This is JoCo podcast number two forty six with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

I was doing what I was doing. I was getting after it, working. It had been five years since I had retired from the Navy. And in that five years, I had been working hard and and. Listen, I'm not the guy. That sends a happy birthday texts or or meet you for dinner on a Tuesday night. Let's not that let's just not I don't know, that's just not really my personality. And I look, if you want dinner when you come to my house at any time, well, the grill is on Will.

We'll cook steaks. Obviously no factor, but.

When I'm in the zone, I start doing my mission, I get focused on that, that's what I do. And I'm not saying that this is a good way to be.

I actually don't think it's a good way to be I think I get a little target fixation in life and not really great at maintaining contact with people.

And the fact that I was in the teens my whole life didn't really help because all my friends were teen guys and so they didn't need any kind of consistent communication either.

I want one guy that I went through buds with, went through basic training with my class. Then I went to team one with him, and then we did three deployments together, three platoon work ups, three deployments together. Then we went into trainings all together. And this whole time we were roommates the entire time.

And then I left for the East Coast and I didn't say one word to him for two years zero, and then I got back and we both ended up a team seven and like, nothing happened.

Look high five and all good. And we just picked up and no factor. And that's just like I said, it's I know it's not great, but that's that's just the way my personality is. And that being said, my friends also know that if they call me.

I'll answer the phone, and if they need something, I will make it happen, and I don't care if I haven't heard from you for a year or for two years or for six years. If you're my friend, I'm ready to rock and roll. But most people don't actually like to ask me for help. Most people don't like to ask for help anyways, and they definitely don't want to ask me for help because they don't want me to see that they are doing well or they've made a mistake or they put themselves in some kind of bad position.

So most of the time, I don't get those calls.

Now, one of the people that I did keep in touch with was Seth Stone, the Delta platoon commander.

Mostly through text because he got stationed, you know, he got stationed out of California. So is using different places. And so mostly text, sometimes email, occasional phone call. But ninety five percent of the time text.

And just totally good to go, two words, you know, one word, little inside jokes, maybe if something cool happened, maybe a picture of the waves, if they were good, maybe a picture of a new board. He would ask me things, you would ask me questions, blunt questions about things, and I would give him blunt answers. And then he would execute and he would tell me what's going on, and like I said, these would be in text and short texts.

I would get a text from him in some foreign country and it would say, you know, Norway. Period. And then there'll be another text that would say girls, period. That would be it. And I knew exactly what was happening.

And if you need anything, obviously, to hit me up. And I. Give them whatever needed. So one time he sent me a text. And it said something like. The GOP needs help. Can you take care of him?

And that might not seem like that big of a deal of a text, but I I knew that there was more to it than just that I knew what that text actually meant because I knew that JP wouldn't ever ask for help, wouldn't ask me for it anyways.

Too much pride. Is that a thing you have to think so. I knew JP wouldn't ask. I knew that Seth wouldn't ask me either.

He wouldn't want to burden me with anything, but Seth obviously knew that there was something going on for him to send me that text and J.P. was his guy. J.P. had been Seth's point man and his lead sniper. And he done operation after operation after operation with Seth in Ramadi. And J.P. was always out front and JP was always in danger and JP was always holding the line and JP was also like my brother was kind of like my little brother. I mean, I was a decade older than him, actually, more than that, I think he was twenty two years old when I met him in 2003.

When? When I send them into battle. And I had no problems with that whatsoever because that's what he was meant to do, but at this point, when I got this text, JP was in the civilian world.

You'd gotten out of the Navy and because he was in the civilian world and Seth was still in the Navy and Seth was working and traveling and wrapped up in all that stuff.

Seth couldn't provide any help, at least the amount of help that he wanted to provide.

So. That's why you hit me up and I had been trading some texts with JP occasionally. You know, there's a fight would happen or, you know, we'd talk about UFC or we'll just just just basic stuff.

I knew that he was working in a couple of different various places, bounced around a little bit.

Trying to figure things out. But a young J.P. was meant to go to war, so it was no surprise that things might not be as perfect. As they could be as he tried to play the role of a civilian in the civilian world. So when Seth asked me to take care of J.P., it was only because Seth couldn't do it himself. And that meant that I had to and people throw the word brotherhood around. But this is what it means.

That means one hundred percent commitment any time, anywhere, forever. No one gets left behind. So when Seth asked me to help J.P.. I responded to such text with one word, Roger. And Seth Roback, thank you.

And that was it, so I started to escalate the idea that it had been floating around of getting JP to come work additional in front, because what I actually knew or what I figured out when I started thinking through this, that it wasn't really help that JP needed, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. What JP needed was a mission.

So he ended up coming on the podcast. Exactly two hundred episodes go episode forty six. In October of twenty sixteen, and if you haven't listened to that episode, you can go back and listen to it right now just to hear the background of japes experience and younger life and in the teams and in T Bruiser. But at that time when he was on the podcast, he needed a mission. So he was actually out. When he came on the podcast, he had come out to observe the first echelon front master.

And that was the beginning of his second career. Is the beginning of his new mission, he was the first instructor we brought on board at Echelon Front and he has been here ever since.

And the last time he came on. Maybe you can tell a little bit when you listen to that podcast, but his life was not in the best place.

He was off the path. But he's in a totally different place now, a much better place. And part of the reason for that is because of our friend Seth. Who's always looking to take care of his guys? Would you pass the word to me? To get engaged. And Seth isn't here anymore, but J.P. is. And JP is here tonight to. Fill us in on the rest of this story, this backstory and the lessons that he's learned on this journey.

And how he's climbed out of that place that maybe wasn't ideal into where he's at now. J.P.. Welcome back. Thank you for having me back.

I had no idea that every text that a while ago I was asking you questions I was trying to figure out. I was saying, hey, remember when Seth Rogen visited you? I was trying to figure out when I was trying to put together the dates so that I could figure out how what I did.

But I actually didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to tell you that that's what had happened. Got it. But I was asking you, like, when or when did you and when did you come the and when did Seth see you? I was trying to put together the dates because I have the old texts, but I have you and me, you are texts.

I have back until a long time. Whatever. Seth's phone number changed in twenty seventeen so I only have like I don't know, I don't have the full history, at least not I couldn't find it. OK, but yeah that's what happened. You sent me a text that was like JP needs help. Can you take care of him. And I just wrote back Roger, it's awesome.

And you and I like I said, and as I went through our texts and, you know, I don't know where, but all of a sudden I was like, OK, if I could just to come to the master, he's going to see what's going on.

And then he can, like, hook a carabiner into this thing and let's go rock and roll.

Well, it was also at that time, I was also reaching out to you consistently. And and I remember specifically I said, hey, I know the mentor doesn't seek out the mentee. That's why I'm hitting you up. Is there anything I can help with?

Because you and I were talking one time like I just did a gig and I'm like, wait, where was that?

And you told me I'm like, I was thirty five minutes from my house and I remember we were just texting about that. I had no idea.

Sorry, like I, I don't even know where I'm going until like the day before according to my calendar. That's how busy. I'll be honest at first I was when you sat down right. Yeah I remember you tell me you'd like later.

How do you like like two years later you're like I didn't believe you and then it was happening to you. But I get it now because I'm like, wait, what city am I going to next. Oh OK.

And yeah well last year I, I don't, I can't remember what month it was, but yeah I spent five nights at home like with all that Xs and massas and everything else like that engagement's I, I was like oh yeah I get that.

But yeah that was why I was texting you just hey what can I do to help.

Is there anything you need help with. And there was a forum for me.

I just thought you were like, hey man if you ever need anything. I thought it was one of those. Well I didn't, I didn't understand. I didn't read into it. I should have been like, OK, you know, Japes texted me four times in the last two months saying, hey, if you ever need anything, let me know I'm an idiot. And I should have been like, OK, I need to talk to JP instead.

I was like, hey, we're all good right now or something. I could I could have been a little more aggressive to the point and clear with my communication and said because my my thought was, OK, I've done I've done sales for a couple of years. When I got out, I was doing well. I left that to start my own consulting company.

I left doing that very emotional, you know, I didn't really plan out what I was going to be doing.

And so, you know, there was just a gap in work and stuff like that. And I in my mind, I was like, well, I can sell. I know what they're doing. Like, it works is that maybe they need somebody to help with sales or or anything.

I was just I wanted it to do anything I could just to try to help and be back working for you again and life. And, you know, I just I didn't want to be too aggressive and too pushy to check this out. Echo Charles, have you ever seen a movie called The Sixth Sense? Yes, sir. JP have you seen it? Yes.

You know how like in the end, you all of a sudden the whole picture becomes clearer of what happened.

That's basically what happened with me was when I got that text from Seth all of a sudden, like all the dots connected, and I said to myself, oh, that's what's going on. That's what these texts are. I'm an idiot. Yeah.

I mean, because during that time I was helping build up. I was helping a guy build up his training facility in Alabama. It's an awesome facility that they have done. Their things didn't work out between us because of my lack of proper communication with him. You know, I dropped the ball on that. And so then I was solely doing my own thing. I was teaching shooting. I was sitting in people's hunting rifles for I was just doing anything I could for extra money, like doing construction, repairing fences in the neighborhood for the landlord to help, like, go towards my rent and, you know, and then I got the call to.

From a team guy buddy of ours, Kevin Camp, and he was like, hey, what are you doing this summer? I'm like at the time, like class wide open right now and not let me check my.

Let me check my schedule.

And he said, hey, would you want to be on Transformers five as an extra playing a Navy SEAL? And I said something back to him like pretty smart ass is like not being serious.

Michael Bay is looking for younger looking team guys like, awesome. What do you need for me? So I sent over there for, you know, I sent what he needed back for me. I didn't hear anything. I was still helping out somebody else with their training company, kind of building that up. And then I was down in Alabama again. So I'm back down in Alabama with another guy and I get the call from Harry's wife. Harry's an old team guy.

He's been in the movie industry for a long time. And she's like, Hey, Michael Bay loves you. Pictures, loves your stuff. Can you be on a plane tomorrow?

Might I hold on.

Let me let me check. Because in their world, everything runs around them. I'm like I have a family, I have commitments. And so I talk to the guy. I'm like, hey, here's the opportunity I have. Like, are you good with that? And he was like, Dude, that's a great opportunity. Go ahead. I'm like, OK, so we finish our little business dinner down there. It's a six hour drive back to Mississippi.

I call Amanda.

I explain to her and she's like, that's amazing. Yes. So I drive all the way back, pack out everything. They're like, oh, you're going up to, you know, Detroit, Michigan area. Like that's where they're filming outside of there. You know, I don't know how long you're gonna be up here. So it's just total open ended. Don't know how long you're going to be up here, went up there. We ended up going to the UK, filmed over in the UK as well.

You know, it was a really cool experience getting to just see that aspect of it and which it was cool.

What year was that? This was twenty sixteen. This is the summer of twenty sixteen and got it.

You know, and it's funny, I got a text from one of my buddies, Michael, the other day when you know, the sour Apple sniper came out, he's like, Hey man, I'm super proud of you.

He's like four years ago you were trying to figure out possibilities of getting paid from Paramount Pictures sooner because their their pay is super slow.

They don't care like they don't like, oh, you'll get your pay when you get your pay. And a lot of the guys, not just me, we're just like, hey man, we left other stuff that paid on time to come do this. And now we're not getting paid on time, like we kind of need our money.

And he's like four years ago, you're trying to figure out how to actually get paid in a timely manner and now you have your own signature flavor energy take with with JoCo.

And he's like, that's amazing. And so it's just it's crazy to see the last four years what is what has progressed.

So did the filming. And then I was looking at doing some contracting.

There are some security work up in the Dakotas on the pipelines I was going to go do I had opportunity to go do some security and some long range shooting instruction overseas. And that one that that one paid a thousand dollars a day for 70 days.

And I'm like, this was the one that we had to discuss.

This was the one that was a big choice.

Yeah, that's that was I get the I get the thumbs up on that one. So the the monster was going to take place in October and I think. Yes. And you know, I said, hey, this is I've actually looked at the text yesterday. I said, hey, we're doing an event October 14th and 15th or whatever it was, it would be cool if you could come out and see what we're doing.

And you had just gotten this offer to go overseas for a thousand bucks a day for 70 days. It makes seventy grand. Seventy grand.

When we had we didn't even I mean, total between checking and savings, we didn't even have a couple hundred dollars at the time. You know, I'd put my family in a really bad position. And I remember talking to you about that. And the guy Michael I'm talking about, I called him for advice as well. After I called Amanda, when I had talked to you, I talked to him. I was trying to get a grasp for the situation before I called Amanda so I could actually have, like, a legitimate conversation with her and kind of talk through the opportunities.

And, you know, it was it was awesome. She just kind of let me talk.

And I already knew the answer. I knew what I needed to do. And she did, too.

And, you know, she told me she's like, you know what the answer is? She's like, you know, Jaconi life will never steer you wrong. You know, the opportunity with in life is is unlike anything else that you've had and the fact that they're giving you this opportunity, you need to take advantage of it. I said I agree 100 percent. I just I guess I needed to hear from her because it's easier if I if I was single.

Yeah, that's a no brainer.

But when you have a wife and three kids that can be affected by your decisions and I had obviously made some decisions, I put them in hard positions. I mean, there is times where we were using gift cards that we gotten from Christmas and birthdays and everything to go eat dinner, like, OK, we'll tie the money.

Guess what a kid you guys want to talk about. I'm cool. Yeah, because we have a twenty five dollar gift card to talk about. We can go get fifteen dollars worth of food as a family and then have ten more for another day.

And it was going over the in-laws and eating with them a lot. And you know, it's just, just hard position. I didn't want to put my kids in but then I'm getting this thousand dollars a day in front of me had another buddy, Steve Arean, who is I was teaching long range shooting with. He has an awesome consulting and shooting company, Grey Fox Industries. He's always been really good to me. And he he kind of knew I was in that, you know, needed work.

And so he always would be like, hey, I'm I'm offering you this first before I give it to the other instructors that I have.

And at the same time, I was already committed to teach shooting with him in Texas. And then I was going to be headed for that overseas gig.

And so when I decided and I called I called you and you're like, cool, you know, just let me know when you get you know, when you book your fly, I'll get you connected with Jamie. And I called Steve. I said, hey, you know, here's the opportunity. I have you guys. I can get another instructor to cover down, you know, but he was tight on his his funds as well. He's like, I'm not going to go pay your travel day, you know, because I don't have to pay for another instructor.

Like, I don't care, man. Like the fact that you're cool with me leaving halfway through this course. Dude, thank you so much.

Like this. This means a lot to me.

And and so I was already out in Texas. I'd already driven out there. And so I looked through all my old airline accounts that I because when I traveled a lot during sales, I had points added up.

I'm like, oh, I can all be able to get from Texas from Love Field to San Diego. I have points at least get me there.

And I was trying to figure out how I was going to get my back if we didn't have the money.

And and so we figured out and I finally I get the flight book that I remember when I sent you that you're like, awesome, you connected with Jamie and you had mentioned like, yeah, maybe you can crash at my house, like you say with me here. And I was trying to figure out where I was going to stay.

But in my mind, my concern was, well, I can't rent a car and we're not going to have enough money to to Uber.

You know, I'm not going to have enough money to Uber anywhere. So I'm like thinking, OK, hey. And then as we got closer to that, like, Jamie got a hold of me and she's like, hey, we have a room here for you at the hotel where the event's going to be. And that I was so thankful. I'm like, OK, well, I don't need Uber any as I can, at least Uber from the airport to the hotel.

And I remember I even like looked at it like I'm like, I can just walk, I can walk. There's like that from the airport to that. The hotel is not a big deal. And and so I just it just worked out I was able to make it out there and we were going to do whatever we had to get me out there for that opportunity.

Yeah. And you camouflaged basically all this for me, the conversations that we had. I thought, you know, you're making a decision. You know, you said, hey, I got this opportunity to go overseas and make this much a day.

I didn't know that. I remember saying to you, look, hey, that's a kind of a that's that's a great deal, you know? And if if you need to go do that, you know, we can hook up later, whatever. I didn't know that you were in the dire straits that you were in because you didn't tell me because because I'm a grown man that put myself in that position.

It was nobody else's fault other than mine. Yeah. And. Yeah, it's one of those things, so when I bring, like, someone on board, you know, I don't I don't want to pull the wool over your eyes.

And another thing I told you was, hey, if you come to Echelon front, you may have 50 gigs next year and you may have one.

I don't know you. It's we're going into the market. I don't know. You know, no one is going to know who you are. No one's going to, you know, understand who you are or will have you on the podcast. And people will get a little bit familiar with you. But I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. I know what it's going to get you. So I don't know.

Yeah. And you were super transparent and honest and you said nobody knows who J-P Daniela's.

They are requesting Leif Babin and JoCo. Like, that's when they reach out to Ashlawn Front for speaking. That's who they want. But, you know, and then you said the Rassam, I was like, I understand. One hundred percent.

And the other thing that you said that I'll always remember and, you know, it's the fear of loss you put in there, but you weren't doing it on purpose. You're just being honest.

And this was a very realistic possibility, said I don't know when the next time we would be able to link up, like in regards to I don't know when I'll be able to get you out to the next event for you to see what we're doing. And for me, that was that was I mean, not terrifying, but for me, that was it put me on edge because you feel like a now or never situation. Absolutely it was. We have I have to do this.

And, you know, Amanda understood that one hundred percent. I understood it. My buddy Steve, he understood it as well. I mean, he was super supportive of it. I mean, he even offered his manager anything I could do to help you get out there. It's just a great guy. And I just I knew the opportunity that I had and I wasn't going to I mean, what's going to happen?

What worse of a situation am I going to be?

It I use all my airline points. I use up the little money I had in my PayPal account for Uber because I had, you know, with me teaching, shooting. Some people had bought the never settle shirts that I had at the time. Not a lot of people were buying them, but some people would buy them and they buy it through PayPal.

So that money I never even transfer to my bank account because that was like a extra savings savings that was out of sight, out of mind that I was able to use.

That was your Uber account? That was my Uber account.

It's so great. I can't believe it's again, it's it's a six cents thing for me right now, even right now, because I'm also thinking I pay I paid you to come to the monster because, like, you helped me ramp everything, right.

You paid me after we got done recording episode forty six and we're standing outside of the office and you hand me a check and I'm like, I can open up, what is it.

And I pushed it back toward you.

I said, no, and you actually got pretty upset and you said something to me and you push it back towards me.

And I was like, OK, what do you mean said something? What do you say we of course, we want to know what he said.

Fuck you. Hand me back the jacket.

What you didn't know is we had seventeen dollars in our bank account total between checking and savings from the check that you gave me that I was like.

I mean, yeah, I mean, that was but that's why I said six cents, because when I gave you that check and you looked at it, it looked like I just gave you a check for a million dollars.

And and you felt like the look on your face was it was actually as if it was a million dollars and I was giving it to you. And your look was this is amazing, but I can't accept this. Right. And that's the look that you had on your face.

I couldn't I couldn't buy the JoCo says that to you and pushes it back. And he legitimately looked like angry with me.

I'm like, I've never seen chocolate angry before. Yeah.

And so, I mean, even getting up to when we recorded Episode forty six, I'm thankful that Brady was in town.

And Brady, you know, Lantau, who's been a know trooper from day one with you guys, was there at the muster and he had asked, I believe you if he could come and just sit to listen. Yeah. And he paid for the Uber as we're headed up there.

I was going to pay for it, but I was like, oh, you know, and he paid for it up there. And I was like, OK. And then you dropped us off at the hotel on the way back. And that's but that's so it's such it's crazy.

And, you know, I've talked about this before, like when you're in a leadership position.

Right. And this is me talking because I know that this happens. No one wants to tell me that they're tired. No one wants to tell me that they don't want to do another mission. No, no. Just tell me that stuff. And hardly anyone ever does, you know, and no one wants to tell me that, hey, man, I'm really hurting for money right now. What can we do to make this work? No. Instead, you're just like, hey, kids, you're eating ramen.

Well, you know, I mean, I shared it on on episode forty six. You know, my my family, there was times that we were really tight on money, like really tight. And there's times that Amanda grew up.

They were really tight on money, like my father in law and my father, like I told you before, many times to the hardest working man I know.

I've shared the stories. My dad, you know, growing up him working construction Hamby, he would be coughing up blood because he had pneumonia. He was super sick, is in the wintertime. And he still would go out and frame houses, pour concrete, do brick and block work, Rapha house, whatever work he needed to do for 10, 12, 14 hour days so that we we could get paid so that he could provide our family, my father in law, same way he have always two to three jobs at a time.

He would come home from work. He would spend some time with Amanda and her mom, Debbie, and her brother Nick, and then he would go do some night shift somewhere. He'd come home, get a couple hours of sleep, and then he go do is to me. He was always working. And I knew that from was with with Amanda.

And my my understanding is, you know, I put myself in the situation. I can work out of it. Now, thinking back four years later, could I have gone about a different way? Absolutely. You know, it's like the missions that we would do. You can always look at the mission that you do. And even though you come out of a mission with success, you look at it and you're like, hey, you know, if we would have done this, it would have been a little more effective.

Hey, if we would have done this, maybe those guys wouldn't have been wounded.

My thing is, I put myself in that situation.

I had already read extreme ownership and extreme ownership is like we shared on the last podcast, what regained the marriage for a man and I. We were divorced and we were able to get our marriage and our family back together. I knew that I had put myself in that situation.

It wasn't anybody else's fault.

And at the time, like before, I read extreme ownership, like when things had fallen apart with some other guys, with their contracting companies or the training companies that I was helping out and helping build up that crept back into me of that that Blaine and I got mad at them and I was upset and frustrated with them.

And then I read extreme ownership. I'm like, oh, no. Actually, I could have been more proactive. I could have had better communication. I could have done so many more things that would have ensured that I had success with these other business relationships.

And, you know, and I just I needed to work out of it. Now, it was my ego involved for sure. I mean, because I don't know if anybody who doesn't man or woman that wants to go to somebody that they respect, some of that they worked with a friend or family member and say, hey, you know, we're hurting financially. No, nobody wants to go do that. What I should have done, like you just said, it's been a little more transparent and said, what can we do to work through this?

Like, yeah. And that's the thing that sucks as I look back, because, you know, I gave you this check, which was, you know, it was cool. Is it was. Yes, it was some money. Yes. But that's not that didn't get you out of the hole. And I didn't know how big. The whole was I didn't know what you're saying, I didn't know you didn't have money, I just didn't know that I thought, hey, you know, he's got I knew you were doing other stuff.

