487: What We All Can Learn From Being a "New Guy". With Bobby Holland.
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this is jocko podcast number 487 with echo charles and me jocko willing good evening echo good evening so i got asked a question the other day what can i do to be a good new guy in a platoon and and this is a pretty common question because when you show up at a seal team you you want to be a good guy but as i thought about answering that question being a good new guy in a seal platoon is actually the same as being a good

human being, right? And listen, being a good new guy in a SEAL platoon, there's some things, right? You gotta have weapons proficiency, you know, you wanna be a good shot, you gotta have tactical knowledge, you gotta learn how to utilize terrain, you gotta know your demo. Like there's some skills that you need. But beyond those skills of the job, to be a good SEAL, to be a good frogman, you gotta have more than just the skills.

And so as I thought about the things that I was told when I was a new guy, because you're going to get guidance. What's that thing they say now? Unrequested guidance? Unsolicited advice? You're going to get some of that. But I'll tell you what, some of that stuff that I got told and that young new guys get told and that then I told and other older guys told the new guys, it's stuff that can be

Very powerful if you take it to heart and you carry it through and some of those things carry through My entire life and so I wanted as I started thinking about some of those things I wanted to do a little podcast about things that land on you as a new guy that You can carry through your whole career. And so I actually reached out to Bobby Holland lead Bob and

who was a retired he's a retired seal he's a member of the e5 mafia and task unit bruiser went on to be a platoon lpo a platoon chief eventually became a warrant officer retired after 21 years in the teams he was on podcast 416 originally and if you want to hear his backstory then go listen to podcast 416. he's now the the founder and the ceo of hooli golf making

what badass apparel for badass people that's it hooligolf.com yeah that's what that's what uh lead bob is doing now but like me um he once was a new guy and then he raised new guys and so bob we're gonna talk about some of that then come back yeah man thank you for having me back and i look forward to have this kind of conversation man it's uh you know something especially with where i'm at now it's very much in my headspace because i'm basically a new guy all over again

How long ago did you retire? Summer of 21. It's been a couple of years. And it really is the new guy, some of the new guy mantras that if you keep those in your head, it will make everything better. It really will. They're fundamentals that last a lifetime. Yeah. And you sometimes don't realize until you're thrust back right into that mode. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, look, there's principles of combat leadership that we talk about all the time. Cover move, simple, prioritize, execute, decentralized command. The things that you've heard me say a million times, discipline equals freedom. The attitude of extreme ownership. Those are clearly things that are fundamental to everything that I've done. And those are the things that I passed on. But there's like...

some brass tacks things that you hear when you're a new guy that stick with you. Now, I gotta tell you the story about me being a new guy. I was with a couple other new guys. We were checking into SEAL Team One and we had to go see the Master Chief. And we walked into the Master Chief's office

The command master chief and we were we were actually standing at attention outside of his office and he called us and he's a kid in here And so we go in we're standing in tension in front of his desk And he points at each one of us one at a time and he goes fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you And I was like, okay And he said everyone here has made it through training. No one gives a shit that you made it It doesn't mean shit you have to earn your trying in here and you have to earn your reputation Get the fuck out of here and we were like, okay so

That's that's my first day at SEAL Team one from the command master chief and What a way to take look when you're coming out of buds You know, you've been told that this is the most difficult training in the US military and you made it and they put a big American flag up behind you and you you know you we didn't get our tridents but you graduated buds man, so you're feeling good and

and you might be feeling a little bit cocky well master chief took that right out of us so we had that happen and then a couple days later we had all the new guys that had now checked in maybe it was a few weeks later but you know guys were on leave or whatever i think do we go to jump school yeah we'd already go so we went to jump school so we had gone to jump school in fort benning georgia and then traveled back across the country guys are showing up in ones twos and threes or whatever so finally we get all the new guys we all get assembled

And we get our various indoctrination briefs from whoever, but the mass chief comes in again and he says, keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, don't be late, don't forget any gear. And he left. That's all he said. Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, don't be late, don't forget any gear. So...

Cool. Again, his first statement, keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open. What a, it's so, it's like, you know, you hear that all the time, right? Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open. What he's saying is be humble and listen. And to this day, listen, listen, listen, listen is so important. And you think when you're in a leadership position, that's the time you run your mouth. Nope. It's actually time you listen more. So keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, be humble. The

Was always very paranoid about being late. I would not be late I would rather be five hours early than 30 seconds late for something The only waiver I gave myself on that was when I was going to college I was going to college with another team guy University of San Diego and the parking was so difficult to get but you might get lucky and get a parking spot or you'd have to get there two hours early and

And so we shook hands and made a deal. Because he was a squared away guy too. And we were like, okay, listen, I'll be here around 10. It might be 10.08. It might be 10.04. And he's like, I get it. So occasionally you give a waiver like that. But I think if you're late, it's just such a reflection of...

Kind of of everything. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's kind of a betrayal to the team. You know, it just signals that you straight up betrayal. Bobby's going hot, dude. Betrayal. Aren't prioritizing your life accordingly. Yeah. If you can't show up on time, like, can we count on you? That's a problem. Maybe. You know, I got that thing where I say, if you can't control your temper, right? How can you control anything? Well, if you can't show up on time, how can you execute a mission? Yeah.

Well, there was traffic. Well, didn't you plan for that, bro? We all had traffic or whatever the case may be. It's kind of a, it's kind of a sign of bad judgment. It's kind of a sign of a, a lack of understanding of the way the world works. Yeah. Or it just may signal that you don't give a shit. As a new guy, you're not, that's not really a good signal you want to put out to the team. Yeah. Well, remember Tony used to say everything takes a half an hour. I know. And I was thinking this morning, we both showed up 15 minutes early. So I think, you know, uh,

Tony is the 30 minute standard and everyone else probably 15 minutes. Yeah. Unless it's something really, really important. Like you said, I mean, there's, there's certain things that you just can't be late on that. You can wait around two hours. Um,

Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's also something in the Navy, which is pretty important. It's missing movement, which is like a ship leaves and you're not on it. And if that happens, bro, you're in big trouble. Maybe 30 minutes early for that. Yeah. You want to be 30 minutes early for, you don't want to miss movement at all. So that's a really important. And then the third thing was don't forget any gear, which again, um,

If you're forgetting gear, it's kind of a reflection of just sort of you right like you had You forgot this thing The other thing I think is important about that is you can't go back in time and get that thing like when you don't have something It's it's too late

Missing one piece of gear is can really Disrupt an operation depending on what's missing. I had actually gift remember gift was on the podcast. Yes Well, he was we were both new guys together. We were both radio man. Oh and one time he forgot something he forgot I forget if he forgot a antenna or an antenna base or something that was very critical to making communications

And he came to me afterwards and forgive me for blasting you right now. But he came to me, the credit to him was he came to me. It was like, bro, I forgot this thing. And, and I don't remember, maybe he had a secondary and he was like, Hey, I forgot one, but thank God I had a second. Or maybe he just didn't make comms. But either way it was like, cause gift was squared away for, so for him to forget something, it made me even more hyper paranoid about everything.

making sure I had my gear. So, you know, a lot of people see the sexy stuff that we do and, you know, highly choreographed, whatever. A lot of people don't see the behind the scenes and the very simple things we do that seem like redundant and kind of ridiculous. But one of the things Tony and I used to do, so on that Ramadi deployment, every single time before we went out on an op, every single op, we went out, we looked at each other and we went,

Helmet, nods, primary, secondary. We went through our whole load out there. Because, yeah, you can't be stepping out the door missing something critical, whether that's for, you know, for the team effort or for you to fight as an individual. So it seems really, really basic. But, yeah, you got to kind of make sure you have all your stuff and, you know,

Two is one, one is none. Have some redundancy there. I'm not rolling out on an op with one battery that's in my knots. Or laser or whatever. - And one thing that I did that was cool is I would have all my gear staged on a cot. So when the cot was empty, I had my gear. That was sort of like the preliminary check. Now, actually this happened on my deployment, my first deployment to Iraq.

I was out on this op and we were rushed to leave. I think it was a TST, whatever excuse you want to throw at it. But as we're out there, I'm like, oh, all of a sudden I felt my back pocket. So on your cami pants, the old cami pants, there was a back pocket that had a button on it. So you could like seal the thing. And that's where I would keep my blood chit.

And I had like $200 cash in there and I had my military ID, I had one of those little plastic see-through things. And I'm out there and I'm like, "Dude, I don't have that with me right now." And I was so pissed at myself and I was like, "How did I do this?" And it was mind-boggling to me. And luckily, that's stuff that you only need in a really extreme situation. Luckily we came back. But what had happened was my back pocket had folded up when I put my pants on and it was actually just tucked up under my waist so I had it.

But it was one of those things where I got away with, it gave me the guilty feeling that I had screwed up and I became even more paranoid. So yeah. I used to have nightmares, like no shit. I remember being a platoon chief because the last thing you want to be is the, you know, decked up platoon chief who's forgetting his stuff. So I would have this recurring dream to where like, I forgot my gun and I'm on a mission. You know, the guys are looking at me and I'm just like, oh, no.

13:00 CH: That's the nightmare. That's the true nightmare. So that was kinda like... We'll get into more of mine, but those are some of the... Those are the first things that I remember

when I got to the team was fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. And then keep your mouth shut. Keep your ears open. Don't be late. Don't forget any gear. And those things right there clued me in from the whole career to this day. Don't be late. Don't be forgetting any gear. Keep your mouth shut. Keep your ears open. Those are those that is outstanding advice for a new guy in a seal platoon. And it's outstanding advice for any human being out there.

And I still check my gear. I'm still, I'm a little bit too paranoid. You know what I mean? A little bit too paranoid. Echo, you seem to be nodding enthusiastically at that. - I know what you mean. - Check. All right, so let's get into some of your stuff. What do you got?

Look for work. Okay. That's a good one. Yeah. This originates for folks listening, and this is a kill house term. At least it was when we were coming up. I'm not sure if it still is. But essentially what that means from the team guy parlance is –

you do your primary scan, secondary scan, and then you're looking around with your eyeballs, looking for work. So you're looking for people that need help. You know, you may have someone who's dealing with an unknown, wrestling an unknown, they're dropping something else that you're gonna have to draw down on. So you're looking for work. And, you know, obviously that beyond the kill house, that just applies to all sorts of things in life, you know, business, just everything, just being a part of a team, you know,

do your job, look around. If you're committed to the team and the mission, you know, put them above yourself. And yeah, that's honed in. I mean, man, in Bud's, you know, it's just, it's hammered everything we do, every evolution that we have. There's a post-op to be done, you know,

There's work that needs to be done. We got to clean the boats. We got to clean this. And it's very easy if you're looking very narrow focus, like, oh, I'm good. My gear's good. I'm going to go turn in. Oh, wow.

Yeah, that's bad. Yeah. Yeah, very bad. So that's bad. You know, there's a little bit of decentralized command. This is sort of the new guy version of decentralized command. Like, hey, dude, step up and look for work. Oh, you get into a perimeter and you're carrying a 60. Don't wait for someone to tell you what to do. Go find a little bit of high ground or find that little knoll, find that piece of cover and set up your position. And the reason this comes out is because

And it usually is directed at new guys in the beginning because you're coming out of buds, you're in a platoon, you're so used to being told what to do.

but that is not a good seal. A good seal is not a robot that has to be directed on what to do. A good seal looks for work and goes and executes on it. That's what a good frog man is gonna do. And so that's why you'd hear like guys up in the rafters in the kill house going, "Hey, look for work, look for work." And you see a guy that's a, he's just standing there with his gun at the low ready, not doing anything.

Well, like you said, there's a security threat that needs to be picked up. There's a hallway that needs to be held. There's a person that needs to get cuffed. There's all these other things that are happening and you have to look for work. And the extreme example is like, you don't want to be the guy with your hands in your pockets as freaking a pallet is being unloaded. Like you don't want to be that guy. You want to be freaking working and there's always work to be done. So it's a good one. Yeah. And you know,

In the teams, if you're not that guy, you are going to suffer. Like, you're not going to get away with that, and that can find its way in many forms. But, you know, I was also thinking about the base principle of that. It's, I mean, helping your teammate. And, you know, one story I didn't get to tell last time I was on, which I think this applies to just being a really solid teammate, is a time when Leif helped me out when –

I was going down and I mean that like in the literal sense. Um, but you know, looking, looking for your teammates when they're struggling, trying to find ways to help them out in this. Oh, this heat exhaustion. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. So in this particular case, uh, we were doing, uh, we'd done a series of, um,

of just patrols coming from the PTF house. So it's like multi-day operation. We're just exhausted and smoked. And anyways, I was a pig gunner on this one operation and we were like sprinting in the streets and we're doing bounding. When you're the rear of the patrol, like you are moving.

So I'm doing these sprints, you know, wearing, you know, 60 pounds of gear and it's 120 out. And, you know, these are all my excuses, by the way. But I'm super smoked. I have, you know, just excreted every bit of sweat that I have. And we get to, we end up bouncing into a house, take that down, you know,

just uh i don't even know the purpose honestly but uh our terp one of the terps that we had with was starting to go down and he reached out to me he's like hey bob uh i'm not doing so hot and uh i took some water threw it over his neck i'm like you're good and then no sooner did that happen that i was like wonk wonk wonk and this is the first time i've ever had like any sort of uh

heat issue at all through all the training, three platoons of training, buds, nothing coming up, summer football. I saw the world starting to close down. And I don't know if I went over to Leif or if he saw me just in a bad place, but I told him, I was like, man, I'm about to go down. This is happening. I think we were still a click out from the BTF house. And he made the call. He's like, give me your gun.

and we swapped guns. So as emasculating as that was, as a frogman, I gave him my pig, my AW. He carried that damn thing, got us home, and...

I stumbled in, made it in and then kind of like totally collapsed once we got there. So I mean, you know, obviously not one of my finer moments, but that's what you got to do to win sometimes is you got to help out your teammates, especially when they're really, really struggling. And yeah, I think Johnny Kim hooked me up with like, you know, eight bags of fluid. - I was about to say. - After that, as I was in a full body cramp, you know, for 12 hours.

Yeah. So that's a good one. Good one to start with. Look for work. What do you got next? I think maybe you kind of hit on this a little bit, but be teachable. Be eager to learn and, you know, have a notepad in hand. So those all go hand-in-hand there. And, you know, it

Goes into being humble, show up humble, ready to learn and, you know, show up prepared too. It doesn't mean you're showing up to training. I'm going to get everything I need there. It means doing some of the work, doing the homework prior. That may mean...

