479: First Troops On The Ground In Afghanistan. With Green Beret Scott Neil
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This is Jocko podcast number 479 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. For extraordinary heroism and an outstanding performance of duty in action against the enemy in Afghanistan from October 2001 to March 2002. During its six-month existence, Task Force K-Bar was the driving force behind myriad combat missions conducted in Combined Joint Operations Area, Afghanistan.

These precedent setting and extremely high risk missions included search and rescue, non-compliant boardings of high interest vessels, special reconnaissance, sensitive site exploitation, direct action missions, apprehension of military and political detainees, destruction of multiple cave and tunnel complexes, identification and destruction of several known Al-Qaeda training camps,

explosions of thousands of pounds of enemy ordnance, and successful coordination of unconventional warfare operations for Afghanistan. The sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines, and coalition partners of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force South Task Force KBAR set an unprecedented 100% mission success rate across a broad spectrum of special operations missions while operating under extremely difficult and constantly dangerous conditions.

They established benchmark standards of professionalism, tenacity, courage, tactical brilliance, and professional excellence while demonstrating superb esprit de corps and maintaining the highest measure of combat readiness.

By their outstanding courage, resourcefulness, and aggressive fighting spirit in combat against a well-equipped, well-trained, and treacherous terrorist enemy, the officers and enlisted personnel of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, KBAR, reflected great credit upon themselves and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Armed Forces.

And that right there is an excerpt from the presidential unit citation for Task Force K-Bar, which represented some of the first troops on the ground in Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11th, 2001. And it was an impressive start to the war, but as we found out, only the beginning of the war. And some of the men that were there, especially some of those frontline troops, some of the more junior men went on and continued to fight around the globe for the next two decades.

and it's an honor to have one of those men here tonight scott neal scott is a former green beret special forces soldier who fought both in afghanistan and iraq and other parts of the globe and he's now president of one of the most successful veteran companies in america horse soldier bourbon and it's an honor to have him with us here tonight to share some of his experiences

and lessons learned along the way. Scott, thanks for joining us, man. Thank you very much. It's a honor and privilege. And I'm just looking at a K bar right in front of me, giggling task force K bar, which was a post. What was the Northern area? Uh, they were dagger and sword. So three, uh, kind of main thrust elements. So dagger obviously was the unconventional side. Sword was the, uh, special unit, uh, unit side. And, um,

K-Bar was this idea of joint at the time, so multinational, multi-forces. We'll get into that. It's really interesting to think about, from my perspective, having spent 20 years in the military, having worked a lot with the big Navy, with the Marine Corps, with the Army,

And knowing how challenging that can be. So for you guys to get thrown together like that, I bet that was good times. It was as ad hoc but necessary at the time, right? Yeah. And it's kind of grown into what we take advantage of now. But I don't know if it's going to be enduring because Big Army, Big Navy likes to break things apart and make it what it used to be.

Well, we'll get there eventually and and I I don't know I haven't figured out if you and I were ever in the same time and Perhaps there's chance. There's a chance that we did missions together in Iraq and I'm sure we'll figure that out if we did But let's get a little background on you. What was growing up like?

Rough and rowdy kid. I grew up in central Florida. My family had been in Florida on cattle and citrus groves since the 1830s. I think my family history, we've got roles in the Seminole Indian Wars, the Confederate Cavalry they were known for at the time. So it was just very rural and very poor, but very happy.

So my grandfather, he was well known for long cattle drives and he played the fiddle. So everybody from Nashville would come down and he would make fiddles for him. And I grew up around the

bluegrass out on the range kind of thing. So your grandfather was alive while you were alive? Oh, yeah. Oh, so you were watching him play the fiddle. All the time. And I remember a red barn with lots of cousins. Every Saturday, big potluck. Things you admire as a kid, you don't realize that you don't have a lot because you had a lot with family. But I always loved cowboys and Indians and

Cops and robbers and army men and everything like that. So I kind of set my pace to what I always wanted to do, and that's just join the army. And was there any thing in school that led you in that direction? Did you play sports or anything like that? All of them, mediocrely, right? So my brother was the champion, right? Always the all-star, always the team captain, everything. Was he older or younger? He was older, six years. Sure.

I loved football. I broke my collarbone actually racing motocross, which kind of ended playing football. I wrestled, but I was at the weight class of, I think, 155 at the time, and every other kid was. So I played in between. I was on the high school drag racing team.

Cause I love speed. Awesome. Who knew? But yeah, it was fun. Did you guys build your own cars? Like, what was this all about? I had, how'd I miss out on the high school drag racing? Well, you had the shops, right? You had a wood shop, you had the car shop. So, and then they don't have that stuff anymore, by the way, which is a damn shame. I know. And it was just, you know, it,

What's that stupid musical grease? You know what I mean? When the guys got together and they went in there and they built white lightning. It was like that. So I had the car that was a 327 and a Chevy Vega. So crappy, nothing little thing. And you'd go down to the track, tune it up and you'd race other high schools on the weekend. Damn.

Good times. Yeah. And, but you knew you always wanted to join the army. That's it. I had no other aspirations back then. They had the GI bill, you know, join and go to college. But for me, it was like, eh, you know, I wanted to be an airborne Ranger, airborne Rangers, what I want to be. You go to the recruiter. I did delayed entry. I waited until I graduated and four days later left.

Never looked back. And did you have some kind of contract or what did this recruiter hook you up with? Infantry. Okay. But you wanted to be an airborne ranger? I wanted to be an airborne ranger because that's all you would hear in movies or whatnot. So I went to one-stop unit training where they train the entire battalion. So at the time, you went to Fort Benning in the infantry and the entire basic training battalion all training together.

then went to its first duty assignment, and that was Fort Ord, California. So wait, so like when you say the whole battalion trained together, what about the senior NCOs? No, all the privates. So all the new guys, all the privates. When we got there, they had a whole cadre ready to receive us. So I don't think they do that today, but back then it was kind of this idea that we would form. That way everybody would grow senior to the point where after about the third or fourth year,

Those who get out, get out. Those who become sergeants go on. And it was good because, you know, you have lifelong friendships with somebody you started basic training with. And then you go to Fort Ord, which was light infantry, which meant you walked everywhere. 100-mile road marches. It's like, wow.

And then what was your job? Was your rifleman? Just regular rifleman, assistant gunner, right? Mule, whatever it took. Get some. You know, 70 pounds of lightweight, you know, backpacks and you sleep out of it in the elements. And our first kind of conflict was Panama.

Did you get to jump in or did you get to go into Panama? I was in Panama back in June. So if you look about the conflict, it started rustling, you know, this idea that, you know, we had issues now that I'm senior and can read history. It's a lot different, but we deployed a Fort Sherman, then Fort Sherman to Fort Espinar, which is across from the locks. And it was a Panamanian base. And we dug in at the officer's club because Americans were staying there. And for four months, uh,

Stayed in that foxhole. And then we rotated out November. Oh, you just missed it. Yep. And I'm like, oh, man. Now, did you feel at the time, because I joined in 1990, right? And so in 1990, it was like...

we would hope that there would be one mission. I guess when I first joined, we were hoping that the Gulf War, I thought, we were hearing news reports that there's gonna be 40,000 casualties in the first 48 hours. I thought 100%, I'm gonna go to war, it's gonna be all set, I'm gonna get good, it's gonna be World War II type scenario, let's go.

So when that was over in whatever it was, 96 hours. A dust up. Yeah. I was pretty heartbroken to say the least. I was in training when it happened. So imagine I just missed Panama, right? I get to another infantry unit and I say, okay, I want to go SF. Start going through the training and then the war begins. When did you hear about SF? I heard about it because we're sitting in a foxhole and 7th Special Forces Group was living at Espinar and then you'd see these

guys run by in shorts, UDTs at the time with big mustaches. You're like, Sergeant, they're not Panamanian. Who are they? Don't look at them. Don't touch them. Don't say anything. And after four months of just watching these guys run by, I'm like, I want to be on that side. I don't want to sit here in a foxhole.

And so the recruiter came around, you see this, you know, video of you out of helicopters in the water and, you know, world peace and, you know, lightning fast and all these things. The young man, I said, that's it. And you go through the first physical fitness test, you pass it, then you finally get orders to brag for selection. So at the time there's no Google, there's no book on how to win, how to get through special forces. What year is this? What year did you show up there? Um,

91 ish to begin training. Yeah. And you, did you do anything to prepare for it? Somebody must've told you like a rock or something like that piece of paper in front of you is all you got was a printout at the time, right? It says here, um, we recommend that you, you know, run a lot. We recommend that you walk a lot and special forces selection. I learned then and meet myself going through it. And then post is there, there's no encouragement.

There's no nothing. It's all on you to get ready for it. It's all on you to present yourself as you're going through these tasks. So at the time I couldn't call anybody. I didn't know anybody. They said, don't talk about it, that you're going. So I'm like, okay, I show up. And if the sergeant said, start running, I started running like Forrest Gump. And at the end he said, stop running. I stopped running, right? Climb the obstacle course. You know, yes, sergeant. And that was selection the whole way through.

Um, I don't know how much you want me to talk about it, but it's, it starts off all individual, right? How you run now, you know, five miles. You don't know what the time standard is. You just run it. You do a 12 mile road march. You do an obstacle course. You do a land nav. You do all these individual things and you're, you have no name. It's just a number. And you look on the board that morning and they say, show up at area X. You show up, they read you your task and you execute.

and they say get back on the truck and go back to the barracks take some intelligence tests go to bed you can quit at any time and and as you're going through that are people dropping out so you must have people quitting and then people not making the standard whatever the standard is that's unknown yeah so you get up in the morning you find you know whatever board your number's on it's always a different group you go to that task when you come back things are gone and people are gone

So you don't know at the time who quit or who got hurt because sometimes some things people will twist their their leg or maybe fall off an offical course. So you don't know. You don't hear the hubbub because you're in your small task at the time. And then in the morning, because most people self-reflect and they'll sneak out on fire guard or something like that and and leave and they're just gone.

And now we started with about 360. We ended with about 56. And out of the 56, 42 were selected. And that final selection that they're making, what are they basing that on? Like you got a kid that showed up. How long is it? Three weeks? Yeah. So you get a kid that shows up three weeks, completes all the tasks and gets done. And you go, yeah, no.

So there's, once again, I've learned this afterwards, Bob, who you want to have on here as well. He ran selection as well. Right. And so one is physical. Obviously it's a, it's, can you pass? That's it. Not, can you be faster passer? Do you pass the minimum standard? Okay. And nobody tells you what it is. You just have to pass it.

So next is, can you work as a team? So these team tasks, very dynamic, you know, you apply sweat and impossible conditions. And can you operate in a task? So the sergeant has a kind of list as they're observing. You go through these things, right? Do you help when you help? Are you being noticed? Do you help harder?

Right. These kind of things. And next is the aptitude portion. So after all these physical tasks, you come back, you'll eat your child, you go back to the classroom, you start taking psychological and memory tests and general aptitude test. And that'll start to put you in a bucket, whether you have skill sets to be a medic, a communication sergeant, dumb like me, weapon sergeant, right? Bang.

All these things, they start to filter that out through the process. And actually I learned that this selection process is part of the army human behavior and sciences department. So it's very calculated as you go through this process. So at the end, what do you want? You want somebody that's physically, morally, right? Mentally capable of expeditionary entrepreneurism for the military, right? Remote, low resources, high stress, right?

you know, solving your own problems because there is no solution other than what you create. So at the end of it, once you're selected, that just begins the training. Did you have anything that really challenged you in selection itself? Or were you just kind of a gray, gray man type scenario? I would say gray man. My last name is Neil. So I always lined up in the center. That's true. And so, you know, I always kept quiet. I didn't try to game it.

I didn't try to read my way through it or ask for advice from others. I just took it every day and did what I was told, like Scotty Gump. And, you know, what I went through mentally, though, luckily, I was a poor kid that worked really hard because your brain is the enemy and it starts lacking sleep. It starts lacking physical capability. Start to doubt yourself.

So your losses come from within. And those that surrender to it are the ones that walked off. But there's a reason. Because once again, in a small team, alone or not afraid, you can't walk off the mission. So that part was good. It worked. I mean, the people that have come out have been very successful. Some have escaped through because maybe they were physically gifted. You don't have to be a rocket scientist, but you can't be.

Totally stupid because then the skills training will weed out the stupid. Mm-hmm.

Then you get done with that and then it's into the Q course. And by the way, so now what we were talking about was, so the goal four happened at some point and you're all looking at that going, dang, you guys were all looking at each other going, we just missed that whole thing. Turn it back on. Hold on a second. You know what I mean? I'm the one. Don't you realize what's going on? And you can only watch it from afar and maybe a few media sources. And you don't understand what Green Berets are doing, let alone SEALs or any other sports

mission, anything. You don't know that. And you just know that you're missing. So let's accelerate this. Isn't there some presidential finding that we could be pulled out of class today and they need me, they need me now. I mean, do I got to write a Congressman? But no. And it was over. Yeah. And you know, then you graduate and you think you're the most capable physically fit, you know, you're the right tool on the team and they can't wait for you to get there. Yeah.

And I get to my first special forces team and here are all these legends that had just, you know, worked with the Kuwaiti underground. They had, you know, fought exceptionally. And here I was a young kid. Yeah.

So what were you guys for? What, what, where'd you end up at? Fifth special forces. Awesome. So in special forces, you're aligned regionally. So fifth special forces group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, we're aligned towards the middle East. So when I say middle East, think about Muslim religion and cultures all the way up to the stands, which is just become open, uh,

mid eighties all the way down to Saudi and Kuwait, Yemen, then into Africa with Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya. Yeah. It's a great AO. Yes. And at the time though, I hated it because everybody was going to Okinawa, right? They're going to first group in Asia, the fun places, right? Europe, South America. Yeah. Here I am going to the desert.

Yeah, yeah, that's so that the SEAL teams used to be oriented geographically as well. And we changed that. Luckily, I think it's luckily, luckily we changed it prior to 9-11 and to where they started to, they started to change it to where a team was a team and you could deploy that team wherever. But the geographical locations that it used to be was SEAL Team 1 was Southeast Asia.

So think the good times of what you just said, Okinawa, Thailand, Philippines, Guam,

And then SEAL Team 5 was supposed to be winter, which on the West Coast just meant, it just meant one word, Korea. Yes. And I guess Northern Japan as well. SEAL Team 3 was the Muslims areas that you just mentioned. So that was supposed to be over in the desert in Southwest Asia. And then the East Coast, SEAL Team 2 is Europe.

