388: Lessons That Go Beyond The Battelfield. With Jamie Cochran, Echelon Front COO.

Jamie Cochran joined Leif Babin and Jocko Willink as the first employee at Echelon Front in 2014. She quickly expanded her initial role as Director of Operations and was named Chief Operating Officer in early 2021. After earning her degree in Business Marketing and Communications, Jamie served in leadership positions in several organizations to include Glacier Bay, a boutique hedge fund as the Client Relations Director; San Diego State University as a Programs Director; and Tiffany & Company as a Visual Creative Director. Here at Echelon Front, she leads a diverse team that oversees all business operations and events. Her team also coordinates Echelon Front engagements across the globe, ensuring a world-class client experience. Jamie embraces the mindset of Extreme Ownership and implements it across all aspects of her business and life. As a speaker and Leadership Instructor, she makes the connection between the combat leadership principles of Extreme Ownership and how she implements them in her life as a business leader, woman, mother of three, and wife of a former Navy SEAL. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 388 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. General Mukuyama told me that Colonel Hackworth never did things for personal gain. He always did things for the unit and for the soldiers. For the soldiers. That is the underlying theme that permeates About Face. And it is the underlying theme that stuck with me as a leader. But people's strengths are often also their weaknesses. And perhaps doing things for the soldiers was Colonel Hackworth's undoing.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  In his interview with Issues and Answers, when Howard Tucker asked him if he'd become too emotionally involved in Vietnam, he responded, "One couldn't have spent the number of years I've spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn't see the number of young studs die or be terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved. I just have seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country. I've seen our national wealth being drained away.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  I see the nation being split apart and almost being ripped asunder because of this war. And I am wondering to what end it is all going to lead to." So that's from the foreword that I wrote for the book About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. And that idea that he instilled in me of caring about his soldiers, caring about my people first and foremost. That's what he's all about.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  He dedicated the book to all the doughboys, the ground pounders, the grunts, the American infantrymen, past, present, and especially, future.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  And I wrote in that forward for About Face that the lessons that he learned and passed on in his book, I had used in combat and I had passed them on as well, not only to the SEALs replacing me, but I passed them on to soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines at units throughout the country and around the world. But his lessons went beyond that. And I wrote about that in the forward, I continued by saying Hackworth's leadership philosophies, strategies and tactics can be applied by any leader at any level in any situation.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  I have taught your principles to countless civilian leaders in every industry imaginable and have seen them applied over and over again with extraordinary outcomes. So, the principles that I learned from Hackworth and principles that I learned from my SEAL forefathers and from other military leaders and that are from the Army and the Marine Corps and principles that I learned from military history, all those lessons, they all originated in combat, that's where they're from. But, we now know that they apply everywhere.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  And we know that because we have seen them applied in every arena. And when we see them applied, as I said, we see them applied with extraordinary results. And one incredible example of that is actually within one of my companies, Echelon Front, my leadership consultancy, where one person has applied the principles of extreme ownership in everything that she does to take care of her soldiers, which is actually her team at Echelon Front. She uses the principles to pass on incredible knowledge to clients to run our business, which is the premier leadership consultancy in the world.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  She uses them to raise her family, to run a household, to support her children, to support her husband, to take care of her friends.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  And to grow and create. In short, she uses these principles to lead.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  And she is the Chief Operating Officer at Echelon Front. Her name is Jamie Cochran, and she's here with us tonight to share her perspective and her lessons learned. Jamie, thanks for joining us.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  I had to start with Hackworth because you take the thread. The thread leads back to Hackworth. The thread of my thoughts lead back to Hackworth. And look, there's, there's other huge influences in there. Delta Charlie's in there. He's in the thread. Roger Hayden's in the thread. And there's a bunch of people that obviously know, I can't recite them all. But that thread, like I said, all those lessons originated in combat. That's where, that's where they come from. And so to see what we've done for the last 12 years and to see the way these things are applied and to see the results in every industry, dairy farmers, insurance

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  companies, manufacturing companies, software companies, hardware companies, financial companies, just every industry, energy, construction, every industry, and they put these things to use. And it's been, it's always cool to track how they do, but it's really kind of cool to track you and what you've done with these principles. And it's a really good testament to the way these principles apply outside of the battlefield. So let's, let's figure out how you got here. Let's start at the beginning. Jamie Cochran, where were you born?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  I was born in Utah, Orem, Utah. But when I was three, I moved up to Washington State, just south of Seattle. So that's really what I call home.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  And what, what did your mom do?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  My mom, we actually moved to Seattle for my mom's job. She worked for the United Steelworkers. She worked there for thirty-five years. She was dedicated. Yes. She loved, loved, loved helping people and she loved her job. She was, talk about work ethic.

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  What was her job in the union?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  She was basically, I mean, back then they called him secretary. She was basically a secretary, but she ran that place, for sure. And she, later in her career-

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  You got those genes from her then, huh?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I learned a lot from her. And she, later in her career there, she ended up taking on a program that they had, Women in Steel. And she took that on and started actually teaching and training and setting up these programs for women in steel, helping them understand that there was leadership opportunities for them. So I learned a lot from her.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  And then what about your dad? What was he doing?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Blue collar. He worked at an aluminum, aluminum plant. So he actually worked at a company my mom's union served. A really harsh work environment. Worked a lot of graveyard shifts and different kind of shift work growing up. So they were a big team because my dad was, you know, working different shifts. My mom was traveling for work. And so they both worked full-time and so they really had to work together as a team. My dad dabbled in some construction, ran his own business for a little while, and then ended up back at like a, a plant, a aluminum printing plant.

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  And then what, what about brothers and sisters? What do you got?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  I have one brother. He's nine years older than me. We were very close growing up, given our age difference. Still very close now. He was a wrestler. So all I wanted, all I wanted to do when I was little was just hang out with my brother. Interesting, you know, we'd go to wrestling tournaments. I'd help roll up the mats and then he'd come home and, you know, wrestlers stink. And he would go sit in his room and I would just want to sit next to him and hang out with him and his buddies. I just really idolized him, looked out to him a lot.

• 8:13Jocko Willink?

  But, girls weren't really wrestling.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  I mean, there was some, but not like it is now. Now, there's, there's like girls wrestling.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I never saw it growing up, but I was there every weekend. I was watching him wrestle. I mean, he, he focused in on one thing, different from me, very different from me in a lot of ways. But he focused in on one thing and he put all of his time and effort in wrestling. And so I grew up around that community.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  And then so what were you into since you didn't have the wrestling outlet? Which now I'm like, kind of bummed out. I'm bummed out in the world that you weren't a freaking wrestler.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  I would have loved that.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  We'll get to that later.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  I was one of those kids that I just needed to do a million things. When I was really little, I started out in gymnastics and I got very competitive in gymnastics and it's where I put all of my effort and energy. But by the time I got to middle school, I just wanted to try it all. So I don't, I don't know how my parents kept up with me, but I was in every sport you can imagine. I started, you know, going into plays and singing and just literally my schedule was constantly packed. I went from one sport to the next, to the next, to the next, all through high school.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  When did, how old were you started gymnastics?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  I was three.

• 9:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What level did you make it to?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  A level 10, but I will caveat. No, I mean, it's, it's changed a lot. So like level 10 back when I was little is not the level 10s you see now. The level 10s you see now are freaking beasts. I was not at that level, but I was competitive for, for my age and I, and I continued gymnastics through high school.

• 9:48Jocko Willink?

  How many times a week or yeah, how many times a week did you have to train gymnastics?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it like when you get to level six or seven, you're training every day, right?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, we had sometimes four or five hour practices on Saturdays. I'm just training, you know, we would do a round of a workout and then we would go through our routines and then we would go through a round of stretching and then back to a workout. I mean, it was pretty intense for fifth grade to be that deep immersed in, in a sport.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  And you loved it?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I loved it. And then I got to junior high and I kind of, it wasn't that I didn't like gymnastics anymore. I wasn't burnt out per se. I just wanted to try new things and you can't really do that if you're competitive in gymnastics. So I had to adjust a little bit and stop competing competitively for the club that I was at and start just doing that for school so that I could do other sports.

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  Did anyone talk you through that or did you just figure that out?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  I just figured that out. My mom and dad were so supportive. They never pushed me towards any of this. So me competing in gymnastics was not them being like, you have to do this. And up until that point, they had spent so much money and time. In me doing this sport and they were always so supportive. My mom's one rule, at least when we got through high school, but this, we kind of started this when I was little, was that you're not going to come home after school and just have nothing to do. They both worked, so I needed to have something to keep my time. So when I was younger, that was gymnastics. And then as I got older, it was like you either get a job or you're going to play a sport, but you're not going to come home and just have a bunch of extra time on your hands. So they were good with it.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you have competitive gymnastics in your high school?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  We did, yeah, yeah.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty lucky.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  You must, were you kind of a slayer because you were like a club gymnast?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had a couple, a couple other club gymnasts. So we had just a lot of fun. We had this old German, his name was Gunter Borman gymnastics coach. He was super strict, really tough, but he was so, such a great, just such a great coach. And I got to in my junior and senior, take on the captain role and really, really fun opportunities.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  In your junior and senior year?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  Was that, was that rare for a junior to be captain?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  I mean gymnastics teams are smaller, so not so much. But we had a co-captain role when I was a junior. So there was a senior that was in that place as well. And then when I was a senior, I took on the captain role again.

• 12:05Jocko Willink?

  And then what, and then what else were you doing volleyball?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Played volleyball, loved that sport and I also played softball.

• 12:11Jocko Willink?

  Were you good at both those two?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I was good at both those. I, I was, I was never the best. There was always people on the teams that I played at that were significantly better than I was and put a lot of their time and effort in training, but I played, I started and I played in both of those sports.

• 12:26Jocko Willink?

  Gymnastics is an awesome base sport because you just get strong, flexible. Your proprioception is, is outstanding. The discipline that it takes to do it, like that's a good sport to kick it off with.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always tell, you know, my kids, my daughter didn't do gymnastics, but she did wrestling when she was little. And I think both of those sports are such good introductory sports for kids because you learn balance, you learn strength and it's, it's kind of a gut check. Like wrestling and gymnastics, like those practices are not easy. You are going hard and there's this level of discipline you learn at such a young age that there's really good base level sports for, for kids.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  One thing, I don't know if gymnastics is like this, in wrestling, you're going to lose. You know what I mean? Like you're gonna lose and I think that's also good for kids to lose and have it be on you. Cause like, you know, your soccer team loses, you're kind of like, well, you know, Jamie missed the goal. And it's kind of her fault and Echo didn't do a good job on defense, but I did awesome. You can kind of coach yourself through that rationalize your, but in wrestling, is it like that in gymnastics? I mean, it must be similar.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  It is because you compete by yourself. So you're out there by yourself. And so there's two scores. You get your individual score. I was an all around gymnast, so I did all four activities. Um, and so I had my own scores that I was competing against others individually, but then all your scores also go to the team score. So similar to in wrestling, but you're out there by yourself. So if you mess up, you're out there by yourself. You have to finish the routine. Even if you know you stepped out of line and now you're, you know, there's no shot, you're going to get a good score on this. Um, so it was, yeah, I learned a lot.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  And people can have mental breakdowns with that kind of thing too, by the way. I mean, like kids, sports, like step outside the line. Everything falls apart. You gotta, that's, it's so good to go through that stuff. And then you mentioned singing, the, obviously you've got some pipes on you.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I auditioned for a play in fifth grade. I had never done anything like that. And I auditioned for a play. It was a play that our, the direct, the music director there had written himself. It was called Journey to Echo Mountain and I auditioned and I had no idea. I've never done anything like this and it was a musical. And I got the lead. I got the lead. Her name was Molly and I just kind of immersed myself in this new world in fifth grade of, I'd never sang before. I'd never had any kind of lessons before. And now I'm, you know, in this play.

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  So what happened with the journey to Echo Mountain? What was the play about?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  It was a, it was a girl who like, didn't have any friends and her, it was like this fantasy thing where like her favorite little stuffed doll became real and she goes on this journey with him to Echo Mountain to save his friends. It was a very interesting play, but it had all these songs. And so the first night, the opening night, uh, we were prepping in the morning and I was like, I was coughing and I was having all these like issues and my mom gave me old cough medicine. She didn't realize it was expired. So now I'm throwing up. Opening day, first time I'm ever going on stage. And she takes me to the hospital just in the morning because I'm really sick. I found out I have asthma. So I just internally just started to panic about this opening night.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Get the inhaler, good to go, rush back, go on stage. And we ran, I think, another six shows over the next two weeks and I was in love. I was like, this is so fun.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  My oldest daughter, I remember she was, they did Annie at the school play and she was Annie. And I was thinking, I was like, you know, I was a little bit detached. I was in the Navy, so I show up whatever opening night. And I'm kind of thinking, wow, this is a lot of pressure. And she's in fifth grade or sixth grade, maybe. And then she's got to get up on stage and like sing. And the whole, no offense to the other roles, but basically when you're Annie in Annie, that whole freaking show rests on your shoulders. And she was 10 years old. And I was like, man, that's impressive. That's an impressive thing to be able to do that and step out there and let it rip with the pipes.

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  And so then you kind of got into that scene a little bit.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I did. After that, I was like, I love this. Performing is awesome. And so I joined the choir and I did choir all throughout high school. I started taking vocal lessons. I started going to summer camps where we would go for like a month. And we would, the whole summer camp was just for the sake of putting on a show at the end of that. And we would do musicals and plays every summer. So in the midst of sports, and that's what I meant. I went from one thing to the next and the next. I was also really wrapped up in singing and performing and just wanting to get better and find other ways to explore the performance zone.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  Where was this drive? This is a lot, you know? You see kids that are sitting around watching, playing video games. And there you are doing nine sports plus starring in the musical in fifth grade. Where's that coming from?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I don't know. So, part of it, I think, was my parents. There was kind of two really big themes in my childhood was work ethic. So, my parents always drove home the importance of work ethic. You're gonna show up on time, you're not gonna miss anything, and you're gonna do the job, and you're gonna do it well. And then honesty was another big theme in my childhood. So, I had a good example of watching them. And then I had my brother, who really honed in on one thing and loved that one thing. And I just realized, I don't, it wasn't anything specific, but I just realized at a certain age, it was probably around fifth or sixth grade, that I didn't want to just do one thing. I wanted to do it all. And I started to realize that I loved the challenge. I really thrived in like, the constant change and the constant challenge of things going on. So, I just, I don't know,

• 18:12Speaker 01

  I just wanted to be in everything.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  Were you that self-aware in sixth grade, that you were like, "I really enjoy this challenge?"

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I think so. I mean, I think-

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  I think I might be an idiot. You know what I mean? I think when I'm in fifth grade, I'm like throwing rocks at trees. Like, that's, that's the extent of my forward thinking. I'm thinking, "Hey, I bet I can hit that beehive with a rock and run away quick enough. Do you think I can do it? Yeah, I think you can. Let's try."

• 18:40Speaker 01

  But I think the downside is there's a lot of people, like my brother, that honed in and became really great at one thing. And I just-

• 18:47Jocko Willink?

  Did he wrestle in college?

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Um, he did not. He, he did for like, the first year, and then he didn't, he didn't finish college. But he was a great wrestler, and he was really good at that sport. And he put all of his energy and effort into it. And I was a little bit more like, "Oh, that looks fun. That looks fun. Let me try this. Oh, that looks cool. Let me do this." And I just always, I couldn't keep my attention. I just wanted to do it all. Um, you know, and that got me in trouble sometimes. For the most part, I just loved having the constant change going on in my life.

• 19:15Jocko Willink?

  And were you, you know, you were the captain of this team, you were the captain of the team, you were the lead in this. Were you always sort of, did you always kind of get elevated? Two sort of leadership roles as you were growing up?

• 19:27Speaker 01

  I did. I mean, I did student body government and things of that nature. I like, I was, I just talked a lot, if I'm being honest. Like, so people knew me because I just talked like, I always had straight A's. And then when it got to the point of like, talking in class, I'd always get the two, like the, the lower rating. Because I just, I was just a chatterbox. I would spend hours in my room. My mom has tapes of me doing interviews with myself and playing different characters, like different accents. And I'm like, and now, welcome to the show. And I was like, and I would just spend all this time creating and talking. And so I think I just, I was a little bit of just, I think I just was loud. And so people are like, well, okay, let's just put her somewhere just to manage that.

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  And so as you're going through high school, you're doing all these activities, do you have, do you start to see some kind of a vision for what you want to do with your life as far as career goes?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  You know, not really. I, I, all I knew in high school was that I loved performing and I love singing. And that I really just liked, again, kind of the chaos of having a million things going on. And so all I ever thought I wanted to be was, I'm going to move to LA when I'm 18 and I'm going to go and I'm going to sing. I'm going to sing and I'm going to write and I'm just, that, that was my path. In high school at least. And then I quickly, quickly realized that that wasn't actually what I wanted.

• 20:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, so, okay, so you have this dream, you graduate from high school. And then so do you go to college for music, right? Didn't you go to college for singing?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So none of my, none of my family had ever gone to college. So going to college was a big deal. And my parents always were like, you're going to go to college, like you're going to do this. And I always wanted to go to school. I knew that I wanted to go to college, but I didn't really know where to go or like what I wanted to do. So I applied to a bunch of different schools. But my choir teacher at the time, who I really looked up with and looked up to and had a really good relationship. She was the one that was like, I think you should look at Azusa Pacific. And it was a private school. But she knew the, the music director there and she's like, I can get you set up with an inner, an audition and you could maybe get some money to go to school. Cause we didn't, my parents had saved money, but not enough to necessarily send me to four years at a private university. And so I went and auditioned and I ended up getting a scholarship there. So I got into other colleges.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  But because of the scholarship, I chose to go to Azusa Pacific.

• 21:46Jocko Willink?

  Do you get to pick the song you're going to sing for your audition?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. I think they gave you, I I couldn't remember. I mean, it was probably more classical. Because that's, you know, what they expected going into like a music program.

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  What kind of music were you listening to in high school?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Everything. So it was one thing that I I grew up with my dad who loves music. I mean, he had towers of just CDs back in the day. Like, you know, just racks and racks of CDs. And he would listen to literally everything. I mean, everything from like country to Whitney Houston to rap to like, my dad had it all. And so I got exposure to everything. But the one thing that we really bonded over, we still do, we share songs, like I'll send him a song, he'll send me something if he hears. Was just music, music that had a story. So I always loved the singer songwriter, like if there's a good story. It didn't so much matter about the rest. If there was a good, if it made you feel something.

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever pick up a git box, a guitar or anything?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  No, I never did. And I wish I had, but I think I was too, I was too busy. So I could only manage just singing and I was lucky to have enough people around me that could do the music part.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever get in trouble in high school before you get to college?

• 22:55Speaker 01

  You know, I didn't.

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what I was thinking. You're over there just being perfect.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I really didn't. I I got good grades and we had, our school system had a very interesting. They had like these secret high school students that would go to parties. And like basically rat out other athletes. Yeah. And it was all, it was all about the athletic clubs and making sure that the athletes weren't going to these parties. So you had like a twenty minute leeway. And so I had that kind of keeping me from getting into trouble. And honestly, I probably would have gotten into a lot of trouble, except my best friend was like an angel and perfect. And she, you want to talk about leadership, she led me in high school and she's like, nope, you're not doing that. She was also an athlete. And so she was very much in my corner and kept me from making lots of bad decisions.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever, did you ever figure out who one of the rats was?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  No. Who takes that job on? Like, that's risky.

• 23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a very strange thing. So you go, you, there was parties, but you kind of would show up and leave?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I remember one time my parents dropped me off at this, at this house and you could tell, like when they dropped me off, you could tell that this was a party. And my mom's like, okay, and you, you're, you're gonna go to this and just a lot of trust, you know? And, but they were suspect. And I was like, yeah, no, mom, it's totally fine. Like, it's just some friends getting together. And like, you can see the house. You're like, this is a raging party. And I went in and I spent like 15 minutes and I was like, all right, I probably shouldn't be here. It's total mayhem. So I called her and I was like, hey, mom, can you come get me? And she was like, oh, my gosh, yes, we're up the street. We'll be right there. She like waited up the road, just hoping I'd make the right decision. So I was friends with all the people that partied, but I just kind of stayed out of that for, for the most part. I definitely went to some, but I didn't get caught up.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you think you didn't want to let your parents down? Do you think you didn't want to let your team down? Like, this is in kind of really positive peer pressure, because most kids are getting peer pressure to do negative things. What kind of peer pressure? Was it just like, hey, I don't want to let my parents down?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yep. My biggest fear growing up, my absolute biggest fear, even to this day, was disappointing my mom and dad. Because they were such pillars in my life and like, I just highly, highly respected them growing up. That I just didn't want to let them down. Like, I was so afraid of that. So I made a lot of good choices because I was like, I don't want to have to show up and be like, hey, dad, I screwed up.

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  Are you guys having dinner together, together every night? Like, but your dad's working shifts? Like, how is this really tight family unit and this, this high level of respect for your parents? How did they, how did they formulate that?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  I think a couple of things. One, my parents are best friends and they are a true partnership. They carried the load together. And so, um, they just, they just worked together so well. My mom would travel and my dad would have to take on like feeding us every night. And yes, we had dinner most nights at the table. And sometimes it was in the midst of things, but it was like, hey, at 6:30, be home. We're gonna have dinner at the table. Um, and my mom would go out of town and my dad would do like seven days of. Different ground beef, like we're having hamburger helper, then spaghetti, then sloppy Joe's, then goulash, like variations of ground beef. And my dad

• 26:09Jocko Willink?

  I haven't heard of goulash in a while. I was saying that was a big one at my house, dude. Get that goulash together, bro.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. But he would, he would manage food when my mom was gone. And when he work shift work, my mom was there. And I think what I'm very, very lucky is that I was a busy kid. I had a lot of stuff going on and yet I can't remember a time and it had to have happened that, um, but I can't remember a time where I didn't have both parents or at least one parent, or in the very rare occasion, they both couldn't be there. They'd send my brother. They're like, you're going to support. So I always had someone in the stand there rooting for me that just wanted the best for me. And I think, um, that cultivated like a very, we're, we're an oddly close family, even now into adulthood. Uh, my, my dad and my brother are best friends and they do so much together. Even now, we're very, very close, I think, compared to a lot of other families.

• 26:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, I, I've, I talk about the fact that I've told so many parents like, hey, listen, your kids are gonna get this rebellious streak. They know they gotta leave the house. They don't want to do it. When, when they're so close to you, they're, so they're gonna set, do some things to create a little separation. Just expect this. But you didn't even have that.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I hit my rebellious stage in, in college because I was, I wasn't near them anymore. So I went through that whole stage when I got to college and I was living in LA and just trying to figure out who I wanted to be, what I wanted to be.

• 27:30Jocko Willink?

  So you don't remember your Adish song, but you knocked it out of the park. You get the big scholarship to Azu, what is it? Azusa?

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Azusa Pacific.

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  Azusa Pacific. And now you're leaving your family. Did your mom cry? Did you cry? Did your dad cry? Was it total? I'm, I'm just picturing like just total mental breakdown of the fam.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  We drove from Seattle to California.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, they're driving you. Hell yeah. They're like, we're driving her.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  And I like slept the whole time, you know, because I'm young, like whatever. My, they drove the whole time. They get me set up in my apartment and my roommates in my first year in this dorm, we lived on campus. It was a small room, three beds and like a dresser, tiny. I mean, probably the size of this room. And, uh, both of them were from Okinawa, Japan. So there was just an interesting dynamic right out the gate. They helped me move in and they've got to get back. So we go to this parking lot. My dad gets my car off the back. He had it on a trailer and like,

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Gave me a hug and drove off. And I remember sitting there in the parking lot by myself, like, what have I done? I am now in Los Angeles by myself and my parents just drove away. And in the moment, we kept it kind of together, but my mom lost it in the car. I lost it in the car, separate of each other, uh, just feeling like, what, what have I done?

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  And so now you got two roommates from Okinawa?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of random. Were they sisters or something?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  They were, uh, they came from the same high school.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Um, but yes, they were wonderful. They were wonderful roommates.

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  Is that college meant for like performance? Cause you're going there, you're going there to major in singing?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  I went there and my major was vocal performance. So I was a part of the women's choir, which you have to be your first year. And then there's opportunities to move into some of the other, uh, choir units. Um, and I was taking primarily music classes. And at the, I always tell students now, like, just go do your general education because you don't know what you want to do. And I made the mistake of like,

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  People go join the Marine Corps for four years and then you forget what you wanted to do.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Perfect. But a lot of people make the mistake, just like I did, where I went and I'm like, okay, I'm a vocal performance major. I'm going to take all music classes. I'm just going to get deep into music composition and all these different things. And then about six months in, I realized, I don't want to do this anymore. Uh, cause I realized that I loved singing, but I didn't really necessarily like, like, learning and the components and the teaching and the technical side of it. And that I didn't need any of that to go perform and sing.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  You just need that microphone.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  So you're going through that decision process again, you're aware for a young person, even when I was, thank God I was in the Navy because God only knows what I would have been doing if I wasn't. But you're now 18, probably 19 years old. You take this, all these music classes and you realize you like singing, but you don't want to learn about sheet music or whatever it is, music theory. So then what do you do? You decide you're gonna change majors?

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yep, I decide I, as part of my general ed, I did take a marketing class and I was, I loved that class and it started to open my eyes to like, oh, okay, you know what, maybe there's something I kind of like event planning, I like marketing, I like this other world. I also started to realize that I was not, even with my scholarship, I was not gonna be able to afford to stay at Azusa Pacific because we had basically depleted my college saving funds to go to that first year. It was not a cheap school. And so I was realizing that I was gonna have to go in significant debt to stay there. So I was like, alright, I'm changing majors, I'm gonna move schools. So I moved after the first year and I started summer school classes to try to catch up because I've now changed

• 31:12Speaker 01

  majors. Right after I left Azusa and I went to Cal State Los Angeles and I changed to communications and public relations.

