microphone check Joo how are you sir I’m doing pretty good how are you feeling Splendid especially given this this cocktail of adrenaline that you’ve been feeding me optimal minim at this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can I ask you a personal question now we in the brok time what the I’m a cybernetic organism living dissue over a metal endoskeleton this episode is brought to you by wealthfront and this is a very unique sponsor wealthfront is a massively disruptive in a good way set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like apple and world famous investors it has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and they now have more than $2.5 billion dollar under management in fact some of my very good friends investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in front so the question is why why is it so popular why is it unique because you can get Services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them and this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations bloated sales teams Etc and I’ll come back to that in a second I suggest you check out wealthfront.com take the risk assessment quiz which only takes 2 to 5 minutes and they’ll show you for free exactly the portfolio they’ put you in and if you just want to take their advice run with it do it yourself you can do that or as I would you can set it and forget it and here’s why the value of wealth front is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren’t great investing is a marathon not a Sprint and little things that you may or may not be familiar with like automatic tax loss harvesting rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time wealth front as I mentioned since it’s using software instead of retail locations Etc can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible right off the bat you never pay commissions or account fees for everything they charge 0.25% per year on assets above the first 15,000 which is managed for free if you use my link wealthfront.com Tim that is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account for instance now normally when I have a sponsor on this show it’s because I use them and recommend them in this case it’s a little different I don’t use wealthfront yet because I’m not allowed to here’s the deal they wanted to sponsor this podcast but because of SEC regulations companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials so I couldn’t be a user and have them on the podcast but I’ve been so impressed by wealthfront that I’ve invested a significant amount of my own money at least for me uh in the team and the company itself so I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client now back to the recommendation as a Tim Ferris show listener you’ll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account but just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you take 2 minutes fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com Tim it’s fast it’s free there’s no downside that I can think of now I do have to read a mandatory disclaimer wealthfront Inc is an SEC registered investment adviser investing in Securities involves risks and there’s the possibility of losing money past performance is no guarantee of future results please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure so check it out guys this is one of the hottest most Innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley and they’re killing it they’ve become massively popular just take a look see what portfolio they would create for you and you can use that information however you want wealthfront.com this episode is brought to you by 99 designs your One-Stop shop for all things graphic design related I have used 99 designs for everything from banner ads to book covers including sketches and mockups that led to the 4our body which later became number one New York Times number one Wall Street Journal and the brainstorming a lot of it took place with designers from around the world and here’s how it works whether you need a t-shirt a business card a website an app thumbnail whatever it might be you submit that project and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mockups and Designs you choose your favorite and you have an original that you love or you get your money back it’s that straightforward and many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I’ll be sharing in the future but in the meantime if you want to see some of my competitions some of the book covers as well as get a free $99 upgrade go to 99designs.com that’s 99designs.com hello ladies and gems this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris show where it is my job to deconstruct worldclass performers whether they are chess prodigies like Josh whiteskin actors and gavetas like Arnold Schwarzenegger or anything in between professional athletes you name it I want to talk to them because you find that at the very highest level at the top of the top in each field and across those fields there are commonalities and I want to tease out the morning routines the habits the favorite books and so on that you can apply immediately to your life to level up and this episode is no exception this episode was a very intense episode my guest is someone who very rarely does any interviews Joo willink J KO he is a legend in the seal Community he’s also 240 LBS or so 230 to 240 lbs of lean muscle he would routinely Tap Out 20 or so Navy Seals as a workout since he’s a Brazilian jiu-jitsu uh practitioner at a world class level and also trains professional MMA fighters and his spare time but dialing back to the beginning jono grew up in a small New England Town en listed in the Navy after high school and spent 20 years in the SEAL Teams during his second tour in Iraq he led seal task unit Bruiser in the Battle of raditi which was some of the toughest most sustained combat in the Seal team since Vietnam under his leadership task unit Bruiser helped bring stability to ratti and became the most highly decorated Special Operations unit of the entire war in Iraq Joo is subsequently awarded the bronze star and Silver Star after that returning from that deployment jao served as the officer in charge of training for all West Coast SEAL Teams which means he designed and implemented some of the most challenging and realistic combat training in the world he also spearheaded the development of seal leadership training and therefore personally instructed and mentored the next generation of Steel leaders in 2010 Jaa retired from the Navy to co-found eschelon front that’s e c e l o n never knew how to pronounce that Echelon front a leadership and management consulting company which teaches leadership principles learned and proven in combat to help others lead and win and this is very interesting because you can view combat in many ways as sort of an an exaggeration of many states and situations that one experiences in other areas of life including business Joo is last but not least the author of a brand new book extreme ownership that’s the title and we get into what that means uh I am really enjoying this book extreme ownership subtitle how US Navy Seals lead and win I highly encourage you check this book out even if you just read the the intro and chapters 1 16 and 12 even even if you just do that the book is worth many times the price so check it out I highly encourage it and you can find Joo at Echelon front.com e c l n and also on Twitter I am helping train him to use Twitter a lot of these guys in the uh Navy Seals and other uh divisions of the military do not like to be public facing but uh Joo is going to be on Twitter SoJO willink J C KO w i l l i n K and you can probably also check out a photo of this guy which you have to see and as always you can find all show notes links to everything we talk about at 4hourworkweek domcom podcast all spelled out or you can just go to 4work week.com and click on podcast and you can also find all previous episodes so without further Ado please enjoy this very intense very insightful conversation with jao willink we do get into the weeds and I implore you I encourage you to bear with us if we get into a bunch of military specifics because there are gems throughout this conversation and even if you only take one or two away it is well worth the time invested so thank you for listening and please enjoy okay we are live Casa Ferris jao welcome to the show glad to be here yeah thrilled to have you here and looking at your bio and talking to people who know you the number of topics we could discuss are are many and extremely interesting but I’ll start with this tea what is this I suppose it’s a pinkish colored liquid that you’ve been consuming and that uh you’ve shared with me it’s a pomegranate white tea which I believe hits your soul pretty well well I was surprised because I expected it to have low caffeine content I was like sure I’ll TRW the tea it sounds like you know with the pomegranate I’m like maybe it would help with my cramps or something and I’m pretty well lit up for someone who drinks you know puer tea tea I guess sort of a a veteran of of indirect caffeine consumption with with leaves I I’ve been impressed how long have you been drinking this I don’t I forget when I stumbled upon it but we used to do some desert training back when I was in the SEAL Teams actually when I was running the training on the west coast and uh I would have to sit through the the platoon briefs as they were getting ready to go out in the field and do a field training exercise and the briefs were about an hour long and we’d be on 3 or 4 hours of sleep a night for a few days and so at some point I discovered this stuff and I would start drinking it when the brief kicked off and by the time the brief ended I would have taken copious notes and be ready to get after the platoon commanders that were uh trying to give good briefs and i’ I’d I’d get after it you you’d be fired up for feedback affirmative and uh you mentioned that you don’t normally consume caffeine is that true I do not normally consume CA caffeine now when do you what are some examples of when you reserve uh or or when you do consume caffeine what’s the use of caffeine some kind of long drive you know so um you know even my first deployment to Iraq we did longer Patrols in the vehicles and I would have you know right in front of my seat so sort of hanging in front of my seat I’d have a a flashbang grenade and then another flashbang grenade and then a frag grenade which is the grenade that you know kills people and then another frag grenade and and then the next three pouches were Red Bull Red Bull Red Bull so you know if you’re going on a long Patrol and I know it might seem strange that you would get tired but you would you know and so you crack open a Red Bull and get after it and that’s the kind of occasions I would save the caffeine intake for what now we we haven’t spent too much time together we’ve been hanging out and uh you had an niced tea I had a couple of coffees and I feel like I’ve I’ve just belligerant unnecessarily punched my adrenal glands for so many years that the coffee pretty much does nothing to me but uh you’re an intense guy which is meant as a compliment what do you like on three Red Bulls more [Laughter] Joo and how did you get the nickname Joo uh actually my parents gave me that nickname oh they did yeah that’s that’s a my real name is John but ever since I was born I’ve been called Joo so that’s what everyone knows me as MH and uh when you and of course we’re going to talk a lot about your time deployed and uh training other um other people but let’s take a look at your physique so so we were introduced through uh ptia who’s also been on this podcast very funny uh very smart guy and he said you have to ask Joo about his weight gain now this is not bad weight gain because right now you’re about how much would you say 230 235 230 if you were green you’d be the you’re a big guy uh and uh very fit but when you entered these seals how much did you weigh 174 174 yeah how on Earth well that’s when I when I started SEAL training I weighed 174 PBS and how did that transformation take place I mean was it was it just a growth spurt or were you facilitating that with uh resistance training how did that come about So I entered Seal training at 174 lbs and you know everyone seen what SEAL training is like it’s a lot of push-ups a lot of pull-ups a lot of dips running swimming obstacle course uh I just ate what they fed us which is they feed you a lot and in the course of SEAL training I put on I think I graduated 185 pounds and then once I was done with that and started getting in Seal platoon you know and we all lifted heavy and wanted to be big and strong and so I lifted heavy and ate a lot and I think I put on I was up to 200 my first platoon and then after that I got up to about 225 and now depending on what’s happening in the in the fight game and who I’m training with and what they’re preparing for I’ll go up to you know 240 245 if I need to and then come back down once you know those events are over so in other words I’ll be if I’m training a guy that’s a heavyweight or or fighting a heavy weight then I’ll put on some weight so I can simulate that better what type of training would you suggest for people what type of regimen what a what might a workout or a week look like for someone who wants to let’s just say a male 25 years old who wants to add uh lean mass would deadlift and squat deadlift and squat I mean I think that’s the universal answer right does anyone say anything different when you ask that question I don’t ask I I don’t ask many people but you have you have such an incredible range of weight over that period of time that I had to ask I mean I think that is the right answer um I think the eating is a lot harder than the training in some respects at least for me I mean I got up to I’m I’m walking around about 175 right now but I did to beat a friend in a bet which didn’t even involve money so I’m not sure why I subjugated myself to this or subjected myself to this but I got up to like 25 uh the eating was the harder component I remember being on a deployment on a ship and so the food on a ship is not good you know you’re on a six-month deployment on a ship and I was a seal and when you’re on a ship as a seal you’re not you don’t have you don’t have a job other than just to work out this is especially you know in the ’90s so it was it a totally different world the dry years because there’s no war going on and I remember you know we were all just trying to get huge and I remember getting a Plates Full of chicken McNuggets or whatever brand they serve in the Navy and I would just be sitting there at a table you know for 40 minutes after cow was done being served and I’m just looking at these chicken nuggets and hating them and putting them in my mouth and forcing them down in order to gain weight so yeah stupid but requires dedication and there there’s something to be said for you know to use one of your terms I’m a worldclass chicken nugget eater when when I need to be uh let’s talk about um the MMA and then we’re going to come back to military when did you first get exposed to Jiu-Jitsu or uh martial arts so I’m on my first deployment 1992 or 1993 and I’m in Guam and there’s an old seal Master Chief named Steve Bailey and he was kind of known as a badass in fact he was known as a badass and the reason he was known as a badass is because he was a badass and so this is pre-ufc no one knows anything and he has been training for a year or something with the Gracies up in Torrance and he took a bunch of us new guys and said hey does anyone want to learn how to fight and of course absolutely want to learn how to fight myself and a couple other guys and uh you know he was like a highlevel white belt maybe even a medium level white belt but it’s 1993 you know no one knows anything so you know he taught us you know the rear naked choke the arm lock how to escape the mount and possibly an Americana yeah and posting on the chest into right and so with those moves you know and there’s a lot of you know being in the SEAL Teams you’re constantly I mean it’s a it’s an environment where there’s lots of escalations you know in a platoon and so you’re constantly scrapping and wrestling and fighting and you know uh that’s part of it and so but with these basic Maneuvers that I learned I could do well you know and it was it was badass so that’s when I started it and then I you know I didn’t really see it didn’t really have the vision you know I thought that it was a where it would go I thought it was a finite thing I know these seven moves everyone that’s stepped up to me now I’ve been able to handle I’m good I’m I you know I’m good right and it wasn’t until one of my other buddies uh who was a seal who was in that initial pack with me um a guy by the name of Jeff higs and he had kind of he had gotten out of the SEAL Teams and he had just dedicated himself to training Jiu-Jitsu and one day he came to my house and you know we were even when we were both idiots right and he came to my house one day and he says hey you want a train and I said well yeah absolutely so so we went over in the grass across the street from my house and you know he he had just gotten his Purple belt so you can imagine a purple belt in 1995 yeah I mean you know he was just completely Beyond you know anything I knew he tapped me out a thousand times and I said hey where where you training give me the place and that was it went down the next day and signed up for