Joe Rogan Experience #729 - Jocko Willink

Alright ladies and gentlemen, we are here and I'm here with Jocko Willink of Extreme Ownership. How US Navy Seals Lead and Win. I'm really excited to read this because I really enjoyed your podcast with Tim Ferriss. I've seen you around the UFC a bunch of times but I didn't know much about you. But you're one of those dudes, you know, where I look at this guy and I'm like, that guy probably knows some shit. This is just something about you, like when I see you, you know, you're hanging around with Lister, I saw you a few times at the UFC, I'm like, that guy probably knows some shit or he's seen some shit. And then I saw or listened to the Tim Ferriss podcast and I go, okay, well that makes a lot of sense now. If you haven't heard that podcast, it is excellent. And you're the one, the first guy ever to come with your own notepad in your own pen too. I just want to point that out. Just try to be prepared. Well, that's your whole thing, man. I'm a big fan of your social media posts too because I like feeling like a lazy fuck whenever I look at your social media posts and you have a picture of your watch, 4.45 in the morning, this dude's out there working out. I like it. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I obviously had zero social media presence like three months ago or whatever the case may be. And Tim Ferriss was, you know, basically said, hey, you need to get on this social media stuff. And I said, okay, can you kind of show me what to do? And he says, yeah, sign up. So then I signed up and then he dropped that podcast that gets listened to by a bunch of people. And all of a sudden I was engulfed in the social media world. And I found Twitter to be the one that was the easiest to use and you don't have to write a lot. So, you know, I don't like people that talk a whole bunch without saying anything. So I figured that one's pretty cool. Yeah, that was the thing that I was thinking when he was encouraging you to use social media. It was like a guy like you, you're not a peacocker, you know, and there's something about social media that as a person who's an avid social media user, there's some peacocking to it, you know, and I try to do it with humor and I try to because it's it's an important aspect of promoting comedy shows and podcasts and things along those lines. But you were much more of a keep it to yourself. One of the things that I loved about the Ferris podcast you were talking about, how you would have commanders would come to various leaders and ask them, what do you need? What do you need? And guys would have all these requests and all these things. We need Wi-Fi. We need this. And you were like, we're good, sir. We're good, sir. And the idea behind that is when you did need something, if you really did need something, someone would come to you. Yeah, you would get it quickly. Absolutely. When I needed something and I spoke up and said, hey, hey, boss, this is what I need. And this is why I need it. They would instantly give it to me because they knew that I was telling the truth and it wasn't some, you know, half ass request that wasn't real. It was something that we legit needed and they'd give it to me. Well, this is the value of someone who keeps their words short and means what they say and says what they mean and doesn't have a lot of bullshit involved in their vocabulary or in this coming from a professional bullshitter. I mean, this is what I do. I bullshit. I talk, you know, feel a lot of hours of just shooting the shit about nonsense. Yeah. And I mean, I have to, you know, look in the mirror myself. I mean, I just wrote with my with my partner, Lave Baben, who I served with, you know, we just wrote a 300 page book about us, you know, for all practical purposes. Now, of course, it's about our team and it's about what we learn and what we experience. But there's no doubt that there's some level of, you know, self promotion when you're writing a book that's got your name on the cover of it. And now I'm sitting here talking to you and I guess that puts me in the same league, maybe I'm not the same league, but at least I'm playing the same sport. Yeah, we're definitely playing the same sport. But there's benefit to that because I think what you have to say and especially what you had to say in the Tim Ferriss podcast is is very important. It's it's not just important. It's unique. And because your perspective is of one who was involved in the most intense activity a human being can participate in in today's world. You were involved in combat in Iraq during the worst time of the war. And you came through it with some pretty intense lessons. And you can I think anybody listening to that podcast can get a lot out of it. There's inspiration to be gotten from that podcast for sure. But there's also an understanding that can only be I don't think anybody else can relay what you experienced. But you know, you can have all these guys that write these, you know, movies and they could write screenplays and television shows about it or guys can write books about it. Embedded journalists can write about it. It's not the same. It's not the same. I got a sense from just you talking about it on Tim Ferriss podcast, literally a shift in my perspective of what it's like to be there. Yeah, it is. You know, for me, it was my and I know this might sound weird, but it was my lifelong dream to be in combat and to be in a leadership position in combat. Ever since I could remember wanting to do anything of any substance with my life, I wanted to be some kind of a commando. And so I really felt and the Battle Ramadi was, you know, like you said, it was 2006. It was Ramadi, Iraq. It was the worst place in the world at the time. And I knew that and I felt like my whole life had sort of been preparing me to be there in that position, taking care of those guys to the best of my ability and going out and sending them out to go and kill the enemy and supporting the conventional forces that were there that were unbelievably brave and humble and just miraculously patriotic. And we formed a brotherhood that, you know, to this day, I don't think it'll ever be replaced. And you can see why, you know, these stories of war stand the test of time. And when we talk about the Peloponnesian Wars, we talk about war for all time, because there's something there. And I think it's what you began with, because it is the ultimate human test. You know, it's the ultimate it is other people are trying to kill you. And you're trying to kill them. And that's just the ultimate test. And not that it's a great test or a test that everyone should want to have happen because it's it's awful and horrible and wretched in many ways. At the same time, it's there and it's present. And there is no avoiding it. There is no avoiding it. War is part of the world. It's part of human nature. I know Dana White, you know, says, fighting's in our DNA. Well, you don't have to go but one or two degrees further from fist fighting to where, you know, tribes of human beings are trying to kill each other. Yeah, it's one of the subjects that I've talked about with my friend Duncan, we were we were going over this. And we essentially came to the conclusion that the history of the human race is a history of military warfare. I mean, when you talk about the human race, you talk about the Civil War, you talk about, you know, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, you talk about wars and in between those wars, people preparing for more war or trying to avoid war, the Cold War in between wars. You talk about the various conflicts throughout history, whether it's King is Khan, or whether it's Napoleon, whether you're talking about war. I mean, almost all of our history has been trying to keep people from fucking with us and trying to take things that we think will help our people. That's essentially the history of the human race. Yeah. And I think what really strikes people and why there's a an almost sick fascination with it in some ways is because there it's, you know, we say that combat is like life, but amplified and intensified. So it's similar to regular life, except for the consequences are obviously everything, you know, you can die, that can be the end of you. And so when you're in that moment, and when you read about that, and when people read these books or watch these movies, they get some sense of what that must be like. And I think that's why there's, like I said, some attraction to it. I mean, that's why war there's hundreds and hundreds of war movies and hundreds and hundreds of war books, because people try and understand what that emotional content really means. Well, there's no higher stakes. So anytime you're involved in an activity that literally there are no higher stakes, other than the loss of your loved ones, and the grief that you would suffer because of that the loss your own life is about the highest stake possible. And when I talked to people like you, or many of the other guys that have talked to that have served and been involved in combat, one of the craziest aspects of it is many want to be back there, many experienced that life, tuned up to 11. And they, they recall it like it's the best time of their life. There's no doubt about it, best time of my life. That's crazy. No doubt about it, feeling that pressure, knowing what was at stake. And again, for me in a leadership position, you know, everyone feels a little bit different from me in a leadership position. You're not worried about yourself getting her killed. You're worried about your guys getting her killed. And that's the most important thing. And the thing that's keeping you awake at night and the thing that's driving you. So there's an intensity there. But having so much pressure and so much at stake when it goes away, it's definitely leaves a hollow empty space inside. There's no doubt about it. Well, you see it with fighters, with boxers, MMA fighters, when they retire, they have a real hard time finding regular life to be fulfilling. And I can only imagine it would be way more intense because of war. Because the thing about fighting is it's such a solitary sport. You know, you have your team behind you, you have coaches, you have guys that you prepare with, that you train with. But once you're locked up inside that cage or you step inside that ring, it's really all just about you. The experience is yours. When you're at war, your experience is protecting all those around you as well as staying alive and losing friends and thinking that you could have done something differently and maybe someone would still be here. That's a completely different kind of thing to leave and to come back to regular civilization and then to watch all the shit that you did in Iraq go to pieces now. You watch just fucking chaos over there now. Every day in the news, whether it's the civil war between the Sunni and the Shia or whether it's what's going on with ISIS and it just seems like whatever gains that you guys made there are slowly being eroded every day. Does that also like pull at you? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like I said, we fought and when I say we, I'm talking about a giant group of 5,000 or 6,000 Americans or the 11 AD, just a huge group of awesome guys, soldiers and Marines, and we were a part of them. We all fought very hard for the city of Ramadi. It's a city like a city in America. It's got roads and it's got houses and it's got building and it's got a government center, it's got a soccer stadium. It's a city like what we have in America and we went in there and fought to take this city back from these savages that owned it at the time. Why do I call them savages? It's because they tortured people, they skinned people alive, they beheaded people, they raped little girls and little boys. It was just disgusting. We went in there and fought against them and beat them. What we did in doing that is the people that actually lived there, again, this is a city with human beings in it. I always have to tell this story or at least relate to people that you'd be running down the street, there'd be guns firing around, you'd kick open the door to a compound to somebody's house and you'd get in there and there'd be a guy, a dad working on a car and there'd be two kids kicking a soccer ball and there'd be a mom cooking lunch. There's people there and those people wanted us to be there and wanted us to defeat the insurgents that were terrorizing them and we did. They were joyous about that. When you talk about what do I think now when I see ISIS, the black flag of ISIS, is there any other more dramatic image than I could tell you then that the black flag of ISIS now flies at the government center, a Mahdi? It's horrible and it's sickening. They went around and anybody that had had anything to do with the coalition there, they went around with a list of names and they murdered all of them and all their families. We as a country, we left them hanging and it's horrible to see that. We left them hanging and we instigated a lot of crazy shit when we took Saddam Hussein out of power, which was probably ultimately a good thing to get rid of that guy. There was no question that he was a psychopath and his sons were evil fucks, but in creating that vacuum, like when the leadership is gone, you kind of have a responsibility to manage that area now. As crazy as that sounds, people want to say we're not in the business of nation building. We're not in the building process or the business of organizing or structuring a nation, building a democracy out of one which did not have one ever, but you kind of have to. Well, look what we did in Germany and Japan. We're still in both those countries. We stayed there and guess what the two economic superpowers behind America. I know those two are both in the top five. Germany is definitely the head of Europe besides China, but Japan, those are economic superpowers. They're very successful countries and we formulated their new structure. Now, there's a lot of resistance in this country. There always was a lot of resistance to going to Iraq in the first place because people didn't understand the connection between 9-11 and Iraq and it seemed like it was manufactured. It seemed like to people on this side that we're looking at it and we're looking at Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and all these chicken hawks that wanted us to go over there and why, but once you're there, you kind of have to have a different approach, don't you? Well there's no doubt you have to have a different approach. You have to believe in what you're doing. Again, when you're number one and every soldier or marine or service member will tell you that when they're in combat, they're not thinking about the strategic mission of the United States of America. They're thinking about the guy that's next to them and what they're going to do to keep their buddies alive. That's all there is to and that's true and anyone will tell you that. That being said, when you come back from that operation and you have time to think about what you're doing there, then you've got to believe in what you're doing. If you don't believe in what you're doing, then you're going to have some serious issues. For me, it was pretty obvious that what we were doing was absolutely the right thing. You've got insurgents there that were foreign fighters that want to kill everyone in America. They hate us. They want to destroy us. They want to do 9-11 over and over again in this country. They want to kill us all. For us to be there fighting them, I am totally on board and was on board and remain that way today. Now, these insurgents that came into these places like Ramadi and were taking over the city and killing all these people and torturing all these people, why were they doing that to them? It's the same thing that ISIS did when they went back. They want to have a chunk of land. At the time, they'd said that Ramadi was going to be the seat of their caliphate. It's going to be the capital city of their caliphate. That's what they were trying to do. In a sense, once war started over there, it became a holy war. Yes, and it's a holy war, but it's interesting because the people of Iraq, there's people in Iraq, most people in Iraq, when you talk to them, they're normal people that want to have a job, build a new addition on their house, fix the roof, get some good food for dinner that night, raise their kids so that they can take over the family business or whatever. That's what they want. They're not a bunch of people running around doing what ISIS is doing, but who is the powerful force in Iraq right now? Now everyone's scared of ISIS. One thing about this is because Iraq is ... They don't have this patriotic feeling that we have in America, which I know it may be dying in many cases, but there's a lot of Americans that still believe America is the greatest country on earth. Even if you don't believe it's the greatest country on earth, and even if you see it for all that's false that it has, you appreciate the fact that in this country you have freedom. You can kind of fight for that no matter what you're thinking about. You're fighting for freedom. You're fighting to protect your family. Well, in Iraq they're like, okay, I'll fight for whoever. I'll fight for whoever or support whoever. Is this going to allow me to live? They don't have the same attitude. That's why when ISIS came into Ramadi and the Iraqi troops kind of ran away, they're like, well, we don't know what's going to happen. We don't really ... They don't have that core belief that they're fighting for. I think that's where some of the challenges come in. As they grow that, they will perform better, but it's definitely going to take a close quite a bit of time. Well, I think patriotism in America was at its all-time high around September 11th. Right after that happened, you never saw more flags. I mean, I remember driving down the street and every car had a flag hanging from it. No doubt about it. I mean, it was a buddy of mine, Jay London, sold flags. That's what he used to do, sell car flags, flags that he put on cars. I mean, I had a good business going on for a while, but like a lot of things, people got accustomed to it. They got settled in and everything got back down to its normal level. So it was this big buzz of patriotism. Well, there's a big buzz of patriotism when you feel threatened. We never feel threatened in America. Everyone is driving around in a nice big SUV that gets eight miles to the gallon with big air condition blasting. They're looking at their iPhone, texting people, socially interacting through the WiFi. And they're not concerned about their safety. And so when you're not concerned about your safety, what is there left to be patriotic when you don't understand what it means to live in fear? So yeah, September 11th comes and you get attacked and you feel that fear. Guess what? You rally around this thing, America, that's protected you and your family, but you didn't even think about it before. But now you're thinking about it and you go, you know what? I'm going to put a flag up on my vehicle, this vehicle that I drive around in complete luxury, which is what America's like. It is unbelievably luxurious compared to the rest of the world. It is also unquestionable evil involved in flying planes into buildings and killing civilians, just randomly haphazardly suicide bombing, essentially with a plane right into a building. Like all that was so evil that everybody just, there was no gray area in that. It was pretty clear. It was about as clear as any event ever in human history. Agree. Now when you found out, I mean you were already involved in the military when all this was going on. Yeah. I was. You signed up like long before that. If there's anybody that I've ever met that I've ever heard talk about it, that was, I mean this is how you feel. You're born for this. This is your goal, your post in life. Yes. What pulled you into that? You grew up in New England? I did. What part? Connecticut and Maine. In the sticks, I'm on a dirt road, just kind of a general American. General American. What was it that drew you to it? Where did you develop this sense of patriotism? Well, I would say prior to the feeling of patriotism, like I said, I always wanted to be some kind of a commando. I would