#162 Leif Babin - What Leadership Looks Like in the World’s Deadliest Warzones

Last week was our first playoff game, and my plaque psoriasis was so itchy under all my gear. Sometimes just thinking about scratching could take me out of the moment.
And then, my doctor told me I could get clearer skin with a pill called O-Tesla. O-Tesla apremolast is a prescription medicine used to treat adult patients with plaque psoriasis, for whom phototherapy or systemic therapy is appropriate.
O-Tesla can help you get clearer skin after just four months.

Okay, ready for the next game.

Talking to my doctor about a pill was a total game changer.

Don't use Otesla if you're allergic to it.

Get medical help right away if you have trouble breathing or swallowing,

swelling of the face, lips, tongue, throat, or arms.

Severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting, depression, suicidal thoughts, or weight loss can happen.

Tell your doctor if any of these occur and if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts. Live in the moment.
Ask your doctor about Otesla. Call 1-844-4OTESLA or visit otesla.com for prescribing info, info about cost, and more.
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible.

Financial geniuses.

Monetary magicians.

These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive

and save hundreds.

Visit Progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Potential savings will vary.

Not available in all states or situations. Leif Babin, welcome to the show, man.
Thanks for having me, Sean. It's an honor to have you here.
It's an honor to be here. It really is.
And man, we've got history together. We went through buds together.
I'm sure we'll get into some of that. But, man, I just I've been

following And, man, we've got history together. We went through BUDS together.
I'm sure we'll get into some of that. But, man, I just, I've been following you for a long time, man, in what you're doing.
And you're just putting out amazing stuff. And I think you're a great example for veterans and SEALs coming out of the teams and anybody coming out of the military.
We both know it's a big struggle for a lot of people. And to have good examples to follow and good leaders like yourself, it's really cool, man, what you've accomplished and what you've done after the teams.
And I want to commend you for that. Thank you, Sean.
That means a ton to me. That means so much coming from you.
And I'm so proud of you and your success and the powerful voice that you have been for so many great stories. And how you've represented, you know, as a teammate, how you represent the SEAL teams, how you represent the veteran community.
And it's great to reconnect with you. It's been way too long.
And, man, I was thinking about all the history that we had through our time together and Buds. And what a great time that was.
Like, what an incredible time. And our class and what people went on to do and the combat that you saw and so many others saw and were a part of.
But just can't tell you how excited I am to be here with you. And I'm proud of you and all that you're doing and honored to call you a friend.
Thank you, brother. Feelings are definitely mutual.
And like I said, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. But everybody starts off with an introduction here.
So let me get to yours. Leif Babin, former U.S.
Navy SEAL officer, served 13 years in the Navy, nine of which were in the SEAL teams, several deployments to Iraq with the infamous task unit Bruiser. You are the co-author of the New York Times bestseller, Extreme Ownership, the number one New York Times bestseller, Extreme Ownership, How U.S.
Navy Seals Led and Win, and the number one national bestseller, The Dichotomy of Leadership with Jocko. You are the co-founder of Echelon Front and currently serving as president.
You're the recipient of the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart. You are a husband, a father to three kids, and a Christian man.
Am I missing anything? I'm sure I'm missing quite a bit. No, that's it, man.
I think being a husband, father, and a Christian, I think are the most important aspects of that entire bio there. I think those are the most important jobs I've had.
And I was lucky enough to serve with some incredible people, like yourself, going through training and then on the battlefield. And I'm just honored to be able to share some of those lessons learned with others around the world and to see people that can take and apply some of the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield and in their lives.
I'm humbling and mystified about how, you know, just how far and wide that has spread and the impact it's had. And it's incredible to me to see that.
And that's kind of what keeps us going. That's our mission of why, and I get to honor the teammates that I lost and talk about their legacies and all that they did and how they lived.
We have a lot to dive into. We have a lot to dive into.
So in the interview, that's what I want to do. I want to cover your life story, your time in the teams.
I mean, I've heard, I wasn't there, but I've heard a lot, a lot of amazing things about

tasking a bruiser. I had several friends that we went through Buds with that wound up serving with you and under you.
And once again, I just, you hear a lot of shit about a lot of people, you know, on the teams. And especially officers.
And, man, I've just, you always come, like, highly recommended. And your guys just, you guys fucking love you, man.
And it's really cool to see that. You don't see that in a lot of platoons of platoons i don't think not like what i hear about yours and so um i can't wait to dive into that but that's the highest compliment you could ever pay me man and uh i love i love those guys i'd do anything for them and uh it's it's uh just the honor my lifetime was to was to serve uh serve with, awesome teammates.
So we have a Patreon, and Patreon is our subscription network, and they are our top supporters. A lot of them have been with us since the beginning, and one of the things— I'm proud to be a member.
Yeah, thank you for being a member. They will be ecstatic to know that you're in there.
So you know, I offer them the opportunity to ask each guest a question. And usually I only pick one, but for you, there were a lot of good questions.
And so I think we might do three here. First question is from Charlton Clark.

What are three words that encapsulate a powerful... here.
First question is from Charlton Clark.

What are three words that encapsulate a powerful

leader and why?

Three words

that encapsulate a powerful leader and

why?

I think the three words,

the three most powerful

words are

it's my fault.

It's a fault. And I think as a leader, recognizing that you are responsible for everything that your team does or doesn't do.
Just as a dad or a spouse, you're responsible for everything that your family does. And I think that understanding this concept that we call extreme ownership, man, our ego is such a powerful driver in the world, and it wants us to point fingers or cast blame or make excuses or say, hey, look at that guy over there.
He's more successful than me. He got lucky or he got this break or he started with some advantage that I didn't have instead of actually, and when you do that, what you do is you don't actually take action to correct the problem, to actually implement solutions to fix that going forward.
And so I think when you, when you accept ownership for every single thing that happens in your world, every single thing that impacts your mission, then you could actually take action to solve problems, constantly learn, constantly grow, constantly improve.

And I think that makes all the difference.

Man, that's great advice.

Thank you.

Stephen Casey, what is the most significant leadership principle you've seen that is essential

but has problems transitioning or translating from the military to civilian situations? That's a great question. I think initially I thought that this concept that we call cover and move, which is teamwork, right? We're working together as a team.
You and I are trying to move across the street under fire. You're laying down suppressive fire so I can move.

And then when I get across the street, I lay down suppressive fire so that you can move.

Like we're covering and moving.

We're leapfrogging.

We're mutually supporting one another.

And when Jock and I first launched Echelon Front, our leadership consulting company, we went in to talk to a corporate business.

And we thought, man, should we even talk about this concept? How does that even apply? And we're talking, this is a gunfighting tactic from the battlefield. And the moment that the senior executive team is telling us how the sales team and the production team are like, they're not on the same page and they're blaming each other and they're pointing fingers at each other.
The marketing team is saying, well, the sales isn't telling that. And the sales team is saying, well, marketing is not actually setting us up for success.
You got a bunch of finger pointing, a bunch of blame casting that we say, okay, let's talk about this concept of cover and move. And they said, hey, that's exactly what I need you to teach to my team.
And so it's really just the recognition that it's not about you. It's about the overall team and the overall mission.
And that applies to your family. I mean, when you see your wife or your spouse that's struggling or frustrated with the kids or something that's going on on the home front, and you can say, hey, okay, those school applications are taking a long time and you got a bunch of stuff on your plate.
Why don't you let me just take that off your plate? I'll take that. I'll run with it.
That's cover move and action. You can actually, you're working together as a team, mutually supporting one another in order to accomplish a mission and win.
And I think initially we weren't sure how that would apply in the civilian world and it absolutely does. I think one that's harder to apply is what we call our force law of combat, and that's decentralized command.
Decentralized command is obviously something you're familiar with being in the military. It just simply means that everybody leads.
And I think a lot of times when you talk to a leader that wants to control everything, they want to do everything, obviously that doesn't work on the battlefield, and that's one of the strengths of the SEAL teams and special operations units. You've got thinking shooters.
I mean, even going through BUDS together when you were 18 years old, you're a smart, capable, talented individual that just because I'm the officer and I'm in charge, I need you to be able to step up and make calls. I need you to be able to solve problems.
I need you to be able to move the team forward in a positive direction. I can't make all the calls.
If you're just sitting and waiting for me to tell you what to do, that doesn't work. So that's a concept that's hard to get across in the civilian world.
People say, well, I don't trust my team or they don't have a strong relationship. So we help them work to build those relationships.
It's all based on the strength of relationships. It's built on trust.
When people understand not just what to do, but why they're doing it, you know, what we call commanders intent in the military, the purpose and the goal and the end state. But oftentimes, now we start to see leaders when in the civilian world, they'll release, you know, the authority, they give people ownership and they kind of let people run with stuff.
The problem is they get too detached. They get too far away.
And so it's always a balance, right? It's a dichotomy, and you're getting pulled in different directions. So you want to be detached as a leader.
You want to step back. You want to let your people step up and lead and run with a plan and execute the plan, give them ownership of the plan.
But you can't be so detached. You can't be so detached that you don't know what's going on.

You're too attached from the challenges and problems.

And then you can't actually support your team.

You can't guide your team.

You can't actually step in and help them

if you're not even familiar with the challenges.

Or you can't see when they're getting off track

and you maybe need to help or direct them.

When you're talking, I'm just curious,

this is a personal question,

when you're talking about, when you're relating stuff back to Ramadi or gunfighting scenarios, because it sounds like you guys kind of do that, how quick, I mean, how fast do civilian types wrap their head around what you're teaching them when you're using those analogies? Pretty fast. Pretty fast, usually.
I think initially some people will think, I guess I can put it this way, the biggest excuse is that, I think the biggest excuse that any of us give ourselves, me included, is that it's harder for me than it is for other people. And so, yeah, Sean's maybe experienced some things on the battlefield.
Well, how does that really apply to me? Or, hey, you've done some things in your life and you have some good lessons learned, but that doesn't really apply to me. I have a different situation.
Instead of keeping an open mind, instead of saying, oh, what can I learn from Sean? What is he experienced? How can that apply to my world? What lesson can I take and apply to that? And before Jocko and I wrote the book Extreme Ownership, I'd have a lot of that. Businesses would say things like, well, how are you going to translate this to the business world? They would say that over and over again.
Tell me how you're going to translate these combat leadership lessons to the business world. And I think once they read Extreme Ownership, they realized that the hardest part about combat leadership is it's not about planning, executing missions under fire.
It's not about maneuvering troops with bullets flying over your head. The hardest part about combat leadership is getting a diverse group of people with different skill sets and different agendas and different perspectives to work together as a team to accomplish a mission.
And obviously that applies to any team in any situation. It's people.
It's actually getting people to actually work together as a team, put their own egos and their own agendas aside and put the mission first. And I think that's what makes the SEAL teams great.
Certainly the best units in the SEAL teams have that, right? They put the team and the mission before anything else. And it's not about them as an individual.
It's about the team. They're going to sacrifice for the team.
They're going to sacrifice for their brothers on that team. And so I think that when people realize that that's how these concepts translate, it's just about getting people to work together as a team to mutually support one another, to accomplish a strategic goal.

That applies to everything, everywhere. Makes a whole lot of sense.
That's good to hear that they can comprehend it that fast. That's really cool.
We do have people to push back. We'll come into a company.
I was with the company a few weeks ago, and there was half the room of several hundred leaders were female executives. And these lady executives, some of them were pretty skeptical.
They told me afterward. I was pretty skeptical about how this applies to me, how we were going to take these leadership concepts and apply them in our world.
And they came up and said, this absolutely applies. We need more of this.
And so I think once people are just willing to open their mind, they realize that every problem that you face in life is a leadership problem. Your frustrations with your spouse, your frustrations with your kids, your friction points in the community, the frustration you have with your boss or the people on your team for not doing what you want them to do, or the people outside of your immediate team that you depend on for support.
These are all leadership problems. And I think once we think about those problems as leadership problems, then we can start to apply leadership to the point of friction, as the Marine Corps would say, to get those problems solved.
But you see that what might seem like a hopeless problem actually is a solvable problem. Interesting.
If you're my boss and you're micromanaging me, and I'm feeling like, Sean just needs to get off my back. I'm being micromanaged.
And I feel like I'm in a hopeless situation. Well, Sean doesn't trust me.
What can I do about that? He just needs to back off and trust me and let me do my job. But if I realize that actually I control that situation, if I take extreme ownership of that situation and realize if what I'm feeling is micromanaging, you're asking me questions about what's going on.
Well, that's because you care about the situation. And you don't have enough information.
You need some more information. So I start to take action to push more information your way, to build a better relationship with you, to talk to you about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, to get some guidance from you so I understand the strategic goal and that we can be aligned.
And if we do that, then I can get that problem solved. All of a sudden, you're like, hey, Leif, you got it.
Good to go. Let me know how you want to do this.
And so those check-ins become less frequent. And so what seems like an impossible situation actually is easily solvable the moment I put my ego in check and the moment I actually take ownership and I start to lead up the chain of command and apply leadership to get problems solved.
Wow, that's great advice. Thank you.
Thank you. The second half of basketball season is here, and the race to the playoffs is heating up on PrizePix.
With over 10 million members and billions of dollars in awarded winnings, PrizePix has made daily fantasy sports more accessible than ever. It's simple.
Get the app, pick two or more players across any sport, pick more or less on their projection, and you can win up to 1,000 times your money. Don't miss your chance to cash in as the league's best fight for playoff positioning.
Join PrizePix, America's number one daily fantasy sports app available to play in more than 40-plus states, including California and Texas. Download the Price Picks app today and use code SRS to get $50 in bonus promo funds instantly when you play $5.
That's code SRS on PrizePix to get $50 in bonus promo funds instantly when you play $5. Win or lose, you'll get 50 bucks bonus credit just for playing, guaranteed.
PrizePix, run your game. Must be present in certain states.
Visit prizepix.com for restrictions and details. Part of the reason I do what I do is for my family.
I want to leave them a better country than the one I was born into. I also want to make sure they are taken care of financially, and that's why I make it a priority to help protect the money I've worked so hard to earn and save.
And one of the ways I do that is by diversifying into gold and silver. Precious metals have been a store of value for thousands of years, and they are known as a hedge against market risk and inflation.
If you're interested in learning about how precious metals can help you, you should reach out to my partners at Gold Co. They're an amazing company.
They support this show and I trust them. Right now, they're offering a free gold and silver kit.
All you have to do is go to seanlikesgold.com. You'll also learn about a special offer to get up to a 10% instant match and bonus silver for qualified orders.
So go to seanlikesgold.com. That's seanlikesgold.com.
S-H-A-W-N likesgold.com. Make sure you do everything in your power to help protect what's yours.
All right, Leif.

One last thing.

I got one gift for you. Last one, I promise.
We're getting to your story, but just a little something for the ride home. Those are Vigilance League gummy bears.
That's awesome. I've been looking forward to sampling this.
I'm right on. Well, now you got some.
Outstanding, man. I appreciate it.
Thanks, brother. You're welcome.
But all right, Leif, we're going to, like I said, we're going to go into your life story. And I have a feeling this is going to get really heavy.
And I think people are going to get a lot out of this episode. And so once again, I just want to say that I've really been looking forward to this.
And so let's start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? I grew up in a small town in Southeast Texas in the Piney Woods called Woodville, Texas.
And it was an awesome community to grow up. And it was a small town, about 3,000 people.
We had two stoplights.

We had two Dairy Queens, which made us, I guess, big time at the time.

But it was just a great place to grow up.

You know, there was, if you wanted to go to a fancy restaurant or a movie theater, you had to drive more than an hour away.

But I loved it.

I mean, I spent all my childhood playing in the woods, playing some kind of combat, the woods, throwing spears at each other and building forts. People sometimes ask me if we played cowboys and Indians.
We actually were all Indians all the time. Everyone, no one wanted to be a cowboy.
Everyone was an Indian. And so we were the Native American warriors out there patrolling the woods, setting booby traps for my mom to like in in our backyard.
And we lived in a great neighborhood with just kind of woods behind the neighborhood, and we were just constantly in the woods playing and out from sunup to sundown. My mom had a whistle that she would blow, and we had to be within hearing distance of the whistle, which was, I pushed that pretty regularly, but you could hear that whistle, we'd come back.
And I grew up in a great household. My mom and dad were loving, wonderful parents.
They really took their job seriously. My dad was the town dentist, and he had a busy job.
My mom was a stay-at-home mom and then a part-time school teacher and school librarian. But they really

just poured into me and my brother and three sisters. We had a big family, and they took that

as their primary job, as raising us upright. The Proverbs, train up a child in the way he will go

when he's older and not depart from that. I think they took that very seriously and really set an

amazing example for me as a mother and dad and just were constantly there to support me. Always my dad's like fishing and hunting buddy.
Really? He had friends that he'd hunt with, but we spent so much time together on the lake, on the ocean, fishing and hunting out in the woods. It was an amazing place to grow up.
And I didn't fully appreciate the town of Woodville and the community until after I left school or I went off to the Naval Academy. And when I was really deployed overseas, because the amount of care packages that would come in from not only my family, but friends and just members of the community, I mean, it was stuff that we would share with the rest of the task in it

because there was so much stuff that was coming in.

And it just, you know,

there were some great communities across the United States,

but it was just a quantitative measure

of just how awesome that community was to grow up in

and just how supportive and patriotic and amazing.

The church was a big part of our life growing up.

We started going to the First Baptist Church of Woodville when I was in third grade. My dad became a deacon there.
And church was mandatory every Sunday. When I started being a little wild man, you know, in my high school days and partying a little too hard, my dad would come in and drag me out of bed and say, you're going to church, boy? Here we go.
So then we'd get home from church, and it was put on your working gloves and working clothes. And I remember trying to push back and saying, hey, Dad, aren't we supposed to not work on the Sabbath? And he said, this isn't work, son.
This is fun. Yeah.
So we'd be out chainsawing brush and clearing land. We grew up on them.
When I was about 12, we moved to some acreage kind of out in the woods. We lived in a neighborhood before that with woods behind it, like I mentioned, but then it was constantly just working to clear that place and, you know, keep it nice, build fence and repair fence and clear brush.
And it was just an awesome way to grow up. It was an amazing community.
Five kids. Five kids in my family.
Where'd you fall in the birth order? I was the second. Second? My sister and I are very close.
We're 16 months apart. So she'll never let me live down.
She was, in those 16 months, I guess she lived a lifetime of experience that she's older. Then I have a twin brother and sister.
My parents wanted to have three.

They had me and my sister.

Then the third child was twins.

My brother and sister were fraternal twins.

And then they had a surprise about eight years after that, my baby sister.

Nice.

Nice.

I was the only one that served in the military.

I always wanted to do that.

My dad had been in the Army and then in the Air Force.

And so I spent my first couple years at Ramstein Air Base.

He was stationed there as an Air Force dentist.

And I was the only one that went in the military in my five siblings.

But for me, that's all I ever wanted to do was be in the military.

What did your dad do in the military?

He was in the National Guard and in the Army. And then they paid for his dental school, and he served his, I think, four years after dental school.

So he was stationed at Ramstein for, I think, for three of that.

Right on.

So my first kind of six months to we came back when I was three years old.

Wow.

I lived there, too, when I was a kid.

No kidding.

My dad was in the Army, too, as a pharmacist.

Wow, our upbringing is very similar. I never knew that.
That's awesome. Yeah.
But are you tight with all your siblings? I am. I am.
They're a great family and we all keep each other in check. But yeah, they're a wonderful family.
Everybody's got kids. We have a huge, I think my parents have 17 grandkids.

Holy cow, that's awesome.

From like 18 to two or three, I think.

That is awesome.

So it's a pile of cousins every time my kids go.

It's magical and they scream, why can't we live in Woodville?

Every time we go there, they get to just run around the woods.

That's awesome, man. Is everybody in Texas? Everybody's in Texas, no.
Nice, nice, nice. What kind of, were you a star athlete or anything like that growing up? I played, you know, I played probably like a lot of people.
You know, I played soccer and baseball and basketball. I was horrible at basketball.
I realized that wasn't my sport when I got a rebound. I think that was in fourth grade or fifth grade, and I immediately shot.
I shot the basket, scored a goal for the other team. I was like, basketball's not for me.
So when I started playing football in seventh grade and tackle football, it was like everything. And in small town Texas, we'd have 3,000 people in the town, and we'd have probably nearly that many people at the game on Friday nights.
It was just a, it's, you know, we'd have 3,000 people in the town and we'd have like, you know, probably

nearly that many people at the game, you know, on Friday nights. It was just a, it was an awesome thing.
I loved it, man. It was the closest thing to suiting up, you know, and gearing up for combat, you know, that you could do, I think, in the civilian world.
And it was a super, It was a fun time.

We had, in our high school, the head coach, our head football coach, coach Melvin Houston, he'd been there for years, awesome guy. And he was a real mentor to so many people on the team, particularly for some of the star athletes who were raised in homes that maybe didn't have a father there.
He was an incredible guy. And his wife was also the choir director.
So all of us, like the entire starting lineup in football was like in choir as well. He was in track.
So we all ran track also to keep in shape. But we had some of the star football players that are like marching in the band at halftime.
Everyone kind of did everything.

Wow. And it was just a fantastic place to grow up.
Awesome community. Very cool.
What got your interest in the military? I can't ever remember wanting to do anything else. I mean, from the time that I can remember wanting to do anything, I wanted to be in the military.
I was painting my face and crawling through the backyard jungle. And it was, I just, I wanted to be some kind of combat leader.
I had a little stint where we had these F-4 Phantoms that would come fly over from some of the bases in Louisiana. I remember a couple of like B-52, like treetrop level flights that were pretty awesome.
So there was like a small stint where I was like, oh man, maybe being a pilot would be cool. But then I quickly went back to like, no, I want to be some kind of a ground combat leader in some capacity.
And then when I was in probably, I was probably in junior high school and I started hearing about the SEAL teams and the Marcinko books came out,

read Rogue Warrior.

You probably read it probably about the same time I did.

And that was one that really,

I started reading about the SEALs in Vietnam and learning about the Rungsat Special Zone

and Cameran Bay and Nabe

and all these places that our SEAL forefathers

were operating out of.

And I was just smitten with that.

And then the movie Navy SEALs with Charlie Sheen came out.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you. and Nabe and all these places that our SEAL forefathers were operating out of.
And I was just smitten with that. And then the movie Navy SEALs with Charlie Sheen came out.
Oh, yeah. And while I was in high school, and it just, that kind of cemented it for me that I wanted to be in the SEAL teams.
And so I wanted to go to the Naval Academy to pursue that dream. And so I put in a package for the Naval Academy.
I put in a package for West Point as well. And we had a super strong West Point Alumni Association in Southeast Texas.
And one of the head guys, he was a Silver Star recipient from the Korean War. Amazing guy.
He was really close friends with my grandfather. And he was a big advocate of West Point, his West Point grad.
And he was pretty heartbroken when I chose Navy. But I chose that because I wanted to be in the SEAL teams.
And my dad and I did a lot of fishing growing up on the Texas coast. There's fantastic inshore fishing, offshore fishing on the Texas coast.
And we were going out on the Galveston jetties. And I remember just watching all these, I'd accepted my appointment to West Point because I got picked up in, it was January of my senior year.
And so I'd accepted my appointment. I still hadn't heard back from Navy.
And finally, in late April, when I was graduating in May, I finally got accepted to Navy. So I'd already accepted my appointment to West Point.
I finally got an appointment to the Naval Academy. And so then I was like, man, what do I do now? Like, I don't know what I want to do.
The alumni network told me, they said, the West Point alumni network said, they said, all right, you got a decision to make here. Dwight Disenhower went to west point jimmy carter went to navy i was like man that's a tough one you're putting it on me here that was that was a strong statement but i was i was out fishing my dad had a little center console fishing boat we were out trying to catch some speckled trout redfish on the galveston jetties um and i remember looking at these just theseers.
You know, the Houston ship channel comes in through the Galveston there. It's one of the busiest ports in North America.
And just watching these different tankers come in and all the different flags, you know, sailing from around the world. And I just remember turning to my dad and saying, I'm going to go to a naval academy.
I wanted to be in the Navy, and I wanted to be in the SEAL team. So that was the purpose.
And after four long years at Navy, I did not get selected for the SEAL program. Damn.
You know, it's—why did you—I know you said all throughout your childhood you wanted to be a leader in a ground unit. But why—I'm just curious, why didn't you go the enlisted route? Why did you—why were you hell-bent on the academy? Man, that's a great question, Sean.
There were many times as an officer when I was sitting in a tactical operations center and when we were passing out the PowerPoint Ranger patch, 3,000 hours, where I was like, maybe I should have enlisted in the SEAL teams. I definitely questioned it when I graduated from Navy, because when I didn't get service selected, and man, they made the right call, to be honest.
Like, they only took 16 guys out of the Naval Academy. And there was a prior enlisted SEAL in my class.
So they took 15 guys. And there was 200 people that went out for the screener.
It was probably 80 guys that graduated from the screener. And probably 40 or 50 of those guys could have gone and done really well, any of them.
And so they only took 15. And I was not one of those 15.
And that was based on my grade point average, which was atrocious. I was part of that half of the class that made the top half possible.
And I had a terrible conduct record because when you get a midshipman that was two years older than me, who was kind of barking orders at me and telling me what to do, I let them know that I was not too pleased about that. I was pretty strong-willed and hard-headed, as you know me to be.
And I think that that didn't serve me well there. So I had a conduct record.
I got in a bunch of trouble. And so I wouldn't select it.
But actually, it was the best thing that ever happened to me because my time in the service fleet was awesome. I was instantly thrown into a position of responsibility and leadership.
And I served three different deployments on two different ships, got to sail all over the world and see some amazing things, worked with some incredible people. So what was...
Well, to answer your question... Sorry, go ahead.
Well, I was just going to say, to answer your question, I think what my parents were pushing me to go to college first, and that was probably a bigger factor, but it was a – I don't know. When I got service elected for the service fleet out of the academy, I was like, man, I probably should have listened to the Navy.
But it was, I think my parents just kind of encouraged me to go to college. I was interested in the Naval Academy.
I was interested in having a degree under my belt. If I hadn't gotten one of the academies, I would have gone to Texas A&M and been on the Corps Cadets there in the RTC program.
So I think that was probably more their encouragement than anything else. But there's certainly times that I regretted that.
What I loved about the SEAL teams was man, while the college degree might have separated officers from enlisted at some point, I mean the post-9-11 world, that wasn't even the case for a lot of guys. Brian Bill in our's class had an electrical engineering degree, probably a way better GPA than I ever had, you know, and so many guys that I served with, like you, you know, were just super smart guys, you know, and were way smarter than I would ever be.
So it was, there wasn't a lot of differentiation. It was just simply like a different role.
Interesting, interesting. So they're recruiting right out of the academy.

I didn't realize there was that much. The 200 people tried, roughly, 200 people trying out, that's pretty stiff competition.
So when you found out that you didn't, how did they tell you you didn't make the cut? Do you find out immediately? They announced, it's like service election night, and so they announced you. And so I had put my first choice was Naval Special Warfare.
My second choice was Marine ground. I was like, if I can't be a SEAL, I'll go be a Marine infantry officer.
Maybe I can try to go force recon and, force, force recon and, you know, that, that route. And, uh, and then my third choice was service, service warfare, the ship drivers.
And, um, so when they, they, they basically like just, you know, you, they, you distribute a piece of paper that gives you the service selection with all the, you know, the seniors, the firsties there. Um, and, uh, you're sitting there in like the wardroom on, on, you know, and it on, you know, and it's, I saw my best friend and roommate, just his head, just, you know, he was really disappointed to not get served.
We were both going out for the SEAL program. That's what we wanted.
And so when he didn't get it, I didn't get it. And we were right there in the room together, sitting next to each other.
You know, it was an encouragement, you know, to keep going. And, but again, it was the best thing ever happened to me.
I loved my time in the surface fleet. And I wanted to be a SEAL the whole time.
But I instantly, I flew out to, I went to about six months of school in Rhode Island. And then I flew out and met a ship.
And we were enforcing sanctions against Iraq before the war kicked off.

So these were the UN sanctions that had been in place since the Persian Gulf War.

And so I got to work alongside.

SEALs would go and take down these ships.

Our boarding team would go alongside and take over the ship

and then just vector them over to a holding area.

It was super cool.

I forgot.

You were on a boarding team, correct? I remember right. Yeah, we did dozens of boardings, yeah.
How did you get involved in that? The ship just selected me to be a part of it. I was lucky enough to be a part of that.
And it was a neat thing to be able to see and do. And I think just being able to navigate a ship across the world required a lot of responsibility.
I mean, when you're the officer of the deck, you're in charge of the ship when the captain's asleep in his stateroom at nighttime or if he's elsewhere. You were responsible for the entire well-being of that ship.
I mean, it's massive responsibility on your shoulders. What kind of ship were you on? I was on a destroyer, DD-972 USS Oldendorf.
I did two years on that. We had an awesome, you know, wardrobe of great officers and the enlisted sailors were outstanding that were on that thing.
And it was just a great leadership opportunity from that. I learned a ton of lessons, learned a ton of things wrong, you know, came in kind of this strong-willed ensign and got shut down, you know, realized like, look, I need to rely on my experienced chiefs and sailors to actually lead this team and learn from them.
And so I got to see what good leadership looks like. It's not the person that's barking orders at people.
It's actually being the silent leader that listens to the team and lets them run with things. And then I went to a different ship.
FFG 38, USS Kurtz. I did about a year on that there as a training officer.
So I did the first ship. I did two deployments to the Persian Gulf.
I kind of transit that Indian Ocean, Pacific transits. And then I did a Western Pacific deployment with the Kurtz, the frigate.
Both of those were great experiences and awesome group. And I got selected probably halfway through my time at being on that second ship, the USS Kurds.
I got selected. This was September 2001.
And I got selected finally on my second package that I put in for the SEAL program and so right as September 11th happened. Wow.
So we knew this was real. We knew we were going to war.
I knew after Bud's we were going straight to a SEAL platoon and deploying overseas and so probably by the time that you were, you know, going, uh, going through your bootcamp and just starting your Navy journey, um, I was, uh, for me, uh, it was interesting because some of the sailors, you know, there's so many sailors in the fleet with a 70, 80% attrition rate that didn't make it through BUDS. I remember one of the sailors is a great, great guy, um, asking me like, you know, you got selected, you know, for, for, for buds, how far do you think you'll make it to the program? You know? And I thought, I thought that was a crazy question.
I was like all the way through the program. Like, like, why, why would I be even going if I didn't think I could, I was going to make it all the way through, you know, I think, you know, in his mind, having gone there and not made it through, it just was like impossible to make it through the program.
And, and I think I, I was so appreciative of the experience. You know, when I got to Buzz and you and I are going through Buzz together, it enabled me to think about what it took to actually get there, all the effort that it took.
And I had some amazing people that pull so many strings for me, you know, to write letters of recommendation, to train me and prepare

me and get me ready, you know, physically, and stuck their neck out to get me selected out of,

you know, dozens of people that applied. And so I was never going to, you know, let them down in

any way. And it gave me some great perspective.
Man, I didn't realize you got picked up in

September of 2001. Where were you when the towers went down i was on duty the pier side in san diego at 32nd street naval station aboard the uss kurt so i was the duty officer and um and uh we were just you know everybody was just waking up in the morning and um you know obviously that's you know six six in the morning uh know, on the West coast when nine o'clock, you know, when it went down and on the East coast.
And I got a call from the, the incoming duty officer who was listening to the news on his way into work. And he said, Hey, a plane's just hit the world trade center.
And I thought, I'm thinking it's like a little Cessna sightseeing plane or something, you know, that got too close. I'm like, what are you talking about? So I went in and we turned on the news in the wardroom.
And I turned on the news and I'm sitting there watching like, man, just smoke blowing out. And we just watched on live TV as the second plane hit.
And we knew instantly this is an attack. This is real.
We're at war. And it just changed everything.
Wow. Wow.
And so you were selected right after that or right before that? I don't remember the exact date that I found out. It was right around then.
And I can't remember if it was just before or just after. But I know I got the news in September 2001.
And so it was, I knew this is real. And I was lucky enough.
I had a great commanding officer on board the USS Kurtz, and he was kind enough to send me TAD over to SEAL Team 5. And so I was TAD to SEAL Team 5.
I went over there. I helped out wherever I could, you know, the administrator side, but they assigned us to a senior chief, and he was, all he did with me, he just trained us all the time, and so we, for like six straight months before I went to Bud's, I was spending most of my time over at SEAL Team 5 just training and preparing, and some of my friends were there who had helped pull some strings, you know, for me to be there.
In fact, that very same CEO who got service selected. No kidding.
Yeah, he got picked up just the year before. So they went through the year before that you and I went through BUDS together, and he was just there as a new guy, assistant platoon commander.