unlimited classes and I took three classes a day until the present time three classes a day yeah I mean I would just go during lunch I’d go to the the beginner class I’d go to the advanced class I would just get after it and uh who was he training with do you recall who he was TR Fabio Santos Fabio Santos and let’s flash forward to the current day uh who are the primary teachers you’ve trained with and what’s what’s the current status of your Jiu-Jitsu and training well my uh long story short myself and Dean liser uh we ended up not being with Fabu anymore and we ended up kind of going out on our own Dean went out on his own I I was I was you know an active duty seal so I wasn’t a full-time Jiu-Jitsu guy but uh but I was a full-time main training partner for Dean and so we left and we ended up going to a couple different schools and eventually uh opened a big gym down in San Diego and we have Dean lster and Jeff Glover uh our our primary instructors what’s the name of the school Victory MMA Victory MMA and uh how did what was your experience opening a business as an active seal how did your military experience help or hinder that ex you know I’d say it was the typical stuff hey okay let’s figure out what the plan is going to be how we going to put it together you know it was opening a gym we weren’t you know planning we weren’t it wasn’t it was a lot less than even planning a regular seal Mission um in a lot of ways which again planning sealed missions is no is no you know High intellectual task either I mean you got bad guys you’re going to go kill them that’s that’s not super Advanced and of course there’s technology and timelines and all that but it’s not it’s not rock and Science and so I you know we did a good job and opened up a big space and teach a bunch of Jiu-Jitsu so okay got it so as far as sort of tactical implementation not the most complex thing that that you’ve done what would you what would you put on the uh the higher level end of of complexity in terms of things that you’ve spearheaded or uh had to tackle up to this point your well there’s there’s two types of complexity that that you know we could talk about here there’s the actual complexity of the mission which again in generally is not going to be super complex but what is complex is yet you’re dealing with human beings who have you know all these variables emotions and problems and issues and Egos and that’s the complexity in anything and so that’s from a leadership perspective that’s what I found to be always the more challenging thing you know that’s always the more challenging thing is dealing with people and getting people to you know conduct operations or carry out missions in a way that is most efficient most effective especially when you know they could get killed doing it and you know you’re asking guys to do things that are very very dangerous where they know they could die and so that’s what’s complex that’s what’s complex and and it transfers over to the business world where you’ve got to get you know a group of people it’s the same thing you’ve got to get a group of people to carry out a mission and that you know in the most and effective manner so they both have that in common and I think that is usually the more complex piece is the leadership of human beings sure well I mean it’s U makes me think of um I guess custom a who worked with Tyson for so long and really took him to his first uh world championship belt he said you know everyone has planed until they get hit in the face and I think that when you have something’s very simple on paper but there are a lot of unknown or uncontrollable variables the plan is just a starting point but then you have to adjust in the field and obviously when the stakes are as high as they are uh when you were deployed um I I can see how that would be infinitely complex potentially you know depending on on how sideways things go how did you become a seal what’s what’s the story of you becoming a seal well I grew up in New England and I actually grew up in a little town in the sticks of New England and I was a kind of a rebellious kid kid in fact I was a pretty significantly rebellious kid and and I know it seems counterintuitive but when you grow up in New England um one of the most rebellious things that a human being can do is join the military and almost the the ultra rebellious thing you could do because you know it’s very uh you know I grew up with a bunch of hippies you know the kids were hippies they were dead heads they were smoking pot and I was not into that and I was so so they thought they were rebellious because they were smoking pot and doing acid and whatnot and uh I don’t know you tell me who was more rebellious cuz I ended up becoming a Commando for my whole life I think the the the sort of pot and hacky sack scene I’ve spent a lot of time in Vermont in New Hampshire that that seems kind of par for the course it’s like sort of conformist Rebellion uh but the uh and what was the path that you took then so was at what point did you enlist so I actually uh 1989 and Panama happened the invasion of Panama happened and four seals were killed there and when I saw that in the paper I was I guess the word would be ashamed that I was not there I you know the Vietnam War was over so we weren’t seeing headlines all the time and all of a sudden there’s guys that were dying for the for for our country and I was not there and right after that I went down to the recruiting station and said I wanted to be a seal and what happens after that so then you know I went to boot camp which is Navy boot camp got done with boot camp and is boot boot camp is separate from buds it is it is separate and then you go to a school where you learn a Navy trade and then you start buds so started buds in I think it was April of 1991 so this was right after the Gulf War so from my perspective leading up to the Gulf War there you know there were some reports remember hearing them on the news they’re saying there’s going to be 40,000 casualties in the first 24 hours I don’t know if you remember that but I remember that I don’t remember that I remember that cuz I was in the military and I was going to Seal training I was in China when I saw the announcement on television so so here I am thinking okay this is going to be I’m going to get some you know I’m GNA I’m going to go to war you know all these guys are going to get hurt and injured killed and I’m going to go to war and the war kicks off and 72 hours later it’s over and I hadn’t even started Seal training yet so I was you know pretty bummed out I know that sounds crazy but you know I was pretty bummed out because that’s what I wanted to do with my life was be in combat and be some kind of warrior and now the chance had just dissipated in 72 hours uh but you know it was the reality of what was happening so went to Seal training went through and went over to Seal Team One and in let’s say boot camp just for people listening and for myself quite quite frankly who are not familiar with what happens in these different phases does does uh is the object what is the objective of boot camp in in the in in uh in the case of the boot camp that you uh attended and then buds for instance because I think a lot of people are familiar with the term like hell week and they think of buds as a disqualifying facee right the objective is to weed out the people who who aren’t suitable for combat or leadership or fill in the blank but what what what are what are the objectives of boot camp so boot camp is to get a civil turn a civilian into a military human and you know they teach you all this basic stuff I’d say the key thing that they teach you in Navy boot camp is attention to detail so you’ve got to do all these tasks because if you’re in the Navy you’re working on an aircraft and if you make a mistake working on the aircraft people die so it’s very attention and detail oriented and they just teach you the basic structure of the military and imprint that on your brain right and then and then Seal training is is what it is what you said it is it’s weeding people out and what is the of the say incoming an apologize I’m going to Mas the terminology here but of the incoming class how many people go into Buds and how many people make it out the other end it’s it’s it’s about an 80% attrition rate 80% attrition So 20% make it through yep and uh do you have to ring a bell is that an actual thing how does that work could you describe the yeah they have a bell and if you want to quit you can quit at any time and if you want to quit you walk over to this Bell that they carry on all the runs and they have in the back of a truck and and if you want to quit you go over and ring the bell and then you’re done then you’re done what did you find most challenging personally in the buds training if anything you know the thing with buds is um you know I was not good at anything I wasn’t great at anything I couldn’t run fast I couldn’t swim fast but I was like okay at everything which is actually better because you didn’t have a single failure point I didn’t have these areas of weakness of huge weak now again I was not believe me I’m not saying I was great at at anything cuz I really wasn’t I finish the middle of the pack on a run or the middle of the pack of the swim uh there were some guys you know a couple guys that I remember that were at the other end of the spectrum we had a guy that played you know college NCAA water polo and he was a phenomenal athlete and he quit because he couldn’t get through the obstacle course I had another guy in my class that was a uh was on was an Olympic gymnast alternate and he quit because the water you know doing the stuff in the water got to him so for me luckily I grew up in the water and I grew up in New England so I was used to the cold that didn’t do anything to me and you know all you had to do was get The Passing and put out as hard as you can you know like for the runs I had to run as hard as I could to pass the runs it was a Sprint uh because you couldn’t modulate you didn’t know how long the runs really were they’d say they were four miles but you had no idea what they were actually going to be so you just had to run as hard as you possibly could that’s what I had to do right that’s got to be uh quite a mind trip I mean to start a a run when it’s not a primary strength and know you have to go all out without having any idea of the length well you know it was going to be around four miles I don’t want to make it sound like it we had no idea but it was um you know we it’ be it’d be 4 and a half miles you know 4 and 3/4 miles or whatever did the people who made it through the 20% who made it through buds um did the people who showed the most promise in buds end up performing best in the field not necessarily because buds isn’t is a much more athletic um event you know it’s about athleticism a lot of it a lot of it is also you know don’t quit and you know I hear some people say everybody thinks about quitting during SEAL training and I I did absolutely did not think about quitting at any time you know there was nothing if they could have killed me and it would have been fine but I definitely wasn’t going to quit and but when you get to the Seal team yeah there was some guys that that you that were studs athletically but they were not great seals when they got to teams and there’s also guys that are studs athletically that were studs in the SEAL Teams so it’s it’s hard to put a a scientific answer around that one yeah we’ll come back to the training because I just I I loved talking about you any types of commonalities or patterns that you’ve spotted in a couple of different areas but but um going to ask you about the bottle the the Battle of ratti but I I want to first ask where did you get this mental toughness so this this not thinking of quitting even if it killed you was that developed through Athletics as a kid through something else is is your entire family like that I mean where did that where did that come from where did that drive and and stick toess come from I’m not 100% sure um some of it you know I remember you know my dad was definitely you’re not allowed to quit at anything ever so that leaves a mark right sure uh also I think that you know I grew up and I I started listening to you know hardcore music and I had a hardcore attitude and so I think that growing up under that influence you know that and watching war movies and you know a product of of that you know of that influence of those mantras that you’d hear in some hardcore song that’s about you know getting after it and I think that that left a mark as well MH uh could you describe the Battle of radi and uh explain what that is for people who may not even recognize the name radi so the Battle of raditi so ratti is a city in Western Iraq in a state or a province called Alamar province which is the largest province in Iraq and romadi is the capital city MH and the Battle of ratti that that I fought in was in 2006 and at that time most of the or many of the insurgents had been pushed out of Baghdad many of them had been pushed out of fujia because the Marine Corps did a very uh substantial effort through fujia and cleared it out and a lot of those enemy had gone to raditi so in the summer of 2006 the epicenter of the Insurgency was in ratti and so that’s where my seal task unit deployed to and that’s where we fought how long were you there we were there for 6 months for six months how would you how would you describe that experience to people and I know that’s a very broad question but for for for lack of a better way to to approach it CU I mean we can we can really peel back the layers but when people ask you what was that like how do you answer that well for one thing it was my second deployment to Iraq so my first deployment to Iraq was all completely different in that the Insurgency hadn’t been really truly established yet and we as a country this is 2003 2004 and so we were doing very well you know at least everyone thought we were and we were winning and you know I always talk about that deployment like we were rock stars cuz we’d you know 1:00 in the morning we’d drive out of the gate and go capture a bad guy and bring him back at 3:00 in the morning and it was like we were rock stars you know we um we had such a tactical advantage over the enemy and it was just pretty pretty easy MH we always worked with seals only it was just it was just easy um tough of course I’m not I shouldn’t say easy but it was less challenging and and on that deployment it was like we won every thing and we we felt great you know we felt great about what we did we felt like we accomplished our mission and you know if those were the challenges of combat as an individual I felt like I did a good job right you were well equipped I did a good job and and my troth did my platoon did a good job we did a good job and it was it seemed like we passed a test you know like cuz you know at that time we hadn’t had sustained combat operations for a long time in the seel teams so we felt pretty badass so now you fast forward to rat in 2006 it is completely different there are insurgents that actually control a majority of the city they are have complete freedom to maneuver they are terrorizing and I don’t use that term lightly they are terrorizing they are skinning people alive they are beheading people they’re doing what you see on TV right now with ISIS they’re doing that the civilian population is horrified and there are 30 to 50 enemy attacks a day in the city of romadi there are route Michigan which is a road that ran from east to west through radi which was Loosely controlled by Americans would have 7 to 10 IEDs attacks IED attacks a day so this is the statistically the most ided Road in all of Iraq and it’s three miles long improvised explosive device improvised explosive device so these are roadside bombs that completely caused the majority of casualties in the war in Iraq and so we get there you know the the buildings are rubbled out the buildings have bullet holes in them there’s wrecked vehicles on the streets there’s giant craters in the streets from IEDs and on top of all that on an almost daily basis you’re going to some kind of a memorial ceremony for an American Soldier or an American Marine that’s been killed in combat and we rolled into that and right away I knew this is completely different situation and we are going to fight a completely different type of battle here were the uh in this case I mean looking at your opponents were they better trained or did they just have a sort of territorial and movement Advantage um that that made it more difficult for you guys they had both they had both they had both so there was a former military base former Iraqi military base so you so you had a lot of former regime people there soldiers former soldiers that were there they definitely controlled the terrain without question they acted they were allowed to fight a completely different way than us and by that I mean they have no rules right so you’re fighting against someone that has no rules and you know they don’t care about collateral damage we are we are very careful about collateral damage they don’t care just to Define that you mean taking out civilians people who are civilian casualties means nothing to them destroying a building means nothing to them um killing each other so accidentally shooting or suicide bombers I mean there suicide bombers on the regular in ratti and so they have no rules and so that gave them an advantage as well now tactically they did what we did so for example