Jocko Podcast 487: How Being a "New Guy" Can Help You Win In Life.

Summary

Highlights

• Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open: Being humble is key to learning and progressing in any environment. 🤐
• Don't be late: Being punctual shows respect for others' time and reflects your reliability. 🕒
• Don't forget any gear: Preparedness is crucial. Missing essential items can disrupt operations. 🎒
• Look for work: Always seek opportunities to help others and improve the team dynamic. 🛠️
• Be teachable and eager to learn: Show up ready to absorb new information and improve continuously. 📚

Key Takeaways

• The importance of maintaining humility in new environments and valuing the experience of others. 🧠
• Time management and punctuality as a reflection of one's reliability and trustworthiness. 🕑
• Always being prepared and not overlooking the small details can have a significant impact on outcomes. 🎯
• The value of initiative and proactively seeking ways to contribute to a team. 💪
• Learning from mistakes and the importance of continuous self-improvement. 📈

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Question about Being a Good New Guy In this episode of the Jaco podcast, an individual received a question about how to be a good new member in a SEAL platoon. They explore this query and suggest that the traits needed to be a 'good new guy' in this context are universally applicable across different teams and situations. The discussion aims to provide insights not just for the SEALs but for being a constructive and effective new member in any team or organization.
• 03:01 - 03:30: Skills Required for Being a Good New Guy The chapter discusses the essential skills required to be a successful 'new guy' in a SEAL platoon. It emphasizes not only the importance of having weapons proficiency, being a good shot, possessing tactical knowledge, and utilizing terrain but also understanding demolitions. However, beyond these technical skills, the chapter alludes to the importance of being a good human being to excel in this role.
• 03:31 - 05:30: Guidance and Advice for New Guys In this chapter, the focus is on guidance and advice for newcomers entering a particular field or environment. The narrator reflects on the nature of receiving unsolicited advice, often given to new individuals by more experienced members. The chapter emphasizes the value of these tips, despite being unrequested, as they have been passed down and can be quite valuable for those starting out.
• 05:31 - 08:10: Introduction of Bobby Holland The chapter introduces Bobby Holland, a retired Navy SEAL who was a member of the E5 mafia and task unit bruiser. The narrator reflects on lessons that can profoundly impact one's life and career, and suggesting that those lessons have been significant in the narrator's personal journey. This prompts the narrator to start a podcast to discuss insights gained from such impactful experiences, with Bobby Holland's story serving as a focal point.
• 08:11 - 11:00: Principles of Combat Leadership and New Guy Mantras The chapter introduces a seasoned veteran in combat leadership who advanced from platoon chief to warrant officer before retiring after 21 years in the field. He first appeared on podcast 416, where you can learn about his backstory. Post-retirement, he founded and now serves as the CEO of Hulie Golf, a brand focusing on 'badass apparel for badass people,' which you can explore at Julieolf.com.
• 11:01 - 14:30: Jocko's First Day at SEAL Team 1 The chapter titled 'Jocko's First Day at SEAL Team 1' revolves around the experience of being new in an environment, specifically focusing on Jocko's experience as a new member at SEAL Team 1. The conversation begins with reminiscing about the new guy experience and continues with Bob, who is also transitioning into a new phase himself, having retired recently. The discussion emphasizes the mindset and mantras that can be beneficial when entering a new role or environment, suggesting that maintaining a 'new guy' mentality can be advantageous.
• 14:31 - 18:00: Importance of Time Management and Being Prepared This chapter emphasizes the importance of time management and preparedness as lifelong skills. It relates these concepts to principles of combat leadership, such as cover and move, keeping plans simple, prioritizing and executing tasks, and decentralized command. The speaker reiterates familiar concepts like 'discipline equals freedom' and 'extreme ownership,' underscoring their foundational role in effective leadership and personal success.
• 18:01 - 21:30: Consequences of Forgetting Gear and Redundancy The chapter discusses the crucial lessons learned as a new recruit regarding the importance of remembering your gear and the principles of redundancy.
• 21:31 - 25:00: Classic New Guy Mistakes and Learning Experiences The chapter 'Classic New Guy Mistakes and Learning Experiences' recounts a tough introduction to a new environment, highlighting a scenario where the protagonist and his peers faced a brash welcome from their superior. The superior, obviously seasoned and straightforward, dismissed their past accomplishments and emphasized the need to prove themselves anew in their current setting. This experience underscored the cultural shift from training to real-world application within the organization, exposing the challenges of transitioning and the demand for re-establishing one's reputation in a professional setting. The intense language and atmosphere set the tone for the rigorous journey ahead.
• 25:01 - 28:30: Advice on Proactivity and Ownership The chapter titled 'Advice on Proactivity and Ownership' is about the experiences of Team One from the command master chief during the graduation of Buds training, considered the most challenging training in the US military. This accomplishment initially leaves the graduates feeling proud and possibly a bit overconfident. However, the master chief quickly humbles them, emphasizing the importance of proactivity and ownership in their military careers.
• 28:31 - 32:00: The Importance of Being Teachable The chapter titled 'The Importance of Being Teachable' starts with an account of a new group of individuals checking in for a program after completing jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. The individuals arrive at different times, gradually assembling as a complete group. Following their assembly, they go through various indoctrination briefings. A master chief addresses them with a timeless piece of advice, urging them to 'Keep your mouth shut.' This indicates the significance of listening and learning, underscoring the value of being open to receiving guidance and instruction, which aligns with the chapter’s theme of teachability.
• 32:01 - 37:00: Doing Things the Hard Way and Not Repeating Mistakes The chapter titled 'Doing Things the Hard Way and Not Repeating Mistakes' emphasizes the importance of humility and listening as key principles for avoiding mistakes and succeeding. The speaker recounts advice given to them to keep quiet, pay attention, and ensure readiness by being punctual and prepared with the necessary equipment. This advice underlines the value of being observant and learning from others as foundational elements to achieving success.
• 37:01 - 40:30: Humility and Proper Decision Making The chapter emphasizes the importance of humility and listening skills in leadership roles. Contrary to common belief, leadership is not about speaking a lot but about listening more and keeping an open mind. It highlights the critical nature of being punctual and the personal commitment of the speaker to avoid being late, even preferring to be early rather than risk lateness.
• 40:31 - 44:00: Attention to Detail and Gear Maintenance This chapter discusses the importance of teamwork and flexibility within rigid scheduling. It illustrates how, despite the challenges of finding parking in a crowded college environment, mutual understanding and small concessions like tolerance for slight delays can smooth over logistical hurdles. It touches on how agreements can be made with others to increase efficiency and adapt to unpredictable circumstances. These elements tie back to maintaining a disciplined and attentive mindset when managing both personal tasks and collective commitments, emphasizing the necessity of attention to detail and the occasional need for flexibility in gear maintenance or mission preparedness.
• 44:01 - 48:30: Becoming an Asset and Keeping Your World Small This chapter discusses the importance of being committed and reliable in a team setting. It emphasizes that not managing personal behavior or responsibilities, such as punctuality, can signal betrayal to the team. The chapter suggests that failing to prioritize correctly reflects one's inability to control broader aspects of life.
• 48:31 - 53:00: Importance of Rehearsals and Redundancy The chapter titled 'Importance of Rehearsals and Redundancy' emphasizes the necessity of planning and preparation for successful mission execution. It highlights how excuses such as traffic show poor judgment and a lack of world understanding, which can negatively impact team perception. The narrative stresses that as a newcomer, it's crucial to demonstrate commitment and reliability to avoid negative signals. A reference to Tony's saying that 'everything takes a half an hour' underscores the importance of time management, exemplified by showing up earlier than required.
• 53:01 - 64:30: Philosophical Discussion on AI and Technology The chapter discusses the importance of punctuality, especially in critical contexts such as the Navy. It highlights that while some events allow for flexibility in timing, crucial movements, like ships departing, require strict adherence to schedules to avoid significant repercussions. This serves as a philosophical backdrop on the broader implications of time management and responsibility, particularly in high-stakes environments.
• 64:31 - 72:00: Jocko Fuel, Origin USA and Other Products Promotion The chapter underscores the importance of punctuality and preparedness, especially in relation to movement and gear management. Being early ensures you don't miss out on important movements, while not forgetting any gear is emphasized as it reflects personal responsibility and preparedness. There's also a reflection on the irreversible nature of being unprepared when something essential is missed.
• 72:01 - 80:00: Hulie Golf and Shirts Discussion This chapter reflects on a past experience involving a critical mistake made during a joint operation. The narrator recounts a time when a colleague, referred to as GIF, forgot a crucial component, an antenna or an antenna base, needed for effective communication. This error highlights the importance of preparedness and attention to detail in their line of work. The story is further emphasized through an anecdote about GIF, who owned up to his mistake, demonstrating accountability and humility. The discussion underlines the lessons learned from such incidents and the value of owning up to one's errors.
• 80:01 - 90:00: Books, Echelon Front, and Closing Comments The chapter focuses on a conversation about preparedness and attention to detail in high-stakes environments, possibly in a military or tactical setting. The speaker recounts a situation where a colleague, referred to as 'GIF,' who is usually meticulously prepared, happens to forget an important piece of equipment or communication. This incident alerts the speaker to the importance of vigilance and meticulous preparation. The message underscores the often unseen disciplined and methodical aspects behind seemingly glamorous or 'sexy' operations.

Jocko Podcast 487: How Being a "New Guy" Can Help You Win In Life. Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 This is Jaco podcast number 487 with Echo Charles and me, Jaco Willink. Good evening, Ekko. 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 cuz 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
• 00:30 - 01:00 good human being, right? Yeah. And listen, being a new good new guy in a SEAL platoon, there's some things, right? You got to have weapons proficiency, you know, you want to be a good shot. You got to have tactical knowledge. You got to you got to learn how to utilize terrain. You got to 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 frog man, you got to
• 01:00 - 01:30 have more than just the skills. And so, as I thought about the things that I was told when I was a new guy, cuz you're going to get guidance. What's that what's that thing they say now? Un 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 is can be
• 01:30 - 02:00 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 to 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, 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
• 02:00 - 02:30 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 Hulie Golf making what? Badass apparel for badass people. Julieolf.com. Yeah, that's what that's what uh lead Bob is doing now. But like
• 02:30 - 03:00 me um he once was a new guy and then he raised new guys. And so Bob, we're going to talk about some of that. Thanks for coming back. Yeah, man. Thank you for having me back and I look forward to have this conver conversation, man. It's uh you know something especially with where I'm at now. It's very much in my head space because I'm basically a new guy all over again. Well, how long ago did you did you retire? Uh summer of 21. It's been a couple years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it really is the new guy some of the new guy mantras that if you keep those in your head, it will make
• 03:00 - 03:30 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. So, I mean, obviously, look, there's principles of combat leadership that we talk about all the time. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, and execute, decentralized command. Uh, the things that you've heard me say a million times. Discipline equals freedom. The the the attitude of extreme ownership. Those are clearly things that are fundamental to everything that I've done. Um, and th those are the things
• 03:30 - 04:00 that I've passed on. But there's like some brass tax things that you hear when you're a new guy that stick with you. Now, I got to tell you the story about me being a new guy. Um, I was with a couple other new guys. We were checking into Seal Team 1 and we had to go see the Master Chief and we we walked into the Master Chief's office and the command master chief and we were we were actually standing at attention outside
• 04:00 - 04:30 of his office and he called us and he's like, "Get in here." And so we go in, we're standing at attention in front of his desk and he points at each one of us one at a time and he goes, "Fuck you. [ __ ] you. [ __ ] you." And I was like, "Okay." and he said, "Everyone here has made it through training. No one gives a [ __ ] that you made it. It doesn't mean [ __ ] You have to earn your training here and you have to earn your reputation. Get the [ __ ] out of here." And we were like, "Okay." So that's that's my first day at SEAL
• 04:30 - 05:00 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 trident but you graduated buds man so you're feeling good and you might be feeling a little bit cocky. Well, Master Chief took that right out of us. So we
• 05:00 - 05:30 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 and I think do we go to jump school direct? Yeah, we had already 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 master chief comes in again and he he says, "Keep your mouth shut. Keep
• 05:30 - 06:00 your ears open. Don't be late. Don't forget any gear." And he left. That's 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 we, 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,
• 06:00 - 06:30 listen is so important. And you think when you're in a leadership position, that's 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 next one, don't be late. Now, I was always very paranoid about being late. I would not be late. I would rather be 5 hours early than 30 seconds late for something. The only waiver I
• 06:30 - 07:00 gave myself on that was when I was going to college. I was going to college with another team guy at the University of San Diego. And the parking was so difficult to get and but you might get lucky and get a parking spot or you'd have to get there two hours early. And so we had we like 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
• 07:00 - 07:30 just such a reflection of kind of everything. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's kind of a betrayal to the team, you know? Just signals that you straight up betrayal. Bobby's going hot, dude. Betrayal aren't prioritizing your life accordingly. Yeah. Yeah. If you can't show up on time, like, can we count on you? That's 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
• 07:30 - 08:00 can you execute a a mission? 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 um a lack of understanding of the way the world works. Yeah. Or it just may signal that you don't give a [ __ ] 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 I was thinking this morning, we both showed up 15 minutes
• 08:00 - 08:30 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,
• 08:30 - 09:00 you want to be 30 minutes early for you don't want to miss movement um at all. So that's 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 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. And missing one piece of gear is
• 09:00 - 09:30 can really disrupt an operation depending on what's missing. I had actually GIF, remember GIF was on the podcast? Yes. Well, he was we were both new guys together. We were both radio men 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 g forgive me for blasting you right now but he came to he the credit to him was
• 09:30 - 10:00 he came to me 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 secondary or maybe he just didn't make comms but either way it was like cuz GIF was squared away for so for him to forget something it made me even more hyper paranoid about 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
• 10:00 - 10:30 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 uh Tony and I used to do, so on that Ramati 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, knots, primary, secondary. We went through our whole load out there. Um cuz yeah, I can't be stepping out the door missing something critical. Uh whether that's for, you know, for the
• 10:30 - 11:00 team effort or for you to fight as an individual. Um, so it seems really really basic, but yeah, you gota got to make sure you have all your stuff and you know, two is one, one is none. Uh, have some redundancy there. You know, I'm not I'm not ruling out on an op with one battery that's in my knots. No, you know, or laser, whatever. And one thing that I did that was cool is I would have like all my gear staged on a cot. So, y when the cot was empty, I had my gear.
