The Shawn Ryan Show
#257 Jocko Willink - Commander of SEAL Team-3 Task Unit Bruiser aka "The Punishers"
27 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What types of gifts are mentioned in the episode introduction?
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Jocko Willink Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. It's an honor to have you. It's an honor to have you. I can't believe it took this long, but here we are. Seriously, man, I've been watching you for a very long time. I mean, I've heard about you when I was in the SEAL teams.
And, you know, even though we've never met, I just want you to know that I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. And a lot of the guys that I went through buds with served with you, under you. And you just have a reputation as a leader that is unmatched. And... I just want to say it truly is, man. It's an honor to be sitting across from you today. So thank you for making the time.
Well, I appreciate it. I was very lucky to learn from some really great people and be surrounded by a bunch of awesome, awesome dudes.
Chapter 2: What makes Jocko Willink a respected leader?
And awesome to see what you're doing these days, getting after it for sure.
Thank you. Thank you. But yeah, so everybody starts with an introduction here. Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL and Silver Star recipient, commanded the SEAL Team 3's Task Unit Bruiser in Ramadi, Iraq, the most highly decorated special operations unit in the entire Iraq War. I did not know that until today.
um number one new york times best-selling author brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt you also own an mma and fitness gym in san diego you're an og podcaster with over a billion views host of the presidential special above below and beyond celebrating 250 years of the u.s navy and marine corps which is streaming now.
A business titan with everything from leadership consulting to American Maine clothing and supplements to a soccer club in your portfolio. Husband to Helene and father of four. Most importantly, you're a Christian. And, you know... Jocko, every year since I started this, I started this in Christmas of 2019. And, you know, we were still at war back then.
I guess we are kind of still right now, too. But but meaning like, you know, Afghanistan, the same war that we were involved in. And, you know, when I started this, it was it was pretty much all for veterans and, you
And I wanted to make the biggest episodes, the Christmas and the Thanksgiving episode, because I remember what it's like to be deployed overseas, sitting on your ass or maybe not sitting on your ass, but without your family. on Christmas and Thanksgiving. And so I always make it a point every year to bring something inspiring, motivational, somebody that everybody that can look up to.
And you're the perfect man for this year's Thanksgiving episode. So I just want to say thank you again.
Yeah, appreciate it for all the guys and men and women that are overseas right now. Yeah, I did some deployments during those time frames and it's... Always a good time to focus on work a lot so you don't have to think about home very much because you're missing out.
But I thought if it's okay with you, I thought maybe we could open this episode with a prayer. Sure. Perfect. Jesus, I just want to say thank you for having Jocko here today and, you know,
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Chapter 3: How does Jocko Willink reflect on his leadership experiences?
How big was your town? Graduated with 85 people in my class.
It's like where I grew up. Yep, small town. What got your interest in the military then?
I do not remember anything. actually wanting to do anything else. The only thing I ever wanted to do as far as a job goes was be some kind of commando. And I collected little soldiers when I was a little kid. I had the British commandos from World War II. I had a little air fix set, one 32nd size of British commandos.
And they had Zodiac boats and they had kayaks and they had the black watch caps on. And I thought that that was the coolest thing. And eventually I figured out that you could have that as an actual job.
Very cool. I want to go back real quick to the rebellious. Why do you think you were so rebellious? I don't know. I don't know.
I think part of it's like psychologically, right? I think all kids will have this. you have to rebel against your parents at some point because you have to get out of there. You have to leave them. And so you kind of create friction so that you can release. So I think that was part of it.
And I also think I just looked around at the world and just, you know, had the angst of a young teenage child, you know? You got a lot of testosterone flowing through your blood and you just want to fight and get after it. And that's kind of what I did. Were you a troublemaker? I was a borderline troublemaker, but also... Like I didn't drink, didn't do any drugs.
There was a whole like sub genre of music called straight edge music, which I wasn't fully into that, but straight edge music is like no drinking, no drugs. And, but I was close enough to it that I, That's the way I heard that messaging of, you know, drinking and drugs were bad. That's kind of a weak thing to do. And so never did, never did, never drank and never did drugs in high school.
How would you rebel? Ruby violence? Yeah, going to hardcore shows, listening to punk rock music, listening to hardcore music, shaving my head, you know, getting in fights, just that kind of stuff. Right.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Jocko Willink share about leading a platoon into battle after 9-11?
That deployment was relatively chill.
I mean, what's that feel like, though? I mean, five deployments, you join to go to war when you're 18, don't see any. Now you're in charge of your platoon straight after college, after 9-11, and you're fucking leading a platoon into battle in Iraq. I mean, that's fucking, did it even hit you? Was it surreal at the time, or are you just so in it, you're like, all right, this is the deal, let's go?