you know if we get into a bad firefight we’ll call for reinforcements reinforcements will come to help us we would watch them do the exact same thing if we had someone get wounded we would call for a casualty evacuation they’d come and pick them up and take them back to the field medical facility we would watch them do the exact same thing so they had Communications they had plans they they would they would hit with complex attacks that would be coordinated throughout the city so at one time they would attack three or four different Coalition outposts in in the city or on the outskirts of the city all coordinated you know not only amongst themselves so the separate attacks would be coordinated but the individual attacks would be coordinated where they were vicious usually ending you know starting with machine gun f and then rocket propelled grenades and then their goal always was to get a suicide vehicle a suicide vehicle bomb and drive it right into the compound and detonate and kill as many people as possible and they did this on the regular in in that type of well what was the uh what was your unit what was your unit known as Seal Team 3 task unit Bruiser and how many people were in that unit so in that unit you got about 35 seals and then we have another 70 support people so these are people that you know help us fix our vehicles get our intelligence man our radios and all that so so you got about a pretty big pretty big contingent of support people they’re not seals they’re seal support got it so about roughly like 100 105 people in total do those 35 seals uh do they all directly report to you so in of those 35 seals there’s two seal platoon with you know 16 guys each and then we have a small headquarters element myself and a couple other guys got it and that was the most decorated Special Operations unit in the Iraq War it was what what separates a good Commander from a great commander in an environment like that out of the gate you know my immediate answer is humility because you’re in a situation like that there’s no way that you know everything it just it’s not possible and so you have to be humble enough to you know reach out ask people for advice there had been a there had been conventional units so big army units you know um on the ground for years and when we got there there had been a unit on the ground the 228 uh iron soldiers from Penn I’m just giving them some props right now cuz they were awesome and they they’ been on the ground for 14 months fighting so we went to those guys and we you know said okay what how can we help what can we do what advice do you have for us uh we wanted to learn what they knew and I think that that was a big piece of it and also you know I had an open mind when it came to the Strategic Mission that we were trying to accomplish because for many years what seal and special operations and the conventional units were doing was going out in the neighborhoods grabbing bad guys and coming back to their bases and after three years of that the enemy attacks had gone up 300% so clearly something was not working and the the Brigade that came in and took over again I’m going to give some uh huge compliments to the 11 ad under Colonel Shawn McFarland they came in with a amazing strategy which was C clear hold and build which meant you got these bad neighborhoods that are owned by the enemy and okay we’re going to go in there and we’re going to stay there and that was a a very different strategy than anyone had used and so that’s the Seas that’s the what the Seas clear hold and build so you go into these enemy territories and you actually take over a building or two buildings or three buildings and you make them your house make them your fort and so that so that’s what we did and again so from my perspective uh you know for col McFarland and the rest of the Battalion commanders and all those commanders to have this open mind to try out a new a completely new strategy which was very very dangerous very dangerous I mean I’m I’m not an expert that sounds very risky it was extremely risky and you know there was a a huge price was paid um the casualties were very significant and very horrifying now despite that overall was that an effective strategy it absolutely was that was just the price that it exacted it absolutely was so by the time I left the the strategy hadn’t we hadn’t seen the results yet I left October 21st 2006 by and and there was still about 30 to 50 enemy attacks a day about 5 months after we left the enemy attacks were down to one a day two a day from what was from 30 to 50 wow and then and then 6 months later it was you know down to one a week and then one a month and then soon you know by 2007 raditi was the safest place in Iraq I mean if excluding maybe the kurd controlled area up in the north and do you attribute that to anything uh else outside of this uh this strategy the the the Seas I’m apologizing that I’m forgetting the the others but occupying these buildings or areas and making them your home for a period of time were there other uh tactical decisions or strategies contributed to that decrease so the other well obviously the other huge piece of this is the men and women that were fighting and God bless them all because it was a hell of a fight and like I said there was significant casualties and the other Focus now was to take back the neighborhoods and in that secure the populace so in other Wars you know you say okay here’s our strategic objective is to take this this hill or take this Airfield or or what or what have you in this one the goal the Strategic goal was to secure the populace to make sure that the populace was safe because once the populace was safe then it was okay now we’re going to give you some food we’re going to give you some water we have Iraqi troops with us we so we worked all the time with Iraqi troops and they’re speaking the same language and it took a very short amount of time before that barrier got broken down and the local populace of raditi turned again the insurgents because they were no longer feared them and so that was the other huge Tipping Point was getting the the local populace of of ratti on the side of the Coalition I imagine that would give you a I mean an enormous informational Advantage absolutely the so it sounds like you have humility and openness to modifying pre-existing strategies uh but then there’s also an experimental piece it sounds like I mean how was the how was the first uh experiment conducted uh or how did it come to pass and be implemented um that you would go in and occupy and test out that particular approach because it seems like were there other uh experiments like that I know I just asked two questions but uh I’m just trying to figure out in a military structure and I haven’t been exposed to that where I’m sure there are a lot there’s a there’s a lot of command uh structures in place um were you given a lot of latitude to experiment in that way or did it require a lot of process so let let me give you a I’ll try and give a concise answer doesn’t have to be conc this is you’re you know you’re going deep right now oh yeah which is fine uh because I guess it’s your podcast so I I’ll take it back to a place called Alim where the Marines did a big sweep through Alim and at some point when they went through Alim the local populace started saying hey there’s bad guys over there hey there’s bad guys in that building down there go get them too so there was a little thought about that now there was a uh place in north of raditi called tfar which there’s a great uh legendary Army commander and I’ll have mcms and I got to look that up because I I think I’m I think I’m missing it yeah that’s okay and people in the show notes can also um they can also do McMaster the guy’s legendary guy but he ran this Seas clear and hold strategy up in tfar and it was very effective and again this is pre- surg that was 20052 2006 Colonel McFarland went and took over for him in tfar and saw you know got the turnover and understood what had happened and then Colonel McFarland got the task once McMaster left to come down to raditi and he said you know I’m going to do the same thing there and so that’s what he did and you know it was you know one thing that’s interesting is it’s not a movie and so everything was not perfect and you’d push into some of these neighborhoods and it was fierce fierce fighting and you know you take casualties and I think that Colonel McFarland understood that deeply and he also had a vision for what the victory was going to look like so those those pieces and and pushing in you know the first time it was like hey here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to go into this neighborhood that’s controlled by the insurgents and move in mhm and in a in a in a battle such as uh you know uh raditi how do you define objectives um in the longer term not necessarily on on a nightly basis but in the longer term so that you can focus the efforts and and sustain the morale for that matter right and that’s that’s actually a simple question you know okay here’s what we’re going to do 3 days from now we’re going to go into this neighborhood we’re going to establish a combat Outpost and and that’s what we’re going to focus on for the next 3 days and then once we get that thing established guess what we’re going to spend a you know four or five days there and then we’re going to do it again and Grand picture you know strategic Vision here’s what it’s going to look like we’re going to have combat outposts all over ratti that are going to be controlled by Americans with Iraqi soldiers in them that can go out and talk to the local populace and we can secure the city so it was it was as simple as that now you take that down a level to let’s say my seal platoon one of my seal platoon and they’d be saying okay here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to go and take this particular building and then we’re going to cover for the conventional units as they come in in a very exposed way because when you build these combat outposts you’re literally doing a construction project in the middle of a combat zone so These Guys these Brave Army Engineers are standing with you know a hammer in their hand full body armor and a you know reinforcing these buildings loading sandbags building barricades and you know this is while we’re being attacked wow and so those guys you know like I said I I can never give enough credit to the units that we worked there in raditi they were phenomenal and brave and what we would do is while they were doing those missions building out those combat outposts we would go out to The High Ground surrounding the combat Outpost so we’d sneak out into the areas surrounding the combat Outpost so now when the enemy came to attack the combat Outpost we would kill them right and they didn’t know where we were in the beginning and eventually you know they’d figure out where we were and and come attack what um was the sort of division of expertise like among the 35 seals uh under your command in so much as and again I I I I have to apologize because my what I know of seals some of it has come from guys who’ve been deployed um who who are friends of mine but a lot of it comes from seeing films right I mean it’s it’s a lot of the exposure that civilians have here but uh and some people say like oh yeah that that guy’s a door kicker you know this guy’s this this guy is that how did the the responsibilities break down U across those 35 you know it’s it’s it’s a seal two seal platoon each SE platoon has a a singular leader that’s in charge of the whole platoon and he’s got some subordinate leadership underneath him and then you’ve got these guys that are have their specialty craft whether they’re snipers whether they’re medic guys Corman whether they’re breachers which are guys that blow blow things up blow open doors uh Riflemen grenadiers uh Point men so you’ve got these various um skill sets inside what say uh I apologize The Rifleman and then what was the other word Grenadier are they the same no there’s two different it it depends you know so is basically a guy with a rifle which we generally wouldn’t have because almost every guy in a seal platoon is doing something other than just shooting his gun like I said he’s a Radioman so he’s calling in for fire calling tanks calling casualty evacuation anything like that the sniper is being a sniper the machine Gunners are machine Gunners uh a Grenadier lobs gr grenades at people ah all right so so that’s that’s what a seal platoon is now the experience level in a seal platoon is you know you’ve got guys that have never deployed before and we had probably out of 30 30 whatever guys we probably had a dozen that had never deployed before so their first deployment to Iraq and it was you know pretty epic first deployment to Iraq um and then you’ve got guys that have varying level of experience inside the platoon and you know some guys had deployed to Iraq one two or three times and that’s probably the level of experience and did you have um what were the size of groups that would go out and say a nightly raid or something like that and again I apologize I’m playing the civilian role here so I’m not going to get everything right but like what do the the would the core group be sort of like a six or seven we would task organized depending on the mission so if you it’s important to remember that we were working with Iraqi forces so we had these other people with us that we could use as bodies to do you know some of what some of the work right some of the work and so you know what we’d send six seven eight nine 10 seals out with 8 10 12 20 40 Iraqis and and then it’s the whole spectrum because sometimes we’d send an entire seal platoon out you know 16 guys with 40 Iraqi soldiers or 50 Iraqi soldiers and sometimes we’d send you know five seals out with five Iraqi soldiers to do some kind of an OverWatch position little smaller but you know you we still had a a minimum that we we needed to take out what is an OverWatch position OverWatch position is kind of what I talked about earlier where you get the high ground or maybe not maybe not necessarily The High Ground but often The High Ground that’s the Tactical that’s the Tactical advantageous position on the battlefield is to be on The High Ground who are other people uh in the military alive or dead us or elsewhere um who you really respect as uh sort of strategists or tacticians obviously I talked about uh Colonel Shawn McFarland who was just fantastic and you know he was he was and I don’t know if I’m necessarily right on this but you know General Petraeus uh who wrote the manual on counterinsurgency so he’s obvious and he you know orchestrated The Surge and he’s uh brilliant and you know in my opinion was you know the critical player in in really turning the rest of the war again we were pre-surge and but I think they used the success in ratti as a reason to uh to sell the Serge like we can do this in other places we did it in ratti so you know from my perspective both those guys were uh were just outstanding and when when you look at the reason I was asking about the the smaller groups that are sent out say the the 8 to 10 seals within the uh the Iraqi um colleagues uh what distinguishes a good leader in that type of situation or in buds or elsewhere I mean what what what have you observed and learned about what makes a good leader versus a good or mediocre or a bad leader again it’s it’s the the immediate answer that comes to mind is humility because you’ve got to be humble and you you’ve got to be coachable you know that we would fire guys later when I was running training we would fire a couple leaders in every from every Seal Team because they they couldn’t they couldn’t lead and 99.9% of the time it was wasn’t a question of their ability it was a question of their ability to listen and their ability to step outside and see that maybe there’s a better way to do things uh so that’s that’s number one and number two I would say is a an individual who is balanced and you know I talk about there’s there’s a phrase that I use it’s the dichotomy of leadership so lead in a leadership situation you’re constantly balancing these opposing forces so do you have to be aggressive absolutely can you be too aggressive yes you can um can you be do you need to be courageous yes you do can you be fool hearty and get people killed absolutely so there’s all these balances can you be too close to your men yes you can can you be not close enough yes you can can you be too robotic yes you can can you be too emotional absolutely so what I find the best leaders they have this ability to balance all those opposing forces and and usually when you do find a problem you know if you’re if you’re making if you realize that your leadership isn’t working generally you can look and say oh I’m going too far in One Direction on this particular uh Force this dichotomy of leadership I’m going too far I’m being being overbearing I’m micromanaging you know micromanaging great one right you you can obviously micromanage your people and they won’t act they won’t do anything on their own they won’t take any initiative and that’s horrible the other end is you cannot give them the guidance that they need and and not pay close enough attention to them and now they don’t know what the mission is or what they’re doing so there’s all these dichotomies that you have to balance as a leader and you know I think that between being humble and and balancing all those dichotomies of leadership is is what makes a good