say that when you join the military, I'd say people that are somewhat patriotic join the military, but when you travel around the world and you're in the military, that kind of confirms your patriotism more than anything else because you see what the rest of the world is like and how unbelievably amazing America is. And again, does America have faults? Yeah. America's got all kinds of faults. There's all kinds of things that we could do better. There's things that we've done in the past that we shouldn't have done, and there's things that we'll do in the future that we shouldn't have done. But when you compare that with the rest of the world and how the rest of the world lives and what it means to be in an oppressed society, you're extremely thankful to be in America. This is once you've already been in the military and already started traveling. So this is just, you just had this draw towards it, almost like your destiny. To be in the military? Yeah. Yes. It's strange that it just came out of nowhere. There was no event in your life. It just seems like this was just something that you were always attracted to. Running around the woods as a little kid with BB guns shooting each other, and that seemed like a good job. And it's funny, in SEAL teams, you don't grow up. You continue with your childhood play time for your whole adult life, and it's awesome. That's the best thing about the SEAL teams, is you get to do what you always wanted to do, and they pay you money, and you get unlimited ammunition, unbelievable types of weapons, bombs, explosives, grenades, and they just give it all to you, and they say, get after it. Well, they get excited when they find a guy like you. Here we got a smart guy who was born to do this, who's really looking forward to it. It's perfect. I guess so. I'm sure the recruiter was pretty fired up when he met me. I would be. If I was a recruiter, I'd be like, we got one. Check the boxes. It's even more intense because it's not just you get to play, but only the strong get to play. The weak all get weeded out, and what's left is people of similar character. What I've found most fascinating, I think that's one of the things that's so romantic in the public's eye about the idea of the SEALs or Green Berets or Rangers, people that it's very difficult to get in there, and only a select few have the intestinal fortitude, the willpower, and the ability to lock onto a task and a goal and get through it. Yeah. Then when you're in the SEAL teams, none of that means anything. All the training and all that selection process, it just doesn't mean anything because that's just the baseline of where everyone's at. When people talk about this intense training, when you're in the SEAL teams, you don't talk about that training that you go through to get in there. That's just the baseline for everybody. It's just to make sure that you're not a pussy. Exactly. Exactly. Here you are, 44 years old. You're still getting up at four o'clock in the morning doing deadlifts. It never left you. It did not leave me. It's not going to, is it? It is not going to. You get through. Once you get through the intensity of buds and you get through all the people that are going to quit and you get through all the training, what is life like from there on out? How structured is training and physical activity and things like that from there on out? Again, being in the SEAL teams is awesome. It's such a fun job that I literally didn't consider it a job except for maybe 13 months out of my career. 13 months I worked directly for the admiral that was in charge of all the SEALs. He's a great guy and I learned a ton from him and from having that job, but it wasn't a fun job. Even he would tell you it's not a fun job. You're wearing a uniform every day. In the regular SEAL teams, you're wearing a pair of shorts and you're barely wearing a shirt because you're out there in the field or getting ready to go in the field. It's a great life and you're constantly training. You're hanging out with a bunch of guys that pretty much have the same attitude as you for the most part. There's a couple guys that don't cut it and there's some guys that are super studs and you're doing your best to emulate them. You're hanging out with a bunch of great guys. When I was a young SEAL, we'd get to Friday and we'd go out, have a beer. We'd get done Saturday, we'd still go to work. Sunday, we'd still go to work. We'd go work out, we'd hang out, we'd work on our gear, we'd get ready. There was not even a war going on. We were just into it. We were just fired up for the SEAL teams. It's a great life. Once the war started, the intensity definitely picked up because everybody knew that we were going into combat and everyone pushed that much harder. That being said, back in the 90s, we used to train really, really hard because there was an unknown element. There was an unknown element where you didn't know what was really going to ... You didn't know what combat was really like. You trained as hard as you possibly could figure out how to train. We trained. Then once combat started, and we were like, okay, well, we know what we're dealing with now. It'd be like a fighter going to a camp. If he's never fought in the UFC before, he's going to train super hard to make his debut. Well, maybe after he wins really easily his first couple fights, maybe he backs off on that training camp a little bit. Not that we did that, but it definitely mentally was there to push hard even before combat. You're essentially saying that even before you were going to war, you were going to be ready. Yes. You were going to make sure that you had all your boxes checked, you had all your ducks in a row. 100%. How much physical training is there once you're actually deployed? It depends on where you are and what you're doing. It depends on what type of missions you're going on. Being in the SEAL teams is a very physical job. Again, you know what it is? It's a baseline. Everyone expects that you're going to be able to put on your rucksack and your gear and go out and move and shoot and communicate. That's the baseline. Everyone's expected to do it. Whatever you have to do to make that happen is kind of on you. Although we do team what we call PT, physical training, but we do team PT. A lot of it is on you as an individual or your smaller element, group of guys. That's how you got to stay in shape. You do not want to be the guy that can't carry his weight. You'll get kicked out. But it's not structured. It's not organized. Say if you're deployed in Iraq. What I was getting at was I always wondered, I would imagine the type of workouts that you do, they're exhausting. You're deadlifting. You're doing cleans and presses and all this crazy shit and chin-ups and running up hills. If you had to go to war right after a hard workout like that, it's going to take something out of you. Yeah, you've got to use common sense. How do you know when to stay in shape or what to do? Yeah, you're not going to do a massive squat workout while you're on deployment that's going to put you in the hurt locker for three or four days. It's just not smart. It's like a Pavel, the Pavel. Tutsula. I heard that from him years and years ago because he was training some SWAT guys up in LA. I talked to some of those guys and they said, you don't need to go to exhaustion to get stronger. I said, okay, cool. Let's try that. You've got to be ready to operate. That's your primary mission. You've got to be ready to go out on the battlefield and get after it so you're not going to crush yourself so hard that you're incapacitated. He's not a guy that believes in going to failure. He's got some interesting ideas. He doesn't get into failure. I'm not some follower from just one of those things I heard along the way. There's a lot of different philosophies when it comes to training. When you're deployed, it's essentially all entirely on you other than the group organized PT trainings. Just about. Yeah, just about. Do you guys get together and say, hey, we're going to go running or we're going to lift today or we're going to? Let's go do some pull ups. What about martial arts training? How much martial arts training is involved? Again, that depends on what the situation is and who you're working with. If you were a junior officer that was working for me, then you were going to be training jiu-jitsu all the time. If they're working for you. It depends on who they're working for. I needed training partners and so I got them. When you did that, would you take guys and teach them some basic stuff and then just choke the shit out of them? Is that the move? Yeah, pretty much. Do you talk them through it while you're doing it? Defend, get your arm here, look out. But I would actually improve. I'd go on deployment and come back and some guy that maybe I was having good battles with before I left, I'd come back and be better because all of a sudden you're going to work on really good offense against a bunch of strong psycho seals that don't want to tap and you got to make it work. I'd come back and be better. I wouldn't get worse on deployment, that's for sure. That's Eddie Bravo's theory. He believes that the real way to get better is not to train with people better than you, but to train with people that aren't as good as you and just constantly drill finishes over and over and over again, sharpen them up like a samurai sword. And then when you do spar with people that are your level or better, you'll be much better just because you're constantly used to finishing. Yeah, and I think there's a combination of both. You got to train with people that are better than you and you got to train with people that are worse than you. We do that in seal training too because the seal training that I ran before I got out was not like the seal training we see with the guys with the logs carrying those around or boats on the head. Like I said, that's the basic training and no one really cares too much about that once you get in the seal teams because it's just over. It's just to smash you in the beginning. Just to smash you, like you said, make sure that you ... You're not a pussy. Exactly. Have the intestinal fortitude to bring it. But once you get in the seal teams, then you go through something called a workup and that's when you've got seal platoons that are trying to work together and we do crazy simulated combat on these guys that is awesome. It's devastating. We would have paintball. Again, this is like little kid stuff, right? You get awesome paintball guns, unlimited paintball rounds. We had the best laser tag system that anyone could ever imagine, this crazy expensive laser tag system where you could go out and fight each other with laser tag. When you were getting shot at, if the rounds weren't theoretically hitting you, then there was a little speaker on your shoulder that would make noises as if rounds were going over your head so that you would know to get down and there'd be explosions going off on these little speakers. Then when you'd get back from these training operations, they have little embedded GPS's in them, so you'd put it out on Google Earth and you could watch the whole battle unfold and watch what people did right and wrong. My point in this is that sometimes, many times, especially in the beginning, when the seals weren't quite up to speed yet, they didn't know how to work together that well, three or four or five opposing force seals, so these are guys that are pretending to be bad guys, they would kill them all. They would just go out there and murder them all. As these guys got better and started to work together and the leadership started to step up and take command and do a better job of leading, then all of a sudden the seals would start to beat the opposing force and annihilate them. What an incredible tool to learn how to organize and to stay together and work together as a team. What did they used to do in the past? That's a very interesting topic because it's very similar to what the UFC did to martial arts because, as you know, in 1991, you and I could sit here and talk and you could be a kung fu guy and I could be an Aikido guy and we could be like, no, my martial arts better and you could be saying the same thing. We could theoretically debate it all day long but we'd never actually do it. It's different. In combat, obviously, we can't say, okay, let's find out which one's better and we're on the same team, we're just going to kill each other to find out. You can't do that. The first thing that happened was simunition. They basically started paintball but it's high speed paintball that fits in your real gun. It fits in a real gun. Yeah, it fits in a real gun. You put a new barrel on your standard issue weapon and now you're shooting paintballs out of your real gun. You have 30 rounds and change magazines. It's very, very similar to real combat. All of a sudden, just like a punching bag, when people say, oh, the punching bag doesn't punch back. Well, when you go into a house and you shoot a bunch of paper targets, they don't move, they don't shoot back. Guess what? You win every single time and you can get pretty confident with your tactics but your tactics aren't getting tested. When these great technologies came out, simunition, paintball and these laser type systems, it was a complete change and we definitely changed our tactics. Our tactics evolved just like fight tactics evolved with the advent of the UFC and people said, oh, this doesn't work the way we thought it did. This idea of, oh, we're just going to go running into a room and no one's going to stop no matter what. No, actually, if there's a machine gun, just lay in paint into you as you go in. You're stupid if you go running into that room. We made these simple adjustments but it was an interesting progression and it definitely imprinted the fact that you have to make your training as realistic as possible. It also shows you how people, humans, have a tendency to believe in what they're doing just because it's kind of what they believe in. Again, I think those traditional martial arts that were so popular back in the day, people truly believed that, no, I will actually stop you with my chi. My chi will stop you and they really thought that. One of my jujitsu buddies had some chi guy in 1995 like, you cannot take me down. He said, what do you mean? He said, no, once I settle my chi, you cannot take me down. He said, well, okay, settle your, do you want to try it? The guy's like, sure, you can try all you want. The guy stands there and settles his chi out and my buddy goes, are you ready? His guy says, yeah. He just double legs in and slammed him on the ground. The guy believed it. That's what's crazy. That's what people get lured into. Our egos lure us into a lot of stuff that we need to watch out for. Well, the belief is based on being taught it by people who also believe it too. It's so confusing because no one's experienced it in real life, which was why the initial question was when they used to prepare like back in Vietnam or during the first. When was this stuff invented? Did they have it during the first Gulf War? Barely, barely. Very small groups had it, not as many as should. They had the laser set up and everything? No, we didn't get the good. No, they had a worse laser system. They've been trying to do it for years. But what did they used to do during the Vietnam era? Go off the experience of guys that had been in World War II and Korea, trying to pass that on. Luckily, and honestly, being in combat, the basic principles of combat are not these super crazy complex things. The most basic principle that we talk about is cover and move, which is if you and I are going to go assault a building over there, I'm going to take cover. I'm going to engage that building so that the enemy can't put their heads up. While I'm shooting at the building, shooting where we think the enemy are, you're going to get up and maneuver into a better position. Once you get into a better position and you get some cover, you're going to start shooting at the enemy. That's going to allow me to move. Once I get to a better position, I'll start shooting again. We'll continue to do that, supporting each other as we move to a target. Once we get there, we'll kill the bad guys and it'll be done. That's the most basic principle. There's times where before, in between Vietnam, which is where we had major combat and people learned that cover and move, and guys that were in Vietnam were the people that taught me cover and move. In between that time and the time when we started using Simunition and the lasers, the better products, we actually forgot some of those lessons. As crazy as that might seem, we actually forgot some of these very simple basic lessons of gun fighting. It was great to have it back. When we went to combat, finally, we were more prepared for it. Yeah, I would imagine that kind of simulation. You're calling it Simunition? That's an actual name brand. It's a name brand. That's the paint? Yep. So Simunition is the paint and the laser, what is the name brand of that stuff? The one that we used was called Ditz and it was made by Saab. I don't know if they still make it or if that contract's still going, but it was awesome. I'd like your analogy to martial arts, like testing it in an actual competition, because it would seem that that would be the only way that anybody would ever actually learn what mistakes not to make and how they could easily be replicated in combat. And then the repeated actions of doing those over and over again and ingraining them in your mind is probably the only thing that could really, you could draw upon when you're in those intense situations of an actual firefight. Yeah, and there's another good comparison. I don't know if you've ever heard somebody kind of say this, but you know, they'll say, like let's say I train some kung fu stuff where I'm like an eye attacker and I rip your throat out and all that stuff and you train, you know, jujitsu, Muay Thai wrestling and boxing. Right. So people will say that you're not ready for the fact that I'm going to poke your eyes out or you're not ready for the fact that I'm going to try and grab your throat or whatever and therefore I have an advantage and that you have some kind of a training scar because you aren't used to doing that. You see what I'm saying? So if, like I said, if all I do is train to grab your eyes and poke your throat or whatever pressure point type attack, then that means that I'm better prepared for a street conflict. And as you and I both know, like a guy that does that versus a guy that trains in mixed martial arts, boxing, wrestling, Muay Thai, jujitsu, that guy's going to destroy this other person in the street fight and the guy will grab for his eyes and then he's going to get his arm broken off and he's going to get punched in the head 47 times. But my point in telling that is that we had the same type of people inside the SEAL teams that said, oh, if you get used to training with paintball, then you're going to develop training scars from it. So you're not going to be used to your regular weapon. You're not going to be used to the recoil of a real gun and you're going to have more courage because it's only going against paint. And while there's some small piece of truth to that, just like there's some small piece of truth to the fact that if you never think about what it's like to be punched while you're doing jujitsu, well, then it's going to be a surprise for you the first time you are in guard with someone and they crack you in the face. There's some small truth to it, but it's not a reason to throw out that type of training. It just doesn't make sense. And the other thing that's good about it is, in jujitsu and Muay Thai in boxing and wrestling, you're going live against another human being that's maneuvering on you and trying to defeat you. And when you have paintball or laser, you're going against another human being that's trying to maneuver on you and defeat you. So therefore it's very effective in teaching you what real combat is going to be like. What was it like the first time you were deployed and when was that? The first time I was deployed in 2003 and deployed to Baghdad, Iraq, and it was great. That's not what most people would think of. They wouldn't ever think of that word. What was interesting