490: Accept All Challenges Involved. With Travis Barnes
02:18:32 Share

This is Jocko podcast number 490 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Realizing it is my choice and my choice alone to be a reconnaissance Marine, I accept all challenges involved with this profession.

I forever shall I strive to maintain the tremendous reputation of those who went before me. Exceeding beyond the limitations set down by others shall be my goal. Sacrificing personal comfort and dedicating myself to the completion of the reconnaissance mission shall be my life. Physical fitness, mental attitude, and high ethics. The title of Recon Marine is my honor. Conquering all obstacles, both large and small, I shall never quit. To quit, to surrender, to give up.

To fail to be a recon marine is to surpass failure to overcome to adapt and to do whatever it takes to complete the mission on the battlefield as in all areas of life I shall stand tall above the competition through professional pride Integrity and teamwork. I shall be the example for all Marines to emulate. I

Never shall I forget the principles I accept. I accepted to become a recon Marine honor perseverance spirit and heart a recon marine can speak without saying a word and Achieve what others can only imagine boom. There you go That is the recon Creed the Creed of the Marine Corps first reconnaissance battalion which is

Unique in that it's a standalone battalion with no parent regiment. It was activated in 1937, earned combat honors in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and in recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a hallowed unit. And of course, when recon Marines move on, while they still are and will always be Marines, they carry on and find a new mission and new goals.

and it's an honor to have one of those recon marines with us here tonight travis barnes who did three back-to-back tours in iraq and then carried on with a new mission it's an honor to have you here tonight man thank you sir very much pleasure to be here and we got connected through scott from the horse soldiers what is it horse soldiers bourbon or is it horse soldier is it horse soldier distillery or horse soldier whiskey what is it i believe it's horse soldier bourbon okay

So Scott connected us because you're also a bourbon guy. Yes, sir. And we'll get to Hotel Tango. What is it? Brewed with distilled with discipline. Distilled with discipline. That's right. Yeah. Distilled with the maybe that go Charles smiled at the distilled with discipline. We like that. And we'll get to that. But you had you had a very man. Talk about it. Talk about a

short and intense career in the Marine Corps, just back-to-back-to-back deployments, all combat deployments,

Before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about your background. Where are you from? Where were you raised? Born in Sturgis, Michigan. Grew up in Noble County, Indiana. Spent my formative years there. What's in Noble County, Indiana? Oh, man, it's the Paris of the Midwest, man. It's gorgeous. No, a pretty rural farm community. I only had about 100 kids in my graduating class. It was a small, tight-knit little town.

Hamlet of Indiana. Um, but great, great people, great place to grow up. Um, what'd your mom and dad do? Dad's a bricklayer. Mom was a hospital administrator. Um, so, you know, right down the middle class kind of, you know, and what were you into growing up? Uh, you know, played basketball, ran track. Um, and you get a basketball, of course, man from India. Oh, that's right. We didn't invent it. We just perfected it.

Were you guys playing just basketball all the time? That's it, man. It was either baling hay or playing basketball growing up. And was Larry Bird, were you, were you, are you old enough to have Larry Bird? Were you guys just worshiping Larry Bird? Yeah, it was Larry Bird and Bob Knight. I mean, those two guys kind of just owned Indiana during the eighties and nineties. Yeah. My dad met Bobby Knight.

And my dad would also say Bobby Knight was a psychopath, but he said it was pretty cool to him when he met him. Yeah. I think it's what day you met Bobby Knight was probably, you know, you get a different experience. So did you play, you played basketball through high school? Yep. Any chance of going to college? No, no. I mean, not at any D one level or anything like that. You know, it was, um, you know, I, I always,

I liked it just to be around the guys as much as I did to play. - And then what other sports did you say you played? - Ran track, did pole vault, just kind of as a time filler I think. - And were you into school at all or was that your thing? - No, no. - What was your GPA? Let's get down to brass tacks, what was the GPA?

Probably somewhere between a 2.5 and a 3.0, man. I was always just, I don't know, having a good time, I think. Did you have any veterans in the family heritage? Had one uncle who was a ranger in the 90s, was an interpreter, learned Arabic. So I had, you know, but not a military family by any means, you know. For me, it was when 9-11 happened. When you were in high school and you were getting ready to graduate, what were your plans?

So at college, I started off graduating. That's just what everybody would do. Or you went to work at the factory down the street at Dexter Axel or Bushy making widgets on a CNC machine. And so I went to college not really knowing what I wanted to do, but

Where did you go to college? IU, Indiana. Okay. And you were in college when September 11th happened? Yeah. So I graduated high school in 2001, worked that summer, and then first semester, first month in school, 9-11 happened. I was out at lunch with my uncle at Bob Evans, and the waitress came over and was like, you guys see what happened on TV? By the time I got home, the second tower had come down, and I was like, oh, shit.

And did you know at that point where you're like, yo, I'm going to sign up? Yeah.

For sure. I wanted to be the first kid on the block, you know. Jack. But you had no real military background. You were slacking in school. You were a B-grade basketball player. Solid. But there's something just sparked when September 11th happened. Because were you thinking about the military at all on September 10th? No. Never seriously, you know. I watched Full Metal Jacket and was like, oh, that looks great.

Looks intense. Yeah, I always joke that the Full Metal Jacket platoon Born on the Fourth of July and apocalypse now all these anti-war movies 100% made me want to go in the military so yeah, they it goes when you're a 15 year old 12 year old 14 year old kid all the anti-war stuff goes right over your head and it just lands with the war. Yeah exactly

I mean, 9-11 actually, you know, that was a huge catalyst, obviously. But that was, you know, my only understanding of were those movies of like, oh, the sexy, cool, weird, fun parts of it. Never the, you know, the real stuff. And how did you pick the Marine Corps?

Oh, man, I think that recruiter saw me coming a mile away because I scored pretty high on the ASVAP. I tested really high and all that stuff. But then he was like, what do you want to do? And I said, infantry. And he's like, oh, man, you lucky bastard. We got one spot left. Oh, yeah.

You got the last one right. Was there a line when you tried to sign up? Like, was it September 12th or 13th? Was it right away? So I went in probably, yeah, within the next couple days. And they basically said there was a line. They said, come back later. So I waited a couple more weeks. By the time I got, you know, the appointment, it was 03 open. So infantry open contract was what I signed up with.

And the soonest I could get out was the following April. I mean, they had booked that. They had stacked it that fast. The following April as in? 2002. Oh, wow. Okay. No, okay. That's not too bad. I thought you meant like 2003 following April. Like April and then another April. Okay. No. So by that following April, started boot camp. Yeah.

and then graduated did oc or uh how was how was boot camp shocked to the system were you pretty you knew it was coming you've seen full metal jacket enough times yeah i mean you know i just remember my drill instructor just saying you are the most feminine recruit we have ever had passed through these hollowed holes i was like fair enough fair enough sir it always stuck with me it's like the most like

low-key insult you can get, right? Damn. I had my instructors in BUDS surround me and this warrant officer was like, hey, come here. And he's standing in my face during inspection. He's like looking at me like he's trying to, he looked like he's trying to read something on my face or something like that. And eventually they all surrounded me and they're like trying to figure out why this warrant officer is so intrigued with looking at me.

And he goes, what do you think guys? And they're all kind of like, you know, they didn't really know what to say to the warrant officer. And he'd be like, I think this is the ugliest motherfucker we've ever had come through training. I was like, Chuck. Hey, I'll take that over most feminine, I guess. Yeah. Again, I learned there like, all right, this is the worst they're going to get me. Like, all right, fair enough, guys. I'll show you my show choir routine. And what were you like 19? Chuck. Yep. Yep. And then from you get done with bootcamp,

Infantry training just down the street, Camp Pendleton. And that's where they, you know, 03 was open. So they bring in all the 0311 basic infantry, 31 machine gunner, 41 mortar men. And then the 21s walk in and they got the bling and they're just the fucking, you know, the peak performers. You can immediately tell, but just cool laid back.

And we're like, this is the coolest job you're ever going to be able to do in the Marine Corps. And do you get to or did you get to select what you wanted to do then out of those? So it went by, you know, ASVAB and your PFT and whatever other metrics they used to determine that. The recon was like anybody that wants to give it a shot, try out or sign up and we'll be back for the end doc in a couple of days, which was basically like

Thursday, Friday, Saturday evolution of ruck, run, swim, ruck, run, swim. You know, just who's going to quit. How was your swimming? Really good. How was that? Did you grow up in the pond or something? Grew up on a lake. There you go. Yeah. Hunting turtles. And I mean, that was, you know. Yeah. We got a turtle hunter over here. Hell yeah. And just playing. I mean, I was outdoorsy, you know, growing up for sure. Growing up out in the country. So yeah.

That came just very natural to me. I was actually lucky, I think, because my run times were not great. I'm a pack mule. I can carry a ruck all day. But the swim, obviously, you know, swimming is the great equalizer among men, right? You get a guy...

underwater and they just can freak out and you know then that's you're done so you did three day selection and how many guys tried for it there's probably 60 and five of us got made it through no kidding yeah damn there was I mean again within the first day it was down to

18, 19 of us. - 'Cause a bunch of people just can't swim. - Can't swim, yeah, so it was over. And then it was just attrition by who wants to be here and who doesn't. And it was weird because at that point, the first recon had just stepped up from a company to a battalion sometime after 9/11 before I got there, and so they were basically trying to fill slots. So we thought when we got, we checked in on 9/11/2002,

And us five guys, we thought we were immediately going to be put in a rope or platoon, train up before we go to BRC, get some level of institutional knowledge before we got to go. And it was, no, you guys are going in slack, man. We've got to fill teams. So we're basically training up for the deployment for the invasion of Iraq. So from September through January, us five guys were just put into a team as the low man on the totem pole and said, learn as much as you can.

Because normally you'd go to the course in Coronado, right? It's called BRC, right? Basic Reconnaissance Course. Yes. And that's sort of... How long is that thing? That's like a pretty extensive course. Yeah, it's three months. So first phase is just work up. You're just working out, running, swimming, lifting boats. Second phase is water phase. So you're doing...

boats, fins, just water. And then third phase is patrol phase. So you get, you know, you work up with all of your technical radio,

reconnaissance skills and then you do a two week long mission up in Camp Pendleton. Do you go to on the normal pathway do you go to airborne and scuba when you for that? So yeah the traditional path would have been yeah you from there you get to go to your select school so that's jump dive seer ranger I was a fac so that's where I eventually got to go and learn to drop bombs but

Yeah. And then it was some guys got to Ranger selection. Some guys got to go to, you know, whatever cool schools are out there. So none of that for you and your five buddies straight into a platoon getting ready to deploy. And, you know, you're deploying to Iraq when you show up there. No, I didn't know anything. I barely knew my name at that point, but they were like,

Get on the boat and we're heading out. And at some point once we're already deployed, they're like, we're headed to Iraq. There's going to be a big invasion. And that we left somewhere right after Christmas. We got leave, came back and everybody's like, pack your shit, get on the boat. And that was it. Were you pretty pumped about this whole scenario? Were you nervous? Were you like, let's go?

Yeah. I mean, you know, you get to these units, right? And these guys are just superhuman, right? And they're so technically proficient. They're, they're so good at the basic stuff and we didn't know anything, right? We didn't know how to talk. We didn't know how to walk. We didn't know how to shoot. It was just, Oh, JT, you list, you look at the guys that you look up to and that seemed to be the stellar, most stellar in the platoon and you just copy what they're doing. Did they, were they not just kind of pissed that you guys were there? Did they hold back? Oh,

Oh, God. It was horrible. I mean, the hazing that was, you know, again, this was Wild West. And did you have post-Afghanistan guys? Guys were coming home from combat in Afghanistan or no? Not yet. There were a few, but basically one or two platoons. And those guys were, you know, they were already working back up for the MEU or they were already at a schoolhouse or somewhere. So there wasn't a lot of changeover. It was basically...

a lot of green guys. There were some guys that had done a few MEWS and they were the senior guys. I think Rudy and some of the guys from Generation Kill had just gotten back from Afghanistan, but there was like one or two platoons that had made it over. And they were obviously some of the most, the guys we were looking up to, the guys that we wanted to be like. And yeah, it just, we were hazed nonstop. I mean, it was training, don't get me wrong, but it was the midnight wake up call

go get the rock on the hill kind of thing. And then you get back and you're like, that was the wrong rock. Oh, well, shit. Maybe you should come up with me and tell me. Help me identify. Yeah. So. Yeah, I can't imagine like this is, I would say,

fairly the equivalent of like having guys put into your seal platoon that hadn't been to buds, you know, you'd be not quite because the, you know, the Navy bootcamp has nothing to do with anything that you ever do in a, in the field. But yeah, that's, I can imagine there might've been some grudges. Yeah, there was, but it was a perfect storm. It wasn't our fault. Like obviously, you know, but they didn't, there was no love lost there either. You know, it was, if you're here or you're, we're going to make you earn it one way or the other. And yeah,

Yeah, so that initial kickoff on Iraq was, you know, we basically were thrown to the feet to the fire immediately and a lot of training, a lot of shooting on the ship on the way over there. Just, you know, again, so basic, but just enough to be dangerous, I guess, without having gone through any of the proper training.

schools to earn the title and get to the team the traditional way. And so you show up, you get on the ship, you guys are training, you're heading over there, shooting off the fantail, getting your weapons dialed in. Then what you get there and go right into Kuwait? Yes. The other big part was, I mean, we were basically fab welding pieces of metal off the ship.

to the Humvees because these were just basic and they were like well you guys might want to put some armor on there and so they just you know they look like gypsy wagons with bolted on everything we could steal and scrap from off the ship and yeah uh we landed in Iraq sometime in you know February heloed off um we're camped there in Kuwait for about a month again training

Just getting acclimated. I'd never been out of the U.S., let alone, you know, Indiana for that matter. And then, you know, you're over there just like, holy shit, what's going on? And it was massive, right? So there's international force, you know, the Brits, everybody's there.