leader and how would say the ability to listen and be coachable um what would be an example of how that manifests itself just how you would observe that and say that’s a guy who’s good at uh being humble and coachable or the opposite right like so I’m looking for the things that you would observe or hear where you’d be like you know what I think we might have to let that guy go yeah you’d see a guy in again now we’re going back to training we put these guys through very um realistic and challenging training to say the least and I know if there’s any guys that went through training when I was running it right now they’re chuckling because it was very realistic psychotic and we put so much pressure on these guys and overwhelm them and you know a good leader would come back and say I I lost it I didn’t control it I didn’t I I didn’t do a good job I I didn’t see what was happening I got too absorbed in this little tiny tactical situation that was right in front of me they they’ either they’d make those criticisms themselves about themselves or they’d say what did I do wrong and when you told them they’d nod their head they’d pull out their notebook they’d take notes and and that right there you know that’s a guy that’s going to that’s going to make it that’s going to do it right and then you get the guy that comes in and he’s immediately saying uh you know you say well what’ you think of the operation or and if it was a disaster you’d say go was a disaster and you go well what went wrong and immediately it’s well my assault team leader didn’t do X and my Mobility Commander didn’t do y and I told those guys I wanted him to over there and they didn’t go there finger pointing immediately finger pointing and that’s just a Telltale sign you’ve got a guy that’s not humble enough and and coachable and it’s it’s an awful thing and you can try and you can try and change people and sometimes they would change but it’s difficult to get them to change you know that’s some people are are born with that characteristic and and it’s it’s a bummer to see because it’s if you can’t fix fix them you can’t fix them right and they’re not going to listen to anybody well it sounds like uh self-awareness is also a big component of that to have the the awareness to kind of step outside and objectively evaluate yourself I you know I call it Detachment and you know that’s one of the things that early on in my leadership career I I actually remember when it happened I was probably 20 something years 22 or 23 years old I was in my I was in my first seal platoon and we come up we’re on an oil rig in California doing some training and we come up on this level of this oil rig and it’s never been in an oil rig before they’re very complex there’s gear and boxes and just stuff everywhere on these levels and their see-through you can see through the floors and you can still it’s it’s complex environment we come up and we all get on on this platform on this level and everybody freezes and I’m kind of waiting and I’m a new guy so I don’t really you know I don’t feel like I should be doing anything but then I said to myself you know somebody’s got to do something so I just what’s called high ported my gun so I just lifted my gun up towards the air like I’m not I’m not a shooter right now and I took one step back off the line and I looked around and I saw what the picture was and I just said you know hold left move right and and everybody heard it and they did it and I said to myself hm you know there’s that that that’s what you need to do and so I realized that detaching yourself from the situation so you could observe it so you can see what’s happening is absolutely critical and and now you know when I talk to Executives or mid-level managers I explain to them that I’m doing that all the time I I it sounds horrible but it’s almost like sometimes I’m not a participant in my own life I’m an observer of that guy that’s doing it so if I’m having a conversation with you and and you know we’re trying to discuss a point and I’m watching and saying wait are you being too emotional right now you know wait a second look at him he you cuz I can’t I’m not reading you correctly if I’m seeing you through my own emotion or ego I can’t really see what you’re thinking but if I step out of that and now I’m seeing I see the real you and if you are getting angry if your ego is getting hurt if you’re about to Cave because you’re just fed up with me whereas if I’m you know raging in my own head I might miss all of that and so that Detachment that takes place as a leader is critical and and you’re 100% right on that how do you instill that or try to teach that is that is is that something people I I feel like that maybe more than the humility seems to be a coachable skill um and the part of the reason I say that is because I found that whether it’s like cognitive behavioral therapy or stoic philosophy for that matter you can in small increments condition people to have less of an extreme emotional response and to try to observe themselves and I suppose that there’s some Buddhist thought that would translate to that as well but how do you teach how do you help teach someone that ability to detach so what we did to teach them was put them under extraordinary pressure where to fail to detach from the situation and step up and away from the problem would result in failure and I I had a great experience where one of my uh one of the a guy that actually took my job over as the troop commander and a very close friend of mine he he got hurt so he was he was going through the training now and I was running the training and we were going out to a place called Nyland California to do land Warfare and again this is Desert operations you’re patrolling in long distances you’re hitting targets and we have uh like highlevel laser tag guns that we use to shoot and and it’s very we we put a lot of pressure on people there’s helicopters there’s smoke there’s bombs there’s all kinds of stuff happening and this guy this buddy of mine he was supposed to be commanding it all but he had broken his neck oh God about I don’t know six weeks prior to this was that on like a ropes course or it was it was uh climbing a ship and a guy above him fell and broke his neck and so this guy who’s who had been in ratti with me and you know did an outstanding job and and amazing effort and was Brave as to a fault you know we’re lucky he’s here so he so so the land Warfare training takes place and he comes out and I said hey just come out and watch with me and so he comes out and you know we’re we’re watching and we’re out on one of these field training exercises so all this Mayhem starts and there’s bad guys up in the hills and there’s bombs going off and there’s smoke everywhere and but from our position which we were standing next to the guys that were in it and and he looks at me and he says you know it’s so easy when you’re not in it and I said this is how it was for me when we went through I was up here and he was like a light bulb went off you know he said I I saw you you know like he would he kind of saw me like that and said how does he know what’s happening right so the ability easy in so much as when you’re the outsid are looking in you can see what to do what’s going wrong and when you did it you were not necessarily physically removing yourself but sort of mentally yes pulling the perspective back so you could observe it so so if you take someone like your your uh your friend who has this realization like oh holy okay that explains a lot because if you could create this perspective you would have a huge tactical Advantage um what type of of uh exercise would you put someone through where the consequences were so significant that they would be forced to detach in that way I mean these are just exercises that we do and you know like I said so we would use lasers we have this Advanced laser tag system where you get you can get shot at 300 meters and if you go if you get shot at an island and your beeper goes off and says you’re dead then you’re dead right and you’re going to have to get carried out by your buddies which is awful and you’re going to get they’re going to get hurt sprained ankles everything else it’s a nightmare and then and they’re also now they can’t maneuver as well so now what happens when they get attacked again which they’re going to because it’s going to be Murphy’s Law out there and the the problems compound and if the leaders get bogged down in those problems and don’t step back we’ll literally we would kill all of them right and they’d come back with their with their heads down and say you know what the hell just happened and what can we do better and then you know we’ we’ we’d have this talk with them and you know it’s one of those things it’s like when you it’s like when you’re growing up and you don’t listen to anybody not that you don’t listen to people but some lessons you have to learn you know through life and through experience and so that happened and guys would you know guys at varying levels some of them would would be able to go oh I just saw it okay now I can make this happen and that would happen as well where uh I would see their you know in in like in Terminator when the beginning of the ter they said you know on August 27th 2016 the the machines became aware you could see their leadership switch happen and all of a sudden they’d go boom and and then I would know my job was done and they’d step up they’ they’ they’ take a step back from the situation they would look around they’d observe they wouldn’t they’d make good decisions and good calls and then watch them progress out of it and finish the problem and and do well and then I I knew that I had done my job they’d become aware they became aware As Leaders yeah so I um this is in my mind at least related to not panicking or at least being able to think in the midst of panic uh and there’s so many examples of this I mean in sports and elsewhere but I remember doing some uh Convoy and evasive driving training with a bunch of executive types I mean these are not military guys uh just really for the experience and part of the training involved splitting up into two teams having sort of an ambush team and trying to go get a broken down car with a person passed out inside they might be dead they might be passed out back through uh basically a Finish Line and uh we got to pick teams and I happened to be I guess one one team leader and I picked the guy who had the best evasive driving skills to be sort of the victor one driver and then I was in the passenger side with comms and everybody had paintball guns and uh we had to keep the passenger side and driver side windows down so we could get nailed and uh there were also drivers trying to like take us off the road and whatnot in any case as soon as the paintball started flying this guy just gunned it in a straight line no response to comms no response to anything even though under the pressure of sort of mock competition with the evasive driving and so on within cones he’d been spectacular how do you either pick people who are less likely to have that that just go into a a blind kind of Red Zone where they’re unresponsive uh or uh prepare people and condition them so they can actually function when the starts hitting the fan and that’s exactly right what you just said we desensitize them to being in horrible situations and we condition them and work with keep putting that pressure on them until they can get through it mhm got it so it’s just it’s a a matter of exposure and most most guys do you know most most guys they go okay I’m I’m used to this and then and then it’ll be up a level it for real it’ll be up a level so you’ll and most guys will be good there too you’ll have a couple Fallout there yeah but uh but the SEAL Teams does a very good job of applying that pressure and conditioning you and desensitizing you to horrible situ situations so that you can deal with it when it comes uh so I want to talk a little bit we’re just going to shift gears a little bit and I know we’re going to bounce around a lot but so I I’ve uh I’ve heard that I’ve heard of your workouts uh when you’re deployed and one guy said I don’t know if this is true that you would uh you know roll with like 20 guys in a platoon as as a workout and just tap out like 20 guys is that true well yeah I mean you’re rolling with guys that don’t know anything and so in order to get good training in I would just have guys you know come in you know every 15 minutes and you know I I you know I remember this particularly when I was at Team two and I would just have the guys come in every 15 or 20 minutes and just you know roll with them and then another guy would come in so yeah but I mean I was you know better than them at Jiu-Jitsu and so it’s it’s not that I was any tougher I just knew more when you look at uh of course you know many very good competitors in Jiu-Jitsu MMA when you look at the the top performers in that world and then some of the top performers you’ve met in the seal world uh what are the commonalities if any let me talk about Jiu-Jitsu first sure uh one thing I noticed about Jiu-Jitsu is there are when we get to the when we get to the worldclass level of Jiu-Jitsu guys there is a stratification there between guys that have a natural god-given ability that is above and beyond normal human uh it’s above and beyond what a normal human being would do or should be able to do right and there’s not many of those people who would you put and who comes to mind when you think of that I I think um Hicks and Gracie who you know I’ve trained with him and yeah he’s I was I was a blue belt when I trained with him but you could feel that this guy is not normal uh Dean liser who’s my training partner forever and you know I’ve rolled with guys from all over the world and Dean liser is at another level I’ve never rolled with Marcelo Garcia but uh you know just from watching in competition you can see that he has that as well and then the next and and I mean that’s there’s not a large group people at that level and then the next level down is guys that train like maniacs and they’re great athletes and and that’s and they’re awesome too you know those guys are the world champions Etc um so that’s that’s my estimation and and having rolled with guys on both ends of the spectrum you know Dean is an example because Dean has won World Championships training a minuscule amount compared to you know what a normal person would have to train to get there which I don’t know if that’s a compliment or uh a uh you know a negative right but you know it’s it’s true yeah it’s uh now in in the SEAL Teams as far as the the high performers I think it’s the people that you know you it’s a certain level of focus I think and again a certain level of open-mindedness and a certain level of dedication to the task and to the craft that they’re dealing with and you get guys that are just super passionate about the job and if you’re super passionate about the job in the SEAL Teams you know there’s a really good chance you’re going to be one of the top performers because you’re going to put in all that extra effort to to do well what are you world class at um the people might not realize uh well first of all I think world class is a is a strong word it’s a strong word for I I I sorry to interrupt because I because I’d say I’m world class at uh you know just about nothing um and and as far as what people might not know about me one thing that’s interesting about me is I I live a fairly compartmentalized life where you know my Jiu-Jitsu friends would not meet my seal friends who would not meet the people that I work with in a leadership situation or in a in a civilian sector business world so there’s people that don’t know that you know I’m a really good Jiu-Jitsu player or that I work with big companies and help their leadership and so there’s that but if I had to say you know what uh the skill set that I have that I think helped me was number one taking complex things and making them simple and then being able to communicate that Simplicity to other people is number one and number two the ability that we already talked about to detach myself from situations emotionally and mentally usually not physically you have to be able to do it without detaching physically but th those those things would be what I would say my talents if I had any because you know I’m definitely not the fastest not the strongest not the uh not the most flexible or whatever and not the smartest but it seems like um you know it’s very interesting Mandana would say the same thing about like I’m not the best dancer I’m not the best singer I’m not the best this but I think like yourself she’s kind of a um what a fet tool player like a baseball player who can like hit for power hit for getting on base Can field etc etc etc I mean and it’s the collection of those tools that makes you say a world class Commander or something like that um what is your what do what do your morning routines look like on an Ideal day like what does the first 90 minutes of your day look like when do you wake up what does what does that look like so I wake up early I wake up at 4:45 um I like to have that psychological win over the enemy and you know for me that when I wake up in the morning and I don’t know why I’m thinking about the enemy and what they’re doing and I know I’m not active duty anymore but it’s still in there that there’s a guy that’s in a cave somewhere and he’s rocking back and forth and he’s got a machine gun in one hand and a and a grenade in the other hand