This is Joo podcast number 64 with Echo Charles and me Jaco Willink Good evening Ekko Good evening In a country that most people would struggle to find on a map in a compound that few possess the courage to enter Men from my previous life took the fight to our enemy In that compound they found men that pray five times a day for your destruction Those praying men don’t know me They don’t know you And they don’t know America They don’t understand our compassion our freedoms and our tolerance I know it may seem as if some of those things are currently missing but they remain at our core and always will Our capacity for them is boundless and is only dwarfed by the hatred in those men hiding in that compound The hatred they have for you Those men don’t care about your religious beliefs They don’t care about your political opinions They don’t care if you sit on the left or the right liberal or conservative pacifist or warrior They don’t care how much you believe in diversity equality or freedom of speech They don’t care I’m sorry you have never smelled the breath of a man who wants to kill you I’m sorry you’ve never felt the alarm bells ringing in your body the combination of fear and adrenaline as you move towards the fight instead of running from it I’m sorry you’ve never heard someone cry out for help or cried out for help yourself relying on the courage of others to bring you home I’m sorry you’ve never tasted the salt from your own tears as you stand at flag draped coffins burying men you were humbled to call your friends I don’t wish those experiences on you but I do wish you had them If you had them it would change the way you act It would change the way you value It would change the way you appreciate You would become quick to open your eyes and slow to open your mouth Most will never understand the sacrifice required to keep evil men like those from that distant compound away from our doorstep But it would not hurt you to try and understand It would not hurt you to take a moment to respect the sacrifices that others make on your behalf whether they share your opinions or not It would not hurt you to take a moment to think of the relentless drain on family friends and loved ones that are left behind Sometimes for weeks sometimes for months sometimes for [Music] years sometimes forever Ideas are not protected by words Paper and ink may outline the foundation and principles of this nation but it is blood only blood that protects it In that dusty compound a man you have never met gave everything he had so that you have the freedom to think speak and act however you choose He went there for all of us Whether you loved or hated what he stood for he went there to preserve the opportunity and privilege to believe to be and to become what we [Music] want This country every single person living inside of its borders and under the banner of its flag owe that man We owe that man everything We owe him the respect that his sacrifice deserves Saying thank you is not [Music] enough We send our best and lose them in the fight against the worst evil this world has to offer If you want to respect and honor their sacrifice it needs to be more than words You have to live it Take a minute and look around Soak it in All of it The good the bad and the ugly You have the choice every day as to which category you want to be in in which direction you want to move You have that choice because the best among us the best we ever had to offer fought and bled and died for it Don’t ever forget that Now those words were in a piece that was called A debt that cannot be repaid which was written by a fellow Seal and a friend of mine named Andy Stumpf when he heard that we had lost another frog man Chief Ryan Owens during a daring raid on an al-Qaeda compound in Yemen And it was a very fitting tribute Another fitting tribute Yet another fitting tribute to yet another great warrior who sacrificed everything for us One of the hardest truths is is that I know we know that this will not be the last great warrior to fall And those warriors still on the line close ranks to fill the void left by the fallen And they continue to march forward into the dark and into the dust looking for and hunting for evil And those warriors regardless of what they come up against they will not stop And this evening while that hunt continues and while evil lurks out there in the [Music] world I am lucky enough to have one of the good guys here with me The man that wrote those powerful words and that powerful tribute As I said a friend and a former SEAL teammate of mine Andy Stumpf Andy Stumpf welcome to the show brother Thanks for having me man There was um that was a that was an incredible piece man Really was And uh thank you for writing it I think uh it got around and I hope more people get to hear it now and and spread it and share it about that you know another another brave warrior down Yeah it uh like we were going back and forth over text That thing took off like wildfire I I was eating breakfast with my sons and had received the news from a buddy before it had broken on uh mainstream media and it was just one of those moments where it I couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head So I cracked open my laptop literally took one stab at that one pass and just hit the post button and walked away came back four or five hours later and my phone was just exploding and uh yeah I mean it it was cathartic for me to write it and I do hope that more people can understand the message and take just two seconds out of their day to realize what’s happening all around them all around the world at any given time Any given time it’s happening Yep the sacrifices are there and it’s you know speaking of social media it’s been a lot of people been requesting they’ve been asking “Do you know Andy Stumpf and Andy Stump? Do you know Jono?” So yes we do know each other That is confirmed And they’ve been asking you to come on the podcast So thanks for coming on man I know I know We haven’t really seen a bunch of each other in the last few years I think it’s been like 5 years That’s That’s ridiculous And for all those people who’ve been asking you can stop now The answer is yes I know Draco We’ve known each other for a while and here we are So stop We’re good to go Yeah But uh really appreciate you coming on So um let’s get into it man Let’s talk about Let’s talk about you know give us your basic background you know tell us about growing up in Santa Cruz What’s up Santa Cruz? Man what a great place to grow up I mean Santa Cruz is amazing with an asterisk And that asterisk is whether or not at some point in time in your life you leave Santa Cruz because it’s a bubble But for me it was awesome I have family roots there from not only my father but my grandfather They had one of the first construction companies there Built the high school that my father attended Uh built a lot of the infrastructure uh and also had a lot of ties to like law enforcement and firefighters which would help me out when I would get rides home when I would get in trouble You know advantages that other people didn’t have But I mean I consider my I mean my background is very uh generic I mean I played water polo and baseball in high school I’d give myself a C as far as being an athlete Like very average junior lifeguard so comfortable uh in and around the ocean which was a skill that obviously paid off uh in training You didn’t surf it Did you surf in Santa Cruz? I did surf quite a bit And I’m sure you’ve surfed up there As you know it’s extremely territorial Uh it’s good waves It’s good waves but like when you’re 150 lbs you know and you’re 17 18 years old I just really wasn’t into uh you know fighting for waves Yeah So I’d surf a little bit little longboard stuff down by cows maybe steamers if it wasn’t huge and and just played sports Yeah I mean it was super casual Worked for my dad’s construction company Santa Cruz has a dichotomy too in it in the fact that especially when you were growing up there was mad like okay there’s that basically I don’t know if you want to call it the halves the have nots but we’re not talking about money We’re talking about like massive drug use right? Still exists to this day Yeah Uh and it’s it’s it’s like an undercurrent that not a lot of people know about Santa Cruz Most of the people who live in Santa Cruz don’t work there The money all comes from the Silicon Valley They go over the Highway 17 I mean the the median cost of homes in Santa Cruz I think is near $800 000 which is crazy because the city was kind of built around UC Santa Cruz I mean it’s a college I mean who can afford that stuff? But in the surfing scene I mean that’s where a lot of the drug from my understanding that’s where a lot of the drug stuff started and then it just pushed itself out It still exists It’s really bad Yeah it can be it can be a rough it’s you you’d think Santa Cruz is nice beach town but it can be a rough town I mean you make a wrong turn you’re going to be in trouble But I mean the same can be true here of San Diego or anywhere you may want to go So when did you hear about when did you hear about the teams and decide you’re going to get it on? Yeah You know uh so I come from a military family My grandfather was in the Navy My father was in the Navy He was a twin 50 cal gunner on the Mark 1’s in Vietnam The first squadron of patrol boats with the Jacuzzi jets which he said had a failure rate of about 90% That had to be fun And of course they didn’t fail at the time but you’d want them to like pulling away from the dock while you’re Yeah No just in the middle of a firefight you know a complex ambush that you’re trying to get out of Uh so you can I mean I don’t think Actually I know for a fact my father Did your dad work with SEALs? That’s Yeah that’s what I was getting to That’s how I heard about it Um my father probably didn’t want me to join the military right? I mean I I don’t want my sons necessarily to however I would never stand in their way just like my father allowed me to pursue what I wanted to do But I started working for him when I was 11 and learned some of the best lessons of my life with bricks in my hands because he was a mason and I basically moved to bricks for a long time Uh but it was hard work and it paid off later in life And I remember we were driving back from a job when I was 11 and he mentioned seals and with no understanding of what they are just his description of what they did how they he was it was like you know they were in the water they would get them onto the boats they drop them off It was intriguing to me So it led me to trying to search for as much information as I could find out about them And in the early 90s the internet was not what it was today So of course I found the book that almost every team guy has read The Men with Green Faces all about Vietnam But it’s an awesome book So I read that and then unfortunately stumbled across the Rogue Warrior series which as I was saying before we started I made the mistake of thinking that it was a non-fiction work Didn’t find out until a little bit later that that was incorrect But I was hooked And from that moment on it was every piece of information that I could find It’s all I wanted to do It was like a magnetizing force Uh I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it People who don’t come from our worlds it’s very uncommon for them to hear that but you know as well as I do the SEAL teams is is full of people with the same narrative Oh yeah I’ve just always wanted to do this It was a calling Uh but yeah I mean the idea was sparked from my dad and I was 17 still in high school a junior in high school and I went to the Navy recruiter and brought the Navy recruiter home because my parents had to sign for me and I had my mom who was an Army brat and my dad who was like I said served in Vietnam and I’m sure that they were not extremely excited but they both signed for me So I enlisted actually when I was a junior in high school and then left just a few days after high school graduation That’s so legit Yeah it was awesome And I look back now I’m like why did I do that? Why did I list a year early? All I did was give a recruiter I filled their quota for the month I couldn’t leave I was like yeah you got still got to wait till I turn 18 and graduate But I mean the recruiter was happy But I mean it I I never took the SATs I had no plan B It’s what I knew I wanted to do And I I never even considered years I enlisted August 1st of 96 Awesome Yep And so then you showed up at Buds showed up for Buds January of 97 Get some winter Were you still Were you still 17? I was 18 Nice Yeah Got some uh got some winter class action on Well you’re from Santa Cruz so it was not not that big of a deal That’s right Yeah I never really laid in the ocean for extended periods of time without a wet suit Uh but you know what? Even the training was everything that I thought it was going to be I mean I was happy to be there and it hurt every single day and it was extremely hard Um but God I’d pay I’d give you every penny I have right now to go back If I could turn back the clock right now I would make exactly the same choices up until that point in my life Yeah maybe they would change a little bit later on but until that point we’re still going down the same road Yeah Just I I had somebody ask me that the other day some kid I was talking to some school kids and one of them said “You know what can I do to get ready for SEAL training?” I was like “Man SEAL training is awesome You get paid You work out You literally work out all day long They feed you three if not four meals a day of all you can eat Just get after it It’s It’s awesome man It’s so fun With aggressive A type motivated largely personalities surrounding you it gets better as obviously the days and weeks go on in training Some of the people who shouldn’t be there are weed it out But and then even the teams it’s like it’s it it can be everything that you want it to be Yeah So you show up So you get done you show up at the teams you’re a new guy How’s that new guy experience man? Well I don’t know the statute of limitations on some of the things that were done to me but uh I mean again but it was it was awesome I was surrounded by my heroes