this is Joo podcast number 34 with Eko Charles and me Joo willink good evening Eko good evening and tonight we have a guest on the podcast back for a second time my brother Leif Babin good evening Leif good evening good to be back with you and if you don’t know who Leif Babin is real easy thing to do is go back to Joo podcast number 11 and listen to that I give him a long introduction and tell you about who he is guy that I served in the SEAL Teams with and like I said go back to 11 I think you guys wrote a book yeah we wrote a little book called Extreme ownership I’m sure we’ll talk about that tonight Leif was one of the Tomb commanders that that worked for me in the battle ratti when we deployed in 2006 and just one of my brothers so thanks for coming on the podcast again thanks for having me what do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul why would you say anything I’ve thought about it a good deal but he wasn’t nothing compared compared to what was coming down the pike they say the eyes are the windows to the soul I don’t know what them eyes was Windows to and I guess I’d as soon not know but there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that’s where this is going it is done brought me to a place in my life I would not have thought I’d have come to Somewhere Out There is a true and living prophet of Destruction and I don’t want to confront him I know he’s real I’ve seen his work I walked in front of those eyes once I won’t do it again I won’t push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him it ain’t just being older I wish that it was I can’t say that it’s even what you are willing to do because I always knew that you had to be willing to die to even do this job that was always true not to sound glorious about or nothing but you do and if you ain’t they’ll know it they’ll see it in a heartbeat I think it is more like what are you are willing to become and I think a man would have to put his soul at Hazard and I won’t do that I think now that maybe I know never would now that’s the opening from the book No Country for Old Men which is written by corm McCarthy who also wrote my favorite non-military memoir book the book Blood Meridian which is just an outstanding book and No Country for Old Men was actually made into an outstanding movie as well which almost follows the book word for word it’s it’s an awesome movie and in the in the movie and in the book there’s a there’s a guy and that’s who’s talking in that opening Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and he’s explaining that he’s seen evil in the world a living prophet of Destruction and he seen his work and walked in front of those eyes and ultimately and that’s kind of what the book is about Sheriff Bell is explaining that he doesn’t really want to face this evil he doesn’t want to put his soul at Hazard so ultimately he doesn’t really want to be a sheriff anymore he can’t face that kind of evil so he leaves the to the police and he retires and stays in his own little world and that’s That’s the basis of it and there’s way more to it than that and you should definitely read the book the book which is it’s set I think it’s set in about the 1980s early early 1980s and this evil that he’s speaking of that he’s having to now deal with as a as a sheriff is the drug cartels coming out of Mexico the border of Texas they’ve escalated from you know petty little drug dealers back in the day and now it’s a ruthless organized crime syndicates that murder with no mercy and like I said it’s just too much for Sheriff Bell and he ends up walking away now meanwhile in 2016 the evil that we deal with now is even more pervasive and stronger and completely without mercy and it’s everywhere and we can try and ignore it and we can try and act like it doesn’t happen but there’s some things that you cannot ignore and in this case it’s something that we cannot walk away from in Late July of 2016 father jacqu Hamill an 86-year-old Catholic priest was doing what he did every Sunday conducting mass for his Parish in Normandy France obviously the site of dday where one of the most impactful operations in history in terms of protecting freedom and liberty took place and there in Normandy France in this church two young men and I use that term loosely burst into the mass brandishing fake guns fake explosives but real knives and the fake guns and the fake bombs apparently allowed them to get control of the people in the church including father Hamill they forced him to his knees in front of his parishioners and they slid his throat and in fact they slit his throat with such force that the reports came back and said that they beheaded him and one of the survivors who is a nun said that the attackers who claimed loyalty to the Islamic State smiled and appeared to be happy as they slit the priest’s throat and then these two Savages attempted to use some of the nuns from the church as human Shields to try and escape and when they did try and Escape fortunately there were some French police snipers that shot and killed them but obviously the damage was already done one priest slaughtered one of the nuns was wounded and obviously peace and serenity destroyed and that is pure evil and that’s the same evil evil that slaughtered 89 innocent people at the batlan theater in Paris the same evil that murdered 12 cartoonists at Charlie hebdo the same evil that led an Islamic extremist to murder 49 people at a nightclub in Florida the same evil that brought down the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon and has caused death and Mayhem and destruction all over the world and unlike Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in the book No Country for Old Men we can’t just walk away from this evil because this evil is everywhere and I regret to tell you that it’s growing and it’s going to continue to grow unless we we the Civilized people of the world do something to stop it in of course with Leif and I background you know uh both of us spent a lot of time in the SEAL Teams deployed multiple times overseas to confront this evil enemy and of course we get a lot of questions about our take on this and to open up the questions for tonight first question is here is the darkness taking hold or do you and LEF see the way out of another War what can we do to to prevent Lone Wolf attacks from happening in Europe and America Leif thanks for coming on I know this is uh obviously something both of us think a lot about and I know a lot of people are wanting to hear what we think about it so is the darkness taking hold my brother there’s no out that there is some serious darkness in the world and uh and I think that Darkness we’ve seen it grow we’ve seen it grow we’ve seen the number of uh Jihadi terrorist attacks across the world grow substantially over the years uh and statistically that’s just a fact and uh and I think uh it’s something that I I think people need to understand you know Across America across the the world people need to understand just how evil this enemy is we talk about Darkness we talk about evil and you know that No Country for Old Men summary that that that intro really uh really captures it uh in a way and certainly we’ve seen that with with you know drug cartels some of the horrific things were going on uh in northern Mexico or even across the border you know in in the United States but this this Islamic enemy in particular is in my opinion as evil an enemy as the US military has ever faced in our long history and I’m very well aware of the horrific evils of Nazi Germany Imperial Japan and uh and I think this threat is uh is every bit or even more evil than than that it is uh it is something that we’re seeing as you just described from that one attack that’s one example of hundreds of hundreds that you could use uh over the last uh year or two alone yeah and a good point on that is we hear about the attacks that take place in the Western World right that’s what we hear about if we if you start diving into the The Butchery and the slaughter and the torture and the rape that happen happens in their world in the Islamic world in the Middle East and again you and I that have been there we know for a fact that the majority of people do not want to live under that reain of Terror no doubt they want to have normal lives and and and I say this all the time I know you say this all the time they want to have normal lives and they are being brought down and and driven by this this I mean evil is is it’s like I want a stronger word I don’t know what stronger word there is but this is like this is a this is a personification of Satan that’s what this is so and I know that’s one of the things that struck me and and as we were talking that made me think of No Country for Old Men because when he says I know he’s real I’ve seen his work and I know both of us have we know he’s real and anybody that’s deployed overseen sees and seen what these people can do is knows that this is real now the other part of this question Leif was what can we do to prevent these Lone Wolf attacks so so what do you what’s your what’s your thoughts on Lone Wolf attacks well I think first of all the lone wolf attack is a myth it’s an absolute myth and you know this idea that there is these people are just randomly you know we use we also use the term along with Lone Wolf they use the term self- radicalization you hear that all the time self he’s self-radicalized you know he was a normal kid everything was great and all of a sudden he uh followed a Twitter feed from Isis and decided to go out and kill people and uh in no case are we seeing that we’ve seeing that to be true and I think we we’re discounting that this is this is an ideology it comes out of uh out of the the radical Islamic Jihadi movement uh and there’s a Sunni component of that there’s a Shiite component of that but there is uh there are a lot of followers of this and there are folks that you know when we’re the Orlando shooter is a great example we have uh someone with like oh he self- radicalized and the reality was I mean you could go back and and and track the the the guy’s father uh and and see that his he had Pro Taliban posts on uh his YouTube channel and and and uh he’s he’s anti-American uh pro- Jihadi he learned this in his home and the fact that that the Orlando shooter also happened to go to the very same mosque where the only known American Born suicide bomber attended and and went to the same mosque as well a guy who traveled to Syria joined up with Isis and blew himself up an American citizen and they both went to the same mosque in four Pierce Florida so uh where is this coming from it’s coming from ideology and we we have to we have to recognize that that’s a fact you know so many people want to bury their head in the sand and say you know Islam’s a religion of Peace this has nothing to do with Islam it has everything to do with Islam obviously and as you said of course most of the Islamic world doesn’t want to live under this brutal reign of terror and we’re abandoning those people uh to to the likes of of the Islamic State uh and that that reign of terror if we don’t stand up we don’t do anything and so we have to recognize that threat is it is an ideology that pushes that threat and it is not Lone Wolf these they’re connected by that ideology across the world and and that inspires people to join up and I think you know back to the that ties us back to the the the first question about is the darkness spreading there’s always darkness in the world there’s always been evil in the world what keeps that Darkness at Bay you can go back to the the pox Romana and and talk about peace in the in the ancient world and how it was imposed through strong military might and it’s no different today we have enjoyed the the the the relative piece of post World War II uh because we had the strongest most dominant military in the world and so uh we keep that Darkness at Bay that wouldn’t have been the case if if the United States and our allies had not won World War II The Darkness would have uh would have taken over the world or much of the world so uh only through military power peace through strength can we ensure uh that there’s light in the world that the darkness does not take over that we keep that in shap and and I think people need to understand that uh uh this can this is an enemy that can be defeated that this darkness is spreading only because we are allowing it to spread only because it is metastasized only because we have not gone and rooted it out and so so many Americans uh I know they asked you just like they asked me you know years ago when we saw Isis taking over uh parts of Syria then coming back into Iraq and and establishing a foothold there uh taking over huge cities like mosul uh and fuia and then raditi uh before they were they were pushed out um it’s people ask well why do we really care about that why does it matter and I think now as we’re starting to see the kind of horrific attacks that are inspired by their so-called caliphate that that real estate absolutely matters it matters to us and it inspires they can Inspire attacks here Among Us and you we always try to connect it back people always say well we don’t know if it was related to Isis and if Abu Bakr back Daddy the you know the the the is Islamic head of the Islamic State had given them direction that doesn’t matter none of that matters the fact is that they’re able to inspire attacks where people here amongst us in America and Western Europe and and and across the world go out and kill innocent people uh and declare their allegiance and so we have to go there and we have to destroy them and it is it is worth the effort for us and we have a military that is eager and is ready to do that and they are itching to make it happen because they understand the nature of this evil just like me and you theyve faced it they’ve seen it and uh you know as we talked to our our buddies who spent time there are there now uh they’re frustrated and they want they want to close with and destroy this enemy and yet uh um there’s a lot of political strings holding them back from doing so and I think that’s something that uh it simply requires leaders who understand the nature of this threat and understand that there is a military solution to this and we have to lead that fight America has to lead that fight and and I think we can absolutely do that and we can have tremendous impact on the world and make sure that people don’t want to join the losing team because the Islamic state is getting hammered and people are dying in large numbers and uh they don’t want to go over there and be a part of that they don’t want to join up with a losing side we got to make sure that that’s clear to everybody in the world that um if they want to be on on the side of of the radical Islamic jihadis uh they’re going to die a bloody and nasty death one of the things that you you mentioned real quick and we we were kind of going off um was was the fact that these people are normal people one of the things that you and I heard so so for those of you don’t know Leif and I fought with the first Brigade First Armor division in the battle ratti in the summer of 2006 where the the the city of ratti was taken back from insurgence and when we did that it was a very tough fight very Fierce fight and we were able to get that City turned around and turned back over to the ciens Cati and it turned into a flourishing City it was very peaceful for seven years and when Isis then took it over took it back they and and again this is what what Le and I were told by people that we knew that were on the ground over there Isis came in and murdered they had a list of about 500 families and they went in and murdered every person in the family these were this was a list of family family of whom someone in the family had worked with the Coalition forces worked with the Iraqi government been against you know this form of radical Islam so Isis came in and murdered 500 families which to me it should tell everybody out there that this is an enemy that we must address we must face and we Must Destroy I what I think what people don’t understand either is that those same people who were on that that list that Isis brought in they were screaming and begging for our help they wanted American troops on the ground to help them they don’t want to live under that brutal reign of Terr they want us there they want us to be able to push push that enemy back and give them the chance to live their lives in relative freedom and peace and security yeah there’s a great there’s a great video on on Vice news that shows prior to Isis coming back in raditi it’s it’s it’s very difficult for me to watch watch it’d be difficult for you to watch too because it’s exactly showing exactly what you’re saying they’re going around they’re interviewing people and the guy that’s doing the interviews is he’s some kind of I think he’s an Iraqi American because he speaks Arabic and he’s he’s conversing with people and they’re showing subtitles but everybody he’s talking to he’s saying well what do you what are you going to do it looks like Isis is coming and they’re said we we we want the Americans back we want them to come here we want them to help us then they got the governor of ramati and they’re they show him on the phone and he’s talking to his his whoever his superiors and he’s saying we need the Americans out here they’re getting too close the Isis is getting too close we need American Support we need them and that’s that’s the thing that so many people Miss in America is the fact that the normal people in these countries they do not want to live under this kind of regime and they but they are it’s hard for them to defend themselves against it and so that’s where America the benevolent nation that we are can provide this sort of peace and stability there and it’s going to be hard and I say this all the time right if you’re going to go to war people are going to die Americans are going to die innocent civilians are going to die but look at what the alternative is the alternative is you have this disgusting despicable ideology getting a foothold in the world and it is absolutely disgusting and it should not be stood for and I think people need understand too when we’re talking about destroying the Islamic caliphate as they as they call themselves and how that real estate alone them owning that real estate inspires those attacks it doesn’t take in giant ground invasions with hundreds of thousands of troops in order in order to defeat this enemy it it takes a few thousand American troops uh to to go and and generate momentum to beat them back partner with folks on the ground like like uh anbari shakes that we we worked with back in the day and US forces worked with for the onar Awakening and they’re they’re asking for our help we need to partner with folks like the the the president of Egypt and and king the king of Jordan who have talked about how this is a civil war within Islam and uh they don’t they don’t want to subscribe to that uh or live under that kind of brutal Reign they they want to lead the fight against it we got to help them we got to support them you know we need to team up with folks like that it is uh we must do it and if if we don’t do it you’re going to see the darkness continue to spread until we actually do something about it so many people want to say well let’s let others over there lead the fight uh that’s kind of like Winston Churchill saying you know what uh the Nazis in Czechoslovakia and France that’s that’s that’s their problem where are they come in next exactly all right that’s the Islamic State for you folks move on to the next question here Joo and Leif how do you know if you terminated too early I wanted to remove the toxicity before it damaged the team when do you know it’s time to fire someone so what we’re get into a little little change in Pace here going from the darkness of the Islamic State into something a lot more positive which is people running businesses and it’s good you clarify that because terminated has a different context in our previous topic check so this is a good question and it’s something we hear a lot and we got a ton of questions when I put this out so when you know it’s time to fire somebody we get this question all the time as you just said and it’s this was always the most difficult thing it is incredibly difficult even for you know people who feel like