[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I kind of formulated my little argument. As an individual, you can hang out in the courtyard. So as a group, you can't. But as an individual, you can. So I was going around, and so all the, there was security, and then the RAs, resident advisors, I think, whatever, they're saying, hey, you guys can't hang here, right? Hundreds of people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I knew most of them. So I was just going around saying, hey, you don't have to leave. And I'd, I'd say that argument where it's like, you can stay here. Like there's no rule against staying right here. You know, we can't have a party, but if you just say you're, I'm just here cruising by myself and I don't know, you know, I'm not with them kind of an idea. You can't go. And I was right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was one of the, one of the things for sure. But it worked though!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every once in a while, yes, if like, let's say I worked on a Saturday and I don't work on a Sunday, or whatever the days are, and then, you know, the manager or whatever, cause we're all friends in there too, so, you know, we'd close up and then yes, we'd have like one drink, two drinks. You can't just drink all the alcohol in the bar, you know, it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you gotta drive home, you gotta, you know, like it's not party time and it's late. You're not gonna, you know, I mean, although that probably happened, you know, once or twice or whatever, but generally speaking, no. So you just have one or two and that's it. And again, not every day, just cause you're around it every day. Like I'm not drinking every day. Most people not like that. It's just on the days off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is correct and here's why which is like something that like you kinda go in and out of remembering this idea that thinking back then even in college where the reason it wasn't a problem is because I had other stuff going on that was more important than hanging out and partying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or another way to put it is alcohol didn't fit into the more important things that I was doing. Like it didn't fit, it would always mess it up. So like you can't, if you're into your fitness, you know, kind of a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being a young single guy in San Diego, whatever, and I was always into fitness, whatever, but I was kind of into it. So if I'm drinking, you can't work out hungover.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not sustainable, you know? And I knew that. And I was really into like, the working out process was fun to me. So I was like, frick, if you work out, it makes working out. Or if you drink, it's not fun to work out the next day. It's not at all. No matter how much you power through it, it's not fun at all. So it was night and day. So it was like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would have answered no to most of them, but I still would have been alcohol because I would have answered yes to at least one of those and I know I do have to answer yes to a lot of the ones that the doctor asked you, you know, you have more than, you know, four drinks or whatever per week. Oh yeaah. Yeaah, I have more than four drinks in one day and I drink more than once a week, you know, kind of a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's the exactly the same my obviously it not was shooting in time, but with the stuff that I cared about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, drinking basically was like second to all that stuff, so I could fit it in. You know, if you can get five workouts a day or a week, uhm, get to work on time, do a good job at work, not get arrested and stuff like that, you're like, you're kinda good to go. So you feel like you're good to go. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Five, six years. Five, six, seven years? Yeah, five years ish, you know. Yeah, like I would say I was not an anomaly as far as drinking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so, and fast forward, cause I got into jujitsu, which was even more like, hey, no drinking, you know, like kinda...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You, you don't have many fitness goals you're trying to achieve when you're injured like that. So you're just trying to maintain, trying to do rehab and stuff like that. So in the meantime, what are you going to do? Kind of a thing. And yeah, I was always into that creative stuff, you know, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well at that time I think it was vodka and grapefruit juice. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first few podcasts I would drink while we're doing the podcast. That's insane. Yeah. And that was just like, like the first drink of the night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we're just buzzing. After that one drink, it's like you don't really feel it till the end of it anyway, so it doesn't, it, that was not a, it didn't really change me at all. Even when I stopped drinking, I didn't feel any difference at all. But uhm, no, and here's the thing, here's, and I'm gonna say this part because it's a trap, because this is part of the trap, where,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because, you know, it's like an addiction, right? So, there's good addictions and bad addictions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And of course both are kinda debatable on certain levels or whatever, but I got addicted to the learning process of all this video and CGI and all this stuff because at that time that was the beginning of the resource flood, you know, like on YouTube and so you can learn anything on YouTube. Like right now you can learn pretty much anything on YouTube. You can literally learn how to be a lawyer on YouTube right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Trap, I kinda fell in, cause I was, I got addicted to that as well. That's all I wanted to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, straight. So a lot, it's like during the day, it wasn't as fun, but during the day, and I'd try to get a workout in of some sort.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That is correct, that is correct, yeaah. I mean, we didn't have kids till like later, so it was just me and her, but uhm, yeaah, oh yeaah, fully. Like I wasn't going places, even if I would go places, I would be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, fully. I was addicted to that. But then, at the drinking, now I was really addicted to the process, you know, because you get to kind of...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So uhm, but like I said, like there's external things that can make the addiction to the drinking way more powerful. Like if you're addicted to like going out looking for chicks or like, you know, the other thing that you're into, if it involves drinking, like it makes it like double, double addictive kind of a thing. Just so happens, mine was a constructive thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, which ended up being a little double-edged sword because now I can rationalize it more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, in the next day. Oh yeah, you know how many like, so we'd laugh about, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yeaah, you know, yeaah, that was the process right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, fully. And a lot of that is because I had kids. So when you have kids or whatever, you make those adjustments. But it's weird because I'm not competing in Jiu-Jitsu anymore. And, you know, fitness is kind of like, ehhh, you know, like I don't care that much about it. Even though I did care about it, it was still part of the whole gig, but I didn't care as much because the career part of my life was like, uhm, was improving, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And was kinda establishing itself before the podcast. So as long as I could get the work done, as long as I could get a workout in, and as long as I wasn't, uhm, failing as a parent,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The rest of the, you know, is, I fit in the drinking. And just so happens, you can make a lot of adjustments, you know, with these things, especially when you run your own schedule. So, you can go, okay, I'm gonna drink, and then, okay, you know, kinda, and kinda battle through everything else, and still kinda be able to be successful in it. You can pull that off. So yes, I wasn't getting, like, it wasn't super heavy, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Basically I was maintaining, for sure. But I'd go in and out though. Like I would quit for like a month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's no big deal, I'm good. That was it. That was it. Yeaah. Exactly right. I never felt like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every once in a while when I'd wake up, like, actually in the hungover realm, where I drank kinda too much and I'm physically feeling not that good, then I'd be like, man, I really need to stop. But then if it wasn't that, I was like, cause I proved to myself every single day that I can power through the day, even if I'm a little bit dragging. You know, it was that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, sir. So, and here, I think this is important because I think a lot of people are kinda in this zone as well, where


