John A. Dailey Tough Rugged Bastards

Alright, we are good. Alright, everyone, thanks for tuning in. Super excited today to have John A. Dailey. John, thanks so much for coming on the show. Greg and I are both excited to talk to you today, man.

Well, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, so, you know, everyone kind of heard a little bit of an intro, a little bit of your background. But if you could just for our listeners, give us a little bit more about you. You've got a great Marine Corps career and the stuff we'll get into about starting a whole new unit in the Marine Corps and then the book you have coming out. But kind of give us a little bit about you and where you're from originally, and then we can jump in from there, man.

Absolutely. Yeah, I was born and raised kind of on the Virginia-West Virginia border and lived on both sides growing up. So it was a great place to grow up out in the mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains. Great. But I knew that I wanted to get out as soon as I could. So, in the Marine Corps, I decided to join the Marine Corps as a young man. As soon as I graduated high school, I was on a bus for Parris Island at 17. And I knew that it was something I wanted to do. When I signed up, I thought that I asked them how long I could sign up for. I assumed I was signing up for 20 years. Now it goes in four-year increments. But, so I wound up doing 21 years and really had a lot of luck. I mean, there was obviously a lot of work involved too, but I kind of lucked out getting into a sniper platoon early, and I learned so much there. And then I worked my way into Force Recon, which at that time was the pinnacle that you could achieve in the Marine Corps. So I spent most of my career there. Loved that. I mean, loved every day of it. And then I had the opportunity to move and start a new unit, like you mentioned, the Special Operations unit working not for the Marine Corps, but for USSOCOM.

So you're an actual Force Recon sniper, which sometimes people like to — when they're making up stories about what they did in the military — they'll say, "Oh, I was a Force Recon sniper." So when you actually meet one, it's actually somewhat rare, I guess. But yeah.

I guess it is. I mean, I know a lot of them, so it doesn't seem that's definitely one of the things that people, if you're going to make some up, you may as well make up Force Recon sniper. Yeah, I mean, go for the gold, right?

So we're going to do it. It's one of those things I used to hear, people say, "Oh yeah, so-and-so, and they said they were a Force Recon sniper." I was like, "Okay, maybe," but it's funny. But yeah, man, so I wanted to kind of jump right in because you've got your book out, Tough Rugged Bastards. And we'll talk about what you're writing, which a lot of people don't know: Marines actually can read and write. And I like to say one of the biggest lies the Marine Corps ever told is they just tell everyone that they actually created the whole lie about Marines being dumb and crayon eaters so that they get left alone because no one thinks we're doing anything. They're like, "Oh, they're just the bastard child of the DoD." And then we actually get to go do cool stuff. But I want to jump into that. So you started up — you helped start with a bunch of other folks, some of them I know — this Marine Special Operations Command. So that was new, obviously, to the Marine Corps. So, if you're a Marine, no one's special, you're just a Marine. But then also the Marines think, "Hey, we're all special!" Well, they'll tell other branches, "Hey, we're all special. We don't need this area in SOCOM. Marines already are." But could you give everyone just a little bit of background about how that works and the significance of it, and we can kind of jump into all the different things that were going on at the time?

Absolutely. So the quick kind of history lesson is that the Marine Corps always, throughout our history, has done the harder things, done Special Operations. Really, the first raising the American flag on foreign soil was following a 500-mile march across the Libyan Desert by a handful of Marines that raised a Gila Army and were trying to reinstall the rightful king of Tripoli. So, the Marine Corps, and then from there, we kind of moved into the Banana Wars in South America. And we were really kind of in the political and military legends like Chesty Puller, who was the military governor of Nicaragua for quite some time. So, we had gained a reputation as jungle fighters, but also as a force that could operate in the political realm as well. But the Marine Corps, like you mentioned, has really been reluctant to ever embrace the idea that there's a special unit within it. So it wasn't until World War II kicked off that there were the Marine Raiders formed, kind of when the President said, "Do it." And there's a real interesting history when you get into it. The President's son was involved, and the Marine that had served as the President's bodyguard, a guy named Evans Carlson, was tapped to be one of the leaders of one of the Raider battalions. So, really interesting history. But two years in, the Marine Raiders were disbanded. And it really, other than Force Recon, the Marine Corps several times, following Vietnam, disbanded First Force Reconnaissance Company and didn't reactivate them until the early, late '80s, I guess.

But in 1987, when SOCOM was formed, it was kind of following the failed rescue attempt to rescue Americans from the embassy in Iran that had been taken hostage. The decision was that, "Hey, we need one component that oversees all Special Operations." So when they reformed the U.S. SOCOM, the SEALs went over, the Green Berets went over, the Rangers, the Air Force Special Operations. And the Marine Corps was invited but said, "No, we're good. We don't want to do that." And that's kind of the way it's been. So we were kind of within the Special Operations world, the "bastard children." But following 9/11, the Secretary of Defense at the time was Donald Rumsfeld, said, "Hey, we need — we're going to need more Special Operations for this coming fight." And so he told the Marine Corps, "You guys, this time you are going to participate." So the Marine Corps fought back, and eventually the decision was — and SOCOM fought back, to be honest, they weren't really interested in having Marines join — but the decision was that we'll start a small unit that will be a testbed for two years, and we'll see how it goes. And I had, at this point, I had been the Platoon Sergeant for a Force Recon platoon. And I was sitting at a pub in Australia when 9/11 happened. So it was nighttime there, not morning. But then we found ourselves in Afghanistan, and it was by November of 2001, and my platoon was responsible for the first real Marine Corps combat on road interdictions between Kandahar and a town called Lashkar Gah. But in December, so I came back on the kind of on the backend of that, and I was probably largely responsible for the fact that I was tapped. "Do you want to be a part of this unit?" And of course, of course, I did.

That's cool how all that got started. And then, again, like you said, there's always these sort of background political arguments and command arguments and people saying, "Well, we don't want to do that," or, "Yes, we want to do that." And so it's interesting the backstory on some of the stuff because working through that is really, really difficult, right? Because I remember even this kind of getting started, I knew some folks over there and was like, "Okay, well, there's these arguments of like, 'Well, are you SOCOM or are you part of the Marine Corps? Do you fall under this?'" It's like, "Well, we're under SOCOM." "Okay, but that gear you're wearing belongs to the Marine Corps, so give it back!" I mean, there's actual logistical things that come up. So I'm curious, just because of the way the culture is with the Marine Corps and the DoD — and SOCOM is spelled, if anyone doesn't know that, it's "Army" (SOCOM is an acronym for Special Operations Command; "Army" is not part of its spelling, but it is often associated with the large number of Army Special Operations Forces within SOCOM.) — but with that, what were some of those kind of challenges looking back that you sort of didn't expect to happen? I mean, of course, you have the people that are like, "Hell yeah, let's do this," and everyone wants to be part of this because it's kind of historical, right? But then you also have a lot of pushback. And I'm curious what that was like for you guys getting going. What was that pushback you got internally or externally? You're saying like even SOCOM didn't want you there. It's like, "Hey, we're fighting for a job here, we should be belonging." Like, what are some of those things that you came across during that time?

