473: Achieve The Intent In A Matter Best Fitting Reality. With Codey Gandy

Summary

Jocko Podcast Episode 473: Achieve The Intent In A Matter Best Fitting Reality with Cody Gandy

In Episode 473 of the Jocko Podcast, host Jocko Willink and co-host Echo Charles engage in an in-depth conversation with Cody Gandy, a seasoned Marine Corps fireteam leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, and now a leadership instructor and director of experiential training at Echelon Front. This episode delves into Cody's extensive military background, his experiences during deployments, and the profound leadership lessons he has gleaned both on and off the battlefield.

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1. Early Life and Background

Cody Gandy hails from Loomis, California, a small agricultural town near Sacramento. Growing up in a tight-knit community, Cody was influenced by his parents—his mother worked in real estate, and his father served as a police officer. This environment instilled in him a sense of discipline and resilience from a young age.

Cody Gandy [03:03]: "I was the introvert in a group of extroverts, and so they kind of brought that out of me."

2. Athletic Pursuits and College Aspirations

From a young age, Cody was heavily involved in sports, excelling in both baseball and football. His ambition was to pursue athletics at a collegiate level, with dreams of making it to the NFL. However, a combination of academic struggles and a significant knee injury derailed his athletic trajectory, leading him to reassess his path.

Cody Gandy [09:30]: "After my freshman year of college, my ball blew out my knee and kind of the walls came crashing in after that point."

3. Joining the Marine Corps

Facing a pivotal moment in his life, Cody turned to the Marine Corps as a means of rebuilding and finding purpose after his injury and subsequent personal challenges. Influenced by a Marine friend and seeking a structured environment, he enlisted and quickly distinguished himself in boot camp.

Cody Gandy [22:59]: "I moved up the surgery, got surgery, and they gave me kind of like, hey, you can't really do anything for about six months. And I was like, watch me."

4. Deployment to Benghazi

Cody's first major deployment was to Guantanamo Bay, where his unit was tasked with providing security at the fence line. Shortly after, they were rapidly deployed to Libya in response to the tragic attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. This real-world combat scenario provided Cody with firsthand experience of the challenges and complexities of military operations under crisis conditions.

Cody Gandy [38:55]: "We landed down there, and it's just pandemonium. It's just crazy. We're trying to get there as fast as we can because, you know, at 19, I'm like, what's going to be there when I get there?"

5. Lessons Learned from Deployment

The Benghazi deployment was a profound learning experience for Cody. He emphasized the importance of clear communication, swift decision-making, and the critical role of leadership in high-pressure situations. Observing the delays and bureaucratic hurdles firsthand underscored the necessity of decisive action to prevent further loss and chaos.

Cody Gandy [48:05]: "Biggest lesson learned was just information itself and how powerful it can be. The unknown caused a lot of panic and, you know, craziness."

6. Transition to Echelon Front and FTX

After completing his tour, Cody transitioned to Echelon Front, where he became instrumental in developing and conducting Field Training Exercises (FTXs). These exercises are designed to teach and reinforce leadership principles through realistic, hands-on scenarios. Cody shares insights into how these FTXs operate, emphasizing their focus on mental resilience and strategic thinking over physical prowess.

Cody Gandy [110:20]: "It's a leadership lab for, for lack of a better word. A lot of people, when they read the book or they come to a PowerPoint done by one of the instructors, everything's theoretical. The FTX is a culmination. It's a test on the reality of who you are."

7. Applying Leadership Principles at Home

Cody reflects on the challenges of implementing military-derived leadership principles in his personal life, particularly in raising his children. He discusses the difficulties of detaching emotionally while maintaining discipline, highlighting the delicate balance between authority and empathy.

Cody Gandy [93:08]: "With my kids, it's a hell of a lot harder than any other realm. It's my kids. It's my wife. They are my emotional connection, which makes it harder."

8. Overcoming Leadership Challenges

Throughout the podcast, Cody candidly shares moments where his leadership approach was tested and how he adapted to become a more effective leader. From handling peer evaluations to dealing with personal setbacks like a gun accident, Cody emphasizes the continuous nature of learning and growth in leadership roles.

Cody Gandy [77:36]: "I started to really reflect and look back, you know, when I was subordinate, on, like, how I viewed my leadership. I wanted to be someone that, like, I want to be like him. I didn't want to be the name, like, don't be like Sergeant Gandy."

9. Final Thoughts and Personal Growth

In the concluding segments, Cody discusses his ongoing commitment to leadership development, both professionally and personally. He underscores the significance of ownership in all aspects of life, advocating for a proactive approach to challenges and the continuous pursuit of self-improvement.

Cody Gandy [125:54]: "There is a place for ownership in everything. Sometimes it's in your response, sometimes it's in the problem, sometimes in the solution."

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Key Takeaways:

• Decisive Leadership: Cody’s experiences highlight the necessity of decisive action and clear communication in leadership, especially during crises.

• Ownership and Responsibility: Emphasizing the importance of taking ownership not just of actions, but also of responses to unforeseen challenges.

• Continuous Learning: Leadership is an evolving skill that requires ongoing reflection and adaptation based on experiences and feedback.

• Balancing Authority and Empathy: Effective leadership involves maintaining discipline while also fostering genuine connections and understanding within a team.

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Notable Quotes:

• Cody Gandy [38:55]: "We're just trying to get there as fast as we can because, you know, at 19, I'm like, what's going to be there when I get there?"

• Cody Gandy [48:05]: "Biggest lesson learned was just information itself and how powerful it can be."

• Cody Gandy [93:08]: "With my kids, it's a hell of a lot harder than any other realm."

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This episode offers a comprehensive look into the life of a Marine Corps leader who has seamlessly transitioned his military experiences into civilian leadership training. Cody Gandy’s narrative serves as a testament to the enduring principles of discipline, ownership, and adaptive leadership, making it a valuable resource for listeners seeking to enhance their leadership skills in various facets of life.

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko, podcast number 473 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Good evening.

[Jocko Willink]

The mission of the rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver or repel the enemy's assault by fire and close combat. The Marine Corps rifle squad is the fundamental maneuver unit of the Marine Corps infantry. It is organized to provide multiple fire units and mutually supporting combined arms effects on the battlefield. Time and again, the tide of a battle has been changed through a squad leader's decisive employment of their squad Mission tactics is a fundamental enabler of maneuver warfare. Mission tactics is a method of command which relays commanders intent to subordinate leaders and empowers them to take initiative on a dynamic battlefield in order to achieve that intent in a manner best fitting the realities facing the subordinate leader. Rifle squad leaders are the point at which mission tactics are actually employed in the operational environment. They must be able to effectively and efficiently use the tools and techniques available to them in order to generate the desired commander's intent. To that end, the Marine Corps has developed small unit tactics and techniques which have proven effective for small unit leaders in past wars and operations to serve as a template to guide squad leaders as they face new and challenging environments. A foundational aspect of Marine Corps leadership is the small unit leader's ability to understand the fundamentals of the profession of arms and confidently apply them in innovative ways. This ability is the core enabler of mission tactics and maneuver warfare. Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1 Warfighting defines maneuver warfare as, quote, a war fighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy's cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot cope. End quote. I think I could just read those like just kind of continually. That's from a little excerpt. Little combination of some excerpts from Marine Corps Publication 3 TAC 10A4 Marine Rifle Squad explains how the Marine rifle squad operates, how it functions, how it's led, and the Marine Corps does an outstanding job of creating leaders. We have one of those leaders here tonight, Cody Gandy, Marine Corps fireteam leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, and now leadership instructor and director of experiential training at Echelon Front. He's learned a lot over the years coming up through the ranks and he's here with us tonight to share some of those experiences and lessons learned. Cody, thanks for joining us, man.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir. Pleasure to be here.

[Jocko Willink]

When you hear close with and destroy, do you have flashbacks?

[Cody Gandy]

It's a little. Little burning Inside of my soul there as you read that off.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, so epic. All right, let's, let's get a little bit of your background. Where'd you grow up?

[Cody Gandy]

So I grew up in Northern California, small town called Loomis, California. It's about 20 minutes north of Sacramento. So capital up there and small town. So you're talking, you know, 7, 500 people is, is what you're dealing with. Little cow town up there, small community, but you're close enough to the big city if you want.

[Jocko Willink]

But so you say cowtown and a lot of people don't understand that much of California, Most of California is agriculture.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, is that what's going on up there?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, we're on the, the outskirts of the or we're on the edge of the city. And so as you get a little past the high school and stuff like that, it's all, it's all cows and ag and stuff like that. So definitely have rode a couple cows in my life.

[Jocko Willink]

And what'd your mom and dad do?

[Cody Gandy]

So my mom was real estate growing up, so she was a working mom and my dad was, was a cop. So still is all kind of billets, was on the sheriff's department, small town PD and now he's still, he's a homicide detective out in California right now as well.

[Jocko Willink]

Where did he, did he grow up in California as well?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, he's from San Jose.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, and what about your mom? Same thing.

[Cody Gandy]

She's up in Auburn area. Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Where my, my grandparents grew up and then brothers, sisters.

[Cody Gandy]

I have a younger sister.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah. So she's four or five years younger than me, depending on the time of the year.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, Jack. And so you're growing up. What were you like a kid? What are you into?

[Cody Gandy]

Pretty quiet, pretty reserved. I know. You know me, pretty reserved person. Got that from my dad and kind of growing up that way, heavily involved in sports. I was that, that weird kid that would watch SportsCenter three times in a row and I would give you all the stats and I knew everything about everything. Sports.

[Jocko Willink]

And so I was wearing your dad that into sports?

[Cody Gandy]

No, it's just I fell in love with it. I wanted to do football, baseball, sports year round is what I wanted to do. So I was, that was, that was my life until I, until I went into the Marine Corps later on.

[Jocko Willink]

So as you're growing up, did you get, did you like go play travel ball or. Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

So baseball was a year round thing.

[Jocko Willink]

Was that your best sport?

[Cody Gandy]

I was better at baseball, but I liked football. More. And then I supplemented wrestling in there to help with. With football.

[Jocko Willink]

How many years did you wrestle?

[Cody Gandy]

Three. Once I got to high school, I stopped just because it was.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, damn. I know why.

[Cody Gandy]

It was just too much in my head because I went from football and then it was fall ball for baseball, and I thought I had a chance of going, you know, college for one of those two, and so I had to pick and choose.

[Jocko Willink]

Echo Charles. Yeah, we're playing football.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. In part of football, a big part of football is to grab another guy and pull him to the ground, right?

[Echo Charles]

Yep, yep, true.

[Jocko Willink]

So if you start. But then there's other things. There's a ball, there's throwing a ball. There's other things. But really what a lot of people like about football is you're going to grab a guy and pull him to the ground, right?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah. It's part of the gig, for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

So you get done with football season and there's another season that starts that we could participate in.

[Echo Charles]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

There's no ball, there's no throwing, there's no kicking. All there is is grabbing dudes and pulling to the ground.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Why isn't wrestling more popular? Well, why did Cody Gandy quit wrestling?

[Echo Charles]

It's a good question. Because what you're talking about literally, is like half the appeal for, like, half the people. So you're talking about tackling somebody. Yeah. So first off, only defense tackles.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, Some.

[Echo Charles]

A lot of people, actually, I would say would. And tell me if you agree with this. Did you play defense? Offense?

[Cody Gandy]

Both defense.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. So most people, I think, like offense because you can get to score.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Okay.

[Echo Charles]

And the objective of the game is to get on offense and score.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. But let me say something else. There's also people that are trying not to get taken down to the ground. Yeah, right.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah, fully. And. And, yeah, continue running.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, continue running and getting away.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah, fully.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, it.

[Echo Charles]

To be honest, I don't. I mean, sure, there is translation, for sure. Oh, man. I can see how it. Help. Or whatever. In fact, jiu jitsu and rugby, there's like, I told you, I made like this little documentary mini doc or whatever in the Australian Rugby League about you. They take jiu jitsu to get better at rugby.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Anyway, it's a long story, but answer your question. They are complete. It doesn't seem like it if you don't play football, I guess, but they are completely different. Different experiences. One is like, yeah, you're fighting the guys in just more of a combat scenario. The other One doesn't feel like a combat scenario. It's more about like.

[Jocko Willink]

It's a game.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, it's like. It's the combat part of it is more of a means for something, dude.

[Jocko Willink]

Something great. Wrestlers go hard. Wrestlers are like. They say you don't play wrestling.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know what I mean?

[Echo Charles]

Yep. That makes sense. That feels correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Go play football. You ain't playing wrestling.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. So understand.

[Jocko Willink]

All right, so I fast forward a little bit there. So you're. So. You pretty good. Pretty good at these games.

[Cody Gandy]

Good. Not great. I had the ability to do that, but I didn't take it seriously. So the practices of workouts, I would show up and do good.

[Jocko Willink]

And so you're watching SportsCenter three times a day, but you're, like, not putting out on the suicide sprints. Is that what's happening?

[Cody Gandy]

I guess at practices? Yes. But it's all the stuff outside. There's a difference between being good and great. I wasn't putting in the work. I was more worried about other things in life.

[Jocko Willink]

What other things are you worried about?

[Cody Gandy]

Girls and parties? Was that it?

[Jocko Willink]

So you're quiet and you're reserved, but you like girls and parties?

[Cody Gandy]

I was the introvert in a group of extroverts, and so they kind of brought that out of me. And so that was where my head was at, you know, 15, 16, 17. That was so.

[Jocko Willink]

So now we're in high school.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, so you're in high school. And how's your. How's your, like, schools? Are you guys going to states? Are you guys winning CIF regionals? Like, how's it going?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah. CIA, Nothing to state. Went to the CIF championships in baseball my junior year. Football my junior year, senior year, We. We weren't the best in football. And then baseball, we were pretty decent, but nothing. Nothing to the state level.

[Jocko Willink]

And are you starting to get looked at for college? Are you thinking that's an opportunity for you?

[Cody Gandy]

That's what I wanted to do. So I wanted to go. My goal was to go NFL, but I weighed like a whopping 165 my senior year and wasn't really in the card. So I had some looks on some D2, some D3, some smaller schools, and had some D1 baseball, but I really wanted to play football more than anything.

[Jocko Willink]

And how is it when you're growing up in a small town and your dad's a cop? How's that work out?

[Cody Gandy]

A little challenging. It's pros and cons. Right. So everybody knows. My dad, my mom, and dad are kind of life of the party. We're always doing big things. We're doing, you know, camping with 50 people and going out in the woods and doing stuff like that. So everybody knows my dad. My dad eventually transfers to the neighboring city, so he's in Rockland cop. And I live in Loomis, so everybody knows him.

[Jocko Willink]

He.

[Cody Gandy]

He coaches me in football in his, you know, full kit as a kid. And so I get dropped off at school in a squad car, which I don't think you're supposed to do that, but that was. That was cool growing up. So it was. People knew, but I was a bit of a knucklehead and got in trouble a couple times. And so that was the classic cops kid causing trouble.

[Jocko Willink]

In trouble with the cops.

[Cody Gandy]

Majority of times, no able to get away. But I got. I got arrested when I was 16. So I was. I was a younger kid. I. I graduated. I was 17. So my, my junior year hung out with a lot of older kids playing football. Dated an older girl and we're going to one of the dances and got caught underage drinking. And they're like, hey, you got to call your dad.

[Jocko Willink]

And this was when your dad was a cop in that town?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, my dad's been a cop pretty much my whole life. That's all. That's all I've ever known. And so I call him and I'm just like, I let him down was the thing, because he's like coached me and guided me and don't do this stupid stuff and learn from him, et cetera. I remember making the call and he's like, hey, just what are you going to do? Because the cop's there and he wants to. He's asking everybody questions like, who did this? Who's drinking? And there's like two sides. It's you drink or you didn't drink. And I was like, well, I'll just tell the truth. Cuz one thing I learned growing up is like, the truth is. That's it. I never got in more trouble for telling the truth is when I lied, it is when I got in exponentially more trouble.

[Jocko Willink]

It's exponential. Here to tell you as a. As a dad, you lie, it's going to hurt.

[Echo Charles]

Oh yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You tell the truth, it's going to hurt a little bit. But I like that. Exponential is what we're dealing with.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Told the truth.

[Cody Gandy]

Told the truth. Still got in trouble, but there was no punishment at home for what happened. I was.

[Jocko Willink]

Did they lock you up?

[Cody Gandy]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

Cuz I feel like if My. If. If I was your dad and you got rolled up, I'd tell, like, you know, be like, hey, dude, freaking throw him and throw him in the. Throw him in the clink for the night. Just let him see Scared Straight. Dude, is that wrong?

[Echo Charles]

It's harsh, but, hey, man, do it.

[Jocko Willink]

Especially a small town. Like, they probably had four cells or something in jail.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. You probably knew other cops, too, probably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

[Cody Gandy]

I was always around, get in here.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Process you in. So. But you ultimately don't get in a ton of trouble because. Well, first of all, it's not that big of a crime. Underage drinking.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

What kind of music were you listening to?

[Cody Gandy]

My. My first CD was Beastie Boys. Licensed to Ill. That was my first cd. So that's what my dad bought me. I don't remember what age it was.