they’re super super tough leaders uh or strong leaders in the SEAL Teams who’ve been through all our training and and uh and have proven themselves on the battlefield it’s hard to fire people it’s always difficult to fire people it’s hard to have those tough conversations with folks and so uh we’ve we talk about this that the right time to fire somebody is when you don’t feel bad about it and what do I mean by that I don’t mean just because you’re cold blooded but that you actually uh but that you actually have taken every step to mentor and train and provide resources and and uh help that person achieve the performance that you need them to achieve in order to accomplish the mission and you’ve given them every chance to succeed and once you you you should feel absolutely confident that you you you have exhausted all options and then you you’re not going to feel bad about it because you you you’ve taken so much time and effort and they shouldn’t even they they’re not even going to be upset about it not that they may necessarily love you or thank you for firing them but so often you see people that are literally relieved when we work with companies and we see this happen we see people that are relieved because they’re in a position where they just they’re overwhelmed there’s massive pressure on them and they knew they were it was it was beyond their capability and just didn’t want to say I can’t do this and so when they got either fired or just transitioned to a different role it was they were relieved and they said thank you and like it really was that was really eating at me that I I didn’t feel Gable and I didn’t feel I knew I was letting the team down uh and that’s almost always the case every once in a while you get the torture genius who’s just can’t take direction or won’t listen um who’s never going to see never going to you know see that out but that that’s okay that’s okay yeah the the only other thing I’d say is laying out the real Crystal Clear expectations of where you need to be hey if this is where you this is where you need to be and if you don’t get there this is what’s going to happen and that’s why you said it shouldn’t be a surprise it should be hey I knew exactly what the expectations were I knew exactly what was required of me and I knew exactly what was going to happen if I didn’t meet those expectations requirements so that’s how you know and the only other thing is we sometimes and it’s totally normal we build a relationship with our people and so sometimes that relationship gets strong to the point where you might value that relationship more than you value the performance of the team and that is not a good situation because you have to look out for the whole team and if I say oh this guy’s not doing his job but he’s my bro so I’m going to keep him on I’m letting down the whole team so that’s just another little element that you have to pay attention to and if you truly care about the person Mentor him Coach him put him into a position where they can succeed sometimes people aren’t good at something and you got to move them to a spot where they can you can take advantage of their strengths instead of putting them in a spot where their weaknesses are going to be totally exposed that’s how you take care of someone so that’s what you got to do before you fire somebody one thing too that I learned from you in in in the Navy uh during our time was when you have those tough conversations you got to write it down you have to write it down and that’s something that uh I I thought was very powerful because so often even in the SEAL Teams you’d see leaders who would say well this leader screwed up you know this platoon Commander or this Chief’s got an issue and we need to he’s causing the you know he’s dangerous or he’s making bad decisions or he’s unprofessional or uh he’s you know he’s he’s not getting his unit where where they need to be and and we need to call him in and tighten him up and you’d have that conversation behind closed doors when the the person isn’t present and you’re like right on let’s call them in let’s tighten them up you come in they sit down and here you are face to face with person and you just had that closed door conversation about how terrible they were and how they really needed you know we’re going to we’re going to square them away and now face to face the conversation goes like this well you’re doing you’re doing a pretty good job you’re doing a pretty good job overall there’s a couple things we need to work on here there but you know maybe not here and uh I I think that’s uh that’s that doesn’t help anybody that’s the false cheerleading is a disaster and um it’s something that we talk about all the time in our business I’m sure You’ mentioned that on on the podcast uh you know many times before but uh when you write it down you have it in front of you so you have to have that tough conversation and you give them a copy so they have it with them as well and then they can take that and understand where they need to be and when they need to be there and uh and that forces you to have those tough conversations it’s uh it’s it’s absolutely a GameChanger uh and makes you makes you address that and then again the false cheerleading is a disaster people then when you have to fire someone and they’re like wa you just said I was doing a good job so obviously you failed as a leader and another another good thing you can do to soften the blow of this stuff when you’re when you’re delivering the heavy news is you’re saying listen I wrote this down I I’m putting this in front of you why am I doing that because I think you can do it I want you to do it I’m investing in you this is not my way to to make you feel bad this is my way to make you get better I want you to do better so here’s what I here’s what you got to do for me here it is in plain English do you understand this bullet point do you understand this bullet point do you understand this bullet point that’s the best possible thing you can do and and you got to make that them understand that because otherwise they’ll walk out of the room saying oh he’s picking on me he doesn’t like me no no no no the opposite is true if I didn’t like you I would just fire you I want you to perform I’m mentoring you I’m coaching you because I want you to do better I’m giving you this list so you know exactly what you have to do to win so don’t take it the wrong way my brother just get in the game and get this stuff done hey do you think cuz I remember you saying this good evening Echo good evening I remember you saying this to to Jade remember you were like you were like when you don’t feel bad I don’t know if you put in those exact words but that’s basically the message exactly what they said when you don’t feel bad about it you guys both know you know yep do do you think that there’s a difference between like the SEAL Teams for example because you can’t just well I’m assuming you can’t just replace the guy so it’s like it’s worth it to invest as much as you possibly can in the civilian world and the SEAL Teams I thought this would be different they’re not different they’re the same so in the civilian world every company we go work with do doesn’t matter what the company is there there’s no immediate replacement for somebody that knows a skill set for a software engineer is there a great guy waiting to come in the door no is there a great welder waiting to come in the door no is there just no matter what these things are there’s not a perfect replacement coming for it’s the same thing in the SEAL Teams you don’t have a ready replacement ready to come in so of course you’ve got a person you’ve gone through the agony of finding them you’ve gone through the agony of recruiting them you’ve gone through the agony of bringing them on board issuing them their gear getting them computer letting them understand the the the culture of the company I’ve done I’ve in you’ve already invested so much you don’t want to just fire the person you want them to work out and so that’s why it’s important on either military and civilian you got to you’ve made those Investments the the best outcome is to have them succeed that’s always the best outcome and so that’s why you’ve got to be a great mentor a great coach a great leader and I’ve talked about this before I’m not going to go into it right now but some people are allergic to the words mentor and some people are allergic to the word coach you get someone with an ego problem and I go hey Le welcome to the platoon I’m going to go ahead and Mentor you you know what I mean I don’t need you to M so so there’s a lot of people that that that they think you know that offends them because that implies I’ve said this before that implies that I know more than you do and you know less than me and I’m the big guy that’s going to help you little guy so sometimes that direct kind of coaching is not the right answer but you know clearly when you’re getting to a point where somebody’s getting fired you need to do some Direct coaching so that’s why we’re right now we’re getting it done correctly and one one more point on that which is a great a great question EO but it it’s that’s the easiest I think fallback and we see that with a lot of leaders I’ve we saw in the military and we see it throughout you know companies and organizations that we work with now oftentimes it’s people that well this person isn’t good enough I need to fire them and get someone else and it almost most of the time that’s not the case most of the time it’s they just need to be led they need to be led they need to have the mission better explain to them they need to have you know the training they need to have better resources they need to have mentorship uh just as Jack was talking about and so that’s that’s an easy fallback but it’s it’s not it’s an excuse and it’s the opposite of extreme ownership and really only the case of that tortur genius right that that that we wrote about the the person that just cannot take any Direction no matter how uh how valid uh or or positive uh and needed they can’t take any criticism they won’t accept any responsibility they they have it all figured out the world just can’t see the genius and what they do right you know that’s kind of how they look at things that’s the only time that you really have to fire those those folks generally yeah and the the thing you didn’t say you hit like four points you want to one of the best places to start if someone’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing is explain to them why they’re doing it what this is why I want you to do this because then they can absorb it they understand what the Deep mission is they understand kind of the commander’s intent so whenever someone’s not doing this and I I you know what I’m just going to go ahead and break out a story right now good do it so I got a seven-year-old daughter MH she can’t ride her bike yet mhm right that’s not good you should be riding a bike at four right in my family it’s four so she can’t ride a bike yet why not two so and she’s and it’s become a thing it’s become an issue right so the other day and we’re going on a big camping trip and it’s going to be necessity to be able to ride the bike so the other day I started telling her okay we got to go work on your bike riding so I’m like come get your shoes on get ready and she’s immediately goes defensive I don’t I don’t want to ride a bike I can’t ride a bike I’m not good at R and I started getting right you know no listen get your shoes on I went that route like an idiot and I luckily I didn’t go too far down that road and I just stopped myself after two direct orders with no explanation of why and I said hey sweetie we’re going to go work on your bike ride let me tell you why because when we go camping almost everywhere we’re going to be going is going to be on the bike especially when it’s time to bike ride to go get ice cream we’re going to have to ride bikes to get ice cream and and so all I want to make sure is that you’re able to come with us when we go to get ice cream y I mean I don’t want to have to bring it back for you I want you to come with us and you could see you I just completely changed attack and she was said you know okay let let me get my shoes on and and literally that’s an example with a seven-year-old right and first of all the first note there is that I Mr Big leadership expert completely went down the wrong road and was like listen listen to me because I’m the father and I know you do what I tell you it’s a wrong approach 100% of the time even with a seven-year-old and as soon as I went back and said hey here’s why I went you and you know I told her a bunch of other things you know it’s really good this is how we’re going to do get around this is how you can get around the beach all these things and changed her attitude it literally changed her attitude in a minute I wish I would have videotaped the whole thing because we could have posted it yep yeah that would have been a good little case study yeah flank through with the ice cream money the would you say back to the the the hiring and people you know you don’t have just someone waiting in the wings to get hired to to fill that position remember um that kind of is the case huh most of the time where if you fire someone and it’s like oh we’ll just replace them yeah right all that work and stuff you got to rehire somebody then that you’re wasting time and resources to do that when you could just be investing more that you always want your your team to succeed and sometimes people take that too far we you get someone that just wants the team why they’re not going to fire somebody so there’s always a balance there’s always economy there but yes that is true so do you make the exception if let’s say you know let’s say hey I’m I I I hired this I don’t know you weigh it you weigh the pros and so if you do have a guy kind of waiting in the wings I don’t know my neighbor you know hey he’s winning win so you’re going to invest Less in this guy cuz we got this guy ready to go well no you you you won’t invest less you’re not going to invest anything if you got someone that’s going to come in and do the job and this person can’t make it happen and it’s failed currently get rid of them yeah Jack there you go good times yeah all right here we go Joo and Leif explain how you first met and work together and then the second part is how do you say stay so disciplined every day so Le meeting Joo Good Times how how’s that we touched on this a little bit in pod in uh podcast 11 but uh it was a uh it was a good time I checked into I checked into Seal Team 3 back in the the spring of 2005 and uh I was taken over as the Bon Commander for Charlie Bon and I see I see the uh I see the name on the board Joo and I already kind of heard his name around people kind of knew who he was and but I didn’t I didn’t know much I didn’t know much about I like but our chief Tony who we’ve all talked about who was just a complete badass amazing Warrior incredible combat leader and uh he he said hey joo’s good to go he’s like joo’s who you want I was like right on I’m looking forward to meeting Joo and this time jao was the Admiral’s Aid so I think you were you were still busy kind of running around and trying to turn over those duties there uh very busy job difficult job um but uh but an important job certainly and uh so when jao finally showed up to the team the first time I remember see was it was it we had a morning formation so we all we all go to you know our our morning meeting and then we we stand in formation out back of the team and everyone musters up and and uh I just remember looking at jao and he had zero smile on his face just a scowl no smile whatsoever in fact I don’t think you smile for the first two months yeah I have I have two two month Mor atorium when I meet people for smiling and so he just came up to us and he just looked at us and said I’m Joo and just staring through us like he wanted to murder us and and you know shaking our hand it was me and then our other uh the other Del Commander Del platoon and uh and we we knew each other well me and the Del platoon commander and you know we were we were like looking at each other and he’s like he looks at me he’s like Joo hates me I can already tell it yeah Joo hates everybody but what I didn’t realize later until after we worked together he gave me a copy of the book about face which we’ talked about many you know you’ve talked about many times on the podcast um and it’s a tremendously influential book I know on you certainly on me and on our entire generation about fac by Colonel D David hackworth uh I realized that that’s what he did when he checked in and took over his unit which he renamed the hardcore and uh and actually uh he said I didn’t smile at anybody for several it was six weeks or something like the first first couple months he was there I like to be a little bit harder than hackworth so I go two months wait did you get it from hackworth or was that that was your thing I don’t remember I probably did I ripped off so much stuff from hackworth I definitely ripped off like we we we renamed the task unit which was called Bravo we renamed it Bruiser that complete ripoff from hackworth so but I but I it worked it worked yeah I always have uh have I mean I’m when you meet me I’m going to be standoffish I’m not I’m not a big you know I don’t open I’m just not generally like that I was going to say you did me like that yeah all nuts he probably didn’t smile for the first two years that he knew you right yeah yeah the the thing is though is when you take over a position like that in the SEAL Teams and Le you know this you don’t know who you’re getting you don’t know anything about them you have guys that you are GNA have to put trust and faith in to to lead guys in combat and it’s it’s a very that’s the way I saw it and and I knew that with you guys you guys were the platoon commanders you guys are going to be on the battlefield every day you guys are going to be leading guys in combat the most there was going to be so much pressure on you guys there was going to be violence there was going to be war and so I wanted to and and there was a chance you’re going to get fired you know I didn’t want to be friends with you yet I wanted to make sure you made it through certain wickets and then obviously the more I got to know you and actually there was at this time you know I wasn’t um I guess the word is I wasn’t as mature as I am right now so I was talking to one of the one of the senior officers at the team and they were thinking about maybe switching guys around or moving the platoons around and now this at this point you guys head I had gotten to know you guys you and the Delta platoon commander and realized that you guys were exactly who I wanted to be with me in combat exactly the type of guys that I knew would never back down would go forward and would kick ass and I knew that but this guy says to me he says hey you know we’re thinking about maybe moving some of the platoon commanders where blah blah blah blah and I said no I the two guys I got are the two guys I’m keeping and they’re like well you know do they have the qualities that you want you know for a and I said they have the two qualities he said the qualities I said I only need two qualities they need to be able to listen which means they’re humble and they need to be tough and that’s what those guys are cuz I dished out all kinds of crap on these guys and they always just took it we wouldn’t have lasted long cuz uh we were all training Jiu-Jitsu at 0500 every morning that’s how we roll and uh it was we had an awesome task unit and you know jao uh mentored and trained us and I’m sure he was frustrated with our performance initially because he had a lot more experience than than me or Del 2 commander and and yet he spent the time to train and Mentor us and get us to where we needed to be and by the time we deployed you know to the battlefield in Rat he Unleashed us on the battlefield F to lead our platoon and and even you know underneath us within the platoon our our assistant platoon commanders and our platoon Chief and our leading petty officer I mean our senior leaders within that they were out on leading their own elements on the battlefield and so uh he he had to have tremendous faith and trust in those guys and and we we certainly built that and it was all certainly due to joo’s leadership Tu Bruiser