I didn’t know anything about anything Uh I didn’t realize that at the time Uh but cuz in your head cuz cuz in our heads we know everything about everything I had been to Buzz and Airborne School at Fort Benning I am the most highly polished soldier in the world Yeah And you just FYI for those people that don’t understand when you get done with Buds and Airborne School you know nothing You you know nothing You know nothing tactical You know nothing And it’s pretty ridiculous that that it’s got the people call Yeah People call BUDS a school and it’s again you got to air quote that because you don’t you don’t know how to be a that’s another one I get all the time You don’t you’re not a seal at the end of Buds I always tell people it stands for basic underwater demolition seal with the emphasis on the bee It’s basic Yeah You can run and do pull-ups and you look great with shorts on at the beach I mean but you don’t know anything Yeah Yeah So I mean I checked in uh you know pre 911 Although they are better now I just I have to say that they’re they’re way better now I was talking to some guys that um recent graduates that are now in the pipeline They’re getting trained And I told him I said “You guys are getting trained infinitely better than what we got Infinitely better ” Now it has to do with the time frame that you and I came in the ‘9s There was no there was few very few Vietnam veterans left You’d milk what you could out of them but you weren’t going to get like now every single guy that’s teaching every single Bloods instructor are all combat veterans that have experience So it’s it’s a different game now They’ve And I think we were taught infinitely better than the people before us I’m glad to see that that cycle repeats itself I mean it’s a matter of technology and understanding and uh I mean they’ve changed the pipeline a little bit especially what happens after buds because I went to team five and we did our own trident board you know and we did our own trading and then you go talk to the guys like down at team three they’re like oh yeah we didn’t do any of that well that just means I’m better than you obviously know but yeah there’s no competitive nature of the teams at all but I mean it was I mean I looked at these guys who had been SEALs for like five six seven eight years or there was like a Vietnam vet walking around like you’re just I just wanted to breathe the same air as those people And I mean it’s a you realize incredibly fast that you don’t know anything And you realize that because you get taped up for your mistakes cuz you’re you’re reinforced every time that you make a mistake and it’s just like I couldn’t do anything right for like years because I didn’t know anything the biggest if we had been fighting an enemy I would have been more of a danger to the people that I was with than the enemy that we were fighting It just Yeah I mean I tell people it takes five to seven years to even understand what it really means to be a SEAL And then probably at the 10 year mark you’re at the top of the bell curve as far as what you’re going to be able to do operationally But still I mean I was in heaven I was in my I was I wasn’t even 21 yet Living in an apartment in Coronado riding a bike to work in the world Well well until I got paid Yeah And then I would be the poorest guy 2 days after that It’s It is like for most guys that coming out of high school cuz when you’re in high school you know even if you’re working at Wendy’s Yeah like I did Hell yeah You’re only making whatever 425 an hour and that amounts to you know whatever you know you’re making like 80 bucks every two weeks You You show up in the teams and all of a sudden they’re giving you real legit money You’re they’re filling your pocket up every two weeks You are the richest You are kid in the world Not if you’re a new guy cuz you’re paying for everything You buy a lot of stuff You buy You buy some beers Buy some beers Learned a lot of stuff in bars over beers Indeed Learned a lot of I mean you listen to a lot of history Uh you learn a lot about yourself You learn when you should keep your mouth shut because it gets shut for you I’ve been taped up in a bar maybe The uh the uh the hazing was pretty good in teams back then Yeah reinforcement less in reinforcement So you did a couple deployments couple deployments two pre 911 deployments Uh and you know again the life as a new guy is amazing Like here’s a rifle it’s yours And then my first uh department I worked in with I was a secondary comm guy So I think I had like a PRC77 with like rotary you know rotary dials and whip antenna I had even been to comm school but it’s like this is my stuff And I got remember going getting issued my first set of gear that I look back at now and it’s like I couldn’t sell it if I wanted to So antiquated but I was so happy to be where I was And we you know we trained for 18 months and we deployed for six but my first deployment was to Japan to the Kadina Air Force Base And we experimented with how much we could drink and how much we could work out like which ratio is best 8020 7030 and we’d go train our partner forces But I mean we just I mean we lived life hard It was exactly the brotherhood that I thought it would be I was surrounded by my best friends We all had the same drive You could have told us to go build sand castles we would have had the best sand castles in the world because we just go and go and go and go until we get it right Surrounded by like-minded motivated people come back did another 18-month workup as like a kind of new guy one platoon wonder if you will cruise wonder if you will again you know about 20% but you think you know about 80 The ratio is just a skew Yeah Uh went through the whole work up again and then uh deployed to Guam for 6 months and then at the same time we’d go to Australia for a bit We’d train with the the partner forces there We’d go to the Thailands we go to Philippines and then we’d go back and we’d just train and talk about how awesome we were going to be when the Big Mish Remember the Golden Con Xbox? Yeah Big Mish and the Golden Con Le and I have talked about that on here You know back in the day pre especially pre 911 we were all preparing for the one big mission that was going to go down the big miss Yeah And you know how and and what was interesting is because we didn’t have any combat experience at least from my perspective we trained freaking hard because we thought like it was going to be even harder than anything we could imagine We don’t know how hard it’s going to be So we’re just going to be like it’s not sand castles cuz we would have prepared for that hard too But it’s real This is what we’re prepared for So we trained as hard as we possibly could in every arena In every arena to be ready for whatever was going to come which we had no idea I don’t know if I’ve talked about this before but we finally got my first deploy My first deployment deployed to Guam and I’m ready for the big mish bro Totally I’m I’m ready It’s going down from We get there We get there and we have you know we get issued beepers So you know it’s real now cuz you’re getting issued beepers cuz this back in the day no one had beepers back then unless you unless some [ __ ] was going to go down So they give us the beepers and we’re like ready to rock and roll And finally actually I was surfing and I come in and someone’s waving one of my buddies waving to the beach like “Hey ” I run up What’s going on? Hey we got a page So we get the page We got the page We know We get the 911 page I’m dang but we you know get call ass to base We get there We get in The LPO is sitting there You I look at his face and I go “This doesn’t this doesn’t look like the kind of face I anticipated seeing right now ” And I’ve been in Guam This is my first deployment I’m two days into Guam So I think man this is exactly like we you’re saying yeah what it’s going to be like of course man I just got on deployment it’s going down so no kid the president knows that I’m on deployment he’s ready we’re going to action that target So what I failed to mention was that we were like our second or third day in Guam The first day in Guam that we were there we went and cited in our weapons So we got a recall emergency recall 911 Go back into base Guess what we didn’t do? We didn’t clean up our brass So I’m not kidding We went and cleaned up our brass They they made a they recalled us emergency recall to go clean up our brass on the range After that the the beers got cracked open and it went sideways real quick for the rest of that deployment But isn’t it amazing what used to constitute an emergency? That was a that was a rough one Oh man So you end up So those are your couple uh pre 911 the Where were you when September 11th happened? Uh I was uh stationed at uh team five still and I was living in the Archstone Apartments right by the IKEA in Mission Valley Watched the second one go in live Dang Yeah I remember it Uh was living with a buddy and uh my wife we’d been married for 6 months and watched the second one go in live And then you knew immediately Did you know did you think were you thinking on the first one? Cuz I wasn’t The first one I was like I didn’t see the first one going live turned it on just in time to see the second one but I think it caught most people Like the first one they’re like “Oh wow That pilot’s probably in trouble There gonna be a lawsuit on that one ” And then the second one there was no doubt whatsoever And I didn’t know I mean looking back I didn’t have the mental capacity to understand the difference that it would have in my life But I knew that something was going to be different I mean I think I realized that we were passing from the conceptual phase to the practical phase of what we had trained to do for a really long period of time You know who did know that? So the de the officer D So I was going to college at the time and I called the officer detailer who was a friend of mine who I knew who I’d worked for who is an outstanding guy and I called him up and I was like “Hey sir I’m in college Get me out of college I’ll finish online I’ll do something Just get me out of here Send me to a team immediately please ” Yeah please And he and he says to me “Jo don’t worry This war is going to last a long long time ” And of course I didn’t believe him Yeah but damn was he right He He was But I mean I can only imagine being in your shoes I would have been like I don’t really care This is what my calling in life is to be I don’t I don’t care if I’m in line to get the Nobel Prize for something Like we’ll just put that on the shelf and I’ll come back and get it Nobel what? There’s a war going on And so you get done with that and then shortly thereafter you ship out to the east coast right? Yep Go out to the east coast and uh did the vast majority of my combat deployments out there Uh and wow I mean what an eye- openening experience you know it from like I said going from conceptual shooting at paper targets and and training hard and realistic to to being on a two-way range for the first time I mean uh the the first target I ever was on uh I think my helicopter had 27 rounds in it and the door gunner got shot in the face right in front of me And I’m in MOP level four Yeah For those of you that don’t know that what that is that’s the that’s the chemical biological and radiological suit protection that you wear And level four is you’re wearing your mask You’re wearing everything M So it’s it’s a horrible uncomfortable miserable thing to do And we had a 4hour 47 flight on the way to the objective And 30 minutes out we got all of our stuff on to include our gas masks and the blowers I was going to say if you had the blowers that does make it a lot nicer Well unless you put your weapon strap over the hose Well I could go on for days about mistakes I’ve made in my life Uh so yeah I was skip breathing and occasionally the glass would touch my eyeball because I couldn’t breathe But I mean this this is my first real target ever And it’s uh we’re hitting the number one chemio target in Iraq uh right after the war kicked off And I was on the third 47 that came in and they blew the power grid uh by an A-10 strike uh before we landed And then they landed the helicopters in between the fireball in the city So we were back lit So each subsequent helicopter that came in uh took more rounds and by the time ours came in we started taking rounds at about a minute out I didn’t even know what they were I’m just sitting there looking through straws you know through my gas mask through my night vision goggles suffocating myself cuz my weapon strap is over the hose that’s supposed to be giving me the air Uh and you know there was some sparks Nobody nobody heard on the bird Not a single one of our guys shot And then right before we touch down the door gunner just falls over And then you know the top of his head kind of came off and tied my you know tie my jacket around his head and it just took off and away we went on our first combat operation But the whole thing was just surreal And that that leap I didn’t realize how surreal it was till the next morning when I woke up and I was like man I hope this is survivable Because that was just one of many in the target deck And it continued for months and then years and you know two decades now Decades Yeah And it was and it took me a little bit of time to get up and running to be to be comfortable in that environment but I I developed a level of comfort in that environment And if I’m being totally honest I mean I loved it I loved it It was I mean I I understand that it’s high consequence and that it’s high risk and that there’s there’s matters of life and death and decisions that are being made but that’s where I want to be I mean it that I was like yes this is what I came to do to fight for the values that I believe in and to fight for people who can’t fight for themselves And uh yeah it was awesome Loved it It’s interesting how you talk about that um transition from like from training which is what we all lived There’s very few people that This is another thing that it’s hard for people to understand about especially about the early days of the SEAL Well for us the early days of the SEAL teams is there was so