And so, man, he'd take me out for runs.

The runs that he took me on were harder than anything we did in BUDS. I would puke my guts up.

And as a result of that, I was a horrible runner.

That was the thing I probably struggled with most,

and I didn't fall back in any of the runs in BUDS just because,

thankfully, I hadn't had that opportunity. How long was it after you got the word that you showed up at Bud's? We classed up, 241 classed up in April of 2002.
So that was, yeah, it was pushing six months of kind of prep and training. And I knew that when I got picked up, like that was the last time.
I was already a Lieutenant JG, and I knew I was going to make, you know, Lieutenant at the four-year mark, which if you remember, I put that on at first phase. I got quite the promotion party, if you remember, the beat down.
But, yeah, it was – I knew that was, like, the last shot. So I was already training for it.
I was already preparing for it. But I had about six months of people that really – and it's so hard to train when you're underway on a ship, you know, as far as running and swimming and doing the – you just can't do it so well.
So it was just awesome to have, you know, my commanding officer and the senior leadership on that ship support me and be excited for me. And on my previous ship, I mean, they wrote super powerful letters of recommendation as well, you know, that enabled that to happen.
And if I didn't have the SEALs that were pulling for me that wrote me a letter of recommendation, you know, and more than anything, probably it Smith, who was a retired SEAL admiral. His son, Adam, and I are friends.
And he had our close friend who's still serving, I won't name him, you know, was probably my biggest advocate, an amazing guy. And pulled so many strings from me, trained with me, got me ready, you know,

connected me with Adam and then Admiral Smith. And Admiral Smith wrote me a just incredibly

powerful letter of recommendation that if people hadn't pulled the strings for me, man,

I would have never even had the opportunity to serve.

You all know what speed dating is, right? Well, if you're the owner of a growing business, what if there was a feature like speed dating, but only for hiring? In other words, you could meet several interested qualified candidates all at once. Well, good news.
There is. It's Zip Intro from ZipRecruiter.
You can post your job today and start talking to qualified candidates tomorrow. And right now, you can try Zip Intro for free.
It's ziprecruiter.com. Zip Intro gives you the power to quickly assess excellent candidates for your job via back-to-back video calls.
You simply pick a time, and Zip Intro does all the work of finding and scheduling qualified candidates for you. Then, you can choose who you want to talk to and meet with great people as soon as the next day.
It's so easy. Enjoy the benefits of speed hiring with new Zip Intro, only from ZipRecruiter, rated the number one hiring site based on G2.
Try Zip Intro for free at ZipRecruiter.com. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash srs zip intro post jobs today talk to qualified candidates tomorrow i'm always looking for ways to make sure i feel comfortable in what i wear through the whole day that's even more important when the weather is changing from winter to spring, and True Classic helps make it easy.
Their active wear is moisture wicking and quick drying. And for spring, they have short sleeve comfort knit button-ups that look as good at the gym as they do in meetings.
True Classic makes premium clothes at an affordable price with shirts designed for your best features with a perfect fit. Their best-selling t-shirts and more come in three, six, and nine packs.
The more you bundle, the more you save. Plus, you get free shipping on all orders, a 100% perfect fit guarantee, and easy returns so there's no risk.
Whether you're bundling up for the cold or getting ready for spring, level up your style with the clothes that actually fit right. Just go to my exclusive link at trueclassic.com slash SRS to save.
That's trueclassic.com slash SRS. Shop now and elevate your wardrobe today.

You know, what does the selection look like for an officer to get into BUDS?

What's the selection process look like?

I think there's 24 billets at the Academy today. And i think there's something like that that's a for all of like rOTC um and then there's like a handful so they take 48 a year something like that i i don't know what the numbers are um i have to double check that i i think it was i think that was it for a while but it's highly competitive right interesting so they only take 48 men it's something something like that.
Yeah. In the program.
Yeah, don't call me on the numbers of that. Maybe half of that.
But it's very highly competitive. And then there's a handful of officers that come in, like our mutual friend Travis, that will come in with an officer candidate school billet.
And, you know, who went through Buzz with us.

And they'll, there's just,

it's very competitive as an officer.

So you're training with people like,

I mean, I was competing at the Naval Academy

with the captain of the water polo team.

Like I was never a competitive swimmer.

That guy's going to destroy me.

Like somebody who's on the cross country team, somebody who's on the triathlon team. They got to be looking for more than that, though.
I mean, they can find physical fitness anywhere. What are they looking for specifically in an officer? I mean, because it sounds like you weren't even, no offense, but it doesn't sound like you were a superstar athlete at the Naval Academy.

I definitely was not.

Problems running, you weren't a swimmer, and then you have all these guys that were.

Maybe that's not why you got picked up.

I don't know.

But I mean, they have to be looking for more than athleticism.

That was a part of it.

I think it was a major factor.

I think they're also looking for grade point average.

They're looking for student leadership opportunities. I was never a student leadership because I was always in trouble for something.
So I think, you know, there's just, I mean, I wouldn't trade. My time at the Naval Academy was awesome.
I really enjoyed my experience there. There were some, there was some negative examples, right, that showed me like the leader that I didn't want to be as well.
And I think that's always the case, right? I think good leadership is rare no matter where you are. But there also were some amazing leaders there who poured into me and then set a great example.
And frankly, Sean, I wouldn't trade that for anything. I mean, the fact that I didn't get service elected for the SEAL program, I had to work my ass off.
I had to train. I had to go out and build relationships.
I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and making excuses because that would have been easy to do, right? Well, this person knew that person or this person got picked up or that person happened to make better grades than me or this person is a better athlete and that shouldn't be what it's based on. I can make all those excuses.
What I had to do was before I even understood this concept, we now call it extreme ownership. I actually, I didn't take extreme ownership to say, if this is what I want to do with my life, I'm going to have to actually do the work to make this possible, you know, to open the door.
And when I put in my very first lateral transfer package, so I had to get fully qualified as a service warfare officer. And so that took me about a year and a half on my first ship.
You know, man, that's a huge qualification to get, right? You have to study, you have to prepare. It takes a long time and effort.
And when I finally got that qualification, I put together, I met every requirement possible. And I put in a package that I thought was a strong package, didn't get service elected.

Wow.

I got turned down again.

And that was crushing to me.

I thought, man, what, this, you know, this is, and I, the senior officer, he was a captain at the time, and he was the chief of staff over at WARCOM, the Naval Special Warfare Command, so very senior officer.

And I reached out, just tracked down his content info, scheduled a meeting with him, and went over and sat out to talk to him. And I said, hey, sir, I'm Lieutenant J.J.
Babbin. I want to be in the SEAL teams.
This is what I want to do. I think I can contribute to this community.
What do I need to do to make this happen? And he told me, he was like, he said, he was like, no one has ever scheduled a meeting like this with me. I think that shows a lot of initiative on your part.
Keep trying, get your scores better, go get some strong letters of recommendation, put in a package again, and I think you'll do better next time. So I think just, we call this concept default aggressive, that problems aren't going to solve themselves.
Like you actually got to go solve problems. You actually have to make things happen.
Things aren't going to just fall in your lap. Like you got to go make it happen.
And that applies on the battlefield. It also applies anywhere in life.
And the opportunities, I think it's real easy for us to look at people and be like, well, you know, that person got lucky, or this person just stumbled upon that, or this person had that door open for them. And more often than not, man, people make their luck through hard work, you know, discipline, preparation, effort, all the years and years of effort behind the scenes that people don't see.
And so I think that to me was a tremendous life lesson of like, hey, this isn't going to happen unless you go and do the work to make it happen. And that required training, you know, being the best service warfare officer I could be.
I knew that instead of complaining about not being in the SEAL teams, if I wanted to be in the SEAL teams, the best path for that for me was to be the best service warfare officer I could be. And there was, I mean, people would say things that, well, you don't want to be, they won't want to let you go, you know, if you're, you know, if you're too critical for a member of the team, that's total bullshit, right? You got to, the better that you are on your team, the more, the higher you perform, the more that your leadership's going to want to write you a strong letter of recommendation, right? The more that people are actually going to want to take care of you and help you out.
So the more I could contribute to my team, you know, that happened to be a ship that I was assigned to, the better it would be for me. You know, going and building relationships with people, reaching out to folks that could write powerful letters of recommendation, you know, and it was, I think for anything in life, like it's, the opportunities are not going to come your way.
You got to go make things happen. You've got to be default aggressive.
And it's, you know, again, if you wait for problems to go away on their own, they just, they just get worse, you know? So I'm, I'm thankful that happened. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
And I can tell you, Sean, years later, after I was serving as a senior, you know, executive for, in the business world, we call it right at the operations officer and executive officer position. And I was frustrated with the employment of SEALs or lack of employment with SEALs in combat at the time.
And I would get super frustrated about things that were way above me in the chain of command. I can remember at least three different occasions where I jumped in my truck, I drove across the Coronado Bay Bridge.
I went over to 32nd Naval Street. I went over to 32nd Street Naval Station,

which is where all the ships in San Diego are.

And I walked out on one of those piers

and I lived across at Coronado

at Naval Amphibious Base where the SEAL teams are.

And I remembered what it was like.

And it just put that on perspective for me.

Wow.

You know, this is, I can't ever forget

what it was like to be over here,

wanting to be there and wanting to do anything

I could to get over there.

So no matter how frustrated I am,

I'm in the single teams,

and I've got to do the best I can

and impact the people around me

and try to make whatever unit I happen to be assigned,

try to make life as good as I can

for those people that I'm with.

Wow, that's interesting.

So you would go back to what you couldn't wait to leave, to reset.

Just to give me perspective on what it was like,

to remember what it was like to want to be in the SEAL teams

and not be there.

Man, that's cool.

That's cool, Leif.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but at breakfast,

I think we had a discussion where are you mentoring junior officers in the SEAL teams or junior officers that are wanting to go to the SEAL teams? When I got back from my second combat deployment to Ramadi, I took over the junior officer training course. And so for two years, I ran that training program for every single SEAL officer.
They graduated from BUDS. so before they go to BUDS before they go on to the advanced training the seal qualification training

they would go for every single SEAL officer that graduated from BUDS. So before they go to BUDS, before they go on to the advanced training,

the SEAL qualification training,

they would go through a four-week classroom, week-long field training exercise.

And so I'd been through that program.

That's where you and I broke off together, right?

After we graduated BUDS, and then you went on to SEAL qualification training.

And so the officers from our class went to SEER school and some other schools. And then we went to the junior officer training course together.
Um, and so I got a chance to run that four years later and I got, it was a great program and I went through it, but I think, uh, it was focused on trying to help you understand how it was organized. And what I got to do was really, um,, try to revamp it to just try to set those leaders up for success, you know, and to help those leaders be ready for the most difficult combat situations that they might come up against.
We'll get into more details with that at a more appropriate time in the interview. But the reason I'm bringing it up is what are you looking for in junior SEAL leadership? What are some of the top attributes that you've identified that great leaders inside of Naval Special Warfare all seem to have? Number one, humility.
Humility is the most important quality in a leader. And the reason I say that is because, look, if you don't have an ego, you don't care about winning, right? You just mail it in.
You don't care about outperforming the other people or doing well. Like ego drives us to be successful.
So you got to have an ego. But so often, ego is the, it just absolutely destroys people.
It destroys careers. It destroys teams.
It destroys relationships. It destroys lives.
And when people can't put their ego in check, you just, you can never get better. You can never improve.
And I think the biggest lesson that I've learned in life through some extremely humbling combat operations and then beyond is that it's be humble or get humbled. And anytime that I'm feeling like, oh, I got things figured out, oh, I'm ready for the worst case scenario, life might throw me.
Man, you get humbled and you get put in check. So I think that humility is number one, the most important quality.
Because without humility, you can't learn from anybody else. You can't get better, right? You can't evolve.
You can't adapt or innovate. You can't listen to other people's ideas or learn from them in any capacity.
And worst of all, you can't look yourself in the mirror and conduct an honest self-assessment, a brutally honest self-assessment, because that's what's key. If you can't do that, there's no way you're ever going to improve.
What's required is an honest self-assessment of like, okay, I need to do these things to improve. I need to do these things to actually fix myself going forward.
Okay, these might be my strengths, but these are my weaknesses. I need to work on those to get better.
Hey, we might have gotten lucky on that combat operation, but we better be prepared for that worst-case scenario next time in case we don't get so lucky. And so I think number one, humility.
Number two, ownership. And that goes right along with each other, right? If you're going to point fingers and cast blame and make excuses, it's right there with humility.
The driver of that is ego. But oftentimes, the reason I say ownership is because if I'm going to wait for you to solve my problem, that problem's not going to get solved.
So let's say you and I have a conflict and we don't see eye to eye on something. I can say, well, Sean, I don't like the way Sean talked to me.
Or Sean needs to come apologize to me. Or Sean, that's Sean's fault for not seeing the world from my perspective.
Or I can actually take ownership of saying, you know what, Sean, there's some reason that Sean disagrees with me on this. Let me actually learn from his perspective.
Let me actually take ownership of fixing this problem by taking some action to actually get his perspective and see his perspective on things and see what I could have done better to better communicate what my perspective was and ask more questions so I could see the world through his eyes.

And so I think those things are super critical.

Teamwork is a great example of that.

If you're just about yourself and you can't actually put the team and the overall team and the mission first, I think that's not someone that's going to do well. And particularly in high performing organizations, whether you're talking to like a SEAL unit or a special operations unit or a SWAT team, or frankly, like a super high performing sales team, you know, in the corporate world, a lot of times you'll talk to them about the concept of the cover and move and teamwork and they'll say, oh, we're doing awesome.
We're doing awesome. You know, but our admin department sucks and supply sucks.
They're not getting us what we need. You know, the senior leaders up in their corporate high tower, they don't know what's going on down here.
And so they, and what you realize is like they think about teamwork within just their immediate team, not about the other teams that they actually depend on to be successful. So when you start realizing like, hey, I need a better relationship with the admin department so that we can get paid, so that we can actually get the paperwork taken care of, so that we can actually do what we need to do and focus on our job.
I need a better relationship with supply so they can give me the tools that I need to be successful. I need a good relationship with my chain of command.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from Jocko is not having a good relationship with your chain of command doesn't help you. And it certainly doesn't help your team.
So you got to build a good relationship with your chain of command just to make sure you're aligned with them, make sure they understand what you're trying to do and how you're trying to do it and why you... And they have the information they need, you know, to better support you and make better decisions.
So I think when you're looking at humility, ownership, teamwork, I think those are crucial things. Discipline, I think is something else.
You know, if you have people that are not disciplined, I mean, I think about somebody in our bloods class, like Brian Bill, you know, for instance, who probably wasn't born great at everything. That guy was so, he was the only guy in our entire BUDS class that was first time every time in die phase through the pool competency test, which is, if you don't know what a pool comp is, it is miserable, right? Where they're tying your hoses and knots.
And that's a terrifying test for so many people, even people that are comfortable in the water. And we had so many rollbacks from the previous class, as you know.
I was one of them. Yeah, you were one of those.
And the stories you guys told us, it was terrifying. And so I think that Brian was the only dude on that wall this first time every time.
Why is that? Well, he was methodical in his preparation and he was disciplined and that enabled him to be successful in everything he's trying to do. So I think somebody, it's great to have some innate qualities and natural abilities and those things are great.
When you can combine natural ability and discipline, that's unstoppable. But hard work is going to beat natural ability over time if you've got somebody who's disciplined is going to put in the work.
So I think those are the qualities that I think apply not just to a SEAL leader, but I think to any leader in any situation. Somebody who's humble, somebody who's able to take ownership, somebody who's a team player and puts the team first, and somebody who's disciplined.
Man, that's great. That's great to hear.
Thank you. I got a ton of questions, but I'm going to save them for the leadership section.
But so let's get back to Buds. So you show up to Buds.
We're classing up in April of, was it 2001? 2002. 2002, correct.
And so what was it like for you walking in the compound as a Buds candidate, Buds student? Man, I might have been different from a lot of us. I loved it.
I thought it was awesome. I mean, to me, just having the, not that you weren't, certainly we were walking on eggshells all the time, right? And I remember afterward, particularly as the class officer in charge, as the senior person in the class, it didn't matter what happened.
I don't think I failed a single room inspection the entire time. Actually, we had one spot inspection in dive phase that I failed.
And me and my roommate failed. It was like one is, but every other inspection I passed, every other personnel inspection I passed, which was unheard of.
And yeah, I got beaten. I was the first guy to get beaten every time, right? Because you're just, anybody in the class feels, you as the leader are responsible.
And so you're going to pay the man for it. That was just part of the game.
You know, I embraced that with humor. So it took a couple of years to be able to walk on the grinder before you were kind of like, who's looking at me? You feel like you need to be running and calling Cadence.
But by the way, they don't call Cadence across the grinder anymore, man. I miss that.
That was so freaking cool. Like just to my left my left to you know i just just yelling at our class as we came across the grinder for me just knowing the history of that place you know knowing not only through the seal teams but for our the underwater demolition teams our frogman forefathers before before them um and and knowing all of that took place right there right i mean it's coronado Amphibious Base.
I mean, this is where the guys that were going out and swimming up on beaches like Iwo Jima and Guam and Saipan. I mean, just amazing, amazing history.
And I just, I thought it was awesome. And checking in, I guys like you that were class ahead of me, you know, initially it was like, you might as well have been there for 30 years of experience, right? Because I'm just showing up and you don't know like what to do.
I quickly like just try to just have a sense of humor. I remember they, I walked into the INDOC office, right? Those first few weeks that they used to call IN-doc, the indoctrination, before you started first phase.
And one of the instructors was like, babbing. And he just walked up and was like, hey.
They had like their coffee mess there. And they had like this fancy coffee.
And I came from the fleet. There's no fancy coffee.
Everybody's, these chiefs, you know, the fleet are drinking like black tar coffee that was you know reheated coffee from like five days ago so they had this like fancy coffee mess in there and they had a they had a pile of like like sugar cubes i mean and it was probably like i don't know 50 of them he's like how many of those sugar cubes you know can you eat it once bab and i'm, all of them. I just shoved them all in my mouth.
And yeah, I think from that on, I just try to just have a good sense of humor about it. And it was, yeah, to me, I thought it was, I mean, it was the quality of people that we got to serve with there.
It was, you know, I think in that post-9-11 era of people that, you know know, like you that are like enlisted in the Navy, this is what they want to do. I'm going to go serve my country in a time of war.
You know, it was just incredible, man. And I just, I wouldn't trade that for anything.
It was awesome. What about the intimidation factor? Were you intimidated coming in, checking in there? Totally, man.
Of course. You know, I mean, you're kind of like, do I make eye contact with people? Do you not? You're trying to just figure that out.
We talk a lot, the dichotomy of leadership. You've got to try to find that balance.
You've got to be confident but not cocky. I said humility is the most important quality of a leader, so you've got to have some confidence, but you also, you can't be cocky.
And I think just trying to find that balance was like, you know, knowing that like the instructor staff, that some of the guys that would, you know, say I hate officers and give us the hard time, you know, more than anything else, they ended up being my favorite instructors. And they just, you know, even though they dished out the worst physical punishments at pain, they were just, they were awesome.
And some of those guys who were looking to give the officers a hard time. One of the things I loved about in-doctor, do you remember the officer belly flop contest off the high dive? Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Off like thefoot board. That was so awesome.
And you're like, okay, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to win. Like, I'm going all into this thing.
I want to make it so painful. I'm going to, like, knock the wind out of myself, and someone's going to have to, like, haul me to the side.
But that, to me, was, like, it was fun. I think you just try to, you know, try to make the best of it.
what was the when usually everybody i know has some type of uh you know they're worried about a hang-up in buds whether it's the pool comp or the 50 meter underwater swim or the two mile swims or whatever it may be mine was the 50 meter under underwater swim was the first one i was really nervous about what how'd you do on that. Crushed it.
I didn't think that was hard. It was easy.
You know what was crazy? I'm sure you watched the Discovery Channel. Oh, yeah, like 50 times.
I did too. What I realized later, some things like Hell Week, they really can't show you just how hard Hell Week's going to be.
I thought So, like, I thought Hill Week's way harder than, you know, that I'd even envisioned it could be just kind of based on watching that show. But some of the other things, like the ocean swims, the cold water, like the underwater swim, I realized they were focusing on people that were struggling.
And so it made it look like it was impossible. So, yeah, I mean, I thought the 50-meter underwater swim was, like like no factor.
Yeah. But some of the things that kicked my ass, man, were- Before, though, before we did them, what were you worried about? What was your biggest fear? I worried about it.
I sweated every single evolution. No kidding.
Every single one. And I had a friend tell me that, sweat every evolution.
Like just, you better be worried about preparing. We're going to spend our weekends prepping, planning.
We were doing stupid stuff too, like pool comping each other in like the, you know, in the like local like apartment complex pools, you know, in like civilian die breaks that we rented from the local, like stupid stuff, like dangerous stuff. If you're listening to this, don't, or watching this, don't do that.
That's stupid. You know, you're going to AGE yourself.
You definitely need a dive master there to make sure stuff like that's not going on. Um, but, uh, we were, we just tried to sweat every evolution.
I was, um, I was worried about the runs cause I had struggled with runs. Um, and I found the runs were like, the runs were hard.
I mean, they definitely were, you know, all out spread for, but I don't think I got in the goon squad even one time. That was also because our good friend and classmate, Seth Stone, had made the egregious error of marrying one of the Bud's instructors.
Oh, yeah. I forgot about that.
So the officers would get regularly pulled out and just beat on for that. And then the entire class would get beat on.
And then wherever Stoner was, we call him Sesto, we call him Stoner, but wherever Stoner was in the lineup of the runs, if you remember, they would just find him and be like, Goon Squad, you're on back. And he would just embrace it and just start bear crowing.
The Goon Squad, everyone's just getting beat on and everyone else is like circling up. But you were a good runner, right? I don't think you were in the goon squad.
I was a good, that was the one thing I was really good at was running. Yeah, I remember you being a good runner.
The swims for me, I was like one bad swim. Our mutual friend who, I won't say his name, but we got put together.

It was another officer, and he was not a great swimmer,

and I was not a great swimmer.

So we were like one bad conditions away from failing the swim.

I think the only swim I failed was the ones where they forced us

to wear the new fins.

Remember that one?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And half the class failed because we had to wear these new fins that were supposed to be so much better. And we all went back to the old school, like World War II, like.
UDT, duck feed. Yeah.
But that was one where I wasn't a fast swimmer. I'm not going to go for a while, but I knew I was kind of one bad swim away.
But I think one of the hardest things for me that I didn't anticipate was drown-proofing. People thought drown-proofing was easy.
Did you have no problem with drown-proofing? I thought drown-proofing was easy. So many people did.
Drown-proofing was horrible. No shit.
That was hard for you? After we did, like, you know, bouncing off the bottom was fine. But once we had to do, like, the traverse, you know, with your hands and feet tied, and my heart rate got up, and then I started doing the flips.
So just for the audience that doesn't know what drown proofing is, basically what they do is they tie your feet, they tie your feet together, they tie your hands together behind your back. And you start off just in the deep end, right? Bouncing up up and down kind of getting a rhythm into breathing then you have to float then you have to swim was it 100 meters you have to swim 100 meters uh with your hands tied behind your back and your feet tied together and uh it is challenging it is the swim is definitely challenging well i i've struggled with it and I was really struggling with it.
And one of those buzz instructors who was the meanest instructor, and he came to officers and just hammering them, he just pulled me aside and put me in the forefoot section. It was like, hands and feet tied, you're going to do your bounding in the four-foot section.
And he just left me there.

And then he moved me over to the nine-foot section.

And it was just like a progression, and that really helped me.

And then actually, one of the other instructors,

remember we had to like, you were supposed to,

so after you do that traverse, then you were supposed to like,

you do like a flip and then go down and grab the mask,

and then you bound.

Oh, yeah.

You were supposed to do like three flips and then like five bounds,

and then go down and grab the mask and then you were supposed to do like

three flips and then like five bounds

and that was the end of the test.

And one of the instructors

on the side was like,

I think I was probably 30

flips in. He was like,

again, again, again.

Yeah, and finally that same instructor

that helped me out came over and was like,

Babin, you're good, get out of the pool. And so it was,

he kind of helped me out. But I mean,

You knew your

Thank you. Again, again, again.
Yeah, and finally that same instructor that helped me out came over. I was like, Babin, you're good.
Get out of the pool. And so it was, he kind of helped me out.
But I mean, you knew you were going to get the full benefit on it, like no factor. Yeah.
And that was, so that to me was harder than I thought it was going to be for whatever reason. And then life-saving was, life-saving was a challenge too.
That was a kick in the ass, man. The smallest instructor we had, so if you remember, you had your unconscious victim for the, I don't think life-saving is like that anymore.
What do you mean it's not like that? I don't think it's like a pass-fail evolution like it was. I don't think you can get kicked out of the program.
Remember for us, like if you didn't pass it, like you got kicked out. And so the unconscious victim, I got the smallest BUDS instructor we had.
He was like probably 150 pounds. He was the unconscious victim, which means he's laying there.
I just grab and haul him across the pool. And then the very next one was, if you remember this instructor who had started at, he had played starting linebacker at Arizona State University.

Oh, yeah.

I remember him.

And man, he was an awesome instructor.

I loved him.

But he kicked my ass in the morning.

I swam over to him and realized, he's like, save me.

And I grabbed him.

I think it took me.

Was this Scotty Walker?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, we could say his name.

He's in the Buds thing.

Yeah.

He's in the 234 thing.

I don't know if you could say it.

and I'll see giant wrestling match. He probably weighed 250 at the time.
I remember watching that guy when we were doing LogPT pick up the fucking log by himself and just start running up the berm with it. And I was like, holy shit.
I remember that too. And we were all like, dude, that guy's an animal.
And I remember it was probably, it felt like a 20-minute evolution for me to get him to the side. It probably wasn't near that long, right? But I finally get him to the side, and I crawled out the combat training tank just outside, and I just puked my guts up.
And then I just crawled back in there, and it was like the next one, the next one, the next one. So that was a tough evolution.
But it was awesome. I mean, you also knew that what was cool about that is there's nobody that I can't save.

If I could save Scotty attacking me under those conditions and this monstrous human,

and I could get him to the side and fight him the whole way, I could save anybody.

The training program itself was just awesome.

Do you remember when Ben, do you remember the armpit hair tactic that Ben created? I do remember that. I had forgotten about that.
Yeah. Genius move.
That was a genius move. I don't think that I, I don't think that I, I can't remember if instructors shaved their armpits for that or if they stopped, but it was.
I remember he had, what did they call that victim? You had like the passive victim. You had the unconscious victim.
You had the one that's going to fight everything you do, basically beat the shit out of you as you're trying to save them. And I think it was Pranger.
Was it Pranger? Ben went out to save Pranger,

and he just reached all the way around his chest,

grabbed a big handful of armpit hair,

and just yanked it.

The instructor was like, I'm good, I'm good.

And what a genius move.

Dude, I remember instructor Nave had me,

and I didn't even know what a triangle choke was.

He had me in a triangle choke on the bottom of the 15-foot section of the combat training tank. I'm trying to go underwater to get away from him, and he just locks me up in this triangle.
I'm down on the bottom. Man, man.
That was crazy. When did you find out you were going to be the class OIC? So in INDOC, I was the senior guy.
I was the only officer for a little while. We had a few officers that ended up getting rolled back.
So I think I was the, there were 18 of us in BUDS class 241 that like started with 241 and made it through in one shot. I think I was the only officer from that group.
And the rest of our like 44 guys graduated were rollbacks. And man, thank God for you guys, because when you got rolled back in the class, y'all brought in this like, okay, we've been here before.
We understand how to prep for these things. Because at the time, other than the Discovery Channel show, you don't even know what's coming, the schedule's secret.
It's not like you can walk in and ask the instructors that. you know, that was that was massive but i we had several o's that were like rolled in and so um i think when when you got rolled back into the class um that was uh i got there was there was a senior officer who took that role um through hell week and then shortly after hell week he got um he got rolled out and so then i became the senior senior officer again.
So most of the class, I was a senior officer. What did that feel like for you to be the OIC of, I mean, that's a lot of induced pressure, I would imagine.
Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, I think it instantly, luckily, I'd learned the lesson of like, hey, I can't do everything.
I'm here to rely on my teammates to make this happen, right? I need to use my senior enlisted leadership. You know, if I'm running around trying to count everyone, right, that doesn't work, right? You have to have a, and if the LPO, the leading petty officer is doing that, that doesn't work.
We need squirt away boat crew leaders. You know, you need people in those boat crews that are helping those boat crew leaders out.
This is how decentralized command actually works. And so I think it was, that to me was like, the thing that I was, I would get, sometimes people would come up with ideas and say, hey, let's go ask the instructors if we can do this or we can do that.
People wanted to kind of try to cut corners. I was, I think, I know I frustrated some of the class sometimes when I was like, yeah, we're not going to, we're not going to, we're not going to expend the leadership capital on something like that.
We're going to just show up when they told us to do it. You know, we're not going to ask if we can come 15 minutes later, right? We're going to like, like, it's not, it's not worth it.
And I think for people that at that time, I know sometimes, particularly some of the O's and Boca leaders got frustrated with me, you know, with some of you have to just I think really prioritize what you're going to push back on, what you're not. We had a phenomenal class.
I mean, it was awesome. it was I mean, you joining our classes was one of my favorite stories of the whole thing, man.
The whole week kickoff. Yeah.
Yeah, that was... That was us.
Yeah, I got rolled because I failed the first phase exam. Genius move, Sean.
But it all worked out. Everything happened for a reason.
It was an awesome class. And I do think my most memorable experience in Buds with Leif Babin was the O-Course wrestling match when I got a little too far out in front of my skis and challenged you to a wrestling match.
It didn't come out on top. Dude, that was so awesome.
So we show up to the O-Course and we show up to the obstacle course. And if you don't know anything about the Buzz obstacle course, it's a notorious obstacle course.
These things have been around for a long time. All these obstacles are named.
And before even CrossFit or these kind of high intensity interval training was even a thing, the O course was that, right? You're going to do seven or eight minutes of like max put out effort, you know, when you're done with that thing. And then you add the soft sand runs and, you know, to the demo pits and back, you know, that's a mile and a half down, mile and a half back.
And then add a ruck, you know, ruck run, you know, in that soft sand on top of that for third phase. So we were out there for that evolution.
And I can't remember what happened. Something got screwed up.
The schedule got screwed up. I know I cleared with the proctor we were supposed to be there, but the instructors never showed up.
And of course, there's nothing worse than bored bud students standing around. So somehow it started with these wrestling matches that were going on.
And we had some wrestlers in the class. And people were calling each other out like WWE SmackDown style.
And I remember, I was just kind of trying to stay above the fray, making sure, because it's in the sand. We didn't want people's head hitting rocks.
Obviously, at this point, you get injured, right? You're going to be rolled from the program, but just don't even graduate. So I wanted to try to prevent that.
I was trying to stay above the fray. And all of a sudden, you know, I got Sean out there.