[Jocko Willink]

Your dad bought you that?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Interesting.

[Cody Gandy]

Okay, So I was in middle school. Beastie Boys, System of the Down. My dad was really into rock. I was really. Anything that had a good beat or just got the blood flowing, obviously a lot of workouts for sports and stuff like that, but it was pretty much anything that had a good tune to it.

[Jocko Willink]

And so were you thinking about going to the Marine Corps this young?

[Cody Gandy]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

What were you thinking about? What were you thinking about doing?

[Cody Gandy]

I want to go into law enforcement. So growing up, you know, I was born in 91, watching my dad, it's a little bit cooler to be a cop back then than it is nowadays. My dad was, you know, the hero in the house, and it just made sense. And hearing the stories and, you know, people gravitate towards him and want to talk to him, it just. It's what I wanted to do. No interest in the military whatsoever. I had a buddy, one of my best friends, that ended up going in the Marines, and he wanted me to meet his recruiter. And I was like, hell, no. I was like, that's not. I wanted to serve, but just in a different way. Both my grandfathers were Navy guys, so, you know, I had some family in the military as well, but it just. For me at the time, it didn't make sense.

[Jocko Willink]

So are you going to go to college to make this happen?

[Cody Gandy]

Do you?

[Jocko Willink]

Because you don't need to go to college to be a police officer, do you?

[Cody Gandy]

No. You can go straight out of high school. I wanted to go to college to get a degree. Well, I wanted to do. Football was the primary route, but I wanted to get a degree because certain law enforcement agencies, you have to get a degree to promote to certain levels. That was really the only reason.

[Jocko Willink]

Now, are you getting looked at for colleges? You said you got some D2 schools looking at you.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, small schools for. For football, a couple, you know, Lower tier, tier 2, D1 schools for baseball. But I really wanted to play football, but I was just, you know, too small. I. I ate top ramen. Every day was my. My fuel source, like, every single day. That's what I. After school. So. Didn't prioritize the nutrition as I should. Thus the 165 and full gear is what I weighed.

[Jocko Willink]

When you were growing up and your dad, looking at your dad, did you. You know, you get to see the good side of, you know, being a cop. You see him in uniform, you see people treating him with respect. Did you see any of the, like, downside. Did you see any of the negativity from, you know, the stress from your. From watching your dad?

[Cody Gandy]

I think my dad did a very good job of shielding me from that. Obviously, when I'm really young, he wants to not let me know what's going on, but we had a couple instances where he had a undercover car at the house, and our tires got slashed and stuff like that. And we didn't really run into any people that he arrested in the. The past, which was good. But, you know, sometimes we'd be out and he. He would see someone. He's like, we're gonna go. Which I kind of put two and two together. So I really didn't see any of that until in high school. My dad's partner got killed in the line of duty. So one of his partners, Matt Redding, was doing a DUI checkpoint or set up cones on a freeway super late at night about 2am and a drunk driver hit him and killed him. And I just remember after the fact, that was the first time I saw my dad kind of process, you know, something negative in a. In a. From a. From a law enforcement lens.

[Jocko Willink]

How old were you when that happened?

[Cody Gandy]

This was. Man, I think I was freshman year, so 2005.

[Jocko Willink]

So you were like a fully cognizant.

[Cody Gandy]

I was aware, yeah. And I knew the guy. So he's been to the house a couple times, played basketball with him. He was. It was a younger guy that my. My dad joined when he was like, 31, 32, and for law enforcement. So I knew the guy, Matt. So it kind of hit home and it hit my dad pretty hard.

[Jocko Willink]

And would you say that that made you hesitate towards law enforcement or made you more move towards it?

[Cody Gandy]

I think it solidified it like then I knew in the moment I was like, this is exactly what I want to do.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, that's so strange how young men are like that, you know, like, we just see stuff like that and it makes us want to go do it. That's very strange. All right, so did you get any scholarships to college? Did it work out the way you wanted it to?

[Cody Gandy]

No, I had some D2, D3. But I eventually wanted to carve my own path. I went to juco route, went to a small school in, you know, middle California, and I wanted to, you know, play, you know, get some reps, gain some weight, and then eventually wanted to try to walk on. I wasn't getting a lot of exposure. My senior footballer team wasn't very good. We had a losing record and there's not a lot of eyes on teams that aren't very good. So I thought going juco, getting my weight up, getting some reps, getting more film, and then I'd walk on D1 was my route.

[Jocko Willink]

Mm.

[Cody Gandy]

But how'd that work out? That was short lived as I. After my freshman year of college, ball blew out my knee and kind of the walls came crashing in after that point.

[Jocko Willink]

What was the injury?

[Cody Gandy]

Mcl, pcl, meniscus?

[Jocko Willink]

What? Did it happen during a game?

[Cody Gandy]

Nope, it was just non contact.

[Jocko Willink]

Just cutting a turn or something like that? Yes, sir. Yeah. God. All right, and now what does that do to your. You said, you said things a little bit sideways after that.

[Cody Gandy]

Well, I'm in college, I'm away from home, which I'm away like two hours, but I'm on my own at, you know, and I'm still 17 because I graduated when I was 17. And so I'm on my own for the first time I get done with football and my, my dream is gone. Right. And you know, at 17, 18, you don't really have a lot of perspective on life. And my, my mission's over on the NFL. My. My dream's crushed. And so I start make one bad decision, which is followed by another and hanging around with the wrong people and doing the wrong thing. And it's just, I'm on a path of destruction at that point.

[Jocko Willink]

What, so what, are you drinking and partying and are you skipping classes? The whole nine yards?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, I'm failing like just like 101 classes. Like, you just have to show up to pass and I'm just like, I'm not going. I don't care. This is where I'm at.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you think how long you're gonna be able to do that for?

[Cody Gandy]

No, Very, very short sighted living day to day.

[Jocko Willink]

And so who, who turned you on to the possibility of going in the military and possibly going to the Marine Corps?

[Cody Gandy]

So it was a collection of events. So I, this was the summer of 2010, suffered the injury in the spring. During the summer there's not much going on. Doing a bunch of wrong things. I end up going to a party and I, I at the house, this guy tries to pull a gun on somebody, pulls a gun out, there's all this chaos and we're in a not so good part of town. He's flashing around, he ends up putting it towards his head and pulls a trigger. But it's a misfire. And guys tackle him, take it away. And from that moment I'm really just sitting there processing like, like what am I doing? Is the question I'm asking myself. Like where am I at? Like why? Why?

[Jocko Willink]

Let me just, just real quick. You told that pretty quick. So you're at a party and a dude has a gun and he's like flashing his gun around, acting like people are mouthing off.

[Cody Gandy]

It's we're not so good part of town, people are mouthing off. They pull it out to, you know, show that they're tough and stuff like that, waving it around.

[Jocko Willink]

But then he decides he's gonna kill himself.

[Cody Gandy]

I don't know if that was the master plan or whatever, but that's how it ended up.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you say misfire like click or misfire like partial discharge of the weapon, click. Okay. And now people tackle him.

[Cody Gandy]

People tackle them, take it away, please show up. I'm long gone before then, but as I'm leaving and everybody's kind of running away as they see a gun and stuff like that. Reflecting on your, reflecting on the life choices and how did I end up here within the, in this moment? And so that was kind of the, the self reflection moment on like what am I doing?

[Jocko Willink]

You know, that's a really good thing to think about. You know, every once in a while you gotta, if you're lucky, if you're lucky, when you're 18, 19, 20, 14, 17, 37, you can take a step back and look around and go, hold on a second. Why am I here right now? Is this the right spot to be in? And I think that some people feel that you get to a point where you doesn't matter anymore. You know, if you watch someone kind of self destruct in their 40s, 50s, like the, for them to dig themselves out of the hole that they Dug, it's going to be too much. And so they just keep going. But I still, I've seen people recover from those situations where they step back and said, you know what? This, this is not working out well, I need to stop doing this. But that's a, it's an important thing to. You know, it's like we talk about detachment all the time at Echelon Front, because when you're in the. When you're a kid, you're in it and you're doing it, you don't. You're like, that's just another night. You probably had other nights like that where there was a fight, there was a knife, there was a thing. People got arrested, dui, like the whole nine yards this stuff's happening. And when you're in it, you don't recognize, like, oh my gosh, I'm. I'm on the bad path right now. And what's crazy is your parents recognize it. Your parents, like, what the are you doing? You know? And any of your friends that kind of move forward in life, they're like, dude, what are you doing? Why are you still. Why are you still doing this kind of shit? So, yeah, that's a good little lesson learned. Assess where you're at sometimes. Take a little look around. Hopefully you don't need a traumatic event like a dude getting free, possibly killing himself. That's kind of. It's a bit much, but that's what it takes. So then how did you. So now you're. Now you're kind of open to suggestion of, of another path.

[Cody Gandy]

I see the, the football path, at least in the moment, the card. Like, it's a path that's really long. I'm trying to figure out what to do. I'm thinking of going into law enforcement, but there's my knees all jacked up, and I, I call one of my buddies, the Marine that I went to high school with, that tried to bring with the crew, and I was like, hell no. End up calling him. I was just seeking advice from, from anybody. And he just got back from Iraq at the time. And I was like, hey, man, like, I really don't know what I'm doing. Like, I'm in the pits right now. Like, how's the Marine Corps? And he was just like, you could hear him, like, perk up. He's like, oh, this is my moment.

[Jocko Willink]

He's like Ace Ventura. And he's like, you ask him that question, he's getting ready to give you a 30 minute answer. Yeah, so this dude did that okay, cool.

[Cody Gandy]

And it was good. He was. He was honest and upfront. He's like, hey, it's tough. It's challenging. That what really painted the picture on what I wanted to do. He was like, I look at where I'm at and what I'm doing, and the rest of our friends, and it's different. He's like, I've made great strides in life. I'm gonna get education when I get out. I have all this experience. And he's like, look at our friend group right now. What are they doing? And I was like, and I'm that person. He's like, what are you doing right now? And I'm like, they can't compare. We're on opposite sides of the spectrum. And, like, just in a conversation, it was like, click. And so just that relationship that, you know, influence that he had were peers, were friends, were the same age. It just. The path opened, and that's what I wanted to do. And literally, like, the next day, on crutches, I went to the recruiting office.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you need to get surgery, or you already get it?

[Cody Gandy]

I was going to get surgery, so I. I moved up the surgery, got surgery, and they gave me kind of like, hey, you can't really do anything for about six months. And I was like, watch me, kind of thing. Went to the recruiter's office, like, hey, we can't touch you till it's healed. So I'm kind of on the back burner for a while. I'm not really looping in my parents to what I'm doing on the decision. My parents are kind of opposite. My dad's very stoic, very reserved. My mom's very emotional, and so I fear that my mom's gonna have a very hard time with it. So I was like, I'll just wait close to my bootcamp date, and then I'll let her know. Which I didn't really loop her until about a month out. I was supposed to leave April 2011. I got a call October 2010. Like, on the first, he's like, hey, man, can you leave in two weeks? And I was like, sure. I was still enrolled in classes. I'll drop everything. I'll do everything. And I believe in October 2010.

[Jocko Willink]

How's boot camp? We can go to San Diego, right?

[Cody Gandy]

San Diego.

[Jocko Willink]

How was it?

[Cody Gandy]

So being a fall class, not too bad. Obviously. We don't do a lot of water stuff like you guys do. The physical activity, I'm pretty used to in terms of, you know, being in sports my whole life. The mental. I'm definitely used to being yelled at and screamed at and stuff like that. I did get some advice from that Marine on what to do and what not to do. The hardest part for me was, you know, growing up, I. I never really thought myself as a leader. I'm very. I don't talk, I don't speak. I just. I kind of just watch and. And, you know, act that way. I was always kind of the action guy. So if somebody wanted me to do something, like, I would do it, and that would be how I led. But for whatever reason, you know, about two weeks in, you know, in each platoon, in about 100 guys, is your boot camp class. There's a guy called a guide. They carry the flag. They're like, they represent the group. And our guide was at dental, doing some dental thing, and the guide almost sitting on our quarter deck. And all our instructors are getting pissed off, like, somebody go and get it. And there's like a hundred of us just sitting there and nobody's moving. And I don't know what it was. Just I had this pole. I was like, I'll go. And so I grabbed the guide on, and now I'm. I take over this position, and I'm the number one guy in 100, in charge of 100 people, which was very foreign to me, very Challenging As I'm 18, they're all 18, and, you know, I pay for everything that they do. But that leadership component, initially, that was challenging, to say the least.

[Jocko Willink]

So when you're the gut. When you're the guide in the class, do you do some. Is this just during marching?

[Cody Gandy]

It's during everything.

[Jocko Willink]

During everything. So they'll be like, God, get. Get your class assembled and stuff like that.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Get God, give me a headcount, that kind of thing.

[Cody Gandy]

Yep. You're starting off well there. It's all overseen, especially at the beginning. You're very like, turn left, turn right type of thing. But everything the class does is a reflection of you. So when somebody's lockers jacked up, like, you're going to pay as well, and you're going to meet that quarter deck, and you count for the class at the end of the night, like, you say the thing.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're basically a class leader?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

And did you stay the class leader the whole time?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

That must be rare. It was when I went to Officer Candidate School, I was the president of the class. And like the other classes, they'd go through, like, three, four, five presidents, but I was just president from Day one until we graduated. But most people just cycle through because things are just jacked up and it just sucks. But were you. So were you the guide the whole time?

[Cody Gandy]

From whenever I picked up that guy on like two weeks in, till we finished, I was.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, did you have anything that was challenging for you in, in boot camp? Was there anything that was hard for you?

[Cody Gandy]

Not really the physical or the mental. Like it was fun. Like you're getting all the stuff I did in my previous life. Like that's training and I'm getting paid to train. That's a fun aspect to it. I wasn't. The challenging part wasn't, you know, missing family or friends. Like I was ready to do this. It really just was that leadership component that I wasn't really prepared for. I never was in a leadership role. I never was told to like, speak up. I was told to motivate people. I never was told, like, or taught. Hey, you know these two guys, like, they're your peers, you need to get them up to shape. Like, I didn't know how to do that. And I would find myself like doing a lot of things that I, I couldn't figure out. Like, hey, this guy's jacked up. Like, you need to fix him. And I was like, I don't know how to do that. Like we had a guy wasn't really all there and like, I'd have to shave his face every morning. Like that was my responsibility. Like, like stupid things like that. But also, hey, this kid's not going to make the run or he's not going to make the weight. Like you need to figure out like how to get him up to speed. I didn't know how to do it at the time. And it was just kind of a learning curve, month after month, until eventually left on. It's, it's a lot harder than it looks in terms of getting people towards this common goal.

[Jocko Willink]

Did the kid learn to shave?

[Cody Gandy]

Well, for about a month. I had to do it for him, but. And which was weird. He was older than all of us. He was like super old. Like 28.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn. I didn't know they let 28 years old, 28 year olds in the Marine Corps.

[Cody Gandy]

I don't know the cutoff, I'd have to check, but it was definitely a 7 to 10 years older than all of us.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn. What was it like? You know, I, you probably had a bunch of combat veterans as your drill instructors. Did you pay attention to that? Did you notice that? Was there, like, were they talking about those kind of lessons Learned because you were going to infantry from the beginning, right? You're going 0311.

[Cody Gandy]

So the, the recruiter, right? Recruiters are recruiters. When I went to the recruiting office and I was like, I want to go be an O3, 11 want to be an infantry. They were like, we can't. All the billets are filled. Like, if you want to become an infantry, you have to go this other route, which is called security forces, which is 8152 and security forces. There's three billets in there. There's a fast team, which I was told was like the SWAT team. That sounds cool. Yeah, there's. That sold out.

[Jocko Willink]

Fast team is cool, but. Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

And then there's like presidential security. And then there is like, basically people that guard nuke. So high priority bases. Those are the three routes you can go. Security forces. So I was told, and I believe, like, hey, in order to go infantry, you have to do the security forces route, which means you don't do a four year contract. You do a five year contract and you gotta, you know, give two years to security forces before you go to the fleet and be a part of the infantry. And I bought that. Sweet, sweet life in the beginning.

[Jocko Willink]

That's crazy. Check. Okay, so. But do you still have to go to school of infantry? Don't you?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes. So after boot camp, that's the first school you go to.

[Jocko Willink]

How did you. Did you graduate number one, your class in boot camp?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

That's what I'm talking about. Echo, Charles. See that right there?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, See that?

[Jocko Willink]

Don't underestimate Cody, dude. So with their graduate, there's a hundred freaking dogs in there trying to get that. Do you get promoted because of that? Do you get like a stripe because of graduating number one?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn, dude. Okay, all right, so now you. How's. How's the school of infantry?

[Cody Gandy]

It's a different beast, right? Boot camps all about discipline. It's. It's drill and things I like, like, why am I doing this? But it's. It's really to instill discipline. Marine Corps. It's discipline. That's. That's really all we care about. When you go to the school of infantry, there's two paths. So if you're in O3, you go to the school of infantry for the whole three months or you go the MCT route, which is everybody other than infantry, you do the same month and a half, but the last month and a half is, you know, it's not.