• 31:19Jocko Willink?

  What's, where's Cal State Los Angeles?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Kind of east LA, not far from like Pasadena.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  About fifteen minutes like east of that.

• 31:28Jocko Willink?

  And so do you move in an apartment with new people, obviously?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so really kind of crazy twist of fate. I showed up and the apartment, the dorm that I was supposed to stay in was a four bedroom dorm, so eight girls and like this common space. And all, seven of the eight, so the other seven were on the soccer team together. And then me. So I show up and I go to, to, to move in and they've moved me to a different room. So I went back just to get a new key and I didn't, I didn't want to cause drama. I was like, no, I just need a new key so I can get into this new room that they've shifted me. And it created this whole whirlwind. And she ended up saying, no, I'm gonna move you to this other apartment with one of our resident assistants. And so I moved in with this girl named Diana who ended up becoming my best

• 32:12Speaker 01

  friend, but she didn't, she didn't want me moving in with her. But all of a sudden, I'm, I'm, now it's just three girls in a two bedroom. And it turned out to be a cool twist of fate because it led me to a job where I worked at the college as a resident assistant like the next quarter. And just cultivated some friendships I wouldn't have had if I had been in the soccer house.

• 32:33Jocko Willink?

  The soccer house. So you get moved into this new place and now you're studying communications and public relations?

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  What is, what is, what does it mean when you study communications? You don't know.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 32:47Jocko Willink?

  What job do you get hired into if you study communications? You get like, I mean, are you a newscaster?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  No, I didn't take the journalism route. I took the public relations route. So really, you know, it was a component of marketing, but not the marketing degree. It was a little bit more towards, you know, learning how to communicate, how to tell a story, how to, you know, I could have gone and worked at like a PR firm. What I loved at the time is I was a resident assistant. And so what I was doing on campus, in addition to just the regular duties there was I was planning events and there's a component of the communications degree that sets you up for that because you have to market and publicize these events. And it just gave me some exposure. I didn't know what I wanted to be, so I kind of landed there haphazardly and it stuck. And I really loved Cal State because the classes were smaller, so I got to know my

• 33:39Speaker 01

  teachers more and I just started to cultivate relationships there that I hadn't a year prior.

• 33:44Jocko Willink?

  And you're out of money, kind of, so you gotta be working.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I was broke. I was so broke. I remember pulling into a gas station, trying to get back to campus and like going up to the counter and being like, I have $3.23 on point four. You know, my parents made sure that I had food, so I had the campus meal plan and I had housing and everything else was up to me. And so I ended up getting a job initially at a restaurant and I started as a hostess and then worked my way up to various positions there and I worked there all through college.

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  What restaurant?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  McCormick and Schmick's.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  What kind of restaurant is that?

• 34:18Speaker 01

  Like a fish house. Yeah, like a seafood. They had, yeah.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  And did you end up as a waitress? What did you learn from that?

• 34:26Speaker 01

  A lot because I started as a hostess and then I became a waitress, then the cocktail waitress. So I worked in like the happy hour. So you just get to meet all sorts of different people, not only the people that you work with, but the people you're meeting on a day to day. You have to manage emotions if something, if an order gets wrong. People treat people in the service industry terribly. Others treated me great, but I had to learn a lot how to like control my emotions and like show up on time. And it was, it was a great job. I loved it. I was there for a long time and I had a couple key relationships there that were really important to me in my development as far as like being mentors.

• 35:04Jocko Willink?

  So you end up, how much do you make a night as a waitress?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Uh, I think I would, I mean, sometimes I would walk out of there with some pretty good cash if it was a busy night because I would work happy hour. I would take extra shifts.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Um, maybe a couple hundred bucks.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Some people become kind of career waitresses sometimes because you can make good money.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Well, and this was before like people were doing the, the guaranteed 20%. Like nowadays, I feel like it's on everything, you know? They didn't have a little key at the bottom that suggested the amount. So sometimes you'd get totally stiffed and other times, you know, people were really generous, but I relied heavily on the, the cash tips. That was a big part of my income.

• 35:44Jocko Willink?

  And then you also were working as an RA, is that right?

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  So are you dealing with freaking just mayhem?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Mayhem.

• 35:51Jocko Willink?

  Just people puking on themselves, just drinking?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  Drugs?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  It was an interesting leadership lesson because it was, they weren't dorms. It was apartments. So it was almost like just managing apartment complex. But quarterly, we had to do like review, we had to go and like evaluate and do walkthroughs. And it was my job to like go in and see if, how they're living and whether or not they're violating any rules. If I was on duty, then I'd have to go let people in in the middle of the night. You were on duty for like three or four days, like around the clock. So the people would call you at 2am and be like, I locked myself out and you have to go get them situated. Um, so it was a lot of like management and it's your peers too. So parties are happening and you've got to go like kind of shut them down or noise complaints.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  You became the rat.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Totally. I was a pretty cool rat, but yes, I had to go shut some of those things down. Um, and then in addition to that, it was our job to put on events every, every couple of weeks. We do these different events. Um.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  What kind of events?

• 36:51Speaker 01

  We, one of my favorite events there, we started with another friend of mine who was another RA and we called it the underground. And it was like a show of like poetry and music and like dance. And it was just like this cool, we turned this, uh, common area that was, you know, you can think like fluorescent lights, kind of whatever. We turned it in this like cool, dark underground like club and we just had different performances and artists come and perform.

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you perform?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  Singing?

• 37:18Speaker 01

  I sang, yeah.

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  Were you in a band?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I did have a band in college.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  What was the name of the band?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Uh, it was just me, J, J Smith.

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because your maiden name is Smith?

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  But you can't play any instruments?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  No, but that was like.

• 37:34Jocko Willink?

  Just a cappella?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  We just, no, no. I had a band. We had a stand up bass. We had a guitarist, a drummer. We had backup singers.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Were you doing covers or are you doing?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Uh, no, my own stuff.

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  Where is it? Where's the MP3s? Let's go.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  That was a long time ago. Uh, no, we did. I mean, we, we had some covers, but for the most part, we were writing our own music and we would just, we would link up on, on campus and we would just jam. And then over time, we were like, we should do a show. And so we went and played a little show and then we, we, we did a couple of cool gigs. It was fun.

• 38:08Jocko Willink?

  But did you do any recording?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Not with that band. We didn't record any of that stuff. I was also going to a studio in Hollywood and doing some like, vocal demoing. So I would help write a song or I would potentially, or they would give me a song that was written in and I would demo it so that artists, like the, the people that I was working for.

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, just like a music company of some kind?

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I got, I had a couple of friends that were in that. And so I would go in the studio and I would record a song that they were going to send off to a real artist who was already famous, to hear what the song would sound like. So I would demo the song. Um, and then on some cases I was asked to do like, little choruses or things on, on people's other. So I was recording, but not for my own stuff, not my own songs.

• 38:54Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting paid?

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Not for that, no.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  You're just doing it for free?

• 38:58Speaker 01

  Just doing it.

• 38:58Jocko Willink?

  Can we hear your backing vocals on anything that on MP3 right now?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  Not that's like out. I mean, I have them.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  But no, you're not on the backing vocals of some band that we could listen to?

• 39:10Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I mean, possibly. I mean, I did a lot of like stuff, but this was all like local stuff going on. It wasn't like, you know, some big hit song.

• 39:19Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen any jingles that are commercials that we've heard?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:22Jocko Willink?

  You know, like Geico or something. You're sitting there getting it.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  That would have been where the money's at though.

• 39:29Jocko Willink?

  So, all right. So this is what you're doing. This was your rebellious phase was you were like, starting the underground as an RA?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  No, I'm just saying. I'm just saying I had some fun in college and and maybe realized was maybe happy when I met my husband and he didn't drink to kind of like shift because it wasn't ever natural to who I was but it's hard to be in LA in that culture and not get caught up in some of just the chaos and drama of that culture. It's not a it's not a great place for young women. And I realize that pretty early. No, not college, the music industry. Like I was I was I had enough of a foot in that world that I really quickly realized like I don't think that's the path I want to go down.

• 40:15Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of crazy.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  It is crazy.

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  So you're in college, you get you go there for three more years? Do you get it done in four years?

• 40:25Speaker 01

  I did, yeah. I went through I did summer school every summer to make up for the year of vocal performance classes I took and I graduated on time.

• 40:32Jocko Willink?

  And then what's next? What happens?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  I

• 40:35Jocko Willink?

  So it's now 2006? You graduate from college?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yep. And my best friend, we ended up getting an apartment in Pasadena and a one bedroom that we shared and she was like, hey, I had this idea. She went to school for she had her master's in education, brilliant. And she was like, I had this idea, let's go be flight attendants so we can just travel the world and like just be single. And I was like, awesome.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I was like, we're gonna do that.

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  That's the plan. I like the plan has two sentences. We're gonna travel the world and be single. Okay.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  We were both single at that time and we were like, all right, we're just gonna go do this. And so we went, it's actually really hard to become a flight attendant. Like people underestimate that. Not only like the interviewing process, but then the training is significant. And so we ended up becoming, you know, getting the opportunity to go to this training. And in between when we got the, hey, you know, you're hired and the start of training, I went on the first date now with Flynn, who is now my husband. And so all of a sudden, like this whole, I'm gonna be single, kind of took a little pivot. And she found out like right before we went that she was pregnant. So like all of a sudden

• 41:50Speaker 01

  this travel the world, we're going to be single and just living up our life. Like both of us made this big shift of like, okay, I guess things are going to change. But I went through the training and became a flight attendant.

• 42:01Jocko Willink?

  And how long did you do that for?

• 42:03Speaker 01

  Six, six months. I, the training is about eight weeks and then, uh, which is, it's, it's difficult training. Like people really don't get it. Like when you go, when you go on your next flight, treat those flight attendants with care because they're, the parameters in which they have to operate on that is so strict. And so when they're asking you to put your seat up or your tray table, there's reasons and safety protocols for why. And they've trained to know every piece of the plane for every plane that they could possibly fly. So it's just an interesting dynamic.

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  Hold on. So there's a reason I gotta put my seat up when we're landing?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  Can you tell me what that reason is?

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's like a two inch situation.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  I know. But the research shows takeoff and landing is the most dangerous time on a plane. It's, it's when you're most likely to crash. And if you do crash, what they're trying to do, why you have to put your seats under and your tray, tray tables up is create enough, uh, leeways so that if you had to get out and evacuate, you could do that safely without things being in the way and causing trip hazards.

• 43:02Jocko Willink?

  I always do it. I kind of like, you know, you talk about waitresses and waiters and flight attendants. Like I always think they've got, like they're having a bad day. That's the way it always seems to me. Cause I know I wouldn't, you know, I've worked in restaurants and it's, it's a hard job. I've never been a flight attendant, but I can just, you know, you just need to watch one person be a jerk to a flight attendant and you're like, dude, just leave this person alone. Please. They get out of control. So I always try and be cool, but I've always wondered why this seat needs to be up. Two inches, like, okay, but now we know. I knew it was for that safety protocol, but still. Okay, so you're doing that.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  So I become a flight attendant, but by the time I became a flight attendant, you have, when you're first, you know, start off, you are at the bottom of the totem pole. You have no seniority. And so you basically are on call for several days. You don't know where you're going, how long you're going, what you're doing. You don't even know what air, I mean, I'm based out of LA, but there's three different airports we serve, four. And so you could just get called to say, hey, we need you in Burbank in three hours and so forth. And at this time, I'm kind of living in San Diego because we made this one bedroom apartment, the crash pad, for eight other flight attendants. So you, you walked into an apartment and there was just mattresses and all eight flight attendants, because we couldn't afford this rent anymore, paid in to help cover this rent.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  So I had the option.

• 44:31Jocko Willink?

  Friend gets an F for planning. I was stoked on the two sentence plan. I revoked that.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  I had like, in my mind, I'm like, I would, I had the option of either going back to the crash pad or driving two hours back to San Diego. So that's what I did. I just, every time I finished, even if it was a 16, 20 hour day, I would take a nap in my car or go shower at the 24 hour fitness and then drive back to San Diego.

• 44:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And then you're, now you're, you got Flynn and Flynn's in the Navy at this point?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yes, he was in BUDs. So we got married. Uh, no, actually, yes, he was. I was a flight attendant after we got married. The, the whole time we were engaged, I was a flight attendant and he was just in the, in the regular Navy.

• 45:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And then, but you know, he's going to BUDs? You find out he's going to BUDs?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Well, yes. When he first asked me to marry him, he, you know, proposed or whatever in the car.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  It was basically like,

• 45:28Jocko Willink?

  Two out of ten.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was basically, hey, I'm supposed to go to Japan in March and I'd like you to come with me. And I was like, okay, well, what does that mean? He was like, well, you can't really come with me unless we're married. And I was like, so are you asking me to marry you?

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  He's taking the indirect approach?

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's like, yeah, pretty much. And he made up for it later. He did a whole thing, but that's basically when I agreed to marry him. And at that point, he had orders to go to Japan, um, where he was going to be deployed for two years. And that was going to be his last deployment. He was going to get out. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, he had submitted a package to BUDS. He was a little old. He was kind of on that cusp. Um, and so I don't think he told me because he just wasn't sure if he'd get in or not. But he had submitted the package to BUDS and was waiting to hear.

• 46:13Jocko Willink?

  And then he found out.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  So he found out about a month before we actually got married.

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  And what's going on with the flight attendant?

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was just, you know, just running up to LA every couple of weeks or every couple of days. Um, and flying, um, and I ended up, so I, I really did love that job, but it was difficult. It was very difficult, especially kind of commuting back and forth, which I made it harder on myself because I did that. Um, and there was just a lot of lessons. I had some crazy stuff happen on planes and, uh, I had just gotten to the point where I don't know that I was fully into it. Like I was already seeing like, there's, there's an end here. Um, and I ended up, I ended up like shortly after we got married, I got fired.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I got fired.

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  How come you got fired?

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Well, they have really strict policy on attendance and tardiness. Like you, you, three strikes, you're out. And I could give you all the explanations or reasons why I was late three times. I was basically late for three times. The planes went off on time. It was no big issue, but, um, two times I was late, one time I called out and I could tell you in detail why. And all of that might make a ton of sense, but the reality was. I did not have any relationships there. I did not know my supervisor. I couldn't even tell you his or her name. It's not an office where you go into. So if you want to get to know your supervisor, you've got to like make an appointment and plan to go to the airport at some point and meet with them. And I didn't have any of those relationships. So despite the fact that I was a good flight attendant and I got really good ratings, like customer

• 47:46Speaker 01

  ratings, and I had dealt with several major emergencies very well, despite that fact, I just hit the three strikes. And I could give you all the reasons and explanations, but they're just excuses. And the reality is, is I had no one to really call when it got to that point. And if I'm being honest, at that point, I was kind of like, it's okay. I'm kind of ready for something else.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  Because you were already married at this point?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now you get married, and is that when Flynn starts BUDs?

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got married Friday afternoon, evening. We went down to Arizona for a couple days. Scotts, no, I don't know, not Scottsdale.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  Lexington.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Sedona, yeah, Sedona for two days. And then came back and he started BUDs on Monday.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  And how was that?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Um, just a really quick and rapid introduction to the Navy.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  What, did you know anything about the Navy?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Nope. I mean, my parents have a lot of, you know, gratitude for our military members. I grew up in a house that really valued our military members. But all I knew about the military, I didn't know anyone personally who served. All I knew about it is like what I learned in history and what I saw on TV.

• 48:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you know what a SEAL was?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  Did you know what BUDs was? Obviously, you didn't.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so he starts BUDs. And so now, are you fired at this point?

• 49:03Speaker 01

  I continued as a flight attendant for like another two months, but it was shortly after, yes.

• 49:08Jocko Willink?

  And then you guys are living here in San Diego?

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  And he's going through BUDs. What does it look like when, what does it look like from the outside when your spouse is going through BUDs?

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  Which is basic SEAL training, if you don't know.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  And we were the only ones married. I don't think anyone else was married at that time. So that was a little bit of like a unique scenario anyways. But I had like, I had this vision of like what it was going to be to be like newlyweds. And I'm young, like I was, I was 22. I turned 23 like a week after we got married. So I was young and I was like, oh, we're gonna like travel and we're gonna hang out on the weekends. We're gonna go down on the beach. We lived a block from the beach, like a block from the Hotel Dell. And I was like, we're gonna spend all this time doing all these fun things and meeting new people. And very quickly, I realized we're not doing any of that. That I was lucky if he came home. He wasn't supposed to come home, but we were so close to the base that he came home most nights, even though he was supposed to stay on base. I think I can say that. He's, he's long out.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't, I think you actually could go home. It's just that at the, there's probably some nights he wasn't supposed to, but, but the officers pretty much were allowed to go home. And even married guys were allowed to go home. So it was probably what, what, what makes it not smart is, you know, you get done at midnight and you gotta be back there at four o'clock in the morning. And so it's gonna take you 15 minutes to get off base, you know, 10 minutes to get home, park the car, get upstairs. You just cost yourself 40 minutes there. And then now you gotta get up earlier. You gotta make sure you're gonna be on time. So you gotta leave extra early. So instead of sleeping four hours, you're sleeping three hours. And so that's probably where it seemed

• 50:47Jocko Willink?

  like he shouldn't be coming home. And he was probably like, I shouldn't be coming home. And he probably shouldn't have been coming home, but he did.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Well, I remember one morning, he woke up in a panic because Brendan, his, his best friend going through buds, called him and was like, hey, they just like pulled us out, get here now. And so he like threw his stuff on and he rushed out. And he was the OIC. And so like, he was supposed to be there. And he like rolled in and act like he was like outside on a phone call and like totally came under the radar. And like, they didn't know that he was not on base, but he was supposed to be there. So there might've been times where he was supposed to, and he's still kinda, um, but it was interesting. He would come home and like, just sand in the bed constantly. Like, he would wake up and like, like, like, startle me, like, just, you know, whatever it was, he was sleep deprived and he would wake up like in these like massive, uh, like fits. Um, it just was interesting. And then

• 51:37Speaker 01

  The weekends, like, we weren't doing any of the stuff I thought we were doing.

• 51:40Jocko Willink?

  He's definitely not like, let's go to the beach.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  Let's go swimming.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  He don't, he wanted nothing to do with getting wet and sandy, so we weren't going to the beach. And we ended up spending most of our Saturdays in the first couple of months, painting helmets at his, like, buddy's house. Just me and like, these three other guys going through Bud's, painting helmets all day.

• 51:59Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's where you met Brendan?

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Brendan was living with a guy named Rob, and we would just go to Brendan's house and barbecue and paint helmets.

• 52:07Jocko Willink?

  Good times.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  This is exactly what you signed up for at 23 years old.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Yep, I was on stencil duty. I was very good with the little details. Yeah.

• 52:16Jocko Willink?

  So, that's where you're starting to understand what's happening, and then, was there any highlights that you remember? But what was, what about Hell Week? How was it after Hell Week?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  It was great. So Brendan's mom had flown in town, and she, we like, spent a day or two together before Hell Week was over, just kind of waiting for them to call and say, I made it. And you start to feel pretty good after Wednesday. Because I kept thinking, like, what if he comes home Tuesday? Like, how do I respond? And then Wednesday, yeah, yeah. I'm out.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Wednesday passed, and we got into like, midday Thursday, and I was like, okay, I feel pretty good about this. But you're, I'm nervous for him, and Brendan's mom was there, so we ended up just kind of hanging out in Coronado. And then Friday, I don't remember what time it was, but at some point, he called, and he was like, I made it. And he was like, I just remember, he was like, hey, can you bring us milks, milkshakes? And he was delirious, and he sounded like a, like, seven-year-old, like, can you just please bring us milkshakes? I was like, sure. So Brendan's mom and I went and got these chocolate milkshakes, and we went to base, and we sat in the back of his truck, and it's Rob, Brendan, and, and Flynn, and then Brendan's mom and me. And we're talking, and one guy would be talking, and the other two would be falling asleep.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  And then, the other one would wake up and say something, and then the other guy would start to fall asleep. And very quickly, you realize, like, man, they have been through something crazy. Because Bren, I mean, Brendan couldn't walk, he had rashes everywhere, and it just, like, you, you saw it, like, firsthand. It was like, this is crazy. And then, obviously, they have to leave, and I don't get to see him again for like, 24 hours, until they're medically cleared. But we did drop off those chocolate milkshakes.

• 53:53Jocko Willink?

  And they were stoked.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:55Jocko Willink?

  And then what about the rest of BUDS? Was there any issues? Did he, did he get rolled back or anything?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  No, nope. He did good. He, he made it through all of that on, on track. Um, he obviously, you know, he was an officer. So we had to go through the extra training. So we ended up going to a different class than what he went through BUDS with. Um, but no, uh, everything ran smoothly.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  And then he gets done with BUDS and, and he gets orders. Where's he, where'd he go? Team one?

• 54:22Speaker 01

  Team one, yeah.

• 54:23Jocko Willink?

  And, and now do you know what's going on like?

• 54:28Speaker 01

  All I know is that he would be gone for three weeks, home for two days, gone for a week, home for two weeks. You know, and like we obviously talked about what he was doing, but I remember at one point I was like, hey, do me a favor. Don't tell me you're leaving until like two days before, because it would always be this game of like, hey, I'm leaving in a week. And then you come home the next day. He's like, actually, we're leaving tomorrow or I'm leaving in three days. Actually, it's two weeks and it was always changing. And I was like, okay, I'm trying to handle like all this other stuff I have going on in the midst of like, when are you going? What are you doing? Where are you coming? When are you going to be home? And so I was like, just tell me two days before you have to leave and then tell me like the day before you're coming back. And then that was just our, our deal.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  And so what are you doing at this point?

• 55:13Speaker 01

  So after, after I got fired, uh, I ended up getting a job at a hedge fund. Um, and they were in downtown San Diego and they worked off New York hours. So I had to be there at five and they were done at three, which was awesome in San Diego because then I had all afternoon. I mean, he wasn't coming home till late anyways. Um, just to myself and kind of do whatever I wanted in San Diego. Um, and I was just basically an overpaid administrative assistant for them. Um, uh, so I, I liked that job, but it was not very fulfilling. It was not challenging at all. Um, and so before I had taken that job, there was this position that came up at San Diego State University that really piqued my interest. But I looked at the job description. I'm like, I wouldn't qualify for this. Like what they wanted, I didn't have.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Um, and so I didn't apply and I took this job instead. Um, and then a year after I served at the hedge fund, they moved back to New York and I obviously wasn't going to go with them. Um, so I started looking again and low and behold, that position at San Diego State had come up again, which I guess could have been a red flag that like. Someone didn't make it after a year, but whatever it was, I thought, you know what? There's no better time than at least trying. So I applied for a job at San Diego State.

• 56:23Jocko Willink?

  And then you got the job?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  I did, yeah, to my utter surprise.

• 56:28Jocko Willink?

  How come you're so surprised?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Because the requirements of what they wanted, they prefer to master as they wanted several years of experience. I just didn't think that I qualified. And I submitted my application. I ended up getting a screening call with their HR director and I got off the call and I was like, Flynn, there's no way they're gonna hire me. And then I got a call and they were like, hey, we want you to come in for a panel interview, which I had never done. A group of like nine people sitting around a table, all from various parts on campus, asking me like intricate scenario-based questions. And I'm just sitting there, you know, going through this. And I left that interview and I was like, Flynn, there's no way they're gonna hire me. And then two days later, I got a call and I had an interview with who the woman that ended up becoming my, was gonna be my direct supervisor if I got the job.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  And I got off that call and said, there's no way they're gonna hire me. And like a week later, they offered me the position. And this whole time, I was pregnant and hiding it because I was afraid that that would impact my, my potential.

• 57:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so your integrity just took a hit.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I did tell her, I told her in the final interview, I was like, hey, I just have to come clean. But yeah, I was three months pregnant with my oldest.

• 57:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and so now what's going on? Flynn's now in a workup at a team, getting ready to go on deployment. And that's probably when I met him for the first time, putting him through those workups when I was working at Trinity. Matter of fact, that is when I met him for the first time.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  He still has notes in his notebook, says JKO brief, the Jocko brief. And it's the laws of combat, which is awesome.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  That's rad. So now...

• 58:05Jocko Willink?

  You, you take this position, what are you doing in this new position that you're at at San Diego State?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  I was a programs coordinator, so I was responsible for all of the programming on campus. So the Associated Students at SCSU is a massive, like, it's 20 million dollar corporation essentially. They run and operate seven of the facilities on campus. And when I came into the job, they had just passed the year before a fee referendum for the students where they agreed to give more money to increase the funds for the case, which is the program that I ran, the Culture Arts and Special Events Program, with the intent of you need to offer more programming on campus and we want you to do this spring festival. It has to be a sustainability focus, but we want it to rival like USD's Sun God. And so I came into a position where all of a sudden I had to hire someone full-time

• 58:55Speaker 01

  that had never been in a position, a full-time assistant, two graduate assistants, multiple part-time assistants, student assistants, and advise the student board of 60 students. And it was, and an influx of cash, an influx of money with the intent of putting on this big program. So I came in like hot with all these different things to do and I just loved it. I loved it.

• 59:19Jocko Willink?

  You like, you like mayhem?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  I do a little bit, yes.

• 59:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, I went to USD.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember no Sun God.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:26Jocko Willink?

  Thing going on, fuck, because I was a grown man. What did you guys do to rival Sun God?

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that's a hard one because it's like a longstanding history and ours had to be sustainability focused. So the first year we run this event, we called it Green Fest and it was all sustainability focused. It was a week of events leading up to this festival concert. And so the first year we did it, we did it out just on a walkway. We had like slightly stupid, we did this outdoor stage.

• 59:52Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great.

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  Slightly stupid.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  Those are my people.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  It was a phenomenal concert, but we had like 1,500 students come to that and everyone's like, this is awesome. And I'm like, we have 40,000 students at this campus, like 1,500 is lame. So the next year, we brought out LMFAO and we did it at the Open Air Theater and we had like 35,400 students and everyone's like high-fiving like, this is great, this is awesome. And I'm like, this is weak. So the next year, we did it at the Vehast Arena. We sold out the arena, but before the concert, we had this big festival with rides and a beer garden and they were all solar powered and all this stuff.

