65: What to Carry to Be Prepared for Battle and Life: With Leif Babin

0:00:00 - Opening "The Things They Carried", by Tim O'Brien http://amzn.to/2mglpaG. 0:05:30 - Weapons & Equipment we carried in Ramadi. 0:1230 - A hard lesson with Over-packing Equipment for Patrol. 0:28:04 - Training for adversity. 0:39:57 - How Adversity Training Payed off in Ramadi. 0:47:12 - Heat, Stink, and Moon Dust in Ramadi. 1:03:16 - The Strain of Being in Battle: Physical and Mental. 1:23:57 - How Complacency can Creep in And Kill. 1:36:50 - Reflecting on The Muster 001, and Thoughts on Upcoming Muster 002. 1:50:38 - 1:40:13 - Support, Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498533&linkCode=ur1&adid=1DKYGWXQBV0KNEZ3MZZX&, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid http://amzn.to/2n9k6I9, and The Muster002 http://www.extremeownership.com 2:22:18 - Closing Gratitude 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 65, with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near necessities were P38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, military payment certificates, sea rations, and two or three canteens of water.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  Together, these items weighed between 12 and 18 pounds, depending on a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations. He was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R and R in Sydney, Australia.

• 1:15Jocko Willink?

  Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the Village of Tate K in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed five pounds, including the liner and camouflage cover.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  On their feet, they carried jungle boots, 2.1 pounds, and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Baucher carried a diary. Rat Kylie carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  of the white man and his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated, because the land was mined in booby-trap, there was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compressed bandage, usually in the helmet band, for easy access. Because the nights were cold and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or ground sheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him onto the chopper that took him away.

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  And that excerpt is from a book called The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. And the book is about the Vietnam War and it's actually a blend of nonfiction and fiction.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  And part of that blend comes from what he actually experienced for real as a soldier in Vietnam in 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, 5th Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment. And incidentally, he was in the same division and the same area of operations where the My Lai massacre took place.

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  And then that reality is intermingled with his thoughts and ideas and stories that put together a unique perspective on war. But the book is considered fiction and I don't like to dig too deep on fictional books. So I'm not going to go too deep on this one, but I was having a little conversation with my brother Leif Babin, with whom I wrote a little book called Extreme Ownership. And Leif and I were talking about the things that we carried.

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  And tonight, we have the good fortune of having my brother Leif Babin here with us again today. And I figured a good way to begin talking about what we carried was to kind of compare and contrast what we did carry with what men like Tim O'Brien carried in Vietnam.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  Leif Babin, my brother, welcome to the show for the third time.

• 6:02Leif Babin?

  Thanks for having me on. Good to be back on again.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  And for those of you that don't know who Leif is, if you haven't been listening, or you, this is, if this is basically the first time you've ever listened to this podcast for some reason, is if you're not going to know who Leif is. Leif was in the SEAL teams with me. We were in the Battle of Ramadi together. And when we both got out of the military, I retired and Leif got out and we ended up working together. We have a little business called Echelon Front, where we work with companies and teach leadership and management. And we wrote a little book, like I just said, called Extreme Ownership. And actually, if you want to know about Leif, well, you can read Extreme Ownership. You can listen to podcast number 11 and podcast number 34. Leif was the first guest.

• 6:49Jocko Willink?

  And here he is back again. So,

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Leif Babin,

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  what did you carry? Talk to me about that. Compared to what these guys in Vietnam carried. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of similarities. There's a lot of differences, too. What do you think?

• 7:06Leif Babin?

  Definitely. I mean, it brings back so many memories, just thinking about all the stuff that we carried and with us and, and the burden of, you know, just the heavy, you know, we used to joke about stuff, body armor back, you know, and the body armor is just biting into your traps after you've had it on for hours and hours of the helmets, just the vice down on your head. And obviously, we had to train and prepare us that we, we could, we could prepare to have those things on for hours and hours on end and be able to deal with that. And in fact, I remember you being the only guy in the universe that actually liked a certain type of headset that we were using because it actually crushed down on your skull. And you're like, bring it. Good. Everyone else is complaining about it. You're like, you're like, I actually like this.

• 7:49Jocko Willink?

  Ah, that thing hurt my head. I would never have admitted it back then. But yeah, it hurt bad. It would squeeze your head in that awkward way. It was bad. That was a, that was a gnarly old headset. But. A lot heavier because the body armor we're wearing, how much did, how much did our body armor weigh? It was like seven pounds of plate and you got a front and back plate and then you got the nine mil body armor. And you're, that, that right there is heavy. And then the funny thing is we were able to make our weapons a little bit lighter over time, but then we've decked them all out with lasers and optics and everything. So the weapons, I bet you our, our weapons were actually heavier.

• 8:23Leif Babin?

  Definitely. And then like for me, um, you know, we, we had trained to carry those little 10 inch barreled. Uh, our, we have an M4 with a 10 inch barrel, which we use for, uh, close quarters combat, you know, house clearance and, and, uh, as you know, that was like the primary weapon and we get to Ramadi, I was like, hey, I gotta carry my 14 inch barrel, which is longer. And it's got an M203 grenade launcher on it. So you got a 40 millimeter grenade in that. So it becomes, comes a lot heavier, uh, based on that. I just, I needed that to be able to throw some 40 mic, mic down.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Now, one of the things that I know was, uh, I mean, we all learn a lot in combat. And actually Andy Stumpf was just on and, and I know you're friends with him too, but we were talking about the learning curve of how quickly you learn things. And I know you, you learned some pretty, pretty solid and, and rough lessons out of the gate, going on some big patrols. Right, right, right when we got there. And it's specifically about what you carried.

• 9:18Leif Babin?

  Absolutely. I mean, we had, you know, we had to focus so much on doing a, a roll up assault. We're loading up in vehicles. So you're not, you don't have to carry much on your person because, uh, we're, we're trained to, to drive up in vehicles. And so we get to Ramadi and of course we've done our patrols out in the desert, done that, that training and, and prepared for that. But we think we're going to Iraq and we're going to, we're going to drive in vehicles and we get to Ramadi and I mean, these IEDs are so dangerous and killing people. And so what do you do? You get out of the vehicle and you patrol, which means if you're going into an area and you gotta carry everything on your back and you gotta carry enough water and all the stuff you gotta have for the next 24, even 48 hours.

• 9:57Leif Babin?

  It's a lot of stuff and one of the, the first patrols, uh, I've done a few patrols on kind of the outskirts of town, you know, but, but that city center where it was Al Qaeda controlled battle space and US troops were down. dying almost every day in this horrible violent place. We've been on the ground for I think a couple of weeks in and and we were teaming up with a marine unit from three eight Marines, third battalion, eighth Marines, outstanding group of warriors. Who've been on the ground for a month or two prior to us getting there and they were, these guys were in the thick of the fight and they were, they had adjusted their tactics and learned how to go out there and and and conduct these patrols. And so we were teaming up with them to go into

• 10:40Leif Babin?

  an area called firecracker circle as.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  Firecracker is in, hey, this is a happy place with fourth of July or firecracker is in massive bombs.

• 10:49Leif Babin?

