468: Some Lessons Only Life Can Teach. With Sean Glass.

Summary

Podcast Summary: Jocko Podcast Episode 468 – "Some Lessons Only Life Can Teach" with Sean Glass

Introduction

In Episode 468 of the Jocko Podcast, titled "Some Lessons Only Life Can Teach," retired Navy SEAL Sean Glass joins host Jocko Willink and co-host Echo Charles. The discussion delves into Sean's extensive military background, leadership experiences, personal growth, and entrepreneurial ventures post-service. Released on December 11, 2024, this episode offers a rich exploration of discipline, leadership, and the profound lessons learned through Sean's life journey.

Sean Glass’s Background and Military Experience

Sean Glass is a former SEAL officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. After leaving the Navy, he transitioned into leadership roles in the startup ecosystem before joining Echelon Front as a leadership instructor. He is also a husband, father, and proprietor of a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, where he operates Primal Beef, a company dedicated to providing high-quality beef while supporting military causes.

Leadership Lessons from the Field

Sean shares his initial experiences as a squad commander in his first platoon, emphasizing the rigorous training and character-testing environment of land warfare. He recounts leading his team through field training exercises (FTXs) and the responsibilities that came with being the "hinge man," responsible for signaling shift fire and check fire during raids.

“You can really see your character being tested more than any other place.” ([02:00])

A pivotal moment in his leadership journey was during a simulated raid where Sean's quick thinking with Kim lights earned him commendations but also highlighted his own inexperience and the fine line between confidence and cockiness.

Relationship Building and Overcoming Friction

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on the importance of building and maintaining relationships within the military hierarchy. Sean discusses his transition from squad commander to platoon commander and the challenges he faced in developing a rapport with his troop commander, who initially had an ego-driven approach.

“Building that relationship out made the situation a whole lot better throughout training.” ([49:00])

Sean admits that personal egos can create friction but emphasizes the necessity of fostering trust, respect, and open communication to ensure effective leadership and team cohesion.

Deployment to Iraq and Interactions with SAS

Sean details his deployment to Iraq as a troop commander, overseeing multiple platoons involved in critical missions like clearing Mosul. He narrates a harrowing incident where his Quick Reaction Force (QRF) rescued SAS operators trapped in a compound under heavy fire, resulting in the loss of one of their own, JJ Finan.

“He was handling their own, but they needed that QRF. It was legit, just like that.” ([84:22])

This mission underscored the unpredictable nature of combat and the vital role of leadership in high-stress situations.

Starting Primal Beef and Supporting the C4 Foundation

Post-military, Sean founded Primal Beef, aiming to honor every part of the cow and minimize waste while delivering premium beef cuts. The company's mission aligns with supporting military personnel through donations to the C4 Foundation, established in memory of SEAL Charlie Keating (C4), who perished in Iraq.

“Whenever you buy a box, you're feeding yourself super high-quality beef. You're feeding your family, but you're also taking care of our nation's special operations forces.” ([171:37])

Primal Beef has donated over £5,000 worth of beef to the C4 Foundation, reinforcing Sean's commitment to his military roots and community support.

Raising Kids and the Forge Program

Sean emphasizes the importance of imparting leadership and life skills to his children. Alongside Echo Charles, he co-founded "The Forge," a monthly program aimed at teaching young boys virtues such as service, discipline, and teamwork through activities like Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, and community service projects.

“The Warrior Kid wakes up early in the morning... I would take them to spend time with this guy and let them know that putting others first is a gift.” ([113:04])

This initiative reflects Sean's dedication to fostering resilience and moral integrity in the next generation.

Advice on Training and Leadership

Throughout the episode, both Jocko and Sean offer actionable advice on leadership and training. They distinguish between formal and informal training, advocating for consistent, practical exercises that build real-world skills over theoretical knowledge.

“Informal training, like showing the kids an arm lock for 10 minutes a day, can make a significant difference over time.” ([173:10])

Sean discusses the importance of adaptability in leadership, managing resources effectively, and maintaining humility.

Conclusion

Episode 468 of the Jocko Podcast provides an in-depth look into Sean Glass's journey from a Navy SEAL to a community leader and entrepreneur. Through candid storytelling and reflective insights, Sean underscores the enduring value of discipline, relationship-building, and purposeful leadership. His experiences offer valuable lessons applicable both in military contexts and everyday life, inspiring listeners to continually grow and lead with integrity.

Notable Quotes

• “Building that relationship out made the situation a whole lot better throughout training.” – Sean Glass ([49:00])
• “Don't let your ego get in the way of your leadership.” – Jocko Willink ([20:36])
• “When you step up and you give, that's when you find.” – Jocko Willink ([155:07])
• “Being prepared is a choice. You're not always going to be ready unless you make the effort.” – Sean Glass ([163:29])

Key Takeaways

1. Leadership Requires Humility and Continuous Learning: Effective leaders must balance confidence with humility, always seeking to learn from experiences and others.
2. Relationships are Paramount: Building strong, respectful relationships within any team or organization is essential for success and cohesion.
3. Service and Community Support: Transitioning from military service to civilian life offers opportunities to give back and support fellow service members through entrepreneurial ventures.
4. Raising Resilient Children: Programs like The Forge highlight the importance of teaching young boys essential life skills and virtues to prepare them for the future.
5. Adaptability in Training and Leadership: Emphasizing practical, consistent training over formal, theoretical approaches leads to more effective skill development and leadership growth.

This episode serves as a compelling narrative on the intertwining paths of military service, personal development, and community engagement, offering listeners valuable insights into the true essence of leadership and service.

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko, podcast number 468 with Echo Charles, and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Good evening.

[Jocko Willink]

Also joining us tonight, Sean Glass.

[Sean Glass]

What's up, Jocko?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there you go. Sean's a former SEAL officer, fought Iraq and Afghanistan, got out of the Navy, went into a leadership position at a startup, eventually joined us at Echelon Front as leadership instructor. It's where he works now. He's worked with scores of companies in every imaginable industry. He's also a husband, father, has a small farm. What do they call that, like a hobby farm? Is yours bigger than a hobby farm called.

[Sean Glass]

I mean, it's 60 acres. I don't know if you'd call that.

[Jocko Willink]

A hobby that's a little bigger.

[Sean Glass]

I mean, it's not, you know, it's in Virginia. So if I was to say 60 acres in Montana, that's a hobby farm. 60 acres in Virginia. You know, it's. It's, you know, small, but it's still okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Sean Glass]

I think I graduated. Graduated from hobby to small farm.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. So he has a small farm in the Shenandoah Valley. He has a little company called Primal Beef, and he's been on the podcast before. He's been on episode 404. So if you want to hear his origin story, go back and listen to episode 404. But we're going to talk about some of his experiences and lessons learned that we didn't discuss the first time that he was on. And that's because we're always learning, we're always reflecting, and let's talk about what you've learned in the past couple years. You know, that's the thing is when you start to work at Echelon Front, people working there, we talk about leadership all the time, and we hear stories of leadership all the time. And we're watching leadership inside of companies all the time. And so we're constantly like a doc, you know, what is it when a doctor thinks they have diseases or they're constantly checking and like, a psychologist thinks they have these crazy diseases or thinks they have these mental problems? So when you're working Echelon Front, you're constantly reviewing your whole life and every leadership call that you ever made, and it can be humbling to look at your mistakes.

[Sean Glass]

And you also go, oh, yeah, did.

[Jocko Willink]

That one pretty good, but I messed this one up. So you've been going through that process.

[Sean Glass]

For a few years now.

[Jocko Willink]

So, awesome, man. Let's get into it. You got in your first platoon, got done with buds, getting your First Platoon. What was. Wasn't there something that went down at land warfare? Some chem light scenario that happened? What was that all about?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, so, you know, new guy tour. He's even an officer. It's a new guy tour. So you're trying to prove yourself at all times. Land warfare was our first real block of training, which, as you know, and Echo probably knows now as well, sitting in that seat for as long as he has that, that's kind of like the proving ground for the SEAL teams is land warfare. That's where, you know, bread and butter, all the hard work. That's where the platoon comes together or doesn't come together sometimes. But that's where I think your, your character is tested more than any any other place. Super hard training, long hours. You know, I went through, was always a summertime when I went through. So it's what, average day out in Islands, like 115, something like that. So, you know, first time to prove myself, you know, I'm doing. Doing pretty solid. Training's progressing. We get to right about the portion where we're going to start doing the field training exercise.

[Jocko Willink]

What are you a squad leader?

[Sean Glass]

At the squad commander and.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, a squad commander.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, we changed.

[Jocko Willink]

Only SEAL teams could do that.

[Sean Glass]

Change that. Which means, like, you're in charge of eight people, but you're not really in charge of eight people.

[Jocko Willink]

That's. That's classic. Did you have. So did you have two junior officers and one platoon commander?

[Sean Glass]

So it was myself, Rob Burch, who's about to retire after doing 20 prior enlisted. Guy, total stud. I'm actually linking up with him tonight to hang out a bit. Total stud. One of those guys that's like, just good at everything he does. And then platoon commander, Platoon chief.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, because back in the day, there was only two officers in the platoon, the platoon commander and then an assistant platoon commander. And then at this juncture, because we, the SEAL teams is always got some kind of new flavor going on. So at this point in the SEAL teams, it was all right, you're gonna have one officer and then each squad is going to have its own leader, correct? No or no commander.

[Sean Glass]

Commander. So you're a squad commander, bro.

[Jocko Willink]

This guy was in charge of seven other dudes and he's getting called commander. Okay, hey, we'll go with it, dude. All right, so you're a squad commander and what's going down?

[Sean Glass]

So you're getting towards the point of training. We're going to do the FTXs, which is, you know, put everything together. So it's simulated real world operation. All of our training is iterative, so they're building blocks. We've been doing, you know, patrolling, we've been doing IADs, we've been doing react to contact drills and now you're starting to put things together. So before the first ftx, you do some raids, practicals and just think of a raid for those listening as it's the actions on. So it's not getting you to the target, you're at the target, you're setting up positions to take the target down, and then it's basically the actions that you would take to take the target down. So typically what happens is there's two good formations to take to conduct a raid. Either everybody's online or you set that L. The reason being is obviously you want to make sure that you know where all your people are and you want to make sure that there's no potential fratricide out there. So online minimizes that, and then an L also minimize that, minimizes that. But you've got to have some control measures in place with that L because you've got what's called a basifier and then a maneuver. So my element is the maneuver element, the sister platoon. So our other platoon that we were going through training with, 18 SEALs, they're the base element. The base element are the guys that are going to just be hammering the target with heavy machine gun fire. Probably some, some mark 40, so 40 mic mic, stuff like that, but they're just softening the target for a long period of time. And then after a certain period of time, then the maneuver element gets up and you start to push through. But right as you get up, the base element is still providing that cover fire. At some point in time, the base element has to do what we call shift fire, which means now they're still shooting because when I'm shooting, bad guys keep their heads down, but they're not shooting potentially directly at the target. They're shifting their fire at a 45 degree angle to create some space for the base element to come in and then for the assault element, sorry, for the assault element to come in. And then at a certain point of time, the assault element has to signal to check fire. And check fire is when you're close enough to the target where it's now unsafe. The assault element takes over the assault. The base element has to stop shooting to keep everything safe. So perfect world, that's what happens. So I am a commander, so I'm given some extra responsibilities by my platoon chief and I'm what's called the hinge man. So I am the guy in the assault element that has to signal to the base element when it's time to shift their fire and then when it's time to check the fire. So that's, you know, a big responsibility for me. Again, always looking to prove myself super fired up. So how we do this, at least at the time, was we had what's called a kimlight bundle. So imagine a bunch of little Kim lights. You tape them together, you throw them in the air. It's a visible cue for, for the base to say, okay, there's the Kim light bundle. That's our cue to shift fire. The next kimlight bundle, which is a different color. So the first one we threw out was green. That means shift fire. The next one that I throw out is red. And that's their sign for check fire. So the only way that they know how to shift fire and check fire is through that. Now you're thinking, well, comms, sure, we, we have comms. But the guy right beside you is lighting up with a Mark 48 Belfed machine gun. You can't really hear much of anything. So this is the two signals. Green chem light bundle, red Kim light bundle. So I've rehearsed it a bunch of times in my mind. I'm going to walk you through what it looked like and then I'm going to walk you through what, what actually happened. So we start base element just starts hammering it at to that point in time is the coolest thing I've ever seen. As a new guy, you're just watching tracers just rip through everything. You've got 18 seals online. 18 seals, that's probably four mark 48s and 46 is you're just getting after it. We start making our move. I want to prove myself. I want to show that I'm young and aggressive. I don't want to throw that Ken light bundle out too soon. So we start walking, walking, walking, and you know, we're starting to get close. And at about the 20 yard mark, where I'm just watching tracers zip by, Kim like bundle comes out shift fire. We go about another 20 yards. I throw out the red Kim light bundle, check fire. We do the raid. It goes great. After action reviewed right there on the scene, the traded instructors come up to us and they said, hey, that was legit. That was the best raid we've ever seen. That was the closest we've ever seen anyone allow their squad to get before they shifted fire. That's what we're talking about. That's the aggression we want to see. So I'm feeling pretty. Pretty solid about myself. There's a guy in our platoon whose nickname is Grinch. He's the senior E6 that's not in a leadership position. He's kind of like the guy that all the E6s look up to. Total stud. Very quiet. But he's called the Grinch for a reason. I don't think he's ever said a word to me up to this point. But he comes over to me and kind of gives me a tap in the chest, and he's like, f. Yeah, man. That's what I'm talking about. So, again, you know, I'm taking that on board, prove myself. At least that's what it looked like to everybody else. What really happened is I take the Kimlight bundle, and I'm thinking about the best place to store it. I've got two of them. The colors matter. You've got your nods on. You know, you can't really see a whole lot of anything. So sorry. Like, color wise, once you bring the. Bring them up, everything just looks like a big, glowing bundle. So I'm like, all right, green bundle. The first one I'm gonna put right here, center mass, in my kit, kind of in one of my ammo pouches. So that way I know right where it is, I can grab it, chunk it. Second one, I attach to my hip with a little cord that I can just pop off and chunk it. So we're marching. I do want to prove myself, so I want to get close so I don't even start messing with the Kim Light bundle until we're probably about 50 yards away. And then I go to grab the Kim Light bundle, and I can't get it out. I don't know what it was caught on, but it was caught on something. And I'm.

[Jocko Willink]

We're walking.

[Sean Glass]

I'm making sure that the whole platoon's online. We're walking. I'm trying to yank it out. I'm trying to yank it out. I can't get it out. There's something that I could do to stop and just make sure that no one gets hurt, and that's to yell, ceasefire. There's no way in hell. As a new guy, I'm yelling ceasefire. On a range where my chief gave me the responsibility of being the hinge man in front of the sister platoon, in front of all the trainers. So I'm like, you know, freaking out at this point because I'm Thinking there's no other way. I'm gonna have to yell ceasefire and then I'm just gonna get called out. You know, my reputation is going to be ruined forever for screwing this up. I'm yanking, I'm yanking. I can' get it out. I don't know what it's caught on. I can't see anything with my nods on. So I just, you know, grab my knife out of my pocket and I'm just slashing everything that I can possibly slash on my kit to try to get it to break free. And it eventually breaks free and like the second it's free I just chunk it up, shift fire. Then, you know, the other one was easy to get off check fire. So I don't think I've ever told anybody in my platoon that story before. But I went from, you know, to. I didn't say anything anybody. Of course I took the credit that everybody was giving me. But it was up to that point the scared as I've ever been in the SEAL teams because I'm like, I'm either going to have to call ceasefire, which you know how that makes me look, or I'm going to get my squad killed by walking in this line of fire. So I got some kudos for it. They probably weren't deserved but at the time, you know, when was a win so I took it.

[Jocko Willink]

And just so everyone knows, there's art range safety officers that would have blowing the whistle.

[Sean Glass]

He was right beside me.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, he's right beside you. He's probably watching your dumb ass. He's probably the only person that would. He probably owe that guy a beer. And there's range safety officer with the base element. That's all they're on nods. They can see where everyone's going. So there is some control. There's a lot of control in those live fire evolutions. But that, that is, it's interesting that you would rather die. Didn't look like a. Yeah, a wimp out there, which is very common. Tony Frati btf. Tony is horrified of heights. Like horrified of heights. And he was, I think he was in Hong Kong or something and they were repelling, they were doing like a thousand foot rappel like off of a, of a, you know, 50 or 80 or 100 story building.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And he said he was just like absolutely horrified but he would just rather die. He was like, I truly believed I was gonna die and I was like, okay, I'm just gonna die. It's gonna do this, this thing. And so you, you're in Your first platoon. And it sounds like. And you were telling me earlier about, like a little bit of arrogance, little. Little cockiness that you had.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

How'd that work out for you?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, I don't know. Like, if you were to. If you were an outside observer, you were probably said definitely there's some ego there. As far as just how I carried myself, I don't think I really treated really anybody ever disrespectfully or anything like that. But I was pretty good as, as a. As for a new guy. My chief gave me a lot of faith, allowed me to run a lot of things during training. My platoon commander did the same thing. So, you know, I was a good shot. I was in good shape. I was. I was making good calls. I had the. At least I think I had the respect of the guys in my platoon, and I let some of that get to me as far as my ego. And my platoon chief was always a guy that was going to be in my corner, was always going to encourage me, but also a guy that's going to let you know, you know, if you' stepping out of line.

[Jocko Willink]

This is Dave, right?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, this is Dave. Yeah. So, you know, we get through work up, and I know he sees it. We've had some, some conversations where he's, you know, made me aware of it, but nothing, you know, nothing that's going to.

[Jocko Willink]

No hanging offenses.

[Sean Glass]

No hanging offenses, nothing like that. Just like, hey, things to be cognizant of. So we get through training, we deploy, 11 months in Afghanistan. Again, I got to run a whole lot of stuff, working with different units. I'm running different operations. So the confidence and cocky level are probably starting to blur a little bit. So I find out on that tour that I'm going to get to go and do my platoon commander tour next, which is not normal at the time. Usually as a new guy officer, you've got to go and do your new guy tour, and then you go do what's called the disassociated tour, where you're going to go some other command that's probably not necessarily in the seals. Maybe it's a boat team, maybe it's administrative or an operational position in a staff. But the theory is you get a breath of experience, you see something else, you get a little bit more seniority, and then you come back and do your platoon commander tour. I was fortunate enough to go right from my squad commander to my platoon commander. So I'm sure this was Dave's way of telling me, you've got a Couple things you need to work on as you're getting prepared to step into this platoon commander role, because as a squad commander with a platoon commander and a platoon chief there to kind of keep me in check a little bit. But also, you know, there was some mistakes that I made overseas, probably from overconfidence, cockiness, and they, you know, they helped me out with it. So I think he was his way of saying, you need an example of a mistake. Working with different partner units. Probably trying to take a little bit too much charge of stuff and then getting. They'd get some phone calls about stuff, and then instead of being like, hey, man, what the heck? They. Let's talk through this. You know, think about it from their perspective. They've been here for X amount of months. You know, you roll up and I'm not. Again, I'm not treating people person to person bad. But it was just kind of this thing of, hey, we're the SEAL teams here. You know, you guys are supporting us. This is what we need, that type of thing.

[Jocko Willink]

You're a little bit of that guy.

[Sean Glass]

A little bit of that guy. Yeah, from time to time, a little bit of that guy. So we're deployments over with. We were very north in Afghanistan, like very northern Afghanistan. The biggest base, our home base, was Mazari Sharif, which is a northern Afghanistan. It's a big air base, but we were 350 miles north of that. But that's where we have to go to Redeploy. So we go down there.

[Jocko Willink]

You were doing vso, right?