• 11:00 - 11:30 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 I I 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, all of a sudden, I felt my back pocket. So, on on your Cammy pants, the old Cammy pants, there was a back pocket that had a button on it so you could like seal the thing. And that's where I
• 11:30 - 12:00 would keep my blood chit. And like I had like $200 cash in there and I had my military ID. I had like 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 like mind-boggling to me. And luckily, you know, 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 like folded up
• 12:00 - 12:30 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 like no [ __ ] I remember being a platoon chief because the last thing you want to be is the you know picked up platoon chief who's forgetting his stuff. So I 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 that's that's the nightmare. That's
• 12:30 - 13:00 the true nightmare. Uh so that was kind of like we'll get into some more of mine, but those are some of the those are the first things that I remember when I got to the team was [ __ ] you, [ __ ] you, [ __ ] 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 for the whole career to this day. Don't be late. Don't be forget any gear. Keep your mouth shut. Keep your ears open. Those are those that is outstanding
• 13:00 - 13:30 advice for a new guy in a super tune. And it's outstanding advice for any human being out there. Um, and I still check my gear. I'm still I'm I'm a little bit too paranoid, you know what I mean? Little bit too paranoid. Echo, you seem to be nodding enthusiastically at that. I know what you mean. Yes. Check. All right. So, let's get into some of your uh some of your stuff. What do you got? Look for work. Okay. So, uh good one. Yeah. This originates for folks listening in. This is a uh kill house
• 13:30 - 14:00 term. Um 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 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 uh dealing with an unknown, wrestling unknown, they're dropping something else that you're going to have to draw down on. So, you're looking for work. And uh you know obviously that beyond the kill house that just applies to all sorts of things
• 14:00 - 14:30 in life you know business uh just everything just being a part of a team you know do your job look around if you're committed to the the team and the mission um you know put them above yourself uh and yeah that's that's honed in I mean man in buds you know it's just it's hammered everything we do every evolution that we have there's a there's there's a posttop to be done. Um, you know, there's there's work that
• 14:30 - 15:00 needs to be done. We got to clean the boats. We got to clean this. And uh it's it's very easy if you're looking very narrow focused like, "Oh, I'm good. My gear's good. I'm going to go turn in." Yeah, that's bad. Yeah. Yeah. Very bad. So, that's bad. Uh, you know, this there's a little bit of decentralized command. This is sort of a 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
• 15:00 - 15:30 ground or find that little null, find that piece of cover and set up your position because cuz and the reason this comes out is because when you 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 going to do. And so that's
• 15:30 - 16:00 why you'd hear like guys up in the rafters in the kill house going, you know, 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 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 uh a pallet is being unloaded. Like you don't want to be that guy. You want to be freaking
• 16:00 - 16:30 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 uh you know that can find its way in in many forms. But you know I was also thinking about the base principle of that. It's I mean helping your teammate and uh you know one one story I didn't get to tell the last time I was on which I think this applies to just being a really solid teammate is uh a time when Leif helped me out when uh I was going down
• 16:30 - 17:00 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 is this heat exhaustion? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in this particular case, uh we were doing uh we' done a series of um of just you know uh patrols during coming from the the BTF house. Um so it's like multi-day operation. We're just exhausted and smoked and um anyways I I
• 17:00 - 17:30 was a pig gunner on this one operation and we were like sprinting in the streets and we're doing bounding. You know when when you're the rear of the patrol like you are moving. So, I'm I'm doing these sprints, you know, wearing, you know, 60 pounds of gear and it's 120 out and uh you know, these are all my excuses, by the way. But, um I'm super smoked. Uh I have, you know, just excreted every bit of sweat that I have. And we get to uh we end up uh bouncing into a house uh take that down um just
• 17:30 - 18:00 to I I don't even know the purpose, honestly. But, uh our turp, one of the turpps that we had with was starting to go down and he reached out to me. He's like, "Yeah, 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, "Won wonk." And this is the first time I've ever had like any sort of uh, you know, heat issue at all. Uh, through all the training, three platoon of training, buds, nothing coming up. Uh, you know,
• 18:00 - 18:30 summer football. Um, I saw the world like starting to close down. And I don't know if I went over to LA or if he saw me just in a bad place, but uh I I told him I was like, "Man, uh I'm about to go down." Like, "This is happening." I think we were still a click out from the BTF house. And uh he made the call. Um he's like, "Give me your gun." And we swapped guns. So, as uh emasculating as it was, as a frogman, I
• 18:30 - 19:00 I gave him my my pig, my my AW. He carried that damn thing. um got us home and I I stumbled in, made it in, and then kind of like totally collapsed once we got there. So, I mean, you know, obviously not uh not one of my finer moments, but um that's what you got to do to win sometimes is you got to got to help you help out your teammates, especially when they're really really struggling. And uh yeah, and I think Johnny Cam hooked me up with like, you know, eight bags of fluid. I was about to say after that as I was in a full
• 19:00 - 19:30 body uh cramp, you know, for 12 hours. Yeah. Uh, so that's a good one start good one to start with. Look for work. What do you got next? Uh, I think maybe you you kind of hit on this a little bit, but uh, be teachable, be eager to learn, and, you know, have a notepad in hand. So, those all all go hand in hand there. And, um, you know, it goes into being humble. Show up humble, ready to learn, and, you know,
• 19:30 - 20:00 show up prepared, too. It doesn't mean just showing you're showing up to training. I'm going to get everything I need there. Um it means doing doing some of the the work doing the homework prior. Um that may mean uh you know so one thing as it applies to new guys is uh you know particularly when I was in a leadership position uh LPO and chief later is we did a lot of pre-work with our new guys before starting unit level training. Right. So rather than um you know take these guys fresh out of SQT straight to the kill house and and
• 20:00 - 20:30 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 um much calmer environment you know learning environment when we can reach them get them acclimated. Um you mean people don't learn well when they're freaking totally freaked out? Yeah and and that's part of it. I mean a lot of our training the merit is uh you know stressing us out the pressure and and uh working under that pressure but in terms of
• 20:30 - 21:00 learning some of the fundamentals it's not a great way to start. So you know 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 uh wheelbook 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
• 21:00 - 21:30 subordinates goes, "Hey, you know, hey boss, what's going on with this?" And I pull out my notebook and say, "Hey, 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 it would make the person think I'm paying attention. I initially did it because when if I don't you you get so much information during a day. You 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
• 21:30 - 22:00 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. Yep. But the same thing when I was running trade at and we would have guys coming through and it was weird. You you you never know what you're going to get, right? I might have some guy that have has a ton of experience um 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
• 22:00 - 22:30 ter they do terrible. They just would do terrible. And 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 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
• 22:30 - 23:00 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 doing all that. When he showed up, he was like exactly notebook in hand like, "Hey, hey, sir, you know, what' 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
• 23:00 - 23:30 could learn anything. They thought they knew everything. And it was such a bummer, man. I'd be like, "Well, hey man, I know you I know that might have worked or I know you might have been through this before, but" and it was just like, "Well, you know, I've always done it this way or whatever." And it was just so painful to 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 unteable and didn't want to learn would do freaking terrible. And so no matter where you
• 23:30 - 24:00 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 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 uh think that you don't know it all. You know, how much have you learned um in a startup scenario with witholf.com?
