This is Jocko podcast number 484 with echo Charles and me Jocko willing good evening echo good evening all day murderous bursts of machine gun fire hammered our position shattering windows and impacting interior walls each round with the violence and kinetic energy of a sledgehammer wielded at full force some of the incoming rounds were armor piercing and punched through the thick concrete of the low wall surrounding the rooftop

All of our element of SEALs, EOD bomb technicians, and Iraqi soldiers could do under such accurate enemy fire was hit the deck and try not to get our heads shot off. Rounds snapped inches above us and shards of glass and concrete fragments rained down everywhere. "Damn, some of those bastards can shoot!" yelled a SEAL operator pressed as close to the floor as humanly possible. We couldn't help but laugh at our predicament.

RPG-7 rockets followed in rapid sequence of three or four, exploding with tremendous concussion against the exterior walls. Hunkered down inside the building, we were separated from the bone-jarring explosion and deadly shrapnel by a foot or so of concrete. One errant RPG rocket missed its mark and sailed high over the building, trailing across the hazy, cloudless Iraqi summer sky like a bottle rocket on an American Fourth of July.

But if just one of those rockets impacted a window, it meant red-hot fragments of jagged metal ripping through just about every man in the room. Despite the onslaught, we held our position in the large four-story apartment building. When the fury of the attack subsided, our SEAL snipers returned fire with devastating effect.

Armed enemy fighters maneuvered through the streets to attack seal snipers squeezed off round after round with deadly accuracy Confirming ten enemy fighters killed and a handful more probable kills and that right there is an excerpt from a book called extreme ownership Which was written by Leif Babin and me in that section which was written by Leif Displays and shows and talks about not only the level of violence delivered by the enemy which was significant but

but also the effectiveness of our SEAL snipers. And on that particular operation, it wasn't just SEALs from task unit Bruiser. We had some help on that one. And one of the best things about being in the teams is obviously working with the best guys in the world.

It's also very random because you can be in the SEAL teams and you can be on a different cycle from someone else. And you might not see that other person for months or years or sometimes even decades. But you still know them and you know their reputation. And you track what people are doing. You hear stories. You read after actions reports. You see their name pop up on the advancement lists.

but time goes by and then for whatever reason you happen to end up on the same battlefield at the same time and you get to work with them for a day or two days or a week or a month and get to do what we all join to do and you get to confirm that they are who you thought they were and their reputation is well earned and that they're frogmen

And then they're gone again, and you continue to track their progress and their career through the stories and the advancement lists, and you continue to see them do great things, and you feel proud to know them. And that's the teams. And when I was at SEAL Team 1, there was a guy who checked in and quickly earned an awesome reputation. He fit in very well with the culture of SEAL Team 1 at the time, which was...

Stalag team one. Very strict, very tough, very hard charging, very operationally focused, and probably overly professional in many aspects. But he knocked out a few platoons there, became a respected operator and a sniper. And when I went the officer route, he went to the Navy's special mission unit, the maritime component of the

Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC. And he made it through selection there and became an operator, a combat leader in the global war on terror. And fast forward almost a decade from after we left SEAL Team One. And that's when we were in Ramadi. And he was able to join our task unit on some missions to see exactly what we were doing and how we were doing it. And we all got to see his professionalism, his expertise, his humility, his

I like to think that that was some shared roots from that time that we spent at SEAL Team 1 with BTF Tony as well. But he continued on his career path. He eventually completed 27 years in the SEAL Teams, conducted 18 combat deployments, served as a team leader, troop chief, squadron master chief, chief of selection and assessment, training chief. And during that time, he was awarded awards.

Silver Star eight Bronze Stars Purple Heart and five presidential unit Citations and this individuals name is Jim Foreman and it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share some of his Experiences and lessons learned Jim good to see you man. Thanks for coming out YouTube, bro. Thank you Yeah, it's wild how you can just not see someone for years and then you say oh, hey, what's up, dude? and and the nature of

I guess it's the nature of the shared suffering and camaraderie of the SEAL teams that it doesn't really matter if you don't see someone for a long time. It's like, oh, hey, what's up, dude? How you been? Oh, good. Yeah, it picks right up. Let's get some background. So where did you grow up? Bay Area, Northern California, Fremont. And what did your parents do?

- My mom was a RN, nurse, up there. And then my dad was an accountant. - Okay. So any veterans in the family? - My dad served in the army. - What did he do in the army? - He was an engineer. - Was he in NOM? - No, no. He stayed back and was a reserves.

I think 'cause mostly he had a family. And I have a twin brother. - Oh really? - Grew up with a twin and a sister, older sister, and had a pretty good upbringing. - Nice, Echo Charles, any twin questions? Echo Charles has a twin as well. - Right now, this early on. - Are we going early on? - Identical or what? - Yeah, we're identical. - Oh, right on, okay. - That's it? - I'm with you. - Oh, okay. - Nice. - You guys bro-ing out. - Yeah, yeah, big time, big time. - That is a weird thing, right? - Is this really Echo?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I'm the echo of him. He was born second. What about school? What were you into? What sports did you play? So I did football, wrestling, and some track and field. How much wrestling did you do? Two years. Okay. Yeah. What years? Freshman and sophomore year. And then no more? No more. Then I switched to football. Oh, okay. But wrestling was awesome. I got an injury.

So, in my going ads that like shut me down pretty hard. - That's a significant injury. - Getting wrecked. - Jack. - Yeah. - How about, what was your grades like? Were you like studying? Did you care? - I was bored. I think I got bad grades 'cause I was bored, you know?

Uh, so I had to do some summer school and things like that. And, Oh wait, that's, that's a little beyond some bad grades. If you had to go to summer school, isn't that like a, isn't that like a serious, uh, shortfall that you had to go make something up? Yeah, it was. Were you getting in trouble or anything? Not really. Just, I think I was just bored. I had like, you know, like history is a big thing for me. I love history. And my history teacher was even in college was, uh,

you know, just dates and laws, dates and times and things like that. It was not about, like when I learned about the Alamo in junior college, it was like, okay, on this day, 1836, a bunch of Americans made a fight and they got wiped out and blah, blah, blah. I was like, what? So, you know, I had to read books on my own to find things out. So I, you know, a lot of teachers, there are some good teachers, but I wish they would like elaborate a little bit more, make it more interesting, even in like math, you know.

they should do it. It is amazing what a good teacher can do. And I think podcasts, there's some podcasts out there that people do such a good job of telling history. It's like, it's, it's a game changer. And people always say, I wish you were my teacher in high school, you know? So when you were in high school, did you have like a life plan of any kind? Uh, when I was in high school, I started to see like, I love football and wrestling. Um,

I started to look at the military stuff and I was like, yeah, I'd like to be part because you would see some movies. That was like in the 80s, right? And I'd go like, yeah, I think I want to be a part of a small team. You know, I didn't know anything about the SEALs that highly skilled. We all have the same skill level, same mindset. So when I was a junior, I started to look at the Marine Corps. Hmm.

And when I went to college for a couple years and didn't do too well. And so I actually joined the Marine Corps. Okay. And then in the delayed entry, we're playing football. And then I racked my leg pretty bad and tore my ACL. So I had a year out. Did you get surgery? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I got my mom since she was a nurse. She knew some good doctors. Oh, nice. And she hooked me up big time with a sports doctor.

Did you get a cadaver replacement or did you get a, did they move your patella? No, they just moved, they actually stretched my tendon and put a screw in the side of my knee. Yeah. So it was like, my knee was like that for a long time. He had to stretch it back out. But you were going to go in the Marine Corps. What did you, what were you going to do in the Marine Corps?

I just wanted to do just be infantry. I just wanted to go like, actually in those days, I don't think you could pick your MOS at all. Yeah. When I was looking, you could just join the Marines and you were just going to be whatever they told you were going to be. And that's the way it was. So you were probably just going to be a Marine. There's anything wrong with being a Marine, but you could have been a lot of, there's a lot of different jobs in the Marine Corps. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. So you get,

You get hurt for a year? I was out for a year, then I started, so my brother, unlike me, was getting good grades. And so I go, okay, I'm not doing too good in school. I'm going to kind of see what he's doing for school. And he was taking like, you know, interesting things like history, geography, anthropology. Okay, I'm going to just mirror what he does. So I just went to his, I just got the same classes as him. No kidding. And I just like basically copied his class schedule.

So then, you know, I also had somebody to hang out with and ask questions and learn from, 'cause I was not doing good in college. - What college was it? - It was Chabot College, it was a two year college. I actually got kicked out, that's why I joined the Marines.

Or I got suspended for bad grades. For bad grades? Yeah. So then, okay, and I got this year off because of the delay entry with the Marine Corps. So I could actually get out of the Marine Corps. Because about that time, I heard about the SEALs. How did you hear about the SEALs? My brother was the first one who brought it up. And then, unbeknownst to me, my uncle was a doctor in the Navy, and he served with SEALs in Vietnam. Dang.

And so then I started to hear about that, those stories, and it was pretty cool. They picked him because they needed an excuse to go in these villages to take care of the kids and the people. But then they would, you know, set up ambushes nearby. But they needed him to take care of the people, so they had an excuse to get in. So he has some really cool stories. And so that's how I found out about those guys.

And then you went to the recruiter. Was it a tough process? What year is this now? This is my junior year. Now I'm at... It's now called East Bay College. It was...

Yeah, so it's East Bay now. It's Cal State Hayward back then. But so I was going to my junior years when I heard about them and I go, okay. So I got two years in. I was struggling whether I should just join now. And then I kept, my parents were like, hey, just get your two-year degree or your four-year degree. Just knock it out.

because you're not going to get it again. And I struggled with that, but I did stay in and got my four-year degree in geography, backing with some history, trying to get the easiest thing, but it was the most interesting. Like I could not sit still if it was not interesting, so I took something that was interesting. And at what point, you said your junior year, you enlisted in the Navy or did that? No, that's when I heard about the SEALs, and then that's when my...

Legs start to heal Okay So Cause it happened In my sophomore year

So then I just decided to finish the last year and a half of college. And then when you got done with college, is that when you went to the recruiter? Yep, I just signed up right after, before I even got my diploma. What kind of prep were you doing? So your knee heals up, you're feeling strong. Did you see the Be Someone Special video? I did, yeah. We all did. It was just like these badass combat dudes with ribbons from Vietnam. They didn't really talk too much about what you needed to do.

So did you run? Did you swim? Were you comfortable in the water? How did all that go? Yeah, yeah. I had a pool in my backyard, so that was nice to work on. Then I would go to YMCA and swim there and do some running and pull-ups and all that stuff. I had a pull-up bar in my backyard. So I started to prepare. That's pretty good to go for the – what is this now, like 1991 or something like that? In the 90s, yeah. I joined the Navy in 91.

13:00 CH: Check. As you get to boot camp, did you think about putting in an officer package at all because you had been to college or no? 13:09 SJ: No. So I was thinking... I heard that officers move around a lot and I go, "If I wanna be a SEAL, I wanna be doing a job for a while and getting the skill." And then maybe later, but I wasn't really thinking about officer.

So it was just, I'm going to eat dog. I'm going to eat dog. All day. Yeah. And also, cause I heard of, you know, I start to read some books. I forgot which one it was, but, uh, um, most of them were fictional, which is even more interesting, you know, cause they, I forgot the name of the book, but it was, it was a good, it was a good book about CEOs in Vietnam. Um, so it was maybe UDT seal operations in Vietnam. That was one of them. That was a, yeah, that's a good one. That's just like a big, long AAR. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But talk, you know, the point men, the machine gunners, the snipers, you know, all that stuff was super interesting to me. And then back then in Vietnam, the officers had more power to do things. You know, it was more like, you know, they were more enlisted in a lot of ways. Like they had skill sets that they could use. And not only did they have those skill sets, but then they also were the senior guy on target, the GFC. So it was kind of cool to be an officer back then.

You know, they had some, you know, I was going to say, it's like in Vietnam, I noticed like, you know, I read books on a green brace cause there was a lot of green brace stuff going on and those guys are bad asses.

A lot of the lieutenants, the officers, captains, and even the SEALs had a lot of freedom to do a lot of things without a lot of oversight. And I thought that was pretty cool. That made me think, wow, these guys could be pretty innovative without a lot of red tape and get the job done. And then Roy Benavidez, that guy's a badass. Jerry Shriver, Mad Dog, both Green Berets.

really inspired me I was like man they they got some um they got some power to make things happen um

So you head off to boot camp. Well, how was that a pretty good shock to the system? Yeah, it was all right. I just didn't want to get, so I did the dive fair program, which was six years. Cause I just didn't want to get derailed. I did that too. That's why. Yeah. I just want to get guaranteed that you get the buds and then it's up to you to make it. So I got that. Where'd you go to boot camp? Um, Orlando. Yeah. Me too. Check. Get some dive fair. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you get to Bud's? How was Bud's for you? - It was good. I mean, I got a good story. I was like, you know, when you're doing the fourth phase thing, right? When you're doing the pre-training, getting ready and all that stuff.

We had like 127 guys in that fourth phase. And I was looking around. I was like, man, there's some ripped dudes. They already look like seals, you know? And when we took that PT test to class up for 181, we only classed up with like 66 guys out of 127. Damn. And they had room to take at least 100 maybe. But I was like,

wow what the hell and then the guy one of the guys was just ripped like shredded abs looked badass he couldn't do the sit-ups i was like oh he just has show muscles he just got sure so i'll show no go yeah bro i feel like such i i was doing the class up test yeah and my partner he had to count sit-ups yeah and my partner like dude i mean i didn't i didn't really know him too well but i

Think you had to do 75 sit-ups to class up and he did like 73 and the instructor came by I was like how many to get I was like 73 I just like didn't cover for And the dude made it in the next class and I know him like he's a great guy Yeah, and but I I remember just thinking like well, there's the stand like hey, bro Sorry, like 70 73 don't cut it dude. You needed it more I don't know if he's still mad at me about that, but it'd be

If he is, I think it's somewhat justified. Echo, do you think that's somewhat justified? I think he should have got his extra two. Well, both, but... Okay. Depends who you... That's a very politically correct answer you brought over there. It's true. Both true at the same time. But you had to do a PT test to class up. You did fine. Yeah. You roll into first phase. First phase, good to go. Hell week starts November 7th.

So that was Sunday. And, you know, we're all nervous and stuff like that. We had, I forget how many guys we had by then, like maybe 45 or something. And it was December 7th, so it was like cold.