[Sean Glass]

Vso? Yeah, the Village Stability Operations piece, which was great time. And we come back there to redeploy. We end up having to stay there for two weeks because the bird got delayed. So we have time. And there's Missouri. Sharif is big, big airstrip. And then you've got the American side on one side of the airstrip, and then you had German side on the other side. American side, you know, was a total dump. Nothing was improved. Nothing was, you know, it was just gravel floors, basically. The Germans, I don't know if they inherited this base or they just built it up, but it was a nice base. It had restaurants, it had all kinds of other stuff. So almost once a day, we'd all go across to the German side, get some food. We were on one of these trips. It was him, myself, and two of the older gu in the truck driving, get some food. Dave, Dave, Dave, my platoon chief in the truck with me. He's driving. I'm sitting there. You know, you're spent 11 months together, deployed, and then 18 months training before that. You've talked about literally everything you could talk about at this point in time. So we were talking about superhero, because I think, like, the first run of Marvel movies had just start to come out, and we had watched some at the base. So Dave's like, hey, if you could be any superhero, what would you be? And instantly I was like, batman. Because I've all, you know, Batman. It's awesome. I always want to be Batman. And he doesn't even look at me. He just says, you couldn't be Batman. I'm like, well, why not? And he goes, batman wears a mask. And you would need people to know who was doing the heroic deeds. Yeah, yeah, that was a. That was a gut punch. I think it was a very well deserved gut punch. But to me, that was his way of just politely giving me a little thump upside the head and set me up for success. Saying, you're about to be a platoon commander, and you've got some things that you have to work on. Like, it was a privilege to be given the platoon commander spot, which he knows. So I think he was just telling me, check yourself before you go into that spot. But I'll tell you what, it probably made more of an impact on me than anything else that he could have said, just based on how he responded to that. Like, it got my attention, and I definitely, you know, had a lot to think about. And I definitely made a change after that, for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

One thing I definitely realized, I realized, so you've heard the story of my second platoon, where we fired our platoon commander, we had a mutiny, and the. The great guy Delta Charlie came in to take over. What I realized in that platoon was that. And I used to teach this to the young junior officers. You're gonna get the. You're gonna get the credit. You don't need to make everyone know that you get. Because when you're the platoon commander, when a platoon does well, everyone's gonna look and go, hey, good job. Like, good job with your platoon. It's your platoon. Good job. And when you do bad, everyone's gonna look at you, and you're gonna sit there say, hey, what's wrong with your platoon? So you can take all those insecurities you have that no one's gonna notice how awesome you are, and you can just settle them down because you're de facto the person in charge. You don't need to prove anything. That's the context. I used to teach junior officers like, you don't need to prove that you're in charge of anything. You're, you are, you are de facto in charge. You're literally the platoon commander. And so what happens with a platoon if it does well? You don't need to tell anyone how awesome you did. If your platoon does well. People know. And it's the same thing with a platoon chief. Like a good platoon chief. Everyone knows. Oh yeah. They give that, that platoon chief gets a ton of credit because it's his platoon. So. Yeah, the, the officers tend to do that more because the chiefs kind of know that it's. It's the platoon chief. But the officers, they, they haven't been around long enough to be like, oh, I'm just gonna get credit. And there's. I don't need to tell anyone that I need credit.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. The thing that is, even makes it worse is my platoon commander was that guy. They never saw credit for anything. I would watch him actually take ownership for things that was not really on him during training and he would just sit there and just take it. So I had a great example. I had a great example. And I'm making it seem like I was the worst. Like I was not. But I definitely. It was there.

[Jocko Willink]

I remember you're not the worst. You were not at all like, it's. You were, you were self aware enough to at least be recognizing this stuff. A lot of people that they don't even recognize what's happening.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And that's, you know, like a crazy person doesn't know that they're crazy.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

A truly egotistical person. They have no comprehension that that's what's going on. And they just rationalize it to themselves. Well, I mean, of course I'm gonna be a little bit arrogant. Look at my performance. You know, they say that and they. That's their justice rationalization.

[Sean Glass]

It's not ego if it's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

There you go. And then. Didn't you have some Dave again? I think I'm having Dave on the podcast. Some.

[Sean Glass]

Oh, hell yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

In the near future, something happened with SF guys, like some liaison that you had. What was that all about?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, so the Village Stability Operations mission set had been going on since 2009 in Afghanistan. We deployed very, very early 2011. Like February of 2011. So village stability Operations was still relatively new for the campaign, but it was very, very new mission set for the SEAL teams because that is not something that the SEAL teams really train heavily to do is that unconventional warfare thing. So it was a new mission Set. But Green Berets, in conjunction with their assaults training and things like that, that's their mission set. So when we embedded, we had no real frame of reference for this outside of just lessons learned. So they gave us a liaison who had been doing this for a long time. A squared away army, I think it was East 7 won't say his name, but we'll call him Pete. So Pete is kind of our liaison off liaison for these village stability operations. He's been cultivating some of these relationships with the local elders that we're going to need to know. So he's been basically laying the groundwork for you guys.

[Jocko Willink]

Going to do a turnover with him or is he going to stay on board?

[Sean Glass]

Okay, he was supposed to stay on board. So he, we meet him, Missouri Sharif. We all convoy up to this place we embed and then he's basically all has these relationships built out and we kind of fall in onto these relationships.

[Jocko Willink]

That's pretty nice that they gave you a guy like that.

[Sean Glass]

It's huge.

[Jocko Willink]

That had been up there.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, it was huge. I'm sure that.

[Jocko Willink]

How long had he been on deployment for?

[Sean Glass]

Oh my goodness. He was one of those guys that I don't know that he ever really went home. It was one of those things with the SF guy specifically. They would go back to back tours all the time. And Pete really, really loved it. So I think he was volunteering always to come back. So if I remember correctly of like the last three or four years, he had probably spent three of them inside Afghanistan. So he'd been there forever. It was him and his terp that had built out his. His interpreter was US citizen, but Afghani born. So they had built out all these relationships for us. We embed with him. We're kind of, you know, working with these relationships, building them up for us now. And he's going out with us on all these operations and he's just. I mean, he's a savage. Like, this guy is a total stud. Total stud. Definitely a little bit of a wild streak in him too. Like he would disappear with his terp every now and then and they would go into the village and then they would go a little bit past the village and they would go and do some relationship building or something. And then he would come back and our platoon chief Dave would have to kind of be like, hey man, what do you. You said you were going over here, but then you went over there type thing. So he was a super courageous guy, put it that way. Like not necessarily worried about his own his own self preservation in the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan. I'll give you an example that the first response to a firefight. So these different villages, they know we're there, the Taliban know we're there. So we're going and visiting these villages. We start building some relationships, talk to the village elders, hold these key leader engagements, and then we come back to our base. Well, the Taliban comes then into that village in the next day or two. Sometimes they would just talk with the village elders and sometimes they would start slapping people around, shooting a couple people, try to prove that they're still in charge type thing. So it was one of those instances where they started to make a ruckus in a neighboring village. We get the call that they're in there, so we respond and we go push out to basically clear them out of this village and protect the local population. So at the time we had these big up armored vehicles. I don't even think that we had our side by sides there yet up and running. So we have these big, they're called Mat V's. Imagine, even larger than a Humvee. They're big off road vehicles and they're basically like wheeled tanks. Super capable. That's what we go out on. Pete has got a Iranian made motorcycle called the Pamir and he's riding on this Iranian made motorcycle next to us, actually in front of us as like the vanguard guiding us to this village that we need to go to. So en route to this village, we're probably about 100 meters away from this village. My vehicle was the lead vehicle at the time, besides Pete leading the charge on his premier motorcycle. And our vehicle just starts getting pinged with all these different incoming rounds. And I see Pete just kind of, no joke, dump the bike, jump up, dive behind a berm and just start getting after it. Talking to him afterwards, he's like, rounds were just snapping all by him on his little motorcycle and he just dove off into a, in a ditch and started getting, getting after. He was good dude. Like he was awesome SF guy. As we were there for a little bit longer, we started to realize that he also had some issues that probably came from being in theater for too long. He was going in that mission set. You got to go a little bit indigenous, a little bit indigenous because you're living with him. I think Pete went full, full indige and we started to get the feeling that some of the times that he would go into these different villages, he would take his terp and he would come back and he would be pretty Heavily inebriated. So again, Dave's such a good guy. He really likes Pete, and Pete is a stud. So he's trying to look out for him and he's talking to him and he's saying, you know, you can't be doing all that nonse. And Pete just doesn't take it on board. And it kind of came to a head one night where we have. Our base is in the village, and then there's two pieces of terrain to the right and the left. And we had our observation post with the heavy machine guns, the grenade launchers, all that stuff up there. So one of our new guys, Chris, new guy with me, radios in and says, hey, there's machine gun fire going on in the wadi. It's the middle of the night. It's like 12 o'clock at night. So good on Chris because he could have just lit that position up with the.50 cal, but he had enough SA to go. That's a little bit out of the ordinary. It's not being directed at us. So he calls back down to Chief. Chief rallies everybody. We go, we clear through the wadi and we find out it's beating his terp. And they're just hammered. Hammered. And they're just clacking off rounds in the middle of nowhere. And luckily, as we were clearing up there, we realized what was going on. And no one took any shots when they were shooting everything. So get them, bring them back to our base. They're definitely hammered. And they're sitting on a bench and. And Dave's talking to him. And Dave is now, I mean, you know, Dave, he's calm until he needs to not be calm. And he's starting to get worked up now because they've had this conversation multiple times. And he's telling them, you know, you can't be doing that. You put everybody at risk. You put yourself at risk. You're damaging the relationship that we have here that we're trying to build out with these village elders by, you know, cracking off your machine guns in the middle of the Y in the middle of the night. And Pete doesn't like the conversation too much, and he gets up and he goes and attempts to take a swing at Dave, and Dave just drops him with a straight right.

[Jocko Willink]

Dave's. How tall is Dave? 66. Yeah, and he was like a. Like a boxer growing up.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And he's a jiu jitsu player, so he knows how to scrap. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Dave hits hard. Yeah, Dave is very hard.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

And he.

[Jocko Willink]

So he took the dude takes what? And the dude's drunk, dude, drunk. And he takes a swing.

[Sean Glass]

Takes a swing at Dave. Dave just rocks back. And then as he's coming back, boom, straight right. He's out cold. Like. Like timber. Out cold. His Terp, who's also inebriated, stands up and I just kind of shoved him back down on the bench, and he was so gone. He wasn't going to do anything else.

[Jocko Willink]

But, dude, I wish. I wish it was the two piece right there. I wish he cracked that terp, too.

[Sean Glass]

The Terp, I think, saw what happened and felt like he probably needed to do something and then realized it wasn't. Wasn't prudent. Prudent to do that. So Pete's just laid out now and we're all just kind of sitting here like, you know, Dave just dropped Pete. Justifiably just dropped Pete, probably for his own good.

[Jocko Willink]

And Pete And Dave, both E7s.

[Sean Glass]

Both E7s. Yeah. And hey, during the daytime, like, they're all good. They're all good. All good. But you get alcohol involved or Afghani wine or whatever it was, and, you know, things escalated. But that night, Dave, after he knocks him out, grabs him, drags him and puts him in a Conex box and locks the Conex box. And he didn't do it because he was concerned about Pete. He did it because all of his E6s just watched Pete try to take a swing at Chief. And he was very concerned about when he went to bed, what would happen to Pete. So he puts Pete in the Conex box and he puts one of the new guys or two of the new guys on watch. Pete wakes up the next morning. You know, he's definitely got a hangover and a sore jaw, but it's. It's all good. But, you know, the real lesson here is, for me at least, was Dave could have ruined Pete's career. He could have called back and just said, hey, this guy's a liability. He's insane. He's doing all these things that he shouldn't be doing. You know, you need to fire this dude. You need to take care of him. But that's not what he did. He called up the sergeant Major that we were all working for, SF Sergeant Major that we were in their battle space. The sergeant major was awesome. He's an ex cad guy. He was about Dave's height, 6 8, but big, big country boy. Last name was Smith. And he calls him up and he just tells him. He's like, hey, Pete needs to go home and he needs some time at home. To, you know, take a, take a breather. And I think Smith was also savvy enough to not ask too many questions. And Dave just goes, he's, he's good, dude. He just needs to go home and take a knee for a little bit. Smith didn't ask any questions besides that. He took Pete back, spent some time with him there at the command, and then. And then brought him back home, sent him back home on a bird and I think got Pete some, some much needed R and R and clear his headspace. But because of the way that Dave dealt with that problem with the Sergeant major, because he didn't try to make a big deal out of it, because he looked out for his guy, because he realized Pete was a legitimately good dude who had just probably been over there for a lot longer than he should have been over there. That sergeant Major loved our platoon. There was not one thing that we asked for that tour that we did not get. And I think the vast majority of the reason was because of how Dave handled that situation and how he didn't try to throw Pete under the bus, about how he just tried to take care of a fellow, fellow soldier who needed, you know, maybe a little bit of outside encouragement to go take care of himself.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's a legit. That's a legit example of the escalation of counseling as well. He's telling me doing this. You can't be doing this. Oh, you swing it, but you're getting dropped. No, that's, that's, that's great stuff. And, and there's always, you know, you. I mean, we could probably spend hours of you explaining, because when you're working with someone and you're seeing that they're doing a bunch of positive things and you're seeing that they're a good soldier and they're, but they have, obviously they have this issue that they got to deal with and do we want to burn someone and ruin their career? Even though they're a good person, they have an issue. Right. So that's one of those decisions you can make. Now, there's other times where you clearly, people do things where you're like, oh, yeah, you're done and you're going home, or whatever the case may be, and you're going home, and I'm reporting everything that you just did, and I'm going to do everything I can to burn your career. That happens, too. But realizing that there's a whole gray area and, and you as a leader have to figure out, well, in this case, Dave As a leader, figure out how he's going to handle this. And clearly, you know, he probably could have called the sergeant major and said, hey, you know, what's this guy been like? What's Pete like? And the sergeant major could be, oh, he was a problem. That's why we send him up there with you guys.

[Sean Glass]

Oh, okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Because guess what? He's a real problem. The sergeant major is probably like, hey, you know, he's. He had some issues at home. He wanted to stay on deployment. But yeah, he's dealing with some stuff and like, okay, cool. Guess what? You know, he needs some help.

[Sean Glass]

He needs a little breather.

[Jocko Willink]

So good relationship up and down the chain of command. Awesome. So you end up rolling from that platoon right into your next platoon.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Now you're a platoon commander, which out. Again, a little more credit. Yeah, yeah. Again, in the SEAL teams, you know, we call it a platoon commander when it's a really. It's a real stretch of the word. And you. When you got in this troop, now, you get into a little bit. You have a little bit of a frictional relationship. But when you roll in, you were telling me about this. This is when guys started getting their tridents straight out of sqt. Did you get your trident straight out?

[Sean Glass]

I did.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. And how did you get handled when you got to the team?

[Sean Glass]

Because of. Because Dave was there. I got handled like a seal. There was no games. There was no removing the trident until you earned it for the platoon type thing, which is something that I'm sure still happens every now and then.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Sean Glass]

So.

[Jocko Willink]

Echo, Charles. Back in the day, back in the day, we used to graduate buds, and you didn't get your trident. Your trident is the thing that, like, you wear on your chest means your seal. And so when I graduate buds, you can get a trident. You just showed up to the SEAL team and you showed up to the SEAL team, and you had. You went through STT SEAL tactical training, which was run by the SEAL team, and the SEAL team put you through that training. It was a couple months long. And when you got done with that, you had actually. I don't know how long it was probably three months or something like that. It definitely wasn't six months. So when you got done with that, you had to study and you had an oral board where you had, like, they put, like, every weapon in the armory, every type of weapon in the army, into a poncho and shake it up, and they'd throw it out on the floor, and you have to put all the weapons together. They'd give you all these, like, dive physics problems and you have to assemble a rig, a dive rig and work on the radios and call nine. Like, they just gave you a bunch of stuff. You had to do it. And when you were done, you were either approved or you were not approved. But pretty much everyone would, you know, most people, unless they were idiots, would get their Trident. So later they made that training go to one centralized location and at Naval Special Warfare Center. So now it was buds. You went to BUDS and you went straight into sqt. Now it was called SEAL Qualification training. That was now six. Was your sqt six months long?

[Sean Glass]

Seven months, yeah, because they added the jump at the end. So six months, then jump. So seven months.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're like, qualified, but they also ended up giving you your trident at the end of that. Well, you weren't at a SEAL team yet. They'd give you a trident. Now you'd show up at a SEAL team, you already had your trident. So some of the, Some of the boys, some of the mafia, they didn't like that. Is it. Wait, you, you don't, you don't just give a guy a trident. He's not even in a platoon. How can you get a trident? You're not in a platoon. So they did all kinds of little things. One of them was so in. In the military, if you have an inert training device, like an inert weapon, it'll be blue, or an inert, like RPG will be blue, or an inert grenade is blue. So they would take their tridents and paint them blue, meaning, like, inert. They also had put them in. I've heard of them being put in. In a. In a bird cage because you call your trident your bird. They would take the tridents and put them in the bird cage. And until they deem. Until the platoon deemed that you deserve to have a trident, your. Your bird is in the bird cage. I've heard of being in freaking fish tanks. Like, they've done all kinds of stuff and different, you know, and some people were like, Dave, like, you know, hey, that's. You're fine. Actually, I didn't really think about this in tasking a bruiser. We didn't do anything like that. It was just like the guy showed up and they were. We didn't think about their tridents too much. We treated them like new guys.

[Sean Glass]

You talk to guys. Some of my buddies had that done to them and they didn't look at it like it was. They have fond memories of it now. It's like hey, it was our platoon's way of saying, yeah, you know, welcome to the platoon type thing. So some of them have fond memories of that stuff, the bird cage.

[Jocko Willink]

So what was the deal with you guys? Do you guys had the blue tridents?

[Sean Glass]

Blue tridents and on pink patches. So we show up to our first pre training event. So the real six months of training, unit level training, you go through about a month of what we call pre unit level training, which is basically you're doing shakeout patrols, you're getting some time on the range, getting your weapons all doped in, maybe doing two man entries and four man entries, one room entries. Just basically doing what you need to do so that when you show up to day one of the actual training, you're ready to train and you don't have to spend hours doping in weapons and all that other stuff. So we're at our pre ult assaults training, where we do our assaults, and first day, everyone puts their gear away. You know, they're getting stuff ready for the. For the kill house and for the range. And I'm sitting in that space, and one of my new guys comes walking by, and he's got a pink patch on his arm, like a fluorescent pink patch, huge, with a blue inert trident in it. And I called him over and I said, hey, what's up with that patch? And he goes, oh, all the. All the new guys.

[Jocko Willink]

You said, pride, yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Real sheepishly. He's like, hey, all the new guys are wearing them. And I'm thinking, in my platoon, Michael, all the new guys. And he's like, yeah, in the whole troop. Three platoons. I said, well, who. Who told you to wear that? And he goes, with the LPOs, gave them out and told us all to wear them. And I'm very calm having this conversation with. But I'm just boiling on the inside for several different reasons. So call my LPO over, who's absolute stud, like, awesome guy. And I just asked him, hey, what's the deal with these? And he goes, hey, the other LPOs wanted to do it. And, you know, I didn't want to be the guy that says, no, I don't, you know, don't see what the big deal is about it. So I, you know, they're all wearing them.

[Jocko Willink]

Why was your blood boiling?

[Sean Glass]

Primarily for me, there's a lot of seals with really good reputations that gave their stamp of approval to those guys to have their trident. So I was upset one, because I think also as a grown man and a seal, you should not be wearing a pink patch with the blue trident on it. That was the primary reason. The secondary reason was because of kind of the message it sends. I'm like, well, you know, there's a lot of guys. And Dave was my first platoon chief, who I looked up very highly to. He was one of my BUDS instructors. So I know he was probably had a couple of these guys that were probably he put through as well. So I'm thinking, so Dave says they're good. All these other master chiefs at SQT say they're good, and now we're saying they're not good. So I was pretty heated. But nothing gets won by being superheated by not being detached. So I stayed super detached. I'm like, hey, I'm just going to get the rest of the platoon leadership, the troop leadership in. And let's talk about these, these patches with the end state being I knew my guys weren't going to wear them. I actually told my new guy before he walked away, I said, take that off and go tell every other new guy to take those off. And then I pulled my LPO aside, talked with him. He gave me the backstory. I went and got my chief. We kind of got on the same page. And then I went and talked to the rest of the platoon commanders, platoon chief and the troop chief, troop commander, and just said, hey, I, at first I was trying not to just plant the flag and say, absolutely not. My platoon's not going to do this. I was trying to build a little consensus and maybe show at least in my perspective why they shouldn't be rocking those patches. So try to win them over with some discussion. Same, some of the same points we just talked about. Hey, they're grown men. They've earned their trident, you know, they shouldn't be walking around with these pink patches on. It's unprofessional. Use the whole thing about, well, you're telling me that we know more, we get more of a say than every E6, every E7, every E8, and every E9 who trained them, selected them and said they were good to have these patches. So you're saying that their opinions don't really matter and this is a brief summary of things, but this was like a two to three hour heated conversation.