And they're just waiting. Like it's that, you know, before a race kicks off, you're just built up so much tension and anxiety that just, it was crazy. And then March, whatever, 19th, 18th, 19th of 2003, the war kicked off and we were in it. What did you think your possibility of survival was going in? 100%? Because I had Dean Ladd, who was a Marine going into Tarawa.

And this is, he'd already done, I forget which other island campaign he did, but you know, I was like, Oh dude, were you afraid of dying? He's like, no, that always happens to the other guy. You know, he's like, yeah, it's going into Tarawa. There's freaking explosions going off machine gun fire. He's like, yeah, I'm getting on. I'll be fine. Of course he ended up getting gut shot and barely survived. But he, he, you know, he made the comment like, yeah, it's all young guys always think it's going to happen to someone else. Were you in that camp or were you in the other camp or somewhere in between? I was certainly in, in the, the first one. Yeah.

You're just so naive. You don't really, it doesn't click right until that first time being shot at. And then it really clicks. Right. And you think you want to touch the fire, right? You think you want to be that guy that's the alpha and out there and fucking Rambo. And then when bullets start coming in your direction and they're intentionally coming at you and barely missing, you're like, oh shit, this is real. Right.

And it just changes your mindset. Not in a way that you become afraid, that you just almost accept it differently. It's not going to happen to me. If it happens to me, it happens to me. It's my time. What was your mission as you guys were, before you headed in, what was your like, what were they telling you the last briefing that you're going in? What was your mission? What were you guys doing? Eyes and ears for the entire force. We were out in front or off to one of the sides basically the whole time to either

create distractions for another unit to come through or traditional SNR reconnaissance where we were, you know, Nazaria, we were there a few days before looking over the water, looking over the river to see who was moving where and what. And that was it. I mean, there was at that point, it was a wild west. So it was, we're going to be the eyes and ears for the division. Then as you roll in and you start getting tasking that you guys start doing assaults of cities and whatnot, it gets a little crazy. Yeah.

How did that land with you? He didn't give a shit. You're like, cool. What was your job? Slack man. I mean, I was basically a donkey, you know, to beans, bullets, band-aids, make sure we were stocked, the Hummer was ready. It was, you know, there was nothing missing loose. It was,

And then a gunner, you know, up on the 50 cal. That was basically my job. You know, I was not going to be tasked with anything too crazy at that point. You know, PFC Barnes was still obviously pretty green. But everybody was looking back, right? In the moment, it's a totally different feeling than in hindsight. Because at that point, there had been guys that had been on a few muses, but that ain't combat. So we were all learning together in real time, you know, and learning.

Again, you saw the guys that reacted very well and some guys that did not, which was a huge learning curve, too, that you think you know somebody and how they're going to react and people react. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm a decent judge.

And it's still like, even as a decent judge, it's like 70%. You know, like 70% like, I know this guy, like I think he'll do pretty good. Yeah, 70% of the time. And then 30% of the time you're like, well, what just happened? And the same thing's true. Like somebody go, I'm not sure about this guy, but then they're good to go. Exactly. And so, yeah, like there's some level of judgment that's okay.

But, yeah, I wouldn't put any money on anybody, I'll tell you that much. Not until you've been with them several times, enough to know, right? I think you also get comfortable with guys that are in the fight with you and you know, like, I count on you to shoot the same direction and they're going to be there to do that, right? So, yeah, I think that's a huge learning curve. Yeah, it is very bizarre to think of whole –

battalions of Marines going in with probably no one having any combat experience. That was the SEAL teams. I mean, obviously, I was in the SEAL teams in the 90s. No one had combat experience. And there's some weird thing that you have to learn in combat. You have to go through where you all of a sudden have a better understanding of it. You go, okay.

Okay, got it. It's like standing up on a surfboard for the first time or parachuting for the first time where you're like, okay, yeah, there's a whole mysterious part of it that's now gone and now I can kind of function a little bit with a little bit better attitude and a little bit better understanding. But when you have whole battalions of those guys that no one has seen that yet, no one has that little extra level of understanding,

That's pretty sketchy, especially because you're going in and doing big, giant operations. Freaking massive operations. Yeah. I was very lucky. So I flew into Baghdad in 03, but it was like the fall of 03. And I had this really like sort of nice escalation of operations. Literally the first operation I went on, we went outside the gate and like drove around looking for possible mortar emplacements. Nothing happened, but...

Came back from that, I was like, okay, there's like, my night vision goggles work the same as they did and the Humvees and guys are looking around. And it slowly went from there and got more and more, I guess the word would be intense, but for, that was a lucky way to do it. For like you guys, okay, line up on this border of this entire nation and now ready, set, go. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it was a communal learning experience for everyone. So you mentioned Generation Kill. Did you watch it when it came out?

Yeah, well, I read it before it came out in the Rolling Stone article, and then the book came out, and then the miniseries on HBO. How'd the book? I haven't read the book. How was the book? I thought it was accurate. I mean, you know, there's some creative liberties, I think, but for the most part, I think it really did a good job of capturing that time and place and the language and the speak, and he did a good job of understanding what we were doing, right?

And just, you know, the Marine vernacular. And that, again, it was, he just did a good job, I think, of capturing that time and place. And then how about the miniseries when the miniseries came out? Again, I think that it, you know,

It painted some guys better than others. I think that, you know, there was some liberties taken. But at the end of the day, I was a PFC. So I did not understand or have, you know, the sight to be able to critique on what the, you know, battalion commander was doing or even really any of the company commanders or platoon commanders at that level. It was like I had I got to talk to my ATL and my team leader and that was it. Yeah.

So so I was just talking my buddy Leif who was one of my platoon commanders I was like the equivalent of a company commander. He was one of my platoon commanders and We were talking about this very subject and he one of his new guys this guy Ryan Jobe We were talking about the chain of command or something like that I was talking about the chain of command with Leif and He was and Leif's like I don't think Ryan even knows like who is above you in the chain of command and

And sure enough, we went and asked him like, who's the XO at SEAL Team 3? And he's no idea. Who's the CO of SEAL Team 3? Couldn't name him. Like, who's your boss? He's like, Leif. And he's like, no, who do you work for? And he goes, Jeremy. He just named his NCO, his senior NCO, his platoon commander. That was the...

that's where his knowledge of the chain of command topped out was me, you know? And so it sounds like you were in that boat. Yeah, it went from my, basically, yeah, my team leader to Donald Rumsfeld. That's who's in charge, right? Yeah, and it's interesting. So I watched Generation Kill and, you know, you and I were talking about before Hit Record in,

I think when they're making a movie, they have to add like volume to some parts of a person's character to make it a little bit more interesting of a story. So you got like the battalion commander. Look, I'm sure he's a hard dude, but they crank that up a little bit. So it's almost like he's, you know,

Like overly aggressive and overly hard and then they had a couple of the company commanders where hey Maybe the company commander wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed or maybe I mean But they cranked that up to a point where you go and it just makes the story gives it more contrast and I did that pretty much it seemed like they did that with most of the characters yeah, I just crank up the volume a little Increase the contrast is what they do in the photography realm. I can understand. Yep, I

Yeah, absolutely. And again, at least from maybe there's some of those things were happening behind the scenes, but I can tell you that, you know, professionally, those guys, it would never leak out in front of the guys, the troops. Right. So again, I never saw anything like that was inappropriate or, you know, you can always play armchair quarterback and second guess decisions, but you know, when you're on the ground making them, you know, and when you're, when you're pushing up, how long did you think the whole thing was going to last? Like,

did you think you were going to be done in a week? No, I, I guess in my head, I thought it was the equivalent of like a world war two, right? Like I was thinking this is going to be a year and a half, two years of fighting, you know, the Iraqi army to get to Baghdad. And then again, I was so naive. I had no understanding that,

you know, this is going to be a nine month deployment and I'll be back home and that'll be it. Yeah. That's weird. Cause I was older at the time and I was, I thought it was going to be over in like a week because the first Gulf war lasted 72 hours and I wasn't,

at a SEAL team. I was going to college at the time. The Navy sent me to college, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, this thing's going to be over in like 72 hours. I'm going to miss the whole thing. It's going to be terrible. And yeah, but from your attitude, you're like, WWII eyes kicking off. We're going the distance. Right. And again, I had no concept of what the exit or the end game was. I don't know if anybody did at that point, you know, but I just was, I was like, I'll be here as long as they want me to be.

Did you see the transition of the local populace from the flag waving type, you know, thanks for showing up? Because that's what you experienced when you arrived. Yeah. I mean, yeah. USA, George Bush, like yelling in the streets, like chanting. And for sure, in 2003, everybody's happy to get rid of Saddam, I think. That was the overwhelming response we had.

We left sometime that summer in July, August of 2003. By the time we got back the following year. Did you, when you left, was it still who you are, George Bush? Did you start to see any of the indicators of insurgency or anything like that? No. I mean, we were bored by the end, right? We were in some holding camp just south of Baghdad.

And we went out and did, you know, intermittent patrols, just really, you know, like bridge to nowhere kind of things like, what are we doing? What are we looking for? No one, there wasn't a mission. It was just kind of presence ops. Like just go show that you're out there. Did you, did you get the feeling like kind of won the war? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, we're done. Mission accomplished as, as George Bush famously. Yeah. Turn the keys back over to the Iraqis and let them deal with it. Um,

And that's what you went home with. You went home with that attitude. Yeah. But again, it was, it was such a whirlwind. We, on the way back home, I think they told us on the, on the airplane, like, uh, guess what you guys, we, some slots opened up. You're going to BRC. You're not, you don't get to take leave. You're going to get three days weekend and you get to go right in, check into BRC. So I was like, okay, cool. Um,

And that's what we did. So, I mean, and again, at that point, we were thin, out of shape, just beat up from the deployment, basically. I look like, you know, Wile E. Coyote, just grizzled, you know, as a 19-year-old or 20-year-old at that point. So by the time we show up, all of these dudes were just peak performance, right? Like they'd been training for six months to get the slot and –

Um, you know, it was me and four other guys that would just got off this deployment. They were like, Oh man, we can't fail this. We got to go. So, and that's what we did. So, but you guys were hardened steely eyed combat vets. It was weird because that was truly like, you know, some of these other, you know, again, I was a Lance corporal. So these sergeants and guys had been waiting years to get a slot or training, you know, try to get to BRC, um,

Yeah, they were like, what's it like? What was it like? And so for us, it felt pretty cool. But at the same time, that disappeared first day of BRC. It was like, get back in the surf. Don't give a shit about your combat action ribbon. Cute. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah, I was...

People will be like, oh, do you think you could still make it through buds and whatever? But the mentality that I had when I was a young kid, like, I'll do anything. Whatever. Like, you...

I don't care about anything. But then when you're like 25, you're like, eh, I don't know if I feel like doing that right now. You seem like an asshole to me. As opposed to just when, like you're saying when you're young and you're looking at those instructors like, that's God. So they're telling me to do something that they must know that this is good for me.

But then by the time you're like 25 or 27, you look at those instructors, you're like that dude, I know that guy. The guy's an idiot. Yeah. I mean, you know, they're holding water over here or, you know, and I'm just like, I don't know how this relates to anything we're going to be doing in Iraq guys, just to be clear here, back in the pool, Barnes, any big challenges getting through BRC? Again, no, it was for me, it was just, you know, put your head down and,

left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. That's, you know, I think the mentality you got to have. Um, it was certainly, you know, physically anybody who says it's not challenging is insane. Um, you know, we started probably with, I don't know, 50, 60 guys and we graduated 18, 19. Um, and most of those were water phase and injury, but they, you know, either got to retread or just said, I'm out DOR. And, um,

I would say, you know, if anything, the patrolling was probably not... It was, for me, the... Because it's putting all those technical skills together into one tight little package where you're getting graded and it's pass-fail, right? So... And then our instructor that we had just... He...

