Jocko Podcast 167 w/ SEAL Master Chief, Jason Gardner: Lessons on War, Leadership, and Life (Pt.1)

this is Jocko podcast number 167 with echo Charles and me Jocko Willick good evening echo good evening beware of that trap choose dear Beowulf the better part eternal rewards do not give way to pride for a brief while your strength is in bloom but it fades quickly and soon there will follow illness or the sword to lay you low or a sudden fire or surge of water or jabbing blade or javelin from the air or repellant age your piercing eye will dim and darken and death will arrive dear warrior to sweep you away and that right there is some timeless wisdom offered by the the epic poem Beowulf the first poem in the English language of course it's Old English which is mutually unintelligible from the modern English that we speak but it has some incredible translations if you want to read it I recommend the Seamus Heaney version but regardless of the translation translation that you get the story remains as do of the lessons lessons based on the war and leadership and really human nature then we find these lessons over and over and over again throughout history and in different cultures and in different Wars and we all continue to learn everyday from history and from each other and it certainly seems that there are some principles that are universal there are some underlying unifying theories that bind together and thread through leadership and war and human nature and the more we experience in life the more clearly we can see the thread of these unifying theories I am tonight I happen to have on the podcast an individual with a lot of experience experience in war experience in leadership and experience in life and he also happens to be someone that I grew up with in the SEAL Teams who is a great friend and who just retired a couple days ago as a seal Master Chief my friend and my brother by the name of Jason Gardner Jason Jaco thanks for coming on man hey I'm really excited to be here and um it's kind of cool because I know that you listen to the podcasts and you were one of the first guys that reached out to me I don't know what number podcast it was but you reached out to me really early and said hey this is kick-ass man keep doing it and then you know as the podcast kind of spread I started hearing from more guys but that was a pretty you were that literally the first guy that reached out to me and said bro keep it going and I said cool Wilco that's awesome yeah and like iris is the one that said told me hey Jacko's got a podcast and I'm like oh okay she goes you don't know how to listen to podcasts tearfully I said no gave her my phone she got it set up it was episode six and within a week and a half because of my commute I was caught up and then just dialed in from there on out and talking about it sharing it with a lot of other guys and it's been a huge help to me that's awesome and yeah if anyone hasn't put this together yet this is iris a gardeners husband and iris is on podcast number 70 mm-hmm so if you want to listen to that you can hear us talk about you I guessed indirectly because you were still active duty in the tameless so all right let's get to your story let's talk about you okay where'd you grow up my dad was in the Marine Corps so we moved around a little bit kind of settled down up in San Clemente here in Orange County grew up up there swam played water polo did that through high school and then yeah I think started doing a martial art Clark College attempt on one of the instructors was a team guy in Vietnam order and at it back in the day you know I had no one knew what seals were and then my parents had found out that that he was a seal in Vietnam and they're like oh you know this guy was a sealing I'm like what is that and they said these guys are awesome it's really hard training their water warriors which was super appealing growing up at the beach and water polo and swimming so then I just latched on to that and that's what what I got after and enlisted right out after high school so was your dad was your dad kind of like the stereotypical marine that was just like oh no like acting like a drill starter charging no my dad my dad was super laid back easy just an easygoing good guy and he was a Jag officer in the Marine Corps so he was like an attorney but but not definitely not your stereotypical marine and at one point I was thinking about going the marine corps and he talked me out of it don't do it don't do it and he's like hey the Navy the SEAL team just closed loops or you could go to recon but at the time it wasn't closed loose so you'd go in and out in and out he goes you don't want to do that you want to do this and then yeah the nor'easter now has MARSOC which you can just go in and you can be a Special Operations guide your whole career what is closed-loop what are the meaning so what I just said about the Marine Corps looked like now you can go in the Marine Corps and you can just be in Special Operations for your whole career before you could go for what would how long of a tour where they do two or three deployments at a I think there's like a three-year tour or six years they would do to come in and then it'd have to go somewhere else they might go back to an infantry unit or something like that and that's called like a open yeah open loop meaning that you don't necessarily stay in a job and you want the whole time okay now at what point did you start listening to heavy metal punk rock and hardcore music cuz I know that's the first like connection you and I had which I don't know is there some weird sort of thing when you just like look at some other guy you know this guy's into hardcore I I mean it's not it's not like I walked up and said hey what kind of music do you like no it was just like immediate do you just know right yeah it I don't know what the bona fides are absolutely on that um yeah shoot I explored around with like a lot of different music and it just wasn't enough you know it's like oh okay well I'll listen to the doors yeah stray cats I like them for a little bit man then the and it was kind of an investment to buy an album back in those days or to find even any punk rock so I found I think like a Dead Kennedys album fresh fruit for rotting vegetables that was kind of like my gateway drug and then I'm like oh okay this is really getting me moving yeah then I remember I think I was 14 or 15 when I went to my first show up in UC Irvine it was like PIL which was Johnny Ron's band and I I saw I you know and in a mosh pit was just like what is this yeah I want to live here I want to get a mailbox right outside this thing and just stay in here at this point of friction circle and around and around forever and I was like boom then that was it and you know discovered GBH and an Orange County had a really really like probably a one of the biggest scenes in the world at the time for all the music that would come through there or was going out of there so GBH the DI uniform choice which was guys that I glommed in later in high school those guys were awesome and and you knew the guys from uniform no I don't but I really liked their music and I liked their message because some of the other stuff like okay Rage Against the Machine for instance I like the music like I just can't get behind the lyrics yeah you know or cro-mags that was a great example yeah love the music and I like the lyrics do it because it's good like get after it stuff so and then there just may be that that buzzing I don't know what guys did in other wars when for sure no good music - going into combat listening to kill them all instead of listening to Puff the Magic Dragon right that's literally what's what Americans were listening to like they're listening to Puff the Magic Dragon and those folk music bombs and I mean I guess maybe at the outside edge somebody might have been listening to Hendrix or something that was a little harder yeah but yeah yeah it's me there's a there's a this is just straight-up the way it is some human beings I would say normally boys have this thing in their head that wants to fight and like wants to break things yeah and and and when you hear your example the doors your you're like okay well this is you know you hear light my fire and you're okay look I'm kind of I'm feeling a little something there and then you hear the crow max and you go okay you hear Motorhead and you go oh okay this is this is me this is one right here this is uh I completely understand this music right now yeah and Annette just and they can use pick it up and other people yeah yeah and then so that and then like I stuck with punk rock for a long time and then a buddy of mine in high school who I swam with Steve Rosenthal is like hey you should check out Metallica oh yeah yeah and then they were like they crossed me over to where I'm like oh no now I like speed metal too and then finally I found my way to Slayer and kind of stuck with them forever and it's layers on a continual loop in the back of my head all the time and it's always surfacing up or down um but now it's like really by exception that I listen to it because I just can't listen to it all day I got fired up but still really good yeah it is and so then you enlist in the Navy mm-hmm you go to buzz and this time what you weight yours it I won in 87 and then went up to Great Lakes did Gunner's Mate a school up there and so I think I checked into bud sometime in May or June 88 and how prepared were you for buds cuz it you know a lot of people that listen to this will think they want to go to buds or whatever and they're paranoid about what they can do to prepare and I know I'm assuming you probably did something similar why did cuz we had no idea what was going on had no idea what the training was like the video you probably watch the same video as me if they even had that video there's no one special yeah so he watched it be someone special and you think well in order to get ready for the SEAL Teams what I need to do is look cool yeah we're all black yeah and be cool but there was no hey here's the protocol to get good at pull-ups here's the protocol to get good at swimming with fins none of that no no and then you know like in boot camp I have found that we actually got out of shape me and there's another guy in in my bootcamp class that actually just retired as a master chief as well and we would go in the bathroom and do pull-ups in on the stalls just to try and stay in shape um one thing I didn't do enough is run so I hated running and then I was in every goon squad until I think third phase then it clicked and I was already a really good swimmer so the water wasn't an issue for me but I was just hammered and a goon squad you know it's when you're towards the back of the deal and and they're like okay you guys are done you're doing this run the rest of you start doing push-ups hit the surf and they just mess with you forever feel like the first all through first base every time to run I threw up because I was gonna I was like inches in front of failings yeah and just had to reach deep and and push push it across the finish line you said there were some what happened it sank we you were telling me the other day about something happened saying oh what was that so think before you started training in a pre training they said hey we need volunteers to come out to San Clemente Island to help out with the class that was was out there and you just kind of go and work behind the scenes with the staff out there at San Clemente Island and so I think like the second night I was out there we were in Chow and instructors and students are eating in the same room as this little Quonset hut and they had it was taco night and so there's a big sign up there when you went went up to get served like hey only two tacos so when I got up there the cook is like there was only one taco left he goes hey just come back when I'm making some more come back up here and get one so I ate my one taco went back up to get my next one he's like here you go and as I'm walking with my tray back one of the instructors says to me hey didn't you already ate two tacos and I'm like oh my goodness I didn't know what to do so I said no and then I tried to keep going well it was the phase officer you know he wasn't wearing any rank insignia so then all the other instructors leap up they're all huge and they just start screaming at me and I'm thinking to myself are I've already ruined it we're done so I got an even eat the taco I just got out of there and I went back to where you know our little hot where we were sleeping and I just went to bed it was like at 5:00 p.m. because I was like oh no then the next morning at 4:00 a.m. there's a knock on the door and one of the guys opens up the door and it's one of the students that's actually in the class and he goes hey is there a gardener in here and then everyone just looks at me you know and I'm like yeah I'm back here and they go they wants you down at the beach so I got dressed and went down there you know I feel like I'm going to Castle Dracula I'm like oh what are they gonna do to me so the instructors are all circled up and the phase officers there he goes gardener get over here so I go over there and he goes he hands me a thermometer and he goes we need to get the water temp so you're gonna go out in the water up to your waist and you're gonna stay there and do not you I need you to go all the way to your waist and you're gonna stay there for two minutes don't come in early and I'm like ooh yah so I take it and I just go I go out until I'm just treading water but as I see how this is gonna go right so then and I didn't even look at my watch I just stayed there until finally they're like get in here dummy running in and hand him the thermometer and they check it was like 53 degrees or something like that you know like get out of your gardener and they did did this like one other time and then they just decided it's it's it's not gonna be fun to pick on this guy and that's what I kind of figured was going on I just like oh okay um don't give him a reaction don't give him reaction and and then they they when I found someone else to mess with but the guys in the class later told me that the group of three trainings that was out there before our group came out like they had one guy that they would just harass and they would just make him burst into tears every time in the end quitting before I even started training but you know you talk about this a lot on the podcast how SEAL platoons are just super aggressive and they're like anybody looking for any weakness and if you show a weakness it's gonna get hammered and then you're like no response no response you got it you got to have normal face your stifle your emotions or your life is gonna be miserable until you figure out how to deal with whatever that weakness is the thing there's a couple things that really bother me in the world uh and I won't tell anyone what they are no one knows not one single person knows what really really like there's a couple things if I if the seal platoon would have known these things I would have been eaten alive but I never ever say and I won't tell anyone right now ever I'll put it in my will when I die it'll be like hey you guys missed a huge opportunity cuz you know and sometimes you know it's things that can happen with team guys just anyways just things happen yeah and if you let it show you're doomed you are or or they just hammer that weakness until that nerve is dead and it doesn't bother you anymore sir don't get they'll work you through it uh-huh in a nice gentle way and did you have any so you you you were crappy runner obviously and you said that was a gut check that's like me every run I failed one run well after that run every run I did I just ran as hard as I possibly could sprint this is one of the further until we were done yes I was done would did anything else trip you up at all on buds because everything all the water stuff was easy pool comp life-saving all that stuff was easy because you did water yeah and nothing about buds is easy but um it was all stuff that I was really accustomed to and so that so was like this is no big deal this is no big deal that but it it was friggin brutal like I wouldn't do it I wouldn't want to do it again that's for sure and then but the truth of it is like as cool as I was in buds colder and the team so stires I wasn't buds tire during the team so yeah um great guys it was a great experience I finished up did you finish up with dive phase I finished with land warfare so so they switched it somewhere around when I was there which was 1991 that's it was just before we got there that we switched it in fact I think there was actually a class that did it the opposite way did it the old way the way you did it before right that was still there when I got there so right it was because of Poole Khan was because it pulled so many guys get kicked out during cool comp that they're like why are we wait until the end to do this let's shift it over yeah Poole competency is something that I knew zero about when I was coming into the into buds and they had they had a poster in the Med medical area and by the grinder over there and it was a Texas Chainsaw Massacre poster and and yet they had written the Texas or the buds pool caught mascar and I had like a guy with a regulator getting ripped out of his mouth and and who's the killer in um in a leather face leather face was no no like it had it like an AED TCL instructor t-shirt on yeah and I just remember walking by toes checking in or whatever and I go I don't know what that's all about and then I found out that yeah they're gonna they're gonna crush you in the water and what up then you go to you into old school Airborne School oh yeah for you so it was really good but I was you know I was really really cocky and when I go back and examine my cockiness it was just here's the deal I was super insecure and and then compensate for it by being cocky and hope hope sit no one figures out how insecure I am but anyway the physical aspect of jump school you know the runs and stuff it's so easy and then but they kind of get throttled back where it's kind of a boot camp mentality you're not used to it so me and the guys we were going out drinking on and there's rules you're not supposed to drink on a weeknight and we were out drinking on a weeknight or it was like a Sunday night um the night before one of the last before the final week of jump weeks and I went up to get a pitcher a beer at the the bar there and the guy who was the bartender turns out he was a black hat and so he's like hey or you'd jump school and I'm like oh yeah yeah I'm in jump school and he goes you're not supposed to be drinking on weeknights and then I I'm like yeah well whatever and he goes do you know who I am and I said no and he goes I'm a black cat and he said it in a manner where it like there should have been some spooky music playing behind it and and I was like okay well if you don't think I can you know drink this beer and do the PT and run in the morning and you're out of your mind and he's like get out of my bar rightly so kicked me out so we leave the next morning we're on the bus on the way