Of course, we do all the stuff all night, Sunday night, and then the morning. You said it's December 7th? December 7th, yeah. I think I graduated, I don't really remember. You know, like, you ever seen a fake seal? And they go, what day did you graduate? And the guy's like, I don't know. And then they're like, you're a liar. I don't know what day I graduated from BUDS. But I know it was in the fall of...

So, and it was the fall of 91. So while you, I probably left just before you started hell week. Yeah. That's pretty funny. So, so, uh, you guys, you guys went into hell week with like, what'd you say? 45, something like that. So that first morning, Monday morning, we go into the chow hall, all wet, freezing, dripping, you know, Sandy. And we, you know, usually we fit three or four tables, the big tables. And we all sat on one table. I was looking around. We're like 18 guys left.

I was like, holy crap. And nobody looked like a SEAL. They're like me, like I'm 133 pounds, you know, 5'8". And then we had a guy that was like 6'5", looked like Lurch, you know, with big hands, awkward hitting things. And then fireplug guys that were short and stocky with no neck. We all looked like just like –

Misfits. Yeah, misfits for sure. No SEAL-like dudes. And I realized, okay, so this is a mindset thing. This is people that don't quit. And then over the course of five more months, they make you look like a SEAL just by the amount of push-ups and sit-ups and running and all that stuff. But they can't make the mindset. They can't fix your mind. They only can fix your body. And so they got rid of all those guys. It really hit me hard seeing that.

Was there anything that was hard for you in first phase that was like a challenge where you were a good enough runner, a good enough swimmer, just pretty much well-rounded? Yeah, I was right there. O-course sucked for me because of that dirty name. Oh, yeah. I finally realized, okay, you have to train. You have to jump over it to hit your waist. You can't jump at it because you're going to bounce right off and fall at whatever the eight feet. Yeah, that is...

- That is definitely an obstacle that is very prejudiced against people that are smaller. - Yeah. - So this thing, Echo Charles, it's like you gotta, you jump up on a log and then you gotta jump onto another log that's like right around chest high. So you gotta jump up and hit it with your stomach and kind of pull yourself and you gotta stand up on that one, then you gotta jump to another one.

So the shorter you are, the harder it's going to be. And it's not just the height. It's also the distance. Like you got to jump far. So like you have to try to jump past it to land on your waist. Otherwise, you're going to hit your chest and fall backwards. So you had a little bit of a challenge with the third name, huh? But it was good. It's like I remember the first time. I mean, they did some good mental stuff on everybody. Like how, okay, get your best time. You get your best time.

Okay, now you go get wet and sandy and beat your fucking best time. Or you're going to do it again. And then you're just doing it over. Because now you're tired and you're wet and sandy. And you're like, God, why did I get my best time? I should have sandbagged that first one. Running the O course wet and sandy, I don't think they actually do that anymore. Oh, that's too bad. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think they do it anymore. Because that made the O course so much harder. The way your traction was terrible. Slippery. And there's a couple...

The stumps, remember the stumps you hop on? Those are now just tires, like football. Yeah, I like those things because those were tricky. Like wet and sandy, that thing was like, it was like it was varnished or something. It was like glass. Yeah, that thing sucked. Did you, so you made it through Hell Week and through first phase, you were on the dive phase. How were you in the water?

I was good, except that was the one thing I failed was that pool comp. Holy crap. So I was, cause then you fail pool comp and what it was, was, you know, you got like the shoulder straps and the chest strap and you got the one inch or half inch floating around. So I pulled, I was trying to pull my chest strap and I pulled the shoulder strap instead. So procedure. So I failed. And then waiting all weekend sucked. Cause if you failed again, you're done. Right. Right.

And then Monday came around and we had five guys retake it. And they put me through. I'm glad they did because it made me feel like I earned it. But I was underwater for like 18 minutes. Like they're like, you know, fucking around with me, punched me in the stomach, doing all that stuff till I had nothing. You know, like even the air bubbles you're trying to breathe through to get the extra. Because I don't think they may fail you if you come up too soon. So you try and do everything you can to put that rig back together, breathe from it and all that.

So like the whammy knot on the fucking inhaling tubes. Like when they put that whammy knot, it's like, because I've seen some guys, you think that they're done. They're like, okay, I'm done. They're like, nope. You got to get that knot out. Which is badass training, right? With no mask, you know? So yeah, I came up with black, you know, rubber marks on my face from the strip running around my head.

So that was cool that I passed. I'm glad that they gave me a tough one because the other four guys didn't pass. So that was good for me. So there was like 18 guys in your dive class, in your second phase class? Or did you get some rollbacks? We got some rollbacks. So when we graduated, we had 16 guys.

Think from how we can then we got some rollbacks from that from the previous class when they got done with how weak and then we moved on Yeah, I think that that regulator that aqua long aqua master regulator to hose regulator No, there's no one that used there's no reason to use that anymore. Although I do think there's like someone in cold water and

But that thing is just archaic. And I think the main reason why they keep it around is literally for pool comp. For just for doing the hard shit. And the other, like the Army or the Air Force or the regular Navy, no one uses that freaking evil regulator that could get tied in knots on your back, dude. It's freaking chaotic. Yeah.

We're not made where you, you had to wait for them to get done with tying the knot and you're holding your breath. Yeah. You know, it's always just like you're breathing through your regulator. Yeah. And they're fucking around. They're spinning you up on your head. They're taking your rig. They're trying to rip your rig off you and take it to the surface. You're like, wait, you know, it was brutal, but it was bad ass. You know, when you think about it. Was it,

I was trying to remember this. Was it if you, cause I remember I failed on Friday and then the weekend, it was like the worst, longest weekend. And me and my swim buddy, we put our, we both failed and we, we got in the, I don't know how we did this. We got in the dip tank and,

Second phase and we had like the full setup we had the regulars We had charged bottles and everything and we pool comp each other in like whatever the depth of the diptych

But we did it for like eight hours just murdering each other and you could you could pool comp the other guy while you were standing outside the dip tank so I was like totally dry out of the water and I'm just like wrecking my buddy and what we Trashed each other and did it over and over again and then on Friday we both I mean on sorry on Monday morning we both passed but I

Was it just one chance on Friday, one chance on Monday? It probably was two chances, but I only remember one. I only remember pulling that shoulder strap. But I probably messed up somewhere else. Yeah. God. Because one would be kind of – I think it was two chances. I don't remember what the first thing was. But it's probably a procedure too. Chuck, you get through it. Then it's third phase, going to the island. Yeah. Are you now super stoked? Because you end up being a sniper. Was that always sort of a goal of yours?

Yeah, I was a good shot. So it's like it revealed itself that how good of a shot I was like at Bud's and also at CO Team One when we started going to an island and stuff like that. And I was like, oh, this is cool. I want to definitely want to be a sniper.

But third phase, so like shooting the pistol, you were good to go. Shooting the rifle, no factor. Yeah. Isn't it weird? There's like some people that just suck at it. Yeah. It always baffled me. Like to me, a CO, you always have expert. And I remember seeing like S on one of them. I'm like, what? You're like, how did you make it through bots? I think they might roll you now if you don't shoot expert. That's right. Which is good. Although...

You know, if you get the guy, if the guy gets rolled in buds, he could get to the team and he's going to be shooting expert in like a month. Yeah. I mean, it's just a lot of it was giving the proper instruction, which they did. But some instructors, you know, they're, they get impatient. And I mean, the students like feeling that hate towards them, they mess up. So yeah, there's a lot of stress.

And this is back in the day when you'd graduate Bud's. That was kind of the big deal graduation. Now it's when you graduate SQT, you get your Trident and everything. Then you go to your team. But you're just like me because I was 177. Did you graduate with 180? 181. Yeah, I started with 181 and finished with 181. Okay. Yeah, so that was you went to Bud's, graduated from Bud's, no Trident. And did you put in that you wanted West Coast?

Yeah, I put in I want SEAL Team 1 just because that was like the Vietnam guys. You know, there's still some guys hanging out there. And so I thought that would be the one. Yep. And you got those orders. How was it showing up at SEAL Team 1 as a new guy?

Good. Neither the fucked up thing was like, Hey, go, go to engineering and ask for this guy, you know, some guy that died, you know, or whatever it was. But, uh, yeah, they fucked. Obviously they fuck with you. Yeah. Big time was, uh, was fact the master chief at the time. How was that check in procedure?

Intense. I mean, he was an old Vietnam guy. He was later on. I never even talked to him personally until one time we were out in, I think it was Guam. He showed up and he was actually a regular guy. I was like, oh shit, he's just a regular guy. He mellowed out a lot towards the end of his tour there. Because he had been at SEAL Team. He spent like...

Mean 30 years he probably did 25 years or something like that as he'll team or yeah, like he was there for a long time Yeah, I checked in with three other guys and we were like Outside of his office. He's a kid in here So we were all in the way we're like staying at attention on our whites and he goes fuck you Fuck you and fuck you get out of my office. I was like, oh my god Like what am I doing here?

And then he once we were all kind of all new guys together He assembled us and we were in the classroom and he came and told us like keep your mouth shut Keep your ears on keep your mouth shut. Keep your ears open

Don't be late and don't forget any gear. And that was like Roger. That was the, that's what he said. Yeah. I was all ears at that point. Yeah. That's good advice. Did you, so you also like me, you didn't go through SQT at the group or at the center. You went through STT seal tackle training at seal team one. Yep.

And what'd you guys do land? Did you guys do land? Nyland. Nyland. Just straight into the mix. Yeah, it was good. I think we fucked up somewhere and we had to spend two more weeks out there. But it was kind of cool to have the instructors from CO Team 1. Yeah. You know, because then you might get a platoon, they may be your platoon chief later. 100%. So that was kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely some advantages to it. I think that...

they unified everything together because those guys were getting the SQT training is like a really good right now. Yeah. And it's much more uniformed. So no matter what team you're working with, everyone's got a, even more of a baseline, you know, that's like the same. Um,

What was your, did you, what was your job going to be in your first platoon? Did you know? Uh, I didn't know. I want it to be a point man, but I got 60 gunner, which I loved. Like that was bad-ass. Yeah. Yeah. 60 gunner with a couple other guys and the E3, you know, 18 and a half pounds, 500 rounds, you know, a couple, maybe 50 extra rounds for a little bit more, but that was awesome.

And I don't know if they do it that much anymore, but like we used to like practice singing, you know, like, and that was just nonverbal communication. And I thought all, and that started us off with a seal is like how we use body language and shooting and different techniques. Like, you know, like you're getting ready. My 60s going low. So I'm doing like three round birth. And the other guy here is that. So he's like laying on the lead.

You switch out, and then you just give out like 12-round breath. You're up. Now you're back singing.

Yeah, no, they definitely hammer that course because at least when I was running trade at, like it was still the 60 gunners or it became Mark 48 gunners. You know, they had, what was it, four days where it was just them and their pig. And it was awesome. Like, do you see those machine gunners at the end of that? Even like a new guy machine gunner after four days of that machine gun course. And the machine gun course is just freaking awesome. And you know the deal with...

Like you get some seals when a seal gets really into something, bro, they just break that thing down and they, and so you get those guys that are instructors and they love being an a dub and they're going to make those guys into really awesome a dub. So it's holding strong, man. It's holding strong. That's good to know. What's crazy is I had a Roger Hayden. You remember Roger Hayden? I don't know. So Roger Hayden was a old Vietnam guy, but,

Like some of the stuff that they start like he started like walking the point man course with the with the tripwires and yeah Targets popping up. He started that like him and another guy and we we still do that now, you know what I mean? so it's like these these courses that were all

from combat and they just got passed down from generation to generation to generation to generation and they're still there now. That was one of the coolest things was that point man course. I love that, that like a 60 course where you got like, you know, almost a week of solid stuff and you come out of that and you're just like, you understand what your job is. Like you're at the door, you're laying down leads for everybody to get through. You know, it's like,

that type of training. If you go down, somebody, they don't care about you, they're picking up that 60, getting led down first before anybody grabs you, you know. And then that point man course was, I mean, you could tell it was like right from the Vietnam days, you know, the little tricks that they had. Yeah. I was at like a SEAL thing and there was, I was talking to some new guy, 60 gunners or Mark 48 gunners and I saw Roger Hayden. So I bring these guys over and say, hey, Roger, I was talking to these guys, they're pig gunners.

And he just looks at me and goes, the pig is an area fucking weapon. That was the first words out of his mouth. I was like, thank God. He's fast. This knowledge on man, the best. All right. So now you roll into your first platoon. Yeah. And you're, and you're a pig gunner. Yep. Pig gunner. How, how's the, how's the, you know, this is the nineties where, uh,

it's hard to explain to the younger guys, the G walk guys, um, how for us, at least for me, it was always like, let's hope we can get one mission. Like, let's hope we can get a mission where we get to lock and load our weapons for real and go do anything. That was kind of what we would hope for. Yeah. I, we all did like we're in Guam or something or no, we were in, uh,

someplace, Indonesia, and something happened, something small. I went up to my host, he goes, hey, can't you just tell the congressman we're here already? You just want to get into everything. Yeah, I remember in my first platoon, we were

We were in Guam, but we went to Thailand and there was like some kind of a UN thing was going on It was a UN helicopter. We like took a picture with the UN Helicopter and like thought it was super cool that we know the UN troops and you were there that's man it was just different and The but but I will say this and we just kind of talked about it, dude. We trained freaking hard like

We trained so hard. It was almost there was, in a way, training for the unknown. You would just think about the fear of not being prepared enough. I think that compelled us to train even harder because we just didn't know what to expect. Like, will I be ready? And I think that had a big impact on me and how...

you know, would we get the call? Are we good enough? Will we know our weapon systems? Will we be, you know, do we know our comms well enough? And like all these things, which the funny thing is all that stuff is kind of, it's actually not that hard. Yeah.

13:31 CH: And that's where you went on your first deployment? You did your Guam deployment? 13:35 SJ: Yeah, we did the Paycom. 13:36 CH: Okay. 13:36 SJ: Yes, based out of Guam. 13:38 CH: Did you guys do just exercises? 13:40 SJ: Yeah, we did Cobra Gold, which was fun. Yeah, four weeks, five weeks there. But working with the Thais, that was great. 13:50 CH: Yeah. Man, there's some SEALs that never left.

Yeah, exactly. They're still there today with whatever, how much land they got in their own house and probably the third or fourth wife. Yeah. Yeah. Simultaneous wives, I think for some of those, uh, you come back from that deployment. What's next? Uh, I jumped into golf platoon and they need it. It was like, uh, they're already on their, uh, their cycle. So I jumped into golf and then I was their rear security point man. Mm.