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Covid lockdown, yes. I got to the point where I could get good workouts in and still drink every single day. And a lot too. But I could still get like PR workouts in, like good workouts in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, exactly, exactly right. Drink a bunch of water, you know, some gatorade, like frickin', you know, walk around a little bit, do some work, you know, I'm just sitting down in front of the computer, you know, hanging with my kids, like, kinda playing around, go outside, throw the ball, you know, a little bit, you know, like that kind. It wasn't like, have to go to this work and make all these decisions really function like cognitively, you know, it wasn't that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, yep, exactly, exactly right. And, you know, it kinda helped that I had a real tolerant wife, or have a real tolerant wife, so she would just be like, oh, well you were up late working, cause technically I was. So it's like, yeah, it's just his schedule.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the tooth fairy or something. But, but like I said, it was kinda like my work was delivering, you know, where there was no metric that you could say, hey, you're failing at work. In fact, it was the opposite. It was like, oh yeah, you're, you know, things are growing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I said, there was no metric to say that I was regressing, you know, in life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not, not noticeably like given, I don't know, maybe like a general standard, you know, where, like I said, like bruh, I don't go out and party, I don't go out and get into fights, I don't do illegal stuff, I don't go to jail, I'm not going to jail, I never had a DUI, nothing like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you could go look into your brain and be like, hey, am I reaching my potential or whatever? Then yeah, but that's different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think throughout the drinking process there was something in my head saying like, this isn't good, like literally this is bad. I don't know, we, we're not at the maturity level yet to admit exactly why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know it's there, lingering, you know. And you're saying you. Me, in myself, in my own brain. So I would do these little tactics where I'd be like, hey, freaking, I'd pour my drinks out, like for the night, you know, I'd pour them out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like beforehand, be like, okay, there's like, you know, I know how much vodka goes in one big drink. So I pour them out. So I'm like, okay, I got four drinks tonight or five drinks tonight or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then I take the bottle and I'd be like, Sarah, freaking put this, hide this somewhere. You know, so I don't, cause you know, after a few drinks, that plan goes right out the window. You just want that other one cause you want the fun to keep going. So I knew that and so I got down to the system, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And sometimes it wouldn't work, because before the night would end, for some, I don't know, for whatever reason, I'd go like, I don't know, go in the bathroom or something, and I'd see, oh, that's where she hid the bottle, so I'd know it, you know? Like that, I don't know, it was, it was real messed up. It was like, behind the scenes, there was some-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly right. It wasn't perfect because I'd defeat the system sometimes. But the point there isn't...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, you know, whether I felt good or bad about it or nothing like that. It was more of that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was obvious that something was wrong, that I was fighting against, even though like I felt or I could rationalize to myself that it was working. It was obvious that something like was wrong and I could feel it, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, one of these moments of clarity, I'm like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I'm like, oh man, I would really love to do that. Then I'm like, wait a second, I could totally do that, like, tomorrow, right? You know, like, at this moment. But then why don't I? And it never really happened. Then one time, it was just one of those happenstance moments of clarity that I would be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not like, fuck it, I'm, I'm gonna make the plan. Tell Sarah, you know, Sarah grew up in the snow and she loves that kind of stuff. And she was like saying, so anyway, I made the plan. I was like, hey, let's go snowboarding right here. And Sarah signed right on cause she grew up in the snow, she loves it. She was freaking super happy. She was even saying, freaking, I've been waiting for you to get out of your routine to start doing more stuff like this or whatever. I was like, okay, cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then we did it and we went up there and it was like the best man. Everyone freaking loved it. I freaking loved it. I liked it even better than I thought I would. So it's like one of those things and it was just yet another hint that bro there's a world out here that like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is like limitless that you can, things you can do, things you can learn, things you can, you know, have the potential of like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Embracing and succeeding in, you know, on all these different levels. And it's all out there waiting. But that drinking, which that, it always came back down to the drinking. Cause I can work, you know, I can work a lot and still do that stuff cause I'll have the energy to do it. But drinking, you spend the whole, just like I said, you spend the whole day recovering, essentially. So you're like, if you're not in the mood to do something,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was like a struggle to go, you know, where I'd be just dragging myself to-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think we're all kinda like this who've been into jujitsu for a long time. Back in the day, it's like you couldn't wait to go to jujitsu. Even like when you w- when you wake up, like in my case,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be like, shit, how long is it till I get to go to jujitsu? Just can't wait. Everything about it is fun. Doesn't matter if you get tapped or don't tap. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. It's just like, just being there and doing it was fun. Everything from the moment you step in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'd always think about it, but bro when you're dragging, bro that's kind of the last thing I want to do right now is go get freaking choked by Jaco and stuff and freaking get claustrophobia cause you won't let me up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah, fully. And if habitually that would happen so much that after a while,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I kind of like forgot about it in this sense where you forget about jujitsu because it's just not in the schedule and then every once in a while it'll click. They'll be like, oh wait, I could go to jujitsu right now. Then I'd like drag myself and go. So I'd hardly ever go. I'd go like once a week, once every two or three weeks, you know, like that kind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I would say that that's a real thing in my experience. I felt like that was a real thing for sure. Cause like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To, to think back and analyze it, it was like, from an idea standpoint, all my ideas, you know, and this goes for everyone by the way, for the most part, where when you drink, all your ideas seem good, not just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Video, who cares about making videos or making creative stuff? Just say in life, when you go out drinking, all ideas are good. Bro, let's all take off our clothes, go to the freaking pier in PB and jump off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know if you looked at me or not, but I just don't like it. Let's get in a fight. That seems like a good idea. And then you'll just execute, you know? It's like that's everybody. Everyone thinks an idea- most ideas seem good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it can kind of help you when you're formulating creative ideas. So you're just like everything is included. So you're just like doing it and following through and it's part of the learning process as well. So it's like there's always a big payoff for me for that. So it would help me, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we were at sushi and I was drinking sake too, by the way, and it still made an impact where he was explaining to me one of those characters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, and I was asking, well yea, you know, why not, or whatever. And I wasn't trying to get him to drink at all, I was just wondering, like, what's that, you know, what's the process. Keep in mind, like, nowadays too, it's, we slowly hear more and more people kind of start saying like, hey yea, I haven't drank for like two years. It was just getting in the way, you know. And even you, what you would say, but I just thought you were just different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But even you saying something very specific, which really landed on me after I stopped drinking, was you just said simply, drinking doesn't help you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's all you said. So I was like, oh damn. But, before that, Carey said, oh well, he's like, in a nutshell, the reason I quit drinking is because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On one hand, if I drink, my life goes to shit every single time. And on this, on this hand, when I don't drink, my life literally gets better and better and better and doesn't stop. And I was like, oh damn, that's like a good, even if that's not factually true for anyone, like that's literally how it works most.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, or ever since I picked up drinking more, my life has improved, you know, by so much.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. Yeaah, and it was, it was a fun time and that, that did add like another little inkling of an ingredient to be like, cause like I said, like I wasn't 100% okay with it, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I did, I wasn't, I wasn't not okay enough with it to actually stop, so, but that added like another little thing that really stuck with me. That pushed, nudged me in the direction of like, okay, at some point this is gonna have to stop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like a super anti-climactic ending to a movie or something like that. It wasn't like, oh yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you kind of do the math and you kind of like search your feelings and all this stuff and you kind of realize wait a second, drinking even short term has not been really serving me in a way. And then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I could ever find it in myself to like not drink for a week, it's like wha- I feel so much better just in, in general. And like, you kind of consider, sure, I did some cool things like outside of my normal routine and you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Developed cool traditions and, you know, snowboarding was just one of them. And that is cool, but imagine how many other things could like materialize. If I just freakin' finally just turn my back on drinking, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well before that, that guy, we were talking with him beforehand, and he's a successful dude, like works in, I think Silicon Valley or something like that, started some company with an engineer or something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That impacted me too, by the way. Cause I wasn't, I didn't really like make any kind of decision, especially at that point where it, I was just doing camp, like I don't really drink in camp. I think, I mean maybe a few years ago I had like a, you know how they have wine sometimes, I had like had a drink, I don't drink in camp for whatever reason. Uhm, and then,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Experiencing that right there was like, really thinking back, it was like a good, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this guy, bro, he almost went down. Straight up. Cause it's not like you saw the whole thing happening. We didn't know anything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I think so. But it was like a light, it wasn't like a, you know, draw the line in the sand kind of a decision. It was just like, bro, I think, I think I'm kinda done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do believe that everything is a spectrum. But I think that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being an alcoholic, this is what it seems like, that, that, that's a spectrum as well, but the really, the way that to ensure that it's gonna be effective, that you can win the fight against that kind of stuff, is to draw the line in the sand, for sure. That, as far as like, reliably win, that's, that's the way to do it, 100%.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that's- Right now. That is, uh, sorted itself out. That method, it sorted itself out to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's terrible. Yep. You do notice a lot of that stuff too, like how much, and this sounds like obvious and there's nothing new, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like how much alcohol is part of like our culture and even the good parts of our culture, right? So you know, we just traveled recently so I'm looking at all the cool advertisements on the