I knew.
Like, I knew. I think I'm very lucky because I was older, you know? I think I was, what, 33, 32 or something like that point. So I knew how rare this was. I thought the war was going to be over in a couple months. Like, I was very, very grateful. for everything that we got to do. And I knew that every night. Every night, I was playing the Super Bowl game every night. That's what I felt like.
I was very grateful the whole time. And I had a great bunch of guys, great bunch of guys that were just hard-charging and Just, it was awesome. It was great. And we did a lot of direct action missions, you know? And so we did, we kind of got close a couple times to the idea of sniper overwatching. We did it a couple times. but it kind of left an imprint of my mind of what capability we had.
But we were primarily just a DA force and we would just roll out and hit targets. And I mean, it's, yeah, I don't know if there's anything else I can say to make it, for me to explain how happy I was, but that to me was just the most awesome thing. What about the pressure?
I mean, I've always thought about, you know, I mean, I always felt a lot of pressure just going out the door, you know, do the right thing, you know, but I mean, what is the pressure like?
And you don't really have any other reference because you hadn't gone on any kinetic operations until this point, but I mean, what is the pressure like as an officer leading 16, 20 guys into battle at the beginning of a war where there's not a lot of lessons learned, there's not a lot of new tactics developed yet?
Yeah, the pressure I felt was just wanting to do a good job.
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Chapter 5: How does Jocko describe the pressure of leadership during combat operations?
You know, not wanting to do anything, not wanting to... I wouldn't say not make any mistakes, because I was not a risk-averse person, you know? Like, I recognized that if you roll out on an operation, things can go wrong. And I understood that, and I understood that risk. So, but yeah, you know, you're worried about guys getting wounded, you're worried about guys getting killed.
A little bit of a very distant idea to me. Guys getting wounded or killed. It could happen, I thought, but it was... Man, this is early in the war. The IED threat was relatively small. We would drive very aggressively at night on nods. We got ambushed a few times, but it was like...
no factor RPGs going over the, you know, lucky RPGs going over the convoy, you know, machine gun fire going between vehicles. Like we, we, we got, we got lucky. God's a frog, man. But it was still a little bit distant to me that someone could get wounded or killed. It was there, but not we really dominated the battle space. Like coalition forces dominated the battle space.
And so I didn't have that much of that kind of pressure in my head.
What about the pressure of winning your men over? Winning their trust? Winning... I mean, you want to be the fucking leader that everybody wants to follow into battle. You know, that stuff, I would imagine, has to be going through your head. Am I making the right calls?
How do my men... I mean, we talked about perception earlier, and that's a conversation I want to bring up, you know, more towards the end. But, you know what I mean? Are you worried about the guy's perception of how you're leading?
These guys are my bros, and these guys are my friends, and... When I took over that platoon, we were the first, like the first, maybe the first or second thing we did was a nighttime OTB in San Diego, pilot recovery, training operation. So I had done three shipboard deployments, man. I know how to do over the beach. And we go over the beach and one of our boats like,
capsizes or the motor dies, I forget which. I think it's just the motor died. And we get the pilot and we come back and now we got a down boat. And the guys who, when I took over the platoon, some of the guys were kind of friends with the old officer. And so there was a little bit of that. And some of the guys didn't like the old officer. And so there was a little bit of a friction, right?
And I, so this boat's down and the guy's like, we're in a perimeter. And the guy's like, dude, we got to call admin. We got to call the trucks down here and get this boat towed back. And I was like, we're not doing that. And they're like, well, what are we going to do? And I go, this is what we're doing. And I gave him the plan and I,
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Chapter 6: What lessons does Jocko learn from a blue on blue incident?
Yeah, these guys are my friends. You know why these guys listen to me? Because I listen to them. You know why these guys treated me with respect? Because I treated them with respect. You know why they trusted me? Because I trusted them. And when that's what you do, that's how it is. And that was the attitude that I had. I wasn't really concerned about that.
These guys were my guys, and I trusted them. They trusted me.
you didn't know any of them prior to you coming into that platoon i knew the platoon chief yep the platoon chief was another you know team one e5 mafia guy from from back in the day so it was great it was great to have that instant connection but i don't believe i knew one single other person in that platoon because i'd been out on the east coast and then i've been in college so i don't think i knew once the sister platoon the my sister platoon
my old running mate, the guy that told me, hey, you're not the only one that lost Grizz, he was the LPO in my sister platoon. No shit. And I got to do some ops with him.
Nice.
Which was as good as it gets.
Nice. What would you say your most memorable experience of that deployment is?