And how was, as you're now a new guy in your first platoon, now you're in your second platoon, what are you looking at from a leadership perspective, and what are you seeing? I'm seeing the difference in leadership, you know, the slightly difference of the chiefs and the LPOs, which was, they're both good. But I did notice that the chief...

You know, if you got one that was like, cause my first chief was bad-ass. We talked about him. Um, or he was the LPL. Okay. Yeah. So the LPL was bad-ass and the chief was bad-ass. And then my second platoon, um, the chief was okay. He was still good. He just wasn't like, wow, I got spoiled on that last one with the chief and the LPL. Um, and then you can see the team, the, uh, squad leaders picking up. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, this is what I realized when I worked at Trade-At was if you had a platoon, my initial thought was like, all right, the chief's got to be the tactician, the officer's got to be looking ahead, the LPO's got to be driving stuff. And I had this kind of mold of what I thought it should be. And what I realized after a relatively short period of time was,

dude, I just want to have like a couple good, if I can get one or two good leaders out of that top four, the platoon's going to do fine. It doesn't really matter if the officer's great and everyone else sucks, it'll be fine. If the chief is great and everyone else sucks, it'll be okay. LPO is great and everyone else sucks. Like you just need a leader that can make things happen and it makes such a huge difference in the whole zone and,

I had to open up my mind and be more flexible to where what roles people were gonna play because Look, man, you got there's some chiefs that they're just gonna run everything and it's just gonna be they've been date They got eight platoons under their belt. They're smart. They're humble They make things happen and it's like no look that that officer doesn't really have to you need have to show up to be honest with you and then sometimes like all that chief came from

Shore duty and before that he did, you know worked at some other shore duty and he just doesn't know what he's doing and Then it's like that officer better step up or the LPO better step up or something, but you just need a guy Yeah to make things happen. Yeah, you're right. You can't you rarely get all four badasses. Yeah That's that's very rare and sometimes

If you get four guys that are really good, they also come with four really big egos. And now you got conflict between, you know, the, the chief and the OIC or the chief and the LPO. And those things are just, it's so, it's such a bummer to watch, you know, it's such a bummer to watch a platoon eat itself. Morale drops. Oh yeah. It's a disaster. Um,

When did you go to sniper school? After that deployment? So I got to COT-1 in 92. I went to sniper school in 95. Okay. So was this after your second platoon then? Yes. I think it was, yeah. It was at the end of my second platoon, yeah. And where'd you go on that deployment? Same place. So we just did different things. Like I think we went to India, which was awesome. So we still did PACOM. We just hit different areas, Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong,

Different areas. Did you start feeling like you knew how to do your job pretty well? Yeah, I got better. Like I was also the Intel rep back then, you know. Laminating maps. Yeah, I was just basically the guy that got all the RFIs and, you know, briefed whatever. You know what else was crazy was back then was on my first appointment, we had one computer.

Yeah. Like one computer. And it will, you're the only person that even knew how to turn that thing on was the officer.

and everyone else was just like every single brief was on whatever flip charts and just that's how we rolled. It was like magic. The mission planning stuff was just paper and magic markers. That's crazy how much it changed. We didn't even have a whiteboard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't even have dry erase boards. Dry erase board would have been high tech back then. Check. Check.

So it's pretty standard deployment for back then. Yeah. All three of them were standard. Did you have anybody ever get in any trouble or anything like that? Oh yeah. Yeah. We got in trouble. I think it was my third,

Did you make it to Point Man in your third platoon? Yeah. There you go. That was awesome. But here's the thing. Because I was the 60 gunner, and you realize the importance of it, that's why it's good to have different jobs. So as a point man, I remember at Nyland, we're doing IADs, immediate action drills and live fire, and they put our 60 guy down.

And then I was able to go, okay, I get a 60 and start laying lead, you know? And so, you know, a lot of guys, everybody could shoot a 60, but like to shoot it like proficiently because you have the experience and all that stuff. That was awesome.

to still have it, you know? Oh yeah. And also later in my career to understand supporting assets, you know, cause I remember a couple of times in my career later on guys, it was just all like 18, 20 guys show up. All was just like 22s, you know, like the, the M fours, nobody has a heavy weapon. Nobody has 40 Mike, Mike, you know, like, man, this is not good. We want to have a variety of weapons.

And we honestly want to have as many belt feds as we possibly can. Absolutely. Because that's how we're doing this. That's what keeps the freaking enemies' heads down. So you get done with your second platoon. Now you go to sniper school. How was sniper school for you? It was good. I loved sniper school. It was, you know... Did you go to sniper school? No. Okay. So yeah, laying out in Kalinga, flat ground. There was a couple of tumbleweeds. Trying to do a stock. You know, that was tough. But it was great training. It was...

There's a lot of people there's a pretty big attrition rate at sniper school. Yeah guys that would go and wouldn't make it through it was freaking I didn't go to it, but like I knew really good guys that would come back and be like the yellow that Sucked yeah, and some guys would be like oh yeah, I graduated but barely yeah, and and like you said it was especially the stalking piece of

which is you got a guy that's a sniper instructor that's sitting on an elevated piece of position and you have to crawl to him in a certain amount of time to a close enough distance and take a shot with the blanks.

And not, and have that guy who's on binos. Two guys. Two guys on binos trying with all their might to find you. Right. And it was a challenge. Like they made it, they felt like there were shit bags that they couldn't find.

So like when you take that shot with a blank, you just have to sit there. Right. And they have, I don't know, anywhere from five to 10 minutes to scan. Okay. We just heard a shot. And then they got walkers and they go, Hey, I see something suspicious. Walk to your right. 50 yards, you know, two feet up a little bit to the right sniper at your feet.

And then if they're wrong, you're like, nope, that's just like a Coke can or something like that. And I'm like, fuck. And then they'll keep doing it, you know? And sometimes they're like trying to like wait till they get one, but they try not to do that where there's just like saturated area. What's the closest you ever had them call sniper at the feet to where you were actually laying? Oh, they got me once. My final one. And that was for Honor Man. And this is a good story. I know the guy,

So one of the guys was failing, right? And he had to get like a 10. And so a 10 is like, so yeah, you do your blank shot and they can't find you, right?

And then they give you a live round and then they put a target where they're sitting and they move off and you take that shot and you have, you can't just hit the target. If you just get the side, that's not, that's like a seven or something. You have to get like within that kill shot thing. And if you get that and then they come back and they look for you again and if they can't find you, then you get a 10. So I was rocking for, I was very patient doing the right things. My favorite thing to do was like, um,

cut a hole through a bush or a tree, cut a small hole through a tree and then get behind it 20 feet and then shoot through that hole. Cause then they're looking for you in the tree. Right. But you're like 20 feet behind or have multiple bushes and they're like looking for you behind each bush, but you're like way back there. So that was cool. And that was my favorite thing to do is like shoot from distance through a hole in a bush or a tree.

And in this situation, I'm like, okay, man, I'm going to crush on him at it. And then he was actually my shooting partner. And I did that scene. This is in Nyland now. And now, so I have a tree. I'm like laying on my back, cutting a hole through this. There was tumbleweeds. It was like about four foot long tumbleweed. And I click, click, click, come back, click, click. And they also look at your bullet path.

It has to be legit. Yeah, even if you hit the target, they want to make sure that you're not hitting any twigs. The guy that's lane grading the walker will look at your bullet path and your position and all that. So I had this perfect shot. I'm like, all right. And all of a sudden, my shooting partner, who was like 6'3", shows up right next to me, like ran, like across the pool table with two bushes, like runs and gets right next to him. I'm like, what the fuck?

And he's like, Jimmy, I have to get... I knew he had to get a 10, right? But I go, hey, man, I'm also going for honor, man. And so he gets right next to me. He's like, fuck. And all of a sudden, I hear the comms. They're like, holy shit. Run. Run 20 feet to the right. Run. You saw him run over to that bush. And so they stand right behind both of us, right? And I didn't know what he had done. So I'm just like concentrating on my thing. And they go...

Sniper sniper at your feet or oh, no, they didn't ask that they go who did that right? And I looked at my buddy and he looked at me I uh, I did it like that And then they go fucking for me get the fuck out of that was the biggest bullshit thing I ever seen I'm like what and so I'm walking away I go hey, bro. You got a perfect shot through that bush already cut the hole. Oh, it's so pissed and you got a 10 and

But he made it. That's good. But I was like, he's one of those things. I was like, what? I didn't know you did that. I didn't know you ran 50 yards on a pool table. Yeah.

And how was that deployment, your third deployment? That was a good one. That's the one we went to India, and we were training with those Indians. They're their SEAL version. That was good. We did a lot of maritime stuff, and that's when I started getting into the teaching stuff, teaching the 60, doing the 50 cal sniper stuff. And I could see that, okay, I like this stuff, teaching stuff. And then we had the skill to back it, the capabilities to back it. So that was cool to see.

And you come back from that deployment. Did you go into training cell at team one? I did. Yeah. I went to training cell for a little bit and then I became a sniper instructor and did that. That was in 97. Now would you do that sniper instructor, uh, like TAD? You just like, they'd group you guys together in four months. They just said, Hey, we got a sniper course going on. Um, you're in training cell, you're a sniper instructor.

They want you. Yeah. Like I remember you being in training cell, but I don't remember you being like I taught kind of did everything because I was like, you know, didn't care about anything else. So I was like, oh, we'll teach CQC. We'll go teach freaking diving. And but you were out there. The one thing I didn't teach because I wasn't a sniper is I never went to teach any sniper courses. Obviously. Yeah, it was short. I was a short time in training. So because then I left for the next unit in 97.

So you head out to the next unit, you get out there, selections is another very difficult challenge. It was good. It was kind of like Bud's, but just more advanced. It was just like big boy stuff, and they knew what they were doing, so they had certain ways. It was like the basics. And I won't get too much into it, but it was just like if you didn't know the basics. Like they broke everything for CQCF, like everything.

Most of the guys that failed were RSOs, 'cause they already had a way of doing things. So you had to forget all that stuff. So my advantage was I didn't really know a whole lot. So I just listened to them and did the walking thing, walking, walking, and then two weeks later things are speeding up. And then next thing you know you're running. And if you didn't have the basics, how they wanted it, then it was over.

And the good thing is, so out there at this time, there was actually work to be done like over in Bosnia. Yeah. And did you get on some of those operations? I got on two deployments over there, which was good. It was basically PIFWC stuff for the first one. That's what personnel indicted for war crimes. Yeah. So these are people that are doing war crimes over there in that war zone. And once the war kind of ended...

They had to go back and capture all these war criminals. And then, so you did two of those deployments. What was the op tempo like? Back home, it was slow, but over there, so you would only get a couple guys that would go during a certain...

time in your training. And so they get like maybe four or five guys that go or in once the war kicked off, then we had a whole troop go over there because then it was like not only PIFWC, it was also like terrorists that were working out there with NGOs, funding money and things like that. And that was cool. So basically when you go over there, there's just basic low vis type thing. You're wearing the clothing that they're wearing, just taking photos, documenting, tracking,

up a target portfolio on the guys that you're looking at. And eventually you're going to nab them and roll them up. Yeah.

And you do those low-vis type things? Yeah. So we never nabbed anybody. We turned it over to the big dogs, FBI. Yeah. And they actually, they grabbed one of the guys that we had tracked for them back in Chicago. So they were just, they didn't want to do it over there because they knew that he was tied to all these different NGOs where they're filing money. And one of them was Chicago. And that's when they grabbed him. Sure. And then...

Once so where are you at September 11th? I was training FBI at the command. No kid. Yeah, so we're doing just GQC and then One of the guys came in goes. Hey man Planes just hit the towers and at first I was like playing in the tower like a small plane like I didn't understand and then Then they left because they're from DC. They took off and

And that's when, or I think the second plane hit, they took off. And then that's, okay, that's definitely deliberate. And that's two airliners. So when that started, a lot of guys were thinking, oh, yeah, there's going to be a deployment or two, and then it's going to be over. I was like, oh, no. A lot of moving parts on this one.

Yeah, well, I thought the same thing. I was actually in college because I did the semen animal program. So then I had to, once I did a couple deployments, I had to go to college. And so I was now in college. And I called the detailer who I had worked for and who was a friend of mine, an awesome guy. And I was like, hey, sir, like, just send me back to a team. I'll go to college when I'm older. I'll do online courses or whatever. Yeah.

I don't want to miss this. And he's like, Hey, Jocko, this is going to last for a long time. And of course I didn't really believe him. Yeah. And the other thing that he told me, he actually told me this like a couple of years ago. Like I'd be like, Oh yeah, I called him and told him I wanted to go. Every freaking guy called him. Like every seal that wasn't at a seal team was like, Hey,

Hey, sir, please give me orders to a SEAL team. That was every guy. So that's the kind of guys, you know, that's of course, of course. Yeah. You know, that's of course every guy that's not at a SEAL team is like, get me to a damn SEAL team now. And I think everyone's thinking, otherwise we're going to miss it. You know, because if you looked at,

Grenada if you looked at Panama quick if you looked at the first Gulf War It was like if you weren't lucky enough to be in the right time in the right platoon at the right place It was like you're just gonna watch it. It'll be over in 24 hours 48 hours 72 hours maybe a week at the most and Everyone I mean we all just thought well, it's gonna be over quick. Yeah, boy were we wrong, huh? So what what so when did you actually get overseas?

The first time was right after, like in early 2002, January. And that was just an advance just to check it out because we were getting ready to deploy. So I went over with like four other guys from my team and we checked it out and then we came back and then we deployed in 2002. And what was the like up-tempo like in the mission set you guys were looking at? I think a lot of people thought that was just going to end pretty quick.

A lot of, so I was with a sniper team and I had some awesome leadership. So during peace, we were training really hard. Like if we did cold weather training, we're actually like making snow caves and packing our rucks like you're supposed to, like taping up all the, you know, the one inch and understanding that you don't want to just dump your rock out to find something, you know, that winter warfare thing on the East coast, like, uh,

I know team two, when we were geographically located and team two was Europe and they had some dudes that were freaking all in on the winter war activities. You get in the Norwegians. Hell yeah. Those guys telling it how it is, making sure that you did things right. So that was cool. And also we had guys that were just like recce guys that just understood even in the jungle or, um, woodland that you have to have your rock packed. Right. You know,

and you could compartmentalize. I mean, we came up with that one with a top pouch you could undo and put it around your waist so you could go off for 12 hours and not have to take your whole ruck, things like that. So it was good. That deployment was good 'cause we already had those skills, so we weren't walking. We were walking.