thanks to uh Colonel David hackworth yeah and you know everybody should know that it’s Le and I are are the mouthpieces right now for a bunch of badass guys that all stepped up and when we were going through training crushing it when we went overseas crushed it we’re we’re two two two people from a from a big unit and all those guys you know were just getting after it and we put we put them all you know we didn’t it’s you know we just talking about firing people we fired people from task unit Bruiser that didn’t didn’t make the cut and we tried we did the things we’re supposed to do we mentored them we helped them along and at the end of the day they weren’t ready and so we got rid of them so when we went overseas we were uh we were ready to rock we knew we could counter everybody no doubt yep and that’s I think that’s something that people you know Miss and we talk about that all the time that you know what makes a team the biggest lesson we brought back from raniti was that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield leaders at every level and so you know why we had an extraordinary task unit was because we had those leaders at every level that stepped up not just me not just Joo our our Squad leaders in charge of eight guys our fire team leaders in charge of four guys the Twan shooter pair down to the Frontline Trooper who just stepped up owned his piece of the mission and and led and got after it yeah and when you think about actually as I’m I’m sitting here thinking about because I really haven’t thought about this too much about the process of going from I don’t know these two guys I don’t trust these two guys that’s the main piece of it right I don’t trust these two guys because I don’t know them and so how do you build that trust and uh and somebody asked me that the other day and and just it’s a really good point of how do you build trust with people and a the best way I think to build trust is to give trust so I said you know I’d look at Le and say Hey you run this operation you know this you run this training operation I trust that you can do it now when I give him that trust he’s looking me thinking to himself hey this guy trusts me this guy so so we’re building the trust whereas if I say I’ll run this you just you just follow me you just get in the backseat you just step aside I that’s where we’re not building trust and if we went on deployment if I had acted like that whole deployment we on deployment I would have wouldn’t have had built any trust and I’ll tell you one more thing as I was sitting here thinking we did everything together I mean we ate dinner we worked out we did ju-jitsu and this was you me the the other platoon command the other Delta plon the Delta platoon Commander we did everything together I mean you guys live together it and and we all lived in the same neighborhood we surfed together we lifted together everything was together we debriefed together and that is how you get this Bond and this massive amount of trust where I look at you and know I don’t have to say a word you know the deal I know the deal and we go forward one thing I was just thinking about too is uh this is something that I think I think brought you brought to the table I mean as you were you know training us and ing us and spending time with us and building building that trust as as we were going through all this training to get ready for combat deployment you know if you come in and say you talked about before like I’m I’m going to coach you I’m G to Mentor you obviously that makes people like when when you actually say you know when you said to me like life you got this or like hey run this and then I’m put in a situation where I know ja’s got a bunch of experience in this you know this this particular direct action you know raids he just come back from Iraq and had a bunch of experience I didn’t have any experience in that I’d let a few sniper operations uh you know but that was it and uh I I had done any you know direct action uh raids like that so uh here here we are getting getting I’m getting thrust into it I’m in charge I got to make some calls it’s humbling so what does that make me do it makes me be like hey Jack what do you think about this hey what you know here’s kind of what I’m thinking here what do you think so it it opens up the conversation of like hey uh I’m looking for mentorship I’m looking for training rather than I got it all figured out so even had I thought that initially you know at that point when you don’t have experience you don’t even know what you don’t know so when when you put people in a situation that they’re it’s beyond their comfort zone it’s outside of you know their real knowledge base then they look often they’re looking to you for help they’re looking to you for guidance that’s a good point and actually somebody somebody point we were working with a company the other day on the east coast and we were going through something and and and we were you were describing me quote unquote mentoring you and again I hate to use that word but but when you described it you said hey Joo asked me this and then he asked me this and then he asked me this and what I was doing was saying hey Leif why are you doing that right there and Leif said well this is what I thought and I said okay well what would you do then if this happened and Leif said oh that’s a good point and so instead of me saying Leif don’t do that do you do this right here I didn’t do that I was asking him questions and letting him find the answer and also the other point of this for real is I wasn’t just asking him the question like so that I could guide him down the perfect path I’m legitimately asking him like why you doing that right there cuz maybe he’s got an idea in his head that that could be positive I uh I can I can talk through that example cuz that was that was in the kill house yeah we we’re working through the kill house and you know for those that don’t know who a kill house is you got a uh you’ve got a rooms and hallways uh in in a building and often times it’s ballistic walls so we can shoot live fire in there uh same thing SWAT teams use or you know any military in the world but it’s it it’s you work on your close quarter combat skills or CQC where you you enter doorways and you work you’re working together as a team clearing these H halls and rooms and moving through a a Target building in a training environment and often they can change them and move the move the hallways around or change doorways so so it mixes it up every time you can’t really get used to you know doing it one way or the other and and uh and so i’ had been told as an officer my job was to stand in the back and just take the report so um that’s what I did and uh the report being how many how many people have been shot how many hostages have been captured how many seals have been wounded the report I’ve got the little quarterback uh sleeve on my arm with a grease pencil and I’m just standing in the back doing that and J the question Joo asked me was hey Leif um he literally asked it wasn’t condescending it was you know the tone really mattered and he he said why why are you in the back and uh he was very curious about why why I was in the back what was it what was my tactical reasoning for that and I looked at him I was like that’s what I was told to do and someone who had told me that didn’t really have any real uh experience on on a real Battlefield and said well you’re an officer you just stand in the back and so uh so I thought I’m going aggressively do that that’s what I’m going to do and that’s that’s where I was aggressively stand in the back and I’m a pretty default I’m a pretty default aggressive leader and I was like hey if my job is to stand in the back and take this report I’m going to do it better than anybody watch this and when Jau asked me that he’s like well why are you in the back and I was like because that’s where I thought I was supposed to be and then he asked me another question was like well do you know what’s going on up in the front of the train right now you know I’ve got I’ve got 15 guys spread out through through the building they’re in different rooms and stuff and I was like I have no idea what’s going on in the train up front and and so then the the follow on question for him was like how can you how can you lead these how can you lead this team how can you be the command of control for your team if if you don’t know what’s going on up front I was like I mean it was just light bulb moment go off like I have to I have to be in a position where I know where you know where I need to be and that was it showed me that I was I was not only was I wrong in where I was but I I was failing as a leader and failing my team if I couldn’t actually lead them and know what’s going on so the proper position for me was forward somewhere in the middle generally and I could move around I didn’t want to get so far forward that I’m getting sucked into every room clearance or getting in a gunfight you know in the hallway because I got to be able to stand back and see see what’s going on but not so far in the back that I don’t know what’s going on up front so uh that he never needed to tell me that again it was I knew where I needed to be I understood that uh it made sense to me and I think if you want to that’s a great example of being able to successfully Mentor your people so they understand you know to ask them those questions in a way that’s meaningful it’s not condescending it’s not you know I know everything uh you know why are you doing that but uh or don’t do this but but actually ask me the questions and I didn’t have a legitimate answer live bulb goes off nobody ever needs to tell me that again yeah I feel like that’s like such a critical component the tone how you can say the same exact question but you say it in all these different tones so like like what were you you know how like you always say this like what were you thinking there on that thing or that when that went down as opposed to what were you thinking you know like that kind of thing that’s common what were you thinking like you’re so dumb and I think the factor is there is that I recognize I truly recognize that I could be learning something and there might be something I don’t see I and I’ll tell you what Le talked about this earlier man combat is humbling and and I’ve been in situations combat where I did not have control yeah and I did not do good and I look at those situations and I don’t know if that’s going to happen again in in whatever situation so my mind is not sitting there saying I know everything cuz I know I don’t yeah so when I’m asking those questions I am legitimately asking you the question hey Eko why did what were you think when you when you spliced this thing together what were you thinking when you when you when you posted this thing on that video what’s the purpose of that you know and I I actually want to know um so that’s why I’m not saying Echo why the hell did you post that you know what I mean it’s I I generally I genuinely am not am not overconfident and and don’t think I know everything and that was that was one of the biggest lessons you know in addition to this leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield one of the other big Lessons Learned was humility and that you know at that time I had deployed to Iraq before so I was a one platoon wonder One One Cruise Wonder exactly and one pump chump it’s uh and you you really feel like that that happens when you have well I’ve deployed or I’ve been overseas and I’ve done a few combat operations you get that on your belt and yet you don’t even realize what it feels like to be overwhelmed to have things that are out of your control to to have the enemy flank you or do something that you hadn’t foreen and I think those just sustained combat operations for almost seven months in Rani just day in and day out of intense gun battles was something that it was humbling and I think that was one of the biggest lessons we were able to come back and pass on to others was just wow if you think you got it figured out you haven’t really done anything real yeah and the the other thing that happens and this is this is actually to to exactly to your point somebody goes overseas and they they they do some combat operations and they don’t get challenged they don’t get tested truly and it actually falsely increases their confidence and we see this in the business world too like you have an you have a company that came out of the gate and that they just timed things right they weree the curve and all of a sudden they’re doing fantastic and they think they can make no mistakes and they’re not humble so their success their success actually makes them get arrogant and I mean this real obvious I mean look at Ronda Rousey right Ronda Rousey she thought hey I’m good to go I’m going to beat all these people and that that that arrogance will bite you and so I I think we saw that in in the SEAL Teams where guys who go overseas do do a quote unquote combat deployment they they’ get some experience but it wasn’t like hardcore sustained combat operations and so that that that actually it would be a negative it’ almost be better not to have any experience almost it’s probably better to have some experience but you definitely so so my point is whether you’re in combat whether you’re going into combat whether you’ve been in combat whether you’re in business whether you’re in a sport just because you’ve had some success don’t start cutting Corners don’t let don’t get arrogant I mean this is common sense stuff but we still see it all the time yeah when you’re in the mix you it’s you just you’re just compelled to do it like I’m winning yeah I don’t need to train any harder you know I don’t need to train any harder I’m good to go it’s like that guy running the mile you know the guy who’s running the mile right he’s beating everyone he’s winning but then you got the guy who’s had some adversity through the four laps and at the end he’s turning it on and the guy ran the M he’s like oh I’m cruising and the guy passes him same thing I think that’s why it’s always easy to be the underdog cuz it’s it’s you can just take advantage of uh of of of overconfidence of arrogance of uh someone who just doesn’t think touch me it’s like what you were saying like I’d gone to Iraq we’ done we’ve done a bunch of operations but I’ll tell you in my mind I I didn’t feel like I had been tested I knew a lot I felt like hey I we still got to be that’s why we always thought worst case scenario what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen what’s how bad can this get that’s what I was always looking at and still look at and when I when we were running training when I was running training when you were running training we were always looking at that what we want I want the training to be harder than combat you know so keep your ego in check people and we we talk to leaders about that all the time I just had a conversation with a leader uh not too long ago about uh how he’s telling me everything’s going good you know he’s implemented the stuff we talked about he’s he’s Rock and rolling these principles his team’s going great I’m like okay well where can it go bad where can it go bad you know where what what what did you miss what risk did you you know are you not taking the proper steps what’s the worst case scenario that can happen I think good leaders are going to be doing that all the time never going to be satisfied always thinking what what did I miss there’s always those little butterflies there and I think when you’re when you’re around an op and thinking I got it all figured out what bad could possibly happen we’re going to crush the enemy watch out it’s it’s G to go bad for you all right moving on to the next question I’ll tell you though what’s easy about being the underdog is that not much is expected out of you so even if you fail it everyone’s like whatever it doesn’t throw up any kind of risk flag doesn’t move the needle but when you do good it moves the needle cuz no one expects much out of you yep being the underdog is the easier position less pressure yeah it can be seen that way yeah for sure next question uh here we go Joo and Leif what once the crisis started in Benghazi was a qrf practical you know this is something that uh there’s been so much discussion obviously with the the heated uh political debate you know of election season and uh A lot’s been said about Bazi and uh I think what bothers me so much about that is the answer is yes of course a qrf is practical and a qrf should have been set up and ready to go in the event that this happened and so the issue with this is you know with Benghazi and why it’s a big deal and why it’s important is uh particularly for those of us in the military um is because when US military personnel are are employees of the US government anyway are Out In Harm’s Way and they’re calling for help leaders real leaders are going to step up and get that help to them and make it happen and I think you know what uh whether or not a qrf which is a a quick quick reaction force we’re talking about sending in a you know a force maybe it’s Marines maybe it’s soldiers maybe it’s Special Operations forces maybe it’s just air support maybe it’s air support close air support uh which could have gotten there certainly uh you know in a matter of of hours um it’s those things would probably have made a huge difference on that that Battlefield would they have save the lies of of Tai Woods who was our our teammate and Glenn Glenn dhy another teammate um and those uh the two State Department officials lost their lives including the Ambassador Chris Stevens um I don’t know I don’t know that it would have saved saved their lives and no one can say that but that’s not what leaders are asking themselves they don’t know the outcome I think a a true good leader is gonna is gonna when bad things are happening is going to say how can we resolve this how can we help those guys and I think the the hard thing when you look at this scenario is from everything that we’ve seen and understand about what happened in the wake of Benghazi is when the call came in that US forces are under attack uh the immediate response was how can we twist this how how how can we how can we make this better for us politically spin it how can we spin it yeah exactly so how can we do that well we Libya had to be because that was the the party line at the time Li Libya had to be a big win we liberated Li Libya you know US forces went in air power liberated Libya from the you know evil dictator morar Gaddafi uh that has to be a victory for us we can’t say that Al-Qaeda or terrorist groups have taken over that the threat level’s there um so we have to put a spin on this so let’s let’s we can’t say that there’s a threat let’s come up with a story about the video and how the video inflamed uh you know uh hatred against Americans and and uh and blame that and so that was the crisis response and no one ever said send every asset we have to help those guys and you know there there’s all this the you know the the the paperwork and the the permissions that are required to enter another country’s airspace let me tell you something if someone if the president at the very top says get US aircraft there now they’re going to get there now and what is what is Libya going to do for us I mean particularly when they’re a nation that’s not I mean they they’ve got kind of a pseudo government at that point post uh you know post Revolution so um it was a it’s a travesty and I think it’s a real stain on a on American Honor that when US troops were In Harm’s Way calling for help uh America did not send help so a couple things from my perspective number one and you kind of touched on this the preparation was awful there’s all kinds of documents showing that these guys had felt the threat analyzed the threat knew the threat was real and did not get the support that they wanted down there that’s just step number one so from the beginning never mind once this once once what was it was the question once the crisis started the crisis shouldn’t have started you should be proactive you should be aggressive in your contingency planning you should be aggressive in your security measures you should be aggressive against a known and quantifiable Threat all the time so so there’s number one there’s the first failure then the second failure you already