484: It Might Not Go The Way You Want. With Navy SEAL Command Master Chief, Jim Foreman. - Jocko Podcast

Summary5 min read

Podcast Summary: Jocko Podcast Episode 484 – "It Might Not Go The Way You Want" with Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Jim Foreman

Introduction

In episode 484 of the Jocko Podcast, host Jocko Willink, along with co-host Echo Charles, welcomes Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Jim Foreman. Jim shares his extensive 27-year career in the Navy SEALs, encompassing 18 combat deployments, leadership roles, and invaluable lessons learned from both the battlefield and his transition to civilian life.

Early Life and Joining the SEALs

Jim Foreman hails from Fremont in the Bay Area of Northern California. Growing up with a twin brother and an older sister, Jim was actively involved in sports such as football, wrestling, and track and field during his high school years. An injury during his wrestling career led him to shift his focus to football, but academic challenges persisted, resulting in a suspension from Chabot College due to poor grades.

Notable Quote:

“I was bored. I think I got bad grades because I was bored.” [07:12]

Inspired by his brother and influenced by stories of Navy SEALs from his uncle, Jim decided to enlist in the Marine Corps. However, after recovering from a torn ACL, he shifted his aspirations towards becoming a SEAL, ultimately joining the Navy in 1991.

SEAL Training and Selection

Jim details the grueling SEAL training process, highlighting the intense physical and mental challenges of BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training). He recounts failing the pool competition during dive phase but successfully passing on a subsequent attempt. The selection process emphasized not just physical prowess but unwavering mental resilience.

Notable Quote:

“This is people that don't quit. This is... they make you look like a CEO just by the amount of push-ups and sit-ups and running, all that stuff.” [20:36]

He emphasizes that SEAL training refines both body and mind, filtering out those who lack the mental fortitude essential for elite operations.

Deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan

Jim Foreman’s deployments spanned critical operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the Iraq invasion in 2003, he was involved in deep penetration missions aimed at dismantling insurgent networks. He discusses the strategic impact of targeting high-value individuals and the complexities of urban warfare, particularly in Ramadi.

Notable Quote:

“Things are not going to go the way you think they're going to go. They're just not.” [63:49]

In Afghanistan, Jim led sniper teams tasked with tracking and capturing war criminals and terrorists. He highlights the evolving threat landscape, including the rise of sophisticated IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) that significantly increased the operational tempo and dangers faced by SEAL teams.

Leadership Lessons and Experiences

A pivotal theme of the conversation revolves around leadership in high-stakes environments. Jim Foreman shares insights on the importance of clear roles and responsibilities within teams, the necessity of adaptability, and the critical role of mentorship. He underscores that effective leadership ensures mission success and team cohesion, even amidst immense pressure and adversity.

Notable Quote:

“You have to know your job, your lanes, but you also got to know one above you and one below you.” [97:24]

He also discusses the dichotomy of leadership, balancing decisiveness with humility, and the significance of owning one’s actions to foster accountability and continuous improvement within teams.

Transition to Leadership Roles

As Jim advanced in his career, he assumed more significant leadership roles, including becoming a Master Chief and leading training cells. He developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to clarify leadership roles and enhance operational efficiency. His efforts in training and leadership development were aimed at empowering junior leaders and ensuring that mission-critical tasks were executed flawlessly.

Notable Quote:

“You have to lead by example. Especially if you're pushing the mental toughness, you gotta be out there doing the training.” [97:24]

Coping with Retirement and Mental Health

After retiring in 2018, Jim faced the common challenges of transitioning to civilian life, including a divorce and the struggle to find new purpose outside of the military. He turned to art therapy as a means of processing his experiences, creating paintings that helped him confront and reconcile with his past. This creative outlet facilitated a deeper understanding of his emotions and the accountability he held for past missions.

Notable Quote:

“That painting took four years to do. It was significant because... I had some accountability for what happened.” [112:23]

Jim emphasizes the importance of self-forgiveness and the need to compartmentalize experiences to maintain mental resilience.

Post-Retirement Activities and Legacy

In his post-military career, Jim Foreman has remained active in leadership and consulting through ventures like Pharaoh Concepts and Active Crisis Consulting. He also founded Actions on Consulting, focusing on leadership and tactical training. Additionally, Jim is authoring a book that distills his leadership experiences and lessons learned, aiming to provide actionable insights for both military personnel and civilians.

Notable Quote:

“We have a lot of lessons learned. It's about holding the line and being a true frogman.” [142:22]

Jim highlights the significance of mentorship and continuous learning, stressing that effective leadership transcends the battlefield and is essential in all aspects of life.

Notable Quotes

“This is people that don't quit. This is... they make you look like a CEO just by the amount of push-ups and sit-ups and running, all that stuff.” – Jim Foreman [20:36]
“You have to know your job, your lanes, but you also got to know one above you and one below you.” – Jim Foreman [97:24]
“Things are not going to go the way you think they're going to go. They're just not.” – Jim Foreman [63:49]
“I had to have some stuff standard and I need this guy on board. So a lot of things like that, like corporations don't understand sometimes that like, hey, it's not just your department heads. You need to find your key influencers and sometimes they may be a counter influencer that's against you.” – Jim Foreman [131:42]

Conclusion

Episode 484 of the Jocko Podcast offers an in-depth exploration of Navy SEAL Command Master Chief Jim Foreman's illustrious career, leadership philosophy, and personal journey. Jim's experiences underscore the relentless pursuit of excellence, the critical importance of leadership in high-pressure environments, and the challenges of transitioning to civilian life. His insights provide valuable lessons on discipline, accountability, and the enduring impact of mentorship, making this episode a compelling listen for those seeking to understand the intricacies of elite military leadership and personal resilience.