But at least we were walking. - As opposed to crawl, walk, run, you mean? - Yeah. - That type of metaphor? - Yeah, 'cause I saw some other units that were out there and they're like crawling. And it was like they didn't have the ruck idea. 'Cause you're out there for a long time and those mountains are killer. It's like Yosemite, but you're not using trails. So they had trails and stuff, but if you get off that goat trail, you're done. I mean, it's brutal.

And those mountains separate, uh, other countries like Pakistan, you know, so you walk and then they don't understand where their line is. So you're in Pakistan. They don't, they don't get it. Um, so we had to abide by the rules and they don't, but it was good. It was good to be up in those mountains. Uh,

up north, northeast, and then even interior. Because that's where those guys were up there with their camps and regrouping and doing their stuff. And so as part of a recce element, you were doing primarily recce? Mm-hmm, yeah. And then, so how long was that? Like into 2003? So yeah, 2000, that deployment, and then we deployed again, 2003, 2000.

2004. When did you go to Iraq for the first time? 2003 for the invasion. Oh, so you were there for the push-up. Yeah. How was that? That was good. I mean, talk about having every single asset you needed. I mean, there was one operation we did where it was a deep penetration because Iraq wasn't secure. We left from a different country and we flew in our helos and they said that they had

Three aircraft per guy. That's how many aircraft were in there. Damn, dude. Oversee us. Because there's a big deal. They're shooting like those damn missiles at us. I remember we're refueling because there's a long insert and we're seeing like a telephone pole go past it. Oh, fuck.

So they definitely had their defenses up and it was good to have all those aircraft because you're taking out targets as we're moving in. Three aircraft per man. That's freaking crazy. Yeah. And that was on the push up that you had all that going on? Yeah. Yeah. And then we ended up flying into Baghdad once it got semi-secure and then we start working out of Baghdad. Okay.

And out of Baghdad, were you guys doing like kind of hits, just DA type hits? Yeah, yeah. We're just knocking out like whatever we had, like a list of guys that we need to find and capture. And then we're just knocking them out along with other units. Yeah. Just bringing them down, finding out where they're at. Yeah, I got there in 03 and that's exactly what it was. It was like, you know, one of our jokes was saying Baghdad swap.

Yeah. Like load up the trucks and we'll go freaking hit that target and we'll do it the next night. We'll do it the next night. It was just like pretty straightforward. And at the same time, super cool because it is like the,

The ops would take like an hour, you know, and we had good Intel coming in, relatively good Intel. And so we, we didn't hit a lot of dry holes. Like most of the time we'd kind of get who you're going after. So it was like, you know, pretty good percentage of success. There was a plethora of targets. Yeah. And the enemy was, they weren't like organized, you know, they were still doing kind of dumb things that, you know,

that would

In an environment like that, if they're not adapting, they're just getting rolled up. So you're getting rid of the easy targets, basically. Yeah, here's something for you. Because I thought my opinion was they made a huge mistake. So when we took over that country, they had a standing army. Oh, yeah. And they took the generals and the top leadership and they put them in jail. And what did they do with them? And then they just had...

And then they disbanded the army pretty much. The whole Bathurst party, yeah. That was a huge, huge mistake. Yeah, and it's like, hey, you had a standing army. Just like, you know, get them on your side. Pay them. Because now they had no jobs, no nothing. And then it's like, fuck these Americans. Yep. You know? No, that's probably one of the biggest blunders and lessons learned. Yeah. You know? These are so... I mean, even a normal soldier...

They're like, okay, cool. Like, am I getting paid? Yeah. Cool. You want me to face this direction? I'll face that direction. You want me to face the other direction? Okay, I'll face that direction. Like, give me my money. Let me take care of my family. And it's not like they're going to be able to be gainfully employed if you fire 100,000 or 200,000 people. Like, what are they going to do? I'll tell you what they're going to do. They're going to get paid by some insurgent to put an ID in the street or shoot a mortar or shoot an RPG. Yeah, that was...

That was not good. And I think that's pretty universal that that was a mistake. But I did, you know,

Did you get to see like the people welcoming you with American flags and all that stuff? They loved us. Yeah. And I felt bad because there's sometimes we had to bust in their house to look for something or somebody and they're just like, have a tray of fruit, you know, to give to us. Hey, we understand, you know, we understand you have to do this. Well, you know, I felt bad for them, but they're super friendly because they want it, you know, that regime out and they saw us as the saviors and they want their country back. Yeah. Boy, um,

it's one of those reasons is one of those things where I think that as Americans and especially as our senior leadership in America and by senior I mean like the senior leadership at the time looking at the situation and thinking that everything is gonna go the way we want it to go and That's the thing with war is it is one thing I can guarantee you about wars things are not gonna go the way you think they're gonna go and

And if you think you're gonna roll in there and because they're waving American flags when you get there, they're gonna keep waving those American flags. It's like, well, not if you do, not if you fire 200,000 people in the army. I don't even know what the number is. It's hundreds of thousands of people. And then, look, we can kick in your door tonight and you'll give us fruit. But if another unit kicks in our door two nights later and then another unit kicks in our door four nights later, eventually we're not giving you fruit anymore. Eventually we're just pissed.

And then not to mention, what if you hurt somebody? What if someone gets injured by a breach? What if you destroy their car? And then what happens is Al Jazeera shows up with cameras and they start record or they record, oh, look what happened to this family. Look what happened to that. And it's just little by little that mob mentality, the tide turns. So you're there in the pushup.

And then do you go to a cycle of going to Iraq or do you start bouncing back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan? We did both for a while. So we got back from Iraq and then it was like only a couple months where we went back to Afghanistan. And what are you, like a team leader at this point or are you still just a shooter? I was a sniper team leader. Okay. Yeah. And then the recce guys had a lot of experience up in the mountains, which paid off because we were also the point men for the troops and the teams and stuff like that.

So back to Afghanistan, I think it was like third time now, you know, by then. Or maybe second. Going on my third. And the cool thing was that we were just, the cycle was quick. So we got a lot of experience over there. Like we'd come back, train, go back over, and we'd see the same people, same interpreters, same personalities. We'd pick up where we left off. So...

That was good for us to have that experience. Yeah, that quick timeline, I think, has some advantages to it because, you know, I think the ideal way to fight a war is the way they fought World War II. Yeah, you're there for the duration. You're there until we win. I think that that cycle of, hey, you're going to be gone for like, you're going to be there for,

three, four months, come home for a short period of time, go back for three, four months. And it sort of is, I think that's better than, all right, you're going to go for a year, but then you're not going to go back for three years, four years. And that I think is, I think the way we did that, the way the military at large did that,

was not the best way to do it. I think either shorter, where even though you're going home sometimes, you still feel and you still have continuity. Because I think when you start going six months, when you start going home for a year, year and a half, the continuity's gone. It's just gone. And then you have to relearn new tactics, new procedures that the enemy's using. Yeah.

Everything changes, you know, so you're back to it's like your first deployment again, right? And and so I think you got to make the home time frame short enough that when you go back again, it's not like you're Having to relearn and you're yeah, you're on a totally different deployment Yeah, and obviously guys are gonna get burned out of doing that and then you go cool You're done for you send them to shore duty or whatever send them to three years let them take some real legit downtime to decompress and

But, man, when you're switched on, stay on and keep it rocking. It's true. You can see even the leadership, the senior generals and admirals out there, they switch out. And then the next guy comes in, he's doing his own twist on something. But if you had the same guy out there, and if he fucks up, whatever, you get a new guy in there that could get the job done. But the whole thing is to end the war.

not just to have it prolonged. And then learning new lessons and somebody else, oh, I think I know how to do it. And then they try it and it fails. And then they got another guy come out, well, I'm going to do this thing. But if you had the same guy out there who's like, yeah, I tried these two things and it failed. Now I'm going to do this one. And I'm seeing my mistakes. I'm getting experience from dealing with these people out here. And I think we could do this efficiently.

- Yeah, and I think that when you look at the fall of Afghanistan, I think one of the many contributing factors is like if Echo's out there and he's training up some local forces, he says he trained them up to a level four. And then you get them and look, those guys aren't getting any better, but what do you say? You go, oh, I'm Jim and I trained them up, now they're level five. And by the time it gets to me, I'm like, well, I'm gonna do better than Jim. I gotta prove that I did a great job too. So now I'm trained them to a level six.

And you do that for, and by the way, they're still level three because Echo was lying. You were lying and I lied all to get our promotion, all to look good. So we all lied and the Afghans weren't any better. And that basically happened for 20 years. And look what happened at the end of it. Oh, the Afghans are good. You remember, what was it? Two or three weeks before the pullout, they're like, oh, they're up and they're ready to, that was just based on lies and lies and lies. Instead of somebody just saying, wait a second,

And everybody on the ground was like, no, no, this isn't good. This is not good. I mean, I said that in Iraq when we left Iraq. It's like, hold on, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. The Iraqis have gotten better, but they're not ready to hold down the fort. They might hold it down for a little while, but they're not ready. And the politics took over. Yeah. Freaking. Yeah, it was horrible. So you're doing now just back to back to back cycles coming home training, training.

And, and then going back on deployment. Now we, are you in a sniper element this whole time? Yeah. I switched over, um, took basically, uh, a platoon size group. And that was cool. Cause then that was like a, an assault type group where I also had a sniper team and assault teams and stuff like that. That was great. And you're, you're getting experienced. Um, how's it, how's the casualty rate at this point for you?

I would say there was mostly wounds, you know, and that's, and I say that mostly wounds because we did have some deaths, but like at the same time we were quick to learn from, uh, the feedback was good. And that's one thing I didn't like about like when I was, uh,

And the CO team was just like finding out what happened, you know, getting the AARs, you know, from like team three or team two. It was hard to get, you know? So where I was at, it was like a little, it was still hard to get from different teams that were out there, but like,

With the snipers, it was easy because we had the same building and we just talk about it and we could get back. We could email them and stuff like that and find out. So we could prep training for, okay, this is what they're doing out there now. So we could get there a little bit at a higher speed. But, yeah, so there were some casualties. And then I won't get into too much, but, like, yeah, we took some heavies in Iraq. And then, but, you know, we were going after some heavy hitters too.

When you came out to Ramadi in 2006, what was it that, I mean, obviously you guys knew that we were killing a lot of bad guys. What was it that, how'd you end up coming out? I forget. Good question. So I was the operations guy. So I wasn't really, didn't need to deploy, but I liked deploying operations.

So I knew, uh, your platoon chief, Tony, big Tony. Um, so I did a platoon with him at one and learned a lot from him. Big land warfare guy. So, uh, and I love an Islander. Yeah. So, uh,

We came, I did a visit for you guys and I brought my sniper rifle because I was like, good call. I was like, Hey, I know I'm the ops chief, but like, you know, so I told my leadership, I said, Hey, so we as a unit do not have urban sniping. We got rural and, but we don't have any urban, you know, can I stay here and just learn from these guys? Cause they're doing urban, you know, why wouldn't I? And if, as long as they allow me, can we do that?

And so that's where my pitch was. And they're like, yeah, I just talked to Jocko and Tony, you know? So that's how I got in. I was like, cool. Yeah. And I was, I always had a relatively, uh,

Open-door policy for team guys that especially I mean if I know him that's a lot different But I always tried to in Ramadi. It wasn't quite as much in Baghdad wasn't Baghdad It was like if you showed up and you were a seal We get you on you know we get you do an external security or something like that I did have that bite me in the ass one time where we took out a guy and he ended up like opening He was trying to shoot out a light, but he didn't tell anyone so we're like taking down a target all of a sudden there's shots fired and and

He didn't tell anyone that he was gonna shoot. And then when we're all going, "Hey, who's shooting?" Didn't say anything. It wasn't until afterwards in the debrief, it's like, "Hey, 'cause we're now, we're spinning up. We got the AC-130. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on." And it was this dude trying to shoot out of the light. So we tightened up our policies after that and like, "Okay, here's the rules. Gotta do a walkthrough. Gotta get with the chief."

all that stuff. Yeah. But Ramadi, we were tighter because it was just way more dangerous to do it. But you, you know, coming from your command and just knowing me and Tony was like, oh, go get some. Yeah, that was good. It was a good experience for me. Did you like, was it surprising to you how target rich that environment was? A little bit. I think I knew it was target rich, but it was, it was cool that you guys put yourself right in the center of,

Or on that corner, like where you guys drove out and hung out. That was cool to be there, you know, that platoon. And then you just walk out the door, you know, patrol down the street or go out at night and take a building. Yeah.

It was good to see old map studies of finding, okay, which building's the highest in this town? And where can we get to? And what are we actually trying to do? If we take this building, can we even see the other building that we're trying to observe or the structure?

So I liked that. That was cool to see the old school planning, not just walking out there and just taking a building. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, Tony was totally fired up for that. You know, like, let's get out the map. And then Chris Kyle obviously was like full on committed to where can we position ourselves where we're going to have the most impact and kill the most enemy. And what was interesting, I had the brigade commander on here, General McFarland, and he would like the same...

you know, here his brigade is, they're killing all these enemy fighters. And like the meth is going, Hey, what, how are you killing all these people? General McFarland's like, come out here, come and see. And that was my answer. Same time. Every time people like, how are you killing so many people? It's like, come on out, come in, come in, come and have a look. You got to stick your neck out a little bit. You got to be in there. Yeah. Um,

My regret was that I brought my 300 Win Mag. Yeah, you wanted that SR. No, no, I wanted my 5.56. Oh, okay. And only because I had the round that could drop people. But the kickback. So the 300 Win Mag, when I shot, it took so long to get my scope back on the target like I would miss the second one. Yeah.

But like the 5.56, it could be like tink, tink, you know. So that was my only regret, but it was good experience. I was just rocking with a... Well, like you said, that's a good lesson learned for like, oh, if you're in an urban environment, there's going to be more targets. It's going to be, you're going to need to take quicker shots. Yeah.

