476: Dog Ain't Got Nuthin' For Ya. With Retired SEAL Harold "Dog" Underdown.
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This is Jocko podcast number 476 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I was a new guy in the SEAL platoon, which means keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open. I did that to the best of my ability. Wasn't always the best at it, but I did my best. And you get, when you're in your first SEAL platoon, you get a lot of your DNA in your first SEAL platoon.

You kind of watching what's going on you're watching what the old guys and by the way the old guys are like 22 or 23 maybe for me I was 19 you know so an old guy is 24 25 maybe your platoon chief might be 33 Something like that, but you're watching them how they're acting what they're saying what they're doing and you're modeling your behavior off them and

when i was in my first platoon we had a the corpsman of our platoon you know what corpsman is echo charles medic yeah it's a medic so the medic was a guy he was one of the old guys and he was a southern man from north carolina call it north kakalaki you've heard of that before yes sir all right so his name was harold underdown and in the seal teams you're going to get a nickname at some point and i believe harold under down

'cause your last name is Underdown. Now did you ever hear of a TV show called Underdog? - Yes, of course. - So that got, I believe, morphed into Underdog and then eventually that just became Dog or Doggy. So he was an old guy at the time. He was probably, I don't know, maybe around 30, maybe. He had an old school mentality. And it became very clear what his attitude was like when someone needed medical attention because, as our platoon corpsman,

If someone got sick or someone got dinged up or someone needed some kind of medical help, dog would take a look at the individual, you know, look at the sprained ankle or the cut hand or the sick belly or whatever. And he'd do an assessment. And then he'd say, dog, he ain't got nothing for you. You know, and that was his way of saying it.

If you got a problem, you know, suck it up. And if you got a problem, you got to get that problem solved yourself. Doggy ain't got nothing for you. I'm not over here to fix you. I'm not even, you know, to baby you. You got to take care of yourself. You got to make sure you're good to go. You got to solve your own problems. And that was a great attitude for me to see as a young guy. And I definitely carried that attitude throughout my time in the teams.

As did Doggy, who went on to have an incredible career with deployments all over the place, all over the world. Spent time at the Navy's JSOC special mission unit. He deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and he was the master chief of the command of SEAL Team 4.

He carried on to do other things in the SEAL teams, and it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Here he is. Doggy. Thanks for joining us, man. Wow. What a pleasure being here with you, Jocko. And, you know, let's have some fun, right, as we talk through this.

It was a heck of a ride. I ended up with 30 years in one month after they do the arithmetic of how many active duty days you had. And I had eight years of National Guard when I came in. So I was 25. I was one of the older guys at that first platoon. But they took the eight years National Guard, and they couldn't calculate that before I retired officially. Right.

And I call the lady and I go, hey, can you tell me kind of a ballpark where that would be? And she goes, no, Master Chief. She said, we'll do the calculation at your retirement date, right? So once the retirement papers got put in, it came back. I had 28 years, 11 days active duty Navy at the time.

At the time, they wanted me to leave the East Coast and go to the West Coast, right, like to Group 1 Master Chief. And I just told the Force Master Chief at the time I can't do that because –

I'm going to lose about $300,000 of equity in my house, and it's just not worth it at this time and point, so I'm going to bow. I'm going to bow out, right, because at the E9 level, we only have so many Master Chief billets, and that's the thing to do, right? You need to move aside and let these other E8s come up to promote the Master Chief.

But the lady called me back, and I remember I was sitting at my desk on a Friday. She goes, "Marchief." She said, "I got good news." I go, "What's that?" She goes, "Your final calculation for retirement is 30 years and one month." And I went, "Roger that." That was great, right? Because that's a full career, right? So it was awesome.

Let's get back, let's get to how it started. So you were born down, like I said, down in North Kakalaki. And what was growing up like? What'd your mom and dad do? Oh, mom and dad were, you know, they were great supporters of my brother and I, Mike. And basically we lived in a little town there called, you know, Mount Holly, right beside Belmont, which is about 30 miles or, you know, 30 minutes south of Charlotte, North Carolina. Mm-hmm.

And so I grew up in a little small neighborhood, you know, running around. We had this road that cut up through the neighborhood called Hickory Grove Road. And on Hickory Grove Road is where I met all my buddies, right? You know, we would play all kinds of crazy stuff out in the woods, and we would play basketball, football, you know, tackle football back then in the backyard, right, especially when it was muddy. We had a lot of fun with that. But growing up, my mom and dad were awesome.

My mom worked in a mill, like a cotton mill, for eons. And my dad was a – basically, dad had an eighth-grade education, but he could do anything. Mechanic, carpenter, plumbing, you name it, he could do it. But he worked for a utilities plant, you know, like a water utilities plant down in McAddenville. Yeah.

a little town south of us. And, but, you know, it was just work, work, work. And, you know, I think they paid $15,000 for the house that me and, you know, me and Mike grew up in one bedroom. Right. So, you know, we had a lot of wrestling going on, but, but yeah, I mean, very modest, right. Very modest. Both, both parents worked and then supported Mike and I, as we came up through school and,

and got into sports and played little league baseball. Had lots of friends that would come over to the house, would have barbecues in the back. And it was very simple life, but very satisfying, right, as far as growing up. And then, you know, they made us go to church, right, back when we were young. But at a certain point in life, you know, my mom said, hey, you don't have to get up Sunday morning and go to church anymore.

So basically, she just turned the tables on us, right, and said, I'm not making you go to church. So you make up your mind. And we did, and I've been going to church ever since, right, because, you know, hey, if it's a part of your life, you're a believer, you jock up and show up, right? So I'd jock up on Sundays and go to church.

But mom and dad, they worked their whole adult lives, right? My dad passed about two years ago, and my mom's still with us, and she still lives in that little small house there off Hicker Grove Road. Good thing is my brother Mike lives about probably –

about four miles away. So Mike's always checking on her and Mike just retired. He's a, uh, he was with Freightliner. Okay. Built trucks. Yeah. I know. So he, he had a great career with them about 42 years. He just retired and he's enjoying it. Right. He's enjoying his transition. Right. But, uh,

But, yeah, for North Carolina, I have great memories of growing up, going to high school, playing football. I wrestled for one year. And understand the wrestling mentality, right? I mean, it's a long two minutes, right? Or two or three, right? Three, yeah. Three. I mean, it's just long, right? It seems like hours when you're going toe-to-toe with somebody in your own weight class. But, you know, it was awesome. We had a great time.

Being kids, coming up, you know, it's not like it is today. We'd basically leave the house and we wouldn't come home until dark. And, of course, Mom always had food on the table and then just repeat, right? When you got to high school, how good were you at football? Were you playing –

Like varsity your freshman year or anything crazy like that? The first year, I mean, I did really well, you know, as a peewee ball and a midget ball played. I was a running back. Mm-hmm. So I was a running back, and then I switched over to defense, kind of a defensive back. So high school, I went straight defensive back. We had some really hardcore running backs and really fast. Mm-hmm.

But I was fast enough to play defensive back, and they would move me up in a hawk position, they call it. So the hawk position was good and bad because the hawk means you had to go in, and if they run in a stampede run, I was the first one. I'm the first one to try to break up that stampede coming around the end. Right.

And a lot of collisions, right? So, and then back then, we didn't really have the technology as far as concussions go. I mean, I remember a couple times I could hear the birds tweeting. And I was on the kicking team and kickoff, I was receiving the kick. So you get your bell rung, you know, when you're doing those type deals, you know, at that high speed, but...

But I remember, you know, I thought I was pretty good. Right. But it pretty much ended after high school. I played a couple teams. We picked up – remember USFL? Oh, yeah. New Jersey Generals and all that. They had Herschel Walker. Yeah. We actually did a – we called it Lincolnton Bandits. And I was on – I was a defensive back again. Okay. But I was tackling these running backs. And these guys were 220. They looked like Herschel Walker. Yeah.

And I was getting my bell rung, like probably every other contact. And I'm like, because nobody was making a tackle up on the line, right? I remember the old saying, I remember our coach when I played high school, he goes, guys, if a lineman misses a tackle or a linebacker six yards, if you miss a tackle, it's six points. So he really taught us to face in, you know, make sure you get the guy down, right? Whatever you got to do. So just get him to the ground.

So it was a lot of fun. But I think football, the team mentality of football, and basically any sport in high schools and college, it prepares you to go into something like a Navy SEAL program, right? Now, what was your plan when you were going through high school? Were you planning on going to the military? What was the plan? Well, I have an interesting story with that. When I was probably...

eighth, ninth grade, we were standing at the end of the road, right? Hickory Grove. Hickory Grove Road. And we had some firecrackers. And we was doing stupid stuff, right? Kids. And we're throwing, my buddy said, I double dare you to light this little blackjack, you know, firecracker and throw it at a car coming by. And I'm like, well, you know, that doesn't seem to, because we're behind hedges and they ain't going to see us. So sure enough, lit the firecracker, threw it on a car,

uh-oh that car was a black and silver state trooper oh not good right bad timing right so guess what the trooper goes down a block turns and he's triangulating the position right i go running down the road and go into the woods next thing i know i'm standing and all of a sudden i hear whoop whoop and there's the state trooper sitting right on the road and he was stepped he stepped outside of his car and he's staring into the woods looking right at me i go

man, that was quick. How did that happen? So I had a couple options, right? I could either bag it, right, and run through the woods and double back around my house, or I could walk out there and face the music. Well, I chose to go face the music. And I walk out. I came out, and he goes, did you? And I go, yes, sir.

And, you know, because there's another guy with me. I could have said, no, it wasn't me. It was Bobby. It wasn't Bobby that threw the, you know, the crash on the patrol car. It was me. So I stood there and he goes, you know what? That's very dangerous. And he says, you just happened to choose the wrong vehicle. But in a way, it was a good vehicle because I'm just I'm telling you, this is very dangerous. I could put you in a car and I take you to your house and we could talk to your parents. Or you can take this as a learning experience.

and have a great day. And I looked at him, I said, I choose to have an experience. But he taught me one, right? I mean, this guy was squared away. It was a black individual, freaking squared away, had a smoky bear hat on.

was freaking, you know, decked out. So ever since that day, that stupid move, I wanted to be a highway patrol state trooper because he was such a professional. I mean, it could have went really sideways, but he was, he taught me a lesson and moved on. Right. And, uh,

I still think about that. But growing up through high school, that's what I wanted. I wanted to be a North Carolina Highway Patrol. And so then what was the path to that, to make that happen? Well, you had to take a test, a written test, and then they – I remember going up to –

I think it was. And I had to go through their physical part of it, physical exam, eye test, all that stuff. And then you had to do the written exam. And then right after that, we'd go outside in a parking lot, and they had a highway patrol car sitting there. And they had a dummy, one of these crashed dummies that was behind a wheel, and it was seat belted in. So one of the drills where you had to start about 50 feet behind the car, and they had you on a clock.

And they would say, go. You would run down to the side of the vehicle, open the door, reach across the dummy as it was a passenger, you know, in distress or whatever, a wreck.

undo the seatbelt, get your arms underneath the armpits of the dummy, and you had to drag that dummy back to that about 50 to 60 feet behind the car, right? That's a freaking good realistic test. Yeah, and that dummy was about, you know, I'd say about 180 to 190 pounds. So it wasn't anything small or light. So you did that, and then you had to push the patrol car down,

And then a couple other agility, I think you had to run like a half a mile, push up, set up stuff. And then that was it. So I'm just waiting. Then once you finish all of the tests, they either give you a thumbs up or thumbs down. And I got thumbs up. And they said the academy will be reaching out to you when it's ready for you to go to Raleigh, North Carolina, and go through the Highway Patrol Academy. But for whatever reason, they had a hiring freeze last

They had some administrative issues or something. They needed to hire people, but at the same time, the state was looking at it. And from the state's standpoint, they were like, look, we don't have diversity or whatever was the issue. And they had promotions. People were quitting, so they were trying to figure out what was going on. But that took about a year. Yeah.

So here I am as I'm waiting on this. And you had already graduated high school. Graduated high school. I'm in a National Guard, right? So you're already – when did you join the National Guard? Joined the National Guard in 79 –

It was the Army Guard out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Did you do that in between your junior and senior year of high school? Yes. That's such a good program. Yeah, it is. It is. It's a great program. You had all of the, you know, the GI Bill that you could use for college. So what I did was, since I'm rolling down this highway patrol path,

I go to a local college, Gaston College, community college, and I went after my criminal justice degree. In the same time, I was doing night courses to be a medic, right, to get my medical – it was – I forget the actual name of the course, but it was, you know, first aid. Damn, you were squared away other than hucking some firecrackers at the car. Well, other than a bad decision doing that that day. That junior year going to the Army –

Boot camp. That's got to square you away as a young kid. I went through that in Oklahoma, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. And we were kind of artillery. We were forward observers. So we would be out there in the front and we'd call in fire from 155 howitzers. So you're like 17 years old. 17.

And me and three of my buddies, and we're still good friends today because we lived through all of that. And then about four years after that, I joined the Air Guard, basically walked across the street and got into a C-130 outfit that had medics, flight medics. So I was on flying status and I was a medic. And in the meantime, you're going to college and you're waiting for the call, right? Waiting on the letter to say, hey, come and join us at the academy. But like I said, it just kept going and kept going.

Do you have a civilian job at this time? Oh, yeah. I was working from 4 in the morning until 8 at UPS. Doing what? Driving, sorting, what? I started out unloading. Unloading trucks, then I started loading trucks, and then I was a sorter. Sorter is a job you want, right? Because basically you stand there, they unload the truck, you read the zip codes. And I got zip codes in my head today, right? Colorado 8-0. North Carolina is 2-8-0.

just a state you say Florida three three two five I mean I got that stuff in my head and it will not leave right so anytime I see a male I look at the zip code I go I know where that's at but it but it just it you know working and then trying to go to school I sleep in half the classes right yeah so basically what I did was instead of the guard GI bill I said to heck with that I'm not disciplined enough that I'm not spending their money like this this is ridiculous so I stopped and then I started paying myself

for my classes and I finally made it, but it took me six years, right? And remember the saying for that, right? Six years in college for a two-year degree, must be a doctor. Well, no, I'm not a doctor. I am a doctor and a cornerman, right? On the cornerman side of it, I'm a doc. But yeah, I mean, so that was some being very patient, waiting on the highway patrol thing, the academy up in Raleigh. And then one Sunday, I remember this like it was yesterday, there was a parade magazine that

inside the Sunday paper, you know the Sunday papers are really thick. And I pulled that little parade magazine out and on the front cover of that magazine it had one of the candidates in buds was climbing underneath the barbed wire. And what, I don't remember that, I don't even know what the name of that obstacle was. I think it was just called the barbed wire. You had to get down on your face, right? And I saw the name was stenciled on his chest. He had a nice haircut, right? High and tight.

And I go, you know what? And the caption on the front of that magazine said, are the Navy SEALs the toughest men alive?

So at the time, I had a girlfriend, and she wanted to get married. And all I had seen was North Carolina and Oklahoma. And in the Air Guard, I got to go to Germany. So I kind of got the bug. I'm like, man, I like this traveling, you know, Air Guard, you know, flying on C-130s. And, you know, back in the day, 141s, when we'd go over across the pond. But I really liked that. And I go – and then when I read that article, I'm like, that's it.

I'm done. I'm joining the Navy because I had two choices at the recruiters, right? I talked to the Army guys about flying Apaches helicopters. Well, they were going, hey, that's great. We'll get you at Rucker Flight School. But before you go to Rucker, we want you to go to Army Ranger School.

So I had a Ranger buddy of mine I played football with in high school, and I called him. I go, hey, Jeff, what's the deal with the – they want me to go to Ranger school before they'll sign me for a flight spot. And he goes, don't do it. He says, they get you in a Ranger battalion, you're not leaving. You're not going to leave for about four years or a couple tours.

And at the time I was 24, 25, right? And I'm like, nope, I'm not doing that. Went straight into the Navy and said, hey, I want to be a SEAL. They look at me kind of funny and go, can you swim? And I go, yes. And they went, all right, let's do this. But back then, right, we didn't have contracts, right? There was no guarantee. So what you had to do is join the Navy.

Get a rate, right? I think I was a boatswain mate at the time when I went in because I just, you know, one of those deals where you just get in, they'll sign your rate. So I was a boatswain mate when I went through boot camp. And then comes to the point where you raise your hand. Do you want to go SEAL, EOD, you know, diver? You know, all of those communities. And I went, well, I'm signing up for SEAL.

Went through the process, and then the next thing you know, you get orders. Did you train? Like, once you made that decision, did you train any extra? You just freaking was going to be dog. You know what? I just figured, you know, I played football. I was lifting weights a lot. So I was probably a little more muscle than I needed to be if I knew what was coming. Mm-hmm.

If I knew that being a sugar cookie was going to be on a daily basis, salt water is going to be part of you. And pool, too, right? Because I've been in some pool situations where, you know, it just rips your heart out. Doesn't it? I mean, when they put towels in your hands and say, do the butterfly, and I go, wait a minute, I can't do the butterfly without towels, right? Well, do the best you can. Shut up and jump in the pool, right, and get the towels going. But that was...

That was something that was, you can't train for that. What year was it? So what year did you join the Navy? 87, May of 87. So at that point in time, I got a letter in the mail. Once I shipped out to boot camp, I got a letter from the highway patrol.

But it was a month late, right? A month short. That's right. No turning back at this point, right? So as I look back on that, you know, I could have been a highway patrolman and then, you know, done a long career. But what would I have seen? I would have saw North Carolina. I would have probably moved around to different counties. You've got 100 counties in North Carolina. So I would have probably bounced around three, four, ten counties, you know, in a patrol car.

And whatever, right? And I look back on my Navy career, and as you well know, we're global, right? I mean, so, you know, out of North Carolina. Big world to see. North Cackalacky is in the rear view, right? But, you know, back then, though, Jocko, wasn't a lot of talk about Navy SEALs. You know, we didn't have any –

Like it is now, you know, with the movies and all of these series that are out about Navy SEALs, the UBL mission, all of that. And then now it's all like, you know, hey, what did you do? You as a SEAL? And so people have a certain, you know, perspective of Navy SEALs.

When you talk about it today, but when I went in, you could say Navy SEAL. Yeah, no one knew that. You know, when I met Lisa over in Guam, we said SEAL, and she's like, what is that? In the water? The SEALs were in the water? Yeah. So they, you know, the public awareness at that time was like zero. So, you know, Echo? I mean, you know, I know, how old are you? 47. 47? Yeah.

So, you know, and now it's all over the place, right? Good or bad, right? The good is that, you know, we still need people. We need young men to step up and take on this ultimate challenge. And the bad side of it is we don't want to be looked at as people that –

That are not silent professionals, right? Because, you know, when I was at SEAL Team 1, it was all about being a silent professional. Not about beating your chest when you go down to the bars or in Coronado and go, hey, I'm a Navy. You know, you didn't say that. No. Right? No. So. Team 1 was definitely tight on that stuff. That was a tight command, right? That was a tight command. I think that's what basically broke me from haircut. Because I love haircuts. Yeah.

And I started loving them when I was at SEAL Team 1. So if you didn't have a haircut, you were going to be doing some push-ups. When you went to Navy boot camp, how was the contrast? Because you already had been through Army boot camp. You must have been in Navy boot camp just going, what is this? It was a cakewalk. And then I got, since I was 25 when I went through, or 24 at the time, I believe,

I was RPOC. Okay. So I'm not sure what RPOC stands for now. It stands for Recruit Chief Petty Officer, and it's still a thing. Yeah. Well, that's what I was, and I had two of the boot camp instructors that were great guys, and they just basically, hey, you got it, RPOC. I'm leaving. So it's basically about, hey, just making sure people are squaring away their gear, keeping the place clean, and then if we go anywhere, make sure we're accountable, and we check out every day, right? Check.

And then when you show up to Bud's finally, what was your first impression of Bud's? Oh, it's a rude awakening, right? And you cross that quarter deck because as soon as you cross the quarter deck, somebody's got you, right? They got eyes on you. It's like this place got cameras all over the place. But them, it's instructors. You know, we had an old master chief that was, you know, he was welcome aboard. You know, he says, you know, who are you? Where are you from? Good. Good.

right? Go sweep the hallway or go do something menial. So it was a awakening, right? And then of course you walk out on a grinder and you see all those helmets, the classes that are in front of you. And I was like thinking, what, what is that? Are those winners? Are there a reason that those helmets are laying on the ground and all lined up perfectly? Nope. Those are not winners. Those are quitters. They go home. They decided to go home. Did you, did you have any major issues at Bud's?

