#257 Jocko Willink - Commander of SEAL Team-3 Task Unit Bruiser aka "The Punishers"

Summary

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The Shawn Ryan Show – Episode #257

Guest: Jocko Willink – Commander of SEAL Team-3 Task Unit Bruiser

Release Date: November 27, 2025
Host: Shawn Ryan
Length: ~6 hours

Episode Overview

This Thanksgiving episode brings together two former Navy SEALs, Shawn Ryan and Jocko Willink, for a deeply candid and powerful interview. Jocko discusses his journey from rebellious small-town kid to leader of the most decorated special operations unit in the Iraq War, Task Unit Bruiser. They reflect on SEAL experiences, leadership lessons, profound loss, brotherhood, and Jocko’s transition into business and personal development after his military career. The episode is rich with actionable leadership insight, stories of heroism and tragedy, and emphasis on humility, ownership, and service.

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Main Themes

• Leadership and Extreme Ownership: Hard-learned lessons about responsibility, humility, empowering others, and accountability under fire.
• Brotherhood and Sacrifice: The tight-knit bonds of SEAL teams; stories of loss, trauma, and honoring teammates.
• Adaptation and Professionalism: Navigating peacetime SEAL life vs. wartime, and the constant effort to prepare and improve.
• Post-Military Purpose: Jocko’s pivot to business, writing, youth mentorship, and patriotism.

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Part 1: Early Life and Military Motivation

[10:35]

• Grew up in a small New England town, middle child, both parents were schoolteachers.
• Not a standout athlete; gravitated to heavy metal and hardcore music—a DIY ethic that influenced his life.
• Describes a rebellious streak driven by the usual teenage angst, energy, and need to break the mold.

"I've always been a little bit of a rebellious kid, and so that kind of made me feel like I was scratching that itch." – Jocko [12:00]

[14:08]

• Obsessed with the military even as a child, collecting action figures and dreaming of being a commando.
• Eventually realized he could do this as a “real” job; naturally drawn to the SEAL Teams.

[17:26]

• Raised Christian, family-oriented values from going to church in youth.

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Part 2: Joining the SEAL Teams & Early Career

[21:42]

• Enlisted in 1990 at 18; the Gulf War had just begun.
• Excitement at boot camp; no SEAL mentors prior to arrival at BUD/S.
• Bud/s was tough but approached every failure as opportunity to work harder.

"I overcame failure just by pure, just aggressive hard work." – Jocko [27:52]

• Emphasizes the importance of not quitting:

"Don’t quit. Statistically, that’s how you make it—just don’t quit." – Jocko [31:19]

[31:26]

• Arrival at SEAL Team 1 was intimidating and disciplined; “no fun one” culture.
• Not much combat experience in the peacetime teams, aside from some Vietnam vets.

"As much as the Vietnam guys passed down as much as they could, but it still was like you didn't really know what it was you were training for." – Jocko [37:36]

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Part 3: First Leadership Lessons & Life-Altering Losses

[50:32]

• Early in his officer journey, friend and platoon leader Alton Lee Grizzard was killed in a tragic murder-suicide. Led to a first, powerful lesson in perception versus intent and the essential nature of self-awareness as a leader.

"The way you perceive yourself is not going to be accurate all the time ... there's a really good chance their perception is more accurate than your own." – Jocko [55:09]

• Mutiny in his platoon—got a problematic officer fired, replaced by a legendary, humble leader; this contrast became Jocko’s template for leadership.

"He just put that responsibility and gave us ownership. That guy left me with a lot of lessons." – Jocko [61:09]

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Part 4: Leadership Philosophy – Caring Beyond the Job

[7:43] (Patreon Q&A)

• Biggest regret as a leader: Not taking more interest in his men’s lives outside the teams—finance, education, life after service.

"I never really cared about what happened after the teams. For me, it was always about the teams." – Jocko [7:43]

"If a guy was having problems with his marriage or kids I would do whatever I could to help him—so he could get back to being in a platoon." – Jocko [9:36]

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Part 5: Transition to Officer & Learning Both Sides

[84:49]

• Chose to become an officer to follow in the footsteps of a leader who made life in a platoon “awesome.”
• Experiences as an enlisted and then officer gave him “bilingual” ability—fluency in both E-5 mafia and officer language—helping translate realities up and down the chain of command.
• Emphasis on keeping subordinates informed, context, and explanation.

"If you fail to do that, they'll have no idea, and you won't know that they don't know, and that's a disaster." – Jocko [96:01]

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Part 6: Early Combat Deployments and Principles of Ownership

[108:44]

• First combat in Iraq in Baghdad, 2003—platoon deeply integrated in high-tempo direct action missions.
• Early lessons in being in charge, managing risk, and building trust:

"You know why these guys listened to me? Because I listened to them. You know why these guys treated me with respect? Because I treated them with respect." – Jocko [116:27]

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Part 7: Task Unit Bruiser – Ramadi

[149:57]

• Chosen as Task Unit Commander, led Task Unit Bruiser—a legendary group (Chris Kyle, Marc Lee, Michael Monsoor, Leif Babin, Seth Stone, et al).
• Renamed unit “Bruiser” for morale and team identity, inspired by Colonel David Hackworth.

"You’re not just Team Alpha or Team Bravo. You’re Task Unit Bruiser. Let’s go." – Jocko [153:19]

• Emphasis on real danger: "I was just enough ahead of the power curve to know what was coming. And I told the task unit on the ground: this is going to be a historic deployment." [161:40]

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Part 8: Tragedy, Ownership, and Heroism in Combat

[187:32]

• Detailed account of the first major blue-on-blue (friendly fire) incident in Ramadi.
• Heartbreaking story of how he personally processed the incident, and the moment he realized he must shoulder all responsibility as the leader:

"When you are in charge of a team and something goes wrong, it is your fault." – Jocko [204:33]

• Built immense respect and credibility with the team by owning the failure and immediately implementing lessons to prevent future blue-on-blues.
• Examples of other blue-on-blue near-misses and the need for constant vigilance, communication, and humility.

"The guys in the troop, the guys in the task unit...I think I did what they probably expected I was going to do." – Jocko [207:32]

• Open, raw stories of catastrophic loss:
  • Cowie: severely wounded, begged to stay with his brothers.
  • Ryan Job: shot in the face, later died from complications.
  • Marc Lee and Michael Monsoor: killed on deployment, left lasting legacies.

"Mark was the first SEAL killed in Iraq...It's a heavy weight, we've got to hold the line." – Jocko [170:24]

"[After a loss] I told my guys the truth...I don't know what to tell you, all I know is what I know how to do, and that's work. We're going to go back to work, and we're going to take the fight to these moosh, and we're gonna kill as many as we can." – Jocko [254:23]

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Part 9: The Burden of Command and Lessons Translated

[255:54]

• Navigated the aftermath of loss by focusing on work and supporting his team emotionally.
• Leadership requires knowing when to have your men’s back, and also setting clear moral/ethical boundaries.
• Jocko awarded Silver Star for actions during this deployment, but emphasizes—again—that credit goes to the whole team and army/marine partners.

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Part 10: Post-Combat, Teaching, and New Mission

[291:59]

• Returned home, assigned himself to SEAL training command (TRADET) to better prepare the next generation for real war.
• Decision to leave after 20 years, focusing on family and recognizing that “if you can't give the teams everything, it's not the best thing.”

"You know, I was married to the teams, and my wife and family came second." – Jocko [300:49]

• Opened a Jiu Jitsu gym, accidentally became a business and podcasting leader, and realized universal applicability of his leadership lessons.
• Emphasis on ownership—personally and in business.

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Part 11: Building Legacy – Books, Businesses, and Giving Back

• Jocko’s companies: Echelon Front (leadership consulting), Origin USA and Jocko Fuel (American manufacturing and nutrition), children's books (Way of the Warrior Kid series and "Mikey and the Dragons").
• Upcoming Way of the Warrior Kid movie starring Chris Pratt as Uncle Jake (Jocko has a cameo).
• Purpose-driven entrepreneurship: “If we don't have the ability to make things and be self-sufficient, we will lose.” – Jocko [327:46]

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Part 12: Reflections, Patriotism, and Advice

On America’s Divisions:

• Social media algorithms amplify division and anger, but real America, in person, is largely united by desire for strong families, honest work, and optimism.

"Open your eyes, open your ears, listen more, try and understand other people's perspectives, try and figure out where you can agree with them." – Jocko [333:28]

On Leaving the Teams:

• Still battles with the decision: “The teams gave me everything.” [301:08]

On Generational Advice:

• America offers opportunity, but you gotta work for it. Choose your game wisely. Seek “lore”—that is, the stories and struggle that build meaning in your life.

"Enjoy it. When you go through challenges, look at it as an opportunity to make some lore for your existence." – Jocko [344:13]

On Service and Sacrifice:

• Reinforces the sacrifices of conventional forces—soldiers and marines—as deserving of the highest respect.

"There was so much heroism in that city...so many stories—I'm giving you a little fraction of my view." – Jocko [265:12]

On Healing and Grieving:

• "You get sad when you think about your friends—it's okay. You get a tear in your eye when you hear the national anthem—it's alright, man." – Jocko [352:37]

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Notable Quotes and Emotional Moments

• [204:33] “When you are in charge of a team and something goes wrong, it is your fault.” (Jocko)
• [164:13] “If you're more concerned about yourself than your platoon, you will not work for me.” (Jocko)
• [254:23] “I don't know what to tell you...all I know is what I know how to do, and that's work.”
• [255:54] "Would I have changed anything? Maybe. But I don't know that there's anything else to do in a situation like that." (Jocko)
• [300:49] "I was married to the teams, and my wife and family came second."
• [337:15] “Almost all people, if you say, you got family, you want your kids to have a nice place to live—they’ll say yes. At least we have that common ground.”
• [344:13] "When you go through challenges, you face things in life, look at [them] as an opportunity to make some lore for your existence."

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Key Timestamps

• Leadership reflection & advice: [7:43], [50:32], [61:09], [84:49], [96:01]
• Ramadi deployment: setup & loss: [160:43], [187:32], [254:23]
• Blue-on-Blue Incident/Owning Mistakes: [203:30], [204:33]
• Lessons from leaving service: [291:59], [301:08]
• Building Origin/Jocko Fuel: [326:06], [329:13]
• Way of the Warrior Kid Movie Announcement: [316:30]
• Modern America/Generational advice: [333:28], [344:13]

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Summary

Jocko Willink’s appearance on The Shawn Ryan Show is a lesson in humility, deep responsibility, and service. He opens up about loss, leadership, and hard choices with rare candor—never shying from mistakes, but always seeking to learn and grow.

This episode is an immersive look into what makes a true leader and warrior, equal parts tribute to fallen brothers, practical leadership seminar, and a call for personal accountability and unity amid division.

For anyone interested in real insight into military leadership, the bonds of the SEALs, and living a life of honor and extreme ownership, this is essential listening.

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Recommended Next Guests:

• JP Donnell
• Debbie Lee
• Johnny Clark (Vietnam grunt, author of "Guns Up")

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Transcript

[Jocko Willink]

Hi, I'm here to pick up my son, Milo.

[Sean Ryan]

There's no Milo here. Who picked up my son from school? Streaming only on Peacock.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection. You don't understand. It was just the five of us.

[Sean Ryan]

So this was all planned.

[Jocko Willink]

What are you gonna do? I will do whatever it takes to get my son back. I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people killing each other.

[Sean Ryan]

All her fault.

[Jocko Willink]

A new series. Streaming now only on Peacock. This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad, Ryan.

[Sean Ryan]

Real United Airlines customers.

[Jocko Willink]

We were returning home, and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew. I got to sit in the driver's seat. I grew up in an aviation family, and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot. These small interactions can shape a kid's future.

[Sean Ryan]

It felt like I was the captain. Allowing my son to see the flight.

[Jocko Willink]

Deck will stick with us forever. That's how good leads the way.

[Sean Ryan]

Jocko Willink. Welcome to the show, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

[Sean Ryan]

It's an honor to have you. It's an honor to have you. I can't believe it took this long, but here we are. And seriously, man, I've been watching you for a very long time. I mean, I've heard about you when I was in the SEAL teams, and even though we've never met, I just want you to know that I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. And a lot of the guys that I went through buds with served with you, under you. And you just have a reputation as a leader that is unmatched. And I just want to say it truly is, man. It's an honor to be sitting across from you today. So thank you for making the time.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, I appreciate it. I was very lucky to learn from some really great people and be surrounded by a bunch of awesome dudes and awesome to see what you're doing these days. Getting after it, for sure.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, so everybody starts with an introduction here. Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL and Silver Star recipient, commanded the SEAL Team 3's Task Unit Bruiser in Ramadi, Iraq. The most highly decorated special operations unit in the entire Iraq War. I did not know that until today. Number one, New York Times bestselling author, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt. You also own an MMA and fitness gym in San Diego. You're an OG podcaster with Over a billion views. Host of the presidential special above, below and beyond, celebrating 250 years of the U.S. navy and Marine Corp. Which is streaming now. A business titan with everything from leadership consulting to American Maine clothing and supplements to a soccer club in your portfolio. Husband to Helene and father of four. Most importantly, you're a Christian. And, you know, Jocko, every year since I started this, I started this in Christmas of 2019, and, you know, we were still at war back then. I guess we are kind of still right now, too, but meaning, like, you know, Afghanistan, the same war that we were involved in. And, you know, when I started this, it was. It was pretty much all for veterans. And I wanted to make the biggest episodes the Christmas and the Thanksgiving episode because I remember what it's like to be deployed overseas sitting on your ass, or maybe not sitting on your ass, but without your family on Christmas and Thanksgiving. So I always make it a point every year to bring something inspiring, motivational, somebody that everybody that can look up can look up to. And you're the perfect man for this year's Thanksgiving episode. So I just want to say thank you again.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Appreciate it for all the guys and men and women that are overseas right now. Yeah, I did some deployments during those time frames, and it's always a good time to focus on work a lot, so you don't have to think about very much because you're missing out.

[Sean Ryan]

But I thought, if it's okay with you, I thought maybe we could open this episode with a prayer. Sure. Perfect. Jesus. I just want to say thank you for having Jocko here today. And, you know, we're going to release this on Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving is just a holiday that's full of love, family and friends. And both Jocko and I both know as well as a lot of people that a lot of people are not able to enjoy those things on Thanksgiving for whatever reason, whether they are first responder, police officer and they're out, or they're in the military and they're deployed, or maybe they just have a lot of loss and not a lot of people around them. But whatever those reasons are, we want this episode to reach them, to bring them joy on Thanksgiving and just something that they can look forward to and hopefully they can take something out of this. And that's also just for everybody in general. I know this is going to be an extremely powerful episode. There's going to be a lot of life lessons in here and, And. And just little nuggets that people can take with them and better their life. With them. And that's. That's what we intend to do here today. So please, please make that happen. Amen. But. All right, Jocko, well, got a couple of things to crank out here before we start the big interview, so I got a couple of gifts for you.

[Jocko Willink]

One of them, the famous. The famous gummies, Famous Vigilance League, Gummy Bears.

[Sean Ryan]

Legal in all 50 states. Still no funny business. It's just candy. I know you're not a big sweets guy, but maybe give them a try on the flight home. So.

[Jocko Willink]

Thanks, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. And then I have another gift for you. This is from my friends over at uscca. And they wanted me to give you a lifelong membership. So basically what USCCA does, you're a concealed carry permit holder, which I don't know if you are in California, if you're not. I know Newsom. I can maybe make an introduction. But. But, but no, if. Look, bottom line, if you ever have to defend yourself, your family, your friends, if you ever have to get into some type of an engagement with a bad guy, these people have your ass. They're going to take care of all of the legal fees and coach you how to get through it. And they're a huge fan of yours. And so I just wanted to present that to you.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's awesome. When you go through the concealed weapons, the concealed carry course in California, the state mandated one, most of the course is them telling you what a problem it's going to be if you ever have to use your weapons. So it's nice to have these guys as backup, man. Thank you. You're welcome.

[Sean Ryan]

And then, last thing before we move on here, I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account. A lot of these guys and girls have been with me since the very beginning when I was doing this in my attic. And we've turned it into quite the community. So what we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is a good one. Has to do with leadership. This is from Nick Farrell. Looking back at your career now, what was your greatest flaw as a leader? What advice would you have given yourself as a young officer?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, well, for me, fortunately, I didn't have to experience much time as a young officer because I was a prior enlisted guy. But when I look back at my career, one of the biggest things that I noticed is that I never really cared about where guy, what guys, what. What happened after the teams. For me, it was just about the teams, and I didn't really think about it for myself. I Didn't really think about it for anybody else. So, you know, for a guy like, for instance, I never gave anyone any financial advice. I never said, hey, you might not want to buy that brand new F350 Super Duty, that's $70,000, and you're going to spend your whole reenlistment bonus on it. You should probably do something else with that. And I never really did that and never really encouraged anyone to get an education. You know, when someone came to me about getting an education, I'd say, when I. Do you want to go to sniper school? Do you want to go to breacher school? You know, we got you. And so I was very, very focused on the teams. And. And, you know, that's just the way I was. And I recognized when I retired that there is something after the teams, and so I wish I would have paid a little bit more attention to that, especially for the guys that. That I was responsible for, and I didn't do a great job of that.

[Sean Ryan]

So you're saying, in a nutshell, you would have taken more of a stake in their personal lives to watch them succeed.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Interesting. Do you feel like.

[Jocko Willink]

Do you.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm learning a lot of leadership lessons right now and do you feel. And I do that with. With. With. I would say the majority of my team, I take a great interest in their personal lives because I want them to succeed. Do you feel. But there's a. There's a caveat to this that I have learned throughout doing this. Does that blur the lines?

[Jocko Willink]

No.

[Sean Ryan]

Does that blur the lines of leadership?

[Jocko Willink]

No. And again, look, as far as their personal. Like, if a guy was having problems with his marriage or problems with his kids or something like that, I would do whatever I could to help him out with that. But I'm saying as far as planning outside. Planning life outside of the teams, I. I just didn't. I didn't think much about it. And so. And even if a guy was having a problem with his wife or with his kids, my focus would be, okay, how can we get that fixed so you can go on deployment, so you can get back to being in a platoon, which is what everybody. Everybody wants to be doing anyways most of the time.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, thank you for that. Let's move into. Let's move into your life story. So this. I want to do a life story on you. So it's going to be a long one, and there's quite a few rabbit holes that I'd like to go down with you, and I want to Use this interview for. I want to learn a lot about leadership for myself, so I know I have a lot to work on.

[Jocko Willink]

You and me both.

[Sean Ryan]

But where'd you grow up?

[Jocko Willink]

I grew up in a small town in New England on a dirt road, and both my parents were schoolteachers. Pretty normal. My mom taught English and my dad taught history, and I was not interested in either one of those things. So I was kind of a rebellious kid, but, you know, nothing totally out of bounds. You know, I liked. I had a lot of energy and probably a lot of aggression, and so it, you know, I was kind of looking to get out of that town as soon as I could when I was growing up, and that's why the military's a nice opportunity to do that.

[Sean Ryan]

Siblings?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I got an older sister and a younger sister.

[Sean Ryan]

So your middle child?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Middle child.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit. I was not expecting that one.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, well. And yeah, I forget what the middle child is supposed to be like. Am I not like the middle child?

[Sean Ryan]

I wouldn't consider you to be a middle child, but. But there is a character.

[Jocko Willink]

What's the characteristics of the middle child?

[Sean Ryan]

I don't know how to articulate that, but I think that the characteristics of a middle child would be bouncing around a lot from thing to thing and trying to find your place.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, no, I found my place.

[Sean Ryan]

I know you did. I know you did.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

What were you into as a kid?

[Jocko Willink]

You know, I wasn't really great at any sports. You know, I played soccer and basketball. I wasn't really good at either one of them. I was okay, but not. Definitely not great. I like music. I liked hardcore music and heavy metal, and that's where I spent a lot of my time, listening to hardcore music and heavy metal when I was a kid, surfed, luckily, skateboarded, went to hardcore shows in New York City when I was a young kid, which was amazing. And, you know, that kind of scratched my rebellious. I've always been a little bit of a rebellious kid, and so that kind of made me feel like I was scratching that itch. And I just related to it. You know, I related to the first time I heard, like, heavy music. It. I, I. It sounded right to me, as opposed to a lot of the, you know, other music that was out there, you know, like pop music. I just didn't. It didn't sound right to me. But hardcore and heavy metal sounded right to me, and there was a lot of that kind of push yourself also, like a DIY ethic of, hey, you got to do stuff yourself. If you want to do something, if you want something, you got to go make it happen. And that stuck with me for sure.

[Sean Ryan]

When did Jiu Jitsu start for you?

[Jocko Willink]

My first platoon.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, it didn't start until your first plate. Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Jiu Jitsu was not even remotely a thing when I was growing up. It wasn't like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was completely unheard of. This is in the, in the 80s in America, there was no Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It wasn't even in the magazines yet. It was nowhere. So that wasn't. It wasn't until my first platoon where I got introduced to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

[Sean Ryan]

What about wrestling?

[Jocko Willink]

Didn't wrestle. My high. My high school was too. My high school didn't even have a wrestling team.

[Sean Ryan]

How big was your town?

[Jocko Willink]

Graduated with 85 people in my class. Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

It's like where I grew up.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Small, Small town.

[Sean Ryan]

What, what, what got your interest in the military then?

[Jocko Willink]

I do not remember actually wanting any to do anything else. The only thing I ever wanted to do as far as a job goes was be some kind of commando. And I collected little soldiers when I was a little kid. I had the, the, the British commandos from World War II. I had a little air fix set, 1 32nd size of British commandos. And they had Zodiac boats and they had kayaks and they had, you know, the black watch caps on. And I thought that that was the coolest thing. And eventually I figured out that you could have that as an actual job.

[Sean Ryan]

Very cool. Very.

[Jocko Willink]

Let's.

[Sean Ryan]

I want to go back real quick to the rebellious. What? Why do you think you were so rebellious?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know. I don't know. I think part of it's like psychologically right, you, I think all, all kids will have this. You have to rebel against your parents at some point because you have to get out of there. You have to leave them. And so you kind of create friction so that you can release. So I think that was part of it. And I also think I just looked around at the world and just, you know, had the angst of a young teenage child. You know, you got a lot of testosterone flowing through your blood and you just want to fight and get after it. And that's kind of, that's kind of what I did.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you a troublemaker?

[Jocko Willink]

I was, I was a borderline troublemaker, but also like, I didn't drink, didn't do any drugs. There was a whole like sub genre of music called Straight Edge music, which I wasn't fully into that, but straight Edge music is like, no drinking, no drugs. And. But I was close enough to it that I. That's the way I heard that messaging of, you know, drinking and drugs were bad. That's kind of a weak thing to do. And so never did, Never did. Never drank and never did drugs. And in high school, how would you rebel?

[Sean Ryan]

Would it be violence?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Going to hardcore shows, listening to punk rock music, listen to hardcore music, shaving my head, you know, getting in fights, just that kind of stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

Right, that kind of stuff. Where did, where did Christianity get rooted into you?

[Jocko Willink]

So I was, you know, we. We went to a church growing up. We went to St. Michael's Church and probably, probably did maybe three, three to five years of that. Where. And you know, when you look back, you know, people go, where do you get your values from? And I think that's pretty much as a. As an American, that's where our values come from. You know, it was like, that's what you're hearing. And so that's probably the time. Well, that's, that's the time where I was going to church and know you're going to. You're going to absorb those values.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you. I mean, did you. Do you feel like you had a strong faith as a kid or did that come later on or.

[Jocko Willink]

For, for where I'm from, that's just kind of normal, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Y.

[Jocko Willink]

It's just. It's not some, you know, big deal.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Jocko Willink]

It's like, this is, this is. This is what you do. And like I said, when you get, you know, I always talk about the fact that you learn a lot when you're. You get a lot of your DNA when you're in your first SEAL platoon because it's all new, and so it imprints on you. And I think that's just growing up. You know, you go to church, it's imprinting on you, and that's where. That's what stays with you.

[Sean Ryan]

So let's move back to the. Moving into the military. So what drew you to the seals.

[Jocko Willink]

Man? I had a friend that did the army program, used to be able to go and join the Army Reserves. And in between your junior and your senior year, you'd go to boot camp. And I had a friend that did that, and when he came back, he told me this story. And I've joked about it because I don't know if it's true or not. It's probably not. At least it's not totally true. But this guy told me that when he was in boot camp they were out on this track. They were out in Fort Benning and they're out there doing morning PT or something like that. And there's a guy with cami pants on, combat boots, a T shirt and a rucksack and a ponytail. And he's long hair and a ponytail and he's running around this track. And this friend tells me the story that he asked the drill sergeant. He said, drill Sergeant? Who's that? And the drill sergeant, without looking back, just keeps looking forward and goes, Delta. And then my buddy goes, drill Sergeant, is there anyone that's tougher than Delta? And the drill sergeant, without looking back at him, just says SEAL team. And so I heard that story. Dude, I'm a freaking young kid. And that was it, man. Now again, you know, I don't even know if that actually happened, but you want to know where I first started thinking about the SEAL teams? That was it. And like I said, I grew up in the water. So knowing that the seals worked in the water, you know, I surfed as a kid up in Maine, which was awesome. And so just having that tied to the water and then the SEAL teams were stationed, I figured out that the SEAL teams were either in San Diego or Virginia beach, both of which were cool places in my mind. And so I said, that sounds awesome. Join the SEAL teams and get stationed either in San Diego or Virginia Beach. You can surf and do commando stuff in the water. Like, it's a literal no brainer to me as a kid.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you look at any of the other branches or you were just like, I'm going to do that?

[Jocko Willink]

You know, of course, the Marine Corps is always tempting for a young kid because the Marine Corps presents such an awesome image and they're such an awesome unit. But I saw the SEAL teams as, again, it just fit with everything that I thought about being a military personnel would be that.

[Sean Ryan]

What age did you enlist?

[Jocko Willink]

18.

[Sean Ryan]

18?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

What did your parents think?

[Jocko Willink]

I think they were pretty happy.

[Sean Ryan]

Were they really?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, because I was. You know, it's like you have a plan. I love the military. The military gave me everything. The Navy gave me everything. But initially, what they gave me was a plan. This is what you have to do. If you do these things, you're going to be successful and you get a blank slate when you go in there. No one cares what your background is. No one cares who your parents are. No one cares what grade you got in high school. They just, this is what you got to do. And so, yeah, my parents were stoked. My dad did Say. He said, you're not going to like it. And I said, why not? And he said, because you don't like authority and don't let you don't listen to anyone else. And of course, since I knew everything, I looked at him, I said, hey, you know dad, it's not like that in the SEAL teams. It's a team and there's no bosses. You do everything together. So that's how ignorant I was. But yeah, you know, pretty, pretty ignorant going into the military, you know, not growing up around it. My, my dad got kicked out of ROTC as a matter of fact.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh no.

[Jocko Willink]

My grandfather was in the army. He was a 20 year army guy, but I didn't know him very well. He died when I was about 10. So didn't have a lot of military information and just thought that the SEAL team sounded like a good fit for me.

[Sean Ryan]

And you joined in, was it 90?

[Jocko Willink]

1990.

[Sean Ryan]

1990. What was going on in the world in 1990?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, so. Well, the Gulf War, the original Gulf War, the buildup for the Gulf War was starting and that's where I was, thought I'd be going. Yeah, I was pretty, pretty stoked about that.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Jocko Willink]

Because Panama had happened in 89.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And that was another thing that made me think, wait a second, these guys are out fighting and dying for our country and I'm not doing that. This is embarrassing. So how do I get in? Who are those guys and how do I go join them?

[Sean Ryan]

So you enlisted 18, 1990, go to boot camp. Where do we go from there?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I mean, I was really stoked when I got to boot camp, you know, because again, for me it was like blank slate. Here we go. I had one buddy that rode on the bus with me who was, he looked at me and he goes, are you going seals? And I said, yeah. And he said, me too. And so we just, we just hit it off real quick. And he had been through college already. He had, he had knowledge, you know, he understood more than I did. I think he had a mentor that was a SEAL and so, but he, he, we brought up real quick and he ended up making it through maybe a class behind me and he ended up, you know, as a master chief in the SEAL teams, but just a great dude. You know, he wrestled in college, just a great guy. So, you know, went to boot camp and then again I was super, you know, just so open minded to like what was coming and happy about being there and just stoked to go to Bud's and then showing up at Bud's. It was like, the best thing ever.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, I'm.

[Jocko Willink]

Did you have.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you meet an actual SEAL at all before you. No.

[Jocko Willink]

No. So you showed up, saw one in boot camp, and I just saw one in boot camp. And I think it was a guy that I met later who was getting reprocessed. He had been out of the SEAL teams for a while, and then he'd coming back in, and I kind of recognized him because, you know, I saw one SEAL when I was in boot camp and I recognized him later and I talked to him. He was just a super chill guy, but in my mind, you know, he's this seal. So you think he's, you know, the coolest thing in the world?

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. Damn.

[Jocko Willink]

But, no, I never knew any SEALS before I joined.

[Sean Ryan]

So how was it showing up for Bud's for you?

[Jocko Willink]

It was awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you intimidated?

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, I would say not really. I wasn't really intimidated, but I definitely didn't know much about what was going on when I showed up. There was a poster in Medical. They had a Texas Chainsaw Massacre poster in Medical, but they'd crossed out Texas Chainsaw Massacres. And they replaced it said Bud's Pool Comp. And they put, like, a snorkel or whatever, a mask on the kid. And I didn't even know what pool comp was. You know, I didn't know anything about it. And I was. That's interesting. I wonder what.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I guess they didn't have.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Any of the documentaries or any of that kind of stuff held nothing.

[Jocko Willink]

So I wasn't really intimidated, but I was just excited, man. I was just excited. And, you know, like I said, I wasn't the fastest runner. I wasn't the fastest swimmer. I wasn't. I wasn't really that good at anything in particular, but I wasn't that bad at anything in particular either. And I was young. I could recover quick. I was fired up. I was very used to the cold. But, you know, you're meeting guys that are total studs. You know, you're meeting guys that are D1 athletes and whatever. I had Olympic. I had an Olympic alternate in my Bud's class for gymnastics. Like, how fast can that guy do the O course compared to me, you know what I'm saying? And some D1 water polo players and, you know, just the whole. The whole nine yards. And I was just young and just fired up to be there. Stoked.

[Sean Ryan]

How many people were in there? Do you remember?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't really know. Probably I don't know. A couple. I mean, 150. I. I actually don't know a lot of people. I'd have to. I'd have to look at it. But how did you.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, did you measure yourself up against the people that you were seeing when you showed up? Like, oh, that guy's gonna make it. That guy's not gonna make it if that guy made it. You know what I'm talking about?

[Jocko Willink]

There was a couple guys that, you know, seemed like studs that quit. The gymnast that I was talking about, Olympic gymnast or Olympic alternate gymnast, quit at a D1 water polo player that quit. I had. There's. There was definitely some studs that quit. And I realized, oh, there's a wrestler from Iowa that quit. Not. Not. Not the college, but he was a stud. So, yeah, I realized that this isn't all about, you know, what your athletic background is, because it's about being cold, wet, miserable, and suffering, and if you don't like that, you're going to have problems.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you have any problems?

