[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and he basically gave this advice. He said, look, just simplify things, like be useful and be liked over the summer, just when it comes down to that. So I showed up and. You know, I worked hard and learned over the course of the summer that, you know, a lot of the things that I had learned in the Marine Corps, a lot of the things I had learned, like turns out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Getting shit done, working hard, holding a high bar, being a great teammate. Those things pay dividends in this completely different and foreign environment. So left that summer, had a great time, loved it, learned a ton and left with an opportunity to go back there after my second year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Business school the first year is, is like everyone comes in as like gunners ready to do a great job. And then the second year is very social. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and then the class bifurcates into the people that like want to spend their time on, on the academics. And my second year I spent more time, you know, with friends and classmates and we did some volunteer stuff. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you had a few hours of class every day, did a lot of training and sports. So you had a lot of former athletes. So we'd get after it together and then a lot of social stuff as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we are playing a ton of pickup basketball we're doing. Uh, we had this big, actually pretty cool. They had this competition between West coast business schools where it was a mix of charity and sport. So you would compete on raising money for special Olympics. Um, and then we would host all these schools at Stanford and it was a weekend of sports competitions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so you'd play flag football and basketball and softball and run a five K and, uh, just get after it. We're not in the best of shapes. You have a lot of, a lot of injuries after that weekends, a lot of pulled hamstrings, but, uh, it was a good time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'd say mostly at, you know, in business school, you know, I tell folks now, like you don't come out of business school with the next expertise to do any job in business.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What you get out of business school is like broad exposure into


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Frameworks, concepts, ways to think about things. So what is marketing? What is finance? How do you think about it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you do a good job, I think you can come out and ask the right questions, but you certainly don't come out with a level of expertise that sets you up to be really great in any particular role. So for me, I had zero business vernacular, zero coming out. So I learned a lot about that type of stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was great. So I went back to Google and I got a chance to work on. So I worked on what was effectively kind of customer support and sales. And this is 2006.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They do. So that was really important to me. So I, when I came out of my first summer, I worked a little bit on, uh, in an area called product management. So at Google, I would say if there is an internal hierarchy of influence, product management is probably at the top product product management and engineering at Google.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, rule. So they're figuring out what the strategy is, what to build. Uh, and then I spent the other half of my time working on operations or customer support on the product management side. Um.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, really interesting to get to work with the engineering team, a lot more influence. I'd say what's perceived within the Valley is a much more attractive career path, uh, and certainly valued that way internally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, but for me, I got to the end of the summer, had to choose. Do I want to go the product management route or the operations route? And most people thought I was nuts to even think about it. Like, of course you go product management.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I decided to go operations because in operations you had the chance to lead a team and in product management you didn't. And someone had given me really good advice around that. And thank God, because I would have been, I'd say,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A mediocre at best product manager? Maybe slightly better than average?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Managing a team of folks who are working directly with your customers, dealing with the day to day issues that come up as part of it. So customer support. I always said like for a long time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I always worked on teams that had the biggest, like self-esteem issues within these companies. It was the teams that were perceived as like our team, our work isn't as important as either other teams. And so that was a really good learning for me early on. How do I articulate what we do in a way that really resonates with these folks to keep them motivated and excited.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still works. Still works. I mean, I, I had a little bit of an adjustment phase. Some of the, some of the language and vernacular had to change a little bit, but that was, you know, it seems so dumb to say it, but I learned that like, you know what? Human beings are human beings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was there for only little under two years. So I was there for about two years, loved it, learned a ton. Google was a really fun and exciting place to be at that point. And, uh, I was looking at another role internally and a friend of mine from grad school called me and said, Hey, he was working at Facebook at the time, called me and said, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We are building a support team, building an operations team. We're looking to hire someone to build it. Do you want to come over and interview?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at this point I'm like, dude, I have less than two years of experience outside the Marine Corps. And he's like, look, you should just come over and interview. So this is 2008.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I went over and interviewed, interviewed with the, you know, the executive team. So, you know, with, with Zuck and a bunch of the other senior leaders at that point, uh, and got hired into this role that I was totally unqualified for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just incredibly lucky that the person who hired me didn't realize how under qualified I was because he was a business development guy, not an operations guy, you know? And so I came into this role.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, you know, at the time, in retrospect, looks like an obvious shift. At the time, people thought I was nuts to leave Google. This is the point when Google's, you know, grown really fast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For sure, and, and, you know, that's absolutely part of it. The other thing I'd say is I think my, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think coming from a different domain was ended up being a huge advantage for me. So the thing that I was most worried about was I'm going to come in and interview for a role where the requirements are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 10 to 15 years of experience in consumer technology leading teams. I don't have that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I will be the most prepared. And so I got in and I remember my early interviews. I was lucky to get.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My early interviews out of the way at Stanford and I was a train wreck. Like thank God none of those are on video.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but I got to the point where my mentality was if I get asked a question that I do not have a prepared answer for, I've failed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I had a, you know, dozens and dozens of pages. I would write out all the questions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I would think about, I knew I had the challenge of, look, I can't just recite military experience because people don't get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So how do I think about the stories I tell and the way that I tell them that aligns with what they're looking for? So what is the culture here? Okay, great. What's the misperception I've got to overcome?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. Leadership in the military is tops down hierarchical misperception. Okay. I know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, that is a perception this person's likely to have. How do I make sure whether they ask me directly or not?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That that answer gets into the conversation and dialogue. So I got to the point where.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I prepared you know, knowing that I didn't have domain expertise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I walked in just about, and I still do that now. I think I, my aspiration when I interviewed for the CrossFit job, I'm going to be without question the most prepared person they talk to. You know, this is 20 years in to my career. And so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was something I learned early. What year is this? This is 2008 Facebook.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, uh, just before, so this is February, uh, 2008, um, just before the economy crashes. Um, Microsoft had invested at Facebook, just invested in Facebook. Facebook is making a little bit of money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the narrative at this point is everyone told me social media is that you're never going to make money. You're an idiot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was, um, I was still pretty young and I was, uh, the same reason I went into the Marines, the same reason I wanted to go to force. Like it was hard and new and I didn't know if I could do it, but, uh, I was really seeking like risks seeking at that point. Still. I love the people. I love the culture. And I thought this is going to be an amazing experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably about 350, 400 somewhere in that range. And it was probably maybe somewhere 30, 40 million users, mostly college in the U S still had just launched internationally. So it's still pretty early.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, now it's, now it's peanuts. 30 million users is nothing. You don't get out of bed for it in social media. But I'd say that like within the next year or two, things started to really turn and we started to build the app business, started to scale it. We started to put the infrastructure in place internationally where folks are like, oh, okay, this isn't a novelty. When I joined Facebook, MySpace was bigger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I, I show up my first week, just left Google and I was supposed to come into this job managing this online sales team, which is basically selling medium size advertisers, getting them to buy Facebook ads.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I show up on my first day, excited for the new job, little anxious cause I just left Google after I feel like I finally figured things out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And my buddy who had introduced me there introduces me to another guy and he says, Hey, Don meets so-and-so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he says, what are you going to do? And I said, uh, I thought I was going to do that, but there's gotta be a good explanation for this. So I go back to my, the guy who hired me and I said, Hey, I'm trying to be diplomatic. It's day two.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he cut, you know, basically says, yeah, we're basically going to do this guy reported to one of his peers. They did not get along. And he said, we're going to take all the most profitable advertisers from that guy's team and we're going to manage them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now keep in mind these two executives, my boss and this other guy's boss, both have a revenue number they're responsible for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, they don't like each other. So my second day I realized I have no job. This other guy's like, fuck off basically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three days later, my boss pulls me in and he's like, Hey, how's your first week going? I'm like, well, a couple of bumps. I didn't anticipate, but he's like, yeah, well, I'm leaving the company. So by day five, I have no job and no boss. And he's like, but, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, you're going to report to so-and-so, it'll be great. So I talked to this other guy, he said in the meantime,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you've got some time, why don't you see if you can walk up and down University Avenue in Palo Alto and see if you can get some of the restaurants to buy Facebook ads.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so yeah, I'm on my first week. Exactly. And I'm like, holy shit. And I just left Google. I have no job. My boss is leaving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, you know, so that next week I showed up and I, I remember there was another inside sales team that they were trying to hire someone for. I'd never done that. And I just came in and said, I'm going to start building this team. And I know I'm not qualified to do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you hire someone, I'll hand it over and then you can figure out what to do with me at that point. So I brought him my business school textbook on how to build a sales team. I'm sure everybody was laughing at me and terrified and started building the team and did that for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three or four months and then a woman who I'd worked for it at Google came over became my new boss. She consolidated a bunch of the operations under me and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, things kinda grew from there, but it was a little bit of a shaky first experience.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I, when I started there, the team was probably, the initial team was probably four or five. Um, and then took on some other teams when I left team was probably six, 700. Um, and that's probably about 20, 25% of the company. Um, we had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 700, somewhere in that range probably. Yeah. So we were really fast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I was at Google, Google grew with a similar capacity. We had no constraints on hiring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They said basically, if you can get people through the process, you can hire as many people as you want. Which is kind of insane to think about. Facebook has a similar rate of growth. So we had to figure out, like, how do you preserve quality? How do you put the right process in place?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I got a bunch, you know, I was so lucky. I got a chance to do so many things there. I got to open our office in Dublin. I got to open an office in India. Um, we got to build new functions from scratch, got to deal with governments, uh, again, whole host of things I had not done before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Facebook was really cool at that point because the environment was just, look, we're going to give you the space. If you demonstrate, you can get stuff done. You can earn as much scope as you can take on. It was all about impact. It was, it was very merit, meritocratic and how things were structured. And that was really, really energizing for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I'd been there for four years, um, loved it. So I went, you know, went from a job where it was, you know, small team, very hands-on, a lot of early building to, um, you know, by 2012 had built out. We had an amazing team, senior leaders, um, a lot more of my job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, different skillset on that. So, so on the marketing side, I think that the, the skillset around the storytelling, like the creative stuff, the reason that you