few people that actually had combat experience And that went all the way up to the leadership A lot of the leadership had no combat experience And so for us all of a sudden in a very quick learning curve you know you spend two weeks on deployment you had more combat experience than you know than anybody else in the SEAL teams at that time you know other than the guys that were deployed right before you but you had a that’s how quick the learning curve was and things were changing I mean look at what we trained I mean we were doing OTB and exhaustion dragger dives and I’m doing river and stream crossing and island Bro I’m not kidding Before my first deployment to Iraq I took my SEAL platoon We went on board of an amphibious landing ship in San Diego and went and no kidding did lead line and slate beach reconnaissance at Camp Pendleton That was that was less than it might have been a month and a half before deploying to Iraq to do operations That’s how that’s that’s that’s the lag time in the big bureaucratic machine of the military Hey you know we got this big uh fleet exercise You guys can go participate in one of one of our one of my guys in that platoon I come down I go “Hey break out your lead line and say ” So again for those of you that don’t know there’s the a very prehistoric type operation that was It’s an excellent descriptor Yeah Prehistoric It’s It came from World War II It came after the Battle of Tarow At the battle of Tarowa the Marines went in and as they went into the beaches in their landing craft they hit reef and the the they opened the gates of the of the uh landing craft The Marines got out and unfortunately the reef ended and so these guy these Marines went out and they went into you know 10 12 15 feet of water instead of 2 ft of water and many many Marines were drowned Heavy gear that was not buoyant It was not designed for swimming It was it was meant for beach landing not for a swim And anyways that was kind of the one of the precursors to the UDTS And and what so what our our predecessors used to do was go in with a lead line which is a piece of string with a lead on the bottom of it and it’s got little uh marks on it called buntings little marks on it that tell you how deep it is and you go in as a big team and you drop these lead lines and you figure out how deep and you and your slate is a piece of plexiglass that’s been sanded down and you write with a pencil on it how deep it was in this particular location It’s like trying to do calculus with an abacus basically So so we are you know like less than two months from deploying to Iraq for the first time None of us had ever been in combat Not one single person Zero Not one single person in my SE platoon had ever been in combat before including our task unit commander No one And so we say “Oh you know what we need to do right now is we’re going to do a hydrographic reconnaissance ” That’s what it’s called leading slate But one one of the guys might be “What? What are you do? What are you talking about? And I go “Bro we’re just going to do it ” And it was like “You’ve got to be kidding me What is wrong with us?” But so that learning curve was fast But then but I also to to kind of emphasize what you’re saying and I look at it when when you said you know your first like platoon you know like 20% and then your second platoon you know for me cuz I have four kids it’s very similar to what you learn with kids Your first kid you’re like “Wait what?” You don’t know how to do anything Everything is hard You don’t You’re worried about everything Your second kid you’re like “All right I’m pretty pretty much going to do it ” Your third kid you’re like “Okay you know I I think we’re comfortable ” Your fourth kid you’re like “I got this “ Whatever Fourth you’re like “Hey first kid go take care of your siblings ” Exactly Which is which is really which is really exactly what you do in the teams You’re like “Hey you know you know one cruise wonder go show that new guy what’s up ” Cuz you don’t have to do it anymore and you want them to learn the experience But that’s the same thing with the combat operations that you do And over you know a period of a couple weeks all of a sudden you go from being you know I’ll I’ll give you another good example from my perspective my first deployment to Iraq when every operation we would go on like the first like let’s call it five or seven operations that I did every piece of gear that I had I changed the batteries changed the battery my knobs changed the battery my lasers changed the battery my flashlight changed every single I need a brand new battery in every one of these pieces of gear Well I was doing it cuz that’s that’s when we talked about the big Mish that’s what we would think You know what? I got to have this 100% We realized after a week if everyone does that we’re not going to have any batteries left in another two weeks And so we all realize you know what you’re going to have to wear use that battery and keep track of how long you’re using it for cuz you don’t want it to fail But you’re going to get you know 12 or 15 or 25 uses out of this thing But that’s the kind of lessons that we learned and that’s the kind of comfort level you got Like okay if my nods fail I’ll stop I’ll put a new battery in my nods and we’ll move on So those are the kind of things that you learn uh in that steep learning curve that all of us our whole generation went through that real quick And you only learn that with time in the saddle Like it takes experience to understand like okay I can use this lithium battery that probably cost $9 And I didn’t turn it on the whole time and I’m going to huck it you know? Like I think I can use it again I mean but I mean everything changed The tactics changed the gear changed the way we trained changed It was amazing what happened post 911 All the stuff we thought was going to be crazy effective because it worked in Vietnam Guess what? Doesn’t work in the desert Let me ask you this When you say that you only learn it in the saddle when you were when you went through training when I was when I was running training you were able to convey a lot of that information to those guys though I tried I thought I think you were And maybe you couldn’t give them every single little tiny thing Yeah But what I’m saying is there was no one to teach us that stuff Yes In for me it was in 2003 There was no one to say “Hey you don’t need to change your battery on every operation You’re going to need those batteries You need to make them last ” So we did get we did get some fundamental knowledge back from for sure from those early times And then you still got to add that experience though the people I mean like you could you could read a book and then go do it for real and you need the combination of the two to have that confidence and then you can impart it on somebody else and you know history just like like you said the Vietnam guys like they were just timed out we didn’t have access to that and I I look at the pre 911 training that we did it was awesome but don’t get me wrong I loved it but man it doesn’t work in Baghdad Yeah You know and then we had a tactical shift again in probably 2006 2007 You know it’s it just it’s that I think is what separates our community from a lot of other ones Like we’re malleable Like we have leadership that’s like “Listen this isn’t working in real time We need to create a solution for it right now and we’re willing to do that We have just a little bit more control of the wheel “ Yeah Well part of the reason is because we had no doctrine Yeah Whereas the other service branches many of them have this beautiful really well written doctrine on this is how you do this type of operation and we didn’t have that So guess what? For us to say you know what that didn’t work yesterday We’re going to change it today They didn’t have that capability They were like hey this is the way we do it Yeah And we never really had this is the way we do it I mean think about before trade dead I was at team five right? So we would go to Alaska and do cold weather training and the team three guys were off driving DPVs I mean there wasn’t even talking in between the teams so there was so much skill set And of course I mean if you were team three I wasn’t telling you [ __ ] I’d give you the wrong information because we’re competing with ourselves But yeah that like you said no doctrine And then finally we had you know the trade at you know East Coast and West Coast and you know sharing information and coming together and lessons learned and all that stuff that I think largely professionalized the force from a paperwork perspective but has impact on the battlefield as well too It’s not sexy and it’s not fun but it keeps people alive No there’s there’s no doubt about that The amount of interoperability we would do Yeah as the different training departments was was awesome Was awesome And bouncing lessons learned and the feedback loop that we got going was definitely far superior to anything than like you said when we had the teams going all different areas and not talking to each other I mean I got issued overwhes at Team Five We they wouldn’t issue us tan BDUs because we were a Southwest Asia platoon and I’d look at the guys wearing the chocolate chips I’m like “God I want to get a pair of those I’ll trade you for these woodland camies ” It’s just a different world But I’m actually extremely grateful that I got to see both sides of the coin because if you never got to see that evolution uh you’re missing a huge piece of who we are as a community And also I I believe it would be easier that you would that we could let it slip back in that direction if we don’t like we said capture those lessons and and be able to pass them on So how how many then you got out to the east coast How many deployments did you do out there? Uh I bounced back and forth from Iraq to Afghanistan uh for basically four years straight Everything between three to four months They were shorter in duration Uh so I ended up in my career I’ve been to Iraq three times and Afghanistan five and at one point there you you kind of got a little setback Yeah Uh I equate it to going to Vegas uh and you can play craps for a really long time and you can be on a great heater uh and then a seven’s going to come up and bite you and hopefully you don’t have a lot of chips on the table Um yeah I got uh I got shot from about 15 ft away by a guy in a window that I didn’t see And I was staring at that window for 10 minutes before I I was sitting on a ladder looking into a courtyard where they were trying to determine uh which building was the one that we were actually going to make entry on And they determined that the building that I was looking at was the one we were going to make entry into Actually got to back it up a little bit So we walked by this building originally The lights were off cuz I was walking point at the time So we went down an alley Uh you know we’re not always the best ninjas We made a little bit of noise So a guy comes out of a house We pursued him into the house and made additional noise while we were doing that Uh securing that to make sure that uh maybe it wasn’t the guy We weren’t exactly positive of the location So maybe that could have been the guy So it wasn’t And we backtracked and went back down that alley And uh the guys who were doing the they were fixing the target uh trying to determine which building it was going to be They needed some time So I threw a ladder up on a wall cuz I’m not a huge fan of not being able to see over things Climbed up on the ladder and was just looking at the outside of a building And the lights were on this time which defeats a lot of the uh technological advantage that I have So I was kind of just looking underneath my nods And I could see plainly into the window I never saw a shadow I never saw a curtain move I never saw anything And they finally gave me the go-ahad hopped off the ladder and I remember being in the corner of the courtyard by myself for a little bit before uh two other guys came over with me And I almost approached the door on my own Uh because I had before and it was dark and I had the shadows and it was kind of like an American house where there’s a uh it was like an L the long end of the L being the garage and then there’s the path that goes to the front door and then it breaks off and then there’s that window right there That was the window I was looking at I was just going to go to the corner to set security for the breach And I almost left the shadows I was like you know what? Not today So I waited for two more guys to come up And right at that corner that I was going to post myself up on there was a window And I wasn’t going to turn my back on the window without taking at least a quick peek in it And as soon as I turned my head to look in that window I heard a crack And uh the round hit me high up on the hip and spun me And and then this is the only time I’ve ever felt it in my life The true sensation of time slowing down It really it was it was almost like the movies It’s probably the only thing I can say was ever like the movies but it slowed down and spun me towards him And when it hit I pushed off a little bit with my right foot I think just instinctually kind of kind of pushed me down And there was a vehicle in the driveway and I ended up stuck underneath the vehicle I had a shotgun on my right hand side and the bungee cord got stuck on the undercarriage I’m laying on top of my gun Can’t get it staring at full auto fire from like 15 feet away out of a window Guy is just up on his knees just hosing and uh probably 3 seconds occurred or expired and I mean obviously all hell broke loose from people on our side uh engaging the window They made entry from the other side Ended up having I think it was eight American servicemen get wounded on that target alone Uh some of it was uh our guys were too close to a breach I mean a lot of it was it was some fog of war stuff from a unit that you wouldn’t associate necessarily with the fog of war but it you know it happens I um I associate the fog of war with all units unfortunately Yeah But you know some of them would it surprises you at some levels more than others And it was you know they were trying