Just had so many CS grenades. The, the, the, the just smoke in our face for seven days straight was just horrible. I remember that, you know, just why did you get, did you get, you, did you get wounded on the, on your first deployment at all? No, I just didn't take that many casualties. Did you on our first tour? No. Uh, there were a few injuries, but I don't think we lost anybody in our company. Um,

our second and third for sure. But again, and it was weird because each tour was very different from the combat, right? Like the first was it, when you're in Nazaria shooting across a bridge, I mean, it looked like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan. I mean, there was full on uniform bad guys on the other side with binoculars calling in mortars. You saw it, right? And you could see the guys, you know, shooting at you from across and they were the enemy.

By the time we got back on our second deployment, it had completely shifted to the insurgency. And, you know, I remember as we were getting briefed before we left on my second tour, like, you guys...

we call everybody in, there's a big class about IEDs and no one had heard that. What the fuck's that? And they're like, basically it's everything and anything that you see outside of the wire. And we're like, what? What does that mean? And they were just showed pictures of all the clever little shit they were doing to hide these things and pressure plates and just the way that they, I mean, ingenious, right? They were like clever little hillbillies that were able to like rig together things

some pretty sophisticated stuff. If you can turn over a Humvee or a tank, right? I mean, that takes some technical proficiency. So I think once we got there, we learned very quickly that IEDs were, that was going to be the thing. So you got done with BRC, you do a workup. Did you have much of a workup after you got done? Because...

No. Seems like you're pretty much, we're going to go pretty quick back on deployment. No, I went to Sears school and I got, I was turned 21 and I got in trouble, didn't graduate Sears school that time. So I went back. What'd you do? Alcohol related incidents? Yeah, ended up, my buddy was perpendicular parked outside of the base and the MPs came over and like, you idiots. They took us back.

Turned me into the steering commander, and I was sent back to my unit without graduating. So they were like, you know what you need, Barnes? A double cax. So they sent me out to 29 Palms for two combined arms exercises as penance for my drinking mistake.

so i went out there as while we're out there meanwhile you're thinking somebody i'm going to start a bourbon yeah get over while we're on the cax they were like guess what battalion just got orders we're going back so by the time we were out there again it was bring everybody back we're getting worked up everybody's getting re-slotted into companies and platoons uh i ended up i stayed in alpha company um but was basically with several of the same guys that i was with on my first tour

And we deployed again February, March, I think of that year, went right back into Camp Fallujah at that point, which was really getting built up to what it eventually became by my third tour. I mean, it was a fully operational military base. So when you went in like February, March of 04 is when you left or when you went back to Iraq? Yeah. So you and I overlapped for like a month or two there because I think I came home in April, right?

And one of the last things that my platoon did was this operation direct action mission to go capture, kill this guy named Yakubi, who is one of Sodder's top lieutenants. And they kept telling us we're going to get Sodder. Maybe we won't. Maybe we will. Maybe we won't target him. No, don't target him. And finally they said, all right, well, let's just see what happens if we get one of his top lieutenants. Cause it seems a little sketchy to get him.

We don't know what's going to happen if we get him, but let's just test the waters a little bit. And we test the waters and it was like, that's...

Iraq erupted after that. It just fully erupted and went crazy. And then we left. So, sorry. Yeah, when we got there, there was open hostility. I mean, it was night and day from when we left the first time right after we took Baghdad to my second tour. I mean, openly upset. And you could tell. I mean, Fallujah was getting mortared every single day, every night.

Indiscriminate pop shots basically at all times of the day. You didn't dare go into some areas at that point because you were asking for trouble. While we were there, they had some massive ambushes that took out entire platoons while we were there. Mass casualty stuff. And yeah, just completely different. I mean, it was the true insurgency. And what was your job at that point in...

What was your mission and what was your job specifically? I mean, we had so many. It changed almost, you know, sometimes daily. It was traditional SNR. It was sniper, counter sniper. We participated in some Trojan horse missions where we got to work with some SF guys to basically dress up like Iraqis and go out Trojan horse, right? Like see how they react. And

we were essentially using ourselves as bait, right, to go pick a fight. And that worked for a while. I mean, they were openly recruiting insurgents to come fight Americans, right? And we stumbled upon that a few times. And it was like, this is insane. Where, you know, our interpreter's like, no, they're asking people to go fight with them to kill Americans. So it was just, the mindset had completely shifted.

And I mean, that's when the IEDs were going off every single day. They were so nonchalant about it. I mean, there was one outside the base every day, right? I mean, they would just throw a sack out or drop something and say, good luck. And what's your job in the platoon at this point? I was an assistant radio operator. So again, moved up one slot. And then when we'd do dismounted patrols, I'd be a point man patrol.

And again, but 90% of our time over there was probably spent in mounted patrols. And even with, you know, three to six Hummers going out and moving,

in formation wherever we were. And again, most of this was right outside of Fallujah. So a lot of the countryside and along the Euphrates on either side. We'd get pulled up to Ramadi. We'd get pulled up over to TQ, basically to run missions out of. And then from there, we would also utilize some sort of big house as a fob for a day or two and then move on.

Again, the mission just changed so dramatically. We were doing ambushes on certain stretches of the road between TQ and Fallujah to figure out who was doing that. We would do direct action, sometimes with SEALs, sometimes with SF. Sometimes it was a cordon off portion. Sometimes it was the actual go and get these fuckers right now because the SEALs are over here doing something.

it just shifted so quickly, I remember. And, you know, the ROIs changed as well. Sometimes it had to be a uniformed guy wearing, you know, the whatever. And other times it was like, if it's a military-age man out there, they're engaged. They're not supposed to be there. So it just shifted that so quickly all the time. It was really hard to keep up, honestly, you know. And, again, with some of those, they were not afraid to –

go to battle with you. I mean, they would engage and true ambush. I mean, L-shape and just, they would, they're extremely coordinated and yeah, just wild times. There were no rules in Fallujah in 2004. And the op tempo is every night?

It just depended again. Yes, basically you were on call. If you weren't out actually in somewhere out in the bush, if you were in back in Camp Fallujah, you were still on QRF, right? I mean, there were just so many limited guys. There was no off time. It was immediately refit. Once you get back, make sure you got enough beans, bullets and water to go back out for another 10 to 14 days at a time.

That's primarily kind of how we would go out. It would be anywhere from seven to 10 days back for one or two right back out. And would you go out to support like a battalion commander that needed help or a company commander? Or was it like, Oh, we're getting Intel on this area being bad. We're going to send you guys there. We were on our own, man. It was literally go out, find a house. That's got a nice big fence around it, pay the family, kick them out for a day or two and set up watch for either to, uh,

traditional, you know, reconnaissance or it was a staging area for something bigger that would happen, a hit on a house or, you know, we think that somebody's over there. We could figure out pretty quickly who was involved in bad stuff and who was not. A lot of it was just going out looking for caches at that point too, right? You just have, we got an engineer attached and like you follow a deer trail out to a patch by the Euphrates River and you're like, I wonder what's in there.

Right? I'm going to check it out. And you go back and have a talk with the homeowner and he's like, that's not mine. My property line ends right there. Oh, all right. Well, you're free to go. Just kidding. You're not. Is there any other, is there any major operation that you remember that was like you considered successful and impactful during that, during that second deployment? Um,

You know, we had some big engagements, just sustained firefights for a few hours that, you know, I think those were probably... And again, we're out on our own. It was, you know, that's just what it felt like for, you know, while you're in that moment, like, we got to fight our way out of this. And I think not one specifically on my second tour. I think it was just, you know...

There were a lot on that tour that just constant. It was just them constantly testing the wire from a pop shot. So you never knew what it was going to be, right? Are they just testing or is that the test for the next big one that's coming? So you were always on edge. And how did you like it? I think that for me, that tour was amazing.

there was a lot of fog, right? We didn't know who the enemy was at that point. We didn't know what the rules of engagement were. We didn't know or how often they were going to change, right? It just kept on evolving in ways that we were always a little one step behind where however they were evolving, right? So from IEDs that were using one mortar to then a cell phone, then to whatever the trigger would be. So they were evolving

For what means they had to operate a war, I mean, they were extremely good at it. And Iraq is just built for ambushes between the date groves, the water, the berms on the side of the road. I mean, you literally are in just a kill zone all the time. It just depends on how far out they are. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that I don't think I would say I enjoyed it. I was certainly glad to get home from it. And at that point, I thought I was getting out. I was like, there's no way. There's no way they're going to send me back. I've got a year and a half left. But they did. They found a way. So you were thinking like, oh, this is not going to be my career.

By the time you were in your second platoon? At that point, they were starting to stand up. MARSOC, there was a, you know, they were talking about, like, you know, this is the future of kind of Marine Corps Special Forces, what we're planning on doing with this, we're going to stand this up. So they were looking for guys and experienced guys that they wanted to bring over. I was certainly recruited to do that, but I was also...

I was getting burned out for sure. You know, and I was like, did you get blowed up at all? Oh yeah. We were hit by multiple ideas. Uh, my second tour, um, yeah, completely blew off the back end of one. Um, and then another one just came in from the side. Um, yeah. Uh, luckily I was, um, just some TBI and, you know, shaken up and, you know, the fuzzies, I guess. Um,

But you have that happen a few times and it gets old. You start wondering, when is my time going to be, right? So you come home from that deployment. Did you guys take any counts? Did you lose any guys on that one? Not our platoon. Bravo Company had a major ambush where they lost several guys, both WIA, KIA, and

But we were on the QRF, so we went after them. And by the time we got there, I mean, it was chaos as far as just, you know, bodies stacked. So, yeah, pretty wild, pretty wild times on that one for sure.

So that gives you the feeling going home, like, all right, they got their, they got their pound of flesh out of me. I got a year and a half left. I'm going to end up being, you know, a lifeguard down a horno. Right. Exactly. And, and that's it. I'm going to carry on with the rest of my life. Cool.

Yep. The Marine Corps had a different idea for that? Well, again, I think that, you know, a lot of guys at that point were like, you know, they were either it was time to go to the schoolhouse to be an instructor somewhere or get out. And after my second tour, I mean, there was just a mass exodus of a battalion. So they had to find ways to

to bring in other guys that were coming back or wanted to be in the unit or were from third or second and wanted to come over to first because at that point there I think they were starting to figure out the deployment schedule. Well, while I was there I started to work up with a team that they were like, you know what, you're probably not gonna finish out but just stick around to help some of the younger guys learn and teach them whatever you can. And I said, okay, well,

Over that period of six, nine months, we lost, I lost two team leaders, both to car accidents. And so at that point, they're like, look, we'll give you your own team if you want to take these guys over and you'll be a TL in Charlie Company. And I was like, okay, I'll do that one more time.

But again, these kids were 18, 19, fresh out of BRC. They'd gone through the pipeline, right? So they did the traditional route but had not been deployed yet. And I said, all right, at that point I was 22 and I was the old man. Yeah, I was going to say you were an old man at that point. So I had a ton of knowledge, a ton of just combat experience to say, all right, let's, you know, I'll go do it. So I extended my contract out for a few more months and

to be able to go over to Iraq with those guys and, you know, do that. So third tour was fairly similar to my second as far as the mission. Again, we were involved in, we actually worked very closely with the SEAL team in Fallujah at certain points during the Battle of Fallujah and the afterward. And that was also the year that they,

My second, I think it was 2004 where they had the vote. Right. And then 2003 was again, kind of that aftermath of figuring out what the vote even meant. Right. And how they were going to carry on with life in Iraq. Again,

This is really right before the uprising in 2006 and 2007. But you could just feel the powder keg building, right? You just... The amount of caches we were finding. We did Operation Green Trident on that deployment where we found, I forget how many metric tons of ammunition. I mean everything. Russian, Chinese, old French weird shit. Like they had... He had everything buried in this hole. Yeah.

And that was one day. Again, we were constantly taking pop shots. And yeah, I mean, we had to fight our way out of a couple tight spots as a single six-man team on that deployment, but we didn't lose anybody.