So one thing as it applies to new guys is, particularly when I was in a leadership position, LPO and chief later, is we did a lot of pre-work with our new guys before starting unit level training. So rather than take these guys fresh out of SQT,

straight to the kill house and let them, you know, drink through a fire hose. Like what I did going through training is let's go through the basics. Let's talk through in a, you know, much calmer environment, you know, learning environment when we can reach them, get them acclimated. And people don't learn well when they're freaking totally freaked out.

Yeah. And that's part of it. I mean, a lot of our training, the merit is, you know, stressing us out the pressure and working under that pressure. But in terms of learning some of the fundamentals, it's not a great way to start. So, yeah, we would build those fundamentals and they would show up ready to learn. And that always propelled us to a higher level of performance, you know, as a unit. Yeah, that's a huge one. The notebook thing.

is like such a trick up, down and across the chain of command. You know, I'd have my little a wheel book and if like my boss tells me to do something and I break out my notebook and I'm like, Hey, let me just make sure I got this. That is such a good sign. When one of my subordinates goes, Hey, you know, Hey boss, what's going on with this? And I pull up my notebook and say, hold on, let me, let me just make sure I understand what you're saying.

it is such a good sign. And I'll tell you, I didn't initially do it because it's like, it would make the person think I'm paying attention. I initially did it because when, if I don't, you get so much information during a day, people are constantly telling you things. If you, if I didn't write it down, it would, I'd lose it. So initially it's like, oh, let me pull out my notebook so I can write down what you're saying to make sure I'm tracking it. And so I think that's

Not only a good thing to do but it also the image it projects is like hey, I'm paying attention Yeah, but the same thing when I was running trade at and we would have guys coming through and it was weird You you'd never know what you're gonna get right? I might have some guy that have has a ton of experience And thinks he's the best person in the world and comes in like you can't teach me anything and it and they're they do terrible and

They just would do terrible. As a matter of fact, there's an officer that's portrayed in the movie Warfare who is the guy that comes in and the officer that was on site kind of got rocked and he was a little bit messed up. And so he goes, he tells the officer that shows up, hey, you got this. And that officer's like, cool. And he just starts running stuff. And that guy came through. After that had happened and after the rest of that whole deployment,

that individual officer came through training with me to prepare his platoon. He was then a platoon commander, because he was an assistant platoon commander. He became a platoon commander. And that guy was, even though he'd been through all that, performed well, had a great reputation for doing all that, when he showed up, he was like, exactly, notebook in hand, like, hey, sir, what'd you think of that? What could I do better? Just a totally humble attitude. And because of that humble attitude, guess what? He did great, his platoon did great.

Now I would have other guys that would have either less experience, more experience, but they didn't think they could learn anything. They thought they knew everything. And it was such a bummer, man. I'd be like, well, hey, man, I know that might have worked or I know you might have been through this before, but, and it was just like, well, I've always done it this way or whatever. And it was just so painful to try and get through that. And the bottom line is people that were teachable and eager to learn would perform outstanding. And people that were unteachable and didn't want to learn

would do freaking terrible. And so no matter where you are, no matter how much experience you think you have, no matter how many times you've done the thing, just freaking be teachable and be eager to learn. And it's going to have such a huge impact.

Yeah, man. And, you know, stay curious, right? Like the best performers are intensely curious and they're trying to get better each and every day. So you're only going to do that if you show up humble, ready to learn and think that you don't know it all, you know? How much have you learned in a startup scenario with, with hooligolf.com?

How much time do we have? Man, I tell you what, when I started out this, and when you first came to me, we were having this conversation about what we're going to talk about here. I was like, man, I'm living the new guy life. So I've had to, since leaving the military, I went to business school and I was a new guy there. You know, I'm showing up one of the rare people that don't have any business background. So I have no disciplinary experience in anything.

Right? So I'm doing all this stuff. I'm showing up with a notepad. Other than blowing shit up and machine gunning people. Yeah.

How does my experience as a breacher work in the boardroom here? But yeah, so I mean, I had to do all these things. I had to ask for help. You know, they give you all these modules to teach yourself advanced math and like pre-calculus stuff, like all this. It's like overboard stuff. But yeah, I dug into all that and it just continued. It's like in months, you know, we had our sights on Hooli.

okay, how do I do the job of a CEO? How do I do the job? How do we launch this thing? How do we market it? Suddenly I'm a sales guy. I'm cutting videos. I'm doing design shit. I'm doing accounting. It's like you're wearing all these damn hats and no one's hand-holding you to do this. So it's either...

you know, you have the cash if you're fortunate enough as a startup to have the cash, you can hire all this talent and you can handle those things. That's great. But if not, you're going to have to figure it out. And yeah, but for everyone else, for everyone else, get on that YouTube, start checking out tutorials, you know, reach within your network and get smart. And yeah, man, I've been doing that. And you know, that

That's, you know, worked out really well. To this point, each day I just tried to get a little bit better, tried to get Hooli, you know, just in a little bit better footing, more efficient, try to learn from our customers and all that. And yeah, you know, and also it's the same methodology. This shit just, it translates to life and how I've applied myself to golf in general. So golf is insanely hard and yeah,

You got to be eager to learn. You got to dig in there. You got to figure out there's, you know, just a lot of parts of the golf swing that take a lot of time to work through. A lot of YouTube videos, a lot of instruction, a lot of nerding out. But, you know, if you want to get better at anything in life, golf business, being a good team guy, you got to be eager to learn and you got to put in the work, man. All right. So be teachable, be eager to learn. What's next? The hard way is usually the right way. Mm hmm.

And closely related is do it right or do it again. Yeah. There's always that temptation, right? There's always a shortcut that you think you're going to get away with. It's always there. Luckily, you know, you got BTF Tony.

The BTF Tony is not doing it the easy way. No. The shortcut. He's what comes to my mind immediately whenever I saw that. I was like, oh, that's Tony. I mean, the things that he instilled, man, I remember doing planning stuff for training and operations and just watching him plan and talk about infill and everything.

you know, his thing was always, we got to do the hardest, the hardest way and is generally the best because generally the enemy is not expecting you to come through that shitty muddy bog. So, you know, yeah, that sucks, but tactically it's putting in much better footing. Yeah.

I've, uh, where I, I guess I learned this, not, not necessarily the hard way, but doing the right thing at the right time. And I was working, we, we were doing hydrographic reconnaissance for the Marine Corps. I was in an ARG platoon off the coast of Southern California. We went out in the middle of the night and did like the five hour freaking hydrographic reconnaissance in a big sea state. It was a total nightmare. Um, we, we,

Get all of our soundings. We do the freaking stuff. We gather our slates back up. We drive back out to the big ship. The cartographer, which is the guy that makes the charts, Echo Charles, the two cartographers take all the information. They build the little map or the little chart.

Turn it over to the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps then comes. We go back in the water, go back in the boats, back in the water. We go on the beach. We call in the Marines. The Marines come in. It's now been, you know, 48 hours of being awake and freaking being freezing cold and swimming and all this shit. And the Marines come in and they land and they get on the shore and

And the colonel in charge of the Marines is like, that was not good. We're doing it again. Go back to the boat. So all the Marines turn around, they go back to the boats. We go back to the boats. We get on the boats. They're like, hey, the Marines did not like the landing. They want to do it again. They want to do the whole thing again, starting with your hydrographic reconnaissance. We're like, okay. So we all freaking load the boats again, get our wetsuits on, drive over the horizon with our little boats, you know, three-hour transit, whatever.

Get our boat pool set up. And we're getting ready to get in the water to do a hydrographic reconnaissance that we had just done like whatever, 36 hours before. So it's not like the beach had changed. And we're all freezing. And we're all tired. And it's still a big, giant, crappy sea state. And we're in our boat pool. And we're about to get in the water. And someone says to our platoon commander, who was a prior enlisted freaking stud, he

And one of the best guys ever, someone goes, are we going to do this thing again? And thank God it wasn't me. But someone said, are we going to do this thing again? And our OIC said, well, we don't have to, but would that be the right thing to do? And it was all quiet, just like that. And we said,

getting in the water, swimmer in. And, and it's so true. Like, you know, just, you gotta do the right thing. And no Marines never would have known the big Navy would never would have known. We could have turned in the same chart that we had made the night before, but it would not have been the right thing to do. And, and,

And that is like the true frog man is not looking to cut those corners. And the only reason we didn't want to go, it's like cold, wet, tired, right? Like that's where you go through buds because cold, wet and tired is just part of life. And that's how you do your job. So shut up and get in the water. Yeah. Sometimes you got those demons though that are chirping at you, right? Maybe we can, maybe we can just skip this one.

It's always that little that little weakness is in there and especially from a leadership perspective It's like yeah, you better do the right thing. You better do it the hard way the hard way is usually the right Hey, not always It's not like you do something hard just because it's hard if there's a better way to do there's a smarter way cool We're all about that. But if it's the right thing to do do the right thing Good one. All right, what next don't make the same mistake twice Yeah, yeah, that's so uh

There's a lot of, I almost say a lot. I mean, you're expected to make mistakes as a new guy. And obviously we're going to make mistakes throughout our lives and careers and all that. But there's a way to handle these mistakes. And it's very important, particularly in the teams as a new guy. And you got to own it. You got to own the shit out of it. Because if there's any resistance...

You know, and it's clear that you're not taking ownership. You're not learning your lesson. You're going to suffer. And I mean, again, this applies to everything else. It's just, you know, you guys talk about ownership all the time. And that's what this is. It's owning up to your mistakes. And then...

Most importantly, you know, the debrief. What did I do wrong? How do I avoid it again? And then, you know, doing the remediation or whatever that is to make sure it never happens again. The escalation between your first mistake and your second mistake of the same thing in the teams is a lot. Like you make a mistake. It's like, hey, dude, here's what you did wrong. Like, make sure you don't do that again. And like you said, it's kind of expected.

If you make that same mistake again, it escalates quickly because now you're just being dumb I was on a trip back in the day and We were I was in training cell with a couple other guys and we were like advan to a certain area and there was it was an area where there was Bars and clubs and nightlife as they say echo Charles. Yeah, so You know while I was a young single team guy and was with some of the boys and

And there was a Master Chief, a Vietnam Master Chief that worked in this particular area. And he was, you know, like a Vietnam Master Chief. And so we go out and one of the guys got into like a fight, you know, and he kind of like scraped up his knuckles. And the next day we're at work and, you know, it's not a huge town. So, you know, word travels around. And, you know, of course, the SEAL Master Chiefs kind of kind of know some of the law enforcement or whatever. But

Anyways, we show up to work the next day and this buddy of mine has like, you know, scratched bruised knuckles, right? From cracking somebody. And the master chief's like, hey, he's like one of those master chiefs. He's like, hey, what happened to your hand? And the dude's like, oh, I think I fell down the stairs or something stupid like that. And the master chief looked at him and goes,

i've been in that team for 28 years what happened your hand and he's like i punched someone in the face it's like totally good to go like just tell the truth own it yeah or your things are going to get worse because of course you know he knows police like it's all going to they're going to get you like it's going to you just don't you can't cover things up own it you make a mistake don't make it again and carry on yeah uh you know one thing that comes to mind um

It's easier to make mistakes as new guys because you're expected to make certain amounts of mistakes. It's harder when you're a more experienced guy, even a leader, to make a mistake. And how you handle that is even more important. I had a case where I'm just going to be diming myself out today.

Just repenting on some of my team guy mistakes. But I was on my fourth platoon, so this was after Ramadi. I went to a training command. I was perhaps a smidge rusty coming back, and we were doing a jump.

- Oh, you were a smidge rusty on jumping. Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, when you're at a training command, you're sucked into, I was at Bud's, so I was doing very basic training there. And we had done some qual jumps or whatnot, but anyways, we were doing this jump, normal kind of profile. I was a little bit rusty.

And they had me, normally being a bigger, heavier guy, you're at the back of the train jumping out, 'cause you fall faster than everyone else. For whatever reason, they put me out front. And anyways, they're giving the signals, and one of the signals, which is the standby signal, is a thumbs up. So they hit the bottom of the floor with a thumbs up,

I was like, fuck yeah, let's roll. And basically just jumped out 15 seconds early and the entire train jumped out. So we were hovering probably over Mexico a little bit. But after that, I didn't even realize what I'd done. When we jumped out, I was like, damn, we're kind of far from the DZ. We all made it back. And then the guys were polite enough to let me know, hey, why'd you jump on standby? Yeah.

And then Stand By Bob was born. So there's been many Bobs, but for a while I was Stand By Bob. And you got to take it on the chin, man. You know, you got to own it up. And especially if you're in a leadership position, you know, it sucks sometimes to take that, but you got to just take it, man. Yeah. There's a very decent chance if you do something like that, you're going to end up with a modified or new nickname. Yeah.

But if you fight it, the nickname lasts forever. Oh yeah. If you fight it, it's going to stick even more. But no one knows me as Stand By Bob anymore, except for a select few. Maybe now a couple more. I'll get a couple more. But yeah.

There was a video of it wasn't me. It was in my platoon. I wasn't free fall qualified, but it was in, this is my first platoon. And like, there was a whole debate on the ramp of a guy saying like, go, no, no, no, go, no, no, go. It was like, it was all in video. It was just comical. So that's why we rehearse, you know, that's why we rehearse. Well, you know, I mean, this goes to, we're talking about humility and, and,

you know, the longer you're in, the more likelihood you are to get complacent. And, you know, I've had a couple periods in my career where I got a little complacent. And complacency kills, and that's why, yeah, you got to fight it at all costs. There's another, we'll throw this in the mistake category here, but I watched Warfare this last week. Fantastic movie, man. Yeah. Watched the episode with Joe and L.A. Man and really powerful stuff. But

when I was watching that movie, I've seen so many of the sights and sounds and feels that I was familiar with. It was blowing my mind. But there was one scene in particular that is like, holy shit, I feel like I've seen this. And no spoilers here. You already had them on. Yeah, we already did. But anyways, there's a scene where they're looking through the scope and you see these people scampering into the building. Like, I saw that. Mm-hmm.

And I saw that. And so I was on a gun. I wasn't a sniper. I wasn't a trained sniper. But, you know, we all rotated through, you know, watch rotations essentially. So I spent a lot of my time on an A-dub looking down the sector. But I would rotate through sniper rifles. You know, I was trained to shoot rifles, but not as proficient as a sniper. But anyways, I was...

I was... I saw this movement and I zoomed in and was looking at that. And right when I did that, out of my periphery, I saw a puff of smoke from across the street. And I looked and I locked eyes, you know, not beyond the scope, but with this fucker shooting an RPG, like, right in my face. And that thing...

Zoomed in and I swept the scope over and it was zoomed in because I'm looking, you know, a thousand yards down and it was just blackness. Nothing. I was basically, you know, not able to get that guy. And yeah, we got hit by PKM soon after, but yeah.

