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To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
I Shot Bin Laden In the Face 3 Times: The Robert O'Neil Story from RYNOx
00:55:49
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host 1
Hey, what's up? To the Point, listeners. It's your boy.
- [00:03]
Podcast Host 2
This episode is gonna be so great. You're gonna love it. This was from Rhino X. This past Rhino X with the guy that shot Bin Laden in the face three times, straight in the face. And his. His session, it was probably one of the most exciting ones there because he just went off about so many different things about leading in, you know, a stressful environment, and, you know, how he came from being someone from a small town, you know, with no real skill or ambition, and turned into a badass Navy seal. So it is a very, very, very cool session. And we decided, let's turn this sucker into a podcast. So enjoy it. You're going to love this one with Robert o'. Neill.
- [00:43]
Rob O'Neill
This is to the Point a Rhino Experience voted one of the top home services, marketing and operations podcasts. Cutting through the bullshit and getting to the point,
- [00:59]
Interviewer
Rob, this is going to be a lot of fun.
- [01:01]
Rob O'Neill
I can't wait.
- [01:02]
Interviewer
I can't think of a better person to do a fireside chat with. Maybe we'll start off with the story you were the chubby kid in Montana who couldn't swim, and then you were in Osama bin Laden's bedroom. Tell us about that.
- [01:18]
Rob O'Neill
Yeah, in a nutshell, that's what happened. One of my. One of my favorite sayings, I'm gonna say that a lot, too. I have a lot of favorite sayings, is if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan for tomorrow. Because life happens around you as you're planning. And the way that I give an example is my plan as a young man was to play college basketball, get an mba, and then work for my dad as a broker. And that was the plan. I was playing in my freshman year. I got dumped by a girl, and it was time to leave town. And the more I've been around, too, I found that a lot of young men, a lot of young women, too, just find that time in life where it's time to leave. Mine was at 19 years old. I grew up with two guys who were Marines. They always wanted to be Marines. Two years older, Ben and Jim. Ben. Ben Walacheski. Jim McBride, two years older, always wanted to be Marines. When they graduated the same high school I graduated, they left together. Every time they came back, they looked like Marines. You know, they had the high and tight. They were studs. I'd see him working out. When I decided to leave Montana, I'm going to join the Marine Corps. I knew them, and I'd seen Full Metal Jacket There it is. So I went to join the Marine Corps. As luck would have it, sometimes it's better to be lucky than it is to be good. The Marine recruiter was not in the office, but the Navy guy was. Now, the only reason I went in to see the Navy guy is because the two Marines told me a joke I didn't know. Some of you may not know the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy and just the men's department. That was the joke that sent me into the Navy guy's office. That's how my life got to where I am right now. I went in there and said, hey, if anyone's going to know where the Marine is, you will. And he said, why do you want the Marine? I said, I want to be a sniper. I'm in Montana. I hunt Marines, have the best snipers in the world. He said, look no further. We have snipers here in the Navy. You need to be a SEAL first. He brushed over that part. For some weird reason, we're in Montana, landlocked state. I didn't know how to swim, but. But I'm 19 years old, kind of naive, but here's a professional recruiter. Why is he gonna lie to me? And so I signed, and I brought my mother down to see it. And then that's when he showed me a video of what a Navy SEAL is. And I like, well, this is gonna be a tough one, but I better learn how to swim. And that was it. And so then I actually went. I still was playing ball, so I had a badge to get into Montana Tech, which is in Butte, Montana, where they had a pool. I went into the pool. This is the next day after I enlisted in the delayed entry program, which means I had a. An amount of time before I signed, from the time I signed until I had to leave. So a few months. So I'm standing at the pool, 6am I'm looking. I could keep myself alive, but I didn't know any strokes. So I'm looking like this. Okay, here's the pool. It's 25 meters down, 25 back. I'll swim a thousand meters, and I'll see what kind of a swimmer I am. And so, like. Like your perfect plan exists when you're planning. Everything was going fine with my plan till I entered the water. And I. That's when the problems immediately started. I got down to the deep end, barely made it back. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm in a pickle. I just signed a contract, and I can't swim. Mike Driscoll came walking in from my same high school. He was about to go swimming at Notre Dame and he said, hey, Rob, don't take this the wrong way. It's good to see you, but I've never seen you in the pool before. What gives? And I said, I just joined the Navy to be a seal. And he said, not like that, get back in the water or whatever. And then he showed me the breaststroke, which I got proficient enough to pass the very easy test to qualify for orders to get to SEAL training eventually. That was the very first part. But once I got there to boot camp, I realized, very cool. I'm from Butte, Montana, which is kind of a bubble, but it's similar to everywhere else in the world. It doesn't matter if you're from Long Island. There was two guys from South Central Los Angeles escaping the gangs, joined the Navy, a dude from South Florida. What we all had in common is it doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from, you can do anything. But we were all scared. And that was kind of cool for the Navy experience. Everyone's scared. We're all similar, one day at a time. In a nutshell, chubby kid joined the Navy and now what?
- [05:08]
Interviewer
I mean, that's some butterfly effect. That's some hell of a way to get into.
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Rob O'Neill
Well, here's the butterfly effect too. I bring this up when people ask how to make a change. And I don't know why they ask me, but they do for me. What I've noticed in my career from not playing four years of college basketball to wherever it is now. If you want to make a big change, you do a 2% or 3% now and you're not going to get the immediate gratification that people always want. In five years, 10 years, you'll see it. And the way that I tell my college age kids this, I have three daughters in college. I tell them just to give them an idea of the butterfly effect and the small percentage that can make a big effect on your long term goal. If a random Marine sergeant wasn't stationed in Butte, Montana as a recruiter and wasn't at Arby's at 11:30 on a Wednesday in 1995, you would not be alive because I would have joined the Marine Corps. I wouldn't have gone to Virginia, I would have gone to North Carolina. So that's just a little. The butterfly effect and stuff with everything. If you want to make a change, do it there. Like my change right here, I got a Tattoo on my arm, on my hand, right there. That's the first day I decided to be sober. And it says 7, 18, 25. So seven months ago. And that was, you know, thank you. And on. On 7, 7, 19, it looked like a ridiculous tattoo, but on 7, 17, 26, there's a pretty good goal. And in 10 years, that's going to be really cool. And so I decided with my drink in hand. There's my. There's my change.
- [06:34]
Interviewer
That's awesome. That's awesome.
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Rob O'Neill
A lot of drinking in the Navy. We'll get to that.
- [06:39]
Interviewer
How was. How is BUDS for you?
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Rob O'Neill
How much.
- [06:41]
Interviewer
How much swimming did that entail?