I don't think so. Physically, I held up pretty good because, you know, you have to know when to go and know when to hoe, right? And you had to be clandestine when you're hoeing, right? Because you get an instructor seeing you hoeing, and then he's going to turn you into a go-go, right? You're going to go to the surf, right? But I did have one thing that – drown-proofing.

I know you remember drown proofing. I got rolled back on that. Okay. And it was a nightmare, right? They tie your feet together. They tie your hands behind your back. And then they introduce you to the pool, which was about, what, 20 feet deep on that deep end, maybe? I think it's 15 feet, 9 feet, and 4 feet. Yeah. So there's no standing on your toesies. Might as well be 100. I get what you're saying. Might as well be the abyss, right? Yeah.

So doing that, I mean, I did it. I mean, I would come undone. I would get out of the ropes behind my back somehow. I don't know how I did it. You mean like panicking scenario? Yes. Like you were freaking out? Anxiety. Bad anxiety. And I did that like three times in a row. I came out of those ropes. And one instructor said, you will never come out of this knot. He said, get your ass back in the water. So I go back in the water and I get halfway down the pool. We're doing the dolphin kick.

And I came out of them again. Full Incredible Hulk. Panic mode. Panic mode. So after drinking, felt like half of the swimming pool.

I got out and they rolled me back, right? So here I am now. I'm sitting in a barracks across the street on the amphib side waiting to get classed up with class 152, right? So, and you're talking about some, you know, you're thinking about, hey, I want to be a Navy SEAL. Now it's all about you've got to be comfortable in the water and drown-proofing is one of those evolutions that has been proven to be

It seems like torture, but it's not torture. It's just to get you to relax in the water and trust yourself with filling up your lungs, lungs being that buoy for you, and doing that dolphin kick.

Because he did it. I think there were two or three of us that failed. I think I was the only one that actually got rolled. But that whole time, that six weeks I was waiting on class 152, I would go over on the weekends and I'd tie myself up and I'd jump in the pool. Well, when I was doing this, there was this older gentleman working at the pool at the time, retired SEAL. And he goes, hey, under down. You can't do that. You're going to get me fired. And I go, hey, Charlie, you know, Charlie.

I go, I got to do it. I said, I'm getting ready to go through this again. And I said, I'm not failing this. You know, so I'd get in there and I said, hey, just get your little, you know, he had a little hook on the end of a pole. If needed. If needed, he could pull my drowning ass out of water, right? But we didn't need it. I just kept doing it, kept doing it. Charlie kept telling me, no, no, you can't do this. You know, you're going to get me fired. And I just worked through it. And I remember the evening that we did drown proofing.

When I was in 152 and I was like, man, I was leading up to this, right? I said, I've got to do this. I've got to get through this. Passed it the first time because I was totally relaxed and had the confidence to do that evolution.

which is you start in the deep end, you dolphin kick all the way down to the shallow side of the pool. And this is a 50 meter, right? 50 meter pool. And then you turn around and you come all the way back down. And then you had to do a amount of, uh, little ups and downs, right? Ups and downs. And then, and then once the instructors are confident that you finished doing what you needed to do, boom, you're out of the pool, you passed. So I passed and I got out and I remember we were doing an evolution and, um,

We were down on the Steel Pier over at Amphibside, right? And we're on our backs. We're doing flutter kicks. And, of course, then again, you got your name stamps across your chest. Was this Hell Week going on? I think it was Hell Week. Steel Pier is definitely, I mean, that's like part of Hell Week. It was a part of Hell Week, right? And I remember, you may remember this. We had a lieutenant.

thinks it's Thompson, but he had these glasses, mirror glasses, right? He looked like somebody off of the movie of, what's Steve McQueen? What's that movie? Shaking the Tree Boss. You remember what I'm talking about, where you eat all those eggs? It's a freaking classic movie. Yeah. What is it? Well, he looked like that guy, one of the prisoners. Failure to communicate. Failure, yeah. What we have here is a failure to communicate. Well,

That guy looked like him. He looked like that prison guard. And he says, under down. And he's looking right down at me with them glasses. And I look up at him. I go, oh, here's LT. He says, get up. So I stand up. And he goes, come up here. He says, put the blanket on. I go, I don't need a blanket. He said, here, have some hot chocolate. I said, I don't need any hot chocolate. And he says, let me tell you something. Let me tell you a story. And he starts to talk. And he's looking off into the distance, looking across the bay. And he's looking down at me. And he goes, I'm disgusted.

And I'm like thinking, you know, what the heck is he discussing about? Right. I ain't done anything. You know, I haven't done anything wrong. He goes, I have this neighbor, my neighbor's name's Charlie. And I go, Oh, here we go. He says, Mr. Charlie told me we had an individual, a candidate who was going over to the pool on the weekends and tying himself up and jumping in. That's totally illegal. You cannot do that. You're putting Charlie, Charlie may lose his job. He says, well,

Do you know what I'm talking about? And I look up at him. I go, yes, sir. And he goes, he says, guess what? And I go, what? And he goes, I like it. It shows that you've got a little bit of fire. He says, you may, may make it. He says, you may get through this. And he said, now get your ass back down on the pier and join your class. And I went, hoo-yah, hoo-yah.

Good times. But that was scary, right? And they would always do that, right? Where they're blowing smoke and they're smoking cigars and blowing smoke in your face and telling you in the unlikely event, you make it. Like when you're getting ready to graduate, when you're lining up, they're like, well, hey, in the unlikely event that you graduate today, you're going to have to have this admin stuff done by the afternoon. I'm like, what else are these people going to do to me? Yeah. It's scary though. Like I failed pool comp and when I failed pool comp, like all of a sudden,

Because you're on track. You're like, you think you're going to make it, you know, you get a rail comp and it's like, oh, my entire life. Everything that I want in my life is is like at jeopardy. It's a nightmare.

it's a lot of pressure like it's a crazy pressure and you put it on yourself too right 100 you know because once you fail something and and and you know you i talked to young young young men today that want to be a seal you can't really prepare them for what they're going to go through you know it's like a buzzsaw right you just you just really they just gotta they just gotta face it right they gotta face the deal yeah check but uh so you graduate

And so you go to orders to team one. Did you pick West Coast? I did. How come you picked West Coast being most guys, I mean, generally speaking, when guys are from the East Coast, they pick East Coast. When guys are from the West Coast, they pick West Coast. Well, growing up in North Carolina and then being out here in San Diego, Coronado, you're looking at these beautiful places.

Palm trees. I mean, it's beautiful, right? So I'm just like, you know what? I want to be somewhere that I haven't lived my whole life, right? So I chose West Coast. Right on. And got picked, you know. Now, did you know anything about, like, Team One?

Did you know the reputation or anything like that? No, I just knew they were one of the originals, right? Them and SEAL Team 2 were OGs, right, as far as SEAL Team 1, SEAL Team 2. I think SEAL Team 2 may have got commissioned before. I guess it's East Coast time or something like that. Yeah, East Coast, West Coast. But, yeah, I mean, walking across the quarterdeck, I had no idea that SEAL Team 1 was –

they were very strict. Yeah. We used to call it Stalag Team 1. Stalag, yeah. And there was one other good name for it. Anyways, yeah. So actually, I think you're the person that originally told me

Team one. It's not just a number. It's an attitude. You took that shit serious, dog. You took that serious. And I really enjoyed looking back on my career. Still team one. I had a lot of great mentors.

They're a great lot of hardcore operators that I learned a whole lot from. And, you know, like you said earlier, you got two years for a reason, right? And that's the way it was at SEAL Team 1. It's like shut up and just, you know, listen and do what we say and train. Yeah.

So did you roll right into a platoon when you got there? Or did you have to do STT? I had to do STT, right? Back then they called it SEAL tactical training. But it was kind of like SQT. But it was still the same. Basically, your trident is put in a box. Command Master Chief's got the box, or the platoon has the box with your trident inside. And you have to prove yourself, basically, for six months.

And you do the workup, you know, from cold weather training to combat swimmer to jumping,

land warfare, and you go through all of those evolutions of training. And then when you finish that six months, then they give you your, they have a celebration, a little ceremony, and give you your trident. Yeah, there's controversy because now when you get done with SQT, you get your trident. And so then when those new guys started showing up at the team with their trident, the team guys were like, oh no, we didn't get your trident. So they took them off of them.

And that still happens depending on the team. But then you can see the commands are like, wait, you're undermining the authority of the system. They've been awarded this. They've been approved by the SQT instructors. Those are master chiefs and senior NCOs that are awarding them. Now you're saying that they don't. So there's a little bit of controversy around that about the way it goes down. I was the same way as you. When I showed up, no bird.

You didn't get your bird when you graduated. Do you, you went to your team, you went through SQT, you got in a platoon. Then you did a, a board where you had to program radios and assemble weapons and get asked a bunch of questions and put tourniquets on and all this stuff. And then, and then you got, you tried it. Exactly. And you got your trident.

like punched into your chest, which you punched my trident into my chest with the entire SEAL team. The whole SEAL team lines up. It's freaky. It was freaking awesome. Yeah, it was. It was. I remember that. The old blood, blood burden. Yeah. Blood burden. So, but, but you know, now the, the young guys, now they think the platoons take them and they put them in a birdcage. So they've got this birdcage in her space and they got all these tridents hanging in these birdcages. I've seen bird cages. I've seen, uh, uh,

aquariums. They're all kinds of little things. I've seen them painted blue because it's inert. So you don't, you know, you get a blue trident. It's not real. It's like, you know, a blue gun, a gun that's not real. They paint it blue for training. I've seen the tridents painted blue because it's inert. They don't really have it. So they got all kinds of little tricks they do to them. So when you showed up, you get into your first platoon.

What year is it now? Is it like, it's still '87? - It's '88. - '88? - I think it was August of '88 when I checked in SEAL Team One. - And how's being a new guy at SEAL Team One? - You know, it's basically, you know, these older guys, right, SEAL Team One members basically say, you know, just keep your mouth shut and pay attention.

Right. And then we're going to we're going to train you. We're going to mentor you. I don't know if they actually said mentor at the time. They just said, you just you just do what you do. Right. You got to show up for get a haircut. Check to watch. So team one. Right. What was your job? I, you know, I came in and I was still both made at the time. Right. Which was, you know, back back then you had to have a rate to be assigned to you a job title. Right. To be a Navy SEAL.

So I was a seaman. I think I was just a seaman E3. Did they make you a pig gunner in a platoon? I was. I was a 60 gunner. But what happened early on, I had a senior chief who had some time in Millington and knew a lot of people in the detail shop and stuff. He says, dog, the best thing for you since you was a flight medic in the Air Force, Air Guard. He says, you already got all the medical training because I had to go to Shepherd Air Force Base and go through the medical training, right, for the Air Guard. Right.

So I already had the medical stuff, plus I was an EMT. And he goes, we're going to send you to Corman School in Balboa.

And you graduate, Corman, I think it was six to eight weeks. And when you graduate, we're going to reinstate you to E5. That's awesome. And I'm thinking, gee, I'm an E3 now. That'd be great. So I did it. And you know what? He kept his word. I graduated Corman School, and I was automatically promoted to HM2. Damn, dude. That was a blessing, right? That was a blessing as far as being able to get promoted. Because you know, in the teams back then –

Your rate was your fate, right? If you're a certain rate, you may not promote as easily as a corpsman, right, an HM. And I was blessed with that rate, and I had that all the way up to Master Chief. It took me a while to make E6. Had to do some crazy stuff for that. Had to go to Florida and sit through a week-long course with this old retired Master Chief that was –

was basically teaching how to pass the test, right, and how to do it effective. And I actually scored like a 77 out of 80. It worked, right? So I got promoted to – but I had to do that, right? And damn neck paid that. They paid me to go down to Florida and sit down with this guy. He had a classroom. So where did you go on deployment?

Like your first, your first one, Philippines went over to, went over to PI. Was that the volcano or anything like that? You know what? No, I think we were either before or right after that. And, but it was still, it was fine. You know, we would go outside the gate a lot, did a lot of training on the beat, green beach, red beach, all of those beaches that would go shoot live fire.

and then do a lot of water work as well over in Subic. But that was a great base. But that was right after we shut that down, right? Not too long after that. So you got done with that deployment, and then you did another one? Where was your next deployment? My next deployment was Guam.

With me? Yeah, with you. That was my second deployment. I always thought that was your third deployment. And then I did one more. You were just a one cruise wonder. Oh, you know what? Hold on. No, two. That was right. The third. That was my third deployment because I did an ARG. Got it. Right? Okay, that makes sense. So they needed a corpsman, so I joined the ARG platoon. And basically, I did back-to-backs, right? And then that's when I met you when we did that third deployment over to Guam.

Right? Because I screened for damn neck and went back to Virginia. So one thing I was thinking about when you were talking about that police officer that like –

basically taught you a lesson was cool to you. I was thinking about when you were, you know, when I was a new guy and look, I was about as, you know, a new guy as a new guy could get, dude, I was freaking 20 years old and, and you know, young, dumb and full of motivation as they say. Oh yeah. And what I remember about you though is like you would, you wouldn't, you weren't like, um,

You were trying to help us, new guys, be better. You weren't just like, hey, let me show you how to do this. Hey, here's something to think about. You were...

you were truly like, again, you didn't use the word mentor, but you were actually trying to get us good at being frog men. Not, you weren't just hammer beating the shit out of us and being an asshole. And there's plenty of guys like that too, you know? Um, but yeah, you were, you were always like trying to help us. And I think that makes a big difference. I think it took me a while to find that for myself. Cause I know I, I was a little bit of an asshole, uh,

by the time I was in my second and third platoon, you know, myself and my run mates and a bunch of guys that were in that platoon with us, you know, we, we were definitely hard, probably too hard on some of the guys, but you know, uh, as I got a little bit older, uh,

I realized, oh yeah, if you want these guys to be good SEALs, you should be helping them. And you want to have a good relationship with the dudes. You don't want them to be mad about coming to work and you don't want them to not be able to come to you and say, hey, how do I do this? Because they're scared they're going to get beat down. Matter of fact, I remember one time, I forget, we were doing shipboarding, just training.

One of the other older guys started making a scene about some shit He's yelling and and you were just like shut the fuck up man. You don't know what you're talking about You it was funny because you defended It was actually me it was you were actually literally defending me to another guy because you know I had done something and

you know what I did, what I thought was right. And you thought what I did was right too. And this other guy didn't think it was right. And he was having to go with me. And what am I going to say? I'm not going to say shit. I'm say, Roger that. But then you stepped in and I was like, Doug, Doug, he just put, put out the word right there. He's looking out for his boy over here.

Yeah. Well, that's part of being a platoon, right? We take care of each other. Uh, but if, if we see somebody, you know, they always said, what we're, we're only as fast as our slowest man. Right. So we always had to work to make sure that slowest man understood that he had to perform. Right. You got to get up here. Right. Cause you're slowing down this whole train. Right. Yeah. That's, that's wild. Just how, how, uh, that, how platoons come together and how you just so damn, uh,

You're so engaged in being in a platoon. You know, it's just such an awesome place to be, and you're trying to do a good job. It doesn't matter where you are. I mean, I went everything from the new guy to the platoon commander to tasking commander. It doesn't matter. Like, you're still trying to do the best you can possibly do that whole freaking time, which is stupid. And, you know, we were talking here before the show about your reputation. Mm-hmm.

And I think there's no place like the SEAL teams when it comes to you are graded on your reputation, right? Especially when it comes time for you to get orders and you go to another SEAL team. All those people at that SEAL team want to know, can he pull his weight, right? And they get plenty of intel, right? It's just word of mouth, right? Your reputation matters.

is going to precede you and you you know it's just very important and it's the same in business right it's the same in business life as we transition out of the military your reputation speaks for itself right so yeah you know yeah and we had like that platoon that we were in dude i mean it was a pretty wild platoon that we had some wild dudes in there i mean i was wild as hell

I'm actually, I would say I got wild as hell because I wasn't old enough to drink when I got in there. I was a kid. And then when, you know, we went on deployment and it was interesting because you mentioned that the Philippines had shut down. So we were the first platoon to deploy straight to Guam.

Like we didn't because I think the platoons before us deployed to the Philippines and then they left and went to Guam We deployed straight to Guam and there was a lot of people look the Philippines was like a great place for guys to go and a lot of guys loved the Philippines and guys would get stationed there and they do multiple deployments over there and We got sent straight to Guam and there was a lot of people that were pissed, you know Like we didn't want to be in Guam. They wanted to go to the Philippines. I didn't know any better. I

And some of the other old guys, like from other platoons or other teams, you know, they're so mad. Like they were literally mad. Like, okay, I believe we're here. This sucks. Meanwhile, Guam is like a tropical paradise island. There's surfing. There's a sick gym. There's you're getting per diem. There's like, you know, we're young. There's bars to go and there's women there. It's like kind of an awesome place. And so I'm like some of the older guys from some of the other guys were mad because

I'd be like walking out with my roommate. We'd be like walking out to go out and they'd be like, you know, where are you guys going? I go going out. They're like, Oh, this place sucks. And I'm like, okay. If you're sitting in the barracks, right. If you're sitting in the barracks, it does suck. Remember they got the blue hole there too, right? Remember the diving blue hole at place at this unbelievable. Yeah. This blue hole, like you, you can swim down to it. It's 65 feet. I remember we had a, uh, one of the officers that worked there was like a, well,

like a swim guy from the Naval Academy. And so we all went out to the blue hole and he swam down to the top of the blue hole, which was 65 feet. And he just like sat on the edge of it and looked up and waved and then came back up, you know, all chill. So I was like, of course I go, okay, now I got to do this. Right. It brought me down there. I tried to try as hard as I could to look out. You look down that hole and it looks like something that that's like a laser cut, uh,

a circle. I mean, it looked like a drum, right? And it had that arch on the front of it. And then it opened up to the ocean. But on the other, when you got down to that bottom, it was 150, I think, about 150 feet down. We did a bounce dive down there. You can climb over the edge and look down. And that's all you had time to do because you have to go back up, right? On your stops going back up to atmosphere 66 and 33. But

when we were down there, I climbed out over the edge of that cliff and looked down. That's Marianas Trench. That's the Marianas Trench. Like 30,000 feet deep. That water went navy blue to black. Yeah. That was just, that was scary. That was a little scary. So that's Guam. Like you got all this cool stuff going on. And we did like one trip as a platoon.

Then we didn't do any more trips and that was very early in our deployment And so then we were just in Guam so like we'd go shooting But you can only you like you there's only so much stuff that you can do is you run through all your ammo now What are you gonna do? Okay, we'll go jumping cool. There's no helicopters like at a certain point There's only so much you can do and then what are you gonna do? Well, you're a bunch of bunch of freaking frogmen hanging out at mom Bay

yeah there's beaches they bars on the beach which is you know that's not a good uh ingredients for it's either not a good ingredients or it's the best ingredients when you're 21 years old or 20 years old and so that's what we were doing uh

And that's where you met your wife. I met Lisa on the beach down at, you know, the beach we'd always go to, right? And, you know, she was down here throwing football, you know, with this other girl. I think she was stationed on the submarine tender. So her and Lisa, that's when Lisa goes, well, who's Seals? And the girl goes, well, the Seals are here.

And Lisa's like looking around going, where are they at? I don't see any in the water, right? And she goes, no, no, no. I'm talking about the Navy SEALs. These guys, they always, you know, would take over, right? As soon as we hit the beach, you would plant a flag and go, this is it. Yeah.

And I remember when you met Lisa, just how, dude, you were hook, line, and sinker. You were done training, bro. It was game over for you. And she was, because she was a knockout, and she was a, you know, we all knew immediately she was a Seattle Seahawks cheerleader, and she was a badass chick. And all of a sudden, dog, he's just freaking hook, line, and sinker. Done training. Dog gone. Dog gone. Yeah.

Oh, classic stuff, man. Yeah, that was something else. Met Lisa. And I remember I ended up, as we left, of course, Lisa went back to Seattle. After our deployment finished, I think it was in July, because I remember having the July the 4th twice. And then, of course, Lisa was pregnant. So she went home off the work site there. She was working with her two brothers there.

who were doing stucco work in Guam. They had contracts on both the commercial side and then they were looking at getting some Navy housing contracts. So they were full-on busy. And so Lisa went back. I ended up flying back from Guam as we went back to SEAL Team 1. And I remember it was crazy because we flew across the dateline, right? So we celebrated the 4th of July in Guam.

