed at flew back.
[02:15:54] So there's sort of a mad dash for the bar, we got there.
[02:15:57] And, and, you know, then we got back, and my car was, for Carson, my car was the same place where I'd park that I disconnected the battery.
[02:16:06] You know, the battery was, I had to connect the battery back.
[02:16:09] We're sort of, in this parking lot around our compound at 10th group.
[02:16:14] And it was just sort of like, oh, I guess I went to war and came back.
[02:16:19] And it just was kind of, it was kind of weird.
[02:16:24] And, you know, there was this other compounding part of my life, which was, you know, I was married to Emily.
[02:16:31] And we had started dating, finally told the girl I loved, the love of my life that I loved her.
[02:16:37] And, oh, and oh, by the way, I'm going to boot camp, right?
[02:16:40] So we had gotten married while I was in the QCourse and she had then gone through the CIA training pipeline to become a case officer.
[02:16:47] She graduated from, to become a case officer five days before I became a green bra.
[02:16:53] Right? And so she got sent to Africa and then I got sent to Colorado and then to Iraq and, you know,
[02:16:59] talking over secure lines with your wife and while you're at war and she kind of had some access through her friends to some of our situation or sit reps,
[02:17:09] situation reports from war and there was, it was just kind of, it was surreal, but so I also felt just really kind of lonely.
[02:17:21] I mean, our team was there, but then they went off and they had their families, their families,
[02:17:26] they had created them. And that was just kind of, it was lonely ride and oh, by the way, right when I get back, have my truck and driving off base,
[02:17:37] thankfully I waited to do his off base. But, you know, in Iraq when you're in a Humvee and you're driving, you go down the middle of the road,
[02:17:44] it's a tactic because most roadside bombs are on the side of the road and you don't want to go anyway.
[02:17:50] You just dominate the road. That's how it is. Get out of my way. I've got a bigger truck than you do and that's what's happening.
[02:17:57] And so I defaulted to that on the highway right off Fort Carson and it wasn't some sort of huge flashback or something.
[02:18:07] It was just kind of, I wasn't just home.
[02:18:10] Yeah, I wasn't home yet. And it was just all of these weird emotions going through my head and I had to kind of click my brain and say, hey, I need to slow down, stop, stop flooring it because that's also he drive their speed of security.
[02:18:27] It goes fast as you can and gets on the target, right?
[02:18:30] And move over into the right lane, take a deep breath. It'll be okay.
[02:18:35] And that's more than the actual fact that that happened was just the weird feeling that that happened.
[02:18:42] And then, you know, I didn't have a cell phone set up or anything and all that stuff. It wasn't quite as simple as it is now.
[02:18:49] So I went back, I was staying with my great aunt, uncle and Colorado Springs and then I called, you know,
[02:18:56] had a calling card number to call Emily. She was at working out of the embassy in Abjohn West Africa and it was just sort of this I'm back.
[02:19:07] And it was very anti-climactic just to be on the phone.
[02:19:13] It's not what you see in the movies where you land and there's the big parade and all of that stuff and you know,
[02:19:20] you're loved one sprinting for you and you know, you swoop her off of her feet and do all of these things.
[02:19:26] It was none of that. And then, you know, then the next day, what do you do?
[02:19:30] Go back to work, go back to work and inventory all your stuff and make sure that your team rooms clean and do all of that stuff.
[02:19:37] And that's, you know, that's the next couple weeks of your life.
[02:19:40] And so, yeah, so that and then eventually obviously I saw Emily have flew over there for Christmas.
[02:19:47] That was, that was the kind of vacation because she's in war torn west Africa.
[02:19:53] It almost was more comfortable to go visit her.
[02:19:57] Oh, you felt a little more normal.
[02:20:00] Well, it was like, you know, so we talk a lot about PTSD and all that stuff this day and age and it's become this kind of thing where every veteran probably has it.
[02:20:10] So I shouldn't hire a veteran or there's something wrong with them.
[02:20:13] I'll donate money, but I'm going to kind of put them on the leprechaunty and let them struggle with their PTSD and send them a paycheck every once in a while.
[02:20:21] That's, that's the situation at its worst. Now, there's, there's obviously various levels of that.
[02:20:29] But it's just, you know, when you came back from war and say, world war too, you know, you're not a ship with everybody that you went to war with.
[02:20:36] There's decompression time.
[02:20:38] But as for us, you know, we're, we're getting on a plane, we're, we're having a couple beers in Shannon. We show back up at home and then we're at home. And this is America. And it is very, very free, right?
[02:20:49] And you know, there's not trash everywhere. People don't just, I mean, in Iraq, everyone's got that what eight foot wall, if you've got an house in any money, you got eight foot wall with concertina or probably barbed wire around the top of it.
[02:21:02] And when you have trash at your house, what you do is you walk out in your front yard and you throw it over your wall because you don't really care about what happens outside your, your little wall. Well, here, it's just, you know, that Colorado air is pretty awesome. And, you know, you can stop anywhere you want and there's no roadside bombs.
[02:21:19] And, you know, it's like what you saw in her locker, the guy goes in and he's staring at all the cereal and there's 10 million things a cereal.
[02:21:27] That's not the decision that you're used to making and it feels weird. Just, it's, it's going to happen so fast.
[02:21:35] And, and so remember, I got off the tarmac, because on the tarmac in, in Abysson, I'd flown over there.
[02:21:42] You know, they love a good coup in Africa. This, it's always kind of semi-permissive and it's never perfect and they could have RPGs and AKs in the street at any time. And you'll be the last to know, right?
[02:21:54] So, got there and it just, it smelled tropical and it smelled just sort of like, like, not America.
[02:22:02] And rolled in and it's just, there's just all this commotion at this African airport and, you know,
[02:22:09] writing back, getting in a car, you know, gave her a big hug and the, and the kiss in the airport.
[02:22:16] And then, got in a car and drove home and there's checkpoints and, you know, there's guys with guns at the checkpoints and then pull into her house and it's, there's two layers to the compound.
[02:22:27] And she was not on an American compound, per se, it was American housing, but not a compound, but it was within a compound with other locals and there's one layer of, quote, security, where there's a local with a pickup truck.
[02:22:40] And if you're white, you're here find to go in. I mean, it's, it's just how it is there. And so, you know, so we drove in, they obviously knew her and her car at that point.
[02:22:50] And then, you know, she's got a second layer of, quote, security and it's a renocop basically and they've got a stick, you know, they're not doing anything with that stick, but it's, it's faux security.
[02:23:02] And, but it just, it, it felt more normal to me than coming back to America so quickly. And it was just sort of some decompression time.
[02:23:14] But then, you know, you've got the sort of relationship side and life's hard. And so, you know, she's, and that job, I mean, the CIA works, it's people really hard. You have a lot of people, young people, old people, whatever, that's sort of America that work really, really hard in our true patriots.
[02:23:31] And they're really committed to our way of life in America. And if, if you go that route, you are, it's a 24, 7 job, just like special forces is. And so she's working a hundred hours a week by Wednesday, our, it's, it was not a traditional marriage, you know.
[02:23:53] And it was it all right, we guys getting through it was separation a good thing. Sometimes, you know, the best thing to happen between some couples is they're not around each other. Sometimes that's horrible. It doesn't work.
[02:24:06] Yeah, so we had spent, you know, the first four years of our marriage, we did not live together at all, zero living together.
[02:24:16] As it for Bragg, she was in Florida teaching, she was a, a great Spanish teacher, right. So for the first year of the Q Corps, I'm driving back to Florida every single weekend that I have off.
[02:24:27] So if I'm not in the field, I have the weekend off. So drive back, you know, second year she's going through, she's working out of the, the Langley and then, you know, out of, out of the farm.
[02:24:38] And so kind of doing some of driving north five, six hours every weekend go, see her there. And then, you know, she's in West Africa and I'm in Iraq and then I'm in Colorado and it's, you know, you're, we're,
[02:24:52] a mediums were the thing back then, you know, these sort of, because it wasn't as simple as everyone's got data connections just pull up FaceTime or Skype or whatever the case may be. So, you know, it's a mediums and there was, you know,
[02:25:05] a strange, probably a hundred numbers I had to dial to get the access to get to call her cell phone or her, whatever at her at the embassy. And if you go to the well to often, eventually, the well runs dry. And so when that Christmas, it was just kind of weird with her.
[02:25:25] It wasn't bad. We, she babysat my siblings growing up. She was great friends with my family and my mom and all these things like we really were in love. And, and so we knew each other as friends for almost a decade before we started dating.
[02:25:43] And it just was kind of weird when that, that Christmas. And so it was kind of like, okay, I was going to get out of the army in October of the next year.
[02:25:55] And it's like, okay, well, that became the target, right? Everything's going to be better at that time. And so, you know, was there for a month? And we had fun. It's just was kind of weird. Like life was kind of weird though, too, right?
[02:26:08] I mean, she's in kind of war torn. I'm going to war coming back flying over for some, quote, vacation, you know, and we're finally together. And there's just so many balls in the air. It's hard to make sense of what's going on.
[02:26:22] And so we went back and, you know, back at base, well, we ended up forward deploying the Stoocard to do a backfill for our, our, our commanders and extremists force that was in Stoocard.
[02:26:33] So, with Station there for, I want to say four months, something like that. But in that time, also went down to a different part of West Africa on a mission to work with the Mauritian troops out of New York shot except we were in Octute, which is, you know, a few hours through literally camels and desert in Mauritania. And, you know, we trained up their commandos and we were out there. And the interesting part is that, in much of the world, you know, the US has its diplomats and it has its sole job.
[02:27:02] And that's, and it has its soldiers. And there's kind of a stark difference between those two. In much of the world, the soldiers are where it's at.
[02:27:11] You know, the diplomats, they don't have the real power because they can't, they can't take their soldiers and go drive to the middle of the capital and say, hey, I'm in charge now.
[02:27:20] And so, you know, to go back to follow up on some of the earlier points about, you know, should we be in Iraq or Afghanistan or I think special forces in some capacity should be everywhere.
[02:27:30] Special operations and people who are serving this purpose of working with other host nations. I mean, that was also the lesson of post 9-11. Afghanistan was, you have no presence there.
[02:27:43] You're going to have to recreate it in time of crisis. And that's very challenging. And so, to have some, some presence between militaries, between, hey, the US military has, is working with these locals that are in the military and,
[02:27:58] hey, pick your country. That's important because you, you, it's constant, not like spy stuff, but you just.
[02:28:06] Just relationships, no, you're not allowed to. Yeah. That's it. And that's a really positive thing.
[02:28:11] Very positive. And so, you're also able to, to be there just in case. And so, in those kinds of countries, you know, there's a role for, there's definitely a role for the military.
[02:28:22] Anyway, I was there and even while I'm on that deployment, you know, M flew up on African air, whatever, from Abjah to Nookshat and my captain gave me the time off to go, you know, hang out with Emily in the capital Nookshat for a couple days while she was in town.
[02:28:42] And then our whole team went to a soccer game there in some Chinese built stadium because the Chinese are, are moving into Africa big time, but they, they move in and they set up their own base and they bring their thousand Chinese.
[02:28:56] And they're not doing anything with the locals except extracting what they can from there and their building relationships that way with, with, with money and with their presence.
[02:29:06] And they built soccer stadiums and the locals love soccer and that's kind of what it is. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, but it's just to say that our marriage was kind of, it was, a typical.
[02:29:20] And so, you know, I went back and what I did not expect.
[02:29:23] And it was part of the reason that you decided that you were going to get out of the army because this, you know, your marriage, your wife being in the CIA, being on deployment, traveling and you being in the same thing.
[02:29:34] The army was just going to look long term. This just ain't going to work. We just knew it wasn't going to work long term. The, the hope at the time was that it would.
[02:29:43] We would be able to sustain it until it sort of ended. Now, what I did not foresee was the idea of how much I loved serving in the army special forces and how great and, and how, what an honor that was and how impactful those men in that community.
[02:30:03] And that community were and will forever have been on my life. And that became something that I dreaded.
[02:30:12] Leaving that job. And it, it, it sort of just felt like this guillotine that I was facing as I, you know, because it's not like you just show up one day and you say, alright, peace out guys.