[Jocko Willink]

Only in the SEAL teams can we get this kind of drama going. But we could get it. I shouldn't say only in the SEAL teams, like any other organization, we can get our drama.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, it was basically the. One of the platoon chiefs who, one of the other platoons was really Planting the flag on it, like, hey, this is not the officer's territory. This is the enlisted person's territory. And again, I'm not trying to stir things up too much. We're just forming up as a troop. But I told them, I said, hey, well, when. When it starts to affect the platoon, my platoon, I'm like, it becomes my territory. And that's when I kind of turned my tactic towards, I don't think I'm going to win them over. I think it's just time to plant the flag. One of the. One of the platoon commanders did say, hey, I see your point. And I don't think it's the right thing to do. Troop commander, I think, was trying to be diplomatic about things, and he goes, it's one or nothing. So you guys all get on the same page, or you don't do it or you do it, but we're all going to do it or not do it together. And I finally just said, well, we're not doing it, so you guys can do whatever you want. But not the way that I wanted to start off the trip. But I felt like it was one of those things where for my guys, like, I'm not going to let my guys walk around.

[Jocko Willink]

So what'd you guys do? You guys not do it? Did the address of the troop do it?

[Sean Glass]

Nope, Nope, they didn't do it because it was the troop commander. And troop chief said, hey, it's either one or none. And as a. As a. As a token, if you will, Steve ward was the CMC at Team 7 at that time. So I said to close the. To close the discussion out, I said, our platoon is not wearing them. And I looked at our troop chief, and I said, if you want to go and ask Steve Ward if he's okay with these, and he says, yes, we'll put him back on. I already knew what Steve was going to say. We get through that training trip. Senior chief, who I loved, he was an awesome troop chief, pulls me aside, and he's like, I went and asked Steve, which my mind was kind of blown that he actually asked Steve in the first place, but he asked Steve, and Steve was like, mortified. Like, hell, no. Hell, no. You're not going to do that. So it was one of those things that maybe doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but for me, it was a huge deal, and I was not going to let my guys go around wearing a freaking pink patch with an inert trident on it.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, the patch thing was enough of a thing. For life. And I to write a freak chapter about it in a book because I had, you know, ours was a little bit of a different thing. But, you know, guys were just getting crazy with the patches. Highly offensive. Which is funny when you're out in the desert by yourselves on a SEAL base around a bunch of frog men. That's cool. I get it. They're funny. We all having a good time. But, you know, if Marine Corps battalion commander or an army battalion commander sees like some patch, which is vulgar at best, you know, totally offensive at worst, it's like, that's just not gonna fly, man. It's not happening. But yeah, the patch things, it's really. It's really interesting because I actually, I understood and still understand that there is absolutely a value in having material things that represent. Like we're sitting here talking about the trident. The trident's a real thing. Like, somebody made that up. It didn't even exist when the SEAL started. We didn't. There wasn't a thing. They made a thing. They made a thing to signify, like, oh, you're a seal. What are, what are the awards that you get? Those are things that you're going to put on your uniform that said you were deployed at this time or you served honorably in this combat situation. These are all things that the military made up and blessed. By the way, we have a flag in America. Why do we have a flag? It's just. And we put an American flag patch on our gear and those things work. And even in about face Hackworth, he would give. They have a. They had a patch.

[Sean Glass]

They had a patch. Little hardcore.

[Jocko Willink]

A condo patch is what it is. We ended up putting on a damn shirt. What up. So those things are real and there's a. There's a reason. And the SEAL teams went through a whole thing of like the platoon patch. Shouldn't. You shouldn't be loyal to the platoon. You should be loyal to the teams. Loyalty, the Navy, loyal to the country. Right? And so there's some fear that there was like an undermining. Like this guy's more loyal to the platoon than he is to the team, to the Navy, to the country. And that that's a thing that you can get scared of, right? And there is a reality to that because you're in a. When you're in a platoon, you just said it like you spent 18 months training with someone, then go on deployment for 11 months. And by the way, you risked lives together and you took lives together. Like there's things going on. So that the patch thing is a real thing, and you just have to. You can't throw away the baby with the bathwater. And at the same time, like, what are we going to do now? A squad patch? Now we're going to do a fire team patch. We're going to do, like, a swim buddy patch. And where does it end? Where does it stop? So, again, there's a bunch of different ways to handle it. And there's certain platoons that have a patch that means a lot to them, and it's awesome. There are certain platoons that have a patch, and it doesn't mean, you know, it doesn't mean really much to them. They don't care about it. It's just one of those. It's one of those things as a leader, just got to pay attention to. Yeah, you just got to pay attention to. I mean, in the army, you know, the way the army works their patches, you know, they have official patches for their units. That's the way it is. And it is a. They wear those patches with pride, especially once they get that combat patch on their right arm. Like, that's a thing they're going to wear for the rest of their lives with pride. And so here it is, a little thing that we kind of joke about, that I kind of joke about. It's like, oh, patches, you hear me? Kind of making fun of there. It's a. That's a real. It can be a very important thing. And so we as leaders need to remember that. And again, this. This goes over to, you know, what you're doing. The civilian sector. I've worked with plenty of construction companies that have some sticker that you get to put on your helmet after such and such a thing or such and such a project. You do these things and you get recognized for it. You know, even the uniforms in the Navy, you get the stripes on your arm. And if you've been well behaved, you get gold stripes. And if you're Tony Frati, you get red stripes because you've been busted down a few times. And, you know, you look at that group of guys, you see your brother over there with red stripes, like, okay, you know, he was getting after it maybe a little bit too much. So just important things to think about. You can really. You can make those patches beneficial. You can make them additive to the team. You can make them unify the team. They can. They can put culture. They can implement culture into the team, and they can also do the opposite of each one of those things, depending on how you handle them.

[Sean Glass]

As a leader.

[Jocko Willink]

So important things to think about. How about your relationship with your troop commander? That now you're a platoon commander.

[Sean Glass]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And so you have a sister platoon. So there's another platoon commander and then above you in the chain of command. Oh, yeah. And you have two.

[Sean Glass]

We were the super troop at the time.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. So we had three platoon commanders, and you have a troop commander who's in charge of all three platoons. And it sounds like you started with a little bit of friction.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Was it over the patch thing or was it something else?

[Sean Glass]

No. Yeah, Just general. Yeah. Just probably some personality conflicts there. Not seeing eye to eye. Some of it was how he carried himself. Some of the things he cared about that I didn't care about too much. And if you asked him, I don't know that he would have ever have said, we have a bad relationship, because I was smart enough to not have a bad relationship with him. But he definitely rubbed me the wrong way. And my first inclination with that was I just didn't want to spend any time with them. I wanted to minimize contact as much as I could. And luckily, you know, I figured out real quick that was a silly, silly tactic to take. We literally worked in the same office, like the same office space about this size. We were going to be together for two years, so he's not the worst guy in the world. We just didn't see eye to eye on some stuff. And I made it my goal after realizing, well, one, if I didn't have a good relationship with my troop commander, it's definitely going to affect me, my sanity. But more important than that, it's going to affect my platoon, because if I don't have a good relationship with them, there's not going to be a lot of trust there. I'm not going to have a lot of room to maneuver as far as different things that I care about with my guys, Things on deployment will probably be affected. So I started to make it my goal to build out as good of a relationship with him as I could. And, you know, there were things. Some of the things that. That got rubbed me the wrong way with them is he would. He had a little bit of an ego, too. You know, I did my first tour as well, but he had a little bit of ego. Had a hard time admitting when he had messed something up or when. When something was wrong, would jump to conclusions. That was the one that really got to me, is I felt like I was a pretty squared away guy. The other two platoon commanders were pretty squared away as well. You're our troop commander. If something's wrong, come to us. Let's talk about it. Don't jump to conclusions like we did something on purpose or we're out to, you know, to screw the troop over or something like that. So that. That really rubbed me the wrong way. So luckily, I was wise enough to see, don't avoid. You got to start building this relationship out with them. And I did everything I could to really start to strengthen that relationship. He was a little bit of a micromanager, I felt like. So I started over communicating things with him, including him, including him on all these different emails, updating him all the time, you know, as much as I could, trying to build that relationship out. And. And over time, throughout the workup, we were able to build out a really good working relationship. Now, every now and then, you know, we still jump to conclusions. There were still some personality things that rubbed me the wrong way, but they definitely got a lot better. And again, if you were to ask him, hey, did you have a frictional relationship with Sean? He probably would have said no. He probably would have said, there's some things we didn't see eye to eye on. But, no, I don't think we had a frictional relationship. And to his credit, he was always a big advocate for me, always representing me well up the chain of command. It wasn't like he was petty or vindictive or anything like that. He always had my back up the chain of command, hey, Sean's good to go, all that stuff, but it was just, you know, if you asked me, do I want to hang out with him or not hang out with them, the answer would have been, no, I don't really. But building that relationship out, it made the situation a whole lot better throughout training. And then what really paid off as we deployed. So, first tour, go to Afghanistan. Where do we want to go again? We want to go to Afghanistan again, and we want to go to Iraq. That's where every SEAL wants to go. At the time, that wasn't in the cards for us. We were going to what's called the crisis response element, which is a place in the Middle east that they stood up right around the time that Benghazi happened in 2011. And it was basically, we need a force in the Middle east that's capable of responding to a crisis or an emergency if needed. So most of the special operations forces in the military, we either deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq, and then a handful would still go to a Pacific theater to do some training over there, but they wanted Some dedicated force in theater that could respond to different emergencies. So you had two SEAL platoons from our troop. You had the. At the time, they were called the SIF platoon. I think now they're the KRIF platoon. It's basically the Green Berets Assault troop was there. Lyft from TF160th was there. It was supposed to be this package that we had all the assets that we needed. And when something bad happens, you know, the president or the SEC def would make the call, we'd spin the birds up, we'd load it, and off we'd go to save the day.

[Jocko Willink]

That's the. That's what the. That's what the plan.

[Sean Glass]

It sounds awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

It sounds awesome, but it's actually not that cool because it never happens. Echo Charles Never.

[Sean Glass]

Never.

[Jocko Willink]

So almost never.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, almost never. Come to find out, almost never. But at the time, it had never happened.

[Jocko Willink]

Happened.

[Sean Glass]

So one just trying to keep my platoon motivated. That's where they're going when all of their friends that are in different platoons are going to. I think we sent four platoons that tour to Afghanistan, so the majority of the team is going to Afghanistan. So that was a leadership challenge in and of itself is just getting guys prepared for that. And the mindset of it is what it is, and we're going to crush it while we're there, and we're going to be ready. Even if nothing happens, nothing ever happens, we get there. Fortunately for us, there was the opportunity for that over the beach mission that we talked about on the last podcast, which was the best mission I was ever a part of as far as an actual SEAL mission set. Like, you're putting everything together on that operation that we trained for. So it was an amazing experience. But there's multiple platoons there that could have done that job. And my platoon got picked or I got picked to take the guys down there. And I know for a fact the reason I got picked is I had a good relationship with that troop commander.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, the kind of advancement, I guess, of Echelon front. And I wrote about in the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics to this idea of teaching what a relationship is and how to build it. Because for a long time I was saying, and we were all saying, like, build a relationship, build a relationship, build a relationship. And then when we finally broke down what a relationship is and how you build it, which obviously it's something that we all instinctively did, but just like anything else, instinctively doing something and it works, and you go, okay, that's cool. It's really hard to teach someone what your instincts were if you don't identify them and how do you make them happen. So, you know, being able to teach people trust, listen, respect, influence, and care. That's what a relationship is. And if you want to build a relationship, you've got to give the other person those things. You've got to give them trust. You've got to listen to what they have to say. You've got to allow yourself to be influenced. You got to treat them with respect, and you got to show them that you care about them. And those are. What's beautiful is at work. In a work environment, there is a natural framework for all these things to take place. You know, for you, in that case, the guy is a little bit micromanager. Okay, so what do you do? Tell them, hey, you're micromanaging me and you need to just trust me. No, you don't do that. Doesn't work. You actually listen to them. You actually say, oh, I'm going to give you more information that you need. Hey, boss, that makes sense.

[Sean Glass]

Let me get.

[Jocko Willink]

Let me make sure that you understand what's happening. So you're in the loop. Like, you treat them with respect. Oh, you want me to give you a more detailed plan? Okay, you just allowed them to influence you. You listen to what they have to say. That's what you do. And when you do that thing, you build the relationship. The other piece of this is I've talked before about when you're in a leadership position, the people that you're working with are the terrain that you're maneuvering through. So that's a big difference in the SEAL teams or in any combat unit, at least for a small unit, for small unit leadership. When like a, like a white belt doesn't know what's happening, a blue belt understands the maneuvers that can take place, but then the purple belt understands how to use those maneuvers in the various terrain and can actually not just use the maneuvers in the terrain, but utilize the terrain to make the maneuvers even better. So when it comes to leadership and humans and what made me think of this is, you know, you've got your boss. Just like when we're out on the battlefield, I can't move a mountain. I can't shift a ravine to suit my needs. I can't change the human that I'm working with. I have to learn to maneuver, and I have to learn. Oh, guys, a little bit of a micromanager. Oh, the guy. What was the other thing you said about him? He Jumped. Oh, guy jumped conclusions. Okay, what am I going to do? Fight against that? No, you go. That's the. That's the terrain I've got to maneuver around. That's the terrain I actually am going to utilize. I'm going to figure out how to utilize that terrain. If I know this guy jumps to conclusions, I'm going to make sure that when I feed him a little piece of information, I already know what direction he's going to jump, and I'm going to be ready for it. So those are some things to think about from the relationship aspect. You're not gonna listen. Do people change? Yes, people do change a little bit sometimes over time, usually after some kind of a traumatic event. Like a traumatic event, people can change, even some. You know, it's a traumatic event. When Dave calls you like, you can't be Batman because you wouldn't want to have a. You don't want a mask on. That's like a little bit of a trop traumatic event for you. It's one of those things that can. You can make a little shift. Right. But there's, you know, other big traumatic. People get fired from a job. But I've seen people get fired from a job and just been like, I shouldn't have been fired. You know, I had that. I had a friend of mine get fired from a SEAL platoon, and he had beef with another guy, and they had the big, you know, showdown, and he ends up getting fired. And I was like, bro, what happened? And he's like, that guy couldn't work with him. And I was like, bro, you just got fired. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, whatever you're saying, you just got fired. That's. That's terrible. It's horrible. And the guy's not a bad guy.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And he's getting fired. So we can't. People aren't going to change. And when you're working for someone and they've got some idiosyncrasies or they've got some little personality traits that you don't like very much. You can't. You can't necessarily change them. It's very difficult to change. And by the way, this goes down the chain of command, too. And you. That's why sometimes the parameters that you got to put on some. On some of your subordinates are parameters that contain or mitigate these idiosyncrasies that people have. You put a little thing on, you got someone that jumps to conclusions. That works for you. Hey, if you get into these four scenarios, hit me up and let me know what you're doing before you go. You know what I mean? Like, you know that they're going to jump to conclusions. Hey, if you were going to, are going to fire anyone, let me know before you fire someone. Or even like, oh, you're going to write if, you know, if I got Sean over here and he's a jump to conclusion kind of guy and just writing everybody up, you know, hey, listen, I'm not trying to micromanage you, but I just want to make sure we're on the same page. If you're going to write someone up, just let me know when you're going to do it. That way I can have a conversation with you and be like, dude, you're going to write echo up like because he was late by three minutes. Like, is that the kind of relationship you want to have with this guy? When was the last time he's late? I've never been late before. And you're going to write. You see what I'm saying? You can have these conversations. So just important things to keep in mind, man. The trustless and respect influencing care, the building relationship things very important. And then human beings are terrain that you, you're gonna have a hard time changing the terrain. You change a little bit, you know, you can, you can, you can blow some trees to give you a better line of sight or you can cut down some trees. We did that before, like, hey, just saw down these trees so we have a little better field of view. Put a loophole in a wall. You can do those things, but you're not going to be able to drastically change the terrain. Just like you're not going to be able to drastically change some human being. And they're their personality and their instincts, hey, good luck over time might have some influence over them.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

But it's not going to be an immediate gratification by, you know, hey, what can I say to my boss to get him off my back? Nothing. Nothing. There's not one thing you can say to your boss to get him off your back. You know, what can I say to my subordinate that'll make him start paying? Nothing. There's not one thing. There's not one single thing that you can say. There are some things you can do over time. You know, if someone's got a big ego, you can assign them things that are outside their capacity. If someone lacks confidence, you can assign them things that are within their capacity and let them excel and those things will be good. But there's not one thing you can say, yeah, so be careful of those things.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. And then, you know, debriefing is a huge thing. Hindsight, looking at what we could have done better, you know, there was definitely two traits that I had that I could have done better. And he had talents for sure. He was awesome administratively. Which at the time, if you were to say what was my weak spot, I probably would have said a little bit of admin for certain things. If it was an award or something that mattered for my guys, like, I would put in whatever time I needed to make sure that was done. But there was other things that I didn't pay that much attention to. And as a troop commander, he has the perspective of why that matters. And he was hard on me about that stuff. And then what was my big issue, my first platoon that I just talked about that Dave helped cure? Well, it's not like he said that and it just went away totally. So why did I have such an issue with this troop commander? True commander had a little bit of an ego, but what did I have too? I had a little bit of an ego. So always micromanaging me. Why is he micromanaged me? I'm a squared away guy, you know.

[Jocko Willink]

I just got back from 11 months of combat in Afghanistan.

[Sean Glass]

Come on. Exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

So don't worry, I got your script down.

[Sean Glass]

So that was the things that I was doing that were not helping this situation out whatsoever. And luckily I realized, hey, if. If I go in there ego to ego with my troop commander, it's rock, paper, rank. I lose every single time. And I can't control necessarily his ego, what he had, but I can control my own ego. And what can I do to maybe get him off my back a little bit with some of the administrative stuff and built trust them? Administrative stuff is show him that I'm taking on board what he's saying and provide a little bit better updates and all the other things that he really wanted. So it's not like it was a one way street of, you know, this issue. There was definitely things I was doing to contribute to it.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And those relationships, it's so awesome when you have a good relationship, when you build good relationships. I was actually at the dinner table the other night with my daughter Rana.

[Echo Charles]

I hear good things.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, hear good things. So for some reason we were talking about the. The SEAL teams and she was asking my kids don't know about, you know, the seal teams. You know, like, I don't sit there and talk to my kids about the SEAL teams. And. And she was like, oh. She was like, so. Wait, so were you in a platoon? She was talking about something. She goes, wait, so were you in a platoon? I was tasking a bruiser because she went to the muster. She was like, wait, so. And she's working while she's at the muster, so she doesn't get to see the whole thing. Anyways, she. I think she. I think the conversation was like, so you were. Was Task Unit Bruiser a platoon? And I was like, no. I go, it. It was. There was two platoons in Task Unit Bruiser. And she goes, oh. And then she goes. And Leif was in charge of one of those platoons. And I go, yeah. And then she goes, and Seth was in charge of the other one. And I go, yeah. And you could see she had this look on her face like, oh, are you serious? Like, what a freaking joke.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, how fun was that job?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Because she's been.