and he’s waiting for me and we’re going to meet and when I wake up in the morning I’m thinking to myself what can I do to be ready for that moment which is coming which is coming and uh so that that propels me out of bed that and I I work out early in the morning uh so you wake up at 4:45 what’s the next thing aside from like brushing your teeth and doing the usual uh do the usual start working out and I try ideally I like to get done with my workout by the time the sun comes up and so now if there’s waves you know I live by the ocean so I’ll go surfing and get done with that and what does the morning workout what does a typical morning workout look like uh I I you know I do a lot of pull-ups push-ups and dips I deadlift and do squats I do Sprints I mean it’s everything that everybody knows it’s everything that everybody does right I swing kettle bells uh I do burpees you know it’s it’s all that and it’s like a 60-minute work out how long is it workout it depends it depends on what’s going on um I will I I’ll try and do some strength movements to be strong you know deadlifts cleans clean and jerks something like that uh to make myself stronger or even if it’s even if it’s something like just dead hang pull-ups and I’m just maxing out but I I I’ll do something like that to make myself stronger and sometimes that can take a while you know CU I’ll just want to relax and and you know hit singles or doubles um on deadlifts or cleans or whatever and then when I get done with that I’ll do some kind of uh some kind of metabolic conditioning of some kind you know I’ll be sprinting or rowing or swinging a kettle bell or you know lighter weight cleaning jerks for reps or something like that so that’s what it looks like for me so you finish training when the sun comes up hit the waves since they’re there which is a good policy and um what happens then you know I’ll I’ll come back and you know start doing normal human stuff um right that’s when work I you know I have I have a leadership and management consulting business so I’ll have clients to talk to I’ll have emails to push out um and and I’ll I’ll start taking care of that business I normally don’t get hungry until 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning so around 10 or 11 o’clock I start wanting you know to to start to graze on some food and I’ll do that and and then by by noon I’m I’m feeling pretty hungry like I need some lunch and uh what is is what does your diet generally look like generally looks like steak steak and chicken and salad paleo-ish yeah yeah yeah and and I’m no you know I’m no stranger to having some chocolate chip ice cream or some oval teen or whatever uh you know again I’m not I’m I’m not you know a competitive bodybuilder and so you know I eat some normal food right you can indulge when the when when the spirit moves you when you think of the word successful who are the first people or the first person that comes to mind so for me you know the the part of the world that I’ve seen is a very dark place it’s a dark place that’s what war is and when your job which my job was was to expand that darkness in many ways I mean it’s war is about killing people and so for me when I look to someone that successful it’s someone that brings some light into that Darkness so for me the first people that come to my head are Mark Lee who is one of my guys first seal killed in Iraq Mike Monsour one of my guys second seal killed in Iraq postly awarded the Medal of Honor and Ryan job one of my guys wounded in Iraq blinded in both eyes made it home medically retired from the from the Navy married his high school sweetheart got her pregnant and finished his college degree and after his 22nd surgery to repair the damage that was done to his his head and face there were complications and he died as well but all of those guys in all that Darkness they did things they they made a sacrifice that was completely selfless and to do that and to live and fight and die Like a Warrior that to me is success and those guys are my heroes what do you what do you struggle with and I I asked that because uh I mean we’ve we’ve only just met but it’s hard for me as a civilian to Fathom what what you and your friends have been through uh impossible for me to Fathom um and I mean it makes me just feel ashamed for ever complaining about a bad day or a hard day uh given what you guys have experienced and the stakes that are involved and the sacrifices and the you know sadness and tragedy that is uh a part of that job uh what what do you struggle with uh whether it’s in the business sphere or just in in life in general if you’re open to talking about it because I certainly I know that uh I used to you know when I had these um icons in my head I was like oh my God Richard Branson he’s got it all figured out he’s doing everything perfectly he’s just he’s on cruise control hitting home runs every time he gets it bat and as I’ve slowly gotten to know not necessarily Branson directly although I have met him before I realized like people all have and this is something that you talked about the Detachment you know when I find myself I’ve always had kind of impatience and anger issues and it’s helped me to be aggressive in sport and in business and in negotiation but it’s also caused some problems for me and um but I’ve realized that one of the ways I can tone that down is by realizing like everybody had everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about uh in some way but what what are the things that uh that you find difficult or that you struggle with or have struggled with it’s it’s it’s an interesting question because and this is a filler answer in case you couldn’t tell that because when I start off with it’s an interesting question that means I’m not really quite sure what to say um I’ve you know I’ve been I’ve been lucky I’ve been blessed I’ve had you know a a life that I would not trade with anyone in the world um when you talk about ramadi I that was the highlight of my life because I was Leading Men in combat which is something which was something that I always wanted to do and something that I felt that I was destined to do and when I was in that situation I knew that I I was doesn’t I don’t look back and say oh I wish I would have enjoyed that no I knew it then this is it this is this is what you have been waiting for your whole life and what you really have been preparing for your whole life and I was lucky to be there and I was lucky to have uh incredible guys to work with both in my unit and in the other units in the Army and the Marine Corps that we worked with I was lucky enough to have guys that were so brave and so dedicated and I I will use the word Fearless not that they didn’t have fear but that they overcame it all the time and so I’d say if there’s anything that I struggle with now it’s just that does anything else matter is there and the answer is no the answer is no nothing else matters nothing else is close and so you have to deal with that and and I don’t struggles a strong word because I don’t sit there at night you know wishing I was back well okay I do do that you know sometimes I I often wish I was back but I don’t dwell on it because it’s gone and I’m so happy that I could be part of it and that I was able to work with such tremendous guys and uh I try and keep their memory alive every day in my own head how did you when you were active um reconcile the risks that are inherent in that job with family with your family well first of all I actually when I had when I was young you know I I thought that I was going to die I thought I was going to die in combat there’s no war going on this is ignorant thought right this is Young stupid um you know unn knowledgeable idiot saying I’m only going to live to I’m never going to make it to 30 right and I was good with that CU I had you know nothing I was a single guy that was a wanted to go out and destroy the world you know that’s awesome then you know as I got older and I realized oh I’m actually going to live to be 30 and probably 40 and so I had to you know work through that um and you know what I got married along the way had kids and I actually when I had kids I actually felt more ready to die because you know I had left my I fulfilled my my I left I left children and so I actually felt like I was okay with that um which I guess that’s bad but you know men have been traveling and fighting for thousands and thousands of years since the beginning of mankind and I knew that as a warrior that’s okay and sometimes men don’t come home and the families drive on and that’s the way the world works so I didn’t really have much to reconcile there um now as far as division of time and you know having a family I I can tell you uh you know I was very lopsided and unbalanced in that situation you know I the SEAL Teams to me was everything and nothing else mattered well I shouldn’t say it didn’t matter but it was definitely on a much lower priority and I remember actually my wife sent me an email when I was on deployment and she you know she’s very independent doing her thing and she sends me an email that says something along the lines of of hey you know send us a picture of where you sleep fair enough you know they show the kids where where I sleep at night and so I went up to my room we had some old uh Saddam Palace that we had taken over not really a palace the Saddam house that we had taken over and that’s where we lived and I had the one of the rooms in this building and so I went up and I took some pictures some digital pictures of my bed and I looked at him and I said oh wait a second and I went into a folder that I had and I pulled it out and I took out pictures of My Wife and Kids and I hung them up on the wall and I took pictures and I sent those home and I took the pictures back down because I didn’t want to be thinking about My Wife and Kids when I had men’s lives at stake and that’s how I compartmentalized and did what I did what I had to do which was be dedicated to my guys to the mission and to the country and at that point in time you know it had to take priority over everything took priority over everything I mean my guys they had families they had to go home too I can’t be thinking about this other stuff so there’s a little reconciliation who are uh now that you’ve entered the uh the civilian world are there particular non-military leaders whether they’re CEOs or maybe outside of the private sector uh you admire or um looked to in some way as Role Models you know I you meet these guys and and girls and they are they a lot of them might as well have been in the SEAL Teams you know they’re aggressive they’re making things happen and yeah I admire and learn from them all the time you know and and I think they get the same thing from and that’s why I’m in business you know so uh absolutely there’s some you know America is the greatest country on Earth and you know capitalism is what makes this country one of the one of the things that makes this country so great and those folks that run these businesses are you know part of that fabric that makes America great so absolutely they’re they’re incredible people and and they have the same faults that seals have and and they make the same mistakes and they get they get involved emotionally with stuff and their ego gets in the way of course just like it happens with seals it happens with them and and they you know they make the same mistakes where they don’t explain the mission to their troops or they don’t break it down from a strategic level to a tactical level so that people on the front line can understand so it’s all the same mistakes and that’s again that’s kind of why we’re in business now right humans will be humans group dynamics unfortunately that is correct and you know when you when you were talking about um the Detachment it made me think of uh uh quite a few years ago but I had my first sort of frivolous lawsuit come in which completely paralyzed me I mean I was so intimidated and shocked and fearful and it ended up getting completely tossed out but it took a long time and a lot of money and I ended up developing migraines I started clenching my jaw to the point where I had these shooting pains and I had to get a mouthpiece and it caused a whole Cascade of health problems and issues and I remember talking to a number of my buddies who had been in business for decades and at very high levels and one of them I won’t give his full name away but Pete really hilarious uh but brilliantly effective executive he goes Timmy he’s like you’re too nice I should have sued you just because you should get used to it and he’s like sure it’s talking to me treating it like such a nonevent it was just such a non-event for him and I couldn’t compute it at the time but uh now I’ve just realized like some of these things are a cost of doing business and if you’re going to be aggressive and push the envelope and step into environments that are uncertain because that’s where a lot of rewards are potentially you’re going to deal with these things so now I’m at a point like I’ve been exposed to that enough times not necessarily frivolous losses but just legal headaches because that’s a sort of a side effect of having a very vigorous free market uh on one hand as you you have some legal complications and um what I’ve tried to figure out for myself uh spending time with people who have been deployed and done the realistic training that uh you you’ve referred to mean some of which is just beyond intense uh as as they’ve described it to me I’ve wanted to take myself out of this sort of keyboard uh Shackled experience from dayto day and expose myself to more of these stresses to try to toughen myself and inoculate myself against future uncertainty and things like that what are um what are skills or experiences that you think every man should have I mean there’s a whole there’s a whole list of those I’m interested because quite frankly I feel like and I’ve had female friends say this to me where they’re like you know I meet a lot of guys like I date a lot of guys but there just aren’t many men out there anymore which that we could dig really far into that and there’s it’s there’s all sorts of complicated sort of gender questions and topics that I could raise but just putting all that aside for the time being I think a lot of folks like myself even uh and I experienced this when I was doing the 4our chef and really got back into doing hunting and field dressing and trying to build things and working with fire and I was like wow I feel like I’m slowly becoming maybe barely manually literate you know compared to like my great-grandfather who was chopping wood every day building stuff fixing things that broke Etc um so what’s what would be on that list in your mind I mean if if guys are listening to this and you know what I want to toughen the up just a just a little bit you know if you went Bare Bones basic you’re talking food shelter and water right do you have the skills to bring those things to the table and make them happen I think that’s a very basic place to start I can tell you that from from my perspective and I I actually uh gave a speech at one of my buddy’s weddings and you know I said that there was three things in my life that made me feel like a man and when you when I say feel like a man it doesn’t mean Bow up and feel like a man it actually means the opposite it actually means I I’m confident enough that I don’t need to Bow up and I don’t need to Bow up meaning puff up your chest puff up my chest and I’m a badass yeah and uh the first one was was actually Jiu-Jitsu was learning how to fight and knowing that there’s not a question that if I get into an altercation I can handle myself I 100% that because when you’re when you don’t know Jiu-Jitsu or you don’t know how to fight then you question that in the back of your mind and how do you how do you answer that question you you act like an right you these are the guys that you know run around in a bar get in fights with people cuz they don’t know they don’t they’re not confident that they can handle themselves so that was number one number two is going into combat because again there was a big question mark of you don’t know for sure how you’re going to react in those situations and I felt pretty good that I knew how I was going to act but you know you need to you need to check the box and so I checked that box and I knew that I was going to do fine and then I did fine and then I was Brave and not scared and was able to detach myself and make decisions and make things happen so that was good and then the last one was getting married and having kids because now all of a sudden I have other humans that are directly relying on me for as their you know their soul kind of lead and you know realizing that this is the most important thing you have to make this the most important thing in your life and you’re out of that game too you know so you’re no longer trying to you’re no longer trying to impress you know a girl or whatever because you got a girl right and so there’s a there’s a level of you know I don’t care anymore you know that that is also nice so those those three things were for me were kind of the where I was able to say okay you know I’m good now let’s focus on being a good a good guy and moving forward but those were those are those are three good ones the the on the Jiu-Jitsu side I that’s the only one that I can that I can speak to having done um you know a little bit here and there and also Muay Thai and whatnot but I think that it’s it’s so valuable on so many levels