Yeah, it was interesting. There was a lot of it that we kind of arrived. So, our unit, Detachment One, was composed of roughly Force Recon-sized platoons, about 30 men. About another 30 men were our intelligence unit, which was massive. I mean, they thought that our commander was insane for asking for that, but it proved to be absolutely valuable. And then the remainder were communicators, logisticians, administrative people, our Tactical Air Controllers — kind of all of the other things that you need to make an organization run. So for most of us, in what was the operational platoon, we just kind of put our heads down and did what we do. So we weren't privy to a lot of the decisions that were being made and a lot of the things. The direction was that the Marine Corps was going to pay for this, and the Marine Corps is notoriously cheap. So they're like, "Hey, we'll give you this much money." And fortunately, we were able to — we actually hired a civilian who worked as an equipment specialist for the DoD. So we brought him on, and he was able to kind of move money around and get us money for the equipment and everything. So we were very well outfitted, even though it was largely the Marine Corps' dime. But we had no idea when we stood up where we were going to employ, or who we would deploy under. We had assumed that we were going to go to Afghanistan. That was just, you know, we were a Force Recon platoon, so our primary mission is reconnaissance. It seemed that reconnaissance, Afghanistan, would be the place for that. So we had a year, basically, to prepare. We spent the first six months really very heavily focused on reconnaissance and on the idea that we would be in Afghanistan. So the vehicles that we procured, a lot of the things, were kind of based on that. And then about halfway through, they're like, "Oh no, by the way, you're going to go to Iraq. You're going to essentially perform as another SEAL platoon underneath the SEAL architecture." Once we knew that, our mission was primarily going to be direct action — just finding bad guys. And that's what we were also good at, so we spent the last six months really kind of focused on that skillset, building that up, and that's primarily what we did. So overall, at the headquarters level, there were absolutely a lot of head-butting and a lot of turf battles. For us, I think the biggest recognition was, you start up a new unit, you have nothing. I mean, we had buildings being built, but they were temporary kind of structures, but even those took three or four months to have built. We had no equipment. So the only thing that every Recon Marine owns is his own rucksack. So the one thing that we knew we could do was go rucking. And so the Platoon Sergeant that we had was adamant that, "Hey, we've got a lot of people who were kind of considered heavy hitters in the Force Recon community. There's a potential when you do that to have a lot of friction." So what we're all going to do is we're all going to put 55 pounds on our back and we're going to go 20 miles every Thursday morning. And when we finish, we're going to go straight to work. There's no — you can eat lunch, but no time off, no — nobody's going to clap you on the back for finishing the 20-mile run. So that really, I think, helped set the tone. One, it gave us the opportunity, a lot of hours walking, to get to know some of the people that we had come from different units and things. But also it drilled into our head that no matter how special you are, you've got to get to work. And usually getting to work is going to be on the "black Cadillacs" on your feet.

Yeah, I mean, that's a whole host of issues I could see coming up, especially with that team dynamic. It's like, "Okay, you're being selected for this special thing." You've got to prove yourself again. Even — I mean, this is the thing too — it's like you guys are picking from a group of people that have already proven themselves, not just in training and through assessment selection, but through deployments and done this. It's kind of like, "Alright, starting over again," almost like you said, "You got nothing. We've got to figure it out as we go along." So what do you think helped best or how did you guys just form as a team, right? I mean, you're talking like, "Alright, yeah, we go out hiking every Thursday, we're going to go on a ruck and we're going to talk." But what was it that really kind of worked for you guys to get everyone together?

Absolutely. So we initially organized into four teams when we thought that we were going to be doing reconnaissance. When we realized later, before deployment, we split into six. But I was able to — I was kind of brought in by our boss, Colonel Coates. And he said, "Hey, you pick your guys." And that's where the title of the book came from. He was like, "Hey, you know my requirements. I want tough, rugged bastards." And I was sitting in his office, I'm like, "Man, you know, one of these days if I ever write a book, it's going to be..." I kind of always had this thing in the back of my head. I always loved to read, so I always thought that I would. But I think that was part of it. I knew the people that I picked. And it was a really good lesson in leadership. Before that, like I said, I had been a Platoon Sergeant at Force Recon years before. I'd been a Chief Scout, almost a Platoon Sergeant, in the Infantry, in a sniper platoon. And you always have the people that you've got to keep an eye on, the people that you've got to sit down and coach and bring out the best in, and the people that you have to make sure are not screwing up. But in this sort of unit, it was a different type of leadership required. And you really have to put people — give people things to be in charge of themselves — because they're all leaders and had been leaders. So you really — even though one of the things that really, I think, kept this humble was just the requirement that we were responsible for when we did get our facilities built. Every Friday, we were out pressure washing the buildings. Our E-8s (First Sergeants) were sorting brass. It was cleaning the heads. It was because we were a unit with very, very senior people. We didn't have a lot of junior guys that you could say, "Hey, Lance Corporal, go clean." We didn't have any Lance Corporals. So it was all — and those things keep you honest, keep you humble. When you realize that, "Yeah, I'm a team leader in the first Marine Corps Special Operations unit, but I'm in here plunging the toilet on Friday," it's hard to get too big of a head. Yeah.

No, and those are the — it's like the little things like that really go a long way. And when you're talking about taking ownership of something, it's not just about, you know, someone's got to clean the toilet, someone's got to take the trash out, someone's got to do this. And when you have a bunch of senior folks, it's like, "Oh yeah, now we have to start doing this again." I think we also realized how lucky we were to be a part of this. And how it meant like the weight on our shoulders was because if we did poorly, then the answer was easy. SOCOM didn't want this, the Marine Corps didn't want this. So we knew that if this thing was going to happen and grow, then we needed to knock it out of the park. So it was — and things that settled a lot of, even among the team leaders, I would say myself and the other three team leaders, initially there was head-butting. But we were like, "Hey, we need to butt heads. We'll go out and throw blows in the corner, but when that's done, we've got to get back to this mission that we have, and that's to be successful at whatever it is to do." So you guys are doing this workup, you're thinking, especially strong reconnaissance, obviously, Recon background from everyone on the team. And you think you're going to Afghanistan. Then you've got to pivot, like, "Okay, we're going to Iraq now." Different ball game, different mission. But then, like you said, what was that like with the — I mean, did you guys feel sort of that pressure? Because you're going on the first deployment for a brand-new unit, even though everyone's highly skilled, highly trained, highly experienced, already had combat deployments. What was that like going into that? Because, like you said, you have to prove it. Otherwise, it's not just, "Hey, not a great deployment." It's like, "No, this unit's done."