I think we were extremely lucky because it was kind of right before the top blew off. And I think that was when you came, we changed over and it just, again, wild west. How did you, how did you like being in that leadership position? How did that impact you? Certainly, you know, the most responsibility I think I've ever had as an adult, you know, is, is taking those guys over and,

extremely proud that we didn't lose anybody, that we made it through. But nerve wracking, right? Before I was just one of the guys in the team, make sure the radios are clean and the 50 cals ready to go. And now you got, you know, five other 18 year old dudes that are looking to you like, what do we do, man? What next? What's next? What's the call? Right. Where are we going? And what, what was the, was it a similar mission set where you were kind of

finding work? Jack of all trades. You know, once we got over there, there was a rumor going around that because we were getting a lot of direct action and we were getting a lot of these cool missions. And the rumor was that the SEAL team that was there got benched because they were in a firefight and someone took out an AT-4 and took down a minaret from one of the mosques that was apparently a no-no. But when you're getting shot at from one, I don't know what you're supposed to do.

And so we eventually just were getting trade-off with the SEALs. I think at that point there was a lot of intel going back and forth between, hey, we think there's a guy over here. Can you go rattle him up? We're going to be over here at the same time getting another guy night after night after night, right? So that was the op tempo was just constant going and looking. As soon as we knew we had somebody, go get them. Go roll them up.

And you can do that in like 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I remember my boss had asked me, this was on my first deployment where now we were running the same thing. Like it's the same thing. We're getting intel. Here's the target. Here's the house we think they're in. Boom. And my boss is like, my commanding officer was like, how long do you need? You know, how much warning time do you need to prepare your guys to go out and hit a target? And I said, 15 minutes. And he thought I was kidding.

I was like, oh, I was like probably 15 minutes or, and he's like, no, what I mean really look, what do you need? And I said, no, 15 minutes. Like we will get our gear on. All I need is the frequency of the local conventional commander that owns the battle space and a grid coordinate of where the bad guy is and we'll go. And yeah, so you get in that pattern of that direct action and. And our leadership is the same way. Our platoon sergeant, platoon commander, company commander were like,

if you guys can do this, go do it. And they were all for like, it didn't matter if we'd never done it before, but they were like, we'll figure it out. We'll get, just give us the coordinates. We'll get it done. And that was the mindset of like, well, you didn't, no one wanted to give up that mission. Right. There were so many bad guys out there at that point that it was like, you know, who's going to be the one to get the next big one. So there was that feeling too, right. That you wanted to be out there to, to go,

Take that door down and see what's behind it. Yeah. There's something very immediate gratification from doing a direct action mission that I think our whole country got focused on that. Like all of our leadership was like, Oh, we got this bad guy. We got this bad guy. We got this bad guy. We got this bad guy. And you think you're making progress.

But when I showed up in 2006 and I was like, wait a second, we're still doing, we got this bad guy, we got this bad guy, we got this bad guy over and over again. And we're now, enemy attacks are up 300% and it was just bad. And we needed to take a different approach, which eventually we did, thankfully. How about, now did you get, did you take, get blown up again on that deployment?

No, I was pretty unscathed. My last firefight was March 15th, 2006. And it was, we were kind of doing the left seat, right seat with the second battalion from out east. And I was up on watch on a roof and, you know, did the early shift and I'll never forget it. I was just kind of standing there looking out over the horizon, you know, and

I could hear the thwaps going by, right? And I look around and as I'm turning, my buddy Dane was already coming toward me saying, they're shooting at you, motherfucker. And as soon as he said that, our other guy on the other side of the roof, he started to engage with the saw and

And it was like at that point after that, you know, and then the guys down on the ground were up on the 50 cal. So, I mean. Where was this? In Fallujah? Mm-hmm. So, again, we were out just in a farmhouse out, and they were behind a couple of berms. And, you know, they had a sniper rifle and taking a few pop shots. And luckily, they weren't a good shot because, I mean, and yeah. And that was it. I had to march. That was my last time. And then.

within 30 days i was back home san diego another 30 days i was out of the marine corps back home in indiana that was that was what like four year and a few months hitch yep pretty much three combat deployments yep and how are you feeling when you get done you're like hey i got it done i'm moving on yeah i mean you you know again

You don't realize how important the camaraderie, how important the guys are until you don't have them and how much of a crutch that is. You don't realize it. You can call it a crutch or a support system or whatever, but it really is when you have it, you don't realize it when you leave it like I did and several guys, you immediately kind of feel that there's something missing, right? And then I go back, I start school, and there's no one –

You can't talk to anybody about it, right? You can't. There's no one that will understand. So you just learn to kind of cope. For me, it was all about the next thing, the next, you know, school, pilot, you know, law. So there was always this kind of goal that I would set out in front of myself and just go as hard as I could that way. Because as soon as I start, you start thinking about, you know,

You know, what was, you know, never going to be that cool again. It's a bad spiral, right? You can start, you know, what if and regret and all that shit. And that's, you know, that's toxic. So I think that for me, it's always been about, you know, life goes one direction. It's forward. There's no going back. There's no take backsies. It's, you know, what was, what was, is what was. Great memories, great people, but also, you know,

It's really, for me, and again, I struggle with PTSD and TBI, and I don't think that ever necessarily goes away, right? Because the farther away you get from combat and the things that you did that you didn't think about in the moment about collateral damage or about, you know, why did I go left instead of right and what impact did that have on the guy to my left and my right? Once you get out and you start having time to think about those things, I mean, it is...

it's very complicated right so you're you get out of the marine corps you're back in indiana and now you're sitting in a freaking classroom listening to the professor talk about stuff well how how did you pull that off because i was so i came home from my last deployment to iraq with 2006 and and i remember so i took over uh something called trading detachment and pretty quickly i was doing paperwork and i remember thinking

- Yeah, I have to like focus and recognize that as a professional I have to do this paperwork right now because the entire other part of my brain, that was 10% of my brain, 90% of my brain was like this shit don't matter, what are you doing? This is bullshit. And I had to really just override that and be like okay, yep, this is what you're doing, this is part of the military and you're gonna sit down, you're gonna do this paperwork like you're supposed to, cool. But it was not fun. And I would imagine if it was something totally different like oh,

Because I was at least able to say, well, this is part of the military. This is the professional. You're in a leadership position. You've got to do this. So shut up and do it. But if the other thing was random college course on whatever college course, I think I would have had a little bit of a harder time convincing myself that I should get it done. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I'm...

extremely blessed that I moved in right back next to my parents. I bought a house right next to where I grew up and they were really instrumental in helping me heal, identifying when I wasn't acting normal, when I wasn't, you know, um,

dealing with, uh, you know, moving on from the military in productive ways. Um, and they, they were able to, you know, kind of help guide me through that. Just, you know, nudge here and there. And I say, and I'm very thankful for them for that. What would kind of make them say, Hey Travis, we need to give you a nudge in this direction. Were you like drinking? Were you just, yeah, all of that. Yes. Yeah. All that, man. Uh, you know, uh,

But I think it was just also attitude, you know, extremely intense, you know, always on edge, could get upset about anything and everything that wasn't a big deal. You know, they're like, look, hey, bro, no one's shooting. It'll be OK. And, you know, it took several times to hear that before I was like, OK, they're right. Like this isn't Fallujah. This is not the end of the world stuff.

And also to like, hey, how was school going? Just that, right? Like checking in, I think, is a huge deal because they realized in the same time that I didn't have a support system. I didn't have the guys that I was always around, that they knew who were my buddies while I was in. So and that I didn't, you know, have a ton of friends once I came back. You know, all those guys that I grew up with were either out of college or had jobs and families and stuff.

So it was a weird spot. You know, you're 22, you're going into your freshman year and you have nothing in common with these people that you think, right? The world is, your lenses have changed significantly from when I left four years ago to where I am now. And obviously you have a much broader lens. You have a worldview that very few people can understand or even identify with.

And on top of that, I think that I just personally had a very unique experience of that short amount of time with such intense combat over and over and over and then just back out. I mean, they released a feral wild thing back into, you know, Noble County, Indiana. So, yeah, I think that... Did they throw anything when you were getting out? Did they throw anything at you? Did they throw shore duty at you? Did they...

like try and tempt you to stay in. Oh yeah. And I, I, I'm my, my company commander, uh, it was captain Dill, Colonel Dill when he got out. Um, and my platoon commander, uh, who's now the CEO of Raider Regiment, um, went on to do unbelievable things. Um,

Both of those guys tried. I mean, I think that they said, look, Barnes, you're either going to get out and you're going to be in jail in six months or you're going to end up being a senator. We don't know which, but you're pretty dangerous. Let's not roll the dice. So why don't you...

Think about coming in and doing another four years. We're going to get you into the MARSOC pipeline. We're going to, you know, whatever you want. If you want to go to college, you know, we talked about, you know, getting a pilot's license or coming back in through an aircraft contract. And at that point, you know, I just thought to myself, I'm healthy enough.

At that point, I was like, man, this war is not going anywhere for a while. So if they need me, you know, I'll always have the opportunity to get out. But on the other hand, I thought, man, if I don't get out now, I'm going to be back in a platoon going right back over to Iraq or Afghanistan in six months because that's where I wanted to be. And there were so many slots open that that's where I was going to end up. And several of my buddies ended up doing that. A few got killed. So, you know, for me, it was...

It was more of the opportunity. And I always thought I can do more for the Marine Corps outside of the Marine Corps than I can in. Like when you're in, you're one guy that can affect a few guys. When you get out, you know, there's veteran causes. There's, you know,

ways to interact back in the military that you don't have the opportunity to do while you're in the military. I didn't know what that was or how I was going to do that, but that was just, I guess, pie in the sky of like, I got to give this a try first. And if I get through college, maybe I can come back as an officer, something like that. Um,

But I was certainly going to give myself an opportunity to get out and just see how it went. Yeah, that's impressive because the gravitational pull of the military and of your friends and your job and the stability of it, that's a strong gravitational pull that a lot of guys can't escape. I retired at 20 years, and there was guys that told me, like, dude, I can't believe you had the nerve to retire. Yeah.

because they're like, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm doing 30, you know, I gotta get the, I got a family, I got a mortgage and they just couldn't believe that I had the nerve to retire at 20. It's like, well, you know, like I, I, I was able to escape that gravitational pull. Cause you feel it, you know, when, when the skipper calls you and is like, Hey, we got this slot, you know, you, for me, it was like, I had screened for XO. So that's like the next bit, you know, big, uh,

career move, you know, like we're going to pull you over to this team and we got this skipper. He wants you, requested you by name. Like they start throwing all that stuff at you and it's like really... And then you have the boys, right? Right. And all the boys are going back to war and you're like, yeah, it's tough. I'm impressed that a 22-year-old like that, like you were, was able to escape that gravitational pull. That's impressive. Well, thank you. But yeah, I mean, and you're right. That was...

And as soon as you get out, you're like, man, I'm not ever going to get that back. I'm never going to be that cool. I'm never going to live a Spartan life. I'm never going to be in it that intense where you're so focused and you know what you want to do. And everybody with you, your left and your right, they also want to do the same thing. You're never pushed that hard. You're never going to be that good again at one thing.

And you realize that very quickly, I think, once you get out. But there's trade-offs, right? And by the way, because I was also that guy for much of my career that was saying, hey, dude.

what are you gonna do when you get out? I used to have guys give me a business plan. And the business plan wasn't like a business plan that you think of when you're presenting to some public or private equity. No, the business plan was like, how are you gonna pay for your car payment, which is $422 for your truck and your rent? And by the way, you've got a kid. Like, just tell me how you're gonna buy groceries. And then like, I can let you go. And I would say, I'd say I got about 50%. 50% of the guys were like,

They go away for one more trip and they come back like, hey, I'm relisting. I'm like, cool. And 50% of the guys are like, yep, I'm getting out. I've got a plan. This is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to afford it. I'm going to move back home, whatever. So yeah, to those guys that are listening right now, just make sure you have a freaking plan. Because if you don't have a plan, you get out and you will not become a senator. You will be in jail. Yes. Yes. So your parents are helping you out.

uh, helping you and who are you hanging out with at this time? Cause like you said, you're in college, but it's, you're 22, but you're a freaking old 22, 23 year old compared to the 18 year old freshman that you're in class with. Yeah, I didn't, I mean, I really didn't have, um, friends, uh, you know, to speak of. I mean, I certainly met some while I was at school, a couple of veterans, uh, that, you know, obviously you gravitate toward those guys, uh,

I was a poli-sci major, so Iraq and Afghanistan were topic du jour. Did you have a plan with that degree? Well, that's what I was interested in, so that's what I wanted to study. And then about halfway through, we're all talking, and I'm like, basically, this degree qualifies us to move furniture, guys. So it's either that or law school. Yeah.

So that's how I ended up there. While I was an undergrad, there was an opportunity for an internship with Senator Lugar from Indiana to go out in D.C., sit on the Foreign Relations Committee, and learn kind of how the sausage gets made. And Senator Lugar was an unbelievable statesman, and the stuff that he did kind of under the radar is just unbelievable. Yeah.