I went back to San Diego and did it again. Let's do it again. Do Fourth of July one more time. But we got married shortly after that, and then that's when I got orders to go to Dev Group. So –

Lisa's dad and I drove our 4Runner, and we had a Nissan Pathfinder. Lisa had that over there. So we drove that bad boy across country in a U-Haul. And then we were pulling one vehicle, and then we'd drive the 4Runner. So what, now it's like 1993? 94. I checked in at Dev Group January of 94. Okay.

And, and you, you had already screened for that, I guess, prior to us going on deployment. So now you're out there going through selection, um,

in 94 and how was selection oh it was another there's another kick in the jimmy right just like anything else right and as soon as you think you're you got to a point you know i was a hm2 at the time check in the damn night same thing you know shut your mouth you know you're you guys are we're supposed to be door kickers right they brought in i think there's 22 of us 21 and

And we all check in, and when Master Chief came up in the classroom, he says, guys, I got good news and bad news. And we're like, what's that? And he goes, good news is you're at this command, you know, Tier 1 command. He goes, bad news is you're not going to be door kickers. You're going to boats. So we went – we were the first time that they'd pushed that many SEALs in a gray team, right, into the gray team where we have the 40-foot, you know, eight sacks, go-fast boats team.

And they asked a question at the screen, you know, at the interview. They said, do you like boats? I'm like, I love boats. I mean, what are you going to tell them? I don't like boats. Because if you don't like boats, guess what? You're not going to get ordered. You know, you're not going to get orders. So...

uh i just but i really did i really liked boats and uh i had a great time in those boat and then they they sent us all to florida for a two-week course u.s u.s coast guard captain license that's awesome so we were all u.s coast guard 100 ton near coastal captain license which is pretty awesome to you know it's a great that's a great certificate to have but uh but yeah that was it you know we i left the west coast and

I went out there and I ended up finishing my whole career on the East Coast. - And in the 90s, again it's like pre-9/11, what were you guys doing? You guys were doing, didn't you guys do stuff for Bush up in Maine, up in Kennebunk? - Yeah, I did that three times. When I was at trade at, we would go up there for basically, we were the water protection for the president as he fished, right?

They were fishing off the coast up there in Kenny Buttport, Maine. And his dad, 41, had a house on Walker's Point. And we would go over to the house every day. And they had these Segways. They just came out, these Segways. And they were riding these Segways around. And I remember the president, you know, 41, saying,

He came out, George Ace, and he goes, guys, he said, I want you to ride these Segways. I just got this as my birthday gift. And he says, you guys can ride them around. He said, just don't hit the beast. And I'm thinking, what's that, the beast? And he goes, yeah, that armored Cadillac, right, the president's car. And we're like, roger that, sir. We won't hit the beast. So we were doing that, but we were mainly up there just to be protection as he was fishing with his dad, right? So we had two presidents. We had 41, 43 presidents.

And we would jock up in the boats. We had Pelican cases. We had rifles in the boats. We had 60 guns in the Zodiacs. And I remember we're having a discussion, right? So I'm up there as a master chief, and we got these two-way walkie-talkies just talking back and forth. And I'm on the Secret Services. They had a rib boat out there. It's about a 45-foot boat.

But it couldn't keep up with the Bush's fishing boat because they had a fountain boat. So that fountain boat was about a 36-footer, and he had like three big-time engines on the back of it, right? And they would take off, and I'd be on the rib, and I told the guy, I said, well, it doesn't make any sense. You guys need to – he said, well, we'd like to have the hardboats up here, but damn that was – we're not bringing hardboats up to run around with the president as he's fishing, but –

So we did the best we could. And I remember they had a wedding on the peninsula. So everybody was driving from Walker's Point over to this peninsula for the wedding rehearsal. And we're all, we had the peninsula basically surrounded 180 security ring about a mile off the coast. And we're just out there. We had our weapons with us and we're just watching for anybody that would possibly break through the perimeter and get onto the rocks and climb up to interrupt or harm anybody. Yeah.

So we were on the radio, and remember this was 43. George W. was in the car with his primary guy, right? He's got the guy that's his pocket man. And he was listening to our chatter, too, as we were talking around the perimeter. And one of the guys in the Zodiac who was up against the rocks, who was near shore, he basically said, Hey, dog, if one of the high-speed boat comes –

what do you want me to do? And I go, well, you got a weapon. I go, smoke it. And when I said smoke it, of course, I didn't realize this, but they picked it up in the beast, right, inside the president's car. And George W. looked over at the secret surgery guy and he goes,

you hear that? Those seals are going to smoke something. You know, he said, that's why the seals are up here. Right. He said, I feel safe, but it was, it was funny, you know, but he asked me later, he said, who, who, which one of you said smoke them? And I went, that was me. He said, that was a good answer. By the way, the president really loved that. That's good. Commander's intent right there. Dude. When I was a kid, so my dad worked in it in, I'm from new England and my dad worked in a, in a camp, a summer camp in Kennebunk.

And so when I was a little kid, Vice President Bush was, you know, he'd be the same thing. Like, we'd see the Secret Service up there, and he gave a speech in, you know, the little town of Kennebunk, little Kennebunkport, right? He gave a speech in that little square, and my dad took me, and we had one of those little disposable cameras. And my dad says, hey, you know...

Get a picture of him. And there's a real big crowd. And I said, okay. And I said, well, I really can't see him. And I climbed up on this windowsill. And so now I'm probably like, I don't know what the math is, but I'm probably eight, nine years old, something like that. I had some kind of camera. Anyways, I get up on this windowsill. So now I can see above the crowd and I have a really good view. And Vice President Bush is up there. And I'm a punk ass kid. And so I go, and everyone's quiet listening to him.

And I go, Hey George. And I shit you not. He like stops, looks over at me and I took a picture of him. And my dad's freaking ganking me down. You freaking disrespectful little idiot. What the hell's wrong with you? So yeah, there you go. That's my, that's my George Bush. Yeah. Yeah. I'm surprised the secret service didn't freaking smoke me. Oh yeah. You probably had a red dot on your chest and didn't know it. Yeah. Uh,

And so you spend these years, it's like, so where are you when September 11th happens? September 11th, we were at the command and we're in a classroom. I can remember it like it's yesterday, right? Like the space shuttle blowing up. You know exactly where you were at and what you were doing when that tragic hit. But when 9-11 hit, I was in a classroom. We were doing public speaking with an outside contractor. And the guys flew into the room and said, hey,

You guys have got to watch the TV. So we went into the operational side where they had the big screens up and we could actually see the airplanes flying into the second tower, I believe, at that point. And it was like looking at something like, what is this? Is this a movie? I mean, what, you know, doctor movie? What's going on? And then we, you know, sadly come to the realization that it was real.

and that both of those buildings were struck by airplanes. And then the other one that went after the Pentagon, I think, hit the Pentagon. And then they say the one that went down in the field in PA was targeted for the White House. It was going to hit. I mean, it was just really bad.

And, of course, we went straight through the ceiling as far as spin-up goes. And we kicked all the contractors had to leave and all of that. And we went on lockdown. And then we started getting briefs right away. And I think we had boots on the ground within probably two weeks, you know, in Afghanistan when that went down. And where were you in all this? Well, I was still gold, right? I was gold team.

So we were second. We were standby, right? So they sent, I think it was Blue Team initially, went out the door for that mission to hunt these guys down. And we were just on standby to standby, right? We already had everything, all of our bags were packed. We had the flyaway package, right? So we could go anywhere at any time. But, yeah, that's where it was at. And then how long until you rolled out?

After Blue came back, then they sent Red. And then, of course, I was Gold. But the feather that I had in my hat was I was a corpsman. I was a medic. At the time, because I went through Independent Duty Corpsman School, which is a year-long school over in Portsmouth.

The master chief at Damnack said, hey, all of you guys, because they shut down the goat lab down at Fort Bragg. They rebuilt it. So it was shut down for a year. So during that year, he looked at us and said, you guys are all going to independent duty corpsman school over in Portsmouth, and you're going to thank me later. And we're like looking at him going, because, you know, you have to wear uniforms every day. And we had fleet instructors, and they were hammering us.

So that was one year long school, right? So it was, but it, but it, like the master chief said, I made, I made chief first time, senior chief first time, but not, not just because I was a independent duty corpsman had combat experience. It was because I,

because of the way it went was you go to promotion boards, right, and they rank and stack you as far as score. But a part of that being promoted, too, is you need to be in a position of leadership, right? I was in a position of leadership every time, so it just worked out for me to get that chief's job and then to get the senior chief job.

And then for Master Chief, that's when I went over to Training Command, you know, debt, East Coast, you know, trade debt. And that's when I made, picked up Master Chief, you know, the first time. But as I look back at the career, it was because I was in those positions of leadership that helped me to get promoted. Yeah.

And also been to three promotion boards, right? As a Master Chief sitting on a promotion board, you really appreciate the process that we go through. Reading records, I mean, we show up at 7.30 in the morning and we don't stop until 5. I mean, that's all day long looking at a computer screen, reading people's records, right? Because if I'm grading out Jocko, I'm looking five years behind you. Mm-hmm.

And then it brings me all the way to the point where you're up for promotion and we have to make the decision. And we rack and stack it and the computer does it for us. After we grade you paper, you have five Master Chiefs and an officer on the board and probably seven of us total. And then once we rack and stack you, the computer does the math for us.

And it builds a ladder. It builds a ladder. And you get to the final part, say we got 80 chiefs to promote. We get down to 79, 80, 81. Then they start asking questions like, why isn't candidate 81 not 80?

And why are you going to stop at 80 and promote 80 chiefs or promote 40 senior chiefs? The numbers go down right as you go up. And why is – you're promoting 20 master chiefs. How do you do that? And then we have to stop what we're doing. After we build a ladder out, we've got our top 20. Now they start asking questions.

How about number 18? Is 18 better than 20? Is 20 better? You know, so it just goes back and forth. But as we build a ladder, that ladder stands on its own, right? We've already did the work. We did the hard work of ranking them, racking and stacking them, and then it's all that. But that's just another education as you move into the leadership side of your career. You get opportunities to do that, and we call that doing big Navy work. Because it is, right? Because we have to go down, and we get to meet a lot of –

good people, you know, good master chiefs and officers who, who has basically taken, I think it's about a two week process, but I mean, two weeks and you're in that, you're in that office every day. Just, just my pencils. I got number two pencils. I actually kept them as trophies. Now I've got them about two inches long with a little eraser on them. And I go that right there. That's the pain.

That's administrative pain doing that job, right? So it was quite the experience. So I always, you know, you were mentioning, you go on this deployment, I always tell people, like, I was in the SEAL teams for 13 years before I actually shot my weapon at the enemy because I came in in 1990 and it wasn't until 2003. Yeah.

So for you, it's even longer. And what was it like? Like, okay, now you're going to Afghanistan for the first time. And by the way, the other interesting thing is, and I've thought about this a lot, like no one had combat experience at this time. Like very, very, there were some people that did some snatches in Bosnia. There's a couple people that did some stuff in Somalia. Maybe some leftover guys from either Panama or Grenada. But broadly speaking, you could be in a SEAL platoon forever.

that had no one that had ever been in combat before and it was that's not well we all pray for peace maybe but it's not great to have a unit where people don't have combat and they're supposed to be combat warriors so how what was that like for you well um you know I did grow up you know at SEAL team one we we didn't have anything going on as far as um you know

being in the arena, right, being a gladiator or being shot at or engaging the enemy. So when I went to Dev Group, I was there for about six months, and then we got spun up for Haiti. Remember the Haiti mission that went down? Oh, yeah, that's right. We were going to go down, and it was going to be heavy, right, because they had us on board the USS America aircraft carrier at the time.

And that was the first time ever in Navy history that they had an aircraft carrier solely dedicated for special ops. They had gold team was on there. We had red team and blue team. I mean, this thing was loaded down with tier one operators. We had our Humvee, our mobility package on there. We had the boats on there.

We had TF-160 aircrafts on there. We had Army Ranger Battalion on there. I mean, this whole thing, you couldn't look anywhere without seeing. That's what happens when you don't have war for freaking 20 years. Yeah. Everybody had paint on, right? And we moved all the way to the part where we were test firing our weapons on the elevator of this aircraft carrier. We had the Humvees. We was going to sling them with 47s side by side. I remember we had boat fenders in between the vehicles.

And they were going to hoist them up with these Kevlar straps and drop us off. And the mission was fairly clear, right? Hit the deck, assimilate ourselves. Little birds come over. We had a gunship up, and then we had Blackhawks coming in with guns, right? Guns on. And we were going to roll straight from the pad that we were going to be dropped off on straight to the president's palace. And we were going to kill anybody that gave us any resistance. If they had a weapon, basically drop them, right? So—

We were going to do that, but right at the last minute, after we'd already test-fired and everybody looked at each other and we're ready, and we're going up the elevator, actually, to come up and link up with the helicopter chalk. And all of a sudden, we got the call to stand down. And we're all looking at each other like, what? What's going on? And come find out, it was President Carter and –

Colin Powell, who called the Haitian government at the time and says, I want you to look outside your window. You see that aircraft carrier sitting out there. And they went, yes, sir. Well, he says these 13 or 16 aircraft C-130s just left Fort Bragg with a second airborne. And he said in about two hours time, you're going to have 82nd airborne dropping in. And then you're going to have tier one forces on your back door.

And we're not coming down there to eat MREs, right? So that was the deal, but they shut it. They shut it down. We immediately reconsolidated. We held out there for about a week, I believe. They sent us back to the beach to stand up the package, right, our blowout package. But the rest of it, one of the teams stayed on that carrier, and they rode the carrier home because it still could have went sideways, right? And we'd have had to go back in anyway. But it didn't. The government kept their word. But, you know, Haiti's just a –

It's a bad place. And then, but so that's really the closest you got prior to 9-11? No, yep. Other than test firing our weapons, we didn't see anything with that. And then when 9-11 hit, that's when we rolled over and took Blue Team's spot.

And it was 100 days. I think we did 100 days in the theater, but it was busy. So, you know, I got on. I remember sending back a high-side email to my buddies back at the gold team, and I said, hey, life is good on two-way rifle range. Because really, that was the first time I'd been shot at, you know, doing these missions, you know, because they would –

Here are the helicopters coming in, and they would run, so we would have to chase the squirters. And we were on the outside. You know, great team. They used us for outside security. Assault force would blow the walls, the adobe walls, and then they would go inside and looking for this deck of cards of people we were looking for, the bomb makers and the bad guys.

So the outside, we got busy outside, right? We had some squirters running around trying to contact us, so we'd light them up. Then we had a gunship above us with a predator. I mean, the sky was stacked up, right? Fast movers up top. But that kind of opens your eyes to all of the training that we do in a SEAL team.

It's really amazing because we, when I hit the ground, when I rolled out of the back of the helicopter, I picked up a position on my knee and there was two guys, I mean, fairly close, right? Running away from me. And I could tell one of them had a weapon, but I had an opportunity there to shoot somebody. But I'm like, I'm not going to shoot a man in the back, right? He could be a farmer. He could be a doctor. Who knows, right, who he is. It ended up being two bad guys because as we pulled back the security and perimeter around the house that was the target...

These two knuckleheads that I think I saw running away from us, we had nods, and I'm looking at them, and all of a sudden I hear this snapping sound, and I look up at one of my guys who's standing up, and I went, hey, you may want to take a knee or get some dirt on your chest because we've got incoming.

And he looked over at me. We're wearing Peltors, right, headsets. I could hear it clear as day. And I go, hit the deck, knucklehead. So he gets down, and we back in. I get into a ravine, and I start engaging the target that was – because I knew exactly where they went to. So I start lighting him up, and then I call Cass. I call our CCT guy, and he goes, he says, what you got, dog? And I went, hey, we got incoming over here. These guys were in a ravine. They must have went through a cachet, and they're shooting back on the target. And he goes, stand by.

And he had Hammer, you know, the gunship upstairs. And all of a sudden, you saw all this heavy, I think they were 105 rounds, coming down. Damn, straight to the 105s. They're coming down in that ravine. It's early in the war, bro. We get that chance to clear out those 105s. It's coming in hot, boy. 105s and 40 Mike Mike. Oh, hell yeah. They were doing, then you could hear the minigun too. It would wind up. But that, we never had any more. Those gentlemen were out of business. They were out of business for sure. They closed their gun shop up.

But what I think the point was I was trying to make is all the training that we do through our careers, you know, you don't want to ever, you know, pray for war or run to war because when you get there, you know, you have the training to be as calm. I mean, I felt totally calm. Our technology with our weapon systems, our lasers, our NODs,

and the way we communicate with each other it's it's just unbelievable the the type of lethality that we bring to the battlefield when we're fighting these guys who may be farmers they don't know how to shoot that well and and it's just uh it's a smoke show for us right because we're we don't miss much you know we if we do miss we miss small but but it's just it's just good to feel though right all the training that you've done

It's like these football players that train and train and train and never get to the Super Bowl. But when they step on that Super Bowl field, you don't want them to totally clam up on you, right? You want them to be able to do their job. And we did our job, right? And every mission was different, and I know you know this, but you just have confidence in yourself. And, you know, they say the professionals or, you know, the tier one guys or, you know, where you were at in your career, we see things slow. It slows down for us. Even though it may be chaotic as shit,

People shooting RPGs and shit blowing up all over the place. It just seemed like you can just, you know, we can... Take a wrap off, take a step back, look at what's going on, make a call. Yeah. That's right. That's right. And it is because, I mean, even something going all the way back to like Hell Week, there's freaking total chaos going on. And...

Like you have to learn the process, what's going on and what to block out and get that little portion of the job that you got to do, which is, you know, moving cam lights or, you know, moving the boat over here. You got to learn how to focus and get that thing done. And then you just get fast forwarded. That gets expanded on as you go through training, you go through workup, you know, it's the same thing that's going on in workup. You know, you got freaking explosions. The trade at guys are putting gas bombs all over the place. There's artillery Sims going off and they're down men. And it's, it's,

total chaos and you learn to okay cool what I got to do well well you know getting back and I want to say this real quick before we get going and you know we mentioned our wives and

I just want to put a thank you out to my wife, Lisa, who stuck by my side during all these deployments. And I remember, like it was yesterday, when I got the call that I was going to go with Red Team, right, when the Master Chief said, hey, dog, I want you to be an E-5. And I'm like, hey, that's good. I like that. I like being a good E-5 because that means the leadership is taken away from me. I just need to be a 60-gunner or a sniper or a medic.

I'm a medic all the time, of course, but I'm going to go do that. I'm going to do it well. But my wife took me to the gates at the command before we were flying over to Afghanistan, and she just kind of looked up at me. She goes, I'm proud of you. And I kind of looked at her, and I'm like, proud of me for her. And she says, no, I'm proud because you're volunteering to go do this because you think you need to go validate yourself or whatever. But she says, I'm very proud of you. She says, don't worry about anything back here.

I've got this, right? She's got the compound, right? The home. And I call her, she's in my phone, Homeland Admiral. So when I call my wife, that's her, her basically in, in my, in my, you know, my phone, she's a Homeland Admiral. Yeah. And she's really been a good one, you know, for that. But, uh, yeah, that's, that's, uh, definitely, you know, when, when I would be on deployment,

you know, whatever was happening at home, broken water, heater, flat tires, kids getting in trouble, kids sick. What you just, you know, uh, uh,

any problem that was going on. My wife never told me about it. Like it was just, how's everything? She don't, I'd ask her everything. Everything's great. You know, there ain't no way you got three freaking toddlers in a house in a 900 square foot house, whatever that was built in 1940 and everything's great. Like that ain't happening. Like it's just zero chance, but it's, but you know, um,

Bravo Zulu, good job for them to be able to allow us to step away and not have to worry because you don't need to worry about that stuff. I mean, I've had that situation. I was over in the Philippines on a deployment, and I was walking home from being outside the gate, and I came up the backside stairwell, and I walk up, and I hear somebody chattering. This is like 2 in the morning, right? And I hear somebody chattering, so I walk into the laundry room that we had there at the barracks.