• 1:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Solar powered beer garden.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  So then we had 9,500 students, around 10,000 students, and we sold that out and everyone and now I'm like, okay, now we're getting somewhere. And then the last year before I left, we moved it. T-Pain, we had three music stages. We had two, a main stage, a side stage, and then a DJ dance tent. All rides, we shut down three big parking lots and we had around 12,000 students and it was just kind of continued growth.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  And at some juncture along the way, you had your first kid?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, in the, like, six months after I got that job, I hired a full-time assistant and she had to become the interim coordinator while I took maternity leave. And I took, I worked up until like a week before I had my son and I came back like the second I could. I loved my child. Don't get me wrong, but I was like ready to get back. And the timing worked out really good because I ended up having him in November and then I was back right before our first Green Fest. So all the work that we had done, I got to come and actually see it come to fruition.

• 1:01:33Jocko Willink?

  So how many, how long do you get for maternity leave?

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  I took, I took exactly three months.

• 1:01:37Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the authorization?

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Or whatever. So you, you have this first kid. Meanwhile, Flynn's just going on deployment.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  He's just gone all the time.

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, when you first check into a team, you're just gone.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  It just, there's no, there's nothing.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Seems like there's enough time to get pregnant again, though?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Well, he came back. Yeah, he came back and he's like, I'm ready to have a second child. And like, I feel like, I feel like the universe just does whatever. Like Flynn puts it out in the universe and the universe just provides. And so he gets back and I'm like, no, I am finally like in this great state. My job's going good. I've got this kid now. He's two, like one and a half. And, and I had like finally lost all the weight. I was feeling good. I was strong. Like, I just was so excited to just be that for like the three months he was going to be home. And I finally convinced him, like, because we're going back and forth and he's just like, I really think we should. And I'm like, no, I, we're not. And the whole time I'm arguing with him, I'm pregnant with our second

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  son. So the universe provided and now, yes, I'm pregnant with our second.

• 1:02:44Jocko Willink?

  All right. So now that, that takes place. You're, you're pregnant again. You're still working the same job.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Then, so this is now 2010, right?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yes, yep.

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is when, um, this is when Brendan died.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what, what did that look like from your perspective? So Brendan Looney, just a freaking outstanding guy, um, died in helicopter in, in Afghanistan. How did you, and this is one of Flynn's best friends.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:16Jocko Willink?

  How, how did you hear about it?

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  I was in my office at San Diego State and I had a couple of students and some staff in there and we were having this meeting. And I had a big glass window or like door. And I remember seeing Flynn up at the door and his eyes weren't red. He wasn't crying, but I could immediately tell something was wrong.

• 1:03:36Jocko Willink?

  Was it normal for him to come to the office?

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, very abnormal. So I was like, why is he here? And I could just see it on his face. So I excused myself and I walked outside and I thought like, did something happen to his dad? Like what, what's going on here? And it took him a second and then he told me about the helicopter crash. So he had heard about the crash. Um, and he talks about it as like knowing, like knowing Brendan was on that helicopter and not being able to explain why. Um, obviously not wanting that to be the case, but he basically went into Leif's, uh, office. He worked with Leif at that time at SEAL Team One and basically went in and just was like, tell me it wasn't Brendan. And Leif wasn't able to give him information initially because they hadn't contacted Amy yet.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  They were trying to find her, his wife. Um, and so Flynn kind of demanded again, like, tell me it wasn't Brendan. And he could see it on Leif's face. Um, and, uh, Leif was like, hey, we haven't been able to contact Amy. There's nothing you can do right now, but I'll call you as soon as we find her so you can go to the house. Um, so he told me what had happened and we didn't know what to do. We were just waiting to try to figure out how to help. Um, so we left and we got lunch. We're just waiting for this phone call and we, I remember we went to In-N-Out. He finished his meal and he goes, okay, I'm done feeling sorry for myself. Let's figure out what we can do for the family. And he just made this shift of like, okay, we're just gonna figure out what's next.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Who did he was he part of the notification for for Amy?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  No, so Amy was on a sales call. She was in a sales position and so she was out on this call and nobody could find her. And so at this point, they were like, hey, sit tight and we'll call you as soon as we find her because we didn't know where she was. And we got the phone call right after he had kind of made that declaration that like, hey, we're not going to feel sorry for ourself. We're going to go just figure out how to help. And we got the call that they had found Amy and that we could now go to the house. So we went to Amy's house about a half an hour after she had been delivered the news.

• 1:05:43Jocko Willink?

  When you were at that time, you know, you got Flynn kind of going on deployment and it's sort of, you know, you where were you guys living?

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Claremont Mesa.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  So you're living in Claremont Mesa, you know, you're working, he disappears, but you don't really think about where he's at. Like, it seems like it's very easy living in San Diego, California, that the war isn't a real thing.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. I thought my husband and his teammates were invincible. Invincible. I was completely naive to the reality that they may not come home. So when we found out about Brendan, it was devastating. And devastating because it like shattered this really cool veil I had as to what was going on. And now, you know, I realize they're not invincible. And it was Brendan, like, one of the best human beings, one of the best guys I've ever known. And it just seemed so unreal.

• 1:06:45Jocko Willink?

  I know, I always felt like when the families would go to funerals, like, I can't tell what they're thinking, but you've got to imagine that every single wife, parent, Son, daughter is all thinking this could be my dad, this could be my husband, this could be my son. Like that has to be the thought going through. And that's why those, you know, like, um, you know, when I had guys killed. I remember my wife going to these services and I was like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be the, just such a shock to the system. And you know, what's interesting is I went, I have like emails

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  that I'd be sending my wife and my wife, you know, we're in the middle of the battle of Ramadi. Guys are getting, army and marine corps guys are getting wounded and killed every day. And I'm sending my wife emails like, oh, hey, you know, how's, like literally not one indication of any kind at all that there's a war going on, that there's any danger of any kind. Uh, Mikey Montessor, same thing, you know, talked to, to his family. And they're like, yeah, he, Mikey Montessor, who is in a gunfight on a daily basic basis, practically the entire deployment was like, they're like, oh, what are you doing over there? And he says, oh, you know, we're just training Iraqis. We don't do very much. It's boring. He's telling his family, it's boring.

• 1:08:09Jocko Willink?

  So that it's, I, I think it's just to, to, to recognize the fact that especially I think in San Diego, you know, if you're in, if you're at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, like the whole, the whole, it's such a focus and, and the, the airborne divisions are huge and everybody's a part of it. In San Diego, you know, you're in the SEAL teams, like you're, not everyone's a part of it. And there's a bunch of Navy people, but they're not gonna be getting killed in combat. And so you get very, very detached from, or like you said, like there's a, there's a protective screen up that you don't realize when these guys get on a plane. They might not come back.

• 1:08:54Jocko Willink?

  And, um, yeah, I, I, I can't imagine how that impacted you, your thoughts, your family, um, as that happened and as you watched this happen to, to Amy.

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  I figured out really early, because we got to this house and I'm pregnant at this time too. So I've just got a bunch of, you know, heightened emotions anyways. And I walked into that room and I just remember thinking like, I can't do this. Like, she had a really good friend and her sister-in-law that was there and they were sitting on the couch holding her hand. And I had a moment where I could give her a hug and kind of hold her hand. And then very quickly, I was like, I don't have the capacity to do this. And so I went over to the CAO officer and I was like, hey, what can I do to help? Can you just give me something to do? And he was like, yeah, actually, I need someone to go in the office and find something. He was looking for some paperwork. And so that's

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  really how I managed that entire excursion is that is looking for things to do. Even when we ended up going out to the family and the funeral, it was like, cool, I'll make the programs. I'll go meet with the people at the church with the family. I'll order dinner. Like, just give me something to do because I can't emotionally handle the weight of this right now. It was too much at a young age to, to manage. And I couldn't, I can't even fathom if I was feeling that, the weight that, that Amy was feeling.

• 1:10:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, very similar to my sort of standard operating procedure in those times. It was like, okay, I need to do work. I need to find something to do. And that's, I don't think a bad thing, you know, it might not be the healthiest thing in the world, but I'll tell you what, you got to get through, especially when there's the family and, you know, like, you got to support them. That's got to become the focus, not your own personal grief, for sure. And, you know, and Amy ended up with Ryan and, and Heather Kelly writing the book, A Knock at the Door, actually covered it with Ryan on this podcast, Podcast

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  201, just a very powerful book and incredible to hear their perspective through these terrible, terrible situations.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  You now have a son.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  Named Brendan.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Yep. So Brendan Brendan passed in September two thousand and ten and my second, we didn't know if it was a boy or girl. And we were at his funeral. And we got in the car and Flynn kind of lost it. And then when he kind of compiled himself, he was like, I just have this instinct that it's a boy, that our child is a boy, and I want to name him Brendan. And I want to ask the family. And he was asking for my permission. I was like, Yeah, go for it. And so he talked to the family shortly after that and asked if that would be okay. And Brendan, my Brendan was born in January, and it was a boy, and we named him Brendan in honor of Brendan Looney.

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely outstanding. Was was Flynn, did Flynn have another deployment to do at this point?

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep. He, he, my son Brendan was born, he was home for like, three days, and then he left. But that was a training excursion. And then I think it was like, no, uh, yeah, it was a year later. He did another deployment to the Philippines this time.

• 1:12:16Jocko Willink?

  So you were a little bit more comfortable when he's down there in the Philippines as opposed to being over in the Middle East at the time?

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had done a deployment to Yemen, which was definitely a little more heightened, you know, because at the time, there was a lot of stuff going on the news about Yemen and some of the the dangers there. And I didn't get to talk to him very much when he was in Yemen hardly at all. So the Philippines was a very different experience because I got to talk to him. I actually flew out there and like, he took leave for a week and I hung out like, that that didn't happen on any other deployment that he had been previously.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  No. Yeah. And that's the thing is, doesn't matter where you are, you know, when you're in the military, you're flying in helicopters, you're parachuting, you're diving, like, all these things are, you know, they're all, they're all risky, they're all, it's all risky business. We mitigate the risk as much as we can, but things can still happen. So I know there's stress when you're doing that. And then he comes home from that deployment, and he Flynn decides he's gonna get out.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was that deployment. I can't remember. It all just melts together. It's like six years of just straight chaos. But yeah, he decides he's gonna get out. He had always had a dream. I mean, part of it, even going in the SEAL teams, he was gonna get out of the military. He was gonna do one more stint and then get out. He was, he was on a ship prior to that. He just realized, he went to the, he went into the military just to get through school and cover school ROTC program because he's one of eight and they just didn't have money for college. So he's like, cool, I can go this way and kind of bankroll college. And then he realized that he didn't want his Navy time to be what he had experienced prior to that. It just, now that it was a bad thing at all, he just wanted to do more. He didn't want that to be that his lasting legacy was like, oh, I spent

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  a couple of years on a ship and then, you know, pushed off. So.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but Flynn was like in the Persian Gulf.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  While, it was like, it was like literally while I was in Ramadi.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  And he's like seeing reports of what's going on and seeing the news and he just kind of said to himself, I gotta, I gotta try and do that.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so he kind of put the package in and went that route, but he always had the desire to go on and do something else when that was over. So he knew he wasn't necessarily going to be a lifer, especially as an officer. Like you get to a certain point where you don't get to do the things that you loved doing. And he always knew that he had another route he wanted to take. So he ended up applying to a couple of business schools and wanted to go get his masters. So we left San Diego and drove cross country to Boston with our two boys and kind of changed up everything at that point.

• 1:14:49Jocko Willink?

  And you just ditched your job?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was not happy about this move. I wanted to support him, but I was.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  You're kind of stoked he was getting out of the Navy. That's gotta be a little bit of a relief for you.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Kind of.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  But not really.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  I mean, yes, yes and no. I mean, you, you build up such a, it's such a strong community that there's such a high sense of pride and I had learned so much that at this point, I was a lot more comfortable in that setting. Not that I wanted him going off to war and I didn't want the chance of him not coming home, but there was just a real pride in what we were doing. And now we're leaving, I'm leaving a job I loved that I would have stayed at forever. Where I have, I feel like I have a lot of value, like I'm valued in this role and I just felt comfortable there and my kids were set up in a really good situation. They went to the, the daycare on campus, which was incredible. And I just had really good relationships and if I'm being honest, there was probably

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  a little bit of resentment because I had like already, everything that I cared about or I thought I cared about in college, like just made a shift because now we're just focusing on Flynn's going through BUDs, Flynn's becoming a SEAL, Flynn's deploying. And so everything was always the second seat to what he was doing. And now, once again, we were uprooting our lives and going cross-country to support him. And so it was just a transition that I had to make and it took me a little while. Coupled with, like now I go to this prestigious university and people are, like find out I'm a mom and then like conversation ends and they're like, oh, cool. And then they want to move on to something more interesting. So now I'm like, I left his career and now

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  I'm like the stay-at-home mom supporting my husband while he goes through college. And I wasn't super happy with that role. Yeah, it was, it was, it was, it took me a couple of months to get comfortable there.

• 1:16:42Jocko Willink?

  That was the attitude you got, huh?

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, yes, especially early on because all the students are just trying to meet the other students and there's all these things that we do when you get there that they do as part of onboarding and orientation and things like that. And there's all these different events and you know, people would be having a conversation with you and they'd be like, oh, so what do you do? And it was like, oh, well, you know, I was in this, but now I'm home with my kids. And they're like, oh, cool. So, who are you? And it was like, all of a sudden, I'm like, no, like I, I do cool stuff too. Like I've had a career, like it just was difficult. It was a lot of, a lot of ego on my side that I had to manage because I was like, struggling, yeah.

• 1:17:22Jocko Willink?

  I've got to admit, I've adopted, uh, my son and his buddies will use the term yo at this point for like, for like everything, every reaction that they give. So I'm, it's kind of grabbing me. So when you tell me that someone's like, oh, nice to meet you. Bye.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, yo. So he's going to college and then you, you're living, I mean, it's not cheap to live in Boston and

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  What's his job? Does he have a job?

• 1:17:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:52Jocko Willink?

  Is he getting GI? Do you even have GI Bill?

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So he's got GI Bill.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  Yellow ribbon and all that. Yeah. He, uh, we, yeah, we depleted our savings in the two years that we were in Boston. Um, and in, once I got past the initial shock of just this new life.

• 1:18:09Jocko Willink?

  And hating everyone.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  I loved it. It was such a cool experience because it was the first time that Flynn was home a lot. So now like Miko would get on his little bike and he'd ride from our little apartment that was on campus across to where Flynn would have his break in between classes and he'd bring him an energy drink. Goes weren't out at this time, but he would bring him an energy drink and a book and Flynn would spend his break reading and, and you know, drinking this energy drink and then Miko would ride back and he would come home for lunch and then go lay down with Brendan and put Brendan down and then go back to class. And so all of a sudden it went from like, he's never around ever to he's here a lot. Like I see him in the morning. He's coming home at lunch. I see him again

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  at night. Um, but I started to figure out like I, I made friends. So that really helped. And I started to get a little more comfortable with like, just having time with my kids that I hadn't had previously. Um, and then in my true nature, I just started finding things I could do. So I started helping, uh, with various things on campus. I got into some event planning on campus. Flynn came home with a project and I basically did it. So, uh, I just started like, cool. I can still have all this stuff and I'll just find ways to satisfy like the challenging component that I needed.

• 1:19:28Jocko Willink?

  And as you're, as Flynn's kind of wrapping up there is when Leif came out to talk to Flynn and be like, hey, Flynn, you know, we've got this thing going at Echelon Front. What do you think, you know, when you graduate from school, maybe you come by and we could see if you wanna work with us? And you're like eavesdropping on this conversation or something?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  No, so Leif came to dinner at our house, but Brendan, I don't know what he had done, but for whatever reason, I had to take him to the emergency room. He needed like a stitch or something. Uh, just, you know, uh, boys, two boys. I had my third daughter at that point too, my third child, uh, my daughter. Um, so I had to leave, so I didn't stay for dinner. Um, so I like said hi to Leif and then I was out with Brennan, like managing whatever injury he had. Um, and I got home and Flynn was telling me about their conversation and this company I shall front in this book and what you guys were doing. And he, and I was like, oh, cool. And he was like, yeah, he was kind of trying to, you know, see if I was interested, but at that point he had already committed to this other consultancy and like had a path.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Um, and he was like, you should reach out, like I, you'd love what they're doing. And I was like, I don't know. And I thought about it for about a half an hour and I was like, you know what? I'm going to, and I sent Leif an email. I think it was that night and I just said, hey, I had this great conversation with Flynn and he told me about what you guys are doing and I don't know what you're looking for, or if I even am what you're looking for, but if there's an opportunity, um, we're leaving this stint and I'm kinda looking for my next mission. And I'd love to talk to you about it.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  What did you think he wanted?

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  I had no idea, no idea. I saw him two weeks later. We were in New York and we went to brunch with him and his wife. And we had a conversation again at that point. And that's when he kinda told me, hey, I got your email, like, if I'm being honest, what I need right now is probably like part-time, maybe, maybe 10 hours, maybe 20 hours, but it's kind of like admin. Cause I had sent him my resume and like did this whole thing. And, um, and we had this conversation and I was like, you know what? I don't, I don't know what I wanna do. I can go back to higher education, but I'm just kinda looking for something that's that challenge. So if you're open to it, I'd be open for some part-time work and, and that'll give me some time to kinda figure out what I really wanna do. So

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  I just was stoked about what you guys are building, even just without really understanding what it was at the time. I was just excited. So I was willing to kinda take the part-time job.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  To just, you know, see if it worked out.

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And Leif somehow convinced me to, to hire you, cause I never wanna hire anybody.

• 1:22:01Jocko Willink?

  I was adamant. He sent me, he forwarded me an email. What did I say? He forwarded me an email. He, he was like, this is from 2014 and it was something along the lines of, gosh, I wish I could remember the terminology, but it was some legal, legal description for you. And it was like, general labor. Should we, oh yes, we put her as, should this, should this description be, you know, employee or should it be general labor? And I just wrote back two words. I wrote back, general labor. That's it.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  That's a fair description in the early days of Echelon Front.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you did. You came on and you started kind of like just doing admins. Cause the discussion I had with Leif was like, we could really, we could really use someone to help us, you know, uh, uh, book our travel and stuff. I was like, book your own travel. I'm like, I'm booking my own travel. You could book your own travel. We'll be fine. And you know, he's kept, just kept at it. And eventually was like, all right, cool. I figured he's not going to be pestering me that much. And you know, in typical, um, typical fashion, his, he was able to articulate good reasons and I wasn't able to articulate reasons not. So eventually you gotta say, okay, this might be a better plan than mine, which is my plan was just a BTF on and just keep doing everything ourselves.

• 1:23:18Jocko Willink?

  So he, he won that and, and we brought you on as just doing like travel. I don't know what else you were doing. You were doing like travel. I didn't talk to you. I didn't care. I was like, I don't need this support. Maybe you should pay for this girl Leif. Maybe that's what you should do.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  I don't think I talked to you for like the first year, like even in person, like you were always cordial. You were always nice. And you weren't like mean or rude by any means, but there was definitely a little bit of like a, we'll see about this. Like I could feel it. I was like, all right. Um, but I'd, I'd worked a lot with Leif and I was doing like literally some of the most menial, mundane admin tasks. Um, and I took on some other jobs too, some part-time jobs because I was paying for full-time childcare, but like working at Echelon Front like five or 10 hours a week. And so I picked up a job at Tiffany and Company and I was doing some stuff with them that was kind of like I just had to go monthly and I did a lot of design in their like window

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  displays and things of that nature. So I just was taking on little projects to to manage like the full time cost of sending my kids to childcare. And I remember Flynn was like, hey, how long are we going to do this? You know, and he was good with it. He was very supportive, but it was a valid question. And I was like, you know what, just give me six months. At this point, I had been with you guys for like six months. I'm like, just give me six months. And, you know, and then I'll make a decision if things haven't progressed, or I don't have an opportunity to grow here, like we'll, we'll make a decision. And it wasn't long after that that the book came out and like, everything changed.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And when the book came out, that was kind of my, I don't know if I probably met you before that or talked to you before that. But it wasn't when the book came out was sort of like, the first time I saw your capabilities. And I was super stoked because you were because it was like, three hours of sleep a night. It was, you know, all day long, tight pressure timelines, everything had to be organized. And I remember, you probably don't remember this, but I remember, we have like, the St. Martin's Press guy, who's a good guy. But I was, I remember like, looking at you like, what you tell me. And he was kind of like, like you were getting in on his rice bowl, because you proved to me pretty quick that

• 1:25:32Jocko Willink?

  you knew what was going on, and you can handle it, you would be making things happen. So that was definitely left a really awesome impression on me, the way you handled. We probably did in seven days, we probably did, you know,

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  So many.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so many little movements and to the different place and to the radio station and the TV place and to the interview place and, and then the dinner thing and like, just all that stuff going on. And I didn't think about anything. All I did was do what you told me to do, which, as you know, now, like, that's, that's how I roll. Like, I'm not looking about what's going on. I'm not getting into the details of the stuff. You tell me where to go, put a mic in my hand, and I'm gonna rock and roll. That's what I'm gonna do, Echo Charles. So, as soon as I realized, oh, she gets it. Like, she understands how to make this stuff happen. And like you, you did exactly what we needed. And so after that, I was, I was super stoked. And, and then I think you just started to take things. This is sort of the, you know, when I did

• 1:26:28Jocko Willink?

  that intro, talking about the principles and how you utilize the principles, what you started doing is taking ownership of things, taking ownership of things that were important, things that you knew you could control and get in order. And that's what you did. And then every time you grabbed, you know, project A, and you had control of it and it worked. And it was like, oh, project B is over there. Let's take that one. And then project C. And I'm like, hey, we got project D, Jamie, can you do this too? And you're like, oh, I'm already on it. And so then it was just an escalation, you know, if you, it's such a good lesson learned for people. You, you literally were hired part-time as to do admin work. And you just started taking ownership, dominating, crushing. And the more you crushed and the

• 1:27:12Jocko Willink?

  more you took ownership of, the more ownership and responsibility you got, the more you did. And then you started, I don't know how long it was, but all of a sudden you looked at us like, hey, I need help. Because once the book came out, the podcast came out, and then it was, it was on like Donkey Kong. And we started just getting all kinds of work.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  It was like a month after that, that whirlwind of a trip. And I remember Leif invited me to the book launch. And he was like, hey, you should come out with us to New York. And like, we started in Vegas, you just had a gig. And it was your first like book signing and keynote. And then we ended up going to New York from there. And you're right, it was a total gut check. And now that you know what you know about me, I loved it. I was like, this is like total chaos. You're getting like, I remember going to going back to my room, I stayed at with like a friend, we had no money, like Echelon Front didn't have money back then. I wasn't staying in some posh hotel. I stayed with a friend. And I, we got back at like one after like all day go. And I had three hours to basically sleep before I had to get back on the subway and meet you guys. And I, she was in like a New York apartment, so no windows. And I shut the door and I crashed. And when I woke

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  up, I didn't know where I was. Like, I was just so tired. But it was like, cool, let's go. And you really started to take a turn. I didn't know what I was intended to do during the book launch. I was like, all right, Leif asked me to go. There wasn't a lot of guidance of like, hey, here's what we need you to do. So I just was like, I just need to be ready to answer any questions. I need to understand the schedule so that I could help in whatever was required of me. And that really was my mantra through all of that, that first year and a half before the book came out was like, I'm just gonna find a way to provide value because I don't have a clear understanding of what exactly I should be doing here.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  But when I saw a need, I was like, all right, let me just see if I can handle that. And then something would come up, you know, in conversation. I'm like, well, I could probably do that. Let me try to figure that out. And just that continued over time. And then the book came out and it was like a month later, we started getting calls from people to have you guys out to speak. And all of a sudden that cadence became significant. And I was like, hey, Leif, I think this part-time gig now now needs to be full-time. And it went from like 20 hours a week to like 65 and like non-stop consuming all of my waking hours. And, uh, and it was maybe eight months or nine months after that, that I finally was like, hey, I'm gonna need a little help if we're gonna continue doing this. Like I've, I've reached a capacity of things that I could take off the plate.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Uh, cause early on it was marketing, finance, accounting, budgeting, sales, contracting. I mean, like, the list was endless of like what I was trying to handle. And I realized at a certain point that I can't do all of this.

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was awesome. It's an awesome path for anyone to follow, you know, anyone to follow. You didn't have experience in finance, marketing, contracting, all that other stuff. You didn't have any experience in that, but you took it. You'd get help if you needed to call a lawyer or call someone about some contract, you'd get that done. But to take ownership of it and, and get the job done using whatever means necessary, that's what you did. And you just, you just started to grow and, and. Responsibility and then you started to grow in your job as well and we started to grow the company as we started to grow the company, you know, all the tide rises, the boats, all boats ride with the rise with the tide. That's what that was you. And it's a protocol that

• 1:30:36Jocko Willink?

  anybody can follow. I think I in one master I called the Jamie Cochran protocol, like go and start doing stuff and start making it right. And if you do that, you're gonna, it's so obvious when people, you know, we work with so many companies, if you're a, if you're a highly motivated person that will step in and take responsibility and take ownership and make things happen, you're gonna rock and roll. People are gonna love having you and they're gonna give you that responsibility. Look, if you take responsibility for something and you mess it up, you could find yourself moving in the other direction. Now, if you, if you take responsibility and you mess up and you say, hey, this is the mistake I made, it won't happen again. Then it's like, okay, cool. Well, let's make sure it doesn't happen again and we move forward and you can make up for that and go beyond it. But that idea

• 1:31:21Jocko Willink?

  of taking, being humble enough to take a job, because you know, you had a pretty prominent job at San Diego State University, and you went from that prominent job to a pretty menial job first at Echelon Front, and you were humble enough to do that. You didn't complain about it. Like I never, I haven't actually think I've ever seen you complain anyways to this day. So you didn't complain about it, you just did it. And you did it well. You know, what's funny is you don't like doing paperwork, do you?