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, a lot of it was about team and team building and structure and process. Those are the things that I was more comfortable with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, so yeah, I was, you know, at this point had talked to my boss and said, Hey, look, I love it here. I'm ready for something new. There wasn't a role that really made sense for me. And then had a friend call me who was at Pinterest and said, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, it's, this is 2012. Pinterest had gone from hundreds of thousands to I think north of 10 million users in like four months. Insane growth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the team was about 35, 40 people and he said, Hey, you know, we're building the team. What do you think?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's similar to moving from Google to Facebook. Um, you know, I thought to myself, gosh, this is a great opportunity to go to another fast growing company. Uh, this friend of mine and some of the other leaders were some of my favorite people, um, from Google and Facebook. So it felt like the team was an amazing fit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was a role that had the opportunity for some new learning for me. So not only operations, which I had done some of the sales stuff, but managing now a senior marketing leader. So not doing the marketing myself, but hiring a, uh, a marketing leader building out, uh, early on our human resources and people team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so it was a chance for me to kind of take that next step and learn a bunch more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had a bunch of experience and, and actually the founder of Pinterest, uh, I had worked with his wife. Uh, she was my, uh, she partnered with me on the human resources team at Facebook. So I knew her well. She was good people. I knew the founder. Um, and so I had a little bit of relationship. He knew me a little bit through her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and through some of the other executives who I had worked with before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeah, particularly Facebook was an incredibly intense environment. So I was, and it was not a healthy period for me. Uh, so I was, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 5, 6 days a week I'd, I'd roll into the office at 6 a.m., would skip the workout, eat like shit, work till, you know, 3 days a week I was there probably past midnight, back in at 6 a.m. the next day, you've got people there until 2, 3 a.m., grinding. That was pretty common. Uhm, and when you were at home you were working.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, not, not, you know, at this point you have, you know, the promise there was, was the equity, you know, so what the company would be worth and, you know, that was there, I'd say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was driving people was, was the excitement and the impact in the culture. And early on it was really- But we can do this. We can do this. We're gonna win this thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it was, it was exciting. And, uh, and so that was that, that culture of people working hard. And you're right. Like I think the.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Culturally, the inception of a lot of those things was in service of how do we enable people?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And exactly, and I think at some point, you know, I think early on we understood the intent behind them. Everyone did. Like this isn't so you can fuck off for three hours a day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is it. Look, if you need to create some space, if you need to work it off, cause you're grinding, great. We're going to make that available. But the expectation is you're going to be here and get after it. And I think at some point when you lose the Y and the intent behind it, and you've never heard it before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have this really dangerous slippery slope where now the expectation is, wait, how dare you not serve me three meals a day?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think you're probably safe not being on pitch. The idea is uhm, is that it's a virtual pin board, a place to discover and save the things that you're interested and passionate about.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pinterest was really interesting on a number of levels. I think it was almost the inverse of a lot of the companies that took off in the Valley early on. So if you look at the Facebooks of the world and the Googles, they took off amongst mostly tech dudes on the coast.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pinterest resonated with women, you know, Midwest, South, um, who were cultivating and crafting these virtual pin boards, saving things that they loved. And so it was really interesting for us early on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That you missed out on this thing. And it was really interesting for us over time thinking about like, how much of a push do we make in getting men on this? Or do we just double down because it's working so extraordinarily well for women?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was, um, my title was head of operations, which was basically kind of the business managing the business teams. So it was when I first started, you know, wait,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't that in title, but it was a similar scope in terms of role.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, about 35, 35 to 40 total in the company. Uhm, I inherited a team of I think four people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think coming out of Google, I was exposed being in an environment where you start to soak in what matters and you start to absorb some of the signal around things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, and I was like, again, really lucky, like Google. The other thing too is, is, you know, looking back on this, really fortunate to get the job at Google coming out of Google.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the valley that these other companies were looking to replicate. So if you're at Facebook and you're like, okay, we need to build a team that can support hundreds of millions of people all around the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and build an operations team that combines technology and people. Where do we find people who do that? Oh, let's go look at Google. So I, you know, I was lucky to be in that place and then I got Google on Facebook.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I get the luck of like a little bit of the double whammy of it and, and all the lessons that come along with it. And, and you know, that, that was a really interesting place where you're at these companies where the product, you know, in the, in the valley, people will say product market fit, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You build something that like resonates and then these software things can just take off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I joined right after, you know, probably a couple years after things had taken off at Google.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A year or two after things had taken off at Facebook, the year things had taken off at Pinterest. And that's a really fun time because you've got the growth and you have to build all of the, you have to build the team and the infrastructure to support it. And so yeah, I was, I was, you know, I think a lot of it was having those different experiences and then knowing people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it was, yeaah, they were growing so fast. Uh, Google is, I think, probably already profitable at that point. And then Facebook was growing so fast that they could raise money. Yeaah, so you had effectively unconstrained capital and resources.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, for a period of Google, that was the thing. If you can get them through the hiring process, you can hire them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, they had these really dangerous micro kitchens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, uh, I was into triathlon at this point and I had done a race up in the city in San Francisco.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And posted the picture on Facebook and one of my buddies, you know, you know how your buddies in the military are, they show affection by cutting you down. And so I posted this picture and just savage comment from one of my buddies about my gut. And I remember reading that and being like, I need to get my shit together. This is embarrassing. And so that was a, I got my act together a little bit at that point.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm not, so I met my wife, um, so I'm dating at this point. So my wife, I met my wife during my internship at Google. So she was, she had, uh, gone to school undergrad in the area. She had just started full time at Google. Uh, we met during my internship, uh, and then we dated, uh, during my time at Google, we both worked there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I moved to Facebook and then she moved over to Facebook two years later. So we worked together for a while. And then we got married in 2010. So that was when I was at Facebook.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, so I had, you know, when I got out of the Marines, I had gotten into when I was on active duty into triathlon. So played rugby in college, played a little bit after college when I was on active duty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, got all jacked up, blew out my shoulder, um, got into triathlon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did that for a while and, um, blew out a disc in my lower back. So this is, you know, I'm now at Pinterest, probably 35, 36. My low back is jacked. Uh, I'm, uh, I'm running quite a bit and doing the like, you know, global gym equinox three days a week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, a couple of times a year having like a, some sort of back episode where I am laid out on the floor, immobile, bad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And had a buddy of mine, um, who I used to run with in the city say, Hey, this is 2014. What do you think about CrossFit?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'd heard about it, I'd missed the wave on active duty, so I didn't see it then.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, I didn't know a lot about it and my initial reaction was like, I can't do that with my back. Like there's no way I can do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. So I, you know, my initial response was, Hey, sounds awesome, but no. And then he was persistent and I said, okay, like, let's go give this a shot. I'll get, I'll give it a try. So he and I signed up, went to a box in San Francisco, about a mile from a Pinterest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dropped in and, you know, I would have said walking in that I was in good shape. I was running 50, 60 miles a week, could run pretty fast. So I was doing a marathon about every year, lifting quite a bit and just got absolutely smoked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't, I wish I'd written it down, but I do remember.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For the first probably two to three weeks, I came in last in every workout.