• 24:00 - 24:30 How much time do we have? Man, I I tell you what, when I I started out this uh and and when you first came to me and we were having this conversation about uh about what we're going to talk about here, uh I was like, man, I am I'm living the new guy life. So, I I've had to since leaving the military, uh I went to business school and I was a new guy there. You know, I I'm showing up one of the rare uh people that don't have any business background. So, I have no disciplinary experience in anything, right? So, I'm I'm doing all this stuff. I'm showing up with other than blowing
• 24:30 - 25:00 [ __ ] up and machine guning people. How does my experience as a breacher work in the uh boardroom here? Um but yeah, so I I mean, I had to do all these things. I had to uh I had to ask for help. Uh I you know they they give you all these modules to teach yourself uh advanced math and like pre-calculus stuff like all all this it's like overboard stuff but um yeah I I dug into all that and and it just continued. It's like and once you know we had our sights on Julie okay how do I do the job you
• 25:00 - 25:30 know of of a CEO? How how do I do the job? How do we launch this thing? How do we market it? Suddenly I'm I'm a sales guy. I'm I'm cutting videos. I'm doing design [ __ ] I'm doing accounting. It's like you you're wearing all these these damn hats and uh no one's handholding you to to do this. So, it's either, you know, you have the cash if you're fortunate enough as 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
• 25:30 - 26:00 everyone else, for for everyone else, get on that YouTube, start checking out tutorials, you know, reach within your network and get smart. And um yeah, man. I I've been doing that and you know that that's you know worked out really well to this point. I I each day I just try to get a little bit better try to get Julie you know just in a little bit better footing uh more efficient try to learn from our customers and and all that. And uh yeah you know and I also it's the same methodology this this [ __ ] just it translates to life uh and how
• 26:00 - 26:30 I've applied myself to golf in general. So, um, golf is insanely hard and you got to be eager to learn. You got to dig in there. You got to figure out. There's, uh, 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, uh, you know, if you want to get better at anything in life, uh, golf business, um, being a good team guy, you got to be eager to learn. And, uh, you got to put in the work, man. That's it. All right. So, be
• 26:30 - 27:00 teachable, be eager to learn. What's next? The hard way is usually the right way. And uh closely related is do it right or do it again. Yep. 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. Uh luckily, you know, you got BTF Tony. BTF Tonyy's not not doing it the easy way. No, I mean the shortcut. He's what comes
• 27:00 - 27:30 to my mind like immediately whenever I I saw that I was like, "Oh, it's that's Tony." I mean, the things that he instilled. Um, man, it I remember doing uh planning stuff for for training and and operations and just, you know, watching him, you know, plan and talk about infill and, you know, his thing was always we we got to do the hardest the hardest way is generally the best because generally the enemy is not expecting you to come through that shitty muddy bog. Um, so you know, yeah,
• 27:30 - 28:00 that sucks, but tactically it's put you in much better footing. Yeah, it I've uh where I I guess I learned this the not not necessarily the hard way, but doing the right thing at the right time. That's it. 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 5hour
• 28:00 - 28:30 freaking hydrographic reconnaissance in a big seastate. It was a total nightmare. Um, 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 cgrapher, which is the guy that makes the charts, Echo Charles, the two cgraphers take all the information. and they build the little map or the little chart, turn it over to the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps then comes, we we go back in the water, go
• 28:30 - 29:00 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 [ __ ] And the Marines come in and they land and they get on the shore. And the colonel in charge of the Marines is like, "That was not good. We're doing it again. Go back to the boats." 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
• 29:00 - 29:30 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 wet suits 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
• 29:30 - 30:00 all freezing and we're all tired and it's still a big giant crappy seastate 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 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
• 30:00 - 30:30 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, and and and it's so true, like you know, just you got to 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
• 30:30 - 31:00 that is like the true frog man is not looking to cut those corners. And the only reason we didn't want to go is like cold, wet, tired, right? Like that's where you go through buds cuz 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 uh chirping at you, right? Oh, little weakness. Maybe we can maybe we can just get this one. Yeah, it's always that little that little weakness is in there. And especially
• 31:00 - 31:30 from a leadership perspective, it's like you 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 uh I almost say a lot. I mean you're
• 31:30 - 32:00 expected to make mistakes as a new guy. Mhm. And obviously we're going to make mistakes throughout our lives and careers and and all that. Um but there's a way 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 [ __ ] 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 uh I mean, again, this
• 32:00 - 32:30 this applies to everything else. It's just, you know, you you guys talk about ownership all the time, and that's 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 in the teams is a lot. Like you make a mistake, it's like, hey,
• 32:30 - 33:00 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. Uh 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 of the guys and we were like advon to a certain area and there was it was an area where there was bars and clubs and nightife as they say echo
• 33:00 - 33:30 Charles. Yeah. So, you know, I was a young single team guy and was with some of the boys 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 SEO master chief's going to kind of know
• 33:30 - 34:00 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 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 to your hand?" And he's
• 34:00 - 34:30 like, "I punched someone in the face." He's like, "Totally good to go." Like just tell the truth. Own it. You or you're 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 gonna 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 [Music] um it's easier to make mistakes as as new guys because you're expected to make
• 34:30 - 35:00 certain amounts of mistakes. It's harder when you're more experienced guy, even a leader to make as a mistake. And how you handle that is even more important. Uh I had a case where um yeah I'm just going to be diamond myself out today just all good just repenting on uh you know some of uh my my team got mistakes but I was on my fourth platoon so this was after after Ramati I went to a training command I was perhaps a smidge rusty
• 35:00 - 35:30 coming back and we were doing a jump and uh Oh you were a smidge rusty on jumping yeah yeah yeah Jack yeah when when you're out of training command you're you're sucked into I I was at uh Buds. So, I was doing, you know, very basic training there. Uh and we had done some uh qual jumps or whatnot, but uh anyways, we were doing this jump normal kind of profile. I was a little bit rusty. And uh they had me normally being a bigger, heavier guy, you're at the back of the uh of the train jumping out
• 35:30 - 36:00 um because you fall faster than everyone else. For whatever reason, they put me out front. Mh. And uh anyways, they're they're given the signals and one of the signals, which is the standby signal, is a thumbs up. So they they hit the bottom of the floor with the thumbs up and uh I was like, "Fuck yeah, let's roll." And uh basically just jumped out 15 seconds early and the entire train jumped out. So we were hovering probably over Mexico a little bit. Um but after that, I didn't even realize what I had done. I when we jumped, I was like, "Damn, we're
• 36:00 - 36:30 kind of far from the DZ." Uh we we all made it back and then um the guys were polite enough to let me know, hey uh why'd you jump on standby and then stand by Bob was born. So there's been many bubs, but uh for for a while I was standby Bob and you got to take on the chin, man. You know, you got to you got to own it up and especially if you're in a leadership position, you know, it sucks sometimes to to take that, but you got to you got to just take it, man. Yeah, you're there's a very decent chance if you do something like that, you're going to end up with a
• 36:30 - 37:00 modified or new nickname. But if you fight it, the nickname lasts forever. Oh yeah, if you fight it, it's going to stick even longer. But no one knows me stand by Bob Bobby anymore except for a select few. Maybe now a couple more I'll get a couple more. But uh there was a video of it wasn't me. It was in my platoon. I wasn't freef 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 no no go no no no no go. It was like it was all in video. It
• 37:00 - 37:30 was just comical. Uh so that's why we rehearse you know that's why we rehearse. Well, you know, I mean, this goes to uh we're talking about humility, 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 of my career where I got got a little complacent and uh complacency kills. And that's why uh yeah, you got to fight it at all cost. The um there's another we'll we'll throw this in the mistake category here, but
• 37:30 - 38:00 uh I watched Warfare this last week. Um fantastic movie, man. uh you know watched the uh episode with uh Joe in LA man and uh really powerful stuff. But I when I was watching that movie I was seeing so many of these sights and sounds and feels that I was familiar with it was blowing my mind but there was one scene in particular um that is like holy [ __ ] I feel like I've seen this and uh um and no no spoilers here you already had them on Yeah. Uh but
• 38:00 - 38:30 anyways, there there's a scene where they're looking through the scope and you see these people scampering into the building. Like I saw that and I saw that and uh so I was on I was on a gun. I I wasn't a sniper, wasn't trained sniper, but you know, we all rotated through um you know, watch rotations essentially. So I spent a lot of my time on an adub looking down the sector, but I would rotate through uh sniper rifles. Um, you know, I was trained to shoot rifles, but
• 38:30 - 39:00 not as proficient as a sniper. Um, 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 [ __ ] shooting an RPG like right in my face. And that thing zoomed in and I I, you know, swept the the scope over and it was zoomed in because I'm looking, you know, thousand
• 39:00 - 39:30 yards down and it was just blackness, nothing. I was basically, you know, not able to to get that guy. And uh yeah, we got hit by a PKM uh soon after, but um yeah, you know, th those are the mistakes that you don't want to don't want to have to learn, but um you know, luckily we didn't get hit. And uh just, you know, don't make that mistake again. And you know, and and whether or not that was a mistake or they just got one up on me uh from being zoomed in or not
• 39:30 - 40:00 being being aware of the immediate part of our sector, uh combat's hard, man. And sometimes, you know, even you're trying to do all the right things, uh, you're just going to get gotten sometimes. Yeah. What What did you um I had a uh my first deployment to Iraq, we were in this, uh, position. And do you remember when they had fleer on the the 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
• 40:00 - 40:30 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 to flee, you know, so I was like, "Okay, I 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 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, "Okay, cool. This is we're about to we're about to kill some bad guys." Um because we were we're on this
• 40:30 - 41:00 FOB that had been getting attacked a lot. And so now I'm like zooming in. I'm like trying to P weapons. Trying to P I 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 uh 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
• 41:00 - 41:30 of our attention, including mine." And then we got hit from probably 300 meters away, which is I did not see any of it. We just boom. I'm like, "Oh, yeah. We just got played." Uh, that is, you know, the enem is going to be smart. What do you remember? Uh I I know you on that podcast I did with Joe and Elliot we did uh 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
• 41:30 - 42:00 your kid go like for the first time in the deep end or whatever and it 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 uh yeah, you just you feel for the guys and you you wish them the best and not knowing what they're going
• 42:00 - 42:30 to face, you just hope that you know um they're going to learn the lessons they need to learn the easier way. Um, yeah. Yeah. Tough one. Yeah. Um, all right. What's your next What's your next uh new guy advice? Life advice. Yep. Uh, we talked about humility. I think we're good on that one. Um, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. One of my favorite team guy sayings. Love that. So, from a uh from a team guy perspective, this is a a shooting term and it's really about um
• 42:30 - 43:00 being smooth to 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, you know, I may be stretching it a little bit, but you guys talk about uh you know, udaloop and and detaching and I think I think
• 43:00 - 43:30 those are closely related terms of just being smooth, right? Being uh observing, orienting, smooth and and deliberate in in uh some of the decisions that that you're making so you're not being hasty and emotional. Uh yeah. Yeah. Um, that's such a classic team guy saying and I I don't even know where I think it might have originated from one of the shooting schools that we went to, but I'm not sure. Uh, maybe it came from the Vietnam guys. I don't know. But, you know, when
• 43:30 - 44:00 you shoot and especially when you're a new guy and you're trying to beat one of the older guys and so you're going f and the faster you try and go, the more shots you throw and the worse job you do. And just to be like, all right, just do what you're supposed to do. Slow is smooth. 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 going to have to make decisions but sometimes and again as as much as we
• 44:00 - 44:30 talk about being default aggressive and making things happen there's sometimes it's like okay hold on a second let's 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 uh 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
• 44:30 - 45:00 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 Fleer uh 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 is a good policy. Not just when you're shooting, but when you're when you're living, be smooth. Chuck next.