And here was one of our sailors, SEAL Team 1 sailor, underneath a blanket talking on a phone. And he was crying, oh, I won't do that again. I just want to be with you, blah, blah. And he was going on and on and on. And I'm like, dude, you can't do this. You can't do this. And he ran up like a $4,000 phone bill that our command had to engage. We had to engage in that and pay that. Of course, he ended up having to pay, right? He paid his piece, $4,000 phone bill.

From talking from Philippines back to San Diego to his girlfriend or his wife. And I'm like, dude, you can't do that. You need to be locked in of what we're doing over here. You can't just tell her you love her. We'll be home in five months or whatever it was. You can't get rolled into that. And I think he learned a lesson with that. But yeah.

Yeah, I think it's real important that like your, you know, your wife doesn't get jealous of the team of the platoon because, you know, it's hard, you know, like here you are, you marry a girl and then you go, yeah, by the way, I'm married to you, but I'm going to spend all my time with these dudes over here. Exactly. And when you call, I might answer when they call. I will answer.

Like when your work calls, you answer the phone. If you're at work and your wife calls, you may not be able to answer it. So they got to have a certain level of emotional independence and also just like being a...

A stable person, confident person that knows, okay, well, you know, you do what you got to do and I'll be over here doing, I got the home front on lockdown. Exactly. And that just gives us the ability to just totally focus on what our mission is because, you know, any given night, right, we step out the door, we don't know if we're, but you know, that never, I wouldn't let that doubt in my mind at all. I'd just like, hey, let's go kick ass on target and let's come home.

And repeat, right? Get the intel, go back out. Find it, fix it, finish, right? And we're the finishers, so we got to get back out there.

And then what'd you do after, after you got back from that deployment? I got back after that deployment, basically I already strapped in with orders, right? So I ended up having to execute those orders to trade at. Okay. So you went to trade it. Because back then it was like, look, we've got to get these tier one guys to come out of the tier one. Cause I was already there for eight years. So it's time to start rolling some of this subject matter expertise that we have. And fortunately for me, I got that a hundred days on the ground running operations and

combat experience to go now teach the young SEALs. And I was the senior chief in charge of assaults. Perfect. So assaults was CQC and military operations, urban terrain. We did a little VBSS, but that wasn't VBSS. Wasn't my deal. And we weren't focused on it too much at the time. No. Cause once that, once that kicked off, it was like, it was boots on the ground. And what did you, you know, I always found, I was real lucky cause I was at team one.

I got to work in training cell. So, and I found that I learned so much when I was in training cell. Number one, cause you're teaching it. And number two, cause you're watching it and you're getting to see like what a bad leader does, what a good leader does, what a bad chief does, what a good chief does. And you start going, okay, I don't want to do what that guy just did. Cause that didn't work out too well. But I see that this guy over here is doing it well.

Did you find that like being in that instructor mode, running those trips, you just get better and better? You do. I mean, I think you just kind of hit the nail on the head. You know, when you're an instructor, you're teaching, right? And they send us through. I went through Navy instructor school, right? And then I was a master trainer. Oh, yeah. Master training specialist. Yep. MTS, right? Yeah. So I got that. But you're right. When you're teaching something, I went through sniper school. Then I went through, I was a sniper instructor. Okay.

But when you're a sniper instructor, you really get to take – because you know what the stresses are. The stresses with the crawls you have to do, the stalking, the shooting aspect of it. And you're there to help people, right? You're watching people. And lots of times we have these civilian shooters come in and teach us. But we're just passing on information, right? But from our standpoint, we're just trying to make sure, looking into a person, go, hey, does he have the field crafts? Now, he's a good shooter, but –

But now can he take that being a good shooter and move into the stalking side of the house, which means you got to learn how you can basically crawl to a target within 300 yards or meters and then be able to make the shot without getting caught. And we're looking at you through a spotting scope.

So even with the ghillie suits on and stuff, you get rolled out on a pool table. We used to call it pool table because you'd get out on a piece of ground that was, you didn't have any vegetation. So you look like a polar bear basically climbing across a flat deck with a ghillie suit on, right? We're going to catch you, right? We see you. So we get the walkers over there, pat you on the head and go, hey, you got to do better than that. So we'd send them back to restart, but.

it's all time too right you only have like three hours to make the shot so yeah that was fun that seal sniper school is no joke that's that's a freaking great school yeah uh and then as you're running as you're running trade at what's going on with your career did you make master chief when you got there you said i did i made uh once i checked in that trade ed i was a senior chief in charge of assault sales

So I had a warrant officer that was working with me, and we got another chief from DAMNAC to come over and help. But, yeah, but, you know, checking that block, being that senior chief for that training command, you know, being a trainer is another, you know, avenue that you need to really come off the SEAL team, right, quit being an E-5 shooter and go do some of these jobs that we need you to go do, right? And then when you do those jobs, though, you get rewarded for it, and that's when, you know, I made master chief.

And then I got selected to go to the Command Master Chief Cobb training course up in Rhode Island. How long is that? That's about, I don't know whether it's two to six weeks. But that's where you learn all the resources that the big Navy has. For you to be a Command Master Chief, you have to be able to deal with these young sailors and their families first.

You got to get them resources like through the Navy College, you know,

They got all these grants out there that you can help people with. All the plethora of reasons why a sailor would come offline, whether it's self-generated or what, they give us the resources to help with that. And then, of course, for us, we're very fortunate because we got the Navy SEAL Foundation, who also has a whole lot of resources that they can throw at problems. Yeah, no doubt. And we have them.

And so you go to that school and then you go to SEAL Team 4 and now you're the command master chief, which for anybody that doesn't know what that is at a SEAL team, that's basically God. Like when you're a young SEAL and that command master chief, that's the senior enlisted guy.

He's the guy that has all the clout, has all the experience. And he's the senior advisor to the commanding officer. And he's really driving the enlisted troops. He's making sure that the right enlisted guys are platoon chiefs. He's making sure the right enlisted guys are leading petty officers. When there's problems, he's the guy that sorts the freaking problems out. He's the guy that's getting the phone call from the police. He's the guy that's getting the phone call from the girlfriends, from the wives, from

He's the guy that's making things happen. And that's got to be pretty heavy weight when you're rolling into that position. It is, you know, because you're selected by the other Master Chiefs at the group level and Warcom, of course, our top, our force Master Chiefs.

So they take that very seriously when they assign a master chief to be a command master chief. That means you have to go to the command master chief COB. COB stands for chief of the boat. So that's the COB. Those guys go to be COBS of submarines, right? So that's where you get to CMC COB. And the COB on a submarine, same thing. Like that dude's a god when you go on a freaking submarine. He's got a lot of experience.

And but, but yeah, as you, as you step into that position and I stepped into it a little bit early because I actually went down range with SEAL Team 4 when they were in Iraq and we were doing that PSD mission. Right. So I was kind of a backup. I was incoming. I was the incoming CMC and they already had a CMC at four, of course. And then all I did on that deployment was I had another master chief with me and an officer who was a force protection officer who

We were going around all of these ministers' houses where they put their heads down, but we had protection on them 24-7. And by ministers, you mean the Iraqis. So this is the time where the SEALs were in charge of protecting the senior political class, the senior political appointees and officials of Iraq at the time. I think we had eight of them. Yes. And...

These guys had to go to bed at night. And so you were at that point when you went over there, you were checking out where they were living and sleeping and getting their areas secured. You know, back earlier on, they tasked that with the State Department. The State Department did a quick assessment and turned around and

kicked it back to the DOD and said, hey, we can't do this mission. We don't have the skill sets. We have armored cars. We got a lot of resources, but we don't have the people that can do this mission. Yeah, I heard that. I don't know if this is true or not, but I also heard they put it out for contract and Blackwater came back and said, oh, it's going to be $12 billion or something like that. Yes.

the, the, uh, state department said, we got a cheaper solution. And someone said, how about the freaking seal thieves? You know, they've been doing so, so much with so little for so long, they can probably figure this shit out. And that's what we did. We fit right in. And I remember the day that, uh, that I went back over, uh, as far as being a master chief of seal team four, we still had that mission. And, uh, we got a, uh, Blackhawk inbound and it was, uh, McChrystal, you know, uh, general with his, uh, Sergeant major, uh, uh,

So he walks up to me and he goes, hey, dog, how you doing? And I go, good, started major. And he goes, tell you guys to lose the sunglasses. And I turn around and look behind me, you know, and here's all the SEAL platoon standing out there and they're all wearing Oakley sunglasses. So I walk over to them first hand and say, all right, guys, lose the glasses. And I had one guy go, why? And I go,

This is not a good time to ask me why. I said, just shit can of glasses right now. So that's when McChrystal came into our little talk area there and briefed us on this. And he said, basically, this is we can't afford to have a one one scratch on any of these eight individuals who have been selected as the cabinet of this new Iraqi government. He says, you guys have the toughest mission in the country.

Just do it. He said, you got it for a reason. He says, take care of these people. I'm going to give you the resources to make it happen. So we had a full platoon of MPs, military police, with up-armored Humvees. We had, you know, they had all the weapons on the top, deterrents.

We also had two of the helicopters were flying Cobras and Apaches. So the Army and the Marine Corps would rotate week to week on who was covering us when we moved, especially with the president because the president at the time, he lived outside of the green zone down by the Tigris River. So we'd have to take him through a gauntlet. We ended up cutting trees down.

down that lane, we got a lot of pushback on that, of course, environmentally speaking, right? But the trees were bad, right, for us. I mean, we had to drive too close to them. They're in the middle of the median. So we took those things down so we didn't have, you know, a person up in a tree with an RPG or whatever he wants to take up with him. So that mission was so, so stressful because every three days I would go into the platoons and say, hey, I want three of your guys to come out.

So I'd bring three of them out and I'd rotate it, right? Every three or four days, I'd pull three out, bring them back to... Just to let them breathe? Let them have a beer. Yeah.

and get some sleep and get out a kit right because they're wearing kit every day you know so get out your kit get in pt gear have a beer relax and then they'd relax for about 48 hours then i'd bring them back in and bring them back out so i was mainly just dealing with that right just trying to keep the morale up because it was such a taxing you think about it you know you you got to wake these guys up and you got to put them to bed yeah

Yeah, and plus you're on defense, which being on defense sucks. Yeah, it does. A frogman wants to be on offense, wants to go out and do the killing, not the waiting to get killed, which is what that job was. That's right. And for them, they got to be right once, right? Yep. We have to be right 100% of the time, which is stressful, right? I mean, it wears you out. And it was amazing.

Looking back that none of those Iraqi officials got killed. Because they got killed before we took over. Several of them were killed. Everybody wanted to kill them. The Sunnis wanted to kill them. The Shia wanted to kill them. They were just like, it was a disaster waiting to happen. And it never happened. Yeah, they had a target on their backs for sure. Did you guys take over for Team 1?

Is that who you guys took over for? It may have been three. Okay, yeah. It could have been team three in there. But, yeah. But the second time I went back for the Master Chief job, we're at BIOP, right? So we're at Baghdad International Airport. And we were doing a lot of anti because the skipper, my skipper, had a lot of connections in the outside organizations who were tracking the influence from Iran and Iraq, right? They would come in with their proxies and create havoc. Yep.

and then jump back across. So we were trying to mitigate that. And that was kind of a – it was a crazy thing that we were doing. But lots of – it's intel-driven heavy. So I would stay down at the camp, you know, back where the SEAL team was at. And then the skipper had to go up north and run that Iranian influence thing. What year was that? That was probably –

2005, 2006. That was my tour for being a command master. I was there from 05 to 07. Okay. So that was right in that window. You guys, I'm trying to think of, because I was in 03 and 04. I was in Baghdad. And then in 06, I was in Ramadi. And I'm just trying to think of when you guys rotated through. Because we were there with 10. When we were in Ramadi, we were with 10. When I was at Team 7, there was no one else there. Yeah. And eventually...

the East Coast guys started rolling in. But what was, when you're the match, if any, you know, you got, you got,

You're handling the operational side. What about just when guys do dumb shit? What's that look like? Well, I got a good dumb shit story. Before I was actually in the command master chief job at SEAL Team 4, I was over early. I was doing half of the deployment, and then I would come back and take SEAL Team 4, and I'd have to rebuild the manning of the platoons. But as I was at Baghdad over in Iraq, we had some young SEALs.

that were living in a house that was outside the green zone, which means it's not really all that protected, right? They had some issues where they took a suburban, a white suburban, out for a joyride, and they blew through an Army checkpoint, and they got lit up. So that's not good, right? That's blue on blue, basically. But the question was, why was one of our vehicles being driven outside of the green zone and was contacted? Right.

it doesn't make any sense, right? So I got assigned to be the investigator along, had an officer with me, and I believe we had that force protection officer that was with us too, so there's three of us. We drove out to the house, and before we got to the house, we stopped at the gate where we had Tennessee National Guard guys protecting that green zone gate that was an in and out for that one cabinet member's house.

And I stopped and I got out of the vehicle and I looked at these Tennessee National Guards. I go, hey, guys, did anything weird happen last night between 12 and 3 o'clock in the morning? And they went, yes, Master Chief. We had a white suburban come through here last night, but it looked like it had been contacted. It was shot, had some bullet holes in the back of the vehicle.

And this was an armored, you know, suburban. So we drive through the gate. We go down to the house, and I get all three of these young SEALs. I think it was two from SEAL Team's west coast, and then one of our guys, SEAL Team poor guy, was there.

And I noticed we were walking around in the house just kind of observing, right, and see what kind of lifestyle they're living. And went over to the trash can and looked down, and we had Red Bull cans all over the place and vodka bottles. So I'm thinking, I guess this new generation likes to drink Red Bull with vodka. So that looked like what was going on. And when I sat them down, I said, okay, guys, this is your one chance to tell the truth.

I want to know, was this vehicle that's sitting outside right now with bullet holes in it, was you guys driving outside the green zone last night and was contacted by anybody? So what happened? And they're like, well, I don't think we heard some shots last night. Maybe somebody shot our vehicle. I go, so somebody shot your vehicle as it parked outside.

That's what I'm hearing. So they stuck with their guns. They stuck with their story. And I went, okay, guys, I'm getting ready to leave, and I want you to make sure that you understand this is your one chance to tell the truth. And they all kind of shook their head. Yes, Master Chief. Yes, Master Chief. I said, okay, have a good day. So I was already building a story, right, and it didn't look like it was lit up by a local somebody out there shooting, you know, celebrating a wedding. So I go back. I'm driving back through the gate, and I get a phone call. They go, hey, Master Chief.

We want, you need to come back. We want to tell you something. We want a second chance. We want a second chance. Can you give us one chance? Can we get one more? Can we do a rerun? So I go back to the house and I walk in and we, we, we sat there with them and I go, okay, so what's the story? And they go, we were, we were driving last night. We're a little antsy.

We're getting bored. And I'm like, no, this is not sounding good. And we went out and drove. And we went down this one road called Michigan Road. And we turned left. And we went back through a gate. And we didn't know it was a gate. We had some Army guys jump up. And they shot at the vehicle. And we kept going. So I said, you didn't try to de-complicate as you pulled up on these people that were basically guarding the gate. No, Master Chief, we didn't do that.

So, of course, we wrap up the investigation, and sure enough, they did that. And we're thinking, man, that was stupid. So we ended up doing a DRB in Iraq, right? So a DRB is a Disciplinary Review Board, right? Mm-hmm.

So I was in charge of the board, and we had a guy, SEAL Team 5 CMC was on the phone with me, and we basically said, you guys are done, right? You can't operate like this. You're lucky to be alive. This is blue on blue, right? This is unsat. So we process our SEAL Team 4 guy. We process him out and get him out of country as soon as we can within the next 24 hours.

He goes back to Virginia Beach. He had temporary orders over to a ship that was sitting in Norfolk. It was a LPD out ship, right? And I don't like doing that. Yeah, but no, but I mean, dude, you can't look. Yeah. So we pushed him over to this ship. And I don't, you know, I mean, you talked about earlier, Jocko, I don't like passing trash.

Usually if somebody messes up and if I have to get medieval with them and pull their trident off their chest, I'm ad-sepping them, right? I'm administratively separating you from the Navy. We can do that very quickly. What happens, I'll pull your trident off. The admin shop basically does the paperwork to shut down all your special pays. So basically that's a shot to the heart, right? Career ender. And you're out of the community, right? You're out of the Navy SEALs. So this guy went over to the ship.

I finished out my three or four months with the SEAL Team 4 that was downrange. I come back to take my duties as a command master chief, and I'm sitting at my desk. I think it was a Friday. I get a phone call, and it's the master chief on the ship. And he called me, and he said, Master Chief, I've got one of your boys over here. He's done great things for me. He went on for about two minutes telling me how good this person was doing.

And how squared away he was. He was teaching force protection on the ship, teaching them small arms, shotguns, all of this stuff. And I go, well, that's good to hear. You know, I said, let me come over and have a cup of coffee with you and we can talk through this. So I get over there to the ship and I'm sitting down at the mess deck. We go in the chief's mess and we were having lunch. And right as we were finishing up with lunch, he says, I'm bringing Jared down. And I go, yeah, please do. I'd like to see him.

So Jared comes down, you know, and he's got his dungarees on and you know how, you know, you know how that, how bad that is. Did he have his trident or no? Did you pull his trident? No, you know what? He didn't have his trident on. So he, he stood there and he, he said, Hey, you know, master chief, uh, it's good to see you. I'm very sorry, you know, for what happened. Um,

I just wish I could redo it and blah, blah, blah. So I just kind of thought and looked at, I was looking at him up and down, right? He had nice, nice looking, clean press uniform on, conducted himself really well, spoke really well of what he's done to help the ship, you know, the sailors on the ship, you know, with their training and stuff for force protection. And I go, okay. I looked at the master chief and I go, I really appreciate you giving me a phone call.

And that's part of being a master chief, right? We have to make decisions. Sometimes they're not good outcomes, but sometimes you've got to see somebody and look them in the eyes and understand where they're at in their life. So I decided when I got back, I told Jared I'd go stand by. And the reason I told him to stand by was because the master chief had shared with me that he was getting ready to detail the boat. So when he says detail the boat, that means everybody on that vessel has

What's going bye-bye. And when they do that, they're getting detailed to the knees of the Navy. So my – The big Navy don't care about young – They ain't got none for you. They're going to send you to whatever billet they need you to fill. It doesn't matter whether it's in Japan or Italy. It doesn't matter, right? So –

So I understood the gravity of that. So I went back to SEAL Team 4. I got on the phone with their detailer. I go, look, I need this individual detailed back to 4 ASAP. So when you say ASAP and I'm talking to the guy that's got his fingers on a computer, they make it happen, right? So I said, he belongs to me now. So bring him to SEAL Team 4 as soon as you can. So detailer did their jobs. I had him back the next week. I had him in my office. I said, hey, this is the reason I made this decision. I said, now...

I really feel that you've learned your lesson. So go be a good seal. And I said, my door's always open to you. Right. So that's awesome. Go be a good seal. What would you pull a guy's bird for? Uh, the, the, when we pull a bird, uh, the guy was either, um, mixing it up with law, you know, police officers or had a domestic dispute where he punched his wife. And, uh,

actually shot himself in the hand with his pistol, said he was having a dream. He was back in Vietnam. And I'm like, well, you're not old enough to be back in Vietnam. But I can tell you one thing. You're stupid. You're dumb, right? So what I'm going to do for you is we don't need you. This is a $1.5 million asset that I'm getting ready to pull his bird right close. When you pull his bird, you're done.

Right? Administratively, we take it. You're done. I'm sorry. It hurts. You know, it hurts. But guess what? You did it. Sometimes I give them three chances. Yeah, but once you punch your wife and shoot yourself in the hand and talk about mom when you're 24 years old, you need to shoot that. Well, and, you know, you feel for them too, right? Because you don't want to totally derail this person, right? Because, you know, it's bad. Always...

have the analogy when you have to clean somebody up, right? Like if they've had something bad in their lives or their relationships with their, you know, being married goes sideways. It's hard work, right? Because you're dealing with people and you're dealing with things that you don't really see, right? You don't know what's going on behind the curtain.

It's like a train. When a train runs off the railroad tracks, it takes a lot of work to get those trains back on that railroad track, right? Same when people do. When people run through the briar patches, that's the way I refer to them. When people have squirrels in their sea bags, right? You're supposed to be squared away, right?