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a few of the clips are like, you know, the parents cheersing their wine and their like, uh, tropical drinks and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They didn't say, hey, there's alcohol in here, but it's like obviously alcohol, like that's what they're selling, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, the wine was obviously alcohol too, but uhm, but it's like just, and it's just it, that's just how, that's just part of it. You know, it's not like a big deal and they're not saying, hey, wink, wink, you can, if you really want it, you can have some of this stuff if you really want to go hard. They're not saying that. They're saying, hey, this is part of the family wholesome, refreshing, recuperative experience of our awesome hotel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I always talk to him about drinking, even when I was drinking, we'd just talk about it, the effects, whatever. If I go like, one day without drinking, the next day not feeling that drag, bro, I feel like Superman. I was like, bro, no wonder guys can work so hard. They feel like freaking they have endless energy, you know? Cause I'm so used to dragging, you know? Uhm, and, but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For whatever reason it just didn't, you know, take hold or whatever. Uhm, but, so of course I feel that, like you just have, and you're not dragging, and when you're used to dragging, like for just literally like a decade of dragging pretty much every day is the norm. Damn. And now you're not dragging, you're like, holy cow, it's like you shed like a big ball and chains just cut loose, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mentally that's literally what it feels like. And then it's weird because that feeling just gets stronger and stronger as like the weeks go on. So you're like, holy cow, like I didn't know, like, it was weird, like I always...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had this happen where I'd be dragging and then, and if you drink it enough, I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'd feel that, not super strong, but I'd feel it every once in a while where I'd be like, what is this dumb, like, life is kinda like pointless, in a way. Not, it's not suicidal, nothing like this, but it's just kinda like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, you work, and you do this, and it's like, who, I mean, but why does that even matter? You know, you go down this weird spiral, it's not super powerful, but it's there. And I'm like, yeah, I dunno, whatever, alright, cool, whatever. And then I go-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I do a hard workout because like I said, I got into a point to the point where I could totally do a sick workout being hungover.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just more of a feeling, you know? And I was like, there's some chemical shit going on in my head that, that is causing me to feel like this. And this working out hard like this is kinda helping me balance it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that feeling, that the workout at that moment, cause it's happened a few times, that feeling just like, is like constantly there. Becomes your norm. Yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's like, every once in a while I'll be doing some normal everyday shit and then I'll be like, why am I having so, like, why am I enjoying this so much right now? And then usually I'll say it cause Sarah knows that I stopped drinking, or you even, a lot of times I'll be like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like how I said, isn't jujitsu just so freaking awesome or whatever? Like that when I'm having those feelings, like I'll express it to anyone around who can appreciate it. I'll be like, bruh, you know how freaking cool it is to not drink or what? You know how I'll say that sometimes?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is because of that reason. Cause you start like appreciating everything more. And I did anyway. Uhm, and, and as the weeks kinda went on, it just got more powerful, more, and more powerful, you know? So, that, that was it. That was the experience. So now all these ideas that you're like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I didn't like tell her and I'm trying to remember cause again, it wasn't like this big deal. I was just cause, and let's face it, like I've probably said it, I think I'm done with drinking a bunch of times before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, right. That's what I feel. It would have felt pointless, yes, to say it like, hey, but I did end up saying it. I said, but I said, hey, I think I'm kind of done with drinking. I just said that and she was like, yeah, me too. You know, she'll see that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I think in the moment she thought, okay, we're gonna try this again. You know, kind of a thing. And then, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, actually, you know, I think most of us are like this where it's like, oh shit, that's what we're doing? Okay, I can sign on to that, you know, like, unless it's like some bad decision, you know, so it was kind of that going on. And then yeah, so that was, that was it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, so I'm trying to think, have I ever had that since? Every once in a while, here's, it's, this is weird. Anytime I hear like an old song that I used to like a lot, because really, when I really analyze my feelings, it's more like, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The benefit that alcohol did bring in the short term was like I could feel more. Like I could feel like, oh the feeling like, you know, if you really get into a certain song, you know, the feeling. It was like, oh man, if I had a beer to help enjoy this, it was more that. So I'll be like, oh man, if I had a like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Feeling, you know, it's like once the song ends, you're like freaking whatever. That was a dumb thought kind of thing. So it was that, uh, I will say this though, and, and this is kind of important too, where it's nothing new, but it's, this is really, I am convinced this is a massive, massive deal. Where, okay, so when I go out to sushi, I always drink sake.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I went out to sushi a few times, once with my son, Nosaki, for probably the first time in a long time. It was just me and him though, he's seven. Nosaki. So I was like, oh, freaking, it was way better with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, way better than, than my memories of going and drinking sake. I don't think I've ever gone with just him before, but nonetheless, I remember thinking, man, this is better. I'm like talking to him way more into this. Now, a few weeks later, I went with my cousin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and I hadn't seen him for a while or whatever, and I went out to sushi. And it was cool, really cool to see him, but it was not fun. It wasn't as fun as, like, it seemed-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so it was good overall. Of course, it was a great time catching up with him and all this stuff, but put it this way, man, it probably had a lot to do with my expectation because him, he's, you know, he's a professional comedian. You know, so I'm thinking festive, festive party time. See what I'm saying? But it was a little, it was a lot more mature. That's what it was. It was a mature interaction, you know, which was cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think it, comparing it to my expectation, it was like, oh shoot, it wasn't the party that I almost, I guess in a way expected, you know? So there was that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, because when you go in certain environments,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, if, put it this way, he doesn't drink. And he was with his girlfriend as well, and she said, oh yea, I drink, but not really. So it's not like she's gonna start drinking when I just, when we're talking about not drinking. So none of us were drinking. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If he were to, in that moment, if he were to be like, oh yeaah, like, yeaah, I drank freaky, let's get some sake, come on, like, all good. Not in a pressure way, I'm just saying like, if he were to offer that up as an option.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I- and I was like, oh yea fuck yea, I started drinking sake or whatever, I wouldn't have been surprised at all. Because of that, you know, thing, and-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, because I, I didn't, it's weird because it doesn't feel like I, like, drew a line in the sand. I just, I just came to the realization drinking doesn't help you, you know, kind of a thing. Seems a little bit sketchy. Yes, it does. Yeah, seems a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The best way to, the best way to do it is be a person who doesn't know any better and want to drink some sake with me. Then, yes I will.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it's gonna be to on purpose pull that off. I don't know, it doesn't seem like it'd work. But, uhm, but yeah, that's why I say it's a big deal because you can go in a certain specific environment and relapse real easy. Especially if you can justify it like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like, it's like habit, it's a habitual thing but like there's more to it it feels like. There's something a lot more compelling. Cause habit seems like something where you should just snap your brain and get out of the habit. Like I feel like that's kind of the thing even though I know there's more to it. Routine?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Routine, habit, but almost on a level of necessity. So like, if I go to sushi, or if, let's say I go bowling, and I'm like, okay, now, when I go bowling, I don't drink beers now. And I go, and now bowling is really boring now. Because all that, like, association kinda works off