You like walked out in the middle.

It looked like Apollo Creed from the Rocky movie.

I want you.

You were like, bad, man, I want you.

And like just challenging me.

I was like, okay, I guess I got no choice here. So they like drew a ring in the sand like Kumite.

We had a big rest of the match. That was awesome.
I think it was probably more of a stalemate than anything. Yeah, yeah.
I stuffed the tape down. Yeah, I'm pretty sure you choked me out.
I think I just held you in place until it was like, okay, let's move on to the next. Everybody got bored.
But, dude, my favorite story from you was that Hell Week experience because we were, no one knows, it's kind of like combat, right? No one knows. Hell Week was, I think it was the fifth week for us going through first phase.
So we've been in five weeks to end doc. We've already been in four weeks, you know, of, of, of first phase at that point.
And I think we started our class. We started with 193 guys.
And then I think we started with 193 guys and then I think we started with I think we started we started a whole week with 101 guys so our automatically was just getting already a bunch of people had quit it's getting whittled down and I remember those numbers well so you're already losing a bunch of people,

you know,

in those first few weeks.

Now,

hold on.

Let me just,

I just,

193 guys at one one day

or 193 guys in NDOC?

193 guys in NDOC.

Okay.

Is what started

with Bud's class 241.

That's what classed up.

Okay.

The original class.

Now,

some of those guys left,

others got rolled back in,

you know,

the numbers are kind of

switched around

and by the time we were in, we were about to start Hell Week, we had 101. So we'd already lost, you know, a lot of guys who quit, a bunch of, you know, injuries, things, people enrolled, things like that.
But you were a brown shirt rollback, which is like that coveted brown shirt was, had to be awesome, right? You. You made it through Hell Week.
If you remember right, they actually took our brown shirts and gave us the white shirt back. Well, and I think that's what's so...
I know people who in the previous years have been given a chance. They screwed up something in buzz in dive phase or third phase and were given a chance to go back and start day one.
And they're like, no, thank you. I won't do it.
They turned down a career in the SEAL teams because they were not willing to go back. And so once you've made it through hell, I mean, hell week is as close to combat as you're going to get.
I mean, it was designed by Draper Kaufman and his staff at Fort Pierce back in World War II for the naval combat demolition units that were hitting the beaches at Normandy and blowing up all the... These were the first waves at Omaha and Utah, and they were trying to create as much mayhem as possible for them.
And so they tried to combine all this training down,

weeks of training into just five continuous 24-hour days.

These guys up all night, no sleep, explosions going off everywhere,

chaos and mayhem.

And just like combat, nobody knows how they're going to do

until they get in that situation.

And I remember just reading the Bible, having Bible study.

You were having Bible study? Totally, man. In Buds? Totally, yeah.
Wow. Andrew Paul and I on our team and several others, we got issued those Bibles, those little Buds Bibles that were in IV translation and in the camo.
I still have that one, man. And we were reading from judges about the story of Gideon.
And the story of Gideon, who's this reluctant warrior, like the angel of the Lord appears to Gideon and says, hey, you're going to go fight the Midianites. And Gideon's like, what are you talking about? I'm the least of my family.
I'm not even the biggest and strongest guy in my whole family. You know, Midian is so much stronger, more powerful than Israel.
Like, what are you talking about? I can't do that. And the angel continually assures Gideon and he says, some translation, it was, you are a mighty warrior and God is with you.
And those are just such powerful words. In some translations, it's God is with you, mighty warrior.
And Gideon is this reluctant warrior. And of course, he is empowered.
He calls out to Israel, thousands of people come to the call. He has thousands of Israelite warriors that have answered the call.
And God says, that's too many. People aren't going to believe in the miracle of this.
So he whittles it down to just a few hundred. And Gideon goes and destroys the Midianites with just a few hundred warriors, you know, through the power of God.
And so it was, we were reading that verse. And in fact, Andrew, Paul, and I like during Hell Week, you know, when in the darkest hour, you know, like the second day, like Tuesday night, you know, and probably the largest number of quitters, I remember quoting that verse to Andrew, you know, and him quoting it to me.
Like, it was— In the middle of it? In the middle of it, yeah. Wow.
Like, I said, I told him, you're a mighty warrior. God is with you.
Now, go get back under your boat. You know, so, like, those things are—those verses were super powerful to make it through.
But even then, like, I'm nervous. Like, I didn't sleep at all, man.
you know, go get back under your boat. You know, so like those things are, those verses were super powerful to make it through.

But even then, like I'm nervous.

Like I didn't sleep at all, man.

You know, prior to hell week,

like most people probably didn't.

You probably didn't before your first hell week.

And what's crazy is you guys at 240 had like the worst hell week of all.

I remember it was like,

I was going into SEAL Team 5

because I was TAD there before we classed up. Actually, maybe I was already in Indy.
I can't remember. But I was scraping the ice.
I scraped the ice off of my windshield. That was 239.
239. I would love to take credit for that, but I can't.
But that was class 239. Okay, maybe that was 239.
I remember watching that and I was like, it's fucking snowing in San Diego right now and these guys are in the water. And I was like, holy shit.
And I remember watching all these badass guys just quitting, quitting. I remember just going.
Well, 2.40, you guys had a huge amount of guys that got pneumonia. I think it was a particularly miserable one.
It certainly wasn't the June hell week that we had, which the water wasn't as cold. The weather was cold.
It just meant we ran more. But you definitely went through a tough hell week for sure in 240.
And so when you got assigned to come back and that brown shirt, so you get a white shirt, you got a white shirt, you make it through hell week, you get that brown shirt. I mean, this is a super coveted thing.
We're all looking at, you know, you and, you know, the guys that have made it through, I'm like, oh man, those guys made it through hell week. And we're talking, you know, the vast majority of the 70 to 80% of the people that don't make it to training quit during hell week.
And so when they took away your brown shirt and like sent you back, you know, as a white shirt. And I just remember, like, I was in awe, man, of like the attitude that you had.
You were like, all right, this is what it is. Like, we're going to do it, you know? And I'm going to go through this thing.
I'm going to be a team player for 241. I'm going to tell them what I know.
I'm going to support the team. And, you know, we're all nervous, man.
We've been up, you know, for nights on end. Everyone's kind of freaking out.
We're reading these Bible verses. They're trying to like strengthen each other.
And right as they kick off, you know, they come into the tents and they have an amazing way. I think I hadn't slept for easy 24 hours prior to that, just as I was able to kind of relax enough to like fall asleep for, you know, 10 minutes, right? They come in, all of a sudden the blank fire's going off, they'll fit machine guns and grenade sims are being thrown.
And I remember running out there. We had instantly had quitters from the team that had been thinking about it.
It got to their head and they're already ringing the bell within minutes. And we're running after the grinder, we're running around.
And I remember them calling you out by name and pulling you out of the class and then giving you your brown shirt back. And now you got to support.
And it was one of the coolest things I ever saw, man, because there were so many people who would have been like, no way am I doing that. I just did, this is supposed to be the toughest military training in the world.
You're going to make me go through it again. And like, that's what you were willing to do.
And you were a team player the entire time. And then even as a brown shirt rollback, man, you were checking on us.
You were looking at us. You're like, Hey guys, you know, you were just strengthening us, giving us some encouragement.
It was freaking cool, man. And, uh, and I remember later you gave me some photos of all of us just like, we look like just, you like wet, sandy, all like contorted on these cots.
Three days in when we get our first chance to sleep for 45 minutes or an hour or whatever. But you were taking photos for us, just helping us out, looking out for us.
It was awesome, man. It was like the consummate team player.
And the person is going to put the mission first. And you were like, Hey, they're telling me to do this.
Cool. I'm going to do it.
And even you were, you were willing to go into that with such a great attitude. And you could tell the instructor staff was like fired up by that.
And you know, the, the respect and admiration that they had for you to be, to be willing to do that. And you were like, cause I don't, how much you, you were, it wasn't immediate, right? Like it was, I mean, you were running around the grinder.
Yeah, we did the whole, I think we did the whole, we did the whole breakout and then they called me and the other two gents out. First serve torture.
When was the last time you checked on your home title? If you're like me, the answer is never. There's a growing real estate scam targeting American homeowners and their home equity.
Criminals forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee, and file with your county. Boom, your home title has been transferred out of your name.
Then they take out loans using your equity or even sell your property. You won't even know it's happened until you get a collection or a foreclosure notice.
Stop what you're doing and find out today if you're already a victim. Use promo code SRS at HomeTitleLock.com and you'll get a free title history report to find out if your title is still in your name.
When you sign up, you'll also receive a free 14-day trial of their million-dollar triple lock protection. That's immediate 24-7 monitoring of your property's title, urgent alerts if there are ever any changes, and if fraud should happen, their U.S.-based restoration team will spend up to $1 million to fix the fraud and restore your title at no additional cost.
Your satisfaction is guaranteed and you can cancel at any time. Get peace of mind now at HomeTitleLock.com, promo code SRS, or click the link in the description.
Going online without ExpressVPN is like not having a passcode on your phone. You're just making it insanely easy for anybody who steals your phone to also steal your whole digital life.
Every time you connect to an unencrypted network, like in a hotel, your online data is not secure, and hackers on the same network can try to steal your personal data like your passwords.

ExpressVPN stops hackers from stealing your data by creating a secure tunnel between your device and the internet. ExpressVPN is so easy to use and super secure, you just need to fire up the app and click one button to get protected.
And it works on all devices, your phones, laptops, tablets, and more.

I know for me, helping to protect myself from hackers is a top priority, and I really like that ExpressVPN can be used and trusted when I'm on the go or in the studio. Secure your online data today by visiting expressvpn.com.srs.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-Ss-s vpn.com slash srs to find out how you can get up to four extra months for free expressvpn.com slash srs yeah so it was we were probably 45 minutes or hour of like solid physical beat down at this point you probably are a hundred percent convinced that i was the entire next five days of no sleep because holcomb had actually told us like they're probably gonna pull you guys out we're like like right before and we're like all right whatever and then i remember seeing him and break out and i was like they're not fucking pulling us out and uh like he was just playing mind games yeah yeah yeah but um well thank you for saying that man i will say i think the thing that sticks out the most uh and you were a great fucking leader by the way i really uh i've really looked up to you going through Buds. That means a lot, man.
And I had a terrible mistake in third phase right before we were done on the island. I had an AD with a blank round.
And talk about one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire fucking life. And yeah, an AD is an accidental discharge.
And I just remember getting called out immediately and I was like, fuck, man, we're like a week away from getting out of here and we're done and I'm probably going to get kicked out.

And I don't know what the conversations were, you know, behind the scenes.

I never asked, but I just I always respected you for not making for not making more of a thing out of it. Because it could, man.

When you make a mistake like that,

you feel like the entire world's crashing down.

I've never even talked about it before.

I haven't thought about that in a long time.

And you know what, though, Sean?

To me, it was, failure is the best teacher.

And I think that those are the things that I can't imagine that that helped you as a shooter and as an operator, you know, as teaching tactics, you know, down the road, you know, those kinds of lessons learned and the weight and pressure after all that you've been through, you know, I'm weighing on you, but for, you know, you were always like exactly the kind of person that we wanted in the SEAL teams. Exactly the kind of person I wanted.
I remember at one point, the instructor staff going through hell weeks saying, who's not performing in your boat crew? They're always trying to solicit info. And I'd always be like, me, I'm not performing.
I wasn't going to throw guys on the bus or things like that. But you start to realize, hey, they want good people to serve in the SEAL teams.
And if you don't want somebody, if you wouldn't want somebody on your platoon, if you wouldn't want to go to war with somebody, then that's, you owe it to the SEAL teams that these guys should be weeding out of the program. That's what the program is actually for.
And so I think that was somebody like you were always an absolute standout performer, always somebody to put the

team first. And I mean, to me, like, you know, I don't think that was ever a question in any of

these instructors' minds. And, you know, and everything I could say positive about you was

always said, man, because you were a go-getter, you got things done, you're smart, you're capable,

you're talented, you're innovative, you're a hard worker. You're a physical put-out guy all the time.
And you're absolutely the kind of guy that I wanted to serve in the SEAL teams with, that other SEALs you would want to serve with as well. And frankly, my hat's off to you, brother, because I was 26 years old, man.
I was an old man. There were a couple of guys along with me, our leading petty officer and a couple of our non-commissioned officers.
But man, I had 26 years of maturity experience for you to do that as an 18-year-old, to have the maturity to train and the discipline to actually train and to put out and to be able to make the attorney book. I don't think I could have done that at 18, man.
So I mean, that's to me, that's, that's what I loved about the SEAL teams. It was always about the guys and the quality of the people that I got to serve with and, and guys like you, man.
And that's, that's what I love most about Buds is like, Hey, we might be getting beat on. This might be physically punishing, but we can look at each other and just laugh about how ridiculous this situation was and and uh or how funny it was or how much we were actually suffering and uh you know that that that's the best of the seal tits man yeah yeah yeah i'm with you man and um and you know like i said your reputation preceded you and and went with you everywhere you went.
And so moving out of Bud's, I mean, where did you – we all get a dream sheet. Where did you want to go? What team? I wanted to be on the West Coast, you know, just because I'd been stationed in San Diego.
My friends were out there. I had spent some time on a ship during a midshipman cruise in Virginia Beach.
And I just – I like San Diego. just, you know, I, I had spent some time on a, a ship during a midshipman cruise in, in Virginia beach.
And I just, I liked San Diego, you know, I got to know it better. And my closest friends were there.
So, um, I think, uh, I'd put West Coast SEAL teams and I got server selected, uh, or I say server selected. I got selected for, I was going to be sent to SEAL team 1.
Excuse me. So I got sent to SEAL Team 1, and I had orders to SEAL Team 1.
And that was a problem for me because in their rotation, as you know, I put on lieutenant in BUDS. And so I was already a senior guy.
What that was going to do was I was going to start as a one-time platoon commander. So I would have had, I wouldn't have the chance of being an assistant platoon commander under my belt.
And that was a problem. I was going to, like, instead of, you know, having a full workup cycle and deployment as an assistant platoon commander, which would give me some experience in the SEAL teams and give me some perspective, I just didn't think that was good for me.
It wasn't good for the SEAL teams. And so luckily, I had some good friends.
It was my same friend that was at SEAL Team 5 and several other friends that were there. They went in and talked to the executive officer and commanding officer at SEAL Team 5.
And they pulled some strings from me and got the D-30 to cut me some new orders. So I went to SEAL Team 5 as an assistant patrol commander commander.
So even though I was a lieutenant, I got a chance to be a platoon commander. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I'm so thankful for my friends that were there, for the senior leaders that were there that pulled strings for me and made that happen and really opened some doors for me.
So we got a chance to go through and got a chance to serve with some of our mutual friends, Elliot from our Buds class, who may be, Elliot may be the most senior, the most significantly wounded living seal like through the GWAT era. Yeah.
Who got wounded in Ramadi and TBI, you know, and lost his leg, wheelchair bound, like, you know, significant injuries, but just an amazing guy, man, and such an awesome dude. And always loved, like, stories from Buds.
I pulled strings to get him over to SEAL Team 5 and try to stack the opportunity. He was coming out of, you know, the 18 Delta combat medic course, Special Forces combat medic course, and all our corpsmen went to.
But it was great to be there with Elliot, some of the guys that were in, you know, classes just before us and behind us. We'll get into deployment cycles and everything that happened, but just real quick, I mean, when you pinned your trident

on, you'd been passed up. You didn't get selected two different times, one in the academy, one a couple years after the academy.
Then you make it through straight with no hangups. I mean, who was your first phone call when you passed Bud's, when you got through? my first full call was to my dad.
My dad and mom were praying for me the whole time and knew that's what I wanted to do. And just wanted to thank them for their love and support and all the prayers.
And that was, I think my dad has since got disappeared, but he had a vo he had a voicemail for me after Hell Week that I called and left for him, you know, too, as well. But that was a proud moment, man, and getting that trident.
And you and I, you know, we didn't get pinned together because that was at SQT during the time. But I remember well Ty Woods, who was, you who was our instructor at SEAL qualification training, that he probably pinned your trident on his chest just like he did for me as well, man, that we later lost in Begazi.
He was an awesome guy. And yeah, that blood pinning ceremony was something that we had a full-on Navy investigation on.
I had to answer all these questions. Oh, man, really? Yeah, and they were like, you know, this can't happen.
This is hazing. And so an officer was like doing an investigation.
And I was like, I wasn't hazing. Like, this is completely voluntary.
This wasn't hazing in any way, shape, or form. Like, I saw that as a ritual.
It was like, this is what I wanted to be a part of. And so I asked him, the investigating officer, I was like, hey, did you get your trident pinned on? He was like, oh, that was a different time.
Oh, shit, he was a seal? Yeah, I was like, that was a different time. I was like, there was no hazing whatsoever took place.
Ah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome.
Well, you know, I do have one other question.

I had no idea you guys were studying the Bible on Buds.

And, you know, I think, at least for me, faith in general kind of dissipated into nothing for a very long time until recently.

And I'm just curious, did that stick with you throughout your entire career? Man, I've fallen so far, Sean. I've stumbled as much as anyone out there.
And I'm glad I had the foundation built in me. And by the way, man, I love that you share your faith with people.
I think that's an incredible thing. I don't know how people who have been through dark times in their life make it through without faith, man.
People ask me, how is it that you're doing okay? And I think knowing that there is a creator that's in charge of the universe that has all things planned out and has a plan for each one of us, that to me is everything. And knowing that you can screw everything up and all you have to do is simply just ask for forgiveness and strive to follow the righteous path as best you can, knowing that we're all gonna fall short of the mark, you know, but that's all it takes.
And I think that to me is everything. And I think, thank God that was instilled in me at an early age.
I didn't realize or fully appreciate that. I went to the public school.
I went to a private school at a small three-room log cabin schoolhouse until I was in fifth grade. Then I went to public school in know, East Texas public school.
And then before my junior, I transferred to a public school or I'm sorry, a private Catholic school in the bigger town of Beaumont. It was about an hour away in Southeast Texas.
And so, you know, it was, it was the level of education there, I think was going to open some more opportunities for me. It was probably easier to get accepted into the Naval Academy, you know, as a result of that, or one of the service academies.
But it wasn't until I started going to school, and, you know, I was going to school, and the Catholic school was an outstanding school. We had a religious class every semester.
And I was going to school with kids that had been in a religious class from kindergarten on. And I remember, so this is my junior year, and it's my first ever religious class because in public school, we didn't have that.
But I went to Sunday school every Sunday with the First Baptist Church of Woodville. I was involved in the youth group, and we were constantly, my dad would study the Bible and talk about it at home.
It was constantly something that we referenced and talked about. And so I remember the teacher at high school, in this Monsignor Kelly High School, asking like in the spiritual class there, like what is, how did the Israelites get to Egypt? And I was like, you know, I just, I was kind of looking around the room.
I was ready for somebody to jump in. And I was like, I just raised my hand.
And I thought, I talked about Joseph, the coat of many colors. And his brothers sold him into slavery.
And then he's, which is an amazing story from the Bible, right? Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers that are jealous of him. His brothers think he's dead.
He goes to Egypt. Years later, there's a famine in the land of Canaan.
His brothers bow down before him and are asking for food supplies. And what he says to him is that what you use for good, what you meant for evil, God chose to use for good.
And so all the Israelites come and they start to become populous in Egypt. They eventually slay 400 years of slavery that results from that in Egypt until Moses leads them out.
And I was kind of looking around the room, like everyone knows the answer to that question. And afterward, people were like, dude, like how did you know that? And I was like halfway paying attention in like Baptist Sunday school, you know, like getting kicked out because I was bad and cutting up and punching people in the back of the head.
But I realized like studying the Bible was, that had been grain to me. That's something my family did.
That's something that we did in church and in my youth group, opening the Word, studying the Word. And I'm so thankful for that foundation that was built to me.
And there's times when I strayed very, very far from that. But I thank God that that always has brought me back to the the truth, right? Always understanding that there's forgiveness for anything.
And that all it takes, you know, is to recognize your own failures and flaws, that none of us are actually good enough, you know, to achieve righteousness on our own. And only through the blood of Jesus can we do that.
And that's all it takes. So that to me is, I've shared that with many

people when I talk about it. We don't need an openly secular organization, Echelon Front, but

I think there's so many foundations that are biblically rooted, right? When it talks to being

humble, I mean, you can't study scripture and not realize like abject humility is like

continually the theme. The proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted.
And, and, and that's throughout the, the scripture and particularly in the, in the new Testament. But I think, you know, the idea that like, if we got to take ownership of our problems, like we're never going to actually be good enough.
And that's, that's what prevents us from, you know, from achieving salvation. So that to me, I think to me, faith is everything.
And I think having that foundation that's, you know, that's built in and study of the word. I try to be like the, Paul talks about the noble Bereans who after he would preach to them in the synagogue would study the word to see if these things were so.
So, right, you hear something in a sermon, you hear something from a pastor, you hear something from somebody in the world, we would actually search the word, open up the Bible, study scripture, make sure that that actually is the truth and that it's open for any of us to study and know. But I just, you know, it's been really cool to hear about your spiritual journey.
And I thank you for sharing that because I think for so many people out there, they're trying to find some answer, you know, in the secular world. They're trying to find whether it's fame or fortune or money, you know, power, followers on social media, whatever it may be.
And they're never going to find that. We all know that that doesn't lead to happiness.

And I think being grounded in that.

By the way, have you ever been to the Palace of Versailles?

I don't think so.

So the Palace of Versailles, I got a chance to go to France this summer just before the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasions.

Oh, man.

And I did a go-ruck event there.

We did the 80-kilometer ruck, about 50 miles.

It was brutal.

I'm going kids there. And we had a nanny there that came and helped us with the kids, and she did some great reporting there.
And the Palace of Versailles is probably the greatest monument to the idea that money and power and fame and fortune cannot buy you happiness. It is the most magnificent place you could ever go, like Golden Gates.
And I mean, this was the seat of power, right, for the French kingdom. from Louis XIV, who was the Sun King at the height of France's power,

one of the most powerful people in the entire world, you know, all the way through Louis XVI, who eventually, you know, he and his wife, Marie Antoinette, were led to the guillotine. And I think one of the reasons that happened is because I don't think they had a clue what was going on outside the palace, man.
It is, I think they were, they're surrounded by by people who you can walk around these amazing gardens and this incredible, just ornate palace that would have just eclipsed. It's mind-blowing to think about the power and fame and fortune and influence that was going on.
This is the reality show, right? TV, the hard time that everybody wants to be a part of. And you just sense that it's probably the most miserable place you could be, right? You can't trust anybody.
Everybody's got their agenda. Everyone's trying to, you know, to undermine the other.
And it's, I think it's just a living monument to that. I think it's worth going and worth seeing.
Very interesting. You know, for that.
But it's, again, just leading us back to the faith of like, what buys you happiness, right? It's the proud will be humbled and the humble will be exalted. And only through recognizing my own failures, abject failures and flaws and weaknesses, you know, can I actually find salvation, you know, through Jesus.
And I hope that's something that others can turn to and see because that is how you find peace in this world.

I'm not like extremely wealthy or anything,

but I'm working towards it.

And so doesn't the Bible say something like a rich man

has like a fucking...

It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle? Yeah. What do you think about that? Yeah, those are great questions, man.
I think Abraham was very wealthy. I had massive herds.
So did Isaac, so did Jacob. Joseph became second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, you know, the most powerful empire of the time, you know, and

the day. I think God, I mean, Job was, you know, was given tremendous wealth, right? That's one

of those that was taken away from him that when Satan was trying to get him to curse God. So I think God gives us, I think as long as you remember that, it belongs to God.
It belongs to God. And so you can choose that to do good with it, or you can choose it to be selfish with it.
I think God has given you the means to help people. And I think, I kind of like Dave Ramsey's take on it, when you have like the, you can't help anybody else out, right? If you came to me and you're like, hey Leif, I'm having trouble paying my bills and I might lose my house here if I can't pay my mortgage.
And if I don't have my own finances in order, like I can't help you. I can't do anything for you.
So like I need to, if I have my finances in order, then I have the ability to actually have the means to help you. It enables me to help other people.
So I think when it becomes the object of worship as like, no, no, I want more money. It's money for the sake of money.
I think that's where it becomes a problem. And when you know that it's all, man, it's all like, it's just all dust, right? You can't take any of it with you.
I think when people kind of hold that up, it's like, this is what success looks like. I think you do have to be careful that it's, there is, you know, I think that Jesus talks about the Jewish culture of the day was like, hey, if someone was poor, well, that means that God, like, you know, they did something bad.
If someone was rich, then God had blessed them. They did something good.
And Jesus threw that on its head. And that thinking is not true at all.
In fact, when his disciples had asked him, when he encountered a blind man, who sinned, this man or his parents? And Jesus said, neither. This man is blind so that God could be glorified.
And then he healed them. So I mean, I think it just throws out the idea that like, you know, bad things can happen to us at any time, right? All of this can be, you know, can be given and taken away.
And I think as long as you use the means that are given to you for good, you know, to help those in need, to help others in need. And that's, I love what you're doing that, man, with like the veterans groups and bringing people into the fold, like not working yourself, right?

So you can actually help people and get them into the fold so they can get taken care of and get the benefits they deserve through the VA.

I just think those things, using the platform that you've been given for good, man.

You've been given this platform for a reason, man. God has placed you in that position for a reason.
Yeah. And you can choose to use it for good or ill, right? And when you share your faith with people, when you try to help those in need and try to actually reach out to those that are struggling, you in hard times, like you're using it for good, man.
And that's what I think has been so awesome, seeing your success. Man, thank you.
Yeah, it's just something, I don't know, man. I think about it all the time because I want to set future generations of my family up to tell you don't get pushed around.
You know what I mean? In my opinion, you create enough wealth to where you can't be fucking pushed around anymore. That's something that's really important to me.
I just don't want to see. Look, you see all these fucking families and everybody's getting pushed around, man.
Push around in their beliefs. You know, you see it everywhere.
And it just, like, from the, I mean, it just looks like the people that don't get pushed around are the ones that work themselves up to be wealthy so that they, you know, they can afford to, you know what I mean, pull their fucking kids out of school and put them over here. I think there's definitely something to that, man.
I mean, if you become uncancellable, like where somebody, they're trying to put the pressure on you and you can say, like, well, I'm not going to do that. Or, hey, I'm going to, oh, yeah, that might be a big paycheck, but I'm not actually going to take that sponsorship because I don't want you dictating what I get to say.
I'm never fucking like that. Well, I think that's what's been awesome, man.
That's what's driven the success of your show, man. I mean, there's no question in my mind about that.
You get to talk to people you want to talk to. You don't pull punches.
You don't, like, you know, you say what you want to say. And I think, and not that you're not smart about it or professional about it, you know, but I think there's, I think the self-censorship, I think you were talking about with Joe, you know, on the Rogan, Joe Rogan experience was like, that's the worst of all, right? Like, oh, I shouldn't say that because someone doesn't want to say that.
I mean, I just think it's, I think that's the kind of thing where, I think there's enough people pushing back on things now where that pendulum is starting to swing back, where people are like, yeah, we've had enough of that. Yeah, I think so too.
I mean, is that something you think about though, when you're building your business? Totally. The wealth stuff and what the Bible says about.
Totally, man. What was the passage again? The camel? It's easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle is the passage that Jesus talks about.
Now, there's some controversy about whether or not he's talking about an actual geographic place or an actual needle himself. And then he was asked about it.
His disciples were asked about it. He says, he's saying it's not impossible.
And there clearly are many, many, you know, many examples of wealthy people, including Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy man that Jesus was laid in his tomb. Nicodemus, who was one of the Pharisees, and Jesus called him the teacher in Israel.
In John, where he comes to Jesus by night and asks, how do you get to heaven? How do you be born again? And so those are things that these were believers that were wealthy and positioned to power and used their power for good. Interesting.
Yeah, it's just something I always think about. And I know Jesus is all about family.
And so if the goal is to protect your family with and everybody around you, then I just don't see how it could be bad.

But I don't know.

I get wrapped up in these little...

I struggle with it too, man.

I struggle with it too.

As we started to gain some success as well.

But the cool thing is you've got a growing business, right?

You're employing people.

You're creating livelihoods for people. I think that's huge, man.
The bills are our economy. You're promoting the sponsors in those companies that employ people.
Those things all have huge impacts. You can't lose track of that.
I think we live in a society where you get of get demonized, right, of, like, success. Yeah.
And you shouldn't be apologetic for it. I think you should be, again, confident, not cocky, right? Like, confident knowing, like, hey, this is what I'm supposed to do.
This is, God's given me the opportunity to do this. I'm going to use this platform for good.
And then I'm going to help people in need. If I see someone in need, I can help them.
Cool. I'm going to absolutely help them.
And I'm going to use that, the means that I've been given for good. And I think also, again, knowing that ultimately our faith is not in money or savings or even our firearm stash, as much as I hate to admit that in our house.
Our faith is in the almighty creator of the universe who's in charge of all things, man. And even if he lost everything, like Job did, he's still on the throne.

He still has a plan.

And that's where your faith lies.

There's a lot of people looking for that right now.

A lot of people looking for that.

It's really cool to see how many people are coming to the Word.

But, well, Leif, let's take a break.

And when we come back, we'll pick up at Seal Team 5. Hillsdale College is offering more than 40 free online courses.
That's right, more than 40 free online courses. Learn about the works of C.S.
Lewis, the stories in the book of Genesis, the meeting of the U.S. Constitution, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic, or The History of the Ancient Christian Church, with Hillsdale College's free online courses.
I've talked pretty openly about my return to faith on the show, and Hillsdale offers some incredible courses to help discover the Bible's profound lessons about fatherhood, the nature of sin, and the consequences of sin on both a family and a nation. Their online courses are self-paced so you can start whenever and wherever.
Go right now to hillsdale.edu slash srs to enroll. There's no cost and it's easy to get started.
That's hillsdale.edu slash srs to enroll for free. Hillsdale.edu slash srs.
I know everybody out there has to be just as frustrated as I am when it comes to the BS and the rhetoric that the mainstream media continuously tries to force feed us. And I also know how frustrating it can be to try to find some type of a reliable news source.
It's getting really hard to find the truth and what's going on in the country and in the world. And so one thing we've done here at Sean Ryan Show is we are developing our newsletter.
And the first contributor to the newsletter that we have is a woman, former CIA targeter. Some of you may know her as Sarah Adams, call sign super bad.
She's made two different appearances here on the Sean Ryan show. And some of the stuff that she has uncovered and broke on this show is just absolutely mind blowing.
And so I've asked her if she would contribute to the newsletter and give us a weekly intelligence brief. So it's going to be all things terrorists.
How terrorists are coming up through the southern border. How they're entering the country.
How they're traveling. What these different terrorist organizations throughout the world are up to.
And here's the best part. The newsletter is actually free.
We're not going to spam you.

It's about one newsletter a week, maybe two if we release two shows. The only other thing that's

going to be in there besides the intel brief is if we have a new product or something like that.

But like I said, it's a free CIA intelligence brief. Sign up.
Links in the description

or in the comments. We'll see you in the newsletter.
All right, Leif, we're back from the break. You're getting ready to check into SEAL Team 5 as a brand new guy, but in 03.
And so let's just talk about, you know, what that experience was like checking in let's go to day one yeah it was awesome walk across the the the corner deck there at seal team five and um we were in the old kind of quonset huts you know then and uh we we ended up building like a new building that was all kind of fancy and some of those old quonset huts have been out there since the World War II, you know, Underwater Demolition Team days. But it was awesome.
I knew a bunch of people at SEAL Team 5. It was great to be a new guy there.
There was a bunch of pipe hitters there. There were people that were just, they had just come back.
I checked in and we came back from Alaska, our Winter Warfare training trip, which I did in August of 2003, which was actually miserable. It was like 40 degrees and raining on us, you know, for a lot of the time.
Uh, but we had a great time up there, you know, on, on the, we, we, awesome fishing. And, uh, we came back, excuse me, we came back from, uh, from that.
And I immediately went on like an elk hunting trip with my dad and my brother.