about my first deployment to Iraq was that, again, I was so happy to be in a position where I was a platoon commander and we were doing real missions and I was excited and happy about that. And that doesn't mean I was running around with a smile on my face. We had a legit job and we had to get it done. It was also a time where the insurgents, there wasn't an insurgency yet. We hadn't even really heard that word in 2003. And so the operations that we did were relatively simple and our tactical advantage over the enemy was good enough that we just annihilated them. It was like an unfair fight, which is how you want it to be. You want to have an unfair fight in combat. So we would go in two o'clock in the morning, we'd find out where a bad guy was in some house or some office or some building, and we'd load up our vehicles and go in the middle of the night, blast their door open with big explosive breaching charge, clear their house in about 30 seconds, grab them, grab their buddies, bring them all back, interrogate them, find out where their friends are, and go out and do it again. And it was awesome. And it was awesome. And it was like a rock star deployment. We'd come home at three o'clock in the morning and be done and debrief the operation and get ready to do it the next day. We probably were in four or five firefights during that whole deployment, a couple ambushes, and I had one guy get wounded, not very bad. So it was fun. It was good. And we were ready for it. And the contrast comes when you go to my next deployment, the next deployment to Ramadi, which was completely different. And on that deployment, everything bad that can happen to a guy in a leadership position or an element happened to us. Everything bad that could happen happened. And so it was radically different than my first deployment. So your first deployment was, in a sense, a lot like what people expected the war to go like after we had experienced Desert Storm. Desert Storm, which was just overwhelming success. Just the only casualties were when that one Scud missile had hit a barracks. And that was what America thought war was. Like, well, this is how good we are at it right now. We just go over there and we kill everybody and we lose a couple people. And we're real sad about that, but we wrapped it up tight. So your second deployment, what was that like? And how did it begin? Well it began with our deployment orders changing. So we were literally two weeks from going on deployment. So now my first deployment to Iraq, I was what's called a platoon commander. I had 15 or 20 guys underneath me, depending on what time during the deployment it was. And we were an assault force. We were like, we jokingly called ourselves Baghdad SWAT, because that's what we did. I just kind of described what those missions were like. My second deployment, now I was what's called a task unit commander. And I had two of those SEAL platoons with 15 to 20 guys that were underneath me. And then we had another 60 or 70 support personnel. So these are people that do Intel, people that man the radios, people that clean and repair our weapons, and people that keep the camp running and all that. So it's about 100 guys, but there's only 35 or 40 SEALs. And we found out about two weeks before we went on deployment, our deployment changed instead of going to Baghdad and really doing more Baghdad SWAT operations. We were told we were going to Ramadi. And I was again, and people always say, I can't believe you fought that. And I can't believe how twisted you are. And I can't believe what a sick individual you are, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, I was extremely happy and motivated that we were going to Ramadi because it was the worst place in Iraq. And that is exactly where I wanted to be my whole life. So yes, I was fired up to go there. It's just so crazy that I mean, it's so counterintuitive to the way most people think. I guess so. And I hung around with a bunch of guys that thought the same damn thing as me. Let's go get these guys. Let's get after it. Well, that's why you are who you are. I mean, that's why it's important to have people like you in the world. There's a spectrum of human beings. There is a spectrum of human beings. And you're on this extreme edge of exactly what you want when you have an army. If you put together a military force, you want a guy like you that has that attitude. You don't want a guy who's going to the worst place in the world saying, why me? What the fuck? Why didn't I become a baker like my dad? I could be making cupcakes right now. Instead, I'm shooting people. Yeah. Yeah. No, you and the SEAL teams and the Rangers and the Special Forces does a very good job of attracting the type of people that you're talking about, the type of people that are fired up to do that job and not encouraging it and growing it like you like. It seems like the amount of camaraderie and the intensity of the friendships and the bond, the brotherhood that you develop with those people just intensifies it all. Yeah, it's a big gang. It's a big, it's a big, awesome gang that you're a part of. That's badass. And you're part of this fraternity, this brotherhood. So yeah, they definitely fuel the fire. And I should say, I shouldn't say they fuel the fire. We fuel the fire. We are the fire. The guys that are there, the guys that I worked with, they're the fired up guys that are completely ready to do this job. So you get over there, you're in Ramadi, totally different situation than Baghdad. Totally different situation than Baghdad. And immediately you realize this? Immediately. Immediately. We were going, I mean, I think we went to the first memorial service for an American within 24 hours of being on the ground there. My camp got attacked the, I don't know, maybe the third or fourth night that we were there. Every guy was on the roof of our building shooting back at bad guys that were shooting at us. It was, and then we started conducting operations almost immediately. And the operations were just radically different. I mean, the enemy owned the downtown area of Ramadi. They were the dominant force down there. So whereas before you'd be going through kind of semi-permissive environment in Baghdad, meaning that, you know, it's a bunch of civilians and they just wanted to get out of your way. And then you'd go and find this bad guy. Well, in Ramadi, the bad guys were going to find you and it was different. And they were everywhere. They were everywhere. Who had trained them? You know, some of them were former regime elements. So some of them were, you know, Ramadi was a Iraqi military city as well. So there are some of them left over, actually a bunch of them left over. And then you had Syrians coming in, foreign fighters, people coming in from all over Saudi Arabia, Jordan. I mean, they'd come in from all over the place to come and engage and get their jihad on. And were they motivated because America was now occupying Iraq? Is that what was driving them? I think more than the fact that America was occupying Iraq is that they wanted to take that land. I mean, America was no longer occupying Iraq when they went in and took Ramadi. This time we were gone. We'd been gone for four years. So the occupation of Iraq was not the driving force behind this. So once you get there, once you realize right away, it's different. You're experiencing casualties at a level that was unheard of in Baghdad and you are engaging with an enemy that's very prepared and overwhelming. They're everywhere. And they did, they were similar to us, meaning they did like first world country type stuff. They had medical evacuation plans where one of their guys would get wounded, you'd see him get evacuated. You know, you could watch on on the screens, you could watch what was happening, a vehicle would come in and gather them up and take wounded guys away. They'd bring in reinforcements. They had communications. They did fire and maneuver. They did, you know, the same basic tactics that I was talking about. They did those tactics as well. And so it was a real well trained and well coordinated and determined enemy. Was this expected? Well we knew what Ramadi was like. But I would say it was expected, but it's hard to mentally picture what that's going to be like when you when you're going to go up against guys that are that prepared. So this was tactically and as far as like the strategy that was involved to try to take a city like that. This was a fairly new experience for the United States military, right? We'd never what other being other than what Somalia like what other urban war had the United States engaged in like this where you're in a city? Well I mean obviously World War two had all kinds of right conflict and in Vietnam there was portions you know the battle of way city was a huge urban conflict. Somalia was definitely urban combat, but you're right in the fact that we weren't going in there to try and stay. And that was one of the biggest differences or changes and strategies that the US military had that turned the war around. And that was as the as the insurgents grew in 2004 2005 the insurgents started getting more and more unified and better and more well trained and more organized in America. What we did was kind of go back to our strong basis. So there's basis you got to understand this in Iraq the 2005 2006 if you went to a base in let's say Baghdad international airport there's a huge US military base there was you know Subway the sandwich shop Subway Starbucks these places had become little little outcroppings of America. And so what we did when the insurgency got worse and worse and worse and also the public opinion of the war went down and down and down and all of a sudden we're saying okay we're not going to we're going to minimize casualties as much as possible. So what does that mean you do you go back to your base and we we did that as a country we kind of said okay we're not going to take huge risks anymore we're going to pull back to our bases we're going to try and support the Iraqis as much as we can and let them go out and try and accomplish missions and we still did do missions but we definitely had strong and move back to these big bases. Well there was a guy there were several people and one of them was General Petraeus he wrote this you know the counterinsurgency manual because now now what you had was you went from this idea of we were fighting kind of terrorists and and all of a sudden we were fighting an organized insurgency and that was a huge strategic shift and so now instead of going out and grabbing a bad guy and then coming back the new strategy and it was implemented in Ramadi by a guy named Colonel Sean McFarland was seize clear hold and build which means you're going to go into these enemy controlled neighborhoods you're going to take buildings you're going to hold those buildings you're going to build them into your own forts and you're going to have American and Iraqi soldiers live in those enemy controlled territories until the enemy was gone. Had that ever been implemented before? It had been implemented in Tal Afar in northern Iraq by a guy named H.C. McMaster who's another kind of legendary military army colonel at the time all these guys are generals now because they're awesome guys he'd implemented up there he'd actually turn that plan over to General McFarland and General McFarland came down to Ramadi and implemented the plan there but what was what was hard to understand is no one really knew about this no one understood it all they all they said was oh my god wait a second you're saying we're going to go into these enemy controlled neighborhoods where where there haven't been American or coalition forces for a year year and a half two years you're saying we're going to go in there right before we arrived in Ramadi there was a road that the Marine Corps tried to penetrate down they hit 13 ID's and 500 meters so 13 ID's and 500 so essentially what is 500 meters is like every 50 meters or so little less than 50 meters what is that in football fields five foot five football fields that's insane it is wow so so this new strategy to go in there and push in there was considered to be by many people was considered to be too risky too dangerous and and really in some cases crazy like this is a crazy strategy we haven't been able to get down there and now you're saying we're gonna go down there and live there so it was a it was a very dynamic change so this is a gigantic gritty boots on the ground approach to taking over a city like one step at a time one building at a time that's it Wow that had to be insane yeah yeah is there any documentary footage of this were there any embedded journalists there were there embedded journalists you know you can go on YouTube and just Google Ramadi 2006 and you'll you'll see some good stuff there's a documentary that came out I think was on the history channel it's called a chance and hell the battle for Ramadi and that what's good about that one is interviews a lot of guys that we worked with while we were there and what I was just trying to convey to you about the fact that a lot of people were saying this was a suicidal operation you can hear these guys that were officers in charge of battalions and companies they're saying the same thing they're they're getting told by their peers like this is a crazy idea and you guys are all gonna die if you go in there Wow now what is morale like when something like that gets brought down when these are the orders and this is what you have to do and everyone's telling you it's a suicide mission well that's that's where leadership comes in yeah because you know one of the one of the toughest things that I ever had to convey to my guys was this fact that we were going to be working alongside Iraqi soldiers conventional Iraqi soldiers so you picture this we all that first deployment I talked about we were we were only working with seals I mean we were seals the guy to your left was a seal the guy to your right was a seal the guy behind you was a seal the guy I trust you knew you could trust them you knew them they were they were your brothers so now we get to Ramadi and the mission changed coming down from the special operations forces that were in charge of all special operations in Iraq and the new the new mission was to it was a new mission I'm trying to think of the exact was to train and fight company and platoon sized elements of Iraqi soldiers train and fight company and platoon sized elements of Iraq soldiers and when they say fight that means like that's a verb saying we're gonna fight with them so all of a sudden I'm telling my guys hey you know how you're used to working with a bunch of seals you're gonna now when you go out the majority of the guys you're gonna be with are Iraqi soldiers that's the majority of guys now Iraqi soldiers are they're they're they're barely even military I mean people they're just unmotivated poorly trained in fact in many cases their loyalty is questionable I mean these are guys that would shoot Americans in the back so now I'm telling my guys okay you're gonna go out there and do this and obviously the first reaction I got was this is crap this is garbage why would we ever do that this is the worst battlefield seals have fought on since Vietnam and you want us to go out there with a bunch of a bunch of Iraqi soldiers watching our back that's crazy and and when I heard it I thought it was crazy too so what do you do then what what do you do then you're gonna send your guys into harm's way in a much more vulnerable way and you got to get them to do it so first of all I had to understand what we were doing in my own mind I had to understand why I understand why would somebody be telling us to do this because it seems freaking crazy to me so as I sat there and thought about it I realized you know okay why is why is the president making us do this why is the general the why is the Pentagon making us do this why are the generals and colonels on the battlefield here in Iraq why in God's name would they be making us go out with Iraqi soldiers it's crazy and then I thought to myself why okay why let's answer that question oh news flash if we don't do it if we don't get the Iraqi soldiers trained up and ready to maintain the security in their own country then who's gonna do it who's gonna do it who's gonna train them and furthermore who's gonna hold the security in their country and the answer was nobody and the answer was us the answer was we would be here forever because these Iraqis need to be able to get up and stand on their own two feet and so when I explained that to my guys like hey I know you don't want to work with Iraqi soldiers I understand I understand there's more risk here's why we're doing it we're doing it because if we don't do it if we don't get these guys up to speed if we don't teach them how to defend themselves and how to defeat this this enemy they're never gonna be able to do it and we'll be mired in this conflict forever and once once they understood that strategic picture they were able to get their head around it and then slowly accept what we were doing how common were their complications from dealing with the Iraqi soldiers and did you guys have to take steps in order to to watch over them to make sure I mean you're talking about guys shooting guys in the back shooting Americans in the back did you have plans in place to make sure that someone was watching them at all times like yeah yeah so you didn't you couldn't treat them like did someone did they speak English no we had interpreters oh and oh yeah it's a nightmare and and we would have some of the Iraqi soldiers some of the some of the leadership of the Iraqi soldiers would be very good some of the grunts would be very good and someone would be just disastrous and did we have to change yeah they didn't we had to change our tactics so that we didn't use the terms left and right because like they didn't understand left and right or no numbers a lot of them couldn't count I mean it was they couldn't count yeah yeah so they're totally uneducated totally uneducated Wow can't count holy shit yeah go four doors down hmm hmm something you could tell a five-year-old yes whoa yeah so so that was that was definitely challenging I think you're allowed to call them savages when they can't count is that is that the rule if you can't count the four I reserve I reserve the term savage for somebody that horrible people commits you know atrocities against human beings you know somebody that rapes an eight-year-old girl like they're doing wholesale doing that and Isis is doing that right now that's part of their gig yeah I reserve the term savages for them so what steps did you guys have to take to ensure that the seals and the other American soldiers were protected in working with these people I mean you just had to keep your eye on them I mean it and honestly at this point the you saw this this happened a lot more in Afghanistan which was the what do they call it they call it I forget what that they have a term for it but when the when the friendly allegedly friendly Afghan soldier turns and shoots everyone in the back that happened more later in Afghanistan and when we were in Iraq it was pretty seldom that it happened but we just had to be aware of it we had to you know you always had a guy that was like standing off the firing line and making sure that no one was you know pulling their weapon out and aiming at Americans so that was a job yeah we just you got to keep an eye on these guys you absolutely had to keep an eye on these guys what a crazy added element and the other I mean and just again because there's dichotomy and everything at the same time you'd have some guy that was you know some Iraqi soldier that was willing to take a bullet for your buddy and so it's that's what makes war so complex and confusing is it's not cut and dry and it never is so how did it start panning out once you started this seize seize clear hold and build it was a tough fight basically with every one of these combat outposts that's what we ended up uh what they ended up calling these combat outposts every one of them was a pretty a pretty tough fight so they were fight they're buildings they're calling them combat output combat outposts and what kind of the 10 stories like how many stories are these buildings most