[Jocko Willink]

Specialized to your thing.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah. And so the. Oh, three route was. That was fun. You know, you're in, you're at Pendleton, you're hiking the mountains up there. You're in the field all the time. You're getting dirty, you're doing the camo paint, stuff like that. Like it was an absolute blast.

[Jocko Willink]

The, the Pendleton mountains, like you think of climbing mountains, right? You don't think of Southern California, San Diego mountains. But I'll tell you what, dude, those mountains, those, they're like hills, but dude, they feel like mountains.

[Cody Gandy]

Never ending hills we'll take.

[Jocko Willink]

What's the attrition rate at school of infantry? Do you know?

[Cody Gandy]

I don't know. Majority of the time it's just people getting rolled back for injuries. So you know, it's, you know, for us it's. You don't go to sit call unless like it's mandatory. A lot of people are trying to escape there and they don't want to do it's, it's a lot of hiking and you're hiking with like 100 pound packs, like stuff you're never ever gonna use. But it's like they just want to teach you how to carry this heavy load. And you know, those hills, they get you and it's week after week after week and it, it sucks. And some people, it's a lot of attrition, but you just get rol. You start over again. You know the quickest way to get through boot camp, the quickest way to get through SOI is you just keep going. You just keep going, Jack.

[Jocko Willink]

So you did a month and a half of that and then you get turned over to the like specific fast company security forces.

[Cody Gandy]

Training school of entry is three months. So for the first, first month and a half is. It's all generalized. So everybody does the same thing. The last month and a half because I was an 11 that's a rifleman. You go that route and then you have your 31s, which are machine gunners, mortarmen and they learn those individuals skills.

[Jocko Willink]

So what was it? But you were 0311.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so you, so you did, you did get the infantry mos, but, but they slotted you for the different job of security forces.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Cody Gandy]

Because that's where you start. And then after school of imagery I went to Virginia and then I went to the security forces school and then how's that? It's, it's unique. So it's very specialized. As I was going in the fast company, like it's, it's a SWAT team as what I was told. It's a lot of specialized tr. We got to do a lot of cool stuff but it was just another school. So it's another three months. But you're doing, you know, advanced urban combat, which was really cool. Got to go to designated marksman school. That's our, you know, mini sniper course that some of the platoons wanted to go do. But it was a lot of stuff. And I look back when I got to the infantry, like I'm really thankful to go to the that, that way, in that path because I learned a lot more than the infantry was given people. So it, it was a fun route. It was in Virginia. Never been to the east coast. Really close to Dam Neck. We trained on that. So I got to see a lot of cool dudes with beers riding golf carts around and stuff like that, which I put two and two together. But cool opportunity out there.

[Jocko Willink]

And so just for people that don't know the fast company, it's Fleet Anti terrorism Security Teams. They were only formed in like the 80s I want to say.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, it was in response for like embassy attacks. So that was really why they built it. And so each, there's three fast companies out there, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and they're designated to certain parts of the world. World. So you're really the, the qrf, the quick reaction force to get sent out to those places.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have any problems or anything or any challenges going through all these different schools that you got to go to or was it pretty straightforward?

[Cody Gandy]

Schools are pretty straightforward. But initially trying in that first platoon it was still that, that peer to peer that I couldn't really figure out. I, I kept getting slotted to for leadership positions. I was a fire team leader at 18 and I'm leading a bunch of 18 year olds and I couldn't find the mix on being friends and being a boss. And then I learned the hard way that you know, if you don't draw that line then people are going to take advantage of your position and they, they think that they can, you know, Cody's the boss. Like I can get away with stuff and I kind of had to learn that the hard way on like where to set the line specifically with friends as you promote from peer to leader.

[Jocko Willink]

So you were a little bit too nice in the beginning.

[Cody Gandy]

I was, I'd rather be liked was the mindset was your attitude.

[Jocko Willink]

And I always say it's easier to like if you become bros first and then you have to reel that back in because you went too far. That's a lot harder than hey, we're going to be Professional first. And then over time, the trust gets built and it's like, oh, yeah, I can give you some slack and we can be bros. But we all know that, you know what, what the scenario is as far as work goes. Whereas if you're just like rolling in, hey, I just want to be everyone's friend. Cool. They want to be your friend too. A lot. So then what, what did you guys do? So now you, you get, you're actually trained up. You're like, what, do you go on standby or are you on permanent standby?

[Cody Gandy]

So we're out in Virginia, we're in Norfolk, is where the, it's called Camp Allen out there. They've moved it. I think they're at Portsmouth right now. But that's like my first official unit is I'm in first Fast Company, Alpha Company, fifth Platoon. So we're a five. So we're there, we're doing a typical workup. Um, and the deployment schedule we're supposed to go on is we're going to go to Guantanamo Bay is where we're supposed to go. So we do this six month block of training, then we go to Guantanamo Bay. That's the first place that is, you know, I think three to four months. And you're really just stationary security on the fence line. So you're still doing the fence line rotation where you're just up in a guard tower for, you know, 12, 15 hours a day. And you're doing that month in, month out for three months.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, talk me through a day of sitting on a 15 hour watch, sitting on a guard tower, looking at a jungle or something.

[Cody Gandy]

You see a lot of crabs, a lot of iguanas. You're, you're, you're hoping and praying for some Cuban asylum seekers to come across the water and approach your post, which happened a couple of times. And that was like the action that we got was, hey, I got some people moving in the water. And we send our qrf. And it's funny, in the moment, watching, I remember being in a tower and you're watching the Cuban fence line and you see their post towers as well. And this group climbs up, you know, a cliff and I just see him standing, there's like three of them. And I'm like, like, this is it. So we call the QRF and our QRFs, all our big dudes that come out of the Humvee and it's like a dead 50 meter sprint to just spear these people into the ground because they're like, this is the moment that We've prepared for that was really like.

[Jocko Willink]

These are people that are defecting.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

That they're just. But they just, like, they just get.

[Cody Gandy]

And then eventually those. The defectors, they get taken back. We pass them up to headquarters, and then, you know, what happens after that, we don't really know. We did a lot of security at the, you know, the base in Cuba, fence line to where they do some meeting and trade prisoners and stuff like that, which obviously, I'm 18, 19. I really don't know what's going on.

[Jocko Willink]

I just.

[Cody Gandy]

I see a lot of things and I'm coming to like, oh, what are they doing in there, Jack?

[Jocko Willink]

All right. What was after Gitmo.

[Cody Gandy]

Gitmo, we come back, we train for a little bit more, and then we're gonna go forward, deploy to Rota, Spain. So Rota, Spain, big naval base out there, and that's where we're gonna stay. And basically, you're on standby in Spain for anything that's gonna. Going on. You're on standby, but you have other, you know, mini deployments where you're gonna go train with foreign allies. So we train with the Royal Spanish Marines. We go train with the.

[Jocko Willink]

And you have one platoon. Is that right?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

How many guys are in it?

[Cody Gandy]

30, 35.

[Jocko Willink]

So like pretty much a kind of standard platoon.

[Cody Gandy]

You got a platoon, it's just the Cape. The fast mindset is you just have a different capability. So all of us are trained to do a bunch of different stuff. So you're operating at almost like a company. So it's 30 guys, but everybody can do a bunch of different stuff. So we go Royal Spanish Marines, we go train with the Israeli Defense Force, which was really cool and unique, getting to go to Israel, go to Jerusalem, you get to see the Gaza Strip and stuff like that. And. And training with those people was unique because in Israel, everybody serves in the military. And being there, I was one of the snipers for a platoon, got to train with Israeli snipers, and they're all female, which that's just what they decided to do. A little more low profile, able to get into place and what like that. But you also saw a lot of U.S. citizens. They were U.S. citizens, but they were fighting for the IDF, which was interesting to say. So we train with those guys, we come back, we're in Rota. And then this is September 11, 2012. On that day, that was anniversary of 9, 11, obviously, a bunch of embassies are attacked around the world. At the time, we think it's a. You Know a joke, like, we're, we're doing the whole, like, hey, get ready. The get ready drills. Like, we did a thousand of those. And that night they're like, hey, you guys are going to go down to potentially Libya in response to Ambassador Stevens getting killed.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh. So the big Benghazi thing starts unfolding and you guys are on the hook as that's actually legitimately your mission as a Fast company is there's an embassy being attacked. That is textbook. We need to send the Fast company guys down there to go and secure the embassy and provide, you know, until we can get bigger forces there. That's. That's literally what you're supposed to be doing.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you say you. So are you seeing, like, reports of it?

[Cody Gandy]

I mean, we're all in our rooms and we get the message, but we're all checking online. We have Internet and stuff like that. So we're checking on the computers and seeing just all the carnage going on. But all of us are a little, I'll just speak for myself. Unsure on, like, what we're actually going to do because it's the whole, like, is this a game? Is this a drill? And we really didn't know. We're going to go pack, we're going to go prep, we're going to get on the plane. But we've done that a thousand times to where we actually get on the plane. And then we get off like, hey, good job, guys. And so nobody really knew what exactly we were doing until we actually got on the plane and we took off like, oh, this is real. Like, this is where we're actually going to go.

[Jocko Willink]

How long did that take? Because there's all kinds of, you know, debrief points on this that those guys were on the ground and no, they didn't get any help for hours and hours and hours. And there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape that. That held up reinforcements from showing up at a reasonable timeline. So, like, how long did it take for you guys to actually leave?

[Cody Gandy]

It was a classic hurry up and wait. So obviously at the time I'm a, you know, I'm an E3, I'm a fire team leader. I'm in charge of three guys. So I have like three layers up in the chain of command trying to get information from. So we get all our gear prep, which is probably a couple hours, we head to the tarmac, we prep all that stuff. We have to palletize. We're bringing everything with us. That takes a couple more hours, and eventually Leave. So I would say probably 10 to 12 hours is what it took to get down there.

[Jocko Willink]

That shit's crazy. So by the. So you already seen the reports of the deaths?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, we're seeing the videos. The classic, the, the picture that's always shown. It's, you know, the burning embassy and the guys kind of running around.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you got an Ambassador Stevens was killed. This, an information officer named Sean Smith was killed. The guy named Ty woods, who was a former SEAL who I went through buds with, he was in my bud's class. He was killed. And then Glenn Daugherty, another seal, was killed. And all that took place pretty rapidly and they didn't get the support that they needed. You know, again, this has been kind of debriefed ad nauseam. It's interesting to hear your perspective being there, how quickly you could have gone and how much you, how long you had to wait to actually leave. What, what was it like when you got on the ground? You finally get on the ground down there?

[Cody Gandy]

Well, flying over and, and I think what, what took the longest is whoever was overseeing this whole thing didn't know who to send. So I know there was a MEW in the area. I know even talking to some guys on Echelon front team, that they were potentially going to go down there as well. So there was like, probably five different units that had the potential to go. And for whatever reason, we got the call. So I think that's what delayed us initially on the flight there. There was still just mass confusion. So we really didn't know what we're getting into, where we were going. We couldn't figure out if we were going to be full kit or wearing low vis there. Like, we changed out probably five or six times just because it was just frantic. Like, we don't know what to do. And obviously this game of telephone gets down to the troops, and we're like, what the hell are we even doing? So that was a little frustrating.

[Jocko Willink]

And I, I, yeah, it's, that's what happens when you have a foggy chain of command, you know, and there's, there's always a little tension between, like, the State Department and the military. And it's, it's just very, very challenging. And if you don't have people that have experience to be like, oh, we got a problem. Here's what we need to do. Just the little debate that you just brought up of should we wear plain clothes or should we wear our combat uniforms? Dude, at the end of the day, doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't really matter. Like as if Cody Gandy rolls into freaking Libya and people like, oh, is he a local? Like a freaking six foot one white dude with blonde hair and blue eyes. There's no one's like, oh yeah, he must just be a, you know, a local, you know, just out on a, on a daily walk, you know, and he's in shape and he's wearing freaking 511 pants, you know, Oakley sunglasses. Like there's, it's just, and they're like, oh, you know, we, we might want to go low vista. Who are you going to fool? Who are you fooling? You're not fooling anybody, but bureaucrats will get caught up in this kind of thing. They'll get caught up in things that don't matter. Yeah, what matters is we have people on the ground that are being attacked. We need to provide them reinforcements right now. We should have them overhead assets in minutes, like 20 minutes to get overhead assets there. And we should have other ground troops there. Dude, this is not a big area of the world. This is like, where were you in Rota? That's not a, that's not a far flight. This isn't a 12 hour flight. This is, this is, should be happening so much more rapidly. But the bureaucratic people, and there's also a lot of risk aversion because, well, if they're, if the embassy is under attack, what if the attack increases now we send more guys and now they're in trouble too. Maybe more guys get killed. I don't want to take that risk. It's like, no, wrong answer. This is America. We have an embassy in trouble, we go and we secure that embassy, period. End of story. By the way, we have the eras it's above to keep the people on the ground relatively safe in most situations. So what, so you finally let, where do you land? The airport in Tripoli or something like this?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, we land up there, we, we deload all our stuff and we have these working with the Department of State, which I didn't really know until actually we got there and kind of figured out what we're doing. But we, we land and there's just these souped up SUVs and you're talking bulletproof windows. You got the ability to put like a M240 in the back and pin out the window and it's just all this high speed vehicles that land there. And so we load all the stuff and we head to this main site, which at least my interpretation at the time was this was a designated spot where they're going to rebuild the embassy. So the Benghazi embassies, it's gone, it's, it's destroyed. You can see the pictures online. And so they designated this new area close to the embassy where we're going to reconvene. Because you have all these people at the embassy where they have nowhere to go. And so they, the Department of State I believe, set up this new, you know, satellite place and that's where we were going to go. So we rolled in and it's just, you know, it's just pandemonium. It's just crazy. We're just, you know, crashing into cars, trying to get there, like just whatever you can think of the carnage, like we're just trying to get there as fast as we can because you know, at 19 I'm like, what's going to be there when I get there is, is the mindset. And you let an 18 year old drive this, you know, indestructible vehicle in the city, they're going to do whatever they want. So we drive there, you know, there's, there's just 35 of us. So we break up into teams. We eventually get there and it's very anti climatic on the arrival the whole debate on low viz full K. Like to your point, it didn't freaking matter because we got there, it's super dark, we're clearing these buildings which have already been cleared like before we got there. Eventually we link up with the Department of State and now we're just, hey, we need to immediately set security while everybody reconvenes to our location. So that was the initial, you know, on the ground. The first thing that we do is we get to this new satellite campus, everybody reconvenes out our location and now we're just, we're gonna hold fast while they rebuild embassy here. There that was, that was the mission is embassy's gone. This is gonna be the new location for the embassy.

[Jocko Willink]

Did well. So they just secured some, you guys secured some buildings, some random buildings in a compound that have a wall around it. Was it even. No, just sucked.

[Cody Gandy]

So that was part of the mission was you have to be the security. Why they build the wall?

[Jocko Willink]

Sun comes up, what's the, are you guys anticipating like hey, we're gonna get attacked when the sun comes up? Or there's a lot of really think through that.

[Cody Gandy]

I mean that's what we're, you know, hoping for at the moment. But obviously like my perspective at the time is there's only 30 of us and so really, the ROEs are very strict because, you know, in our minds, like, help's not coming, so if you do anything dumb, shoot like we're is what's gonna happen. So very strict on what we're supposed to do. Sun comes up, there's a lot of intel reports on, like people are moving towards the area and we hear all these potential riots and gathering the stuff like that. And you know, the roes, it's, everything's got to be non. Lethal. Is, is the course of action just to not stir anything up. But, you know, for the three months that we were there, it was all just, you know, smokes and mirrors on, on what's actually happened. It was all this what ifs, what's going to happen, but it was very stagnant and just, hey, we're going to hold it down while they rebuild the embassy here.

[Jocko Willink]

So then how many days do you end up on, on the ground there?

[Cody Gandy]

We got there, you know, September 12th in the morning and we stayed right before Christmas.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so you're on the ground for a while. Did anybody ever attack you guys?

[Cody Gandy]

No. You had people kind of approach the perimeter and you're sending non, lethal. You know the man. What are those, like the riot grenades?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, the crash grenades.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, the stinger be. I can't remember what they're called, but those, those fun things. You have your VCPs and ECPs of people coming in, coming out. You had some, some people there, some tier one guys with, with beers. We don't know what they were doing that would bring people in and interrogate them and we would hold security while they interrogated in the building and stuff like that. But that was really the extent of it.

[Jocko Willink]

What was the. Were you guys eating MREs or did you guys quickly get supply of local food or something?

[Cody Gandy]

Initially it was MREs. We brought all that, we brought all the water. But eventually they set up in one of the buildings like a, you know, a place where they could cook for us and stuff like that. So we split into two satellite places. So we broke the platoon in half. So it was really 15 and 15. So it was small enough to where we could feasibly do that.

[Jocko Willink]

Check. Any major lessons learned that you brought home from that and how did that. I'll ask you that question first.