[02:30:23] Like you have certain dates and you have to re-enlist prior or you do all these things and, you know, they were really trying to keep guys in because they had invested a lot in us and, you know, the mission wasn't stopping.
[02:30:35] And so, everybody around me understood what was going on with my life. My wife's in the CIA, she's in West Africa, we can't make this work. It's just not possible to be married in these kinds of jobs or roles.
[02:30:52] And so, everyone was supportive.
[02:30:56] But at the same time, I felt like I was quitting. And, and so I started to go through that process and eventually obviously did go through that process.
[02:31:05] And when I, I pulled off base, I had my same green Nissan Xtera, I'd had throughout my whole training life in, in, for brag and then it carcin' in your cars just this very safe place, you know.
[02:31:21] When you, you can turn the AC on if it's hot, if it's cold, you're warm. It's, it's this small notion of privacy. You don't have a car in basic training where you have zero privacy.
[02:31:32] But when, when you have a car, you have a little bit of freedom and, you know, if you're able to use your car for whatever reason before formation or just in general, you have so much that is just creature comforts.
[02:31:46] And drive, drive and off base in Colorado with basically everything I owned in the back of that truck.
[02:31:55] And I just, I cried on the way off base and I couldn't believe it.
[02:32:02] Because this was supposed to be this really positive step in my life. I was going to go get reunited with the love of my life.
[02:32:11] It was going to be, it was supposed to feel different. And I already just hugely missed my, my team.
[02:32:21] I missed that way of life. And I, I felt like I was abandoning them and they were going to go back to war and I wanted to go with them.
[02:32:30] And I was, you know, uniquely, not uniquely. I was well trained in America's eyes to, to be on the front lines and to continue to serve.
[02:32:40] And I believe in our mission and regardless of, you don't always get to choose the destination that you go and that's fine, right?
[02:32:48] I believe that when America says it's time to go, I want to be the kind of person that says send me.
[02:32:54] And so that, that was the sacrifice of the individuality that I was very willing to submit to, to the team and to the mission and to our country.
[02:33:05] And it just felt like I was losing all of that. And so, you know, eventually your tears try and you wake up and you learn how to be resilient again, but it was just, it was just,
[02:33:18] Where did you go? Where was the plan?
[02:33:20] Right. So I, I drove back to Florida where my mom was and I was just going to put my stuff, my car and storage.
[02:33:29] And then I was, I was getting on a plane to fly to Africa to go live with Emily because, you know, I was now her dependent, right?
[02:33:37] So it just was a typical because I had not gone with her out of the gates. I mean, it was, you know, you're supposed to be together. That's kind of how this stuff works.
[02:33:46] I mean, a community of two, that's a foundational community. Sometimes it's you and your dog, sometimes it's you and your family, but it's, that's a community. And that is very important and not only my life, but our lives.
[02:33:58] And so, you know, that was the plan. Drop my stuff off, get on a plane and fly over. Well, I did that. And it was just as weird as it was that Christmas before, it was just a lot weirder.
[02:34:13] Just everything was, it just nothing felt right. And, you know, I didn't have mission or purpose. She, you know, she was used to operating alone.
[02:34:22] I mean, she was her and her dog, Java, right? And so, you know, that was her like 100 hours a week by Wednesday, 24, 7, all the time. And then I'm showing up almost like dead weight.
[02:34:34] Because I got this, I got this sort of chip on my shoulder because I just gave up everything to be with her.
[02:34:40] And, you know, it was just very, it's just not fun.
[02:34:47] You know, this, this sounds like a nightmare because you're showing up there. You just got out of special forces. You just got back from these deployments.
[02:34:55] And you have been turning and burning work in 20 hour days for the past, however many years. And then you show up.
[02:35:02] And she's in the middle of that exact lifestyle. And you're like, I'm going to watch more TV right now.
[02:35:09] I mean, this is a nightmare. It was horrible. There was nothing to do, right? So I even applied for jobs at the embassy. I'm thinking, how do I serve for the next year?
[02:35:19] Because she was going to be there for the next year. How do I do something here for the next year? And literally the only job available that I could get was as the janitor of the embassy.
[02:35:31] And as a reference earlier, I'm not above mopping the floors and cleaning the head. I was not ready for that at that time in my life though.
[02:35:41] That's just not what I couldn't go from this thinking that this vision that I had for myself and for working with these guys on this team to I'm the janitor of pushing the mop at the embassy.
[02:35:54] And oh, by the way, you know, my wife's on the top floor in this, you know, really cool job.
[02:36:00] She's saving America. Yeah, on the front lines and I'm doing nothing but cleaning the head and so that flicks didn't even exist at that time. So there was armed forces network was all that we got and you know, so then it's it's me and Java at the house, right?
[02:36:20] And this is where this was the beginning of my life turning into that bad country song where a guy's got his dog and you know, his sort of bottle of whiskey and all of his sorrows and you know, I ended up only being in Africa for about two months.
[02:36:40] And then I was like, we're this just isn't where this is too miserable to endure and it wasn't sort of like we didn't hate each other by any stretch and oh, by the way, I'll get to the point somewhere down the line where we got divorced and then we eventually got back together and we're together now, right?
[02:37:00] So it's even ten times mess year, but at this point, you know, we were just really good friends and we had gone to the well for too long and I just didn't.
[02:37:12] I wasn't a part of her journey and she wasn't a part of mine and we were trying to make it work and we said, okay, we'll skip to the end and that just didn't work. And so I'm then I'm flying back to to.
[02:37:24] We were you left where you like, yeah, this is, did you leave on hey, this is probably not going to work or did you leave on like, okay, well, I'm going to go figure some stuff out in America, she's going to stay.
[02:37:32] Well, you guys still thinking it was going to stay together at this point.
[02:37:36] Hope is not a strategy and we were at best hoping and it just it felt like a sledgehammer.
[02:37:41] So when you rolled out where you kind of like, yeah, this is probably the end of it.
[02:37:45] Or do you know, want to say this on the air right now?
[02:37:47] No, no, I mean, I think it was just very, it was just very confusing.
[02:37:52] I mean, for me, and this was very mutual, by the way, this was not all me or all her. This was both of us.
[02:37:59] And it was, you know, she didn't want to, she didn't want to bend her lifestyle for me.
[02:38:06] I mean, what she think it she was going to stay in the agency forever at this point.
[02:38:10] Right. So I mean, this is how this was the ultimate irony was that, you know, part of the journey that I wanted was to go join Ground Branch.
[02:38:18] The CIA, that's where it started. Mike Span, you know, rest in peace.
[02:38:22] When when we honor our heroes, it will inspire further service and that had inspired service in me.
[02:38:28] And so I didn't know anybody in that process of hiring to get to Ground Branch.
[02:38:33] I didn't know anybody and I eventually started and made it through and became a green barray.
[02:38:38] And in Emily's training, I met lots of people in Ground Branch.
[02:38:42] They became friends of ours. And so it was kind of, hey, why don't you just come back and go through the process and that's how it works.
[02:38:51] Right. If you know someone, you're a more of a trusted person, and especially in that place, the agency is always looking for things to do with spouses.
[02:38:59] I mean, if you can, because you're already trusted, right?
[02:39:03] I mean, there's risks in that job of leaks and all that stuff that you have to trust your spouse.
[02:39:09] And so it felt like, okay, well, I guess I can go do that.
[02:39:14] And so started reapplying for some of that stuff, but frankly, I mean, I was not in the, I didn't have a headspace at that time.
[02:39:24] To, I went from Hero to Zero real fast.
[02:39:28] And I'm sleeping on my buddy's slanted floor couch, you know, apartment with a slanted floor on his couch in New York and the lower east side for four months.
[02:39:38] I mean, he's a bartender, most of the only times I'd leave the place, I'm going for his shift to, you know, drink free booze at where he was working.
[02:39:48] I mean, like, it was just, it was, I mean, call it what you want.
[02:39:52] Some state of depression or not having mission or purpose in my life.
[02:39:58] And feeling like now I don't have no job, no mission, no purpose, no wife, which I was kind of banking on as the founder of the house.
[02:40:07] Thinking on as the foundation for the rest of my life, you expect something to go a certain way and it doesn't, that's harder than just knowing that something's going to be miserable the whole time.
[02:40:18] And so it was just one of those things where M and I stayed in touch, we even, you know, took a trip to Morocco together and it was still weird and then eventually, you know, she came back to you.
[02:40:29] So you guys need to go to a place like Hawaii or, you know, the Bahamas, you guys keep going random African nations that are in turmoil.
[02:40:39] Yeah, I want to think through that.
[02:40:41] So I'm actually something from Uncle Jockel for here.
[02:40:44] Well, the other part of this is I'm actually insufferable on a beach with nothing to do, right, and suffer, like, what am I supposed to do?
[02:40:50] You can surf.
[02:40:51] I wish I could.
[02:40:53] You can try.
[02:40:54] I can try.
[02:40:55] You're right.
[02:40:56] I can be really bad at it until I'm less bad.
[02:40:58] I'm not even in places without security checkpoints is what I'm advising.
[02:41:01] Yeah, got it.
[02:41:02] Future reference.
[02:41:04] So we're kind of, you know, in touch again and doing this weird, long distance thing and it just, it just kept getting worse and worse and worse and it's sort of confused.
[02:41:15] She comes back to America and has Java and Java formed a really big bond with him.
[02:41:21] Well, I was in Africa because he was kind of my only friend.
[02:41:23] And so my only friend, Java and Francis Francis was our housekeeper and sort of like almost like him's chief of staff for the house.
[02:41:29] She would have parties to over to house or she would host people or whatever and he was just make that train roll.
[02:41:37] And I became really good friends with him and he was my best friend in Java and I was at the house all day.
[02:41:44] And for a period of months and this is anyway really fast transition to doing nothing and having no purpose.
[02:41:52] So eventually she comes back and it's still really bad and we're just sort of subjecting ourselves to further misery, right?
[02:42:02] But you say you hope, oh, this is going to get better.
[02:42:05] It's going to get better.
[02:42:06] How's it going to get better, right?
[02:42:07] I mean, something's got to give.
[02:42:09] And then eventually you just, you can't endure it anymore and so it's like, you know, she's like, hey, I'm done.
[02:42:16] And so went through that, I stole that because I'm.
[02:42:24] The eternal optimist, right? I mean, this everything can work out if given enough time and and then it almost becomes a competition of who can suffer more, right?
[02:42:29] And I think I can suffer a lot and I'm willing to kind of be that kind of martyr if left to.
[02:42:36] If left in a situation where I want what I want, I'll suffer almost anything.
[02:42:43] And so eventually you just move on and you know, I started business school, which I applied to and I also had this little hobby for.
[02:42:56] Go rock that was kind of nothing at that time, but she had actually recommended it.
[02:43:03] The first time I went to Africa because I built her a go bag, I built her a go rock.
[02:43:08] And that was something that then I just was applying what I didn't wore. You have a go bag.
[02:43:16] You put it in the trunk of the Humvee in case vehicle gets disabled and you got to fight, right?
[02:43:22] So you have bombs and guns and batteries, all that kind of stuff and it's just extra supplies that you don't want to have on your back all the time.
[02:43:30] And you might as well have more if the trucks going to carry it around with you.
[02:43:34] So are for you. So I had done that for her and made one at her house and made some others for some of the other folks that she was working with at the embassy.
[02:43:43] And when I was trying to figure out what to do, we were trying to figure out what I could do.
[02:43:49] She's like, you should do the go rock thing.
[02:43:52] And that just kind of meant teach people what you know from social forces or build them go bags or whatever, figure it out.
[02:43:58] Like, here's something, do that. And that idea had kind of stayed alive as I came home.
[02:44:06] And but I was not in any position to commit to anything as significant as kind of starting a business and going full throttle.
[02:44:18] And then.
[02:44:20] Yeah, so so I'm sleeping on my buddy's couch and I'm kind of trying to figure out, okay, well, I got this go rock thing and I'm applying the business schools and I'm applying to the CIA, which is just another re-up process.