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Each other, you know, to make this experience. Now, that one lacking element provides this experience that's not fun, not as fun. It's not as quote unquote pleasurable because of all the, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now you're in that same experience, bowling, and now it's super boring. So now you're kinda angry, like, hey man, I had this thing that was an enjoyable experience, part of my routine, my tradition, my whatever, you know, my whole thing, and now I don't like it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you kind of rebel against that and add that ingredient again. You know, it's like that, that idea su- it's, it's uh, it's super strong, you know? So it's hard to defeat unless you really kind of dig deep and analyze it for what it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, I do actually and that, that went through my mind so much where I'm like, freaking, this is how Jaco does it, he just doesn't drink. You know, it's like, I know there's more to it than that, I know, but the feeling is that night and day where, you know, the idea of, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, if you were like, hey, your life, like, if you had like some, like, terrorist person, and was like, hey, I'm gonna kill you if you don't work out five days a week this week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm gonna kill you. The moment that it turns midnight and you haven't worked out, I'm gonna kill you. He's right there. And you can't kill him? Bro, you'd easily do that. It wouldn't be a problem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's like, it's probably, it's super simple to do it. You just essentially find reasons not to, right? So- Excuses. Exactly right, excuses, right? So excuses are powerful, but they're only as powerful as you allow them to be. So if you can, if you say, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna set this goal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Short term, medium term, whatever. And then you don't do it, you can't control your mind. You, for real, can't control your mind. Cause somewhere along the line, you said, yeah, I said I'd do that, but I'm not gonna do that. You know, kind of thing. It's like, bro, you can't control your mind for some reason. I mean...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know how you, your whole, it's half joke, it's probably not even half joke, it's like probably like 1% joke, the rest truth, even though it sounds like a joke, you know how you're like, oh, how is a donut more powerful than your mind or whatever, you know, like the old school-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're against sugar coated lies, like that thing. So really think about that. In actual, boots on the ground, freakin' reality, real life, think about that. Like I...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do not like, let's say, I don't know, let's say it's an aesthetic thing, right? You'd like, I don't like the way, I don't know, my body looks. Or I don't like my health, my current health. Health.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably, yea, if you lose your health, you lose whatever, yea, the most important thing, you only get one body, like, you know, that whole thing, really look, analyze it for what it is, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the thing could, you could literally like throw it down the can and it'd be done. Throw it in the trash. It's gone, you know? It's not a thing that follows you around and forces your hand behind your back where you gotta like tap or nothing like that. It's like just existing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would, I mean, you're absolutely right. It's almost like not even an analogy. It's almost like literally that's what you're doing because the grappling dummy, like your mind...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Made it into a grappling dummy. It's just cotton and freaking leather and cloth. Like put together in a certain, your mind was like, ooh that looks like a person. And it's over there in the corner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you chose to walk over there and you didn't trip over it, you walked and got into the triangle choke of the, you put his legs over it, you put energy into putting his legs over your head, under your arm, and then like squeeze, you squeezed it. He didn't squeeze, that's just cotton.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, exactly right. The same exact thing. And here's the thing, it's not like you just tap that and whatever. With a donut, you literally are taking a step backward with, in a very important, one of the most important things that you have in your whole life. And you took a step backwards just cause.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Big time. Actually, I would even go one step further and say it became clear. Because before I realized it was there, so like moment to moment you're like, okay, you can make the evaluation, but now I feel like I can like actually see it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For what it is, like this actual real existing kind of thing. Yeah, I feel like I have way more access to it now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You gave me more shit about getting a coke the first time, like a coca soda.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actually imagined it. I just knew it as like kinda like the answers to a test almost. You know, like kinda like... If someone were to ask me, hey...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, how much better? How does that look when I do this? How does that look? I never really thought real deep into that part of it. I was just basically going moment to moment, you know, like so if I could pull it off, you know, one day, one week without drinking, then I could feel it, you know, but I didn't really like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I guess I failed to formulate any kind of like structure or plan or vision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Into the future, you know, I was like, cool, I did it and I know that's good for me, you know, but now I can kind of cut loose and whatever, you know, kind of a thing. It was like a moment to moment kind of thing. I think once it kind of takes hold and then you recognize it for what it is and then you kind of get exposed to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a real way, what you could be doing and what your life could be and you're exposed to it actually happening. And then you say, okay, I choose right now to pursue this and not pursue this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And go back to what frickin K-Dog Kerry Hilton said, where you just go binary, go be like, okay, hey, I could either go this path and be like, hey, my life is gonna go to shit every single time. And in real life, it doesn't go to shit every single time, level 10. No, it doesn't. But, it might go level .1.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, exactly right. And here's the thing, whether it adds up or not, I mean, it does add up. Yes. Oh, freak yeah, obviously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it doesn't matter, you're choosing to go negative per, like, per, like, event. You're choosing it as opposed to the other choice, go positive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's like, okay, so I could either go here where my life goes to shit every single time, or I could go here where my life improves every single time and doesn't end. So then you kind of, if you can kind of formulate that whole structure in your head and be like, I choose this one, right, it does become a lot easier for sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I like these little metaphors, like little visions, where you can kinda have like a vision of it, a quantified like vision, and it's almost like alcohol is this uhm, is this little devil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the more you justify it, the more the devil's like, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, you're like, no, no, no, but it's not, it's helping me in this creative way. Or it's like, it's not a problem, you know, I do it to have more fun with my friends, build relationships, you know, all this stuff where the devil's in there going, yes, yes, yes, exactly, like more of that, more of that, you know, kind of a thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But really what the devil is doing is finding its way into a bunch of parts of your life. In fact, the more the better. The more parts of your life that the devil can find his way into, the better for him. And then his goal is to just fuck it all up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the more you justify it, the more he's like, yes, yes, allow me into this part too. You know? It's like, yeah man, you're, you're stressed right now. I can help you with that. Like, let me help you with your stress, by the way. Put some alcohol in your stress. That'll help. That'll help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That sounds cute for sure, but kind of defeats the purpose a little bit. We're not doing that. Why even drink, actually in a way, and hey no offense, I'm not judging any person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Be honest, I've seen you, well, I've seen you appear really mad with DeanLischt a few times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but I don't know that I've ever felt really actually mad in jujitsu, ever. Yeaah. Even when I got injured, I was mad that I was injured. I would get mad if I'm injured. But I was glad I'm still doing jujitsu though. Yea true. You know, it's like to live by the sword, die by the sword, kind of a feeling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeaah. Also, discipline equals freedom. This is true.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's true, the more disciplined you are, the more free you are. Cut the ball and chain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what it is. Freakin' ballin' chain. Uhm, yea, but you wanna represent on this path where we're on the path. Drinkin' or not. Whether you chose to quit drinking, yet. Yeaah. Or not. We're still on the path. You wanna represent? ChocoStore.com. Discipline equals freedom. Good. These are good attitudes to have, by the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, that's where you can get your stuff. Hats and hoodies. Shirts, of course. Uhm, also this shirt locker, by the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we know discipline equals freedom. We see you wearing the, you know, the deal. And uhm, you'll see like a new one. They'll be like, hey, where'd you get that one? Like that one's like kind of cool. Like where'd you get that one? I never, I didn't see that one before. But yeah, that's kind of the phenomenon in a way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Good representation. There you go. Short Locker. It's called the Short Locker. It's on JacoStore. It's a cool subscription. You get a new one every month. Uh, you know, a new, new design every month. It's cool. On JacoStore.com.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, the cover? Milk cover? Okay, no, no, no. I do the cover, but then I just go one minute, one minute, one minute, one minute. One minute only. Four minutes? Yep. But with the top on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm a Connecticut kid, and it's actually surprising how many, uh, team guys that I discovered when I went to steel training, how many guys are from Connecticut. Yeah, a lot of big populace. I don't know what it is. Maybe someone in the water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All I know is that when I first joined up, within the first few years, I met at least a dozen or more dudes from Connecticut. Wow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, well, it says wrestlers and rowers and what I, I think one of the, one of the primary attributes required, if there's one most important attribute required to get through BUDs, it's compartmentalization. It's the ability to assess your environment, immediately prioritize what you need to focus on, and then focus on that until completion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, uh, you think about a rower and I never rode competitively, but I've talked to many rowers. Um, a rower is someone who's sitting in a boat and is part of a team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And has to literally just row until they puke. And if they, if they even break their rhythm for a second, they mess up the whole team. So it's literally a selfless sacrifice in, in a, in a team effort that they just have to gut it out until they're done. I mean, it is, is kind of one of the most intense compartmentalization moments, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure it's like sprinting in terms they have different, uh, different, uh, distances, but none of them are, are short.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to, and to, and to not to even dip a little bit is going to affect the team, which is fascinating to me. And of course wrestlers, I think, you know, and I would actually put any fighting discipline into this category, this idea that you are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You are in a ring with another human, so it's a highly uncertain situation. And, uh, and you have to, you have to compartmentalize and you have to basically adapt to everything you're seeing. And you are often being viewed by


