490: Accept All Challenges Involved. With Travis Barnes

Summary

Podcast Summary: Jocko Podcast Episode 490 - "Accept All Challenges Involved. With Travis Barnes"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Jocko Podcast
• Host: Jocko Willink
• Guest: Travis Barnes
• Release Date: May 14, 2025
• Description: Retired Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink and Director, Echo Charles discuss discipline and leadership in business, war, relationships, and everyday life.

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1. Introduction & Travis Barnes’ Background [00:00 - 03:15]

In the opening segment, Jocko Willink introduces the episode and his guest, Travis Barnes, a Recon Marine who served three consecutive tours in Iraq. The conversation begins with the recitation of the Recon Marine Creed, highlighting the values of discipline, perseverance, and leadership ingrained in Barnes.

Notable Quote:

Jocko Willink [00:06]: "To be a Recon Marine is to surpass failure. To overcome, to adapt and to do whatever it takes to complete the mission. On the battlefield, as in all areas of life, I shall stand tall above the competition."

Background:

• Early Life: Born in Sturgis, Michigan, and raised in Noble County, Indiana—a tight-knit farming community.
• Family: Son of a bricklayer and a hospital administrator.
• Interests: Played basketball and ran track during his formative years, heavily influenced by Indiana’s basketball culture.

2. Military Career & Deployments [03:15 - 47:24]

Travis Barnes delves into his decision to join the Marine Corps post-9/11, motivated by a sense of duty spurred by the attacks. Despite lacking a prior military background, Barnes enlisted and quickly found himself thrust into active combat during the invasion of Iraq.

Key Points:

• Enlistment: Enlisted shortly after September 11, 2001, aiming for the infantry.
• Boot Camp Experience: Faced challenges and hazing, often feeling out of place among seasoned Marines.
• Reconnaissance Training: Successfully completed the challenging Basic Reconnaissance Course (BRC), out of 60 applicants, only five made it through.
• Deployments: Served three tours in Iraq, experiencing both conventional warfare and the rise of insurgency, including the Battle of Fallujah.

Notable Quotes:

Travis Barnes [06:34]: "I wanted to be the first kid on the block, you know, Jack."

Jocko Willink [19:46]: "We're going to be the eyes and ears for the division."

Travis Barnes [44:50]: "I think for me, that tour was... There was a lot of fog, right? We didn't know who the enemy was at that point."

Challenges Faced:

• Unexpected Deployments: Barnes’ unit was rapidly deployed without extensive training, leading to high attrition and a steep learning curve in combat.
• Leadership Roles: Despite being relatively young, Barnes assumed leadership responsibilities, guiding younger, inexperienced Marines through intense combat situations.
• Combat Experiences: Encountered multiple IEDs, sustained firefights, and witnessed significant casualties, shaping his leadership and resilience.

3. Transition to Civilian Life & Education [47:24 - 77:04]

After completing his military service, Barnes faced the daunting task of reintegrating into civilian life. He pursued higher education, aiming for law school, while grappling with PTSD and TBI resulting from his combat experiences.

Key Points:

• Return Home: Struggled with the absence of camaraderie and the challenges of adapting to a peaceful environment.
• Education: Enrolled at Indiana University, majoring in Political Science, and later attended law school with the encouragement and support of his sister, a Navy veteran.
• Mental Health: Relied on family support and proactive engagement with the VA to manage PTSD and TBI, emphasizing the importance of addressing mental health issues post-service.

Notable Quotes:

Travis Barnes [58:50]: "It's on this linear thing. It doesn't just stop. It shifts and it changes."

Jocko Willink [70:04]: "You're the person that executed these freaking policies that these people came up with."

4. Founding Hotel Tango Distillery [77:04 - 98:05]

Leveraging his legal education and entrepreneurial spirit, Travis Barnes co-founded Hotel Tango Distillery in Indianapolis. The distillery focuses on artisan bourbon, emphasizing quality, unique flavor profiles, and veteran ownership.

Key Points:

• Incorporation: Founded in 2014 amidst evolving Indiana laws that favored artisan distilling.
• Licensing Challenges: Navigated complex zoning laws and historical district restrictions to secure necessary licenses.
• Product Development: Launched with small-batch bourbon, expanding to include gin, vodka, and seasonal products like hand sanitizer during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Business Growth: Successfully raised initial capital through angel investors and maintained growth through strategic pivots and adaptation to market demands.

Notable Quotes:

Travis Barnes [83:53]: "We were one of four within the state to get that initial both federal DSP distilled spirit plant license and our state license with that artisan moniker on."

Travis Barnes [86:21]: "It was so you can't drink when you take those drugs."

5. Navigating COVID-19 & Business Adaptation [98:05 - 118:47]

The COVID-19 pandemic posed significant challenges, prompting Hotel Tango Distillery to innovate and adapt. Barnes shifted production to hand sanitizer to sustain operations during lockdowns, showcasing resilience and flexibility.

Key Points:

• Pandemic Response: Quickly repurposed bourbon production to create hand sanitizer, meeting urgent demand and supporting public health needs.
• Operational Shifts: Maintained business continuity by exploring alternative revenue streams and adjusting to changing regulations.
• Market Trends: Addressed emerging trends such as non-alcoholic beverages and shifting consumer preferences towards health-conscious products.

Notable Quotes:

Travis Barnes [104:08]: "There's going to be a billion dollar industry if it's not already."

Travis Barnes [105:01]: "People want to participate."

6. Current Business Landscape & Future Plans [118:47 - 133:48]

Hotel Tango Distillery continues to thrive by expanding its product lines and embracing new market opportunities. Barnes discusses the importance of authenticity, storytelling, and adapting to industry disruptions.

Key Points:

• Product Diversification: Introduces innovative products like flavored bourbons and mocktails, catering to diverse consumer tastes.
• Market Positioning: Emphasizes the brand’s unique selling points—veteran-owned, high-quality artisan spirits with compelling narratives.
• Future Initiatives: Plans to launch new products, enhance distribution channels, and leverage online sales to reach a broader audience.

Notable Quotes:

Travis Barnes [121:59]: "Nothing tastes like anything to me. I just don't like anything."

Travis Barnes [123:12]: "It's a ritual and detour, but my sister was a substance abuse counseling officer within the Navy for 10 years."

7. Closing Thoughts & Leadership Insights [133:48 - 124:00]

The conversation concludes with reflections on leadership, resilience, and the importance of moving forward despite challenges. Both Travis Barnes and Jocko Willink share insights on personal growth, maintaining discipline, and supporting fellow veterans and community members.

Notable Quotes:

Travis Barnes [124:06]: "It's all about the next thing, the next, you know, school, pilot, you know, law."

Jocko Willink [133:48]: "Never surrender, never give up, never quit."

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Key Takeaways:

• Resilience and Adaptability: Travis Barnes exemplifies overcoming adversity through discipline and adaptability, both in military service and entrepreneurial endeavors.
• Importance of Support Systems: Family and community support play a crucial role in transitioning from military to civilian life and managing mental health challenges.
• Entrepreneurial Innovation: Barnes’ ability to pivot during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of flexibility and innovation in sustaining a business.
• Leadership Lessons: The episode underscores the significance of leadership in high-stress environments, the value of mentoring, and the enduring impact of military discipline in civilian pursuits.

This episode provides a profound look into the journey of a Recon Marine transitioning to a successful entrepreneur, offering valuable lessons on leadership, resilience, and the pursuit of excellence.

Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

This is Jocko podcast number 490 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Good evening.

[Jocko Willink]

Realizing it is my choice and my choice alone to be a reconnaissance Marine, I accept all challenges involved with this profession. I forever shall I strive to maintain the tremendous reputation of those who went before me. Exceeding beyond the limitations set down by others shall be my goal. Sacrificing personal comfort, dedicating myself to the completion of the reconnaissance mission shall be my life. Physical fitness, mental attitude, and high ethics. The title of Recon Marine is my honor. Conquering all obstacles, both large and small. I shall never quit. To quit, to surrender, to give up is to fail. To be a Recon Marine is to surpass failure. To overcome, to adapt and to do whatever it takes to complete the mission. On the battlefield, as in all areas of life, I shall stand tall above the competition. Through professional pride, integrity, and teamwork, I shall be the example for all Marines to emulate. Never shall I forget the principles I accepted to become a Recon Marine. Honor, perseverance, spirit and heart. A Recon Marine can speak without saying a word and achieve what others can only imagine. Boom. There you go. That is the recon creed, creed of The Marine Corps 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, which is unique in that it's a standalone battalion with no parent regiment. It was activated in 1937, earned combat honors in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and in recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a hallowed unit. And of course, when Recon Marines move on, while they still are and will always be Marines, they carry on and find a new mission and new goals. And it's an honor to have one of those Recon Marines with us here tonight. Travis Barnes, who did three back to back tours in Iraq and then carried on with a new mission. It's an honor to have you here tonight, man.

[Travis Barnes]

Thank you, sir, very much. Pleasure to be here.

[Jocko Willink]

And we got connected through Scott from the Horse Soldiers. What is it? Horse Soldiers bourbon or is it Horse Soldier? Is it Horse Soldier distillery or Horse Soldier whiskey? What is it?

[Travis Barnes]

I believe it's Horse Soldier bourbon.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so Scott connected us because you're also a bourbon guy.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And we'll get to Hotel Tango. What is it brewed with? Distilled with discipline.

[Travis Barnes]

Distilled with discipline.

[Jocko Willink]

That's right, yeah. Distilled with even. Even echo. Charles smiled at the. Distilled with discipline.

[Echo Charles]

We like that.

[Jocko Willink]

And we'll get to that. But you had. You had a very man talk about a. Talk about a short and intense career in The Marine Corps. Just back to. Back to back deployments. All combat deployments. Get it? Before we get into that, let's talk a little bit. Your background. Where you from, where you raised?

[Travis Barnes]

Born in Sturgis, Michigan. Grew up in Noble County, Indiana. Spent my formative years there.

[Jocko Willink]

What's in Noble County, Indiana?

[Travis Barnes]

Oh, man, it's the Paris of the Midwest.

[Jocko Willink]

Man, it's gorgeous.

[Travis Barnes]

No, A pretty rural farm community, you know. Only had about 100 kids in my graduating class. So a small, tight knit little hamlet of Indiana. But great, great people, great place to grow up.

[Jocko Willink]

What'd your mom and dad do?

[Travis Barnes]

Dad was a bricklayer, mom was a hospital administrator. So, you know, right down the middle class kind of, you know.

[Jocko Willink]

And what were you into growing up?

[Travis Barnes]

You know, played basketball, ran track.

[Jocko Willink]

Any good at basketball?

[Travis Barnes]

Of course, man. From Indiana.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, that's right.

[Travis Barnes]

We didn't invent it, we just perfected it.

[Jocko Willink]

Were you guys playing just basketball all the time?

[Travis Barnes]

That's it, man. It was either balin hay or playing basketball growing up.

[Jocko Willink]

And was Larry Bird, were you, Were you, Are you old enough to have Larry Bird? Were you guys just worshiping Larry Bird?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, it was Larry Bird and Bob Knight. I mean, those two guys kind of just owned Indiana during the 80s and 90s.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, my dad met Bobby Knight and my dad would also say Bobby Knight was a psychopath, but he said it was pretty cool to him when he met him.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I think it's what day you met Bobby Knight would probably, you know, you get a different experience.

[Jocko Willink]

So did you play, you played basketball through high school?

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Any chance of going to college?

[Travis Barnes]

No, no. I mean, not at any D1 level or anything like that. You know, it was, you know, I always knew that I was. I liked it just to be around the guys as much as I did, you know, play, so.

[Jocko Willink]

And then what other sports you say you played?

[Travis Barnes]

Ran track, did pole vault, you know, just kind of as a time filler, I think. Again.

[Jocko Willink]

And were you into school at all or was that your thing?

[Travis Barnes]

No, no.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your GPA? Let's get down to brass tacks. What was the GPA?

[Travis Barnes]

Probably somewhere between a 2, 5 and a 3 0, man. I was, you know, I was always just, I don't know, having a good time, I think.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have any veterans in the family heritage?

[Travis Barnes]

Had one uncle who was a ranger in the 90s, was an interpreter, learned Arabic. So I had, you know. But not a military family by any means. You know, for me it was when 911 happened.

[Jocko Willink]

When you were in High school. And you were getting ready to graduate. What were your plans?

[Travis Barnes]

So at college, you know, I started off, graduated. That's just what everybody would do. Or you went to work at the factory down the street at, you know, Dexter Axel or Bushy making widgets on a CNC machine. And so, you know, I went to college not really knowing what I wanted to do.

[Jocko Willink]

But where'd you go to college?

[Travis Barnes]

IU Indiana.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay. And you were in college when September 11th happened?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, so I graduated high school, 2001, worked that summer. And then first semester, first month in school, 911 happened. I was out at lunch with my uncle at Bob Evans and the waitress came over and was like, you guys see what happened on tv? By the time I got home, the second tower had come down and I.

[Jocko Willink]

Was like, oh, and did you know at that point were you like, yo, I'm going to sign up?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, for sure. I wanted to be the first kid on the block, you know, Jack, so.

[Jocko Willink]

But you had no real military background. You were slacking in school, you were a B grade basketball player, solid. But there's something just sparked when September 11 happened because you were you thinking about the military at all on September 10th?

[Travis Barnes]

No, never. Seriously. You know, I watched Full Metal Jacket, was like, no, it looks. That looks intense.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. I always joke that the Full Metal Jacket Platoon, born on the fourth of July in Apocalypse now, all these anti war movies, 100% made me want to go in the military. So yeah, they, it goes. When you're a 15 year old, 12 year old, 14 year old kid, all the anti war stuff goes right over your head and it just lands with war.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, Exactly. I mean, 9 11. Actually, you know, that was a huge catalyst, obviously, but that was, you know, my only understanding of were those movies of like, oh, the sexy, cool, weird, fun parts of it, never the, you know, the real stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

And how did you pick the Marine Corps?

[Travis Barnes]

Oh man, I think that recruiter saw me coming a mile away because I did, I scored pretty high, you know, on the asvab. Did you know I tested really high and all that stuff. But then he was like, what do you want to do? And I said infantry. And he was like, oh man, you lucky bastard. We got one spot left. Oh yeah, you got the last one right.

[Jocko Willink]

Was there a line when you tried to sign up? Like, was it September 12th or 13th? Was it right away?

[Travis Barnes]

So I went in probably, yeah, within the next couple days. And they basically said there was a line and they said, come back later. So I waited a couple more Weeks. By the time I got, you know, the appointment, it was 03 open. So infantry open contract was what I signed up with. And the soonest I could get out was the following April. I mean, they had booked that. They had stacked that fast.

[Jocko Willink]

The following April as in 2002. Oh, wow. Okay. No. Okay, that's not too bad. I thought you meant like 2003 following April, like April and then another April. Okay, no.