said it I’m going to tell you what you got American troops in harm way Harm’s way we are going to do everything possible to get there now and you know what how long is that crisis going to last you don’t know you don’t know how long a crisis is going to last so if the crisis starts and I know what’s going on I’m sending help and I’m sending the first the first help I can get out there I’m sending there and as soon as I can establish more help I’m going to send them too and if the crisis is over and the and the embassy is overrun in 20 minutes and we’re too late okay we did our best if the crisis lasts 6 hours and the the the patriotic Heroes that stood the line and fought held those guys for five hours or seven hours long enough to get support there then guess what we win everyone’s alive and we did our job so it was just a a disaster across the board and uh like you said a real a real not only a stain on on American presence in the world to have an ambassador a sitting Ambassador murdered but our reaction to it was completely it was it was a travesty and not to mention of course the loss of uh some real heroes that that stood up and held the line even without the support that they needed from their country at that time which is hard for me to even say I’ll I’ll back us down a little bit take a little breath throw you a little softball from the from the Troopers out there and I and this is actually something might be a softball La but I know you’re passionate about this what’s the best barbecue in Texas that’s uh those are fighting words right there because uh people have their favorites that’s for sure you know what today we’re going to talk about you know politics we’re going to talk about religion we’re going to talk I said Le they’re asking about barbecue he’s like I don’t know man touchy subject heavy we we I want to get there man I don’t want I don’t want to get a bunch of Twitter haters say the wrong Barb I don’t know any true Texans is going to take their barbecue very seriously there’s no doubt about that um I uh it’s uh it’s certainly a passion down there in Texas and it’s a it’s a big deal but I gotta go with um I got to go with Cooper spit barbecue where’s thato it’s in Lano Texas the the original they’ve had they’ve had a couple more that have opened up in Austin area now but uh it is uh it’s awesome you walk in that place you get just a big plastic tray and there’s just giant smokers around and you go up and you just like I want that piece of brisket I want those ribs I want that sausage and you just take it and you weigh it and then you just get after it Joo you probably wouldn’t like I mean I know that now that you’ve gone vegan you probably Jo Joo is not a vegan either for those out there that are listening uh he is uh very very much a carnivore awesome uh wait what’s this SP again it’s Cooper’s Pit Barbecue in Lano Texas you’re right that down all right next question is there a way to practice this back to leadership is there a way to practice the hard conversations I’m not known for my delicate finesse well I’m glad you’re not known for your delicate finesse because neither am I generally I’m a pretty direct guy and uh I’m a default aggressive leader I think by Nature uh but that’s something that you know I learned from from jao really is you know you always you always use Jiu-Jitsu is as an analogy and you know how the the direct approach and particularly you know as a as a as a white butt wonder myself and when you’re training Jiu-Jitsu it’s like you’re going for the three moves that you know people know it’s coming and it’s very easy to defend right so if you can if you can set up like I’m going for this but then I’m going for something else and it’s that indirect approach uh generally generally is more more successful you just talked about that with the ice cream ride the bicycle with your your daughter so I mean I think that’s uh there’s so many examples of that where we see and often that direct approach hey my way do it this way just doesn’t get the job done I think is there a way to practice the hard conversations 100% there is and so many people think they’re above rehearsals roleplay those are those are things that are critical to seal performance on the battlefield I think a lot of people don’t realize that we actually we we do rehearsals and walkthroughs before every single operation and we try to mimic that maybe it’s you know we’re out training in the desert we might even have like you know we might lay out rocks or or put tape on the ground so it it it mimics build if we if we if there’s not actual buildings to use for training facilities or or uh uh and we have everyone stand together in their sticks and we know who’s getting on the helicopter here and and these guys are going to be on the second helicopter there those are the kind of things that allow people in the dark of night when it’s crazy and it’s chaotic to go to the right place do what they’re supposed to do everything is simple as unloading from a vehicle just we we would practice that we you we we we had this uh we had this giant truck that we use when when the IED threats started getting really bad in Iraq uh initially um Seal Seal assaulters were riding in the back on benches in in the back of a humy kind of an open bed like a truck truck type back uh and then the ID thread the roadside bomb threat started getting so dangerous that we had to put guys inside armor and so uh that means that Humvees can only care Five Guys you if you don’t have guys in the back so um so we had to take this giant we call it the man truck and we I think we nicknamed it big Zev was our was our truck and it was a it was a big U fton truck and you know flatbed truck and and they I don’t know if previous SEALS or if the Army had done it or Marines but we had welded these a quarter inch steel uh plates around it and then we had uh then we had uh sandbags in the bottom of it so that was like our that was our protection and most the sandbags were like torn up because the boots going in and out and so it was you’re just sitting on Sand so if you got blown up it would not have provided a whole lot of a protection from you but You’ be blown up in Sandy getting out of the truck is is substantial mean you got 20 guys sitting in the back of that truck and they’re you know uh with some of our guys Iraqi uh uh soldiers that were with us our jundy um and you got to open swing open this giant heavy you know quarter inch steel doors in the back and then you got to put a ladder out and everyone’s got to climb down that ladder that takes some time and guess what that that can turn into three stooges real quick no doubt off people can get injured we’ve had guys fall off at trucks like that and dislocate their shoulders and literally have to get sent home but more important if it’s if it takes three minutes or four minutes to do something like that that’s three or four minutes that you don’t have guns pointed in every direction uh and it’s critical so we had to practice that and practice that and practice that until we could do it in less than 30 seconds and and then if we have two different assault forces we got to make sure assault one’s line up on the left side of the road assault 2’s line up on the right side of the road I mean those things that you we have to practice that over and over and over again and it seems really juvenile it seems very Elementary but if if you did if you took the time to practice that performance your performance is so much better when you actually get out in the dark at night the chaos of being an unknown area and worried about you know bad guys and where they are and all those things happening and making sure people went to the place they need to go so having those conversations practicing it sitting down with someone who understands how that person might respond for a tough conversation role play maybe you know they they uh they they try different scenarios where’re they’re really it’s a softball or easy scenario it’s a difficult scenario and and uh it’s the worst case scenario the worst case scenario so the more you do that the better it is and this is something that ja and I have done quite a bit is with companies we work with is roleplay you got to counsel a guy and it’s easy just to say well you screwed up we’re firing you but if it’s this is a good guy he messed up you got to try to get him on board to use this plan or you have to talk him down for doing this out on you know he did something out in town that that’s making the company look back what whatever it is uh and you have to talk to them and that role play is critical and it makes you better and enables you to perform better uh and so yes you have to do that rehearse yep three or four iterations with someone dealing with in a roleplay scenario they get better you can literally see them get better it’s pretty uh pretty cool we got pretty good getting in and out of big Zev nice all right next question there was recent news about combatives in the SEAL Teams what was the evolution towards MMA so the seal teams has gone through a whole plethora of various kind of hand toand combat type things when I when I first came in there was something called scars and I it stood for scientific something something something something but it was was uh it sort of looked like a kung fu yeah it was it was very um actually I think it was based on on sansu right uh which is a martial art anyways so that was kind of when I showed up there then we kind of morphed towards something a little bit more modern and then we morphed towards something else and so we were constantly kind of looking and searching for something that was efficient we ended up going with uh this one this one contractor for several years and you know so use this this one contractor for several years and then eventually especially once the war started and we had guys on a regular basis doing hand-to-hand combat against the enemy and for for those of you that don’t understand when that would happen if we go into a building and there’s people in there that don’t have weapons well you can’t just gun them all down you have to get control of them if they’re military age males you probably got to Cuff them you got to get them down to the ground you got to control them now there there a whole variety of things that can happen the guy can be unarmed but literally combative you know he can square up and say okay it’s on we’ve seen that and people might be surprised to hear that uh people actually do that you know you got a gang of big tough seals there they’re going to going to put you down we’ve had multiple people like not comply you’re not going to put me down and uh it doesn’t usually go too well for them so that’s that’s one in the Spectrum you then you go down the Spectrum where it’s someone that just is scared and they’re Frozen with fear so but but you’re yelling at them to get down and Arabic which is you know your arabic’s not great you’re yelling at them they’re scared they freeze so now what are you going to do you can’t just stand there and keep yelling at them you’ve got to get them to the ground get them control so you continue the clearance then there’s people that are going to so you and then all the way down to someone that just you know you they see they see you they put their hands up they lay down that’s great that’s easy so as we started getting into these scenarios on a regular basis we we realized that the the system that had been taught was ineffective and that’s and and all so luckily we had a bunch of guys in SEAL Teams that were into Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai and wrestling and MMA in general and so that kind of came in and started people started saying hey why don’t you just do this and this will actually get a person under control and actually you told a good story uh to me today when we were talking about Jiu-Jitsu about that tell that that’s a good that’s a good little uh explanation of where we were and where we where we got to yeah in my first platoon we went through that that training uh and uh that was our prisoner handling training so that’s that’s what we did and and uh that’s what we we we practice handling prisoners and searching them and put them on the ground all that stuff handling them um and so you know we’re told this is the way to do it this is you know well when we start going against role players I remember one in particular um we’re going against uh we’re we’re in the kill house and we’re moving through and and of course we’re we’re this isn’t live fire you’re going against role players they’re shooting back at you with Sim munition which is a paint round through our our actual weapons it’s great training because then you have then you have to deal with with people you have to actually wrestle with people you actually have to engage targets or they’re shooting back at you outstanding training and we we’ve talked about that before but but uh it is one of the things that really stood out to me was I remember one one particular guy one of the role players was a a pretty large guy I mean he was probably 6’4 65 like 250 PB guy big guy and me and and this guy wasn’t a seal he wasn’t a seal I think he was a Gunner’s M or something he was just volunteering to come up and be a role player great you know helps with training um and so you know a smaller role player you’re able to get them down the ground hold them and and uh you know get get a search on them and um me and and another one of our guys who is a big a big guy I this guy had arms as big around as my legs this seal was was a large large man very strong guy and uh we grabed this guy we’re trying to get him to the ground and he’s not being compliant he is being he’s resisting us and it’s hard I mean this this is difficult for me this other guy and we’re not we’re not small guys I mean we’re we’re strong guys we’re we’re getting this guy to the ground but he’s not cooperating and we’re having a hard time keeping him down another one of our guys who was actually a lot smaller than us he was probably 180 PB guy I’m 200 lbs and and the other SE I was describing is probably 230 lb guy and uh his uh so this this other seal comes up and he’s like a 180 PB guy he’s train Jiu-Jitsu he’s got a little bit of that he spent uh spent a little time you know at the Gracie Academy and and uh had had was one one of the one of the first guys I knew who who who was pretty pretty skilled in Jiu-Jitsu and and uh he he gets this this this big guy that you know the role players wrestling around that Gunners made and uh not cooperating we’re wrestling around with him he comes up there gets the guy gets a gets a knee on him goes like knee on stomach and the guy the guy can’t do anything and you know here’s this 18 180lb guy completely controlling this large guy that two of us couldn’t do before and I was like I need to some Jiu-Jitsu cuz that stuff works and it was just a it was just a reality of like body control I can control this guy I mean KNE knee on stomach get his arms got him zip tied done I mean he’s and he actually when we debriefed with him you know he he comes now now he’s out of his role player element he’s like he’s like hey that was pretty cool and then I think he actually probably started training some Jiu-Jitsu because he he he realized like just how effective it was for a guy who really understood body control to be able to just get a knee on him hold him down you know and and be able to control him even though he was half the size interestingly that’s how most that’s why most of us start it happens to to you and you’re like whoa whoa whoa that was like you’re like how’s this guy who’s you know wa you know he looks so much smaller than me and he’s just crushing me how’s that possible yeah so that was you know and that that case that you just described happened like you know every day in the Seal team somebody else that that knew some Jiu-Jitsu you know would would have that scenario happen and eventually the the the correct answer Rises up and people say hey look this is working this is not working and so that’s how we ended up with uh with more of an MMA based approach because it’s not just pure Jiu-Jitsu it’s everything it’s Muay Thai it’s boxing it’s it’s you know weapons retention pieces to it it’s hitting people learning how to hit people with your gun what we call a muzzle strike which is again this is one of those things where we kind of would get be told that the like the muzzle strike would would just kill people it would kill people or was gonna definitely incapacity me instantly and knock people out and the fact of the matter is and I know I know Leif and I have seen I don’t even know how many people I’ve seen muscle strikes over and over and over again and it just the the amount I don’t even think I ever saw an actual knockout I mean you see some damage it hurts and it cuts the person’s face open and it makes him bleed everywhere and it’s a complete Nightmare and you have to take him to medical and it’s it’s just a bad thing whereas somebody that knows a little bit of MMA can go in and get control of these people and take them down and it’s it’s no Factor so that’s what ended up taking over and it’s definitely a good thing and a positive thing and it’s been it’s been cool to talk to the guys that are now carrying on with the program next question how do you deal with anger and flared tempers in yourself or your team Le I’m going to go ahead and turn that one over to you I got a lot of experience with this one life’s way more experienced than me yeah losing your temper I’ve I’ve got a lot of experience in this one and I talked about being a direct guy being being a uh a default aggressive guy and uh and that’s good there’s a lot of good in that there’s also some bad when you lose your temper when you you know you lose your cool one you know when you get emotional about things and react to stuff you don’t make good decisions and so you know we we always taught our our guys that the most important quality they could have as a combat leader is to remain calm and make good decisions under chaos and pressure so uh that doesn’t happen when you lose your temper um so uh you know when I I look back on that the the other thing about it too is when you do lose your temper about stuff and it’s um I can give you a number of scenarios where it happened where if guys had uh people always think like seals are oh is focused all the time you know and it’s life and death for you guys out there when we talk about businesses they say that all the time like it’s life and death for you guys you know so it’s not real life and death for my guys but how do I get them to stay focused guess what um people lose discipline right people lose discipline if there’s not leaders that are holding those standards and and pushing it hard and I remember one time in particular there was we were patrolling back to our Comet Outpost and uh we’ve been on a long operation it was a foot patrol into a dangerous area and uh we captured a bunch of prisoners and we had to we had to uh walk them back on foot because there were so many IED threats in that area um I think we finally met up with some Bradley Fighting Vehicles a smaller tank from the army that came down we loaded them up in that and and uh and they to they took them back from there but so we’re walking back patrolling back and we’re almost you know we’re still a few hundred yards back away from this combat Outpost but we’re in enemy territory and I could see that some of the guys are starting to not be as focused like looking down their weapons and dropping security and those things and um and I was infuriated by that I was totally infuriated by that and it was because I I knew what was at stake that look if if we’re not disciplined all the way back until we’re inside that wire of the of the friendly combat Outpost we could take fire at any moment and if we’re not watching you know at that very second we get shot at people might get killed you know it decreases our probability of winning that firefight of of bringing everybody back so um so it was a big deal and and uh but I I definitely lost my cool on that I when I came back I was chewing ass and like fired up at people and like here this is why this important and I and looking back on that like that’s that’s not the best way to do that right the best way to do that is to say um well I mean Force guys to to to to keep security remind them to