[Jocko Willink]

I failed. I failed to run. I failed to swim. I failed a no course. I failed pool comp. I failed, like, everything. When I went through. If you failed something twice, you got rolled, but if you failed something once, you could stay with the class. And so if you failed two runs, you got rolled, and then if you failed one in the next class, you got dropped. So I only failed one of everything, you know, and. And some of the ones were, you know, like, there was some swims that pretty much almost everyone in the class failed because the tide or the current or whatever. There were some runs where a lot of people failed because it maybe wasn't quite four miles, Maybe a little over. Yeah, yeah, it was a little over, but so I failed a little bit of everything, but not enough to get me rolled. And I stayed with my class the whole time, made it through one shot.

[Sean Ryan]

How did you deal with failure?

[Jocko Willink]

Just. Just tried to go harder. You know, I failed to run. I paced myself on a run, which I wasn't fast enough to pace myself. I needed for basically everything that I did in Buzz. I just need to go 100 and probably, I don't know, my third or fourth run in first phase, I was kind of like, oh, I. I'll try pacing myself. And so I went at a pace, and I just was wrong and failed. And so I never paced myself again on those rods. I just ran as hard as I could because that's the only thing I wanted to do, man, was get through that training and, and be a seal. So I just put out hard and that's, that's how I over. I overcame failure just by pure, just aggressive hard work. Man, we got, I failed pool compared to. And me and my, one of my buddies, we got. This shouldn't even be legal, but we got, we got dive equipment from dive phase to practice with, but we wore it in the dip tank, so we were, we were pool comping each other in the dip tank on a weekend and, and then, then got, got through it on Monday, you know, so, so.

[Sean Ryan]

For those that are listening, pool comp is an exercise that you do in second phase. It's open circuit diving and it's one of the more strenuous weeks that you go through in buds. A lot of people fail. A lot of people say that pool comp, they basically beat the shit out of you underwater with tanks on. A lot of people say that pool comp is the last major hurdle that you're going to have to pass to get through buds.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So. But how did you, I mean, how did you deal with the mental stress? Did that affect you at all? Or was it, was it the physical stuff or was it both?

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, I had fun. You know, I'm not, and I'm not saying it wasn't hard like how weeks hard. You're, it's cold, wet, miserable. But I mean, I wasn't really mentally stressed. I was kind of having fun, you know, I enjoyed it. Like, man, you're gonna get to be a frogman. Yeah, you know, I'll do it. I would have done whatever they told me to do. Like, I think there's some people that show up to buds that they, they would rather die. And I, I was definitely in that category. So, you know, and I think they figure that out. You know, I think they figured out with guys, they go, yep, this guy, we're not gonna break this guy. Because they'll try, you know, but eventually they go, yeah, we can maybe hurt him physically, but we're not gonna break it mentally.

[Sean Ryan]

So for somebody that's going through buds right now, would you have any advice for them or what would your one piece of advice be?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I tell people this one piece of advice all the time. Don't quit. Love it. You know, and that statistically is right, because the vast majority of people that make it through buds, they quit. They don't get performance. If you, like, if you get rolled for a run, you're gonna have six weeks to get better at running. You can pass the runs if you get rolled for swimming. If you get rolled for pool comp, you're gonna get good at pool comp for the next six weeks until you start up with your next class. What'd you do for those six weeks? You practiced pool comp over and over and over again. So the people that don't make it, generally speaking, quit. So if you don't quit, you should be in a pretty good spot. So don't quit.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, it's a good point. So where do you go after Buds?

[Jocko Willink]

Got done with Buds and I went to Seal Team 1.

[Sean Ryan]

How was that? Did you pick one?

[Jocko Willink]

Yes. Well, I didn't pick one, but I picked West Coast. And you know, it's, I was going to say this when you talked about being intimidated showing up to buds, and I was kind of like, not really because it's a big game and it's, you know, get wet and be cold and do push ups. It's kind of fun. But when I got to SEAL Team one, I was definitely, it was intimidating. Going to SEAL Team One, I was definitely the, the atmosphere for a new guy at Seal Team 1 was intimidating.

[Sean Ryan]

I've heard the stories.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it was definitely intimidating. We, we went, myself and two other new guys were checking in to the master chief. We're standing outside of his door in our uniforms and parade rest and he calls us in there. We go to attention. We, we walk in, we're standing at attention, and he says, he says, you, you, you. Everyone here has been to buds. It doesn't mean get out of here.

[Sean Ryan]

Cool.

[Jocko Willink]

So then the next, we had like all the new guys assembled together and that master chief came in and said, he said, don't be late, don't forget anything, and keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Those are really, that's really good advice. Don't be late, don't be light, and keep your mouth shut and your ears open. And that's the way it was, you know, that's the way it was. Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open and try and absorb everything that's going on. And Again, this is 1991, man. Like the Gulf War that I thought I was going to be in that they were reporting that there's going to be 30 or 40,000 casualties was over in 72 hours. I missed the whole thing. So this is just a peacetime organization. And even with that, it was pretty intimidating to walk into.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Jocko Willink]

You know, back then we didn't get our trident or anything you know, we just. You just graduated, and you still had a lot of hurdles to overcome. I was always pretty paranoid. You know, you asked, like, when I failed something, I was very paranoid about failing, not wanting to fail. And so even going to. Knowing that I was going to SEAL Team One, knowing I graduated buds, it felt good, but it didn't feel like I had completed the journey at all. It felt like, okay, now you got to get through SEAL tactical training, and you got to get through your. Your board with the. The team. So I didn't have some, you know, elevated feeling of I made it. I never really got that feeling in my 20 years. Gotcha.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha. All right, back to team one. I mean, so you get into team one.

[Jocko Willink]

What.

[Sean Ryan]

What kind of. What kind of team guys are there? What have they been through? I mean, we're in peacetime. You talked about Gulf War. You know, that was pretty short. What. What kind of experience was in Seal Team 1 when you showed up, other.

[Jocko Willink]

Than a couple Vietnam guys, there was, relatively speaking, almost no experience, almost no combat experience.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. And so it was kind of weird because the way we trained you were training for something that no one really understood. And as much as the Vietnam guys passed down as much as they could, but it still was like you didn't really know what it was you were training for. And that made us train very, very hard because it seemed like combat was this unfathomable, tough thing, and so we better train as hard as we possibly could. And we thought, we hoped and prayed that we would get to do one mission. You know, that was the hope and the prayer was, maybe we'll get to do one. What we used to call a real world mission. You know, Real world mission. We would hope and pray that we would get to do some real world mission. And we trained as hard as we possibly could. Everyone was very. There was a lot of. Team One was very. They called it Stalag Team One, and there's another name for it, but it was very strict.

[Sean Ryan]

I've always heard, no Fun One.

[Jocko Willink]

No Fun One. Yep. They had a bunch of names for. A bunch of names for no fun one. Stalag team won. And yet in my first platoon, the older guys would say, Team 1. It's not just a number, it's an attitude. Which, again, now that I, you know, when I got older, but I was young, dude, I was like, that's a real thing. Like, this is. This is our attitude. And so, you know, we literally had haircut inspections every two weeks, uniform inspections with our Cammies, like it was. We had command PT every day. Everything was very professional, and that's how I fit in well with that, you know, and. Or I should say it fit me well because I liked the military, and that's what we were doing.

[Sean Ryan]

That's interesting, considering you don't like authority.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe at this point, I had recognized that this was. This was. That professionalism was part of the job for me, you know, for, like, that. That level of professionalism that I saw was. That was what we were supposed to be like. That was the job. So I bought into it, man. You know, go.

[Sean Ryan]

It sounds like when you went to one, when you got into the teams, it sounds maybe. Maybe similar to what guys might experience today. You know, you've got a lot of past experience. It sounds like when you came in, it was a little bit of past experience with the Vietnam guys. But, I mean, you know, the G WA guys, it's. Every day there's gotta be more and more guys, you know, retiring, calling it a day, moving on with their lives. And now you have this younger generation that's coming in that, you know, isn't. They're not. I don't know, maybe they are doing a lot, but I don't think they're doing a lot. I don't think we got a lot of guys in Ukraine. And so, you know, I mean, do you think it's. Are we at a similar time today?

[Jocko Willink]

It's a very similar time. Very similar time. I tell those young guys now, I didn't shoot my weapon at the enemy for 13 years. And the way you just expressed that. I would have never expressed that because I was having a freaking great time. We were training hard. We were jumping out airplanes. We were, you know, diving and shooting machine guns and blowing things up. And, like, that's what. We were getting ready. Getting ready, getting ready. And so I understand the expression, because now, of course, we all look back like, gosh, how could you wait around for 13 years? But that's what it was. That's what we lived in. That's the water that we drank. That's what. And so it was, hey, this is what we're doing. And by the way, you're with an awesome bunch of guys. We have fun. Everything is, like, super professional and also super fun. You know what?

[Sean Ryan]

It's.

[Jocko Willink]

It's being in a SEAL platoon, man. Yeah, there's. I don't. I would rather. If I could, just. Heaven for me would be just like, SEAL SEAL platoon. SEAL platoon forever. That's what we're doing, and we go to war. Cool. We go train. Cool. That's what we're doing. It's the best job. And so I didn't. I didn't know enough to go. I can't believe I got to go on deployment again. No, I wanted to go on deployment. Oh, there's nothing happening. Cool. We're going on deployment. We're gonna go to this country, that country. We're gonna work with these group, that group. Maybe something will happen, and if it doesn't, we're still going to be out here doing our best. So I didn't. I. I didn't. I had a good attitude the whole time. Like, it was exactly where I wanted to be. Being in the SEAL platoon was just as good as it gets. Bad.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I guess, you know, I could totally see that. I mean, I guess that that attitude probably came in with my generation. When we came in, it was. It had. I mean, I joined in 2000, July of 2001. And so by the time, actually, like two days after I graduated boot camp, the towers went down. So I knew. I guess I didn't know.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that's a different level of frustration, right, where if your country is at war and you joined the teams to go to war, if you're not going. Yeah, there's going to be. That's going to. That's going to be angst. Right. That's going to be problematic for sure. And. But when there's nothing going on, just. I didn't. I didn't know enough to be frustrated about it. Yeah, we're having a good time.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, I think that would come in too. I mean, is. Is. I mean, I think that attitude comes in as well. When you see platoons go out and do something and you haven't yet, and then that creates, you know, I don't know if jealousy is the right. I mean, yes, it definitely creates jealousy and maybe some discontent throughout the community, but. So where did you go? Where was your first deployment?

[Jocko Willink]

First deployment was to Guam, and this is where I got introduced to Jiu Jitsu.

[Sean Ryan]

How did that happen?

[Jocko Willink]

There was. We show up in Guam, and this is after our workup. So we're there and we're sitting in our platoon hut one morning, and this master chief comes in. It's an old master chief. Like, he had to be at least like 39 years old or something like that. But he looked like an old man. And he's old, lanky old guy. And he says, who wants to learn how to fight? And I'm like, I don't know what this old guy thinks he's going to teach me, but me and a few other guys, new guys, we raised our hands and. All right, so we went to the Navy base, had like a judo training mat, and he told us to meet him there at a certain time. And this guy's name was Steve Bailey. He was a awesome master chief in the SEAL teams, and he was a Muay Thai fighter. And he had been training Jiu Jitsu with the Gracies in Torrance in the late 80s. So he was like, what right now would be considered, considered like a mid level white belt in Jiu jitsu. And he just lined us up and just tapped us all out over and over again. It's hard to explain to people how little we. How little human beings knew about fighting in 1992, before the UFC. Like, no one even understood the guard or the mount or the rear naked choke or the chimera or the arm lock. There was. It didn't even exist. It wasn't. It wasn't even. It didn't even exist, man. And so this guy, you don't even know that he's passing your guard. You even know what the guard is. You don't know that he's mounted because you don't even know what the mount is. You don't know that he's taking your arm. You have no comprehension of what's happening. And so he just annihilated us. And to me, I just thought to myself, this whatever this freaking guy knows, I will do whatever I can to learn it. And so we started training with him. That was my introduction to Jiu Jitsu.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. He just stuck with you ever since?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So how long has it been since then?

[Jocko Willink]

Well, that was in 1992. 1993. So.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. So what, 20?

[Jocko Willink]

No.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit. 30?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, whatever.

[Sean Ryan]

33 years. Is that right?

[Jocko Willink]

Something like that.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow. 33 years.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah. There was something that I recognized very quickly that it was I had to learn this thing, this stuff. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And now you're a black belt.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yep. So that was my first platoon. We go to Guam, and this is 93. There's, you know, we go and do exercises, we work with other, you know, host nations. Again, I'm having a good time. You know, we're training hard, we're partying hard, we're doing what kind of like young seals do, but, you know, there's no war going on, except for there were some things that were happening in Somalia, and so there was some guys on Board ship from the east coast and the west coast that did some kind of operations in Somalia that they went from the ship to go do these operations. Now SEALs, back in the 90s, no one wanted to go on the ship, right? And so I got back from that 1st Platoon, and me and a few of my buddies, we were like, hey, we know what we did in Guam, which was nothing, and we know what the guys that were on the ships, they went to Somalia. Let's go on the ships. And so me and a few of my buddies from that first Platoon that I'd gone through BUDS with and we'd done that first Platoon, we volunteered to go on a shipboard deployment. And everyone's like, what are you guys doing? We're like, that seems to have the best chance. So that's what we did. We volunteered for what was called an ARG platoon on the east coast, it's called a MARG platoon. We volunteered for the ARC platoon, and we went and did a ship. Shipboard deployment, which for me was awesome because we had a lot of assets to train with. We work very closely with the Marine Corps, which was awesome. We did, you know, we trained. We did, like, their shooting package with the Force Recon guys. We trained with them. We did shipboarding with them. We. We did. We did stuff, a lot of stuff at Camp Pendleton after our own workup. And I also got to learn and understand the structure of the Marine Corps and how they operated, which gave me an insight onto conventional forces at large and what they were doing, interacting with the Navy. It was very, very beneficial for me. I was. I was the primary comms guy in my first Platoon. For whatever reason, they didn't have a primary. Primary comms guy. And I'd gone to comm school, as a matter of fact, on the east coast, the SEAL comm school on the east coast, which was awesome. And so then I was a primary comms guy in my first platoon. So now I'm the primary comms guy in my second Platoon, which means I'm sitting with the officers during planning. I'm, you know, learning how the communications work, learning about contingencies, learning about loss of comms plan, learning about QRFs. Like, I was learning things that I wouldn't have been learning if I had been a machine gunner. So I got very lucky that I was a comms guy and I had volunteered to be a comms guy. And the reason I had volunteered to be a comms Guy was my third day at Seal Team 1. I had quarter deck watch back when we used to stand watches and. And the officer of the deck, which was another seal, said, hey, new guy. I was like, hey, sir. And he said, if you want to be on every mission, be a comms guy. Because no matter what the mission is, you will get to go because if you know how to work comms. And the next morning when we woke up, I went up to the comm shack and I said, hey, I want to be a comms guy. Which again, no one had ever volunteered to be a comms guy. So I volunteered to be a comms guy. And then I was a primary comms guy in my first platoon, and now I was the primary comms guy in my second platoon. And then probably one of the most influential things of my life happened in my second platoon. So there was actually a couple pretty pivotal moments. The first one was we had an assistant platoon commander in my second platoon. His name was Alton Lee Grizzard and he was an absolute freaking stud. Just. He was the quarterback at the Naval Academy. He was record setting. Like he broke Roger Stahlbach's records at the Naval Academy. He was complete charismatic guy. Fun, nice, charismatic, the whole nine yards. And I was really good friends with him, really good friends with him.

[Sean Ryan]

And.

[Jocko Willink]

He got killed. He got murdered.

[Sean Ryan]

He got murdered.

[Jocko Willink]

He got murdered in a murder suicide. So you can go back and look at the news on this, but what is a murder suicide, meaning a guy.

[Sean Ryan]

Suicide by a cop or something?

[Jocko Willink]

No, he was. He was. There was a guy from the Naval Academy, another guy from the Naval Academy who was a submariner who had been dating a girl from the Naval Academy who I think was a surface warfare officer. They had been dating. They broke up. Griz had been like hanging out with her and this guy showed up at the boq, the bachelor officer's quarter, on. On Coronado, banged on the door and Grizz opened the door and the guy shot. Grizz shot the girl and killed himself.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Jocko Willink]

And so really heartbreaking, terrible scenario. And I was really good friends with him. And we had had. He was one of the first people that had a video camera, like a normal person with a video camera. And we had made this video. We were down in Panama doing jungle warfare training. And we'd gone out and there was this song that said, whoop, there it is. You remember this song? And so he had filmed. We were hanging out with these Panamanian girls and these girls were saying whoop a a because they didn't speak English. And we're just like in a, you know, partying with these girls. And he had taken this video, and he'd shown his dad, and his dad was a warrant officer in the Navy. And his dad, he had grown up in Japan for the most part. And so Grizz had showed this video to his dad of me and him with these Panamanian girls laughing in a bar, saying, whoop. Aea. Because we were just laughing. So when we go to. They had a big service at the naval academy because he's a hero at the naval academy. And I met his dad, and his dad recognized me. And, you know, I told his dad because he had told me, because I said to him, I said to him one day, I told his dad, I said, you know, I said to your son one day, I said, hey, you grew up in Japan. Like, you're going to a Japanese high school. How did you learn to play football? And he said, my old man taught me. And. As that happened, you know, I got. I was very. You know, obviously, we're all broken up for the mess, but I don't know. I don't know. I wasn't behaving properly. And my run inmate from the SEAL teams who I went through buzz with, I went through SCT with, I did three platoons with this guy. I was in training cell, and this guy was my roommate the whole time, just like my. My. My running mate. And he. He pulled me aside, and he was like, hey, Grizz, didn't. You're not the only one that lost Grizz. And I thought to myself, he's 100% right. And what it made me aware of is that the way you perceive yourself is not going to be accurate all the time. And you have to be very cautious in the way you behave because you think you're behaving a certain way, but other people's perception is going to be different. And there's a really good chance that their perception is more accurate than your own. And that. That struck me. And this guy was, you know, this guy was my best friend. And. And he's telling me, like, hey, bro, you're not the only one that lost Gris. And I'm acting like I was like, he. Like I was the only one that lost Grizz. So it made me aware of that. That, again, just the way you perceive yourself is not the way other people are going to perceive you. So we go through that.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you.

[Jocko Willink]

Hold on. This is.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you find. How do you.

[Jocko Willink]

Today?

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, that's a big lesson. I would take that as a big lesson. Like, you did as well.

[Jocko Willink]

It was a huge lesson.

[Sean Ryan]

So how did you. Moving forward from that, how did you. How do you find out how people are perceived? Are perceiving what you're projecting?

[Jocko Willink]

I think it's generally speaking they're gonna pursue. My assumption is that what I'm doing is viewed as negative. My assumption is that if I'm doing something, the assumption is it's viewed as negative. And so if you assume that what you're doing is being perceived as negative, it keeps me in check from behaving in a way that is going to be perceived as negative. I mean, to the best of your ability. I'm not saying, you know, of course, just like every other human, we're all going to slip up, but recognizing that, like, man. And thank. I'm so thankful that my. That I was. Had a good enough relationship with this guy to. To tell me that, because otherwise I never would have. You never would see this disconnect between how you're perceived and what you think you're being perceived as. And it was something I wasn't like. I thought to myself, oh, here's how people are seeing me. I was just acting the way I was acting, but it was being perceived in a way that I didn't mean at all. Didn't have any intention. But I could see as soon as he said it, I go, oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. You need to look at yourself. You need to detach from the sadness and go, oh, yeah, what does it look like? What does it feel like? Never mind what it looks like, because their perceptions are not wrong. Like I said, their perceptions are right. Oh, I had this video. His dad recognized me. I must be. You know what I mean? Like, that's all. That's all bad stuff. And I didn't recognize it until my. My buddy let me know. And I was very, very grateful. And it definitely made me recognize that, yeah, people's perception of you is not what you think it is. And that's. If you're not careful, you can really get yourself a bad reputation. And obviously, as you know, reputation in SEAL teams is everything. You know, your reputation, the SEAL team is everything. So I was just very thankful that he gave me that heads up. And then again, what made this platoon very impactful for me, SEAL Team 1 Alpha Platoon. We had a platoon. Our platoon officer, our oic, was pretty much a new guy who had lat transferred from another part of the Navy. And he had come in as our platoon commander and. Which is no big deal, right? It's really no big deal. Like, officers don't have a lot of experience. It's not that big of a deal. They listen to what you have to say, they listen to the platoon chief, they listen to the LPO and they figure it out. Except for this guy didn't really want to listen. And so it ended up causing some friction in the platoon. He, you know, is one of those guys where again, he probably didn't realize how he was being perceived. And he was being perceived as arrogant, being perceived as conceited, being perceived as not listening to the rest of the platoon, including the platoon chief, including the platoon lpo. And he was dictating, you know, like, this is how we're going to do this and this is the way it needs to be. And just wasn't listening. So it's problematic. But, you know, we're. What are you going to do? Carry on? Well, then we had a. We were at desert warfare training and he presented some plan to us and it was a bad plan. And the LPO had like, had enough of it was like, sir, this plan is stupid. And, you know, since the guy had a big ego, they got in each other's faces and then the. The OIC takes a swing at the lpo. We split them up. Yeah, it's. Which again, we've seen plenty of inter platoon fights. I mean, it's a thing. It's almost like its own sport. Right. But when there's this much tension and negativity, it's a problem. And so we got done with that and we, we go back and we kind of had like a platoon meeting without the platoon commander. And we told the platoon chief, like, we don't want to work with this guy. Platoon chief brings it up the chain of command and we have a. We request captain's mask. Like not official, but we want. We request to go talk to the CO so we go to the CEO's office and the CO lines us up, you know, from the chief on down. And he goes down the line like, what's the problem? What's the problem? What's the problem? And we're all saying the same stuff. This guy's arrogant. He doesn't listen to us his way or the highway. And we get done and the CO says, you know what this sounds like to me? This sounds like a mutiny. We don't have mutinies in the Navy, and we're not gonna have a mutiny at my SEAL team. Guys, go figure this out. Cool. We walk out of the office and the CO was a good Guy who started to pull the thread, you know, once we left his office and talked to the training cadre and figured more about the guy's reputation and talked to the guy himself and he realized like two or three days later, he fired him. And so, big win for the E5 mafia. We're all fired up that we get this guy fired and we proceed. And now we get our new assignment for our new platoon commander. We find out who our new platoon commander is going to be. And our new platoon commander is a legendary SEAL who I had never met him, but I had heard his name. Everybody kind of heard his name. He had been, he had been a prior enlisted senior chief. So he went up all the way to senior chief. He was at udt, he was a plank owner. At Damneck, he was at sdv. He was at a boat team. He was at Team One. He had done everything in his career.

[Sean Ryan]

Everything you could possibly fucking want as a. And a leader.

[Jocko Willink]

He had combat experience from Grenada. So everything that you could want as a leader. He comes in and, and I'm thinking everyone's like fired up. And I go, hold on a second, guys. This is, this is happening for a reason. This is because we're a bunch of mutineers that got our last boss fired. And they're sending this guy down because he's going to crush us and like, get us in line. And so when he shows up, this guy, I'm expecting, you know, a 6 foot 5, 270 pound beast. And this guy shows up and he's like 5, 8 and maybe 150 pounds. And he looks like he's about. He's like the oldest guy I've ever seen in the SEAL teams, which was probably like, you know, 37 or something like that, graying hair and all the whole nine yards. And he walked into our platoon space and I'm like, who is this freaking. This guy's supposed to be the legend. He walks into our platoon space and he says something along the lines of like, hey, I sorry to hear about your last platoon commander, but I'm not worried about it. I'm just looking forward to working with you guys. And right there, like, the fact that he didn't come in and say, you know, I'm taking over, I'm in charge, there's a new sheriff in town. He said, I'm looking forward to working with, with you guys. And I realized, oh, this guy is different. And then that afternoon, he's taking out the garbage, you know, sweeping up the platoon space. He's Taking out the garbage. I'm like, whoa, that's a new. That's. That's not just a new guy's job. That's like a new guy that's in trouble's job. And then a couple days later, we had our first training mission, and he put me and my running mate in charge of the mission, which was awesome and crazy, like from, you know, hey, here's the mission. You guys figure out how you want to do it. And he just put that. That responsibility and gave us ownership. And so that guy, you know, when I was watching him and as I went through that platoon, he was just awesome, and he made our lives awesome. And, you know, when you're. When your SEAL platoon is your life and your SEAL platoon is your religion, and you have a guy like that take over. And the contrast between the guy that was arrogant and didn't listen to us and. And held on to all the power himself, I learned so much from seeing that contrast between these two guys. And so as time went on, that's. That guy left me with a lot of. A lot of lessons. And one of the most. One of the most important lessons that he taught me was we were. We were working with the Marines. We, like I said, we were an ARC platoon, so we were ships off the coast of San Diego. We're doing, like, the Marine Corps workup with them. For the Marine Corps workup, they got to do beach landings, Red beach up in Camp Pendleton. And before the beach landing goes down, seals. Back in the old days, we went out with a lead line and slate, like World War II, and did a hydrographic reconnaissance. And that is a gut check of an operation, especially in a big sea state, especially off Camp Pendleton in whatever month it was. It's cold, giant waves. We're in our, you know, zodiacs. It's such a gut check of an operation. It takes five or six hours to do. You're freezing the whole time, and you take a, you know, a lead line and a slate. So you take a lead line and you dip it in the water, and it's got little markings on it to show you how deep the water is. And then you have this slate on your arm where you're writing down how deep the water is. And you do this whole. Your whole platoon is doing it at the same time. It's just a gut check. And we get done that night. And then you have to take all the. All the slates with all the information on them, and you bring them back to the ship. And then the cartographers which are the guys in the platoon that, like, take all that information, they build a chart to give to the Marine Corps, and we go through all that. And then that day, early morning, we then go out and mark the beach lanes. So we swim across the beach again and we set up the beach lanes. We mark them for the Marines, and the Marines come in and land. And so now it's like 48 hours of continuous operations, freezing cold, gut check. And we get done and get a few hours into the beach landing, and the Marine Corps decides that they didn't like their landing. And so they said, we didn't. You know, we missed our timeline. We didn't bring the vehicles in the right direction. Whatever the problems they had, we're doing it again. We're reloading the ships, and we're doing it again, which is, like, mammoth and ballsy for the Marine Corps colonel to say, like, hey, I didn't like it. We're doing it again. This is massive. So we reload on the ships and we start the whole thing again. And we go out to do the hydrographic reconnaissance. And we're in our little boat pool. You know, we launch from the big ships. We go on the Zodiacs. We get to the point it's been all night, and we're getting ready to get in the water, and we're in our little boat pool. And again, we just did this 48 hours ago, and someone in the platoon, it wasn't me, thank God. Someone in the platoon says, are we really going to do this again? And the platoon commander just quietly says. He says, well, you know, we don't have to, but would that be the right thing to do? And not another word was said when we got in the water, because you have to do the right thing. You're a frogman, you're a seal. You have to do the right thing. It's the hard choice right now. We just did it 48 hours ago. There's been no shift in the sand. There's been no obstacles put in, but this is what we do. And for me, that statement, is it the right thing to do? Stuck with me for the rest of my career. And this guy, you know, I remember getting towards the end of that platoon. And again, when you're. When your platoon is your life and somebody makes it that good. And that was the first indic. The first thought that I had about trying to become an officer because I said to myself, this guy made life so good for me and these 16 guys in this platoon, someday, if I can, I Want to make life good for 16 guys in a platoon. That was the very first thought that I had of following his path. And that's what I did. That's what I eventually did. I followed his path and I, I did. Always did my best to emulate and, you know, never be as good as him, but I always did my best to emulate his leadership.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you think he knows this about you?

[Jocko Willink]

Yes. Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Could I ask you what his name is?

[Jocko Willink]

I. I'd rather not say.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

But he's. He's well known in the SEAL teams.

[Sean Ryan]

That's pretty cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, he's. He has no, you know, he's very low profile. Very low profile guy.

[Sean Ryan]

That's even cooler.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. I mean, the best of us are right.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, I'm just curious. When you, when you make a switch, you know, when, how fast did you see morale recharge, you know, on that platoon? When you saw the leadership change? And when he came in and said, I'm excited to work with you overnight. Overnight. And like that fast.

[Jocko Willink]

Instant. Instant, Yep. And that was just instant. And then that deployment, you know, again, we were on board a ship. We were actually, we were actually staged off the coast of Africa when the Rwanda genocide was going on. And we were like planning to go and getting our gear ready and of course we never went. This is where, you know, the, the face that you made earlier that I, where went, like, that's how. That's the first time I felt that of like, wait a second. There's. I think it ended up being 800,000 people slaughtered in 100 days. But we were there, we were off the coast and we didn't do anything. Why didn't we do anything? Well, what had just happened in Somalia a year prior, it was Black Hawk Down. It was like, yeah, they were not willing to take that risk. We did the same thing. There was a couple missions we got spun up for in Somalia and had our gear loaded, had 40 mic mic. I remember loading out 40 mic mic for the first time for real and being like, oh, yeah, we're going. And we didn't go. So that was probably the first time that I felt that level of frustration of, you know, why, why aren't they sending us? Like, we can help. And that the way it was, you know, definitely a letdown.

[Sean Ryan]

How did that platoon end?

[Jocko Willink]

That was it. You know, we went on deployment. I think we spent, we spent some ridiculous amount of time because they call them gator squares, which is when you're just going around in a circle off the coast of. We did Gator squares off the coast of Rwanda or off the coast of. Not off the coast of Rwanda, but off the coast of Kenya for several months. And then we did Gator squares off the coast of Somalia for another period of time. And then we went up into the Persian Gulf. Because at some point, I think it was this platoon, There was something going on, like Saddam had pushed troops, moved troops or something going on. So we went up and. And did Gator squares in the Persian Gulf for a while. So I think we were at sea like, 174 days out of 180 or something. Totally like that. Yeah. Just riding that ship, lifting all day, shooting off the fantail again. Did we have fun while we're doing it? Yeah, dude, we had a blast. We had a blast. I also. In the couple of days that we were not on the ship, I met my wife. So how'd you meet your wife? We went into Bahrain for, like, some training, and the boys, we went out and I met. I met my wife, who was a stewardess at the time.

[Sean Ryan]

Really?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

How'd you make the approach? Oh, man.