SEAL Team 4 was South America. So that, you know, SEAL Team 2, everyone would want to go to SEAL Team 2. And everyone would want to go to South America too. And then SEAL Team 8 ended up being sort of Africa, Africa areas. So it was geographical for a while. And there is still a remnants of that. There is still a remnants of that in some form, at least East versus West Coast. But guess what? I had guys with me from SEAL Team 8 in Iraq and Georgia.

you know, everyone worked together, so we had to get over it. Um, but at the time for you, were you thinking, well, at least I'm in the area of operations where we'll most likely have a conflict. Um, or were you just this and no young, excitable Scotty, you know, wanted because just FYI, I thought I was going to Vietnam. Like I thought I was going to Saigon and I thought I was going to the Mekong Delta. And this was in 1990. When I first got there, you see the legends there. Um,

literally a year and a half out from the Gulf War, but then Somalia was kicking on, right? And we had guys going in and out of Kenya and driving up humanitarian assistance into Somalia and

So there's always something. Every year we would go back to Kuwait for three or four months in a rotation just in case there was another invasion. So it was free-for-all training, all the ammo, all the demolition, anything you can't really do back in the States because you're isolated within a military base, right? Over there, free-for-all, right? Just tons. Udari range. Udari range. I mean, tanks and T-72s and close air support and...

All of these things, it prepped you for the conflict. But then I spent six months in Africa with doctors and vets treating rare cattle diseases in tribes that were being attacked by Somalis rustling their cattle. It was awesome. I mean, lions and tigers and bears every night. And you're trading beads and you're trying to eat with the locals. I mean, it was full on. I did six, seven months in Africa.

Pakistan with the DEA, you know, learning the drug trafficking and routes. So Lahore to Karachi to everywhere. Once again, small team alone and unafraid. Those were the perfect, you know, pre-war missions that I don't think even,

anybody realizes the value of being in those environments and the networks you create and the interagency came from before nine 11 and how we had to rely on them post. Yeah, no, those are, those are great missions for a peacetime military going out, living amongst the people. And like you pointed out, that's how we build those relationships with those host nations and,

And we learn about the cultures. Hopefully we capture that information so that we can utilize in the future and we don't do dumb things. So those are great missions, really. And I wish I suspect they're kind of getting a little bit back. We're turning back into a peacetime. So the ebb and flow and but we have to remind ourselves and our commands, you know, what we did in between.

in between, you know, peace in Columbia, we worked heavily with their security forces, special forces, everything to defeat the FARC. It took 30 years. So we're now have friends, you know, deploying down South and working with those same forces we did before this. We have friends now going back into Africa. What I'm not certain we're ready for is to capture those relationships and

Right. And keep fostering them. So young commanders keeping up with the young commanders that eventually become three star, four stars of whatever country. And if something happens, you plug back into the software life network and you pull them back into that relationship. So you rack up a bunch of deployments during that time. Again, those sound like really good quality deployments for, for that time period. I, I, in that time period for me, I was doing, I did, I,

I did one deployment that was what we called a spec ops deployment. We deployed to Guam and then did exercise out of Guam. But then we had SEALs that were in combat in Somalia who had come from a Navy ship. And you could volunteer because no one wanted to be on a Navy ship as a SEAL. And so it was very easy to get that spot if you wanted it. So I looked at it and said, oh, those are the guys who are going to combat. Then...

Me and some of my buddies were like, let's go in that kind of platoon. So I did two of those platoons and spent a bunch of time driving around in circles off the coast of Somalia, driving around in circles in the Persian Gulf on both those. And then eventually I did an aircraft carrier deployment as well when I was out on the East Coast. And then...

when I was kind of wrapping up my enlisted time, I was working in the training, as a training cadre at SEAL Team One. And that's kind of was where I spent the 90s. And

You ended up as a drill sergeant, didn't you, at some point? Yes. That's so awesome. It's not. So SF, just probably like the SEALs, mid-career schoolhouse time. So typically most go back to Fort Bragg or they go wherever some of these schoolhouses are. And every year special forces are required to give four Green Berets to drill sergeant.

And so I got notified about four months previously and I was trying out for another element and I'm like, eh, I don't need to go to that. I'm going to go to this. And literally the week of the, the head of the post school said, Hey, you know, you know that your drill sergeant school's coming up in a week. I'm like, what are you talking about? I have no idea. I thought we got rid of this. He goes, no, no, no, no. Well, let me call this other sergeant major. Oh, you're good. Don't worry about it. Comes Friday. Okay.

Hey, you need to pick up your packet to go to drill sergeant school. I'm like, hey, this thing's solved. I don't know who you're talking to. You need to talk to this guy. This guy calls me up about an hour later and says, yeah, I can't work through this. And I picked up my orders to go to drill sergeant school Friday afternoon at...

I showed up on Monday and you sit there in a big room and they start yelling at you and they say, if you don't want to be here, stand up now. So I'm like, that's easy. I don't want to be here. And you go, shut up and sit down. And so for two years, uh, I went to four. Um, how long is drill school? Six months.

Maybe it's shorter. I can't remember. I blocked it in my special place. Right. It's just repetitive. This is how you march private stand up, march. You know, it's just barking this repetitiveness. And so I went to Fort Leonard Wood, which is home with the artillery. So I'm like, I didn't get infantry crap. I went to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then it was the brand new Jenner integrated basic training.

The Summer of Love. So this is like 1999 or something like that? Yeah, 99 and 2000. So you were there for the first integrated men and women together in an open bay barracks type scenario? No, you had men on one side of the open bay and then you had a door. You had women on the other side. But I call it the Summer of Love because you're intercepting love letters. I mean, they're just out of high school, right? It's insanity. And these are the band members, the cooks, all of the other soft side of everything.

And I was a senior drill sergeant. So I had other, you know, drill sergeants that were, you know, infantry or mechanics or whatever. And you're just teaching them the basics of basic training, right? How to march, how to organize, you know, you fire a leader every other day. You just, I tell them private, you paid for this, right? This is your experience. We're going to give it to you. And, um,

Half the time, you're just trying to take something that's clay in a mound and just mold them into something before they leave on and go to whatever specialty they're doing. So every eight weeks, a new batch. Every eight weeks, seven days a week, 3.30 in the morning until you put them to bed at 9.30 at night. Now, did you get...

I mean, how many people in a... Was it a company you're putting through? No, I'm putting a battalion through at a time. So maybe 600. How many suicide attempts are there? They're... Boy...

- None successful, right? Because you have constant touch and watch. Usually it's in AIT where they have time to slow down and think. They got a lousy weekend, their first girlfriend's leptom. You know what I mean? They're in such a managed culture of go, go, go. There's all the doubt and all these other things that you just force it out of them, right? There's no breath.

The reason I asked that is because I remember... There's lots of AWOLs. Okay. I remember kids in my boot camp, there was a couple suicide attempts, which is weird. You're kind of like, whoa, this kid's four bunks over from me and he just tried to kill himself with a safety razor or whatever and...

It seemed like if you had 600 people going through at a time, you would see a lot of that stuff. Yeah, it was mostly towards the end when you finally, you know, you have no time off the first four weeks and then maybe four hours to go to church on Sunday. You let off the pressure and then by close to the end, you might have a full day to go to the store, right? You got a couple bucks. And then literally the last week is when you see people, they see the train tracks as they call them.

Right. They, there was no phone members, all pay phones at the time. They'd all stand in line, a drill sergeant there and that's mommy and daughter and family. And that was it. It was all scripted today. You know, I, I can't speak for it, but I can only understand you have kids, unfortunately that maybe didn't disclose they were on medication or something. So by the time the third, fourth, fifth week comes about and they don't, they don't know how to handle themselves. Yeah.

They were little chemically, you know, blocked and they don't know the structure of life. They don't know how to take an ass chewing. They don't know the difficulties of these things. And that adds up. Did you get any like major insights into human nature when you were doing this?

Or is it just, did it become so repetitive? It becomes repetitive because once again, control, you have a very scripted format, right? So big army doesn't let you deviate. This isn't make it up as you go. So every day as a drill sergeant, you have to emotionally break them, right? Take them individually down, make them hate you collectively, right?

Right? Is that what they teach you? Do they teach you like you want to make them? Oh, I know it. You know what I mean? Because if I get them to focus on me, they want to outperform me. They want to be up earlier before I get there. You know what I mean? They start plotting and scheming. They know my personality. Then I got a unit. Then I remove myself and I give that unit or that cohort to the military that then shapes them for the new foundation. And you did that for two years? Two years. Is that...

And then you, so you go back to fifth group. It's the summer of 2001. Okay. And, uh, you know, so now I'm communicating. I was only on one team for since 91, 92 until I left 99. So do I go back to the same team? But they had started a new unit up in a fifth group that was more of a direct action kind of

they called it the commanders in extremist force. So each group has this regionally oriented kind of SRDA team that's already in the area in case things happen, you could respond to your capability or you can prep for somebody else. And I'm like, Oh,

I'll do that. Sounds good. Blow stuff up, shoot things, you know, punch people in the face. That's, that's America. I'm angry. You know, two years of being a drill sergeant, I wasn't happy. And, uh, we got there and it began the cycle. You now had new funds, new capabilities. You were going, you go to the SIFT. Oh yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. So it was the very beginning of,

Um, and we got to pull in the best from fifth group, right? We, uh, started doing exchanges with other units. We started getting on the national exercise program. So doing more complicated things, you know, now you're like, oh my God. So we were ready on one October to go into middle East and begin as a SIFT company.

And when got it. So you were, you guys had done a workup and a training cycle. Then that was the first fifth group SIF to go through a training cycle like that. Yeah. That's awesome. And then you were prepared to go on deployment to the middle East where we're going to go Bahrain or Kuwait or something. So you're going to go there and be on standby for four months or six months or whatever. Yep. And do a normal deployment. Yep. And you were going to leave on October 1st. Yes. Okay. Yeah.

So were you on pre-deployment leave or something on September 11th? What were you guys doing? September 11th, 595, which is now kind of our sister team and

They had just got back from Uzbekistan. They were training the Spetsnaz in, as you know, the Soviet Union fell apart. They had a lot of nukes and other capabilities. They had Al-Qaeda and other elements trying to enter and, you know, sneak through. And also you had the kind of drug markets that were getting into Europe and Russia. So they were training their forces and capability, a typical security force assistance training.

And they got home. Mark had just left the team, Bob and Will, and they took our snipers. We had an exercise that weekend, and we were inserting snipers on this faux terrorist training compound, and they were sending back signals and digital and all kind of other things. And these were SIF snipers? Yeah. Okay. Okay.

And when the morning of nine 11, we're in a probably the second day of our exercise. And I remember the Intel Sergeant walking in and on the whiteboard, he said the world trade center has been hit. And we thought it was just part of the exercise scenario and escalation, right? The curve ball. And if our later he came in and write the second one's been hit. So we started sending out, uh, RFIs request for information. What does that mean? You know, exercise, exercise, exercise, you know, what's the complication. So, uh,

It wasn't until four hours later then Mulholland came in and said, stop, this is for real. And if you did see the movie, it was the chow hall. Everybody went to the chow hall and saw CNN and were like, holy crap. Because you guys were in isolation. Oh, that's right. I remember they put us in Echo Charles back in the day. For an exercise, part of the exercise would be to get put into quote unquote isolation.

And in an ISO fac, an isolation facility. So you'd go in there because you weren't allowed to talk to anyone. No one was allowed to talk to you. You're focused on the mission. You don't want anyone to talk about what you're going to be doing and all this. So they put you in this ISO. That's where you guys were. And the only information that you're receiving is from the people that are controlling the exercise that you're going to do. Your handler. So you guys thought.

This is just part of the exercise. Why was that? That's crazy. All of a sudden we've got a cell in America. We're uncovering the cell. We're sending back information. We're, you know, doing assets. We're doing all the things that on this checklist of capabilities you're supposed to have. And when they put the World Trade Center has been attacked, it's just does this accelerate timing? You know, you start thinking.

You know, what does this mean? What are these shocks and patterns of, you know, not normal? And so you start thinking through them and request information and you go further. So we literally thought that was it. But it was. Now you go to the chow hall. Yeah. And you guys, like I'm sure we all knew, it's time to go to war. It's time to go to war. So we were already packed and ready to go.

So now what to do? The world's in chaos. They shut down the airways. Presentations need to be presented to multiple commands to remind them, you know, that we're a capable, competent force. We work for you. So you have to do a little bit of salesmanship again because everybody's in chaos. You have, you know, obviously national forces, you know, in theater forces, all these other things, you start to see that it became, you know, who's going to get what.

Mark and Bob, their team was put back together again because they just came from the area. So you start to see two parallel paths where the unconventional side was being formed. They didn't know exactly what to do with the direct action side. So we moved forward into Kuwait and then we moved into an island off the coast. Were you married at the time?

No. So you were just a young, single dude, not getting a shit about it. This is what you say. This is how it ends, right? This is how legends are made. Let's go. And, but to move a company of our size with our capabilities, it requires a lot of airlift, right? We, we don't,

We don't move lightly. It's no more one team, one seat. You know, we have vehicles. We've got platforms. We've got things. So to get us over to the playground, it took a lot, but luckily we had it done. And ahead of time, I actually went into Yemen first.

Prior to getting to Kuwait, you went to Yemen. How many guys did you go to Yemen? Was it a site survey to see what was going on there? At the time, everybody wanted to help America, and everybody realized they had an al-Qaeda problem. So if everybody came on the network, they would get funding and fighters, and it was the time. And so Yemen...

had reached out they had their own cells and problems and they sent a small team to Work with our counterparts to see what we could do to provide You know aid and capabilities not only on the close Family protection side. They're always worried about themselves these leaders and then what kind of force what could they get what kit what lethal aid packages whatnot and

So we went in there, evaluated them, went all over again. So this is you and one other guy. Yeah. Who's like, is it your team sergeant? What's your role in this? What's your position? Are you still a weapon sergeant? No, I'm what they call a cell leader. So now we're organizing troops. So three teams, you know, 12 for sniper, 24 assaulters, a headquarters element. So I'm a cell leader with about six, seven guys. But this was such a pieced together opportunity for,

They just needed a couple guys just to go evaluate. So how did you get to Yemen? Was it civilian aircraft? Flew in. Yeah, flew in. You have your link-ups meet you at one side of the airport, and you get the shakedown. You say nothing. You do nothing. The embassy comes by and picks you up, and then you're gone. How much time do you spend in Yemen?

- Probably a week and a half. - Two weeks. - And it's still so, it's hard to look at things in a pre-9/11 mentality because in post-9/11 and as we began to actually fight, like we all got so much experience,

That to think about what it was like going into, for you going into Yemen. The beginning of the beginning. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, here I am going into Gansuqs, you know, looking at can you buy off the black market or market and equip people? What resource are you looking at? At the time they were called the Rangers or we called them the Rangers. You'd see them do a couple of things. You'd watch them go on a mission. It's just, that's the old OSS mentality.