keep security certainly while while it’s happening uh but getting back and saying guys here’s why we got to keep security I know we’re only you know a couple hundred yards from The combet Outpost but recognize there are enemy Fighters out here and they’re going to hit us when we least expect it um and just because it hasn’t happened to us before you know even though we’ve done this dozens of times does not mean that it won’t happen to us the next time and we can’t you know this is important think about how you would feel if somebody got killed when you were supposed to be holding security as they were crossing the street and you weren’t paying attention you know it’s interesting to use that example I almost feel that you showing legit anger at that point was a positive thing like you want to make it perfectly clear to everybody and the way you get their attention cuz it’s not like you lose your temper all the time is by you know getting angry and people go oh you know he’s he’s he doesn’t lose temper very often here he is super fired up well I I don’t think I don’t think it’s a problem it’s not a problem to get angry I got really really angry okay so it’s one of those things where it would have been more effective for me y to be Stern and and and not back down from that in in the least and not treat it lightly in the Le I’m not saying that at all but I think just to Lo to yell and scream and those things it’s just never the best way to get point across you’re right that is true if you if you completely lose and you’re yelling and screaming it’s it’s it’s it’s not a good thing and even though you’re absolutely right it was important and and I I I wanted that addressed it was like it just wasn’t the best way to address it looking back on the now one time in particular too was uh I can think uh when uh you wanted to make some changes to our operation oh yeah that’s right that’s right I I can’t remember if we talked about that in the last podcast or not but we we uh I was ready to cancel the op Joo came in was like well what what about this you know maybe yeah do we look at it from this direction why why don’t you guys maybe Patrol in on this route and not go across this bridge where there’s a choke point and they might bury IDs in the road and I was like we’ve been looking this for hours I was like now he’s changing it 10 minutes prior like cancel the off and Joo he could have got he could have lost his cool with me because I just lost my cool and you know I’ve been we’ve been hours at this and I was frustrated I was ready to get get this op launched and all the paperwork requirements and the levels of of approvals that we need and running around trying to you know fix all these things and and uh he actually just looked at me and was like we don’t need to cancel the out it’s fun it’s gonna be fun and then and then you you actually again asked me some questions like is does what I’m saying make sense and I wanted to be like no I can’t you know but it was like yes I hate toally it totally makes sense you’re like okay how long is it going to take to change it you’re like I was like 2 minutes like well we have 8 minutes left so no problem let’s get it done we don’t need to cancel the operation I was like no we don’t yeah yeah uh and and like you said it’s important to maintain your your cool and the way I do that is by being detached talk about it all the time in that situation when you got all fired up at me I was like like okay you know Le’s getting fired up and I I didn’t think LEF getting fired up because he’s immature or cuz he’s doesn’t can’t control himself I thought to myself hey you know what but he’s been working on this all day he’s he’s got a lot of pressure on him there’s a lot of frustration when you’re doing these plans and doing all this paperwork I understand where he’s coming from let me give him some space let him vent a little bit and then let’s reapo this thing that’s how I’m coming at the situation so how you handle it though is perfect because had you blown back up in me which is what the natural human reaction is right then I get mad we’re yelling at each even though we have tremendously close relationship we would have canceled the op yeah it it would have been a big deal or even if even if you and end up saying like you know as so many leaders would do like you’re going to do it this way and then I I’m mad at you and I’m I’m all pissed off you you you know you came in and Trump me oh yeah by the way what happens when something goes wrong on the operation and I’m like Joo told us to do it you told us to do this and then then then you have those frictions but the be the the best thing that you did in that situation was you actually just smiled and laughed at me like just take it easy not that big of a deal just to make that clear I didn’t laugh at him like he was a little kid you know I just like hey man you know and he knows me and he knows exactly where I was coming from like heyy I know it’s I know I know what’s going on it was the perfect way to deescalate the situation which which made me deescalate exact and made me realize like yeah it makes total sense and then we executed it was no problem yep that’s how you deal with that’s how you deal with so when someone gets mad at you deescalate when you feel yourself getting spun up detach when have you got spun up and lost your cool uh I’ve said this before on the podcast printers and copy machines they they don’t like me and I don’t like them and so are we talking straight up office space style office space style um I’m I don’t like I don’t like printers and and copy machines they don’t ever do what I want them to do and so I get I get angry at them so I lose I lose my mind a little bit uh but no I don’t I don’t lose my temper very often you know doesn’t doesn’t do me a lot of good and and it usually it usually doesn’t help the situation you know doesn’t help you solve the problem and and my mind is always all right how do I get this thing Sol it never helps you solve the problem that’s for sure nope so if if you’re like me and and you lose your cool you got to you got to practice it you got to rehearse that you got to make sure that you’re detaching and uh not losing your cool so that you can get the job done and win that’s that’s what it’s all about and the Delta platoon Commander you know he’d go into a little bit of Rage from time to time and and you know one day the Delta platoon Commander is going to be out of the military and he’s coming right on this podcast and he knows it he’s fired up but uh you know he’s my my other brother and that’s gonna be a good time but you know he would get some rage going and I’d have to I’d have to uh back him down a little bit and say bro it’s me no reason to get fired up right now we’re we’re here to win Y and I’m here to help you and he’d go I know but damn awesome all right next one and this is a a pretty uh pretty heavy subject actually Jocko and Leif thoughts on cops being ambushed what should police departments do be doing to prepare especially with no command support for training Isis is an America and law enforcement role in battling this terrorism we have been training active shooter a lot so these are this is actually a conglomeration of a few questions but the the basic question is thoughts in the cops being ambushed what should police departments be doing to train for that prepare for it and then how do civilians F into that picture and what can civilians do to help Le the horrible shooting that took place in Texas horrific horrific stuff and uh certainly we lift up the families of those lost in our prayers and and the entire you know the entire police force there in Dallas in Baton rou and across the country uh where they’ve uh they’ve lost lost their brothers uh I think first of all we have tremendous respect for law enforcement for uh you know the boys in blue and and uh well there’s police departments you know sheriff’s deputies federal law enforcement you know they they protect the home front and we have to have that we have to have that we have to have we have to be a nation of laws and and uh without that we’ve got complete lawlessness and so uh and I think Americans need to show appreciation for their police departments and for their law enforcement officers uh we can’t do that enough we got to thank those those folks I think uh as far as there you know this is just another example you know when we talking about these the police Ambush this is another example that just as we talked about in that first question Darkness right the evil that’s in the world there are some evil people that celebrate this evil like it’s a great thing um and uh I think uh uh you know there’s just no no justification for for the kind of horrific stuff that we’ve seen uh you know these ambushes on on police officers and uh so I I think police need to start you’re already seeing you already seeing police police that are getting they’re getting long guns for the forces that didn’t have them a lot of them had them but maybe they didn’t have access to them or couldn’t get to them quickly they’re going to need to have those long guns where if someone’s targeting you with a rifle and all you have is a pistol it’s not good for you that’s not a good scenario for those of you that don’t know anything about guns like Echo the difference between having a rifle and a pistol is night and day I mean let’s just break it down a pistol if you’re a good shot with a pistol maybe if you’re a great shot with a pistol maybe you’re getting out what what 50 yard 50 yards you’re a good shot with a rifle and you’re out to 800 yards pretty easily now on top of that you got a pistol you can a pistol round will stop when it hits something you know sometimes pistol round stop when they hit regular windows on cars uh uh a high powered rifle is going to rip through the doors of cars no problem it’s going to be so there is a there is a massive massive difference between being out in the street with a pistol and being out in the street with a rifle so luckily there well not luckily but they are starting to arm the police for these scenarios that you’re going to get in I remember the first time first Patrol I went on in Iraq in in Humvees and we hit we we hit a a steel Hedgehog right the little obstacles that Americans had put out I don’t know if they left them there or been some problem so I’m driving along all of a sudden boom we hit one it was my vehicle and I thought to myself I just hit an ID I’m about to die but our vehicle gets jacked up we’re like propped up and everyone poured out in the street and like took up security but everyone’s out there with their little m4s and and you feel even you know because we wanted machine guns and we never went out again without you know two heavy machine guns per Humvee because we wanted to be ready to rock and roll uh so that’s the same feeling you’re going to get rolling out with just a pistol so that’s number one number two these the the police departments they got to start looking at tactics at Urban combat tactics and how to handle these situations how to cover and move primarily how to cover and move it always is shocking to me when I see the the when I see people not using the use of cover when when there’s gunfight or potential gunfight or even if there’s not that’s one thing in ratti like when you’re walking down the street in armad you don’t walk down the street you’re moving from cover to cover and if you’re a police officer let’s at least be near cover so if shooting starts you can get in cover when I see arrests happening actual arrests happening they’re trying to they’re trying to get someone to stop and the the police officers are standing out in the open to try and tell someone to stop don’t stand out in the open stand behind cover now there’s a there’s a complexity there because you want the person that you’re trying to stop to be able to clearly identify that you’re a police officer right but let’s make the error on the side of being behind cover so if that person does draw a gun you can be able to react them from a place of cover because if you’re the difference between standing behind cover and standing out in the open if someone starts shooting at you oh if you got cover you’re good to go that’s literally you’re good to go they have to do a they have to hit a tiny tiny little Target of whatever is exposed to you you know part of your head whereas if you’re standing in the open they’re going to hit you so I think I think those tactics need to start be looking at they need to start looking at the individual tactics of doing arrests and then they need to start looking at the larger group tactics when you have either one you know you got your partner out there how do you operate together how do you cover and move together what’s the best way to react to these scenarios and then furthermore when another group when when other police show up how do you then quickly organize into elements that can operate together like a military unit and I know that’s going to make some people scared but like that’s that they shouldn’t be scared of that when you’re in a gunfight you need to use tactics gunfighting tactics and those come from the military so they should be able to operate in pairs they should be able to operate in elements and and grow until you get to a point where you can handle these situations and that’s going to take a lot of training and that’s going to take money and that’s going to cost and I was talking to some of my friends that are police officers and matter of fact one guy just met re really good guy really fired up Jiu-Jitsu player of course and he said the amount of training that they get is very very minimal so for example a regular police officer they actually don’t oftentimes they don’t have designated times for training they don’t have times to say okay you’re going to work 40 hours this week four of those hours are going to be training and and that’s completely wrong you should have mandatory real good training force on Force training and that’s what Le talked about earlier where you’re shooting live or simunition rounds or paintball rounds at each other so you’re getting used to those stressful situations so because I’ll tell you what you square off with a guy three you square off the guy one time and he’s got simulation and you stand out in the open and don’t get cover and he pulls out that gun and shoots you three times in the face with with simulation and then the next time you go again you’re going to be H some cover it’s going to happen and so and that’s what we want people to do you know what’s interesting about that is the we there was a real emphasis on live fire when I first came in in into the SEAL Teams and a lot of the instructors that were putting through training had not had any real experience yet any real Combat experience uh and so we still had those folks that were saying well we’re going to focus on live fire because that’s more important and that’s better training and the reality is it’s not it’s actually worse training because you’re dealing with paper targets and it’s it’s simple it’s like either they’re arm there’s a there’s a weapon in their hand or they’re not shoot them don’t shoot them did you hit the target did you not so uh while it’s important to be able to operate with live fire and that’s that’s great so much better to operate against a role player now you go into a room you’re like the guy’s moving you can’t see him he’s trying you know is he shooting you is he not shooting you is he maybe he isn’t armed but if he’s bum rushing you uh and you know and and for us you know if a guy’s are yelling a Akbar and and running at you he’s probably a high suicide bomber threat so uh he’s getting smoked he’s getting smoked so it’s uh so I I think police police forces have absolutely got to make time for training but they got to put those realistic scenarios in there too and and and you know our police officers and as Joo said we’ve got many many friends in in law enforcement um some of them former seals that we worked with have gone gone that route now and uh they’re in very difficult scenarios all the time it’s one of the hard things about Close Quarters combat is iron instructors always tell us like don’t game it don’t game it meaning and I talked about with a kill house how you can change the walls and maneuver around when when you’re thinking in your mind I know what I’m going to see when I enter this room that’s what you generally see and so it’s a it’s a difficult thing you got to make sure it’s easy to get really amped up your heart rate’s going and you’re like like you know you know because there’s pressure on you got instructors there and you want to make sure you make your shots and make good decisions and particularly as a new guy when you haven’t done that before and you’re going through it for the first time and uh so it’s if you’re gaming it and you’re you’re already envisioning what you’re going to see that’s how you react to it and you end up I mean I remember I shot a Target and the St like Babin look at that Target and there’s no it’s it’s a there’s nothing in the guy’s hand there’s no and I I I thought I saw a weapon on the Target and I so I I I hammered the target you know with rounds and uh I’m looking at the holes you know the chest the tget you vaporized a hotel did you engage hostil I vaporized hosts to grow the movie Navy Seals but that’s that kind of thing can really get to you so um and only only learn that when you you only realize how easily that can happen when it happens to you in training and and when they change those things around uh so that you go in there and it’s the hallway is different and you’re moving a different direction and the there’s you know uh it causes those kind of issues so what you’re talking about is you want to train for the unexpected that’s what you want to have happen and the things that you see in combat are crazy the things that cops deal with go watch YouTube I said this last time we talked about this subject go watch YouTube and see the crazy crazy things that people do out in the in the world and you got to be prepared for all those things and how do you prepare you got to learn to think and you got to learn to think quickly I was talking to one of our guys from task unit Bruiser the other day and it’s a I’m not going to say his name obviously but he’s one of one one of my favorite guys who did that deployment with us came back and I think it was either his next deployment or the deployment after went to Afghanistan and did a lot of incredible stuff in Afghanistan and again you I put him through training for that so I was running training and he was just great guy stepped up and I I said hey man what was the because I didn’t fight in Afghanistan I said what was you know what was the difference between what you know your deployment to Afghanistan where you got in a bunch of gunfights and got after it compared to what it was like in raditi and he said you know the biggest difference was in Afghanistan when things are happening they’re they’re usually at a distance you know you’re in you’re looking at across a valley you’re looking down a ridg line you’re looking you know you’re you can observe and you can got some time to think and you can get some cover and think okay I think this is where they are let me take another look you can pop your head out you can assess and he and he just looked at me and he said in ratti you had to make a decision now and I I started laughing because that that you know you don’t there’s no distance the person is across the street the person is two buildings away and you as a leader or even not as a leader as a shooter you got to make a decision right now as a matter of fact the leader’s not going to tell you what to do you get engaged from across the street you you’re not going to wait for the leader to tell you what to do you got to know what to do you got to act and and that intensity of urban combat combat and again you know this is like when uh when we talk about the ches war and what those guys that’s what was so stressful and those Lessons Learned where they said Hey in the urban combat environment these guys need to be cycled out of the urban combat environment because the ID threat because the sniper threat because the immense pressure of having to make decisions now they should be cycled out like I think it was every two months and here we were I’m putting you