[02:44:32] It nothing happens fast even when you're a spouse and I'm still technically a spouse. So it's it's easier and I know all the right people through through Emily, which you know, because I'm her dependent now.
[02:44:43] Like we joked because one time when she was at the farm and we went to we went to Bush gardens in Williamsburg and we got a discount on the the entrance because we're active due I was active duty military and she was my quote dependent right it's a military term like it's not a it's not like we're equals.
[02:45:08] And then I are very much equals and always happened, but she's my dependent legally and I was then later her dependent legally, but at Bush gardens they gave her a necklace that said hero dependent.
[02:45:21] She loves that.
[02:45:22] Yeah, we both just sort of chuckled about it. It was it was.
[02:45:26] She'd certainly go over to you like eight months later, we're you got out.
[02:45:30] There you go. Yeah, it was in a box somewhere like everything else. I still I still have it in my work desk at now it go rock and it's something that makes both of us smile now, but so basically I had these these kind of.
[02:45:47] I'm applying for more stuff trying to do something I mean the idea of filling out an application to go to grad school was just a hugely daunting task this should take you know two or three hours it was months in decisiveness in inability to function and you know we talk about military transitions are hard like whoever you are if you lose all of your support structures everyone's got a break in point.
[02:46:14] I mean this is one of the lessons of searschool survival school no matter how tough you think you are you are breakable and you know all of my support structures were gone and but go rock became a hobby so I had this idea for okay well I guess I'll try to figure out how to design a backpack or a rucksack and thankfully I actually
[02:46:34] unbeknownst to me almost knew a lot about this topic that I just sort of gravitated toward it because I knew a lot about it even though I didn't have some conversation that said I really know about rocking and rucksack I was not my own id boosting my own
[02:46:50] you know sense of self worth through something that I thought would be a great way to spend time it was just something to do and so you know didn't know anything about manufacturing didn't know anything about anything but
[02:47:04] eventually was like okay well I got I'll start doing something with this put an ad in craigslist new york city for a backpack designer and like all right well see what we get I got kind of some sketches and I got some samples and I want something that's kind of like these
[02:47:19] and got a response back from this team in Montana that was basically trolling the internet for work because in 2009 the economy was not in a good place so you have to put yourself into those kinds of perspectives you know you like to say good about a lot of stuff you know bad stuff happens good well look the economy was in a really bad spot good
[02:47:44] good if you're looking for work good if you're trying to do something awesome because there's a lot more opportunity whereas when nobody's looking for work and everything's really expensive and you can't find any deals because the economy is just purring forward
[02:48:00] it's harder you got to you got to speed things up faster so anyway found this great team out there and basically worked on the rocks and how to do them throughout my first year in business school
[02:48:15] and then when did that develop into or how long was business school so business school was from 2009 to 2011 and so even business school is I applied to a couple schools and it's like I don't even know if I want to go to business school I mean that it's like it's so weird to think about now
[02:48:33] I've got these chapters in my life and I look back at them and it's hard to relate to myself now in some of those chapters it's like when I think about deploying to war and all the training that I went through and the people that I served with
[02:48:48] it feels like I'm reading my own book sometimes right my own kind of narrative in my head it's I don't wake up like rambo every day or anything you know I've taken a ton of lessons from that but I don't
[02:49:04] I also can't relate to being just depressed like why don't you just stop being depressed that's what I would sit and just stop doing this and the right answer is move forward anyway you can if you're feeling sorry for yourself go to something for someone else and you know eventually M came back we sort
[02:49:23] of
[02:49:42] you
[02:49:51] And also the post 9-11 GI Bill.
[02:49:54] And you know, transitioning veterans out there, you should use that.
[02:49:59] It is a great way for you to buy some time and re-aclimate yourself to America and gain
[02:50:06] a skill, some knowledge, some whatever.
[02:50:09] And it's structure.
[02:50:11] And so I'm grateful to the American taxpayer for, you know, pay for some housing allowance
[02:50:16] and some books.
[02:50:17] And it distressed my life a little bit at a time when I needed less stress in my life.
[02:50:23] And so going through business school and M and I had gotten, you know, officially divorced,
[02:50:29] but she was waiting to go on another assignment.
[02:50:32] She was going to go somewhere else down south, either Brazil or Mexico or something.
[02:50:37] And you know, she had Java and she's living in a hotel in DC because she's only supposed
[02:50:42] to be there for a few months.
[02:50:43] And Java was the fight between the two of us.
[02:50:47] We never thought about money.
[02:50:49] We always loved each other.
[02:50:50] We were always friends, but Java was the fight because there's not two jobs.
[02:50:55] And so, you know, I'll never forget this moment where I was staying in a Hedakondo in not too
[02:51:02] far from Georgetown, the University in Georgetown.
[02:51:05] And she was staying at a hotel in P Street, so hotel Palamar, because it's dog friendly.
[02:51:10] And we're sort of at dual custody of our dog, Java, right?
[02:51:16] And it's like, this is what we both got really emotional about.
[02:51:21] Because he had been with her.
[02:51:23] He was kind of her dog, but he also was kind of my dog.
[02:51:26] And he had been on, you know, so just to put some of her work and perspective, you know,
[02:51:31] she's going as 110-pound girl out to go on termination meetings with assets.
[02:51:38] Meaning you're telling them you're not going to pay them anymore, which is there only
[02:51:42] a lot of the hidden life. Thanks for your service and the intelligence that you got us,
[02:51:46] but we don't need you anymore.
[02:51:48] That's your threatening someone's livelihood, be very careful how you are around them.
[02:51:53] And in her case, there was Java in the back seat with fangs at the ready.
[02:51:58] Should anyone get elevated or, you know, escalation of tone, temper or whatever, Java was
[02:52:04] back there.
[02:52:05] And he was very much her protector.
[02:52:08] And they had, obviously, a very close relationship as well.
[02:52:14] And so it just got so bad about Java.
[02:52:18] She gave me a really big hug.
[02:52:20] We were standing on the sidewalk off of her hotel.
[02:52:25] So a little bit closer towards the Georgetown side on, on P Street.
[02:52:29] And she goes, you need him even more than I do.
[02:52:33] So here you go.
[02:52:35] And then it was Java was mine.
[02:52:40] And I felt guilty, right?
[02:52:45] And it was just really, but I was also really still talking.
[02:52:49] I still talking.
[02:52:50] You are absolutely right.
[02:52:52] I still absolutely took that dog.
[02:52:54] And that dog is uniquely responsible for my turnaround in life.
[02:53:01] So because here's the thing.
[02:53:03] You need mission.
[02:53:05] You need purpose, you need community.
[02:53:07] You and her dog, that's a community of two.
[02:53:09] And that is a million times better place to be than a community of one, which is not a community
[02:53:16] at all.
[02:53:17] Right?
[02:53:18] It's even a military side of it.
[02:53:19] If there's two of you, you can cover 360 degrees of security.
[02:53:23] If there's one of you, you can't.
[02:53:24] You're alone.
[02:53:25] And that's not a good place to be in life.
[02:53:27] You need other people.
[02:53:28] We are hardwired for this.
[02:53:30] And it is better for us to be around other people.
[02:53:33] And so now I have Java.
[02:53:36] And dogs have to do things like go to the bathroom.
[02:53:39] And Java needed exercise.
[02:53:41] And he would let me know and no uncertain terms that he needed to go out and that he wanted
[02:53:46] to go to the creek and that he wanted to then go a little bit further down the path.
[02:53:51] And I just I poured all of my grief into that dog.
[02:53:57] And I felt so much better for it.
[02:53:59] And then you start, you take one step and you can take many.
[02:54:04] And so that was just the start of slowly.
[02:54:08] And it doesn't happen like that.
[02:54:09] It's like, when did you become a great leader?
[02:54:11] I mean, people ask you that.
[02:54:13] So I get that.
[02:54:14] It doesn't work like that.
[02:54:15] It doesn't work like that.
[02:54:17] You've got to just take one step forward and see where that path goes.
[02:54:21] And when you're at a low spot in life, I mean, get a dog, work hard, stuff like that.
[02:54:27] I mean, Java got me out and was just my absolute rock and life for the next several years.
[02:54:33] And he passed away in 2013, got sick and passed away of something.
[02:54:38] We don't know what.
[02:54:39] But anyway, by that point, I was doing much, much better.
[02:54:44] And it used the time in business school to kind of incubate, go rock and met a lot of
[02:54:49] people there that that hugely impacted the direction that go rock would take.
[02:54:54] So how to go rock get to get from this idea of teaching people about to go back to what
[02:55:01] it is right now.
[02:55:03] Yeah.
[02:55:04] So it started out with one rock sack, GR1.
[02:55:07] And there's then I did an napkin sketch of it and eventually figured out how to get
[02:55:11] that through the process of you get something R&D and then you find a factory that will
[02:55:16] build it, which is, by the way, a completely different process.
[02:55:20] And then there's things like order minimums.
[02:55:22] And you have to spend every dollar I had to get any inventory at all.
[02:55:31] And the thing is, at that point, that was May of 2010 was when the first rocks were for sale.
[02:55:39] And I thought, man, we've been working on this officially since, you know, the original
[02:55:43] idea was late 2007.
[02:55:46] Officially started the company in February of 2008.
[02:55:49] It's just a way to, while I was still agreeing.
[02:55:52] I was just a way to catalog costs.
[02:55:55] Like, oh, there's, I got to take a trip here.
[02:55:57] I got to pay this person to design these things.
[02:56:00] I guess it's a company.
[02:56:01] Right?
[02:56:02] I never had a lemonade stand as a kid.
[02:56:04] Okay?
[02:56:05] I would not some eager, on-trip for nerd, like this is what I have to do in my life.
[02:56:10] I just kind of backed into this.
[02:56:12] And then I have a company.
[02:56:14] And then, you know, it starts to kick in.
[02:56:15] I hate to lose.
[02:56:17] I hate losing.
[02:56:18] Hate it, right?
[02:56:19] And so I don't want to lose.
[02:56:20] I don't want to quit on this.
[02:56:22] I'd have already quit on a marriage.
[02:56:24] That's how it felt.
[02:56:25] I already quit on a team.
[02:56:26] I already quit on what I held most sacred in life.
[02:56:30] And that's what it felt like.
[02:56:31] And so I don't want to quit on this.
[02:56:33] So I took all of my kind of perception of failure.
[02:56:39] And I had my dog by my side.
[02:56:42] And I just refused to quit at this.
[02:56:44] And so in May of 2010, the rucks came out.
[02:56:47] And I thought, oh, this is awesome.
[02:56:49] I spent a lot of time developing this.
[02:56:51] Everyone's going to want one of these.
[02:56:52] How are you going to keep inventory up with this demand?
[02:56:55] Come on.
[02:56:56] It's just going to fly off the shelves like magic.
[02:57:00] I mean, I can't believe I thought of this.
[02:57:02] I'm so brilliant.
[02:57:03] Yep.
[02:57:04] The name is great.
[02:57:06] Every pixel on our one page website is perfect.
[02:57:10] And you know, it's silence was the world's answer.
[02:57:15] It just was absolute silence.
[02:57:17] And nobody bought anything.
[02:57:19] And I was like, man, this is terrible.
[02:57:22] So I had this great and by great, I mean, horrible idea to drive around the country to
[02:57:28] 48 states, by the way, with my dog, Java.
[02:57:32] And go meet anybody I could meet would possibly be interested in buying a rucks.
[02:57:37] Like I felt like Willie Loman, except that wasn't selling shoes in death of a salesman.
[02:57:41] I'm like selling rucksacks out of the back of my truck.
[02:57:45] Yeah.
[02:57:46] Which actually, everyone needs shoes.
[02:57:47] Everyone doesn't necessarily need a rucksack.
[02:57:49] So you're already starting to rucks a lot.
[02:57:52] So did that drove the 48 states and went to sort of small retail shops and got the
[02:57:58] Heisman from everybody, right?
[02:58:00] Like, no.
[02:58:02] You know, arm out front.
[02:58:04] This is too expensive.
[02:58:05] You know, the retail price was 295 bucks for a rucksack.
[02:58:10] And they were all made in America.