to the drop zone for the first jump and there's kind of a commotion outside and I look and there's that guy that was the bartender with his in and he's with one of our guys cuz he was in a different phase and so they pulled everybody off the bus lined us up he walked down he goes oh here's the guy they pulled me out a lineup pulled me behind one of the buildings and Tunes me up you know I kind of deserved I did didn't it kind of I deserved it and so they let me have it and then that was it I went back and did three or four more jumps and then I was getting ready to do my fifth jump which is the last jump there at jump school and the liaison officer came and pulled me out and said hey you were drinking on a weeknight I've got this statement you're I'm pulling you out of this thing and I'm gonna take you to njp which non-judicial punishment campus so I was like hey wait a minute these guys chewed me out you know tuned me up a little bit by that I mean I got punched me and I had you know I had it coming it's all good and you know they it was gonna be done there and he goes nope we're not having this this isn't it so you're gonna go to Mass so I got pulled out of the class the class graduated and left and then this is like Friday you know they did their last jump did the graduation I was put in a holding company and then I wanted to to captain's mast in front of the Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel that was kind of like the officer out there and charged the Navy and Marines going through jump school and you know I called my dad cuz he was still active duty at the time he's a Jag she's shagging or yeah but he couldn't pull any strings he's like hey you're just gonna have to go in there and own it so I go and I you know I sit in the room coming in the guys office they read me the rights they read the statement against me in which which is basically the story I just told you said embellished a little bit more but it's all good and so the the colonel he reads his stuff and then he just looks up to me at me and I'm standing at attention and I'm I think okay I've done it again I'm gonna get thrown out and he goes do you do you have anything to say for yourself and I said sir that's pretty much what happened you know the statement that he read out and I said I've embarrassed the Navy and by in turn the Marine Corps and all I can do is take my lumps and press on with my career and then he just stared at me and he goes I find you a hundred bucks for one month and I'll let you reclass up with the next class and do your final jump and get out of here and so you got a hundred dollars extra a month jump pay so it was really kind of a wash it was awesome and then the the one guy that had pulled me out of line and brought me in there to mast he's like you know who told you what to say but I found that and I've always told young guys in military career just own it if you get in trouble own it it's when you make excuses that you run into trouble but when you're like this is what I did most things that people have done guys have come close to doing or did and just didn't get in trouble for and when you own it it just works out better in the end to those every time no doubt about that so now you go back to back to the team where your team five check-in at team five we didn't have sqt then so what they did with us was we just kind of bounced around so I worked in a different department at the team that worked in diving for a couple weeks which worked in for a couple weeks and I think I was at the team for about four months and in those days the team didn't deploy we always had two platoons pushed forward and the command was back so well I think I was probably four or five months that the team went out to Niland worked at the old cap camp out there as a camp guard it was great experience and and then God in the my first platoon which was an Arg alpha so we did the whole deployment on a ship and that was that was great had some awesome guys in that platoon platoon chief was his guy named bill Kuhn who's passed away now and really miss him but he was just super even-keel quiet direct you never really saw him lose his temper and a good good man good example for all of us and then then a couple other guys I'll get into here in a second you know and then we wound up deploying on the ship and we did a longer workup then it was we did like almost a year-long workup because we were going on the ark we had to do everything guys were normally doing like an eighth month or and then they do a six-month stupi I yeah well well when I did because I did two args you know for those don't know it's deploying on a ship when we did that it would be we'd do the normal workup but we do the normal workup before we started our interoperability with the Navy and the Marine Corps so that tacked on that that technolon there work up the Navy work up in the Marine Corps work up so it was like we did two work ups kind of and it was awesome training I got so much out of out of that but then where did you where'd you guys go into ployment well we started our Westpac and we were we just gotten into the Philippines when the Sodom was saying invaded Kuwait and all that stuff kicked off so then we pushed over for Operation Desert Shield and then was thought we were going to go home we made it back to the Philippines and then we stopped there in the p.i for like three weeks and then turned back around and went back Oh her for Operation Desert Storm did you guys do anything we just did about so we did the tanker boardings like to talk about did a couple of those and then we had a bunch of different operations that we had slated on some of the islands off the coast there that we would we got all the way the point of doing rehearsals for him and then like the Iraqis would have just abandon the island or cut one of the times when the helos flew over to do a recon they surrender to the helicopters and they just sent helicopters in there and took all through all Iraqis over but um Admiral McRaven was our tasking a commander at the time and so that was cool he was he was really good to work for and then like one of the guys in the platoon that I'm that I told you I reached out to him because I want to mention him because he's kind of a bigger than life seal was Steve Heinz and Steve is is he's a big guy he's all you know at the time tatted up quite a bit which in the early nineties a lot not a lot of the guys had tattoos he at some point in a bar fight someone had cut him up with a knife so he has these amazing scars Chris crossing his chest he's really smart he's got a razor-sharp whip wit and was just a lot of fun to work with one of those guys where is he as bad as things ever got he's always cracking you know cracking jokes so it's always funny takes the edge off of it and one of the things that he did really well was you know when you're on a ship you're on the ship and there are some guys that decide they're gonna be condescending to everybody and you know that just doesn't get you far in life Steve Brant a PT for the ship so we would do our own physical training in the morning and then he had one that he would run in the afternoon and he would invite everybody to it and the the captain of the ship came to his PT the Master Chief for the ship was there by the end of the deployment we would have most of the flight deck would be covered with guys coming to his PT and then he'd be cracking jokes the whole time everybody loved him we would do like okay hey we're gonna do a fantail shoot and we would have different people from the ship come up and we would let him shoot our guns and be there Range Safety officers so it's like hey all the guys that work in the galley you know and the galleys our mess hall come out we're gonna run a shoot for you and then then what happens they hook you up with food you know you everybody chicken patties more chicken patties you know maybe some extra dessert and then everybody just looked out for us and it was so good it paid off in spades yeah that idea of building relationships with people it's just such a benefit across the board and I certainly learned that literally getting extra chicken patties and extra chicken nuggets because I was bros with the dude working in the front line a handing out the chicken nuggets what might sound like like that's whatever no that's a real thing you're gonna cut in Gator squares off the coast of Africa for 90 days they don't have a lot of food left and it gets down to okay what are we gonna get or if you're out there trying to get jacked by the way and if you if you don't have fuel so yeah bro out with those people a little bit everybody why it's just like no skin off your back not to ya and you know I mean really that's what karma is right ya ain't good to people and and it comes back to you yeah and so you guys did some shit boardings and but then the Gulf War and he was over in 72 hours yeah was it done really quick and the guys in the teams that did do missions they they were generally liked by a couple guys there's a couple platoons that got so complicated that almost got over and yeah it over coffee right that was one platoon no was it I think it was a team one platoon but it wasn't it wasn't me I forget what it was but I was right up their line and they punched through was pretty crazy yeah yeah that's like one of the and one of the guys that was in a platoon I ended up in a platoon with later but generally and and even even doing ship boardings back then was like ass we did something real world real world had a real world up everybody gather round yeah and that was the truth that was the truth that was that was the way it was hey if you did something real that was awesome and and I mean when I was coming in I had all these fantasies that once I was in the SEAL Teams look there's clandestine wars going on worldwide and I'm gonna be all up in um I'm gonna be fighting wars people don't even know about and then I found out when I got to the teams that there was no Wars in Guam which was where my first deployment went to yeah I felt like that same thing was going on that there'd be like guys with cool you'd get there and within a week people Bellona it load your stuff up we're going here loading everything out and then it doesn't happen that way or it does you just got it you can't chase it I guess well it happens more now I mean now there's a lot more stuff going on and it is going on and it is worldwide and you see it in the news and sometimes you don't but it is totally different it's completely different now I mean we are at war and so those little fantasies that you have about going into countries or though that that happens now whereas in the 90s one happening no and and then there are all these assumptions about what you're gonna do when you're shot at I remember like we shifted our immediate action drills around at Nylund right after the Panama thing happened on that pettite airstrip and and we decided that or it was decided by guys thinking about they're like hey you're just when a when the first gun shot goes you're just gonna crawl so we did everything crawling around in the desert and you know it's not it's not how it goes yeah no one knew no one knew and we lacked simunition or yeah love laser systems that we ended up using so it was hard to know I mean even CQC was especially totally ridiculous what we used to do and you know new guys like me they're telling me that this is what you do and this is why you do it because they have theory behind it huh they have theories theoretically and the theories are hard to argue with a because you don't know any better and be because they've kind of pressure tested the theories in little arguments amongst themselves so hey you listen to him and you think okay this is the way it is and then you find out well then everyone found out actually even just when they started implementing paintball and simunition it was like you know what this doesn't seem like a smart idea it doesn't seem like a smart idea for all of us to be standing in the hallway that that's the that's one of the big ones it's so obvious you know my first Platoon it was like hey everyone stand up all way and you get ready to go in the next room and that's cool then second Platoon same way it was until either like I think it was even past I think it was I think it was in no I'm trying to think of the year but like 98 is when I started seeing a change in hey this is not smart because watch what happens you guys are all line up in the hallway cool somebody sticks a simunition gun around the corner of the hallway and mows down eight people right and the first reaction is like well that wouldn't happen it just happened it just happened well that guy wasn't aiming yeah you don't need to aim you have an automatic weapon and so that was kind of the beginning or that definitely had an impact on the way stuff is gonna be and it's just like you said like you talked about in Panama those guys and how the guys made theoretical changes which is hey when the shooting starts you're gonna crawl well in the desert your contact is likely to be much further away and you have much greater distance to travel in order to break contact or do assault so if if what you're doing is calling not saying there's no times where you will be sucking mud because you certainly can be but there's a difference between effective fire and an effective fire and there's this difference between dead space and when you're in in open space where you can actually get hit so yeah it's weird it was awesome and weird to see all that unfold and it is actually very similar to what the UFC did to martial arts you know sure yeah because everything was theoretical and again it was you remember some of the kind of your martial arts that they'd fellow out us and the teams and I remember one in particular where it was hey when you hit the guy here his I forget what they called it they had a scientific name for it his automatic reaction but they had some scientific sound where his automatic reaction his physiological reaction is going to be to do this and then when they do that you can do this and then went and when you do this it's gonna call me that and they had these big scenarios that would they would play out and that was what it was hey when you get it like it was literally when you hit the guy in the neck it's gonna cause him to like fold to one side and and and everyone that gets hit in the neck arches their back and sticks their chin out then you'll hit him with this it was there's there that that's what they're saying and then you can't say well hey man go ahead and like hit me in the neck with all your might and I actually did do that I actually did say like hit me see if that happens and it didn't happen and then I got some other weird psychobabble circular argument about well that's because you're expecting it well okay but do it when I'm not expect you know it just it's just one of these things strike the neck stomp the groin rake the eyes restart the drawing was it the skies it's like a soft combat assault system or something like that it was and we got we went through a whole bunch of those and all it takes is a couple people in a leadership position to get convinced by this if I notice IRA saw a lot of circular arguments and those things and it's so that that thing so when the UFC started it was like oh these kungfu guys or whatever these karate guys or whatever these ninjutsu guys or whatever whatever their martial art was and they had the thing that oh when I throw punch you your breathing will be incapacitated for approximately 45 seconds it's generally about 45 seconds when you hit someone to throat in order for the nuke let's about a 45 seconds you get about a 45 second window where now you want attack the nerve basis you want to attack the solar plexus when you get him the solar plexus prosody now you got about another 45 seconds this is we could rape the eyes I knew it some Grandmaster can stick that that was it and and so when the UFC came around it was like oh all of a sudden that doesn't work and it's the same thing that happened pre and I'll even say pre simunition pre paintball and pre and we use miles gear but miles gear was kind of weak yeah miles get wasn't quite good enough which is for those you don't know it's like a laser tag system that you mounted on your wheel weapons but it it wasn't very accurate you had to deal with jams and your blanks it was just it wasn't that good you know but those things definitely started to make it lean towards oh that's just this theory doesn't seem to hold the water that we all thought that it held yeah yeah but you know what here's the thing even if we were crawling as long as we had a plan and rehearsed it that was way better than stuff that wasn't so a lot of those guys that did that first those first fighting systems that there was a lot of goofy stuff when they would get in a street fight they would just still do okay because what what's I think Patton said that thing about it and a good plan now is better than a perfect plan later right you know that's a good point now that I think about if you think about the tactics so you got told after Panama to crawl and that seems kind of crazy right now and then eh if you think about it as abroad hey what we're gonna do is crawl whole time think about this though remember when it was a whole squad getting up online and moving get them but getting up and running all at one time yeah just as ridiculous just yeah just dicking exactly and there's a time and place for bullying there's a time and place for both things and you know as memory I was at I was at one of the teams I don't know a six months ago a year ago we were talking tactics and a guy asked me like hey where does the argument haven't been your team the the question was like where does the commander go in this situation and it wasn't one group was saying they shouldn't be in the rear and the other group saying no before I was my team okay yeah and I was like listen there's different times where the commander needs to be in a different spot and where the commander should be is where he isn't in the weeds but still kind of understands what's happening and can provide them as command and control something the answer is not he should be here the answer is where should he be for that particular situation and does the commander have the understanding the tactical understanding and the operational understanding to go oh you know what if these guys are busting into a building right here and I go into that building and there's contact I'm gonna be sucked into that contact and I'm not gonna be able to control anything contrary to that if I'm way at the back where the contact happens and I don't even know what building it's in that's a problem too where should I be I should be where I can provide the best command and control and that's very adaptable it's very easy to adapt but it's very also very easy for people to come up with doctrine and then supporting arguments supporting the theories that that are very hard to argue against could you get into circular arguments against crazy people yeah emotionally attached to whatever the answer oh that's a stinger and the