[Jocko Willink]

Because she knew late. She'd known Leif and Seth since she was a little, tiny kid. Since we're, you know. What was that? 2005? She met Leif and Seth, and so she's seen us growing out for the past 20 years, and it's like, oh, so these guys that are your bros that you hang out with and have fun with and go surf surfing with, that's who you worked with all the time? She was like. And you could see the look of like, oh, okay. And then she's like, and JP was there. And I'm like, yeah. And JP was there, and Tony was. I was like, yeah. And so she starts putting together the picture of, like, oh. So it was like, awesome. You know, she didn't say that, but she was like, okay, I get it. So, yes, relationships are paramount. You get done with that. And then it's Bud's instructor.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, Bud instructor, went over there, wanted to do my troop commander right away, but I was way too junior.

[Jocko Willink]

No way.

[Sean Glass]

Wait, no. My exo, who was an awesome guy, just when I told him that, he just laughed, Literally laughed. And he's like, bro, you are way too junior to do your troop commander spot. So BUDS was the next move after that.

[Jocko Willink]

What do you. When you talk to young men right now that want to go to buds, how do you tell them to get ready for it?

[Sean Glass]

Run. Run and swim. Yeah. I mean, if. What I should probably say is, if you need me to tell you how to get ready for buds, nowadays, you probably shouldn't go to buds. Like, everything is out there.

[Jocko Willink]

There's.

[Sean Glass]

The Navy has all the information that you Need. They have training programs, they have all this stuff. But I just tell them, you know, if they're really asking me, honestly, I just tell them, run more than you think you need to run and swim more than you think you need to.

[Jocko Willink]

Swim, and then hopefully you'll not quit. That's what I tell them. They say what I need to do to get through buds or whatever. I'm like, just don't quit. Yeah, you legitimately have a really good chance of making. You got probably a 95% chance of making it through Buzz, man. Maybe a 90% chance of making it through buds if you don't quit.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. I would say nowadays it's 100%. Right. Because you won't get to buds unless you can physically qualify in the runs and everything you do. If it was back in the day, as you like to say, when they just kind of fed you to buds and it was what it was without like a pipeline of knowledge, maybe that number is 80, 70% now. Like, you don't get to buds unless you're in shape enough to get through buds.

[Jocko Willink]

I think the screening test that I took to get to buds, I think, I think I. Literally the minimum score on pull ups was like six. Yeah, six pull ups, bro. If you, if you can only do six pull ups, bro, you can.

[Sean Glass]

You're going to have a hell of.

[Jocko Willink]

A hard time getting through that. O course doing freaking back to back to back to back rope climbs while you're renting wet and sandy. Like, it. It's not going to be easy.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, don't quit, but be in some good ass shape when you show up there. So then you finally get to your troop commander tour. And so speaking of relationships, how was the relationship rolling in that troop commander tour?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. With what I learned. You can learn what you, you can learn something from everybody. My first platoon, it was all positive learning. Awesome Platoon Chief, awesome Platoon commander, Troop Commander Jack Carr, who was amazing as a troop commander and genuinely cared about everybody in the troop to include the squad commanders, which, you know, being a troop commander, sometimes troop commanders don't really show that much love or pay that much attention to their squad commanders. And that was not Jack. He was definitely involved and, you know, mentoring us and spending time with us. Awesome Troop Chief. So all the lessons that I learned from them were how to do things, how to conduct yourself.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's a huge point you just made. And I remember you guys going through, but Jack or any troop commander, there's a lot of stuff going on. Like there's a lot of stuff going on, and it's not just the 40 or if that was a super troop, was that a super troop that.

[Sean Glass]

That platoon was not.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so you got 40 mugs. Like, there's a lot of stuff going on. You got the command, they're all spinning up. They're trying to figure things out. So there's a lot of things going on. A lot of things going on. So you can. If you're not careful, you can start looking up and out too much, which you hear me talk about. Up and out. You got to be looking up and out. But if you're not careful, you're looking up, up and out too much, and you're not training these young leaders to lead, which is problematic. So, yeah, make sure you're investing in your people. Sounds like Jack definitely did that with you.

[Sean Glass]

Yep. And then second tour, we just talked about the troop commander. Learned some good stuff from him again, administratively. The guy was dialed in, and it definitely helped me out throughout my career to learn from him why it matters, how to do it right, all those different things. Also learned some things from him that I were things that I did not want to do with my own troop. I felt like he was a little bit overbearing with how he handled the platoons from time to time. As far as, like, the. The issue of the patches and whatnot, platoon identity. Sometimes it was a little bit more like, it's just the troop. It's just the troop. And I'm like, well, that's. That's great, and we're all about the troop, but, like, it's okay if the platoons have a little bit of identity themselves and they take pride in being in the platoon. As long as, like you said earlier, it doesn't become frictional. The competition doesn't become frictional. As long as we're all three troop, that's great. So the lessons that I took going to my troop commander tour were a lot of good things from Jack. And then deliberately wanting to make sure that my platoon commanders felt like they were platoon commanders, because there were times my platoon commander tour, I felt like I had more freedom as a squad commander than I did as a platoon commander at certain times from my leadership. So I wanted to very deliberately make sure that the troop had the troop identity, our standards, ready to rock and roll. We had our. Our five troop standards. And what I told our guys was, if you are doing these five things at all times, you'll never hear from me about anything other than great job. Like, these are the Things that my SCA and I care about. And the guys did them. They stuck to them. It was great. I had great relationships with my platoon commanders, all my platoon chiefs, and again, I was given a huge gift because I was given 3 really squared away platoon commanders. Three really squared away platoon chiefs. But then we deploy and we take two extra platoons from Team 5 to Iraq with us because we needed that many platoons inside of Iraq for what was going on at the time inside of Mosul.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So this is like 2015, 2016. You go on deployment and Jason Gardner's your CMC.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You guys came to my house.

[Sean Glass]

We did.

[Jocko Willink]

The troop leadership came to my house for a freaking leadership brief prior to departure.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Brought the guys over there, all five platoons now. Because now I have five platoons and epic. It was amazing. I mean, it was. Troop commander. What else could you ask for? Right. So I wanted them to hear, because we were going to go very likely. We didn't know at the time. Obviously, there was a certainty, but we were. The writing was on the wall. We were probably going to end up. At least some of the platoons were going to end up inside of Mosul. Heavy urban combat. Obviously, y'all had a ton of experience in that environment. I wanted them to hear from you, your big takeaways from that environment and then your just big takeaways about working in that joint environment where you're Marines, Air Force, army, and you're playing in their battle space. And then just the lessons that y'all learned over there. It's good for people to hear things from an outside perspective as well. And y'all had a lot of things to offer us, so came over there. You know, you talked to him about Ramadi, asked a bunch of questions. Our guys asked a bunch of questions. It was great. So we. We deploy four of those platoons for the platoon commanders. My three that I went through, work up with, great relationships. Like, I love those guys. One of the guys from the other platoon that we adopted, very easy to get along with. Same thing. Great guy. He was just fired up to be going to Iraq. They were solid. Platoon and the other platoon was great, too. But me and the platoon commander did not have as good of a relationship. Now, that was 100% my fault. So I don't really know him that well. Literally, we get given these platoons and then we deploy about a month later. So we deploy and he goes to an outstation with his platoon, and he's asking for lots of different things to support and I don't have all these things to give away. I've got now five different platoons inside of Iraq that are broken into seven different outstations. Resources are limited. So as a troop commander, I have to sit up here and try to figure out who really needs this, who really needs that piece of equipment, who really needs these weapon systems, that type of thing. And I made a comment to him. I was busting his chops, which I did all the time with the other platoon commanders, but we'd gone through workup together, so they know where it's coming from, and they bust my chops right back. And it was kind of like how guys talk to each other. I should have been more self aware. Me and this guy did not have that level of relationship. So we're on a call and I bust his chops. I say something about how needy he is and how he wants everything. And I'm. In my defense, I'm totally just joking. It just goes dead silent on the.

[Jocko Willink]

Was this just him on the call?

[Sean Glass]

Just. No, no. Yeah, just him on the call. Just him on the call, Dead silent on the other end. And instantly I'm like, oh, I've made a. I've made a mistake. So he's like, well, why do you think I'm needy? And I'm like, oh, my goodness. So I try to. Hey, man, I'm just goofing around.

[Jocko Willink]

De escalate.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. De escalate, yeah, I'm just goofing around. But it wasn't happening.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Like, he was really offended by it. That really damaged the relationship. I spent the rest of that deployment trying to convince him that I was in his corner. And he doesn't know a lot of these things, and he doesn't need to know a lot of these things. But his personality, it was things that him and Jason and our commanding master, our commanding officer, they didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things. So there was some friction at the command level with him as well. But I was 100% sure that he was the right guy to be in the position he was in, because I knew he was very squared away on target, and I knew he wasn't going to allow his guys to take risks that they shouldn't be taking in an environment where they definitely could have done things that they shouldn't have been doing inside of Mosul, with not a lot of oversight. I knew he had the respect of his guys, I knew his platoon chief had the respect of his guys, and I knew that he was not going to allow them to do things that they should not doing. So he was the right guy for that job. There was times, There was a time where I was sitting down in Jason's office, in the commanding officer's office, and the commanding officer was to the point to where he wanted to relieve him.

[Jocko Willink]

Really?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Yeah. And the relationship. I have a great relationship with Jason. I have a great relationship with my commanding officer. And I said, hey, sir, I can completely understand why you feel that way, but if you can just take on board what I'm saying, here's why I think he's the right person for this job. And let me just try and mitigate as much of the personality things as we can. And I laid out my case. And like a good commanding officer, he trusted the guy that was closest to the problem. And he said, okay, you know, he's. He's yours. You've got to manage it. But I'm not gonna relieve him. I don't tell this guy that. This. I'm never going to tell him. Like, he doesn't need to know that stuff. But I spent that whole diploma trying to convince him that I was supporting him, that I was there for him, that I was trying to enable him to be, you know, do the best job he can inside Mosul. And I don't know if I ever, ever got through to him or not. I know for a fact. I know for a fact the reason that that relationship soured is because that joke that I cracked. And look, if we had gone through training together and I had that 18 months with him, it would have been no big deal, but we didn't have a relationship, and I crossed the line and, you know, he just took it the wrong way. And the next six months was. Was rough for me and him.

[Jocko Willink]

I was just kidding. It's real hard. That's a real hard round back. Yeah, that's like. You know what they say when you. Exactly. When you fire your weapon, you. You can't pull that. You can't bring that round back into the gun. It's out. And unfortunately, when you open your mouth, you can't bring those words back in and you keep, you know, especially when the weight. The weight that you have when you're in a leadership position and the words that you say carry so much more weight and oftentimes don't. People don't realize how much weight. The words that they say. I. I learned that on a. On a steady learning curve throughout my career, you know, where. Because, you know, I was a freaking. I was at E4 in the days back in the day, dude. I mean, there was no. There was literally not one thing that was filtered coming out of my mouth talking to the other guys in the platoon. Not one single thing would be filtered ever. And that's the way every single guy in a platoon was. You know, the E4E5 mafia used to be E4 mafia, by the way. Echo Charles. Because back in the day, we weren't getting the E5, so it was E4. You know, we. And, you know, you're just gonna. Any chink in the armor that you saw on one of your friends. It was attack mode all day long. And then as I got more and more senior, I realized, oh, you know, I'd, like, say something to some guy like, oh, good shooting, knucklehead. And you could see like, oh, if I said that to my peer, you know, good shooting, knucklehead. They'd be like, oh, let's see. You. You know, they're talk back when you're in the platoon commander and then a troop commander, it's like, you say, hey, good shooting, knucklehead. And they look at you like, oh, I let my boss down, or, you know, now I'm gonna get a baddie. I mean, just crazy thoughts. So you got to be. You definitely have to be careful about the weight of your words as. As you increase your level of responsibility in the chain of command.

[Sean Glass]

The last, I would say, month, things got better. And the reason things got better was he was in Mosul with his platoon doing awesome stuff. Command master chief and our CEO, one of them had to be in Mosul at all times per the. The general's orders inside of Iraq. One of them had to be in Mosul kind of c twoing some different things. Commanding, controlling, different things. So Jason was up there, and again, you know, he had a frictional relationship with the CEO. So they had a little exchange, and the guy's super squared away. Like, super squared away. Super smart guy, great at his job, but just, you know, sometimes probably picking and choosing the right battles is what. What I would define it as with a commanding officer. And it kind of escalates. And this is what Jason's telling me. And, you know, Jason's like. He says he's not getting any support. He's not getting any support from his troop leadership, all these other things. And Jason just looks at him and goes, the only reason you're here. Oh, yeah, yeah. Is because Sean stood up for you when the boss wanted to fire you. And it was like, to him, I wasn't there. So this is Jason and I'm, of course I trust Jason. He said it was kind of took the guy back. He know these discussions went on and Jason's like, he's been the only guy at the leadership level that's consistently been in your corner. So maybe pump the brakes a little bit after that. Jason didn't tell me that that happened until after the tour, but the last month, he was getting ready for a green team at the time too. So I would call him and just ask him, how's the workouts going? You know, are you able to stay in shape? Are you, how's the ops going? Things like that. And I noticed there was a little bit of a shift. It was more of a conversation versus just one and two word answers. And then come to find out, you know, Jason had a little heart to heart with him, and I think it got him back in my corner a little bit. But it was still, it still wasn't great.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I, I, well, I have, like, rules, like, no joking on the radio. You've heard Leif talk about that, like, with me. I was like, you are not now even like on inner squad radios. Even on inner squad radios. I'm like, don't joke or don't make jokes on these radios, and certainly not on any freaking, like battalion net or brigade net company net. Like, never make any jokes. But that's a good rule. And you, you hear Leif talk about the fact that, like, I didn't joke with those guys for just eight weeks when I met him. And it's like, yeah, dude, I don't. You gotta be careful. And you, you gotta, you can't reel those things back in. And so you got to be careful. 1 miles I was a young SEAL, and there's on it on, on ships, on Navy ships. You ever been on a Navy ship before?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

What'd you do on a Navy ship?

[Sean Glass]

So our first deployment was supposed to be the Cree deployment. We went to Afghanistan was supposed to be Cree. So our entire workup was basically Mar ops focused. And then all of our UL, all of our TJET, the last phase of training, and then G20 summit, PSD protection for the President at the time, spent two and a half weeks on the payload. So, okay, I don't have a lot of time, but at the, during that time frame, I had more time than most seals on a ship.

[Jocko Willink]

I had a lot of time on, on a Navy ship as a seal. And there's a thing on the Navy ships called Navy Red. And it's basically a radio frequency that goes in between all the ships in the little fleet that you're with. So you got like six or seven Navy vessels. And on the bridge, where the commander of each ship sits and where the, the freaking admiral has piped into his room is this Navy Red, which is. This is the one common frequency for the whole little fleet that's out there. And it's not called a fleet. Life's going to be like. It's not a fleet. It's a battle group. Like, it's a battle group, okay. Or like the arg, the amphibious ready groups or whatever little. You little group that you're with. There you go, Leif. They have this Navy Red thing. So we were planning some op, and our, our task unit commander was over on like the mothership. And so we're planning this op, and my assistant platoon commander, he's a Naval Academy guy and super smart and very, very square to away, very squared away and kind of quiet. So he's. And for whatever reason this op, like, we had some big, major change in the op and we're going to do this. You know, it was like helicopters and now we're using boats. It was some major change and we had to get comms really quick. And for whatever reason, he got called to the, to the bridge to get on Navy Red and communicate with our task unit commander. And the task unit commander tells him whatever he tells him. And this Naval Academy guy who's totally squared away, who's quiet and humble, he goes, you know, he says, you know, you're gonna be using boat. Hey, sorry, you guys are gonna be using boats now instead of vessels. You know, you got to have the boats ready and. Or instead of helos, you gotta have the boats ready in an hour and a half. And my SYSTEM platoon commander goes whiskey Tango Foxtrot over. And it was like the whole freaking bridge, everyone's was like, oh, yeah, you got some for that. So, yes. Be careful when you're cracking jokes look like, to have fun. I like to have fun as much as the next guy, which in a leadership position, you get this. The fun and the joking has definitely got a. Take a backseat to what's going down in. As far as your leadership role goes. So be careful. What else, what else? About that, that deployment as a troop commander, I know you guys did that op where you guys rolled in or one of your platoons rolled into those SAS guys.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Do we talk that about that?

[Sean Glass]

No, we did not. Oh, I don't know how I left that One out.

[Jocko Willink]

That's a good one.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, it is. Because I mean SES guys are just man.

[Jocko Willink]

Legit.

[Sean Glass]

Legit is the only word. Yeah, the only word for them. So they're, they're up there, small group of them. I think it was only about 8 guys are up in outside outskirts of Mosul and they're running their own ops.

[Jocko Willink]

Just FYI the, the British as a whole are freaking professional. They are free. They are the British military. So professional. And I haven't worked with a ton of them, but I've worked with the SBS and I've worked with the SAS and they're freaking outstanding. They're just freaking outstanding. So. And then when you're the SAS is just another level.

[Sean Glass]

That's what all of our soft is.

[Jocko Willink]

Based, all based on the sas.

[Sean Glass]

SAS laid the groundwork for everything and they're respected for a reason. Yeah, respected for a reason. And just that Brit mentality is just a different mentality too. I mean, you know.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, just. Yes, I do, I know it well.

[Sean Glass]

Just a different mentality. So they're up there in Mosul and they're running their own ops. And I think development group had a couple of guys up there as well, not working with him, but they were running some ops as well, much higher level operations than what we were running. And our, one of my platoons was their closest to them geographically. So they were the SAS QRF whenever the SAS would roll out. And then SAS at times would be our QRF whenever our guys would roll out. They had a real good relationship with each other, spent time with each other at the different bases. Both had a good relationship. So anytime they needed someone to be on the hook to be the Quick Reaction Force, which is basically we got an operation plan, we're going to do the operation. Something does not go right, we need reinforcements. The first step is call the Quick Reaction Force. So you don't go out without having a QRF prepped and ready. So when they go out, if my platoon is the qrf, obviously that means they're not going out. That means everybody's there, jocked up, ready to roll in case something goes down. So SAS rolls into Mosul in thin skinned vehicles, four of them with their terp, which just right away you're like the SAS legit, just, just a different mentality. And this during the height of the Mosul clearance. So ISIS controls all of Mosul. At this point in time we have not made that much ground inside of Mosul. They go in to do their thing and they basically I don't know if they got lost or if they got cut off, but they got cut off and isolated in a compound, and things were going south real quick. So they called our platoon to come and react, to come try to help them out. Our platoon load up their big up armored vehicles. They look like the. Again, the giant tanks on wheels, basically. And they roll into Mosul to try and, you know, help these SAS guys out. By the time that our guys got to their general position, not even in the compound, the general position, there was ISIS guys peppering them from like, two blocks away. And, you know, they've got small arms fire. That's all they really got. But they're definitely handling their own. But they needed that qrf. It got so dicey that our guys had to find a wall that was weak enough that they could push down with one of their vehicles because they couldn't even maneuver to the front to help them out because it was just too much fire coming in. So this is a sketchy situation, like a super sketchy situation for these SAS guys to be in. Like they're in complete. They're about to get overrun. Is what's about to happen as good as they are. It's just a numbers game at this point in time. So our guys get there, they drive down, drive over some walls, through some walls, knock them down, get into the compound finally, and pick these guys up.

[Jocko Willink]

And did they leave their vehicles?

[Sean Glass]

I don't know. I think they did.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn.

[Sean Glass]

But I'm not positive. Don't quote me on that. I'm not positive. They get there, door pops open, you know, guy hops in and, like, it's no big deal whatsoever. Straight up just goes, hey, thanks for the lift, mate. Like. Like it wasn't a big thing that they were in this running gun battle.

[Jocko Willink]

About to be over, with all of.

[Sean Glass]

ISIS inside of Mosul about to be overrun. So just legit. I mean, what else can you say besides just legit? And then it just cracks me up that Brit mentality of it is what.