I absolutely think that collectively we realized that we were really, really good. I think, and I thought it was only me, that I had this, "Man, when's somebody going to realize that they made a mistake? I should not be here. I should not be..." Even though, and what I realized when I wrote about it in the book is that that's probably the one aspect that I've had more people contact me about and say, "Man, I thought I was the only guy," because we don't talk about that, like impostor syndrome or whatever. So, all of us, I think, were — and you're probably a psychotic if you don't have that to some level. But we kind of pushed that down. And when we deployed, when we landed in Iraq, we realized that traditionally with a normal unit rotation, you're replacing another unit, and that unit gives you, "Hey, here's everything that we were working on, all the targets, packages, and things." We didn't have that. The SEALs had put us in an area of Baghdad where they had not had another SEAL Team, so we didn't have that luxury to kind of draw on. And so we were like, "Man, we've got to make something happen." And it's hard, how do you figure out who the bad guys are when you don't know anything about the area? And that's where our intelligence section totally paid off. So when we got there, we had trained with the understanding that we were going to stay as an entire detachment, roughly 100 folks. And so attached to my team, I had a human intelligence specialist, I had a geospatial intelligence guy, I had a signals intelligence guy. And so I had this insanely capable intelligence apparatus with my team. When we got there, the SEAL commander who was in charge was like, "Hey, I own you guys, and you've got way too much of this intelligence. You've got much more than I do. So I'm going to take some of your people and farm them out to support my SEAL Teams." Which, of course, initially we were really pissed about. But the thing that we didn't count on is that now we had our eyes and ears all over Iraq, with special missions units, with other SEAL Teams, all over the place, just attached throughout. So we had this massive network that was very quickly able to communicate among each other and track things that other individual units weren't tracking because they weren't looking at the big picture; they were looking kind of myopically at their own little patch of ground.

That's a number, I just think of all the different things that come up when you're doing this. So, a new unit, you're going there, now you're working for a SEAL Commander, which I get it. That's how SOCOM can work, or depending on what command you're at, that's not unusual. But what was their — like, you're walking in. I always say Marines and SEALs are so much alike, so they either love each other or hate each other. It's kind of like, my brother is a SEAL, I'm a Marine. There's just a lot of crossover in some of the missions and the attitude, and just how that is. But I'm curious, was that tough with them? Like saying, "Hey, we can do this work," or did they just give you like the, "Oh, we don't know what's going on over here, go take that, go figure something out?" Was it just like, "We don't know what to do with you," or how did that work? Because again, it's like they're like, "Alright, well, you guys are Marines, so yeah, you know how to fight and win battles, but how does that fit into the overall structure of what they were doing?"

Yeah, it was definitely, there were growing pains on both sides. So I think that Naval Special Warfare as an entity wasn't terribly happy about it. But I think there were some of them also that realized that, "Hey, if we have this Naval — now if we add Marines into this, now the naval service has a bigger slice of the pie within SOCOM." Because the Army makes up like 70% of SOCOM, I may be off on that number, but it's huge. I mean, MARSOC makes up now about 3%, and Naval Special Warfare is like six. So together, we grew a little bit. But we were incredibly fortunate that the SEAL Commander that we worked for was very upfront. He was like, "Hey, I'm going to treat you exactly like one of my teams. I'm going to give you everything that I can give you to make you successful, all the support, all the assistance." And we're friends to this day. I mean, he wound up being a great, great supporter of us. So it was helpful. But it was still, like I said, initially just trying to find, trying to find the low-hanging fruit that you can go find and then build from there. So that all came down to our, like I said, the Intel people just making things happen, reading through Intel reports and doing their little diagrams. And ultimately, they were able to point us, within a couple weeks of getting there, at a target. And that target led to another target, another, and then you kind of make your own luck after that.

That's incredible. So what was your guys' first mission then as the team? I mean, what was the first MARSOC mission?

So it was atypical, to say the least. During our workup, I was the junior team leader. I mean, I was a Gunnery Sergeant, but I was still quite a few years younger and a couple years less time in the Marine Corps than the other guys. So I had always had the mentality, and one thing I told my team is, "Hey, we'll do windows. If there's a mission to do, we'll do it, and I don't care what it is." Everyone loves to do the direct action mission — you fly in, you blow off the door, you shoot things, and you go home. But I've always felt that reconnaissance is the — I mean, we are called Force Reconnaissance, right? That was our bread and butter. And at the time, right before Detachment One started, I had been the director of our Urban Sniper Course and our Urban Reconnaissance Course. So I had all of that kind of fresh in my head. So anytime there was an unusual mission during training, my team was given it. If it was, "Hey, it's sub-zero and you guys are going to be out in Mercury, Nevada, for four days, finding routes and observing a target."

So when the first mission came up, again, it was our Intel folks that had found a report saying that — and he'd seen a number of reports over time — that Iraqi interpreters who were working for the U.S. were being killed. And he went back and realized what nobody else had put together: that there had been like 17 of these interpreters around Iraq in a relatively short period of time had been killed. So he started just going through and doing link analysis and realized that, "Hey, it all comes down to one person." And that one person was a female interpreter. So we found out where she was. And the Intel guy is like, "Hey, I've got an idea. If we can go grab this woman, then we can start to figure out what's going on." So all the team leaders, of course, go in and they're like, "Hey, I want the mission. I want the mission." And I'm like, "Hey, you know, this is odd, right? This is the sort of mission that, how many reconnaissance missions or how many of these sorts of things have anybody else done lately in workups? I did them all. So it's like the Chicken Little thing of like making the bread. Nobody helped me make the — nobody else wanted to go on Recon missions, nobody else wanted to do this. This one's mine." So it wound up being me, a SEAL that I had to take, with one of our human intelligence folks. And because it was a woman, we had borrowed a female operator from the GROM, the Polish Special Forces. And so it's the four of us, civilian clothes, driving out through Baghdad in the middle of the day. And we got to the place where she was supposed to be, and they're like, "Oh no, no, she doesn't work here anymore. She's 20 miles further away." And so I'm on satellite phone, I'm like, "Let us go." And they're like, "Alright." So then it's 20 miles further this way, and then it's over here. And so all day we're kind of bounced around until we find the place. They're like, "Hey, she quit last week." And so we were able to convince them to bring her in. And when she came in, the GROM operator took her into custody, essentially, brought her back. And we also brought the gentleman that was driving her, brought her back. And we pretty quickly realized that she was responsible, but she was clueless. She had been a victim of what you normally call a "honeypot" operation, right? Or if the shoe's on the other foot, it's a guy with a hot chick that entices you to provide information. In this case, it was a guy who had befriended her and said, "Hey, I need some interpreters. Maybe you could get me your company phonebook or a recall roster or whatever." And he was using that to go and take these targets out. So when she found this out, she was distraught, obviously, but she was also like, "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." So she was pissed. So she gave him up, and she said, "Hey, here's where he works, here's his house, here's his friends." And so our first, our second mission was — and that mission, because it had had so many kind of moving parts, I think made people, even though it was going out to grab an old lady, people recognized that, "Hey, there was a lot going on here. These MARSOC or these Detachment One people can be trusted to do kind of traditional SOF (Special Operations Forces) type missions." So a couple of nights later, we roll out to this guy's house, and grab him at his place of work. We grab him at his house, hit his place of work at the same time, and there's a lot of propaganda and bomb-making materials and things like that. So we grabbed him, shook him a little bit, and then we started to build a link analysis of who's next.

Yeah, that's wild. But you want to talk about when people say, "Find work," you literally had to make your own. But that's sometimes when you get the best stuff, where it's like, "Alright, no one's looked at this, let's go over here and then start putting things together." And then next thing you know, it leads to another thing, it leads to another thing.