[Jocko Willink]

So Squad 2 had spent a couple days. They went off the ship before us, and Squad 1 still had some. Whatever we were doing some. Some work to do. And so when we flew into Bahrain, because we flew to Bahrain, and we didn't know what Bahrain was. I mean, a country, but we didn't know that Bahrain at the time was like the Las Vegas of the Persian Gulf. Meaning they had. It was, like, somewhat westernized. They had bars and stuff like this. And so when we. When squad one, when we landed in the helicopters, Squad two is, like, running to help us move our bags and stuff. We're like, what's going on? And they're like, there's girls here. There's ballers here. Like, so. And one of my buddies, who was very. A very shy type dude, he was in squad, too, and he tells me, yeah, you know, there's these girls here. There's these two girls. I've seen them each night. And, like, I know you're gonna go and you're gonna go talk to them. And, like, they haven't even given me the time of day. And I was like, bro, if there's girls, you know, I won't. I'll leave them alone. They're yours. You handle it. And so we go to a. We go to this bar. I know you're gonna talk to him. Yeah, yeah. Oh, shit. I look across the bar, and there's this, like, shockingly stunningly beautiful girl with blonde hair and like a white freaking skin tight, gorgeous outfit on. And so I saw her, I just walked over to her and yeah, this is the embarrassing part is, you know, when you're on a ship back then there wasn't Internet and so we had a limited number of video cassettes. There's no DVDs, no streaming. And one of the movies that we had was Ace Venture, a pet detective. And so we had, I had watched that movie at this point like hundreds of times. And I walked up to this beautiful blonde girl and. And I said in like a Jim Carrey style, I said, you must be Aphrodite's goddess of love. And she looked at me like I was an idiot and then laughed. And you know, we started talking, but that was the. I don't know whether it's more embarrassing that I said it to her or that she fell for it. I'm sure she's pretty embarrassed that she fell for it. But yeah, so we ended up, you know, having a long distance relationship and. But that's. Came home from that deployment and you know, go in another platoon right off the bat. Yeah, you know, this was, this was the 90s, you know, just go on deployment. Go on deployment as much as you can and hope that something happens. And so, so that's what I did. Just went back into another platoon, did another ARC platoon. So right back into the ARC platoon.

[Sean Ryan]

New leadership.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Got a new platoon commander, got a new platoon chief, new platoon LPO and all. All good dudes. You know, this was just, it was just good. Team One was, was a great team to grow up in. For me, you know, they just had a. Other than that one officer, everyone else was, was just good, good people. And everyone was just hard working frogman, you know, it was good.

[Sean Ryan]

Anything significant on deployment three?

[Jocko Willink]

You know, the only thing I can say was cool about that third deployment was that we did some. We did like. And I saw, I think we did one shipboarding, like a real shipboarding. And I think we ran some security operations, means. And again, this is how desperate we were. We locked and loaded our weapons and drove our ribs around like the boats, the ship, the Navy ships. And I was kind of fired up, you know. Yeah, this is literally, to me, it was real. We locked a motor of weapons and then we did one shipboarding that was, you know, real. And again, in, in the 90s, I was freaking stoked that I got to lock and load my MP5 because we used MP5s back then.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Got to lock and load my MP5 and, and board a ship and get control of the vessel and turn it over to the authorities. And it ended up. It wasn't even like a. It was just some weird situation where they were making some kind of a distress call, but people thought they might be, you know, there might be a hostage situation, so. Or. Or some kind of. Not a hostage, but some kind. So they didn't know what was happening.

[Sean Ryan]

What kind of ship was it?

[Jocko Willink]

Some random foreign ship? Yeah, yeah, just some random, you know, like a Maersk or something smaller. It was a pretty. It was. Wasn't that big. They're probably. They're probably moving dates or whatever. Whatever kind of produce from one of the Arab countries was nothing. It was literally nothing. I'm. I'm like bringing it up because it's funny that I was excited about it and that's kind of how naive and, and into the teams I was.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you board it?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

How'd it go?

[Jocko Willink]

Cool. We took it over. You know what, what happened when you took it over? Just walked up.

[Sean Ryan]

They're like, we're not in distress.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. We figured out that they weren't in.

[Sean Ryan]

Distress, but we are now.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. That we stressed them out. They were actually thankful. I think they had some kind of problems, you know, some kind of problems with their engine or something like that. So we showed up and you know, as a non opposed boarding, but you know, we got to hook and climb on a. You know, we put our little water ski ladder. Like we had little water ski ladders. We just hooked it on and climbed up. It was cool.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Jocko Willink]

I was happy. Happy to do something for real. You know. That's one thing the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard. One thing that's cool about the Coast Guard is no matter what's going on in the world, the Coast Guard's doing real stuff. You know, Coast Guard's always doing, saving people. You know, the ocean is mean.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

So there's a war going on or not. If you're in the Coast Guard, you can still do some really impactful things. Of course, now they're doing all kinds of drug interdiction too.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I love that. Have you seen that video? The. Those guys that jump on that damn submarine and open it up?

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, no, I haven't seen that.

[Sean Ryan]

It's. It's awesome. It's awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

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[Jocko Willink]

So he cooked up KFC's 499 chicken pot pie. Warm, flaky, with savory sauce and vegetables. It's a tender, chicken filled excuse to get some time to yourself and step.

[Sean Ryan]

Away from decking the halls, whatever that means. The Colonel lived so we could.

[Jocko Willink]

Chicken KFC's chicken pot pie. The best $4.99 you'll spend this season. Prices and participation may vary. Well, supplies last, taxes, tips and fees extra.

[Sean Ryan]

All right, so when did you move over to two?

[Jocko Willink]

So I got done with that platoon and I went into training cell at Seal Team 1. And when I was a training cell at Seal Team 1 again, I'm still like single and I taught everything. You know, we just, we do everything. Do land warfare, taught diving, comms, cqc. We do every, we just teach everything because we just didn't, we didn't have anything else to do. Wasn't like, hey, what do you want to do this week when you're home? No, I'll go to Nyland or I'll go to wherever to go make stuff happen. So I stayed in that mode. And then again from my second platoon, I had, there was a, there was an officer program that was called the Seamen to Admiral program. And it was started by a guy named Jim Borda, Admiral Borda, who, if you know anything about him, he killed himself.

[Sean Ryan]

I didn't.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know anything about him. So this is. Again, there's all these weird threads through people's lives, but one of the weird threads throughout my life is that one of my biggest mentors and heroes is a guy named Colonel David Hackworth. And Colonel David Hackworth wrote the book about Face. And he was a Korean War veteran and a Vietnam War veteran. He was one of the most decorated army soldiers. And he. When he retired, he had retired because during the Vietnam War, he did an interview where he said, if we don't change the way we're fighting, we're going to lose. That's basically what he said. And he got drummed out of the army for saying that. Because he was a colonel, he was a senior officer. He was the first senior officer to speak out against the war and the way we were fighting it. And when he got out, he, you know, he kind of. He wrote books, but he was a little bit of a journalist and a little bit of a, you know. Yeah, kind of like a journalist. And he reported that Admiral Borda was wearing a V on his Navy Commendation Medal, so a Navy Comm. With a V. And he said he didn't rate it because V is an award for valor. And, you know, like, that's a big deal. It doesn't stand for valor. It stands for combat distinguishing device, but it's a V. And that story came out and Admiral Borda killed himself. But prior to that happening, Admiral Borda had started a program called the Seaman Admiral Program because Admiral Borda was a prior enlisted guy. And so he wanted to offer that to other troops. And so they started this program, and it was 50 sailors from the US Navy would get selected. And I heard about the program, and actually one of my officers said, hey, they've got this program coming out. You should do it. And I did it. And I didn't get picked up, but I got slated as an alternate, which was. No, there were no alternate spots that opened up because everyone took it, but I was an alternate, so I knew I had a decent chance. And. And that the guy actually sent a note back to my commanding officer that said, make sure this guy applies next year. And so I applied again the next year, and I got picked up for that program.

[Sean Ryan]

No, I'm just curious.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, we.

[Sean Ryan]

A lot of us know, you know, where this story's headed into Ramadi. But, you know, and maybe the knowledge wasn't there, but, you know, I mean, now, you know, actually, maybe it was there because this was after your second platoon or during your second platoon. I mean, it's pretty common knowledge that, you know, officers, you join the SEALs to go to war. That's what you wanted to do. Now leadership package is presented to you. You take it. Did you know, you know, that you would have more time in a combat role as an enlisted guy than you would as an officer if.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, at that juncture in my career and the way the teams were, this is 1998. It, you know, I had done three platoons, so I maybe had an LPO and a platoon chief left. So I basically looked at it as, oh, instead of doing an lpno, platoon chief, you're going to do an AYC and an oic.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Jocko Willink]

And so it wasn't really. Didn't really make that much of a difference to me. You know, when guys ask me now, like, what. What should you do? Or what? You know, if they say, hey, I want to go on the SEAL teams, what should I do? I. I mean, my career couldn't have gone any better. Like, it was great. But to your point, if you want to do the trade of being a seal, then you should enlist. Yep. That's just how.

[Sean Ryan]

Why did you decide to take a leadership role?

[Jocko Willink]

It all just boiled back to working for that platoon commander that made life in a platoon awesome. And I thought, if I can make. If I can make platoon awesome, if I can make life awesome for 16 guys, I'm gonna do it. And. And, yeah, that was it. That was it.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a damn good reason.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

So when did you go?

[Jocko Willink]

I went to Officer candidate school in 1998. Yep. Early 1998, I went to Officer Candidate School. And, you know, that was. You know, you're pretty much. We had. We had a decent number of prior enlisted guys in my class, but most. Most of them, I'd say 70% of them were kids out of college going to OCS. And so, you know, I show up there, I'm a seal, and the drill instructors, the Marine Corps drill instructors down at ocs and great, great interaction with the Marine Corps drill instructors. You know, I became the class president, which seemed pretty obvious, I guess, but most of the class presidents are only class president for, like, three days in the first few weeks because they just. They're just firing them. But I became class president and I just stayed. So I was a class president and then Went through ocs, you know, folding underwear, literally, with a ruler. They have a ruler?

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Yeah. So, you know, graduated from OCS and then went to team two.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you learn anything significant in ocs?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you know, leadership was a cool leadership challenge. Going to OCS and being the class president, you make things happen and it was cool to work. You know, it's. People are. And this is another thing that, you know, I've learned along the way is, like, people aren't going to be perfect and they're going to make mistakes and I'm going to make mistakes. And as long as their intention isn't bad, then, you know, I get it. And also, you know, to ask someone to perform like or behave in a way that they have to surmount their innate, like, habits as a human being, it's a lot to ask of someone. So when someone gets mad, when someone gets frustrated, when you see someone's ego come out, when you see someone look out for themselves, I kind of understand that that's the way people are, and I'm not going to be mad about it. I understand that people get, you know, there's. There's. People do crazy things, man. People do crazy things. And I understand. And I think that going to OCS was one of those things that said, yep, there's. Kids were trying, but kids were also doing things. Where you go, I see what he's doing, man. He's worried about this test and he's looking out for himself right now. And I get it, I get it. And I think just a little bit of understanding other people's perspective, it was good for me to continue to be able to understand other people's perspective, because if you don't understand other people's perspectives, you're going to be very judgmental. And if you're very judgmental, you're going to have a hard time interacting with other people. And when you're in a leadership position and you're having a hard time interacting with other people, that's not going to be good.

[Sean Ryan]

Why did you. Why did you go to 2? I'm just curious why you went east coast versus west coast when you could have.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Reintegrated back in with your old guys. You know what I mean?

[Jocko Willink]

At the time, the officer community, if you went from enlisted to officer, they made you switch coasts.

[Sean Ryan]

Gotcha.

[Jocko Willink]

And I wanted to go to the east coast because I hadn't been out there. I'd spent all my time in the West Coast. And so. And team two, I came from team one, Team One was the traditional team on the. On the west coast and the east coast from my friends that I knew out there was the same way. Team two was the traditional team. It was the old school team, you know, and that's where I wanted to go. So I got. Got to go to team two.

[Sean Ryan]

How was it as an officer? I mean, how. What is it like walking through those doors as a prior enlisted guy? Now as a. As a.

[Jocko Willink]

As a junior officer, it was pretty much this. Pretty much the same. You know, when I was an E5 or an E4, you know, I worked with. Like I said, I was the primary comms guy in my first platoon. I had a really good relationship with my platoon commander, my second platoon, good relationship with my platoon commander. And then when he got fired, I had a good relationship with the guy that took over, so. And I didn't. It seemed like good, good guys, they would just treat you like, you know, like mutual, you know, So I never really had a huge difference between the way I saw other people or the way, you know, I always just saw myself as another team guy. That's. This is my job, you know, When I was a comm guy, my job was to make sure the radios were good. When I was an officer, it's like, okay, I gotta make sure that the plan is good, make sure we have contingencies. Like, there was other things I was gonna be in charge of, but I'm still just a part of the machine that's going to take care of this, and if one part of the machine fails, the whole machine fails. So it was fine, you know, and, you know, team two was great. I had a bunch of good guys there. And. And, yeah, and. And there was like. You hear about the differences between the east coast and the west coast, and there were team guys, you know, they were. They were team guys that lived in Virginia as opposed to team guys that lived in. In San Diego, and a bunch of great dudes. And I ended up almost immediately deploying to Germany. My. The chief of my second platoon was the master chief in Germany, and they had been calling back for ops support. They wanted j. They wanted a joke to. To go over to Germany to help with OP support. And he told me this later. They were in, like, a morning meeting, and they said, yeah, we finally got OP support coming from. From the beach. And they go, who is it? And they go, it's. It's a. It's an Ensign Willink. And the. The ops officer's like, what are you. What are you talking about? They're sending us an ensign. Like, we need an ops guy. And he, the master chief goes, hold on a second. What's that guy's name? He goes, ensign Willink. He goes, we want this guy. And so I showed up, and again, there's my old platoon chief, who is like a great guy who had a great relationship with, like, awesome friend of mine. He's the command master chief. And so I show up and develop a great relationship with the commanding officer there and the executive officer there just. And the ops chief there became awesome friends. And it's just great, you know, just great opportunities and work with these guys that are, again, man, just dedicated to the teams, you know, just dedicated to the teams. And I think that's the main thing is, you know, you get guys that. The bet. The good guys, their. Their commitment is to the teams. And so you got a bunch of guys, they're just committed to the teams and want to do a good job. And that's. So went over to Germany and we actually, like, did some little mini deployments from Germany that were really cool and learned a lot. And my. The skipper was a great guy. And he ended up, you know, becoming the officer detailer later, which, you know, again, it's beneficial. And. And the SEAL Team 2 executive officer again, developed a great relationship with him. Just a good guy that, you know, I was a hard worker and that he moved from group from Unit two. So I was with the XO in Germany, and then he becomes the XO at Team two. So, like, when I get back there, I immediately get back, put into a platoon. So I do a platoon at Seal Team 2 and a strike platoon off the aircraft carrier.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. Yeah, right on.

[Jocko Willink]

Which was, again, working with a lot of assets and going over and doing VBSs over in the Persian Gulf, which, again, at the time was a real thing.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you get a lot of leadership experience as the. As the opso in Germany or was that kind of just, you know, getting.

[Jocko Willink]

You ready as far as leadership of troops? No, but understanding of the bigger picture, yes, because the guy that I work for there, again, he's a friend of mine and just a great guy. And he had, you know, a lot of experience himself at the time. Right. Not experienced like guys have now, but at the time he had experience. And like, there was one time we were. We were on a big exercise, a big joint exercise, and we. We, like, put together a talk. Tactical Operation Center. What's interesting about this is bad. You think of a talk now. Like, you think of what a mobile talk would look like now. I'm not kidding. Well, I put together a mobile talk, and I was the. Like, the. The ops officer for this operation, this training operation, and I had to talk. In my backpack, it was like, three radios, two maps, some magic markers, some pens. Like, that's what we rolled with, and that's what we set up. You know, that's what we did. But there was a time where there's a platoon in the field and there. There's multiple elements that are getting ready to do target hits, and we're waiting for, like, a pro word from this platoon that's supposed to be set up, and. And we're waiting, and I go, sir, can I pimp them for this pro word? And he's like, give him another minute. And I was like, Roger that. And 45 seconds later, the guys passed the pro word. And it just reminded me that, like, those guys out in the field, you got to listen to what they're doing. You got to give them the benefit of the doubt. And that's what my boss was telling me. Like, hey, those guys got. They're not sitting in the talk right now. They're not. They. They're making decisions. So just good experience from that perspective and seeing, you know, the way the. The sock worked was good. So when did your.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, if this happened, which I think it would happen, I mean, when did. You know, as enlisted guys, we always have a lot of gripes and bitches and like that about, you know, the leadership. And so, you know, kind of where I'm going with this is when did your mind kind of expand and realize, you know, what the old position is? And. Okay, like, there's a lot more to this than I ever gave it credit for as an enlisted guy.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, that happened. It happened on that deployment. Right. And I think where. I think what was good was I was bilingual. Meaning I spoke two languages.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, I mean, Mustangs, prior enlisted officers, have fucking tremendous amount of respect in the enlisted man's eyes.

[Jocko Willink]

So since I was bilingual and I could speak two languages and I had to learn the officer language, but I spoke. I was fluent in e dog language. I mean, I was completely fluent. I was e dog mafia. If you go to talk to anybody that was at Seal Team 1 in between 1991 and 1998, I was a made man in the Seal Team 1 E5 mafia, 100%. There's no one that would ever deny that. And so I spoke fluent E5 mafia language. And then as I started to learn the officer language, what I think I was able to do was translate what was happening with the officers to the E Dogs, which I think a lot of times gets missed to this day. Gets missed because it's. It really is two different perspectives that are happening. And there's a lot of things that happen at the officer level that don't ever get told to the E Dogs. And that does create frustration and angst amongst the troops because they don't understand what the hell is going on. And when that happens, man, they get pissed. And I got pissed when I was, you know, when I was an E dog, and we weren't being told what was happening. We're freaking pissed. You know, I tell this one story where we were on the ship, this is my third platoon, and we got told, hey, you guys are going to launch your Zodiacs off the ship. We go, cool. So we drag all the stuff upstairs. It takes an hour and a half. Got to bring the fuel, which means you got to. You got to notify the fire party, and they got to set up all their stuff so you can bring the fuel up to the top deck so you can launch the boats inside the ribs. And two or three hours into this, they're like, actually, you're going to launch off of the well deck. Oh, bring everything back downstairs. Another two or three hours later, they say, oh, you're going to use helicopters? Now we got to break all that? So. So we're getting whipped around the whole time. And this is, by the way, someone just saying, oh, why don't they use the helicopters? Oh, okay, cool, I'll tell them. And they think it's just like this, but it's not. So I always remembered what it was like. I also always remember, you know, I was in. When I was in STT SEAL tactical training, we had to walk in every position in the platoon. So sometimes you'd be point man, sometimes you'd be the Pl, sometimes you'd be the radio man, sometimes you'd be a machine gunner. And I remember, luckily, or unluckily for me, we did a long patrol and I was rear security, and I had no idea where we were. I had no idea we were going. I had no idea we were going to stop again. If we got contacted, I might as well have just, like, started running around like a chicken with my head cut off because I didn't know where the rally ports were. I didn't even know where the target was. And I hated that feeling. And I always said to myself, I am going to make sure that I keep the guys informed. Of what is happening that is so important. It gets dropped all the time because you get focused on, like, well, hold on. How much longer do the next. This is the platoon commander talking. He's only talking to the point man. And so now when he stops talking to the rest of platoon, they lose track of what's happening, and it's just a cluster. And so even as an enlisted guy, I realized that you have to make a concerted effort to explain to the guys what is happening. And if you fail to do that, they'll have no idea, and you won't know that they don't know, and that's a disaster. So now when you move me up into this officer position, now I'm saying, oh, yeah, I bet the platoon has no idea why they're having the helos move to this position or why they're being told they have to stand down from this operation because they don't. They don't get told, oh, the charge d' affaires in this country just said that we can't do it, and go, here's the risk that they don't. Aren't willing to take. They just hear, hey, it's a kankbird, and they go, so we just spent four hours doing this, and now it's just nothing. But they don't understand why. And so it's incumbent upon the leadership to make sure that everyone in the chain of command understands not just what we're doing, but why we're doing it and why these changes get. These changes happen. Because, as you know, these changes happen all the time. They happen all the time. And so, yes, I. I think that one of the things that I had the capability of doing is I was bilingual, I talked E5, and eventually I learned how to. How to speak officer as well. And I could also bring the problems at the E5 level to my boss and explain to them in a way that they could understand that, hey, when you tell my guys we're not allowed to explosively breach anymore, let me tell you what that means. And then they say, oh, okay, well, I didn't understand that. Thank you. Or when I get told, hey, you need to have this number of Iraqis with you, friendly Iraqi soldiers with you on every operation, I need to explain to my boss what that means on the ground. And if you have a good relationship, which I always had a good relationship with my boss. So when I would. I would explain something to my boss, my boss would listen to me, My boss would. Because also, I wouldn't complain about stuff like, I Wasn't going to complain. If I was going to my boss and telling them that something didn't make sense, they would listen to me because I would only say it if it was true. And so I just developed that good amount of trust with my chain of command and it would work out well. So yes, as I got into that officer role, I started to see, oh, okay, I can understand why. Oh, if the troops would have known that it was the commodore of the ARG that now wanted to use helicopters, because it's something they have to get checked off the box before they're allowed to go on deployment. If the guys understood that, they'd be like, oh yeah, well, we got to get quals done too. And this is the quals that they got to get. Cool, let's make it happen. But a lot of times, you know, we, we fail as leaders to let people know. And then when I got to in the platoon at Seal Team 2 again, now we're on a strike aircraft, we got a lot of assets, we're with a carrier air group, which is an awesome projection of power, unbeatable projection of power. But we're a little cog in that machine and helping the platoon understand what we're doing, why we're doing it was beneficial.

[Sean Ryan]

Why do you think that the. Maybe they are doing it, but they definitely weren't doing it when I was in not to. I mean, it seems like with what you just described, prior enlist mustangs, prior enlisted, going to officer, I mean, that's, that could alleviate a lot of communication issues within the military. Why do you think that they aren't. If they aren't. Motivating people, enlisted guys to become officers, why aren't they, why aren't they giving more billets? I mean, this, this seems like a, it could be a key component to a 250 year communication issue.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there are, you know, it's, it's with prior enlisted officers. Some of the best officers I ever worked for or worked with were prior enlisted officers. Some of the worst officers I worked with were prior listed officers. So I, I think it's more of an. Thing and more of an understanding that, explaining to people that, hey man, this, this communication that goes up and down the chain of command is, it needs to happen. It's a real thing. And when you're com. When your platoon is complaining about something, you should listen to what they have to say because they're doing it for a reason. And of course, if you're asking me if they should take more prior enlisted guys and make them into officers. Absolutely. That's awesome. I wish they would do that all the time. It's a great move.

[Sean Ryan]

Anything significant on the strike deployment or the. The mark? Excuse me?

[Jocko Willink]

It was a strike deployment. It wasn't a mark, but it was, you know, it was cool. We did. We did VBSS overseas again. This was like, when doing VBSS was as real as it gets. Get to lock and load your weapon and board a ship and get control of the ship, and it's as good as you could hope for. You know, we took down a big Russian ship, which was a big. Which was at the time was like, on cnn, you know, it was a.

[Sean Ryan]

Wait, what?

[Jocko Willink]

We took down, like, there was a Russian ship that was smuggling oil, and so we. We boarded that ship and got control over it and turned over to the authorities. So, you know, that was kind of a. A cool op to do in the 90s, you know, in the 90s, some things that aren't that big of a deal seem pretty cool.

[Sean Ryan]

So what year is this?

[Jocko Willink]

That was a millennium deployment. So we were on. We were deployed 99 to 2000. So it was like, the winner of 99, 2000.

[Sean Ryan]

Where were you when September 11, 2001, happened?

[Jocko Willink]

So I get home from that deployment, and I have to go to college because I didn't have any college. And again, this is why they changed that whole officer program that I did. I was in E5 at Seal Team 1. I went to 13 weeks of OCS, no college. And then I went to Seal Team 2 as an officer, so it was awesome. But when I got done, they're like, yo, you. You don't have any college. You have to go to college, be an officer. And I was like, oh, no, I don't need to go. I can go when I'm. I can. I'm already doing the job. And the officer detailer was like, no, no, you have to go to college. So I went back to San Diego to go to college, University of San Diego. And I did that primarily because of Jiu Jitsu. I knew I was going to be. I knew I was going to be having some time during this. Three years of going to college. So I went back out to San Diego. So I get my own training, get with my old training partners and stuff. And then so I got back out there in 2000, and I'm in the middle of college when September 11th happens, and when September 11th happened, my commanding officer, or the commanding officer of Unit 2, who I was deployed with as an ops o. Not the ops O. But as an ops Jo, he was the detailer. And I was friends with him. And I called him and I said, can you please get me back to a SEAL team right now? And he said, jocko, this war is going to last a long time. Finish college. And I said, sir, I can finish when I can do online, like, whatever. And he goes, finish college. This war is going to last a long time. And I didn't believe him at all, but he was right. And. And I always want to make sure I make this point. He told me later that everybody called him. Everybody that wasn't at a team, everyone called him. I was just one of the other guys that called him. It wasn't like I was extra motivated. No, I was just as motivated as everybody wanted to get back to a team. And so he sent me when I finished college, 2003, again, like, awesome. He sent me to Seal Team 7. Seal Team 7 was like, the next deploying team. I got to Seal Team 7, and my old XO from Seal Team 2 was the commanding officer, and he welcomed me aboard. And then a week or two later, he fired a platoon commander and put me in charge. Oh. And so. And we were slated to go to Iraq, and we left, I don't know, a few months later. Yeah, actually probably quite a few months later, because I graduated in, like, June, July, showed up at the team, and we went on deployment in September. So that's, you know, good relationships with people, work hard, and. And, you know, he had a platoon commander that wasn't doing a good job, so he put me in there.

[Sean Ryan]

This was in 2003.

[Jocko Willink]

2003. That's certainly grateful. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

So were you on the invasion?

[Jocko Willink]

No. So SEAL Team three. SEAL Team three did the invasion. SEAL Team five had kind of established Baghdad, and then I went in and relieved them.

[Sean Ryan]

How was.

[Jocko Willink]

Was the best thing ever? It was awesome. I mean, and there was a.

[Sean Ryan]

So you've done basically five deployments.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, so this was my. Yeah, so this was my fifth deployment. No, my. No, this was my sixth deployment.

[Sean Ryan]

Sixth deployment.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, this was my sixth deployment. Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, dude, what's it feel? I mean, five deployments of. I mean, you did some stuff, but now you're.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

9, 11 happens. We've invaded Iraq. And you're in Baghdad. I think. You're in Baghdad.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, I'm in Baghdad. And I'm in heaven. Yeah. I was totally stoked. And for. So there was actually, like. There was a. I had a sister platoon at SEAL Team 7, and they went to Baghdad. And then we replaced them in, like. Or we kind of, like, it was weird. We kind of replaced them within weeks. Like, we started augmenting them and then kind of replaced them. And after a little while, like, after a month or so, we were the only platoon in. We were the only SEAL platoon in Iraq for a short period of time. And. And so, you know, we were. We were just doing, you know, what the Team five guys had had established, and then my sister platoon at Seal Team 7 had kept up the pace, and it was just, you know, Baghdad SWAT is pretty much what it was. It was get intel from various sources, find out where a enemy was located, and then go get them. And we. We had a lot of targets, and we got to do a ton of it, and it was. It was like, what. It was what we all joined the teams to do, you know, so it was awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you remember your first operation where you had an engagement?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, actually, the first opera. The first time I left the wire in Baghdad, my. The troop sea was a friend of mine. Like, we were E5 mobsters at team one. And he had been there for, like, a month. And so we show up and he goes, there was like, a mortar attack or something, and he was like, hey, go take your platoon and go, like, check these roads in this place. And we went out, you know, we went out the wire and, like, checked these roads and drove to here, drove to there, and then we came back. And he was like, you good? And I was like, yeah, yeah. He was like, that was just kind of a shakeout. And I was like, good call, dude. You know, like, it was him saying, hey, like, there's nothing. There's nothing gonna happen. Look, we're gonna. We're not sending you on a wild goose chase, but, you know, go to these couple points and check them for whatever. So it's just a good break in of, you know, getting the guys, getting the platoon, getting the vehicles loaded up, went out, drove around outside the wire. That was kind of the first time leaving the wire with my nods on. The first time we got shot at, I was in a Humvee. And I'm looking at the Humvee in front of me, and I'm like. I see, like, sparks. And I'm like, why. Why. Why is someone smoking, like, why is someone flicking their. Throwing their cigarettes out of the vehicle? And I'm like, oh, those are bullets, aren't they? And sure enough, one of the guys. One of the guys got caught, like, a ricochet in the head. Totally good to go. It, like, entered his. Went through his skin, and then like, kind of wrapped around his skull and. But he was fine. You know, we. We still took him to Charlie Med, but. And then, you know, we. That was kind of. That was kind of like the first time. And we got, you know, that. That deployment was relatively chill.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, what's that feel like, though? I mean, five deployments. You join to go to war when you're 18, don't see any. Now you're in charge of your platoon straight after college, after 9, 11, and you're fucking leading a platoon into battle in Iraq. I mean, that's. Did it even hit you? Was it surreal at the time, or are you just so in it, you're like, all right, this is the deal. Let's go?

[Jocko Willink]

I knew, like, I. I knew. I think I'm very lucky because I was older, you know, I think I was, what, 33, 32 or something like that point. So I knew how rare this was. I thought the war was going to be over in a couple months. Like, I was very, very grateful for everything that we got to do. And I knew that every night. Every night I was, you know, like, playing the super bowl game every night, you know, like, that's what I felt like. I was very grateful the whole time. And. And I had a great bunch of guys. Great bunch of guys like that were just hard charging and just. It was awesome. It was great. And we did a lot of direct action missions. And so we kind of got close a couple times to the idea of sniper overwatching. We did it a couple times, but it kind of left an imprint of my mind of what capability we had. But we were primarily just a DA force, and we would just roll out and hit targets. And I mean, it's. Yeah. I don't know if there's anything else I can say to make it for me to explain how happy I was, but that, to me, was just the most awesome thing.

[Sean Ryan]

What about the pressure? I mean, I've always thought about, you know, I mean, I always felt a lot of pressure just going out the door, you know, do the right thing, you know, But I mean, what is the pressure like? And you don't really have any other reference because you hadn't gone on any kinetic operations until this point. But, I mean, what is the pressure like as an officer leading 1620 guys into battle at the beginning of a war where there's not a lot of lessons learned, there's not a lot of new tactics developed yet?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, the pressure I felt was just Wanting to do a good job, you know, not wanting to do anything. Not wanting to, I wouldn't say not make any mistakes because I was not a risk averse person. You know, like, I recognize that if you roll out on an operation, things can go wrong. And I understood that and I understood that risk. So. But yeah, you know, you're worried about guys getting wounded, you're worried about guys getting killed. A little bit of a very distant idea to me. Guys getting wounded or killed. It could happen, I thought. But it was, man, this is early in the war. The IED threat was relatively small. We would drive very aggressively at night on nods. We got ambushed a few times, but it would like, no factor. RPGs going over the, you know, lucky. RPGs going over the convoy, you know, machine gun fire going between vehicles. Like, we, we got, we got lucky. God's a frogman. But it was still a little bit distant to me that someone could get wounded or killed. It was there, but not. We really dominated the battle space, like coalition forces dominated the battle space. And so I didn't have that much of that kind of pressure in my head.

[Sean Ryan]

What about the pressure of winning your, your men over, winning their trust? Winning? Yeah, I mean, you want to be the fucking leader that everybody wants to follow into battle, you know, that, that stuff, I would imagine, has to be going through your head. Am I making the right calls? How do my men. I mean, we talked about perception earlier. And that conversation I want to bring up, you know, more towards the end, but you know what I mean, Are you worried about the guy's perception of how you're leading?