[Travis Barnes]

So by that following April, started boot camp and then graduated. Did OC or.

[Jocko Willink]

How was. How was boot camp? Shock to the system. Were you pretty. You knew it was coming. You've seen Full Metal Jacket enough times.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I just remember my drill instructor just saying, you are the most feminine recruit we have ever had pass through these hollowed halls. I was like, fair enough, fair enough, sir. So that always stuck with me. It's like the most, like, low key insult you can get, right?

[Jocko Willink]

Damn. I had my instructors in, in BUDS surround me and this warrant officer was like, hey, come here. And he's standing in my face during inspection. He's like looking at me like he's trying to. He looked like he's trying to read something on my face or something like that. And eventually they all surrounded me and they're like trying to figure out why this warrant officer is so intrigued with looking at me. And he goes, what do you think, guys? And they're all kind of like, you know, they didn't really know what to say to the warrant officer. He's like, I think this is the ugliest we've ever had come through training. I was like, jack, hey, I'll take that over most feminine, I guess.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. Again, I learned there, like, all right, this is the worst they're gonna get me. Like, all right, fair enough, guys, I'll show you my show choir routine.

[Jocko Willink]

And what were you, like, 19, Jack?

[Travis Barnes]

Yep, yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And then from you get done with.

[Travis Barnes]

Boot camp, infantry training, just down the street, Camp Pendleton. And that's where they, you know, 03 was open. So they bring in all the 03.11 basic infantry, 31 machine gunner, 41 mortarmen. And then the 21s walk in and they got the bling. And they're just the fucking, you know, the peak performers. You can immediately tell, but just cool, laid back. And we're like, this is the coolest job you're ever going to be able to do in the Marine Corps.

[Jocko Willink]

And do you get to. Or did you get to select what you wanted to do then out of those?

[Travis Barnes]

So it went by, you Know ASVAP and your PFT and whatever other metrics they used to determine that recon was like anybody that wants to give it a shot, try out or sign up and we'll be back for the indoc in a couple of days, which was basically 30. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Evolution of ruck. Run, swim, rock run, swim, you know, just who's going to quit.

[Jocko Willink]

How was your swimming?

[Travis Barnes]

Really good.

[Jocko Willink]

How was that? Did you grow up in the.

[Travis Barnes]

Grew up on a lake. Grew up hunting turtles and I mean that was, you know.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, we got a turtle hunter over there. Hell yeah.

[Travis Barnes]

And just playing. I mean I was outdoorsy, you know, growing up for sure, growing up out in the country. So that came just very natural to me. I was actually lucky, I think that because my run times were not great, I could. I'm a pack mule. I can carry a ruck all day. But the swim, obviously, you know, swimming is the great equalizer among men. Right. You get a guy underwater and they just can freak out and you know, then that's. You're done.

[Jocko Willink]

So you did three day selection and how many guys tried for it?

[Travis Barnes]

There's probably 60 and five of us got. Made it through.

[Jocko Willink]

No kidding.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Damn.

[Travis Barnes]

There was, I mean, Again, within the first day, it was down to, you know, 18, 19 because a bunch of.

[Jocko Willink]

People just can't swim.

[Travis Barnes]

Can't swim, yeah. So it was over. And then it's just attrition by who wants to be here and who doesn't. And it was weird because at that point the first recon had just stepped up from a company to a battalion sometime after 911 before I got there. And so they were basically trying to fill slots. So we thought when we got, we checked in on 9 11, 2002, and us five guys, we thought we were immediately going to be put in a roper platoon, train up before we go to brc, get some, some level of institutional knowledge before we get. We got to go. And it was no, you guys are going in slack man. We got to fill teams. So we're basically training up for the deployment for the invasion of Iraq. So from September through January, us five guys were just put into a team as the, you know, low man on the totem pole and said, learn as much as you can.

[Jocko Willink]

Because normally you'd go to the course in Coronado, right? The B. It's called brc, right? Basic Reconnaissance Course.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

And that's sort of. How long is that thing? That's like a pretty extensive course.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, it's three months. It's so first phase is just work up. You're just working out, running, swimming, lifting boats. Second phase is water phase, so you're doing boats, fins, just water. And then third phase is patrol phase. So you get, you know, you work up with all of your technical radio reconnaissance skills and then you do a two week long mission up in Camp Pendleton.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you go to on the normal pathway? Do you go to airborne and scuba when you for that?

[Travis Barnes]

So yeah, the traditional path would have been, yeah, you from there you get to go to your select schools. So that's jump, dive, sear, Ranger, I was a fac, so that's where I eventually got to go and learn to drop bombs. But yeah, and then it was some guys got to Ranger selection, some guys got to go to, you know, whatever cool schools are out there.

[Jocko Willink]

So none of that for you and your five buddies straight into a platoon, getting ready to deploy and you know you're deploying to Iraq when you show up there.

[Travis Barnes]

No, I didn't know anything. Barely knew my name at that point. But they were like, get on the boat and we're heading out. And at some point once we were already deployed, they were like, we're headed to Iraq, guys, there's going to be a big invasion. And we left somewhere right after Christmas because we got leave, came back and everybody's like, pack your shit, get on the boat. And that was it.

[Jocko Willink]

Were you pretty pumped about this whole scenario? Were you nervous? Were you like, let's go?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I mean, you know, you get to these units, right? And these guys are just superhuman, right? And they're so technically proficient. They're, they're so good at the basic stuff. And we didn't know anything, right? We didn't know how to talk, we didn't know how to walk, we didn't know how to shoot. It was just ojt. You just, you look at the guys that you look up to and that seem to be the stellar, most stellar in the platoon and you just copy what they're doing.

[Jocko Willink]

Did they. Were they not just kind of pissed that you guys were there? Did they hold the. Oh, yeah. Okay.

[Travis Barnes]

Oh, God, it was horrible. I mean, the hazing, that was, you know, again, this is wild west. So. And it was.

[Jocko Willink]

And did you have post Afghanistan guys? Guys were coming home from combat in Afghanistan or.

[Travis Barnes]

No, not yet. There were a few, but basically one or two platoons and those guys were, you know, they were already working back up for the MEW or they were already at a schoolhouse or somewhere. So there wasn't a Lot of changeover. It was, was basically a lot of green guys. You know, there were some guys that had done a few mews and they were the senior guys, I think Rudy and some of the guys from Generation Kill had just gotten back from Afghanistan, but there was like one or two platoons that had made it over and they were obviously, you know, some of the most. The guys we were looking up to, the guys that we wanted to be like. And yeah, it just, we were hazed non stop. I mean it was training, don't get me wrong. But it was the, you know, midnight wake up call, go get the rock on the hill kind of thing. And then you get back and you're like, that was the wrong rock. Well, maybe you should come up with.

[Jocko Willink]

Me and tell me identify. So yeah, I can't imagine like this is I would say fairly the equivalent of like having guys put into your SEAL platoon that hadn't been to buds, you know, you'd be. Not quite. Because the, you know, the Navy boot camp has nothing to do with anything that you ever do in a. In the field. But yeah, that's. I can imagine there might have been some grudges.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, there was, but it was a perfect storm. It wasn't our fault, like obviously, you know, but they didn't. There was no love lost there either, you know, it was, if you're here, we're going to make you earn it one way or the other. And yeah, so that, that initial kickoff in Iraq was, you know, we basically were thrown to the feet to the fire immediately. And a lot of training, a lot of shooting on the ship on the way over there, just again, so basic, but just enough to be dangerous, I guess, without having gone through any of the proper professional schools to earn the title and get to the team the traditional way.

[Jocko Willink]

So you show up, you get on the ship, you guys are training and heading over there, shooting off the fantail, getting your weapons dialed in. Then what? You get there and go right into Kuwait.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes. The other big part was, I mean we were basically fab welding pieces of metal off the ship to the Humvees because these were just basic and they were like, you guys might want to put some armor on there. They look like gypsy wagons with bolted on everything we could steal and scrap from off the ship. And yeah, we landed in Iraq sometime in, you know, February. Heloed off or camped there in Kuwait for about a month again training, just getting acclimated. I'd never been, I've never been out of the U.S. let alone, you Know, Indiana, for that matter. And then, you know, you're over there just like, holy shit, what's going on? And it was massive, right? So there's international force, you know, the Brits, the. Everybody's there and they're just waiting. Like, it's that, you know, before a race kicks off, you're just built up so much tension and anxiety that just, it was crazy. And then March, whatever, 19th, 18th, 19th of 2003, the war kicked off and we were in it.

[Jocko Willink]

What did you think your possibility of survival was going in? 100%. Because I had Dean Ladd, who was a Marine going into Tarawa, and this is. He'd already done. I forget which other island campaign he did, but, you know, I was like, oh, dude, were you afraid of dying? He's like, no, that always happens to the other guy. You know, he's like, yeah, it's going into Taroa. There's freaking explosions going off, machine gunfire. He's like, yeah, I'm getting, I'm. I'll be fine. Of course, he ended up getting gut shot and barely survived, but he would. He, you know, he made the comment like, yeah, it's all young guys always think it's going to happen to someone else. Were you in that camp or were you in the other camp or somewhere in between?

[Travis Barnes]

I was certainly in, in the, the first one. Yeah. You're just so naive. You don't really. It doesn't click, right until that first time being shot at. And then it really clicks, right? And you think you want to touch the fire, right? You think you want to be that guy that's the Alpha and out there and Rambo. And then when bullets start coming in your direction and they're intentionally coming at you and barely missing, you're like, oh, this is real. And it just changes your mindset. Not in a way that you become afraid that you just almost accept it differently, right? It's not. It's not going to happen to me. It's. If it happens to me, it happens to me. It's my time.

[Jocko Willink]

What was your. What was your mission? As you guys were. Before you headed in, what was your, like, what were they telling you the last briefing that you're going in? What was your mission? What were you guys doing?

[Travis Barnes]

Eyes and ears for the entire force. You know, we were doing. We were out in front or off to one of the sides basically the whole time to either create distractions for another unit to come through or traditional S and R reconnaissance, where we were, you know, Nasiriya. We were There a few days before, looking over the water, looking over the river to see who was moving where and what, and that was it. I mean, there was. At that point, it was a wild west. So it was. We're going to be the eyes and ears for the division.

[Jocko Willink]

Then as you roll in and you start getting tasking that you guys start doing assaults of cities and whatnot, it gets a little crazy.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

How did. How did that land with you? He didn't give a. You're like, oh, what was your job?

[Travis Barnes]

Slack, man. I mean, I was basically a donkey, you know, to beans, bullets, Band aids. Make sure we were stocked. The Hummer was ready. It was, you know, there was nothing missing. Loose. It was. And then a gunner, you know, up on the 50 cal. That was basically my job. You know, there was. I was not going to be tasked with anything too crazy at that point. You know, PFC Barnes was still obviously pretty green, but everybody was looking back right in the. In the moment. It's a totally different feeling than in hindsight because at that point there'd been a. Guys that had been on a few mews, but that ain't combat.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Travis Barnes]

So we were all learning together in real time, you know. And again, you saw the guys that reacted very well and some guys that did not, which was a huge learning curve too, that you. You think you know somebody and how they're going to react and people react.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. I've. I think I'm a decent judge. And it's still like, even as a decent judge, it's like 70, you know, like 70. Like, I know this guy. Like, I think he'll do pretty good. Yeah. 70 of the time. Yeah. And then 30% of the time you're like, well, who. Where. What just happened? And the same thing's true, that somebody go, I'm not sure about this guy, but then they're good to go.

[Travis Barnes]

Exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

And so, yeah, like, there's some level of judgment. That's okay. But yeah, you. It's. It's. I wouldn't put any money on anybody, I'll tell you that much.

[Travis Barnes]

Not until you've been with them several times enough to know. Right. I think they're. You get. You also get comfortable with guys that are in the fight with you and, you know, like, I count on you to shoot the same direction and they're going to be there to do that. Right. So, yeah, I, I think that huge learning curve.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. It is very bizarre to think of whole battalions of Marines going in with probably no one having any combat Experience? Yeah, that was, you know, the SEAL teams. I mean, obviously, I was. I was in the SEAL teams in the 90s. No one had combat experience. And there's some weird. There's some weird thing that you have to learn in combat you have to go through where you all of a sudden have a better understanding of it. You go, okay, okay, got it. You know, it's one. It's like standing up on a surfboard for the first time or parachuting for the first time, where you're like, okay, yeah. There's a whole, like, mysterious part of it that's now gone. And now I can kind of function a little bit with a little bit better attitude and a little bit better understanding. But when you have whole battalions of those guys that no one has seen that yet, no one has that little extra level of understanding, that's pretty sketchy, especially because you're going in on and doing big, giant operations. These are freaking, massive operations.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

I was very lucky. So I flew into Baghdad in 03, but it was like the fall of 03, and I had this really, like, sort of nice escalation of operations. Literally, the first operation I went on, we. We went outside the gate and, like, drove around looking for possible mortar emplacements.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Nothing happened. But came back from that. I was like, okay, there's like, the. My night vision goggles work the same as they did, and the Humvees and guys are looking around, you know, and it slowly went from there and got more and more. I guess the word would be intense, but for. That was a lucky way to do it.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

For, like, you guys. Okay, line up on this border of this entire nation. And now ready, set, go. Yeah.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. You know, it was a communal learning experience for everyone. So.

[Jocko Willink]

So you mentioned Generation Kill. What? Did you watch it when it came out?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, well, I read it before it came out in the Rolling Stone article, and then the book came out, and then the miniseries on hbo.

[Jocko Willink]

How'd the book. I haven't read the book. How was the book?

[Travis Barnes]

I thought it was accurate. I mean, there's some creative liberties, I think, but for the most part, I think it really did a good job of capturing that time and place and the language and the speak. And he did a good job of understanding what we were doing and just, you know, the Marine vernacular and that, again, it was. He just did a good job, I think, of capturing that time and place.

[Jocko Willink]

And then. How about the miniseries? When the miniseries came out again, I think that it.

[Travis Barnes]

You know, it painted some Guys better than others. I think that, you know, there was some liberties taken, but at the end of the day, I was a pfc, so I did not understand or have, you know, the sight to be able to critique on what the, you know, battalion commander was doing or even really any of the company commanders or platoon commanders at that level. It was like, I had. I got to talk to my ATL and my team leader, and that was it. Like, so.

[Jocko Willink]

So I was just talking to my buddy Leif, who was one of my platoon commanders. I was like, the equivalent of a company commander. He was one of my platoon commanders. And we were talking about this very subject, and he. One of his new guys, this guy Ryan Jobe. We were talking about the chain of command or something like that. I was talking about the chain of command with Leif, and he was. And Leif's like, I don't think Ryan even knows, like, who is above you in the chain of command. And sure enough, we went and asked him, like, who's the XO at Seal Team 3? And he's no idea who's the CEO of Seal Team 3. Couldn't name him. Like, who. Who's your boss? He's like, leif. And he's like, no, who. Who do you work for? He goes, jeremy. He's like, like, he just named his. His nco, a senior NCO to his platoon commander. Right? That was the. That's where his knowledge of the chain of command topped out. Right. Was me, you know, and. And so it sounds like you were in that boat.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I went from my. Basically, yeah, my team leader to Donald Rumsfeld. That's who's in charge. Right.