I mean, of course, the 300 wind mag, you got the distance, which, you know, Kyle definitely shown on that one. You know, for me, I think my shots were only like 80 to 120. I think I had a 220 yard shot, but they're pretty close. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to Leif, you know, that you were coming on and he was like, oh yeah. He's like, he was telling me about that chapter that I read in the opening of this. He's like, I think, he's like, I think Jim got four of those. He was all fired up. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was definitely, you know, we were doing things that,

Made a lot of sense to us, but you know, I found out afterwards People be like why are you going out in the daytime? I was like, hey, wait, what do you mean? Why are we going out in the daytime? It's like number one. We have Iraqi soldiers with us. They don't have night vision goggles number two We're gonna go out in the nighttime and we're gonna get in a position where we're gonna stay and That's when the enemy's gonna come out because the enemy didn't come out very much I think we probably killed less than five guys in the daytime

or sorry in the night time yeah almost everybody was that's when the enemy would come out and fight they knew we owned the night they didn't want to come out yeah i like what you guys did you guys went out in the night to take the building and then you're there first light you know and then you're and then that one was the mosque right next door was like yelling screaming out like hey americans are here so how to get your guns we got them you know and then they came you know yeah they they would definitely come

And I remember one op that you guys did. You guys went out because an army tank got blown up. Yeah. And when an army, a Brad, or sorry, not as an M1 got blown up. And so then it takes, you have to send an M88 wrecker out there to drag the thing back to base. But for,

And I think on that particular operation, when that tank got blown up, I think it was the driver got out, stepped down off the tank as they exited the tank, and he was killed by another IED. And then the Army requested, hey, can you guys watch this thing? And I think that's when you were like, I'll go too. So you got down there and just to see...

how the enemy was effective. Like they figured out a burn. They figured out how to set fire to those tanks. Yeah. Which was, which was impressive. Yeah. Um, I think you also did a bit, you also did like a daytime patrol with the boys, didn't you? Yeah. Yeah. A big, I add big gunfight, big gunfight. Yeah. That would, they, they, I think they hit us with PKs on that one. And, uh, um, the funniest thing was like, you know, I was,

you know, with you guys on the, we're doing like a center peel and I was running back and then the rackies were behind us. Right. And I run it back and I was like, man, we only got like all seals up here. And I came back thinking I was going to go down the long line and all the rackies were on a corner, like huddling up in the corner. I'm like, Oh my God. Okay. It's just us. It's just us. Yeah. Their reactive contact was not exactly up to the standard. Yeah.

One thing that was so so you got done there and you kind of reported up your chain of command and like basically correct me if I'm wrong you said like I don't think that we that your unit should be doing that operation and or something along those lines because like maybe a week later my skipper calls me up and he's like hey I

Like what's cool? What what's what's this all about? I was like, what's what he was? Well, you had Jim Foreman out there. He went on some ops with you guys and and like

He said you guys don't have any air support. I was like, sir, we don't have any air support like there's two helicopters can't fly here Because they'll get shot down and AC 130 isn't gonna fly during the day. So no, we don't have any air support He's like we are you know, you got there's this massive ID threat. I was like, well, sure Yes, there is a massive ID threat. That's why we do mostly foot patrols like we did foot patrols to get hit with a lot less IDs That's why we're doing he's like, oh he's like he's

these aren't strategic targets that you guys are killing out there. And I was like, no, sir, these aren't strategic. We're not shooting Osama bin Laden or Zarqawi out here. We're, but we are having a strategic impact with helping the, the conventional units win this. This is a very strategic battle and we're certainly implementing it or we're assisting in it. And then there, there's always this thing about supporting the,

conventional units and Echo Charles for your information. There's two different types when you go out in the field. You can either be the supported element, which means you're the one that's like, for lack of a better word, you're the senior one, or you can be the supporting element, which means you're the junior one. And sometimes people get really concerned about that. Like,

Because if I'm supporting you echo and you decide to do something that I don't like well, that's kind of like oh well That's what we're doing And so it is it and and actually if you look at the history of NSW or you look at that history of special operations There has been times where that has been terrible. So I I'm a special operations unit I'm working for you echo and you go Oh you were working for me cool Go charge that machine gun nest and we end up losing a bunch of guys and it doesn't work out well and that can be really bad so people are very hesitant and

to sign up to be the supporting unit. And so, you know, my boss was kind of like, well, you guys are the supporting unit. And I was like, well, sir, yeah, we are. And I said, and guess who's supporting us? The conventionals. They are absolutely like all of our close air, all of our fire support is coming from them.

with their tanks and Bradleys, all of our QRF is coming from them and all of our CASAVAC is coming from them. So even though we're quote the supporting unit, it's fine. Like it's not, and by the way, they completely listened to what we had to say. It wasn't like they were like, no, shut up and go do this. No, they're like, oh, you don't think that's a good idea? Cool, what do you think is a good idea? So they had a totally open mind. And the final thing was just like,

"Is this the most dangerous thing that NSW has done?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know if it's the most dangerous thing that NSW has done." But I said, "Sir, this is freaking dangerous. Go look at the casualty reports. There's an American wounded or killed every single day here, and we're out there. So is this dangerous? Yes, it absolutely is, but the conventionals are out there every single day, and we're gonna support them." And so that's what it was. And thankfully, I had a great relationship with my skipper.

And I talked him through it. And by the way, my skipper had to approve all of our operations. And just about every operation that we did had to get run through the CJ SOTIF as well. And the CJ SOTIF was great. They supported everything that we were doing. And so ultimately it was, you know, there was like a little bit of a firestorm for a little bit. But, you know, once we talked through it, it was all good. Yeah. I think the biggest thing was like we did things different.

And we have a lot of assets and we try to take out the

key players and you guys were doing things differently. What I didn't want to do was we just always say, hey, this rooster environment over there, let's just take our squadron and take over. Because then you guys would be under us and this is your playpen. So I appreciate being out there and seeing what was going on. That was awesome. And then also I was like a free agent. And the last thing I want to do is pull

Because I had a relationship with you guys. To pull 30 dudes or 40 whatever over to you guys and then what the fuck. I had that happen to me where another unit person from a different unit came over to observe and the next thing you know they got like 20 guys. This is during the invasion. And then they're like, hey, we like what you got. Not only do we want, they want our AO, but they also want our sleeping quarters.

you know and we're like what now we got problems I was like in E5 I was like wait what and I was like looking back to my senior chief and I'm like is he serious you know I was like

So not that that would happen like that, but I'm just saying we had a different mission. Our stuff was at night. We go in at night, we take care of it at night and we come back before the day. In Afghanistan, sometimes we go out in the day and do the right thing. But like you guys had a totally different mission set. And mixing the two might not have been the best thing. Yeah. And we were really lucky too. Like we happen to have 13 snipers in our squad.

Task unit which was not normal, you know normally maybe you have maybe I've two puts a platoon maybe three per platoon Yeah, so you're up to like six maybe but we had 13 like we could really lock some stuff down but uh, it was weird too because like there's like there was some kind of like there was like people that just said that you said

That we were like operating outside the ROE, that we were killing women and children, that we were going crazy, taking it like unnecessary risk. It was, it was, there was, there was like a rumor that the seals wrote this, the Ramadi snipers got shut down.

Because of you know all this rule breaking and it's just like no actually none of that is even remotely true We did operations from the day we got there until the day we left sniper operations and we and we turned over to sniper operations to the guys from team five that took our place and they rolled right into it yeah, you have a hater and That person used me to accuse you of things you said

that I was sent there to report on you. I'm like, dude, I would never do that. I want to get experience. I want to roll with you guys. I wouldn't be there observing, critiquing. And I told the guy, I go, hey, I got three shots off that, three or four shots off that. And we were surrounded. I got wounded with those guys, you know, which was like, how could you say that I was there to report war crimes?

So my point is that somebody does not like you. I never said those things. And I was in the mix with you guys, my brothers. Like I said, I got wounded on that trip with you guys. I was only there for like maybe less than a week. You know, we did two, three ops, which were awesome. And I got some experience finally on the urban stuff and I took it back to the command and

I won't mention the technique, but the techniques that you guys used were good to go. And it bugged me that somebody was using me. And they also didn't... They used my name, but they didn't use their name. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and I remember I first heard that, and I just sent you an email. I was like, hey, bro, you know about any of this? And you're like, oh, no, I didn't say any of that. I was like, okay, cool. I'm just making sure that we're all good, because this is kind of crazy. And you're like, yeah, dude, some...

you like you got some haters i'm like okay man yeah the biggest thing i had was that we just do things differently yeah and it's not there's a thousand ways to do something right and it doesn't uh mean that they're wrong um we just were like very strategic target uh assets nighttime in and out not the daytime remain over day stuff yeah for that deployment in the daytime completely embedded with like conventional units in the staying within like a

Little tiny city, you know, it's just it's just a different a different gig but yeah, and that's the other thing is like how tightly controlled

The city was and how we have Iraqi soldiers with us. There's Iraqi police out in the city. There's shakes out in the city. The battalion commanders and brigade commanders are meeting with the shakes. Like you can't just go out there and kill people. You will. Yeah, it just, you, you literally cannot do it. You will get reported. I mean, they had to work in hospital, right? Yeah. They had to work in hospital in Ramadi. So it's not like it was the wild, wild. It was a wild West, but it wasn't as intense.

The Wild West where you can just do whatever and nobody reports you. Yeah, the amount of oversight that we had. Like I said, my commanding officer, the siege of SOTA commander, not to mention the entire conventional side. Like you can't roll into some battalion commander's battle space and just do what you want to do. There's just no...

way that that could happen. So that's why I've never really worried too much like these, this craziness is all just like, okay, it's, we know the truth and, and that, that is what it is. But it was awesome seeing out there and is awesome. Just, just anytime you link up with like some of your people, you know, from back in the day and now you can make things happen. It's very cool. Yeah.

And so we kept operating, and of course, you kept operating too. You kept getting after it. You went back, and now you're... What happens after that deployment? What's next on the agenda? Next was back to Afghanistan, running my platoon size guys. And I did...

and then I went back to Iraq for my second platoon size leadership role. - And when you went back in 2008, that was sort of the hard deployment for you. - Yeah, that was a rough one, yeah. - And that out tempo was up and you're going against some pretty hardened targets. By this time, the enemy, like we were joking about earlier, the enemy in 2003, 2004,

there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. And just like we were learning, but they were learning too. And they were getting smarter, they were getting better. They started doing the vehicle-borne IEDs. The IED threat just got out of control in 2006, 2005, 2006. By 2007, 2008, now they're countering RTTPs. This is when a lot of the house-born IEDs, it got gnarly for you guys on that deployment.

Yeah, yeah. It was a good deployment because the guys were all on board with what we're doing. We're just hitting hard dudes, not just guys that were just mid-level management. We're going after the top dogs, making a difference. Those guys were Suicide Network, blowing up, you know, putting bombs on handicapped kids and sending them into a store and blowing it up, killing 90, 80 people.

So those are the targets we're going after, those guys. And they're well protected. So it wasn't just like, hey, they have one bodyguard. It was like they had 10, 15 bodyguards throughout into multiple buildings and stuff like that. So we planned pretty good and we were taking them out and they were like, hey, we're getting tired of these guys. They don't have so many. Let's just whittle them down and then they'll probably go home.

And they tried to do that. Luckily, we stayed with it and got the job done. But it was a bloody one. And you lost guys on that deployment? Three guys, yeah. Three guys, two dogs. I think I had 17 Purple Hearts total. But I had to get some reinforcements back from home to make up for some guys. And I had the whole command volunteering. I grabbed...

I think I grabbed five guys that I knew. I go, okay, I just want to know them. I want to know who they are. I want to have fought with them before because I'd rather have five than 10 or 20 that I'm not sure about. Even though they're all good guys, I just want to be very selective on this one like you were in Ramadi. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's such an awesome statement about what SEALs are like when you've got a unit that has taken heavy casualties and you need replacements and you have every guy putting their name on the list. That's what it's all about right there. They want to get in the fight, they want to avenge their brothers, and they want to do the job, and they want to help each other out. And that's just freaking awesome to hear. How are you doing? Now you're just...

I don't know, 10 deployments deep or something like that. What, what's your, uh, how's your like personal life going at this point? Are you married at this point? You got kids married, uh, three kids. I have, yeah, that's what happens. We've been talking for an hour and a half and we didn't mention any of that. That's what happened. Freaking team guys are married to the teams. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, three kids and, uh, married and, we're doing good. And,

And things start getting a little bit heavier after more and more deployments. And then I end up retiring in 2018 and then shortly after divorce and then managing the kids' stuff. But during this time period, like 2008, 2009, your wife at the time has just gotten through it. Yeah, solid. Yeah, there's something...

I know my wife, when I was losing guys, and my wife is going to the funerals. And she's going to visit my wounded guys in the hospital. And I think that's a huge reality check on the home front.

Like, it's one thing to see, oh, there's people getting hurt or killed overseas. But it's never, you know, it's not my husband. It's not happening to my husband or his team. It's like, now all of a sudden, oh, it is. It is happening to my husband's unit. And I think that was a huge...

Reality check for my wife and my wife god bless her like she never asked me about anything She's like she didn't I bet she didn't ask me three questions in my time that I was married with her about work and probably Two of them were like are you gonna be home this weekend or do you have to work and I was like I will I'll be home or not but you know what I mean like my wife was never wanting to know about

anything she was like you go you know like I get it you do your thing but man um going to going to guys funerals was a definite reality check yeah yeah for sure uh are you so are you staying you're you're at this command now five seven ten eleven twelve straight years at this point yeah how do you get any downtime

Not really. That was one of my, not complaints, but like, it's a good thing. You're at war and you're being used, right? But after a while, it would be good to have like, hey, this month, just stay home. You know, just take care of your family and take care of yourself and show back up 30 days from now. But we couldn't, we didn't afford to do that. So we just had to keep going. But I think it burnt some guys. Yeah. And,

are you, now you're getting, you're obviously you're promoting and at some point you take over selection. Is that right? Is that how you made master chief? Yeah. And how was it? I know that for me, I had a, I always feel like one of the luckiest things that I got was, uh,

As an E5 at SEAL Team 1, I went into training cell. And like I said earlier, I taught everything I could. Every trip I could go on, I'd go on. Whether it was CQB at the time, CQB, CQC now, but Mount, Land Warfare, comms. I did, ran the dive course. Everything that I could do, I'm in. And even teaching, I taught STT to the young officers. And so it was like, oh,

now you're like sitting and you're watching and you teach it and then you watch it and then you teach it and you watch it and you do it. You're like, oh, let me show you how it's done. And I learned so much by being an instructor. Is that the same thing that you felt? Yeah, it was good because you're getting guys from different, you know, platoons basically. And everything's based off the basics, but there's also some idiosyncrasies that they do differently, right? So now you're seeing multiple ways to just do something right.

And so you're like, okay, that's cool, I never saw it like that. As long as you're getting the job done, it doesn't matter. You're not just going, hey, this is my playbook and this is what I do every time and that sucks. You want to have a couple plays in your playbook. So that was good and then like you said, you're seeing it done over and over and over again and you just become that much better, you're more reactive, you can see where an issue is about to happen and be there or stop it before it happens.