I know you teaching shoot. And what I knew you had some other things going on. And I thought, you know, hey, cool.

Well, we'll slowly, you know, we'll start getting you some gigs. Once you're on the podcast that'll come out, people start asking about it. We'll get you on the roster. We'll take you to some gigs. You can sit there in the back. You can do some Q&A and we'll get you, you know, we'll get you ramped up over the next three, four months. No big deal. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I'm thinking no big deal.

We'll get you ramped up over the next three or four months.

And you know my attitude in life.

And and that attitude reflects very deeply into the way that I run businesses is you eat what you kill. And so if you come and work for me and you think, well, I'm just going to give you money because you showed up. Now, I'm not actually going to do that. If you come and work with me and you start producing results, cool. We split up the results and we go forward and everyone's happy. So what I'm saying is you show up at Echelon Front to start working.

You do not get any money until you start working. Yes. And that took time.

And what I didn't realize is you weren't out of that hole yet. And so that puts you for a few more months. Again, this is all me looking back six cents. Now I go, oh, that's what was going on. But it was not it was not a welcome to Echelon front.

Now everything's good now. And the way the way that I that the way that happened was was perfect, though.

And I am I am fully on board with what you just said. And I think I think if everybody operated that way, society would be a lot better. I truly believe that because it takes away from that sense of entitlement.

And people think that because they're a part of a team that they get to reap the rewards. And it's like, no, like if you are putting out if you are working, if you're hunting, then you're going to eat. And I knew that. And you told me you and Leif both told me, hey, we are going to give you as much work as you want. If it's there, you are the one that needs to tell us, like, hey, I need I need a break.

And I remember laughing when you guys said that, like, yeah, that's OK. That's that's going to be a great problem to have. And so I come back from San Diego. The master is great. A lot of amazing troopers at that very first Musker. You know, I learned so much at the muster and that was when that was my I am all in. This is what I want to be doing. Like you said, I needed that new mission.

And I've talked about this at multiple musters about finding a new mission because a lot of people without that mission there lost.

And when they were lost, very rarely are you going to actually make any sort of progress. If you're truly lost, you'll make zero progress. If you kind of start to figure out where you're at, then you can start to get some progress. It's like if you're doing land navigation and you don't have a compass and you're out there and all you have is a topographical map, you're completely lost.

You have no idea what's going on. So it's a middle of the night. It's really hard to see terrain features in the middle of the night. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, you might be able to see a little bit with the moon and the stars. And if you're really good at being able to rain that, read the terrain, then you might be able to figure out where you're on that map.

What you actually need is the ability to look around and and gain some situational awareness. Yeah. And what you actually need beyond that is you need to have a goal of where you're trying to go to, because otherwise you can look at that map all day and sit there because it doesn't matter. You need a map. You need a compass. Yeah, but you need to pick a point on that map and say, OK, this is where I'm trying to get to one hundred percent.

And this isn't by the way we start. We say this all the time to veterans, hey, you need a new mission when you get off military. But it's not just veterans. It's people that graduate from college, people that get laid off from a job, people that leave their family splits up and all of a sudden they're by themselves. All those situations are situations where you going to look up and say, OK, what's my new mission?

What am I going to do? And if you don't do it, you're sitting out in the middle of the woods without a map, without a compass and without a without a destination that you're trying to get to.

Absolutely. And so once I figure it out, OK, this was my new mission. This is this is what I wanted to be doing.

It changed my mindset because I was at the time where I was just surviving. I was just trying to survive for my family, trying to like just one thing I know is I know I'm smart. I know I'm not super intelligent. Like a lot of like the people I work around with these days, like my brother, my sister, very extremely intelligent. But I know I can work hard.

And so that's what all I was doing was just working, working, working hard, which is great. There's nothing wrong with hard work. I just wasn't being smart with my hard work. So I wasn't getting like the momentum in the success that I needed to put my family in a different situation because there was no clear mission like I had no why like.

Well, let me kind of go back on that. My wife was providing for my family, that was clear. But in order for that, why? To provide the results and yield to the success that I wanted. And I really I wasn't going to be able to do that until I had figured out what that new mission was going to be.

And I thought it was going to be starting Navasota Consulting because I wanted to be teaching shooting tactics and combatives to law enforcement and military to help them out. Like I my heart was big for law enforcement because I saw the lack of training that they had and that's why I really wanted to do what I screwed up was because I didn't come up with a good plan.

All the things that I knew to do in the military, all the things that I knew to do as a point man, as a sniper, like with planning and, you know, just making sure I can execute the highest level.

I wasn't doing that as a civilian, so I was failing.

And then when I saw what you guys are doing and saw how I could have a just a seat at the table and the ability to contribute and to provide impact and service.

And, you know, I've always understood servant leadership. You know, growing up in the church, my parents always explained it to me. I saw it firsthand from family members. And then I saw it firsthand, working directly for Seth.

Seth was an amazing leader that served his men. He he was always about the man. He was always about the mission. He was he was it was everybody else but himself. He always took care of everybody else.

And when I saw what you guys were doing here at ashlawn at the very beginning, that's what I saw. Like I saw that again. I saw that fulfillment of something that was very similar to what we had in the SEAL teams.

And I wanted to be a part of it with only one. Yeah.

And and going back to the analogy of land navigation, you can be a hard worker and you can go and up and down those hills with your rucksack. But if you don't know where you're going, you're all you're doing is sweating a lot and doing a lot of work. But you're not actually making any progress in any direction. And that's that's not good. And and I'm sure I'm sure we talked about this, but from the get go at Echelon Front, almost immediately, we were working with not just companies, but we were working with law enforcement.

We were working with military units. So I know that was you said you saw that that's we were already executing what you know, what you actually really wanted to do. And then you saw which the I what a great introduction coming to the muster and you saw that not only does this apply to law enforcement and military, but it also applies to every business out there, everyone in leadership position.

You know, starting my own thing was it was good. I'm glad I did learn, like I had learned some very valuable lessons.

But for for me to have the opportunity to be a part of what you yourself were doing, it was it was a good opportunity for me to also learn to check my ego because I had a lot of people like me. You need to be doing your own thing. You need to be doing your own business. You write your own book. You need, you know, is all about me doing my own thing.

And I just I would be very polite to people that say that sometimes I would be a little irritated because I'm super defensive of you in life and in my boys. You know, I've always been like that. And I know that it means the wrong way. And if I were just talking like, I don't care, that is not my company. What this company is doing is what matters. Like this is what matters. This is what I want to be a part of this.

It doesn't need to be my consulting company. That means nothing like and I know I'm a part of this as it grows.

And that was at the very beginning, like I was, you know, there is this you need to be doing your own thing from other people that didn't really know me very well.

I didn't know you guys very well because when I came back from us recording the podcast, I went straight back to what I was doing, teaching, shooting, citing in hunting rifles, doing construction, whatever I could do to to make some ends meet. And I remember I was I got a miscall from Jamie and I called her back. I was out at my buddy's property.

He's such a good guy.

He would always let me have his his family had one hundred and seven acres down down south of us where we live, the Mississippi. He's a, you know, a former service member. You know, he was wounded overseas. He was is a cop of the Memphis area and he's working for his family. And so him and I, we would go shooting all the time. Mike Gaines, great guy. He was a sniper. And he was like, yeah, I zigged when I should have zagged.

I got shot. I just always makes light of the situation that he's in. And he was another guy that really helped me out because I he knew kind of the situation I was and I was trying to make sense for my family. He would let me set up shooting courses and citing hunting rifles down on his family's farm for nothing. Because I was like, hey, man. I was like, we can split the cost. I can pay you guys.

It's like, man, my dad just likes having you around down here. And I'm like, OK, you know, his that.

And so I. I would always offer to pay, and he just always was like, nope, nope, nope, and he so you really helped me out. And I remember I was down there and I was I got this call and I called Jamie after I was, you know, sitting in this rifle and she's like, hey, it's super last minute I was talking to JoCo. You know, he has an event with Los Angeles County Fire.

It's a four day workshop. Would you be able to make out to San Diego? I said, yeah, when she's like, we'd have to get you on a plane tomorrow, OK? And I call my wife really quick. She said, absolutely. And she's like, and it's it's not a paid gig, but it's a good opportunity for you to be able to just go see what Jack was doing and, you know, kind of get you in the game.

I'm like, yeah, OK. I don't I don't care. And she's like, but we're going to put you travel. I'm like, oh, cool, awesome. Kind of put my whole flight out there. I was like, This is in October.

So we recorded in September, right? Yeah. The Mastro's in September, I forget. No, no, I was in October. So this is legitimately next week. This is the next week.

So OK. And so I was all fired up. I called and she was like, OK, cool. Yeah, no, no factor.

And I remember I was so excited because, you know, Jamie is like it's last minute flight. The seats are kind of crappy. I'm like, it's OK.

And I flew from Memphis to Atlanta and then Atlanta to San Diego. And so. Yeah, and both both flights, the middle seat gets back and call me and I'm just I just have a huge smile on my face, like I could care less, you know?

And I just had the mindset of like I was just so happy that I was getting to do this.

It's a it's the same mindset that I had going through buds and in in training and in combat was I get to do this. I would always try to remind myself, like, I get to do this.

And the fact that I was flying out to San Diego, I was ecstatic.

I like man, I would have drove out there. Hey, Jamie would've said, hey, we need you. I hear of it. All right. It's going to take me twenty eight hours. Let's go get something. So I fly there in the hotel. You come pick me up the next day we go up, we do the event, we're driving back down. And I was just I was smoked. I was just smoked from just the day the travel.

I didn't sleep at all that night in the hotel. I was having a lot of headaches and and just issues. So any time I go out and I do a couple of days of shooting at the time, I would get really sick.

I get headaches. I would throw up just being around the concussion of just the rifles and shooting a lot. And I remember we got done with it. We're driving back down and I had to never saddle shirts.

I gave you one to give to Echo and and I gave them to you.

And I said, hey, if there's anything I can help you guys out with Echelon Front, I'm like, if there's any gigs. I was like, I just want you to know, like, I'm all in, like, anything I can do. I was like, I can't keep doing what I'm doing right now. I was like, and I remember you said, well, like, is there anything like the VA? Like you're like concerned because you knew like I was having some issues with my brain and just my ability to focus and headaches and sleeping and stuff like that.

And I remember that was like kind of the first time I kind of was was vulnerable with you and shared with you. Like, I can't keep doing what I'm doing. Like, if I could do something with you, like, this is what I want to do.

And you're like, Roger that, which I respected because you've always since day one, you and life have always erred on the side of not overpromising anything like just being very transparent and almost underselling stuff like just completely underselling stuff, which I've always respected.

I've always loved that. And that's one of the things when we were growing the field training exercise team, the experiential leadership training that we that we run in front, I've done that with the team. Like I did that with Cody. I did that with Kawi. I was very blunt and say, hey, this can all go away tomorrow. We could have no training tomorrow. Like, you need to understand that nothing is guaranteed. Even when we do, the training is still not guaranteed until we get paid by the client.

And that was what you life had always told me from day one life. And I had a lot of conversations about that as well. At the beginning. He just wanted to make sure there was no, I guess, false expectations on my end.

And I and I respect that and I love that.

And so I go back to San Diego the next day, um, I'm sorry. I go back to Mississippi the next day and then I get a call from from Jamie again.

And she said, hey, let's do an event in Fort Worth. Would you be able to join again? Absolutely. Yes. And I told him, like, hey, anything that I can join in life, like I'm available. Just if you can just give me more than like a next day travel heads up like we're good to go.

And, you know, she was she's been so amazing from the get go and so helpful. And I've learned I mean. I could do a whole podcast on what I've learned working with Jamie Cochran, because she's just amazing, human, amazing member of the team and I've learned a lot from her over the last four years.

And so she's like, OK, here's a date. You know, I'm a you fly and everything else like that. And how are you going to meet up with life and. And Mary, she said, well, you can, like, wait to link up with Llave or meet up at the hotel, you guys, and get like car service together.

And again, it was that, like, I don't have the money for car service or an Uber for DFW to Fort Worth is like this. It's funny because I live there now and I thought this is a big, long trip and everything. And I remember she's like, oh, I'll just get you know, it's easier if I just get car service for you.

I was like, yes, I'll pay for that. And so I linked up with life. We went out to dinner that night and then we're at the hotel. And I just thought it was so awesome. It's like, hey, let's let's rehearse everything for tomorrow. Even though I wasn't helping present, I was just going to watch him present. And then he was going to pull me up for Q&A, but he wanted to rehearse everything with me.

And I thought that was great.

And, you know, I brought a suit out there because they said, hey, do you have a seat? I said, yeah, I was doing sales and a financial company. I have some suits. And so I brought a suit out there and.

You know, watch laugh and I recorded on my phone, you know, I did the audio, little voice recording thing on your phone of him, of him giving the keynote. He had given me the keynote that I had put on my computer. So we were just kind of like rehearsing, talking through it together. He pulled me up on stage. We did a Q&A. And, you know, I just remember I was so excited to be up on the stage in front of all these people with Lahiff.

I'm wearing a suit.

And it just it was just I felt like I was making some progress from my situation, even though, like, financially, there had been no difference.

Like I was starting to see the change in my mind, in my mindset, like my attitude, the way I was thinking of things. And I remember this guy asked a question. He said, hey, what's the best counter sniper rifle? What's the best rifle to counter another sniper?

And what would you think my answer is? My answer is, well, three hundred women, because I played some cat and mouse games with some enemy snipers and it didn't work out well for them. And I'm just going back to straight like that. And life goes actually.

And I answer and I'm like, cool, because they wanted to hear about what type of rifle that I shot.

And life goes. Actually, the best weapon to counter an enemy sniper is an M1 Abrams tank. He goes, Those soldiers came to our aid every single time we needed it. If if we were having issues with enemy fighters, we'd call in for tank support. They would come in and they would handle that.

And that was like a major aha moment for me of this isn't about what we did in tasking a bruiser. It's about what we did as Americans fighting together, soldiers, Marines and sailors working together.

And I remember like I wasn't embarrassed that he corrected me, but it was a noted this is not about what I did as a sniper.

And I felt embarrassed that I gave that answer about what I did.

And it was just it was a very humbling moment. And then so we get down with that.

And I just I remember sitting there just watching people line up to, like, take pictures of life and him sign the books. And I said, man, this is so cool.

I'm like, hey, you guys need me, take pictures. I'm really going to take your pictures. Don't worry. I'm coming for you. Really good at taking pictures. And and so we do that of that. We go and we grab some we grab some food, go back to the airport and we say our goodbyes.

And he gave me he gives me a check for and he's like, this is for work. And, you know, this is, you know, what we did today. This is a percentage of it. And, you know, it's like that's that's how it works. Like you do events, like you get a percentage, because obviously Jack and I are going to get paid much more than you are. I laugh.

I'm like, oh, you think? But he's like, hey, you know, he's like, you did Solla with the company.

And I appreciate you being here. And he goes, Any time we can do stuff with another instructor, it's always going to be better than just someone by themself.

Check on my team.

It's like this is awkward.

Like I just didn't feel like I deserved that. And I and I told him that it's like, no, you know, he's like, your time is valuable. And that was another really important thing that I learned was he said, your time is valuable.

And that's when I started to.

Again, really start to value who I was and my time and what it's worth, because for a while I didn't value my time, I didn't.

And I think now, like people that I get is some of it's fun, like like, oh, Black Friday specials like the camp overnight. Do I get the TV that they're saving 50 dollars on like people like how about I say the mike.

But you spent twenty three hours sleeping on a curb outside a Best Buy to save fifty dollars. Like that's what your time is worth. That's what you know. I remember when he said your time is valuable. That was I needed to hear that. I knew that. But I just I needed to hear that from somebody that I really looked up to life and I went through it together. I've always looked up to him as a leader.

I know how intelligent. He's bright. He's very smart. Right. Him and South were those leaders and scutti and andropause. Well, that they're all like super smart in my high school diploma. But I just I've always looked up to life.

And I know life also doesn't B.S. Life isn't going to say something that he doesn't believe or think is true.

And so when he said your time is valuable, I said, yeah, on the inside, I'm like, OK, it is it is valuable. And so I'm sitting at the airport, I'm sitting at the Dallas Fort Worth airport and flying back to Mississippi.

And this guy is like looking at me and I'm always scanning like we always are.

And I'm always looking around and like he's just looking at me and I like a smile, kind of give a head nod and I'm still in. So, like, he gets up and I'm like, I'm gonna keep my eye on him.

And I see him on his phone and he's like, looking at me. He's on his phone, look. And he comes up at this point, he's got a big smile.

I'm like, OK, not not a threat. And the other thing, I'm like, man, I don't want to do this at the airport because then I'm never going to be able to fly again if I have to defend myself in the airport. It's probably pretty bad.

The guys big old smile, he's like, Are you JP to know? I said, Yes, sir. He's like, man, I thought so. He's like, I was just watching you on JoCo Podcast's. His name is Stan. Super nice guy. I'm like, Oh, that's great. And so we connect because I love to get you. He's like, Are you part of Echelon Front now? I said, Yes, sir. And he said, Awesome.

He's like, Maybe I can get you to come out and talk with our company. I'm like, Yeah, we can absolutely do that. I'm just like, yes, come on, you want to do it tomorrow? What are you guys located? And I change my flight. You know, he was flying back to Mississippi with me. Oh, we're good. Yeah, we're good.

He's down in Tupelo and and so we fly back and, you know, talk to him a little bit after the flight.

And then we we kind of cut out and it was again, back to the same thing, go home, change out working construction.

And then at the time, my buddy Jared White, he had already built me this an amazing rifle.

It's an HSR platform, and it's probably one of the best air platform guns I've ever shot. He is amazing at what he does. And he's like, hey, man, he's like I have I have a long range rifle I want to give to you as a gift.

That's what he's like.

Yeah, I was like, OK. And so I come up and I go I meet up with him. He's also the Nashville area.

You, like, confirmed the dope on this gun. I mean, it is a it's the same gun that I shot in the Showtime series four for Origin and JoCo Fuel. And so I, I confirmed the dope on it. Go out to three hundred, confirm, go to five hundred like Dolin the dope he says that I should be having. And there's these five targets and I shoot from left to right and it's getting smaller each target as you're going down my boom boom like working my way.

Last one. Like I pause guys, I see the wind kind of picking up a little bit and it wasn't just the wind like in front of the target, but like I'm like looking at the wind the whole way down there. So I just hold off the right edge of the target boom dink center mass.

And he's like, man, that's nice. And the guy next to this guy gets bizarre. He's like, I've been trying to shoot that target for two months and I have never hit it. It was a two and a half inch target at five hundred yards and I'm boom dead center. That is a half minute of angle gun that he built for me. I mean, it is. And this is where shooting factory off the shelf ammo that you can buy it from anywhere six point five Creedmore beautiful weapon.

So I'm like man this is amazing. So we shoot a little bit more. What he doesn't tell the guy like my background in the guys like this. Your first time shooting this guy to my. Yeah. You just you know and so we hang out, we go grab some food. I'm like yeah man can I get you some like can we get lunch or whatever is a gas.

We go grab some food and I'm again super tight but I'm like and like he just built me this amazing. I'm going to buy him lunch and I'm like try and calculate gas money to get back and everything is well. And I know he's always done construction and he's talking me about some jobs. And I said, hey, if you ever need help with any of your jobs, I would love to work with you.

I love construction. I love working with my hands. I was like, I could use the work if if you need it, it's OK. Yeah, man, I appreciate it. And I like I drive back and I think I followed up with them. I said, man, thanks again.

This gun is amazing. This is like, ridiculous. I was like, I owe you. Big time is like, nah, man, you don't owe me anything. So I just really appreciate your service. And he's like, it's, you know, you deserve to have a he's like, you're a badass sniper that should have badass sniper rifle. I'm like, well, I'm not a badass sniper, but I appreciate the badass sniper rifle. And he hits me up and he's like, hey, you know, do you still want to work construction with me?

Just like I could do something. We could do something on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I said, Yeah, absolutely. And so we start that and tour. And this is I'm still like I'm doing my brief. Like every day I am rehearsing my Echelon front keynote legitimately at this time, four to six hours a day. Like Amanda, like I would be in my office. I mean, I would pick different locations in our house in Mississippi.

When we got back together, we were in a two bedroom house that was I mean, that's probably the square footage of this podcast recording room and the locker room next to us.

That was about the size of the whole house, two bedrooms.

You know, we had no kitchen because that I mean, we had a kitchen, we had no dining room area because that's where the office was.

We would eat in the living room on TV trays like, you know, that was where we'd have our family dinner. Like, we didn't actually sit at a table unless we went over to our in-laws.

And so I would be practicing my keynote four to six hours a day legitimately, like going through it, listening to lace keynote, clicking along, like making it my own kind of doing some tweaks, talking with you in life here and there. And then this opportunity for me to start working with my buddy Jared. I said, yeah, absolutely. So I would wake up at 3:00 in the morning on Wednesday and I would drive up to to Nashville from from Southaven, Mississippi, where we lived.

Well, there's a there's like a three three and a half hour drive. Well, guess what, that was three repetitions through the keynote.

So I would be driving. I'd have my laptop at an angle, so I'd put my backpack in front of the passenger seat. I put my laptop at an angle and I had the clicker.

And while I was driving, I would list I was playing life audio of the keynote while I was clicking through and watching the slides as I'm driving and you just kind of listening and getting like the flow down.

And I would do that and I would I would get up there, I'd work construction with Tim. And then he had a bad up in his attic that I would crash in. And so I crash there. We get down with the dad, do another like two hours of rehearsing. I would wake up a few hours early. I would do a few hours of rehearsing in the morning, go where construction was down. And I would do this Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Friday.

I would drive back and then I would spend some time with Matt and the kids while my buddy Lee opened up a Marko's pizza and sauté them. We used to work at the financial company together. He invested in the franchise. And so, of course, Amanda and I were supporting him were there were like, oh, this is awesome. The kids were like, this pizza is really good. I'm like, wow, this is awesome family. This is great.

I'm super proud of you. This is awesome. I said, hey, if you ever need help, like with drivers, let me know. He's like, oh, man, you don't want to be doing that. I'm like, no, it's fine. I was like, if you ever need help, just let me know. Like, I would love to help you out.

And he kind of like we went back and forth and I, I was like, hey, if you need some help with a driver, I would like to be a delivery driver for you. He's like, oh hey man.