[Cody Gandy]

Biggest lesson learned was just information itself and how powerful it can be. So part of like the flight over and everything was there was just this constant, constant theme of unknown. And that unknown caused a lot of panic and, you know, craziness and actually, you know, Sean Glass, who you just had on again for the second time, he, I just worked with him up with at NYPD and he was talking about, you know, during training, they were trying to see what stressed out the seals the most and went out being the most stressful thing was just standing on the outside of the door going into the building. That unknown factor is what stressed people out the most. And I saw that in real time at 18 and 19 and how information can help mitigate that unknown. But oftentimes as leaders, we withhold or our team doesn't need to know, or I don't even know myself and we don't tell people, which ends up, you know, that gets down to the troops and they're coming to that worst case scenario on their own on like, hey, my boss is stupid. They don't know what's going on. Like, we shouldn't really be here. Like, all that can come from not just sharing vital information. So from that, you know, deployment in itself, I figured if I was in a position, whether it was a fire tomb leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, if I had the ability to share insights or information that could help bridge the gap between the chain of command or keep the troops involved is what I wanted to do.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, that's important. You know, the idea that the high level of stress comes before you enter the door. Right, that's, that's like such factual. I can imagine that they got guys with heart rate monitors and sweat monitors and, and we're watching them like, oh, here they come, they're coming to the door and it's peeking out. And now that once they go in the room, it's like everything calms down. They start to understand what's happening. I, I think that I have been conditioned in like every aspect of my life to open the door. Like, I don't, I don't like that unknown, just like most people don't. But I think, I think at a certain point you realize, I realized it's better just to open that freaking door and go handle whatever's in there. That's much more, that's much easier to deal with than I'm going to stand here and ponder how terrible this could be. And the reason that's in a small scale is like, oh, I don't know what's in this room. I'm going to open the door, we're going in. But on a bigger scale is like what you went through in Benghazi. Like, hey, we haven't, we don't know what's happening on the Ground, we've got forces that we could send. Could we? And instead of going up to send people there, just kick open the door. In this case, it's, you know, send another force. But that mentality, especially again from like people that haven't been in combat, people that are bureaucratic types, they're trying to figure everything out from the outside. The answer's in the freaking room. The answer is on the ground. The answer. When there's a problem with a business or there's a problem with a situation, the answer is like, oh, go, go open the door and see what's happening. And when you don't open the door and see what's happening, you're going to sit outside and not understand it completely. And then you're going to. In a worst case scenario, you're going to get more and more nervous and worried and paranoid about what's going on and it's going to cause more and more problems and it's going to cause you to hesitate more and more, which causes things to get worse. So freaking go. You know, I, that's my long way of saying go, go. Just go. I heard we were on this op and we were, we had a. We had like a sniper element, or not a sniper element. Yeah, we had a little sniper element. We were gonna. We were hitting a village with like, I don't know, four or five little. It's like a little market, right? It was, but it was in a more rural area north of Ramadi. And we. So we had an overwatch team in watching this. And then I forget exactly what happened, but we were all the assault force. We were at not even a combat outpost. It was just like a little forward, like little staging platoon plus army guys that had a little hooch basically set up. They had like one building. And so we're staged there with them and we're waiting for our snipers to, you know, give us some intel and tell us what's going on. And all of a sudden like shooting starts and I'm like, mount up, we're going. And that's it. Like, just like that. There was no, you know, I'm sure we got some radio calls on the way in there, but it wasn't like, wait a second, what is happening? We need to know what's going on. Like, no, we'll find out on the way. And if we don't find out on the way, we'll find out when we show up there. I know that my snipers aren't going to shoot dudes in Humvees you know, they're not going to shoot the dudes in Humvees that have Punisher skulls on their chest. They're not. We're not going to. That's not going to happen. So we're going to roll and then we'll find out what's going on. But that, that's years of conditioning of, like, oh, there's something bad going on. Let me go figure it out. Let's go in there, because it's only going to get worse. And I will understand more and see more when I get on the ground and when I see what's happening. So that's a really good point. And then what you said is we are all responsible for conveying up information up, down and across the chain of command. And the more you can tell your troops what's going on, the better they're going to understand because things can be happening with the troops where they don't know why this is happening. And like, if this situation that you were in, if you expand that over time, where, you know, luckily for you, you were. It was done in 12 hours. You guys didn't have the time that it takes to truly formulate the crazy rumors that can happen. And that's what happens. So when we keep our, when we keep the troops isolated from what's, from what's going on behind, quote, unquote, behind the scenes. It shouldn't be behind the scenes, it just is. Well, then they're going to be like, oh, okay, hold on. Why. Why are we making this decision? And this did happen in Ramadi for us, where we had some guys that were like, in the planning space, like, whether was the point man, whether was the lead sniper, whether it was the breacher, they're kind of like understanding what's happening. Or the assistant platoon commanders or the platoon commanders, they're going to the brigade meeting, they're going to the battalion meeting with me. I'm at the brigade meeting once or twice a week. I know everything that's going on. But does one of my new guy, 60 gunners know exactly? No, dude. You know, he's getting told, hey, get jocked up, you're going again. Hey, get joked up, you're going again. Hey, get jocked up, you're going again. Eventually, some of them are like, wait a second, why? Where are we going and why are we going there? So to your point to say, like, hey, here's what's happening, here's what's happening at a strategic level and operational level, and here's the tactical level that we're about to go execute on that is how you prevent people from getting spun off into the rumor mill. The craziness, which is, which is absolutely terrible because the rumors that they make up are not going to be good. They are not going to be good. They're going to be, you know, it's going to be that, you know, who knows? You know what? They don't want to send us. They don't want to send us from Rota because, you know, then you make up your craziest explanation because everyone that's. They think everyone that's going to go there is going to die. It's like. And then what happens when two hours later, like, all right, you're going, we're all going to die. So good stuff. And you spent so like, like three months there on the ground. Yeah, just over September, October, November. Yeah, December. You get done with that. How's it coming home from that?

[Cody Gandy]

It's good. We got ripped out by another unit. So another unit stayed there. The, the embassy wasn't complete. They got a lot of the walls up and stuff like that, which was good. So we got ripped out by. I think somebody came from the MEW or is another security forces element that came and relieved us. But we went back and then from there. That was really the end of the security forces tour for me. So that was about the, the two year mark that I finished. And then from there you're going to get to go to the fleet. You're going to. That's what I, what I signed up to do. It's going to take me two years to get there.

[Jocko Willink]

And where'd you end up getting stationed?

[Cody Gandy]

So there was, there was three places that we were going to go. So Marine Corps gets what the Marine Corps wants. It's just how it works. We were either going to go to Lejeune or 29 Palms or to Hawaii. Those are the three places.

[Jocko Willink]

When you say we, who are you talking about?

[Cody Gandy]

Who's the platoon in itself? Because everybody's going out there to. To want some unit. So 35 of us are going to go out.

[Jocko Willink]

So they like disband the whole thing?

[Cody Gandy]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn. Okay.

[Cody Gandy]

And they break up majority of the platoon into Lejeune and 29 palms and they send all the. The NCOs to Hawaii. So I got promoted to E4 while in Libya and there was like, I think four or five of us of the platoon that were NCOs. So us stuck together. We all went to Hawaii together.

[Jocko Willink]

Hell yeah, we approve of that. So are You a squad leader now that you got promoted?

[Cody Gandy]

I finished, yeah. Right before I left Virginia. Like, the platoon is disbanding, so I get promoted to the squad leader billet before I leave. So I'm holding that build for a couple months, which that just elevates me for in charge of four to in charge of 12. Now I'm in charge of three teams, so trying to figure that out. And then when I arrive on the island of Hawaii, I'm part of 2, 3. Now I immediately get thrown into a squad leader position.

[Jocko Willink]

That's awesome.

[Cody Gandy]

So that was fun. Hawaii was.

[Jocko Willink]

Now, are they looking at you like, oh, dude, you came from Fast Company. You know, it's like down here on, you know, on the front lines with the grunts, or is it like, oh, this guy came from Fast Company. He's got some experience. Like, what's their attitude?

[Cody Gandy]

My team was still deployed. They were, I think, in Okinawa at the time. And so when I immediately landed, I immediately went to school. So I went to the advanced infantry course, which is our, you know, infantry course leadership course. The first leadership course I ever went to was like, three years in after I already had all these iterations of leading. So I immediately go to this new school, which gave me a leg up. And after I.

[Jocko Willink]

Where was that school?

[Cody Gandy]

It was in Hawaii. So it's.

[Jocko Willink]

And how was it?

[Cody Gandy]

It was pretty brutal.

[Jocko Willink]

How long is it?

[Cody Gandy]

Probably two or three months. And it's. It's all field work. So you get to operate as a platoon sergeant, you get to operate as a platoon commander. You're riding, you know, mission orders. You're doing offense defense, you're doing urban, and you're in charge. You're the platoon commander running that whole thing, which was really cool. Give me a lot of perspective on what officers deal with that whole. Because, you know, I sit there, I'm like, oh, jock was right. No order like that should be repaired easy. But when you got a right order on a weekend and it freaking sucks, and you got to handwrite it, you don't get to. To type it. You have to handwrite two copies. Gives you a lot of perspective on what's going on. So I learned a lot there. It was a very tough and grueling school. A lot of people, they self select out or they just don't get along with the instructors because, you know, majority of us are NCOs and there's Sergeants and staff sergeants leading us, and there's just a lot of headbutting going on. But it was fun. Most physical school I've been to the only.

[Jocko Willink]

Or just humping.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, they got some, they got some hills out in. On Oahu. There's this, this route we take called the Devil's Backbone, which is probably the hardest physical thing I've ever done. And we're hiking, you know, 100 pound packs. It's like 12 miles uphill both ways. Somehow they're gassing us while we're out there. Like, it just sucks. It was the only time I've ever, you know, not stayed with the instructor. From a PT standpoint, it just was. It was intense, but it was fun. I loved it. I loved being able to be in those roles. And I think when I was in that school, I was in charge of two different iterations. I was in charge of a defense, which I failed that iteration. Cuz you, you learn how you have to lean on other people. Because I may be the platoon sergeant, platoon commander, but I have to appoint a. A nav man and a guy that's built a terrain model and all these different pieces and you know, you can do great, but the team could fail. And guess what? You were still going to fail. So I failed the defense. You know, I put us on a elevated piece of terrain, but basically in rock and so the guys cannot dig in. And we got attacked and we did not do well.

[Jocko Willink]

And so now once you got out, did you. Did you select the terrain while you were out there? Did you select the terrain prior to getting out to the location? It's basically en route, so in route, but once you got there, you're like, all right, there's rocks here, we should move.

[Cody Gandy]

It was probably like two. Once I got like two feet down, then we started to hit that bedrock and then it was like, I'm. It's too late.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, it's too late.

[Cody Gandy]

Dark's coming. Like we're already here. Like figure it out.

[Jocko Willink]

And then are they. Do you get attacked?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And what are they using? Miles, gears or paintball?

[Cody Gandy]

No, at that point we're still using blanks.

[Jocko Willink]

Blanks, but with no laser indicators or anything.

[Cody Gandy]

No, but.

[Jocko Willink]

So it's just the instructors are kind of judging.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah. And you get, you get eval. You get peer eval on what's going on. And so I failed that iteration, which was humbling for me because I never really failed anything in the Marine Corps. I was always elevated even from boot camp to number one. And every place I went, I was like the first person promoted or in charge. And so it's very humbling for me because I, I thought I did great and then I failed. And if you fail twice on anything, whether it's when you're in charge of platoon or, you know, assembling any piece of gear or calling for bombs and stuff, like if you fail twice on anything, you could drop from the course. So I failed that.

[Jocko Willink]

How early was that in the course?

[Cody Gandy]

That was probably about halfway through. And so I knew I was going to get another chance, but I didn't know what I was going to get. And luckily I got, you know, urban. So I got to plan an attack on a city which coming from fast company, that gave me a leg up because in the traditional infantry you don't get that training I went through. We call it AUC CQB Advanced Urban Combat down in Norfolk. And that was three months where I learned how to clear buildings and there's some high speed stuff out there. When we went to Israel, which was probably the greatest mountain town I've ever been to, was a gigantic city. So I had a lot of experience in urban combat from training standpoint. So I had a lake up there and I crushed that second iteration being in charge just because I had that experience in place.

[Jocko Willink]

How long is that whole school?

[Cody Gandy]

That's probably like two and a half, three months.

[Jocko Willink]

And now you, you feel pretty good getting out of that thing. I mean, that sounds like awesome training.

[Cody Gandy]

It was probably the best training I went through from a learning perspective.

[Jocko Willink]

And now your, your battalion, two, three, they were on deployment and now they're coming back.

[Cody Gandy]

They're coming back, people are leaving, people are getting out. And then I get, I get transitioned to a platoon.

[Jocko Willink]

And you're ready to rock and roll.

[Cody Gandy]

I'm ready. I've been waiting because not only do I go to auc, but I go through our water survival course, which is, I think the more challenging course from a attrition rate in the Marine Corps it's called. McQuist Marine Corps Instructor OF WATER SURVIVAL I think we like 100 people tried out. We had like 30. We graduated with eight.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn.

[Cody Gandy]

It's just three months of swimming, which I'm not really a good swimmer. I just too dumb to quit. This is what ended up happening. Plus I'm in Hawaii, so the water's not that cold. So I went through all this schooling, which was great, which gave me a leg up. And after I got to platoon, it really kind of got welcomed with open arms just because I had this experience. The fast guys that came in before had a good reputation. Some of the other security forces that were at like the nuke bases, they didn't have that good reputation and they didn't get the training that we got to. So we were kind of seen as like these assets that we could utilize. So that was nice for me.

[Jocko Willink]

And then are you starting a workup? Basically when they show up.

[Cody Gandy]

So they show up and then you're going on that nine month workup before you deploy again.

[Jocko Willink]

And how's the workup?

[Cody Gandy]

Workup's good. So in Hawaii, you go to the big island to train. We call it, I think it's Island Viper, which actually gets pretty cold out there. You're working on lava rock, which is its own freaking beast to try to deal with and move on that terrain. You go down to Pendleton to get certified down there or sorry, you go down to 29 palms to get certified, which is very similar to like the FTX's that we always talk about. That's like the culmination. It's the names changed over the years, but after your workup you go down to Twin and Palms to make sure that you conduct deploy. So they have these cadre down there called Coyotes. And whether it's called ITX or cacs, they've changed it over the years for about a month and a half you're getting certified by the Marine Corps to make sure you can deploy. And that was really like the first test as a unit on like, hey, are you guys good to go? Which we're being told we're going to Okinawa, which the guys aren't really thrilled about that you have a bunch of guys that signed up for four year contracts and in a four year contract as 03, you only get one deployment, you get two if you're lucky. So these guys is one deployment, they're going to Okinawa. So that was tough to deal with just because it's not the mission that they wanted. So keeping them on task or trying to motivate them when it's they're going to do something they don't want to do, where they see all these other teams that are still over in Afghanistan and stuff like that. It was tricky to navigate, but that final iteration was pretty cool to see the team come together and work as a cohesive unit and you're doing platoon and company and battalion size, you know, operations, which was really cool. Cool. And eventually we get certified before we head over to Okinawa.

[Jocko Willink]

Any other, any major challenges during that?

[Cody Gandy]

I think in that space one of the constant themes throughout the Marine Corps has been, you know, people wanting to take their lives. In boot camp. We had A guy try to commit suicide. And soi we probably had several guys try to commit suicide. And there's all. There's this really negative mindset in the military towards that. Guys that try to commit suicide, it's cowards way out, or, you know, why didn't they ask for help? And I remember being young, and when people don't succeed at taking their life, they get put on suicide watch. I'm sure you know what suicide watch is. You get echo tries to commit suicide. And so at night, there's gonna be four people that watch you. And, you know, I don't get to sleep now. I just have to watch you, which frustrates me a little bit. So they have this negative mindset towards this. And so this continues to happen throughout my time in the Marine Corps. Guys just consistently try to commit suicide for whatever rhyme or reason. And one of the lessons I Learned out at 2, 3 was, you know, the power of relationships in itself. I had this Marine that was in our company that was, you know, doing the wrong thing. He popped on a drug test, and I basically was one of the guys that got tasked with, you know, getting him back up to speed. As, you know, you pop on a drug test, you're getting kicked out of military. But I spent a lot of time with him. You know, he got put on restriction, which means you can't leave base, you can't change out of uniform. It's like your life sucks. And I spent a lot of time with this Marine, but I. I don't really, for lack of a better phrase, don't really care about what's going on. Like, it's taken away from my team. Like, why would I prioritize this person when he, you know, he wants to get out, he doesn't want to be with us. And, you know, fast forward a little bit. This guy tries to commit suicide, and this one I was relatively a part of to where we're looking for him. We can't find him. He's in the barracks. We break down the door, and he, you know, try to hang himself. And the team got there just in the sake of time to cut him down and resuscitate him on scene. And I remember after the fact, obviously, there's an investigation on what's going on from the head shed. And a lot of questions are getting asked on, you know, who was with this person at this time or who spent time with this person here. And a lot of fingers indirectly pointed toward me, me and the time I spent with him. And I started to Think on the role that I played in the situation on, you know, I potentially could have helped this person not make this decision by simply being there for him. And I really undervalued relationships, specifically in the Marine Corps, because I couldn't wrap my mind around, I'm going to be with Jocko for two years. Like, why should I spend time with him when he's going to get out, he's going to move on, like there's somebody else out there or there's more people that are higher priority. And, and so that really was a harsh reality for me. On, like, you have to take time to know the team. You have to get to know them not just on a professional level, but a personal level. Like, like things matter and what's happening at home and why he made that decision. I potentially could have uncovered that, you know, saved him from making that decision because that, that mental health piece, as you know, in the veteran community, it's a, it's a real thing. There's this, this, it's not a survey, but it's basically a graph on the amount of suicides in the last 20 years. The 20 year war, right? It's, it's around 140,000 suicides in 20 years from the, from the military. In that same 20 years, it's roughly like 6,600 that were killed in action. Like 6,600 vers, 140,000. Like that's the difference between killed in action and suicides. And you know, after that fact, I really told myself that, you know, in life, in general, whether it was in the military, when I got a family or I joined a team, like, relationships was gonna be the thing I focus on most in life because you never know when somebody's gonna need your help. If you don't have that relationship, they're not gonna ask. So that was one of the biggest lessons in that, that 2, 3 before we left.