Yeah, you know, those are the mistakes that you don't want to have to learn. But, you know, luckily, we didn't get hit. And just, you know, don't make that mistake again. And, you know, and whether or not that was a mistake, or they just got one up on me from being zoomed in or not being aware of the immediate part of our sector. Combat's hard, man. And sometimes...

Even if you're trying to do all the right things, you're just gonna get gotten sometimes. - Yeah, what did you, I had my first deployment to Iraq, we were in this position and do you remember when they had FLIR on the Humvees for a little while?

And so we were in this position and I had my Humvee in this kind of like bunkered position and we were looking across the river. This was in Baghdad and we're looking across the river and we're scanning for a while. And all of a sudden this, this, um, and we had snipers out, but I had the flare, you know? So I was like, okay, I can help the snipers a lot. And so I'm looking across the river and all of a sudden, you know, this kind of, this kind of vehicle rolls by and then it kind of rolls by again and then it stops and

And then like guys get out and I'm like, oh, it's, you know, these guys are definitely setting up and they start like, they open the trunk, you know? So now I'm like, oh, okay, cool. This is, we're about to, we're about to kill some bad guys. Cause we were, we're on this fob that had been getting attacked a lot. And so now I'm like zooming in. I'm like trying to PID weapons, trying to PID weapons. I'm talking, you know, snipers like, hey guys, right. It was, there was a bridge right there. And I was like right by the bridge and they were like, we got him. We're tracking. And,

And as I'm sitting there like totally focused on that, boom, we get hit with RPGs from like another spot. And it was so as soon as it happened, I was like, dude, I just got so played because they did made the total obvious thing for to draw all of our attention, including mine. And then we got hit from probably 300 meters away, which is awesome.

I did not see any of it. We just boom. I'm like, oh yeah, we just got played. That is, you know, the enemy is going to be smart. What do you remember? I know you're on that podcast I did with Joe and Elliot. We did a, you know, we kind of talked about the turnover and how, you know, what my feelings were when we turned over. It was like,

you felt like you were letting your kid go like for the first time in the deep end or whatever. And it felt really hard to, to leave. How did you feel? Yeah, I think that's the sentiment there is, uh, you know, because you know that there's a learning curve and I, I knew where we were in April, 2006 and then where we were by October, we were completely different humans and operators and,

And yeah, you just, you feel for the guys and you wish them the best in not knowing what they're going to face. You just hope that, you know, they're going to learn the lessons they need to learn the easier way. Yeah. Tough one. Yeah.

All right, what's your next? What's your next new guy advice, life advice? Yep. We talked about humility. I think we're good on that one. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. One of my favorite team guy sayings. Love that. So from a team guy perspective, this is a shooting term, and it's really about being smooth to draw your sights and a smooth trigger squeeze, and that that is preferable to...

being fast jerky throwing your rounds off target missing and having to take follow-on shots so that's kind of the uh you know the the principle that applies to shooting but i think in a broader context yeah yeah maybe stretching it a little bit but you guys talk about uh you know oodle loop and and detaching and i think i think those are closely related in terms of just being smooth right being uh

observing, orienting, smooth and deliberate in some of the decisions that you're making. So you're not being hasty and emotional. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a classic team guy saying, and I don't even know where, I think it might've originated from one of the shooting schools that we went to, but I'm not sure. Maybe it came from the Vietnam guys. I don't know. But you know, when you shoot,

Especially when you're a new guy and you're trying to beat one of the older guys until you're going to fat and the faster you try and go the more shots you throw in the worst job you do and Just to be like, all right Just do what you're supposed to do slowest move smooth as fast is a huge benefit And I think it also applies like what you're saying is not rushing decision-making and look you're gonna have to make decisions but

And again, as much as we talk about being default aggressive and making things happen, there's sometimes it's like, okay, hold on a second. Let's see where this, let's let this evolve a little bit. Let's let this play out a little bit. Let's see where this is. Let's see if this is the real problem. Because just like I just talked about, a guy that's,

In the vicinity of this FOB that has been getting attacked in the nighttime when there's a curfew and he's out and he's opening up his trunk of his car. That seems like the biggest problem. And it got me totally sucked in. But if I would have been like, okay, cool. Let's take, let's take a bit, just, just widen the parameter of the FLIR thermal imager. And I would have seen the other dudes popping up with a couple RPGs that they're about to get slam into us.

So taking a step back, not getting target fixation, not rushing to judgment is a good policy, not just when you're shooting, but when you're living. Be smooth. Chuck, next. Take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. Ain't that the truth, yep. Yeah, man. So...

Seems, you know, pretty common sense in the statement. But one thing I think about in particular being a breacher, just to get the level of like attention to detail on my gear, just to get an example of being a SEAL and being a SEAL breacher. But we have to operate our systems at night. We primarily do direct action missions at night. So everything that we do is under darkness, under nods.

So when you're part of a breach team in particular, you're dealing with a charge, a number of charges, you know, no-no firing devices. And, you know, not to get too much into our procedures, but there may be a procedure where, you know, it's a two-man job and there's some orchestration of that stuff. And, I mean, this could be a total goat rodeo if you're not –

you know, applying the attention to detail where it needs to be and how your gear is set up. But, you know, these charges have, there's a booster connected to it. There's this. And if it's,

if it's not placed in your pouch the right way and you at the dark you're going to pull that out like i had this folded in exact precise way it wasn't upside down it wasn't this so i could reach in i know when i'm grabbing it exactly where it's at and i know there's like an adhesive to it i've pre-staged like a tape ball at the end of it because i i don't want to be looking down i want to feel

But I don't have the dexterity in my gloves. So you know exactly where everything's at. You got the no-knell wrapped this side. If I'm passing it off this way or that way, the firing device is laid on just this way so that everything comes out and it's maximum efficiency on target. So yeah, that's just one example of...

the level of attention to detail on the gear that I applied. But, you know, in the teams in general, our gear is king, man. From day one, our weapon systems, keeping them up and running, you know, the post-op, the pre-op, making sure they're ready to go, op testing them, all of our life-saving equipment. I was probably, you know, if there was an award for the slowest parachute packer in the teams, it was probably this guy. Yeah.

I wasn't putting anything to chance, man. I was always the last one. They were packing my shoe, you know, sweat just pouring off. But take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. Yeah, I was over jumping and I was on deployment back in the day. And we were jumping into some desert location. And, you know, we land and we pack. And, you know, cool. And we're kind of like...

you know, you know, we had a couple very proficient, like leap frog type jumpers in the platoon. They're like, come on guys, like hurry up. I'm like, okay, of course, you know? And so I kind of like, you know, rush through a pack job and then, you know, we jump again and like, okay, my parachute still opened. Well, now we get down to the ground again and now the wind's picked up. So now we're out in the desert trying to pack our rigs and the, you know, things blown and we're literally like taking rocks and putting them onto the shoots. And dude, I completely trash packed this rig and, uh, the shit didn't open. Yeah.

So yeah, I had to cut away and really didn't feel good about it. Um, but you know, I was like, you know, is that smart? And it was also part of it, you know, it was not only, Hey, um,

I'm trying to hurry because I'm trying to get it done. But like that peer pressure of like, come on dude, like you don't want to be, you do not want to be the guy that's holding up the helo, like a helo, a whole helicopter is waiting on you. And you know, so I wasn't, and I wasn't the last guy done packing. Of course I wasn't because I trash packed that thing and it didn't open. So. - This is the teams right here. Rather than doing the deliberate thing to take care of yourself, you don't want to let down your buddies. - Yeah, that's 100% it. Maybe not the best call in that particular scenario.

And the other piece of gear you got to take care of is your body like you're 100% yours, you know and You're just you know The SEAL teams and the military is very rough on your on your body and a lot of times guys don't help it right They don't help the process like they eat like crap drink alcohol Don't I think one of the worst things that I

that people do is stop working out for three weeks, stop working out for a month. Whatever the case may be, oh, you went on a trip or you got back from a trip or your family this or, and guys stop working out for six weeks.

And all of a sudden when you get back to working out or you get back to the field, you think you can still do what you were doing. And it's like, you know what? That works when you're 20. Like when I was, when I was got out of buds, bro, I could show up what it didn't matter. You're, you're in shape from buds for a while. Like they just, it just, it just is part of you. But then eventually you're like, Oh man,

I would see guys not work out. And who do you think is going to get hurt? Like you, if you haven't worked out and then all of a sudden you're sprinting, carrying a freaking down man, like you're getting hurt. So. Yeah. Especially dues of our advanced stage. I mean, once you get over 40, you got to keep moving. Cause if you don't move it, you're going to lose it and you may not get it back. Yeah. You caught it. You got to fight it every day. You got to get it. You got to get it done every day. You got to move every day. I really do think like I've been very lucky on, you know, training and, um,

I mean, I've gotten dinged up from jujitsu, but I'm still training and I'm still training hard. I'm still lifting, still running, still doing stuff hard. And I think one of the main reasons for that is the fact that I don't stop moving. And I never go, you know, it's been a few months since I worked out.

That's when you're getting hurt. - Do you still do muscle ups? - Yes, yes. Actually, technically right now I have some tendonitis in my right arm that we're getting there. So it's not at this moment, but yes, muscle ups are part of the thing.

- Good for you, man. I was never a muscle guy. My shoulder mobility never, I've only done a couple in my entire life, but I was always impressed. I remember back in the day. Yeah, you're doing a bunch of muscle ups. - Yeah, we had one of the new guy officers came over to Ramadi. And I don't know if you remember, I had rings in the gym there. And this guy came up to me, he's a good dude, he's an ensign, brand new officer. He's like, "Hey, sir, I've been having some troubles with my shoulder. Do you have any recommendations?" And I was like, "Yeah, muscle ups."

Yeah, on that, the teams are getting a lot smarter. You know what I mean? When we came up, there was no thought of taking care of yourself. It was just run yourself into the ground. And that's why everyone in our generation just became broken at some point. But now it's built in. They got touch points throughout. You got nutritionists. You got trainers. Yeah.

Yeah, it's pretty good. - Yeah, and they don't like, they're not as abusive to their bodies as we were, which is awesome. So there's progress there. And then the other thing I'll say on this is I've taken this, take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. I've also changed that to take care of your people and your people will take care of you. So if you treat your team like shit, they're not gonna care about you. But if you take care of them, they'll take care of you. So this applies to everything.

All right, what's next? What do you got? Become an asset and make yourself indispensable. Very important. Yeah, in the teams, especially as a new guy, that's what you're trying to do as fast as humanly possible is become a reliable entity that people trust and that they'll bring you on the mission because it's not guaranteed that you're going on the mission or if you do go, that you're not going to get marginalized into some position in the back of the train or whatever else. So it's about...

putting in the work to get yourself there, a lot of work on your own, finding the mentors that you need, and then taking advantage of opportunities, you know, when they come. There was one vignette I could think of as a new guy. I had a new guy buddy with me that we'd done butts together until I got rolled, and then, you know, I met him. We joined the same platoon, Charlie, and

And anyways, he was a comms guy. And, you know, he wasn't super happy with the level of, like, comms training and support at that time, like early 2000s. So we had some new, like, emerging technologies, and we just weren't where he thought we should be. And as a new guy, he just, like, geeked out. And he got all the manuals. He started reaching out to SMEs. And on that deployment, he actually ended up

creating some innovation. I won't get too into the details, but it had to do with, basically we got tasked to do the exploitation of like a strategic level operation. So after the operation went down, we went and did some exploitation and we're sending photos that like high level folks were seeing. And he was able to do this in an environment that had never been done before.

So just because you're a new guy doesn't mean you can't innovate and bring value. The ball's in your court. It's just how far can you get, how fast. - Yeah, in fact, as a new guy, you might have a little bit more of an open mind than other people, especially when it comes to technology. People like me,

may not be all that technologically savvy, but if you roll in there and you can make things happen, yeah, it's so critical. And oftentimes it's like,

You know, hey, this is how someone does the business, right? This is how we do it. And they don't see the holes or the gaps that you might be able to see when you go, wait a second, why do we have this? Why don't we just get this app over here? Or why don't we just program this thing? Or whatever the case may be, wouldn't it be more efficient to do this? And they just don't see it sometimes. And so rolling in there, and of course, you got to be humble, right?

But if you roll in there and you can say, hey, we can make this more efficient. We can accelerate our progress here by doing these things. It's very beneficial. That's a huge part of it. And then, you know, as simple as this might sound, like the first thing you said was if you're reliable.

Like being a reliable human that is gonna do the right things on the right time and be on time and have the right gear. Like that is, believe it or not, a legit freaking asset. If I can count on this dude to be here at this time with the right gear, 100%, man, that's huge in its own right. So good way to become an asset. Yeah, damn right. What's next? Keep your world small.

What does that mean? What do you mean by that? So as a new guy in this kind of, you know, from training to being a new guy is don't get overwhelmed with, you know, the big picture and all these things. Keep your world small, you know, focus on the procedure. The teams, everything we deal with in close quarters combat, you know, immediate action drills, maneuver warfare,

It's all if this, then that. It's all a set of procedures. So looking at, I think pool comp is like the best example that people know about in our training pipeline of pool comp is this series of underwater, or it's an underwater test where-

they're stressing you the hell out. They're taking away your air source, getting you near drowning and then letting you work yourself out of that procedure there. And if we go all the way back to there, it's keeping your world small and okay,

I don't have an error. First, I got to check, you know, make sure the air is on. Okay. The air is on tracing the hoses. So it's easy to get overwhelmed in, you know, extremely stressful situations, but keeping your world small, especially as a new guy, when you're not as familiar with all the things that you're doing, you know, the more you could focus on, on the procedure. And yeah, you know, it's led me to, you know,

get through a lot of stuff beyond beyond just being a team guy um you know business is a roller coaster and you know like you you can get jerked around a lot emotionally if every little thing that happens you're you know kind of losing your shit so um you know focusing on the fundamentals the things you got to do to get better um you're recognizing where to make the adjustments and uh you know i mean man translates to life and everything else and um

Yeah, you know, one thing that one team guy vignette that is a very strong one. You talked about having a cutaway. I had myself a little free fall issue once as well. And I believe keeping my world small, like save my damn life. So like a little backstory here is this is like circa 2012. I was dealing with some really bad back issues. I was platoon chief. I was just fighting through it.