[Jocko Willink]

These guys are my bros and these guys are my friends. And when I took over that platoon, we were the first, like the first. Maybe the first or second thing we did was a nighttime OTB in San Diego, pilot recovery training operation. So I had done three shipboard deployments, man, I know how to do over the beach. And we go over the beach and one of our boats like capsizes or die or the motor dies. I forget which. I think it's just the motor died and where we get the pilot and we come back and now we got a down boat. And the guys who, when I took over the platoon, some of the guys were kind of friends with the old officer. And so there was a little bit of that. And some of the guys didn't like the old officer. And so there was a little bit of a friction, right? And I. So this boat's down and the guy's like, we're in A perimeter. And the guy's like, dude, we got to call admin. We got to call the trucks down here and get this boat towed back. And I was like, we're not doing that. And they're like, well, what are we going to do? And I go, this is what we're doing. And I gave him the plan and I, I put on my fins and. And took the boat. And I was like, hey, guys, I'm gonna. You guys are gonna paddle this boat. They're like, they're looking at me like I'm crazy, like paddling a boat through the surf. Like, this is buds. And I said, we're gonna. And as soon as we get like deep enough, we'll set up a tow line. And we did have a good to long tow line. And I, I remember I put. Beaned my weapon into the boat and I got in the water and I'm keeping the bow into the wave so we don't flip over. And then we get. The other boat comes in, I get those lines secured and then they start towing us out. And then the guys drag me back into the boat. But like, one of the guys in that platoon was like, after you did that, that night, like, we would do anything for you because. Because I kind of. They had kind of said like, oh, we got to call admin. And I was like, no, we're not calling that. We're going to make this happen. But there was all kinds of stuff like that, like, step up and do the. Do the right thing. And yeah, these guys are my friends. You know why these guys listened to me because I listened to them. You know why these guys treated me with respect because I treated them with respect. You know why they trusted me? Because I trusted them. And when you. That's what you do. That's. That's how it is. And that was the attitude that I had. I wasn't really concerned about that. These guys were my guys and I trusted them. They trusted me.

[Sean Ryan]

And you didn't know any of them prior to you coming into that platoon?

[Jocko Willink]

I knew the platoon chief. Yep. The platoon chief was another, you know, Team 1E5 mafia guy from, from back in the day. So it was great. It was great to have that instant connection. But I don't believe I knew one single other person in that platoon because I'd been out on the east coast and then I'd been in college, so I don't think I knew once the sister platoon. This. My sister platoon. My old running mate, the guy that told me, hey, you're not the only one that lost Grizzly. He was the LPO in my sister platoon.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Jocko Willink]

And I got to do some ops with him.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice.

[Jocko Willink]

Which was as good as it gets.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice. What would. What would you say your most memorable experience of that deployment is?

[Jocko Willink]

There was. There was a few things that happened where you. You like. There was. The CPA in Najaf was being overrun, and we needed. They needed qrf. Najaf is five hours away by Humvee, and they need a qrf. And they called us, and I'm like, hey, there's, like, three other units between us and Najaf. Like, why? And they're like, I don't know, but you guys are going. And I remember the sea of that troop who, like I said, was the guy that was like, hey, go on this mission. Which was kind of for no reason. He was a. He's a great friend of mine to this day. But I came out of, like, the talk, and I was like, hey, guys, load up all the rockets. Load up all the ammunition you can fit in the trucks. This is what's happening. We're going to QRF. We're going into JOFF. CPA's been overrun, and we. 20 minutes later, we're jocked up. And that guy. That guy hugged me, and I was like, this is interesting. And because he was. He usually went with us, but he wasn't going with us. And so he, like, hugged me, and I was like, interesting. Long story. No big deal. We got to know Joff. The. The cure. They didn't need a qrf. The. I think I want to say Blackwater actually came in with their helo.

[Sean Ryan]

I was wondering if that's what that was.

[Jocko Willink]

It was. So we went down there, we spent the night, didn't do anything, and then drove back. But, you know, I remember thinking, hmm, that's. That's interesting. I'm getting this hug from my bro. We ended up doing. Towards the end of the deployment, there was a. There was a. One of Saudr's. Muktado Sadder was the leader of the Shiites in Iraq, and we. Coalition forces had been targeting him for months. Our whole deployment, he was being targeted, but they didn't want to hit him because they didn't know what the reaction would be. And so just before we were going home, we. We got tasked with hitting one of his top lieutenants. And it was a big operation, a lot of visibility on it, and we went down. And that was also. I want to say that was in the. Yeah, that was in the joff we went down, we captured this guy. And when we came back, it was kind of, once it got out, it was kind of the beginning or one of the triggering points of the true insurgency in Iraq. Like, I woke up that morning and there was like, you could look down from our base and you could see like fires from the highways, vehicles were being ID'd and stuff. And it was, it was the beginning of the real formation of the insurgency, which I wasn't really quite 100% sure on. But you could see something was changed. Something just changed. And you could feel it. And I don't think America was ready for that. We weren't. You know, we'd already made all kinds of mistakes. You know, standing down the bath, the Ba'ath soldiers and the army sounding down our Iraqi army. Like we made all kinds of mistakes out of arrogance as a country. But I don't really don't think that we saw like, oh, damn, this is about to get really, really bad. And that was in the spring of 2004. And that is truly when things started to spiral.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, Jocko, I know it's getting ready to get heavy with Tasking and Bruiser. Let's just take a quick break. When we come back, we'll pick up right here.

[Jocko Willink]

Let's do it, man.

[Sean Ryan]

A lot of dark stuff going on in the world right now. And it's to the point where I don't even believe my own eyes anymore because I cannot verify what people are saying about all the political violence. The division I partner with this production company called Ironclad, and we're doing an eight part audio series on PsyOps on why foreign countries, governments, maybe even our own government would conduct a psyop on its own people. And I just think that, that this series is going to be extremely important because it's going to open the eyes of people on why these things happen. You can head over to psyopshow.com order it today. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. Who's pulling the strings?

[Jocko Willink]

Who's pulling.

[Sean Ryan]

All right, Jocko, we're back from the break. It's about to get real heavy here, but this is where you go to SEAL Team 3. Take task unit. Bruiser is the Task Unit commander, correct?

[Jocko Willink]

Not quite.

[Sean Ryan]

Not quite.

[Jocko Willink]

Because as I'm finishing my deployment, my with SEAL Team 7, my commanding officer again, who is my ops officer in Unit two, my executive officer at SEAL Team two. Now he's my commanding officer and he says the last thing I do as a commanding officer is I'm going to make sure that you become the Admiral's aid. No one wants to be the admiral's aid, of course, because, you know, it's an administrative job. But there's a reason why he wanted me to go be the Admiral's aid. And it is because at that point in time, at that moment, I was going to come straight off the battlefield. You know, this is 2003, 2004. There hadn't been that many platoons gone over there. I'm going to go straight off the battlefield and work directly for the Admiral. And that's what they want. They want somebody that has fresh combat experience that can tell him what is happening. And I, you know, I did all kinds of excuses and tap dancing to try and get out of it, but it was, it was happening. So, and, and you know, it's part of it is, it's very, it's outstanding professional development because you're going to see things that you would not see without doing it. So that's what I get. I get home from deployment and I check in to be the Admiral's aide. And yeah, it was definitely a wake up call because, you know, we always, we had a thing was if you avoid wearing a uniform at all costs, if you have to wear it, make it perfect, right? That was kind of like a thing at Seal Team 1. And I was really good at avoiding wearing a uniform. Like I didn't like to wear a shirt at work, you know, as little as possible. And the first trip I went on with the Admiral, I think I had four uniforms with me, like khakis for the Pentagon, cammies for Fort Bragg, dress blues for a ceremony, and civilian clothes. That's like one trip.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Jocko Willink]

So I check in to be the Admiral and you know, it was definitely an eye opener of what's happening in the community and what's going on and what's happening at that, that level. And it was, yeah, a massive learning experience. And again, you know, I had the E5 mafia language down. Now I learned the officer language and now it was learning. I don't know what to call the next level up of officer language, but it's like flag.

[Sean Ryan]

Officer language.

[Jocko Willink]

Flag officer language. Because for that year I was in the Pentagon, I was, you know, and you'd be. It's weird when you're an aide, it's kind of like you don't exist, but you do. And I don't mean that in a bad way. My boss was a great guy. He was, you know, just A great guy, nice guy, cared about me a lot. But like when you're in a room with a four star general, like the aides are kind of these sub humans in the back, but you're listening to everything, you're seeing everything. And so it was a very educational experience as to what's happening at those levels. You know, you're going to meetings at the Pentagon, jsoc, like, just really educational.

[Sean Ryan]

A lot of inside baseball going on.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And you know, for, for us in the SEAL teams, we don't realize often how much visibility we have, especially back then. Look, I guess now it's pretty obvious we have a lot of visibility, but back then, you know, you wouldn't think that a E5 in a SEAL platoon doing something dumb on liberty would get a phone call to the Admiral from the Vice CNO or the CNO or the SEC Nav, like these things are a big deal. And so that's what I learned. I learned the amount of scrutiny that we're under. The SEAL Team five guys, they had a. Someone in that platoon uploaded digital pictures of their deployment to a website that was supposed to be secure, that got breached. And so these pictures went out over the Internet. And the pictures. So I'm there when the CNO is calling the Admiral to ask him about each of these individual pictures. What is going on in these pictures? And implied in that was like, what is wrong with your troops? Example, there's an image of a guy, an Iraqi guy, he's being held by the jaw and he's got a pistol to his head with a flashlight in his eyes. And Sino's like, what is going on in this picture? And the admiral like, hits the mute button and I'm like, sir, they don't like to have their picture taken. So you got to face their picture to the camera. You got to face their face into the camera. And the light is so that you can illuminate the camera. You can illuminate the picture. That's why the closest flashlight you got is in his pistol. That's what he's doing. Boom. Admirals tells him what's going on. Next picture a guy with a sandbag over his head, cuffed, blood coming out of the sandbag. What's going on with this picture? Hey, sir, that guy resisted. He got subdued. He probably could have been shot, but. But our troops are disciplined. And instead of shooting him, they captured him. They had to subdue him. They used minimum force required, and now they've got him handled, and now they take a picture of it. So, like these little things where I realized that's the level of scrutiny we're under. And that's why again, when I became a troop commander, being able to translate and explain to the guys what is going on and what the visibility is and how much it matters what you do as an E4, as an E5 in a seal platoon, it has a strategic impact for the nation in some cases. And that was really clear with like Abu Ghraib, but also for the SEAL community. And if we are not professional, we don't get work. And that's not, I'm not saying that for the benefit of the SEAL teams. I'm saying that for the benefit of the country, because seals are good at what we do. And if we're not getting jobs that we should be getting because of these kind of ancillary actions, it's bad for the country, it's bad for our war fighting capabilities. So I learned a lot about that when I was, when I was the Admiral's aide. And there's another, there's another couple of huge cases. There was, there was, you know, I got to hear about what was happening from a legal perspective. Like there were some guys that shot someone. This wasn't SEALs, this was army guys, regular army guys, conventional army guys shot someone in south of Baghdad somewhere. And I don't quote me on the story, but they had planted a gun on him and they were going to jail like they were under trial for murder. And I just would hear that and go, what were these guys thinking? You know, why would they be doing this? And the immediate answer is, well, because they're afraid they're going to get in trouble, right? Oh, they're afraid that the Roe didn't allow them to shoot this guy. And now they're trying to cover it up. The reality of this scenario is the Roe. If someone is, I'm trying to think of the exact terminology, reasonable certainty that they're committing hostile intent, not a hostile act, hostile intent. So if I think you're going to do something, and I'm reasonably certain of that, I can shoot you whether you have a gun or not. And yet we have guys, this particular case, these guys were getting in trouble because they planted a gun. They didn't need to do that. So that was like another just learning about how much scrutiny the military. So like I initially saw, like, oh, there's. The SEAL teams is under scrutiny. But then I realized it's not just the SEAL teams. There's a lot of scrutiny on everything that we do. And the Abu Ghraib scandal that caused so many people, that fueled the insurgency so much. And I saw that it fueled the insurgency. So what a couple 18, 19, 20 year old privates were doing in a prison fueled the insurgency. And the Al Qaeda took advantage of it. They propagated those pictures. They propagated those Pictures from Team 5. That's what happens. And so I guess I realized how the tactical actions of our units, Seal teams, Marines, army soldiers, has a strategic impact and we have to think about what we're doing.

[Sean Ryan]

That is something I never thought of. Where does the scrutiny come from?

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, it's the law of armed conflict, right? It's like the Geneva Convention, the law of armed conflict. There are people, are people that are in place to make sure that we are conducting war in a forthright and just manner, if there is such a thing. You know, can we go back to the quote from, from Apocalypse Now? Like, you know, handing out charges for murder around here is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500. You can take that approach, but it's not going to help you. It's not going to help you. You. There's, there's rules, and we have just got to follow the rules. And if the rules don't make sense, then you got to raise your hand and say, hey, these rules don't make sense. And I did that, for instance, and I brought this up earlier. Breaching. So when I first got to Iraq, that first deployment, we're breaching every door, of course, right? Well, so is everybody else. Everyone's just breaching the hell out of everything. You're going to enter a building, you breach the door because it gives you a tactical advantage, right? So, guys, civilians were getting injured by breaches and eventually they said, hey, no more breaching, no more explosive breaching. Done. So I get this word and, you know, I talk to my guys, no more explosive breaching. And you know, what's their reaction going to be?

[Sean Ryan]

Not good.

[Jocko Willink]

Totally not good, right? Hey, and it's exactly what, it's exactly what you would think it would be. Hey, wait a second. You want us to be at more risk? You don't care about us. You don't understand what it's like down here. This is a problem. You, you don't, you don't understand the battlefield. Screw you. That's basically the response. So. And I'm thinking the same thing, right? But now am I thinking, wait a second, does my boss want to put my guys at risk? What do you think? Really? Does my boss want. No, no, Actually, no, I don't believe my boss wants to do that. There's got to be something else going on. Hey, boss, what's the deal with explosive breaching? Why are we being told we're not? Why are you telling me we can't explosively breach anymore? And he's like, here's what's happening. Here's the amount of casualties from breaches. Here's the civilians injured by breaches. Here's, you know, the number of breaches that are happening every night in Baghdad or the surrounding areas. And the civilian casualties are so high that the generals are saying, don't do this anymore. And I said, okay. Now, boss, if I'm going onto a target where the intel represents a higher probability of there being some kind of resistance on the target, can I breach? And he's like, well, what do you mean? I said, well, if I get this intel that says that they're expecting them to have bodyguards or they expect there to be IEDs, can I use breach explosive breaches to mitigate that risk? And he's like, yeah, that makes sense. And that's what we did. And that's also when we started doing call outs, which initially guys were.

[Sean Ryan]

Guys were doing call outs. Yeah, all the way back then.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep, we started doing them.

[Sean Ryan]

Holy shit.

[Jocko Willink]

I did not know that. We started doing call outs. And it was like we were figuring out how to do it. Okay, what are we going to do? Because from my perspective now, all right, so I'm not going to explosively breach this door. Door. So we're not going to really have the element of surprise that we want because we're going to be sitting there with a sledgehammer or what even a lock pick is, or, you know, anything's going to make noise, we're going to alert them that we're there. So now we've got guys in the stack or waiting outside this building. They're not behind cover. This is a problem. How can we mitigate that risk? Well, since we have to wake them up to breach the door anyways with a freaking sledgehammer, let's just get a little safe distance, set up our vehicles, and wake them up and say, hey, you got to come out. And that's exactly what we started doing. And then. So what we ended up with was a good variety of tactics of sometimes we do a call out, sometimes we just mechanically breach the door, and sometimes we explosively breach the door. But all those things were a result of me talking to my boss and then talking to the guys and saying, guys, here's why we can't breach. This is. Okay, well, we can't. Oh, there's a huge super high risk. Explain that risk to me. And they explained to me, you know what, I agree with you guys. Boss, we're going to explosively breach tonight. Boss says, cool. My boss never told me no. So those kind of things, I think, again, where we get into the. Hey, do. Just do what I'm telling you to do, both up and down the chain of command. I don't want my. I want my guys to resist me. I want them to say, we should be able to explosively breach. Okay, tell me why. And I should be able to look at my boss, here's why. And by the way, if my guys explain to me, hey, we should explosively breach, and here's why. And I explain it to my boss and my boss says no. Okay. Do I have an argument? No. Okay, well then how can I mitigate this? Well, I can mitigate it by not stacking my platoon up in front of the door or outside the building and doing a call out. So those kind of things, I think get lost when it comes to communicating up and down the chain of command.

[Sean Ryan]

I got a question for you. I mean, earlier when we were talking, I can't remember at what point we brought this up, but we were talking about leadership. I believe you had just gotten through ocs. Anyways, you had said that trust your guys and that's how they trust you. Right? And so big proponent of that. How do you just trust your guys? I mean, do they have to earn your trust? Or do you give them the trust and let them fuck that up, or give them the opportunity to fuck that up? I'm asking because for my own. I'm learning, I want to learn from you.

[Jocko Willink]

The way you do it is a little bit of trust at a time. So if you started working for me, I wouldn't be like, hey, Sean, we got this op tonight. Why don't you take lead on that? I'm going to sit in the talk. I've never worked with you before and I'm just going to let you go take lead on a mission? No, it's like, hey, Sean, we got this op tonight. Can you run external security for me or can you clear this back, you know, outhouse with your fire team? And you're like, cool, got it, boss. And you do it and you do it well. And then the next time, hey, you're in charge of external security, and the next time, hey, you're in charge of vehicles and Next time, hey, you're in charge of the breach team, so it's like I'm going to give you a little more trust each time and then you keep making good calls. Maybe sometimes I have to tighten you up. Like, hey, what were you doing? Going to clear this other building. That wasn't part of the target. Yeah, but I saw a guy over there. But I don't care about that. But you didn't tell me. Yeah, but I didn't have time. Well, what if we have a blue on blue because of this? Oh, good point. So, you know, you learned a little bit, I took a little bit of risk, maybe a little bit of, a little outside the zone. So that's what you do. Just a little bit of trust at a time. You build it over time. But I have to trust you. And actually what's funny is I thought where you were going with that question is if my guys are telling me like we need to explosively breach this target, do I have to trust them? And the answer is, yeah, well, I.

[Sean Ryan]

Mean, then you get a guy like me that works for you and we have to explosive breach every single fucking time. How do you trust me?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. And then I go, hey, hey, Sean, if we do another one of these explosive breaches, we're probably not going to get approved for our next missions. And you go, what do you mean? I said, well, they've had a bunch of collateral damage, They've had a bunch of people in the Baghdad General Hospital that are wounded civilians from breaching charges and we're just going to get told no. So now what are you going to do? I'm telling I trust you, but do you trust me? And okay, well that makes sense, Jocko. Okay, can we mitigate it? How can we mitigate it? Well, we could do a call out, we could throw flash crashes through the windows. Like there's a bunch of ways we could figure out ways to mitigate things. But if I don't talk to you and you don't talk to me and I don't explain to you what's happening, how can we expect to be aligned? It's just not going to happen. And so that, that open mindedness and having good relationships with people, this is what it's all about. And by the way, this extends to like the other units that you work with, right? The other military, army and Marine Corps units that you work with. You got to listen to what they're saying about their ao, because that's going to have an impact as well.

[Sean Ryan]

Makes sense. Makes sense. And I can't believe you guys are doing call outs back that. How would you do it?

[Jocko Willink]

Set the vehicles in a. Either, usually an L type scenario, you know, so we'd be able to see the. The black side of the building, but we wouldn't set ourselves up in an envelopment. And we'd get on the radio and say, hey, you're surrounded. You know, our TERP would do it. Hey, you're surrounded. Come out.

[Sean Ryan]

How would that work? Would they come out?

[Jocko Willink]

Usually, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

Occasionally there would be no one there.

[Sean Ryan]

What was the ultimatum?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know if we ever even reached an ultimatum. I think we had a couple where there was no one home. And we eventually breached, which again, which is a good escalation, right? I guess, depending on how you look at it. But if they wouldn't come out. And now when we explosively breach this thing, we. We'd explosively breach it, like big.

[Sean Ryan]

So there were some very valuable lessons in the admiral's aid slot.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. And. And again, even that first deployment to Iraq, these kind of conversations, you know, these kind of things, understanding what my boss was having to deal with. Do you.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you feel. I mean, it sounds like he. It sounds like he had a great relationship with him, but it. What I want to ask is, How is it? I've always expected my leadership to have more experience than myself. And so you're showing up at a slot to be the aide for the admiral with more combat experience than the admiral has. That's an assumption. Maybe he was a Vietnam guy.

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know. It's a correct assumption. I mean, how, how, by the way, my commanding officer, Remember I said I was the only platoon in. In Iraq for like a month or two when my skipper showed up? He was no combat experience. And, you know, remember what I was saying earlier about, like, I understand, you know, like, I don't expect my boss, who's never been in combat before, to be able to roll in and start telling me what's what. And I understand he's going to ask me some questions about some things that he doesn't understand. Because he doesn't understand, and that's okay. Like, oh, sir, let me explain to you. Why don't you come on an op and you can see what this looks like. Like, that kind of attitude, as opposed to. Which is really easy from a judgmental perspective to say, why the hell are you in charge? Or, hey, I'm trying to run operations down here, and you're asking me a bunch of questions like, no, Actually, come on down, sit through our brief, tell me what you think.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, I guess that's what I'm, I mean, I've had both leaders too, and I think I've always paid a lot of attention to how my leadership approaches me with certain issues. And are they open to, are they open? That's really it. I mean, when you have a leader that comes in with a little to no experience, I mean it's, it's once again, how are they going to project that? Are they going to project that and lean on us or are they going to, are they going to fucking hide from their inexperience? And you know what I'm getting at and present like over inflated, over inflated confidence.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And what do you, so how do you deal with that? It's like, hey boss, that sounds like a good suggestion. Let me, let me bring that to boys and see how, see how we can make that work. You know, it's like, what am I supposed to say, boss, you haven't been here as long as I have, you don't know what you're talking about. Where's that going to get me? Yeah, so it's like, hey boss, sounds like a good suggestion. Let me get with the guys and let's figure out how we can implement that. Hey boss, I was talking to the guys and I just want to go over a couple things. Couple secondary and tertiary effects are going to happen if we do what it is you were saying. It's going to cause this and it's going to cause that. I'm good, we got to mitigate this one. But I just want to let you know that's what's going to happen. I didn't know that. How do you recommend. Oh, here's what I recommend, boss. You see what I'm saying? So again, if I don't listen to him, he's not going to listen to me. If I don't put some trust in him, he's not going to trust me.

[Sean Ryan]

Makes sense. Makes sense. So how does tasking a bruiser come about?

[Jocko Willink]

So, yeah, I do that year at the admiral's office. And then the next billet is to be a task unit commander. And a billet opened up at Seal Team 3. And so Seal Team 3, here I come.

[Sean Ryan]

Could you explain what a task unit is to the audience?

[Jocko Willink]

Task unit is the old name now it's called the troop, but it's the old name for two platoons combined together with a little headquarters element above it. So it's about, it's about 36 guys, but it really can be anywhere between 30 and 50 or 70. You know, it's. It's. It's. I think people are always surprised that the variables inside the military, like a infantry company can be 80 guys or can be 280 guys. You know, there's a big variation, but generally speaking, a task unit is two platoons or a troop is two platoons with between 16 and 20 guys in each platoon.

[Sean Ryan]

And so you. You are tasked with. With leading the task unit. Yep, two platoons. Man. I just had so many friends slash, you know, Bud's classmates that were in that. I mean, Cowie, Mark Lee, Leif Babin, Seth Stone, I think I don't want to mention his name. He might still be in there. Andrew Paul, but fucking ton of them, man. I think Melendez maybe. Was Mario Melendez with you guys? But, yeah, a lot of these guys, plus a lot more enlisted. But I don't want to say all their names because I don't know who's in and who's not anymore. But. And this is where, man, you is. Your guys just have all positive things to say about you. I've never heard anything negative about you from anybody that you've served with. And that is. That is incredible.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. I work with some awesome guys, man, for sure.

[Sean Ryan]

And you guys seem really tight, and that is cool to see, too.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it was great crew of guys, man. Great crew of guys.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, it's almost like you took your task unit with you into your business career. Yeah, there's a lot of those guys there. We got a decent, you know, that are in there, but. But I don't know where to start with this, so I'll let you start.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, for me, it was. You know, I thought that this may. This. This could be getting towards the end of my operational career. There were some couple other options that may play out or not, but at this point, you know, just for me, this is just an awesome opportunity, you know, an awesome opportunity. And I love the SEAL teams. And to be a troop commander, tasking a commander for me was just awesome. I was. Again, I guess I find myself struggling for words. For me, to be able to describe the things that I've had in my life, like being a platoon commander in Iraq, when there's one platoon in Iraq, like, this is just. This is like, if you played football your whole life and you get to go to the super bowl, you know, or you. You get. You know, you. You are in a rock band and you get to play Madison Square Garden, and that's what it was for me. This is the only thing I ever dreamed of doing. The only thing I wanted to do was be in the teams, and now I'm in the teams, and now I'm getting to be in charge of some team guys. And, yeah, it was awesome from the word go, you know, showed up and, like, I stole a lot of stuff from Colonel David Hackworth. And one of the key components that I stole from David Hackworth was he would rename the units that he would take over. So when he was in Korea, he took over Fox Company. He changed it to Fighter Company. When he was in Vietnam, he was in charge of the 439th, which was called the Hard Luck Battalion. And he changed it to the Hardcore battalion. And he did that even with each of his subordinate elements. He would change their name to something cool. And so when I took over, Task Unit Bravo was the original Alpha Bravo Charlie. And I took over for Task Unit Bravo, and the first thing I did was change the name to Bruiser. And it's totally unofficial, and I just went with it, and that's what we got. So shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way. Stitch Fix online Personal styling makes it easy. I just give my stylist my size.

[Sean Ryan]

Style, and budget preferences.

[Jocko Willink]

I order boxes when I want and how I want. No subscription required. And he sends just for me pieces, plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep woodworks and send back the rest. It's so easy make style easy. Get started today@stitch fix.com Spotify. That's stitchfix.com Spotify.

[Sean Ryan]

Where'd you come up with Bruiser?

[Jocko Willink]

Had to begin with B. And there was an old band friend of mine had called the Bruisers. And I was like, that's too easy. So there we go.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Jocko Willink]

Bruiser coming in hot. And I mean, let's face it, it's a pretty good theme.

[Sean Ryan]

It is a damn good theme.

[Jocko Willink]

It's a pretty good theme. And again, very fitting. Just something that I took from Colonel David Hackworth. And it does have. I've worked with all kinds of companies now, you know, at Echelon Front, and there's so many companies that have told me that their sales team gave themselves this name or their concrete team gave themselves a name like this happens all the time now. And people report back that, yeah, man, it has an impact. You're not just Team Alpha or Team Bravo. You're tasking a Bruiser. Let's go.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. Right on. I mean, did you know you were going to Ramadi when you took it?

[Jocko Willink]

No, we didn't know where we were going at first.

[Sean Ryan]

Anywhere or anywhere in Iraq.

[Jocko Willink]

So there was one task unit that was designated to go to Iraq, and that was Alpha and Bruiser and Charlie. One of us, one of those task units was going to go to paycom, meaning no war. And so my commanding officer and master chief, they brought us all back. They brought the head shed from each task unit back, and they said, hey, we. If you want, we can take. And we can split up the task units so that whoever hasn't been to Iraq can. We can all put them in one task unit and they can all go to Iraq, and then the other guys that already have been to Iraq can go to paycom, which is the fair ferry. Right. Like when the fair ferry shows up to try and make everything fair. And, yeah, I was. So I. I had my opinion, but I went back and asked the guys because we were just starting our land warfare, and I said, hey, here's what they're offering. They're offering for us to split up, and guys that haven't been to Iraq can go, or we stay together, and they send whoever performs the best to Iraq. And I kind of smiled, and they're all like, hell, yeah, let's go. So it was a little bit of a competition to see who goes to Iraq. And we were very hardworking.

[Sean Ryan]

Sounds like it. I mean, fuck, man. So many legends. Chris, Kyle, Eli Crane's in there.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, Eli wasn't with us.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh, he wasn't? Mikey Mansour.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, wow. Wow.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Bunch of. And. And, you know, a bunch of guys that. Whose names people don't know, who are just awesome guys, and I think so. Tony Efrati, he. He's the. Might be the one guy that I. We were E5 mafia, team one, me and Tony. And I'm trying to think if I knew anyone else in there, I might have known the. I think I knew who the other platoon chief was. Another good guy, I think. But we weren't ever at the same team. But I knew him, but other than that, I don't think I knew one single person in there.

[Sean Ryan]

What do you think your. What do you think your reputation was for them? What did they think they were walking into with you as their task unit commander?

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, Tony knew me. I mean, he knew exactly who I was.

[Sean Ryan]

So he got the word out.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, Tony. Tony's as hard as they come. And Tony had. Has an outstanding reputation and. Had an outstanding reputation. And so, you know, he knew me. And so that was that. And, you know, my platoon and in Baghdad had done a lot of stuff, and so we, you know, I had a lot of experience at that time. You know, at that time, it was a lot of experience. And, you know, like I said, I was a. I was an enlisted team guy for eight years. So at a minimum, you couldn't lie to me about what the radios could or could not do. You couldn't lie to me about, like, basic team guy stuff. You had to tell me what was what, had to tell me the truth about stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

When did you find out you were going to Baghdad, so. Or not Baghdad? Excuse me, Ramadi.

[Jocko Willink]

So I would say about halfway through the workup, they said, all right, you guys, Bruiser's going. And look, Bruiser's going to. Bruiser's going to Iraq. We're like, yeah. So we were planning to go to Baghdad and work with the ictf, which the Iraqi Counterterror Force. I went on advon, as a matter of fact, and I went and did some ops with those guys and saw what they were doing and started the turnover with their task unit commander. And that's what that was like, kind of a very. Looked like it was gonna be an awesome deployment. Like, those guys had a good force that they were working with. They had a good op tempo. They just had good stuff going on. So looked like that's where we're going. And when we. When I got home from that PDSs, they wanted to align all of. Because the east and west coast were both in Iraq at the same time. And yet the. The west coast had western Iraq, except for they had an element in Baghdad, and then the east coast had eastern Iraq, except for they had an element in Ramadi. And you can already see this doesn't make much sense, right? So as the two commanding officers were getting ready to deploy, they talked about it and were like, wait a second, why do we have our forces kind of disjointed? West coast, you take western Iraq, that's like Fallujah, Habaniyah, Ramadi. East coast, you take Baghdad, which includes the ictf, and then the other stations that they were had. And it makes sense, you know, like, there's no two ways about it. And when I heard that I. I was on. I wasn't on leave, but my guys were on leave, pre deployment leave. Like, we were that ready to go to Baghdad. And my skipper called me to the office and said, hey, what do you think about going to Ramadi? And I was like, I knew exactly what was going on in Ramadi. I mean, the intel reports were very clear that Ramadi was a total, total war zone, total disaster, and it was the. The. The worst area in Iraq. And I said, yeah, roger that. And I tried to. Inside, I was like, oh, hell, yeah. Outside, I said, well, sir, you know, there's a couple more things I need. And I bargained to get, like, a few. I bargained to get a few more people. I bargained to get, like, some computer stuff that we needed for our, you know, for our communication stuff. And he was like, yeah, I can get you that. I can get you that. I can get you these other people. And I said, I'm in. And that was it. Going to Ramadi.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you know this was going to be. This was it as far as kinetic deployments?