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the external, so to give up in any capacity is going to mean injury or...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Least of, or, or, or, or I guess least, uh, fave, or least favorite embarrassment, injury or embarrassment. So I think, I think those, those sports I talk about,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't, I typically don't talk about attributes in the athletic endeavors because most, most sports are fairly certain environments, uh, other than a few. And the few that I do talk about are fighting sports, climbing in some cases, uh, rowing is pretty certain, but I think compartmentalization is, is definitely effective in that one. Check. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dad was a lawyer, mom stayed, stayed home with kids. Uhm, professional, she was a semi-professional pianist, so she used to spend most of her days practicing piano.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, it's funny, it, yeah, it was, I thought it was, I thought it was annoying, but then I had friends come over like, man, that's a really nice background. And I recognize, I do love classical music. I don't, you know, I don't over-index on it, but I do have a love for it. And so, uh, so yeah, it was, it was, it was nice. But yeah, really nice childhood, twin brother, older sister, younger brother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] None, uhm, my dad was a private pilot so he'd go flying on the weekends and so he'd take us all up and my twin brother and I got hooked from the, from the beginning, uhm, you know, he'd put us in the, in the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is in the right seat and we'd help, help them steer the aircraft. And so my favorite, my two favorite books growing up were Chuck Yeager's autobiography, Yeager and the right stuff. And I read those books. I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, first Air Force, then we found out that the Navy guys land on ships. We were like, well that's really cool, right? So, so then it was Navy, uh, all the way. This was pre-Top Gun, then Top Gun just made it, made it even worse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember, uh, reading an article, Navy pilot, and of course I was absorbing as much as I could back then, and the Navy pilot was quoted as saying, imagine, uh, putting a postage stamp in the middle of a large rug, turning out the lights, and then jumping and landing on that postage stamp with your tongue. That's what it's like. I was like, that's pretty good.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, yeaah, I, I, I tried everything when I was a kid. Back then you could. You didn't have to start a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, depending on where you grow up nowadays, you have to start, if you don't start early, you're not going to make the high school team, right? So anyway, I tried everything growing up. Uh, when I, when I got to high school, I decided I loved ice hockey, but I couldn't skate well enough to make the team. So I decided to play lacrosse. I felt like it was kind of a land version of ice hockey. And so I walked on the team freshman year, never having played.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Played four years and was captain by the end of the, by my senior year. That's legit. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I mean, I did track, I did track in the winter to get in shape for lacrosse, but, uh, that was, yeah, that was about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we were bent on Navy. Uhm, and so we were the kids, we were the kids who had pictures of jets, you know, in our notebooks, I had it all over my room. Pictures of Tom Cruise? Not so much Tom Cruise, but yeah, jets and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, so it was, yeaah, we were known, kind of, those who knew us in high school, they knew that the Divini boys wanted to go in the military, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So went, uh, first year to an aviation school down in Embry-Riddle. Oh, in Florida? Yeah, Embry-Riddle down in Florida. My brother, uh, went to FIT down in Florida. Uhm, the plan was let's get our


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's start learning how to fly or maybe get our pilot's license and go OCS. Uh, but after about a year there or half a year there, I realized well, first of all, I realized getting, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Paying $20,000 a year to get your pilot's license, right? It makes sense. So I, I majored in avionics, which I wasn't good at at all. Uh, my brother did get his license, but we also realized that the doors, after the Top Gun kind of surged, the doors for slots for OCS were closing. So we were like, nah, we should probably find a, an ROTC unit. And so we both applied to Purdue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was never, I didn't want to be a pilot. It was uhm, it was after the first Gulf War, there was a Newsweek article I saw and it was, it basically had a guy's face on it was camouflaged and said it was like special operations forces, right? And so I opened up this article and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, it was about seven pages, and it talked about all the spec ops units, so Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through those seven pages, there were probably 20, 25 pictures of guys, you know, doing different things like underwater, in the snow, skydiving, desert, jungle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, and then as I went to school, I still hadn't made a decision when I was in ROTC, but ultimately...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I said to myself, well, I know I can be a pilot, but I don't want to, I don't want to wonder if I could be a seal. And so, so I went that direction and fortunately got a bill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rotsey guys, nationwide, uhm, and I think, and it was like 16 Academy guys. And so, uh, I was able to link up with a guy in Connecticut who was running, he basically, he'd just started a program where he just, he was a, he was a retired reserve SEAL, uh, Captain Bissett. And, um, and he had helped a couple guys get through the, you know, get to the, get through the pipeline.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I linked up with him, he started, you know, helping me with the physical test, which ironically, back then I did, I think I did 11 pull ups for mine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Captain down there got a recommendation. So I met with them. They gave me recommendations and then he helped me put together a package, which I then gave to my ROTC unit because they didn't really know how to do the seal thing. Uh, in fact, you know, during our summer cruises, there's, there was something called mini buds and, um, I remember, you know, being at my unit, going to my, my unit officer and saying, Hey, can I go to mini buds? He was like, Oh, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let me look into that. And so a couple days later, I said, oh, you know, there's no more billets for Minibuds. I was like, oh, okay, check. And so I went on a normal Navy cruise. In fact, I went on a ship out here in San Diego.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, you know, it's fascinating. I think you can, you can agree with this because you were actually in the pre-war SEAL teams longer than I was. But when I got to the SEAL teams, you know, 97 or so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I went to the SEAL teams and I recognized that all the quote best SEALs were, or those who were considered the best SEALs were all the best PTers. They were the guys who came up, you know, first on the runs and all that stuff. And PT was kind of the measure at the time because we'd have these massive,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All those guys started to disappear. I mean, it didn't, you know, the guys who were actually good at war or good at the job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was, I was goon, I was goon squad. When I first got to Buds, I was goon squad. And I was literally on the weekends practicing my running, you know, on the beach on the soft sand because I really hadn't done it. Uhm, and slowly I got up to the edge of the pack or the back and then into the middle and you know, but I was goon squad a lot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, I mean, books back then were, you know, hard to find, uh, brave men, dark waters, uh, you know, or Kelly wrote a couple, there was one, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Call the commandos, which was probably the most recent, it was kind of the, at the time, the most recent book and it kind of outlined hell week. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had a sense of what was going on. Uhm, the be something special recruiting video. There you go, that's all you need. That's all you need, right? Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ultimately, I think, uhm, I, I, I can say I wasn't prepared enough, uhm, but, you know, when I got there, I just, I recognized, hey, I just had to do what I needed to do, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even the O course, I mean, you know, again, on the weekends or after work, I was going to practice the O course. I was running on sands, you know, just to get going. Cause I said, I just have to have to do it. So, and, uh, what I knew I could do, I think one of the things I recognized at Bud's fairly quickly was that, uh, it actually wasn't about the physical. It was about just keep going, you know, and, um, and you almost come to the sense that, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for that recognition and that almost that comfort in the fact that's yeah, I'll just keep going. Even if it's slow, I'll just keep moving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, running was probably the most challenging. Uhm, especially beach running, yeaah. I would say...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The water stuff, I always loved the water stuff. Uhm, so if there was anything, so drownproofing was pretty much my favorite thing to do. Oh, okay. Uhm, because it was a time that no one was screwing with you. Yeah. So, so I remember they'd have dog and ponies and, you know, as the Buds class, they'd have