- [06:42]
Rob O'Neill
So BUDS is. Is short for Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL Training. And that's the course every Davey SEAL needs to go through. And that's the one that you'll see in the movies. And it's an 85% attrition rate. 85% of the dudes that make the tryout don't make it. And the system works. It's the people skills that get through it. A sense of humor is key to everything. Never lose your sense of humor. But the best advice was. Was given to me. It was actually demonstrated to me the first day of SEAL training how to get through it. Because SEAL training is not like boot camp. Like I mentioned Full Metal Jacket. It's not an open barracks the size of this room where there's bunk beds and all these instructors come in and hit a baton into a trash can and wake you up. That's boot camp. In SEAL training, you need to be at a certain place at a certain time with a full headcount ready to go now. So we had 227 guys in Bud's class, 208. We didn't know what to do, so they brought us into a room just like this to explain to us what to expect. And here's the advice he gave us. He gave us advice on humor. I got to stand up to explain it. We're sitting in the. They brought a SEAL on a stage just like this. So we're looking at him like you're looking at me, except we're terrified, right? And so he came on stage looking like a seal. Camouflage pants, bloused into shiny boots, a tight blue T shirt in gold on his chest. This is UDT SEAL instructor and short sleeves. So he's got tattoos down to his knuckles. He is the Navy seal. So he's obviously ridiculously good looking, right? So he's standing here like this, and he stood in the silence and he broke the Silence. By saying, looking good today, gents. Not you, me. I know what you're thinking. I look a little tired. It's because I am tired. I was up all night. I had to get my wife out of jail. She was arrested for shoplifting earlier that afternoon. We were leaving the mall together and she had her arm around me. Security thought she was trying to steal an anatomy chart. This is how we started the thing. So we're sitting there like, what is this obvious psychopath talking about? He was just having fun at our expense. Like, sort of the sense of humor. But then he got motivational and he said, look, I know you've read the books. I know you've seen the movies. Regardless of what you've been told, however, this course is not impossible. Don't freak yourself out. People graduate. Look at me. I'm living proof. So I'll never ask you to do anything impossible. But I will make you do something very hard, followed by something very hard, followed immediately by something very hard, day after day after day for eight straight months. And that sounds like a lot to get from now to eight months from now. But don't think about it that way. That's not how you achieve a long term goal. Here's how you get through SEAL training, but this is also how you get through life. Wake up in the morning on time, make your bed the right way, and then brush your teeth. Three wins. You just started your day with three wins. Make it to the 4am workout on time. And as I'm beating you, don't think about the pain. Concentrate on your next goal in life, which is breakfast. After breakfast, your next goal in life is lunch. After lunch, make it to dinner. After dinner, do everything you need to do to get back inside that perfectly made bed. And because you took the time for yourself in the morning to make your bed the right way, regardless of how bad today was, and it will be bad, tomorrow's a clean slate. Tomorrow's a fresh start. And when you feel like quitting, which you will feel like quitting, never quit right now. That's emotion. Quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything in life. And that's what he said, and that's what we did. And it got to a point where it was a Monday morning, you wake up and now it's like, hey, go to medical, get your gear. And then your service record, you're going to SEAL team too. So it was just little goals into big goals, I guess. And it was. I mean, it wasn't that easy. You're doing a thousand push ups a day, a thousand setups a day, a thousand flutter kicks a day. Even where we would get beat outside on this, like seal training is an outdoor concrete slab where you're cold, wet and miserable. And a mile from that is the galley where you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner and mid rats. So if you're having three meals a day, that's six miles a day you're running just to eat and test every single day. 50 meter underwater swim. A test where they tie your hands behind your back and your feet together where they throw you in the pool for an hour at a time just to prove Boyle's law. They that if you exhale that volume and pressure are inversely related. So you'll sink. But basically panic's not going to help you. So don't panic. And that's the whole goal. This is a really difficult course. The hardest part of SEAL training is actually called Hell Week. That starts on Friday and it doesn't end till Sunday. And you don't sleep at all. You're awake the whole time with a boat crew of seven carrying boats on your head and doing different drills. Actually before that, right before Hell Week two, the instructor gave me some advice, just really good advice. If you can win the little mental games. He said right before Hell Week, you're about to go to war for the first time and the enemy's all your doubts, all your fears and everyone back home that you know that told you you weren't good enough to do this. Keep your head down, keep moving forward. When you feel like quitting, don't quit now, quit tomorrow.
- [11:39]
Podcast Host 1
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- [13:00]
Rob O'Neill
Be fine and in Hell week, or not even in hell week, but in buds, if you want to quit, you can quit whenever. And they actually make it easy to quit. They'll encourage you to quit like they're your friend you see in Train in the movies. Like they're yelling at you and screaming, that's not the guy that's gonna get you because you're gonna flip him the middle finger. It's the guy that says, hey, look, man, this isn't for everyone. This is a hard course. If you quit right now, I'll find you a job in the Navy, no problem. You'll be on a ship tonight. Nope. If you quit right now, I will give you a warm shower, a bed to sleep in, dry clothes, and 12 hours of sleep. If you quit right now, all you gotta do is ring the bell. The nightmare can end. It's so easy. But get in your head. After you quit, you take off your helmet that has your last name in your class and you put it in a quitter's line. I would just tell myself there's no way in hell I can ring a bell and put a helmet with my father's name on it in a quitter's line. And just the little victories, the little mental wins you can get lead into big victories.
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Interviewer
What was the closest you say you came to quitting?
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Rob O'Neill
Closest I came to quitting was waking up every single day. I'm from Montana. We don't have a lot of ocean, actually, none of. And we don't get outside a lot. So I'm very. I had to tell instructors I got off a submarine, I was so pale, I would have to wake up 20 minutes early to put on sunscreen. Like the little shit like that, the mental games. But I thought about quitting every single day. But you think about someone who told you you couldn't. And then I'm definitely quitting tomorrow. No doubt. When I wake up, I'm quitting tomorrow. And then you wake up tomorrow, I'm definitely quitting tomorrow. And all of a sudden you're at Seal Team 2. Then all of a sudden you're in Osama bin Laden's bedroom. It's that easy.
- [14:29]
Interviewer
The video that Chris shared before is pretty good. But tell us more about the bin Laden raid.