[Jocko Willink]

It is, and you end up losing your. One of your EOD guys over there.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, yeah, jj, that was right as the clearance was kicking off and we talked about this, but he. We only had two dedicated EOD guys. And again, as a troop commander, you're trying to figure out where's the best place to put your dedicated EOD assets, because you've got seven outstations that could all use Navy, highly trained Navy EOD guys that have gone through your workup with you, that have gone through your assaults, training with you that know all of your SOPs. So I was trying to figure out where to really put this amazing asset. And one of our platoons just kept getting in these IED issues where they were complex IED shoes to include incoming rounds that had chemical agents inside of them to where such an extent that our guys couldn't roll out without at least having their chem stuff with him. I don't think they ever put it on, but they had to have it with them because some of the rounds that were coming in had some, you know, chlorine gas or something in it. So it was sketchy. So I made the call to put the EOD assets up there because that's where they were needed most. And then during the initial stages of the clearance, as they're trying to get to Mosul, so at that point in time, they'd gotten close to the city, but not to the city. They got to get obviously into the city to start clearing the everything out. So they're trying to push big operation to try to get the entire coalition force to Mosul so that we could take about a week break, prep everything, and then start the clearance. So kinetic. A crazy kinetic day, Lots of different gun battles. And they were in a position, and they realized that the enemy was maneuvering to. To take some high ground, and they were about to be in a really bad spot. So they made the call, hey, we've got to make a move from here, get to a different piece of terrain. Platoon chief made the call, identified some terrain. They start driving in their up armored vehicles to get where they need to go. And jj, the EOD chief, is in the lead vehicle, and he's doing his best to spot from the passenger seat. So he sees something ahead that he thinks looks like an ied. And he calls an all stop. Everybody stops. And then he, you know, kind of identifies it's definitely an ID and what he realizes is he pretty sure they just drove into a minefield. So he makes the call. Hey, we've got a reverse out. And the best thing to do is just try to keep exactly in the same tread that you're in, because if you drove in that way, the thought process is, obviously, you're probably safe by going back out that direction. So my platoon chief pops his door open, and he starts to spot for the driver, and JJ says, hey, that's my job. That's not your job. He makes the platoon chief close his door. J.J. pops his door open, he's spotting for the guys, and I don't know if it just didn't go off the first time or maybe they just barely missed it, but they ran over a pressure plate, and JJ was spotting with his head outside the door, half his body outside the door, trying to make sure that guys were getting out safe. And he just took the full force of that blast, and guys went to work on him. Did some heroic things in the middle of a firefighter, but it just wasn't. Wasn't gonna happen. He expired within about two hours.

[Jocko Willink]

You. What was your plan when you came home from that deployment?

[Sean Glass]

I wanted to do another troop commander tour because I was very junior. So I asked my commanding officer, and he laughed at me and said no, you can stay around and be the ops boss if you want to do that, but you're not going to do troop commander tour. So didn't want to leave team five. Loved it. So did the ops job for a little bit before getting bounced over to trade at.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're over there at trade at For a couple years. We. We talked about that last time you were here. Got out, you did your startup thing again. These are things we covered on that last time, but eventually start over at Echelon Front.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Having a good time?

[Sean Glass]

Oh, loving it. Yeah. I was just up in New York with Cody for a couple of days, working with some of New York's finest. I mean, what's not to love about that?

[Jocko Willink]

Freaking outstanding. And then you got Primal Beef going on. What's the progress there at Primal Beef?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, been going for about a year and a half now. Everything's solid. And when we started the company, we wanted. Simple is the thing that we teach. So what we tried to do was keep it as simple as we possibly could until we figured out basically, logistically, what's the best way to make sure that you don't want any part of the cow to go to waste. What does everybody want when they want beef?

[Jocko Willink]

Ribeye.

[Sean Glass]

Ribeye. Everybody wants ribeye. Everybody wants steak. You only get about 26 ribeyes. From a cow, you get about 26 New York strips, and you get about 18 fillets. You get a lot of ground beef, and then you get some different awesome cuts that are fly under the radar sometimes. Your flank state, your Bavette steak, your hanger steaks, all of those are awesome, but they're. They're lesser known cuts. So we wanted to make sure that.

[Jocko Willink]

I been eating all those steaks. They're freaking good.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, I wouldn't. I don't just. You go to a restaurant a they might not have them. But B, if it's ribeye or flank steak, like, I'm just going to get the ribeye just out of habit and out of go with what you know. Right. So I really didn't start eating some of these other cuts until you started sending me these boxes filled with them. And I'd be like, oh, oh, yeah, good to go.

[Sean Glass]

Do the, the flat iron steak. It's become my favorite steak now. If you still put a ribeye in a flat, I'm eating both of them. But the flat iron is amazing.

[Jocko Willink]

That flat iron thing's ridiculous.

[Sean Glass]

It's so good. But you get one per cow, you know, so it's a scarce resource, if you will. So we were trying to keep things very simple and try to figure out the best way to make sure we're honoring the entire animal and not wasting or not able to move some of those different cuts. So we built out some boxes and we tried to make the boxes the best value we could for the customer with the best cuts they could get in there, but then also make it to where X amount of boxes made a whole cow, basically. So we wanted to keep things very simple. The feedback we got from everybody that's tried the beef is they love it. And the feedback we kept getting was we'd like to pick whatever we want to put in the box. So we made the change, we redesigned a new website because, lesson learned, our old website did not really allow us to do a lot of customization. So that's probably my biggest lesson learned from it, is I should have done more research ahead of time knowing it's an E commerce platform and really look into what designs, what website designs, what companies are really meant for E commerce. We went with one that's wasn't really made for E commerce and it just didn't allow a lot of customization which meant we couldn't give some certain options to the customers that we really wanted to give. So we scrapped the old website, built a whole new website out.

[Jocko Willink]

So now what do you want now?

[Sean Glass]

Now it's Shopify.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I really apologize for not telling you to go Shopify because I've made transitions at Origin USA to Shopify, may transition to Jocko Fuel at Shopify. And those are big, massive websites with big, massive e commerce. And the guys at Shopify are, are freaking really awesome. And there, there's a reason why their platform is, is an outstanding platform. Like they have great attitudes. I've, you know, Echelon Front has worked with Shopify, so they're just, they, they get it.

[Sean Glass]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I, I, I wish I would have told you that. Whatever it was a year and a.

[Sean Glass]

Half ago, I wish I would have asked you that. Yeah, I was like, oh, we got this figured out. No big deal. Websites. A website? What's that? Yeah, you know, so now, because the new website allows us to basically do whatever we want, our goal has always been one to give Americans the best beef they can get their hands on, period. And we want to give it to them in a way that they want. So the boxes were great for the time to help us start the company up. They're still there, they're never going away and people will still order those boxes. But now we made a couple of smaller sampler size boxes. So it's got the same cuts but about half the samples. Because for some reason, you know, 15 pounds of beef, some people have a hard time eating that within a month. For me, that's like a week supply of beef. But some people don't want 20 pounds of beef a month. So we built some boxes that are about 7 or 8 pounds. Got all the great cuts in there. And then the thing that I'm really excited about as far as the, the steak and the beef options is we have a build your own box now. So now it's 10 items. Whatever, 10 items you want to put in that box is what we're going to give you. Now I know what most everybody's reaction is. I know what your reaction is going to be is I'm putting 20 rib eyes in there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

But you know, now there's no such thing as a bad cut of beef. And there's definitely no such thing as a bad cut of primary. And all these different steaks are awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

They're freaking.

[Sean Glass]

Rib eyes are great. A flank steak is great. A flat iron steak is ridiculously.

[Jocko Willink]

Steak is ridiculously good. Yeah, ridiculously good.

[Sean Glass]

And it's versatile steak. Eat it as a steak. Make some tacos, make some whatever.

[Jocko Willink]

You're gonna see some amazing. The Shopify platform. This is just like on the top of my head, I just have this, this stat. We at Jocko Fuel, we went from one of the other ones to Shopify. We used to have 70% abandoned cart. 70%. So people would fill up a cart and then just abandon it. And when we got Shopify, it's now down to like 30%. Just think of that. That's, that's like crazy. But yeah, you're gonna see some, some real improvements and all kinds of stuff.

[Sean Glass]

Hell yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And and it's good. Take care of people, what they give them what they want.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. There's never been. We've not had one piece of feedback that's like, we don't like the steak. We don't like the beef. The. All the feedback we've got is, we love you guys. We love what you're doing. The steak's amazing. Thanks for supporting the troops. Can I buy a bunch of rib eyes? Can I buy a bunch of strips? So now they have that option. The other thing that's great is if you like those other boxes and you want those other boxes that are still there. And now we have add on options, too. So you. You build your box out, you know, you get to go check out. And maybe we're going to run a sale that week on brisket. And you want to throw a brisket in there, too.

[Jocko Willink]

Cool.

[Sean Glass]

Throw a brisket in there as well. It might come in a different box because briskets are big, but you can still throw it in there. And then, you know, another thing that we're super excited about that we've been working on for a long time and being really, really picky about this is the jerky that we got coming out.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't understand what you did to the jerky that makes it the way it is. It's not. It doesn't taste normal. Like, I mean, obviously it's beef jerky, but damn, it's good. So, like, I got mail, right? Yeah. I get mail at the house, and my wife, like, put the. The jerky. I was out of town. She put the jerky. And I guess you told her.

[Sean Glass]

I did.

[Jocko Willink]

You told her. Like, she wrote a note on it, says, like, don't eat this. You know, Sean wants you to do something with it when it comes out or something like this. And I'm like, okay, cool. Well, I. She staged it in my office, right?

[Sean Glass]

Mistake one.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, mistake number one. And a lot of times, you know, I get done working out in the morning, shower get done, and I'm like, jumping onto a call. So I'm jumping onto a call. And so now I've been up for, like, four hours, worked out, ran, and I'm hungry, you know, and I'm staring at freaking this beef jerky. And quite frankly, I was like, well, well, you know, it's beef jerky. Look, when you echo Charles. Yes. When you hear. When you hear beef jerky, does your mouth start to water?

[Echo Charles]

I see what you're saying.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you see what I'm saying? I wasn't like, oh, hell yeah. But I was like, you know what, I'm real hungry right now. And I know it says do not eat until, you know, Sean can tell you you can eat it, but I'm just gonna get in there a little bit. Let's just see what these things.

[Sean Glass]

Just one, bro.

[Jocko Willink]

I freaking powered through like three bags. It's delicious. So I don't know what you're doing. Yeah, you're doing it right?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. I mean, it comes down to a couple different things. One is the quality of beef in the jerky is going to matter a ton. So almost all the jerky, if you go to a gas station, that's all commodity beef. Commodity beef, meaning is still beef. It's still a cow. Beef is awesome. But you don't know what kind of cow it is. You don't know where it was raised, you don't know what it was eating. You don't know any of that stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

So the chances it's from the Shenandoah Valley, about zero. And what are the chances that it's grass fed and fruit finish?

[Sean Glass]

Again, about zero. About most of the time. It's probably a dairy cow. And the dairy cow just can't produce milk anymore. And you know that unfortunately for that cow, they're not just going to let it live a peaceful life out to pasture because of all the milk it produced. It's going to get processed dairy cows, if you've seen them, they're not beefy cows. They're, you know, they're, they're massive cows. But they're meant for dairy production. So they don't put a lot of weight on. It's probably that or it's some other commodity beef. So the biggest thing is it's still primal beef. It's good cuts from primal beef and the quality of beef going into it matters a ton. The second thing is, do yourself a favor. Next time you get a package of jerky and just turn that thing around and read the ingredients that are in that jerky. There's probably 15, if not more. And you probably can't pronounce a whole lot of those different things. And there's things. So when you're making jerky, you dehydrate the jerky. Something has to go in there to bind it together and keep it from completely dehydrating. What a lot of beef jerky producers will do is they'll use some type of canola oil or some type of vegetable oil because it's cheap and it's going to keep that moist throughout the Process. What we did is I told them, hey, I want the fewest ingredients you can possibly get in this. And it all has to be clean ingredients. You can't put any nonsense, you can't put any garbage in here. So the other thing that I think makes it something special and makes it so good is what's in it and then what's not in it as well. So if you look at the back of our original jerky, the ingredients are beef spice, brown sugar, which is what we used to bind it, a little bit of brown sugar to keep it moist, and that's it. My wife buys beef jerky. She used to from Costco Big Bag, because we got five kids, they love jerky. And I looked at the back of it. There's 30 ingredients on the back of them. Like it's beef jerky. There should be one or two or three ingredients. So even if you look at the ones that we have that are a little bit flavored, if you look at our sweet and spicy, there's like five ingredients in there. There's honey, there's brown sugar. There's tamari, which is a derivative. It's not soy sauce, but it's got a similar flavor. I did not want any soy sauce in there for lots of different reasons. But one is, I love my wife. She has celiac disease. She can't have soy sauce because soy sauce has wheat in it. Has a lot of things in there we don't need. So for lots of different reasons, I said no soy, which was a bit of a back and forth with the beef jerky producer, who's a marine, awesome guy, started his own company. They're doing great stuff right now. So small batch jerky. But he's like, you gotta like, everybody put soy in. That's what. That's what makes it so moist and everything. And I was like, I'm pretty confident the quality of the beef is going to keep it moist. And I don't want a lot of soy sauce in there. One, because I think it overpowers a lot of the different flavors. Not a big fan of soy to begin with. And the last piece was my wife can't have it if it's got soy in there. So tamari's richer. It's got more of that umami flavor without a lot of the nonsense in it. So if you look at the back of the sweet and spicy, it's beef, tamari, brown sugar, spice and honey. That's it.

[Jocko Willink]

It sounds like these are the kind of things that are going to help Make America healthy. Healthy again.

[Sean Glass]

I would agree.

[Jocko Willink]

So.

[Sean Glass]

So jerky.

[Jocko Willink]

You got RFK rolling in.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And as a guy that's involved in food, what do you think? And farming.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So what do you think? What does RFK bring. RFK Jr bring to the table?

[Sean Glass]

Time will tell, but I think good things. I think his mentality is kind of getting one food back to what food should be and strip out a lot of the things that should not be in our food. A lot of the things that are created in a lab. Red, 40, yellow, whatever. All these different things. But two, there's also just been a lot of regulation that makes it hard for smaller farms to compete. And it also makes a lot of. I'll give you an example. So the raw milk stuff, whatever your taste, whatever your take is on raw milk, it's not even like we can apply for a permit and get it tested and all these other things. It's just most places, it's just straight up illegal to sell raw milk.

[Jocko Willink]

Is it. Is it still illegal a lot?

[Sean Glass]

Most places? Most places, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know. We got some kind of raw supply.

[Sean Glass]

There's ways. There's ways to get.

[Jocko Willink]

Maybe I don't need to say this on here. Maybe we need to edit this out, but we have to get that wrong together. No.

[Sean Glass]

So here's. Here's how people will get around it, which, again, this is just silly. It's silly to make people do this. You can buy a share of this, probably what you're doing. You can buy a cow, a share of a cow. So I can't sell you raw milk, but you can buy a cow with me. And if that cow produces raw milk, I can give you the milk from it. It's just a piece of legislation that just makes it more difficult for people.

[Jocko Willink]

It's like the gun control laws where you have to have these. You can't have a certain thing. And so they make a thing to go over the thing that makes you be able to do the thing that they don't want you to do. It's freaking ridiculous.

[Sean Glass]

We could just remove this thing.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

And then if we need to put in some things for health and safety concerns, that's fine. But people are going to find a way around it. And there's just really just no reason for a lot of those different things. Another thing that. That is coming in with the administration, with the Make America Healthy again push is Joe Salatin, who is. He didn't. He didn't create regenerative farming, but he's definitely the leading voice in the States for regenerative farming, which is basically traditional farming practices that are good for the animal, good for the land, and good for the consumer. So he's been named an advisor to the usda, which again, we'll see what happens. But that's a great step in the right direction for a guy who cares very much about small farms. Going in to the USDA with an outside perspective of. Let's show you some of the roadblocks that you're putting on these farmers. And there's no reason. I mean, there's. There's reasons why it's happening, but there's really no reason for this. There's less beef being produced in America now than there has been in the last 70 years. So.

[Jocko Willink]

And that's because the regulatory environment, some.

[Sean Glass]

Of it is regulatory. It makes it very difficult for small farms and even really big farms to. To make a living. Part of it is it's so difficult for these farmers and ranchers to make a living. Their kids see this and they don't take over the farm. So the average age of the American farmer right now is mid-60s, because the kids aren't taking over the farm. And that's historically been what happens. You know, I've got five kids. If one of them wants to take over the farm one day in the business, that would be amazing. I'm not going to force them to do that, but that would be a goal, is it's there for them to take a part of. But there's just so many things that are making it difficult for them to earn any type of living without massive subsidiation that the kids just aren't doing it. They're leaving. So you've got this. And beef consumption has not gone down. So now what do we do because of those policies? We get stuff from overseas or the producers that are growing beef are forced to do things that probably they don't even want to do to make as much beef as they can. Hormones, different stuff like that. And I'm not bashing that farming system whatsoever. Like, those are good Americans that are producing beef that the country needs. But I bet if you asked them if that's really what they want to be doing, I bet they would say it's not how my pops did it, that's not how my granddad did it. This is just the system. So I think an outside perspective and maybe a common sense look at some of that legislation will help. And then just anything in farming, the reason that beef specific and beef is at all time high price wise, which by the way, we have not adjusted the prices of Primal beef. Like we're just absorbing this because we want to make sure the customer gets the most value. But I'll give you an example. Last year, my own personal herd on my farm, we do a cow calf operation, which means we have some cows, we have a bull, you know, the cows have their calves, we raise the calves to a certain age and then we take them to our local livestock auction and we sell them to different farmers from around the area who will buy them and then either finish them on grass or they'll finish them on something else and then sell them. So we just do cow calf. Last year, an average price for a calf for me would be everything is by the pound, so we call it live weight. So what's the live weight of the cow? A good steer for me would bring in about a dollar fifty a pound. So seven hundred pound steer I'd be making. What's that, a little less than 1100 bucks, something like that. Now this year, average steer just, you know, he's nothing wrong with him, but he's just not big body. The genetics aren't there, whatever, it's like $2.80 and I was selling multiple theaters for over $3. Nothing has changed with those cows over the course of the last couple of years. But everything to do with farming in general, it all comes back to energy prices. Everything that has to go with making a ranch run and making a farm run is heavily dependent upon what's happening with energy costs. So if fuel is expensive, then the farmer can't just eat that cost. That has to go into the cost of those goods, whether it's beef, whether it's produce, whatever is those things. The farmers are not greedy. They're not making any more money than they were before, but now they're paying $4 a gallon, $5 a gallon for diesel versus 350. That affects the price of all the different produce, all the different beef. So typically in a market, when things go up, they don't come back down. I don't know for certain, but I would be very hopeful that maybe some of this, at least with the beef industry, will start to self regulate when the farmer's not paying $5 a gallon to fill their, their tractor up.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, well, hopefully we're heading into that direction where we become a little bit more energy independent around these parts in the coming several years. And then you were talking about, you know, kids hopefully taking over the farm. You know, again, you're not Going to force them. But. But let's talk a little bit about these kids and raising kids.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, perhaps.

[Jocko Willink]

I guess it is the most important job we got, right? Being a dad. How's that going? I know you. You put together a group recently at church.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

What's the deal with that? What do you got going on there?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, so we, we call it the Forge because we felt like we had to have a name for it. So we call it the Forge. And it's basically meant to give an environment. We do it once a month on the first Fridays. And it's meant to give an environment where dads from around the community can come with their sons. And we can very deliberately teach our kids some skills and also talk to them about some things that we think are important, some virtues, some masculinity type things, those type of stuff. So we felt like it was necessary. We've all had those conversations with our kids, but sometimes it can feel a little bit forced. But if you have this environment where like, that's kind of the goal of it, is to get everybody there and talk about these things and share our different lessons learned, that was kind of the genesis of it, was to give the, the men in our community an environment. We could get together, enjoy each other's company, teach our kids some skills that we want them, our son, some skills that we want them to have, and then also pour into them some lessons learned and some things to think about that we think will be very important to them as they, you know, progress throughout their journey to becoming. Becoming a man. So that was.

[Jocko Willink]

What's an example of something that you told the boys, like the story. What'd you tell them? The lesson learned was, yeah, so we.