And when I, you know, I asked him for a recommendation for law school and I think that and my military background got me in because it certainly wasn't my GPA. So your GPA in college wasn't good either. It certainly improved. But, you know, I think that those little extra gold stars there probably pushed me over the line. Well, how did you because now that what year is this now? Like, oh, eight or nine.

Yep. So I graduated college undergrad in 2010. So while I was out in D.C., I took the LSAT, took all the entrance tests to get in. And that's where you apply and you find out whether or not what schools you got accepted into. How did your perception of what you had done as a Marine in Iraq change once you got to D.C. and you saw what that freaking system was all about?

It depends. I do think that there were certainly folks like Senator Lugar who did understand the issues and the problems that were ongoing and watching him kind of navigate that struggle between implementing change, which is extremely difficult within the Senate, and supporting our troops, but also

criticizing in the right way that, you know, one protects veterans but also protects our troops while we were there. You know, I got to have several private conversations with him about that and, you know, just why do we have to do this or that or it doesn't feel like there's a good plan here, you know, ongoing and to exit. So it was certainly eye-opening to see how things come together and how things don't come together sometimes.

For me, you know, I was extremely happy to see Senator Lugar was a Republican, how he worked with Senator Ted Kennedy, who is a Democrat, right? And how those guys both work together to solve issues. I mean, I can tell you that that was certainly heartening to see and gave me faith in our system and that

there are people there that want to help move this country forward and have our best interests in mind, even if they don't necessarily agree fundamentally on how to make those changes happen. But I will say that I was very happy to see that there are still people in Washington that have our best interests in mind. Yeah, I was...

I worked in the Pentagon or I didn't work in the Pentagon, but I was the Admiral's aide in between my two deployments to Iraq. And so, you know, I was in a lot of really high level meetings and yeah, we'd start, you'd start really paying attention as a young junior officer going, wait a second. Like you said, like, is there a plan? Is there a plan here?

Do we have an exit strategy? Does anyone, we gonna talk about that at all? And even those questions will get brought up. So yeah, and then, and so I think that for you, seeing the political side of things must have been very interesting for coming from your background of three intense deployments where that you were the person that executed these freaking policies that these people came up with. You know, you talked a little bit about TBI and PTSD.

And I know that those things really have become more and more known as time has gone on. But I don't think...

Like, did a single person to you when you got – when you were getting out of the Marine Corps, did anyone talk to you about either of those subjects? No. Jack. No. It wasn't on the checklist of getting out of the Marine Corps or, you know. But again, again, they really hadn't had to deal with these things since Vietnam. So there was a 30-year gap between –

on a mass, right? Not just me, but like guys coming out with real issues that they were not staffed for it. They didn't have the training to do it. They didn't know how to screen for it. It just seemed like it was one of, again, one of those things that no one thought about as we went in, like, Hey, we're going to have this, there's going to be a lot of wild feral dudes out here roaming around. If we don't have the system set up to take care of them and help them.

And you didn't get any of that. I certainly, after a while. At what point did you realize like, hold on, there's something ain't quite right here. The summer I got back home. Again, when my mom and dad pulled me aside. And it becomes instinctual. It becomes this second nature to you, just like clearing a rifle, right? Like you just react certain ways to certain instances, right?

That you don't even realize you're doing. And I think that that just takes a lot of patience, a lot of practice to realize that you are going through these things, that your lenses have changed, and that you need to be aware of them so that, you know, you...

can engage more appropriately, I guess, in society. Yeah. Did you ever get any other help besides your parents? Yeah. This is a little frolic and detour. My sister was in the Navy when I got out, she actually enlisted and went in and she became a SACO. So she was a substance, substance abuse counseling officer within the Navy for 10 years and

And she was very helpful in both as a sister and a veteran and a therapist to kind of talk through some of these things. And my sister and I are extremely tight. So just the having her there that somebody that I could trust, that I could talk to both as a family member and as a veteran, I think is, you know, finding that one person that you are able to

uh, share those things that they have some idea of, you know, what you went through. Obviously she did not do three combat tours, but, um, she still had that, you know, military mindset and could speak the language and just understood, you know, what, what I went through. And then did you get any kind of like, uh,

specific diagnosis did you ever get your brain scanned where so you got all that oh yeah and was that through the VA yes and how was the was the VA good to go um yeah all of the services I would say that I've received from the VA have been pretty good um I think you have to be extremely proactive about your treatment and what services you earned um which is one thing you know

My wife and I are still very supportive of the kind of local organizations within our own community that help fill in some of the gaps that the VA doesn't provide, which is really helping veterans understand what services are available to them and how to utilize them. And again, I think I was just out there and ambitious enough to go and figure out like, hey, I don't have insurance anywhere else. I got like I don't have another choice. So yeah.

And I did have a lot of Vietnam vet guys say, you need to get this documented. You need to make sure, don't let this go too long. Protect yourself, protect your future family because you earn these benefits. You did three tours. Don't let them get wasted. And was there any like eureka moment that you had that maybe from your sister or from some other source at the VA that you said,

that helped you? Like, was there a pivot point or was it just like a gradual adjustment to the world? I think I'm still pivoting. You know, I think that, you know, PTSD with combination TBI, I think that, you know, you, the farther away you get from it, your, it changes, you know, how you look back on it. Sometimes there's pride. Sometimes there's regret. Sometimes,

And it's, again, it's on this linear thing. It doesn't just stop. It shifts and it changes, you know, and how you remember things. You know, when you go back and talk to guys about how certain things happened that were with you there, it's funny how experiences sometimes shift and your memories change, right? And they're all kind of, the core is there, but some of the details are, you know, shifted 15 degrees. Yeah.

So I think it's constant. You know, I think it's important both to remember what we did while we were in Iraq, but also to move on from it and not let that, you know, pain, regret, you know, remorse overtake you because it can, it can become overwhelming. And, you know, I've lost several guys to suicide since I got home that, you know, I think that that's,

What ends up happening with these guys is they're alone, they don't have a support system, and they get into this spiral of thinking about the past with an eye that has remorse and regret and shame, probably, embarrassment, you know, some of the things that happened.

And they're not able to take a step forward. It's kind of always moving back or retreading, right? So for me, at least, one of the most important things, my eureka moment was keep moving forward. Don't stop.

Yeah, that's I've I tell I've told many people and I say myself remember but don't dwell so like yeah, you got to remember what happened to remember your friends, but you can't dwell in the past you can't just constantly stay there because like you said that turns into a downward spiral pretty quickly and

You kept moving forward, which meant you eventually go to law school. - Yep. - And you get done with law school, so you're gonna become a lawyer, is that the plan? - When I went, yeah. I thought I'd go to law school and move back to my hometown and be a small town prosecutor or hang my shingle and that would be, that was what the goal was, so that was what I expected.

Once I got there, you know, I think I realized pretty quickly that I didn't necessarily want to be a lawyer, but I really enjoyed the school part of it and the, you know, the intellectual gymnastics that the law school teaches you kind of how to think and rethink things through. So I really enjoyed that part of it. I also met my wife first semester, first, you know, class we had together. She couldn't keep her hands off me. So...

Uh, poor girls not here to defend herself. That's right. Microphones too far away. Um, and I will also say she was extremely helpful too, as far as just, you know, being someone that you can talk to and trust and who has inquisitive, she was inquisitive about my experiences, but not nosy. And just, she was really wanting to learn and understand. Did she have any military veteran heritage in her background? Uh, her dad was in the army. Um,

But I don't, not a military family by any means, you know, no, yeah, no. But was also extremely, you know,

in that part of my life. Well, I just think it's important because you got someone that you met that was, like you said, inquisitive but not nosy and probably was able to sense, oh, this may be a little bit too sensitive right now, back off a little bit, but at the same time, oh, looks like there's an opening here and probably wants to express some of this stuff. So just a good thing to pay attention to. And that, again, not just to like,

veterans, but I can tell you right now, if you got kids, like knowing when to like ask some inquisitive questions and also knowing when to back away and be like, all right, they don't really feel like talking about that right now. I just got a text from one of my friends this morning. It was something like, dude, did your daughters bottle their feelings up and not, and you couldn't figure out what's going on. And I wrote back. Yeah. For a little while, but then eventually, you know, to get the,

get in there and find out what's happening. And then he wrote, would it come out very emotionally all at once? And I wrote, yes, sometimes. Oh, dude, my house, I got a five, a four, and a two-year-old little girls right now. In my house, sometimes it feels like Fallujah because there's screaming, there's crying, there's blood. No one knows, but there's feelings everywhere. Just it's fucking wild. Jack. So at what point did you start making bourbon? Yeah.

So the law in Indiana started to change around. There was talk around it changing in 2010. So Indiana used to have a very robust distilling industry. Then during Prohibition, the U.S. Legislative Congress said we're only going to allow six distilleries to continue operation. Five were in Kentucky. Jack Daniels was in Tennessee.

And they basically have had a monopoly on it for 70 plus years. Well, Indiana said around 2010, we're interested in opening it back up to artisan distilling, which that artisan moniker is important because it allowed small craft guys the ability to produce and then sell directly to consumers out of their tasting room without having to go through the three-tier system, which is enacted in every state globally.

which is basically you don't have to use a distributor to move your alcohol, so that's about a 30% margin increase. So it gave us a little bit of an advantage. The law was shot down for a few years, and then in 2013 it finally passed, and we were one of four within the state to get that initial both federal DSP, distilled spirit plant license, and our state license with that artisan moniker on it.

It was good that you were a lawyer at this point. I'm assuming because you're doing paperwork. It was huge. We started the company while we were in law school or last year. We incorporated ourselves. The state of Indiana really didn't know. They had cobbled together...

regulations from a few other states and but they were still kind of figuring out exactly how they were going to implement these regulations and it was all honestly was based around taxation and not serving under 21. those are the two big guideposts right pay your taxes don't serve under 21. if you do those two things there's a lot of wiggle room inside that goal post um but absolutely the the legal uh degree that you know hillary and i started it with a couple other buddies

I mean, it's hard to say how many tens of thousands of dollars we saved by not having to go and just hire a law firm. They would have been learning at the same time because there hadn't been this opportunity for 70 years. So no one had worked with alcohol under this system within Indiana for over half a century. So we really, I think, learned, became kind of subject matter experts within this particular section of alcohol law.

law within Indiana, which was a huge advantage. Because I don't think if we would have had that, we wouldn't have got the license within the timeline that they outlined, and then we would have missed the opportunity completely. Luckily, we were Johnny on the spot, and we got the federal license and the distilling license, the state license in 2013. We spent the next

few six months raising capital, which again, I had never done that before. I'd never asked anybody for any money. Um, but getting into bourbon is extremely capital intensive. Um, it's, you know, the equipment is very expensive, but also the wait period for bourbon, right? So you gotta have a lot of money and it's gotta be patient money. What's the minimum amount of time? Bourbon becomes bourbon at two years in the barrel. Um, anything over that becomes straight bourbon. Um,

And then it becomes, you know, reasonable minds can disagree when it is fully matured, right? Some guys let it go six, eight, 10, Pappy's got 15 and 21 year old, right? So it's really about what you like. There's no bad bourbon, only better bourbon, in my opinion. So different strokes for different folks. - How much money did you have to raise to kick this thing off?

My seed round was $200,000. We literally started it with student loan money to just kind of incorporate and get the building. And you have to have a building to get the license because the license runs with the geographic location. And then you've got to get it zoned, right? You have to do all these things. So literally we were doing all of these things in real time. So it was an education unto itself just to get the license done.

Once we had that, we had our business plan, very rudimentary. It was basically we had outlined kind of what the margin was, where the opportunity was. And then I thought, look, there is a huge opportunity in the military. Like when I was in, you had a choice, Jim Beam or Jack Daniels, whatever you wanted. And it was on every shelf. And really it's controlled by a few of the very big strategic alcohol companies that are out there.

That was really, I think, kind of the niche advantage we had early on. And I had a buddy that was working as a bartender at a private kind of old guy club within Indianapolis and said, hey, man, they're doing this high-end scotch tasting. I'll give you 10 minutes. Come over and do your elevator pitch and see what happens.