[Jocko Willink]

Like, yeah, it's interesting. So I, I. I watched Generation Kill, and, you know, you and I were talking about before Hit Record in. I think when. When they're making a movie, they have to add, like, volume to some parts of a person's character to make it a little bit more interesting of a story. So you got like, the battalion commander. Look, I'm sure he was a hard dude, but they crank that up a little bit. So it's almost like he's, you know, like, overly aggressive and overly hard. And then they had a couple of the company commanders where, hey, maybe the company commander wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed or maybe, I mean, but they crank that up to a point where you go. And it just makes the story gives it more contrast. And they did that pretty much. It seemed like they did that with most of the characters. Yeah, just crank up the volume a little, increase the contrast is what they do in the photography realm. Echo.

[Echo Charles]

Yep.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, absolutely. And again, at least from, maybe there's some of those things were happening behind the scenes, but I can tell you that from, you know, professionally, those guys, it would never leak out in front of the guys, the troops. Right. So again, I never saw anything like that was inappropriate or, you know, you can always play armchair quarterback and second guess decisions, but you know, when you're on the ground making them, you know.

[Jocko Willink]

And when you're, when you're pushing them. How long did you think the whole thing was going to last? Like, did you think you were going to be done and A week?

[Travis Barnes]

No, I, I guess in my head I thought it was the equivalent of like a World War II. Right. Like I was thinking this is going to be a year and a half, two years of fighting, you know, the Iraqi army to get to Baghdad. And then again, I was so naive, I, I had no understanding that, you know, this is going to be a nine month deployment and I'll be back home and that'll be it.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. That's weird because I was older at the time and I was, I thought it was gonna be over in like a week because the first Gulf War lasted 72 hours and I wasn't at a SEAL team. I was going to college at the time, the Navy sent me to college, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, the war, this thing's gonna be over in like 72 hours. I'm gonna miss the whole thing. It's gonna be terrible. And yeah, but for your attitude, you're like, WWII is kicking off, we're going the distance.

[Travis Barnes]

Right. And again, I had no concept of what the exit or the end game was. I don't know if anybody did at that point, you know, but I just was, I was like, I'll be here as long as they want me to be.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you see the transition of the local populace from the flag waving type? You know, thanks for showing up, did. Because that's what you experienced when you arrived.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, usa, George Bush, like yelling in the streets, like chanting and for sure that in 2003 everybody's happy to get rid of Saddam. I think that was the overwhelming response we had. We left sometime that summer in July, August of 2003. By the time we got back the following year.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you, when you left, was it still huya, George Bush? Did you start to see any of the indicators of insurgency or anything like that?

[Travis Barnes]

No, I mean, we were bored by the end Right. We were in some holding camp just south of Baghdad and we went out and did, you know, intermittent patrols, just really, you know, like bridge to nowhere kind of things. Like what are we doing, what are we looking for? No one. There wasn't a mission. It was just kind of presence ops, like just go show that you're out there.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you, did you get the feeling like kind of won the war?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, absolutely. Oh, we're done.

[Jocko Willink]

Mission accomplished. As German famously. Yeah, yeah.

[Travis Barnes]

Turn the keys back over to the Iraqis and let them deal with it.

[Jocko Willink]

And that's what you went home with. You went home with that attitude.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. But again, it was such a whirlwind on the way back home. I think they told us on the airplane like, guess what, you guys, some slots opened up, you're going to brc, you don't get to take leave. You're going to get three days weekend and you get to go right, and check into brc. So I was like, okay, cool. And that's what we did. So I mean, and again at that point we were thin out of shape, just beat up from the deployment. Basically. I look like, you know, Wile E. Coyote just grizzled, you know, as a 19 year old, so. Or 20 year old at that point. So by the time we show up, all of these dudes were just peak performance, right. Like they'd been training for six months to get the slot and you know, as me and four other guys that would just got off this deployment, they were like, oh man, we can't fail this, we gotta go. So. And that's what we did. So.

[Jocko Willink]

But you guys were hardened, steely eyed combat vets.

[Travis Barnes]

It was weird because that was truly like, you know, some of these other, you know, again I was a lance corporal, so these sergeants and guys had been waiting years to get a slot or training, you know, try to get to brc. Yeah. They were like, what's it like? What you know, what was it like? And so for us it felt pretty cool. But at the same time that disappeared, first, first day of brc, I was like, get back in the surf. Don't give a shit about your combat action ribbon. Cute.

[Jocko Willink]

That sucks. Yeah, yeah. I was. People will be like, oh, do you think you could still make it through buds and what, whatever. But the, the mentality that, that I had when I was a young kid, like, I'll do anything, whatever, like you, I don't care about anything. But then when you're like 25, you're like, yeah, if I feel like, doing that right now, you know, like, you seem like you. You seem like an. To me, you know, as opposed to just when, like, you're saying when you're young and you're looking at those instructors like, that's God. So they're telling me to do something, that they must know that this is good for me. But then by the time you're like, 25 or 27, you look at those instructors, you're like, that dude, I know that guy. The guy's an idiot.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. I mean, you know, they're holding water over you, you know, and I'm just like, I don't know how this relates to anything we're going to be doing in Iraq. Guys, just to be clear here, back in the pool, Barnes. Roger that.

[Jocko Willink]

Any big challenges getting through being DRC.

[Travis Barnes]

Again? No, it was, for me, it was just, you know, put your head down and left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. That's, you know, I think the mentality you got to have. It was certainly, you know, physically. Anybody who says it's not challenging is insane. You know, we started probably with, I don't know, 50, 60 guys, and we graduated 18, 19. And most of those were water phase and injury. But they, you know, either got to retread or just said, I'm out, dor. And I would say, you know, if anything, the patrolling was probably not. It was, for me, the. Because it's putting all those technical skills together into one tight little package where you're getting graded and it's pass fail, right? So. And then our instructor that we had just. He just had so many CS grenades or the. The. Just smoke in our face for seven days straight was just horrible. I remember that. You know, just. Why.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you get. Did you get. You. Did you get wounded on the. On your first deployment at all?

[Travis Barnes]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

You guys didn't take that many casualties, did you?

[Travis Barnes]

On our first tour? No. There are a few injuries, but I don't think we lost anybody in our company, our second and third, for sure. But again, and it was weird because each tour was very different from the combat. Right. Like the first was it when you're in Nazarea shooting across a bridge. I mean, it looked like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan. I mean, there was full on uniform bad guys on the other side with binoculars, calling in mortars. You saw it, right? And you could see the guys, you know, shooting at you from across, and they were the enemy. By the time we got back on our second deployment, it had completely shifted to the insurgency. And you know, I remember as we were getting briefed before we left on my second tour, like you guys, we call everybody in. There's a big class about IEDs, and no one had heard that. What the fuck's that? And they're like, basically, it's everything and anything that you see outside of the wire. And we're like, what? What does that mean? And they were just showed pictures of all the clever little shit they were doing to hide these things and pressure plates and just the. The way that they. I mean, ingenious, right? They were like clever little hillbillies that were able to like rig together, you know, some pretty sophisticated stuff. If you can turn over a Humvee or in a tank, right? I mean, that takes some technical proficiency. So I think once we got there, we learned very quickly that IEDs were. That was going to be the thing.

[Jocko Willink]

So you, you got done with brc? You do a workup? You did you have much of a workup after you got done? Because no, it seems like you're pretty much, we're going to go pretty quick back on deployment.

[Travis Barnes]

No, I. I went to Sears school and I got. I was turned 21 and I got in trouble. Didn't graduate sear school that time, so I went back.

[Jocko Willink]

What'd you do? Alcohol related incident.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. Ended up. My buddy was perpendicular parked outside of the base and the mps came over like, you idiots. They took us back, turned me into the steer commander, and I was sent back to my unit without graduating. So they're like, you know what you need, Barnes? A double cax. So they sent me out to Twentynine Palms for two combined arms exercises as penance for my, you know, drinking mistake. So I went out there as.

[Jocko Willink]

While we're out there, meanwhile, you're thinking, something, somebody, I'm starting a bourbon brand. We're gonna do this.

[Travis Barnes]

When does this get over? While we're on the cacs. They were like, guess what battalion just got orders. We're going back. So by the time we were out there again, it was bring everybody back. We're getting worked up. Everybody's getting re slotted into companies and platoons. I ended up. I stayed in Alpha company, but was basically with several of the same guys that I was with on my first tour. And we deployed again February, March, I think of that year. Went right back into Camp Fallujah at that point, which was really getting built up to what it eventually became. By my third tour, I mean, it was a fully operational military base.

[Jocko Willink]

So when you went in like February, March of 04 is when you left or when you went to. Back to Iraq.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So you and I overlapped for like a month or two there, because I think I came home in April, and one of the last things that my platoon did was this Operation Direct Action mission to go capture, kill this guy named Yakubi, who is one of Solder's top lieutenants. And they kept telling us, we're gonna get Solder. Maybe we won't. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. Target him. No, don't target him. And finally they said, all right, well, let's just see what happens if we get one of his top lieutenants. Because it seems a little sketchy to get him. There's. We don't know what's going to happen if we get him, but let's just test the waters a little bit. And we test the waters, and it was like, that's. Iraq erupted after that. It just fully erupted and. And went crazy, and then we left. So. Sorry.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. When we got there, there was open hostility. I mean, it was night and day from when we left the first time, right after the. We. We took Baghdad to my second tour. I mean, openly upset. And you could tell. I mean, we're getting. Fallujah was getting mortared every single day, every night. Indiscriminate, you know, pop shots basically at all times of the day. You didn't dare go into some areas at that point because you were asking for trouble. You know, while we were there, they had some massive ambushes that took out entire platoons while we were there. Mass casualty stuff. And. Yeah, just completely different. I mean, it was the true insurgency.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, and what was your job at that point in what was your mission and what was your job specifically?

[Travis Barnes]

I mean, we had so many. It changed almost, you know, sometimes daily. It was traditional snr. It was sniper, counter sniper. We participated in some Trojan horse missions where we got to work with some SF guys to basically dress up like Iraqis and go out Trojan horse, right. Like, see how they react. And basically, we were essentially using ourselves as bait, right. To go pick a fight. And that worked for a while. I mean, they were openly recruiting insurgents to come fight Americans. Right. And we stumbled upon that a few times, and it was like, this is insane. Where our interpreter is like, no, they're asking people to go fight with them to kill Americans. So it was just. The mindset had completely shifted. And, I mean, that's when the IEDs were going off every single day. They were so nonchalant about it. I mean, There was one outside the base every day, right. I mean, they would just throw a sack out or drop something and say good luck.

[Jocko Willink]

And your, what's your job in the platoon?

[Travis Barnes]

At this point, I was a assistant radio operator. So again, moved up, you know, one slot. And then when we do dismounted patrols, I'd be a point man and again. But 90% of our time over there was probably spent in mounted patrols. And even with, you know, three to six Hummers going out and moving in formation wherever we were. And again, most of this was right outside of Fallujah. So a lot of the countryside and along the Euphrates on either side. And we'd get pulled up to Ramadi, we'd get pulled up over to TQ basically to run missions out of. And then from there we would also utilize some sort of, you know, big house as a FOB for a day or two and then move on again. The mission just changed so dramatically. You know, we were doing ambushes on certain stretches of the road between TQ and Fallujah to figure out who was doing that. We would do direct action. Sometimes with seals, sometimes with sf, Sometimes it was a cordon off portion, sometimes it was the actual go and get these fuckers right now because the seals are over here doing something. It just shifted so quickly, I remember. And you know, the ROIs changed as well. Sometimes it had to be a uniform, guide wearing, you know, the whatever. And other times it was like if you, if it's a military age man out there, they're engaged, they're not supposed to be there. So it just shifted that so quickly all the time. It was really hard to keep up, honestly, you know. And again, with some of those, they were not afraid to go go to battle with you. I mean, they would engage in true ambush. I mean, l shape and just, they would, they're extremely coordinated and yeah, just wild times. There were no rules in Fallujah in 2004.

[Jocko Willink]

And the op tempo is every night.

[Travis Barnes]

It just depended again, yes, basically you were on call. If you weren't out actually in somewhere out in the bush. If you were in back in Camp Fallujah, you were still on qrf, right? I mean, there were just so many limited guys. There was no off time. It was immediately refit. Once you get back, make sure you got enough beans, bullets and water to go back out for another 10 to 14 days at a time. That's primarily kind of how we would go out. It would be anywhere from seven to ten days back for one or two right back out.

[Jocko Willink]

And would you Go out to support, like, a battalion commander that needed help or a company commander, or was it like, oh, we're getting intel on this area being bad. We're gonna send you guys there.

[Travis Barnes]

We were on our own, man. It was literally, go out, find a house that's got a nice big fence around it, pay the family, kick them out for a day or two, and set up watch for either to traditional, you know, reconnaissance, or it was a staging area for something bigger that would happen, a hit on a house, or, you know, we think that somebody's over there. We could figure out pretty quickly who was involved in bad stuff and who was not. A lot of it was just going out looking for cachets at that point, too, right? You just have. We got an engineer attached. And, like, you follow a deer trail out to a patch by the Euphrates river, you're like, I wonder what's in there, right? I'm gonna check it out. And you go back and have a talk with the homeowner. And it's like, that's not mine. My property line ends right there. Oh, all right, well, you're free to go. Just kidding. You're not.

[Jocko Willink]

Is there any other. Is there any major operation that you remember that was, like, you considered successful and impactful during that. During that second deployment?

[Travis Barnes]

You know, we had some big engagements, just sustained firefights for a few hours that, you know, I think those were probably. And again, we're out on our own. It was. You know, that's just what it felt like for. You know, while you're in that moment, like, we gotta fight our way out of this. And I think not one specifically on my second tour. I think it just. You know, there were. There were a lot on that tour that just constant. It was just them constantly testing the wire, you know, from a pop shot. So you never knew what it was gonna be, right? Is it. Are they just testing or is this gonna. Is that the test for the next big one that's coming? So you were always on edge and.

[Jocko Willink]

How did you like it?

[Travis Barnes]

I think that for me, that tour was. There was a lot of fog, right? We didn't know who the enemy was at that point. We didn't know what the rules of engagement were. We didn't know or how often they were going to change, right? It just kept on evolving in ways that we were always a little one step behind where, however, they were evolving, right? So from IDs that were using one mortar to then a cell phone, then to whatever the trigger would be. So they Were, you know, for what means they had to operate a war. I mean, they were extremely good at it, you know, so, um. And Iraq is just built for ambushes. Between the date groves, the water, the berms on the side of the road. I mean, you literally are in just a kill zone all the time. It just depends on how far out they are. Right. And, yeah, I think that. I don't think I would say I enjoyed it. I was certainly glad to get home from it. And at that point, I thought I was getting out. I was like, there's no way. There's no way they're gonna send me back. I've got a year and a half left. But they did. They found a way.