- [14:35]
Rob O'Neill
Well, the. To get there, let me, Let me back up a little bit because I. I got to seal Team 2 at first, and the Way it's very simple. The way that we as operate as Navy seals, we know that if you get really good at the easy stuff, you can be good at the hard stuff. You don't talk yourself into an ass whipping, just get good at the basics. You know, the haymaker will come, but you need to know how to throw a jab type shit. So SEAL teams are even numbers on the east coast, odd numbers on the West Coast. 1, 3, 5, 7, 2, 4, 8, 10. I was assigned to two and along the way I found out about another team called Seal Team 6. They're the Counter Terror Team, that's the Tier 1 unit. And Seal Team 6 sounds cool, but the reason that name is that is because it first we had one and two in 1962 I think and then in 1980 we had to start Seal Team Six because we needed a like Joint Special Operations Command because of a Desert one failed rescue. But Richard Marcinko, who started it, the commander, the plank owner and the commander of Seal Team 6 said the Russians will say they're Seal Team 1, 2 and 6. Where the hell are 3, 4 and 5? So just really good, you know, I tell my wife, not just a hat rack, but so anyway, so the process to get over there to the counter, The SEAL Team 6 will get the big missions because you need to be a Navy SEAL for at least five years before attempting to go there. And the process to attempt to go that, you won't see that in the movies. The way it goes, you need to get approved by your conventional SEAL team to represent them in a new. Well, the first part is three. The first part is three weeks to get to know you. So the first day of the three weeks is a triathlon, about the length of a triathlon. Shower, put your uniform on, then you sit in front of an oral board which is like a shitty job interview. 14 people on one side and you're dumb ass on the other side and you're getting rapid fire questions. You're all like, for us it was your tactics, yes, but now it's your finances, your home life, your mortgage, how much you drink. Some dude's got your service record open because you have your uniform on, going through, making sure ribbons and metals match and nothing's missing and they're stressing you out. And then they, if the board likes you, they send you to the psychiatrist for two and a half weeks for psychological evaluation, which is ridiculous. It's fun if you keep a good attitude. Everything can be fun and you'll get used to most Things for the psychological evaluation. The written test took me a day and a half to finish because it was like 5,000 questions with a number two pencil. And like, you know, the test like with the. There's the five options or A, B, C and D. Let's say four options. Five, whatever. One is never, five is always and three is seldom. So we'll say five. And some PhD came up with an algorithm for the questions that don't make sense. Like when you sit down, it's like, number one, you love roses. Five, always. Who doesn't love roses? Everyone. Number two, you want to decapitate kittens. You're like, shit. That escalated extremely quickly and they're trying to get in your head. Like you try to cheat with your buddies, like shit, sell them for the fucking cat. I don't know. I actually got done with the test and I had the same psychiatrist the whole time. And I asked her what was the point of this test? And she said, oh, we're not trying to figure out if you're crazy. We're trying to figure out which flavor of crazy you are for placement. So then after that you do another really hard physical test, the triathlon. And then if they like you in that three weeks, they invite you to a nine month selection course. So SEAL training that you see in the movies is eight months long. This one is nine months long. So it's longer than SEAL training, but it's harder and it's different because now it's. These are Navy seals trying to get everyone there's gonna die before they can't do something. So in order to select, we're trying to find people. We were talking about the hiring process earlier for selection of Seal Team 6. We're trying to find people who can not just think, but who's willing to make decisions now rapidly in a high stress environment. So we came up with drills to test our. To test your job, to test the stress of combat. But in a training environment, if you can do that, but like for whatever you do for real, try to add the stress. But for us it wasn't real war where bombs are going off and bullets are flying and it's a controlled training environment. So everything that we do to you is self induced stress. And as instructors we know that, but we're trying to find the person who's smart enough to realize this. In life, all stress is self induced stress. Every bit of it is in your mind. Stress is a choice. Basically. Stress is a bag of bricks that sits by your perfectly made bed in the morning. And if you want to, you can pick it up and ruin your day and ruin everyone else's day around you or at any time. Try this tomorrow. Wake up, take a deep breath, put stress down, exhale and let it go. Get over it.
- [19:11]
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- [20:24]
Rob O'Neill
Be Prolific. Seriously, isn't that cool? Because it's in your mind here. Stress is in your mind. It's like guilt. What is the point of guilt? Because that play is over. That plays over, you're not getting it back. You can learn from it and move on, hopefully. And if you do it again, you can learn from it, hopefully move on. But just being guilty is not going to do. I get asked all the time, what's it like? The analogy I've come up with. Sorry, let me dance around it. The analogy I've come up with to put stress in perspective is whether you're taking effective fire on a mountaintop in Afghanistan, or you're the woman landing a jet on an aircraft carrier at night, or you're the person making latte at a coffee shop at 7:00am, you know, at an airport and there's a line of angry customers waiting. What those three have in common is they only feel the amount of stress they allow themselves to feel and that no one has ever accomplished anything positive by panicking. You know, people. People ask me about fear. I love hearing no fear. What's it like to have no fear? After 400 missions, and I'm like, I don't know, man. Because I was afraid every time. But it's okay to be. If anyone's told you they've been in combat and weren't afraid, they're lying or they're a sociopath. We got plenty of those. But it's okay to be afraid because. Because fear. Fear is natural, and it makes you think more clearly. Without. Without fear, there would not be courage. The difference between fear and courage is, like, one more second, it's okay to be afraid. Here's. Here's proof that fear makes you think more clearly. Think about the last time you were watching a scary movie at night by yourself, and you can hear everything in your house. That's just fear. That's fight or flight working for you. Last week I was at home alone. My wife went some damn wear overnight. And I decided the same day I bought an ice machine at Lowe's, I decided it'd be a fun time in my house by myself to watch the movie Smile. You ever seen Smile? Don't watch it alone, because I'm watching, like the scariest part when this. Yeah. And the ice machine clacked off, and I was like, Satan. It wasn't Satan. It was the ice machine. But it's okay to be afraid. I'm getting to a point, though, because there's a very fine line. Fear is okay, but the fine line is panic. Because panic is contagious. And panic will get us all killed. If one person panics, the herd mentality in us comes out. Here's proof that panic is contagious. I'm not bragging, but I flew in last night. I'm flying after this. So I get to be in airports every single day, which means I get to see people in transit. Think about the last. Here's proof the panic is contagious. Think about the last time you were flying somewhere and someone from Zone 5 tried to board with Zone 1. What did everyone start doing? Running right. For that door. Right? And we take off late because we're in the fatal funnel. But if you do what you should, and slow is smooth, smooth is fast. We take off here. Okay, I'm off on a tangent. Everyone can relate to this. Here's proof that panic is contagious. Do you remember the great toilet paper debacle of 2020? Right. Why did that happen? Who thinks toilet paper is a survival necessity? No, it's nice to have it shortens your shower. But some asshole decided to buy all of it. One day where another asshole Watched him and went. Bought the rest of it and we're out of toilet paper. Collectivism doesn't work is the point I'm making. Anyway, these are the little drills that get into bigger drills, the SEAL training and selection, stuff like that, that. But then, then you get to the selection course that's nine months long. And it's all based on skydiving and close quarters battles. So I've kind of gone off script a little bit. So if you want to get into some of the stressful stuff or the selection process, we can't.