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Transcript832 lines

[00:00]
Jocko Willink
This is Jocko, podcast number 484 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
[00:05]
Echo Charles
Good evening.
[00:07]
Jocko Willink
All day, murderous bursts of machine gun fire hammered our position, shattering windows and impacting interior walls. Each round with the violence and kinetic energy of a sledgehammer wielded at full force. Some of the incoming rounds were armor piercing and punched through the thick concrete of the low wall surrounding the rooftop. All of our element of seals, EOD bomb technicians and Iraqi soldiers could do under such accurate enem was hit the deck and try not to get our heads shot off. Rounds snapped inches above us and shards of glass and concrete fragments rained down everywhere. Damn, some of those bastards can shoot. Yelled a SEAL operator. Pressed as close to the floor as humanly possible, we couldn't help but laugh at our predicament. RPG 7 rockets have followed in rapid sequence of 3 or 4, exploding with tremendous concussion against the exterior walls. Hunkered down inside the building, we were separated from the bone jarring explosion and deadly shrapnel by a foot or so of concrete. One errant RPG rocket missed its mark and sailed high over the building, trailing across the hazy, cloudless Iraqi summer sky like a bottle rocket on an American fourth of July. But if just one of those rockets impacted a window, it meant red hot fragments of jagged metal ripping through just about every man in the room. Despite the onslaught, we held our position in the large four story apartment building. When the fury of the attack subsided, our SEAL snipers returned fire with devastating effect. As armed enemy fighters maneuvered through the streets to attack, SEAL snipers squeezed off round after round with deadly accuracy, confirming 10 enemy fighters killed and a handful more probable kills. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Extreme Ownership, which was written by Leif Babin and me. And that section, which was written by Leif, displays and shows and talks about not only the level of violence delivered by the enemy, which was significant, but also the effectiveness of our SEAL snipers. And on that particular operation, it wasn't just SEALs from task unit Bruiser. We had some help on that one. And one of the best things about being in the teams is obviously working with the best guys the world. It's also very random because you can be in the SEAL teams and you can be on a different cycle from someone else and you might not see that other person for months or years or sometimes even decades, but you still know them and you know their reputation and you track what people are doing, you hear stories, you read after actions reports, you see their name pop up on. On the advancement lists. But time goes by, and then for whatever reason, you happen to end up on the same battlefield at the same time, and you get to work with them for a day or two days or a week or a month, and get to do what we all joined to do. And you get to confirm that they are who you thought they were and their reputation is well earned and that they're frogman. And then they're gone again. And you continue to track their progress in their career through the stories and the advancement lists, and you continue to see them do great things, and you feel proud to know. And that's the teams. And when I was at Seal Team 1, there was a guy who checked in and quickly earned an awesome reputation. He fit in very well with the culture of Seal Team 1 at the time, which was Stalag Team 1. Very strict, very tough, very hard charging, very operationally focused, and probably overly professional in many aspects. But he knocked out a few platoons there, became a respected operator and a sniper. And when I went the officer route, he went to the Navy's Special Mission Unit, the maritime component of the Joint Special Operations Command, jsoc. And he made it through selection there and became a. An operator combat leader in the global war on terror. And fast forward almost a decade from after we left Seal Team 1, and that's when we were in Ramadi, and he was able to join our task unit on some missions to see exactly what we were doing and how we were doing it. And we all got to see his professionalism, his expertise, his humility. I like to think that that was some shared roots from that time that we spent at Seal Team 1 with BTF Tony as well. But he continued on his career path. He eventually completed 27 years in the SEAL teams, conducted 18 combat deployments, served as a team leader, Troop Chief, Squadron Master Chief, Chief of Selection Assessment Training Chief. And during that time, he was awarded the Silver Star, eight Bronze Stars, Purple Heart, and five Presidential Unit Citations. And this individual's name is Jim Foreman. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned. Jim, good to see you, man. Thanks for coming out.
[05:39]
Jim Foreman
You too, bro. Thank you.
[05:40]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, it's wild how you can just not see someone for years and then you're, oh, hey, what's up, dude? And. And the nature of. I guess it's the nature of the shared suffering and camaraderie of the SEAL teams that it doesn't really matter if you don't see Someone for a long time. It's like, oh, hey, what's up, dude? How you been? Oh, good.
[05:59]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, it picks right up.
[06:01]
Jocko Willink
Let's get some background. So where did you grow up?
[06:05]
Jim Foreman
Bay Area? Northern California? Fremont.
[06:08]
Jocko Willink
And what'd your parents do?
[06:10]
Jim Foreman
My mom was a rn nurse up there, and then my dad was an accountant.
[06:15]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[06:15]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[06:16]
Jocko Willink
So any veterans in the family?
[06:19]
Jim Foreman
My dad served in the army.
[06:21]
Jocko Willink
What do you do in the Army?
[06:23]
Jim Foreman
He was an engineer.
[06:25]
Jocko Willink
Was he in. Was he a nom.
[06:27]
Jim Foreman
No, no, he. He stayed back and was reserves, I think, because mostly he had a family and I had. I have a twin brother.
[06:36]
Jocko Willink
Oh, really?
[06:37]
Jim Foreman
Grew up with a twin and a sister. Older sister, and had a pretty good upbringing.
[06:43]
Jocko Willink
Nice echo, Charles. Any twin questions right now?
[06:46]
Echo Charles
This early on?
[06:47]
Jocko Willink
We've own. Early on.
[06:47]
Echo Charles
Identical or what?
[06:48]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, we're identical.
[06:49]
Echo Charles
All right. Okay.
[06:50]
Jocko Willink
That's it. Okay.
[06:52]
Jim Foreman
Nice.
[06:52]
Jocko Willink
Guy's grown out.
[06:53]
Echo Charles
Yeah. Yeah, big time.
[06:55]
Jocko Willink
That is a weird thing, right?
[06:57]
Jim Foreman
Really echo? Yeah.
[06:59]
Echo Charles
Oh, yeah, no, I'm the echo of him.
[07:01]
Jocko Willink
He was born second. What about school? What were you. What were you into? What sports you play?
[07:06]
Jim Foreman
So I did football, wrestling and some track and field.
[07:12]
Jocko Willink
How much wrestling did you do?
[07:14]
Jim Foreman
Two years.
[07:15]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[07:15]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[07:15]
Jocko Willink
What years?
[07:17]
Jim Foreman
Freshman and sophomore year and then.
[07:19]
Jocko Willink
No, no more.
[07:20]
Jim Foreman
No more. Then I switched to football, but wrestling was awesome. I got an injury, so in my going ads that, like, shut me down pretty hard.
[07:28]
Jocko Willink
That's a significant. Yeah, Jack.
[07:32]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[07:33]
Jocko Willink
How about. What was your grades like? Were you, like, studying? Did you care?
[07:36]
Jim Foreman
I was bored. I think I got bad grades because I was bored, you know, So I do some summer school and things like that and.
[07:44]
Jocko Willink
Oh, wait, that's. That's a little beyond some bad grades. If you had to go to summer school, isn't that, like. Isn't that, like a serious shortfall that you gotta go make something up?
[07:52]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, it was.
[07:55]
Jocko Willink
Were you getting in trouble or anything?
[07:56]
Jim Foreman
Not really. Just. I think I was just bored. I had like, you know, like, history is a big thing for me. I love history. And my history teacher was even in college was, you know, just dates and laws, dates and times and things like that. It was not about, like, when I learned about the Alamo in junior college. It was like, okay, on this day, 1836, bunch of Americans made a fight and they got wiped out and blah, blah, blah. I was like, what? So, you know, I had to read books on my own to find things out. So I. You know, a lot of teachers, there are some good teachers, but I wish they would, like, elaborate a little bit more. Make it more interesting. Even in, like, math, you know, they should do.
[08:33]
Jocko Willink
It's. It is amazing what a good teacher can do. And I think podcasts. There's some podcasts out there that people do such a good job of telling history. It's like, it's. It's a game changer. And people always say, I wish you were my teacher in high school, you know?
[08:47]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[08:47]
Jocko Willink
So when you were in high school, did you have, like, a life plan of any kind?
[08:54]
Jim Foreman
When I was in high school, I started to see, like, I love football and wrestling. I started to look at the military stuff, and I was like, yeah, I'd like to be part. Because you would see some movies that was like, in the 80s, right. And I'd go like, yeah, I think I want to be a part of a small team. You know, I didn't know anything about the seals that highly skilled. We all have the same skill level, high, same mindset. So when I was a junior, I started to look at the Marine Corps. And when I went to college for a couple years and didn't do too well, and so I. I actually joined the Marine Corps. Okay. And then in the delayed entry, we're playing football. And then I racked my leg pretty bad and tore my acl, so I had a year out.
[09:43]
Jocko Willink
Did you get surgery?
[09:44]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[09:44]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[09:45]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. I got my mom, since she was a nurse, she knew some good doctors, and she hooked me up big time with a sports.
[09:52]
Jocko Willink
Did you get a cadaver replacement or did you get. Did they move your patella?
[09:56]
Jim Foreman
No, they just moved. They actually stretched my tendon and put a screw in the side of my knee. Yeah. So it was like, my knee was like that for a long time. He had to stress it back out.
[10:06]
Jocko Willink
But you were going to go in the Marine Corps. What did you. What we can do in the Marine Corps?
[10:09]
Jim Foreman
I just wanted to do. Just be infantry. It's like, I just wanted to go.
[10:13]
Jocko Willink
Like, actually, in those days, I don't think you could pick your mos at all.
[10:17]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[10:17]
Jocko Willink
In the old days when I was looking, you could just join the Marines.
[10:21]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[10:21]
Jocko Willink
And you were just going to be whatever they told you were going to be.
[10:24]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[10:24]
Jocko Willink
And that's the way it was. So you were probably just going to be a Marine. There's anything wrong with being a Marine, but a lot of. There's a lot of different jobs in the Marine Corps.
[10:33]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
[10:35]
Jocko Willink
So you get. You get hurt for a year.
[10:37]
Jim Foreman
I was out for a year. Then I started. So my brother, unlike me, was Getting good grades. And so I go, okay, I'm not doing too good in school. I'm going kind of see what he's doing for school. And he was taking like, you know, interesting things like history, geography, anthropology. Okay, I'm going to just mirror what he does. So I just went to his. I just got the same classes as him.
[10:59]
Jocko Willink
No kidding.
[11:00]
Jim Foreman
And I just like basically copied his class schedule. So then, you know, I also had somebody to hang out with and ask questions and learn from because I was not doing good in college.
[11:10]
Jocko Willink
What college was it?
[11:11]
Jim Foreman
It was Chabot College. It was a two year college. I actually got kicked out. That's why I joined the Marines. Or I got suspended for bad grades.
[11:19]
Jocko Willink
For bad grades?
[11:20]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. So then, so then I. Okay. And I got this year off because of the delay entry with the Marine Corps so I could actually get out of the Marine Corps because about that time I heard about the seals.
[11:31]
Jocko Willink
How'd you hear about the seals?
[11:32]
Jim Foreman
My brother was the first one who brought it up. And then unbeknownst to me, my uncle was a doctor in the Navy and he served with seals in Vietnam.
[11:42]
Jocko Willink
Dang.
[11:42]
Jim Foreman
And so then I started to hear about that, those stories, and it was pretty cool. They picked him because they needed an excuse to go in these villages to take care of the kids and the people, but then they would, you know, set up ambushes nearby, but they needed him to take care of the people so they had an excuse to get in. So he has some really cool stories. And so that's how I found out about those guys.
[12:05]
Jocko Willink
And then you went to the recruiter. Was it a tough process? What year is this now?
[12:11]
Jim Foreman
This is my junior year now. I'm at. It's now called East Bay College. It was. Yeah. So East Bay now is Cal State Hayward back then. But so I was going to. My junior year is when I heard about him. And I go, okay, so I got two years in. I was struggling whether I should just join now. And then I kept. My parents were like, hey, just get your two year degree or your four year degree. Just knock it out because you're not going to get it again. And I struggled with that. But I did stay in and got my four year degree in geography backing with some history, like trying to get the easiest thing, but was the most interesting. Like I could not sit still if it was not interesting. So I took something that was interesting.
[12:59]
Jocko Willink
And at what point you, you said your junior year you. You enlisted in the Navy or did.
[13:05]
Jim Foreman
That's when I heard about the seals. And then that's when my, my legs start to heal.
[13:10]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[13:11]
Jim Foreman
So. Because it happened in my sophomore year, so then I just decided to finish the last year and a half of college.
[13:17]
Jocko Willink
And then when you got done with college, you. Is that when you went to sign up?
[13:21]
Jim Foreman
Yep, right after. Before I even got my diploma.
[13:24]
Jocko Willink
What kind of prep were you doing? So your knee heels up, you're feeling strong, like. Did you see the Be Someone special video?
[13:31]
Jim Foreman
I did, yeah. We all just like these badass combat dudes with ribbons from Vietnam, you know, I didn't really talk too much about, you know, what you needed to do.
[13:43]
Jocko Willink
So did you, did you run? Did you swim? Were you comfortable in the water, how all that go?
[13:47]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah, I had a pool in my backyard, so that was nice to work on. Then I would go to YMCA and swim there and do some running and pull ups and all that stuff. I had to pull up bar in my backyard. So start to prepare.
[14:03]
Jocko Willink
That's pretty good. Good to go for the. What is this now, like 1991 or something like that?
[14:08]
Jim Foreman
In the 90s? Yeah, I got, I joined the Navy in 91.
[14:13]
Jocko Willink
Check. Yeah. As you, as you get to boot camp, like, did you think about putting in an officer package at all because you had been to college or. No, no.
[14:24]
Jim Foreman
So I was thinking, like, I heard that officers move around a lot. And I go, if I'm gonna, I want to be a seal. I want to be doing a job for a while, you know, and get the skill and then maybe later. But I wasn't really thinking about officer.
[14:41]
Jocko Willink
So it was just. I'm going to E Dog.
[14:43]
Jim Foreman
I'm going to E Dog all day. Yeah. And also because I heard of, you know, I start to read some books. I forgot which one it was, but most of them were fictional, which is even more interesting, you know, because they. I forgot the name of the book, but it was, it was a good, it was a good book about CEOs in Vietnam.
[15:02]
Jocko Willink
So it was maybe UDT seal operations in Vietnam.
[15:06]
Jim Foreman
That was one of them.
[15:07]
Jocko Willink
That was a. Yeah, that's a good one. That's just like a big long aar.
[15:10]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Yeah. But talk, you know, the point man, the machine gunners, the, the snipers, you know, all that stuff.
[15:18]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[15:19]
Jim Foreman
Was super interesting to me. And then back then in Vietnam, the officers had more power to do things. You know, it was more like, you know, they were more enlisted in a lot of ways. Like they had skill sets that they could use. And not only did they have those skill sets, but then they also Were the senior guy on target, the gfc. So it was kind of cool to be an officer back then, you know, they had some, you know, I was going to say it's like in Vietnam I noticed like, you know, I read books on green brace because there was a lot of green beret stuff going on. Those guys are badasses. A lot of the lieutenants, the officers, captains, and even the seals had a lot of freedom to do a lot of things without a lot of oversight.
[16:05]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[16:05]
Jim Foreman
You know, and I thought that was pretty cool. That made me think, wow, these guys could be pretty innovative without a lot of red tape and get the job done. And then Roy Benavides, you know, that guy's a badass. Jerry Shriver, Mad Dog, both green brace really inspired me. I was like, man, they, they got some. They got some power to make things happen.
[16:30]
Jocko Willink
So you head off to boot camp. Well, how was that? A pretty good shock to the system.
[16:34]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, it was all right. I just didn't want to get. So I did the die fare program, which was six years because I just didn't want to get derailed.
[16:42]
Jocko Willink
I did that too.
[16:43]
Jim Foreman
That's what I. Yeah, I just wanted it guaranteed that you get the buds and then it's up to you to make it. So I got that.
[16:50]
Jocko Willink
Where'd you go to boot camp?
[16:52]
Jim Foreman
Orlando.
[16:52]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, me too. Check. Get some die fair hot. Yeah. Do you get to buds? How was buds for you?
[17:03]
Jim Foreman
It was good. I mean, I got a good story. I was like, you know when you're doing the fourth phase thing, Right. When you're doing the pre training, getting ready and all that stuff, we had like 127 guys in that fourth phase. And I was looking around, I was like, man, there's some ripped dudes. They already look like seals, you know. And when we took that PT test to class up for 181, we only classed up with like 66 guys out of 127.
[17:29]
Jocko Willink
Damn.
[17:30]
Jim Foreman
And they had room to take at least 100 maybe. But I was like, wow, what the hell? And then the guy, one of the guys was just ripped, like shredded abs looked badass. He couldn't do the sit ups. I was like, oh, he just has show muscles. He's just got strong muscles.
[17:48]
Jocko Willink
So also no go.
[17:50]
Jim Foreman
Yes, bro.
[17:51]
Jocko Willink
I feel like such. I. I was doing the class up test.
[17:54]
Jim Foreman
Yep.
[17:55]
Jocko Willink
And my partner. You had to count sit ups?
[17:58]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[17:58]
Jocko Willink
And my partner like, dude, I mean I didn't, I didn't really know him too well, but I think you had to do 75 sit ups to class up. And he did like 73. And the instructor came by. I was like, how many do you get? I was like, 73. I just, like, didn't cover for him at all. Just a total dick. And the dude made it in the next class.
[18:16]
Jim Foreman
Class.
[18:16]
Jocko Willink
And I know him. Like, he's a great guy.
[18:18]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[18:18]
Jocko Willink
And, But I, I, I remember just thinking, like, well, there's the stand. Like, hey, bro, sorry. Like, 70, 73 don't cut it, dude. You needed it two more. And I don't know if he's still mad at me about that, but if he is, I think it's a, I think it's somewhat justified. Echo. Do you think that's somewhat justified? You think he should have got his extra too?
[18:35]
Echo Charles
Well, both, but.
[18:36]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[18:37]
Echo Charles
Depends who.
[18:38]
Jocko Willink
You. That's a very politically correct answer.
[18:42]
Echo Charles
True, though. It's true. Both. Same. True at the same time.
[18:45]
Jocko Willink
Both. Uh, but you had to do a PT test to class up. You, you did fine. Yeah. You roll in the first phase.
[18:54]
Jim Foreman
First phase, good to go. Hell week starts November 7th. So that was Sunday. And you know, we're all nervous and stuff like that. We had. I forget how many guys we had by then. Like maybe 45 or something. And that for. It was a December 7th, so it was like, cold.
[19:14]
Jocko Willink
Of course.
[19:15]
Jim Foreman
We do all the stuff all night. Sunday night, and then the morning.
[19:19]
Jocko Willink
December 7th.
[19:20]
Jim Foreman
December 7th.
[19:21]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I think I graduated. I don't really remember, you know. You know, like, you ever seen a fake seal? And they go, what day did you graduate? The guy's like, I don't know. And then they're like, you're a liar. I, I don't know what day I graduated from Buzz.
[19:34]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[19:35]
Jocko Willink
But I know it was in the fall, so it was the fall of 91. So while you. I probably left just before you started hell week. Yeah, that's pretty funny. So, so you guys, you guys went into hell week with like, what'd you say, 45?
[19:50]
Jim Foreman
Something like that. So that first morning, Monday morning, we go into the chow hall all wet, freezing, dripping, you know, sandy. And we, you know, usually we fit three or four tables, the big tables, and we all sat on one table. I was looking around. We're like 18 guys left. I was like, holy crap. And nobody looked like a seal. They're like, me, like, I'm 133 pounds, you know, five, eight. And then we had a guy that was like six, five, looked like Lurch, you know, with big hands, awkward hitting things. And then fire plug guys that Were short and stocky with no neck.
[20:26]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[20:26]
Jim Foreman
And we all looked like just like, you know, misfits. Not. Yeah, misfits for sure. No seal like dudes. And I realized I go, okay, so this is a mindset thing.
[20:36]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[20:37]
Jim Foreman
This is people that don't quit.
[20:38]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[20:39]
Jim Foreman
And then over the course of five more months, they make you look like a CEO just by amount of push ups and sit ups and running, all that stuff. But they can't make the mindset. They can't fix your mind. They only can fix your body. And so they got rid of all those guys. It really hit me hard seeing that.
[20:57]
Jocko Willink
Was there any. Was there anything that was hard for you in. In first phase? That was like a challenge where you were good enough runner, good enough swimmer, just pretty much well rounded.
[21:05]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[21:06]
Jim Foreman
I was right there. Okor sucked for me because of that dirty name. You know? Like, I finally realized, okay, you have to train. You have to jump over it to hit your waist. You know, you can't jump at it because you don't bounce right off and follow whatever the eight feet. So, yeah, that is.
[21:23]
Jocko Willink
That is definitely eight. An obstacle that is very prejudiced against people that are smaller.
[21:28]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[21:29]
Jocko Willink
So this thing. Echo Charles. It's like you got to. You jump up on a log, and then you got to jump onto another log that's like right around chest high. So you got to jump up and hit it with your stomach and kind of pull yourself, and you got to stand up on that one. Then you got to jump to another one. So the shorter you are, the harder it's going to be.
[21:48]
Jim Foreman
And it's not. It's not just the height. It's also the distance.
[21:51]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[21:51]
Jim Foreman
It's like you got to jump far. So, like, you have to try to jump past it.
[21:57]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[21:57]
Jim Foreman
To land on your waist. Otherwise you're gonna hit your chest and fall backwards.
[22:01]
Jocko Willink
So you had a little bit of a challenge with the dirty game, huh?