this is why I think NSW has always been so successful and I think will continue to be successful is because we're not so rigid in what we do and it's so it's in one ways it's a weakness but it's also at the same time our greatest strength because everything I've done on deployment most things actually was not exactly something that I trained for but the training that I got was 30% there to where it was easy to pivot boom and into whatever whatever is being requested overseas yeah and the training that you got trained you to think not just hey this is what you're gonna do 100% of the time it's a hey this is gonna work in this situation but you should be looking around you should have your head on a swivel you should be looking for work you know all those little little like mantras that you get told they actually make sense because it's not just do this same thing every time it's read and react right I didn't react that's one of the first things you started here like read and react because you don't just do you actually read and you actually assess so those are all important anything else from that first deployment besides just being on the are can be you know unmanned hot long ten month deployment I remember it by the end of the deployment after that deployment none of us wanted to talk to each other for a while it was like you'd see guys around the Krannert hey and then because it was just so long and there's no internet there's no internet you know you communication with home is snail mail letters to us three-week conversations you have back and forth and and the whole platoon is in a room that's twice the size of this the whole racks are stacked for high you you've got like eighty movies on videotape and they're just running constantly and you've seen every one of these eighty movies a 500 times because they're literally playing non-stop in the platoon space region dick ulis we got on a kick and this is the another arc deployment I went on later when I've gone to Somalia but we got on a kick with what's the movie where the girls had spins around the exorcist Exorcist so we're watching The Exorcist over and over and over again and right about that was the time we did the the Shellback ceremony where overlook later and so there was only two guys in the platoon that had done it so all the rest of us were logs and we're going through it and basically all they do is throw food it's you and spray you with water which okay is like buds we were just doing it and guys have come by with like all these logs over here and I remember one of the guys gone the power of Christ compels you power of Christ compels you and then we all started shouting it and the guy just looked at us for a second and wandered off and someone else came behind with the hose and spray us a little bit but they had no idea what to make of us at all awesome you come home from that deployment and then what then what's up what's next then I went and worked in the armory for a little bit and waited to pick up another another platoon then after that I did I worked in the armory for another six months did another platoon and then that was a special you went you went to the armory because you were interest I was a gunner Jay and so I was ordnance rep what what position were you and your first platoon oh good point so I was a sniper but they didn't we didn't have any stubble you didn't have a sniper course so there was a guy that had just come from reappointment point man in second squad and the first squad point man was a sniper and he'd been to the army Sniper school yeah so they ran ran me through some different training and stuff like that to get me like kind of qualified but I didn't have a certificate or nothing and and it was really minor stuff so me and the other sniper would you know practice just calling stuff out and then when we do the tanker boardings I'd be up in the helo eyes above pass an info and so when I got back I went to I was working in ordnance and then I got an opportunity to go to the second nsw sniper course they ran on the west coast and that was that was brutal I've never failed anything up until then I'd never failed anything in my life and I didn't make it through the first night of course I passed the shooting portion which most guys pass but and that's like five weeks straight of shooting but then when it came to stalking I just didn't get it and I lacked the patience that I needed that I later figured it out and so I didn't past I came out of there without not a sniper call but in advance marksman qual um the badge of dishonor yeah pretty much and guys so actually it's funny because I say that jokingly but like everybody knows that how hard that's they used to fail everyone in stock and it was crazy my my course there's only two guys that graduated with a call with a sniper qual out of like how much how much of that was the seal instructor bro team guys going we're gonna have the hardest course ever no one's gonna make it through it's gonna be the toughest course I'd write on yeah yeah I mean I mean I would have been in that position I think there was there was definitely a piece of that because there was like some guys getting pretty dang excited and screaming and yell at you every yard line you're like good grief what's going on and um but I don't know if that would have made a difference for me passing or not like had it been more leveled out and they hadn't gotten too excited about it yeah which I'm not saying they did but that's just that's how it rolled out so ii and i i play too and i was a again a point man and then I think I acted as a sniper but then the sniper thing kind of fell off the radar for NSW a little bit it wasn't a priority for anybody and did a second platoon which is a spec alpha-2 and went to the Philippines or no we went to Guam that's where we met yeah at the jungle and Guam Minh and the jungle was this bar yeah the German air was not a jungle the jungle was the bar that everybody went to and then yeah did a platoon then I wound up doing a year overseas well I went home for a week and then came back with another platoon straight away and did did that and those were great experiences I mean who travelled around a lot we did a lot of water work back in the day a lot of tanker boarding a lot of diving all that didn't do anything real and then when I came back from those deployments I went to work in our training cell at the team and the guy was working in the land warfare section working for a guy named Danny Carroll who at the time was uh I don't have to back up a little bit on this but he he was just he was awesome to work for he's he's one of these guys that no matter how bad anything ever was he never complained he might complain to someone that was his peer but he never complained down and then never complained about oh this is stupid or he was not the torturer genius which when things were hard and he wasn't complaining then it wasn't hard and he he's another guy with a really good sense of humor and uh and just a good good time to be around but the biggest thing about him was just like never ever complain always something positive to say and and was was an expert and then when he did give you a critique he didn't it wasn't condescending so he was somebody I looked up to and he wasn't in my platoon he's actually a leadership and my sister platoon and I would go over and talk to him all the time and like back in the day I had my hair bleached white it was always long you know I was never in the right uniform ever because not being a uniform made me feel special because I was insecure and all all people would just scream at me cut your hair get in uniform but they never would tell you you know hey do it then one day Danny goes hey Jason why don't you why don't you cut your hair it's so easy to have a decent haircut and be in the right uniform and your life is gonna be so much better and you should just try it for a little bit and he just laid it out and it there was no condescension behind it was just straight-up advice from one friend to another and um and so I tried it now I was like hey this is amazing like people aren't asking like hey what are you doing tonight people are actually giving me stuff to do and then leaving me alone and let me do it because they trusted me that I was going to be proof you know be professional about it and after and working for him I got the opportunity because when the teams ran sniper courses I gotta interject real quick because there's also those guys that would be like they're condescending and and all you do is you know the you know the guy that's all straight-laced running around the team looking like a dork and you just think when you're a young team guy you're like this guy's a dork he doesn't he doesn't and if they come up and say something you're just mad at him you know you're just like you're stupid you don't get it you don't know what it's like to be young jock right and that's how everybody else was it was for me because they're like really yeah but you know Danny was a beast and yeah and so was like yeah I'm gonna listen to what he's saying you know there's an important two things about Steve Lyons and and Danny which I didn't work with either of those guys other than periphery look peripherally through through the years no I think Steve Hines put was that freefall school with me and it was an island forever so whatever and Danny Carroll well I didn't I remember Danny from being on deployment and hit my LPO was good friends with him and so you know we were always linked up and but what I was gonna say is you you mention this real quick he was good operator like he was Oh guys that because if you were good at your job yeah that's like the base level of having respect and getting people listen to you is oh this guy is really good at his job and you'd even hear before we before the word operator had the had the kind of meaning that it has today where it's like oh he's an operator and it kind of has this taken on a life of its own but back then and be like oh yeah that guy is a good operator and it really meant something when I would hear that about someone yeah like hey that guy's a really good operator and you think oh wow that guy's that means he can shoot well that means you can navigate well that means he can dive well that means he's he keeps his cool it like men to all those things that guy's a good operator and so that sort of Nemea was the baseline and especially for guys that I looked up to at my team when I was a new guy it was the guys where you'd hear all that geyser good operator and then it was okay and it wasn't like that was everyone they owned it on a big number of people yeah and and to develop a reputation as a good operator when there's no war going on it's actually very hard to do that because what that means is every one of these stupid training missions every one of these dumb dives that everyone's bitching about you're actually taking completely serious and you're doing your best and you're teaching other people and that is what that's what developed the reputation back then was like this guy's a good operator yeah yeah definitely and so then then that guy's I got the kind of wasta where he can hand out advice and then the fact that he gives it out without being condescending or straight up it's just so much it's worth absorbing what about did you so what are the schools you go to did you get any what about did you go to sere school yeah good time you know that was a it was a I forget when it I think it was in this period after I did those two platoons I finally got sucked into going to sere school and I remember I didn't get waterboarded for some reason in sere school but I did kill and eat a rattlesnake and they're like hey you're not supposed to do that and then I got caught and then I'm like okay well but this is just in the field training portion where you know you're doing patrolling and danger crossings that's all you're doing all day and then you have these little land nav exercise that you're doing which were super easy for me because this is what we did so I would just just get them done and be done sleeping and hungry and trying to eat grasshoppers and everything cuz they don't feed you for the whole week and then when they catch you and they put you into that that prison camp so the first thing they do is I have everybody line up and then they strip you down naked because apparently they're they're checking you for ticks so then they see all my tattoos and one of the instructors is like hey this guy's got the mark of the devil because the guys all have that Russian accent right yeah so I get I get grabbed and then I'm in the circle of these instructor and they're like he's got the mark of the devil and they're kind of shoving me back and forth and I'm like okay this is kind of fun this is you know this isn't a big deal and then a guy that's straight across from me I can remember seeing a big black hand come over his shoulder and it like covers up half of his chest like like Andre the Giant big and just move the dude away and then another guy a hand moves the other guy way and then there's this just mountain of a man grabbed me with his left hand picks me up they're only allowed to like hit you from out here to here but it was like you know those those images in Rocky where I was like stars and that's just oh that was that little smirk I just had on my face laying on the ground over there and oh here comes again boom and humbling I literally got the exact same treatment I remember I was in some vehicle and it was after you got you avoided capture and then eventually they just call up in the woods and I go come down you have to surrender now yeah so we had avoided capture me and my pilot buddy we had avoided capture we go down and get in the vehicle they drive us somewhere and I'm just you know everything's a joke whatever and get out of the vehicle and you know some guys yelling at us with the fake Russian accent and I'm just laughing at it inside and which means you know I'm like kind of probably got that I was 19 yeah and the dude the dude comes over and he like yells at me and I you know who knows what I said to prove that I was a tough guy and this dude I was like I can't believe he just did that uh and okay well good times so that must be they must they must know who we are coming in they must look at the young punks and go yep I got this guy hey I got what number is Gartner yeah I mean over here from SEAL Team 5 what number is willing coming over here from SEAL team one I'm gonna get me some of that yeah and it's gotta go I'm just an immense amount of satisfaction when that look it's knocked off your face cuz they can just see the light come out of your eyes and you're like oh it's a I mean I've been punched many times yeah that open hand smack full-on and I don't know what you're talking about only bringing it back to wherever this brother brought it back all the way got it all the way home dude it was a good one and I've been like I said I've been hit before I've been knocked out before it didn't knock me out but I was it was definitely uh it was definitely reality oh oh yeah these guys are these guys are not playing around these guys are gonna take pleasure and beating the crap out of me and they're gonna do it if they if I give them any reason to so in which event so that was two deployments you come back you're in training how much did you learn when you were working in training because I know I as an e5 working in SEAL team one training cell learned like just mountains of information tons yeah exactly because that's when when you have to teach something as one you got to really absorb it because you have to completely understand it and everything else so that's when it opened up the curtain for me so I saw everything that went into training that was behind the scenes you know when you go through the training like oh okay well there's a lot that goes on from laying on the ranges to doing the med drills to order in the ammo to trying to make the training relevant and realistic for the guy so it you just don't feel like you're wasting their time but yeah and then it was at that at that time that I went back and restocked and got my sniper qual and then was an instructor for a couple of different sniper courses that period the difference is what you was there something you said you didn't get it the stock from the first time around was it like you didn't quite figure out deadspace was that you just didn't have the patience for it were you like whatever what what what did you what changed about you what did you learn it by oh so I so they drop you off and then they'll just point Hey the observation point is that way and during stalk your you're trying to find where these other guys are at and and you don't know and their other their sniper instructors so they have really really good skills and optics and they're sitting out somewhere shouldn't not totally concealed but you've got you've got to find them before you move and the mistake I was making before is that getting impatient and I'm just like I'll just start going that way and along the way I'll figure out where they're at and as opposed to okay I'm going to just sit right here and take my time and figure out where everything is and how everything's laid out and then try and find the opie before I move down toward it at all no you'd have to I'd have to move laterally one way or the other to figure it out and so typically on the stalks when it clicked for me I would be the last guy to leak to actually leave where they drop us off and I'd be the first guy done and typically I'd spend almost no time crawling because I would do do the this you know find the opie once I had it located then I would study their terrain really hard and figure out where I need to go to get within that 200 yards to do your you know final shot do you figure this out on your own well they tell you that but I just started listening to one and and and it clicked they're like hey you gotta find the LP okay cuz yeah isn't it strange and I mean well your kids well you got kids are old enough like it's the same thing with your kids you you tell them like hey figure out where the Opie is before you start crawling or whatever it is less life lesson that you learned hit in the head with a baseball bat and you try and give your kids a hint or just tell them and they're just like no I'm just going to start moving yeah I got this yeah and I have no idea how to deal with that it's it's funny because I think you and I have had a lot of the same experiences with with dealing with our kids you know like hey I'm telling you I've lived through this here's what you should do and but now I've come to the point where I'm still gonna tell him but I know what they're probably gonna do and then yeah and then just wait and see keep your hungers cross yeah yes is what people say okay so when I noticed one of the things that I'm actually thinking about this right now when I was in training cell and I was so because I was single and didn't care about anything else and so I taught everything it was like oh well there's land warfare trip cold Cochise land warfare oh there's CQC trip go teach that go teach combats