Speaker 1Hey, what's up to the point listeners? It's you boy this episode. It's gonna be so great. You're gonna love it This was from Rhinox this past Rhinox with the guy that shot bin Laden in the face three times straight in the face and his his session It was probably one of the most exciting ones there because he just went off about so many different things about leading in a stressful environment and how he came from being someone from a small town, you know, with no real skill or ambition and turned into a badass Navy seal. So it is a very, very, very cool session. And we decided, let's turn this sucker into a podcast. So enjoy it. You're going to love this one with a Robert O'Neill.
Speaker 3This is to the point. of Lionel Experience. Probably one of the top home services marketing and operations podcast cutting through the bullshit and getting to the point.
Speaker 2Rob, this is gonna be a lot of fun. I can't wait. I can't think of a better person to do a fireside chat with. Maybe we'll start off with the story. You were the Chubby Kid in Montana who couldn't swim in the newer and Osama Tell us about that.
Speaker 0Yeah, it ain't nutshell, that's what happened. One of my favorite sayings, I'm going to say that a lot to have a lot of favorite sayings, is if you want to make God laugh, tell them you're planned for tomorrow. because life happens around you as you're planning. And the way that I give an example is my plan, as a young man, was to play college basketball, get an MBA and then work for my dad as a broker. And that was the plan. I was playing in my freshman year. I got dumped by a girl. and it was time to leave town and the more I've been around to I found that a lot of young men a lot of young women to just find that time in life where it's time to leave mine was at 19 years old I grew up with two guys who were marines they always wanted to be marines two years old or Ben and Jim Ben well it's just a gimmick bright Two years old are always wanting to be Marines when they graduate at the same high school I graduated. They left together every time they came back they looked like Marines. They had the high and tight. They were studs. They, I'd see them working out when I decided to leave Montana, I'm going to join the Marine Corps. I knew them and I'd seen full metal jacket there it is. So I went to join the Marine Corps as luck would have it. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than it is to be good. The Marine recruiter was not in the office, but the Navy guy was. The two Marines told me a joke. I didn't know some of you may not know the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy. It's just a men's department. That was the joke that sent me into the Navy guys' office. That's how my life got to where I am right now. I went in there and said, hey, if anyone's gonna know where the Marine is, you will. And he said, why do you want the Marine? I said, I want to be a sniper. I'm in Montana. I hunt Marines have the best snipers in the world. He said, look no further. We have a sniper here in the Navy. You need to be a seal first. He brushed over that part for some word reason. We're in Montana, Landlock State. I didn't know how to swim. But I'm 19 years old, kind of naive, but here's a professional recruiter. Why is he gonna lie to me? And so I signed, and I brought my mother down to see it, and then that's when he showed me a video of what a Navy seal is. And I like, well, this is going to be a tough one, but I better learn how to do a swim. And that was it. And so then I actually, I still was playing ball, so I had a badge to get into Montana Tech, which is in Butte Montana where they had a pool. I went into the pool. This is the next day after I, I enlisted in the delayed entry program, which means I had a amount of time before I signed, but from the time I signed, until I had a leave, So a few months, so I'm standing at the pool six a.m. I'm looking, I could keep myself alive, but I didn't know any strokes. So I'm looking like this, okay, here's the pool, it's 25 meters down, 25 back. I'll swim a thousand meters, and I'll see what kind of a swimmer I am. And so like your perfect plan exists when you're planning. Everything was going fine with my plan until I entered the water, and that's when the problems immediately started. I got down to the deep end, barely made it back. And I'm thinking, okay, I'm in a pickle. I just signed a contract, I can't swim. My drisco came walking in from my same high school. He was about to go swimming in Notre Dame, and he said, hey, Rob, don't take this the wrong way. It's good to see you, but I've never seen you in the pool before what gives. And I said, I just joined the Navy to be a seal, and he said not like that. Get back in the water or whatever, and then he showed me the breaststroke, which I got proficient enough to pass the very easy test to qualify four orders to get to seal training eventually. That was the very first part. But once I got there to boot camp, I realized very cool. I'm from Utah, Montana, which is kind of a bubble, but it's similar to everywhere else in the world. It doesn't matter if you're from Long Island. There was two guys from South Central Los Angeles escaping the gangs during the Navy who had to do it from South Florida. What we all had in common, it doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from, you can do anything, but we were all scared. And that was kind of cool for the Navy experience. Everyone scared, we're all similar one day at a time. In a nutshell, Shelby Kid joined the Navy
Speaker 2I mean, that's some butterfly effect. That's some hell of a way to get into it.
Speaker 0Well, here's the butterfly effect, too. I bring this up when people ask how to make a change. And I don't know why they ask me, but they do. For me, what I've noticed in my career from not playing four years of college basketball, too, wherever it is now, If you want to make a big change, you do a 2% or 3% now, and you're not going to get the gratification that people always want. In five years, 10 years, you'll see it. And the way that I tell my college age kids this, I have three daughters in college. I tell them just to give them an idea of the butterfly effect, and the small percentage that can make a big effect on your long-term goal. If a random marine sergeant was in station in Butte Montana as a recruiter, And wasn't at RBZ at 1130 on a Wednesday in 1995. You would not be alive, because I would have joined the Marine Corps. I wouldn't have gone too Virginia, I would have gone in North Carolina. So that's just the butterfly effect and stuff with everything. If you want to make a change, do it there. Like my change right here, I got a tattoo on my arm. On my hand right there. That's the first day I decided to be sober, and it says 718-25, so 7 months ago. And that was, you know, on, thank you. And on 7, 7, 19, it looked like a ridiculous tattoo, but on 7, 17, 26, there's a pretty good goal. And in 10 years, that's going to be really cool. And so I decided with my drink and hand, there's my, there's my change.
Speaker 2That's awesome.
Speaker 0A lot of drinking in the Navy, we'll get to that.
Speaker 2How was, how was Buds for you, how was, how was, how was swearing to that and tell.