they wanted to get internal They get the breach on the door Get the breach on the door So we put a C6 strip charge up which is a very large explosive charge that runs the length of the door put on the hinge side When they set it off there was a unit that had entered on the other side of the building without telling anybody standing about 3 ft from it So there was some people who were shot on the inside There were some people who were shot on the outside and then there were some people who were hurt from the explosion So they had little birds coming in grabbing people Uh I ended up getting thrown in the back of a Bradley with a guy who jabbed me with a 14 gauge needle and hadn’t prepped the bag So he pulled it back out and I told him at that point you’re done with any medical treatment at this point I will handle my own stuff from here on out like an army medic He was just shaking I’m like “You’re good I’m going to live I think So just take it easy Take it easy ” But uh I mean I didn’t do anything differently that night that I hadn’t done before hundreds of times Uh you know I just I was on the wrong side of the bullet And it it uh it actually really rocked my confidence It was I was young I was my mid20s where I wanted to be operating at the level that I wanted to be operating at And I mean I couldn’t walk for almost a year I had hemoplegia like paralysis of one side of my leg I had drop foot for a year Is that cuz it obviously hit nerves then? They don’t know if it they I mean they don’t know It either hit the sciatic nerve as it went through or the shock wave shortcircuited it Either way the result was the same It fried it all the way down to uh my ankle So when I was in the back when I got to the hospital in the green zone my biggest complaint was that my ankle felt like it was snapped in half Uh and like I still have never had a surgery never broken a bone everything is still inside of my pelvis They just wrapped the wound with Ace wrap and drug me out of the compound I mean that’s literally it And then they went back to business But I I thought that I was like “My ankle’s got to be destroyed somehow ” So they cut my boot off like very gingerely and they’re looking at like your ankle’s totally fine But that was by far the worst part of it was the the neuropathic issues for like a year and a half almost two years It felt like I had dipped my leg in gasoline and just lit it on fire 24/7 And so the Navy I mean I had like 14 15 pill bottles Uh I mean I was taking two three four ambient staying awake Of course the only way to up that game is to combine it with Captain Morgan which I did in a variety of dosages Uh so I would sleep but wake up exhausted I mean it was it was rough It rocked me as a person and as a as a SEAL Uh I didn’t know if I was going to ever come back from it Where were you stationed at that time? Were you still out on the East Coast or did you go on the East Coast? I went to BUDS uh as a basically a break to rehab myself Uh I mean like so even still today I can’t fill my left leg from the kneecap down I roll my ankle all the time I’m just used to I’m used to it I know you somehow compensate for it the best you can Yeah I mean I’m I don’t do any like lateral stuff because if I catch my left foot to the outside that that’s the role that I can’t stop is the one at the outside So I mean I still train as hard if not harder than I used to I’m just super cautious with what it is that I do and I tailor it all towards the the stuff that I do now But yeah you want to talk about you know you watch all these movies where you know guys are just getting drilled and they’re running at it like I’m going to be the biggest warrior ever and like I was flat on my back I mean I was freaking done training There’s nothing I could do pinned under a car Uh needed a buddy of mine to come over and pull me around in the middle of a firefight to get me out of out of harm’s way I mean I got super lucky The uh the belt I was wearing that night has the second round that the guy shot at me It burned the belt for like two inches and then the copper jacket is still in the uh the belt itself That’s how close I got to getting hit even higher up in the hip Like the pelvis I I don’t think I would have survived that one if that would have hit me cuz there’s an AK from like three times the distance from me to you right now It was spicy So so when you they’re just I mean I’m not trying to say anything super negative about the care that you got but they’re like “Okay take this pill Take this pill Take this pill Take You’re in pain Take this pill ” It was early so I was um I got home about 2 days after it happened They flew me they medevaced me to Launchto I decided I didn’t want to stay there so I checked myself out and got a Delta ticket and flew into New York uh got picked up by another plane and my wife met me at the stairs of the aircraft it in Oceanana the naval air station there with my son in a stroller and she was pregnant with our second child And about a week after that my arresting heart rate was sitting at like 150 I was sweating profusely in a ton of pain And they take me to the hospital and I remember talking to like this I think I was an E5 at the time So I was talking to this little punk E2 Corman who was checking me in and he’s like you know what’s the nature of injury? And I’m like you know gunshot wound to the hip And I kid you not he’s he’s like writing this stuff down He stops and he looks at me and he goes self-inflicted And my wife’s sitting there looking at this She’s just like “What’s what’s going on?” Like she has very little understanding of the military medical system I sat in the waiting room while they took people in with the sniffles and the flu for four hours before they took me in And my wife finally just started losing her mind on them And like you know they it was a training hospital as most military hospitals are They had never seen a gunshot wound because it was relatively early uh in the war you know given where we were at that time And they wanted to come have all the doctors all the residents come in They’re like “Hey can they come in and check out the wound?” Like we’ve never seen a gunshot wound M I’m like “Sure if you bring a a pint of morphine with you and juice me up first I don’t care what you do ” Like I just couldn’t sleep I was in so much pain Uh the treatment that I got from the military was not awesome Um it it was frustrating at the time but I So this is this is just to make sure this is 05 right? 05 Yeah early05 It wasn’t awesome They weren’t used to seeing a lot of that stuff Uh yeah I got pills and I got sent home and kind of largely left to my own devices which was not a smart call at the time Um I mean I I in my career I felt like I was a race car in fifth gear going around turn four and then somebody dumped the [ __ ] into reverse and there was just pieces everywhere and I had to kind of put it back together myself and it sucked at the time Uh my wife still I mean she’s pissed about it the the treatment that I got but I mean the military did what they were doing at that time you know I don’t hold him against it or hold it against them at all Uh but it sucked for sure and I I do know we’ve made vast improvements since then you were one of the guys that the reason why there’s been so many improvements cuz you know guys were coming back and getting the kind of treatment that they would definitely deserve better H you know one of the worst things about the whole thing was actually the flight out of Balad and a C141 full of stretchers of people that were wounded far worse than I was Just the noises that were being made on that flight from Balad to Ltool Uh I was very fortunate I had a doc who was assigned to me and I was just like hey knock me out right like I don’t want to hear this anymore And I had the guy just basically just juice me up until I fell asleep for the whole flight But what an experience that you’ll never forget Just a tube full of bleeding Americans you know on their way back to try to put their lives back together People missing I mean I was right next to a guy who was standing in a turret of a Humvey when a suicide bomber clocked himself off and every inch of his body from belt line up was just completely tattered I mean uh another guy who had his legs blown off I mean like it I’m sitting there I’m like I’m like okay I thought I was injured Uh you guys you guys are way worse off than I am It was a very sobering experience How did you So you go you go kind of pretty far down the road of uh of booze and pills I mean Okay I can give you some good recipes if you’re interested Three blues of red two bottles of Captain Morgan How did you Okay we’ll we’ll take it for granted that you went pretty far down that road being that you know you’ve got the the team guy personality of okay I can’t do this so I’m going to I can’t do this to the extreme so I’m going to do something else I have go and stop How did you figure out okay you know what what was the slap in the face that made you say you know what this this is not where I want to be? I was in the car with my wife So one of the pills that they gave me was Neurotin which is a anti-seizure medicine for children but it has a secondary or tertiary side effect side effect of uh neuropathic pain control It was an attempt to try to get that burning feeling to stop in my leg And uh I kept signing waiverss for the dosages because they were we were off the charts like we were making medical history with the dosages that I was on Uh and another side effect of it is central nervous system suppression And I remember going by the gasoline or going by the gasoline going by the gas station and looking at the sign for the prices of the gasoline And my wife asked me a very rudimentary mathematical problem and I couldn’t I couldn’t figure it out Uh and I’m certainly not the smartest guy in the world but like I should be able to add 2 plus two and you know maybe multiply that out a little bit And I I couldn’t do it And I recognized that in and of myself Uh so that night I stopped drinking and basically started weaning myself off of the neurotin because you can’t stop it cold turkey because if you do uh your propensity for seizures goes through the roof So you you got to graduate yourself out of it So it took me like six to eight months to get myself off of the neuroten off all the pills Uh and I just started working out like a maniac and that’s how I got myself I did it I did it all on my own They didn’t get on any protocol from the Navy but I remember that moment where I just couldn’t answer that question I was like “Okay time to time to shift course ” And you know a lot of people always a lot of people ask about um you know when you’re injured what they ask me you’re you’re injured what do you do? And I always say “Hey I do what I can do If I got a blown out knee you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to do onelegged squats the other leg I’m going to do pull-ups ” Was that your your attitude was like “Okay what can I do?” You know that’s that’s how I found uh CrossFit was through uh getting shot That’s what I used to and and I could care less People get very uh excited about the term CrossFit functional training whatever you want to call it To me it was really new at that time Like I was on the bodybuilder routine you know chest and tries and back and buys the ‘9s team guy routine Totally or otherwise known as the echo routine routine or you run on Wednesdays Uh but yeah so like and I had never done squats before So I literally held on to a pole and lowered myself down into a squat and I picked myself up and I just I just changed stuff so I could do it And uh I remember the first night of sleep that I had that was really good and my wife could probably point to it on a calendar because I came back from the gym like I had no responsibilities at work cuz they my my squadm was still deployed So I mean I literally was like hey come in on Thursdays and we’ll give you some E stem on your leg That was that was the therapy So I went into the gym and I just crushed myself Came home like covered in sweat and just passed out slept good and just continued that routine on And you know they were saying it would take me a couple years if ever to get back on uh full active duty because they didn’t know I mean because with nerves they’re like “Yeah you reach the end of the medical practice when you start talking about nerves I’ve never had I mean the doctors with probably a decade of medical experience is saying to me I don’t know ” I’m like “Hey doc I I don’t have an MD and I can tell you that I don’t know Could I get a better answer out of you than that?” Like come on man Uh but yeah I mean I I worked myself back I wasn’t done I didn’t want to be done and I worked myself back to a point where I felt confident again that I could deploy and I was still continuing So I left and went to BUDS in 2006 as an instructor used that time to rehab myself and then um by the time I got to team three it was yeah about four four or five years after that injury where I was going through training when you were the OIC trade And and also you became an officer at that point When were you going to butts? I did I did I um I didn’t have a It’s not that I didn’t have a choice It was the best choice that I had at that time So when I got shot I was on my LPO tour Uh and for people who don’t understand the military it is a mandatory go no-go wicket for advancement And they counted it as me not successfully completing it So to advance so I was in E6 at the time and I was trying to walk the lad I’m sorry for laughing Those of you that think I’m an evil bastard because I’m laughing I’m not laughing because I’m laughing at the old just the ridiculousness of the system So if you want to march your way from E1 to E9 you have to hit these mandatory career wickets And the jump between E6 to E7 for the enlisted guys is the large jump from middle management to the seuite of the enlisted realm They they judge you only by your service record unless you have these mandatory wickets you you’re getting swept off the table And so I submitted my chief package twice with a good uh awesome evaluations I mean I was doing some some awesome stuff in my