[22:03]
Jim Foreman
But it was good. It's like, I remember the first time. I mean, they did some good mental stuff on everybody. Like how. Okay, get your best time. You get your best time. Okay, now you go get wet and sandy and beat your best time or you're gonna do it again, and then you just do it over. Because now you're tired and you're wet and sandy and I. Why did I get my best time? I should, like, sandbag that first one.
[22:26]
Jocko Willink
The running the o course, wet and sandy. I don't think they actually do that anymore.
[22:30]
Jim Foreman
Oh, that's.
[22:30]
Jocko Willink
I don't think they I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think they do it anymore because that made the O course so much harder the way your just traction was terrible. Just freaking. And there's a couple. The stumps, remember the stumps you hop on? Those are now just tires. Like. Like football.
[22:49]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. I like those things. Cuz those were tricky. Like wet and sandy. You. That thing was like. It was like it was varnished or something. It was like glass. Yeah.
[23:00]
Jocko Willink
Did you. So you made it through hell week and through first phase. You roll into dive phase. How were you in the water?
[23:09]
Jim Foreman
I was good, except that was the one thing I failed was that holy crap. So I was. Because then you fail pool comp. And what it was was, you know, you got like shoulder straps and the chest strap and you got the. The 1 inch or half inch floating around. So I pulled. I was trying to pull my chest strap and I pulled the shoulder strap instead. So procedure. So I failed. And then waiting all weekend sucked. Because if you failed again, you're done. Y right. And then Monday came around and we have five guys retake it. And they put me through. I'm glad they did because it made me feel like I earned it. But I was underwater for like 18 minutes. Like they're like, you know, around with me, punch me in the stomach, doing all that stuff till I had nothing. You know, like even the air bubbles you're trying to breathe through to get the extra. Because I don't think they may fail you if you come up too soon, you know. So you try and do everything you can to put that rig back together, breathe from it and all that. So like the whammy now on the. The inhaling tubes like when they put that whammy. And I was like. Because I've seen some guys, you think that they're done. They're like, okay, I'm done. They're like, nope, you gotta get that knot out.
[24:24]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[24:24]
Jim Foreman
Which is badass training, right? With no mask. You know. So yeah, I came up with black, you know, rubber marks on my face from the strip running around my head, you know. So that, that was cool that I passed. I'm glad that they gave me a tough one because the other four guys didn't pass.
[24:42]
Jocko Willink
Oh.
[24:43]
Jim Foreman
So that was good for me.
[24:45]
Jocko Willink
How many? So There was like 18 guys in your dive class, in your second phase class.
[24:51]
Jim Foreman
We got some rollbacks. So when we graduated we had 16, I think from hell week. And then we got some rollbacks from that from the previous class when they got done with hell week and then we moved on.
[25:02]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I think that. That regulator, that aqualung, Aquamaster regulator, the two hose regulator. No, there's no one that uses. There's no reason to use that anymore. Although I do think there's like someone in cold water possibly. But that thing is just archaic. And I think the main reason why they keep it around is literally for pool comp.
[25:22]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[25:23]
Jocko Willink
For just. For. For doing the hardship and. And the other. Like the army or the air force or the regular Navy. No one. No one uses that freaking, evil freaking regulator that could get tied in knots on your back, dude. It's freaking chaotic.
[25:39]
Jim Foreman
Well, not only were you. You had to wait for them to get done with tying the knot, and you're holding your breath.
[25:44]
Jocko Willink
Y.
[25:45]
Jim Foreman
You know, so it wasn't just like.
[25:46]
Jocko Willink
You'Re breathing through your regulator around as they're.
[25:48]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, they're you around, they're spinning you up on your head. They're taking your rig. They're trying to rip your rig off you and take it to the surface. You're like, wait, you know, it was brutal, but it was badass. You know, think about it. Was it.
[26:00]
Jocko Willink
I was trying to remember. This was it. If you. Because I remember I failed on Friday. And then the weekend, it was like the worst, longest weekend. And me and my swim buddy, we put our. We both failed and we. We got in the. I don't know how we did this. We got in the dip tank in second phase and we had like the full setup. We had the regulars. We had charged bottles and everything. And we pool comped each other in like whatever the depth of the dip tank. But we did it for like eight hours, just murdering each other. And you could. You could pool comp the other guy while you were standing outside the dip tank. So I was like, totally dry out of the water and I'm just like wrecking my buddy and what? We trashed each other and did it over and over again. And then on Friday we both. I mean, I'm sorry. On Monday morning, we both passed, but I was it just one chance on Friday, one chance on Monday.
[26:52]
Jim Foreman
And then it probably was two chances, but I only remember one. I only remember pulling that shoulder strap, but I probably messed up somewhere else.
[27:00]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, because.
[27:01]
Jim Foreman
Because one would be kind of. I think it was two chances. I don't remember what the first thing was, but it's probably procedure too.
[27:07]
Jocko Willink
Check. You get through it. Then it's third phase going to the island.
[27:13]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[27:13]
Jocko Willink
Are you now super stoked? Because you end up being a Sniper. Was that always sort of a goal of yours?
[27:18]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I always had good shot. So it's like it revealed itself that how good of a shot. I was like a Buds and also at Seal Team 1 when he started going an island and stuff like that, I was like, oh, this is cool. I want to definitely want to be a sniper.
[27:30]
Jocko Willink
But third phase. So like shooting the pistol, you were good to go. Shooting the rifle, no factor.
[27:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[27:37]
Jocko Willink
Isn't it weird there's like some people that just suck at it.
[27:41]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, it's. It always baffled me. Like why like to me, a CEO, you always have expert and I remember seeing like S on one of them.
[27:48]
Jocko Willink
Why you're like, yeah, how did you.
[27:50]
Jim Foreman
Make it through butts?
[27:51]
Jocko Willink
I don't. I think they, I think they might roll you now if you don't shoot expert.
[27:56]
Jim Foreman
That's right.
[27:57]
Jocko Willink
Which is, which is good. Although, you know, if you get you the guy, if the guy gets rolled in buds, he could get to the team and he's going to be shooting expert in like a month.
[28:07]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. I mean it's just a lot of it was giving the proper instruction, which they did. But some instructors, you know, they're, they get impatient and the students like feeling that hate towards them. They mess up. So yeah, there's a lot of stress.
[28:28]
Jocko Willink
And this is back in the day when you'd graduate buds, that was kind of the big deal. Graduation. Now it's you. When you graduate sqt, you get your Trident, everything you're you. Then you go to your team, but you're just like me because I was 177. Did you graduate with 181?
[28:42]
Jim Foreman
80. Yeah, I started with 181 and finished with 181.
[28:45]
Jocko Willink
Okay. Yeah. So that was you. You went to Buds, graduated from Buds, no Trident. And did you put in that you wanted West Coast?
[28:56]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I put in I want SEO Team 1 just because that was like the Vietnam guys, you know, I go, okay, there's still some guys hanging out there.
[29:03]
Jocko Willink
Yep.
[29:04]
Jim Foreman
And so I thought that would be the one.
[29:06]
Jocko Willink
Yep. And you got those orders. How is it showing up Seal Team 1 as a new guy.
[29:11]
Jim Foreman
Good news. Did the up thing where it's like, hey, go, go to engineering and ask for this guy, you know, some guy that died. Yeah, you know, or whatever it was. But yeah, they obviously they with you. Yeah, big time.
[29:22]
Jocko Willink
Was. Was fact. The master chief at the time was. How was that check in procedure?
[29:28]
Jim Foreman
Intense. I mean he was a old Vietnam guy. He was. Later on, I never even talked to him personally, until one time we're out, and I think it was Guam, he showed up, and he was actually a regular guy. I was like, oh, he's just a regular guy.
[29:42]
Jocko Willink
He mellowed out a lot towards the. Towards the end of his tour there.
[29:45]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[29:46]
Jocko Willink
Because he had been at Seal Team, he spent like. I mean, he did 30 years. He probably did 25 years or something like that. As Hill Team 1.
[29:52]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[29:53]
Jocko Willink
Like, he was there for a long time.
[29:55]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[29:55]
Jocko Willink
I checked in with three other guys, and we were like, outside of his office, he's like, get in here. So we roll, and we were, like, standing at attention on our whites. And he goes, fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you. Get out of my office. I was like, oh, my God. Like, what am I doing here? And then he. Once we were all kind of all new guys together, he assembled us and we were in the classroom, and he came and told us, like, keep your mouth shut, Keep your ears on. Keep your mouth shut, Keep your ears open, don't be late, and don't forget any gear. And that was like, Roger. That was the. That's what he said.
[30:32]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[30:33]
Jocko Willink
I was all ears at that point.
[30:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. That's good advice.
[30:38]
Jocko Willink
Did you. So you also, like me. You didn't go through SQT at the group or at the center. You went through STT SEAL tactical training at SEAL Team 1.
[30:47]
Jim Foreman
Yep.
[30:48]
Jocko Willink
And what you guys do. Land. Did you guys do land?
[30:51]
Jim Foreman
Island.
[30:51]
Jocko Willink
Island. Just straight into the. Straight into the mix.
[30:54]
Jim Foreman
Yep. It was. It was good. I think we. We up somewhere and we had to spend two more weeks out there. But it's. It was kind of cool to have the instructors from SEAL Team 1.
[31:04]
Jocko Willink
Y.
[31:05]
Jim Foreman
You know, because then you. You might get a platoon. They may be your platoon chief later.
[31:08]
Jocko Willink
100%.
[31:09]
Jim Foreman
So that was kind of cool.
[31:10]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[31:11]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[31:11]
Jocko Willink
There's definitely some advantages to it. I think that thankfully they unified everything together because those guys are getting the SQT Training is like a really good right now.
[31:22]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[31:23]
Jocko Willink
And it's you much more uniformed, so no matter what team you're working with, everyone's got a. Even more of a baseline, you know, that's like the same. What was your. Did you. What was your job going to be in your first platoon? Did you know?
[31:38]
Jim Foreman
I didn't know I wanted to be point man, but I got 60 gunner, which I loved. Like, that was badass. Yeah, yeah. 60 gunner with a couple other guys and that. E3, you know, 18 and a half pounds, 500 rounds, you know, a couple, maybe 50 extra rounds for a Little bit more, but that was awesome. And I don't know if they do it that much anymore but like we used to like practice singing, you know, like and that was just non verbal communication and I thought all. And that started us off with a SEALs, like how we use body language and shooting and different techniques. Like, you know like you're getting ready. My 60s going low, so I'm doing like three round birth. Another guy here. Is that. So he's like laying on the lead, you switch out and then you just give out like 12 round. Now you're back singing.
[32:31]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, no, they definitely hammer that course because when at least when I was running trade at like it was still the, the 60 gunners or became mark 48 gunners, you know, they had what was it, four days where it was just them and their pig. And it was awesome. Like do you see those machine gunners at the end of that? Even like a new guy machine gunner after four days of that machine gun course. And the machine gun course is just freaking awesome.
[32:56]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[32:57]
Jocko Willink
And you know the deal with like you get some seals when a SEAL gets really into something, bro, they just break that thing down and they. And so you get those guys that are instructors and they love being an aw and they're gonna make those guys into really awesome aw. So yeah, it's holding strong, man. It's strong.
[33:16]
Jim Foreman
That's good to know.
[33:17]
Jocko Willink
What's crazy is I had Roger Hayden, you remember Roger Hayden?
[33:20]
Jim Foreman
I don't know.
[33:20]
Jocko Willink
So Roger Hayden was a old Vietnam guy, but he like some of the stuff that they start like he started like walking the point man course with a, with the trip wires and the targets popping up. He started that like him and another guy and we, we still do that now, you know what I mean? So it's like these, these courses that were, came from combat and they just got passed down from generation to generation to generation to generation and they're still there now.
[33:48]
Jim Foreman
That was one of the coolest things, that point man course. Yeah, I love that, that like a 60 course where you got almost a week of solid stuff and you come out of that and you're just like, you understand what your job is. Like you're at the door, you're laying down leads for everybody to get through. You know, it's like that type of training, if you go down somebody, they don't care about you, they're picking up that 60, getting led down first before anybody grabs you, you know, I mean that point man course was, I mean you could tell it was like right from the Vietnam Days. You know, the little tricks that they had.
[34:16]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. I was at, like, a. A SEAL thing, and there was a time I was talking to some new guy, 60 gunners or Mark 48 gunners, and I saw Roger Hayden. So I. I bring these guys over. I say, hey, Roger, I was talking to these guys.
[34:29]
Jim Foreman
They're.
[34:29]
Jocko Willink
They're pig gunners. And he just looks at him, he goes, the pig is an area weapon. That was the first words out of his mouth. I was like, thank God he's fast. This knowledge on, man. The best. All right, so now you roll into your first platoon.
[34:45]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[34:46]
Jocko Willink
And you're. And you're a pig gunner.
[34:47]
Jim Foreman
Yep. Pig gunner.
[34:49]
Jocko Willink
How. How's the. How's the. You know, this is the 90s, where it's hard to explain to the. The younger guys, the G walk guys, how, for us, at least for me, it was always like, let's hope we can get one mission. Like, let's hope we can get a mission where we get to lock and load our weapons. For real?
[35:09]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[35:09]
Jocko Willink
And go do anything. That was kind of what we'd hoped for.
[35:13]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I. We all did that. Like, we're in Guam or something, or. No, we were in some place Indonesia, and something happened, something small. I. I went up to my house. They go, hey, can't you just tell the Congressman, like, we're here already? Like, you know, you just want to get into everything.
[35:30]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. I remember in my first platoon, we were. We were in Guam, but we went to Thailand, and there was, like, some kind of a UN thing was going on. There was a UN helicopter. We, like, took a picture with the UN helicopter and, like, thought it was super cool that, you know, the UN troops and we were there. That's. Man. It was just different. And the. But. But I will say this. And we just kind of talked about it. Dude, we trained freaking hard. Like, go. We trained so hard. It was almost. There was a. In a way, training for the unknown. You would just think about, you know, the fear of not being prepared enough. I think that compelled us to train even harder because we just didn't know what to expect. Like, will I be ready?
[36:19]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[36:20]
Jocko Willink
And I think that had a. I think that had a big impact on me. And how, you know, would we get the call, who are we good enough? Will we know our weapon systems? Will we be, you know, do we know our comms well enough? And, like, all these things, which. The funny thing is all that stuff is kind of. It's actually not that hard. Yeah. And which. So that's where you went on Your first deployment, you did your Guam, so.
[36:47]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, we did the paycom.
[36:49]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[36:49]
Jim Foreman
Yes. Based out of Guam.
[36:51]
Jocko Willink
Did you guys do just exercises?
[36:53]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, we did Cobra Gold, which was fun. Yeah, you know, four weeks, five weeks there. But, you know, working with the ties, that was. That was great.
[37:01]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah, man, there's some seals that never left.
[37:07]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, exactly. They're still there today with whatever. How much land. They got their own house and. Yeah, probably the third or fourth wife.
[37:14]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah. Simultaneous wives, I think for some of those. You come back from that deployment, what's next?
[37:21]
Jim Foreman
I jumped into Golf. Platoon, they need it. It was like they're already on their. Their cycle, so I jumped into golf, and then I was there, rear security point man.
[37:35]
Jocko Willink
And how was. As you're now a new guy in your first platoon, now you're in your second platoon. What are you looking at from a leadership perspective and what are you seeing?
[37:42]
Jim Foreman
I'm seeing the difference in leadership, you know, the slightly difference of the Chiefs and the LPOs, which was. They're both good. But I did notice that. That the chief, you know, if you got one that was like. Because of my first chief was badass. We talked about him, or he was the lpo.
[38:01]
Jocko Willink
Okay. Yeah.
[38:01]
Jim Foreman
So the LPO was badass, and the chief was badass. And then my second platoon, the chief was okay. He was still good. He just wasn't like, wow, I got spoiled in that last one with the chief and lpo, and then you can see the team, the squad leaders picking up.
[38:18]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, well, this is what I realized when I. When I worked at trade at was if you had a platoon, you know, when I. My initial thought was like, all right, chief's got to be the tactician. The officer's got to be looking ahead. The LPO has got to be driving stuff. And I had this kind of mold of what I thought it should be, and what I realized after a relatively short period of time was, dude, I just want to have, like a couple good. If I can get one or two good leaders out of that top four, the platoon is going to do fine. It doesn't really matter if the officer is great and everyone else sucks, it'll be fine. If the chief is great and everyone else sucks, it'll be okay. LPO is great. Everyone, like, you just need a leader that can make things happen, and it makes such a huge difference in the whole zone. And I had to open up my mind and be more flexible to where. What roles people were going to play. Because, look, man, you got. There's some Chiefs that they're just going to run everything, and it's just going to be. They've been. They got eight platoons under their belt. They're smart, they're humble, they make things happen. And it's like, no, look, that. That officer doesn't really have to. He didn't have to show up, to be honest with you. And then sometimes like, oh, that chief came from shore duty, and before that he did, you know, worked at some other shore duty, and he just doesn't know what he's doing. And then it's like, that officer better step up or the LPO better step up or something, but you just need a guy.
[39:35]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[39:35]
Jocko Willink
To make things happen.
[39:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, you're right. You can't. You rarely get all four badasses.
[39:40]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's very rare. And sometimes if you get four guys that are really good, they also come with four really big egos. And now you got conflict between, you know, the. The chief and the OIC or the chief and the lpo, and those things are just. It's so. It's such a bummer to watch, you know, it's such a bummer to watch a platoon eat itself.
[40:09]
Jim Foreman
Morale drops.
[40:11]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah, it's a disaster. When did you go to sniper school?
[40:15]
Jim Foreman
After, and so I got to cot one in 92. I went to sniper school in 95.
[40:21]
Jocko Willink
Okay. So was this after your second platoon then?
[40:24]
Jim Foreman
Yes, I think it was. Yeah, it was at the end of my second platoon. Yeah.
[40:30]
Jocko Willink
And where'd you go. Where'd you go on that deployment?
[40:32]
Jim Foreman
Same place.
[40:33]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[40:33]
Jim Foreman
So we just did different things. Like, I think we went to India, which was awesome. So we still did pay calm. We just hit different areas. Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong. Different. Different areas.
[40:48]
Jocko Willink
Do you start feel. Did you start feeling like you knew how to do your job pretty well?
[40:52]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I got better. Like, I was also the intel rap back then, you know, so.
[40:58]
Jocko Willink
Laminating maps.
[40:59]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, Yeah. I was just basically the guy that got all the RFIs and, you know, briefed, whatever.
[41:05]
Jocko Willink
You know what else was crazy was back then was on. On my first deployment, we had one computer.
[41:12]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[41:13]
Jocko Willink
Like, one computer. And it was. The only person that even knew how to turn that thing on was the officer. And everyone else was just like, every single brief was on whatever the charts, and just. That's how we rolled.
[41:26]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[41:26]
Jocko Willink
It was like magic. The. The, you know, the mission planning stuff was just paper and magic markers. And that's crazy.
[41:35]
Jim Foreman
We didn't have a whiteboard.
[41:40]
Jocko Willink
Dry erase board would have Been high tech back then. Check. So pretty standard deployment for back then.
[41:47]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. All three of them were standard.
[41:51]
Jocko Willink
Did you have anybody ever get in any trouble or anything like that?
[41:53]
Jim Foreman
Oh, yeah, yeah, we got in trouble. I think it was my third platoon.
[41:59]
Jocko Willink
Did you make it to point man, your third platoon?
[42:01]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, there you go. That was us. But here's the thing. It's like. Because I was the 60 gunner like you, you. And you realize the importance of it. That's why it's good to have different jobs. Yeah, right. So as a point man, I remember at NY island, you know, we're doing IADs, immediate action drills and live fire, and they put our 60 guy down. And then I was able to go, okay, I get 60 and start laying lead, you know. And so, you know, a lot of guys, everybody could shoot a 60, but like, to shoot it like proficiently because you have the experience and all that stuff, that was awesome to still have it, you know.
[42:36]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah.
[42:36]
Jim Foreman
And also later in my career to understand supporting assets, you know, because I remember a couple times in my career later on, guys were just all like 18, 20 guys show up, always just like 22s, you know, like the, the M4s. Nobody has a heavy weapon. Nobody has 40. Mike. Mike, you know, like, man, this is not good. We want to have a variety of.
[42:57]
Jocko Willink
Weapons and we honestly want to have as many belt feds as we possibly can.
[43:02]
Jim Foreman
Absolutely.
[43:02]
Jocko Willink