  As in, there's a 400 pound explosive in the road that's going to blow your vehicle 100 feet in the air and kill everybody.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  That was, that area of firecracker, they did not, as a matter of fact, when we, even even later than this, when you were looking at doing operations in there, and I remember sitting there with the Marines going, hey, what's the QRF situation? Who can come in to get us? And they were like, hey, look, we're not coming in there with vehicles unless they're like, hey, if if it's an absolute worst case scenario, and you got to get somebody evacuated immediately, but if you get a guy get shot in the leg and you can stop the bleeding, you're going to wait till nighttime. They they were adamant about not going in there because it was so bad. I mean, they patrolled in there all the time, which you're about to talk about, but nobody wanted to bring vehicles up in those streets. And actually, part of that reason is because just before we got there, they took a massive, the Marine Corps took a massive ID hit, and I think they lost four or five Marines in

• 11:38Jocko Willink?

  one shot, just just a total travesty.

• 11:40Leif Babin?

  That was right as we were arriving, we were hearing the stories about that and reading the reports on it and horrible, horrible deal. But that was, that was a great tactic that we learned from the Marines, which is, listen, the bad guys, they want to blow you up in the streets. They're going to try to target your vehicles. They're going to try to ambush you. So when you're in a building in a sniper overwatch position and you're behind concrete walls, like stay in that position. Stay in that position unless you have an urgent surgical casualty, you've got to get out right now or you're going to be overrun, only in extreme situations. So we're not going to call in the QRF because they're going to blow up the vehicles. And that's what they want you to do. And and they taught us some of those things that were, that helped keep our guys alive and certainly helped us perfect our.

• 12:21Leif Babin?

  Our tactics, techniques and procedures to be able to go deep into those areas and do some real damage to the enemy and most of the time bring our guys home.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  So, so speaking of going deep, how deep did you have to dig on that first patrol out with three Marines?

• 12:35Leif Babin?

  So, we're going into this area, I mean, we just, you know, these Marines have just lost guys and we're going in with Lima Company, outstanding group of warriors and, and, you know, we were excited to go in and work with them. So I've got a, you know, we got about a squad of SEALs going in, we got some Iraqi soldiers and we're going to team up and we're going to put in some mutually supporting sniper overwatch positions and remain in a, through, through the, we go in at nighttime, we'd remain through the day and we come out the next night. So, I'm like, hey, I'm going in there, we may be in there for 24 hours, it could even be longer if we get delayed and you know what, this is a bad area, nobody can come, come get us out. So I'm loading out for World War III. And, you know, my first time going in these areas, I mean, I'm packing hand grenades and extra mags and, you know,

• 13:20Leif Babin?

  our typical loadout was two hand grenades and I think I added a, I added like three or five extra hand grenades that I was bringing. So I put that in my bag, I'm bringing, I've got ex, you know, my typical-

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  I was actually laughing about this because we've done a lot, talking about World War I and they had grenade battles, like trench to trench grenade battles. And I don't even think if I was going into a grenade battle where that was my primary weapon, I would have seven grenades like Leif was carrying right into Ramadi, bring it. It's awesome.

• 13:50Leif Babin?

  So I'm getting, I'm getting ready, I'm getting ready to get some and, you know, I'm thinking, man, if we're getting overrun and we're loading up on it. So it's like one more thing, one more thing, you know, extra mag here, extra mag there. So, you know, I've got, I've got those extra hand grenades, I've got the extra smoke grenades, I've got, you know, I've got flashbang grenades, I've got, I've got, you know, four or five extra magazines in addition to like the seven magazines, you know, each of these are 30 round magazines we carry-

• 14:16Jocko Willink?

  You must have had 100 rounds.

• 14:17Leif Babin?

  At least 100 rounds. Crazy amount of, and then of course I've got my, I'm carrying my 40 mic mic, right? So I've got 40 millimeter grenades as well. And, and I was typically, you know, I'm loading that out. So, so I've got a bandolier of 12 of those things. I think I had six more on me in, in a pouch on my waist. So literally, I mean, I'm rolling in like John J. Rambo style. Ready to get some, so.

• 14:41Jocko Willink?

  That seriously though, as I'm sitting here thinking that must have been 100 pounds worth of gear. With your body armor, all those grenades, smoke grenades, 40 mic, mic, you must have had it at least close to 100 pounds.

• 14:53Leif Babin?

  I think, I think easy because then you tack on water, you know, that was the biggest limiting factor for us. And you know, and you got the, the summertime heat over there is just, just unbearable, you know, may hit 115, 120 degrees. And so here we are remaining over day, you're not going to drink the, the water out of the faucet, you know, unless you want to be, unless you want to be visiting, making some frequent head calls and having some, some dysentery for the next, uh, next few days, uh, and what that's going to bring you. So, um, so you gotta, gotta carry that water in. You know, we carry these liter and a half bottles that they had. I think I had probably 10 or 12 of those bottles too. So I'm like, I don't want to run out of water. So I'm going to be a bunch more, you know, that even thought I needed. So it's ridiculous amount of weight that I'm carrying.

• 15:35Leif Babin?

  And so we load up, I mean, I'm, I'm having a hard time even just, you know, picking this bag up, putting it in. So we load up in our vehicles, we drive, we meet up with the Marines, we're loading up into their big, uh, seven ton trucks that they took in. And they put the troops in the back, these huge vehicles and that, that was, they would kind of drive you on the outskirts of the bad areas, on roads they'd cleared. Um, and hopefully you were protected in the, you know, in those, in those vehicles from, from the armor. Then we unload, we loaned it and we unloaded from the vehicles once we got to a point.

• 16:02Jocko Willink?

  And just so everyone knows, these are, these are like Mad Max scenario vehicles that people, that, that people, military guys had, had put steel on the sides, you know, half inch steel on the side to protect from rounds, sandbags on the floor, you know, just put sandbags all over the floor. So it's not like when, when, when he's talking about an armored vehicle, don't think of a tank or a Bradley fighting vehicle. He's talking about a Mad Max scenario, big giant seven ton truck. It looks like a construction truck basically, but it's got big steel walls on it. And now they put sandbags on the floor to prevent from IEDs and that's going to war in the fun way.

• 16:40Leif Babin?

  Straight, straight out of the, the road warrior, definitely. And so we get dropped off from those, those vehicles and of course we're getting up and you know, as soon as I'm putting this thing on like, man, I'm carried. I can't wait to drink this water, you know, I can't wait to try to shoot some of these rounds, you know, get rid of some of this weight because I realized like it's crazy. It's crazy, man. Of course, you're like, you know, you don't want to run out ammo, but you also, you know, you can't, if you can't move, then it becomes even more dangerous. So we start to patrol and we're moving in the area and, and the Marines who'd spent time on the ground, as I talked about, I mean, their, their method of patrol, because there were a lot of enemy snipers out there, and even though it's nighttime, you know, there's still some streetlights and things like that. So their method of patrol is two man shooter pairs, and those guys got each other's backs. You got two guys covering

• 17:25Leif Babin?

  two different directions and they're holding on a, on a, on a street corner and, and then they're waiting for the next shooter pair that's up to the next block from them and they sprint all out, mad dash sprint as fast as you can go, as fast as you can run from one corner to the next corner.