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Hmm, not my, not my thing.

• 1:31:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And like, I didn't know that until like, three years ago. Like, three years ago, it's like, oh, she doesn't like doing paperwork. She's like me. I always thought you were like, into it. You were one of those people.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  No, you know, to the point you just made, you can't deny performance. You can't deny it. And to your guys' credit, you guys gave me so much leeway. Like, I would say, hey, I was thinking about taking this on. You'd be like, yeah, go for it. Like, there was just a lot of autonomy, which I loved. And really, you guys set me up for failure because I was like, well, I have to make it work at Echelon Front, because I can't go back to like, the red tape that you get on a college campus. And you want to talk about paperwork. There's a lot of that there. But no, I I'm not really one for the details. I can do it. And I did do it.

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you definitely did it.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  You have to like hone in on the paperwork and the details and those types of things. But where I really love sitting is the brainstorming and the thinking and the solving problems and the big picture. I love that piece of it. But early on at Ashland Front, there wasn't a lot of capacity for that because we had all these smaller tactical things that had to get done. And then obviously, as our team has grown in nine years, I just keep hiring people that are way better at the details and the paperwork than I am, so that they can handle those things. And we got, you know, Jen Tarantino, who's a freaking like warrior when it comes to like the details and the paperwork and the just the logistics, which enables me to actually do what I like, which is just to think big picture.

• 1:33:13Jocko Willink?

  So we get done with 2015, and 2016 is when we did our first muster, which it was kind of like, what was it, August was when we decided to do it?

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  It was September. Or yeah, we I think we decided in August, and then the event happened in October, I think. Yeah.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  So it was something like that.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  It was a short turnaround.

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Short turnaround. Luckily, you had experience in event planning. I don't know if you and Leif really wanted to do it.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  I just remember. Yeah, yeah. I remember a phone call and like, we had been talking about it like vaguely. And then finally, the three of us were on a call. And it was like, hey, we want to do this event. We want to do it in October. We want to do it in San Diego. And we want like 350 people. Can you make that happen? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I can make that happen. And inside, I'm like, I don't know if I can make that happen. This seems like a really tight timeframe. But we pulled it together. It turned out awesome. We sold that event out. Yeah. We had 365 people at that first event. And it felt like like we made it.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was epic. I remember from my perspective, I was like, hey, worst case scenario. Thirty-two people show up at this thing and they're gonna have literally the best event they've ever had in their life. And they'll be stoked and we'll lose some money, but we'll, you know, we'll figure it out. And you're like, okay, cool. Fair enough. Let's rock and roll.

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  I was like managing this budget to like the penny because my biggest fear was like, I can't have the first program, the first big project they give me be a failure. And so I'm like, how many tickets do we need to sell that at least it's a wash? I just don't want to go into the red. Um, and I had like this, like very detailed budget and I was tracking every single thing and we had nothing established. We didn't know what the two day agenda was going to look like. We didn't know what kind of auto visual we wanted. There were so many things that came out of that first muster, like the music we play in between sets and walk in and things of that nature. Um, like merchandise was a new thing for us. We never had any of that. There were just so much in that first muster that is awesome because we've evolved so much, but

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  it really set the stage and there's still things that we learned in that first muster. We implement now that just worked.

• 1:35:28Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's where I think from a leadership perspective, when you execute things and you're going to take some risk to execute things. Sometimes the, the downside because you executed quickly, the downside because you didn't have maybe things fully planned out. The upside is the lessons that you learned because you can't learn lessons. You can't learn all the lessons unless you execute. So actually executing something, and that's one of the things that drove me to execute that thing was like, oh, I know if we do this, we're going to learn a bunch. We're going to learn a bunch. We're going to learn how to do it and then it's going to be one step closer to being a lot better.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  Whereas just sitting around and brainstorming like, well, what do you think it'll be like when we do a two day schedule? Like no, let's make a two day schedule and let's execute this thing. And then you figure out, hey, this was a little too much or do a little bit less of that or a little bit more of that. So I think leaning towards executing as long as you can mitigate the risk, you know, somewhat, then, then take a shot, take a crack at it. That's what we're doing. Um, and that's what we did. And what, what muster are we on now? How many?

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  We're coming up on muster seventeen.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  Muster seventeen.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  And to your point, we haven't stopped learning. Like I remember after that muster, there was a ton of lessons learned. And then we did it again and there was more lessons learned and we did it again and there was more lessons learned. And even to this last event muster sixteen, we debriefed after and there was like, Okay, there's a couple of things we can, we can still tweak. There's always little things. Every muster, we've added something or done something based on feedback from attendees and observations from the team. So that debrief has been awesome because every event just gets better.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That being said, the learning curve on the first like three or four musters was insane. I remember Leif and I were up in New York City, our second muster. It's two o'clock in the morning. We have to get up at three o'clock in the morning to PT and we're signing certificates. And he was just like, yo.

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Leif always brings up that story because there was a bunch of certificates that have been duplicate printed. So he just was like, it's, you guys just want to get done. And he's seeing like John seven times. And he's just like, oh my gosh. That was a big one. I mean, that was the first time we had JP and Dave on stage. So that was a learning curve. I was super sick at that muster, like really sick. We got the day kicked off and I like went up to the room and took a nap because I was like very sick. And it was, that, that second one was my least favorite muster, even though it was the first time with Dave and JP. It was, it was cool.

• 1:37:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it was awesome being in New York, kind of like there was not, there's a lot of things that are negative about New York, but there was also some awesome things about being in New York City. That was cool.

• 1:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Then you, when did you talk? Cause you, cause you ended up eventually, cause listen, as I'm watching this, I'm seeing that, you know, we have zero employees, then we have you. Then all of a sudden we have three, then all of a sudden we have five, then all of a sudden we have seven. Then we have, you know, we're bringing in truckers on like this is growing. And so what I'm getting to see this whole time is you utilizing the principles that we sit around and talk about that you had to sit there and listen to it. You had to sit there and read and I saw you utilizing them like, and for me, there's a, there's a, you know, Alan Belcher Jiu Jitsu, MMA?

• 1:38:36Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  When he fought against Tocino, you know who Tocino is?

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  Tocino.

• 1:38:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He was a guy that was a brutal leg locker, brutal leg locker. And they were fighting in the UFC. And Alan Belcher had Dean Lister go down and spend like a month training him for leg locks. And everyone was absolutely horrified of Tocino's leg locks. He had hurt people. And he was kind of like a little bit crazy where when he would get a heel hook or something, he would crank it and hurt people. So everyone was kind of scared of him. And I'd actually had one of my guys, Thomas Grevall fought him and got heel hooked in the first round and like it hurt like injury like the whole nine yards. So Alan Belcher is gonna

• 1:39:20Jocko Willink?

  fight Tiquinho and he hires Dean Lister. Dean Lister goes down and trains him on how to defend leg locks. And then I'm watching the fight on UFC and I it was the coolest thing because I'm watching Alan Belcher and I'm like, oh, he's gonna, oh, he's doing this right. Oh, there's the defense. Oh, yeah. And I could see that he was literally taking Dean's principles and just putting them to work. And he beat, he got out of every heel hook attempt and he was like, he was kind of like being provocative about it like, oh, try and heel hook me or try and footlock me. And and Tiquinho couldn't get it and he ended up Alan Belcher won the fight. It was it was awesome. But I remember watching going, oh, I know exactly what that is. I see

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  what you're doing there. I see what you're doing Alan Belcher. Oh, there's the next move. I could see what he was doing. You could see what he had learned. And I got to watch you apply these things. And I'd be like, I know, I see exactly what she's doing. Oh, she's using decentralized command over there. Oh, she's got prioritized and execute. And I was watching you do this, you know, for a year, two years, three years. And at some point, Leif and I are talking like, you know, it'd be kind of cool to get Jamie to get up there and talk about some of these principles from her perspective. And also be cool to get that, you know, someone that's not in the military up there because we have, you know, me, Dave, JP, Leif, we're all military background. And we're sitting here preaching to people that this stuff works in any environment.

• 1:40:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's nice to get someone that's from a different environment, get up there and and and tell what it's like and how it is from the pure civilian perspective. So eventually, what was it? It was in Australia is the first time you got up on there, right?

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the conversation had come up a couple months before that. And I was like, yeah, yeah, just kind of like, sure, guys. And and we didn't really talk about it again. And then when we were getting ready for Australia, it was the prime opportunity because we weren't taking the entire crew. We were taking a more condensed crew because we're obviously going all the way to Australia and it was expensive. So it got brought up again. And I finally was like, all right, like, we'll give this a try. And I prepped for my first brief at that muster and I gave my first keynote there. And I was terrified.

• 1:41:28Jocko Willink?

  Why were you terrified?

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  I'd rather get up there and sing a song. I think it was just like, it was just like, it wasn't necessarily the stage. It wasn't even the audience. It was two things. One, it was my first time. So there's just a lot of pressure. I think I gave that brief like 47 times before I ever went on stage. My parents probably heard it like 12 times because I was like, can I run my brief for you again? And so I just was really practiced and I wanted to make sure I did well. The biggest challenge or the reason why it was so difficult was it wasn't the audience. It wasn't the stage. It was the fact that sitting stage right was you and Leif and Dave and JP and these people that I highly respected and valued. And I didn't want to let

• 1:42:15Speaker 01

  you down. And I didn't want to do a disservice to the content that we teach because I believed in it. And I, I wholeheartedly wanted to help people understand that these principles apply in every aspect. And I was, I think, a little afraid that I would somehow not do the message justice.

• 1:42:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, you kind of knocked it out of the park, didn't you?

• 1:42:37Jocko Willink?

  I thought you did. The crowd thought you did. You obviously got repeat performances. Now you're a staple.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  A staple of that. And, and from there, once you did that,

• 1:42:51Jocko Willink?

  you know, now you're a full-on instructor at Echelon Front. And you had to do a couple things to make that happen. Well, number one, you, you kept, you know, you went and expanded from like, oh, well, Jamie can do that keynote. And Jamie can actually do a little bit of a workshop. And then all of a sudden, you're doing that stuff. You also had to build a team that could do everything that you were doing, that could cover for all that other stuff so that you could go out and do the instructor type stuff. So you, you had a, it was a, it was a pretty quick, though. You did that pretty quickly, that transformation. It was like over a year.

• 1:43:24Speaker 01

  Well, and we had been slowly building the team at that point anyways. And up until that point, like I, I got a lot of credit for the musters. People would come out and be like, "Man, that was awesome. You run a great event." And I always wanted to be like, "No, no, you don't understand. Like, there is a team of people that are managing this, that are making me look good." And we're just lucky because the people that come to these events make this atmosphere very unique compared to other environments. So, like, we could be mediocre and the event would still be amazing because people show up and they just are engaged. So, there was just, there was already this team dynamic and people on the team that were stepping up and taking over responsibilities, to the point where I could even be onstage in Australia. Whereas, like, four musters prior to that, there's no way

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  I could have done that because I was in the background managing all of that, that, the responsibilities. And then, over time, every muster, I had less and less and less to do. Kind of like Echo. Echo shows up, you know, with his camera, and then all-

• 1:44:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, at the muster?

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, he just walks around holding it. He's not actually taking footage. He's actually signing books and, and he's, you know, just with the people. But, but, over time, that happened with me at the muster. I had less and less to do. And so, it opened the pathway for me to actually think more about what it would be like to be an instructor. And I realized, I realized after that first muster, that when people look at you in life, they see something that maybe is, like, they can't achieve. And so, what I provided was a different perspective and the recognition that, like, "Hey, I'm not like these seasoned combat veterans that I work with. I'm just a regular person, just trying to become a better mom and trying to implement these principles in my business and how I lead

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  my life." And people saw themselves in me. And so, I, I got over that imposter syndrome of, is there, you know, what am I doing trying to teach this message to, you know what, I have some value to add. I have a perspective that I think could help people.

• 1:45:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And like I said, you put this stuff to work. I mean, you're talking about the muster, the first four musters, you were kind of in the weeds and you had to do stuff. The fifth muster, maybe a little less. The sixth muster, you don't do anything now at the muster.

• 1:45:27Speaker 01

  No, I get in my team's way. I'm like, hey, guys. And Jen's like, no, no, no, we got it. And then I'm like, well, what about this? She's like, we got it. And I'm like, you know what? I'll just be over here if you need anything.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what that is, is that's decentralized command. That's making sure that everyone understands what the mission is. That's cover move. That's everyone understanding what the priorities are. Like, those are the principles being executed. The muster is a great example. I mean, I use the muster as an example at the muster because it truly does represent the principles. It's really obvious. Everyone's there. Everyone's like, the crowd is sitting there and it's like, oh, all this stuff? I didn't do anything. I didn't do, all I did was show up. They put a microphone on me. I'll walk out there and talk. That's literally all I have to do. There's all this AV setup. There's meals. There's PT happening. There's gift bags for everybody. There's the run of show and the slot, like all the stuff.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  I don't do anything. I don't do anything. And, and now you don't do anything either, barely. So, so when you talk about, oh, you can just give your perspective, that's cool. But also you can literally speak to the fact of how these principles work for you. And the other thing that's cool about being an instructor at Echelon Front is you get to work with other companies. And when you work with other companies, you start to see when they start to implement the principles, you start to get the feedback from them and they see how it works. And now you have more tools to be able to explain these principles and how they function in different environments. So it's a, it's a pretty cool growth for you

• 1:46:58Jocko Willink?

  to go to, to make that transition, but it's also a really obvious move. It's, it seems real obvious now. It might not have seemed obvious to you at some point. But like when I, when you got done it in Australia, actually before you even got done, I was like, you know, I watch you operate. I know what you do. I understand that you understand. I know that you. Deeply understand what it means to take extreme ownership. I know that you fully recognize what it means to cover move. Like, these are things that you can answer any question about. So I think it's a, it's an obvious move. I'm glad you're there now.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I love it now. I, I still get nervous and it's still you guys. Cause I go speak to companies all the time. I did a keynote yesterday and it's like no factor. It's just get up, you talk about it. I, I love this stuff. I'm, when I'm speaking about it, it's authentic because I've seen it in my own life, literally transform the way that I handle challenges and problems. And so I believe it. And so it's very natural and, and easy to give a keynote. And then we get to the muster and people are like, why are you so nervous? I'm like, it's you. It's like, it's you guys because it's probably that same sense I talked about earlier with my dad of like, I just didn't want to let him down. I have that same sense of, uh, you know, significance with the Echelon Front team. I just don't want to let you guys down or disappoint you by not following through and doing the things that we're

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  supposed to do. So if I'm ever teetering on like not following the principles, it's like, I always go right back to it because I'm like, I can't be here as a part of this company and managing this mission or helping to support this mission of helping people learn these principles if I'm not applying them in every single aspect of my life.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep. This, uh, being in Echelon Front is a very difficult place to make excuses.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  It's just like, it just doesn't work out very well. Uh, then what do we do? We did Jocko Live, which is another, I threw Jocko Live at you with, how far in advance was that?

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Right before we left for Australia. It was like December, like maybe November 30th or something. But right before we left for Australia, you were like, I don't even know how it came about. Somebody had the idea and we're like, all right, we're going to do this. The Jocko Live tour, uh, in January. We did six shows and so we had a month to prepare for that while we were in Australia for basically two weeks doing the muster and then Christmas. And we came back from Christmas and it was like, boom, we went. Six weeks in a row, six different shows.

• 1:49:29Jocko Willink?

  We got more Jocko Live coming up, by the way. I haven't even talked about it. I keep forgetting to talk about it. I'm very bad at advertising.

• 1:49:35Speaker 01

  They're close to sold out, so you gotta get your tickets now.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's Ann Arbor, Michigan. It's Chi-Town.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  It's Boston. And where's the last one? And Philly.

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:46Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  This July 7th and 8th and the 21st, 22nd.

• 1:49:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So if you want to come check out a Jocko Live, it's just me.

• 1:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Talking, playing guitar.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  We can add that into the second round. That first round was so cool because you, if you don't know what Jocko Live is, and I think people, it's a cool way for people to introduce you to people in their life that may not listen to the podcast. But every show is unique, which I thought was so crazy. You could have easily done the exact same thing at six shows and it would have, no one would have ever noticed. But you like, based on the city you were in, your intro was different for every single show. Some of the core of it was kind of the same, but I just was so fascinated going on tour with you. And I was like, I cannot believe like, the imagination never stops with you. There's always something different. Like, just when I think I've learned it all, I've heard you talk for nine years, nearly every single day. And then you say something and I'm like, gosh, damn it.

• 1:50:46Speaker 01

  Like, there's another good thing. I gotta write this down. Like, it's, it's crazy.

• 1:50:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the Jocko Live things are awesome. There you, how many people, there are like a thousand, maybe 1500 people.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  These venues are between a thousand and I think 1800.

• 1:50:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm not a diva. I'll like hang out. Someone just sent me a message like, hey, can I, is it possible that I could please, you know, meet you at this thing? I'm like, yeah, 100%. I'm gonna be walking around out front, you know? I'm not like in a green room with cucumbers on my eyes, the way Echo Charles usually is.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  You actually get in trouble at those venues because you hang out beforehand and they're like panicking because like, we have to start the show and people can't get to their seats because Jocko's in the aisle way. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I got him. And then after the show, you know, we'll tell them and I will prep them. Hey, we're gonna be here for a long time because people, he's gonna, he's gonna meet every single person that wants to meet him that night and take a picture and sign a book. And they're like, well, how long? And I'm like, we could go till 11. There was a couple of shows. I think we hit midnight.

• 1:51:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  And the venue's like, oh, my gosh, can we get out of here?

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  They're so mad.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  They're so pissed. Um, but that's who you are. And I think, um, yeah, it was people coming to those events are wanting to meet you. That's what, that's why they come. So the fact that you stick around and do it is cool.

• 1:51:57Jocko Willink?

  It was hype for you too, because at the muster, you've got audio visual. You've got all these people. You've got all these meals. You've got all those things going on. At, at, at Jocko Live, I'm like, can you get me a table? A chair? And I'm good and a microphone. And so it's, it's definitely a different vibe and I'll do Q and A too. I do Q and A. So if you've got questions, you can ask them, you know, there. So anyways, we got Jocko Live coming up. You, you managed to get that thing together. It was all, by the way, super spreader events because it was just before COVID. And it was crazy because we went to like every COVID town. It was before COVID, like no one had heard of COVID. But we finished in February, like February 28th or something was the last show.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  In San Francisco.

• 1:52:40Jocko Willink?

  So we did San Francisco, New York, DC. Awesome. We went to every place that of two weeks later was completely shut down from COVID. We were there hugging, bro-ing out with people, just getting after it. And so I felt like if there was a patient zero and it happened to be me, I was like, oh, I might, if they, if they pulled a string on this, I might be the guy.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:03Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  Especially that San Francisco show, because you were sick. Like you, like you almost lost your voice. And I was like, I hope we can make it through this show.

• 1:53:10Jocko Willink?

  You think I had Miss Rona?

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  Maybe. I wouldn't have been surprised, but I remember when like things started happening at like a couple of weeks later. It was really closely after. It was a couple of weeks and they're talking about it. And I was like, uh, we were just in San Diego with a thousand people and you were sick.

• 1:53:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  And you were.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  The San Diego show was sick.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  You were. Yeah.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  That was our last show.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, I thought San Francisco was.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  That's what I meant. I'm sorry. San Francisco.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:35Jocko Willink?

  I still have funny flashbacks when, um, my oldest daughter and I would be arguing about the coronavirus. And we would be in the middle of like a heated argument. My daughter would be like, listen, dad, the fact of the matter is Miss Rona exists. And I'd be like, yeah, but you can't blame everything on Miss Rona. We would still call it Miss Rona. All right. And then speaking of COVID, that was a wild time.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  That was a wild time at Echelon Front. So Echelon Front, 99% of our engagements in March of 2020 were live, face to face, going into companies, sitting down, working with them. And then

• 1:54:15Jocko Willink?

  March 15th comes and I think we had, how many events do we have canceled?

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  I think within the first month of like the world shutting down, we had 37 different events that were canceled. Or like, they were like, hey, we gotta postpone, we gotta put this on hold. Several companies panicked and they were like, we just need to cancel.

• 1:54:36Jocko Willink?

  Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of revenue, gone, gone.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  And up until that point, we had never explored virtual training. And I think we all had this feeling that like, you can't be effective virtually. So we weren't really doing it. And I think we always felt like this sense of like, no, in person is the way to go. And then all of a sudden, it was like, well, I guess we can't do that. So what's next?

• 1:55:00Jocko Willink?

  We, we had explored it. And the reason we explored it, because we had a base level platform. And the reason we had that was because I had a client and I went to this client and he, and he said, I want you to teach every person in my company. And I think they had 150,000 people globally.

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. You're talking about the EF Online. Yeah.

• 1:55:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we, so we had kind of started to do that. We had, we had a platform. But like I said, it was being utilized 1% of the time.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  And what I was, yes, I totally forgot about EF Online at that time because it was still very new in its infancy. But as far as like us going on site with clients, we weren't doing any of that virtually. Everything was like, no, no, being in person is really where you get, you know, we had all these activities that required discussion and things like that.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  And there's also a hurdle to get over because clients would be like, what do you, what do you mean video? Like, what do you mean? How does that even work? Like, so? People didn't want to do it.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:55:59Jocko Willink?

  People said, no, you fly out here, you fly to New York, you fly to Chicago, we want to hear you talk. And then that was the awesome thing about COVID was all of a sudden, in two weeks, every single person in the world was doing video teleconferencing, video conferencing, video presentations. And now it was just normal. And that was such a huge hurdle to overcome and open people's minds to, this is a way to do this. And there's actually some things about online training that's better. You know, for instance, if I'm doing an online, if I'm doing a presentation and I go and there's 3,000 people in the crowd, the people in the back row, you know, what are they seeing? They're, they're, guess what they're staring at? They're staring at the big video monitor anyways.

• 1:56:44Jocko Willink?

  But there's no real interaction. And then when I'm doing a, a, a presentation to 3,000 people over the, over a web presentation, whether it's Teams or Zoom or Skype or whatever, I'm looking at them. Like, look, you can't put 3,000 people on the screen, but you, those 40 people, those 40 little faces, you're getting more feedback from them than you are when you're staring at the bright lights, giving a presentation to 3,000 people. So there's some real advantages. Also doing the Q and A. Look, you can do Q and A live and people can stand, but you don't get any screening of those questions. Whereas if you have people submitting questions into a chat room, there, there's someone that's filtering through those questions, figuring out what the best questions are.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're in an awesome place. So there's some actual things about virtual presentations and virtual events that are better. Now, listen, there are some things about live presentations that are better, too. You get that human interaction, you get that energy, you get the real time engagement that's human. So there's advantages and disadvantages to both, but they're both really super positive. And there's really, They both have some positives, but there's no real like negatives to either one of them. There's no like, hey, this is actually the the real downfall of virtual. There's no real downfall. There's no real downfall to live presentations. They both have some some higher advantages,

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  but the base level of both those things is outstanding, which is what the world learned from COVID.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Well, the benefit for us is that we start, we made the quick pivot to virtual. We started doing free, we remember we were doing three times a week, free sessions and you could just join.

• 1:58:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, I thought you were going to talk about the amount of stuff we did for clients.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  No, we started doing that too. We just started doing free stuff because our theory, and you said very early on, when I would call you and I'd be like, hey, we had another client. They want to cancel their contract. This was before the world knew like everything's going to shut down. So there was a lot of fear of like, okay, do I just void this contract? Do I just let it go? Like, do we hold them to terms? Like, I didn't know how you wanted to handle that. And I would call you the first couple of times and you'd say, finally, you were like, hey, relationships are paramount. And you gave me that one mantra and I was like, okay, I can run with that. I understand your intent. I can now make decisions to prioritize our clients. And so very quickly, the whole team started to do that where we shifted to virtual sessions, oftentimes for free.

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  We started just reaching out to our entire list of clients, just checking in and and making ourselves available. Um, I know Dave did a big effort on that and I actually talked to clients on the phone. They would call with challenges that they were dealing with all through COVID. And we had most of those contracts that were canceled came back around at some point and we were able to fulfill them. Whether virtually, in fact, we had, I think, seven leadership development and alignment program clients, our big contracts that we do over the course of a long term, our long range training, uh, programs. All seven clients pivoted to virtual and we didn't lose a single one. And we were able to be effective at training them in a virtual setting. And the benefit to us is over that time, first of all, I got.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  An immense amount of training myself because I got to sit with you guys three times a week and listen to this. And I got to practice because I started doing some of those sessions. But then at the end result for Echelon Front was now we figured out you've got in-person and virtual and the real power is kind of when you use both and you go do an in-person and then you do a virtual follow-up. Like now we can do more with the client that we couldn't do previously because budgets didn't allow for us to come four different times or get all their people or take their people offline. We could do a in-person session and then send them to the academy for really amazing courses and continuation, or we could do live virtual sessions that are deeper dive into what we're teaching and we could have a lot more impact with our clients.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's literally crazy to think about the number of times that I have flown to New York City or flown to Chicago or flown to Orlando or flown anywhere to give a one-hour presentation. And so it takes me to go to New York. This is like a 48-hour at a minimum to get out there because you can't like leave it to the last minute. You got to get out there early, which means a day early, which means you're flying out early and then you got to get a hotel and then you're staying in the hotel and then you go there and you're going to get one hour from me. So they're pulling me offline for 48 to 72 hours to get a one-hour thing. Meanwhile, COVID hits,

• 2:01:09Jocko Willink?

  I'm on a Zoom call and I'm giving the same presentation and it takes me literally one hour and seven minutes because I'm going to get on early, make sure everything's squared away, give the presentation, answer questions, and we're all good to go.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  And you're going to do four of those or five of those in a day?