• 45:00 - 45:30 Take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. Ain't that the truth? Yep. Yeah, man. So, um, seems, you know, I pretty common sense in in the statement, but, you know, one thing I think about in particular being a breacher, um, just to give the level of like attention to detail on on my gear, um, just to get an example of of being a SEAL and being a SEAL breacher, but we have to operate our systems at night. We, you know, primarily do direct action
• 45:30 - 46:00 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, uh, you know, non-nell uh, firing devices. And, you know, not to get too much into our procedures, but there may be a procedure where, you know, it's it's a twoman job. And, and there's some orchestration of that stuff. And I mean, this could be a total goat
• 46:00 - 46:30 rodeo if 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 can reach in. I know when I'm grabbing it exactly where it's at. And I know there's like an adhesive to it. Um, I've pre-staged
• 46:30 - 47:00 like a tape ball at the end of it because I I don't want to be looking down. I want to feel, you know, but I don't have the dexterity of my gloves. So, you know, you know, exactly where everything's at. You got the no nail wrapped this side. I'm I'm you know if I'm passing it off this way or that way the the firing device is laid on just this way so that you know everything comes out and it's maximum efficiency on target. So um yeah that that's just one example of the level of attention to
• 47:00 - 47:30 detail on on the gear that that I applied. But you know in the teams in general um our gear is is king man from from day one. our weapon systems, keeping them up and running, you know, the posttop, the preop, making sure they're they're ready to go. Um, op testing them, all of our life- saving equipment. Um, I was probably, you know, if there was an award for the slowest parachute packer in the teams, it was probably this guy. I wasn't putting
• 47:30 - 48:00 anything to chance, man. I was always the last one there packing my shoot, you know, sweat just pouring off. But, uh, take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. Yeah, I was I was over jumping and I was on deployment back in the day and uh 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
• 48:00 - 48:30 leapfrog type jumpers in the platoon they're like come on guys like hurry up and like okay of course you know and so I kind of like you know rush through a pack And then, you know, we jump again and like, okay, my parachute's 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 blowing and we're literally like taking rocks and putting them onto the shoots. And dude, I completely trash packed this rig and uh the [ __ ] didn't open. Damn. So, yeah, I had it cut away and really didn't feel good about it. Um,
• 48:30 - 49:00 but, you know, I was like, you know, was that smart? And it was also part of it, you know, it was not only, hey, um, like 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 a hilo, like a hilo, a whole helicopter is waiting on you. And, you know, so I wasn't and I wasn't the last guy unpacking. Of course I wasn't, cuz I trash packed that thing and it didn't
• 49:00 - 49:30 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 your your 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, uh don't I think one of
• 49:30 - 50:00 the worst things that that people do is stop working out for 3 weeks, stop working out for a month, whatever the case may be. Oh, you went, you know, 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,
• 50:00 - 50:30 bro, I could show up what it didn't matter. You're you're in shape from buds for a while. Like it just it just it just is part of you. But then eventually you're like, "Oh, I would see guys not work out." And who do you think's going to get hurt? Like 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 dudes of our advanced stage. I mean, once you get over 40, you got to keep moving because if you don't move it, you're going to lose it and you may not get it back. Yeah. You got to you
• 50:30 - 51:00 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, you know, jiu-jitsu. Like, I mean, I get I've gotten dinged up from jiu-jitsu, 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,
• 51:00 - 51:30 dude. That's that's when you're getting hurt. Do you still do muscle ups? Yes. Yes. Actually, technically, right now, I have uh some tendinitis in my right arm that we're we're we're getting there, but um 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 up guy. My shoulder mobility never I've only done a couple my entire life, but I was always impressed. I remember back in the day. Um yeah, you're doing a bunch of muscle ups. Yeah. We had a one of the
• 51:30 - 52:00 new guy officers came over uh to Ramati and I don't know if you remember, I had rings in the like gym there and this guy came up to me. He's a good he's a good doobie. He's in Enson, you know, brand new officer. And he's like he's like, "Hey sir, you know, I've been having some troubles with my shoulder. Do you have any recommendations?" I was like, "Yeah, [Music] muscle-ups." So, uh yeah, on on that, the uh the teams are getting a lot smarter, you know? I mean, when we come up, when we came up, there was no thought of taking care of yourself. It
• 52:00 - 52:30 was just run yourself into the ground. And that's why everyone in our generation just became broken at some point. Um but now it's it's built in, you know, they got uh they got touch points throughout. You got you got nutritionists, you got trainers. Um yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. And they don't like they're not as abusive to their bodies as we were. Um, 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
• 52:30 - 53:00 your people and your people will take care of you. So, if you treat your your team like [ __ ] they're not going to care about you. But if you take care of them, they'll take care of you. So, this applies to everything. Um, all right. What's next? What do you got? become an asset and make yourself indispensable. So important. Yeah. In 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 you know,
• 53:00 - 53:30 they'll bring you on the mission because it's not not guaranteed that you're going on the mission and or if you do go that you're not going to get marginalized into some position um you know, in the back of the train or whatever else. So, you know, it's about putting in the work to get yourself there. Um, a lot of work on your own, finding the mentors that you need. Um, and then taking advantage of opportunities, you know, when they come. There was uh one one uh vignette um I could think of as a new guy. I had a new
• 53:30 - 54:00 guy buddy with me that uh you we we had done uh buds together um until I got rolled and then uh you know, I met him. He we we joined the same platoon um Charlie and anyways uh he was a comm's guy and you know he wasn't super happy with the level of like comm's training and support at that time like early 2000s. Mhm. Um, so we had some new like emerging technologies
• 54:00 - 54:30 and 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 SME and uh on that deployment, he actually ended up um creating some innovation. I won't get too into the details, but it had to do with um basically we got we got uh uh tasked to do the exploitation of like a strategic level operation. And so after the operation went down, we went and did some exploitation and we're sending photos at like high level folks
• 54:30 - 55:00 were seeing and he was able to do this in an environment that had never been done before, you know. So just because you're a new guy doesn't mean you can't innovate and and bring value. Um you know it's that the ball's in your court. It's just you know how far can you get how fast you know. Yeah. And in fact, as a new guy, you might have a little bit more of an open mind than for sure than other people and like especially when it comes to technology. Like people like me
• 55:00 - 55:30 may not be all that technologically savvy, but if you roll in there and you can make things happen. Yeah. That's it's so critical and it's so it's often times it's like they you know, hey, this is 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 are we do 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 or whatever the case may be, why don't wouldn't it be more efficient to do this?" And they
• 55:30 - 56:00 just don't see it sometimes. And so rolling in there and of course you got to be humble, but if you roll in there and you can say, "Hey, we can we can make this more efficient. We can ex, you know, accelerate our progress here by doing these things." It's it's very beneficial. That's um a huge part of it. And then you know as simple as this might sound like you the first thing you said was if you're reliable like being a reliable human that is going to do the right things on the right time and be on time and have the right gear. Like that is believe it
• 56:00 - 56:30 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 is 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 this kind of uh
• 56:30 - 57:00 you know from training to being a new guy is don't don't get overwhelmed with you know the big picture and all these things. Keep your world small. uh you know focus on the procedure the the teams everything we deal with in close quarters combat you know immediate action drills um maneuver warfare you know it's all if this then that it's all a set of procedures so looking at um you
• 57:00 - 57:30 know I think pool comp is like the best example that people know about in our training pipeline of you know pool comp is this series of underwater um or It's it's an underwater test where they're stressing you the hell out. They're taking away your air source. Um, you know, getting you near drowning and then letting you work yourself out of that uh procedure there. And you know, if we go all the way back to there, it's keeping your world small and okay, I don't have
• 57:30 - 58:00 an air first. I got to check, you know, make sure the air is on. Okay, the air is on. Tracing the hoses. Um, so it's easy to 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. Um, you know, the more you could focus on on the procedure and, uh, yeah, you know, it's, uh, led me to, you know, get through a lot of stuff beyond beyond just being a team guy.
• 58:00 - 58:30 Um, you know, business is a 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 [ __ ] So, um, you know, focusing on the fundamentals, the things you got to do to get better. Um, you know, 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 one thing that uh one team guy vignette that is a very strong one,
• 58:30 - 59:00 you you talked about having a uh cutaway. I had I had myself a little freef fall issue once as well and good times. I believe keeping my world small like save my damn life. Um so like little backstory here is uh this is like circuit 2012. I was dealing with some really bad back issues. Um I was platoon chief. I was just fighting through it and we we had a jump week and we were progressing through that jump week and culminating in a combat equipment jump
• 59:00 - 59:30 and you I wasn't going to not train. It just everything I did hurt really bad and so uh you know maybe this this pertains to something else we've already talked about here but uh we're jumping with the ruck and I I thought it best to lighten up that ruck a little bit. Um and really just to alleviate, you know, the sitting around having that thing, it sits in between your legs for, you know, you're sitting for hour, hour and a half. Um just excruciating pain to have
• 59:30 - 60:00 anything pulling on me. Um, so anyways, I I lightened up that ruck and then we went out and proceeded to do the jump and, you know, I waddled up to the door and I threw myself out. And I don't know if it was a combination of the uh the lightness of the ruck or um how the straps became loose, but that damn thing turned into a sail. It caught air and I started violently flipping um essentially for like 7,000 feet. So I I was violently forward flipping.
• 60:00 - 60:30 Forward flipping? Yes. That's bizarre. It is bizarre. Yeah. So the the ruck the ruck had uh basically caught, you know, it's in between your legs and it had like dropped down and was catching wind like a sail. So I I was trying to I was 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
• 60:30 - 61:00 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, cuz 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 3 seconds. I pulled that damn thing into
• 61:00 - 61:30 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, you know, I think just one of many examples of, you know, high stress pressure situations where, you know, 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.
• 61:30 - 62:00 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 [ __ ] going on right now. I'm could die, but right now what I need to focus on is getting stable so I can pull my rip card. that's the most important thing in the world. None of this other [ __ ] matters and that's what I'm going to take care of. So yeah, that's when there's a lot of crazy things going on like what's the most
• 62:00 - 62:30 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 like I've just got to get stable and freaking pull my rip cord. 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 rip cord. That's a little prioritize and execute activity. That was it, man. Yep. All right. Next. Rehearsals and visualizing to enhance performance. So, like this is definitely
• 62:30 - 63:00 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 uh I know the team's got a lot better about this. We we kind of hit on this earlier, you know, about the value of doing 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
• 63:00 - 63:30 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 we've seen a lot of this in sports nowadays. there's just a big movement towards visualization performance. It's uh it's I mean it's big in golf. Uh professional golfers are doing it. Uh obviously a lot of the other athletes have been doing this for a while. But uh one thing that was something that kind of got lost for a while was when I first got to the teams
• 63:30 - 64:00 it was for a mission you were supposed to prep gear one-third of the time, plan oneird 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 uh your fonts and whatnot. And we really got away. I saw I saw people getting away from rehearsals. And luckily I was
• 64:00 - 64:30 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, you know, you're going to have to freaking put this major PowerPoint thing together so that the whoever is going to 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 the deal is 1/3 1/3 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
• 64:30 - 65:00 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 then 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 an Overwatch and Overwatch over like you you don't it doesn't take
• 65:00 - 65:30 oneird of the time to prep your gear." Uh, but rehearsals and and 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. Uh how are you going to line up the vehicles? What are you going to do if there's a down vehicle? What's your toes to toe your rig for tow situation? Who's changing tires? Like all that stuff you But we would do like just operation
• 65:30 - 66:00 after operation after operation where you could do a threeminute 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 of rehearsal, which man, walking through something one time is it increases people's capabilities
• 66:00 - 66:30 like five times. Yeah, man. Um, 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 outside looking in like amateur level [ __ ] Um, you know, pulling up, vehicles are in this order, they're looking this direction, guys are stepping out, fields of fire, and then, you know, uh, the assault is moving this way or whatever. Um, we did that every single time. And you know what? Every single time I also did was every breach
• 66:30 - 67:00 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 I if nothing else, it's it you're you're creating muscle memory, right? So that it's instinctive that when we're when we're on target, we know what the target looks like. We know we're going right. And obviously, anything could change, right? uh you
• 67:00 - 67:30 know, you you train to your your plan A and then you read and react based off your SOPs after that. But um what we did is we we came 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 charge is, you know, off and we're inside before anyone knows what's happened. Y that applies to, you know, so many different things. Doing walkthroughs. Um could next
• 67:30 - 68:00 This is another popular team guy one. And uh 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 I got a good story here. So when I was on uh last time, I told a story. Uh, I won't uh recount the entire thing, but basically we were doing a training operation um big Navy exercise training with a submarine. I had like a
• 68:00 - 68:30 near-death experience uh Zodiac flipped yada yada. Well, after that whole thing transpired, we still had the entire operation to do. That was just the insert. And so we um what had what had happened at that we flipped the Zodiac on uh you know pulling the Zodiac off the submarine launching. Uh all of our [ __ ] got soaked and we got some gear that basically got damaged. Uh so we inserted our our swimmers and our uh our radio had been uh you know just soaked.