[Sean Glass]

Had a big talk about service and the importance of using your abilities, whatever that is, using your strength, using your abilities, whatever it is, in the service of others. Because I think there's a little bit of a push in our society for a lot of selfishness and a lot of, you know, what can people do for me, that type of thing. So I feel like a big part of being a male. And I'm not saying this doesn't go for females too, but I think a big part of being a male is being able to do things for other people and serve other people. I mean, we joined the military for probably lots of different reasons, but I'm sure the call to serve and wanting to serve was a big thing. And for me there's a trade off because I didn't really realize this until I was a little Bit older, but you actually get a lot in return for your service. You do something good for somebody else. Yes, it benefits them. It's at least the same benefit for you in the long run for how it makes you feel, all those different things. So we wanted to teach the boys about service and having a very deliberately servant mind mindset. So we had a talk and it was a little bit cheesy, but it made a big impact on the kids. I had a cool knife from Winkler who does the tomahawks for all Jack Carr's books and movies. But he also, he was famous because it is his knifes where the knife's used. And tomahawks were used in Last the Mohicans. So I have this amazing blade from Winkler and I brought it. I was showing it to the kids and I said, hey, you know, here's this awesome knife. I gave the backstory of it. And then I also showed him this scar that I have on, on my hand. And I said, hey, if I was just to ask you guys, which one of these would you rather have? You know, which one would you say? Would you rather have a scar or would you rather have the sick knife? And of course, what are all the boys say? And they're like, well, we want the knife. I think half of them thought I was going to give them the knife, which, sorry boys, it's not happening. They said the knife. And I said, well, I understand why you say that, but if I was given the choice between this knife, which means a lot to me because it was a gift from a teammate, or this scar, I would take this scar and let me tell you why. And I told him a story about how I got this scar. Was working on a farm with my neighbor Dan, who was getting up in age at the time and needed some help. So I went over to help him. Little kid, you know, I probably was more of a hindrance to this dude than I was in actual help. But I was, I was trying to help him out and I cut it open on a barbed wire fence and it left this scar on my hand. But when I look at that scar 30 years later, it just reminds me of the time that I got to spend with this guy and at least as much of a 10 year old can try to help this guy out and how much it meant to him that I was coming over there and trying to help him out. So it's a little bit cheesy of a story, but it resonated with the boys of like, what's more important in Life, it's not the things you accumulate. It's not, you know, what you, what you, you know, have in your closet. It's not what you have in your driveway. It's the impact that you, you leave on other people. And a great way to do that is through service. So that was the talk. And what we always do is we try. Talks have to be short. Some of these kids are pretty little.

[Jocko Willink]

So the attention span, four minutes, seven minutes, like go.

[Sean Glass]

You got to make an impact. We try to pair the talk with whatever the activity is going to be. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. But it was a service talk. So there was a, a blind lady in our church who obviously can't do a lot of things around the house for herself. So we went over to her house and we did a whole bunch of yard work, cleared the backyard, replaced some sections of fences, and the boys just loved it. They absolutely loved it. So that's kind of the theme of it is we have a virtue or a talk that we want to give them something to think about. And then we try to pair it with some type of skill. You know, we did a talk on stewardship and what it means for a man to take care of your family, take care of the land, provide for your family. One of our good buddies runs a tree clearing company. I just happen to have 120 foot oak tree that came down in the last storm that we had. So he brings all these way overpowered chainsaws over and we got a bunch of little maniacs running around with, you know, expert grade steel 90cc chainsaws, chopping up this tree under our supervision. So the boys dig it, they love the activity. Do the talks really resonate with a lot of them. I don't know, half the times I get home with my sons and I'm like, you know what we talk about. But we're trying.

[Jocko Willink]

Knife.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, exactly. We talked about a knife. And now you giving me that knife one day. But no, the boys, it does, it does resonate with the boys. And most importantly, it gives us time as dads to very deliberately spend with our sons teaching them, which we've all got busy schedules and if you're not deliberate about it, sometimes those things just don't happen.

[Jocko Willink]

And then you've got the rugby club, the boxing club, what's on, what's that all about?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, rugby club. Actually got a text thread started just right before I came on about rugby club's about to kick off again. So some dads in the community, the school that our kids go to have a rugby team. But then we also wanted to build kind of a community based rugby club that we could put together a big enough roster to one day to compete against some of the school or some of the clubs that are up in like the D.C. area. So a couple of dads started it up. I don't know a lot about rugby. I lived in a tiny town in Texas where rugby was, surprise, surprise, not a thing. So I'm learning about it and then I just help out as much as I possibly can with the rugby club. You know, you give me a drill to run, I can run that drill all day long with the boys. But again, it's just a community of dads that are some of them, most of them have played rugby growing up, at least to the high school level.

[Jocko Willink]

How come there's kids, like adults that played rugby as kids?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Where?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, east coast. Most of them are east coast guys.

[Jocko Willink]

Huh?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. And it is the. If you've never been big on the rugby environment, it's in my opinion, after seeing lots of different sports, it's the best sport, team sport that a boy can play. And here's why.

[Jocko Willink]

Good coverage for yourself.

[Sean Glass]

You're about to get wrestling sport. Yeah, you did good team sport. And the reason why I think that is multifaceted, but the prime one is it is the epitome of a team sport. The entire philosophy of rugby is I have to hold on to the ball just long enough to take the hit from you so that I can dish it off to my teammate last minute and hopes that he can make a move. So there's no selfishness in it and there's no. Doesn't matter how good you are at rugby. There's a lot of players on the field. There's no one person that's going to take over a rugby match. There's no Michael Jordan. The best rugby player in the world is not going to take that match over. It is a thousand percent a team effort and it's just a grind. You're just grinding it out. Yard after yard after yard. You get hit. Doesn't matter how hard you got to get back up. You got to be there to support your teammate. And the whole philosophy of the game is I'm taking the hit so that you can get a couple of extra yards. It's also exceptionally respectful. There's no ego allowed on the field whatsoever. There's two people that are allowed to even communicate with a referee and it's the captain from each team. Anybody else says A word to the ref. Done. Off the field. And if you communicate with the referee and it's not in a respectful manner. Yes, sir. No, sir. Can I talk to you about this, sir? Same thing. You're going to get booted off of the field. So you've got all of these just savages getting after it, you know, injuries galore, blood everywhere. And then they're just being super respectful at the same time. They're grinding it out against each other on the pitch. The second that the game's over, both teams are hanging out, talking about, hey, it was a great hit. So I think for a boy, best team sport you can play. Because there's nothing about that game that's about you. Everything is about the team.

[Jocko Willink]

That's good to know that. It definitely is growing in America.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I don't know if that's. Because part of it is, you know, there's some negativity around football right now with the cte.

[Sean Glass]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Echo, Charles. Cte, what do you. How familiar are you with rugby?

[Echo Charles]

We're not very. I did actually, I did a video. This is rugby league.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

It's different in Australia with the Gold Coast Titans, actually, the relationship between jiu jitsu and rugby. And the Titans are taking jiu jitsu from one of Hicks and Gracie's black belts, black belt named Jason Robig, and he's teaching the rugby guys jiu jitsu. And it helps because a big part of it when you get tackled to get back up real quick is like a big, like, advantage if you can do it quick. So they do all these drills. Really cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you think there's more head trauma in football or in rugby?

[Echo Charles]

I. I don't know, but it would seem like it would be football because you have helmets on. So you're less like. Yeah, like in rugby, it's like you're not going to go head to head on purpose.

[Sean Glass]

You know, they purposely. You can't high tackle in rugby. I know you're not supposed to high tackle and even in the NFL anymore, but. Which still happens. But in rugby, anything above, basically, the. The upper chest line is. Is illegal. But they spend a ton of time drilling proper tackling technique where it's almost like they're just drilling single and double legs over and over and over again. It's head to the side, control the legs, all those things. So there's less head injury there because they're purposely teaching them how to wrap and tackle also. It's very rare. It happens, but it's very rare that in A game that's multiple times, you know, full sprint contact. Very rarely happens in rugby. Most of the time it's. I've got a little bit of steam up. I get popped by you, maybe you don't get me. Jocko's right there. Boom. He takes me down. So very rarely is it, I'm running full speed, you're running full speed, and then we're just gonna see. See what happens. Yeah, so there's some of that too.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I know you. You had an unfortunate incident with your. With the boys on a hike. And you know what. What happened with that? What lessons did you take away?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. So our school does a fall hike. So we're again, we're blessed enough to live in the Shenandoah Valley. So we're right in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and during the fall, it's got to be one of the prettiest places in the States. Everything is turning colors, you know, the trees. Everything looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. Basically. A lot of people from the east coast flood our town for three weeks during the fall to go. We call them leaf lookers. They just come to check out the foliage in the mountains. Like, that's how beautiful it is, is people from all over the country will come down. So our school takes advantage of it, and they do what's what we call fall hike, which is the entire school goes, but they break the hikes up into basically how capable the kids are. So the kindergartners go on a hike, a hike, and then the high schoolers go on a hike, and middle school goes on a hike. But the high school hike is a legit hike. I want to say it's something like nine or 14 miles there and back. So it's a legit hike. And the parents, as many parents as can, are encouraged to come on this. So it's a great event for the school. It's something we all look forward to doing. I was not there for this fall hike. I was meeting with a company. But one of the dads that did go was just like a pillar of our community. Been living there forever. A whole bunch of kids. Nobody had a bad word to say about this guy. He was on, you know, the board for the school. Just one of those guys that did everything he possibly could for his kids and for the community. And he was on the hike, and he was kind of bringing up the rear with a couple of people. And I don't know what the initial thing was, if he was dehydrated or if he had you know, a heart issue. But he went unconscious and fell over. And I think when he fell over, he hit his head, hit his face for sure, because there was a lot of blood. And there was a couple of girls from the school that were with him that he was hiking with. And, you know, they try to respond to him. He kind of comes back, too. But it's a horrifying situation for them, even as it is right now, with him being responsive because his face is all cut up. You know, there's blood everywhere. And he was responsive for a little bit, and then he started to go unresponsive. So one of the girls runs up, makes contact. Some of the parents come back down, and they start to try to try to help him out, but he's, like, completely unresponsive at this point. So, you know, grace of God, they were in a place where they could actually get cell service, because you don't hardly get any service on this hike. What we're talking, like, backcountry into the blue. Blue Ridge Mountains. So they get some cell Service. They call 91 1. And, you know, 911 is now trying to respond. But this is the mountains. They're. They're a very long ways away. So about 20 or 30 minutes go by before the EMS ever make it to the base of the mountain to start the hike. But I think they were five miles into the hike, so they've got to get all the equipment, all that stuff up there. And at the same time, one of the parents, his wife was there with him, too. One of his parents. One of the parents had called the parish priest because they were kind of like, he might not. He might not come out of this one. So EMS finally gets there. They're trying to get the equipment up the mountain. But, you know, I don't know how to say this without being just blunt. They were not in shape, and they could not make it up the mountain with the equipment. So a bunch of the high school boys started running down the mountain and then grabbing equipment from them and then running back of the mountain, the equipment, running back down and just shuttling this stuff back and forth. And a couple of times when they ran down, the EMS were just literally sitting there taking a breather during this situation. So some of those boys put in 21, 25 miles that day, just shuttling stuff back up. And we're not talking, like, flat. We're talking in the mountains, shuttling stuff back up and forth. Paris priest gets there, total stud, sprints up the mountain in his cassock Gets there, is able to issue last rites, but unfortunately the father passed away and there was a lot of, I mean, it's just a horrible situation all around, but there was a lot of frustration obviously because of how everything went down with the ems, all that different stuff. So tight knit community, the community definitely felt the loss of this man, felt the outpouring of love for his family. But there was some resources brought into the school to try to help people talk through this and deal with this. And I wrote a letter to some of the boys, all the boys that I knew were involved and just told them that, hey, I don't know exactly what you're going through, but we've all dealt with loss before being in our profession. And let me just give you some things that I think will come in, come in handy for you to think about. And the main thing that I wanted to take away was it was good, good that they were there. You know, if they weren't there and they weren't able to shuttle that stuff up back and forth, I mean, think about what a horrible situation that is for that family already. His wife, his daughter was on the hike too. Those boys being there was a big relief for them. And then another big thing that I want them to understand was I think a lot of them were dealing with, is it okay to be frustrated? You know, is it okay to be upset at some of the ems? And I was like, hey, is it okay to be frustrated at the situation? Yes, it's okay to be frustrated at the situation, but don't dwell on it, don't take it out on them. You can't control that situation. You know, you did what you did. And I was basically just trying to, as much as I could from a detached perspective, just reshape their thought process if they needed it into. It was good that you were there. Like, don't be sad that you were there, which I don't know if they were. Don't be sad that you were there. It was a good thing that you were there in a tragic situation to support this family. It would have horrible day. It would have been that much worse if you guys wouldn't have been there doing what you did for that family. But just when you live in a community like ours, I mean, that leaves a big hole. Big hole.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you, did you take his place on the, on the school board?

[Sean Glass]

I don't know if I took his place. I think they were already going to invite some more people to the board and I was asked to be on the board. Another big Lesson from that I told those boys was, you know, being prepared is a choice. You're not always going to be an 18 year old athlete stud. You could be a 50 year old athlete, you could be a 50 year old stud, but that's a choice. You know, when you graduate from this school, go to college, maybe you play sport, maybe you don't go to college, like no one's going to force you to work out anymore. And those EMS members that couldn't make it up a mountain, they didn't make up the mountain because they just weren't prepared. Flip that with our priest who's 50, I'm going to get it wrong and I apologize, Father, I don't want to call you out for being older than you actually are, but he's mid-50s and he sprinted entire way up there. So I was like, you guys had a great example of a 55 year old guy who sprint was completely ready for that situation. And then you had the people that should have been ready for that situation that weren't even capable of making it up. So it's a choice whether you're prepared or not. And it's not going to be any easier than right now. You know, 10 years from now, if you're not working, if you're not working out, if you're not putting in the miles and putting in the hours, you know, you could find yourself being that situation that you're frustrated at. That could be you 10 years from now, that could be you 20 years from now. And you'd have no one to blame but yourself because you weren't prepared.

[Jocko Willink]

What's the priest protocol workout?

[Sean Glass]

Well, he's one of my, he gets after. He's one of my sparring partners.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Sean Glass]

For boxing. So he's in phenomenal shape. We went 30 minutes one time without a break because he controls all the sparring.

[Jocko Willink]

Like 30 minute or 30 minute round.

[Sean Glass]

30 minute round, 30 minute round. I was in the Hurt Locker, but he was just bouncing around all over the place like it was no big deal. In my defense, the volume of punches he was throwing, father, was a lot less than the volume of punches that I was throwing. But he's super in shape. He runs every day. He bikes a lot. He coaches lacrosse for one of the schools there. He, I think if he's not helping somebody out in the community, he's spending his energy working out or doing something physical. So he's total stud. Total stud.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you guys have a, a code over at the Forge? What's it called? The Forge.

[Sean Glass]

The Forge. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You guys have a code?

[Sean Glass]

You know, we don't have a code. We definitely need a code, though, don't we?

[Jocko Willink]

You definitely need a code.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I was getting. I got asked the other day about the Warrior Kid books, and, you know, one of the things that I talked about was the fact that in the mid-2000s in the SEAL teams, we had some. We had some discipline problems pop up and guys doing dumb things. And look, we've had plenty of guys do dumb things since then, but there was one of the things that came from that was, you know, all these different military units they all have. And this is going back to, you know, the samurai and the Vikings and the knights, they all had their codes that they live by. And we in the SEAL teams, we didn't really have that. We had a bunch of little sayings, but they didn't really guide your. You know, they didn't really guide your behavior in many cases. And so there was an attempt made. They got a bunch of us together to San Clemente island. And I was one of the people that went. And it was a bunch of people from different ranks, different, you know, different commands, different coasts. Just they. They brought in a pretty widespread variety of people. And we ended up writing down the SEAL ethos and, you know, it was. Is it perfect? No. But, you know, at a minimum, it at least captures some really important stuff for the seals. And, you know, so I kind of watched that. I watched how that happened, and I watched it go out into the community and, you know, just like the. The patches and everything else, that it was very top down. And so the way it was received in the beginning was. Was a little bit. And you didn't get until what, 2008.

[Sean Glass]

2008.

[Jocko Willink]

So you probably were still seeing like, oh, the coeth those thing. You probably were still hearing that kind of thing because, you know, you're getting something imposed on, and we don't like to have things imposed on us. And I think that that code, the first time that I felt like, oh, there's some traction coming there. And that's when I went to a memorial service and they read it and you start listening to those words and you go, okay, I'm. I'm starting to understand where this comes from and why we have this. But, you know, when I was writing the Warrior Kid books, you think about it, you know, there used to be various codes that were issued to kids. Whether they got those codes from church, whether it was the Ten Commandments, whether they got it from the Pledge of Allegiance, whether they got it from the Boy Scouts. There was a place they were going to get this code to live by. And you can make a lot of decisions. You can make a lot of decisions if you've got a code, if you've got some protocol in your life that you follow, you can make a lot of decisions and you can make a lot of good decisions. So, you know, that was one of my main goals when I wrote the, the first Warrior Kid book is give kids a code that they can live by. And by the way, in the Warrior Kid book, it's encouraged that you write your own code. It's not, hey, here's the code that you should use. In fact, the Warrior Kid code is what the kid writes after he reads the other codes and after his uncle tells him, all right, dude, what's your code? What is the Warrior Kid code? So that might be an idea, a little, little exercise that you guys could do, come up with your own forge code. And again, you know, you'd be surprised how many decisions you can make in life if you've got a good code to live by. The Warrior Kid code. The Warrior Kid wakes up early in the morning. The Warrior Kid studies to learn and gain knowledge and ask questions if they don't understand. The Warrior Kid trains hard, exercises and eats right to be strong and fast and healthy. The Warrior Kid trains to know how to fight so they can stand up to bullies and protect the weak. The Warrior Kid treats people with respect, doesn't judge them, and helps out others when, whenever possible. The Warrior Kid keeps things neat and is always prepared and ready for action. The Warrior Kid stays humble, controls their ego, and stays calm. Warrior Kids do not lose their tempers. The Warrior Kid works hard, saves money, is frugal, doesn't waste thing things, and it always does their best. The Warrior Kid is always thankful for both the challenges and opportunities in life that help them become a smarter, stronger and healthier Warrior Kid. I am a Warrior Kid. So you get to like, you can make some serious decisions based on those protocols right there. It's going to help you a lot. So that's the kind of thing, you know, when I think of when you were telling me about that, I think, oh, you get these kids to come up with a little code, little seven rules or the five rules of the forged, or you take forged and you say, f is for fighting. We know how to fight. You know, O is for opportunity. We seize our, you know, come up with some cool stuff.

[Sean Glass]

There's a interesting little snapshot of what drives Boys is we do it first Friday every month. People have lots of different activities going on. Not everybody can make every Friday. So, you know, your attendance goes all over the place. Whenever we have an event that's got an edge of violence to it, maximum turnout. Maximum turnout. Boxing was the one where we had the most kids that we've ever had. Most kids. I don't know if it was the dads driving that train like, hey, boys, we're going, or if it was the boys that were like, let's get after it. It was the one where we had the most people show up. The second biggest one we did was middle of winter. Had a bunch of different ice buckets outside. And it was, we're all going to spend X amount of time in the ice bucket. Dad and his son at the same time. Or for me, I had three sons, so it was dad and three sons at the same time. Anything where they feel like they were challenged or there's a little hint of violence there, like, they are maximum participation. Some of the ones where it's, you know, stewardship. We're going to learn to do caretaking of livestock.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

People still.

[Jocko Willink]

Little Johnny can't make it.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, we got a little family event, but you tell them we're going to lace it up and the kids are going to fight. And even if you've never had an experience, everyone's doing two minutes. Everyone was there. Everyone was there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. That shows you that there's a little intrinsic thing that we all. That many, many young men have.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

We were talking to us on one of these recent podcasts. Just like, when it comes to recruiting and. And the lack. The. The trouble that they've had, the military recruiting people, and it's, you know, I. When I was a little kid, I want to carry a machine gun.