Lawrence of Arabia, right? They don't know what is needed or what's going on or whatever. Big people are thinking about big things. We need you to go just evaluate and assess, build some packages, work with the elements in the embassy and hold fast. How long did you spend there? Week and a half. Week and a half. And then you go to Kuwait. Well, we go back to Kuwait. Then we go further into the Gulf. And that's when the war had begun.

So in the beginning of the war, it was really an air campaign and they tried to bomb anything that they thought was relevant. But once again, big air force and big targeting planners are looking for bridges and tank depots and things of conventional forces. After about two days of that, they don't know what to do now. And so, you know, as, as we start hearing the chatter come in, the unconventional side, you know, it was proposed that, Hey, we used to work with the Mujahideen.

Let's find some resistance fighters a couple had reached out because they had saw some congressional delegations and other people when they traveled abroad So they started using literally an old business card and called an individual an individual called a buddy in the Pentagon the Pentagon called him back the next day he called him back and said I'll take fighters and that's how the unconventional side started And then where when did you?

What were you hearing you were going to do? Like how did that, how did the planning and preparation for you get going into Afghanistan? How long did that take and what did it look like? Um, it started in, so October 19th, the first two SF teams went in, then you had a national force, which is now disclosed, went in to, uh, Omar's compound. Uh, you had, uh, the Rangers that jumped into South of Kandahar. So you start thinking strategically, uh,

How are we going to move forward and position forces because things were landlocked? They didn't really have a relationship in Pakistan to maneuver. Uzbekistan was still on the edges, right? Still remnants and influence of Soviet. So they realized they needed some, you know, on the edges airfield capability. So that's what you saw.

go for. So initially the two teams, one was maneuvering towards Kandahar, the other Masraj Reef in the north to capture that airfield, which was a heavy lift capable airfield. And then we started planning for central Afghanistan, you know, airfield seizure, hold, resist, you know, face out. It was kind of,

In a way, like you guys were going to be utilized for what you had trained to do. Yeah. Which is kind of nice. Yeah. So what started happening, we started seeing through messaging and human intelligence that all of these unconventional battles, you now have chaos within the Taliban and their al-Qaeda brothers. They're over-communicating. So now you have...

Capabilities that would hear this chatter and they would start meeting up behind the scenes trying to figure out how to contain Resist they didn't know what's going on. So now you've started to figure out that they're meeting in certain areas So that becomes the picture-perfect we need more surgical and a capability that can strike precision behind the lines versus unconventional Mad Max front of the lines things

And that's what got us into the game. Yeah, because that's really just so everyone understands. So that's like absolutely the capability that your unit was. 100%. Direct action.

Oh, we, we're going to know the locations of bad guys through various intelligence sources. And when we know where they are, we need to go send people to go get them. We followed the script and the script, you know, usually you'll try to put eyes on whether it's electronic or human eyes. You get pattern of life. You communicate, you determine whether that is false, right? By pattern of activity.

It could just been a rival saying, I don't like this person or none of the indicators at the time would, would warrant a package or somebody coming in. Uh, then there's a trigger event. You go, you hit all around it cause you can't,

At the time, we weren't very good at saying that's the compound because there's 40 compounds. So you have to isolate all of it. And then smart men make smart decisions. I could run into an objective and know this isn't it. Or you could run in and it's the hornet's nest. And so you use all your dark arts to speed, finest of action, and so on.

I forgot to ask you this. Did you have a language? I did. I had back in the day. I don't know. Does SF still go to language? That's still part of the pipeline. Persian Farsi, which is Iranian. And then never spoke it because I was always in the middle East for Arabic modern standards. So I took modern standard classes then in Africa, Swahili. So if you learn 20, 30 words, how to count to 10, do you speak English? Does your friend speak English? Can you call somebody who speaks English? You can get around.

And you always will find that English is the business language. There's always somebody. So you just learn to be conversationally and pleasant and whatnot. You're never really technical. Dude, they threw...

a language program into the pipeline for seals for a little while it just was such a hands up you know what i mean stop it's just like we were so bad i i think it's part of you know the the culture of green rays when you know that's the that's what you guys do it's like we go and work with the indigenous forces but it's a level of pride that you can speak a language and speak it well and all that

Seals are just like, yo, well, I don't want to learn how to talk like that. It's distracting me from my other tests. I was like that too. But there's a difference between speaking a language and growing up in the culture and understanding the nuances of three cups of tea. You know, the book about sit down, get to know each other, talk about your family. Where's the weather you beat around the bush. And it was the same way, uh,

when you work with indigenous forces, I mean, they're humans, they're gorillas, they're part-time ish, you know, they're a little slow on wanting to go charge down the hill and take a battle. And you have to, you know, it's like talking to your cousins, like starting a cousin army. Right. Yeah.

So as you guys are recognizing that, okay, they've got targets, we're going to go. I mean, how freaking pumped are you guys at this point? Now our first mission was like everything you train to be right. You get on a helicopter, you get off the helicopter, you run to the objective, you explosively breach outer perimeter, inner perimeter. You started encountering people, uh,

You move through the objective. You start doing SSC. It could have been training, exercise, or how we operated. Now with two-way gunfire. So you get to Afghanistan. And how do you guys get there? Like C-17s? I took a... From the location...

Kandahar was starting to fall. They just took an over the airfield. They wanted a precision team because displacement of leadership and they wanted to find them, right? So we loaded up that day. I remember they called in a 130 that was doing a milk run, diverted him from going to Qatar. He landed. He had two nurses in the back.

We backed in our trucks, our gun trucks loaded for bear. And we said, here's the destination. And the nurse are like, what are we supposed to do? I'm saying where you could stay or you can get off. But we commandeered a one 30 and that was it. Yeah. So you had to just be so freaking fired up. It was. So same thing. You land, uh, it's still rolling the tailgates down. You roll the trucks off and you, you go for it.

Then you get there, and did you already have your first target package? You knew what you were going to hit? So you get on the ground. You have a little bit of time to establish. Yeah, Kanaher Airfield. But you were traveling light, so you didn't have any kind of— We didn't have anything. You were just a mobile assault force, which is kind of awesome. How many computers did you have with you?

enough at the time you had those little Panasonic Toughbooks that was it and enough to write us something up and put it in to digitize it and send it off nowadays echo Charles that damn assault force is showing up with 500 people with powerpoints printers the whole nine yards lamination machines you're in a different world when you see the printers come out you're like yeah yeah there it is things change but it

So it was on the fly. You start doing what you do. You build terrain models out of cardboard boxes for ammunition and styrofoam, and you kick open a crate, and I could show you photos of just areas of where they start hearing chatter. So as they develop it more, you start planning, you know, who goes left, who goes right, start coordinating your aviation assets. And then one night, you put in the SOs.

And you see what they see. And you show up there and you are part of this Task Force K-Bar. And Task Force K-Bar was actually being run by a SEAL, a captain. I think it was a captain at the time, Captain Harward. And interestingly, the whole thing was also being run by a SEAL, by a guy named Burt Calland, who was an admiral at the time. Yep.

And it's interesting because Calland was my second CO at SEAL Team One and Harward was one of my Commodores along the way. So here was, what are the chances that both those guys are in the senior positions

for the kickoff of this war. That's cause there's not a lot of seals compared to, compared to SF for sure. I think it was a sign of the times that came about from the relationships in Somalia. So if you look at, you know, Blackhawk down, for example, but then how many seals that eventually went on to leadership with the Olson, right? It, the dynamics of this joint operation changed it. And, and,

Culturally, you could say one thing. Operational, how do you report up? How do you get approval? You're always trying to win the yes. So all you want to do is present factual, demonstrate that you're capable and competent, and earn trust within the leadership that they give you the go. And I think that became the first thing. We had our very first mission. We were starting to get in other elements. They didn't know what to do with the Dutch, the Germans, the

the New Zealanders, the Australians that were coming in. Right. So all of a sudden you'd put together a mission. They're like, no, no, no, not your, let's do the New Zealanders today. And it's like, okay, let's plan. Obviously they got lots of mountains and they know about hide sites and okay. So we started doing what I call old fashioned Green Beret confidence targets.

Around the area of Kandahar. Don't know exactly this thing. We've got some Intel. Let's put some eyes on. Let's do pattern life. So you're practicing rehearsing like a kindergarten band, right? To make sweet music. And then people are getting more trusting.

each other and then finally I think the first couple of that's what you guys were doing - you guys were going out and do a little recce's yeah now were these rural recce's or urban recce's bro rural so you're going up in a mountain somewhere in the mountains or outside the edges of Kandahar you know once again the militias had already taken over inside of Kandahar and you know there's a whole nother story of the hospital

Um, where some Al Qaeda were holed up. So there's pockets and you don't know where people have fled. So now there's total unorganized chaos on leadership and where are they reconsolidating is what you want to find. So you don't want to find masses of two, 300. They didn't exist anymore. They were four commanders, you know, three people seeing each other, couriers, you know, dispassing information, uh, trying to find out, you know,

things like that. So the first couple of missions were, you know, more confidence. They weren't really, okay, there's 20 bad guys and these are the bad guys and they're going to resist you. So you're going to go in guns ablaze. And it was, we don't know, we don't have the assets. We're not mature back then. Like we have today where you have three 60 of, you know, capabilities. Then it was like, yeah, the hunches. I was sitting here thinking about the maturity level of,

the US military at the time and it was like not super mature because it just when you're doing it for real it there's so many things that come into play that you're just not just there's not there in every training exercise in the world that just doesn't bring the same element to it there's like there's something that you can't train for

- No, 'cause it's real, right? - Yeah, exactly. - And I could sit here and tell you the first times of things, first times you shoot at a vehicle and the tires don't explode, you know what I mean? It's like, God damn, Hollywood, what? Come on now, you know, and the first time you breach into things, you get a missed breach, it doesn't open up all the way, you're trying to crash yourself through and out, you know, all these things are like, note to self, okay, that was stupid. - The first time I got shot at, I was in a Humvee and I'm looking at the Humvee in front of me,

And all of a sudden I'm looking, I'm like, who the hell is smoking? Cause I'm seeing like little sparks coming off. I'm like, who's flicking their cigarettes out of that vehicle? Like what is wrong? Why is someone in my platoon smoking? No one smokes. Why is someone smoking all of a sudden? Oh, sure enough. They're getting shot at. Cool. Got it. Well, you know, the first time you shoot a,

you don't have your hearing in, you know, it does these things. It's combat becomes, you know, increasingly first time you shoot at somebody, but you got suppressors, you know what I mean? You're like, it's, it's, they're all things that,

Um, we all collectively needed to learn, you know, now 20 years later, I wonder if the new elements coming up have received those lessons that we put those things in place. So, you know, after I got back from that deployment, I also had the special forces advanced urban combat committee and we tried to program these things in because, um,

we had learned a lifetime of lessons in one deployment, but we had special forces guys redeploying in urban environments now, especially Iraq that, um, they didn't have the depth we had and we couldn't solve, we couldn't race to everybody else's urban problem. Yeah. Yeah.

So going back to this, you guys do some recces. You guys were out there. You're getting your feet wet. You're developing a little rapid maturity of like, okay, I went outside the wire. We maintained communications. We didn't have any accidental discharges. Yes, Ranger Sergeant, we passed this stage. We all came back with men, mission, and material complete.

And then we did our first, this is it. And it was about a five compound spread. And we had some partner forces with us that were going to be the outer cordon. And we realized that we couldn't use, typically you have one 60th, which is very well known, very precise. They've played this game a while because of the distance we had to take air force 53s and they're not known as a combat landing capable. Yeah.

So we're flying, we're flying. It's about four hours at altitude in weather. You know, you're trying not to freeze. You're getting fueled and you land and it takes off and you do not know where on God's green earth you exist. And it's like landing on the moon. And you realize that your night vision only sees so far. And then what do you do? Pull out your compass. So we turned on one GPS can find itself.

You say, got to move. It's like the ranger sergeant in your ear. You know what I mean? What are you going to do, private? What are you going to do? So we start moving up to high ground and somebody goes over the radio and says, what about landmines? So do you crouch on the ground and look for the three little sticks that you see in a movie? You don't know what to do. Mm-hmm.

Then we start moving out once again to a little high ground. And then a helicopter flies over us. We're like, okay, let's follow the path of the helicopter. And then somebody says on the microphone, well, what if they're taking off and leaving or we're running? It just starts happening. You're like, now you're in total blackout chaos. You just don't know what to do. This is your first mission. This is the first one. First big, big DA mission. Yeah, this is it. This is how it ends, mission. So...

How far away from the target were you? We were, they put us 300 meters off. That's actually not bad. Right. But there was a rise, a hill in between us. So we couldn't see the compound because of limitations. And as soon as we got to the top, you can look down. And by the way, Echo Charles, I'm saying 300 meters isn't that bad because I've gotten out of helicopters and been like, oh, damn it. It's two clicks away with a ridgeline. And they landed, you know, when you're in a helicopter, by the way,

like a thousand yards is like, or a thousand meters is 30, 20 seconds. It's like, oh, you wanna land? Oh yeah, we're in the spot. Yeah, this way. We there? Yeah, we're there. Okay, boom, they set you down. You just traveled two kilometers, which is gonna take you six hours or four hours to cover on the ground, which you could have covered in 30 seconds out of a helicopter.

So 300 meters and there's a rise there. I get to the top. I look down. I was part of the breach element. And then the assault element is gathering on the outside of the compound and there's no breachers there, you know, for the heavy outside. So I take off running, you know what I mean? I'm running at them, but then I'm trying not to yell, you know, it's me, it's me. I'm coming behind you. Please look, you know, don't turn around and smack me. And I run past him and I see, uh,

Tony and Jay trying to put some small charges up against this big, massive outdoor. So Afghanistan was very compound where you had an outer 20 foot wall, you know, three feet thick, like dungeon medieval times. And it took a lot to penetrate it effectively. And I smacked their hands. I put on my charge and I said, run. Cause I did the short fuse one.

You know what I mean? It's not the, we've got to plan this. It's the- The big one and the short fuse one. Those are two things that go together. I just look at them both, whites of their eyes glowing green, and I said-

You pull it and as soon as it goes off, you run in. They had a log on the back of the doors, the two outer doors. I see it flipping through the sky. You know what I mean? And then you're crying because this is how it ends, right? This is everything you had hoped for.

And you run into the compound and you begin, you know, your process of just making your breach. And I came up to the window. I raked and braked and threw in a flashbang. And it hit something and dropped right into the threshold there and exploded. And then the assault element runs past me and goes to the first door, blows in. And it was a donkey inside the building in a small area. So there's, you know, 10 assaulters. But you took that donkey by surprise. Yes.