• 68:30 - 69:00 So basically it was inoperable and we had had an issue. Seastate had kicked up and so we had to change our link up with uh the Mark 5 were supposed to pick us up out in the middle of the ocean essentially and due to seastate we we had some changes. We were relying on this communication to get relayed. Well, it never did or never got back to us and uh come that morning we're flown out in the ocean waiting for pickup. It just never came. This is just such a freaking
• 69:00 - 69:30 typical freaking team guy disaster. Just just 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 It's like just Yep. And and it turned into a lot more. So we uh we missed our our link up our X-ray. 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 other Zodiac drivers. We're just smoked. Been floating out the ocean all night. And we were all, you know, so from the seastate. And uh
• 69:30 - 70:00 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 thousands of seals and sea lions and we just pulled up amongst them. We just racked out, you know, set our stuff out, tried to uh drop. Where was this? Uh was it like around San Diego? Uh it was near uh I want to say like San Nicholas. St. Nick. Okay. Yeah, I've been there. That's what there's freaking uh elephant
• 70:00 - 70:30 seals on there and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's it's like a little wild out there. It's a little western. Yeah, there there were uh zero shits by the time we were so smoked. We just pulled up to this. I mean, it was like the National Geographic filming thousands of these of these guys and we laid out and uh basically had no columns with anyone and you know, just hoping people were going to find us. They ended up Who was with you? Um was it like a platoon? No. No. Well, we we dropped off like the boat. We we dropped off uh it was a
• 70:30 - 71:00 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 uh alone enough, right? And so we 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 Fis where we were and then they came to pick us up that evening, showed up. We thought our our night was over. Um seasate kicked up, weather kicked up,
• 71:00 - 71:30 it's storming, bow breakers, and uh the boat got stuck out in the middle of the like I guess we ran over kelp and went in the jets. So we were stuck out there all night through the next uh next morning. So yeah, I mean going back to his one is none, right? If we have two radios, if we have a redundant capability, um 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, freaking driving back down motors, towing with a 35
• 71:30 - 72:00 horsepower spare engine, like just drifting into Mexican waters, coming up on HF radio, calling like port facilities, trying to see if we could 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. Um, you're going to have to carry more
• 72:00 - 72:30 weight than everyone else. Uh, you're going to be working longer hours than than everyone else. So, you know, that's it. If you're going to be stupid, you got to be tough. Yeah. Yeah. Check. Concur. Yep. Um, yeah, man. you you mentioned uh with the uh you know pod with Joan Elliot um about the the Overwatches like how how hard those actually were and how
• 72:30 - 73:00 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 you know carrying a [ __ ] ton of weight and then and then you get there and you're standing watch essentially waiting for bad [ __ ] happen. Um yeah, those are some some long gnarly ops and uh our new guys were studs, man.
• 73:00 - 73:30 They they handled that again. Um you know, exactly as they were trained to do and represented, but uh yeah, just kind of came to mind. Mhm. Yeah. I remember sitting in like uh 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 four storere. You guys pushed down there and I'm like sitting there and I am in a full athletic sweat. Like I'm
• 73:30 - 74:00 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 um yeah, that's the way it is, man. The yard. Yep. Check. Next. Attention to detail. So, I mean, this is and and that phrase is just uh hammered in buds, but I mean that's this is actually hammered in Navy boot camp.
• 74:00 - 74:30 Yeah. Really? like cuz 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 teams, it's the same damn thing. It's it man, everything we do is high-risisk, whether that's training or or operations and all of it. Uh it's a lot of little details, man. And all the all those details
• 74:30 - 75:00 matter. the order matters sometimes. Um Yeah. Yeah. Uh 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. Well, it is that important. Like the little things, that's like that saying, how you do anything is how you do everything. Yep. That's one of those
• 75:00 - 75:30 another little like team guyish saying of 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, then you can't really lead that. So it all starts from the fundamentals of the attention
• 75:30 - 76:00 detail. Um yeah man, they matter. Yeah. Any more? Uh yeah. Um be a good follower. You know I know you you guys talk a little bit about this the uh you know the the dichotomy of being a good leader. The the opposite of that the reciprocal of that is being being a good follower. And uh you know sometimes that could be challenging. Uh but it's super important and um yeah man you got to you know part
• 76:00 - 76:30 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 um you know understanding the chain of command and uh you know knowing knowing how to respect uh leadership and how to you know I mean just be a good teammate you know so one example I was thinking with uh with Leif um Leif made it really easy to be be a
• 76:30 - 77:00 good follower because he was really tremendous leader and I really appreciated his style. um you know as as leaders you you pick and pull from different leaders that you have and uh you know he was less experienced in the teams than I was but like super mature great great leader and you know he had a this is like a superpower in terms of leadership but just a way of connecting with his people at a very human level
• 77:00 - 77:30 and you know he's funny as [ __ ] and that's uh you know I'm not sure if everyone gets gets to see that really really funny guy uh engaging dude but um and and he's willing to have you know discussions with you but in the same sense uh you know he knows how to make a call and you know when it's time to to fall in line and and listen to that and one one such case uh I had is we we were doing an operation I think this is
• 77:30 - 78:00 um was uh what was that village right outside of uh way I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Um so we were doing an operation there and we had a uh you know normal direct action mission there and we hit the target. Uh actually the the breach went off and we we rushed you know the room kind of like a mud room and uh fireworks started going off in there. Not sure if you remember this but the uh the JSU
• 78:00 - 78:30 incident. So essentially we we come into this room and you know gunshots are are happening like it's like damn this this is a hot target. Guys are starting to prep frags like it's on. Y um you know sucking out the doorway and uh make entry and ends up being like an old guy in kind of a dry hole and and you know I'm certainly perplexed like what the hell happened? It turned out one of our uh Iraqis in the back of the train had an ad. Um
• 78:30 - 79:00 almost smoked all this. But anyways, after that whole event, we got the intel, okay, the guy's over here, couple houses down, couple houses down, kind of like in an apartment complex. And um you know, being the breacher 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 uh some small shoes sent out the uh Yeah. like multiple pairs of kids shoes outside the door. Yeah. Yep. So, uh, you know, Leif kind of gave me the initial
• 79:00 - 79:30 guidance, say this this is what we're doing. And, uh, you know, there was a little bit of not push back, but I I I think we should do this. Leif was like, you know, negative, not not doing that. So, uh, and I immediately backed off because 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 being 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, Leif
• 79:30 - 80:00 had sent me a bunch of emails between him and Elliot and cuz they were they were real tight bros. Y and um the funny thing is so I got him and I'm like all right. So I had to like edit them down cuz there's like inappropriate stuff in there and so and then I I told Leif I was like hey man thanks for sending those emails. Yeah I I edit them down you know just to clean them up. He's oh I already edited them down. So, I had edited down the edited down version, you know, but there were just a bunch of uh bunch of smack talking in there and
• 80:00 - 80:30 stuff like that. Um, and yeah, and that's I always, you know, I always joke that Leif is like a a lot nicer than I am, you know what I mean? Like he's just nice, you know? He's just a nice whatever uh what's that like southern etiquette type dude, you know? He's just super nice to people. But I'm 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 my more my general uh uh atmospherics that I give off I
• 80:30 - 81:00 guess even though you know I like to have fun too occasionally just not while we're at work. So uh all right is that is that is that your list? I I have one more 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. Yeah, this is a good one as a team guy, but uh I got a story as a new guy. We were doing a I believe we're working in
• 81:00 - 81:30 a Fallon and we're doing back then we did a lot of SR training and like hardcore SR training, long inserts, long in infills. Uh this was supposed to be a 20 minute insert. Mhm. And you know, multi-day op. We're carrying a bunch of [ __ ] 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 2 days, 3 days, and you got to carry a [ __ ] ton of water. You can actually drink enough water before you go that you won't need water for the first day. Like, I'm serious. That seems crazy, but you can do it. And
• 81:30 - 82:00 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, you don't that's a terrible thing. You're a total You're a total uh uh disaster soup sandwich. It's just terrible. So, like the prehydration 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 Hilo." And then it's 20-minute insert. Cool. No, you don't you don't think about it that much. Yeah, cuz normally if you got to take a
• 82:00 - 82:30 piss, you take a piss. You don't always have those opportunities. All right, proceed. Yeah. So, we're moving and uh I did exactly that. I prehydrate cuz 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 emnet." But I'm I'm starting to I got to piss. 30 becomes 45. Now we're at an hour and I'm doing I'm doing the pee pee dance and uh I'm hurting. And so like we get uh I think we're 90 minutes
• 82:30 - 83:00 in and and we get we get to a hover and I'm like, "Oh my god, thank God. It's it's now time." And uh we're hovering for about five minutes and I'm like it's happening. And then we take off and we're another another half an hour. I'm beside myself and eventually 2 hours in we land and you know uh whatever I I go admin for for a couple of minutes here. But the funny part and and when you were mentioning earlier about uh you know
• 83:00 - 83:30 we're never going to stop a Hilo for this one guy. Well, when we hovered that 90 minutes in, it's because the other Hilo actually had them land cuz the guy had to piss really bad. And so, and they didn't tell you. They didn't tell me for bastard. Yeah. For for the young team guys out there, bring a Gatorade bottle when you're on a Hilo. Just bring Gator bottle and you're all good. Yeah. Good. Go. And that's it for me. All right. Um I got I got some here. Some again, I was just kind of like going through my thoughts and of life.
• 83:30 - 84:00 All right. What? 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, then 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 weapon's cleaned. And don't clean your weapon until the Humvee is refueled and prepped. And if you if you break this
• 84:00 - 84:30 procedure, it's a freaking mortal sin in the teams. It's a mortal sin to take care of your own [ __ ] before you took care of the platoon ship. That's the way it is. So that's my 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 partyier. 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
• 84:30 - 85:00 plane's going to 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 going to go out and I'm going to be the the freaking uh backup boat driver, but if that's what I if that's a job I'm going to be able to get, I'm going to take it. You always go out 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
• 85:00 - 85:30 know, there SR team's 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 calms. Like, no, always go out. And that's a good attitude to have. Um, 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
• 85:30 - 86:00 heart, you know, and sleep. You're going to need sleep sometimes. Yeah. That in Buds, and I'm not sure if this was a tradition that you guys had or if it still goes on, but uh there used to be this hideout spot that the class There was no hideout spots when I was in Buds. the uh after cow like the the uh the trick was the hack was we would eat fast and then we would go to this hideout spot and and you would take a 15-minute nap and that 15-minute nap was like a million man boss but yeah
• 86:00 - 86:30 like uh you know you want to see a whole platoon of sleeping team guys just take them up in the plane getting ready to jump every single dude you guys are just passed out uh 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 yet you'd have these like officers that would be like, "Hey, we want to be forward leaning on this." And they would
• 86:30 - 87:00 be so far forward leaning like, "Hey, we need to prep the gear and do the rehearsal and 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 the leaning rest. Um, hey, use the chain of command. I know this might sound crazy. Use the chain of command up and down. And we're just what I remember about this is guys would come to me cuz I was bros with a lot of different dudes and like guys that were f four, five levels below me
• 87:00 - 87:30 in the chain of command, they'd 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 cuz 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 is doing something jacked up, I'm not my my initial instinct isn't be like go right to them. No, I'm going to talk to the chief and say, "Hey, have you seen
• 87:30 - 88:00 what Ekko'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. Uh, never turn down a school you're offered and then when you get to the school, be number one in the school. Yep. That's a That's a good one. Um, your reputation is everything and everything you do is your reputation. Everything you do. Everything you do is your reputation. And your reputation is everything. So, when you're doing dumb [ __ ] don't do it. When there's an
• 88:00 - 88:30 opportunity to cut a corner that you think no one's going to see, everyone's going to see it. they're gonna find out about it and they're gonna hold it against you forever. Yeah, sure. So, just be careful. Um, this was one that I learned early on. Uh, avoid wear I think I think this was in Marino's book, too. I think that's where I remember it from. Uh, avoid wearing a uniform at all cost, but if you have to wear it, look perfect. That was 100% the way I operated. I
• 88:30 - 89:00 would do pretty much jump through hoops to avoid putting on a uniform, but if you got to put it on, you look freaking 100% squared away. Don't show up looking like a [ __ ] Um, yeah. I think like to that just to drill down on that, it's uh 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
• 89:00 - 89:30 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 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
• 89:30 - 90:00 be in a proper military uniform. Yeah, it's a I'm not sure if I mentioned this last time I was on, but um I worked with a guy, he was the CMC maybe of the group at that time and he came out to visit us in Romani. I worked with him later at Buds and he was taken back 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
• 90:00 - 90:30 trying to do. You're trying to, you know, send these signals to your chen leadership that you're squared away. You can follow directives and you can be reliable and trustworthy and and what does that cost you? It cost you nothing to look squared away. Just being professional and people are judgmental. And look, what's this? What's this saying? We didn't put it in this thing, but uh uh 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 if it's a master chief or a command sergeant major or a
• 90:30 - 91:00 battalion commander, like they've been in the military for 20 years. If they 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 [ __ ] away and they go, "Oh, cool. these guys are at least, you know, the professional unit. So, totally important. Um, and you know, there's this old, uh, document floating around. Um, it's Huck Harbor's 69 steps to Frogman perfection. I love it. Yeah.