• 2:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It's like crazy how much it helped our capacity and helped us by everyone understanding that virtual is a thing. It's a positive thing. There's positives to it. It has the same impact or it has an equally strong impact. There are some, there's something live. Look, when live events started kicking back off and I was going to live events again and we're going to live events now, there's a certain level of, look, they get the camaraderie of the team all coming together, you know, when there's 800 people at this company and they're

• 2:02:00Jocko Willink?

  All over the country and then all of a sudden they're all in the same room. There's networking and relationship building that happens and then we're there to help, help that out. So there's, there's that side of it, but man, for, to get those 800 people and talk to them six times instead of just once and have them all on a zoom call at the same time, six times, it, there, there is some serious positives to the virtual stuff as well. And that's why COVID turned out to be a positive thing for us.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we like tripled in size in like the three year span of COVID. It's crazy. Like we were, and at the same time, doing a lot of free stuff, just prioritizing relationships and yet we were growing. And I think that was, you know, much to your credit of like the quick pivot of like, all right, the world's shutting down. We've got to innovate and adapt and figure out another way. And so let's start doing these free sessions. Let's put a lot more effort and energy into the academy and kind of fortify some virtual options for people. Let's, you know, spend this time building some additional curriculum. And all of a sudden we just, you know, everyone turned and kind of ran, ran quickly and we started growing as a team. I mean, we tripled, tripled in size in that time span.

• 2:03:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know what my, uh, predilection, predilection, what's the word?

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  Prediction?

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  Prediction. No, that's not it. But anyways, I don't know what my sense was, but I remember saying this to the team, hey, we don't know how long this is going to last. We can try and hold our breath until it's over, but it might not be over and we might run out of air. And so let's just make an adjustment right now. And that's what we did. I mean, we made an adjustment immediately because we didn't go, oh, there's only two weeks to flatten the curve. Okay. We can hold our breath for two weeks. We didn't even do that. We were like, we're changing right now. We're going to start being proactive. That was definitely a very positive thing to do because we were ahead of the curve. We were ahead of it, which was, which was good. When you look at.

• 2:03:59Jocko Willink?

  Let's, let's take that a little bit, but just in general, cover and move. How does it help you?

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  Relationships. I think too often people don't understand the value of what positive relationships can provide you. There's, you can get anything accomplished if you have strong relationships. And I, it's not something people spend a lot of time prioritizing or maintaining. Uh, you know, we get really comfortable with our kids or our spouse or our friends of just these established relationships. And yet we're not prioritizing continuing to maintain or build those relationships. And with your teammates, there's nothing more powerful than a team of people that care about you and care about the mission and know that you care about them. So if I'm putting my energy and effort in focusing on the team and prioritizing the team and doing what I can to build relationships and

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  support them, that level of trust is going to be far more valuable than anything else that I could do as far as, hey, I am your boss and this is what we're doing. Um, and so it's, it's just working together as a team, recognizing that we have one mission and we're all going to work together to accomplish that mission.

• 2:05:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When we talk about building trust, a lot of times we get asked about building trust. And I think what I talked through earlier was you, and let's take you and me as a, as an example. I didn't know you. I didn't trust you. I didn't know you. I have no relationship with you. Right? I mean, I don't, I literally don't know who you are. And oh, you're Flynn Cochran's wife and he was at team one and, and I know him and he's a good dude. Okay. Cool. This is nothing. I, I get, that gives me zero to go off of. So I meet you and it's like, oh, give a little bit of trust. Yep. You take that, you prove you're good to go. And by the way, when I give you a little bit of trust, I'm actually giving you it in a way that you realize I am actually giving you trust. And like, hey,

• 2:05:48Jocko Willink?

  oh, you're going to let me do this project by myself or you're going to let me handle this thing. So this is where we talk about that, the building of trust. It starts small and then it just builds from there and it snowballs. It's like an exponent, at least for me, uh, it's, it's pretty exponential. And so what did that look like from your perspective?

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  You, early on, you started, and the way that you built that trust was I would call you and say, "Hey, how do you want me to handle this?" And you would ask that one question over and over and over again, "What do you think we should do?" And you would ask me that question, and over time, I've realized, okay, I've just got to come prepared with an answer or a plan. And so I would say, "Hey, here's the problem. Here's what I think we should do." And 98% of the time, you'd say, "Cool, execute. Let me know how I can support." And that built up that confidence and that trust in me. And so you gave me so much trust that over time, there's almost nothing I value more than like the trust I get from people that I care about. And you gave me so much trust

• 2:06:51Speaker 01

  in the beginning, and even when I failed, even when I made mistakes, you took ownership of it, or Leif took ownership of it. And I was like, "Hold on, guys. I made this mistake." That that continued to build in that trust to now, you've created such a sense of loyalty. I mean, we joke about just that the team has this like real sense of loyalty to you. And nothing was more, you know, there was a whole scenario, we got to see this play out, where everyone was like coming to your defense, because there is this such, such a strong sense of trust. And that started from the beginning, just little ways in which you just let me run with it, and then you let me execute my plans, even though you probably had better ideas on how to solve those problems. But you would just say, "Execute," and you would just give me that trust to go do

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  it. And over time, that became something that, that I highly, highly value, is your trust.

• 2:07:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, lately, I've been talking a lot about the, the extreme ownership leadership loop. And the last thing that I consider when I'm making a decision is how does this impact my relationship? And that's the most, it's the last thing I consider, but it's the heaviest weight of what I'm considering. And if I could, hopefully, I wrote about it from the new version of Leadership Strategy and Tactics, and hopefully, I can convey it strongly enough, that if you put the relationships as the priority, it helps so many decisions. Because just what you're talking about, you know, you might come to me and say, "Hey, Jocko, I think for Jocko Live, we should hand out these small kettlebell keychains," right?

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  And I might be thinking like, well, that's an extra expenditure. They're just gonna get lost. They're not gonna be high quality. You made them look that good. Well, whatever. Maybe, look, it's, I don't even think it's that bad of an idea, but it's like not the priority at all. And so I might think, well, hey, Jamie, I think that's a waste of money. Or, hey, Jamie, I think it's gonna, but what is that worth? How does that show you? What does that show you with my level of trust in you that you came out with an idea? You went and sourced the way to make this happen. You put together the budget, then you came and presented me and said, hey, Jacque, we got these cool kettlebell keychains that we're gonna give out. And I go, no, I don't like that. So what does that, what does that do? You, all of a sudden, I'm showing you that I don't trust your judgment. And really, what's the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario is people got a cool

• 2:09:05Jocko Willink?

  keychain. That's like the worst case scenario. But because I don't think it's a good idea, it wasn't my idea, I'm gonna, I'm gonna shut it down. And what I'm doing is I'm prioritizing my ego, I'm prioritizing my idea, I'm prioritizing my budget over my relationship with you, my trust in you. Now, listen, if you came and say, hey, we're gonna give away a real kettlebell, you know, a real 24 kilogram kettlebell to every person that shows up at Jacque Live, it's gonna be awesome. And I'll be like, hey, Jamie, like, can you run the numbers on that? Because those are expensive, and they're also hard to ship. And also, some people are flying in and they'll have to fly home with a 20. And I would ask you some questions, and then you'd be like, you know, I ran the numbers on that. We're gonna go with a keychain

• 2:09:50Jocko Willink?

  instead, right? But just asking earnest questions, prioritizing a relationship is such a key component to think through. There's so many decisions that make themselves. There's so many decisions that make themselves if you prioritize the relationship over everything else. Now, listen, like I said, if you come to me with an idea, that's literally not gonna function, then I'm gonna have to ask you some earnest questions and, and hopefully,

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  You'll see like, oh, this doesn't make sense. Now, maybe there's something I didn't think. Maybe you're like, hey, no, Jocko, don't worry about it. We got a sponsor. They're giving us all the kettlebells for free. We're getting 10,000 kettlebells. They're for free. They're going to ship them for free. We just got to deal with FedEx. They're going to ship it free because they love, they love Jocko and they love what you're saying. So we're good to go. And I'd be like, wow, awesome.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  Everyone gets a free kettlebell.

• 2:10:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, everyone gets a, so if I ask an earnest question and you give me an answer, I'm ready to be like, okay, awesome. Let's execute. So prioritizing the relationship, so important. Giving trust away is how you get that trust back. That's covered move. What about simple?

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  For me, simple in the way that we typically teach it with clients is about communicating effectively, being simple, clear, concise. I think about simple as it relates to the mission and plans. The mission has to be simple. And I think anyone at Echelon Fund understands what our mission is because it's simple, clear, concise, and we can execute towards that mission. And once the mission is simple, I can now focus on the plans and processes and what we need to do to accomplish that mission. And those things need to also be simple. And I think that's what's awesome about working with a team that understands these principles because we're very good at coming up with simplified SOPs, simplifying processes, recognizing when something's too complex and maybe the team can't execute because they don't understand what's going on.

• 2:11:35Speaker 01

  And then ultimately, once you have simple missions, simple plans to execute on that mission, you have to be able to communicate that effectively in a simple, clear and concise manner. And for me, what that, what I've really learned is that I have to, I have to adjust the way I communicate based on who I'm talking to. That's a component of simple. So the way that I communicate with you versus Leif is different. The way that I may communicate with Jen or with Jack is different based on what I know about them, based on our relationships. And so that simple component is really that test for me of, am I communicating in a way that is effective with this particular individual or team?

• 2:12:14Jocko Willink?

  These, the instinct that human beings have, generally speaking, to make things more complex.

• 2:12:22Jocko Willink?

  is really a driving force in human nature. And look, I got to see this in the SEAL Teams, these guys with these giant brains and their Ivy League education, and they'd come in with their engineering degree, and they would formulate plans that were just completely insane. And so, yes, keeping things simple and then the way you communicate. Yeah, absolutely. By the way, when I talk to the troops, I'm communicating in a certain way. When I talk to the Admiral, I'm communicating in a different way. The content of what I'm saying is not different. So I'm not telling the troops like, hey, this is a stupid thing to do. We shouldn't be doing it. And then saying to the Admiral, hey, this is brilliant. No, I'm not doing that.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  I'm saying to the troops, hey, look, I'm not 100% sure why this is going on. Let me try and find some answers. And I'm saying to the Admiral, hey, sir, I actually need to find some answers about why we're doing this because it doesn't make sense to me right now. I'm going to come and look, when I talk to the troops, I might drop a couple F-bombs, whatever. We're talking in a different, we're using different communication tools. That's not to say I'm telling two different people, two different things. It's not two-faced to communicate in utilizing different methodologies. And I actually was telling Echo about this a while ago. Like, I would talk to the Admiral, I would talk to the captain, I would talk to my commanding officer, I would talk to the troops.

• 2:13:47Jocko Willink?

  I would walk out of a platoon meeting where I was talking to them in their language to go talk to the Admiral, where I would talk to him in his language. I wasn't saying anything different. I was saying the same thing. It's just in a different language. So that's what we have to learn how to do when it comes to simple communication. You need to communicate to people in their native tongue whenever possible. And you need to not utilize language that they don't understand that doesn't make sense to them. And by the way, that's up and down the chain of command. You can talk to, there's things that an admiral or things that a CEO will not understand. There's language that you can use that they will not understand.

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Just like there's language you can use to the frontline troops that they won't understand. So you as a leader have to be, I use this a lot. You have to be a translator of sorts because sometimes I'm telling, taking what the admiral said, I'm translating it into what the troops can understand. Sometimes I'm taking what the troops said, I'm translating it into what the admiral can understand. That's what we become. We become a, a, a filter that provides simplicity in language to the audience that we're talking to. So that's a very astute perception you've got there, Jamie.

• 2:15:06Speaker 01

  Well, I actually learned that early on with you and Leif because you're both very different. And so I figured out that one, you were really always busy. And so I wanted you to pick up the phone when I called if I had a question. So I realized very quickly, okay, Jocko, I need to speak in bullet points. And I could do that and you wouldn't be offended. You wouldn't be like, are you okay? Or is there something wrong? Like you would just take it. I would just say, hey, A, B, C. And you'd be like, yes, no, yeah, let me think about it. And then we'd end the call and you weren't short and it wasn't, it wasn't a detriment to our relationship. I just figured out early on that I could talk to you in bullet points and we could just get some stuff done and move on. And if I did that and I've managed that, the way I communicate with you based on your schedule, you pick up the phone every time I called.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  And in fact, now people will get ahold of me to be like, hey, can you get ahold of Jocko? Because you'll answer my call. And then Leif needs a lot more information. I have to anticipate that when I go into a conversation with Leif, we're going to spend 20 minutes probably talking about my family and what's going on and what I did for the weekend. And just that southern hospitality, it's just going to be a different conversation. Sometimes, you know, Leif calls and I'll be like, all right, how much time do I have? And can I take this? But even with Leif, like I will know that I need to come in that conversation, prepared to answer questions he's going to have and, and have a little more information for him than I may need for you. But I figured out very early on that if I tried to communicate that way with you, you would be like, hey, I don't have time for this. So I just had to adjust.

• 2:16:33Speaker 01

  You, it's up to you when you're communicating to adjust to the person that you're talking to. And too often we think it's up to them. Like I'm communicating clearly and then I'm being frustrated because my team's not doing what I asked them to do. And it's like, Well, probably because of the way you communicated it. You didn't think about the, the receiving end of that and what it, how it comes across.

• 2:16:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, prioritize and execute.

• 2:16:55Speaker 01

  Detaching from emotion. There's a million things at any given time that I have to manage or that people have to manage. We have these overwhelming plates of responsibility and the only way to recognize the thing that we need to put our focus and effort into is learning how to detach from our emotion. Because our emotions pull us in and suck us into the chaos of all these things that are happening. And when we're in that place, we can't see the truth of what needs to get done. So we have to learn how to manage our emotions so that we can take that step back and detach and recognize, okay, this thing right here is going to have the biggest impact on the mission. And then focus of effort on executing on that task.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  Uh, we're not naturally good multitask, uh, multitaskers, um, as people like to think they are. And so we have to be able to detach long enough and then focus effort on executing on that thing before we move on to the next.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  People ask about, what's the difference? What, can you utilize these principles when you're leading your family? And I'm like, yes, you can. And they say, is there any differences? And I say, there actually is. And the big difference is that when you're dealing with your family, you're going to be much more emotional and it's going to take extra effort and extra discipline to be able to detach and not get emotional. Like that's what it's going to take. That's the biggest difference. There's a little other little subtleties, but essentially the principles are the same. The biggest difference is when you're, you know, if Jamie's working for me and she does something really stupid and she's getting us in legal trouble, I can be like, hey, Jamie, you're fired. Like, okay, you know, good luck, carry on.

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  When your kid does something stupid, you're like, oh, you can't fire your kids. You're stuck with them. You can't fire your spouse. You're stuck with them. So you, you get more emotional because you're like, what are you doing? And you, plus you care about your kids so much. You're like, wait, if you're doing, if you're doing that thing right now, that's going to, that's going to put you on a bad course and you get emotional. And then when you get emotional, you make that bad decisions. So think about that.

• 2:19:01Jocko Willink?

  When you're dealing with the people that are closest to you, those are the people that make you the most emotional. People that you don't care about, it's easy to make. That's what's why you type a leadership question in a chat GPT. It's gonna give you a good answer because it has no emotions. It's just like, oh, the person has been unproductive for three months. They should be fired. Boom, done. Okay, cool. We'll execute on that. Uh, but if you take a human being, you're like, oh, this person has been unproductive for three months, but guess what? What's going on in their personal life? What? Oh, they've got a, their mom's sick. They gotta go to the hospital every day while their mom's going through chemo. Oh, you're just gonna fire them because they've been unproductive? How's that gonna work out? What kind of human being are you? So, think about that. There's a little bit of emotions involved with the stuff. I always say detached from your emotions, but you're not

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  decoupling from your emotions.

• 2:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:49Jocko Willink?

  Emotions have to be part of the calculus. They have to be part of the calculus, even with your team. You know, you have to realize, oh, if I, we just got done with the muster and all of a sudden we get tasked with some big project and Jamie hasn't had one day off. And I go, hey, Jamie, we got this project due tomorrow. I gotta recognize that she's gonna be mad at me. And I need to put that in the calculus. I need to say, hey, Jamie, look, I know you're gonna be mad because you just got back off this trip and I know you got some things that you're gonna do with your kids. We got this project due. If you can help me with this, next weekend is gonna be a five day weekend. Can you work with me? And you're like, I got you.

• 2:20:28Speaker 01

  Our, our emotions typically help us identify that there's a problem. Our emotions are really important to helping us recognize, okay, this is a priority. This is a major deal. But we don't make good decisions when we're emotional. So to your point, you can't decouple the emotions. They typically are an indicator that, hey, there's a problem here we need to solve. But we have to be detached enough to be able to see how we can actually solve this problem. And we can't do that when we're caught up in the emotional state.

• 2:20:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, how about that decentralized command? I think you're a

• 2:21:00Jocko Willink?

  You've gotten to, you've gotten to see decentralized command as full force from me.

• 2:21:04Speaker 01

  I learned from the best. Yeah. Empower other people to lead, empower your team to lead, to step up and take things on, to solve problems, give them as much ownership in the projects and plans as you possibly can. And that what's really difficult about that is letting go, at least for me, it's letting go. Like, I want to be in all, involved in all those things, especially like you use the muster and as an example, the first time I went to the muster and I wasn't doing all the things I had done the muster previous, like you start to get the sense of like, well, wait, what am I here for anymore? And that, that's an ego play. But the more that I've let go, the more that I recognize I get to see other people step up into roles

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  and take on responsibility and execute and see them thrive, that that just is way more rewarding than me stepping in and solving the problem and being the one to save the day and do this awesome thing. That it's about the team and I get to see them just feel valued and contribute to the mission. And that is so much more powerful than anything else I could offer them. So giving them as much responsibility as I possibly can and empowering them to make decisions and solve problems and get things done.

• 2:22:12Jocko Willink?

  I have an app on my phone that reports when, no, sorry, it's not an app. It's an email. It's like an automatic email that reports expenditures from my bank, which is our bank, which is, and so this is my, this is my, I guess, my evidence of decentralized command. I'll just be like, whatever, on a trip or something, I'll pick up my phone, I'll look at it and they'll be like, you just, you just wired $842,000 to this account. And I'm always like, huh, okay, cool. And what is, I think, have I upped your limit, your spending limit to a million dollars?

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. You, you told me I have, I have leeway to spend up to a million dollars before I have to get permission. And I think in the earlier days, I was calling you for like hundred dollar expenditures. I'm like, hey, I gotta buy this thing. It's a hundred bucks. And now I've got up to a million dollars. So.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, Jamie, if you need to spend more, if you need to spend more than a million dollars, can you let me know what that's about? Just, you know, I just gotta, didn't know about that one.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  I think it was like six months ago, it was 750. So I'm really like, I'm really getting there now. We're at a million.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But that's, you know, like you said, in the beginning. I'm watching like, hold on, what did she spend a hundred and forty dollars on? You know what I mean? What's, what are you doing? And you're like, well, I had to print out, you know, copies of the book for, okay. Okay. So she's actually got good judgment. Oh, hey, there's a twelve hundred dollar charge on here. What's this for? Oh, we had to get this thing for the client otherwise. Oh, okay. So then it's like over time, I'm looking at your judgment. And by the way, when you're doing that, I'm not like, what the hell did you spend that money? I may be like, hey, hey, what's this expense for? And so then you realize I'm not jumping down your throat. So you're starting to trust that I'm going to listen to what you have to say. And before you know it, I got Jamie Cochran wiring money eight hundred and ninety thousand dollars to some random place.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  I'm going, what is it? Not, I actually don't even ask anymore.

• 2:24:07Speaker 01

  Well, there's a triple effect because you implemented that with me. And over time, I got a little more comfortable being able to do those things and make those decisions. And now I see it with Jen and the real trick is just put something in your team that you know is gonna, I mean, Jen stresses over ten dollars. Like she can get a deal and save fifty cents on like a product that we're buying in bulk. And she's like stoked. So she's such a good steward of our money that she has almost unlimited leeway too. Cause I know she's not going to be out there making crazy decisions. And you figured out early on that I wasn't going to make crazy decisions. And I was actually very conscientious about what we were spending and on what, you know, what it was and how much we were spending. Um, that you gave me a lot of freedom in the early days.

• 2:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you gotta get comfortable with some level of risk. I mean, I'm sure sometime in the next year, somebody's gonna buy something and I'm gonna be like, did we really need to buy? I'm sure like there's somebody's gonna spend three thousand dollars on something. And you've got to be comfortable with that level of risk. And here's why I'm okay with it. If I wasn't okay with, hey, someone made it soon. You know, someone bought a twenty eight hundred dollar meal with a client that, you know, okay, cool. There's, that's gonna happen. That's gonna happen. And the, the thing is, if I was paranoid about that, we would literally just not do anything. We would just not do anything because can you imagine if you were sending me approvals every time we spent more than a thousand dollars?

• 2:25:27Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, we'd never get anything done.

• 2:25:28Jocko Willink?

  Nothing would happen. And so it's so, but you, you, the financial, um, example's really clear. But it's not just the financial example. It's like everything that we're doing, there's, there's, there's decisions that are being made. There's things that are being executed. That they need to be executed, they need to be executed quickly. And if I was trying to micromanage things, it just, it just would absolutely never work. We wouldn't be able to do anything, wouldn't be able to advance, not to mention. I mean, you take, that's Echelon Front, you throw Jocko Fuel, you throw Origin on that, you throw Jocko Podcast, you throw Jocko Publishing, like, there's a lot of things that are, a lot of decisions that are being made that are being made at the level, at the point of friction, which is awesome, which is, which is how things,

• 2:26:13Jocko Willink?

  which is when people ask me, like, how do you do all these things? I'm like, oh, I do all these things, cover, move, simple prioritize, execute decentralized command. That's what I do. That's how I, that's how I make it happen. That's how my team makes it happen, because we're not going to sit here and micromanage. So those things, again, can you give decentralized command when you first meet someone and you've never worked with them before? You don't understand their judgment, you don't understand how their mind works? That can be a challenge, but once you understand how their mind works, once you've built up that trust, you can move forward. And then, once you establish culture inside of an organization, then decentralized command can really be, can really be utilized. And again, using the muster as an example, the first, or whatever, by the time we got like the fourth or fifth muster,

• 2:26:58Jocko Willink?

  everything was now, maybe it was the sixth muster or seventh muster, everything was now just like super smooth and super squared away. And, you know, we would get our feedback from the, from the attendees and they'd be like, this is the, the most well-run event I've ever been to. And what's cool about that is, I never like sat you and Jen and your team down and said like, this needs to be the most well-run event anyone's ever been to. I didn't tell you that. You already knew. Your team already knew. So they knew on the front lines, when someone says to one of the, one of the frontline people, like,

• 2:27:39Jocko Willink?

  hey, I'm supposed to be checking in my hotel and my luggage is in the wrong area. What can I, can you guys help me? Their attitude isn't like, well, no, that's your luggage. No, their attitude is like, oh, we want this to be the best thing. Hey, hold on a second, we've got a driver, they can drive you out to the airport, we can get that luggage picked up. Do you want to go with? So that's the attitude. And when everyone understands what the culture is, Everyone understands what the mission is, then decentralized command just works.

• 2:28:04Speaker 01

  Yep. You said once at an executive team meeting, you said, "I can only do the things that only I can do." And what you were saying basically is like, you have a lot of things you're managing. I mean, the things on your plate are crazy. And you just mentioned some of those things. And so it was really this permission to the rest of us. Like, "Go do everything else that you guys can answer and do and accomplish. Go do it. And come to me for the things that only I can do." And there are certain things that only you can do as the CEO of our company. But everything else, you give us complete trust and authority to go make those decisions. And that trust, once again, is so valuable to everyone on the team that when we go to a muster,

• 2:28:46Speaker 01

  you never had to say what the standard was because you set the standard in the way that you operated and managed this company. That we all felt this instinct of we have to, this has to be the best thing ever because I don't want to let Jock go down. I don't want to do a disservice to this message that is a life changer, a game changer. So it started with the precedent you set and the example that you set. And then you just gave up the reins and let us run with it. And we felt that sense of, "I have to do this right." Because I was entrusted in this.

• 2:29:21Jocko Willink?

  We talk about ego a lot. And again, the reason we have to talk about ego a lot is because that's a human instinct that people have. Their instinct is to get to believe their own hype. That's what our instinct is. And especially when you're successful, you think, "Well, you're damn right I'm successful. I should be. I'm pretty awesome." And then the next thing you know, you're believing your own hype and that's a problem. You have, considering, you know, you're a street A student gymnast, class president, or were you class president?

• 2:29:52Speaker 01

  I was in, yes. I was class president. I wasn't the, like, for the whole school.

• 2:29:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So, but you know, you've been in like, you've been doing really well. When you came on board, when you came on board, you didn't know we were going to be talking about ego, but you had the instinct to be humble enough to be like, okay, I can do this job. Oh, you want me to answer the phone? You want me to book your flight? Okay, I'll do it, right? You, you were humble enough to do that. Where did you pick up that sense of humility? And how has your, how has your perspective of ego become clarified while you've been at National Front?

• 2:30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, listen, I am actually a very competitive person and I definitely have an ego. A hundred percent it exists. I mean, that's the only reason like why I ever wanted to do all the stuff I wanted to do because there was this ego sense of like, yes, I can do it all and I can be good at it all.

• 2:30:44Speaker 01

  But, uh, but I also had incredible examples in my life of humility. My mom and dad, once again, set this heavy tone of like, hey, work ethic and honesty. And they were some of the most humble, uh, people, if not the most humble people I've been around. And they, they had very different lives than I did. They had a difficult life growing up. My mom ran away when she was like 15. She put herself in foster care. My dad was poor, um, and just really struggled. And so they propagated that story with our family a lot. And I understood where they came from. And that was not my experience at all. If anything, kind of the world revolves around me as a young kid. But over time, because of that example, I recognized that the ego pushes you to want to win and want to succeed.