• 17:44Jocko Willink?

  So it's like a cover and move, but it's covering sprint as hard as you can.

• 17:48Leif Babin?

  And some of those blocks, maybe it's 50 yards, some of them it's 100 yards, but, you know, and this is how they patrol into the city. So it's, it is your sprint, hold, sprint, hold, sprint, hold. And, you know, a few blocks of going into that and we're kind of moving around the city and this direction is like, man, I am smoked. I'm having so hard a time keeping up. And, and just my hats, these, these young Marines that are just getting after it, carrying heavy, heavy equipment and gear and the radial men and the guy carrying his, you know, his 40 mic, mic and they're, of course, they're carrying the two, uh, 240 Bravo machine gun, which is a, a belt fit machine gun that was much heavier than what, what our, our, you know, Mark 48 slider machine guns were, uh, for, for our medium machine guns. But, um, these guys were just awesome, just awesome trying to, you know, trying

• 18:31Leif Babin?

  to, uh, work with them. But I am, I am having one hell of a time trying to keep up with these guys. So.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  So what does that do to your, uh, what's that do to your leadership capability when you're tired?

• 18:44Leif Babin?

  Here I am supposed to be in charge of this thing. So I'm in charge of this, I'm in charge of my guys, you know, we got a squad of eight of our guys, eight SEALs and, and, you know, a dozen Iraqi soldiers. So, and. I'm supposed to be in charge. I'm supposed to be thinking about the bigger picture and be able to detach and all the things that we talk about sitting back and thinking about, you know, what's going on, you know, a half mile up the road and making, you know, radio calls back to the Tactical Operations Center, talking to you and telling you where we are and what's going on. And I can't, I'm focused at this point on putting one foot in front of the other. Just head down, one foot in front of the other and just try to keep up, you know, and here I am, the guy just having a hard time keeping up. And it was, it was humbling, humbling experience

• 19:24Leif Babin?

  for me. Here I am, a SEAL, a team guy, thinking I'm in shape and, you know, and I'm in an area where, you know, I'm not acclimatized to this kind of brutal heat. Even at nighttime, it's 95 degrees outside, you know, and there's no wind, no wind. And you think, oh, it's a dry heat in the desert? No. The river's like, you know, just-

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  It's not a dry heat. Not in Ramadi, it's not a dry heat.

• 19:47Leif Babin?

  Yeah, we were half, you know, half mile off the river. So it's humid along the river. So it was, it was horrible. And I was realizing like this, I got my ass kicked. I mean, it was, by the time we got back from that, it was, I knew I was going into a heavy like heat exhaust, like I was, I was hitting like the heat exhaustion point where it was like, this is rough. This is rough.

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  And that's the thing that's scary about heat exhaustion scenarios is it's like a cliff you're walking off of. And when you're getting close to the cliff, and when you go off of it, it's not like you say, okay, let me get a sip of water. No, you're in big trouble. You've got guys carrying you now because you, you know, if you get heat stroke or heat exhaustion, it's a bad, bad situation.

• 20:26Leif Babin?

  And it doesn't matter how tough you are, you're not going to be able to power through that, right? Physically, and so that's what, you know, that's a nightmare scenario for me that here I am, the leader, and yet if I can't keep up, if someone has to carry me, right? That was, that was just going to be a horrific disaster. So, you know, we went through that operation. We were out there for, you know, remain throughout the course of the daylight. We got shot at. We shot at some bad guys. And then we came out, you know, the next night and I got back from that.

• 20:54Jocko Willink?

  Were you aggressively returning fire to get rid of some of those rounds?

• 20:57Leif Babin?

  We definitely aggressively returned fire. Unfortunately, didn't get a chance to throw any of the hand grenades, which was a real bummer. But yeah, I mean, it was, it was a real rude awakening for me. Just being humbled by that experience to come back and think- I'm carrying way too much stuff. I can't, you know, it's, it's, sure, I don't want to run out of ammo, you know, and, and, but, but how much more dangerous is it for me to be carrying so much stuff that I can't even keep up on a patrol? I can't move fast when I need to, and if bad guys start shooting at us, I can't get my guys off the street, you know, or I can't move, run across the street or run up the stairs and, and, and so I recognize right away, like, I've got to, I gotta pare this down.

• 21:36Leif Babin?

  And I gotta carry just the essential stuff and maybe a couple of contingency plans, like, maybe I got one extra grenade in my, in my backpack. And maybe I don't even need that, you know, um, what do I really absolutely need? You know, don't want to run out of water out there, so maybe I got one extra bottle. Don't need four, you know, um, with me. And, and that enabled me like to, to recognize that I've, I've gotta carry only the essential stuff because you can absolutely get overwhelmed. And part of that too, if you're, you know, we were training, we trained at land warfare at the time, you know, what was, the attitude was, we do land warfare in the SEAL teams, so we don't, we don't wear helmet and body armor for land warfare.

• 22:15Leif Babin?

  So we'll go out and patrol across the desert and do that stuff. We wear helmet, body armor when we do CQC, close quarters combat in the, in the kill house. And, you know, here we are in an urban environment, like, gotta, gotta be able to do both. I'm foot patrolling and then we're clearing houses. So gotta have that stuff, uh, and, and you just recognize how you just cannot carry all that stuff with you. So that was the rude awakening for me. And the other piece of that was physical training. You know, here I was thinking I'm in shape, I'm a team guy, you know, uh, we train hard, we push the envelope, and yet, I am not in good enough shape to be able to, to perform at the level I need to in this kind of heat, in this kind of environment. You know, and after that, you know, you would see, now, it was a lesson not just me learn, but I, I saw so many of us.

• 22:57Leif Babin?

  You know, it, to you Bruiser, you showed up, if you showed up at like noon, uh, at the heat of the day, you'd see guys out doing tire flips, doing, doing, you know, sprints, running, uh, working out to get acclimatized, to be ready for those, those worst case scenarios. And we recognized that we thought we were good and we had to step it up to, to an even.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  I actually took one of those workouts and I would do it at, at Victory MMA Training Fighters, but the workout was, it was a. A dummy carry, because we had a big, uh, old heavy bag. So it was a dummy carry, carry it down and back. Sprint as hard as you can, then grab the tire. It was a tire pull down and back, and then a sprint down and back. And what that was simulating was like, okay, you might have to pick up a guy and carry him down, or carry him somewhere. Then you, you also might have to grab a guy and drag him, and then you might just have to sprint. But that was, we do that, like you said, we do that stuff at high noon, because, because like you said, everyone wanted to be acclimated for the worst case scenario.

• 23:52Leif Babin?

  And that was something we saw over and over again, even the, I, I, by the way, I remember you running the, I remember you running Dean through that, uh, through that training. It was brutal.

• 23:59Jocko Willink?

  He liked that too much, didn't he?

• 24:00Leif Babin?