Yeah, I could actually I could actually use a good, reliable like driver. That would be great. And I'm like, OK, cool, man. I had like the absolute probably the nicest vehicle of any delivery driver at the time. It was my 2015 Toyota Tundra that was lifted. And like I mean, it was awesome. So I would do the construction with Jared Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, doing the rehearsals in the morning, rehearsals in the evening.

When I drive back on Friday, it was another three hours of doing the rehearsals through the keynote.

I would see Amanda in the kids shoes usually be over at her parents at this time. I would go back home, I would take a quick shower, I would throw all my polo, throw my Marko's pizza hat. I would go in a clock in and I would deliver pizzas until midnight and then after midnight. Most drivers would leave and I was like, hey, I can help close out the the store because I needed that extra hour of minimum wage because that extra six twenty five was I was like, I will take anything and everything I can at this moment.

And so I would that's what I would do. I would deliver pizzas on the weekend and then I would be I would come home from delivering pizzas around one thirty two ish in the morning by the time we got done cleaning up the kitchen. And I would get online and see if anybody ordered any never settle t shirts. And because we had talked about on the podcast, there's a good amount of orders that started to come through. And so I would fulfill orders until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and I would crawl into bed with the man, the kids, and she would wake me up.

When the kids would get up, she would get me a cup of coffee and I would that's why I would spend some time with them. On Saturday and Sunday, we go to church and I would do the same thing in the evenings. And yeah, I was doing construction.

My landlord had some fences that he needed repaired on Somoza's of rental. So I would go do that and I would exchange him rent instead of paying rent. I remember one time I and this was at the very beginning and Jamie like, hey, you have a gig that's going to be in March. You know, the client wants to do a prevent call with you. I'm like, OK, awesome. And so I was sitting I stopped doing fixing fences, has this person's house.

I went and sat in the car and I did my prevent call with the client, got done with it, took all my notes, took a picture of it, emailed it to myself so I could have like an email copy, the photocopy, the digital copy of the notes to my phone.

I had everything and went back and finished repairing these fences so I could exchange rent for a couple of months with the landlord. And yeah, I was doing everything, everything I could.

And then you or Jamie reached out and said, hey, Jako is going to be doing a thing in Nashville.

How far away is that from you? I said, well, I'm going to be right up there. I'm actually helping a buddy. And so I reach out to my buddy and Jerry. And I said, hey, you know, I believe it is like, hey, next week. Do you mind if I take a day off? Like, could I miss out on Thursday? And he said, Yeah, absolutely. What's going on? I said, well, Jack was doing an event.

I'm going to be yeah, I need to go with him. And he said, Yeah, dude, he's a big fan of yours. Listen to the podcast.

And and he was like, yeah, anything you need, let me know. And so I was working construction with him, got done with my day, came met up with you at the hotel.

We did our rehearsals, which were awesome seeing you do the rehearsals and then you were trying to like have me do rehearsals and I was just the whole big brother. In fact, like I couldn't even like talk in front of JoCo in the room.

I just yeah, I was too much. So we go do the event.

And I remember I thought I was going to be early and I text you and I said, hey, I'm headed that way.

Where do you want to meet? Like I'm thinking, I'm cool. I'll be a little early. And you said, I'm sitting in the front one of the front tables already. OK, Jocko gets there really early.

And so I remember that was the major lesson for me from that little interaction was any time we're doing something with a client, it's about an hour ahead of time.

And you explained to me the reason why is because you have to go through all the different you know, you want to make sure that everything's loaded properly.

And I didn't know that you'd been down that there that early. I'm like, OK, so I go. I said I same thing. I record your keynote and it was on the dot to the our like our head.

Right. As you are doing your closing like thank you slide. I was like that's impressive.

And you knew and you knew it. And so you come off stage and the guy goes up on stage, he's like man must be a Navy SEAL thing. Sixty minutes on the dot.

And everyone's like, oh, like just, you know, applauding. And it was really cool. And I remember you said you like man when you hit that mark, when you hit the mark within a minute, it's like you coming down on a freefall jump and you hit the X on the drop zone like it feels so good. You just hit that. And I was like, OK, timing, you know, I just I'm taking all these like notes as I'm interacting with you and laugh and listening.

And I'm like, OK, timing. Like, that's obviously very important for what we're doing. And and so I we go to a breakout and they wanted you to do another little breakout training. And I asked you, I'm like, well, what are you going to do? You're like, I'm just going to open up and talk. I'm like, oh, OK.

You're like, but I have slides in case nobody is talking, interacting that I can talk through that will get engagement. And if not, then I'm just getting I'm like of another brief on some other things that I think is important for their business.

So that right there is a primary planned secondary and tertiary. Yep. One hundred percent.

And these are all the things that I'm like in my. I like relating back to military, and it was cool because I was seeing, like the change in my mindset, like I could feel it. I was excited. I was engaged. I felt like I was planning operations like we did in Ramadi. I felt like it was just I was having that sense of fulfillment again. And that's what a lot of people struggle with.

And you and I have talked about this a lot. And I know life and I have talked about this a lot, veterans and first responders and law enforcement officers and firefighters and EMS, they struggle when they don't have that sense of purpose anymore.

And if you want to take an outsider, like you said, it's humans in general, like college athletes. Right. They think they're going to go to the professionals and then they don't.

And what do they do? It's like one or the other.

They either thrive in a civilian world and they find a job with a purpose and they can do all that drive and learn all the hard work ethics that they had to bring him to that high level college athlete level. Or they just everything falls apart. And there is like there like Napoleon Dynamite uncle who's talking about like, hey, if coach would have put me in, we would have won. It's like, OK, cool. Yeah, probably not dude.

And so I just remember this, this change in my mindset starting to happen when I was just around it again and I was thinking of like, this is what I need to be doing.

And so I do that day with you. And you brought me up to interact in and provide, you know, some responses and answers to different questions that are coming about.

And I remember I felt really comfortable up there, like I wasn't nervous, like when I was sitting in the hotel room with you, like, just trying to go through the slides. I was you know, I was it was horrible.

I wish we would have, like, video footage of some of that, because that would be awesome. I wish we had that, too, because and now this is like the big joke at Echelon Front that everybody, when they have to brief me, sucks. Yeah, it's a disaster and it's like they freak out and then everyone's awesome. And actually, you know, when you spoke at the muster for the first time, you're we went through the rehearsal and it was just a total disaster.

And you and I had worked with you trade it. And so I've seen you briefed on and I knew what you're going to do, but you walked out of the room and life is like bro or dude.

I don't know. When I go, he'll knock this thing out. He's going to crush this thing. I go, he just freaks out in front of me. And he's like, Roger that. If see, I said, you know, we'll do it.

The other thing that sucks about this whole thing is, you know, you were going through like again, I just now I just have to point this out because it's such a good leadership lesson to learn for me and for everybody. You're going through like these real struggles of driving all this way, working construction work, delivering freakin pizza. You're doing all that. And I don't know it. I think you're teaching shoot like, you know, you're in Mississippi.

I'm in California. Look, you you you teach shooting. I know. And people pay you to teach me. I'm like, OK, cool. You know, he's going to do that. I'm not even it's not even entering my mind that you have a freakin pizza hat on and you're delivering pizza. That's not even entering my mind. You never said a word about it. And I didn't I didn't dig enough to be like, hey, bro, how is this work and how is everything going?

You know, and that's totally my fault for not understanding and not doing enough research and not having a good enough relationship with you where you'd be like, bro, you know what?

I'm going to have trouble paying rent this month. Like, if I would have known that I be like, oh, cool. No, actually, I could have no trouble paying my rent ever again. Here, watch this game over.

Done. Yeah. And yeah.

So that sucks. And the weird thing is I'm trying to think like, what puts you into this mindset? And then what I realize what puts you into this mindset is there's a lot of people that they they read extreme ownership or they come to the muster or they they listen to the podcast and what they think is, yeah, you know, I wish that person would have ownership and I wish this person would act that way. And they start they start thinking about how everyone else should take ownership.

And so in this process where I would love for you to say to me, hey, hey, JoCo, I need a little bit of like to make ends meet and give me a stable base right now. Can you help me out? What I would love to say that I would love to have had you say that to me. What you're thinking is this is my fault. I'm going to fix it.

And it was one hundred percent my fault. One hundred percent.

And I was on the path of fixing it because of good opportunities that I had from my buddy Jared, my buddy Steve. You know that I was teaching shooting. You know, I was I was doing construction. Lee allowing me to come deliver pizzas like these were great opportunities that I had.

And I was in my landlord willing to trade. Oh, you want to you want to replace some fences and do some maintenance on.

On some of the properties like to train out rent, OK, like these were opportunities that were actually helping and then fulfilling online teacher orders, these are all things that were making ends meet that I'm.

I don't think if I would have come to you and said, hey, I'm here and you're like, hey, don't worry about this, I don't think that would have made the situation better.

Honestly, I don't, because I don't think that makes any situation better for anybody.

It's you have to grind. You have to work through these things. And if you allow yourself to get in a situation, you have to get yourself out of the situation. You absolutely have to get yourself out of situation. I understand what you're saying from a leadership standpoint. I get that one hundred percent.

But this was something that I had to get myself out of because it doesn't mean you can't achieve success for somebody else. They have to do it themselves. They have to actually want to do it themselves.

And you know, what I don't want to do is make people think, hey, J.P. sucked it up and I'm going to suck it up, too. And as I was just thinking through this, you look, you were in a really bad spot, but you actually your head was still above water, right? It was tough. You were treading water hard. But if it got to a point, I would hope that if it got to a point where, you know, you were going to be homeless or whatever, you would have been like, hey, ajiaco, here's what's going on, man.

And I would have been like, hey, Roger that. And you probably said, listen, I need I need a loan. I need money right now and I'll pay you back or whatever. But right now this is where I'm at.

And so so maybe it's the fact that as low as you got, you didn't quite get to a point where you were drowning. And as long as you weren't drowning, you're like, hey, I'm going to figure this out.

Yes, I still am telling you, I still wouldn't have come to you and asked for that because I don't think that's the right answer.

I put in actually a thing at Lowe's to do loss prevention. Right.

And I guess I wasn't qualified enough because I didn't get the job at Love to do loss prevention. And I knew, you know what?

The other thing I could have done that I actually had talked to Amanda about was like, hey, once you you once you and the kids go to sleep, I can go restock the shelves at Wal-Mart and you go do that for four or five hours every single night, get a couple. You know, I could get enough sleep throughout the day to to make those things happen. And these were legitimate conversations that we had that I could do. The other thing is, you know, I and I was looking to get back into the military for a while.

That's one of the times I actually called you. Actually, I sent you a tweet and I said, hey, give me a call.

And you're like, why didn't you just text me? I said, Well, because I know if you saw that, you give me a call and people would say, why is he saying, give me a call?

And they would like, like sway some social media followers to come see what I was doing. But I was actually trying to get back. And this is before all this was trying to get back in the military for a while there, I had enough options. I had there's there's plenty of options for me to go.

Some say you didn't you weren't actually drowning. No, nobody.

But what I'm saying is if if there's someone listening right now that's like drowning, then you ask then you have to ask for help. And you know what, man? I have had friends, mutual friends of ours, people that we know, people that you don't know, that you know, whatever. I've had plenty of friends that have come to me been like, hey, man, this is what's going on. And and I need some help.

And I've been like, Roger, you know, that's what I talked about when I opened this up. Like, I've had plenty of people come to me and say, this is what's going on. I need help. And I've said, Roger that. What do you need?

I mean, dude, I had Seth Seth was Seth was freaking buying a house. And he was like, hey, I'm whatever, thirty eight thousand dollars short. And then I also need money in my bank account to show that I have the reserves.

And I was like, cool, come pick up a check. Like done. No, no questions asked. Not like what's the payment plan. SEC no. Done, done. Deal, done. Deal. No factor. And, you know, I think that's the I just want to make sure people aren't thinking like, hey, just don't ever come ask for help if you're if you're treading water and you're above water and you can still make some progress.

Awesome. Yes, I totally agree. Figure it out. But if you're going to drown, you need you need to put your hand up and you need to ask for help. That's what you need to do that that's what your friends are there for.

Yeah. No, I, I understand what you're saying. And I definitely could have reached out. I didn't feel that I needed you. Like you said, I wasn't drowning and I have no problem doing whatever I have to do to make ends meet. And I will like I mean, there is one time just in the neighborhood, like I just had the idea. And so what I did is I asked people if they wanted their addresses spray painted on the curb and from their mailbox.

It was easy to identify.

And I went around doing that.

And yeah, I mean, I get the get the template, do the white paint down that kind of dry, put the template over it, spray paint their address. That was easy. Boom, quick cash would go around. I would do that sometimes. How much would you charge for that.

Twenty five dollars check. Yeah. Go do it.

Enough of those. You know here you're ok. But you know what does it take 15 minutes maybe.

Yeah. So you're talking a hundred bucks an hour maybe. Yeah. Maybe fifteen. The first couple of times I was, I was like I need to actually process this.

So that was, you know, at the very beginning, like you said, you didn't know. And then Jamie says, hey, December 5th, December 14th, we you're going to have your first gig. You're going to be doing a keynote. It's one hundred and ten people. It's their company. It's a safety stand down.

And I was like, OK, cool, and it's going to be in an auditorium.

And so I was I was excited about that, but, you know, a little nervous, like, OK, what am I going to be doing for this first time? And again, practicing my keynote at this time about six to seven, sometimes eight hours a day. Any free moment? I had if I had a free hour, I was doing it.

I was I was doing like, you know, just listening to your audio, listening to this audio, I'd go back and forth between the two audios. I had my brief put together and then I started to to make it my own right.

And I remember the first time that I had to it was over Skype. I was going to give the presentation to you in life. Amanda was like, OK, her and the kids were going to be gone. I stacked up all this stuff in my living room toward the computer would be I love, took everything off the walls behind me, how my clicker had everything and we did the keynote. I did it for you guys. I was like right at the at the hour mark.

So I was like excited that I had hit that time. And then we did a Q&A and I remember.

It was I was proud of myself when when they said, JP, you've obviously done a good amount of prep for this, that was a good job. Now let's do some mock Q&A. And like that was the feedback that I got from you guys because I had I don't even know how many hours of this presentation I had worked through. I mean, to say laugh was thinking you did like three hours of practice, but you did 3000 close to it.

I mean I mean hundreds of hours legitimately of just planning and just going through it and just making sure that I knew and I would I would make it to where like even like if I didn't, I wanted to be able to do it, try it. If I couldn't see the advance slide, like I would practice different ways where the computer was behind me, like representing the screen. And I would I would, I would do that now. I would get into my little rhythm of like, hey, as you can see, to make sure I was still on the right slide practice using reflections off of like pictures or mirrors or stuff to see where I was out on stuff behind me.

Just try to put myself in bad situations so that I could go through it. And then I did that.

That first keynote was in Denver, Colorado. And, you know, it was awesome. This is in December, December 14.

So it was October, November, December. So so those were like you struggling through. And then finally, here comes your first gig.

Get my first gig. I remember when I got there, I took a picture of all the line up because there is a safety stand down thing.

And so that all these other speakers there and every other one of them was like, doctor, doctor, doctor, I like all this less than J-P to now form like what is J-P, what's a GP, what does he stand for?

And I remember I sent you that picture to your life and your response was something along the lines of better get used to that. And I was just awesome, you know. And then so I go down there, there's a break before I talk. I get my computer set up, I have my water, have like everything kind of like set up for me about halfway through the audio. Like the the sound goes out in this place. Microphone goes out.

I'm like, OK, was an auditorium. So I'm like, cool, just project.

Well I just remember like everyone like being on their phones while I'm talking and I was like, oh my gosh.

Like this I suck like I suck. Yeah. And then it clicked. They would get on their phones every time I click the next slide so that they could take notes. I remember like people are using their phones, they're using technology, people are taking pictures, they're typing in the notes. And then when they done, they would put their phone away. And it was just that that moment of like fear. And then like, I was able to put it together and got done, give the keynote when I had lunch with a buddy, the company requested, like, hey, if you can hang out, we'd like to have, like, have dinner.

So I went back, met up with them, and then the next day I flew back and I had nothing for December, the rest of December. And then my next gig was it was in January. And so I was going down Key West, Florida. My this is awesome. So go down there, fly down to Key West or fly down to one of the airports.

And then it was like an hour and a half override down to where I was going to be at. I went to the event, was kind of doing my research, like wanted to find the room that we're going to be talking in. And I use my credit card to Jimmy open the door because there's like, you know, order like hotel in Key West, Florida, like easy to break into everything there. So I use my credit card, get in I go into the check out the room that I'm going to be speaking in.

There's nothing set up at all. And I don't think it will.

We start at like 7:00 a.m. and so I text a point of contact and I said, hey, there's like there's nothing set up in the room here.

And the response was like, I thought you were bringing everything.

And so there are some major miscommunication there.

And I said, well, no, I brought my computer and the adapters and the like, the clicker. Everything else is supposed to be on here, guys.

And the guy, a guy was super nice. He's like, oh, he had been he was at dinner with a group. They'd all been drinking as he comes in. And I kind of showed him the room.

He's like, oh, so what do we need on my screen? A projector, a power source. And so we went down to the front desk and like was talking to somebody.

It's like we're like eleven o'clock at this point in time.

And so we kind of told him, like, hey, this is what we need. And they're like, well, we can't do anything. Like we start at seven. And the guy in the guy said, OK, we've rented out this many rooms for this many days like this needs to happen. And the front desk lady was like, OK, let me see what I can do. I went and found this guy that can help us out and we got everything set up that night.

And that was for me, it was like this call. Summation of why it's important to do your recon and why you should take the extra time, go check out the situation, gain as much situational awareness as you can before you go into an environment. And I'm glad I did, because if I we would have done it the next morning, nothing would have been set up. And so everything got set up.

I'm doing a half day workshop and it was my second gig. I'm doing a half day workshops, although I remember like trying to talk with your life. I'm like, how do you guys do workshops? Like, what am I doing? You guys gave me the template. We talk through it.

And major lesson learned of a failure on my part is make sure your watch syncs with the new time zone because I'm like, oh, I'm on time.

I'm good to go. While you go from Mississippi to Florida, there's an hour difference. And I went over forty seven minutes over my time that I was supposed to have. And I remember one of the guys like, hey, are you going to be getting done soon? I'm like, yeah, you know, we've got like 20 minutes. I'll be wrapping it up because you're supposed to be done.

40 minutes ago I was like What?

And I'm like, Oh. My watch didn't change time zones. That's one hundred percent my fault for not thinking that, am I? OK, give me give me one minute. And so I go.

I change like my PowerPoint slides, right? I just go straight to the closet and I just, you know, they were super cool. They they were good with it. They were loving it. But, you know, it's a corporate retreat for them. So they had other stuff that they're supposed to be going through. And I just I addressed the group and said, hey, you know what? I completely failed on the time. Like, this is what happened, you know?

Hey, here's a recap of the day. We kind of talk through everything.

And I closed it out and it was good to go and, you know, so going out and I said, hey, yo, do you have confirmation of the car service that was in?

That is like, oh, no at all. And I'm like, OK, so I try to call Lynn and Jamie to see. And they weren't available. And so I was like, oh man. I'm like, that's going to be really expensive ueber. I don't know if I have it.

And so I got the Uber and it was like it was like one hundred and thirty dollar Uber to get back. And I had like one hundred and forty dollars in that PayPal account and I was like, OK, cool, go back.

Well when I'm flying back it's the man and I's anniversary and it was, it was snowing in Mississippi when I get back.

And so we spent a little bit of time together and I shoot Lee attacks on car. Hey, do you need a driver tonight? My truck has four wheel drive. He said it's isn't it your anniversary? I said, do you need a driver? He said, when can he be here? And so I told him and I said, Hey, do you care if I I know it's our anniversary, but we need the money. I'm going to go deliver pizzas.

She's like, OK, you know, I was fully supportive of it. And and so that was a super humbling moment. When you go, I need to give Amanda more hugs next time I see her because she should be hating me right now. Going you could have made this money overseas. We would be sitting right now. I can't believe this. Guys are now going to give her a big old hug, maximize year and say tell her thank you for putting up with me because dang yeah.

So am I. Get the conversation that we had very shortly.

Like you, Amanda and I had a conversation like I think it was the same month. So where is the beginning of January. And so, you know, I go and I change out and you know, she goes over to her parents to hang out and I started delivering pizzas, you know, and he put he put a social media post.

He said, hey, it was a picture of his truck in my truck in front of Marco's pizza. He said, you shouldn't be driving, but we can say something along those lines. And we were I mean, I was delivering pizzas until one a.m. I mean, we were nonstop delivering pizzas and I was doing that for the tip money. You know, we need that extra tip.

And I would make, you know, about three hundred dollars in tips. You know, I just made a good tip money. I was super polite and, you know, friendly to people. But it was just I, I remember I was going up to this one house to deliver, and it's this beautiful house in Mississippi, the big old house.

And it was, you know, very wealthy family.

I go up there and it was just like I recognized, like where I was still at because I was still on this. Like I'm JP to now with Echelon front. I was just in a nice suit in Key West, Florida, giving a leadership speech. I gave this workshop. But you know what? They don't know that.

Nobody knows who I am because I'm wearing a Marko's pizza polo shirt and a hat delivering their pizza.

And I just remember thinking, like, man, I really need to make this work with Charlotte Front. Like, I really need to make sure I'm doing what I need to do and not just, like, make it work, like, hey, I'm available for work. Like, do you have opportunity? Like, let me know what to name, but I need to make it work. Like, I need to be in the game. I need to be leveling up.

And I was just and that's just kind of where it was at.

And so I don't I don't I had one other event that month of January and that was out in Philadelphia. And that was, again, a great company, learned a lot with them. It was a half day workshop. They saw my phone was seeing to my watch, seeing it with the time zones and the schedule went well, you know, I flew back and I don't I don't think I really had anything in in February. And so I was still same thing.

Like, I'm delivering pizzas, I'm doing construction, I'm doing whatever I can during this time frame, has some opportunities to help teach shooting. So I'm doing that as well. And, you know, March rolls around.

That's what I hear. I hear it. You know, you'd be like, hey, I'm going to teach you how awesome. It sounds like everything's going awesome. Yeah, me too. And I thought I was like, oh, man, that's a kind of a cool deal.