We went up to the mountain, Colorado

and went and pursued some elk with our bows.

And then I came in, I checked into SEAL Team 5

and the guys were just,

a couple of people had just come back,

but the team was deployed.

So Iraq war had just kicked off.

And so SEAL Team 5 had taken over from Team 3

that had done kind of the initial takedowns of the, the, the oil platforms off the coast. And then SEAL Team 5 had really gotten to the mix with, with the, the DAs, right? The direct action missions, the capture kill raids.
And they were, they, they started using vehicles and, and, and, and jumping in, you know, using those vehicles as like their mobility element. I think they initially had to borrow vehicles from the National Guard unit because we didn't have the capability of the SEAL teams at the time.
I came back, and the guys that were coming back from that deployment started trickling back in the fall were highly experienced. They had more experience than any SEAL unit since Vietnam at that point.

So it was really cool to learn from them

and talk about the real-world experiences

that they were getting.

And it was just a lot of great mentors,

a lot of open up notebooks and ask a lot of questions.

So, I mean, what was...

It's just such a different experience

from what I experienced.

I mean, you're going, especially going to Team 5, I didn't know that they were kind of the first ones out the door doing it in Iraq. And so as a lieutenant in 03, I mean, we've already discussed the fact that you were going to have to do a platoon commander, which means you're in charge of everyone in the platoon, for those that are listening, and you're able to finagle your way into kind of an AOIC slot is what it sounds like, so second in charge.
From your words, you're getting ready to lead men who have the most experience out of the entire SEAL team organization, all of naval special warfare since Vietnam. I mean, what is that like to walk into that with a junior guy right out of SQT? I mean, we basically, yeah, we're SEALs, but we really don't know shit, you know, and we haven't really experienced anything other than training.
And you got these guys coming back who you just mentioned, capture, kill missions. They're getting after it.
It was very intimidating, man. When I graduated BUDS, you know, when you and I graduated BUDS together, we felt like, hey, we just graduated BUDS.
Like, you know, we're ready to go take on the world, right? Then you start going into SQTs, heel qualification training. You start getting some of the fundamentals of close-quarters combat and land warfare and, you know, maritime operations.
You realize, man, there's a lot I don't know. And then you start getting that first workup.
You're like, I don't know anything. I know absolutely nothing.
And then I deployed to combat. I deployed to Iraq.
And when I was leading my first combat missions, I know absolutely nothing at all. It's even less than nothing.
So it definitely was very humbling. It was cool, though, because there was, I think just realizing that, hey, I can learn from these guys.
Let me talk to them. Let me understand what they know.
And I think everyone was trying to get into the war effort. Everyone got a chance to go forward and be in the fight.
And for me, right off the bat, our very first training block was the assaults block. And so we started going through and learning that and doing our close quarters combat.
And then we did our visit board search and seizure block shortly thereafter that. And it was, that was, I had had a bunch of experience boarding ships, as we talked about, you know, in the Persian Gulf.

So I'd climb down these ships onto a, you know, a climb down the Jacob's ladder, right? The rope ladder and the plastic rungs that you lower, you know, from the side of the ship. I've climbed up and down those things a thousand times.
and in my very first

VBSS training block

we're doing some hook and climbs

from the 11 meter ribs

you know from the 11 meter ribs, you know, from the, from the special boat team, uh, detachment that took us out. We're 13 miles off the coast of San Diego and we're boarding the duty oiler, right? It's like 800 foot long, uh, uh, U S Navy service ship.
Uh, this is the ship that like the other that's refueling the, you know, the Navy warships and the carriers. And so we're 13 miles out of the coast of San Diego, and we're doing the hook and climbs, climbing up that little caving ladder just as you've done.
And I remember I was about to walk off the deck. I was like the first down on the ladder to climb back down onto the rib.
And we'd had a guy that was driving the boat. They clearly had a new coxswain at the helm.
He was somebody who was having a tough time. And you remember what it's like when you're climbing up that little paving ladder, right? If your boat's going left and right, or moving out, hauling out from the ship, it's treacherous as you're trying to climb up the 25-foot freeboard and you're bouncing up and down the waves.
And so we kind of complained about it. You know, we thought, this guy can't drive the boat.
And people were kind of complaining about it. But no one said anything.
I didn't say anything. And so I'm about to climb down.
So now the caving ladder, we've climbed up. We cleared the ship.
We took down the bridge. And so now we're going to do another run.
And they threw the Jacob's Ladder over the side, this big heavy rope ladder with the plastic rungs. This is now admin, right? We're just climbing down back onto the rib.
So I'm climbing down this thing. And right before I go, one of the trading detachment instructors that's running the training says, don't be scared, Bab.
And he made some comment like that. I'm like, whatever.
You know, I just like, I was like, man, I've done this a thousand times, dude. I walked out.
So I get down to the bottom row of the ladder at the waterline, the waves are going up and down. The rib comes in.
As the rib's about to haul out from the side of the ship, I go to step on. As the rib comes in, I'm about to go step onto the ship and the rib hauls out probably 10 or 12 feet from the side of the ship.
And I went right down in between the rib and the ship. And it would have been fine if I had a positive flotation on.
We went and did our dip test, the combat turning tank, just like we're supposed to have positive flotation on. Man, if not, I'd have been 2,000 feet on the bottom off the coast of San Diego out there.
But I got my leg wrapped up in the painter line. Oh, shit.
So now I'm getting dragged upside down underwater by this 800-foot long vessel. And I mean, I didn't know what to do.
I mean, this was, they're going like 12 knots, which is a lot of pressure. You know, if you're underwater, and my leg is like suspended, but my body's underwater.
I got my helmet, body armor, a weapon, radio, all that stuff on me. Luckily, we had a weapon shape, not a real weapon.
Because I ditched that as soon as I could. I was trying to get to my little scuba bottle, the Heads bottle.
That got just ripped away by the force of the water, so I couldn't get to that. The rib comes in, and they're trying to rescue me,

and they just smash me between the rib and the ship.

And luckily, if I had a Pro-Tech on, a plastic helmet,

I would have been killed.

Almost certainly would have smashed my head.

I had my Kevlar on, and so the boat smashed my nose.

It just kind of like filleted my nose open.

But the rib realized they can't help me, so they just kind of hauled off, and they were sitting probably 200 yards off the quarter. Just kind of just no one knew what to do.
The guys on the ladder didn't know what to do. And I'm trying to reach the water.
Every time I tried to get my hand, I would just get ripped right back down by the force of the wave. So within probably, you know, it felt like an hour, right? It probably was two or three minutes, but I very quickly realized like, I'm not going to survive this, man.
This is over. Wow.
Holy shit. And it just happened like that.
And it was, I just remember thinking, what a stupid way to go, man. This is so dumb.
I've done this a thousand times. And luckily, some heads up guys on the ladder, my teammates above me on the ladder, they realized, they climbed back up the Jacob's ladder.
And everyone was kind of just wondering what to do. And they started, one guy was like, hey, let's haul this thing.
And they started hauling it in by hand. And they lifted me.
I mean, that was a massive feat of strength and very heads up for them to do because it was a contingency that they hadn't really even thought about. And so they started hauling the ladder in.
And as it lifted me up out of the water, the pain of rope popped free off my leg and I floated down the side of the ship. Damn.
And I mean, I could see just blood pouring down my face. The rib, so the rib driver, let me the rib comes over to pick me up.
I just float right down the side of the ship. I'm kind of in the stern wash, you know, as they come pick me up.
And their faces were white. I mean, they were like eyes this big.
I must've just looked. Probably thought you were dead.
Blood just pouring everywhere. And I probably looked especially crazy, Sean, because I had a gigantic smile on my face.
I was laughing. Because I was so happy to be alive, man.
And I did not think I was going to live through that. And I was stoked.
And actually, Elliot Miller was the corpsman on that, man. Elliot treated me, and I was keeping pressure on my face, took me to Balboa.
They got me stitched up. I sat out for another couple weeks until the stitches healed and got our go-plats on.
Holy shit. So how did you gain the respect of the guys, of the seasoned guys coming back from combat? Man, I don't know if I did a great job.
I'll tell you, I learned, I made a lot of mistakes. And as I said earlier, like mistakes are the best teacher.
And I think so many of the, you know, when you asked me like, what are you looking for in a leader? Humility is number one, because I think so many of the mistakes that I made, particularly early on, were when I was really trying to prove myself.

You know, when I was like, I need to show people that I'm a competent leader and I need to show people that I know what I'm doing and I'm in charge of this. Or, you know, and I made all kinds of mistakes like that.
You know, instead of actually what you need to do is show people that you're humble. What you need to do is show people that you can listen.
What you need to do is show people that you can lean on the most experienced people. we were lucky we had a super squirt away crew in our in my

first platoon And what you need to do is show people that you can lean on the most experienced people. We were lucky.

We had a super squirt away crew in my first platoon, a 155 Bravo platoon. And they were awesome, man.
Like, it was a great crew of guys. We had a stellar crew of new guys.
And we had some experienced guys that had just come back from combat. And it was, and we had a, we had, we had a,

our platoon was was tough as nails man because our our physical training coordinator was dave goggins who was oh he ran all our training and dave is exactly who who you see dave today but it was you could always tell our platoon because no one had any skin on their shins because we were constantly climbing ropes, doing hundreds of pull-ups and running like crazy, and he organized all the PTs, and it was good, man. It was a good time.
I'll bet it was good with that guy running it. Holy shit, man.
Well, when did you find out? So you check into Team 5. we talked about that, when did you find out

where you're deploying to?

We were all fighting to go to chance,

to get a chance to go to Iraq, and we

learned that we were going to get surged

forward with,

they were going to combine,

we were going to be part of SEAL Team 3's deployment, so

they took some of the platoons from Team 5

and split them up, and

so the plan was to go half of

that to Iraq, and then half to the Pacific Theater

to run JSATs with our

I'm sorry. They took some of the platoons from Team 5 and split them up.
And so the plan was to go half of that to Iraq and then half to the Pacific Theater to run JSATs with our partners.

And so we knew we were going to go to Iraq, first of all.

And then all of a sudden, the SEALs got handed the personal security detail mission for the top five interim Iraqi officials. I don't know.
Did you get tied up in that for your first one? We did. Well, not for my first one.
We talked about my first one at breakfast. When I went to Baghdad, the whole team was tasked with it.
And we had a very, just a really fucking cool OIC. And I don't want to say his name because I don't know what he's doing nowadays he might still be in but he started farming us out to conventional units and who were having problems with the IED stuff going on and And so, yeah, they sent us, he got us into all these different locations, helping, training, and going on operations with conventional units, primarily Army units.
And we would do like a mini workup training course on sniper operations,

take the guys out and then get rid of the problem,

kill the bad guys.

And so I never had to do any PTSD,

personal security details in Iraq because he had farmed us out.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Well, I can't tell you that. I mean, having done a bunch of that on that first deployment for a few weeks and then on our second deployment to Ramadi, just seeing, you know, so much of that war was a defensive war, right, for those guys that were, you know, when the enemies, 7% to 80% of attacks are, of, uh, of attacks or IEDs, you know, roadside bombs and, and when there's nothing to shoot back at, you know, um, and you don't even know who placed it there and you're losing guys and you're hauling your dead and wounded comrades out of the street.
Um, there was nothing, I think more powerful, you know, for morale booster than, you know, for those conventional units that know the soldiers and Marines that were out there in the streets running those convoys, knowing that they had frogmen on the high ground, snipers that had their backs and were covering for them so they could move. I think it was phenomenal to be able to do that and support those guys.
And I think it was just a game changer. If you think about every bad guy you eliminated, more and marines are coming home to their families as a result and and uh i don't i don't think we did near enough of it and uh some of the people that criticized us you know later of like that's not a special operations mission i was like man you you know what you're talking about man this is this is americans that are getting killed like whatever we can do to try to help win this thing and help more of them come home with their families is what we're going to do.
It was awesome, man. I mean, you know, not only the operations that we did, but we ran into, and several of these, I've talked about this before, and a lot of the guys, a lot of the conventional guys that we worked with emailed in saying, hey, I was the 18-year-old that got that kill that day or thanking us.
And we ran into, I think it was the 10th Mountain guys that we worked with. They were the first ones we got co-located with, and they were the last ones that we saw.
We ran into them at the Chow Hall at the end of the deployment. And one of the sniper teams that we had trained and taken out came up and they were like, hey, we've killed X amount of more bad guys.
We have not had any casualties since you guys put us through that.

And we just want to, like, all of our equipment's different.

They've changed everything.

They took all the recommendations that we had and implemented just about everything. And it was just cool to see, man, like, the impact after you're gone.

You know, like, we went there. These guys were getting blown up like every day.
We killed the guys in the first 12 hours, I think, and then moved on to the next unit. And to run into those guys three or four months later, whatever it was, and to see them still doing the job effectively, probably even more effectively, and taking zero casualties when they were every other day, it's like, it's just fucking cool, man.
You know what I mean? I mean, how many guys are still walking around today that would have been killed had we not gone there and trained with them?

And then they have kids and their kids will have kids.

I mean, when that kind of shit happens, you're not just saving a life.

It's an entire fucking line of lineage that is going to be roaming the earth because 16 guys from a SEAL platoon went and trained with that unit and brought them on a real-world operation. And it's cool to think about, you know.
That's awesome, man. That's outstanding.
And I think you, sometimes, you know, when you think what it's all about and, like, you know, all this loss of life and, you know, friends that we lost and families that have been destroyed, you know, in the wake of it. And even those guys that are seriously wounded as well, right? Lives are changed and altered forever.
It's really good to remember that, man. It's good to remember the impact of that.
I think it's a little bit like that, you know, it's kind of like It's a Wonderful Life, right, with George Bailey there and getting a chance getting a chance to see like you know what it would have been like if you didn't do that stuff right and and i think uh i think it's a good reminder man of of the impact that it has um and it's uh it's just it's so much bigger than us like for me like i was going to do everything in my power always right to help try to try to bring as many Americans home as we could, do everything we could to do as much damage to the enemy as we could. And I think that's just an obligation that we all have.
And so for me, like it was, I was lucky enough, we got assigned that security detail mission and the team right before us had been given it um and man that was that was not what we wanted as you remember but i think blackwater came in with like a a bid it was like a hundred million dollars per uh you know per guy and uh the bush administration said negative that's too expensive seals you got it um but i think the seeing that like you know two of those guys have been assassinated um you know in the months prior to the seal teams taking over it and so when this is like a no-fail mission we have to keep these five interim iraqi government officials alive i loved one of the guys that passed down to me you know for the previous seal team said uh you know we know there's bad guys looking at us we know they're going to try to you know they're going to try to take us out at some point. Our whole goal is just to make them say, not today.
Not today. They look at us, not today.
And we're going to be a hard target. They're going to look at us, not today.
We'll try somewhere else. We'll go hit some software target somewhere.
And I thought that was something that always stuck with me. And the SEALs did that amazingly well.
I kept all those guys alive. It was frustrating for me as a, I got to go out with the detail every once in a while, but most of the time I was assigned to the Tactical Operations Center.
So I'm in there as the liaison officer, just tracking their movements and kind of setting up their logistics. Not what I wanted to do, but it was a job that needed to be done.
And I felt like I was probably the best guy, you know, to be able to do it for my platoon and help them and support them. Learned a ton, you know, about passing information back to the talk and how they can best support you.
And luckily, I had a great executive officer who sent me out. He tasked 12 of us, a bunch of us from, you know, from Silt Team 5, Silt Team 8.
Got a chance to go and be a part of some sniper operations up at Samara, supporting the Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division up there. You know, didn't see a lot of combat.
Got shot at a few times. Kind of small little teams kind of, you know, going through the city, little four, six-man teams and climbing up on rooftops and trying to do the sneaky frog mess.
It was pretty fun. You know, we engaged a few guys.
I think we had one confirmed kill from that and, you know, a few problems, but we definitely disrupted the IDs that were being laid and the mines were being put in the street. And it also gave me an appreciation, you know, obviously I love the SEAL teams, man.
And I'm so proud of the training that we went through and the guys that we served with. But when I flew up to Samara and it was funny because we left Baghdad, we had 12 guys with us.
It was like 82 degrees on the tarmac in Baghdad. We landed Samara after a couple other stops.

It's nighttime.

It was 39 degrees.

I had five guys with no warmies.

Yeah, bad.

And it was like, so we're trying to piece together this stuff.

We're living in this like burned out, you know, building.

And I didn't realize, you know, our guys are complaining about, you know, Baghdad.

And they're eating at the Al Rashid, you know, hotel with ice sculptures and stuff. And stuff and i remember jumping in a you know we're rolling around these up armored vehicles and you know uh and it was a lot of times in and out of the green zone obviously there was dangers i mean people were trying to attack the guys i'm not saying the risks were were limited but i remember sitting in the cab of a big like five ton truck there's like you know quarter inch steel plates welded on the back they didn't have doors in the cab of a big five-ton truck.
There's quarter-inch steel plates welded on the back.

They didn't even have doors on the cab.

It was an Arkansas National Guard unit,

and they're giving us a ride from the airfield over to in the downtown city center where there's an ODA team.

We were going to stay with them.

I'm talking to this Arkansas National Guard soldier.

I was like, man, you're kind of hanging it out up here. He's like, oh man, this baby.
He's like, this baby's eating about 14 RPGs at this point. Yeah, she's my good little charm.
And I was just like, man, here we are. These dudes are out here roughing it.
They're in the fight. They're getting attacked all the time.
They don't have near the equipment that we have. They don't have near the training that we have.
And that to me was like, I'm going to do everything I can to help every American that's on the ground here in every way that I possibly can. Yeah.
I thought you were going to say he looked at you and said, I'm not the one hanging it out. That's your vehicle.
But yeah, it was pretty bare bones there at the beginning. But, well, when did Elliott get hurt? Was it this platoon? It was the next platoon.
So he stayed in that same platoon. I rotated to a different platoon, it's SEAL Team 3.
Okay. We ended up getting rotated out of Iraq, so we went up to Samara for like three weeks.

Then we came back,

did our turnover,

and then we did the relief in place

between the squadrons.

And so we got sent

to the Pacific Theater.

So we went around

doing the J sets

with the Royal Thai Seals

and the Republic of Korea Seals

and, excuse me,

was spending a little time

in Okinawa. You know, just, I got to see a different theater, got to train a little bit, spent most of the time in Guam surfing and partying.
Nice. And basically, we just trained like madmen the whole time and got in really good shape.
And we're itching for a chance to go back. You know, so I came back with SEAL Team 5.
And luckily, my commanding officer at SEAL at seal team by the time he he said you're going to seal team three and i was i was so pissed about that sean like i was like really these are my guys i want to take over this platoon i want to be their platoon commander and um and you know he was detached from this and he said look you're you're already senior it's it's important that you you'll be six months ahead in the workup cycle um you know that that you you deploy so that you'll be eligible you know uh for promotion down the road and like this is that's for your career path and i was like i pitched a fit about man i was like are you kidding me you know like i was i was the kind of argument and push back type and he was like nope it's happening you're going to seal team three and uh And thank God he did that, man, because I love those guys at SEAL Team 5.

They were awesome and still some of my closest friends in the world.

And they relieved us in Ramadi.

But thank God I got a chance to go serve and task at a bruiser in SEAL Team 3.

And so I showed up.

At the end of that deployment, I came back, did a little, you know,

got a little bit of a leave and then went straight to SEAL Team 3, checked in as the platoon commander, got assigned as Charlie Platoon. We heard about this guy, Jocko Willink, who was our task unit commander.
He was in charge, and I had heard about Jocko. I'd never seen Jocko.
I didn't know anything about Jocko. What did you hear about him? I heard he was pretty intense.
I heard he was my platoon chief, Tony Afrati, was a phenomenal SEAL. I think probably one of the best SEAL chiefs that one of the best platoon chiefs that the SEAL teams has ever produced.
No kidding. Phenomenal battlefield leader.
Wow. I'm talking like, hey, we're taking massive fire from that building across the street.
Give me two guys on me. Let's go.
Wow. And he is absolutely the guy that you want in a gunfight.
And so he was like, he had a reputation. Tony, everyone loved Tony.
Been around for a long time time. He'd been busted down multiple times for shenanigans.
Just old school teams. Here he is at the platoon chief.
He's like, trust me. Jocko is the one guy that we want as our task leader commander.
I was like, all right. Jocko had been the admiral's aide.
He admiral's aide, so he got assigned as the admiral's aide and he gets, he comes over. And when I met him for the first time, you know, Seth Stone, our brother from, you know, from Buds, he was the dealt platoon commander.
So we were platoon commanders together. We had a bunch of guys from our Buds class in there, you know, as well.
I knew a ton of these guys. I've been deployed with Hill Team 3 just before this.
So I got to meet Chris Kyle and some of the other guys just prior to that. They'd been in Baghdad doing a bunch of sniper ops on Haifa Street and supporting the Fallujah offensive that went down while we were deployed in the fall of 2004.
Now we're here in the spring of 2005, standing up the task unit.

And so Jocko shows up.

And I was like, man, this dude looks like an axe murderer.

He doesn't smile at us.

He just walks up, like just mean mugs, like, hi, I'm Jocko.

Like no smile whatsoever.

And like just walks away.

And then, dude, you remember Stoner, like, you know,

who's an emotional guy.

Man, I love Stoner so much.

And he was like,

Thank you. And I was like, hey, man, listen, I hear he's the guy that we want.
I was like, we knew he trained jujitsu. We knew he just got his black belt.
He's a big jujitsu guy. We knew he had a ton of operations he'd come from SEAL Team 7 a bunch of operations that he'd done so he probably had as much experience as anybody in the teams at that point and so I was like hey man come on let's work hard let's train jiu-jitsu and after a couple months Seth and Jocko stephen jaco ended up being like super close right so uh in fact i think you know it was uh steph was probably the little little brother that uh the jaco never had you know to jaco and and um but jaco was like i i he set the tone for our entire task in it we had an awesome crew of pipe hitters in there man they were they were excellent they came they were just coming back from ira coming back from Iraq.
A lot of experience. Chris Kyle was our lead sniper appointment, and he had a ton of experience coming from Fallujah, coming from Haifa Street, some of the other places in Baghdad.
And then the new guys that we got in were studs too, man. We sent them to schools.
It was an awesome team. But Jocko really set the tone for our entire team and and of like hey right away he was like right away he was like we're not tasking a bravo we're tasking a bruiser and interesting so you know we had three task units abc right alpha bravo charlie and the phonetic alphabet and i was like i thought that was weird for like 24 hours like tasking a

bruiser and then like 24 hours later we're like we're tasking a bruiser so like it was actually i learned later this is something that he got from uh a book uh by a u.s army a retired colonel named david hackworth called the bout face and if you haven't read this it is a phenomenal, phenomenal book. Hackworth joined the army when he was a, he lied on his paperwork and listed when he was 17 to try to make it into World War II, just missed World War II, but was brought up to the ranks as, you know, had learned from all his mentors who had just, you know, defeated the Germans and Japanese in World War II.

And then he served in Korea and was eventually, you know,

commissioned as an officer, made it up to colonel,

multiple deployments to Korea, multiple deployments to Vietnam.

I think he was the, when he died, he died in the early 2000s.

I think, I think it might've been while we were deployed to Iraq that first time.

And I think he was the, he was the was the highest, the most decorated living soldier at the time. Wow.
I mean, like crazy, crazy awards. But they called him Mr.
Infantry. And so much of, he changed the names of his units.
Interesting. For what? To give them a personality.
So I'm just going to... Task unit bruiser is like a legendary unit.
And you don't hear... Look, there's no other task unit that has a call sign that I'm aware of.
You hear people talk about tasking a bruiser all over the place. I don't know a whole lot about it other than the reputation, but it seems like you guys have really created or did create some type of very strong culture in that platoon? The culture was massively strong.
In our platoon, Charlotte platoon, in Delta platoon, in Sass platoon, and the entire task in it. And those two 60-man SEAL platoons and a five-man 100-quarters helmet that Jocko was in charge of that we started out with.
And he set the tone right from the beginning. We're tasking a bruiser.
We're going to work harder than everybody else. We're going to train harder than everybody else.
We're going to be ready for the worst case scenarios on the battlefield. And that was the culture of our team.
And what's interesting about Jocko is you look at him and he's got this like super stern kind of look to him. But he actually, and even though he didn't smile at us for the first couple of months that weren't together, in fact, the first time, we were all training jiu-jitsu.

We'd come in at 5 o'clock in the morning and train jiu-jitsu.

He'd lay mats out in the high bay at Seal Team 3.

It was mandatory for all the officers, and we had a bunch of enlisted guys that would come in and train too.

And you could tell us at officer's call, you know, the morning meeting,

because you'd say, you know, if you said like, hey, Leif, or hey, Seth,

like everyone would kind of turn their head, like their whole body because their necks are all like jacked up because we're like cranking on each other and hurting each other and everyone's going just full bore level 19 berserker mode. But the first time that I realized that Jocko was like actually, you know, not super serious all the time.
Like I'm demoing, he's like demoing a jujitsu move at five o'clock in the morning. We're in the high bay.
He's like, he's like, Babin, get over here. You know, he's like, grab my hand.
Yeah. My other hand.
My other hand. And he's like, bow to your sensei, bow to your sensei.
And I, I'm like, wait, that's Napoleon Dynamite. He's quoting Rex Kwan Do from Napoleon Dynamite, but he's doing it with a straight face.
And he's not like, he doesn't even smile. and I'm like, okay, this dude's joking around.
So that was the first time I got to see Jocko, who's totally, like totally jokes around, and is obviously professional when he needs to. But I think what Jocko did for us was, I think channel aggression and guys that wanted to go get after it into like, he really taught me to be what we call, and I just call him for the silent leader.
That's what good leadership looks like. You would look at someone like Jocko and think Jocko's in charge.
Jocko's a prior enlisted SEAL. Jocko's got more common experience than anybody else here.
So he's going to dictate everything and run everything and tell you what to do. And he did the complete opposite.
He said, hey, here's the goal. Why don't you come up with a plan and tell me how you want to do it.
Rates have dropped and it's time to take advantage. A lot of us are struggling to keep up with everyday bills and you're reaching for the credit cards to pay for all of it.
But homeowners, listen up. Interest rates have fallen into the fives.
That's nearly a quarter of the average credit card rate. American Financing is helping homeowners like you save an average of $800 a month by tapping into your home's equity and wiping out high interest debt.
And the best part is there are no upfront fees to get started. Credit card rates are insane.
And if you're carrying a balance every month, you're stuck in an endless cycle. Break free today, call American Financing and see how much you can save.
And if you start now, you may even delay the next two mortgage payments. Call American Financing today at 866-781-8900.
That's 866-781-8900 or go to AmericanFinancing.net slash SRS. You know, and it was the first time that I saw, like, we draw on operations.
Well, he doesn't say anything. He's letting the team run it.
So I realized that's what I need to do as a leader is let my team step up and lead. And so when my team is leading, now I can look up and out, right? Every leader should be trying to look up and out down the road.
Now, so instead of me solving the immediate tactical problem, I'm thinking about the next step or the next step or the next step beyond that. You're thinking about the long-term strategic problems, you know, down the road.
And that's what every leader should be trying to do. And, you know, Jocko also, he used what we call the indirect approach, which is, you know, instead of saying, Hey, listen, you know, I had one platoon under my belt, didn't really have, I had a handful of combat operations.
I had zero DA missions, right? Capture kill raids at that point, zero. Seth had done a couple of them.
You know, I'd done a handful of sniper operations, but I didn't have any, I didn't really have any experience. And, you know, but instead of, instead of saying, you know, for us, when, when, when the training detachment instructors, who obviously drive a very high standard of performance, when they would say things like, hey, you guys are good to go.
You met the standard. You know, we're out here at land warfare.
Okay. Your patrol is good to go.
Hey, your, your, your immediate action drills when react to contract, and those are good to go.

Hey, you guys can take it back to the camp.

Instead of Jocko saying,

like, you knuckleheads aren't as good as you think you are,

combat's harder than you think it is,

we're going to keep pushing the standard even higher,

we're going to do this again.

He actually just called us over,

and he said, hey, Leif Stoner,

do you think we're ready for the worst-case scenario

in the battlefield?

And we looked at each other, and we're like, no, man, no, let's do another run. Let's do another run after that.
Let's do three more runs. And it was us doing it.
If we just said yes, he would have been cool. Sounds good.
Let's go back to the camp. But he just, he would ask us an earnest question, a question that he wanted the answer to and let us reveal the truth of ourselves.
And I think it's such a powerful leadership concept instead of, you know, this works on your kids, right? This works with your spouse, with members of your community, with your team at work, anywhere in life. When you can ask someone a question and allow them to reveal the truth to themselves instead of trying to just bash them over the head with the truth.
Because what good is telling people the truth if they don't listen? But when you can ask someone a question like that, now it's not Jocko saying, do two more runs, and everyone's complaining about it. It's actually me saying, we need to do two more runs so that we're ready for that worst case scenario, talking that over with my platoon so they understand it as well.
And I think that was the kind of culture that became part of the team of like, hey, we have to be ready for the absolute worst case scenario that we might come up against. And so I think that was, it was a culture of always striving to do better.
And immediately, I think what set our task unit apart was in my previous task unit, it was of like most SEAL task units where we had some really talented people. We had some experienced people.
We did some things well. We did some things not so well.
But the things that we didn't do well when training detachment would say, hey, you should improve on this, there was pushback. We were kind of like, eh, I'd like to see them do better.
Yeah, we're good to go. We'll play the game and just get through this and get overseas.
And in Tasking a Bruiser, it wasn't like that. We were our own harshest critic.
It was really critiquing ourselves. And when these training instructors said, hey, look, your head counts are taking too long.
You need to figure out a way to be more efficient. We're like, absolutely.
Let's figure this out. Let's work on that.
And we were our own harshest critic. We were always trying to get better and improve all the time.
And that became the culture of the team. Whether you're a brand new guy, you know, that was trying to contribute in some way to, you know, managing your fire team, you know, all the way up to me as the platoon commander to Jocko as the tasking commander and figuring out ways to be more efficient and effective all the time.
And I think that's the strength of the SEAL teams, right? Is always that innovation, like always trying to get better in what we're trying to do, always trying to improve and seeking inputs from everybody, no matter if they're in a leadership position or if they're simply just a shooter, you know, who's in charge of just themselves and their piece of the mission. I think when you've got to, when that becomes the culture of the team, that makes all the difference.
You've got a team that's constantly improving, constantly learning, constantly growing. We made all kinds of mistakes in Tasking a Bruiser.
We screwed all kinds of stuff up. But we learned from those mistakes, and we would implement solutions to try to fix them and prevent them from happening going forward.
I mean, are we ready for the worst-case scenario? That's a tough question. Was there ever a yes? I don't think so.
I think we were honest enough with ourselves to know, hey, man, I've never been in the worst-case scenario. So are you ready for it? Are you going to be ready for it? And I think when you show up to something and you're over-trained, like, hey, we didn't need to train that hard.
Cool. It's easy, you know? It's easy.
Like, that's what you want it to be. You know, if you can make training harder than actual combat, like, that's awesome.
That's ideal. You know, and that's one of the lessons that we brought back to Ramadi, you with us you know after we deployed if you'd asked me if you'd asked me uh as young lieutenant Leif Babin Charlie platoon commander and tasking a bruiser hey Leif are you going to be in you know do you think you'll get in a blue on blue like friendly fire situation and I told you like that happens to losers who don't know how to plan SQ missions.
And, you know, the book Extreme Ownership, like that's chapter one. That's chapter one, the very first major combat operation that I was a part of, massive blue on blue, massive blue on blue issue.
And, you know, we talked about before, like the idea that like we had to, if we didn't take extreme measures to mitigate the risk of that happening, it was absolutely going to happen. Particularly in the urban environment where it's confusing with so many different units that are out there, particularly with our SEAL snipers that were going out under cover of darkness beyond the forward line of advance.
and you've got U.S. tanks and Humvees and units that are coming into an enemy held area and they're getting shot at by enemy fighters.
You know, it just, the idea that like that is absolutely going to happen unless you take massive steps to mitigate the risk of it happening. And then it was, it was just one of those things where like, I just realized like combat is so much harder than I thought it was ever going to be.
And, and those things can happen so much easier than you ever thought it could be. And once you're in it, you can't just, can't just peek your head.
You know, if you're taking an effective fire, man, you can't just peek your head up over the wall and say, Hey, who's shooting at us? You know, like your head's going to be gone. That's going to be the end of you.
So, um, if you're getting suppressed, uh, man, that's all, that's all you can do, you know? And I think. And I think we had such a close call in that first situation where we had about that whole squad of my guys on that operation.