Until he started kicking. How do you put that on the Purple Heart, right? I had the same one. We come on this building. We're in Iraq. We come on this building, and we had this big plan. And I'm the assault force commander, so I'm probably the number two guy to get to the door. I kind of step back, let the boys go in.

And all of a sudden I hear like, you know, I get in there. It's a stable. It's like they had been using this building as a stable. And there's a bunch of freaking donkeys in there. And the target was approximately 12 feet to my right, the actual target building. So we did a little transition. But, yeah, those animals be funny sometimes. It gets weirder. Okay. Just getting warmed up. More happens. So Tony, who was my team sergeant,

Root of a man was the all army weightlifter in Europe. Hands as thick as sausages. Smart like tractor. Brilliant guy. We finally go around because it was a failed breach. I like him already. Go around the other side. We breach in. It was a long hallway. And then you go to the first door and it had a blanket over it.

So once again, what training exercise is that to even conceive it? So you push it aside, you rush in and it's just nothing but it's squishy and there's no furniture and you're just like bouncing in a bouncy house. Like what the heck is this? And they had stacked carpets up and that's how they had beds and there was no person in there. But all of a sudden we started seeing movement in the corner. We're like, Oh crap.

And now you're under nods. Your visions are differently. Depths are differently. And we go to draw back and we see these little hands pull this carpet, which is a blanket up. And she sits up and it's a little girl and she starts screaming and crying. You're like, Oh, you ever watch cops? You know what I mean? And you're like, Oh crap, dad's probably in the other room. Oh, you know, what do you do now? There's no scenario where you now have civilians who,

And Tony starts moving into another corner and they had something stacked and he think it's the body. So he started kicking and, you know, beating up grain sacks. But then you go and you say, do you leave the person there or do you keep going through? And so when we get out to the middle, other assaulters that come in, but then the buildings, you know, has a fire going on.

What are you going to do? Right? So I ended up with this little girl on my hip outside, you know, directing the cell during combat. They're finishing off in the corner. Now you're an SSE. Part of the building's on fire. All of a sudden you recall that there's a bank of computers outside.

and the rise cell phones you know now let's get back into burning building this is why we're here and uh let's start picking our way through that right then you start your collection points and you find mama had abandoned everything so you bring the kid over to mama it's all these things become the truth that we experienced from then on and uh you know from

Before that, it was always, you know, let's train as you fight. No, no, no, that's not how you're going to fight. And so we had to adapt very quickly.

Yes, some of those things, you know, eventually, because I ended up running the training out here for the West Coast Seals. And we had civilian actors we'd hire. We had women, Arabic speaking women, middle aged women that would, you know, be yelling and screaming. Then we got to a point where we would just want to do things that the guys would not expect. So, you know, I tell my cadre, hey, you know, let's get give them something to think about.

I remember I'm standing outside in a hallway and I see where is a target out in the desert and I see like the assault train get to a room and they like open the door and like there's a couple stutter steps, which you don't see a lot of stutter steps. You know, at this point in training, you don't see a lot of, I see a couple stutter steps. I'm like, and then like, oh, hey, uh, uh, and not, not, not a get down. I'm like, what did my guys put in there? So I walk up and I was ridiculous.

My guys had two guys in there dressed up like clowns and they were having a pie eating contest. So that's what these guys walked in on. And the thing is, as funny as that story is, isn't as stupid as it is. Just like you just said, what do you do? Yeah. Is if someone's sitting there with a clown outfit on and they have a pie in their hand, what do you do with that person? How do you handle that? And the fact of the matter is there's going to be things in combat that

That might as well be a clown, two clowns sitting, eating a- Because it shocks your brain in the same way. Because it shocks your brain. You couldn't have conceived of this idea and you're going to have to do something about it. And like I said, we're talking about the maturity of us as war fighters. You went into a room, there's a little girl in there and you're like, wait, how is this even happening? It shocked your brain because, and it's so obvious. What? There's children in Afghanistan. I know that's like, of course there's going to be children in these buildings.

We didn't think of those things as obvious as they are. And so I thought that was, that was really important. And that's why I think, you know, the way that we eventually adjusted our training was it was, and I was having a conversation with some seals the other day is the training might not be exactly what you're going to see in theater, but it has to be training that provokes you to have to think and make decisions that

And if you can make a decision in this urban environment and you can make a decision in this jungle environment and you can make a decision in this CQC environment, well, then when you get in this environment you haven't quite been in, you still can go through those same protocols to make a decision at that time. So it's a lot of lessons that we learned. Well, one thing I took away is on an objective basis,

if you're the assault leader or the, you know, troops are major or, or whatever senior level leadership is resisting the temptation to be the leader in the door because you need to be the logic leader. What's going on on smelling things. This is going too easy. Oh, let's start coordinating. Let's move people to the left and right because you know, everybody will get sucked in to the noise. And if you're not a mature logic leader sitting back, you know,

and hearing and smelling and I call it, you know, the X ring and the 10 ring and the eight ring and nine ring, it takes a lot of leadership and experience to, you know, look at those as well. Yeah. And even that story I just told about we're hitting that target ended up being a stable and,

Even when I told that story I was like I was probably the number two or three guy get to the door and you there's You can't sometimes you just end up there but but just taking a step back and my guys knew if they saw me and I was doing something that it was going to engage me in a Minor tactical scenario whether it's prisoner handling or doing room entries. Look, do you got to do a room entries? of course, but

we're approaching the target, it's really easy for me to take a step back, guys, fill in that spot, and that way I'm not the number one, two, three, four, five guy. And now by the time, oh, they're shooting inside, or there's not shooting inside, or there's donkeys, and I can say, okay, if there's donkeys in this building, it's probably not the building we're supposed to be hitting, and there's a building right next to us that looks almost the same, let's hit that one, and I can make that call. Whereas if I'm in there in a donkey fight, I'm not making any decisions, I'm not thinking. So those are important things to learn about.

So that's the first big mission. How did it conclude? Did you guys roll up a bunch of computers and Thariah phones? A bunch of things, and it turned into a special forces selection event because one of the events you have to carry these crates, right, full of ammo and stuff, and your hands are bleeding. So now you're post-mission, you're consolidating things,

you only have one hour to be there, right? Because of the distance and everything. And if you didn't make the helicopter in one hour, it's 24 hours later reset. So you're like, okay, now you're the time master, right? And that guy's calling out time. We moved to our rendezvous location. You don't know who else is encountered or what's going on. And the first helicopter that comes in crashes, his front landing gear takes off. So now you're down one.

Okay, let's cycle in the second one. Who's a priority? Let's put some people on here and some objects. It comes. The third helicopter quit in the air, refused to land. So now you're down to three helicopters. So all these scenarios were true. And then luckily we had one Marine 53 with triple engines that could go beyond tort, stuffed the rest of the assault force in there, and we took off and went home and unwound.

How was the op tempo after that one? Every third night. And so you guys got into a good groove. Yeah. Every third night. Some, um, one objective was the hornet's nest. Right. And it was very complex. It was multiple buildings. Some went in, you know, behind the mountain because the helicopter wash and walked in and staged. Uh, we took in vehicles cause it was in the middle of town and that objective we started, you know,

seeing there were people on it, so you're starting to hear chatter that you've got active and Then there's the question we just bomb it and soup it up or do we keep going? so they said keep going and we you know moved into the compound and Instantly somebody came running out and you grab a hold of them and so it begins and there was maybe 24 assaulters took out 22 guys and was over in a minute and a half and

What were the 22 guys doing? It was a schoolhouse, and they had thought that we wouldn't take it down. So people had learned things we would or wouldn't do based on how we articulate ourselves at times. They had taken vehicles, so there were 17 SUVs, a couple anti-aircraft guns. So everything said that that's a meeting place. Mm-hmm.

And when you go running into the school, it was an open compound. We came into the back and they were already outside talking to each other. And so it was, so you caught him off guard. Yeah. Instantly it was on. And so I went down, got pinned down, you know, with some guys that were firing outside the windows cause it's a compound. And Tony and another guy went in the very first room and,

And the number two guy is he's going to go in. Somebody came out the next room beside him. So he got caught right then and there. So Tony ended up in the first room by himself. And that's where he did hand to hand. Four guys killed them all. Basically broke his collarbone, you know. So now the firefight's on. There's probably about seven rooms altogether. When he did hand to hand.

What was his weapons? So if you run into a room and somebody's beside you and you're coming this way, they just grab on your gun. They got hold of his gun. So he shot one with a pistol. Because the number two man didn't come in because the number two man was previously occupied. The next guy came out of the next room. I mean, it was just absolute. So he ended up with a one-man room entry and somebody literally grabbed his barrel, which we do that shit to people all the time in training. Yeah.

grab their barrel. So now you're under knots, right? You're alone. Firefights are happening, you know, simultaneously, multiple, everything right then and there. And so I go into the next room and I remember I didn't have time to put a charge on. So I, I kicked, it kind of came open. I threw a flash bang, but as I'm flash bangs out of my hand, I looked down, I see a guy laying on the ground with his gun up at me. So I immediately step on his barrel and then you start going into the room and there's about,

seven guys in there and they're all trying to shoot out the window or out the back. And, uh, so you surprised him to the point that you got to shoot these guys in the back that they were shooting out the window. Yeah. I mean, it was full on. It was nice. By the time we came into the center of the compound and we started our first engagement, they started shooting. I mean, we're talking, uh,

seven or eight meters. Now, you know, when you start shooting AK, it lifts up, right? So instantly everybody's squatting. Now they're in a duck walk because you know, the guys are getting shot at and you, you literally go into this room and they're all trying to face the windows. So you're actually in the center of the room. Yeah. That's awesome. Engaging that way. So once again, how do you train to that? Um,

Then the next room, the one guy we took off, he had his hands up. And as they proceeded, the gun trucks came around. There was guys fighting on the outside now. So now we had some outside contact we had to clear through. The 130 started spotting sprinters, which later on you'd learn that the actual leader, they disengage quickly and make a run for it. Did you guys have any wounded? Not on that compound. The one up north got somebody shot. Mm-hmm.

And that was... Like, what number mission was that in the... Or how long? Oh, that was number three. Yeah. So that was a quick escalation. Yes. Into the... So you know when you hit, right? That's it. Other ones we would hit and the SOs were...

There for 24 hours, a lot of chatter. It was a crossing station. We're waiting for somebody particular, so you had to do a change out of positions. One of the guys got a kidney stone. So imagine the medic trying to bring him in and out because he's a commo guy. I mean, just things. Freak snowstorm. They send back a picture. They're covered, you know, a foot of snow on them. They're like, suckers, right? I don't want to be in this. No way.

So that was Afghanistan until it, it, big army came in and said, turn the war back on. We need somebody to shoot at and Anaconda heaven. And, and also while this is happening, you had,

the guys from 525, the horse soldiers. - 595. - Sorry, 595, the horse soldiers. Those are your buddies and they're running the whole, what is it, Horse Soldiers book, 12 Strong book, well, it became 12 Strong book, became the 12 Strong movie and now there's an actual real book, not real book, but there's a book that was actually written by Mark and Bob.

who have decided that if someone's going to tell their story, it should be the people that tell the story. So the first foray in, once again, culture is, again, it kind of wasn't in our culture to talk and think about storytelling because we were still in, I mean, Iraq war and everything. The first one that came in actually while we were all still there was Robin Moore.

And he had wrote the book, The Green Berets, The French Connection. So he's kind of like the patriot writer of Green Berets stories. So he heard this and he came in, but he was very, very old. And he was co-opted by somebody that kind of led him astray. And so his book he produced was half washed and half made up, half everything, because nobody wanted to talk or say anything. And then when they finally, somebody was approaching the command,

This used his name D, you know, started to get about a day's worth of the story and it was all fake names. And then it was like, I don't know if we want to talk anymore. And they left. So that book is small percent of one position of the story. Nobody's went in and nobody's gone back and took all the unconventional teams and the D.A. team and try to place it at one time.

So there's never been a totality of stories because none of the guys knew what other guys did. So once you get back to the team room, you know, you don't talk about fight club. So nobody talked about what you did or what you did or what you did. War just continued. Yeah. And at the time, like you care, but you don't care that much. No, it's like, I got my own story. It's like, Oh cool. Oh yeah. I heard you guys did some good shit. Oh yeah, we did. That's cool. Huh?

That's about the conversation. Like maybe there's one little, Oh yeah. Hey, make sure you put your magazines over here. Don't put your radio over there. But other than that, it's funny. The SOG guys from Vietnam, like they had no idea what they didn't even know each other in many cases. Nope. Nope. Same thing with a team room. You're isolated in a, that's it. I was only on two teams for 17 years. That's 12 guys. That's it.

But, uh, the book that is out now. Yeah. Swords of lightning. Swords of lightning. And it's so Mark and Bob, you know, we've become friends. Mark came over to our unit after he left, uh, five, nine, five. And, um, that's how our friendship became closer and closer. So you do know each other and your kids play ball together and you're just in the same neighborhood. And fast forward, when we started this business, um,

Hey, you know, Mark, do you want to go to a distillery? Yeah, let's go to a distillery. Hey, I know somebody that's an SAS. Let's go to England and see a distillery in England. So this thing organically. But then I was there in the, in Tampa when somebody called up and said, Hey, uh, you know, they're doing a movie. I'm like, what, what do you mean? Well, you know, they got actors and everything. Are you guys advising? They're like, what movie are you talking about? And literally flew out there on a Friday and,

Went to set on a Saturday. The lawyers asked him to leave by Saturday afternoon. And that was that. Yeah. Um, I just was part of, he wanted to write a book saying, okay, everybody else is telling these stories. Let me put it down. That's awesome. I was, uh,

I was listening to an interview with Mark and I just was a part of a movie. So I've written a bunch of kids books got made into a movie. But one of the things that Mark was saying is the same thing that you just said, which is the movie had begun filming when Mark showed up. And look, are there some changes you can make when the movie's begun filming? Kind of.

But it's like the frame of the house is there. And maybe you can select what color paint you want on the cabinets. But other than that, man, the whole, the foundation, the room layout, the plumbing, the electrical, you're not moving that stuff once it's already been kind of bought and paid for. Once again, we don't understand the process culturally in SF. I can talk to lots of other friends that have been in the business and they understand when they're involved and when they're not involved.

The movie, they told them at the end, it's a movie, not a documentary. So sometimes you're trying to question, you know, it wasn't exactly like this. No, no, no. A movie, you need love interests and you need a little tension. And there's about two prime characters, you know? So after the movie was made, it ran into some controversy. Obviously, the name Horse Soldiers, the Wayne family had owned IP. Yeah.