  That's rough. That's a rough thing. Uh, good training, awesome training, you know, and prepare you for those worst case scenarios, but we, it was humbling. And we'd see, you know, we'd have great team guys, brothers who showed up, you know, in Ramadi and want to go out on patrol with us. Uh, guys who we knew were incredibly fit, great athletes, kept themselves in shape. Uh, these certainly weren't the guys that let themselves go. And we'd take them out on patrol and like, they'd be falling back, you know, they'd be having a hard time keeping up. They'd have, they had to learn that same lesson that I learned. Uh, and, and then you'd see them out there getting after it, you know, like training and pushing the envelope. Uh, and I think that was a lesson that, uh, you know, we learned some great tactics from the Marines and also got, it was, uh, my hats off to those young Marines that were,

• 24:40Leif Babin?

  that were getting out there in the thick of it. They taught me some, some, uh, some great lessons there that enabled us to go forward and, and, uh, really, uh, push, you know, push the envelope, going deep in areas that nobody could get into. Um, and setting up those sniper over watches and, and helping protect the soldiers and Marines that were building those combat outposts. Uh, but we had to be physically fit and we had to carry only the essential gear, uh, that we needed.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  And you know what's interesting? I'm sitting over here because we, you know, obviously we're in a business consulting business, but same thing that we'll see with businesses when they want to, they want to do the same thing. They want to build their infrastructure so much that they can handle any scenario that's going to happen. So they're going to hire three more people in case of this, and they'll hire six more people for that, and they'll hire four more people for that. For that contingency, right? It's like you saying, well, I might run out of magazines. So I'm going to put five more in my backpack and I might throw these four grenades. So I need three more. And next thing you know, these companies, they're so overburdened with, with overhead and with cost structure that the same thing happens. What happens? They lose their ability to maneuver.

• 25:47Jocko Willink?

  And so it's the same thing. You take that combat principle of carry what you need, think about it and don't carry too much. And you apply that to the business world. If you don't need to bring that extra person on board and you can get away with a contractor for a little while, or you can pay somebody some overtime, do that until you have to make that decision and you'll know. So.

• 26:09Leif Babin?

  That's something you actually taught me in Ramadi, you know, we, you can't, you had been a bad guy and had those good, the experiences of these capture kill raids and, and it always seemed like we're going in this house. We don't know what's in that house. We know, we believe a bad guy to be there and maybe he has some people. So, so I'm going to put 25 assaulters in that house and you know, I'm going to put as many people as I can. And then you're like, hey, Leif, I don't think you need that many people. Initially, I was like, that's crazy. Why would I not want to take them all? And then you recognize like 25 people in the house? There's a lot more mayhem. There's a lot more chaos. There's people bumping into each other and you're like, yeah, maybe, maybe 14 guys is all I need, you know, for this particular.

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  And guess what else? When you're on this target, where's the biggest threat? The biggest threat actually oftentimes isn't in the building you're taken down because you're doing that aggressively. You have a good force. The harder threat to cut, you know where the threat is. A building is, you know, 480 square feet or 1,400 square feet. You know how big that puts it. It's a, it's a finite area. Whereas when you're in the street, 360 degrees, that threat's there. So where do you actually need people to cover a threat that you don't know and don't understand? You need them in the streets. That's where you need them. And that's where we always went heavy on the streets and the assault team is a smaller package. And plus it's very easy and very controlled to be able to say,

• 27:29Jocko Willink?

  Jocko, I need four more guys in here. Boom. You got them. Doing the opposite. Hey, send four guys out in the street. We don't know where, but send guys out. It's, Totally, it's much more har- it's much harder to do that because it's a much less controlled situation out in the streets.

• 27:44Leif Babin?

  And I think for leaders, that planning piece, right, to think about where is that contingency? What are the likely contingencies that may happen? Uh, so yeah, keep that essential personnel, essential resources, uh, and focus. You can't plan for every contingency, and if you do, you're gonna overwhelm your team, uh, and, and it's gonna, it's gonna cause more problems trying, trying to solve every contingency than, uh, than it wouldn't otherwise.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. All right, that's, that's good stuff. You know what I'm do? Go back to the book right now.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. "They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to hump it.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  As when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha.

• 28:43Jocko Willink?

  As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, map, codebooks, binoculars, and a forty-five caliber pistol that weighed two point nine pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC twenty-five radio, a killer, twenty-six pounds with its battery. As a medic, Rat Kylie carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M and M's for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly eighteen pounds."

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbin's carried the M60, which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded. In addition, Dobbin's carried between 10 and 15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  They all carried ghosts.

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  When dark came, they would move out single file across the meadows and patties to their ambush coordinates where they would quietly set up the claymores and lie down and spend the night waiting.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  In that section, when I was reading that, clearly this is very similar to the operations that you conducted a ton of, which was, you know, they're calling them ambushes here and we called them sniper over watches. But the idea, you know, the idea for those of what was happening is very, very similar, you know? You guys are patrolling out to a location, just like you talked about, and setting up for a remain over day or for the night.

• 30:49Jocko Willink?

  How did you feel like, you know, you kind of talked about it, but did you feel like you were ready for that stuff? And,

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  you know, a lot of times, like you said, we were, we were, we trained to drive a lot and we ended up walking so much because of the IED threat. How did you manage that once you got on the ground?

• 31:11Leif Babin?

  Well, I think, thank God, we had actually trained and, and, you know, it's been a part of the SEAL teams since Vietnam, you know, going out in the Southern California desert and training in, you know, land warfare, you know, is that, that awesome block where you go out and learn how to patrol, uh, which we've talked, you know, you talked a lot about on the podcast and certainly we talk about with that's not front, you know, where it's man camp out in the Southern California desert in this rugged environment with just sharp rocks and, and cactus with spines and rattlesnakes.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  So, so, real quick.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Everybody in the world, when they hear the term Southern California, they think of Baywatch, right?

• 31:48Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  They think of Baywatch. We ain't talking about Baywatch. So when you go east from the coast in Southern California, you enter a place, places that have names like Death Valley, right? Those are the kind of areas we're talking about. We're not talking about SoCal, Baywatch. We're talking about inland, in the, in the deserts, the hard deserts of California. And it's where, it's one of the primary places where we train for, for combat. And it is, I always used to say that our desert training facility is where men become frogmen. Even though there's no water out there. It's where men become frogmen because it'll test you.

• 32:29Leif Babin?

  No doubt. And I, you know, thank God that we, we get tested like that. And that, you know, that, that kind of training um, is, uh, is something that's, that's kept SEALs alive on the battlefield and enabled us to, to accomplish some, some great things for a long time. And I remember that first shakeout patrol.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that was a good one.

• 32:45Leif Babin?

  The land warfare instructors, we're fired up to get out in the desert to train, get our land warfare on, dial it in, uh, our procedures and learn how to work together as a team and patrol. And we show up to the camp.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  It was funny because generally, I mean, I'm not going to say that you have this immense trust with the cadre, but like, you know, we're kind of friends with all these guys. We know them. And so they did a really good job of, of suckering us in on that, on that first patrol because they said, hey, we're just going to send you guys out on a little shakeout patrol tonight. And so a shakeout patrol in the SEAL teams means you're going to put your gear on. You want to see how everything rides on your body. You want to make sure that it's comfortable. You want to make sure that there's no, you know, tags that are wearing on you or anything like that. That's just a shakeout patrol. Get your little hand signals. Make sure we're all good to go.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  Get to know each other a little bit. It's just like a little, it's, it's basically like a little walk, like, like a little walk. I mean, if you think it's probably going to take a shakeout patrol, it should probably take, you know, hour, maybe two hours at the most. We're just going to be. You know, kind of relaxed mode, doing a little shakeout patrol. And that was the setup.