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember looking around and like, you know, men, women in their fifties are destroying me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, you know, my friend and I had, you know, at that point I was sore as hell. I could only do like two days a week, but I was completely hooked. Uh, that did it for me. So I did that for, you know, about a little over a year in San Francisco. And then when I left Pinterest to go to my next job, uh, founded a gym down in Palo Alto.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I left Pinterest and went to a really small early stage company called Athos. So I had worked with a guy at Facebook who left Facebook to invest.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and he had invested in this company called Athos, which made compression apparel with embedded sensors that track muscle activity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So really interesting technology captured the electrical signal at the major muscle level. So you could look for an athlete as you trained, which muscles are firing, how hard are they working? When you looked at that kind of data, you could look at overall movement patterns. You could look at overall load on the body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, so you could see patterns that were predictive of injury. So for me, it was kind of the intersection of two things. I was super interested in the sports fitness, human performance, technology.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I had, you know, been at now three companies that had taken off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I wanted to try something earlier stage and I remember meeting with this. So I met with this investor and I'd known him pretty well from Facebook and I talked to a bunch of other companies, uh, and came down to, uh, uh, Athos and, uh, Airbnb.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, I had gotten to know the founder at Airbnb, amazing, spend a bunch of time there, incredibly impressed, great company, great culture. The job was very similar, would have been somewhat similar to what I had done. So another fast growing company doing operations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I met with this investor and he knew me well enough. He's like, yeah, interesting. Or maybe he's interesting, but you've done a version of that job. You know, you can do it this other job. You've never done this. You don't know if you can do it. I don't think you can do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that was it. I walked out and was like, fuck you, I'm taking this job. And, uh, so for me it was like doing something early stage that was high risk of failure, totally different environment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably 50, 50, 55 and, um, you know, two founders, two young founders, um, two guys out of Waterloo in Canada, uh, amazing guys, great culture.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yeah, so I, you know, I started there and, you know, I figured, Hey, this is as close for me in terms of what we're building. This is as close to a 10 as it gets sports, fitness, human performance, technology. Uh, we were doing some work with DOD, doing some work with pro sport, really, really interesting. And it was an opportunity to kind of learn this new stage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is, you know, when, maybe when Fitbit's at its peak. So it was, hey, you got gen one wearables, which was in my mind was, okay, there's a ton of demand here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But also, Hey, Jen one is Jen one. There's an opportunity to build something that's a lot more sophisticated than just movement. And so Athos was this, we had this really interesting dataset, like we could see what people's muscles were doing. So I thought in that there was a lot of potential, um, and working in a space that was really fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I, you know, I, um, started there as COO and, um, about 10 months in. So founder, uh, amazing. The two founders, incredible. One of them was CEO.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both amazing entrepreneurs, amazing human beings about 10 months in founder and I switch roles. So he moves into a more technology focused role, what he loves, what he's world-class at. I moved into the CEO role first time for me being a CEO.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and then, you know, six years of battling the startup grind. And so, um, you know, if there's a mistake to make early stage, we made it. I made it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very humbling. Like, oh, turns out it's not as easy as Facebook and Google and Pinterest make it look.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Being on the cusp of running out of money constantly, uh, keeping people motivated, focused. Uh, so it was, it was, you know, I say Athos was for me by far the least successful in terms of the outcome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, in my, my time in technology, my favorite experience and the experience I've learned the most from as a leader without question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we basically sold part of the team and wound it down. So we didn't make it. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we, we got to a point where, you know, I'd say we were, let's call it a year out. Uh, our, our focus was we were selling a bit into kind of pro and college sport. And so our, uh, use case basically was injury prevention. So we could see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're a wide receiver on a college football team, we could see a hamstring imbalance present before anyone could see it. And then we could help with protocols that would mitigate and reduce injury risk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Musculoskeletal injuries and DoD are catastrophic in number and cost.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of them are repetitive stress, uh, they can be mitigated. And so we were doing a bunch of work there. We had some early contracts with the air force, with Afsoc, um, down at Lacklands with some really good outcomes. Uh, but unfortunately just couldn't get to, uh, kind of cross the chasm and get to big contracts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I left that, you know, we made the decision, you know, we essentially said, Hey, we're going to wind the company down. Look for a buyer. We did that. Um, you know, wound it down and then I spent a little bit of time, um, you know, with family and then had a friend of mine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, call me and say, Hey, you know, I heard CrossFit's looking for a CEO. Do you have any interest? So he had talked to the recruiters. This is probably.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] April of last year, so a little over a year ago, um, and I said absolutely, uh, would love to be considered for it. I knew I was a really non-traditional. I had not worked in any sort of fitness or franchise per se. It worked in technology, but I'd been in the community for a long time. Um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so he connected me with the board and the executive recruiters. I went through the process, you know, had this very funny experience of my wife and I had planned to be off. So we planned a three week trip to central America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And went through the final stages, the interviews, doing interviews over Zoom from Nicaragua praying that the power wouldn't go out. Um, and that culminated, you know, that wrapped up right before the CrossFit Games last year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, uh, you know, I wanted to understand a few things. I wanted to understand, um, just the overall state of the community. So, you know, how was the average affiliate owner feeling? How's the average coach feeling? How's the average member? Is it growing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did. So I, you know, I reached out to you. So I, I had trained for when I moved from, uh, Pinterest onto Athos, I started training at, uh, NorCal CrossFit in Redwood city. So Jason Kalipa's gym and see fit now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I had met Jason a couple of times. And so I sent him a note and said, you know, essentially, would you be willing to share some advice and feedback? Can I pick your range? So I talked to Jason, uh, talked to a bunch of other folks. Um, I'd gotten to know, uh, Dave Castro. So I had met Dave.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, through another friend, um, and so I reached out to Dave and, and he was kind enough to kind of share his perspective.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so I wanted to get a sense for, you know, where's the business, where the state of things, where's the team and where's the culture, where's the state of the community and the ecosystem. And then I wanted to get a little bit of a sense for, I also wanted to understand the, the ownership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, who these investors were, what their priorities were. And then I tried to use that, you know, to come in with a point of view on, okay, here's my,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Albeit with limited context. Here's my perspective on, on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities. What does that look like? Uh, you know, going into the conversation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For sure. Yeah. And I, you know, I think you framed that really well. And it's funny when I talk to people, you know, people who love CrossFit, they, they would say to me that more than one person saying,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That sounds amazing. You should definitely not take that job. It's impossible. Uhm, you know, with all of the love for the community because they saw both sides of the coin. For me,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really life changing impact. You know, I was, when I, my back was jacked, I thought I was done getting after it in the way that I used to. I was 35 being like, all right, for the rest of my life,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Every morning when I wake up, it's gonna take me 20 minutes to be able to stand up straight. That is just like the price I pay for being dumb when I was in my 20s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, you know, for me, totally transformative. Um, you know, not to mention meeting this amazing community of folks now who I've known for 10 years that I train with every day who are good friends. And I saw the same thing happen for, you know, hundreds of other people. And so for me, yeah, there was, there were all of those challenges, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, all of the things that I knew was gonna make the job really hard, but I had never seen or experienced anything that had the type of impact on people's lives that CrossFit does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Never. And I, you know, I was lucky to work at companies that have billions of people using their product. Not one of those companies has even close to the type of impact. In the last year for me, just reinforcing it, like my, my wife is kind of sick of like me going home and like, let me tell you another story. I dropped into a random affiliate today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You will not believe this. And so for me, I looked at that and thought, gosh, it's already had a huge impact on so many people's lives. And it's just the tip of the iceberg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like we, we have all of these challenges, but those are also opportunities. If we can, we know it's not as dangerous as people. It's not dangerous when done well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know it's not just for young, super fit people. We know if you walk into an affiliate, you're going to see young, old folks who are fit, folks who are just starting in their journey. If we can just help people understand that and start to shift those perceptions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Holy cow, like we can magnify the impact of this thing even more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, uh, bunch there. I think the first thing I'd say is, I think it's, we have to, you know, make sure that we...