Speaker 0So Buds is, is short for basic underwater demolition seal training. And that's the course every day we see only to go through and that's the one that you'll see in the movies and it's an 85% attrition rate 85% of the dudes that make the try out don't make it and the system works it's the people skills to get the get through it like a A sense of humor is key to everything, never lose your sense of humor, but the best advice was given to me. It was actually demonstrated to me the first day of sealed training how to get through it. Because sealed training is not like boot camp, like I mentioned, full metal jacket. It's not an open bay barracks, the size of this room where there's bunk beds and all these instructors come in and hit a baton into a trash can and wake you up. You know, that's bootcamp. In seal training, you need to be at a certain place at a certain time with a full head count ready to go now. So we had 227 guys in Buds class 208. We didn't know what to do. So they brought us into a room just like this to explain to us what to expect. And here's the advice he gave us. He gave us advice on humor. I got a stand up to explain it. We're sitting in the, they brought a seal on a stage just like this. So we're looking at, at him like you're looking at me, except we're terrified. Right. And so we came on stage, looking like a seal, camouflage pants blouse into shiny boots, a tight blue teaser, in gold on his chest, this is UDTCL instructor and short sleeve. So he's got tattoos down to his knuckles. He's at ABC, also he's obviously ridiculously good looking. Right. So he's dead. He stood in the silence. And he broke the silence by saying, I know you're thinking I look a little tired. It's because I am tired. I was up all night. I had to get my wife out of jail. She was arrested for shoplifting earlier that afternoon. We were leaving them all together. She had her arm around me. Security thought she was trying to steal an anatomy chart. This is how we started the thing. So we're sitting there like, what is this obvious psychopath talking about? He was just having fun at our expense, like sort of the sense of humor. But then he got motivational. And he said, look, I know you've read the books. I know you've seen the movies. Regardless of what you've been told, however, this course is not impossible. Don't freak yourself out. People graduate. Look at me. I'm living proof. So I'll never ask you to do anything impossible, but I will make you do something very hard, followed by something very hard, followed immediately by something very hard, day after day after day for eight straight months. And that sounds like a lot to get from not eight months from now, but don't think about it that way that's not how you achieve a long term goal. Here's how you get through seal training, but this is also how you get through life. Wake up in the morning on time, make your bed the right way and then brush your teeth. three wins. You just started today with three wins. Make it to the 4am work out on time and as I'm beating, you don't think about the pain concentrate on your next goal in life, which is breakfast. After breakfast, your next goal in life is lunch after lunch, make it to dinner. After dinner, do everything you need to do to get back inside that perfectly made bed and because you took the time for yourself in the morning to make your bed the right way regardless of how bad today was and it will be bad. Tomorrow's a clean slate. tomorrow's a fresh start, and when you feel like quitting, which you will feel like quitting, never quit right now, that's a motion quit tomorrow. If you can keep quitting tomorrow, you can do anything in life. And that's what he said, and that's what we did, and it got to a point where it was a Monday morning, you wake up, and now it's like, hey, go to medical, get your gear, and then your service record, you're going to seal team too. So it was just little goals into big goals, I guess. And it was, I mean, it wasn't that easy. It's, you're doing a thousand pushups a day, a thousand set ups a day, a thousand flutter kicks a day. Even where we would get beat outside on this, like seal training is an outdoor concrete slab where you're cold, wet, miserable. And a mile from that is the galley where you eat, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and mid-rats. So if you're having three meals a day that's six miles a day you're running, just to eat. And test every single day, 50-meter underwater swim. A test with a tire hands behind your back and your feet together. Really throw you in the pool for an hour to time. Just to prove boil's law that if you exhale, that volume and pressure are inversely related, so you'll sink. but basically panic is not going to help you so don't panic and that's the whole goal. This is a really difficult course. The hardest part of sealed training is actually called Hellweek. That starts on Friday and it doesn't end till Sunday and you don't sleep at all. You're awake the whole time with a book crew of seven carrying boats on your head and doing different drills. Actually, before that, right before Hellwee 2, the instructor gave me some advice. Just really good advice. If you can win the little mental games, he said, right before Hellwee, you're about to go to war for the first time, and the enemies all your doubts, all your fears, and everyone back home that you know that told you you weren't good enough to do this. Keep your head down, keep moving forward, when you feel like quitting, don't quit, not quit tomorrow, you'll be fine. And hellwee, are not even a hellwee, but in buzz, if you want to quit, you can quit whenever, and they actually make it easy. to quit, they'll encourage you to quit like they're your friend. You see in train and the movies like they're yelling at you and screaming, that's not the guy that's gonna get you because you're gonna flip in the middle finger. It's the guy that says, hey, look man, this isn't for everyone. This is a hard course. If you quit right now, I'll find you a job in the Navy, no problem. You'll be on a ship tonight, no problem. If you quit right now. I will give you a warm shower, a bed to sleep in dry clothes and 12 hours of sleep if you quit right now. All you got to do is ring the bell, the nightmare can end. It's so easy. But get in your head, after you quit, you take off your helmet that has your last name in your class and you put it in a Quitter's line. I would just tell myself there's no way in hell I can ring a bell and put a helmet with my father's name on it in a Quitter's line. And just the little victories, the little mental wins you can get lead into big victories.
Speaker 2what was the closest he said you came to quitting.
Speaker 0Closers I came to quitting was waking up every single day. I'm from Montana. We don't have a lot of ocean, actually none. And we don't get outside a lot. So I'm very, I had to tell instructors I got off a submarine, I was so pale. I would have to wake up 20 minutes early to put on sunscreen. Like the little shit like that, the mental games. But I thought about quitting every single day, but you think about someone who told you you couldn't. And then I'm definitely quitting tomorrow. No doubt, when I wake up, I'm quitting tomorrow. And then you wake up tomorrow, I'm definitely quitting tomorrow. And all of a sudden you're at SEAL team, too. And all of a sudden you're in Osama Bin Laden's bedroom. That is easy.
Speaker 2The video that Chris shared before is pretty good, but tell us more about the Bin Laden rate.