So I went over, I built my own still. So I dragged this little thing over with me and I had a little bit of product that I had made in the backyard. And I got up, give my little song and dance and it turned into an episode of Shark Tank. I shit you not. I mean, there were guys in the room. I had no idea who I was talking to, but they ended up being some of the pillars of Indianapolis, you know,

uh that were you know intrigued and then the next morning i got a a few phone calls from the guys that were there the night before and they're like i'm interested how do we do this and then over the course of the next couple weeks month uh we put together a business plan an operating agreement and they each put in 50 000 and i was off to the races

And you had to, did you say you had to buy a building or you just had to lease a building? Had to lease it, but it had to be zoned properly. So again, to get that through the neighborhood association, the land use committee, and it was also in a historic district, both from the state level and the federal level, like the

all African American Civil War unit bivouacked on this site. So, I mean, this thing is like triple protected from a, you know, you can't do anything on this site without multiple permissions. And everybody's like, I don't know, a distillery. That sounds, I don't know, alcohol, boogeyman kind of thing. So,

We eventually convinced everybody that this was going to be a good thing for the neighborhood, and it would lower the tax base, increase traffic through. So we did a lot of studying, and we had to present and represent and finally got it over the line. And we opened our doors in September of 2014. And is it called, is the tasting room, what is it called? Is it a tasting room? What's it called? Yeah, so that's under the nomenclature of the law itself, tasting room, artisan distillery.

And it's called hotel tango artist and artisan distillery hotel tango distillery. Yep. And when did you open the doors on that? September of 2014. And how was the reception like? Uh, it was incredible. Uh, I mean, at that point we had three tiny stills we were producing during the day to sell it at night. I mean, we, we could barely keep up. Um, it was great. Um,

And we, you know, at that the next following year, we saved some up. We put enough back. We were ready to enter distribution. Wait, if you produce it during the day, when's that two year? So we were putting bourbon away in barrels, but we were also making gin, vodka, rum. Also supplement that period of time to allow the bourbon to age. Got it. How long do you have to wait to make to drink gin?

Just like beer. I mean, you can, it's about a seven day process. Got it. So is there anything you can get faster than that? Or does it all have to ferment for some time? Yeah. I mean, it's basically, we're taking beer one step further, right? So you take grain, water, yeast, sugar, that makes beer from there. We'll take large vats of that, say 500 gallons. And we will distill that the high octane alcohol out of it to 50 gallons. So, so yeah,

It's basically just refining over and over and over again, right? Until there's very, there's a lot less alcohol, but just much, much higher proof. Do you still make gin or vodka? Yeah, absolutely. Echo Charles. You like vodka, right? Yeah, vodka's cool, for sure. You used to drink vodka like a decent amount. Probably too much. Yeah, probably too much at one point, sure. I agree. Yeah.

And you offer all these different types of alcohol to this day? Yep. Yep. So it's really about, at that point, it's how high you're distilling it down, the proof that you're taking it up to.

We'll determine what the product is, right? Vodka has to be colorless, odorless, flavorless, and that happens at about 190 proof. And from there, we'll cut it back down with water, just RO, reverse osmosis water, and that is the process of vodka. That's how everybody makes it. That's how everybody has made it for hundreds, if not thousands of years. What about gin?

Gin is, there's multiple ways to do it. You can either macerate it, so you will put in botanicals. It has to be predominantly juniper. That is what is the, that's the flavor that you're getting from gin. And then from there, you can add in anything your heart desires. Elderflower, orange peel, star anise, you know, whatever, you know, you've got laying around in the kitchen from a spice rack, that makes a gin.

You can soak it in a pie-proof vodka and then redistill it to create the gin. Or you can layer all of those botanicals in a cake inside of a gin basket that's actually an attachment to the still. And the vapors will go through it and will take on the flavors of those botanicals as it passes up and over through the still and then comes back down, goes in vodka, comes out gin. And obviously you're into this kind of stuff.

Yeah, man. I mean, that's, that's what, that's what kicked this whole thing off was you were enjoying making bourbon. Absolutely. Uh, you know, it's, there's, it's half science, half art, right? There's a recipe you got to follow, but within that there's tweaks that you can make along the way that add your own flavor to it, right? That make it yours individually. Yeah.

And with those tiny skills, they're manuals, right? There's no automation at all. So you're pulling levers that will dictate the flavor profile that comes out on the other end. So learning on those tiny do-it-yourself stills really allowed us to play with flavor profile, proof, and just kind of overall experience of that particular spirit. Mm-hmm.

All right, so you get the doors open, things are going well. And what's the trajectory over the last 10 years been like? Well, it's been wild. I can tell you that I kind of talk in two terms. There's pre COVID and post COVID. Pre COVID, you know, the world really operated on a three legged stool, right? You had beer, wine and alcohol.

And when we got into it, bourbon was on this massive upward trajectory, right? Everybody was watching Mad Men and wanted old fashions. And, you know, it was the cool hip drink. And a lot of other artisan distilling distilleries were coming online. And it was just high growth, right? People couldn't get enough of it. And there's all these, you know, Easter egg bottles that are going on the secondary market for thousands of dollars. It was just an unbelievable time of growth. Yeah.

And we had a good story. So for us, in the bourbon world, I think that the ingredients that make a successful brand are you've got to have a good product, obviously, but you have to have a good story and be authentic. And I think that that's kind of what set us apart early on was veteran-owned, veteran-made, and people wanted to support that. And then...

COVID happens and everybody thinks the world's going to end. Right. And at the same time, they, they're pantry loading. So sales are still growing, but it's also, it shut down our tasting room. So in 2020, we had a budget built out for how we thought we were going to reach our sales goals for the end of the year. Well,

They shut us down in February, I think, of that year. If you would have asked me 30 days before, I was like, there is no way, no way that there will be riots on the street if they shut down bars and restaurants. I was wrong. So within about 30 days, not even, I mean, we were one of the first in the country that we pivoted and said, we got all the ingredients to make hand sanitizer. We can keep the wheels on this thing moving. Okay.

And so we totally shifted. We kept everybody employed.

And we basically turned our event space that we were just getting ready to open into a hand sanitizer factory. So we had totes of vodka that we were adding denaturing flavoring to and what made it hand sanitizer. Wait, what's denaturing? It's so you can't drink it. It'll make you throw it up. Got it. Which I was like, I can't believe we have to add this. That hurt your soul to do. Well...

There are people out there actually drinking this to get high instead of I was just like, man, this that is intense. But we started giving some away. We started selling some. And the bell curve on this was intense. I mean, we became a hand sanitizer company for about 90 days and then it was over. And we we I said, look, we got to cut this off because this is going to go away. Everybody's in panic mode right now, but it's going to end soon.

Did you do well in the 90 days? Very well. I would think that hand sanitizer was in high demand. Well, everybody was out. I mean, the big guys did not have the reserves. They were not expecting this. And again, it was that panic buying. So everybody was like, I got to get hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Or I'm going to die. Right. I got to be able to wipe my ass and wash my hands. And this is the only way to do it. Yeah.

So yeah, we did very good, but then we immediately shifted back to, okay. Did you shift back before the demand signal dropped? Were you kind of ahead of it?

Or were you like, oh wait, no one wants our hand sanitizer anymore. We were before, but we had made enough to where the residual like was going to carry on. But we're like, we cannot continue doing this. This is, this is not our business. Because you knew Johnson and Johnson and whoever else was going to get caught up and then you'd be screwed. Absolutely. And no one wants to buy a artisan hand sanitizer.

Hand sanitizer. Well, there's just no need for it, right? That was, you know, again, where I thought this is going to end and we do not want to be stuck with so much inventory that we can never give it away. And so then what happened after that? How long did it take before they were allowing you to open up the restaurant or the tasting room?

I mean, it was six months. We were shut down and we were trying to figure out ways we sold cocktails to go in pouches like the old high C pouch. Indiana went through just kind of a weird, sometimes then we could do it with masks. We had to create outside areas.

So we just, again, we were kind of taking what the defense gave us as far as like, okay, if we're allowed to do that, then we can do that. And if they haven't said we can't do it, then do it until they say we can't do it. So there was a little bit of that, but always trying to stay within the square lines of like, okay, this is no-go, this is go. And again, sometimes as we're changing on day-to-day basis, right? So the ROIs for that were changing, right?

Also trying to not become so distracted within that period of time to lose focus on what our core business was. Did you have to take on more capital or were you guys, did you guys get to a point where you're kind of profitable and you're making money and you don't need to bring in more? Well, we've always, our goal is, you know, grow, grow, grow. So, you know, we've raised capital several times over the last 10 years and

And we're very close to cash flow positive and getting to a spot where it's more sustainable. That's also what really has changed in the last few years is what a strategic would be looking for in a

artisan distillery to bolt on. You know, before COVID, it was growth at all costs, EBITDA be damned. We just care about your top line and that you've got enough barrels behind you that we can plug you into our system and take you from 50,000 cases to 200,000 immediately. Since then,

There's this perfect storm. So within, since COVID, several things have happened. RTDs have been introduced to the market. So they're ready to drink high noon,

Marijuana has basically become, it's legal in 25 states plus now. And they've got marijuana drinks now apparently. I just saw a Wall Street Journal article about that. It's going to be huge. It will be a billion dollar industry if it's not already. Absolutely.

So Gen Z, they don't drink, they don't drive, they don't screw, they don't do anything. That's my kids. My kids are like, cause I got older kids and they're Gen Z and what's after Gen Z? Gen A. Back to Gen A. But yeah, that's kind of like the, at least, yeah, that's kind of the new thing. They're,

not drinking. They're super healthy. They're like on the weekends, let's do ice bath saunas. And that's like how we get crazy. Like factory reset in the sauna. You know what I'm saying? It's, I mean, I'm, I'm kind of, and I'm not just talking about my kids, like all their friends. We're not all their friends, but many of their friends, the same way they want to be smarter. They want to be tougher. They want to be like in better shape. They want to be healthy. And so they ain't drinking bourbon. They don't even drink like freaking, uh, uh,

pasteurized milk. You know, if it's not raw milk, we're not putting it in our body. We want that raw milk. So, so yeah. Well, you know, different strokes for different folks. I think the, the other big thing that has happened is that I recently read about was online gambling has taken a huge chunk out of people's disposable incomes. And then the big one that is really going to be the biggest disruptor for alcohol is

are the weight loss drugs, Manjaro, Wagovi, Ozempic, that you put 70 million people that are diabetic on one of those, the reduction in drinking is going to go down. So right now we're going through this period. Is this because you can't drink when you take those drugs? Correct. At all? No.

I think you, again, I can tell you anecdotally that I know folks that, you know, they'd go out and they would have two or three old fashions before we'd go to dinner. Now that they're on that, they'll say things like, man, I can only do one of these. I want to have another one. But like my body is just saying, nope, you're done. Those drugs are out there, huh? Like a lot of people are taking those drugs. Yeah.

It's going to be, you extrapolate that over 70 million people that have, are diabetic in the U S there, there's going to be an impact on 70 million adults. Correct. Right. Cause kids aren't on Ozempic, right? Not yet. I freaking hope they're not. So get a treadmill for the children. So, yeah. So all of these things have happened in the past minus the, you know, the, the,

weight loss drugs, but all of the other things have happened just never at the same time. So right now there's just this inflection point of how consumers are drinking, what they're drinking. And it used to be that, you know, 30 years ago, a Budweiser guy was a Budweiser. So he'd have it at the ballpark, he'd have it on the lake, he'd have it out at dinner. Now,

That same guy might have a Budweiser at the baseball game, but he's going to have a bourbon at the campfire and a high noon out on the lake, right? Or eat a gummy or whatever, you know. So there's these – there's an experience component of what people are choosing to get their fix on at a particular time and place. And so that is also –

Just disrupting the industry because it's never had this optionality before of you can pick your poison based on, you know, whatever the time and place is. So I think there's going to be, you know, a new kind of hierarchy of, you know, what brands and what products continue to move off the shelf, right? There's going to be a thinning of the herd. Mm-hmm.

- And people are making non-alcoholic, there's like a beer company that doesn't even make alcoholic beer. - It's the fastest growing category in alcohol right now. - Yup, and my wife who doesn't drink, she drinks like, I don't even know what to call it. It's alcohol, it's non-alcoholic alcohol. Meaning, like my wife's a Brit, you know, that's part of that, drinking is part of the whole jam over there.

But she doesn't drink anymore. So, but you know, this is a girl that when she was 14 years old, had a gin and tonic at dinner with everybody, everyone else in the fam. Like that's what we're doing. And so now like she doesn't do that anymore, but she still wants to have something. And so she's got these weird creations in her house that come in really nice bottles. It kind of reminds me of what I'm looking at right here with your stuff.

So maybe you got to get into that. I want to use the word botanical, but I'm not 100% sure. No, you're right. I think that's right. Yeah. But yeah, it's just this trend is definitely here. And it's not something that popped up overnight either. It's not like, oh, this is a trend that's going to last for a little while, like the hula hoop. It seems like it's been a slow building of a trend where things are just growing and growing.