[Sean Glass]

Oh, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So if you showed me the recruiting thing that said you get to carry a machine gun, sign up over here. Cool. Just give me the piece of paper. I'm signing it. And then some of the recruiting efforts recently have been, like, not aimed at a young kid that wants to carry a machine gun. They're aimed at. So when you're a young kid and you want to carry a machine gun and you see some commercial or some advertisement that has nothing to do with carrying a machine gun and being a warrior, you're like, well, I guess that's not my place.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Well, the 80s ads and the early 90s as the Marines, you've never had better. You've never had better military Recruiting advertisements and that. I mean, you felt like watching that kid, watching that video as a kid, that if you signed up, you were going to be a one man army.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Is what it made you feel like.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. So that's why your community, you're the forge, you tell them they're going to get it on. It's like, oh, yeah, we'll be there, we'll be there. And that's awesome. And you know, it's interesting because, you know, you mentioned off or you start off talking about the idea of service and choosing to serve. You know, obviously you and I served in the military. And when you look at these kids now and you look at, you know, your military experience, which was similar to my military experience because we both basically fought in the big, giant 20 year global war on terrorism eight years ago. You, you lost. JJ Finan this, these wars cost over $2 trillion. Almost 7,000 killed in action, over 50,000 wounded in action. And you know, those numbers, we just throw them out there. 7,000 killed, you know, 50,000 wounded. But those for us that were in the military, those aren't just numbers. These are people. And there's so many of those people, so many of those individual humans. And when you think about, you know, the next generation and the service and what we went through, and I know that this will, this gets asked. I know it certainly gets asked to me sometimes, you know, when I'm out in public, I know that people on the team and the Echelon front team that, that were in the military get asked this question, but, you know, it's a question of, of was it worth it and how do you feel, how do you address that with your kids? Your kids might be a little young right now. How are you thinking you're going to address those things with your, with your kids when they get old enough?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Who's. How'd. Your oldest right now, how old is 13? Yeah, 13, 12, 10. That's the boys and then the two girls a little bit younger. Yeah, I've had a lot of people ask me the same thing recently too, and I don't know if it was, you know, some of the discussions with this election cycle with some of the personalities, they're really looking at that question, you know, was it, was it worthwhile? And I don't know that I have the answer total, but I know I'm really proud of what we did over there and the effort that we put forward and the impact that it made, at least on the people's lives that we were involved in. Take Mosul for an example. I can't even. I know we can talk about whatever on this podcast. I can't begin to tell you because I don't want to talk about it. What I saw and what our guys saw ISIS doing to civilians inside of Iraq and inside of Syria, it's things that we don't even want to believe that human beings are capable of doing to each other. So knowing that we played a small part, our troop did, in ridding the world of that organization, I could not be more proud of that. But then you look at the total cost of everything and, you know, I can only focus on the things that I can focus on the things that I know that we affected. And I know that for those people, I think we left them in a. In a better place. And for my kids ask me that question. That's kind of what I would tell them, is you don't sign up to serve thinking that you're going to control every decision that's going to happen to you inside of the military. It's a large organization, and you've got to trust that people are making the right decisions. All you can do is control your actions on the ground and make sure that you're doing the right things for the right reasons and that you're protecting the people to your right and to your left and making a difference. And I think based on what I saw all of my tours, even in Afghanistan, where hindsight now, like, it's in a pretty bad spot for everybody that was there, but for a period of time, you know, we gave them some things that they, they didn't have. I don't know if that makes it worthwhile, but I know I'm proud of, of what our guys accomplished that while they were over there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, the, you know, clearly that's the same kind of attitude I have of, you know, be being, especially in Ramadi in 2006, like the civilian populace was being subjected to just abject, subhuman, terroristic behavior from the insurgents. And the fact that we were able to be there and able to rid that city of insurgents and give the, the people in that city the opportunity to live normal lives. And again, it ended up, you know, I mean, we would have to do a full assessment. It's a lot easier to do a full assessment of where Afghanistan's at right now because Afghanistan clearly has gone back to the dark ages of the Taliban. And it's just horrible to see Iraq. And I just saw another. I just saw a news story. I haven't fact Checked it yet, but they're passing a law that, that brings the age of consent and marriage in Iraq down to nine years old. So that's not a positive sign for the girls there. But I know that they at one point were living in a terrible situation and we were able to help them. And then on top of that, of course, we were thankfully able to overwatch the soldiers and Marines on the streets and, and keep hundreds of those soldiers and Marines alive. So same thing. Like, I know that what we did in our little, little share of the task, we did what we could. I think about what do we, what do we learn as a nation? You know, when I, when I look at the mistakes that we made in Vietnam specifically, just because I think I'm more familiar with that war and, and clearly it was very devastating for, for the country. And I, I wonder what lessons, you know, how do we, how there's such obvious lessons that, that we should have taken away from Vietnam and we didn't. And how short is our memory going to be this time? You know, when we're here, we are with the world kind of in the win. One of the worldwide is horrible right now. Like, you think about what's going on in Ukraine, in Israel, like, these are terrible situations. There's escalation. I mean, the escalation in those two areas of operations is both of those could go completely out of control very quickly. And how. Well, you know, what are we doing about it? How, what are we gonna, how are we gonna handle these situations? What lessons are we going to forget about? At what point do we become the catalyst for escalation instead of the catalyst for de. Escalation? And it's, I really hope that. Well, friends, we got a new administration coming in. Obviously Tulsi, who is, I know her personally and she's, I have a lot of trust and confidence in her. She's just a great person with a great attitude. And then I know some of the other people involved in the administration as well, and we've spent a lot of time, we spent a lot of time with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. What a smart and knowledgeable guy he is. And Vivek, I've met him and spent time with him. And again, these are people that I just, I hope that they recognize lessons that we should have learned from Vietnam, lessons that we hopefully have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan and we can move forward in a, in a way that makes this sacrifices from all these wars worthwhile as we move to a place of peace and not a place of war. There's a guy we know. I was thinking about this before, you know, knowing that you were coming on and we had talked about this a little bit. And one of the things that I think about when I think about wars, I think of a guy named Joshua, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He is, you know, definitely one of the, one of the heroes of the Civil War and also a guy that I try and read as much as I can now. Just a very eloquent speaker who, I think the way he spoke and the way he wrote about things was very powerful and he captured things that, that I think he captures them in a way, even though it was a Civil War and post Civil War. But, you know, he gave a speech and I think it ties into everything that we're talking about. You know, when you think about what we did, you know, as a nation and then what we did as, as teammates and service members, he said this. We rose in soul above the things which even the Declaration of Independence pronounces the inalienable rights of human nature for the securing of which governments are instituted among, among men, happiness, liberty, life. We laid on the altar of offering or committed to the furies of destruction. So he's saying they're like we looked at the things that we're guaranteed or, or the things that the Declaration of Independence says, these are your, your rights as a human being. And we said, no, we don't, we don't care about them. We're going to put, we're going to put our sacrifice. We're going to sacrifice happiness, sacrifice liberty, and possibly sacrifice our lives for this while our minds were lift, lifted up to a great thought and our hearts swelled to its measure. So we're, we're performing above our station as, as mere human beings. We were beckoned by the vision of destiny. We saw our country moving forward, charged with the sacred trusts of man. We believed in its glorious career, the power of high aims and strong purpose. And I think it's important there, you know, we believed in the glorious career of our country. We weren't, you know, we believed that we were doing the right things. And, you know, sometimes I'll get asked that question of, you know, what would you do if you were ordered to do something that you weren't, that wasn't the right thing to do? I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. If we were told to do something that didn't make sense. I wouldn't do it. If we were told to do something that was immoral, wouldn't do it. And that's the way. Most of the people in the military are the vast majority. And by the. By Most, I mean 99%. But when you're there, you believe in what you're doing. If we didn't believe in it, we're not doing it. The power of high aims and strong purpose, the continuity of great endeavor, the onward, upward path of history to God. Every man felt that he gave himself to and belonged to something beyond time and above place, something which could not die. These are the reasons. Not fixed in the form of things, but formative of things. Reasons of the soul, why we fought for the Union. So when I hear that he's. Look, he's talking about the Civil War. But so much of that to me applies to my thoughts. Looking back at, at the wars, we did our duty, right? We did our duty like what you teach those young men, which is to put others above yourself. That's what we did. And we saw our friends, we saw our brothers, and we saw our teammates do that. And we helped the people on the ground as we talked about. And hopefully we learned lessons that can then be applied to our country. And I think this line about not fixed in the form of things, right? Not fixed in the form of things, meaning there's not an undeniable reason why we fought. It's not an underlying. You can't say, well, we fought because of this thing right here. So it's not in. It's not fixed in the form of things. But he says, but formative of things. So it's like, what did we learn from it? We did it. How did it make us better? How do we become better from what we went through? And I think that's just the way things work. When you, when you think of the idea that what we do is formative of who we are as individuals, what we do is formative of who we are. And our country, what our country does is formative of who our country is. And there's going to be mistakes and there's going to be things that happened, but as long as they form you into a better person and a better nation, then I, I think we have to move forward with that attitude, the lessons that we learned from it. And. And then there's another thing from Chamberlain. He says there is a way of losing that is finding when soul over masters sense, when the noble and divine self overcomes the lower self, when duty and honor and love, immortal things bid the mortal perish. So there's things that are more important than life. It's only when man Supremely gives that. He supremely finds that was your sacrifice. That is your reward. So although, you know, we. And. And those of us in the military, those of us that stepped up and served, when you serve, when you give, that's when you find. So it's what you talked about earlier. When you step up and you give that your reward, you make the sacrifice. Your reward is what you find. And so, you know, as I look back at, again, the idea of the wars that we fought, I want to make sure that we remember what it taught us, and we utilize that as individuals and as communities and as a nation. We use what we've been through to make us better. To where I'm at on it at this particular stage, always trying to keep an open mind, learn more. But Chamberlain was. He was a smart guy.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And he was a hell of a writer, so.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, man. Raising kids, selling steak, teaching leadership. Pretty good spot to be in.

[Sean Glass]

Not a bad place to be. Not a bad place to be.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Being able to take all these lessons and impart them on as many people as you can. You know, you're not just your own kids, but the kids in the community and. And then companies that we get to work with, you know, that right there is a huge benefit. The fact that we get to take these lessons that we learned and pass them on, it's so important. And I believe that's part of, you know, part of this whole thing that Chamberlain was talking about.

[Sean Glass]

You said it at the beginning. The blessing of this echelon front for me is I go and I get to pass some of these lessons learned on to people who are really thirsty for them. But every time I do it, I come home a better husband, I come home a better father. I still make plenty of mistakes, but I can't be up there talking to these different individuals about this and not just thinking to myself, I messed that up. I messed that up last week, and now I've got to go and, you know, take some ownership of that. So you said the service thing, you know, it's great to be able to be there and help these different companies and help these different individuals. But, man, selfishly, it's hugely beneficial for me, too.

[Jocko Willink]

Gosh, so many people have said to me, man, I wish I had that book when I was younger. I'm always like, me too, dude. Me too. All these books. I wish I had them when I was younger.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And, and, and, and here's another tangentially. You ever had somebody ask you, what would you. What advice would you Give yourself if you were 20 years old.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Have you ever had somebody ask you that question? Had somebody asked me that question and you know what I said? I said it doesn't matter because I wouldn't have listened. You know what I'm saying? Unfortunately, there's some lessons that only life can teach you. And I, and I really hope and I actually. I know, I know because I talk to these people all the time. You talk these people all the time. We have figured out a way to convey these lessons in a manner that people can actually understand. And I think that's, you know, that's one of the reasons why we've been successful is because we've figured out a way. And look, you got to convey to an adult it's going to be in a certain manner going to convey it to kids. Can be in a warrior kid manner, you know, so one of the reasons in the book it's not the dad. Why isn't it the dad? There's a couple reasons why it's not the dad. One of the reasons not the dad. Because not everyone has a dad. Right. And I didn't want that kid to go, well, gee, so I don't have a dad. And the other reason is kids don't listen to their dads. There's always my, you know, my kid, by the time he was eight years old, he was way smarter than I was, knew way more than I did, of course. But they always listen to Uncle Jake.

[Sean Glass]

Ah, you want me to give you a real world example of that?

[Jocko Willink]

Let's go.

[Sean Glass]

Do you think I talk with all of my kids, but specifically the boys and I'm. It's not a gender thing is my boys are older with my boys about the importance of working out. Yes. Do you think I talked about the importance of eating well and taking care of their responsibilities around the farm? All the time. The boys reread the Warrior Kid book. I come downstairs at my normal time somewhere between 5, 5:30. No one's downstairs. It's my time. Round six, usually the two or three kids are down, nobody's there. I look outside, the lights in our pole barn are on, which is where the gym is. I go out there, my boys are shirtless, doing pull ups and doing push ups. Hell yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

I've told them this repeatedly that they should be doing this. Uncle Jake steps in and tells it and all of a sudden, you know, I don't know if their mom would approve of this, but like Megadeth was blaring in the pole barn and they're just crushing the deck of cards workout.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. It's like, check, it works. And that's the same thing that happens. You know, I get this feedback from companies we go work with. You know, some. The COO or the CEO will be like, this is the same stuff. I tell them. They just don't want to hear it from me anymore. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, it happens. It happens. That external detached element comes in and tells you what's going on that you don't have a little relationship with. We were terrible about this in the SEAL teams because we would always. No one in the SEAL teams could be good enough to teach shooting in the SEAL teams because I could never say, you know, sean, can you show me. You know, can you show me that draw again? Help me out? Nope.

[Sean Glass]

Nope.

[Jocko Willink]

My ego will not allow me. You have to be some civilian expert, and then I can. Then you can tell me. And same thing with parachuting and same thing with fighting. It's like, no, there's not enough guys in the SEAL teams that are black belts in jiu jitsu that did Muay Thai, that were professional boxers or golden glove boxers. No, none of those. Can't learn from any of them. We got to hire somebody to come and show us some karate. Right. It's like. It's like, no, totally ridiculous. So we try and do that. That's why Uncle Jake is a pretty powerful figure with the kids. But passing these lessons on, that's, to me, one of the best things that we can do as military members and to serve our country and serve our communities to the best of our ability now that we're retired, old guys, facts, and that's the way it goes. We good? Is that. Is that up to speed for right now?

[Sean Glass]

I think so. I think literally everything that we got going on, we just talked about at least all the good stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

That's right.

[Sean Glass]

Some of the bad stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

Right on. Echo, any questions?

[Echo Charles]

No, I don't, actually.

[Jocko Willink]

All right.

[Echo Charles]

Oddly, because, shoot. I know Sean Glass. If we had questions, I call him up. What up? Where we at?

[Sean Glass]

Where are my stakes?

[Echo Charles]

Or whatever. Yeah, or whatever.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey, so we're training Jiu Jitsu. You are? You are the kids training Jiu Jitsu.

[Sean Glass]

So I was talking with Echo about this. They have. We're trying to control the schedule, so they have spring sports, fall sport, fall sport for them. They all play soccer. It's awesome right now because all the boys are on the same soccer team for school. And then my daughter plays for the direct league, youngest Daughter's too young. Spring is rugby season and then my daughter's playing soccer again. So wintertime, summertime is the only time that we can fit in combatives. I try to walk a line of not forcing them to do it. And it's. It's tough because we know why we want them to do it. I don't want them to do it for any reason. That's not great for them. It builds a huge amount of confidence. It's good for you to know how to defend yourself and to defend other people. I can't convey that. It's tough for an 11 year old to listen to that and have the perspective to go, my dad's trying to give me a gift. I didn't have that when I was growing up. You know, we didn't Little Itty Bitty Town. There was one shot of Khan Karate place that I went to for three months and then it closed down because it wasn't enough shotacon and going on, of course.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

So I never had that. So I want to give my kids at gift. A couple of them are down and we're trained and then a couple of them want some downtime. So any advice, I'm gonna give it.

[Jocko Willink]

To you right now.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So I'm gonna give you echelon front advice. So at echelon front, we talk about the difference between formal training and informal training. So what most people think of Echo Charles, when they think of training, they think of, all right, we're new training for our company. We need to take four days off. We need to bring in an expert. We need to sit in a classroom while day, we need to take notes. We need to be presented with a manual or a pamphlet or something. That's what, that's what training is. We think of military training. Okay, you're going to go to this school, you're going to go through this leadership stuff or you're going to go through this weapon system and you're going to learn this weapon system and you're going to. It's going to take three weeks to learn this weapon system. And once you've got this weapon system learned, then you'll be ready to use this system. That's formal training. Informal training is, hey, Echo, have you ever shot this weapon system before? Hey, let me give you a quick rundown. Okay, well, hey, you're gonna be here tomorrow because we're actually using on the range. Okay, cool. I'll let you shoot a couple times. And then two weeks later I'm like, oh, hey, I Got to break down and clean that weapon system. Do you want to help me? And boom, you get to do it. And. And over a period of six months, you're actually better trained than the guy that we sent to the two week school on the weapon system. So what I would recommend, and this is actually a perfect solution for you and your family because you have the pole barn, you've got room, you can get a couple mats.

[Sean Glass]

We've got them.

[Jocko Willink]

You got mats already. So what you can do is informal training. What you can do is, hey, for warm up today, we're going to escape the mount. You know enough basic Jiu Jitsu? Escape the mount, arm lock. You know enough basic Jiu Jitsu, Say, hey, to warm up. Hey, maybe we're not even doing Jiu Jitsu. Maybe we're just saying, hey, we're going to do hip escapes. We're going to do movements and occasionally we're going to. Oh, let me just show you guys an arm lock. You show a kid an arm lock for 10 minutes, you show a kid an arm lock for 10 minutes as a way to warm up, and you do that for a month, that kid's gonna have a freaking pretty solid arm lock. You show them how to do the rear naked choke for five minutes, that kid's gonna have a pretty solid rear naked choke, you know, for five minutes a day for. So I would recommend. And also then you do little challenges like, hey, your kids, do they ever shoot the basketball?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Do they toss the football?

[Sean Glass]

Oh, yeah. Rugby.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so they toss the rugby. So they're, you know, they're gonna be outside, they're gonna be doing things. Hey, what this, what you do today? You get the mount position, you got to get escape. You got to escape and you got to grab this, you know, tennis ball over here that's on the other side of the mat and just do some little games. And if you do this informal training, by the time these kids recognize, because what will happen is at some juncture, someone's going to push them on the schoolyard and they're going to do a double leg. Because that's another thing you'll drill a little bit of. They're going to do a double leg and they're going to take them down to the ground. Well, they actually just can do a rugby tackle.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Because they already know how to do. So they're just going to grab their legs like they do in rugby, and then they're going to be on the ground and the kid's going to turn away. And they're going to put a rear naked choke and be like, oh, I'm never going to get picked on this stuff that my dad was trying to show me. This magic. It's magic, and I'm going to learn more of this magic. So informal training, and this goes for all parents. A lot of times kids are like, you know, what age should my kids start Jiu Jitsu? Zero. When your kid is laying in their crib and they can't walk, you can start to pass their guard a little bit. You know what I'm saying? Echo Charles. And it becomes a little game when your kid can't walk, but they can, they can ride. And you can, you can have them mount you, and you can let them get that movement and the stability. Little informal training. That's my recommendation.

[Sean Glass]

Dig it.

[Jocko Willink]

So when you're doing Jiu jitsu, when they're working out, boxing, rugby, the whole nine yards, they're gonna need fuel. I recommend Jocko fuel for all of us. Check out jockofuel.com. we got. We got protein. We got energy drinks. We got. Ready to drink energy drinks. It's wintertime, and you know what that means. Hot chocolate milk. This is. This isn't a. This is a miracle. It's miracle, sir. Have you. Have you ever had hot chocolate mold?

[Sean Glass]

No, I have never heated it up.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so heat up the milk first. Heat up the milk first, and then add it. And then. Actually, this is another thing.

[Sean Glass]

You ever.

[Jocko Willink]

You ever doubted a piece of technology?

[Echo Charles]

Doubted.

[Jocko Willink]

Doubted a piece of technology? And you just like, that is stupid. It happened to me with wireless earphones for your phone, like, for so long. I was like, I gotta carry a nut. You gotta charge this thing. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I just have a wire. It's no big deal. And then finally, I forget who I think JP was like, dude, they're freaking awesome. And I was like, really? And I got him. Was like, I'm an idiot. My wife has this little thing. It's like a little stirring machine. I guess it's a long, slender metal pole with a little spring thing.