[Jocko Willink]

Yes. Yep. I mean, there was sustained fighting every day. Like, there was soldiers and Marines getting wounded and killed every day. And this isn't a big area. Ramadi is not a big city. It's small. IEDs were totally out of control.

[Sean Ryan]

So you had a pretty good idea what you were walking into.

[Jocko Willink]

100%. Yeah. Well, not 100%, because, you know, there's still some things you're going to learn. But I knew. I knew what was happening. I was. Again, thankfully, I had done that deployment to Baghdad. I had experience as an enlisted SEAL working for the Admiral. These are all things that helped me understand. It's like I was just a little bit ahead of the power curve. You know what I mean? Just enough ahead of the power curve. Did you ever get rolled back in buds? Yes, I didn't get rolled back in buds, but you could tell the guys that got rolled back, they were like, okay, pool comp. They know what's coming. They're just a little bit ahead. And that's how I felt like I was going into radi. It was just ahead enough to know, like, okay, I know what's coming. And. And I told, you know, once the tasking was on the ground, I'm like, this is going to be a historical deployment.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you.

[Jocko Willink]

Which is a big statement. That's not a small statement. I don't. Didn't throw that word around. But I. I knew. I knew.

[Sean Ryan]

How many guys did you have that had experience, like, actual experience?

[Jocko Willink]

Every guy that wasn't a new guy had been to Iraq.

[Sean Ryan]

We had a lot of new guys. I think.

[Jocko Willink]

We had a decent amount of new guys. We had a decent. Wasn't overwhelming, but we had a solid, probably normal, average number of new guys.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Three, four guys, Purple Tune, new guys, something like that. So not overwhelming and all. All great guys.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, if you knew what you were walking. Let me ask this. How many guys on your team or in your task unit had an idea of what they were walking into?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know if anybody did. I don't know if anybody did.

[Sean Ryan]

How do you prepare these guys for that?

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, just telling them what's happening. You know, you. You put the sigacts, the significant activities, which are basically enemy attacks, brief the sig acts in the last 24 hours, and then you brief them, the sig acts in the last seven days, and then you brief them sigacts in the last month. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist, because in the last 24 hours, there was three guys wounded, one guy killed, you know, 38 enemy attacks, and you think, whoa, that's a rough day. But then you realize it's every day for seven days, and then you realize it's every day for seven months or for. For a month, and then it's. That's how it's been. And just before we showed up, like, the three. Eight Marines had had a terrible. About a. About a week where they had lost four or five guys in that week before we showed up, and they'd lost a couple more before that, but, you know, that's. That's what we're getting into.

[Sean Ryan]

Who are you tasking at? Excuse me? Who are your platoon commanders?

[Jocko Willink]

Leif Babin and Seth Stone? Yeah, my brothers. Yeah, two guys.

[Sean Ryan]

You didn't know them before?

[Jocko Willink]

Didn't know him. Met him. And two guys from the Naval Academy. Neither one of them got selected out of the Naval Academy. They both had fought their way back from the fleet to get to the SEAL teams, both of them from Texas, both of them surfed. Neither one of them had much experience at all, but they were. Dude, they just. They wanted to be good. They wanted to be good team guys, and they wanted to. They wanted to fight. They wanted to fight for God and country. And they were tough. They listened. Yeah. Yeah, they were. Couldn't. Couldn't ask for better guys to work with, you know, for the two platoon commanders. And, you know, it's funny because Leif will tell the story about when I met those guys and how, A, I didn't smile to him, and I wasn't nice to him, and B, Seth thought I was gonna fire him, and I hated him. And it's actually true.

[Sean Ryan]

Is it really?

[Jocko Willink]

It's actually true. Not that I hated them, but that I might fire them. I didn't know who they were. I didn't know what their attitudes were. I didn't have high expectations that they were gonna be, you know, successful or good. And so. And you know what? This is another thing I stole from Hackworth. This is exactly what Hackworth would do. Hackworth's like, yeah, when I meet guys, I don't know who they are, I don't know what they're going to do. I'm not going to become friends with them because if they're not capable of doing the job, I'm going to get rid of them. And so, yeah, there's a reason why I didn't like bro out with them when I first met him, because I will fire them if they're not going to do their job correctly or if they're more concerned about themselves than they are about the platoon. And if you're more concerned about yourself than, than your platoon, you're, you will not work for me. You will not work for me. And I will do everything I can to like, get you out of the SEAL teams. So luckily and thankfully, those guys didn't have an ounce of that in them. You know, they wanted to take care of their platoons. They wanted to fight. They wanted, that's what they wanted and they did.

[Sean Ryan]

Who are your chiefs?

[Jocko Willink]

Well, the, the, you know, the one chief is, is, was SAS chief and he's, he's not in the public light. And the other chief was Tony Efrati. And you know, Seth Chief was a great combination with Seth. Hard working guy and a good compliment to Seth. And then Tony, Tony Efrati was Leif's chief, who again, he was E5 mob with me at Seal Team 1. And like just, just a, just a, just a stud dude. I mean, honestly, he's on the, on the platoon list that you form up for the apocalypse. Like Tony's, he's on the top of the list, you know, because he's not going to back down. And he's, and he's great. You know, there's a situation when we were in, going through workup and I was watching Tony and Leif, they were getting ready to do some training op, just a real simple training op, you know, target, like a, like a iteration training on a target assault or something like that. And they're sitting there in the, you know, in the sand, you know, with the freaking sticks. And Tony tells him like, hey, hey, sir, we should come in from here, set up a base over here, move through here, rally point over here. That's what we should do. And Leif's like, hey, that sounds really good. Why don't you tell the guys? And Tony goes, I think it'd be good if it came from you. I was like, damn, dude, that's a professional. He's trying to elevate the platoon commander. Instead of him being like, I want to show these guys that I'm the real guy in charge. Instead of doing that, he elevated Leif just in that little moment. That's one little. One little moment in time where you see a guy that's like, a real true professional whose ego is totally out of it. He wants to have a good point tune. So, yeah, just epic. And, you know, since I was, you know, I'm good friends with Tony. You know, I grew up with Tony, and so we had a great relationship. Yep. Do you.

[Sean Ryan]

Before we go to Marati, I just want to ask if. If there was. How did you address your team when you knew that's where you were going? What was.

[Jocko Willink]

How did you tell them stand by to get some boys? Yeah, it's weird. There was a. There was a time earlier, because I knew that Ramadi was the worst place. And I had said at some point, like, we're. We're gonna end up in Ramadi. I had said that. Like, I kind of knew it. So the guys were tracking. The guys knew what was what. And, bro, the idea, you know, it's like I. I had a guy named Dean Ladd on my podcast who is a Marine officer in World War II, and, like, he's going into Tarawa, and they're. The threat brief that they're getting for Taro is, like, totally out of control. You can see it. The Japanese are dug in. They got mortars trained on the beach. They got machine gun pillboxes, the whole nine yards. And Torah was tiny. And I asked him the same kind of probing questions that you're asking me of, like, well, how did you. You know, how did you feel? And I was like, well, were you nervous? Were you scared about getting wounded or killed? And he goes, that always happens to the other guy. And that's exactly. You know, that's how I felt. That's how I can just about guarantee you every guy in tasking a bruiser when they heard we were going to Ramadi was like, hell, yeah. Every single one of them was like, hell, yeah. Nothing bad is going to happen. We're going to go and kick ass. That's what we do. Which is exactly what you want.

[Sean Ryan]

Fucking awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. We're frogman dude, this is what we do. This is an opportunity. You know, the storied legacy. That the guys in Vietnam built that we got to, you know, get to walk around in Coronado with a trident. I mean, not. You're not walking around, but guys know you're a SEAL. You go into a MCP's on a Thursday night, which, I'm sorry you missed out on, but back in the day, you go into MCP's on a Thursday night, like, you know, you're a badass. And I didn't do anything to earn that. Nothing. I got to live off the reputation of the guys that came before us. So to have an opportunity, get some of that back. Yeah, that's a. That's a. It's a huge opportunity, and it's a heavy weight. We gotta hold the line.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah. So you get to. You get to Iraq. You're in Ramadi. Let's talk about day one.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. So we were on the PDSS or. No, the Advan. Right. So a few of us came over on the advan, and, yeah, everything I had read about was going on there. It was going on there. And you know what day it was? I don't know, but we were going to a memorial service. Like, almost out of the gate. Yeah. And again, what was. What left a mark was. I could tell in the memorial service that this was a routine. Like, it wasn't an ad hoc thing. Like, I'm looking around and I go, this is not an ad hoc thing. I've been in the military for, at this point, 15 years. I know what it looks like when you throw together a ceremony last minute, and you get in there and you do something. Something. This was not that. I'm looking at, like, the setup where they have the memorial crosses. Those things are not. Those things are used. I'm looking at where the preacher's talking from. I'm like, oh, he's delivering remarks again. So that's the. That's the. My first memory of Ramadi was that was going, yeah, these guys, these. You know, we're showing up here, these guys from the 228 under Colonel Gronski. They've been here for 14 months. They've taken. They've lost almost 100 guys. They've taken hundreds and hundreds of casualties. And we're. We need to do what we can to help them. That was my attitude, was like, we need to help these guys as much as we possibly can.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn. And I'd like to. I just want to remind the audience. I mean, your tasked the most decorated SOF unit out of the entire Iraq war. That's what we're walking into.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, we had. For some reason, we had 13 snipers. And I say for some reason, because that wasn't normal. You know, both the platoon chiefs were snipers. We just had. We were overloaded with snipers, which was a real blessing and that seeing. Remember, I talked about being in Baghdad, and we did a couple operations where I kind of caught a glimpse of what we could do with snipers. Like, a little. A little glimpse. And when I saw what was happening there, I thought to myself, oh, I think I have an idea of what we can do here. And the turnover with the guys from team two. Great bunch of dudes. It was like there was areas where. And same thing with what the coalition forces were telling us. The 228 was like, hey, this area here, you can't go there. It's not passable areas. You know, the. There are too many IEDs to go down there, period. So it was. We knew. I knew. I knew it was going to be a fight because it was all around us. You know, you go. We lived. It's another weird thing. It's like growing up, watching more movies. It was usually like, good guys are over here, bad guys are over there. You go over to fight the bad guys. Like, okay, World War I was trench warfare. Even the trenches seem like they were a little bit far apart. And Ramadi was like, oh, the other side of this wall right here, there's bad guys. It's like the other side of that wall, there's bad guys. And when you go out the gate, you go out the gate, and there it is. You're in it. You're in Ramadi. And, you know, there was people killed on Ramadi, you know, from mortars and rocket strikes and stuff like that. So it was all around you.

[Sean Ryan]

How big was Ramadi? I never made it.

[Jocko Willink]

Probably like four miles across.

[Sean Ryan]

That's it?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. 350,000 people. Roughly speaking of civilians. Yeah, Camp Ramadi was a pretty big base because it was a former Iraqi army base. It was a pretty big base. And we had our little annex to that base right on the Euphrates river, as frogman should be. And within. Once the whole task unit showed up, like, the night the task unit showed up, there was, like, a coordinated attack on various bases, ours being one of them. And like, every guy in our task unit, the first night that they showed up in Ramadi, was on the roof of our building just getting after it. Oh, yeah. So that was kind of a good welcome to Ramadi as well.

[Sean Ryan]

So you get, okay, so you're not in the middle of some big base. I mean, it's. You go on the rooftop and you can engage.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Day one.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And it's funny too now that you mentioned at the. The commodore at the time, who was the detailer that I asked to send me back to a SEAL team asap, who is the commanding officer when I was in Europe. So this guy's a friend of mine, and before we left, he it to a speech to the whole team, and I harass him about this to this day. He's like, hey, the chances are none of you are going to shoot your weapons. Like, this is a different time and all this stuff. And I think I sent him an email or a. A Webby thing, and I said, hey, sir, we've been here for 48 hours. Every single guy in my task unit and some of the techs have. Have engaged. And he was. He was like, yeah, Roger, great guy, great guy.

[Sean Ryan]

So what was the mission set? Was it. Was it very specific or was it always something different?

[Jocko Willink]

It. It ended up being pretty specific. And that is setting up sniper overwatch positions in support of the army elements on the ground. That's kind of one. We did do direct action missions with our Iraqi counterparts. We did the overwatches with Iraqi counterparts and we did, you know, clearance operations, patrols to contact, reconnaissance missions, demo raids. We kind of got full spectrum frogman activities. Yeah, wow. Yeah, it was the. The 228. Who is the brigade that was on the ground? When we got there, they, they had pretty much secured the outskirts of the city, and so there was just starting to initiate the idea of pushing into the city. And it seemed like. And as a matter of fact, while my guys, before my guys arrived, we were getting word that one of the courses of action was a Fallujah type clearance of Ramadi. And so now I'm like, oh, it's completely on, right? It is completely on. But Maliki, who was the president, just been elected, he said, I don't want to do that type of assault on Fallujah because it'll cause a separation between the Sunnis and the Shias, and this will be. This will be a civil war. Is there another way to do it? And so this is where, when the 11 AD showed up, which is the first brigade, first armored division ready, first brigade, when they showed up, they had a plan that had been used in northern Iraq, a Tal Afar to clear the city, like a small section at a time, and that's the. What we ended up implementing.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you think that was the right call?

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, yes, I do. I do. Because it would have caused so much destruction in the city that it would have caused mass civilian casualties, displacement of people. It would have been very problematic had we done a Fallujah type clearance of Ramadi. So. And I think there actually would have probably been more casualties had we done it that way on the US Side. Certainly on the Iraqi civilian side, it would have been rough. So I thought it was a good plan.

[Sean Ryan]

What was the first operation that you took your task in and on?

[Jocko Willink]

We started doing some, like, almost immediately, some small DAs and stuff like that. Like, I remember the first DA that Leif was going on, and this was. We had a. When we first got there, the first couple weeks, we were still under command of SEAL Team 1, so my skipper hadn't taken over yet. So I had taken over the. The Ramadi task unit, Ramadi space. But my SEAL wasn't in charge yet. And so my goal was to do as many missions as we could for the SEAL Team One co so that my CO would be like, jocko knows what he's doing, and that's what we did. And I had a good relationship. I had known the CEO from SEAL Team 1, and when he came out and I met with him and I kind of presented the case and explained to him what I saw and how we're going to operate, he was just. We got along great. And so when I started running up, you know, missions that we were going to do, he was. He was approving and. And that was very cool. And we got very aggressive out of the gate and, like. But I remember Leif's first direct action mission, and he. He may have never done a direct action mission before, and I'm the task you to commander, but this thing was pretty close to the front gate. And I'm like, he can. He can go do this thing. And so he's putting together the plan, and there's, like, a lot of stuff to organize. And he came to me and he's like, hey, bro. He's like, I don't know if we're gonna be ready for this. And I'm like, bro, you're gonna be fine. You're totally good to go. You got this. And he was like, you know, he trusted me, man. And I trusted him. That's why I was going. But he looked at me like, with that kind of like, okay, if you say so, type thing, and he went out and did it, you know, and it's all good to go. So we ran some missions like that. And then what happened was when I met the Colonel, Colonel Gronsky, this is before the 118 showed up, because you're asking about the first missions that we did. So I had put Tony Efrati had taken a little sniper element with some Marines and him and some seals and a couple Iraqi soldiers out to this area where the Marines had been IED and lost Marines in early April. And so Tony went out there, they're in Overwatch for 48 hours or something like that, 24 hours, 36 hours, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. I go to meet the brigade commander, and as I'm going to meet the brigade commander, I'm walking through his talk like this is out of a movie. I'm walking through his talk and they're announcing like through the radios that the SEALS just engaged two IED emplacers at this location where that IED had taken place. And I walk into his office and he goes, are those your guys? And I'm like, yes, sir. And he said, I need you over in Eastern Ramadi. And I said, roger that, sir. Let me, let me get it fixed. Let me get, let me get it together. And, you know, we, we chatted and he explained to me what was going on. This area called the Malab District, run by the first of the 506 Band of Brothers. Outstanding, outstanding army unit. I mean, just as awesome as it gets. They were in control of this or working to get control over this place called Malab District. And they were just getting annihilated with IEDs. I mean, it was absolutely horrible. And so went back and I put together a crew and to go over to Eastern Ramadi and conduct a massive clearance with them. So we're over there for a few days, we're getting to know the Iraqi troops, We're planning this big giant operation. And again, bro, when we're in the SEAL teams and we think of a big operation, we think of like a task unit, right? Maybe a task unit plus a company of Rangers or, you know, a company of, maybe a platoon of infantry guys, when I say big bro, I'm talking like thousands, not, not thousands, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of. So we're planning this operation and it's weird. So see, now we're talking about what is the head shed doing, like. So in Ramadi, the leadership had figured or made a decision that they didn't want any battalion sized operations conducted in Ramadi. But this clearance was going to take that whole battalion plus to get it done. And they run it up the chain of command. Hey, we want to do this battalion sweep of this area. And it comes back, hey, no battalion sized operations. And so they said, okay. So we took and broke up this battalion sized operation into like multiple smaller operations that were company plus sized operations. It's a little bit of a shell game is what I'm getting at. But it was the mandate that had come down. And the commanding officer of the battalion said, okay, that's the mandate. We gotta meet. Here's how we can. Here's how we can maneuver around that and still accomplish the mission. So that's what we ended up doing. And this is, this is, you know, you're talking about the first major operation. So this is the first major operation that we're doing. We're planning to sweep a certain section of the city first thing in the morning. Then we're going to reset, do another section of the city, then do another section.

[Sean Ryan]

And what do you mean by sweep? Clearly talking about like route reconnaissance, sniper watch.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm talking the Iraqi soldiers with the U.S. army, but primarily the Iraqi soldiers in the lead are going to enter every building in a area. It's a clearance operation.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay?

[Jocko Willink]

Meet with the people, see if they have weapons, talk to them about atmospherics, and then go to the next building and go to the next building and go to the next building. So as they do this, they know that they're going to get attacked. So in order to interdict the attacks. And they also know that once you clear a street of IEDs, in a matter of hours, they come out and we called it reseeding the IEDs, which is, it happens so much that they have a term for it. It's receipting the IDs, so they know that if we clear a road and get rid of the IEDs, the enemy will come back and input IEDs. So when we put together this plan, I have a group of seals that are going to go with the Iraqi soldiers to help them and do C2 for their clearance operation. And then I have two elements of seals that are going to go out and one of them is going to overwatch one of these long axis roads, and the other one's going to overwatch a shorter axis road, but also the Ramadi soccer stadium, which is a staging area for the enemy. And then I am going to be with the company commander, who's an awesome guy. Joe Claiborne. Crazy. Crazy Joe Claiborne. I'm going to be with him because he's helping C2 and the Iraqi soldiers with elements of his company. There's a lot going on, man.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Jocko Willink]

So we launch pre dawn, and this is another thing, pre dawn operation. And. And we had done. Stoner had taken guys out with Clayburn, with Joe Claiborne like a few days earlier, and he had gotten a big gunfight. And when they came back, I was standing at the gate waiting for him. And they came back and I, you know, he's like totally impressed. And I walk with him to his battalion commander and this guy, this company commander, Joe Claiborne, who's been in Iraq for four or five months at this point, he's lost two guys. I think he's had a bunch of guys wounded. I think at that point, like 20% of his guys have been wounded or killed. And he goes to the battalion commander and he says, I want seals with me on every operation I do from here on out. From one engagement with my guys, he was impressed. And we were. I mean, I was overwhelmingly impressed with him and his guys. They were outstanding. But that's how much we hit it off with these guys. And I've told them since that that was the best compliment I've ever got. My life was when a. Was when an army company commander goes and tells his battalion commander, I want seals with us on every operation we do from here on out after just getting in a major engagement. So now you fast forward a few days and we're going on this mission. And as we're driving in, it's eerie. And what the moos would do is they would light tires on fire. And so you're rolling into town, it's black smoke everywhere, there's fires burning. Very, very eerie as we roll in. And I have already have my sniper elements head inserted at this point. And one of they were inserting on the mine clearance vehicles. So it's a pretty sneaky little operation. You know, the mine clearance vehicle goes by, it stops to clear a mine, but then some seals get out of the back and go set up an overwatch position. Very cool. So they're in position, the one by the soccer stadium is in position. The other group gets in their spot. And the building that they had selected was not the way it looked like it was going to look on paper or the way it looked on the overhead imagery. They didn't have a good view of this long axis road that was going to be utilized for the clearance, which was bad because it was going to get cleared. And then it would be hours before the op started, and now we'd have possible IEDs getting reseated. That's a problem. Didn't want that to happen, so that element decided to move. And now there's a lot of time compression. The sun's starting to come up, and we're like. As they realize the sun's coming up, they're like, oh, we don't have good visibility. The road that we need, that's our. That's. That's their commander's intent is to watch this road. They can't see the road. They decide to move. As they move, they go into a building that is just outside the limit of advance. And I'm sorry for civilians that I'm talking in military jargon, but there's a point where the clearance operation was supposed to stop. And so they're on the other side of it's a road. It's like, okay, the clearance operation, they will not go past this road. So now as things start to develop, I've got my guys, my sniper element over by the soccer stadium. They're starting to engage enemy. The SEALs that are pushing through, they're starting to income, experience resistance, and they're starting to engage with my little element starting to engage. So there's a lot of enemy fighters out there. And at some point, one of the Iraqi elements, which I don't know why they did this, or I did not know, no one knew that they were going to do this. They had decided that they were going to set their own cordon around the area that was being cleared. So by themselves, they ran from where the clearance was taking place all the way to the limit of advance road, and they went across it to enter the building and set up an overwatch position for themselves. That's where my guys were. So one of my guys. And again, there's so many little details that go into this, but we had seen, they give us intel pictures, and the intel pictures have body armor and helmets and AK47s and chocolate chip cammies that the enemy has. So we know that the enemy can be wearing body armor, chocolate chip camis, helmets, and we know they carry AK47s. So one of my guys is in that overwatch and they're looking out the bottom floor and they see a guy with an AK47. Again, it's like not quite Nod's time. It's the worst time of day, dude. And the guy sees a guy with an AK47 maneuvering through the courtyard, which they had zip Tied the courtyard shut. So this guy had actively entered the courtyard and was now maneuvering, and my guy shot him. Obviously looking back, this was one of those Iraqi soldiers that had run up there. So now him and his Iraqi soldiers and there was a small Marine element that had gone with us. An Anglico element had gone with these guys. Because the job of the Anglico is to keep track of the frontline trace of where friendly forces are. So they see these Iraqi soldiers run off and they followed them because they're freaking awesome marines and they're doing their job. So now they get up to where this, where this guy is, where this small element is, and they're like, what's going on? They're like, hey, you know, broken English, the whole nine yards. One of our guys went in that compound. He, he got shot. And so then what do they do? They all start shooting. So what we end up with now, now we're entering the blue on blue. This is a blue on blue happening. And as my guys in the overwatch position are now returning fire at the Iraqis that are dumping down rounds, trying to get their guy out of the courtyard. The Iraqis call for the qrf. So now a QRF launches to go down and it gets to that corner.50 caliber machine gun, puts it on the, on the overwatch, my overwatch position. And again, this overwatch position is Iraqi soldiers and SEALs and starts engaging with.50 cal into this overwatch position. As this is happening now, my guys call the heavy qrf, which is tanks. And as this happens, I look at the company commander, Joe Clayburn, I'm like, hey, those are my guys calling qrf. Let's go. Like, follow these tanks down there. Roger that. So we kind of break contact over here and we pull out onto that main road. Farouk Way is what it was called. And as we're driving down this road, I'm looking and I see the tank and I see red smoke, which is what we use for emergencies. And I see the tank and I'm, I, I just, as soon as I looked around, I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I knew something. My gut instinct was telling me there's something, something is wrong. So I get out of the Humvee and I'm with my sea. He's a great dude. And I, I look and I see the gunny sergeant from Anglico. And I'm like, what's happening? And he goes, there's Moose in that building right there. He goes, he's like, we're Going to call for fire. Like, we got to take him out. I'm like, okay, stand by. Because I didn't feel comfortable and looked at my, like, sea game, like, the head nod. And he, like, got on my. Gave me the squeeze, and I started walking up. And as I'm walking up to this compound, I see a white on the ground and on the door, I see a white zip tie. And I'm like, my guys are in here. And I kick the door open. And when I kick the door open, I saw tune Chief Tony Friday standing there, and he's, like, stoked to see me because they called the qrf. He's thinking, I'm the qrf. And I go, what happened? And he said, hey, guy was coming. Guy was coming through the courtyard. We engaged him. And then they brought it. And I looked at him, I said, it was a blue on blue. And he looked at me like, totally confused. And he said, can we get the guys out of here? I said, yeah. And we had a 113, was down there as a Kazavak already, so got the SEALs and the Iraqi soldiers that were in there, put them in the 113 to get him out of there. And Tony stayed with me because Tony's like, there's a reason why. I said, Tony's like, top of the list. Because Tony just got 150 rounds shot at him through a 50 cal. By the way, one of my other guys, Matt Hasby, he got fragged in the face. I. I don't. He was so. Had so accepted his death. It was wild. But Tony through all that was just like, hey, I'm staying with you, boss. I'm like, check. No factor. Those guys go back. And I went up then to the company commander and same thing. I looked at him, I said, hey, that was blue on blue. And his same. Same look. Like, what? And I said, it was a blue on blue. Then he radioed it in. So. And by. As soon as I saw that white zip tie, I. I figured out what had happened. You know, I like, oh. And I saw the building from the map where my guys were supposed to be, where they were to supposed originally planning to be. I knew that I was at the limited advance. Like, I knew what had happened. And in talking to that Anglico guy was like, yeah, the. The Iraqis pushed down here. And I was like, oh. So we finished the clearance, you know, because that's what you do. Like, there's still a mission going on. We finish the clearance. And as we finish the clearance, we. Then we're we're now, like, some elements stay out there, but the bulk of the clearance force is now going back to base. I go back to base, and myself and the company commander go to the same battalion commander that he had just told. He wanted seals with us on all of his operations. And this battalion commander is one of the best guys, But seriously, one of the best leaders I've ever met. And he looked at me and he looked at Joe, and he's like, what happened out there? And there was a giant battle map. Like, literally wallpaper. And I just walked through it with him. I was like, hey, sir. I had an element here. Had an element here. My element moved to here. This Iraqi element pushed down. He goes. They went past a limited advance. My guys didn't know who they were. Engaged him. They called the qrf. My guys got engaged by the qrf. My guys called the heavy qrf. I came down and made the connection, and he was like. And this guy was. You know, he'd been in Ramadi for six months as a battalion commander or five months or whatever it was at that time. I guess they got there in December. Yes, it'd been like four or five months. He was just awesome. And he was like, okay. He's like, we learned from that. Don't let it happen again. We got another mission to do. And I was like, roger that, sir. And so we went rejocked, went out again, did a whole nother operation, got done with that clearance sector, and again, now everything's. You know, we didn't have any more of these things happen. And then we came back, did it again, Boom, rolled out. So we end up doing clearances the whole day, engaging all kinds of enemy fighters, the whole nine yards. And then I get back once the last mission is done, because these were daytime operations, you know, other than us inserting at night. Once the sun was setting, the Iraqi soldiers can't clear it at night, so it's a daytime operation. That's why. Then I get back, and I open up my field computer, and needless to say, I had some emails and some. Some texts, you know, the Webby texts to explain that, hey, stand down. Investigation is commencing as to what happened. I'm like, yeah, roger that. So we consolidate, and we go back over to Western Ramadi Camp. Ramadi Camp Mark. What? We end up calling Camp Mark Lee. And now I'm getting ready to debrief, and my. My skipper sends me an email like. Like, hey, we'll be out there tomorrow. Be ready to debrief. And now I'm trying. So now one Iraqi soldier's dead, multiple Iraqi soldiers wounded, and one of my guys wounded. Blue on blue, dude. It's a freaking nightmare. So it's a nightmare. So I spend the next however many hours trying to figure out who is to blame for this. I'm. My assumption is someone's getting fired, right? Because you can't have a blue on blue and no one gets fired. My assumption is someone's getting fired. So that's kind of the question is who's getting fired? So I go down the list of, like, the element leader that was in charge of the Iraqi soldiers. Guess what he didn't do? He didn't keep control of those soldiers and let them go down and leave the limit of advance. The radio man that was in charge of that element that moved positions didn't tell me or anyone else where he's going. He just did it. Shooter shot a guy without doing a good pid. Like, I went down the list and was figuring out who was to blame. And there was something in my gut that felt so disgusted by my thoughts, and it. I was probably, you know, a half an hour away from when the CO arrived. And I couldn't figure out why I felt so disgusted in this debrief. And it occurred to me, like a giant slap upside my head, that the reason I felt disgusted is because I was trying to blame people for things that were my fault. Because this operation, like every operation, when you are the senior leader on the battlefield, you're in charge of everything. And every one of those mistakes that happened are because of me. They're because of me. Because I failed as a leader to convey how important it was to pass your location. I failed to convey, as a leader how important the limit of advance was. I failed to convey how important it was to keep control of those Iraqi soldiers. Those. Those things are my fault that that's happened. Not any one of those guys. And so when the commanding officer showed up and the command master chief and the investigating officer, and they're sitting there in the room with my wounded guy who's got his head bandaged up. It's Matt Hasbro. You know Matt, right?

[Sean Ryan]

Matt was my swim buddy in second phase.

[Jocko Willink]

So I'm looking at Matt in the back. I mean, it's only a miracle that he's alive, right? He had.50 cal punching through the roof. He's laying there. He drew out his pistol so he could, like, fend for himself as. As he got over. So. And I will say with that moment, when I realized Why? I felt disgusted. I felt so relieved, like, oh, you're an idiot. This is you. And I felt, okay, this is you. This is what you did. You're in charge, you're responsible, and this is what the leader does. And so I went in the room and, you know, I. I asked that question, whose fault was this? And there was a. There was a pretty good moment of silence. And then some, you know, someone chimed in, well, hey, it was my fault. I did this. And I was like, no, it wasn't your fault. And then the raidman said, no, it's my fault. I said, no, it wasn't your fault.