We were taught in boot camp how to fold our underwear or skivvies in your t-shirts. But sometimes I open up a sea bag and I got a damn squirrel in there, right? You got a squirrel in a sea bag because this guy is such a shit show. Yeah. So, and that happens in the military and it happens in civilian life as well. And it's weird too, because, you know, people, people, uh,

think about seals and they think, they've gone through all this training and they've been weeded out. And, you know, this person, they got it, you know, they've been academically tested and physically tested. And they've been through some kind of psyche eval. And they think that that's because a guy's a seal, like he's good to go. And,

No. No. Never mind squirrels. They might have raccoons and freaking bobcats in that sea bag sometimes. It's freaking disaster.com. Oh, it is. It is. And you just have to clean it up, right? You've got to clean it up because we're all responsible. And I remember when I took that job at SEAL Team 4, I had them all in the classroom. We had all of our new guys in from BUDS. We had everybody in the classroom. I told them, I go, look, I said, I want you to look yourself in the mirror and

Because be accountable for your individual actions. Because if you're not, that's when I get involved. Right.

So be responsible for your individual actions when you make decisions. And I go, when I say this, I'm looking at you and I'm looking in the mirror to myself. I said, I can go out and get a DUI with the best of them, but I'm choosing not to do that because as soon as I do that, my command master chief job is gone, right? You're done, right? So there's decisions that you can skirt around and be okay, but there's some decisions that when you make those bad decisions –

Your career is stopped. Yeah. I know when I was in leadership positions, you know, sometimes I'd say, hey, listen, you guys know, like, I'll take care of you guys. If in these events over here, you give me some something. I don't mind being the senior guy with a secret. I don't mean saying, oh, yep, yep. You did that was stupid. You know, here's here's here's your little punishment I'm going to give you. You're going to stand extra watch out at Nylander. You're going to I got that.

I go, you do some of these things over here, there's nothing I can do for you. Doesn't matter whether I like you or not, doesn't matter whether you're my number one guy, if you do some of these things over here, there's nothing I can do for you. And I'm not gonna do anything for you. And I think it was very important that people understood what, hey, I got your back. Doggy, I got your back. You work for me, if I'm the skipper and you work for me, I got your back.

If you make a mistake, I got your back. You do something, you know, okay, that wasn't the best move, I got your back. Now, if you do something that is like illegal or immoral or unethical, there's nothing I can, dog ain't got nothing for you. Dog ain't got nothing for you. That's right. There's nothing I can do for you. And I remember I had a guy who, I'll abbreviate the story, but he got into a fight and left his wallet at the scene.

and came to me with his chief and said, hey boss, here's what's going on. Guy got in a fight in a public place and left his wallet at the scene. And I said, all right, well, here's what we're gonna do. And I had my master chief in the room with me. I said, here's what we're gonna do. I said, if you're lucky and no one pulls up this wallet, no one pulls up security cam and comes back and says, oh, we have this guy who did it. If we don't hear about this again,

No factor. I said, if the police are knocking on my door, coming looking for you, we never had this conversation. Isn't that right, Master Chief? My Master Chief said, roger that, sir.

And so I didn't mind saying, "Hey, look, you made a mistake." But it wasn't like some grievous thing got into a little scrap outside of whatever bar, like, okay. But he knew, and also him and his chief knew, oh, this could come back because idiot dropped his wallet. So they gave me the heads up of saying, "Hey, look boss, this may come at you."

Now, if it had been something like, oh, you got arrested, cool. I already know what's gonna happen. I'm calling the Commodore. Hey, there's not, that's coming back 100%. And I'm not gonna let my boss get blindsided by this crap. So you gotta make sure, and I think that's another important thing when I talk to the younger guys today,

You got to have the damn courage. If people are doing dumb shit, they say, we shouldn't be doing this dumb shit. Stop what you're doing. I'm not going to do that. You shouldn't do it. We shouldn't be doing this. You have to have that kind of courage to do that. Because otherwise, what you get is you get a little mob mentality, right? Like, oh, we're doing some dumb shit. Like, okay, hey, I'm a new guy. My LPO is doing something that I know is stupid, but

But I'm not gonna say anything cuz I'm just you know I lack the courage and I look back at my own career where I had that happen to me You know, I was telling you earlier. I was in a situation. I was a new guy when in our platoon and One of the guys was gonna drink what was gonna drive drunk and I hadn't drank at all And I said hey, you know boss like it wasn't my but wasn't officer, but it was like a senior guy said hey, dude I can drive you know, I'm having been drinking all he's like no I'm driving and instead of me

Having the courage to go hey negative like give me the keys instead I was new guys like Roger that and here I am letting a guy drive drunk with me in the vehicle this total a total idiot like a total idiot never should have done that and

But I did. And that's the kind of thing I look back and it was just being a new guy, not having the courage to stand up and say, "Hey dude, no you can't drive. "You've been drinking for eight hours. "You're drunk by any measure. "Give me the keys, I'm gonna drive." And instead I was more, "Well, don't wanna make a ruckus here. "I'm a new guy, get in line, "'cause that's what you get told. "Yeah, you're a new guy, keep your mouth shut, okay." And that's what I did. And so little situations like that,

If when you're in a in a subordinate position, you still got to have the courage to go. Hey, no, this is stupid. We're not doing it. And what was interesting is even as I became more senior, like there was there was issues that would come up where I know that me saying something was I was the only person that was going to say something, you know, like I was the only person that would be able to say, hey, we're not doing that thing right there. Stop. If anyone else, you know, because it's because I was the boss.

And not only the boss, but I was like a prior enlisted guy and I trained jiu-jitsu. And I was like, I won't choke your ass. I'll wrap your ass up. Yeah, exactly. And so that does make an impact. And so, yeah, when you get with your, that just makes me think when you take over as the command master chief and you're like, hey, you better be doing the right things.

And if you're not, there's going to be hell to pay. And that's all there is to it. And listen, you make a mistake. Cool. I got you. You do some dumb shit, illegal, immoral, unethical.

I ain't got nothing for you. I'm not going to be able to help you, and I don't want to help you. So good leadership lessons there. And, you know, I think whether you're in a SEAL team or whether you're Tier 1 or regular SEAL team or in a business environment, there's times when we have to set back our course, right, our course of direction, which is a professional course, right? So I refer to that as snapping a blue line.

The old carpenters used that, right? Snap the blue line. So I said, it's time to snap the damn blue line, right? And I'll also refer to the Coast Guard. And the Coast Guard rules of the road, right? You take that test, rules of the road. You have to know the buoys. You have to know everything out there at sea that you navigate off of. And you have to make an 80-some point. You miss like one or two questions, you fail the test. So that's how much you need to know that, right? So the Coast Guard says when entering a harbor –

You shall. Instead of may, right, you shall pass port to port, right? Port to port. Port and starboard, right? Port to port. So when I have a situation going on in a SEAL team, I look at my XO or my skipper and go, it's time to snap the damn blue line. Mm-hmm.

And they just look at me and go, oh, yeah, I'm with you. Because it is time to snap the blue line. And let's make it clear, guys. You cross this freaking line right here and your ass is mine, right? Or you shall.

Be responsible for your individual actions. You shall. This is Coast Guard. I'm going Coast Guard rules on your ass, right? Because that's what keeps people safe, right? That's what keeps people in the deal. Yeah, get rid of the gray zone. I remember I got a story for you, and this was a good one. Setting in a jump master brief, right? You set in these jump master briefs, and this was a double stack boat drop in Guam. I think you may have been on that.

So this is a twilight drop, right? It's almost dark. You know, we try to get out of the bird before it's totally black. You know, we've got a little bit of sun simmering on the horizon, a little bit of visibility. And this night was a double stack boat drop. We had two of them, right? So we had two C-130s, you know, drops. Or we may have had both boats, you know, both boats rigged up inside the 130s. So it's a platoon drop, right, with four boats. But I remember sitting in a jump brief.

And they were talking about if you, you know, unlucky encounter, if you go face-to-face with a paratrooper, both of you turn right, right? And that way you miss each other, right? And then another one was if you find yourself entangled in a parachute, if a jumper comes right at you and goes below you but your feet hit the parachute, you bicycle kick across that parachute. Yeah.

And I remember listening to that and I go, that shit ain't happening. That don't happen. Well, guess what? That night dropped. I left that aircraft and I got about, you know, because we're following the duck. We got chemlights on top of our boats and the parachutes are all up, you know, the G11s or whatever we had on there.

And no shit. I look up and all I saw, the sky was night, a little bit of sun, you know, the daylight or light was coming from the stars. And I saw a canopy. I mean, it was right, I mean, right at my freaking face. And I'm going, what?

Oh, shit. Here comes this jump master brief. I've got a canopy on my freaking face. And I start bicycle kicking. And I know shit. I walk all the way across this parachute. I went across the apex. And I couldn't believe it. I saw the apex on my feet. And I go, holy shit, I'm actually running across a parachute. And I got to the other side and boom, my parachute inflated. And we hit the deck and hit the water. And we went over and we're de-rigging a boat. And I go, boy. Yeah.

Was that something? So you just never know, right? You never know. So that's why you have to pay attention. Yeah. Follow those basic rules, man. I know. That's that blue line, right? There are certain things that, you know, you got to pay attention to and you got to be able to react when something happens, you know, when something goes sideways. Yeah. And when you, so you get out on that deployment journey.

Now you're the command master chief SEAL team four. And did you guys do – was it PSD for that whole deployment? No, this was more of a regular operational deal where we were running missions to try to find these bomb makers. Oh, that's right. You guys started doing the counter-Iranian operations. And then the counter-Iranian thing was a little more high speed, right, because they had tier one units were taking care of some of that, right, because it was so –

And back where I was at with the SEAL team platoons that was at Baghdad International Airport, we were pretty much executing most of the bombers, right? The people that were building the bombs, the IEDs. Did you guys have an Iraqi partner force at the time? Yes. Okay. Yes. And that was comical too, trying to teach those guys how to shoot.

And they were, it was unbelievable. It was like teaching third graders how to shoot, right? As soon as you thought they could hit something, they were stealing bullets. And I'm like going, why are you stealing bullets? They said, well, we can sell them.

Don't do that. Right? You can't do that. Did you guys have the Iraqi force that had like M4s and U.S. weapons? Or did you guys have, were it straight just Iraqi jundies with AK-47s? You know what? I think they just had the AK-47s, which are dangerous. Yeah, yeah. Right? Some of them were China, built in China, and they were pieces of...

And they're just rusted like sites. Just, they're not going to hit anything. No, no, but that's a, that's a powerful round though. As you know, right. That's seven, six, two by what was it? 69 or 39, 39. Yeah. And, and how was the, the op tempo was good for those guys that were out there getting after it. It was, it was, um, they stayed fairly busy. Um,

You know, I was having to try to keep the Seabees alive because the SEALs wanted to kick them off the island, right? And I had a meeting with them, and I'm like, what are you talking about? They go, those guys don't do their job, Master Chief. You know, we go out on these operations at night, and we come back, and I go, do you do a post-op of your vehicle before you turn it over to the two Seabees that are here working through the night to try to –

Whether it's a half shaft that's broke. You know, this is freaking serious work, right? And these two CBs were freaking putting out. Why do I know that? Because I stay up. When these SEALs are finished with their mission, they clean their gear first, right? It's always team gear, personal gear, and then you finally get to take a shower and go to bed. So they're in the bed. These two CBs are cranking in this little, you know, shanty garage they've built. And they're replacing half shafts.

I mean, this is a major operation, right? So they didn't know that. So when I'm in the tent talking to them, the senior chief got them pumped up, right? And I was into his backside, too, because I go, don't ever get your platoon fired up. And I said, this is horse shit.

I said, you should be focused on operating. And your guys, when they finish a mission, should come in and turn over a good post-op to these CBs so they know what's going on with their vehicles. And, you know, that's part of it, right? That's part of the responsibility of being in mobility. You know, when you use these vehicles to go hit targets, you know, you're not in a helicopter. You're in a freaking Humvee. So I just had to tell the senior chiefs, look, you're making my job difficult. So when you make my job difficult –

I'm going to put some pressure on you being a leader, right? Because I don't need to hear this shit, right? You're telling me that I need to fire the two Seabees that are with us? What do you want me to do? Me pour some water in a bowl and generate two more? I said, because they don't have anybody to send. You know, the battalion or, you know, back at Logsue, I called them. They go, Mayor Chief, I don't have anybody. And by the way, the two guys we had were doing great.

it was just the seals getting on a you know little tantrum and i told them to shut the hell up i go the next time you bring this to me i said i'm gonna have all of you in the garage

You're going to be fixing your own shit. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, my CBs, dude, we had, I think we had 17 generators. Just generators. Something like 22 air conditioners, 30-something plus vehicles. And I had six CBs. You know what I mean? These guys were working. Oh, they're badasses. The maintenance schedule alone.

You can't do it. They have to work 24 hours a day. They were just busting their ass the whole time. And my guys knew it. I mean, it's just like, you rely on them.

Those vehicles are a life-saving piece of equipment. That thing goes down in the street, you're screwed. So those CBs were freaking awesome. I'm glad you took care of your CBs. Yes. I'll tell you what, man. CBs, I've always took care of them because they just work. They do work. They come in, they build our fobs. They build anything. They fix anything. Like you said, whether it's a generator or a Humvee or whatever. Yeah, they get it done. They're badasses.

As you get done with that SEAL Team 4, what's next for you? What was next? I get moved over to LOGSU. So that's when I really had a liking to the Seabees because I had a lot of Seabees working for me. LOGSU is a logistical command that supports the SEAL Teams.

And I got to work with sailors, right? Regular sailors. And it really brings out the Master Chief training that I got when I was up at Academy. Because, you know, you have to – and we had some issues with those guys too, right? We had this one CB. He hadn't been coming to work.

So I had the master chief come over, the master chief CB that we had, you know, running the shop over there at the mechanic shop, comes over and sits down with me and said, master chief, I want to kick this guy out of the Navy. I go, what, what, what you got? He goes, well, he's not coming to work.

his uniform looks like he slept in it blah blah blah just just rent down a whole list and i go let's bring him in let's do a drb let's find out where his headspace is right because that's what you need to know right and i wasn't trying to step on the master the master chief cb is you know he's very capable master chief so i knew if he's got an issue there's there's there's problems there right so he brings him over we get in the conference room

We had the front table set up and there was about seven of us. So I was the master chief that was chairing this. I had the CB master chief sitting right beside me, had a senior chief CB right here on this side of me, had another chief pair rigger from the pair shop, and had another chief down here that was with me. And I was the only SEAL. I was the only SEAL on the panel.

So the Master at Arms at the time, who is the Popo police of the military, escorts this guy in. So when Master at Arms escorted him in, I was kind of – Yeah, that's a – You know, I kind of sat back in my chair like going, what we got here? That's an indicator. You know, is this a – what we got going on here, you know, if he has to have an escort by Master at Arms? So he sits down in his seat.

And all of a sudden, the senior chief beside me, they started going off. They said, you know, you look like you slept in uniform. You look like you haven't shaved. Your freaking uniform's a mess. He's wearing Cracker Jacks, you know, the old white sailor uniform. But it looked like it was almost beige. It wasn't white. So I'm looking at him, and I start, you know, after they've been firing off some salvos on him, you know, calling him a dirtbag and all this stuff.

And I kind of like said, okay, okay. I said, let's stop this a second. I said, I need a cup of coffee. And I told him, I said, Master Arms, I said, take the sailor, you know, to my office. And I go, stand by. I said, just take him to my office and stand by. So he gets him up, parades him. You know, he's walking right beside him like he's a prisoner. Takes him to my office, and I'm sitting there with the panel, and I told the guys, I go, guys, I appreciate your motivations. You know, I appreciate you.

I said, but we're being really hard on this individual. And I said, what I want to know is what's he got going on? What's going on behind the uniform speaking? So I told these guys, I said, hey, just take the day off. This thing's done. I said, this guy's got problems that probably go a little bit far than we sit here and chew his ass all day long, but he ain't going to make a bit of a difference. He didn't have one problem.

on his face the whole time we were going at it, right? These guys were basically attacking his integrity and his uniform and him not being at work. You know, he's got problems. So I get in the office and I'm sitting there and the master arms are there. I said, you can leave. I said, just be outside. I said, you know, I want you to escort him back over to the CB, the garage area, right, when we're done. But I started, I said, hey, I said, talk to me, man.

I said, talk to me. I said, you've got some shit going on. You've got squirrels in your sea bags or raccoons or something in the bag. I need to know what I'm dealing with here. And he started, he had a couple tears, started crying. And I said, calm down. I go, I said, everything okay at home? You know, he said, yeah, everything's okay. He said, my marriage is not going all that well. And he said, I've got five cars. And when he said he's got five cars, I go, why do you have five cars?

He goes, well, I like them. I like cars. He said, I rebuild them. So he said, I'm kind of in debt with the cars and the people at work. He says, I'm not getting any sleep. You know, we're having some issues with our youngest kid. And it just went on and on and on, right, as far as he's got problems at home. He's got financial issues because he has five cars. And, you know, you can't support five vehicles, right? I mean, I know how expensive vehicles are.

paying insurance and all that so i said uh what can we do to help you and i said you know you know i said your uniform i said you want me to i said i can i can get those uniform cleaned up for you i said what so what how can we help you and he he just said you know i i need some help financially i need to consolidate these vehicles i need to be a better dad i need to be a better you know husband you know i need this i need that so i'm like okay we're gonna we're gonna do that we're gonna take care of that i said uh

I want you to go back over to your garage and talk to the master chief. And I want you to take a couple days off because, you know, we're not fighting. We don't have people shooting at us back at the beach, right? And I go, take a couple days off. And I go, let me find somebody that can help you with the vehicles. And I've got some resources, Navy resources here on base that we can help you with, your finances. We'll get you a financial advisor, right?

and try to get you get this squared away because right now you just can't you can't deal with these vehicles and i don't know what kind of problems you're having with your wife and all but we've got people that can help you with that so basically give him a couple days off um and then i told him i said next week i want you to come back in for the drb but i want you to understand the gravity of this i said you need to be squared away i said you need to have the right command rocker on your uniform your uniform needs to be cleaned like in dry cleaned

your your shoes need to have a some kiwi you know polish on them give us some effort and let me see that you're doing what you're going to do and i said i'll give you everything we have we'll we'll throw resources at you and we'll get this cleaned up that takes work right so i talked with the master chief cb who was a great guy i still run into him day you know sometimes back at the b he's a great guy and i told him i said it's going to be hard work but this is going to be a little little project a little pet project to see if we can

Get this train out of the woods, out of the briar patches, and get it back on the railroad tracks and see if we can save this sailor. I said, we may not be able to, but I said a big part of this is going to be how he presents himself next week. If he comes in and he looks good, I said, I don't want to turn into a shouting. I just want him to open up to us and tell him what he needs so we can set some resources up to help him out. So he came back in that next Monday.

Totally different. Dialed in, squared away? Dialed in. Dialed in. I think he even bought a new set of Cracker Jacks. Had the right rocker sawn on. His ribbons were a quarter inch. You know, I know all that shit about uniforms, right? So I just looked at him, had a brand new T-shirt on, had a brand new white hat. I mean, shoes had Kiwi. Effort was made, right, to bring a different presence.

So we sat there, and instead of yelling at him, we listened to his story. And he taught us something, right? We don't know what's going on with our employees or our sailors or our Marines or Army soldiers and all of this, right? But it takes leadership if you do it right. It's a little work, you know, other than chewing somebody's ass out and kicking them out to the curb and say, you know, you messed up. Go square your shit away and then never engage again.

So we engaged with him on that second time that he came in. He looked a lot better. And then we continued to follow up with the finances, dealing with the vehicles and stuff. So I think we have a success there. Hopefully that guy figured out what auto trader was. Well, he needed it. Started dumping some of those vehicles. You know what I'm saying? I mean, he had all muscle cars. These cars were $20,000 to $50,000. One of them, I think he said he paid $100,000 for. I'm thinking, damn, how are you paying $100,000 for a Chevelle? Yeah, E5. Yeah, 100%.