- [24:01]
Interviewer
I mean, I love where we're going. Maybe keep us going through the.
- [24:06]
Rob O'Neill
Yeah, I'm worried. I'm just yapping up here. Sorry about that. I'm. I can see all kinds of weird drills in my head. Well, the one here's the one that I want to. I got to stand up again and do I get all excited and I'm having a lot of fun.
- [24:15]
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- [25:01]
Rob O'Neill
The one technique that we use is close quarters battle cqb, which is the SWAT team style entrance you'll see in action movies like when you come through the door to try to save the day and all that stuff. The reason that we use that so much, well one is because in combat for Navy seals, it comes down to an entry point, the door to the room to the house, a cave entrance, a ship hatch. So we drill on. When operators come through those thresholds, there are definite steps, distances, movements and angles for each dude based on field of fire and covering each other's backs. Which is also great about what we did because as a good team, I only needed to worry about 45% and my teammates got the rest. So when guys come into a room, there are steps, distances, movements and angles and it differs. So we'll start off with guys four Dudes at a time in a kill, a shoot house or a kill house. And a kill house is a training area that looks like a hotel. But unlike, unlike a hotel, though, the walls are ballistic because we're shooting live ammunition, blowing up real bombs. And there's up in the rafters. There's 20 SEAL team, six instructors. So five sets of eyes on each guy as they enter the room. And what they're doing is, is when the guys come through that room and make a mistake, they start adding pressure on you immediately, no matter what you do, as soon as you come into room, they start yelling at you, calling you stupid, yelling your name, shining a flashlight. What are you doing here? Because they want to see who you are.
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- [26:59]
Rob O'Neill
Person you are, you know, are you a person who comes into a situation, makes a mistake and you realize you just made a mistake? But you I can't worry about this mistake right now because I have a job to do. Or are you the person who comes into a situation, makes a mistake and then you can't stop thinking about that mistake even though it's not helping you? You're dwelling on this mistake. And because you can't stop thinking about that mistake, even though it doesn't matter right now, over here, you make a bigger mistake. And that's where they get you. They, they're compounding the stress. Even if you don't make a mistake, they're now adding stress about a mistake you both know you didn't make to see how you handle making a mistake you didn't make. Right? I'm trying to stress, okay, I could talk about CQB for weeks at a time, but to give you an example of what's going on the mind chess match, I'm going to walk you through what the number one man is thinking as he enters a room so now keep in mind this will be one guy through one door on one wall. You in one room. Think about how many rooms are in a hotel. And you know, and it'd be going 10 times faster than I'm about to explain it. But if you could picture a door right here and I'm the number one man pointing my gun at the door. There's a two man, a three man and a four man behind me in a stack or a train. What the one man is thinking in order every time now. Cause all 20 dudes are watching him. As I see a door, I don't see hinges. Door opens and click the fire. Check the door. Door is unlocked. Wait for the signal. And the signal is a squeeze on the leg or the shoulder from the two man. Letting the one man know through effective communication, we have enough guys. It's time to enter the room. The one man doesn't need to turn around and count and check for himself. Plus if he did that, he just dropped security on the door. That's a safety violation. You're fired. Lot going on. So once he gets the squeeze as open the door, outside foot comes in. Clear. My initial corner. Inside foot comes with foreign self. The walls. I start my initial sweep when 6ft off the door, I see a target to threat. Engage, engage. Finish my primary sweep. A foot and half my buddies barrel. Secondary sweep to the corner. Middle of the room, clip. Safe. Clear. The reason that can be stressful is if you're not the one man, but you're the two man and you're having a bad day and you don't wanna screw this up. So you try to choreograph it like before a job. You just assume something's gonna go a certain way. Don't do that because Murphy shows up. You know, everything changes. But I'm having a bad day. He's definitely going this way, I'm definitely going that way. This is definitely my outside foot. As we enter the door. We have enough guys go. And he goes this way. Well now you step with your wrong foot. But you got to cover his back. So you're stepping here, you're mad at him, you're pissing yourself. They're stressing you out. And that's when you shoot the wrong target. You're fired. And then even if you don't make a mistake. Prime example. I was that one man one time. All this stuff over here, middle of the room, center of the room, safe. Clear. They stopped the training to yell at me. So all this is happening at once now. They're screaming at me, o', Neal, how could you do it? You're supposed to be six feet from the door. You. You're way too far in the room. Why? Now? Imagine that chaos of me. That's a trick question, so calm down. Here's the answer to a trick question. Because I'm an idiot. Just deflate the argument. Never get in an argument you can't win. Guys, when your wife comes home. Honey, we need to talk. Start a fire in the kitchen. You can manage that. But they said you're too far in the kitchen. Take it. Or too far in the kitchen?
- [30:04]
Podcast Host 1
Too far in the room.
- [30:04]
Rob O'Neill
Take a step half an inch to the right. So they mess with me by making me half. Then they take me outside. You're too far in the room. We're doing tire drags with body armor, helmet, gun. 105 degrees of Mississippi in May. 20 minutes of this, then climbing ladders. You don't know why you screwed up. They put you right back in front of the train. You're the one man. Again, why? They want to see how you handle it. That's it. We know you didn't screw up, but we punished you for it. What was the point of the drill? Can you get over it? Great advice for life. Think about what's bothering you. Get over it. That's the point of selection right there. They want the IT guy who can make decisions and get over it.
- [30:42]
Interviewer
That's great.
- [30:42]
Rob O'Neill
Why don't you. So everybody knows CQB now.
- [30:46]
Interviewer
Why don't you take us through the through line from evaluation to, you know, some of the. Some of the missions.