Yeah, absolutely. So I go, I'm teaching helping teach you. On my birthday for a trading company that was near the Memphis area and. You know, just hey, I think I had like a few events, I think in March with Ashlawn Front a little bit in April as like one or two gigs. Right. Well, the thing that I did in December and January, none of those pay. I didn't get paid for those in Telek, April or May because, well, you don't get paid intuitional and Frank gets paid.

And that's a principle and a concept that I know like why would they pay me if they haven't gotten paid? I you know, I remember life like making sure I understood that he's like, you're going to be out of my car, go with that. Like, I came from sales in a financial industry where that's what we did. We actually helped people get paid before they got paid.

And so I understood it and I was good with it. I was doing all this other work. And I remember one time I sent you a picture of I was I was working construction with Jared and it was eight degrees outside. Like I took a screenshot of the temp and the and the and of me doing this brick were doing some block work on this really nice house.

And you said, make sure you save that because you're not going to be in that situation next year. And I and I saved it.

I saved that like that that picture. And so I was, you know, doing what I could.

And I met this I met these brothers at a shooting course that I did. And they're like, hey, if you ever do like your own, like we love to do is like like just some specific specialized training with you. And I'm like, OK, cool. And they followed up with me.

They're like, hey, let me know if you have anything. And I felt weird like doing my own thing, considering I was helping my buddies do their thing that was kind of customized. And I let my buddy know and he's like, dude, if if people are asking you to do stuff like and if you're doing it through your company like whatever, that's fine.

And so I put together this really high end shooting experience where it was a day of pistil, a day of rifle and a day of long range shooting.

And it was at this really nice house in Mississippi on seven hundred acres in this beautiful, huge house, like there's a lake out front of the house, like the sun rose.

So, I mean, it was an amazing experience. And that was a first, like, high end type of thing that I did. And man made a difference. Right. And there's, you know, another company that, you know, asked me to kind of do like a shooting day with their company for some team building. And like it was same situation where I was like, man, I don't know how I'm going to make rent.

And it was a complete God thing because the guy hit me up. He said, hey, I have a check for you. I want to make sure this gets paid to you before we do the training. I was like, OK, where are you?

I can meet you. And I remember I drove to go meet with him and I looked the check at the bank and I'm like, Oh, I'm going to go straight to that bank and cash in there.

And he went, and I remember the bank was like, oh, there's going to be like a fifty dollar cashing fee. I'm like fifty dollars a cat. I'm like, that's ridiculous. And I'm like, so I was kind of like talking through. I was like, hey, I'm a small business. Like this is like part of my business. And it's like, oh, wave. At this time I'm like, thank you.

And I was like, You've taken fifty dollars. Come on. I was you know, Small is a small community bank in Mississippi, but anyways, our Tennessee.

And so I get through all that time and it's just, you know, making ends meet. Amanda, the kids are being so supportive and we had a conversation with you. I remember we dropped off the kids at school and we were talking and we were driving in my tundra and we're headed to the gym. And we're just kind of having this conversation where you told Amanda, like, hey, when this picks up for JP, he's going to miss a lot of stuff.

He goes and you need to understand that he's probably not going to be there for their preschool graduation. He's probably not going to be there for the kindergarten graduation. He's going to miss some birthdays. He's going to miss the anniversaries.

But if you guys are willing to just, like, grow with us right now, he's like it's going to be a solid three to five years before any of us really take a break, if that's what you want.

And I'm just like, nod my head I or your torso.

At this point, I'm guessing that I started to see some kind of trajectory with the demand signal for you start to see like, hey, OK, this is because I knew where I was at, which was mayhem. Yes. And the more mayhem I have, the more mayhem everyone else has. So there's a little lag time behind it. But that's the way it works. This was so this was right before that. I was right before I spoke at Musterer zero zero two, which was May of of twenty seventeen.

And so there wasn't that crazy demand for me. But you knew it was going to be there because if people are joco leave and that they can't afford joco in life, they get JP to know.

And, and you saw that kind of starting to happen and you just kind of set the expectations. And Amanda was like, I have no problem with. And you're like, OK, I just, you know, we want to make sure and then this is about the time that you guys brought on Dave Burke. You deal, Dave. Good deal, Dave. And we did our first event together in April.

Mm. I wanna say April. Twenty sixth or twenty seventh somewhere in that time frame. We did our first event together and it's cool because when we met up it was like it was where we just gave each other like this big like this bro hug. And I was like hey man, it's like good to meet you and actually be working with you. And he was like me, just beyond excited for the opportunity. And that night we sat and we went through the brief together.

We rehearsed it a couple of times. The next day we woke up early, we knocked out a workout. We rehearsed the brief, you know, a couple of times out of what we're going to be doing. And it was funny because the client was like, oh, how long have you guys been working with each other? And Dave and I kind of laugh like, you know, on and off, you know, since 2006, mostly off like, you know.

But the client, you know, just was happy to have Dave and I for this event. And we did this full day workshop and it was awesome.

And for for me, what I what I learned from that event with Dave was just humility of of Dave being this super high ranking Marine Corps officer with the pedigree background that he had for what he did in the military, the Marine Corps, as a Top Gun pilot, you know, just I mean, he's good deal day for a reason and for him to be asking me, like, my ideas and, hey, what do you think and how do you want to run this?

And what's your thoughts on this? How you've been doing a little bit longer than me. And as I get my mind, I'm like, well, yeah, I've been here a couple of months longer than he, but it's not like I've been flooded with work, brother. Like, I'm just.

But he just showed just complete humility. And for us to be able to work together and, you know, just just cover a move for each other, it was awesome. We've we read off of each other like we had been working together for a decade.

Plus it was really cool.

And, you know, just us knocking out the work out together in the morning and then us just doing the workshop. And then us had now it was it was really cool. And then it was just to me it meant a lot that, you know, Dave could have come in. You know, he's got his all of his degrees and his educational background and everything he did, the Marine Corps and, you know, the business degrees and everything, he could have come in and be like, hey, this is what we're going to be doing.

Like, Hey, I had a talk with Rockhole Avon. And I would have been like, Roger that, sir.

Like the check, like I know my place. I'm good with this.

But it was the exact opposite, which that's what good leaders do.

And I just I knew that he exemplified everything that you in life had talked about from day one.

And that's why I was like, OK, this is this is a guy that I'll do anything with. I'll do anything for him. I like the fact that I get to work with him. I'm fired up and then muster 002 happen.

And Dave and I both spoke and I was like, dang, that guy can talk like his his Mutlu brief was incredible.

And we just we bonded at that, at that muster and just being able to see you in life grow from the first monster to the second monster. I was like, oh wow, that's so impressive.

It was just it was it was just getting evolving and getting better and more powerful and dynamic.

And at that point, that was when I was going to start getting more work. And it was after I spoke with that monster. That's when things really started a book and get busy. And it was it was a busy year. Twenty, seventeen. You know, Monsieur 003 happened. And, yeah, it was it was really cool to kind of see that that growth and progression happen.

And it was just turning and burning, yep, anything and everything I remember Jamie would say, hey, I've got a gig. They don't have the budget for what we're charging for you. And I said, yes.

And she's like, well. And I'm like, yeah, it got to the point where Jamie would call him, hey, you know, she's like, I already know what your answer is going to be, but I just want I'm like, yes, look it good. Hey, this is a free event, but it could open up other opportunities. Bookit like I didn't care.

I literally anything and everything I was saying yes to because that's how you should be in my opinion, like if you're J-P to now with that opportunity in front of you, who in the hell do you think you are to be picky about anything.

I didn't care.

And there is still this delay in pay. Right. There's still, you know, for the events and everything else like that. But like I knew where we were going, that vision was very clear.

That's another six cents. When I look back on it, I remember having a conversation with you and you're like, hey, I want to talk to you about the way that we're getting paid. It seems like we should maybe do. And you have this whole, like, pitch to me about, you know, you could get advance from the the whole pitch to me about basically what it boils down to is how you how how the instructors could get paid faster, which is only two instructors.

And I was just kind of like I was like, bro, like looking back, I see what you were trying to say. You needed money. Now, I was just looking at you going, bro, who cares? You'll get paid, you know, whatever. You'll get that money then whatever. To me, I don't even know. I don't even know when I got paid for whatever.

I remember you telling me that on the inside you said that.

And I remember on the inside going, oh, my situation. And I'm not in that situation. Yeah. And it's funny because now it's like, oh, I definitely remember telling you like, hey, I don't even know when I got paid for what doesn't even I don't even don't even recognize it.

And you were like, Roger, you know, there's probably a little bit of an indication to me, but I knew it couldn't have been that far off. You know, I must have been looking at it going, yeah, he's going to be here in a very short period of time. Yeah. And again, just bad leadership on my part.

No, not at all. No, that's it was just now, again, if my communication would have been a little more clear with you, if I would have said Jacaré, the reason why I'm talking about us being able to do this is because boom, boom, boom, bust your your reason and reason was very valid.

Like for you to do that, you're giving up a percentage of your pay for that advance and the company didn't need it.

You guys didn't need it and you knew in the very near future was not going to be an issue, was going to be no factor now. So it's twenty. Seventeen. This is all happening.

Yeah. That makes sense to me, like how you especially with your personality, but even like without necessarily your specific personality, like you don't want to like as a team member, enthusiastic new team member, and you have that kind of attitude or whatever, like Narnian, you know how you have entitled attitude.

You have the exact opposite yours, your attitude.

And it's kind of extreme. But even if it's not that extreme, I understand that you come and you don't want to be you don't want to start presenting burdens to like the team, like, oh my my financial like, hey, let's do this because of my personal financial situation, you know. Yeah. And it was ideas to where if it made sense to them that we would execute on it.

But I like I know life and JoCo well enough to worry if I present something to them and if they see the value and if it makes sense, they'll do it. If they don't see the value and if it doesn't make sense to the company, then why would they do that?

And I understood that. So I didn't care either way.

It was like, hey, if we did this it would be beneficial if we don't do it, whatever, like we'll be good to go.

I'll be OK. Yeah. And you know, like if like ideally you want to be the team player, that's like the easiest to work with. And then of course the one that executes and does a good job for sure. But what if like what if you're a team member that you executed well, you did your job 100 percent and you excelled in it and you're really valuable. But every time you did a job, you'd sort of complain about it for like three or four minutes before you did it and then you do it, but you just complain about it.

You'd always sort of have that, you know, just for example, nothing you'd ever do that, obviously.

But let's just say, for example, where someone like you and I think it's normal to be like men, I don't want to bring that burden to this team that I respect so much. So I'm going to, like, work so hard to keep it from them. It's like, you know, the idea that, OK, my financial situation is not jonquils problem. It's not. And in fact, I don't even want him worrying about that. So I'm going to in a way, I'm going to hide it from him a little bit and I'm going to keep it for him.

And I'm going to just all I'm going to present to JoCo as far as his perception is me doing a good job. Hundred percent. That's it.

Well, and it's also the mindset that it's nobody else's responsibility to fix my situation other than myself. And it is nobody's responsibility.

Yeah. Now, if I'm a contributing member of a team that they value, guess what? I get paid accordingly. I know that. Right.

And one of the things I've always tried to be is like, hey, you should be working so hard and provide so much value to a team that if the team and I've told this to a lot of companies we've done workshops with during Q&A the last what about this and this? And if I can tie this answer into it, I think it's important for people to hear and understand. It's like you want to be that person on the team tour if your company has to start cutting back.

Every time they see your name on the list, they're like, nope, it needs to be bumped up a little bit. Nope, it needs to be bumped up a little bit.

And that's just kind of like the mindset I've always tried to have is just being that contributing member of a team and not not at the end of the day.

Also, this is nothing for me to complain about because I also know that my worst day is somebody's dream.

Yeah. I mean, I have you I'm sure this by having you on a few of your deployments, I know what's happened to Mike's rally. I've asked him about it. It happened on mine. Have you ever had somebody where they tried to give you their kids for you to take off target or take out of wherever you're at, like try to give you the kids? Think about that. I mean, and I know how you are with kids, sister, and this will probably make you emotional like it does me when I talk about this is on my deployments, everyone, and it's only three.

So it's not like a lot. And I'm not like my ex, really. Right. Like it's like an actual G.I. Joe Rambo hero. Right.

With eleven combat deployments is where you would have a family try to give their kids to you like they're asking you to take that.

That never happened to me. Oh, they didn't know where they are trying to like saying, hey, can you please take the kids with you, Adam? Like like trying to protect the kids, you know, like keep the kids over here. But never had anyone trying to say, hey, take take the kids and keep them safe away from us.

Tomas, can you take them back to base with you? Can you take them back to base with you?

You got to think about that like we're all parents in here.

I mean, I would never trust a stranger with my kids. I mean, there's some family members. I have a Mac now. We're going to watch your kids. Like, I'm very protective of my kids. And to think that there are people that live in a situation, they live in an environment that's so bad that they know that their kid could have a better life if they were to come back to America with us.

And obviously, it's not a reality. We can't just take kids back to the United States with us to provide safety and security. But, you know, it's just something that's all I've always kind of thought about is my worst day is somebody's dream, like the things that we complain about. People would love to have those those problems.

And so that was just another reminder that I have to myself, like, hey, like your life's not bad. Then you live in America.

You know, you have a house. You have a vehicle. Yeah. You're struggling to make ends meet. But guess what? You're the jackass to put yourself in that situation. Get yourself out of it.

Yeah. And that's that's obviously a good attitude to have for sure, especially if it comes as naturally as it seems like it does with you. I mean, I don't think that comes as naturally for maybe the typical person, even though. Yes, I think a lot of us do remind ourselves, you know, that kind of stuff. And it does help a lot.

Well, yeah. And it's I guess it's unfair because I had the advantage of seeing what I've seen on deployments and both my parents worked their butts off.

You know, they never I never we never heard our parents complaining about the work that they had to do. There's times where my mom would would wake us up at like 4:00 in the morning because she had to go teach step aerobics at five a.m. and so she would wake up all the kids. And my dad was leaving to go do construction all day. So you can't leave the kids at home. So she would wake us up. We should get us ready for school knowing that we're going to go back to sleep.

We would go to the gym, the fitness center or the club, whatever she was working at. We would sleep in daycare or sleep in the office while she would teach her classes. She would then get us up, feed us some breakfast, drop us off at school and go back and work, pick us up from school. We'd hang out at the club or the fitness center or wherever she was working at doing our school work there until she got done teaching.

Then we go home. She'd make dinner for our family and by that time my dad would be coming home. And it was just you can make excuses or you can make things happen. You can't do both.

And that's what I've always loved. That saying I always try to share that with people is because I think too many people are comfortable with making excuses, you know, and like I said, my mindset was starting to shift and change.

Working with you in life. I mean, and now I'm working with Dave Burke and you and I are seeing each other, like when we did that field training exercise out in New Jersey with life. And I did that with that company.

And it was just, you know, being around people that have a different driven mindset, it's going to change. Like either you have to change your mindset if you're going to try to keep up.

And again, I know how smart Joshua is. I know how smart life is. I know how smart Dave is.

Like, I had to work I had to work to to to keep a seat at the table. And I also know not everybody deserves a seat at the table. Yeah.

Do you think, JoCo, that I mean, obviously good attitude to have, just generally speaking, but with the extreme version of that, I think you could out of the thing is, I don't know and I don't see that that this has happened. But it seems like you might run the risk a little bit of OK, let's say here's an analogy. So let's say. We're all running up a hill, right, and at the top of the hill is the goal and we all have our sacks of marbles will say docos legs like we're stronger than ours will say, allegedly, allegedly.

Now, for this analogy, we'll say that's the case. And but we all have the same amount of marbles, you know, but at the end, when we reach the goal, we're all they're equal or whatever, you know, fullfillment, whatever that is.

And let's say you're falling behind a little bit like maybe later aren't as strong as mine. And because whatever you're falling behind and jockeys like, hey, like you good or whatever, and you're like refuse because he can grab, like, half your marbles and still be rolling faster than us.

Literally, he can be doing that just for the last 20 meters or whatever. But you're like, no, no, these are my marbles.

I have to carry them. But it's like, hey, wait, but if I carry them just for a little bit, I can help us all out and we can all be where we want to be quicker. SIMPSON So what do you do you think that we run the risk, given that analogy? Yes.

So here's to Extreme. We kind of already answered this, but you're bringing a good point into it. So the answer for the original thing, as an individual human in japes world, he didn't get to a point where he was going to drop the marbles and fall down the hill. He didn't get there as an individual. So he never reached a point where he had to say, you know, I need help or whatever. Right. That's part one.

Part two is what this is where it starts to sway the answer a little bit. Now, we're supposed to work together as a team, right? So if JP is hurting the team, it's the same. If JP gets to a point where he's going to not make it himself, he's got to speak up. If you're hurting a team and you think that's a bad thing, well, guess what, then you need to speak up.

So, yes, if JP would have said if JP would have said, you know, hey, I can't make it to the gig because I got to deliver pizzas, we would have been like, hey, hold on a second, dude. What are you talking about? You got to deliver. You know, that's that's we need you at this gig. And he said, Yeah, but I don't have enough money. And I want I said, oh, OK.

Well, let's do. All right, let's figure this out. Let's talk. So he didn't reach a point where, look, one hundred percent of the time when it was go time, he was ready rock and roll, like, OK, that's cool. Yep. Yep. Here you are. You're here to do your job. If he if I would have said, hey, JP, can you come out of this game going to be.

And he's like, well I can't because I've got to do you know, I've got pizzas deliver. I got a real work on this construction site. I said, why do you have to do that? And he said, Well, I actually, you know, I I'm not quite there. That's not in front yet. And I need a little bit more money. And I said, OK, well, give me some of those marbles or let me give you some of mine to get you to where you need to be.

So, yes, it can happen. And there's you know, you see this in the example that you're giving is an actual an actual thing that can happen in a Silvertone. You know, if you've got a bunch of guys and you've got someone that's can't carry their weight, you and now the platoon is not going to make it right. So you say, hey, give me the radio. You go to the radio, man. Hey, I've carried the radio man's radio before.

You're like, hey, the radio one's got an extra twenty pounds. Give me that radio. Let me carry this thing till we get the next rally point or we get to the next, you know, the next waypoint that we're going to and see if you feel better. And if you do, you can take the way back. If not, I was on a patrol one time. I had this is just a training operation, but I had the radio and I had about 60 from from the radio.

And one of the 60 owners, I mean, that's they were hurting. And yet I didn't like that's the way it is. And you could see we were going to lag. We weren't going to make to our where we need to be. So. All right. Give me the radio company, the radio for a little while. And I was on look at the sixty gunner. Dude, you want me to carry that thing for a little bit?

Yeah. Here, take my peashooter. Let's switch it out. So, yes, you are correct. Yeah. But never got to either one of those thresholds. And I will say the criticism you could have of JP is on a personal level. Is his threshold to too low I guess is the word to low where he thinks it's OK to get to this really low point when, you know, maybe his maybe in his mind is maybe your mind threshold is too low.

But guess what? You're not it's not your it's not your life. It's his life. And I'm telling you, if he got to a point where he was saying, and this is what I was trying to make clear earlier, if you not just J-P, if anyone gets to a point where you can no longer keep your head above water, man, and I don't care if it's financial, I don't care if it's psychological. I don't care if it's emotional.

I don't care if it's relationship. If you get into a situation where you can't keep your head above water, you have to have the humility and the courage to ask for help.

That's what you have to do. Otherwise you drown. Yeah.

Yeah. And you have that weird grey area, though, with that, with this. So you got. The analogy is kind of easier to explain it, we're OK. So when I when you say you say, oh, we might fail to get to the whether it be the rally point or to get to our objective without me helping, you know, some people, whatever.

But what if they ask for help? Earlier, they didn't necessarily they weren't about to drown, but they were kind of holding things up. You were going to get there maybe a little late or maybe kind of on time.

But if you if they would ask for help earlier, you would have got there early way more advantageous position than saying so. There's like a gray area where it's like you're drowning. That's like kind of do or die situation where no choice. But there's that little gray area where it's like men to optimize, like just ask for a little bit of help and you might be able to optimize. Not to say that's always going to be the situation, but then exactly what you said you kind of got to wrestle with someone like you would you wouldn't be like you would take it as a personal failure.

Like, I shouldn't. I shouldn't. And this is a good thing. By the way, I shouldn't have to ask for any help ever unless I'm about to drown. Otherwise, it's not their problem kind of thing.

And that this reminds me of, you know, when we're in Ramadi and I was, you know, one of our snipers and I wasn't clear on our rules of engagement.

We got gotten the rules of engagement brief. You know, our leadership had done a good job. We you know, we were fired up to be doing what we were doing.

But and it was clear. But what was not clear to me was when you're actually in that situation, because there is some grey zones there, there is some like, you know, like once you're in a situation, it kind of changes like how you can interpret something.

And I know and our leadership, it always made it very clear.

And I just knew that if if you shoot somebody. That was not an enemy combatant fighter, that was not within the rules of engagement. You're going to be going to jail like I'm going to be going to Leavenworth to make big rocks, to medium rocks, to make meaning rocks to small rocks.

Like that's not going to be good. Like, you can't just shoot people without them having a weapon or doing a hostile act or something that's within your rules of engagement. And so we were setting up an overwatch and I was a sniper and I'm scanning my area.

And I knew where the the soldiers were going to be. I knew where the Marines were going to be. We had some seals on the ground as well with them. And like I knew their location, I was aware of it. I had the my my map, did my map study. I knew what I was checking. And and I remember seeing this we call them mams military age male that started to.

Creep into his activities were within the rules of engagement. It wasn't like this blatant like right away type of thing, but what he was doing was there was like, oh, OK, that's within those rules of engagement. But because he didn't start doing it right away, there's confusion on my end. Like, I was kind of like and I remember I was on my S.R. twenty five and which was our sniper rifle that I had. It was a seven six two caliber sniper rifle magazine held 20 rounds.

So in an urban environment, it's a great sniper rifle to have because I can shoot it semi auto if I have to. There's a few times in the streets we got to get into a gun fight. You can take multiple shots, shots, you know, before you move. And it was, you know, it was a great, great gun.

I love that gun.

And I remember I was watching as I was watching this guy and I was like kind of scanning the other area to see if there's other activity that was going on and know Dolin on this guy. I manipulate my my safety from from safe to fire, put my finger on the trigger. And I just was watching the crosshairs on his chest. And as I'm pulling out the back and it was hot and I just remember, like, I just had sweat dripping down my face, like I could taste like the salt in my sweat.