Uh, there was, there was a few things that happened where you, you like, uh, there was the CPA and Najaf was being overrun and we needed, they needed QRF. Najaf is five hours away by Humvee and they need a QRF and they called us. And I'm like, hey, there's like three other units between us and Najaf. And they're like, I don't know, but you guys are going.
And I remember the SEA of that troop, who, like I said, was the guy that was like, hey, go on this mission, which was kind of for no reason. He's a great friend of mine to this day. But I came out of like the talk and I was like, hey guys, load up all the rockets, load up all the ammunition. You can fit in the trucks. This is what's happening. We're going QRF, we're going into joff.
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Chapter 7: What exclusive content can listeners access on Patreon?
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You know, when you were asking me about the pressure on my first deployment to Iraq, and I told you that I didn't really feel this wasn't... The idea of someone getting wounded or killed was kind of a little bit of a distant thing in the back of my mind. And in Ramadi, It was front of mind.
And... when you see that many casualties happening... like, on a daily basis... there is... the odds are going to catch you. And of course, do you hope, am I fatalistic? Because that was my thought process, maybe. But it was also just numbers, man. It was just the numbers. You just look at the numbers. And every day, every time you leave the wire, there is a chance. And so it's a daily basis.
And listen, the Army and the Marine Corps are just making the most incredible sacrifices. You see it. You go to their memorials. You hear it on the radio. That's one thing that was, you know, you'd hear it on the radios. You'd hear, hey, there's one KAA heading back to Camp Ramadi, or three wounded heading to Charlie Med. Like, you would hear these things. It's just constant.
This is daily. Daily.
Daily. So, and, you know, I try and give as much admiration to the Army and the Marine Corps, who fought so hard in such terrible conditions. And that's what they were facing every day, and that's what we were facing. And... We had the blue on blue happen almost pretty quickly thereafter. Cowie got wounded bad. And you know, Cowie just a stud. And he's in Charlie Med.
He's all doped up on morphine. The doc pulls me aside and he's like, hey, I don't know if this leg's gonna make it. Roger. And Cowie, like, I, you know, bend over to, like, hold his hand, and he's like, the first thing's out of his mouth. Let me stay.
Damn. So that's the kind of guys you got, you know? Let me stay.
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Chapter 8: How did Jocko Willink cope with the pressures of combat?
the chain of command on both the special operations side and the conventional side. But you're going into these areas and the Army's taking casualties, the Marine Corps is taking casualties. And I know that at some point we're going to take casualties. And the, we, you know, we, like I said, we had a couple of guys wounded. Cowie was wounded bad, but on August 2nd,
that's when Ryan Jobe got wounded severely. And, you know, he was shot in the face. And I know when you had Leif on the podcast, Leif gave you a pretty detailed description. But you had, you know, a guy like Ryan Jobe who... I had his parents on my podcast. Just... Man, you can't even describe just what a...
What a being of light, you know, just tough, funny, like will literally do anything for you. Just as good as they come. And he gets shot. Thankfully he was, had his weapon right up in his cheek. Well, where are you supposed to have it? You know, three hours into a clearance operation on a rooftop, and he still is a disciplined machine gunner.
He has his weapon up in his cheek well, and a single shot hits his machine gun and hits him in the face and just devastating damage to his face. And they, you know, they caz-a-vac him. And this kind of initiates one of the larger battles in the Battle of Ramadi was on August 2nd. And... Leif and his guys go back to Cop Falcon, which is a combat outpost.
And we have a great relationship with the 137, and Leif's great friends with their company commander, Mike Baima. And I'm great friends with Colonel Tedesco. And now they're starting to take heavies out there in the field. It's a big gunfight. And Leif gets Ryan Kasavak, and it didn't look good.
Um, although he did stabilize, but you know, Leif did not think he was going to make it, um, for a bit. And these guys are back there and, uh, the army, our brothers in the army said, Hey, we were taking contact from some of these buildings. We think this is where these insurgents are. Can you help us? And you know, Leif called me on the radio and he's like, hey, here's what's happening.
The army needs our help. They want us to go hit some buildings. And I'm like, you good? He said, I'm good. I'm like, execute. And they went out to hit those buildings. And, you know, it's already, like I said, one of the biggest battles. And, you know, Leif and Tony, and, you know, Tony was the platoon chief down there, and just no hesitation from any of the boys. Roll out.
They softened up the target with the Brad's, you know, 25 millimeter chain gun, and I think they went in the first building and cleared it. The second building they go into, and they take fire from an adjacent building. And, um, Mark... Mark Lee. Who's another guy that's... just all good. Like, in his whole being, in his soul, he's good.
And he gets job killed.
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