• 91:00 - 91:30 And I'm definitely Some of these are some of these are from that. I got to give the the shout out to that. Um, one of them was don't get mad, get a degree. And look, what 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 going to 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, but
• 91:30 - 92:00 you got to 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. Uh stay with your swim buddy of course and what's you know this is this is such an important foundation of the SEAL teams is you always have a swim buddy. And the reason you always have a swim buddy and I think it's more prominent because in
• 92:00 - 92:30 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 SEAL training. And part of the embedded
• 92:30 - 93:00 portion of that is that you your buddy comes first like your 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. 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
• 93:00 - 93:30 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 uh 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
• 93:30 - 94:00 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 [ __ ] Bob, like twoerson integrity, for me to be like, "Hey, this seems like I think I've got a good idea, you know, and if you if I do it solo, cool. I have no twoerson integrity." But to have at least someone that goes, "Hey, hey, Jaco, are you sure about this?" Or like maybe the consequences of what you're
• 94:00 - 94:30 thinking might not be worth the effort here. So I I think that's another important component and it doesn't always save us in the SEAL teams cuz sometimes like hey Bob I got a great idea and you go that sounds great to me but often times it's like hey I think I got a good idea and it's like well we we might want to rethink that before we roll on it. So stick with your swim buddy. Uh here's another one from Hawk Harbor. Uh a miserable day in the teams is better than the best day at the office. Or maybe that one's not. Maybe
• 94:30 - 95:00 that one's mine but there's something similar to that. Um, 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 [ __ ] about that stuff, too. Are you kidding me? What the hell? Like, what kind of tyrannical rear echelon [ __ ] is this? And it's like, bro, you you've you haven't even been to
• 95:00 - 95:30 work in three days. Well, if the guys aren't complaining, then I start worrying. Yeah. Um, another one from Huck Harbor. Breaking contact does not surrender. Good thing to remember. 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
• 95:30 - 96:00 prudent move is to leave. I know even even like we got ambushed a few times my first deployment to Iraq and you know the temptation would always be like stop, go back and assault. But it's like oh we we're okay. We they they fired two RPGs and they missed with both and they fired a bunch of machine gun rounds at us and now we're gonna like we made it through unscathed. The temptation is like, "Oh,
• 96:00 - 96:30 AC130 can see him. Okay, cool. Let's turn around and go back and get him." And we never did. Yeah, it was always tempting. We always had another mission that we were going on, but it was always very tempting. But just thinking like, uh, you know what? I think we'll be all right. This is their terrain, too. when you don't know what IDs lurk in front of you. Yep. Uh 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
• 96:30 - 97:00 the 8year 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 the tilted head look because they didn't have a plan. Well, how are you going to pay your rent in three months? You know, like how are you going to pay your car payment? By the way, I saw you just pull up in your new freaking Superduty Harley-Davidson version uh F350 that you paid $88,000 for. Well, you didn't pay at all
• 97:00 - 97:30 cuz you only put an $4,000 down payment. So, your car payments like 1,100 bucks a month. How are you going to pay for that? So, what is your plan? And as much time as we spend in the SEAL teams planning for us to roll out and do execute things with no plan whatsoever. And look, it's cool. You 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
• 97:30 - 98:00 able to re react. Be able to react when things don't go as planned. But have a baseline with some reasonable contingencies. Yeah, with a couple 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. You know, you come up with a plan. Bob and I are swim buddies here. We're going to dive this, do that, do that. And then when we get underwater, it's like, well, actually, I think I'm
• 98:00 - 98:30 in a different spot, so I'm going to do something radically different. And everything goes to [ __ ] So, as much as possible, plan your dive and try and stick to it. You can't always stick to it cuz this is contrary to like oh uh the plan goes out the window at the first contact. Look, there's that's a that's a little bit of that's an exaggeration, right? 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
• 98:30 - 99:00 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 hyperdetailed plan and you think everything is going to go according to this hyperdetailed 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 you shouldn't have to abandon your plan just because something didn't go as expected. So, plan your dive. Dive
• 99:00 - 99:30 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. Go 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 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
• 99:30 - 100:00 be abandoning your plan unless it's completely gone [ __ ] Yeah. Uh, here's like one of the most pragmatic things I have on this list. Uh, bring a beanie and a Gortex jacket. Like, I'm telling you what, bring a beanie. Bring a wool beanie and a Gortex 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 Goretex jackets, but you know, I'm talking about a shell and you got like a heavyduty one and you got
• 100:00 - 100:30 a lightweight one. And look, sometimes the lightweight one, like you're going out for 3 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 Gortex jacket because when you get stuck on St. Nicholas Island for 19 hours waiting for the Mark Fives to come and recover you and you have no possible way of staying warm, you're gonna freaking hate your life and possibly get
• 100:30 - 101:00 hypothermic. So, god, those those were the best jackets, the old school uh extreme weather cold weather Goretex jackets. They're standard military issue. They were freaking heavy duty. you could put that thing on in the worst weather and and be like pretty okay. And in those jackets, they had this big velcro uh pocket on on the left and right side. So where the zipper is, you didn't have to undo the zipper, but you
• 101:00 - 101:30 could just rip this big velcro thing inside that thing. I had a wool beanie. I always had those things with me. Uh now look, did I have them in Romani was in 120 degrees? Nope. That's the one, you know, AO. But if it's not a if it's not over a hundred degrees, I'm gonna say that maybe 90. If it's not because I'll tell you what, go to 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 I I had never gone
• 101:30 - 102:00 until my uh fifth pump out there. I had never been out there when it wasn't the summer. Oh. And so I did I did a you know a workup uh 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 uh where it was like you know one platoon's uh doing a kay in a village or something and the other platoon is uh basically holding um you know uh outward security if you
• 102:00 - 102:30 will external security uh on on the mountains there and it was supposed to be just a short iteration in like an hour and they it was one of those uh you know trick [ __ ] events where it was a remainover night. Jack and it it rained and our platoon Charlie or sorry uh was it uh no it was Bravo. Uh we're stuck on the mountain all night get some getting pissed on and that was one of the coldest moments I'd had since Buds. I was there with my OIC and we were just
• 102:30 - 103:00 jackhammering and just regretting not having a beanie and uh some Gortex. God, being in a Gore Texas 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 2:00 in the afternoon. 2:00 in the afternoon, bro. It's in San Diego, it's 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
• 103:00 - 103:30 good. And then you fast forward, the sun goes down, bro, all of a sudden it's 48°, 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 you No, 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 a extra hoodie in the vehicle for
• 103:30 - 104:00 two is one, one is none. Yes. Full circle. 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 Gortex jacket. That's that's my advice to you. Um, and then the last one I got, I think we 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
• 104:00 - 104:30 body and mind. And in the SEAL teams, uh, and I think in life, we generally tend to get too focused on one or too focused on the other. We either spend all of our time training the physical physicality of it. in in the 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
• 104:30 - 105:00 think it's important to 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 got to you got introduce new things to your brain. You know, you got to introduce new things to your brain otherwise it gets going to get stagnant. So, learning new skills, uh learning new languages, learning new instruments, just learning things is
• 105:00 - 105:30 beneficial. And you have to look sometimes you say you're 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 got to try and learn it as as silly as that might sound. And then what we already talked about physically, you got to 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 so. You know, you're like, you know, you get these things. I mean, they're all kind of computer uh uh
• 105:30 - 106:00 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 Can you play a song then? I cannot play play a song. Yeah, bro. There's songs that have one chord. Yeah. Yeah. Then I can play a song then. Okay. So in principle. Yeah. So you So you're not you're not playing? No. Dabbling. I'd say dabbling is uh accurate, bro. Let's
• 106:00 - 106:30 Let's just get you a song down. Yeah. Yeah. It's freak the ukulele. That's Yeah. But you you spend more of your time learning about the computer techniques, tactics, techniques, and procedures. Oh, yeah. What did you say? Oh, yeah. That was a good one. Now, what was interesting about that? There's a couple things that I noticed about that. What What program was that? I forget. 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. Mhm. And then you use these new AI tools and it'll start animating the picture
• 106:30 - 107:00 into a video, whatever you tell it to do. like Adobe Firefly maybe. Familiar. Yeah, but but yeah, you I mean we've seen it before, you know. Um 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 it made things up to go there, right?
• 107:00 - 107:30 Freaking impressive. It grabs elements and it's like, "Oh, there's a tree back there." And, "Oh, is there is that?" This is, you know, I'm the AI talking. 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, it'll recreate this whole environment. Yeah, it's very interesting. But with that, it just is since it only can see a face at one angle, you know, there's a it gets weird. You get this uh shadow, you know, weird shifty face thing going. It'll turn into a different person is what
• 107:30 - 108:00 it'll happen. and what will happen. So, even with you actually, oddly, okay, so there's this classic photo of Joo like with his gun or whatever and he's all angry or whatever and there's a brick wall behind every single he was happy but yeah, but um and it's like it's not black and white. It's like a what you call there's a name for sepia or sepia or something, right? Like more of like a warm brown. So, he's sitting against this wall with a gun. More like someone's like, "Hey, Laco, let's take a picture." I was actually in it's in the take the picture's taken in the streets of
• 108:00 - 108:30 Romani. So it's not like I was out there freaking coing and joking, bro. No, he was very unhappy to be taking that picture apparently. That's what it looked like on the picture. The late was always smiling in the same picture. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, this might have been Jaco smiling, but either way they look the same in my opinion. So I I took that one and made a video into actually made a bunch of them, but the one the one I showed you was like one of the first ones, whatever. And then so I was like, "Okay, make Joo start laughing. and then something else, right? And then so he's standing there all mad, then he
• 108:30 - 109:00 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 in my phone. Um, 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 what they kind of introduced when they introduced it. It was a lot of like old
• 109:00 - 109:30 photos, let's say, of your great-grandparents, right? The black and white, whatever, and they start animating them or 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, but there there are obviously some seriously beneficial things that you could do or productive things cuz you
• 109:30 - 110:00 could make a scene, you know, if if you were to make a movie and you needed to show something that you didn't that didn't happen or that you didn't have the budget to put in the the movie, then you could animate it. Yeah. Fully. and and yeah, there are there are certain applications, but I didn't see that as fulfilling the lack of for lack of a better term, the hype that was behind it at the time. I saw a movie that was completely generated by uh like AI and it looked pretty freaking
• 110:00 - 110:30 good. And 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. Unreal Engine that's it was a car scene. It was like shootout, I think. But it looked freaking great. I mean, yeah, I I don't know that Unreal Engine generates AI stuff. But 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
• 110:30 - 111:00 was like, "Oh, I see where they could go with it." Remember Forest Gump? Yeah. Okay. Remember the recreated scenes of like JFK and all this stuff? And if you watch it now, you're like, "Oh, that's not real or whatever." But the stuff now they could have done that with that scene and it would have looked better. You got to kind of tweak it and 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 bro I got to get to know this stuff cuz bro I could do some cool stuff. Small stuff. I'm not going to make a whole movie I don't think. But the more pictures the more information
• 111:00 - 111:30 you give it the better it's going to be. That's a different thing. Yes. But that's another AI thing. That's like you know if you're doing a deep fake or you know 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 going to there there's going to be some value there. Yeah, it's it's definitely helping us on the marketing side. I mean, just coming up with marketing materials and backgrounds
• 111:30 - 112:00 and stuff like that. It's uh it's going to be interesting to see where it is in a couple years. Yeah, fully. Yep. But yes, I'm a learner. Yeah, sure. So that's what you've been learning. Yeah. A few things other stuff as well. Yeah. 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 jiu-jitsu, you're like looking at it and you're like, you know, this is an um platada and you just go, dude, what what is happening? Right? You're like
• 112:00 - 112:30 that. You're you're more right than you know. And I know I say that sometimes joking, but that applies to kind of anything. So if if it's like, hey, I want to um let's say, hey, you're you say either move it or lose it kind of a thing. So if it's like, hey, I'm going to do jiu-jitsu, right? I'm going to start jiu-jitsu. I'm 40 years old or whatever, but I'm way out of shape where it's like that at the end of the day that 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 ahead and jump into jiu-jitsu, no problem. It's way easier. See what I'm saying? So yeah, you could
• 112:30 - 113:00 Jo maybe not Joo Leebob, you could open up Adobe After Effects, we'll say. Have you know what After Effects? Yeah, I've I've I've been in there and I've I've done a lot of these things again like what I was sitting on earlier u wearing a lot of hats being a small team, man. Like you you got to figure [ __ ] out. So I've Yeah. A lot of these technologies like a illustrator, right? I taught myself how to design in illustrator. I'm pretty impressed with your shirt designs, too. Like thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah. Like the fact the first time you told me that you designed
• 113:00 - 113:30 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 [ __ ] golf shirts, including the one you're wearing right now, but they like you obviously have figured it 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 and just to be clear there, uh we have a designer as well, so I I haven't done all the designs. This was uh this pattern was done by someone else. But yeah, it's uh it's creating repeatable
• 113:30 - 114:00 patterns which is a whole technique in and of itself. But um you know I mean kind of circling back to what we were talking about earlier is uh early on in Julie 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 and it was taking a really long time to get from here's the idea you give me first draft back and forth were 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
• 114:00 - 114:30 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 and then he makes them translate. It translates. But see, like, okay, we'll take Illustrator for example. You know how to use Illustrator? Just we'll say for the fundamentals of Illustrator. No, I'm good now. Okay. Okay. Good. You're good at Illustrator. So now if you open like Photoshop, you're going to be like, "Oh, I can use Photoshop." And you're hitting
• 114:30 - 115:00 the ground running. As opposed to Jaco, he's going to be like he's going to open Photoshop and be like, "This is literally a different language to me." So it's like, what am I going to 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 see 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 like like After Effects or something and you're like, "Okay, this is hard, but I can see how hard it is versus Jaku is going to everything's just going to look like a different language." You see what I'm saying? So you can't really learn as much. That is how it looks to me. Yeah.