of them were two or three stories two or three stories and so you set up a perimeter around the building keep people stationed in them guns at the windows looking out constantly and it would be we take the building down and then they would do a massive construction project in the middle of a combat zone so these army engineers god bless them all would roll down there with their bulldozers and there they'd put these big concrete barriers up and they'd put sandbags and all the windows and they'd build machine gun nests on top and again they're doing this in the middle of like mayhem wow and then you'd have this secure combat outpost and while they were doing that this is sort of was our our addition to this type of operation was while they were doing this big construction project project obviously the situation was very vulnerable for the american forces and so what we would do is i would push our seals out into perimeter buildings that were maybe 200 or 300 yards away and so when the enemy would come to attack we'd kill them what a crazy scene that must have been to be taking these buildings and then reinforcing them and then turning them into military bases and then one after others you're doing this too yeah yeah it was it was an awesome effort and i think a good number we put in one combat outpost and there was they the uh army engineers put in 30 000 sandbags in one combat outpost it's like three buildings just all good things a lot of sand out there yeah no doubt about it no doubt about it wow and so how many buildings did you guys wind up taking overall uh probably probably a total of like 10 combat outposts each one having two three or four buildings and again let me clarify when i say we i'm talking about this massive effort of the 1 1 ad which is the the first brigade first armored division and all the battalions that were underneath them including one marine corps battalion and the reason i'm pointing that out joe is uh those guys were just unbelievable heroes they really were they were awesome you choked up up yeah these guys were these guys were awesome they really were yeah i can only imagine the emotional attachment that you have to that yeah and you know they you know you can look you can google navy seals and find you know 20 million news stories about them um and that's great but these guys you know to to have seen them uh kids you know because you know you're talking about earlier how the seals you know guys like me this is what we want to do well these guys didn't all necessarily have that attitude and as a matter of fact the guys that were in ramadi with us when we first got there they were reserve unit out of pennsylvania the 228 iron soldiers they were reservists these guys were teachers that like like what you see when they talk about these reservists these guys were teachers and professors and you know bakers and they had real jobs in the real world and wanted to get home to their family and yet they were there grinding it out against a hardened enemy and so uh yeah it's it's it's a it's a it's a crazy thing to see and it's it's very humbling to be around people like that it really is how long did this battle go on the battle for ramadi well we got there you know the like i said the 228 had been there for 14 months 14 months on the ground lost around 100 guys i think 94 um and then the 11 ad came in in may and implemented seize clear hold and build and by the time uh i left october 21st 2006 and by the by january of 2007 the battle was for most for the most part over and these enemy attacks that had been uh when we were there 30 to 50 a day went down to like one a day and then one a week and then one a month and and and you know i have pictures of probably about six to nine months after we left we got pictures that guys sent back to us of they were running road races down the worst what were the worst areas of ramadi they were playing soccer games there was people out in the streets there was guys seals or not seals but soldiers with no body armor on just walking around meeting people it was uh it was a miraculous turnaround and the people of ramadi that we had fought to support and help were more joyous and were had a stable city to live in and were you know ready to carry on with their lives see i think stories like this get left out of the mainstream narrative of course they do they most people me included just don't know about it aren't aware of it have a very insulated idea of what this war was about what happened over there and what are the pros and cons of this war and what are the pros and cons of taking a city like this and turning it into a relatively safe place relatively it was definitely a safe place there was less murders there than there was in detroit wow i mean it was it was a complete turnaround and again you do you can do that because the people there wanted to be stable they wanted that they wanted peace and they wanted freedom and they wanted the insurgents out they absolutely wanted the insurgents out do you think that most people in america have a distorted perception of of the military in general and of the iraq war in particular i i think it's hard for me to give a perspective of what civilians think you know right it's it's very difficult because you know it's really easy to slip into like just a straight john j rambo you know there are no friendly civilians you know it's it's really easy to get there uh but definitely when i hear various you know people talking and you go this person has no idea this person has no idea it's weird because they'll clump the people of iraq they'll clump those people together as a group and it's the wrong they have the wrong impression what those people are like you know and and guys that have been to iraq and have gone into houses and talked to the the local populace there and broke bread with them and drank their tea you're like oh that these people these people definitely wanted us there like when i hear this thing about you know that they didn't want us there and we were occupying it's like oh no there was there was times where they we'd kill an insurgent and they would cheer they would cheer like thank you thank you for killing that person he was a terrorist and he was you know trying to trying to rape my daughter they were happy we were there what is ramadi like now it's been overrun by isis there they keep saying now that there's uh going to be an effort by the iraqi military to take it back and god bless them and good luck they would have to do the exact same thing they're gonna have to do the exact same thing it's gonna be it's gonna be tough it's gonna be very tough and without the united states military force backing them up and leading something like that do you think that's even possible it's going to be difficult it is possible but it's absolutely going to be difficult it's going to be very difficult that's one of the things that again you know and leadership leadership is such an important thing it's such an important thing because it really does change it changes every variable in a situation and so when you have good leaders you you can win and i don't know who in particular is in charge of this iraqi force that's going in there the iraqis have some very strong leadership and if they've got the right person in position they they will be able to take it back now america absolutely has incredible military leaders some incredible military leaders and when you when you have to step up and lead a an assault like that on a city i mean american leadership would be would absolutely make a change and would be extremely positive for the situation on the ground do you think that america should go back into iraq well first of all we're already back in iraq we're on the ground we got 3 500 troops there this is a and i hate to answer your blunt question with a philosophical answer but war is very difficult and very tragic and very evil in its own right and so you should be very very cautious about pulling that trigger and initiating a war because horrible things are going to happen horrible things are going to happen enemy are going to be killed friendly are going to be killed americans are going to be killed civilians are going to be killed this idea that we're going to go into a a war in an urban environment and we're not going to kill any civilians no civilians are going to die and you have to understand that and i i talk about this when people ask me this question there is two types of will that you have to have if you're going to go to war two types of will one is the will to kill people and like i said it's going to be enemy and you're going to focus as much as you can on killing the enemy and some civilians are going to die there that is what is going to happen and you have to understand that that is part of what you are getting into so you have to have you have to have the will to kill to kill and you also have to have the will to die because americans are going to die and young men are going to come home in coffins and that's a horrible thing and so if you're going to go to war you should be going to war with a clear vision to win to win and i think if we have the will and we have a plan on on winning then we should we should execute that plan but if we're hesitant and if we don't have the will then we should stand by until we develop that will and we can sit outside and we can shape and we can we can try and shape events which we should we should have a leadership role in the world we should be looking out for american interests i know that sounds like taboo language in this day and age but we're america and we should look out for american interests around the world that's what we should be doing and there's nothing wrong with that that's what other countries are doing they're looking out for their interests and when when we're all looking out for our own interests there's a balance and things can move forward so do you think right now with the the limited amount of troops that are in iraq it's uh you said 3,500 now yeah at what was it at the height i don't know over 100,000 i mean at the height it was probably even close to 200,000 what would it take to develop that will that you talk of do you think that the united states needs to see some other paris like event i mean we already had september 11th they killed 3,000 of our people on our home soil but that was 14 years ago and for a lot of people that might as well be another world true true um i i i got asked the other day about the warning signs you know do are we paying enough attention to the warning signs or are there enough warning signs and i you know i just i kind of shake my head i mean what more warning signs do you need then go watch youtube videos and they're like we are coming to kill you we are going to destroy you all that look that's the warning right there the warning has been issued stand by for people like me that are completely on the outside of the military it seems like isis came out of nowhere it seems like once arab spring started happening we start pulling out of iraq all of a sudden you start hearing about the isl or isil or isis they used they used the term isi which was which was is isomic state iraq they used that in i think 2007 was the first time they used that as they started to take uh area over in syria they threw the l on the end of it you know which is lavant which is the historical name for that that region and the other one is syria the ass is so it's the same people it's the same people that were there and will continue to be there until we route them out what what i was getting at was that it wasn't something that anybody here had heard about as an organized thing we had we had heard about insurgents in iraq but we had never heard of it in in a like with a name like like isis like now that it's a name it's like an identifiable enemy and when you're in a war against terrorism one of the things that i think kind of freaks americans out especially those that don't have a connection with the military is this idea of a war against terrorism is is this open-ended proposition there's no enemy you know like the or there's no there's no definitive end to this like when japan surrendered world war ii was over people were kissing in the streets that iconic image of the the sailor kissing his girlfriend in the street that we didn't none of that happened for us in this country there was no definitive ending and when we've pulled out of iraq and we're planning on pulling out of afghanistan and then we see isis build up and get bigger and stronger and scarier and we see what happened in paris and we see what happened in lebanon and in nigeria and we see these terrorist attacks and we're like well when is is this is there ever going to be a point where we have an a soldier and his girlfriend kissing in the street is there going to be an end is there going to be a confetti blowing in the main street in a parade doesn't seem like i would say that that's an accurate assessment that it doesn't seem like it yeah we we got a long fight you know and you asked you know where did isis how do we start hearing about them well the same thing we were talking about earlier social media yeah they've got social media they're aiming it at you know uh disenchanted people all around the world that can cling on to something that will give them some sort of uh identity yeah that's one of the most bizarre things about this when you see people like these young girls from the uk joining isis and you know they're escaping their country and and going over there and joining isis like what what is happening here like how disenchanted do you have to be where that looks attractive to yeah and the the two girls i'm sure you saw this and the two poster girls for isis one of them died three to six months ago and they just got the latest report on the other one that was trying to escape isis and they beat her to death yeah the i mean unquestionably it seems to be a growing force and a more dangerous force every day i got again i think it was on twitter someone hit me the other day on twitter um you know this is an idea and you can't bomb ideas was the was the statement to me and you know i try and avoid like getting into these massive sort of political debates or whatever um especially with 140 characters yeah and that being said um nazism was an idea that was defeated through military force slavery in america was an idea that was defeated by military force imperial japan was an idea and a religion that was defeated by military force and none of those ideas would have stopped without military force and this is an idea that can be defeated with bombs and this is also an idea that unfortunately in this country gets connected to all muslims the idea behind what these people are do are doing gets connected to all muslims when in reality most of the muslims in the world they they don't want something like isis to be in control they don't want to be in a perpetual state of war they don't want to have to worry about these quote-unquote savages and what they're doing yeah i mean the the isis has killed hundreds of thousands of well i don't know i don't know what the number is but we know that isis has killed thousands and thousands and thousands of muslims you know they went into ramadi and killed hundreds and hundreds of muslims that had worked in some way with the coalition forces so that they could have a peaceful city they murdered them all so let's say donald trump becomes president and he listens to your podcast with tim ferris and he reads your book and he goes joco i'm coming to you for advice what do i do i don't know why i said donald trump for president i'm hoping that's that's our own isis let's whatever fill in the blank new president person becomes uh notice i said person i didn't even go with woman or man uh what what would you do if you were if you were in a leadership position if you were in a position to make a decision or to uh to start a process what would you do we would destroy them you would just go right back in we would destroy them and you think that that's what america should do right now yes yes it is a cancer that is growing it is malignant and it needs to be destroyed so what steps would you take like what what would you do if you were in a position of power right now you know it's interesting people get this idea that this is some crazy complex situation and it's going to be all hard and all this i could pull together like two first lieutenants from the marine corps which is like the junior officer in the marine corps and say come up with a plan to defeat isis you got two hours and they do it and it'd be a good plan this is not a complex situation how many people are you dealing with when you're talking about isis i don't know 20 000 10 000 4 000 100 000 it's tough to tell it yeah it's tough to tell it doesn't matter you assess it you make you you bring what you need to the table and you defeat them so what do you think is holding back from us doing something like i have no idea is it frustrating to yes because if you got kids and you see again a malignant cancer on humanity that is growing unchecked when we have we're we're like the master surgeons that have the ability to go in and eradicate this disease and instead of doing that we're just we're just not doing anything so do you blame this the current administration do you blame the the climate of the american public right now the the political climate where people just don't want to be involved in another war or enter into another prolonged interaction i think people are always looking for the easiest way out and going in is a hard decision to make it's a very hard decision to make and it's be very unpopular decision and it would be the short-term pain that everyone's afraid of that's what one of the things that's so disconcerting to me about drones because it seems to me that what drones are is a way that we can avoid american casualties so people don't complain about it as much so we send this robot in there to fly in and then launch missiles and the good thing is it doesn't create american casualties but the bad thing is it doesn't seem to be nearly as effective it's like sort of a wishy washy attempt in some ways at war it seems almost like it would be something that would you would use in a supplement as as well as a military attack like it would be a part of it instead of being the only thing that you use to try to combat these people does that make sense i don't know if we have enough drones to get the job done and they're effective but i mean a drone is going to take out i don't know 20 20 bad guys so there'll be a lot of drones in action i don't know if we have that kind of capability yet but we will someday yeah well someday we'll have a robot army and we'll be dealing with some terminator type situation right yes but right now it's it's almost like uh we need to get smacked like something needs to happen before we hit back and i cannot in good conscience agree with you because i don't even want to say those words you know it's just a horrible thought you don't want to put it out it's a horrible thought yeah it's a horrible thought especially when you start talking about a dirty bomb yeah you know and like oh here's a sector of america that no one can live in anymore because it's been contaminated it's radioactive now i mean that's real and again for some reason the warning signs which can be seen you know anywhere you look we're ignoring them i think people speaking for myself and speaking for the people that i come in contact with i think people are becoming more and more concerned about isis on a pretty much daily basis i think one thing that paris did do is it woke a lot of people up as to possibilities that something like this can happen and that this isn't the end and this is this is ramping up and if they have the kind of resources to pull off something like the paris attacks who knows where this is going i totally agree with you it is a very scary time what do you think is going to happen if you had a guess what do i think is going to happen in terms of a terrorist attack in america no no no in terms of our approach to dealing with something like isis yeah i think it's very difficult to protect the future but not not to be a just a big cop out over here i'm not trying to do that to you but there's so many different ways that