Yeah, I mean, there's certainly evidence to suggest that alcohol is not necessarily a healthy lifestyle choice, especially if you're abusing it, right? I think everybody's known that for a long time. I think the difference now is

It's that information plus lifestyle, right? So you're not just doing the one thing, but it's an incorporation into an overall plan of, you know, I'm going to exercise more. I'm going to drink less. I'm going to, you know, be mindful. Like, so there's this whole, it's a part of the puzzle, but it's also when you, people are looking at the whole puzzle more. And when that happens, you know, for us, it's,

How do we gain that consumer in that particular time and place to pull a Hotel Tango bottle instead of a Jim Beam bottle? That's our fight. And why do they? Taste better? Higher quality? What's the deal? Well, all. I would argue that our smaller batch, there's certainly a different profile. It is artisan.

It's not gonna be your standard everyday bourbon, whichever one that is. And I think that's what's fun about the art side of bourbon, right? There's nuances and little micro changes in each barrel that every barrel is individual. It's a different, you could have two barrels that were distilled the same day, put in the barrel the same day, age for the same amount of time, and when you pull it out, they're going to be different. There might be a little bit of difference, but there might be a lot of bit of difference.

There's so much impact that the wood and the charring have on it. And in some cases, where it's stored geographically, right, a barrel in Indiana might taste different than one that's been stored in Kentucky or even farther in Texas. You know, so there's so many little nuances that can happen within the artisan guys that aren't just that massive industrial, you know, kind of bourbon. And then with the flavored, I think it's really getting into that optionality again. And for

the experience of the time and place, right? So our Shmallow, it's a campfire whiskey. It's lower proof. It's sweeter. You can either drink it on ice. You can drink it in a hot toddy. And our Swiss Miss is certainly a seasonal thing that you can drink in your hot cocoa or hot coffee.

You can also drink it on its own and you can also put it in an old fashioned. So it's, it gives, it's utilitarian. Um, and it's not just your everyday kind of thing that you see all the time. I think that's what we're trying to give people is the optionality. If they're going to do it, might as well take it to a little bit of a unique spot. Right. You know, a little bit of fun, authentic. And again, you know, we've only released this for a few months out of the year. It's there. The Swiss Miss. Yes. Schmallow. Yes.

And by the way, I don't think we've said this yet. The name of the brand is Hotel Tango, which is named after you, Tango, T, and your wife, Hillary, Hotel. Yes. And that's how we got to Hotel Tango. And she comes first because she's smarter than you. Yes. Better looking. Yes. The whole nine yards. 100%. No denying that. Awesome, man. So where do we go from here? What's the next big move with Hotel Tango?

Well, you know, you'll continue to see us growing in stores. Really, you know, we're focused over the next couple of years of seeing how the market shifts and trends. You know, we're dealing with some, you know, international stuff with trade that impacts us.

by the big guys pulling back and, and, you know, kind of loading in the shelf with lower priced items. So flooding the market here, stateside. Yeah. You'll see a handle of Jim beam and Jack annuals for under 30 bucks sometime, you know, that that's going to be, we can't drop our price like that. So we have to, you know, aim small, miss small. Um,

And so I would say, you know, potentially another maybe springtime offering of the Shmala. We're playing around in our tasting room right now with some other fruit products. We might have a raspberry bourbon coming out in the next year or so. We'll see. The raspberry bourbon.

Right on, man. Well, does that get us up to speed? That's it. That's where we're at. Yeah. Look for it anywhere that fine spirits are sold. And yeah, order online. Come check us out. If you're ever passing through Indianapolis and you're a veteran, you know, hit me up online. I live five minutes away from the shop, so I love to host guys and gals and love to have a drink and tell some lies to each other.

And if you want to order online, it's hotel tango distillery.com. Yeah, that'll get you there. You've got a, you got Twitter, which is hotel tango Indy. And then on Facebook and Instagram, it's a hotel at hotel tango distillery. That's where people can check things out and see what you got going on. Awesome.

Echo Charles, you got any questions? Oh, here we go. The real interview starts with Echo Charles. Yeah, so the hand sanitizer, was that called Hotel Tango hand sanitizer? Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah. All right. Was it kind of artisan or was it just like, no, we're just going to provide? I mean, it was certainly artisan. I mean, it was pretty rudimentary when we were making it, but...

I mean, it was crazy. We sold everything. You know, we gave it to schools. We gave it to hospitals. Actually, the U.S. government bought a bunch of it, shipyards. Again, it was really, for us, it was the way to kind of keep the wheels moving for everybody else. That was kind of one of the sticking points that the government put out there that you got to have cleaning stations. You got to have, if you want to stay operational, you got to do the mask, whatever. And that was our, there was this kind of,

you know, World War II feeling when we were doing this because everybody was chipping in to just make it work. Like, it's not going to be perfect, guys. But, you know, if we all work together and lean in on it, we'll get this over the line and we'll help everything hopefully fix this faster so we're not shut down, but also allowing everybody else to continue working

Operating which was felt really good. I had a similar little scenario I got a clothing manufacturing company in America with all American made materials called origin origin USA and It's funny because one of my buddies Sarge he's you know like he's a seal a retired seal and he's kind of he does security work all over the world and he was doing security work over in Europe and

And he sent me a text like, "Bro, there's something going on over here. You should make masks." And this was pre anyone hearing about COVID.

And I was like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Yeah, there's this weird like disease over here and it's spreading and you should make masks." And I said, "Well, what kind of masks?" And he's like, "N95," because he's a medic, he's a corpsman. So he's like, "N95 masks, see if you can make them." And I go, "Cool." And I talked to my buddy Pete from Origin, who's my co-founder at Origin. I'm like, "Hey dude, my buddy's calling me from overseas saying we should make masks." And he's like, "Well, what are they? N95?" And he goes through the thing.

he's like, he calls me back the next day and he's like, Hey dude, like we'd have to tool up with like a plastic press. Like we, it was equipment we'd have to buy and eh, okay, pass. And then fast forward like a month now COVID's here and they're like, Hey,

putting cloth over your face and I'm like dude that sounds that doesn't sound like it's gonna help anything and Pete you know he's like hey should we make these things and I'm like dude how is putting a piece of cloth over your face like I don't I don't think that's a real thing and he's like yeah yeah cool and then the next I like that afternoon I went home and they had a press conference and someone from New York I think it was New York was saying

cloth face masks are mandatory. And it was a Friday and I called Pete. I'm like, yo, they're making these things mandatory. And he's like, I'm on it. And sure enough, over the weekend designed like a face, a cloth face mask, a cloth face mask. Like that's a thing designed it. And we started making it and we used, because by the way, we, we, that part of the company makes a jujitsu clothing.

And every jujitsu school in the country shut down. So we weren't selling any jujitsu clothing. All right, well, here we go. When we started making these masks and we ended up same exact thing where we had companies because I have another consulting company. And so a lot of those big companies that we work with, they're like, we heard you're making masks. We need them.

And I'm like, okay, how many you need? 28,000. All right, cool. We're on it. 42,000. You know, it's just like boom, boom, boom. And we were the only people that could supply them because a lot of the other companies that have different materials in their clothing, even if they're sewn in America, they didn't have the material. So they were screwed and we just delivered. So we did have a little bit of that.

World War II kind of get everyone on board. Same kind of feeling that you had. Yep. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. So, yep, when you got to have it, you figure it out. Yes, indeed. Anything else, Echo Charles? What's the Easter egg bottle? So some of those would be our tenure that we have put away. You know, single barrel stuff. Like, again, we'll have guys that will come over and do barrel picks. And...

There's no right or wrong answers. It's what that particular bottle shop guy will want. But it's a very, you know, it's different in his opinion, or my opinion, I guess, than all of the other bottles or barrels out there. So, I mean, within the bourbon world, you can think of it as like maybe the Blantons single barrel release, right? Blantons? Blantons. That's one of my favorites. Do you know Blantons? No, I do not.

It's owned by Sazerac. Do you know Sazerac? I do not. You know Fireball. Oh, Fireball. Yes, yes. Fireball. So they own both of those. And kind of the opposite end of the spectrum, right? Like Fireball is, you know, you shoot it. It's, you know, a lot of college kids drink it.

more of a party atmosphere. Blanton's, when you think of that, it is, you know, the old timey, like Colonel Sanders on the front porch, rocking chair, sipping on it and just really enjoying like the experience of a straight bourbon that's been aged for, you know, eight, 12, 15 years. Mm-hmm.

So it's like a special a dish kind of scenario. Yeah. If you find one, I mean, and that's crazy because people will get, they'll go in and they'll buy them off the shelf and they'll be selling it out in the parking lot and it will go like that. I mean, it's crazy, these collectors. It's just like drop culture. Yeah.

Maybe not the workflow, but kind of the result little bit, right? You know, they don't redo them. Like, is there like other runs in the future or is it just limited runs or is it just the one run? That's it. Once that barrel's gone, man, that's it. So it's kind of like a, you know, NIL thing. How many bottles do you get out of a barrel?

Depends on the age. So the older, you know, you lose between 5% and 8% of volume within a barrel every year. So their standard bourbon barrel is 53 gallons. So depending on how old, it will reduce by gallons, you know, over time. So anywhere between, I'll say, 100 bottles for a very old barrel to 240 bottles for a, you know,

four or five year old bourbon. - Jack. - So.

It's like a whole thing, man. Like a whole culture. Oh, dude, it is. Remember, I think what's doggy, what somebody was saying, how like some people, they don't even drink. They just collect the stuff. Wine, bourbon, all this other stuff. There's an aftermarket that's huge, you know, secondary, third, tertiary market that just guys will buy these bottles just to put them on their bar back and say, look what I've got. You know, it's kind of a status symbol. Yeah, kind of when you think about the whole...

that kind of rises with a lot of these things. Alcohol is one of them. It does get kind of weird and hard to keep up in a way, especially with the non-alcoholic alcohol. We already know non-alcoholic beverages. It starts from water all the way up to soft drinks. We always had that sense, literally sense people could drink water. Yeah.

And now they have non-alcoholic alcoholic beverages. It's kind of like this weird loop that we did just because of the culture. Yeah. 100%. I mean... We buy water for $3 a bottle, right? That's artisan water. Yeah, yeah. Get that. It's crazy how the circle kind of comes full after a few years. Yeah, the difference between the water and stuff, which is obviously half joking, is...

It completely, like not even 99%, 100% defeats the purpose. You know how you have like these cocktails, non-alcoholic cocktails, it defeats the whole purpose.

I think it's a mindset. So in our tasting room, we have it on our menu, these mocktails. And I think for some people, it's really about participating in the experience of the communal aspect without getting the buzz. Yeah, exactly right. And that's kind of the point. And there is a taste thing that I don't identify with it because I have the taste buds of like a freaking piece of wood. Like...

I'm just like, I can't tell. Nothing tastes like anything to me. I just don't like anything. But my wife, you know, who like she drank wine, she would tell like, oh, I like this bottle, not that bottle. And she's like that with food too, like with the sauce and with the thing. And so for her,

You know how much like, okay, I like chocolate milk, right? We might even say I'm a connoisseur of chocolate milk. I love chocolate milk, right? I've been drinking it my whole life. And when I get a really good chocolate milk, it's like, oh, I mix up. You know, we make chocolate protein. And I'll mix up a really good one with, you know, I just nail it. And it's the good temperature. And I'm kind of into it. But she does that with like.

normal everyday stuff. And so she buys this fake alcohol and I've tried it. To me it's literally disgusting by the way. I drink it and I'm like, this is gross. But she's excited to drink it. And she's getting no buzz obviously 'cause it's non-alcoholic.

but she likes the taste and the notes, right? The tones that are in there. She's into it. So you need to back off a little bit. You see what I'm saying? Because it's not just water. I'm not, I'm not stating any opinion on the matter. I'm just identifying, you know,

Kind of the characteristics. Yeah, because you're right about the experience. And that's kind of my whole point, where it's like, okay, you have alcohol that gives you an experience, right? Which usually is like a supplement to something. Maybe you went to, I don't know, fishing or something like this, right? And the alcohol gives us the enhanced experience, right? That's kind of how, like, kind of the one-to-one deal. Yep. Then afterwards, it's kind of like, wait a second. This alcohol combined with the fishing kind of gave us this almost like

Third experience in and of itself. See what I'm saying? And then the culture just builds and builds and builds. And now people are kind of giving, you know, subtracting one of the main ingredients of the original formula. But meanwhile, the culture is so robust that you can still kind of have the experience now. Yep. Absolutely. See what I'm saying? Yeah, it's weird. People want to participate. And the whole thing with tasting.