[02:58:11] And they're, it's just really expensive.
[02:58:13] When I first saw the cost side of what it was going to cost, like this is insanity.
[02:58:18] And basically it was.
[02:58:21] So luckily you knew that everyone would want these.
[02:58:24] Exactly.
[02:58:25] So the question became what I did not know how to do was anything related to business doctrine.
[02:58:34] I don't know anything about online advertising.
[02:58:38] I don't know anything about wholesale.
[02:58:40] I don't know anything about ads.
[02:58:42] I don't know anything.
[02:58:44] But what I did know how to do was to work with these designers.
[02:58:50] And they gave me a heck of an education in just the manufacturing world.
[02:58:54] And I'm just grateful that I found them.
[02:58:57] Just huge education about all the trade-offs in product and you know, what you can and
[02:59:02] can't do.
[02:59:03] And that became my foundation.
[02:59:04] They became teachers to me for two years as we were developing this.
[02:59:08] And eventually got a great piece of gear.
[02:59:12] And that wasn't enough though.
[02:59:15] And so went back to the basics and said, what do I know how to do?
[02:59:19] Because I didn't want to slave over a computer and figure out Facebook ads.
[02:59:24] I just didn't.
[02:59:25] And I should have probably except maybe I shouldn't have.
[02:59:28] Because what I didn't know how to do was to teach others and how to train others and
[02:59:34] how to build teams.
[02:59:36] And I learned that from the guys who had taught me that in special forces and then working
[02:59:40] with them by with and through partner forces in Iraq and in Africa.
[02:59:46] And so came up with something called the GoRuck Challenge, which was a rocking based event
[02:59:51] imagine that.
[02:59:52] Because that's all my training was and now we have Rucksacks.
[02:59:56] And anybody could sign up and it would be led by a special forces guy.
[03:00:01] And at that time it was just me.
[03:00:03] And so it was sort of details not forthcoming and you show up at one in the morning
[03:00:09] and this could go very long time.
[03:00:11] There's no published route.
[03:00:13] There's no published distance.
[03:00:16] It's just us.
[03:00:18] And you're going to do what's told.
[03:00:23] You lunge around the building till I get tired style.
[03:00:26] And yet the other part of it was I didn't want it to be like boot camp.
[03:00:30] That was the one thing out of the gates was yelling and screaming has its place but in boot
[03:00:36] camp.
[03:00:37] Because you have to get people's attention and you have to tear them down.
[03:00:40] You just don't have that time when people are actually giving you their time and paying
[03:00:45] you to be there.
[03:00:46] So you know it was we weigh the Rucksacks down and they would put bricks in the Rucks and
[03:00:51] then we would do PT and a guided tour of the city and they would face a lot of it
[03:00:56] diversity and I would just apply the lessons that I'd learned in my training to building
[03:01:00] a team out of this small crew.
[03:01:04] And then that started to expand.
[03:01:06] Yes, so what turned out to happen is that those people did the work for me.
[03:01:12] They went on Facebook and Google and used their networks and told people about GoRuck.
[03:01:18] And oh yeah, there's gear that we manufacture.
[03:01:21] Like at a foundational level we design and manufacture all of our own gear and it's meant
[03:01:25] to withstand this really difficult and challenging stuff and it's really good at carrying
[03:01:30] weight.
[03:01:32] All the things that I would have wanted out of an assault pack that's kind of what we did
[03:01:35] with this.
[03:01:36] We just sort of streamlined it so it didn't look like a military assault pack.
[03:01:40] Right.
[03:01:41] And so when we were that first GoRuck challenge that was September 25th of 2010.
[03:01:46] Okay.
[03:01:47] So it happened pretty fast.
[03:01:49] When is the next one happen?
[03:01:51] So the next one happened the next month.
[03:01:54] And it was basically in it was in DC after the first one were you like, okay, this might
[03:02:00] be a path right here.
[03:02:02] I was in the parking lot of like right along the ocean just west of Golden Gate Park in San
[03:02:10] Francisco.
[03:02:11] They have you know parking for beach access.
[03:02:12] And that was a start and endpoint.
[03:02:14] And it was I don't know.
[03:02:16] 12 or 15 people were in that first class.
[03:02:18] And where'd you advertise at Craig's List?
[03:02:21] So we had a partnership with an event series called Tough Mudder.
[03:02:26] And so we were actually meant to be the prequel to the Tough Mudder that was going
[03:02:31] to happen in Lake Tahoe in that region.
[03:02:35] Like a little fight club if you will that would then show up and do the Tough Mudder
[03:02:39] together as a team there.
[03:02:41] And it was something for them to talk about and it was obviously good for us.
[03:02:44] So they had they had hit a home run on their first event, which was in May of.
[03:02:51] Yeah, it was May of 2010 because that's we went to that as well.
[03:02:55] Got together a bunch of my special forces buddies and put bricks in our rocks that we had
[03:03:00] and went and did Tough Mudder together.
[03:03:02] And it was sort of something to talk about.
[03:03:04] And of course nobody bought anything.
[03:03:06] We had inventory.
[03:03:07] That's where I thought everyone was going to buy anything.
[03:03:08] Nobody bought anything.
[03:03:09] Like one person named Neil bought one rucksack at half off.
[03:03:13] Right.
[03:03:14] And so I almost got my money back.
[03:03:15] So for the rock.
[03:03:17] And it was just you know so anyway, we had kind of attached ourselves to a bigger organization.
[03:03:25] And they drew we got a little bit of their press and so people showed up.
[03:03:31] But the first one I actually had a really hustle to get people out there because it was just
[03:03:36] a proof of concept.
[03:03:37] And it was crazy.
[03:03:38] This idea of unknown distance, unknown time, unpublished route and some special forces guys
[03:03:42] going to put you through special forces style training.
[03:03:44] That was the marketing.
[03:03:46] And so that will speak to a certain kind of person.
[03:03:48] The question becomes how do you reach them?
[03:03:50] And you know, Tough Mudder certainly helped in that.
[03:03:54] And then you know you get one person that signs up and they want to bring a body and that's
[03:03:58] kind of how that worked.
[03:04:01] And so did the first one and we went over Golden Gate Bridge and back and they wrote
[03:04:06] around in the sand and did you know all that Navy Seale style stuff and the ocean that I
[03:04:11] was less familiar with Ocean PT.
[03:04:14] So you know there were a couple, you know, hey, I had to learn how to make sure they
[03:04:18] locked arms when the serve was coming, right?
[03:04:22] Like lock elbows and everybody making unbreakable chain.
[03:04:25] Well that became sort of the teamwork part of it.
[03:04:28] When we were done, we hung out in that parking lot and drank beer together for hours.
[03:04:34] And everyone was just sort of had this huge smile on their face and you know, it brought
[03:04:38] some peanut butter and jellies and people were eating that and drinking beer and everyone
[03:04:42] was smiling.
[03:04:43] And we were talking about how bad it sucked.
[03:04:46] You know, and it was just awesome.
[03:04:48] And it's like this is how we're going to build Go Ruck.
[03:04:51] These are our people.
[03:04:53] You know, the people that want to push a little harder, a little tougher demand a little
[03:04:57] more and want to be around just have that sense of camaraderie.
[03:05:01] Just push a little harder.
[03:05:03] Find something hard and do it because it's hard.
[03:05:05] It's very counter culture these days, right?
[03:05:08] Everything is sold on being easy.
[03:05:11] And you know, we build gear that's designed for the toughest situations on planet Earth,
[03:05:17] like war.
[03:05:18] And we put on events that are designed to challenge people and push them harder.
[03:05:24] And now we have a lot of different events.
[03:05:26] But at that time that was it.
[03:05:29] And it sort of made the rounds and the people that did it, they told the people that they
[03:05:34] thought, I know, because when you're done, you say, I know just the person that needs to
[03:05:38] do this, right?
[03:05:40] And so, you know, the next one was, again, a really small class, like six people in DC,
[03:05:44] four of whom were personal friends of mine.
[03:05:47] But it was about.
[03:05:48] You wrote in two randoms, though.
[03:05:49] Two randoms, right?
[03:05:50] I mean, I probably, you know, in at that time, the price of the event was half the price
[03:05:58] of the Rucksack and you got to keep the Rucksack.
[03:06:01] So I'm making no money on any of this.
[03:06:04] And I'm spending to travel and go places.
[03:06:06] But you have to bet on yourself sometimes.
[03:06:09] And you have to bet on something that you believe in.
[03:06:11] And I felt it in my gut that it felt really good to give back to people, to show them,
[03:06:17] not only what this bridge between the military and civilian worlds look like, but just as
[03:06:23] individuals, how to push a little further in life in this small microcosm of special forces
[03:06:30] training.
[03:06:31] And, you know, that was very just rewarding.
[03:06:34] So come what may.
[03:06:36] This is what I want to do.
[03:06:37] I don't want to sit in front of a computer and figure out how to do ad words.
[03:06:42] I don't.
[03:06:43] That's not.
[03:06:44] I want to be out and use.
[03:06:46] And I'm going to lose that fight.
[03:06:48] I'm going to lose because there's people who, they just grew up on that stuff and they've
[03:06:53] been doing it for forever.
[03:06:54] And that's sort of fighting a war on their terms of business war.
[03:06:58] Now I want to defy this on my terms.
[03:07:01] And my terms were, I have this background.
[03:07:04] And I can apply what I know and I can provide real value to people.
[03:07:08] And if you're starting a business, think about that first.
[03:07:11] Provide real value, get real feedback from people and follow that.
[03:07:17] Do more of that.
[03:07:18] And good things will happen.
[03:07:20] And so there were some startup costs to this though, you know, traveling around and, you
[03:07:25] know, the events were 12 and then 14 hours and, you know, they were really, really challenging
[03:07:32] and every single time it was like a little fight club that happened.
[03:07:36] And there was just a very passionate base that became the foundation for this go-rup community.
[03:07:42] And if that would not have happened, I would have gone back and figured out how to serve
[03:07:47] America in some other capacity, you know, ground branch or go back into the military or,
[03:07:53] whatever.
[03:07:54] I mean, that's what I wanted to do.
[03:07:55] But I just got that sense of satisfaction from this.
[03:07:59] So that you had your first event in 2010, how many events are planned roughly for
[03:08:03] 2010 years on?
[03:08:06] So we have about a thousand events a year now.
[03:08:09] And they're led by current and former special operations guys.
[03:08:13] And so that means just, I mean, we have seals, green berets, delta guys, we have, you know,
[03:08:19] PJs from the, the air, we have all, you know, we have forced reconnaissance Marines.
[03:08:25] And what's important is empowering veterans to give back on the home front, because all
[03:08:34] of us are united in this belief that we owe, we owe more.
[03:08:40] We owe, you think back to the friends that you lost.
[03:08:49] And when I say that I know for a fact in your head, you're thinking about them right now.
[03:08:53] And you think that they died in service to our nation for values that we hold dear.
[03:09:00] And what they wanted to do was to continue doing that for the rest of their lives.
[03:09:05] That's what they wanted to do.
[03:09:07] And so we honor their memory by continuing that mission as, as us and we get huge inspiration
[03:09:19] by drawing upon the fact that we owe.
[03:09:21] We just owe them and not just for their memory, but for our way of life and the generations
[03:09:31] that will follow, because if we don't honor their memory, then we'll forget.
[03:09:36] And not this doesn't mean just write it down and forget about it.
[03:09:40] It means you have to live it and you have to talk about it and you have to share what
[03:09:44] you've learned and you have to get out there with other people that maybe have not been exposed
[03:09:49] to that.
[03:09:51] And you have to, you have to show them what that, why that matters and why service is so important.
[03:09:58] And for me, that the inspiration is the guys that I served with and that way of life that
[03:10:05] they taught me.
[03:10:06] And so everyone in our community has that.
[03:10:11] We have that deep inside of ourselves and this is just an opportunity for those in our community
[03:10:17] to build a bridge between the military and the civilian world and to get that feeling
[03:10:23] of making a difference on the home front.
[03:10:28] And so go rock became this bridge for me.
[03:10:31] I was part of the building of this bridge along with the people who showed up for these events.