Because that's how we're. That's how we're doing this. That's what keeps the freaking enemies heads down. So you get done with your second platoon, now you go to sniper school. How's sniper school for you?
[43:12]
Jim Foreman
It was good. I love sniper school. It was, you know. Did you go to sniper school?
[43:17]
Jocko Willink
No.
[43:17]
Jim Foreman
Okay. So, yeah, laying out in Kalinga, flat ground was a couple of tumbleweeds trying to do a stock, you know, that was tough, but it was great training.
[43:26]
Jocko Willink
It was. There's a lot of people. There's a pretty big attrition rate at sniper school of guys that would go and wouldn't make it through. It was freaking. I didn't go to it. But like, I knew really good guys that would come back and be like, yo, that sucked.
[43:41]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[43:42]
Jocko Willink
And some guys would be like, oh, yeah, I graduated, but barely.
[43:45]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[43:46]
Jocko Willink
And. And like you said, it was especially the stalking piece, which is, you know, you got a guy that's a sniper instructor that's sitting on an elevated piece of position and you have to crawl to him in a certain amount of time in a. To a close enough distance. And take a shot with the blanks.
[44:06]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[44:07]
Jocko Willink
And not. And have that guy who's on binos.
[44:11]
Jim Foreman
Two guys.
[44:11]
Jocko Willink
Two guys on binos trying with all their might to find you.
[44:16]
Jim Foreman
Right? And it was a challenge. Like, they made it. They felt like their shit bags that they couldn't find you. So, like, when you take that shot with a blank, you just have to sit there, right? And they have, I don't know, anywhere from five to ten minutes to scan. Okay, we just heard a shot. And then they got walkers, and they go, hey, I see something suspicious. Walk to your right, 50 yards, you know, two feet up, a little bit to the right. Sniper at your feet. And then if you're. They're wrong, you're like, nope, that's just like, a coke can or something like that, like. And then they'll keep doing it, you know? And sometimes they're, like, trying to, like, wait till they get one, but they try not to do that where there's just, like, saturated area.
[44:56]
Jocko Willink
But what's the closest you ever had them call sniper at the feet where you were actually laying?
[45:01]
Jim Foreman
Oh, they got me once. My final one. And that was for honor, man. And this is a good story. I know the guy. So one of the guys was failing, right? And he had to get, like, a 10. And so a 10 is like. So, yeah, you do your blank shot, and they can't find you, right? And then they give you a live round, and then they put a target where they were sitting, and they move off, and you take that shot, and you have. You can't just hit the target if you just get the side. That's not. That's like, a seven or something. You have to get, like, within that kill shot thing. If you get that, and then they come back and they look for you again, and if they can't find you, then you get a 10. So I was rocking for. I was very patient doing the right things. My favorite thing to do was, like, cut a hole through a bush or a tree. Cut a small hole through a tree, and then get behind it 20ft and then shoot through that hole. Because then they're looking for you in the tree, right? But you're, like, 20ft behind or have multiple bushes, and they're, like, looking for you behind each bush, but you're, like, way back there. So that was cool. And that was my favorite thing to do, is like, shoot from distance through a hole in a bush or a tree. And in this situation, I'm like, okay, man, I'm gonna crush automatic, you know? And then my. He was actually my shooting partner. And I did that scene. This is an island now. And now, so I have a tree. I'm like, laying my back, cutting a hole through this. Those tumbleweeds. It was like about four foot long, tumbleweed. And I click, click, click, come back, click, click. And they also look at your bullet path.
[46:50]
Jocko Willink
Has to be legit.
[46:51]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Even if you hit the target, they want to make sure. Sure that you're not hitting any twigs. The guy that's laying, grading the walker will look at your bullet path and your position and all that. So I had this perfect shot. I'm like, all right. And all of a sudden, my shooting partner, who was like six, three, comes shows up right next to me, like, ran, like, across the pool table with two bushes, like, runs, and gets right next to him, like, what the. And he's like, jay, I have to get. You know, he. I knew he had to get 10, right? But I go, hey, man, I'm also going for honor, man. And so he gets right next to me. He's like. And all of a sudden, I hear the comms. You're like, holy. Run, run. 20ft to the right. Run. You know, you saw him run over to that bush. And so they stand right behind both of us, right? And I didn't know what he had done. So I'm just, like, concentrating on my thing. And they go, sniper, Sniper at your feet. Or. Oh, no, they didn't ask that. They go, who did that? Right? And I looked at my buddy and he looked at me, and I go, I did it like that.
[47:59]
Jocko Willink
Took one for the team.
[48:00]
Jim Foreman
And then they go, fucking Foreman, get the fuck out of. That was the biggest bullshit thing I ever seen. I'm like, what? And so I'm walking away. I go, hey, bro, you got a perfect shot through that bush. I already cut the hole, like, oh, so pissed. And you got a 10. But he made it. You know, that's good. But, like, I was like, you know, it was one of those things. I was like, what? I didn't know you did that. I didn't know you ran 50 yards on a pool table.
[48:27]
Jocko Willink
And how was that deployment the last. Your third deployment?
[48:30]
Jim Foreman
That was a good one. That's the one. We went to India, and we were training with those Indians. They're their SEAL version. That was good. We did a lot of maritime stuff. And that's when I started getting into the teaching stuff. Teaching the 60, doing the.50 cal sniper stuff. And I see that, okay, I like this stuff. Teaching stuff. And Then we have the skill to back it, the capabilities to back it. So that was cool to see.
[48:56]
Jocko Willink
And you come back from that deployment. Did you go into training cell at team one?
[49:00]
Jim Foreman
I did, yeah. I went to training cell for a little bit, and then I became a sniper instructor and did that. That was 97.
[49:07]
Jocko Willink
Now, would you do that sniper instructor, like, Tad, you just, like, they'd.
[49:12]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Group you guys together in four months. They just said, hey, we got sniper course going on. You're in training cell, your sniper, they want you.
[49:20]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Like, I remember you being in training cell, but I don't remember you being like, I taught, kind of did everything because I was like, you know, didn't care about anything else, so I was like, oh, we'll teach cqc. We'll go teach freaking diving. And. But you were out there. The one thing I didn't teach because I wasn't a sniper is I never went to teach any sniper courses. Obviously.
[49:39]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, it was short. I was a short time in training, so. Because then I left for the next unit in 97.
[49:47]
Jocko Willink
So you head out to the next unit. You get out there. Selections. Another very difficult challenge.
[49:57]
Jim Foreman
It was. It was good. It was like. It was kind of like buds, but just more advanced, you know, just like big boy stuff. And they knew what they're doing, so they had certain ways. It was like the basics. And I won't get too much into it, but it's just like, if you didn't know the basics, like, they broke every. Like, for CQC, if, like, most of the guys that failed were RSOs, because they already had a way of doing things, so you had to, like, forget all that stuff. So my advantage was, like, I didn't really know a whole lot, you know, So I just listened to them and, like, did the walking thing. Walking, walking. And then two weeks later, things are speeding up, you know, so. And then next thing you know, you're running, and if you didn't have the basics, how they wanted it, and then it was over.
[50:38]
Jocko Willink
And the good thing is, so out there at this time, there was actually work to be done, like, over in Bosnia.
[50:46]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[50:47]
Jocko Willink
And did you get on some of those operations?
[50:49]
Jim Foreman
Two deployments over there, which was good. It was basically Piffwick stuff for the first one.
[50:56]
Jocko Willink
Personnel indicted for war crimes.
[50:58]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[50:58]
Jocko Willink
So these are people that doing war crimes over there in the. In. In that war zone. And once the war kind of ended, they had to go back and capture all these. These war criminals.
[51:10]
Jim Foreman
Right.
[51:11]
Jocko Willink
And. And then. So you did two of those Deployments. What was the op tempo like back home?
[51:17]
Jim Foreman
It was slow, but over there. So you would only get a couple guys that would go during a certain time in your training. And so they get like maybe four or five guys that go or in. Once the war kicked off, then we had a whole troop go over there because then it was like, not only Piffwicks, it was also, like terrorists that were working out there with NGOs, funding money and things like that. And that was cool. So basically, when you go over there, just basic, a low vis type thing, you're wearing the clothing that they're wearing, just taking photos, documenting, tracking, building up a target portfolio on the guys that you're looking at.
[51:59]
Jocko Willink
And eventually you're gonna nab them and roll them up.
[52:02]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[52:03]
Jocko Willink
And you do those low vis type things.
[52:06]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. So we. We never nabbed anybody. We turned it over to the big dogs. FBI.
[52:13]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[52:13]
Jim Foreman
And they actually. They grabbed one of the guys that we had tracked for them back in Chicago. So they were just. They didn't want to do it over there because they knew that he was tied to all these different NGOs where they're funneling money. And one of them was Chicago. And that's when they grabbed him.
[52:29]
Jocko Willink
Jack. And. And then once. Where are you at?
[52:34]
Jim Foreman
September 11th, I was training FBI at the command.
[52:40]
Jocko Willink
No kidding.
[52:41]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. So we're doing just tqc. And then one of the guys came in, goes, hey, man, planes just hit the towers. And at first I was like, plane hit the tower. Like a small plane, like, I didn't understand. And then. Then they left. Because they're from dc, they took off. And that's when, or I think the second plane hit. They took off. And then. That's. Okay, that's definitely deliberate. And that's two airliners. So when that started, a lot of guys were thinking, oh, yeah, there's going to be a deployment or two, and then it's going to be over. Oh, no. A lot of moving parts on this one.
[53:17]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, Well, I thought the same thing. I wasn't. I was actually in college because I did the Semen Admiral program. So then I had to. Once I did a couple deployments, I had to go to college. And so I was now in college. And I called the detailer, who I had worked for and who was a friend of mine, an awesome guy, and I was like, hey, sir, like, send me back to a team. I'll go to college when I'm older. I'll do online courses or whatever. I don't want to miss this. And he's like, hey, Jocko, this is going to last for a long time. And of course, I didn't really believe him.
[53:48]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[53:48]
Jocko Willink
And the other thing that he told me, he actually told me this, like, a couple years ago. Like, I'd be like, oh, yeah. I called him and told him I wanted to go. Every freaking guy called him. Like, every SEAL that wasn't at a SEAL team was like, hey, sir, please give me orders to a SEAL team. That was every guy. So that's the kind of guys, you know. That's. Of course. Of course.
[54:07]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[54:07]
Jocko Willink
You know, that's. Of course. Every guy that's not at a SEAL team is like, get me to a damn SEAL team now. And I think everyone's thinking, otherwise we're going to miss it, you know, because if you looked at Grenada, if you looked at Panama quick, if you looked at the first Gulf War, it was like, if you weren't lucky enough to be in the right time, in the right platoon, at the right place, it was like, you're just going to watch it. It'll be over in 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, maybe a week at the most. And everyone. I mean, we all just thought, well, it's gonna be over quick.
[54:40]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[54:41]
Jocko Willink
Boy, were we wrong. Huh? So what. So when did you actually get overseas?
[54:48]
Jim Foreman
The first time was right after, like, in early 2002. January.
[54:56]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[54:56]
Jim Foreman
And that was just an advance, just to check it out because we're getting ready to deploy. So I went over with, like, four other guys from my. My team, and we checked it out, and then we came back, and then we deployed in 2002.
[55:11]
Jocko Willink
And what was that? What was the, like, op tempo like in the mission set you guys were looking at?
[55:16]
Jim Foreman
I think a lot of people thought that was just going to end pretty quick. A lot of. So I was with a sniper team, and I had some awesome leadership. So during peace, we were training really hard. Like, if we did cold weather training, we're actually, like, making snow caves and packing our rocks. Like, you're supposed to, like, taping up all the, you know, the one inch and understanding that you don't want to just dump your rock out to find something.
[55:41]
Jocko Willink
You know, that winter warfare thing on the East Coast? Like, I know Team 2, when we were geographically located and Team 2 was Europe, and they had some dudes that were freaking all in on the winter warfare activities.
[55:55]
Jim Foreman
You're getting the Norwegians.
[55:57]
Jocko Willink
Hell, yeah.
[55:58]
Jim Foreman
You know those guys telling it how it is.
[56:00]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[56:00]
Jim Foreman
Making sure that you did things right. So that was cool. And also we had guys that were just like recce. Guys that just understood even in the jungle or woodland that you have to have your rock packed. Right. You know, and you could compartmentalize. And I mean, we were. We came up with that one where the top pouch you could undo and put around your waist for, you know, so you could go off for, you know, 12 hours and not have to take your whole ruck, things like that. So. So it was. It was good. That deployment was good because we already had those skills. So we weren't walking. We're. We just. We were walking, but at least we were walking.
[56:37]
Jocko Willink
As opposed to crawl, walk, run, you mean?
[56:39]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, type of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[56:41]
Jocko Willink
Metaphor.
[56:42]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Because I saw some other units that were out there and they're like crawling and it was like they didn't have the ruck because you're out there for a long time and those mountains are killer. You know, it's like Yosemite, but you're not using trails, you know, so they had trails and stuff, but if you get off that goat trail, you're done. I mean, like, it's brutal. And those mountains separate other countries like Pakistan, you know, so you walk and then they don't understand where the line is. So you're in Pakistan. They don't. They don't get it. So we had to abide by the rules and they don't. But it was good. It was good to be up in those mountains up north, northeast, and then even inter interior, because that's where those guys were, were up. Up there with their camps and re. Regrouping and doing their stuff and.
[57:35]
Jocko Willink
And were. So as part of a recy element where you were doing primarily recce.
[57:39]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[57:41]
Jocko Willink
And then how. So how long was that? Like into 2003.
[57:45]
Jim Foreman
So, yeah, 2000, that deployment, and then we deployed again. 2003, 2004.
[57:55]
Jocko Willink
When did you go to Iraq for the first time?
[57:57]
Jim Foreman
2003, for the invasion.
[57:59]
Jocko Willink
Oh, so you're there for the push up.
[58:01]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[58:01]
Jocko Willink
How was that?
[58:03]
Jim Foreman
That was good. I mean, we had. I mean, talk about having every single asset you needed. I mean, there was one operation we did where it was a deep penetration because, you know, Iraq wasn't secure. We left from a different country and we flew in our hilos and we. They said that they had three aircraft per guy. That's how many aircraft were in there. Oversee us because it was a big deal. They're shooting like those damn missiles at us. You know, I remember we're refueling because there's a long in certain seeing like a telephone pole go past, you know, so they definitely had their defenses up and it was good to have all those aircraft because they're taking out targets as we're moving in.
[58:49]
Jocko Willink
Three aircraft per man. That's freaking crazy.
[58:52]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[58:53]
Jocko Willink
And that was. That was on the push up that. That you had all that going on.
[58:57]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah. Then we ended up flying into Baghdad once it got semi secure. And then we start working out of Baghdad.
[59:04]
Jocko Willink
And out of Baghdad. Were you guys doing, like, kind of hits? Just D A type hits?
[59:08]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah. We're just knocking out like, whatever. We had like a list of guys that we need to find and capture. And then we're just knocking them out along with other units.
[59:17]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[59:18]
Jim Foreman
Just bringing them down, finding out where they're at.
[59:20]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. I got there in, you know, three. And that's exactly what it was. It was like, you know, one of our. One of our jokes was saying, baghdad swat.
[59:28]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[59:28]
Jocko Willink
Like, load up the trucks and we'll go freaking hit that target. And we'll do it the next night. We'll do it the next night. It was just like, pretty straightforward and at the same time, super cool because is like the. The ops would take like an hour.
[59:45]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[59:45]
Jocko Willink
You know, and we had good intel coming in, relatively good intel. And so we. We didn't hit a lot of dry holes. Like, most of the time we'd kind of get who you're going after. So it was like, you know, pretty good percentage of success.
[60:01]
Jim Foreman
There's a plethora of targets. Yeah.
[60:04]
Jocko Willink
And the enemy was. They weren't like, organized. You know, they were still doing kind of dumb things that, that would. In a. In an environment like that, they're not. If they're not adapting, they're just getting rolled up and.
[60:19]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[60:20]
Jocko Willink
So you're getting rid of the, the. The easy targets. Basically.
[60:24]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Here's something for you, because I think I saw. I thought. My opinion was they made a huge mistake. So when we took over that country, they had a standing army.
[60:34]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah.
[60:35]
Jim Foreman
And they took the generals and the top leadership and they put them in jail or whatever they did with them. And then they just had. And then they disbanded the army pretty much.
[60:46]
Jocko Willink
The. The bat. The whole bath is party. Yeah. That was a huge, huge.
[60:49]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. And it's like, hey, you had a standing army. Just like, you know, get them on your side, pay them. Because now they had no jobs, no nothing. And there's like, fuck these Americans.
[60:57]
Jocko Willink
Yep.
[60:58]
Jim Foreman
You know.
[60:58]
Jocko Willink
No, that's probably one of the biggest blunders and. And lessons Learned.
[61:03]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[61:03]
Jocko Willink
You know, these are so. I mean, even a normal soldier, they're like, okay, cool. Like, am I getting paid? Yeah, cool. You want me to face this direction? I'll face that direction. You want to face the other direction? Okay, I'll face that direction. Like, give me my money. Let me take care of my family. And it's not like they're gonna be able to be gainfully employed. If you fire a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand people, like, what are they gonna do? I'll tell you what they're gonna do. They're gonna get paid by some insurgent to put an ID in the street or shoot a mortar or shoot an rpg. Yeah, that was. That was not good. And I think that's pretty universal. That that was a mistake. Yeah. But I did, you know, did you get to see, like, the people welcoming you with American flags?
[61:52]
Jim Foreman
They loved us. Yeah. And I felt bad because there's Sometimes we had to bust in their house to look for something or somebody, and they're just like, have a tray of fruit, you know, to give to us. Hey, we understand. You know, we understand you have to do this. Well, you know, I felt bad for them.
[62:06]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[62:06]
Jim Foreman
But they're super friendly because they want it, you know, that regime out, and they saw us as the saviors and they want their country back.
[62:14]
Jocko Willink
Y. Yeah, boy. It's one of those reasons. It's one of those things where I. I think that as Americans, and especially as our senior leadership in America, and by senior, I mean, like the senior leadership at the time looking at the situation and thinking that everything is going to go the way we want it to go. And that's the thing with war, is there's one thing I can guarantee you about wars. Things are not going to go the way you think they're going to go. And if you think you're going to roll in there and because they're waving American flags, when you get there, they're going to keep waving those American flags. It's like, well, not if you do. Not if you fire. 200,000 people in the Army. I don't even know what the number is. Hundreds of thousands of people. And then, look, we can kick in your door tonight and you'll give us fruit, but if another unit kicks in our door two nights later, and then another unit kicks in our door four nights later, eventually we're not giving you fruit anymore. Eventually we're just pissed. And. And then, not to mention, what if you hurt somebody? You know, what if someone gets injured by a breach what if you destroy their car? And then what happens is Al Jira shows up with cameras and they start record or they record, oh, look what happened to this family. Look what happened. And it's just little by little that. That mob mentality, the tide turns.
[63:32]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[63:33]
Jocko Willink
So you're, you're there in the push up, and then is it. Do you go to a cycle of going to Iraq or do you start bouncing back and forth between Iraq and Afghanistan?
[63:43]
Jim Foreman
We did both for a while. And so we got back from Iraq and then it was like only a couple months where we went back to Afghanistan.
[63:51]
Jocko Willink
And what are you, like a team leader at this point, or are you still just a shooter?
[63:53]
Jim Foreman
I was a sniper team team leader. Okay. Yeah. So. And then the recky guys had a lot of experience up in the mountains, was paid off because we were also the point men for the, the troops and the teams and stuff like that. So back to Afghanistan, I think it was like, third time now, you know, by then, or maybe second going on my third. And the cool thing was that we were just. The cycle was quick, so we got a lot of experience over there. Like, we'd come back, train, go back over, and we see the same people, same interpreters, same personalities. We pick up where we left off. So that was good for us to have that experience.
[64:35]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, that, that quick timeline, I think, is. Has some advantages to it because, you know, I think the ideal way to fight a war is the way they fought World War II. You're there for the duration, you're there until we win. I think that that cycle of, hey, you're going to be gone for like, you're gonna be there for three, four months, come home for a short period of time, go back for three, four months, and it sort of is. I think that's better than, all right, you're gonna go for a year, but then you're not gonna go back for three years, four years. And that, I think, is. I think the way we did that, the way the, the military at large did that was not the best. Not the best way to do it, I think, either. Shorter where you're. You. Even though. Even though you're going home, sometimes you still feel. And you still have continuity.