Speaker 0Well, the... To get there, let me back up a little bit because I got to seal team to it first. And the way, it's very simple the way that we, as operate as Navy SEALs, we know that if you get really good at the easy stuff, you can be good at the hard stuff. Don't talk yourself into an ass whipping. Just get good at the basics. The haymaker will come, but you need to know how to throw a jab type shit. So, seal teams are even numbers on the East Coast, odd numbers on the West Coast. I was assigned to two, and along the way I found out about another team called Seal Team 6. They're the counter-terror team, that's the Tier 1 unit, and it's Seal Team 6 is just sounds cool. But the reason that name is that is because at first we had one in two in 1962, I think, and then in 1980 we had to start Seal Team 6. because we needed a, like, joint special operation commanding because of a desert one failed rescue. But Richard Marseinkel, who started it, the commander, the plank owner and the commander of CLT6 said, the Russians will say their CLT1 and one, two and six, were the hell of a three, four and five. So just really good, you know. I tell my wife not just a hat rack. But that's so anyway, so the process to get over there to the counter, the CLT6 will get the big missions because you need to be a Navy SEAL for at least five years before attempting to go there and the process to attempt to go, that you won't see that in the movies. The way it goes, you need to get approved by your conventional SEAL team to represent them in a new, well the first part is three, the first part is three weeks to get to know you. So the first day of the three weeks is a triathlon about the length of a triathlon. shower, put your uniform on, then you sit in front of an oral board, which is like a shitty job interview, 14 people on one side, and you're dumbass on the other side, and you're getting ratified questions, and you're known like. For us, it was your tactics. Yes, but now it's your finances, your home life, your mortgage. How much you drink. Some dudes got your service record open because you have your uniform on, going through making sure ribbons and metals match and nothing's missing, and they're stressing you out. And then if they, if they, the board likes you, they send you to the psychiatrist for two and a half weeks for psychological evaluation, which is ridiculous. It's fun, if you, if you keep a good attitude, everything can be fun and you'll get used to most things. The psychological evaluation, the written test took me a day and a half to finish because it was like 5,000 questions with a number two pencil. And like you know the test, like there's the five options or ABC and D. Let's say four options, five or whatever. One is never five as always and three as seldom. So we'll say five. And some PhD came up with an algorithm for the questions that don't make sense. Like when you sit down, it's like number one, you love roses. five always who doesn't love roses everyone. Number two you wanted to capitate kittens you're like shit that escalated extremely quickly. And they're trying to get in your head like you try to cheat with your buddies like shit sell them for the fucking cat I don't know. I actually got done with the test and I had the same psychiatrist the whole time and I asked her what was the point of this test and she said oh we're not trying to figure out if you're crazy we're trying to figure out which flavor of crazy you are for placement. So then after that you do another really hard physical test to try off on and then if they like you in that three weeks they invite you to a nine month selection course. So sealed training that you see in the movies is eight months long this one is nine months long so it's longer than sealed training but it's harder and it's different because These are Navy SEALs trying to get, everyone they're going to die before they can't do some. So in order to select, we're trying to find people. We were talking about the hiring process earlier. First selection of the SEAL team six, we're trying to find people who can not just think, but who's willing to make decisions now, rapidly in a high stress environment. So we came up with drills to test your job, to test the stress of combat, but in a training environment, if you can do that. But for whatever you do for real, try to add the stress. But for us, it wasn't real war where bombs are going off and bullets are flying, and it's a controlled training environment. So everything that we do to you is self-induced stress. And as instructors, we know that. But we're trying to find the person who's smart enough to realize this in life, all stress is self-induced stress. Every bit of it is in your mind. It's a stress as a choice, basically. Stress is a bag of bricks that sits by your perfectly made bed in the morning and if you want to, you can pick it up and ruin your day and ruin everyone else's day around you. Or at any time, try this tomorrow, wake up, take a deep breath, put stress down, exhale, and let it go, get over it. Seriously, isn't that cool? Because it's in your mind. Here, stress is in your mind, it's like guilt. What is the point of guilt? because that play is over. That play is over. You're not getting it back. You can learn from it and move on, hopefully. And if you do it again, you can learn from it, hopefully move on. But just being guilty is not going to do it. I get asked all the time. What's it like? The analogy I've come up with, sorry, let me dance around it. The analogy I've come up with to put stress and perspective is whether you're taking effective fire on a mountaintop and Afghanistan, or you're the woman landing a jet on an aircraft carrier at night. or the person making latte at a coffee shop at 7 a.m. You know, at an airport, and there's a line of angry customers waiting. With those three having common is they only feel the amount of stress they allow themselves to feel, and that no one has ever accomplished anything positive by panicking. You know, people asked me about, I love hearing no fear. What's it like to have no fear? After 400 missions, and I'm like, I don't know, man, because I was afraid every time. But it's okay to be if anyone told you they've been in combat and weren't afraid they're lying or they're a sociopath We got plenty of those But it's okay to be afraid because because fear fear is natural and it makes you think more clearly Without without fear there would not be courage the difference being fear encourages like one more second It's okay to be a friend. Here's here's proof that fear makes you think more clearly Think about the last time you were watching a scary movie at night by yourself and you can hear everything in your house. That's just fair, that's fight or flight working for you. Last week, I was at home alone. My wife went some day and we're overnight. And I decided, the same day I bought an ice machine at Lowe's. I decided to be a fun time in my house by myself to watch the movie Smile. You ever seen Smile? Don't watch it alone. Because I'm watching the scariest part when this, yeah. And the ice machine cracked off, and I was like, Satan! It wasn't Satan, it wasn't the ice machine. But it's okay to be afraid. I'm going to do a point though, because there's a very fine line. Fear is okay, but the fine line is panic, because panic is contagious, and panic will get us all killed. If one person panics, the herd mentality in us comes out. Here's proof that panic is contagious. I'm not bragging, but I flew in last night on flying after this, so I get to be in airports every single day, which means I get to see people in transit. Think about the lat, here's proof that panic is contagious. Think about the last time you were flying somewhere, and someone from zone five tried to board with zone one. What did everyone start doing? Running right for that door, right? And we take off late, because we're in the fatal funnel. But if you do what you should and slow a smooth, smooth, smooth I'm off on a tangent, everyone can relate to this. Here's proof that panic has contagious. Do you remember the great toilet paper debacle of 2020? Right? Why did that happen? Who thinks toilet paper is a survival necessity? No, it's nice to have. It's shortens your shower. But some asshole decided to buy all of it one day where another asshole watched him and went Collectivism doesn't work. Is the point I make it. Anyway, these are little drills that get into bigger drills to seal training and select your stuff like that. But then you get to the selection course that's nine months long. And it's all based on skydiving and close quarters battle. So I've kind of gone off script a little bit. So if you want to get into some of the stressful stuff or the selection process we can't.
Speaker 2I mean. I love where we're going. Maybe keep us going through those things.