[03:10:36] We were building it together, along with my dog.
[03:10:39] And every, every event, I just, the well that was empty in my life, it just filled up a
[03:10:45] little bit more.
[03:10:46] And a little bit more and a little bit more because I gave back what I knew.
[03:10:51] And people said thank you.
[03:10:53] If someone says thank you, take them at their word.
[03:10:56] You did something good.
[03:10:58] Do more of that.
[03:10:59] This doesn't have to be that hard.
[03:11:03] And so that is something that we're just passionate about.
[03:11:08] We put veterans as the face of our organization at all of these events all over the country
[03:11:14] and the world.
[03:11:15] And it's just, there's just a little bit of magic that happens.
[03:11:19] And we're all, we're all strengthening and reinforcing that bridge.
[03:11:24] And it's a very different thing than getting angry and talking about how different we are.
[03:11:31] I just, I don't see it.
[03:11:33] I see we literally don't care if you are young old black white male female gay straight
[03:11:39] military civilian, pink purple, polka doted, striped, whatever.
[03:11:43] Right?
[03:11:44] So we go up and be a part of this team and do the work we want you on our team.
[03:11:48] It's just that simple.
[03:11:50] And there's something very liberating about that.
[03:11:52] It's a political, it's, it's pure.
[03:11:56] And that's what the military and it's best form represents.
[03:12:01] There's just absolute purity.
[03:12:03] It's, it's, to be a part of that is just, it's great.
[03:12:08] And so to be able to lead that for others is just hugely rewarding.
[03:12:15] Yeah, that's powerful.
[03:12:17] I got another question for you.
[03:12:21] Lessons learned wise.
[03:12:23] How did you manage to get your wife back?
[03:12:26] Yeah, that's a good one.
[03:12:30] So what was it?
[03:12:32] So I'm in, you took her dog.
[03:12:36] I took her dog.
[03:12:37] You're just batting like real low right now.
[03:12:40] I was so, I was so, I was so, I got no job.
[03:12:43] You're going to school.
[03:12:45] You're, I mean, you took her dog.
[03:12:47] All right, how did you manage to dig yourself out of that hole?
[03:12:50] So I was so desperate to Emily.
[03:12:52] She gave me her dog, right?
[03:12:55] So she moved down to, she moved down to South America, got remarried.
[03:13:00] Had a, had a daughter, Natalie, who, who lives with us now.
[03:13:04] No visits her father, her father's in the military in Brazil.
[03:13:09] So he's a Brazilian officer.
[03:13:11] And, you know, I mean, that's just sort of what happened at that time.
[03:13:16] But the chaos train continued a little bit for both of us.
[03:13:20] And it was, it wasn't just easy.
[03:13:23] It was just, it just wasn't easy.
[03:13:26] And you know, I'm driving around with a dog to 48 states trying to start a backpack business
[03:13:31] good luck, by the way.
[03:13:33] It against all odds.
[03:13:34] You know, and, you know, she fell in love, got remarried and had Natalie, who is just
[03:13:40] the world's greatest big sister.
[03:13:41] Now, because we have two other boys, or two boys, I should say, Jack and Ryan.
[03:13:47] But so how did we get back together?
[03:13:49] You know, we just kind of stayed in touch.
[03:13:52] We were always friends.
[03:13:55] And it wasn't some kind of, what happens when you make decisions in the moment is that
[03:14:03] when there are big decisions and there are forks in the road and you go left or you go
[03:14:11] right or one of you goes left and one of you goes right.
[03:14:13] I mean, eventually you will get perspective on your own decisions.
[03:14:18] And you have to come to terms with that.
[03:14:21] And the thing that I really try to avoid in life at all costs are regrets.
[03:14:30] And I just, I don't, I think that's what I'm talking about.
[03:14:33] If think about what I regret this with either my time or my effort or energy, whatever,
[03:14:40] before, this is fast-forwarding to just sort of business or life or whatever decisions.
[03:14:45] But at that time, you know, I don't know.
[03:14:46] I really don't know what it was.
[03:14:48] I remember she wanted to see Java because she was back in America one time.
[03:14:53] So we met and I saw her and we had Java and it's like, we're crying again.
[03:14:59] I mean, it's just the love never really dies.
[03:15:05] I mean, you you fall in love with someone.
[03:15:07] I hear these stories, you know, you love someone and then you hate them because whatever.
[03:15:12] I'm, that's not my story, right?
[03:15:15] My story is we were really good friends for a really long time.
[03:15:20] And we hope that our strategy of having this fairytale ending skip to the end with these
[03:15:27] chaotic, crazy lives, which then the plane was I was going to join the agency where we're
[03:15:31] going to be a tandem couple and the agency.
[03:15:34] And that didn't happen, of course, right?
[03:15:37] But we stayed in touch, Soljava.
[03:15:39] And then at some point, she was, she sent me a handwritten letter, which is a really, you
[03:15:46] know, it's one of those things that if you want to get someone's attention in a very
[03:15:50] busy world, send them something that you've actually written by hand, it implies a degree
[03:15:57] of time and thoughtfulness and all these things.
[03:16:01] And so we traded a couple notes.
[03:16:02] It's not like if it's just radio silence, but she sent me a note and it was just like
[03:16:07] I'm moving back to America and I would love to see you.
[03:16:12] There's probably more to it.
[03:16:13] I don't want to.
[03:16:14] You know, it was, it was complicated.
[03:16:18] But you know, I mean, and then we saw each other and it just kind of clicked again.
[03:16:24] Like the love came back and the love never left, but it was, I don't know, Jocca was just
[03:16:33] magic.
[03:16:34] It was just magic.
[03:16:36] And it's just one of those things where the surprising thing I guess was that, you know,
[03:16:45] she had gotten remarried and she got divorced, right?
[03:16:47] And then we got back together and, you know, I had not moved on.
[03:16:51] I mean, I had dated other people and I wasn't really ready to really move on.
[03:16:58] I had not gotten over her by any stretch.
[03:17:00] And so that kind of held me back in lots of other things, especially the love department
[03:17:06] of life.
[03:17:08] But I also was very skeptical.
[03:17:11] I didn't really want to just throw myself back into what our relationship was in 2008
[03:17:18] in 2009.
[03:17:21] So it took time after that.
[03:17:24] It was actually work.
[03:17:27] We had to talk about stuff and get stuff out there, imagine that.
[03:17:30] Like if you're going to get remarried to your ex-wife, you got some work to do, right?
[03:17:35] And you know, now we have two boys and she works at GoRuck as well.
[03:17:41] It's not some perfect life that everyone thinks that everyone else has because nothing
[03:17:48] is perfect.
[03:17:49] But we're really happy.
[03:17:52] Awesome.
[03:17:54] One last thing I wanted to ask you about is the, I know you and I kind of linked up to
[03:17:59] begin with through Ryan Manion and the Travis Manion Foundation.
[03:18:05] What's, how are you tied in to supporting that unbelievable cause in memory of Travis?
[03:18:15] Yeah, so that was one of those situations.
[03:18:18] It was one of the easiest, some things in life are really hard and you've got to do them.
[03:18:23] Some things that are hard in life you should not do cause there's probably other things
[03:18:26] that you could spend more time on.
[03:18:28] This was one of those situations where they do at their core the very same thing in so
[03:18:35] many ways, right?
[03:18:36] They empower veterans to give back, right?
[03:18:39] They operate from this assumption of we, we owe.
[03:18:42] We owe and let's be servant leaders and let's get out into the community.
[03:18:45] Let's be more physically active, let's build communities.
[03:18:48] Let's show the next generation what our values are and let's allow them and afford them
[03:18:56] the opportunity to become servant leaders themselves.
[03:18:59] And so our community basically linked us up.
[03:19:02] I mean there was a Heather who works at Travis Manion Foundation was doing GoRuck events
[03:19:10] and TMF for Travis Manion Foundation was putting on these heroes runs over 9-11 every
[03:19:16] year to get people and bring them together in honor of their cause, right?
[03:19:24] And so it just kind of happened.
[03:19:28] I mean the communities they're doing service projects, we have communities the communities
[03:19:31] just sort of aligned and then we partnered officially on these 9-11 heroes runs and turn
[03:19:36] them into rocks or runs or rocks, whatever.
[03:19:40] But it's about bringing people together and raising awareness and spreading goodwill around
[03:19:48] the veteran space.
[03:19:49] And so we had been working together as partners on this stuff and service stuff at the
[03:19:54] community level, ground up long before I'd ever met Ryan.
[03:19:59] So since then I've gotten to spend a lot of time with her.
[03:20:04] We just rocked the Marine Corps of Marathon together which was awesome.
[03:20:07] Yeah, it was great.
[03:20:09] You spend some time with someone doing something hard, you get to know them and it's
[03:20:12] great.
[03:20:13] You develop a bond and that's, you can't get it if you don't do something hard to together.
[03:20:19] So that was great and we just share a lot of the same values and so you know they're
[03:20:24] part of our vessel for fundraising and for getting people out and getting people active
[03:20:30] and aligning around a cause.
[03:20:31] And one of the things that I love about her story and the story of Travis Manion Foundation
[03:20:38] is that she goes Travis would hate the fact that we've called this organization the
[03:20:45] Travis Manion Foundation because you know, she's like, it's not about me, right?
[03:20:50] That's the sort of way of life that you live and you really do live it when you serve
[03:20:55] in these kinds of communities in the military.
[03:20:59] And so there are other things that they say of these last five words that he said before
[03:21:05] his or these five words he said before he deployed on his last deployment to Iraq was
[03:21:10] if not me even who.
[03:21:12] And you know, the way he said it, it wasn't really a question.
[03:21:16] It was just, I'm going to go because this is what I'm trying to do and if not me then
[03:21:20] they're going to send someone else.
[03:21:22] That's why I'm going.
[03:21:23] This is my mission America sending me and these are the values I hold dear.
[03:21:27] I'm going to go forth and go.
[03:21:30] And so my, I've kind of the idea that now his kind of cross to bear if you will sit
[03:21:36] up talking to the big guy upstairs is if not me then who, at minus ball be my name on the
[03:21:41] organization to represent this sort of veteran space and trying to get more of us out there
[03:21:48] to raise awareness and to really empower the next generation as well.
[03:21:52] And so we're just so aligned that it's such an easy rewarding partnership for us.
[03:21:59] Yeah, awesome.
[03:22:00] No, it's just so awesome to have Ryan on this podcast and hear everything about the
[03:22:07] foundation, what they're doing.
[03:22:09] I did like a video that they present to schools for kids, you know, talking about discipline
[03:22:15] and integrity and leadership.
[03:22:17] And so they're just getting the word out there and I appreciate that you guys are helping
[03:22:22] spread that word as well.
[03:22:23] So that's awesome.
[03:22:26] Well, we're looking at a little over three hours right now.
[03:22:32] You made this really easy.
[03:22:34] The website is go rock.com.
[03:22:36] Exactly.
[03:22:37] The Facebook, the Twitter, the Instagram, the YouTube channel, it's all at go rock and
[03:22:44] people can find you, people can participate in these thousand events you got coming up.
[03:22:48] What do they do just go on where do you sign up?
[03:22:52] So it's also on the website.
[03:22:57] You'll see a lot of gear and stuff as well.
[03:22:59] That's the other part of what we do.
[03:23:01] It's kind of complicated like that.
[03:23:03] It's really like a fitness thing with backpacks though.
[03:23:06] We manufacture gear.
[03:23:07] You've got this rucksack or this backpack.
[03:23:09] You can do a lot with it.
[03:23:11] So yeah, there's a lot of events and nobody wanted the name go rock except for us.
[03:23:18] So all of our social media stuff is go rock.
[03:23:20] Oh yeah, yeah, that's that.
[03:23:22] That's exactly.
[03:23:23] Except there was this Hungarian photographer early on whose name was like go rock.
[03:23:29] Go rock.
[03:23:30] And so he had the Twitter handle and I pestered him forever and eventually he canceled
[03:23:36] his account and then that triggered all these other things.
[03:23:39] Eventually we claimed it.