[Echo Charles]

Like, oh, yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know what I'm talking about?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You would not think that that could whip up in a mug. It whips up chocolate milk. So heat up the milk, put a scoop of chocolate milk in, and you can try the other flavors. But I'm telling you, the chocolate milk, put the chocolate milk, put that little wire thing in. And then if you really go, if you're going the Distance.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

My wife makes heavy whipping cream or she makes whipped cream with monk fruit. So it's sugar free whipped cream and it's. That right there is the combo. You can't, you can't beat it. This is glorious. This is one of the most epic things ever. You think I'm kidding?

[Echo Charles]

I know. I've done that exact thing. Not the, not the.

[Jocko Willink]

Not the heavy. Not the whipping cream.

[Echo Charles]

No, no, but the whole deal. Same tool, everything. Oh, I got you, fam. I got you.

[Jocko Willink]

It's good, right?

[Echo Charles]

Yes, good. Very good. Miracle. It's. Yeah. That's fun. That's a fun way to say yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. Something that tastes delicious and gives you protein.

[Echo Charles]

Hey, look, we're doing great work with our, with our M.O. over here. Christmas time heated up all day.

[Jocko Willink]

Jocko fuel.com, come and get it. Get yourself some chocolate milk. Get yourself protein. Get yourself energy drink. Get yourself joint warfare super krill. I met a woman at the, at the 4:34.

[Echo Charles]

Sure.

[Jocko Willink]

She was like, I couldn't run. And now I'm doing burpees. Joint warfare super krill. She was probably 52. And quite honestly, I'm rounding that down because I'm trying to be polite because I don't know how. So she was, you know what I'm saying?

[Echo Charles]

You never know.

[Jocko Willink]

But here she was, she said she couldn't run. And now she's not only running, she's doing. Doing burpees. So check these things out. Jockofuel.com Also, they're at Wawa. They're at Walmart. Have you heard of Walmart before?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Good things.

[Jocko Willink]

You can get the protein at Walmart. So go get the protein. You can also get it at Wawa Vitamin Shop. GNC Military commissaries A fees. Hannaford Dash Doors in Maryland. Wake Fern Shop.

[Sean Glass]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

HEB down in Texas.

[Sean Glass]

Oh, Heb. Oh yeah, that was our grocery store growing up.

[Jocko Willink]

HEB is Heb. Texas loves Jocko Fuel. Oh yeah, it's. It's awesome. We go into HEB down there and they set up like the most awesome displays and they're just fired up. So he B is a great store. And then same thing with Meijer up in the Midwest.

[Sean Glass]

Oh, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Very, very hyped. And then Wegmans.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Out on the east coast, right by us.

[Sean Glass]

Oh, 30 miles away. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was actually there getting some stuff for this trip before we roll down.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, well, there you go. Wegmans were Wegmans. Harris Teeter and then, you know, Lifetime Fitness and Shields and then bunch of Small gyms everywhere. So get. Go get yourself some taco fuel. Also, when you're doing things in America, you should be doing them while you're wearing American made Clothing, I. E. Originusa.com there's no reason, there's literally no reason. I'm not going to go through the slavery thing. No, look, we already. We fought the Civil War. I talked about Chamberlain. We thought we ended slavery, and we did. Here in America. It's not over in the world. There's more slavery now than there was then. You've heard the stat.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know where they are making your genes? In China, that's where they are literally literal slaves. So don't support that. Support America. Support the American economy. Support the American farmer, which Sean talked about. Isn't an easy life being a farmer.

[Sean Glass]

Not at all.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. It's not an easy life. How about we give them some support? How about we use American cotton?

[Echo Charles]

Yep. All day.

[Jocko Willink]

So whatever you need to wear workout clothes, we got you jiu jitsu, gis, we got you jeans, we got you work pants, we got you. What do they call, what would you call, like, the versatile pants?

[Echo Charles]

The versatile.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Just. What do you call those? Adventure pants, Something like this? Lifestyle pants. Probably a word for it that I don't really know. But hey, whatever you need to wear, OriginUSA.com you can get it.

[Sean Glass]

When I was down in North Carolina last year, you hooked me up with a little tour of the origin factory. It was amazing.

[Jocko Willink]

It's amazing.

[Sean Glass]

It is amazing to see all the stuff that's going on in that factory, all the American goods. And I got to talk to a bunch of people there that were very happy to be working there and doing awesome stuff. I mean, it was like mind blowing to be down there and see everything go down.

[Jocko Willink]

And, you know, I'm so proud and happy that you could go down there and see that because it is such an investment in America to be doing that. Because the easiest thing to do. The easiest thing to do. Look, bro, I can talk to someone in China right now. Look, it wasn't. Didn't used to be like that. In the 70s and 80s when they took everything overseas, you used to have to like, like send them a text. Not a text message, but a wire or something. Right? You had to go over there. No, you don't need to do that now. You can call it, go on the Internet, Google, make T shirt, and boom, you can get it done. And you can just get everything made overseas and you can save a little bit of money so you can Make a little more money. Just use slave labor. Just set your conscience aside. Your conscience aside. Just set it aside. Say that you're doing it because you know you're helping them. You're not helping them. You're keeping them enslaved. No, that's not the right way to do things. So when you go down that factory, that's the rebirth of American manufacturing. We're going to bring it back. It's not easy. We're reinvesting everything back. Right back into the factories, right back into the people, right back in the materials. That's what we're doing. So go to originusa.com and get yourself some freaking freedom and put it on your body. That's what I got. True.

[Echo Charles]

Also, if you want to represent discipline equals freedom, go to jockostore.com. get some hats on there, some shirts, of course, some hoodies on there. Also, what we call the shirt locker. We've arrived at that name, the shirt locker. It's a subscription scenario. Anyway, discipline equals freedom represented different creative ways.

[Jocko Willink]

You got this whole new stick about the shirt locker name.

[Echo Charles]

What do you mean?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know. You. This thing that you just did about. We've arrived at this name.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, we did arrive at this name a while ago.

[Jocko Willink]

Like six months ago. Why are we talking about it?

[Echo Charles]

We still arrived at it. We still arrived.

[Sean Glass]

Whenever you arrived at it, I got to get on it because every time we go to the muster, there's a bunch of people walking around rocking some great shirts.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

I'm like, where did you get that shirt locker? The only place, because I got on the website, I'm like, cool, I got to get on one of these. And then I don't see all the cool drops because I'm not on the.

[Jocko Willink]

Shirt locker drops, bro.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's a boomer over there talking about drop culture.

[Echo Charles]

Well, technically. Technically, it's not a drop. It's similar, but it's not. It's a subscription there. But here's the good news.

[Sean Glass]

Okay.

[Echo Charles]

If, let's say, one was in your position, missed out on all the past shirts. If, when you sign up, you can get some of the past designs.

[Sean Glass]

Okay.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah. Or given that they're not sold out at any given moment anyway, it's a perk of joining the Sherlock. But, yeah, good designs. The most recent one is you against you.

[Jocko Willink]

Is that out yet?

[Echo Charles]

I heard that somewhere. It's a good deal. December. December sure is you against you.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, you don't do a Christmas.

[Echo Charles]

Theme for December sometimes. But, you know, I feel like if you buy a Christmas shirt, you're going to be compelled to only wear it during Christmas, you know, which is cool. It's cool. But, you know, what's the one. What's the word? Ever green or whatever that, you know, you can wear it. Yeah. Whenever.

[Jocko Willink]

Look at you row with the big.

[Echo Charles]

Strategy learning.

[Jocko Willink]

That's amazing.

[Echo Charles]

Anyway, it's all on Jocko store dot com.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. And by the way, in this whole system, like every day, every. This whole system, this whole. This whole atmosphere that we're in here, this whole ecology that we're living in, you're gonna need steaks. And I recommend you go check out Primal beef dot com. You heard about it today. You heard. You talk to the man. Right. Who's making it happen. And it's. It's beautiful.

[Echo Charles]

Quick question about can.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, I was, like, getting emotional and you just cut me off. I was talking about the beauty.

[Echo Charles]

Well, yeah, this is going to be a beautiful question. How about that?

[Sean Glass]

Hell, yeah.

[Echo Charles]

So if I just wanted just ground beef.

[Sean Glass]

Yep.

[Echo Charles]

Like every month, like a subscription scenario, I do that.

[Sean Glass]

Done. We literally call it. I'm not very creative, so I called it the just ground beef box.

[Echo Charles]

Well, that makes sense.

[Sean Glass]

Hey, Jo.

[Echo Charles]

Just. Okay. It's a good team.

[Sean Glass]

I'm not like carnivore strictly, but we've always got cook ground beef.

[Jocko Willink]

We brushing up against it.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, yeah, We're. We're carnivore adjacent. We're like. We're right there.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

So I've got. My protocol is I've got about four pounds of primal beef ground beef cooked at almost any time. Salt, pepper, that's all I put in there. One, because the beef is ridiculous. But two, I also want to be versatile. Most of the time, my kids just eat that with some fruit or they'll put it on some rice or something. But it's also there. If we want to make tacos at night, we can add a little bit of. What's your extra seasoning? Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

That's what I was gonna ask you. So you got just ground beef. You just cook it as is.

[Sean Glass]

Salt and pepper.

[Jocko Willink]

Salt. Okay.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

There you go.

[Sean Glass]

That's it. Because that goes with everything.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Whether I'm making tacos, whether we're making lasagna. We don't make lasagna. Pasta. Whatever. We're making us whatever. You just throw the ground beef in there. But it doesn't usually last because it's so good. My kids are just put it on rice, put it on a bowl with nothing else, and it's Usually gone within a day.

[Jocko Willink]

This sounds like you might have a plan.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, that. Well, that is my plan. That's literally what I do. So I'll cook it. I put this rib rub on it.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, just a little bit, you know.

[Echo Charles]

And it's like even if you want to make tacos, you got the rebrand bottle already. Make the. Or baked or cooked into it. Yeah, the taco makes it, you know, a little thing. But yeah, you put on rice, spaghetti, something like that.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, whatever. But yeah, have it all.

[Echo Charles]

Like there's a bunch of it is what I'm saying.

[Sean Glass]

It's the best. And it cooks, you know, you cook ground beef, it only takes a couple of minutes and then you've got all that stuff just on standby. Only in my house, it doesn't last. Yeah. So usually standby is not that long.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

So that's why. Yeah, you got this. Because we're always going back to the store to grab more, you know, so we've got. There you go.

[Sean Glass]

£15 in the just ground beef box. And then we have a new smaller box for people who maybe don't need £15 every 30 days. There's £7 in there as well. But almost any box you buy from us, you're going to get the ground beef in there as well. So have it on standby.

[Jocko Willink]

Fruit finish. What, what percentage, you know, how they break it down. What, what, what are we dealing with?

[Sean Glass]

85, 15. And for.

[Jocko Willink]

I think that's good. That might be the sweet spot right there.

[Sean Glass]

I think it is.

[Jocko Willink]

Cuz it's. That makes a burger. Yeah, that makes a good burger.

[Sean Glass]

I've had three people text me within the last 24 hours and say they can't have a steak anywhere else because they've been ruined and they can't have a burger anywhere else because they've been ruined. Yeah, I mean the steaks are ridiculous, but our family eats a lot of burgers and we won't eat anything. It's just. Yeah, it just sets the bar. And then everything else is now kind of a disappointment.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So check it out. Primalbeef.com get some of that. Also coloradocraftbeef.com another great family business out there in Colorado making great steaks as well. So you can check them out.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, great. Hang out with Jeff at the council.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you guys go through trade secrets?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah, we. We just kind of had our own little off site. Our beef off site.

[Jocko Willink]

I know. I saw you like, like magnetically go towards each other and start talking. I was like, oh, these guys had a lot of things to discuss. Yeah, it's. But it's awesome to see two great companies, great people, ColoradoCraftBeef.com and PrimalBeef.com Check it out. Subscribe to the podcast. Check out Jocko Underground.com Check out the YouTube channels. Check out Psychological Warfare. Check out FlipsideCanvas.com Dakota Meyer Making Cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership and you can check those if you want. I've also written a novel. I've also written a bunch of kids books. So there's a movie coming that's going to help a lot of kids. And they're all going to be working out. They're all going to be eating clean. They're all going to be getting stronger, faster, smarter and better. But you don't have to wait. You have to wait for that. You can just get the books. So check those out. Also, Echelon front, you heard us talk about a little bit today. That's what we do. We take these leadership principles and we teach them to your whole organization. And you will see a dramatic change in your organization because people will start working together as a team. People will understand what the mission is. People know what priorities to focus on. People will have decentralized command where everyone's going to step up and lead. That's what we're going to do for your organization. So if you need help inside your organization, you want Sean to come out, meet with you, go through training protocols, run through exercises with you that will help you see your leadership shortfalls or one of our other instructors. Go to echelonfront.com we solve problems through leadership. We also have an online training academy. Extremeownership.com Leadership is a skill, believe it or not. Believe it or not, you're not just born with 10 out of 10 leadership skill sets. Doesn't work. Hey, you might have a natural seven in one of them. That's cool. But you might have a four somewhere else. Right. So these are skills. Might have a pretty naturally good arm lock. You ever met someone's got a pretty naturally good arm lock?

[Echo Charles]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, they exist. Like someone's got a good arm lock.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

But there's also people that have to learn the arm lock and they're not that good at, but they can get good at it over time. Same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership skill that you can learn. So go to extremeownership.com learn the skill of leadership. If you want to help service members Active and retired. You want to help their family? You want to help gold star families? Check out Mark Lee's mom, mom Alicia. She's got a great charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warrior years.org there's also heroes and horses.org Micah Fink. Taking people out in the wilderness so they can find themselves. And then Jimmy May has got an organization called beyond the brotherhood.org check those out. And also Primal Beef gets engaged. Talk about it.

[Sean Glass]

What are we doing with C4?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. So we knew when we started this business that we didn't want it to be something that was just serving us. So we care a lot about the community we came from. So when we started the business, I reached out to Mr. Charlie Keating, who's the father of Charlie Keating the Fourth, who Awesome Seal was nicknamed C4. Best nickname of all time.

[Jocko Willink]

It's in the running.

[Sean Glass]

It definitely is.

[Jocko Willink]

It's in the running. There's about five nicknames. I'm gonna, I'm gonna compile lift. C4 is in the game. I mean, you can't have a much cooler nickname when your nickname C4. Yeah, that's freaking legit. I think I'm gonna put together a list of the top 10 nicknames.

[Sean Glass]

And just seal wise, they're like military because pilots have some good ones. They're not. They're usually negative good.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, pilots have some okay ones.

[Sean Glass]

You don't want to give Dave too much credit.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, Dave. Do you know what Dave's nickname was?

[Sean Glass]

It's a chip.

[Jocko Willink]

Chip. Yeah, Dave's nickname was Chip. And it is derogatory because he like chipped his tooth on some system of the thing.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

But C4 is definitely. It's definitely probably top five.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

But I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to really consider and think through those things. Actually. We should have a. We should have an off site or at least a phone call with all the boys and figure out some of them real good. Nick compile. Because there's some good ones. But C4, Charlie Keating.

[Sean Glass]

So Charlie was Chuck heavy. Let's go guy. Loved by everybody. Yep. In the SEAL team, just total stud, like the operator that you. You want to be when you get into the SEAL teams. And he was killed on his last tour over in Iraq. My troop actually bumped his troop out. That was my last combat tour as well. And his dad started a foundation in his honor called the C4 Foundation. And the purpose of this foundation is to provide services to SEALs and their families that they just can't get anywhere else. And the primary thing that they do is they operate this. This amazing ranch. I mean, you've been up there multiple times up in the mountains in California, not too far from here. And they have all these different resources for team guys and for their families to get up there to take care of themselves, to take care of their body, to take care of their mind, to connect back with their families. And I reached out to my first platoon chief. Dave is now helping them out. He's been doing that for a couple of years. He's actually at the ranch right now. And I just told them what we had going on, and I said, hey, we'd like to partner with C4. And every time we sell a box of beef, we like to donate a cut to SEALs and their family through you guys. And Mr. Keating, just being the outstanding human that he was, I had like the sales pitch already, like, ready to show him why this was a good thing. And I got through like four words, and he's like, of course, let's do this. So anytime you buy a box, you're feeding yourself super high quality beef. You're feeding your family, but you're also taking care of our, our nation's special operations forces. So to this date, we've donated about £5,000 of beef to the C4 foundation, and we've only been in business for a little over a year, and that's all made possible by our patrons. So C4 foundation, doing great stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

And you deliver that?

[Sean Glass]

We do.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So you bring it down to. I get to Bob beach or sd.

[Sean Glass]

And selfishly, I still want to be, you know, a little bit a part of the community and be a blessing to the boys. So we send a bunch out to the west coast, and then I drive down to the guys in the east coast, just load the truck up with massive quality. My suspension in my power wagon was. Was dragging this last. This last drop off.

[Jocko Willink]

Is it just like a free for all? Like a un freaking. Basically just fighting over just rib eyes.

[Sean Glass]

On standby, just waiting to receive. Receive beef. But it's again, that. That counterintuitive thing of you get to give and you get to get some in return. So.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that. That's awesome. And you know, look, when you're in the Navy, you're not making a ton of money and so getting. Dude, my family did not eat steak. Yeah, when, when I was in the teams, like, that wasn't on the freaking budget. It was just not on the budget. At all. Did not. We. I didn't eat steak when I had kids and was in the teams, so to be able to get these guys some freaking steak. Hell yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

If you want to connect with us on the Interwebs, primalbeef.com Twitter. How much Twitter activity are you doing right now?

[Sean Glass]

About zero.

[Jocko Willink]

Zero.

[Sean Glass]

But I need to get back on. Yeah, I need to get back on Primal Underscore.

[Jocko Willink]

Beef Underscore co. And then you're on, you're on Instagram now.

[Sean Glass]

Kinda like I had this, this portion where I was like excited about it a little bit and then I just haven't done too much recently.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Sean Glass]

It was all just stuff about the, like, stuff on the farm, things like that.

[Jocko Willink]

It's pretty interesting stuff though, at Sean Glass Actual. Yeah, but you're not on Twitter. X.

[Sean Glass]

No, I've only got five kids. Yeah. I've only got so much time to go around, so I got to prioritize and execute.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. But if you want to find Sean Glass actual, you can find a Matt Sean Glass Actual or. Yeah, but check out Primal Beef, Primal Underscore or. Sorry, what? So what's the. Is the, is the Instagram Primal Underscore brief Beef Underscore company?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Is that right?

[Sean Glass]

But if you just search Primal Beef Company, like it's going to be the thing that, that pops up.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it. And then for, for Echo Charles and I, you can check out jocko.com and find all this [e-mail] and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink Echoes at Echo Charles. And just be careful because there's an algorithm on there that will literally just steal your soul from you. And you'll be thinking it's all good, but it's not. Echo Charles. Anything else?

[Echo Charles]

No. Good to see Sean Glass again, as always.

[Sean Glass]

Always a pleasure, Echo. Always a pleasure.

[Echo Charles]

But it is like, you know, like if I want to talk to you, I do just text you, call you, whatever. So, yeah, good to see you in person. How about that?

[Sean Glass]

Yeah. Cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Sean, any closing comments?

[Sean Glass]

No, just thanks for having me back on and, you know, love being part of the team.

[Jocko Willink]

Right on, man. Well, thanks for coming back on. Of course. And thanks for sharing your lessons learned and thanks for your. Your service to the nation, to the teams, and now to your community. And by the way, thanks all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines that are out there right now in harm's way, keeping us safe and protecting our way of life. And thanks also to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. We thank you all for keeping us safe here at home and everyone else out there. Stay humble. Be ready. Be prepared. You don't know what's going to happen. What Sean Glass is teaching these young men is something we can all learn. Be ready. You don't know what's coming your way. And the way that you can be ready, the way that you can be prepared is by getting out there every day and getting after it. And until next time, this is Sean and Echo and Jocko out.