because not only do you know you can handle yourself but if you think you’re a tough guy and you go to a good gym you get taught really quickly how untoughened and so uh I just remember for instance I was training at faex ages ago here in San Francisco and um you know one of the guys who was a trainer his name is n enn and he was a southpaw so I trained with him because I’m a southpaw the most unassuming little dude you’ve ever seen in your life Cavs the size of my torso but otherwise you would never guess in a million years and he had terrible fashion sense and so you’d wear these like huge baseball caps that would cover his entire head so he looked like he was about 7 years old he was he was only like 5’1 5’2 huge baggy t-shirt baggy pants so he just looked like average guy who’s going to be some type of manual laborer uh and people would mistake him for being Mexican and I just remember he went out to this bar because the gym was on clementino Street which was between Howard and fome I think around no I’m sorry yeah between Howard and fome between 5ifth and 6 which is a it was a terrible place to be when when U when I was training there and in fact Alex gong the owner was shot in the chest and killed MH um basically while I was there and uh by a guy stuck in traffic it’s an insane story but suffice to say he goes out to a bar and I was at a flying camp at the time with a bunch of other guys and this guy pulls a knife on one of the other trainers why who knows and so everybody kind of backs up and they’re like kind of two groups facing each other and one of the guys is like I’m going to you up and to end who looks like he’s like a tiny little guy and he just throws the nastiest round ass kick you can imagine like basically breaks the guy in half like just a Lego figure being broken by a gorilla and and then that was just the showstopper but it’s just I think once you train with people like that you’re like I am never going to pick a fight because you never know who the N is Right absolutely true and um and I I think it’s very uh it also that confidence and that humility I think transfers to so many other areas uh because you realize like wow you know I thought I was the cats meow I thought I was the king of the hill in in areas A B C D or e but you know what that’s probably not the case um the uh on the combat side of things um what are stressful experiences that a civilian might expose themselves to that could I know not perfectly simulate it but to perhaps give them that type of fear inoculation or or conditioning on some level I’m I think any of those you know rock climbing parachuting uh anything that has a real real danger to it which both those things can you know and do um I think those those can definitely help I would say those are those are a couple good examples sure we could sit here and brainstorm about it you know CU because as soon as you put simulation you know we could say paintball right but but there’s no re risk risk and paintball they’re just zero so it’s cool and you can definitely get somewhat conditioned to you know that that panic and that stress level because it hurts you get hit with the paintball you know ow ow ow but it’s not it’s not the fear of death which the fear of death is the uh is I guess the the real the real thing that we’re talking about I guess yeah you overcome that fear of death and then what what is there to be afraid of now right you know well you and I were uh you know we were sitting here we’re in my house and you noticed the Musashi that I have out over there this this historical novel about uh myamoto Musashi and I I think that um I don’t know where it came from and I can’t really pinpoint it but uh the reason I have that there is to remind me that if you’re constantly afraid of death I mean you’re paralyzed in so many facets of your life it really prohibits you from making even effective decisions right so one could say well you should love your family and have the photos up and it’s like well if I really want to love my family and go home to see my family maybe I shouldn’t have those up as something that’s going to occupy a part of my brain I need to be effective in the field for me and my men right no doubt about it so it’s thinking not about that first move that looks good on paper and everyone around you but thinking about the second the tertiary effect Etc um do you have um are there any books that you’ve gifted to other people uh uh or or what do you gift to someone there’s so for books yeah there’s I think there’s only one book that I’ve ever given and I’ve only given it to a couple people uh and that’s a book called about face by Colonel David hackworth and it is huge have you ever heard of it I haven’t and uh I was just looking for oh wait here’s my here’s my pad and and interestingly I looked for it to Day on on to see if I could download a digital copy and I don’t think it’s available digital which which surprised me so Colonel David hackworth was the tail end of World War II uh he was in Korea he was highly decorated in Korea he joined the like joined the merchant marines or something when he was 15 and got into the army again right after World War II so he kind of got raised by those World War II veterans and then he was in Korea and he was in Vietnam and he was just absolutely borderline woried by the men that he led and by some of the senior leadership and just a great book and he was a rebel you know and and he did question the way we were doing things and what’s controversial about him is that he’s the guy that said to Walter kronite or or he said he he’s the first guy in Vietnam that said we’re not going to win this thing and so he’s kind of you know blacklisted by much of the army but you know as you dig into that what he was really saying was we’re not going to win this thing if we keep fighting how we’re fighting he recognized that we needed to do a a significant paradigm shift in the strategy that we were executing over there and you know it’s like you you’ve heard hey we’ve never we never lost a tactical battle in Vietnam you’ve heard that right y and there’s plenty of people that will say that all day long but if you and I are leading a platoon and we take our platoon out and we hit a booby trap and it kills three of our guys or two of our guys and wounds another three and there’s no one to shoot at and we Medevac those guys and we come back to base who who who won that right and you know he recognized that so the metrics that were being used were sort of uh not not a smoke screen but they were at at best the wrong metrics I had that book next to my bed in radi and I literally read it every night I would you know that’s how I’d fall asleep I’d go up read a couple Pages you know just open any and you’d find something in every it was very comparable you know they were working with the the South Vietnamese Army and guess what they were corrupt and they were scared and they weren’t the best soldiers and we were working with Iraqis and guess what they were corrupt and they were scared and they weren’t the best there were so many parallels between the two and so that’s the book that I’ve given to some a couple close friends of mine that that you know I wanted them to have about face the other book that I really that I the other book that I’ve read multiple times is Blood Meridian Blood Meridian yeah I don’t know that you don’t know okay so it’s written by cor M McCarthy oh fantastic writer I so this is his best book and you know I was an English major in college and so you know I was forced to read all kinds of books and you know obviously Shakespeare is is is kind of the Pinnacle in my mind and this cor M McCarthy is the guy that I think actually has that and if you read Blood Meridian then there it is right and I think what what I find so gripping about it is you know I talked earlier about the darkness of the world and this is a historical novel based on a group called The glant and gang that were killing Indians and they ended up killing everybody uh if you had black hair your your scalp was going to be taken and that’s what it’s about and it’s completely epic and but it but for me it it showed it communicated to me a guy cormack McCarthy was able to show the darkness in humanity and there’s nothing good about the I mean there’s nothing Pleasant in any way shape or form in that book but that’s in many ways the world that I lived in do you think there is I I struggle this with this myself because part that and when I say struggle with what am I struggling with how much to voluntarily expose myself to Darkness because I have sort of ups and downs that I contend with and a lot of people in my family just hereditarily deal with this but I feel like on one hand I don’t want to be polyana is I don’t want to I don’t want to just put on my rose-colored glasses and believe that everything is okay everyone has everyone else’s best interest in mind right because I’ve had uh friends who’ve been kidnapped um I’ve had uh nothing that compares to what you’ve experienced but I’ve seen enough glimpses of this like brutish uh nastiness that on on one hand you know I wonder as a civilian should I not look at that stuff should I should I try to Shield myself you know develop a basic level of protection and and skills but otherwise Shield myself from it because it’s not my job to have to look that in the face and in fact it will darken my view of humanity or should I really like stare it directly in the eyes and recognize it for what it is and become acquainted with it and I don’t know why I think about this as much as I do maybe it’s because I have enough friends who’ve been in the military that it’s it’s sometimes a topic of conversation but what are your thoughts I think that in order to truly experience the light and the bright you have to see the darkness and I think if you Shield yourself from the darkness you’ll not appreciate and fully understand the beauty the beauty of life and again you know I go back to the sacri ices that I saw guys make on the battlefield and it’s in the complete darkness of the world of the human soul and you see that there’s no there’s no nothing brighter than somebody that lays down their life for their friends and so I think if you want to understand the the Beauty and the glory of the life you have it is good to know know and understand that Darkness yeah that makes sense what are what are common Mis what are some of the most common misconceptions about um the Navy SEALS or and you you can pick whichever one you want to tackle um what what um inaccuracies bother you about seals or the military for that matter that are common in movies one of the things that I that I talk about when I talk to businesses because businesses think that um you know if you’re a military guy if if you’re if you’re if Tim is military guy and I outrank you and I tell you to go do something you’re G to go do it with a big smile on your face and you’re going to make it happen and so that’s the that’s the misconception and if that was true then military leadership would be the easiest form of leadership in the world because everyone would just obey your commands right and it couldn’t be further from the truth now it would work if I outrank you and I tell you to clean the toilet you go okay you outrank me and you go do it but then you multiply the intensity there times infinite to where I’m telling you you need to go charge a Machine Gun Nest and you’re going to die if you do it are you going to listen to me I wouldn’t want to you wouldn’t want to and you may or may not right you may or may not and I need to be a leader I need to actually be a leader to if I’m going to get you to do stuff I need I need to lead you I can’t just order you to do it so that’s the biggest misconception is that oh if we’re in the military and I order you to do something you’re going to have to do it now again you’re not going to disobey the chain of command but you know there’s stories of seals in Vietnam many stories from Seals in Vietnam that have told me oh they got tasked with a mission to go out and do X and they looked at the mission and said you know what that doesn’t make any sense I’ll tell you what they’d go out of the they’d go out Patrol 100 yards out outside the wire sit down in a little uh little rice Patty somewhere wait 2 hours come back and say yeah the target wasn’t there or the Ambush didn’t happen or whatever they would just blatantly uh disobey those not blatantly they would surreptitiously yeah surreptitiously disobey orders so it’s that’s that’s one of the one of the big challenges another thing I’ll get is you know I’ll meet with a CEO and he’ll say I you know I can’t wait for you to get in here and whip my people into shape so you know in their mind they’re thinking that if I come and yell and scream make people do push-ups like a drill instructor that that will somehow you know create a paradigm shift in the strategy and the culture of their company we both can laugh at that because it’s completely false and you know I think it it it comes very quickly as I start to talk to them about what’s happening inside their company they realize that you know what we do from a leadership perspective is infinitely more about brains than it is about Brawn and the Braun stuff is from the movies and it does not work in reality what uh when when you mentioned the the uh seals in Vietnam you know sitting right outside the trip wires or whatnot made me think of Band of Brothers uh towards the end um I don’t know what your opinion is of that um that entire series but awesome i’ I’ve watched it multiple times my mom I grew up my mom is very U fascinated by World War II so letters from eima and so on so she so that Fascination was passed on to me hardcore history is an amazing podcast for listening to whether it’s World War I or genas Khan or otherwise but that’s I completely second that oh so good I tell people about it all the time yeah Dan Carlin’s amazing uh but in in B Brothers you know they they were tasked with I guess a raid towards the end it’s like we’ve we’ve already won this and this is for some type of guy is this for someone who wants a promotion back you know thousands of miles away and um so they made the decision you know to kind of sit it out uh I don’t know why I felt compelled to share that I just I think I think that Band of Brothers for me more than anything else that I’ve observed gave me I felt like I had a window into sort of the pain and suffering encourage and sacrifice that was involved um in a battle that that is I suppose in many ways very very different from the Insurgent U sort of counterinsurgency warfare in terms of terrain right I mean when you have a bad guy like like Hitler it seems like uh in retrospect ECT everyone’s on your side right but um if if somebody as a civilian wants to get a better understanding of the experiences that you’ve had aside from the books you recommended is there what what are other are there movies or documentaries that that do it justice Restrepo Restrepo which I’m sure you’ve seen I have seen that’s a heart-wrenching it’s unbelievable there’s a there’s an hourlong I think it’s History Channel it’s actually called a chance in Hell the battle for ratti which is about which is about the Battle for ratti I I like Band of Brothers I love the Pacific did you see the Pacific I’ve had it recommended to me multiple times I mean it’s it’s the Band of Brothers in the Pacific so it’s absolutely phenomenal and I had read several of the books that uh the Pacific is based on Eugene Sledge just you know uh I’d read his book with the old breed uh um I’d read a bunch of those books so I kind of knew and understood it and and that’s just a phenomenal just a phenomenal epic story and it and it does you know it it got to me like when I was watching it I got that feeling you know that feeling I I remember there’s one scene where where they’re walking you know they’re walking through the jungle in some island in the Pacific and nothing has happened yet and I had that feeling cuz it’s just like the feeling you’d have in ratti and you you’d be walking down the street if if no shots had been fired yet it’s this it’s this feeling of of anticipation but it’s fear it’s anticipation it’s the unknown and it’s the waiting sounds Eerie it’s the waiting for it to happen and you know it’s coming and I got that feeling watching you know watching the Pacific and that was in one of the early early ones and I said wow this is nailing it well done yeah I have to watch that that’s been this is this is sort of the uh definitely the the final push I need to watch that um what um what would you put on a billboard if you get a if you get have one billboard anywhere what would you put on it you know one of one of my one of my kind of I guess my Mantra is a very simple one and that’s discipline equals Freedom I’ve found that you know as a as an individual the more disciplined you are and it’s counterintuitive right the more disciplined you are the more freedom you actually have and you know you and I both know if you wake up early you you get more done you and you end up with more free time so the more you manage your time the more disciplined you are with your time management the more free time you end up having the more disciplined you are you know physically with your diet with physically the more freedom you have because you can do more stuff you have more freedom so the more disciplined you are the more freedom you have and what’s interesting is how that transfers over to both military units and the civilian sector that