for Marty just teach everything because because in and now I look back how awesome it must be when you got like guys like that at the team who were just like oh yeah I don't mind going down another month-long trip back to back doesn't matter we'll go train and it wasn't just me that wasn't it's like all my all my bros that you know I was friends with all my guys from team when we're all saying that like hey we'll go teach whatever you said was on the road we don't care it's awesome I had a Volkswagen van that I've taken all the seats out of the back and just line of carpet and I had some some bean bags in there and when I was on the stand I slept in the parking lot for like I think eight months because I was like I would rather be on a trip collect collecting per diem and doing stuff than sitting here and so that's that's where that's where I was it was always out on training block I was running an sqt I wasn't running it but I was one of the instructors on an ST T when we used to run s TT at the team so it was a bunch of new guys we were putting him through training and I remember right now I'm remembering this there was like multiple officers in the same s TT class so each squad had multiple officers so we were rotating through like okay it's your turn Reese quad leader it's your turn during I ads and now that I think about it I remember so much of looking at like oh you'd see one guy do it and he'd be all screwed up and you'd say what is wrong with this guy oh he's shooting the whole time instead of looking around and then just from one iteration and the big difference is when you're not doing the I ad when you're actually watching it unfold everything becomes so good with this is like talk about detaching your this is my earliest or some of my earlier experiences being detached asleep you're watching these immediate action drills unfold and I remember one officer that was all jacked up and I watched him like why is why can't this squad do a whatever why can't this squad do a strong left or whatever or appeal right why they do it what is wrong so I'm watching this one officer and the other officer like oh this officer did it fine I watched him the contact happens and that people start shooting and then the guy looks around and makes a call i watch this other officer the contact happens he starts shooting and he doesn't stop shooting and no one's making the call and it was just as simple as like hey man your job is not to shoot your job is to make you know look around and make a call that you learned so much when you're instructing not only because you have to think about what you say and you have to be able to articulate why and that makes you dig deep into the reason why and then you get to detach and actually watch it unfold and watch these little minor mistakes happen and then you get to correct them and then you get to recognize them in yourself when you make them it's a powerful thing to and I when I was at trade it I think we did a good job of transfer because no one you know used to be only one who the trainee I don't want to go to training I don't go to trade that I think we did a good job of transferring the mentality to hey if you want to get good at this job you got to come here you got to yeah which I believe it's the truth so anyone if you want to get good at something just try and teach it same thing with jiu-jitsu as well the um that was an SOP for us when when I was in land warfare at five was when a guy was having a hard time we pull him up as like hey come stand next to me they are so and just watch your guys eighty percent of the time that would that would all fix the problem yeah yeah which is a testament to just attachment yeah it is is a testament to detachment in man once you learn how to detach even though you're in the situation it's like just makes life so much easier so much easier okay so now what you'd do another patoot so just I got three platoons on my belt and working in in land warfare or at trade at you know training sell at the team and then one of the the platoons that was on the Arg they were gonna pull into Somalia and help the MER the UN pulled out of Somali this is ninety five and one of their their sniper in their platoon got thrown in jail in Hong Kong and was a big international incident so they were down a sniper so I happen to be on quarterdeck watch when the OIC the platoon called back to the team and said we need another sniper out here we're down one and we know we're gonna go into Somalia here in like three months and I'm like hey I'm a sniper and I'm a sniper instructor send me so I passed it back to the XO and there are actually a couple there was another guy that was senior to me as an e6 at the time that was gonna go and then something came up at the last second he couldn't go so they're like hey you're going so I packed up my stuff they flew me over to Bahrain I'm the when the ship pulled in I met up with the platoon and then got in the platoon and about six weeks later we went up in Somalia so like I just got lucky you know because you can't you can't chase it and then in the 90s there was no like at that point I think there had been two other platoons that had cycled through Somalia and and both of them had had gotten in troops in contact which was a dream for all of us yeah and timing-wise this is like two years after the Big Black Hawk Down thing happened there so gotten a platoon another aquatune back on the same ship that I did my first our game we in the same burning space what ship was it the the Ogden LBD 5 yeah it's um and but another guy that was really another guy that was a big mentor of mine I looked up to a lot was uh and he was the LPO as Monty tree sighs and money had been around SW for a long time and he had the additional deal where he'd he had broken service so he was a police officer up in Los Angeles and he had a lot of you know because those guys he'd actually been in gunfights before and in high-stress situations so it was it was really good having him having him there and then when we did go ashore myself and the other night we split up into two different sniper elements and money was with my element and then the Eldar sniper was with the the chief was with him and then they each of it's bad like five guys in our group because it was an excuse to get ashore and the reason and this was completely the Marines deal they were there to pull the UN out but they didn't have the 50 caliber sniper rifle capability and that's something that they wanted to have so that they could reach out these long distance and be a little bit more surgical with their application of force smarter so we were our officers were able to sell it and and then we got to go ashore doing that and that was uh how many how many days did you spend on the ground man we were only in there for like three days and so the Marines I think we were on the the second lift ashore and I was down on the airfield but the airfield in Mogadishu reports right up against the ocean and and it's the reason I say mm-hmm is because before this or maybe it was after this but I was cutting Gator squares which means driving around in circles off the coast of Somalia for for a long time and we were supposed to go in and we were we we got our issue of ammo real ammo you know all of our key AR mor mags were loaded our I remember I put the real 40 mike-mike into my vest for the first time and they didn't quite fit right like it was a yeah no one's longer yeah no one had ever you know done it or no like I didn't know and and so here we were and we and so we did all kinds of maps we were ready to go in and then we never went in which was and part of the reason we didn't go in is the same reason we didn't go into Rwanda because Black Hawk Down had happened they were just like mmm they were everyone was super hyper cautious about everything and so yeah I remember we were going it we were actually taking boats into the airfield that's what we were gonna do so I remember that of your field in Lewis then so ah this is a funny you guys flying in helicopters in no II wrote in an on one of the big hovercraft the elk act but we went in so okay this is not dangerous now but you know nobody share ports controlled by the UN and then there's that green Beach right there which is infested with bull sharks I think there are like 12 total shark attacks and a couple fatalities on that beach so we got tasked with doing the hydrographic reconnaissance there's some story about some kind of slaughterhouse or something that like I never saw it but that was the story the owner there's a camel slaughterhouse that's just teeming with blood and the sharks can't resist that's exactly what we are going in with we had that story that yeah story like the midget sniper in Iraq and they're all they're all just waiting for you to hit the water yeah um you know which is kind of what I think anytime I'm doing anything at night in in the ocean you're like like the Sharks are just waiting right there for you to come in and just come up and bite you I'm so stupid I never think about that I never one time in my whole career thought okay I'm getting in the water tonight it's Southern California there's big sharks that live here there could be one I never thought about that for whatever reason I don't know I do I do but then I'm like I'm cold now I think about something else so you're you guys take accent so wait so we go to do a Hydra recon and because of the sharks we got to do this big perpendicular Hydra recon perpendicular parallel whatever um and we're doing it with zodiacs and then we're spaced every 50 yards and then the ribs on the outside of it and the water is I mean so here's not swimming we're not you taking yourself from boats and um there was a big net that we had to get out of there so that the elk acts and when craft come in so I'm in the first rib and then and a rib is uh like an inflatable hole 30 feet and then the next one out is like 50 yards past mine so the water super clear like you can see the bottom it's like 60 feet deep and the boat out past me they're all yelling they're like hey look down there's some sharks down there so one of the the team guy that was in that boat jumps up on the the sponson of the rib to look at the sharks and slips in the water and it was like he hit a trampoline I don't know how he did it because that the ribs are so high out of the water you're like how do you even get it but he got in and he was out so fast I'm not even sure he got wet and I don't blame him but no we went in there was just a the planning cycle was crazy for that for days everybody was down to the spot they were gonna be in we didn't our study there was a bunker that we wanted to use that would be a good position from where we were at so we run like the third lift on the elk ax and elk ax those big hovercraft but you can't sit out on the deck so they had this big 40-foot mil van strapped to the deck you went inside of it and then there was a bunch of troop seating and then we just rode in on that hope the thing didn't sink because you would just be done got out and then patrolled over to our spot where we wanted to set up in this dis bunker and it didn't work the slits out of the bunker the the scope of my 50 Cal would stick out and the scope was looking right at the cement so then we built we got up on top of the bunker and we started filling sandbags moving sandbags around made ourselves a little like firing position on top of that bunker and and that's really snow covering down on your covering down looking for attackers on they came in to try and attack the airfield so the airfield was controlled so we had set a perimeter up inside of the UN perimeter that was already there and so the first day there nothing really happened because it was all status quo the UN controlled the airfield their watchtowers and stuff like that and then we had a line set up that was just a narrow strip of beach between us in the ocean so when the UN left and we would just all fall back into the amphibs and go back out to the to the ships so the first day you know there's all his tracer fire going on Mogadishu is pretty active not much happened then the next morning at like 4:00 a.m. all the manned positions were replaced by tanks and then everybody left and they just there was a big camp like five hundred yards to the south of us and they just they just a bit they just left everything there and then then at like 8:00 in the morning the tanks all left and just left it open so there was this weird period of time where everyone was like what just happened and then a lot of the civilian populace started piling in because there was like there's water there's building materials they were ripping the roofing off a lot of the buildings that these guys had just abandoned and then about an hour after that the you know you had your different war loads and factions figured out what was going on and then they had to stop people from getting stuff because they wanted it so we watch like a big crowd of people and I was just like in that movie there's a big crowd of people ripping stuff running everywhere ripping stuff out of these buildings and then guys show up with a jeep with like a PKM which is a belt-fed machine gun on the back and just aim at the people and start shooting them and then you just see it like oil on water or whatever everyone moved and they're just all taking off so one clan kind of took control of a camp that was at five hundred yards to the south under the runway there five six hundred yards away from us was the edge of that camp that was you and controlled the other clan which these two major factions of warlords down there controlled the other under the runway at one point they moved down the runway and tried to attack this other clan that was holding because you can't control half of a runway and they had like this crate they had crazy technicals and our rules engaging would say they can have technicals out and that's a civilian vehicle it's like a road warrior vehicle with some kind of crude crew-served weapon in the back and they had one was like a big five ton truck with a quad anti-aircraft gun sit in the back with a guy like you know dialing a thing to move it around and stuff and they weren't halfway down the runway they tried to shoot it out but the this other camp the other factions shot back and shot him off of there so that went on but that was really those two fad there was some spillover toward us what was his two factions shooting at each other well at some point people stood they started the one faction that controlled the south this camp to the south under the runway started to shoot at us and so we started taking a lot of indiscriminate small arms fire and then we had a recoilless rifle launched at us but it went over and landed in the ocean and some random RPGs it was all pretty far away so you know as you know in an urban environment it's it's really difficult to tell getting shot at and then especially when there are six hundred yards away there's it's daylight you can't see any muzzle flash so unless somebody gets really sloppy or you're really lucky you're not gonna see it and the way Mogadishu is like a big hillside with all these buildings and rolls up it's just not like you're looking at one set of buildings you're looking at like a roll buildings then behind you - another roll buildings infinite yeah just Agility's giant mouse maze so um saw a guy on a roof with an RPG and then a second later one gets launched at us and then we're like oh okay buddy missed and then so basically at that point they're like you're you're cleared hot this is silly we've met our rules of engagement cuz and then back in the 90s the appetite for applying lethal force was was pretty subdued it's not as liberal as it is today and how it should be and so it took us a little while to get there and I'm like okay these guys are bad these guys are obviously trying to get us so you're cleared hot find somebody to shoot in can find anyone to shoot for a while then this camp that was 500 yards the south of us we saw a group of like seven guys two of them had RPGs a rocket-propelled grenades and other guys patrolling with like two peak-to-peak a.m. Gunners there belt-fed machine guns and like an a gunner and they're patrolling we can see him we can see him and now they come out the front of the camp and at the gate of that camp which is facing us 500 yards away there's two sandbagged positions for the watches who would be up there to check people coming in and out and a guy there was one guy he had a gray ironically he had a grey t-shirt on that said army right and he's got an RPG and he's definitely in charge and he put a pee cam on one of the sandbags point nose was talking to guys given direction turns around puts the the RPG on his shoulder and it's looking at us through the sight and so ROIC is like okay well hey let's hold on see we're doing the money whose money's really savvy he's like hey they're getting ready to shoot at us he's adjusting the sights right now he's getting and we wanted to preempt this so I could shoot it the guy before he got a chance to launch the RPG cuz it's closed that's a good plan so all I see is like okay go shoot him so I've got kind of it I've got a really jacked up firing position it's a 500 yard shot I I squeeze squeeze around off boom and then apparently I missed so which which I with my shooting position was not good and I was really really like excited either what they call you know buck fever what's the first time I've ever shot at a human so I was worked up pretty good and then the guy who was spotting for me who wasn't a spotter because that was the sniper was in the other platoon or at the other of the other firing position he was sitting right next to me on the sandbags looking through the spotting scope and when the 50 Cal went off it's got a big muzzle break so the recoil doesn't break a collarbone it ports back it just blew a bunch of sand in his eyes and knocked the spotting scope right out of his hands so Monty's like hey you missed I'm like do you have a correction and and he's like no and it sounded like he was talking in slow motion cuz he was just just super calm and cool and I'm like oh no now I'm questioning whether I might might my dope my dad on previous GameInformer yards is any good or anything that 50 Cal you to take the entire bolt out of the gun knock the brass out from the round you just fired put a new round in chamber it and reload so I came heard it reload downrange they were they were like ooh they just shot at us you know so the guy was like wow so they're starting to talk and now he's got that RPG on his shoulder and I hold a little harder I take a breath let half out start to squeeze that trigger I get that surprise bang boom pull the bolt out knocking the brass out load another round and I'm going did I hit and our comms guy had grabbed by nose and he goes oh man and I'm like did I hit and he goes God darn it good grief and I'm thinking that he's gonna tell me that I missed by like half a mile and he doesn't even know what kind of correction to give me and I hit him in the arm I'm like dude what happened who did I hit any good and he didn't even hear me he goes