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Recognize I think part of Greg's genius early on was understanding that that initial model.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was essential in attracting the type of entrepreneurial, independent, small business owners that may crossfit what it is today. And so a model in which we say, Hey, look, we're going to give you the power to run your own business and exercise your creativity and build something that works for your community. I think was really, really important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it also, you know, without a, a model like that, we wouldn't have 13,000 gyms today. There's no way. And so I think for us moving forward, we have to be thoughtful about making sure we preserve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the autonomy and the flexibility that allows our affiliate owners to do what they do best.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Decentralized command. Decentralized command. And so that, that is, it is, you know, if you look at a traditional franchise business, you, you, uh, you exercise quality by control, by very directive leadership. You will do X, you will do Y.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we're going to come in and check every single box. That, that will not work for us. So we have to do, you know, what we, what we learned to do in the military, which is now we have to be really clear about the standards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay. What is the standard? And you know, uh, Greg was right, like excellence and virtuosity. That should be our standard excellence in coaching excellence in how we run our affiliates excellence that you don't have to think twice. You can walk into any one of our 13,000 affiliates and you're going to have a great experience. Now that doesn't mean they're all going to look the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They won't. They shouldn't. Part of the beauty is there's something unique about everyone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what should be consistent is the quality of the coaching. Um, uh, what should be consistent is how you're supported and treated the investment in the community, the things that we know really fundamentally matter. So the challenge for us is figuring out how do we think about, you know, we have to clearly articulate what the standard is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we have to figure out how to create the right incentives in the community that allow people that reward the folks who deliver on that. And then in some cases, folks who are not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's our responsibility. We have to be a custodian, HQ. We have to be a custodian for the brand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause every, every affiliate owner who is doing their part, who is holding the line is counting on us because we know if you walk into, if somebody walks into an affiliate who's not doing a great job.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It doesn't just hurt that affiliate and that individual, it hurts every single other affiliate. And so they got to hold us accountable. We got to do a great job of holding the overall community of coaches and affiliates accountable for delivering that exceptional experience. And then as part of that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We gotta make sure they have the resources to do it. And so this is, has been a big shift for us early on CrossFit was really a.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, send us X amount each year, license the brands. It's on you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the last year and a half or so we've invested a lot in a team and in resources that give owners.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tools and things that they can use to uplevel their coaching, to build a great business, to learn how to support customers through onboarding and all the things that we know to be important.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, couldn't agree more. They've, they've got a, they've got to feel true ownership.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Go ahead. I was laughing because it, uh, my first week was the week of the CrossFit games. So it was insane. It was awesome, but it was six days of, I think I've met 2000 people in four days. Um, it was phenomenal. Um, very humbling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I learned a ton, you know, and so I felt I was very lucky, even though it was a crazy first week.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think by and large, the top points of feedback were from inside and outside the company. Hey, we love CrossFit. We love this community. We want it to be successful. Um, we need to understand where we're going so we can align around it. And so we need clarity of vision. Um, two, we need consistency.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the prior X years had been a ton of ups and downs and for a lot of owners, the changes that we were going through at HQ impacted them. Like it, it, we cannot be a liability for them. Hard job is to support them. And so they ask, Hey, look, we need stability. We need confidence in where HQ is going, where the brand's going. Um, from the team, I'd say the team was pretty banged up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and I think that the team was candidly probably, you know, let's say maybe cautiously skeptical. Hey, we've had a bunch of leadership changes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, we've gone from Greg, this visionary founder who created this thing that has impacted so many people that, that now foundationally is a part of people's identity. You're now the next new guy. There's been a bunch of turnover. What's coming?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and oh by the way, we know this is a job that is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really hard to come into and be successful in and...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, so people were incredibly supportive. People were really candid with me. So I, you know, I walked out of that first week with...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of excitement, but I'd also say, you know, reasonably grounded in the areas where we had a lot of work to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rivaling the Marine Corps and people's intrinsic connection to the mission and the cause. Just unbelievably selfless, extraordinarily talented people. We were a shitty team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, the company was incredibly siloed. So we have, you know, roughly these, we have our affiliate business, we have a business around sport and partnerships, and then we have our education.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those teams didn't really talk to each other. Didn't really work together. Um, I'd say we didn't have a, a culture internally that was grounded in high trust and clarity. And so, you know, we were.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not partnering well, we were not showing up. We were speaking to the same customers from different parts of the organization in ways that weren't coordinated. Um, we were stepping on each other. Um, there'd be, uh, you know, well-intentioned mistakes that blossomed into issues cause there wasn't a foundation of trust internally that really brought it all together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what I heard from folks is, Hey, that the, the higher you get in the organization, the worse it gets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, and I'd spent enough time with the leadership team that knew that we had great people, but we had some real cultural challenges.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I spent the first couple months just trying to get out and talk to as many people. So I thought about, okay, I need to spend a lot of time with our team and get to know and hear from them. We've got so much collective knowledge and wisdom internally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Spend a lot of time with owners, affiliate owners, spend time with coaches, uh, and then talk to partners as well. And then also, you know, we have a bunch of folks, kind of endemic press within the CrossFit ecosystem.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anybody who was willing to talk to me, I tried to just pick folks' brain. And then, you know, I got out on the road. So I went to South America, went to Australia, wanted to make sure I got the international piece as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, that for me, as I had those conversations, eh, you know, themes started to emerge. Okay. Here are the things that, you know, people are saying that are great. We want to make sure we preserve. Here's some of the challenges.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, I kind of put that together into, we sat down as a leadership team and said, okay, our, our job is to serve and support the organization. We owe them clarity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so that clarity needs to be supported first. We need a long-term vision. So we are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Very short-term oriented right now. People don't understand what success looks and worse actually their worst fears are now that Greg has sold the company and we have a new investor, all they care about is money and we're going to ruin everything that made the special. So we need to communicate a vision to them that they can get excited and, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're going to do that work. Then we're going to do a work at three to five year strategy so that the vision helps us understand what it looks like. Then we need to do the hard work of figuring out how we get there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then ultimately we're going to enter by the end of the year, we're going to have a plan that has a clear set of outcomes and goals for next year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That ladder up to our three to five year plan and ladder up to our vision that we can communicate inside the company and we're going to share outside the company as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we did that work in the fall. So we started as a team and you know, I.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, you know, the way we approach it, you know, not right or wrong. I'll start and write a, you know, I write a, write it down on paper. I'll write a doc. So I think I wrote a, I don't know, five to six, seven page.