[Jocko Willink]

So you. You were. You were thinking, like, oh, this is not gonna be my career by the time you're in your second platoon.

[Travis Barnes]

At that point, they were starting to stand up. Marsoc, there was a. You know, they were talking about, like, you know, this is the future of kind of Marine Corps Special Forces. What we plan on doing with this, we're gonna stand this up. So they were looking for guys and experienced guys that they wanted to bring over. I was certainly recruited to do that, but I was also. I was getting burned out, for sure. You know, And I was like, did.

[Jocko Willink]

You get blowed up at all?

[Travis Barnes]

Oh, yeah. We were hit by multiple IEDs my second tour. Yeah. Completely blew off the back end of one, and then another one just came in from the side. Yeah. Luckily I was just some TBI and, you know, shaken up and, you know, the fuzzies, I guess. But you have that happen a few times, and it gets old, you know, you start wondering, when is my time going to be? Right.

[Jocko Willink]

So you. So you come home from that deployment, you. Did you guys take any cat. Did you lose any guys on that one?

[Travis Barnes]

Not our platoon. Bravo Company had a. Yeah, a major ambush where they lost several guys, both WIA kia, and we were on the qrf. So we went after them, and by the time we got there, I mean, it was chaos as far as just, you know, bodies stacked. So, yeah, pretty wild. Pretty wild times on that one, for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

So that gives you the feeling, going home, like, all right, they got their. They got their pound of flesh out of me. I got a year and a half left. I'm gonna.

[Travis Barnes]

I'll end up being, you know, lifeguard right down a horno. Right, Exactly.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And that's it. I'm going to carry on with the rest of my life. Cool.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

The Marine Corps had a different idea for that?

[Travis Barnes]

Well, again, I think that, you know, a lot of guys at that point were like, you know, they were either it was time to go to the schoolhouse to be an instructor somewhere or get out. And after my second tour, I mean, there was just a mass exodus of the battalion, so they had to find ways to bring in other guys that were coming back or wanted to be in the unit or were from third or second and wanted to come over to first, because at that point, I think they were starting to figure out the deployment schedule. Well, while I was there, I started to work up with a team, but they were like, you know what? You're probably not going to finish out, but just stick around to help some of the younger guys learn and teach them whatever you can. And I said, okay. Well, over that period of six, nine months, I lost two team leaders, both to car accidents. And so at that point, they're like, look, we'll give you your own team if you want to take these guys over and you'll be a TL in Charlie Company. And I was like, okay, I'll do that one more time. But again, These kids were 18, 19, fresh out of BRC. They'd gone through the pipeline, right? So they did the traditional route but had not been deployed yet. And I said, all right, I'll. At that point, I was 22, and I was the old man.

[Jocko Willink]

I was gonna say, you were an old man at that point.

[Travis Barnes]

So. And I had a ton of knowledge, a ton of just combat experience to say, all right, let's, you know, I'll go do it. So I extended my contract out for a few more months to be able to go over to Iraq with those guys and, you know, do that. So third tour was fairly similar to my second as far as the mission, again, we were involved in. We actually worked very closely with the SEAL team in Fallujah at certain points during the Battle of Fallujah and the afterward. And that was also the year that they. My second. I think it was 2004, where they had the vote, right? And then 2003 was, again, kind of that aftermath of figuring out what the vote even meant, right. And how they were going to carry on with life in Iraq. Again, this is really right before the uprising in 2006 and 7. But you could just feel the powder keg building, right? You just the amount of caches we're refining. We did Operation Green Trident on that deployment where we found a. I forget how many metric tons of ammunition. I mean, everything Russian, Chinese, old French, weird shit like they had, he had everything buried in this hole. And that was, you know, that was one day again. We were constantly taking pop shots and yeah, I mean we had to fight our way out of a couple tight spots as a single six man team on that deployment. But we didn't lose anybody. And I think we were extremely lucky because it was kind of right before the top blew off and I think that was when you came, we changed over and it just again, Wild west.

[Jocko Willink]

How did you like being in that leadership position? How did that impact you?

[Travis Barnes]

Certainly the most responsibility I think I've ever had as an adult, you know, is taking those guys over and extremely proud that we didn't lose anybody that we made it through, but nerve wracking right before I was just one of the guys in the team. Make sure the radios are clean and the 50 cal is ready to go. And now you got, you know, five other 18 year old dudes that are looking to you like what do we do man?

[Jocko Willink]

What next?

[Travis Barnes]

What's next?

[Jocko Willink]

What's the call?

[Travis Barnes]

Right? Where are we going?

[Jocko Willink]

And what, what was the, was it a similar mission set where you were kind of finding what, finding work.

[Travis Barnes]

Jack of all trades. You know, once we got over there, there was a rumor going around that because we were getting a lot of direct action and we were getting a lot of these cool missions and the rumor was that the SEAL team that was there got benched because they were in a firefight and someone took out an AT four and took, took down a minaret from one of the mosques. That was apparently a. No, no. But when you're getting shot at from one, I know what you're supposed to do. And so we eventually just were getting trade off with the seals where I think at that point there was a lot of intel going back and forth between, hey, we think there's a guy over here, can you go rattle him up? We're going to be over here at the same time getting another guy night after night after night, night. Right. So that was the, the op tempo was just constant going and looking. As soon as they, it was, we knew we had somebody go get them.

[Jocko Willink]

Go roll them up, did. And you can do that in like 15 minutes, 20 minutes. I remember my, my boss had asked me, this was on my first deployment where now we were running the same thing. Like it's the same thing. We're getting intel. Here's the target, here's the house we think they're in. Boom. And my boss is like Mike. My commanding officer is like, how long do you need, you know, how much warning time do you need to prepare your guys to go out and hit a target? And I said, 15 minutes. And he thought I was kidding. I was like. I was like, probably 15 minutes, sir. And he's like, no, but I mean, really, look, what do you need? And I said, no, 15 minutes. Like, we will get our gear on. All I need is the frequency of the local conventional commander that owns the battle space and a grid coordinate of where the bad guy is and will go. And yeah, so you get in that pattern of that direct action. And.

[Travis Barnes]

And our leadership is the same way. Our platoon sergeant, platoon commander, company commander were like, if you guys can do this, go do it. And they were all for, like, didn't matter if we'd never done it before. But they were like, we'll figure it out. We'll get. Just give us the coordinates, we'll get it done. And that was the mindset of like, well, you didn't. No one wanted to give up that mission. Right. There were so many bad guys out there at that point that it was like, you know, who's going to be the one to get the next big one? So there was that feeling too, of. Right. That you wanted to be out there to go take that door down and see what's behind it.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. There's something very immediate gratification from doing a direct action mission that I think our whole country got focused on that. Like, all of our leadership was like, oh, we got this bad guy, we got this bad guy, we got this bad guy, we got this bad guy. And you think you're making progress, but when I showed up in 2006 and I was like, wait a second, we're still doing. We got this bad guy, we got this bad guy, we got this bad guy over and over again. And we're now. Enemy attacks are up 300%. And it was just bad. And we needed to take a different approach, which eventually we did, thankfully. How about it? Did now, did you get. Did you take. Get blown up again on that deployment?

[Travis Barnes]

No, I was pretty unscathed. My Last firefight was March 15, 2006, and we were kind of doing the left seat, right seat with the 2nd Battalion from out east. And I was up on watch on a roof and did the early shift. And I'll never forget it, I was just kind of standing there looking out over the horizon, you know, and I could hear the. The thwaps going by. Right. And I look around and I. As I'm turning, my buddy Dane was already Coming toward me saying, they're shooting at you. And as soon as he said that, our other guy on the other side of the roof, he started to engage with a saw. And it was like at that point after that, you know, and then the guys down on the ground were up on the 50.

[Jocko Willink]

So, I mean, where was this? In Fallujah.

[Travis Barnes]

So again, we're out, just in a farmhouse out, and they were behind a couple berms and, you know, had a sniper rifle and taking a few pop shots. And luckily they weren't, they weren't a good shot because, I mean. And. Yeah, and that was it. It's a march. That was my last time. And then within 30 days, I was back home, San Diego. Another 30 days, I was out of the Marine Corps, back home in Indiana.

[Jocko Willink]

That was, that was what, like four year and a few months hitch?

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Pretty much three combat deployments.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And how are you feeling when you get done? You're like, hey, I got it done, I'm moving on.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. I mean, you, you know, again, you don't realize how important the camaraderie, how important the guys are until you don't have them and how, you know, how much of a crutch that is that you don't realize it. You can call it a crutch or a support system or whatever, but it really is when you have it, you don't realize it. When you, when you leave it, like I did and several guys, you know, you immediately kind of feel that there's something missing. Right. And then I go back, I start school and there's no one. You can't talk to anybody about it. Right. You can't. There's no one that will understand. So you just learn to kind of cope. For me, it's, it was all about the next thing, the next, you know, school, pilot, you know, law. So there was always this kind of goal that I would set out in front of myself and just go as hard as I could that way. Because as soon as I start, you start thinking about, you know, you know, what was, you know, never going to be that cool again. It's a bad spiral, right? You can start, you know, what if. And regret and all that shit. And that's, you know, that's toxic. So I think that for me it's always been about, you know, life goes one direction, it's forward, there's no going back, there's no take backsies. It's, you know, what was, what was is what was great memories, great people. But also it's really, for me. And again, I struggle with PTSD and tbi, and I don't think that ever necessarily goes away. Right. Because the farther away you get from combat and the things that you did that you didn't think about in the moment, about collateral damage or about why did I go left instead of right, and what impact did that have on the guy to my left and my right? Once you get out and you start having time to think about those things, I mean, it is very complicated. Right.

[Jocko Willink]

So you're. You get out of the Marine Corps, you're back in Indiana, and now you're sitting in a freaking classroom listening to the professor talk about stuff. Well, how. How did you pull that off? Because I was. So I came home from my last deployment to Iraq was 2006, and. And I remember. So I took over something called trading detachment, and pretty quickly, I was doing paperwork, and I remember thinking, yeah, I have to. I have to, like, focus and recognize that as a professional, I have to do this paperwork right now. Because the entire other part of my brain that was 10 of my brain, 90 of my brain, was like, this don't matter. What are you doing? This is. And I had to really just override that and be like, okay, yep, this is what you're doing. This is part of the military. And you're going to sit down, you're going to do this paperwork like you're supposed to cool. And. But it was not fun. And I would imagine if it was something totally different, like, oh. Because I was at least able to say, well, this is part of the military. This is the professional. You're in a leadership position. You got to do this, so shut up and do it. But if the other thing was random college course, on whatever college course, I think I would have had a little bit of a harder time convincing myself that I should get it done.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I'm. I'm extremely blessed that I move in right back next to my parents. I bought a house right next to where I grew up, and they were really instrumental in helping me heal, identifying when I wasn't acting normal, when I wasn't, you know, dealing with, you know, moving on from the military in productive ways. And they. They were able to, you know, kind of help guide me through that just, you know, nudge here and there. And I think I'm very thankful for them for that.

[Jocko Willink]

What would kind of make them say, hey, Travis, we need to give you a nudge in this direction? Were you, like, drinking? Were you just.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. All that, man. You know, but I think it was just also attitude, you know, extremely intense, you know, always on edge, could get upset about anything and everything. That wasn't a big deal. You know, they're like, look, hey, bro, no one's shooting. It'll be okay. And, you know, took several times to hear that before I was like, okay, they're right. Like, this isn't Fallujah. This is not the end of the world stuff. And also to like, hey, how was school going? Just that, right. Like, checking in, I think, is a huge deal because they realized in the same time that I didn't have a support system. I didn't have the guys that I was always around that they knew who were my buddies while I was in. So. And that I didn't, you know, have a ton of friends once I came back. You know, all those guys that I grew up with were either out of college or had jobs and families. And so it was a weird spot. You know, you're 22. You're going into your freshman year, and you have nothing in common with these people that you. You think, right. The world is. Your lenses have changed significantly from when I left four years ago to where I am now. And obviously, you have a much broader lens. You have a worldview that very few people can understand or even I, you know, identify with. And on top of that, I think that I just personally had a very unique experience of that short amount of time with such intense combat over and over and over, and then just back out. I mean, they released a feral, wild thing back into, you know, Noble County, Indiana. So, yeah, I think that.

[Jocko Willink]

Did they throw anything when you were getting out? Did they throw anything at you? Did they throw shore duty at you? Did they, like, try and tempt you to stay in?

[Travis Barnes]

Oh, yeah. And I think I'm, my. My company commander. It was Captain Dill, Colonel Dill, when he got out, and my platoon commander, who's now the CEO of Raider Regiment, went on to do unbelievable things. Both of those guys tried. I mean, I think that they, you know, they said, look, Barnes, you're either going to get out and you're going to be in jail in six months, or you're going to end up being a senator. We don't know which. But you're. You're. You're pretty dangerous.

[Jocko Willink]

Let's not roll the dice.

[Travis Barnes]

So why don't you think about coming in, doing another four years? You know, you'll. You'll. We're going to get you into the MARSOC pipeline. We're going to, you know, whatever you want, if you want to go to college. You know, we talked about, you know, getting a pilot's license or coming back in through an aircraft contract. And at that point, you know, I just thought to myself, I'm healthy enough. At that point, I was like, man, this war is not going anywhere for a while, so if they need me, you know, I'll always have the opportunity to get out. But I, on the other hand, I thought, man, if I don't get out now, I'm going to be back in a platoon, going right back over to Iraq or Afghanistan in six months, because that's where I wanted to be. And there were so many slots open that that's where I was going to end up. And several of my buddies ended up doing that. Few got killed. So, you know, for me, it was. It was more of the opportunity. And I always thought, I can do more for the Marine Corps outside of the Marine Corps than I can in. Like, when you're in, you're one guy that can affect a few guys when you get out. You know, there's veteran causes, there's, you know, ways to interact back in the military that you don't have the opportunity to do while you're in the military. I didn't know what that was or how I was going to do that, but that was just, I guess, pie in the sky of, like, I got to give this a try first, and if I get through college, maybe I can come back as an officer, something like that. But I was. I was certainly going to give myself an opportunity to get out and just see how it went.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's impressive, because the gravitational pull of the military and of your friends and your job and the, The. And the stability of it, that's a strong gravitational pole that a lot of guys can't escape. You know, even I. I retired at 20 years, and there was guys that told me, like, dude, I can't believe you had the ner. Like, the nerve to retire. Because they're like, I'm. I'm, you know, I'm doing 30. You know, I could get the. I. I got a family, I got a mortgage. And. And they just couldn't believe that I had the. The nerve to retire at 20. It's like, well, you know, like, I. I was able to escape that gravitational pull because you feel it, you know, and, yeah, when the skipper calls you and is like, hey, we got this slot, you know, you. For me, it was like I had screened for xo, so that's like the Next bit, you know, big career move, you know, like you're, we're gonna pull you over to this team and we got this skipper. He would, he wants you requested you by name. Like they start throwing all that stuff, stuff at you and it's like, really? And then you have the voice. Right, right. And all the boys are going back to war and you're like, yeah, it's tough. I'm, I'm impressed that a 22 year old like that, like you were, was able to escape that gravitational pull. That's impressive.