[03:23:40] We're not hugely on the Twitter space, but it's everything's go rock.
[03:23:43] That's awesome.
[03:23:44] Ecker, you got anything?
[03:23:48] Yeah, what kind of dog is job?
[03:23:50] So job was a chocolate lab.
[03:23:53] He passed away in 2013.
[03:23:55] It was one of those situations where we had this really big event.
[03:24:00] We'd done an obstacle course race out in Virginia, like a confidence course.
[03:24:06] I mean, wood trees with nets and stuff and you know, balance walks and all this stuff.
[03:24:13] And it was our first venture into that as a way to get people out there.
[03:24:17] I mean, I'd never doing that again because it was just too labor intensive.
[03:24:21] But Java got really sick right before that and spent a lot of time and I slept on the floor
[03:24:28] at the vet's office in Northern Virginia for like two weeks.
[03:24:34] It became really good friends with Heather who was the veterinarian.
[03:24:36] They're still a really close personal friend of mine.
[03:24:40] But he was basically diagnosed as bi-exclusion.
[03:24:44] It just got some autoimmune disease like Lupus and I just watched him with her away to nothing.
[03:24:49] And so that's the sad part of the story.
[03:24:52] It comes to all of us.
[03:24:53] You just have to kind of deal with it.
[03:24:57] And then we got monster.
[03:24:58] So if you go to our site or you see pictures now, most of them are of monster.
[03:25:02] He's also an English chocolate lab.
[03:25:04] So he's got this kind of blockhead.
[03:25:06] And those two dogs they look kind of similar.
[03:25:08] But monster is literally the nicest dog ever.
[03:25:11] I mean Java was kind of had those fangs at the ready and the great protector.
[03:25:15] And monster just he'll roll over on his back with all four paws in the air and just
[03:25:22] no predator to that dog exists whatsoever.
[03:25:26] And life's a funny place like that sometimes.
[03:25:29] They're both great.
[03:25:30] They're just complete opposite.
[03:25:33] Right all.
[03:25:34] Anything else echo?
[03:25:35] No man.
[03:25:36] That's it.
[03:25:37] Good to meet you.
[03:25:38] Thanks so much for having me guys.
[03:25:39] I've been this been fun.
[03:25:40] Yeah man, anything else?
[03:25:42] Any closing thoughts?
[03:25:43] Anything we missed.
[03:25:44] I least on this round.
[03:25:46] You tell me you got any big advice for me?
[03:25:49] I'm sure you dug in to go rock and you've seen sort of our stuff with a fresh set of
[03:25:53] eyes.
[03:25:54] You do a lot of business consulting.
[03:25:56] You solve a lot of problems.
[03:25:57] You've seen a lot of leaders along the way.
[03:25:59] I mean, what do you see of what we're doing and what are we doing well and what could
[03:26:03] be doing better?
[03:26:04] I think what you're doing well and what I'm glad that you already figured out is like
[03:26:08] you're focused on helping people out and you're exposing them to, I don't know if I
[03:26:14] want to call it a form of exercise because it's really a lot more than that.
[03:26:18] You know, going out on a rough hump like I said, I've talked about it before.
[03:26:21] It had a big impact on my life.
[03:26:23] It has a big impact on the way.
[03:26:24] I think about things in general.
[03:26:27] So I think the fact that you're taking something that helped you and is opening the doors
[03:26:32] to a lot of people.
[03:26:33] I don't think there's a better business plan than that man.
[03:26:35] So keep getting after it is what I always say.
[03:26:38] All right.
[03:26:39] We'll keep getting after it.
[03:26:40] Thanks.
[03:26:41] Thanks for helping out the TMF, the Travis, Travis, Manion, Foundation.
[03:26:45] That's awesome.
[03:26:48] Of course, thanks for your service man.
[03:26:50] I appreciate it.
[03:26:51] Likewise, Jocca.
[03:26:52] Thanks for what you're doing.
[03:26:53] We'll talk to you later.
[03:26:55] And with that, Jason has left the building and while Jason has left the building, I'm
[03:27:04] going to be entering.
[03:27:05] Some buildings around America, speaking to people.
[03:27:11] Yes, going on tour.
[03:27:15] All right, live gigs.
[03:27:17] If you want to come, January 6, Washington, DC, January 11, Austin, already sold out.
[03:27:25] Sorry, January 16, New York, January 20th, LA, January 27th.
[03:27:32] And then January 27th, Seattle, and January 28th, San Fran, Cisco.
[03:27:40] So looking at the maps of the assorted event venues, they are one in sold out.
[03:27:53] Like I said, Austin, the other ones are in the process of selling out.
[03:27:59] So if you want to come, jump on there, go to joccolive.com and get yourself some tickets
[03:28:07] to come, hang out.
[03:28:09] I'm going to talk.
[03:28:12] Echo is going to be there.
[03:28:13] Some of them.
[03:28:14] I think that's what we're planning.
[03:28:15] Yeah, we're sorting that out.
[03:28:17] Maybe all of them.
[03:28:18] Maybe some of them.
[03:28:20] Not none of them.
[03:28:24] For people that like Echo, hopefully it's one of the ones that you're going to.
[03:28:28] For those people that don't like Echo, there are people out there like that.
[03:28:33] I believe so, yes.
[03:28:35] If you don't like Echo, well, you're all right.
[03:28:38] You can still come.
[03:28:43] And all right.
[03:28:44] So we talked a lot about rocking, which we've talked about before, certainly a good way
[03:28:49] to make yourself better.
[03:28:52] Not the only way.
[03:28:53] There are some other ways to make yourself better.
[03:28:55] There's ways to provide yourself support while you're actually supporting what we're
[03:29:02] doing here.
[03:29:03] Kind of this whole thing.
[03:29:05] Yeah, it's true.
[03:29:06] Echo Charles.
[03:29:07] Hey, you know how.
[03:29:08] Rocking.
[03:29:09] Like, you know what I think about rocking is in the airport.
[03:29:11] To me, when I think of rocking and you, I think you have no idea what this is.
[03:29:16] Just like, do.
[03:29:17] Because my camera bag is pretty heavy and then my computer bag is pretty heavy.
[03:29:22] It's heavy and then we're going to compute a bag.
[03:29:24] Well, my computer is kind of heavy.
[03:29:25] Because big.
[03:29:26] Even though it only has four terabyte drive.
[03:29:28] Yes.
[03:29:29] Yeah.
[03:29:30] Week.
[03:29:31] Anyway, that's still a heavy computer for I'm saying.
[03:29:34] So when you carry the camera bag and the computer bag when you travel, you walk from terminal
[03:29:38] to terminal, going in, you know, to all these different gates.
[03:29:42] This is it.
[03:29:43] You basically ran through the special forces.
[03:29:44] Good course.
[03:29:45] This is what I'm hearing.
[03:29:46] Pretty much.
[03:29:47] It's what I'm saying.
[03:29:48] That's what I'm hearing.
[03:29:49] And, hey, man, I don't know how a real rock feels.
[03:29:54] I don't.
[03:29:55] I was thinking, like, you'd have no idea what we're talking about.
[03:29:57] We might as well be talking about, you know, walking around on Mars in low gravity or
[03:30:04] whatever gravity they have on Mars.
[03:30:06] Yeah.
[03:30:07] So I don't know.
[03:30:08] I'll walk around on the moon with low gravity.
[03:30:09] Like, this is, I can imagine what it's like, but I have no idea.
[03:30:11] I disagree.
[03:30:12] Because when I walk around with that, it's like a little, like, workout.
[03:30:15] So they don't want to do this.
[03:30:16] So I was right.
[03:30:17] You kind of know what it's like.
[03:30:18] It's just my mind, like, where it's like, hey, this isn't really a workout.
[03:30:22] It's a workout, but it's not the workout.
[03:30:24] Echo Charles special forces to push the elevator via carry on luggage.
[03:30:31] Yes, sir.
[03:30:32] And it's very true.
[03:30:34] Because I'm just trying to get from point A to point B.
[03:30:37] Are you going to start a company called GoLugged?
[03:30:39] Who are you?
[03:30:41] Go carry luggage around an airport for a workout?
[03:30:44] Anyway.
[03:30:45] This one.
[03:30:46] I know exactly what's going on.
[03:30:48] But it's exactly.
[03:30:49] Exactly.
[03:30:50] You say you know exactly what's going on.
[03:30:51] Well, even that exactly.
[03:30:52] But it's like, you know, like that you could, you could isolate that as a work.
[03:30:57] Because like when he's talking, oh, yes, actually I do know what's going on.
[03:31:00] Because when he explained how it feels to take off like the rocks back when you're done,
[03:31:04] I was like, bro, you're talking about me.
[03:31:05] You're talking about me when you get.
[03:31:07] So you were, you were a backpack.
[03:31:10] Yes, sir.
[03:31:11] For, let's call it seven minutes as you get through there.
[03:31:15] And then you finally get after that treacherous journey.
[03:31:19] You get to your first class seat on the airplane.
[03:31:23] You get to unload that burden.
[03:31:25] Oh, yeah.
[03:31:26] You feel like you'd go back to your job.
[03:31:27] And then the girl comes over and says, would you like a champagne?
[03:31:30] Sure.
[03:31:31] No, man.
[03:31:32] I'm too busy rocking.
[03:31:33] So you know, basically, right.
[03:31:34] I think I think that's the SFQ course.
[03:31:36] It's the same thing.
[03:31:37] I think that's Ranger School.
[03:31:38] You just completed.
[03:31:39] Anyway, I'm doing you, Jitsu.
[03:31:41] I don't know what you changed the subject.
[03:31:43] Well, that's all.
[03:31:45] And sometimes I'll do it with a rock sack on.
[03:31:48] You do Jitsu with a rock sack on.
[03:31:49] If you had a rock sack on, did you do it?
[03:31:51] If you, if the rock sack was like stream lined, I don't
[03:31:55] know like how, but I mean, they get, there's varying levels of bulk.
[03:31:58] Right.
[03:31:59] I mean, this levels.
[03:32:00] Yeah.
[03:32:01] But if you had a stream lined, rock sack, do you
[03:32:03] do you do to might, it might benefit you?
[03:32:05] Because you get used to the weight?
[03:32:07] You do, you see the weight, sure.
[03:32:08] But no, no, no, no, as far as like performance goes because you'd be heavier on
[03:32:11] them to go, like they couldn't really stay on your back.
[03:32:16] You see what I'm saying?
[03:32:17] Sure.
[03:32:18] Yeah, it's kind of unrealistic.
[03:32:20] But the last, I do do Jitsu.
[03:32:22] And you know, I don't wear a rock sack most of the time, I wear a
[03:32:25] gear.
[03:32:26] Some of the time.
[03:32:27] How about I?
[03:32:28] Where do you get your gear from?
[03:32:29] Origin, so you got origin made.com.
[03:32:30] What is important about origin, why?
[03:32:33] Well, depends on who you are.
[03:32:35] But in my opinion, what significant and significantly important is that
[03:32:40] they're made in America.
[03:32:44] Okay, the main America sounds cool, I appreciate it.
[03:32:48] But what if we want high quality?
[03:32:50] Yes, same deal.
[03:32:51] So I was going to say the second most significant thing is the main American, the high
[03:32:55] quality, that's the first most significant thing.
[03:32:57] That's what I was going to say.
[03:33:00] So origin made.com, get your gear, get your rash guards, get your t-shirts, and by
[03:33:06] the way, since we can't walk around America, wearing gear, pants, you can get a pair
[03:33:14] of origin jeans.
[03:33:15] Same deal, made in America, from the materials, raw materials, raw materials, right?
[03:33:23] Yeah, like the cotton.
[03:33:24] What?
[03:33:25] The cotton.
[03:33:26] Whatever, you were talking to somebody and you said it like the, you said cotton to
[03:33:33] to, to, no, no, you were, I don't know if you're imitating me.
[03:33:37] I was 100% because otherwise they were not f-t-s.
[03:33:40] No, I was not f-t-s.
[03:33:41] But it wasn't cotton, it was but it, you said but the same thing.
[03:33:44] I'm just doing that, I'm just imitating you.