• 115:00 - 115:30 Like I don't comprehend this at all. Zero comprehension. That's how it looks for most people. So like think about uh code. You ever watch or you ever see like code written out? Yeah. Like computer code. Okay. So HTML, you know what HTML is? I I 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. Darn it. But but there's HTML, then there's like
• 115:30 - 116:00 JavaScript, then there's like C sharp, then there's like then there's like Python, there's all these different codes, and they have different levels of advance. You look at any code, it's all code. Mhm. 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're kind of lost. I got a a company that I'm involved with called Blackbox. Blackbox.ai. It's amazing because it is taking
• 116:00 - 116:30 English and turning it into code. So, uh, 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 I'm 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 uh, Photoshop or whatever you said a Adobe Illustrator and it it's
• 116:30 - 117:00 it's completely foreign to me. Mhm. But blackbox 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 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. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, this is uh so I use chat uh GPT in a similar
• 117:00 - 117:30 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 it'll get you to a certain level. Um if you use Blackbox, it's better because Blackbox is strictly for coding. Yeah. and and they so if you take all the if you take all the resources that Chad GPT takes and you know they put it towards uh
• 117:30 - 118:00 understanding books and understanding you know podcast training 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 it's infinitely more accurate than what the other AI program programs are doing. Yeah, it's pretty sick. It's pretty sick to see. And and like since I get to see the numbers behind the scenes and like percentage of accuracy, it's
• 118:00 - 118:30 incredible. It's incredible. It is better than human. You know what I mean? And I'm not just talking about Jono human knuckle dragger. I'm talking a human that codes for a living this thing. These they don't make mistakes, you know? 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 uh and and not talking about this in particular, but just AI, the way it's moving, I
• 118:30 - 119:00 mean, has the potential to like like copywriters, people who do, you know, emails and these other things like you can just press the button now. So you know how that is going to evolve. Is that going to you know eliminate some sort of industries uh or Oh there's definitely going to be industries that are being eliminated. And the interesting thing is is what's going to be taken away is the creativeness right the creative and the it's going to be interesting. So I was I always tell the story about um you know the White
• 119:00 - 119:30 Stripes the band. Oh yeah. So Jack White. So he's got this thing where, you know, he he explains how they make pop music. And the way that they make pop music, for instance, and the way he explains it is they take a snare drum and they'll like hit the snare drum a hundred times and they'll look at the computer uh you know, sound dynamics of of all of them. and they pick the one that is most perfect and they take that that one snare hit and that's the one
• 119:30 - 120:00 they use for every hit on the snare in a song. And they do the same thing with the symbol and they do the same thing with the high 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 Katie Perry and uh whoever like the popular pop music is all computer perfected and
• 120:00 - 120:30 that's why we listen to White Stripes and he's like, "Oh yeah, we recorded our second album in the in the stairwell of my rented, you know, townhouse and put mics in the different rooms and and that's why you can hear that there's mistakes. there's depth and there's soul to it. So when when you start talking about writing, okay, so we can have there's going to be things that are so you know what it's like um you know you can get a diamond
• 120:30 - 121:00 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 going to be some uh some sort of gap between those two, between like a perfectly written piece that was written just to land so perfect
• 121:00 - 121:30 with you, Bob the consumer. This email is going to go out to you and it's going to sound so perfect and you're going to be like, you know, is this thing real? You know, something in the back, 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 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
• 121:30 - 122:00 that's talking about Tulsi Gabbard? Uh it's it's it's Grock like angry Grock or something like that and it's like Tulsey Gabbard don't give a [ __ ] She'll [ __ ] tell people what's what. like you're like, "Oh, 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 human." And it and it'll add the variations that are needed. So did I just talk myself out of my my my theory? No, no, no. You're both of your little
• 122:00 - 122:30 theories put together as one unified theory, if I may. That is correct. artificial general intelligence. That's 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 where 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 whip pan or
• 122:30 - 123:00 something, it'll just go it's too computerized, right? So it doesn't look like someone was holding that. So uh after a certain amount of time whatever people invented a thing or whoever does these uh does the code for the for the program they have a thing called easy 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 were 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
• 123:00 - 123:30 to the smallest thing and with some stuff not everything with some stuff people can just tell you know like the they need that imperfection to for it to be con convincing and it's such it's on such a micro level that if it's not there or if even if that's replicated by you you can sort of feel it some things more than others. So after a while they added 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
• 123:30 - 124:00 much you adjust it you're like bro it's not the same too much of a pattern but too much of a pattern even 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
• 124:00 - 124:30 Bob has a camera. He films a black wall with a white square on it or 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 lead Bob's actual camera shake pixel by pixel. You see what I'm saying? Then you can get these camera shake uh 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 Brad there's certain things where it's really I don't know they'd
• 124:30 - 125:00 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 day 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. See what I'm saying? Yeah. There's a another thing. There's some spark, right?
• 125:00 - 125:30 There's some spark of creativity that comes into the world. And you know, my 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 uh a guitarist that can play the following albums." And you can name the most complex, complicated albums. Rush, uh, Led Zeppelin, just just name them
• 125:30 - 126:00 all. And and you will get probably five people from every guitar center in America that say that will say legitimately, "Yes, I can play all those." And yet when you call them, they're you're like, "What do you do for a living?" And they're like, "Oh, I you know, I work at, you know, uh Olive Garden or whatever. like I'm a waiter or I'm a and and even though they're so skilled at the techn technical aspect of playing guitar, they don't have whatever little
• 126:00 - 126:30 thing it is that allows them to create music. Now you take like Kurt Cobain who was I I mean obviously a skilled guitarist but he wasn't like some technical genius or he wasn't a technical uh 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
• 126:30 - 127:00 creativity and all, 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 where with all the millions of inputs that you just talked about Bob like billions of inputs that it 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 uh the AGI
• 127:00 - 127:30 comes to fruition of it developing like a human mind, you know, I mean, like we all develop from from babies to where we are now with a it's 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
• 127:30 - 128:00 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 it's sexual motivation and it's for a bunch
• 128:00 - 128:30 of different reasons. So and then it those those reasons are linked to a bunch of other stuff, right? And it's and that's it. That's a 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 can a computer get jealous? you know, you'd kind of have to program that in, you know, can a can a computer like get distracted in a sexual way, you know, cuz that's kind of part of our being a little bit. See what I'm saying?
• 128:30 - 129:00 So, I don't know 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? Yep. You're going to write some good blues songs when you get dumped, right? That's a good point. Paint some good uh some good paintings when you're distressed about something, right? And when you think about it, computers always have like this mission, right?
• 129:00 - 129:30 This program like I 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." And hell yeah, no matter how focused and concentrated we are on this mission, we can still get distracted in principle. You know, we can get distracted. We can get uh like all these things can can deviate make us deviate from the mission. And not to mention, you can get distracted from nothing but be but
• 129:30 - 130:00 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, you know, sentience with uh biologics, then maybe that gap is closed down. Yeah. But even that's a different thing. You know, I think that I don't even think that would be considered general whatever intelligence. I I often compare it to
• 130:00 - 130:30 life because, you know, 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 don'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
• 130:30 - 131:00 that creativity in AI. But I guess we're going to find out the coming years. Find out real quick, too. And and but and but maybe you can get real close to it. You know, you can get real close to it. Like right now, we can we can grow we can graft skin cells. We can make from stem cells. We can make it grow into something. But we there's a one line we can't cross. I feel I don't know. We've been talking out of school for the last however long, but I will add this to the
• 131:00 - 131:30 mix of ignorance that we're all 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 in the oven for half an hour. That's the ingredient. I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about all the ingredients. You see what I'm saying? So, it's like um it'll be
• 131:30 - 132:00 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 something you know something that we're just not paying attention to right now. Feels like that's going to be the little factor. Yeah. When when we're old men [ __ ] is going to get weird. Yeah, feels like it. Couple decades away. Well, we're keeping learning though. So, yes.
• 132:00 - 132:30 Yes, of course. Echo's learning and and and contemplating philosophizing over here. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get some feedback. I wonder if people want to hear the philosophization of the whole scenario. Most likely not. Probably not. All right. In the meantime, uh 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.
• 132:30 - 133:00 We recommend Jo Fuel. Hey, check it out. We got uh energy drinks. What do you got over there? Pink lemonade. I do. Is that your go-to? Uh black cherry vanilla. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Number one for me. This is number two. Yeah. I'm 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 cuz I don't always, you know, I like to come in to the podcast. I almost always well 99% of the time I'm drinking a go during the podcast or just before the
• 133:00 - 133:30 podcast but getting into two it's not every time you know but uh that's what we're doing. Joel check out joofuel.com we got energy drink we got protein we got uh greens we got hydration we got we got cold war. You know, we got everything that you need. Joint warfare. Some of the things that that I feel like we don't draw as much attention as we could, which it has one of those hidden
• 133:30 - 134:00 something that might be interpreted as 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 Mhm. I think you'd be surprised. Go check it out. Uh do also check it out at Walmart uh Wawwa Vitamin Shop GNC Military Commissaries Aphy's
• 134:00 - 134:30 Hanford Dashtos Wakeorn Shopright HB down in Taos Meer up in the Midwest Wegman's Harris. Somebody somebody posted Harris Teter like had the full display going on. Uh Publix Dicks sporting goods right now. We got a little test scenario going. I think we're in 200 stores. So go clear the shelves at Dicks. Yeah, Dix is good. Um there's one right around the corner here, by the way. Publix down in Florida, which is outstanding. People been getting into Publix, too.