• 33:56Leif Babin?

  And it's administrative, right? So you're like, hey, let's work on this, it's that. So it's not like you're, you're in the game, acting like you're in the enemy territory the whole time. And it's, you know, so you're kind of talking with instructors and figuring things out. So, yeah, so they're like, oh yeah, just the, the land warfare cadre like, yeah, just, just a little shakeout patrol. No big deal. So we're just showing up, you know, no one's got their, I know, I didn't have my gear situated. I grabbed some stuff that I'd had from advanced training, uh, what we call SQT, so qualification training from, from like two years before that. Um, and, uh, I had these two canteens that had been filled with water, um, in that gear. And I don't think I'd emptied that water in like two years.

• 34:39Leif Babin?

  So there's probably a little algae growth and some nastiness going on in these canteens. So I just like throw it, I'll go shakeout patrol, you know, and we were rushed because they were, they were, they were like, hey, we gotta get this going. We gotta get this going. So we, we arrive, you know, guys are trying to get settled and like, hey, get out, you know, get your gear on, let's get over there. It's, it's so, so we throw our gear on and I throw on that gear with it, those canteens, you know, there's, there's two year old water in it. And we're, uh, and we're, we go, we take off on the patrol. And what we didn't know was that, uh, this shakeout patrol was, uh,

• 35:10Jocko Willink?

  Was a, was a man test.

• 35:11Leif Babin?

  It was a man test. And what, what, uh, a word we like to use in the SEAL teams called the mud suck, which is basically a sucker punch, right? They, they put together a patrol that was, it took hours and hours.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, it took the whole night.

• 35:23Leif Babin?

  The whole night.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  The whole cycle of darkness.

• 35:25Leif Babin?

  The whole night. And, and no one had, I mean, several guys didn't have any water. I remember, I remember Ryan Job had like no water at all. And I remember him like, you know, just struggling was like, hey, hey, uh, sir, do you have, do you have some water?

• 35:43Leif Babin?

  It actually came up, I came up to you, I think, right?

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  Because you said no one had water and actually I had water. I had water. I was going on it. To me, it was like shakeout patrol, of course, even though I was like, oh, it's kind of administrative. Of course, in my mind, I'm like, hey, it's a shakeout patrol, but I'm doing everything the way I would do it normally because I'm super hardcore. So I got all my stuff the way it's supposed to, and also I had the advantage of having done a lot of these trips in my time. So for me, I didn't, it wasn't trying anything new. It wasn't a shakeout patrol for me. It was just a patrol. But yeah, I went, got good water in my canteens, my camel back, and I was all good to go and I was ready for this.

• 36:17Leif Babin?

  And because discipline equals freedom, you were, you had the freedom to go out and execute with your water. Meanwhile, I'm carrying these canteens that I know are like.

• 36:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you say like you first sip, you spit it out?

• 36:28Leif Babin?

  I actually, I actually, I got so thirsty, right? That finally I was like, I gotta, I gotta drink something. And so I, I, I pull one of these canteens out. Again, you know, it's just nasty out. I open it up. I like smell it. I was like, man, it smells like a, it smells like a fish aquarium, you know? And I like just, but I'm, at this point, I'm desperate, right? I'm desperate, like two or three, four hours into this thing, everyone's sweating. So I was like, I, I take a big sip of this thing and it just immediately projectile vomit that up, that stuff back up. And I, I, I think I, I gave one of those canteens to, to Ryan because he was desperate, but I asked you for water.

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  How'd that work?

• 37:08Leif Babin?

  Didn't I ask you for water? I was like, I was like, hey, Jocko, do you have any water?

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, yes. I was like, yes, I do. And you said, can you, is your voice was scratching me the whole nine yards. You were dehydrated. You're like, can you give some of that to Ryan? He's, he didn't bring any water. And I said something along the not lines of, well, firstly, I said, no, you can't have any of my water. If, if you want water, you must hump it in. You don't, I don't hump in your water and I'm not humping in Ryan's water. That doesn't work this way. You bring in your own water. And then I, I think I said like, if he's going to die, I will give you some water. If he's not going to die, you will get nothing.

• 37:49Leif Babin?

  And he got nothing. So, and it just so everybody understands like it is, it is pretty, if you can't carry your own stuff in, right? It's, it's pretty taboo to have to have to like, depend on somebody else.

• 38:00Jocko Willink?

  And no kidding, at that point, we didn't actually know. I didn't know how long we were going to be in the field for. I mean, we

• 38:07Leif Babin?

  Yeah, they were keeping us in the dark.

• 38:09Jocko Willink?

  They didn't tell us what was going on. And they did a really good job of, they brought us into the hill, into the hills of Southern California where you're going to be going up and down terrain and the terrain is uneven. And they did this whole link up drill. So it wasn't like we, we were just blindly walking. It was link up from starting with swim pairs and then fire team link up and then squad link up and then platoon link up. And yeah, so we, the, the future was very unknown at this time. So I, I wasn't, you know, thinking, hey, I'll just give a bunch of my water away. Cause

• 38:39Leif Babin?

  Yeah, you give all your water away and you got nothing and then you're struggling to keep up too. So it's, it's, it was a bad situation and it was,

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  Am I an asshole? I think I might just have like peaked a little bit, at least getting in the zone.

• 38:50Leif Babin?

  A little bit. It was, it was definitely borderline. But look, I, I think the reality was, uh, you were helping reinforce the lesson that you gotta have your gear squared away. You gotta be, and you, you gotta be ready for a contingency like that. Because that happened all the time to us. You know, we're really like, hey, this is going to be, you know, obviously we're in Ramadi and we're like, hey, this will be a 24 hour operation. Like, no, now it's a 48 hour operation. Now it turns into a 72 hour operation. We're going to, we're going to stay here longer than we thought. So you gotta have, you, you gotta be squared away. You gotta be thinking about that. And, you know, thank God we had, uh, such awesome, amazing leaders like, like Tony Affrati. You know, that has been on this podcast and that people love and

• 39:28Jocko Willink?

  Which is why we can say his name. Cause otherwise we'd name off all the other guys that were out there. Good, you know, the LPOs that getting after it, the E5 mafia in there running things. So yeah, it's, it's the whole crew.

• 39:42Leif Babin?