[Sean Ryan]

The whole team was in there.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Everyone in Tasking Bruiser was in there and the command master chief and the skipper and the investigating officer. And I went around the room and asked, you know, whose fault is this? And everybody, you know, whether it was they wanted to blame the Iraqis, whether they wanted to take ownership themselves, everybody was chiming in on whose fault it was. And then I said, no, it wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault. There's only one person to blame, and that person's me. And that is the truth. That is the truth. When you are in charge of a team and something goes wrong, it is your fault. And then I said, and here's some things that we're going to do to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And I started talking about time and space deconfliction. I started talking about how we were going to overly signal. We went through some protocols, but that was it. And you know, my boss, who I already had a great relationship with, and the master chief, who's a great, you know, legendary master chief, he, you know, those guys, my, my relationship and trust with them went up in both directions because they understood what, they understood what had happened, they understood that I understood. And I think, you know, if they would have. They would have been in their rights to say, hey, Jocko, you're done. Or they could have fired anyone in that long chain of command. I would have, I would have protested with my own job if they would have tried to fire someone else besides me. But, you know, I had a good relationship with them. They understood how complicated it was. They saw these little things. There's a million other little elements I can tell you about, like the fact that Matt has be, who was getting shot at with a.50 caliber machine gun, which you'd think, hey, dude, you're getting shot at with a.50 cal. That's that's an American weapon. Like, that's not common. Well, 12 hours prior to this, he was in a sniper tower, and he got engaged with a Dishka 12.7 machine gun by the enemy. And he was. He told me, he's literally up there thinking, I can't believe these guys at the disc have found me again. Because otherwise, if you think you're getting shot at with a.50 cal, you call cease fire, you throw a red smoke, you do something to stop it. He had no idea. And so that's, you know, to. To the credit of my command master chief and my commanding officer, they listened to me, I listened to them, and we carried on. And that was a very rough way to begin the deployment.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you have any idea how much credibility was boosted within you with your team that day?

[Jocko Willink]

I don't know. But I can tell you that you and I have both sat in rooms where some officer blamed someone else other than themselves. And you and I both know that that is disgusting. And that's what disgusted me, the fact that I was even having those thoughts. Part of it was me trying to truly figure out what happened, but part of it was like, oh, yeah, this is you trying to look for someone to blame. There's no one to blame. You're in charge. So, you know, the guys in the troop, the guys in the task unit, like these guys, I'm not a hard person to figure out. I'm not maneuvering in some way. I am who I am, and those guys knew that. And so I think I would have lost a lot of respect. I think I did what they probably expected I was going to do. Maybe some of them were pleasantly surprised, but I think most of them knew me. You know, I think I would have been a. It would have been. We would have been very out of character if I'd have gone in there and blamed someone else. That's not. That's not how. That's not how it works. You know, again, this goes back to that platoon commander I had. You know, that guy, he was responsible for everything when we screwed something up, even when we screwed something up, even when one time one of my friends got in trouble, like on liberty, and he wasn't even there. He wasn't even there. And he's like, yeah, you know, I should have seen this coming. I was like, check. So when things go wrong, you better take ownership of it. And they certainly went wrong in that scenario. And, you know, there's another. The commodore of Group 2 at the time, who was a guy that was A legendary, legendary leader in the SEAL teams. And he had been a Marine in Vietnam, and he had come in at the tail end of Hue City. And I don't. I can't remember if I talked to him or if he emailed me, but he said something along the lines of, hey, Jocko, I don't know if you know about me. Yes, I know about you, sir. I was in the tail end of Hue city in Vietnam. I saw he, you know, he was one of those guys that made it very clear that he was not in the battle of Way City, but he showed up there afterwards or he's at the tail end of it. And he said he rattled off the percentage. Like a third of the casualties in Way City were fratricide. That's just one battle. It's like this complicated stuff. And it was the first. He was. He let me know, like, okay, this stuff, this is war. And by the way, the army, like that battalion commander, blue on blue was a part of Ramadi. You know, we think of in the SEAL teams and we think of blue on blue. It's like you're getting kicked out of the SEAL teams. Like, if you and I are running around with sim and I shoot you, there's a decent chance I'm getting kicked out of the SEAL teams. Like, that's how much of a mortal sin it is. And the army and the Marine Corps, they're like, it's just like we have to mitigate it as much as we can. But if you can't, it can happen.

[Sean Ryan]

This is part of it.

[Jocko Willink]

It's part of it, and it's a horrible part of it. And look, we. We had other blue on blues that potentially could happen. We had shots fired, but we never had it escalate like that one did. And that's because we learned a lot of lessons from that one. And we prevented all kinds. That never escalated at all. That never happened. But, you know, it's one of those. It's funny in extreme ownership. Leif and I were writing our kind of chapters independently, and it ends up there's three chapters in there that are about blue on blue. One of them was Chris Kyle with a PID on a guy with a scope of weapon. And he's telling Leif, like, hey, I got a guy with a scoped weapon in this building. Is there any friendlies in that building? And Leif's calling the company commander, hey, do you got any friendlies in this building? And the guy's like, no, we got a guy with a scope weapon. He's like, kill him, because there's snipers that are killing Americans. And Chris, like, didn't quite feel comfortable. And Leif was like, hey. He's saying, we're cleared, and goes back and forth. And finally Leif's like, hey, we don't feel comfortable taking the shot. And the guy's kind of pissed. And this is a great company commander guy's kind of pissed. And he's like, okay, well, we'll go clear it. And Leif's like, roger, we got. You know, we'll. We'll tell you what we see. And a few minutes later, the army goes to assault that building. But they come out of the building that they were going to assault. There was a. They didn't know. We miscounted the buildings or they miscounted the building. I forget what it was. But that right there, man, if Chris. Chris could have shot one of friendlies, but you. We had to be so careful about these engagements.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Jocko Willink]

And then there was another one that I wrote about where we had a element sniper element on a rooftop, and there's a Bradley fighting vehicle on a intersection. And he calls back, like, hey, we got. We see bad guys on the building of Building 48J or whatever the building was. And the company commander's like, you got any guys on that building? I'm like, hold on. I'm like. Because it's, you know, multiple guys with scope weapons on top of a building. I'm like, do me a favor. Have the Bradley count the number of buildings he sees till he gets to that target. And he's like, what? And I go, please? He's like, okay. Says, all right, hey, whatever. Dash one. Count the number of buildings you see before you get to that target building. Guy's like, what? He said, count the number of buildings. Counts the number of buildings. Come back. He said, hey, we misid the number. The building. It's actually building 32. Like, yeah, we got friendlies on that building. Do not engage. So that's what we were dealing with a lot. And there was cases in Ramadi of people engaging Humvees. Like, there's probably no vehicle in the world with a more distinct silhouette than a Humvee. And we had guys. There was soldiers and Marines that engaged Humvees because of the confusion and chaos of the battlefield. So that's how we started off with a massive lesson learned.

[Sean Ryan]

With a lesson learned like that, and you took ownership of that. I mean, and this is advice for future leaders in war. I mean, how do you. How do you brush that off and get your head back in the game.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, what are we going to do to prevent it? You know, like, we got lessons learned and, you know, I think when you're shooting head plates and you miss one, if you start thinking about the one that you just missed, you're going to miss two more. And I think that's a really important thing to be able to do with other factors in your life of, hey, look, this happened, it went bad, we need to fix it. We need to fix it and we need to move on. If you live in the past on stuff it without, you know, you learn from it, but you can't. It's like I say about when, when you, with, with losing people, if you lose someone like your friend, your, Your parents, your brother, your sister, whoever, someone close to you dies, you got to remember them. But you can't dwell on the past. You can't just, you can't just be there forever because then you're not moving forward. So I think it's. The similar activity here from my standpoint is like, okay, like, this is what we did wrong. This is the lessons that we learned and here's how we, we move forward.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you feel any type of reluctancy to, to address your men as a. Is. Is their leader again after that? Immediately after that?

[Jocko Willink]

No, no. I, Man, I was really close with these guys, you know, up and down the chain of command these guys had. We did a workup together. They've seen me in every different type of scenario. They're not like, these are, these are my brothers, one of great relationships, you know, So I wasn't, I. If I would have blamed one of these guys, I would have been ashamed to show my face. You know what I mean? But they were more like, hey, this wasn't your fault. Like, yes, it was. Like they've tried to re. Explain to me, you know.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, the other thing is they're all thinking, he's got our fucking back. That's really, definitely one of the most important attributes of a good leader is knowing that your guy, your boss, has your fucking back.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yes, it is. Absolutely. And, and you got to know that they have your back. And this is, you know, this is one of those things where it turns into. Or you have to watch out because if you work for me and your impression of me that I give you is that no matter what you do, I'll cover for you. Now we get into a bad zone because you have to know that if you do something that's immoral, Illegal or unethical, I'm not going to have your back. Now, if you explain to me what happened and what went wrong and you had a. What we. What we learned from the army, which is a good shot, bad result. 100%. 100%. But if you are doing things that are illegal, immoral, or unethical, you need to know that I will not have your back. And even something, even, you know, even this isn't that extreme. But, like, I would tell guys, hey, you get a dui, it doesn't matter what I do to your back, because you're. It's going to be in the system and you're going to get in trouble, and there's nothing I can do about it. Like, there's nothing I can do. Like, I can go and be a character witness and tell you, tell the commodore how great you are. But the commodore is going to go, oh, yeah, you had a dui. You're getting. You're getting busted down and you were pulling your. From your platoon. And I have. It doesn't matter how much I have your back. That's what's happening. So, yes, you're right. But as a leader, you've got to put those parameters up to make sure that guys understand what the left and right lateral limits are. And they can be big, but they're not infinite. And that's why I need to know that you have my back. Because if you're out doing something that you shouldn't be doing, what are you doing to me, man? Because I am going to. I'm going to take the fall as well. It's not like I'm just going to be like, oh, no, he did it, because I am responsible. You do something stupid or you do something illegal and you get rolled up, I'm going down, too, as I should, because I let it happen. So, yes, 100%. And these guys knew that. These guys knew that. That is how we have to operate. And luckily for me, like I said, I did that to were. As the Admiral's aide, I understood what those left and right lateral limits were. I understood that very well. And that was a real blessing because there were. No, there wasn't really any ambiguity about that. If you do something that's outside the box, I will not have your back. Anything you do inside the box. And like I said, it's a big box. A big box. I got you. But you better be doing good things, at least with the best intent. And are mistakes going to happen? Yeah, man, they are going to happen, especially in a Combat zone. Like, are civilians going to get killed in the combat zone? Yes, they are. Are the wrong breaches going to happen to the wrong building? Yep, they're going to happen. There are things that are going to happen, and I will have your back as long as your intent was good, as long as you were doing the right thing for the right reasons all day. And yeah, my guys knew that for sure and I knew that with them.

[Sean Ryan]

How was it working with Chris Kyle?

[Jocko Willink]

Great. Yeah, it's great. He was a very dedicated sniper. He was a wise ass. He was funny as hell. He was a shit talker in, like, a good team guy way, and he was just a great guy to having a platoon. Yeah, man. Like, you'd see him and Tony looking at imagery for hours, trying to figure out what building would be best, looking at the angles, looking at the distances, looking at the long axis. Like, that's what they did. And, you know, he. He was good, man. He was good. He would spend, you know, a long time on his gun in sniper overwatch positions, and he would set himself up for some good positions, you know what I mean? Like, he would set himself up on some long axis positions where he can see four or five blocks. And meanwhile, like, a new guy sniper might see half of an alley, so. But he earned that position. You know, he earned it with his patience and his. And his discrepancy. Like, he was. He was very, very good. He was good as it gets.

[Sean Ryan]

Was he good at passing on wisdom?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, you know, I'd say I was a little bit out of the line of fire of him passing on wisdom because I wasn't a sniper. But, you know, he. He'd pass on some hassling to these new guys, I can tell you that. The funny thing is, you know, they. He liked to do. This is weird, but he liked to do, like, pranks, like a. Like a grade school kid. Like, he would prank people, do funny stuff. Like that's. That's what he's like. So he wasn't the. You know, in the movie, they make him out to be, like, super serious all the time and all this stuff. And he was actually just a funny, great guy to be around. That brought a lot of. Brought a lot of entertainment with him, you know, a lot of entertainment.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on.

[Jocko Willink]

And we had, you know, and we had a good crew of guys that was, you know, that's a SEAL platoon, man. It's a SEAL platoon. I was. I guess they're SEAL platoons where they're not, like, having fun and, and ribbing Each other and, you know, being brothers. But I was never in a platoon like that. I was always in a platoon that was freaking awesome to hang around. And, you know, when I was a young seal, what I do on the weekends, went to the team. You went to the team on the weekends, went to the team on Saturday and worked on your gear, went to the team on Sunday and worked out with your buddies. That's all we did. That's what we did. Because there wasn't anything else. And once I had a family, I had to at least take a little bit of time. But even then, my family was second to my platoon, to my task unit, to the teams. I would love to tell you that I'm embarrassed to admit that or that that's not the way right thing, but when you're in the SEAL teams, I think that is the thing that is way.

[Sean Ryan]

It is, man.

[Jocko Willink]

That's the way it is. And. And, you know, God bless my wife, who was just like a saint, but she handled the family stuff and I handled the war stuff. Were you.

[Sean Ryan]

Were you married at this time?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. So going to Ratti. I had three kids at that time. You had three kids? Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

How are you handling. I mean, how was. How long. How many deployments had you done? Married with kids and. Or with kids?

[Jocko Willink]

Two. Well, no, one. Three. Three. So my daughter was born. My oldest daughter was born the day before I went on the strike deployment at Team 2. She was born and I left. Never changed a diaper. And then while I was in college, I had two more kids because I was home and then. And yeah, I mean, I was. I was in the SEAL teams, man. Like, we go on deployment, we go to war, and you want. You want to be with your kids, but you're not going to be with your kids in the SEAL teams. It's not a good. It's not a good family environment now if you have a strong family. You know, men have been going, you know, on some form of deployment since the beginning of time.

[Sean Ryan]

You said this at breakfast, and I love this.

[Jocko Willink]

I mean, because I hear sometimes people like, oh, you know, the father's got to be around. Like, I wasn't around, you know, and a lot of dads weren't around, and they raised some awesome kids. And so, yeah, guys have been going on the hunt, on the sea voyage, on the crusade, whatever you're going on. Men have been going on that stuff for a long time. And the kids understand that and the moms understand it, and they raise warriors.

[Sean Ryan]

How long have you been married?

[Jocko Willink]

I think 28 years.

[Sean Ryan]

What is the secret to a successful marriage?

[Jocko Willink]

There's a couple, but number one is marry like a pretty awesome woman and then just apply the principles of leadership to your marriage. It's the same principles that you want your wife to listen to you, you better listen to her. You want your wife to trust you, you better trust her. You want your wife to respect you, you better treat her with respect. You want your wife to care about you, you better care about her. If something goes wrong, you better take ownership. So that's worked out great for me. And my wife's a saint. My wife's a saint.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm sure she is.

[Jocko Willink]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Jocko Willink]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Jocko Willink]

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[Sean Ryan]

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[Jocko Willink]

You know, when you, when you were asking me about the pressure on my first deployment to Iraq and I told you that I didn't really feel this wasn't the idea of someone getting wounded or killed was kind of a little bit of a distant thing in the back of my mind. And in Ramadi it was front of mind. And when you see that many casualties happening like on a daily basis, there is. The odds are going to catch you. And of course, do you hope. Am I fatalistic? Because that was my thought process, maybe, but it was also just numbers, man. It was just the numbers. You just look at the numbers and every day, every time you leave the wire, there is, there is a chance. And so it's a daily basis. And listen, the army and the Marine Corps are just making the most incredible sacrifices. You see it, you go to their memorials. You hear it on the radio. That's one thing that was, you know, you'd hear it on the radios, you'd hear, hey, there's one K heading back to camp, heading to or three wounded heading to Charlie Med. Like, you would hear these things. It's just constant.

[Sean Ryan]

This is daily.

[Jocko Willink]

Daily. So. And, you know, I try and give as much admiration to the army and the Marine Corps who fought so hard in such terrible conditions. And that's what they were facing every day, and that's what we were facing. And. We had the blue on blue happen almost pretty quickly thereafter. Cowie got wounded bad, and, you know, Cowie's just a stud, and he's in Charlie medicine. He's all doped up on morphine. The doc pulls me aside, and he's like, hey, I don't know if this leg's gonna make it. Roger. And Cowie, like, I, you know, bend over to, like, hold his hand, and he's like, the first thing's out of his mouth. Let me stay.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Jocko Willink]

So that's the kind of guys you got, you know, Let me stay. So, you know, this is once the 1.1ad shows up with Colonel McFarland, later, General McFarland, you know, that's when we start pressing in to the city. That's when we start supporting these combat overwatch or the. Yeah, these combat outposts being built in the city, which is a huge construction project. And there's a time period when they're building these combat outposts in the city that they're extremely vulnerable because they're doing a construction project in the middle of a war zone. And so what can we do to help? That is we can set up sniper overwatch positions, and when the enemy would maneuver in to attack them, we would kill them. And it was actually General McFarland, he wrote it in an article. It's like those combat outposts being built were bait. You know, he didn't put them out there as bait. He put them out there on the grand strategy of taking over the city. But it's like a salt lick. You know, you start building this construction project in the middle of downtown Ramadi, the insurgents are absolutely going to attack you. And when they do, my guys would be in an offset position 200 meters away, 300 meters away, 400 meters away, looking down a long axis avenue of approach where the moos would come and they'd kill them. And it was, you know, an ideal setup for us, you know, and it was when we started doing this like this, the amount of. The amount of scrutiny for the 118 for General McFarland, you know, he was getting scrutinized on the amount of combat that his guys were getting, the amount of casualties and the amount of killing that he was doing. He was getting that scrutiny from his. From the. From the meth. And I was feeling the same thing. And it was always like, please come see. Come and see. Come and see what's happening here. You'll. It doesn't take long to figure out. And thankfully, you know, they did. You know, I had the siege of Soda Commander, who's a great guy at the time, came down, visited the, you know, the commodore, visited the SOCOM commander, visited, you know, General, General Brown, SOCOM Commander. He came to see us in Ramadi. We got 35 seals, bro. He's in charge of all of the world of special operations. He came to Ramadi to see what we were doing, to talk to the conventionals, make sure that they were getting what we needed. So there was a lot of eyes on what we were doing, and part of that was because of the amount of people we were killing, and part of it was because they were very risky operations.

[Sean Ryan]

Can I. I want to ask a question. You'd been studying this. You'd been studying Ramadi since before you got there. You know, seals have, what, year and a half workup you started studying sounds like I think would have did. She said maybe you maybe found out six months into workup that you were going to Ramadi.

[Jocko Willink]

No, we didn't know we were going to Ramadi until, like, a couple weeks before.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Well, you're talking about doing dailies, weeklies, monthlies of troops in contact, casualties. You've studied. You've. You've studied this fucking battle space. It's very obvious. It's hot. Why are you. Why would anybody be under scrutiny for the amount of combat that they're seeing when they want you to incrementally take over a fucking city? That makes zero sense to me.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yep. And again, it wasn't just me and Special Operations. General McFarland was feeling the same thing. And again, just like General McFarland had a good, great relationship with the meth commander, I had a great relationship with my commanding officer. And so when I explained to him what was happening, you know, we started probably a few weeks, like, three weeks into these sniper overwatches that we were doing. This is early in deployment. And we'd killed, I don't know how many, probably, I don't know, 10, 15, something. Mostly IED in placers. And I talked to my headquarters, and they're like, hey, you know, you're killing these IED in placers, but the IEDs haven't gone down yet. And I said, hey, sir. The average insurgency, according to the counterinsurgency manual, lasts seven years. It's been three weeks. Can I get some more time to work? And he's like, yeah, check. But, yeah, I mean, well, you know what it's like. You know what it was like for a SEAL rotation at the time. You know, you. You went to Iraq, right? There's not a lot of direct enemy contact and there's not a lot of killing. Most of the time you're doing DAs, they don't want to fight. Do they get killed sometimes? Yes. But most of the time, they don't really want to fight, so they surrender. And you capture. The capture, kill part is mostly capture for me. On my first deployment, it was almost all capture, killed very few. Well, now you're in this zone where there's enemy that are, like I said, going to Assault Lick. They are maneuvering through the streets, and we're in locations with tactical advantage that we selected. With long axis down multiple roads, you're going to start killing a lot of enemy fighters. And it was abnormal. It was abnormal. And so, you know, the scrutiny came, but I welcomed it. It's no factor. You know, we had to. We had to have guys sign a shooter statement for everybody that we killed. There was like a sworn shooter statement. And at first, guys like, why we got to do this? It's like, hey, because in five years or 10 years or 15 years or 20 years, someone's going to come back and say, this person died here who did it? And we'll say, either, oh, yeah, that was us, because this is why, or, no, that wasn't us. So I, again, luckily for me that I had seen the officer side of things, I understood that, and I was able to explain it to the guys, explain it to the guys, like, hey, there's a reason we're seeing this scrutiny. It's because we're killing a lot of bad guys. And the chain of command needs to make sure that we're doing the right thing for the right reasons. We are, and they see that. And we got such great support from the siege of Sotif, from my chain of command, from the special operations chain of command, for sure. Like I said, General Brown came out, and by the way, the army in the Marine Corps was epic. I had the colonel that was in charge, General Sean McFarland, had him on my podcast. And you can tell it was as good as it gets. And so, yeah, there's scrutiny because you're killing a lot of bad guys. And there's also scrutiny because these are risky freaking operations. And you know, a big one was going out in the daytime. Why would you give up the tactical advantage of going out at night, which we have? Because we got night vision, we got lasers, the whole nine yards. Why would we make that mistake? Well, there's a bunch of reasons, you know, there's a bunch of reasons. Number one, our mission from the siege of Sodef was to train and fight company and platoon sized elements of Iraqi soldiers. So that means we are supposed to train them and go and fight with them. Company and platoon sized elements, not special mission units, not da bottom units. Company and platoon sized elements of infantry soldiers. That's what we were supposed, that's what our task was. We put together some scouts, we put together some, some special mission units, but that was our task. They don't have night vision. They didn't even have flashlights. We used to give like a fire team of Iraqis a flashlight. So for them to do a clearance operation at night was like just a non starter. So that means they're going to go out in the day. Well, since we're training and fighting them, guess who's out in the day? We are. So now since I got my guys out in the field during the day, I want to protect them. So what am I doing? Overwatch positions. What time is it? Daytime? And by the way, we killed 99% of the enemy was during the daytime because at nighttime the enemy came out a lot less. So that. And again, one of the, one of the big mistakes that I made was I never really explained that outside of my chain of command. Like, so to the teams at large, most of the guys go, what are you doing? Oh, here's why we're doing, I think, oh, cool, cool. Occasionally you get a guy like that doesn't know what was happening, doesn't know how bad it was, couldn't conceive a reason to go out in the daytime, or couldn't conceive how it's possible to kill that many enemy fighters. Bro, they are everywhere. And so I should have done a better job of communicating that aspect of things, but I didn't really recognize it because my chain of command, they knew. And most of the people that were around me that were actually talking to me, they would be like, oh yeah, that makes sense. We get it. Like I said, including the chain of command on both the special operations side and the conventional side. But you're going into These areas. And the Army's taking casualties. Marine Corps is taking casualties. And I know that at some point we're going to take casualties. And the. We, you know, like I said, we had a couple guys wounded. Cowie was wounded bad. But on August 2nd, that's when Ryan Job got. Got wounded severely. And, you know, he was shot in the face. And I know when you had, when you had Leif on the podcast, Leif gave you a pretty detailed description, but you had, you know, a guy like Ryan Jobe, who I, I had his parents on my podcast. Just, man, you can't. You can't even describe. Just wanna, What a. Being of light, you know, just tough, funny, like we'll literally do anything for you just as good as they come. And he gets shot. Thankfully, he was had his weapon right up in his cheek. Well, where he's supposed to have it. You know, three hours into a clearance operation on a rooftop, and he still is a disciplined machine gunner. He has his weapon up in his cheek. Well, and single shot hits his rifle, hits his machine gun and hits him in the face. And just devastating damage to his face and relief, you know, they, they cast back him. And this kind of initiates one of the larger battles in the battle of Ramadi was, was on August 2nd, and Leif and his guys go back to Cop Falcon, which is a combat outpost. And we have a great relationship with the 137, and Leif's great friends with their company commander, Mike Baima, and I'm great friends with Colonel Tedesco. And now they're, they're. They're starting to take heavies out there in the field. It's a big gunfight. And Leif gets Ryan Kazak and it didn't look good, although he did stabilize. But, you know, Leif did not think he was going to make it for a bit. And these guys are back there, and the army, our brothers in the army said, hey, we were taking contact from some of these buildings. We think this is where these insurgents are. Can you help us? And, you know, Leif called me on the, on the radio and he's like, hey, here's what's happening. The army needs our help. They want us to go hit some buildings. And I'm like, you good? He said, I'm good. Like execute. And they went out to hit those buildings. And, you know, it's already, like I said, one of the biggest battles. And you know, Leif and Tony, and you know, Tony was the platoon chief down there and just no, no hesitation from Any of the boys roll out, they softened up the target with The Brads, you know, 25 millimeter chain gun. And I think they went in the first building and cleared it. The second building they go into, and they take fire from an adjacent building. And Mark, Mark, Who's another guy, that's just all good. Like in his. In his whole being, in his soul, he's good, and he gets Shop killed. And. I was actually. I was in the talk, and I'm watching this happen, watching this happen, and I see. I see them carrying on isr, I see them carrying a guy out. And one of the guys in the talk goes, maybe it's an Iraqi. And I actually knew that it wasn't because I knew that Leif didn't have an Iraqi so with him. So I knew it was one of our guys. And le gets back to cop Falcon, he calls me up and. And he tell. Told me what happened. He said, we have one kia. And I said, who? And he said, charlie.

[Sean Ryan]

I'm sorry, man.

[Jocko Willink]

So. Got their guys together, you know, and came back to base. And, you know, I mentioned General Brown had came to visit. He came to visit on August 2nd, just. That was just when the scheduled visit was. And he came to the flight line for the angel flight. And earlier that morning, you know, one of the Marine elements that we worked with from three eight, there was a fourth platoon, I think it was Lima Company, and Tony and Leif and those guys had done a bunch of operations with them and gotten to know them and their assistant platoon commander or their platoon commander, you know, he was kind of broing out friends with Tony because Tony's Tony, you know, and, you know, it's weird. I heard this story from both guys at a later time, but when Tony gets up there and he sees the platoon commander from 4th platoon and he's like, dang, they must have heard about Mark. And the platoon commander told me later that he saw Tony and he said, dang, they must have heard about Joe, because that morning, Joe Tomsi from three eight, he was killed. Wow. So SEALs, Marine and Army, we stood there on that flight line and load those boys up to go home, And the war doesn't stop. And that is a. That was a shortfall for the SEAL teams out of the 90s. You know, you think you do an operation, and when, you know, when the operation's over, it's over. And if you lose a guy, well, it doesn't really. I mean, it matters, but the operation's over, but we never really thought about that. Guess What? The army and the Marine Corps, they understood that we had to learn that immediately.

[Sean Ryan]

How are you holding it together?

[Jocko Willink]

I had to focus on the job, you know, I had to focus on work. We did the memorial service, Told some stories about Mark. At the memorial service. We were in Vegas, and he was like, a maniac dude. Just hilarious. He's gambling, and he would, like, I'd walk. I'd walk through the casino, and I'd see him gambling. He'd be like, hey, sir, when are the new Cadillacs coming out? I'm winning big over here. Like, he was just that guy. And. Or if you're playing blackjack with him, and the dealer would bust, you know, he'd yell out, everybody's a winner. And he'd get the whole. Whole casino saying that stuff. So we got to tell some stories about Mark. And then I also remember that day. Seth, he had an operation plan on Eastern Ramadi. And this was, like, the day Mark got killed before the memorial service. And he. And he sent me, like, a webby, which, for those of you don't. It's like text messaging sends me webb. He's like, hey, we're. We're not going to do this operation tonight. And I was like, hey, you're good to go, man. Like, I understand that, like, chain of command. Don't worry. I got it. Like, you're clear to go. And he's like. He's like, no, no, we're not going to do it. And I said, no, no, you're cleared. Like, you can do it. And he called me on the field phone, and he's like, hey, bro, I don't want to take the guys out right now. I was like, oh, got it. He's like, guys aren't in the mental state. We need 24 hours. But again, for. For Seth Stone to be so in tune with his guys, recognizing, like, they're not in a good psychological position to go out. So he calls me up and tells me, like, it's a no go. Like, that's leadership. And, you know, it's just devastating, man. It's devastating because, again, Mark, you know, we didn't seem like Ryan was going to live, you know, and we didn't really know he was going to be blind yet, but it seemed like he would live. And. But, Mark, you know, this is, again, just a terrible, undescribable loss. And when you talk to the army guys, too, it hit all them because we were. We were getting after it, you know? And like I told you earlier, when. When. When something Happened there on the radio. Like, everyone would kind of hear it. You might not hear it directly, but if you're in my platoon and you hear, you'd hear reports. And if I'm an army guy and you're my platoon sergeant, and I hear, oh, we just got mortared an hour ago. And then I hear on my radio, hey, seals just took out. Or it's like tu ramped. Engaged three mortar men with mortar tubes with three rounds of 7.300Win mag, resulting in three ekaa. Bro, I'm going right over you. I'm like, hey, the seals just whacked those dudes. And that happened a lot. And, you know, we had been very lucky. And we had been very lucky for months. And so talking to the army guys, you know, when. When Mark got killed, it was like the invincibility was shattered. But the war does continue. And so we stood down for, like, a day, did the memorial service the next day, and then we got our gear back on.

[Sean Ryan]

Fuck, man. As a leader, what do you say to your men for them to keep it together?

[Jocko Willink]

I told him the truth. And that was that I did not know what to do, except for one thing. Work. And I knew that every day that we weren't doing our job, there was going to be soldiers and marines that were going to pay the price for it. And I knew 100% that what Mark would want us to do would go, go, go and fight. And by the way, Mark's brother's a marine. And by the way, Ryan Jobe's brother's a marine. Like, you don't think that they want us to go out there and do everything we can. Seth Stone's brother in the army, like, this is we. We. There was only one thing to do. Do I know? Did I know how to mourn? Did I know how to say the right thing about loss and death and life and all those things? No. I'll tell you what I told him exactly. I don't know what to tell you. All I know is what I know how to do, and that's work. We're going to go back to work, and we're going to take the fight to these moosh, and we're going to kill as many of them as we can.

[Sean Ryan]

With as much loss as you've experienced up to this day, would you have changed anything? Would you have told them anything different?

[Jocko Willink]

Maybe. But I don't know that there's anything else to do in a situation like that. I could tell them what we were talking about earlier. Like, remember don't dwell on that kind of stuff. But these are. These are, you know, we're all very focused at this time on what's happening. Very, very focused on what's happening. And so I don't know what the broader, you know, life impact of that. You know, could I say some philosophical thing? I don't think so, man. I think I actually said the philosophical thing. We're going to get back to work. We're going to get our gear on, we're going to lock and load our weapons, and we're going to go do what we're supposed to do because we're frog men.

[Sean Ryan]

I can't think of anything better to say, to be honest with you.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, we're frogmen. This is what we do. This is who we are. This is what every one of us signed up for. This is it.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you want to talk about Cowie?