guys out field for six straight months into an irman combat apologize Leif apologize to you Bruiser guys damn hard but so so that and that’s go back and that’s what these cops are dealing with that’s these police officers are dealing with is they got to get practice and rehearse making these decisions now because that’s what they have to do so now what can you do to buy yourself an extra quarter second an extra half a second well don’t stand out in the open create some distance why are you approaching the person ask yourself why what I mean if where’s this guy is he going to run for me if he runs what’s going to happen is he going to become more of a threat less of a threat so you can you can make those decisions another piece of this citizens of America I think we actually need to teach in high school in ninth grade freshman classes I think there needs to be a class called how to get arrested by the police and they tell you what you should do when you get pulled over by the police or you get told to get down by the police or you get told to get away from the wall by the police you know what you do you do it you do it that’s what you do you show them your hands you get your hands out of your pockets you put your hands in the air and you know what part of that class should be is the students that are going through the class get to be the cop and get to use simunition get to feel what it’s like to know to not know actually to not know when you pull this guy over is he what’s he going to do to you and I watched a video the other day they did a great job somebody suckered me in on the internet on YouTube it was um watch another horrible police brutality like some kind of title like that and I’m watching it and this this guy that’s in the car so it’s a it’s traffic stop and the guy that’s in the car is is being totally compliant and I’m like oh God I can’t believe this cop is going to do anything to this guy look at this guy he’s getting his license like he was asked to I’m like oh I could barely watch it cuz it’s like another shooting that was the title another shooting another death and because I I always think those things are horrible to watch so I’m watching them waiting for this cop just to pull out his gun or see a quick movement and pull out his gun and shoot the guy and the guy’s just being compliant and nice and um reaches in uh to grab something grab his wallet or whatever pulls out a gun and shoots the gut gut shots the cop gut shoots the cop busts out of the car and runs totally caught me by surprise so when you are getting arrested and we need to educate the citizens of America on how to to get arrested and I think that would be very helpful instead of protesting the cops for shooting people they should say okay what can we do we should take some ownership of this what can we do as Citizens to do a better job of getting arrested you know be compliant show your hands that is and again I think it’s important to understand the pressure that that that police are under and and hey just so everybody knows some of those videos that I watch I know for it’s horrible and the police are have taken shots that have made me made my stomach turn because they’ve been a nightmare I already described one of these on the podcast but that one where I saw the guy with the headphones on and a hoodie on couldn’t hear what the cop was saying reached into his pocket to turn off his iPhone and the cop drilled him you know where was the cop standing he was standing out in the wide open in a wide open of a 7-Eleven parking lot so he has no cover no concealment he’s yelling at this guy the guy turns around wants wants to shut off his iPhone where he’s listening to music so he can hear what the cop is saying cop drills him and the call was you know guy with a gun so I understand the anger at police when police make bad shots but let’s figure out not let’s let’s let’s we just talked about this let’s not be temperamental about it let’s not use rage let’s that’s not going to solve the problem what is going to solve the problem is take a step back let’s analyze what we can do as Citizens to deescalate all these situations yeah me that’s a good idea right there about let the you know in your it was high your example was high school but let the citizen know how it feels to be the cop cuz really that’s all you see cuz the cop has all this power you know and all this stuff but they don’t know I think when they see that kind of stuff they don’t know cuz because of the the emotions that get invoked when they see it so if they understand that’s like a two-way street to facilitate that learning process so when you so when the so let’s say that was a common thing that was one of like a normal thing one of the normal a common thing for to people to go through this training one way and that was just kind of part of our our culture you know where as a citizen we know we’re well aware of what cops go through and all this stuff because we’ve been through it and we understand we just totally understand that would make the whole landscape of cop versus Ci or cops working alongside with citizens it would stick out like a sore thumb when someone was suspicious ex otherwise people would be just yeah I know exactly what to do it’d be like clockwork routine and and myself I’ve done vehicle interdiction over in Iraq and I know what it’s like to walk up those cars and see what those people are looking like and and so when I when I get pulled over by the cops which it hasn’t happened to me a lot but you know speed I’ve gotten busted for speeding I’m I’m sorry citizens of America but you know I’ve got pulled over I’m you know toally discipline equals Freedom yeah totally you know just just hands very slow movements I don’t you know I want to make their job as easy as possible as easy as possible cuz I know they’re stressed you know hey officer how you doing sorry it’s going a little fast you know what do you want from me I’m here to comply on that note too I mean of course they’re going to they’re going to be they’re going to be police that don’t make good decisions and and and maybe go over the top or maybe they’re you know they’re they lost their cool for some other issue or they or they got a call I mean often and this is kind of where I was going I was talking about this earlier was if they get a call like I saw an armed guy or you fit the description of someone you’re looking for they’re already seeing you as a threat so H having that you know if you feel like you’re not getting and believe me this is this is always the kind of myth in our culture as well uh I’m about as a white boy as you can get as you know a blond-headed uh uh pale skinned guy uh I’ve been mistreated by the police that’s for sure and when uh when that was happening uh when I got shoved on the ground a little short bar shotgun jammed into my my skull uh even when I was being comp I I didn’t lose my cool because what do that gain me I I I’m not going to resist the rest I’m I’m just going to I’m going to I got I got to suck that up then I can uh you know if you want I want to complain about my rights later I I can do that you know now look I was being a knucklehead as a as a young uh you know as a uh a young guy back in the day but uh uh and I probably deserved to be roughed up but it was it was one of those things where like I then now’s not the time to complain about it you you cooperate with the police you want to file a complaint later you can do that yes yeah and that typically ends up to be well I mean I guess you know it’s debatable I guess but that typically becomes the best discourse because at the time if the if a cop or whoever whoever I used to be a bouncer so it’s on a way lower level it’s kind of the same thing I remember those days Eko I think you you had to bounce me out of the the bar a few times right yeah probably but um if if you start taking it right then and there where you know you’re losing your temper something like that making the the the job difficult like just like you said like that’s not going to you’re not going to recapture your rights at that time like if you think your rights are being violated you’re not going to you’re not going to get your rights back at that time the the ones that are being VI let let me say something worse than that you have a rookie cop that doesn’t know what he’s doing that well and he for whatever reason decides he’s going to take that shotgun off safe right or he decides he’s going to put the finger on the trigger and now you start jerking around and moving and all of a sudden you got an accidental discharge into your head right so that that’s not real beneficial for it’s notal for life even before before it gets to that it think about just the person who’s going to make the decision to either resist or put up a a fight about their rights or um you know or this officer being a Power Trip having a power trip or whatever just think about that person’s decision- making right rather as opposed to we’re going to let this happen I’m going to cooperate fully regardless of your power trip regardless of the rights that you violated or whatever and then if I believe that my rights are violated to Pur it later like how you’re saying because if you choose to pursue it right then and there it’s not going to work out and you know actually now I’m sitting here thinking about this it it doesn’t need to be like a high school education thing that’d be great but like what could we do in the immediate the the the government the police should get together and start making videos of saying hey here’s what’s going on here’s what the cops feeling here’s what the cops thinking watch this live you know there’s plenty of body cams now you can say here’s what the cops thinking here’s what like they just had a shooting of a white guy up in Northern California a little bit ago and he you know they showed him reaching for his reaching behind him after he was being compatitive and walking towards people so you it would be cool to just freeze that frame and say this is what a police officer is thinking right now when you’re doing this he’s thinking does this guy have a gun here’s the report that I got here’s the situation I’m in think about what you’re doing and do the right thing if you’re getting told to get down get down if you’re getting told to show your hands show your hands and I think we got to start educating we got to start training our police better they deserve it we owe that to them so that they know how to work as an individual to use cover as pairs to use cover Move as elements to use cover and move and then we we need to put them in the stressful realistic environments that are changing all the time that they have to learn how to think now and then on the civilian side our civilians need to be educated as well on how to get arrested how to comply what it feels like to be on the other side yeah yeah man I and like I said I think that does create this kind of this overall understanding of the process like remember I used to be a bouncer and you know it’s like check IDs right you check IDs and when someone has a fake ID usually you can tell in their behavior and I’m not saying I can tell a guys’s underage or whatever if they’re behaving I’m not saying that but if there’s some suspicion or whatever his behavior is going to tell more of the tail you know but there is this kind of standard standard operating kind of way when you present your idea you show your ID you be quiet and you just kind of stand there so they can look at your face the bouncer I’m just saying that’s what typically what people do automatically but when people do other things it sticks out you know so like I said I think like how you were saying if there is this understanding like I know how it is to be the cop I know how to get arrested they’ll do that and they’ll create this pattern like I said where when they are acting suspicious it won’t be he was just kind of generally suspicious it’ll stick out way more exactly that’s a good idea man I don’t think I ever heard that before Leif next question Metallica or panta this is open up a big can of worms because we used to have H quite a big debate about this in Tu Bruiser back in the day and uh Joo gave me a hard time because I I grew up in the the Metallica Black Album era oh God uh which joa didn’t even consider real Metallica uh he was going to Old School Ride Ride the Lightning kill them all kill them all but uh yeah for for me it was you know what’s funny I see to think about Vietnam the Vietnam War and these guys are going to the Vietnam War and they’re they’re listening to um um Crosby Still is a Nash right they’re listening to the Greatful Dead I mean a large portion of the population was we’re going to war listening to Metallica Kill Them All so little good little mindset show that is uh that’s pretty good I got to say though uh I think panta crushes Metallica and I got to say that uh Cowboys from Hell is probably the greatest rock song of all time Roger that I’m uh I actually I actually really like the early Metallica and then I thought that panta got better after that album and and moved towards Vulgar Display of poweray when they stepped up and went harder hold your mouth or War as opposed to Metallica who got softer so dig them both and when I got to Seal Team One there was a big stereo system in the gym and it had a glass case in front of it and they they’d welded like a rod into the case where you couldn’t open it you you could you couldn’t open the case and it was lock shut in in the first five you remember the old days they had the the CD disc Changers there was and this was a five dis CD changer the first five Metallica albums were in there and they could not be removed that if you went in the gym that’s what you listening to back in the day team one style Good Times all right I’d like to hear what you both think regarding the deaths of buds trainees in the past few months yeah look this is something that’s been all over the news um our buds is basic underwater demolition SEAL training and that is that is the basic SEAL training program that’s the pipeline that we all go through uh that uh that we graduate from it’s a about a 27 we program or so um it’s got a 70 80% attrition rate it’s it’s why they consider some of the toughest military training in the world it’s tough training and and it needs to be tough training uh because we expect seals to be able to perform at a very high level on very dangerous battlefields across the globe and a lot of Highly Dynamic and high pressure situations so we got to keep those standards High one thing that’s misleading is uh there was you know they’re saying well three three deaths happened in a short period of time you know a few months back at at Buds and and that’s that’s actually not true it it wasn’t two of those two of the three deaths actually didn’t happen in training and so uh people need to understand that so so what were the three deaths so there was there was a uh one one death actually happened in training there was a death of a student that drowned in the pool while going through an evolution um and uh the instructors you know were there they tried to resuscitate him got him in the hospital but they couldn’t bring him back he was gone so that’s that is a training death that’s that’s the one training death the two others that happened was um a student that quit training Dro he dropped on requests as we call it which is again you know most of the students that go there this this ends up happening had uh most most people quit most people quit that the 70 80% attrition rate means most of those folks are walking away so uh they’re ringing the bell and and and dropping on request which is you know quitting the program so uh horrible situation but uh this individual uh the student you know apparently that was weighed heavily on him that he quit his dream to go to buds um and on Liberty uh meaning meaning he got he quit and then he went out wasn’t under supervision anymore went into downtown San Diego went to a hotel jumped off the 22nd floor killed himself which is horrible which is horrible but that that was not a training death no even though he was attached to the command at the time and there’s certainly I’m sure they’re taking some substantial steps to maybe uh try to monitor guys a little bit more but you can’t you can’t put you can’t while horrible and tragic and they’re going to try to do everything they can to prevent that you can’t put guys in jail for six weeks after they quit I mean you can’t be with them 247 so um so I think it’s hard to hold you know the center responsible our training center responsible for for that death and the other one that happened was uh another guy who had who had quit training a student who had quit training while on Liberty got uh got drunk and and crashed his car and was killed in a car motorcycle was it a car I think it was a car yeah well you know what I think you just kind of explain these things you know one of them is training death training deaths shouldn’t happen it’s horrible when it happens a lot of times there’s been other drownings in the past often times there’s some kind of a some kind of a medical issue that the person had I don’t know what the results of this guy’s autopsy are but the guy that killed himself this was one thing that I found interesting I was talking to one of the guys one of my buddies that that works over there still and I saw a picture of the guy that killed himself and dude looked like a stud you know he they had a couple pictures of him it almost looked like a almost like a professional photography of a of a guy you know he was he was like a rugby player and he was kind of look like a stud and I mentioned this to the to to my buddy that’s an instructor over there I said hey man that guy look like a stud what’s going on and my buddy said hey Joo they’re all studs so when I went through training no one knew about the SEAL Teams we there wasn’t this big giant you know we didn’t have this huge um publicity that we have now and so if if you wanted to go to the SEAL Teams you kind of had to search it out it wasn’t just going to the SEAL Teams weren’t going to just land on your doorstep you had to figure it out and go for it and so there’s there wasn’t a lot of there was all kinds of Knuckleheads going through training and he said he said when you look down the line and you look at when you talk to these kids they’re the captain of the the team they’re the the class president of the high school they’re they’re studs and so it’s no it’s no different with this kid the kid was a stud and I I think and and actually reading some of the articles about him he this was his lifelong dream he had told everybody I’m going to be a seal I’m going to be a seal I’m going to be a seal and I think he quit on Wednesday I want to say w I don’t know I don’t know when he quit but he quit in h week and since he told everybody that’s what he’s going to do you know that was uh the stress was too much to bear to go back to everybody and say yeah I didn’t make it so I just I want to be clear I mean that these are horri it’s horrible to lose young you know good young men who aspire to be s and whether they’re killed in a auto accident uh you know drinking and driving or not or you know a suicide this is horrible and we want to try to prevent that I’m sure I I I know that the our training center is doing everything they can to try to prevent that but again you can’t lock these guys up yeah you can’t be at some point they have to be released to be on Liberty they they we can’t be with them 247 so uh you know you can counsil guyses you can talk to folks uh and what’s a shame about you know the the uh the suicide is I mean some of our the the best guys we served with guys like Mark Lee and Mike Monsour both had quit buds rang out uh got some maturity went to the fleet you know worked hard to get ready and come back came back knocked that training out of the park and we’re we’re outstanding Team guys so that’s uh that’s just that that’s a horrible tragedy definitely but I think what’s important for people understand is you know for the actual training death this stuff is there’s a lot of protocols in place it’s very it’s very when I was an instructor there because you were an instructor there for those you who don’t know Leif was an instructor at buds I was never an instructor at buds but Leif worked there you worked hell weeks I did and so what you