• 2:31:29Speaker 01

  And that definitely exists in me. But if I wanted to be successful, I had to get really good at managing and subordinating my ego because I learned very early on that that wasn't going to help me build relationships and help me along the path of what I wanted to accomplish.

• 2:31:47Jocko Willink?

  I'm a little bit surprised.

• 2:31:50Speaker 01

  Why?

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  Because you, you're like, you're growing up, right? And you were like the star of this and the leader of that and the captain of this and you're, the world revolved around you, the way your parents treated you, like everything that you've, that you experienced. I've known a lot of people that grew up like that and they are not humble. I'm just telling you, like a lot of people that grow up like that, they're not humble. They think they're the center of the world from the time they're born and it really hurts them later on in life. But for some reason you were able to identify that. Sense of humility, which is you're very, I don't know if you're lucky or what, maybe like

• 2:32:31Jocko Willink?

  you said, I guess you're the way your parents instilled that in you. But yeah, there's plenty of people that are the star of this, the captain of that, you know, this seals is filled with guys like this, right? They were the captain of this, they were the they were the quarterback here and they were the they were did all these things and they were just winning. And when they win, they just think, oh, I obviously deserve to be worshipped. So well, let's go ahead and proceed to worship me, everybody. And it hurts, you know, and there's people like this in the certainly in the business world as well, like you, you know, you rose up through the ranks in your company. Well, why'd you get promoted? Because I'm awesome. Oh, why'd you get selected as the as the chief operating because I'm awesome. Why'd you get such as a CEO because I'm awesome. Well, you know,

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  why'd you get these investors? I got these investors because I'm awesome. And so that can snowball and get out of control, obviously. So that lesson that your parents taught you, I'm I guess it's your parents.

• 2:33:25Speaker 01

  I think it's is a combination of the example that I had, but also like I I had all those things. And then I moved to LA and very quickly was kind of reminded as a very young girl that I wasn't nearly as good as I thought I was. Like I moved, you know, little fish now in a big pond. And I was like, oh, I'm not the best singer. I'm not the best at this. I'm not the best at this. And I just started a little bit of failure, you know, and and recognizing, okay, I had a lot of really cool things growing up and I was really good in a lot of things. I wasn't the greatest. I wasn't the best at anything. But I, I think it was the combination of my parents example,

• 2:34:09Speaker 01

  and then getting a phase of my life where I really started to recognize like, you know what, I am not nearly as good as I thought I was. And that set me up for success when I started to take on other opportunities and grow in my life, because I started being willing to accept that. And it's okay. I don't have to be the best. I just have to work hard. I just have to perform. And if I do that, I can accomplish anything that I actually want to try to do. And every time I just focused on the work and the work ethic component that my parents taught me, I succeeded and things happened for me.

• 2:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Did you identify that when you were reading Extreme Ownership for the first time? And you see like a chapter about ego? Were you like, oh, I relate to this?

• 2:34:50Speaker 01

  Yes, I remember reading it for the first time and just that first chapter of Extreme Ownership just blowing my mind like, okay, my parents always really taught me about honesty, but I hadn't really ever thought about it in the way of me making decisions or taking ownership. Like that's, that's a component of honesty, being honest with yourself to say, hey, I screwed this up. And as I did that, I started to realize that, hey, that's a big ego hit to say this, this is my fault, or I have to take ownership of this. But the more that I started to dip my foot in that pool, the more I started to realize that it actually was an ego boost because I started to feel a little, a lot more confident to say, yeah, no, I screwed that up. Yeah, let me take on ownership of that to the point now where there's no ego involved.

• 2:35:34Speaker 01

  I'll take ownership all day long. If anything, it's like, you don't want to take ownership? I'll take it, give it to me, I'll, I'll take it all day long because I know that if I do that, I can solve the problem. And so the ego component, which still exists, I still want to win. I still am very competitive. Uh, I am capable now of subordinating that ego enough to recognize that the ego will get in the way of actually accomplishing the mission and I care more about the mission than my own sense of self.

• 2:36:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a wild thing to say that there's people that will literally, their ego will kill them. Like they will make decisions and they won't want to back down from their decision and they will like in combat, get people killed or get themselves killed because they didn't want to subordinate their ego. And it's crazy. So if that can happen in combat, it can happen anywhere. It can certainly happen in your finance company or your manufacturing company. These things happen, gotta watch out for that. Now, on the academy, a while ago, you and I were having a conversation and it was, I think you were trying to explain to me that. From a, from a female perspective, this stuff doesn't always look the same.

• 2:36:47Jocko Willink?

  And you and I, I think I made, did I make you, we didn't agree at first.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  No, it was actually at a muster and we were having some conversation and I think I brought up like, "Hey, maybe we should do like a women's like breakout session at the muster or we could do something." Cause I was looking at the, the stats for the muster and we were about like six, seven, eight percent women. And I was like, "Okay, there's a big disparity here. What if we added a component to the event that was like women only, like a panel or something?" And we got into this conversation and you kept saying like, "No, it's all the same. It's the same." And in the moment, I wasn't hearing exactly what you were saying. And so I went back to my room and I remember feeling frustrated. Cause I was like, it was the first time I felt this disconnect of like, "I don't think I agree with Jocko." Like, "He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand. This is different for women."

• 2:37:35Speaker 01

  He doesn't understand that I am carrying almost the full mental load of like managing our household. I'm managing groceries and dinner and taking kids to school and doctor's appointments and dentists. And I'm also managing Echelon Front and he has no idea what that's actually like. And so I remember feeling a little bit of like initial resentment of like, "It's easy for you to just say, 'It's the same.'" And then we went the next day to the muster and I'm listening and taking notes and you're talking about the principles and it hit me and I realized, what you were saying was not that my experience is different is, you know, you were, you weren't saying that my experience wasn't different than yours. You were simply saying that the way that you solve those problems was the same. You have to apply the principles of extreme ownership.

• 2:38:20Speaker 01

  And that kind of opened my mind to, "Okay, he's right. My experience might be different. My experience may be more challenging or in some times feel maybe unfair, but the way that I solve those problems, it, it is the exact same that we would teach anyone." And so we started thinking about, "Okay, how do we, how do we get women more on board with being open to this content?" Because I think there was some barrier with the combat military component.

• 2:38:46Jocko Willink?

  The barrier was my face.

• 2:38:49Speaker 01

  And they just, you know, we weren't seeing a lot of women. I mean, and the women who were a part of this movement were some of the coolest women I had ever met. Like, they were in the game. And so we needed to find a way to open the door to, for women to understand that this content was absolutely for them. And that there was some really cool principles out there that could help them solve the problems that they were dealing with.

• 2:39:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so I think what cracked open my mind, because I was still, you know, you said, well, maybe we should do a breakout for women. And I was totally against that because we're at an event together. Like, I'm not breaking out people based on anything. Like, you're people. We're all people. But what kind of cracked my mind open a little bit to become open to the idea of like, you eventually want to do an online thing called the Women's Assembly. And what kind of cracked my mind open was jujitsu. Because in jujitsu, if you show up like at a lot of schools, a lot of academies, they have women's only jujitsu classes.

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  And usually what those women's only jujitsu classes are is a way for women to get into jujitsu so that they understand it. And once they understand jujitsu, they're just training in the regular classes. Most of the time, most women make that transition to where they're just training regular classes. Some of them don't, but most of them do. And so I started to recognize, oh, what Jamie wants to do is do a women's jujitsu class for leadership, where people go and they, they're comfortable and they, look, there's not too many women that look at my head and say, oh, yeah, I identify with that. Or I could relate to that. But they look at you and they think, oh, yeah, this is a woman. She's a mom. She's in business. She's got a lot of things going on. I can relate to that. So just like the jujitsu idea of a women's only class, that's the way I looked at it in my head.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  I was like, okay, you want to do something for women that's going to make sure, make them feel comfortable coming into the jujitsu academy? Feel comfortable coming into the Extreme Ownership Academy? Okay, let's go for it. And then eventually, and now you've got a women's summit coming.

• 2:40:50Speaker 01

  We do.

• 2:40:50Jocko Willink?

  So, hey, look, you've got women comfortable. From a online with the with the assembly that you're doing, but now you're doing a women's summit. Tell me about that.

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we started the live monthly free sessions for the Women's Assembly two and a half years ago. And we just thought, you know, we'll throw it out there and see if we can get some people to join. And that community started to grow. And we have like 7,000 people that are a part of that Assembly Committee. We've done free sessions every month for the last two and a half years. And we started to see the impact of the musters, because we went from 8% to 12% to 15%. The last muster, we had 22% women. So we started to see the adjustments that we made pay off in like more women coming to events and recognizing that this content was for them. And then as a part of that, we started to get sort of a call to action, or a request of,

• 2:41:41Speaker 01

  hey, we'd like to do an all women's event. There's also a lot of men in our network that are like, hey, how do I introduce this to my daughter or wife? Coming for me, it's not a great thing when you're like, hey, you should really read this book on taking ownership. And so the Women's Assembly has been

• 2:41:57Jocko Willink?

  Written by a meanderthals. Written by two meanderthals.

• 2:42:01Speaker 01

  And it's been a really cool way to kind of introduce that in a in a more subtle way. And so we started thinking about doing this live event with women who want to come learn about leadership in business and life. And as a part of that, we're going to obviously teach the principles of extreme ownership. But we're also going to bring in some women who have interesting stories, interesting perspectives to share just some things that are more relevant to women in leadership.

• 2:42:26Jocko Willink?

  When does it take place?

• 2:42:28Speaker 01

  September 14 through 16 in Phoenix.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  In Phoenix, Arizona?

• 2:42:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:42:34Jocko Willink?

  And it's who is it? Who's like, give me an example of, are you going to go over the fundamental principles that we talk about? Do you have anyone else going to speak?

• 2:42:43Speaker 01

  Yep. So myself and Corey Mize and Meg Miller from the Echelon Front team, we all are the the women leadership instructors at Echelon Front. So we are going to focus on introducing and talking through, just like you would get at the muster, the core of our content, the foundations of extreme ownership and these principles. And then inserted throughout the session, we have some cool guests coming to share in their unique perspectives, a lot of which are very closely tied to what we teach as well. So Ryan Mannion, who's been on this podcast before, she's going to come and give a keynote. Debbie Lee, Mama Lee is coming to talk. And then we've got this wonderful Speaker Latonya Sumter, who has now been on the Women's Assembly Free Sessions twice,

• 2:43:24Speaker 01

  and just has this incredibly charismatic personality and people are drawn to. And she actually, we brought her back from request. So we're bringing in a couple of different people. We're bringing in a panel of Echelon Front wives. So we've got Helen Willink locked in to do this, which I thought was gonna be.

• 2:43:42Jocko Willink?

  I don't know how you pulled that off, honestly.

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  To her credit, she was like, yes. She didn't even fight me on it. I thought I was gonna have to really go to bat for this. But Helen and myself and Iris Gardner, who's amazing, and then Amanda Danelle, and hopefully Cody's wife Paige, we're gonna do a panel on sort of the military wives perspective as like the wives of Echelon Front, all of whom have been on the home front side of the combat that you guys were serving and just have a unique perspective to answer questions and help women understand how to cultivate some of that emotional independence and talk through these leadership principles from our perspective, both in the military and now at Echelon Front.

• 2:44:22Jocko Willink?

  I don't know how you got my wife to say yes to this.

• 2:44:26Speaker 01

  Dude, I was preparing for like this indirect approach. I had like the script in mind and I called her and I like laid it out. I'm like, hey, just hear me out. And I go through the plan and she was in her lovely, sweet voice was like, yes. She's like, I would do that. And I think she's, she would never come on here. She's made that very clear. Like, I will not come on this podcast.

• 2:44:48Jocko Willink?

  I asked her, I said, listen, if I write down questions and you write answers and I'll read them on the podcast, you don't have to come on, would you do that? And she's like, no. There's like, what else can I do? Right? There's nothing else I can do. And so, yeah, I was pretty surprised that she, because she's a very private person and she doesn't like any limelight and she doesn't like to, you know, do this kind of thing.

• 2:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good job.

• 2:45:17Speaker 01

  But people want to hear from her.

• 2:45:18Jocko Willink?

  I know they do.

• 2:45:19Speaker 01

  Because you're such a unique, yeah, and you're such a unique being that people are like, what is his wife like? Which I can attest, she is the, one of the greatest people I know. She's one of the kindest people that I know.

• 2:45:30Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:45:30Speaker 01

  And she's a total badass. And you wouldn't know it because she's so humble and so sweet. But I asked her to come and she agreed. And I, maybe it was the fact that it was multiple people on stage. She wasn't going to be by herself. And we're just answering questions. And I think she loved the mission of helping women be successful in their lives. And she had a perspective to offer. So she, she said yes.

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's cool too.

• 2:45:53Speaker 01

  That's the reason to come, just for that.

• 2:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. I kind of want to come. But, uh, the, you know, we also have three daughters, two of which are adult daughters. So she probably can connect to, to wanting to help out, you know, um, young ladies and with their, as they, as they go through, whatever they're going through and, and moms, you know, I mean, so I think it's going to be awesome.

• 2:46:17Speaker 01

  I think everyone who has agreed to participate so far, and we, we have more surprises coming, but a lot of that was, they loved the mission. They were like, oh, I get to go speak to a group of women who are looking for answers to solve problems in their lives, in business and in life. And I have an opportunity to not only teach and hopefully inspire them, but be inspired by the atmosphere of this group of people coming together, rallied around this mission of extreme ownership. So I am so excited.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  I think it's awesome too, the, the fact that extreme ownership is clearly, you know, meant initially for people that are in a leadership position, basically in the workplace. That's basically what it's for. But dang, if it doesn't apply to everything and every aspect of your life and the way you're operating and interacting with your family, for sure, the way you're interacting with your community, for sure. The amount of people that have talked to us, talked to me, talked to you and explained how they implemented extreme ownership.

• 2:47:19Jocko Willink?

  With their husband, with their wife, with their kids and it's a game changer.

• 2:47:24Speaker 01

  You wrote a book that was based on helping, I mean, one section in each chapter is titled, "Application of Business," but I learned really early on and it was something you said to me because I was dealing with, you know, a phase, my oldest was in a phase and I was struggling with that and I was talking to you about just some frustrations and you were like, "Hey, these same principles apply." And I reread the book and when I got to "Application of Business," I just simply was like, "Application of Home." And I started to recognize that this book was written for businesses, but it's even more important at home. And we see people crushing it in their business, taking these principles, applying it, having so much success, and yet they get home and they, they hit these barriers, they hit these

• 2:48:06Speaker 01

  walls. Because as you said earlier, your emotions and your ego is so much more involved that it's more difficult. But the payoff at home is even greater than what you could get at home, at, at work. And I've seen that with my kids, that when I do the right things, when I apply these principles, I see them model that behavior back. And there's no greater gift I could give my kids than teaching them and helping them understand this idea of ownership and this recognition that I can own all the problems that I'm facing and I can take ownership of solving those problems. No greater gift.

• 2:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, when they follow that example, it's incredible. I, this is a little bit tangential, but it's a little bit on point, too. I walked up to my garage gym the other day and I walked in there and my 13-year-old daughter, she's in there listening to Led Zeppelin and doing squats. You know what I mean? Bruh. Let's, you know what I mean? Are we in the game? You know, does that, you think that I didn't like get a tear in my non-shooting eye when that happened? I was like, "You having a good workout?" She's like, "Yeah." She gave me a high five. She's looking jacked. You see what I'm saying? So yeah, that, the other thing, I said this a while ago, I don't know what event we did, but we went to a jiu-jitsu

• 2:49:26Jocko Willink?

  place afterward and I said, "Hey, these principles from jiu-jitsu apply to your life."

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  And I said, and unfortunately, some people don't take the principles from jujitsu and apply them to their life. And there's black belts out there that are black belts on the mats and they're white belts in life. And they make mistakes that you shouldn't make. And it's the same thing, what you just said, like, there's business people that are doing a great job with their team, they're doing a great job with their business, they're doing a great job with their clients, from applying these principles, and then they don't apply them with their wife, they don't apply them with their kids. And it just goes, it's terrible to watch. It's absolutely terrible to watch. And it's, it sounds callous. It sounds callous to say, well, you know, if you, if you treat your kid like your employee, then that's what you should be doing. Well, actually, if you, if you listen to us on how we actually say

• 2:50:18Jocko Willink?

  you should treat your employee, which is you should respect them, you should listen to them, you should explain the why, you should, you should allow them to influence, like, all those things that we talk about, if you treat your kid like that, they're gonna be stoked. They're gonna be stoked. And so will the people that work for you. And by the way, this is another thing that's, I have to explain to people now, is like, they'll think there's a difference between the way I treat my boss, and the way I treat my peer, and the way I treat my subordinate, that I'm, oh, well, if it's your boss, you gotta do, you treat them this way. Now, listen, we talked about communication, I might communicate, but the way I treat them with respect, the way I listen to them, the way I care about

• 2:50:59Jocko Willink?

  them, up, down, across the chain of command, it's the same. And so, when you take those principles, and you apply them to your children, and you apply them to your spouse, like, what does it make sense to treat your children the same way as you treat your spouse? Actually, actually, listen to your spouse, listen to your kids, allow your spouse to influence you, allow your kids to influence you, treat your spouse with respect, treat your kids with respect. Now, listen, if they're four years old and they're doing something stupid, you can't let them play in the street. I get it. I get it.

• 2:51:30Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, there's some, there's some gambles you can take there. There's some risk you can allow for. Leif's got a good story. His daughter didn't want to wear flip flops across the cactus covered grass or whatever. And she's, you know, he says, hey, put your flip flops on. I don't want to. And he was like, okay. And she goes running across the grass. Boom. She got her feet fill of cactus or whatever they got down there in Tejas. But, you know, he, she's gonna get a lesson learned. And he's listening to what she has to say. And so when he listens, she's gonna listen more. So yeah, these things do work up, down, across the chain of command at work, up, down, across the chain of command on your pickup basketball team. And up, down, across the chain of command in your house.

• 2:52:14Jocko Willink?

  So utilize them. They're there. We are giving these away. We are giving these away. You can buy the book for 20 bucks. You get all the books for 50 bucks, probably. You can listen to podcasts. It's free. You can go to the Women's Assembly online. It's free. You can go to the First Responders online. It's free. Like, you can listen to this podcast. It's free. There's all kinds of, we're trying to give this away. I remember it was probably second or third podcast that Echo and I were recording and I had some nugget, some golden nugget of leadership. And I was thinking to myself like, oh, should I share this right now?

• 2:52:55Jocko Willink?

  Cause like we have Echelon Front and Echelon Front people pay money to learn this stuff. And if I'm just giving it away. And I made a consciousness and I said to myself, you know what? The best thing I can do is try and get this information to as many people as possible. That's the best thing to do. And that's what I'm gonna do. And I haven't held back anything, obviously. There's hundreds and hundreds of hours of this stuff, but to get this information out there, that's the goal. And, and so we're giving it away. The reason we're giving away is because we know it's gonna make people's lives better. And you get to, you get, you're on the receiving end of a lot of the people that message us about how it's helped them. Kids, adults, moms, dads, CEOs, frontline workers. It's everybody.

• 2:53:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've said this before, and it's one of my favorite quotes of yours, but if you do the right things for the right reasons, you will win in the end. And I think you've always kind of taken that stance of, I'm going to give this stuff out because our goal and our mission is to help as many people as possible understand these principles, learn how to apply it in their lives so that they can see the impact, but not just in their own lives, in the lives of the people around them. And one of my favorite things about what I get to do here, especially earlier on, is I was always the first point of contact when people would reach out and say, let me share with you how these principles have changed my life, which we have heard that, I couldn't even count the number of times someone has said, changed my life. And it was really them recognizing that they could

• 2:54:27Speaker 01

  take ownership of their situation, whether it was their health, or their addiction, or their family, or their work, or whatever it was that they were trying to solve. People started coming out and sharing these stories. And we realized early on, okay, we have to start using that internally to help propagate our story. And we can give this out for free, and it's not going to impact our ability to grow and build a business, because we have people here we have to take care of. That if anything, it amplified that effort, because we had people out there sharing in their message of, hey, I implemented ownership in my life, and here's the outcome of what happened. And it changed my life. It changed my life. And so I resonated with that. When I started getting this feedback, I'm like,

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  yes, I see that. You're totally right. It's a game changer. So, you know, we've said it before, but when you start taking ownership, and you really get to the point where ownership is your instinct, everything in your life gets better. Every single thing. And maybe not easier, definitely not easier. I think ownership is hard in a lot of ways, much more difficult than just taking the easy out of casting, you know, letting someone else be the problem. But it gets better.

• 2:55:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 2:55:34Speaker 01

  Because you can actually solve it.

• 2:55:35Jocko Willink?

  It's harder at first, and then, over time, it gets easier and easier and easier. And there's people that talk to us that say that these principles changed their lives. And there's also people that talk to us that say these principles saved their lives. I mean, I can't tell you how many people have told me that. What we do save their lives and what I tell them every time, which is the truth. We didn't save your life. I didn't save your life. The book didn't save your life. The podcast did. You did it. You, you saved your life. You changed your life. You took this information and applied it. That's you. We appreciate the compliment, but that's what it takes. It is on you. You can read this material. You can study this material. You can listen to this material.

• 2:56:17Jocko Willink?

  You have to take action with this material. Otherwise, if things aren't going to change. So keep that in mind. That is one of the keys. That is one of the keys to moving forward. Some other keys to moving forward, I think for you, um, you from a, from like a health perspective. You kind of get after it, don't you?

• 2:56:41Speaker 01

  I try.

• 2:56:42Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you run marathons, right?

• 2:56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:44Jocko Willink?

  You got like a CrossFit gym in your house.

• 2:56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:46Jocko Willink?

  Um, you do jujitsu?

• 2:56:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Can I get a hell yeah, please?

• 2:56:53Jocko Willink?

  You're a blue belt in jujitsu?

• 2:56:55Speaker 01

  Reluctant blue belt, but yes.

• 2:56:57Jocko Willink?

  You don't get a blue belt unless you're a blue belt.

• 2:56:59Speaker 01

  I know, I know. I've got to put my faith and trust in our instructor, but I still feel every day that I have to earn that. I have not in my mind earned that blue belt.

• 2:57:09Jocko Willink?

  But don't you do well competitively against other blue belts?

• 2:57:13Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I do fine on the mats. I think for me, it's more about consistency and jujitsu is one of those things that I love it so much, but it's, and it's the only thing in my life that's really just for me. Like I get to show up and I get a moment where my brain turns off and I get to just focus on what's happening and like, I need to try to survive this and I love it so much. But my journey in jujitsu is very much like a, I wouldn't even call it a roller coaster. Cause I'm not like, it's like I'm, I'm on the bus and I'm going and it's going great. And then I get off the bus and I wait and I go like three, four months sometimes before I get back in the gym. Because if there's one thing when I have, you know, implementing prioritize and execute,

• 2:57:56Speaker 01

  if there's one thing that I need to get off my plate in order to focus on Echelon Front and my family, which are the two main priorities, it's the easiest thing to put on the back burner. And then what happens is I look at the week and I'm like, well, I can only train once this week. And then I convince myself that like, is it really worth it to go the one time? And then all of a sudden it's been three weeks and now I'm dealing with like, kind of the ego of like, I have to walk back in the gym and tell Gustavo like, hey, I'm back. So I do that a lot. I kind of go in and out. And so when I got my blue belt, I was like, I really feel like I need to be a lot more consistent before you can pass this off to me. And so he did the right thing though, because it's fueled the sense of like, all right, now I gotta earn it. Like if he's gonna give this to me, I want to, I don't want to let him down.

• 2:58:41Speaker 01

  I've gotta actually show up and earn it. So it might be an ebb and flow. It might be a long journey before I get to, you know, where I don't even, I don't even know if black belt's in like my purview. Like it'll be a long journey as a blue belt and it may take me a while to get there, but it's just a matter of just showing up to your point earlier and just like walking through the door. And every time I do it, after a stint of being out, I like walk back in and I'm like, what am I doing? Like I miss this so much. It is, it's such an amazing sport. Every woman should go try a jujitsu class.

• 2:59:12Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 2:59:13Speaker 01

  They should.

• 2:59:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was chuckling the other day because I got a text at 10 o'clock at night that said like, hey, Choco, I was just at this jujitsu class and the instructor said that if they're just totally, you're in a bad, really bad situation, what I do is survive, what was it? Survive? And then stabilize and then advance. Okay, yeah. Survive?

• 2:59:37Speaker 01

  I was struggling. I was struggling with a particular position and I was, it was five minute rounds, just back to back to back and I was getting my ass handed to me. And I was like, all right. So I went over to one of the black belts, Randy, and I was like, hey, I'm really struggling on this position. What advice can you give me? And he gave me something like tactical to do. And then he was like, listen, I think about jujitsu as survive, defend, advance. And you're constantly going back and forth in those things. So you might survive and then you get a chance to now defend the move. And then something happens and they make a shift and you have to go back to survival. And I started thinking about it as just life. Like that's how we manage. Sometimes chaotic things are happening and Your first instinct is you just have to survive this. Then you get to a safe space.

• 3:00:19Speaker 01

  Now you can start to defend and make a position and start, you know, in jujitsu shrimping out or doing little movements to try to get yourself in a better position. And then, once you've defended properly, you can now advance and actually solve the problem. And I tried it in the next five minute round and he was totally right. Like, I just kept thinking, okay, survive, protect my neck. Now I gotta defend, hands on the hip, let's do this. And now I've got to advance, I can actually sweep and get into a better position. So, it was a, it just proved the point that you've always made, that the lessons in jujitsu apply so well in leadership. They're, it's so connected.

• 3:00:54Jocko Willink?

  When did you start training?

• 3:00:56Speaker 01

  Um, it's probably been four years.

• 3:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Was that when you got to Virginia?

• 3:01:00Speaker 01

  No, I started in Seattle at a women's, it was a women's only.

• 3:01:04Jocko Willink?

  So, we had to get you in the door.