Let's rewind real quick.

So this is your first operation.

That was the first was your operation.

First kinetic operation of the deployment.

Let's just walk. What were you guys doing? What was the op? Yeah, if you will, maybe it's better to back up to talk about what it was like to arrive in Ramadi and, you know, and start there.
When we were, we thought we were going to go work with the, you know, with the ICTF, you know, in Baghdad and do this high-speed Iraqi commando unit that probably had the most training of any Iraqi unit out there. And that's what we thought we were going to do.
We were going to go do these kinetic operations. It was going to be super foam.
We were excited about it. Everyone left to go on pre-deployment leave.
And while we were on pre-deployment leave, we got a change of orders. They decided to consolidate the two different squadrons that were deploying.
And we found out we're going to Ramadi. So at the time, Ramadi was just a violent hellhole.
I mean, it was a city of 400,000 people. It was the capital of Anbar province, and it's a fraction of the size of Baghdad.
I think the whole greater area of Baghdad has something like two and a half or three million people in Baghdad. there would be more significant attacks, right, or enemy attacks that happened in and around the city of Ramadi, this small city of 400,000 people just a few miles across the city center.

There would be as many or more attacks in Ramadi, this small city of 400,000 people just a few miles

across the city center, there would be as many or more attacks in Ramadi on a daily basis as there weren't. Why was Ramadi such a strategic location? I think it was after the, it was in the heart of the Sunni triangle, right? And it was the largest, it's the capital of Anbar province, which is the the Sunni capital.

So this is where the Saddam's kind of base of support and operations were. So I think there was a lot of support for Saddam and the insurgency that came out of there.
I think after the Marines smashed Fallujah in 2004, many of the fighters that were there fled and went to Ramadi. And so, you know, from like late 2004 into 2005, Ramadi was just really the most violent place in Iraq.
Zarqawi, you know, who was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq at the time, had declared that Ramadi was the capital of his caliphate, and he was going to establish the capital there in Ramadi. There was something like 3,000 to 5,000 insurgent fighters that controlled most of the city.
And when we arrived in April of 2006, it was, man, it was, I think I landed on the ground. It was like April 3rd, 2006.
It was instantly, it was apparent that this was a very different deployment than the one I've been on previously. And I've been hearing about Ramadi.
You'd hear every day in the news, you'd hear like three U.S. soldiers killed in Ambar province or two Marines wounded in Ambar province.
And most of those were coming in and around the city of Ramadi. I think Ambar province was accounting for something like 70% of U.S.
casualties in Iraq at the time throughout most of 2005, 2006. And most of those were coming in and around Ramadi.
So it was just a violent terrorist stronghold. And when we arrived there right away, I mean, even in Baghdad, you're flying around in a helicopter.
If you flew over Ramadi in the daytime, you're getting shot down in the sky. No one was doing it.
So it was like vehicle convoys. And it was every single week there were memorial services going on at the camp.
There were U.S. Marines and soldiers getting wounded or killed almost every day damn almost every day and uh and multiple times i remember there would be like a call of the loudspeaker for like like a a mass like blood drive you know come give blood uh you know for a mass cashing situation i mean there were people killed on base in the chow hall with mortars in the base, you know, before he even left the base.
And when we were driving, so the SEALs were working out of a place they called Shark Base. It was like an old like Republican Guard effort.
And after Mark Lee was killed, we renamed it Camp Mark Lee. But it was kind of on the edge of Ramadi, like right on the Euphrates River.
And in order to get there, you had to drive off the main camp. It was still kind of behind the walls of the camp.

But, but right on the Euphrates River. And in order to get there, you had to drive off the main camp.
And it was still kind of behind the walls of the camp. But there was a, you would drive through what they called the vehicle graveyard.
And the vehicle graveyard was, you know, these vehicles that would have IDs, Humvees, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles. They would drag these twisted burnt hulks and just, they would just leave them out here in this kind of you know it was just kind of a kind of a junkyard area and uh man it was a powerful reminder of what was out there waiting for you every time like you're going you're going to uh um you know you're driving past that every single time you're launched on an operation um driving to that vehicle graveyard just knowing that those twisted charred honks of metal that used to be a vehicle you know almost all those had had you know soldiers or marines that were killed or wounded them and um and then you know the gates were like a it was it was a m88 uh which is like a it's basically like a tow truck for tanks i mean these things weigh you know a tank know, a tank weighs 70 tons, you know, an M1 Abrams tank.

And that's what they had blocking the gate because it was such a threat of like a, you know,

massive IED threat coming in

and people would be attacking the camp.

And I've been on the ground for probably about a week there.

We turned over with a crew from SEAL Team 2,

outstanding crew there,

and they had built awesome relationships.

They'd trained a bunch of the Iraqi units, and they were doing a ton of operations. But it was kind of mostly on the outskirts of the city because there was no U.S.
presence inside the city except for the Marine bases that controlled and the 101st Airborne, 1st to 506th Battalion that controlled, Task Force Red Courier control at the eastern part of the city.

And the Marines from 38 Marines controlled the main route to the city. It was called Route Michigan.
And about every kilometer, the Marines had a base there. And even still, even though we controlled that road, that road throughout our six-month deployment there was overwhelmingly the most heavily attacked road in all of Iraq.

It had 7 to 10 IEDs on average in any 24-hour period. This is a road that we controlled.
So, like, U.S. forces controlled that road every kilometer.
There's a Marine or Army checkpoint. And so, I mean, it was just nonstop, you know, combat that was going on all the time.
Nasty, nasty. When we showed showed up, it was just, it was, I was just in awe of the soldiers and Marines that were there.
And, and the fight, there was a, there was a National Guard unit that was on the ground. And seeing these National Guard, you know, the National Guard, man, they, they, they don't have, they have a fraction of the training and equipment that we have.
This was the 228, the 2nd Brigade, 28th Infantry Division, the Iron Soldiers, based out of Pennsylvania. And they had National Guard from really all over.
They had some Utah National Guard, Vermont National Guard, Pennsylvania National Guard. And these guys, they're part-time soldiers.
And many of them had been on the ground for over a year at that point. And I mean, these, these guys were hardened combat warriors.
And sometimes they'd, I'd show up and, and the SEAL Team 2, you know, would introduce us and, and they'd, you know, they'd look at us and our high-speed little 10-inch barrel M4s and our, our gear. And, you know, we had better night vision and lasers and stuff like that.
And they're looking back at us like, like, oh man, look at, look at that. Look at the SEALs.
They've got, you know. These guys have all this cool gadgetry.
And I just, for me, Sean, I was like, man, this National Guard soldier, who's probably 19 years old, has fired more rounds through his weapon in his year here than all of us put together are ever going to fire in our entire careers. And I mean, they were just in the thick of the fight the entire time.
The Marines that were manned in the checkpoints through that city, in particular the ones at the government center, that was Kilo Company, 3A Marines, awesome unit of Marines. We worked really closely with their Lima Company, Kilo Company, and India Companies, and, man, they were freaking awesome.
And the government center was taking an OPVA, which was named after like the Veterans Administration building that was like an Iraqi Veterans Administration building, I guess, in the Saddam era. But those two, they'd get hit once a week by 50, 100 insurgents attacking from three different directions hitting them with you know a dozen belt fed machine guns at the same time lobbing mortars in the super accurate mortar fire and then somebody trying to drive a 5 000 pound v-bed into their position i mean it was it was every week wow for them and uh so we just you know when we showed up there i was like man how can we help these guys what can we do to help in any way that we can.
And so we just, you know, when we showed up there, it was like, man, how can we help these guys? What can we do to help in any way that we can? And so we just decided to get to work. So what was the work? The work was, what can we do? You know, what is our part of this mission? And for us, it was number one SEAL snipers, just like the work that you were doing.
We can take our guys, we can take a pretty small group. And right away, we were told there was red areas on the map that were like, don't go there.
These are Al-Qaeda. This is Al-Qaeda in Iraq battle space.
And if you go there, you're all going to get killed. Nobody can even come recover your body.
And so we realized like, hey, that's the enemy safe haven. Like, is there a way that we can get into these safe havens and mitigate the risk of being overrun, you know, by a hundred enemy fighters? And so what we did was we started kind of on the edges of the city, you know, pushing in with some of the Marine and Army patrols, but setting up sniper overwatch position.
We'd go in and undercover darkness, set up on the rooftops of buildings in the windows where they wouldn't be expecting us to be. And, you know, if you were in a bad area that had no U.S.
presence before, I mean, all of a sudden when the, you know, first call of the prayer goes down and, you know, the sun rises and the cities move around, I mean, you got enemy fighters moving around with RPGs and Belfand machine guns and starting to coordinate attacks on nearby friendly patrols and outposts. And it was just a shooting gallery for the snipers.
So you could actually sit in an OP in an area that was black and see the enemy combatants forming up to go outside of that area to engage and ambush U.S. forces.
Definitely multiple times, yeah. Many, many times.
In the daytime. Well, we'd be in there.
We'd sneak in at nighttime and try to be hidden as best we could in a position. And what we did, though, was we adjusted.
My idea before of a sniper mission was like a little small two-man, four-man element, six-man element.

Man, these elements, when you're going in there, we had to have, you know, we would go in with a 30-man element and lock down like a four-story apartment building.

Particularly, it didn't start, you know, initially we started working on the outside edges of the city. And then once the U.S.
forces started establishing these combat outposts, they'd build a forward operating base right in the enemy-held neighborhood, a permanent, permanent outpost that they could work out, bring Iraqi soldiers with them. Oftentimes what we'd do is be the first U.S.
troops on the ground for that. So we'd sneak in under cover of darkness.
And the IED threat was the biggest threat. So how do we mitigate the risk of that? Well, we would foot patrol.
So I mean,, it was throw everything on your back. We're carrying Carl Gustav, you know, shoulder fired rockets.
We're carrying 40 millimeter grenades. We're carrying multiple belt fed machine guns, every squad, multiple belt fed machine guns.
Because we had to be ready. You know, we would take the minimum force that we would take, we usually was at least a squad of SE SEALs because that way I at least had two fire team elements that could bound.

And if we're going into a super hot area, it would be double that.

It would be like a full implementation or even more.

So you guys are running 30-man teams?

And with those teams—

So maybe 18 or 20 of those guys would be SEALs plus EOD. You know, our EOD bomb technicians were phenomenal.
And we're absolutely, you know, part of our, a critical part of our team, just like the ones you worked with. And we had some awesome shooters too, man, that they could do both.
And they're, so we also had, we'd also, So sometimes we would plus up with squads from conventional army units or Marine units as well, just because we wanted to have some more Americans out there with us. And we'd always have Iraqi soldiers.
So, you know, we might have 12, 15, 20 Iraqis with us. I did not, like those guys were out there risking their lives.
I did not count on them in the gunfight. So, you know, when it was, we saw that too many times that when, you know, if you've got 100 enemy fighters trying to overrun your position, like you are, the only thing that's going to save you is Americans.
And the things that saved us was Americans with Belfit machine guns. Those machine gunners carrying the, you know, the Mark 48, you know, 760 belt-fed machine gun and the Mark 46, you know, 556 belt-fed machine gun, those guys saved our lives over and over and over again.
Just beat back attacks, preventing us from being overrun. If we're on, if we were on a patrol with our Iraqis, you know, if we're getting attacked, like enabling us to be able to keep the enemy's head down so we could get off the street, land down cover fire from us.
I mean, I just, I talked to those Vietnam SEALs about how much they love their machine gunners, you know, that were carrying the stoner machine gunners in the M60s, you know, back in Vietnam and how that would enable them to push deep into Viet Cong territory where nobody could come get them. And the only QRF, you know, a lot of those Vietnam guys had working in like the Rungsat and places like that in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam was like another seven-man SEAL squad.
And they had some, you know, maybe some, they had Seawolf, you know, the helicopters that were supporting overhead and some aircraft. But those machine gunners kept them alive.
And it was the exact same thing for us in Tasking a Bruiser. Those machine gunners like Mark Lee and Ryan Jobe and all those guys carrying the heavy belt.
Jake, our mutual, you know, Bud's classmate, man, he was, those guys were awesome. And, you know, carrying so, because you're full patrolling in every time.
And so they're carrying massive heavy weight. And real quick, let me, I want to get into some specific examples of how they, how effective the AW, the automatic weapons guys were.

But from, let's look at a bigger picture real quick.

So from, for Ramadi, what was the, what was the overall mission?

Not just of tasking a bruiser, but what was the overall mission?

Was it to, was it to infiltrate and occupy and the city and take it from aq al-qaeda that's a it's a fantastic question man i think what's interesting about it is um never did i see a time where the generals in baghdad or someone from the pentagon came and said here's your mission ramadi the sean ryan show peak points get timeless inspiration from the very best of The Sean Ryan Show. What do you think of working with the Seals? We went out every night going after bad guys.
I was humbled. There was no going back home.
I would be in another room crying because I was afraid to go to sleep because of what was coming for me in the middle of the night. How long did it take you to be able to talk about a long time? But I realized my experiences may help other people, too.
The men like yourself are considered legends in the community. You're right.
The Sean Ryan Show Peak Points. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
And so the guys in Ramadi figured out what that mission should be. They were close to the problem.
And the brigade colonel that was in charge, the colonel and his staff that were in charge of that National Guard unit, they got relieved by about a month in our deployment by the Ready First Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division. And those guys were brought in tanks and firepower, but they brought in a perspective on that as well about what that mission should be.
Colonel Sean McFarland was was the guy in charge um and his staff were just they were phenomenal man and uh we uh we love that national guard unit too those guys were outstanding but the the ready first brigade combat team is who i spent the bulk of that deployment with you know helping them many of the marine units and the uh that task force red curry the one of our airborne unit those guys guys stuck around as well for much of that, our deployment.

But what they realized was the mission Ramadi was to stabilize the city,

secure the local populace, and ultimately lower the level of violence.

That was the goal.

That was the goal.

And I think if you, you know, I think for so long,

if you'd asked a SEAL, if you'd asked me, you know, my first opponent,

like, what's the SEAL mission in Iraq? What are you trying to do? I said, kill bad guys. And I think something that Jocko really recognizes, like, look, either U.S.
forces win in Ramadi and we all win, or U.S. forces lose and we all lose.
And it doesn't matter how many bad guys we kill or capture. It doesn't matter how many operations we conducted.
If U.S. forces lose here, we all lose.
So what we have to do is help U.S. forces win.
And we understood that that was the mission, was to stabilize the city, secure the local populace, lower level of violence. And we realized our part of that was to take a small element that was very heavily armed.
I say small, right? It might've been as many as 30 guys if you're locking down a four-story apartment building. And many times we tried to put two elements in that were mutually supporting one another because there's nothing stronger than mutually supporting overwatch positions with interlocking fields of fire.
I mean, that's how you're going to defeat an enemy that way outnumbers you when they're trying to come and attack your position. When that other position could cover a move, cover for you, and you can cover for them as well.
But that's how we mitigated the risk of going into some of those areas. And we knew that we could take a fairly small group of guys with a lot of firepower, carrying the shoulder-fired rockets, carrying the belt-fed machine guns, carrying the 40-mic-mic grenades, JTAGs with aircraft support and its overhead.
We had artillery battery. The artillery battery in Ramadi fired, I think they fired over 5,000 rounds from their 155 batteries.
So when you're going out with 30 guys, are you breaking them up into 15 two-man teams and putting them in different locations? Sometimes. Seven four-man teams? Sometimes.
And you can get them all in one location? Sometimes. But what we typically would do, we would, I like to be in multiple locations so we can mutually support one another.
We also found, though, that when we teamed up, a lot of these operations, we were the very first U.S. troops on the ground.
We would even go in and do some reconnaissance in the area. And as frogmen, right, the river, the Afrinist River runs right through Ramadi, and there's a Habbaniya Canal kind of breaks off from there as well.
So we had access to much of the city, and there was a badass marine boat unit there called the Dam Support Unit. They had these circ boats, these small unit riverine craft that they could stand for, Kind of like a rib.
Kind of like a combination between a rib and a sock are. We teamed up with those guys.
We'd sneak in there at night time, totally blacked out. Night vision, they'd just drop us off in the bank.
No one had any idea we were in there. No shit.
You guys would do a water insertion at night. Did a ton of them.
To do a reconnaissance to what? Find where your sniper hides and no pieces are going to be? Find out where they would be, do a reconnaissance of the area, engage IED layers, which we often did. And then we'd use that as an insertion platform, go in there at nighttime, jump off on the beach, full patrol in, so we could set up a sniper, you know, our sniper hides.
And so we would oftentimes take down the buildings or buildings near those buildings that would eventually be the combat outposts. So would you insert guys, they would infiltrate the OPs, and then the rest of the team would come and link up later? Or would you exfil back out of the location that you're at and then get the rest of the team and then go back in? Sometimes we did reconnaissance missions where we'd go in and kind of just probe and do a little recon and then come back and kind of use that as part of planning.
Obviously, you have to hit multiple buildings that don't know exactly where you're going. Try to go into different areas and do some misdirection stuff.

But usually what we would do is an insertion method.

We would go in there and set up in the sniper hide

and try to get in position before the first call of prayer.

So we could get in position by daylight.

Then we would start to like, we would try to get to get some long axis looks down, you know, some of the main avenues of approach. And then usually we would be, so we would wait until oftentimes the, you know, the first, some of those larger operations, you're talking over a thousand soldiers and Marines on the ground, 50 tanks, dozens and dozens of heavy, you know, engineering vehicles.

I mean, they're trucking in, you know, 70,000 sandbags to, you know, multiple semi-truck loads

of, you know, Jersey barriers and Texas T-barrier, you know, those giant concrete barriers to try to,

you know, concertina wire rolls to, like, reinforce these positions.

Because you know you're going to get attacked.

I mean, they're coming.

And that's usually where we could really help those guys. So we would set up and cover for them as they infiltrated.
And there were multiple tests. I remember that.
Okay. So you would know.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around the overall mission. So you would know where the conventional units are setting up.
Then you would conduct reconnaissance around that specific area, find the best vantage points, and then set up the OPs? Well, sometimes we would conduct a reconnaissance provided to the conventional units to maybe make a recommendation on where they could set up, you know, or take them with us on those reconnaissance missions. And then we would plan that thing out, and we became their go-to as far as they realized the effectiveness of SEAL snipers and what we could do for them to disrupt attacks because they're super vulnerable.
Before there's any, they're just out there in these neighborhoods they're getting shot at. You've got hundreds of enemy fighters that can muster and start attacking their positions um and so our snipers were able to to disrupt those attacks oh shit but that's how we'd be sitting in position you see like the the mine clearance element in their big like mrap you know those v-hull vehicles they were the only guys that had them at that time we would ask for them and nobody else had them but you'd see them slowly like on white lights, like digging IDs out of the road.
And there was, to one of the first major operations we put in, I mean, they cleared dozens of IDs out on that route. I mean, just to tell you how bad things were, there was a route that was coming down off Route Mission, that main road that I said was statistically the most heavily ID'd road.
A couple months before we moved into that area, right before we deployed, the Marines had tried to push down a road into where we ended up putting a combat outpost. It was called Route Sunset.
And they hit something like 13 IDs in less than 500 meters. So, I mean, it was just, it was constant.
You couldn't even get into these areas. And so we would watch those guys clear.
And so it took like four or five, six hours for them to clear all the way down. And we wanted to make sure that IEDs weren't being in place, you know, on top of that.
And so then, then all of a sudden tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, you know, those troops are coming in, you know, in Humvees. And man, I remember this one time we were sitting in this sniper hide in what was going to be the buildings that would become the combat outposts and we're on the third story and I'm looking over the side and I got that mine clearance element.
I mean, they got this, it was called the dagger was the call sign for the vehicle and they got this huge like arm that's like, I think they call it the buffalo was the vehicle and they're like digging. It's just this big robotic arm that's like digging in the dirt and this robotic arm got blown off every night.
They'd replace it. I'm looking down there, and I could see these Projos.
I'm looking over the rooftop. All of a sudden, it occurs to me that if that thing goes off, these are one in five Yeah.
Like that thing's going to take my head off.

You know, my face is going to be gone.

I was like, if I can see the explosive, it can see me.

I need to get back behind the rooftop.

I mean, it's like right there.

Wow. Like at the base of the building that we're in.

And we found a bunch of them too, like on the, along like the creek we were patrolling across as the army went and burned out the vegetation later.

And they dug like, I mean, they found eight or 10 IEDs ideas in there. We were patrolling all around.
Those things are just everywhere. And then from the combat outpost, once we had that established, so then we could push out deeper into enemy territory.
And so initially, the army would say, like, hey, we want you here in this building so that you can cover our guys. And, you know, you're looking 360 for 100 yards in all directions, you know, for blocks.
It's all you can see is U.S. soldiers and Marines.
Like, I can't even engage anybody. So we talked them into it.
And luckily, Jocko would kind of explain why we needed to do it. And we pushed about 300 meters outside the perimeter.
And they were worried about us getting attacked. But we pushed 300 meters outside the perimeter, set up in a big four-story apartment building.
I wanted to go in a different direction. Chris Kyle was like, we need to go there.
That's the apartment building. And luckily, I was at least humble enough as a leader.
I made all kinds of terrible mistakes, but at least humble enough to listen to the guy that knows who he was talking about, to say, okay, cool, let's do what Chris wants to do. Thank God we did that because, I mean, we had, over the next 48 hours, we disrupted all kinds of attacks on that combat outpost.
And that was just kind of the model for what we did over and over and over again. You'd see a dozen enemy fighters that are trying to rally.
And they know they're going to attack the combat outpost, which you can't see. Or you get, right as the sun comes up, mortars are landing dead center of the combat outpost, kills a soldier, wounds three others.
And the soldiers can't even shoot back, right? Indirect fire is coming from kilometers away over blocks of the city. And you can't even see the launch point.
Our cybers were able to engage

guys loading mortar tubes

into the back of a vehicle from 600 yards

away.

It was that kind of element where

those soldiers, when they started hearing the 300

Win Mag, it was like three enemy

fighters engaged with 300 Win Mag.

You would just hear they were

so stoked about it. They knew

we were up there on the high ground

to protect them and help them out.

As a result, every single time

Thank you. here, they were so stoked about it.
They knew that we were up there on the high ground to protect them and help them out. As a result, every single time we called them, because when we're deep in enemy territory, we got vicious.
They always figured out where we were. Sometimes it was sending unarmed kids through the neighborhood, knocking on gates.
All the standard stuff. They knew we weren't going to engage that guy um but uh but they they wanted to figure out where we're at so um it would we just adopted the marine tactic from three marines of like it became an overt fighting position so if if you didn't have an urgent surgical casualty like you weren't calling evap because that's what they wanted you to do you were going to be in the streets getting ambushed have an ied clacked off on you you know or having you know multiple machine guns engaging you while you're patrolling out so we try to wait till undercover darkness if possible and sometimes we didn't do that because if i was felt like i was in a position that was not very defensible if they attacked us um like if they could get if we were on we had the rooftops were kind of equally, you know, high or even higher around us and they might have the advantage over us.
So there were a couple of times that we had to make the tough call. It's, you know, it's kind of like the, you make the least bad decision you can, right? Or you're like, hey man, I know we're going to get attacked, but we can move fast on foot.
We can do some misdirection and we can get back to the base. It's going to be better than allowing them to set up a massive attack on our position where they have all the advantage.
So I think we've done a fantastic job of painting what Ramadi was like back in 2006. And so let's rewind back to your first kinetic operation with the blue on blue yeah man even before that when the guys hit the ground the the very first like i've been advans i've been on the ground for like a week everyone arrives um and so they they're just offloading in the camp and we got in there's like a massive multiple uh um like multiple unit like well-coordinated enemy attack on the camp we're talking like so every single seal was on the rooftop of the camp just dumping fire across the river um and uh that was like the first the very first i one of my guys who was who was our probably ourner, he'd been, it was his third deployment to Iraq.
He'd been a machine gunner, you know, every time. He'd done a bunch of assaults, done a bunch of capture kill raids, you know, those direct action raids.
And he was like, this is the first time I've ever fired my machine gun. I mean, he'd been on the ground for like three hours, you know.
Are you serious? Three hours? And they shot like 500 rounds off the rooftop. So we knew like this is going to be different, you know.
And then that first particular, the first major operation, first of all, I was so pissed at Jocko for this because he wasn't, I had to be acting task unit commander for that because, and it was the right call, man. It was the right call.
But I like, I want to obviously want to be out there with my guys on the battlefield. And a bunch of guys, the army, this was the 101st Brigade or the 101st Airborne Division.
This was the first, the 506th, Task Force Red Curry. And this, I mean, they lived that, the celebrated Band of Brothers tradition, you know, from the book that Stephen Ambrose wrote in the HBO miniseries.
This was the first of the 506 Parachute Emetry Regiment. Awesome, awesome unit.
And they just had a phenomenal soldier, just incredible leader of their battalion commander. And they were asking for help.
They were doing some operations, pushing in what was called the Malab District. It was a really, really bad area.
And so our guys went out there and set up a position. We had our job tasking from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force.
That was the Green Beret colonel in charge of all the special operations at Deirdre at the time. Everything was going to be by, with, and through Iraqi soldiers.
So we were tasked to train and fight company and battalion size elements of Iraqi soldiers. That was literally our tasking.
That's what we were there to do. And obviously that was an ODA mission.
It was a little bit different for SEALs to kind of adopt that. But we took with us, we took with Iraqi soldiers with us on every mission.
And the SEAL Team 2 guys before us had done a great job of training those guys up and trying to mitigate some of the risk of their training. But that's what our guys were doing on that very first mission.
They sent, we had an element of SEALs that was going out as combat advisors

to the Iraqi soldiers.

And we're talking like 100 Iraqi soldiers

on the battlefield, you know,

with like a dozen of our guys

and some of the Army,

the military transition team,

and some Marines that were with them.

And then we had two different SEAL sniper teams

that were going out there

along with some Army sniper teams.

And so they went out onto the battlefield. They briefed where everybody was going to be.
The plan made a lot of sense. I'm kind of tracking this mission.
I'm watching their con ops, and I'm listening to it on the radio. And it was pretty clear that all hell kind of broke loose on the operation.
And we expected it to, because in the Malab district, this was like, and this was our very first major operation as tasking a bruiser. So Jaco felt like he needed to be over there, uh, located with the battalion leadership.
So he could kind of be the liaison officer to manage that as the command and control with all those different elements out there. A hundred percent the right call to be able to do that.
So Jaco was out on the battlefield, but instead of being, you know, with, there's all these different multiple SEAL units out there, he's co-located with the, the staff from Task Force Red Curry. He, you know, tried to manage that.
And we have this report of like a massive enemy attack that goes on. So our SEAL sniper Elm is reporting the attack.
And then all of a sudden we also get a report that, you know, there's a report that the insurgents are attacking the Iraqi unit that's out there. And there were some issues I won't get into on the communication side, you know, as well, that kind of broke down passing communications.
But Jocko's out there on the battlefield. He shows up there.
He knows that his guys are in trouble. They're calling for heavy QRF, right? They want tanks.
That means they're in a dire situation. They feel like they're about to be overrun.
And so Jocko shows up there, the command and control element. He moves up, sees the Anglico officer, right? The air naval gunfireison Officer that's there to coordinate an airstrike on a building.

There's red smoke marking where the enemy is.

He knows that the sniper team is in there somewhere or should be close by.

And so he's kind of trying to de-conflict what's going on.

And he went up and kicked the gate open.

And it was Tony, my platoon chief on the other side, was, and realized like this is a blue and blue situation. So, and no one understood what was going on.
This was, meanwhile, I'm monitoring the radio on the other side of the city. I'm getting traffic passed back to me.
There's a huge spin up on this, but all of my guys that were in that sniper position, that was, that was a squad of my guys that were there. And it was, they were all convinced, I think that they were about to die.
I mean, they, they, they had moved, they moved out to a sniper position under cover of darkness. They realized that where they were was not a good and defendable position.
They didn't have visibility on where they needed to see to cover the road that they were supposed to cover for the soldiers and the Iraqi, the U.S. Army soldiers, Iraqis that were moving down that road.
So they moved position across the road. And they weren't able to pass that information for a series of reasons, a breakdown in communication.
Then the Iraqi soldiers were out of sector. So they were supposed to, it was supposed to be like hours before they were clearing.
Well, some of the Iraqi soldiers, I think, decided like, hey, we're going to get killed if we're out here. Let's get this thing over with.
They like rushed to the furthest point away, you know, from the friendly, you know, outpost Camp Corregidor and then tried to rush back. And so they were out of sector.

So all of a sudden, you know,

as our sniper team is setting up,

they zip tied the gate to the,

and they're setting up and, you know,

it's just starting to get light.

So like first call to prayer goes down.

So night vision doesn't work, you know,

but you can't really see.

And all of a sudden they've got somebody,

you know, creeping by the window with an AK-47. Like they see unmistakable sign of an AK-47.
They engage that guy. They didn't realize it was an Iraqi soldier that was out of session.
The Iraqi soldier, that guy gets killed. Several others get wounded.
The Iraqis engage back. The Iraqi gets dragged back.
They call in for fire support because they're thinking, oh man, there's Al-Qaeda insurgents are holed up in this building. And man, we got this on video.
There was an embedded reporter, I think from Stars and Stripes with the unit, ANCO unit. They pulled up a Humvee and they probably dumped 300 rounds of 50 cal into the building and our mutual friend matt that we were buzzed with is on the rooftop and uh and i mean all he can do is just take cover rouser coming to the rooftop like one round luckily it went through the concrete wall enough to slow down like hit him in the face and like embedded up under his cheekbone are you he said he was burning him, but he like grabbed it and pulled it out of his face and like threw it down on the roof.
And so these guys were like, man, we're about to be overrun, right? They're calling for that QRF and they're thinking, man, these guys, this is, they're bringing it. This is our first major operation.
So they're calling in for tanks and fire support. Outside, they're calling in for tanks and fire support.
So a tank pulls up. When Jaco gets up there, before we kick the gate open,

there's a tank with their gun trained directly on the building

where my guys are holed up.

And they're just all kind of hunkered down trying to just take cover

and not get their head shot off.

I mean, you can imagine, right?

There's 50-cal rounds coming, you know, and belt-fed 762

coming right over your head.

All you can do is just bury your face and try to take cover and return fire as best you can. And they think they're about to get overrun.
And then on top of that, not only are they going to engage with tanks, they're coordinating an airstrike. So the Anglico, you know, the JTAC, right, the air controller, he's coordinating an airstrike that's about to just demolish this entire building.

So I'm going to wipe out my

entire squad.

So this was

the lesson from that of

just how easily...

We thought we had taken every

step possible to mitigate

the risk of that happening.