[65:24]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[65:24]
Jocko Willink
Because I think when you start going six months, when you start going home for a year, year and a half, the continuity's gone.
[65:31]
Jim Foreman
You're really gone. And then you have to relearn new tactics, new procedures that the enemy's using.
[65:37]
Jocko Willink
Yep.
[65:38]
Jim Foreman
Everything changes, you know, so you just back to. It's like your first deployment again.
[65:42]
Jocko Willink
Right. And. And I. So I think you got to make the home time frame short enough that when you go back again, it's not like you're having to relearn and you're on. You're on a totally different deployment.
[65:56]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[65:56]
Jocko Willink
And obviously guys are going to get burned out of doing that. And then you go, cool, you're done for. You send them to shore duty or whatever. Send them to three years. Let them take some real legit downtime to decompress. But, man, when you're switched on, stay on and keep it. Keep it rocking.
[66:12]
Jim Foreman
It's true. You can see even the leadership, the senior generals and admirals out there, they switch out. And then the next guy comes in, he's doing his own twist on something, you know, but if you had the same guy out there and if he up you, you know, whatever, you get a new guy in there that could get the job done. But the whole thing is to end the war, not just to have it prolonged and then learning new lessons and somebody else, oh, I think I know how to do it. And then they try it out. It fails, you know, and then they got another guy come out, well, I'm going to do this thing. But if you had the same guy out there, he's like, yeah, I tried these two things and it failed. Now I'm going to do this one. And I'm seeing my mistakes. I'm getting experience from dealing with these people out here, you know, and I think we could do this efficiently.
[66:54]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And I think that when you look at the fall of Afghanistan, I think one of the. One of the many contributing factors is like, if echoes out there, and he's training up some local forces. He says he trained him up to a level four.
[67:08]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[67:09]
Jocko Willink
And then you get them, and look, those guys aren't getting any better. But what do you say you go, oh, I'm Jim, and I train my. I train them up. Now they're level five, and by the time it gets to me, I'm like, well, I'm going to do better than Jim. I got to prove that I did a great job, too. So now I'm trained them to a level six. And you do that for. And by the way, still level three. Because Echo was lying. You were lying. And I lied. All to get our promotion, all to look good. So we all lied. And the Afghans weren't any better. And that basically happened for 20 years.
[67:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[67:37]
Jocko Willink
And look what happened at the end of it. Oh, oh, the Afghans are good. You remember, what was it, two or three weeks before the pull out? They're like, oh, they're up and they're ready to. That was just based on lies and lies and lies instead of somebody just saying, wait a second. And everybody on the ground was like, no, no, this isn't good, this is not good. I mean I said that when in Iraq, when we left Iraq. It's like, hold on. No, no, no, no, no, no, hold on. The Iraqis have gotten better, but they're not ready to hold down the fort. They might hold it down for a little while, but they're not ready. And the politics took over.
[68:08]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, freaking horrible.
[68:13]
Jocko Willink
So you're doing now just back to, back to back cycles coming and, and then going back on deployment now. Are you in a sniper element this whole time?
[68:23]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I switched over, took basically a platoon size group and that was cool because now it's like a, an assault type group where I also had a sniper team and assault teams and stuff like that. That was great.
[68:39]
Jocko Willink
And you're, you're getting experienced. How's it, how's the casualty rate at this point for you?
[68:48]
Jim Foreman
I would say there was mostly wounds, you know, and that's, and I say that mostly wounds because we did have some deaths. But like at the same time we were quick to learn from the feedback was good. And that's one thing I didn't like about like when I was in the, the SEAL team is like finding out what happened, you know, getting the AARs, you know, from like Team 3 or Team 2, it was hard to get, you know, so where I was at there was like a little, it was still hard to get from different teams that were out there. But like with the snipers it was easy because we had huge. We had our, the same building and we just talk about it when we could get back. We could email them and stuff like that and find out so we could prep training for, okay, this is what they're doing out there now. So we could get there a little bit of higher speed. But yeah, so there were some casualties and then I won't get into too much but like, yeah, we took some heavies in Iraq and then, but you know, we were going after some heavy hitters too.
[69:58]
Jocko Willink
When you, when you came out to Ramadi in 2006 and what, what was it that, I mean, obviously you guys knew that we were killing a lot of bad guys. What was it that, how did you end up coming out? I forget.
[70:12]
Jim Foreman
Good question. So I was the operations guy, so I wasn't really didn't need to deploy, but I like deploying. So I knew your platoon chief, Tony. Big Tony. So I did a platoon with him at one and learned a lot from him. Big land warfare guy.
[70:30]
Jocko Willink
Oh, yeah.
[70:31]
Jim Foreman
So. And I love. Yeah. So we came. I did a visit for you guys, and I brought my sniper rifle because I was like, good call. I was like, hey, I know I'm the ops chief, but like, you know, so I told my leadership, I said, hey, so we as a unit do not have urban sniping. We got rural and. But we don't have any urban. You know, can I stay here and just learn from these guys? Because they're doing urban, you know, why wouldn't I? And if as long as they allow me, can we do that? And so that's what my pitch was. And they're like, yeah, just talk to Jocko and Tony, you know, so that's how I got in. I was like, cool.
[71:13]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And I was. I always had a relatively open door policy for team guys that especially, I mean, if I know them, then that's a lot different. But I always tried to. In Ramadi, it wasn't quite as much in Baghdad. When I was in Baghdad, it was like, if you showed up and you were a seal, we get you on, you know, we get you do an external security or something like that. I did have that bite me in the ass one time where we took out a guy and he ended up, like, opening.
[71:38]
Jim Foreman
He.
[71:38]
Jocko Willink
He was trying to shoot out a light, but he didn't tell anyone. So we're like, taking down a target. All of a sudden there's shots fired, and he didn't tell anyone that he's gonna shoot. And then when, you know, we're all going, hey, who's shooting? Didn't say anything. It wasn't until afterwards in the debrief, it's like, hey, because we're now, you know, we're spinning up. We got the AC130. We're trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
[71:57]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[71:58]
Jocko Willink
And it was this dude trying to shoot out a light. So we tightened up our policies after that, and like, okay, here's the rules. Got to do a walkthrough. Got to get with the chief, like, all that stuff.
[72:07]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[72:08]
Jocko Willink
But Ramadi, we were tighter because it was just way more dangerous to do it. But you, you know, coming from your command and just knowing me and Tony, it was like, oh, go get some.
[72:18]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, that was good. It was a good experience for me.
[72:22]
Jocko Willink
Did you, like, was it Surprising to you how target rich that environment was?
[72:30]
Jim Foreman
A little bit. I think I knew it was target rich, but it was, it was cool that you guys put yourself right in the center of or on that corner like where you guys drove out and hung out. That was cool to be there, you know, that platoon just. And then you just walk out the door, you know, patrol down the street or take a go at night and take a building, you know. And it was good to see like old map studies of finding, okay, which, which building's the highest in this town, you know, and where could we get to and what are we actually trying to do? If we take this building, can we even see the other building that we were trying to observe or the, the structure?
[73:09]
Jocko Willink
Sure.
[73:09]
Jim Foreman
So I like that. That was cool to see like the old school planning, not just walking out there and just taking a building.
[73:16]
Jocko Willink
Oh yeah. Well, you know, Tony was totally fired up for that. You know, like, let's get out the map. And then Chris, Chris Kyle obviously was like full on committed to where can we position ourselves where we're gonna have the most impact and kill the most enemy. And was interesting. I had the, the brigade commander on here, General McFarland and he would like the same, you know, here his brigade is, they're killing all these enemy fighters and like the meth is going, hey, what? How are you killing all these people? General McFarlane's like, come out here. Yeah, come and see. And that was my answer. Same time every time. People be like, how are you killing so many people? It's like, come on out. Come and come and come and have a look.
[73:56]
Jim Foreman
You gotta stick your neck out a little bit. You gotta be in there.
[73:59]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[74:00]
Jim Foreman
My regret was that I brought my 300 win mag.
[74:04]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, you wanted that SR. No, no.
[74:06]
Jim Foreman
I wanted my 556. Oh, okay. And only because like I had the round that could drop people, but like the, the kickback. So the 300 win mag when, when I shot like it took so long to get my scope back on the target. Like I would miss the second one.
[74:22]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[74:22]
Jim Foreman
But like the 5, 5 6, it could be like tink, tink. You know, so that was my only regret. But it was good experience. I always just rocking with.
[74:31]
Jocko Willink
Well like you said, that's a good lesson learned for like, oh, if you're in an urban environment, there's going to be more targets. It's going to be. You're gonna need to take quicker shots.
[74:38]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. I mean of course the 300 win mag you got the distance, which you know Kyle definitely shown on that one. You know, for me, I think my shots were only like 80 to 120. I think I had a 220 yard shot, but they're pretty close.
[74:54]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Yeah. I was talking to Leif, you know, that you were coming on, and he was like, oh, yeah, he's like. He was telling me about that chapter that I read in the opening of this. He's like, I think he's like, I think Jim got four of those. Yeah, he was all fired up.
[75:07]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[75:09]
Jocko Willink
And it was. It was definitely, you know, we were doing things that made a lot of sense to us. But, you know, I found out afterwards, people would be like, why are you going out in the daytime? I was like, hey, wait, what do you mean, why are we going out in the daytime? It's like, number one, we have Iraqi soldiers with us. They don't have night vision goggles. Number two, we're gonna go out in the nighttime and we're gonna get in a position where we're gonna stay, and that's when the enemy's gonna come out. Because the enemy didn't come out very much. I think we probably killed less than five guys in the daytime or.
[75:43]
Jim Foreman
Sorry.
[75:43]
Jocko Willink
In the nighttime.
[75:44]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[75:44]
Jocko Willink
Almost everybody was. That's when the enemy would come out and fight. They knew we owned the night and they didn't want to come out.
[75:49]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I like what you guys did. You guys went out in the night to take the building, and then you're there first light, you know, and then you're. And then that one was the mosque right next door was like yelling, screaming out like, hey, Americans are here surrounded. Get your guns. We got them, you know, and then they came, you know.
[76:07]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, they. They would definitely come. And I remember one OP that you guys did, you guys went out because an army tank got blown up.
[76:14]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[76:14]
Jocko Willink
And when an Army A. Brad or sorry, M1, got blown up, and so then it takes. You have to send an M88 wrecker out there to drag the thing back to base. But for. And I think on that particular operation, when that tank got blown up, the Dr. I think it was the driver got out, stepped down off the tank as they exited the tank and he was killed by another id.
[76:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[76:36]
Jocko Willink
And then the army requested, hey, can you guys like, watch this thing? And I think that's when you were like, I'll go too. Like, so you did the. So you got down there and just to see how the enemy was effective, like, they figured out how to burn. They figured how to set fire to Those tanks.
[76:52]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[76:53]
Jocko Willink
Which was. Which was impressive.
[76:56]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[76:57]
Jocko Willink
I think you also did a. You also did like, a daytime patrol with the boys, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big iad. Big gunfight.
[77:07]
Jim Foreman
Big gunfight. Yeah. Well, that. Would. They. They. I think they hit us with PKS on that one. And the funniest thing was like, you know, I was, you know, with you guys on the. We're doing like, a center peel, and I was running back, and then the rackies were behind us, right? And I. Running back, and I was like, man, we only got, like, all seals up here. And I came back thinking I was going to go down the long line, and all the rackies were on a corner, like, huddling up in the corner. I'm like, oh, my God. Okay, it's just us.
[77:40]
Jocko Willink
It's just us, man. Yeah. Their react to contact was not exactly up to. Yeah, the standard one thing that was. So. So you got done there, and you kind of reported up your chain of command and, like, basically, correct me if I'm wrong, you said, like, I don't think that we. That your unit should be doing that operation and. Or something along those lines. Because, like, maybe a week later, my skipper calls me up and he's like, hey, like, what's. What. What's. What's this all about? And I was like, what's what? He goes, well, you had Jim Foreman out there. He went on some ops with you guys, and. And like, he said, you guys don't have any air support. I was like, sir, we don't have any air support. Like, there's. Dude, helicopters can't fly here because they'll get shot down. And AC130 isn't gonna fly during the day, so, no, we don't have any air support. He's like, we. You know, you got. There's this massive ID threat. And I was like, well, sir, yes, there is a massive ID threat. That's why we do mostly foot patrols. Like, we. The foot patrols do get hit with a lot less IDs. That's why we're doing it. He's like, well, he's like. He's. These aren't strategic targets that you guys are killing out there. And I was like, no, sir, these aren't strategic. We're not shooting Osama bin Laden or Zarqawi out here. We're. But we are having a strategic impact with helping the. The conventional units win this. This is a very strategic battle, and we're certainly implementing it or assisting in it. And then there's always this thing about supporting conventional units and Echo. Charles, for your information, there's two different types. When you go out in the field, you can either be the supported element, which means you're the one that's like, for lack of a better word, you're the senior one, or you can be the supporting element, which means you're the junior one. And sometimes people get really concerned about that, like, because if I'm supporting you, Echo, and you decide to do something I don't like, well, that's kind of like, oh, well, that's what we're doing. And so it has it. And, and actually if you look at the history of nsw, if you look at the history of Special operations, there has been times where that has been terrible. So I, I'm a special operations unit, I'm working for you, Echo. And you go, oh, you were working for me, Cool. Go charge that machine gun nest. And we end up losing a bunch of guys and it doesn't work out well and that can be really bad. So people are very hesitant for, to sign up to be the supporting unit. And so, you know, my boss was kind of like, well, you guys are the supporting unit. And I was like, well, sir, yeah, we are. And I said, and guess who's supporting us? The Conventionals. They are absolutely like, all of our close air or all of our fire support is coming from them with their tanks and Bradleys, all of our QRF is coming from them and all of our CASAVAC is coming for them. So even though we're quote, the supporting unit, it's fine. Like, it's not. And, and by the way, they completely listen to what we had to say. It wasn't like they were like, no, shut up and go do this. No, they're like, oh, you don't think that's a good idea. Cool. What do you think is a good idea? So they had a totally open mind. And, and the final thing was it's like, this is like, is this the most dangerous thing that NSW has done? And I was like, well, I don't know if it's the most dangerous thing that NSW has done, but I said, sir, this is freaking dangerous. I'd like go look at the casualty reports. There's an American wounded or killed every single day here and we're out there. So is this dangerous? Yes, it absolutely is. But the, the Conventionals are out there every single day. We're gonna support them. And so that's, that's what it was. And thankfully I had a great relationship with my skipper and I talked him through it. And by the way, my skipper had to approve all of our operations, and just about every operation that we did had to get run through the CG Soda as well. And the siege of Soda was great. They supported everything that we were doing. And. And so ultimately, it was, you know, this. There was like a little bit of a firestorm for a little bit, and. But, you know, once. Once we talked through it, it was all good.
[81:54]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. I think the biggest thing was, like, we did things different, and we have a lot of assets, and we try to take out the key players, and you guys were doing things differently that I did not. What I didn't want to do was, like, we just always, hey, this richer environment over there, let's just take our squadron and take over, you know, because then you guys would be under us, and this is your playpen. So I. I appreciate being out there and seeing what was going on. That was awesome. And then also, I was like, free agent. And the last thing I want to do is like, pull. You know, because I had a relationship with you guys to pull 30 dudes or 40, whatever, over to you guys. And then, what the fuck? I had that happen to me where another unit, person from a different unit came over to observe, and the next thing you know, they got like, 20 guys. This is during the invasion. And then they're like, hey, we like what you got? We want your. Not only do we want. They want our ao, but they also want our sleeping quarters, you know, and.
[82:59]
Jocko Willink
We'Re like, now we got problems.
[83:01]
Jim Foreman
I was like an E5. I was like, wait, what? And I was like, looking back to my senior chief. I'm like, is he serious? You know, it's like, so. Not that that would happen like that, but I'm just saying we had a different mission. Our. Our stuff was at night. We go in at night, we take care of at night, and we come back before the day. In Afghanistan, sometimes we go out in the day and do the right thing. But, like, you guys had a totally different mission set, and mixing the two might not have been the best thing.
[83:28]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And if we were really lucky, too, like, we happen to have 13 snipers in our task unit, which was not normal. You know, normally, maybe you have. Maybe you have two platoon, maybe three per platoon, you know, so you're up to, like, six maybe, but we had 13. Like, we could really lock some stuff down. But it was weird, too, because, like, there's, like, there was some kind of. Like, there was, like, people that just said that, you Said that we were, like, operating outside the ROE that we were killing women and children, that we were going crazy, taking it, like, unnecessary risk. It was. It was. There was. There was, like, a rumor that the SEALs wrote this. The Ramadi snipers got shut down because of, you know, all this rule breaking. And it's just like. No, actually, none of that is even remotely true. We did operations from the day we got there until the day we left sniper operations, and we turned over to sniper operations to the guys from Team five that took our place. And they rolled right into it.
[84:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, you have a hater. And that person used me to accuse you of things. He said that I was sent there to report on you. I'm like, dude, I would never do that. I want to get experience. I want to roll with you guys. I wouldn't be there observing, critiquing. And I told the guy, I go, hey, I got three shots off that. Three or four shots off that. And we were surrounded. I got wounded with those guys, you know, which was like, how could you say that? I was there report war crimes. So my point is that somebody does not like you. I never said those things. And I was in the mix with you guys, my brothers. Like I said, I got wounded on that trip with you guys. I was only there for, like, maybe less than a week. You know, we did two, three ops, which were awesome. And I got some experience finally on the urban stuff, and I took it back to the command with. I won't mention the technique, but the. The techniques that you guys used. We're good to go. And it bugged me that somebody was using me, and they also didn't. They used my name, but they didn't use their name.
[85:45]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I remember I. I first heard that, and I just, like, sent you an email. I was like, hey, bro, you know about any of this? And you're like, oh, no, I didn't say any of that. I was like, okay, cool. I'm just making sure that we're all good, like, because this is kind of crazy. And you're like, yeah, dude, some. You, like. You got some haters. I'm like, okay, man.
[86:05]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. The biggest thing I had was that we just do things differently.
[86:08]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[86:08]
Jim Foreman
And it's not. There's a thousand ways to do something. Right. And it doesn't mean that they're wrong. We just were, like, very strategic target assets. Nighttime, in and out. Not the daytime, remain over day stuff.
[86:25]
Jocko Willink
For that deployment in the daytime. Completely embedded with, like, conventional units in the Staying within like a little tiny city. You know, it's just, it's just a different, a different gig. But. Yeah, and that's the other thing is like how tightly controlled the city was and how we have Iraqi soldiers with us. There's Iraqi police out in the city, there's shakes out in the city. The battalion commanders and brigade commanders are meeting with the shakes. Like, you can't just go out there and kill people. You will. It just. You, you literally cannot do it.
[86:57]
Jim Foreman
You will get reported. I mean, they had to work in hospital.
[87:00]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, right.
[87:00]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, they had to work in hospital in Ramadi. So it's not like it was the wild, wild. It was the wild west, but it wasn't as the wild west where you could just do whatever nobody reports you.
[87:09]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, the, the amount of oversight that we had, like I said this, my commanding officer, the siege of Soda Commander, not to mention the entire conventional side. Like you can't roll into some battalion commander's battle space and just do what you want to do. Like it. There's, there's just no possible way that that could happen. So that's why I've never really worried too much. Like these, this craziness is all just like, okay, it's. We know the truth and, and that that is what it is. But it was awesome seeing you out there and it was awesome. Just, just anytime you link up with like some of you people, you know from back in the day and now, you can make things happen. It's very cool. And we, so we kept operating. And of course you kept operating too. You kept getting after it. You went back and, and now you're. What happens after that deployment? What's, what's next on this, on the.