[Jocko Willink]

Didn't that when you had that at 4 accident too?

[Cody Gandy]

I did have that as well.

[Jocko Willink]

What happened with that?

[Cody Gandy]

So this was a lesson on complacency. Complacency is a real thing. Complacency is a typically a matter of time, if you allow it. We were training up at I think the Air Force base or the army base on Hawaii because all the, all the branches are up there and we're running a at 4 live fire range. So we're there for about a week. We're getting guys certified. This is before we go down to 29 palms to get our, our final check. And I'm there as a rso, a range safety officer. So I don't even get to participate. I'm just checking boxes, making sure guys are safe and about. You know, end of the week, Friday, we're still certifying guys and one of the guys comes up to the line and, you know, we're just rushing guys through. We need to check the boxes. For whatever reason. Still don't know. Before he shot, he started to arc his at 4 towards the sky. And as you know, there's a back blast to the AT four. It's pretty nasty. As he aimed towards the sky, the back blast went directly into the ground and ricocheted out of 45, then hit me where I was standing offset. So I was taking a knee watching. I just remember the blast and I just remember going down and I don't really know what happened. I come to a couple seconds later and it's just, you know, my ears are ringing, I can't see. I touch my face, I turn my flashlight on and there's blood and I know something's wrong. So as he pulled the trigger, blast goes into the ground. That blast has to go somewhere, just offsets at that 45. And that debris in that blast, it hits me right in the face, hits me in my right eye. I walk up to our lieutenant who's, you know, overseeing the range, and I was like, sir, I don't know what happened, but, like, something's wrong. And I just remember him shining the flashlight on my face and seeing his face told me everything that I needed. I was like, it's a. Oh moment. But to see everything play out after the fact, like, we trained for that. Like, you know, when the SEAL teams are like, you train for things like that. Like, I can't tell you how many times we ran a, you know, a nine line or a casualty. Like, it was seamless. And in the moment, ironically, the only thing I was worried about was, like, my kit and where it was going to go. Like, I had all my stuff. And you know, one of the guys that helps me at Echelon for on the ftx, his name is Joe. I was like, hey, man, like, here's my gear. Like, please take care. Don't lose it. Like, that's all I was worried about. He's like, dude, like, don't worry about this. Just go. And so we go see the doctor on site there that's overseeing the range and, you know, loss of light, potential loss of life, eyesight or limb. Like, you get medevacked out. And so we fly From, I think, the north side of the island down to Pearl harbor down south. And I'm. I'm a bit of a mess. I'm. I'm concussed. And unfortunately for the. The citizens of Hawaii, I'm throwing up on the chopper, outside the chopper. So if somebody is listening and they reflect on the moment, that was me, because I was not feeling too hot on that bird. Eventually we get to the doctor and checks me out and, you know, half step left, half step right. You know, I still can't see that well in my right eye. I'm missing some part of my eyelid there. But, you know, grace of God, I just came away a little winged.

[Jocko Willink]

Then you guys go on deployment.

[Cody Gandy]

Then we go to Okinawa.

[Jocko Willink]

And what are you doing when you get to Okinawa? Like, what's your. What's your. What's the mission of the team?

[Cody Gandy]

You're continuing to build a relationship out there? Obviously, we're stationed out there. There's two bases. There's Camp Hanson and Camp Schwab. Those are the two sites there. There's a unit that's permanently stationed out there as well. So you're there. You're doing a lot of iterations with the local forces there. You get to go do some of the island stuff. So we went and trained with the Republic of Korea Marines, which was fun and fascinating to see how they train, lead and stuff like that.

[Jocko Willink]

But what differences did you say? Because, I mean, the Rock, Marie, the Rock. The. The Korean military has a. The South Korean military has a freaking outstanding reputation from the Korean War, from the Vietnam War. And not just an outstanding reputation. Let me quantify that a little bit more like a. Like their beasts, like, they're. They're brutal.

[Cody Gandy]

They're.

[Jocko Willink]

They get after it in a big way. You know, they. A lot of the. Even throughout history, like, we joke about the kinder, gentler military that we have, you know, now, but America has always been somewhat kinder gentler than a lot of other militaries. So how was. How was the Koreans?

[Cody Gandy]

They're pretty strict. They're. They're pretty crazy. They're small, but they're mighty. We had some of our teams do some snow packages with them, which is terrible. Like, I hate the cold. And the Koreans would get out there, like, in the middle of the morning, just no shirts on, getting PT in the snow, and like, hell, yeah. Watching them train and watching them fight and then kind of introducing to their cultures, and we're switching food and stuff like that. It was a really good experience because I Was a squad leader out there the time. So I got paired up with one of their squad leaders. So we're sharing insights. We're teaching them.

[Jocko Willink]

You speak English enough? Yep.

[Cody Gandy]

Enough to get along. Like, we. We know what each other are trying to do, and so a lot of, you know, we're like, clearing houses together with them, which. There's that language bar and stuff like that. But it's. But it's fun. And I get to learn just a different way to lead. Like, there's some compassion there. Like, they really care for other people. It's. It's a different military, but it's. It's. It's all just leadership that I'm trying to. To take in. And, you know, throughout my. My time in life, I've really been aware of, you know, how other people lead, because you can't be an. I even just be watching what other people do. Like, I'm always fascinated how other people treat each other. And I learned a lot on what not to do, and I learned a lot of what to do.

[Jocko Willink]

What did you learn what not to do on that one?

[Cody Gandy]

What not to do was, you know, the, you know, frontal direct assault on people, which, coming from the Marine Corps. And, you know, I've been quiet, but the Marine Corps, like, you can't be quiet. And the Marine Corps. I love the Marine Corps. Very. Rock, paper, rank organization, Meaning I'm in charge of you. So guess what? It's your fault. It's your problem. The problem with being direct is initially I was fascinated because it worked, right? Because I can use threats and I can use consequences. And ultimately, like, it gets things done. Like, if I, hey, jocko, you're gonna do this or else, like, guess what? Typically, you're gonna do it, but at what cost? So it's this, you know, tactical victory, strategic loser, as we all talk about. So I learned eventually, you know, from that, watching other people and then towards the end of my career that I was rubbing people the wrong way. I thought I was doing great, I was getting things done, but I found, like, people didn't want to work with me or work for me because of how I handled things. And so this direct, you know, frontal assault was something that I could not utilize. There's a time and place for it, but it's, you know, 1, 2, 3% of the time, majority of the time, it's that. That indirect approach as we talk about. So that was humbling for me because at the time, I thought I was doing everything right, because that's what I saw A lot of people do was it's direct, like. And I just see people get yelled at and they're like, oh, like, that's how you get things done. But then that person rarely is leaving. They're like, thank you so much for that wisdom that you imparted on me. So that was a big lesson learned.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, I got so lucky in my second platoon, going from my platoon commander that got fired to Delta Charlie, who was awesome. And it was just this, such a contrast in two days. We went from like a guy that's yelling and screaming and imposing everything on us, and we get him fired, we have the big mutiny, we get him fired. And then Delta Charlie comes in and takes over and it's just like, dude, just as awesome and humble as you could ever hope for. Indirect to the point where it's like, I don't even think he. If I was to guess and I said, hey, you know, Delta Charlie, did you use the indirect approach with us? He'd be like, sure what that is. You know, I just, I figured you guys would have the best ideas, you know what I mean? Like, it's like what he believed. It was so good. And, man, I got so lucky in having that because it's very hard to learn stuff. And a lot of times what happens is you learn. You get a lot of your DNA from your first platoon and your first leadership. So if you got a guy that's yelling and screaming to you, and like you said, guess what? It worked. We all did it. We all, you know, and by the way, there's also. I had another guy that was a master chief, that was a brow beater, meaning you come up with your little idea. Echo Charles. But the belittling that you would get before you really even presented the idea was so bad, you're just like, I don't, That's. I'm not. I'd rather not do this. You know what I mean? Think. I'm a grown man. I'm like 22 year old grown man. And, you know, I'd see him talking, I'd be like, dude, I don't want none of that. I don't want. I'm not, I'm not down for this. Like, whatever. He, He's. He's a master, master browbeater. And then as I became friends with that guy, of course form a relationship with him. I figured that out. But then you get older, you're like, dude, you'd see someone step into his line of wrath. You just be like, dude, there's nothing I could do for you. Like, Echo, you're. You're my friend.

[Cody Gandy]

You.

[Jocko Willink]

I ain't got nothing for you. You know, it's game over for you, dude. I'm sorry. So. And learning again, like you said, then seeing how people, they might submit to him in the moment, because there's no choice. It's a freaking SEAL Master Chief. Like, what are you gonna. Like, you're screwed. You're an E4. Like, it's. You're. You literally have no give 0% chance of survival. Like, it's not happening. And so they submit. But the problem is they. Those people, they. They just remember that and they're not given their best work, and they end up leaving. They go to different teams, and it's just terrible. So, yeah, those are such important lessons to. To learn. And if you don't learn them, they'll come back and bite you. And, you know, I can. I try and imagine, like, young Cody, I. In my opinion, you were in my. If I was to guess, you'd be like, hey, this is what we're doing today. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, totally professional, totally squared away, but with a little lack of connection, you know, and a little lack of feedback and a little lack of, like, giving ownership away because you're squared away. You know what to do. Here's the plan. Let's go execute it. You're just a matter of fact kind of guy, and I imagine when you were 21, 23, the matter of fact was a little bit more matter and a little bit more fact. So was there some incidents that you remember? Was there individual that you worked for that was like a yeller or screamer or something like that? How did you.

[Cody Gandy]

What.

[Jocko Willink]

What made you see the light?

[Cody Gandy]

So for me, it was, you know, we would do peer evals on, you know, where people stood in the platoon, and I started to get some anonymous, Anonymous, not so anonymous feedback on, you know, how I was leading. And I started to really reflect and look back, you know, when I was subordinate, on, like, how I viewed my leadership. And, you know, there's definitely people in my life that I didn't want to be like. And as I got older and, you know, I started to get a squad leader, and eventually I got thrown into a platoon sergeant roll. I didn't want to be somebody that people didn't want to be like. I wanted to be someone that, like, I want to be like him. I didn't want to be the name, like, don't be like Sergeant Gandhi. I didn't want to be that person. And I was trending in that direction just on how I handle myself. And I could. I could see the writing on the wall from some of the anonymous feedback, but also just how, like, how the troops were receiving. What I was saying is, like, I would give them a command or an order, and, like, just to. You could, like. You could just see it, like, the culture, the look. And, you know, I would. I have some good guys that would come talk to me. I'm like, hey, man. Like, you can't do that. You can't say that. And also, I was the youngest squad leader, and I had a lot of, you know, senior veteran squad leaders that were, you know, coaching me and teach me and stuff like that. So really, at the end of the day, I just reflecting on, you know, the time that I was in, I didn't want to be a name that people didn't want to be like or, like, man, that Sergeant Gandhi. Like, I want people like, yes, that's somebody you want to be like or learn from him, not don't learn from him.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's a huge. That's very lucky because, like I said, a lot of people, they see. They see Sergeant Gandy and he's yelling and screaming, and I literally. I'm one of your free freaking lance corporals, and I hate it, but I emulate it. You know what I mean? It's like the. The chain of abuse, right? I beat up my kid, so then my kid hates it, but what does he do? Beats up his kid. And instead of breaking the chain and being like, oh, I remember how terrible it was to be treated like that. And I think that's where I got very lucky, because I had that two days. I. I saw. Went from one extreme to the other extreme in. In two days. And I was only. How old was I. This was like 1993. So I was like, 22. So otherwise, if it would have been a gradual. Like, oh, we worked for this guy. He's a jerk for a year. And then, you know, you come home, you go on post deployment leave, then you get another guy. And that guy that comes in, he's gonna take a little while to establish, but it's all compressed. So I was like, terrible leader. Freaking best leader in two days. And I think that helped me so much because it made me go, oh, wow, it's so obvious. It wasn't like, oh, that guy was a dick, but this guy's cool. Over a long period of time, I was like, oh, no, this guy's freaking terrible. And this guy's awesome. So recognizing that you shouldn't be the guy that you literally didn't like, as opposed to, oh, this guy, hated him. But you know what? It was, it worked. I still had to do what he said. So I'm going to be the act the same way. It's just, it's a little trap you can get caught in. Little trap. Gotta watch out for that one. And now at this point, you're, you're, Are you coming up on your, your time in the Marine Corps?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes. So after we get back from that deployment, so down to Okinawa. Okinawa and then Korea. So we come back and then I'm probably at like 4 and some change, and people get out, people do that thing, and I'm told that, hey, this unit's gonna go back again to do the same rotation. And when I heard that, really, the writing was on the wall. It's not. Oh, and I was great, but it's not what I signed up to do. So when that moment came, that was when I was. I wanted to get out. I had the opportunity to get out early, but I really wanted to stay and, you know, pay back to the troops and be a part of the platoon. So a lot of people, they call it fap, which is basically you go serve another billet outside the platoon. People took that, that route because they just. They didn't want to go do another worker. But I really wanted to stay and help my guys, set them up for success again. Kind of the legacy play on. Let's set the team up for success, not for failure. So I decided to stay in and help them. And as they deployed, that's when I got out.

[Jocko Willink]

So right as they deployed, you got out?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

And what was your plan?

[Cody Gandy]

My plan was to go to school and then go into law enforcement.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you, did you save up money while you were in? You're just going to use the gi? Hey, we are learning some lessons, but not others.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, the running joke is I got out with $5 and a hangover.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's. That's crazy. It's crazy. What's crazy is you make. You make decent money in the military and you have really low expenses. But I'll tell you what, you find some expenses. You find some expenses at 2300 on a Friday night is where you find your expenses.

[Cody Gandy]

I was even living off base. I had barracks, but I chose to live off base and pay because. Why not?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, because you're the richest guy in the world. And the other thing is you get used to that, that paycheck's. Coming. Dude, paychecks, it's going in there. Two weeks, doesn't matter, you're on leave. Doesn't matter, you're working, not working. Doesn't matter, you're getting a paycheck. So you get used to that thing. So you're. You had a brilliant financial plan when you got out. You had next to no money, but you're going to get the GI Bill. Were you accounting on that?

[Cody Gandy]

I wouldn't have gone to school if I didn't get the GI Bill. And part of, as I mentioned earlier, law enforcement, certain ranks. So as you get up and you get some on your collar, you need a degree to get that done. So I was like, I had a buddy that I served with, he was the only guy I stayed with the whole five years. He was from Texas, I'm from California. So I was like, let's go to school in Arizona together. Moved to Arizona. I was like, what's the quickest degree that I can get? So I got a communications degree in about two years. I did it all online. I did one, one class a semester which is like that five hour window Wednesday night class to check the box on the GI Bill. My running mate lasted like three months as he tried to take like advanced Mandarin and was like, hey, this sucks, I can't do it. He ended up going contracting. So I was stuck there by myself. Met my wife out in Arizona and then graduated in 2017 and.

[Jocko Willink]

And. But were you still in school when you started coming around ef?

[Cody Gandy]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

So you did graduate?

[Cody Gandy]

I graduated in the spring of 2017. We had our first son, me and my wife Paige had our first son Bear. My wife was pregnant again as we had back to backs. And then the fall of 2017, yeah, I got a call from my sister that my parents were getting divorced and so I decided to move back home to try to help that situation.

[Jocko Willink]

So two parents have been married for a long time. 30 something years or something like that.

[Cody Gandy]

It was yeah, right around there.

[Jocko Willink]

And they're getting divorced. So now you head back, back home? Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

So bring your wife with you.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

So my sister calls me in the fall, I got 2:00am and she's like, hey, we're. We caught dad cheating on mommy and moved back home. And so I have this decision to make. I kind of have my life figured out and this is a moment where things are going to change. And so we uproot. I take my wife. I was like, hey, we're moved back in with my mom and my sister. We move back Home with them. Which was pretty humbling at you know, 26 years old to move back in with my mom. I kick my dad out. You know, as much as I'm not an emotional person, I tell my dad like, hey, if you don't fix this, like you're never seeing your grandkids again. Is, is how I handled it in the moment. So move back in with my mom. And at a low point in my life, right. I think getting out of the what.