he is oh that had to hurt so now that PKM gunner who who was set up on the sandbags he just lets her rip and so there's the the the bull whit craps of those rounds going over the top of us and money's like hey I think this guy's like right at 500 yards you got your dialed in you know he's just talking in my ear like man like we're going to get the mail or something or or whatever just calm and then so I can't see the guy at all all I can see is the muzzle flash so I put the crosshairs in the middle of the muzzle flash squeeze the round off reload come back up and look to see what what had happened and there was a the gun had spilled over the front side of the sandbags there was a huge divot in the sandbags I couldn't see you know I couldn't tell I think I hit the rifle but then he had spilled out he was out from the side of the sandbags on his side and and it's just his guts were everywhere he was flailing around for a little bit and then he expired I assumed because I quit looking at him at that point because a Jeep had now shown up and it had like one of their 50 51 cows in the back and the guys just do and I'm thinking oh man we've grabbed a tiger by the tail because I've got this round I can you know one round at a time and I'm waiting for like there was a tow missile gunner right near our position for him to light it up but we've gotten really really strict rules of engagement briefings before we went in so the guys were a little bit hesitant to let her rip so that shot I rushed I wound up hitting the Jeep right on the side walls between the Gunners legs but that was enough as soon as the jeep got hit boom they drove away and they were done and then these guys started to do a peel and it was a really organized squared away good deal so they were peeling behind a building so that now they were starting to gain a little bit of distance on us and they were falling behind this big building Monte's given me gives me another round he's like hey I think they're about at 700 yards now adjust your dope so I'd made my adjustment from from where I was just shooting at to 700 and as you know as the they're doing appeal a guy gets up and runs so there was a guy running full value he's running across with the rock RPG so I shot at him hit way behind him and he went behind a building then reloaded two more guys peeled behind the building and then they were just gone so I held I held my crosshairs on the edge of that building were they just gone and a second later the guy with the RPG steps back out into my crosshairs and so my crosshairs are squared up on his pelvis and I start loading the trigger as he's taken a knee to shoot the RPG so his heating he hit the ground when that 50 Cal round hit him in the chest and so we were shooting the ralphus mark 211 which is a multi-purpose armor-piercing round and it explodes when it hit something hard and the spotters like bro that thing will hit right up when it hit his chest boom down he went and then then that was it then they got some guys over there that linguists and they had loudspeakers on their Humvees and they're like hey don't shoot at us we're not taking sides in this whole thing and that kind of calmed everything down for the next couple hours and into that day and then we we watch the guy it's like life was incredibly cheap there saw a guy get pushed off a roof we were watching in the evening we had gotten someone said like hey that this one building about two kilometers away that's when the clan leaders buildings and we could see guys up there in the evening and they get that cop there that makes them all go kind of crazy and we see guys sitting there like watching the Sun set up on a roof and then one of them would start to get animated waving their arms around like they're arguing about something then they are all animated then they were up like beating each other with clubs hitting each other with rocks and then it would just stop and then it would start up again and I think at least one of those we watched the guy just get pushed off a roof fall dead and it's just how they roll and so this so the first day was pretty mellow with this all this activity took place on the second or the third day first day was mellow second day was uh OHS when they pulled back and then the third days when they said no the first day was mental a second morning is when they pulled back and then the second day is when we got in that first firefight and then it was either that afternoon or the next day my memory you know it's been 13 years memory slips where they called and they hasn't been an issue with the guy they're like hey or two three years but yeah we'll take it okay I should have taken more discipline they they hit us up they're like hey we've got a guy down here that is close to where we're getting ready to move some armor and he has an 84 which is weird because that's one of our weapons it wasn't an RPG yet a legit 84 and they'd shot out and he ran away and came back they're like he's gonna use it so we want to do this deal we're gonna have a sniper initiated kind of assault on this guy so they sent an lav over to our position me and the OIC got in and we went and saw the lieutenant colonel and he's like hey um here we studied a map he's like hey here's where the guy is I think a good spot is this tower there's some recon guys up there I'm gonna put you up there with him and then then get this going so I went up to the tower we moved up to the tower the guys showed us that what it was was out there there was a set of bunkers in alongside of the airfield that was now controlled by just whoever and this guy was in one of the bunkers and then he would come out with like six or seven other guys and he had eight you know and they would smoke cigarettes and he had the 84 and he would they were watching the US line so they said hey here's what we want you to do you know he keeps coming in and out when he comes out again we want you to shoot him and then we're gonna have they shifted some of the light armored vehicles down the line to where they could go at go at the bunker with their coax guns and try and get him in his buddies so we put us up in the tower there's this a 20 mile an hour wind just howling full-value its right to left and then it's from where I was in the tower it's a thousand-yard shot so so I got a bunch of sandbags bunkered my position up we waited around you know for the guy to come up he comes up so I take this thousand-yard shot at a guy in a twenty mile an hour you know full value crosswind which at the time there's probably two or three people in the world that can make a shot like that and I'm not one of them I missed and his buddy so I didn't hit the guy with the 84 I hit the guy with the ak-47 standing three feet to his right because I put in too much wind and they all dove in the bunkers then everybody on the line started shooting the bunkers toward the bunkers up they called the ceasefire and the one of those guys survived and it was the guy that had that 84 but he left it and he just got up and ran away then at a later point there was a guys they were shooting at the elk axes they were coming in and out and so we we there was a there was a big cinderblock wall seven hundred yards away away from the the airfield there and he was on the other side of it and there was one cinderblock missing and he would look through and shoot through it so I shot at him and hit the wall right next to the wherever he was shooting at and I scared him away and and come back but uh then that was it then the next day we backed up and everybody fell back out to the ship the the Marines ran a great operation because everything kind of went like clockwork exactly the way it was supposed to and it was a good to go then you went back on the Hellcat you just said yeah the elk ax came up on the beach got back in the mill then God back in the mill van went back out to the ship and then the final deal was there was just a strip of the amphibs that just drove out to sea as they broke down the final deal and that was it yeah that was it that was but but then I was like one of six guys at the time on the West Coast did it you know been on the trigger and and been in combat yeah no I remember it was awesome I was super stoked and super jealous of course like every other guy was like which actually this is it why I did another argh because it seemed like hey if you're gonna get some action you need to go with the Marine Corps in the Arg and go out and do that that's why myself and all the other guys that you know all my old runnin mates we all were like okay let's do another hour get back over there let's see let's make this out what's going to the problem I mean I had to arts and to combat action ribbons yeah and then you know it worked out for a lot of other guys since then or before that because there were two the other guys that had rotated through Somali had been on the art platoon yeah when you get home you know what was going on what were you married at this point I was I was married to my son's mother and and when did you get married I don't what it was it no but not not what year but like training cell at the time isn't training cells or time I was after much of less than a year of marriage or maybe two years of marriage yeah and then how did how was that dealing with you know being gone and being the team guy marriage oh he's generally really hard it was hard it and in it I want to back up really quick cuz I want to make sure I point this out before we get into this next thing and another thing that that monny told taught me that we kind of talked about a little bit was he's like wherever you go run for mayor and he's just talking about be good to everyone everywhere you go because they're gonna go out of their way to take care of you so like that crew on the Ogden on that deployment they took great care of us because he always went out of his way to be good to everybody you know just to go back to mommy a little bit it's weird to think about now right you look back at what you did now and what you've done since then which is obviously a ton and going back to you being there and when I think about it in my mind about how just I guess immature is part of the word but it's beyond just being immature because I'm not just talking about being immature in the traditional sense of the word I'm talking about being combat immature meaning no one had any combat right yeah and I think about just having a guy like Monty who's like level-headed who's been in some shit before and can go you know what hey we need to shoot this guy before he shoots at us that's just totally sensible thing to say but if if everyone's cuz you got these massive all roee briefs and everyone's being paranoid and you can't a listen we don't want we don't want this to escalate and all these things are in everyone's head yeah and it's so easy it's kind of like the detachment when you just go hey you know what this guy has an RPG they just shot one at us he's aiming it he's gonna shoot us again we need to kill this guy okay go ahead and then instead of you know dude you're low you're low you know or whatever just hey you're good load another round just being calm when I think about the advantage and how that's a pretty good performance you know what you guys was a pretty good performance with no experience because I think of how you know what I gained through experience and the maturity the combat maturity of seeing things and things unfolding and being like okay I can handle this right now or this isn't a big deal or whatever but man when you're when you don't have that everyone's all excited everyone's freaking out and everything's just magnified and so it's pretty impressive and it to me you again you have a guy like Monty that's just looking at the oh I see his boss mm-hmm and saying hey we actually need to kill this guy right now and and not being like we need to take this guy out which just escalated in the oh I see he's thinking oh my god you know he might say shut up you know whatever yeah just going hey man we need to take this guy out just just having that mentality is is so important and I don't know how well would you guys have done if he wasn't there I don't think we'd had done as well we we might not even been in the position where we shot yeah yeah um yeah cuz he just carried us through that whole thing he had a funny thing he taught us he goes if you're ever really excited and and he may have put this out to you too over the radio he goes if you try to talk like you have a Southern drawl it'll slow you down yeah and he goes and you won't have a Southern drawl by the way but it'll slow you down and he told us of a case that there was some officers in a high-speed chase and they were so calm over the radio people didn't believe that they were in a high-speed chase except for the rep the speed at which they are going out we just passed this we just passed this street we just passed this street because they were cool as cucumbers you know I'm freaking out yeah that's awesome no it's it's definitely just it's cool to hear that story and you tell probably told me that story 21 years ago or something like that and I actually heard you briefed that story to a bunch of people at a dog and pony show and it was really epic to tell that story but to hear the full actually um did you ever give me that detailed of a debrief but it's awesome that at that time no combat experience it's like okay here's what we're gonna do and that's a good lesson for everyone man detached stay calm look at what's going on and it all does go back to the fact that you were in that position probably had something to do with the fact that you that you know you were running for mayor or you know monney as a platoon chief was running for mayor and building relationships and hanging out with Marines and teaching them whatever and getting giving them some gear and well you know just doing those things that you're building relationships with the rest of the team instead of being an arrogant jerk to everyone because you think you're better than them absolutely because there was another unit that had 50 Cal sniper rifles that didn't get to come well there you go yeah there it is okay so now you get back and how long was that deploy is that just a six month or well they they were already deployed so I three and a half months with them because I replaced it got a guy that got in trouble got it and then but okay so now we were starting to dive into a marital scenario yeah so you got a kid already you got a kid my son's mother was pregnant when I went on that deployment so he was that was in February and he was born in September 95 so yeah I came back and then it was one of those situations where me being gone all the time didn't help but me being home all the time didn't help either and it in and so we just parted ways and it was it was hard for me not to have my son in my house but it it was it was the best thing because me and his mom just didn't get along and then this is at the point at the same time this is this one you got out this is right with it are we got divorced right after I got out which did you get out with the vision in mind that you're gonna be able to save this thing or did you get out with a vision in mind like no this is already too far so no yeah I got out she she wanted to like hey I want you around more you're gone too much it's you know this isn't good get that but then say we got out I got out and then and she realized that she really doesn't last much I can't blame her so so then then we ended up separating or or get you know going through the neutral and getting out oh I was gonna go work for a guy doing some kind of investment stuff huh because that makes a lot of sense yeah there was no plan it wasn't thought through the smartest thing I did was the day the day I got out I enlisted in there or or I joined the reserve so I was in the SEAL team five reserve teams so I did that for a year and a half and then when all it dust settled and with with the you know who's gonna have custody and where my son's gonna live it was like what am i doing I'm only happy when I go to do my reserve drill yeah and so I'm like hey I want to go back on active duty at the time they were critically undermanned 4e sixes so they're like boom so the timing like my timing I've been so lucky for my timing like being on the quarterback that one day I checked into trade at in August of 2001 into the sniper cell and then you know the planes hit the towers and then the teams are just off to the races yeah did you when you when you were civilian or whatever you were a reservists civilian how long did it take you to realize that this was a bad call and I'm gonna jump forward like when you would have guys that were saying they were gonna get out at 13 years or nine years or whatever did you you know what would you tell him about that oh you mean later yeah like later like because you know you I would you know when I was well my you know once I was an officer and I would have friends that were like eh able to get out and you know I'd say the experience I had was I went to college right and when I went to college for three years and when I came back I was like the main thing I learned in college was never ever ever ever get out of the teams ever because in dealing with other people it was just so horrible and especially I mean like you and me who literally spent our whole adult life in a platoon you get out of business you know with normal people and you're like what are they everyone doing once have what why is this even happening it's just nothing makes yeah there's a lot of awkward silences no one gets your jokes and it was what I usually tell guys is like hey I got broken service and you're gonna once you get out you're gonna miss this beer group mmm you'll miss this job and I don't think you're gonna make that much more money yeah and but I never I always tried the soft sell yeah hey and I would tell guys here's my phone number do not lose my phone number and if you decide you want to come back and please call me I will you know figure out how to get you wherever I'm at or back in and I've done that for at least two or three guys ya know it's a I know it's a hard decision for guys to make and and usually and and sometimes it's um what is that it's an emotional decision well completely because they had a bad deployment they didn't like someone or their wife's Madden or whatever and then make that emotional decision when in fact the teams can take care of you - you know the teams can go hey look we know you need some downtime you're gonna go to buds and be an instructor or whatever you know for three years you know you can get your kid through high school or whatever so the teams does a good job usually of taking care of of the people you know taking care of team guys but sometimes you know people they have the grass is greener situation again in the 90s we're playing we're training for a big game that we're not going to do and so there was a loss of job satisfaction there yeah and and who knows where Anna still be what trajectory we were on had these wars not started yeah that's a good question that's a scary question wait so what you do when you got