And then you're just in tune. You're in flow state for some really... The toughest thing we do for all of us SEALs is CQC live fire, right? Even with multiple entries. You're trying not to enter on other people, but it happens all the time. So you have to be on your toes as a cadre. And then you end up being the CMC of some...

Yep. Yeah. And how's that leadership? It was good from a leadership perspective. Talk to us about leadership now that you're in charge of hundreds of people. Yeah. So I liked that. My understanding of like a master chief CEO is like they're going to be.

probably like top five or top 10 shots, you know, that they're still bringing it, not like they're sitting behind the desk, you know, with a gut and they're not doing anymore, you know? So I always thought, okay, that's how you should be. You should be like,

- Dude, I saw a t-shirt the other guy had at the teams that said no fat team guys. When you start talking about a team guy with a gut, I'm like, all right, I gotta break this up. So yes, that is not what you're supposed to be. No fat team guys. - Exactly. - And definitely no fat Master Chiefs, come on. - Yeah, I mean, you gotta lead by example, right? Especially if you're pushing the mental toughness, the mental mindset, and then you're sitting back there not doing the training. So the other thing is you gotta be out there doing the training.

Like, so I can't be at a two week breaching course or two week sniper course or two week shooting course, but I could be there for two days, you know, and part of it is to see the new technology like the snipers. Cause you know, like they're going to come some requests to get gear, you know, it's going to be like thousands of dollars and it's going to, it could just be something, Hey, we want everybody with new boots.

And then, you know, usually it's the XO that run it past the master chief. What do you think about this? I'm like, dude, these have got new boost last week, whatever it is. But just like technology is like, hey, we already have GPSs, but tell me why we want these ones. It's like, okay, we want these ones because it does this, that, and this. Okay, well, that sounds like for our lead jumpers and our recce guys. So get 10 of them instead of like 40 or 50 or whatever it is.

So then you could make those calls, but if you don't know, the worst thing is that you just deny it because you don't understand it. Because you're a dinosaur and you're like, "Hey, why do we need GPS's? I just use my compass." That's how we did it. So you have to be in the game, you have to be present, you have to just a little bit. Even just walking around your team room, just knowing the guys' names is a huge difference.

So, like building those relationships, even a small bit is worth it. - And you also went to Trade-At for a while, right? - I did, I did Trade-At twice. - And how'd you like going to Trade-At? - I loved it, yeah, it was good. It was good to see, well, the first time I went down there, I noticed like, you know, in selection, we're seeing like some of the bases was getting dropped.

And then when I went to trade it, I go, okay, this is where it's at. It was like the one, the shift break punch thing.

instead of just saying flank left. Because the whole idea is like if you tell me, hey, Jim, flank left, there's a lot of freedom for me. You can figure it out. Yeah. And the shift break punch was created, I understand why it was created, it was for safety. More control so nobody would get shot or there's less leadership in it. Like you're telling me to do something, but I have to shift along this line and

and then when i cross the line it's a break and then everybody shifts fire but it's way too soon like i'm not even i want you still firing at that target until i get to this area and then there's always choreographed to i'd always punch or assault through but if i get what if i get there there's a river or you know i get some high ground i got the perfect ground i want you to assault through so there's no decision making in that call shift break punch whereas flank that's all you decide when you get there so

That's when I came back to the West Coast and talked to Tony who was also at Trade at One and I talked to him about changing that call back and he agreed.

So that was, and the cool thing about Tony, he has like tons of influence. He's like the legend, right? So, and that's, I went right for the juggler. I didn't try to tell like a CEO or a master chief to get this thing changed. I went to Tony. Ground level. Yeah. Tony, do you agree? And we had a couple of beers and at his house and he's like, yeah, man, you're right. Let's do it. And then I just left. I didn't have to do anything else. He made it happen on his end and it happened. Yeah.

Having a guy like that with his respect he had and his status was great. - Tony. So I was saying this earlier, I feel so lucky that I happened to go to training cell at SEAL Team One and then my last tour was at Trade-Et. And so I got to do the same thing again, which is watch a platoon go through a training scenario

Win, lose, or draw, but you can watch what the leaders do. And then the next night, a different platoon's going through the same thing, and it's all the success and failure is based on what the leaders do. And so just watching that and being from a detached position and being able to see what works and what doesn't work, such a blessing, and I feel super lucky that I was able to wrap up my career there. At some point, obviously, 27 years, you decide you're going to call it.

Yeah, yeah. What was the deciding factor? Was there a straw that broke the camel's back? Yeah, a little bit. There's a lot of personal stuff in it and just time to hang up the boots. And then I did my final tour at Trade It again.

And that was cool to run the training department. And then I finally, before I retired, I came out with a SOP book just to talk about the basics. Leadership, like everybody at every level, you're a leader, but what are you responsible for? And it was really tied into the platoon chief and the CO.

Oh, I see like that relationship, you know, cause if that relationship is messed up, it's like, you know, um, it's a marriage, right? It's like your parents fighting all the time.

They have to, uh, you had to have some common ground and then also understand that, Hey, uh, the OIC does delve into the enlisted stuff and the, um, NCO does dive into the higher end stuff. And there's like a mix of that. And you need to understand that you don't just draw a line. Hey, sir, you don't go into this tactical stuff. No, he does. And same vice versa. So it was good to have that. Um,

book out so people could understand what their roles and responsibilities were. And it wasn't like a strict thing. It was just like, hey, this is a guideline, but we need to have something put out, especially for the junior guys. - Yeah, yeah. It's so often, like how can you hold somebody accountable for doing a certain task

if they don't know what that task is. - Exactly. - And how can you expect for a leader to step up and lead a certain portion of an operation if they don't even know that they're supposed to step up and lead that thing? Or how do you expect them to know that, hey, they shouldn't actually go and do this other thing, they should focus on that when you didn't tell them to do it. So roles and responsibility is a huge way to mitigate a lot of problems.

And like you said, this isn't roles and responsibilities written in stone with no leeway or flexibility at all. No, actually it's the opposite. And I used to tell guys, you got to know your job, your lanes, but you also got to know one above you and one below you. So like, like you said earlier, when you were a point man, if your machine gunner doesn't

goes down, you need to be able to step up and take his role. And by the way, if your OIC is going to, you know, doesn't know which, doesn't make a call on which way we're supposed to move away from this contact, if he's not making a call, you're going to have to make it. That's being able to step up and do it. And your OIC, if your chief gets hit, needs to be able to step down and like get out of that immediate firefight. So,

Definitely good to clarify. - You mentioned on one of your podcasts, and it was right on the money, like if you're waiting to move up, but you're not training the guy below you, you ain't moving up. - Nope. - And you're gonna be stuck in that position. You know, like, COOs naturally mentor. You know, it's just like that big brother thing. They bring you in and they want you to learn.

And there's a passion behind it. And guys, I think that's what makes the teams great is like there's huge mentorship stuff. And guys want to give back. Even retired guys like from Vietnam or whatever, they're always – to hear a story from them. You know, I remember in Bud's, they brought an old crusty guy back. You might have known him. I don't know his name, but he was living on a sailboat. Yep.

Yeah. Butch McIntyre. Yes. So he came to the island during third phase and he told us some stories about Vietnam and like how he made a mistake once, like on an ambush on his first one, he was a young guy and it was like a hasty ambush where he cut backwards, you know, and he went way so deep that,

the enemy couldn't see him, but then he couldn't see them. So the firefight happened. He's just like, I don't know what happened, you know? So on his next one, he learned from that, you know? And it was like kind of powerful to understand that like, Hey, you can't just hide weights cause you're scared. Right. Cause it's your first thing you're doing. Right. And you should be,

scared but you also have to hang it out there a little bit you have to see the target area you know yeah and so you explain the next one way better but like for us to hear that it's like okay so he's made mistakes and he's learning he's telling us this you know so in training we make sure we can see the trail when we tuck it in you know for a hasty ambush

Yeah, those lessons getting passed down and like you said, the best lessons. And even you take that, Butch telling you a story he didn't tell you about when he was great. He didn't tell you about when he was awesome. He didn't tell you about when he kicked ass. He tells you the main story that he wants you to know is when he screwed up. Yeah. And that's where so many lessons get learned and it also sticks in your memory. Yeah. Yeah.

So you make the decision to retire. Yeah. And you're wrapping up. Did you have a plan for what you're going to do when you retire? No, it came quick. And that kind of shocked me. So retirement happened. I didn't really have a plan.

And then the biggest thing for guys, I think for me at least, was like my purpose was like the teams and the mission and then that goes away. And then you're like kind of like what the hell? You know, you don't have a purpose. And I didn't really understand at the time and I started picking, I still have like a bunch of jobs I'm doing. But you try and like recreate that purpose you had and you can't. There's no way. So understanding that, that like okay, so take some time, take care of yourself,

and do things that you like. 'Cause I was rogering up for everything. Now, hey, can you do this, can you do that? I was like, yeah, I'll do that, I'll do that. - Wait, this was on the civilian side? People asking you to do stuff? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So whether it's running a shooting course or talking about something or anything. Hey, can you come out this weekend to teach this shooting course? Saying yes to everything just to have some semblance of a purpose. - Did you take any downtime at all? - No.

Yeah, that was... And I was going through a divorce at that time too. So it was like hard to, you know, financially to do anything other than keep working. Yeah, I retired on a Friday and like Monday I was talking to a client about leadership. Like literally I took the weekend off kind of because I had to prep. Yeah, you're still working. It's just like nonstop. Probably not the best move in the world. Was there anything that like...

really helped you go through the transition? Oh yeah. I'll tell you like, uh, I got tied in with a therapist right before I retired and it was art therapy and I got to show you some paintings. So now that helped to actually process things. Even I even painted an op, you know, uh, that was significant. Um, and being able to do every brush stroke,

It took four years to do this painting. I'll show it to you later. But it was significant because the op, I kept going, why did they do this? Why did they fucking do this? And then as I was painting, okay, this is uniform we were. Oh, I remember they said this. I remember that guy said that. I remember I told him to do this. And then by the time I was done with the painting, I was like, oh shit, I had some accountability on this thing. I can't just blame somebody

everybody because they didn't do what I said. Why didn't they do what I said? Because of these other situations that, you know, and they're holding back from me or something like that. But anyways, it made me realize that I had a huge amount of accountability for what happened. And, you know, because we compartmentalize super well, like almost too well. And we have to, because if you think about stuff too long, you melt. Yeah.

Well, that's the, the war doesn't stop. Yeah. You, you have someone wounded, you have someone killed, you still have to go and do your missions. Right. And that's just the way it is. And so what you do is like you said, you compartmentalize right now.

Well, at some point, at some point you have to uncompartmentalize and process that. It sounds like a painting was really helpful for you. That was one way. Yeah. And also just given time, like forgiveness of yourself. You know, that's one thing that I think we are hard on ourselves, all of us. Um, cause we want to do the best, be the best and all that stuff. And you gotta like recognize like, okay, I made a mistake for sure. Yeah. And I always look at it. I've,

been talking this about this because sometimes you know the book the book titles extreme ownership and so that means you know oh well it's my fault and sometimes people they take that to the point of it's my fault and therefore I need to be punished over and over and over again and and never forgiven well just like if you know if I work for you and I screw something up I

Look if it's obviously if it's some egregious thing and you get rid of me, okay but if it's something that I screw up and it was bad and

You can't forgive me. We shouldn't I should just leave anyways, right if you can't be like dude I I get it like I know what you were thinking. I know you know made a mistake I know it's not gonna happen again I'm not gonna hold this against you because if you hold it against me we're gonna I just It's not gonna work You know if you if your wife does something or if you do something your wife and she can't forgive you I

Ain't gonna work. It's over. It's the same thing with ourselves if you can't say oh, yeah, here's what I did This was my intent. I didn't intend for this bad thing to happen, but it certainly is something I did I'm gonna learn from it and I'm gonna forgive myself and move on at some point you have to do that if you don't do that I don't if you don't take ownership of it and then say yep. This was on me My intent was not that but this is what happened. It's my fault. I

Now I have to forgive myself so I can carry on and make this relationship that I have with my own brain function properly So it sounds like that's kind of the process that you went through. Yeah Yeah, and it's tough because like you don't want some things you your mind can recreate a story and

and have a new story that didn't happen. You know what I mean? If you think about it, if you say it enough and say it enough, it never happened, but it did. So you have to write that painting and doing every brush stroke, I realized, oh, I did say that, and I said this, and then it's like, okay. And then there's forgiveness of what happened to yourself, and it wasn't just like...

all one person, all me or whatever, there's a multitude of reasons. But to have, to recognize that there was also you involved, like myself involved, was key for me. - Yeah, I believe that that's a, I think that's actually one of the biggest remedies, right? And I think that, you know, when I, when that whole situation happened with me with the Blue on Blue, I was sitting in my office

in the talk and my skipper is, he's on the ground, like he'd flown out to do like a debrief and really find out like, okay, who's gonna go down for this?