• 3:01:06Speaker 01

  Yep, and I found a community there and just loved it. And then I started doing the coed classes there. And then I moved to Virginia Beach and I called you and I was like, hey, what gym should I go to? And you were like, Gustavo Machado's, hands down. So, I showed up there and I've been training. I mean, it was COVID, so it was a little bit of a weird time, but I've been training there for three years, on and off.

• 3:01:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there you go. Awesome. And that's just a little message for everybody, for everybody, even everyone at this table. If a little time goes by and you haven't gotten on the mats of justice, go get back on the mats of justice, right? We all learned that lesson. We all learned that lesson. You gotta take some licks. I bet you the ego has them, has a lot of victories in jujitsu.

• 3:01:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, the ego has defeated more people in jujitsu than anybody else. More than Hicks and Gracie. You know what I'm saying?

• 3:01:56Speaker 02

  I do know what you're saying.

• 3:01:57Jocko Willink?

  Because the ego's like, well, if you go in there today, you know, that guy might be there and he might tap you out because you haven't been trained. Like, that's, that happens legitimately. People go, people literally have that conversation in their head and they go, I'm not gonna train today. I'm just not gonna go. And then, and then next week, or the next day, you know what they're doing? Not gonna go today. And it just builds up. You gotta just bite the bullet, man.

• 3:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the most comment, I, I don't know if this is what, particularly what you meant, but let's say, especially... Whether you get a blue belt or whatever your belt is, right? Let's say you take a month off or two months, months off. And then you're like, shoot, if I go back tomorrow, I'm gonna be a step behind. And everyone's gonna know that I'm not really that good of a blue belt. And then you're like, so I just won't go. Then another month passed, now you're like even one step in your mind mentally, right? Meanwhile, everyone in class, they don't care. They don't care at all. In fact, they're happy to see you, to be honest with you. They're like, oh, you're back, okay, you know, whatever.

• 3:02:50Jocko Willink?

  They wanna tap you out.

• 3:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's always the case, though. That's the thing.

• 3:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Nothing changed.

• 3:02:54Speaker 02

  That doesn't, yet, nothing changed.

• 3:02:56Speaker 01

  There's a girl in my gym now, and she, when we first started, we were both white belts at Gustavos. And she was a beast, and I loved training with her. She's just such a fun partner, cuz she's tough and she's hard, but she's a good partner. And I started doing what I do, which is I'm in and out, and she just stayed with it. And so I'm watching her on social all the time. She's competing now, she's dominating, and she's just a force of nature. And she has just been so consistent in the last two and a half years, where I've been like, hard, going hard for a month and then out for two months, and no one sees me. And there, it's total ego, cuz I like look at her and I'm like, man, like, we were at the same level two years ago, and now she, I mean, she's a purple belt and she could just, she, she toys with me, you know? I'm surviving the entire round.

• 3:03:40Speaker 01

  But every time I show up, she is like, hey, girl, what's up? Like, where you been? Like, how you doing? And she gives me, you know, she's just so polite. And it, again, it's just like, it brings me back to, no one cares. They're just glad you're here.

• 3:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's how egocentric we all are. We all think when we walk in the gym that everyone's looking at us. Just like, you know, you, oh, I'm gonna look stupid if I do this. It's like, no, I'm gonna look, from a leadership perspective, like, oh, I'm gonna look stupid if I ask a question, or if I admit that I don't know how to conduct this project. If I admit that, everyone's gonna think, no. People be like, oh, yeah, cool, no big deal, here's, you know.

• 3:04:16Speaker 01

  Welcome back.

• 3:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, welcome back, no big deal, we move on. And how many marathons have you run? Have you just run one?

• 3:04:22Speaker 01

  No, I did.

• 3:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 3:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really, I hate, I hate running. I hate running. So no one should be impressed with me. My first, my first marathon, you know, Flynn did it and he didn't train. I trained hard, like hardcore. And we ran the Marine Corps Marathon and it was, it was for Team Brendan. So this is a year after he died. So I'm like, all right, I gotta like step my game up. And I trained for this thing. And, you know, Flynn finishes and I think he finished in like 410 or something without, without training at all. And he was like disappointed in himself and he's like, man, this thing is humbling. Like I had old people beating me. I had like women beating me. And he's like thinking he, you know, it was just a humbling experience. And I'm like, hey, I, I just finished with the guy that juggled

• 3:05:06Speaker 01

  the entire race. Like, I don't want to talk about humbling. So I did that first marathon and it was awful. And then somehow I just kept getting trapped. You know, I met Jen Tarantino. She had never run a marathon and, and I was like, well, okay, I guess we could train for one. And so we started training for one and I ran another one with her. And then I started getting my dad involved in running, which was just an incredible journey. Cause I, I asked my dad to run this like Tough Mudder. And he's like, Jamie, I haven't ran a mile in like 40 years. And I was like, yeah, I was like, um, I was like, you could do it. Like we'll just, we'll run, you know, we'll start with a mile.

• 3:05:49Speaker 01

  And so I go and I pick him up and he's wearing jeans. He's wearing jeans to this run.

• 3:05:54Speaker 02

  Hell, yeah.

• 3:05:55Speaker 01

  And like he's running and my dad's kind of tall and lanky and he's running and I'm watching him from the side view like, oh my, what is going on? Cause you could tell he doesn't know how to run. Like his, it just was not a good situation. And we ran a mile. He thought he was gonna die. And then I showed up two days later. I bought him like legitimate like pants and a running shirt. And we go and we run another mile and then we run a mile and a half and then two miles. And we just start building up. And we do this Tough Mudder, which was 10 miles, but obstacles every half mile. So you don't have to run, you know, in its entirety. And he finishes it and you could see this sense of like total accomplishment. And so then I was like, hey, what, what if we did a half marathon? And so we did a half marathon and the entire race, he's like, don't ask me to do a full.

• 3:06:40Speaker 01

  I'm not going to do a full. And then we finished the half and he's watching the full marathoners come across and he got that little like, so I waited a month, just enough time to forget how bad the half was. And then we started training for a full. So we did our first full together, then we did a second one together. And then he, I moved to Virginia Beach and he started training with my niece, his granddaughter. So he ended up running another marathon with, I ran that one, but I only did the half with them. And my, he ran another marathon with my, with my niece, his granddaughter.

• 3:07:14Jocko Willink?

  So with everything you've got going on, kids, work, running a company, you still make time to do jujitsu, you make time to stay in shape. I think that's just freaking such a mandatory thing to do with life.

• 3:07:29Speaker 01

  You, I get so much more accomplished if I am taking care of myself. And I figured out a long time ago, the best way for me to be disciplined in taking care of myself and doing those things is by helping someone else along the way. So all of the running with my dad, like I would not, I am not that disciplined to get up and go train for that marathon on my own. But I was trying to help my dad accomplish something. And I was getting time with my dad that you don't really get as an adult. I mean, hours a week running with him. And then even with Jen, like when we started working out and we trained for our first marathon, it was helping her. Like she had never done anything like that. So I think I figured out that in order for me to succeed in my desire to want to continue to be healthy and do these challenging things,

• 3:08:12Speaker 01

  I've got to be helping someone else accomplish it because I'm way better when it comes to helping someone else than just trying to do it on my own. And when left to my own devices, I'm actually not that great. So. So I have to get creative and like create these scenarios where I'm like, hey, let's run a race and now I'm in charge of helping this other person and that becomes a motivator for me.

• 3:08:33Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting how it's so much harder to let someone else down than it is to let yourself down. Even like Jordan Peterson has one of those, one of his rules is like, treat yourself as if you were someone that you were trying to help. Right? It's that same thing. Like you wouldn't not show up to run with your dad, but if it was just you, man, you're in that rack, Jamie Cochran.

• 3:08:57Speaker 01

  I'm like, it's raining outside. I think I'll take today off. And my dad is one of those, he's the best training partner because you give him a schedule of like, here's the things we're gonna run and here's how many miles and what days and he sticks to it. He's crossing every single training run off that schedule. So you're not getting out of the seven mile run or the nine mile run on a Saturday because he's like, what time are we meeting? We gotta cross this off. So he's the best training partner to have. Find someone who's like, sticks to the plan.

• 3:09:25Jocko Willink?

  Sticking to the plan.

• 3:09:29Jocko Willink?

  Where are we at? Does that get us up to speed, Jamie Cochran?

• 3:09:31Speaker 01

  To today?

• 3:09:32Jocko Willink?

  To today? Are we there?

• 3:09:34Speaker 01

  I think we're there.

• 3:09:35Jocko Willink?

  You think we're there? Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 3:09:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'll rewind a little bit back to when you were in LA. You said the music industry wasn't good for you, for women, for what did you say?

• 3:09:48Speaker 01

  For young women, it is a difficult environment to be in. There's just a lot of pressure. There's a lot of scrutiny. There's a lot of self doubt, a lot of insecurities that you're dealing with. And it's just, you know, women already, you know, you have daughters, you've probably seen this. And I've tried to explain this to my husband, but there comes a point in, I think I would dare to say, and I know we're not making generalizations here, but I would dare say most women get to a point in their life where the world has convinced them they're not good enough, they're not pretty enough, they're not smart enough, they're not skinny enough. And they have all these fears and insecurities and they have to work through that. And so that environment amplifies that significantly.

• 3:10:32Speaker 01

  And so I just think it's, you know, I have a daughter and I think about her and how do I prepare her to the best of my ability to manage what the world will someday tell her. And my husband. Flynn is always like, no, no, no, that that won't happen with Charlie. I'm like, it will happen with Charlie and we just need to prepare her for that. And I got into that environment and realized very quickly that that's where I kind of reconciled with what the world was telling me and that I needed to get out of that in order to maintain my sense of security and comfortability in who I was.

• 3:11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 3:11:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that goes into the conversations we've had before about ecosystems and you get into an ecosystem where it's just, that's what you think the world is. And that's not, oftentimes, that's not very healthy. Whether that ecosystem is the music industry in LA, or whether that ecosystem is the dang Ivy League college in Boston, or whether that ecosystem is some business that you're in, or being in the military, there's people that, you know, they're in that military ecosystem and they they're stuck in it and they're doing things that don't make sense in their life, but they're trying to preserve their their status in that ecosystem. And people, that applies to all of them, music, anything. They have, you get in there and you're,

• 3:11:49Jocko Willink?

  you start judging yourself against this world and you're doing things that actually don't make sense for you as a human being, but you're trying to maintain your status inside that ecosystem and it's just absolutely terrible. And it's very difficult. That's what's, that's what I find very impressive about your story, is a lot of these things, people don't realize, like what you just said, you were in an ecosystem that was not healthy and you, as a 20-year-old girl, said, oh, I can see that this ecosystem is bad, I need to get out of it. That's a very challenging thing to do. That's a very challenging thing to do. Most people, they get in those ecosystems, they double, triple and quadruple down inside those ecosystems. That's what normally

• 3:12:29Jocko Willink?

  happens. So another great lesson for life is, that's why we talk about detachment. You've got to detach all the way outside of that ecosystem. And because that's what happens, people detach from where they're at, but they're still inside the ecosystem and they think, well, I just need to do more. I need to do, do, do this, do this even harder. And it just doesn't work out. So be careful of that. Look around the world. Look around the world. And you, no matter where you are, you're in some kind of ecosystem. You're in Silicon Valley and you think you need to be in the startup, or you're in the college and you think you need to do the good, uh, Internship with the big tech company, or you're in the AAA baseball and you think you

• 3:13:13Jocko Willink?

  need to do like, you can just pick the ecosystem. And if you, if your heart's not there and you're doing it anyways, that's where, that's where it hurts. Some people, that's what they're into, which I get, you know, I get it. But if your heart's not really there and you're doing it for the wrong reasons, it's not going to work out good. So watch out for that. Anything else echo Charles? No, that's it.

• 3:13:33Speaker 01

  I'll just say, I think that's what I learned when I was young by doing so many different things. One of the benefits of not honing in on one thing is I never got stuck in any of those ecosystems. I had exposure to different people, different perspectives, and going from sport to sport and music and plays and different, I just had exposure to so much more. And I can easily sit here at this table and say like, oh, I, I recognize this and I made a choice. But the reality is in the moment, that wasn't happening. It wasn't as clear. I had a lot of people around me that I could look to and say, you know what, I, what do I want for my life? Do I want that? Or do I want that? So I was lucky because I was at least aware enough to recognize that there were things that I wanted and I, I saw what those people were doing. And I was like, all right, I need to go down that

• 3:14:17Speaker 01

  path to get to that. And so I never got stuck in that ecosystem because of the people around me. But that's easy to do now, looking back through this lens of ownership of the mistakes or the choices that I made. But in the moment, I, those things were not instinctual. Like, it wasn't like, I got there and I was like, I need to get out of this. Like, no, I sat there for a while and dabbled in that and then realized, looking up and out, you know what, I don't actually want this. This doesn't like, this isn't who I want to be. So let me, let me look elsewhere. And I think, growing up doing a million things, I was more comfortable saying, let me pivot and try something different.

• 3:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which, this was foreshadowing conversation. I asked you, three hours ago, or whatever, like, wait a second, you were training gymnastics four hours a day, six days a week? That's an ecosystem. And it's a strong ecosystem. And there's people in there that, there, there's people in there, if you, if you ask a 12 year old gymnast, like, what is the ultimate thing to do in human life? They'd be like, competing in the Olympics in gymnastics. And there's a whole pack of them. And so you, at age whatever, 13, 14, looked around and said, huh, that's cool. But I actually want to do other things too. Like, that's, that's an amazing ability for you to have. And it's a huge lesson learned for, for anybody that's listening. Jamie, any closing thoughts?

• 3:15:35Speaker 01

  I just want to express in this moment, an opportunity of gratitude to you for the opportunity to be here at Ashlan Front. What we get to do here is like nothing I could have ever imagined. And the journey we just walked through, I'm always so uncomfortable talking about myself. I'd so much rather hone in on the principles and what we teach in these leadership lessons. But the truth is, the reason I feel that way is because these things have legitimately changed my perspective and my ability to take on problems and come up with solutions. So if there's anyone out there that's, you know, listening to this podcast or wanting to understand these principles, stop hesitating. Stop making those excuses and just start doing it and you

• 3:16:16Speaker 01

  will see your life change ahead of you as far as what you can handle and what you can manage and what you can solve.

• 3:16:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think what's awesome is, you know, my mind being open to the idea that the way you have a women's jujitsu class, you need to have a women's assembly. And I've also, I have talked to you about this. Look, there's a 13-year-old boy right now, a 16-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy. And they can look at Uncle Jake, Way the Warrior kid. They can look at me and be like, "Oh yeah, when I grow up, that's what I want to be like. I want to be like that guy. He looks strong. He looks tough. That's what I want to be like." And there's a lot of examples like that. There's a lot of guys out there that would, that you could take a 13-year-old kid and say, "Hey, you should, you should try and behave like that guy. That guy's setting a

• 3:17:08Jocko Willink?

  pretty good role model. Emulate that guy." And I think for girls, and like I said, I have three daughters, I don't know that there's that many out there. I don't know that there's that many legitimate role models for young women, for young girls to look at and say, "Oh, that seems like a really good path that that individual went down." And I talked to these, I told you that months ago. I said, you know, I'm looking at my daughters and I'm like, "Who, who are they looking up to? What are they, who are they seeing on?" Well, I see who they see. You see it on Instagram. That's where you see it. You see it on TikTok. You see it on Snapchat. Like, that's what they're getting inundated with. And I know that's not healthy. And look, there's plenty of bad examples for young boys as well, but...

• 3:17:52Jocko Willink?

  I think for you, for you to be an example for, I mean, for anybody of any age, but also especially for a 13-year-old girl right now, a 15-year-old girl right now, a 20-year-old girl right now that's looking around going, "Hey, why am I in this ecosystem? Do I want to be a part of this? What can I actually do? What are my limitations?" And I think you're living proof that there really are no limitations, that you can go out, you can take ownership of your life, you can take ownership of your world, and you can make things happen. So, thank you for sharing all of that with us. Thanks for sharing those lessons. Thanks for also, honestly, and most, maybe not most important,

• 3:18:34Jocko Willink?

  but thanks for your service as a military spouse. The families don't get enough credit. I can guarantee you that your husband, who I know, was less worried when he was on deployment than you were. Like, the families and the spouses are the ones that have to worry. So, thanks for your service there. And then, at Echelon Front, I don't know what the numbers are right now, but our growth has been phenomenal. And you are the person with the oar in your hand, paddling and making this boat move. So, thanks for everything you do for us at Echelon Front and the lives that are impacted by these principles and that company.

• 3:19:19Jocko Willink?

  So, thank you.

• 3:19:20Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for setting the tone.

• 3:19:25Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Echo Charles?

• 3:19:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:19:28Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of, you know, trying to set the tone, trying to live a good example, what do you think we should be doing? Jamie thinks we should be doing jiu-jitsu. We're gonna be doing jiu-jitsu.

• 3:19:39Speaker 02

  Well, Jamie thinks we should be doing kind of everything.

• 3:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, she's kind of doing everything.

• 3:19:43Speaker 01

  You gotta do it all.

• 3:19:44Speaker 02

  I respect it. It's true. Actually, you make a good point, man, because you don't really think about that, like, that ease of... Like if you committed to and how you said gymnastics, right Jocko? Where it's like, okay, if you're in gymnastics, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna go to the Olympics, whatever. And then it gets, starts to get hard and be like, man, I'm not even progressing as fast and all this stuff. And then you kind of consider, okay, if I don't do this, what am I gonna do? And if the answer is kinda nothing versus Jamie's over here, well, about, you know, 900,000, 999 other things, it's easier to kind of make that, make an informed decision, you know, on your next move.

• 3:20:15Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you wanna talk about dream killer? I went and talked to eighth grade students the other day. And I, you know, I was asking boys, hey, what do you wanna do when you grow up? 50% of them, I would say, named some kind of professional athlete, football, baseball, basketball, whatever, 50%. So I took the first one, second one. By the fifth one, I was just turning into a, not, not angry, but reality check Jocko. I'm like, what's your backup plan? Do you know what percentage of people actually make it into the NBA? It's a tiny number and you look like you're not gonna be that tall. What's your backup plan? I had to. And you know what? The thing is, no one's telling these kids this. No one's telling these kids

• 3:20:57Jocko Willink?

  this. And by the way, how much basketball can you practice? Tell me Echo Charles, how much basketball can you practice? How many hours a day can you practice?

• 3:21:04Speaker 02

  I think he caps at about 10.

• 3:21:07Jocko Willink?

  10 hours. So you got 10 hours, you're gonna sleep for eight?

• 3:21:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:21:12Jocko Willink?

  That's 18 hours. You got six hours left over to figure out what your backup plan is gonna be. So even if you completely committed 10 hours a day to making it to the NBA, you can still have six hours a day to figure out what your backup plan's gonna be. That's what I'm talking about. So you gotta have a backup plan.

• 3:21:28Speaker 01

  You have to have a backup plan.

• 3:21:29Jocko Willink?

  You have to have a backup plan.

• 3:21:30Speaker 01

  Because you don't know, you do not know what you wanna be in eighth grade. I'm sorry. Like, there is a very few people, like the Dave Berks of the world, that's like, I'm gonna be a pilot and go be a pilot. Most of us go the route that I did, where I'm like, I know what I wanna be. And then like, very quickly was like, actually, let me pivot. And you have to have a backup plan. And you're right, no one's talking to kids about that now, nowadays.

• 3:21:53Jocko Willink?

  It's, I realize that the kids, they don't connect what's happening right now to their future. They don't connect those connections. If they're lucky, their parents are like, hey, get straight A's. You don't really know why, but maybe you're gonna get, you know, Uh, two dollars for every A that you get and that ends up being 10 bucks. And so you can kind of relate to that. So you work hard. Most kids aren't like, oh, I know what I'm doing. We get straight A's. That's gonna be a good college. It's gonna be in a program. I'm gonna get a doctorate in this. Like, that's not most kids. And I get it that there's some kids that are out there that are like that. Cool. They're not gonna have any issues unless they over commit to an ecosystem that they can't quite get into. Because there's people that their goal in life is to get into an Ivy League school. And when they don't get in because it's freaking competitive, they don't know what to do. They break down. They have problems. But that's what we have to do. You

• 3:22:37Jocko Willink?

  have to broaden your mind. You have to just, well, one of my friends, actually, our friend, Brian Sargent, he, his, he asked his, one of his kids, um, he was telling his kid, like, you need to study hard. You need to get good grades. And he's like, why do I need to get grades? Good grades? And he says, well, what do you want to do when you get older? And this kid says, I don't know. And he said, exactly. Exactly. And when you don't know, and you get bad grades, you're just closing doors. You're just closing doors on yourself. You're closing doors on your opportunities. So when you can maintain good grades, you can try a bunch of different sports, you can behave well, you can not get in trouble, like, those are the things

• 3:23:18Jocko Willink?

  that are gonna open the most amount of doors for you that you can capitalize on somewhere down the line. Because as Jamie just pointed out, you don't know what you're gonna do, what you want to do when you're in sixth grade, or seventh grade, or eighth grade, or 12th grade sometimes.

• 3:23:34Speaker 01

  We're 24.

• 3:23:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, we just talked to another guy who was, who's at West Point in the engineering program. And he's like, yeah, second year at West Point in the engineering program, I realized I don't want to be an engineer. Like, that's, that's crazy. So there's a 20 year old individual that's in a military academy that is, doesn't know what he wants to do. So keep your options open. The way you keep your options open is by working hard.

• 3:24:05Jocko Willink?

  So make that happen.

• 3:24:06Speaker 01

  It's difficult nowadays because there's a trend now, especially with sports where like you're going to get your kid into the sport at three years old and that's going to be your only for focus and they're going to go to the competition and the travel team. And they're going to focus so much on that one sport. Well, what happens in high school when they change their mind? Or as an adult, they get injured and they can't do it or they don't make it. And parents put that on their kids.

• 3:24:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:27Speaker 01

  And I learned from my parents example that I'm going to let my kids, they want to, Nico decided six months ago, he wanted to try lacrosse. I was like, sure. And he started playing lacrosse and he loves it. Cool. Sounds good. And he may decide he wants to continue through high school or he may decide he wants to change his mind, but just give them exposure to as much as you can.

• 3:24:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's going to open up their adaptability as well. And adaptability is such a key component of survival in life. You know, the animals that survive are the ones that are most adaptable.

• 3:24:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:24:55Jocko Willink?

  The humans that do the best are the ones that most adaptable. That's what makes special operations good. So we're good adapting to the situation that's on the ground. So raise your kids so that they're adaptable, not so that they can do one random thing. Like, you know, hit a ball with a stick or do a double back handspring. Which actually that has come some.

• 3:25:18Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing to know how to do. It's also translates really well to a bunch of different things, but.

• 3:25:24Speaker 01

  Back handsprings?

• 3:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just the athletic capability, the explosiveness, the flexibility. Like there's a lot of positive things that come out of that. And there's positive things that coming out of hitting a ball with a stick too, right? Hand-eye coordination. But let's not make that the sole focus, as you just pointed out. Let's not make that the sole focus. Any point 001% that they have the genetic capability, the timing, the injury prevention to have every star in the galaxy line up that they can get to the NBA, the NFL or whatever. So just be careful. I'm, my dream killing monologue is complete.

• 3:26:00Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. But we are staying physically capable.

• 3:26:05Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 3:26:05Speaker 02

  On all fronts. Yes, you know, um, you know, longevity sake, capabilities sake, all that stuff. With that, we do need fuel.

• 3:26:12Jocko Willink?

  You need fuel.

• 3:26:12Speaker 02

  Clean fuel.

• 3:26:13Jocko Willink?

  You need Jocko fuel. Jamie, what are you drinking right now?

• 3:26:15Speaker 01

  Chocolate milk.

• 3:26:16Jocko Willink?

  Chocolate milk. How tasty is that?

• 3:26:19Speaker 01

  Tasty. Chocolate milk and orange go. That's a daily for me.

• 3:26:22Jocko Willink?

  That's your daily go to. When do you have a, when do you have a go?

• 3:26:27Speaker 01

  Usually for me, I know this is way late in the day for you. It's usually like one o'clock for me.

• 3:26:32Jocko Willink?

  When, when is Academy?

• 3:26:35Speaker 01

  It's right. It's right at the start of Academy. It's like one or two o'clock. Yeah.

• 3:26:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I like to have one around the Academy. That's pretty normal for me. Or like if I'm doing a presentation, I like to get that go together. And I'll be honest with you. And I don't know if this is cheating. I don't know what the law is about this, but lately I've been having a go on my way to jujitsu. That's sort of, that's sort of my thing right now. And I'm starting to feel like it's hyping me up in like a real kind of way.

• 3:27:01Speaker 01

  I've seen the videos lately. You look hyped up. Yeah.

• 3:27:04Jocko Willink?

  I'm hyped up. And then when do you have a milk?

• 3:27:06Speaker 01

  In the morning or post jujitsu.

• 3:27:09Jocko Willink?

  Post jujitsu.

• 3:27:10Speaker 01

  I don't eat breakfast very often. So milk is like a really quick, easy way to, to get some fuel in the morning.

• 3:27:16Jocko Willink?

  What I'm stoked about milk is you can drink it on an empty stomach and not like have your stomach go into a rebellion. Which can happen if you drink like milk, regular milk. Bro, you might get a rebellion on your hands. You might get some, some, some reactions that you're not gonna like. So we got milk. We got go. We got Jocko fuel. Jocko fuel.com. Go check it out.

• 3:27:39Speaker 02

  Yep. For all elements of capability. You run into a roadblock physically, boom, Jocko fuel's there. Save the day.

• 3:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Got you covered on. You can get this stuff out. Wow, wow. Bottom right. Cause look, we're under some pressure from the, from the.

• 3:27:54Speaker 02

  You know what bottom right means?

• 3:27:56Speaker 01

  Is that the Wawa like placement now?

• 3:27:58Jocko Willink?

  That's where we're at.