back in so you went oh my god when went into trade net just got stood up and I went into the stand up those 2001 that's luckier uh-huh and so I got in there they're like hey we're gonna do a sniper cell and we're gonna be dedicated to this which is something that wasn't replicated on the other coast I was like oh man are you kidding me I'm just gonna do sniper stuff all the time yeah and throw me in that Burpee and you were the perfect literally the perfect guy and they probably were just overjoyed to have you come and it did it with a real world experience yeah which is serious at that time because no one had it yeah and so it allows you to say stuff to people and they're gonna listen to you like like we were talking about earlier where if a guy tells you to get your hair cut and he's a goofball and ain't done anything just like yeah whatever and and then so when you run to that sniper course are you guys now was that the sniper course no the sniper course was already stood up so now what we're doing this is what we kind of ended up with that trade net which is you guys are going out to training you're implementing sniper things into the overall training and you're doing specialized training for the snipers that's what you ended up that yeah we so for a little bit we were still running the sniper course I think till like two thousand two or three and then doing the sustainment training and so you know we developed the urban course the long-range target interdiction course which they they have a different variant on it now but um you know that's uh the land it was under land warfare and the land warfare oh I see at the time was a Warrant Officer Prichard Doug Pritchard who's an awesome dude he still works in shooting to this day and we got a lot of cool stuff done like we got the the ballistic computers which made you know shooting a whole lot more predictable and then we could get guns ready to go in a lot less rounds because we had these computers that did it and we did a lot of good research and development and tactics that we could push directly to the platoons which I mean nsw snipers are like the mainstay group I think of of snipers in the world yeah I'm not saying that we're better than anybody because everybody's really good but we've had a really rich history of employing snipers and doing stuff with with snipers you know as you well know yeah yeah and speaking of that how did you end up doing an augment because you augmented to Ramadi right right in what year was that 2005 so there was there was some of that video that got released of nose guy kitten that first couple snipers or whatever it was in Ramadi and the common or at the time saw that and he goes that's it and they they had a piece of gear that was supposed to help us detect enemy snipers and so they bought some they gave it to us to test out real quick and then we got to take it forward with SEAL team seven to go hey here's this new gear here's how you use it and and then it also gave us the ability to get get straight over there and kind of into the fights we team seven had just moved into the the shark base there at Ramadi and then we went in there with them and they long did you stay there for six weeks how was it awesome it's so cool so cool I didn't I didn't want to come back but you know you come from the strand I didn't do the workup my guys didn't do the workup and there's other guys doing PSD and they're like hey what's up with these dudes who aren't even at our team and they're going out on sniper missions so it's it's not cool it's combat tourism and I was super lucky that we were able to you know be there as long as we were and then it was just like yeah it's time to go you did a turnover with the guys that were there in other words you taught them how to use the system and yeah we're like a ops with them when it got to go out and some ops with them got to go on a lot of date I like my favorite thing to do was go out on daytime presence patrols with the army or the Marine Corps because that's was so fun you know and then so we we could took to get embedded in a daytime presence it was a one slide 5wc which which for the planning cycle it's really easy it's like gonna be approved no problem and then if you wanted to mix it up that's that's where it was happening out on the streets with the guys that are walking around using themselves as bait so we would balance between going out with the Marines and going out with the the army and and in both cases it was awesome but I I really have a soft spot in my heart for the Marine Corps because my dad was Marine but when you're in a Marine Patrol it it's like being a part of a big huge beast that's just walking down the street waiting for someone to bump into it and then they just turn and go after it and were you guys setting up a bounding over watches during that or we just going on patrol of us we would gone but so so the reason that we would go on patrol is so we could we could look for positions to put up snipe over watches and the sniper over watches were to catch guys placing IEDs out in the road and they'd already gotten like three or four cuz some guys went out on a really good op you know a guy that we both know and they pick up two guys who are digging in our ID and then there was another couple where they got and they were they're having an impact for a little bit so well that meant a lot to the Marine Corps in the Army when they are losing guys all the time to IEDs and then and you know hardly ever to the IND and placers actually get captured or killed so yeah when they're getting laid out in the streets by snipers man those guys were excited about it and in their time and then then then you know you had that whole thing going on with the populace because they they began to believe that every building had an american sniper in it which is a good that's exactly what you're denying them freedom of movement and they gotta look over their shoulders before they place you know one one of those one five five rounds in the road yeah yeah so you get done with that how much longer after that did you go to team three immediately I got back from that and then checked out a trade yet and checked into SEAL Team three for my platoon chiefs law and that was an interesting ride that true Buick isn't so now I'm at SEAL team 3 common task unit bruiser and you're a SEAL team three in your task unit and there's that that one there was some drama in that one right in fact I mean life and I wrote about it in extreme ownership because this is the story and extreme ownership of when the political one of the platoon commanders and the task unit commander did not couldn't get along and unfortunately they could not come to any kind of agreement of how to work together in fact you know that the skipper said hey you guys got the weekend figure out how to how are you gonna deploy together and I think they could have come back and said look you know he goes there I'll go somewhere else we'll we'll figure it out but they both came back in and kind of stuck to their guns which is no I don't want to work with him I don't work with him and the skipper fired him both actually yeah that was crazy that was a horrible like that had been brewing for a long time and so just that drama is so horrible to deal with like Vic when and they're they're both good guys yeah but it's just this drama brewed and then there is all this crazy uncertainty and you know who's gonna get fired what's gonna happen as a result of that and so you know I'm glad the Admiral made to call that he did and it it worked and then we the guy you took over as of the tea you commit so we are a OIC went over became they always oh I am I see our assistant officer in charge became though I see another platoon there is an officer you read a counseling chit for in the real early podcast that the new task unit commander the first thing he did the first day was sit down and give him a counseling Chet yeah that's good leadership yeah he's like hey here's what you're doing wrong here's what right looks likes laid it all out for him and and that was it and then he he was super direct gave us our left and rights and then we were just like I was like I remember thinking personally this is awesome yeah he's strict but that I I don't care if he if you tell me where my left and rights are especially you know when that guys especially because when you're coming in I've said this many times when you're coming into a situation where there's there's problems right there's definitely problems when the OIC and the task unit commander just got fired there are problems you have to come in and kind of set down you have to lay down the law a little bit it's not like you know if I roll into a tasking that they're doing great and the one of the guy had a family emergency and he had to leave and I roll in and it's like okay I'm not gonna lay down the law and a bunch of guys that are doing well I'm gonna go in there and say hey we work with you guys and then over time if there's things that need to be adjusted cool maybe they don't need to be adjusted but whatever it's different when you roll into a situation where things are not good and then you have to lay down the law the other thing that's very important about what you just said is sometimes people are sometimes from a leadership perspective you don't feel comfortable giving direction because you're like well I don't really know what's going on and but it's it's important to think about times in your life or times in your career when you didn't get good direction from the person you're working for and how just you don't really know what's happening and you don't feel you don't you can't predict what's gonna happen and so you you just feel kind of a little bit lost and then you think to yourself man I just wish the boss would just tell us what the hell he wants and so that's kind of what happened there's a ball the new boss comes in and says hey here's what's going on here's what we're gonna do hey you guy that's all jacked up here's what you need to improve and everyone instead of what in your mind you might think hey I'm gonna piss everyone off if I come in and lay down the law at this you've got to remember that people have been wondering what the hell's going on for six months for a year they don't know who's in charge everything's a disaster no decisions are being made you come in and people are gonna thank God thank you for telling me what the hell you want I I'm tired of playing a guessing game every Monday morning about who's my boss and what direction were going into so that's that's an important part to remember now I am definitely there's a dichotomy of course because you can come in and you can start barking orders and everyone just says well who are you where'd you come from you don't know what you're talking about you haven't been here shut up and of course they won't say that to you they'll just undermined what you're trying to do and cause all kinds of you know just just try and usurp you with whatever they can so that's problem but what I'm saying is there is a a happy medium and there are times when you lean towards being laying down the law and there's times where you lean towards being more loose and you got to figure out where that's gonna be depending on the situation you're diving into and so the advantage that the guy coming in had was he'd been watching this situation for a while and he knew everybody so sometimes when you come somewhere new it's it's maybe keep just listen before you start making some major adjustments or something like that and but that would have just prolonged the angst all of us were feelings and he came in he had a big brief it was and after that I felt like someone had taken 40 pounds out of my rucksack yeah because you finally knew where you were going who was in charge and what at least the near-future meant which think you get rid of what the near-future you get with you get rid of the certainty of the near future you get rid of who's in charge you get rid of what's gonna happen you take all that away and you're just left uncertain and that's a horrible feeling you know probably the worst well yeah I think from from a perspective of being led yeah having no idea what's gonna happen is the worst I talk about that example of rats in a cage and how the rats on one side of the cage they just get electrocuted randomly from the floor and but the electrocution isn't very strong the other side of the cage has a stronger elect electrocution shock but there's a little light that comes on that lets them know that you're about to get shocked and rats prefer to know that they're gonna get shocked even if it's more often and even if it's stronger they just prefer to know that it's coming as opposed to be just randomly getting shocked and you don't know why it's gonna happen and that's basically where you where your task unit was because there was I mean it was like a public - it's like a public everyone kind of knew it was going on at least after about six months you know I would say after all of us being at the team for about six months it was readily apparent that's that's for sure and you guys actually that one of the pieces of collateral damage that was Mike Sorelli it Mike Sorelli he they didn't know what to do with him because I forget what the internal conflict but there was internal conflict with Mike Sorelli and meaning that I don't even know what it was but so they said hey Jocko you want this guy and like affirmative and then you came up to me and I was like you know this guy and you're like yes he's awesome cool and you know there was other people that were saying oh he's this and he's that and of course the other people I'm like okay and I listen to him and then I was like thinking okay well that's why I think I asked you like hey what's this guy's deal yeah like he's awesome you're you're stoked and I was like cool good to go yeah Mike was awesome yeah and and he wasn't geez obviously he still is awesome and then you guys did that workup and then you guys deployed over - while I was in Ramadi you guys were over and uh oh um in Guam yeah so I tell you what if it hadn't been contrasted it was an amazing deployment like we nobody got in trouble we did a lot of great stuff which is a big problem in Guam guys just getting in trouble and you know the fit the problem was that we guys were hearing in real-time like hey they just got the first carl gustaf kills in Ramadi and hey this is happening and and I remember one day we were on in we're in Thailand on an exercise staying in a five-star hotel and guys are all gloomy and I to get everybody at the side of the pool at the five-star hotel and I'm like listen I want to be there too it's not gonna happen we have to put the mission first our mission is to be here and this is an amazing experience I guarantee you're gonna remember for the rest of your life you guys got to stop whining yeah stop worrying about it and of course all the guys always joke about the fact that when you're sitting in a sweaty overwatch position it's 118 degrees like okay we just spend a week in Thailand right now by the pool I know whoa and then when they used to do that rip yeah where you'd go to Iraq and then halfway through come back to Guam the problem is in Guam they'd be like guys would get back here and they wouldn't want to do any work and they weren't they weren't focused on what was going on you know but then that's the mission has got to come first and the mission isn't always something that you can tell stories about hey I got the ride elephants I got to sit on a croc Isles back uh I got great for damn of them either of those yeah I was good it was interesting to like going back to the workup it was a good contrast for my especially for my officers to kind of see like I'd be watching this unfold and you know I had stoner and Lafe and I'd be you know we would talk about it be like bro this is what's going on fellas look at this look what's happening here and it was a good contrast for them to see because it made it so obvious like why you have to work together why these relationships we have inside the tasking are so important why we need if you have an issue you bring it up you bring it to me why it's not gonna freak me out why we're gonna talk about it why you know Lafe always says in sedona would have told you the same thing the Flav fought like hey I'd like to try this a different way I'd be like cool how do you want to try it go let's let's make it happen I don't care I don't I don't care what happens as long as it makes us win so there was a really cool for me unfortunately it was not cool for you to be in a position where I could look and use the leadership failures in that task unit and the other interesting thing was like you talked about those two guys you're like hey they're both good guys I've actually know both those guys and would be getting debriefed by both of them like both of them would be telling me what the other person was doing and man you just be thinking guys instead of telling me go tell each other go talk to each other it didn't happen yeah the enemy's outside the wire not Owens yeah and what will you what was what were you when you're looking at my task you know what were you thinking when we're to work up and stuff you guys are gonna go to Iraq and we're we're gonna go to pay comm that's fine I mean that's that is we knew where we were laid out and how we were manned and it was all good to go it wasn't like we were kicking cans oh no it's like okay well that's how it's gonna be well they proposed they made up the command made a proposal uh-huh that was early on as a matter of fact I was at Nylund dirt so that was our first block returning the command made a proposal that we kind of disassembled the task units and reassemble them in a way that was more fair with regards to who's been to Iraq and who's not and they made this proposal and so they made this proposal to us it was to me personally to the task unit commanders as a matter of fact hey that we can rearrange this thing and that way guys haven't been can get to go it was like the fair ferry was coming out right and I mean I was just like there's no possible way but I went back to Nylund and I sat down with the platoon commanders and the platoon chiefs and the the my senior chief and I was like hey here's what they're proposing they're proposing that we could disassemble these task units and we could reassemble them so that guys that haven't been to Iraq can go and then the other guys that had been to Iraq that have combat experience and there's all those things you can layer on top of that like hey cuz guys will say well I can't get promoted if I haven't been to it you know what I mean like all these things they layer all these things on top of it because that's a crazy proposal if you think about it yes but also if you think about it that's how much it means to guys that they want to go and so now this is 2005 so there was still guys that had been on shore view over there that were cycling back in never been to combat and they missed the 2003-2004 deployments and they're thinking eh this is ridiculous and it's what you talked about earlier job dissatisfaction you