career I had good awards uh good recommendations good eval And two years in a row they’re like “Nope “ And so finally I started calling people who probably shouldn’t have told me the answer I’m like “Hey what’s going on there?” there and they’re like “Oh you know your LPO tour is getting counted against you ” And I didn’t Yeah And I And I didn’t want to be done with being in the military And I’m sitting there and I’m like “Okay how what can I do here if I want to continue on and I want to have impact?” So I decided I needed to maneuver So I researched uh officer programs and stumbled across the limited duty officer program which is traditionally for E7 E8s and E9s Uh and there had never been an E6 candidate picked up And so I threw my package in the next year that it came up and was actually selected first out of the whole stable of people that were selected that year ahead of like five or six other chiefs uh who ended up getting picked up for LDO But for me it was I’m looking at I’m like I want to stay in and I want to have an impact This is the only way that I can do it So that’s why I submitted my my officer package It was never any burning desire of mine from like years before that It was just that I I need to do something to keep moving and that was my that was my route to do it Did you when you were so you get wounded right and obviously you could have said at that point hey you know what I’m done you know when you look at the various reasons that a person could choose from why you said like you know what I’m not done cuz friends you know other guys that we both know that I’ve talked to they have you know various reasons some of them are straight up vengeance like oh I’m going to go back and I’m going to get after it these people are going to Hey some of it hey for myself you know kind of like what you were saying like I I feel like I I I can’t do what I am supposed to do so I want to prove that I can go back and do it What What was like the driving reason for you if you had if you had to pick one? Maybe it’s just all those things which is a perfectly acceptable answer too I mean vengeance is certainly a part of it right? Like how dare you? I’m the only one who gets to do that to people Uh you know yeah what a crazy uh crazy thing to think like that but you kind of do Like you think you’re invincible right? So I needed to prove to myself that I could still do the job that I wanted to do I was pissed about it And I was at a point in my life where I was still very tied to what the job meant I derived so much of my personality and who I was from that job because it was all that I had focused on for the vast majority of my life at that point that I didn’t I didn’t know who I would be without that So it was a combination of all of those things that just kind of kept driving me towards going back And there was I mean there was never a second hesitation I like I knew I was going to not stop I just didn’t know that the road the road with which I was going to take to not stop You know what’s weird too is and I you know for guys that like you and I that are fullon institutionalized in the military it’s almost like when I was in I didn’t understand other options like it wasn’t like well I could do this like right now we can sit back you know Andy you could have gotten out back then you should have gone it’s so clear to see that now but when you’re in you’re just no no well if you can’t do this well then you there’s nothing else that you actually can do this is the only option in the world And if we’re being totally honest a lot of that is by design I’m sure it is The military and especially the SEAL teams What do we do to our buddies who want to get out? You know like I am thinking about getting out Hey [ __ ] you Quitter Quitter You know what I mean? Like we I mean we’re the most Well I I did 20 years and one of my buddies was like I said hey man Yeah I’m like at the 18ear mark I told one of my close friends I’m like “Yeah man I’m I’m going to retire at 20 ” They’re like quitter quitter But think about think about the training from day one It’s about the guy to your left and right right? And then you get back from a mission you take care of the team gear first You know the last thing you do is you take care of yourself So we’re you are the bottom of the priority list of the priority list Life is the bottom of the priority list in the SEAL teams and that has secondary and tertiary effects when it comes to understanding what you can do or options that you would have outside of the military I’m not saying they do it by design but the system that we come from naturally puts on a set of blinders which I think is essential to make us as effective as we are You’re right I think I think it is a complete secondary effect It’s not like there’s some evil training person in the sky that’s going “Okay the way we can get these guys to stay in and do this ” No the way that the SEAL teams has evolved to be the best we can be in combat is to make this thing your number one priority Which I say that all the time I got asked this the other I was doing a working with a company and you know some guy was asking me you know how did you do your work life balance when you’re in the SEAL teams and I’m like you know this is an answer I shouldn’t be giving I’m not authorized the only you know what you do you marry an awesome girl and then you focus on your job That’s what I did I married an awesome girl and I focused on my job and my wife knew She knew It wasn’t like I covered up and said no no babe you’re my number one priority It was like “No no no no The teams and then the teams and then the teams and then everything and then like jiu-jitsu and then everything else and then you’re you’re down here ” That’s the way it is And I’m not trying to be an [ __ ] That’s the that’s the reality of the situation And that’s why Yeah It’s uh that’s that’s why another reason why when when guys get wounded and they go “Yeah well what else are you going to do?” Yeah So you get to team three What? So what was your position when you Cuz cuz So by the way so just so people understand this LDO thing which by the way I don’t know if you know this but it’s completely gone It’s They shut it down They shut it down Yeah It’s one of the if not the only way to get commission without a college degree I’m I’m working on a high school diploma here people Public school education barely Santa Cruz And but you showed up and like to this day right at this moment in time and and I was quote unquote running the training I have no idea what your job actually was How awesome is that? That is pretty awesome Well done But you know I know I could tell you exactly what role you fulfilled you know as a leader But I don’t know where you would have broken out on an orc What was your actual training officer for a task unit for the SEAL team 3 in general? I was How come you were running around with a machine gun dude during workup? because they would have failed their o okay I mean the platoon would come or like you know uh the sea would be like hey uh we failed land warfare will you come out to with us for the os like absolutely I’ll come out swing blanks and like I mean for one like I I have I never wanted a desk job I I I loved the best job in the steel teams and you know this is an E5 shooter absolutely When I my first combat deployment my responsibility was a sledgehammer Then I moved up to hulie and then I moved to a shotgun and then I could do whatever I wanted to do and it was the best job in the world and like I that’s all I wanted to do So although I was an officer you get to be by the way you get to be a master with a sledgehammer or a master with a hooligan tool You just become it’s your life precise efficient Uh and so you know like I put my officer package in but let’s say like 20% of me was like you know what this is just a means to an end I’m going to figure out a way to get back on the battlefield because LDOS’s are not supposed to be tactical leaders at all You’re a line officer but I should have never been well I should have never been by the letter of the law of the LDO manual in a tactical leadership position which I eventually worked uh my way to not by any kind of design but I went to team three the trading O and you know they’re getting ready to send people to Afghanistan and no one’s ever set foot there and you know this the skipper wanted to send me there and then the troop commander I had a great relationship with and they were short on officer here and there so I’d like ah maybe I’ll just go out to San Island for a little bit you know maybe I’ll get on the roof and throw some grenades in the window it’s hard to say what I’m going to do and so I just like just kind of started going out there again and then like went out the nylon when they when the the troop failed their land warfare I went out with them and tried just to try to go and do smart stuff to help them out to relieve some give the leadership some distance and space Yeah And it was awesome I mean it’s awesome when guys that were experienced would come through like yourself It just so good to have guys like you coming through especially because you were you were super experienced really good tactically and super humble It wasn’t like you were out there like no you were like oh this is awesome training let’s oh yeah this hey we need to do this It was just just so good for the troop to see that type of leadership out there Plus I like offensive maneuvers And when I’m telling guys to move forward they’re like “Oh we can do that ” I’m like “Oh yeah Oh yes Oh yes we can do that ” And you should and they just they weren’t because that you know you get a junior officer in a community full of A types and most of the people that work for them have more experience than them They’re hesitant to make a call because they we eat our own cuz we’re the most voracious community ever So they’re afraid to make an offensive call when they should make an offensive call Like I’ve I’ve heard you say before and I know we have the same position like the default move should be aggressive Drive forward not away Like put your enemy on their heels You don’t need to be on your heels at all Like take their space and time away to make a decision Shorten their shorten your udaloop and get in the middle of theirs and just start wreaking havoc Uh but you got to have again time in the saddle to be comfortable making those calls And a lot of it I noticed was pattern recognition Like oh I’ve seen this Okay high ground’s over there Sure Let’s get some guys over there Hey they’re going to come around this building Don’t ask Just don’t don’t ask me now Just go over there Just go over there please Like you can see you It’s pattern recognition from time in the saddle And because I was exposed to awesome people throughout my career and I watched them and I wrote down what they did and I just have always tried to be a sponge You have to be a sponge and suck up knowledge And so then you you do another deployment and you do end up in a leadership position Yeah Which again good job You said it was what did you just say it was or something like that? It was relatively relatively like Okay You you quantified it now Thank you Because I was going to have to call [ __ ] on you you know Uh so I went through the last you know the troop commander from that troop was like “Hey we’re you’re going to come over ” I was supposed to be the opso on that deployment at a fire base that was in between the two platoon One of the officers was having a kid He wanted to stay back for about the first month month and a half And so they had no AOIC And I’m a minted 01 at this point Freshy butter bar One of my favorite things to do totally in the side was to put my camies on with my butter bars and I’d go to the ops meetings over at group Yeah And I would let like uh E6s and E7s like talk to me like as a brand new guy because I always I mean I look relatively young and they’re like you know later on once you got some you know time and these these guys are actually guys that you would probably or in many cases had been in the teams longer then oh for sure 100% And I’d be like uh-huh tell me more and like and and then I’d catch them later on in my khakis and they’re like I got I got to admit I had some fun as a butter bar as well I got to admit I but I was like like oh that’s awesome Thank you so much for the guidance I hope one day I know as much as you do and they’re just like “Yeah new guy “ I told I told a I told a chief a senior chief actually that was kind of calling me out like butter bar at when I was at team two and I was telling him in front of my platoon there and they all they all knew me and I go “Well you know you know senior you got to you got to understand Enson’s run the Navy ” And he he was he went you could see him turning red instantaneously into orbit Yeah Instantaneously into orbit He actually said “You know you guys need to straighten this ent out ” And I said “Hey why don’t you do it? I’ll meet you out at the mill vans Let’s call it noon I’ll be out there warming up You’ll be out there by yourself “ Oh that was so good Yeah So you know the the troop commander was like “Hey do the last month of training with us ” which was the Sanmeni block Oh yeah Uh so went out there with the Sanmeni block Uh the skipper was like “Hey go over there as the opso but we’re going to slide you out with this platoon were having some potential leadership issues with the OIC a man that I know you’re familiar with cuz we experienced them largely together Yeah Uh and I think I think and this is me speaking for why I think he did that I think he did me he put me out there as a as a safety mechanism I don’t know I don’t think he had anything else to do Uh so I went out there and uh he ended up being relieved and then uh the skipper be I mean I was an 01 wearing 03 uh and 04 when Scott wasn’t paying attention cuz I would just take his color devices off cuz whatever It’s not like I’m an 03 either So I would just put on whatever color device I could get my hands on Good thing there was no Colonel bars available Oh I’d been wearing if I could find some General Stars I’d have been rocking those things And uh I mean it was one of the best deployments of all