[88:07]
Jim Foreman
Agenda was back to Afghanistan, running my platoon size guys and I did Afghanistan, then went back to Iraq for my second platoon size leadership role.
[88:21]
Jocko Willink
And that when you went back in 2008, that was like a, that was sort of the hard deployment for you.
[88:28]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, that was a rough one. Yeah.
[88:30]
Jocko Willink
And, and that op tempo was up and you're going against some pretty hardened targets by this time. You know the, the enemy, like we were joking about earlier, you know the enemy in 2003, 2004, there was a lot of low hanging fruit and just like we were learning, but they were learning too. And, and they were getting smarter, they were getting better. They started doing the vehicle born IEDs. The IED threat just got out of control in 2006, 2005, 2006, by 2007, 2008, now they're now they're countering our TTPS. This is when a lot of the Houseborn. IEDs. Like, it got gnarly for you guys on that deployment.
[89:10]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah, it was, it was a good deployment because we were, the guys were all on board with what we're doing, which is hitting hard dudes, not just guys that were just mid level management. We're going after the top dogs, making a difference. Those guys were suicide network, blowing up, you know, handicapped, putting bombs on handicapped kids and send them into a store and blowing it up, killing 90, 80 people. So those are the targets. We're going after those guys and they're well protected. So it wasn't just like, hey, they have one bodyguard. It was like they had 10, 15 bodyguards throughout to multiple buildings and stuff like that. So we planned pretty good and we were taking them out and they were like, hey, we're getting tired of these guys. They don't have so many. Let's just whittle them down and then they'll probably go home. And they tried to do that. Luckily we stayed with it and got the job done, but it was, it was a bloody one.
[90:12]
Jocko Willink
And you, you lost guys on that deployment?
[90:15]
Jim Foreman
Three guys? Yeah, three guys, two dogs. I think I had 17 Purple Hearts total. But I called, I had to get some reinforcements back from home to make up for some guys. And I had, you know, the whole command volunteering. I grabbed, I think I grabbed five guys that I knew. I go, okay, I just want, I know, I want to know them. I want to know who they are. I want to have fought with them before because I'd rather have 5 than 10 or 20 that I'm not sure about. Even though they're all good guys, I just want to be very selective on this one. Like you were in Ramadi.
[90:55]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, it's such an awesome statement about what seals are like. When you've got a unit that has taken heavy casualties and you need replacements and you have every guy putting their name on the list, that's like just, that's, that's what it's all about right there. You know, they want to go and they want to get in the fight, they want to avenge the brothers and they want to do the job and they want to help each other out. And that's just, this is freaking awesome to hear. How did, how are you doing? Like now you're just, I don't know, 10 deployments deep or something like that. What, what's your, how's your, like, personal life going at this point? Are you Married at this point. You got kids?
[91:37]
Jim Foreman
Married, three kids I had. Yeah.
[91:40]
Jocko Willink
That's what happens. We've been talking for an hour and a half and we didn't mention any of that. That's what happened.
[91:44]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[91:44]
Jocko Willink
Freaking team. Guys are married to the teams.
[91:47]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Yeah. Three kids and married. And we're doing good. And things start getting a little bit heavier after more and more deployments, and then I end up retiring in 2018, and then shortly after divorce and then managing the kids stuff.
[92:10]
Jocko Willink
But. But during this time period, like 2009, 2008, 2009, your. Your wife at the time is just solid. Gotten through it.
[92:18]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, Solid.
[92:20]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. There's something, you know, I know my wife, like when I was losing guys and. And my wife is going to the funerals, you know, and that is. And she's going to visit my wounded guys in the hospital. And I think. I think that's a huge reality check on the home front. Like, it's one thing to see. Oh, there's. There's people getting hurt or killed overseas and. But it's never, you know, it's not my, not my husband. Not. It's not happening to my husband or his team.
[92:52]
Jim Foreman
Right.
[92:52]
Jocko Willink
It's like now all of a sudden, oh, it is. It is happening to my husband's unit. And I think that was a huge reality check for my wife. And my wife, God bless her, like, she never asked me about anything. She's like, she didn't. I bet she didn't ask me three questions in my time that I was married with her about work. And probably two of them were like, are you going to be home this weekend or do you have to work? And I was like, I will. I'll be home or not. But you know what I mean? Like, my wife was never wanting to know about anything. She was like, you go, you know, like, I get it. You do your thing. But man, going to. Going to guys funerals was a definite reality check.
[93:39]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
[93:43]
Jocko Willink
Are you. So are you staying? You're. You're at this command now. 5, 7, 10, 11, 12 straight years @ this point.
[93:53]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[93:54]
Jocko Willink
How do you get any downtime?
[93:58]
Jim Foreman
Not really. That was one of my. Not complaints, but like, like, it's a good thing. You're at war and you're being used. Right. But after a while, it would be good to have like, hey, this month, just stay home, you know, just take care of your family and take care of yourself and show back up 30 days from now. But we couldn't. We didn't afford to do that. So we just had to keep going, but I think it burnt some guys.
[94:25]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. And are you. Now you're getting. You're obviously you're promoting, and at some point you take over selection. Is that right? Is that how you made Master Chief?
[94:35]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[94:36]
Jocko Willink
And how was it? I. I know that for me, I had a. I always feel like one of the luckiest things that I got was as an E5 Seal Team 1, I went into training cell, and like I said earlier, like, I taught everything I could. You know, every trip I could go on, I go on. Whether it was CQB at the time, cqb, CQC now, but mount land warfare comms, I thought I did. Ran the dive course. Like, everything that I could do is like, I'm in. And even teaching, we taught STT to the young officers. And so it was like, oh, now you're, like, sitting and you're watching and. And you teach it, and then you watch it, and then you teach it and you watch it and you do it. You're like, oh, let me show you how it's done. And I learned so much by being an instructor. Is that the same thing that you felt?
[95:28]
Jim Foreman
It was good because you're getting guys from different, you know, platoons basically, and everything's based off the basics. But there's also some idiosyncrasies that they do differently. Right. So now you're seeing multiple ways to just do something, right? And so you're like, okay, that's cool. I never saw it like that. As long as you're getting the job done, it doesn't matter. You're not just going, hey, this is my playbook, and this is what I do every time. And that sucks. You want to have, like, a couple plays in your playbook. So that was good. And then, like you said, like, you're seeing it done over and over and over again, and you just become that much better. You're more reactive. You could see where an issue is about to happen and be there or stop it before it happens. And then you just, like, introduce tune. You're, like, in flow state for some. Really, like, the toughest thing we do is for all of us seals is CQC Live fire. Right. Even with multiple entries, you know, you're trying not to enter on other people, but it happens all the time, so you have to be on your toes as a cadre.
[96:32]
Jocko Willink
And then you end up, you know, being. Being the CMC of. Of some elements.
[96:39]
Jim Foreman
Yep. Yeah.
[96:40]
Jocko Willink
And how's that leadership? It was good from A leadership perspective. Talk to us about leadership now that you're in charge of hundreds of people.
[96:49]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, so I liked that. My understanding of like a master chief CEO is like, they're gonna be probably like top five or top 10 shots, you know, that they're still bringing it. Not like they're sitting behind their desk, you know, with a gut and they're not doing anymore, you know, So I always thought, okay, that's how you should be. You should be like, you should.
[97:11]
Jocko Willink
I saw a T shirt the other guy, a guy had at the teams and said, no fat team guys. Yeah, I'm just. When you start talking about a team guy with a gut, I'm like, all right, I gotta break this up. So. Yes, that is not what you're supposed to be. No fat team guys.
[97:23]
Jim Foreman
Exactly. So.
[97:24]
Jocko Willink
And definitely no fat master chiefs. Come on.
[97:26]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I mean, you gotta, like, lead by example, right? Especially if you're pushing. Pushing the, you know, the mental toughness, the mental mindset, and then you're sitting back there, you know, not doing the training. So the other thing is, like, you gotta be out there doing the training. Like, so I can't be at a two week breaching course or two week sniper course, a two week shooting course. I could be there for two days, you know, and part of it is to see the new technology, like the snipers, because, you know, like, they're gonna come some requests to get gear, you know, it's going to be like thousands of dollars. And it's going. It could just be something, hey, we want everybody with new boots. And then, you know, usually it's the XO that, you know, run past the master chief. What do you think about this? I'm like, dude, these got new boots last week, whatever it is. But just like technology is like, hey, we already have GPSs, but tell me why we want these ones. I was like, okay, we want these ones because it does this, that, and this. Okay, well that sounds like for our lead jumpers and our recce guys. So. So get 10 of them instead of like 40 or 50 or whatever it is. So then you could make those calls. But if you don't know, and the worst thing is that you just deny it because you don't understand it because you're a dinosaur and you're like, hey, why do we need GPSs? I just used my compass, you know, that's how we did it, you know, so you have to be in the game, you have to be present. You have to just a little bit just even just walking around your team room just to see knowing the guys names is a huge difference. So like building those relationships, even a small bit is worth it.
[99:01]
Jocko Willink
And you also went to trade at for a while, right?
[99:04]
Jim Foreman
I did. I did trade at twice. Yeah.
[99:07]
Jocko Willink
And how do you like going to trade at?
[99:08]
Jim Foreman
I loved it. Yeah, it was good. It was good to see. Well, the first time I went down there, I. I noticed like, you know, and selection, we're seeing like some of the bases was getting dropped. And then when I went to trade, I go, okay, this is where it's at. It was like the one that. The shift, break, punch thing. The, you know, instead of just saying flank left.
[99:30]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[99:31]
Jim Foreman
Because the whole idea is like if I. If you tell me, hey, Jim, flank left. There's a lot of freedom for me.
[99:37]
Jocko Willink
You can figure it out.
[99:38]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. And the shift break punch was created. I understand why it was created was for safety. You know, come more control so nobody would get shot or there's less leadership in it. You know, like you're telling me to do something, but I had to shift along this line. And then when I crossed the line, it's break and then everybody shifts fire. But it's way too soon.
[100:01]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[100:01]
Jim Foreman
Like I'm not even. I want you still firing at that target until I get to this area. And then it was always choreographed to. I'd always punch or assault through. But if I get what if I get there, there's a river or, you know, I got some high ground. I got the perfect ground. I want you to assault through. So there's no decision making in that call. Shift, break, punch, whereas flank, that's all you decide when you get there. So that's when I came back to the west coast and talked to Tony, who was also at trade at 1. And I talked to him about changing that call back and he agreed. So that was. And the cool thing about Tony, he has like tons of influence. He's like the legend. Right? So. And that's. I went right for the juggler. I didn't try to tell like a CEO or a master chief to get this thing changed. I went to Tony, ground level. Yeah, Tony, do you agree? And we had a couple beers and at his house and he's like, yeah, man, you're right. Let's do it. And then I just left. I didn't have to do anything else. He made it happen on his end and it happened. So you know, talk. Having a guy like that with his respect. He had. And his status was. Was great.
[101:13]
Jocko Willink
Tony.
[101:15]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[101:17]
Jocko Willink
That's an So I was saying this earlier, like, I feel so lucky that I happened to go to training cell at Seal Team 1. And then my last tour was at trade at. And so like, I got to do the same thing again, which is like watch a platoon go through a training scenario and win, lose or draw, but you can watch what the leaders do. And then the next night a different platoon's going through the same thing. And it's all the success and failure is based on what the leaders do.
[101:45]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[101:45]
Jocko Willink
And so that just watching that and being from a detached position and being able to see what works and what doesn't work, such a blessing. And I feel super lucky that I was able to. To wrap up my career through there at some point. Obviously, 27 years, you decide you're gonna. You're gonna call it.
[102:04]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah.
[102:06]
Jocko Willink
What was the deciding factor? Was there a straw that broke the camel's back?
[102:09]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, a little bit. There's a lot of personal stuff in it. And just time to hang up the. The old boots. And then I did my final tour at trade again and that was cool to run the training department. And then I finally, before I retired, I came up with a SOP book just to talk about the basics, leadership. Like everybody at every level, you're a leader, you know, but what are you responsible for, you know, and was really tied into the platoon chief and the. The CO oic like that relationship, you know, because if that relationship is messed up, it's like, you know, it's a marriage. Right. It's like your parents fighting all the time. They have to. You have to have some common ground. And then also understand that, hey, the OIC does delve into the list of stuff and the NCO does dive into the higher end stuff. And there's like a mix of that. And you need to understand that you don't just draw a line Haster. You don't get. Go into this tactical stuff. No, he does. And same vice versa. So it was good to have that book out so people could understand what their roles and responsibilities were. And it wasn't like a strict thing. It was just like, hey, this is a guideline, but we need to have something put out, especially for the junior guys.
[103:32]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah. It's so often like, how can you hold somebody accountable for. For doing a certain task if they don't know what that task is exactly? And how can you expect for a leader to step up and, and lead a certain portion of an operation if they don't even know that they're supposed to step up and lead that thing, or how do you expect them to know that a. They shouldn't actually go and do this other thing. They should focus on that when you didn't tell them to do it. So roles and responsibility is. Is a huge way to mitigate a lot of problems. And like you said, this isn't roles and responsibilities written in stone with no leeway or flexibility at all. No, actually it's the opposite. And I used to tell guys, you got to know your job, your lanes, but you also got to know one above you and one below you. So, like, like you said earlier when you were a point man, if your machine gunner doesn't, it goes down, you need to be able to step up and take his role. And by the way, if your OIC is going to, you know, doesn't know which. Doesn't make a call and which. Which way you're supposed to move away from this contact. If he's not making a call, you. You're gonna have to make it. That's. That's what being able to step up and do it. And your oic, if your chief gets it, needs to be able to step down and, like, get out of that immediate firefight. So definitely there's something to clarify, you.
[104:44]
Jim Foreman
Mentioned on one of your podcasts and was right on the money. Like, if you're waiting to move up and but you're not training the guy below you, you ain't moving up.
[104:53]
Jocko Willink
Nope.
[104:54]
Jim Foreman
And you're going to be stuck in that position. You know, like the seals naturally mentor. You know, it's just like that big brother thing. They bring you in and they want you to learn, and there's a passion behind it. And guys, I think that's what makes the teams great is, like, there's huge mentorship stuff and guys want to give back. Even retired guys, like from Vietnam or whatever, they're always to hear a story from them. You know, I remember in buds, they brought an old crusty guy back. You. You might have known him. I forget. I don't know his name, but he was living on a sailboat.
[105:29]
Jocko Willink
Yep.
[105:30]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[105:30]
Jocko Willink
Butch McIntyre.
[105:31]
Jim Foreman
Yes. So he came to the island during third phase, and he told us some stories about Vietnam and, like, how he made a mistake once, like on an ambush. On his first one, he was a young guy, and it was like a hasty ambush where he cut backwards, you know, and he went way so deep that the enemy couldn't see him, but then he couldn't see the enemy. So the firefight happens. He's like, I don't know what happened, you know, so on his next one, he learned from that, you know, and it was, like, kind of powerful to understand that. Like, hey, you can't just hide weights because you're scared.
[106:06]
Echo Charles
Right.
[106:07]
Jim Foreman
Because it's your first thing you're doing. Right. And you should be scared, but you also have to hang it out there a little bit. You have to see the target area, you know?
[106:16]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[106:17]
Jim Foreman
And so you explained the next one way better. But, like, for us to hear that, it's like, okay, so these made mistakes. And he's learning. He's telling us this, you know, so in training, we make sure we can see the trail when we tuck it in, you know, for a hasty ambush.
[106:32]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, those. Those lessons getting passed down and. And like you said, the. The best lessons. And even you take that butch telling you a. A story. He didn't tell you about when he was great. He didn't tell you about when he was awesome. He didn't tell you about when he kicked ass. He tells you the main story that he wants you to know is when he screwed up.
[106:50]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[106:51]
Jocko Willink
And that's where so many lessons get learned. And it also sticks in your memory.
[106:55]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[106:58]
Jocko Willink
So you make the decision to retire.
[106:59]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[107:00]
Jocko Willink
And you're wrapping up. What, did you have a plan for what you're going to do when you retire?
[107:05]
Jim Foreman
No, it came quick, like, and that kind of shocked me. So retirement happened. I didn't really have a plan. And then the biggest thing for guys, I think, for me at least, was like, my purpose was, like, the teams and the mission, and then that goes away, and then you're like, kind of like, what the hell? You know, you don't have a purpose. I didn't really understand at the time, and I started picking. I still have, like, a bunch of jobs I'm doing. But you're trying to, like, recreate that purpose you had, and you can't. There's no way, so understanding that, that, like, okay, so take some time. Take care of yourself and do things that you like. Because I always. Rogering up for everything. Hey, can you do this? Can you do that? I was like, yeah, I'll do it. I'll do.
[107:48]
Jocko Willink
Wait, this was on the civilian side, people asking you to do stuff?
[107:50]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, whether it's like, running a shooting course or talking about something or anything, you know, he can come out this weekend to teach this shooting course, you know, saying yes to everything, just to have some semblance of a purpose.
[108:09]
Jocko Willink
Did you take any downtime at all?
[108:11]
Jim Foreman
No. Yeah, that was. And I was going through a divorce at that time too, so it was like hard to, you know, financially to do anything other than keep working.
[108:23]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I retired on a Friday and like Monday I was talking to a client about leadership. Like, literally I took the weekend off kind of because I had to prep, so. Yeah, you're still working just like non stop. Probably not the best move in the world. Was there anything that like, really helped you go through the transition?
[108:46]
Jim Foreman
Oh, yeah. I'll tell you. Like, I got tied in with a therapist right before I retired and it was art therapy. And I gotta show you some paintings. So now that helped to actually process things even. I even painted an op, you know, that was significant. And being able to do every brush stroke. And it took four years to do this painting. I'll show it to you later. But it was significant because, like the op, I kept going, why did they do this? Why did they fucking do this? You know? And then as I was painting, okay, this is uniform. We were, oh, I remember they said this. I remember that guy said that. I remember I told him to do this. And then by the time I was done with the painting, I was like, oh, I had some accountability on this thing. You know, I can't just blame everybody because they didn't do what I said. Why didn't they do what I said? Because of these other situations that, you know, and they're holding back from me or something like that. But anyways, it made me realize that I had a huge amount of accountability for what happened. And I, you know, could we compartmentalize super well, like almost too well?
[109:58]
Jocko Willink
Yeah.
[109:59]
Jim Foreman
And we have to, because if you think about stuff too long, you. You melt.
[110:04]
Jocko Willink
Well, that's the. The war doesn't stop.
[110:07]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[110:08]
Jocko Willink
You, you have someone wounded, you have someone killed, you still have to go and do your missions.
[110:14]
Echo Charles
Right.
[110:15]
Jocko Willink
And that's just the way it is. And so what you do is like you said, you compartmentalize right now. Well, at some point, at some point you have to uncompartmentalize and process that. It sounds like painting was really helpful for you.
[110:28]
Jim Foreman
That was one way. Yeah. And also just giving time, like forgiveness of yourself, you know, that's one thing that I think we are hard on ourselves, all of us, because we want to do the best, be the best and all that stuff. And you gotta like, recognize like, okay, I made my mistake for sure. Yeah.
[110:46]
Jocko Willink
And I always look at. I've. I've been talking this about this because sometimes, you know, the book, the. The book title is extreme ownership. And so that means, you know, oh, well, it's my fault. And sometimes people, they take that to the point of it's my fault, and therefore I need to be punished over and over and over again and, and never forgiven. Well, just like, if, you know, if I work for you and I screw something up, look, if it's. Obviously, if it's some egregious thing and you get rid of me, okay. But if it's something that I screw up and it was bad and you can't forgive me, we shouldn't. I should just leave anyways, right? If you can't be like, dude, I. I get it. Like, I know what you were thinking. I know, you know, made him. Made a mistake. I know it's not going to happen again. I'm not going to hold this against you, because if you hold it against me, we're going to. I just. It's not going to work. You know, if you, If. If your wife does something or if you do something to your wife and she can't forgive you, it ain't going to work.