Speaker 0Yeah, I'm more than just you happen, I'm sorry, about that. I can see all kinds of weird drills in my head. Well, the one, here's the one that I want to, I gotta stand up again and do it. I get all excited, and I'm having a lot of fun anyway. The one, the one technique that we use is close quarters battle, CQB, which is the SWAT team style answer and you'll see in action movies. Like when you come through the door to try to save the day and all that stuff, the reason that we use that so much, well, one is because in combat for Navy SEALs, it comes down to an entry point. the door to the house, cave entrance to ship hatch. So we drill on, when operators come through those thresholds, they're definite steps, distances, movements, and angles for each dude, based on field, the fire, and covering each other's backs, which is also great about what we did because, as a good team, I only needed to worry about 45% and my teammates got the rest. So when guys come into a room, they're steps, Distances movements and angles and a differs so we'll start off with guys four do's at a time in a kill a shoot house or a kill house And a kill house is a training area that looks like a hotel But unlike but unlike a hotel that the walls are ballistic because we're shooting live ammunition blown up real bombs And there's up in the rafters there's 20 seal team six and structure so Five sets of eyes on each guy's in the room and what they're doing is when the guys come through that room and make a mistake. They start adding pressure on you immediately, no matter what you do, as soon as you come into the start yelling at you, calling you stupid, yelling your name, shining a flash like, what are you doing here? Because they want to see who you are, what kind of a person you are, you know, are you a person who comes into a situation, makes them a stake, and you realize you just made them a stake. But I can't worry about this mistake right now because I have a job to do, or are you the person who comes into a situation makes a mistake and then you can't stop thinking about that mistake even though it's not helping you you're dwelling on this mistake and because you can't stop thinking about that mistake even though it doesn't matter right now over here you make a bigger mistake and that's where they get you they're compounding the stress even if you don't make a mistake they're now adding stress about a mistake you both know you didn't make to see how you handle making a mistake you didn't make. Right? I'm trying to stress, okay, I could talk about CQB for weeks at a time, but to give you an example of what's going on the mind chess match, I'm going to walk you through with the number one man is thinking as he enters a room. So, now keep in mind, this will be one guy through one door on one wall in one room. Think about how many rooms are in a hotel. And you know, and it'd be going 10 times faster than I'm about to explain it, but if you could picture a door right here and I'm the number one man pointing my gun at the door, there's a two man a three man and a four man behind me in a stack or a train. What the one man is thinking in order every time now, because I'll 20 dudes are watching him as I see a doe, I don't see hinges drope, I click the fire, check the door, there's a lot to wait for the signal. And the signal is a squeeze on the leg of the shoulder from the two men, letting the one man know through effective communication. We have enough guys this time to enter the room. The one man doesn't need to turn around and count and check for himself. Plus if he did that, he just dropped security on the door. That's a safety violation of your fired. Lock going on. So once he gives the squeeze, open the door outside. Foot comes in clear. And it's a corner inside. Foot comes in to force off the walls. It's starting to sweep. It's six feet off the door. It's going to turn to threaten. Gage engaged. Finish by primary sweep. A foot net. The reason that can be stressful is if you're not the one man, but you're the two man, and you're having a bad day, and you don't want to screw this up, so you try to choreograph it. Like before a job, you just assume something's going to go a certain way. Don't do that because Murphy shows up, you know, everything changes. But I'm having a bad day. He's definitely going this way. I'm definitely going that way. This is definitely my outside foot as we end of the door. We have enough guys. Go, and he goes this way. Well, now you step with your wrong foot, but you've got to cover his back, so you're stepping here. You're mad at him. You're pissing yourself. They're stressing you out, and that's when you shoot the wrong target. You're fired. And then even if you don't make a mistake, prime example, I was that one minute and one time, all this stuff over here, middle of the room, send to the room, say clear, they stopped the training to yell at me. So all this is happening at once. Now they're screaming at me. Oh, Neil, how could you do it? You're supposed to be six feet from the door. You're way too far in the room. Why? Now imagine that chaos of me. That's a trick question. So calm down. Here's the answer to a trick question. Because I'm an idiot. just deflate the argument. Never get an argument you can't win. Guys, when your wife comes home, honey, we need to talk. Start a fucking fire in the kitchen. You can manage that. But they said, you're too far on the kitchen or too far on the kitchen. Too far on the room, take a step, half an inch to the right. So they mess with me by making half it. Then they take me outside. You're too far on the room. We're doing tire drags with body armor, helmet gun, 105 degrees of Mississippi and May, 20 minutes of this. Then climbing ladders, you don't know why you screwed up. They put you right back in front of the train. You're the one men again. Why? They want to see how you handle it. That's it. We know you didn't screw up, but we punished you for it. What was the point of the drill? Can you get over it? Great advice for life. Think about what's bothering you. Get over it. That's the point of selection, right there? They want the it guy. You can make decisions and get over it.
Speaker 2That's great.
Speaker 0So everybody knows CQB now.
Speaker 2Why don't you take us through the through line from evaluation to some of the missions?