So meanwhile, I'm back at

the tactical operations center. We're monitoring radio reports.
We're hearing that we've got wounded SEALs. I know it's one of my guys.
I know it's Matt at this point, but then we're hearing that it's friendly fire, right? So like, okay, what's going on? Man, all of a sudden, word spreads like wildfire, right? The webby like instant, you know, chats are going on across the, you know, the every talk of like friendly fire, friendly fire, like what's going on, what's going on? And so, I mean, there's like massive scrutiny on this operation, you know, right away. And I remember I jumped in the truck.
All I know is that Matt, you know, my brother, our brother, we went through BUDS I've done, you know, the, this workup cycle with us in my platoon, his platoon, I know he's been shot in the face. I don't know what that means.
I don't know if it means his head's gone, you know, I don't know if he's going to die. So I jumped in a truck, drove across the base to Charlie Met, that was a medical facility.
And, and I went, went to, to, to pick him up and man, they, you know, they, they put him on a morphine drip and um and patched him up and gave him some antibiotics you know for for infection and when i was talking to him you know obviously he's kind of out of it right he's got it's a morphine and and uh but he's like man they brought it those guys brought it he's like they were gonna overrun our position he's like i thought we were all gonna die and he kept saying it over and over again and i was like matt i was like matt it was friendly fire man it was friendly fire is friendly fire. And I probably said, I thought we were all going to die.
And he kept saying it over and over again. And I was like, Matt, I was like, Matt, it was friendly fire, man.
It was friendly fire. It was friendly fire.
And I probably said it was friendly fire probably six times before it sunk in. And he was like, what? And it was like, he couldn't believe it.
He couldn't believe it when I said it. And so I think that right there as like, you know, our commanding officer flew out.
We had an investigating officer that flew out. It was, we were so fortunate to not lose any of our guys on that.
And, you know, it was horrible that we lost an Iraqi soldier on that. We took up a big collection for his family and tried to do everything good, you know, for him.
There were a couple other Iraqi soldiers wounded. Luckily, they recovered, you know, from that.
But it was so close to being just absolutely catastrophic. We're talking

wiping half my platoon out. And then when people were looking like, what heads are going to roll

over this? What heads are going to roll? Who screwed this up? This is friendly fire. This

is the worst. This is the cardinal sin, the cardinal sin that you commit.
X-ray platoon in

Vietnam that had a friendly fire incident. And this is the worst case sin the cardinal sin that you commit x-ray platoon in in vietnam right that had a uh a friendly fire incident and and this is this is the worst case scenario that can happen um and so we had a big debrief and our commanding officer our commanding master was sitting in there the investigating officer who was our jag was in there uh people were wondering like who's responsible like who's how did this happen who's responsible for this And we knew it was probably some heads that were going to roll over it.
And Jocko stood up in front of the task, and we're all in there. And he said, whose fault is this? And, man, there were, you know, the radio man stood up.
I was like, man, I didn't pass the traffic on where we moved location. I should have made sure that got passed.
That's my fault. The seal that engaged Iraqi soldiers said, I didn't get proper PID.
I thought that was an enemy insurgent and I engaged him before I had proper PID. That's my fault.
I should have made that happen before. I mean, over and over to the guy with Iraqi soldiers who had been combat advising them said, this is my fault.
Those Iraqis were out of sector. And we just went around the room, around the room.
And Jaco was like, no, it's not your fault. Like, no, it's not your fault.
No, it's not your fault. He's like, this is my fault.
Like, I'm the task unit commander. Everything that happens to this task unit is my fault.
I'm responsible. And we're going to do everything in our power to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.
And just to watch that happen, like the power of extreme ownership in front of everybody in the task unit. Our respect for him was already high, man, and it went through the roof after that.
I realized, and our commanding officer, instead of, he actually left there. He had greater trust in Jocko and in task unit Bruiser because he knew that we were going to take steps to make sure that it didn't happen again, and we did prevent it from happening again.
Friendly fire happened probably, friendly fire would erupt, but it never became catastrophic. We were always able to manage it.
We could stop it before anybody was killed or wounded. And it was always a constant threat, but we took massive steps to mitigate the risk.
And in fact, even some of the guys, some of your still team eight brethren that plugged in our team, they were an awesome crew that came out and joined us. And they were kind of jokingly calling me the rocket man there for a little bit because I had these two flares on my back.
We had a white flare and a red flare. You know, a white flare was, our red flare was SendQRF, a white flare was like ceasefire.
And so those so that those were signaling device i was like man i want that with me all the time just in case that we have that happen um i'm gonna carry that thing those things around on me that's ultimately my job is to prevent this from happening so we implemented lessons learned at every level of the team we took massive steps to mitigate it from happening and and uh when it did happen you know we get, we get some rounds of our head. We were instantly had the radio comms and we had a good comms check with that.
You know, the tank that was shooting at us, we could get them to cease fire and we're marking our positions, cease fire. Sometimes we'd throw a freaking giant, you know, via 17 day glow orange signal panel, you know, half the size of this room over the side of the building and let every insurgent

know where we were at just because

that was better than taking,

you know, 120 millimeter

main gun rounds, you know, into

your position because the threat of that

was significant every time. Damn.

Wow.

Wow.

You know, I heard you talking

I heard you talking once, I think it was

with Jocko about getting shot in the chest

Thank you. Wow.
You know, I heard you talking once, I think it was with Jocko, about getting shot in the chest, in the plates. Can you run through that? Yeah, man, that was the darkest day of my life.
I'm sorry, I didn't know that. August 2nd, 2006, man, we lost Mark Lee.
And Ryan Jobe had been wounded right before that. I took a round.
I think it was a ricochet. Otherwise, it probably would have killed me, split my spine in half.
What were you guys doing? It started as a big, basically, a coordinate search operation into what was called the J-block sector of Ramadi. And so after we'd established those combat outposts, we'd push sniper overwatches out.
And then we would push patrols with the Iraqi forces out to try to patrol into the city, engage with the local populace, show them that we were there to actually support them, talk to them about where the insurgents were. The Marine Corps called them census operations of kind of just showing the local populace that we were there to actually support them, talk to them about where the insurgents were.
You know, these were, the Marine Corps called them census operations of kind of just showing the local populace that, like, we were here to support them. You know, that was that stabilize the city, secure the local populace, you know, part, which paid huge dividends down the road, you know, to ultimately lower level of violence.
And, you know, the Anwar awakening, you know, came out once, but all that started with breaking the back of the insurgency, like really lowering their military capability. But what we would do is push patrols out with the Iraqi soldiers and the military transition teams that were assigned to them.
And we put sniper overwatches out there. And we had a bounding overwatch that was in a sniper position covering.

And we were out with an awesome unit. This was from the Task Force Bandit Team Bulldog.
So this was Bravo platoon Bravo platoon first. It was Bravo platoon 1st Battalion 37th Armored Regiment of the 1st Armored Division.
I mean, this is a unit that had been in the Ardennes, you know, for us in the Battle of the Bulge and World War II, like historic unit, incredible group that we built some awesome relationships with. And we, by the way, we couldn't have done any of these operations without these soldiers and Marines.
You know, we push into these areas. the only reason that we built some awesome relationships with.
And by the way, we couldn't have done any of these operations without these soldiers and Marines. We pushed into these areas.
The only reason that we could do that, the only reason that we could push so deep in enemy territory is because we knew that the soldiers and Marines were going to mount up in their tanks, mount up in their Humvees, and come to our rescue and aid. And they did it over and over and over and over again all the time.
And we had just an incredible working relationship with those guys. And I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for them.
And so we supported them as well. When they asked us to do things, we helped them.
We put in cyber overwatch positions. And so we were pushing Iraqis deeper into enemy-held areas.
And as we were clearing through an element of the J block, we'd done probably, I don't know, six or eight operations in this area, kind of pushing deeper and deeper in. And Ryan Jobe was one of our machine gunners, amazing guy, incredible guy.
And the kind of guy that, I don't know how long it took him to get through Bud's, but it was a long time. He was one of those guys that was never going to be the best athlete, was just absolutely tough as nails.
And was just a stud, awesome machine gunner, super strong man of faith as well, and hilarious. But he was the machine gunner basically holding security for Chris and the sniper team that was on the rooftop as we had this kind of bounding overwatch.
And I was with the Iraqi element that was moving forward to the streets. And we were about an hour and a half or two hours into that operation.
Again, one that we conducted many like that before. And all of a sudden, I mean, we hear a shot ring out.
I mean, you can hear the impact of it, you know. And I hear, you know, our most experienced, our most common experienced guy was chris kyle but awesome awesome teammate and uh tremendous sniper uh saved lots of lives on the battlefield and and man i could just hear him chris's voice man he's like we call ryan's nickname was biggles and uh he was like biggles has been hit i need a corpsman to the rooftop now.
And, man, I could just hear in his voice, you know, how horrific that was. And I literally had been talking to him, you know, both those guys, like 30 seconds before that, right? Just walked down the stairs, you know, to try to, you know, we're going to organize our team and kind of push out to the next building before we take the rooftop there.
And,, we get, you know, so we go rushing back up to the rooftop and Mark Lee, who is rolls right back up there, another awesome machine gunner, just an incredible, incredible guy steps right into the very position that Ryan got shot, like right in the position with his belt fed Mark 48 machine gun. It just starts laying down, suppressing fire.

Knowing that like we're going to get shot back, you know, at any moment.

And we got up to Ryan, you know, I, Ryan had been hit in the,

hit in the face and just a single, single shot hit him in the face.

You know, you could call an enemy sniper around.

You could call it just a, you know,

obviously it was not your average like spray and pray, you know insurgent. Somebody that had some good side picture trigger squeeze engaged him, hit him in the head.
And, man, it just looked horrific. I mean, you know, his eye is gone.
Like, his half of his face looks like it's missing. And you know how blood looks, man.
It's just, so I just, I ran up to him. I just grabbed his hand.
I was like, is he conscious? When I rolled up to him, he's just, he's just laying there. And I grabbed, I grabbed his hand.
I was like, hang in there, brother. We're going to get you out of here.
And I, I didn't believe that for a second, man. You know, like it just looked like it was, there was no chance.
Um, and you know, meanwhile, Mark and it's standing there laying down suppressive fire right over the rooftop wall where he just, Ryan just got hit. Other guys stepped up there, too, laying down suppressive fire.
You know, we're getting, we're calling in the CASAVAC vehicle. The Corman rolls up there and is working on him.
That Corman was Johnny Kim, our, you know, just a phenomenal guy. And they're, you know, going to work, you know, on Ryan.
And miraculously, Ryan, like, sits up. He, like, sits up and says, I'm okay.
and, you know, on Ryan. And miraculously, Ryan like sits up.
He like sits up and says, I'm okay. And, you know, he was, the blood was kind of going down his throat, right? So he has to kind of sit up to kind of clear that.
And we get under his armpits. We're getting him down.
So the Kazovac vehicle, you know, we had a M113, an armored personnel carrier down there, you know, for Kazovac. And so we get Johnny, our corpsman, and we got, you know, guys under each shoulder of Ryan, and we're getting a mass score off the roof.
And he walks off the roof really by his own power, like down the stairs. And just incredibly, incredibly tough, you know, human being.
And we found out later that Ryan got hit in the, when he was in the hospital, you know, they had all this shrapnel in his face and they were trying to figure out like what exactly happened. Cause I thought the round just impacted him, you know, uh, but he, he, what, we realized that like there was a, there was a round impact on the receiver right at the base of the receiver where it meets the buttstock for his Mark Fort 48 machine gun.
And we were an hour and a half into this operation. He was, you know, it's 117 degrees.
You know, it's miserably hot, repairing all our gear and water. I mean, Ryan must've been sweating profusely.
And man, just like the awesome teammate that he was, the awesome machine gunner was, Ryan was on that machine gun. He was on that machine gun, looking down the sides of his weapon ready to provide cover fire and if he hadn't done that he would have just taken his hat off you know that round would just take his hat off so um like that saved his life um and uh we unfortunately we didn't figure out till later it was it was two weeks later that we realized that uh that uh the the shrabble had severed his optic nerve to his good eye, and he was going to be blind as a result of that.
And so I didn't know how it was going to go at the time. We evac'd Ryan.
We sent our corpsman with him. We pulled back to the base.
And August 2nd, we'd done multiple operations in this area. We'd gotten tons of gunfights in this area.
There were definitely a lot of insurgents, but there was something different about August 2nd. I think it was the largest single engagement of any of the engagements that made up this eight or nine-month Battle of Ramadi, and insurgents were just coming out of the woodwork, attacking the soldiers that were out there.
So we had one sector. They were clear in another sector.
After Ryan got hit, we pulled back and went back to the— we pulled patrolled back about a kilometer to the base, kind of refitted. And the soldiers were, like, under attack, man.
And they asked us if we could we could help them um and uh and and you know they were getting attacked from these different positions uh so we loaded up in bradley fighting vehicles and we rolled back out you know into the into the city um and it was it was man there was so much going on that day. Like, for guys like Mark Lee,

for all the guys that were in Charlie Platoon,

like, they knew they were going back out

under the teeth of it.

Like, we'd just seen what happened to Ryan.

And, you know, our brothers in the Army

needed our help from Team Bulldog there.

And nobody hesitated for a second, man.

Jocked up in their gear, reloaded mags, refitted with grenades, loaded up into those brads, and we rolled out. No shit.
To hit those target buildings. No hesitation.
No hesitation, man. Those guys did everything I asked of them, man.
Unbelievable courage. We had, the firefight was so bad that day, man.
We had, like, I think for the company commander's name is Mike Byham, he's a close friend of mine. He's retired now, Main Gun Mike, we called him.
He fired over 50 main guns from his tank throughout his time there. And I don't know how many people have done that since like the World War II era, man.
50 main guns, but he was a phenomenal guy. I think just about every tank and Bradley fighting vehicle out there was, we would use the term Winchester.
They're out of ammo. They go out black when the tank's out of ammo.
They shot every single main gun around that they had in that engagement. That is some serious shit.
It was right in the teeth of it, man.

And so I think for me, I talked quickly over with Tony, my platoon chief.

I was like, look, if we're going to hit a target where we got bad guys that are shooting at us,

the best thing we can do is soften it up first.

So we wanted to go in and try to stay off the street.

We knew we had at least one sniper out there. So we wanted to try in and try to stay off the street.
We knew we had at least one sniper out there.

So we wanted to try to use armor, you know, to get into these areas.

And so we had those, the Bradley fighting vehicles and the tanks just blast these buildings, man, before we went into them.

And then smash through the walls and lower their ramps, you know, before we engaged.

We hit one building.

The insurgents had already, like, pushed out of it.

The Army told us, hey, we're getting engaged from this building.

There's a insurgents in that building.

So we loaded back up.

We'll be right back. perhaps, you know, before we engaged.
And we hit one building. The insurgents had already, like, pushed out of it.
You know, the Army told us, hey, we're getting engaged from this building. There's a insurgents in that building.
So we loaded back up. We hit another building.
And in the second engagement, as we went into that building, man, the building was on fire as we went in there. Like a main gun round had already hit the building and just blasted it open.
As we started moving into the building and clearing through the building,

we took fire from the opposite end of the hallway and Mark was killed.

And somewhere I was hit in that gauge.

I heard the gunfire ring out.

I stepped out into the hallway, got hit,

and I just grabbed one of our guys who was in the hallway.

It was clearly a hot hallway with bullets

and ricochets flying around to push them across the hallway, you know, just to try to get him out of the line of fire. And, and, and, you know, I heard the man down call.
Mark was 20 feet away from me, you know, when that happened. And, and, you know, guys came, came as more assaults were poured in the building like they cleared the rooftop and and um it the rooftop.
And it was the absolute worst day of my life, man.

And I think the fact that I got hit just in between the plates.

I knew I'd been hit.

But then the guy that I pushed into that room was like, hey, Leif, you're bleeding.

Just blood always looks like more than it is.

My whole inside of my vest was soaked. And it was just like trickling down, you know.
You could just hear like the tap, tap, tap, tap, like blood on the floor. But there just wasn't time to even think about that, man.
You know, it was, Mark was down. We moved up to him, got the corpsman on him, got him gazvacked.
And for whatever reason, I thought there might be some hope. Mark was unconscious when we got to him.
I thought there might be some hope to him, man, but he'd been hit in the head. He was killed instantly.
And Mark was just such an incredible, incredible warrior, man. And he was doing exactly what I asked him to do, which was engage enemy engage uh enemy insurgents he was he was moving down a hallway stepped up right in the doorway to um you know to engage enemy insurgents that were shooting at us from the building next door man and uh and sacrificed himself for me and the rest of the guys were coming in there and he was uh i mean just like ryan just the most incredible teammate just the just absolutely, just absolutely hilarious, strong as an awesome, incredible athlete, but just representing the absolute best of the SEAL teams.
And I would do anything, Sean. I'd do anything to trade places with him, man.
I got lucky for whatever reason. I got lucky, and some rico ricochet hit me and they patched me up.

And there'll never be a time when I go up to Fort Rosecrans Cemetery and see Mark's grave there.

I don't wish that was me lying to the ground there, man, and not him.

And I think that's one of the hardest things that I could have never prepared for, right?

When these guys that you love and would do anything for, it's the ultimate dichotomy as a leader. It's the ultimate dichotomy, which is to love your guys and want to do anything for them and be willing to trade your life for them if you could.
And yet sending them out on missions where you know that they might get injured or killed. And I think it was something that I tried to pass on to the next generation of SEAL leaders, just the reminder of what's at stake.
And we would do a memorial run every junior officer training course that I put through. We'd park our vehicles down at Dog Beach and Ocean Beach,

and we would ride five miles uphill all the way to Fort Roche Grand Cemetery. And we'd go pay our respects to where Mark Lee's buried and Mikey Montsew, our teammate in Delta Platoon, who was killed about a month later, and pay our respects there and just remind, remind these young leaders about what's at stake, man.
And then the burden of leadership. And I think for me, it's a burden that never goes away.
It's a burden that never goes away. And I think as a man of faith, Mark was a tremendous man of faith.
And he had wanted to be a pastor. And he had gone to the master's college to study to be a pastor before he decided that he wanted to join the SEAL teams.
And I remember quoting scripture and talking about there was a time when we were out when, you know, there was, we were engaging targets, and we were talking about the worst-case scenarios, these mangy Iraqi dogs that are like these kind of junkyard dogs that are running around.

Like the worst case scenario is that these mangy dogs are like chewing on you out of the street, right?

And we talked about how this was, you know, that in the Bible, there's numerous examples of that.

Where like the prophet Elijah, you know, that in the Bible, there's numerous examples of that, where like the prophet Elijah, you know, and Jezebel who's trying to kill him and the prophets of Israel, the dogs are going to chew on Jezebel. When David and Goliath, Goliath says that he's going to give David's body after he kills him to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.
And we were talking about this with Mark, right? This idea of like being a warrior on the battlefield. And I remember sharing those scriptures, you know, with Mark and talking about his faith and how powerful that was for him.
And I know I'm gonna see him again one day. And I look forward to that day, man.
He was an incredible man. And Ryan Joke, you know, three years after the surgery, I think it was the 22nd surgery repair those wounds that you know when he was wounded um we lost him you know from complications of that surgery as well and uh like him like just like mark ryan was an awesome man of faith um you know he came back from that deployment and being blind to him was like an inconvenience, You know, it was, uh, he, he, he climbed 14,000 foot Mount Rainier, totally blind, um, to this awesome organization called Camp Patriot.
I know, I know a number of SEALs that attempted it and were unsuccessful in their summon attempt, you know, with, with, with their sight, you know, and, uh, and all their limbs. And, um, we, he asked me to go on a, I was on, I was the spotter for him.
He shot this world-class bull elk using this little camera system. I mean, he was just a phenomenal guy.
He married his longtime girlfriend. They were expecting their first child.
And you know, when that happened, it was just a tremendous, tremendous loss. But I know that Mark would have wanted us to keep going, right, to keep operating, to keep doing what we were doing, to try to make a difference there.
And I would talk to Ryan on the phone, and Ryan would tell us to keep going in those operations. Keep doing what you're doing.
Keep going out there. Keep getting after it.
Do everything you can to try to bring more soldiers and Marines home, to try to win this thing in whatever capacity we can. And, man, I'm just so thankful and fortunate and honored to have been able to serve with guys like that, you know, who were willing to lay down their lives.
And Ryan one time told me, he's like, it doesn't make me a hero. Just because I got shot in the face, I'm not a hero.
That doesn't make me a hero because I got shot. And I told Ryan that what made him a hero is not that he got shot.
It was the fact that he knew that he could get shot at any time, that he could get gravely wounded or killed, and yet he jogged up in his gear and he rolled out all those operations over and over and over again. And he did it for me.
He did it for his teammates. He did it for the teams.
He did it for the soldiers and Marines that we were trying to protect. He did it for the innocent Iraqi people that were out there living under this brutal reign of terror and fear, that Zarqawi's henchmen in al-Qaeda in Iraq, later ISIS, ruled over them with.
And I know Mark was a hero for the same reason, man. Mark was a hero for the exact same reason.
He was willing to do that over and over and over again. And I just think it's the honor of my lifetime to be able to have served alongside heroes like that and be able to tell their story and share their legacy.
Damn, life. That's heavy.
That's heavy. I'm sorry I had to go through that, man.
We're going to see him again one day, Sean. Yeah.
I look forward to that day. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, when I first checked into 240 at Bud's, Mark was my headmate. I'm kidding, man.
I didn't know that. I didn't get to know him terribly well, but I am very thankful that I got to meet him.
And he gave me the ins and outs of Bud's. What a great guy.

I didn't realize that you guys,

I guess I should have known that because I didn't put it together

for several months

in a Charlie bettunia

as he started to come,

he joined our bettunia,

started working with us.

And that wasn't in our initial workup.

That was several months

before we deployed.

But somehow we put it together like he knew Brian Bill. So I realized that he had been to Bud's previously.
And those guys, Brian was one of the guys that had trained with him. They'd lived together in Virginia Beach.
And Brian was one of the guys that encouraged him. And I'll tell you what, man destroyed as i was um he brian bill um was as close to mark as you could be and brian wasn't close to a lot of people man he he was but he was very close friends with markley and we talked a lot about brian and you know obviously i was close to brian Brian and Buds and was a friend of his through that time.

And when we came back, man, I was, I just was,

just my soul was crushed.

My soul was crushed, man, from losing Mark

and Ryan being blind.

And particularly knowing that I had some minor wound, man,

it was like, it patched me up and I'm going back to work. You know, like it.
Like, why couldn't that have been me? Why couldn't I have been killed and not Mark? Why couldn't I have been blind and not Ryan? And luckily, I had a great commander in Jocko who pulled me aside and said, hey, man, we don't have a crystal ball, and we don't know when that stuff's going to happen. And if we did, we wouldn't go on that operation.
But we can either choose to do nothing and take no risk, or we can do everything we can to try to make a difference here, to try to save American lives here. And that's what Mark would want us to do.
That's what Ryan is telling us to do, you know, and encourage me to keep going, man. And that support from Jocko was immense.
But I remember sitting in the mission planning space as we're just kind of all reeling from Mark's loss. And at this point, we didn't know Ryan was going to be blind.
I knew it was grave. I didn't know how, I knew he was wounded badly.
I didn't even know if he was going to like out of the woods as far as making at that point. And I got a call brian bill who was in baghdad was sealed teammate and he said hey man i heard about what happened and i just want you to know like i'm gonna go home i'm gonna take care of the family i'm gonna take care of my mark mark's wife you know i'm gonna be there for marsh mom debbie and his family.
Don't worry about it. You guys are going to continue to operate.

I got this.

Man, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me.

He never questioned a thing.

He never said, what happened?

What are you guys doing?

All the emotions that you might expect.

He just said, hey, man, I'm here.

I'm here to help.

And gave up what was an awesome deployment for those guys. He bagged that doing a bunch of great operations to go and support Mark, man.
And that was the kind of guy that Brian was. And it was, I can't even tell you how much that meant to me, man.
Just getting that call in the darkest hour and realizing a teammate just putting his arm around you. Because that was one that was one of the hardest parts is like hey i we're here like the performance continuing operations are going on i want to go back you know i want to be able to talk to mark's family and and support them and be there for i want to be with ryan's family and and yet you can't do that right there's still operations going on so just knowing that teammates like that um you know we're doing that was that was i'll never forget that man for brian that was just i think a real testament to the man that he was how long was it after that that you guys were on the next stop we we had a stand down and uh because we just we needed it man we've been going hard we've been going hard.
And Delta Platoon, working across the city out of Camp Corregidor, was going to be on the, they were going to launch an operation like the next day. And Seth Stone called Jaco and said, hey, we're going to roll this 24 hours.
And so Jaco said, hey, man, you can still go on the op. And Seth was like, look, I think we need to roll this 24 hours, right? Everybody needs to decompress.
Everybody's emotional. And so that was an important thing for us, I think, just to realize we need to allow our guys to decompress.
But we had a memorial service for Mark. And, man, it was so—guys drove down the most dangerous roads in Iraq.
You know, our teammates came from Volusia and Haditha and from across the Ramadi down that, you know, route Michigan, that deadly road, you know, to come pay their respects. And we had an awesome memorial service where we said goodbye to Mark.
And then 40 hours we jacked up in our gear and we rolled back out do you want to talk about the service with markers do you want to keep that between the platoon i think we all just said our goodbyes man you know we all just did our best to honor him and and you know four guys had gone back with mark to escort his is you know earthly remains home and be there with his family and be there for the memorial service for that. And I think it was an amazing turnout, man.
Soldiers, Marines there, Iraqi soldiers. It was just the kind of person he was, man.
He was just the best, man. I've never seen anybody who could use humor in the darkest situation, like to just drop a joke or like a movie quote, you know, and get people laughing and like get them just to kind of shake things off.
Like he was, he just was, yeah, man, he was awesome. you guys took a lot of losses and um you know the the the world is very volatile right now and we're gonna get involved in some more stuff there's not a doubt in my mind the u.s and so you know for the future generations that are going to go through similar experiences

as what you just described, you know,

what advice do you have for them?

Yeah, I mean, our losses, you know,

every time I think I've seen some combat, Sean,

I read about Marines in Iwo Jima.

You know, I get a chance to visit Normandy this summer, right?

And I'm standing on the beaches at Okinawa and and uh i'm sorry the beach at utah um i've been on the beaches in okinawa as well um you know when i was deployed there back in the day um but just being there normandy kind of opened up my eyes to some stuff like some of the inland fighting campaigns and things that were happening um and you realize the kind of losses that military units have sustained over the years. You go to the battlefield like Gettysburg or so many of the battles around here in Tennessee that are not far from where we are now.
I mean, just massive, massive loss of life that did eclipse anything that I've experienced. And I think what I can just, what I can what I could say is like, what's helped me is number one faith, man, knowing that like God has a plan for you, you know, and the survivor's guilt that that's so easy for any of us to carry with us is like God has a plan.
And so I think you've got to lean on God for his plan. We don't know what that plan is.
None of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We don't know what he has in store for us.
But just trusting in him for that plan, leaning on faith, and knowing too that taking extreme ownership of situations, debriefing, learning lessons, even if it's things that on August 2nd, the enemy fought in a way that we hadn't really expected them to do. Like they brought it, they attacked in huge numbers.
And that was a different tactic, right? The enemy's going to adjust tactics. So you got to debrief, you got to learn lessons to apply that stuff going forward to make sure that you try to prevent those things from happening again.
And I think more than anything else, I think it's about taking care of your people, man. Like your responsibility as a leader goes way beyond, way beyond just looking out for them in the time that you serve with them.
It is about looking out for them and their families, like for the duration of your life. And I will feel that way about the guys that I serve with.
And as long as I'm breathing, man, like there's nothing I wouldn't do for them. You know, there's nothing I wouldn't help them out with.
And sometimes, you know, you lose touch with people and you haven't talked to them in a while. And maybe people forget that.
And I think it's important to reach out to people and remind them of that. It's important to check in with people.
It's important just to be thinking about how you can continue to support them because it goes way beyond just in the immediate aftermath of some horrible situation like that. And it's not just about showing up and paying your respects at their graveside.
It's about checking in with their family, checking in on their kids, reaching out to your teammates, asking them how they're doing, letting them know that you're there for them. And that is you're all in this together and no matter what and i think that's you know when you go to battlefield like gettysburg um there's there's memorials all over that battlefield and that's what it's for man people put their hands up just like in normandy there's memorials all over there people people the veterans that survived those battles go there and they put their hands on on on those memorials and they remember their lost teammates and they support each other and they help each other.

And I think that's something that goes way beyond just the time and service that you have with people.

It's lifelong and even beyond that.

Thank you for sharing that, Leif.

I know it's been heavy for you, and I just appreciate you going through that, man.

And let's take a break.

All right, Leif, we're back from the break. Once again, I really appreciate you digging deep and sharing those stories because, one, I think it's, it's, it's extremely important to, for those guys to live on, you know, through stories and two, it's a very, very important piece of history that, that I'm just honored to be able to document here with you today.
So. Well, I appreciate it, man.
I'm honored to share it. And anytime I get a chance to talk about the teammates that I lost and honor the legacy of Mark Lee and Ryan Jobe, I think it's – I'm happy to do it, Sean, and I appreciate you.
I appreciate you passing it on. I think there's so many lessons that we learn from that.
And I think for me, I think some Americans, though, need to understand, like, sometimes people come up after I speak about leadership and I talk about Ramani and I talk about Mark and Ryan and Mikey Mansour, you know, and, you know, Gavey's Life and our sister platoon, another phenomenal team guy and awesome machine gunner, you know, just like Mark and Ryan. And people come up and be like, I'm sorry, man.
Like, I'm sorry you went through that. And I think it's important to say that, that like, we had some dark days in Ramadi, man.
I think the, you know, the, the, it's, it's kind of cliche, right? The Charles Dickens, tale of two cities, right? The best of times, it was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
But I think it's important to say that, man. Like I would trade those dark days for anything.
I would trade the days when we lost Mark and Ryan and when Cowie was wounded and when we lost Mikey Montser, I had trade those days for anything. But most of those days were some of the absolute best days of my life.
And knowing that we were working with an awesome crew of warriors, that we were out there fighting against an evil enemy, making a difference and have an impact and making sure more soldier Marines came home to their families as a result. And I think that's something that I think a lot of Americans have a hard time.
You know, we kind of live in a day sometimes where it's like, well, you know, is there really good and evil? I'm like, yeah, there is. There absolutely is.
And I think when you see the kind of savagery that the precursor to ISIS, the Al-Qaeda in Iraq, what they're doing to innocent people, just the butchery and torture and rape and murder and just horrific, horrific stuff. And I think when you know that you can make a difference in the world

and rid the world of some of that evil,

then it's a great thing, man, to do everything you can in that regard.

And I think America needs to remember that.

Yeah.