[Travis Barnes]

Well, thank you. But yeah, I mean, and you're right, that was. And as soon as you get out, you're like, man, I'm not ever going to get that back. I'm never going to be that cool. Never going to live a spartan life, never going to be like in it, like that intense where you're, you're so focused and you know like what you want to do and you're part. And everybody with you, your left and your right, they also want to do the same thing. Like you're never pushed that hard. You're never going to be that good again at one thing. And you realize that very quickly, I think once you get out. But you, there's trade offs. Right?

[Jocko Willink]

And by the way, because I, I was also that guy for much of my career that was saying, hey dude, what are you gonna do when you get out? I use this. I used to have guys give me a business plan. And the business plan wasn't like a business plan that you think of when you're presenting to some public private equity. No, the business plan was like, how are you gonna pay for your car payment, which is $422 for your truck and your rent. And by the way, you've got a kid. Like, just tell me, just tell me how you're gonna buy groceries and then like I, I can let you go. And I would say, I'd say I got about 50%. 50% of guys are like, they, they go away for one more trip and they come back like, hey, I'm realistic. I'd be like, cool. And 50% of the guys back. Yep, I'm getting out, I've got, I got a plan. This is what I'm gonna do. This is how I'm gonna afford it. I'm moved back home, whatever. So yeah, to those guys that are listening right now, just make sure you have a freaking plan. Because if you don't have a plan, you get out and you will, you will not become a senator. You will Be in jail.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

So your parents are helping you out, helping you. And who are you hanging out with at this time? Because like you said, you're in college, but it's. You're 22, but you're a freaking old 22, 23 year old compared to the 18 year old freshman that you're in class with.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I didn't, I mean, I really didn't have friends, you know, to speak of. I mean, I certainly met some while I was at school. A couple veterans that, you know, obviously you gravitate toward those guys. And I would, you know, I was a poli sci major, so Iraq and Afghanistan were topic du jour.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have a plan with that degree?

[Travis Barnes]

Well, I didn't realize that's what I was interested in. So that's what I wanted to study. And then I, you know, about halfway through we're all talking and like, basically this degree qualifies us to move furniture, guys. So it's either that or law school. And so that's, that's how I ended up there. I got a. While I was an undergrad, there was an opportunity for an internship with Senator Lugar from Indiana to go out in D.C. sit on the Foreign Relations Committee and learn kind of how the sausage gets made. And, you know, Senator letter, Senator Lugar was an unbelievable statesman. And the stuff that he, he did kind of under the radar is just unbelievable. And when I, you know, I asked him for a recommendation for law school and I think that and my military background got me in because it certainly wasn't my gpa.

[Jocko Willink]

So your GPA in college wasn't good either.

[Travis Barnes]

It certainly improved. But, you know, I think that those little extra gold stars there probably pushed me over the line.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, how did you. Because now that. What year is this now? Like 0809?

[Travis Barnes]

Yep. So I graduated college undergrad in 2010. So while I was out in D.C. i took the LSAT, took, you know, all the entrance tests to get in. And that's where, you know, you apply and you find out whether or not what schools you got accepted into and.

[Jocko Willink]

How did your perception of what you had done as a Marine in Iraq change once you saw, once you got to D.C. and you saw what that freaking system was all about?

[Travis Barnes]

It depends. I do think that there were certainly folks like Senator Lugar who did understand the issues and the problems that were ongoing. And watching him kind of navigate that struggle between implementing change, which is extremely difficult within the Senate, and supporting our troops, but also criticizing in the right way that one protects Veterans, but also protects our troops. While we were there, I got to have several private conversations with him about that and just why do we have to do this or that or it doesn't feel like there's a good plan here, you know, ongoing and to exit. So it was certainly eye opening to see how things come together and how things don't come together sometimes for me, you know, I was extremely happy to see Senator Lugar was a Republican, how he worked with Senator Ted Kennedy, who's a Democrat. Right. And how those guys both worked together to solve issues. I mean, I can tell you that that was certainly heartening to see and gave me faith in our system and that there are people there that want to help move this country forward and have our best interests in mind, even if they don't necessarily, necessarily agree fundamentally on how to make those changes happen. But I will say that I was very happy to see that there are still people in Washington that have, have our best interests in mind.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I, I was, I worked in the Pentagon, or I didn't work in the Pentagon, but as the Admiral's aide in between my two deployments to Iraq. And so, you know, I was in a lot of really high level meetings and yeah, we'd start, you'd start really paying attention as a young junior officer going, wait a second, like you said, like, is, is there a plan? Is there a plan here? Do we have an exit strategy? Does anyone. We can talk about that at all and even those questions will get brought up. So, yeah. And then, and so I, I think that for you, seeing the political side of things must have been very interesting for, for coming from your background of three intense deployments where that you are the person that executed these freaking policies that these people came up with.

[Travis Barnes]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, you talked about a little bit about TBI and ptsd and I know that those things really have become more and more known as time has gone on, but I don't think like, did, did a single person to you when you got, when you were getting out of the Marine Corps, did anyone talk to you about either of those subjects?

[Travis Barnes]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

Jack.

[Travis Barnes]

No, it wasn't on the checklist of getting out of the Marine Corps or, you know, but again, again, they really hadn't had to deal with these things since Vietnam. So there was a 30 year gap between on a mass. Right. Not just me, but like guys coming out with real issues that they were not staffed for it, they didn't have the training to do it, they didn't know how to screen for just Seemed like it was one of, again, one of those things that no one thought about as we went in, like, hey, we're going to have this. There's going to be a lot of wild, feral dudes out here roaming around if we don't have the system set up to take care of them and help them.

[Jocko Willink]

And you didn't get any of that?

[Travis Barnes]

I certainly. After a while.

[Jocko Willink]

At what point did you realize, like, like, hold on, there's something quite right here.

[Travis Barnes]

The summer I got back home again, when my mom and dad pull me aside, it becomes instinctual. It becomes this second nature to you. Just like clearing a rifle. You just react certain ways to certain instances that you don't even realize you're doing. And I think that that just takes a lot of patience, a lot of practice to realize that you are going through these things, that your lenses have changed and that you need to be aware of them so that, you know, you can engage more appropriately, I guess, in society. Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you ever get any other help besides your parents?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, this is a little frolic and detour, but my sister was in the Navy. When I got out, she actually enlisted and went in and she became a sacco. So she was a substance abuse counseling officer within the Navy for 10 years. And she was very helpful in both as a sister and a veteran and a therapist to kind of talk through some of these things. And my sister and I are extremely tight. So just the having her there that somebody that I could trust, that I could talk to, both as a family member and as a veteran, I think is, you know, finding that one person that you are able to share those things that they have some idea of, you know, what you went through. Obviously, she did not do three combat tours, but she still had that, you know, military mindset and could speak the language and just understood, you know, what. What I went through.

[Jocko Willink]

And then did you get any kind of, like, specific diagnosis? Did you ever get your brain scanned? Where. So you got all that?

[Travis Barnes]

Oh, yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And was that through the va?

[Travis Barnes]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And how was the. Was the VA good to go?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, all of the services I would say that I've received from the VA have been pretty good. I think you have to be extremely proactive about your treatment and what services you earned, which is one thing, you know, my wife and I are still very supportive of the kind of local organizations within our own community that help fill in some of the gaps that the VA doesn't provide, which is really helping veterans understand what services are available to them and how to Utilize them. And again, I think I was just out there and ambitious enough to go and figure out, like, hey, I don't have insurance anywhere else. I don't have another choice.

[Jocko Willink]

So.

[Travis Barnes]

So. And I. And I did have a lot of Vietnam vet guys say, you need to get this documented. You need to make sure. Don't let this go too long. Protect yourself, protect your future family, because you earned these benefits. You did three tours. Don't let them get wasted. So.

[Jocko Willink]

And was there any, like, eureka moment that you had that maybe from your sister or from some. Some other source at the VA that you said that that helped you? Like, was there a pivot point or was it just, like a gradual adjustment to the world?

[Travis Barnes]

I. I think I'm still pivoting. You know, I. I think that, you know, PTSD with combination tbi, I think that, you know, the farther away you get from changes, how you look back on it. Sometimes there's pride, sometimes there's regret sometimes. And again, it's on this linear thing. It doesn't just stop. It shifts and it changes. And how you remember things, when you go back and talk to guys about how certain things happen that were with you there, it's funny how experiences sometimes shift and your memories change, right? And they're all kind of the core is there, but some of the details are shifted 15 degrees. So I think it's constant. I think it's important both to remember what we did while we were in Iraq, but also to move on from it and not let that. That pain, regret, remorse overtake you, because it can. It can become overwhelming. And I've lost several guys to suicide since I got home. That. I think that that's what ends up happening with these guys is they're alone, they don't have a support system, and they get into this spiral of thinking about the past with a. An eye that has remorse and regret and shame, probably embarrassment, that, you know, some of the things that happened and they're not able to take a step forward, it's kind of always moving back or retreading. Right. So for me, at least one of the most important things, my eureka moment was keep moving forward. Don't. Don't stop.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's. I've. I tell. I've told many people, and I say myself, remember, but don't dwell. So, like, yeah, you got to remember what happened, remember your friends, but you can't dwell in the past. You can't just constantly stay there, because, like you said, that turns into a. A downward spiral pretty quickly. You Kept moving forward. Which meant you eventually go to law school.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And you get done with law school. So you're going to become a lawyer. Is that the plan?

[Travis Barnes]

When I went, yeah, you know, I thought I'd, you know, go to law school, move back to my hometown and be a small town prosecutor or hang my shingle and that would be, you know, that was what the goal was. So that was what I expected once I got there. You know, I think I realized pretty quickly that I didn't necessarily want to be a lawyer, but I really enjoyed the school part of it and the, you know, the intellectual gymnastics that the law school teaches you kind of how to, how to think and rethink things too. So I really enjoyed that part of it. I also met my wife first semester, first, you know, class we had together. She couldn't keep her hands off me, so.

[Jocko Willink]

Poor girl's not here to defend herself.

[Travis Barnes]

That's right. Microphone's too far away. And I will also say she was extremely helpful too, as far as just, you know, being someone that you can talk to and trust and who has. She was inquisitive about my experiences, but not nosy and just. She was really wanted to learn and understand.

[Jocko Willink]

Did she have any military veteran heritage in her background?

[Travis Barnes]

Her dad was in the army, but I don't. Not a military family by any means, you know. No. Yeah, no. But was also extremely, you know, interested in that part of my life.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, I just think it's important because, you know, you got someone that you met that was, like you said, inquisitive but not nosy and probably was able to sense, oh, this may be a little bit too sensitive right now. Back off a little bit. But at the same time, oh, looks like there's an opening here and probably wants to explain, express some of this stuff. So just a good thing to pay attention to and that, you know, again, not just to like, veterans, but I can tell you right now if you got kids, like, knowing when to, like, ask some inquisitive questions and also knowing when to back away and be like, ah, they don't really feel like talking about that right now. I just got a text from one of my friends this morning. Something like, do. Did your daughters bottle their feelings up and not. And you couldn't figure out what's going on? And I wrote back, yeah, for a little while, but then eventually, you know, get the. Get. Get in there and find out what's happening. And. And then he wrote, would it come out very emotionally all at once? And I wrote yes, sometimes. So.

[Travis Barnes]

Oh dude, my house. I got a five, a four and a two year old little girls right now in my house. Sometimes it feels like Fallujah because they're screaming, there's crying, there's blood, no one knows what, there's feelings everywhere. Just. It's wild.

[Jocko Willink]

Jack. So at what point did you start making bourbon?

[Travis Barnes]

So the law in Indiana started to change around. There was talk around it changing in 2010. So Indiana used to have a very robust distilling industry. Then during prohibition, the US Legislator Congress said we're only going to allow six distilleries to continue operation. Five were in Kentucky, Jack Daniels was in Tennessee. And they basically have had a monopoly on it for 70 plus years. Well, Indiana said around 2010 we're interested in opening it back up to artisan distilling, which that artisan moniker is important because it allowed small craft guys the ability to produce and then sell directly to consumers out of their tasting room without having to go through the three tier system which is enacted in every state, which is basically, you don't have to use a distributor to move your alcohol. So that's about a 30% margin increase. So it gave us a little bit of an advantage. The law was shot down for a few years and then in 2013 it finally passed and we were one of four within the state to get that initial both federal DSP distilled spirit plant license and our state license with that artisan moniker on.

[Jocko Willink]

Was good that you were a lawyer at this point, I'm assuming. Cause you're doing paperwork.

[Travis Barnes]

It was huge. We started the company while we were in law school or last year we incorporated ourselves. The state of Indiana really didn't know they had cobbled together regulations from a few other states, but they were still kind of figuring out exactly how they were going to implement these regulations. And it was all honestly based around taxation and not serving under 21. Those are the two big guideposts, right? Pay your taxes, don't serve under 21. If you do those two things, there's a lot of wiggle room inside that goal post. But absolutely the legal degree that Hillary and I started it with a couple other buddies, I mean, it's hard to say how many tens of thousands of dollars we saved by not having to go go and just hire a law firm, they would have been learning at the same time because there hadn't been this opportunity for 70 years. So no one had worked with alcohol under this system within Indiana for over half a century. So we really, I think learned Became kind of subject matter experts within this particular section of alcohol law within Indiana, which was a huge advantage because I don't think if we would have had that, we wouldn't have got the license within the timeline that they outlined and then we would have missed the opportunity completely. Luckily we were Johnny on the spot and we got the federal license and the distilling license, state license in 2013. We spent the next few six months raising capital, which again, I had never done that before. I'd never asked anybody for any money. But getting into bourbon is extremely capital intensive. It's, you know, the equipment is very expensive, but also the wait period for bourbon, right? So you got to have a lot of money and it's got to be patient money.

[Jocko Willink]

What's the minimum amount of time bourbon.

[Travis Barnes]

Becomes bourbon at two years in the barrel, Anything over that becomes straight bourbon and then it, then it becomes, you know, reasonable minds can disagree when it is fully matured, right? Some guys let it go. 6, 8, 10. Pappy's got 15 and 21 year old, right. So it's really about what you like. There's no bad bourbon, only better bourbon in my opinion. So different strokes for different folks.

[Jocko Willink]

How much money did you have to raise to get kick this thing off?