[Jocko Willink]

Are you doing for job. Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

So I think, you know, the world owes me everything for my, my great service to this country. Right. And I find myself struggling on what to do. I'm trying to get into law enforcement. It's taking way too long. Backgrounds has taken forever. I just, I need to do something. So I, I start a job demoing burned down buildings, making 500 every two weeks, trying to support a family.

[Jocko Willink]

So then when did you, when did you start thinking ef?

[Cody Gandy]

Like a week after my second son was born, I believe. JP asked me to come help out with the FTX program. So JP was like, hey man, I'm running this hands on trainer Dash on front which living in Arizona, JP did an event at the Phoenicians. And I've known JP a long time and he was like, hey, why don't you guys come have dinner with me? So I went and saw him and kind of learned what he was doing and that was really the first point. But then he was like, hey, I need some people that I can trust was really it. He's like, I'm running this new training. Jocko is letting me run it. Like I just seen people that aren't going to embarrass Echelon in front of the client. So I came out in the fall of I think 2017 to help out with a gas and electric company, FTX. And as I came out there I was a little unsure on, on what you guys were doing. I obviously got it right. It's, you know, the laws of combat that makes sense to me. But watching JP and another instructor teach these gas and electric companies, like those dudes wanted no part. Like they're saying like, hey, this is like this, this doesn't work here. There's a guy that stood up and walked to the wall and like headbutted a bunch. He's like, this is what it's like to work here. And I was like, damn, like you guys do this, you're going to teach this guy how to lead. But to watch, like in a matter of a day, like People just start to like things click and like, see, like grown ass men after the end of ftx, like, crying, like, hey, I'm a shitty leader. Like, I failed my wife. Like, I'm like, how are you guys doing this? Crazy.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it is wild. It is wild. And it's, it is true. It's like so transformational. And the FTX is, the FTX is probably the most dynamic because you get to see the morning and afternoon. Day one, day two. Sometimes we do two days, some days we do one day. But the difference between the individuals and the group. So someone that. And they do like, you can't. If we were trying to script a Hollywood movie to show how the laws of combat work, if you made it as obvious as it is, when you see like the leader of a company that's like, no one on my team is stepping up to lead and you're like, okay, go do this tactical mission. And the tactical missions are not like, crazy. But then that leader, you'll put him in charge or not in charge, doesn't matter because he's the CEO of the company. He'll be out there like, don't move. Hey, you, like, move to that building right there and stay there until I tell you to leave. And just complete micromanagement. And then, you know, you record, you know, I'll have like a voice recorder and just like record what he's saying. And then you play it back to him and he's like, dude, I'm a loser. But you don't realize it or you'll see people freaking out. You see people raising their voices. You see people yelling and screaming. You'll see people being totally indecisive. Like, it is so blatantly obvious to everyone that's on the team, the Echelon front team. Like, you're like, oh, this is absolutely terrible. Hey, Cody, grab a camera and film this right now. Because this is an example that we can use from here to eternity. Except we won't need to because there's gonna be another one on the next iteration. And when people go through those and they make those mistakes, it, it's like, it hits them so hard because when I tell you like, hey, Echo, this is what you did during that situation and you can't. A lot of times you can't believe it. This happened in like, in the teams, we'd be doing CQC or something and you'd say, hey, Echo, you. You freaking like stutter stepped going in that room and you backed up the chain train and it caused a Bunch of problems. And Echo would be like, no, I didn't. Like, truly in your heart, believe you didn't do something. And then we'd break out the video like, yo. So it's the same thing. Not that we videotape every run at Echelon Front, but. Or at an ftx. But you know, in the debrief they're like, oh, I did do that. Oh yeah, I did. Oh, that's terrible. So they become self aware many times for the first time in their lives of what it's like to interact with other human beings and how those interactions are perceived by everyone else. Because what I say to you and how I say it to you is often different for different from what you hear and what you see. And the delta between those things can be great. So these are some of the things that, that you get to see. And people really do make like transformations. In two days, going to an FTX and you got to see that. The first one you see a guy banging his head on the wall. That's so classic. Yeah, it's, it's at Esalen Front we're always like, oh yeah, here's the, you know, we'll always have oh yeah. One guy was standing in the back with his arms folded, you know, looking out the window and yep, there's your target. Because you got to get that guy to recognize that what we're teaching is going to help him, it's going to help his team, it's going to help the whole company. Yeah, it's freaking crazy. So what, you start off just doing kind of role playing and, and then directing the role players and then you just escalated from there. Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

So starting off it was, I think it was five of us and JP was over. JP was running everything. So he was run like he was just the only instructor. And then it was just us five kind of friends just trying to figure it out. There was no SOPs, it was, we had no radios. Like it was just Thunderdome out there. And it's. We're playing laser tag and you know, competitive juices are flowing and we're just trying to rack up kills on the opposing side and stuff like that. So that's where it started. Eventually. This is like a two week iteration that we did with this company. And the client came back, they're like, hey, we love this. We want to double down. And towards the spring, JP was like, hey man, they want to do like another six months. I think it's like in my hand I have like two decisions. He's like, this is kind of a part time, full time role. Like I need you for six months, maybe even a year, or like, because I was in backgrounds for law enforcement or I can do that. And in the moment I was like, law enforcement will always be there for the most part. Like, I could, I can go there when I'm done. Session, front moment. It's, it's gonna pass if I don't take it. So I was like, cool, all in.

[Jocko Willink]

Give it a shot. Give it a shot and pretty good shot. So you went from being the role player, running the role players, and then it was okay, running kind of the direct, the, the backside of the entire FTX. And now you're running FTXs.

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you, as you see your growth and you see like the fact that you get to teach these principles, but what I think is awesome is like you applied these principles and that's what we talk about all the time, is if you apply these principles in life, things are going to be, things going to work out.

[Cody Gandy]

There's some truth to it. Look at that.

[Jocko Willink]

And you, you continued having kids, right? That's, that's what we're doing.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, I got four kids. I got. My boys just turned, so we got 7, 6, 4 and 2.

[Jocko Willink]

That's a fairly tight grouping you got going on there. 7, 6, 4 and 2. What are you learning from applying these principles on the home front?

[Cody Gandy]

It's a hell of a lot harder than any other realm.

[Jocko Willink]

And what makes it harder, it's closer to other people.

[Cody Gandy]

It's, you know, it's my kids. It's. It's my wife. They. My wife knows what to say to get under my skin. My kids are carbon copies of me and what they do is reflection of me. It's that emotional connection and the ego in me which makes it harder. And I always reflect on that when I, When I go teach, as I remind people, like, hey, if you're gonna try this at work, like, I work with Echo, like, it's easier to, you know, get along with him, but you know, at home when things aren't going right or to detach specifically, it's harder to do those at home. So it's, it was harder initially and, you know, as I got married and as I had new kids or more kids, it was just a new perspective. I think detachment specifically was something that I thought I was always good at. Being reserved and, you know, having a, A dad who was a cop, being very stoic, like, that's how I thought you should be Marine Corps, being Detached, you know, emotional decisions gets people killed. Ego based decisions get people's killed. That was always hit over and over and over again as I joined Echelon Front. You know, I was always detaching, but I didn't have the word. And then you gave me the word. I was like, oh, that's what I've been doing. But when I had kids, it was just different. It's, it's harder to detach. And my kids are so close and we homeschool and like literally last week my, my 7 year old dropped a gallon, a gallon of purple paint on my black tile. And like in the moment I'm just like all the things I want to say and do and I'm like, he's seven, he wants to help in his paint. It's not that big of a deal.

[Jocko Willink]

The, the weird thing is, so not only is there this, there's these sort of pre formatted relationship things that you have with your kids. So you know, you care about your kids and you know, you know exactly what they should be doing. You know it. And, and you know what, Echo, Charles, you're right. You're actually right. And if you, if your kid was like, all right, here's the, here's the schedule, here's what we're doing. Your kid could become the, the, the apex example or the apex capability that they could have. They could meet them all. Like, we all know that we could formulate the plan and we're right. We're a hundred percent right. But I'm gonna tell you right now, there's a pre programmed thing in our mind that we, that we know that we're right and we're, and it's, we know what's best for our kids. There's also a pre programmed thing in their head. And that thing doesn't always line up. You know, there's, there's something about your kids and look, there's something about your kids and it's the same with your employees. The same with people. Like if I bark orders at you or I say like, hey Cody, here's exactly how we're doing this. You're going to have psychological reactance, which is a real term that I learned. You're gonna be like, oh, Jocko thinks he knows how to do this better than me. Oh, Jocko thinks he knows how to, you know what, how to run the FTX better than I do. Okay, we'll see. And you're gonna be negative, man. It's just what's gonna happen. It's guaranteed to Happen. It's guaranteed to happen. I have your best interest in mind whether I'm talking to my daughter, who I'm like, oh, you want to be champion? Here's what you should do. I know, bro. I've. I've trained actual freaking champions. Echo Charles.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Straight up, by the way. Let's just get real here in the. In the sports that we're talking about.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I have been down the promise road. I have trained the world champion. Right. I get it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Know the deal.

[Jocko Willink]

Know the deal. 100%.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Now, let's say I had a daughter that wanted to be world champion in the same sports. I know exactly what to do. I literally know exactly what to do. I. I cannot impose that plan. It will not work. It will not work. Psychological reactance. I. I want my daughter to be world champion. Probably more than she does. You know what I'm saying?

[Echo Charles]

I know what you're saying. Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Probably more than she does. And I know. I know how to do it. I know how to do it. I've walked that road.

[Echo Charles]

It's a good dream.

[Jocko Willink]

It's a good dream. It's a good dream. So. But I can't impose that plan on her. And it's the same thing with, like, your team. Like, I know what. I know what Echo should do with a video. I know. Oh, gonna give me that look. Maybe not the best.

[Echo Charles]

I understand what you mean.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So I know. I know. I know what my team should be doing for something. Look, when I was in a. When I was a SEAL platoon commander, dude, I was a very experienced SEAL at that time. When I was a task unit commander, I was a very experienced SEAL at that time, compared to normal SEAL for sure, because I was a prior enlisted guy because I had taught stuff and trained, done the whole thing. But luckily, I'd worked for Delta Charlie, who was way more experienced than we were when we were those young kids. And he wasn't like, all right, I know what to do. I literally know. I literally know everything, and I'm not going to tell you what to do. And so when I was a task unit commander, I. Look, did I know everything? No. Did I know a hell of a lot more than Leif Babin and Seth Stone, who've been in the teams for two years? Yeah. Hell, yeah, I did. I knew a ton more than they did. Did I? Then impose it on him? No, you can't do that. So this idea of imposing your plan, and like you said, when you get to your family, dude, you know how to Turn your son into the best football player, basketball player, baseball player, Jiu Jitsu player, wrestler. Like you know how to do it, we know how to do it, but it ain't gonna work. You cannot, you cannot do that. That's a, that's a very difficult thing. And not only is it not going to work, and not only is our perception wrong or our perception kind of locked in that we think we know everything. Their perception is locked in that you don't. Their perception is locked in that you don't. If I can't tell my 10 year old son where to, where to put his hips on an arm lock in Jiu Jitsu. If I can't tell my 10, which this happened, I was like, hey, dude, put your hips a little further on. And he's like, you don't need to do that. I'm like, okay, cool, we're done here. It's freaking 10. I've been doing Jiu Jitsu for 25 years at that point. Like, that's where we're at. That was such a good wake up call because you cannot impose things on people. Now look, can you occasionally get some. You can occasionally get someone that's more open to it. Sure. Very, very rare. Almost never. It's almost never that you get someone that's like their mind is just open, blank slate, write what you want to write. It's almost never. And if you do try and write stuff on there, they're gonna freaking like bump your hand and scribble and erase it. It's going to be a problem. So, yes, the fam situation. Got it. Got. It's real. Got to keep it real. When you, as you're seeing your kids get older and, or do you think you're, do you think, are you starting to see some of the behaviors that you have reflected by them? I mean, he's your, your oldest is seven. That's, that's actually, I, I don't know if this is a valid question. Might not be a valid question. I don't think. I don't think the formulations are there yet. I don't think there's enough form. I don't think their personalities are formulated enough at age 7 to where you're like, oh, I see the reflections of me in them. I don't think it's old enough. What do you, what do you think?

[Cody Gandy]

There's some tendencies coming out, but yeah, there's, there's nothing. We're still building who they are. I think, to your point, and really the question at hand, I'LL just speak on one thing that we're navigating right now. Since we homeschool, like, we can kind of control curriculum.

[Jocko Willink]

It's.

[Cody Gandy]

My kids call my wife the teacher, and I'm the warden of the. You know, the school.

[Jocko Willink]

Wait, they. They use the term?

[Cody Gandy]

Well, we taught them what it was, but it's math, English, that stuff like that. And then periodically we throw stuff in there and obviously work industrial in front, like ownership. It's very hard to teach a 6,742-year-old ownership. But the whole. When I mentioned getting arrested and with my dad and the truth piece, like, being truthful is something that I'm navigating, like, right now. And I think a lot of people, when they read the book Extreme Ownership, like, ownership is one of the hardest tenants we have to overcome. Like, well, where does that start? It starts when you're a kid, and I get to see that in real time. When I watch my kid do something, he's like, no, that. That can just spilled by itself. Like, I literally watched you do it. And so navigating things like that. And, you know, I always ask questions at workshop or keynotes on, like, whose kids, when they do something, do they fuss up? Like, nobody raises their hand, but, like, I have a leg up because I'm getting to this early, and I give my kids a lot of choices. I'm like, hey, I know what happened. Like, just tell me the truth. And they still fumble and mess up, but we're getting quicker to, like, them realizing that the truth is what I need to be doing. For example, we first moved to Arizona. One of my sons, my oldest son, he cut all the drip lines in my backyard. Scissors.

[Jocko Willink]

And I remember walking terrorist right there, dude.

[Cody Gandy]

Walking out in the morning and like, surgeon move, dude. Walking on the backyard, and the backyard's flooded. Doesn't rain in Arizona, where we're living. I'm like, what happened? And then I look around and just all the drips, there's just piles of.

[Jocko Willink]

What was he using to cut them?

[Cody Gandy]

Scissors, dude.

[Jocko Willink]

That's a freaking insurgent right there.

[Cody Gandy]

And terrorist. I remember sitting all four of my kids down. I was just. It was just. Just me at home. Paige was gone and asking my kids, like, who did this? And just, I. I actually filmed it to see kind of what happened, and all the kids are just like, nothing. And my oldest actually was like, it was me. And in the moment, like, there's a couple choices that I. I can do. Like, really? Does this really matter? It's. It's water, isn't the grant. Like, but what I. What did I want to do? I wanted to do a lot of things, but in the moment, I'm like, cool, man. Like, we can't be doing that because of a, B and C. And it was just a moment where I was a teaching lesson for him that I appreciate the honesty. Like, you still can't do this. Like, ownership doesn't just eliminate, like, when people mess things up, but in that. And there's been constant moments like that where. So that's why I'm trying to get in early, because I want them to learn this. This habit, which is going to build into a tendency which builds into who they are when they're 10. Like, if I can teach my kids ownership by 10, I believe I'm setting them up for success. Like, I don't want them to learn when I learn when 28 years old. Like, oh, this is what you're supposed to do. Like, I want to help them out.

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, man, it's a. It's an. It's. It's interesting. And I've kind of been through it now because I only have one, like, quote kid left that's 15 years old. My other kids are grown people. But, man, you look back and you think, I wonder if I made the right move right there. It's. It's very interesting. And also, I just got a new dog, by the way. And, you know, so now I'm like, just deep back deep in with the dog thing. Right back deep in with the. All of it, the training and all that, and the. The way that you train a dog. Like, there's. Dude, there's just similarities. Here's one. You can't. You know this one because actually, you might have taught me this one. The reward. You can't reward 100 of the time. You can only reward 80% of the time. So literally, you tell your dog to sit like a puppy. You say, sit. Give him a treat. Say sit again. Give him a treat. Say sit again. Don't give him a treat. Say sit again. Give him a treat. And that little bit of randomness because. Because you were talking about this with some kind of applications or something, right?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Or gambling or what?

[Echo Charles]

Applications, apps, and kind of doing that. Variable reward.

[Jocko Willink]

Variable reward.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Whether you're a human or a dog, you. You both respond better to variable reward. There has to be some element of surprise. The. The dopamine that you get from the. The surprise is as valuable as the reward itself. So you get. You do the right thing and you don't get a reward. You do the right thing, you get a reward. You're excited, you get a reward. You're excited, you don't get a reward. Well, I'm gonna try again, see if I can get the reward again. And that's what in imprints the behavior. So as you look at the way kids when they grow up, you're like, oh, I see some little characteristic. What did I do that made that characteristic exist in this human being right now? Maybe it was me, maybe it was a school teacher, maybe it was a friend, whatever. But what. What pattern of life? What lesson did that person did? This. What used to be a kid now is an adult, and their behavior has been modified. It's behavior modification by school, by friends, by all this other stuff. And this is where they end up.