• 134:30 - 135:00 Appreciate it. Appreciate you go going into Publix and just buying. I posted the other day before, during, after. This is jiu-jitsu specific, but it's not just jiu-jitsu specific. Driving to jiu-jitsu, go get to jiu-jitsu, have that little nice little energy, right? Sure. During jiu-jitsu, hydrate, good to go. Cuz I'm sweating like a damn pig during jiu-jitsu, but just keep hydrated. Get done, get home, mulch. There it is. Before, during, and after, you're good to go. Yeah, totally good to
• 135:00 - 135:30 go. So, check that out. If you don't have uh Jaco Fuel at your gym, email jfs sales@jofuel.com. We'll get you hooked up. Also, you need clothing. Originusa.com. We got hunt gear. We got jeans. We got what? Rashg guards. Rash guards. We got shorts. We got boots. Boots. Belts. Did you get the new boots yet? You didn't get them yet, did you? You're going to like the new boots. They're agree. I seen them. Freaking GTG. GTG. I look, do I get a little bit
• 135:30 - 136:00 of a hookup? Kind of. Little bit. Yeah. But I got a pair of blacked out ones. Oh yeah. Why is that not murdered out as they say? Yeah. Hell yeah. And well, it's cuz because at Echelon Front, you know, it's professional organization, so you got to have some professional looking boots. I can't have a big white sole. So, I got a blacked out sole from the team. Oh, you got a blacked out soul. And then I I blacked out the threads myself with sharp sharp. Good to go. No factor. Yeah. Yeah. And uh Yeah. Yeah. I remember blacking stuff out. The
• 136:00 - 136:30 team blacking that thing out. So yeah, all 100% Americanmade. 100% Americanmade materials. Check out originusa.com. We we you know 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. Uh more clothing merch if you will. Jono store. We got discipline equals freedom stuff. Shirts, hats, hoodies. We already knew that. We got socks. We
• 136:30 - 137:00 already knew that. But we are we do have an upcoming collab with a little brand called Hulu. Yeah. 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 Hey, 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? 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 uh solving
• 137:00 - 137:30 that problem. But now we're going to do a collab with Julie and now we got some some college shirts, some polos. Pumped to do it, man. Yeah, that'll be solid. Do we decide on a design yet? Yeah, just the basic bro represent the flag X flag core to the core. Nice all day. Should be out pretty soon as well. Yeah, that'll be good. It's not It's not out right now, but yes, soon. Be on the lookout for that. Yeah, very good. I was impressed. I am still am obviously impressed with like the fit cuz that's like a thing. Let's face it. Like I don't wear polos that much. So when I
• 137:30 - 138:00 wear one I'm like cool it's a polo like whatever. But the 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 we put a lot of time and effort uh you know launching and then iterating from there to you know make sure we can you know provide the best products possible. You got Shirt Locker. Oh yeah. Yeah. Shirt Locker by the way leadup is a subscription scenario new design every month. The reason I bring this up is cuz somebody posted a Shirt Locker shirt and
• 138:00 - 138:30 I texted you and said, "Wait a second. Is this one of our shirts?" And you said, "Yes." And I said, "I need 4 XL." Yep. Not four, not four, not XXXL. Not 4X. Yeah. Yeah. Four times XL. Who made that? Um, it's freaking dope, you know. So, it's like a skull with the with the deaf core 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. Hey, we made
• 138:30 - 139:00 it. Made it happen. So, that's a dope shirt. Did you get me? Did you set some aside for for me? Yeah. So, we got to wait for the end of the month cuz everybody got to get theirs. Hey, look, we all love you. But let's face it, you know, our people, they come first. Take care of people and they'll take care of us. Yeah. Exactly right. The team comes first. But yeah. when they got 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. And on that one, that particular one says, "Comfort is a curse." You know what I'm saying? Good.
• 139:00 - 139:30 And I like that too because there's sort of like a whole like, you know, ritualistic thing. Kind of cursy. Yeah, it's kind of a cursy thing. Yeah, that's it'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 going to need to wear a polo shirt. Yeah, that's by the way that was a standard thing in the SEAL teams. Like it was a certain mode of dressing. If you had to go on a on a commercial flight in civilian clothes, you'd have to put on a a collared shirt, they said. Yeah. Yeah. Now look, you could get a
• 139:30 - 140:00 lame polo shirt, right? Yeah. Like not fitting right. Just whack. Just whack. You get yourself a huliefolf shirt. Yeah. 100%. Tell us about hulie hulieolf.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 honored, privileged to be here. And uh, yeah, I wanted to take this opportunity just to thank uh, everyone who's supported Julie the last couple years. So, we turned two in April. Um, hey, yay. Happy birthday.
• 140:00 - 140:30 It's been a hell of a ride, but I mean, to be honest, uh, 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 uh played a part in in getting us here, uh thank you so much. And for every everyone who has been getting the word out, please continue to do that. Uh you know, we really appreciate. We're trying to you we make golfware for action guys. We're trying to reach out to and connect Julie with the actionoriented competitiveminded people out there. Uh you know, athletes,
• 140:30 - 141:00 former athletes, gym rats, crossfitters, hunters, fighters, surfers, like you name it. If you share this mindset, you like to get after it, uh, and you have a pension for golf, it's not a mustave, but, uh, we are your brand. So, please check us out, huligolf.com. We got some killer threads, polos, te's, hats, and we have a whole range of styles, right? So, if you don't want to be uh, showing it off like what I got here a little bit uh, you know, bright pattern here, we
• 141:00 - 141:30 got stuff that's a little bit more chill and relaxed. So, I like how you just called the freaking subdued tiger stripe black on gray of what would you call it? A loud color. Well, it's it's a it's it's a pattern. So, I mean, if if you're not into wearing patterns, we have some non-pattern stuff as well. And I got to say, if you don't like I don't play golf at all. Like, 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,
• 141:30 - 142:00 Julie, 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, and you actually have the Is a polo shirt and a golf shirt the same thing? Yeah. So the whole reason why this whole damn thing
• 142:00 - 142:30 started in the 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 got to play golf you got to look the part. Might as well have some fun with it. Um you know we use high performing materials. We got some kick-ass designs and uh so yeah, if you're gonna golf, uh no need to go out there looking like a nerd or if you're just, you know, living
• 142:30 - 143:00 life or traveling, going to work, uh you know, we can elevate that look a little bit and have a little bit of hulie flare that adds some some character and there's, you know, a story and ethos behind this brand. We're not just pumping out [ __ ] you know? Well, what I appreciated was cuz 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 uh like you got the
• 143:00 - 143:30 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 they're cool but like I don't need that. I well I I need that but I also need to have a professional shirt which most people or many people that are here I don't care look if you're work 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 Julie Julie has got you
• 143:30 - 144:00 covered if you work at an energy company and you're you know a lineman but you got to go and talk to the boss and present him about some plan you got to go in you can't roll in there in like your your field wear you You got to have something that steps up a little bit. So regardless of what you do, when you got to look, 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 a t-shirt. And that's what that's what we got hulie for. So, and and another thing
• 144:00 - 144:30 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 cuz they got to show up for an event somewhere or they got to go present to clients and you don't want to 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 don't get your your team like a bunch of junk
• 144:30 - 145:00 uh 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 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.
• 145:00 - 145:30 This isn't just like a shirt that you know, whatever. go down to the go on the website and order these shirts and new. No, bro. That's a big deal, too, by the way. Like, you know how like um you know, to little a 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 uh thrift stores or you know, one of these uh what do you call club stores where they just buy in bulk, right? Real cheap. The cheapest, right? No heart and soul. Give away freaking um cheap stuff or whatever. And then yeah,
• 145:30 - 146:00 they look more like a bunch of slackers. And look, not 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. Little bit. You think, "Oh, that that shirt was probably designed by AI." But you see someone in a hulie shirt, you're like, "That thing was that thing was literally designed by Lead Bob." And the whole team knows that lead Bob. Lead Bob to He was 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
• 146:00 - 146:30 we're doing. So you you definitely got to keep that in mind. Um just just to follow up, you hit on something, but 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 uh uh Yeah. So anyways, uh check us out. You can either uh go to the website or email us at info@hulleyolf.com. Would love to get that going for you guys. Hey, I'm going to go I'm going to put myself on report here kind of. All right. Sure. Don't
• 146:30 - 147:00 even know if I should bring this up, but I'm going to out of character. Have you ever heard of a Tiffany's bag? Do you know there's a jewelry store called Tiffany's? Yeah. Yeah. Tiffany's Anko. So, it's like a jewelry store. Yeah. And apparently it's a really nice one. And if you get like your wife something from that store Yeah. It doesn't really matter what it is. But if you roll in with that bag, bro, she's
• 147:00 - 147:30 happy like, oh, in the house like after shopping at the Tiffany's bag. Oh yeah. Or or like she opens up the the present or whatever for Mother's Day and she sees a Tiffany bag. It doesn't really matter. And you know what I mean? You rolling that Tiffany bag cuz it shows like, "Hey, I'm in the game. I got you the Tiffany bag." The whole thing, right? I understand. That's kind of like when you give someone a hulie shirt, right? They're not like Yeah. They're not like, "Oh, cool. You just went down to freaking whatever Essmart and got me
• 147:30 - 148:00 a polo shirt." It's like, "No, we didn't shop smart. It's different. Shop smart. We shop smart. Shop smart." No, we got you the hulie shirt. Yeah. And so, and they like a nice little bag. The little hulie 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 uh you're right. I mean, every single polo that we make, it's uh it's originated from a thought and uh there's a lot of, you know, blood, sweat, and uh heart and
• 148:00 - 148:30 soul in everything that we make. And we'll continue to get better and and make more cool [ __ ] Right on. Check. Huligolf.com. Okay. Uh check out primalbeef.com and Coloradobeef.com. Just go get steak. We need steak with that fuel. Look, you can have mulch 100%, bro. Mo, by the way, mulch is a good 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? You tell me. All right. We
• 148:30 - 149:00 got a new flavor coming out. Wait, wait. The the the powder or the RTD? Uh powder. Okay. Yeah, of course. I know. There's new new flavors coming out. Um but yeah, you be before you eat your dessert, which is a mulch, get some steak, get some Coloradobeef.com, primalbeef.com. Uh also subscribe to the podcast. It's also got check out jock underground.com and we got YouTube channels but you got a hulie golf YouTube channel. You know, we haven't done much with that. Uh over the top Julie was our uh YouTube channel. We'll work on that here probably this next year. It's not been a
• 149:00 - 149:30 priority at this time. Not a priority right now. Got you got to prioritize and execute. It's not Yeah. Uh well, we got YouTube channels, right? We got the Joo podcast official. Dig it. We got the Jaco podcast clips. Echo Charles. 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, way out there. Uh, Jaco Fuel has a 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
• 149:30 - 150:00 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 learned their timetables. 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, get 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
• 150:00 - 150:30 any leadership endeavor. So if you want to come to one of our events, the next event is in San Antonio. There's still a couple t tickets left. It's San Anton San Antonio, Texas, April 29th through May 1st. Come and check it out. Um, 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
• 150:30 - 151:00 like, oh, you're in a leadership position, you're the CEO of a company, you're a you're the chief of a fire department. It's not just for them. It's for you that's sitting there with uh you're at the bottom rung. You've been in your job for a year and a half. You 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
• 151:00 - 151:30 leadership. And that can be found at extreme ownership.com. And finally, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Goldstar families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a incredible organization that has helped so many of our friends. Also check out America's. Also check out heroesinhorses.org, or which is Micah Fininks organization helping SEALs get and and not just SEALs helping all veterans or a
• 151:30 - 152:00 bunch of veterans find themselves up in the mountains find their soul again. And then Jimmy May has got his organization beyond the brotherhood.org. So that's America's mightywarriors.org, heroes and horses.org and beyondthebhood.org. If you want to connect with us for Bob and Julie, check out huliggolf.com. Uh, and then on Instagram, Julieolf, and then Bob on Instagram is lead Bob Holland. Check out episode416 if you want to learn more about that. And if you want to connect with me, uh, check
• 152:00 - 152:30 out jo.com. And then on social media, I'm at joink echo at echo Charles. Just watch out for the algorithm. And, uh, once again, thanks Bob for coming back. Thank you for having it. Good to see you. Uh, thanks for your service as a frog man and your continued pursuit to building a business here and helping our economy grow with Hulie 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
• 152:30 - 153:00 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
• 153:00 - 153:30 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 Joo out.