[Travis Barnes]

My seed round was $200,000. We were, we literally started it with student loan money, you know, to just kind of incorporate and get the building. And you have to have, you have to have a building to get the license because the license runs with a geographic location. And then, you know, you got to get it zoned, right? You have to do all these things. So we were literally, we were doing all of these things in real time. So it was, it was an education unto a itself just to get the license. Once we had that, we had our business plan very rudimentary. You know, it was basically we had outlined kind of what the margin was, where the opportunity was. And then I thought, look, there is a huge opportunity in the military. Like when I was in, you had a choice, Jim Beam or Jack Daniels, whatever you wanted. And it was on every shelf. And really it's controlled by a few of the very big strategic alcohol companies that are out there. That was really, I think kind of the niche advantage we had early on. And I had a buddy that was working as a bartender at a private kind of old guy club within Indianapolis and said, hey man, they're doing this high end scotch tasting. I'll give you 10 minutes, come over and do your elevator pitch and see what happens. So I went over, I Had built my own still. So I dragged this little thing over with me, and I had a little bit of product that I had made in the backyard, and I got up, give my little song and dance, and it turned into an episode of Shark Tank. I shit you not. I mean, there were guys in the room, I had no idea who I was talking to, but they ended up being some of the pillars of Indianapolis that were intrigued. And then the next morning, I got a few phone calls from the guys that were there the night before, and they were like, I'm interested. How do we do this? And then over the course of the next couple weeks, month, we put together a business plan, an operating agreement, and they each put in 50,000 and I was off to the races.

[Jocko Willink]

And you end up. Did you say you had to buy a building or you just had to lease a building?

[Travis Barnes]

Had to lease it, but it had to be zoned properly. So again, to get that through the neighborhood association, the land use committee, and it was also in a historic district, both from the state level and the federal level. Like the all African American Civil War unit bivouacked on this site. So, I mean, this thing is like triple protected from a, you know, you can't do anything on this site site without multiple permissions. And everybody's like, I don't know, a distillery that sounds, I don't know, alcohol boogeyman kind of thing. So we eventually convinced everybody that this was going to be a good thing for the neighborhood and it would lower the tax base and increase traffic through and, you know, so we did a lot of studying and we had to present and represent and finally got it over the line. And we opened our doors in September of 2014.

[Jocko Willink]

And is it called. Is the Tasting room. What is it called? The Tasting room. What's it called?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, so that's under the, you know, nomenclature of the. The law itself. Tasting room. Artisan distillery.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And it's called Hotel Tango. Artisan. Artisan Distillery.

[Travis Barnes]

Hotel Tango Distillery, Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

And when did you open the doors on that?

[Travis Barnes]

September of 2014.

[Jocko Willink]

And how was the reception? Like?

[Travis Barnes]

It was incredible. I mean, at that point, we had three tiny stills. We were producing during the day to sell it at night. I mean, we could barely keep up. It was great. And we, you know, at that, the next following year, we saved some up. We put enough back, we were ready to enter distribution.

[Jocko Willink]

Wait, if you produce a dirt during the day, when's that? Two year.

[Travis Barnes]

So we were putting bourbon away in barrels, but we were also making gin, vodka, rum that we could also supplement that period of time to allow the bourbon to age.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it. How long do you have to wait to make to drink gin?

[Travis Barnes]

Just like beer, I mean, you can. It's about a seven day process.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it. So is there anything you can get faster than that or does it all have to ferment for some time?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I mean, it's basically we're taking beer one step further, right. So you take grain, water, yeast, sugar, that makes beer. From there we'll take large vats of that, say 500 gallons, and we will distill that, the high octane alcohol out of it to 50 gallons, say. So it's basically just refining over and over and over again, right. Until there's very. There's a lot less alcohol, but just much, much higher proof.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you still make gin or vodka?

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

Echo Charles. Do you like vodka?

[Echo Charles]

Right, yeah, vodka's cool for sure.

[Jocko Willink]

That used to drink vodka like a decent amount. Probably too much.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, probably too much at one point, sure, I agree.

[Jocko Willink]

But. And you offer all these different types of alcohol to this day.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep, yep. So it's really about at that point, it's the how high you're distilling it down. The proof that you're taking it up to will determine what the product is. Right. Vodka has to be colorless, odorless, flavorless. And that happens at about 190 proof. And from there we'll cut it back down with water, just ro. Reverse osmosis water. And that is the process of vodka. That's how everybody makes it. That's how everybody has made it for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

[Jocko Willink]

What about gin?

[Travis Barnes]

Gin is. There's multiple ways to do it. You can either macerate it, so you will put in botanicals. It has to be predominantly juniper. That is what is the. That's the flavor that you're getting from gin. And then from there you can add in anything your heart desires. Elderflower, orange peel, star anise, you know, whatever you know you've got laying around in the kitchen from a spice rack that makes a gin. You can soak it in a high proof vodka and then redistill it to create the gin. Or you can layer all of those botanicals in a cake inside of a gin basket. That's actually an attachment to the still and the vapors will go through it and will take on the flavors of those botanicals as it passes up and over through the still and then comes back down, goes in vodka. Vodka comes out gin.

[Jocko Willink]

And obviously you're into this kind of stuff.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, man.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, that's, that's what, that's what kicked this whole thing off was you were enjoying making bourbon.

[Travis Barnes]

Absolutely. You know, it's, there's, it's half science, half art, right. There's a recipe you got to follow, but within that, there's tweaks that you can make along the way that add your own flavor to it. Right. That make it yours individually. And we, you know, with those tiny skills, we were, they're, they're manuals right there. There's no automation at all. So you're pulling levers that will dictate the flavor profile that comes out on the other end. So learning on those tiny do it yourself stills really allowed us to play with flavor profile proof and just kind of overall experience of that particular spirit.

[Jocko Willink]

All right, so you get the doors open, things are going well. And what's the trajectory over the last 10 years been like?

[Travis Barnes]

Well, it's been wild, I can tell you that. I kind of talk in two terms. There's pre Covid and post Covid. Pre Covid. You know, the world really operated on a three legged stool, right. You had beer, wine and alcohol. And when we got into it, bourbon was on this massive upward trajectory. Right. Everybody was watching Mad Men and wanted old fashions. And, you know, it was the cool, hip drink and a lot of other artisan distilling distilleries were coming online and it was just high growth. Right. People couldn't get enough of it. And there's all these, you know, Easter egg bottles that are going on the secondary market for thousands of dollars. It was just an, an unbelievable time of growth. And we had a good story, so. Right. So for us, you know, in the bourbon world, I think that the ingredients that make a successful brand are you've got to have a good product, obviously, but you have to have a good story and be authentic. And I think that that's kind of what set us apart early on was, you know, veteran owned, veteran made, and people wanted to support that. Right. And then Covid happens and everybody thinks the world's going to end, right. And at the same time, their pantry loading. So sales are, you know, still growing, but it's also, it shut down our tasting room. So in 2020, we had a budget built out for how we thought we were going to reach our sales goals for the end of the year. Well, they shut us down in February, I think, of that year where, you know, if you have asked me 30 days before, I was like, there is no way, no way that there Will be riots on the street if they shut down bars and restaurants. I was wrong. So within about 30 days, not even. I mean, we were one of the first in the country that we pivoted and said, we got all the ingredients to be make hand sanitizer. We can keep the wheels on this thing moving. And so we totally shifted. We kept everybody employed, and we basically turned our event space that we were just getting ready to open into a hand sanitizer factory. So we had totes of vodka that we were adding denaturing flavoring to. And you know that what made it hand sanitizer?

[Jocko Willink]

What's denaturing?

[Travis Barnes]

It's so you can't drink it. It'll make you throw it up.

[Jocko Willink]

Got it.

[Travis Barnes]

Which I was like, I can't believe we have to add this.

[Jocko Willink]

That hurt your soul to do.

[Travis Barnes]

Well, there are people out there actually drinking this to get high instead of. I was just like, man, this. That is intense. But we started giving some away. We started selling some, and the bell curve on this was intense. I. I mean, we became a hand sanitizer company for about 90 days, and then it was over. And we, We. I said, look, we got to cut this off because this is going to go away. Everybody's in panic mode right now, but it's going to end.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you do well in the 90 days? Very well, I would think that. I mean, hand sanitizer was in high demand.

[Travis Barnes]

Well, everybody was out. I mean, the big guys did not have the reserves that they were not expecting this. And again, it was that panic buying. So everybody is like, I got to get hand sanitizer and toilet paper or.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm going to die.

[Travis Barnes]

Right. I got to. I got to be able to wipe my ass and wash my hands, and this is the only way to do it. So, yeah, we, we did very good. But then we immediately shifted back to.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, did you shift back before the demand signal dropped? Were you kind of ahead of it, or were you like, oh, wait, no one wants our hand sanitizer anymore.

[Travis Barnes]

We were before we had made enough to where the residual, like, was going to carry on. But we're like, we cannot continue doing this. This is. This is not our business.

[Jocko Willink]

Because you knew Johnson and Johnson and whoever else was going to get caught up and then you'd be screwed.

[Travis Barnes]

Absolutely.

[Jocko Willink]

And no one wants to buy artisan hand sanitizer.

[Travis Barnes]

Well, there's just no need for it. Right. That was, you know, again, where I thought, this is going to end and we do not want to be stuck with so much Inventory that we can never give it away.

[Jocko Willink]

And so then what happened after that? How long did it take before they were allowing you to open up the restaurant or the tasting room?

[Travis Barnes]

I mean, it was six months. We were shut down and we were trying to figure out ways we sold cocktails to go and pouches, like the old hi C Pouch Indiana went through just kind of a weird sometimes then we could do it with masks. We had to create outside areas. So we just again, we were kind of taking what the defense gave us as far as like, okay, if we're allowed to do that, then we can do that. And if they haven't said we can't do it, then do it until they say we can't do it. So there was a little bit of that, but always trying to stay within the square lines of like, okay, this is no go, this is go. And again, sometimes as we're changing on day to day basis, right. So the ROIs for that were changing also. Trying to not become so distracted within that period of time to lose focus on what our core business was.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have to take on more capital or were you guys, did you guys get to a point where you're kind of profitable and you're making money and you don't need to bring in more?

[Travis Barnes]

Well, we've always, our goal is, you know, grow, grow, grow. So, you know, we've raised capital several times over the last 10 years and we're very close to cash flow positive and getting to a spot where it's more sustainable. That's also what really has changed in the last few years is what a strategic would be looking for in a artisan distillery to bolt on. You know, before COVID it was growth at all costs, EBITDA be damned. We just care about your top line and that you've got enough barrels behind you that we can plug you into our system and take you from 50,000 cases to 200,000 immediately. Since then there's this perfect storm. So within, since COVID several things have happened. RTDs have been introduced to the market, so they're ready to drink high noon. Marijuana has basically become. It's legal in 25 states plus now Indiana.

[Jocko Willink]

And they're getting marijuana drinks now? Apparently.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. So Indiana, I just saw a Wall.

[Jocko Willink]

Street Journal article about that.

[Travis Barnes]

It's going to be huge. It will be. It will be a billion dollar industry if it's not already abstinence. So Gen Z, they don't drink, they don't drive, they don't screw, they don't do anything.

[Jocko Willink]

That's my kids. My kids are like. Because I got older kids and they're Gen Z. And what's after Gen Z? Jenny. Back to Jenny. But yeah, that's kind of like the. At least. Yeah, that's kind of the new thing. They're not drinking. They're super healthy. They're like on the weekends let's do ice bath saunas. And that's like how we get crazy. Like factory reset in the sauna. You know what I'm saying? It's. I mean, I'm. Yeah, I'm kind of. And I'm not just talking about my kids like all their friends. We're not all their friends, but many of their friends. The same way, they want to be smarter, they want to be tougher, they want to be like in better shape. They want to be healthy. And so they ain't drinking bourbon. They don't even drink like freaking pasteurized milk. You know, if it's not raw milk, we're not putting in our body. We want that raw milk. So. So.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, well, you know, different strokes for different folks. I think the, the other big thing that has happened is that I recently read about was online gambling has taken a huge chunk out of people's disposable incomes. And then the big one that is really going to be the biggest disruptor for alcohol are the weight loss drugs. Mounjaro, Wegovy, Ozempic, that, you know, you put 70 people, 70 million people that are diabetic on one of those, they're going to. The reduction in drinking is going to go down. So right now we're going through this period.

[Jocko Willink]

Is this because you can't drink when you take those drugs?

[Travis Barnes]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

At all.

[Travis Barnes]

I think you. Again, I can, I can tell you anecdotally that I know folks that, you know, they'd go out and they would have two or three old fashions before we'd go to dinner. Now that they're on that, they'll say things like, man, I can only take one of these, I want to have another one. But like my body is just saying, nope, you're done.

[Jocko Willink]

Those drugs are out there, huh? Like a lot of people are taking those drugs.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, it's going to be. You extrapolate that. Over 70 million people that have. Are diabetic in the US there, there's going to be an impact.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, and plus it's 70 million adults.

[Travis Barnes]

Correct.

[Jocko Willink]

Right. Because kids aren't on Ozempic, right?

[Travis Barnes]

Not yet.

[Jocko Willink]

Freaking hope they're not.

[Travis Barnes]

So damn.

[Jocko Willink]

Get a treadmill for the children.

[Travis Barnes]

So, yeah, so all of these things have happened in the past, minus the, you know, the weight loss, drugs, but all of the other things have happened just never at the time, same, same time. So right now there's just this inflection point of how consumers are drinking what they're drinking. And it used to be that, you know, 30 years ago a Budweiser guy was a Budweiser. So he'd have it at the ballpark, he'd have it on the lake, he'd have it out at dinner. Now that same guy might have a Budweiser at the baseball game, but he's going to have a bourbon at the campfire and a high noon out on the lake. Right. Or eat a gummy or whatever, you know, so there's these, there's an experience component of what people are choosing to get their fix on at a particular time and place. And so that is also just disrupting the, the industry because it's never had this optionality before of you can pick your poison based on, you know, whatever the time and place is. So I think there's going to be, you know, a new kind of hierarchy of, you know, what brands and what products continue to move off the shelf. Right. There's, there's going to be a thinning.

[Jocko Willink]

Of the herd and people are making non alcoholic. There's a, there's like a beer company that doesn't even make alcoholic beer.

[Travis Barnes]

It's the fastest growing category in alcohol right now.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. And my wife, who doesn't drink, she drinks like, I don't even know what to call it. It's alcohol. It's non alcoholic alcohol. Meaning, like, my wife's a Brit, you know, they, that's part of that. Drinking is part of the whole jam over there. But she doesn't drink anymore, so. But you know, this is a girl that when she was 14 years old, had a gin and tonic at dinner with everybody, everyone else in the fam. Like, that's what we're doing.

[Travis Barnes]

Right.