[111:45]
Jim Foreman
It's over. Yeah.
[111:46]
Jocko Willink
And it's the same thing with ourselves. If you can't say, oh, yeah, here's what I did. This was my intent. I didn't intend for this bad thing to happen, but it certainly is something I did. I'm going to learn from it and I'm going to forgive myself and move on. At some point, you have to do that. If you don't do that, I don't. If you don't take ownership of it and then say, yep, this was on me. My intent was not that, but this is what happened. It's my fault. And now I have to forgive myself so I can carry on and make this relationship that I have with my own brain, function properly. So it sounds like that's kind of the process that you went through.
[112:23]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah. And it's tough because, like, you don't want some things. You. Your mind can recreate a story and have a new story. That didn't happen. You know, I mean, if you think about. If you say it enough and say, enough, it never happened, but it did, you know, so you have to, like that painting and doing every brushstroke, I realized, oh, I did say that, and I said this, and. And then it's like, okay. And then there's like, forgiveness of what happened to yourself. And it wasn't just like, you know, all one person, all me or whatever. There's a multitude of reasons, but to have to Recognize that there was also you involved. Like, myself involved was key for me.
[113:03]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, I. I believe that that's a. I think that's actually one of the biggest remedies. Right. And I. I think that, you know, when I. When that whole situation happened with me, with the blue on blue, I was sitting in my office in the talk, and my skipper is. He's on the ground. Like, he had flown out to do, like, a debrief and really find out, like, okay, who's going to go down for this? And, you know, so I'm sitting there and I'm thinking that too. Like, who's going down for this? And there's something that was. I just. It was bothering me. Like, there was so I couldn't point my finger at that guy and say, yep, it was his fault, or, yep, it was his fault. Yep, it was his fault. I just couldn't do it. And I'm trying to, believe me, my ego and my freaking, you know, personal wanting to. To not be wrong. All those guys were in my head like, well, yeah, you could blame this guy. That guy shouldn't have maneuvered over there. That guy should have sent the report on the radio.
[114:02]
Echo Charles
That guy.
[114:02]
Jocko Willink
Like, there was a. A bunch of that. But at the same time, there was a whole part of my soul that was like, no, no, not his fault. Not his fault. And it wasn't. I was like. I was like, why can't I blame anybody else? What is wrong? I was like, oh, you idiot, because you're the freaking guy in charge. This is your fault. This is your fault. And that. That was like, okay, cool, now I'm okay with it. And, you know, by okay, I mean, like, okay. I felt okay finally blaming someone because everything else was just an excuse, right? It really was just an excuse. And I think that if you go through life and you're continuing to look to other people at blame, that little excuse part of your mind will overpower and it'll just rot you. And. But I think if you can go, okay, here's where I am culpable. Here's the mistakes that I made. Here's how I'll prevent them from happening again. And I think that's the way out of it. I think that's the way to move forward in life.
[114:59]
Jim Foreman
Right?
[115:00]
Jocko Willink
And it sounds like that's exactly what you did, you know?
[115:02]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. Yeah. The painting thing was key. Now, you guys probably heard of C4 Foundation?
[115:07]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[115:08]
Jim Foreman
So I have recently, like, painted them something a scene or whatever that's relative to seals and Then they auction it and do this. Like, who? It's just like. Because I don't paint unless somebody say, hey, I need this because I'm so busy. And, hey, you need a painting. I'll paint something, you know, and it's good and I'm getting better and all that stuff. And I'll show you the last one I did. It's pretty cool. It's just like a. A night sitting in water, like, reflecting, like, after a battle. Like, he's like, you know, but it's what we do. And it's part of that thing about you said, have I ever had a break? It's like, I don't think any of us had a break. And even if you're doing training, you're still not taking a break. You're not fighting the war anymore, but you're not taking a break. And even operationally, like, that painting really talks about, like, hey, after you just did something like an op that you still. You have to take, like, at least five minutes and you just shut your door to your room and just go, okay. And that's maybe all you get is three to four minutes. But you need that, you know, just to process what just happened and then put it in the carpet. Compartmentalize, and then move on. But that little bit, you need it. And I didn't realize how much we needed those little tiny things.
[116:23]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. You know Gardner, right? Jason Gardner.
[116:25]
Jim Foreman
Oh, yeah.
[116:26]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. So Jason, when he retired, at his. At his retirement speech, he talked about the NSW Pain train.
[116:35]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[116:35]
Jocko Willink
And it was like, I never, you know, he just was describing his career, and it's just the end, which is Naval Special Warfare. The NSW Pain Train, it's gonna keep going, and, like, you're on it and you're part of it, and you. You can't get these. He would, like, describe some part of his career and be like. And the NSW Pain train kept moving, and it's like. He described some other part of the NSW Pain train. And he's on that freaking train, and you can't get off. And you just, like, are. I mean, I guess you can get off, but it's a weird thing. It's like a. You know, you could go to. There's jobs that you can go that you can kind of get off of it. But most guys aren't. Most guys, they're just on that NSW pain train. You're lucky if you get three, four minutes. And that's what I always felt like, okay, you got done with this operation, we're doing another one and you know, for me it was like, oh, I got these guys coming out of the field. Cool. There's still, there's still eight guys in the field over here. And you're. And they're in a gunfight, by the way. And it's like there was constant, constant, constant. And so. And then coming home when I took over trade at. I remember go. I remember at trade at watching guys like when I right got home watching like a new guy stand in the middle of the street at Salk. And I would get like an actual knot in my stomach and, and go over and be like, what the are you doing? Like, what the you doing out here? Like you're gonna get killed and. Because I really felt like he was gonna get killed. And you're just carrying that. And the NSW pain train just keeps rolling.
[118:05]
Jim Foreman
Yep.
[118:06]
Jocko Willink
Until you get out that paintbrush. Echo, Charles.
[118:08]
Jim Foreman
Yes, sir.
[118:09]
Jocko Willink
So you're still painting.
[118:11]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[118:12]
Jocko Willink
And. And by the way, shout out to the C4 Foundation. Awesome organization. Charles Keating. C4. Charles Keating IV. His dad put together this organization after. After Chuck was killed. Actually, speaking of which, supposed to have Big Dave on the podcast at some point. I'll need to get that re resumed. But what they have is they have an awesome facility in Southern California and it's like a ranch. It's the C4 ranch. And it has just a beautiful place where. Where guys can go with their families and they can go and just freaking decompress. The thing that you just said of like reflect.
[118:53]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[118:54]
Jocko Willink
And get off that NSW pain train for three, four days with their family.
[118:59]
Jim Foreman
The cool thing about C4 is like they take care of the family when it's needed most at the beginning. Like when you're in E5, your wife, your kids, you not. Because a lot of foundations they take. They try to take care of you after, you know, at the end of your career and you're already like, I hate to say broken, but you're kind of like broken. Right. You're already going through a divorce. Things are not good. And then they try to help you out there. But C4, they take care of you at the beginning. They don't go, oh, you have to be at least a Chief or a E5, E6 to get out there. No, anybody could go out there. And then they, they run classes and seminars and stuff like that. We are actually starting art classes with them.
[119:42]
Jocko Willink
Sweet.
[119:42]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. So out there. So we're going to be doing one coming up here pretty soon.
[119:47]
Jocko Willink
Were you doing art in high school? You didn't mention it.
[119:50]
Jim Foreman
My parents were artists.
[119:51]
Jocko Willink
Okay.
[119:52]
Jim Foreman
And I didn't do formal classes. I think I did one. And I like to paint, you know, and I did some before I joined the Navy, but that, you know, art therapy. You do a painting. And my first one was like, this ocean. It was like this, like a tidal wave coming down, you know, in like a storm.
[120:12]
Jocko Willink
And the freaking psychologist was like, okay, bro.
[120:14]
Jim Foreman
She's like. She's like, are you gonna put me. You gonna put any bright colors in there? You know, I'll show it to you later. But that. I was like, wow, that's pretty damn good. You know, and then it's. Then it was the scene, you know, that scene was like a big one for me because it was basically me painting something I didn't do. Like, I never said goodbye to those guys. So in the painting, it's me saying goodbye to them, you know, because we had to go deal with a threat, you know, so it was good to paint something like I didn't have the opportunity to do, but it was, like, closure for that. So those things. So I kind of had that. I almost, like, made. Created something that, although I didn't do, I did in the painting, you know.
[120:56]
Jocko Willink
That's awesome.
[120:57]
Jim Foreman
Helped me process all that stuff.
[120:59]
Jocko Willink
Has that painting already been auctioned?
[121:01]
Jim Foreman
No, that one's not.
[121:02]
Jocko Willink
Because.
[121:03]
Jim Foreman
No. Just because it has the. The faces and stuff like that. It wouldn't be respectful for the. The families, I don't think.
[121:11]
Jocko Willink
So. What's your. What's your. Let's get to your current activities. What do you got going on right now?
[121:16]
Jim Foreman
So my primary job is. Is a tactical gear company called Pharaoh Concepts. So they are good to go. They very innovative. And you. You wonder, like, oh, how many times can you reinvent a plate carrier, you know, backpack? But they do. They got some. The good stuff out there.
[121:34]
Jocko Willink
Every team guy can reinvent that thing. Every single guy.
[121:36]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. He's like, sewing into the. The paraloft, you know. But they got some awesome gear. So I love, you know, showing that gear to team guys, operators, Marines, army. So we're starting to break out pretty good just because we got good stuff and they. They take input very well. Meaning, like, if I go to them, I go, hey, we're looking at making some AW gunner kit that we need. As long as there's enough people that are into it and I think it's like something that we need to create, they'll create it. And sometimes they hand me back a prototype within a week. So it's a pretty good process. They got going on.
[122:15]
Jocko Willink
And what's your role there?
[122:17]
Jim Foreman
I'm like the government sales guy.
[122:20]
Jocko Willink
Got it.
[122:21]
Jim Foreman
So then they were just doing really good just by having, you know, people clicking the stuff online and they had government sales, but they didn't really have a big process for it. So I came in to help them out with that.
[122:32]
Jocko Willink
Okay, that's check one. What else we got?
[122:34]
Jim Foreman
One. I got my own company, Actions on Consulting, which is like leadership and also shooting and things like that. And then I work for another company, Active Crisis, which is a bigger company and they do everything. So I'm a part owner of that company. And anything from training vehicle, tactical driving, tactical shooting, CQC to red teaming certain things to testing security, making suggestions for security solutions, all that stuff. So that's the bigger company.
[123:09]
Jocko Willink
And I saw that you had Colin Kilrain as part of that.
[123:12]
Jim Foreman
Colin is part of us. Yeah. Yeah, he's a great, great add on.
[123:16]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, he's freaking just awesome.
[123:20]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[123:20]
Jocko Willink
There's another guy supposed to have one. I gotta hit him up. Yeah, he was, he was. He's just like. When I tell. I've. I talk about Jiu Jitsu a lot. Echo Charles sometimes, but one time back in the day, I was talking to Hicks and Gracie, and Hicks and Gracie was like, yeah, you know, when I, when I was training in the late 80s here in Torrance, California, in the garage, the, the legendary Gracie garage, he was like, yeah, there was this one big Navy SEAL wrestler and, and he said we would have wars. And Hicks and Gracie is like the, the, the best fighter in the Gracie family, kind of universally accepted. And that big wrestler, that big Navy SEAL wrestler was Colin Kilray.
[124:14]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[124:14]
Jocko Willink
Who wrestled at Lehigh and like started wrestling his sophomore year in high school and became, you know, like a champion wrestler. He's just a stud and he's an awesome guy. I mean, look, do we give a lot of credit just for being a good wrestler? Yes, we do. But he's also just a freaking great guy. So that's, that's Active crisis consulting and then yours is Actions on Consulting.
[124:39]
Jim Foreman
Right.
[124:39]
Jocko Willink
And so what's the difference between those two?
[124:41]
Jim Foreman
Mine's just smaller. Just me, you know, and I had started that when I got out just to have something to do and teach, you know, shooting skills and stuff like that. Now act of Crisis is just a big bigger company that got it part owner of and we're starting to break out with bigger contracts and things like that. And it's like funner because, like, I don't have to do all the legwork defining, you know, a facility to host 20 guys that want to do breaching, shooting, you know, all that stuff. We have people to do that.
[125:09]
Jocko Willink
Nice. What have you noticed on, like, the. They're getting us so much into CTE right now with, like, breaching, and now they're saying, like, every time you did a breach, every time you shot a Carl Gustav, every time you hucked, a flash or a crash grenade, like, that has an impact.
[125:25]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[125:26]
Jocko Willink
Are you feeling any of that?
[125:27]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, I think. I think the. The thing is that it's like that shock wave, right? So, like, we could. It was like, hey, if it doesn't see you, or if I don't see it, don't see me, and I'm just, like, six feet away, cracking or, you know, breach off, you still get that shock wave. And then that shock wave is what's guys up. So, like, when they said they didn't, they don't know if you have it, but if you die and they look, you'll have it, you know, So a lot of it, they say, hey, every team guy has it.
[125:57]
Jocko Willink
Did Timmy Farrell put you through stt?
[126:00]
Jim Foreman
He was there, but he did not.
[126:02]
Jocko Willink
Okay, so he died, unfortunately. But Timmy Farrell. We were doing claymores, and I am not kidding. We were like a backpack and a small depression in the earth away from claymores, clacking them off. Yeah, like, it was nuts. Like, if I was a new guy, I was. Didn't even have my bird yet. But looking back, I'm like, what the were we doing? Like, that is crazy. And I guess he was trying to prove to us that, you know, like, there's a safe distance and you can probably close in on that a little bit. But, yeah, the. The seeing what everyone's saying about the CTE right now and how those shock waves. I remember, watch. I'm, like, up on the wall when Baghdad. And I'm looking at my breacher, you know, some. The assault force commander. So I'm, like, on the wall, looking. On the ladder, looking in, letting, you know, like, observing and make sure. And I see my breach. He was going over, and he gets the preacher on the wall, and I seem like trying to back away, and he gets. There's, like, something in the way, and I'm watching him, and also the light comes on in the house, and I'm like, oh, this sucks. And he just. My breacher, he sees it too, and so he just lays down, and I'm like, oh, this is gonna suck. And I hear him turning steel. Boom. I I duck down behind the wall. Freaking goes everywhere there. I jump over, I start running. I just like, like walk by him and I look at him and he is freaking rocked. Yeah, but like, that's not that uncommon to have to concuss the out of yourself. And guess what he was doing two days later? Another breach on another door. So scary stuff, but you're still out there just teaching breaching. Let's go.
[127:50]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, well, they didn't do a baseline until we had a hbid go off, you know, and it killed a guy, buried a bunch of other guys. And then they start. That was like in 2008. And so then they started to do like, baseline, like, okay, we should probably do something like that in case. So at least we have something to go off of. Like, if something happens, we could say, okay, this is you two years ago. Now you're down here. But they didn't do a baseline until some major stuff was happening, which I'm glad they did.
[128:21]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, no, I think they're definitely taking better care of the guys now and. And the families as well. Like, dude, I mentioned my wife not asking me about anything. Not only that, but she didn't meet any other. Like, she wasn't. She had a couple team guy wives that she was friends with, but there was no. There were no potluck supper she was going to. Nothing like that. Back in the day, it was. You're kind of on your own. And they're super supportive now. Way more supportive, which is. Which is good to see. So we got Feral Concepts, and they're making all kinds of tactical gear. We got active crisis consulting and. And that's activecrisis.com and Feral Concepts. What does feral mean?
[129:02]
Jim Foreman
Pharaoh. So that's just the name that they came up with. So this is interesting. So they. This came up. They started making gear in their garage for like, paintballers and airsofters. And then it became popular, and then they just took off from there. And then it went to the tactical side. But I don't. It was just.
[129:22]
Jocko Willink
Just the name. Yeah, just so feralconcepts.com activecrisis.com and then yours is. Is actually Jim Foreman leadership dot com.
[129:32]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. So that's. That's new. I just got that website gone. So it was. It is actions on consulting. And then Jim Foreman leadership ties into that.
[129:41]
Jocko Willink
Check. You're writing a book.
[129:44]
Jim Foreman
I am.
[129:45]
Jocko Willink
We talking about that.
[129:46]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[129:46]
Jocko Willink
So I seen the draft. It's great. You're, you know, gonna continue to pound on that thing and. And get it dialed in what, what made you decide that that was something you wanted to do?
[129:58]
Jim Foreman
So I do leadership talks and somebody came to me goes, hey, you know, we would love to have a book. And if you, if you're going to be teaching leadership, you probably should have something, you know, I go, they said that last year. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. So I started doing a book. And the book is not like a whole lot of war stories. It's more like I could talk about a couple of them just for mental stuff, the mental drive that you need to have for certain things, right. And how we think. So there's, and there's a lot of lessons learned. Like, hey, yeah, I missed this in one of my leadership roles and this is what happened. Or I couldn't get this passed. And this as, you know, applies big time in civilian corporations. Like I couldn't get this thing going. And then, and I went to all my department heads and they agreed with me. But then a week later they disagree with me. So somebody's influencing them, you know, and so I'd have to do some homework and I find out who that is. And it's probably some junior guy that's super influential and very well respected. And okay, that's just like with Tony, instead of going to the top dogs, I got to go to Tony. Tony's actually the top dog, right, so, but I don't go to the, the, you know, the structure top dog. I go to the guy that's the most influential that could get things done. And that was Tony. For that, for this other thing it was ended up being this guy at trader that was E5 that was big into fighting, you know, like MMA. And once I talked to him and he agreed that was done. Next, you know, the, the department heads agreed. Two weeks later I got that. That was for the SOP book.
[131:42]
Jocko Willink
Got it.
[131:43]
Jim Foreman
And then I could get that because I was like, man, I'm retiring pretty quick, I gotta get this thing going. I can't, you know, just agree with everybody. I gotta have some stuff standard and I need this guy on board. So a lot of things like that, like corporations don't understand sometimes that like, hey, it's not just your department heads. You need to find your key influencers and sometimes they may be a counter influencer that's against you. And then, so if you can, if you, you don't need to fire that guy. If you could turn him to be.
[132:11]
Jocko Willink
On your side, that's your best move.
[132:13]
Jim Foreman
You are done. It's like, you gotta play chess you know, and. And you want to understand people and also help them understand you and what you're trying to do. And if they agree with it, then you're. They're on board and you're moving forward.
[132:25]
Jocko Willink
Check. Well, the draft that I looked at, I'm. I'm sure once that thing's done, we'll have you back on here and go through all these leadership principles and some of those stories in a little bit more detail, because even the draft that I read is freaking. It's great, but I don't want to spoiler. Is that what we're doing over here? We don't want to be spoiler, but we'll. We'll move that thing along. I think it's going to be. Going to be epic. So does that kind of get us up to speed?
[132:49]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, that's it.
[132:49]
Jocko Willink
We're. We're getting there. People can find you. Where can people find you? So you got Jim Foreman, leadership.com Y. You're on Facebook @JF Foreman, and then you're on Instagram at Actions on Consulting.
[133:05]
Jim Foreman
That's right.
[133:06]
Jocko Willink
So if people are looking for you, they want to find you. That's where you're at these days.
[133:10]
Jim Foreman
That's it.
[133:10]
Jocko Willink
Getting after it. Echo. Charles, you got any questions?
[133:13]
Echo Charles
Yes, I do. Well, rewind a little bit. We're talking about sniper school.
[133:18]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[133:18]
Echo Charles
You said something about a pool table. Somebody running across a pool table. What does that mean?
[133:23]
Jim Foreman
So out in Ireland especially, Kolinga is flat. So it's, like, flat like a pool table?
[133:29]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[133:29]
Jim Foreman
So when you get people looking for you and you get, like, a couple bushes, you're, like, hiding behind, like, weeds. Weeds, you know, and you got a ghillie suit, of course. And you're trying, like, not move too quickly because movement, people pick up. So you're, like, inching around like an inch worm, trying to find some. Something to hide behind. And so when that one guy stood up and ran across that pool table.
[133:52]
Echo Charles
Six three, by the way.
[133:53]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, six three. That was super noticeable. And it was, like, so egregious that they didn't even say sniper at your feet, because I. Okay, he's not gonna get. He must have. Did. Maybe I'll get a set. If I take the hit for him. I'll get a 7. I want a 10, but I'll get a 7. I still get Honor man for sniper school. And no, it was, like, zero. Like, I ate it for him.
[134:16]
Echo Charles
So the pool table is essentially like a known feature or what? Like a slang term if.