He wasn't paying $150,000. He was running up credit cards. He was. Getting in fights with his old lady for sure. He was. That's chaos. But that was a success story. Yeah, it's always what's this other person got going on? What's going on in their world that's making them do this? And that's why it's important you got to know your people too so that you can go, oh, there's something going on. Hopefully you can pick it up.

on the second or third car and not the fifth you know once it's in the fifth car zone you're like you're done yeah we got issues you're done so so you you didn't you end up you did some time as an ops master chief at uh at group yeah well i when i left um log sue i got a phone call from the force master chief and he goes dog i need you to go to sock south

Okay. So when he sat down – Was that in Florida? Well, that's what I said, right? I said, where's that at? He goes, Homestead, Florida, which is right on top of the Keys, right? Homestead is right below – Homestead is called HAARP, right? It's Homestead Air Reserve Base. But TSOC sits there, right? So what a TSOC is is a Theater Special Operations Command who is run by a one-star. This was Hector Pagan, one-star general, Army Triple Taver, right? Special Forces guy. Right.

So he was the commanding officer or general. And then we had – it's a joint command, right? So you have Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps. And we had some Coast Guard people that we were helping train with them down in Miami area for VVSS.

But I went down screaming and kicking, right? I'm like, force majeure, she said, this is not a, you know, this is orders, right? Orders are orders, they're not imitations. So I took them. Within two weeks, I was down in home. Did you move the family down there too? This was a geo batch. So Lisa stepped up to the plate once again and said, I got this. I got the home, you know, the compound. You go do what you have, you know, you need to do.

So I went down there screaming and, you know, this sucks, you know, blah, blah, blah. I just got back. So I go down. I meet a group of sergeant majors. First time I've ever really worked that close with special forces guys, squared away guys. We had three or four different SEAL officers down there working in the J-3 shop. I was the J-3 master chief, which is a very important job, right? We haven't filled that job within probably 10 to 20 years.

So when I got to a call from the force of marriage, he said, we got to get senior enlisted people like yourself outside of NSW, Navy Special Warfare, and go down and do these TSOC jobs because I need people sitting in those seats to help me understand how we can deploy our SEALs better. Right? And the special forces guys. That's a good call. So-

What the TSOC does is basically we in-brief all of the teams that are going south and South Com, right, into the South Com theater, whether it's Panama, Columbia, Chile, Honduras, any of those places down south. And so we had SEAL teams roll through, and we would brief them.

These are your rules of the road as far as what you shall do and what you shouldn't do. And then when they go do their deployment, whether it's a 30-day deployment or a two-week deployment, they come back to the TSOC at Homestead and debrief us, give us actions, after actions. So we build these folders up so we understand who we're training down there. Is it the Panamanians? What is that? Is that security around the...

the Panama Canal or, you know, what are we dealing with? The same with Bogota. You know, Bogota, you have all the drugs and all that stuff to be concerned about and, you know, kind of stabilizing their government and working with their military personnel. The same with Chile, Argentina. But it was really a good job for me because I would set, every Friday would have a call with the generals, three, four stars at SOCOMP.

SOCOM would talk directly to us since we're a TSOC. You know, we're down here doing special operations in the southern, what is it, operational? Theater. Theater, right. So it was very educational at the high level, right, Clay? I'm sitting right there with a one-star general. And I remember we were at a meeting and we had a three-star general, Keene, was talking, another Army triple-tabber, Special Forces General.

He said, hey, Master Chief, good to see you. Good to see Colonel. You know, I work for Fulberg Colonel. He was a J3. I was a J3, you know, Master Chief. He goes, why are you two guys sitting here? And I, you know, we're always sitting there, right? So I look at the screen at the end of the table and I'm looking at General Keene. And I look over at Colonel and I go, you want to answer that or should I answer that? And he goes, no.

He says, you got this, dog. So I look at the screen and I tell the general, I go, general, we're always here at this meeting for situational awareness. And he goes, no, no, no. He says, that's not what I'm talking about. He said, I just sent a C-130 down to pick you and Colonel up. You're going to Haiti. This was after the earthquake in 2010. Damn, okay. So I'm just looking at Colonel like going,

and i look over at the one star sitting at the table with us and i didn't know we were going to haiti and he goes i didn't either so here he said you guys can leave you know general king said you guys can leave go pack your stuff i want you on the ground within 24 hours we're going to bring in assets he says we already got a hospital ship down there

The country just suffered a huge earthquake. We got tons of bodies all over the place. How many Richter was that earthquake? Do you remember? It was seven. I think it was a 7-3 initial, right? Because you had the 7-3, then the follow-on aftershocks. So here we go. We're loading a C-130. We already had one SEAL officer in the field down there.

So we fly down into 130, and it was a complete shit show, right? We show up on the tarmac. We got the air traffic control was down. We got a CCT Air Force guy calling air traffic control down there. You got Jimmy Buffett on his seaplane. You got Bill Clinton landed in a 757.

So we got all of this shit going on. Everybody's bending over backwards. What did Jimmy Buffett come down there for? Just help. He just wants to hand out some t-shirts and some flip flops. Some hamburgers at Paradise.

So we're down there, and we're seeing this shit show at the airport. So we get out of the airport. We go up to link up with our SEAL who had set a flag in the ground for us at a Christian school. A bunch of missionaries up there, and they had doctors from around the world, right? The docs that travel all over the world. They were in. They had all these medications. They had these tents.

So here comes the Seabees again, right? So the Seabees came down from Virginia Beach, and they built these temper tents because they had to have the medication and the temp-controlled environment, right? Because it was hot. Even in January, it was hot down in Haiti. Right.

So we were looking around. They had, you know, like I said, they pretty much cleaned up most of the bodies that were crushed. You know, these parking decks were like, you know, 10 stories high. They were just pancaked. Damn. Right. So the stuff that you saw was just unbelievable. And the education I took away from that was, and me and Colonel would go to a meeting every day in this big tent with General Keene running the show. And we had USAID officers.

World Food Organization, the World Health Organization. I mean, all these three-letter acronyms, you know, other than, right, the ONGs of the world were all there. And it was just crazy. So we'd go to meetings after meetings after meetings. And our job from a Navy SEAL and Special Forces deal was we had helicopters. We had 53s off of one of the LHAs that was down there.

We were moving food and water and bunks to these field hospitals that they already tried to establish. And it was interesting, right, because we had Sean Penn down there. Sean Penn was running around, and I remember we was getting on a 53 to fly up to one of these hospitals. But you know what? God bless him.

He was working. He had his little entourage with him, but he was working. And I remember one day we were loading up a 53 helicopter to fly up to one of these field hospitals. He was smoking a cigarette. And I walk up to him and I go, hey, Sean. And he looked at me, you know, and I go, you need to shit can that cigarette. I said, you're standing way too close to this. I mean, we're right outside of Rotor Wash, right? And I go, see all that slick shit on the back of that ramp of that 53? Yeah.

He goes, yeah. And I said, that's either hydraulic fluid or fucking go gas or whatever. Right. And, you know, I said, you don't want to smoke anywhere near this thing. So he he put it put it out on the boot. But we were doing that. But but but the the experience you take from a national disaster. Right. I mean, it's just it's crazy. Right. Because I learned so much and we're having a meeting with the world food guy. And I said, hey, I noticed we've been on the deck for about three days.

And he sat down at the table with us, and he came across from Dominican Republic, right, Don Rep. He came over the mountain, come down, and you can see Haiti because they deforested their mountain, right? They don't have any trees. It's mud. It's a freaking shit show. So he comes over. They fly them down, seven-group guys. They land in Don Rep. They had five Humvees. They brought them over to pass, and they came down to link up with us.

And they were going to be a part of the deal where we were looking for displaced people up in the hinterlands of the upper. The epicenter was down at Port-au-Prince, down by the port. And the earthquake, it was devastation. So we go up and we're looking for people who need medical help or medicines. And we're having meetings with all these local mayors that were around these little towns.

And so when the guys showed up, I met them at the gate at midnight one night. And they come in, and they get out, and a major gets out, a major, special forces major guy. He kind of reminded me of you. He's freaking hyped up. He had Copenhagen in, drinking a Red Bull, and he was smoking a cigarette. And I go, can you get anything else going on, man? I said, you got caffeine, you got nicotine going on. I said, dog, I got one question.

And I go, what's that, sir? And he goes, why is a damn special forces and Navy SEAL sitting in freaking Hades? Ain't nobody down here to kill. He said, this is not our mission. And I went, well, I said, it is now. I said, you need to go talk to Colonel Stoltz because, you know, you got to go do that. I said, you know. But he was a hard-hitting dude, and we got the mission done, right? I mean, we stayed down there for about 50-some days before we –

We got relieved, and it was educational, but, man, it was a disaster. Oh, yeah. And then what was after that? Where did you go next? After the TSOC, I did that for about two years, and I got a call from Master Chief at Group 2 at the time, Britt. So Britt said, hey, dog, I need you to come home.

And he said, I'm bringing you home a month early. And I go, I don't have any problem with that. Right. So we were pretty much calm. You know, after we finished the Haiti mission, it really, you know, we were just doing normal debriefing and in-briefing to the guys going down south. So I'm like, okay, I'll come back to group two. So I was a group two master chief. So I did that for two years.

And then after that job, and then that's when they wanted me to come to the West Coast. And I was like, negatory. So I did the senior enlisted job at ATC. Got it. Advanced Training Command. And we moved to command from Little Creek to Fort Story. Oh, yeah. And that was me and John. Oh, awesome. Me and John did that. You know, John was coming off of his deployments and stuff over at Dev Group. And basically, it was our –

you know, that was it for us, right? We're, we're outbound. That was a twilight tour. That was a twilight tour for us. And, uh, but it, it was a great job, you know, back into the training side again, right? So it was good. And so then you retire. What was the, what was your first, what'd you do when you retired? Well, when I retired, I was, um, I made connections with, uh, people from the Navy SEAL Foundation. Um, I met these basically five guys and, and, uh, I call them high, very high, um, uh,

They're just very talented people, and they're very successful. I had a little acronym for them, but it was highly successful individuals. But they were good, right? But they plugged me into some positions. So I got my first job when I got out was I went to work for a security company out of Roswell, Georgia. And we had about 50,000 security officers who would watch. They were in the corporate 500 companies, right? Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola.

Hollywood Squares. We had a 9-11 museum. We had the Empire State Building. So I'd go all over the United States and they hired me as the senior vice president to

run the professionalism, you know, professional training and leadership with the security officers. Got it. So, you know, the difficulty of that is, is, you know, we pay these security officers who watch front doors and lobbies and man the desk at these big businesses about $10 to $15 an hour. So how do you motivate somebody like that to, to increase your retention and,

and decrease your turnover. So that's big money in between those two things, right? So I worked with our training academy, which was in Roswell. We pushed out a lot of courses, active shooter, first aid, just security courses, right? And we built a library up and had some very talented people working down in Roswell at this little academy we had. So what I come up with was I go, look, you know, security officers, they have a uniform. I'm just going to give them a medal.

So I come up with this metal. It's about the size of jump wings that went right over top of their pocket, right? I could put it right on the top of a pocket. Quarter inch? Quarter inch. Quarter inch above the pocket? Quarter inch above the pocket. And we had five stars. You could earn a star, right? You had that little silver plate and it was red, white, and blue. It had security stars on it. And then above that, we put stars. So if you finish your five courses successfully,

initial five courses, which were active shooter, hazardous waste, you know, medical courses, you would get, you'd earn your first star. And then we would just up the ante, we'd have, you know, active shooter number two, a little more in depth about what you do other than run, fight, fight, and hide, right? Or, you know, run, hide, fight.

So we did that, and we'd get it up. So I got to about two stars in that program, and we really saw retention go up, and our turnover rate was going down, which is where you find a margin of money. Did they get anything besides the medal? No.

They've got the medal, but we dialed in. Did you get them a raise or anything like that? We did. Okay. Yeah, once you had the two stars, you got a raise. So there you go. Right? So there you go. That's what it all boiled down to, right? And I would travel all over the country, and I'd do these pinning ceremonies.

So when I would show up, all of them get their blood wings, they would get their blood wings. But, you know, it was working because they would see me on social media out in the field, whether it was Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta or I was in, you know, Sunoco fuel out in Texas or I'm at a star walk of stars out in Hollywood. They would see these ceremonies going on and all these other people, all these other managers of all around the United States was saying, I want dog. We need dog. We need

We need dog to come in and put the pins on my people. So I was doing that, and I was running ragged, man, because I'll tell you, I'd wake up in a hotel, but I didn't know where I was at. I'm like, I have no idea where the heck I'm at. I had to look out the window and go, oh, yeah, this is New York City. But it was a great job. We did meet the goal to doing that. So about three years into that, we got acquired.

But we set the company up for success, right? And we got acquired. We sold to Allied Universal, which is a huge security company. And a part of that was my contract was you either keep the senior vice president's own board or you sever some out. One year. One year pay.

severance, right? So they kept me on board for about eight months and they didn't adopt the Security Stars program because they didn't see the value in it. I really thought it would work, but they just didn't see the value. So they said, hey, you know, dog, we're paying you this amount of money. We can hire three people to do that. You know, we're going to give you your severance. And I went, thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. So I was making, you know,

making good money and then i got that and i got to go home plus my master chief pay right so i you know i don't how doggy was eating good i could have probably bought five cars if i wanted to but i wasn't i'm not i'm not into buying that many cars but um so that happened i'm sitting at home relaxing because i'm the mailbox is full of money right so i don't i don't need to do a

So I get a phone call from one of our captain. I'm sure you know Captain Bam Bam. Captain Bam Bam calls me and goes, dog, I got an opportunity for you down in the Bahamas.

And I go, hmm. I go, what? I said, what? I said, what you got? He goes, well, we have a resort down there. It's a high-end resort. It got hit by a catfibre hurricane. This happened in 2019, September the 1st, 2019. It sat on top of this Abaco's region of the Bahamas for about 36 hours.

About 200 mile an hour of sustained winds, tornadoes raced through. Dee just took pine trees and houses and roofs and just blew it out. It looked like a JDAM hit. Some houses were somewhat intact. Some houses got totally blown up because either these –

Trees flew through or wood from another house broke the windows, and once that happened, it overpressured and just blew up. So they said, hey, we want you to fly down and take a look at it. And if you want, they want to bring you down, and you can run the workforce for the restoration project to rebuild this island. And that's going to take – that's job security, right? Because that's about a two- to three-year dealio, right?

So I went, okay, I'll fly down. So I go down to Fort Lauderdale, meet one of the partners of the company that builds these resorts around the globe, right? It's a beautiful place called Baker's Bay Golf and Ocean Club down in Abaco. So I go down and take a look at it, and it was jacked. I mean, you know, we had debris all over the place. We had houses that were totally blown up, some houses that were okay, but had water damage, a lot of tarps on roofs and all that stuff.

So they brought in a vessel that it was in a barracks. It used to be an old machine shop vessel, right? So that was the barracks. And then we brought in 130 Hispanic workers come from Cabo St. Lucas, Mexico, because we have a property down there. They brought these guys in to expedite the work being done. Sure.

And these guys were like, these were top. I mean, these guys were master carpenters. You know, they can do it all right. They built a house from the ground up. So they brought these guys in, and we worked them. They stayed on this boat, right, this little boat. We had them isolated over there, but they were great people. I'm actually speaking some Spanish, not a whole lot. I was kind of saying, hey, I'm going to take advantage of this, right, and I'm going to try to learn some Spanish. I'm going to talk to these guys and befriend them and help them, you know, because I know they're doing most of the work here.

So we did that. I did that for about two years. We ran into COVID. Boy, that was an interesting time because four of those supervisors on that boat were sick. So I got Jay. Jay was the golf superintendent. He spent a lot of his time in Costa Rica, so he speaks really well Spanish. So he came with me and said, Jay,

Ask this guy, why does he have a fever? How does he feel? And he said, I feel like shit. Well, that guy's probably got COVID, right? So we shook down the whole boat, but we stopped it. We actually had to have a fire line, right? We're saying, okay, these supervisors are up on the front bow up high in their living quarters. We took down all of those rooms. We quarantined those guys in RVs.

and put up yellow tape. I mean, we'd bring them meals every day. But we had to do that, but then we had to go in there and spray all those rooms down and basically sanitize all of those rooms on the forward part of that boat. And then, but we saved that ship. That ship would have lit up. We'd have lost that workforce for a month or two before we could recover and get back, you know, get back to rebuilding the property.

But we pulled through that. I took a, you know, my dad passed away. So I came home to take a knee for about a year. And I got bored. And my wife looked at me and said, you need to do something. So I called back down. Didn't burn any bridges, right? I called back down. I said, we got a great job for you. Come down here and be the logistics guy on our pier. They get all these 40-foot containers, 20-foot containers, flat racks,

palm trees they get they get 20 foot mail vans full of food reefers refrigerators so I went down and learned how to move freight and I had to open the boxes up to inspect them because they were losing money they lost $300,000 for like people taking high-end wines you know

tomahawk steaks just disappearing. I might be disappearing the tomahawk steak. Well, I know. I know. So they put me down there. I went down and I put up a camera. The camera didn't work right. I didn't have any feet. They didn't know that. So I put up a camera. I got some lights on the pier and I was on there every time a boat pulled in. I was on that pier. And I was asking what's in that box? What's in that box? Check this box. And then when a box leaves the pier, I open the box. So as soon as I started that,

The theft shit stopped because they knew that they got somebody paying attention. Don't get the chops, right? Don't get the tomahawks. Leave those tomahawks for me. That's right. Those things were awesome. About that thick, you know the deal. Yeah. All right. So then this bourbon comes into play. Four branches bourbon. How did this whole thing get initiated?

Well, this all started back at Bahamas, right down at Baker's Bay, where I met Rick Franco. Rick's a VMI graduate Marine Corps officer, and then he transitioned over to the CIA, GRS contract world. And now Rick is a head of security for Troubadour Club, which is another one of these –

beautiful resorts that they, you know, Discoveryland Company has them all over the world. But during my time down there, I got to spend, you know, me and Rick both lived in a house that was affected by the hurricane back in September 1 of 2019. So the owner of the home, the member of the club there said, hey, I want security to stay in my house to make sure, you know, that it's,

taken care of and of course you have security people living in your house so you feel pretty safe that nobody's coming in and doing anything to your house. Because dog you'll smoke them. That's right. We'll smoke you from a ways off. But I met Rick. Rick was doing like a 60 day rotation that another person would come in for 60 days and just contractors back and forth.

And during that time, after about two years, Rick came to me after having a conversation with Mike. Mike Trott is the Air Force founder. And Mike is really our managing principal of the business. And he's very hardworking, attention to detail, Mike and his wife Cheryl. And so Rick came to Mike and I and said, hey,

I want to do a barrel of bourbon and pay tribute and honoring our men and women that we've all worked with. And it's in the shadows. Hadn't got the accolades that some some of the people do, the operators and stuff. And I go, that sounds good. And he says, yeah, I want to do a you know, do a barrel, buy a bottle, simple bottle, slap a sticker on it, you know, a label and sell it on Facebook.

So Mike and I were looking at each other and I go, well, Rick, you know, I don't, you know, there's lots of regulations with spirits, you know, brown water. And each state is different. So I said, that's, that's, you can't do that. Right. Probably can't sell it on Facebook. Number one. And number two, it's kind of a half-ass approach of, you know, buy, buy just any bottle. So we kind of put our heads together and said, let's, let's create a brand. So this was when,

It got very interesting, and a lot of homework was done, a lot of being on fire hose. So we reached out. Rick reached out to several distilleries around our country. We got about 300 distilleries that produce bourbon in the United States. So he started calling, and nobody would pick the phone up. So we were thinking, you know, this is kind of tough right off the get-go, right? We're trying to communicate with people, and they're not answering their phones, or they're not getting back to us.

So Rick finally made a phone call, and this person called him back, and this was Barstown Bourbon Company in Barstown, Kentucky. Barstown, Kentucky is considered the capital of bourbon, the creation, you know, where it started. So we took that phone call, and then we made a trip out to Louisville, Kentucky,

Because we were meeting with Saver Glass, which is the company that we purchase our bottles from. This particular bottle here is called a diamond bottle. It's a premium bottle, which means see how thick it is at the bottom? So it's a really nice, sturdy bottle, premium bottle.

Because it's got four sides to it, right? Four sides aligned with four branches, right? Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. You didn't mention RJ. He's the Army guy. RJ Casey is our Army. So you got you, Navy. RJ Casey is Army. Mike Trott is Air Force. And then Rick Franco, that's Marine Corps. You got the four branches of the service. Yep, four branches of the service.

And we're reaching out to Coast Guard and also Space Force because we don't want them to think that, you know, we're just about four branches. It just so happens that the four of us as friends who've worked together and our boots have crossed the same pass over in Afghanistan, Iraq, and across the Asia Pacific region.