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They'd say, hey, we need volunteers to do these dog components. I'd always volunteer for drown proofing because it was the time they'd leave me alone. You know, for 30 minutes I could just bob in the, in the pool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I grew up in Connecticut right on the Long Island Sound, so I was always a water rat. So yeah, everything water related I was comfortable doing. Uhm, I had learned to scuba dive in college just deliberately, uhm, and just recognized I just loved, I just, I loved being in the water, underwater. So pool comp, yeah, I wasn't,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wasn't an issue for me. I mean, uhm, yeaah, obviously I had the normal stress for it, but I was able to get done the first time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, especially if you fail a few times and then you have to do it, uh, you have to wait the weekend and then do it again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you know, but you bring up a good point because I think, you know, uh, a lot of people, and I'm sure you've had this, uh, they've described seals as fearless. And I can't stand that description because it's not, none of us are fearless. You know, because, you know, courage requires fear and all of us have little things that we're like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We don't like it, you know. There are team guys who love skydiving and they hate diving. There are team guys like me who love diving and I don't like skydiving, you know. Climbing is nothing, I would never climb on my free time, you know. Or bungee jump, right? Uhm, but I think every single one of us, we learn how to move through it. Uhm, and so you hope that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every guy has something they like, uh, about the job. Uhm, but regardless of who you're talking to, that person had to move through some fear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Totally, totally. Well, and here's another thing, cause, cause uhm, I've always, you know, and I got asked by, this was a while ago, a bunch of sailors, they wanted to be SEALs, and so I was on a ship, I did one ship deployment as an LNO.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they said, Hey, sir, could you just give us 30 minutes and talk to us about being a SEAL? So I said, sure. And I got them all in a room. It was about 10 of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I started it by saying this, I said listen, I want all of you to know, okay?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're a Navy SEAL, when you're doing the job, okay, there's never any cool music playing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and there's no, there's no like girls on the side or beers. It, it always sucks, right? They will, the teams will take the, the fun out of everything. If you're diving, it's cold, it's dark, it's dirty. If you're skydiving, it's nighttime, you, you're waddling out of there. Nothing is ever cool. The coolest part is at the end when you look back at what you did and you're having a beer or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but you have to get that in your head, and I think, I think Bud's...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Slams that into your head, day one, right? You come in with this mythology and you're like, oh cool, and then suddenly you're like, holy crap, what the hell is this? And so, so I think that's enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I rolled from the, so I didn't, technically I started with 209, I did their, their, their Indoc, but before 209 classed up officially, they were like, hey, there are too many officers in the class, we're rolling, we're going to roll the three slowest runners of course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I got rolled to 210. So I never classed up with 209. So I started with 210 and I graduated 210, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, in Hawaii, but at the time, um, classic budgeting, you know, we graduated April 98 and, uh, there were no, there's apparently no, no, no money to P, PCS officers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so like, Hey, we're going to keep you here and you'll do your SDV school because of back then it was in San Diego. So we waited, we lived in, you just lived in apartments until summer that year did SDV school, went to jump school. And then I checked in January 90, January 98 to SDV team one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So on my dream sheet, I put two, all East Coast teams, because I wanted to go to the East Coast. And I got SDV1, so, uhm, but I wasn't upset. I was like, okay, this is cool, because I did love diving, and I loved that, I loved that aspect of it, and to be able to have done that, I thought was pretty froggy, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it was uhm, it was a little bit, we were a little bit delayed. There was a platoon that was already formed up. My, one of my, you know, my best friend is an admiral now. He and I were, were, were kind of put in holding.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Got to do an exercise, one of the platoons went out to the Middle East, did an exercise, and then platooned up a little bit late, uhm, but did one platoon and a deployment, uhm, out to the, out to the Middle East, you know, kind of went to the Middle East quite a bit back then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we're out there in, we were actually out there in Bahrain when the coal, the USS coal got hit, so we actually did some response to that. Uhm, so yeaah, did one deployment as an AOIC, uhm, there at STVs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so, uh, I always wanted to go to the East Coast and specifically SEAL Team 2, because all the books back then, you know, were older books, so they focused on SEAL Team 1 and SEAL Team 2.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, yet again, I was delayed, uhm, I would did a, I, the only way I could get to seal team two, you know, interesting, so my, my buddy and I would call the detail for, detailer from Hawaii, and both of us want to go east coast, so he gets on the phone first, he's like, I'd like to do an A, I'd like an OIC on the east coast, and the guy's like, yea, I have one of teammate, and he's like, cool, I'll take it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can I go to SEAL Team 2? He said, yeah, you know, you need to do it in Illinois. I said, I'll do it in Illinois, but I want to do a carrier. I don't want to do a bark. Cause I always loved aviation. I just want it. He said, deal. So I went, checked in and then did a, did my first deployment with the John F. Kennedy Battle Group as an LNO on that carrier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There you go. So last conventional carrier. There you go. So yeaah. It was actually turned out to be a great deployment. We, I mean, obviously 9-11 happened. Is that while you were on deployment? No, in fact, we, it was before we deployed. We were actually getting underway for Comp2x, uh, on 9-11.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, yeaah. And, and, and the battle group got underway on the morning of, of September 11th, and so all the news, all the news reports said that there was a, uh, a strike battle group that got underway within hours of the attack, which is hilarious, because that wouldn't, it wouldn't happen that way, right? It happened to be within hours, and so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so we actually steamed right up to the east coast off the east coast of Virginia there. I flew off and went to the teams to check in to see what was going on and, uh, you know, get a sense of everything, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so I got back from there, uh, platooned up as an OIC, um, and started that work up. And then of course then Iraq was kicking off. And so, uh, because we were, you know, our platoon did pretty well in the, in the training, um, our CEO sent us to Iraq. And when was that? What year was that? That was 2004. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did you guys? So we started up north and then, uhm, and then came down south and we took over the, the security mission. Yeah, we started it. Yeah, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was great, it was, it was standard, uhm, you know, uh, did the, well obviously the, the unit, uh, the individual trainings, all the guys went to the schools and we did our, our, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our platoon training did all our, our schools, uhm, and back then it was all, well, as you remember, they had just, uhm, implemented the, the, the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] NSW 2000, Force 21, I think it was called, uhm, brilliant idea. We didn't know that it was going to be so brilliant, right? Because it just set us up to deploy in such a perfect way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they hadn't, they hadn't changed the, the training program. So we did all the regular blocks, you know, mobility, diving, CQC, all that stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, we had some LNO guys who stayed down, which was also fortuitous based on the fact that we all, after a few, after about a month and a half, all went down to Baghdad to start running that PSD mission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was on deployment with us. So what happened was the team 1 CO stayed out west to continue running direct action and our team 2 CO ran the PSD mission. Got it. So both COs were deployed. Got it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, a little bit of DA up north, only about a month and a half. And then, um, get drawn down to PSD and, um, yeah, that was a deployment. Um, and that was the focus for the teams, um, for I think a year and a half before they were able to pass that off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seven, yeaah, uh, the PM, the President, a couple others, uh, and yeaah, and then, yeaah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seven, with seven different details. Uh, it was, it's funny, I was on a call about a month ago with, uh, well, retired now General George Casey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Seals, spec operations, special operations holistically are designed to do what you have to do. I mean, you can adapt, you can, you can mod, you can, you just, hey, what's the job? Okay, we'll do the job. And we might complain and bitch and moan, but uhm, we'll still do the job well, uh, and uh, that's what we did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well the only doctrine we, again, the only thing we drew upon was that our specialized unit had been doing it up in Europe for a few years and we had some guys who were from that command.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who were like, oh we know how to do this, we've done it before. And that's why we were tapped to start doing it, because those guys started training all of us and they were familiar. So yea, you're right, the doctor, I think officers, and I think they do a little bit more of this, but it would, you know, officers who could


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Come in with a better understanding of just field maneuver and, and, and battlefield stuff, right, is advantageous. But at the same time, this, this ability kind of come in almost with a, with an infant's mind is, is something we do pretty well. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're on defense. Although, what people don't understand is the offensive nature of that job. I mean there's so much preparation and planning, uh, and I think, I think one of the reasons why


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The guys did it so well is because we just look at environments differently. We're always hedging our