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's a vision doc and since it's a leadership team and said, look, most of this is probably wrong or really off, but it's a starting point. So I'm going to try to outline my thinking and the rationale for it. Bunch of my assumptions will be wrong. Help me inform it. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our affiliate owners and in January, uh, right in Pleasanton, uh, up in the Bay area, he went to affiliate owners and said, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's our vision. Here's what we're focused on. Here's what you can expect from us. We're accountable to you. We're going to be working on your behalf. Here's what you can expect from us in the short, medium and long run.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, and then, you know, that set up for us allowed us to enter this year with a set of goals that we set. So we do like roughly six months. We'll look and say, Hey, you know, by mid year, we want to be here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll take a minute and do effectively an after action. So we'll look and say, okay, what went well? What went wrong?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What were the assumptions we had coming in and then how do we make sure that we learn from those to adjust our strategy? So we just went through that process for the second half of the year and we communicated that back out to our affiliate owners up in Portland a couple of weeks ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's been good. It's been really positive. I think generally, I'd say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, you know, we've communicated that are at the end of the day, like what drives everything we do is, is reaching more people and changing more lives through CrossFit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's not about revenue. It's not about profit. It's how do we take this thing that is pretty amazing and reach more people with it? And oh, by the way, if we do that, this should be a great business. But, but for us, the financials are not the outcome. And then we talked about, okay, great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What that means is if we're gonna get there, if we're gonna reach more people, we had a bunch of problems we need to solve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we got to address this issue on how the brand is perceived, that it's dangerous, that it's intimidating, that it's only for folks who are already fit. Okay, great. We've got a strategy we're going to work on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. So it's, it's a mix of, I'd say kind of two high level things. One, it's, um, doing a bunch of work on the storytelling side to elevate stories that start to shift that perception. So I think the good news for us is we don't have to change CrossFit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's been there forever. All we have to do is elevate the stories that are happening and do a better job of that. So we got some work to do on that front. So a lot of it is just storytelling and this is an area our team has been really good for some time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other side of it is we got what we're not great at historically is measuring the efficacy of our storytelling.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, okay, great. We just shipped X pieces of content, which of them are working so we can double down on those that are working and those that aren't. We have a lot of like gut feel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we need to know actually which of those is driving traffic. How is that traffic converting? We, we should be accountable to our owners around it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's one of the areas around our culture that we're trying to shift a little bit. The passion is essential but we gotta be rigorous. We gotta validate our assumptions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Better measurements and then better. One of the things we don't do a great job of now is if you get to our website.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We do a shitty job of handing you off to an affiliate. So our job should be for folks who are sitting at home, peak their interest in CrossFit, get them to CrossFit.com and then hand them to a local affiliate where they can start their journey. And right now the experience on the website for us is, is not as tight, uh, as it needs to be. So we're working on that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so we've had, we've had a map for some time. We're about to come out with in the next couple of weeks and update to the map, which has been overhauled. So it's much better designed. And most importantly, what it'll allow us to start to do is actually measure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The number of people that were handing off to affiliate. So at the end of the day, we need to be able to understand for the amount of cycles that we're spending on telling the story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How many people do we hand off and how many of those people become new members at a CrossFit affiliate? And so making sure we've got a really well-designed, you know, we'll call it a marketing funnel that allows us to see exactly how we're doing that work. So we can hold ourselves accountable and we can communicate to affiliates, Hey,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're spending money with us every year. We're putting that money to good use. Here's how many people we are sending on your behalf.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and we, we haven't, you know, for the past at least few years, haven't been doing a lot of the basic blocking and tackling. So, uh, you search for.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we weren't even making it hard for them. So there's a lot, a lot of stuff that we're doing now there that'll help me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, that you can, you can bid on those keywords on somebody else's trademark. It sucks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, uh, last year was my first games, um, which I immediately regretted not having gone before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The watching the competition is amazing, but just being in, in and around the community. So CrossFit, like I, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Huge part of CrossFit's magic in my mind is our community. It's just so, it's super special and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Part of that for most folks, the community, the experience is in their own affiliate and that's awesome and amazing, but there's also this other community of millions of people. And when you go to an event like the games, I remember walking around last year, probably day three for me and thinking to myself, there are a few places, right? You could draw a ring around the games right now, this event.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there are probably not another 15,000 human beings who are happier, healthier, fitter, more resilient on the planet anywhere. And you walk around and you see people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The level of happiness and excitement and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Standing in stark contrast to what you see sadly in most of our society, but that really struck me. So it's just a super fun, high energy, positive environment. We've got a really, we've done a lot of work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To build out experiences for the fans. So we'll have, uh, throw down training sessions where we effectively allow fans to do similar workouts to what the elite athletes are doing under conditions that feels like you're getting after it. I did one in Berlin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People are showing up that early excited to do really hard shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So for most folks who are getting started with CrossFit, the traditional thing is you'll show up if you've not done CrossFit before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you're not familiar with Olympic lifting, for example, the coach will walk you through kind of the fundamentals, you know, everything comes down to, down to, you know, CrossFit, making sure you get the mechanics, right. Getting inconsistent before you introduce any sort of load or intensity. And so there's usually an onboarding class.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could be doing a class, it could be your third day where you're super unfamiliar and you could be training some next to someone who's going to the CrossFit games in their age group and the nature of how that class is run and how it's scaled makes it possible for folks to train together in a way that feels really comfortable, motivating, et cetera.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, most gyms also have open gym time. So for a lot of folks that they want to do accessory work or some additional that you can schedule that as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think what you find too with Open Gym is I think one of the cool things about CrossFit is you've got this constant journey of getting better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there's so much, you know, potential complexity and advancement in everything you do. So you're going to find games athletes who are still working on at the very highest level, who are still working on some of their gymnastics movements. And when you get started. So for me, I've been doing it nine years now. I do open gym because there's a few weaknesses I want to work on. And so you're constantly thinking about, okay, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My ring muscle ups suck. I am not good at them. I'm going to get some extra time so I can start to work on it. And you start to develop that attitude within it where it's constant progression and evolution. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, I think they've got three out. Three out. The first one's where it's at. Like three seasons? Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In, in the heel hook manipulates the, the knee, but it's the, the pressure's coming from the heel and the foot. Right. So with like any straight arm lock or anything like that, the pressure's directly on the joint that you're manipulating. This one's like, you know, the, the next one in the chain that's actually getting the pressure and the damage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you talked a lot in the book about sleep and, uh, you know, the effect that has on our ability to perform and things like that. I'm curious about, uh, your kind of opinion on mouth taping. Do you have an opinion? I do, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right on, and what are some of the benefits of nasal breathing? I know there are some, I'm just not 100% sure what they are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cool. Yea, JP, Danelle and I both, we've been geeking out about the mouth taping. We both do it now when we sleep and it's been crazy beneficial for me. I used to wake up with headaches a lot of times because my mouth was like gaping open when I was sleeping I guess. But it's been super helpful. Awesome.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's the one we've both been using and it works man. Uh, not waking up all, you know, headaches and