It's Four Branches because that was the brand that we started to build, right? So with the walk on this was find a bottle. We found a bottle. Then you go, okay, what's the label going to look like? We started out with a tree with four branches coming out of the tree kind of coming together like a spear, almost like a SOCOM spear. We kind of

We shit-canned that, and we're like, you know, that doesn't – we didn't want to have an eagle on the bottle. We don't want it to scream, you know, military, right? Because we look at it as we want to cast a larger net for customer base. We want to – we're reaching out to all patriots of the United States, which is everybody that's got a – you know, that's in the United States is a patriot as far as I'm concerned. So –

With the label, we went to another artist and we said, hey, we want a four, the number four on here, but we want that four to represent each one of the branches, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force.

And what we did with it here, you can see at the bottom, we drew this line here. It looks kind of like a hill or a ridge line on a map, grid lines. That's the U.S. Army. And that's the foundation of this fort because the U.S. Army was the first founded DOD service, right, back in 1775. The centerpiece coming up in the middle here kind of looks like a Navy mast of a ship from a shoreline or a submarine con coming out of the water. Yeah, it does. U.S. Navy. U.S. Navy was the second founded U.S. Navy.

Coming across horizontally, you've got this horizontal piece that looks like a bayonet knife or a sword. That's U.S. Marine Corps because they're the leanest. I tell Rick, I say, I'm going to say this anyway, but Marine Corps is the leanest and meanest.

We support the Marine Corps. Oh, you got to support the Marine. Once a Marine, always Marine, right? So then the swoop up into the sky here with this four is Air Force because Air Force provides air power for our air cover for all of us, right? Cover. And then you see it's got a black spear comes down in the middle to create the opening inside the four. And what that spear is, is half of it you can see. The piece that you can see is honoring our men and women who are still fighting for our freedom around the globe today. The piece that's missing is for our fallen.

So after all the thought that went into this, each piece of this bottle, whether it's a label or whether it's the colors, and moving up to the neck here, a lot of thought in this, right? Because we're thinking, you know, we've got to put a bottle on the shelf,

that not only is going to catch the eye of someone, but also looks very clean, right? And doesn't scream military because lots of people see four branches of a thing, what, four branches of a river, four branches of a creek, a tree. So they don't really tie it in until they see some of it. And this is like our neck tag on here that kind of shows, you know, this is a – and we're the first company in the spirit world really to –

have all four founders be four branches of the military, right? There are a lot of Bermans out there that are, you know,

Created by veterans, but it's a one-service type of deal. It's not all four branches like we are. And then the top, you see our label at the top, it's got four branches on it. And then below, it's got this ring here that has serve honorably and drink honorably. And we use that. We've all served honorably. Everybody serves the community or whatever it is. We want you to serve honorably. We want bartenders to serve it honorably.

And more importantly, we got, you know, drink honorably. Not to replace drink responsibly because that's been around for, you know, decades, right? But we still have issues with military personnel, veterans, suicide, 22 a day or up or down, whatever that number fluctuates around from time to time. Still a concern of ours. We don't want to say, hey, you know, we want you to buy our great bourbon. It tastes great, but we don't want you to drink it.

down to the bottom as fast as you can. We want, you know, instead of drinking to forget, the ethos of our company is we don't want you to drink to forget. We want to start sipping to remember. And we always are going to remember our fallen. Not a day goes by that I don't remember one of my friends, one of my comrades that didn't come home. It's just there, right? It's with us. But on the other hand, there's lots of victories in life that we should sip to remember.

our promotions, weddings, babies, victories, right? We can't let the negative stuff that's happened to us drag us down a certain path. We've got to stay positive. And when I do this with a cigar or just having a bourbon, I try to understand the process that it took to get this liquid in this bottle. And it's a long process, and it's a beautiful one. You always hear trust process, right? Whether you're shooting sporting clays,

Or whatever it is, jujitsu, trust the process, right? Because if you don't, you're going to start getting out of bounds and it's just not going to go well. So with this bourbon, this juice, what we've done, instead of building a distillery, because for us to build a distillery, it would cost 40 to 200 some million dollars.

There's already 300 out there. So for us, we acquire, right? We resource. We go out for sources. We've got people in the bourbon business. We've got a really good friend of ours now that we built a relationship with for the last couple of years. His name's Jeff. Jeff is out of Nashville, Tennessee. He happens to be a bourbon broker. So what that means is that Jeff has acquired hundreds, thousands of barrels.

And he's sitting on them just like gold, right? Liquid gold. Every year when this juice ages, the price goes up on that barrel. It's just like, oh, right. A commodity. So does that happen indefinitely? Like if it's sitting in a barrel 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, it goes up every year. It goes up. It goes up a little bit. Does it ever go bad? Well, there's, um, I'm probably not, uh,

I think it does. I think after 20, 25 years, people who – and, of course, you know you're going to have angels cut, right, because the evaporation of that liquid after years and years and years, you may only have a quarter of that barrel left after sitting there for 25 years. Oh, okay. Because that wood, that juice is going in and out of those American white oak saves, right, the saves in a barrel. And it's getting that color from the wood. It's taking it out of the wood, right? Right.

And I'll talk about the charring of barrels and stuff and what that does. But this juice here is the age statement on our juice is about six years old. Six years is really good, really good juice. We purchased about 50-some barrels from MGP. MGP is a distillery out of Indiana. We brought those 50 barrels down to Barstown Bourbon Company.

And then we purchased some weeded barrels that was about seven years old. And we got that from Wilderness Trail Distillery or Green River out of Kentucky. And we bring those two together at Barstown to blend. Now, we were very blessed by being at Barstown when we started putting our mash bill together. Your mash bill is basically your ingredients of what you're putting into the blend.

to cook, right? Because you bring in the elements of it. You bring in your grains. You got corn. Corn is where you get your sweetness from. And then you have rye. Rye is spicy. Spiciness, right? From cinnamon to peppers.

And then you have your malted barley. Malted barley is like oatmeal. You can put it in your mouth and chew on it, and it flavorings like oatmeal. Smells really good, aroma. And then we brought in wheat because we were talking with Steve Nally, who's a master distiller at Bardstown Bourbon Company. He used to work with Maker's Mark for 30-some years. So Steve's a Hall of Famer. So while we were in this room, it looks like a chemist lab, and we were working with Dan, who's the master blender at Bardstown,

And Steve walked in. We thought he was just coming in just to shake our hands and meet us. He heard that there was four veterans there starting a business, a brand. So he just wanted to come up and say hello. We figured he'd come in a room, shake our hands, and leave. He's busy. But he didn't. He stayed with us. He goes, guys, so I heard your story.

I want to help you with this. I want to help you, you know, with the mash bill. And he was the one who really said, four branches, four branches military. Why don't you guys have four grains? Let's go with four grains. So we were looking at each other like, wow. Why didn't we think of that? Yeah, why didn't we think of that one, right? So...

So basically, he said, he was talking to Dan. Dan, he's the blender. He's over there having these little, he's got these little cups, and he's blending this stuff up. And he says, put 5% wheat in. Put 5% of that 7-year-old wheat we got. Put that in there. He put that in there. We tasted it. We're like, oh, boy, that's really good, right? So the guys were beating me up, and they probably should, because they mixed this thing. It took them about 30 minutes or so to mix this 5% wheat that we were tasting.

And I looked at it, and he handed it to me, and he said, and before that happened, he said, this is for all of you, but I want you to give it to me. So Harold, try this. So I look at this little, it looks like about an ounce and a half or something, right? It wasn't even two ounces, I don't think.

So I took it and went, I dumped it back, right? And all the guys were looking at me going, what are you doing? You know, damn it. You know, Harold, you just took the sample that we wanted to taste. And I'm like, I'm sorry, man. It wasn't that much, you know. But anyway, they still give me a hard time about that. But we ended up staying in that room with Steve for about two hours. And Steve said, hey, let's go 10% on the wheat, aged wheat, right? So –

We put the 10% in there, and we're like, man, that's really good. It's got the sweetie notes to it. It's got vanilla. It's got caramel. It's got the spiciness of cinnamon and some peppers. It's got that oatmeal aroma, you know, of oatmeal, the barley. And the wheat really kind of rounds it off, right? So it kind of rounds it off and softens it. It's like butter, right? And that's what I refer to this juice. It is kind of like butter. But that's dangerous, though, right? Because it's 96 proof.

And we toyed with that, right? We're working on that 80%. We started in a range of 80% proof or 120-some proof, right? And by the time we hit about 95%, we're thinking, oh, boy, that's about right. Because, you know, if you get up into the higher, higher deal, it starts to taste like race car fuel. You know, it'll kick you in the butt.

But it depends on if you can tolerate. If you can tolerate the higher alcohol proof, you know, some of it's really good juice. But this is 96. The reason we landed on 96 was is in the military you have 96 weekends, right? 96 hour. So when you get a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, that's a 96er. There you go. We like 96ers, right? We get to go home and relax.

But so that's how it all came about. We got a little more of our story on the back of the bottle. It talks about the age of the juice and stuff. But, boy, what a process this has been. About three years, three and a half years into the making from the marketing standpoint. We've got a great marketing team down in Nashville, Tennessee, Double Diamond. They're really family-oriented.

And we got the brokers that help us to acquire the right barrels, not just any barrel, but the right barrel to meet our standards here with this four-grain, six-year blend age and being 96 proof. And I think they're running today. I think they're running a batch today to back it up, right, because you've got to have inventory. When did you start really getting into bourbon?

Well, you know, I had a bad experience with brown liquid when I was in high school. I drank about a fifth of it. It's not good. Okay.

It took me about three days to pull out of that. And I couldn't even smell it. It'd make me sick to smell it. But as I got older, and especially my tour down in the Bahamas, working down there at the resort, we'd have scotch. We'd do Dewar scotch and cigars. And then we started migrating over to bourbons. And we were drinking some bourbons, Woodford Reserve and Basil Hayden, some of the other bourbons we'd get our hands on down there.

And most of the guys had them on their yachts. So we'd go to sit on the back of a yacht with one of the members and we'd have whatever they had, right? Angel's Zambia or whatever. So, and then I started learning the process of what it takes to make a barrel bourbon and what it takes

what you're tasting when you pull this bourbon from a thief. You stick the thief down in the porthole, pull it out, and then taste that. And it's probably 120 proof because it's barrel strength. But understanding that the corn goes in for the sweetness, the rye is for the spice, malted barley is like that oatmeal rum I was talking about, and then the wheat kind of rounds everything off. And then when you drink it, you can taste those notes.

Some palates are different. Some people say, I didn't taste it. And then some people kind of shoot it. You don't shoot that, right? You don't shoot bourbon.

Just like you don't really shoot tequila, you know, because, you know, we did, right? You just shoot tequila. You're trying to get it to the bloodstream ASAP. You're not waiting on it. We ought to be an IV in that stuff. But now the process is really interesting. You know, and bourbon has rules to it, right? So to be a bourbon,

You have to be at least 51% corn in your mash bill, in the ingredients, 51%. It has to be laid down, rested in American white oak barrels. You have to have a certain char, and chars go by numbers. That is when they stick the flames inside the barrel and they turn the barrel and they burn the barrel, right? They burn those oak saves.

And what that does is, is I was thinking that that burned part of those saves inside the barrel when they toast it or either they char it. So if you, this is about a three char in this, but you would think that you would have a smoky taste or something like that, right? Like, you know, like scotches, you'd smoke like peat, but you don't. All that charcoal does, that black, when you burn those, that first layer or so of that quarter inch into the wood or whatever,

That acts as a filter, a natural filter to filter the impurities out of the juice, out of the bourbon. And as it sits there for two, three, four years, five years, six years, whatever it is, the more that fluid moves in and out of those wood saves. And that's where you get your caramel, your vanilla, your color. See, this has got really good color to it.

Right. So it's six year juice. So it, it should have a good color. You get a little bit lighter than that. You get two, two year stuff and it's lighter. It's just not, it doesn't have the darker tones to it when you, when you look at the juice, but a lot goes into it, you know, from marketing to finding investors to then getting, we call liquid to lips. And that's when you go out into the stores, you go, when you call it on premise, all premise, right on premise, right.

It's where you can actually drink the juice where you're at, restaurants, bars, hotels. That's on-premise accounts, they call it, and sales. Off-premise is where you go to the liquor store, whether it's a liquor store, mom-and-pop shop, or a chain liquor store in certain states, or in controlled states like Virginia, it's all ABC stores.

So that's off-premise for us, right? And we're in Virginia, ABC store, about 205 stores. And you go to the liquor store, you pick up the bottle, you take it, and you're moving off-premise. You can't drink it at the store. But unless I'm in there doing a tasting, then you can have liquid to lips with me. Right there in the store. And I tell the story, right? I tell the story so...

I probably told this story I don't know how many times, right? But the more you tell it, just like being an instructor, right, or teaching. I just did one Friday before I came out here, and I had a special agent, DEA agent, came in, and he said, tell me your story.

And I told him the story, right? And he goes, he said, boy, you really, he said, you, he says, you own this? And I said, yes, sir. He said, you talk like you do. He said, because I didn't figure somebody they hired to do a tasting would know as much as you do. And I went, well, thank you for that. But that's what it takes, right? Attention to detail. And we chose purple on the top for joint.

Since we're joint, you know, joint colors purple. Right? So we chose the purple up there. And plus, you don't see purple on many American Spirit bottles. You do see them Crown Royal, you know, Crown Royal has purple. But you don't see it. So that's just another factor we weighed in since it's an eye catcher. You know, something different. And what's your experience been with like? Because this is, as I'm sitting here thinking about it, this is your first business, right?

This is my first business as far as being a founder and being responsible for your investment monies, understanding the profits and how much money does it take for marketing, how much money do we spend for meta-ads.

You know, we pay a PR firm out of Phoenix, Arizona. But you know what? They've been hitting home runs for us. They got us on Today Show this past Veterans Day. Our sales went, you know, ballistic. Right on. So we were on a nice little level, and then all of a sudden, boom, straight up. So we've been very blessed with the people we have around us. We have in our dugout, our panel. We got Nick in Kentucky. We got Johnny, who lives in Dallas, Texas.

Tim is, I think Tim's in Florida. And, you know, Jeff, of course, he's in Nashville. We've got Angela who does our marketing. And Claire is our PR person. But, you know, it's just a team, you know. And we communicate. We try to over-communicate because you need to in this business. Because if you're not out there, you know, creating new customers, it ain't going to sell itself, right? The distributors will put it on a shelf for you.

They're not telling a doggy story, right? They're not talking about four branches. They'll say four branches of veteran on, and that'll get you for a little bit. You know, people really appreciate it. I think people in our country love veterans. But if it don't taste good, if this tasted like swamp water, we wouldn't see the sales that we have right now because we're putting quality juice in the bottle. And like I was saying earlier, it's like butter. It's really good. It's good bourbon. We'll continue to do that.

We had an LTO we released shortly ago. It's Black Ops. Black Ops was a book written by Rick Perotto. Rick Perotto was a 10-year-old little boy down in Cuba when Castro started taking over. So basically Castro took his family's businesses, took his dad's coffee shop, his grocery store, his little hardware store,

And he said, now these belong to me. You work for me now. So they saw the writing on the wall. They got Rick out of country, flew him to Miami. America was doing flights to get the kids out. So Rick went to Miami.

Then he was moved to Denver, Colorado at an orphanage, and he lived in an orphanage out in Denver about a year, and then his mom and dad made it to Miami and bought a home, got jobs, and the first thing they did was sent for Rick, brought him home. Rick was growing up in Miami, figured he was going to get in trouble on the streets. He joined the Air Force and became a para-jumper, para-rescue man. He spent about 10 years as a para-rescue guy. Then he was recruited by the CIA. He ran a lot of operations down in Honduras and Nicaragua.

And he just retired, I think it was last year, after 32 years of service. And we did the bottle to pay tribute to him and his career and the book. And we sold the book and the bottle of Black Ops to

And the Black Ops was 100 proof. And it was nine-year-old, nine-year juice. It was awesome. It was really awesome. How many bottles did you run of that? We ran 183 cases, I believe. We sold. So it's pretty much gone. Yeah. He was supposed to come on the podcast at some point. Rick Prado was. Yeah. You know, this like.

all it's all scheduling unfortunately this well unfortunately unfortunately this isn't my like job you know what i mean i have a lot of other jobs and so sometimes just getting synced up with somebody but i'm sure we'll get it done at some point oh yeah yeah because he's got a great story well like i said earlier i really appreciate this opportunity to be on here with it because it took us a while oh yeah no that's a great case in point you and i yeah you and i linked up at the freaking navy seal foundation thing

Back in, I couldn't tell you when. Yeah, probably over a year ago. Yeah. And we swapped numbers, and then it was like, oh, yeah, let's do it. And then here we are a year or something. That's right. Then I saw you at the Army-Navy game. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. That was my first ever Army-Navy game. It was my second. Well, it made my third. That was a bucket list, freaking check off. What an experience. I mean, that was just beautiful. You know what's funny? I was in a car because I was out there with the Travis Manion Foundation, and-

walking down the sidewalk and I'm sitting there and I hear like, hey, Jocko. And I didn't know who it was. And it wasn't because you had sunglasses on, a hat. I couldn't really see you. And that was Rick, I think. Rick Franco said, hey, that's Jocko. And I go, are you kidding me? Yeah. And then I didn't know who you were. I go, hey, how you doing, man? Good to see you. And you go, what's up, Jocko? And as soon as I heard your voice, I was like, dog.

Yeah, it was kind of pretty cool. And then I just call you, I'm calling you, trying to get this thing set up. And it's just, you know, we're busy, right? Everybody's busy trying to get stuff done. But, you know, the bourbon thing is, you know, the business is another reason, you know, for me to be engaged, right, to have a purpose. And our purpose is to build a badass brand.

and put good juice in the bottle. And then hopefully one day somebody will go, hey, I like this, I like the story, I like what you guys are doing, they come in and help us, right? Whether it's just big investors that want to see us be successful, and they help us. They help us with the monies, of course. You know, that's on us, right, to build this brand where it's attractive enough for somebody to be interested in.

and partnering with us so we can blow it up a little bit because right now it costs so much money to go into a market, right? We're in seven markets now. We're in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arizona, Florida, Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. And we're really only starting to scratch the surface, right? So what our subject matter experts, our panel people, tell us with all these years of Brown Spirit's experience, we're saying, hey, be careful not

You don't want to be an inch deep and a mile wide. Let's just take it easy. Let's be methodical about where we want to grow. Florida, we just went into 50-some stores, ABC. So Florida's kind of a hybrid. They're controlled ABC stores, but they also have a lot of liquor stores that are privately owned.

Virginia is just ABC. You don't move brown liquid and you got to go through ABC, right? But Florida is a multi-pronged type of deal. And we're into the NEXs and we're going into APs down there. So it's mainly monies to put boots on the ground to help us with the liquid ellipse, you know, the tastings, telling our story.

And just wash and redo, right? Yeah. And just go, go, go. But it requires a lot of traveling, a lot of thought, because when we all four get together, we want to go do bottle signings. And then we give back, too. I mean, our give back was over $400,000. I mean, unbelievable. Unbelievable.

For a company starting back in May of 23 until the end of calendar year 2024, we have raised over $400,000 and given back to 16 or so nonprofits. That's awesome. Organizations, right? We're trying to...

to balance that because we're getting a lot of people reaching in now wanting to, they want to, they want to ride, ride with us and that's fine. But we have to figure out, we want to go four pillars, you know, let's give the four of our primary pillars, right? Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps. And then we find out these other organizations that are out there doing some incredible work. Like,

like Samaritan's Purse and Red Cross that are taking care of the flood victims up in Western Carolina and the fire out here in California. We want to get, and we gave money to some organizations. I think there were firefighting organizations for that, right? So we're trying to really give back to our veteran communities and our veterans

other you know organizations that are helping our communities and you know to give give to them we had a we sent a truckload of uh jaco fuel up to the firefighters up in uh up in la and sweet yeah it's pretty awesome they said we sent them hydrate and we sent them uh energy go and pretty pretty awesome that we were able to pull that off and a bunch of people like uh actually was the got a

guys I'm making a movie with, so Chris Pratt and Mick G and Ben Everard, and they live up there, right? They live up in the LA area. And so they hit me up like, hey, because when we were making this movie, everyone's drinking this stuff, you know? So they're like, hey, we should get some of this stuff for the firefighters. So I talked to my team at Jocko Fuel and they jumped on it. And then our logistics partner sent it all out there for free, you know,

big giant was 21 pallets worth of stuff. It's a lot of stuff. It was gone, but it was great. Uh, Ben was up there filming like they're there. Firefighters just walking out with the stuff on their shoulders to take it out to the front lines. It was awesome. That is awesome. When you can help, right? When you're a hundred percent, when you're successful and you can help it really, it really matters. You

And it goes beyond us, right? And that's what we say with our give back is beyond the branches. And I was a part of a, I went up to Boston to do a, we had a bottle that we donated and a case. We had this beautiful wooden case built. I sent my trident up there. They put my trident in the box and we had a ripstop cami shirt that was placed. You know, we cut it, of course, and it was the backdrop. And we had, it was John Connors, an officer that was killed in Panama. So a close friend of his, Tom,

Tom is doing a fundraiser for John to erect a life-size statue up in his hometown. That's awesome. And we were a little part of that, but that bottle sold for $15,000. That bottle and that box went for $15,000.