this could go and you know now you've thrown russia into the mix because they took down the russian airline you've got a guy like putin who is a gangster you know and i say that in both contexts of of negative and positive i mean the guy is in the negative way he's a gangster that's like scary with his thought process and at the same time like props the guy's a gangster and he's going to smash some people you've got now turkey in the mix i mean it's just a very it's a complex situation that's getting more complex all the time and the scariest part about it is that america is not in a leadership position we are not influencing the world the way we once did we are not people are not looking to us as the as the leaders they're we're in the back seat and that's scary we should be in the leadership position there's nothing wrong with that it's not bad to have a benevolent country and and i know people are going to go crazy but a generally benevolent country that's sitting here you know given billions of dollars of aid around the world never taken any soil and kept it i mean we've you know i guess in modern times we've never taken any soil and kept it we've given germany back to germany we gave japan back to japan you know we've we've we're a fairly benevolent country again i know we've got faults i know we've done things wrong in the past i'm sure we'll do things wrong in the future but to have us not in a leadership position is a very disturbing time and when you say that we're not in a leadership position what do you think the shift is and where do you think it happened i think it's been happening and i think you know i think the current administration is definitely not um as experienced as you would hope and i think there's a lot of a lot of naive attitudes about what the rest of the world is like so this administration you think was the beginning of the shift away from america being in a leadership position yes what do you what kind of a president do you think would change that somebody that has a better understanding of the nature of the world like a john mccain type guy yeah maybe like a like like you know again i'm not to sit here and try and think of who the best who the best presidential candidate would be i mean we have a hard time figuring that out in america as a whole but again you look at a guy like you look at a guy like putin and you look at a guy like obama um you know putin's whole existence has been geared towards this you know i mean a kgb guy i mean he's been a player on the world stage and a part of it for his whole life and he's got an acute understanding of it and he's a black belt you know he's a legit black belt and you just see these other um uh you see the the the naivete of of this administration and it's it's it's really hard to it's it's hard to understand it was one thing that obama said uh it was yesterday or today that just drove me crazy he was talking about the attack on planned parenthood in colorado springs and he said things like this don't happen in other countries it's like how the fuck do you say that just days after what happened in paris i was reading that just today before we started the podcast i was reading it i was like that is one of the craziest things that someone could say after hundreds of people were killed in paris because he's talking about it in terms of gun violence from a religious perspective that what the fuck happened in paris what because it's not about babies it's different like yeah and he i mean he said something the other day too was uh i'm not interested in some notion of america leading and winning what does that mean exactly that's yeah it's very uh it's just it's an it's it's very disturbing what does that mean that's what what did anybody ask him to qualify that or no it's one of you know spam he's kind of speaking and yeah that's a weird statement for the guy who's the commander in chief of the greatest army the world has ever known i'm not interested in staying number one not good i think the the the concept of a benevolent leader of a benevolent nation you know that if you if you do concede that the world will always be in chaos and there will always be at least in terms of like foreseeable future you know the next hundred years or whatever we're we're until something crazy happens i mean there would have to be something monumental life changing that stops conflict all around the world you'd have to if you're a rational pragmatic person you're looking at the future you'd have to say well we're gonna have conflict especially if you look at places like you know the congo or you know parts of the middle east where people don't count and there's places where like you would have to educate them to the point where the future would look radically different than the present right so if that's the case if the if conflict will be something that we're we're gonna have to mitigate no matter what wouldn't you want to be the one that gets to decide wouldn't you want to be the person in the position of power yes you would be it's like the is a much smaller scale but this is what i've always tried to tell people when they say why would you want to learn martial arts and what i always say is you don't want to learn martial arts because you want to go beat somebody up you want to learn martial arts for two things one because you want to learn how to overcome incredibly difficult things and in martial arts you're going to encounter times where you want to quit you're going to get your ass kicked it's going to be difficult today it's extremely difficult to get good at it but two if you do get into a situation you want to be the one who gets to choose whether or not someone gets hurt you don't want to be helpless because being helpless is a terrible place to be but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to go out and fuck people up and that's sort of the same idea on a macro scale that you would look at the concept of america being a benevolent entity or a benevolent superpower absolutely 100 right you know i mean you know it's it goes with everything that we do and when i say we i'm talking about you you know you train you work out you try and be strong you know you keep yourself aware of what's happening it's not because you want to go around kicking people's asses it's because you don't want to have to kick anyone's ass you know people are not looking at joe rogan be like oh i'm gonna beat him up right now no they're going out that guy i know he trains all the time and if someone gets in your face they're going to know that immediately you know that when you can tell you can tell by the way someone carries themselves what you know what they have and what they know what they understand you know i got asked the other day if you were president you know you asked me if i was got advice they said if you were president what would you do with isis and i said if i was president isis would not exist president jaco they would not exist because we would have a presence in the world that would prevent the growth of this kind of ideology but what kind of a reaction do you think you would have from the american public from the insulated american public i mean we're this is probably one of the most sensitive times ever in terms of like they throw around the term islamophobia if you even criticize anyone that just happens to be muslim i mean we're we're in a strange time when it comes to incredibly sensitive maybe hypersensitive people that maybe don't have a good grip on reality well what would you do take them over there in buses yeah that'd be one thing that'd be the way to go it's interesting because i i've already talked about this islamophobia i mean i fought alongside these muslims i fought alongside them to help them my friends did and america did we fought alongside these people to try and help them and we did so so how that gets twisted in some world to where you know we're not where evil is completely beyond me well i think because there is legit islamophobia out there in the world just like there's there's a legit hatred of christians there's legit hatred of mormons i mean there's you're gonna find groups of people that are hated and there's also people that aren't willing to look deeper deeper into some some global issue if you have a global issue that there's these people that call themselves isis or isil or whatever they call themselves and you know they call themselves the islamic state you oh islam oh islam's bad muslims are bad muslims are evil i was watching some thing there was a sam harris had posted up on twitter uh there was this guy who was proposed i believe it was in virginia he was uh at a like county one of those meetings where you're talking about building something in the town and he was he was talking about putting up a mosque and these people were screaming at him that muslims are evil and your evil cult is not going to come into our town and you're trying to invade our town and get out of here with your evil cult and like okay that's islamophobia that's right there i mean you're talking about a peaceful guy who just wants to be able to worship his you know his ideas his religion in peace in this place he wants to build a mosque and people want to you know they're furious at this guy that's real islamophobia right but there's a big difference between something like that and what's going on in other parts of the world with isis a giant giant difference and i think that when people want to throw around that term islamophobia i think a lot of times what they're doing is they're just trying to be correct they're trying to be politically correct socially correct they're trying to be sensitive and they're trying to let everybody know that they're not racist that they're not xenophobic that they're not islamophobic or whatever that they're open-minded and progressive so they're throwing around these terms and it kind of clouds the water okay i mean yeah uh these are these people are uh running around calling you know islamophobia i don't know no one's ever called me that um not yet i'm sure they will get ready today on twitter yeah i don't see it's happening right now yeah i don't i don't see how they could i don't see how they could do that you know again yeah we we fought alongside muslim people we ate with them we put our lives in their hands and they put their hand their lives in our hands and you know america and my friends were killed trying to help them so how i'm a person that could be called an islamophobist is is kind of a stretch i think yeah well it rationally but you're talking about people that aren't necessarily rational well you know people paint their own layers onto things and make them into what they're not well i think it's symptomatic of what's going on with with our culture too is that this these hypersensitive oversimplistic ideas and people that that would say these things like this don't have a real grip like you have of what it's like over there and i don't think anybody does other than people like you that have been over there and have been in combat i don't think it's possible i think that's one of the problems that we have we're behaving like children in a lot of ways because we really have never had to live on our own yeah and it's it's it's actually very similar to what we were talking about earlier with the traditional martial arts where you can sit there in your fantasy world and think that your chi is going to protect you and that as long as you spread love you're going to be protected because your chi is strong and until you've been in a fist fight you're going to believe that and so that's kind of what you're saying do we need to get spanked do we need to get into a fist fight before america realizes like oh no there's real problems in the world that need to be handled we this is one of the weirdest times ever but i have a bit in my act about um this is the first time ever where someone broke into the white house if you know that in 2014 was the first time anybody gained access and there was a woman guarding the front door it's an unarmed woman guarding the front door and a woman who's in charge of secret service because diversity and one of my favorite parts was there was an article written about when the guy uh knocked the chick over ran inside and they said uh it was reviewed and gender wasn't an issue well okay yeah that makes a lot of sense like you mean if brock lesder was guarding the door the same thing would have happened the guy would have knocked him over and ever and he would have no one would have ever caught the guy you just want to run by and that's fucking ridiculous but it's that same kind of crazy thinking politically correct asinine thinking you should have a fucking team if you're gonna make the president sleep in a house that's in the park you should probably have a team of fucking assassins surrounding that building at all times and you should keep a look at for dudes that are sprinting across the lawn knocking over chicks that are guarding the front door there's no doubt about it but it's the same thing it's like we're so soft and we're so used to being in this insulated world that we have here this nice sweet bubble where we drive our eight mile per hour or eight mile per gallon suvs i don't know how you would ever really illuminate all these problems that you're bringing up i don't i don't know how you could get these i mean to the head of the average person like in world war two like you and me if we were 13 years old we weren't old enough to serve we still knew that there was a war going on because we couldn't eat steak we couldn't use any metal we were gardening at night we were shutting off the lights like we were impacted all of america was impacted at the height of the battle of Ramadi the height of it at the height of the war of iraq at the height of the war in afghanistan america americans at the mall were not impacted at all at all at all not only that they weren't even allowed to show photographs of coffins it's like the first time ever in the history of the united states the history of the united states taking pictures during wartime where they made it illegal to show photos of coffins which is just absolutely insane like how how are you going to let people understand what's happening if you don't even allow journalists to show photographs of coffins it's the it's the bubble you're talking about the same thing what made you decide to leave the military well a bunch of things i mean it wasn't like one day i woke up and said all right i'm done you know obviously if if you haven't caught this up to this point i i love i love the seal teams yeah i love being in the military um at the 20 year mark i had a bunch of different things that kind of weighed in you know i had a family that i hadn't seen or didn't know uh pretty much so you start thinking well you know maybe i should pay attention to them a little bit i had completed sort of my last real uh job operational job in the seal teams and it was going to be a long time before i was in command again of a seal team or of something that was important and from a war fighting perspective so that was kind of kind of another thing that i looked at that was tough and and yeah i just i guess i that's it that's it really so what was your transition how long ago did you begin to get out i got out in 2010 wow so it's five years five years yep and what was your transition we uh started this company where we go and work with civilian companies doing leadership and management and you know my buddy lathe that i was talking about earlier who was one of the platoon commanders that was with me in ramadi and you know he he had run into a company i had run into a company and they asked us to do some stuff and the next thing you know you know i gave one one kind of leadership training to a company and then they said come back and train all of our divisions and then the parent company of that company watched me and said hey can you come to our ceo summit and then went to the ceo summit and then a bunch of those ceo said hey can you come and the next thing you know i'm doing this so what what is the what is the process like when you're when you're doing these these speeches or you're setting things up how do you organize them and what you you obviously your lifetime was in the military right so what was it about you and about what you brought to the table that was so attractive to them i think it's because the principles of leadership and that's what we do that's what we talk about and that's what we teach is leadership the principles of leadership do not change whether you're whether your mission is to capture kill bad guys or whether your mission is to manufacture something or sell something or produce something you're trying to you got a group of people group of individuals and they're going to be diverse they're going to be different they're going to have different intelligence levels they're gonna have different personalities they're gonna have different goals they're gonna have different motivations and you got to take all those people and unify them and try and get them to accomplish a mission in the most effective and efficient manner. And that's leadership. And it doesn't, like I said, those principles that we used in combat don't change regardless of what the mission is. And what's good, and I said this earlier, life is like combat but amplified and intensified. Or combat is like life. Combat is like life but amplified and intensified. And that means when we tell a story, like a leadership story, about combat, it's so obvious what the principle was. Whereas in the business world, it might take six months or a year or maybe you barely even notice what the failure was. And when we make those stark examples from combat, people go, oh, oh, I see how we're failing in this too. And that's why I think people really took hold of what we did and how we put it across. So this was something that you were approached to do. This wasn't an idea that you had had and you thought about, like, this will be my new thing. Yeah, and I mean, regardless of all this garbage that I talk in my life, and I've always told people to plan and be prepared, yeah, I almost completely fell into this with the fact that someone said, hey, can you come and talk to my people about leadership? And I said, well, yeah, I've been talking about leadership for the last several years in the SEAL teams and I've been in a leadership position in some pretty tough situations. And that just happened. Now do you teach a course or is this like a one-time seminar type of a thing? We do both. Well, so sometimes we go in, we'll do like a keynote speech. And those are good. Those are good. Those are great. We get a lot of positive feedback about those. But then sometimes we'll go in with company and we've done like two-year contracts with companies where we've trained everybody that they have and we get all their leadership aligned on the same page. And we'll go in for maybe an assessment. We'll look and see. We'll learn about what business they're in. We'll learn about what they're doing, how they're doing it. We'll see what areas they can improve on. We'll formulate a plan around that and then we'll come back and we'll train leadership. That's fascinating. So you have to kind of construct a course. Yes, yes. The basic principles are always the same, but some organizations have different problems than other organizations. They all have the same five, seven problems, whatever that number is. Some of them are really bad at this or really good at this or they're failing here but they're winning here. So we got to go in, check them out, see what the issue is, and then we get it turned around. Is this rewarding for you? Do you enjoy doing this? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, well, number one, I can talk about combat all day long and I can talk about, and even more than that, I can talk about leadership all day long because it's the most challenging thing. The most challenging thing about being in combat in a leadership position is not trying to figure out what the enemy is going to do and trying to organize a good plan. The most challenging thing is dealing with all these human beings. What's the challenging thing is getting these guys and girls to do what they need to do, what you need them to do to get them to believe in it. That's what's challenging and we definitely learned lessons, positive and negative. That's one thing about our book that people have got a lot of feedback is this book isn't like, hey, look what we did. Look how awesome we are. No, this book is a lot of those chapters in that book are, hey, this is what we screwed up. This is the failure that happened. This was a horrible situation and it was my fault. That's where we learned the lessons and I think that's what's made people relate to it more because we're not just saying, hey, we're the greatest thing in the world. No, we were humbled by combat. We were humbled by the enemy. We were humbled by our own guys that did amazing things when we were around. So I think that's a little bit different as well. And again, I think that's one of the things that makes peop that appeals to the people is they look at this and they go, oh, I can relate to that. I can understand it. I've failed too. I made a mistake. Oh, how did they handle it? Oh, they did this. Okay, got it. When you're talking about combat and you're talking about people organizing and staying together and figuring out how to lead, you're talking about these extreme consequences, the most extreme ever. And when you have these extreme consequences, obviously when there's a lot on the line, you're going to focus and some people are going to fall apart and some people are going to pull together, but you're going to, you're going to get people that understand the gravity of the situation. It would seem to me that it would be much harder to impart that into people in the business world, amplified and intensified. So in combat lives are at stake. Absolutely. In business world, have you ever had to fire anyone before? No, it sucks. Have you ever had people lose their job and couldn't pay their mortgage and feed their kids because you screwed up as a boss? No. That's pressure. That is mass. Have you ever lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of capital because you made a bad decision? No, but you know why? It's because I'm not a leader. See, so there's good things in not being a leader. The benefits of non-leadership. So when people ask me that question, they ask that question all the time. I'm like, hey, it's not about lives, but it's about livelihoods. You've got people that are relying on you to succeed and win. And again, sure, you get killed in combat. That's obviously the worst thing that can happen. But if you lose your job or your people lose their jobs, I mean, people kill themselves all the time when they make bad business decisions. It's that much pressure. It's that much pressure for sure. And so that's why it does translate because business people relate to that amount of pressure and they understand how it feels to have that bearing down on them. It just seems to me for a guy like you that maybe you would be even more attracted to going into business than you would be to teaching people how to lead their businesses better. Yeah. And we, I mean, it is a business. We do have a business. So it is definitely what we're doing. And that being said, for me to now go into business, I'd have to learn some new business. Well, why not just take the skills that I do have, which is, you know, we know about leadership. So let's just help other people. And that is rewarding. It's very rewarding to talk to someone and have them go, I did what you told me to do. And this is the result. This is the outcome. That's very rewarding. And another piece of it is, you know, everything always ties to me back to America. The businesses in this country are the economic power of this nation. And our economic power is the backbone of our authority in the world. And so to help businesses grow and achieve is very rewarding because I know that it's a very patriotic thing to do. Capitalism is a very patriotic piece of America. That's an interesting perspective. That's an interesting way to look at the big picture. And I agree with you. I'm going to say something that people hate me saying, but I'm going to say it because I need to say it to you. You should have a podcast. People always get mad at me because I say this all the time to interesting guests, but this is not something that's difficult to do. And you'd be fucking great at it. And I think that your perspective on the military and your perspective on our situation overseas I think would be very unusual, very unusual and very educated. And I just think there's no one out there that's doing it like you could do it. Well we definitely, you're not the first person to say that to me. As a matter of fact, when Tim Ferriss, like we got done with the podcast and he pressed stop on the thing and he just looked up at me and said, you need to do your own podcast. Good for him. I've talked to some of my buddies about it and we're working. This is all you have to do, man. Get a fucking phone. Do you have a phone? Yeah. Press record. Sit down with people. It's not hard to do. It's easy. Trust me. No, it's interesting too. And I'm getting over the fact of, like I told you earlier, and like I said on the Tim Ferriss program, people that just talk for no reason. And it's hard for me to get used to the fact that somebody wants to hear what I have to say that's not a seal or a direct business person. But I'm definitely, I'll probably end up doing something with it. Well I think great military leaders, whether it's Song Su, The Art of War, whether it's Miyamoto Busashi from the Book of Five Rings, great warriors from the past have written books that civilians have gotten a lot out of. And I think that someone like you, instead of writing a book, and your book I'm sure is great, and I'm sure there's a lot of lessons in that, but on a daily basis to be able to do something like this, anytime you want, just fire up your podcast. Anytime something like Paris, like the Paris attack happens, you could give your perspective instantaneously, upload it onto the internet, and there's just never been a time like that. It's wonderful that we could sit down and read what Miyamoto Musashi wrote hundreds of years ago. I mean it's amazing, it's interesting to try to peer into the mind of one of the greatest swordsmen that ever lived and see his philosophies on life. But I think that today with the advent of the internet and with the ability to broadcast yourself virtually instantaneously, I think you could make a gigantic impact in sharing that perspective and taking those experiences that you have so deserved and so earned and giving people this insight that they're just not going to get it. I'm getting it from you, like I said, I got it from you from that Tim Ferriss episode, and I'm getting it even more from you now. It's a perspective you're just not going to get from someone who wasn't there. You're just not going to get it. You're going to get these fuzzy, it's like two people sit ... You ever heard two people talk about martial arts, don't know shit about martial arts? That's what it's like to hear someone like me talk about the military, really. Yeah, and again, it's another thing that I'm sorting out in my own head, which is this idea of broadcasting myself. It's just weird. I mean, you grew up, you were into this. I think you've been a comedian for pretty much your whole adult life, right? 26 years. 26 years, you were getting on stage. That's what you wanted to do. And honestly, when I first joined the SEAL teams, that was the most frowned upon thing was to be broadcasting yourself that you were a SEAL, that you were, that what you did. And it took me a long time. I mean, writing this book was a ... It's a really hard thing to do because you sit there and you're supposed to be humble, right? You're a warrior, you're supposed to be humble. Okay, well, I'm going to write a big book about myself. I mean, that just doesn't work. And so it was really hard. And Lafe and I, that was one of the biggest things that we did as we edited it and edited it and edited it. We went through it just to make sure that we were coming across and saying things in a manner that really reflected that humility, which again, it's very hard to do because it's a dichotomy. It's a dichotomy because you're saying, hey, you got to be humble as a leader, but I'm going to write a big book about myself. It's just crazy. And so when you're sitting here like, oh, you should have a podcast. And I'm thinking, you should broadcast yourself. And again, the way I was raised, because you spent your whole adult life in comedy. I spent my whole adult life in the SEAL teams and I was raised by these old Vietnam guys that were badasses. And they were like, oh, you don't talk about this. And so I'm kind of going against this the way I was raised. And so again, I'm getting over it. I'm trying to get over it. But at the same time, I don't want to get completely over it because that's part of the way I was raised and what I believe in. I see their point of view. I totally understand why they would say you don't talk about it. But what I think the benefit of talking about it today as opposed to their time is that through the internet, you can broadcast in a way that would be like, look, no one's going to take a Navy SEAL back in the day and give them a gigantic television show where they could say whatever the fuck they wanted, broadcast anytime they wanted. But if you have a successful podcast, you can reach hundreds of thousands of people with each episode, which is just like a successful television show. And because of that, you have the ability to educate people and give people this perspective that I said that I got from you that I'm just not getting from anybody else unless they've been there. But I get it from you. I get it from Tim Kennedy. I get it from Brian Stan. I get it from Andy Stump. I get it from people that have been there. And you get a different perspective than you're ever going to get from someone who's just pontificating or guessing, waxing poetically on the nature of man and war. It's all bullshit. Until you talk to someone who's actually been there, you don't really understand what they're saying. I think that I think it would be gigantic. I really think you should do it. I really think it would help a lot of people. I think it would help a lot of people understand from the perspective of someone who actually knows what they're talking about. And there's not a lot of that in the world. I think this is also what you're talking about when you're talking about the leadership in this country. I don't know if you should be someone who has served in the military in order to qualify for being the president, but I don't think it's a bad idea to throw it out there, to say that at the very least you should spend some time living in these environments where we're involved in massive conflict. At the very least, you should visit them, spend a lot of time with the people who have lived and served and fought in these countries. So you understand clearly with no fuzziness at all what the fuck is going on in the world. Well there's no doubt that I think military service, I mean it was so good for me. It was so good for me. Would it be good for everybody? What about Jamie over there? Look at him. I don't know either. See, he just said I don't know. I'm not 100% sure. I guarantee Jamie would get a lot out of it. I'm sure he would too. I guarantee you would. But he might wind up like that dude in full metal jacket with the rifle in the bathroom. Private Kyle, get some. Yeah, the military was great for me. But again, you were born for this. This is something you were drawn to, like a magnet to metal filings. Yeah, I was drawn to it. But I was still, like when I joined my dad, my dad said to me, you're going to hate it because you hate authority. That's what my dad said to me. I was like, okay. But that gives you an indication as to what kind of kid I was. I was completely out of control and didn't listen to anybody. I was probably similar to what you were like, I'm guessing. I was just an out of control kid that just did whatever. And so joining the military, it put the structure around me. And all of a sudden I could take all this energy that I had. And what's really nice about it is you get this clean slate where they're like, okay, if you do this, you'll be successful. Here's what you do. Check these boxes. I was like, okay, I'm ready to do those things. And you just do them. And you develop the discipline. The discipline, I talk about that all the time, the fact that discipline equals freedom. And the more discipline you have as a human, the more freedom you're going to have, which is completely counterintuitive. People think, oh, you're living this disciplined lifestyle. So that means you don't have any freedom. And it's actually the exact opposite. I have freedom because I have discipline. I have financial freedom because I have financial discipline. I have more time because I have the discipline to get up in the morning before most normal people get up. Those are the kind of disciplines that you put in a place. And those definitely get instilled through the military. Well, I think the one thing that discipline definitely does help you with is it helps you get things done. And when you get things done, when you actually do things, you have more success. If you have more success, sometimes a big part of success is just not being fucking lazy and just doing it. That's like 90% of it is just showing up. Get there and start working. You're not going to feel perfect every day. If I only worked out when I felt good, I'd be a fat fuck. Because there's a lot of days I don't want to do it. It's pretty much the same with everybody that actually gets good at something. There's got to be those days you push through. And they're probably going to be more numerous than the days you don't. And so the benefit of discipline in my eyes has always been that through discipline, I get things done. I always say that I'm like the most lazy, disciplined person I know because I don't want to do it. But I always do. And I'd be interested to get your perspective on this statement. So I also think that discipline is a pathway to creativity. And I'll tell you, when I talk about creativity, there's another misconception about the military. When you're on the battlefield, it's an absolute exercise in creativity. I already talked about how you're going to lead these people. What are you going to do? How are you going to influence them? How are you going to talk to them? How are you going to say the right things? That's creativity. Now you throw on top of that, what am I going to do to the enemy? How are we going to attack them? How are we going to disorganize them? How are we going to get in their heads? That's all just massive creativity. And when I look at people that are artists like yourself, because you're a stand up comedian, I would imagine that the more disciplined you are, you got to get up and write. You got to write stuff down. You got to read and find out about what's going on in the world so you have more things that you can jab at and make fun of. You got to increase your vocabulary so that you are quicker and sharper so that when people are saying things, you have more words to battle back at them. All those things, all that freedom that you get on stage comes from the discipline that you study, you learn, you read, you write, you talk, you go through things. Is that an accurate statement? Absolutely accurate. There's a great book on it. Stephen Pressfield wrote a book called The War of Art. And Pressfield was essentially like a ne'er-do-well until he was like 40 years old. He was kind of a fuckup. And then figured it out, somewhere along the line, figured it out. I used to keep a stack of them in my old studio and I'd hand them out to guests if I thought they needed it. Like, just take this. Trust me, read this. There's a lot of artists in comics. I bet musicians as well, but writers for sure. One of the big problems is sitting down and doing the work. And Pressfield talks about that in the most concise and beautiful way. And he labels it like an enemy. He calls it resistance. And you have to sit down and you have to overcome resistance. And that the pro goes to work. And it doesn't matter if you're sick, it doesn't matter if you have kids, it doesn't matter what. You're a pro and you go to work. It puts it in your head that this is what I do. And you have pride in that. And then when you are in front of that keyboard and you look down at the count, it says, I got a fucking thousand words today. I put a thousand words in. And you're doing the work. And out of that work, gems blossom. Little things, but you might have a day where you just write nothing but dog shit. So what? Show up again tomorrow. And tomorrow out of that dog shit, a flower will emerge. You never know. And that's the only way to develop real, like to really develop your potential 100% in anything. Whether it's as an author or even as a martial artist. There's a lot of creativity in martial arts. To be a great striker, you have to be creative because you have to develop patterns or execute patterns that aren't going to be perceived. Like if a guy has a real simple one, two, one, two, you're going to time that shit. We were talking before this podcast about Holly Holmes victory over Ronda Rousey. And one of the things we were talking about was that Ronda had this very linear, straightforward attack. You knew she was coming and Holly is a master at countering. So all she had to do was wait and move. And Ronda was coming in one direction. There was no variation. There was no creativity. There was no creativity. It was a mad bulldog rush that had worked on everybody else before. But she found one person who was a virtuoso at movement. And she needed creativity and it wasn't there. And she needed that experience that came with having faced someone who knew that position and had a deep understanding of that movement. And she didn't have that in her repertoire. And so that's the result that we saw. Like a striker like Anderson Silva is extremely creative. If you watch, she's got a fight versus Tony Fricklin in Cage Warriors. What the fuck was it called in England? Small organization in England. I think it's Cage Warriors. I think it's Cage Warriors. Yeah. Where he practiced this step in uppercut elbow, like a sideways elbow. And his coach was going, you're fucking crazy. Stop practicing that. And he would make his wife hold the pillow because his coach didn't want him to practice anymore because he thought he was wasting his time. So he practiced stepping. His wife would hold a pillow for him and he'd step in and throw this uppercut elbow. That's what he knocked out Fricklin with. And obviously Fricklin was outclass in that fight, but he wanted to make a point. And the front kick that he landed the face of Vitor Belfort. Vitor never saw that shit coming because nobody had done that to him before. Because nobody had done that in the history of the UFC. Nobody had ever knocked anybody out with the first kick you learn in martial arts. But the creativity to try something like that, he would throw punches to your thigh from standing. He would throw a jab to your thigh. Throw a crescent kick. An inside crescent kick to your face. Like what the fuck? It was part of what made him such an effective striker is that he threw these things that you just didn't expect him to do. There's a lot of creativity in jiu-jitsu. You know that. Yeah, well I got Dean Lister and Jeff Glover are my guys. Jeff Glover is one of the most creative guys in jiu-jitsu today. He's one of my favorite. He does this thing for folks who don't understand jiu-jitsu, who don't know what we're talking about. He does this thing called a donkey guard. He's so fucking crazy this guy. He gets on, literally he faces you with his butt to you and he launches himself backwards like a donkey kicking and wraps you up. And it looks so preposterous while he's doing it that so many guys, especially when he first started executing it, just had no idea what the fuck to do. Yeah. Yeah, there he is right there. Look how crazy he is. He's out of his mind. He's so comfortable in every, like, you know, he trains every, you know, we're the same gym and he trains every day with whoever and he puts himself in the most ridiculously horrible positions. I'm talking like, okay, he'll let people get a rear naked choke on him. I mean, he, I'll watch him. I'll be like, what in God's name? How is he gonna, and he will escape. He'll just put himself in horrible positions all the time. Just to work on his defense. Just to work on his defense and just to be in a bad way. How does he avoid getting hurt? Because he's not a big guy. He's super, super, super flexible. Like crazy flexible. And you know, he gets dinged up, but he just is very flexible and he knows where to put his body. You know, he's just a, he's a kind of a freak. Because I knew that he trained with you. I was gonna ask you like, the idea of you and him training together for folks listening to this was the majority of our podcast is audio. Probably like 90%. You're about what, 240 or something like that? Yeah, 235. Yeah. That's 150. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What the fuck? That's a big, I don't want to, I weigh 200 pounds. I don't want to train with anybody who's 210. The fact that he's 150 pounds and he's training with gorillas. I don't know how the fuck he does it. I don't know how he does it. He's just super relaxed and he just moves and moves really well. That's amazing. That's amazing. No back problems. He's all right. No neck problems. He is 100% at all times. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Dean's getting a little more dinged up. Yeah. Dean looks like he ate a Dean. I saw him the other day. I'm like, what are you with 300 fucking pounds? And I don't mean it in a fat way either. He's huge. Yeah. He looks gigantic. He's pretty big. Yeah. Has he just been powerlifting or something? Like, what is he doing? I think he just eats a lot. Yeah, but he's definitely lifting too. Because like food doesn't go right to your neck. His neck starts at the top of his head. He's a genetic mutant. He's definitely a genetic mutant. And yeah, he's... Both those guys are mutants. They're actual grappling mutants. Where if you and I were to like concoct some weird, you know, like potion and create beings, you know, you'd make like a Jeff Glover because he's weird, flexible, wiry, and he would be really good. And then you'd make a Dean Lister who's just a big mutant. When you catch Dean, you have to like do everything perfect. Because his defense is really good. And he just doesn't... It's really hard to tap him with stuff, you know, like he'll just give people, you know, his foot and be like, yeah, go for it. And it takes me like three days. I'll have to soften his foot up with like nine foot locks, then just crank it, crank it, crank it. And then, you know, on the third day, I'll get a deep one and it'll already be like hurt. So, you know. So you have to soften him up over days, like tenderizing meat. Yeah. Well, that was why it was so shocking when Josh Barnett tapped him. Because Josh Barnett tapped him in like an old school side, like headlock joke, which is very rare. You know, it's very rare that you see like a high level guy that executes that joke like the way Josh did. But Josh has got that old school catch wrestling knowledge too, which is just such a different approach and you get used to certain approaches and Josh has a very different approach and he's a very physically strong guy as well. Yeah. And I mean, you know, Dean is just a, Dean is a mutant and he is a gifted, incredibly gifted grappler. But his, you know, his training methodology and lifestyle is not really conducive to competing like that. You know, unfortunately, that's a nice way of saying he's kind of lazy. Let's just make those noises and not say anything. You know, he could definitely train harder. And you know, I've trained with all kinds of guys in the world, world class guys all over the place. And Dean is absolutely, you know, one of those guys that is up there with like, you know, Hickson who have trained with, I haven't trained with Marcelo, but he's like that crazy good. Really? Wow. Well, no, he was one of the first real leglock masters, really understood. And who brought him in to, into where someone brought him in to ADCC pride? No, I know he, fuck, why am I, why am I blanking? Alan Belcher. Yeah, Alan Belcher brought him in when he fought Husammar Pajares, who's the best leg locker in MMA. And in that fight, Alan just stopped everything, Paul Harris threw at him and beat him down. Every single movement that I saw, I was like, Oh, that's this, that's this, you know, like, I knew exactly what Dean had showed him and exactly what those movements were. That's amazing. What is Dean doing these days? Is he going to still compete or? He's, you know, he's teaching jiu-jitsu and, you know, hanging out, getting after it, you know, I would love to see him just like get completely refocused and make a make a run at winning ADCC or whatever. One more time before he before he hangs it up. When you say he's dinged up, like what kind of shit? Oh, just normal old, you know, jiu-jitsu type guy, you know, his neck will be sore, his shoulder will be hurt. Just that kind of stuff, you know, but but, you know, he is a mutant. He is a mutant that could, you know, if I think he in ADCC, his last time he was in China, his match against Buchecha, when Buchecha is just a complete beast. And you know, they went at it. And that was a very close match. And again, if you watch training videos of Buchecha getting ready for ADCC, he's training like a complete savage. I mean, he's bringing wrestlers in. He's clean and jerky, he's flipping tires. He's doing everything that one does to prepare for a situation like that. And Dean does not do those types of things, you know, he'll come in and train a little bit and go on his natural ability as a mutant human being to get it done. It's always frustrating when you see a guy who is so naturally gifted who kind of like lays back but that's it seems to be that's a lot of what happens is the people that are naturally gifted don't have to work as hard. So they don't work as hard. It's also part of, you know, when I talk about Jeff and Dean, both those guys, they're both and you know, you could throw Eddie and you could throw all kinds of people into this category who are who are kind of game changers. You know what I mean? You know, I don't know Eddie that well. I've hung out a couple times, but I definitely know Jeff and Dean and they're they got some they got some some weird stuff about him, right? I mean, they got some weird personality stuff. And from my perspective, that is, you know, no, if you didn't have that weird personality thing, then how are you going to be, you know, a 15 year old Jeff Glover and be like, oh, you know what I'm gonna do all day? I'm just gonna train you to do all day every day. I'm gonna sit there. I'm gonna watch YouTube videos. I'm just gonna get good at this. I'm gonna train every day. I'm gonna compete all over the country. I'm just that's what I'm gonna do. That's you know, if you're not some if you don't have some if you're normal, you're not gonna do that. Our normal person's like, oh, cool. I'm gonna get a job at Walmart and then I'm gonna do it. You know, I'll train it. I'll train for an hour and a half night. These guys are like, oh, no, no, I'm just gonna train all day every day and I'm gonna live in you know on the mat and Dean same way like how if he didn't have that weird like spark that made him that makes him. I mean, he's got some weird like knowledge. What's weird about him is if you ask Eddie Bravo about you know, the rubber guard, he knows all this details about it. But if you ask him about a footlock or what I have something that he doesn't know that well, he'd be like, oh, yeah, a little bit. You'll ask Dean about something that he knows nothing of that you've never seen him do before and he'll know all these details of the moves. I don't know if I seriously don't know if he goes and watches it on YouTube or if he like studies or writes it down, but he's got this weird little almost rain man. You know, idiot savant type weird thing in his head. He was one of those guys that had a really hard time transitioning into MMA. Absolutely. His striking just never seemed fluid like and he you know, I know he worked hard at it. He just for whatever his body is designed for things. Yeah. And you see that with everybody because everyone's got strength and weaknesses and everyone's gonna be good at something and bad at something else. You know, you and I know all these examples of people that are like this. Every fighter, you know, has got some weak area and then you get occasionally get a guy like GSP that's just like well rounded. Right. But you know, everyone even even things physical things physical attributes, you know, some people are just super mutant strong and some people are just super crazy flexible and some people have unbelievable natural cardio and some people don't. And so it's the people then there's some people that are really good at grappling. Some people are really good at striking. There's some people that are good at putting all those things together, which I always thought Fedor was very natural at combining his striking with his grappling and kind of making it all fit together better than most people could. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you on that. I think that was one of the things that really stood out about him was that he didn't fall into that trap that a lot of people do where if you're a really good wrestler, but you have knockout power, you just knock everybody out. Fedor, he would be you'd be stunned and he would see your arm and he would dive into Kimura. Yeah. You know, he would he would always take the opportunity that presented itself whether it was a grappling situation or whether it was a striking situation. And his well roundedness was one of the things that made him special on top of his knockout power and his aggression. He was so well rounded. His ability to flow with whatever was happening. And he also had that humility and he had that calm like you saw Holly had the other day. I actually again talk about social media. I posted, I haven't posted much on the Facebook before, but there's a video of Holly talking about she got beat by Sofia Matias in kickboxing, right? It was a vicious fight. Watch it later. Was it kickboxing or boxing? Kickboxing. It's insane. I mean, she gets destroyed. Holly gets completely destroyed. Hanging on the ropes, getting punched in the head. It's awful. Then you watch the post fight interview with her and it's unbelievable because everything she says she takes complete ownership of the loss. She's like, I had a great training camp. My coaches were telling me to do the right things, but I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I was fighting the way I was supposed to fight. The reason I lost tonight is my fault. I did this and I will have to change things if I'm going to beat her. And hearing someone and the other part that was cool about it was she was getting emotional. Like you could see like she wanted to cry. I mean, she was crushed, but she kept control of her emotions. And what is another, you know, when I saw that video, I'm like, man, this girl is going to do going to do well in this fight. I mean, I had a pretty good feeling about it. Well, she's she is incredibly solid. That's for sure. And that is so admirable when someone does take ownership of their mistakes. Yeah. So important. It's so important. That's like we wrote the book. The book is called Extreme Ownership. That's literally the title, ladies and gentlemen. Right there. But that's that is like the key. The reason it's called that is because when we made mistakes, we owned up to them. And furthermore, when both Lafe and I ended up in positions where we were teaching leadership, Lafe was teaching the junior officers that were coming out of the SEAL training, putting them through the junior officer training course. And I was teaching, like I said, the advanced guys. And so you'd get to SEAL officers. And like I said, we put these guys through horrible training scenarios where everyone was getting killed and blown up and they'd be a buddy carrying people through the desert. It's just awful. And you come back from these situations and you talk to one of the let's say one of the good leaders and you say, hey, what went wrong? And the guy'd say, well, number one, I didn't give a clear enough plan. No one really understood what my vision was. They didn't execute because I obviously didn't give them a good enough briefing. And you'd be like, OK, fair enough. And that guy would go and fix that problem. Then you'd get a guy that was would not take ownership of stuff that would come in and say, you'd say, what went wrong? That training. You guys did a terrible job. What happened? He said, well, my assault force commander didn't wait for my command before he left. And he screwed up. And my platoon chief wasn't heads up about where our casualties were being taken and my LPO. And they did make all these excuses. And it really was the difference between who would be successful and who wouldn't be. Because the guy that takes ownership of the problems, what do you think the rest of his team does? Just just if that person takes ownership of the problems, everybody on that team does the same thing. They don't say, yeah, you're right, boss. It is your fault. No, they go, hey, boss, you know what? I actually could have done a better job. And and that spreads through everybody. Whereas when someone says it wasn't my fault, it was Joe's fault. What does Joe do? Joe goes, no, it wasn't my. Yeah, exactly. You get no argument. And guess what? The problem never gets solved. Exactly. So to hear Holly talking about that after the fight and taking complete ownership of a loss was very impressive to me. And she went on to beat her like six months later, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of the most important things and getting good at anything is recognizing when you're not good, recognizing when you make mistakes. Yeah, it seems so simple. Right. But you know why? Because ego, you know, he goes on everybody's ego. It's like even even me because I sit here and I like teach people about, you know, you got to keep your ego. There's a chapter in there like you got to keep your ego in check when when somebody I'll even ask somebody, I'll be like, hey, is there anything I could have done better in that in that speech or in that class? And they'll be like, well, you know, one thing that you could do and like immediately I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm such a loser. I'm sitting here telling them about their ego and check. And I'm an idiot. So everybody does that. Everybody does it all the time. No one can take criticism. And, you know, part of that biggest step of moving forward is is is learning how to take ownership of stuff and when it goes sideways and it definitely will. Well, you need some form, some amount of pride and some amount of ego to get good at things in the first place because it's such a counterintuitive notion because you have to have a belief in yourself. You have to be able like when you when you first when you start out at Jiu Jitsu, you're a white belt. Like I remember being a white belt and being like, oh, my God, I am fucking never going to get good at this. I'm going to suck forever. But to to to look at people who are better than you and know they had to have sucked at one point in time. OK, there's got to be somewhere along the end of this tunnel. There's got to be a light. I just got to keep going. Yeah. And that takes ego. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, ego drives, you know, you to be successful, me to be successful. Ego is what's driving you. The problem is when you let ego go too far. And, you know, everything, you know, everything takes balance. It's a dichotomy and everything. Every part of you has a dichotomy. You know, you can get so into the physical aspects of things that you end up like doing a bunch of steroids and going crazy and ruining your health. Right. That's that's not good. Right. The other end of the spectrum, you know, you can sit around and play video games and turn into a. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's there's yeah. Bodybuilding is the best example of that. Right. Is because yeah, it's kind of dying out, though, isn't it kind of bodybuilding? So I would fall on out there. Well, to you and I, it is. But I think there's a giant culture of people out there that want to look like huge mutants still. It's I think I mean, I'm not in that world. But what I mean, bodybuilding is a great example of that, because when you start lifting weights, you're like, God, I'd like to be stronger and you start getting a little bit bigger. You're like, oh, look at that. I got a muscle. Whoo. This is cool. And then you keep going and then you keep going. But some guys get so fucking crazy, they won't stop until they have 22 inch arms and they want to have thighs that are so big. They have to walk like they're they've got a barrel in between their legs and, you know, and they just can't help it. They just take it to some completely unhealthy place. Yeah, that's that's rough. Yeah. Well, it's it's just the nature of trying to get good at something. You got to recognize what's good and what is just fucking insane. Yeah. And it happens in training camps with fighters all the time. Oh, yeah. Overtraining. Overtrained. So a big, big part of the problem with with mixed martial arts. So obvious to when you're overtraining somebody, because all of a sudden, like one night, they'll just fall apart. And they won't be able to do anything right. And I'm always like, all right, go eat two steaks and take two days off, you know, because they will get to a point. You just feel you'll just feel them fall apart. Yeah. Well, you have to monitor your heart rate. That's a big thing that a lot of fighters don't do. Monitor your resting heart rate in the morning. And if it goes up more than five beats in a day or two, most likely you're overtrained or you're sick or you're struggling with something. That would make sense. Steve Maxwell taught me that trick. Yeah. He's like, every fighter should do that. None of them do. They should monitor their heart rate. And every morning his heart rate is like seven. Yeah. Steve Maxwell can fucking he can deal with anything. Yeah. He's just one of those dudes. But he's just he's another guy. You want to talk about a guy who's got a lifetime of wisdom when it comes to strength and conditioning and what he calls physical culture and the culture of taking care of your body. Guys, 62 or 63 years old, fit as a fiddle, travels all around the world training people. That's all he does. Doesn't have a house. Doesn't he has a bag that he brings with him when he travels around all of his stuffs in that bag. Yeah. I ran into him in San Diego because he's been downsizing. And when I for the first time I ran into him in San Diego, he was down to living in like an RV, like a small RV. That's when I first met him too. I hear him on a podcast, whatever, you know, a year later or two years later and he's not have all my worldly possessions in a backpack. Yeah. He sold his RV and he's like, fuck it. I don't even know if he has a bank account. I mean, he's a strange cat, man. He really is a strange cat, but a very at peace guy. For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's very interesting. I wouldn't want to live like that. I don't like living like that. But he's also been the guy that's lived the other way. He's had the house and he's had the family and his son, Zach, is a very successful Jiu Jitsu competitor and, you know, got divorced and gave up the gym. He had all the trappings. He had everything. He's like, I like it better like this, like backpack life. Maybe the key word there was trappings. Yeah. Maybe he somehow built all these things around him that felt ended up making him feel trapped. Yeah, for him, it's just he figured out what he enjoys. He enjoys training. Still doing Jiu Jitsu to this day and he teaches a course, Jiu Jitsu for Lifetime. And it's all about maintaining your health while you train. And, you know, he's written articles on training smart to avoid injuries as you get older and, you know, how to pick the right training partners and make sure, you know, nobody's trying to hurt you. But that you could keep an active martial