[Jocko Willink]

And so now, like, she doesn't do that anymore, but she still wants to have something. And so she's got these weird creations in her house that come in really nice bottles. It kind of reminds me of what I'm looking at right here with your stuff. So maybe you got to get into that. I think it's, I want to use the word botanical, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Travis Barnes]

No, you're right. I think that's, that's right. Yep.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. But yeah, just this, this, this trend is definitely Here. And it, it's not something that popped up overnight either. It's not like, oh, this is a trend that's going to last for a little while. Like, like the hula hoop. It seems like it's been a slow building of a trend where things are just growing and growing.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, I mean, there's. There's certainly evidence to suggest that, you know, alcohol is not necessarily a healthy life, just style choice, if you're. Especially if you're abusing it. Right. I think everybody's known that for a long time. I think the difference now is it's that information plus lifestyle. Right. So you're not just doing the one thing, but it's an incorporation into an overall plan of, you know, I'm going to exercise more, I'm going to drink less, I'm going to, you know, what, you know, be mindful. Like, so there's this whole. It's a part of the puzzle, but it's also when you people are looking at the whole puzzle more, and when that happens, you know, for us it's, you know, how do we get. How do we gain that consumer in that particular time and place to pull a Hotel Tango bottle instead of a Jim Beam bottle? Right. That's our fight.

[Jocko Willink]

And why do they taste better, higher quality? What's the deal?

[Travis Barnes]

Well, all. I would argue that, you know, our smaller batch, we get a. There's certainly a different profile. It is artisan. It's not going to be your standard everyday bourbon, whichever one that is. And I think that's what's fun about the art side of bourbon. Right. There's nuances and little micro changes in each barrel, that every barrel is individual. It's a different. You could have two barrels that were distilled the same day, put in the barrel the same day, age for the same amount of time, and when you pull it out, they're going to be different. There might be a little bit of difference, but there might be a lot of difference. There's so much impact that the wood and the charring have on it. And in some cases where it's stored geographically. Right. A barrel in Indiana might taste different than one that's been stored in Kentucky or even farther in Texas. You know, so there's so many little nuances that can happen within the artisan guys that aren't just that massive industrial, you know, kind of bourbon. And then with the flavored, I think it's really getting into that optionality again and for the experience of the time and place. Right. So our shmallo It's a campfire whiskey. It's lower proof, it's sweeter. You can either drink it on ice, you can drink it in a hot toddy. And our Swiss Miss is certainly a seasonal thing that you can drink in your hot cocoa or hot coffee. You can also drink it on its own and you can also put it in an old Fashioned. So it's, it gives, it's utilitarian and it's not just your everyday kind of thing that you see all the time. I think that's what we're trying to give people is the optionality.

[Jocko Willink]

If they're gonna do it, might as well take it to a little bit of a unique spot.

[Travis Barnes]

Right? You know, a little bit of fun, authentic. And again, you know, we've, we only released this for a few months out of the year. It's there. Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

Mallow.

[Echo Charles]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

And by the way, I don't think we've said this yet. The name of the brand is Hotel Tango, which is named after you, Tango T. And your wife Hillary. Hotel.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

That's how we got to Hotel Tango. And she comes first because she's, you know, smarter than you, better looking.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, the whole nine yards, 100.

[Travis Barnes]

No, no, no, no. Don't denying that.

[Jocko Willink]

Awesome, man. So what, where do we go from here? What's the next big move with Hotel Tango?

[Travis Barnes]

Well, you know, you'll continue to see us growing in stores. Really, you know, we're, we're focused over the next couple years of seeing how the market shifts and trends. You know, we're dealing with some, you know, international stuff with trade that impacts us by the big guys pulling back and, and you know, kind of loading in the shelf with lower priced items.

[Jocko Willink]

So flooding the market here stateside.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, you'll see a handle of Jim Beam and Jack Daniels for under 30 bucks sometime. You know that that's going to be, we can't drop our price like that. So we have to, you know, aim small, Miss Small. And so I would say, you know, potentially another maybe springtime offering of the Shmallow. We're, we're playing around in our tasting tasting room right now with some other fruit products. We might have a raspberry bourbon coming out in the next year or so.

[Jocko Willink]

We'll see the raspberry bourbon. Right on, man. Well, does that, does that, does that get us up to speed?

[Travis Barnes]

That's it. We're at. Yeah. Look for it anywhere that fine spirits are sold and yeah. Order online. Come check us out if you're ever passing Through Indianapolis. And you're a veteran. You know, hit me up online. I'm. I live five minutes away from the shop, so I love to host guys and gals and love to have a drink and tell some lies to each other.

[Jocko Willink]

And if you want to order online, it's hoteltango. Distillery.com.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, that'll get you there.

[Jocko Willink]

You've got. You got Twitter, which is Hotel Tango Indie. And then on Facebook and Instagram, it's a hotel at Hotel Tango Distribution. Distillery. That's where people can check things out and see what you got going on. Awesome. Echo Charles, you got any questions? Here we go. The real interview starts with Echo Charles.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. So the hand sanitizer, was that called Hotel Tango hand sanitizer?

[Travis Barnes]

Yes, sir.

[Echo Charles]

Okay.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah.

[Echo Charles]

All right. Was it. Was it kind of artisan or was it just like. No, we're just going to provide.

[Travis Barnes]

I mean, it was certainly artisan. I mean, it was. I mean, it was pretty, you know, rudimentary when we were making it, but, I mean, it was crazy. We sold every. You know, we gave it to schools, we gave it to hospitals. Actually, the US Government bought a bunch of it. Shipyards. Again, it was really. For us, it was the way to kind of keep the wheels moving for everybody else. That was kind of one of the sticking points that the government put out there, that you got to have cleaning stations, you got to have. If you want to stay operational, you got to do the mask, whatever. And that was our. There was this kind of World War II feeling when we were doing this because everybody was chipping in to just make it work. It's not going to be perfect, guys, but if we all work together and lean in on it, we'll get this over the line and we'll help everything, hopefully fix this faster so we're not shut down. But also allowing everybody else to continue operating, which felt really good.

[Jocko Willink]

I had a similar little scenario. I got a clothing manufacturing company in America with all American made materials called Origin Origin usa. And it's funny because one of my buddies, Sarge, he. He's, you know, like a. He's a seal, a retired seal, and he's kind of. He does security work all over the world. And he was doing security work over in Europe, and he sent me a text like, bro, there's something going on over here. You should make masks. And this was pre. Anyone hearing about COVID And I was like, what are you talking about? He goes, yeah, there's this weird, like, disease over here, and it's spreading, and you should make masks. And I said, well, what kind of masks? And he's like, N95. Because he's a medic, he's a corpsman. So he's like. He's like, N95 masks. See if you can make them. And I go, cool. And I talked to my buddy Pete from Origin, who's my. My co founder at. At Origin. I'm like, hey, dude, my buddy's calling me from overseas saying we should make masks. And he's like, well, what are they? N95. And he goes through the thing and he's like. He calls me back the next day and he's like, hey, dude. Like, we'd have to tool up with, like a plastic press. Like, we. It was equipment. We'd have to buy. And. Okay, pass. And then fast forward like a month now Covid's here. And they're like, hey, putting cloth over your face. And I'm like, dude, that sounds. That doesn't sound like it's going to help anything. And Pete, you know, he's like, hey, should we make these things? And I'm like, dude, how is putting a piece of cloth over your face? Like, I don't. I don't think that's a real thing. And he's like, yeah, yeah, cool. And then the next. I like, that afternoon, I went home and they had a press conference, and someone from New York, I think it was New York, was saying cloth face masks are mandatory. And it was a Friday. And I called Peter. I'm like, yo, they're making these things mandatory. And he's like, I'm on it. And sure enough, over the weekend, designed, like, a face. A cloth face mask. A cloth face mask. Like, that's a thing. Designed it, and we started making it. And we used. Because, by the way, we. That part of the company makes Jiu Jitsu clothing. And every Jiu Jitsu, you know, school in the country shut down, so we weren't selling any Jiu Jitsu clothing. All right, well, here we go. When we started making these masks, and, you know, we ended up same exact thing where we had companies, because I have another consulting company. And so a lot of those big companies that we work with, they're like, we heard you're making masks. We need them. And I'm like, okay, how many you need? 28,000. All right, cool. We're on it. 42,000. You know, it's just like, boom, boom, boom. And we were the only people that could supply them because a lot of the other companies that have different materials in Their clothing, even if they're sewn in America, they didn't have the material, so they were screwed. And we just delivered. So we did have a little bit of that World War II. Kind of get everyone on board, same kind of feeling that you had.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, yeah. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. So when you got to have it and you figure it out.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, indeed. Anything else?

[Echo Charles]

Echo Charles what's the Easter egg bottle?

[Travis Barnes]

So some of those would be our tenure that we have put away. You know, single barrel stuff. Like, again, the we'll have guys will come over and do barrel picks, and there's no right or wrong answers. It's what the, that particular, you know, bottle shop guy will want. But it's a very, you know, it's different in his opinion or my opinion, I guess, than all of the other bottles or barrels out there. So, I mean, within the bourbon world, you could think of it as like maybe the Blanton's single barrel release. Right? The Blanton Blanton's. That's one of my favorites.

[Echo Charles]

Do you know what Blanton?

[Jocko Willink]

No, I do not.

[Travis Barnes]

It's owned by Sazerac. It's, you know.

[Echo Charles]

Do you know Sazerac?

[Jocko Willink]

I do not.

[Travis Barnes]

Okay. You know Fireball?

[Echo Charles]

Oh, Fireball.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, yes, Fireball.

[Travis Barnes]

So they own both of those and kind of the opposite end of the spectrum, right. Like, Fireball is, you know, you shoot it. It's, you know, a lot of college kids drink it. More of a party atmosphere. Blanton's. When you think of that, it is, you know, the old timey, like Colonel Sanders on the front porch, rocking chair, sipping on it and just really enjoying like the experience of a straight bourbon that's been aged for, you know, 8, 12, 15 years.

[Echo Charles]

So it's like, like a special Edish kind of a scenario.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah. If you find one. I mean, and that's crazy because, like, people will get, you know, they'll go in and they'll buy them off the shelf and they'll be selling it out in the parking lot and it will go like that. I mean, it'll just. It's crazy. These collectors.

[Jocko Willink]

Is this like drop culture?

[Echo Charles]

Echo Charles maybe not the workflow, but kind of the result? Little bit. Right. You know, the, the do they. They don't re. Redo them. Like, is there like other runs in the future or is it just limited runs? Or is it just the one run?

[Travis Barnes]

That's it. Once that barrel's gone, man, that's it. So it's kind of like a, you know, Nil thing.

[Jocko Willink]

Like how many bottles do you get out of a barrel?

[Travis Barnes]

Depends on the age. So the older, you know, you le. You lose between 5 and 8% of volume within a barrel every year. So there's standard bourbon barrels 53 gallons. So depending on how old it can, it'll. It will reduce by gallons, you know, over, over time. So anywhere between, I'll say 100 bottles for a very old barrel to 240 bottles for a, you know, four or five year old bourbon.

[Jocko Willink]

Jack.

[Echo Charles]

So it's like a whole thing, man. Like a whole culture.

[Travis Barnes]

Oh, dude, it is.

[Echo Charles]

Remember, I think it was doggy. Well, somebody was saying how like some people, they don't even drink, they just collect the stuff. Wine, bourbon.

[Travis Barnes]

I know several stuff. There's an aftermarket that's, it's huge. You know, secondary, third tertiary market that just. Guys will buy these bottles just to put them on their bar back and say, look what I've got.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Travis Barnes]

You know, it's kind of a status symbol.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. Kind of. When you think about the whole culture that kind of rises with a lot of these things, alcohol is one of them. It does get kind of weird and hard to keep up in a way. Especially with the non alcoholic alcohol, like beverage. Like we already know non alcoholic beverages. It starts from water all the way up to like soft drinks.

[Travis Barnes]

Right.

[Echo Charles]

That's kind of. We always had that since, you know, literally since people could drink water.

[Travis Barnes]

Yes.

[Echo Charles]

And now they have non alcoholic alcoholic beverages. It's kind of like this weird loop that we did. Just because of the culture.

[Travis Barnes]

Yeah, 100%.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, we buy water for $3 a bottle. Right.

[Echo Charles]

Artisan water.

[Travis Barnes]

It's crazy how, how the, the circle kind of comes full after, you know, a few years.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah. The difference between the water and stuff, which is obviously half joking, is does it completely, like not even 99, a hundred percent defeats the purpose. You know how you have like these cocktails, non alcoholic cocktails. It defeats the whole purpose.

[Travis Barnes]

I think it's a mindset. So we, in our tasting room, we have it on our menu, these mocktails. And I think for some people it's, it's really about participating in the experience of the communal aspect without getting, you know, the buzz.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, exactly. Right. And that's kind of, that's the point.

[Jocko Willink]

And there is a taste thing that I don't identify with it because I have the taste buds of like a freaking piece of wood. Like I, I'm just like, I, I can't tell. Nothing tastes like anything to me. I just don't like anything. But my wife, you know, who, like, she drank wine, she would tell like, oh, I like this bottle, not that bottle. And, and she's like that with food too. Like with the sauce and with the thing. And so for her, you know how much like, okay, I like, I like chocolate milk. Right. I mean, we might even say I'm a connoisseur of chocolate milk. I love chocolate milk. Right. I've been drinking it my whole life. And when I get a really good chocolate milk, it's like, oh, I mix up, you know, we, we make chocolate protein and I'll mix up a really good one with, you know, I just nail it. And it's the good temperature and I'm kind of into it. But she does that with like normal, like everyday stuff. And so she buys this fake alcohol. And I've tried it. To me, it's literally disgusting, by the way. Like, I drink it, I'm like, this is gross. But she's like, excited to drink it. And she's getting no buzz, obviously, because it's non alcoholic. But she likes the taste and the notes, right? The tones that are in there. She's into it. So you need to back off a little bit. You see what I'm saying? Because it's not just water.

[Echo Charles]

I'm not, I'm not stating any opinion on the matter. I'm just identifying, you know, kind of the characteristics. Yeah, because you're right about the experience where. And that's kind of my whole point where it's like, okay, you have alcohol that gives you an experience. Right. Which usually is like a supplement to something. Maybe you went, you know, I mean, you. We went to, I don't know, fishing or something like this. Right. And the alcohol gives us the enhanced experience. Right. That's kind of how like kind of the onetoone deal.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep.

[Echo Charles]

Then afterwards it's kind of like, wait a second, this alcohol combined with the fishing kind of gave us this almost like third experience in and of itself. See what I'm saying? And then the culture just builds and builds and builds and now people are kind of giving, you know, subtracting one of the main ingredients of the original formula. But meanwhile, the culture is so robust that you can still kind of have the experience now.

[Travis Barnes]

Yep, absolutely.

[Echo Charles]

See what I'm saying? Yeah. It's weird.

[Travis Barnes]

People want to participate.

[Echo Charles]

And the whole thing with tasting is my theory. They say that females have more acute taste than males. This is why I think, I think like tasting stuff in different, like, notes or whatever you said, has to do with, like, your emotions. And that's why I think you're not. Your. Your palette is very unrefined.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, because I'm just an emotional.