Brian, I don't want to — this is the longest you've gone. I think I'm fascinated by the discussion. So, no, so I wrote down a couple of notes, and I apologize for going sideways and backwards. But Brian's a huge fanboy, you can't see that, John, but I know when he gets excited and he likes talking about the Marines. So, the first thing I wrote down, I wrote it down in red because we've got three vets on here with various levels and degrees of background and experience and all that. And you said something that is the stuff of legend. You said they looked at you and said, "Pick your own team." Okay, how many times did that happen in your career? That happens nowhere, ever, right? So how did you, John, when that was given to you?

It was a huge honor. One, that the boss trusted me to pick the right guys. And I had had the — I don't know if it was always a pleasure, but before I was finally given a platoon, our same boss, Colonel Coates, had been my boss at First Force Recon. He was the Commanding Officer there, then my boss at Special Operations Training Group, and then my boss again. So when he arrived, I was coming off a platoon as a team leader. And normally that's the progression; from team leader, you'll go to Platoon Sergeant at some point. But he had had an idea to create a training cell. Now it's a pretty common idea, but it really didn't exist. So there was a handful of us that were kind of handpicked to help each platoon as they went through their training: organize them, organize the training, evaluate, make sure that they were being held to standards of performance. So in that two years that I was doing that, I got the opportunity to watch every platoon go through training. So I really had — I was like, "I know this guy, this guy Mike, I know I want him. I really want this guy." And then he had everybody. I mean, we didn't have free rein to anybody that we wanted. There were people that were already in the workup for a platoon for a deployment. So there were certain people that we couldn't get. But I had worked at the Special Operations Training Group with a couple of the people that I picked. So it was rewarding to be able to do that. And when you do that, you know who you're picking. You know their strengths, you know their weaknesses. You don't want a team where everybody's exactly the same. You know, having the rowdy guy that you're going to have to watch sometimes, but he, when you send him out for something, he's going to over-perform. And then the quiet guy that's just always thinking. So it's being able to — and I've since, in my current job, we talk a lot about that team structure, team dynamics, and how you, if you have the opportunity to create a team or to assign particular people to particular missions, you know, taking into account their background, their personality, things like that. So I didn't realize I was doing it at the time, probably, but I was able to kind of pick and choose to make sure that I — one of the things I think a great trait, or a trait of great leaders — and I don't necessarily consider myself a great one, but surrounding yourself with great people and letting them work. And that was, having the opportunity to do that is, from the ground up, huge.

No, that's fascinating. And I was going down through similarities, and we're dissimilar, our backgrounds, everything is nothing could be the same. But I'm getting chills because I'm reading your stuff, and I'm looking at it, and I go, "Okay, so One MEF (Marine Expeditionary Force) has me working in Iraq, and I'm bouncing around to all the different locations." And I'm talking to Jim Conway, and I said, "Hey, do I need to prepare anything for Afghanistan?" He goes, "Marines are never going to be in Afghanistan, so you have no reason whatsoever to prepare for that." And then the next thing I know, I'm getting sent to Afghanistan, and I land in Lashkar Gah. They sent me to Kandahar, then a flight out to Lashkar, and they go, "Hey, you're going to Lower Helmand." And I got all my gear, and I'm scared to death with CONEX (Container Express - shipping containers) full of gear. And they said, "Well, you won't need any of that because you're following the Marines." And I, "What do you mean by that?" And they said, "Well, with the Army, you were teaching in FOBs (Forward Operating Bases) in Combat Outposts, but with the Marines, they're following the Taliban, so you've got to have like a propeller in your ass." And it was so funny to see the different way that the war was being fought, even regionally, even in different cities, and even in different locations. So, for example, with the — I would fall in under a Special Operations Group unit, or you'd go for Task Force Paladin, let's say. It'd be completely different than the next one. So, how long did it take you to get to the point where you were up to speed with that, where you were going, "Okay, now we're autonomous," now, and you never really were autonomous, but I mean, "Now we can run our own game and not be beholden to some other unit"?

I think pretty early on because there wasn't a lot of support to provide us. We did some joint operations where we would work with the GROM (Polish Special Forces) if we needed external security because the target was too large or we had to hit multiple targets at a time. But we were formed to be a MAGTF (Marine Air-Ground Task Force), well not air, a Marine Ground Task Force essentially. And Colonel Coates built this around the war-fighting functions of, "Hey, we've got to be able to do all these things on our own." So we absolutely had to have support. A lot of it was, like I said, we had prepared for Afghanistan, so we brought IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles), the Mercedes Fast Attack Vehicles, which are pretty good for driving around the desert. They're shitty for driving on the streets in Baghdad, not unarmored, they're basically like a Jeep without a top. So we were able to put our hands on a handful of almost unserviceable Humvees before we left, brought those over. And the Army Engineers were kind enough to weld steel onto the outsides and things of that nature for us. And then later SOCOM was able to provide us with vehicles. But as far as the planning and execution of the bulk of our operations, we were pretty much self-sufficient.

That's great, that's fantastic. And Brian, I've got to tell you, when we did the research for this, John, Brian and I were excited about it. And you know that some things have happened in the last couple of weeks that kept sidetracking it. So this morning, anticipation was killing me to be on here. It's just so much fun to talk to somebody that's had such a wide variety of experiences. And it's not unlike a National Football League coach. You were given such rare opportunities, and you knew that. You knew that at the time, and you knew that going in. And you certainly didn't usurp that; you certainly tried to go in and do the best. And that's different because what I found with the Marines, embedded and dealing with the Marines all the time, is exactly what Brian was saying about, "Listen, every Marine's a rifleman, and every Marine does this, and you're not special." And when you talk to the Joint Special Operations Command, it's entirely different. They all have different units and different insignia and their rich history of whatever else. So did you face any backlash from fellow Marines for being allowed to have this amazing opportunity?

Yes, I mean, not from the tactical level, like peer level. They were all jealous, obviously, but very jealous. But there was a lot of resistance from the Marine Corps. We dealt with a lot from staff officers that were kind of on the periphery of things. And we tried to be — and that was one of the things that was kind of beaten into us by our boss, Colonel Coates, but also our Platoon Sergeant — that we've got to, we're representing the Marine Corps, but we also can't forget that we are Marines. And that's the same story, same thing I tell young Marines coming into MARSOC now, is the things that will make you successful are the same things that make you successful as a Marine. And I feel that SOCOM recognizes that about MARSOC now, is that you're starting with Marines. And so when you do that, you're starting with a pretty solid product. But yeah, we would — still there's the urge to rebel, like being a teenager, I guess. When you're given an inch, you take a mile. So we would often roll into a conventional organization, a CJSOTF (Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force), and in Fallujah, going to the Marine showers there. We weren't allowed to have beards, and that was much to our dismay. But we all, because of that, we all had outrageous mustaches, like porn star mustaches. And we had different uniforms, and we had different things on our weapons. And we would come in, and inevitably somebody would say, "Hey, you guys need a haircut! You guys need to do this! You guys need to do that!" And so we took a little bit of pleasure in, "Why don't you go off?" For the most part, I mean, we, I think largely recognized the fact that we're representing the Marine Corps, so we've got to do that in a way that, both tactically in the tactical actions that we take, but also the way we carry ourselves, the way that we behave. We can't play the fool and if we do, we're going to make the Marine Corps look bad, and that's not what any of us wanted, right?