the stuff that I did uh while I was in I think what I was the proudest of is a lot of the guys I deployed with were people that I had put through BUDS and to see them overseas on their first deployment Uh and and the only word for it is is afraid to do something because of the consequences You know there’s there’s as you know there’s a lot of oversight If you pull the trigger on somebody you had better be able to articulate why you did that Uh you need to be able to conduct yourself over the radio You have to be able to paint the picture There’s a correct way to brief There’s the ways that you know you got to play you know it’s mental judo you know and and interacting with people And to see these young guys who had no experience and afraid to afraid is not probably the best word but hesitant to make decisions And then at the end of the deployment just sharp teeth out knowing what they need to do and I can just sit back and it’s not and again that that’s a lot of that is them getting that experience but I was just glad that I was able to be there to provide that buffer because I wasn’t going to let anything happen while I was out there to the best of my ability Like I always picked the most dangerous place to be I always wanted to be in the position where there’s going to be a decision to be made like that That’s just the way that I want to be Like where’s the most dangerous place to be? Where’s the most optimal place to be? Put me in coach I’m gonna be right here And then to try to teach other people to do that exact same thing and then to step back That to me is probably what I’m the most proud of of the is the growth of the people that I was there with you know that you talk about that mental judo thing which again this is one that’s going to be hard for civilians to understand how much you know it’s like a bureaucratic force that exists in the military and really you have to be you have to be able to to navigate through that and that was that was the thing for me that I always look back and I go I wish I would have done a better job of teaching that to guys because I had no problem teaching them the tactical side of things And then if I really was close with someone or really spent some time with them I’d be able to get through the rest of it and say like “Okay by the way this is how you have to do this This is this is how you have to walk this line This is what you have to say in these situations ” And they’d be great But some guys would catch like some guys would catch the uh the the surface jo right? Just like the surface jo right? Which is which is awesome right? That’s absolutely part of part of it right? But guys that only caught the surface Jo sometimes they get caught up later because they’d say you know oh this guy was a this guy was you know risk averse I’m like well you know here’s what you got to do when you got a guy that’s risk or this guy’s an ego Here’s what you got to do Here’s how to handle them So that’s something that when I had the opportunity and the time but that thing the other thing about it is there’s no there’s no training for that That’s just about being in the saddle Like that is there is no one that says and it’s hard to even simulate cuz that means you got to simulate some other human beings rank and characteristics and personality That might change halfway through your deployment That might change halfway through your briefing You know you can brief a guy that’s all in a good mood and all of a sudden he turns cuz he saw you said something and you got to learn how to deal with that And that political side of that’s what it is basically It’s political and it’s relationships Building those things up That is so key And once you get into the leadership position I hate to say this I hate to say it Once you’re in the leadership position that is at least as important as what you’re going to do tactically I mean the SEAL teams have made their mark kinetically but we get our go no-go off of PowerPoint Absolutely I mean and that’s I’ve had briefs come back because the helicopter was facing the wrong way on the insertion slide I’ve almost gotten into fist fights I’m like listen it’s Helvetica 12 not 11 We’re not doing Times New Roman [ __ ] now All right The new Get out of my face with that Times New Roman son The Battle Space Commander said “It’s Helvetica bold sometimes only on the Xfill slide ” But like I mean I It’s insane Like we we have we can bring some of the most amazing combat power to bear but only if the leadership can articulate and navigate what the battle space owner wants because we don’t make sense to a lot of people who don’t come from our background And you got to learn to you got to learn to read what they’re saying and speak their language and then you just you got to maneuver I mean that’s the biggest thing is you got to maneuver and then then you can be so wildly effective It doesn’t matter how good you are tactically if you can’t get outside of the wire I mean and it’s truly if I tell people this all the time you want to shut down the SEAL teams kill Microsoft Office We’re done Yeah We’re done Yeah The the whole military is actually very you know it is a bureaucracy You said it’s kind of a bureaucracy It is the biggest I mean it it’s 100% bureaucratic I mean it’s amazing And as an E5 you’re like I just I just want to go jam my mags up and then make them empty And you’re like yeah that’s awesome I’m going to be up for 12 hours looking for the appropriate helicopter icon and I may get sassy and have it move in with helicopter noises It depends on how s and then you got to be able to brief it right? Because then there’s a whole other skill like I mean I don’t know how many times you have to go and not only present the brief but like talk to the guy who’s going to say yes or no and develop that relationship and you’re selling your operation In many cases you’re selling your operation until you get that relationship where they’re coming to you and saying this is hey this which is the best possible case and I was blessed to end up in that situation where it was just a total mind meld of hey whatever you guys want to do what can you do here can you that’s that’s when you that’s when you just are loving life and it doesn’t get any better than that Good times with PowerPoint Oh my god So you got you hit the control key and the arrow it only moved a little bit Yeah if you need to move that icon just to get it centered I know so much about PowerPoint that I could never forget if I wanted to So horrible You So that was that was an awesome deployment though It was awesome for different reasons I mean don’t get me wrong I as an 01 I was carrying generally my 3001 mag and two Javelin missiles to high ground positions and coming back with them all empty the majority of the time So I got to have uh So yes that does go in the awesome deployment box Yes So I got to have a little bit of what we’ll call a hoot and then but again professionally developing for me too because I didn’t have any experience being an opso for a task unit and you want to talk about relationship stuff the sometimes you know the base that we were on I just developed a relationship with their N3 or S3 and ended up I was selling myself we had a great relationship I could come to him the day before be like hey we’re looking at doing this he’s like yep no problem let me know let’s line up a QRF and it just it so much pulling the trigger is easy All the stuff you got to do to get to that point is so hard and it just doesn’t make the movies cuz it’s boring Yeah No there’s there will there will literally never be a movie or a book about that crap Why can’t we have a movie about a 72-hour planning cycle? I don’t understand Where’s the 3 m imagery? God damn it This is five I heard one of my platoon commanders not le the other the Delta platoon commander was telling someone and he goes he goes you know someone was like oh yeah you guys got to and he said Jo I watched Joo literally beat his head up against a wall for every single operation that we did I was like oh damn and that wasn’t the conventional side that I was beaten up against was you know it was our chain of command which is very um which can be very micro focused on little things from time to time occasionally You get the broad spectrum of leadership inside of the teams Not all of it is good but you whichever whichever game you got to play that’s what you got to play And that’s exactly what I did And that’s you know that’s why I always say the I had the same relationship with every boss I’d ever have Yeah No matter who they were or what how crazy they were or how awesome they were they trusted me and they were going to give me what I needed to do my job Yep So that was your last deployment then? It was And then you went to Trade Trade and I was gone You were check I got there in August of 2010 Yep I was Well I I I think the last time I literally saw you before today was in the hallway right by your old office You were walking out and I was coming back from deployment and we like dude later Yeah So like 5 years ago It’s no big deal actually seven years ago What did you do there? Uh it was the opso Okay I think I mean did you did you get to go out at all? I didn’t do anything I augmented the leap frogs Um I’m not I don’t do good when it comes I mean I did my job but like I’m not a paperwork you know ninja at all No And nor is there really it’s not really an opso much like the tradeet guy is not the CEO He’s the OIC So a lot of those positions there’s redundancy There was a training warrant Yeah you know like there was also it’s fairly repetitive So there’s not like at a team where it’s the first time you’re going to go through this and now it’s everything You get through two or three cycles and it’s like okay you could put this thing on autopilot It’s the same thing every 3 six months whatever it is So I got medically retired Uh I was going to just get out of the military Uh I came back from that deployment and I was talking to uh the officer detailer about what I would need to do to continue my career and she said “Well you know since you haven’t done your AOIC or your OIC tour what we’re going to need you to do is two backtoback AOIC OIC and then you’re going to do your you know your disassociated tour ” I’m just like we we can stop right now Like my wife’s not going to tolerate that Like I think she’s at the vast limit I was at the limit my body like my ankle I almost had to medevac myself out a couple times like roll my ankle extremely bad on a on an offset patrol in like laying on target with my foot up in the air It just I was I recognized it like my time was over Uh so I researched what it would take for me to stay in and continue and it was not tenable So I was just going to get out of the military and I was 5 days from my separation date and went to go get my physical and the doc like “No I’m not signing this ” Right on Good for him Uh they extended me a year I mean I had to go I went out to Nikico out at Bethesda Did that as far as the kind of the horsepower for the ride up Got the whole full assessment done and end up getting uh medically retired which was a huge benefit to myself All thanks to that doc who was like no I’m not I’m not going to sign this So yeah that is awesome And there’s plenty of team guys that you know spend their entire career I’m not going to the doctor I’m not going to And that’s another thing that gets conditioned into you going through basic SEAL training which is don’t go to medical no matter what I was in the same way even after getting shot My medical record was thin And you know I was going through the questionnaire in the interview at the actual discharge physical and he’s like what? Like you couldn’t find any of the documentation And then I left Nikico with like 300 pages Um and if you read that thing it’s like this guy will never I should be in a wheelchair right now with a straw Like you read that thing and I’m like oh my gosh Uh and then you get away the bureaucracy submit a package to the med board and six months later they’re like “Okay you’re out ” And that was it That was it No retirement ceremony I just was like “Hey uh went and talked to the Oh I see ” I was like “Hey um it’s almost lunchtime I’m going to leave now and I’m I’m never going to come back “ How many years was that for you? One month shy of 17 Yeah Yeah And so I literally went in I was like “Hey it’s almost lunch I’m I’m leave I’m not going to come back ” He was like “All right cool See you later ” I had some terminal leave saved up and like 90 days worth and I just gone Never went back in Yeah I think I went and got my DD214 or like my retirement ID card like a year later Yeah Just never went back That’s crazy man It’s crazy how you do that time and then it’s over like that In a blink of an eye In a blink of an eye I remember that I was all big I did the retirement ceremony Did that came back all my the rest of my gear which was all packed up in my drying cage went up grabbed it pulled in the back threw it in the back of my van drived out the gate That was it Yep No more Yeah Badge is gone That’s it Done Never to never to be back 20 years Done Yep It’s bizarre So then you get into the afterlife Indeed And what’s that been like? So what what year did you what year was that that you retired? I got retired the last day of June 2013 Okay So I’m coming up on uh this year will be four years Uh I had fortunately I was kind of double dipping on weekends I had a a job that I was doing on the weekends so I transitioned to doing that full-time Uh and I dabbled in a lot of stuff I mean I got 3 500 hours of flight time I type rated in a Gulfream jet a Citation 525 jet which gets me like five other jets I could fly I did Uh when did you rack up all those hours? What I do on my weekends is not you know the business of the Navy flying Uh I flew hard I mean I I was just flying a ton Uh I got my pilot’s license on my own when I was in and then all the rest of the licenses came in the two to three years after after I was in but I was just was cranking out hours I had a company that I was working for that was paying for all the training so I could fly as much as I wanted to So I dove in to the bucket both feet Uh I did charter flying for