- [30:53]
Rob O'Neill
So, okay. And again, sorry for getting loose like that, but that course, 50% of the Navy SEALs who try out don't make it through. But the ones who do get to the tier one level now you will get the big missions. So I got. I got lucky on that. My first deployment was SEAL Team 6. Not lucky, but I was in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in an outstation when Marcus Luttrell needed to be rescued. Operation Red Wings, the lone survivor. So that was my team went in for that. And that was a mission where it took us three days to try to find him. If you're not familiar with the mission, some Navy SEALs put four snipers into. Into one of the valleys, compromised, big gunfight. Three of the snipers were killed. A helicopter went in to get them shot down. 18 guys on board were killed. Or, sorry, 16 guys on board were killed. And then they. My part of my team had to gather whatever we could. And that Was a really patriotic day, though, because they're in a valley now where they won't fly us in to try to find the bodies or the crash site because they're shooting, shooting down helicopters. So we had to go around and find everyone, Rangers, Marines, Air Force dudes, whoever we could find. I remember going into a Ranger hut, and this is before the Jalalabad. I mean, the Russians had the Jalalabad airfield, but there was really nothing there. They had tents built up and we went into a tent and explained the situation and we need like five guys. All 25 or 30 rangers got out and said, it normally takes us five minutes to get ready. We'll all be outside in three. And then we stole vehicles and mules and whatever they had, and we. Three days hiking, but then we finally get up and other. You know, the entire country shut down trying to find Marcus. And some Rangers came in on helicopters and got him. But now we're just in there. Now we're in the Shariak Valley in Afghanistan. He's gone, but now we're here. And that's when we looked at each other and said, this is why we train so hard. Because if we wanted to quit right now, where the fuck we gonna go? We're just here. So the preparation, even in. Before someone's on the job, you gotta make sure the preparation is there. Everything else will just come with it. So that was one, and then that was 2005. We had other deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan. The heat of the war in Iraq in 2007, that was just hunt al Qaeda missions. So doing all that stuff. And this is slowly building a resume for when the President needs to pick who's gonna go on the bin Laden raid. So then we. I was at my. We would. We would deploy and then train. Then training is all around the country and then deploy. So, you know, I have my kids from this part of my life too. And I would be away from home 320 days a year. But I was at my daughter's Easter tea party on my birthday, Good Friday, April 10, 2009. And I was actually getting her, like I had a pink plate and smiley face cookies and shit that you feed four year olds. And I'm walking over and I got a message that a guy by the name of Captain Richard Phillips had been taken by Somali pirates. And they were calling my team to go get him from right now, not tomorrow. So put cookies down, look your daughter in the face, give her a kiss, and turn around and go to war on your birthday. Like, I May never see her again. There's a huge difference. That's the hardest part of war right there. Kissing your kid. Getting shot at is easy. Getting blown up is easy. Kissing your kid goodbye. There's a huge difference between kissing your kid good night and kissing your kid goodbye. Yeah, she, this one daughter was always there. Well, I mean, after we got that call, I'm jumping around, got a message. Fifteen hours and 46 minutes later, though, we had a full headcount. Over 100 Navy SEALs in the Indian Ocean. We rescued Richard Phillips on Easter Sunday with some shots from our snipers. Why? Because they were prepared Again, prepared. Let me back up on that one, too. Seal Team 6 I talked about was designed to rescue American hostages at Sea in 1980. It had never been done. Not one time. 29 years. Could you imagine complacent? Being complacent. Imagine being one of those snipers that, okay, I'm standing up because I'm excited. If you're not familiar with the mission, a US Navy destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, was towing a lifeboat full of pirates. And we didn't know how to get them. And we didn't go there to kill those guys. We simply put snipers on the back, watch them, make sure nothing unsafe happens as we're preparing for the rescue. As we were preparing for the rescue, something very unsafe happened. And they shot. And there was no countdown. Here's why it's cool with the preparation. Four days before that, those three snipers were in their own beds in Virginia. We had never done this in 29 years. And it's a long weekend. I'll drink beer and I'll sight my guns in on Tuesday. They didn't do that. Those guns did not need to be sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives, but their guns were sighted in for the most difficult shots of their lives because we don't take shortcuts. And it saved a man's life. So that was another mission. And there was a few more here and there. And then we just finished yet another deployment. We're back stateside. I was running a dive trip in Miami because if you're running a trip, you want to do it in Miami. It's just fun. Good training, good libs. We got a call. This group needs to come back. We went back and they sat us in a room. And the way the whole thing started was the reason you guys are here. And we looked around. It's all senior guys. Here's guys have been fighting now for 10 years. Every single day, they said, this is not a drill. This is real. We found a thing. This thing is in a house in this mountain range, in a bowl, in a country. And you're going to go get this thing and you're going to bring it back to us and you're going to show it to us. We said, cool. What's the thing? Can't tell you. Okay. What mountain ranges? It can't tell you. Sweet. What country? Can't tell you. How are we getting there? Can't tell you. How much air support do we have? None. Okay, we have an answer. We don't know where we're going or what, but we don't have any help. That was it. And then they also started saying we can't bring. So. So we have other guys that go with us. Air Force sends us combat controllers, CCT guys, which are the ultimate, the most deadly man on the battlefield of combat control. In the Air Force, we also would bring PJs, they're the surgeons that are also operators. But they said, you're not bringing any of those guys, just seals. So get your gear ready. If you're the radio guy, like we were down in the cage and other shooters from Seal Team 6 would walk up and say, hey, what's this mission you're going on? And we're like, I don't know. And then you have the awkward conversation, oh, you could tell me. It's like, I have no fucking idea. But then we put two and two together. It slowly came down to it that it was bin Laden. And then we launched. Well, we, we knew, we didn't know how we're going to get there until we went out to a certain spot that I could get into. And we did have some helicopters that no one knew about it. But we, the mission we, we trained after they told us the woman that found bin Laden, who's real, told us, the reason you guys are here is this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And that was pretty cool. And there was no high fives. It was just, all right, here's what we do. But we did have to train on a site. That's the two scale model. They built a two scale model and also a miniature. So we could train on the hardest mission every single day, day and night with helicopters, and then talk about the hardest mission every night. And the coolest thing about contingencies is I keep saying the perfect planning only exists in the planning room. Because this is true. We had some of the best tactical minds in the world came up with the perfect plan. Rehearsed the perfect plan all day long. One night on a Wednesday, the very tired boss said, what's the worst thing that could happen? The youngest guy in the room said, the helicopter could crash in the front yard. And we're all like, what the fuck was that? Why would you bring this karma on us? And literally got nervous like, I don't know, maybe we should talk about that for 30 seconds. And that's exactly what happened. And we, you know, we talked about it for 30 seconds. The perfect plan never came close to fruition. But we're able to do something great after that. Eight and a half seconds of complete, complete chaos was over because the preparation to get there. And I can go, I don't even know the timeline here. I'm just rambling. I can talk you through what went down if you'd like. All right. Because that's just a cool factor. I do need to stand up for this too. Here's the way it went down. Here's the cool part. I need to talk about the human element. Because for a number of reasons, war is not a video game. People don't respawn real bullets. A bullet needs to be right once and an explosion will kill you. So there's a human element involved. Not everybody in a combat