  And that's exactly, and just leaders at every level that were stepping up, leading their fire teams, leading their squad. Uh, and I think that was, thank God, I, I appreciate as, as, as much as that sucked, uh, and as much as people were complaining about that at the time, um, those kind of training scenarios were We didn't see it coming and it was a lot harder than we thought it was gonna be. It got us ready, you know, to, to, uh, for those, those long range patrols in Ramadi. And when we got there, like you said, we thought, we all thought we were gonna drive. And they were like, well, we can't drive. Man, that's the best way to get killed if you wanna try to drive into some of these areas. So park your vehicles and walk in on foot. Uh, and again, we, we, you know, we learned we only had to carry the essential stuff, but we also knew we had to carry some firepower too. Cause one of the things that we did in Ramadi was,

• 40:27Leif Babin?

  you know, I think oftentimes special operators can get a little spoiled where, you know, if you're going out on a mission and it's got some higher profile and you've got, you know, you've got aircraft supporting you and, and you know, you're gonna have all this, uh, you've got close air support set up where it's, it's just dedicated to you. You know, and here we are, we're, we're, you know, we, we had 40 SEALs in Task Unit Bruiser. So I'm leading a 16 man SEAL platoon and maybe a couple other augments, um, you know, with SEALs and, and our EOD bomb disposal technicians and Iraqi soldiers. And we're just one tiny unit out of 5,600 troops, Marines and soldiers of the, of the first brigade, first armored division brigade combat team. So, um, there isn't dedicated aircraft to us. You know, there isn't a QRF that's a quick reaction force that's dedicated just to us to come out.

• 41:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because on top of, you, you, you know, we had our unit. And just because you were out with your platoon in a firefight, you were not the only game in town at that time. There would be three or four other units somewhere else on the battlefield that were in a firefight, maybe worse, maybe not as bad, but there was, there was always someone that's calling the QRF or that needs air support. So it was exactly like you're saying, we, we weren't at the top of some food chain. We were just in the, in the food chain and had to learn how to mitigate that stuff by, so, so, you know, that massive loadout that you took and you were heavy, you, it's not like you said, okay, I'm not gonna have to carry this stuff anymore. You still had to, to bring it.

• 41:53Leif Babin?

  We, we had to make sure that, uh, that we carried our own firepower into those areas when in an area where we knew that the tanks may have a hard time getting in there to us, even if, even if the, the emergency scenario. And we didn't wanna be overrun, you know, 50 enemy fighters trying to overrun our position. And we only had, you know, eight or 10 or 12, 12 guys in this position with, you know, some Iraqi soldiers who were pretty much worthless when it came to, uh, to beating back an enemy attack, uh, like that. So, um,

• 42:19Jocko Willink?

  And, and by the way, there were many. Positions, small positions, sniper sized elements that were overrun and dispensed. Before we showed up, there was an element that disappeared and they didn't, they, they found their bodies months later. But you know, same thing. It was a smaller element of, I don't know, it was five or six guys in a sniper type element. They got overrun. They did not, no one knew what happened to them. And it happened to large fortified positions as well. If you remember some of the checkpoints that were well fortified and built up and they got completely overrun by, by, by moosh. And so, yeah.

• 42:55Leif Babin?

  This is my driving a big thousand pound VBID truck bomb into their position. Horrible. We had to carry all kinds of, that firepower with us. We had to carry it on our backs. So the belt fed machine guns, the guys carrying those, those, the machine guns that were going to beat back enemy attacks. Carl Gustaf was, was our shoulder fire, it's a recoilless 84 millimeter recoilless rifle that we use. And it's heavy, super heavy. It's great against enemy tanks. The moosh didn't have any tanks. So it was probably a lot heavier than what we needed. Our, our leading petty officer would just man up BTF and carry that thing in. And he figured out pretty quick though, that I think the first time he tried to carry

• 43:38Leif Babin?

  it in, he's, they were on a long range foot patrol and going into an area that was, this area was a rural area, a little bit outside the city. And so now, you know, we were used to patrol on the city streets in this rural area, MC1 that was kind of out east of Ramadi. Now you're talking about patrolling in through farm fields and flooded, flooded areas where you might be an ankle or knee deep mud.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  It looked like Vietnam. It looked like every, every war movie that you see about Vietnam. In fact, we used to call it Viet Rom.

• 44:11Leif Babin?

  Viet Ram. That's what we call it. And it was, it was, it was just like that. I mean, my first patrol that I went on out there, we're literally wading through irrigated fields through mud and, and wading through canals. Cause there's all these little canals are coming off the river to irrigate the fields. And, and there was some marine support in us. So we had, we had a Huey helicopter and a Cobra gunship, which are Vietnam era platforms. And I was like, Man, am I in Iraq right now or Vietnam? This is crazy. There was, there were people out tilling the, the fields with like a, like an ox.

• 44:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:42Leif Babin?

  I mean, it looked like something straight out of.

• 44:44Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was actually crazy out there in MC1, how much it looked like Vietnam. It was nuts.

• 44:49Leif Babin?

  It was nuts. And it was not anything that we'd expected to do, certainly. So, we just had to prepare for that contingency and, and, uh, and figure out a way to, you know, to operate in that environment. Um, and, but, but, you know, our LPO is carrying that, you know, carrying that big man, uh, rocket, uh, but he recognized right away, like initially he tried to carry some rounds in his backpack and, you know, each of the, I don't even know what this thing weighs, but it's, it's gotta be what? It's gotta be, I think the weapon itself probably weighs.

• 45:16Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-five pounds.

• 45:17Leif Babin?

  Twenty-five pounds and each of the rounds, because it's gotta weigh.

• 45:20Jocko Willink?

  The rounds are heavy.

• 45:21Leif Babin?

  Ten or twelve pounds, yeah. And, uh, maybe fifteen pounds, I don't know. But, so when you put that thing, when you load that thing, uh, initially carried it in, loaded, and then put it around his backpack and it just weighed him down, he couldn't do it. So, uh, you know, it was hard, hard keeping up. So, he recognized, I'm gonna carry it empty, I'll carry it in my hand, I'll put one round in my backpack that I can use, and then we'll put another, I, I always carried a round for, in my, in my rucksack as well, you know, that I could hand off to those gunners if they needed it. Uh, but that gave us some firepower to be able to, to beat back an enemy attack and we had to carry that stuff in on ourselves. So, it just, it took, you know, one or two guys that could man up and, and do that and our LPO was, was the guy to BTF with that.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you said if you needed, and you needed a lot because, um, you know, I don't know if you remember this, but you guys shot the six-month loadout of Carl Gustaf rounds in about a week and a half. So, and then we had to borrow a bunch from the Rangers and we actually shot their loadout too. So.

• 46:15Leif Babin?

  It was awesome. We actually got the cool airburst, airburst rounds from the Rangers, which was awesome.

• 46:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those were, those were effective.

• 46:21Leif Babin?

  What does that mean? Airburst? Airburst means that, uh, it explodes over the top of, so bad guys are shooting at you from a rooftop, right? Like, and, and they're hiding behind a wall, um, you could like, you could, you can, you can determine like how far they are and set a timer on there so it explodes over the top of them. Uh, so it's pretty devastating. It's pretty awesome.

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  We like devastating.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:44Jocko Willink?

  T U Boosser got after it with some Carl G rounds.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kinda advanced though, you know? Like, technology-wise? Where you can set how far you want it to...

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  It is advanced. It throws another kinda twist into, you know?

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  But it's, uh, it's good to go.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I didn't know it was like that.

• 46:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, they've actually had airburst rounds for a really long time.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  We don't hear about them though.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  I know. It's a little advanced in the civilian sector, I guess.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. It's pretty dope, though.

• 47:10Jocko Willink?

  That's good stuff. Alright, hey, I'm gonna go back to the book here.