you know imposing or or when when an element or when a unit or when a company is a disciplined group they actually end up with more freedom so you know I had a a sealed troop we were highly disciplined you know we had standard operating procedures for just about everything that we did and you’d think that that would restrain your creativity but it actually doesn’t the more disciplined you are the the easier I could say Hey you four go take down that building and they knew what to do because they were highly disciplined I knew what they were going to do because they were highly disciplined we understood what parameters they were going to stay within because we had standard operating procedures to follow so that discipline both on an individual level and as a group equals freedom and just like anything else with leadership you can take that too far you know you can you can discipline uh an element or a person so much that they they break down and they no longer have creativity so just like the dichotomy of leadership you can go too strong with discipline and they end up uh breaking down or you can give them too much freedom and they break down in the other direction yeah this is this I’m really glad that you you mentioned that because I um I’ve realized in a way that my when I struggle the most kind of existentially or or really just creatively it’s when I have the fewest constraints I want positive constraints I need uh I need a like a I need boxes not so that I have to stay within the box but that I can start at least coloring inside the box and uh that’s part of the reason I’ve been so excited to adopt you know this rescue puppy Molly because it forces me to regiment and structure my day in such a way that I can then plan around fixed objects and I think that whether it’s in the military at least in my experience in business you want to reserve your creativity for the things that require creativity not for what should I what should the steps be when I’m doing uh a room clearance it’s like no no no you want a standard operating procedure so that your brain Cycles are allocated to the places where you need those brain Cycles right that’s 100% right and uh so I’ve realized in the last few months for myself that what I thought I wanted right which is freedom in the form of infinite options is not actually what I want at all it’s very stressful and you end up burning calories you know you burn 10 calories in a million directions you’re fatigued and you didn’t get done know it’s and uh so I’m actually in a way trying to figure out how I can say no to a thousand things so that I can be fully creative on one or two things and um it’s just it’s it’s part of the reason I enjoy doing this podcast so much is that when you talk to people who’ve operated at the highest levels in any field this kind of stuff comes up and after a while it’s like Ferris idiot do you get the message yet you’ve heard meditation from 80% of the people who’ve been on your podcast maybe you should chill the out and like sit down for 20 minutes every morning uh but the the uh I want to talk about ownership and uh could you explain your book and why you decided to write it so first of all while I was still in the SEAL Teams you know I had guys because they they once everyone knew I was getting out I had guys saying hey you know you need to write this stuff down you need to pass on these Lessons Learned and you know I did that in a uh in almost a doctrinal way and I captured those Lessons Learned and and passed those on and then when I started working with civilian companies yeah you know Le and I my my business partner we started hearing the same thing which is hey do you guys have a reference can we you know what if we want to hand out some stuff to the rest of our people that couldn’t make this and hey you guys really change the way this group is operating we want to spread that to the rest of our groups do you have a book we can give them do you have reference material and you know eventually we said okay we we need to write something and so you know from from my perspective this is uh an opportunity for us to pass on the lessons that we learned and relearned that have been you know some of them some of them some of the lessons we learned and and talk about have been around for thousands of years and some of them were were discovered a little bit more recently but they are definitely solid and they’ve been very well tested in a variety of environments starting with the harshest environment of them allall which is sustained violent Urban combat and then they’ve we’ve brought them to dozens and dozens of companies and we keep hearing the same thing which is these work what what’s the explanation behind the title actually came from an email that I sent to a uh you know group uh a manager in a company and and the email basically said we when I was in the SEAL Teams and I was a troop Commander so I was in charge of task unit Bruiser and we were getting ready to go on deployment and occasionally the Commodore which is a couple ranks above my boss actually one rank above my boss is a guy named The Commodore which is you know a a full bird colonel if you’re in the Marine Corps or the Army and he’s kind of in charge of all the SEAL Teams on the west coast and so he would have occasional meetings where he’d bring in us the troop commanders and we’re like the front line guys and this is west coast of the US West Coast to the US and the story that I told in this email was that he would go around the room because he wants to get some direct feedback from the troops and he’d ask somebody you know okay what do you need and these guys are my peers and you know someone would say well you know the boots that we have are okay in the hot weather but we’re getting ready to be in a cooler environment we need new boots uh and we need them by this date cuz that’s our next training block okay got it and he get to the next person say you know when we’re out at the desert training facility there’s no Wi-Fi internet so our guys are disconnected and you know we really need to get Wi-Fi out there okay God it and the next guy would say we need more helicopter training support because we don’t feel like we’re working around helicopters enough and we really need that and eventually he’d get to me I need you know com would say Joo what do you need and I would say we’re good sir and I I was stating the obvious which is if I have problems I’m going to handle them and I’m going to take care of them I’m not going to complain I I took extreme ownership of my world and the way that worked twofold was when I did need something it number one it was something significant it was something real and when I told the Commodore hey boss we need this right here I I I would almost get it instantaneously because he knew that I really truly needed it and so I I had written this kind of told that story and and talked about extreme ownership and and owning everything in your world cuz the other piece of that is you you complain you know people complain they place blame on other people and finally you know if your boss if Tim’s boss isn’t giving you the support you need whose fault is that whose fault is it if your boss is not giving you what you need whose fault is that I suppose it’s my fault plenty people plenty people will say well it’s my boss’s fault no it’s actually your fault because you haven’t educated them you haven’t influenced them you haven’t you haven’t explain to them in a manner that they understand why you need this support that you need and so that’s extreme ownership that’s where the title came from or you’ve made them like like you uh I suppose alluded to um you’ve made them uh immune to your requests because you’re the boy who cries wolf exactly and if you’re constantly needy they will determine that nothing is important or or it’s not a real urgent important request y um and that that really I mean that’s extreme ownership and a nutshell is you’re taking responsibility for everything in your world and there’s no one else to blame and when we do talk about bosses you know I I tell this to people all the time because you know I always hear complain about people’s bosses and I tell people that I worked for every different type of boss you could imagine you know superb tactical Geniuses that were incredible leaders of men and I’ve worked for people that didn’t know anything and were horrible and I had the same relationship with all of them which is I built up trust with them so that they trusted that I was going to do the right thing and they gave me the support I needed and that that’s a that’s a I took ownership of those relationships to make sure that that was always the case and that’s another piece that I you know if you have a problem with your boss it’s not your boss’s fault it’s your fault and obviously it’s the same thing down the chain of command as well what what are some of the principles uh or lessons that the companies you’ve worked with have found most valuable well cover and move is a big one cover and move cover and move so if you and I were going to attack a building across the street where there was enemy uh I would get in a window here and I would start shooting at them covering fire covering fire and you would move when you heard me shooting you would start to move and you’d find a better tactical position and then once you got in a better tactical position you would start shooting and I would move and eventually we would get to a position where we could kill the enemy and take down the building so that’s called cover and move and honestly when I started talking to companies I said to myself well how do I translate an actual gunfighting tactic like that’s that’s all it is a gunfighting tactic how do you translate that to to a company to a business and as soon as I started talking to you know businesses uh I I mean the first business I talked to I realized that guess what every single business has multiple different elements within it whether it’s you know you’ve got an operational group you’ve got a manufacturing group you’ve got a sales group and guess what all those elements have absolutely got to work together cover and move for each other because if I’m the sales guy and I sell something and you’re the manufacturer and you don’t manufacture it in time or it’s faulty or whatever that we fail we fail and if you manufacture a bunch of perfect units and I can’t sell any of them get guess what we fail right so that that’s a huge one that that people really grab on to because just about every company experiences some need to cover and move and uh there there’s so many maxims that are memorable um from the military I mean one that I only got exposed to a few days ago and you mentioned it when we got started right here um was you know the fact that I have I have two recorders and uh so what what is the expression cuz I I I I was trained very early on to think about single points of failure actually in my first job which was mass data storage so you always want redundancy they’re all about redundancy whether that’s you know a rate array uh or or anything else you don’t want a single point of failure so what what was the expression that you used again two is one and one is none so just means have a backup means have a backup if you only have one of something it’s going to disappear sure well and the the structure of the book uh I really like and you know I spoke with with Pete about this is so it could you describe it because it seems like every chapter has a story from combat that reflects a principle then you explain the principle and then you use a business story to show how that translates exactly right and uh what is your what do you think is a part of the book that people might not pay enough attention to that they should pay more attention to so I know there are aspects I’ll just for instance like in the in the uh 4our Chef I’ll give an example people focus when I’m talking about an accelerated learning framework they’re like okay deconstruction got it selection you know doing the 8020 analysis got it uh and then you know sequencing cool got it and then Stakes setting up consequences that kind of gloss over it I’m like no no no if you don’t have a sufficient incentive like a punishment or reward all that other stuff the how-to stuff doesn’t matter right but but they gloss over it and I think I take responsibility for that like maybe I didn’t highlight the importance enough but what are what are areas of the book book or chapters anything that comes to mind where you’re like you know what people might gloss over this or pay less attention to it than they should well I think I don’t know if this will answer your question but what’s been interesting on the feedback we’ve gotten is we we have different people find different chapters they latch on to different chapters and so there was even chapters where we you know we said hey you know maybe we should take this chapter out I don’t know about this chapter or that chapter and we even got some feedback said oh take this chapter out and literally would get someone saying hey the best chapter is the chapter that someone else told us to take out so I I I think that people are going to identify very easily what relates to them and you know there’ll be a high point of this completely relates to me and there’ll be some other ones oh yeah I’ve seen that before not as much because of you know maybe that’s a a an a scale area that they have so they don’t they don’t really need to work on that but that’s what i’ I found most interesting is that the variety of answers when people people like the different sections and and they get something out of the out of the various chapters that’s a that’s a really that’s a really good sign by the way and I know we’re we’re chatting um about this book and uh I’m excited to see what it does in the wild the U what I’ve noticed for you know the the books that I’ve written which are way way too long for any sane person to write them reading is a different story because it’s can be like a Choose Your Own Adventure book but when I’ve done proof reading and I’ve had friends read the rule that I’ve decided on is to remove something you need a consensus to keep something you only need one person to love it so if I have one person who says I love this part doesn’t matter if nine out of 10 people say I hate it it stays in uh that’s a good Rule and uh because you don’t need a book everything in a book to apply to every person it’s just like if you had a commanding officer not everything that person would say would equally apply to you if they’re if they’re dealing with groups as you have dealt with groups and teams U so that’s a very promising sign um there’s so many questions I can ask you I don’t even know where to start let me uh let me take a quick glance at a few things here um because I know we want to grab some food in not not too not too short order uh Joo hungry Joo hungry Joo smash I don’t want Joo to smash me because I would be helpless uh what do you talk to about seals more versus civilians as opposed to I mean obviously you have the the the camaraderie and common background of uh the Warfare experience right but aside from trading those stories uh what do you tend to talk to seals about more versus civilians straight to the point when you’re when when I go and talk to seals I spend time a little more time talking about well number one I talk about the tactics like the the actual on the ground tactics of what was happening and that’s that’s valuable lessons learned another thing that I talk about in depth is around the piece of risk mitigation now as you know in the business World risk mitigation is huge and as a matter of fact the first time I ever spent the day with a CEO and he said well what do you think of this stuff and I said it’s kind of like what I used to do risk mitigation but when you’re talking about your guys’s getting killed it’s a whole another ball game and I remember a a conversation I had with my commanding officer and so this is the type of thing that I would tell seals we’re not on deployment yet so we’re still back in America and my commanding officer brings me in and he says Hey Joo you know he knew we were going to ratti he knew ratti was really bad and he said before you go on any operation I want you to think about if it is worth if it is worth the risk of losing one of your guys and I said to him sir I I don’t need to think about that I can tell you right now there’s no operation you can give me you can task me with that is I would trade one of my guys for not going to happen that being said we are going to on deployment to Iraq we have a mission and we have a job and we have a duty to execute that mission and we will take risks and we’ll do everything we can to mitigate those risks but if we’re going to take zero risks then we might as well just stay here in San Diego California so that’s the kind of thing I think that you know because people can be very risk averse even in the military uh it can get very very risk averse and it’s and it’s understandable you know it’s understandable that you say look what is what’s is this worth the risk or not and my point always was you have to just mitigate the risks as much as you can but there are going to be risks you you’re going to have to deal with absolutely well in in military context I mean it seems like a huge risk is not making a decision which is a decision in and of itself uh and when I look at say you know the layered Hamiltons of the world uh is an incredible big wave surfer or