[Jocko Willink]

Well, Cowie, he was home, man. Cowie, you know, like I said earlier, he said, let me stay. And I was like, bro, go heal up. And, you know, he wasn't going to heal up, not in four more months or five more months. His. His. Dude, he took a freaking armor piercing round to the femur. There was chunks of leg gone. Like it's a miracle he kept his leg. Props to the. The Charlie med, the docs that worked on him and all the people at Walter Reed or wherever else, Bethesda, like, they kept his leg, man. But, you know, it's terrible for Cowie because you think Cowie wasn't there, you know, and, dude, he wanted to be there. You know, he wanted to be there. He would have given anything to be there.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

And. And then, you know, you get Leif. Leif, just the same responsibility that I talked about when it comes to taking ownership of thing. Well, there's Leif, man. And Leif is taking ownership of having one of his guys severely wounded and having one of them killed. And me, too, like, this is us. I approved all these operations. I came up with this whole damn idea. And Leif called me. Can we go? And I said, yes. Leif came up with this idea, and I said yes, and this is on us. That's the way it is, man. That's the burden of command. That's the way it is. And Leif was devastated. Of course. Leif was completely devastated. And, you know, when. When. When he talked to me about it, you know, he said something along the lines of, like, I don't know. I don't know if I made the right decision in going back out There. And I told him there was no decision to make. That's not a decision. There are army brothers that have gone out over and over again to pull us out of bad situations, and these fellow Americans are asking for our help. That is not a decision. That is what we do. That is what we do, and we do it every time. You ever talk to Vietnam guys? Vietnam guys? If it was a platoon in trouble or a down pilot, they were going. Same thing with the Seawolf pilots, by the way. SEAL platoon in trouble. They're going. That's what they're doing. And when our army brothers are asking us for help, we go. That's not a decision. That is duty. That is being a frogman. And I also told him if we had a crystal ball and we could tell when something bad was going to happen, of course we wouldn't do that thing, whatever that thing was. But we don't have a crystal ball, and combat is inherently freaking dangerous. And Leif understood that. Leif understood that. It didn't make it any easier for his soul, for his heart that was broken, but he understood. He understood that. That's what Mark. You know, when I was talking to Mark's mom the other day, and Mark has had a huge impact now. America's Mighty warriors, like, is incredible organization that's helped out so many, not just seals, but other people. And she, you know, she said, you know, if. If I could talk to Mark. And Mark had a chance to go back and not sacrifice his life on that day, but none of this other stuff would have happened. He wouldn't. He wouldn't come back. I'm like, I know. So this is what we do. This is what we sign up for, and. That's part of being a frogman. And look, we. We had some, you know, we had the. The 80s and the 90s, and, man, like, there was nothing going on. And Mark was the first. You know, Mark was the first SEAL killed in Iraq. And again, you'd like. Why? Well, look at the battle space, man. Look at the battle space. It was of complete war zone. Why did the 11 AD lose that many guys? Why did the first of the 506 lose that many guys? Why did, 137? Why did the 3, 8 Marines, like, just losses. Why? Well, it was a freaking war zone, man, and the war didn't stop. So it was back to operations. And that's what we did. Got got our gear back on, locked and loaded our weapons and. And back to the field, back to conducting these operations, You know, and as Far as what, what did we change? We. We. Honestly, there was. After that one, it was like we were. We were so used to the city. You know, my, my first deployment to Iraq, we went all over the place. We went all the way from Najaf down south, all the way to Hadith up north. We went east of Baghdad, west of Baghdad. We went out to Ramadi. I was all over the place this whole deployment. I only left Ramadi one time to go to Balad for one meeting the first three days, four days of deployment, and I was back in Ramadi the whole time. So we knew what was going on and so we continued to push. And you know, the guys, every one of those guys, night after night, day after day, jocked up, getting in a Humvee, driving past the damn vehicle graveyard that had 75 or a hundred destroyed vehicles in it from IEDs. Out again, out again, out again. The army, the Marine Corps and us. It's the way it was.

[Sean Ryan]

Man. Jocko, what was your. What were you awarded the Silver Star for?

[Jocko Willink]

Well, just this deployment. The whole deployment, basically. This deployment, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

How did the deployment end?

[Jocko Willink]

Well, we were. We continue to push operations. We continued to eliminate enemy fighters. We saw the beginning of the Anbar awakening, which was an incredible process that took place. And again, General McFarland and I talked about it for a long time on, on the podcast I did with him. But the local populace began to turn against the insurgents, which was the goal. And as this happened, we started seeing, you know, intel would come in that there's enemy fighters in this area or there's a enemy fighter in this area. There's a group of ID makers over here. So we started pushing. When I say we like coalition forces, we started really pushing and taking it to the enemy. We had one. We, we had started really pushing some good operations and eliminating a lot, a lot of bad guys. And we were getting towards the end of deployment. And, you know, again, man, I'm talking about, I'm just talking about this, my guys. But there are so many stories. You know, there was so much loss there and so much heroism there. You're hearing one person, I've had a bunch of guys on my podcast that were everybody from brigade commander, company commanders, battalion commanders and gunners and medics to tell their little tiny part of the story. Their little tiny part of the story. You know, the Brigade Reconnaissance Element, Dan Pinion, he was like the sergeant Major and like they had the heaviest casualties of any group, any company sized element. He has a guy named Marquis Quick that jumped on A grenade to save some of his other teammates. And like, it. It kind of just happened and almost got overlooked. And they're trying to get him the Medal of Honor now, but that's one. That's a one. And I didn't know about that. I didn't know about that until he came on my podcast and told me about it. And I didn't know about it. So my point in saying all this, man, is I'm giving you like little fraction of my view. And I had 40 seals in Ramadi. And I just want you and everybody to know that there was companies and platoons from the army and the Marine Corps that were out there all day, every day, and they were taking the fight to the enemy and they did an outstanding job and they suffered insane casualties over and over and over again. And I've tried to tell as many people as I can about that. There's a reunion coming in Texas, January 16th, 2026. The 20 year reunion of Ramadi, January 16th and 17th. But I hope that as many people that were there can go to that.

[Sean Ryan]

That is cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes. And it's, it's. General McFarland is leading it and there was just so much heroism in, in that city and to be able to witness some of it with my guys and with other groups, it was just, it was just, it was, it was, it's. It's amazing to look back on so much sacrifice and such, you know, such. Such incredible Americans. Yeah, it's. It's humbling to think about. And so as this deployment for us is now starting, we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And one of the things that I, I did on my last deployment, I, I always figured I never would tell someone like, hey, this is the last op, because I think that's like bad luck. I didn't want them to freak out. I didn't mind bad luck, but I didn't want everyone else to feel bad luck. So we were getting kind of towards the end of deployment and. Seth, who, you know, is just incredible, and he's out there and he's in Corregidor leading his guys, and they do an operation in support of the first of the 506th, who again, can't say enough good stuff, can't say enough good things about the first of the 506, the battalion commander, their company commanders, their company sergeants, their, their e dogs. I mean, just, Just awesome. And, and I think part of this is when you get into like a real fight like this dude, everyone Is just, like, wants to help out. And if you can help out, I. I'm thankful. And Seth and his guys had been out there with the first of the 506 for pretty much the entire deployment for them. And they plan an operation, set up two overwatch positions, mutually supporting overwatch positions down in the mob district, South Moab district. And Seth was in one overwatch position and the other overwatch position got attacked. It got attacked. They were getting attacked through the morning, you know, like RPGs, small arms fire. Things are starting to escalate. And that somebody through dead space, like, got close enough to throw a grenade and threw a grenade. And Mikey Mansour, who, again, just. Just as solid as they come, man. As solid as they come. He saw the grenade, yelled out, grenade. The way he was positioned on that rooftop, he was the one that could have gotten away from it. He could have left his guys exposed, but instead he jumped on it. The other guys were wounded bad, though, and called over to Seth. And Seth assembled his guys, left his Iraqis there, left their gear there, just brought their, you know, their primary kit, rolled over, fought their way to that position, and then, you know, got that under control, organized and got them Kazak out and got back to base camp, Corregidor. And then Seth had to take some of his guys that could still function mentally back to get the Iraqis and back to get the gear. So, you know, Seth just stepping up. And it was the. It was the battalion commander. He called me up and told me. Hey. He told me, because I could hear what was happening over the radio, but once they were out of the field, he called me and he said, gave me a sit rep on. On the guys. One guy was, like, pretty good to go. Two guys were wounded. You know, they were gonna get. They were gonna get medevaced. And he said he didn't think Mikey was gonna make it. He said they were doing CPR on him, he didn't think he was gonna make it. And he was right. So it was. I mean, immediately I immediately knew that he had jumped on the grenade. And I talked to the guys once I got to Germany, the guys that had been cassavacked, and they told me, you know, and they were, like, sending me sketches of what happened immediately. And so it was, like, about as clear of a Medal of Honor action that you could think of. And luckily, like I said, for. For Dan Pinion and his guy Mark Marquis, quick, they were in the middle of deployment. You know, for me, we were almost done, so started putting. Started putting that award Together.

[Sean Ryan]

And did you write that award?

[Jocko Willink]

Seth did, and he got the input from Mike and Doug, who were like. And Benny, who are the guys that were saved. And, yeah, he. He put it together. He started writing it, and then I. I mean, I chopped it, edited it or whatever, but, yeah, it was. You know, and talking to Mikey's sister, it's like. I mean, many conversations over the years, but one of the things that always stuck with me was she was just like. It was not a surprise. Meaning, like, that's Mikey. Someone a surprise. I think he's gonna. What do you think he's gonna do? Save his teammates or save himself? Six. Six. We weren't surprised by it.

[Sean Ryan]

It's incredible, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. I mean, the. The families of those guys just all. Just amazing people. And, you know, that maybe a day later, Seth had to come. He needed to come talk to me about something. And, like, I remember they. It was to get down. To get to. From Camp Corregidor to Camp Ramody was down Route Michigan, which was, like, not a good place to drive down. And he came to see me, and when he did, the. The battalion commander sent us, sent him in a section of tanks. To make sure it'd be all right, you know, And that's, you know, that's why that. That bond with those guys is so strong. You know, the just being in that battle space with those guys, that. What they would do for us was just so, like, you could just tell that they were. They cared about us as much as we cared about them. And, you know, they. They put. They put Mikey Mansource on the first of the 506 on their memorial wall. The guys that they lost, he's one of them.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jocko Willink]

And now at this point in the platoon, in the deployment, you know, we were. That was September 29th, and we were kind of running low on guys, man. But we. We kept doing whatever we could do. Guys from Team 5 showed up, and, man, they were fired up, man. And I remember telling those guys.

[Sean Ryan]

Like.

[Jocko Willink]

To their task unit, their whole task unit, you will take casualties, which is a horrible thing to say. And I'm looking at him, and it's like, as you're looking at him, you're like, I don't know if they really believe me. And those guys, God bless them, man. They went to Mikey Monsource funeral. They went to Mark Lee's funeral, but they had just gone to Mikey's funeral. They were showing up maybe a week or two later, like their advent. And. Yeah, but they were, man, they were they were, they were fired up and we turned over the best we possibly could with those guys. And you, you know so much, and you just can't, like, download enough information. I remember I was like, I don't know, maybe this before Mikey got killed, but we were doing some big clearance operation and I'm like, ended up in some rear security while we're doing clearance, but we had done the clearance. Now we're moving back. And I'm in this, you know, just like a nug, because I'm out there, but I'm out there kind of just to be out there, you know, Leif and Tony have got it. But I'm watching as the platoon is like, moving through the streets. And you think these freaking guys are good right now? Like, it's, it was a very awesome thing to be witness to. And the reputation, you know, that we had earned was like, I, I could see it, I could feel it. The way the army treated us, the way the Marine Corps treated us. It was like, it was awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

It's fucking incredible, man. Like, I, I, I have to say, it is fucking incredible. I mean, the deployment that you had, the losses that you took, the action that you saw, the lives that you guys took, I mean, it's a fucking hard deployment. And I just want to commend you and all of you guys, man. I mean, you know, from, from an outsider looking in, you know, you see, especially nowadays, I mean, we were kind of talking about this this morning. I mean, you see a lot of, you just see so much animosity within the veteran community. It's a real fucking shame.

[Jocko Willink]

And.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, like the tasking at Bruiser guys, man, you guys are fucking tight. I mean, I'm not aware of any. You guys just seem really tight. And, you know, to have an employment like that, with that, that kinetic, the loss that you guys have experienced and the respect, you know, that your guys have for you and that you have for them is truly fucking unmatched.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it was an honor. And it was the boys.

[Sean Ryan]

You know, I've never seen anything like it.

[Jocko Willink]

When you asked me if I kind of knew what was happening in my first deployment, like, I was in Baghdad, we were doing DAs, and I was like, yeah, I knew. And on this deployment, I really knew, like, every day, I knew that every day this was, this was going to be. This was the highlight of my life. This was the most thing, this was the most. This was the highlight of my life. I knew it every single day. I knew every, every time I went out, every time I Saw the boys off. I knew that this was the most important thing I would do in my life was this. And you know, one thing that I leaned on because, you know, you, you, there's the whole political aspect of this thing of like, oh, why were we there? What was it worth? All that kind of thing. And one of the things that the brigade commander said to me as I was leaving and you know, he, we had a four minute brigade meeting of a 30 minute brigade meeting. He spent three minutes talking to me and kind of saying, hey, this group of seals is leaving us. The tasking abruzer guys are gone. And he presented me with this wooden tank that they had made, a little cool little sculpture of a wooden tank which by the way, the guy that was in of charge, charge of getting those tanks made was one of the brigade staff who was killed in combat. But he said, He said your guys kept hundreds of my soldiers and marines alive. And when I got home and I talked to Mark's mom, I talked to Mikey's mom and talked to Ryan's mom, that's the one thing that I felt I could indisputably tell them about their sons, politics, Iraq, al Qaeda, whatever. Your sons made sure that hundreds of American soldiers and Marines were able to go home to their families. And by the way, those soldiers and marines made sure that my seals were able to come home to their families because the Cassavacs and the QRFs and the fire support was all them every single time. And tanks, they lost nine main battle tanks. So you think you're doing okay? Like I'm happy they sent Seth Stone down to see me in a section of tanks, but we lost nine tanks when we were there. Yeah, and those guys sent those tanks out and those Bradleys out and those soldiers and Marines over and over again to support my guys. Casavac, my guys, extract my guys, fire support for my guys over and over and over again. And the fact that we were able to repay that in some way, killing IED in placers, killing mortarmen, killing RPG and, and machine gunners, enemy, it's, it's. At least I know that that's meaningful. I know it's meaningful.

[Sean Ryan]

Thanks for sticking with me on that, man. You want to take a break? Sure, let's take a break. I'd like to invite you to gain access to an exclusive experience on Vigilance Elite Patreon. Our patrons are the driving force behind the success of this show and their support allows us to keep doing what we do. Depending on the tier you choose, you'll get access to benefits like behind the scenes footage before each interview, early access to episodes, end of the month live zoom calls with me, exclusive merch and more. Join us and become a patron starting at just $5 a month by visiting patreon.com vigilance elite. That's patreon.com vigilance elite. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to itunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, Jocko, we're back from the break. Nice shooting, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, right on.

[Sean Ryan]

Nice shooting. But so we're wrapping up Taskina bruisers deployment. And you know, one thing that I, one thing I wanted to ask is, and I think throughout the four or five hours I've been interviewing you, I think I know, but I'm curious what your perspective is. Why do you think that your men have such a deep respect for you as a leader?

[Jocko Willink]

It's what I said earlier. I treated them with respect. I listened to what they had to say. I put my trust in them. And when you give those things to people, they give them back. No, it's not a guarantee. They could be a nefarious, bad person. You know, that happens. But those guys, they were just, you.

[Sean Ryan]

Know.

[Jocko Willink]

It'S what the teams for me was always supposed to be. And what it was, you know, that was, that, that was, that is the teams to me, when I think about the teams, best job ever, best guys ever, and all my platoons, I had like just great people. And yeah, I think, you know, kind of, I, everything for me was kind of a bonus. Like, you know, I enlisted in the Navy when I was 18 years old, you know, and now I'm an officer. Hadn't even been to college. Like, that's a pretty cool bonus. And now I get to lead troops in combat. That's pretty cool bonus. Now I'm in, in Iraq. That's a bonus. And tasking a bruiser in a, in an incredible war zone, it's just all a bonus. My point in saying all that was it wasn't like I was going to be admiral. You know what I mean? Like, it wasn't, I wasn't going to be admiral. I mean, I guess I could have been admiral, but I wasn't. That wasn't my goal. That was never, that was never really something I thought too much about. My career was really about just being with the platoons.

[Sean Ryan]

About the job.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

And the same reason you joined.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, And I get it. You know, that's another thing. When I was. When I was the admiral's aide, I saw what the admiral did, you know, and it was. He had a great attitude about it. You know, on September 11th, I think he started his job in the Pentagon as an acquisitions officer. And one thing he told me, he said, when. When September 11th happened, I check into my job as the acquisitions officer. Last job in the world I wanted to do, you know, because he joined, he probably got in the teams in 1976 or something. No, Vietnam, I don't think. You know, golf, war. And now this big war starts, and he's in the Pentagon doing acquisitions. And he said, you know what, Jocko? I said, this is my foxhole, and I'm gonna fight. That's what he did. And I think that attitude, regardless of where you are, you know, sometimes I get people that were in the military and they. They didn't deploy to combat, and they're, like, borderline ashamed about it. And I'm like, hey, man, you signed that dotted line, and you did what your country needed you to do. So, you know, thank you for your service. But, yeah, for me, I think that I really just love the teams. And the teams, man, every day was. Was awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Why did you decide to separate? I mean, I think you kind of just said it, but the reason I'm asking, Jocko, is, you know, to have. And I mean this in the best, most respectable way, it is a real fucking shame for the SEAL teams, for the Navy, for the United States, to lose a leader like you. And so there's a lot of frustrations, I think. You know, there's a lot of. There always has been, there always will be, right? There's a lot of frustrations, but especially. Especially in the last eight years, you know, there's a lot of frustration within, you know, the military ranks. I hear it. I'm sure you fucking hear it all the time, too. And, you know, it seems like the best leaders, in my opinion, always wind up leaving early.

[Jocko Willink]

It can definitely happen. I mean, we do have some amazing leaders in the SEAL teams, but, you know, for me personally, so I get done with that task unit, I come back, the admiral who I had worked for was still in charge. And, you know, he. He. He met me on the plane when we landed, and he told me later that he's like. When he got on the plane, because he got on the plane, like, the plane lands. He got on the plane's Family are outside. And he said when he saw me on the plane, he was like, oh. Like, oh, because, bro, we. We were. You know, we were in the game. And, you know, at a certain point, you. You don't care about anything else. You know what I mean? And I was definitely at that point by a long shot. And, you know, of course, respectful to the admiral, said, hi, and thanks for coming. And I got off and I saw my family. And he said, when I saw your family, I was like, oh, he's gonna be fine. And so he also said, what do you want to do? Like, it was awesome, you know, and he. When. When Mark died, I talked to him when Ryan was wounded, like, he was. He was just awesome supporting. And again, my whole chain of command, you know, the commodore, the admiral, my commanding officer, like, everyone. The. The senior enlisted guys, because I knew all the. All the senior enlisted master chiefs as well, and everyone was just very, very supportive. And so when I got done with that deployment, he. He said, where do you want to go? And I knew where I wanted to go because Ramadi was not over yet. And it. We saw, like, a glimpse of change. But they did some of the heaviest fighting after we left. And so I knew because I. I was in training cell at Seal Team 1, and when I was in training cell at Seal Team 1, I learned so much, and it was so important I realized how important it was to train. And then having my guys, Leif and Seth and the rest of the Jos and the E Dogs, like, bringing them up in the teams, I knew that I needed to do that for more guys. And so I knew that the one place that I could do that was going to trade it. And so I said to the boss, the Admiral, I said, you know, I want to go to the trade at. And he said, cool. And he gave me orders to trade at. And when I got there, it was exactly, you know, what I. And what I knew it was, you know, I knew that we had guys, and, you know, we. We got home October 21, or when we left Ramadi, October 21, the guys from Team 5 that are depicted in the movie Warfare that happened November 19. So, you know, we had just left, and those guys got blown up. And, yeah, Elliot and Joe, you know, got severely wounded, which was horrible. But I knew that that's what I need to prepare guys for. And I knew that there was no better place to do that than trade at. And so that's what I did. I went to trade at, and, you know, it really turned out to be Even better than I thought it was going to be. Because now, Now I have so much context in my head about leadership, about combat leadership, about the big army, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the battle space, everything from CQC to reconstruct, just every type of operation that we could do, I kind of. I felt pretty good about. And so I went in there and started teaching, you know, started teaching leadership and started running training. And it was. It was awesome. It was awesome to be a part of. It was awesome to. Yeah, awesome to be a part of. And it was. It was a little weird, too. Like, we'd be doing mount training, urban training, and I'd be watching, and I'd see, like, some new guy standing in the middle of the street, and I would get, like, a, like a sick, like, knot in my stomach, and I would, like, go over to him and like, bro, get out of the street, man. You're gonna get shot out here. And, like, I really, man. Yeah, it was, it was definitely, you know, it was, it was perfect place for me to be because I cared about the guys more than anything. And I just had a bunch of experience with this exact thing that everyone was going to do. So, you know, that's what I did. And when you asked me about why I, Why I ended up retiring, so I showed up there, and I was probably at, like, 17 years or something like that. And, you know, it's just, okay, this is what we're doing next. Do this for a while. And then I started. There's one thing that I didn't like when I came home from deployment, when I was gone on that deployment to Ramadi, when I left on my first. Sorry, my first deployment to Iraq, when I left, my son couldn't crawl. When I got home, he could crawl and he could walk. So I was like, that sucks. In Ramadi, which was. And I also, you know, of course you miss all the holidays, whatever. But then I. When I got home from Ramadi, he could swim. I remember asking my wife, like, who taught him how to swim? And she's like, oh, it was, you know, one of the lifeguards guards down at the base. And I'm like, dude, I'm a frogman, and someone else taught my son how to swim. That sucks. So that was, like, a little deposit in the back of my head. And, you know, it was a trade at. And just, you know, we're gone all the time at trade it. And as I started to. And I got, you know, I, I, I had the luckiest career ever. I got deep Selected over, like, I very. You know, everything had always gone well for me in my Navy career from, you know, be being selected for the. The Seaman Admiral program in the first place, which was probably because I was sailor of the year at Seal Team 1 when I was an E5, like I'd been doing, I was on a very good trajectory. But I also looked at it, and I was like, okay, what's my next billet? And he started looking at the billets and like, there. There weren't jobs that I was super excited to go do. And then I was thinking, okay, what's after that job? And it turned out when I measured it out, I was about seven years at that time from. From being a. Like a SEAL Team co And now fast forward a little bit because I'd come home from Ramadi, the war, so. But now it had started to, like, draw down, and I'm like, man, I could hold on for seven more years. By that time, it was like five more years, and then what will I be doing? Okay, But I love the teams, but what about these people that live in your house? You know, who are these people that live in your house? And why don't they really know you? So I just did the. Ran the numbers mentally on what that was, and I just decided I'd done 20 years. I'm gonna go focus on my family. I did not focus on my family. When I was in the SEAL teams at all the teams was. I was married to the teams. I was married to the teams, and my wife and family came second. And that's not. I think I needed to give something to them. Maybe if I'd been more balanced, you know, maybe I could have sorted it out, but I wasn't very balanced. I was in the teams, and I love the teams, and I feel. Felt like, yeah, if I can't give the teams everything, then it's probably not going to be the best thing.

[Sean Ryan]

Do you still battle with that decision?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah, I do. I. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Oh.

[Jocko Willink]

Oh, yeah, man.

[Sean Ryan]

When did you retire?

[Jocko Willink]

2010. 15 years.

[Sean Ryan]

15 years. You're still battling that decision?

[Jocko Willink]

Yep. Why? The teams gave me everything.

[Sean Ryan]

You gave the teams everything?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing better than going to work in the teams. You know, you and I just got all giddy going out to dump some rounds out there. You know what I mean? You and me were kind of like in a different. Like, we were like a couple kids out there, and you and I used to do that all day, every day until we were sick of it.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, so yeah, and it was hard because I, you know, I had to go tell my chain of command, and. And it was hard for me to go tell the admiral, go tell the commodore then. And then tell my teammates, you know, that that sucked because you're a quitter, you know, and I was not a quitter, and now I'm gonna quit. When I left Team one, you know, they used to say, if you got out of the teams, you're a quitter. Right? And. And I said. When I left Team one, I said, because I was an enlisted guy, and I was going to become an officer, and I said, hey, the only thing worse than a quitter is a traitor, and I'm not going to the dark side, you know? But, yeah, quitting the teams was. Was bad. But at the same time, I, you know, I remember cleaned out my cage the last day and had great. You know, I had great time at trade at. And. And, you know, it was. That's when. When Ryan. Ryan Jobe, who had been wounded so bad, he. He died from complications from his medical stuff. You know, that was while I was at trade at. And, you know, again, that was one of those things where it was really. It almost like, hooked me back in, you know, because just knowing that Ryan, you know, he's another guy. Like, he was blind, bro. And I talked to him on the phone. He's like, can I come back? He wants to come back to Ramadi. He can't see. He wants to come back to Ramadi. Like, this is the kind of guy that I'm gonna abandon right now to get out of the Navy and do some other whatever, like nothing else matters. So that was, you know, another thing that kind of almost hooked me. But again, I'd go home and see my. See my kids, see my son, you know, you have a, you know, three daughters or. Yeah, I had three daughters and one son. At this point, you go home and see them, and they're like, what's your name again? Or who are you? Again? Like, that is an equal thing that's starting to pull.

[Sean Ryan]

How old was your oldest?

[Jocko Willink]

She was born in 1999, so she was 11.

[Sean Ryan]

Wow.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. And my youngest doesn't even, like. No, my son can remember because I would. Like, he. He was at. He was on training trips as a young kid. That's like a little kid. He was hucking grenades and shooting machine guns and paintballs and all that stuff. So he. He remembers all that stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

Did you have a tough time integrating in with your family?

[Jocko Willink]

Not really.

[Sean Ryan]

Did they have a tough Time integrating with you?

[Jocko Willink]

Not really.

[Sean Ryan]

That's good. You don't hear that very often.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I always left my work at work. You know, I always tell like police officers and military people, like, take your uniform off when you go home. Don't leave it on. Take it off and put on a pair of, you know, for me it's flip flop surf shorts and a T shirt and be in that mode as opposed to keeping your uniform on. So I felt like it was pretty. Yeah. Another, another weird thing that always freaked out like Le and Seth is I never swore in front of my family. Yeah, I would. And you know, meanwhile in the teams, you know, every third word was an F bomb. And I'd come home and just never swear because it's, it was almost like I had a, A, you know, like a mental deviation when I went home and I was that guy. And then at work I was the team guy.

[Sean Ryan]

Man, I wish I could do that. Maybe I can try harder. But I mean, what did, did you struggle with? Did you struggle with the transition? I mean, we both know a lot of guys struggle with the transition. Did you have any plan when you got out?

[Jocko Willink]

I didn't, didn't really have. My plan was to surf, train Jiu jitsu and hang out with my wife and kids. That was my plan.

[Sean Ryan]

It's a good plan.

[Jocko Willink]

And, you know, and then I, I opened a Jiu Jitsu gym. So I figured I'd be able to teach Jiu jitsu and hang out, surf with my kids, surf. And that's what my plan was probably about six months before I retired, I had a friend that owned a big company and he asked me to come and talk to his executive team about leadership. And I knew him from Jiu Jitsu. I was like, yeah, cool. And I went up and I gave the kind of leadership brief that I gave to the SEAL platoons. And I think in his mind I was going to get up and be like, you need to do push ups or whatever. And all of a sudden I'm talking about decentralized command and taking ownership and prioritizing, executing all these things. And then they start Q and A and they start asking me about leadership. And I'm asking all these questions and by the time I got done, he's like, I want you to talk to every division I have in my company. And I was like, well, I'm retiring. And you know, and he's like, I will pay you. And I was like, well, he's like, oh, let's make a deal. I said, okay. So I started going around talking to all of his divisions, and at one of those divisional meetings, his. The CEO of the parent company was there. And the guy came up to me afterwards and said, I want you to come talk to all my CEOs. And he owned like 45 or 50 companies at the time. And I went and did that, and then it just started happening. And I eventually was getting, like, business, you know, and Leif had gotten out of the arm. The. The Navy, the Army life had gotten out of the Navy. And he was, like, kind of considering going to law school, I think, at the time. And his wife was, you know, gainfully employed at Fox News. And, you know, I was like, hey, man, I need some fire support over here. And he's like, want to do a leadership company? And I'd kind of talked about it with him before, because when I started talking to these civilian companies, I realized that everything I had learned about leadership applied to all leadership. It wasn't unique to combat. It was leadership was leadership. And once I realized that, I realized that I had something that would be useful for a lot of people. And so then, like I said, it just grew word of mouth and from there. This is kind of how all this stuff eventually happened, because as Leif and I would talk to different companies and they would come up afterwards and be like, hey, do you have this stuff written down anywhere? Do you have a. A pamphlet you can give us? And so we wrote it down. And then I want to. I. I think one of Leif's wife's friends or something was a literary agent, was like, this could be a book type thing. And so we wrote a book proposal. And, yeah, the book agent shopped it around, and one of the people, I think the third, fourth, fourth or fifth person at St. Martin's Press was like, we'll take it. And so we wrote the book and, you know, the book came out and it was really did well, so.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, it did. Yeah, it did really fucking well.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah, man.

[Sean Ryan]

And then, I mean, you've created. I mean, I think I counted seven businesses. I'm probably off, but am I off? You got the podcast, Extreme Ownership, the kids book, which is going to be a movie origin. Jocko Fuel. What am I missing?

[Jocko Willink]

Jocko Publishing.

[Sean Ryan]

Jocko Publishing. Yeah. The soccer club.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Jiu Jitsu gym.

[Jocko Willink]

There's a. Yeah, that's true. Get some stuff.

[Sean Ryan]

You lost count.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. I look at it and people ask me about this. So the podcast thing, you know, I went on Ro. I went on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And when we got done, he said, hey, dude, you should start a podcast. And then I went on. Joe Rogan heard that podcast and was like, invited me on his podcast. And this was 2015. Like, podcasts weren't really a thing yet. Yeah, you're. You're.

[Sean Ryan]

You are an OG podcaster.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

I mean, way before anybody even knew what the hell it was.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I think. I think the numbers at the time there was about 15% of the podcast population of America was listening to podcasts. I don't know if it's 100 now, but it's pretty much everybody. But I went on Rogan in the middle of Rogan show. He's like, you should start a podcast. Of course, Rogan tells that to everybody. But he told me that. And I said, all right. So I got Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan, like, two massive podcasts are telling me I should start a podcast. So I talked to my buddy Echo Charles, and I said, you know how to do this? And he said, I'll figure it out. And then next day, he came back and he's like, all right, I know how to do this. And I said, cool, cool. He said, can I be on it? And I said, what are you going to do? And he said, you be Jocko and I'll be normal. And I was like, okay, cool. And so that's how the podcast started. And then once the podcast started, it was just, you know, people would ask me about, like, what kind of supplements I used. And I was like, well, here's what I would like to use, you know, and why don't I make what I like? And then people would ask me about Jiu Jitsu geese. And my. There was a company up in Maine, you know, New England, where I'm from, and this guy Pete was up there making jiu jitsu geese 100America. And I was like, get those kind of geese, because those are American made. And I ended up linking up with him and origin kind of took off, and Jocko Fuel kind of took off, and it was just. Yeah. And then the kids books were somewhere in there. You know, I. There's. I went. I was trying to get my son. My son was not like a reader, right? Was his little kid. So I went to try and find him, like, something that he might be interested in. Right. And I picked up this book, and it was like a pirate book. And I was like, cool. You know, pirates. What young boy isn't going to be into pirates? And I read this book, and it was the Lamest, weakest, most pathetic pirates ever. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not gonna read this to my son. And I just decided I'll write my own books for kids. And so. And the idea of the first warrior kid book was just like immediately in my mind, the whole thing, like start to finish, I had the whole thing, my mind almost immediately. And it's a real, it seems obvious, right? Like there's a kid like all kids who can't do any pull ups, doesn't know his time stables, doesn't know how to swim and he's getting picked on by the school bully. Right? That's. You go to anyone, any kid in the world, they've got a, one of those problems or a problem like those problems. And so I put those problems in the book. And then I brought in a character, Uncle Jake, who's a seal, who is going to come stay with, you know, the family for the summer. And he's going to teach this kid how to fight, how to eat right, how to exercise, how to study and how to swim. And that's the first book. And it, you know, the feedback of all the, you know, of all the things that I'm currently doing, getting feedback from like a 10 year old kid that says, writes me a letter and says, I did my first pull up or I got an A on this math test, or I started training jiu jitsu and I did my first competition. Those are the most epic things to receive.