zone is a combatant. Not everyone's a terrorist. Some of the most welcoming people I've ever Met was at 2 in the morning in Ramadi, of all places. The guys going in on the helicopters to include the air crew and the pilots are not superheroes. They cut their own grass and could barely afford their own mortgage. So we had a 90 minute flight into bin Laden's house where we could get shot down at any moment because this is new technology. The President of the United States didn't know about these helicopters and the pilots been flying them about seven days. It's a 90 minute flight. We're going to get shot down. When we land, there's going to be a gunfight. If anyone's going to blow up the entire house with his whole family in it, it's Bin Laden. We're going to run out of fuel. No one thinks of that. We don't have enough or refueling stations. Local cops will be there, not the military. I'm going to shoot it out with them or die in a Pakistan. Whatever. We're not coming. We were so convinced we weren't coming back. One of the guys that was on the last set of stairs said, I'm don't take this the wrong way. Because I'm going 100% going. I just need to say it out loud. If we know we're going to die, why are we going? Which is fair. I would expect you to ask that. So we had the conversation. We said, we're not going after bin Laden for the fame. We're not getting the reward. We're going after Osama bin Laden for the first Americans who were forced to fight Al Qaeda to the death, toe to toe. And those are the passengers on United Flight 93. We're going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday and then an hour later, she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper. Because that's a better alternative than whatever is going on inside right now that we'll never know. At 2500 degrees Fahrenheit, this woman looked down, made a choice. She might have grabbed a stranger's hand. And her last gesture of human decency was holding her skirt down as she jumped out of the North Tower. She was never supposed to do that. And they weren't supposed to fight. We're supposed to fight. That's why we're going. And these are the conversations. The guys were. I mean, we even had the Braveheart conversation right before getting on the helicopter. Like, you can pull yourself off this mission right now and you can live and see your kids again. 50 more years. I. I got another guy who'll hop on in your place. But 50 years from now, on your deathbed, if you could give every single day back for one shot at this motherfucker, you would do it. Get on the helicopter. We were talking to each other like this. So the flight in 90 minutes where you can get shot down. If you're worried right now about something that your worry will not fix, why are you wasting your energy? So what I was doing, I actually. The smartest move I pulled on that was bringing a trifold hunting chair. So. So I'm sitting on this chair in a helicopter and I'm counting from 0 to 1000. I learned as a sniper that's how you get your mind off of stuff. Just count zero to a thousand. Thousand zero. I'm looking at the dudes I've been working with for 10 years. At least. The dog Cairo is sitting right next to me, sleeping. Cairo, Belgian Malinois. There's a book written about him called no Ordinary Dog. Unbelievable. Even if you're not a dog person, but if you are, you better be a crier. His handler, Chesney's right here. This is the funniest part. I want to tell you what we're thinking. I look down, I one of my guys put his earbuds in and he's listening to music and he fell asleep. And I remember looking down at him thinking, you were literally asleep on the ride to Osama bin Laden's house. Man, you have ice in your veins. And I literally see why women find you attractive at this point. And as we're going like we bank to the south and this sounds Hollywood, but it's not at all. I don't know how I remembered it, but we're flying on like 556, 557. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward in freedom. Freedom will be defended. It's like, whoa. That's what George bush said on 9, 11. Forget counting. I don't know how I remember that. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom will be defended. Holy shit. I am on this team. We're going to kill him. That's. And now I'm starting to get. We banked one more time. The air crew guy, crew chief reached over and he opened the door. I need to stop right there. The word hero gets thrown around a lot, especially on this mission. Have you ever heard of the crew chief? Never. His job was to make sure the bird flies, make sure the door gets open when we land. Can you imagine? Every job is important. Can you imagine two super secret helicopters land full of assaulters and we can't get the fuck out. Just a bunch of assholes. So he opened the door. Now we're there. It's a resort town. This is not out west. There's a golf course. And the last thing I thought before everything went to shit was this is some serious Navy SEAL shit we're about to do. Here's what went down. Now I'm going to go on this side. Just to be accurate, we'll say my chair has been Laden's house. Here's the perfect plan. This is dash one, this is dash two. Keep it simple. Dash one's going to hover in front of his house. We're going to throw ropes out and go down them very fast. We call that fast roping. My team is going to go outside of the. There's a 20 foot raw around the whole thing. My team's going to go down there, we're going to put guys out, sniper's dog, machine gun. My team is then going to the roof. Fast rope down, jump. And we're going to shoot him through the glass or whatever, this team's coming this way. As soon as this team came in to hover, something happened with the updraft. And the pilot told me later, 1 degree Celsius warmer, something like that. We had the four best pilots in the world. The army has the best pilots. TF1.6 is the best pilots in the world. He said if he would have powered up like any other pilot, he would have rolled and killed everyone. He thought, if I turn the tail, put the tail on the wall and stick the nose, we might live. And he did that that fast. And it worked. My team dropped off a small. My helicopter was going up. This pilot saw they couldn't hover, so he went back down, said, get out. We got out. That's how the mission started. I remember stepping out of the helicopter, there's the big wall, there's Bin Laden's house. Obviously I'm not on the roof. No problem. This is contingency from training, from preparation. There's a double door on this 20 foot wall there. We will blow that. I started calling a breacher, who is a methods of entry guy. He'll get you in if you need to pick a lock, break the glass, blow the wall. That's what he's gonna do. He decided he wanted to use a seven foot charge of C6. And okay, I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence. I'm assuming you've heard of C4. I don't want to get all technical. C6 is too more fucking awesome. So he rolls this thing down like a giant fruit roll up. He backs off, he clacks it. And C6, a seven footer is a master key, you know, so this thing opened like a tuna can, but behind it is a brick wall. And he looked at it and just out of a training scar, sort of, he goes, fail breach. This is bad. And I said, no, this is good. That's a fake door. And nobody does that. He's. He's in there. So now we got to go. I know if we go past this house to the other side, still outside the wall, there's a carport double door that definitely opens. We've seen it. So I said, now, I thought they cra. I thought they were doing a racetrack. What they said was dash one going around. Dash one going around. Because I'm assuming they took fire, obviously they're doing a racetrack. They're going to re attack. What they were saying was dash one going down. I didn't know that. And no one on my bird knew they crashed. So I said, hey, this is so and so. I'm going to blast the carport. They just said, don't blast it. We'll open it. And that didn't make sense to me, but the door opened and a thumb came out with a glove that I recognized, just like that. And right now, you got to be able to think quickly. I'm at a point right now. It doesn't matter why. They're just there sometimes. It doesn't matter why we're here. We just are. When I talk to NFL teams, I will tell the offense, it doesn't matter why it's second and 15 guys. It just is, right? Yeah, we can bitch at each other about who missed the assignment, but what we all have in common right now is that clock. It's ticking. What are you going to do about it? So we go. I remember the air. Here's how much sense it didn't make to me. The air crew from the first plane was standing there. I saw the American flags, a different uniform. I. I literally said, who the fuck are you guys? Went into the house. There's a gunfight going on. The coolest part about that, now, I get in there, I'm trying not to tell the whole story. It's in the Operator, the only book that was approved by a guy that was in there, the spoiler alert. Bin Laden dies at the end. Anyway, long hallway. I get out of the hallway, and I'm watching dudes work the problems. Here's another. I know I'm going on a tangent, but here's the human element. Is this okay?