And they wouldn't release it, so they had to change the name, which was a big no-no. Oh, that's why it got changed, huh? And nobody was going to participate after it was done, but the command said, hey, we actually, Green Berets aren't doing so good, you know. Recruiting perspective and all that stuff. Recruiting-wise and media-wise, let's embrace this movie, and there's some resistance. It's like, eh. And then they said, we'll let you go to the red carpet premiere. And we're like, oh.

then the wives were like, Oh, Rick carpet, did you say Chris Hemsworth? And so it's like, okay, they got us. And then how this business started we're in today is we literally were traveling the world just as friends making some whiskey for fun with some other veterans. And we didn't know if it was going to be a business or not. So we,

Uh, kind of like the, uh, I hope you were getting, even though you didn't know it was going to be a business where we get in tax write-offs, where we writing off trips to England and whatnot. We didn't make enough money to get a tax write-off. You know what I mean? It's like, okay. But we said, we're only coming to the recovery party. If we can bring some of this whiskey we're making. And they're like, sure. So we literally went poured some in a bottle, printed off on a laser printer, a label, uh,

And called it Horse Soldier and took it to the red carpet premiere. That's how the business started. Who do you say owned the rights to Horse Soldier? Wayne Family, 1959. The Horse Soldiers.

And then how did you print the label off and get permission to use the name for the bourbon? We didn't know what you're supposed to do or not do, that you're not supposed to transport alcohol across state lines and blah, blah, blah. We just learned how to make it, and we made it for fun. So we were like, oh, here we go. How about once you were going for it, though? Did you have to buy that name from them? Oh, yeah.

The journey of starting a business, right? So we were in transition. Some guys were still in. Bob was still in. He was the head of selection. Mark was still playing contractor warrior overseas. So we were in different places. And we started going to craft distilleries because it was a fun thing for friends to get together and go see how vodka was made or rum. We had done a 10-day horse and mule train through Yellowstone. Yeah.

And we gave up the horses and we're going out the West gate and we saw a craft distillery sign that said free tours and tastings. We're like, this is what men do, right? We,

we both mosey up to the bar before they get arrested. Free whiskey. I don't think that far ahead. I'm in the moment. And, uh, it was fun because the wife came out and it's a little bar and she started pouring some things and you're of course sipping it. And she goes, ah, this is potato vodka. You're like, sure. Can I get another one of those? No, no. Try potato flake vodka. Oh, I could taste. Um, and, but, uh,

one of the wives and co-founder Elizabeth started looking at the bottle and talked to the wife about the label and the texture and the things on it. And then the husband came out and said, would you like to see the stills? And you go behind the rope and you see mechanical and engineering and what time do you show up to start this? So we literally got back to the Airbnb, checked out and hit every craft distillery from West Yellowstone back to Tampa, Florida. It took us three weeks.

on a journey. And no DUIs. No, no, no. Cause we would stop. We're mature. You know what I mean? We would, uh, and, uh, we called up Mark and he said, Hey, I got an SAS buddy that owns a distillery in Scotland. So we flew to Scotland, went to whiskey university, went up, you know, space side. Is whiskey university a real thing or are you just,

There's a real thing. Yeah. So we don't know these things that you don't know the culture, you just scratch your way into it. And so we took official classes on nosing and tasting the history of whiskey without the E, which is the English version, right? Um,

And we go to see what tourism sees at a distillery. You kind of walk this velvet guided rope and then you go through the curio shop at the end and you buy three bottles for your buddies. You go to the next one. And then when we got to Thorsow, the northernmost city in Scotland where the Vikings came, there's nothing to do but work at that distillery and go to the bar. Work at the distillery, go to the bar. Right. It's like oil dregs.

And we learned how to turn them on. You know, the Scots are very efficient. There's no task left unmanaged with them. And we left, we came home. Somebody said, what's the difference between whiskey in Scotland and Irish whiskey? So we said, screw it. Let's go to Ireland. It's been a month in Ireland to Teeling and Thorson or Kelbegin and just would knock on the door and say, can we work here for a week? And so we came back, we went into Kentucky and,

Can I work at a warehouse? On the weekend, we would just go and see a bunch of broke vets, man. This is interesting. Can we just come just pick your brain? And everybody was open. And so we started forming a company called American Freedom Distillery. And my business partner, mentor, John Coco, previous generation Green Beret agency, him and another buddy started an insurance company, highly successful. Daddy Warbucks,

Successful. Right. And he understood business. So we formulated it and we started making a couple of barrels and that's when the movie hit. So we went up there, did the movie, came back from the movie. The next day we went to a charity event and the owners of ABC Liquor in Florida heard that we were somehow part of this movie. We heard that he owned liquor stores and he said, I'll take 50 cases. Nice. Yeah.

Now you had to go make 50 cases. Yes. Literally flew a Legionnaire, went back there, filled up some Jugo bottles, printed off some labels, licked them on, drove them. Across state lines? No. No, of course not. No. Um,

They arrived. What's the statute of limitations on state lines? Son of a bitch. The mistakes. So, but we didn't know. So we just learned how to make it. Now you don't know that the, you know, what distribution is, what sales is. We didn't even have an invoice. You don't know any of this stuff. And, uh, that first year, you know, we were educated, we formed alliances, we formed partnerships. And, uh, today we're the fastest growing bourbon in the country. Mm.

I'm building a 7 million gallon facility that'll make 100,000 barrels a year, which is a million cases, which is the size of Woodsford. From a bunch of guys who knew nothing about anything. And that's where you guys building that? In Kentucky. Did you guys buy the land already? Yeah. So you start knowing when you go, there's a, to get started usually by somebody else's is contract distilling. I have about 30,000 barrels aging right now.

And that's a whole separate business because four to six years to eight years has to age. And then I have my horse soldier bourbon as a brand, which we did 150,000 cases last year. So there's, we realized that if we, if I bought a barrel from somebody else and I paid a thousand dollars, if I made it myself, I make $500.

I'm losing that profitability. So at what point in your business plan do you start to transition to think 25 years, 100 years out? If I can only integrate all of my production manufacturing and then my sales side takes over once it's age appropriate. So we bought an old golf course in the smallest town in Kentucky, away from all the big distilleries and COVID hit.

So what was a plan to build a distillery, a hotel, a 5,000-person amphitheater? Because we like to think big. Game of Thrones, right? We don't think small. It would have cost us $150,000 to build. Then it got up to $450 million. And so we had to break apart the big idea into little chunks. And now the build is about...

halfway done we've got the tanks in we've got everything we're going to open up the 4th of july 2026 nice 250th anniversary of america america american dream screw it that's pretty bad for amateurs yeah right on little deviation there um rewind a little bit let's bring you back to the military you're you get done so you get done with that deployment

What's your next, what's your next pillar? Do you stay there at the same, at Fifth Group? - Oh yeah, Fifth Group still. - Still on the SIF? - Still on the SIF. Already heard rumblings getting ready for Iraq. Because we had already been in the 90s into Kuwait, we already knew certain elements had, whether it was WMD or whether it was unconventional or regular warfare, strategic reconnaissance, those ideas were probably just blown off the dust.

So by November, teams started getting ready and going into Jordan and Kuwait and positioning. By this early February, the missions were set, and by the invasion, teams were already going inside to whatever-- - So this is now '03. - Yeah. So you lead the invasion from multiple fronts. If you recall, it only took 90 days, once again, from-- - And were you over there on the pushup? - Yeah. - Nice.

And what were you guys doing? One mission still, you know, sensitive enough. Then that problem was solved and it became, you started picking up either ors. Either you were going to do the Jessica Lynch mission or another force was. Well, shit, they got it. There we started because the war was just over within a flash. What do you do? You know what I mean? They,

We were literally in Baghdad going to the market, hanging out in shops, you know. Yeah, and there was that weird time. Checking on facilities. Yeah, there was that weird time where it was like there wasn't an insurgency. There wasn't. It was kind of, like you said, you're going out in the market. Yeah, it was quiet. And we didn't understand because we had bypassed, you know, a lot of things in high sight.

hopefully we understand now, but we don't, you know, all these compounds where these munitions were that became the feeders and fuels, you know, all of these things we didn't secure. We were such a rush just to exist and occupy. Um, and then from there, once you had the lack of structured governance, the people begin to revert to, um, stripping things, so government buildings, all these things. So you couldn't go back and reinsert government institutions because, um,

you know, they were already degrading. So that lasted April, May came back for two months and then Djibouti, Djibouti, Djibouti. And what was Djibouti like? Um, take your hand, call it the rim of the asshole. That's Djibouti right there. Um,

What we saw was this phenomena of foreign fighters. So if you think historically how people migrated for the Hajj, how they supplied other jihadi things throughout generation, there's this kind of out of theater, out of travel network of people coming across. And as things started devolving in Iraq,

Elements could fight them there, but how do you pick them apart before they get there and understand the networks that are facilitating them? So the mission was basically Djibouti was the last long landmass before Yemen. So did we have a presence there and could we understand the networks? It was all more deep reconnaissance, small network, disbanding, you know, understand the flow of pattern.

And then you went back to Iraq again. Yes. A couple times? Yeah. Okay. Two times. So that was end of 03, early 04 was Djibouti. Had a great time. Different. Now chaos reigned and they decided to break the company apart and put the company down south in a traditional SF, you know, regional orientation area.

And we had Escondiria to Al-Qut to Karbala and Najaf, the whole southern region, probably starting in July of 04. July of 04. Okay. And then what was the op tempo like for that? Every other night. I think I did 90 complete hits and missions. And did you have a partner force or just you guys? Mixtures. Okay. So if we...

if it was something small local, right? We had either Hill of SWAT or you had, uh, the Swanese. It depend on what fluff, the 36 commandos were just getting started. ICTF was just getting started. And if, if as battles were progressing, whether it was Fallujah or Al-Qut on the West side, right? The Iranian is coming over. Then you would assemble, we would bring, uh,

a more dedicated element for the precision of the problem. Or if you just need nugs and thugs, you know, you'd bring, you know, some local militia in with you, right. Just to keep the peace and keep people out of your way and do your thing. So, I mean, every third day was, you know, is this a bomber and we know the neighborhood or is this, you know, people creeping across the Iran and we're seeing a lot of personalities pop up.

And then it just unleashed in Alcut. And you say you were formulated like a, or you were structured like a normal ODA at this point? Yeah, so we went back to 12-man teams in, you know, regional locations assisting the fun term, the battlefield, you know, space owner. Why did they do that to the SIF?

I think by then the national elements were so dedicated and they were building their empire of capabilities. So they're putting you guys out of a job. Yeah.

Well, we're just moving you to the other job. Other job. Back to, you know... But we would then come together when necessary. So the elements down south. So you had, once again, some major battles. Najaf was happening at the time. The cemetery battles. They did the SOs counter Chets and doing things. You had the Iranian streaming across the Al-Qut area. You had Fallujah just...

What was your, what was your role in the, in the ODA at this point? I'm back to team Sergeant and then troop Sergeant major. So when we assemble like the wonder twins, you know what I mean? You call up the banner and you say, all right, you know, let's meet somewhere. Let's either bring ourselves, you know, unilateral, let's bring a hill of SWAT or let's bring a Marine. The Marines want to go in somewhere. So, okay, let's do the death stars. I like to call it and,

Bring in a big package and take over a whole kind of non-compliant village. Was there any major challenges during that deployment? Coordination, cooperation. The challenges I look backwards is I didn't know where we were going until a week before we got there.

So now you're blind. How do you set up assets and work networks and do things? We were on the tear lines. We were having that discussion. You know what I mean? The cracks. So we were on the crack by southern Baghdad going south. And that's where people were squirting. They were conducting activity in one area and they were squirting back for rest and relaxation in another. Yeah.

And these elements, because the action activities, they would all storm and put bases and, you know, think that's where the fight, but really people organizing that and coordinating it were, you know, coming back and,

back in these remoter locations, suburbs for effect. So when we started to unscratch that and uncover that it awoke in a whole nother area. So it's never once again where everybody wants you to focus the problem area. It's where we're humans too. We go back and reset and refight, reorganize, re-communicate, refund each other. And we started peeling apart those networks so they couldn't relax.

And how long was that deployment? Were you guys on a four month, a seven month? Yeah. Was that standard for you guys? Yeah. Okay. Cause that's, I know some other elements we're doing four month deployments, the seals, we've always kind of done what the Marine Corps does, which is be aligned with the big Navy, which is basically a six or seven month deployment. So it sounds like you guys did the same, same thing. Yeah. And so you get home from that deployment. Are you still a single dude at this point? Uh,

I've been lucky in love many times, right? No. I think it was my fourth divorce by then. Okay. So you've been racking and stacking. I enjoyed being gone a lot, right? I've been married to my wife now since 17, 18, 20 years. So this also takes the right type of person when you say I'm here and then a month later,

And then you're gone. The hard part is just getting your relationships back with your kids. Yeah. Do you come home from that deployment and then it's just reload for another one? So in between those times, I ran the advanced urban combat school. So now you've got other teams. So you get into the training cycle of getting them ready. And then, you know, things are really starting to downturn. So if you think about...

uh, you know, Ramadi, we had lost some guys in Ramadi in oh four pretty hard. And they were, some guys were trained, you know, really good and went to the schoolhouse for direct action. They try to give it to their ODA and they were caught in a circumstance. Right. So we realized that if some of these guys are going to fight in this urban environment, uh,

They needed to advance their skill set, how to maneuver, how to climb walls, how to be surreptitious entry versus explosive, all these things. So we really brought our skill set to the other ODAs. And then I went back for another four to five months into Baghdad. So now I'm off the team. I'd been there.

Too long. I'm at the schoolhouse running that, but then the command says, Hey, come in and support us with the ICTF and commandos and help professionalize their, you know, training pipeline, their acquisition pipelines. Now you're making a force, not for convenience and partnership, but you're making something sustainable. So I went and helped out with that. And what year did you go help out with the ICTF? Five.

Okay. Because I was supposed to, when I was a troop commander or task unit commander, I was supposed to go and take over for the SEALs. Because they had both SEALs and Green Berets with the ICTF in Baghdad. And so they were all working together. And then I was supposed to go and take over the SEALs that were there. And I went on pre-deployment site survey, but this was in...

early 06 probably like March of 06 went there what met with the ICTF went out some ops with them and then was all ready to do the turnover and then we came home and then they sent us to Ramadi instead which was awesome but that was my interaction with the ICTF and the ICTF was

A squared away unit, definitely for Iraqis, a squared away unit. But it was interesting because they had like our weapons. They had night vision. Mini-me's. Yeah, they were. And I'm sure you've heard this, but the guys that, the ICTF that went up and fought in Missoula took massive casualties there.

But they were also brave and they fought really hard and they fought with a lot of courage, which was a real testament to what all those Green Berets and SEALs did to and what you guys did to put that force together and give them a culture of courage and commitment that, you know,

we didn't see a lot from other units in the Iraqi military. So that was a real testament to that idea of making a longstanding...