a bit Uh I mean I was managing licensing and sponsorship deals for an organization and it just everything kind of just morphed I left that organization got back into teaching uh military guys a little bit on the jump side of the house I’ve been passionate about jumping ever since the first jump that I did How many jumps you have right now? Uh just over 6 000 which seems like a lot Yeah Guys that have 29 000 Oh yeah I I jump at Scott San Diego all the time And if you work in the sport for any period of time you’ll be at 10 15 20 000 It’s not it’s not uncommon but in the military it’s just that’s the school bus to get to work So it’s an ancillary skill set at best So I couldn’t pursue it until I got out But I uh when I got it was hard for me when I got out if I’m being honest um I got to a point where I couldn’t watch the news anymore you know 2013 all of the ground in Iraq that was sweat and blood and tears of of people that we know to gain was being eroded And I describe it like watching the tide go out an inch at a time until all of a sudden it’s gone And I used to make the news and now I’m sitting here on the couch watching it and I had to turn it off And it and I really struggled with finding something that I thought mattered And it’s it’s it was tough for me I didn’t think a lot about what I was going to do when I was out when I was in for reasons that we we kind of already talked about It’s a natural path that you take when you’re in Uh but it took me like a year and a half to really get my head on straight and figure out what it is that I want to do I still don’t even know how I’m going to do it Uh but I know that I want to make a difference I I want to do I want to make this country a better place than it is right now I want to take the awesome stuff that I was exposed to when I was in the teams from the people that I was fortunate to be surrounded by and and make people better with that information How I’m going to do that I don’t know But that’s kind of the circular path that I’m on like half of my year and the other half I just dress up in a squirrel suit and jump out of airplanes and off of cliffs which is nice It doesn’t suck I’m not going to do it forever though I I mean I look at it as something that’s enriching for me and empowering for me but uh there’s a there’s a timeline for how long I could do it I mean I’m a bad landing away from not being able to jump anymore and I and I take it very seriously I have a very structured training protocol I don’t let myself get out of currency whether it be jumping or packing parachutes or I mean I treat it like a military operation It doesn’t make it safer for me but I try to pay uh attention more than anybody else who is around me And my goal is to never be surprised Like I don’t ever I want to understand what’s coming and I and I don’t like and it happens occasionally You you’ll jump off of a cliff or you’re jump out of an airplane or something will happen that surprises you and I try to avoid that at all costs because I find that you know that’s when the catastrophic stuff can occur But it’s uh you got to find the next step I mean you and I both know people who derive their entire identity from what they used to do And it’s tough to sit back and watch them not be able to depart from that because it becomes it’s self-destructive Yeah Because it doesn’t last forever It can’t last forever I mean you’re renting your trident It’s not yours You’re at best you can move the marker in the seal teams hopefully in the right direction Maybe leave a little bit of legacy if you did you know the legacy that you should leave is making it better than when you got there but that’s the best you can do And then you got to put it away Even if you do 20 years the with the average lifespan of an American you got some time left And the military retirement check it’s not massive So you’re going to need another J O Uh but what I needed I needed a purpose And that’s where I started doing you know fundraising for the Seal Foundation That to me was huge Teaching the military guys which kind of felt like I had not a foot in the fight but I had some impact again And just trying to shorten their learning curve Uh because I mean they expect these guys to know so much stuff that if you could just shorten their learning curve and give them again a little bit of space to breathe you know to take the stress off And that stuff’s real Yeah Like that stuff is real And when you when you impart that knowledge on young guys it is real when you make that learning curve shorter and steeper and faster that is real That has a real impact on those on those kids that going out there and it’s those little lessons that they learned And I I mean I I still hear that from guys that come back and and they say “Yep yeah we did this Cover and move ” You know I’m like “Yes ” Like I I’m so happy to hear that cuz I know it’s kind of like the early days of jiu-jitsu in the fact that we didn’t really in the early days of jiu-jitsu there wasn’t as much knowledge as there is now And now the first three days you go to jiu-jitsu you’re going to learn about under hooks you’re going to learn about body position you’re going to learn about hip movement I didn’t learn no one taught me that stuff back in the day No one no one taught you that stuff you just had to figure it out And if somebody teaches it to you it’s like you take a quantum leap And it’s the same thing with the the guys that are in the military and they can get that quantum leap just by saying “Oh here’s a perspective of leadership that it took me jackass Jo you know 14 years and screwing up a bunch of things to go oh this is what you need to do in these situations ” So to be able to say look you don’t need to be the jackass that I was All you need to do is know this little bit tidbit right here and this little thing over here And that definitely has a has a huge impact on those guys And it’s it is awesome to feel that Yeah And it makes them better learning the other stuff because they’re less stressed out They have a better understanding And it’s just and the like 90% of the stuff I teach I’m like “Listen it’s pattern recognition I saw this so many times and I did this and it defeated that So just do this Just trust me and do this and you’ll be better ” And then they do and they’re like “Oh wow That was awesome ” I’m like “Yeah I know That’s why I told you “ How about the uh you talk about the foundation? What are you doing the found? Tell us a little bit about the foundation and how if people want to support the foundation what’s the best way to get that done? Yeah Uh so obviously there I think there last stat I heard there’s 40 000 service-based organizations that help people peripheral to the military So there’s a variety of choices And if you’re from an army family awesome Go support an army charity right? I obviously have a a close DNA tie to SEALs So uh a buddy of mine recommended uh trying some stuff skydiving in the skydiving world to try to drive attention to fund raise for the Seal Foundation because just like I’ve never had I think a unique thought in my entire life I swear that every idea I’ve ever had came from somebody else It was like this one was his Uh but to me that was the link to finding a purpose again because I realized that okay my my days of putting my toes on the line are over but there will always be people with their toes on the line and the next best step is let’s create a buffer for the families to step in because I mean you’ve seen it it’s a I the knock on the door is a tornado wrapped inside of a tsunami with a hurricane at the same time and it is destructive so let’s try to do something that helps the families uh and that’s what the seal foundation does everything from educational support to legacy preservation uh and everything in between I mean you can go the Navy Seal Foundation has an awesome website uh and there’s people who do gofundmes which is what I did or go to the foundation and donate directly because I mean that they’re you can look at their rating as well too It’s like 96 cents out of every buck goes to what they espouse it’s going to go to It’s awesome Like it’s a great foundation Uh yeah do some research on it get involved and skip a latte one day you know and donate five bucks and it goes to it goes to a good it goes to a good cause Uh I’ve been into some houses where you know kids are getting raised by a memory of a father and a picture over a fireplace and no money will ever replace that but it maybe will make their life a little bit easier Yeah no doubt about that What was the what was the record you were going after? Uh yes the completely arbitrary distance lateral uh measurement of distance in a wing suit So I that was the idea where all good ideas start which was in a bar over cocktail Y and buddy was like “Hey man you should go try to set a world record in your wings suit ” I’m like “Well I don’t even own one yet so what are you talking about? I’ll do it of course but like what’s the record? I mean sign me up but what is it a wing? What?” I was like I mean yeah I’ll obviously crush it but what is it exactly again? And where do I get one of those? Uh and it was uh trying to set the uh furthest distance or farthest distance sorry the farthest distance flown in a wings suit So uh I bought a wings suit and after jumping it for less than a year which I don’t recommend to anybody to do this ever uh I got hooked up with a really good mentor the guy who actually taught me how to base jump taught me how to fly the suit and we went up to Davis California and I jumped out of a caravan at 36 500 ft Got into a lovely spin which I had never happened before so that was a great experience It was new for everybody and uh got out of it and then just flew the suit as far as I could and ended up breaking two world records One for the distance that you fly before opening your parachute and then the second one is they tack on the distance uh from when you open your parachute to when you touch the ground So you keep flying forward Yeah And I had an on heading opening so it just opened up in that direction and I was exhausted So I just laid there like a limp piece of meat and augured into the ground into a farmer’s field because I had no I like my landing zone was earth I couldn’t see the airport that I was I had some visual indicator What was it like? How far was it? 18 25 miles So I got out of this bird and I passed Did you really get into a spin when you came out? Oh yeah What happened? Just no air I’m just not really good in a wind suit And I didn’t have the requisite skill or confidence to be attempting what I was attempting But it was a challenge thrown in front of me and I was like of course I’m going to do this I had I literally had not been jumping wing suits I did that jump in August I got my first wings suit in December of the year prior It’s not a not recommended for people Uh so I got in the spin and I got out of it but I got out of the plane I I knew where the airport was and I knew I was going to fly in that direction but I passed the airport at over 10 000 ft in the air and then I was just looking at fields in Davis and I just put my head down and was flying I didn’t have an altimeter on me It was awesome There was so many things that were just I was eyeballing it calibrating before I went I was like “Camera one camera two camera one ” All right let’s go But I had just come back from a base jumping trip to Europe Thank goodness I had cuz I’m flying I’m like “Those trees are looking really big ” Oh yeah Those those trees are looking really big I’m going to pull you know moderately low opening altitude flew straight into the dirt and Yeah people like “Oh you because it’s been broken since then ” Uh a marine did Uhhuh And people like “Oh you going to go for it again?” I’m like “No never Never will I try ” I got into the spin because the plane the the Cessna 206 the Caravan is not designed to be that high Like it had a supercharged engine a different propeller system Everything was stripped out of there except for the huge oxygen bottle It was just the pilot the oxygen tech and me And you know normally when you’re skydiving they’ll pull back on the throttle to slow down it You know it’s called giving you a cut a cut of the air speed Well if he would have done that at that altitude we’d have fallen out of the sky So he’s like got his fist on the throttle with his foot on the dash pulling back and I opened the door and I stuck my head out I was like “Oh no Oh no ” And I’m jumping like the biggest wings suit on the market and they’re like they’re a combination of a prom dress and a straight jacket And I got out of the plane and it just inflated and like oh boy here we go That’s good times right there Yeah coming at you full speed But you you raised some money for the for the foundation Yeah it’s like 150 000 bucks for the foundation And you know from that I developed a great relationship with them Um the CEO of the foundation is married to my first troop chief that I had when I was at the East Coast So there’s a great tiein Uh and anytime Yeah I know that guy well Yeah But so anytime that they call me though like my default answer is yes Like of course I’ll help out anything that I can do And it I mean honestly like I won’t say that it saved me but it helped it helped get me back on the road that I should have been and to have a purpose like that and then I mean I I bet you I’ I’d hypothesize that for you working with organizations and leaders and seeing the light come on makes you you know what I mean it’s it gives you a purpose in life again to impart those lessons It’s exactly the same thing for me So one built to the other that kind of got my feet in the in the pool of interfacing with people like that and I realized that it makes a difference and it’s important That’s awesome Well it’s been awesome to uh to hang out with you Yeah I appreciate it Once every seven years we should do it Yeah seven years we’ll do it again And and speaking of purpose Echo Charles we know you have one purpose and that is to kind of inform anybody that might want to support this podcast Yep On how they might be able to do that Just to clarify Oh Oh here we go My purpose to inform is part of a greater purpose