And so most of the days that I served there

were some of the best days of my life. I wouldn't trade for anything.
Is there anything else on this deployment you'd like to cover? No, I mean, I think that's, I think just knowing that we, you know, there were so many lessons there, like so many things that like, that I thought I was ready. You know, I thought like, hey, we, you know, combat was so much more difficult than we thought it was going to be.
And we were just humbled on every single operation. Something didn't go right.
The enemy does something you hadn't planned. You thought you de-conflicted that so that all the friendlies knew where you were.
And next thing you know, you're taking 50 cal rounds right over the top of your head. You thought everyone knew what the position was because they could see your marking device and come to find out that they can't see that when they're looking through their tank sites.
I mean, just so many things like that. It was just over and over again with those lessons that we learned.
And I think probably the biggest lesson that I learned is that it's not about you, man. It's not about me.
It's not about Charlie Platoon or our SEAL unit. And that's one of the lessons I try to pass on as I went to take over that leadership training course.
And one example of that is when we first joined the SEAL teams, you're training to operate in a SEAL squad or a SEAL platoon. And it's just you, right? And you have assets that are supporting you.
And obviously, you know, if you're JSOC or, you know, there are times when you've got a whole bunch of assets that are supporting just a special operations unit like that. But on the battlefield for us, we would have, you know, there might be two aircraft all of Anbar province wide.
So if you're going to declare troops and contacts so that the aircraft will be over your head and you could utilize them just in case you might need them, where you're pulling them off of a Marine squad that's pinned down and maybe these guys are going to bleed out and die, or maybe they get overrun, or maybe these soldiers that are in this horrific situation. You're pulling assets away from them.
So I think that really for me was an eye-opener of it's not about me or my platoon. We're part of the overall team, the overall mission.
And so we got to share assets. We got to share resources.
We got to actually contribute to the overall success of the mission um i think sometimes um teams get focused on like what they're doing you know but i think jocko really kind of pulled me aside and helping me understand that like this is this is not about us and how many operations we do or how many bad guys we kill or capture this is about you know are u.s forces winning or losing like are we going? Like, are we going to be successful as a nation here? Our coalition partners are not. So I think that was one of the biggest lessons to bring back.
It's interesting. I've never heard it put that way, to be honest with you.
It's always been about the unit. I think that's what...
Pulling assets. Let me refer...
It's always been, what assets can we get? Not, we're pulling them from these units and... Unique perspective.
Well, everybody... I mean, look, you should be trying to get as many assets as you can, right? Like, if you've got an AC-130 gunship, use that thing, right? If you've got helicopters, use that thing.
If you've got tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, whatever assets you can have, that's great. But I think when you start to, one of the things, this is my favorite thing to do with, when I came back from that deployment from Ramadi, they sent me to the center and someone decided to put me in charge of the junior officer training course.
And so I was happy to pass on whatever lessons I had there, but we spent four weeks in the classroom and a week-long field training exercise. And the thing that I loved to do was I would play the part of like an army company commander.
And I used like main gun Mike, the guy I talked about earlier, is like, he's got tanks, he's got assets. So these SEAL, these junior officers, they're leading a squad on this training battlefield.
They got to come up with a plan. They got to come brief me on what they're doing and what support they need from me.
And so they'd come up to talk to me about their mission. And I would just be like, hold on, what you got, man? I got some guys, we're actually activating QRF right now.
so stand by and and i would just have them like stand there and uh and just just to realize that like hey uh these army units that you're working alongside like they that that company commands the charge of 200 soldiers and a dozen tanks like he's got a lot of stuff going on you're not the only thing that's going on so you're showing up there. And, and, uh, Hey, my big office that's happening.
Um, and I got to witness that with a special operations unit. I was standing right there next to, uh, a company commander when a special operations unit rolled in the theater, rolled up there, handed them like the GR, you know, the, the, uh, the, the GRG and said, Hey, here's what's going on.
And they actually were blocking the exits to the combat outposts.

And the company commander's like, hey, man, I got troops out of the field right now.

You got to get your vehicles out of here.

I got to be able to use these tanks.

And it was kind of a rude awakening for that special operations unit to be like, oh, there's other stuff going on around here.

Oh, that it was.

My big mish.

So I think that was what I tried to train those junior officers is just to pass that on to them. You know, it's not that as a leader, you don't try to get every asset that you can for your team, but it's that you realize that it's about the overall team and the overall mission.
And so if you are hoarding assets, you know, or you are focused on yourself, like there may be things that you're doing that could negatively impact others, you know, who are also trying to carry out their mission. And we're all in this thing together.
So I think looking up and out for a leader and thinking about others and those other units that you got to operate, you know, in the same battle space with is crucial. Yeah, definitely.
Before we move on to the rest of your career, I want to go back, and I wanted to ask you, what did you receive the Silver Star for? I received the Silver Star for that horrible situation on August 2nd, 2006. And I don't know if I've ever publicly said that before, but I asked Jaco not to write me up for that, man.
Really? Yeah. I was like, I don't want to work for that.
This is the worst day of my life, man. I'd trade it for anything.
Mark got killed. Ryan's wounded.
I don't want to work for that, man. We did the best that we could in a horrible situation.
I'm proud of my platoon

and how they responded in the worst situation imaginable. You know, to get the building clear,

to call in air support, you know, to get casual evacuation, all the things that they did

under the worst situation

imaginable.

But I was like, I don't want an award for them.

And for whatever

reason, he decided

that it was

deserving of an award, and he wrote me up for him.

So I accepted that award as a

recognition for

my team,

Charlie Platoon, and what they were able to accomplish. Do you feel that there's anything you could have done to prevent that? I think that when you lose guys on the battlefield like that, I will rethink that for every moment of my life.
I know you were going to say that, and that's why, as tough of a question as it is, have you found anything that could have been different, or is it a never-ending thing where you will always look for what you could have done different? Yeah, I think that there is, you're constantly thinking, man, what if I'd have done this, or what if I'd have done that? Or what if I'd have done this? And that's where I think Jocko's guidance, you know, is my task at a commander and saying, like, man, we don't have a crystal ball. Like, if you'd have known that stuff was going to happen, you wouldn't have gone on that op.
You'd have lost that operation. You know? And I think the tough thing for me is, like, you know, is realizing, like, I can't, you know, we've got the army out there that needs our help.

And they're in the worst situation of in, they're in the worst single engagement of like the entire battle of Ramadi.

It lasted for nine months, you know, that killed 94 guys, you know, in, I think 94 guys killed in action in the 228, the National Guard unit.

And I think 98 total guys killed in the Ready First Brigade combat team. And so of all the combat that those guys saw, like, this was, like, the worst.
You know, or this was the single, like, hottest day of, you know, gunfire and mayhem and enemy attacks. And so I think for me, it's the recognition of like, when somebody needs your help, I think you do everything you can to help them.
And I try to mitigate the risks that we can control by riding in Bradley fighting vehicles so that we were behind armor and not out in the street getting shot at by snipers, by smashing through the walls, by softening up targets with 25-millimeter chain gun, rounds from the Bradley fighting vehicles, and main guns from the tanks, before we actually enter those buildings. But there's just never, it's just a burden that never goes away.
And I think you have to do the best you can in the with the

information that you have you know and i think there's uh i would trade the trade that day for anything to do something different to bring mark back or ryan back um and it's something that will always be with me you know um i think sometimes too when you're on the on the battlefield that if you're conducting operations,

like, there's no...

The... Sometimes, too, when you're on the battlefield, if you're conducting operations, like, there's no, the expectation that you are going to be able to be in significant combat, sustained combat over time without taking casualties, it doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen. and you know i remember a question our commanding officer asked us like you know with any

with any operation that you go on, you know, you should ask yourself, like, is it worth it? You know, is it worth the loss of one of your guys? And, you know, as we thought about that question, like, I can answer that question right now. No, it's not.
I wouldn't trade my guys for Osama bin Laden, you know? I wouldn't trade my guys for Zarqawi. I wouldn't trade any single one of my guys for any of these insurgent terrorist savages that we're fighting.
But that's not the right question to ask. And I don't think it's any different than, I don't think it's any different than a, if you had asked a company commander at Omaha beach, like would he trade one of his soldiers for Adolf Hitler? I think he'd have said no.
I think he'd have said no. Of course not.
Like this is my soldier I care about. I'm not, I'm not going to, I'm not going to trade that guy's life.
But they were willing to make the sacrifice

because they realized that establishing a foothold in Fortress Europe was the key to being able to defeat Nazism so that we could live in freedom around, you know, across the globe and maintain our way of life. And so I think it's the same thing, right? If you're looking at if you're looking at a mission like that,

it's never going thing right if you're looking at um if you're looking at a mission like that it's it's um it's never going to be worth like it's you're never going to make that trade but the the the trade is that you do the best you can to try to to try to have the most impact that you can and uh in the time that you have and you got to mitigate the risk and control and i think that's all you can do as a leader. And I think sometimes the lesson learned is that combat is dangerous, man.
It's dangerous business. And if we don't have the will to kill, if we don't have the will to kill the enemy, and if we don't have the will to sacrifice America last, then we shouldn't be in combat in the first place.
Leif, I just want you to know that I don't take that question

that I asked you lightly.

I asked it because there's going to be people in your shoes.

There have been many people in similar situations,

and just your answer alone might save somebody's life.

So thank you.

Well, I'm happy to share that, man. I think, you know, for every leader, right, we got to take risks.
There's no combat operation without risk, right? You can't do anything in life without taking a risk. But you got to mitigate the risks that you can control, right? You don't want to run to your death, right, with your hair on fire.
And I think trying to balance that dichotomy, right, of being aggressive but not being reckless is crucial for every leader out there. And it definitely made me think, you know, deeply about that.
In fact, there was a follow-on time where we had some aircraft overhead that saw, like, some armed insurgents, like, run into a building. and so after losing Mark

and losing you know losing ryan like i wasn't it was we were going to look at alternatives you know to to try to hit them in a different way instead of even if we smashed that building with tanks and blasted it like we weren't going to run into that building we were going to make some adjustments so i think every has to make, has to learn the lessons that they can, lessons that they learned. And I did a poor job, I think, of even letting my guys know of even some of the ops that we turned down.
I've talked to some of the guys I served with in Charlotte, and they were like blown away that we turned down operations because we looked at it. The risk versus reward wasn't there.
You know, we no, we're going to focus elsewhere here. There's too risky, and I think the chance of mission success are limited, so we're not going to take the risk there.
Some of them never even knew that, that we were doing all we could to try to mitigate those risks. But you're not going into combat without taking risks, and if we're not willing to take risks, man, we ought to not even be there in the first place.
And I think that's the kind of thing, the idea that we can go to war without taking casualties. It's just not true, man.
It's not true. And I think that's more than anything, I wish that we had leaders who have been to war who understand that so that they can think very deeply about whether or not those risks are worth it you know at breakfast we had a a small discussion about i guess there there have been some controversy about the the special operations mission that you guys were on and and people were saying wasn't special operations missions because you were operating and gunfighting in the daytime.

And so I wanted to just give you the floor on that.

Yeah, there was all kinds of criticism, you know, like that.

I've certainly been the victim of the armchair quarterback stuff.

I mean, that's going to happen, right, when things go wrong and things go bad.

And I understand that.

And I think that's a function of people just, I think think not understanding what we were doing and why we were doing it. Um, and, uh, and I think I could have done a lot better job of instead of getting angry or frustrated with people of just kind of explaining that, you know, and talking about why we did what we did, um, and the impact that it actually had.
Um, and yeah, I think, think, you know,

Tasking and Bruiser killed a lot of bad guys.

And a lot of those were Chris Kyle,

our lead cyber point man at Charter platoon,

was, you know, was the ringleader of that,

like, who did a tremendous amount of damage to the insurgent fighters there,

disrupted dozens and dozens of attacks

on soldiers and Marines and our own guys, Iraqi troops. It saved a lot of lives, man, and had some huge impact.
And when we were in the squadron after action brief, you know, when everyone's standing in there, all the senior officers and non-commissioned officers are in there kind of talking about the lessons learned. Someone stood up and asked Jocko, hey, you guys were out in the daytime for a lot of this stuff.
You know, do you think that's a special operations mission? And Jocko explained that, you know, 99% of the enemy fighters that we killed were during the daytime. You know, and he said killing bad guys is a special operations mission.
Next question.

And I think this is exactly right.

Like, this is, you know, I think sometimes as special operations units, we need to be innovative.

And I think you can be conventionally unconventional sometimes of like, oh, we can only go out when it's nighttime.

We can only go out when we have like the, you know, the, well, what happens when you have a target that shows up in a marketplace?

Thank you. unconventional sometimes of like, oh, we can only go out when it's nighttime.
We can only go out when we have like the, you know, the, well, what happens when you have a target that shows up in a marketplace in the middle of the daytime? Like we have, we have to be able to actually list targets, right? We have to be able to figure out ways to, you know, to, to, to do things where people aren't expecting. If they're expecting us to come at nighttime with a, you know, undercover darkness every time.
So I think our best special operations units are constantly innovating and adapting ways to do things like that. But I looked at what we were doing in Ramadi.
We were going out. A lot of what we were doing was under cover of darkness in that it was going in at nighttime, setting up, remaining over day when the enemy was actually out, when they had freedom of movement, when they were actually running around the, because they knew we would dominate at nighttime and aircraft could take them out.
And they knew we owned the night. So, and then trying to patrol out, you know, undercover of darkness at nighttime.
But there was, I think that, you know, taking a fairly small group of guys, a lot of firepower, going in deep in enemy territory in a place where people couldn't get, supporting the conventional units that were then coming in behind us in mass, I think is very closely equivalent to our forefathers from the underwater demolition teams, the naval combat demolition units. These were the first guys on the beach taking the risk that were hitting the beaches in landing craft like Higgins boats and naval combat demolition units or scouts and raiders.
And then in the Pacific theater, the frogmen, right, the underwater demolition teams, they were out there doing the reconnaissance, opening up the way, blasting holes in the coral reefs and obstacles so that, you know, the Marines and soldiers could land. And I think that's a lot of what we're doing.
And there was a shift in World War II where those underwater demolition teams at UDT went from nighttime to daytime operations. At nighttime, they were trying to do nighttime, they thought it was safer.
And they shifted to daytime because they thought, okay, well, initially they thought it was too dangerous. But they realized that when they got these little frogmen swimming around, even with the Japanese pillboxes blasting at them with mortars and artillery and machine guns, most of the time these guys wouldn't be hit.
And it was only, I think there was only a handful of UDT men that were wounded or killed throughout the entirety of like daytime, like beach reconnaissance operations. So they were able to do it and mitigate the risk.
And they also were far more effective in the daytime. And so I think that was what we were doing in the daytime was I think very similar, right, to just the making that shift.
And then it was the opposite of Vietnam, you know, where the, in, when SEALs were going out in the daytime initially, you're chaining the Vietnamese frogmen and that's kind of how the mission started and now all of a sudden we're going to start into some kinetic operations. Well, nobody went out at nighttime because Charlie owned the night.
You knew the Viet Cong were out there patrolling, setting booby traps, setting up ambushes. And I've talked to some of those Vietnam SEALs who made that transition and realized, like, okay, the enemy's out at night in nighttime.
We've got to shift to being out at night. And the conventional units thought that was crazy.
They thought you were going to get a bunch of people killed. But the SEALTs were able to have massive impact, you know, for such a small unit on the battlefields because they went out at nighttime.
They went into areas that nobody else could get into, and they did a lot of damage to the bad guys. So I felt like what we were doing at Ramadi was very much in the spirit of that, you know, the SEALs of Vietnam and those same underwater demolition teams in World War II.
Great analogies. Great analogies.
And so, so you get home, you can, let's wrap up tasking a bruiser deployment. You get home, you move into this leadership course.
What's wrap up Tasking and Bruiser Deployment. You get home.

You move into this leadership course. What's the time frame here? How fast did you change? I reported in, I think it was like February 07.
So we got back end of October 2006. and

we

I mean I basically spent a couple months

with SEAL Team 3, turned over, and then went to the center. And we, and so I just, I took over the course.
Did you want to go over there? I was ready for a break. Very different role.
I was ready for a break. I didn't know what I wanted to do.
I wanted to get out. I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
That was a heavy deployment, man. And it was...
So I wasn't seeking that role. Somebody decided that that was a good place to put me.
And what was cool about that is I loved it, man. I loved every second of it.
It was awesome. And the best job in the world has been a SEAL platoon commander.
There's no better job in the world than that. The next best job, I think, was teaching that junior officer training course.
It was, you know, I had some, you know, I got to see. It was an amazing leadership laboratory.
I got to see different officers that were coming to that training. We had prior enlisted SEALs coming to the training.
We had guys coming out of OCS that had been in the civilian world. And now all of a sudden in the Navy, we had people coming out of ROTC programs.
We had people coming from the Naval Academy. We had people doing inter-service transfers from the Marines or Air Force or Army that would come through that program.
Also put some special operations or some Air Force special operations officers through there and some Norwegian Marine Jaegers that came through that program as well. So I just got to see a bunch of different people, a bunch of different styles of leadership.
And it really solidified for me like what works and what doesn't work because I'm putting them all in these challenging situations and seeing how they react to things. And so it really solidified, like, this is what works and this doesn't work.
And so it was awesome to see. It was a phenomenal learning experience for me.
I think if you really want to know something well, you need to teach it. I'm sure just like when you started teaching tactics,

all of a sudden people are going to ask you questions.

You have to be able to know things from different angles.

You have to be able to think deeply about things and how you might react to certain situations and with different variables.

And so that I think really solidified my thought process

in thinking about leadership.

And of course the first thing I did was bring Jocko over to give

what we call the Jocko Brief, kind of his lessons learned and seeing that over and over again. And I got a chance to bring in Vietnam SEALs.
And one of my most favorite things was bringing in the most outstanding senior and junior enlisted SEALs that I worked with and having them talk about the officers that they respected and liked and admired and the ones that they didn't and what the difference was and give their perspective. And so I think that's something as an officer, you don't often get to see that or hear that.
What were the major differences? Many of the ones I talked about, humility, people that were humble, willing to listen. I think the people that wanted to try to act like they have it all figured out or have to show people that I've got something to prove, I think that, number one, that's what pisses everybody off.
You've got somebody that's not humble and thinks they know everything. Nobody likes that.
No one likes to know it all. It doesn't you what experience you have uh we used to joke uh we we had a we had an acronym for we weeb um which was when i was in baghdad and then it became we we're when i was in ramadi you know and so like when people are like dropping these like when i was there like you know when i was here when i was this unit or that unit and like that's not, you know, that's not the way to lead, right? I think asking people questions, helping people understand, you know, the truth for themselves, like I mentioned before, is the way to lead.
And so I think that's what really rose above is people that were humble, people that were willing to listen and learn. And then the fact that people were going to, out for the team and the mission first.
It's amazing to me. I remember the first time I heard the term servant leadership.
And I was like, what does that mean? And the idea that a servant leadership means that, yeah, I'm going to look, I'm here to serve the team. They don't work for me.
I actually work for them. I'm here to help them.
I'm here to put the team and the mission first before myself. And I thought that was kind of a crazy term the first time I heard it.
I mean, obviously that's what good leaders do. That's great.
If you're a servant leader, that's awesome. But I just thought that was weird that it was even a term for that because it's like the worst leadership ever, right? If you're going to look out for yourself, if you're going to be one of these ticket punchers that's going to be like, hey, I'm all about me.
I'm going to put my needs and my wants, you know, before the team or the mission. And I think that's just, that's terrible leadership.
No one wants a word for someone like that. So those are things that kind of, and then obviously somebody that just puts out, somebody that's going to try hard, somebody that's going to have a sense of humor, somebody that's going to hold a line on things when it actually matters and let something slide when it doesn't.
How do you, this is a personal question about leadership. And, you know, how do I...
There has to be a line between you and your guys. And how do you keep...
Let me rephrase this. You know, it sounds style and the conversations that we had at breakfast, I mean, you were really fucking close with your guys.
Very, very close relationships. Very personal relationships, it sounds like.
And so how do you maintain that respect as a leader at the same time as getting so personal with your guys?

Because as a business owner, I found that that line can be very tricky to navigate. It's extremely tricky.
And that's a fantastic question, Sean. I think this is the million dollar question, right? As a leader, you have to be close with your troops, but you can't be so close to them that one becomes more important than the other or more important than the overall team or the overall mission or that they forget who's in charge.
And I think there's, that's a real fine line because it's different for different people, right? I mean, there's the SEAL teams, you know, I came from the fleet where it was, I was going to, you know, I was Ensign Babin or Lieutenant J.G. Babin, you know, it wasn't this like first name base We worked with a lot of the soldiers and Marines.
They were like that. Whereas we're on a first-name basis.
Charlie Baten, I was Leif Tennant. I'm a lieutenant, but I'm Leif.
Everyone's on a first-name basis. I'm sure your platoon was like that.
Your platoons were like that as's, so the line's a little more blurry, but I think it's different for different people when you realize like, hey guys, we got to knock this off and like get focused on what we need to do so we can get this done. And if people aren't paying attention, then you know like, okay, I'm a little too close.
Okay, I've, you know, I need to, I'm going to have to maybe create some degree of separation, you know, here in some way. So you got to be close with the team, right? I think that you got to know your people.
You got to understand what motivates them. You got to understand who they are and what they do and what their skills are and what their strengths and weaknesses are and, and how you can help them, like where, where they want to go in life, what you can do to like, to set them up for success.
that's crucial for any leader to know. But you do have to find that balance.
And I think for me, as the AOIC, the assistant platoon commander, you're one of the boys, and you're not quite the OIC. You're not the platoon commander in charge.
It's a big step up, I think, to go from AOIC to OIC. And all of a sudden, like you're in charge.
And, and I realized I probably crossed that line, you know, with particularly guys that I'd gone to buds with, and I was, you know, or I'd been in SQT with, and I had very close relationships with, and, you know, we'd go out drinking and partying and hanging out and realize like, oh, okay, I have to, like, there's, there's, I'm going to have to create some degree a separation here. Maybe it's, maybe I go out and, you know, spend some time with them.
I'm like, all right, guys, stay out of trouble. I'm, you know, I'm going to, I'm heading back.
But I think, I think it's just trying to create that so that they, you're close with your troops. You're close with the team.
You understand them. You know them.
they know you, they know you care about them.

And, but, but you're not so close that, that one becomes, you know, more important than

the other or the good of the team or that they forget who's in charge. I think that's a,

it's a tough balance, but it's, it's different for different people. So you have to just,

I think if you're aware of it, you know, one thing that Jocelyn and I say with dichotomy

leadership is even just the awareness that there's this dichotomy that exists and you have to find the balance is one of the most powerful tools you have as a leader because then you can start to monitor it. Hey, am I too close? Am I not close enough? You know, and then you can start to find balance and you're never going to be perfectly in equilibrium.
It's always kind of constantly trying to make adjustments all the time. Okay.
Makes a lot of sense. Did you ever vent to your guys? Frustrations? I was probably the chief haterade drinker in Tasking the Bruiser for the low.
If you remember the old Dave Chappelle, the Chappelle show, the player haters ball was one of my favorite episodes. And remember, they just held up pictures of people and they would just like, they'd sit around and go hate, hate, and just like make fun of them.
And I would just throw shade at my chain of command, you know, talk about, I had a great relationship with Jocko. Like we love, we all love Jocko.
Um, but you know, the next level up in the chain of command, our commanding officer and staff, they were always asking for paperwork and, you know, look, they were good people. I liked them, but they, they would, they would pile a bunch of paperwork requirements on them.
Like, I don't have time for this stuff. We're out here trying to fight the war.
I don't need to be doing that stuff. And then you get questions from the siege of Sotiff in 80 miles away.
And the JAG officers asking about the rules of engagement and just making sure that everything was followed precisely. And you start to, it's really easy to get frustrated and get emotional and push back on that and i'm lucky that i had you know jaco to to to ask me he's like hey does it help you to not have a good relationship with your chain command and i was like no it actually doesn't and worse than that actually it hurts my team.
Because if I don't have a good relationship with my chain of command and they don't trust me, well, they're not going to prove our operations. They're not going to give me the resource I need.
They're certainly not going to be, we're not going to be the go-to unit that they choose to go action of a target if they're going to pick one platoon out of the entire team, where it's not going to be us, you know? And so, you know, when I would vent sometimes, Jocko would kind of just allow that and then just ask some questions to kind of turn it back around to kind of think about, like, what could we do to actually lead up the jet command? Like, our commanding officer and staff, what do they want? Do they want us not to be successful? They want us to win. They want us to win.
So if they've got questions about what we're doing, about how we're mitigating risks, I haven't pushed out enough information up there. They don't understand why this mission's important and they're questioning that mission.
I need to actually push some information. They've been talking about why we're doing this.
Pick up the phone and call them and talk them through it. And then the JAG at C.J.
Sotov, we were writing this really basic engaged military-age mail with an AK-47. And the JAG is like, well, every senior male in the household is allowed to have one AK within their home.
If you remember, they were allowed to have one firearm. It was like their second amendment because a lot of people didn't have access to banks, and so they had their valuables in their home, and that was how they defended their valuables.
So the JAG is like, hey, is it illegal for them to have an AK? Meanwhile, I'm like, are you kidding me? This guy's shooting at us, and you're questioning my decision, but I didn't write that in the report so that's why he had some questions and the moment that i put the hater raid down stopped like you know hating on the chain of command and and and telling them they just need to back off and let us do our job and realize like oh i need to push more information of the chain we started to think okay what does a jag he's never sat behind a sniper rifle he's never never looked through a .22-power night force scope.

You know, these snipers are operating

with incredible discipline, man, incredible discipline.

I'm talking, you know, watching hundreds of people

walk in front of their sniper scope,

and they're engaging enemy fighters.

And we're talking about, like,

with minimizing collateral damage in a way,

sometimes these savages would use human shields,

like children, like hold them in front of them and try to run across the street with their RPG. You know, and snipers like Chris and Tony and others were able to drop those guys and not injure the children.
I mean, amazing in a way that nobody with a machine gun is going to be able to do that. Nobody with a Bradley fighting vehicle 20-millimeter chain gun is going to be able to do that um and uh and so I was very proud of our snipers and the discipline that they were using and and I realized that the problem was we weren't describing it in a way um that that that uh that articulated to someone who had never been there you know what we were actually seeing and the moment that we started doing that um and putting statements, man, they were like, awesome.
That's great. Keep doing what you're doing.
What support do you need from us? So, you know, I think so often we feel like we're in a hopeless situation, you know, if we're getting scrutiny from our chain of command and if we take ownership and actually just lead up the chain, it makes all the difference. And I realized, you know, when I was venting to my guys and kind of throwing hate, you C.J.
Soda for our task group that was 30 miles down the road in Fallujah, all that does is just undermine my authority as well. That never helps you.
If you're going to just throw your chain of command under the bus, that just undercuts everybody in the chain of command if you do that.

It's not good leadership.

And the best thing you can do is to say, hey, listen, understand this is frustrating.

Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to put this paperwork together. We're going to get this done.
We're going to send it to our chain of command because they need this information. And we're going to do this so we can build a relationship with our chain of command so that they're going to support us where we need it.
And so when you can talk to your chain of command about the realities of it, you don't have to just sugarcoat something that doesn't make sense. You know, like, hey, they're telling us to do this stuff.
It's not fun. It's a bunch of extraneous work that we have to do.
We're going to have to put in a bunch of extra hours. Maybe you have to stay long, you know, stay late or stay over the weekend or whatever.
You don't lie to the team, right? You don't say like, oh, this is great. We're going to do it.
They're going to see right through that.

What you have to do is tell them the truth, tell them why you're going to do that,

and then help them see that you're building a relationship with the chain of command.

You're putting some leadership capital in the bank so that you're not pushing back on everything

so that when it comes time to really push back on the things that matter, you're able to.

How much of your decision-making process and the reason that you made certain decisions did you share with your guys, if any? Did you ever feel like, I mean, these are personal questions that I'm asking for myself as a guy running a company. And I feel the need to to explain some of the decisions that I make to my guys.
I don't necessarily know if I should be doing that. And so I'm just curious, you know, what do you do? I think it's absolutely the right goal.
You know, this idea of like of like 100 transparency not everybody needs to know everything that you know you know you would spend all your time trying to communicate things to people all the time that's that's not a good use of your time as the owner of a company but if that's one of the biggest lessons and the most humbling lessons that i brought back with me um i wrote an entire chapter about about that Extreme Ownership. It's chapter 10, leading up and down the chain.
So I talked about leading up the chain, but this is leading down the chain, which is I don't think you can do it enough to explain why we're doing what we're doing. Because I think when you kind of think people get it, leaders will think, well, maybe they get it like 7 out of 10.
No, they get it like 3 out of 10, maybe 1 out of 10, maybe 0 out of 10. And your job as a leader is to connect the dots between the hard work that people are doing and the overall success of the mission.
And it's because they don't see it, right? They don't see it when they're out there in the grind, you know, every day. You got to constantly help them see how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission and how it's going to ultimately benefit them as well.
So I don't think as a leader, you can remind people of that enough. And I mean, I planned so many major operations to go and take areas of that city back.
And we were the lead element on the ground with a thousand soldiers and Marines and all the tanks, everything we talked about. And when we got back, Jaco put this slide together.
He was tasked with going and giving a brief to like the, I think it was the chief of Naval operations, you know, the senior admiral in the Navy. And he put this slide together and it showed the map of ramadi it showed the red areas that were al-qaeda battle space where when we'd arrive we've been told don't go they're all gonna get killed and then it showed these blue circles going in with these combat outposts the u.s outposts that went in and then it showed like and each one had like what what our seal involvement was um and how we supported them and then it would have like yellow and green kind of expanding out.

And he put this, it was like a building slide, you know,

on a Microsoft PowerPoint slide.

And so the map overlay with this building slide.

And before he went to brief, just because Jacques was a great leader,

he always was like, hey, man, take a look at this.

Tell me what you think.

And he played that slide for me. And I was like, damn, dude.
Like this tell me what you think um and he played that slide for me and i was like damn dude like that's what we freaking did like i never put it together like that before wow never and it was um i planned and led every every single almost every single one of those operations that that are the blue circles that are going in like we were the first boots on the ground for these, you know, where I was intimately involved in the planning for these things. Some of them were weeks in, in planning, you know? And, uh, and when he saw my reaction to that, he was like, he, I had never put it all together.
Cause I mean, I'm coming back from my event. We lost Mark.
We lost Ryan. Like, I'm like, man, I know we made a, like, we certainly had some impact there.

But do we have any lasting impact?

Like, should we have done what we did?

Like, all these questions, right?

Then I'm constantly running in my head all the time.

And when he put that together, I was like, that's what we did.

That's what we contributed.

We contributed to take that city back.

And you could see it in the combat outpost knowing that hundreds or maybe a thousand

soldiers and Marines for each one of those blue circles are going in, that these are people that dozens of them might have not come home to their families otherwise. And so when you start putting that together, what's cool about that, Sean, is we all split up and kind of win our separate race.
and I have had the chance over the years

to pull some of my guys together and show them that slide. Do you still have that slide? I do have that slide.
Can I put it up on screen? Absolutely. And it will be, it was, when I show them that slide, they say the exact same thing.
Damn, dude. I had no idea that's what we did.
That's cool, man. And so I think it's a reminder that you can't do that enough as a leader.
And it's one of the most humbling lessons I learned of like, if I had just taken the time to take a step back, remind people about what they're doing, how the impact. Our mutual friend, Jake, that we went through Bud's with was a machine gunner for us.
I remember him telling me, you know, he's like, man, I'm just carrying this machine gun. He's carrying this 600-round loadout and this machine gun.
And we put optics on those machine guns because they needed PID. They weren't using, like, the ACOG to shoot the gun with it.
We needed a PID, a target. So, I mean, it's getting heavier, right, with all this gear you're putting on.
It probably weighs 20 pounds, you know, and you're carrying, you know, 600 rounds. Each of those 100-round boxes is, what, seven and a half pounds? They're carrying, plus you've got helmet, body armor, water, you know, all this stuff.
They're patrolling multiple kilometers to get in, you know, some of these areas, particularly in the rural areas outside the city when we were doing some of that work. And I remember Jake coming to me and being like, dude, I'm just security detail for Chris and the snipers, man.
And I was like, man, I have just failed him as a leader. I was like, Jake, when we get attacked, which is pretty much every operation, and we have three dozen enemy fighters trying to overrun our position, we're not beating back that attack with a bolt action rifle, bro.

We're beating back that attack because of you and your machine gun.

And that machine gun has saved our lives over and over and over again.

We could do none of this without you carrying that heavy firepower.

And then we talked a little bit about, I was like,

how many times have you like shot your loadout, you know, your entire loadout? And he was like, I many times have you shot your loadout, your entire loadout?

And he was like, I don't even know.

I was like, I don't even know.

He didn't even know.

And it was interesting because I talked to some of the Vietnam SEALs

and some guys that were machine gunners,

including Moki Martin, who's a phenomenal SEAL.