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  Taking turns, they carried the big PRC 77 Scrambler radio. And interestingly, if you remember when Andy Stumpf was just on and we were talking about being new guys in the SEAL teams, in the 90s, we were still carrying the PRC 77 in our training operations, which is pretty crazy.

• 47:33Leif Babin?

  We carried it in BUDs.

• 47:34Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 47:35Leif Babin?

  We did it for our, our comm shots in BUDs.

• 47:38Jocko Willink?

  Taking turns, they carried the big PRC 77 Scrambler radio, which weighed 30 pounds with its battery. They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries, insignias of rank, bronze stars and purple hearts, plastic cards imprinted with the code of conduct. They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and molds.

• 48:25Jocko Willink?

  They carried the land itself, Vietnam, the place, the soil. A powdery, orange, red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces.

• 48:40Jocko Willink?

  They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it. They carried gravity.

• 48:59Jocko Willink?

  What a great description. I mean, that's just, and that's why, like I said, even though this book is, you know, part fiction and a blend of truth and fiction, that clearly is written by someone that was on the ground in Vietnam. And there's a lot of similarities between that

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  environment and the land itself and the atmosphere in Ramadi. What do you think of when you think of the atmosphere in the land in Ramadi?

• 49:28Leif Babin?

  Just listen to that a minute. It just takes me right, right back there, uh, you know, to, oh, some, no one could have been able to write that unless they'd been there, you know, unless they'd been a part of that. Um, and, uh, you know, what that was like for us and the first thing I remember about, about being in Ramadi is just the, the stench, you know, there was something, there was always the stench of something burning, always the stench of something burning. And whether it was civilians burning trash, because there's no trash pickup in this total war zone city, and you see these giant trash piles everywhere. And certainly there was the stench of that garbage all the time.

• 50:04Leif Babin?

  And, uh, but so they'd be burning trash and a lot of the burning was a burning vehicle in the street that got ID'd. You know, that was a, an explosion that went off, that was, that was a building that was on fire because the tanks hit it with a main gun round. And, uh, you know, or, or the bad guys had driven a truck bomb into a position and just, just smoke in the air. And, uh, I remember that, that stench of burning. And I remember the stench of the trash, the garbage, uh, and sewage, raw sewage, that was always a, a stench as well. And, uh, that kind of takes me back there. And the kind of haze in the air that you get, that kind of Iraqi haze.

• 50:42Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of like, uh, the, all those smells that you talk about. It's kind of like war is hanging in the air because it's fire and it's gunpowder and it's trash. And it's, it's like that smell is war in my mind. If I smelled that smell, I'd think we were at war right now.

• 51:00Leif Babin?

  That sometimes if, you know, sometimes you'll smell a similar smell or things like that, it'll just kind of take me right back to, to be in that environment. Yeah, the stench, I think, is of that, but it was, it was also a stench that we loved as well, because you know, this is what we dreamed about our whole life. And I remember Tony and I talking about that, you know, just, just, this is where we wanted to be, right? I mean, people in T Bruiser, our, our boys were ready to get after it and be a part of that and, and, you know, where else we want to, want to be than in that incredibly difficult environment, you know, this most dangerous battlefield. And we, we wanted to be a part of that.

• 51:42Leif Babin?

  So it was that, it was, it stunk, but it was, it was, it was a good.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I remember the first, the first big operation we did in the Mulab, and I'm rolling in there and it's, it's dark. And we kind of turned this main corner, and as soon as we turned this main corner, there's, there's tires in the street on fire. And, you know, so you, I could smell it before, but I was like, what's that? Well, am I smelling burning tires? And sure enough, we turned the corner and it screws up your night vision goggles, because now they're getting all bled out by the bright light. And, and then as the sun's coming up a little bit, you see the dark smoke. And I remember that, to me, I don't know why, but that to me was the switch in my mind, because, because there's, that was the first, because it was my first big operation, that

• 52:28Jocko Willink?

  was the first thing that I said to myself, though, though, those are the bad guys, though, the bad guys did that. They're here, they were just there, you know, it was like my first moment of saying that. And it's also very distracting and hard to see and all that other stuff. And, and I remember when I was running training, and we would do mount scenarios, my, one of my big things, you know, I'd say, all right, guys, how many tires are you going to put out to burn? And, and I remember one time someone's like, you know, we're not going to do the tires tonight. And I said, no, we're doing the tires tonight. Always set tires on fire. Let that be known because it screws things up. And I think it was just my own personal desire to be taken back to that place like you were just talking about.

• 53:11Leif Babin?

  Well, I remember those mountain areas and going out there with you, you know, when you're running that training when I was at, you know, when I was an operations officer, an executive officer at a SEAL team and it took me right back there.

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:22Leif Babin?

  It took me, the smell, the, you know, the, the stench, we'd hear the, the call, the prayer, you know, comes out and you'd see the graffitied walls and it was, it was so much like that and it was awesome.

• 53:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When you put your night vision on out in our, when we really got after it with the mount training facility and really did everything we could to simulate what the guys were going to experience, man, you couldn't, you couldn't tell actually. You could, you, if you, if you got transplanted, you wouldn't be able, because we did the, even the, because in Ramadi, all the, the electrical wires were all knocked down. So we'd string these crazy wires up just randomly in our, in the streets to make it look, because, because guess what? You'd be running and you'd get caught up in this wire and you got to make sure it's not an IED. So you can't just pull, you know, it's all these little things to simulate as best you can. But

• 54:08Leif Babin?

  Thank God you didn't have the rivers of raw sewage running through the streets. Every, every once in a while our guys would slip and fall down into, which was just horrible.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  I had one of my first deployment, this guy was walking and I don't know what this was, but we were just walking and all of a sudden he walked and he fell through, it was like there was a hardened shell. And he fell through this hardened shell right into a sewage pit and I was, because all the, I don't know what the shell was made of, but it was, we know what was under it. It was nasty.

• 54:41Leif Babin?

  There was a big metal pipe across, uh, across, you remember we called it shit creek. That was actually the official name on the map.

• 54:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 54:48Leif Babin?

  Because it was literally like a creek of raw sewage. And there was a big metal pipe and we often patrolled across this pipe. Um, you know, it was, is the one where you didn't have to jump it. You could actually just walk across. Um, and later actually, uh, some of the army guys had burned the grass out there and there was, there were IEDs all around it. We didn't even know we're there when we first patrolled in. Uh, but one, one guy was with us. He slipped off the pipe and fell into the, fell into shit creek, um, which, and now, you know, he's, he's got to be in that uniform for the next 24 hours.

• 55:19Jocko Willink?

  It's only a 48 hour operation. Don't worry about it.

• 55:21Leif Babin?

  No shower. Yeah. No shower for a good 24, 48 hours. That's good times right there. I think the, the one thing missing too from, um, you know, from, uh, that we couldn't recreate in that, in that mountain area that you were running. It was, it was so awesome, but the, just the heat, like the, the heat was overwhelming. And I think that's, that's what really got guys, even guys that were in really good shape, who, who were, you know, great athletes. Um, if you weren't acclimatized to that, did, did, it just didn't matter. Um, until you really got acclimatized, um, it would crush you. And I remember that going in, you know, even like I said, at nighttime, it's still like 95 degrees outside.