So I'm sitting there and I'm thinking that too, like who's gonna go down for this? And there was something that was, it was bothering me. I couldn't point my finger at that guy and say, "Yep, it was his fault," or, "Yep, it was his fault," "Yep, it was his fault." I just couldn't do it. And I'm trying to. Believe me, my ego and my freaking personal wanting to not be wrong, all of a sudden,

Those guys were in my head like well Yeah, you could blame this guy that guy shouldn't maneuver over there that that guy should have sent the report on the radio that guy like there was a Bunch of that but at the same time there was a whole part of my soul that was like no no not his fault Not his fault and it wasn't I was like I was like why can't I blame anybody else? What is wrong? I was like, oh you idiot cuz you're the freaking guy in charge. This is your fault This is your fault and that that was like, okay cool now. I'm okay with it and

By okay, I mean like, okay, I felt okay finally blaming someone because everything else was just an excuse. It really was just an excuse. And I think that if you go through life and you're continuing to look to other people to blame, that little excuse part of your mind will overpower and it will just rot you. But I think if you can go, okay, here's where I am culpable. Here's the mistakes that I made.

here's how I'll prevent them from happening again. And I think that's the way out of it. I think that's the way to move forward in life. Right. And it sounds like that's exactly what you did. Yeah. Yeah. The painting was key. Now you guys probably heard of C4 Foundation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I have recently like painted them

a scene or whatever that's relative to seals and then they auction it and do this like, who is just like, cause I don't paint unless somebody say, Hey, I need this cause I'm so busy. And Hey, you need a paint. I'll paint something, you know? And it's good. I'm getting better and all that stuff. And I'll show you the last one I did. It's pretty cool. It's just like a, a night sitting in water, like reflecting like after a battle, like he's like, fuck,

But it's what we do. And it's part of that thing about you said, have I ever had a break? It's like, I don't think any of us had a break. And even if you're doing training, you're still not taking a break. You're not fighting the war anymore, but you're not taking a break. And even operationally, that painting really talks about, hey, after you just did something like an op, that you still have to take at least five minutes and you just shut your door to your room and just go,

And that's maybe all you get is three to four minutes, but you need that, you know, just to process what just happened and then put it in the carpet, uh, compartmentalize, um, and then move on. But that little bit you need it. And I didn't realize how much we needed those little tiny things. Yeah. Uh, you know, Gardner, right? Jason Gardner. Oh yeah. Yeah. So Jason, when he retired at his, um,

At his retirement speech, he talked about the NSW pain train. And it was like, I'd never, you know, he just was describing his career. And it's just the edit, which is Naval Special Warfare, the NSW pain train. It's going to keep going. And like, you're on it and you're part of it.

and you can't get the, he would like describe some part of his career and be like, and the NSW pain train kept moving. And it's like, he describes some other part of the NSW pain train and he's on that freaking train and you can't get off. And you just like are, I mean, I guess you can get off, but it's a weird thing. It's like a,

You know you could go to there's jobs that you can go that you can kind of get off of it But most guys aren't most guys. There's on that NSW pain train You're lucky if you get three four minutes, and that's the way I always felt like okay. You got done with this operation We're doing another one and you know for me was like oh I got these guys coming out of the field cool They're still there's still eight guys in the field over here And you're and they're in a gunfight by the way and it's like there was constant constant constant and

And so and then coming home when I took over trade at I remember go I remember trade at Watching guys like when I right got home watching like a new guy stand in the middle of street at Salk and I would get like an actual knot in my stomach and and go over and be like What the fuck are you doing? Like what the fuck you're doing out here like you're gonna get fucking killed and because I really felt like he was gonna get killed and You're just carrying that and the NSW pain train just keeps rolling. Yeah, I

Until you get out that paintbrush echo Charles. Yes, sir. Do you sir? You're still painting? Yeah, and by the way shout out to the c4 foundation awesome organization Charles Keating c4 Charles Keating the fourth his dad put together this organization after after Chuck was killed Actually, I'm speaking which supposed to have big Dave on the podcast at some point. I'll get that resumed but what they have is they have an awesome facility in Southern, California

And it's like a ranch. It's the C4 ranch. And it has just a beautiful place where guys can go with their families and they can go and just freaking decompress. The thing that you just said of like reflect and get off that NSW pain train for three, four days with their family. The cool thing about C4 is like they take care of the family and

when it's needed most at the beginning.

Like when you're in E5, your wife, your kids, you not, because a lot of foundations, they take, they try to take care of you after, you know, at the end of your career. And you're already like, I hate to say broken, but you kind of like broken, right? You're already going through a divorce. Things are not good. And then they try to help you out there. But C4, they take care of you at the beginning. They don't go, oh, you have to be at least a chief or a E5, E6 to get out there. No, anybody could go out there.

And then they run classes and seminars and stuff like that. We are actually starting art classes with them. Oh, sweet. Yeah, so out there. So we're going to be doing one coming up here pretty soon. Were you doing art in high school? You didn't mention it. My parents were artists. Okay. And I didn't do formal classes. I think I did one. And I like to paint. And I did some before I joined the Navy. Okay.

But that art therapy, you do a painting. And my first one was this ocean. It was like this...

like a tidal wave coming down, you know, in like a storm. And the freaking psychologist was like, okay, bro. She's like, are you going to put any, are you going to put any bright colors in there? You know, I'll show it to you later. But that, I was like, wow, that's pretty damn good. You know? And then it's, then it was the scene, you know, and that scene was like a big one for me. Cause it was basically me painting something I didn't do. Like I never said goodbye to those guys. So in the painting, it's me saying goodbye to them, you know, cause we're,

had to go deal with a threat, you know? So it was good to paint something like I didn't have the opportunity to do, but it was like closure for that. Yeah.

So those things, so I kind of had that. I almost like made, created something that, although I didn't do, I did in the painting, you know. Yeah, that's awesome. Helped me process all that stuff. Has that painting already been auctioned? No, that one's not. That one's not for sale? No, just because it has the faces and stuff like that. It wouldn't be respectful for the families, I don't think.

So what's your, let's get to your current activities. What do you got going on right now? So my primary job is a tactical gear company called Ferro Concepts. So they are good to go. They're very innovative people.

And you wonder like, oh, how many times can you reinvent a plate carrier, you know, backpack? But they do. They got some good stuff out there. Every team guy can reinvent that thing every single time. Oh, my God, yeah. It's like sewing into the Paraloft, you know. But they got some awesome gear. So I love, you know, showing that gear to team guys, operators, Marines, Army. So we're starting to break out pretty good just because we got good stuff. And they take input very well.

Meaning like if I go to them, I go, hey, we're looking at making some AW gunner kit that we need. As long as there's enough people that are into it. And I think it's like something that we need to create, they'll create it. And sometimes they hand me back a prototype within a week. So it's a pretty good process they got going on. And what's your role there? I'm like the...

government sales guy got it so then they were just doing really good just by having you know people clicking the stuff online um and they had government sales but they didn't really have a big process for it so i came in to help them out with that okay that's check one what else we got one i got my own company actions on consulting which is like leadership and also shooting and things like that um and then i work for another company active crisis which is a bigger company and they do everything so i'm a uh

part owner of that company and anything from training, uh, vehicle, tactical driving, tactical shooting, CQC to, um,

Red teaming certain things, testing security, making suggestions for security solutions, all that stuff. So that's the bigger company. And I saw that you had Colin Kilrain as part of that. Colin is part of us, yeah. Yeah. He's a great, great add-on. Yeah, he's freaking just awesome. Yeah. There's another guy I'm supposed to have on. I got to hit him up. Yeah, he was, he's just like, when I tell, I talk about jujitsu a lot.

echo channels sometimes but one time uh back in the day i was talking to hicks and gracie and hicks and gracie was like yeah uh you know when i when i was training in the late 80s here in torrance california in the garage the legendary gracie garage he was like yeah there was this one big

Navy SEAL wrestler and he said we would have wars. - And Hicks and Gracie's like the best fighter in the Gracie family, kind of universally accepted.

And that big wrestler, that big Navy SEAL wrestler was Colin Kilray. That's awesome. Who wrestled at Lehigh. He started wrestling his sophomore year in high school and became a champion wrestler. He's just a stud. And he's an awesome guy. I mean, look, do we give a lot of credit just for being a good wrestler? Yes. We do. But he's also just a freaking great guy. So that's active crisis consulting.

And then yours is actions on consulting. Right. And so what's the difference between those two? Mine's just smaller, just me, you know, and I had started that when I got out just to have something to do and teach, you know, shooting skills and stuff like that. Now, active crisis is just a big, bigger company that I'm part owner of.

And we're starting to break out with bigger contracts and things like that. And it's like funner because like, I don't have to do all the legwork to finding, you know, a facility that hosts 20 guys that want to do breaching, shooting, you know, all that stuff. We have people to do that. Nice. What have you noticed on like the, they're getting us so much into CTE right now with like breaching. And now they're saying like, every time you did a breach, every time you shot a Carl Gustav, every time you hooked a flash, you know,

or a crash grenade, like that has an impact. Are you feeling any of that?

Yeah, I think the thing is that it's like that shockwave, right? So it was like, hey, if it doesn't see you, or if I don't see it, it don't see me, and I'm just like six feet away cracking a breach off, you still get that shockwave. And then that shockwave is what's fucking guys up. So when they said they don't know if you have it, but if you die and they look, you'll have it.

So a lot of it, they say, hey, every team guy has it. Did Timmy Farrell put you through STT? He was there, but he did not. Okay. So he died, unfortunately. But Timmy Farrell, we were doing Claymores. And I am not kidding. We were like a backpack and a small depression in the earth away from Claymores clacking them off. Yeah. Like it was...

Like if I was a new guy, I was, didn't even have my bird yet. But looking back, I'm like, what the cool are you doing? Like that is crazy. And I guess he was trying to prove to us that, you know, like there's a safe distance and you can probably close in on that a little bit. But yeah, the, the seeing what everyone's saying about the CTE right now and how those shock waves, I remember watch, I'm like up on the wall when Baghdad and,

I'm looking at my breacher, you know, so I'm the assault force commander, so I'm like on the wall, looking on the ladder, looking in, letting, you know, like observing and making sure, and I see my breacher, he's coming over and he gets the breacher on the wall. And I see him like trying to back away and he gets, there's like something in the way and I'm watching him. And all of a sudden a light comes on in the house and I'm like, oh, this sucks.

And he just, my breacher, he sees it too. And so he just lays down and I'm like, ooh, this is going to suck. And I hear him turning steel. Boom. I duck down behind the wall. Freaking shit goes everywhere. I jump over. I start running. I just like walk by him and I look at him and he is freaking rocked. Yeah. But like that's.

Not that uncommon to have to concuss the shit out of yourself. And guess what he was doing two days later? Another breach on another door. So scary stuff, but you're still out there just teaching breaching. Let's go. Yeah. Well, they didn't do a baseline until we had a HBID go off, you know, and killed a guy, buried a bunch of other guys. And then they start. That was like in.

And so then they started to do like baseline. Like, okay, we should probably do something like that in case. So at least we have something to go off of. Like if something happens, we could say, okay, this is you two years ago and now you're down here. But they didn't do a baseline until some major stuff was happening, which I'm glad they did. Yeah. No, I think they're definitely taking better care of

The guys now and the families as well. Like, dude, I mentioned my wife not asking me about anything. Not only that, but she didn't meet any other. Like she wasn't. She had a couple team guy wives that she was friends with, but there was no.

There was no potluck supper she was going to or nothing like that back in the day. You were kind of on your own, and they're super supportive now, way more supportive, which is good to see. So we got Ferrell Concepts, and they're making all kinds of tactical gear. We got Active Crisis Consulting, and that's activecrisis.com. And Ferrell Concepts, what does Ferrell mean? Ferrell, so that's just the name that they came up with. So this is interesting. So this is...

they started making gear in their garage for like paintballers and airsofters. And then it became popular and then they just took off from there and then it went to the tactical side.

Um, but I don't, it was just, I don't know. Just the name. Yeah. Just the name. So pharaohconcepts.com, activecrisis.com. And then yours is, is actually jimformanleadership.com. Yeah. So that's, that's new. I just got that website going. So it was, it is, uh, actions on consulting and then Jim Foreman leadership ties into that. Check. Um, you're writing a book. I am. We talking about that? Yeah. So, uh,

I seen the draft. It's great. Um, you're, you know, going to continue to pound on that thing and, and get it dialed in. What, what made you decide that that was something you wanted to do? So I do leadership talks and, um,

somebody came to me and goes, Hey, you know, we would love to have a book. And if you, if you're going to be teaching leadership, you probably should have something, you know, I got, they said that last year. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. So I started doing a book, uh, and the book is not like a whole lot of war stories. It's more like I could talk about a couple of them just, uh, for mental stuff. Um, the mental, um,

drive that you need to have for certain things, right? And how we think. So there's, and there's a lot of lessons learned like, Hey, I missed this in one of my leadership roles. And this is what happened. Or I couldn't get this past. And this, as you know, applies big time in civilian corporations. Like I couldn't get this thing going. And then, and I went to all my department heads and they agreed with me.

But then a week later, they disagree with me. So somebody's influencing them, you know? And so I'd have to do some homework and I find out who that is. And it's probably some junior guy that's super influential and very well respected. And okay, that's just like with Tony. Instead of going to the top dogs, I got to go to Tony. Tony's actually the top dog, right? So, but I don't go to the, you know,

the structure top dog I go to the guy that's the most influential that could get things done and that was Tony for that for this other thing it was ended up being this guy at trade it that was a E5 that was a big into fighting you know like MMA and once I talked to him and he agreed that was done makes you know the department has agreed two weeks later I got that that was for the SOP book

And then I could get that because I was like, man, I'm retiring pretty quick. I got to get this thing going. I can't, you know, just agree with everybody. I got to have some standard and I need this guy on board. So a lot of things like that, like corporations don't understand sometimes like, hey, it's not just your department heads. You need to find your key influencers. And sometimes they may be a counter influencer.

that's against you. And if you can, you don't need to fire that guy. If you could turn him to be on your side. That would be your best move. You are done. It's like you got to play chess, you know, and you want to understand people and also help them understand you and what you're trying to do. And if they agree with it, then they're on board and you're moving forward. Check. Check.

Well, the draft that I looked at, I'm sure once that thing's done, we'll have you back on here and go through all these leadership principles and some of those stories in a little bit more detail. Because even the draft that I read is freaking, it's great, but I don't want to, spoiler. Is that what we're doing over here? We don't want to do spoilers. But we'll move that thing along. I think it's going to be epic.

So does that kind of get us up to speed? Yeah, that's it. We're getting there. People can find you. Where can people find you? So you got Jim Foreman leadership dot com. Yeah. You're on Facebook at J.F. Foreman. And then you're on Instagram. Actions on consulting. That's right. So if people are looking for you, they want to find you. That's where you're at these days. That's it. Getting after it. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Yes, I do.

- Rewind a little bit, we're talking about sniper school. You said something about a pool table. Somebody running across a pool table? What does that mean, a pool table? - So out in Nyland, especially Kalinga, it's flat. So it's like flat like a pool table. So when you got people looking for you and you got like a couple bushes, you're like hiding behind like weeds, you know? And you got a ghillie suit, of course, and you're trying to like not move too quickly 'cause movement, people pick up.

So you're like inching around like an inchworm trying to find something to hide behind. And so when that one guy stood up,

and ran across that pool table. 6'3", by the way. Yeah, 6'3". That was super noticeable. And it was like so egregious that they didn't even say sniper at your feet because I go, okay, he's not going to get it. He must have just, maybe I'll get a 7. If I take the hit for him, I'll get a 7. I want a 10, but I'll get a 7. I'll still get honor man for sniper school.

And no, it was like zero. Like I ate it for him. So the pool table is essentially like a known feature or so what, like a slang term? Yeah, just meaning completely flat. Flat, no cover, no cover concealment. No cover or concealment. Look at Echo, Tactical Echo Charles just entered the chat. I like it. So his running across the pool table is yet a compounding violation of what the sniper weighs. Right.