And we had a jump week and we were progressing through that jump week and culminating in a combat equipment jump. And yeah, I wasn't going to not train. It's just everything I did hurt really bad. And so, you know, maybe this pertains to something else we've already talked about here, but yeah,

We're jumping with a ruck and I thought it best to lighten up that ruck a little bit. Really just to alleviate the sitting around having that thing. It sits in between your legs for, you know, you're sitting for hour, hour and a half. Just excruciating pain to have anything pulling on me. So anyways, I lightened up that ruck and then we went out and proceeded to do the jump for

And I waddled up to the door and I threw myself out. And I don't know if it was a combination of the lightness of the ruck or how the straps became loose, but that damn thing turned into a sill. It caught air. And I started violently flipping the

essentially for like 7,000 feet. So I was violently forward flipping. Forward flipping? Yes. That's bizarre. It is bizarre. Yeah. So the ruck had basically caught, you know, it's in between your legs. And it had like dropped down and was catching wind like a sailboat.

so i was trying to i'm trying to counterbalance it and trying to like basically sit fly and do some other things and i was having a hard time getting getting stable i would basically get stable for a second and then i would flip again and so like through this whole time i was surprisingly like pretty calm through it although i knew

like if i didn't get my together really really fast this was going to be bad and i also knew like i can't i can't pull this as i'm flipping you know because we'll get tangled and and i'll be down so you know it's very keen that i had to figure this out and pull at a precise moment and i did just that i i found a sit fly position i was stable for like three seconds i pulled that damn thing ended up pulling at the right altitude and floating down with everyone else no one else had a clue what the hell i'd been through but uh

I think just one of many examples of high stress pressure situations where just focus on the procedure, trying to correct your position and not, because if you're just worried about death-

You're going to die. Yeah. You're going to die. That's it. Yeah. I've always, when I first saw that, I was like, keep your world small. I've heard people talk about like training, like buds training. Don't think of six months. Don't think of one month. Don't think of first phase. Think of like, I'm going to make it through this log PT right now and make it to breakfast or whatever. So that's one. But the way you're describing it really makes me think of like prioritize and execute like, okay, there's a lot of shit going on right now.

but right now what I need to focus on is getting stable so I can pull my ripcord. That's the most important thing in the world. None of this other shit matters and that's what I'm gonna take care of. So yeah, that's...

when there's a lot of crazy things going on, like what's the most important thing? What do I need to actually focus on right now? I can't do four things at once. You know, you probably couldn't even at that point, you know, you're probably done checking your altimeter. You've like, I've just got to get stable and freaking pull my ripcord. Like not worried about this, not worried about that. I don't care where the DZ is. Like I need to get stable and pull my ripcord. That's a little prioritizing execute activity. That was it, man. All right, next.

- Rehearsals and visualizing to enhance performance. So like this is definitely something as our pipeline has evolved that has been more ingrained into the training. At least it had been when I left basic training back in 2021. And I know the team's got a lot better about this. We kind of hit on this earlier, you know, about the value of doing rehearsals, but at that micro level, as an individual, you know, running yourself through

uh, you know, if you're doing a training evolution, if you're doing an operation, whatever that is running through the procedure, rehearsing that and actually visualizing, um, you know, as close as you can replicate whatever it is you're going to be doing. Uh, there's a lot of value in that. And obviously, uh, I've seen a lot of this in sports nowadays. There's just a big movement towards visualization performance. It's a,

It's, I mean, it's big in golf. Professional golfers are doing it. Obviously, a lot of the other athletes have been doing this for a while. But, yeah.

- One thing that was something that kind of got lost for a while was when I first got to the teams, it was for a mission you were supposed to prep gear one third of the time, plan one third of the time, and rehearse one third of the time. One third, one third, one third. And for a while it became like 90% planning, which really translated to 90% sitting around making PowerPoint slides that the commanding officer could be impressed with your fonts and whatnot.

and we really got away from, I saw people getting away from rehearsals, and luckily I was always very, you know, as adamant as I could be about that one third, one third, one third. And look, there was a certain time where, there was a certain things where it's like, no, you're gonna have to freaking put this major PowerPoint thing together so that the whoever is gonna see it and go, wow, looks like you really aren't prepared for this. It's like, no, we haven't rehearsed at all. We're not ready for shit. No, actually,

The deal is one third, one third, one third, one third gear prep, which we would get pretty efficient at gear prep. We really wouldn't take that much time. You know, maybe if you got back in the day, if you got hit with some mission that you

you hadn't been doing right like if you get suddenly hit with a a duck drop otb it's going to take you a third of the time to get that gear ready and the next day you're doing a you know a target assault and the next day you're doing a combat swimmer op like it will take you more time but we get in that rhythm of like oh we're doing a we're doing a da we're doing a da we're doing a driving da we're doing a driving da we're like oh we're doing a uh an overwatch and overwatch and we're like you you

It doesn't take one third of the time to prep your gear. But rehearsals, and that also goes with rehearsals too. Like we rehearse getting in and out of the vehicles. Well, if you haven't done a land, a vehicle op before, or you're working with people you haven't worked with before, yeah, you need to spend a third of that time getting in and out of the vehicles. How are you going to line up the vehicles? What are you going to do if there's a downed vehicle? What's your rig for tow situation? Who's changing tires? Like all that stuff. But we would do everything.

just operation after operation after operation where you could do a three minute walkthrough getting out of the vehicles one time and everyone's like, yep, cool, we're good. Everyone knows what vehicles are in. Yep, cool, got it. So you could spend a little more time planning and a little less time with rehearsals and a little less time with gear prep, but ultimately knowing what those numbers are and understanding the importance of rehearsal, which, man, walking through something one time is...

it increases people's capabilities like five times. - Yeah, man. This is something we did a lot in Ramadi too. So like every time we did a DA, we would do exactly what you're talking about. And it seems, you know, from an outsider looking in like amateur level shit,

pulling up, vehicles are in this order, they're looking this direction, guys are stepping out, fields of fire, and then the assault is moving this way or whatever. We did that every single time. And you know what? Every single time I also did was every breach that I did, every single breach I did overseas is we did a walkthrough like that. So you've done dozens, hundreds of breaches, guys, all experienced dudes, and we're doing very basic level walkthroughs

Because if nothing else, you're creating muscle memory, right? So that it's instinctive that when we're on target, we know what the target looks like. We know we're going right. And obviously, anything could change, right? You know, you train to your plan A and then you read and react based off your SOPs after that. But...

what we did is we became like really efficient about breaching and assaulting and we're minimizing our time on the X because we've rehearsed this over and over again. I know I'm going left, you're going right. This is what's happening. And bam, that charges, you know, often we're inside before anyone knows what's happened. That applies to, you know, so many different things. Doing walkthroughs. Good. Next.

This is another popular team that I won. And two is one. One is none. Yeah. Check. Yeah. Make sure you got your gear. Yeah. Got your gear. You didn't have some redundant gear.

Yeah, I got a good story here. So when I was on last time, I told a story. I won't recount the entire thing, but basically we were doing a training operation, big Navy exercise, training with a submarine. I had like a near-death experience, zodiac flipped, yada, yada. Well, after that whole thing transpired, we still had the entire operation to do. That was just the insert. Yeah.

And so what had happened at that, we flipped the Zodiac on, you know, pulling the Zodiac off the submarine and launching. All of our shit got soaked, and we got some gear that basically got damaged. So we inserted our swimmers, and our radio had been, you know, just soaked. So basically it was inoperable. Mm-hmm.

And we had had an issue. Sea state had kicked up. And so we had to change our link up with the Mark 5s were supposed to pick us up out in the middle of the ocean, essentially. And due to sea state, we had some changes. We were relying on this communication to get relayed. Well, it never did or never got back to us. And come that morning, we're floating out in the ocean waiting for pickup. It just never came. Sure.

This is just such a freaking typical freaking team guy disaster. It just adds up like every little thing. Oh yeah, we flipped the boat, which is no big deal except for the radio flood, except we need to drive. It's like, I've just, yep. And it turned into a lot more. So we missed our link up our extract. Nice.

night becomes day we're just floating out there we're super smoked chris was out there with me too he was one of the uh after zodiac drivers we're just smoked and flowed down the ocean all night and we were all you know soaked from the sea state and uh anyways we made the decisions like all right well i guess we go back to land you know we can't talk to anyone we're floating out here in the ocean we went back this uh this island that we were on was like uh there was like

of seals and sea lions. And we just pulled up amongst them. We just racked out, you know, set our stuff out, tried to drive the radio. Where was this? Was it like around San Diego? It was near, I want to say like San Nicholas. San Nick. Okay. Yeah. I've been there. That's what, there's freaking elephant seals on there and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a little wild out there. It's a little Western.

Yeah, there were zero shits by the time. We were so smoked. We just pulled up to this. I mean, it was like the National Geographic filming. Yeah. Thousands of these guys. And we laid out and basically had no columns with anyone. And, you know, just hoping people were going to find us. Who was with you?

- Was it like a platoon? - No, no, well, we dropped off-- - Or was it just like the boat? - We dropped off, it was a platoon op. We dropped off a couple of SR teams and I think two Zodiacs. So there were like four of us, two per boat. Four of us alone enough, right? And so we were stranded on this island

throughout the day and then we saw a p3 flying overhead and i think we got them on a bidder or something at some point but we uh notified the mark fives where we were and then they came to pick us up that evening showed up we thought our night was over

Sea state kicked up, weather kicked up, it's storming, bow breakers. And the boat got stuck out in the middle of like, I guess we ran over kelp and went in the jets. So we were stuck out there all night through the next morning. So yeah, I mean, going back to as one was none, right? If we have two radios, if we have a redundant capability, our night is two days less long, you know?

bro i've spent a lot of time out there that little san diego ao of operations we get driving back down motors towing with a 35 horsepower spare engine like just drifting into mexican waters coming up on hf radio calling like port facilities trying to see if we can get help yeah the water don't play around don't play around all right next if you're not going to be smart be hard

It's a good one. I mean, I think you should be both, really. Yeah, yeah. But definitely as a new guy, you're going to have to be hard. You're going to have to carry more weight than everyone else. You're going to be working longer hours than everyone else. So, you know, that's it. If you're going to be stupid, you've got to be tough. Yeah. Check. Concur. Yep. Yeah, man, you mentioned with the –

you know pod with uh Joan Elliott um about the the overwatches like how how hard those actually were now that was captured I think um you know pretty well in in that movie uh Warfare but um yeah those were some long gnarly ops man and um you know long patrols in uh super hot nasty um

carrying a shit ton of weight. And then you get there and you're standing watch, essentially, waiting for bad shit to happen. Yeah, those were some long gnarly ops. And our new guys were studs, man. They handled that, again, exactly as they were trying to do and represent it. But yeah, it just kind of came to mind. Yeah, I remember sitting in like Cop Falcon and I was just sitting there and I had been sitting there.

downstairs like the army had moved in they're starting to build the combat outpost you guys pushed down to forced or i think it was forced or you guys pushed down there and i'm like sitting there and i am in a full athletic sweat like i'm sitting i've been sitting there for like two hours like i'm not moving i'm just sitting there and i'm in a full athletic like drip drip drip drip

And that's how hot it is. I mean, it's 120 degrees. It's freaking totally ridiculous. And yeah, that's the way it is, man. Yard. Yep. Check. Next.

Attention to detail. So, I mean, this is, and that phrase is just hammered in buds, but I mean, that's... This is actually hammered in Navy boot camp. Yeah. Really? Like, because he's Navy boot camp. You know, this is a kid that's 17 years old in Navy boot camp, and he's going to be, you know, loading the ordinance onto an aircraft and making sure that it's done correctly. And so they really want to make sure that you have...

attention to detail and the team's the same damn thing. It's it, man. Everything we do is high risk where that's training or, or operations and all of it. It's a lot of little details, man. And all the, all those details matter. The order matters sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. And, and one thing that you notice is,

That's part of your reputation. You know, if you're not, if you're, if you're constantly dropping the ball on the little things, you know, how can I count on you to do the big things if you can't even get the little things right? And, you know, someone might be like, well, you know, this isn't that important now. Well, it is that important. Like the little things that's like, that's saying how you do anything is how you do everything. Yep. That's one of those, another little like team guy ish saying of, um,

The little things are going to matter. That's how you get your reputation. You know, if you show up late, you forget things, you forget that little thing. You're not in the right uniform. All those little things add up, man. They all add up. Yeah. And, you know, before you become the leader, as you're progressing through whatever career that is, you know, if you don't know the details, you don't know the jobs and the smaller parts, points of performance of the job, you're not going to be able to do that.

then you can't really lead that. So it all starts from the fundamentals of the attention detail. Yeah, man. They matter. Yeah. Anymore? Yeah. Be a good follower. You know, I know you guys talk a little bit about this, the dichotomy of being a good leader, the opposite of that, the reciprocal of that is being a good follower. And sometimes that can be challenging, but it's super important. And

Yeah, man, you gotta, you know, part of that is, especially as a new guy, like learning the mission, like you may not understand all the things, but it's, you know, getting yourself informed, getting plugged in, you know, understanding the chain of command and, you know, knowing how to respect leadership and how to, you know, I mean, just be a good teammate, you know? So one example, I was thinking with Leif,

Leif made it really easy to be a good follower because he was a really tremendous leader, and I really appreciated his style. As leaders, you pick and pull from different leaders that you have. He was less experienced in the teams than I was, but super mature, great leader. This is like a superpower in terms of leadership, but

just a way of connecting with his people at a very human level. And, you know, he's funny as shit. And that's, you know, I'm not sure if everyone gets to see that really, really funny guy, engaging dude. But, and he's willing to have, you know, discussions with you. But in the same sense, you know,

he knows how to make a call and you know when it's time to to fall in line and listen to that and one one such case uh i had is we we were doing an operation i think this is um was uh what was that village right outside of uh yeah i know what you're talking about yeah um

So we were doing an operation there and we had a normal direct action mission there and we hit the target. Actually, the breach went off and we rushed the room kind of like a mud room and fireworks started going off in there. I'm not sure if you remember this, but the JOSM incident. So essentially we come into this room and the

gunshots are happening. Like, it's like, damn, this is a hot target. Guys are starting to prep frags. Like, it's on. You know, sucking out the doorway.

and make entry and ends up being like an old guy in kind of a dry hole. And, you know, I'm certainly perplexed like what the hell happened. It turned out one of our Iraqis in the back of the train had an AD, almost smoked all this. But anyways, after that whole event, we got the intel, okay, the guy's over here. A couple of houses down. A couple of houses down, kind of like in an apartment complex. And, yeah.

Being the preacher that I was, I wanted to blow up everything. Just standard. And Leif had seen something that I hadn't seen. He had seen some small shoes sent out the... Yeah. Like multiple pairs of kids' shoes outside the door. Yeah. Yep. So Leif kind of gave me the initial guidance and said, this is what we're doing. And there was a little bit of...

not push back, but I think we should do this. Leif was like, you know, negative, not, not doing that. So, uh, and I immediately backed off cause I, once you get that signal that this is not a discussion, this is a call. Um, so I think that's part of straddling that, uh, being, been a good follower, knowing, knowing when you got to get in line. Um, yeah, it's part of it. Yeah. And the Leif being funny part. So I, on that podcast I did with Joe and Elliot, um,

Leif had sent me a bunch of emails between him and Elliot, 'cause they were real tight bros. And the funny thing is, so I got 'em and I'm like, all right. So I had to edit 'em down 'cause there's inappropriate stuff in there.