[03:33:47] Whatever, that's your jam now.
[03:33:49] So go ahead, run with it, I think.
[03:33:51] Anyway, jeans, yes, good jeans too.
[03:33:54] Not just some red, like, junk jeans, they're good.
[03:33:57] Turn them inside out like pizzas and look at the quality on the inside.
[03:34:00] These aren't normal jeans, these are the best jeans in the world.
[03:34:03] That's, that's where I'm going to say.
[03:34:04] Okay.
[03:34:05] And also we have a lighter weight jeans that are out right now.
[03:34:10] These are close to being out.
[03:34:12] They're cold.
[03:34:13] They're not the 68.
[03:34:14] But I have them, they're out for me, they've been out for a while.
[03:34:17] So they're one pair out there.
[03:34:18] No, no, they're, they're in production for sure.
[03:34:21] That's 100%.
[03:34:22] So if you want to get a pair that's a little lighter weight, it's weird too, right?
[03:34:27] Because here I am, Mr. Heavyweight hoodie.
[03:34:30] Sure.
[03:34:31] But I like lightweight jeans.
[03:34:32] I guess that's the way things are good.
[03:34:33] Shake out sometimes.
[03:34:34] The only times I've been cold, how many times I've ever been in my life, said,
[03:34:39] Oh, my legs are cold.
[03:34:41] I don't know.
[03:34:42] I'm zero.
[03:34:43] Never.
[03:34:45] All right.
[03:34:46] Well, yeah.
[03:34:47] I mean, it kind of makes sense if you look at it practically because if you're going
[03:34:50] to be in a situation where the weather and the temperature is this thing, you're not going
[03:34:54] to be like, yeah, let me get my heavyweight clothes, but not my pants.
[03:34:58] Like it just doesn't make sense like that, seem sane.
[03:35:01] So anytime where it's like a temperature dictated scenario, you never really have the opportunity
[03:35:09] to have your legs cold.
[03:35:10] Seems sane.
[03:35:11] Hmm, sure.
[03:35:12] Like if you're going to mind it, yeah.
[03:35:14] Point taken.
[03:35:15] Point taken.
[03:35:16] Yeah, it's going to top.
[03:35:17] So it's like cool.
[03:35:18] That's cool and everything, but.
[03:35:19] So I really didn't say much.
[03:35:21] You didn't say much, I agree.
[03:35:22] Well, we got lightweight jeans, Delta 68 named after my four fathers and the
[03:35:28] Seal teams who wore jeans in the maycon, Delta, and now I'm also supplements by the way.
[03:35:36] Which I did, I did the jeans, but until they come out,
[03:35:39] you know, I can't get too emotionally moved by it.
[03:35:44] Unless supplements I can because these supplements are, as it turns out, the most important
[03:35:48] supplements that there are for your joints, joint warfare and superkrill oil, cold war by the way,
[03:35:57] which is really put it in work recently.
[03:36:00] My son is sick, so you know, I'm using this a lot.
[03:36:04] They're called war to prevent and head off any sicknesses that might be coming your way.
[03:36:10] Immunity supplement.
[03:36:11] Yes.
[03:36:12] As it were.
[03:36:13] Also, mock additional protein in the form of a dessert.
[03:36:16] Just stick with that one.
[03:36:18] Ready to drink discipline go in a can.
[03:36:24] Tropic Thunder.
[03:36:27] Citrus.
[03:36:28] We got that's kind of mine.
[03:36:29] My go to is psychocetrus.
[03:36:31] It's sort of like a lemon lime, tropic thunder's kind of like a pineapple coconut.
[03:36:37] And then of course we have dac savage.
[03:36:40] Is that your personal favorite?
[03:36:42] A little bit, but yes.
[03:36:43] So there's not a huge margin of favor to his close close close.
[03:36:47] Did you see Dakota posted on his Instagram account, which I know you refer to that as the
[03:36:53] video.
[03:37:03] But he posted like he just got, I don't know, like an entire palette of dac savage to his house.
[03:37:06] Because Dakota's not playing around.
[03:37:08] But yeah, yeah, first and then close second is a tropical.
[03:37:12] I don't forget about jocquawaiti.
[03:37:14] If you need to improve your deadlift.
[03:37:16] I mean, yeah, taste good.
[03:37:18] Yeah, it's certified organic.
[03:37:19] Yeah, it's got a little caffeine.
[03:37:21] But let's face it. You're getting that for that 8,000 pound deadlift.
[03:37:24] Gears, tromb.
[03:37:25] And strawberry and chocolate.
[03:37:27] Warrior kid mook.
[03:37:29] Oh, what if you came home and you're like, oh, well, what do you want to give your kid to eat right now?
[03:37:35] How about poison?
[03:37:36] No, no, no poison.
[03:37:37] No one says that.
[03:37:38] And yet they give their kids sugar, filled, desserts, treats, snacks.
[03:37:45] Thontions.
[03:37:46] Whatever those are.
[03:37:48] Thontions.
[03:37:49] I kind of do, but I don't think I liked them.
[03:37:51] For real. Yeah, they were kind of, that was like a love hates scenario for sure.
[03:37:55] Yeah. Well, anyways, don't give your kids any of that stuff.
[03:37:58] Wouldn't want something tasty.
[03:37:59] Give them some warrior kid mook.
[03:38:01] Also, jocquawaiti store. It's called jocquaw store.
[03:38:05] Jocquaw store.com.
[03:38:06] JP Denel.
[03:38:07] Shout out, by the way.
[03:38:09] He was, well, you know, doing his workout.
[03:38:13] Apparently he posted a picture of postwork out.
[03:38:16] Posted a picture of postwork out.
[03:38:18] Mm-hmm.
[03:38:19] Picture.
[03:38:21] Waring one of the mini shirts.
[03:38:24] Oh, the new.
[03:38:26] He was a new deaf shirt.
[03:38:27] There was the new deaf shirts.
[03:38:28] And there was also the light weight hoodie scenario.
[03:38:31] So he's just getting after him.
[03:38:33] He's getting after him.
[03:38:34] And represents.
[03:38:35] Wait, is he on the path?
[03:38:36] He's on the path.
[03:38:37] So he's representing wallets on the path.
[03:38:39] What?
[03:38:40] Exactly.
[03:38:41] What are you doing?
[03:38:42] That is JP.
[03:38:43] But someone did ask, hey, where do you get that?
[03:38:45] So, you know, we said every week, sure.
[03:38:49] I'm saying it.
[03:38:50] Jocquaw store.
[03:38:51] Jocquaw store.com.
[03:38:52] So you can get the stuff to represent while you're on the path.
[03:38:55] He sure.
[03:38:56] Rashcards, truckers hats.
[03:39:00] Flex, fit hats.
[03:39:01] Flex, fit.
[03:39:02] If that's your thing.
[03:39:03] Beenies.
[03:39:04] Beenies.
[03:39:05] Oudies.
[03:39:06] Oudies.
[03:39:06] Light weight.
[03:39:07] And heavy.
[03:39:08] Mm-hmm.
[03:39:09] Check.
[03:39:10] Depends on what you mean by heavy.
[03:39:11] Anyway, a lot of cool stuff on there.
[03:39:13] Check it out.
[03:39:14] Like something gets something.
[03:39:15] There's women's stuff on there too.
[03:39:16] And for the warrior kids.
[03:39:18] Oh, yeah.
[03:39:19] Everything.
[03:39:20] Yeah.
[03:39:21] Ratschristen is tight.
[03:39:22] How stoked are you in your little kid opens up a warrior kid package.
[03:39:24] And it's a t-shirt for your kids walking around school representing.
[03:39:27] Yeah.
[03:39:28] Your kids on the path represent things while it's on the path.
[03:39:30] Oh, yeah.
[03:39:31] Or she's in the path.
[03:39:32] Oh, yeah.
[03:39:33] Big 10.
[03:39:34] So yeah.
[03:39:35] All that stuff.
[03:39:35] Jocquaw store.com.
[03:39:36] Also, you want to subscribe to the podcast or I should say,
[03:39:38] if you want to subscribe to the podcast, go ahead and do so.
[03:39:41] I'm not like, I'm not going to sit here.
[03:39:43] You don't think that someone's on podcast 208.
[03:39:47] And they've, there's for the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of us talking.
[03:39:51] And you think they didn't get to the end and like hit subscribe.
[03:39:54] Yeah.
[03:39:55] Um, I don't know, but it's possible or it's possible that maybe someone just had stumbled upon podcasts in general.
[03:40:04] Oh, you see.
[03:40:05] Yep.
[03:40:06] Is that possible?
[03:40:07] I sat next to a woman on the plane.
[03:40:09] Sure.
[03:40:10] And she was older than me.
[03:40:12] And she asked me something and somehow she asked what I was doing because I was like preparing something.
[03:40:19] Sure.
[03:40:20] And I said, all I'm writing this for a podcast and she goes, oh, and I said,
[03:40:24] Do you know what podcast are?
[03:40:26] She did like that.
[03:40:28] I said that.
[03:40:29] Did she say, of course?
[03:40:31] She goes, oh, which she goes, of course.
[03:40:33] I know what a podcast is.
[03:40:34] She said, I'm not that old.
[03:40:37] And I said, I know you're not.
[03:40:39] I said, but a lot of people don't know.
[03:40:40] And by the way, I said, I'm probably older than you.
[03:40:43] And she said, there's zero chance that you're older than me.
[03:40:46] Uh-huh.
[03:40:47] But where do you?
[03:40:48] No, I was not.
[03:40:49] Or your scared task.
[03:40:51] Uh, actually, she told me her age.
[03:40:54] And she's older than me.
[03:40:56] She was older than me.
[03:40:57] All right. Well, there you go.
[03:40:58] But here's the thing.
[03:40:59] You really didn't gain much information because it's not like you.
[03:41:01] You said, you know, a podcast are.
[03:41:03] You gotta ask her.
[03:41:04] Do you know whether or not to subscribe?
[03:41:06] Do you know that it's possible to subscribe to podcast?
[03:41:08] So that you know what I did? I took her phone.
[03:41:11] And I showed her, darkle podcast.
[03:41:14] I was like, you're running out.
[03:41:15] And I press subscribe for her.
[03:41:17] Because she's already in the kind of in the game.
[03:41:19] Yeah. She was interested in what was happening.
[03:41:21] Yeah, man.
[03:41:22] Now she's in the game fully.
[03:41:23] And either way, whether she knew the subscriber not, she subscribed.
[03:41:26] But the question still remains.
[03:41:29] Does everyone know about podcast and the subscription option?
[03:41:33] If you don't know to subscribe, then subscribe.
[03:41:35] And also, you may not have been aware because this was probably the worst launch in the
[03:41:40] history of launches randomly.
[03:41:42] Maybe it was a big effort to make impact in the world.
[03:41:47] We have another podcast, which is called a grounded.
[03:41:49] And we talk about casual things of life, including Jiu Jitsu and not so casual things.
[03:41:54] But it's a little bit not quite as heavy or structured or.
[03:42:00] Yeah, as this podcast, it's called the grounded podcast.
[03:42:04] You can subscribe to that one too.
[03:42:06] You can also subscribe to War Your Kid podcast.
[03:42:09] There's going to be some new ones coming out.
[03:42:11] It's weird.
[03:42:12] The worst was in that kid sent me a letter that said,
[03:42:15] I'm wondering why you don't make more podcast.
[03:42:18] That one hit me right.
[03:42:19] It's hard.
[03:42:20] Yeah.
[03:42:21] And don't forget about War Your Kid soap.
[03:42:23] Go to IrishOxRanch.com.
[03:42:26] Eden is up there making soap.
[03:42:28] And we got a new soap coming out by the way.
[03:42:30] What's going to be out there?
[03:42:31] You want to know what it's called?
[03:42:32] Yes, sir.
[03:42:33] It's called killer soap.
[03:42:35] It's called killer soap.
[03:42:38] Is it anti-bacterial or anti-bacterial?
[03:42:40] Anti-bacterial?
[03:42:41] Anti-bacterial?
[03:42:41] My Crombrial?
[03:42:43] Yeah.
[03:42:44] T-tree oils.