know you've been in the teams for 12 years and you and there's a big war going on and you don't get to go that is the kind of thing you have to consider and think how can we take care of the troops you know take care of the guys because we want it they all want to go to war and there's a war going on and yet we're gonna send them some of them to not war but I came I came back in Island I was said hey guys here's the proposals I recommend we they also offered it's a competition it's a competition and it was really just a competition between my task unit and your task unit because the other task unit they they actually didn't that task unit didn't go to Iraq on the last so they said look you guys get to go this time for sure and then it was between us too and they said we can either split up up a lot do that or make it a competition and this commanding officer will decide who's gonna go based on performance and I told my guys I was like I say we go for performance and we do the best we can and we will probably crush everyone and if we don't we don't deserve to go and we'll go do our job in panco and of course all the guys were like hell yes that's what we did sure and and you know like when I was a CMC at Team five and I was doing my Manning the hard fast rule was if you went to pay come last time you are not going to pay comm again and then so those guys could get a chance and then some of this some of the guys that went to CENTCOM went back but in the end when I'm building seal leaders I need guys that have been everywhere I need guys that have had the Paycom experience and understand they're mature enough to go all the mission is first and then guys that have been exposed to combat so they know what that's all about yeah you know and and when you got done so when you got done with that potential then where'd you go so because I didn't because I was in Paycom I I made a deal with the new command master chief and and I said hey I know I'm stepping down but I want to go to CENTCOM so can I stay here in the capacity of as the ops chief for one troop which was the in my guy who is the OIC a my platoon who fleeted Jack Riggins fleed up to be the the troop commander and I'm like hey can I can I stay and go to CENTCOM now cuz he was gonna go to CENTCOM as is uh his his ops chief and they're like sure and it's I'm actually stepping down Tony did the same thing and then Tony and I both made senior chief and they're like hey it's time for you to go he's and they sent us over to the senior enlisted Academy and then we went over to SEAL Team seven together which worked out great yeah that later and you know what um the great part that you just mentioned is like a three-hour conversation yeah which we don't aren't gonna have right now because look the second part of your career or the part that would if yeah we'll get into this we'll do another one well just will this role do another podcast we'll record it like tomorrow and that's gonna follow you into Afghanistan back to Iraq again more time more training more tours combat tours tours as senior enlisted tours as the command master chief towards as an ops Master Chief I mean there's a lot of massive stuff to talk about from here on out so we'll do that we'll record that tomorrow good Jack echo yes while we're waiting for the next podcast mm-hmm I know have you probably have some suggestions on what we can do instead of just sitting around and waiting there's probably some ways that we could get better yes I do how do you have permission first thing is you to Jason jujitsu yes dave-o I'm a one stripe white belt and there you go so and so we know what did what did it feel like when you got the bug when did you get on the mat for the first time legitimately thinking all right I want to know what this is all about okay so the the same Master Chief that taught us in Guam Oh Steve Bailey Steve Bailey I trained with him for a little bit in Guam and then just got distracted you know like talking my teeth into a little bit but then it's like a year ago started training out in East County yeah yeah and it was just awesome but I I was like a spaz I match it's like what am I supposed to they're like relax I'm like what am I just supposed to lose I'll leave you right now the 49:49 so everybody that asks 51 can I start jujitsu um 39 can I start to do - um whatever age you are the answer is yes you can start jujitsu we recommend that you calm down without starting I wanted to roll these once you relax a relaxation level right now if I was because I haven't read like six months why be I probably spaz out for a hot minute and then figure it out but uh yeah because you you're torn you don't know what you're doing but you just don't want to roll over and like oh you're having my arm yeah so you just put a triangle and know that it's a it's a it's easier it's a sweat situation that unfolds that you know is going to unfold that you know is not the correct thing to do and there's no way you can stop yourself from doing it like you just said someone's gonna arm lock you you know what's gonna happen you could just scale okay you know what I'm just got me I'm gonna let him but no you cannot stop yourself from gorilla gripping your other hand and hanging on for dear life for an extra 12 seconds before you tap there's no possible way to overcome that it's just common so yeah you have to do that but hopefully you can make through that you can make it through that transition you fairly quickly yeah it's amazing for my kids - Wow kids it's a beautiful thing it's a beautiful thing for kids yeah it seems like the spazzing thing even as you get it I mean I would say that it happens less and less but they'll be like momentary spaz situations even at like the top level huh where you kind of got to stay calm I mean everyone through all I'll run into it where I got stay conscious of it oh I see the danger coming and it's coming pretty quick you got to think well I in my sister I'll think through it and I'll be way more successful rather than Lycos pass through it so now I'm more tired and it's still coming kind of I hate to say this too cuz it's horrible for me to put this out there but there are times when you have to spaz to escape something Dean Lister will if I do that he just like he he it's worth it even if I get out it's worth it that I spaz because it can make fun of me yeah good bass he's just making fun of me because we know we both know the only reason that I got out of whatever he just did to me is because I kicked and squirm didn't spazzed out and he wasn't ready for it mm-hmm and then I got out yeah it'll work out but a huge cost so there's like there's too little the additional elements to a successful spaz escape or whatever one you gotta be at least somewhat strong like you can't like a smaller person like spazzing is way less effective even at eye level there's that and then when you're strong when you're a strong person and you spaz successfully you're way more tired way more tired so you get a person where you put them in a spazzing state like two three three times in a row yeah no more oh yeah you can't spend more than I don't make you give a Mack spaz rep Sephora after that you're the next one there will be no spaz left yes real urge it's passes there's no time no space left and which brings you back to went back early on as a white belt or something like this where you know it's spaz spaz spaz and they feel the effects of three spasms in a row thank you and you're like dang this is exhausting yeah when you start that's just who is just spazzing and more especially and then it's like the opposite of when you know wait in the beginning there's these small moments where you don't spaz yeah and then when you get better there's small moments when you do spaz yes and then when you're really good I mean very seldom do I make bean spaz yeah I do occasionally though it's a little little little little crazy and you know I end up in a way to where that's why these little is smaller guys when they're super advanced I don't think they ever spaz ever cause it's like been unproductive for them right every attempted spaz is gonna be like unsuccessful you know any kind it's a spectrum obviously so their whole thing is just thinking through the thing Andy Berke sure he does this his form of space is like this silent spaz he pretends it's not happening oh yeah yeah but it is happening over yeah he's doing these like in little movements it's there's only one technique that it could truly be called that's as fast but he acts like it wasn't he's real cool yeah he's real cool he's acting like that was you know just like any offense that he knows one of his things I'm on to you and Ebert yeah I know what's up that's a good tip I'm gonna look out for it I don't know if I've ever made Andy space but you know I'm gonna be looking out for it nonetheless when you're in jujitsu we all need Aggie if we're doing it and I'm not saying you have to do kit you should do geek I think she responded yeah do both that's the recommended boat if you trained Gino gay both oh yeah the place we were training at they did both yeah so one night was noogie the other night was gay was awesome that's not origin jeez they're awesome Oh until you're in a game so some people they they may or may not be looking hey what kind of gear should I get there you go just like this gartner set or Jinky 100% best skis factually by the Jason Gardner with the orange and get plugged comment straight off the top ropes yeah he just pulled that out of nowhere yeah he's a Yankee and Nokia by the way which is the finest key in America and many people say the finest ski in the world yeah I I say that I say that - yeah and it is made in America by the way yeah so yeah anyway when you go to origin main comm that's where you get it you can also get other stuff like rash guards t-shirts for the no key if your name is echo Charles no I shouldn't say that if your name is not Jocko willing you can get joggers mm-hmm because I don't look like normal I don't I don't know what to say I look you don't man I don't I don't feel man yeah joggers are not for me yeah is it him what is that Brad you just don't match so here this is what actually this is what it is uh-huh okay jogger you know with joggers are right do you have orders already skinny no okay yeah there's so they're skinny Jesus in wet pants kind of tapered we're not they're really tapered a little bit of a would he call like a drop crotch a little bit for like a lot of roomy in the hips area kind of thing do you think they're functional yes but I think the big push is a style thing because there's like skinny jeans and all this stuff so it's kind of like a functional thing yes but it's a style thing that's the part you don't match you attitude you especially anything that says skinny or thin or trim fit or what Brad that's not you that's somebody else so yeah that's not gonna mess with you at all in fact even to you know people have like real fitted jeans Yeah right like real fitted yeah yeah it's a tight I'm gonna say that yes I fit it mm-hmm you should not do that either no that's not you huh it's just not you but the weird thing is the world changes right the fashion changes I just keep wearing the same stuff yeah at some point is what I we're gonna come back well fashion wise me but actually know what I wear this is the thing I think what I wear doesn't it doesn't state just what hey you can't say hey this guy's wearing a t-shirt and pair of jeans you could wear t-shirt a pair of jeans in 1950 1960 1970 never I never go out of style quality never goes out of style yeah and actually even to be more precise since yours you don't go for fashion at all you go for like this functionality kind of situation so if if anything you do is like fashion yeah which I know some fashion stuff in your past like maybe hair styles etc that's why if you see old pictures of Jocko with his hair you believe don't be like you know kind of the thing that's the that's the guy that Jason was talking about earlier that's me like we were I like that like hey we're in the teams we have long hair yeah yeah push the handle of why you care long as I could get it yeah dizzy and now the fashion thing to look good but your clothing wise you'll never go fashion so you'll never go out of style because since the fashion is the thing that revolves and goes out of style origen jeans I got like the final kind of cut and everything you know they're legit so that's another thing they're it's not it's not a fashion right their origin genes well they're not mutually um SaLuSa 'v either so fortunately they're strong they're flexible they're durable don't go to stuff right that stuff's not gonna stylus or it's not so there we go origin genes we're are in production with origin genes in production at this time so check the website Origin main comm if you want to get some genes or if your name is not jock a willing you can get pair of joggers the jumpers are good that's the thing where I guys I wasn't down for the joggers Pete told me is he opened my open my little like mind or whatever I put him on I was like dang these are comfortable but man they're skinny they're thin you know they're there it's they're tight you know they had a specific look that I wasn't very accustomed to but and Pete's noticed it he was like yeah they're like you know you gonna use like Jocko that they're probably not for Jocko but you pull him off that's what Pete said to me I hope he was like Dean like honest with it but yeah ever since then I was like okay maybe I can do this so I only warm at camp so as I go I might not wear these at home but where am i camp and then it camp I was like dang these are good too and when you job they're way better than regular sweatpants so I'm like all these are good and they're like super comfortable too because you know the continent thingies or whatever and then I'd wear I'm at home and that's all I would wear now I kind of switched over to that whole thing how are the pocket is all kinds of life-changing things happen on in this podcast wait like one of them is Echo Charles switching to joggers be noted wait pockets like what for like functionality you're like for my everyday carry so I'm going down to the store and the joggers yeah I would say like any other sort of sweatpants situation you know they had pockets on either side right yeah no regular sweatpants don't have pockets bro yeah okay you're talking about I'm talking about you know like gym coach from 1979 no they're not that if they have pockets for sure I gotta tell you I saw those boots online and I'm pretty excited right yeah I open the gun mentioning that now we're making them we're making yeah I have a very little and yeah they're awesome oh you look pair of those two I'm perfect hey man you got another one your one like one degree separation from getting all the new stuff to where you're at really cuz it feels like 180 man you know I'm over here looking online at stuff anyway also mulk right mokrane Jason we talked earlier you just what's your milk recipe morning recipe okay so I get up in the morning brew 20 ounces of coffee i grind up the beans do it in the French press I add a little bit of stevia I'm just wheat in it but it's not gonna spike my insulin then I put some coconut milk in there or no coconut oil grass-fed butter about a tablespoon of that some MCT oil a scoop of vanilla malt I hit that with a stick blender oh I do not have to eat until like 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon I get all my fat in early in the morning so I got a stress getting good fat in and doing this is awesome that's an advance take are the kids on the milk train they are we and is it if you tried strawberry milk didn't strawberry warrior kid strawberry no we haven't we've been doing the chocolate bro um hot chocolate yeah the hot chocolate sauce and iris has been making the pancakes she's just using it and mixing straight-up pancakes oh yes X was talking about it the other day there's a guy in Lang it was like yeah more pancakes it's like taking this a good idea so I just added them basically replaced like us portion of percentage of the pancake mix with a milk I thought I don't know what pancakes are even made of coz I haven't had them in so long yeah that's just hey that's on you and you're kind of missing out on that one cuz it did they work out really good yeah okay so we got the mold by the way we're on that we're on mint I'm on mint and I'm actually in this whole deal now when I'm having mint peanut butter I don't really I don't really like the flavor vanilla as I've mentioned on here so I don't have that but the strawberry to the warrior kids strawberry milk which Brian is working on the adult strawberry milk the vanilla like I'm not a big manila fan either but it just mixes so well so like when iris is making smoothies this is vanilla milk and there I put it in my coffee because the mint chocolate chip doesn't work it's my favorite like okay I get to have dessert and that's exactly what it is it scratches that itch when it comes along that's the thing man I went out last night I had a legit steak legit that Ragland OB and I still was needed a little something I needed or something because they sell this thing at Raglan called the illegal which is a giant chocolate chip cookie and cooked in a cast iron thing it's massive and then they put vanilla ice cream on it which is the only time I like vanilla and the vanilla ice cream is all melting is just ridiculous but obviously that's not part of the program so I left Raglan OB without eating and illegal and I went home and I'm like I still need some kind of a little theater so I went peanut butter on with peanut butter milk and I just didn't I did it like a scoop and a half with a little like a half a shaker of water I drank that thing it was so good I was sitting there saying this is a milkshake if this is a milkshake it's freaking ridiculous you know so they're yes sir and they added protein let's not forget that yeah for the end and don't forget the probiotic microbiome yeah we haven't even gotten to your whole health scenario because would you say you're 50 years old a 51/49 for 250 this year and you're getting after it I feel great you feel awesome walking around it like 157 and in before I had you know before I adjusted my diet and everything I was 193 and then all kinds of inflammation and everything hurt and just crap you know it's all just dialed in yeah I remember when you were first going down path because our wives were hiking and you and I met somewhere and we you were just talking about like the you were starting down this path and coming home from deployment - yeah so as I was like for you this is my last deployment I don't have deployments to go on and get back in shape so I'm gonna have to stick with it and yeah so those supplements join warfare twice a day two in the morning and two in the evening and that the turmeric is amazing yeah yeah krill oil in the morning every morning and then usually uh any time I'm gonna do something the discipline go the basically to go yeah JP said the other day when he took the discipline go he could he could see people's thoughts anyways get all the stuff at uh or