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the, on the offensive nature of that, of that type of mission. Of course, when you're in the moment, you're on defense, but you've, you've offensively prepared the environment so that you are hedging your bets in your, in your advantage, which is pretty cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you get into their, their OODA loop. I mean, you get it, you know, as soon as someone, if they're, if, if, if an enemy is in attack mode and suddenly they find that someone is getting into their space, it puts them on the defensive. And so I think that's a really cool.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mindset and strategy that, uh, that, that, you know, we applied. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then I screened for, uh, the maritime component, the specialized unit, uh, for, uh, for the joint special operations command, the maritime component, uh, screened and got, got accepted and went to that selection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, uh, there, there's a performance, I mean there, you have to, you have to be able to perform in, in the, in what they're asking you to do, uhm, but I just like, I love the, I love the, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Precision, so I grew, so growing up, you know, I, I said my mom, classical piano, my dad, John Denver, I love all of it, but I started getting into metal, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was probably in the late 80s, I heard uh, Master Puppets for the first time, and uhm, and I was, I was, I had been listening to like, you know, Motley Crue and things like that, and I was like, I just want something heavier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's gotta be more, and I, uhm, and I heard Master Puppets and, and, and Justice for All, and I heard those guys, and I realized, uh, well I, I guess I realized this later in kind of this mental autopsy that, uhm, I loved the, what I call precision violence, uh, precision aggression, and the way these guys played. And I love Thrash Metal, but I mean,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the palm muting and the fact that you could hear every single chug on that E chord and it was just so fast and so precise and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's what I felt like when I was doing this kind of hostage rescue level.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] CQC, it was just so fast and so precise. And so I just realized I love it. Uhm, and musically I love it. I mean, the, the rappers who do it, you know, who, who rap fast and precise, I love. If it's a country, if it's a banjo playing fast and precise, I love it. I mean, I just, anything fast and precise, kind of violent, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Precision aggression, I love. And uhm, I love the challenge. It was, you know, I enjoyed it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, right, yeaah, that's, yeaah, that's awesome. Yeaah, they, that, so, so my, so the training reminded me a little bit of that, uh, just this, this very precise aggression, uhm, which I love, cause I thought seals were always that way, and, and obviously underwater it's a little bit,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Different, but I thought we were just designed differently in the sense that, yes, we, we deliver violence, but we do it every single time you move, every single time your trigger finger moves, it's with a thought. It's thought through, and I uhm, I really enjoy that, that level, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, back then it was, uhm, it was a nine month cycle, three months, uh, three months training, three months of what's called alert, and then three months deployed, uhm, and then rinse and repeat, uhm, but because the war had started,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was basically, uh, you know, it, well, I guess prior to the war, it was, it would be basically six months of training, three months alert. And then it became three months training, three months alert, three months deployed. And, um, and so the training cycles got, got crunched, uh, and it was just very fast, uh, and, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tough, tough but cool because the op tempo when you were there was so intense, uh, but, uh, but yeah, I did, I ended up doing, um, two deployments as a troop, I did a platoon as a, I was kind of the opso for the squadron and I had two deployments as a troop commander there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One, well, two Iraq, one Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm sure we did. I'm, I'm, you know, in trying to think through it. I mean, we may have crossed paths here, cause I, even when I was running training, I came out here and I, I, we probably sat down in some of the same training conferences to talk about stuff, right? But, uh, yeah, never know. Yeah, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's uhm, I mean you're learning the whole time and I think, uh, I think you try to, when you, in any, in any seal platoon, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Especially as a new officer, you go in there and if you're not willing to just listen first, you're gonna be screwed, right? Especially when you have guys who've just been there, done that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, so to go in and listen first and watch and hear the expertise and it was almost like getting into a machine that was already moving and you just try to say, okay, how can I help this move better and faster? And so it was a tremendous lesson in leadership for me because that's what I recognize that you have to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to be a part of the machine. It's not necessary. I mean, I think I always say kind of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leadership is not a position, it's a behavior, right? And, and I talk about this concept, uh, called dynamic subordination, which is really decentralized leadership. And I, you know, and the story of this kind of me thinking about this comes after I left the teams. I was talking to a bunch of executives and they asked me, I had a flip chart next to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they say, hey Rich, can you draw the task organization, what the task organization looks like for a, for a high performing team?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I was stumped when they asked me that because I had the models in my head. I was like, this, these models don't apply. I had the pyramid model, of course. And I was like, well, that's doesn't apply because you know, that's too slow and bureaucratic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The flat model, which was a mild rebellion to the pyramid. And I said, um, that doesn't apply because, you know, in a flat model, first of all, it's hard to know who's in charge. And second of all, because it's flat, something can happen on the right side of that line that doesn't, it's not seen or heard by the left sound line. So it gets silent. Information can get silent on a high performing team and information never gets silent. So flat model was out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I always tell people, I was like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna land on any one of those, philosophically, that's the one you can land on. It's a, it's a good one. However, it's still not a high performing team operates because, you know, high performing team, uh, burden is distributed. It's not all in one. So, so really in frustration, I basically drew a blob on the board, an amoeba. And I said to the group, I said, where do you think the leader sits in this blob?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I got answers like, you know, front, back, top, bottom, center. I said, all of you are correct. The leader is wherever the leader needs to be in the moment. And this is what I call dynamic support nation, which is literally this idea that a team understands that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Issues and challenges and problems can come from any angle at any moment and when one does, the person who's closest to that problem


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I know you and I as officers, we were pretty much in charge of every op we were on, but didn't mean we were always being supported. In fact, it was usually the opposite. We were supporting other people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was really, uh, and this really hit me when I was actually in training and I was watching close quarter combat training because in close quarter combat you'll see a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Group of four guys outside a door. And they'll go, you know, number one man, number two man, number three man, number four man. They'll go into that room, they're suddenly clear, everything all clear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well the next threat might be close to the number four man, so guess what, number four man becomes number one man. And so you see this, and so no CQC run is ever the same, you know, and it's just this...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This just amazingly beautiful, violently beautiful dance between leadership positions. And I think that's what I recognized the most and fell into quite, quite, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Quite well, because that's kind of how I like leading. But, you know, funny story, uhm, first deployment as the troop commander. I'm in Afghanistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, we get this, we get this, it's our first mission. It's, and it seems fairly, fairly good. Compound's not too far away. Easy drive there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] relatively easy. So we get this thing planned out and uhm, and as we're planning, we're, you know, we're getting little things like, uh, you know, change the crypto or this thing didn't line up. Hey, the gear we need is not there. So these little things, little ticks. And uhm, and I'm, you know, just little enough to just brush them aside, right? But they're adding up and I'm kind of keeping a count in my head.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so we start rolling out and now we're driving and the first route fouled, right? So we have to go second route. That's fouled. And now we're just like, okay, wait a second, you know, okay, we could probably get this third route. We get the third route. Okay. Finally park. Now we're a little bit late. Timeline's a little bit skewed, walking towards the target. Finally, we're walking towards the target and we start hearing whistling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We just read a couple days before some intel on a unit that had been ambushed and they had heard whistling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I stop everybody. I call my troop chief, I'm like, hey, uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not feeling good about this one. You know, I, I've got, there's too many ticks and fortunately he was a great guy and he's like, I agree. And so I always joke on, on my very first op at that command as, as troop commander, I called the CO who was a ranger back at the, the base and said, Hey, we're turning around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're quitting the mission, you know? And I actually wrote a blog on this. It's okay to quit, but just never give up, right? Because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause if you're seeing this situation and you're not paying attention, and I realized it was really, it was really good for me to understand that, that's my job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the leader. I mean, there were so many guys who would do so many phenomenal things. If I'm not keeping abreast of all this stuff. And of course, there were some guys who were pissed and, you know, you have to take that hit too, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's my job and it really taught me, I think, in the hundreds of missions I did, I turned around on three.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And everyone felt like I was quitting, and everyone was hard, and on everyone we had guys who were pissed off and upset, but, but I recognize that that's, that's the job, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, and you and I, we've read these after action reports of these, these tragedies that happen. And these tragedies never happen with one big thing. It's always a series of little things. And so, hindsight's always 20-20. And I think if we're not as leaders,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's like a, it's like a school of fish, or a flock of br- I mean, we were literally amiibo, we're not, we're not this, this hierarchy or, or line, and that, the position, all the position tells you is what you're,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, your responsibility circle is, you know, for, for making shit happen, you know, so, uh, and I think that's important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, not before I volunteered to go back out to the teams. I, uhm, so one of my great mentors, you and I both know him, uhm, and he was, he was, he's now retired, but he was my CEO at Seal Team 2, and then he was also a deputy there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had been my CEO at the time too and he had been at that command and, and I just loved him so much and I saw what he get back and I didn't, I wanted to make sure I stayed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He, well, no, when I did it, he was the deputy commander, uh, before he took group command. Yeah. Um, uh, but we're tracking on that. But my wife was also sick of sick of the commands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh my gosh, yeaah, he's, yeaah, what a phenomenal guy. Uhm, but my wife was also sick of the command and she basically, uh, back then, uhm, I mean they wouldn't even let wives near the compound. I mean she, you know, she had to drop me off at the, at the fence and I'd walk in and so she just, she was pretty pissed off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she sat me down, she's like, listen, you know, I don't think, I don't think I could take you staying there. Uhm, and that's a pretty big, uhm, thing because, because, you know, typically, especially as an officer, if you leave,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chances you're coming back are, you know, you know, you don't know, you know, it's a, it's a gamble. And so, but I, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so I met her in Hawaii though, and uhm, and then I got to team two, she moved, she's from Pennsylvania, but she moved from Hawaii back to Virginia Beach and so, and we had two kids by then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so I tell the story, it's funny, uhm, it was probably 07, uhm, and I was, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, oh seven. And I came back from one of my deployments and it was very successful deployment and you know, and my wife's pretty sick and tired of hearing how awesome her Navy SEAL husband is. She's at home with our one year old and our three year old. And it's a couple days I've been home and I'm just