[Echo Charles]

Another tip too, by the way, on the flip side of the variable reward is the opposite with punishment. So you got to punish every single time, 100% of time. So consistent punishment is like, oh, in a dog's brain, kid's brain, whatever. They're going to be like, I know. Under all circumstances, not even consciously, it's already like inside instinct. It gets trained into your instinct where it's like, if I do something 100, that's like, literally just the way the world works.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

So even if I do choose to do it, I know what's coming, you know? So a lot of times they just avoid it, like, naturally, you know? But if you do a variable punishment, it's kind of like the. The. The idea of maybe I can get away with it.

[Jocko Willink]

That's enticing, too. Yeah. That's equally enticing, like, I might get away with it. That's kind of fun, kind of dope.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, you know, you ever met someone, they're like, oh, when I was a kid, I shoplift. But you're like, you were rich. And they're like, no, but it was. They kind of do it because they want the excitement of the whole jam.

[Echo Charles]

It's like a dark variable reward really seems on the dark side, though. You got to watch out the double whammy on that one. So, yeah, basically, yeah. If you're going to punish everybody or the people or the pets, keep it consistent.

[Jocko Willink]

True. And this is true. This is true with the kids. And it's in truth, with your team, your employees, your peer, it's like, just true. It's humans, the. The way that they respond. It's just very, very predictable. And look, does everyone have their own little elements? Yep. Everyone's Got their own little thing. Cody might be a little bit more resistant to pain than Echo or whatever. You know, Echo might respond a little bit better to this thing than something else. And that's why I got to keep, I got to keep that in mind. But broadly speaking, the principles, like, they're not going to change. You have to maybe modulate them a little bit in one way or the other, but they're gonna, they, they remain. And I've seen this now for years and years and years. And every time, every time you think like, oh, maybe it's not. Maybe, maybe, maybe this time will be different. It's not going to be different. It's not going to be different. It's just not going to be different. It's so predictable. Predictable within the, you know, degrees of variation, but it's predictable. So that's what we're doing. So that's where we're at right now, huh? You got, you run the FTX. How often you guys doing FTXs right now at echelon front?

[Cody Gandy]

20, 24. We did 28. 28 total.

[Jocko Willink]

And some of these. So some of these are companies that hire Echelon Front to give them a transformational leadership alignment inside their world and knowledge and unified knowledge. So someone, let's say I have a company. Tell me how it works. I have a company, it's called Jocko Fuel. I want to get my team trained up there. I can see that the problems that we're having, they're all leadership problems. So what do I do? I contact Echelon Front. And then what do I do? Say I want to. I heard about the FTX thing. That's what I want to do. Then what happens?

[Cody Gandy]

So basically there's two models of the FTX that we run. There's corporate and then there's individual. So the corporate model is, you know, we come to you. So if it's shock of fuel, hey, we're gonna bring, I'll bring my team up to Maine, we'll locate a site which is typically a paintball field, airsoft field. We, we have used hotels, we've used old refineries. Like, we'll just find something that works. Anything that has buildings is pretty beneficial for us. We bring all the gear and you guys just really have to show up the FTX in itself. From a company standpoint, it gives us a couple of things. One, it is a team building exercise, but that's not the point. That's the byproduct of it. You're going to do something hard together which, you know, builds a lot of camaraderie and helps with the culture. So that's part of it. But it's really a, you know, it's, it's a leadership lab for, for lack of a better word. A lot of people, when they read the book or they come to a PowerPoint done by one of the instructors, everything's theoretical. Right. Cover move is about relationships. And a lot of people will say, like, I'm a team player, I'm good at relationships. A lot of people think their communication is, is great and they know how to detach and they always are decentralized. The FTX is a culmination. It's a test on, you know, the reality of who you are. Theory and reality are two different things. I know a lot of people that have done a lot of echelon front training that have come to 20 musters and they think they're great at these, and they come to the FTX and they blow it out. They, they, they mess it all up because it's, it's different. And so it is a culmination, it is a test of it. It is typically we do some kind of lean in. So you read the book, you get a workshop, you do a keynote, and then we run the FTX and then we tie everything back to what you do. There is some tacticalness to it.

[Jocko Willink]

Right.

[Cody Gandy]

That's the vessel that we chose to use because that's what we know. It's, you know, part of the military is FTX's. It's a culmination event. And so there's a tactical piece, but it's strictly about leadership. We'll teach people, you know, how to walk in a line and how to enter a room, but we don't really care. We're not going to talk about it. We're going to talk about leadership and I'm going to talk about, hey, Echo on that run, like, and I, I killed you as a leader, what happened to the team? Well, the team didn't do anything. Well, yeah, because you told them exactly what to do and when to do and how to do it. We call that, you know, centralized command.

[Jocko Willink]

We call that micromanagement.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

And so in the moment, it's all, it seems tactical, but it's really, it's all about leadership. And so after each run, we do a bunch of runs throughout the day. Everybody switches roles. So sometimes you're, you know, the jocko in the platoon, sometimes you're the frontline shooter and you gain a lot of perspective on what the boss does what the frontline contributor does, and at the end we're tying it back to what you do personally and professionally. So we're taking this, you know, hypothetical laser tag scenario and we're tying it back to what you do. Typically there's some followup on hey, you guys remember Run number one? Which the mission was go talk to an old guy and you slaughtered the entire city. Like, how does that apply to you at Jocko Fuel? That's the goal of the ftx.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. You know, if you took someone that had never trained Jiu Jitsu before and you got, you know, the Hicks and Gracie to teach him a class with PowerPoints and maybe videos and theory and all this stuff, and you had. And Cody, you came, you'd never changed before and you didn't wrestle and you came and took this class from him for three months about how to do an arm lock and what the theory was, a balance and all these different things. And look, you're not going to get a better teacher than Hicks and Gracie. When you got on the map for the first time, you would not be able to execute this stuff. Same thing with basketball, Same thing with playing the guitar. You can understand the chords, you can understand exactly where your fingers are supposed to go, you can memorize things, things with flashcards, but until you get your fingers on the fretboard of a guitar, you're not going to learn how to play. And that's what I feel the FTX is. And it doesn't, unlike Jiu Jitsu or unlike guitar, like, even. So once you pick that guitar up, even if you know all theory, it's still going to take you a while to get your physical, to get your physical dexterity to the point where it'll work. Or same thing with Jiu Jitsu, like it's going to take a while to actually learn the muscle memory of the move. But this is leadership. And so it is a wake up call. But it's not like you have to now learn a physical movement. No, you just have to learn a mental movement, which is, which can be adopted much quicker. If you have an open mind and you show up, you'll be like, oh, oh, yeah, I overreact sometimes. Or oh, sometimes I start talking when I should be listening. Or oh, sometimes I try and come up with the most perfect plan and it's wasting time. Or there's all these things that you can, you can literally learn and you can stop doing them because you learn to recognize them, because you learn how to detach so that is the way it works. So that's the corporate ftx. The individual FTX is basically someone can just sign up and go, yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

So we are, we started to have demand from smaller organizations on, hey, Jockoffee only has 10 people. Like, we. You're not going to come to us. Like we'll come to you. Or traditionally it's like people a little skeptical. They see the footage and they think it's, you know, barbed wire and, you know, low crawls. That's not what it is. So people want to test it out. So we created a, an event to where people can come see what it is. So we open it to small teams or small individuals, which has been successful. And it said, you just come to us. So we typically do this after a muster or we do this in Dallas where we're located, and people come to us and we run it through there. The difference is you're not with your whole team. You're with, you know, potentially 29 other people from different walks of life. But the teaching points are still the same.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, good point though. It's not a physically demanding event. It's not like, like you said, crawling under barbed wire. It's. It's actually there's, there's no physical strenuous activity. It's all mental.

[Cody Gandy]

It's not.

[Jocko Willink]

Look, you're gonna be walking around, you know, some buildings, but you'll literally be walking around. You know the rules don't run, right?

[Cody Gandy]

The rules don't run.

[Jocko Willink]

Now listen, that's the rule is don't run. These freaking people get crazy and they start running and sprinting and acting like John J. Rambo. But you shouldn't need to run because if you've got someone covering properly for you, you can move in a smart fashion, expedited, but you don't have to sprint and you can execute the maneuvers correctly. So it's not a. Again, you're right. Sometimes people see like the physical side of things and you know, there's like, there's like boot camp type things that are out there where you're gonna get tested mentally and physically. Basically physically. This is not that. This is educational. You, you will not be tested physically. We've had people of every age bracket and physical condition go through ftx and their performance doesn't have anything to do with physical. It has to do with mental. It has to do with leadership. It has to do with decision making. It has to do with learning to execute these laws of combat leadership. And what's gratifying for us is that we get to see those transformations take place. And then we get to hear, you know, then people send their whole company or they start sending the rest of the leadership team. And then we get to see companies transform, entire companies transform, because they truly understand these leadership principles, and they start to utilize them throughout their company. And we see companies that go from, you know, that massively increase their. Their workflow, their profitability, their engagement, everything, they just get better across the board. So that's what we do. That's what you do over there, over here at Echelon Front. Does that get us up to speed?

[Cody Gandy]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

All right, so if people are looking for you, they can find [e-mail] you're on LinkedIn. Ody Gandy, you're on Instagram and you're on Twitter X. You have not been active on Twitter X in the past. I think I looked at it. It was like two years or something like that. The gram kind of took over the X. Twitter X is coming back. Although there was an announcement made today by. By Mark Zuckerberg that he is moving away from. From. I don't think he would call it censorship. It ended up being censorship. And I think he readily kind of said that he's going towards the community notes model, which is from Twitter, which is now called X, which is. If you say some dumb shit, people be like, no, that's not true. Here's the facts. And it gets tagged as a community note. I haven't done it yet. I haven't done a community. I've called somebody out because I'm not, you know, to be honest, I'm not sitting there, like, looking to argue with people in the. In the interwebs. It doesn't seem like a move. And it seems like it's like a lot of time. If you're gonna. If you're gonna dedicate your life to that, I get it. Like, there's people that. That's what they do for a living. I don't do that for a living. You know what I mean?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't. I actually have other jobs. Right.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, sir, you do.

[Jocko Willink]

I know. Like, being a. Being online presence is almost. Almost accidental in a way.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Maybe not accidents.

[Echo Charles]

It's incidental. Incidental Kind of part of the gig.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, yeah, it's like, hey, well, yeah, we're posting some stuff, but I'm not like, someone's gonna say some stuff like read. You know, getting into it with them.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's that. So people can find you there. You're at Cody Ganny. C O D E Y G A N D Y There you go. That's where you're at. You're all you. You get a lot of your post with your kids. You guys are lifting, you guys are doing pull ups, you're working out. It's pretty awesome. You get the warrior kids in the house.

[Cody Gandy]

We're trying to get them in the game. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

They doing Jiu Jitsu.

[Cody Gandy]

We tried it a couple years ago.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Cody Gandy]

When we were doing traditional school and it was just, you know, my boy specifically, it's eight hours of school and they're like, hey, let's go to Jiu Jitsu. Was not a good recipe. So we've been talking about it. We're going to try again in the spring to get them back into it because now we're full homeschool.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. You may need to get. And it may be worth it to have mats at the house. You have mats in the house? Yeah. So once you get the mats in the house, it might be worth it to just have someone come in and, you know, get someone that's a instructor to come in twice a week, get them into the game. And then you just, you know, make wrestling and jiu jitsu just kind of like part of what we do for fun.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

That's the most optimal way to get them trained at a young age. So the Gracies did like you. Oh, you're a little kid. Cool. You don't know that you're playing guard pass, but you're playing guard pass. You don't know that. You know, hold that. You're holding them out, but you're holding them out. You don't know that you're escaping them out, but you're escaping them out. It's just a game. It's just part of life. And I recommend that as a good way to make it happen. Echo, Charles. You got questions?

[Echo Charles]

A couple questions. So, okay, when your boy cut the. The drip lines, did you ever ask him, like, hey, why'd you do that?

[Cody Gandy]

It wasn't so much a why. Yeah, the. What it came down to was, like, I provided easy access to scissors. So it wasn't. The why was because he could.

[Echo Charles]

Right, right. Like experimental. You know.

[Jocko Willink]

That little water squirted out, right?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, there's another one. Cool, bro.

[Echo Charles]

That's totally real. I mean, actually, you know, it's gonna sound crazy, but there's an element to absolute truth to this, bro. That's kind of valid for a little kid because that's what we do as Little kids, we're tinkering with stuff. What happens if I break? So I was a little kid, and I was not a morally, like, skewed kid. I was like, pretty, you know, pretty morally sound as a kid.

[Jocko Willink]

According to who?

[Echo Charles]

You know, the world, you know, society, whatever. But our neighbors had this. And now as an adult, I feel real bad, but they had this. These big glass jars, right? Full of, like, fermented meat. And. And it was by their garden. And at the time, I didn't know what they're for. They're just these huge ass glass jars, right? Big ones, like, abnormally big. There's some weird stuff inside. But as it turns out, it's to attract, like, bugs and flies away from the garden. It was like a whole process. And we used to make these slingshots when I was young. And they were real effective, by the way. So I was like, the neighbors. Freaking glass jars over there. Let me see if I can hit it. Not thinking, like, of the real world consequences, you know? And they're glass too, so it's not like, oh, they're like a plastic bucket or something. It'll just make a cool sound. That's it. So I hit one and just freaking. It was a marble that I was shooting, and it exploded. Like, it was spectacular. I was like, that's kind of cool. Like, but that's what it was. It was out of curiosity. I wasn't trying to be mean to my neighbor. Neighbor. So I hit one and I was like, damn, that's awesome. So I go grab my brother. I was like, bro, watch this. Just ruining this guy's garden. Our neighbor, too. It's not like it's some, like, foreign place. They'll never see me again. It's our freaking neighbor lives right there. And then, you know, so we destroyed all of them just out of, like, just sheer, you know? Yeah. Seems crazy, but at the time, like, what goes through your head as a kid? You're just like, oh, that was kind of awesome. Let's see what happens when this happened, you know, like, hey, see if you can hit it. And you just disregard the other real world stuff, you know? So I kind of don't blame them, dude.

[Cody Gandy]

I.

[Echo Charles]

In a way, I disrespect.

[Jocko Willink]

I have an alley behind my house.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And the kids across the alley. This is a few years ago, they just hawked mud, like, mud snowballs, mud balls at my car. Like, and they were young. They were too young to realize, like, what that means, but old enough to be like, oh, that made a Cool sound. And it left a mark.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I'm a little human being, and I want to leave my mark on the world. So I come outside and there's just mud balls all over my freaking car. And. And they were standing there with, like, muddy hands and just didn't even care that I. You know, I'm like, hey, like, what are you doing? I think I. I think I called them savages. I was like, what are you doing? A little freaking savages. Kind of, like, joking. So, yeah, you got to watch out for that also. John Bozak. Yeah, he. This is when I was a little kid. He's at my house, and I had this. We had like a. A pathway that had little tiny rocks on it, right? And he was. We had a well with a concrete. Piece of concrete over the well. So that's kind of like the pathway went by the well. And we used to just kind of sit on the well sometimes. And I was doing something, and he was sitting out there and he had a hammer, and he was just smashing the rocks, taking the little rocks, putting them on the wall and smashing. Take another one. Putting them on the rock and smashing them. Taking. And. And, you know, I kind of didn't even pay attention to it because, you know, I'm a little destructive kid, too. But anyways, my mom comes home, and now the hammer's sitting there. There's, like, rocks smashed, and John and I are no longer out there. But my mom comes in, and she's like, who? You know, because it's her freaking house. And, like, why is somebody. She's like, who's. Who's, like, smashing rocks with a hammer on the well? And John Bozak's like, It was me, Mrs. Willink. And she's like, well, which. She didn't expect that truthfulness, right? She expected denial, maybe. She's like, well, why did you do that? And John without. He's just like, to see them be destroyed. Because to see. Be destroyed. I'm like, it's true. How do you even respond to that?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. You know, like, dang. All right. I guess so, right?

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

I could get there. You could get there. Actually, my, you know, solar water heater. So we had a solar water heater on the side of our house. Huge, like, huge. Just solar panel water. And my brother had this big, like, boulder, like, the heaviest one. And he was just like. And just destroys the whole. He got beat for it. But that's another one of those ones where it's like, brother, an obvious human being would know never to do that to just literally destroy the solar water heater. And he's just like, I wanted to see what was happening, you know, like, bro, that's just how, you know, like. And for whatever reason, I don't know if this is a boy thing or whatever, but like, the destruction part of things is like, very fun.

[Cody Gandy]

That's part of it.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah. Or loud noises. Back to the slingshot scenarios. These slingshots are very effective. There was a. A pig farm, like acres away and down a valley from our house, right? So. And it had a tin roof. So we'd shoot the slingshot, the marbles, like way down. And you could see the spot, you know, the shine, the glimmer of the marble, and then it go down. Then it hit it. So loud sound, right? We'd always do that. And to the point where the owners of the pig farm one time came out with their shotguns, and we're like, hey. Then they started firing the shotguns to scare us off or whatever. But it's like before that happened, we were just like, yeah, bro, shoot the slingshot down there. Make a cool sound. You know, just literally ignorant of the consequences, the rules, etiquette, the whole thing. Like, you just don't know, you know, I could get there, is what I'm saying.