Right. And you've got to have that, like you said, the right kind of leadership. Because Greg and I, doing our work, we work with all kinds of different organizations, you know, police, private sector, military. But we see a lot of the same issues. And when everyone just says, "Well, it's leadership, it's leadership," or, "It's culture, it's this," it's like, it really is. You can have — I always tell people — you can have the greatest team in the world, and if there's a bad leader, they're just not going to do — they're going to perform, but it's not going to be great. Or you could take a completely average team, but give them really good leadership, and they're going to do well. Because it just comes down to everything. So what are — everyone wants, "Hey, what's the secret to this?" And there isn't one, obviously. How do you do that? But what are some of those things? Because you're talking about yourself, and you have your own experience, but you've got this group of individuals that are high performers. They want to go get some. They're Marines. So, like you said, there's some that you're like, "Hey, don't — you're never to be seen by the Colonel. Go hide, stay away." But when we need you, we know you're there. It's the "in case of war, break glass" — like everything else, your life is a mess, but you're really good at what we need you to be good at. So you have those characters. And you have some people, like you said, they're natural leaders, or they are good speakers, they can brief. But how do you, what are some of those secrets or things that you've learned that are like, "You know what? The best thing to do with something like this is, this is how I approach it." Are there those kind of takeaways that you've learned in your career?

Yeah, I'd say one — I think the SEALs may have come up with this — but a little X-Y chart that has performance on one side and trust on the other. A lot of times in the civilian world, absolutely in sports, we prioritize performance. We want somebody that's a really good performer, even if they're low on the trust axis. And you can't have somebody that's super trustworthy but sucks at their job. So you really have to look for people, and none of us are optimum performers all the time, right? But what we need is people that are both trustworthy and good at their job. And we need to continue to work on finding ways to bring them up in both axes. I think that's a huge one. Like I said, in the Marine Corps, Marine Corps leadership, there are two responsibilities: Mission Accomplishment and Troop Welfare. And I think that carries over to most anywhere else. Lately, a lot of the stuff I see is people that talk about leadership, talk about welfare, you know, "Nobody knows how much you know until they know how much you care," which is ridiculous. I mean, if that was the case, then your mom would be the best Platoon Sergeant, right? We need people, we need to win wars, right? We need to accomplish missions, so we've got to have people that know what they're doing. And that's easier because that's the way that we promote people, that's the way that we grow. We get good at our job and then we get promoted to another level of authority. And we can grow people though, on the other axis, of making them understand that taking care of your people, looking out for their welfare. And the biggest thing that I learned, like I said, in this particular instance was that you have to recognize the capabilities. And that's one of the Marine Corps leadership principles: "Employ your people in accordance with their capability." Knowing that, "Hey, this guy's really, really good at this. Let me focus him in this direction. But let me also make him do some of the things that he's not good at, so that over time he'll get better." So I learned a lot more about servant leadership — which is kind of the big buzzword — but more hands-off leadership during that. Because you can't be — and I had been, or I've been kind of forced to be, and as a younger leader, I think you're forced to be, maybe not a micromanager, but you've got to inspect what you expect. And when you try to do that with somebody that — and you still have to do it, you just have to do it differently. You just have to say, "Hey, come back and brief me on what you've done." Because people want to be inspected, right? They want to know that you're not just giving them busy work, that what they're doing is important. So that's what I learned, probably more about managing personalities, high-performing personalities, during that than anything else. Because they were all high-performing personalities. Any one of them could have stepped in and done my job, which probably means I picked well. And I said there's a saying that you should surround yourself with people that definitely make up for your weaknesses. So I felt we had all our bases covered with Detachment One.

I think you also can't surround yourself with people that are "yes men" or "yes people" all the time either. You've got to have somebody that's got the balls to walk up to you and say, "You're out of line," or, "Hey, there's another way of doing this." And high-performing teams can be confrontational, but it has to be done. And I think that's an earmark of a good leader. I wrote down one of your quotes, hoping that one day when we meet in person that I'll be able to get a signed book from you. Stuff like that is huge. It's more important than coins. Coins used to be important, but now everybody's got one. I saw a kid selling cookies for this football team, I bought some, and he gave me a coin. But back when it meant something, this is the kind of quote that meant something to me. And you said, "Don't follow me, it's your life, you're walking point." And statements like that are so deep because you're at the top of your game. You're an over-performing person in a field of over-performers, yet you took it seriously enough to not just do the Army, "Follow me, I'm the Infantry," but to say, "Hey, look, you've got a stake in this, step up to the challenge." The second part of that later on was, "My passion is helping people get better at getting better." Holy, those are so important and influential because there's a big group of people out there — I'll poke somebody in the eye, I'm sure — that just because you served in the military, the next thing you know, they've got a website and they're teaching you how to, "Hey, humility and resilience," go. Exactly. But you know what I'm talking about. And you look at them and you go, "Okay, whoa, wait, your life should be somewhat in order before you come to me and tell me how to fix mine." So with all of the things that you bring to bear, what do you think is the most important experience that you had from the military that you now teach CEOs and executives and people outside the military that they just couldn't see before they talked to you?

Absolutely. I think there are probably a handful of them, but I think the most important thing is — so, quick story: My wife was a school teacher when I met her, a school teacher for like 30 years. We were married, and we're still married, but a couple of years ago, she decided to become a travel agent. And she got fed up not with the kids — she loved the kids — but the parents. It's always the parents, everything. And I didn't think there were travel agents anymore; I figured people just, but there are. She loves it, she's like a master logistician. But when I started asking her about what she does, I realized that really the key to leadership kind of boils down to the same things that it's the key to being a good travel agent. And first, you've got to know where the hell you're going. You can't tell somebody, "Hey, come join me on this trip, we're going to go cool places," right? They want to know where you're going. And as a leader, you are, definitionally, you're leading people from one place to another. So I think one of the biggest mistakes that leaders make is that they really have no idea where they're going. And in the — and a lot of people make the same mistake in their lives, right? They really don't know where they're going. In the Marine Corps, the military writ large, or even in organizations, you might have a mission statement or things like that. But within that mission statement, that broad mission statement, you've got to figure out as a leader, "Where am I taking my people to?" And maybe that's to being more productive, maybe that's to making more money or whatever that is. But that's the first thing. I think the second is that you have to create a really badass travel brochure. Once you know where you're going, you have to entice other people to come with you. And again, in the military, you can kind of get away with, "Hey, I'm in charge, do what I say," but you can only get away with that for so long. And absolutely, in business, and some of the other people I work with, that doesn't work very well. And even less so today, I think people — the idea that people take a job and stay at it until they die, doesn't exist. So if you want your good talent to stick around, demonstrating how they're going to be better when they get to that destination than they are now. And then third is, you have to be very upfront about the cost. You know that, "Hey, you don't get to come along on this ride for free. It's going to take blood, sweat, and tears. It's going to take this level of effort. This is the standard that we expect of you as a member of this Special Operations team or the sales team or a football team." It doesn't really matter. So I think that I learned more from her that's really consolidated my view of what leadership is, kind of through her job as a travel agent.