don’t realize when you’re going through as a student it just seems like Mayhem these guys are you know putting you all these difficult these difficult things well it’s very controlled it’s very controlled and there’s you know there’s um there’s a lot of supervision and there’s a lot of different safety checks and medical checks and all those things that are happening all the time uh that are going on behind the scenes that the students don’t even realize so um you know it doesn’t mean every instructor always behaves the way they should but most of those guys are outstanding professionals there’s a there are levels of leadership that are there to uh ensure that they they perform perform well and do what they should do and and in almost every case that’s you know that’s the case th those instructors are are doing an outstanding job I think the the the important thing here too is to understand that those standards have got to be high and and there people a lot of people outside the SEAL Teams we’ve had a lot of pressure on us right now particularly with the push to open up all of special operations to and infantry units to to women this is a this is a new push under the administration and uh our our secretary of the Navy Ray Maus has been all over this and and and pushing that and wants to see women graduate from the SEAL Teams and I think that’s pretty he’s pretty open about that and so uh um this is I think the danger here and the concern I have is that they’ll use something like this the politicians who don’t know what what a good what makes a good seal you know they they like they like they like to think they do but they don’t they have no idea what makes a good seal and uh and they don’t understand how difficult combat is you know people ask us sometimes ja when I get questions like tell us a good bud story like we don’t talk about buds because everybody’s been through buds in the SEAL Teams and and listen buds is the kick in the nuts it’s a it’s a good training program uh there’s some stuff that’s hard certainly there’s some stuff that wasn’t as hard as I thought it was you know was going to be or or should have been but uh but a lot of it’s quite challenging and difficult uh um but it’s a screening process and to to to weed out the guys that we don’t believe have the characteristics that are going to enable them to succeed on the battlefield a lot of that is just the will to succeed through some and persevere through some really difficult challenges so it is critical that those standards remain high because combat is so much harder physically harder than training yeah that’s what I was about to say you said hey it’s important that we find that they have the will there’s also a level of physical toughness that you have to have that there just is and and when I say physical toughness I’m talking about the actual ability to your for your body to withstand wear and tear and that’s one key part you know with the 80% attrition rate not all those people are people that quit it’s people that can’t stand the cold they physically can’t handle the cold it’s people that physically can’t handle the the stress on your shoulders on your neck on your back on your knees on your ankles it is very hardcore you know there’s a great article that was written by two female Marines that were in in Afghanistan that got kind of put out at an outpost where they were for all practical purposes alongside the male Marines in a field environment and they both wrote and said women should not be doing this and by the way they were both they were both really awesome Marines who had been like some kind of Collegiate athletes they they were studs and they just said look we didn’t have our bodies didn’t hold up and that’s one of the many things you know you just said it when you’re in combat it’s not it’s not it’s not a sport you get the you don’t go to the training room afterwards and get an ice bath and a massage you don’t and if something happens they don’t blow the whistle and come out on the field and let the trainer work on you and then pull you off and put a substitute in that doesn’t happen on the battlefield and there aren’t weight classes either yeah there’s no weight classes for sure it’s um so yeah uh they they need to maintain the standards and they need to maintain the standards and I think we we cannot allow that to slip and I think those instru are doing their utmost to make sure that that happens the other thing people need to understand too is when you’re a student going through this for me this is my dream and guess what when every time I’m going to Med a medical check during our hell week which they do you know every every day you’re get you’re getting checked every morning and they’re taking your temperature and they’re you know they’re they’re take taking your spo2 and and and making sure that uh you don’t have pneumonia or you don’t have some other you know uh dangerous physical uh medical condition um you’re sweating it out you’re sweating it out because you know you know I’m not going to quit this training but what if something that I can’t control happens what if I get pneumonia I get fluid in my lungs what if I get sick or something happens or I get some infection in my leg or I break you know my ankle I mean these things happen to guys and so then you end up you can get rolled out of training maybe it’s just compounds into an issue so you’re doing your utmost to make it through those medical checks and people need to understand that the the students are trying to get under the radar and make it happen and will often push through injuries a mutual friend of ours made it all the way through his hell week with a broken ankle you know running on it he just wasn’t going to stop just be tough wasn’t going to stop he was being tough so you know so that that’s the kind of people that we want in the SEAL Teams you know but but on the other hand instructor staff has a difficult job because they have to make sure that those guys aren’t hurting themselves and I’ve actually talked to uh I’ve talked to some folks who wanted to go into the seel teams and uh had some medical condition that they you know they weren’t get they were failing their Navy physical it’s a very difficult physical exam you have to take you know medical exam and uh that said you know what um I just need a waiver for this and you know if they just give me this and I I I had to I’ve explained this to multiple people when they told me that I said listen those waivers are there to protect you they’re there to protect you to make sure that you don’t get killed in training or and and they protect the team that you know when when people are relying on you and you’re carrying some critical piece of gear and we’re covering moving that you don’t go down so because you covering up some injury yeah exactly so you know it’s not about you about the mission and uh and so you know unfortunately this is when you’re talking about these these units it’s just not everybody can participate in that listen I would have I played High School football as a linebacker and fullback I’m 510 you know 200 pounds uh I I I would have loved to played in the NFL I’m not big enough or strong enough or fast enough to play in the NFL so um the the NFL teams are not going to benefit if I’m playing linebacker fullback on their teams they’re going to be weaker they’re not going to be as good um so uh that’s just the reality of it right we got to keep those standards High um and you know political pressure uh I think is is a very dangerous thing and and all it takes is for you know we we we’re lucky we have some great leaders that are leading that training that are going to keep those standards high and understand how important that is unfortunately it takes one week leader you know to to go in there and uh uh fold fold to the political pressure and uh and standards drop and the world is uh that dark Darkness continues to spread particularly with that that conversation that we open this with as Darkness spreads throughout the world we need our SEAL Teams and special operators and infantry units to perform at the highest levels possible to go and and be able to close with and destroy that enemy indeed speaking of destroying the enemy next question is how do you deal with Rules of Engagement are they necessary did they inhibit you this is a question we get all the time and people want to talk about Rules of Engagement you know everyone there’s always complaints guys you come back from the battlefield like the Rules of Engagement are so stringent and these are different Wars are fighting these are counterinsurgency Wars and often times people use the term civilian casualties uh in a way of that that’s you know they’re talking about innocent civilians but what they don’t realize is that everyone we’re fighting as a civilian none of them are uniformed members of of an opposing military they blend into the populace they act like they’re normal people They Hide amongst the people of sometimes use them as human Shields and then they’re shooting at you and shooting RPGs or or or uh machine guns at you and they maneuver so that it’s a very challenging environment um but the Rules of Engagement really don’t change Rules of Engagement are pretty clear and uh they’re uh You observe a a hostile act bad guys shooting at you or shooting at friendlies or a you You observe hostile intent meaning that and that’s where it becomes a little more gray area to say okay was this was that person acting in a manner that had a reasonable certainty of hostile intent and so uh it’s it’s a judgment call up up to uh up to the Troops on the battlefield and and those rules of GES don’t change they’re they’re always the same I think what changes is a Le is leaders leaders change and there’s some leaders that are willing to delegate that down to the lowest level Troopers trust in their guys train them make it make them understand um just how important it is to make sure uh you know that that uh that they’re operating within that Rules of Engagement that they are you know not uh accidentally engaging some innocent person and causing you know collateral damage that they didn’t mean to so uh and there’s some leaders that won’t delegate that and keep it tight and and want to really scrutinize guys for making the call I think the best way uh for us we this was incredibly important people need to understand how you know our troops are put in a tough position because we know that anything we do in today’s world with with social media with news you know news Cycles could be absolute front page headline news uh in in a heartbeat and uh and those can have massive catastrophic effect on on the entire you know strategy yeah the Strategic uh Mission so this is uh this is something that we have to deal with regularly and uh and if a guy thought you know he he thought he saw someone digging in the road and they were an ID layer and and uh he decided to pull the trigger on on someone that he thought was an ID layer and it turns out it’s not we get investigated for that we it becomes a big deal and and that shooter our our US servicemen who you or or or woman who engaged uh is potentially looking at going to prison for you know for something like that so it’s a big deal if they violated The Rules of Engagement one of the ways that uh Joo did an amazing job of this and and you know one of our four principles our laws of combat that we talk about is simple and one of the ways that he did this for us was you know all this lawyer speak of reasonable certainty of hostile intent and all these things he would stand up before we rolled out the gate every time every single operation and say if you have to pull the trigger you better make sure the guy you’re killing is bad simple everyone understood that and it we had total faith and trust in our guys to do that I’m so proud of that that they were able to execute with tremendous discipline and uh and minimize collateral damage in in a way that other units couldn’t you know in the way we did that so uh I think uh Rules of Engagement are necessary people have to understand them and it’s really whether or not uh you it’s delegated down is entirely up to a leader yeah and you could see the uh the the situation that led up to M Li which we did a couple podcasts ago the the r Rules of Engagement were the the way that they were briefed it wasn’t hey make sure the people that you’re killing are bad it was everyone in this area is hostile everyone has been warned if they’re that to leave so everyone you see is either Viet Kong or Viet Kong sympathizer kill them and there’s some scrutiny about whether they said kill them or not because that because that that was a pretty simple clear message but you know the difference in that the way that the Rules of Engagement were briefed were definitely a a a a cause one of the causes for the Meli Massacre happening it’s it’s a awful situation Rules of Engagement all right next question is probably pretty quick but how often would guys take shots in their body armor or helmet all the time this happened all the time and uh when we were in that Urban combat in sustained combat day after day after day both for for us and Charlie platoon and and our our sister platoon Delta platoon that was operating on the other side of the city it was just this happened regularly I mean we had guys uh you know on patrol with a camel back you know and you know the camel back’s got is a water bladder on the back you wear the backpack it’s got the little hose tube that you you can you can drink water on on on the Move guys no no water his backpack realized later round went through it I mean you’re talking inches away you know from his back we had multiple guys shot in the plates uh front plate back plate um and Guy uh one one of our guys peeking up over the rooftop during a big gunfight bam takes takes uh all of a sudden he feel felt like somebody punched him in the face and uh kind of falls back down below the roof and kind of gets up wondering what’s happening and takes off his helmet looks at his helmet realize he’s been shot in his night vision Mount uh which meant that that round came in directly you know at his face hit hit his hit his night vision Mount and ricocheted up had it hit just you know millimeters lower it would have taken his head off so that happened all the time and I I’m sure Joo you remember this many times I would we’ we’d P come back from an OP Park our homes I’d walk in the door I I was going to check him with Joo let him know you know what what what we what happened out there what’s going on you know what’s what’s happening you know uh now you know are there other Ops we need to get reloaded for things to think about walking in his office you know and first thing I would generally say was God is a frog man God’s a frog man he’s looking out for us I don’t know how we made it out of that without losing guys or you know this was so many close calls uh and it was just a constant thing all the time wear your body armor wear your helmet yeah we we always said guys on our and You’ you’ve talked about this in the podcast before but my first appointment we would have guys that would wear body body armor that was like like 6 in by 6 in minimalistic body tiny little body armor nobody you know and and in ratti getting those kind of gunfights everyone was like hey can we get a little bigger place some guys wanted to cut their helmets into half shells before we got there after we got there it was like no I’m not cutting my helmet some of the arm get a little more ballistic some of the army guys they would have the full they look like almost like Knights the crotch protector The crot Protector the arm sleeves the side sappy plates they they were covered up good on them cuz they were uh you know taking real risks out there so yeah but you know Jody medic and I when he was on here we had a little conversation about body armor they did op and expected to be in a certain spot they weren’t there they didn’t have body armor helmets on and he you know he’s sitting here saying I wished I would have had him so wear your body armor wear your helmet all the time next one Leif we truly appreciate your father’s work here in Texas would you ever consider a career in politics well I appreciate that uh there’s uh just to so everybody understands my dad is a a US Congressman now uh he’s a freshman us congressman from uh Texas District 36 in Southeast Texas and uh I’m very proud of him he retired after a a career as a as a small town dentist you know business uh self-employed business for Army and Air Force Army Army and Air Force veteran and uh he was fed up with Washington and didn’t like the options that he saw uh you know that he knew were going to be running for that seed and he said you know what I’m throwing my hat in the ring I’m going to go up there I’m trying to make a difference and I we need more people like that in Washington dad is my dad is there to make a difference and only to make a he doesn’t care about a career he doesn’t care about being there for decades and decades and decades you know he’s uh he’s retired and he’d rather be fishing hanging out with his grandkids and and hunting but uh he would but he cares the country cares about the country and he is sacrificing to be there uh and to lead and I’m and I’m damn proud of the job that he’s doing uh and stepping up what I consider a career in politics uh I can’t imagine anything to be more miserable than that uh you know what on the other hand when I look at our nation just as my dad has uh uh has has felt you know called to do that to step up to lead you know if we don’t do it who’s going to do it so somebody has got to step up somebody’s got to lead and I think when you look at the direction of our country right now and the the the political climate and and all that’s going on you know in this electoral cycle um would I do that maybe I just might be able to be talked into it uh we shall see what about you Joo get some uh I mean we got we got the bumper stickers 2016 uh that go Charles I think I would be running as if I was to run for political office I would run as um dictator and supreme ruler of of America and that’s what that’s what I would do we we could we could bring back some of the Roman rule of Tri triumphant so me you and Ekko we could just take take over it uh I don’t know if I have the stomach for politics I I really don’t like the political Arena too much and not sure it’s something I would ever ever have the desire to do you know I guess that’s my that’s where I sit maybe when I was 70 years old um yeah people people have asked me too you know like hey if you were president what would you do you know about the situation with Iran you know and their development of nuclear weapons or China getting you know making big moves in the South China Sea or Russia pushing the envelope and uh and and uh kind of thumbing their noses at us and often I’ve told them that if I were president I would immediately uh nominate jao willick as Secretary of Defense we would change Secretary of Defense to the previous title of Secretary of War and uh and I think those problems would would disappear immediately um I think if if I was President it’d be very my policy would be pretty simple my policy would be kickass that’s what we would do economic what are we do what’s your economic plan Joo kickass what’s your what would you do with this situation over here in the the uh Middle East oh there oh yeah what we’re going to do there is we’re going to kick ass what about the drug problem that we got coming in through the borders oh the the drug cartel yeah we’re going to kick ass on that so that’s my policy so this is why I probably wouldn’t be the best politician in the world that kind of like BTF same thing right yeah yeah um all right next question can you give us details of the muster so for those of you don’t know we’re doing an event in San Diego California Leif Babin and I and you know what Echo child’s going to be there maybe gonna be there in the sidelines he’s going to be signing t-shirts and cutting videos MH uh we’re doing an event October 20th 21st and what it is it is a deep dive into combat leadership what combat leadership is all about how to apply combat leadership to your business to your life how to get out there lead and win the reason we’re doing this is as you know Leif and I have been doing this this gig for the past five years working with