[Jocko Willink]

Check. Any other questions? Echo.

[Echo Charles]

All right, so JP said you guys were cousins. Is that literally true or is that just an expression?

[Jocko Willink]

Cousins.

[Echo Charles]

So cuz it's true, straight up.

[Cody Gandy]

It's true.

[Echo Charles]

First cousin. Okay. All right, get it.

[Cody Gandy]

She's letting out of the bag. All right.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, I didn't know was a secret. You know, that's one of the first things I heard about you, so I figured, hey, common knowledge. But hey, good to see you again.

[Jocko Willink]

Check. Cody, any. Any closing thoughts?

[Cody Gandy]

Just one last thought on. Obviously I teach this book that you wrote, and there's been a common occurrence on. On a question that I consistently get. And since I shared the story about my mom and my dad, one of the hardest things that I've ever had to deal with, just on a fundamental level, was that divorce that my parents went through. And ironically, that was when I joined the team. And as I'm joining the team, obviously I'm reading How to do this. And, you know, you guys give us a skeleton on how to teach this. You know, my mom takes notes of what I'm doing, what I'm teaching, and then she asked me a question about ownership, which has kind of led me to where I'm at today. And the question was, you know, how do I take ownership of your dad cheating on me was really the. The summary of the question. You know, I've shared this with, with you, I think, at a battlefield, but in the moment brand new to the team. I. I really didn't know what to say. Like, my first was like, Jock was going to FaceTime my mom and tell her what to do. And the second question or the second thought was like, you know, what did she do? Like, she had to do something to cause this. But then I simply recognized that there was a. There's an action and there was a consequence, and then I was stumbling on, well, what if you're in a scenario where you did nothing wrong but things still happened? And this has led me to having a lot of conversations over the years because, you know, we get the question all the time about affairs and, you know, kids with terminal cancer. And, you know, I got a question a couple years ago at an event where a woman stood up and was like, hey, I was sexually assaulted by somebody in the room. Like, how do I take ownership of that? I think a lot of people miss just considering I teach this. A part of ownership is, you know, your response to things. And, you know, the advice I gave my mom and advice to give to a lot of people is something. Sometimes things are just going to happen. Like, life happens and it sucks. And oftentimes we're a victim to certain things. Being a victim and having a victim mentality are two very different things. A victim mentality is you're waiting for someone or something to come solve your problem for you, which that's not how life works. Like, honestly, people don't care. There's 8 billion people in the world, and you have the worst day of your life. Like, no one's really going to take note. So the ownership in that is, you know, what you do next. And, you know, the. The grace I give my mom is, you know, who she was and who she is are two very different people, all because she took ownership of her life. That is oftentimes missed in the book. And when we teach is, you know, 10%, 5% of the time is things happen to you. And your response, that ownership that you have, like, that is a choice that you have this ownership. It's a choice, like you have a choice to utilize it if you want to. But I definitely have people in my life, people that I run into where that's not the case, and they feel they did nothing wrong or there's nothing that they can do, which ultimately leaves them powerless. And so I feel just to wrap that up that there is a place for ownership in everything. Sometimes it's in your response, sometimes it's in the problem, sometimes in the solution. And so, so that really has been the hardest question I've ever received. That Echelon front and all the people that I've talked to, it's, it's my mom that, you know, caught me off guard. But I like to remind people of that. And it's something that I honestly close with at every workshop that I do. Because that piece is typically missing in the context of the book. If you don't read between the lines.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there's, there's no doubt about it. There's things that happen. Well, like you named them, like terminal diseases. Someone attacks you, you know, you get hit. You're driving down the highway perfectly normal like a, a good 55 mile an hour law, law obeying person and you get slammed from behind like, this is not, this is not your fault that this happened. There are things that are not your fault and how do you take ownership of those things? You take ownership and how you respond. What are you going to do now? How are you going to move forward? What are you going to learn from it? How are you going to prevent this from happening again? All those things are, those are things that we can do to the best of our ability. And that is still taking ownership. Yeah, that's a really good misperception that people can have, which is, oh, you know, my husband cheated on me. How is that my fault? It's like, oh, well, we don't have to take ownership of, of your husband being a bad person, but you can take ownership of how you respond to it. And that's one of the things that we teach and definitely a good point. Another thing that we teach is to get after it. I know, I know you get after it. Cody, you're. What's your physical activities right now?

[Cody Gandy]

Rob Jones and I just finished up with that marathon.

[Jocko Willink]

So what'd you do? You did a ruck marathon.

[Cody Gandy]

So I did a 25 pound weight vest marathon running, ran it.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your time?

[Cody Gandy]

Just over four hours.

[Jocko Willink]

Freaking awesome. How's your knees?

[Cody Gandy]

They've been better.

[Jocko Willink]

Not awesome.

[Cody Gandy]

They don't feel like 30, only slightly.

[Jocko Willink]

Better than Rob Jones's knees.

[Cody Gandy]

Very true. I've never. Whatever reason we decided to do that marathon, I kind of, I just called Rob. I was like, hey, are you in? Are you out? He's like, I'm in. I was like, cool, we're gonna run marathon. Rob has that background. I've never ran longer than like three miles. I was like, cool, let's do something hard and let's add a weight vest. The knees are what. What got me. It was about. I didn't tell Rob this until about mile 20 because he was like, how are you doing? I was like, dude, like, this sucks. Like, in my preparation, I never ran longer than 12 miles, but I didn't tell him that. Like, I wanted him to just be a part of it. Around mile 20, the weight was really problematic. It was. It was killing the joints. But, no, it was good. We ran it up in D.C. d.C. Area around Iwo Jima, which was awesome. It's hard to, you know, be a quitter in that environment when you have, you know, Arlington there. And I got to visit one of my old platoon commanders there that died in 2020. But just to be in that area, like, you can't quit like you're gonna finish. So cool environment to be in. But that was the training plan this last year, which was fun to do in the peak of Arizona summers. So there will be no running in my foreseeable future.

[Jocko Willink]

Time to get jacked. Report to Echo Charles to get jacked. Well, whatever kind of jacking you're doing, whatever you're getting after, whatever you're making happen, you're going to need fuel. We recommend Jocko fuel. Go check it out. Jockofuel.com we got everything that you need. We got molk protein shakes ready to drink. We got powder, we got joint warfare. If you run a marathon with a weight vest on, you're going to need some joint warfare and some super krill. They will legitimately bring you back to health. They're freaking awesome. We got go. You had a go. What are you drinking? Pink lemonade over there.

[Cody Gandy]

Pink lemonade?

[Jocko Willink]

Is that your go to.

[Cody Gandy]

That's the go to Arizona summers.

[Jocko Willink]

It's the sweetest one, I think.

[Echo Charles]

Mango, the sweetest.

[Jocko Willink]

You think so?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, we kind of had a consensus last night. Right.

[Cody Gandy]

But yeah, you made a little bias, but it's okay.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, it's possible. Yeah, you know, it is good.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, all this stuff you can [e-mail] you can also get it at Walmart. You can do Wawa. You can get Vitamin Shop, gnc, Military commerce. If you're over in Korea from the military, you can get it right there at the commissary or at the exchange, which is pretty awesome. Hannaford, Dash, Doors, Wakefern, Shoprite. H e B. Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix. Publix is Another, like, massive regional food chain down in the southeast. And we're rolling into Publix right now. So be. Be on the lookout, clear the shelves. Publix been awesome. Lifetime fitness shields and small gyms everywhere. No matter what kind of gym you got. You got a jujitsu gym, you got a powerlifting gym, an MMA gym. Doesn't matter. We got you. If you don't have it there, go to jfsalesjocofuel.com we'll hook it. We'll hook it up. That's what we'll do. Origin USA.com you're going to need jeans. You're gonna need a GI. Your kids are gonna need geese. Cody, Gandhi. Because they're gonna start training Jiu jitsu. Best thing you can do for a kid. The best thing you can do for a kid is Jiu jitsu. More important than love. I say that sarcastically, but, you know, like, there's some facts. Get your kids trained in Jiu Jitsu. You should be training Jiu Jitsu. OriginUSA.com we got. We got Jiu Jitsu geese for you. We got jeans, boots, hoodies, rash guards, boots. Pretty much everything you need. Hunt gear, jackets. I just ordered two of the rain jackets. I don't think there's that many left, but I ordered two because I'm like, I'm gonna have my freaking rain gear T shirt jogger. So check it out. OriginUSA.com Made in America 100. 100. Made in America. That means you support the American economy. It means you support the American worker. It means you support America. Don't go to freaking China to buy your gear. Go to the United States of America. OriginUSA.com Check it out.

[Echo Charles]

It's true. Also, Jocko has a store go to Gandhi, called Jocko Store. Of course. Right? Yeah, man. This is where you can get your discipline equals freedom. Hats and hoodies and stuff. Mainly shirts, though. You want to represent on this path that we're all on. Discipline equals freedom. Good. All the whole deal. So you can get your stuff, your merch, if you will. Also, on the. On Jocastore is the shirt locker. That's a subscription scenario where you get a new design every month, different kind of designs, more creative, etc. You understand what I'm saying? Anyway, it's all in Jocko store dot com.

[Jocko Willink]

Mm. It's true. Check it out. If you need steak. How many times a week do you eat steak, Cody?

[Cody Gandy]

When I'm at home, I don't.

[Jocko Willink]

How come?

[Cody Gandy]

Because I eat it all the time on the road.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. So what do you eat at home? Chicken.

[Cody Gandy]

Big chicken guy.

[Jocko Willink]

Big chicken guy. Big chicken guy over here. Well, when you're on the road, if you need steak at home right now I got a rack of steak from Primal. Like a rack. They said they sent me a rack of steak and I'm just like, like full on. And then I got prime rib from Colorado Craft brief beef for like Christmas activities.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And I just ordered more because it's so freaking good. So if you need steak, you need beef. Go to primalbeef.com go to Colorado craftbeef.com you get the, the beef tallow.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Which is. It's like, it's like the.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, the fat.

[Jocko Willink]

The fat. Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

That you cook with.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So now you can cook like a hot dog in there.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Or a sausage or bacon.

[Echo Charles]

Freaking eggs.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, eggs. Throw the tallow in there.

[Echo Charles]

It's good. Yeah, it's legit.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you get the beef towel?

[Echo Charles]

No, no, no. I actually that's why I'm all surprised and fired up. But what from what? Primal.

[Jocko Willink]

Colorado craft beef.

[Echo Charles]

All right.

[Jocko Willink]

Primal beef does have jerky now.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah, I got a bunch.

[Jocko Willink]

The jerky's freaking good. It's good.

[Cody Gandy]

Yeah, it's good.

[Jocko Willink]

It's ridiculously good. So check it out. Coloradocraft beef.com primalbeef.com get yourself some steak. Subscribe to the podcast. Check out the Jocko underground podcast. Check out our YouTube channels. We got Jocko podcast Official. We got Jocko podcast Clips.

[Echo Charles]

Official clips. Not official.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Echo Charles]

Just clips.

[Jocko Willink]

Just clips. Origin USA has one and then Jocko Fuel has one. Lots of good behind the scenes. Want to know what's happening? Check those out. Subscribe to those. Psychological Warfare flipsidecanvas.com Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on the wall. I've written a bunch of books. Leadership strategy and Tactics Field Manual Expanded. A dish is out. Check that out. A final spin. Just. I've written a bunch of books. Kids books. Your kids are reading the kids books how they like them.

[Cody Gandy]

Big fan. That's what we've got. That pull up bar. Every time they enter the door. Pull up.

[Jocko Willink]

Imagine how like awesome they're going to be as humans. You know what I mean?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

If when you. When you're seven years old and you got a pull up bar that you have to. Every time you walk by, you got to knock out a couple pull ups, just think how much better you going to be as a human. Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Br. I think I might incorporate. We have a pull up bar, but it's outside. It's different. That's way different.

[Cody Gandy]

It's in the door. Yeah, they go in the room, pull up. When they go out of the room, pull up everything.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, I melted.

[Echo Charles]

That's good.

[Jocko Willink]

When my son was, I put a pull up bar in his room, like on the wall. A full like commercial pull up bar on the wall.

[Echo Charles]

It's a good dream.

[Jocko Willink]

It was his full good dream. It's a good dream. Yeah. That's the kind of stuff, you know, it's a little bit maybe, you know.

[Echo Charles]

Hey, the results speak for themselves. So I'm, I'm down. That sounds like a good protocol.

[Jocko Willink]

Get the polar for your kids for yourself. Warrior kids, Echelon front. You heard us talking about it today. We solve problems through leadership. Go to ashlandfront.com you want to come to our own events, you want to go to one of our FTX's, check that out. Those things sell out. So if you want to go to an ftx, it is an awesome experience. The reason we started doing FTX is because that's the way we taught leadership in the SEAL teams and it was freaking effective. So we brought it to the civilian sector. If you want to go to an FTX, go to echelonfront.com and check the schedule. We also have the muster, we have council, we have battlefield. We got all kinds of stuff going on. We got the women's assembly, so just check all these things out. And then we have online training. We have an online training academy. Extreme ownership dot com. These skills that we talked about, these skills that you can learn that will make you a better leader and a better human being in everything that you do. They're gonna help with every aspect of your life. Go to extremeownership.com learn those skills. And then if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org also heroesandhorses.org Micah Fink. Up in the freaking wilderness with our veteran community, helping them find their souls. And then Jimmy May has got an awesome organization. It's called beyond the Brotherhood. Helping guys get out of the SEAL teams and move into the civilian sector. If you want to connect with us once again, cody, cody'[e-mail] check out if you want him to come and talk to your company. You want to go to an FTX, check that out. He's also on LinkedIn, occasionally post things on LinkedIn. The gram. He posts fairly active Twitter. He's maybe going to get back on. We'll see. He's at Cody Ganny. It's C O D E, Y, G A N D Y. And from for us, check out jocko.com and then we're on social media, but we're not. Look, I'm not there to debate you about freaking some weird topic. No, I'm not going to do that. Echo's not. Are you gonna do that?

[Echo Charles]

No, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

No. No debating weird topics. You can check out. Ekko's making videos sometimes. Sure. Sometimes he made a video of Terminator robots trying to steal Jocko fuel.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah, yeah. The parallel universe one.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey, Spoiler. Does Rana Willink she got wounded? She does. She survived.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah. Huh.

[Jocko Willink]

She's wounded. We're scared. But I feel like she. I feel like she's gonna be okay. Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. She might recover.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, she's gonna have, you know, a scar.

[Echo Charles]

Only. Only time can tell, but.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, should she lay it down with those freaking Uzis or what, bro? Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, she did.

[Jocko Willink]

I would like. I wish I was there to watch you direct that. She looked good.

[Echo Charles]

Yep. Yeah, that was good. That was a good day for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

She was laying it down.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. She's a natural.

[Jocko Willink]

Adam did not do well.

[Echo Charles]

No, you know, dude, he had his purpose. He had his purpose. See what I'm saying?

[Cody Gandy]

Carrie carried Carrie in the fire. Didn't make it.

[Echo Charles]

Carrie. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Carrie got burned up too, right? Oh, I wanted to tell you.

[Cody Gandy]

Critique.

[Jocko Willink]

You ready for critique?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Jocko Willink]

So for a flamethrower, there. There's like a little bit of fire on the end of the flamethrower.

[Echo Charles]

Like the tip of the.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's just kind of there.

[Echo Charles]

Oh, yeah, yeah. The pilot.

[Jocko Willink]

It's like a pilot light. Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

But you didn't get that detail. Made it very unrealistic.

[Echo Charles]

That's what stood out. Okay, wait. Actually, you gave me a good critique about the grenades, too. On a different video. Remember the grenade? You were like, hey, you should. You should have talked to me about the grenades.

[Jocko Willink]

Because you mess up.

[Echo Charles]

I don't know. I forget what I messed up, but he was just like. He pulled the pin and then he just held it or something. You're like, no, the spoon or whatever, like, it comes off or, I don't know. Something.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, when you throw it, the spoon comes off.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Like there's some technical thing that happens that, you know, I failed to include tactical.

[Jocko Willink]

Echo. Didn't know.

[Echo Charles]

Didn't. Yeah, I've never thrown a grenade before, bro. I don't know that kind of stuff, you know. But anyway, we got you. We got Cody Gandy. So, you know, next time we're going to consult 100%.

[Jocko Willink]

Anything else, fellas?

[Echo Charles]

Negative.

[Jocko Willink]

Right on. Cody, thanks for joining us. Once again, thanks for your service in the Marine Corps, Devil Dogs. And thanks for what you do every day at Echelon Front, teaching these lessons to leaders and teaching leaders how to lead. It's awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks to all our armed forces who are also out there right now leading and keeping us and our way of life safe. And thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border Patrol, Secret Service, all other first responders. Thank you for your service. And a solemn salute to Matt Redding, killed in the line of duty after just four years on the force. 29 years old. Do not forget the sacrifice that our police and law enforcement make and everyone else out there. Just. Just like the principles of maneuver warfare and mission tactics and commander's intent allows the Marine Corps to win on the battlefield, the principles of combat leadership that we teach can help you win in business with your family and with your life. So take ownership and go lead. And until next time, this is Cody and Echo and Jocko out.