And so, and then I told Leif, I was like, hey man, thanks for sending those emails. Yeah, I edited them down, you know, just to clean them up. He's like, oh, I already edited them down. So I had to edit it down, the edited down version, you know, but there was a bunch of smack talking in there and stuff like that. And yeah, and that's, I always, you know, I always joke that Leif is like a lot nicer than I am. You know what I mean? Like he's just nice, you know, he's just a nice, whatever, what's that like Southern accent

etiquette type dude, you know, he's just super nice to people and I'm not. I'm like a New Englander who are born like, you know, angry and cold. You know, that's sort of my more general atmospherics that I give off, I guess. Even though, you know, I like to have fun too occasionally. Just not while we're at work. All right. Is that your list? I have one more. Okay, let's go.

Funny one. Okay. So this has no context beyond the context I'm giving it here, but never miss an opportunity to take a piss. Okay. I think this does apply. This is a good one. It's a team guy, but I got a story as a new guy. We were doing a, I believe we were working in a Fallon area.

And we're doing back then we did a lot of SR training. I'm like hardcore SR training, long inserts, long infills. This was supposed to be a 20 minute insert and you know, multi-day op or carrying a bunch of shit. So I'm like, did you prehydrate? Oh dude, you know what? That's a big one. So echo Charles, you're going to go in the field for two days, three days, and you got to carry a shit ton of water. You can actually drink enough water before you go that you won't need water for the first day. Yeah. Like I'm serious. That seems crazy, but you can do it. And,

And generally speaking, you kind of want to do it because you don't want to, there's nothing worse than being thirsty talking about, you know, when Bob was going through heat exhaustion or model, you don't, that's a terrible thing. You're a total, you're a total, uh, uh,

soup sandwich it's just terrible so like the pre-hydration of just pounding water is what everyone does and you think cool i'll piss right before i get on the airplane hopefully or right right before i get on the helo and then it's 20 minute insert cool no you don't even think about it that much because normally if you got to take a piss you take a piss

You don't always have those opportunities. All right, proceed. Yeah, so we're moving and I did exactly that. I pre-hydrated because we had a long patrol after that. And so 15 minutes comes by, I'm like, okay, we're getting close. 20 comes by, I'm like, we're really close. And 30, it's like, okay, this is MNET, but I'm starting to, I got to piss.

30 becomes 45. Now we're at an hour and I'm doing the pee-pee dance and I'm hurting. And so like we get, I think we're 90 minutes in and we get to a hover and I'm like, oh my God, thank God. It's now time. And we're hovering for about five minutes and I'm like, it's happening. And then we take off and we're another half an hour. I'm beside myself. And eventually two hours in,

We land and you know, whatever. I go admin for a couple of minutes here. But the funny part, and when you were mentioning earlier about, you know, we're never going to stop a helo for this one guy.

When we hovered that 90 minutes in, it's because the other helo actually had them land because the guy had to piss really bad. And they didn't tell you. They didn't tell me. Freaking bastards. Yeah, for the young team guys out there, bring a Gatorade bottle when you're on a helo. Just bring a Gatorade bottle and you're all good. Yeah, good go. And that's it for me. All right. I got some here. Some...

Again, I was just kind of like going through my thoughts and of life. All right Well and some of these we kind of hit on a little bit But I'll bring them up again just just as a little bit of an angle. Here's one team gear platoon gear personal gear than yourself Yeah, so when you come back from an operation you take care of the team gear first Which is like the the freaking boats or whatever then you do platoon go platoon gear, which is like your boats Then you do your personal gear then yourself

So don't be getting in the shower before your weapons cleaned and don't clean your weapon until the Humvee is refueled and prepped. And if you break this procedure, it's a freaking mortal sin in the teams. It's a mortal sin to take care of your own shit before you took care of the platoon shit. That's the way it is. So that's my number one. Number two, this came from my LPO in my first platoon.

Always go out and what he meant cuz he was a partier What he meant was always go out like to the bar to the pub you land somewhere in some foreign city And the you know, the planes gonna be on the ground for three hours go out. That's what he meant. I Like rearranged it in my head to mean like hey you go out Like you get a chance to do training you get a chance to do a mission you get a chance to I don't care if you're gonna go out and I'm gonna be the the freakin backup boat driver

But if that's what I if that's a job I'm gonna be able to get I'm gonna take it you always go on if there's a training mission Cuz I know it sounds crazy But you get that point in the teams where you're on your third fourth fifth deployment and you're like well, you know SR teams going out. You know what? They only need six guys. There's eight guys in our squad I can I can stay back in the talk and do comms like no always go out and that's a good attitude to have and

There's the old one, why sit? Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you can lie down? There is validity to that. Like if you get a chance to take a rest, take a rest. If there's a chance where nothing's going on, lay down, put your feet up, elevate your feet above your heart, you know, and sleep. You're gonna need sleep sometimes.

Yeah, in Bud's, and I'm not sure if this was a tradition that you guys had or if it still goes on, but there used to be this hideout spot that the class- There was no hideout spots when I was in Bud's. After chow, the trick was, the hack was, we would eat fast and then we would go to this hideout spot and you would take a 15-minute nap. And that 15-minute nap was like- Sounds like a million bucks. Man, boss.

But yeah, like you know, you want to see a whole platoon of sleeping team guys Just take him up in the plane getting ready to jump every single dude. That's right. It's passed out I I made one which is don't be so far forward leaning that you're in the leaning rest So the leaning rest is the is the army term for like being in the push-up position. They call it the front leaning rest and

And yet you'd have these like officers that would be like, hey, we want to be forward leaning on this. And they would be so far forward leaning like, hey, we need to prep the gear and do the rehearsal, do this, all this stuff. You haven't even gotten tasked with a damn mission yet. And you're so far forward leaning that we're prepping for stuff that's not going to happen or could change radically. So it's good to be forward leaning, but don't be so far forward leaning that you're in leaning rest. Hey.

Use the chain of command. I know this might sound crazy use the chain of command up and down and we're just where I remember about this as guys would come to me because I was bros with a lot of different dudes and like guys that were fought for five levels below me in the chain of command they come up be like hey, can we get this piece of gear and I would always say like did you talk to your LPO? Did you talk to your chief like?

you know, go talk to your chief. Cause your chief probably can make this happen without me. And by the way, your chief might have a reason why he doesn't want to do that. So,

Go talk to your chief. And same thing, if a guy's doing something jacked up, I'm not, my initial instinct isn't be like, go right to them. No, I'm gonna talk to a chief and say, hey, have you seen what Echo's doing? He seems like he's a little off track. Oh, let me find out what's going on. So just use the chain of command. No big deal. Never turn down a school you're offered. And then when you get to the school, be number one in the school. That's a good one. Your reputation is everything and everything you do is your reputation.

Everything you do is your reputation and your reputation is everything. So when you're doing dumb shit, don't do it. When there's an opportunity to cut a corner that you think no one's going to see, everyone's going to see it. They're going to find out about it and they're going to hold it against you forever. Yeah, sure. So just be careful. Um,

This was one that I learned early on. Avoid where I think, I think this was in Marcinko's book too. I think that's where I remember it from. Avoid wearing a uniform at all costs, but if you have to wear it, look perfect. That was a hundred percent the way I operated. Like I would do pretty much jump through hoops to avoid putting on a uniform, but if you got to put it on, you look frigging a hundred percent squared away. Don't show up looking like a dipshit. Yeah. I think like to that, just to drill down on that, it's a,

Part of showing people that you can play the game, right? Yeah. So it's not about being this, uh, you know, prim and proper. It's, it's about doing what you need to do at that moment. And, uh, yeah, I think that's, that's part of it, man. Yeah. And I mean, this, this certainly, as you remember, um,

You know, in tasking a bruiser, I was like, hey, when you leave, I didn't care what you look like on shark base, which became camp Markley. I didn't care if you wore flip flops, a freaking pair of surf shorts and a Metallica t-shirt when it's just seals. But when you left the base and you went to the chow hall or you went to work with one of the battalions, you got to be in a freaking squared away uniform.

And a squared away uniform for us is like the bare minimum for the Army or the Marine Corps. Like they are more squared away than us with their uniforms. But at least you're going to be in a proper military uniform. Yeah. I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time I was on, but I worked with a guy. He was the CMC maybe of the group at that time. And he came out to visit us in Ramadi. I worked with him later at Bud's.

And he was taken aback. Like he remembered it vividly when he came to visit us. He's like, you know what really impressed me was you guys were so squared away looking when I arrived. Right. So like that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to send these signals to your chain of command leadership that you're squared away. You can follow directives and you can be reliable and trustworthy. And what does that cost you? It costs you nothing more.

- It looks word-wise. - Just being professional and people are judgmental. And look, what's this saying? We didn't put it in this thing, but you don't get a second chance to make a first impression. Look, a military human who's been wearing a uniform, if it's a master chief or a command sergeant major or a battalion commander, they've been in the military for 20 years.

they cannot help looking at someone and judging them based on how they look and how squared away their uniform is or how shitty their uniform is. So you freaking square your shit away and they go, oh, cool. These guys are at least, you know, the professional unit. So,

Totally important. And you know, there's this old document floating around. It's Huck Harbors 69 Steps to Frogman Perfection. I love it. And I'm definitely, some of these are from that. I got to give the shout out to that. One of them was, don't get mad, get a degree. And look, what it's basically saying is when you're in the military, the military is going to take a lot from you. You know what I mean? Like you're going to,

You're gonna sacrifice for the military and don't get mad about that The military has programs where you can go to college where you can get a degree where you can get housing allowances Like there's all these things that the military can do you could but you gotta have to take advantage of them So don't get pissed off at the military just figure out how to take advantage of it But what I like about that is you can apply that to anything you can apply that to anything like you can get mad about stuff Or you can figure out how to utilize it stay with your swim buddy, of course and

What you know this is this is such an important Foundation of the SEAL teams as you always have a swim buddy and the reason you always have a swim buddy and I think it's More prominent because in in the army they have battle buddies They there's there's similar ideas in other in the rest of the military But in the SEAL teams because we're in the water and the water is such a high-risk environment

You have to have a swim buddy. You have to have a swim buddy. And so we get that, you know, pushed onto our brains while we're going through basic skill training. And part of the embedded portion of that is that your buddy comes first. Like your buddy comes first. This is like cover move, which is one of the things that you mentioned is I am going to take care of my friend, right?

And, you know, it's funny because we always used to talk about like, it would be, I would much rather get shot in the kill house by one of my friends than shoot one of my friends. Like not even, not even a question. And so the fact that that's, that's one of these things, like you always put your, your buddy first, you put your squad, your fire team first, you put your squad first, you put your platoon first, you put the team first. All of that comes before you.

So that's part of it. The other part of it is there's this thing with communications and your cryptological gear. And it's the old safes that we used to have had two combinations on them, which meant that you needed two people to open the safe. TPI. TPI, two person integrity. Here's what's kind of cool about that is if I'm about to do some knucklehead shit, Bob, like,

two-person integrity for me to be like, hey, this seems like I think I've got a good idea. And if I do it solo, cool, I have no two-person integrity. But to have at least someone that goes, hey, Nako, are you sure about this? Or like maybe the consequences of what you're thinking might not be worth the effort here.

So I think that's another important component. And it doesn't always save us in the SEAL teams because sometimes it's like, hey, Bob, I got a great idea. And you go, that sounds great to me. But oftentimes it's like, hey, I think I got a good idea. And it's like, well, we might want to rethink that before we roll on it. So stick with your swim buddy. Here's another one from Hawk Harbor. A miserable day in the team is better than the best day at the office. Or maybe that one's not. Maybe that one's mine. But there's something similar to that.

And again, this is just framing up life, right? Worst case scenario, you're at the team and there is an inspection.

And you got to put your uniform on for 40 minutes while there's an inspection. It's like, and team guys will bitch about that stuff too. Are you kidding me? What the hell? Like what kind of tyrannical rear echelon bullshit is this? And it's like, bro, you haven't even been to work in three days. Well, if the guys aren't complaining, then I start worrying. Another one from Huck Harbor. Breaking contact is not surrender. Good thing to remember. Yeah.

Breaking contact is not surrender. Just because you disengage from a fight doesn't mean you're surrendering. It just means you're disengaging from that particular fight at that particular moment. So there's times where the prudent move is to back down. There's times when the prudent move is to leave. I know even we got ambushed a few times my first deployment to Iraq and their temptation would always be like, stop, go back and assault. But it's like, oh, we're okay.

They fired two RPGs and they missed with both and they fired a bunch of machine gun rounds at us. And now we're going to, like, we made it through unscathed. The temptation is like, oh, AC-130 can see them. Okay, cool. Let's turn around and go back and get them. And we never did. It was always tempting. We always had another mission that we were going on, but it was always very tempting. But just thinking like, oh, you know what?

think we'll be all right this is their terrain too and you don't know what ids lurk in front of you yep have a plan isn't it interesting seems so obvious have a plan like oh yeah but i'll tell you where this would come into play with me when guys would be getting out at the 10-year mark or the 8-year mark or the 12-year mark and i'd be like oh cool what's your plan and they'd kind of give me the tilted head look because they'd have a plan well how are you going to pay your rent

Three months, you know, like how are you gonna pay your car payment? By the way, I saw you just pull up in your new freakin Super Duty Harley Davidson version F350 that you paid eighty eight thousand dollars for well You didn't pay at all because you only put in four thousand dollar down payment So your car payments like eleven hundred bucks a month. How are you gonna pay for that? So what is your plan? I?

And as much time as we spend in the SEAL teams planning for us to roll out and execute things with no plan whatsoever. And look, it's cool. You can do this with your kids. Like, here's the plan. Here's what we're doing. And having a plan will keep you out of trouble. Having a plan will keep you efficient. Having a plan will make everything better in your life. Now, you got to be able to react, be able to react when things don't go as planned, but have a baseline. Let's...

some reasonable contingencies. Yeah. With a couple of contingencies, just in case this, just in case that we're covered. And right along with that is another good one. Plan your dive and dive your plan. So you come up with a plan. This comes from diving. Um,

You know you come up with a plan Bob and I are swim buddies here We're gonna dive this through that do that and then when we get underwater. It's like well actually I think I'm in a different spot So I'm gonna do something radically different and everything goes to shit so as much as possible Plan your dive and try and stick to it You can't always stick to it because this is contrary to like oh The plane goes out the window at the first contact look there's that's that's a little bit of that's an exaggeration right and

And can that happen? Yes, that can happen, but it really shouldn't happen. Your plan should be good enough that, oh yeah, we get contacted. Look, our standard operating procedures come into play and we'll execute an immediate action drill. Occasionally your plan goes out the window. Occasionally, it should be rare that your plan goes completely out the window. Now, listen, if you've planned a hyper-detailed plan and you think everything is going to go according to this hyper-detailed plan, that ain't going to work. That ain't going to work.