And there is like this like just dust that was all over us just from just on the forward operating base and, you know, patrolling to the streets on the rooftops. And, you know, it's kind of like making this little cake, like mud mixture on you.

It's just the whole thing was gross. And I remember, like, I actually, like, licked my lips, like, get the sweat off. And I tasted that dirt. And, you know, I'm just and I'm getting ready to take the shot on this guy.

And then I stopped.

And so, like, I take my finger off the trigger that comes out. I manipulate the gun to safe. I crawl over to Sath. And I said, hey, this is what's going on, right?

And I tell him what was going on.

And it was like the first time, Seth. Like I ever kind of saw disappointment in his face towards me, and you could tell he was frustrated and he's like, absolutely, take that shot. And so I crawl back over to my gun on the rooftop. I get on my gun and I get on the glass and that dude is gone.

An enemy combatant fighter that was well within the rules of engagement for me to engage.

And I didn't take the shot. I sat down, I let those soldiers down, I let those Marines down because I don't know what that guy went and did I because he's gone. Right.

And when I've shared this story before, I was joking. I said my I just pray that a tank ran him over. Right.

But that was a really bad feeling for myself because I didn't do my job.

I wasn't able to do my job because I failed to ask the right questions. I failed to get clarification.

And the reason why I said that reminds me of this story is like what we're talking about is that situation that I was in is I failed to share the situation with JoCo life of just say, hey, here's my situation.

I don't need help, but I want you to be aware of what I'm working through in case something seems off with me if something doesn't make sense.

Right. Like I failed to share that situation because my ego and I failed to ask better questions about the rules of engagement. I failed to ask better questions of the situation that we were in in combat because I assumed I had all the information. I assumed that I knew enough.

I assumed that my leadership had given me all the information.

And when it came down for me to actually do my job, I wasn't able to do my job because I didn't properly prepare myself.

I didn't ask the right questions.

And, you know, that's just one of those things that it was a very humbling lesson and it bothered me.

Because I mean, you know, the soldiers and Marines always had our back and Seth always had our back and I failed every one of them, like I completely failed them.

And I remember when we came back from that mission, Seth and I sat down and we talked about it and, you know, I got clarification from him.

And the really cool part about it is Seth took that opportunity for him to understand that he should have been asking better questions of the guys, like he should have been getting a better read back and having better communication with us. And, you know, I'm not saying the rest of the deployment went perfect and, you know, there was no other small little hiccups here and there. But I can tell you, the communication was a lot better. There is a lot more clarifying questions that were asked on both parts.

And you have to be able to detach and assess the situations that you're in and and actually look at it from a different perspective to to see the different types of questions that you should be asking to gain more awareness for your ability to do your job.

Yeah, and that's one of those situations where that was like freaking early, as you know, very early in the deployment. Yes. And, you know, I ended up very soon thereafter making it you know, I got the whole rules of engagement because the rules of engagement, this big complex thing.

And it was, you know, the enemy combatant, this detention facility, all these things, all these legal terms that clearly were too much for someone to be sitting on their gun making a decision like that, especially someone that's freaking 20 gister and just turned twenty three years old, first time in that kind of combat.

And so what I ended up telling every one of them, and this is all feedback like, you know, Seth would tell me, like, hey, here's what happened. I'm like, OK, so obviously I did a bad job of getting the word out so people understand what's going on because, you know, so it ended up being, hey, if you when you're out there and you have to pull the trigger, make sure that the person you're killing is bad.

That's the rules of engagement. You make sure that that person you're going to kill is bad. And here's why.

Because the day that one of our snipers or one of our machine gunners shoots and kills a local neighborhood doctor or local neighborhood teacher or a local neighborhood imam, we are going to get shot down. And why is it bad we get shot down? Because if we get shot down, we can't do what we're supposed to do. And that means that these soldiers and Marines that are out there every single day, they won't have us over watching what they're doing.

And we know what will happen then. And so that becomes the rules of engagement. And this goes back to something I've been talking about. I talked about an F on line yesterday.

As a matter of fact, if you wonder if you have that deep understanding, then you can make all kinds of decisions based on that. You can make all kinds of decisions based on your values, on your culture. In this particular case, if you truly understand what the rules of engagement and if your boss JoCo explains them in a way that you can actually understand them, then you can make just about every single decision you need to make. Ninety nine point nine.

Sure, there might be some outlying situation that it just you just need clarification on, but that should be so rare.

It should be so rare that something like that unfolds. And yeah, those are those are the lessons that you learn and that we learn. And like you said, does that mean all of a sudden every other call in terms of rules of engagement was perfect from there on out? No, it wasn't, because there there's grey areas. And even the idea of like, hey, if you shoot the wrong person, you're going to prison, that's actually not true.

And, you know, civilians will get killed in combat unintentionally. And if you if mistakes like that are going to happen and that doesn't mean your chain of command is going to hang you out to dry and you're going to get sent to prison. No, if you're following the rules of engagement, there can be people that do things that bring them within the rules of engagement. And it's something that something that I learned from the first of the five or six is good shoot, bad result.

Like almost as soon as we got there, they had one of those cases. When we got to Krakatau, they had a case that was one of their I don't even know if a sniper is just a rifleman, took a shot. And it turns out that the person that they the person that was killed. There was a decent chance that they were not an insurgent. Of course, there's a chance that there wasn't that they weren't insurgent, but it wasn't a cut and dry case.

So what it turns out to be in the way it gets reported is, hey, this was a good shot. It was well within the rules of engagement. But we cannot confirm that this individual is bad. Therefore, we're putting it as a good shot with a bad result. These are the kind of things that, again, they translate into the business world, because all the time in the business world, you've got someone that's on the front lines that doesn't understand the culture, doesn't understand the rules, doesn't understand the strategic mission of the company.

And they're making a decision. If they don't understand those things, they can make the wrong decision all day long, all day long. They can make the wrong decision. So we as leaders have to make sure that the people on the front lines that we communicate in a simple, clear, concise manner so that they do understand the rules of engagement. They do understand the strategic mission. They do understand that what you do at a tactical level can have a negative impact on a strategic level.

Say, look, look at the police right now. The police are in that exact situation. If there's a police officer, they can they can do something on the front lines and it can have we're seeing it right.

We've seen it now over and over again in the last several months, something that a front line officer does.

Has a negative strategic impact not just on law enforcement, but on the entire country, and if people don't understand that on the front lines, they that plays into their decision making process in a negative way.

You know that the thought process of, you know, you've always ingrained into it since day one of what we started the work up is your individual actions can affect this whole task unit.

And I remember that talk that you had with me. You had the whole talk with the task unit and then you had an individual conversation with me and you told me, hey, JP, I need you to put in big, bold letters on your helmet.

I know we talked about this in the other podcast and you told me the reason why is I want you to I want to always know where you're at.

I need you you know, you to be my go to guy.

And and that was very empowering. It was a very empowering conversation that you had with me. You told me, hey, I need you I need you to step up and be a little more aggressive. And I'm like, OK, you know, I thought I was pretty aggressive, but. Right. But you explain like I need you like just getting stuff done. Like I need you to help sat out. I need you to help, you know, just this task unit.

And it was the other part that was extremely powerful with that conversation, as you told me.

And Seth was very clear with this and we worked through this a lot, is you're going to have a lot on your plate as a as a sniper, as appointment as a machine gunner. When we deploy, you're young, right? And at the time, I just turned twenty two. And then before we deployed the month before we deployed, I turned twenty three. And it was it was so important that you and Seth as leaders made sure that I knew how important my job was, how important my individual roles were, and that my individual actions could have a negative impact on the task unit and that if I did something wrong overseas that we could all get shut down and have.

That's always just been in my mind. And I have I always adhered to that and made great decisions. Now, you know, I've made decisions that, you know, have been bad. I've been arrested. I've you know, I've gotten in trouble in the military. You know, I've got, you know, a lot of my marriage to fall apart, but it's still always been there.

That's kept, you know, just me reminded, like, hey, your your individual actions matter.

And that's one of the things I've always tried to remind myself of. The opportunity that I've had with with you in life here at Ashlawn Front is I need every one of my actions needs to impact the team for the greater good.

And you are a man and I will always have this little joke like, hey, everything's a test.

Like everything is a test with your whole life, like, hey, you don't know, hey, maybe that, you know, just the event something happened with the event, like, hey, maybe they had a part of that just to see how you would do.

Obviously we know that's not the fact, but it was just just to allow us and allow myself to not, you know, fall to complacency.

You know, I've talked about this in the muster and we've all talked, you know, complacency gets people killed.

And complacency is something that we have to actually go to war with every single day because it creeps in. That alarm clock goes off, the complacency is going to creep.

That is going to creep in in your professional life, your personal life, your relationship with your wife or your husband, your significant other your you know, your kids. Complacency is always trying to creep in.

And just as a reminder to myself over the last four years was my individual actions are going to affect the team and how they affect the team is that's a choice that I that I am that I'm making.

Yeah, there's a there's a whole sort of I wrote about in leadership strategy and tactics. I wrote about the fact that, hey, I would tell the point that, hey, you're the most important person in town because you're the one that knows where we're going. And I tell the the the I would tell Seth, hey, you're the most important guy here. I tell the radioman you're the most important person guy here because you're the one that's going to call for help if we need it.

The manifestation of that is me looking at you and saying, hey, put JP on your helmet because I want to know where you are in case I need to have something happen that I can get you. If you think about that from a psychological perspective, that is the physical manifestation of saying, hey, you're the most important person in this platoon, you have to tell someone and you know, I would tell it to people be like, hey, stick by me.

You know, I was told I would also like Radio Menz or Jātaka be like, hey, stick by me because I'm going to need you. You know, it was always that it's a it's a it's a I don't want to call it a trick, but it's a little bit of a trick. It's a little bit of a trick to say, hey, man, I need to know where you all are all the time, because then what you realize is exactly what you just said.

And obviously it worked because what you realize is my individual actions have a impact on everyone here.

What I individually do. And this is one of those weird dichotomies because a team is a bunch of people, right? What's a team made up of a bunch of individuals? And what happens is when those individuals, when good people, when good team players. You know, I got to say this before. What's a team? A team is a bunch of people that are putting the team above themselves. And part of that is realizing that my actions as a team member impact the people on the left and right.

I mean, they impact the whole team. And if I don't perform the way I'm supposed to, I'm not just letting myself down. I'm letting everyone down. And that's what a good team player, a good team player doesn't want to let down the rest of the team so that that dichotomy between between, hey, we're a group and we're a team and saying, hey, this individual, you matter to the outcome of what's going to happen here.

And Lahiff pointed this out to me, that when I would debrief platoons and I might hammer the platoon on this and hammer the platoon on that, but I would always say, you know, hey, Fred, the way you took that, your fire, you the fire team leader back there. Yes, sir. Hey, the way you maneuvered on the enemy from the back, that made a huge difference.

And by the way, who is that supporting element with him? Oh, that was me. All right, Fred or Jim, that was awesome. The way you two figured that out and work together. That's the kind of thing we need to see. That's cover move. That's what got you guys out of there. And so signaling out these individuals makes people think, you know what, man?

I matter to this team. And that's absolutely huge. And it goes against the idea of like the world we're all together. We are we are all together 100 hundred percent. But guess what? What I do matters.

Yes.

And I remember I did that with with Mikey.

I remember I told Mike, Mike, if I'm carrying a sniper rifle when we're patrolling, I need you by my side. Because if I'm walking point and if I wasn't because, you know, if I was walking point and I wasn't going to be acting as a sniper or if we weren't going to go do a sniper overwatch, I carried the machine gun. I carried the mark forty six. I had a ridiculous amount of ammo on me and I was good to go.

But I knew that if I was walking point with my twenty five or the three hunter when mag guess what I needed Mikey because he was carrying the machine gun and I knew that I needed him by my side.

And I remember telling him that, you know, Mike, his answers like I got you homes and he was there.

He was always by me.

You know, the only time that he wasn't ever right next to me was when we knew that we were patrolling through some areas that were heavily Aidid.

And it was everyone is going to walk in the same steps that I walked in and he would be far enough away to where if I stepped on an IED, it wasn't going to kill Mikey.

And we're just there is a couple of times that we had to take those routes and where it was, everybody was on the same path, same stap like you stepped here. They're going to step their type of a deal to get to the buildings that we're doing overwatch. And I remember there was one time that we we patrolled this route in that we were told like it is heavily Aidid. I mean we were going super slow and methodical and we get to the target.

Seth called in the route and the vehicles that came in hit multiple IEDs along that same route that we were on.

And it was pure grace of God guiding our steps that we didn't hit one of those.

We didn't step on any of those.

And it was that principle of what you just said, like, I need to know where you're at. And I and I knew how important that was.

And I'm not naive. I know I wasn't the only go to guy that Jocko had. I know I wasn't the most important member of the task unit. I knew that I was an important member of the task unit, but I wasn't the most important member of the task unit. I just knew that. And I you know, we're on that deployment. You know, we were in a situation that. We were in a building and it was just a weird situation.

I remember, you know, when we were getting close to this building, it just had this weird feeling. There wasn't a lot of movement. There wasn't a lot of activity like there normally would be in the city at night when we got close to this area. I remember we go into the courtyard and it was completely empty. There's like almost nothing in there which was not common for the houses there.

And we get into the building and it was completely empty on the inside as well. And so we're doing the slow, methodical scans.

And we knew that at the time they were starting to booby trap houses and rigging houses to blow because they're like, oh, cool, they're going to come use this house. We'll just rig the house to blow, let them all get set up in there. Then they're going to clock off the house and we're going through this building. And it was just that just super eerie feeling because it was empty.

And yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, that's going to be a bad thing. And we clear the first deck just we go up to the second deck, we clear through it, we go up to the rooftop.

It's completely empty. We check the surrounding buildings, make sure they're not we're not getting ambushed or anything else like that. And we just we're all set up in our different positions. We had guys up on the rooftop, you know, the badger that I talked about before he was up there, you know, Mikey was up there. Another one of our machine gunners are up there. They had they had to crawl just off rocket up there and a bunch of rockets up there myself.

A couple of the other snipers are in different different rooms. Down on that second deck. We had guys down in the courtyard and I remember the call to prayer happens, sun starting to come up. And normally there's some activity.

There is no activity in our area. And we just knew we're like, all right, like we know that we're going to be getting into a big one.

And, you know, and then that first little pop shot happens. You know, they're shooting up at the building and then they're kind of getting dialed in. And you they're starting to hit the outside walls and we're trying to figure out where they're coming from. And we kind of start to see, OK, OK, there are some enemy fighters like that's where they're shooting at and we're engaging them. And I remember Seth was in the room with myself and another guy.

And, you know, he's just kind of asking me what I what I have going on. And I'm showing them. And like, I engage these two guys while he's in the room and he's just laughing that just contagious laugh that s past. He's like, that was awesome. And, you know, he crawls out of the room and he goes to the other room to get the report and he's going up to the rooftop and and then, like a round comes into my room like it hits the back wall.

And it was just so loud as large caliber room round here in the room about the size of this podcast room.

It's all like like concrete and marble.

And so it just it's just super loud and concussed. And the guys up on the rooftop, they see where it comes from. He's here.

Rock it out, the shoot the call stuff. And I just remember, I'm in the room.

You see the rocket come from above and it goes into the window of where those enemy fighters where and it detonates inside there. And you see the like the roof go just like this wave, right. Just boom.

It is all the guys like, yeah, I just I found some videos of it and it was just awesome. Like the guys are just like cheering and everything and you know, we're engaged multiple enemy fighters. And that was the first time that I had actually had an enemy fighter using kid as a shield. And I just remember just.

The way that felt, when you're looking through your crosshairs and there is somebody holding a kid in front of them.

Because there's so much of a coward and they're trying to attack you and they're maneuvering to try to move to a position and they grab some kid that's crying and clawing at them and screaming because they're taken from their family. And I just. Man, I'll never shake that feeling because, you know, that kid is is ruined, you know, how does that kid ever have a normal life when they are being used as a human shield?

And there is times that we took shots and those kids were fine, you know, and, you know, the kids were not harmed, obviously. And there's times that you just knew that you couldn't take that shot because any error, anything, you know, you can't you know, you couldn't do that. You can't obviously, you would never do that.

And, you know, we were we're in it for a while that day. And guys are kind of given they're like, hey, update on their ammo and we're starting to run low. And I remember we try to get some some support to our position. And they were able to because they they had troops in contact. There is a bunch of coordinated attacks that were kind of going on in the different in that region.

And, you know, we make the call, hey, we're going to have the clap security. We're going to head back to one of these one of these cops kind of get resupplied, readdress the situation.

And so we make that call. And as that happens around comes through the window that I'm in and it hits the metal grating in front of me.

And I get a little fragment in my face and the round hits the wall and I I'm on my back right away like I am on my back, laying down, trying to get out of that that window sill.

And I just remember, like, my face felt rather warm and I was like touching my face to see if I'd been shot.

And there's like a little bit of blood on my fingers.

And I was able to feel like, OK, that's nothing. I've probably cut myself shaving worse than that. It was just enough.

And so I'm down and there's machine gun fire that's coming down in that window that I'm in. Another one of the guys who's like out in the hallway and he's like crawling anyhow. And it's just like trying to get out of there.

And I remember, like, I'm up against the window as close as I can to try to eliminate, like, the angle that they could be shooting in from another rooftop or or a window out there.

And like, I get my periscope out and I'm like trying to, like, look out the window and kind of see what's going on. And I look at my rifle and at a hard malfunction on the Essar twenty five. Like, I'm just I'm going to have to take this apart to to actually fix this. I'm like, oh, this is not a good situation to be in. And I'm in my own little world like I'm trying to figure out there's steady shots coming into the room that I'm in and it's definitely an enemy sniper.

And then you'll have a little bit of machine gun fire that's coming in. It's a sprain, that building some of the rounds actually coming into the room.

And I'm like, try to figure out, like, OK, I need to get out of the room. Like, I'm trying to time it. I'm like, well, if I maybe if I get on my stomach, I can get like a sprinter's position.

I can, like, jump in, like slide out like I need to be able to get out like that. Like they've got they've got me pinned down like they've got their beat.

Well done. To tick mark on your side for now. Like I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to get out of the situation.

And then I hear a very familiar sound that usually brings a lot of comfort to me.

And it was Mikey and one of the other machine gunners just pop up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, like they're seeing off each other. Then you hear all the other guys shooting. So there's a gunfight going on. However, that gunfire, it's not in front of the courtyard. They were down the alleyway.

They had left me. I instantly realized that I'd been left behind on that target. And I knew that I had to get out of the room. And I need to figure out how I was going to get a hold of them and get situated.

What I didn't recognize or realize that I was hearing nothing over my radio because at the time I had my radio, for whatever reason was like on my back. And when I would gotten onto my back and was sliding up against the window, I shut it off, reprogrammed it or whatever change the channel had done something right. And so I end up making my way out of the room.

I make my way downstairs, I have my pistol, I'll have my sig two to six because my rifle is is a hard malfunction.

This building is still being shot at like the enemy fighters know where we're at.

The guys had left. I made my way down the courtyard and I'm trying to figure out, OK, hey, how do I get hold the guys. I have to get to my radio. But in order for me to get to my radio, that means I actually have to take my my gear off. And I'm in the courtyard by myself, so I get myself into the corner.

I can hear like people moving around on the other buildings, in the other courtyards. You can hear them talking, you can hear them shooting out the building. These guys are down the alleyway shooting.

So I get my radio out. I keep the radio on like, hey, guys, this is JP You left me behind on target. I might have added a few other key words in there.

And so and I hear and now I hear that gunfire over the radio and it's I know what's happening. It's Seth keyed. To respond to me as he's like looking around for me and it's an inset, Roger that, we're headed back your way. And so the badger is making the calls like, get them back to me.

They get close to me and I'm talking with him on the radio and said, hey, I'm coming out on the south side of the alleyway, lay down, cover fire on the north side.

So Mikey, the other machine gunner, they you know, another big dude like Mikey carried the mark. Forty eight. They just you know, I'm talking about just an amazing operator.

They they get side by side and they're just like I'm just like seeing off each other.

And I remember, like, I poke out my head, I look I look at them and I'm just hauling and asked to get Link back up with them.

And as I run it up, like I have my pistol in my hand and I'm like holding onto my rifle.

And they're just like like the look.

And I remember looking at Mikey and I was just like trying to like the whole thing.

I'm still trying to process. Right. It's you know, that's why the people say the fog of war is a real thing.

And I remember looking at Mikey and I'm wondering like, who were you walking next to? Like, I was the point man, bro. And then I look at the guy that screwed up the head count. Am I how do you like there wasn't that many of us like how do you screw this up?

Right.

And then I like looking at South and I'm just like the same thing like like who are you like who is leading you guys out of this and just this whole thing. I just remember like I was I was like pissed off.

Obviously we take a courtyard, I fix my rifle, we make our way back, we debrief the nation. We kind of figure out what happened.

And I remember the guy that screwed up the head count came up and he like he gives me this hug and I love this guy. We've always been very close. And he gives me he's like, Brock, I'm so sorry. I'm like, man, that wasn't your fault, like, you know.

But he was just, like, super apologetic of it. And Mikey, Mikey came up and we were talking. He's like, bro, he's like, if I would have been with you, that wouldn't have happened, man. Like this is this is my fault, man. I'm sorry. And that takes ownership of it as well, you know, and I'm talking through my guys is my fault. You know, it's like raw. I kind of figure it out.

But it was just I remember just the look on Mickey's face of he felt like he had failed me because he wasn't by me.

And I said, hey, man, I need you by my side, because if I'm a sniper, I need a machine gunner for multiple reasons.

And and I just remember like and after that, like, you know, we got our our gear squared away, like, why was a radio on my back? I shouldn't have had my radio back there. I should have been able you know, there's all these things that were obviously it was it was my fault. At the end of the day, it was 100 percent my fault.

But I just as you were sharing that story about like the psychological side to what you did with the helmet, it was the same thing that I did with Mikey when I was like, I need you by my side. And there's going to be times that team members screw up. They forget what they need to be doing. They fall. You know, there's other priorities that come out, come about. Do we had a lost guys? We're running out of ammo.

We shot every rocket that we brought with us. Guys were throwing grenades, you know, like from the rooftop all the way over to the other courtyard where there's people. And I mean so I mean, we were there a lot of stuff going on. And I just remember just how much that affected Mikey.

And we talk through it and, you know, just making sure, like, hey, we're good, we're on the same page.