[134:21]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, just Mean completely flat.
[134:23]
Echo Charles
No cover, no concealer, man.
[134:26]
Jocko Willink
No cover or conceal. Look at echo. Tactical echo. Charles has entered the chat and I like it.
[134:31]
Echo Charles
So his running across the pool table is yet a compounding violation of what the sniper.
[134:38]
Jim Foreman
Right. Like you never, you never stand up ever, unless you get busted or you're done. And you never run because like number one movement, they pick up. And if everything is flat and somebody stands up, it's like, oh, what's that guy doing?
[134:52]
Echo Charles
Okay, so you for damn sure don't run across the pool and then you're running.
[134:55]
Jim Foreman
You're just doing everything wrong.
[134:57]
Echo Charles
Okay, so the pool table is just a big flat in the clear scenario.
[135:00]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah, Just an analogy. Exposed terrain.
[135:05]
Echo Charles
Real quick, back to the art therapy. What's the pro like, what's the prompt? What does the therapist ask you to do?
[135:13]
Jim Foreman
So it's kind of cool. Sometimes you don't have to paint. Like sometimes I go to them. You just talk, you know, and they may run you through a couple of things. They may be like an anger thing where they just got like this 8 by 8 canvas and you just like throwing paint on there.
[135:31]
Jocko Willink
You know, I might be able to pull that one off.
[135:32]
Echo Charles
Yeah, I think you could.
[135:34]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, that would be pretty interesting. It'd probably be black and red, right? Two colors. So. And it's just like, you know, getting things out, you know, like things that you've been holding.
[135:48]
Echo Charles
Like, what will the. But what will the therapist like say? Will they be like, oh, here's your eight by eight painting. Do something? Or like what is like.
[135:57]
Jim Foreman
Most likely that therapist was talking to the person about something and they're like, okay, let's get it out there. And. Or for, for me, it's like, you know, I was talking about this one thing and she goes, okay, well why don't you paint that? You know, and then it's like, it's almost what you're doing is you're just releasing things. You know, you're. And there's so many things that we do that you can't do all. Like talking to somebody. Here's the thing, like talking to somebody, it's really tough because you don't know if you trust them. You don't know. Like if you could say or thing. But painting something, it's like you don't have to say anything. You're just painting and you don't have to have an explanation for anything. Anything. And it could be even abstract or just like, like I was saying, just throwing paint on there. But it means something to You. You know, it's like, okay, yeah, I know what that means. All that splatters and stuff means something to me. But you don't have to say it, you know, because some things you may not want to say ever, you know, but the. Through the art stuff, you get it out. Yeah.
[136:58]
Echo Charles
That always felt like a mystery to me. Why? Stuff that can go on in your head, like, in turn and morph and mutate into, like, something toxic, versus if you get it out in whatever way.
[137:11]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[137:11]
Echo Charles
Where it can act, like, make it better. Like, why it. Like, why is. Do we fill in gaps in there or something? Like. And then when it comes out, it's kind of like you can't really fill in the gaps because there it is. It's more. I don't know, tangibles.
[137:23]
Jocko Willink
I think it gets organized somehow.
[137:25]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I think.
[137:27]
Echo Charles
Oh, yeah.
[137:27]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. I think you're constantly feeling. Filling in the gaps, whether it's accurate or not, you know, because you're struggling with trying to identify it or process it. And then, you know, if you can actually talk about it or if a therap, a good trained therapist could actually pull it out of you, because you may not even. It may be all subconscious, and you may not understand why you're not sleeping or whatever. And if they could get that out, that's one thing. But if. Sometimes you may know a little bit about it and then pain. Like, for me, that painting took four years to do. You know, I even had it in my bed. I took it home because, like, okay, I can't come in that much, so I'm just gonna take it home. And I had it in my bedroom. And it was not a good thing to do because every night I looked at it and stared at, like, the faces. And then when I woke up, I stared at the face. So it was depressing, you know, So I had to eventually move it into another room where I just paint it. And then I would just go there to directly paint instead of just staring at it, because that was like, rough to stare at. Like, you know, death, basically.
[138:29]
Jocko Willink
Your friends.
[138:29]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[138:32]
Echo Charles
But useful. Useful.
[138:34]
Jim Foreman
Very.
[138:34]
Echo Charles
Process.
[138:35]
Jim Foreman
Yeah. And everybody. Some people do it in woodworking, you know, like, just, like, doing a project.
[138:40]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[138:41]
Jim Foreman
Like, it's like meditating, you know, like, you're going through. You could actually think even, like, I. I can't run now because I got bad knee. But, like, just. Even. Just when I used to run, I just, like, okay. I could think about things. Yeah. It was just like meditating.
[138:55]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[138:56]
Jocko Willink
Interesting. I've always, like, What I kind of assembled in my head was like, when I lost guys, I would. I would always end up seeming to do, like, the eulogy.
[139:09]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[139:10]
Jocko Willink
And so that means. And it got to the point where I would just, like, when someone died, I would start writing the eulogy because I would. I know that I was going to get asked to do it, but, man, like, all of a sudden, you have to process everything. You have to process their life, your feelings, the impact, the. The sadness, the anger. You had to, like, put it all on paper. And I found that over time, I was like, well, it helps. Like, I think that. And then you have to get up and, like, say words. And so I thought that. That this reminds me of, like, the same thing. Like, you're going through this. You're writing down, like, this. This is. You're thinking through everything, and you're putting it on paper. And as you pointed out, echo, it's like a release. But for me, it also, like, organizes, like, the feelings that you have and the emotions that you have. And you're like, okay, now I'm. Now I can see them. And kind of like when you're painting, you can see what those emotions are.
[140:03]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[140:06]
Jocko Willink
Very. It's. I think you gotta have some kind of release. I really do.
[140:09]
Echo Charles
Yeah. Yeah, it feels okay. So this might be an oddball analogy. So when I was, like, I don't know, 12 years old, I. Before I knew the gun safety rules, I had a BB gun and I shot my hand. So the BB gun got stuck between all the tendons in my hand. And then for days, they were trying to get it out. Right. With surgery or whatever, but just, you know, the kind of. What do you call. It's a certain kind of surgery that they don't, like, put you under nothing. They just kind of dig in there. They couldn't.
[140:37]
Jim Foreman
Localized.
[140:38]
Echo Charles
Yeah. So for days, I was like, man, this BB is in here basically haunting me, right? My hand. Like, I don't know what it. It's almost like it had a personality of its own at this point because it didn't want to come out. You know, it was hiding somewhere in there. Meanwhile, the X ray, you see it, but you're like, how can we find this dang thing? You know? So finally they put me on under, like, I don't know, a week or two later, and they take it out, and when I wake up, they're like, oh, yeah, you want to see the bb? Then I'm like, yeah, so I see the B, man. I'm like, oh, that's that. That was in my hand the whole time. But it kind of like things started to kind of make sense a little bit, you know, it's kind of like you can identify that mysterious monster that was inside, just tormenting you from the darkness, you know, and then now it's kind of out and you're like, oh, that's what it was.
[141:23]
Jocko Willink
Still.
[141:23]
Echo Charles
I'm still injured, keep in mind. But I see it now and I. It's so it starts to make sense in that way, you know, and it's almost like that kind of happens.
[141:30]
Jim Foreman
Echo, you are one deep. That was good.
[141:35]
Jocko Willink
And then you can heal.
[141:36]
Echo Charles
And then you can heal. Man, look, healed up, good to go.
[141:39]
Jim Foreman
That was a good analogy there.
[141:41]
Jocko Willink
Go, man. Anything else, Echo? Charles?
[141:43]
Echo Charles
No. Good to meet you, sir.
[141:44]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, you too, gm. Any. Any closing thoughts?
[141:47]
Jim Foreman
No, man, I appreciate getting on here.
[141:49]
Jocko Willink
Right on, right on. Well, thanks for coming out. Thanks for sharing your lessons, learned your experiences. I'm looking forward. Forward to the book. It's going to be awesome. And, and most important, thanks. For 27 years, always @ the front, always training for or fighting the war. 27 years of service and sacrifice, carrying the weight of the nation, carrying the weight of the teams. Much appreciated, bro. It's an honor to serve with you.
[142:19]
Jim Foreman
Yeah, you too, bro. Thanks.
[142:22]
Jocko Willink
And with that, Jim Foreman has left the building and clearly got a lot of work to do. We all do. You know what I'm saying? The NSW pain train rolls on and you got to get. You're either on the train or you're off the train.
[142:41]
Echo Charles
Yeah, that's.
[142:42]
Jocko Willink
But even when you get off the NSW pain train, life is rolling on and you got to stay in the game. You got to stay on the train. You got to keep getting after it. You got to keep pushing to get better leadership knowledge, mental, physical, psychological fitness. Maybe you got to break out a paintbrush, you know what I'm saying? By the way, he showed us some paintings afterwards, dude.
[143:07]
Echo Charles
Good.
[143:08]
Jocko Willink
Those things are not just good. Those. Those paintings are sick.
[143:12]
Echo Charles
Yeah. And you gotta.
[143:13]
Jocko Willink
As soon as he showed the wave. Yeah, I was like, oh, this is gonna. This is go. This is moving in the right direction.
[143:18]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[143:19]
Jocko Willink
Because let's face it, you know, we could be having. We could be not talking about this right now.
[143:24]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[143:25]
Jocko Willink
Like painting. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Good outlet. Yeah. But no, he's painting some legit.
[143:30]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[143:31]
Jocko Willink
I actually kind of want that wave hanging on my wall.
[143:34]
Echo Charles
Yeah. And it's.
[143:35]
Jocko Willink
Make him an offer on that bad boy.
[143:37]
Echo Charles
All right. Yeah.
[143:38]
Jocko Willink
For a legitimate Kind of looks like, you know, the, the, the Japanese tsunami type thing.
[143:43]
Echo Charles
Right.
[143:43]
Jocko Willink
It looks kind of like that, but like way more or less.
[143:47]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[143:47]
Jocko Willink
And cool and realistic.
[143:48]
Echo Charles
Yeah, exactly. More realistic. It's a different style, you know, the like the Japanese style that like that's a style or whatever. His is more like. Yeah. Is because you got to admit, like most times, and I'm not saying I was thinking this, not saying I wasn't thinking this, but you know, expectations. Well, I didn't have any at all. Under really as far as expectation.
[144:09]
Jocko Willink
I can see where you go just say, but carry on. What were you thinking?
[144:12]
Echo Charles
But I think under most circumstances when someone talks about, oh yeah, like I'm into drawing or painting or something that.
[144:19]
Jocko Willink
You know what I make.
[144:20]
Echo Charles
Yeah. You know, you have that feeling like. Okay. Because there's levels to. To it just factually like, you know, and so you, you know, it's really good outlet for me. People say that that's a thing that people say. And then sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes when you see it, you're like, just like how you implied where it's like, yeah, man, I'm good that it works for you, you know, but it's like it's. There's not much skill involved.
[144:43]
Jocko Willink
You know, sometimes it's an outlet for you, for you, not for the rest of them.
[144:46]
Echo Charles
But this is. No, this one was not like that. Jim is freaking obviously very skilled. Even that first. The wave was the first one.
[144:54]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, the wave was the first one.
[144:55]
Echo Charles
Oh, yeah.
[144:55]
Jocko Willink
And I was expecting. I mean, I had low expectations. I'm not afraid to say it because painting is hard.
[145:02]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[145:02]
Jocko Willink
And you don't expect someone that's never painted before before just to be able to paint something that's very cool looking.
[145:07]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[145:08]
Jocko Willink
Well, we saw something that was. First one. I was like, oh. And then you think, well, how's the, you know, how's like a person gonna look? Then you see the paintings of people and you're like, oh, okay.
[145:18]
Echo Charles
So I know art like actual artists that have been doing it for decades that have painted waves, by the way, not as good as Jim Foreman. And I'm not joking, obviously that's my opinion because art is very subjective, but still.
[145:32]
Jocko Willink
Well, once we look, we'll get some art out there.
[145:35]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[145:35]
Jocko Willink
And I think, I mean, honestly, I think people would be willing. I'm willing to pay for that art. So I think people are going to want to pay for some of that art. He's going to need to get a freaking art website up for some of his stuff. Well, whether you're painting, whether you're lifting, whether you're training, you need to feel yourself and you feel your body, feel your mind. Go to jockerfield.com we got everything that you need. We got Molk protein ready to drink, protein powder, protein hydrate greens supplements for your joints so they don't break down. We've got, we've got everything that you need. Got an energy drink and we got a hydration drink. Hydration is so good. I went through about a hundred of them the other day.
[146:19]
Echo Charles
That makes sense.
[146:20]
Jocko Willink
When you, if you're going in the sauna. Stock up. Yeah, stock up. So any of that, any of that stuff that you need. Jockofuel.com you can also get it at Walmart, Wawa, Vitamin Chop, gnc, Military commissaries, a fees, Hannaford Dash Stores, Wake Fern, Shoprite, Heb Meyer, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix, Lifetime Fitness Shields and a bunch of small gyms all over the place. Whether you got a jiu jitsu gym, whether you got a powerlifting gym, we got you covered. If you don't have it in your gym, email jfsgraphy.com we'll get it taken care of. Also text Jocko Fuel to 24672 and then we can send you messages. Voicemails. I send voicemails sometimes on that.
[147:02]
Jim Foreman
Yeah.
[147:02]
Echo Charles
Hell yeah.
[147:03]
Jocko Willink
They're. They're short. They're. They're like seven seconds long.
[147:06]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[147:08]
Jocko Willink
Brief.
[147:08]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[147:09]
Jocko Willink
Yeah, very brief. Check it out. Jockofuel.com also you're going to need some clothing. You need some American made clothing. You're going to need OriginUSA.com hunt gear, Jiu jitsu gear, jeans, boots, hoodies, T shirts, belts, wallets, hats, beanies, training shorts, training shirts, lightweight training shirts, court T shirts. We got everything that you need. And it's made in America. A lot of people are talking about made in America right now. Some tariffs going around like oh, what? No, it does not affecting us. Us because we're made in America. That's what we're doing over here.
[147:47]
Echo Charles
Yes, sir.
[147:48]
Jocko Willink
Where's our cotton from? Or our cotton?
[147:51]
Echo Charles
Cotton. Yes.
[147:51]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Where's that from America? Where's the zipper from America? Where's the thread from America? The buttons, where's the buttons From America. America. Get your made in American goods. Support America. Make America make again. That's what we're doing. Who's in? Go to OriginUSA.com and get, get it. It's true.
[148:13]
Echo Charles
Yeah, man. Life is, life is kind of crazy sometimes. But it is up to you what you put in your body, on your body and in your head.
[148:22]
Jocko Willink
So keep that you covered on all fronts. All front in your body. Jocko Fuel on your body. Origin usa in your head. Jocko podcast.
[148:29]
Echo Charles
You're listening.
[148:30]
Jocko Willink
Jocko Publishing.
[148:31]
Echo Charles
You getting it?
[148:32]
Jocko Willink
Yep.
[148:32]
Jim Foreman
It's true.
[148:33]
Echo Charles
Speaking. Speaking of on your body. Representing really as you. We walk or run or do burpees through life.
[148:41]
Jocko Willink
As long as we just crawl them through the path.
[148:42]
Echo Charles
Crawling through life, whatever. If we. We're representing discipline equals freedom. This is where you can get this stuff. Jocastore.com yeah, so we got some shorts on there, some hoodies on there, some hats on there, shorts on there, socks on there too. If you want to represent in the airport, when they make you take off your shoes, you want to flex on them a little bit. Boom. Discipline equals freedom. You're welcome. Oh yeah. All day. Yes. Oh, also the shirt locker subscription scenario. New design every. Every month. That's a good one. You're gonna like this. This next month's one.
[149:14]
Jocko Willink
What is it? You don't even know.
[149:18]
Echo Charles
I know I do, but I remember. I know what the design is because I made it. But it's a skull.
[149:23]
Jocko Willink
Okay. I like it.
[149:24]
Echo Charles
Skull with. But it's like a hand drawn skull, kind of. Kind of like sketched. And it says comfort is a curse.
[149:35]
Jocko Willink
All right.
[149:36]
Echo Charles
Yeah, it's a good one. Looks good. Came out good, I think. But go to Jocastore.com check it out. It won't be on there till the first, which is, hey, yeah, what if.
[149:43]
Jocko Willink
You like something there?
[149:45]
Echo Charles
So yeah, if you like something, get something.
[149:47]
Jocko Willink
That's fair enough. Check out primalbeef.com coloradocraft beef.com this is American steak. American companies. And it's awesome people, awesome companies, awesome steak, awesome burgers, awesome hot dogs, awesome beef jerky, awesome beef sticks. We got you covered.
[150:08]
Echo Charles
But did you.
[150:09]
Jocko Willink
Colorado craftbeef.com brownbeef.com Did I get what the.
[150:13]
Echo Charles
The sausage. You know this?
[150:14]
Jocko Willink
Yes.
[150:15]
Echo Charles
What's it called? It's called some kind of sausage.
[150:16]
Jocko Willink
Summer sausage.
[150:17]
Echo Charles
Summer sausage.
[150:17]
Jocko Willink
Yeah. Got into that.
[150:21]
Echo Charles
Was it good?
[150:22]
Jocko Willink
Check. Also subscribe to this podcast. Check out Jocko underground.com if you can't afford Jocko underground.com it's $8.18 a month. It's fine. Email assistancecounterground.com and we'll get you taken care of. But we just want you to have access to more information answering questions covering subjects that we don't necessarily cover on this podcast. Jocko underground.com Check out our YouTube channels. Check out Psychological Warfare. Check out a bunch of books that I've written. We got a book coming sometime in the future from Jim Foreman. But in the meantime, we got. What do we got? A re release of the, of the Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We got the. We were just looking through the Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. It's not a normal book. No. The publisher, I asked him, I said, hey, have you ever taken at this much risk on a book? Because let's face it, this one goes real bannable. You've never seen a book like, it's risky, very risky. He said it was not even close.
[151:23]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[151:24]
Jocko Willink
He was like, it's not even. There's no other book that even comes close to taking this much of a risk.
[151:28]
Echo Charles
Yeah, makes sense.
[151:29]
Jocko Willink
And you know, they model out like sales.
[151:33]
Echo Charles
Sure.
[151:34]
Jocko Willink
He's like, once it came out, he said we had no models that predicted this many sales.
[151:42]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[151:42]
Jocko Willink
Like they didn't anticipate anything close.
[151:45]
Echo Charles
Yeah.
[151:45]
Jocko Willink
So that's the Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. I've written a bunch of other books, written a bunch of kids books. Mike and the Dragons, about Face. I didn't write about Face, but I wrote the forward to it. Extreme Ownership. You heard a little excerpt from that today, Little section that Leif Babin wrote. Check that out. Also the dichotomy of leadership. There's another. Leif was saying, oh, either use this one or this one. There's a dichotomy of leadership. There's a story in there that's also got a little gym Foreman centric. So check those out. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com We've got the battlefield coming up where we're going to tour Gettysburg. We're going to learn the lessons that they learned or should have learned. We've got the muster in San Antonio, Texas, April 29 to May 1. Go and check that out. If you need us inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com contact us. We will come and do leadership training inside your company. We will get you aligned. Also, we have an online training program, Extreme Ownership Academy, teaching you to take ownership of your life, not just your business, not just your, hey, I need to figure out how to deal with my boss or my peers or my subordinates. What about how to deal with your spouse? What about how to deal with your family? What about how to deal with your neighbors? What about how to deal with your own head? You need help and we got you covered extreme ownership.com Also, if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want help? Gold star families out there, Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also don't forget to check out heroes and horses.org Micah Fink teaching people how to get back to their soul through nature. And then Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org helping SEALs get into the civilian sector. And finally, if you want to connect with us, Jim Foreman on the Web, Jim Foreman, leadership.com he's on Facebook, JF Foreman and he's on Instagram actionsonconsulting. For me, I'm@jocko.com and then on social media, Jocko Willink echoes CHARLES Just be careful because you could be learning how to paint, you could be getting stronger, you could be getting faster, you could be getting smarter, you could be learning to play guitar, you could be learning to play the clarinet, could be practicing ping pong, and any of those things would be a lot better than scrolling doom scrolling, doom scrolling. How's those reels? That's what's happening in my house right now. You know, for a while my house was dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. You picked up your phone for any reason, everyone in the house was going, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. Right now, if you pick up your phone, it doesn't matter if you get a call from the hospital, the people in my family are gonna start saying, oh, how's those reels? Reals, how's those reels? What real are you looking at? So you can't do it? It works. Yeah, it's peer pressure. Yeah, it's good. Don't let it happen to you. Don't get caught up in the real. It'll take you down. Thanks once again to Jim Foreman, 27 years of unrelenting service. Thank you for holding the line and being a true frogman. Thank you, brother. And to all our military across the globe, who right now, right now at this moment, picked up their weapons and are standing the watch. Thank you for your service. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for standing the watch here at home and everyone else out there. Things are not going to go the way you expect them to go. They're just not. You got to expect that. That's the reality. But here's what you can do. Like Jim Foreman, prepare as much as you can. Train hard, study hard, have contingency plans, and then be decisive. Take action and do not quit. And that's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.
[156:03]
Jim Foreman
Sa.