But if you have a plan, a good plan, a solid plan, a plan that is flexible, then you shouldn't have to abandon your plan just because something didn't go as expected. So plan your dive, dive your plan. Occasionally, do you got to vary drastically? Yes, occasionally you do. And don't cling to your plan if it's not working. That's a leadership thing where it's like, no, we're going to keep doing this. Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan. It's like, oh, the plan is not working. If the plan is not working, stop it.

But don't abandon your plan too easily. Again, if you have, you know, reasonable contingencies along the five stages of the operation there, you know, there's little checkpoints you're hitting that if this happens, we're doing this. If this happens, we're doing that. So, yeah, no reason you shouldn't be abandoning your plan unless it's completely gone to shit. Yeah.

Here's like one of the most pragmatic things I have on this list. Bring a beanie and a Gore-Tex jacket. Like I'm telling you what, bring a beanie, bring a wool beanie and a Gore-Tex jacket. I don't care. You know, you're going out for a three hour operation.

and, and there's a couple different types of Gore-Tex jackets, but you know, I'm talking about a shell and you got like a heavy duty one and you got a lightweight one. And look, sometimes the lightweight one, like you're going out for three hours. It's, it's pretty moderate temperatures. Cool. No big deal. Bring the lightweight one. But,

If there's a chance you might be wet, if there's a chance, bring that heavy, nice, freaking badass Gore-Tex jacket. Because when you get stuck on St. Nicholas Island for 19 hours waiting for the Mark Vs to come and recover you, and you have no possible way of staying warm, you're going to freaking hate your life and possibly get hypothermic. So, God, those were the best jackets, the old school jackets.

extreme wet, cold weather, Gore-Tex jackets. They're standard military issue. They were freaking heavy duty jackets.

you could put that thing on in the worst weather and be like pretty okay. And in those jackets, they had this big Velcro pocket on the left and right side. So where the zipper is, you didn't have to undo the zipper, but you could just rip this big Velcro thing. Inside that thing, I had a wool beanie. I always had those things with me. Now look, did I have them in Ramadi? It was in 120 degrees. Nope. That was the one, you know, AO. But if it's not over...

I'm going to say that. Maybe 90. Because I'll tell you what, go to our desert training facility. I have a story in mind, yeah. Oh, yeah. You'll freeze your nuts off. Go ahead. What do you got? Yeah, no, I had never gone until my...

pump out there. I'd never been out there when it wasn't the summer. Oh. And so I did, I did a, you know, a workup out there and I think we went in December and I'd never experienced rain or cold. And we did, we did a training op where it was like, you know, one platoon's doing a KLA in a village or something. And the other platoon is basically holding a,

you know, uh, our security, if you will, external security, uh, on, on the mountains there. And it was supposed to be just a short iteration, like an hour. And they, it was one of those, uh,

trick fuckery events where it was a remain overnight. And it rained and our platoon Charlie, or sorry, was it, no, it was Bravo, were stuck on the mountain all night. Getting pissed on and that was one of the coldest moments I'd had since Bud's. I was there with my OIC and we were just

hammering and just regretting not having a beanie and some Gore-Tex. Beanie and a Gore-Tex will go a long way. It's kind of like in Southern California. Bring a hoodie.

You know what I'm saying? Bring a hoodie. Now, look, I've been trying to explain this to my wife and I have no idea how it's not landed yet. But, you know, we'll be going out at two o'clock in the afternoon, two o'clock in the afternoon, bro. It's in San Diego. It's 70, 75. It's sunny. It's a little bit hot. You might want to take your shirt off like, you know, you're good. And then you fast forward. The sun goes down.

Bro, all of a sudden it's 48 degrees. It's cold. You have a hoodie. It's no factor. It's actually meant for a hoodie. Southern California is meant for a hoodie. They made hoodies for Southern California for that very reason. So no factor. And I look at my wife. What's she doing? She's jackhammering. Now I got to give her my hoodie. So I've surrendered trying to convince her. I put an extra hoodie on.

The vehicle for two is one one is not yes because I'm sick of giving it up and being like cool I'll just freeze I told I literally looked right at you and said bring a hoodie and you said it's nice out, bro It ain't that nice out. That's that's the bottom line. So bring a beanie and bring a Gore-Tex jacket That's that's my advice to you. And then the last one I got is

Think we talked about this a little bit already but train and maintain your body and mind and you know the Huck Harbor thing says something like train your body and mind and in the SEAL teams And I think in life we generally tend to get too focused on one or two focused on the other We either spend all of our time training the physical physicality of it in SEAL teams like so much is based on your physicality that You people don't people ignore. Hey the knowledge

And then I think in the civilian sector, a lot of times it gets focused so much on knowledge that people forget about the physicality. And so I think it's important to train and maintain both. And what we're learning now too is in order to maintain, especially your brain, in order to maintain your brain, you've got to introduce new things to your brain. You've got to introduce new things to your brain.

Otherwise, it's gonna get stagnant. So learning new skills, learning new languages, learning new instruments, just learning things is beneficial. And you have to, look, sometimes you say you're not that interested in something or you can't find something. You just have to find something that you're interested in. You gotta try and learn it, as silly as that might sound. And then what we've already talked about physically, you gotta keep moving.

you got to keep moving so otherwise you're going to lose it that's what i got you're you're you're kind of a learner echo charles yeah yes i believe you know you're like you know you get these things i mean they're all kind of computer uh uh centric generally speaking oh is there things that aren't generally speaking have you started playing ukulele for real yet because you asked me about it like a year ago dabbling are you dabbling currently yes okay

Do you have a ear? Can you play a song? I do not have a ear and I cannot play a song. Bro, there's songs that have one chord. Yeah, yeah, then I can play a song. Okay. In principle, yeah. So you're not playing? Dabbling. I'd say dabbling is accurate. Bro, let's just get you a song down. Yeah, yeah. It's freaking, the ukulele's best. Yeah. But you spend more of your time learning about the computer techniques, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Yeah. What'd you say? Oh, yeah. I said it yesterday.

That was a good one. Now, what was interesting about that, there was a couple things that I noticed about that. What program was that? I forget the program. There's a few of them, but you might be familiar with this where it's like you get a picture and then you use these new AI tools and it'll start animating the picture into a video, whatever you tell it to do. Like Adobe Firefly, maybe? There's a bunch. I'm not as familiar, yeah, but yeah, I mean, we've seen it before. Well, I have seen many of them. So,

Yeah, I looked into that and yeah, it's pretty, it's fun. It's not there yet. What surprised me about it was as the angle changed, you got to see

Things that were behind me in the actual photo that you couldn't see at all in the picture But it made things up to go there, right? Well actually freaking impressive it grabs elements and it's like oh there's a tree back there and was there and is that enough? You know, I'm the AI talking in. Oh, is there another tree? Oh, I see a road I see a brick wall and then so it zooms out and pans up and whatever and then yeah to recreate this whole environment Yeah, it's very interesting but with that I

since it only can see a face at one angle. - It gets weird, you get this shadow, weird shifty face thing going on. - It'll turn into a different person, is what'll happen. So even with you, actually, oddly, okay, so there's this classic photo of Jocko with his gun or whatever, and he's all angry or whatever.

And there's a brick wall behind him. Every single picture. He was happy to know. And it's not black and white. It's like a, what do you call it? There's a name for it. Sepia or sepia or something, right? Like a warm. Yeah, like brown. So he's standing against this wall with a gun. More like someone's like, hey, let's take a picture. And he's like reluctantly. The picture's taken in the streets of Ramadi. So it's not like I was out there freaking coking and joking, bro. No, he was very unhappy to be taking that picture, apparently. That's what it looked like on the picture.

- But Leif was always smiling in the same pics. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay, yeah. Well, this might have been Jocko smiling, but either way they look the same, in my opinion. So I took that one and made a video into it. Actually made a bunch of them, but the one I showed you was like one of the first ones, whatever. And then, so I was like, okay, make Jocko start laughing

And then something else. Right. And then, so he's standing there all mad. Then he just starts laughing all crazy, but he turned into a different person a little bit. Actually, I'll show it to you after this. I have it on my phone. But yeah, it's, that's one of those things where, you know, when you see that done, you're kind of like, Oh, this is going to like take over a bunch of stuff. And I, with this particular one, I was like, I don't see it. I don't see how it'll take over anything really. I mean, when the novelty wears off,

It won't really because like in old, this is what they kind of introduced when they introduced it. It was a lot of like old photos. Let's say of your great grandparents, right? The black and white, whatever. And they start animating them where these old, you know,

And then after the novelty wears off, you're kind of like, wait a second, they didn't really do that. This is a computer recreation of something that didn't happen at all. So it's kind of like, okay, it's fun, it's cute, but no one's going to really, you know, attribute that much value to it. At the end of the day, that was my hypothesis. But there are obviously some seriously beneficial things that you could do or productive things because you could make a scene. Yeah.

You know, if you were to make a movie and you needed to show something that didn't happen or that you didn't have the budget to put in the movie, then you could animate it. Yeah, fully. And yeah, there are certain applications, but I didn't see that as fulfilling the, for lack of a better term, the hype that was behind it at the time. I saw a movie that was completely generated by...

like AI and it looked pretty freaking good. It was like a, it was like a three minute or maybe like a two minute movie. Yeah. I think it was made by unreal engine. Oh, uh, it was a car scene. It was like shootout. I think, but it looked freaking great. I mean, I don't know that unreal engine generates AI stuff. Okay. Well, maybe it wasn't,

- But. - I don't freaking know, I'm not. - Yes, that's obvious. Demonstrated that, but. No, no, but I'm saying that's what I thought at the time. And then when I see like little, I saw little things where I was like, oh, I see where they could go with it. Remember Forrest Gump? - Yeah. - Okay. Remember the recreated scenes of like JFK and all that stuff? And if you watch it now, you're like, oh, that's not real or whatever. But the AI stuff now, they could have done that.

with that scene and it would have looked way better. You got to kind of tweak it and stuff. So there's little specific applications. Now, my mind has changed is what I'm saying. So that's why I went in there. I was like, probably got to get to know this stuff because probably I could do some cool stuff. Small stuff. I'm not going to make a whole movie, I don't think. The more pictures, the more information you give it, the better it's going to be as well. That's a different thing, yes. But that's another AI thing. That's like if you're doing a deep fake or something along those lines. But this one is...

literally to be like hey this photo right here since it's a special photo very unique like once literally one frame out of existence do something with it make it into like a fun movie or whatever and so yeah I'm kind of convinced a little bit more now that it's gonna there's gonna be some value there yeah it's definitely helping us on the marketing side I mean just coming up with marketing materials and backgrounds and stuff like that it's gonna be interesting to see where it is in a couple years yeah fully

But yes, I'm a learner. Yeah, sure. So that's what you've been learning. Yeah. A few things. Other stuff as well. I feel like when I sit down to try stuff like that, like I don't have enough contextual knowledge that I'm just like, well, you know, it's like trying to learn jujitsu. You're like,

looking at it and you're like you know this is an umma flotta and you just go dude what what is happening right you're like that you're more right than you know and i know i say that sometimes joking but that applies to kind of anything so if it's like hey i want to um let's say hey you're you don't say either move it or lose it kind of a thing so if it's like hey i'm gonna do jujitsu right i'm gonna start jujitsu i'm 40 years old or whatever but i'm way out of shape or it's like

At the end of the day, that doesn't matter as much as you might think, but it does matter. If you kept staying, if you kept in shape and stuff like that, go jump into jiu-jitsu. No problem. It's way easier. See what I'm saying? So yeah, you could, Jocko, maybe not Jocko, Lee Bob, you could open up Adobe Jiu-Jitsu.

After Effects, we'll say. I mean, you know what After Effects is? Yeah, I've been in there and I've done a lot of these things. Again, like what I was sitting on earlier, wearing a lot of hats, being a small team, man, like you got to figure shit out. So I've... Yeah, a lot of these technologies, like Illustrator. Right. I taught myself how to design in Illustrator. Okay, so... I'm pretty impressed with your shirt designs too. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, like the fact...

the first time you told me that you designed them, I was like, Oh, and you only had a couple at the time. But now that I've seen like the full, the full spectrum of Hooli golf shirts, including the one you're wearing right now, but they like, you obviously have figured out how to do it really well because you got kick-ass designs. They all look cool. Yeah. It's dope. No, thanks man. And just to be clear there, uh,

We have a designer as well. So I haven't done all the designs. This pattern was done by someone else. But yeah, it's creating repeatable patterns, which is a whole technique in and of itself. But, you know, I mean, kind of circling back to what we were talking about earlier is early on in Hooli, we were...

trying to come up with these kick-ass designs and it started you know i had these concepts and working with the designer it was taking a really long time to get from here's the idea you give me first draft it back and forth we're taking really long um and so i was like why don't i just learn this damn program because then you can give me something i can make a couple tweaks on my own and we're just good you know so we turned something that took like five months to like two weeks yeah i'm laughing because i've

had to design things in the past years and I send like the most rudimentary freaking sketches to Echo and then he makes them. But it translates. But see like, okay, we'll take Illustrator for example.

you know how to use Illustrator, just we'll say the fundamentals of Illustrator. - I'm good now. - Okay, okay, good. You're good at Illustrator. So now if you open like Photoshop, you're gonna be like, oh, I can use Photoshop. - You can use Photoshop, yeah. - You're hitting the ground running. As opposed to Jocko, he's gonna be like, he's gonna open Photoshop and be like, this is literally a different language to me. So it's like, what am I gonna spend all this time just learning what I'm looking at? That's a whole like,

That's not even one process. That's a bunch of processes. You know what I'm saying? But then now you go, okay, I can use this Photoshop. It's pretty good. Now you can open like advanced stuff. Exactly. Like After Effects or something. And you're like, okay, this is hard, but I can see how hard it is.

versus jockeys and everything's just gonna look like a different language. See what I'm saying? So you can't really learn as much. - That is how it looks to me. - Yeah, yeah. - Like I don't comprehend this at all. Zero comprehension. - That's how it looks for most people. So like think about code. You ever see like code written out? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like computer code? - Yeah.