- [46:29]
Interviewer
All right, go for it.
- [46:30]
Rob O'Neill
No, because, like, I'm watching the guys, so I'm in, backing up the reason I'm in this room. If you ever find yourself. I hope you don't. If you ever find yourself in a gunfight, in a house, get out of the hallway. Trust me. Good biz. So I'm looking down the long hallway, and there's a dude working a breaching problem. And the way you work a breaching problem is you start, check that it might be unlocked. Then you might need a key. Then you might need to kick it. You might need tools, a sledge, a hula, you might need explosives, a saw, whatever. He's working the problem. And as I'm watching, I'm thinking, I. I remember going through SEAL training with him. I remember SEAL Team 2 and breacher school. I remember Wednesday night at Hot Tuna. Don't drink too much. We're breaching on Thursday. Selection to seal Team 6, Red Team Iraq, all these missions. Now he's breaching bin Laden's house. I'm so proud of this dude. That's when the guy next to me goes, helicopter crash. I go, what Helicopter crash? And he goes, bro, our helicopter crashed. You walked right past it. So that didn't make sense to me, but now it does. That's why they're here. As we're having this, the sniper from my bird had Cairo. The dog was running around the whole thing. He, he didn't know they crashed either. He sees the tail of the bird on the fence. He's outside and he looks up and comes over the radio and says, hey guys, inside, be on alert. They're definitely ready for us because they have a training mock up of our super secret helicopter in the front yard. And there was an awkward silence and the ground force commander came over and said, no jackass, that's ours because we crashed. And he said, yeah, that makes a lot more sense than the shit. I was just saying, carry on. So now I want to get to the end of that mission because we get up there, the team did such a great job. We get bin Laden, we pull them out. And because the helicopter crashed in the front yard, we had to blow that up. Another helicopter had to come in. Here are more heroes that don't get mentioned. On the bin Laden raid, the army and Seal Team 6 rescued Seal Team 6. They flew in to get us on a bird that's not stealth. So we blew up that one, put our guys and his body on this one. We get on this one. Now we're leaving on a mission that we're not supposed to live. We accepted death, we said goodbye to our kids. My 3 year old had a hello Kitty carry on with an elephant and a pillow, left it by the door saying, you can take me on vacation as good as a three year old can say that, knowing I'm not coming back. But now we're leaving and if we can live for 90 minutes, if we can fly for 90 minutes, we cross the border to Afghanistan, we get 50 years. Now we can live, now we can see our kids. But we got all we got to do is live 90 minutes. But they know we're here now. We've been blowing the shit out of this place. Pakistan has F16s. I know that because we sold them to them because they're our fucking allies. Anyway, 90 minutes now I can't worry about, but I'm sitting on this bird like 90 minutes, man. The sniper that rescued Richard Phillips is sitting next to me. That's how small this team is. He actually put a thing of Copenhagen in front of me and goes, take one of mine. Now you know what it feels like. It's like, what the shit? We could get shot down. But worrying about it, just starting my watch and you look down. Okay, it's been 10 minutes, we're flying. It's been spend 20 minutes though. All right, 30. Look into your guys. You're getting 40 minutes. 50. Spend 60 minutes. If I can get to 90 minutes, 70. I remember thinking about sports analogies. New York, Yankee Stadium, top of the seventh, pitching a no hitter. I'm not going to say anything. Oh, we're so close. I don't want to jinx at 80. Now it's like down to the wire. And I love sports analogies, especially the Winter Olympics right now, because I was thinking about the greatest event in the history of sports and 1980 Winter Olympics. And the Netflix show was just on. If you haven't seen the miracle, watch it. It's about the 1980 Olympic hockey team. This group of Americans are college kids that don't even like each other and they are going to play the greatest hockey team ever assembled. These fucking Russians are 6 foot 12, full of steroids, haven't lost a gold medal since the 60s and are beating Olympic teams this Olympics by 10 goals. And this team has no business being on the ice. But now they're winning in the third, four to three. And you can hear that crowd. Ten. That's what I'm thinking about on the bird. Six, five. And then 85 minutes into a 90 minute flight, the pilot came over the radio with that monotone voice that they all have that we make fun of. And all he said was, all right, gentlemen, for the first time in your lives, you're going to be happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan. Yeah, and here's the best part. I mean, this is the last. If you see the movie Zero Dark Thirty, if you haven't, definitely see it, because it's about the woman that found him. And she's real. The agency team that found Bin Laden is the most squared away team. She's the toughest, mentally toughest person I've ever met. But at the end of the movie Zero Dark Thirty, the team walks her over to Bin Laden's body. We did bring him back. And then they walk her to it and they leave her alone and she cries, right? And the Internet plane. And it ends. That's how the movie ends. Horribly. Here's what actually happened. We land back there, me and the dude that went up the last set of stairs, have a conversation. And he goes, hey, there she is. You got to give her something because you shot him. And I said, yeah, okay. So we're walking to her. I pulled the magazine out of my gun, the last round. I walked up to her and said, do you have room for this in your backpack? And she said, yeah, I do. And I said, all right. And so a couple of us there and said, well, we have something to show you. So we walk her over to Bin Laden's body and. And this is the only thing she did for the agency was that like the best, the best part of the movie is when Secretary Panetta was played by James Gandolfini. And he followed her to the cafeteria and said, what else do you do for the company? And she said, nothing, I do this. So we're walking. Then obviously the movie wasn't written yet or wasn't filmed yet. And I remember thinking, the only reason we're here is because of her. This team is here because she gave up her life to find him. She doesn't have a husband, no kids, seven days a week, 20 hour days for a decade. And then I started thinking, oh shit, I gotta say something cool because I shot him. Then I put pressure on myself. Then we get over his body, this would have been good enough. I point down on his body and all I said to her was, is that your guy? She looked down for a sec, her life's work. Looked down for half a second, went, I guess I'm out of a fucking job. There's no point to that story. It's just really cool. So that was that. And that's something. Sorry about the F bombs too. I get a little excited.
- [52:32]
Interviewer
I don't know what question I could possibly follow that up with that would be more interesting of a response.