You never stand up ever unless you get busted or you're done, and you never run. Because, like, number one, movement, they pick up. And if everything is flat and somebody stands up, it's like, oh, what's that guy doing? Okay, so for now, I'm sure you don't run across the pool table. And then you're running. You're just doing everything wrong. Okay, so the pool table is just a big flat in the clear scenario. Yeah, it's just an analogy for exposed terrain. Real quick, back to the –

art therapy what's the pro like what's the prompt what does the therapist ask you to do uh so it's kind of cool sometimes uh you don't have to paint like sometimes i go and then you just talk you know uh and they may run you through a couple things they may be like an anger thing where they just got like this eight by eight uh

and you just like throw, throw in paint on there. I might be able to pull that one off. I think you could. That would be pretty interesting. It'd probably be black and red, right? Two colors. So, uh, and it's just like, you know, getting things out, you know, like,

things that you've been holding. Like what will the, um, but what will the therapist like say? Will they be like, Oh, here's your eight by eight painting. Do something. Like most likely, uh, that therapist was talking to the person about something and they're like, okay, let's get it out there. And, or for, for me, it's like, um,

I was talking about this one thing and she goes, "Okay, well, why don't you paint that?" And then it's almost what you're doing is you're just releasing things. And there's so many things that we do that you can't do all, like talking to somebody, here's the thing, like talking to somebody is really tough 'cause you don't know if you trust them, you don't know if you can say everything, but painting something

It's like you don't have to say anything. You're just painting. And you don't have to have an explanation for anything. And it could be even abstract or just like I was saying, just throwing paint on there. But it means something to you. It's like, okay, yeah, I know what that means. All that splatters and stuff means something to me. But you don't have to say it. Because some things you may not want to say ever. But through the art stuff, you get it out. Yeah, that always felt like a mystery to me why...

stuff that can go on in your head, like in turn and morph and mutate into like something toxic versus if you get it out in whatever way where it can act like make it better. Like why is, do we fill in gaps in there or something? And then when it comes out, it's kind of like you can't really fill in the gaps because there it is. It's more, I don't know, tangible. I think it gets organized somehow. Yeah.

Yeah. I think you're constantly filling in the gaps, whether it's accurate or not, because you're struggling with trying to identify it or process it. And then if you could actually talk about it or if a good trained therapist could actually pull it out of you, because it may be all subconscious and you may not understand why you're not sleeping or whatever. And if they could get that out, that's one thing. But if sometimes you may know a little bit about it,

and then paint like for me that painting took four years to do you know I even had it in my bed I took it home because like okay I can't come in that much so I'm just going to take it home and I had it in my bedroom and it was not a good thing to do because every night I looked at it

and stare it at like the faces. And then when I woke up, I stared at the face. So it was depressing, you know? So I had to eventually move it into another room where I just paint it. And then I would just go there to directly paint instead of just staring at it. Cause that was like rough to stare at like, you know, death basically. Yeah. Yeah.

But useful, useful, the whole process. Yeah, and some people do it in woodworking, you know, like just like doing a project. Yeah, yeah. It's like meditating, you know, like you're going through stuff. You could actually think. Even like I can't run now because I got bad knee, but like just even just when I used to run, I just like, oh, okay, I could think about things. It was just like meditating. Yeah, interesting. I've always...

What I kind of assembled in my head was when I lost guys, I would...

I would always end up seeming to do like the eulogy. Yeah. And so that means, and it got to the point where I would just like, when someone died, I would start writing the eulogy. Cause I would, I know that I was going to get asked to do it, but man, like all of a sudden you have to process everything. You have to process their life, your feelings, the impact, the sadness, the anger. You had to like put it all on paper. And I found that over time I was like, well,

It helps. Like, I think that, and then you have to get up and like say words. And so I thought that that, this reminds me of like the same thing. Like you're going through this, you're writing down like this, this is, you're thinking through everything and you're putting it on paper. And as you pointed out, echo, it's like a release. But for me, it also like organizes like the feelings that you have and the emotions that you have. And you're like, okay, now I'm, now I can see them. And kind of like when you're painting, you can see,

What those emotions are. Yeah. I think you got to have some kind of release. I really do. Yeah. Yeah. It feels okay. So this might be an oddball analogy. So when I was like, I don't know, 12 years old, before I knew the gun safety rules, I had a BB gun and I shot my hand. So the BB gun got stuck between all the tendons in my hand. And then...

for days they're trying to get it out right with surgery or whatever but just you know the kind of what do you call it's a certain kind of surgery that they don't like put you under nothing they just kind of dig in there they couldn't localized yeah

So for days I was like, man, this BB is in here basically haunting me, right? My hand. Like, I don't know what it's almost like it had a personality of its own at this point because it didn't want to come out, you know, it's hiding somewhere in there. Meanwhile, the x-ray, you see it, but you're like, how can we find this dang thing? You know? So finally they put me on under like, I don't know, a week or two later and they take it out. And when I wake up, they're like, oh yeah, you want to see the BB? And I'm like, yeah.

So I see the BB and I'm like, oh, that's that motherfucker that was in my hand the whole time. But it kind of like things started to kind of make sense a little bit. You know, it's kind of like you can identify that mysterious monster that was inside just tormenting you from the darkness, you know? And then now it's kind of out and you're like, oh, that's what it was. Still, I'm still injured. Keep in mind. But I see it now and it's so it starts to make sense in that way. You know, it's almost like that kind of happens. Echo, you are one deep motherfucker. Yeah.

That was good. And then you can heal. And then you can heal, man. Look, healed up. Good to go. That was a good analogy. There we go, man. Anything else, Echo Charles? No, good to meet you, sir. Yeah, you too. Jim, any closing thoughts? No, man. I appreciate getting on here. Right on. Right on. Well, thanks for coming out. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned, your experiences. I'm looking forward to the book. It's going to be awesome. And most important,

Thanks for 27 years Always at the front always training for or fighting the war 27 years of service and sacrifice carrying the weight of the nation carrying the weight of the teams Much appreciated bro is an honor to serve with you. Yeah, you too, bro. Thanks and with that Jim Foreman has left the building and clearly

Got a lot of work to do. We all do. You know what I'm saying? The NSW pain train rolls on and you got to get you either on the train or you're off the train. That's even when you get off the NSW pain train, life is rolling on and you got to stay in the game. You got to stay on the train. You got to keep getting after it. You got to keep pushing to get better leadership, knowledge, mental, physical, emotional,

psychological fitness maybe you got to break out a paintbrush you know what I'm saying by the way he showed us some paintings afterwards dude those things are not just good those those paintings are sick yeah and you got it as soon as he showed the wave yeah I was like oh this is gonna this is good this is moving in the right direction yeah because let's face it

You know we could be having we could be not talking about this right now. You're like painting. Yeah, it's good. It's good Yeah, but no he's painting some legit. Yeah, I actually kind of want that wave hanging on my wall Yeah, and it's um make him an offer on that bad boy. All right. Yeah for a legitimate kind of looks like you know the the Japanese tsunami type thing right it looks kind of like that but like way more

Yeah. And cool and realistic. Yeah, exactly. More realistic. It's a different style. You know, like the Japanese style, like that's a style or whatever. It's more like, yeah. Because you got to admit, like most times, and I'm not saying I was thinking this, not saying I wasn't thinking this, but... You had low expectations. Well, I didn't have any at all under really...

As far as expectation goes. I can see where you're going. Just say but and carry on. What were you thinking? But I think under most circumstances when someone talks about, oh yeah, like I'm into drawing or painting or something that you know. You expect to see what I make. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, you have that feeling like, okay, because there's levels to it, just factually. And so, you know, it's a really good outlet for me. People say that. That's a thing that people say. And then sometimes, not all the time, sometimes when you see it, you're like, just like how you implied, where it's like, yeah, man, I'm good that it works for you, you know, but it's like it's

There's not much skill involved, you know sometimes it's not left for you for you But this is no this one was not like that Jim is freaking obviously very skilled even that first other way was the first one the wave was the first Oh, yeah, and I was expecting I mean I had low expectations. I'm not afraid to say it because painting is hard And you don't expect someone has never painted before just to be able to paint something that's very cool-looking. Yeah, I

well, we saw something that was first one. I was like, oh, and then you think, well, how's the,

You know, I was like a person to look, then you see the paintings of people and you're like, Oh, okay. So I know art, like actual artists that have been doing it for decades that have painted waves, by the way, not as good as Jim Forman. And I'm not joking. Obviously that's my opinion because art is very subjective, but still, once we look at it, we'll get some art out there. And I think, I mean, honestly, I think people would be willing to,

I'm willing to pay for that art. So I think people are going to want to pay for some of that art. He's going to need to get a freaking art website up for some of his stuff. Well, whether you're painting, whether you're lifting, whether you're training, you need to feel yourself. You need to feel your body, feel your mind. Go to jockelfield.com. We got everything that you need. We got milk, protein, ready-to-drink protein, powder protein, hydrate greens, supplements for your joints so they don't break down.

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On your body and in your head. So keep that in mind. We got you covered on all fronts. All fronts. In your body, Jocko Fuel. On your body, Origin USA. In your head, Jocko Podcast. You listening to it? Jocko Publishing. You getting it. Yep, it's true. Speaking of on your body, representing, really, as we walk or run.

or do burpees through life almost we just crawl them through the path crawling through life whatever if we were representing discipline equals freedom this is where you can get this stuff jocostore.com um yeah so we got some shirts on there some hoodies on there some hats on there shorts on there socks on there too if you want to represent in the airport when they make you take off your shoes you want to flex on them a little bit boom discipline equals freedom you're welcome oh yeah all day

Yes, Jocko Sardauka. Oh, also, the shirt locker. Subscription scenario. New design every month. That's a good one. You're going to like this next month's one. What is it? You don't even know what it is. I know I do, but I know what the design is because I made it, but it's a skull. Okay, I like it. Skull. But it's like a hand-drawn skull kind of, kind of like sketched. And it says, comfort is a curse. It's a curse.

- That's what it is. - All right, I like it. - Yeah, it's a good one, looks good. Came out good, I think, but go to jocklessore.com, check it out. It won't be on there till the first, which is, yeah, yeah, yeah. - What if you like something there? - So yeah, if you like something, get something. - That's fair enough. Check out primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. This is American steak, American companies.

And it's awesome people, awesome companies, awesome steak, awesome burgers, awesome hot dogs, awesome beef jerky, awesome beef sticks. We got you covered. Did you? ColoradoCraftBeef.com. PrimalBeef.com. Did I get what? The sausage. Yes. What's it called? It's called some kind of sausage. Summer sausage. Summer sausage. Yeah. Got into that. Bruh. Bruh. Those are good. Check. Also subscribe to this podcast. Check out JockoUnderground.com.

If you can't afford JockoUnderground.com, it's $8.18 a month. It's fine. Email assistance at JockoUnderground.com and we'll get you taken care of. But we just want you to have access to more information, answering questions, covering subjects that we don't necessarily cover on this podcast, JockoUnderground.com. Check out our YouTube channels. Check out Psychological Warfare. Check out a bunch of books that I've written. We got a book coming sometime in the future from Jim Forman. But in the meantime, we got...

what do we got? A re-release of the, of the leadership strategy and tactics field manual. We got the, we were just looking through the discipline equals freedom field manual. It's not a normal book. No, the publisher, the,

I asked him, I said, hey, have you ever taken this much risk on a book? Because let's face it, this one goes for you, Banner. You've never seen a book like that. It's risky. Very risky. He said it was not even close. Yeah. He was like, it's not even, there's no other book that even comes close to taking this much of a risk. Yeah, makes sense. And, you know, they model out like sales. Sure.

He's like, once it came out, he said, we had no models that predicted this many sales. Like they didn't anticipate anything close. So that's the Discipline Equals Freedom field manual. I've written a bunch of other books, written a bunch of kids books. Mike and the Dragons, About Face. I didn't write About Face, but I wrote the foreword to it. Extreme Ownership, you heard a little excerpt from that today. A little section that Leif Babin wrote yesterday.

Check that out. Also, the dichotomy of leadership. There's another, Leif was saying, oh, either use this one or this one. There's a dichotomy of leadership. There's a story in there that's also got a little Jim Foreman-centric. So check those out. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com. We've got the battlefield coming up. We're going to tour Gettysburg. We're going to learn the lessons that they learned or should have learned.

We've got the Muster in San Antonio, Texas, April 29th to May 1st. Go and check that out. If you need us inside your organization, go to eslanfront.com. Contact us. We will come and do leadership training inside your company. We will get you aligned. Also, we have an online training program, Extreme Ownership Academy, teaching you to take ownership of your life.

Not just your business, not just your, hey, I need to figure out how to deal with my boss or my peers or my subordinates. What about how to deal with your spouse? What about how to deal with your family? What about how to deal with your neighbors? What about how to deal with your own head? You need help, and we got you covered. Extremeownership.com. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help the Gold Star families out there, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org. Also, don't forget to check out heroesandhorses.org. Micah Fink teaching people how to get back to their soul through nature. And then Jimmy Mays organization beyondthebrotherhood.org helping SEALs get into the civilian sector. And finally, if you want to connect with us, Jim Foreman on the web, jimforemanleadership.com. He's on Facebook, jfforeman.com.

And he's on Instagram. Actions on consulting. For me, I'm at Jocko.com. And then on social media, at Jocko Willink, Echo Side, Echo Charles. Just be careful because you could be learning how to paint. You could be getting stronger. You could be getting faster. You could be getting smarter. You could be learning to play guitar. You could be learning to play the clarinet. Could be practicing ping pong. And any of those things would be a lot better than scrolling. Doom scrolling. Doom scrolling. How's those reels?

that's what's happening in my house right now you know for a while my house was dopamine dopamine dope me oh yeah you picked up your phone for any reason everyone in the house was going dopamine dopamine dopamine right now if you pick up your phone it doesn't matter if you get a call from the hospital the people in my family are going to start saying oh how's those reels reels how's those reels oh what what reel are you looking at so you can't do it it works yeah it's peer pressure yeah it's good

Don't let it happen to you. Don't get caught up in the real. It'll take you down. Thanks once again to Jim Foreman. 27 years of unrelenting service. Thank you for holding the line and being a true frog man. Thank you, brother. And to all our military across the globe who right now, right now at this moment,

picked up their weapons and are standing the watch thank you for your service also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service as well as all other first responders thank you for standing the watch here at home and to everyone else out there things are not going to go the way you expect them to go they're just not you got to expect that that's the reality but here's what you can do like jim foreman prepare as much as you can train hard study hard have contingency plans

And then be decisive, take action, and do not quit. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.