Jemaine calm sorry yes take a really long time oh good also chuckles door it's called choco Store so choco store.com you understand and yeah there's if you want to represent this linkle's freedom this is where you can get your shirts hoodies hats trucker hats flex fit checkouts left flex me it I can go either way oh yes fence Walker they know he's it both sides right yeah when you can adapt and adjust what either way that always got to have a role in it though I'm not a flat bill black guy yeah that's actually streams coming from a California iein aversive because that app that's like in the last couple decades or something that was a not yeah Jack yeah either way there you go chocolate store that's where you can get them or sorry chocolate store calm also women stuff on there as well yeah if you want to represent while on the path that's where you go it's good also jakka white tea mmm if you deadlifting and you're like tired of your like 500 pound deadlift tired retiree which yeah you know I can see how you'd be tired of that oh and you want it to go up to 8,000 pounds chocolate white tea and it happens to taste good and it happens to be USD a organic certified yeah organic organic yes that's a good one now that adds a kind of a little spin because people used to say to me like did you refer a picture that you'd be making tea and it's kind of funny you know and I got whatever but now it's like next level did you ever picture that you'd be making organic tea oh yeah that is kind of a different thing maybe I'll be wearing joggers soon as the whole world going crazy if you don't subscribe to this podcast which is shocking to me but now we have reports from the field of people that listen to 167 podcasts and haven't subscribed to it and so now echo has made it clear that you need to subscribe also don't forget about the the warrior kid podcast you on the warrior kid podcast oh yeah that's like yes have the kids memorized him yet they love it I mean pretty much yeah yeah I've been lagging I don't get him out as much as I can part of it is because I like really like doing those stories from Uncle Jake mm-hmm and they take a little bit more time and so I need to invest the time the cute I should just do the q and A's as well but anyways warrior kid podcast if you want to get your kid on the pot on the path and what you want you and I were talking about earlier of how your kids just don't really want to listen to you they listen to Uncle Jake yeah absolutely just listen to Uncle Jake absolutely I had another Master Chief East Coast Master Chief come out and came to the gym and he's like bro and I never I didn't know you know he's just like another guy he's Coast Guard that I didn't know and he's like he's like bro your book your little warrior kid books he said you got my kid I he's 11 years old everything I did for 11 years to get him to do push-ups and pull-ups failed he goes he read that book he's like I can't thank you cuz it's awesome and I was like dang it's a hunter potential if your your kids are not gonna listen to you as much as you want them to they will listen Uncle Jake for some reason uncle Jake will will take it home form I listen to Uncle Jake I love those books yeah I got taken out just reading the books I'm like oh yeah I gotta fix that oh here's something I could do better yeah it's it's yeah it's Uncle Jake Uncle Jake is who Uncle Jake has good information you think I'm everybody's uncle Jake yeah and people will say like oh you know your uncle Jake to me and I'm like I am so not uncle Jake if I was a little Jake I'd be so much cooler Uncle Jake is my uncle Jay yeah yeah I'm just a little warrior kid over here trying to try to learn to try to get on the path you know FLE that's the way it is you and war your kid soap you can get that Irish oats Irish Oaks ranch calm speaking of warrior kids Aidan's making soap on his farm and he wants you to stay clean what if I go to my kids said today like comment and subscribe kids we are not something you know oh so Instagram the estimate and then one my kids it's like like comment and subscribe yeah that's going up there if I start saying that you keep the joggers out yeah we're already awake and organic tea for some reason which is just great but that's a good thing it's just I know it just tastes good and it's good for you yeah so these are all thing they just sound kind of light-hearted compared to your you know yeah your whole anyway also yes you too by the way that's where they stay that's where you can run into these videos where this because my daughter sometimes watch your little youtube videos and that's what they'll say like comment and subscribe just repetitive they're so true like yeah I mean the children I get it I get it um yeah so jokes don't say that but we do have a YouTube channel and you're basically right now saying subscribe to the YouTube channel if you want and so what Jason says you should like the YouTube channel you should like it and then I'm over here saying you should comment like comment and subscribe yeah I don't know that you can like the YouTube channel you like the video yes which is a quote-unquote like but here's the thing you like to YouTube channel you like the YouTube channel that's a matter of opinion right yeah you like it you kind of neutral or you don't like it kind of thing that's up to you you can tell you don't like it if you want to have fun you can go to the youtube channel jockle Podcast and you can look at the people that attack the downvotes so they'll be and you know we don't have many down votes losses I guess cool yeah it's crazy or whatever thumbs down people get mad mad what good kind of Isis terrorist who the 13 Isis and members that gave this a down vote you will rot in hell so thanks for having my back there they also like that let like to let everyone know the NECA looks jacked whatever there's a video that was just released was the most recent video you just did that describe is the normal face well the normal face overreaction overreaction you you release the video you are not in the video but people are saying that they could feel that you were jacked just for watching this so yeah like a your college act psychological warfare you can get that on itunes google play mp3 platforms if you think you might have a moment of weakness in your day-to-day life press play and you'll get pushed through that moment weakness but jock oh by the way by me yeah yeah and not pushed will say spotted that's better yeah because some people they're not in the mood to get pushed pragmatically reasoned with yes reason to it yes yeah a reason very good also speaking of reason when you want to improve your home gym maybe even your commercial gym you know 25 minutes I don't know go to on it calm / chuckle get yourself more kettlebells like me got the Stormtrooper one oh you're gonna break out some Star Wars and nerd stuff over here bro yeah you ready yes so Jango Fett was the guy that they used for they're like oh you're the perfect warrior we're gonna make all the clones based on you and I believe that his deal he made with those people is like you're gonna give me one of the clones back that I'm gonna raise as my son who turned out to be Boba Fett yes okay yeah oh wait wait so you're - you're letting me know because I messed that up I think so I think Jade yeah tuned you up in there on the last podcast if you guys are talking about it again yes is there a their books for that no just something that you kind of because your closet nerd Jason oh hey I played Dungeons & Dragons when I was in high school yeah absolutely and I can be open about it today I was horrified to tell you when I was in high school I do the Dragons or that got out but right now I don't care you got all kinds of like little nerd know science fiction nerdism right yeah enjoy science fiction that's a lot of fun there you go that's cool my younger brother who's a tattoo artist up in San Clemente he has a complete stormtrooper costume so do it do you that's alright oh by the way are you in the five-o is it the five-o first Vader's fist no so well mine is I got the stormtrooper costume like Bono one what's five-o first Vader's so there's an orc there's its or something there's yeah there's an organization that does a lot of oh just like work for like honesty cancer kids and stuff like that and it's all these people that are Star Wars villains and because they don't make cop no one can make costumes because it's all license so they have to make them themselves and then you go there and they'll validate it and say okay you're good to go your costume is good and then and I hope I'm not screwing up the unit name but I think it's the the five-o first Vader's fist I've never do that that's pretty cool actually going deal one the one I have is like I don't know if it's a licensed costume or what there aren't any you just it has to be so good that they're like they'll validate it oh because there's no such thing as a licensed costume no for any for just make this stuff yeah the ones that classic were like a lot they were like well I bought two of there's a Darth Vader one and a stormtrooper they're like a few thousand dollars yeah my brother's a thousand dollars for well not just to have it though that's the thing he was put off for flex point right so I was making these videos comic the hobbies of Darth be I gotta go check those out those are a really good video so either that's the potential in those videos by the way yeah you didn't get you didn't get where you needed to get well we were going I know Pete you're like them like famous jiu-jitsu people wouldn't you know like Jeff Glover Keaney corny like these guys Ramos is we're just living our life but Darth Vader's here too yeah so like he's doing this so he's going on dates you know he's doing this anyway it turned out kind of funny or whatever so there's one where the stormtrooper was in it he wanted his lawyer when he got arrested for chopping his head off it was pretty good yeah it's deep thumbs up he's like he's like the ex-boyfriend of his date or whatever so uh so Vader like chops his head off uh-huh so the next episode he gets arrested for that his lawyers a stormtrooper oh so that's why I love it yeah do you ever see that one where they did like a cops episode but it was troopers and they're storm troopers and they show up to Luke's aunt and uncle and it's really a domestic dispute and they kill everybody it's yeah there's a lot of fun to be had with those guys for sure nonetheless I got the kettlebell I got it from on it and they got some good stuff on there nanak calm that's yeah good spot including Star Wars stuff I also got some books Mikey and the dragon so Mike and the Dragons Jason you were actually maybe the third or fourth person to hear me read Mikey and the Dragons and I did it on the beach in Coronado to you and iris I was so excited I couldn't believe it but when you started rhyming and the whole thing I'm like how did you do that it's like he's still rhyming and it's still going and this story is just awesome yeah super stoked on Mikey and the Dragons it's how old are your kids eight and six and what age group can it go down to would you say I'd say probably three yeah it can get young it's got very beautiful pictures that are bright and colorful there's so yeah and then the story rhymes it's gonna make your kid smarter and there's times where I was when I was writing it you know they say write in a certain level but at the same time I put some words in there that kids aren't gonna necessarily know right away and so they need to look them up or they need to learn them poise is one of them I remember using the word poise and I was thinking well most kids won't know what poises and then I thought to myself good now they can learn a new word be smarter yeah that's a good point that when you say where does it go down to so three I would say there my son is like - he was like just before two and a half and I'd read a more reading it to my daughter he's there but he'll catch certain things you know when there's like monsters ready to bite he'll be you know like he'll know certain stuff so as you kind of get older you absorb more and more but yeah if you're - yeah it looks for them - there you go yeah all kids if your kids are a little bit older you can get him away the warrior kid you can get them marks mission which is the second book in that series and now we have book three coming out the title of book 3 is where there's a will and mark he gets involved in some more situations but luckily his uncle Jake is there to help him out I get so many pictures of kids doing pull-ups working out studying they're gonna be warrior kids so get that book for your kids get that book for your library get that book for your school get that book for anyone that you know that has kids you'll be thankful and they will be thankful and they'll come and thank you it in you know it's cool going to wrestling tournaments yeah this is pretty cool I've had kids that are you know freshmen in high school so they're 14 years old or whatever and they're like hey I read warrior kid that's why I wrestle yeah yeah think about that so three years ago when it came out the kid got it and now he's wrestling yeah that's what I'm talking about get you kids that kids will listen Uncle Jake discipline equals freedom Field Manual if you want to know how to get after it there you go you have to wonder you can just get the Field Manual if you want the audio it's on iTunes Amazon music Google Play and extreme ownership first book I wrote with my brother Leif babban and then that follow-on book is the dichotomy of leadership which is takes all those lessons and shows where you can screw them up and then teach you how to fix them dichotomy leadership both those books me in life we wrote them check them out and then we have ash law in front leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership it's me it's life Bevin it's JP - no it's Dave Burke it's Flynn Cochran it's Mike Cirelli it's Mike bimah and it is now also Jason Gardner Jason is a - LAN Front he just retired and this is what we are doing he's already got gigs booked which is awesome Ashlin front comm if you need help with leadership in your organization we will help you that's what we do we have the muster in 2019 twenty-three twenty-four million Chicago 19 20 September in Denver four and five December in Sydney Australia every event we've done is sold-out go to extreme ownership calm if you want to come otherwise it's gonna be sold out and you won't be able to come and you'll be all mad and you'll be mad at me mmm-hmm and then someone said that it's like when I went to Lollapalooza yeah and I went and saw Rollins who I kinda knew and I was like hey man can you get us in and Rollins said it'd be easier to sneak you into Fort Knox and I kind of like was all hardcore like you kind of forgot what it's like in the streets but it wasn't up to him exactly now now I'm the guy yep now I'm the guy that's gonna be saying hey be easier to sneak you into Fort Knox I gave you a heads up you're big-time now so check that's that EF online online interactive training from echelon thought we needed to speak to more people and we don't have enough instructors couldn't run enough monsters each year so if you want to know what we teach you want to get granular with it check out EF online.com and finally we have the EF overwatch which is where we take guys that came from Special Operations and combat aviation they have massive amounts of experienced leadership experience they understand the principles we talk about we write about that we teach they understand those and they will bring them into your company you can hire them to work and help your organization when EF overwatch comm is where you can make that happen and if you want to keep this conversation going which is a pretty varied conversation we're talking about star wars and sniper operations in a joggers and DMD yeah I mean that's pretty good spectrum you know you might be that D&D old-school D&D player with your multi-sided dice getting after it and if you want to talk to us about that we are on the interwebs we're on Twitter we are on Instagram we are on the lot EKKO is a deco Charles I am at Chaco Willick Jason is that Jason n Gardner Jason n Gardner and on Facebook Jason dot and dot Gardner on Instagram and Jason n Gardner on Twitter and you're new to all three platforms no I've been on Instagram to Facebook for a while okay just new to Twitter new to Twitter have you ever checked out Twitter before no it's mayhem and then I heard I'm gonna have to be Karen oh I heard no don't like you do have to be careful yeah and you kind of don't but it's weird but then I found out like they were talking about maybe with sam harris and he was talking about there's legitimate there's Russian people Russian BOTS it's also funny they're sitting there just trolling they're just trying to create mayhem and so we don't have a lot of man to be quite honest with you there's not a lot of mayhem but at me for whatever reason but everyone's pretty cool and it's it's I've gotten a lot out of it out of Twitter out of Instagram out of Facebook people giving me information recommending books I'm from the book recommendations cuz I'm pretty much exhausting my personal knowledge of books right now and so right now I'm getting so many good books from troopers out there better letting me know what's up so echo anything else any other Star Wars comment well you know nah for right now no but now that we know that you know we chase on has the knowledge mm maybe later but yes for now thanks for thanks for and Jason we'll continue this conversation you know next podcast anything else any closing comments I'm really excited to be on the podcast I just want to tell my wife iris that she's amazing and made my life so much better by meeting her my oldest son chase out proud I am of him and storming for love you guys looking forward to seeing you soon awesome and of course um we actually could not do this podcast or even live the life that we live if it wasn't for our people in uniform around the world here at home our military personnel police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics and EMTs correctional officers Border Patrol all first responders out there thank you for what you do every day so that we can do what we do every day and to everyone else that's listening until that next podcast remember that advice that Hrothgar gave Beowulf that you should choose the eternal rewards not the short-term ones and keep it always in the back of your mind that your piercing eye will dim and darken and death will arrive to sweep you away so until then keep getting out there into the world and getting after it and until next time this is Jason gardener and echo and Jocko out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 391,213

Keywords: Discipline, freedom, military, extreme ownership, leadership, advice, jocko willink, echelon front, navy seal, jocko podcast, excerpt, echo charles, leader, lead, win, jocko store, master chief, sniper, ramadi, afghanistan

Id: 5qL7_NpcoeU

Length: 169min 40sec (10180 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019