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[Assistant] It's crazy too, I catch myself closing, like literally I'll be breathing through my nose more throughout the day too, and I'll just notice it, like my mouth closed, I'm breathing through my nose, I don't know if that's, you know, a subconscious thing that's going on.


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[Assistant] Time War. Time War. You want longevity bro. You want eyesight. Yeaah. Get that. Get that.


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[Assistant] I was, I was digging into the Jocko system the other day. Cause I was tooling around on Jocko Fuel, you know, I'm getting some stuff. And, uh, I was looking, there's like the Jocko system and the Echo system. And I was like digging around George. I was like, Oh, okay. Got the full stack.


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[Assistant] Uh, there's Go like in that system too. So all the cool things we just mentioned, they're all like listed in order in that, in that stack. So easy access.


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[Assistant] You can't deny performance. Jamie Cochran said that when she was on the podcast the other day, man. That's where I think about, are people clear shelves? Like, you can't compete with that. You know, you can't buy that away from us.


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[Assistant] If you're in the northern part of the states, get the heavy, uh, but the kilo everywhere else.


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[Assistant] Back, back of the, back of the jeep, I've got two kilos, like two kilos, you know, after 7pm, you throw that little guy on, good.


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[Assistant] JockoStore.com. Boom. We got rash guards, t-shirts, trucker hats, beanies, hoodies. Uhm, we got the shirt locker subscription. Echo's putting out a shirt every month, new design every month. This is one of the earlier shirt locker ones. This is still one of my favorites though. We got the element D.


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[Assistant] We got layers in every shirt. This one's got the 0434 at the bottom. Uh, no big deal. Uh, but great subscription. New shirt. Layers. Layers. Getting deep in the layers. Layers. Layers.


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[Assistant] Uh, so it's, it's the assembly now. Oh, okay. Yeah. So they, they had a, you know, a little name change, but the women's assembly, uh, it's a free, uh, live event that we host through the Extreme Ownership Academy. Got it.


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[Assistant] The, the, the in person event in Phoenix.


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[Assistant] How much of your, uhm, career would you say was relationships based? Like in the teams? Like percentage wise?


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[Assistant] Yeah, yeah, he's, he's had it for a long time. I, I first hit him up a couple years back and was just like, hey man, like, if uh, you know, maybe we can work something out.


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[Assistant] And we started to touch on some discussions about the ethics of war. And this is a very important thing to discuss. This is...


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[Assistant] This is where we must learn and know that you have to take the high ground or the high ground will take you. That's true on the battlefield and it is certainly true from an ethical and a moral perspective.


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[Assistant] It can be absolutely terrible and they can give the wrong impression. And I think a good example or a good correlation of that is the stereotype of military leadership. You know, you see the military leadership stereotype in the movies and it's filled with these authoritarian tyrants that yell and scream and bark orders and


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[Assistant] That kind of leadership in the military is not normal. And it's not successful.


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[Assistant] When it does take place, does it ever take place? Yes, it does. There are tyrants in the military that yell and scream and bark orders, just like there's tyrants in the corporate world that yell and scream and bark orders, but it's not normal. It's not, it's not normal. It's not successful. Leadership in the military is by people that do the right thing and listen to their troops and, and care about their people.


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[Assistant] Now, when we talk about the ethics of war,


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[Assistant] Look, same thing, there's movies that present these crazy ethical situations and show the military in a bad light, but on top of that there's


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[Assistant] Of the American military and the ethics in the American military. That the American military is just unjust and immoral.


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[Assistant] Look, that is true. There have been cases, obviously. But it is certainly not acceptable in any sense of the word. It's not even remotely common. Americans are incredibly, incredibly ethical on the battlefield. And Americans, and we'll talk about this, go through


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[Assistant] Incredible lengths to protect the civilian populace, to mitigate collateral damage and to uphold


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[Assistant] We have had horrific incidents in our history.


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[Assistant] Like the MiLiMasker, which was, which we covered on Podcast 31. Why do we cover the podcast, that on the podcast? Well, because we want people to know about it.


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[Assistant] We want people to understand. I want young military leaders to understand what happens when they don't take the high ground. The Sand Creek Massacre.


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[Assistant] That's another one. I did a podcast with Daryl Cooper on that one.


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[Assistant] Why did I do that? Because people need to understand what happens from a psychological and a pure pressure


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[Assistant] And a leadership failure, these are the kind of things that can occur. But these type of incidents are completely atypical for America. And America has an astounding record.


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[Assistant] Especially when you consider the, the vast amount of war that has been fought by America.


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[Assistant] Since US servicemen and women that are out there doing their job in a squared away manner doesn't get the clicks, doesn't get the views, doesn't get the lights, doesn't get the reads. It's the negative stories that are written more often and they're written even though often times they're completely just


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[Assistant] Unsubstantiated lies, but the headlots, the headlines that get read, those are the books that get sold. That's the way the media works. So,


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[Assistant] Talking to Leif, I thought it would be a good idea to come on here and talk about what it was actually like fighting in Iraq. Talk about the actual rules of engagement.


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[Assistant] Talk about the law of armed conflict. This way people can hear the truth about what it was like on the ground.


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[Assistant] Making decisions, leading, and how important it is for the US military.


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[Assistant] The entire US military, from special operations to conventional general purpose forces, to follow the code of our country.


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[Assistant] The uniform code of military justice, the law that exists within the U.S. military, and this law covers everything from drunkenness,


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[Assistant] To conduct on becoming of an officer, to forgery, to robbery, and it also goes all the way to things like kidnapping and rape and murder.


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[Assistant] And the Uniform Code of Military Justice, generally speaking, is stricter than civilian law and usually delivers heavier punishments when these things take place. So you have the code, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You also have


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[Assistant] The code of conduct that we follow, if captured by the enemy.


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[Assistant] We covered that on the podcast with Charlie Plum, who had to live by that code.


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[Assistant] Military values. You know, in the Navy and the Marine Corps, we have the values of honor, courage and commitment.


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[Assistant] We have to follow these codes. And when you don't follow these codes, you get punished. And you get punished severely.


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[Assistant] That way people have the right morals and the right ethics to act with, to guide them.


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[Assistant] And in case that fails during the stress of combat, like I said, there are legal rules of engagement that are in place and reviewed daily to ensure that servicemen and women obey the law.


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[Assistant] From a moral standpoint, from an ethical standpoint, we as Americans have to take the high ground or the high ground will take us.


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[Assistant] So let's start off by reading a lot of times people throw around rules of engagement, but I wanted to actually get the rules of engagement that you and I operated under during the Battle of Ramadi.


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[Assistant] And these rules were not specific to the SEAL teams. They weren't specific to Task Unit Bruiser. They weren't specific to Special Operations. These were the rules of engagement that applied to every member of coalition forces in the country of Iraq. They very rarely changed.


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[Assistant] They very rarely change. Why did they very rarely change? Because they didn't really have to change. They are very squared away.


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[Assistant] And like I said, a lot of people hear about rules of engagement, but when you actually read through the rules of engagement, you'll see.


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[Assistant] And a lot of people think that the rules of engagement are so constraining that, that...


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[Assistant] The troops are put at risk. And while we could identify cases like that, most of the time, that's not a rules of engagement issue, it's a leadership issue.


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[Assistant] And let me just get to it here because you're gonna see right out of the gate. Rules of engagement. This is the ROE card.


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[Assistant] It starts off all caps. Nothing on this card prevents you from using necessary and proportional force to defend yourself. That's how it opens up.


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[Assistant] That's the opening. Nothing on this card prevents you from using necessary and proportional force to defend yourself.


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[Assistant] So anybody that you hear say, well we had our hands tied. Listen, can you have your hands tied when it comes to, and I've heard cases like this, hey we couldn't drop bombs because the rules of engagement didn't allow it. Yes, those things happen.


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[Assistant] I think if, if you went back case by case and reviewed many of those would be a leadership decision where leaders didn't say, oh,


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[Assistant] I am willing to take the risk in this situation to protect my guys. Therefore, I'm authorizing bombs to be dropped.


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[Assistant] That, that generally is a leadership issue, not a roles of engagement situation. But that being said,


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[Assistant] There has been situations where rules of engagement have restrained and cost lives.