That's fascinating. And the best bits of logic that I've learned in my short life are always from somebody else, and it was unexpected. And their short burst of information that you can use immediately, rather than the soliloquy where you have to read a lot and the person drones on, and you're sitting there digging through your notes trying to figure it out. As soon as you hear it, you know it's magic. So thank her for us because that's a great answer, by the way. And, you know, the cost — I think that's the other thing, the cost. There are so few people that join the military and so few people that become veterans and combat veterans because I think the cost scares them away. They get sticker shock right upfront, and they sometimes don't understand that for all the things that we want and hold dear in our country and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and our freedom, this is such an essential part of that. And it's so funny that the false bravado, the hubris that, "Hey, don't tell me thanks for my service," this and that. I thank everybody for their service. And I'm constantly that person that's walking around saying, "You made a difference," and giving up my seat to somebody on the airplane that deserved it more than I do, because I really do that. And what I found is that the elements of your book are that way as well. You're very thankful for those people that gave you the opportunity to be where you are right now. And I think that's an amazing facet, John. Were you always like that, or was that one of the things that the Marine Corps beat into you?

I don't think so. I think I started off as a young guy, I think I was pretty cocky. And as I joined, I felt that I was well-prepared to join the Marine Corps. And to be honest, I had been preparing for so long, I didn't think that boot camp was particularly challenging, which is vastly different story from a lot of people. And not that I was super fit. I had studied all of the — I had a recruiter that was just feeding me all of the information, the kind of outdoor skills, things like that, shooting, all of those things I knew. But I quickly, like I said, I was kind of misplaced into a sniper platoon right as soon as I got to the Infantry. And there I realized that I was swimming with giant fish, and the only way to not get eaten was going to be to keep my head down, learn. And then I really, I think, I learned a level of humility there. And I found over time — I mean, I'm just not that guy who, if somebody thanks me for my service, I absolutely don't feel that you need to. But I'm certainly not going to be rude to you because you did it. I enjoyed, like I said, every day of the 21 years of active duty that I spent. There were days that I didn't, there were things that sucked, but even those things, when you look back on them, you learn. I think the thing about paying the price that some people don't understand is that it's paid in installments, right? You don't have to pay it all at once. An analogy I use a lot is mountain climbing. I'm not a huge mountain climber, but I've climbed a few. You get to Everest; all of the work to get between the base camps prepares you to get to the next base camp. So it's not — you don't shoot up to the top all at once, right? You acclimatize at Base Camp One, and then you start having to do some more technical things as you move. So the work prepares you for the next level of work. And leadership prepares you, hopefully, for the next level of leadership that you get assigned to. So I think people that shy away from doing hard things because they say, "I can't do that," well, you can do something more than you're doing. And when you do that, that's going to give you the skills that you need to do something harder.

Well, tell us about Tough Rugged Bastards. You've got the book. Why did — I mean, you wrote about this a lot in there, but why did you choose to — what kind of made you think, "Hey, I should document some of this," or, "I want to get this story out there?" How did you come upon that? What was the decision to do that?

Yeah, it was kind of long and roundabout like a lot of things. But after I retired from the Marine Corps, I had the GI Bill to use. And I was in no — no one would have taken me into college when I got out of high school. I didn't have the money, didn't have the grades, wasn't going to happen. But I finally started seeing the light towards the end of my career and started using the Tuition Assistance program and was able to finish a bachelor's degree just before I retired. And then I still had all of this GI Bill left, so I was able to get — I just loved reading, loved learning. So I'm like, "Hey, let me get a master's degree in literature," or it was in kind of liberal arts but focused in literature. And I finished that. And in that process, I had to write a lot. And one of the professors was like, "Hey, we have this at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, where I live, one of the best writing programs in the nation, Master of Fine Arts writing program." So I'm like, "Well, it's very competitive. They only pick like a dozen people a year." And I was like, "Well, there's no way I'll get in, but if it'll make you happy, I'll submit something." And somehow, they must have had like a quota for military guys or whatever, I got in. And I realized when I was going through that program that anything that I wrote that was nonfiction was going to have to be reviewed by the DoD. And as the graduation requirement, your thesis essentially was a finished book. So I was like, "Well, I can't write about my time in the military because," so I wrote a novel that was nothing about the military and frankly not terribly good. But when I finished that, I had at least learned the kind of the bones of writing, what writing was about. And I wound up running into a lady that was writing a history of the Marine Raiders in World War II, and she had asked me for some help with that. And then she asked me, she's like, "Hey, send me something that you've written." And I sent an essay that's included in the book, or portions of it are, about being a sniper in Najaf, Iraq. And she read it. She sent it to her agent, and her agent got a hold of me and said, "Hey, can I represent you? Let's turn this into a book." And I'd really not thought of it until that point. And I'm like, "Well, sure, why not? Let's give it a go."

And so when I did it, I wanted to, one, definitely talk about everything that the Marines of Detachment One did and document the history of it. I think another thing I wanted — I think a lot of the GWT (Global War on Terror) books were either written too soon after the fact. So I mean, they're great histories, right? They're like, "Hey, this happened, this happened, this happened. I did this awesome thing, and then this awesome thing." There's a lot of those. But at this point, when I went to write it, or when I finished it, we were really like 20 years after the fact. So I think in writing a memoir, which means "memory" in French, you're writing with a level of reflection that kind of allows you to probably have a little more humility, perhaps, than if you're writing it right after the fact. A little more the ability to say, "Hey, now I'm telling you this, but," and I do that a couple of times, like, "I don't know that I was this thoughtful at the time, but this is what I'm thinking." I wanted to write something that I feel like another — not a flaw, just a difference — with a lot of GWT books is that they really seem to be focused at other military people, a lot of acronyms and kind of just things thrown at you. And I feel like I wanted to kind of give the civilian reader the understanding of all of this without all of the kind of bravado or whatever. So I really was trying to, but I also wanted something that would have some kind of learning points for military people if they did read it. So I went into it with a lot of wickets that I was trying to hit and feel like I was able to get them all in a way that was not too terribly disjointed.

Yeah. So when you're, you know, you're kind of going back and reflecting on this, right, as you're writing it and then you're putting this out there, looking back on this, is there something that you said, "Man, I really wish I could have changed this," or, "I wish this was like a little bit different," or, "I handled this differently?" I'm just curious if, you know, you go back through that reflection because there's always going to be something where you wish you did something better or whatever. But that you can really go, "Man, I wish I had known this when I was starting this unit," or, "I wish I had known this then."