[03:42:45] See, that's good.
[03:42:46] Activated charcoal.
[03:42:48] So it's going to be coming out to check out that killer soap.
[03:42:52] That's a good one, actually.
[03:42:53] This is make me a marketing genius as the question.
[03:42:56] Kind of.
[03:42:57] You're kind of looking like it was a marketing genius, bro.
[03:42:59] I think it's a good product.
[03:43:00] We'll say that. You conveyed that message very clearly.
[03:43:03] So yeah, I guess so.
[03:43:04] Genius.
[03:43:05] Well, you know, maybe you know.
[03:43:06] No.
[03:43:07] What would you have called it?
[03:43:08] Something lame is what I'm feeling.
[03:43:11] Anyway.
[03:43:13] We have a YouTube channel.
[03:43:15] How about that?
[03:43:16] That's marketing genius.
[03:43:17] Yes, what?
[03:43:18] YouTube channel.
[03:43:19] Videos of the thing.
[03:43:20] No, it's right.
[03:43:21] Marketing guy.
[03:43:22] Right.
[03:43:22] Video.
[03:43:23] It's a good addition.
[03:43:24] For instance, if someone's listening to this podcast,
[03:43:26] and they want to see what Jason looks like.
[03:43:28] They can go on there and they can see what Jason looks like.
[03:43:31] They can also see what I look like.
[03:43:32] And in fact, they can see what you look like.
[03:43:34] Sure.
[03:43:35] Which most people don't think you look like what you sound like.
[03:43:38] That's what I've heard.
[03:43:40] That's the consensus.
[03:43:41] Yeah.
[03:43:41] Don't be worried about it, bro.
[03:43:43] I'm not worried.
[03:43:44] All good.
[03:43:45] Wait.
[03:43:46] Would you prefer to have the current scenario, which is you sound
[03:43:51] small, weak in frail.
[03:43:55] And then you're actually kind of jacked.
[03:43:58] Would your brother sound like this is your coach,
[03:44:00] but then you were skinny and weak.
[03:44:02] Yeah.
[03:44:03] Besides your knees.
[03:44:04] Well, I think the answer is obvious,
[03:44:08] or would I rather look how it will look?
[03:44:12] Because this is the knock on how I sound really.
[03:44:14] So technically the dichotomy,
[03:44:16] or the other side of the dichotomy,
[03:44:18] would be like,
[03:44:19] would I rather sound?
[03:44:22] Yeah, yeah.
[03:44:23] Would you rather sound big and look small?
[03:44:26] Or look big and sound small?
[03:44:30] Because that's kind of what would you rather.
[03:44:32] You're good with where you're going.
[03:44:33] I'm good at where we're at.
[03:44:34] Yeah.
[03:44:35] Take that.
[03:44:36] You know, so yeah, YouTube.
[03:44:37] Yeah, and echo makes like videos,
[03:44:39] not just of this podcast, but also.
[03:44:42] Enhanced videos and Mikey in the Dragons,
[03:44:46] which is a children's book that I wrote that Jon Bow's
[03:44:49] acted the artwork for.
[03:44:50] We just posted the entire thing,
[03:44:53] cover the cover on YouTube,
[03:44:56] so that kids around the world can watch and learn
[03:45:01] how to overcome fear.
[03:45:03] Yeah.
[03:45:04] My kids love that video by the way.
[03:45:06] Yeah.
[03:45:07] This is an awesome, even sense before we post it.
[03:45:09] Yeah, that's good.
[03:45:10] It's very good.
[03:45:11] Psychological warfare.
[03:45:12] Got a little out-mouth in it has tracks.
[03:45:15] And if you have a little moment where you're like,
[03:45:17] man, I wish Jocker would just kind of like give me a little
[03:45:20] talk right now, get me in the game.
[03:45:23] That's what it is.
[03:45:24] You think you're going to not,
[03:45:26] you think you're not going to work out.
[03:45:27] You think you're going to lay in bed.
[03:45:28] You think you're going to grab all of that, don't I?
[03:45:31] No, I'm going to stop you.
[03:45:32] Just press play on your, on your,
[03:45:34] listening device.
[03:45:37] And listen to that MP3.
[03:45:38] You can get that on an MP3 dealer.
[03:45:41] iTunes, Google Play Stitcher, whatever,
[03:45:44] whatever, leave reviews.
[03:45:47] Actually, it's not Stitcher.
[03:45:48] It's iTunes, Google Play.
[03:45:49] Whatever, MP3 platforms don't forget about
[03:45:51] Flipside Canvas.
[03:45:52] Maybe you need a visual kind of a visual reinforcement of the path.
[03:45:58] Cool.
[03:45:58] Go to flipside Canvas.com, which is run by my brother Dakota Meyer.
[03:46:02] And you can get yourself some graphic representation of what we call the path.
[03:46:11] Yes, sir.
[03:46:12] You can see that all of this is going to be a real problem.
[03:46:16] And you know, keep you on it.
[03:46:18] Got some books.
[03:46:19] Got leadership strategy and tactics field manual.
[03:46:21] Preorder it now.
[03:46:23] So that the publisher knows how many to print because otherwise,
[03:46:27] they're over there,
[03:46:28] rounded down.
[03:46:30] Right?
[03:46:30] They're like, well, we probably will get away with this.
[03:46:32] No, they don't understand.
[03:46:35] Let them understand.
[03:46:37] Preorder it.
[03:46:38] Get one for you.
[03:46:40] get one for each of the people on your team, get one for your
[03:46:44] bug, get some leadership strategy and tactics, feel manual.
[03:46:48] All the little questions that we have about leadership are in here,
[03:46:52] indexed heavily so you can look through the index,
[03:46:55] making an ultimatum as the boss.
[03:46:58] Hmm, making an ultimatum as a subordinate.
[03:47:02] Okay, those are interesting, right?
[03:47:05] Dealing with an ultimatum placed on you.
[03:47:09] That's these are these are important things to know and understand.
[03:47:13] Balancing praise, that sounds like a good idea.
[03:47:16] Tackfully delivering the truth.
[03:47:17] I'm just looking to giving clear guidance,
[03:47:21] keeping the troops informed.
[03:47:22] So these are all punishment.
[03:47:26] How to meet out punishment.
[03:47:31] You like that.
[03:47:31] You made that little video of this.
[03:47:33] Right.
[03:47:34] That's the for the bug.
[03:47:35] Yeah, of me saying,
[03:47:36] what do I punish people?
[03:47:39] So that's good.
[03:47:40] Leadership strategy and tactics,
[03:47:42] check it out.
[03:47:43] Way of the Warrior Kid Series 1, 2 and 3,
[03:47:45] all available.
[03:47:46] All the best books that you would have wanted when you were a kid.
[03:47:51] If I would have had these books,
[03:47:52] when I was a kid, my life would have been better.
[03:47:53] And that's a bold statement.
[03:47:55] So way of the Warrior Kid,
[03:47:57] way of the Warrior Kid, two marks mission and way of the Warrior Kid,
[03:48:00] free where there's a will get your kid on the path.
[03:48:03] Look, I know you want them on the path,
[03:48:06] but it's hard when you're a parent because your kids don't really want to listen to you.
[03:48:09] They don't.
[03:48:10] They'll listen to Uncle Jake though.
[03:48:12] For some reason, they'll listen to Uncle Jake.
[03:48:15] So get the most books and then Mikey in the Dragons.
[03:48:17] Look, cool.
[03:48:18] Watch the video.
[03:48:19] Cool.
[03:48:19] We put it on YouTube for free, obviously.
[03:48:22] But what you can do is you get your kids the book and then they can read along.
[03:48:27] And they learn to read.
[03:48:28] They learn to read while they learn to overcome fear.
[03:48:32] You're welcome.
[03:48:33] Merry Christmas.
[03:48:36] Then there's Discipline, Chris Freedom Field Manual.
[03:48:38] There's the Holiday Gift.
[03:48:39] Give the Gift of Discipline.
[03:48:42] Discipline, Chris Freedom Field Manual.
[03:48:44] The audio versions are on MP3 platforms.
[03:48:46] Then Extreme Ownership and the Diacodomy Leadership
[03:48:48] that I wrote with my brother, Dave Babin.
[03:48:51] Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.
[03:48:55] These books will show you the principles
[03:48:58] that we used on the battlefield that you can use in your business and life.
[03:49:02] Escelon Front Leadership Consultancy.
[03:49:04] We solve problems through leadership.
[03:49:07] Go to Escelonfront.com for details.
[03:49:12] EF Online.
[03:49:14] I used to be able to say to people, well, you know,
[03:49:16] got some good leadership lessons.
[03:49:17] Go, oh, you got some questions about Extreme Ownership.
[03:49:20] Oh, you got some, oh, cool.
[03:49:21] Here, go to, you know, go listen to my podcast.
[03:49:26] And like, okay, cool.
[03:49:27] What does that look like now?
[03:49:28] I say go listen to the podcast and what does that turn into?
[03:49:30] It turns into 700 hours of training for your people,
[03:49:36] not always the most efficient way.
[03:49:38] It's a good, whatever, doctorate level.
[03:49:43] But let's get this thing concise.
[03:49:45] That's what EF Online is.
[03:49:46] EF Online is boom, here you go.
[03:49:48] Here's some pragmatic training information for you and your team.
[03:49:51] You can get on there.
[03:49:52] You can put in leadership situations where you have to make decisions.
[03:49:57] It's interactive. It's entertaining.
[03:50:01] You get to see the excellent front team.
[03:50:03] Put it down the word.
[03:50:05] So check out EF Online.com and then master 20, 20 dates are coming.
[03:50:10] We're actually finalizing those right now.
[03:50:11] If you want to come to a leadership event slash seminar slash conference
[03:50:17] with me and the rest of the echelon front team
[03:50:20] go to extremeownership.com.
[03:50:23] So you're aware when the details come out.
[03:50:25] And then of course now we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion.
[03:50:28] We are placing military members that have leadership skills and experience.
[03:50:34] And that understand the principles that we teach.
[03:50:38] We are placing those military personnel into civilian businesses
[03:50:42] to lead those businesses so that they can dominate their battle space.
[03:50:46] So go to EF Overwatch.com or EF Legion.com.
[03:50:50] And if you want to follow up with us,
[03:50:55] if you've got questions or answers or comments,
[03:50:58] or whatever, if you want to connect,
[03:51:02] if you want to be part of the community.
[03:51:04] No, we're not saying that.
[03:51:06] If you want to connect with us well Jason and GoRuck all channels at GoRuck.
[03:51:13] And then we are also on the in a webs on Twitter on Instagram
[03:51:18] and on this frig and bizzo.
[03:51:22] Echo is at EchoTrolls and I am at Jaco Willink.
[03:51:27] And once again thanks to Jason McCarthy for coming on the podcast and sharing his experience.
[03:51:32] And of course thanks to Jason for his service in the army and for what he is doing now.
[03:51:39] And thanks to all the men and women out there that have served and that are currently serving.
[03:51:44] Going through the long nights, the early mornings that cold the heat, the risk of life and limb.
[03:51:53] All to protect freedom and democracy.
[03:51:56] Thanks to all of you.
[03:51:58] And to those brave individuals doing that same thing here in America to keep us safe at home.
[03:52:07] Our police and law enforcement firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, dispatchers,
[03:52:12] correctional officers, border patrol, secret service and all force first responders.
[03:52:17] Thank you for what you do.
[03:52:18] And on top of those two, I want to also give credit to our intelligence community out there in America
[03:52:26] and overseas doing work to keep us safe, taking the fight to the enemy by knowing and understanding
[03:52:35] who they are and what they do.
[03:52:37] And to everyone else out there, things aren't always going to go the way that you think they will.
[03:52:48] There will be challenges and there will be obstacles and there will be unexpected problems.
[03:52:54] And you will sometimes have to carry more weight than you want to.
[03:53:00] You might have to carry more weight than you think you can.
[03:53:03] And when that happens, remember to take that weight, take it on your shoulders, stand up, put one foot
[03:53:14] in front of the other and keep getting after it.
[03:53:18] And until next time, this is echo and jocco out.