HTML, you know what HTML is? It's called hyper, yeah, it's called HTML. It's not even considered code. That's how like basic it is, right? No one knows what it actually stands for. Just hypertext markup language. But there's HTML, then there's like JavaScript and there's like C sharp. Then there's like Python. There's all these different codes and they have different levels of advanced. You look at any code, it's all code. Mm-hmm.

But certain people, if they know the basic code, they're going to be like, okay, I know what this code, they're just going to have a platform to kind of stand on. You see what I'm saying? To learn that next thing. And if you don't, bro, you kind of lost. I got a company that I'm involved with called Blackbox. Blackbox.ai. It's amazing because it is taking English and turning it into code. So,

You can literally make a program just by telling it what kind of program you want. It will code for you. And we got some stuff on there. I want to do something where I just make, to show people how easy it is. Because it goes from what you just talked about, where I look at Photoshop or whatever you said, AI.

Adobe illustrator and it's it's completely foreign to me but black box AI I look at it and there's just a prompt box and you can start to communicate in English which I'm very familiar with yes to get it to begin to perform and execute the writing of code which I don't know anything I don't even know what HTML stands for and yet I have this thing programming things for me and

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. This is a, so I use chat GPT in a similar fashion and it's, it's getting better like each, each and every month, but it's another tool. Like you can ask it to do that and it'll get you to a certain level. If you use black box, it's better because black box is strictly for coding. Yeah. And, and, and they, so if you take all the,

if you take all the resources that ChatGPT takes and they put it towards understanding books and understanding podcast transcripts. - Everything. - There's everything. But what BlackBox does is it's just code. So it just studies code and reinforces code and checks code over and over and over again. So when you put stuff in there, it's infinitely more accurate than what the other

AI program programs are doing. - Money. - Yeah, it's pretty sick. It's pretty sick to see. And since I get to see the numbers behind the scenes and percentage of accuracy, it's incredible. - Yeah. - It's incredible.

better than human. You know what I mean? And I'm not just talking about Jocko Human, Knuckle Dragger. I'm talking a human that codes for a living. This thing, they don't make mistakes. It's like that accurate. And the fact that it just checks and rechecks itself, it's...

The world's changing. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how it evolves, right? Because and not talking about this in particular, but just AI, the way it's moving, I mean, has the potential to like like copywriters, people who do

and these other things, like you can just press the button now. So how that is going to evolve, is that going to eliminate some sort of industries? Oh, there's definitely going to be industries that are being eliminated. The interesting thing is what's going to be taken away is the creativeness, right? The creative and the... It's going to be interesting. I always tell the story about, you know, the White Stripes, the band? Oh, yeah. So Jack White. So he's got this thing where...

He explains how they make pop music and the way that they make pop music, for instance, the way he explains it is they take a snare drum and they'll hit the snare drum a hundred times and they'll look at the computer sound dynamics of all of them and they pick the one that is most perfect. And they take that one snare hit

And that's the one they use for every hit on the snare in a song. And they do the same thing with the cymbal and they do the same thing with the hi-hat and they do the same thing with the guitar and the piano and everything else. So everything is perfect. And so when you hear it,

A human being can tell that there's something soulless about this music. Now look, that music is popular. This is like all the popular music that Katy Perry and whoever, like the popular pop music is all computer perfected. And that's why we listen to the White Stripes. And he's like, oh yeah, we recorded our second album in the stairwell of my rented townhouse.

and put mics in the different rooms. And that's why you can hear that there's mistakes. - Depth. - There's depth and there's soul to it. So when you start talking about writing, okay, so we can have, there's gonna be things that are so, you know what it's like? You know, you can get a diamond, you know, they can tell like a fake diamond versus a real diamond. A fake diamond has no flaws.

- It's too perfect. - It's too perfect and a real diamond has like, doesn't matter how perfect you get, a 10 out of 10 as a real diamond, you can still go, oh yeah, there's a little, little something wrong there. And guess what has more value? The one that's real. And so I think there's gonna be some,

Some sort of gap between those two between like a perfectly written piece that was written just to land so perfect with you Bob the consumer this email is gonna go out to you and it's gonna sound so perfect and you're gonna be like You know something about you might not even think that consciously but subconsciously you're like, oh cool I'm getting this is the algorithm coming at me whereas something that I

has a human element of like, whether it's humor or irony or drama that, that, that a computer now look, is it going to be able to create it eventually? Can you say like, Hey, put, make this funny, make this shocking. Have you seen that thing? That's talking about Tulsi Gabbard. Uh, it's, it's, it's grok like angry grok or something like that. And it's like,

"Solsey Gabbert don't give a shit. "She'll fucking tell people what's what." And you're like, "Oh." And it sounds like what a human would say. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they'll be able to overcome. And maybe you say, "Oh yeah, make the snare drum."

and it'll add the variations that are needed. So did I just talk myself out of my theory? No, no, no. Both of your little theories put together is one unified theory, if you may. That is correct. Artificial general intelligence, that's the one that...

like the AI becomes self-learning to the point to where it's like very, very human. That's I think what a lot of folks are concerned about. Like, so even with graphics and video, especially computer generated video, you run into that problem too, or things are too, like if you want to do digital camera movement, right? If you want to do a, let's say a pan or a wind pan or something, it'll just go, it's too computerized. Right. So it doesn't look like someone was holding that. So, um,

after a certain amount of time, whatever people invented a thing or whoever does the code for the program, they have a thing called EASE. So it's easy ease in and out. So it just goes, basically it's an acceleration, right? Instead of it kind of accelerates into it. Right. But even that's too smooth. Just like how you're saying where it's like, sure, the computer can try to fake it, you know, but you still like a person is so imperfect, even to the smallest thing,

And with some stuff, not everything, with some stuff, people can just tell, you know, like they need that imperfection to for it to be convincing. And it's such a it's on such a micro level that if it's not there or if even if that's replicated by you can sort of feel it. Some things more than others. So after a while, they added a

a feature called camera shake. So it like, it feels, but even that, if you get really used to it, if you're really used to the camera shake, no matter how much you adjust it, you're like, it's not the same. Too much of a pattern. Too much of a pattern. But they can get there. So this is what they do. Randomized camera shake or something. But even the randomized,

It's like, I don't think a human hand camera shake is really randomized at the end of the day. I think it's based on something, something nature, you know, and we're in touch with that on a level that maybe might not, might go beyond just our consciousness. So this is what they do with a camera shake.

They'll take little presets, and this is how they're made. Let's say Lee Bob has a camera. He films a black wall with a white square on it or a white X. He'll just film it with his hand. That's a real camera shake. Now they'll take that footage and base the camera shake in the program on Lee Bob's actual camera shake, pixel by pixel. You see what I'm saying? Then you can get these camera shake elements and presets. And then you get millions of those inputs, and then it's…

Truly like, you know. It starts to be, yeah. It starts to be. But I feel like, I don't know, there's certain things where

it's really i don't know they'd have to go so deep and after a certain amount of time maybe but i don't know i don't know i mean at the end of the you know it becomes this big argument like what if right now we're living in a simulation and it's based on that idea where it was like yeah there was just computers and people but the computers were like hey we're too computery we got to be more like people oh that's not quite as convincing let's you know let's refine that into this imperfect thing and then after a while it's like and here we are i'm saying yeah there's a

- Another thing, there's some spark, right? There's some spark of creativity that comes into the world. And one of the ways that I explain this to people is you may or may not be able to produce a spark. And if you go down to Guitar Center where they sell guitars and you hang up a sign that says, "I need a guitarist that can play the following albums." And you can name the most complex, complicated albums, Rush,

Led Zeppelin, just name them all. And you will get probably five people from every guitar center in America that will say legitimately, yes, I can play all those. And yet,

When you call them, you're like, what do you do for a living? And they're like, oh, I work at Olive Garden or whatever. Like I'm a waiter or I'm a... And even though they're so skilled at the technical aspect of playing guitar, they don't have whatever little thing it is that allows them to create music. Now you take like Kurt Cobain, who was, I mean...

obviously a skilled guitarist, but he wasn't like some technical genius or he wasn't a technical expert at guitar. He was a very good guitarist, but he wasn't better than a guy at guitar center that can play every rush song. And so, and yet he could go, and he had that little spark of creativity and I'll, you know, he made music. So there is some, and, and I don't know, this is, I don't know if we can have a computer that,

Where with all the millions of inputs that you just talked about Bob, like millions of inputs that I get, can it create something totally unique that has the actual spark of creativity? It's possible, but... What's to distinguish, right? Like if the AGI comes to fruition, a vid developing like a human mind.

You know, I mean, like we all develop from babies to where we are now with a collection of experiences and trial and errors, you know. Yeah, I guess it feels like you'd have to consider why it would need to be like a human mind. Because human mind is like, and I was talking to Dr. Luke about this, like why would a computer want to do whatever it wants to do, right? It's like, okay, you answer that question. And it's like, why does a person want to do what a person wants to do?

So it was like, okay, so if I can get a little bit crass here. So let's say there's a group of guys, right? And they're in a room and they're trying to, I don't know, they're building, I don't know, some tables or something. And a girl walks in. Now they're there to build the table, but a girl walks in. Some guys are married, some guys are not. Those guys' attention goes to that girl. And so their motivation in being there changes in a lot of ways. So it's sexual motivation, right?

And it's for a bunch of different reasons. So, and then those reasons are linked to a bunch of other stuff, right? And that's the fundamental, like, roots of being a human. Some of them. Now, why would a computer replicate that? Or how would it? You see what I'm saying? Like, can a computer get jealous? You know? You kind of have to program that in. You know, can a computer, like...

get distracted in a sexual way, you know? Because that's kind of part of our being a little bit. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Not to mention like hunger and ego and jealousy and anger and all those. Like you're going to write some good rock and roll songs when you're angry, right? Yeah. You're going to write some good blues songs when you get dumped, right? Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. You're going to paint some good, some good,

when you're distressed about something. Right. And when you think about it, computers always have like this mission, right? This program, like this computer is there to do something, you know, even if you say, hey, free associate as a computer, this computer would be like, okay, that's my new mission, free association, right? People will have our mission. Hell yeah. No matter how focused and concentrated, right?

we are on this mission, we can still get distracted in principle. You know, we can get distracted. We can get like all these things can deviate, make us deviate from the mission. And not to mention you can get distracted from nothing, but what's inside your own head. And that becomes in and of itself a thing. You see what I'm saying? So it's like this, it's almost like there's two different systems running. No matter how advanced the AI gets, it's like, it's almost like something has to be in there to kind of direct it. Yeah.

The same way a person is. If they start merging sentience with biologics, then maybe that gap is closed down. Yeah, but even that's a different thing. I don't even think that would be considered general intelligence. I often compare it to life because we know what chemicals and molecules and atoms are inside of like an amoeba.

But we can't make one. We can't make one come to life. Like we don't have, we can put all the stir it together, mix it all up, but it doesn't turn into an amoeba, which is the simplest, you know, cell form there is. And so maybe this is one of those like things that cannot be crossed. You can't actually ever spark that creativity. Yeah.

but I guess we're gonna find out the coming years. We will find out real quick too. But maybe you can get real close to it. You know, you can get real close to it. Like right now we can grow, we can graft skin cells, we can make from stem cells, we can make it grow into something, but there's just one line we can't cross.

I feel like, I don't know. We've been talking out of school for the last however long, but I will add this to the mix of ignorance that we're talking about. I feel like there is, I feel like eventually we will be able to, I feel like it's like, you know, that last thing, it's probably not just one thing. It's probably like a last little group of puzzle pieces. And it's going to have to do with something that we're just not paying attention to right now. You know how like certain things where it's like,

you put all the ingredients in and you're like, why isn't it happening? Oh wait, I had to put it in the oven for half an hour. That's the ingredient. I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about all the ingredients. See what I'm saying? So it's like, it'll be something like that. I think, I think like, it'll be like, oh wait, maybe some time, like, like crazy amount of time too. And then after that certain amount of time, now this, this collection of whatever chemicals has the capability to do this stuff now, or it's time plus, um,

you know, something that we're just not paying attention to right now. It feels like that's going to be the little factor. When we're old men, shit is going to get weird. Yeah. It feels like it. A couple of decades away. But we're keeping learning though. So yes, yes, of course. That goes learning and, and,

- And contemplating. - Contemplating. - Philosophizing over here. - Yeah, yeah. - We'll get some feedback. I wonder if people wanna hear the philosophization of the whole scenario. Most likely not. - Yeah, probably not. - All right, in the meantime, some good rules, you know? Training, we're getting better, we're getting stronger. Training our mind, training our body. Gonna need fuel for that situation.

We recommend Draco Fuel. Hey, check it out. We got energy drinks. What do you got over there? Pink lemonade? I do. Is that your go-to? Black cherry, vanilla. Okay. Nice. Number one for me. This is number two. Yeah. That's probably number two for me as well. My number one is still iced tea lemonade, which I'm on my second right now, which is kind of cool because I don't always, you know, I like to come in to the podcast. I almost always do a podcast.

99% of the time I'm drinking a go during the podcast or just before the podcast, but getting into two, it's not every time, you know, but that's what we're doing. Jocko fuel, check out jockofuel.com. We got energy drink. We got protein. We got greens. We got hydration. We got, we got cold war.

you know we got everything that you need joint warfare something that i feel like we don't draw as much attention as we could which it has one of those hidden something that might be interpreted as a hidden value is the magnesium the krill oil like that kind of that kind of stuff that's not like oh hell yeah protein get my like of course that's freaking good of course but

If you look into like magnesium, for example, and the benefits of that and how we're kind of like unhealthy because of lack of magnesium, I think you'd be surprised. Go check it out. Docofuel.com. Also check it out at Walmart, Wawa, Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Atheist, Hanford, Dash Stores, Wakeforn, ShopRite, HEB down in Tejas, Meijer up in the Midwest, Wegmans, Harris Teeter. Somebody posted to Harris Teeter like had the full...

Display going on Publix Dick's sporting goods right now. We got a little test scenario going I think we're in 200 stores. So go clear the shelves at Dick's There's one right on the corner here, by the way Publix down in Florida, which is Outstanding people been getting into Publix to appreciate it appreciate you go going into Publix and just buying I posted the other day before during after this was jujitsu specific, but it's not just you just specific driving to jujitsu go

get to jiu-jitsu have that little nice little energy right sure during jiu-jitsu hydrate good to go because i'm sweating like a damn pig during jiu-jitsu but just keep hydrated get done get home milk there it is before during and after you're good to go yeah totally good to go so check that out if you don't have uh jaco fuel at your gym email jf sales at jocofuel.com we'll get you hooked up also

You need clothing. Originusa.com. We got hunt gear. We got jeans. We got what? Rash guards. Rash guards. We got shorts. We got boots. Did you get the new boots yet? You didn't get them yet, did you? No, I'm afraid not. You're going to like the new boots. I agree. I've seen them. They're freaking GTG. Yeah, yeah. GTG. I...