If you remember Moki, was just a legendary West Coast SEAL, sixth deployment to Vietnam, amazing guy. And he was telling me, like, we were just talking about, like, how many times they actually, like, changed the belt on their machine gun, their stoner, you know, their M60.
And it was, like, in his sixth deployment, he told me it was just a handful of times. Like, you know, they would break contact and they would break off.
And I was like, well, how many times did you guys shoot your, you know, like your entire loadout of Belfair rounds you're carrying? He's like, I don't ever remember a time doing that. And so, you know, Jake and our machine gunners did that.
I mean, like almost every single operation we went on. So I think I had, I did not help him understand just how important he was for the mission and how he was contributing to the mission.
We couldn't do any of this without all the work the snipers were doing and making precision shots is not possible without those belt-fed machine gunners. Guys like Jake, guys like Mark, guys like Ryan and Mikey Montsour that were out there carrying that heavy equipment.
So every leader, I think, has to do that. And then when you can put it in contact.
So you're just consistently empowering your guys every chance you get. Well, I think the lesson is that I wasn't doing a good enough job.
I did not do a good enough job of taking a step back and realizing, hey, they don't know that. And they don't know that because I'm not telling them.
That's what you did after. That's the lesson I brought like, I got to do a better job of telling them, of letting them know what they're doing, why they're doing it, the impact they're actually having.
What's the strategic impact that they're actually having? So I think when you've got people on your team that are in the grind, they're head down, they're doing a thankless, what seems like kind of thankless work, whether it's editing videos or posting social media clips or, you know, scheduling travel for podcasts, whatever it may be.

It is absolutely imperative that you constantly remind them about how important their job is and

how what they do contributes to the overall success of the mission. And how that ultimately

is going to benefit them, you know, down the road as your team continues to grow and expand. And I

think it's every leader's job to do that. Man, there's some great advice in this one.
Thank you. So after the, I'm sorry, the leadership, what was the unit? Where did you? I'm sorry.
After the next, after your next station. So I went back.
back i talked to junior officer course for two years um and tried to teach you know those junior officers everything i wish someone had taught me before i went into a tough combat situation and um and then uh then i went to uh the uh the director of training um was uh was it was an awesome leader who came to me and said hey, why don't you come be my operations officer up at SEAL Team 1? And that was Keith Davids, who just stepped down as our Naval Special Warfare Admiral. He was a phenomenal leader and was an awesome guy to work for.
So got a chance to go and, got a chance to go and serve with him as operations officer, uh, at, at SEAL Team 1, did another deployment to Iraq, supported some guys in Afghanistan. Um, you know, we sent to, to, we sent guys to multiple locations around the world, but, uh, I was pretty frustrated on that deployment, man.
Like sitting in, you know, we did a, I, the theme was to like, I had said for all our guys in Iraq, we were trying to embrace mediocrity and like not operate a bunch so that we could try to pull our guys and move them to Afghanistan where the fight was going pretty hot and heavy. That was 2009 and 10.
And so things were kind of just ramping up for like the, you know, the Marine push down into Marja and Helmand province and some of these big operations that were going on and kind of the Taliban strongholds in Helmand and Kandar province. And we didn't do a good job of embracing mediocrity because we did a ton of operations.
But I don't think I was single seal on that operation. In Iraq, we captured a bunch of bad guys and, you know, disrupted some terror some terror cells and, and guys did great work, man.
We had an awesome team. Um, but, uh, I don't, we didn't have a single SEAL fires, weapon and anger in Iraq on that deployment.
And, uh, and meanwhile, you know, it just was Marines are getting blown up all the time, you know, soldiers getting killed in, in Afghanistan. And it was very frustrating to me, you know, uh, that every time we tried to say like, Hey, we can send more guys to send more guys to Afghanistan, we can support the conventional units, and they're moving into these villages and Taliban stronghold areas, we can do what Taskin and Bruiser did for the Army and Marines in the urban environment, just from the high ground, on the rigs lines, with SEAL snipers.
would constantly get told, like, no demands to go for more SEALs. What changed? I think it was the force cap.
You know, President Obama approved, like, the surge numbers there. And I think there was just a – I think there was some force cap limitations.
Hey, well, surge force is there, but we're only going to serve X number of forces, so people are tracking everybody that's there. And frankly, I don't know that there was a lot of appetite in our senior leaders.
I think there was more of a, there was kind of an argument going on that we should be more on the kind of the find fix and let the kind of host nation forces do the finish piece. You know know it was a really interesting time i mean i had no idea you were you were uh sending guys down to marja in helmand at the time and i was down there contracting for the agency we had a safe house get hit and um i remember the it was supposed to be the biggest offensive the second biggest offensive

force of the entire global war on terrorism since fallujah and

they had a amassed a ton of marines down there to do this push and then i remember when the roes

came out for the military that they were somebody could shoot at you and drop their weapon and you could not engage them.

and you know I just

I remember hearing that and

thinking like

holy shit you just chopped the fucking

legs out from every

marine

down here that you

want to conduct this massive offensive force with. And it was just, it was mind-blowing to me.
Like, talk about demoralizing your fucking people. I can only imagine, Sean.
There's no way you can win, right? It's what I talked about before, right? If you're going to go to war, man, you got to have the will to kill the enemy and you got to have the will to die. And I mean, this is what it takes to win.
And I think my frustration was that we couldn't get hardly anybody involved in it. So we had one troop that was working out of Kandahar at the time and they kind of got split up and tasked in some different provinces.
And we had some guys that did some great work there, man, and made a difference. You know, it made an impact for sure.
They did awesome, awesome work. Did a bunch of combat operations that killed a bunch of bad guys and opened up some areas that Taliban had kind of controlled before.
And, you know, enabled freedom of movement for U.S. forces and kind of pushed the white space back around some of those bases where they kind of, you know, uh, kept people, you know, in where they're attacked a moment to get off the base, but we couldn't get more people there.
And, you know, I, we only had a handful of guys that supported, you know, some of the Marines pushing into those areas. Um, and the whole time, like, you know, the, there was just a pushback with the Naval Special warfare and and um i just felt like uh to me that was probably the the number one driver you know our friend elliot that um a month after we left for moddy got blown up um coming out of a sniper overwatch position he'd been wounded the uh and one of the insurgents had crept up near his position and literally like rolled a through a loophole.
So he's sitting there on a sniper weapon, and they pushed a grenade through the loophole. They snuck up, somehow jumped from roof out to roof out, pushed the grenade.
Grenade goes off, wounds him in the arm. So as he's getting kazevacked, they called in the Bradley fighting vehicles, and as they're getting kazevacked, they clacked off a big ID on him.
And I think it, like, ripped an Iraqi soldier in half in front of him and blew him up, you know, really bad. He lost a leg.
I think there were white phosphorus shells, Willie Pete shells. Oh, man.
Horrible burns on his body. And, yeah, man, he just was, like, man, you remember, Ellie's just as good a dude as her is, you know, just an awesome, awesome team guy.
And we'd serve together until Team 5 and been to Buds together, served together until Team 5. Then I turned over with him.
I remember seeing him and my close friends that were now relieving me, you know, as we went home. And I remember seeing him in the turret of a 50-cal, a man in the 50-cal in a turret of a Humvee about to make the push across, down that horribly dangerous road, Route Michigan, that was the most heavily ID'd road in all of Iraq.
And he was like all smiles, like fired up, you know. And I was just, man, just said prayers to, you know, protect these guys and look out for them.
I knew what they were up against, you know. it was November 19th, he got hit.
And then one of the other SEALs got injured, like thought he lost both his legs, like just was like blasted on his back. And then he lifted his legs up in the air, but his like, his tib-fib is like, like he's got double compound fractures.
So like all he sees is like his stumps and he lifts legs up they're like hanging down so i thought he lost his legs and that guy thank god ended up recovering and had you know these titanium inserts in the legs look amazing amazing guy um but elliot was in was in real bad shape man and uh i uh so i spent a bunch of time with him when he came back to the states um and he went to Brooke Army Medical Center, which is the primary burn care center for the military. And, you know, just seeing some of the guys who were in the ICU there and coming out of Iraq at the time was a horrific, horrific thing, man.
Just knowing, like, you know, you see these soldiers marines with like their faces

burned off and no fingers and like no ears and noses and lips and stuff gone and just and many

of them still are like you know they're they're making the best of it man you know um they're

happy to be alive and they're they're continue on their lives and and it was it was man those those

guys were just just heroes man just heroes just. Just awesome.
Their attitude on life. But it made me wish that we'd put a lot more of those insurgents in the dirt than we did.
And we did everything we could. But then, you know, as I was serving, I would go over and Elliot then went to, he then went to Balboa Naval Hospital.

And so I was going up there and visiting with him.

And I'd see a bunch of those Marines that were coming in,

coming in from Hellman province and Conderha province and place like

Sangin and, you know, Marja and, you know,

legs gone, arms gone, you know.

And to me, it was,

I think that was kind of the final straw for me of like, man, this is, these guys and and you know we're not being allowed to do it for political reasons whatever those are whoever's responsible you know and and you know i felt like it was uh that was that was probably the final straw for me of like you know i think it's time for me to probably get out yeah do something different how was it getting out for lot of people struggle with that. Hard.
Like, I never wanted to do anything else, you know? Had you met your wife yet? I did. I met her.
She put up with a final deployment for me. We were dating.
So you married her in service? Well, we didn't get married until right as I left. Okay.
So we got engaged right as I got back from my last deployment.

So I was like, we're going to put her to the test, see how she does to the deployment.

But we had met at the Seal Warrior Fund event, which is the big fundraiser for the SEAL teams in New York City in October 2008.

So the financial world had just melted down, and yet we still had some very patriotic Americans that are giving money to support SEALs and their families. And it was, it was, Elliot was there for that.
Ryan Jobe was the speaker for that. In fact, I don't think I'd even have spoken.
I don't think I would have attended if Ryan Jobe called me and said, dude, if you're not going to this, we're never talking again. He was a speaker.
He gave an amazing speech. They handed him the speech the night before, and he's like, hey, knuckleheads, I can't read.
I'm blind. Someone's going to have to read this to me.
You're going to have to give me the speech. He gave a fantastic speech, man.
And we were all there because the Montserrat family had wanted Mikey's teammates to be there. Mike had received the Medal of Honor for jumping on a grenade to save his two teammates on either side of him.
And our teammate in Delft Platoon. And so the Montserrat, had asked that Mikey's teammates be there.
So they flew a bunch of us out there. And, and, uh, it was, uh, it was amazing.
I sat right next to Mike's mom, Sally, who's, um, as I met Jennifer the first time at this pretty red hair girl, I was like, what's, what's her deal? I want to get to know her better. And, uh, I told her that we had, you know, she worked at Fox news.
I told her that Fox was on, uh, in our tactical operations center. She's like, well, if you guys want, come by.
I'll give you a tour. So I brought me, Seth Stone, and another one of his guys by who were like the biggest wannabe lady killers ever.
They were just spitting game at everybody from the interns to the anchors and Jenna, who just put everybody in her place. Like, didn't take any of that stuff from anybody.
And then I took her out that night. Like, I talked her into coming and meeting us for a drink.
And I took her to meet Elliot. She met Elliot and, you know, was easily, like, loved Elliot and, you know, was fast friends with him.

And so the

rest was kind of history there, man. But that was

another contributing factor for me certainly to get out.

I mean, I had, you know, we had been

dating two and a half years on the opposite sides of the country.

I was stationed in San Diego. She was in

New York City. Closest the Navy was going to get me

was the Pentagon. I had

zero interest in being a

staff officer at the Pentagon. And so I was like, it's time for me to move on.
What was it about her that got you? Man, she's beautiful. She's smart.
And she's got an amazing heart. And she asked me within like two minutes, three minutes, Like she probably learned more about the SEAL teams than anybody.
Like, you know, people might like, oh, you're a SEAL. Like, oh, that's cool.
Like, oh, that's really neat. Or, oh, I'm so annoyed.
You know, like people, you know, that might say something like that, but she was asked, she was like, well, how do you guys train exactly? You know, how often do you employ? And what's the training like? And, you know, how are you organized? Like she asked all these just like interesting questions. And I was like, I definitely want to get to know her better.
And it was, yeah, man, I just, I knew right away. I texted somebody when I was leaving New York City of like, I just met the future Mrs.
Babin. First night, huh? Girls in the phone book, yeah.
Right on, man. How long have you guys been married now? 13 years.
13 years? Congratulations. What is the secret to a successful marriage? Man, the secret to a successful marriage is extreme ownership.
It's extreme ownership, man. Because it's also, it's the most important place that you can apply these leadership concepts we've been talking about.
It's also the hardest because you're so emotionally tied to someone, you know, and your ego's evolved. And like, and I can tell you that when i start pointing fingers and casting blame and making excuses my wife reminds me that i wrote a book called extreme ownership and i should start taking some so she uh she definitely puts me in my place and uh and i'm like jack uh but all the things that like any team needs to be successful right cover move we talked about is like this is we got and move for each other on the home front, with the kids, with work, like around the house, you know, whatever it is.
We got to be able to cover and move for each other. We got to communicate in a manner that's simple, clear, concise.
It's not that, hey, you know, she asked me to do something. I need to give, use a read back to make sure that I understand, you know, what it is that I need to do.
I need to ask for some clarification. I need to make sure that, you know, just cause I asked her to do something, she'll put something out in the morning, like, okay, this kid, the kids need to be here, here, and here, you know? And then she thinks that like, that doesn't all process in my brain, right? I got to write it down.
I have to reference it. Um, so, uh, prioritize and execute.
There's going to be a billion things going on at the same time, you know. We've got to be able to pivot and be flexible and shift to emerging priorities and stay detached, particularly from our emotions when somebody's had enough.
The kids are kind of, they got you at wit's end and you're frustrated. Be like, hey, I got the kids.
I got this. I'm going to take them out for a little bit.
I don't need to ask what she needs me to do. I don't need to ask her where she needs me to help.
I can just step in, you know? And then decentralized, I think if we all kind of understand, we understand like, what's the goal? What's the goal we're trying to do? And I think when we do that, that enables us to, we can all work together toward that goal. You know, she may do something that's slightly different than I might've wanted it done, or I might've not thought about it doing it in that way.
But if it gets us toward the goal that we're trying to accomplish, if it helps us to raise, you know, some patriotic, God-fearing, competent, kind-hearted children, you know, that are gonna be good members of, contributing members to their society and community. That's what we want, man.
That's what we're trying to do. So I think, I think letting some things go, sometimes you're like, you do these little pet peeves, you know? Yeah.
I think that's the most important thing of like, okay, if she's doing something that's annoying me, it's not her fault. It's actually my fault.
It's my fault., that's, I need to, I need to figure out a way to like take ownership of that and like fix that. Um, great advice.
I think that's, I think that's the key. Let's move into your transition into, into civilian life.
How, how was that for you? Did you find it? I mean, you know, there's no secret. there's a suicide epidemic going on in the veteran community, a lot of addiction, a lot of alcoholism, a lot of drugs, a lot of womanizing, a lot of, I mean, it's really a nasty time in a lot of our lives.
And I'm wondering if you experienced any of that. A lot of depression, a lot of resentment, a lot of anxiety.
Certainly, I think I experienced some depression, anxiety. I think when all of a sudden, the thing that I had always wanted to do with my life is now behind me.
And now what? And I think that's a freaking hard thing, man. It's hard for anybody.
Do you feel like you wrapped a lot of your identity into being a SEAL? I don't know if I wrapped my identity into being a SEAL. I loved it.
I mean, I just thought it was the best job in the world. And even though it's not without frustrations, right? It's not that it's, as I got further up the chain of command in the SEAL teams, you get further away from the guys you like to be around and the job that you like to do.
So, I mean, just an example that I was at the Special Operations Task Force, like headquarters, and we were in Ramadi, just down the street from Camp Markley. We'd named the shark base Camp Markley.
And then, and so the, what had been a former kind of Intel base was named after Mike Montsour. So I was at Camp Mike Montsour, we were working out of there.
And man, there was, you know, I think we had 180 people at the Special Operations Task Force headquarters. And I think there were like six SEALs there.
So we were great people there, all performing an important function. But you're just getting further away from the guys you like to be around and the things you actually like to do.
So I think you're completely removed from that when you get out. And so then it's like, okay, now what? and I going to do, like a lot of people do, is just go back to school because it's kind of a transition.
You can get paid. You get money through the post-9-11 GI Bill.
I was going to follow that path. For whatever crazy reason, I decided I was going to go to law school.
I had some people help me out because my grades were atrocious in college, but pull some strings to like get me into law school. And like, you know, I was accepted to Fordham Law School in New York City.
And so it was just right down the road from where my wife was living at the time. And so we just got married and man, I started this like two week kind of academic enrichment program they called it, which was like the, for the people that had been out of school like me or didn't make good grades like me.
And, and so they, they, as I started it, I just realized like, man, I had zero in common with the other students in the class. And as we started to study law cases and things like that, I'm like, I don't think this is what I want to do.
You know, and this is a three-year program. I have to spend three years doing this.

And then Extortion 17 happened, you know, and, you know, the largest loss of life in the single incident in the history of the SEAL teams. Helicopter shot down.
Brian Bill, you know, Derek Benson, both in our BUDS class, awesome dudes. awesome dudes you know both lost on that i knew another handful of guys were on that too as i'm sure you did and um and brian brian bill just been at my my wedding a month before that it was crushing it was crushing and it was uh i mean he actually like finagled the deal he stayed stayed to go to a jump master school so that he could stay late, go to the wedding.
And then he flew overseas to meet his unit. And it was just horrible, man.
And it was just a reminder of something that you and I both know, right? Which is life is too short, man. You can't waste a day of it, man.
Can't waste a day of it. So I immediately deferred law school.
I was like, I'm not going to spend three years going to school. And so then it was like, well, now what? Now what I do? So I go in and defer to law school.
I'm like, I don't have a job. I'm not employed.
I don't know what I want to do. You know, I had people offer me some positions in like the finance sector.
And I went in and like saw what they were doing, you know, the traders. And I was like, I don't care how much money they make.
Like I would rather shear my testicles off with a rusty gun of scissors than sit here in front of this like, you know, trading. Like it just wasn't what I wanted to do, you know, and so we went out to this little place down the way.
It had some good margaritas. And I was sitting there with my wife, Jenna.
And she says, well, what are you going to do now, you know? I was like, I have no idea. She said, well, what is it you love to do? Like, what are you passionate about? And I said, SEAL platoon commander is the best job in the world.
Like, was the favorite job in the entire world. I'll do that over again in a second if I could, but I can't.
And even if I could do it, I wouldn't be deployed to Ramadi. You know, like there's no, there's no, I can't go back and relive that again.
But as she kind of asked me that question, I thought about it, I was like, the next best thing was teaching leadership to those junior officers. That two years that I spent training those junior officers, putting 130 something SEAL officers through training and trying to pass on all the lessons I wish someone had taught me, like it was incredibly rewarding to see those guys grow as leaders, take on that, you know, the lessons that we learned, apply it, get better.
And then I'd see them go forward, go, you know, places that I didn't deploy or didn't have any combat experience with, like, like Afghanistan, they would come home and say, this, this was game changer. Thank you for teaching us.
Hey, you taught me this leadership concept. I applied that.
It made a huge difference. You know, we focus on building these relationships, you know, damn, that's awesome.
It opened up all kinds of opportunities for us. These guys all kept in touch with you.
A bunch of them did. A bunch of them did.
Yeah. You know, I've lost touch with someone, but they, it was awesome, man.
It was so rewarding to see that. And, um, and to know the lesson that we learned and that we paid such a heavy price for, you know, a task and a bruiser were being passed on.
And, uh, And so when I said that, my wife said, call Jaco, start a company.

So I did, and we launched a company that became National Front. How'd that conversation go? Let's Jaco.
Let's start a company. You just said, let's start.
Let's start a leadership company. He said, roger that.
Let's do it. Well, what was he doing at the time? He was working for a mortgage company and teaching leadership for that mortgage company and helping them in their process.
They basically carved out a... Jocko Willink was working at a mortgage company? Interesting.
He learned a ton about leadership and how it applied to the business world and told all the problems know, from the inside. And so from that, he taught me a ton about what he learned, you know, from there.
I thought Echelon Front was my idea, Sean, for about a year and a half. And then I realized that just like this is Jaco's way, like about, about Jaco retired in October, 2010.
So about a year before I left active duty. And I went over and I was cleaning out his cage.

I was like, man, it's going to be a sad day

in the Jocko LeCille team's here when you get out.

And he said, I forgot about this conversation.

We had a conversation, and we were standing in his office

at training detachment.

And he said, what would it take to bring you on board to start like a leadership consulting business? And I threw out some number that I thought was like gargantuan, right? It was like barely, you know, barely six figures, you know, it just seemed like, like it seemed like the most gargantuan number in the world compared to my Navy paycheck. So he had planted that seed probably a year and a half before we had that conversation.
And I'd forgotten about it for a long time. And that's kind of Jocko's way, right, that indirect approach of planting the seed.
He wasn't like, hey, remember when I said that? He doesn't care who gets the credit. This is what good leadership looks like.
That's cool, man. And so how did it develop? It developed the very first year.
I made less than half my Navy paycheck. And I was like, this thing is never going to pay the bills.
And thank God my wife had a great job. Let me read.
What was the original plan? What were you guys doing at the very beginning? The plan was to teach leadership. The plan was to teach leadership the same leadership concepts that I taught in that junior officer training course, the same leadership concepts that he taught when he was running training detachment.
To who? To companies? To anybody that wanted to talk about leadership. Just to back up a little bit, just to back up a little bit, I had the first epiphany that, that I recognize that leadership applies everywhere.
There was a company that did an offsite to San Diego, big corporation, kind of in rapid growth mode. And they had had like a, so they had a leadership offsite, San Diego.
And somehow they got connected to someone at the SEAL team, like one of the junior officers that I put through training, and he was one of my, he'd been an assistant platoon commander, then was a platoon commander, and he said, hey, this company's going to come by. There was a retired, I think it had been his former, like, the CEO, because he was a lateral transfer from the service fleet like me, so he'd been on a Navy ship, and the commanding officer of that ship had retired and was running this leadership consulting business.
So he was bringing this team of, I don't know, 10 or 12 executives by. And so he's like, hey, will you come and talk to him about the stuff that you taught us in the junior officer training course? I was like, well, how long is that going to be? He's like, I don't know, man, 20 minutes, whatever,

you know, something like that.

Just short, just, you know, put out some,

share a thought, answer a question or two,

you know, that's about it.

And so we went in there and I talked a little bit about,

I talked a little bit about leadership

and like what we were trying to teach these,

you know, the, I mean, even just like putting the team and the and the mission first. It's not about you sharing resources across the entire organization.
They just started firing questions. And we were in there for an hour and a half of just nonstop questions being fired.
And I didn't know anything but the military. I mean, like you, I went to the Naval Academy out of high school.
And so I was 18 years old. I never knew anything about the civilian world other than part-time jobs that I worked in high school.
But it was the first epiphany for me of like, hey, everything that we learn here applies. And the world needs this.
The world needs leadership. Leadership is the solution to people's problems.
They don't know that. They don't know it.
And what we understood is that leadership is a skill. It's a skill that we're not born with.
It's a skill that we have to learn. And you're not, just like you don't know how to play the piano when you're born or drive a car or shoot a basketball or wrestle or whatever it is.
You have to learn that stuff. You might have some innate abilities that give you an advantage over others, that maybe give you a leg up on others.
But if you're not willing to learn the skill, you're not going to

improve. You're not going to get better.
And I think leadership is exactly the same way. And I

witnessed that over and over again when I was teaching that course, because I saw leaders who

might have what you might think are a lot of innate leadership qualities that would be important,

right? Like they were charismatic. They weren't nervous to stand up in front of a room and present an idea or talk to their team.
And then you had other leaders that were super introverted, like didn't want to, you know, like were terrified to stand up in front of a group and present an idea. And of course I made them do that all the time, you know, to try to get them used to that.
But what I realized is that even people that you might have think have all this advantage with these inequalities of charisma or, you know, they're kind of a, you know, loud, you know, person that kind of people gravitate toward or they can engage with people. And if that person wasn't willing to learn, if that person wasn't willing to humble themselves and get better and apply, you know, and take ownership of mistakes they made and apply the skill of leadership going forward to improve, like, they didn't get better.
They struggled. And some of them actually got fired and maybe even had their birds pulled and, you know, left the teams as a result.
And yet I watched leaders who, who, who were terrified to stand up in front of a group, like super introverted, like the quiet spoken kind of soft spoken types, maybe didn't have any of the, what you might define as an innate quality that might give people an advantage of leadership. And they did awesome.
I mean, they were phenomenal as long as they, they were willing to learn, they were willing to improve and they were willing to get better all the time. And I'd see those guys go, some guys who struggled in the field training exercise portion of that course that I ran, and I would see them get better and watch them go out on the battlefield and do amazing things.
And have their guys talk about what an extraordinary leader they were and how they made, you know, just how they've saved lives or, you know, were able to build relationships or vector resource. I mean, just incredible stuff.
And so that to me, it was the recognition of like everything that we learned applies, you know, to people in the corporate world, in the business world. We work with people in the nonprofit sector, in the education space, you know, first responders.
We do a ton of work with first responders. And anywhere that people want to talk about leadership, I think we take the lessons that we learn and we talk about how it can apply.
And I think we totaled it up last year. At the end of last year, we've worked with something like 1,600 companies and organizations over the last- 1,600? No.
Wow. How many of those, you know, we'd talked about a lot of the SEALs that went through the leadership course with you.
You'd heard from, you know, after later on in their career about what worked and do you get a lot of that in the civilian world as well? We do. We definitely do.
And it's super rewarding, man. It's our why, right? It's sometimes when you're in the grind and you're traveling and you're gone from home a lot.
And I'm always thankful for the opportunities that we have. You know, it's amazing to see.
I mean, even after, you know, we're pushing this month marks the ninth anniversary of the publication of Extreme Ownership. And the Fallen Book, Decombe Leadership, that was published in 2018, has now been re-released.
But there's still people driving the sales of that book through word of mouth. People are reading it, buying five copies for their team, buying it for their kids, buying it for their family members.
And that kind of word of mouth of like, hey, this has been impactful. And it's been amazing to see that.
And when people come back to us and tell us that, you know, Extreme Ownership saved their marriage, you know, they were blaming their wife for all their problems and, you know, or the wife blaming their husband for all their problems or, you know, having issues with their kids and, or they're, were frustrated at work that they were in a hopeless situation and didn't feel like they had any influence on the organization, didn't think that their leaders cared about them, and they were able to start to take ownership of those problems and lead up the chain of command. It's amazing to see.
It's amazing to see the impact that has. And it's just humbling and mystifying to me, man, to see how those lessons continue to be applied.
And it's, it's just humbling and mystifying to me, man, to see how, you know, how those lessons continue to be applied. And I just, it's, it's, I'm blown away

by it over and over and over again. And about how people are taking and utilizing this.
And it's,

it's not me that's doing it. It's not Jocko's doing it.
We just shared some lessons learned

that they actually have to apply. That's the hard part.
You know, I could share some concept with

you that can, that can help you. But it's, it's up to you to actually put your own ego in check, have an honest assessment with yourself and actually, you know, implement a solution to get problem solved going forward.
And I think, you know, for us, probably the best thing that we do is just help people realize what winning looks like. What does winning look like? You know, is, is it, what does winning look like for you for you? And when you start to think about that from a detached perspective, it's not about how much money you make.
It's not about proving that you're right if you're in a conflict with someone. It's actually about building the strongest relationships that you can with people and having the most impact in the world that you can and spending time with the people

that you love and care about most,

that's most important.

And so I think when we can get people

attached from their emotions,

kind of put their ego in check.

And like, if you and I have a conflict at a company

and let's say we're finding over resources

and we're two department heads,

I want those resources, you want the resources,

I'm in there like lobbying to have the resources taken away from you. We'll see conflicts that get created so bad that we can only communicate through mediated email by HR.
This is what happens with human conflicts. and you're like, wow, crazy.
like, wow. This is crazy.
When you can help someone say like, hey, is it important? Is that other department important for like what you're trying to do in your department? Like, yeah, it is. Okay.
Do you think it's important that you have a good relationship with the leader of that department? Like, yeah, it probably is. And so like when can't communicate with someone except through immediate email by HR, does that, do you think that makes you look, what does that look like to everybody else as a leader? You know, when you can help them start to reveal the truth to them, what's the chairman of the board thinking about? What's the CEO? What's the senior executive team thinking about you? Like, how's that? Do you think you're ever going to get a chance to be promoted up the chain? You know, if you can't actually get along with people and work alongside and build a friendly coalition so you guys can actually cover and move for each other, you should support one another so that the team can win.
And when you get people to start to think about leadership like that and they realize like, oh, you know, they're looking at this little tactical victory of like, I'm trying to get the best of this person, you know, that I'm going to demand that I get the resources from them. And that's what winning looks like.
And it's really the opposite. If I care about the team, I should be in there lobbying for you to get the resources.
Like, hey, you know what? Sean, we got some limited resources here. Your team needs these resources more than my...
I think my team can probably do without until we can get more resources available. I'm going to give these resources to you.
We're going to build an awesome relationship, man. I'm going to help the team win.
That's, I'm showing everybody that I put the team and the mission before myself or my team and our own interests. And it's like, this is what it takes, right? To, if I want to be a winning, a member of a high performance winning team, like that's the attitude I got to have.
And when you start to just get people to see what winning actually looks like, it's often very different than, you know, if you can put your emotions and temperature, you go check, it just, you free your mind. Man, you know, this sounds like a lot more than just a leadership training course.
It sounds like a way of life that can help you with all aspects of what you're going through with your family, with your business, wherever. Wherever.
In the military. It doesn't matter.
It sounds like these aspects apply to every aspect of life. And that's really cool that you guys put that together.
I appreciate it, man. I wanted to be able to share that.
And like I said, it's humbling. It's humbling to see how many people have taken and utilized that.
But if I can help even one person out there in some way to not make the mistakes that I've made as a knucklehead leader, to not lead with ego or try to prove that I know all the answers, I think that to me makes all the difference. It's in life, right? It's be humble or get humble.
That's the way it is. So happy to pass those lessons on.
Thank you. Well, Leif, you know, we're wrapping up the interview now, and I just want to say, you know, it really was, man.
It was great to reconnect, but it was a real honor to have you here to share what you shared about everything, man, especially, you know, your darkest day. I mean, I really commend you for how you handled that and how you described the guys of the past.
And, man, you're just a hell of a guy, Leif, and a true leader, and I appreciate you. I wish I was better, Sean.
I wish I was better, man, and I think I'm just on the path, you know, trying to learn from my mistakes like everybody else, and I hope that people can take those mistakes and learn from them and apply going forward. It's an honor to be here with you, brother.
I'm so proud of all that you're doing in the world, man. You've got such an important voice on so many topics that other people aren't willing to tackle or take on.
And I couldn't be more, we were joking on it before we started this. I've never guessed we were working together in Bud's with 18-year-old Sean that you would have the wardrobe

with so many sport coats out there to put on.

But it's awesome, man.

And so proud of you.

Love what you're doing.

Keep doing it, man.

You're making a huge difference to the world.

Thank you, man.

And just for the record, I personally learned a ton

about leadership talking to you today. And so thank you, man.
God bless. Thank you.
NBA veteran Jim Jackson takes you on the court. You get a chance to dig into my 14-year career in the NBA and also get the input from the people that will be joining.
Charles Barkley. I'm excited to be on your podcast, man.
It's an honor. Spike Lee, entrepreneur, filmmaker, Academy Award winner.
Nixon! Now you see it you see i got you but also how sports

brings life passion music all of this together the jim jackson show part of the rich eisen

podcast network follow and listen on your favorite platform