Speaker 0So, okay, and again, so I forget and lose like that. That course, 50% of the Navy CEOs who try out don't make it through, but the ones who do get to the tier one level, now you will get the big missions. So I got lucky on that. My first deployment was CLT-6, not lucky, but I was in July, a bad Afghanistan, and an outstation when Mark has the trail needed to be rescued. Operation Red Wings, the lone survivor, so that was my team, went in for that. And that was the mission where, um, It took us three days to try to find him. If you're not familiar with the mission, some Navy SEALs put force nipers into one of the valleys, compromised big gunfight. Three of the snipers were killed. The helicopter went into get him shot down. 18 guys on board were killed. We're sorry, 16 guys on board were killed. And then my part of my team had to gather whatever we could. And that was a really patriotic day, though, because they're in a valley now where they won't fly us in to try to find the bodies or the crash site because they're shooting down helicopters. So we had to go around and find everyone, Rangers, Marines, Air Force dudes, whoever we could find. I remember going into a Ranger Hut. And this is before the July, I mean, the Russians had the July a little bit airfield, but there was really nothing there. They had tents built up and we went into a tent and explained the situation. And we need like five guys, all 25 or 30 Rangers got out and said, it normally takes us five minutes to get ready. We'll all be outside in three. And then we stole vehicles and mules and whatever they had, and we three days hiking. But then we finally get up and other, you know, the entire country shut down trying to find Marcus. and some ranges came in on helicopters and got them, but now we're just in there. Now we're in the Sherryic Valley and Afghanistan. He's gone, but now we're here, and that's when we look to each other and said, this is why we train so hard. Because if we wanted to quit right now, where the fuck we gonna go, we're just here. So the preparation, even before someone's on the job, you gotta make sure the preparation is there, everything else will just come with it. So that was one. And then, That was 2005. We had other deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, the heat of the war and Iraq in 2007 that was just hunt out tied emissions, so doing all that stuff. And this is slowly building a resume for when the president needs to pick who's going to go on the bin Laden raid. So then I was at my, we would deploy and then train, then training is all around the country and then deploy. So you know, I have my kids from this part of my life too, and I would be away from home 320 days a year. But I was at my daughter's Easter Tea Party on my birthday, good Friday April 10th, 2009. I had a pink plate and smiley face cookies and shit that you feed for your else. And I'm walking over and I got a message that a guy by the name of Captain Richard Phillips had been taken by some polypyrids and they were calling my team to go get him right now, not tomorrow. So put cookies down, look your daughter and the face giver of kiss and turn around and go to war. On your birthday. Like I've been never seen her again. There's a huge difference. That's the hardest part of war right there, kissing your kid. Getting shot at is easy, getting blown up is easy. kissing your kid goodbye, there's a huge difference between kissing your kid good night and kissing your kid good bye. Yes, this one daughter was always there. Well, I mean, after we got that cost, I'm jumping around. Got a message 15,000, 40, six minutes later, though we had a full head count over 180 seals in the Indian Ocean and we rescued Richard Phillips. On Easter Sunday with some shots from our snipers, why? Because they were prepared. Again, prepared. Let me back up on that one. Two sealed team six I talked about was designed to rescue American horses at sea in 1980. It had never been done. Not one time, 29 years. Could you imagine being complacent? Imagine being one of those snipers. That, okay, I'm standing up because I'm excited. If you're not familiar with the mission, a US Navy destroyer, the US has bane bridge was towing a lifeboat full of pirates. And we didn't know how to get them. And we didn't go there to kill those guys. We simply put snipers on the back. Watch them, make sure nothing unsafe happens as we're preparing for the rescue. As we were preparing for the rescue, something very unsafe happened and they shot. And there was no countdown. Here's why it's cool with the preparation. Four days before that, those three snipers were in their own beds in Virginia. We had never done this in 29 years and it's a long weekend. I'll drink beer and I'll cite my guns in on Tuesday. They didn't do that. Those guns did not need to be cited in for the most difficult shots of their lives, but their guns were cited in for the most difficult shots of their lives because we don't take shortcuts and it saved them as life. So that was another mission. And there's a few more here and there, and then we just finished yet another deployment. We're back in states. I was running a dive trip in Miami because if you're running a trip, you want to tuten Miami. It's just fun, good training, good lips. We got to call this group. These have come back. We went back in the saddest in a room. And the way the whole thing started was the reason you guys are here. And we looked around. It's all senior guys. Here's guys that have been fighting now for 10 years, every single day. They said, this is not a drill. This is real. We found a thing. This thing is in a house, in this mountain range, in a bowl, in a country, and you're going to go get this thing, and you're going to bring it back to us, and you're going to show it to us. We said, cool, what's the thing? Can't tell you. Okay. What mountain range is it? Can't tell you. What country can't tell you? How are we getting there? Can't tell you. How much air support do we have? None. Okay. We have an answer. We don't know where we're going or what, but we don't have any help. That was it. And then they also started saying, and we can't bring. So we have other guys to go with us. Air Force sends us a combat controllers. CCT guys, which are the ultimate, the most deadly man on the battlefields of combat control in the Air Force, we also would bring PJs or the surgeons that are also operators, but they said you're not bringing any of those guys just seals. So get your gear ready if you're the radio guy. Like we were down in the cage and other shooters from seal team six and walk up and say, hey, what's this mission you're going on? And we're like, I don't know. And then you have the awkward conversation, oh, you could tell me it's like, I have no fucking idea. But then we put two and two together, And then we launched, well, we knew, we didn't know how we're going to get there until we went out to a certain spot that I get into and we did have some helicopters that no one knew about it. But we, the mission, we trained, after they told us, the woman that found in line who's real told us, the reason you guys are here is this is as close as we've ever been to Osama bin Laden. And that was pretty cool and there was no high fives, it was just, all right, here's what we do. They built the two-scale model and also a miniature. So we could train about the hardest mission every single day day, and night with helicopters, and then talk about the hardest mission every night. And the coolest thing about contingencies is I keep saying the perfect planning only exists in the planning room, because this is true. We had some of the best tactical minds in the world, came up with the perfect plan, rehearsed the perfect plan. All day long, one night on a Wednesday, the very tired boss said, what's the worst thing that could happen? The youngest guy in the room said, the helicopter could crash in the front yard, and we're all like, what the fuck was that? Why would you bring this karma on us? And literally got nervous, like, I don't know, maybe we should talk about that for 30 seconds. And that's exactly what happened. And we talked about for 30 seconds. The perfect plan never came close to fruition, but we were able to do something great. After that eight and half seconds of complete, complete chaos was over because of the preparation to get that. And I can go, I don't even know the timeline, I'm just rambling, I can talk you through what went down if you like. All right, because that's just a cool fact. I do need to stand up for this, too. Here's the way it went down. Here's the cool part. I need to talk about the human element because for a number of reasons, war is not a video game. People don't respawn, real bullets. A bullet needs to be right once, and an explosion will kill you. So there's a human element involved. Not everybody in a combat zone is a combat, not everyone's a terrorist. Some of the most welcoming people I've ever met was a two in the morning and a mighty of all places. The guys going in on the helicopter They cut their own grass and could barely afford their own mortgage. So we had a 90-minute flight into Bin Laden's house, where we could get shot down at any moment. Because this is new technology, the president of the United States didn't know about these helicopters and the pilots have been flying them about seven days. It's a 90-minute flight, we're going to get shot down. When we land, there's going to be a gunfight. If anyone's going to blow up the entire house with this whole family, and it's been ladden, we're going to run out of fuel. No one thinks of that. We don't have enough or refueling stations. Local cops will be there, not the military. I'm going to shoot it out with them or die in a pack, whatever. We're not coming. We were so convinced we weren't coming back. One of the guys that was on the last set of stairs said, I don't take this the wrong way, because I'm going. 