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[Assistant] As you listen to these, you're going to see it's most likely a leadership issue. Then it starts off here. One, you may engage the following individuals based on their conduct. A, persons who are committing hostile acts against coalition forces. B, persons who are exhibiting hostile intent towards coalition forces. So, hostile intent.


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[Assistant] Hostile intent. That means it looks like someone's gonna do something bad.


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[Assistant] A lot of times you'll hear us say, we had to wait until they were shooting at us. No!


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[Assistant] Hostile intent. They look like they're gonna do something bad. And then you can engage them.


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[Assistant] Next one. These persons may be engaged subject to the following instructions. A. Positive identification is required prior to engagement. PID is a reasonable certainty that the proposed target is a legitimate military target.


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[Assistant] If no PID, contact your next higher commander for decision. So, reasonable certainty. You have a lot of leeway in these rules. It's not overwhelming, but to say to a troop on the ground,


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[Assistant] Hey listen, you need to be reasonable cert- reasonably certain that an individual has hostile intent and then you can kill them.


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[Assistant] That's pretty good leeway. That allows the shooters on the ground to make those decisions and determine whether they should engage or not.


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[Assistant] Use graduated measures of force when time and circumstances permit. Use the following degrees of graduated force when responding to hostile actor intent.


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[Assistant] Then it goes through the escalation of force.


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[Assistant] One, shout verbal warnings to halt. Two, show your weapon and demonstrate the intent to use it. Three, block, access, or detain. Four, fire a warning shot. Five, shoot to eliminate threat.


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[Assistant] There's some escalation that you can use. And you and I, Leif, we've been through every one of those escalations. And sometimes you don't have time for these escalations.


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[Assistant] Sometimes you have time to go from one to four to five. Sometimes you have time to go to one to two.


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[Assistant] To five, things can escalate quickly, but there they are, the recommendations of


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[Assistant] How you can escalate. And it literally says when time and circumstance permit.


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[Assistant] Doesn't say you have to go through all these five steps. It says when time and circumstance permit. So there you go.


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[Assistant] C. Do not strike, do not target or strike anyone who is surrendered or who is out of combat due to sickness or wounds. Check. Straightforward.


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[Assistant] Do not target or strike hospitals, mosques, churches, shrines, schools, museums, national monuments and other historical and cultural sites, civilian populated areas or buildings unless the enemy is using them for military purposes or if necessary for your self-defense.


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[Assistant] You can see a lot of time and effort went into these rules of engagement. These are, and you and I reviewed these many, many times on deployment.


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[Assistant] To make sure that we were following them correctly and they are well written and they are certainly


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[Assistant] They're certainly squared away for not only protecting the troops, but protecting, as you can see,


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[Assistant] Hospitals, mosques, churches, shrines, civilian population, all those people. All those things.


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[Assistant] Which I remember, I went to places in Iraq where they're like, hey, this is a cultural sensitive area, you cannot go in there. Okay, cool. We can't go in there. Got it.


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[Assistant] There's also situations where we're getting shot at from a mosque and it's like, oh, we're sending troops in there. Gotta get OSEC's level approval. Cool, we got it. Let's go.


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[Assistant] So that's what happens. They put these rules in place.


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[Assistant] And these rules have a high element of decentralized command in them.


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[Assistant] Next one, do not target or strike Iraqi infrastructure. Public works, commercial communication facilities, dams, lines of communication, roads, highways, tunnels, bridges, railways, economic objects, commercial storage facilities, pipelines, unless necessary. Again, they're trying to make sure the troops are protected unless necessary for self-defense or if ordered by your commander.


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[Assistant] If you must fire on these objects, fire to disable and disrupt rather than destroy.


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[Assistant] Always minimize incidental, this is number, this is letter F. Always minimize incidental injury, loss of life, and collateral damage. Check.


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[Assistant] Uh, the use of force, this is number three. Going to the next section. The use of force, including deadly force, is authorized to protect the following. Yourself, your unit, and other friendly forces. Detainees,


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[Assistant] Civilians from crimes that are likely to cause death or serious bodily harm such as murder or rape.


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[Assistant] You, your unit, other friendly forces, they're threatening detainees, they're threatening civilians. You can do these things.


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[Assistant] And then it says this for, in general, warning shots are authorized only when use of deadly force would be authorized in that particular situation. Now why do they throw that in there?


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[Assistant] They throw that in there because they don't want people getting trigger happy with their warning shots.


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[Assistant] So you're not gonna take a, you're not gonna say, Oh, this kid is getting a little close to me. I'm taking a warning shot. They don't want that happening.


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[Assistant] So therefore, warning shots are only authorized


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[Assistant] When you're gonna use deadly force. If you're not gonna use deadly force, you're not gonna fire warning shots.


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[Assistant] Number five, treat all civilians and their property with respect and dignity. Do not seize civilian property, including vehicles, unless the property presents a security threat. When possible, give a receipt to the property's owner.


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[Assistant] Number six, you may detain civilians based upon a reasonable belief that the person, one, must be detained for the purposes of self-defense, two, is interfering with coalition force mission accomplishment, three, is on the list of person wanted for questioning arrest or detention, four, is or was engaged in criminal activity, or five, must be detained for imperative reasons of security.


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[Assistant] Anyone you detain must be protected. Force up to including deadly force is authorized to protect detainees in your custody. You must fill out a detainee apprehension card for every person you detain.


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[Assistant] Like, why could we not take war trophies? Can you explain this to me, Life? Why could we, why I couldn't take, why I don't have a freaking Iraqi AK-47 on my wall right now, or at least four of them? This is a bummer.


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[Assistant] Give the boys the opportunity to take home some, some Iraqi weapons or whatever. Alright, so now you got a part that I disagree with.


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[Assistant] So, we should be able to take some level of war trophies. We're going to fight, we're going to war, we want to bring back some freaking war trophies.


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[Assistant] Not, you know, nothing crazy. I mean maybe a couple things crazy.


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[Assistant] Like, let's get that changed next time around. They're Jags. The, the, Judge Advocate General Lawyers for the U.S. Military. Let the troops take some guns home with them. Demail them, whatever you want to do. It's fine. But,


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[Assistant] Let's go. Alright, number eight. And this is the last one. All personnel must report any suspected violations of the law of war committed by any U.S. friendly or enemy force. Notify your chain of command, judge advocate, CID, IG, or chaplain. These are we in effect as of 22 May, 05. And these are the ones that we operated under. So, these rules of engagement that we operated under,


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[Assistant] And we did so very strictly and very completely. The reason we were able to was number one, if you don't follow these rules, you are putting everything at jeopardy. Everything at jeopardy. And it's just not worth not following these rules. And number two, these rules are squared away. These rules work. These rules make sense.


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[Assistant] That's the, that's, that's, that's the beauty of these roles. They were effective not just in protecting the troops, but also in protecting civilian populace and also in protecting the, the infrastructure. They were good to go. Leif, you were out there on a daily basis.


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[Assistant] Yeah, case in point, when we got there...


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[Assistant] By the insurgents. When we got there, there had just been a family who had been, the father had, the insurgents thought he was cooperating with the civilian populace and they beheaded the guy and put his head on the, like on the front lawn of the family. These people were just absolutely


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[Assistant] Now, when we got, there was a couple of things that I had that was pretty lucky. Uhm, number one, as odd as this may sound, I was an English major in college.


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[Assistant] When I was an English major in college, I had to go look at Shakespeare and I had, there'd be words that I didn't know what they meant. And instead of me, if you were, before I was an English major, if I saw Shakespeare, I was like, that doesn't make any sense, whatever. It sucks.


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[Assistant] When I went to college and I had to read literature and I had to analyze it and I had to figure out what it meant, I learned how to use a dictionary. I learned how to be okay with saying, oh, I don't know what that word means or I don't understand this phrase. Let me break it down. Let me parse it out. Let me break down these individual words and find out their meanings.