a bunch of different companies we wrote the book extreme ownership it’s very popular and we get a lot of requests and we’ve you know we we we honestly we’re in a lot of demand and people want us to come work with a bunch of different companies we can’t always do it we’ve actually had to raise our prices so that we could kind of slow down a little bit slow down the demand but when we’re doing that that means we’re we’re cutting a lot of people out you know and I’m a I’m a man of the people and I want to support the work and man so how can we get something where where regular people can come maybe they don’t have maybe their company doesn’t support bringing us out or it’s too expensive for us to come out well how about you send two or three of the critical leaders out there we spend a day and a half getting deep working working through the things that we’ve learned going face to face with people and explaining explaining things to them how to deal with it this is not one of the things this is not going to be this is not going to be a a Feelgood seminar this is going to be hey we’re here to pump you up and that that’s not what we’re doing we’re here to educate we’re here to talk about leadership we’re going to learn too it’s going to be great to have a bunch of people in leadership positions that we can talk to that we can communicate that we can learn from situations that they’ve been in you know we get we when I put out that you were coming back on the podcast get hundreds and hundreds of questions I get thousands of questions I have on the pod on the podcast question bank it’s 82 pages long 82 Pages worth of questions is what I have right now I’m I’m answering five or six questions a podcast so let’s get people that want to come out want to get face to face with Le and I and learn about leadership learn what we’ve learned and how to apply in business’s life that’s what that’s what we’re doing with the muster it’s important to say too this this is not a tour you know we’re we’re not going to take this from City to City to City to City this is uh we’re going to have one one muster this is an annual event you know maybe at some point we’ll expand in one West Coast one East Coast that’s that’s a maybe you know right now we’re going to do we’re going to do one uh one muster annual event and this is for leaders whether you’re whether you’re a leader follower anyone who wants to better themselves to dive deep into these issues of leadership of teamwork of extreme ownership of the laws of combat and how to apply them this is for you you know come to San Diego join us we’re looking forward to deep into those issues helping you solve some challenges to lead and win Boom come out to the muster there’s a there’s a there’s a website for it and we’ll tweet it out go to Echelon front com you can find it on there that’s our company so you can go check that out we’re looking forward to uh the people that want to come out come and get some now the reason that Leif was out here with me here in San Diego was for a series of events to commemorate the 10year anniversary of August 2nd 2006 which is the day that Mark Allen Lee who was the first seal killed in Iraq was killed in ramadi and also the day where Ryan job otherwise known as bigles was was Gravely wounded shot in the face in the wounds that ultimately led to his death as well this particular events were focused on on Mark in in an event to support a charity organization that his mom runs called America’s Mighty Warriors and at one of those events I was uh honored to give a speech from my perspective on Mark and here it is 10 years 10 years is a long time a decade and in many ways it seems so far in the past and in some ways it doesn’t seem so far away at all it isn’t hard to remember being deployed in ramadi Iraq in the summer of 2006 and yes sometimes that seems like a distant place a long time ago and yet sometimes it feels like we were just there yesterday the sweltering heat the dust the danger the crystal clear focus on our mission when we had but one purpose in our lives to close with and destroy an evil enemy bent on destroying us and our way of life and it doesn’t take much for the mind to return there to regain that mindset to get into the combat mode and remember remember the operations out in the city remember the Tracer rounds of the night sky explosions shaking the Earth the weight of body armor and weapons and gear on our shoulders remember the stress and the violence and the sweat and the blood and remember the evil the pure evil that infected the city and committed Savage vile and disgusting acts of mortal sin murder rape and torture and inside that dark world a world ripped apart by War a world where sometimes Humanity seemed all but lost that is where we got to see and experience the polar opposite the counter to all that Darkness against that backdrop of evil we young men we ban of Brothers we got to witness light and life and love so strong that it makes the darkness fade and makes the evil cower and hide its wretched face evil bows down when it sees the bond we developed with the soldiers and Marines we fought alongside died evil cannot contest the bond we formed with our brother seals with whom we had become so close that there is no stronger force in the world nothing more powerful nothing more meaningful than knowing that these men these frog men that we would do anything for each other we saw powerful acts of heroism and courage on an almost daily basis which reassured us solemnly that good would triumph over evil and amongst all that Glory there were a few men the true heroes the ones that Rose above the rest of us to symbolize and personify courage and faith and selflessness and love Mark Allen Lee was one of those rare men one of those Heroes one of the few men in my life that I literally describe as a saint that is who Mark was a mighty warrior whose ferocity and combat was perfectly balanced by faith and humor and compassion a man that left his mark on everyone that he met a mark of happiness and positivity and of humility and of Joy a man whose love for his family and friends was so unbounded and so Limitless that you could actually feel it emanating from his heart and now he has left his mark on the World Mark Lee Mark Allen Lee when faced with fear who else could bring a smile when faced with sadness who else could bring laughter when faced with hate who else could bring love and when faced with death who else could stand and say take me Lord not my brothers I will be their shield now from Death take me and let them live on and that is what Mark did full of Youth and energy and courage and humor and full of love he stood he stood against evil and he stood against death and he gave his life for his brothers and for our freedom on August 2nd 2006 in AR ramadi Iraq 10 years ago 10 years ago and in those 10 years think of all that has happened in our lives big events like marriages children born birthdays new houses new jobs new careers in small events a morning surf session lunch with your buddies a weekend in the mountains a cold iced tea on a hot Summer’s Day smile a laugh life joy happiness and every moment of that happiness is a gift a gift a gift given to us by Mark who sacrificed everything thing for us who gave up his own precious smile so we could all have ours now I can tell you without a shred of doubt that on this day today mark would not want tears he would not want sadness he would not want sorrow he would want smiles and laughter and joy because that was his gift to us every smile every laugh every ounce of life and love is all a gift from a warrior a friend a comedian a a son a brother a hero a saint and what do we owe Mark for Mark each and every one of us must relish the gift that he gave to us and cherish each and every day while remembering the incredible man that gave us this gift of life and to the seals that are listening the Frog men you owe Mark what we owe all our fallen Brothers the grave commitment to carry the fire to hold the torch and hold it high to take the fight to the enemy every chance you get without mercy and without remorse until they are vanquished and there is peace thank you Mark we will never forget you God bless Mark’s family God bless the teams God Bless America and God bless Mark Allen Lee when I think that’s all we’ve got for tonight and I want to thank everybody that’s out there that’s listening thank you for remembering and that’s one of the things that we do here remember might I want to thank Le for coming on we’ve been we’ve been tied into so many things and you were pointing that out to me the other day Leif we’ve been tied into so many different things and so many far-reaching stories that we’ve been a part of and I thank you for coming on here and helping to share some of these stories with with me for everyone to hear thanks for having me everyone can remember those of you that are out there and you want to keep listening and you want to keep remembering Echo how can they support this help me out here red cluster red star cluster star cluster yeah thanks for coming on Le um thanks for having Meo we didn’t talk much about working out or you know that kind of stuff but if you’re into supplements even if you’re not into supplements my opinion go to hit com joaco get on it supplements that’ll help you out a lot and 10% off so we said it a bunch of times but I can’t I kind of can’t say it enough really as far as benefits it’ll put your head for sure so yeah get 10% off that um if you want to support with the Amazon situation the one where you go to the website click on the Amazon link you know before you do your shopping um that’s a good way to do it uh if you have a hard time remembering we have the trooper tool which is good Brady yeah Brady B came through on that one um it’s a thing you go there’s a link on the website it’s called The Trooper tool you click on it uh it takes you to the page you click on it you say yes that’s it it puts a little thing so it automatically um directs you to to the Amazon W uh it adds the affiliate link so you you support the podcast um you don’t have to go through the websites anymore so that’s a good one um yeah and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes that’s a good on H and where you there’s other places to subscribe to it yeah sure YouTube Google Google Play by the way yeah and Stitcher too you’re into that iTunes I think is the main one but hey man stitcher’s dope as well Google play too it’s on there um so yeah and go to the YouTube channel I was going to re release a video today it was like a uh outtake or whatever but what you’re protesting I was I was too fired up yeah man those two fired up with other stuff I’ll post it tonight it’ be good um so it’s out what is it outtake video yeah it’s like one was the the the now you see what makes me nervous about this is I believe in decentralized command all right Leif can attest to that right for sure totally believe in decentralized command but now I’m starting to deal with a possible trust scenario requires trust and confidence that’s for sure yeah so what if my brother Eko Charles I haven’t seen seen it yep so this is the unauthorized outtakes yeah so here and we’re going to we’re going to ease into this whole thing so there’s one and I’m this is just off the top of my head where I was telling you about my my children’s book idea okay yeah you’re GNA make okay it’s a good idea okay anyway that was the fish in the water I I actually remember right now it just hit me right I I’m okay with it I was just uh I was a little concerned that he he might have uh you know a rendition of me and you singing We Are the World yes yes luckily I don’t think we hit record yet we don’t want that we don’t want that on the internet I have on MyPhone when Le and I were put the headphones on and the mics in front of us and we were standing here looking at each other and it felt very much like if you were live during the 80s they did the We Are the World video and and for some reason that just hit us both at the same time we busted out busted out We Are the World Mark Lee would have been proud he would have indeed I was proud for sure and and yeah so the YouTube videos I I told you guys last time Ekko needs motivation he’s you know he’s just a laid-back guy and so we need to motivate him and he his excuse was well you know there not that many subscribers on on YouTube no big deal that doesn’t sound like extreme ownership why should why should I be making vide never said that that’s the thing all right so cool not to get too technical it’s not I don’t need motivation I need incentive so Tech they’re just they’re different okay I don’t want to get into a big thing yeah yeah I don’t want to either awesome uh so that’s it thank you yeah or the the jao store is a good one you know get a shirt if you like those um and a bumper sticker whatever if if you like those I forgot about the t-shirts in the store the Joo store yeah that’s a good one man but yeah if like if you like them yeah if you don’t like them don’t get them yeah yeah yeah oh yeah I’ve seen a lot of those on Twitter yeah yeah yeah awesome cranking pictures of we we do dig that but I’ll tell you if should we just say stop asking us for like a don page no we shouldn’t say that okay but and don’t ask for patreon patreon Pat patreon we’re not going to do it yeah probably not going to do we’re not going to do it if you want to donate you can donate through PayPal yeah if you can that’s good that’s cool it is it is cool to see those cuz it’s like 434 you know yeah cuz that’s that’s that’s the cool that’s what the cool kids do they donate $434 a month yeah to keep them up and engaged up before the enemy yeah that is cool yeah by the way sleep deprivation I’m on it right now cuz Le and I were out late last night and we were up very early this morning to work out and then go surfing that’s right we were we will work and play on this triam discipline you know what I have to say about that good exactly uh awesome awesome thanks but yeah those are the ways okay good and then uh also if you want you know believe it or not this guy sitting here with me Le Babin yeah I know he and I might not look like the smartest people in the world the world and we might actually not be the smartest people in the world but we did write a book people people look at me and probably think I can’t spell my name or read much less write a book but uh we did write a book uh the books continue to do really well and you know if if you’re interested in if you’re interested in the book if you’re interested in the the concepts that jao talks about the stuff that we just talked about and we talked about in episode 11 of the jao podcast uh get the book and dive into that stuff deep talk about extreme ownership talk about the laws of combat and how they apply we use the combat scenarios we talk about the principle and we talk about how it appli to different businesses and organizations that we work with over the years it’s uh something that for us our mission was to write a book that could be useful for leaders as a reference a good read that uh that people can can get into and have some exciting stores that that are applicable but but also is a useful reference for uh for leaders to highlight underline tab refer to regularly you know Dogg pages and and and as we’ve received that kind of feedback and people post uh messages on on social media about of their their books and the dog ear pages and the tabs or the highlights and the feedback we’ve received has been tremendous and and uh if we’ve done that and uh and accomplish that for those leaders as as that useful reference that has helped them be better leaders better followers better team members accomplish their mission to win than we’ve succeeded in our mission I’ll tell you what fires me up too I I I love seeing that I love seeing when people are like like um they’re showing a they cuz I post pictures of the books that I do on the podcast and they’re all they’re all notes and all that stuff because I’m getting ready I dive deep and so people do that to our book and like you said that’s awesome and we love signing books that have massive uh the other cool thing there’s two other cool things they’re kind of related one of them is when people send a picture of a stack of books and they’re like issuing these to my teams today we’re going to get it on that’s awesome and there’s something else that happens that’s a little bit it might be more awesome it might be the same awesome but it’s definitely awesome and that’s when they’re when they’re giving the book to their boss right and there’s a and somebody somebody hit us up the other day and like you know how do I give this book to my boss and and I think Leif wrote you know something along the lines of hey it’s it’s a great it’s a great thing to give to your boss and when you do it say hey man I learn you know you don’t want to say you the thing the thing you don’t want to do is say you need to get some extreme ownership so I’m giving this to you as a hint no what you want to say is ah I got so much out of this book and I’m going to turn you know I look forward to applying what I learned I just want if you see a change in attitude I want you to know where it’s coming from do something like that be tactical well interestly enough ironically looking at someone and saying you need extreme ownership is not extreme ownership right because extreme ownership is about you and you got to control that relationship you got to build that relationship so if you feel like the boss uh needs extreme ownership then you got to own that yeah and you got to lead up the chanted command which is one of the chapters we wrote about and it’s it’s cool too you know we’re out here obviously this weekend we saw a lot of our of our seal buddies and it’s interesting I was having a conversation with I think there’s three or four of us in a circle but they were talking about the book and you know it’s it’s guys that were Junior to us at the time and now they’re saying hey you know this is awesome I’m getting a lot out of it and then guys that are senior to us with the I wish I would have had this book and any I say I do too I do too I wish I would have had this book I mean it’s just like a little step up to just know and be able to read and it just gives you that insight and so it’s awesome we appreciate uh appreciate that appreciate everyone giving us the the solid feedback killer and you got anything else Le that’s all I got thanks for having me on good to be on with you guys again always always looking forward to the next time Echo Charles closing comments Plinko no Plinko Le does sound like Batman that’s all the Texas Batman Texas Batman Le bavin I actually never heard that I never heard that until uh the audio book you never heard of Texas Batman jaon actually we we read the Audi book James Earl Jones wasn’t available so we read it ourselves I would I would have I would have given it up for if James Earl Jones had uh done that but we read it ourselves and uh that’s the first time I started hearing that people were like you sound like Texas Batman or Southern Batman I was like what are you talking about I don’t even like I don’t even like com you press play and you said oh dang s like Batman y you know what one too many immediate action drills over the years I guess screaming out some commands or maybe it was when I lost my cool we talked about I should have done less of that blew your voice out awesome well as always if anybody out there wants to continue this conversation we’re all up on the interwebs Twitter the Facebook e Instagram eeko is Echo Charles Leif is LEF Babin and I am at Joo willink and to all those folks out there in uniform those in the military on the front lines in the war against evil those police on The Thin Blue Line fighting criminals and Terror here at home and the firefighters that run towards the danger to protect us in our homes thanks to you all for everything that you do and the rest of the Troopers out there in the world moving forward stepping up taking charge in business in education in health care buying selling building creating making the most of this gift thanks for listening thanks for spreading the word and thanks for grabbing Life by the horns going out there aggressively every day and getting after it so until next time this is Leif Ekko and Joo out
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