- [52:40]
Rob O'Neill
I do have an interesting story about the Captain Phillips raid against the. The human aspect, because we'd never done that. We'd rehearsed it a lot. Like, we'll rehearse the timeline, we'll rehearse the plane, packing the parachutes, getting the guys there, jumping, all that stuff. But we have a set amount of time to do it. I was ahead of schedule. I got the message in my daughter's classroom. I gave her a kiss and went to work. But I had a set, I was ahead of schedule. So I stopped at a 711 with a plan because we're jumping on the east coast. I'm the lead jumper. The east coast of Africa. Today I'm gonna get as much cash as I can out of the atm, a log of Copenhagen and a cart and a parliament lights. Because we're definitely jumping today. We might not end up where we want. I can barter with the cash of the tobacco. If I accidentally land in Kenya. It's my birthday. There's fucking casinos. It's awesome. I'm in line to get my stuff. There's a dude in front of me, no kidding. On Friday, April 10th, big dude, just finished a night shift. Slams this USA Today down. He's slow. I'm in a hurry. And he announced to the store, man, I sure wish someone would do something about this, because the headline's about the damn mission. And I tap him on the shoulder and I go, buddy, pay for your shit. And we will. And he's looking at me, I'm like, I'm not even kidding. Like, the national security timeline is squarely on your very broad shoulders. And he, like, got it. And he stepped out of the way. And then we had a full head count. It's crazy. And one of the. Here's another training scar story. Do I have enough time to tell a funny story?
- [54:01]
Interviewer
Yeah, Chris, how much time do we have?
- [54:03]
Rob O'Neill
Eight minutes on the fly. And again, training scars. You hear the term train like you fight. Like, if you want to do that. No shit. Train like you fight, don't take shortcuts and put in safe. Safety kills sometimes. If you're too safe, it's going to get you killed, but so does complacency. So there's a fine line. But one of the training scars is a C17 only has one shitter on it. Okay? There's places where you can pee one. Shit are important. They never planned on a 17 hour flight with 50 dudes on it. So it filled up. So now dudes are doing what they have to do in MRE bags, and those bags are going into bigger bags. So we get big bags of shit on this plane. Here's the funny part of the story. We launched both boats, so we just. These two birds are just out of the Indian Ocean. I've got about five minutes before the racetrack, before I gotta jump. And we got these big bags of shit. I look at the crew chief and I go, hey, homie, what are you gonna do with these? Just like bring them back to Djibouti or what? And he goes, yeah. And I go, why don't you just throw them out into the Indian Ocean? And he goes, what if I hit one of your planes? And I said, I'll give you $10,000 if you can. But yeah, he didn't try to throw them anyway. There was no point to that. But yeah, the training scars, like when you're training, make it as realistic as possible. When I jumped out of the bird, I'm used to jumping off the coast of North Carolina and there's safety boats spinning around in the corners. That's my drop zone. There's no safety boats, so you got to know where you're going. So train like a fight, I guess.
- [55:24]
Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, I could ask a million questions, but maybe Tommy,
- [55:30]
Rob O'Neill
I think the most. Probably the best. Yeah. That was her preschool. Yeah. For Camp Phillips. Yeah. The letters I wrote. No, I wrote, okay, that was on the bin Laden read. Yeah, Well, yeah, the way that that went down, that was a letter for the kids that. Because the one we were coming home. I hand wrote letters to my daughters. I had three daughters at the time and the one daughter in the middle was seven years old when I wrote it to her and. But I didn't write the seven year old letter. I wrote it to the 27 year old daughter. Like, I'm really sorry I missed your wedding. Thanks for taking care of your sisters and your mom. Your beautiful mom. What we did was noble. Trying to explain to the kids why we're doing what we're doing. Yeah. The tears. Tears hitting the page on that one, that's no fun at all. And you know what was hard about that is I have to. We'd written letters to our families before, but you give them to your buddy because he'll give them to them. But I'm on a mission now where everyone's dying, so you have to find someone and no one knows about the mission. I had all these letters of my family written in a manila envelope with instructions. I had to find an intel dude that did it, intel for someone and say, hey, here's an envelope and I want this back tomorrow. And if I don't get it tomorrow, the instructions are inside. And he goes, how will I know? I go, oh, you'll know. And then he gave it back to me after the bin Laden raid and I shredded him right as soon as I got them. Wish I would have kept those.
- [56:59]
Interviewer
That's powerful. Anyone else have any questions you'd like to ask? Rob,
- [57:09]
Rob O'Neill
I'm up here wondering if I just told the story and we didn't get any lessons out of it. You know what I want to talk about though, too. Whenever companies or whoever, teams or whomever, one of the most important things I bring up is effective Communication, communication skills. If you can learn to effectively communicate with your team, you're going to be faster and more efficient. And what we learned about effective communication is the less we talk, the better we were because we got rid of the noise. And so if you can, if you can learn, and I give myself this own, my own advice every day, is when you're done saying what you're saying, just stop saying it. Never, never underestimate the opportunity of the power of shutting up. And then you'll be remembered for that. Like, okay, example. And I'm up here talking my ass off, so feel free, tell me to shut up. But think about the email you got today already with 15 people on the CC line that all says FYI, see below C, below K. Every single time someone always puts the letter K, we know you're there. Just because you're talking does not mean you're communicating. So, like, learn. We wouldn't talk to each other on target at all. Just silence. Read. So effectively communicate.
- [58:14]
Interviewer
Yeah. Yeah. You've, you've done a lot of hard things, some very hard things. Talk to us about, like, running towards the hard thing, doing the thing that
- [58:21]
Rob O'Neill
you don't want to do.
- [58:22]
Interviewer
That's uncomfortable rather than, you know, kind of going for the small win.
- [58:28]
Rob O'Neill
Yeah. We, at a very young age, instructors. It didn't make sense at the time because I wasn't overthinking it, but they would say, you can pay me now or you can pay me later. And that's like accrued interest. So you're going to get beat. So do you want to do it now or on Wednesday with interest? So whatever the hard thing is, get that done now, have the hard conversation now and get it over with. And chances are most people wanted to do it too. Wouldn't you agree? And then if the hard thing fails, do something easy and then try the hard thing again.
- [58:56]
Interviewer
100%. I'm really big on this. One of the books I read recently is called the Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. And it is a master class on just doing the hard thing first, not accruing the debt that's going to come due to. On Wednesday.
- [59:12]
Rob O'Neill
Pick that up for sure.
- [59:14]
Interviewer
Any closing words you want to share with everyone?
- [59:22]
Rob O'Neill
I'm. I know. I'm literally trying to think. I wasn't having a moment there.
- [59:24]
Interviewer
I don't know how you're going to top the earlier stuff.
- [59:27]
Rob O'Neill
No, it's again, with favorite sayings is, is wherever you are, be there. Just be, you know, be in the moment. Make yourself available. I. I just kept deploying. I didn't take any breaks. I didn't take the instructor bill or the leapfrog bill. It Just make yourself available, have the car conversations, and then never lose your sense of humor. And if we move forward together, success takes care of itself.