And it's unfortunate that they did suffer such heavy casualties. Well, they did. You know, once again, I think we build them and there for a while you couldn't do the mission unless you had a partner force. So people kind of, you know, hey, look at these four. Is that enough to get the yes? And then you try to build them as a competent leadership, but then you still tickle the close air support and the intel team.

They're not ready to be self-sustaining yet. And the first time probably was. They're planning their own missions. You want them to go. Maybe we'll advise to the side. And then that's what messed that up. You know what I mean? We've lost all those lessons. Even to this day, how do we recount what worked, what didn't, what will we do better? And now it's gone. Yeah.

What do you do when you get done with that? So I'm off the team now. I'm a senior E8, uh,

Typically, if you're getting ready to go for a company start major, they send you to start major academy for a year. I didn't want to go. I'm a little out of, you know, we're talking seven months since 9-11. You're in constant combat. And this opportunity came up to go to Tampa and I'm from Florida anyways. Okay. So I get assigned to the headquarters.

So imagine going from the lowest tactical on the edge level, a major was important, a colonel was invisible, but the God. And now you walk into a four-star headquarters and there were only 17 soft NCOs in the entire headquarters. They didn't know what to do with us. You kind of had to find your own place. That's crazy. I did not know that. How many people are at that command? Thousands. Thousands.

All retired, you know, 05s, 06s, and, you know, four-star, two, three-stars, four, you know, two-stars. You just go down. Like the Richter scale just comes down. So there was an individual I was introduced to. I'll tell you two funny stories. One was a guy named Ed Winters. Mm-hmm.

And he had just left Civil Team 6 and he came to Tampa and they started this task force called the Interagency Task Force, right? So by then you start to see what JSOC was doing with their capabilities and all of the reservoir dog colors sitting in one place sharing the problems of the mission, right? So they tried to recreate that. So Ed was the first one.

So we began to take people funding capabilities and throw them in a dog pile and see how we could support elements forward or support. You know, U.S. had a problem at the time. We could encounter anybody on the battlefield and win. But why couldn't we as a country use whole of a nation and share and support information and degrade networks before they even got on the battlefield?

And so that was the big idea. And so that became the genesis of the Interagency Task Force. And how long did you do that job for? 2010. So six to 10, four years. So winners. And then Scotty Miller came. That's where we became friends. And then had an Air Force, Bob Holmes. And then...

Frankie Schreier, who left the DEA. So I was a list advisor, so people would plug in and out, and we began to have separate cells, and that's where I met Jim, right? We had a foreign fighter cell. We had a nefarious network cell. We had defense or counterfinance, and you started picking apart these problems because there was nobody else really unified to look at it. Looking at them from that holistic viewpoint.

And then after that, did you retire after that? I did. And how was that decision? It was time, right? So here I am. I'm working for a three-star equivalent. I'm an E8. Half the time I'm in a suit walking around because as soon as you put on a uniform, people judge you, especially if you're at a lower rank. And my family came. It's the first time they read you off the rolls and say what you did. And then the next day I was nobody.

So like most people I worked, uh, somebody approached me and they had a contract supporting at the time was McChrystal, uh, overseas. And that was evaluating how Afghanistan was going 10 years into it. So I spent about another nine months in Afghanistan walking the battlefield like a Ronin. I could go to any meeting, get on any helicopter, walk any foot patrol just to assess the

And I think you came up with an interesting assessment. The viewpoint that you took of this was interesting. Yes. I got to speak, you know, with old tribal commanders, people on the ground, you know, their question is, why are we still here? I thought, you know, in the beginning you said you would come, you would avenge. We can understand that now turn over the country and Afghan will become Afghanistan. And, and,

As I would walk the battlefield, I would go on a patrol and I watched some kids get blown up and watched the medics didn't even know how to apply morphine. You just start seeing these things. You're confused on why we're still here. And you start going into these jock centers and watching young commanders make decisions and watching people run out of ammo in the first 30 seconds. And you're like,

you know, why haven't we evolved? People have transitioned. They show up to the new same location that an American has been at for 10 years, but not know any people or anything. It was just, I didn't understand it. So as I started to, to assess myself and what was going on at the end, I printed this presentation. It was very basic and it was just a U S soldier and an Afghan soldier. And it was the cost.

One side or the other how much does it cost us to fill the soldier? How much does it cost the Taliban? So it was an economic assessment and the American soldier 1.3 million, you know education high school equipment whatnot Taliban soldier rusty a K $7 and I just went down the pipeline from vehicles to a Toyota Hilux, you know a million and a half dollar and wrap versus and at the end

We're in this battle because we can sustain it economically, but yet these people who don't have economic, technological, advanced educations, all this other stuff, truly have control of the country. So we need to reassess what we're doing here. Did this make it anywhere? I presented it and I quit government.

They vowed never to be a government contractor to do anything again. Did it get received at all? Did anyone nod their head and say, Oh, they did. I mean, I had the senior relationships at the end to go, where is this going? And yeah,

I mean, it was, it was presented at the intellectual level, right? It wasn't like you would do an assessment of a unit after an exercise and, you know, you should make four decisions better and you should, you know, incorporate this technology better. It wasn't that it was just intellectually. How, how are we still here and have we achieved because being there the first time was to root out Al Qaeda, unseat the Taliban from,

which was allowing them to facilitate training and planning in Afghanistan to 10 years later, we've applied all of these things. We've backed away from some of the simple realities of Afghanistan probably needs 200 years in the oven. And their solution is something they have to

create for themselves and manage and fight the way they're going to fight. So if we're training them to look like us, think like us, use our tools and act like us, as soon as we take that out, it reverts back. So,

So when you say you quit government employment at that time, was this a huge kind of epiphany moment in your life? So how the next phase happened is I was on the board of the Green Beret Foundation and trying to help them raise money. And we were having our storytelling problem, right? The sales are very good. They have great post-production.

Seal people that will go out and encourage people, you know to raise money for do events for whatever Special forces are like mountain men, you know, we're huff and we're quiet and we don't want to talk about anything and so We were seeing more guys getting injured as government contractors because if you get injured or shot or blown up your treatment and your evacuation Is completely different. So these guys were now you're saying as the Green Beret Foundation you were

you were helping more guys that had been wounded as contractors than you were guys that were getting wounded as we had enough problems with guys on active duty. Right. And we were finding the cracks like in vitro fertilization, guys were wanting to store some. And if they lost something, they could, you know, still create families, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, all the stuff that VA wasn't ready for or alternative physical therapies, anything, um,

you wanted to encourage and had to pay for it outside of any normal VA or medical system. We had guys shot through the neck, wanted nasal stem cell surgery so it could rekindle atrophy from the inside. He's still alive today. Romy Camargo, business owner, quadriplegic. So all of a sudden you're getting calls that the guy you talked to a month ago was SART major something now is Mr. And he got, you know, a contract with somebody and then got shot.

And now, you know, he doesn't have the funds and he's let go by the business and he's trying to get some medical care. It's a workman comps claim. So you're, you're doing that. And this was after you finished that commander's advisory and assistance team. This is when you go to the Greenberry foundation and you're in and you're out there raising money, seeing all the problems that guys are facing. So,

As you're raising money, you see, you know, men and women that are the corporate pillars that become successful entrepreneurs. So you start to get to know them as you develop relationships. So Green Beret skill 101, right? Get to know them, you know, help them with your problem and they become generous. But I become fascinated on how they grew their wealth and took advantage of the American dream. And the word entrepreneurism, you know, was an idea theory, right?

And so I created a program called the next ridgeline. So metaphorically how I'm getting from here over there through the valleys and the draws and the haulers. And if we can only, you remember the Rambo movie at the end, when your kid Rambo was about the knife guy.

You know what I mean? The running and evading and standing up to Johnny Law, but at the end he's crying saying, "I can't even get a job and fly helicopters and pumping gas." - I can't even get a job pumping gas. Echo, you have to run a quote right now? Is that what we're doing? - You're talking about First Blood, buddy. - Yeah, he's talking about First Blood. - So now you're older, you're like, well, how can we be this highly trained and skilled? And then the only job you walk into immediately is back into combat, but you don't realize you don't have the support you had.

Why aren't we enabling this generation to become entrepreneurs? So I created the program. We put in some money. And on the stage, we're in New York City. And I had Roger Ailes, the head of Fox at the time, give the richest guy in the room an award. He'll bring his rich buddies. It's a nonprofit 101. And I literally dropped the microphone. I said, I quit.

And if I can't walk off the stage and follow this program and start a business with friends, you all deserve your money back. And that's on stage. Yeah. And that's when we went to Yellowstone to figure out what we're going to do next. And that was the beginning. That was the beginning.

How long did it take to go from, you know, when you're like, did you have an idea of I want to start a business? It was just a business. It could have been sneakers. It could have been hats. I did it. I did operator with backpacks and t-shirts and everything you see at the SHOT Show. And your five friends, you're like, hey, everybody else has got a backpack. I just came up with this. Hold on a second. And I said, all right. So I talked to my friend who's my business partner now, Cocoa.

And Coco was a Green Beret. But is he older than us? Yes. He was blown up in the first Gulf War. His I'm Alive date is coming up. Got it. We'll hug it out and we'll go somewhere dark. And probably drink some horse.

some horse soldier. Don't say it too fast. I know I get that all the time, but he, him and another buddy started very successful insurance business, went public back down to private, sold it for a lot, started buying blue cross blue shield franchises before Obamacare hit. I mean the epitome of self-made nicely done. So I asked him, I said, John,

I got these little companies, these ideas. I'm making five bucks here and a hundred bucks there. And these were backpacks and freaking slings and whatever else. The same. And he goes, what's the margin on that? I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, what are you doing? What's the access to capital you got right now? He started saying these foreign words. I'm like, hey, hey. He goes, no, no, no. Wasting your time. You got 12 hours in the daytime. Those things you do. I'm going to, I'll talk to you about

define the thing that'll make the most value for the time and energy and effort you're going to put into it. And I said, you're a smart guy, you and me. And he said, as soon as I get back from Yellowstone. So when he was injured, uh, there back then there was no PTSD, right? There was no survivor's guilt. There was no things going on, but there was a little program called project healing waters. Um,

And it was started by the Walton family. So the Walton's son was actually a Silver Star Vietnam. John Walton. Yeah. He was a SOG guy in Vietnam. He was with, I mean, he's in a bunch of those books.

He's a total stud. So he started a program and John went through it. And every year afterwards, he and his family went to Yellowstone. And he told me, as soon as I get back from Yellowstone, you and I will evaluate your businesses. We'll talk about, you know, is this making money? How we can help this? And I said, well, sure. Where are you going? He said, Yellowstone. I said, well, I've never been. I realized I'd never taken a vacation of substance in 20 years. Mm-hmm.

So he goes, well, why don't you come? And I told him, well, I'm unemployed, so might as well. And we fly fished and climbed the Tetons and horseback ride. And did at any time, did you guys talk about bourbon at that time? Or just talking about just life? No, you want to know the great brilliant answer? His wife, Elizabeth, who was snow white, beautiful, perfect snow white on horseback with us guys. She's trooper.

And the first night she starts putting on essential oils and rubbing herself down with lotion. You're smelling by the campfire. You're like, and the guy's like, what is that? What's going on? Who's got something? Who's got lotion? What's the bears? He's like, give me all of that. So $10,000 of creams and night creams and stuff. You know, he rices out in the night and he puts it up in the bear bag. And of course we're giggling, right? We're like, welcome to manhood. And she goes, yeah.

You may need a line of rugged essential oils. You know what I mean? She's like, and so we talked about. We could be talking about horse soldier lotions right now. Exactly. So you never know. So you're on a horse. You know, you're just thinking about yourself because you can't talk to anybody. And then you get around the campfire at night and you just be quiet and silent with each other. And you talk about some things could we do.

And it wasn't until fricking frack me and Coco saw that sign that said free drinks. We're brothers and we like to have fun. And, uh, we just looked over and saw Elizabeth just talking to the wife about the labels. She was in the perfume industry, so she knew packaging and labels and that's it. It literally started then. Then when we got back to Tampa, uh,

Coco's parents came over and we just talked more about those distillery visits. And Coco's dad said, you drunks need a hobby. And just started unwinding the mysteries of how to make great bourbon. What was the first big step that you took? Because, you know, when you're all chipping in, I don't know, 200 bucks to get the first barrel done or whatever, and that's all just fun. At what point did you go, oh, this is a little bit of a commitment right now? When you put in a million and a half?

And is that money that you guys raised? Is that... John's. Okay. Right. You start understanding, you know, the depth of things. You have to put structure around the idea into a business plan, which we still follow today. And then...

When we signed our first distributor agreement and says you have to produce and you have to deliver and it takes 45 days before you get paid, you start to calculate timing a little differently. Then you got quality assurance because you got a consumer product. So things get serious quicker and you need more help. So do you hire people that know the business or do you hire your buddy?

So then you hire a buddy and then there's a learning curve. You figure it out. You meet every day, twice a day. Then you take in another million of somebody else's money. So now you've expanded the circle. So going from startup to first money in friends and family to outside money or first million, then we went into 3 million. Then we went into a family office for 12 and a half with a $20 million loan.

You know what I mean? You can't pretend anymore. You have to, you know, deliver expectations, not only for yourself, your family, but board outside investors. And so now you're in a competitive mindset, which is exactly where we thrive. Knowledge dominance. If you know more than me, I'm going to seek it. So the growth has been, so where's it at right now?

Where we're at right now, we partnered with the Gallo family. So we were at a point where our brand was, people were seeing it on the shelves, which means public companies are starting to see you. They're so big they can't innovate anymore, right? They can't build that enthusiasm and exploratory. They can't hip enough anymore.

So they just acquire. So you started seeing George Clooney sell for a billion and a half. You started seeing high West, these monetary purchases by public companies, but almost all of them are foreign. So when we had Campari and beams and Tori, all these people were like, nah, we're American. And so that left a few. And so we started putting together, which this was Coco's realm was how to build yourself up.

And we didn't want to sell outright because if we sold outright, it's over surrendering the true value of what it, we could be, but it was ours. And so we went through 30, uh, dating exercises, narrowed it down to 10 exercises, narrowed it down to five. And then can you align culturally? Because once you get into a business partnership,

You can't divorce. And, uh, one of the companies, some of the companies looking at you, not alcohol companies. Yeah. Like hedge funds, uh, that have spirits portfolios, these others, you know, it's just a thing in their menu, right? Their, their, their, um, committee is told to buy into these certain areas. So when you talk to them, you get it right away. They don't bring value. So if you look at a business as a marriage, I don't need the money as much as your access to markets, your distribution, these, uh,

I say that word. Your family, my family, we get together. We bring capabilities together. So as we went through that, at the final five last one, John, he only has one litmus test. When he meets him, he shakes her hand and goes, give me your cell number. Because if I can't call you at two in the morning because I'm having a problem, then I'm dealing with a committee or a financial team or somebody, you know.