some of these uh just interviewed Jimmy chin who’s uh one of the key climbers I mean he’s effectively a professional athlete in this documentary called meu which is about this uh the sharks fin in I want to say it’s India but it might be Pakistan this this rock face that has defeated the world’s best climbers for 30 years um they are all people view all of these people as massive Risk Takers and when you actually sit down and talk to these guys you realize they are expert risk mitigators and uh and I think it’s very easy to Mis come to the mistaken conclusion in business for example that you only win big if you bet the farm and in fact when I talk to some of these companies here in Silicon Valley for instance that have uh become worth billions and billions of dollars um some rightly some maybe in the uh rational exuberance of our current day but many I think rightly so uh you see that in my experience in no cases have they bet the farm they have evaluated the downside they’ve real they’ve tried to measure the maximum allowable downside they know not only kind of their bet and their bet size but when they’re going to fold uh they have an exit strategy for for minimizing or capping losses and unfortunately I think that the the kind of renegade risk taker gets romanticized in a lot of different spheres including business and they get the magazine covers in some cases because it makes for a good story but there’s a huge survivorship bias right because you don’t get to see you know the the nine out of 10 who tried the same excessively ballsy move and got their balls chopped off you don’t they don’t make it to the the magazine cover I I often talk about the fact I’ll get up and brief a bunch of missions that we did you know and and when I get done I’ll be saying you know I didn’t brief you guys on any missions that we didn’t do you know there was missions plenty of missions that we looked at we weighed the risk versus the reward and we said you know what not worth the risk and so we did the exact same thing I think you’re 100% right it’s a it’s a very high level risk mitigation is is the same in business and in combat yeah and it’s um you know I remember hearing an expression I don’t know who to attribute this to but it’s like if you cap your downside the upside takes care of itself um and I’m not sure that that applies in every circumstance but it’s a might not be a perfect guideline but it’s a helpful guideline where it’s like if you take enough shots and you’ve constantly capped your downside if you have a couple of outliers that give you disproportionate upside in the long run I mean you’re going to average out ahead and beat most people especially the people who are Cavalier um who’s the who’s a historical figure that you identify with if any you know I talked about David hackworth and I definitely uh definitely identify or I I would you know I look up to him um and by the way you know he became you know uh a peace guy I mean that’s that’s where he ended up was living on Australia as a you know Premier leading the pack on you know anti-nuclear weapons so it’s it’s you know it’s not not your average guy a historical figure it’s a tough question I’m not sure what my answer would be yeah I’ll stick with hackworth all right hackworth it is what is something most people would be surprised to know about you again I think it’s the uh the same thing I talked about earlier with the fact that they expect you know I I have a certain look to me you might say um that I look like you know kind of a serial killer combined with you know some kind of a psychopathic uh steroid mutant and and you know so people I think have a little you saw my text to my girlfriend I was just trying to prepare I I think uh there’s some kind of surprise yeah I think when people hear me string a sentence together and say oh okay so I think that’s surprising to a lot of people makes me think of this comedian Jim Gaffigan really funny guy who is like uh you know he’s talking about how attractive people have it really easy because he’s like and then there’s a beautiful woman and she has a book people are like ooh she’s beautiful and she can read double threat but uh no you’re you’re very good at stringing senses together uh do you have any bad habit or bad habits that you’re working to overcome bad habits H let me I can rephrase nonideal habits or what are you trying to improve about yourself I’m trying to improve everything all the time I mean that’s a much easier question cuz because I want to be faster stronger more limber uh smarter quicker Wittier always everything always trying to improve so if you if you were to prioritize those currently let’s just say over the next 12 months which are the areas that you’re hoping to most uh push into overdrive or improve upon you know I think I literally wake up every day and I’m trying to do all those things I I don’t know how I’d prioritize them which and and the reason I think is because they’re not mutually exclusive you know one of my one of my one of my laws of combat is prioritize and execute which means you’ve got multiple problems going on if you try and handle them all at once you will absolutely fail so prioritize and execute you look at what problems you have you pick the most impactful one or the biggest threat and you solve that one and then you move on to the next one and the next one so forth but you know I can definitely read and work out and stretch all in the same day these are not mutually exclusive things and and I’ll I’ll do them all well you’re right and I mean I guess it is in a way kind of it could be viewed as a trick question I was reading uh a number of transcribed lectures by Krishna mty and he talked about and I’m I’m probably butchering this by paraphrasing it but the fact that people talk about start you changing one small thing at a time and I do think there’s a place for that in behavioral change um and certainly applies to things like dog training or human training uh you know operant conditioning and classical conditioning and blah blah blah shaping and all that but there are cases where the every the elements are so intertwined you can’t change one without changing all the others uh and uh so you do have to kind of you know try to you know you can’t eat the elephant in one small bite at a time you have to try to eat the whole elephant um all right let me ask a couple of cheesy questions just cuz I just CU I’m I’m feeling the spirit move me here um you walk into a bar what do you order from the bartender water water do you not drink alcohol no you do not no caffeine or very limited caffeine no alcohol what other what other things um are there any other things you abstain from that would surprise people perhaps I don’t think so okay uh what do you listen to what type of music do you listen to when working out so I I grew up listening to heavy metal and hardcore music uh primarily Black Sabbath was kind of my indoctrination into that world good choice I remember one of my buddies grown up you know he’s was praising Black Sabbath and he said you know music throughout the through throughout the history of the world has been meant to you know make people feel better and bring them joy and Black Sabbath has absolutely nothing to do with that I think that’s you know that Darkness again you know we going back to that theme of darkness and I think that black sabath was the first group that I heard that I said that’s what I feel what is that and and I latched on to it and you know from then I started saying what’s harder what’s darker than that and you know I ended up listening to hardcore I I’ll give a shout out to Black Flag oh yeah Black Flag Black Flag my War side two which if you if you listen to Black Black Flag you’ll and even even me when I was growing up I thought yeah these guys are okay whatever no big deal punk rock but you get to my War side too and there was a paradigm shift and it was a completely new thing and that was another I had Black Flag my War side 2 on my record player for you know maybe even a year where that’s just what I listen to so you know that um and then you know again a lot of the hardcore stuff that I grew up listening to I still listen to that today it’s still you know on my on my iPhone and what I plug into uh if I was to say some of the more modern music that I listen to i’ I’d throw out the white buffalo The White Buffalo yeah who’s uh great just an incredible uh incredible musician and what’s incredible about him is he’s he writes songs and sing songs that have impact and leave a mark and he’s he plays acoustic guitar and uh it’s it’s not heavy metal by any stretch of the imagination but it is hard and it is raw and it is true and one of the few concerts seen in the last 10 years has been White Buffalo White Buffalo White Buffalo and white buffalo so I’ve seen him a bunch of times every time he comes around I go and see him I’ll have to check that out White Buffalo I I won’t even get into it but very interesting mythological uh or sort of traditional Native American associations with the white buffalo also people can Google that and check it out but that’s you can you can go deep looking into the stories associated with The White Buffalo also uh just a few more questions if you could give yourself your 25-year-old self advice what would it be yeah so I’m 25 years old I’m at Seal Team one and I need to know that you don’t know everything and and and right now I I know that right now that I don’t know everything and I still have a ton to learn and it’s like kind of like again we’ll go back to Jiu-Jitsu but I told that story earlier when I first learned a couple basic moves I thought I knew Jiu-Jitsu I thought I was good I got it yeah and then you know now and you know I’ve been training for 20 something years and I know that I there’s still tons I know I I don’t know a quarter of what I need to know a tenth of what I need to know and it’s the same thing with everything in life you know you’re gonna you’ve got to have an open mind you’ve got to be ready to learn all the time and always always be seeking out that knowledge because it doesn’t just smack you you know you’ve got to seek it out and talk to people and and that’s how you learn and get smarter what uh how how old are you now if you don’t mind me asking I’m 44 44 what about your 35 year old self so now I’m I’m in ramati and looking back now I would say relish that moment which I did but I would say Rel that moment Joo this has been fascinating and a real honor I appreciate you taking the time where can people uh find more about you about the book about your company work in the we’re the best places to visit you and everybody listening of course the the links and so on to everything we talked about in this discussion will be at 4-Hour Work Week all spelled out for ourwork week.com and just click on podcast but uh where can people find more more about you and your work online so we have a Facebook for the book that’s coming out extreme ownership is is where you can find that on Facebook we have a Twitter for extreme ownership as well and Le and I are both uh extremely uh inept at at social media so it’s uh we’re we’re we’re trying to make some improvements there and as we as we get people interested we’ll do more and you know I have I actually have a Twitter account I think I’ve posted one Twitter statement it’s kind of weird you know I I always feel like I I never liked people that just like talked for no reason and and I kind of get the feeling when you’re posting something on Twitter you’re kind of talking for no reason yeah and so I don’t know maybe as people start to ask me questions on Twitter and now I have a conversation cuz to just sit there and talk it feels awkward to me and and not right describe the burito you just had perfect strangers on the internet I will I’ll tell you what I’ll do after we get off I’ll show you how I use Twitter for extremely fast information gathering and polling and I think you’ll find that interesting I’m sure will there are some very practical applications so guys I will link to all of this uh website is I always mispronounce this is it Echelon or Echelon it’s actually Echelon Echelon e c l NF front.com and I link all this stuff but I’ll say anyway uh follow so that he is forced to interact on Twitter which is the sort of the the antithesis of the act more talk less ethos that I so respect but I I will show him some interesting ways to implement it atjo willink so on Twitter j c k w l l i n k and extreme ownership will also be on Twitter and Facebook I’ll link to all this stuff but uh that will be in the show notes and Joo thanks so much I really appreciate the time appreciate the opportunity thank you all right man we’ll get some food and uh to be continued so guys let us know what you thought uh check out the book you should really check out the book extreme ownership I’ve been reading it and very highly actionable very easy to digest you have lessons wrapped into stories so you have some some some sugar coating that will help compel this and propel this into your brain so you can actually use this information and uh as always thank you for listening until next time learn experiment test and educate yourself this episode is brought to you by 99 designs your One-Stop shop for all things graphic design related I have used 99 designs for everything from banner ads to book covers including sketches and mockups that led to the 4our body which later became number one New York Times number one Wall Street Journal and the brainstorming a lot of it took place with designers from around the world and here’s how it works whether you need a t-shirt a business card a website an app thumbnail whatever it might be you submit that project and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mockups and Designs you choose your favorite and you have an original that you love or you get your money back it’s that straightforward and many of you who are listen have already used it and created some amazing things that I’ll be sharing in the future but in the meantime if you want to see some of my competitions some of the book covers as well as get a free $99 upgrade go to 99designs.com that’s 99designs.com this episode is brought to you by wealthfront and this is a very unique sponsor wealthfront is a massively disruptive in a good way set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like apple and world famous investors it has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years and they now have more than $2.5 billion dollar under management in fact some of my very good friends investors in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in wealth front so the question is why why is it so popular why is it unique because you can get Services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy but only pay pennies on the dollar for them and this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations bloated sales teams Etc and I’ll come back to that in a second I suggest you check out wealthfront.com take the risk assessment quiz which only takes 2 to 5 minutes and they’ll show you for free exactly the portfolio they put you in and if you just want to take their advice run with it do it yourself you can do that or as I would you can set it and forget it and here’s why the value of wealth front is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis but normally aren’t great investing is a marathon not a Sprint and little things that you may or may not be familiar with like automatic tax loss harvesting rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time wealth front as I mentioned since it’s using software instead of retail locations Etc can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible right off the bat you never pay commissions or account fees for everything they charge .25% per year on assets above the first 15 ,000 which is managed for free if you use my link wealthfront.com Tim that is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account for instance now normally when I have a sponsor on this show it’s because I use them and recommend them in this case it’s a little different I don’t use wealthfront yet because I’m not allowed to here’s the deal they wanted to sponsor this podcast but because of SEC regulations companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials so I couldn’t be a user and have them on the podcast but I’ve been so impressed by wealth front that I’ve invested a significant amount of my own money at least for me uh in the team and the company itself so I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client now back to the recommendation as a Tim Ferris show listener you’ll get $5,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account but just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you take 2 minutes fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com it’s fast it’s free there’s no downside that I can think of now I do have read a mandatory disclaimer wealthfront Inc is an SEC registered investment adviser investing in Securities involves risks and there’s the possibility of losing money past performance is no guarantee of future results please visit wealthfront.com to read their full disclosure so check it out guys this is one of the hottest most Innovative companies coming out of Silicon Valley and they’re killing it they’ve become massively popular just take a look see what portfolio they would create for you and you can use that information however you want wealthfront.com and until next time thank you for listening [Applause] is