And, you know, there's there's a lot of unique situations here in that deployment, you know, and it's just important that people know their roles and how they affect the team. You got to admit, when Wandjuk was like, hey, right, this guy in the back of your helmet, you got to admit you're looking around. You're like, hey, he didn't ask anyone else to write their names in the back of the helmet.

I'm kind of the man right now. I mean, I still have that. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

You know, it's cool when you're talking about here, you go back to debrief that thing. And Seth says it's his fault and the headcount guy says it's his fault. Mikey says it's his fault. You say it's your fault. And some people might look at that and go, well, you know, well, I guess this is that extreme ownership. Everyone is just taking ownership. And what really happens, this is what I like to call overlapping fields of ownership.

Yes. And what it means is you have multiple people looking at the same problem and we're all going to figure out how to solve it, because guess what? You take a situation like that.

If you were to get out a surgeon's knife and start to carve away who was responsible, well, there's a bunch of people that had to make mistakes.

Yes. For that to occur. And if every you know, if Mikey would have said we're JP, that's it doesn't happen. If you would have said, wait, why here? Do you think if you had your radio in the right spot, you would have heard calls that they're leaving? If the headcount guy would have freakin counted correctly, that probably would have been solved if Seth would have looked at the freaking head. Are you sure we're good?

Like, you don't like all these things? When everyone takes ownership of the problem, look, not everyone's going to you know, you get your bell rung by a by an RPG hit in a building, you might not be counting freaking great. Even if your only count the six.

Yeah, right.

And like I knew our hopes for when we clap security, you know, and I was in my own little world solving my problems of being pinned down by an enemy sniper, not trying to put my head up, trying to figure out how to get out of the room.

But if I legitimately would have just dis, like, disconnected for a split second and detach and said, oh, we just made the call to clap security, it's been about 30 seconds. Guess what the guys are doing? They're collapsing security.

I could have just yelled like, hey, I'm in this room. I need cover fire. Like I could have I could have done or said something to to eliminate all that confusion. Right.

And so what you end up with is instead of having a single point of failure, you have multiple you have you have overlapping fields and redundancy to get problems solved. And and that's what you want. That's what you want on the team.

And the funny thing is, when you go to the opposite of that, if you come back and you start point your finger at the head count guy, go, why did you get a good head? You know what he's going to do? He's going to say, because I didn't have any cover fire when I stepped out of the building. Yeah.

And then, you know, when he points is at the end up and says, why won't you give me cover fire? He goes, why wasn't giving you cover fire? Because we didn't have enough time to reload our weapons because you made the calls too fast and instead says, you know, why did you make the call? You told us to do that. We were going to break out, but you gave us only fifteen seconds. How am I supposed to do reload?

And then Seth says, why aren't you training when we're back here so that you can do a faster reload? And what do we have instead of extreme ownership or ownership? Overlapping We've got no one no one's responsible for what happened and therefore we don't fix the freaking problem and.

What you're saying is, like people say it was this extreme ownership, when you say it's my fault, that's not taking ownership. Extreme ownership is owning the problems and the solutions. It's my fault. And I'm moving my radio to hear. Yes, and it's my fault, which means, hey, I'm going to start getting the headcounts just inside the door instead of outside the door. And it's hey, when I break when when I call breakouts, we're going to I'm going to give everyone a solid minute.

And when I say break out, that means change and we'll get ready to rock and roll like all those little things. That's what we are all going to do to win.

You think that this was it's weird. And you can see how each one of those people in in this particular situation, you could see how if you let your ego get in the way, you don't take ownership. You instead blame other people if you can.

Horrible. So those are the kind of lessons that. You know, we learned on the battlefield and they're so obvious when you're on the battlefield, the consequences are so high. I mean, you think about the consequences of you being left behind. You know, it's it's one of those miracles that you were able to link back up. And there's that's one of the things that you always have to do.

You know, we call those lessons that they were a cheap lesson, right? The price that could have been paid to learn that lesson could have been dead, JP, but got away with it.

Got away with it by the grace of God. And you still come back. The the team looks at itself and says, what can we do better?

And it's being able to take these lessons. And I think that's why in the in the business world, people relate to them because they are high stakes situations.

And sometimes in the business world, the consequences, they're not as high and the feedback isn't as immediate in the business world. You know, if you make a mistake in the business world, maybe it takes three months before your profits start to fall and you can kind of identify what the problem was. And it was a leadership mistake here and there. And now we can start to address those things in combat. It's like, no, I made a mistake right now and I'm paying for it right now.

And so it makes the lessons.

It makes the lessons very obvious.

It's just a it's these these battlefield metaphors is why I think people relate to what we talk about, not because not because they they they want to be soldiers, not because they want to be in war, but because they want to learn the lessons. And it's a powerful way to learn them when you see them through the examples of combat.

So at this point in twenty seventeen, you're kind of getting on step, yes.

Yeah, I was I was on step with the workload. You know, I started, like I said, after me, it really started to pick up. And there's always a delay in what we do, like, hey, there's a Jamie back. Hey, you got a bunch of guys coming around like that. Like it's not until like November, December, January next year. I'm like, OK, cool. Like, I'm super happy or should be like, hey, I won.

That's in three weeks. I'm a guest book. Right. Like, it was just it was unique. It was a unique situation that we're in.

You know, we had we had musterer zero zero three down in Austin, Texas. And that was it was awesome.

Like, that was a great master. Learn a lot. And, you know, I learned about my limitations. And I remember I was just going, going, going, going, going, because I had all the other stuff I was still doing. And then and it wasn't until June that I stopped doing all the other things I was doing. Everything was actually in front. I was doing all the shooting. I was doing the construction, I was delivering the pizzas as doing the never set.

Although I was doing all this, I had buddies that were back in Mississippi that were fighting.

So I would wake up and I would train with them in the morning. My buddy Jesse James Wallace, Teddy Holder, Zach Garner, all these guys, I had fights that were coming up. I was like, Yeah, let's train all train in the morning. My buddy Dylan, that was helping me out with stuff like it was trying to get him on the path for because he wanted, you know, to be able to go in the military or law enforcement.

And so I would just was doing a lot, lot, lot, which is good because I would see your workload, I would see less workload. And I knew what I needed to be doing.

And I have never been afraid of hard work. Like hard work's a great thing. I mean, look at like, you know, my dad, you know, my my family, they're all about working hard. And that's all I ever also knew in the military as well. I'm not saying I'm the hardest worker. I'm not saying that the smartest work. I just I enjoy hard work. I have. I love it. And so I just was working hard, working hard, working hard, working hard.

And the valuable lesson I learned that Mr. 003 was I need to be comfortable with my limitations and. Be who I am, I was trying to be JoCo in life because that's all I thought I needed to do.

I thought if I was like chalk on life, that's what I would.

That's what I would achieve success. That's how I'd fit in on the team.

Instead of focusing on being the best version of who I am being, who God created, like God created me a certain way.

I have a certain personality, you know, I am I am made the way I am made for a reason, just like you're made the way you are for a reason. You've been able to figure out exactly what makes you the most effective.

And you capitalized on that just like life has, just like Dave has, just like all the other members of the Echelon front team are have or they're learning to do. Right.

And so at that point, I, I was running myself into the ground.

And I remember one time I gave the analogy to somebody, I said, and this is so foolish of myself at the time. This just shows like immaturity in the in the business sense of I give the analogy and I thought this was like a like a sense of honor. Right.

I said I'm burning the candle at both ends and there's a flame torch over the middle. Like, I'm just literally just burning at both ends and I'm torch in the middle of the candle. I'm just doing everything.

And it was super humbling because we're at the muster. I spoke on that first day.

We you know, we do the muster and we're doing our rehearsals that night. And I just I remember like Jan and Jamie, like JP, are you OK? I'm like, yeah, I'm good. And life is like, you good.

I'm I'm just beat. I'm exhausted. And he's like, OK, so we do our stuff. And you guys were signing certificates and books. And so I was staying up there and finally Jamie's like, go, go get some rest. I'm like, OK, so I go to my room, block out the room, set my alarm call, wake up call, set the alarm on my watch, set the alarms on my phone. And, you know, from learn from your life, it's like you should always also travel with a battery powered alarm clock in case the power goes out.

Everything's dead. Like you can always wake up to that. Have that across the room. I mean, I think I like five or seven, like, alarms set.

And I wake up to the phone and I'm like trying to figure out what's going on because the room is pitch black and I hear laughter like, hey, it's life, are you OK?

And at first I thought I was like a dream. And then I kind of like sat up in the bed and I realized I was like, Yeah, what's up? He's like, I just wanna make sure you're OK. Like, yeah, I'm good.

And I looked at the clock and as I look at the clock and processed the time, he says, Hey, do you think you can make it downstairs in ten minutes, that we can do some recording before the muster starts?

I was like, Yes, sir. And I hung up the phone and it was like seven forty.

Wow.

And he had taken place at four forty five with the whole the whole group.

And before that, that we normally do had taken part at like three forty five or for whatever time it was, because we before the group and the crew, I missed out on all that and I was supposed to be running section and everything and I really wasn't like, he wasn't like screaming at me over the phone or anything else like that and he just you made sure I was OK. I was like, hey, can you make it down here?

Like, yeah. And I just remember I had all my stuff lined up. I always have my stuff ready for the next day. I'm not going to know because I know what could happen. And so I remember I'm like, jump in the shower.

And I am so mad at myself, like I am so upset with myself and disappointed. And I said, well, you just screwed up the best thing you ever had because I'm like this JoCo is going to fire me.

I didn't know, like, you know, because I also understand there is no slack with what we do.

It's been made very clear, like, hey, we don't miss events, we don't drink on the road with clients. We don't do that. There's a list of things that we just don't do and be missing. A morning party at the muster is something that we don't do.

And so I go down there and, you know, I'm doing the recording with Joel. And he was like, Hey, man, I miss you this morning. I'm like a little dig from Joel.

Yeah, but he was like, I saw Echo. And I goes like, Hey, man, you're good. I'm like, Oh yeah, a little something for the Hawaiian.

And I was like, You good, ready? I'm dreading seeing you in life.

And like, you come around and you just have this big smile on your face and you laughing like you're laughing right now. You're like you good, Mike.

Yes. There I was like I, I, I don't know what happened like. He's like a good soldier, God, he's like, and then you told me like. And then life comes up and he has his big smile. It's like, you good to go. I'm like, yes, sir.

And then you guys are laughing here like we were. JoCo was joking about how we should just let you sleep until you woke up and just to see, like, what you would do.

And I remember just the thought of that was like, I don't know what if I would have just kept sleeping and then woken up at, like, whenever, I don't know, 3:00 o'clock at eight o'clock in the afternoon down for the closing of the muster? I probably would have just gone straight to the airport, like, here's my two week notice. It's been real. Thanks, God.

No, I don't I don't know what I would have done. I'm really glad you guys didn't do that because I would have been devastating. And I just remember I had to, like, recognize, you know what?

You need to find a little more balance.

And, you know, it's it's embarrassing that that's that's that's a humbling experience when you need to understand that you're at your capacity, because most people don't want to admit that.

And, you know, let Seth was so dialed in with us that he knew our our capacities as individuals.

And that, to me, is just a sign of a great leader.

And you in life have always been able to do that with the guys that you guys work with. And you guys understood what happened. You know, you you know, and we had a conversation.

And as long as I'm sitting here joking and were laughing and you guys are laughing, there was also this like, hey, like we need to know, like, are you good?

Is everything OK?

Like, why did this happen type of thing like is this can't happen on the road, you know, you can't be missing an event, you know, and so kind of pushed through that. And then I had like five weeks off, I had nothing booked. And so like at this time we're traveling a lot and a lot of rental cars out a bunch of credits.

And so we rented an SUV and we just traveled and we we we hit thirteen states and we made herself our way out to California. Just spend some time with my grandmother.

And then we worked our way down to Southern California. I had an event Jeff McGreavy put on. There was a big individual ticket sale event for me to do a full day of training. It was like a really cool thing that he's like, hey, you know, we want the proceeds to be able to go towards this this foundation that we have for the police officers in this region. And, you know, we discounted our price at Echelon front to, you know, for us to be able to do that.

So they could have as much they could go to the foundation as possible. And it was cool because I imagine the kids were able to come and they're able to see it and watch it. And I'll post it probably the next week or two.

But I took a picture when they're there. All three of the kids were taking notes. And, you know, I mean, my daughters were born in 2012. This is twenty seventeen. So the girls are five right there, about five and a half years old. And they're writing down the economy of leadership when I was doing that slide. And they're like writing down all the different things on it. And it was it was really cool to see that.

And that of that that Jeff put on it was awesome, was very fulfilling.

And I was that's what I was starting to kind of just things were clicking a little bit more and I was gaining more confidence in myself because I always unfortunately, even though I tend to be a very confident person in most aspects of my life, when it came to speaking, I was super insecure because I grew up with a speech impediment. I was in speech therapy all throughout school. I stutter. I mixed up my words. I'm sure some people will hear it on the podcast like, oh yeah, he said that instead of this like lace, give me real time feedback.

We've been added to that. We'll have a break. He's like, hey, that word doesn't exist that keep saying like, oh, check.

OK, like I'll make sure that I don't say that. There's other things that, you know, he's been great on coaching me on. Like, hey, like make sure you're not saying this and doing this this way.

But I always had that insecurity and, you know, just working through it and and seeing the impact that we were delivering at Echelon Front, it was a very clear realization to myself that this isn't about me.

And it brought me back to when I was on the stage with life. And he corrected my answer for the best, you know, anti snipers. Here's a tank. Right? And again, that was that realization like, oh, this isn't about what I did as a sniper. It's not about what we did. And I was really starting to fully understand how much of an impact the Echelon front was having was when I saw, like, people driving six hours just to meet you in life, like they couldn't afford the muster, but they would drive just to come see you guys just to get their picture and say, you guys restored our marriage.

And people that have your guys, his signatures tattooed on their forearms, they have good tattooed on their forearms. And discipline equals freedom.

And just I was.

Really seeing like, wow, this is so much bigger than I thought it could be, and I started to allow some doubt to creep in and saying, I don't know if you deserve to be a part of this anymore, because I was seeing how big it was.

And, you know, Dave is just crushing it and you guys are doing great things and just just is incredible.

And that was it was you know, another God thing is like that is about the time, you know, Seth and I were really starting to communicate a lot. Like you sent me pictures of him outgoing, doing stuff for, you know, some videos. And, you know, and I remember when him and Tommy. You sent me a message. He said, hey. I'm really proud of you. Said JoCo told me how well you're doing.

It's like I'm really proud of everything that JoCo life and you're doing, you're doing awesome. And I you know, I still have those messages saved, and I just it was it was again, it was something that I needed. It was I think that we all need and we all need, you know, people in your life that are going to pour into you.

They're going to feed, you know, feed it to you and help, you know, with that confidence. And that's what you guys have here at this gym. And that's what you guys have, a jujitsu. That's what we had in the SEAL teams. That's what we have it on front. And it was just s being S. S being that that servant leader that serving others. Like I'm not in the military, I haven't been in at this point.

I haven't been in and for, you know, for four and a half years, like he's doing his thing.

He's and he's still taking the time to reach out and say, hey, man, I just want to let you know that I'm proud of you.

And for me. For for a while, I really when I got out, I try to push myself away from all the guys because I had a guilt for getting out of the military, not being in the SEAL teams. The the guilt of me not being on that rooftop when Mikey jumped on the grenade is something I think about every single day, because, again, Mikey was one of my new guys.

That was overwatch. There was supposed to be on. And I didn't I wasn't there. And there's other buddies that had been killed and me not being in situations that I felt like I should have been. And and so for a long time, I just pushed everybody away. I wouldn't respond to people and I would make things up in my mind in regards to like, well, we're not even that close anyways. Or he, you know, he doesn't even like me or, you know, like he's pissed off at me about something.

I was legitimately making stuff up in my mind so that I would feel better for pushing people away.

And I tried to do that with Seth for a long time because I just had this immense amount of guilt and, you know, I doubted myself when I doubted him.

I doubted Jocko and I doubted everybody that I had worked for. When when Mikey was killed. And I held on to that for a long time and Seth continued to just knock on the door, you know, he just continued to reach out and continue to rebuild those relationships.

And things were really good and south and I were talking and communicating and, you know, he did a cross-country trip on his on his motorcycle and he came through and we're able to link up.

And it was just it was great. And then September 2017, life Biden's calling me look down, it's a picture of life and I honor guards when we were training in New Jersey.

You're teaching life and I get to that. New York. New York.

Yeah, New York. Yeah. For that FDX. And it's a great picture. Always makes me smile. And so life's calling me. I answer the phone, I'm excited, like, hey, what's up, boss?

He says, Hey, JP.

And it was that hey JP call that I've gotten a handful of other times.

I just I knew something had happened and he informed me that Sath had passed away and I couldn't process it, it didn't make sense to me because that morning I was messaging with Seth.

And the last thing I had said to South was, hit me up when you're done. And so I was waiting to have a response from Seth. And life tells me what happened and the kids are coming up and they're trying to talk to me, I'm trying to like push them away and say, hey, hold on, I'm on the phone for work. Just give me a second and.

I get off the phone with life, and I remember just like looking at the kids, I call them and I said, hey, can you can you parents can pick up the kids because she was working at her business at the time. She had a business that she'd opened up. And I said, hey, s says just passed away.

And she was trying to process that as well, and it just didn't make sense for her and she said, yeah, I'll have my parents come over and her parents come over. And I just remember I was like. Like, I got the kids ready. Like I was a coward, I sat in the kitchen as they grabbed the kids, I didn't even meet them at the door.

Because I didn't know what to do. I couldn't process that set that actually passed away. I was talking to him that morning.

South was my big brother. He was you know, we went through it together. We checked in the SEAL teams together, and he always had my back.

I just couldn't fathom my brother passing away. Is the way I looked at Satis, the way that my little brother looks at me, you know, I've always had my brother back and I always will, always had mine. That's the way southwest to me.

And I just I couldn't I couldn't process. And I literally I just sat in the kitchen as I came in the house, they grabbed the kids. And my father in law, Jeff, said, I'm very sorry for your loss.

And they grabbed the kids and they left. My mother in law looked at me and she was, you know, sad and she didn't really know what to say either.

And so they left. And I tried to call JoCo because I just knew what Sath meant to him. That was his best friend.

And I just I was so worried about JoCo and I couldn't get a hold of them, understandably so.

And I called Jamie and I said, Hey, Seth Stone just passed away. I just want to give you a heads up. You're going to need to clear everything from Jacob's calendar for a while. I don't know what's going on. I don't know the process. I don't I don't know anything. But just want to give you a heads up. And she was like, this is horrible. She's like, I'm so sorry. And I said, I just I want to give you the heads up because I don't know when you'll hear it from JoCo, but it's something that you need to know.

And then I just I started the phone tree of calling guys and everybody in our platoon just trying to find numbers and get a hold of guys and try to process it through a different guy is just trying to understand it. And, you know, it was. Now, it was it was, you know, a big blow, obviously, to everybody that knew Seth, and it was weird because all of us had this open period on our calendars at that time.

Maybe I'm superstitious, but every time I see him, I'll look at all of our calendars and I'm always like making sure that there's never like a gap that's open for all of our calendars, because I know that doesn't make sense to people when you say God has a plan and our days are numbered.

But I believe in that, and Seth says the last day was was already planned and God knew when that was going to happen.

And I know it's hard to understand and process that because the world was a better place with Seth and he impacted so many lives and he made such an amazing difference.

And it does it just doesn't seem sense for him to be gone.

But God knew what was going to happen and the fact that we all had that block open to be able to do do our events and make everything that we needed to do with the funeral and the different services was was was unique, you know, and, you know, came came back to San Diego and, you know.

Last time I was in my uniform was was for that and I was still within that window of being able to wear my uniform and, you know, it was it was a powerful.

Event, seeing all the guys.

And, you know, I I was standing watch over Seth at the funeral home and guys had different, you know, the different washes or sand over and the command was they had all these guys that were going from SEAL Team three that Roger up to to stand watch over him and myself.

And a bunch of the other guys were like, no, we're going to stand watch over Seth. That's like that's what we need to be doing. And the command was awesome. These new guys are super fired up and squared away and very professional. And they understand who Seth was and the impact that he had. And and we're watching over the guys.

And I remember I was at the funeral home and I was standing there in my uniform. And the family members are coming in and you're standing there at attention. And, you know, people are saying, hey, thank you, I appreciate you being here. And, you know, they're coming and you just see the pain and, you know, the sorrow on their faces and you see the see it in their body as they're walking up and, you know, family members that are getting close and they pause because they don't want to actually walk inside that building.

And I remember seeing life there and I remember seeing JoCo walking up with his family. And they came to the outside and they were talking and seeing each other and there's like the bro hugs and the half hugs with family members and full hugs.

And I'm just standing there and I remember. As they were getting ready to walk in, they did what everybody else did is they there's that pause. Because they knew once they walked in and made a real. And just like JoCo has always done, your head up, chest out, takes a breath, walks inside with his family life does the same thing.

They go inside and I'm just standing outside and. Everyone has their time in there, their they pay their respects and then everyone leaves, and it was life, I think it was life that pulled me in and it was just the three of us.

And we were we were paying our final respects to South, his casket is opening in his uniform and. Let's play some patches in there. I took the bracelet that was off my wrist that had Mark's name and Mikey's name and Ryan Jobe's name on there and a handful of other guys that were on there.

And I took it off and I placed inside the casket.

I remember just like just like touching Seth's arm and just it's being real, and you just said a quick prayer and step back.

And Jocko I went forward and he presented Sath with his black belt and there was some surf wax that was placed in there as well. And it was completely silent and Djogo comes back and we're kind of standing there and we just all kind of have our heads down but we're kind of looking at each other and we're kind of looking at South and.

JoCo breaks his silence and he just says a very simple but powerful statement.

He says, we will not fail. We will not fail s, we will not fill the gas. And that was it, there was a very powerful statement that I have thought about every single day since we laid the rest. Seth. Never failed us. And that's what JoCo he went on to say, as well as the South, he said that never failed us. We will not fail them. And. Then it was back to business as normal, and it just reminded me of.

The teams. It's obviously. A horrible situation to lose somebody. But we still have a mission that we have to achieve.

We still have to push forward, and that's exactly what our brothers would want us to do. We cannot fail them. Yeah, just to. Just to make sure everyone kind of knows that when JP says, you know, well, then we moved on, just just make sure that everybody knows that you just don't get to move on. I mean, you you have to, but it doesn't feel like, OK, we can move on now. And I know I've unfortunately had to do I've had to speak about what you do when you lose someone and what it feels like.