I don't want that. I want a partnership. And two balked and hesitated. Finally made our decision. And that was with the Gallo family. And the Gallo family, you know, same rags to riches, immigrant family, build an empire. And they started getting into the spirit space. They own High Noon and a bunch of other spirits brands. So he knew he had to diversify. And they said, it's your business. How do we help? And so now we're,

Yeah. Two restaurants going on three, a hotel. Where are the restaurants? One's in Tampa. Okay. So the urban still house. Beautiful. It's so high class high end. People think you're vets and they think beer pong ping pong. I'm like, no, no. One in Somerset, Kentucky. There's no beer pong there. No, no. We've got bison. We break down the barrels for wood fire grills. I got fresh caught fish. It's beautiful.

And then the one in Kentucky we opened before the facility and we just bought a building in the stockyards in Fort Worth. Oh, awesome. So we've partnered with PBR. Nice. So we've built this brand and it's basically origin stories, friends that served together, came home, started a business, you know, made something, uh,

you know, we're, we're positioned right. So if you think now with Yellowstone and all this other, you know what I mean? Cowboy culture and other stuff, we, we've kind of hit the right timing to remind what an all American company with all American products is.

So either we've been dead lucky or cleverly smart. Or a little bit of both. We'll take it. Yes. Awesome, man. And then you got one last little thing. You got these adventures that you guys seem to go on. It's like I look at your YouTube channel. You're doing D-Day jumps. You're doing sailing explorations, diving in Saipan. What's that all about? So you can't take...

what has been the embers of your life of service, right? And take it out. So every year we always say we've got to do something together as friends and family. So it started, um, Coco gave us the money because the money he was going to use was to buy a sailboat and he wanted to have a fantasy sailing for life. So one day somebody, uh, had some sailing lessons. So we decided to take them and they were part of the warrior sailing foundation. Somebody had gifted them a $6 million, uh,

kind of race shot. And then they opened up Cuba. So they had a regatta from St. Pete, Florida to Cuba. And we said, why don't we enter that? Yeah.

Literally took two sailing lessons. And we got second place. Damn. Okay. And so we don't like to lose. This is Green Beret sabotage activities going on there. Exactly. Then we hung out in Cuba for a week and had fun. So then the next year they had us regatta from St. Pete to Isla Mojarras, which is near Cancun.

And so we talked to the same warrior sailing. Somebody had donated a carbon fiber race yacht and we were crushing everybody's soul until we didn't release and basically almost crashed. It blew out to Spinnaker, still limped in, got second and decided let's not do that. Strong second. And then...

A former teammate who was still doing government work in Germany said, hey, I just visited Normandy. Like, oh, I haven't been to normally. Let's go. And so you start hearing that they have reenactments and they have events you can go to. So you start hitting the network and they're like, yeah, you know, they have airborne jumps in there. We're like, oh, can we get tickets to go see it? They're like, I don't know.

Who are you guys again? And we told him who we were. He goes, would you guys like to jump into it? Yeah. So went back, got airborne round canopy certified Coco on his jump, broke, broke both of his ankles. And how does it hit hard? Landed hard. He landed on the runway. You know, there's little lights that come up a few feet. You're trying to like lift your leg a little bit. Just it was pathetic.

Uh, and so we jumped in, my son jumped with me and a week later he went to Afghanistan for a year. So it turned into this, you know, our kids in the army. Yeah. It was in the 82nd. Awesome. So this year was the 80th anniversary of,

So we had 10 congressmen, Senator Crenshaw jumped, right? Mike Waltz. Yeah. You know, we created this every year. We're going to go back to Normandy because, you know, how do you pass the baton from one generation to the next through the eyes of your grandkids?

So they need to see, you know, you on the battlefield, you know, sharing something that, you know, shouldn't be in a VFW hall or over a drink, you know, we thought it was important for the kids. The Saipan issue. I have a very good friend, Mark, who's head of task force dagger foundation started doing recovery missions. So you can go into Vietnam, you can dive again,

You can, you know, we're the only country that puts resources against recovering lost. And so we went back to Special Forces Scuba School. Old guy, Red Bull, right? Dove, got certified, went to archaeological dive school, learned how to put the brackets down and, you know, the vacuum, do everything. And then we went to Saipan and spent three weeks on a couple downed Hellcat sites to recover what you can. Very cool. Very cool.

So you got the distillery common. What else? What, anything else? What's the next big project? America 250th anniversary. So I had the honor of speaking at the RNC talking about, yeah, I saw that, you know, passing once again, the baton, you know, let's always question ourselves. Are we doing the right thing when it came to the withdrawal of Afghanistan? And, and,

how do we make small town America important on the 250th? So right now the entire country's planning for Philadelphia, Boston, New York city, DC. So when I talk to my friends, the administration, I'm like, um, where, where's the conversation about small town America, a parade with Jeeps, you know, the boy Scouts with flags. So I've been weaseling my way cause president Trump started a commission on

on the 250th anniversary. And I've been, uh, Don Coyote yelling that, uh, this, it's not a celebration unless all of America talks about what it means to have a 4th of July parade in small town, America. Freaking outstanding. So that's where I'm putting some of my energy into. Right on. Awesome, man. Um, it sounds like that gets us up to speed. Uh,

So people can find you. So you guys are on the interwebs. Yep. Horse soldier bourbon.com. Yep. You got Instagram horse soldier bourbon. Twitter X is horse soldier USA. You got YouTube and Facebook, which is also both. Those are our horse soldier bourbon. And then for you,

If I got this right, it's your Scott Neal and you're at AF, which is American Freedom, AF Distillery. And that's on Instagram. No? Mine is Whiskey and War Stories. Oh, okay. Instagram. So it's at Whiskey and War Stories? Yeah. Got it. We suck. It's not in our nature. Our kids yell at us all the time because we let them post and do things. We probably need to get better at it.

at broadcasting. Like I say, I come from the, you know, don't talk about fight club story. So we get into these discussions and, uh, we need to come out. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's good to, you know, that's one of the things about this podcast is, you know, I've had guys on a decent number of guys that have come on and talked their story, whether it was world war two career Vietnam and they died afterwards. Yeah.

And, you know, I've had the families been so moved and so thankful because, you know, these are guys, Vietnam guys or, or world war two or Korean guys that, you know, they, they didn't, you know, they sure. Maybe they talked about it with their friends when they were in the bar or whatever, but they weren't telling their kids. Yeah. You know, I even, I even look like my youngest daughter's 15 years old. She, I retired in 2010. Right. She doesn't, she doesn't remember me as a,

as a military guy. She doesn't know anything about it. She doesn't remember me going on deployment, none of that. It just doesn't exist for her. So it's not like I sit around the dinner table and say, "Let me tell you about this one time in Baghdad." You know, I don't do that. They're not gonna hear that from me.

And that's the same way it was for a lot of these older guys that I've had on that have told their story. And, man, their kids and their grandkids are just so happy that we were able to capture it. And on top of that, you know, military, I mean, all the younger generation of military guys, like they're going to take lessons learned from even just from what you talked about today, just the simple lessons learned from,

of, hey, you know, maybe when this person who might not see combat for 10 years or 12 years or 15 years inside the Army or the Marine Corps, hears you talking about, oh my gosh, you know, I went in my first target assault and there was a kid in there and we didn't know what to do. Yep. How do you pass on legacy, right? And we grew up 30,000 years ago by the fire.

you know, painting on the cave. And I think we've gotten a little bit out of small community, small family conversations, you know, about what made you. So now as I research my grandpa, my great, great, great uncle in the Alamo, all these things you wish you could have a conversation or hear them. So that's why some of these adventures are always family adventures. Yeah. So as we get together and talk as uncles, you know what I mean? The kids get to hear, and now we've got grandkids. Mm-hmm.

And, you know, you have to share at the end too, though, I don't want to give my kids a, a footlocker full of dirty boots and war medals and then try to recreate who I was. So trying to be present now as a dad and granddad, you got to get,

Yeah. No doubt about it. Awesome. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yeah, I have a few questions. Oh, we got the bourbon expert over here. So, okay. So just for clarification, I used to work in the bar industry, so I know a little bit.

But so first question is from. Did you just roll out the fact that you are a bouncer as your qualification to go down the client questioning? I was a bartender and bar back, by the way. Okay. I blame my last. I stand corrected. And manager in training. And that counts too. So I know about invoices. Get ready. Go ahead. So whiskey, right? It's all whiskey, scotch, bourbon.

It's all whiskey. So whiskey is a category is like saying special operations, right? So whiskey, you have a vodka, you have rum as a category. Gin is a category. Whiskey. Tequila too, by the way. Tequila. Wait, wait, wait.

Wait, whiskey is above vodka, tequila? No, no, parallel. Okay, got it. Parallel. So it's a category, right? And then there's subsets underneath it like tequila. There's Neho and there's in whiskey, there's scotch, which comes from Scotland. Can't come from Ireland, but it can be single malt, right? You have Irish whiskey, which can be multi-grain or a single malted barley. Japanese whiskey, which comes from Japan, but it can be a multi-grain or a single malt. Okay.

American whiskey is usually in two categories. One is bourbon and one is straight whiskey. Jack Daniels is a whiskey. It's not a bourbon. Why? Because bourbon, as enacted by Congress in 1964, is the distinct product of the United States of America. Boom. So it has criteria that make it, if you don't follow those, you can't call it a bourbon. Hmm.

Isn't it because it's made in Bourbon County? 0.0. No. It's a product of the United States of America. Kentucky, 95% of the bourbon is there, and they like to be known for it. But by the law, it can be made in all 50 states. Okay. Right on. See? Learn something new every day. Okay. So when you said, because you started this stuff straight up white belt from scratch. Yep.

all in the field essentially then you get then you went to some classes and stuff like that how long would the classes that you went to they were like kind of a tourist type thing like i'm a curious tourist i want to spend two days at this factory they're going to show me how then we found another marine who was actually in the ramadi at the same time as you uh travis barnes he has a distillery called hotel tango one of our investors invested in that said why don't you go see uh travis and hotel tango he's in indianapolis and

And he said, here we go. Right on. Get that sack. Turn that lever. You know what I mean? What'd you say his name was? Travis Barnes. Travis Barnes. I'll have to find Travis Barnes. Awesome. Great American. He taught us a lot. Same thing. He just started with a buddy and you know, poof, there you go. But we're a little bigger now. What's his called? What's that? What's his bourbon called? I see right in my head. Wait for it to drop here. Um,

Hotel Tango. Yeah. Oh, Hotel Tango. Okay, cool. But those touristy classes, I feel like those count as part of the education process. They take you into the theory on how to taste it. So if you look at a lot of these podcasts and YouTubers, they're just drinkers and consumers. They wotire about the essence of nutmeg and, you know, like a cooking show person. Yeah.

And then you go into Kentucky or somebody that makes it, they're missing fingers. You know what I mean? They're making the donuts. So we got to get with some of the most well-known bourbon personalities, but it's never...

The personality making it, it's the guy that shows up at 630 in the morning. It's the warehouse man that's been there for 30 years and can tell you about seventh floor versus fourth floor, about how ethanol bleeds and lowers and hovers. That's who we spent time with down in the bowels of the ship. So a warehouse guy in the bourbon world is actually dealing with the product and the manufacturing too? So you make it, right? So grains, so let's start here. It took 80 years to grow that tree.

It took seven months to grow the grains, the corn, the barley, the winter wheat or the rye. Then you truck it into one location. You blend it all together. You heat it up to a certain level, and that's called a mash. And then you put it into a fermenter. And after 96 hours, it turns into probably 8% alcohol. Now, the snipers are going to listen to this and try to cut me with precision, but...

for general sake. If I stopped there, it's a beer. Okay. When I go to put it back into a copper still and I start to boil it, alcohol boils at 177 degrees, whereas water boils above that. So the vapors start to come up and when it touches copper, uh,

it falls back down. So it starts releasing some fatty esters and other stuff. So it gets lighter and lighter and lighter. And as it transfers over, you introduce cold water on the other side that turns that vapor into a liquid and it comes out clear and it's called moonshine. Mm.

And that's pure alcohol? To be a whiskey, you can't proof it higher than 160, whereas vodka is 192. Because you still subatomically, chemically, you have esters and oils that give it the mouthfeel and the taste of a whiskey. So you want to capture it at a certain proof. Then it's clear. Now, here's where Mother Nature and Father Time, when you put it in a brand new American white oak barrel that's been charred,

So it's burned on the inside. You have carbon, you have the release of vanillins, tannins, everything else. Time has to sit in a barrel and it starts to change as pressures, environmental pressures day in, day out, bring it in and out of the fibers of the poorest American white oak. It starts to pick up vanillins and flavors and it releases the hard, harsh things that make you go blind.

and it changes into something sippable. So you can't microwave bourbon. It has to age. So even you say the things that make you go blind, that's not like an expression. Like at a certain point, if you drink the wrong alcohol, you'll go blind. So when you have a new young batch, they put it in a Glencairn glass, and you look at the color, you kind of get a nose, and you start to smell, and then you put it up to your eyeball.

And you could tell if it burns or not, right? Because it affects your ocular nerve. So when you say going blind, it's because they didn't cut the right heads and tails the way you, you just don't take it all as it comes out. The first set that starts flowing out is, has all the bad things.

stuff and people that are nefarious they capture it all and sell it to a consumer that's why people are dying over in mexico and everywhere because one fourth of your product you trash or you throw back in called sour mash yeah that that's so like i know this because i looked into distilling right not brewing distilling my own vodka i'm not hey look i wasn't gonna do it maybe maybe not this is back in the day so i looked into the process and in the

through that, the beginning of the learning process. This is back in the day. You're a great discoverer here. Yeah. I learned that. So it's kind of like, hey, if you don't, basically what I took from that is, hey, if you don't know what you're doing, you can blind yourself in real life. And other people. Yes. So the harshness of the art of distillation is knowing how much of the heads, how much of the tails, because that's the dirty sock is the tails. The heads are...

some of the boldness and then a sweet spot called the hearts. And then you put it in a barrel, you proof it down from 160 down to maybe 125 and or 120, depending where you want to be. And you just put it away. It just sits there. Now here's the bad part. It evaporates first year, 10% evaporates the Zora's in a barrel 4%. So I'm racing mother nature right before it's gone in the barrel.

So eventually it's gone. It's gone. Does that contribute to the price? Yes. So Pappy at 22 years old, because maybe you've got, you know, out of 53, maybe...

Five, seven, eight, ten gallons left. Yeah. When you say 80 years to grow the tree, that's for the wood for the barrels. The white oak. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. The whole process. So there's no additives. Whereas regular like scotch, you can add caramel coloring to make it browner. Because it sits in these caves and it sits in Scotland where it's a very mild climate. And they're already used bourbon barrels that are kind of burned out.