Okay Just undisclosed for now Understood Hey when you jumped out with a wing suit Yeah and you went into the spin did you think that that was that was it for you? No I never think like that Straight up Dang I was say somebody commented I said the other day on I forget I don’t know if we had someone on the podcast but I was saying that like when I’m flying in an aircraft in a in a commercial airliner I think if this thing crashes I’m going to live like oh yeah I’ll yeah I’m going to grab this chair seat and I’m going to turn it into something I’m going to throw it in the water that’s going to break the surface tension I’m going to live next question I mean like I’m not saying that it was going to work out great for me but I’m going to die missing my fingernails cuz I’m clawing my way towards victory Like it’s the thought never enters the mind like “Okay I need to give up now cuz it’s over “ Negative Not that you have that much of a choice too But you still fight period Check Yeah No that’s good cuz Yeah Yeah I’d probably be the same way you know That’s how I am too you know fully Anyway uh let’s talk about some support How about that? Let’s do it Let’s talk about Onit You You know Onit You heard On? I do Of course Of course you have Everyone has There you go You’re good Just check in I need this Okay Hey Hey I need it anyway On it Uh I got some more krill oil So I’m good to go Baseline Um on it is a what do you call them? A sponsor Supporter Supporter Yeah So if you want to support uh this podcast and or yourself at the same time and you’re into supplements you work out a lot um we recommend Onit supplements Take Onit supplements It’s the only one the best one Anyway if you want 10% off onit com/joo That’s how you get the 10% off Anyway yeah that’s a good one By the way the last podcast Yeah As people noted yeah we had Colonel Reer on here you know a Vietnam veteran And I pre-briefed Ekko I said “Look this guy’s flying in He got up at 3:00 in the morning He’s coming here at 6:00 at night to do a three-hour podcast He’s been in a conference all day When it comes to you know time to go through your stuff go through it quickly ” And people would have said “Hey did you have Echo on a leash?” And I said “We just pre-briefed We’re just respecting the Colonel’s time ” So I get the feeling right now we could be paying for that right? Yeah Metaphorically I did have a leash for sure Get it out there Stand it up Usually usually I tell a a cool story because it’s not like “Hey take krill oil ” And then I don’t take krill oil or I take it and I’m like “Whatever this doesn’t work It works ” So during the week you I work out and I kind of talk about my experience positive or negative But in this case Never Negative cuz it actually works It’s one of the only uh supplement companies that you know will work Anyway I’m not going to go into any stories I only worked out a few times this week and it’s all the same story Why did you only work out a few times this week? Uh various um things Oh you know Okay I worked out today What? Okay No I’m just making sure it sounds like there might be some slack in Echo’s world right now Yeah You know maybe maybe not Nonetheless even even if I told you the story it’d be a redundant story Okay? You know what I’m saying? Like my joints feel good you know people know that already Taking crow oil that’s what happens Anyway if you like these supplements if you don’t actually if you don’t know about the supplements get them Make your own evaluation You don’t got to listen to me anymore Anyway let’s switch over to Amazon Amazon clickth through So how that works is if you want to support this podcast before you do your Amazon shopping go to jocast com click on the Amazon banner then do your shopping supports I made the sodium in the water analogy you know you know when you it’s like it’s not just sodium it’s like potassium it’s like heavy metals I think it’s called you throw them in water boom big explosion I make the analogy that clicking through Amazon is a small action takes what 3 seconds right? Yeah maybe not even And you think “Oh yeah I’m going to you know click through and I’m going to do my shopping ” That doesn’t because of my action my small action doesn’t it’s not a big deal But here’s the thing that small action is a big deal Just like sodium and water So be the sodium if you want to support Um so click through and do your shopping Boom That’s a good good way to support podcasts Also subscribe if you haven’t already on iTunes Leave a review Jock review Stitcher Google Play Not everyone has an iPhone Yeah I know Yeah I always Somebody asked about some other thing too SoundCloud SoundCloud So I’m not 100% sure of how that works Um I explored SoundCloud before Um unless there’s like a separate thing that does I’m sure someone will let us know how to do that Yeah if we’re missing on Soundcloud then then yeah I’m sure that that should should be where we should be as well Anyway subscribe in the meantime Subscribe Yeah To whatever the one that you’re doing Google Play iTunes whichever Subscribe if you haven’t already Leave a review if you feel like it Um YouTube we have a YouTube channel Subscribe to that one Put more videos I know before when you were watching you were like “Hey these are just podcast videos right?” There’s some good stuff You got some good stuff We do now And that’s the point That’s the point I’m making So we put more videos on there now Just made one what? Yesterday Yeah Um that’ll be up soon Anyway subscribe to that if you haven’t already You’ll get the There’s a new Is that one going to be out by soon? Yeah Few days a new Echo Charles video Yeah It’s more mellow more cerebral Oh standby Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah watch it It’s It’s cool It’s fun I guess Anyway if you if you have um the inclination to get a t-shirt as well Joo has a store It’s called Joo Store URLjoostore com T-shirts rash guards patches velcro patches as well Um the delivery time now from purchase to delivery is quicker now Know that Um so yeah go on there jock com If you like what you see go ahead and grab one of that That’s a good uh way to support There you go Ah but psychological warfare If you don’t know what you know what psychological warfare is? Yeah I support it Oh there you go See how can you not really? You know I mean that’s a rhetorical question Yeah I think you’re right about that So yeah if you don’t know it’s you know when you have moments of weakness if you’re what getting up early in the morning it’s hard I’m tired I want to press snooze or whatever or you’re you know you’re about to work out but you’ll skip the workout cuz you’re not feeling like it Moments of weakness You get this album You can download each individual track or um the whole album whatever Jo will get you through it It’s like a spot Makes you want to do the workout want to um wake up early Anyway iTunes Psychological Warfare Search Psychological Warfare Jaco Willink We’re actually getting some requests now for other moments of weakness Yeah people are like “Hey this moment of weakness we need a track This moment of weakness need a track ” So like what? I’m logging those down Someone was saying “When I get tired ” Oh right In other words it’s 10:00 at night I’m getting tired I still have work to do Yeah I think I’m just going to blow off the work and just go to sleep because that’s the easy route Yeah maybe we need a track for things like that as possible And cuz you know the whole thing biologically when you hit the wall right that’s your body really in a way saying like hey you’re you’re going too far But nowadays in our environment going too far is beneficial because you have this like other goal that your body in a way doesn’t really know about So psychological warfare will will help you get past that natural your body in check Exactly Right Get your mind back what it does Yeah So anyway jump on that man That’s that’s the one that’s supporting yourself fully Anyway it has been number one since the day it was released Straight up That’s pretty cool I’m not mad at that at all You know why that is? Why? Cuz useful people are supporting the podcast and that’s Yeah that’s pretty cool So thank you for way less people skipping workouts way more people waking up early obviously There you go And those are the ways Also while you’re clicking through Amazon you can pick up the books that we review on the podcast right? We just did my captivity in Vietnam Through the Valley My Captivity in Vietnam and it’s a great book but there’s all the other books that we’ve reviewed on there are on there on here are on there So pick those up Extreme Ownership There’s a little book It’s about [Music] combat and it’s about leadership It’s about combat leadership Well what else is there? What else would you want to read out about Jaca White Tea? A couple things Jaca White Tea Some people call it Jaca White Tea Mhm Some people call it the 8 000 lb deadlift solution Yep Hell yeah Some people call it camur tea because apparently you’re hitting camuras very solid I Yeah I get good when you get the tea on Also I’ve heard it called problem solver tea because the problems that you have little bit of tea all a sudden problems are getting solved Yeah So you can do that And and by the way it sounds like oh this is I’m just being you know exaggerating or whatever Mhm Factual Yeah 147% fact Order tea Amazon Uh you can also pre-order Weigh the Warrior Kid And when people read this book it’s sort of like when people tasted the tea We’re going to have a supply issue I’m I’m telling you So just order it If you order it now that way you get a copy and that way you won’t be wondering why all these kids are out there getting after it and you’re going “What’s happening?” No you’ll know You’ll know why they’re getting after it Way the Warrior Kid And lastly also if you haven’t signed up to come to the muster number three muster in New York City May 4th and 5th do it ASAP I’ve been seeing a bunch of folks on social media They’re saying that they’re going to be there So look forward to seeing everyone It’s going to be awesome Obviously I’m going to be there Leif is going to be there JP is going to be there Dave Burke is going to be there You haven’t met Dave Burke yet He’s coming I hear good things Oh yeah You’re going to hear some real good things from Dave Burke And if none of that really motivates you and gets you in the game cuz not hardcore enough and you really need to get nuts well guess what? Don’t worry We got you covered cuz Echo Charles is going to be there Echo Charles is going to be there Come on down There’s not going to be any hiding behind a curtain There’s no backstage divas at this gig We’re going to be out front with everybody interacting solving problems finding solution and basically just getting after it So come on down to the muster And if you want to give us feedback or comments or continue this little conversation that we’re having right here you can find us on the interwebs That means basically we’re talking about Twitter Mhm We’re talking about Instagram as well Sure And then again we’re also talking about that Facebook So Andy what are you on those? Oh man Uh on the Instagram it’s my name Andy Stomp 212 Very original And I think Twitter is Andy Stomp77 Also original And you’re on Facebook The Book of Faces Yes I’m contractually obligated to be on there Oh yeah Nice And Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jo Willink Echo Yes Do you have anything this evening that you want to add to this podcast man? That’s it You know usually I have some expound like some expanding question but man you nailed it You’re very articulate Yeah I use the words I understand two syllables or less Yeah Dang Solid man Thank Thanks for coming man Great to meet you man Right on You too Andy Any uh closing thoughts you want to throw out there? Uh no All I can say is thanks for having me on man So in 2024 we’ll do it again No it’s great Great to meet you Ekko I mean I I sit back and I love what you guys have going on So just keep driving ahead man It’s awesome People need to hear it Well I appreciate the feedback you’ve been giving me on the podcast And obviously thanks for coming on Sorry it took so long Sorry everyone It took so long to get you on And you know what? [ __ ] on 2024 We’ll we’ll get you back on here and we’ll we’ll do this again And like 2020 Okay And um you know obviously man thanks for your service Yep and it was my pleasure and your and your continued contribution to the teams and to and to our country So thank you for everything you’ve done And you know we started out tonight talking about a debt that cannot be repaid And that is very true We cannot We cannot repay that debt We owe too much to those that have fallen for our freedom But you know what we can do and what we must do is try Try try to live every day with that thought in mind That thought of the service and of the sacrifice of those that gave their last full measure for [Music] us for our freedom Freedom this nebulous concept that can be so hard for some people to grasp but I will tell you it is a real thing And it’s a thing that’s hard to recognize until it is taken from you and the chains of oppression control your body and your mind And then when your freedom is taken away that is when you realize that freedom is the most important thing the singular thing that gives each of [Music] us the divine opportunity that only freedom can give to think and to speak and to do as we wish And to do all of those things beholden to no man And yet while with that freedom we are beholden to no one Let us choose Let us consciously and deliberately choose to be beholden forever beholden to those men and women who have relinquished their lives so selflessly upon the altar of freedom for them beholden to them Let us live with purpose and with passion Let us live live lives worthy of their solemn sacrifice Let us live lives worthy of the price that has been paid Worthy of the freedom we are blessed with And worthy of those [Music] heroes we are forever beholden to let us live for them And I think that’s all I’ve got for tonight And so until next time this is Andy and Ekko and Joo out
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