And I sold, I was down in Florida. We had 15 bottles and we had all the veterans there. We had these chefs from in town in Stewart, Florida. We had four chefs that came in for restaurants. And with each one of the chefs, they placed a military cook with them, a military chef. Because, you know, I think the military is trying to transition over to civilian sector jobs, right, titles, right, and help them transition. Okay.

So we had all those military chefs come over, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, Coast Guard, and they signed the bottles that were being auctioned off as a package. It was a $5,000 purchase, but your $5,000, you'll get a bottle of signed Four Branches bourbon by all those veterans that were there, plus a handmade knife. That was beautiful. And it went to children's scholarships. And that was $75,000 just for that one evening. So, you know...

People are getting behind it, and is it difficult? Because you think if you go out to a liquor store, you see all the many bottles of bourbon. So we're in a crowded space, right? But how do we stand out? How do we continue to be loyal? Well, what it sounds like to me is Doggie's finally got something for you.

Oh, yeah. Finally. He's got something for you. It's a little four branches bourbon. And if you have some aches and pains and, you know, you just got knocked down, just go out and sit down and, you know, have you a cigar. Be with a great friend or two or three, your wife or whoever it is and enjoy some of this bourbon. I would enjoy it neat, which is just in a glass.

I use a small rock sometimes because you don't want to water down too much. But the water, the cold water and the ice cube helps pop some of the flavors. That's good. It'd be good. Check. But no. Wow.

And can people get it online or is that not possible? Yes, sir. They can get it online through our DTC, which stands for direct to consumer. We ship to about 32 states. So all you have to do is go to fourbranches.com, which is F-O-U-R branches.com.

And you'll see a little drop-down window. You can say purchase near me or purchase, and it'll take you right through what you need to, and they'll ship you a bottle right to your porch. And there it is. Dougie, we got something for you. Right on, man. That's awesome. After all those years, I finally do have something for you. Does that get us up to speed? Is that where we're at? We're good? I think so, man. Just so people can find you, you've got fourbranches.com.

You're on Facebook, Four Branches Bourbon. You're on Instagram, at Four Branches Bourbon. You got a YouTube channel, which I checked out some of these YouTube videos. Real good behind the scenes of how you guys put it together. The YouTube is at Four Branches Bourbon. And then you have your own Instagram. I do. And your own Facebook. Yeah.

That's amazing, isn't it? Which is at herald.underdown. So that's where people can find you. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Quick question. Yeah. I know you had the special dish for this. Do you plan on, you know how there's like different ages, you know, you got the 18 year and then, you know, what's your thoughts on that? Well, looking forward, we just had our two day meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, where we talked about those things.

Off the bow, right? Off the bow, looking forward, you know, where are we headed? We're going to continue to drill down with this founders plan. This is our one skew that we have right now that are in the seven markets and in online sales.

The LTOs will continue. That's the limited time offerings we did to Black Ops. Now we're thinking this coming year we have something for you. We've got a little surprise for you. We're working on that project right now. We're looking at doing some barrel picks, doing some single barrel delivery.

And we're working all that through DTC, our direct-to-consumer vendor. And also, we're looking at a different skew. We're looking to bring the price down a little bit. The price on this Founders Blend, this six-year-old juice, is about $89.99. You can get $10 off sometimes in an NEX and APs at about $78.49.

But this is really great juice. We're looking at maybe coming out with another SKU that's going to bring the price down. So we're going to have it like enlistment or something, you know, entry. So we're going to get you on the entry level. The E1 beverages, the E2 beverages. That's right. We're going to get you on the entry level. Recruit. And we want you to come on up to Founder. So I'll have something for you. Yeah.

No matter what pay grade you are. That's right. We got you covered. Then you have to come out with the Admiral's blend. That's going to be $230. Maybe that's 14 years old over here. Did I answer your question? Yes, sir. Yeah, very much so. A lot of times when those numbers get higher, that's the more special a dish. Oh, well, it really is. Depending on the age statement, of course, and then if it's a pappy dish,

or something like that it can get it can get really uh crazy expensive but people people don't you know people that like bourbon and they're they're hunting for and i didn't realize this but there are so many collectors out there yep i mean people that don't drink they don't drink at all but they collect they collect these special bottles and special bourbons if they like it they'll

to do that. That's good to know. That is good to know. Did you have any football questions? Normally he's got any football related. I think, you know, respectfully, I think like we have different generations because you were talking about like the Hawk and all this stuff. I was like, bro, I never heard of the Hawk. What's the Hawk? Yeah, Hawk position. Yeah. Well, the Hawk position was for me when I played kind of like an outside linebacker. So what I had to do is I had to break

whatever they ran at us, I was basically going straight to the ball. The freaking Hulk, man. Like strong safety kind of? Strong safety. Okay. Right. So they wanted me to – and I would float, right? Yeah. I would read the formation wherever their split out would go. I would usually go to the split outside. Yeah, yeah. More than likely they'd come that way, right, with their runs. And I was supposed to be kind of like the breaker, the icebreaker. Yeah. And I felt it a lot too because I had a lot of –

birds twerping in my head sometimes I'm like boy that wasn't smart yeah so it's probably just different terminology because yeah strong safety is kind of I mean you're describing a strong safety essentially yeah it's like could be an outside linebacker but could be a straight up safety you know so yeah makes sense makes sense right on cool yeah no no that's the only thing I was wondering football wise and floated right I was floating around a little bit so that was that was good stop to run right on

anything else echo that's it good to meet you right on nice to meet you echo closing thoughts brother well uh closing thoughts as uh i my prayers go out and and um to to the people in north carolina and to uh california for the devastation the loss of homes and stuff um prayers will definitely be continue to go up with that i pray for our government you know we just had a uh change in administration i just hope that

People can be adults. They know that we have a great country, but we have a lot of big decisions to make, you know, moving forward. We've got to square away our borders. We've got to make sure our economy can get on track. What does that look like? You know, because American people are, I think, we're getting fatigued a little bit with the people pointing fingers at each other. We just need you to do your jobs, you know, before –

We have to come up and do it for you. Get some SEALs and firefighters and police officers. We'll come up and run the place, right? But I don't want to do that. I trust these men and women that we have an office. They love our country. They just need to quit the pointing fingers and let's just get, you know, take care of business. Take care of business so doggy can...

drink some so i can so i can have some so i can have something for you but i really appreciate the time choco yeah man it's awesome to see you brother and echo really appreciate it and uh yeah thanks for coming down thanks for joining us thanks to uh lisa man it's like oh yeah it's so cool because when i saw you guys at that new york thing i probably hadn't seen lisa in 25 something years

And it was just like we were all on the beach in Guam again, just having a good time, hanging out. She's such a great, great woman. It's awesome to see that you guys stuck it out for all those years and that she stuck by your side. It's awesome. And, you know, thanks for your service to the country, to the Navy, to the teams. Thanks for pushing me in the right direction as a young new guy.

Appreciate it. And thanks for continuing to represent the teams in a positive light, man, and setting a great example for America and for Americans. And thanks to all of our service men and women out there today that are protecting us. We really appreciate you. No doubt about it. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks, Doggy. Yeah, man. Thank you. And with that, Harold Doggy Underdown has left the building. Now, I'm not going to be able to judge things because I just –

i just don't really like the taste of alcohol sure you tasted the four branches four branches right yeah what's this what's the assessment yeah it was all yeah it was it was all that he uh explained it to be here's the thing i don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing both i don't know two things can be true at the same time by the way just be careful is what i'm saying you could get yourself in trouble because yes so like how you okay so there there are weaker bourbons out there many

Weaker in terms of alcohol content? Alcohol content. Okay. That have way more of like a burning edge to it, which is a bad thing, by the way, for tasting. And they're weaker and they have more of a burning edge to it. This has less of a burning edge to it and it's stronger. So you see how that can be a problem if you don't watch out. So I would say watch out. But yes, it does taste very good.

And I'm like, can you taste like the notes? You can taste them. Yeah, yeah, fully. I think I'm one of those people that just doesn't have a good palate for tasting things. Okay, so did you know there's a technique to tasting shit? No. Yeah, there's a technique. Well, okay, here's my technique. Open my mouth, put it in. Yes.

That's what I do. Exactly right. So yeah, fully. And you know, not to go too deep into it. It's like, you can't just pound it. Sounds like you're about to. But you can't just pound it. You got to take a little bit. You got to, you can do it like certain thing. I don't explain, but you can do a certain thing with it, like in your mouth and then you swallow and then you kind of breathe out with it. It's like a technique or whatever. And then that's when you can taste the most. But yes, certain people's palates are more refined than others for sure. But yes, I could taste. Yeah. I mean, to me, this would have...

There's no sense in me tasting it just because I won't be able to judge it. Number one, I can't even judge anything when it comes to taste, or at least I'm not that great at it. Yeah, but you smelled it. That's a big part of it. It does smell. Even when I smelled it, I was like, oh, this smells pretty good. Smells pretty good. So there you go. That's the four branches bourbon if you want to get in on that. And you know what's another thing you're going to need to get in on?

Getting after it. Yes, you know look you're gonna drink some bourbon You better be working out to make up for it. You also better get some clean fleet fuel in your system Yeah, I recommend jacquard feel hey go to jacquardfield.com check out what we got going on there We got we got energy drinks. We got hydration. We got protein. We got time war We got joint warfare super we got everything that you need to make you feel better. I

Make you healthier, make you stronger, make you faster, make you smarter. We got it. So go to jocofuel.com, check it all out. We're also in Walmart. We are in Wawa. We're in Vitamin Shoppe, GNCs, Military Commissaries, AFI's, Hannaford's, Dash Stores down in Maryland, Wake Fern Shoprite, HEB down in Texas. Yeah. Meijer up in the Midwest. Wegmans out on the East Coast. Harris Teeter on the East Coast. Publix. You know what Publix is?

Folks is like the big the big one down in the southeast. So we just got into public's crushing in public So if you're down there, we appreciate it crushing it. Just crushing it making the good clean fuel and y'all are utilizing it So thank you lifetime fitness. We're in there We're in shields and we're in a bunch of small gyms. No matter what kind of gym you got you got a jujitsu Academy We're in there. We got a powerlifting gym. We're in there. You know matter what you got. I

We're there. So if you were not there, you can email jf sales at jocofuel.com and get it in there. Also originusa.com. That's what we got going on. We got American made.

Boots, jeans, hoodies, t-shirts, shorts, hunt gear, jujitsu gear, belts. Did you get your black belt yet? Well, no. I saw them though. I saw an email. You know, the emails come through and I see them all. I'm like, oh, bro, I need one of those. I need one of those. What should I do?

Give me some advice. Because you know what? I have one black belt that I've had since I got my black belt. Yeah, I know. It's all ratty and old. I got you. But now I have a nice, beautiful, new, origin, made in the USA, made by origin, belt. Made by jujitsu people. Yep. It's a big difference. Yeah. Like, the people that made my original black belt. Mm-hmm.

They weren't jujitsu. It wasn't a jujitsu person. It wasn't a company. Yeah. It was like, Oh, we're a martial arts company. Who knows? Yeah. Let me know where it's from. Yeah.

How do I make the transition? I got you. What do I do? What's your recommendation? One is the functional belt and one is the media belt. So one is like it's built for use. That's this whole purpose of its existence. So when you're rolling ghee, you use the used one because it's for you. I was going to go opposite. Well, you could. But here's the only reason why. And at the end of the day, it's probably not a good idea. This is why. Because that's what that one is.

originally for it's the original one if it gets more worn out and ugly it's kind of like boom that's part of the gig that's part of its purpose see what I'm saying then this new one the origin one bro let's face it it looks good looks way better it has the leather on the other end it has the origin it's like cool you can use that 100% probably use it but that's not comparatively or if you want to differentiate like its purposes it's not what it's for I'm going to throw this out there

I think you're wrong. Now that you've presented your case and the facts of your case, I'm going to say you're wrong because I don't want a wall hanger.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Have you ever seen me? Hold on. Let me get my media t-shirt out. Has that ever happened? Have you ever seen me? Hold on. Let me get my media flip flops out for a picture. No. Have you ever seen that from me? No. Have I ever said, hold on, let me get my, uh, let me get the haircut going. Has that ever happened? No. No. Okay. But there's a lot of things that I've never seen you do say, uh, you know, until you did them and set them and, you know, showed them. Okay. Well,

Don't think I got a jujitsu belt that's made to wear around the key so I can hang it on my wall or only wear it during the media shoots You know you're wrong now, you know as soon as I finish that last sentence you're like I'm wrong You know, you're wrong. You're saying you should never do it because you've never done it is always I'm saying I have a jujitsu belt. Yes, I

That is made to wear on a jujitsu gi. Sure. That is made to do jujitsu in. And what you're telling me is I should take pictures only with that thing. You see it wrong. Oh, man.

Okay, there's more to it. Credit you helped me through the case Okay, you helped me through the case you help me see the light by presenting an adverse scenario Which would be me going hold on photo shoot. It's not adverse. Let's do a media photo shoot Okay, look here. Okay, you're correct in that little yes, but the bigger picture I'm correct Look at the end of the day. That's the choice that only you can make not me for you. That doesn't make sense. I'm saying yeah look I

You probably, maybe you do, maybe you don't. I don't know. Maybe you're different. Maybe you're the same as all of us. But a lot of us have more than one gi, maybe more than two, maybe more than three. I have more than one gi. Yes. And guess what? You know how many of them are not being used for jujitsu? How many? None of them. Okay. Well, some of us have a gi that's like, you know what? This is a good gi, right? This is a good gi. It looks better when it's like sparkling new and it looks better in pictures. See what I'm saying?

So it'll be like the media geek, not freaking what he called. Not, not, not, not the truth comes out. Echo has a freaking media game. I'm saying I do. I'm saying some of us do. When I say us, I mean us, the people seem saying may or may not refer to me. Yeah. See what I'm saying? I'm just saying, if you're not like a four time world jujitsu champion with ghee, you

And you have a media geek? I question your scenario. First off, I'm not saying I have a media geek. I'm not saying I don't, but I'm just saying, I'm saying that as a principle. You see what I'm saying? Like it's not. I'm anti-media geek. I'm anti-media geek belt. Anti. So I guess at the end of the day, the question is, why is that? See what I'm saying? But hey, look, like I said, it's not my question. Because things are made to be used. That's not my question. Yep.

What about a media kettlebell? No, it's different. You got like a nice clean kettlebell for the media? It's different. It's different. Okay. But either way, hey, look, like I said, look, at the end of the day, here's my answer to your question. Thank you for asking, by the way. That's only a question you can answer. Yes, I just did.

Originusa.com. Get yourself a jujitsu belt. Get yourself a gi. Get yourself whatever you need. Don't use it for media. Don't use it for photo shoots. Use it to train. Use it to hunt. Use it to work. That's what we're doing. Originusa.com. I say use them for both.

You want to work whatever but brown when the camera comes out represent you seem saying that's totally different Anyway also chocolate store called Jocko store Jocko store.com say look whether the cameras on off you're out in the wild you had them at home by yourself in your home gym or Commercial gym you want to represent when you're on the path?

This is where you get your stuff, jockelstar.com. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Stand by to get some, by the way. We just restocked that. A lot of people were hitting me up to stand by to get some sizes off. Hey, boom, we're back. Also, we have these hoodies. Look at you just right on top of stuff.

We got these hoodies, Jocko. They're quick flip hoodies. They turn magically into a drawstring backpack. Yes, exactly right. We're out of a lot of those sizes. Boom, we're back. We're back in the game. What do they say on those ones? Discipline equals freedom, of course, all day. Jack, I love you. Yeah, yeah. So anyway. What about those little like wind jackets? Oh, yeah, the windbreaker ones. Those are, those, we're getting more of those in too. Some sizes are sold out. You know, hey, look, we love them. We love them.

But yeah, we're getting them back in. A lot of stuff on there. Go to jocostore.com. What about, if only you had a subscription thing. Yeah, yeah, different designs. Yeah. Like every month or something. Okay, okay, good. Good news. There's something called the shirt locker. Same thing, jocostore.com. There's another top right, shirt locker. Boom, check it out. It's a...

Subscription scenario new designs every month a little bit different from from some of the main designs But yeah, people seem to like them. So check that out as well right on also primal beef calm Colorado craft beef calm You need steak in your life. You need steak. You need some beef jerky from primal beef you need some meat sticks from Colorado craft beef and

You need beef bacon, steak bacon. That's coloradocraftbeef right there.com. Primalbeef.com, that's what you need. Go check those out. Great companies, great steaks, great people. Check those out. Get yourself the steak that you need. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also jockelanderground.com. Also YouTube channels. There's one for Jocko Podcast. There's one for Jocko Podcast clips. Yeah, of course. There's Jocko Fuel and there's Origin USA. So check those out.

Psychological Warfare, you can get in on that. We got a bunch of books. I've written a bunch of books. So check them out, Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Final Spin.

Way the warrior could check out the kids books. You have to wait for the movie to come out There's a movie coming out by the way. It's already been filmed. It's it's wrapped Yeah, well things wrap which is a big deal because when you're making a movie anything can go wrong and now all of a sudden you don't Get it wrapped. Yep. You see I'm saying like oh you're making a movie the funding gets cut Oh, you're making a movie your your star breaks his leg. Yeah. Yeah. Oh you're making a movie like well the there's fires in the set and like you see them saying yes, and these things are severe and

And maybe you never get that movie made. Well, the day you get it done, you're like, all right, we're done. This thing is done. It's a huge step. So you don't have to wait for it, though. We don't know when it's coming out. But until then, we got a bunch of books, kids' books, Where the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3, and 4, and 5.

Check those out. Also, Mikey and the Dragons. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. We do have some seats left in San Diego for the muster, February 23rd through the 25th. If you want to go get there quickly, go and register. We got some seats left. Go get in there. FTX, council, a bunch of events. If you want to come to one of our events, go to echelonfront.com. Or if you need help in your organization,

From a leadership perspective go to our some front calm and we will handle it. We will help you handle it We will teach you how to handle it. That's what we're doing. Also. We have online training extreme ownership calm That is where we provide these skills through an online training program So go to extreme ownership calm and check that out. Also if you want to help service members active and retired you want to help their families

Want to help Gold Star families? Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org. Also, check out heroesandhorses.org, Micah Fink up there in the mountains, and then Jimmy May's organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org. Check all those out. And if you want to connect with four branches and you want to connect with doggie,

the interwebs, fourbranches.com, Facebook, Four Branches Bourbon, Instagram, at Four Branches Bourbon, YouTube, at Four Branches Bourbon. And then Doggy, he's also there on Instagram and on the Facebook at herald.underdown. And for us, you can check out jaco.com. You can also find me on social media. I'm at jaco. Will and Koneko is at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm there. It'll try and ruin your life. Thanks once again.

to Harold Underdown Doggy for joining us tonight. Thanks for sharing your experiences, your lessons learned. Thanks for your service.

To the country and to the teams and thanks to all our military personnel out there right now keeping us safe protecting our way of life We are grateful for all of you also the same for our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers Border Patrol Secret Service as well as all other first responders Thank you for keeping us safe here on the home front and everyone else out there Dougie ain't got nothing for you

No one does. And listen, if you've got a problem, you're going to have to fix it yourself. You have to solve your own problems. And in order to do that, what you've got to do is go out there and get after it. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.