And there's a reason why I've been able to talk about that. An unfortunate reason is because I've lost a lot of friends and. Seen people lose friends and seen the the. The situation unfold not just from my own personal experience, but from watching other people go through it and you don't.

You move on, you have to, but don't think that you are going to be everything normal in a week, on a month or in a year and. That's just not the way beaters don't get to do that, and you don't I don't want to do that. I don't think anything ever goes back to normal, you know, because the normal is when they are with us. And that's not a reality anymore, and that is something that we all had to learn to, to deal with and work through.

And, you know, when you're saying like, hey, I just want to be clear when JBI said and move on, if you don't, it's not like you move on like that. It never happened and you forget it.

Like when we came back from Ramadi, you come back from that deployment from Ramadi, and when you come back, like we've talked, like every company you talk to, we always ask, hey, would you come back from a deployment like that with there's a lot of anger, there's a lot of frustration.

There's darkness, there's guilt, there's all those things. But if that's all you focus on. Where does it get you get you nowhere. It gives you absolutely nowhere in life and the conversation that you had with life and I about us not failing them is something that I hope everybody can just truly understand and and realize that, hey, you can live your life in a way to honor them.

And maybe it's not to honor our brothers. Maybe it's not to honor anybody in the military.

But there's somebody in your life, somebody is sacrifice something so that you can at least be in the situation that you're in and you can live your life to honor them. You can live your you can live your life. One or two ways you can allow it to fall apart where you can you can build it up and you can you can move forward with your mission to achieve your mission. And that's what a lot of veterans struggle with, is understanding how can you even have a mission?

You've experienced all this loss. You've experienced all this devastation. How how do you actually find a new mission? How do you find a new way? How do you stay on the path? How do you even get back on the path? And the loss of S was obviously devastating to everybody that knew him.

You know, I choose to remember his life, I choose to remember that smile, how he would come up and he would just like he would always like is like slap me on the back and kind of grab my trap and just, like, shake. And it's like he's such a strong, powerful guy. When you do that, you're like, OK, know.

But, you know. And he was. He always he always was taking care of people, and I think if we can try to live our lives. Similar to that, and just try to be like Seth and Mikey and Mark and Ryan, you know, all the other guys that we've lost, and I just I really believe that if people can understand.

The situations that they're in and how good that they have it, and to be thankful for the opportunities that they have, the culture of what they want out of life, and for me, that's, I think, a big learning point that I had over these last four years was just maintaining the gratitude mindset that I had of just being thankful for the opportunities.

And, you know, that's that's why we moved to Texas, because I knew that if I was centrally located, it would be the best thing for ashlawn front, for travel and just of being able to interact with as many clients as possible.

And it was either going to be centrally located in Texas or San Diego here with you. Right. So life was in Texas, here in San Diego. I knew Dallas Fort Worth was an amazing airport. It was going to be good for travel.

And so that's why we moved.

We moved from Mississippi to be to be centrally located for what we perceived was the best fresh lawn front, because I was so grateful for this opportunity and I wanted to make the absolute best of what we had.

And then as as a company grown, you know, went from just being a instructor and a speaker to we had the opportunity after Musterer zero zero four in San Diego when we were like kind of defining OK roles and responsibilities as a company growing, you know, and you guys, you know, made me the director of our experiential leadership training program, all the hands on scenario based leadership training that we do.

And, you know, this was another big opportunity that I had, you know, and I understood the potential and I understand how important it was for the company. And, you know, just to be able to grow a department within ashlawn front was it's been amazing. It's been a great learning experience for myself and, you know, making sure that as we're growing the company, you know, you brought on Cody, he's been helping run. He was the operations manager for all the field training exercise that we run.

And he's a former Marine. He's super squared away, came out to one of the first big FDX is that we're doing we had a group of super squared away guys there. And, you know, he really stepped up and took ownership of the team of the scenarios of the training, understood it. And, you know, he was also in a position where we could provide him like, hey, here's here's the opportunity we have.

We'd love to have you come on full board with the team, you know, and so throughout twenty, you know, eighteen have grown out the program speaking traveling to March twenty nineteen. Same thing like crazy busy bunch after seeing the growth of the team, you know, Dave growing up and growing out the leadership development alignment programs and just the partnerships with all the different companies that we had, it was, you know.

It's just been crazy to see see the transition and, you know, obviously us talking about Sath is that's the heavy, deep topic, but it's part of these last four years.

And, you know, the last four years has been an amazing opportunity that I am forever thankful and grateful to you and life for giving me and you and life always say it. And I believe it. And it's we're only getting started.

And the impact that the book, Extreme Ownership and the Economy and leadership that Unilife wrote to see the impact, to see it changing people's lives. I mean, there's been people that have lost 100 plus pounds. There's been people that have regained their marriages. There's been companies that came and reached out to you in life and said, hey, this is our last ditch effort.

If we don't fix something, we're going out of business. And to see them be able to apply the principles and laws to combat the mindsets of victory, to understand the different dichotomies that we all experience as individuals and as leaders, to see them apply those things and see them to turn around their personal and professional lives. It's just been incredible and knowing where we will be going with, you know, f online to see that grow and develop into what it is right now, I mean, the value in Echelon front material is just it's hard to try to figure that out.

I mean, just because you're talking about on one of the sessions the other day is like we didn't know what at the beginning. And, you know, the market kind of, you know, dictates that for us. And we understand the demand. But to see the value that people are getting from F online is is absolutely incredible.

And to see the LD apps that that Dave has created and overwatch and everything that Mike Sherrill has been doing over there and to see the impact of placing veterans and how it ties back to Echelon Front and, you know, f battlefield that, you know, Steve and Jason or Mike just created.

And just, man, I was I was a little sad that I wasn't there. I mean, I understood that I didn't need to be there. I could tell you were getting all jealous and I felt like you're a mess. And now you're like, hey, how was it that actually Dave was the same way and both of you guys were like, oh, how was it? You know, like and you were hoping that I was gonna say, oh, I was fine.

And I was like, it was awesome. No, I was like, no, I don't throw you guys. No, I don't throw that around easily. Yeah. When I because because the F battlefield is awesome. It's it's awesome. It's amazing. And yeah, I could tell both you guys like oh how was it. And I'm not saying you were hoping it was bad, but it hurt when I said it was freaking awesome. Dave asked me the question immediately.

He goes, he goes oh he goes Oh how is the battlefield. And I it was freaking awesome. And he goes, Yeah, I don't feel like he asked me the question to make sure that he was actually hearing it. He was, you know, I mean, he's super stoked and he's going to be I mean, everyone's going to be stoked when you go do it. It was yeah.

It was like the you know, the field training exercises when you and life came out and saw what what had progressed into and what we're doing up in Michigan with our large client up there, like for you and lifebelt to be like, this is awesome just to see the impact.

And now, like, I mean, just it's crazy to see what's happened over the last four years.

I mean, we haven't even talked about just, you know, what we've been able to do with Origin and JoCo fuel.

I mean I mean, it's ridiculous. I have a sour Apple sniper to go drink sitting in front of me with my signature on the side. I mean, the Go Time series that they did, that little mini documentary on me, I mean, that has two point two million views on YouTube organically. That's all organic. And just it's it's crazy. I got to talk to my buddy Michael and a few other people, you know, to my best friends in Texas, Steven Little and Dane.

You know, Danes helped out with taxes and he's came out to the monsters. And, you know, just my really close friends understanding like what's been happening and what's going on. And it's just incredible. I mean, just see the situation where four years ago. We had no money. And now, like as we're looking to buy a house, we're in a situation that it's pure comfort, it's a completely different scenario. I mean, the coronavirus hit not once have I ever been in a stressed situation over finances.

When this all hit, I gave you an update of my status and you're like, OK, I feel good to go let life know. And I was, you know, how am I with my finances? I'm very private. I don't like people knowing what I make. I just I'm not like that. I've never been like that. I don't like the people on social media that I like bragging about. Like I made this much money last month.

Who cares? Like, OK, cool, great. I'm not like that. But I knew that I had to give you guys that situation. Update of like, hey, you know what, everything in life since day one. He's been amazing working with me on hey, investments, savings, you know, just making sure that I knew I was being taken care of, being studious with my money and a man and I have been very studious with our with our savings.

And just our lifestyle is not crazy. And we're in the situation to her.

When all this hit, I told you I was like, I can have no income for the next year and not have to change our lifestyle.

Now, would I do that? No, of course I want to change my lifestyle. I'm going to be a little more fruitful. And, you know, we're going to be a little more, you know, tedious over here. And but, you know, we've been able to tie that. We've been able to to give to different charities and different foundations. And, you know, I mean, it's been nice to be able to to. To be in the situation that we're in and it just comes down to I mean, what you've always talked about is discipline equals freedom and life is always taking the time to work with me on that.

You've had in-depth conversations with me on this. I mean, I know a couple of times I've called and we get down to the call and I look at them like that was an hour and a half call. Michael, I'm really glad JoCo doesn't charge me his hourly rate because he couldn't afford that one.

But, you know, I just it's incredible, you know, and I'm always super thankful of all the blessings that God has given me. But I also understand.

That you have to work for stuff.

You have to work, and I saw the opportunity and I knew that I had to go all that I had to go all in with you guys and by me going all in being 100 percent committed to what you guys had built in and respecting that.

And like Dave and I, we've always we always talk with the other instructors. Any new instructors or hey, this is Jack Lace company that they've built.

We are a part of it. But everything we do has to honor and respect what they've built and we understand how important that is. And it just have that mindset. And to see that Cody and Kawi on the team, they have that same mindset. When Cody, you will call me about different stuff for an and and my default answer or my default answer to his question is and he knows this, but he's always just making sure we're aligned with stuff because there certain things he knows, like he has to let me know.

There are certain things he just hey, f why?

This is what I did. Michael Good.

Good to go is the answer is what will deliver the absolute best training to our client and whatever that is within reason. That's what we do. We always take care of the client.

We always make sure the client has the absolute best training, the absolute best experience, no matter what. That's what we will always do. And we we don't cut corners. We we're not we will always do what's best for the client if that means that, you know, training is going to run long and we're going to catch a flight the next day.

And we've been gone for two weeks, no factor. We're not flying normally.

We don't cut training early so we can get on a flight to get back home. You know, we'll spend time. You know, that's we will always take care of the client. And it's it's awesome to see what we're getting ready to launch with the individual FDX program and.

You know that this is an opportunity to where is, let's say, a company there, not large enough to have a full field training exercise, they just can't afford it.

They can't bring you know, they don't have enough people to do it.

Well, what they can do is they can send a few of their leaders to this individual FDX or let's say it's an individual like Echo and it goes like, hey, it's just me.

Like we see people come to the muster.

They just come by themself because they want to have more hands on of the train. They've read the book, but some dad that wants to be a better dad. Right. We've met people that are like, hey, we just want to be better parents.

That's why we came to the master. I'm like, that's that's awesome. They can sign up for the individual FDX and it's going to be you know, there's different tiers to it, but it's going to be the one tier that we know that we're absolutely launching is that it's going to be two days of field training exercises. And, you know, it's going to be a small group, 30 or less people within that group. And it's going to be two full days of field training exercises where they're we're putting them in stressful situations.

It's all scenario based. They're going to all rotate through different positions of leadership. And we're going to give them intel and they're going to take that intel and they're going to plan their mission. And their mission is going to be a capture or kill mission or, you know, they're going to go do a presence patrol through a different area. It's the same scenarios, the same training or that same very similar to the same type of training that we ran in the SEAL teams.

And each of these scenarios are going to be driven to enforce the leadership principles that we teach at Echelon front, the laws of combat, the mindset, the victory, the different dichotomies that you experience as a leader.

You're going to feel it real time and training. And that's what we saw was so impactful in the SEAL teams, was actual hands on training. When you can feel that stress, we can feel that pressure when you have to make a decision and people are going to see voids of leadership and they're going to see why it's important to step up and make a call.

Even when you're not in that position of leadership, you're going to see decentralized command working and decentralized command not working. You're going to feel your communication not being effective, and you're going to come back and, you know, you're going to, you know, be frustrated and talk to different stuff.

And like Life was talking the other day on EFF online, we leave and I were laughing at one. That is because the OIC goes squat, one on the left, squat one on the right. And I was like, it's like nobody was moving to do anything.

Like another one of the squad leaders, like you just said, squad one on the left, squad one on the right. Like what? What do you want that they're getting all frustrated or they'll make a call out in there like the is over there and always be like over there, over there, over there.

Like kind of like just kind of like, hey, what cardinal direction is the enemy coming from there?

Like they're on the right side of the building. I'm like, you're right.

My right are two different are one hundred degrees out right now like West Side. And so people actually understand that they're not very good at communicating in stressful situations and with the companies that we've done it for.

I mean, I remember we've we've been in that and I don't remember fear that the one in Michigan where one of the corporate leaders was saying, you know, I need to do a better job communicating with the union workers out in the field, I recognized that my communication sucks and I have failed to build a relationship.

And then one of the union leaders steps up and goes, hey, that's actually our fault, because I could have come and built a relationship. And you're just seeing like we're a company where at the beginning of when we were working with them, union and corporate hated each other. They were like screaming at each other in the in the classroom. Before we started the training, I was like and blaming each other.

It was insane. The amount of blame was crazy.

And then you see that that culture start to shift and change from these field training exercises, because it's very humbling, because everybody out there says, oh, I've got this and they're planning the mission and they're just going to be they think they're going to come in and impress us.

Everybody is their general George Patton. Yes. Until the laser thing starts beeping over their shoulder, they realize what's up.

I always say, you know, that the the training that we ran at trade at was the best leadership laboratory.

I actually have changed this statement. I used to say it was one of the best leadership laboratories in the world. I actually think that it was the best leadership laboratory in the world ever. And because and not just the best leadership laboratory, but also the best leadership instruction, because when you're in those situations, you learn them and it's it's they they smack you in the face and you either address them or you get smacked again. And when you get smack to them, it's so obvious what you did wrong.

Here's that. Hey, listen to that. Listen to the recording of what you were just saying.

Squad one on the left, squad one on the right. Listen to that recording.

Now, do you think you were detached when you were doing that? You think you were getting emotional a little bit. Do you think you had to step back? No. So that's what it feels like.

And there's so that's why getting this program off the ground, it's just a phenomenal way to drive these lessons home in the same way that they got driven home to us. And if it seems this is this is the this is the kind of cool thing, you might think, well, how the heck are we supposed to know if you work at a financial company or you work at an insurance company or you work at a construction company? We don't know anything about tactics.

How are we going to go, you know, do a mission on a presence, patrol through a street? It's you spend a few hours learning these basic principles so basic just and there's nothing. It's common sense, right? It's common sense. It's also the last combat cover move. Keep things simple. Prioritize next year. Decentralized command. That's what you're going to learn. And then you learn how to apply it very quickly. And when you make mistakes, believe me, those those mistakes that you make are the best ways to learn that you're ever going to get.

So it's awesome. And then the the F battlefield you get to, you're automatically basically what happens in F battlefield. You're watching the mistakes, but you can see the mistakes made by the leaders and what they did well, what they did wrong. And you're kind of detached from it.

So you again, you get to see these things firsthand and you get to stand where that leader stood and see what that leader saw in that particular situation. And those are all powerful that know why we call it experiential learning, because you are experiencing what a leader experiences and that's the best possible way to learn.

Yeah, it's another very proud moment of mine, of just being a part of this team, being able to see that program grow, see the growth and development of Code of Kaui. You know, both of those guys have really stepped up. They're doing amazing things, you know, and the other echelon, different instructors that come out and help out on the left axis and just seeing everybody being able to work together and just delivering the best training ever.

And I we're a little biased, but not really what I mean, that's not but that's not just us saying this is what our clients have said. This is I mean, the feedback that we get constantly from from people all the time.

And just when you see the culture of a huge company drastically shift and change and they're saying, hey, this is because of the field training program, like I remember working with one company where there is just the racial division was was very unfortunate and it was very real.

And I remember seeing it in in one of the headquarters that we were visiting and working with, then seeing that change after Texas where they're working together and they're understanding how important their roles and responsibilities are each other and just see them starting to intermingle and talk with each other and just just see those where it was to where it's at now was just was incredible.

And it was it was so powerful.

You know, these will be available in the very near future if somebody goes in front of the individual individual just to explain that to everybody. In the past, what we've done is if you want, you've got to bring your company. You've got to bring a company people. So you've got to bring 20 or 40 or 100 hundred people. And we run this FDX program. It's sort of like the muster. That's what we used to just do, consulting for companies.

And and I realized the shortfall was we were cutting out. You know, if you had three people at a company, you can't bring in Echelon Front to do leadership training. I said, let's bring everyone together that wants to do this training into one big group and we'll do a training for them. That's the muster. That's the same thing with the with the individual FDX is, you know, whether you bring two or three people from your team, four or five people from your team, or you just come by yourself, either any of those scenarios, it's like, OK, now we're going to learn where to learn these leadership lessons at a at a deep level.

At a granular level. That's going to be that's going to be burned on to your soul.

And it's awesome. And the cool thing is like these are the first ones, these are the pilot program that people are going to be able to, you know, be a part of. It's like being a part of like master 001. Like those are plank owners. And people are going to be able to be plank owners of the individual left. As you know, we were talking last night, you know, your dinner table about the two different tiers that we know that we're going to definitely do.

One, like I said, is just the two full days of training.

And it's just going to be run after run after run after run after. I mean, you can be you're going to have so many runs, like somebody is going to say, hey, I'm going to have to sit this one out and somebody is listening. Oh, yeah, right. And I guarantee you it's going to happen because it's just the amount of of scenarios that we're going to throw is it's going to be incredible. And the the actual learning fundamentals that you're going to gain from those two days is there's.

Nothing out there like it right now, there's nothing out there, and then the next year it's going to be a little bit longer, it'll be three days, you know, it'll be with with that group of 30, 30 or less. And, you know, there'll be one day of, you know, there will be like roundtable discussions getting to know the unique differences of the different businesses, the talking through the different problems that people are going through and actually diving deep into their principles and addressing it with the group and having all the different individuals that are there actually contributing to like the leadership principles that we talk about and solve.

Because as you've seen from EFF online, I mean, you look at the chat, I mean, people are solving problems for each other. People ask a question and there's 20 responses. And so that's what that next tier is going to be like, is where they're going to come in. We're going to have that. You know how the group dinner morning, Petey's day of Rud's dinner morning, a day of runs and then like a kind of like a final like recapping everything of of roundtable.

And that might be that might be a three, three and a half day type of situation.

But for the individual program, you know, people go to Echelon front. Dotcom will have the information up there by the time this podcast is out.

You know, it's just stand by. It's going to be on standby to come and get some. Yes.

Speaking of getting some, I think we've been going for three and a half hours or so. Thanks for coming back on. I wanted to say that the reason it's I guess maybe it's pretty obvious because we'd be like, what do you have a J-P back on? I'm like, oh, as soon as we can get together. And there you have it. You look at his schedule, you look at my schedule and guess when we get together. Oh, it only took four years.

There was a couple of opportunities we had where like at the muster we could oh I think at one muster we were trying to pull it off and then like we'd be at the muster and to be zero sleep and just total mayhem, especially at the earlier musters when we weren't we weren't a squared away as we should be. We should have been on the back end. And we just need to we need to tighten things up. We need to learn.

And that's what we did. But yeah.

So that's why it took so long. But. Brian, thanks for coming back on and we'll try not let's at least aim for do not even want to say three forty six months, two years away now, we won't let that happen.

Yeah, dude, awesome to have you back on time, as usual. Thank you. Thank you. Echo Charles, yes, what questions, lots of lessons there, lots of lessons learned from J-P, lots of lessons learned about how to get better, how to get back on the path. Mm hmm.

Got any suggestions, for example, that some of the suggestions seem to be being on the path, I guess, or whatever, that me to do a whole JP which made it through the whole podcast and we going to talk about jujitsu.

That's kind of crazy. I can bring it up. I actually I'm just saying I'm like, wow. Well, I just said it's been three and a half hours and all of a sudden we're about to add another two items for talking about just to get at the muster when you slept in or whatever.

Oh, what was the what was the diagnosis that you're just like what sleep deprived freaking exhaust is sick and tired.

Yeah, that's only diagnosed.

But wasn't it kind of refreshing that like because I'd done that before. I'm not going to say when whatever, but let's just say that's happened to me where it's like, oh, should you look at the clock. You're like man, I missed like a bunch of stuff. So then you got to sort of reenter the situation, you know? And so that anticipation is like it's kind of nerve wracking, to say the least. So then in your case, you got to re-enter with JoCo Llave, not to mention everybody else sort of waiting for you.

Sort of.

Yeah, but so how I know you're mad at yourself. Of course he's mad at himself about everything.

But how much of a refreshing scenario was it that, like they were kind of laughing and smiling.

It changed everything totally. Does it completely change everything? Yeah.

I mean, it's like it's the worst because like what if what if, like, they didn't say anything, they just like, OK, japes back. But then you kind of sense just a little bit of, you know, like they're a little bit short with you or something like that. It's like that's like an added double triple torture rate there. You can't do that.

It's like that's not going to help you, you know.

But if I'm sensing or I'm at least getting this indication. I know. Or that you feel some level of guilt about being late. And that's factual because I'm not I'm not seeing that, bro. Not worry if you're talking about today. My one minute late, brother. Forty five early breath. That's early for me. I'm from quite one minute late.

You know, it's not that the early bird gets the worm, so it's all good. In fact, as you said, you come from a long line of people to blame me for.

Yeah, well I mean you did twenty three and leave your DNA came up late.

Yes. It was very clear. The late marker on now and yeah.

Anyway when I'm not late on is my reentry to the Jonquil fuel discipline freakin routine.

You're in the game in the, in the game. I don't even talk about this.

OK, so we're talking about joint warfare, krill oil discipline. That's all cool. Joint warfare. Croyle Vitamin D, maybe some Cold War. That's good, right. We talk about that all the time. We got JP here or we'll get to JP. He happens to have our apple.

Signature. But OK, so but the joint warfare thing and here's the thing, like I you know, we take it every day. I do know about you. I take it every day or whatever.

And like I said, I said before where it's like always on my mind. Right. So I kind of explore, like, why it's always on my mind.

And you came up with a phrase or a line or whatever you call it.