arts lifestyle deep in your 60s like he is. Yeah, you got to be thankful that you started Jiu Jitsu a little bit younger because you got to get in even today, if you start Jiu Jitsu as an older, we have all kinds of older guys come into the gym. And it's that first like year where they just don't know where to put their body yet and they don't notice they don't know to say no to that 21 year old juiced up marine. That's like in there to get after it. And like they smack hands to roll and this guy's going to tear him apart. And that's that's how guys get hurt if they're if they're older and, you know, they you need to ease into it a little bit. Training partners. It's got to pick a training partner carefully. And there's always going to be the guy that hurts people. There's just these giant German dude that used to roll at our gym. He's always get everybody in leg locks and blow their knees out. And he's just, you know, never rolled with that guy. I've I've been leg locked by Dean. I don't know how many times like I mean, we might be talking thousands of times heel hook knee locked. But, you know, I've never been hurt, you know, and I've gotten him, you know, not thousands times, but plenty of times. And we've never heard each other, you know, because we we know what we're doing. Yeah, I'd way rather roll with a black belt for sure. Then some fucking psycho blue belt. It's it's just too dangerous sometimes. They just they spazz out and they headbutt you accidentally and weird shit happens. It's one of the things that I think is amazing is that Anthony Bourdain has gotten crazy into jujitsu over the last, I think, two years now. He just earned his blue belt. He's fifty nine. Yeah, that's awesome. It's amazing. He lifetime of smoking cigarettes, doing heroin like never, never was fit, never exercise at all. When I first met him, like he would laugh about fitness. He just wanted to drink beer. And, you know, he the first time he did my podcast, we got so high, I don't even know how we talked. And then I just did his TV show like a couple of weeks ago. We're in Montana. All he wanted to talk about is jujitsu. He's obsessed. I'm showing him some techniques. We're talking about different guys that like to do different things and different approaches and Gee versus no. He and John Donner her and, you know, Gary Tonen and Eddie Cummins and all these different. I'm like, this is amazing. I can't believe you. What a transformation this guy has overtaken. Jujitsu definitely. I mean, people can get into all kinds of weird stuff, right? People get into surfing. People get into skiing. People get into rock climbing. There's definitely something more in jujitsu that gets into people's heads. And it definitely happened to me. I mean, I was completely and I still am. I mean, I still cannot like stop a YouTube video of a cool move. I mean, I just I just have to watch it. Yeah. And I think it's because there's such a cerebral part of it. There's something about it. And I see this. We know we teach kids and you'll see the knucklehead kids, the kind of knuckle dragon kids are kind of big. They don't really get it. But then you get this kid, like some smart kid, you can tell they're smart. And those are the kids that get really into jujitsu because they realize, like, oh, if I learned this, I can beat that big kid. Yeah. And that's where it starts. But yeah, jujitsu can definitely be addictive. Well, jujitsu is the only martial art where it really works like in the Bruce Lee movie where the little guy really can beat the big guy. Because the reality is like if you watch the old K1 days where Bob Sapp was fighting, when Bob Sapp was 375 pounds with abs, you've never seen anything like it. He was on steroids. He was steroids. There was nothing human left. And he beat Ernesto Houst twice, who is arguably one of the top two or three greatest kick boxers ever. And Bob Sapp just bum rushed him and Donkey Konged him, just beat him down with clubbing punches because he was so much bigger than him. He was more than 150 pounds bigger than him, probably. I think Houst at his biggest is probably like 230 maybe. And to your point, I was in Japan. I was with Dean, as a matter of fact, when Nogira submitted Sapp. That was insane. That was insane. That was a perfect example. Perfect example. But boy, it had to be Nogira though, because Sapp dropped him on his head, pile-drived him on his head. I saw him the next day, Nogira, like after the fight, and he was hurt. I mean, he was beat up bad. Oh my God. His neck was fucked up apparently forever after that. His neck essentially never recovered after that fight. You know, that was one of the fights that Fedor passed on. Fedor wouldn't fight Bob Sapp. It's like, nah, you can take your fucking clown show, take your circus act. And Nogira's like, okay. Fedor was like, no thanks on the freak show. I'm gonna fight. But then again, he went and fought Hong Man Choi, who's a giant guy too, but giant, actually gigantism giant, not giant like juice to the gills giant. But look, Bob Sapp, I mean, all power to him. They didn't have a law against it. And he went in there and they were paying him, and that's how he made a ton of money doing that. But the point is that in Jiu-Jitsu, like maybe in MMA, it's a little bit different because, you know, obviously Bob Sapp dropped Nogira on his head, and most people would have been done then. But Nogira was legendarily tough. But a small man can tap out a much larger, stronger man on a regular basis. I watched Rico Rodriguez and Abu Dhabi go against Marcelo Garcia. I was there. Were you there? Yeah, in L.A.? Yeah, it was amazing. And when Rico threw him on his back, when Marcelo took Rico's back, so Rico threw himself backwards and slammed on top of Mar- Like Marcelo's like a backpack on Rico's back. Rico's like 240 something, maybe even heavier, threw himself backwards and landed all his weight on Marcelo. Marcelo shook it off and leg-locked him. Incredible. Incredible. I mean, Marcelo was like 160 pounds, maybe 170, maybe. But just so skilled and so dangerous with his Jiu-Jitsu that he was the favorite in that, which was incredible. And that's where I think that addiction comes in, because I think it's just a cerebral thing where people realize that it's- like you said, it's this real force. When I- one of my- my kid asked me, you know that movie The Incredibles? Yes. These people have superpowers. And my son asked me, hey, dad, is there really such a thing as superpowers? And I'm like, Jiu-Jitsu. It's definitely a superpower. It's a superpower, you know? And if you remember the days before anybody knew it, if you knew a little tiny bit, man, you were just getting- no one could stop you. It was awesome. Well, it's also amazing to see the progression of Jiu-Jitsu in comparison to 1993, because the Jiu-Jitsu of 1993 was so primitive in comparison to what you have today. Like, the guys who were winning with Jiu-Jitsu, god, the setups were so obvious. You could see the armbars a mile away. There was nothing crazy or weird about it. And you look at that in comparison to today, like a Jacare. Like, when Jacare gets armbars, it's like a work of art. I mean, you watch his setups, you go, good lord. Like, he tapped Chris Camosse with an armbar, and I watched the transition, the way he controlled them on the ground and the scramble to armbar. I probably watched it 40 times in a row. I just played it back and forth and went, fuck. One more time. Fuck. I need a perfect placement of the shin, the knee, the pressure, the hips. Everything's in place. The control of the arm. It was a done deal from the moment he started his movements. Now, that to me is like, that's just as beautiful as any painting that anybody's ever made. There's 100% there's an art to that. No doubt about it. What year did you start? It was 1992 or 1993. Damn, you got in early. Yeah, I got in early. Luckily, I had a- Pre-UFC. We knew when we watched that first UFC, we all knew. Wow. There was three or four of us that knew that Royce, that Royce Gracie was going to win. Royce. That's amazing. Yeah. We had this old SEAL Master Chief, old Vietnam era SEAL Master Chief named Steve Bailey. He was like a high level white belt. He had trained with Thori and Gracie up in the garage, up in Torrance. And so he knew. He knew Jiu-Jitsu. The garage. The infamous garage. Just like the epicenter of Jiu-Jitsu. No kidding. It's crazy. But this guy, Steve Bailey, had trained there. And one day we were over on deployment over in Guam and he said, hey, who here wants to learn how to fight? And I'm like, hey, I want to learn how to fight. And he just took us all and just choked us all out. Like, okay, you attack me and just choked us all. And I'm like, okay, I'll listen to whatever this guy's saying. So so he taught us, you know, the basic, you know, like the rear naked choke and the arm lock and like the American or something like, you know, we're talking like four or five different moves. And with those moves, like I never I'd every scrap I'd get into, you know, I'd just force someone into the rear naked choke or force them. But they had no idea what was happening. So it was actually amazing. But but again, I thought at that time that that that that was Jiu-Jitsu, like it was this finite thing. A lot of people did. Yeah. And then you realize, you know, that it's completely unending and it changes every day. John Giacchotto had a guy that moved to Black Belt and he was a very good martial artist. He was very physically strong. This guy, he was a big, like bulky dude, like a naturally big bone strong guy that gave people a lot of problems and then decided and like, like, didn't just decide this, but said it publicly. I've learned all I can learn about Jiu-Jitsu. And now I'm going to learn all I can learn about Muay Thai. And everybody just went, oh, dude, we're done with you. It was like it was so ridiculed in the Jiu-Jitsu community and in the people in John Jocch school that everybody like I was like a blue belt at the time. And I was like, what the fuck is this guy on? Like you learned everything. How can you learn everything? There's no end. Jiu-Jitsu doesn't end. Yeah, goes on forever. Like you can't get you can always get better. It's not it's not something until you achieve the speed of light. And that's another another great thing about Jiu-Jitsu is because it like combat, it reflects life. And if the day you start saying that you're good to go, like in leadership position or whatever task you're working on, the day you say, I've learned everything there is to learn about this is the day you start to lose. And I know that humility is something that you have to keep yourself in check because, again, I got asked the other day, when were you, you know, when was your high point of leadership? And I'm like, I never had a high point of leadership. I was always trying to learn. I was always trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and what mistakes I was making. Because if you don't do that, that's that's something I learned from Jiu-Jitsu. You know, if you don't do that, then that you're going to get passed by and other people are going to figure some new way of doing it. And you're going to be left in the dark. Yeah, as much as I like to use like the term that was perfect, there really is nothing perfect in human beings. There's always room for improvement. There's always a shorter path. There's always a quicker victory. There's always there's there's always new things to learn. And as soon as you start thinking that you've mastered something to the point of of an end, like you've kind of missed out what it's all about in the first place. It's all about you're constantly uncomfortable. You're supposed to be constantly uncomfortable. And then in these little victories that you get, the good thing about when people tap, you get a little nice feeling right here. Let's go again. They're like, fuck back to being uncomfortable. And there's no getting around. Then he taps you and you're like, shit, shit acquit laws ahead. No, no, because you're missing the point. The point is that it's a long path, a long, arduous path. And I think anything that's worth doing is probably like that. There's no doubt about it. And that's another another piece again, another place where jujitsu is like life is you think at some point you think you know, like you think you're good, you think you're doing pretty good. And then you just get smacked, you know, you get smacked with something. And like now, like when you were 25, you were like, I'm pretty, I'm pretty good to go. You know, I'm pretty much know what's up. And then when you're 30, you're like, I didn't know anything. Yeah, I was an idiot. And it's true. Like even and so I think one of the one of the things that provides some small portion of like maturity as a human being and as a man, is when you get to the point where you actually realize that you don't know everything. And you're like looking at yourself like I'm 44. And I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna learn so much in the next three years, five years, I'm gonna look at myself at 44 and go, yeah, see how stupid you were then. And when you come to that realization, I think that's a pretty positive thing, because it takes a while to figure out that, hey, you don't have everything figured out. You're, you're pretty stupid right now, even though you don't think so. Another thing that things like jujitsu teach you and I say jujitsu, but it's really an all martial arts thing. The problem with the other martial arts other than jujitsu is at a certain point in time, you can't really practice them 100%. Like striking, you really can't practice striking 100% for very long, or your brain starts to give out just the fact and jujitsu, you can jujitsu, you can do it deep, deep into your 50s. I mean, there's like, or Anthony Bourdain, he's pushing 60s still doing it. And you know, it's not that he's going to be a world beater, but he can get the most out of it. The most that he can get out of it, it's it's that stays the same, like what you get out of it stays the same, regardless of your regardless of the success, like what you're getting out of it, even if you're getting tapped, what you're getting out of is doing your best and overcoming and improving upon what your best is every day. And doing so in a situation where there's extreme consequences, you're going to get strangled, you know, you're going to get your arm broken. If you don't tap, you're going to get your leg fucked up. If you don't tap, there's it's not as extreme as combat, obviously, but it is as extreme, you can get in a sport that you're participating in an activity that you're participating in voluntarily in America at 530 on a Tuesday, where you're going to get 30 people that are going to show up, slap hands, and then you're going to get a little bit of a chance together and then hug it out after it's over and go, you're gonna be here tomorrow. Yeah, I'll see you man. And then, you know, back again tomorrow. Same thing. That's another kind of primal piece that makes jujitsu so intense is if you and me roll like, and I get you or you get me and I tap in my like heart. I know that if you and I were fighting for survival, I just lost and you killed me. And I see this with little kids when little kids compete. You tell them, hey, listen, just go out there, have fun. It's gonna be fun. You know, just go out there and do your best. I don't care if you win or lose. Just go out and have a good time. You tell them that you tell them that you tell them that if they get tapped, they, they start crying. It's so emotional. And why is that? Because a part of them inside their head that they don't even know exists knows that that person had they been in a mortal struggle. They got beat. Yeah, they got their ass kicked. Yeah, it's not like someone this is what I always say like, somebody dunks a basketball on you. This sucks. But it doesn't mean anything unless you decide it means something. Well, well, what does basketball escalate into? What do all sports all sports escalate into fights? So if you would let's get rid of the bat, the ball, whatever else, let's just fight. Let's just that's why it's, you know, that's why the I think the UFC has been so highly successful because it is it's what it's it's the ultimate, you know, in combat sport again, you know, barring combat itself. Yeah. Well, it's also why the dorks and pencil necks hate it so much because they think it's a regression back to the primal days of caveman combat like what are we supporting some fat fuck wrote an article for like the New Yorker New York Post or something like that about the Ronda Rousey loss about how barbaric and disgusting it was. And what what what bullshit that we were fed and that, you know, we were made out that she was this unconquerable and to watch her beaten unconscious was disgusting. And you don't get it. Man, like you don't get it. Like what you're doing with your fat face, like shoving cheeseburgers down your mug is way worse than anything that she did inside that octagon. It's interesting because that kind of attitude can can cross borders into other things. And, you know, I end up talking to people, you know, through through our company, people that are smart, I mean, every like, I'll be in a room with everyone's went to an Ivy League college, you've been super successful in their worth millions and millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And I was given one of these talks the other day. And we, you know, of course, they ended up asking me about Isis and all that. And as I'm sitting there looking and I'm thinking to myself, like, these people are all looking at me, and thinking, I'm just a savage, right? I'm just like, hey, I'm a knuckle dragger, we just need to go kill everyone. And so I tried to explain to them, I'm like, listen, I almost I almost feel ashamed to say this to everyone here, because everyone here is an intellectual and is very, very smart. But there are some problems in the world that there is not an academic solution to. And sometimes violence is the solution. And again, there can be a million arguments against that. But the reality of it is, in the world, it's like you were talking about earlier in the world, there are evil people that do evil things. And the only way to stop them is to confront them and destroy them. And unfortunately, we we are so disconnected from that, that it makes people look at UFC and go, Oh, my God, how could that happen? And it makes people look at, you know, a military attack and say, Oh, my God, how could that happen? It can happen because we're human beings, and we're imperfect. And there are there are evil people in the world. Well, the people that think there's no ever there's no excuse for a violent solution. Take those people, bring them to Ramadi right now, right? Yeah. I mean, how do you deal with evil when it exists? How do you deal with it? Do you do hug them? Do you knock on their door with flowers? What do you do? I mean, what is the solution? You just don't have an answer. They have an aunt. The only reason why they even have that attitude is because they live here in this sheltered environment in our beautiful bubble, we call the United States of America. That many brave men and women have provided and will continue to provide regardless of what is said about them. And God bless those folks out there on the wire. Yes, sir. And with that extreme ownership, those three hours, man, we just banged out three hours down crazy. Right here, Jaco Willink and leaf leaf leaf, leaf, leaf, leaf, Baben, extreme ownership how US Navy SEALs lead and win. And Jaco is on Twitter. Jaco Willink on Twitter is that what is Jaco Willink? And what is it on? Do you have anything else website? Well, yeah, we have we have a Facebook for extreme ownership. We have an extreme ownership Twitter. Yeah, we're out there in the social media world broadcasting ourselves and soon a podcast, right? And I will I will do a podcast. See, I knew this. I will do a podcast. It's gonna happen. Echo Charles, be ready to record a podcast, brother. Thank you very much, sir. This was awesome. I really, really appreciate it. And I will put up a link on Amazon after the podcast. So go out and buy this book, folks. Thank you very much, Jaco. Appreciate it, brother. Thanks for having me on.