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[Assistant] And so for me, if I would have read that rules of engagement, which we just read in 1996 when I was 25 years old, I would have been like, uuuh. But having gone to college and studied English, I understood those rules of engagement and I was able to


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[Assistant] Articulate and explain to the troops what they actually meant. So I think I was very lucky in that respect. I was also very lucky in respect that I had just got back from Iraq.


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[Assistant] This might sound strange, but we did a lot of direct action missions, meaning we did a lot of the kind of the classic SEAL mission of there's a bad guy in this building in this part of the city, we go out


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[Assistant] Kick in his door, grab the guy, capture him, bring him back to base, interrogate him, go out and get another guy. Like that's what we do. Classic Seal Machine.


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[Assistant] Especially for the war on terror. It's a classic steel mission. And I did so much of that, that


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[Assistant] And when you do that many missions, you're definitely stoked on it. But then, you know, my aperture opened up to where I started looking and saying, well, what else could we do? What else could we bring to the battlefield? And by the time we got to Ramadi,


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[Assistant] Yes, I definitely, I was, I was looking to conduct those type of direct action missions. But I also thought to myself, how else can we help? So that was already in my mind. And look, I know you and Stoner and the rest of the boys wanted to conduct some direct action missions, no doubt. And we definitely planned to and did.


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[Assistant] I mean, it's like, uh, you know, you really wanna have...


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[Assistant] Uh, chocolate chip cookies, you know. Well, I had eaten a bunch of chocolate chip cookies the previous deployment. A lot of them. And so I was like, hey, dude, there's steak over here. There's like good burgers over here. There's, there's, you know, uh. It's not all it's cracked up to be. It's not all, we don't have to just keep eating these chocolate chip cookies. Let's get, let's have them. Let's definitely have them.


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[Assistant] But we can do some other things. So, those are some things that I was lucky about. Lucky that I studied English. I hate to say it, it's embarrassing a little bit. Lucky that I studied English. Lucky that I had done...


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[Assistant] That I had a high op temple on my previous deployment and I, I didn't have any, uhm,


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[Assistant] Man, for lack of a better word, I didn't have anything to prove, like I needed to do a bunch of these missions so I could be like, look what I did, and I had a lot of experience, I had a lot of experience planning and conducting operations. So, I was very lucky from that respect.


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[Assistant] Real quick, props to our JAG. We had a judge advocate general who was working at SEAL Team 3. And because, the reason I have to bring this up is because sometime when I was in college, I wouldn't understand something that this writer had written.


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[Assistant] And I'd look up the words and I still couldn't make sense of it. So I might talk to our JAG and say, hey, what does this actually mean right here? What does this actually mean? Put this in some other words for me so I understand or explain what they're trying to get across here. And then he would do that. And so we had a very squared away JAG officer who was my professor.


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[Assistant] When it comes to the ROE and what it means. So that was also beneficial. And that enabled you to...


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[Assistant] Yeah, definitely very lucky in that respect. I was also lucky because I've been an e-dog. I've been an enlisted SEAL.


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[Assistant] And so I had done a bunch of deployments as an enlisted SEAL. And you know what? There was no war going on.


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[Assistant] There's no more going on when I was doing a bunch of deployments. I did a couple like...


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[Assistant] Things like that. I guess I'd done some, you know, a bunch of ship boardings as well, you know, so you're, I guess if you're locking, loading your weapon, I always felt like I was doing something real, right? So I had lock in, I guess it was more than four or five times when I talk about all those VBSS operations, but I'd done a bunch of,


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[Assistant] Of operations, you know, that were real, even before I got to Iraq on my first deployment. And again, were they, were they,


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[Assistant] Cool, no, we're looking back, of course, they were lame, but that's what, that's what, that's what we were doing at the time. I had taught a bunch of stuff in training cell at SEAL Team 1. Which, that is when I feel like you really learn stuff well, is when you start to teach it.


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[Assistant] You know, you go teach jujitsu, you go teach an arm lock, your arm lock's gonna get better.


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[Assistant] When you start teaching a heel hook, your heel hook is going to get better because you have to show the details. You have to figure out why it works. You have to show these little nuanced parts of the moves. And so I was doing that as an E5 at SEAL Team 1. And when I was in SEAL Team 1 in training cell,


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[Assistant] I was a single dude. And guess what we were doing? We, I would go on every trip. Like nowadays, you know, someone will be like a land warfare instructor.


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[Assistant] Back in those days, if you were willing, you go on that land warfare trip, you go on that CQC trip, you go on that combat swimmer, run that thing. We were, we taught everything. So I got a bunch of experience and very lucky to have that.


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[Assistant] The other way, so, so I, it gave me a very good tactical sense. You know, and I had great people that taught me this stuff. So, very, very lucky.


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[Assistant] Remember when the army dude came to us in Ramadi and taught us SSE, sensitive slate exploitation, and I was like, hey dude, like, it wasn't actually me, it was my, it was my assistant platoon commander. I was like, hey, we need a squared away way to do this, and we wrote about this in the dichotomy of leadership. We need a squared away do, way to make this happen, where this is not working, we need to get it more streamlined and more,


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[Assistant] More disciplined. And he said, okay, and he created it. And then we, we started doing it and we started telling other units about it. And so then in Ramadi, three years later, this, the army shows up and is like, hey, here's how you're gonna do this. I was like, wait. And I know we invented it. Now listen, we didn't 100% invent it because


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[Assistant] My assistant platoon commander reached out to people that he knew in law enforcement, people that he knew in federal law enforcement and said, hey, how do you guys, like, search a target?


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[Assistant] And they gave him feedback and he took that and kind of fitted it to our situation. I looked at it. It was like, yeah, that makes sense. And then we rehearsed it and made some more modifications. But yeah, those are that that that is an interesting point that we were able to bring. But even my first deployment, like the first time we got shot, I was like, oh cool.


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[Assistant] I wasn't like, eeeeh. I was like, oh cool, we're getting shot out. Here's what we do. Like I wasn't freaked out. Why? Cause I'd been


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Through so much training. It's like we tell that story about Seth, the first gunfight that Seth ever got into Ramadi, where he was like making decisions, making calls, flanking the enemy, and this, you know, army major's like, hey man, you must have a lot of urban combat experience, and he's like, no, this is my first firefight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why? Cause he'd been through awesome training. So I had done a lot of that. The other thing that was very lucky, so that gave me a good...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tactical level picture, but then luckily I had-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was the admiral's aide, and no one likes to say they were lucky to be the admiral's aide, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I certainly didn't want to go, and it was my commanding officer at Tilt Team 7 that was like, my final mission is to make you the Admiral's aide. And it was a smart move for him. And I, and I look back and thank him for it. It cursed him at the time. But working for Admiral McGuire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I got to see was I got to see how much pressure the SEAL leadership was under. I got to see


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we messed up. Like there was some drama. There was some, some negative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was the SEAL Team 7, which I was at SEAL Team 7, there was a prisoner abuse scenario that unfolded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I saw how that impacted not just the guys, those guys were my friends that got in trouble. Some of my friends got in trouble from other platoons.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, so I got to see and think, wow, this is terrible. If, if you do something like prisoner abuse, and the prisoner abuse that I'm talking about, by the way, is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Extremely minor, minor to the point that it's less than a, you know, a normal CEO platoon new guy hazing that we used to get. That's the kind of abuse that I'm talking about. I'm not talking about torturing people, I'm not talking about bamboo shoots under the fingernails, I'm talking about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Non-professional treatment of prisoners is the best way I guess I could describe it. So these guys got in trouble.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My platoon, my sister platoon or other platoons at SEAL Team 7 actually got in trouble. Guys got court martial, guys got letters of reprimand for their behavior.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I got to see that. But not only did I get to see what it did to the guys, I saw what it did to my boss, the Admiral. I saw the scrutiny that he was coming under.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I saw him having phone calls and video conferences.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the Secretary of the Navy. With the CNO.