• 3:27:59Speaker 01

  Wawa's are big out where I am and everyone's complaining about it. And I've asked people, I asked them, I'm like, hey, where, you know, what's up with the Jocko Go? And the guy at the front, he's like, everyone keeps asking me that. Like he, he doesn't have an answer either, but you gotta find them. They're hidden.

• 3:28:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're usually bottom right. Yeah, the answer is that some of the big beverage empires came in and, and bought our slots, which look, they're running a business at Wawa. Good, good for them.

• 3:28:26Jocko Willink?

  But just know that your people are out there and they want that Go.

• 3:28:30Speaker 01

  But you put them in Harris Teeter. So anyone on the East Coast, like now, I don't have to go to Wawa. I don't have to deal with Wawa anymore. I can go to Harris Teeter and get the, get the whole, the whole kit.

• 3:28:38Jocko Willink?

  So Harris Teeter, Wawa, if you can find it, Vitamin Shop, GNC by the way. GNC, like that's nationwide, Vitamin Shops nationwide, Military Commissaries, if you're in the military, Hanaford Dash Stores, Wakefern Shoprite, HEB and Tejas. You people in Tejas, thank you. Thank you. I know it's Leif and JP for sure. They're going hot, but there's no way they could buy as much Go and Jocko Fuel as HEB's got and is getting and is selling. So everyone down in Texas, thank you for going, getting after it there at HEB. We're in Myers, we're in Harris Teeter, as you just pointed out. Lifetime Fitness, Shields, just went to Shields. That's a badass store.

• 3:29:22Jocko Willink?

  Shields, we went to Shields, they got the whole line at Shields. They're fired up. So also, if you've got a gym, if you've got a jujitsu academy and you want to have Jocko Fuel there, you've got a little CrossFit box, you've got some other kind of fitness scenario going on and you want to sell this stuff, go to [email protected]. We'll get you that wholesale account. And I'll be honest with you, you know, you kind of become a little bit of a crack dealer. I don't know if it's illegal or not, but you give someone a can, they're good, they're back tomorrow. They're back, they're training, they're getting stronger, they're getting better, it's helping your whole scenario. So yeah, check it out, jogoffield.com.

• 3:30:00Speaker 02

  Also, originusa.com. So Origin, right, all these, what, jeans, boots, rash guards, gees, all this stuff. How is this helping us? How is this helping America?

• 3:30:12Jocko Willink?

  Are you talking about you wanna improve the national security for your country, for your children and your grandchildren? Is that what you wanna do? You're telling me that you wanna actually help us win globally against tyrannical empires? Is that what you're saying?

• 3:30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:30:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, get yourself a pair of jeans from originusa.com. Cause we're bringing manufacturing back to America right now.

• 3:30:35Speaker 01

  And the best hoodies on the market.

• 3:30:36Jocko Willink?

  Best hoodies out there.

• 3:30:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is how good the hoodies are. So I use, uh, so I have the OG one, you know, the, the heather, like it's rip, it has two holes for me, like pulling it down over the, just the years and years. You know, when you put it on, you pull it down. So it has two holes in here. Sweaty, I use it only for working out. So it's not a wear around anywhere else.

• 3:30:55Jocko Willink?

  I'm like that too. I got a hoodie just for working out.

• 3:30:57Speaker 02

  I have two of them. My wife, my wife.

• 3:31:00Jocko Willink?

  Trying to one up me.

• 3:31:01Speaker 02

  Takes them and wears them, my workout thing. And you know, like, you know, let's face it, usually why it's not gonna wear the workout gear. But they're so good. It's like, it's the most comfortable hoodie in this whole household.

• 3:31:12Speaker 01

  The best. I have one in every color, the, the heavy and the kilo.

• 3:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah. So all that stuff made in America, jeans, boots, hunt gear, we got the, the line coming out for training. Have you, you haven't gotten it. Have you got yours yet?

• 3:31:27Speaker 02

  RTX.

• 3:31:27Jocko Willink?

  The RTX line?

• 3:31:28Speaker 02

  No, you told me.

• 3:31:29Jocko Willink?

  You don't have it yet, cause it's been sent to one of our operators here that's gonna deliver it to you. But it's super good to go. Like, I'm so stoked. This is one of the first things I asked Pete for, was like, hey, man, we need, we need to make like a workout, workout clothing. This is what I do every day. Every day I work out. That's what I need. Every day. And so we got it. It's beautiful. So. RTX line coming out, all made in America, a hundred percent. So you can actually help your great, great, great grandchildren live in freedom. That's what you can do. OriginUSA.com. Go get it.

• 3:32:04Speaker 02

  It's true. Also Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko's Store, by the way. So yeah, we're representing on this path. We're doing everything. We're doing jiu jitsu marathons as the case maybe. I'm not doing a marathon, but nonetheless, I am representing on the path. Discipline equals freedom. It's true.

• 3:32:20Speaker 01

  So you have this shirt locker as part of the Jocko's Store and my dad has been a long time subscriber. And he wears, it's the only shirts he wears and he's on a road trip right now to Virginia Beach and he's two times now on this road trip and stopped. People be like, hey Jocko, yeah. Like he just loves it. He's like in the game. He is repping hard.

• 3:32:39Speaker 02

  Yes. Okay.

• 3:32:40Jocko Willink?

  He's representing on the path. Quite literally.

• 3:32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Shirt locker. New shirt every month. Different kind of design. Same path. Same representation. New design. So it's a good one. Jocko's Store.

• 3:32:52Jocko Willink?

  He's super proud of that.

• 3:32:53Speaker 02

  That's a good one.

• 3:32:54Jocko Willink?

  He's super proud of that.

• 3:32:55Speaker 01

  Echo waits this entire podcast and then like you pass it off and he's like, now's my time.

• 3:33:00Jocko Willink?

  No, you don't even, you don't even know how right you are.

• 3:33:02Speaker 01

  You can see him getting antsy at the end. Like it's almost my turn.

• 3:33:06Jocko Willink?

  If there's a podcast where he doesn't say very much, I have to like brace for it because I know he's going to get in there and just start, I can't stop it, you know? And, and so he's going to talk, you know, we just got to contend with it.

• 3:33:18Speaker 01

  You started to close this out and you could see him like.

• 3:33:22Jocko Willink?

  His face changed. He started checking his notes.

• 3:33:25Speaker 01

  He was like, you know, yeah, getting everything right. He's like, I'm ready.

• 3:33:28Jocko Willink?

  Get in the mental spot there. I like that. That's good observation. That's so, that's so good observation. It's so right too. I see you over there straightening your paper. Just getting ready to talk.

• 3:33:41Speaker 02

  That's a fair assessment.

• 3:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:43Speaker 01

  I should have contributed to this. I really should have your back on this Echo. I'm sorry.

• 3:33:47Jocko Willink?

  Cause you two, you two both experienced workplace hostilities from me.

• 3:33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. We're, we're going to do a podcast at some point, just sharing our, our shared trauma.

• 3:33:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll roll it out.

• 3:33:58Jocko Willink?

  I know we were on some group text with Ashel on front and I don't know what you did. I forget, but I wrote back like to the group test, text to you, trust was broken.

• 3:34:06Speaker 01

  No, I can tell you what I did.

• 3:34:07Jocko Willink?

  What did you do?

• 3:34:08Speaker 01

  It was like a call and I was traveling and I didn't set someone up as the host on, on zoom. So no one could join the zoom call. And like, I was like, hey guys, sorry. Next time I'll make sure that I add some other people. So you guys can get on this zoom call. And you were like, trust has been broken.

• 3:34:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:34:25Jocko Willink?

  Is he out there?

• 3:34:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, I do. And here's the thing, I, I see what you're doing. That's the thing. See what you're doing? Like, he'll go for like, the kind of low blow, not like full obvious low blow, because it'd be too obvious. You know, yeah, the subtle low blows. Here's what he'll do to me. He'll be like, hey, you want to come to this thing, or should I call Carrie? So it's like, no, I gotta go. I gotta go, because they can be like, yeah, like, basically count on someone else, you know, it's like, that can still, so I see what you're doing.

• 3:34:49Speaker 01

  Echo and I link up once a month, and we just have a support session. We just talk through the abuse.

• 3:34:55Speaker 02

  So beneficial.

• 3:34:57Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 3:34:58Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, you are correct. I'm ready. Hey, look, if people want to hear about the shirt locker, who's, who's gonna tell them about the shirt locker?

• 3:35:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:35:04Speaker 02

  You?

• 3:35:04Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of encouragement, he doesn't need any more encouragement to talk to me. Just FYI, for the, our people are, are not, are not appreciative. Uh, subscribe to that. Subscribe to the podcast. Um, subscribe to Jocko Underground. We do that podcast once a week. Generally speaking, we answer questions from you. We also talk about Jocko Podcast adjacent topics. They're very focused on your moving through life in an efficient manner. So check that out. Go to YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel, Jocko Podcast, Origin USA. YouTube channel. Jocko Fuel has a YouTube channel. Echelon Front has a YouTube channel. So we got all kinds of YouTube channels.

• 3:35:47Jocko Willink?

  Go subscribe to those things. Check them out. Good, good information. Psychological Warfare, that's been around for a while.

• 3:35:53Speaker 02

  Get you through those moments of weakness.

• 3:35:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, there you go. Uh, Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer. Books, I've written a bunch of books. You guys know the gig. Get them if you, if you haven't gotten them yet, especially kids books. Look, you might be, you, you might be, uh, uh, uh, beyond help.

• 3:36:11Jocko Willink?

  You're not, but you might think you are. But I tell you what, the neighbor you have, with the two little rug rats running around, getting crazy, they could use Uncle Jake in their, is Uncle Jake in the, in the lives of your children?

• 3:36:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. We love Uncle Jake. Yeah, the way of the warrior kid is like the best thing you can do for your kids because all the things we teach about extreme ownership are in this book and teaching it in a way that kids can resonate with.

• 3:36:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and for whatever reason, again, Jamie Cochran's the unicorn that obeyed her parents with like religious zeal. Most kids are not like that. Most kids are gonna be like, oh, I'm not gonna listen to my dad. What does my dad possibly know? You know, my son, when he was 10 years old and we're doing jujitsu and I said, hey, you need to move your hips a little further over on that arm lock. And he's like, no, you don't.

• 3:36:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, bro, I've been doing jujitsu twice as long as you've been alive. And now you're telling me I don't know how to do an arm lock? But Uncle Jake, the kids listen to Uncle Jake all day. And he's putting out some good word. Let's face it. So there you go.

• 3:37:12Speaker 01

  Adults can read Wave the Warrior Kid and learn a bunch.

• 3:37:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I know.

• 3:37:16Speaker 01

  I love those books.

• 3:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the simple, straightforward methodology in Way of the Warrior Kid is definitely, it hits, it lands, as Echo Charles likes to say. So we got a bunch of books. Check out those books. Echelon Front, you heard a little bit about it today. Jamie Cochran, the chief operating officer there. What do we do at Echelon Front?

• 3:37:36Speaker 01

  What do we not do at Echelon Front? We teach leadership. We do a bunch of different things. We do high level consulting, long-term programs with clients and helping them put together leadership development programs within their company, train the trainers, sustainment efforts. We do one-off like keynotes and workshops and different things that we can come in and help your team understand and get a baseline understanding of these principles. And then obviously, we have the events and experiences that we do, the musters, the field training exercises, the battlefield reviews, the council, now the women's assembly. And then we got a bunch of free stuff and a bunch of stuff on the academy. So if you don't have time, you don't have maybe the money to come to one of those events, or to have us come out and do training for your team, you can join the academy. And there's a plethora of free courses and then very affordable courses you can take to get really

• 3:38:20Speaker 01

  dialed in on learning these principles more effectively.

• 3:38:22Jocko Willink?

  Real quick, what is a trivia question, Echelon Front style? What year was the first Echelon Front video created?

• 3:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I know, but I don't know the year.

• 3:38:35Speaker 01

  Well, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, because early in the day, I made videos for Echelon Front.

• 3:38:41Speaker 02

  Okay, alright.

• 3:38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll, I'll pull out my, uh, it's so bad. If you saw it now, you'd be like, what the heck? But I made a video from like very early on. It was like 2014. I went with you guys to Denver and I took some footage on my phone and I edited it and like some, it was not good. Back in the day, it felt fine, but I mean, our first website I designed and created, I used Wix. And then you came along and you stepped up our game with video and website and you did a bunch of stuff for us. So I don't remember.

• 3:39:14Jocko Willink?

  That's so instrumental.

• 3:39:15Speaker 01

  I don't remember. I don't remember the first time you made a video though.

• 3:39:20Speaker 02

  First video for Echelon Front, Jocko.

• 3:39:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:39:22Speaker 02

  What's your guess? Estimate. I know you remember the video.

• 3:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the video, I don't know what the timeframe was, but I did a video, I did a leadership training. I don't even know if, actually, I don't know if Echelon Front existed yet. It might not have existed yet. I did a leadership training video for a company and Echo filmed it and.

• 3:39:40Speaker 01

  So you do win. If it was before.

• 3:39:42Speaker 02

  2010.

• 3:39:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:39:44Speaker 02

  It was actually me and Sarah, by the way. Remember?

• 3:39:47Jocko Willink?

  What was she in here?

• 3:39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, she, we were doing, she was doing like help.

• 3:39:50Speaker 01

  Was it in this room?

• 3:39:51Speaker 02

  In, on the mats.

• 3:39:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, what was the video?

• 3:39:55Speaker 02

  The video was for a teachers association.

• 3:39:57Jocko Willink?

  I remember, okay, but it was the same one. I thought we filmed, I didn't think we, I thought we filmed that in one of these, like around here.

• 3:40:03Speaker 02

  Nope, on the mats, in there, before Echelon Front existed.

• 3:40:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:08Speaker 02

  Uh, but I revisited that maybe like a year and a half ago and it's all Echelon Front stuff.

• 3:40:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:13Speaker 02

  Literally like to the language, everything. It was, it was before Echelon Front existed because soon after that, he was like, hey, we need a logo that, you know, kind of embodies this and like this. And I was like, okay, maybe I'll come up with something. He sends me a sketch. Made on like Microsoft. I still have that too, by the way.

• 3:40:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:40:30Speaker 02

  I'm gonna make a shirt with that logo on it. I'm only, I'm gonna wear it. Only me and K-Dog gonna wear it. We're like, this is the OG.

• 3:40:36Jocko Willink?

  No, make that into a Sherlocka shirt, dude.

• 3:40:38Speaker 01

  People underestimate or don't realize how artistic Jocko is. He's actually quite artistic. I get a lot of little drawings when he's trying to explain something and like, he wants to show me and I'm like, oh, that's actually a really good drawing.

• 3:40:49Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, the Epsilon front logo, well, there's a difference here because you're talking about Microsoft Draw. Whatever stupid ass program I was on trying to do this thing. But if you give me a pen, I'll do okay.

• 3:41:01Speaker 02

  Actually, you're right about that. There's, yeah, okay. Actually, you're right.

• 3:41:05Jocko Willink?

  But here's the deal. So we get done, we record this video and it's like an hour long. It's a keynote and it's, you know what you pointed out earlier, the principles that your husband had written down when he heard me talk about combat leadership for the first time. And you know, it says cover move simple franchise. Yeah, it's the same stuff. So I was doing this for some company. And the, the audio was off sync. It looked like a bad, a bad dub. And I go, hey, I'm like, hey, Echo, like the, my mouth is moving and no words are coming out. And then my mouth isn't moving and words are coming out. What it doesn't, and you know what he told me? He was like, no, no, no, it's fine. He was trying to tell me it was okay. Why were you doing that?

• 3:41:48Speaker 02

  Because, okay, well, this is literally what happened. So the thing was, first off, that's my first video that I got paid for ever in my whole life.

• 3:41:55Jocko Willink?

  How much did I pay you?

• 3:41:56Speaker 02

  I forget.

• 3:41:57Jocko Willink?

  Fifty bucks.

• 3:41:59Speaker 02

  No, we like split it or something like that. Like the, the gig. Yeah, you were, you were hooking it up. But, um, it was because the video is so long and I didn't use any like tools or, or no visual aids, nothing. I just was going by my own eyes and you know how you get hypnotized. But he was calling out, we were going back and forth for like more than an hour saying, yes, it is, no, it's not. Yes, it is, no, it's not. Yes, it is, no, it's not. For to, to the point where he literally came to my house to show me. Do you remember that?

• 3:42:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:27Speaker 02

  And then we found the one spot when he's like, hey, and you just gotta know, and he's doing this and he's like, look, and he goes.

• 3:42:36Speaker 02

  Thus began the, uh, what that caused the introduction of the slate.

• 3:42:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the slate.

• 3:42:40Speaker 02

  So yes, Jocko, Jocko was correct. He had to drive all the way to my house to prove it.

• 3:42:44Speaker 01

  Your first video ever was 2010?

• 3:42:47Speaker 02

  For money. Yes.

• 3:42:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:42:49Speaker 02

  Paid gig.

• 3:42:50Jocko Willink?

  But didn't you, didn't you, you did some, you did some, uh, victory commercials. Oh, that was after. Cause those are, you know, he's got outtakes of me like 15, 16, 17 years ago.

• 3:43:01Speaker 02

  Still talking.

• 3:43:02Jocko Willink?

  Still talking smack. The funny thing is, I remember that conversation about the timing being off. I was like, hey, I was kind of questioning myself, but then I'm watching it like, dude, this is one of those rare situations where the person that you're dealing with is actually just wrong. Like they're just wrong.

• 3:43:19Speaker 02

  It's true. I was like all hypnotized because you know, like you're like doing it for like an hour. I don't know.

• 3:43:23Jocko Willink?

  Had to drive to his house and sit down and show him that it was wrong.

• 3:43:29Speaker 02

  How to say audio.

• 3:43:30Jocko Willink?

  How to say audio and I didn't know anything. Anyways, we got the mission done. Mission was accomplished. So that's what we're doing at Echelon Front. You can now get trained by us. And, and what you just mentioned, we have an online training thing, extremeownership.com. This is the thing, you may not realize this. If you're walking around right now, or you know, you know people that walk around and they think they're really good at fighting, but they never trained before. And you can go watch a thousand videos of a blue belt in jujitsu, beating up a, or tapping out a big giant muscle head guy that doesn't know how to fight. So there's some magic in jujitsu. It's the same thing with this stuff. It legitimately

• 3:44:13Jocko Willink?

  is like magic that you can bring into your life. Right now, you don't even know that you don't know it. Right now, you think you'll, I know how to interact with my boss. I know how to deal with my subordinates. I know how to do that. Just like that big muscle head thinks he knows how to fight. He doesn't know how to fight. And he ends up losing. And, and looking around, think it was an anomaly, or thinking it was just because that guy. No, your subordinate isn't reacting the right way, not because of your subordinate, it's because of you. Your boss isn't responding correctly to your influence because of you. So if you want to learn these magic tricks of leadership, go to extremeownership.com. You will then have power. And the cool thing is you take jujitsu, chances are you're not

• 3:44:55Jocko Willink?

  going to get in a street fight. But there's a 100% guarantee, you're going to interact with your subordinate, your peers and your bosses. That's 100% going to happen. So be ready. Learn the magic and you'll be good to go. Extremeownership.com. Go check it out. Get a class.

• 3:45:10Jocko Willink?

  Learn. If you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star family, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate, you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And also, HeroesAndHorses.org. Right now, Micah Fink, what's the latest report, Echo Charles?

• 3:45:30Speaker 02

  It was a mountain lion, two mountain lions.

• 3:45:33Jocko Willink?

  Two mountain lions.

• 3:45:34Speaker 02

  Yep. And then one of them lost its head, which now belongs to Micah Fink.

• 3:45:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so Micah Fink is at his present mountain camp with the head of one mountain lion on a pike that he killed with bare hands, and he's eating the other one at the current time. So, he's up there helping veterans find themselves in nature and find their path. So, there you go. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs, Jamie's on the Gram, you're on the Gram, you're at Jamie Lynn Cochran, you're on LinkedIn, at Jamie Cochran. Echelon Front's on there, by the way, at Echelon Front. You're not on Twitter, are you?

• 3:46:13Speaker 01

  I'm not.

• 3:46:14Jocko Willink?

  How come I had to go on Twitter and you didn't?

• 3:46:17Speaker 01

  I remember your first tweet.

• 3:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know.

• 3:46:20Speaker 01

  I just, I don't have enough time to manage social media accounts, and no one's following me for stuff. So, we focus on Echelon Front. Echelon Front has Twitter and all those other things. So, we focus efforts there.

• 3:46:32Speaker 02

  Do you put out word on Echelon Front's social media? Is that you at any point?

• 3:46:37Speaker 01

  I used to be. Now, I don't, yeah, no, the team does that. I get to oversee a couple of things. The try this, instead of this, try this. That was me. That was fun.

• 3:46:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, those are solid.

• 3:46:48Speaker 01

  I put those out, I mean, with help from the team. We got a lot of responses from the team. So, we put those out every Monday, but the team does it all.

• 3:46:57Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember my first tweet?

• 3:46:58Speaker 01

  I do.

• 3:46:59Jocko Willink?

  What, did I write my first tweet? I wrote my first tweet?

• 3:47:01Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 3:47:01Jocko Willink?

  What happened?

• 3:47:02Speaker 01

  No, we, you, early on, were like, hey, we don't need social media. Early on, you were like, hey, you know, I knew what you were doing. Before the book came out, you were not super excited about this idea of going on social media. And I ended up getting with some support from Jenna and Leif to get all your guys' stuff and just keep it on the back burner in case we someday needed it. And then you did the Tim Ferriss podcast and you called me and you're like, hey, Tim's twittering about me. Or like, the way you described it, I was like, that's not accurate. But, uh, and like, I need to use it. And so we had these accounts set up, but we hadn't done anything with them. And so I was like, alright, I showed you how to log in and we're on the phone. And I remember being like, no, no, you have to use the, the hashtag. It's the number sign. And I'm like, walking you through it, like, line by line, and you tweet it.

• 3:47:47Speaker 01

  And then I call you back. I'm like, hey, it was wrong. You tagged the wrong person. And you're like, okay, hold on. So you delete it and you retweet it. And then I went to bed and I woke up the next day and you had like 200 followers and you had responded to a bunch. And I never once again helped you with social media. You just had it locked in. It was like overnight, you figured it out. But that first tweet.

• 3:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember making some kind of mistake and you're like, no.

• 3:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, because you sent it and then I was looking and I was like, he tagged the wrong person.

• 3:48:16Jocko Willink?

  I tagged like Timothy H. Feros in Kentucky.

• 3:48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I only helped you once and then you had it. And nobody touches your social. I think there's, that's a surprise for a lot of people is that you don't have a team of people running your social media. You post and you maintain control over that.

• 3:48:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Tim Ferriss told me, he goes, you gotta do this Twitter thing. And I was like, I don't really know how to do that stuff. And he goes, no, just, just get it and then I'll show you how to do it. He never showed me anything, Tim, if you're listening to this. But he did, he told me like, how effective it was for interacting with people. And it really is, you know? It's, it is kind of overwhelming now because there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of people that will reach out, but it is awesome to be able to just talk to somebody in Kentucky or in Bangladesh or in Australia. Boom, there they are. You can talk to them. It's pretty amazing. So we're on there. Jamie's on Instagram. If you want to follow Jamie on Instagram, she's also with Ashlal Front. Uh, so that's where we're at. Echo and I are also on there.

• 3:49:16Jocko Willink?

  Echo's at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. Just, just please, just watch out for the algorithm. Because it'll get you.

• 3:49:26Speaker 01

  Watch out for those fake accounts too.

• 3:49:29Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, those bots.

• 3:49:30Jocko Willink?

  The bots, the bots are crazy. I can't believe they-

• 3:49:32Speaker 01

  There's like fake Jocko accounts that are like Jocko with like no C like they exist.

• 3:49:38Speaker 02

  So you got the verification.

• 3:49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49:40Jocko Willink?

  But I don't have verification on Twitter anymore. Somebody told me. People like where's your blue check mark? And so I gotta figure that one out. It seemed like I just saw something the other day. Elon tweeted that you can have two hour videos now.

• 3:49:55Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 3:49:56Jocko Willink?

  If you're on. So that's, that actually might move me in the direction of paying the money. You know?

• 3:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause, cause right now the limits are like two minutes or something. And sometimes my videos be longer than that. So then I have to link you over to that. It's just a pain. So that's it. Anything else? Echo Charles?

• 3:50:16Speaker 02

  Negative. Thanks, Jamie, for coming down.

• 3:50:19Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:50:19Jocko Willink?

  Jamie, anything else from you?

• 3:50:21Speaker 01

  No, appreciate the opportunity.

• 3:50:23Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Awesome. Uh, thanks once again. Thanks for joining us. Um, it's awesome. We really appreciate it. I appreciate you and I would say you don't know how much I appreciate you, but I actually think you know how much I appreciate you. Because my life depends on you. So, and I know you know that. So thank you for everything you do for us. And um, also thanks for the military personnel out there tonight. And I want to say especially thanks to all the military spouses that are out there who take care of the home front so that your military warrior can take care of us. Thank you. You spouses, you families, you kids, you moms and dads of those service members.

• 3:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for your service and sacrifice tonight. And the same thing goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders. Thanks to you also. And again, thanks to your spouses. Thanks to your spouses. Thanks to your kids who take care of your families so that you can take care of us. And to everyone else out there from a leadership perspective.

• 3:51:36Jocko Willink?

  Let's remember the underlying core of Colonel David Hackworth's attitude as a leader. He never did things for personal gain. He always did things for the unit and for the soldiers.

• 3:51:55Jocko Willink?

  For the soldiers. That's your team. You put the team first. That is universal in leadership. And the same way it worked for Hackworth in Korea, the same way it worked for Hackworth in Vietnam, it's the same way it works for Jamie. Taking care of her team, putting the unit and putting her people first. And that is leadership. Leadership on the battlefield, leadership in business, leadership with your family, leadership in your life. Put the team first. That is how you lead. And until next time, this is Jamie and Echo and Jocko. Out.