[Sean Ryan]

I love that, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there's.

[Sean Ryan]

That's awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, there's not a lot of. Well, there, I shouldn't say that there is a lot of guidance out there in the world right now. Not a lot of it is good guidance, you know, and so the values that kids should be receiving, in many cases, they're not receiving. So I tried to give it to them in a fun way. They're funny books, but they're powerful too.

[Sean Ryan]

When did the first one come out?

[Jocko Willink]

I think it was two. I think it was 2017 because I was almost done writing it as extreme ownership was coming out.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay, that's pretty cool, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

You're touching a lot of people I know, you know that I would venture to guess that you. It's hard to, it's hard to, it's hard to grasp that. And, but you're a huge motivation for me and I hear about you all the time and, and it's, man, I just, I just, it's cool what you're doing. You're pumping a lot of good into the world. You're pumping a lot of what people need into the world, whether that's adults or children. And, and, man, there's just. There's just. There's just that many great role models for young people to look up to these days, and you're one of them, and that's cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Well, like I said, I had some great role models in, in the teams and left me with some, you know, especially the guys that I lost. You know, those guys were just great, great role models. And, you know, sometimes people ask, like, if having kids made you more nervous about going to war. And for me, it didn't. Like, I felt like, happy that I had kids and Mikey and Mark, you know, they, they didn't. They didn't have kids, man. And it's, you know, it breaks my heart. And luckily, Ryan, you know, Ryan, before he died, his wife got pregnant, and that's just awesome to see. But, you know, passing on what example those guys were, and you know, the character in this book right here, the Warrior Kid book, the main character is named Mark. And there's another book I wrote for kids called Mikey and the Dragons. And clearly the main character in that book is named Mikey. And so those guys. Doing my best to make sure that, you know, people remember them and, and learn some of those things that represent their values of what they were like as people. So it's an honor to be able to share their memories and, and make sure that their, their names are, are never forgotten.

[Sean Ryan]

And this is turning into a movie.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, it is. Yes. The movie has been filmed and it will be coming out next year. That's awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Congratulations.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it's. It was pretty, pretty interesting experience to. To see and a pretty awesome experience.

[Sean Ryan]

Is it an animation or.

[Jocko Willink]

Nope, it's real people.

[Sean Ryan]

No kidding. Are you in it?

[Jocko Willink]

I am in it. Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

Yeah, man, that's awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

I'm in it, but I don't play Uncle Jake. Uncle Jake is played by Chris Pratt, so. And you know, Uncle Jake and Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt's just, just such a. Such a great guy. Such. Oh, he's a unbelievable guy. Just, just the first time I met him, I was going to UFC with Jack Carr and some of the other actors from the Terminal list. It was like the promotion for the Terminal list, and, and I didn't know. I didn't know Chris Pratt at all. But I'm kind of like going. And, you know, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm going to meet this Hollywood guy or whatever, and just super humble, super nice, super cool. Self deprecating humor and super charismatic. Like, there's a reason why that guy is who he is, you know, funny, charismatic, just cool. And so I was really, really stoked. And what happened was he had. We were, we were kind of connected on through Jared, who was training him to get him in shape for Terminal List. And while he was training him, he was giving him Jocko Fuel. And so he really liked the taste of Jocko Fuel and how it impacted him, got him in shape for that movie. And then he also was like wearing Origin clothes because he's a patriotic guy. He wanted American Made because now Origin makes jeans and T shirts and hoodies and boots and. And we make everything. And he wanted to support America. And then he had a little break in between work movies and he was talking to his business people and they're like, hey, you know, you need to find some more sponsors and this kind of thing. And he goes, you know, why am I out looking for sponsors when like, I like Jocko Fuel and I like Origin? Why don't I connect with Jocko? Because I'm. He met me one. You know, I met that guy. He seemed nice enough or whatever. So he called me and he said, hey, man. And I was like, in the mountains. And he said, hey, do you want to do something with Jocko Fuel and Origin? I'm like, sure, you know, it's pretty awesome. And so we ended up connecting on that. And as our business teams were working through the business deal to kind of figure out what that looked like, I had been starting down the process of making the movie with a. A guy from Hollywood who had walked into his kid's bedroom and his kids were doing push ups. And he's like, what are you, what are you guys doing? They're like, we want to be warriors. We want to be warrior kids. He's like, what are you talking about? And he gave the kids, gave. Gave their dad, this guy, Ben Everard the book and said like, we want to be warrior kids. Like this guy. So he reads the book and he's like, I got to get this turn into a movie. And so he. Friend of a friend of a friend searched me out, came to my gym and I had been offered, like, to buy the movie rights to Warrior Kid. I don't know, like maybe four or five times, but that's a real weird thing. Anyways, but he came down to my gym and set up a meeting with me and said, I want to talk to you about this. And he like, got the vision, Saw the vision. So he And I had been. We'd gotten the screenplay written from a screenplay writer named Will Staples. So we kind of started moving. Meanwhile, I'm talking to Chris Pratt about Origin and Jocko Fuel, right? And Ben is like, you gotta get Chris this script. And I'm like, dude, I am not giving Chris the script. I'm like, I'm not doing that. Because he was like a friend, you know, I'm not. Like, at the time, I didn't know him that well, but he was like a friend. And I just.

[Sean Ryan]

You didn't want to ask him for.

[Jocko Willink]

Bro, I don't want to ask him. You know how many people these. These Hollywood.

[Sean Ryan]

Could you just.

[Jocko Willink]

Could you. Yeah, yeah, he can. I. So I just didn't. I'm like, I'm not giving it to him. Well, my business team had told his business team, yeah, well, you know, Jon, he's making this movie. And they're like, well, what movie is he making? Why don't we know about that? It was like making a kids movie, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they're like, well, where's it at? Well, he's got the screenplay. So they give. My business team gives his business team the screenplay. And they read it, and they're like, okay, this is good. And they gave it to Chris's film manager, and it's a woman named Julie. And I found this out later. They called Julie Dr. No, because she says no to everything. And so. But she got this script and she read it. And when I met her for the first time, the first time we. The first big meeting we had about trying to make this happen, she was in the room, and she met me. She was super cool. She's like, my dad listens to you, or my husband listens to your podcast. My kid listen to your podcast. She knew kind of the background. And she said, I got done reading this script. I wiped the tears from my eyes, and I sent it to Chris and said, you better make this movie.

[Sean Ryan]

No shit.

[Jocko Willink]

And then Chris said. He said, yeah, I read the script. And I was like, okay, we're going to do this. And then. I wish it was as easy as I just said it, because then, you know, the cool thing is Chris and I shook hands. We're going to do this. And that handshake encompassed origin, encompassed Jocko Fuel, and it encompassed the movie. And two guys, we shook hands, and that handshake held the whole thing together. Because, bro, you get into this Hollywood and lawyers and ownership, and it was crazy. But that handshake and, you know, him being A good person and a man of his word, and me being a man of my word and despite all the chaos we. We got through and. And now Chris is like a part owner of Jocko Fuel, a part owner of Origin usa, and he plays Uncle Jake in the movie Way of the Warrior Kid.

[Sean Ryan]

That is awesome, man. Yeah, that's a hell of a story.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it's. I can't wait for it to come out.

[Sean Ryan]

When does it come out?

[Jocko Willink]

Sometime next year.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, it's. It's weird, but the way they make movies and the time it takes for them to then edit and assemble it and then the, the advertisement of it, the marketing of it takes months and months. And so, you know, they want it to be released in a big season, you know, because they think it's going to be a big movie because it's. It's. I've seen, like, I've seen it. You know, not a fully edited version, but I've seen it. And it's. It's awesome. It is. It is awesome.

[Sean Ryan]

Congratulations.

[Jocko Willink]

It'll make you laugh, It'll make you cry. It's really powerful.

[Sean Ryan]

Very cool.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, man.

[Sean Ryan]

That's what I'm talking about, man. I mean, everybody. I don't talk to anybody that's happy about what's going on in Hollywood, what's being pumped into the theaters, what's on Netflix, nobody. And so to see, like, something like that, you know what I mean, come out, that's like. I mean, that's a feat in itself, you know, and so. And then. And then, you know. Congratulations.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. Yeah, it was, you know, Skydance eventually came in. It's Skydance and Apple. And you're right, it's a movie that. We haven't seen this type of movie in a long time. You know, the kind of movie that's going to, you know, leave that impact on. On and it's. I'm telling you, like, everyone in the family, the parents will love it, the kids will love it. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

It's old school, family, good entertainment.

[Jocko Willink]

Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

That you're probably going to learn something from.

[Jocko Willink]

Yes, indeed.

[Sean Ryan]

So, yeah, kudos to you.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Let's talk about Origin. I mean, what's. That's a awesome company.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, it really is, man. It really is. And, you know, growing up in New England in the 70s and 80s, and this is when everything was being sold overseas, all the. All the big corporations just took and gutted all the American factories, literally took the machines out of them and sold them overseas and started making stuff overseas so that they could make more money for the corporate headquarters. And it just gutted a lot of. A lot of New England. It gutted a lot of the Southeast. You know, the big textile mills just got annihilated. And I mentioned this earlier, but when. When I had the podcast and I was talking to people about Jiu Jitsu a lot, and people were asking, where should. Where should I get a Jiu Jitsu gi? And I had seen this company, Origin, this guy Pete Roberts was up there, and he was making these GI's in America, 100% America. And so I started telling everyone, hey, if you got to get a gi, get an Origin gi. And I started trying to reach out to him to see if, like, I could meet him or find out what's going on. And I had never heard back from him. And finally, I was on a Facebook Live one day, and somebody asked me, hey, what kind of GI should I get? And I said, yeah, get an Origin gi. Go to Origin. I think it was Origin Maine at the time, originmain.com and that guy makes stuff in America. And I said, and by the way, if anyone here can find that guy, I think I said, his name is Pete. Tell him I want to talk to him. And a woman that was on that, who I since got to know, named Sarah, like, used her contacts and got in touch with him and said, hey, there's this guy, Jocko. He wants to talk to you. He's got a huge podcast. And Pete says, what's a podcast? Because he's up in Maine.

[Sean Ryan]

That's awesome.

[Jocko Willink]

So eventually we link up and we have a conversation, and I could see, you know, he's just a patriotic guy that's trying to rebuild manufacturing in America. I flew up to Maine. We. Same thing, as a matter of fact. We had a steak and we had a handshake, and we. We teamed up, and basically you had. He had this ability to manufacture, and I had an ability to talk to people. And so those two things together were like a perfect storm. When we joined forces, I want to say there was, like, six employees at Origin Making. It was something like 100 garments a week. And right now we've got almost 500 employees, and we make, like 15,000 to 20,000 garments a week. So it's a totally different ball game. And it's awesome because we had lost the ability to manufacture in America. And the corporations just lied because they say, we can't do this in America. They would literally say, we can't make this in America. We can't do that. This is America. Are you telling me we can't make things in America? This is what, this is how, this is how we won wars. This is how we won World War II. We made stuff in America. So don't tell me we can't make a pair of jeans in America. Just like they've been saying for the past 10 years that we can't make any of these electronic components in America. Well, look who's coming back now. Right? So it's an awesome company. Got, you know, we're going to continue to grow. It's hard. It's very hard. Especially because we're so strict about American made. So you know, you got to get the cotton. Where's the cotton coming from?

[Sean Ryan]

Where's literally everything?

[Jocko Willink]

Everything. The zipper, the boots, these, these rivets, everything that with the sole, everything. The thread is 100% made in America. And if we can't find a component that's made in America, we either make it ourselves or we'll find someone that we can convince to make it. Wow. You have to do, you have to hold the standard. And it's good to see other people are coming back to America now. Good, good. Bring it back. This is what we should be doing. This is how we rebuild our country. This is how we rebuild America. And if we don't have the ability to make things to be self sufficient, we will lose. So it's a huge part of, it's a huge part of me of how I feel I can give back to what this country's given me.

[Sean Ryan]

You definitely lead by example, that's for damn sure. You put your mouth where your money is and that's awesome. It's hard to find these days.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, well, I mean, that's literally what you just said. We put all our money back into these businesses, all of it. You know, now we have four factories. Like we, we put all of it back in there and, and we bet on it. You know, this is, this is where we put our, our soul is into these companies because we believe in them and we're patriotic. We love America, we love the people we work with. And this is what we have.

[Sean Ryan]

Once again. Congratulations.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. And then out of that spawned Jocko Fuel. Because you know, one of the guys at origin, Brian, he had worked in the supplement industry and he was like, hey, you know, we, we can make supplements, we do jiu jitsu. And they had like made some supplements before. And do you, how would you feel about making supplements? And I said, I. But if we can make them good and healthy. Yes. Look, I'VE been over. I've been overseas drinking Red Bull and Reddit and Rip it and whatever freaking tiger's blood they were giving us over there. And that stuff's just not healthy, you know, and so I didn't. And I. You know, we talk about people that. We talk about, like veterans. You know, you were mentioned veterans that are, you know, I know you had some friends that had some bad experience, experiences with drug addiction, alcohol addiction. Bro. I have friends that were drinking five, six, seven, eight monsters a day. That's. That's. That's horrible. And so we started the. The Jocko Fuel, and, you know, we just kept things as clean as we possibly could. And, you know, believe it or not, there's a market for it. Believe it or not, Americans want to be healthy. And we probably timed it very well because as Covid came out and people got more concerned about their health, people were paying attention.

[Sean Ryan]

Is that the latest flavor?

[Jocko Willink]

That's one of the latest flavors. Yeah.

[Sean Ryan]

Give it a. Can I try it, dude?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. There you go, man. It's a little iced tea lemonade.

[Sean Ryan]

Iced tea lemonade. It's pretty damn good.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, yeah. And it's no artificial sweeteners. We had to. This is the extent that we go. So when you make a drink like this, you got to put preservatives in it so that it has shelf life. Well, those preservatives, as you might imagine, might not be too good for you. And I wanted to figure it out a different way. And so Brian figured out a way to pasteurize it. In other words, you, like, basically cook it. So anything that could be in there that would interfere with its shelf life won't be in there anymore. It'll be dead. No. And so we had to find a line. We had to wait, like, nine months to get a company that, you know, bottles these or cans these to put a line in to pasteurize them so that we could make them as healthy as possible. That's, like, what we're doing across the board, and. Yeah, that's what we're doing, man.

[Sean Ryan]

That's awesome, dude.

[Jocko Willink]

What?

[Sean Ryan]

You know, we're kind of wrapping up the interview here, Jocko, but, you know, originally, I'd reached out to you several months ago, and I had saw a tweet that you put out on X about our mutual friend now, Braxton McCoy, about the. The land grab. And, you know, like. Like I had mentioned we had never met, but I've always been watching you from afar. And that tweet, basically, all you said I think is pay attention to this guy. So looked him up, paid attention to him, saw the sale of public land, and I was like, fuck it, let's bring him in here. Maybe we can have an impact on this. And collaboratively, we did it. Got pulled.

[Jocko Willink]

Huge deal, man. Yeah, thanks for doing that.

[Sean Ryan]

It's my pleasure.

[Jocko Willink]

And thanks to Braxton. Yep.

[Sean Ryan]

What a dude. Yeah, but. But, you know, I just, Especially ever since COVID you know, I think whatever, everybody knows, you know, things aren't. Things aren't going great. And, and you've. You, you're just always a. A. A voice of reason, a stoic, A voice of reason that makes a lot of sense. And, and so I just want to ask you, you know, what are. What are. What are some of the top things on your mind on what's going on in our country? And, and what are we doing wrong? What do we need to get back to?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of amplification of emotions and ego that happens through online platforms, so through social media. Right. And when that happens, when you're not interacting with another human being, but you're interacting with a, you know, a fake human being or a bot or someone that you can actually see or talk to and someone that it's very easy for you to say, oh, this person's bad, or you just ignore what their perspective is. Is, which is what I talked about, whatever, how many hours ago we started this thing is understanding other people's perspectives and knowing that people see the world differently, man. Like, and there's a reason that someone sees it that way. And instead of just saying the way that they see the world is bad and the way I see the world is good, or the way they see the world is wrong, and the way I see the world is right, saying like, oh, it's interesting that they see the world that way. I wonder why. And as I've said this whole podcast, if you listen to what other people have to say, they're going to listen to you more. If you say, shut up, you're wrong, they're never going to listen to a word that you have to say. But if you say, hey, what makes you think like that? And they explain it to you, and instead of you trying to figure out where they're wrong, try and figure out where they're right. And in most cases, in most cases, there'll be some kind of common ground. In most cases, hey, are there some people that are just evil? Yeah. If you're ISIS or you're like a communist, it's probably going to be hard to find some common ground, but if you're in between those and, I mean, I've. I mean, I guess, like I said, you can say isis, but most people, if you say, oh, you got family? Do you want your kids to have a nice place to live? Almost all people will say, yeah. Almost all people will say, yeah, well, I want them to, you know, be healthy. So at least we have that common ground now. So if we. If we look for that, as opposed to looking for all the reasons why I should hate you and you should hate me, I just. That's. That's not beneficial. So. And I think social media amplifies a lot of that. And also, social media is not real. Right. And so people will say, our country's so divided. Yeah, on Twitter, it is, but I talk to people. I travel all over the country. I have a leadership consulting business. I work with companies of every description. Energy companies with people out on oil rigs, construction companies with people pouring concrete, finance companies in New York where they're doing deals for billions of dollars. And everyone in between. And the vast majority of people that I meet are like, what are they focused on? Oh, yeah, they want to take care of their family, they want to do a little bit better at work. They want to make some more money. They want to be healthy. That's what people are doing. And it's very strange that we forget about that. And as I travel around the country and I meet all these different people, I see people that. They have common goals. They have common goals. And if they have the same common goal as me, how we get there, you know, we'll. We'll try and figure out the best solution. And I don't see a lot of that. You know, if you say something that I disagree with, I hate you. And that's. That's. Doesn't. That doesn't bode well. But like I said, I think for the most part, that's online now. Look, you can go show me. We can go look at riots in the streets of people that are actively trying to hurt other people. Like, okay, yep, you're right. There are people that are out there on the fringes for sure, but that's a small group. There's 350 million people in America. You want to show me a riot that has 3,000 people in it? Yeah, that's bad. But it's not America. And so I would say open your eyes, open your ears, listen more, try and understand other people's perspectives, try and figure out where you can agree with them, which can be difficult, but usually you can. And if you can listen to what they have to say and ask earnest questions about what they believe, a lot of times you can figure out, oh, yeah, there's some common ground. I understand them a little bit better now, and maybe I can. Maybe I can move a little bit, and maybe I can help them see something that I see because they actually want to hear my perspective. Now. Barking at people and trying to shove your perspective down their throat might feel good at the time, but it doesn't change any minds. So.

[Sean Ryan]

It'S a great perspective. Do you think this is happening because of the absence of the human connection? Because of social media?

[Jocko Willink]

Social media certainly amplifies it, but also it's the way the algorithm is constructed. The algorithm is constructed. When I see something that makes me emotional, I share it. So your goal is to post something that makes me feel emotional. What's the easiest emotion to trigger in me?

[Sean Ryan]

Anger.

[Jocko Willink]

It's definitely anger because it's hard to pull at my heartstrings. You don't really know me. You don't know what, like, maybe if I had a dog that I lost, but you don't know that, or maybe I had, you know, whatever, something happened to me in my past and. Oh, that. Thank you for sending me that. It's good. Makes me, you know, connect with these emotions. That's hard to do, but how hard is it to make me mad? It's not hard at all. You know, I'm a military guy. You can figure out 20 things out of the gate, right? Figure 20 things out of the gate that can make me mad. If I'm a normal person, if I'm a normal, you know, military person, or if you're a. What is it? You can tell me 15 things right now that will make a conservative mad, and you can tell me 15 things that will make a liberal mad. And so if you want to get reactions, make people mad. And so that's what the algorithm is set up for. And when you make me mad, I share it. If I have a strong opinion about it, I share it. And so that's what the algorithm does. It just amplifies strong emotions, and strong emotions aren't a good way to make decisions. And the strong emotions become polarizing. And so when people are polarized, they're not listening anymore. And. And everything I just talked about goes out the window.

[Sean Ryan]

There's been a lot of talk about. I mean, I see it all over your comments section. There's. I mean, there's hashtags about a jocko for president. I mean, do you, do you see yourself ever getting involved in US Politics?

[Jocko Willink]

I certainly hope not. I don't, I don't. I don't really have any desire to do that, and I don't. I think that. I mean, I think that. I guess it just depends, you know, because every time you think that things will settle down, the pendulum will go swinging back in the other direction and back in the other direction. So I certainly hope not. Man, I don't. I don't like politics. I don't think. I don't think I would like to do that.

[Sean Ryan]

I don't think you would like to do that at all.

[Jocko Willink]

You know, but.

[Sean Ryan]

I think that's the problem. Yeah, there's everybody that's in there that there's nothing else they'd rather be doing than sitting on their ass on the floor of Congress or the Senate or higher.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, well, hopefully we get some of these term limits and things like that because career politicians are definitely problematic and. But, you know, who knows? That means they have to vote themselves out of a job. What are the chances of that?

[Sean Ryan]

Slim to none. Slim to none. But, you know, you got the Warrior Kids series movie coming out. The upcoming generation is Generation Z. They get a lot of, you know, I'm. What are your, what are your thoughts on Gen Z? What do they need to be looking out for? What's your advice to them?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, I think when I look at it, I forget Gen. It's actually, I think Gen A. Gen Alpha is now, I want to say those are teenagers right now.

[Sean Ryan]

Okay.

[Jocko Willink]

So it's like Zen Alpha, Gen Alpha, and then Gen Z is sort of above them, maybe 20s. You think that's right?

[Sean Ryan]

I think Gen Z's, they're, they're, they're entering the workforce and are already in the workforce.

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah, man, this is America. And you can do, you can, can you do anything you want? Nope. No, you can't do anything you want. But you, you have a lot of opportunity in this country. I was talking to a kid the other day and I was just like, man, he's in the fire department and you know, like, there's a salary cap in the fire department, right? And I said, hey, man, like, save your money. Figure out something else you can do. You in the fire department, you got time to do other things. What do you do in your spare time right there. I already know you're not doing much, so what can you do? And I kind of said, you know, like, we're at my gym. And I said, look, you see all this? I go, all this was just like an idea at some point. Just a little tiny idea with no true value whatsoever. Nothing. And here you are in a gym. And that's the same for everything that, that I have in my life. Everything was just like nothing. But if you apply it and you execute on it now all of a sudden they start to grow value. And so, you know, it's always surprising to me that the opportunity that we have in this country. So are you going to get it given to you? No. Is it going to take hard work? Yes. Will you have setbacks? Yes. You will. Yes. You will enjoy it. Enjoy it. Like this is what, here's a Gen Alpha tour term. Lore. You heard this Lore?

[Sean Ryan]

No.

[Jocko Willink]

So like creating lore. So you're. If you look at. When you have problems, those problems are how you create lore about what you did with your life. The kind of thing you can tell your grandkids. The kind of things you can tell your kids. Kids, hey, this is what happened. Oh yeah, I remember. I remember when I had my wife and my four kids in a 934 square square foot house. That's lore. Man, my kids are kind of fired up for that. Like, there was two girls sharing a bedroom. I took the converted garage and split it in half. One for my son and one for my youngest daughter. That's, that's what we're doing. That's cool. At the time, would I rather had, you know, some mansion? Sure. But that wouldn't have got me no lore. So when you go through challenges, you face things in life look at as an opportunity to make some lore for your existence. It's going to be a struggle. But with America, if you work hard, you will be rewarded and you're going to look, it's not like a guarantee, but if you work hard, you have to make sure you're playing the right game too. So I had this conversation with a guy, actually two guys consecutively, a few years ago, and they were both hard workers in two totally separate industries. Two hard workers working very hard and not able to get to where they wanted to go. And they're putting in 50 hour week, 60 hour weeks, 70 hour weeks, really getting after it. And I said, hey, listen, if that's what's happening, you got to check what game you're playing. Because if you put a lot of effort. The example I use was soccer and basketball. If you put a lot of effort into basketball, how many points can you score in a game? 30, 40 50. You get 50 points in one game. As an individual player. If you're playing soccer, how many points can you get in a game? Maybe one or two. So if you realize that you're not getting the points that you want to get, you might have to say, I, I need to get into a different game. So you have to be smart. Hard work isn't rewarded solo. You have to also, you know, detach, look around and say, like, okay, is this game that I'm playing the right game to get where I want to go? So you have to keep that in mind, too. But this is America. If you play the game and you play the right game and you play it hard, you're going to end up in a good spot, which is all we could ever ask for.

[Sean Ryan]

Another great point. Another great point. Last question. If you had three guests to recommend for the show, who would they be?

[Jocko Willink]

I would say first, I'll give you the easy shot, J.P. donnell. Next, I'll go Debbie Lee. And then I'll go. Johnny Clark. Johnny Clark, who was a Marine in Vietnam and he was a grunt. And you know, our special operations guys get a lot of credit. Well deserved, but sometimes, oftentimes. And I tried to give as much credit as I could today to our conventional army and Marine Corps brothers and sisters that fought, but it's, they don't often get the credit that they deserve. And Johnny Clark wrote a book called Guns up in when he got back from Vietnam, and he got wounded three times. The third time he got wounded, when he finally got pulled out, he had lost like 40 pounds, 35 or 40 pounds patrolling in the jungle.

[Sean Ryan]

Damn.

[Jocko Willink]

For 14 days, 17 days, 20 days at a time. And he just, he's an incredible guy. It's a legendary book in the Marine Corps. You know, I, I got to shout out, guns up. I did that of that event for the Marine Corps birthday up in Camp Pendleton, and I was able to get a. Guns up. Semper Fi. Happy birthday. Semper Fi. Guns up. But Johnny Clark, just an amazing guy and has had a really incredible voyage in his life that I, I think would, I think everyone would be blessed to be able to hear his story. And I think that it would give a lot of people credit. You know, we, we've, I had the honor of bringing the, a lot of the SOG guys into the forefront for the things that they did in Vietnam and most certainly, you know, the most epic guys. But I always want to remember these, these grunts, the infantrymen.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you for saying that. And by the Way you did a, a fantastic job giving those guys credit. I, I talk about the exact same thing on here a lot about those guys never get the credit they deserve. You talk a lot about special operations, nonprofits, and it's like, yeah, great, we got another one we don't fucking need anymore. These guys need them, you know, and so it's pretty fucking cool you're doing that. And that actually is a segment that I planned on covering, but it slipped my mind. Is the SOG guys, I, I mean, I started interviewing this year, a couple of Vietnam guys and got inspired from what you and John Striker Meyer are doing over there. And for me, I mean, those guys, that is the generation that motivated me, that made me want to serve the country, go to war and ultimately become a SEAL and was, man, those guys are something, aren't they?

[Jocko Willink]

Yeah. As I've told John Stryker, Meyer and I've told the rest of them, like as a, as a task unit commander, I wouldn't approved, I wouldn't have approved any of those missions. I was like, yo, you're going out where, wait, across enemy lines. You got three Americans and four Vietnamese and you're going out there into wherever with no ground support. You sure about that? But those guys were in a different, a different breed. Yeah. God bless them all, man. They were just, just epic. And like I said, the, the infantry grunts in, in Vietnam, they were what they suffered through and you know, it was a small percentage of them. Right. Just like, just like any of these wars, there's a small percentage of people that fight them. There's a lot of people in the military, there's a small percentage of people that, that fight those wars. And the grunts in, in Vietnam, you know, even Hackworth. Hackworth, who was in, he was at the end of World War II, he didn't really fight in World War II, but he was there for the end of it. Korea, like full on in Korea and Vietnam. And he said that the Vietnam soldiers had the worst condition conditions, which is coming from a guy that was speaking from a place where he could make a statement like that. So the grunts from Vietnam, Johnny Clark, guns up. Yeah. If you could, I'm sure he'd be honored to come on here and share his story of, of his life, which is, like I said, it's an epic story.

[Sean Ryan]

Right on. We'll reach out. Well, Jocko, thank you again for being here, man. And, and like I said, man, thank you for taking that trip with me today. I know that was really tough, but the beginning of this. We prayed that this would reach the right people and that this interview would touch a lot of people. And it's going to, man. And you're just a hell of a guy. Super thankful that we connected.

[Jocko Willink]

It's an honor to get to be able to share these guys stories. You know, again, not just my guys, but the. The. The whole team that was there. And, you know, again, I talked about. Me talking about these little fractions of guys, small group in. In Ramadi, that was my guys, and there was all kinds of those guys. But, man, you talk about there was guys all over Iraq, there was guys all over Afghanistan that were in terrible situations, suffered through so much, and they. They sacrificed for what we have and what we're. We have the opportunity, and that opportunity is based on the sacrifices that these men and women have made. And, you know, you asked me right. Right before a break or right. Right as we took a break, you were like, you okay? And I said, yeah. And I did a podcast with a guy named Tom Fife. And Tom Fife was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and he got a Purple Heart in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And I was talking to him, and we talked about World War II, and he got commissioned for Korea. And by the time he was in Vietnam, he was a battalion commander. And we were talking through the different types of missions and all good. And we got. I just was curious about, you know, what. What the operations were like. And I ended up saying, you know, well, how many casualties did you take as battalion commander? And he got choked up. And I was sitting there watching him get choked up, and I was like, oh, this is 50 years ago, and he's getting choked up thinking about his guys. And that was a moment for me that I realized, that's okay. And I think we've been told that there's something wrong with us, but there's not. Like, you get sad when you think about your friends. It's okay. You get a tear in your eye when you hear the national anthem. It's all right, man. And you sometimes spend a little too much time thinking about something that you went through. It's okay. And I think it's important for us, our generation of veterans, to recognize you went through some tough stuff. Think about it. Sometimes it's hard. And that's okay, man. That's okay.

[Sean Ryan]

Thank you.

[Jocko Willink]

Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.

[Sean Ryan]

God bless you, man.

[Jocko Willink]

Back at you.

[Sean Ryan]

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Jocko Willink]

Appreciate it.