That's my theory. They say that females have more acute taste than males. This is why I think like tasting stuff in different like notes or whatever you say has to do with like your emotions. And that's why I think your palate is very unrefined. Oh, because I'm just an emotional robot over here. Yeah, you got one, two, three emotions and then that's sort of it. You're taking action after that. A lot of us like, bro, we kind of relish in certain emotions, even the negative ones, by the way.

so it's like boom we're going to taste different things see what i'm saying meanwhile you're ignoring those things yeah yeah unless they just don't get they don't get through they don't they don't even break squelch with me unless it's hot chocolate or chocolate milk or whatever see what i'm saying yeah so that's kind of like your little emotional uh weak spot right there your kryptonite oh yeah you didn't like that huh but it's true given my theory i i think you're right i think that there's certainly uh an aspect of that yes

Yeah, it's true. Right on. That's all I got. Good to meet you. Thanks, sir. Travis, any closing thoughts, bro? Just thank you very much for this opportunity. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the hang. Yeah, man. Thanks for joining us. And very cool to hear your story and hear some of these lessons learned. I mean, you had just had a, what a poignant experience.

Career in the Marine Corps and it just shows you what a great what a great organization the Marine Corps is So thanks for stepping up. Thanks for your service in the Marine Corps. Thanks for taking the fight to the enemy and Thanks for continuing to live a life that exemplifies the freedom that you fought for brother. Appreciate it Thank you very much. Appreciate that and with that Travis Barnes has left the building tensed few years in the Marine Corps and

Listen, by the way, this whole thing that you brought up, I was thinking about when I was talking to Travis and his wife Hillary before they left. This whole thing about I don't have a taste palate because I lack emotions. Yeah. Interesting concept that you have. I would say your emotions are very, what do you call it? Like they're...

They're not like the spectrum is more of a low resolution. So you got one emotion, you got two emotion, a third emotion, maybe, maybe a fourth that, that kind of runs in, you know, comes in onto the scene every once in a while. What are my three emotions? What are my three emotions? Like, I don't know. I want to say number one, I think, especially since I'm sitting here with you. Yeah. Happy. Disappointment. Okay. All right. We'll go with it. Well, you got, you got, you're happy, you're sad, you're mad and you're impatient. There you go. There's your, your whole deal. Hmm.

Yeah, you're right. I don't think I have any of those. Well, I'm not saying anything about your behavior. I'm just saying I've witnessed you feel these emotions at some point. I feel like I have witnessed it. How about that? I would like to see evidence. All right. Well, there you go. Hey, no, but awesome to have him on and hear that perspective. I'm telling you, those were three deployments that were heavy.

So, yeah, he's taking an edge off now. And listen, take your edge off a little bit. Some people want to drink some bourbon. We will support Hotel Tango bourbon distilled with discipline. But listen, maybe bourbon is not your thing. And even if you're going to drink bourbon, I recommend that you don't drink too much of it. Sometimes you got to have other drinks when you need those other drinks, which should be the majority of the time. I recommend you drink chocolate fuel. And listen, I have a light cup.

PSA scenario to report here. So if you are having trouble finding Jocko Fuel, there is probably the premier, like if there's something you want from Jocko Fuel and whoever you're normally getting it from, it's not there, whether that's one of the big online retailers, whether it's a store that you go to, if you go to jockofuel.com, it's stocked and we will be able to get you what you need. And if you order from jockofuel.com,

You're gonna get Jocko fuel because believe it or not. This is crazy You remember how you know, there's people that make fake Jocko t-shirts. Yeah, the knockoff. Yeah knockoff chocolate. Yes made in China, by the way Yeah, there are actually and this is this is like took me a little time to wrap my head around it. There's fake Jocko fuel out there in the world and so

They make it, they sell it at like a cheap price and it's junk. We're on it, like you can go after them and we go after them. But, you know, it's out there. So if you're buying straight from the source, if you're buying from jocofuel.com, you're going to get Jocofuel, which is good. Also, if you go to jocofuel.com, we have like deals that we run on there.

Sign up for the SMS. You'll find out there's, you know, there's some product that you drink a lot of or you use a lot. Get a little text message. Sign up for the SMS. You'll be like, oh, cool. We got the goodness right here. And by the way, here's another thing. Look, we've grown. And we used to ship everything from Maine. And sometimes it was rough. We didn't have, like, we're small. We didn't have a total, like, workforce in there. We had a few people there.

Getting it done, but it would take a while to get it done So and so sometimes shipping would take a little bit long But now we have like a logistics partner they ship everything from Texas if you order it It's getting shipped that day Maybe if you order in the afternoon is getting shipped the next day But it's getting shipped quick and you're gonna get it fast and another reason some sometimes people like to use like the big online retailers is because they have free shipping and

And if you want free shipping, if you spend 99 bucks, you'll get free shipping at jocofuel.com. So, cause we're trying to like help you, right? But shipping is expensive. So we can't just ship like one pack of creatine. You know what I mean? For free. So if you, but if you buy a little bit more, then you'll be good to go at jocofuel.com. And, and we got everything. We also bring some new products on there.

And we have like a whole loyalty, like reward program. Take care of the people, right? That's benefits. You can get loyalty points and you can use those points to get rewarded, get like free gifts, access to new products when they come out. So there's a bunch of reasons. And finally, the last thing I'll talk about is this subscription scenario. I know you like subscription scenarios. Yes, sir. So if you subscribe to whatever product that is you want,

there's some benefits um first of all like it's a reduced price so you're like 10 or 20 off depending on the product itself and it's going to show up so you're never going to run out of it have you ever run out of a product at jocofuel have you ever run out of something yeah creatine i just ran out oh look at you dude subscribe i need to subscribe subscribe and save and not to mention you'll get

some gifts. So like if you subscribe for two months, eventually two months of subscription, Jocko Fuel Shaker Cup coming your way. Fourth month of subscription will suddenly like another gift. And then six months of subscription, you get to choose like a gift. So we got all kinds of things that we try and help you out if you're going to jockofuel.com. So check out jockofuel.com. That's my recommendation if you want the goods. Now, listen,

Also, we do have our products in a bunch of different places as well. We just talked to Travis. They're up there and they shop at Meijer. And guess what? Guess what you can get at Meijer? Jocko Fuel. So Walmart, Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hanifers, Dash Stores, Wake, Fern, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas, Wegmans, Harris Teeter,

Publix down in the southeast, man, killing it. So everybody that shops those stores, thank you. We appreciate it. And then Shields, Lifetime Fitness, I think. I said that, but another place you can get it. And by the way, if you got like a gym, you can get this stuff into your gym. If you got Victory MMA and you want to sell, email jfsales at jockelfield.com. Make a little more money for your gym, right? You got a gym? You want to take care of your...

customers, your clients, get them healthier and make a little bit more money, cool. Email jfsales at jockefield.com. We'll get you hooked up. And there you go. And also, we have Origin USA where we make 100% American-made products here in America. The tariff that's been put on some of these countries overseas, not affecting us at all. Why is it not affecting us? Because we don't bring anything from overseas. The cotton is from America. The zippers...

It's all from America. 100% American made. Originusa.com. Jiu-Jitsu gear. Jeans. Boots. Hoodies. Sweatshirts. Hunt gear. We got it all. Workout gear. We got everything. So check out originusa.com. Get a bunch of American made gear and wear it with pride. It's true. Speaking of gear, more gear. Discipline.

Gear made with discipline and with discipline on the gears Anyway, chocolate store calm. So yeah, this link was freedom. Those you can represent Good the idea of good got a few good shirts. I need to put more designs just on the general store We need a revamp there, but anyway, I'm up here step up the game. Yeah, Kelly

But nonetheless, available now. Hats, some socks on there, some good stuff. Dude, you're going to give me some of those socks? Yes. I've been asking that for nine podcasts now. And I've got no socks. They're coming. They're in transit. And what about my shirts? Shirts, same deal. In transit? To my house? Well, let's say the wheels are turning as far as the process goes. My confidence level with you is so low.

This is literally so long. Don't worry. I will guarantee, personal guarantee, that you will have your socks and shirts. Timeline? I will. You know, within the next... How about this? By the time we see each other again. So one week? Maybe one week. Okay. One week I will have socks. You will be not... And the shirts I requested. You will not be... The shirts I requested, by the way, are the...

The Sherlocker shirt with a cool looking skull on it and a Def Cor flag on its engraved in its head. All hand drawn, by the way. Yeah. Looks sick. Comfort is a curse. Comfort is a curse written with runic Viking writing. Dude, it looks sick. Thank you. Yes. Good shirt. I agree. Did you design that? Good design. Did you design it? Yes, sir. I did. You just said hand drawn. So you drew that.

Yeah, well, on the computer, I didn't draw it with you. So yeah, yeah, all good. Dude, you are being real dodgy about that question. Did you draw that shirt? Well, because you're asking me a technical question. I didn't write the runes. Okay. That's like a thing. And then I use Illustrator. And then, yeah, then I got to use... It's a whole process. See what I'm saying? Hand-drawn to me lands on something that I took my hand and a pen...

and drew out the whole thing 100%. But you didn't do that? No. Okay, so it's not hand-drawn. Part of it is hand-drawn. How about that? You want these shirts? You don't want these shirts. I've been guaranteed that. You're behaving like you don't want these shirts. Anyway, there's a lot of other designs on there. You mentioned the shirt locker, which is a subscription scenario, which, yes, we do like.

you get a new design every month on your shirt it's a good one check it out so it's called the shirt locker it's all on choco store.com right now and also check out primalbeef.com coloradocraftbeef.com subscribe to the podcast check out jocko underground we got a youtube channel jocko fuel has a youtube channel origin usa has a youtube channel check all those out we got books check out modern submission grappling by miha

A bunch of good information there. And by the way, it also has like a computer, an online course you can take. And it's really good for the context that you need for your jiu-jitsu. I train with Miha quite a bit. He's probably my most frequent training partner, individual. You know, because of course you're training with other people. But I train a lot with Miha. Yeah.

So good skills. Yeah. He's good too, because there's, there's all different types of jujitsu people. Like, and I'm, then I say that super broadly for, for reason, because there's a guy who's like, he's super athletic. He has some knowledge or whatever, but he's a competitor. So it's like, that's his thing. He's more like a, his capability is super high. Mm.

But it's like you could ask him maybe hypothetically like, oh, could you explain how you did that? He'd be like, hmm, he'd have a hard time explaining it because he just sort of does it. He's like, just take the leg and pull it over there. Exactly right. And then there's guys who over-index on the, not over-index, but they index hardcore on just the teaching. Just the knowledge. But,

you know, when you roll with them, it's kind of like, wait, you seem to know that in theory, but you're not pulling it off in higher level rounds, you know? So what me has a good, like balance with that, that, uh, that cerebral part of it. Like he can break it down really good. Like he's really good at doing it and he's good at teaching it. So it's, it's appropriate that he has this kind of system. Yeah. So check out his book, modern submission grappling. Also, I've written a bunch of books.

I've written a bunch of kids books. Weigh the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, four, and five. We had a movie coming. We got Mikey and the Dragons. We got Extreme Ownership. Not really a kid's book, but kids read it. Dichotomy of Leadership. We got Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Hey, I've written a bunch of books. Check them out. Also, I have a leadership consulting company, Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. We help out so many different organizations, so many different companies, so many different businesses, so many different teams, so many different departments.

If you have issues inside your team, inside your company, inside your organization, they are leadership issues. And therefore, they can be solved through leadership. So if you need help, go to echelonfront.com and we will help you. Also, we have some live events that you can go to. We've got the muster. We've got FTXs. We've got the council. We've got battlefield. Next council is June 26th through the 29th. I think we sold one out. We got one left. So if you want to come to that, register ASAP.com.

And then finally, we have the Extreme Ownership Academy where you can learn leadership skills for every aspect of your life. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com for that. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an incredible organization. She helps out so many of our veterans.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org. Also, check out heroesandhorses.org. Also, check out Jimmy May's organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with Travis and Hotel Tango Distilleries on the interwebs, go to hoteltangodistillery.com.

Check out the social media at, this is on Twitter, Twitter X at Hotel Tango, N-D-I-N-D-Y. And then Facebook and Instagram is Hotel Tango Distillery. And if you want to connect with us, you can check out Jocko.com for me. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful when you go in there because there's a time thief in there called the algorithm and it's going to win if you're not careful.

Thanks once again to Travis Barnes for joining us. Thanks for your service and for continuing to lead. And thanks to all our personnel in the armed services. And today, a reverent semper fi to the recon Marines of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion and everything that you have done and sacrificed for corn country. 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 your sacrifice that you make to protect us all here at home. And everyone else out there, let's just follow the lead of those recon Marines. Exceed beyond all limitations. Sacrifice personal comfort. Conquer all obstacles. Never surrender. Never give up. Never quit. And be the professional for all others to emulate. And that's all we've got for tonight.

Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.