The beatings are the darkness, the gains or the light. OK, I thought those were you. You want to get that interesting.

Anyway, so the point is, this is why.

Because when you're young and fit, strong fit, you know, usually a good sign in life when you're looking and feeling strong, fit.

But, you know, when you're young, you're like, OK, you know, my big muscles, my big muscles, as you gain maturity, you figure out like the underlying foundations of things or. Usually proved to be more important and the underlying foundations of games is skeletal and tissue strength, strength and stability.

Exactly right. I went back completely correct. It's taken care of, you know.

So, yeah, when you take those beatings. And you want to get those the recovery, the games, your joints are one of the many things that take beatings. Do you spell gains with a Z?

No, sir, no. Are you sure? I'm positive, yes.

And I mean, do you spell gains with a Z? No, negative.

I was talking to Pete. I kind of think I said OK.

And but that's maybe that maybe that's just my own little sort of, you know, games.

Yeah. No, no.

Yeah, no. I was talking to Pete or maybe both of them, Brian.

And we're talking about the word games and it's like I.

Oh, is that word itself a violation. Nor is it only for Z on the Z. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, it's funny. The thing on the end of gangs is a real thing, right? Yeah.

Just like the in the end of a lot of other words, like boys, me and my boys. And you put it like that. Don't, don't do that.

But you can say me and my boys like that's not a violation of it's like, you know, I just don't understand why people go out of their way to misspell words.

Yeah.

It's it's it's it's interesting for sure. Maybe like your individual expression, you know, either way nonetheless.

Yeah. OK, so take these things, take take these things, keep yourself in the game. That's important bro. What, what good is it if you're like muscles are super strong but your joints can't hold.

It's like having a nice house with no freakin foundation. Agreed bro. Or framing metaphore received anyway.

So back to the back to the sour Apple sniper.

OK, JP So why did we to thaw out a sour apple?

It was just a flavor that I've always enjoyed as a kid.

Like I, I really liked the sour apple flavors of different candy and stuff.

I would eat as a kid.

The Jolly Ranchers, those those are they're like like those like sour green apple with a caramel like.

Yeah, I just I've always really liked it and but honestly it was and I, I talked to Brian because, you know, he came out with Dakota Meyer's flavor, Dan Savage, which is legit. It's really good.

And no, I you know, Brian is the same way that you guys are about business, is he's not going to, like, commit or say something ahead of it. He's just more of reserved on it.

And I kind of talk to him about like what about like, you know, different like signature flavor, like, you know, kind of like one for me or other people. Would you guys be open to it? And he's like, well, we kind of got to see how these flavors do. We just want to see if there's even a demand and how it goes.

And obviously what you know, the direction of what he's been doing, you know, and Brian, both with origin and geography and you guys is the growth just is it's incredible to see it and be part of it.

And so, you know, just kind of let it be with that conversation. Talk to Pete about it a little bit. And, you know, they would ask, like, what would you think for the flavor in the name?

And I gave them a name and a flavor.

And then I go, OK, I dig that kind of didn't go anywhere.

And then it was in, you know, January. I kind of brought it up again to Brian. And I said, you know, I was like, you know, I'm thinking about what if it was like sour apples sniper?

I was trying to come up with a name that would be unique.

So fully, fully. You saw Apple Sniper that suggested that.

Yes, yes. And because the other name that I come up with was it worked well and I still like it. It's a good flavor. It's a good name.

What your other name was another idea. What was it? What we could talk about it offline.

Well, someone might steal it, something like that. Is that good? Oh, yes. All right.

And so cameras a sniper. And Brian was like, OK, I like the name, but, you know, sour apple. I don't know how that will do. It was like flavor in a drink. And I said, OK, well, yeah, I was like, that makes sense. We're kind of talking through it. And it was just and I was like, hey, I'm not trying to be the good idea, Ferreti.

Like, I don't want to just be like coming to you with all this, like, hey, I have another good idea and it's expected you to execute it. I'm like, I want to help. Look, let me know what I can do and like if there's an idea and then just, you know, kept conversations about it and then it just became a reality where you know, Brian like reach out to me was like, hey, you know, think about this and start working on your flavor of like, oh, OK, cool.

And I think Brian Brian got excited about it when some of the manufacturers came back to him, like, oh, that's a great idea. And like there's a couple of different companies that were wanting to kind of like bid for being able to do it, I guess, or wanted to be a part of it. And then we got the first couple of rounds of flavors and it was like, OK, this is good, but let's make this tweak and a couple of different tweaks and then we're giving feedback.

It's like actually I really like it. That's actually good. Kids get the feedback and and then.

Yeah. And then just kind of tweak it from there and then they're able to to execute. Obviously there are some delays with, you know, the whole coronavirus thing and across the nation.

But I mean, you came you know, JoCo Palmer came out and that was legit flavor. And now it's like a really good flavor. And man, serial snipers coming after that, like, guess.

Yeah, but I'm really super happy with the flavor.

I mean, the amount of support has been incredible, like the amount of people like to send me messages. I had just ordered six cases or had just ordered, you know, four pack to try out and then they'll order the four pack to try it out. They try it and then that same week ordering a case.

And, you know, I think it should be available on Amazon to vitamin shop, should be getting theirs soon in the game as well. They have the other flavors. But I mean, there's been like the gym I train at, you know, peak performance was where I do jujitsu. And then next to it, my buddy has a a gym called 360 Fitness where a man and I will train and he does personal training there as well. He's been working with Amanda and then he's been doing personal training with aid and helping with, you know, some coordination stuff and stuff.

And like he just ordered a large order. He ordered 40 cases and he he's getting to the fridge in there. And so there's a you're seeing a lot of businesses now also that I've been connecting with with Jocke feeling of like ordering the fridge is another like my buddy, their business, they ordered 48 cases and then, you know, later that week ordered more. And there's it's just the progression of growth is just crazy to see what people are doing.

The support for just all the JoCo flavors. I mean, all the flavors are great.

You know, that's the thing is, you know, of course, I want the sour Apple snipers to continue to sell and do well. But at the end of the day, you take care yourself.

They're all they're all feeding each other. I said I would like, but I'm saying at the end of the day, they're all feeding each other.

You know what's crazy about this whole story?

What there's two right now and there's more common. But there's two signature flavors. You and DeCota. Yeah. Have you ever wondered about why that is? No, well, I guess the the maybe the Atkins, like the the seed of this this idea maybe had was it the seed, this original idea of making an energy drink is from from you and Dakota as individuals, but more you and Dakotas, you and Dakota as.

People as in as a group of people, so let's let's let's face it, you used to freakin drink energy drinks that are absolutely horrible for you and you would drink how many day or as bad?

Five to seven. Five to seven. That's that's that's freaking awful.

DeCota same thing. And so as and you know, I used to drink them when I would need like, oh, I need some caffeine because I'm on a long drive and it's late at night.

OK, I'm gonna drink this and then what happens the next you know, once I crashed from that, from the sugar, the insulin, you feel like crap. But but as I thought about like hate because part of my mind is I don't want to contribute to that.

Like, I want to make something that's going to do that to people. But then immediately. But what am I going to do with my friends, you and you and Dakota and you and I mean it just you guys are sort of the archetype of the energy drink drinker, right?

Hey, I didn't get much sleep, but I want to get after it. Boom, boom, boom. That's that's what it is.

So I don't want to contribute to poisoning my friends and people like my friends. So I'm not going to do that.

But wait a second. What if we can actually make something that is legitimately good for you? That's why when I was like, OK, we need what we want. I think that whole idea of a signature thing, it's like, you know what?

There's two guys that should have a signature freakin energy drink that's good for them. And then that's where we're at.

That's that's awesome. Yeah. I got a message from one of my buddies. You know, obviously most people that listen podcasts probably know this because you follow JoCo, you follow Origin, you follow Jakov, your brain, all them as well. As you know, we just brought on Bryce Mitchell as a sponsor, the pro team member. Right. You know, thug nasty. Yeah. He's got a big fight coming up. He just hit top fifteen for his rankings as well, the USC.

And, you know, his manager, Matt is a great guy and he's I've always had a good relationship with him and Bryce and I used to sponsor Bryce when I had never sat on a panel.

And I did what I could at that point, you know, which wasn't much. But, you know, I was being able to bring him on board. The team is is awesome. He's a great fit, but he is manager like, hit me up.

He's like, do that. Saurabh snipers are ridiculous.

He's like, I got my I put it on and put it on ice. It got super cold. He's like, I'm going to get my wife off a drink and the other energy drinks because she's a nurse and she was you do same thing, you know, boom. Because then I said, Hey.

Let your wife know the flavor isn't going to make sense to her at the beginning because she's so used to like all this other sugar and junk and everything else like that, because that's a lot of people say, like, well, the flavors were different, but then that they'll drink a few of them like, oh, this is really good.

I like it, you know, because you have to understand, like, you don't drink a lot of sugar. Never had any. Yeah. Most people that do like now you're actually drinking.

That's something that's all natural.

Has no sugar. It's it's good for you. Like that's crazy.

And so he's my purpose of saying all that is he's super thankful that he's going to now be able to get his wife off of the other energy drinks. She's going to be able to have part of this. And Bryce is like all about this, like he's sending me text messages he's putting in. He's like, man, this is my go to when you go to bed, it's really you know, the other thing that geography and origin have been doing is growing their sponsored team members like, you know, working with they call it the pro team, just different members that are going to reflect going to be a good reflection of origin and geography and what that means, you know, and the and Brian and them have been working hard.

They're releasing an ambassador program. So there are people that if they want to represent origin and geography or they can actually apply to do that and be a brand ambassador for the two best companies that are out there right now. And so it's just it's crazy that I am a part of all this.

It's just just a little bit of it. It just blows me away. Amanda and I, you know, my wife, man and I were talking last night about it, and I was just it's just crazy just to see it, you know?

And I know we're going to close out like you guys normally do. But, you know, I have to take a moment to thank Amanda and and Aiden and Cora and Nola just for their dedication to me to just always have my back.

You know, Amanda's through thick and thin. I'm not an easy person to live with. I'm not an easy person to be married with, to work with. I have a lot of, you know, demons that I work through.

And, you know, she she knows and sees and she'll be like, you just need to go to the gym or, hey, go sit in this on our go to do some jujitsu because she knows, you know, all the guys that I work with and do jujitsu over at peak and Justin and Zach over 360 fitness like they they're there to support me and they support my family.

It's it's unlike anything I've ever seen, you know, and they their loyalty is so incredible.

And just so so I was like lacking in and that's what I was missing out on again. And just to have that.

But it's all driven from Amanda and my family and, you know, when the drink came out.

You know, Amanda, you know, we got it and she was like, oh, this is awesome, you know, it was really cool. And she like comes up and she gives me a hug and she like, put your hand on my chest. And she's like, just looking up at me like I'm really proud of you.

Like, I am really proud of everything that you've worked for.

It's been a road and she's like it's been a it's been a you know, it's been a while. She say, exactly. It was not a rough road, but, you know, thumbs along the journey. Right.

And I just I was just soaking it in because, I mean, we've had some dark times between the two of us.

And just to know that in the last four years, we went from warat all the struggles, everything up and down to where, you know, we just received like cases of sour Apple sniper with my signature on it and just all the crazy thing that's coming out of it and the just the the relationships with Origin and JoCo fuel.

I mean, I know you're very thankful for that partnership, but like when we really look into like who is and who Amanda Roberts is and who Brian Littlefield is and everyone associated with those companies, they are some of the best people that I know legitimately, some of the best people I know and what they're doing here in America, what you guys are doing, Echo and JoCo with them in America, it's it gives me a sense of pride to be like, hey, this is another mission that I can at least maybe help a little bit.

I can contribute a little bit, you know.

And so I'm just so thankful just for all these opportunities. It's it's unreal. And, you know, I what I'm thankful as well is this is a platform for me to be able to give back and serve and serve more people.

And that's, you know, something we can get into on another podcast of just some of the stuff that we have on in the horizon of different foundations to be able to help out and be able to work alongside, you know, my family with America's mighty warriors. She her foundation probably legitimately saved my life because in March, I got super sick. We don't know what was going on. You remember, I was I was pissing blood for two weeks.

Right. My my body was shutting down. We don't know why I had kidney failure, adrenal gland failure and just just a bunch of other stuff that was going on. I was throwing up my head was killing me. I was getting those headaches again, blurred vision. I was losing, like, the ability like to talk sometimes, like I couldn't find my words. I couldn't focus and, you know, coronavirus hit.

And I Debbie Lee family reached out to me and she says, hey, I got you approved for my treatments. A hyperbaric oxygen treatments. You have the time. Let's get you in there.

And I was doing those treatments, and it was a realization to me of how hard my family is working to serve others.

And I have this opportunity to be able to try to help and give back. And, you know, there's there's good foundations like America's My Warriors that are doing so much for people that that most people don't know about. And, you know, I did all those treatments and it was incredible, the difference that it made for my body, like a complete 180, like able to work out again, like I blacked out in the middle of a workout and passed out.

And I mean, it was it was bad. Like we're still not sure what would happen.

And yeah. And then now a few months later, I'm able to work out and train hard again and actually get back into training, jujitsu and, you know, actually working out, just trying to get back on that path again.

And it's, you know, just all the clean supplements from refueling in origin is just everything. It's just made a huge difference. That's crazy. Yes. How you doing? Those curls on the Internet, you had varying levels of emotional response from. Well, I didn't I didn't take a film of the last one I hit, but I will for you. It was you know, we will. One fifty five, four, three. OK, all right.

All right. OK, so you're you're doing well because that preacher, that preacher girl.

Now go straight.

Bah come with the preacher curls. Yeah. Yeah. Logit for sure. So yes.

Speaking of curls, Molk. Right. You need that protein. That's probably why you can curl that much on that train. You know, a protein in the form of a dessert booya.

Don't forget about that. Oh yeah. That is to sum up the JOCO fuel supplementation line.

Oh wait, no jacoway de work and milk. All good. You can get it. Vitamin Shoppe. You can get it at Origin Main Dotcom. You can also get jiujitsu stuff there. You can get ghys you can get a rash guard you can get. So that's good. You're covered kind of her jujitsu, but you're not really covered for the street if you only have a guy. That's true. So that's why you have to have Origin Jeans, which you can wear on the street.

You can kind of wear them on the massive justice as well if they're delpit dudes because they're flexible.

OK, so you get jeans, you can get boots, you can get T-shirts, you can get roosegaarde skis, hats, hoodies.

So all that stuff made in America.

And by the way, when you're like, oh, it's it feels good to be a part of that. That's what everybody feels like when you when you're, when you're when you put on an origin. T shirt, when you put on an orange and hoodie, when you put on an orange and pair of jeans, you're part of what we are doing, bringing manufacturing back to America.

And that's awesome.

Yes, sure. What you mean Dotcom? Also JoCo JoCo as a store. It's called JoCo Store.

So this is if you want to represent while we are on the path that we are on, actually, we too have Ashkenaz a little bit more indicative of the path directly simazine.

Also made all the other bioregion. Yes.

So we do have origin ration cards manufactured in America, made in America, designed by not Pete Roberts, but in America, but in America.

But yes, designed in America. Maybe by Charles. Yes. In terms of visual impact.

Sure. So there's two different people in the world, right? Some people look at the Pete Roberts stuff and they go, hey, I like that. Some people might think they want something a little bit more on the JoCo store side.

Yes. Like whether that indicative of the path.

Yes, sir. That's where you ask. So, yes, there are also T-shirts on there.

Discipline equals freedom. Good. You know, you got to represent these things. Get after it. Some hats on there, some hoodies on there, some shorts on their shorts and.

Sort just straight up in board shorts. I like it. That's cool. I don't have mine yet.

That's true on the jacket. Some of us are sort of in the game. Some of us are. You're the what do you call it? You're the second guy. What do you call it when like the first people, the primary people get their stuff?

You know, it's the first one. Is it a first responder? No, it's not a first. It's like that early adapter, boom. I'm over here in the rear. You're out the gear.

You're early, early followers or something like this. Either way, you'll get yours will get out. These are all good things. Tropical store, dotcom, if you like something on there, get some.

Don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe to this podcast. Don't forget also that we have some other podcasts. We've got JoCo unraveling with Darryl Cooper. We've got grounded. We've got Warrior Kid podcast. We've got a YouTube channel where Echo allegedly puts effort into making videos from the top groups that we like.

And in no time, any time that the video is long, you can expect to see no no effects, no effects. But if the video is short, you can see an overload of effects. You can be the judge. You can leave comments. If you think Echo put an appropriate amount of explosions in a video, you can say appropriate. Yes. If you think he did not, you can put lacking. Those are your two choices just to put in the comments, either appropriate or lacking.

I think if you look at a long video, you're probably going to put lacking since there's zero.

No, but that's appropriate. So I'm saying zero is appropriate here. A lot of people don't feel that way.

A lot of people wouldn't mind a little visual stimulation.

But whatever noted, you're over there on your own program also got an album called Psychological Warfare, which is an album where I talk about some things. If you're maybe heading down the wrong path, maybe you're about to make a bad decision. Don't do it. Press play on your MP three player on your phone device, device of whatever kind that's putting music, putting things, putting sounds into your ears.

Go ahead, hit psychological warfare, overcome that weakness. No factor, push through it.

I look guaranteed guarantee that you'll after the fact, be appreciative of psychological warfare. You're going into psychological warfare. You want to win. Yes. You want to win that battle. When you win that battle guaranteed, you're going to feel better. You're not going to look back and say, damn, I really wish I would have had that zero chance of that happening. There's zero chance that you look back and say, I wish I wouldn't have listened to psychological warfare and skip the workout.

No, you get done with work workout you like. Yes. Yeah, I won the battle. Yeah.

There's literally no circumstance where you're like, dang, I'm so happy I slacked off like, you know. Yeah. So happy, so stoked.

I like a good thing I slacked off under those circumstances.

You're right, 100 percent. You might want a visual representation of these things. You can get that from flip side canvas dotcom. Dakota Meyer, that's his company, he's keeping it real. Also got some books, the code, the evaluation, the protocol, leadership strategy and Tactics, Field Manual. All the answers are in that book. By the way, all these aren't all the questions that I could ask. Their audience is always in there.

Oh oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Page forty seven. What about this page ninety eight. What about that. What about what I do.

And my boss does this page one hundred and fourteen where the warrior kid one, two and three Mikey in the dragon's teeth to teach a little kid to overcome fear.

Can you imagine a superpower you have when you're a little kid and you realize you don't need to be afraid, you give them that power, give them like the dragon's discipline because Freedom Field Manual. How to get after and then, of course, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership, the foundational principles written by myself and my brother Leif Babin, we also have and leadership consultancy we talked about today.

If you want help with your leadership, go to Echelon front dot com, and that's how you can get us in the game with you if online, that is.

The online training J-P talked about it today. I talked about it, I think, a little bit today, but we've been referring to back to it a lot because we're getting a lot of good questions. Problem-Solving leadership situations being handled. It's us live if you want to ask a question. If you actually want to ask J.P. Dinello question, do you have to travel to Texas to do that? No, you can go to Jeff online on a Wednesday and JP will there.

And you might have got a question for JP if you want to ask me a question. Do you have to come to California to do that? No, you don't. You can go to EAF online. You can ask me a question. What if it's a complicated question? Cool. Bring it home. What if it's a question that's too long for Twitter? Great. You're not on Twitter. You're sitting in a Zoome meeting. You got some good answers on the ad and some good.

That's what we do. So go f online dot com if you want to engage with us there. We also have the muster. Two of them this year have been canceled, Orlando and Phoenix. The next one is in Dallas, December 3rd and 4th. A lot of people that we're going to either Orlando or Phoenix are now coming to Dallas. We're probably going to have to do some kind of social distancing. That means less seats available. So if you want to come, go to extreme ownership dotcom and enroll, we have F overwatch.

Executive leadership, what you need inside your organization, why not get someone that has the principles that we talked about today in their mind and can apply them, someone from the military, someone with experience in leadership positions that can come into your organization and help move you in the right direction, go to f overwatched dot com. I always talk about America's Mighty Warriors dot org. That's what JP just talked about. I always say that my family's mission has become to help service members.

There's a service member, JP How does she help? By providing medical treatment to heal up military members that have made sacrifices. So if you want to get involved or do you want to donate, go to America's Mighty Warriors, a dog, help veterans.

And if you have too much time on your hands and you you want to hear just a few more of my monotonous monologues, or if you want to hear more, a little just a little bit more of Echo Charles's riotous ramblings, you can find us on the website, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, EKOS, adequate Charles.

I am at Jocke Willink and JP is at J.P. Denel D I and an e l l two ns two ls on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook echo.

Charles, any closing thoughts.

No, I have no closing thoughts. Good to see JP again. Yes. Well JP, anything else. Thank you. To you and life for the opportunity that you've given my family, like Dave Burke and I have talked many times, his family knows where all this comes from. My kids are well aware of everything that Uncle Leif and Uncle JoCo has given them. And, you know, again, thank you to Amanda for her support. It is the ultimate cover move.

I could not do what I do with you guys if it wasn't for her support.

So she is. She's my queen. She is everything. I don't treat her as good as I should. And I need to do a better job at that and understand that I could not have the opportunity that I have with you guys if it was not for her and the kids supporting everything that I do. And I don't I don't want you in life or any other anybody on the team to everything that I take this for granted that I feel like I deserve more than I should get.

I am thankful to be here. I'm thankful for my seat at the table and I will always be with you guys until the end.

Well, first of all, as far as Amanda goes, I'm thinking maybe Amanda Mango is on the horizon.

Get her little signature drink. Yeah. And I'm not going to open up a debate with you right now in terms of thanking me.

And I probably told you this at least probably five times, no more than that in certain situations that you don't ever have to thank me for anything. I thank you for what you did for me, for what you did, for tasking a bruiser, for what you did for the teams, for what you do to the country and for our country.

So never have to thank me.

I thank you and all the other military personnel out there on those forgotten barricades.

Who protect our way of life in the world, thanks to all of you and to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the other first responders. Thanks to all of you for standing up to serve even when you're under attack from all sides. And to everyone else out there. No one said that the path is going to be easy and it's not. That's the way life is.

And you're going to go through some low spots and you might be running low on ammo. And yet you might even feel like. There's no hope. But you know what doesn't matter? Keep fighting. Keep keep fighting, keep striving, keep going and don't give up, because the only real failure is actually giving up. And if you don't give up. You will not fail them. And until next time, this is JP and Echo and JoCo.