100% going. I just need to say it out loud. If we know we're going to die, why are we going? Which is fair. I would expect you to ask that. So we had the conversation. We said we're not going after bin Laden for the fame. We're not getting the reward. We're going after Osama bin Laden for the first Americans who were forced to fight Al Qaeda to the death toe to toe. And those are the passengers on United Flight 93. We're going after Osama bin Laden for the single mom who dropped her kids off at elementary school on a Tuesday. And then an hour later she jumped to her death out of a skyscraper because that's a better alternative than whatever is going on inside right now. that we'll never know at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. This woman looked down, made a choice. She might have grabbed a stranger's hand and her last gesture of human decency was holding her skirt down as she jumped out of the North Tower. She was never supposed to do that and they weren't supposed to fight. We're supposed to fight. That's why we're going. And these are the conversations that the guys were. I mean, we even had the brave heart conversation right before getting on the helicopter. Like you can pull yourself off this mission right now. and you can live and see your kids again 50 more years. I got another guy who'll hop on in your place. But 50 years from now on your deathbed if you could give every single day back for one shot at this motherfucker, you would do it, get on the helicopter. We were talking to each other like this. So the flight in 90 minutes where you can get shot down. If you're worried right now about something that you're worried will not fix, why are you wasting your energy? So what I was doing, I actually, the smartest move I pulled on that was bringing a trifold hunting chair. So I'm sitting on this chair in a helicopter, and I'm counting from zero to a thousand. I learned as a sniper, that's how you get your mind off the stuff. Just count, zero to 2000, zero. I'm looking at the dudes I've been working with for 10 years, at least the dog Cairo is sitting right next to me sleeping. Cairo, Bell's in Malawaw, there's a book written about him called No Ordinary Dog, unbelievable. Even if you're not a dog person, but if you are, you better be a prior. His Chandler Chesney's right here, this is the funniest part. I want to tell you what we're thinking. I looked down, one of my guys put his air buds in and he's listening to music and he fell asleep. And I remember looking down at him thinking, you were literally asleep on the ride to a song of him in a lot of his house, man. You have icing your veins, and I literally see why women find you attractive at this point. And as we're going to be back to the south, and this sounds Hollywood, but it's not at all. I don't know how to remember the proflying on, like, 556, 557, freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended. I said, whoa, that's what George Bush said on 9-11, forget county. I don't know how to remember that. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a face, this coward, and freedom will be defended. Holy shit, I am on this team, we're going to kill him. And now I'm starting to get a jet, but we banked one more time. The air crew guy on the crew chief reached over and he opened the door. I need to stop right there. The word hero gets thrown around a lot, especially on this mission. Have you ever heard of the crew chief? Never. His job was to make sure the bird flies make sure the door gets open when we land. Can you imagine, every job is important. Can you imagine two super secret helicopters land full of assaulters when we can't get the fuck out? just a bunch of assholes, so he opened the door, now we're there, it's a resort town, this is not out west, there's a golf course. And the last thing I thought before everything went to shit was this is some serious Navy Seals shit we're about to do. Here's what went down, now I'm gonna go on this side just to be accurate. We'll say my chair has been a lot in his house. Here's the perfect plan, this is Dash 1, this is Dash 2, keep it simple, Dash 1's gonna hover in front of his house. We're gonna throw ropes out and go down them very fast. My team is going to go outside, there's a 20-foot roll around the whole thing. My team is going to go down there, we're going to put guys out, Snipers Dog, machine gun. My team is then going to the roof, faster up down, jump, and we're going to shoot him through the glass or whatever, this team's coming this way. As soon as this team came in to hover, something happened with the updraft and the pilot told me later, one degree Celsius warmer, something like that, we had the four best pilots in the world. The Army has the best pass, T-F-1-6 is the best pass in the world. He said if he would have powered up like any other pilot, he would have rolled it and killed everyone, he thought if I turn the tail, put the tail on the wall and stick to the nose, we might live. And he did that, that fast and it worked. My team dropped off a small helicopter, was going up this pilot saw they couldn't hover, so he went back down and said, get out, we got out. That's how the mission started. I remember stepping out of the helicopter, there's the big wall, there's been Lonne's house. Obviously, I'm not on the roof, no problem. This is a contingency from training, from preparation. There's a double door on this 20 foot wall there. We will blow that. I started calling a breacher, who is a methods of entry guy. He'll get you in. If you need to pick a lock, break the glass, blow the wall. That's what he's going to do. He decided he wanted to use a seven foot charge of C6. And I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence. I'm assuming you've heard of C4. I don't want to get all technical. C6 is two more fucking awesome. So he rose this thing down like a giant fruit roll if he backs off, he clacks it. And C6, a seven footer, is a master key, it opens. So this thing opened like a tuna can, but behind it is a brick wall. And he looked at it and just out of a training scar sort of goes fail breach, this is bad. And I said, no, this is good. That's a fake door and nobody does that, he's in there. So now we gotta go, I know if we go past this house to the other side, still outside the wall, there's a carport double door that definitely opens, we've seen it. So I thought they were doing a racetrack. What they said was, dash one, going around, dash one, going around, because I assuming they took fire, obviously, they're doing a racetrack to get a re-attack. What they were saying was dash one, going down. I didn't know that, and no one on my bird knew they crashed. So I said, hey, this is so and so I'm going to blast the carport. They just said, don't blast it, we'll open it. And that didn't make sense to me, but the door opened, and the thumb came out with a glove that I recognized. Just like that. And right now, you got to be able to think quickly. I'm at a point right now, it doesn't matter why. They're just there. Sometimes it doesn't matter why we're here, we just are. When I talk to NFL teams, I will tell the offense. It doesn't matter why it's second to 15 guys. It just is, right? Yeah, we can bits to each other about who missed the assignment, but what we all have in common right now is that clock. It's ticking. What are you going to do about it? So here's how much sense it didn't make to me. The aircraft from the first plane was standing there. I saw the American flag, the different uniform. I literally said, who the fuck are you guys? Went into the houses and gunfight going on. The coolest part about it. Now, I get in there. I'm trying to tell the whole story. It's in the operator. The only book that was approved by a guy that was in there. The spoil had been locked and dies at the end. Anyway. Long hallway, I get out of the hallway and I'm watching dudes work the problems. Here's another, I know I'm going on a tangent, but here's the human element. Is this okay?