I don't. I mean, it was — it wound up being so very successful due to the work of so many people that I don't. There's one thing, and I didn't even put this in a book, I'd kind of forgotten about it. But I had gotten into a habit of every time we would hit a target, if that building or that house or whatever had a vehicle in it, we would confiscate the vehicle. So we had this collection of vehicles that we would use for reconnaissance and things like that, civilian vehicles. Midway through our deployment, if we couldn't find the keys to the vehicle or whatever the case was, then we would usually disable it. And we had been told that, "Hey, you don't necessarily have to disable these vehicles." But we did a hit on this house, and there was a car in a carport. And on the way out, I'm like, "Screw this," and threw a thermite grenade on the engine block. And a thermite grenade is just a super, super hot flame that will not extinguish and goes up in flames in seconds, basically, with a thermite there. And it somehow kind of shot through and got the interior on fire. And before we could even leave, this whole palm tree underneath the vehicle had caught ablaze, the whole house. And I think I burned half a block down downtown Iraq. So that was something I kind of got a little talking-to after, like, "Yeah, need to be a little bit more prudent with my use of pyrotechnics." But no, I think, and maybe because I've learned that even when there are lessons to be learned, and like we kind of mentioned, you've got to be brutal in the after-action process. And as a leader, you absolutely have to tell people that, "Hey, I expect you to — don't go along with me if you disagree." You're going on this mission, your ass is on the line as well. You're a part of this, so you have a responsibility to point out if you think — and maybe, maybe I'll tell you to shut up and color because that's what I need to do. But we all want the same thing. And if we all know what that thing is, we know where we're going, where our destination is, then we all have equal responsibility to help ourselves get there. So a lot of times where I would have made a bad decision, I had people that would step up and say, "Hey, man, maybe we should think about this." And so we self-corrected a lot of times, and even in things where we probably could have done things differently or better, we learned a lot.

So what do you — we're going to have the links to the book for everyone and push that out there. But what else do you have that you're working on now? I mean, you've got the book out and you're promoting that, and it's telling an incredible story. But what else are you doing now? Because I know you still work a little bit with military, but you do some private sector kind of stuff. So I'm just curious how you've been able to take the skills and all the lessons learned and sort of, you know, you're applying it in a different domain, but some of the key core lessons are just the lessons that people need to learn. So what are you doing with it now?

Yeah, and that's — so I retired in 2008 and immediately kind of rolled in the next Monday to the job that I still do now as the Training and Education Branch Director for the Marine Corps Raider Training Center. So in it, I get the great opportunity to see special operators go through training, the ones that are successful, the ones that aren't. And over the last couple of years after the book, I really realized that, one, I want to, at some point, do something different. So I've started branching out into coaching high performers and doing leadership talks and seminars and things of that nature. So I'm really interested in increasing the level of that that I get to do because I think there are so many valuable lessons from the military that — a lot of times, things that we absolutely take for granted that are kind of mind-boggling when you share them with a corporate partner. So that's a big part of it. I think I came upon, in writing the book, the realization that — or more in research for the book — that is kind of, as Greg mentioned a little bit there, there are so many military influencers, or whatever you want to call them, that they're like, "Hey, I did all this awesome stuff, so come follow me and I'll take you where you need to go." And that's really what the whole idea of "Walking Point" was about, that if you're — there's a little bit off the topic, but there's a guy Joseph Campbell, who wrote a lot about the idea of the hero's journey, a book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. And he talks about in the Arthurian Grail Legend, when the knights were going after the Holy Grail, they were like, "Hey, I think it was Perceval or whatever, it's like, 'Hey, we each need to go. We're all going to go look for the Grail, but we all have to go our own separate ways, and we all have to go into the woods where it's the darkest. And if you find a trail, then you're in the wrong place because we need to go where there isn't a trail to make one.'" And that's really the idea that I'm trying to get people to understand is that if you're following somebody, you're not going to get to your own destination, right? You're going to get where they're going. So I've started another book that's going to be called, probably, Walking Point — a little bit more on lessons, not a memoir at all, but lessons that I've learned kind of leadership-wise and life-wise. And I think the more I've — the older I've gotten and the more post-military life I've lived — I've realized that most of those are the same. Those military lessons apply to life. And if you can, it really all starts with figuring out where you're going and then just chipping away at getting there. There's this idea that you have to get up at 4 o'clock every morning and take a cold plunge and then eat whatever and drink mushroom coffee in order to be successful is crazy, right? So there's no such thing as a quick fix. You've just got to do the work consistently, a little bit at a time. And over time, you'll get there, or you'll get close. But you'll get somewhere that nobody else has been. And that's really what it's all about, I think.

That's amazing. And Brian and I are in discussions for our second book now, in the very preliminary discussions about it. And I've always said that when the book is released on tape, I wanted to have Gilbert Gottfried be my voice, you know, the guy from Aflac. But sadly, he died, so now I'm not sure who I'm going to pick for that. But the one thing I love about what you're doing here is it's not about the platitudes, it's about the hard work. And it is hard work, and it's being consistent and showing up. My dad used to say — my dad, a former Marine — was the one that said, "Showing up is more than half the battle. It's almost all of the battle." And so who in that book, when you go to having somebody be your voice, who are you going to choose for your voice? Is it somebody really cool, or are you goofy like me and want to have somebody funny?

Well, I mean, it's already out on the audiobook. So I wanted to do it. I thought that I would be good, but apparently I don't get that choice. So the publisher made the decision, and they picked an actor named Tom Taylorson. I think if you see him, you would recognize him because he's been on CSI: Miami and different shows. He does a lot of military books. And I let my wife pick because I couldn't — they sent a bunch of audition tapes, and I got to pick out of the people they selected. But I'm like, "I can't listen to this, not my voice, because I hear it." So my wife listens to a lot of audiobooks, so she picked him. And I've got a lot of reviews about how he did. That's great. But yeah, definitely the second book, I think I would like to do it. I think that seems cool.

That's great. And you know what, when people listen to the audiobook, which is great, and your success is great, the idea is that when you say it, when you're the one telling the story, there's somehow much more weight to it, I feel. Because you're hearing it from, as Brian and I joke, "the horse's mouth" or "the horse's ass," depending on what the story is. Probably at different times.

Yeah, I love that.

Brian, I'm just saying it's amazing that we've had this opportunity, John. I hold you in high regard, and I think anybody would be happy to dig in. And I'm anxiously looking forward to your writing on being the point man, being your own point man. That's fascinating to me.

Well, and we didn't get to talk about it, but the stuff you guys are doing, I really enjoyed your videos. And I could talk for another couple hours about that. I really think that one of the good fortunes of my life was starting off in a sniper platoon. And with the mandate that you're always under observation. So just "him games," memory games, things like that, we were always expected to be observing. And that is probably a skill that's helped me more than anything else in my life. So, a lot of your stuff about just paying attention to little things, your decisions that you make, are absolutely ways to prevent bad things from happening.

Well, we run in some of the similar circles. I would love for us to be able to collaborate on something because I think what you do is fascinating, and clearly Brian and I are having a ball. And there's nothing better than knowing that you're pulling the veil from somebody's eyes and allowing them to see the world differently. And maybe if that's the cathartic nature of their restart, then we've done something. I don't care about my name going anywhere but my legacy. I'd like to be that at least one person one time in their life goes, "Wait a minute, we don't have to continue to stomp around in the grape bucket like Lucy and Ethel. We can go out and do something else in life."