So it'll come out not as amber as the consumer expects. So they're allowed to put a certain amount of caramel coloring, just like a rum. Your age rum is an age. There's some laws that say I can put, you know, so much of a 30 year old and the rest is one year old. So a new barrel is going to give more flavor. Yeah.

That's what bourbon is. That's the distinction. So there's not a lot of oak trees in Scotland and Ireland. And it's pretty much a one-time use. That's it by law. I can only use it once.

So the secondary bourbon market, as soon as I pour it, I sell it on a secondary market. So either becomes a tequila barrel or a wine barrel or a Scotch barrel. So how long would you grill or whatever you said you made? Yeah. Woodfire grill chips. Hey, I use every input, right? You're talking about sustainable. Give me that. We're all sell that. Um, so, okay. So this is bourbon. Um,

How long would you say from knowing zero to the point where you can function in a

that you would consider successful? How long? Two to three years. What most people do, like celebrity brands, they hire somebody that's kind of been in the biz and they become the face so they can get consumers to start buying it. So you can buy existing bourbon, put it into your label with a low investment, and they'll throw it into the market. And if it catches, they're already looking for a buyer.

Right. To exit. So if you look at the acquisition side, it's typically a threshold of about 75,000 cases. If you can get your marketing and get into bars and get things going, typically a public will buy it. Right. And then you've made multiples, 10 X's, 12 X's in this industry. So do you.

It's obvious that, or it seems obvious from this position that you know more about bourbon than say the vodka tequila scenarios, gin. I know it all. Why? Because fundamentally the process is the same, right? And then you get to the marketing side. So not only do I have a brand, I'm in charge of going to the consumer facing. So I have to do the events all around the country. I have to work with distributors. I have to work pricing incentives, you

bonuses, all of these other things as my competitor set on the bar. So if you look at a bar, right, I'm competing against not only my set, but the mind share of that bartender to pour, you know what I mean? More old fashions than, you know, Red Bull and vodka.

So I have to be able to articulate why my product is better. Is bourbon your favorite drink out of everything? Of course it is. Like if you're going to hang out. Yeah, okay. No, I love tequila. No, okay. There you go. There's one thing I want to start, and it's my personal quest, Don Quixote quest after the 250th, is to make a shot of bourbon and a beer cool again, like you saw in every old Western. Because right now, when I go to eat Mexican, what do I get? I get a beer and a shot of tequila. I don't even think about it.

for my brand, if I could just bring back, because the number one selling whiskey in the world is what? - Whiskey, I don't know, Jack Daniels? - Fireball. - Fireball?

It's consumed, going out of style. Go to any bachelorette party and there's a bucket of fireball. Interesting. I don't think I've ever had fireball. Good, don't. You ever had fireball? Yeah, I have. Yeah, it's like, you know, the little fireballs that you have when you're a little kid. Yeah, that cinnamon. It's like that. Yeah, like what was the other, the mint one? Rumpelmintz. Rumpelmintz. Okay, all right. Well, it's about consuming, right? So drinks, there's about one and a half pours per drink. So if you look at the...

There are 10 top cocktails that every restaurant has on the menu. So it's a martini or it's a gin fizz or it's a old-fashioned or it's a Manhattan bourbon. It has two categories. So we're always trying to bump off somebody else to a bartender. The hard part is I'm 57. I don't relate to 24-year-olds. They don't care about the military or we were heroes of 9-11. They want to know what's the price point.

Or my customer's gonna ask for it. So we have to have a different kind of business conversation. All of that we knew nothing about. It's only because we just started talking. - Yeah, it's crazy. - You ever had a Long Island iced tea? - Love 'em. - I kinda love 'em too. - What goes in that? - Everything. - Oh really? - It's basically everything with sweet and sour and some Coke on the top or something. - Like those soda fountains when you just hit every one of those.

You know, America is still social, right? And we have some challenges in our industry. You have, you know, access to CBDs and things that are the younger culture. That's how they socialize differently. Wine has really gone down. The Americans, you know, not too many people are doing red wine and steaks. So we evolve. Yeah. Is alcohol consumption going down? Yeah. Yeah.

It certainly seems like to me and I beer. Yeah. Even, um, I know that there's non-alcoholic beer now that's really, really popular. And also even in the culture of the military, which when I was a young seal, it was ridiculous. It was, our number one cells are still the military and the next calm and a fees channels. But, um, there is a more consciousness for, um,

you know, quality and fitness and everything. Right. So we have to evolve into that conversation. Next is people aren't that social anymore. They don't go out like they used to per se and, you know, out every night, all night. Now it's in, now it's social media. Now I'm, you know, I'm interacting different. Now it's secret Hitler.

Do you know what Secret Hitler is? No. It's a game. It's a board game. And it's, I've played it a few times and it's really fun. And like, I know people that like are 20, 22, 24 years old and they go play Secret Hitler.

Wait, it's an in-person board game, right? It's an in-person board game. Okay. And it's kind of cool. You've got to kind of lie to each other. Is it like Clue? You remember Clue? It's way better than Clue, to be honest with you. You basically, you're trying, one person is Hitler. Like, you get a card. One person is Hitler. And then other people are either...

fascist or liberal. And you get card that says you're a liberal, you're a liberal and you got to get certain laws. That's a little bit, it's not, it's not actually that complicated. Like you can, you'll learn to play it immediately. But then what the thing is, the secret Hitler is,

If he's the last man standing, then the fascists win, he wins, and that team wins. Or the liberals can stop him by figuring out who it is and you can accuse him like, "You're Hitler." And then he can go, "No, I'm not." And there's some way of proving it. But that's a legitimate thing. When I was 22 years old, I wouldn't have thought in one billion years of playing a board game with my friends.

You're now, you're now in the bridge category. Yeah. What do you mean? They're all coming over here to play. Yeah. And now these kids are like doing this and it's kind of, it's interesting. It's a new world. Um,

little a little bit more focused like you said a little bit more focus on health and yeah and Fitness so good good in that respect. It's what we chosen. So this is our path This will create generational wealth for our families. So this is the legacy we have to focus on And it will be successful if we wanted to exit today we could exit and then what is the next question but

So this is our battlefield. We've shaped it. We're owning it. Mother nature continues to attack us from left and right. COVID hit and the price of materials hit. I've got competitors that are buying my bottling line

So I can't bottle. I mean, it's, it's, it is the game of the business world. And I love every fascinating second, you know, but I don't have the deploy troops button secret mission nighttime. You know, there you go. And then one day I hope I have a third chapter. So what's the third thing in your life? Do you give it back? You know, do you, you know, write your memoirs? What's the third phase? And I, I got to talk to president Bush and,

After he left the presidency, what do you do when you're on top of the world and every day the decisions on you and knowledge is on you? And he took up painting like Churchill did. And he's focused on veterans and Africa and other things. So I think I'm anticipating what the beginning of the rest of your life looks like.

There we go. Right on. Any other closing thoughts? That might have been it right there. America. America. Awesome, man. Well, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for sharing your experiences and lessons learned along the way. Obviously, thanks for your service to the country. You as well. To special operations. And thanks for what you're doing now to build a business and put people into work, man. Thank you for giving me a voice today. And I think there's more to come. Right on. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

And with that, Scott Neal has left the building. Great conversation. Great stuff he's got going on. That being said, look, we can't always be drinking bourbon. It's true. We're going to need other fuel in the system. Yes. So if you're looking for some other fuel, some clean fuel, I recommend Jocko Fuel. So check it out. We got everything that you need. JockoFuel.com. We got energy. We got hydrate.

We got protein. We got protein shakes. We got protein powder. We got joint warfare. We got time war. Get on the time war. Anti-aging. Yes. Get on the time war. Get on the super krill. Get on the joint warfare. Get the proper protein into your system. How you fuel yourself is how you're going to perform. It dictates what you're doing in life. So fuel yourself properly.

Jocko field calm we also have it available at Walmart by the way is there a Walmart near you there is Two Walmart near me. Yeah check. Yeah, so anyone can go to Walmart There's something like a Walmart 90% of the population in America lives 10 miles or less from a Walmart. Yeah, I

So you can go there and get some charcoal fuel. Also, we got it at Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissary's, Aifey's, Hannaford's, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas, Meijer up in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere. We got the crew, we got the team, Jackson, Jared, and Chaz. They're just out there on the road. Jackson goes hard. Yep.

Yep. They're delivering. And if they don't deliver, well, email jfsales at jocofuel.com and they will deliver. They'll show up and make it happen. So that's what we're doing. Jocofuel.com. Go check it out. Is there, is it true there's some new Go flavors for the energy drink?

I was going over some labels that were sent to me for various artistic projects. And there were some new flavors in those labels. I believe we have some new flavors coming. A new flavor on its way. We're not talking about it now at this time. It's not out yet. So that's that. So check it out, jockelfield.com. I just had a go and a half. I'll probably finish this one on the way home.

And I had a hydrate. Yep. Because I was dehydrated. I understand. From lifting. Oh, dang. Okay. I understand. Really. I had a moke, you know, avoiding catabolic breakdown. Yeah, we don't want that to happen. All right. Also, check out originusa.com. You need clothes. We're talking about American companies today. American-made companies. Originusa.com. What we got is we got jeans, boots, hats, beanies, belts, wallets,

hunt gear, rain jacket, wind jacket, warm jacket, hoodies, multiple variations, pants, multiple variations. We just got everything that you need. And it's all made 100% in America. So that's what we're doing over here. We are making things 100% in American from American made supplies. This isn't some free material that we bought from a slave driven environment overseas. It's from America.

All the materials are from America and it's made right here in America. Go to originusa.com and check out America. That's what I got. It's true. Also, Jocko's store called Jocko's store. There's discipline equals freedom stuff on there. Some shirts, some hoodies on there as well. Some hats and stuff this year. What is it? Winter still right now? Spring. It's winter. Winter, spring next month. I don't know. Okay. Well, we're coming out with some new stuff. A lot of new stuff.

varying levels of excitement either way you want to be informed on this stuff that's coming in go to Jocko store.com and put your little email in the in the What do you call the email list so keep you inform? I don't spam people with that We don't spam people with that, but anyway you can stay informed the new stuff comes boom You got first first dibs on that one um but yeah some cool stuff on there also on Jocko store.com is what we call the shirt locker it's a new design t-shirt subscription scenario every month and

I have a friend, good friend, by the name of Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave. Good deal, Dave. And he was like, hey, you know, I've been a member of the shirt lock for a long time, you know, and my shirts are kind of piling up. And he was almost indicating that, you know, he might put it on pause or something like this. I'm like, hey, bro, do what you dig. You know, the shirt locker is here for you. See what I'm saying? Two days later, he sends me a text. He says, just when I thought I was out, you dragged me back in. That's it. That's all he said.

So I'm like, okay, I say, how so? Because I forgot about any other correspondence. Plus, I was lifting at the time, so I'm thinking about other stuff. And he sends me a picture of this month's design. Is it fire? That's the no drinking X. It's like the Dos Equis rip or whatever. Oh, that's right. Anyway, he just sends the picture of that. Yeah. And I was like, he's like, dude, this is awesome.

So, hey, man, like I said, some cool designs. They're a little bit different and a little bit outside of the, what do you call, coloring outside the lines a little bit, outside the box, whatever. But I think people seem to like them. Anyway, jockelstore.com. Click on shirt locker. You can kind of check them out. If you like something, shoot. Also, check out coloradocraftbeef.com and primalbeef.com. This is where you can get your steak, your beef jerky, your beef sticks, your...

hot dogs, your burgers, all from American companies, American families, awesome people, awesome companies, awesome steaks. Go get some. Primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Also subscribe to this podcast. Also check out jockelanderground.com.

It's where we answer your questions directly. Also, check out, we have a bunch of YouTube channels. We got Psychological Warfare. We have Flipside Canvas. We got books. Now, I mentioned a book today we'll probably cover in the future. It's Swords of Lightning by Mark and Bob who were out on these horse soldier operations. And then I've written a bunch of books about leadership and I've written a bunch of kids' books.

kids books are being turned into a movie already been filmed by the way echo charles is in it plays a very important role sure foundational uh foundational it provides excellence and legitimacy to the whole scene that's that's the word so that's what we're doing but you know you're gonna have to wait a while for the movie because it takes a while for these people to uh to finish post-production

That's real. But in the meantime, we wrote awesome books. And when I say we, I guess I mean me. So check it out. The Way the Warrior Kid series. Also, check out Mikey and the Dragons. That's what we got going for you. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We take these lessons that we learned on the battlefield and we teach them to people who are in leadership positions, which, by the way, is everyone.

So if you need help inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. You can come to one of our live events or you can bring our company into your company to help with your leadership. We also have an online training academy because people around the world need to get better at leadership. You are not born to lead.

You're not born to lead. You have to learn how to lead. These are skills, skills that we can teach you and skills that are applicable not only to, oh, I'm in a business or, oh, I'm running an organization, but also skills that are applicable to everything that you do, every interaction you have with your kids, with your wife, with your husband, with your team, with your neighbors. Learn how to handle all those things.

Go to ExtremeOwnership.com. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization, takes care of so many of our veterans. 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 of Montana. And then Jimmy Mays' organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org.

Check all those out. And if you want to connect with Scott Neal once again, he's got horse soldier bourbon.com on the interwebs. He's got the Instagram horse soldier bourbon, Twitter X at horse soldier USA. And then he's got the YouTube Facebook are both at horse soldier bourbon. And then he's got Scott Neal, which is whiskey and war stories. So check that one out on the ground.

For us, you can check out Jocko.com. We're also on social media. I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because that thing will wreck your whole freaking morning. Morning, noon, or night. I heard a fact the other day. They're saying that the average screen time is seven hours. Come on, people. Don't do it. Don't do it.

Get away from it. And that's what we got. Once again, thanks to Scott Neal for coming on here. Thanks for your service. Thanks for your lessons learned about business and about life. Thanks to all our military personnel with a specific salute to our Green Beret brothers from Special Forces, from the SOG guys in Vietnam to the mountains of Afghanistan. Thank you for taking the fight to the enemy by, with, and through the host nation so you guys do it better than anyone.

Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all of the first responders, thank you all for fighting crime here at home and for keeping us safe. And to everyone else out there, just because one game is over doesn't mean you can't get in another game. Look at Scott and the rest of his crew. All of them had earned a nice, comfy retirement, 25 years in the military, multiple wars, and

They could have gone to the sidelines, game over, but they didn't. Found a new game, a new mission, and they executed. And you can do the same at any time, in any phase of life, you can get in the game. But that's up to you. And I recommend in order to do that, you go get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.