[Travis Barnes]

You have very, like.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, you got one, two, three emotions. And then that's sort of it. You're taking action after that. A lot of us, like, bro, we kind of relish in certain emotions, even the negative ones, by the way. So it's like, boom, we're gonna taste different things. See, I'm saying, meanwhile, you're ignoring those things.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. Unless they just don't get. They don't get through. They don't. They don't even break squelch with me.

[Echo Charles]

Unless it's hot chocolate or chocolate milk or whatever. See what I'm saying? So that's kind of like your little emotional weak spot right there. Your kryptonite. Oh, yeah. You didn't like that, huh? But it's true. Given my theory, I. I think you're right.

[Travis Barnes]

I think that there's certainly an aspect of that. Yes.

[Echo Charles]

Yep. It's true.

[Jocko Willink]

Right?

[Echo Charles]

That's all I got. Good to meet you. Right on.

[Travis Barnes]

Thanks, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Travis, any. Any closing thoughts, bro?

[Travis Barnes]

Just. Thank you very much for this opportunity. Opportunity. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the hang.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, man. Thanks for joining us. And very cool to hear your story and. And hear some of these lessons learned. I mean, you had just had a. What a poignant career in the Marine Corps, and it just shows you what a great. What a great organization the Marine Corps is. So thanks for stepping up. Thanks for your service in the Marine Corps. Thanks for taking the fight to the enemy, and thanks for continuing to live a life that exemplifies the freedom that you fought for, brother. Appreciate it.

[Travis Barnes]

Thank you very much. Appreciate that.

[Jocko Willink]

And with that, Travis Barnes has left the building. Tense few years in the Marine Corps. And listen, hey, by the way, this whole thing that you brought up, I was thinking about when I was talking to Travis and his wife Hillary before they left, this whole thing about I don't have a taste palette because I lack emotions.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Interesting concept that you have.

[Echo Charles]

I would say your emotions are very. What do you call it? Like, they're. They're not. Like, the spectrum is more of a low resolution. So you got one emotion, you got two emotion, 30 motion, maybe. Maybe a four forth.

[Jocko Willink]

That.

[Echo Charles]

That kind of runs in. You know, comes in onto the scene every once in a while.

[Jocko Willink]

What are my three.

[Echo Charles]

That's sort of it.

[Jocko Willink]

What are my three emotions? Like, I don't know. I want to say number one, I think especially because I'm sitting here with you.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Happy disappointment.

[Echo Charles]

Okay, all right, we'll go with it. But you got. You got. You're happy, you're sad, you're mad, and you're impatient. There you go. There's your. Your whole deal.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you're right. I don't think I have any of those.

[Echo Charles]

Well, I'm not saying. I'm not saying anything about your behavior. I'm just saying I've witnessed you feel these emotions at some point, I feel like. I feel like I have witnessed it. How about that?

[Jocko Willink]

I would like to see evidence.

[Echo Charles]

All right, well, there you go.

[Jocko Willink]

Hey. No, but awesome to have him on and hear that perspective. I'm telling you, those. Those were three, like, deployments that were heavy.

[Travis Barnes]

So.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, he's taking an edge off now. And listen, take your edge off a little bit. Some people want to drink some bourbon. Hey, we. We will support Hotel Tango bourbon, just distilled with discipline. But listen, maybe bourbon's not your thing. And even if you're gonna drink bourbon, I recommend that you don't drink too much of it. Sometimes you gotta have other drinks. When you need those other drinks, which should be the majority of the time, I recommend you drink Choco Fuel. And listen, I have, like, a PSA scenario to report here. So if you are having trouble finding Jocko Fuel, there is probably the premier. Like, if there's something you want from Jocko Fuel and whoever you're normally getting it from, it's not there. Whether that's one of the big online retailers, whether it's a store that you go to, if you go to jocafuel.com it's stocked, and we will be able to get you what you need. And if you order from jogofuel.com you're gonna get Jocko Fuel, because, believe it or not, this is crazy. You remember how. You know how there's people that make fake Jocko T shirts?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, the knockoff.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Knockoff Jocko T shirts. Made in China, by the way. Yeah, there are actually. And this is. This is, like, took me a little time to wrap my head around it. There's fake Jocko Fuel. Oh. Out there in the world.

[Travis Barnes]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

And so they. They make it. They sell it at, like, a cheap price, and it's junk. Yeah, we're. We're on it. Like. Or you can. You can go after them, and we go after them, but, you know, it's out there. So if you're buying straight from the source, if you're buying from Jockefield.com you're going to get, you're going to get Jocko Fuel, which is good. Also if you go to jockerfield.com we have, we have like deals that we run on there. Sign up for the sms, you'll find out there's, you know, there's some product that you drink a lot of or you use a lot. Get a little text message, sign up for the sms, you're like, oh cool, we got a, we got the goodness right here. And by the way, here's another thing. Look, we, we've grown and we used to ship everything from Maine and sometimes it was rough. We didn't have like, we're small, we didn't have a total like workforce in there. We had a few people getting it done, but it would take a while to get it done. So, and so sometimes shipping would take a little bit long. But now we have like a logistics partner. They ship everything from Texas. If you order it, it's getting shipped that day. Maybe if you order in the afternoon, it's getting shipped the next day, but it's getting shipped quick and you're going to get it fast. And another reason some, sometimes people like to use like the big online retailers is because they have free shipping. And if you want free shipping, if you spend 99 bucks, you'll get free shipping@jockey fuel.com so because we're trying to like help you, right? But shipping is expensive so we can't just ship like one pack of creatine, you know what I mean, for free. So if you, but if you buy a little bit more, then you'll be good to go. @jockofuel.com and, and we got everything. We also bring some new products on there and we have like a whole loyalty like reward program. Take care of the people, right? That's benefits. You can, you can get loyalty points and you can use those, report those points to get rewarded, get like free gifts, access to new products when they come out. So there's a bunch of reasons. And finally the, the last thing I'll talk about is this subscription scenario. I know you like subscription scenarios.

[Echo Charles]

Yes sir.

[Jocko Willink]

So if you subscribe to whatever product that is you want, there's some benefits. First of all, like it's a reduced price so you get like 10 or 20% off depending on the product itself and it's going to show up. So you're never going to run out of it. Have you ever run out of a product at Jocko Fuel? Have you ever run out of something yeah, Creatine.

[Echo Charles]

I just ran out yesterday.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, look at you, dude. Subscribe.

[Echo Charles]

I need to subscribe.

[Jocko Willink]

Subscribe and save. And not to mention you'll get some gifts. So like if you subscribe for two months, eventually two months of subscription, Jocko Fuel Shaker cup coming your way. Fourth month of subscription will suddenly like another gift. And then six months of subscription, you get to choose like a gift. So we got all kinds of things that we try and help you out if you're going to jockofield.com so, so check out joc fuel.com that's, that's my recommendation if you want the goods. Now listen, also we do have our products in a bunch of different places as well. We just talked to Travis. They're up there and they're, they, they shop at Meijer and guess what? Guess what you can get at Meijer. Jocko Fuel. So Walmart, Wawa Vitamin Shop, gnc, Military commissaries, aps, Hannaford's Dash Stores, Wake Fern, shoprite, HEB down in Texas, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Publix down in the Southeast, man, killing it. So everybody that shops those stores, thank you, we appreciate it. And then Shields Lifetime Fitness. I think I said that. But another, another place you can get it. And by the way, if you got like a gym, you can get this stuff into your gym. If you got Victory MMA and you want to sell. Email jfsalesalefuel.com Make a little more money for your gym, right? You got a gym, you want to take care of your customers, your clients, get them healthier and make a little bit more money.

[Travis Barnes]

Cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Email jfsalesjockfuel.com we'll get you hooked up and there you go. And also we have Origin USA where we make a hundred percent American made products here in America. To tariff. That's, that's been put on some of these countries overseas. Not affecting us at all. Why is it not affecting us? Because we don't bring anything from overseas. Every the cotton is from America, the zippers, it's all from America. 100American made originusa.com Jiu Jitsu gear. Jeans, boots, hoodies, sweatshirts, hunt gear, we got all, we got it all. Workout gear, we got everything. So check out originusa.com get a bunch of American made gear and wear it with pride.

[Echo Charles]

True. Speaking of gear, more gear. Discipline gear made with discipline and with discipline on the gear. See what I'm saying? Anyway, jocko store.com. so yeah, discipline equals freedom. Doesn't you can represent good. The idea of good. Got a few good shirts. I need to put more designs just on the general store. We need a revamp there.

[Jocko Willink]

But anyway, step up your game.

[Echo Charles]

Step up the game. Yeah, totally. But nonetheless available now. Hats, some socks on there. Some good stuff.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, you can give me some of those socks.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, I give you.

[Jocko Willink]

I've been asking you that for nine podcasts now.

[Echo Charles]

Yes, well.

[Jocko Willink]

And I've got no socks.

[Echo Charles]

Okay. They coming, you know, they're in transit.

[Jocko Willink]

And what about my shirts?

[Echo Charles]

Shirts? Same deal, you know, in transit to my house. Well, you know, let's say the wheels are turning as far as, like, you know, the process.

[Jocko Willink]

My confidence level with you is so low. It is literally so low.

[Echo Charles]

Don't worry, I will guarantee, personal guarantee that you will have your socks and shirts timeline. I will, you know, within the next. How about this? By the time we see each other again.

[Jocko Willink]

So one week, maybe one week. Okay, One week. I will have socks.

[Echo Charles]

You will be not.

[Jocko Willink]

And the shirts I requested, you will not. Shirts I requested, by the way, are the. The shirt locker shirt with a cool looking skull on it and a death core flag on its core. Great. Engraved in its head.

[Echo Charles]

Yep. All hand drawn, by the way.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Looks sick.

[Echo Charles]

Comfort is a curse.

[Jocko Willink]

Comfort is a curse. Written with runic Viking writing. Dude, it looks sick.

[Echo Charles]

Thank you. Yes. Picture. I agree.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you design that?

[Echo Charles]

Good design. Yes, sir.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you design it?

[Echo Charles]

Yes, sir, I did.

[Jocko Willink]

You just said hand drawn, so you drew that?

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, well, on the computer. I didn't draw it with it, you know, so. Yeah, yeah, all good.

[Jocko Willink]

Dude, you are being real dodgy about that question. Wait, did you draw that?

[Echo Charles]

Well, because you're asking me a technical question. I didn't. I didn't write the. The runes.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay.

[Echo Charles]

That's like a thing. And then, you know, and then I use Illustrator. And then. Yeah, then I got to use. It's a whole process. See, I'm saying hand drawn to me lands on something that I took my hand and a pan and drew out the whole thing 100%.

[Jocko Willink]

But you didn't do that.

[Echo Charles]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

Okay, so it's not hand drawn.

[Echo Charles]

Part of it is hand drawn. How about that? You want these shirts. You don't want these shirts because you're.

[Jocko Willink]

You're. I've been guaranteed that you're behaving like you.

[Echo Charles]

You don't want these shirts anyway. There's a lot of other designs on there. You mentioned the shirt locker, which is a subscription scenario, which. Yes, we do. Like, you get a new design every month on your shirt. It's A good one. Check it out. So it's called the Shirt Locker. It's all on Jocastore.com right on.

[Jocko Willink]

Also check out Primalbeef.com ColoradoDraft Beef.com subscribe to the podcast. Check out Jocko Underground. We got a YouTube channel. Jocko Fuel has a YouTube channel. Origin USA has a YouTube channel. Check all those out. We got books. Check out Modern Submission Grappling by miha. A bunch of good information there. And by the way, also has like a, a computer on online course you can take. And it's really good for the context that you need for your, your Jiu Jitsu. I'll train with, I train with Miha quite a bit. He's probably my most frequent training partner individual, you know, because of course you're training with other people, but train a lot with Miha. So good skills.

[Echo Charles]

Yeah, he's good too because there's, there's all different types of Jiu jitsu people like. And I'm that I say that super broadly for, for a reason. Because there's a guy who's like, he's super athletic, he has some knowledge or whatever, but he's a competitor. So it's like that's his thing. He's more like he, his capability is super high. But it's like you could ask him maybe hypothetically, like, oh, could you explain how you did that? He'd be like, you have a hard time explaining it because he just sort.

[Jocko Willink]

Of does it just take the leg and pull it over there.

[Echo Charles]

Exactly right. And then there's guys who over index on the. Not over index, but they index hardcore on just the teaching, just the knowledge. But you know, when you roll with them, it's kind of like, wait, you seem to know that in theory, but you're not pulling it off in higher level rounds, you know. So what miha's a good like balance with that, that the cerebral part of it, like he can break it down really good. Like he's really good at doing it and he's good at teaching it. So it's, it's appropriate that he has this kind of system.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So check out his book Modern Submission Grappling. Also I've written a bunch of books. I've written a bunch of kids books. Way of The Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. We got a movie coming. We got Mikey and the Dragons. We got Extreme Ownership. Not really a kids book, but kids read it. Dichotomy, Leadership. We got leadership strategy and tactics, Field menu. Hey, I've written a bunch of Books, check them out. Also have a leadership consulting company, Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. We help out so many different organizations, so many different companies, so many different businesses, so many different teams, so many different departments. If you have issues inside your team, inside your company, inside your organization, they are leadership issues and therefore they can be solved through leadership. So if you need help, go to echelonfront.com and we will help you. Also, we have some live events that you can go to. We've got the muster, we've got FTXs, we've got the council, we've got battlefield. Next council's June 26th through the 29th. I think we sold one out, we got one left. So if you want to come to that register asap. And then finally we have the Extreme Ownership Academy where you can learn leadership skills for every aspect of your life. Go to extreme ownership.com for that. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want help Gold star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an incredible organization. She helps out so many of our veterans. If you want to donate or you get want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org also check out Jimmy Jimmy May's organization beyondthebrotherhood.org and if you want to connect with Travis and Hotel Tango distilleries on the interwebs, go to hoteltangodistillery.com check out the social media hot this is on Twitter, Twitter x hotelTango, Indy I n D Y and then Facebook and Instagram is Hotel Tango Distillery. And if you want to connect with us, you can check out jocko.com for me. And then on social media, I'm Ocko Willink. Echoes Charles Just be careful when you go in there because there's a, there's a time thief in there called the algorithm and it's going to win if you're not careful. Thanks once again to Travis Barnes for joining us. Thanks for your service and for continuing to lead. And thanks to all our personnel in the armed services. And today, a reverent semper fi to the recon marines of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion and everything that you have done and sacrificed for corn country. 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 your sacrifice that you make to protect us all here at home and everyone else out there. Let's just. Let's just follow the lead of those Recon Marines. Exceed beyond all limitations. Sacrifice personal comfort, conquer all obstacles. Never surrender, never give up, never quit. And be the professional for all others to emulate. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time. This is Echo and Jocko out.