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Total loser. And I come home and so I'm at home, I'm doing some projects and I hear her from the back of the house. She's like, Hey Rich, can you grab the, she's in the, doing something with the kids. Can you grab the Q-tips? Now admittedly and embarrassingly, I didn't want to drop what I'm doing. So I'm just like, I don't know where they are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The wives, SEAL wives, are badass. They really are, and I know you can testify that. But yea, so it was, uh, it was 08. Volunteered to go back out to Team 10, was, did an ops, ops, then exo, deployed with them. Uh, so that was about a two year tour. And then,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I loved it. Loved the CEO, loved the Master Chief, loved the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, you're back on, you know, six month deployments, which are rougher, uhm, but, uh, but I was, I recognized, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I recognize the, the, the, the healthy nature of seeing both sides and staying connected and, and, and, and of course it helped, you know, at the home, it helped on the home front. But then was asked to go back to, to run training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, my, at that point they changed the command, you know, there was, there was issues, the command had started to, and actually NSW holistically had started to do a lot more for the families and the wives. Bring the families in, they said, which there's a great concept, right? And so, so it was a, it was a better, it was a better situation and I was happy to go back and, and went back in, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rough and disingenuous, especially as a, I mean, you know, the leadership was obviously...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Needing some answers, uh, and wanting some answers, but as Kadre, I mean, you just, we could do so much better, uhm, and I think the collateral effect of that was that these guys were leaving, these guys would leave and go back to their...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The regular to their teams and they didn't feel good and they were they were they hated where they just came from and so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, my leadership said, hey Rich, uh, take a better look at this. What's going on? And so I really had to start deconstructing performance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I thought about, at the time, you know, now it's 2010, I had already been on hundreds of combat missions, and I thought about my own BUDS experience, and you know in BUDS we,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Been hundreds of hours running around with big hook boats in our head and hundreds of hours running with 300 pound telephone poles and exercising with those.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so skills tell us what to do in, in known specific environments. So here's how and when to ride a bike or throw a ball or shoot a gun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's what to do. Here's when to write. Here's what to do. Here's when to write, right? And, and then finally because they're, they're visible, they're very easy to assess, measure, and test. You can see how well anybody does any one of those things. And you can put scores and stats around. This is where we go into organizations and hiring.


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[Assistant] You could put them on a resume, and this is why we get seduced by skills when we're hiring, right? But they don't tell us how we're gonna show up in stress.


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[Assistant] The distinction as to whether or not we can operate in these environments. You know, here's a funny story. I'm not sure if you heard this one because I heard it when I first.


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[Assistant] Got to Buds, because it obviously happened sometime before me, maybe even way before us.


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[Assistant] But the story goes, and back then, the story goes this kid shows up and he wants to be a seal, and they basically say, well you need to swim.


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[Assistant] You know, 50 meters. He's like, okay. So they take this kid to the pool and it's going to be 25 meters one way and 25 meter back. And, um, the kid jumps in the pool and sinks right to the bottom and starts walking across the bottom of the pool to one end and then walks across the bottom pool back to the other. And he comes up and he's gasping for air, nearly drowning. And the instructor looks at him and says, what the hell are you doing?


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[Assistant] And the kid, who's still casting his breath, looks at the instructor and says, I'm sorry instructor, I don't know how to swim. And the instructor pauses for a second, looks at the kid and says,


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[Assistant] That's okay, we can teach you how to swim, right? And it's because the instructor knew, if this kid had the attributes, the balls, that's one, I guess that could be an attribute, right? But to show up to Navy SEAL training, not knowing how to swim, teaching him to swim, the skill was going to be the easy part, right? And so.


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[Assistant] But if you want teams, if you want the highest performing teams on the planet, which are teams that not only do well when things are going well, they do well when things are not going well, you have to look at attributes. And so, in the book I talk about this dream team paradox, where you hear it all the time, these teams are put together, best graphics designer, best marketer, best lawyer, whatever, best best best.


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[Assistant] And then they slowly turn, you know, and they go, they go well when things are going well, right? But as soon as the environment changes, as soon as things go, go sideways, the team turns toxic. And if you don't, if you haven't built your team on the attributes, you're not going to have a team that survives.


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[Assistant] It's to-, it's uhm, I mean this is, this is where a lot of teams hiring, uh, they get, they get confused. They conflate these things. And they think someone with the, with the best skills is the best person. And uhm, and this is why I think, uh,


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[Assistant] You can, you can pick certain environments where just attributes show up more than skills and, uh, and, you know, obviously spec ops is an environment like that. This is where I talk about like different sports and in, in many sports skills take predominance, right? But things like fighting.


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[Assistant] You know, and I don't fight, you know, I just, I know people who do, and I, you know, I, I look at it with interest, but, uh, but you can't predict necessarily what the other person, this, it's uncertainty, so there's actually, there's adaptability, there's perseverance, there's all these things coming to play. Climbing would be the same thing, and so, so I think these are, this is where you start, I'm really,


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[Assistant] If I'm obsessed with anything, I'm obsessed with who we are as human beings at our most raw. Because that's the real us, right? And uhm, we always hear it, you know, it's when the shit goes down that the real us shows up. And I'm like, okay, who's that? Because we had the great gift.


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[Assistant] In our careers of understanding who that person is and understanding who that person and all the people around us and, and that allowed us to be the teams we were. I mean I know you, you would agree. I mean I knew my guys, I mean I could see a silhouette and I knew that guy. That's how well we knew each other because we'd seen, we'd lived each other.


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[Assistant] At the most raw and a lot of people don't get that opportunity and you don't have to go through seal training to do it, right? It's just understanding these, these qualities because, because these attributes, when we fall back to like our most raw.


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[Assistant] You know, because I think this is, these are the, because it's, they were executing attributes to get there in the first place.


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[Assistant] Bud selection starts when you decide, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of attrition that goes on because people are like, oh, I wish I could do that, but then they stop there, right? And so, so there's a journey, whether you're enlisted or officer, to even get to the beaches of Buds. And then it's, then Bud starts, right? And so, so I think the, the, the folks, and again, you know, there are, there's always exceptions, but the, the folks who have,


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[Assistant] And of course, we all have to come up, we have to enter the game with a little bit of a level, right? We all have to have a level of compartmentalization at day one of Buds or else we're not going to make it. We'll hyperdevelop it in Buds, but we have to have it.


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[Assistant] But there's, we could, I think every single one of us could tell stories from our past. I was like, oh yeaah.


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[Assistant] That was, that was great, right? That was a compartmentalization. I mean, I, when I was playing football in eighth grade, my dad didn't like, he didn't want my mom driving us around. So he's like, you have to ride your bikes everywhere. So my brother and I would have to put on our football gear and ride our bikes through town to get to football practice and then practice and then ride our bikes home. You know, uphills, all that stuff.


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[Assistant] But, but there's elements there that, you know, you're just powering through and I think we could, you know, there'd be, there is, you know, we'd never get it right, but, you know, I think we could, we could pick some of the guys.


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[Assistant] Like it doesn't make any sense. It's one of the things I love the most about that training and one of the things I'm most grateful for. It's because uhm, I don't think there's a process on the planet, there are very few processes on the planet that allow you such a


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[Assistant] Zeroed out start. I mean, you hit those. I remember literally getting there and I felt relieved because it took so many people, like I had to get interviews and recommendations just to get a billet, right? And I remember getting there, I was like,


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[Assistant] All right, it's now it's on me and I felt relieved because it was now it was literally on me. No one there was going to force me out. And, um, and we, we, we had this opportunity to zero out everything and just start moving through and it's just cool.


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[Assistant] Yeaah. Very few performance drops. Yeaah. And those are out, those are towards the end, and all it comes in SQT, but very few.


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[Assistant] I would think so, because if you're talking about a very basic, you know, I remember we had a guy who got, who got dropped because he just, he was unsafe with his weapon. Well, being safe with your weapon has nothing to do with the skill of hitting a target. It has to do with the attributes of being safe with your weapon, right? I mean, it's a, it's a situation awareness. It's adaptability. It's, it's, it's all this. It's a, I'm going to name off a bunch, right?


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[Assistant] That's what he didn't have, and so, uh, and so Bud's, just like this training I was running, and we used to say, I remember briefing Olson when Olson was SOCOM, uhm,


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[Assistant] I said, sir, this training run, it's nine months long, okay, but.