Probably not too many people will know what you're talking about. Well, I've heard that all the time, it's my filter for humans. Yeah, I was like, "Greg, you're using movie references that are before your time, let alone anyone else listening to this show. No one's going to get that." But John, I appreciate you coming on and talking to us, and putting this stuff out there. It's — I always find it fascinating talking about the reason why I find some of the stuff interesting is just personally with your stories. One, obviously, everything talked about having to start a new unit, knowing about how the Marine Corps is, like there's all of these growing pains and things. And then through all this and all your other experiences, you're coming out just going like, "Hey, here's the things you need to focus on," and one can do them, right? It's just hard work, it sucks. Sorry, it's just doing. I mean, even that's what people even know, especially with being a sniper and doing reconnaissance. It's a really boring job. You're just sitting there watching something for a really long time. It's not fun, it's not sexy. You're just writing reports, sending stuff back, taking photos, watching. And maybe you get a second of action, and it's like, it's really monotonous, and you've got to be organized, and you have to have attention to detail. But those skills, that's what it takes to do anything. And so it's always interesting, it's like, you know, you can have all these careers, you can have all these experiences, and it still comes down to like, "Hey, there's just some basic elements here. If you get really good at those basic elements, you'll figure the rest out, or you'll learn along the way." It's just, "Here's the things you can control." So I always appreciate it. Like you said, I'm not doing the military influencer thing, where, "Buy my whatever t-shirt or way of thinking." It's like, "No, man, you've got to do you, you have to walk point in your own life, and here's some fundamentals that you can learn that'll help you navigate that tough, tough job." Yeah.

So I appreciate that. John, how else can people follow you, get a hold of you, or contact you? Obviously, like I said, I'll have all the links and I'll share the stuff on social media when it comes out, especially to get your book. But what else is the best way to kind of follow along and learn more from John Dailey?

So yeah, I write a couple of weekly newsletters that go out. One is called Walking Point, and that's really the stuff I've been talking about. And the other is called RTFU or Ruck the F Up, which is really just about rucking for fitness and how you build mental toughness through that. I have a website, it's JADaly.com (D-A-L-Y), and there are links to both of those. There's the book, you can get all of those things on there. I probably need to update it, but it's all there. Social media-wise, LinkedIn some, Instagram some. But I really am trying to spend less of my time on there. I've started making little videos, kind of inspired by y'all, just short, "Hey, here's a little something to think about," usually my Sunday morning out on a hike video. But yeah, the website is the best place to kind of one-stop shop.

I love it too. I always tell people, it's like, you want to just go throw a ruck on and go for a walk and be alone with your thoughts. It's so good for you in so many different ways. And when you have to do it a lot, you learn like, "This really sucks," you know, when you're doing a long hike or something. But it's one of those things where just go, it clears your head. To think, to compartmentalize, right? "Hey, I'm in a lot of pain right now, but that's, I need to put that aside." Or, "I don't at some points," — and for most for fitness, you're probably not going to go to the point where you're like, "Hey, I don't think I can take another step," — but, "Let me, I'm going to take one more. And if I did that one, then I could do one more. And then if I could do that, I could take 10." And if you get to the point where you can pretty much do anything, right? So that's why I — I certainly didn't love it when I was on active duty, but it's something that I did a lot, and it's certainly something that I've come to realize. The GORUCK company, there's just a lot of people interested in it now. And I think even with that, there's a lot of kind of influencers, "You've got to do this! You've got to carry this much! You've got to spend $500 on this or that!" I mean, just get your school backpack, a couple books in it, and go for a walk. When that gets easy, throw in some more. And when that gets easy, go a little further. And then that's how we — it's the same thing with weightlifting, the principle of progressive resistance, right? You do something until it becomes easy, and then make it harder. And then eventually that harder thing will become easy too. And the big thing I think that I said it already, but the hard thing that you do is preparing you for the next hard thing. As long as you keep that in mind, and the harder the thing is, the better the victory of getting through it's going to be.

And it's funny too, even when you get into how the brain is wired for some of this stuff, it's not even — you start to get that feeling of accomplishment or success or whatever it is, like finishing the hike, whatever. But your brain actually starts that process when you start working towards it. It doesn't just get the dopamine from the accomplishment or winning; it actually creates this whole pathway of, "When I do this thing, I start to feel a little bit, I start to get a little bit of that dopamine, then I go for that reward." So it's like you simply just setting those habits and starting them. It's like you're just — I mean, being the person, realizing, "Hey, I'm the person that gets up at 5 in the morning and goes for a run or a ruck." One, you start to identify as that. You're like, "Hey, I'm no longer somebody that hates rolling out of bed. I'm a person that does this thing. I'm a weightlifter, I'm a rucker, I'm a non-smoker, I'm somebody that doesn't stuff my face full of cookies," whatever it is that you. The biggest thing there, there's a lot of great research about that, goal setting and identity goals versus process goals and outcome goals. But James Clear's Atomic Habits is probably one of the better books about that. But starting to identify yourself differently is, I think, the first step. And the first step in that is figuring out where you're going. "When I finish this journey, I'm going to be a fit 80-year-old." So I need to start thinking of myself as a fit 50-year-old to get there. Yeah.

No, that's great, John. We appreciate you coming on, man, and sharing the stories. And there are countless others. And then, of course, you've got some of the characters in there. Colonel Coates is his own character. So, of course, he gave you the title. I can't remember who was telling me about it when he was working for Coates, and like, they sent a couple of the guys to Ranger School because it was all about Ranger School. And they brought him in the morning before he left, and he was like, "Ranger tab or body bag when you come home!" You either come home... And I was like, "Oh." They were like, "What?" Well, they were already like the same thing, like E-6s, E-7s, right? And so they went to Ranger School, and actually the Ranger instructors were like, "Did you guys get in trouble or something? What are you doing here?" They're like, "Yeah," they'd already been at Force Recon for a while, they're already doing whatever. They're like, "Yeah, we just had a Colonel who's got a thing for this school, so here we are."

If you're going to be a team leader or Platoon Sergeant, you had to have gone. And I was lucky that I had gone before I got there. I went as a relatively young sergeant from the Infantry, from a sniper platoon. So it was one of the things that I think kind of endeared me to him. He was like, "Hey, this guy went to Ranger School back long ago." But yeah, luckily I went as a young guy, and not some of the guys he would send.

Amen. Well, we appreciate it, man. I'll have all the links for everyone. If you're listening, check out Tough Rugged Bastards and follow John. He's always putting out good stuff. And we appreciate you for coming on here, man. Thank you so much. And yeah, we just — thanks for sharing that and sharing the story. It's a cool piece of history that you're part of.

Awesome. Well, yeah, thanks for having me. I'd be happy to come back anytime.

Oh, we've got so much more we could talk about. I agree, John, I think that would be great.

Brian, thanks everyone for tuning in. If you enjoy it, please share it with a friend and don't forget that training changes behavior. Alright, man, we got the end there. Sorry.