Speaker 2All right, go for it.
Speaker 0Because no, because like, I'm watching the guys, so I'm in. Backing up, the reason I'm in this room, if you ever find yourself, I hope you don't. If you ever find yourself in a gunfight in a house, get out of the hallway, trust me, good biz. So I'm looking down the long hallway, and there's a dude working a breaching problem, and the way you work a breaching problem is you start, check that it might be unlocked. Then you might need a key, then you might need to kick it. You might need tools, a sledge, a hole in your mind. You need explosives, a saw, whatever. He's working the problem. And as I'm watching, I'm thinking, I remember going through sealed training with him. I remember sealed team two and breacher. School, I remember Wednesday night at Hot Toon I don't drink too much. We're breaching on Thursday. Selection to sealed team six. Red team, I rack. All these missions now he's breaching been loud in his house. I'm so proud of this dude. That's when the guy next to me goes, helicopter crash. I go, what helicopter crash? And he goes, bro, our helicopter crash. So I didn't make sense to be, but now it does. That's why they're here. As we're having this, the sniper from my bird had Cairo with a dog was running around the whole thing. He didn't know they crashed either. He sees the tail of the bird on the fence. He's outside and he looks up and comes over the radio. It says, hey, guys inside, be on alert. They're definitely ready for us because they have a training mockup of our super secret helicopter in the front yard. and there was an awkward silence in the ground force commander came over and said no jackass, that's ours because we crashed. And he said, yeah, that makes a lot more sense in the shit I was just saying carry on. So, now I want to get to the end of that mission because we get up there, the team did such a great job. We get in line, we pull him out, and because they helicopter crashed in the front yard, we had to blow that up, another helicopter had to come in. Here are more heroes that don't get mentioned. On the bin Laden Ray, the Army and Seal Team 6 rescued Seal Team 6. They flew in to get us on a bird that's not stealth, so we blew up that one. Put our guys in his body on this one, we get on this one, now we're leaving. on a mission that we're not supposed to live. We accept the death we set goodbye to our kids. My three-year-old had a hello kitty carry on with an elephant and a pillow left it by the door saying, you can take me on big, as good as a three-year-old can say that knowing I'm not coming back, but now we're leaving. And if we can live for 90 minutes, if we can fly for 90 minutes, we cross the border to Afghanistan, we get 50 years, now we can live. Now we can see our kids, but we got, all we got to do is live 90 minutes, but they know we're here now. We've been blowing the shit out of this place. Pakistan have ZF-16s, I know that because we sold them to them, because there are fucking allies. Anyway, 90 men, now I can't worry about, but I'm sitting on this bird, like 90 men as man, the sniper that rescued Richard Phillips is sitting next to me. That's how small this team is. He actually put a thing of Copenhagen front of me and goes, take one of mine, now you know what it feels like. It's like, what the shit, we could get shot down, but worrying about it to start my watch, and you look down, okay, it's been 10 minutes. We're flying, it's been 20 minutes, so. All right, 30, look at your guys, you can 40 minutes, 50. It's been 60 minutes, if I can get to 90 minutes, 70. I remember thinking about sports analogies in New York, Yankee Stadium, top of the seventh. Pitch no no hit or I'm not going to say anything. Oh, we're so close, I don't want to jinx an 80. Now it's like down to the wire. And I love sports analogies, especially the winter Olympics right now, because I was thinking about the greatest event in the history of sports, 1980 winter Olympics. And the Netflix show was just on, It's about the 1980 Olympic hockey team. This group of Americans or college kids that don't even like each other. And they are going to play the greatest hockey team ever assembled. These fucking Russians are six foot 12 full of steroids. Haven't lost a gold medal since the 60s and are beating Olympic teams as it Olympics by 10 goals. And this team has no business big on the ice, but now they're winning in the third, four to three and you can hear that crowd 10. That's what I'm thinking about in the bird's six, five, and then 85 minutes into a 90 minute flight. The pilot came over the radio with that monotone voice that they all have that we make fun of. And all he said was our gentlemen for the first time in your life, you're going to be happy to hear this. Welcome to Afghanistan. Yeah, and here's the best part. I mean, this is the last. If you see the movie ZeroDark 30, if you haven't definitely see it, because it's about the woman that found him and she's real, the agency team that found bin Laden is the most square away team. She's the toughest person I've ever met. But at the end of the movie ZeroDark 30, the team walks her over to bin Laden's body. We did bring him back. And then they walk her to it and they leave her alone and she cries, right? And the incident I've played, and it ends. That's how the movie ends horribly. Here's what actually happened. We land back there. Me and the dude that went up the last set of stairs, have a conversation, and he goes, hey, there she is. You got to give her something because you shot him. And I said, yeah, okay, so we're walking to her. I pulled the magazine out of my gun, the last round. I walked up to her and said, you have room for this and you're back back and she said, yeah, I do. And I said, all right. And so a couple of us there and said, well, So we walk her over to Ben Lond's body. And this is the only thing she did for the agency. Was that? Like the best part of the movie is when Secretary Penata was played by James Gandalfini. And he followed her to the cafeteria and said, what else do you do for the company? And she said nothing. I do this. So we're walking, that obviously the movie wasn't written yet or wasn't filmed yet. And I remember thinking the only reason we're here is because of her. This team is here because she gave up her life to find him. She didn't have a husband, no kids, seven days a week, 20 hour days for a decade. And then I started thinking, oh shit, I got to take some cool because I shot them. Then I put pressure myself, then we get over his body, this would have been good enough. She looked down for her life's work. Look down for half a second one. I guess I'm out of a fucking job. There's no point in that story. It's just really cool. Yeah, that was that. And that's something. Sorry about the F-bombs, too. I get a look excited.
Speaker 2I don't know what question I could possibly follow that up with. That would be more interesting over response.