Look do I get a little bit of a hookup kind of a little bit, but I got a pair of blacked out ones Oh, yeah, why is that not murdered out as they say? Yeah, and well, it's cuz it cuz the national in front, you know, it's professional organization So you gotta have some professional looking boots. I can't have a big white soul So I got a blacked out soul from the team. Oh, you got a blacked out soul and then I blacked out the threads myself

With a sharpie. Good to go. No factor. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah. Remember blacking stuff out the team. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Blacking that thing out. So yeah, all 100% American made, 100% American made materials. Check out originusa.com. You know what people are trying to bring manufacturing back to America right now? We brought it back. Already back. So there you go. Check out originusa.com. It's true. More clothing. Merch, if you will. Jocko store. Yeah.

we got discipline equals freedom stuff shirts hats hoodies we already knew that we got socks we already knew that but we are we do have an upcoming collab a little brand called hooli yeah

That's nice. Hey, look, a lot of people have been for years too, by the way. I mean, Bob, we already know this. We've been talking about this for a while. But for years, literally years, people have been like, hey, I need a cool, cool shirts. Freaking sweet. But I have a job. I have a job. Exactly right. I got to go to work or whatever. How can I represent at work? See what I'm saying? And I'm like, hey, you know, and I looked into it. Then I stopped looking to, you know, back and forth as far as like solving that problem. But.

Now we're going to do a collab with Hooli and now we've got some collared shirts and polos. Pumped to do it, man. Yeah. That'll be solid. Do we decide on the design yet? Yeah, just the basic represent. Okay. The flag. X flag. Def core to the core. Nice. All day. Yeah, it looks good. It's not out right now.

But yes, soon be on the lookout for that. Yeah, very good. I was impressed. I am still. I'm obviously impressed with like the fit because that's like a thing. Let's face it. Like I don't wear polos that much. So when I wear one, I'm like, cool, it's a polo, like whatever. But like all polos aren't created equally like the fit, the material, like the whole thing, just like any other T-shirt. Yeah, thanks, man. We put a lot of time and effort, you know, launching and then iterating from there to make sure we can.

provide the best products possible. You got Shirt Locker. Oh, yeah, yeah, Shirt Locker, by the way, is a subscription scenario, new design every month. The reason I bring this up is because somebody posted a Shirt Locker shirt and I texted you and said, wait a second, is this one of our shirts? And you said yes, and I said, I need 4XL. Not 4, not 4, not XXXXL. Not 4X, yeah, yeah. Four times XL. Who made that?

It's freaking dope. So it's like a skull with the Def Corp flag carved into its head. Yeah, dude, it looks legit. And then you finally got some freaking runic writing done properly, which I've been asking you for a long time. We made it happen. So that's a dope shirt. Did you get me? Did you set some aside for me?

Yeah, so we got to wait for the end of the month because everybody got to get theirs. Hey, look, we all love you. But let's face it, our people, they come first. Take care of people and they'll take care of us. Exactly right. The team comes first. But yeah, when they all have theirs, then you're going to get yours 100%. Okay, so if you need some of those, if you need some t-shirts, you can check that out. Oh, wait, on that one, that particular one says comfort is a curse. Yeah. And I like that too because there's sort of like a whole like, you know,

Ritualistic thing. Kind of a cursey. Yeah, it's kind of a cursey thing. Yeah, that's like a voodoo type scenario. So if you want them t-shirts, check that out. Now also, look, sometimes we got jobs. Sometimes we're going to need to wear a polo shirt. Yeah. By the way, that was a standard thing in the SEAL teams. It was. Like it was a certain mode of dressing. If you had to go on a commercial flight in civilian clothes, you'd have to put on a collared shirt, they said. Yeah, yeah. Now look, you could get a lame...

polo shirt. Yeah. Like not fitting, right. Just whack or you get yourself a Hooli golf shirt. Yeah. A hundred percent. Tell us about Hooli, Hooli golf.com. What do you got, Bob? Yeah. First of all, I just want to thank you guys for, for having me on, uh, you know, real, real honor privilege to be here. And, uh, yeah, I wanted to take this opportunity just to thank, uh, everyone who's supported Hooli the last couple of years. So we turned two in April. Uh,

Yay. Yay, yay, yay. Happy birthday. It's been a hell of a ride, but I mean, to be honest, we wouldn't be here without our loyal customers and with the help of so many. So I just wanted to take that opportunity. If you're out there and you've played a part in getting us here, thank you so much. And for everyone who has been getting the word out, please continue to do that.

You know, we really appreciate it. We're trying to, you know, we make golf where for action guys, we're trying to reach out to and connect Hooli with the action oriented, competitive minded people out there. You know, athletes, former athletes, gym rats, CrossFitters, hunters, fighters, it's

surfers, like you name it. If you share this mindset, you'd like to get after it. And you have a penchant for golf. It's not a must-have, but we are your brand. So please check us out, hooligolf.com. We got some killer threads, pull-os, tees, hats. And we have a whole range of styles, right? So if you don't want to be showing it off like what I got here, a little bit bright pattern here, we got stuff that's a little bit more chill and relaxed. I like how you just called the freaking...

- Subdued tiger stripe black on gray of, what'd you call it? A loud color? - It's a pattern. So, I mean, if you're not into wearing patterns, we have some non-patterned stuff as well. - And I gotta say, you don't, like I don't play golf at all.

And I am not going to play golf probably for another, let's say 25 years. Maybe when I'm like 95, I'll start be like, all right, let me get out there. But doesn't matter. Uh, Hooli, look, I still have to wear a polo shirt. I still have to wear a collared shirt. And why would I be wearing a lame polo shirt or a lame collared shirt from somebody that's whack? I would not do that. I would wear something that's dope. So, um,

And you actually have the Hooli, is a polo shirt and a golf shirt the same thing?

yeah so the whole reason why this whole damn thing started in first place is if you golf you have to wear a polo it's like most there's some courses that are rules that are a little bit more relaxed but you know it was this transformation from you know this knuckle dragging dude that i was most of my life and career to you're going to play golf you got to look the part might as well have some fun with it um

We use high-performing materials. We've got some kick-ass designs. And so, yeah, if you're going to golf, no need to go out there looking like a nerd. Or if you're just living life, traveling, going to work, we can elevate that look a little bit and have a little bit of hooli flair that adds some character. And there's a story and ethos behind this brand. We're not just...

pumping out shit. Well, what I appreciated was because I was like, hey, Bob, like I dig the patterns that you're making. I dig the designs and all that stuff, but I got to wear a regular ass polo. Like I can't go present to a company and be in like you got the one that's a bunch of hand-to-hand combat. Yeah, hand-to-hand bunch of little skeletons all over it fighting each other or like bunch of little men on it like doing hand-to-hand combat with golf clubs. Like so there's all these things that are cool.

But like, I don't need that. I, well, I need that, but I also need to have a professional shirt, which most people are many people that are here. I don't care. Look, if you're worried, if you work construction and you got to go in and present to, you know, one of the owners of the buildings, like you got to look professional, right?

Hooli has got you covered. If you work at an energy company and you're a lineman, but you got to go and talk to the boss and present him about some plan, you got to go in there. You can't roll in there in your field wear. You got to have something that steps up a little bit. So regardless of what you do, when you got to... Look, we ain't going into freaking Wall Street. We're not bankers, right? We're not wearing a suit and tie. That's not happening. But there are times where you got to elevate above...

T-shirt and that's what that's what we got Hooli for so and another thing where this plays in is Let's say you own a company. Let's say you own a company and you got a you got a crew of you know, 30 dudes that work for you and You got to have them all look presentable

'cause they gotta show up for an event somewhere or they gotta go present to clients and you don't wanna have them all looking different like a soup sandwich. It's like what you mentioned about tasking a bruiser. People notice you look professional. So don't get your team like a bunch of junk polo shirts that are trash. Get them some professional looking badass shirts that they go, oh yeah. And there's a little unity and everyone goes, oh yeah.

We're not, hey, we're not just representing some freaking lame ass brand.

you know what i mean yes sir you want you when you get hey when you give someone a shirt let's say you own a company and you give someone a shirt you want them to be like oh he thought about this this is for real this isn't just like a shirt that you know whatever will go down to the go on the website and order these shirts and do it no bro that's a big deal too by the way like you know how like um you know it's a little team of people they show up they got their polos on but like they don't fit right or whatever you can tell okay

maybe they went to one of these thrift stores or one of these, what do you call it, club stores where they just buy in bulk, right? The cheapest, right? - No heart and soul. - Giveaway, freaking cheap stuff or whatever. And then yeah, they look more like a bunch of slackers. And look, not consciously. You're not like, oh, that polo isn't squared away, so therefore you're a slacker. It's not that. You just feel the vibe a little bit. - Yeah, a little bit. You think, oh, that shirt was probably designed by AI.

But you see someone in a Hooli shirt, you're like, that thing was literally designed by Lead Bob. And the whole team knows that Lead Bob, he was a attention to detail guy. He was professional. He was on time. He was squared away. Now he's designing your shirt. Don't you want that shirt? Isn't that what we're doing? That's what we're doing. So you definitely got to keep that in mind.

just to follow up you hit on something I just want to be clear to anyone listening out there is we do have a bulk and wholesale program so if you do work for that construction company we love doing jobs like that it's yeah so anyways check us out you can either go to the website or email us at info at hooligolf.com would love to get that going for you guys hey I'm gonna go I'm gonna put myself on report here kind of alright don't even know if I should bring this up but I'm going to

This is out of character. Have you ever heard of a Tiffany's bag? Do you know there's a jewelry store called Tiffany's? Yeah, Tiffany's Enco. So it's like a jewelry store. Yeah. And apparently it's a really nice one. Mm-hmm.

And if you get like your wife, something from that store, it doesn't really matter what it is, but if you roll it with that bag, bro, she's happy. - Oh, in the house, like after shopping, you got the Tiffany's bag. - Or like she opens up the present or whatever for Mother's Day and she sees a Tiffany bag, bro, it doesn't really matter. You know what I mean?

You roll in that Tiffany bag because it shows like hey, I'm in the game. I got you the Tiffany bag the whole thing, right? That's kind of like when you give someone a Hooli shirt, right? They're not like yeah, they're not like oh cool. You just went down to freaking whatever s-mart Got me a polo shirt. It's like no we didn't shop smart. It's different shop s-mart shop smart shop s-mart No, we got you the Hooli shirt

And so, and they, like a nice little bag, the little Hooli bag with the little thing on the top. Yeah, impressive. Attention to detail, man. I tried to, in this next career, apply all of that. And you're right. I mean, every single polo that we make, it's originated from a thought and there's a lot of, you know, blood, sweat,

and heart and soul and everything that we make and we'll continue to get better and make more cool shit. Right on. Check. Hooligolf.com. Check out primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Just go get steak. We need steak with that fuel. Look, you can have Malk. 100%, bro. By the way, Malk is a good freaking dessert, dude. Good dessert. We got a new flavor coming out. I don't know if it's been exposed yet.

Has it? I don't know. You don't know. Tell me. All right. We got a new flavor. Wait, wait, the powder or the RTD? Uh, powder. Oh, okay. Yeah, of course. Okay. So there's new, new flavors coming out. Um, but yeah, you, before you eat your dessert, which is a milk, get some steak, get some Colorado craft beef.com primal beef.com. Uh, also subscribe to the podcast. Also check out Jocko underground.com. And we've got YouTube channels, but you've got a Hooli golf YouTube channel. You know, we haven't done much with that. Uh,

Over the top who leave was our YouTube channel. We'll work on that here in practice next year. It's not been a priority at this time. Not a priority right now. You got to prioritize and execute. Yeah, you do. Yeah.

- Well, we got YouTube channels, right? We got the Jocko Podcast official. - Dig it. - We got the Jocko Podcast clips, Echo Charles. - Dig it. - He's like, "Oh, making the clips thing." He's put like nine clips on it. Good job, dude. Everyone is really appreciative. - There's more than nine, thank you. But, you know, we out there. - Jocko Fuel has a YouTube channel. Origin USA has a YouTube channel. Check all those out. Also, written a bunch of books. Check out the books I've written. Kids books. Written a bunch of kids books.

i get letters from kids that did their first pull up yeah i get letters from kids that started jiu jitsu i get letters from kids that learn their times tables i get letters from kids that squared their life away with this book so get your kids get your neighbors kids get your your nieces and nephews give them the warrior kid books check those out also echelon front we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership these are the principles that we learned in combat on the battlefield and these are applicable in any leadership endeavor

So if you wanna come to one of our events, the next event is in San Antonio. There's still a couple tickets left. It's San Antonio, Texas, April 29th through May 1st. Come and check it out. We have a bunch of other events. And we can come into your business and we can help you with your leadership situation. And by the way, if you have problems, they're leadership problems.

We also have an online leadership training academy, which is not just for like, oh, you're in a leadership position. You're the CEO of a company. You're at the chief of a fire department. It's not just for them. It's for you that's sitting there with, you're at the bottom rung. You've been in your job for a year and a half. No one reports to you. You can learn from the Extreme Ownership Academy and it's going to help you in every aspect.

It's going to help you build relationships. It's going to help you interact with other people. It's going to help you advance, get promoted, do better, make more money. It's going to help you with those things through leadership. And that can be found at ExtremeOwnership.com. And finally, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible organization that has helped so many of our friends. Also check out America's, also check out HeroesAndHorses.org.

which is Micah Fink's organization, helping SEALs get, and not just SEALs, helping all veterans or a bunch of veterans find themselves up in the mountains, find their soul again. And then Jimmy Mays got his organization beyondthebrotherhood.org. So that's americasmightywarriors.org, heroesandhorses.org, and beyondthebrotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us for Bob and Hooli Golf, check out hooligolf.com.

And then on Instagram at Hooligolf. And then Bob on Instagram is lead, Bob Holland. Check out episode 416 if you want to learn more about that. And if you want to connect with me, check out Jocko.com. And then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo is at Echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm. And once again, thanks, Bob, for coming back. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Good to see you. Thanks for your service as a frog man and your continued pursuit to building a business here.

and helping our economy grow with Hooli Golf. Thanks to all our military out there, veterans who passed down these lessons to help us be better new guys, help us be more effective in combat, and help us be better people. And then thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you for protecting our way of life here at home. And for everyone else out there, look, we went through some good mantras today.

that are going to help you in every aspect of your life. So keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open, don't be late, don't forget any gear, look for work, become an asset. And you become an asset by always training and maintaining your body and your mind. And in order to do that, just keep getting after it. And until next time, this is lead Bob Holland and Echo and Jocko out.