Speaker 0Um, I do have an interesting story about the Captain Phillips raid against the, um, the human aspect, because we've never done that, we've rehearsed it a lot. Like we'll rehearse the timeline, we'll rehearse the plane, pack in the parachutes, getting the guys there jumping, all that stuff, um, but we have a set amount of time to do it. I was ahead of schedule. I got the message in my daughter's classroom. I gave her kiss and went to work, but I had a set, uh, I was ahead of schedule. because we're jumping on the East Coast. If I'm a lead jumper, the East Coast of Africa today, I'm going to get as much cash as I can under the ATM, a log of Copenhagen, and a carton of parliament lights. Because we're definitely jumping today. We might not end up where we want. I can barter with the cash at the tobacco. If I accidentally land in Kenya, it's my birthday, there's fucking casinos. It's awesome. I'm in line to get my stuff. There's a dude in front of me, no kidding. On Friday April 10th, Big dude just finished a night shift slams this USA today down. He's slow. I'm in a hurry and he announced to the store Man, I sure with someone would do something about this because they headlines about the damn mission And I tapped him on the shoulder and I go buddy pay for your shit and we will And he's looking me. I'm like I'm not even kidding like the nastows you're curly time on his squarely on your very broad shoulders And he like got it and he stepped out of the way and then we had a full head count. It's crazy And one of those here's another training star story. Do I have enough time to tell a funny story?
Speaker 2Chris, how much are we we have? Eight minutes.
Speaker 0On the flight, and again, training stars, you hear the term train like your fight. Like if you wanna do that, no shit train like your fight. Don't take shortcuts and put in safety kills sometimes. If your two safe is gonna get you killed, but so does complacency. So there's a fine line. But one of the training scars is the C-17 only has one shitter on it, okay? There's places where you can pee, one shitter important. They never plan on a 17 hour flight with 50 dudes on it. So it filled up. So now dudes are doing what they have to do in MRE bags and those bags are going into bigger bags. So we get big bags of shit on this plane. Here's a funny part of the story. We launched both both. So these two birds are just out of the Indian Ocean. I've got about five minutes before the racetrack for I got a jump. And we have these big bags of shit. I look at the crew chief and I go, hey, homie, what are you going to do with these? Just like bring them back to your booty or what? And he goes, yeah, they go, why don't you just throw them out into the Indian Ocean? And he goes, what if I hit one of your planes? And I said, I'll give you $10,000 if you can. But yeah, he didn't try to throw him anyway. There was no point to that. But yeah, the training stars, like when you're training, make it as realistic as possible. When I jumped out of the bird, I used to jumping off the coast of North Carolina and there's safety boats spinning around in the corners. That's my drop zone. There's no safety boats. So you got to know where you're going. So training like you're trying to get fight, I guess.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I could ask a million questions, but maybe Tommy.
Speaker 0Yeah, that was her preschool. Yeah, for Cam Phillips, yeah. The letters I wrote, no, I wrote, well, okay, that was on the bin Laden right, yeah. Well, yeah, the way that that went down, that was a letter for the kids that, but because the one wrote coming home, I hand wrote letters to my daughters, I had three daughters at the time, and the one dot in the middle was seven years old when I wrote a tour. And I, but I didn't write the seven year old letter. I wrote it to the 27 year old daughter. Like, I'm really sorry I missed your wedding. Thanks for taking care of your sisters and your mom, your beautiful mom. What we did was, and no, we'll try to explain to the kids why we're doing what we're doing. Now, yeah, that tears hit the page on that one. That's, that's no fun at all. And, and you know what was hard about that is, I have to, we'd written letters to our families before, but you give them to your buddy, because he'll give them to him. But I'm on a mission now where everyone's dying, so you have to find someone. And no one knows about the mission. I had all these letters in my family, written in a Manila envelope with instructions. I had to find an intel dude that did it intel for someone and say, hey, here's an envelope. And I want this back tomorrow. And if I don't get it tomorrow, the instructions are inside. And he goes, how will I know? I go, oh, you'll fucking know. And then he gave it back to me after they've been laundered. And I shredded him, right, it seems I got him. We should put a kept those.
Speaker 2That's powerful. Anyone else have any questions you'd like to ask, Rob?
Speaker 0I'm up here wondering if I just told the story and we didn't get any lessons out of it. You know what I want to talk about though too. Whenever companies are over teams or whomever, one of the most important things to bring up is effective communication skills. If you can learn to effectively communicate with your team, you're going to be faster and more efficient. And what we learn about effective communication is the less we talk, the better we were, because we got rid of the noise. And so if you can learn, and I give myself this own, my own advice every day, is when you're done saying what you're saying to stop saying it, never, never underestimate the opportunity of the power of shutting up. And then you'll be remembered for that too. I'm dead, like, okay, example. And I'm up here to talk on my ass off, so feel free to tell me to shut up, but think about the email you got today already with 15 people on the CC line that all it says, FYI, C below, C below, K, every single time. So I'm always supposed to let her, okay, we know you're there. Just because you're talking does not mean you're communicating. So like, learn, learn, learn, we, we, we wouldn't talk to each other on target at all. Just silence, read, so effectively communicate.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, you've done a lot of hard things, some spare hard things. Talk to Spel, like running towards a hard thing, doing the thing that you don't want to do that's uncomfortable rather than, you know, kind of going for the, the small way.
Speaker 0Yeah, we at a very young age instructors, it didn't make sense at the time because that wasn't overthinking it, but they would say, you can pay me now or you can pay me later, and that's like a crude interest. So you're going to get beat, so do you want to do it now on Wednesday with interest? So whatever the hard thing is get that done now. Have the hard conversation now and get it over with. And chances are most people want to do it too. Would you agree? And then if the hard thing fails, just something easy to try the hard thing again.
Speaker 2100%. I'm really big on this. One of the books I read recently is called The Heart Thing About Art Things by Ben Horowitz and it is a master class on just doing the heart thing first, not accruing the debt that's going to come due on Wednesday. Any closing words you want to share with
Speaker 0I know I'm literally trying to think I wasn't having a moment there.
Speaker 2I don't know how you're going to top the off the other itself.
Speaker 0No, it's again with favorite sayings is wherever you are be there. Just be it. You'll be in the moment. Make yourself available. I kept applying. I didn't take any breaks. I didn't take the instructor bill or the lead frog bill just to make yourself available. We have the car conversations. And then, never lose your sense of humor and if we move forward together, success takes care of itself.