• 55:58Leif Babin?

  And, and you know, when the sun's coming up, there'd be a little bit of breeze, kind of early morning, you get a little bit of coolness and we're talking, it's like high 90s, right? But you know, it's going to hit 117, you know, for the high that day. And you're sitting on the rooftop and, and my, my rucksack is still, uh, covered with tar. Where, you know, the, the tar starts creeping out of the rooftop and just melting into your bag and sticking onto your weapon and your gear and your uniforms.

• 56:25Jocko Willink?

  Now I sweat a lot, like I, I'm a sweat. I sweat a lot as a person. I remember, but I remember one time, and it wasn't when we did cop Falcon the first time. But it wasn't when they had air conditioning in there yet. It was like in one of those inter between ops. And I was down there, you guys went out, you guys were working and I was in there cop Falcon and, and I had come down in a Bradley or in a Humvee, Bradleys are hot, Humvees are both hot. But, but then I got in the building and I was coordinating with, you know, the, the company commander and, and I'm sitting there. And now I'm not doing, now I haven't been doing anything physical. In fact, I, I think I was inside with, with my gear off, just with my body armor on, but I'm just sitting there.

• 57:05Jocko Willink?

  And, and I'm sitting there like looking at a battle map and it's just me. No one's with me. I'm just looking at the battle map. I think I'm trying, trying to talk to you. You're probably heading out in the city and you're going somewhere and I'm looking at where you are. And there is a stream of sweat. I'm not doing anything. I'm just literally sitting, looking at a map and there is a.

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  Of sweat coming off of my nose onto the, onto the battle map. And I thought to myself, bro, it's hot. It is hot here.

• 57:31Leif Babin?

  Well, and you were in the shade then and.

• 57:33Jocko Willink?

  No, this was, this was at night.

• 57:35Leif Babin?

  Oh, you were at night time?

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  Like we came down at night, you guys inserted and I was just sitting there. So I'd been sitting there for a and that's one thing that I, I always know this is the, the hottest time of day in the desert is when the sun goes down. I, I don't know if this is a true physics thing. If you're a scientist and you want to come back at me with the facts. Maybe I'm wrong, but let me tell you what it feels like. And I, I say this. The heat comes out of the ground. So all that sun's been beaten down the ground all day. The heat comes out of the ground and then the wind stops. And so it's just, that is the hottest time. It's true here in the Southern California desert. And it was true in Iraq that the hottest few hours was after the sun goes down, like the next two to three hours is the worst.

• 58:16Leif Babin?

  Absolutely brutal. On, on that, that same operation, I remember we were, we were running out of water. Cause we, you know, we, we were out, we had moved out 300, you know, 300 yards or so down the street. And set up in that big four story apartment building and uh, we were running out of water. So we had to do, so I remember we're doing a daytime. I was like, we, we grab a couple of guys. We had a stretcher and we have a foldable like Israeli stretcher that we, we open up. And me and, and three other guys are sprinting down the street. Cause we know there's snipers out here. I mean, we're right in the, you know, we're outside the perimeter and we're running back to where you were at the cop Falcon. And we loaded up a bunch of cases of water, some MREs, and then we're sprinting back. And I remember getting back from that.

• 58:56Leif Babin?

  You know, and that we did that at like, it's probably like two o'clock in the afternoon. It's literally like 117, 120 degrees. And I was, of course we had our gear on and we do, we're doing this 300 yard sprint, carrying a stretcher that probably weighs like 150 pounds. We were bringing enough water for like 20 guys and it was, you know, and food. And uh, it was, I, I don't think I, I mean, I look like I just got out of the shower.

• 59:18Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 59:19Leif Babin?

  Just sweating through all your gear and, and a lot of our Ipro, you know, there was the requirement, you had to wear Ipro. Uh, eye protection. So either like, like ballistic glasses or uh, and what guys had been wearing previously was the goggles that you wear. Uh, to protect your eyes. You couldn't wear it because if you had it on, it, it would be completely fogged up and you couldn't see 10 feet in front of you. And I was like, okay, I can protect my eyes or I can like get shot and killed or trip over something and not be able to get where I need to go.

• 59:45Jocko Willink?

  And you, yeah, cause you'd be completely blinded by the uh, by the, the fog.

• 59:50Leif Babin?

  And nothing where we tried to get the high speed ones with like the little

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, the fans.

• 59:54Leif Babin?

  Fan inside.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, what's about high tech? Here's some high tech. We got these goggles that had little miniature fans in them to blow fresh air in there.

• 1:00:03Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Jocko Willink?

  They suck at all.

• 1:00:04Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Jocko Willink?

  Everything sucks. Nothing works. Like windshield wipers, you know those?

• 1:00:09Leif Babin?

  That's what you needed.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  That was another little TB, TB bruiser saying, everything sucks. Nothing works. You know, because someone would say like, hey, man, hey, you know, this, this thing's not working. I'd be like, yeah, everything sucks. Nothing works. Deal with it. You know, it's like, oh, everything sucks. Nothing works. Next. We know that. It's a given. Everything sucks. Nothing works.

• 1:00:27Leif Babin?

  BTF.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Leif Babin?

  BTF.

• 1:00:28Jocko Willink?

  BTF.

• 1:00:29Leif Babin?

  BTF.

• 1:00:30Jocko Willink?

  BTF. And actually, we talked about the heat, but you know, we didn't talk about is the damn moon dust. Because, you know, he's talking about their, they had orange red dust. The moon dust in Ramadi was nasty and gnarly and it was everywhere. I remember specifically Corregidor was completely covered, which was the, the, the camp on the eastern side of Ramadi where the first of the 506 was there and we had a detachment of SEALs there. And when you'd go over there, it was just, it was, every step you took, there was a even trails that were getting walked on all day to the head or, or to the chow hall. Those trails that were walked on every single day, every, it didn't matter. Every time you took a step, there's a little cloud burst of this moon dust, this fine, fine

• 1:01:15Jocko Willink?

  moon dust that covered everything and it was all over the city too.

• 1:01:18Leif Babin?

  It was like talcum powder and it, it was, you know, those tanks would come in, they'd crunch up the concrete. So even if it was, even if it had been previously paved, now you're gonna, you got, you got sand, you know, dirt and, and, and it just, I remember it getting in everything. So we park our vehicles. I remember in particular at combat outpost Grant, you know, right in the heart of just south central Ramadi. Um, and it was patrolling out of there. You're in like knee deep moon dust. So, you know, now, and, and we're patrolling out into a sniper overwatch position, moving out nighttime and not only is it dusty and getting all over stuff, it gets in your weapons and, and you know, you have to constantly clean them and, and, but I, I remember we'd get to where we were going, you know, get in an overwatch position and you'd

• 1:02:00Leif Babin?

  Have to take your boots off and just dump out like a pound of sand of that moon dust that had gotten inside your boots. Uh, that it got in through the little holes in your.

• 1:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Little tiny, tiny holes on your jungle.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Wait, what is moon dust though? Just the dust that happens?

• 1:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's this fine, fine, fine. It's like Leif said, it's like talcum powder, but it's dirt. It's some kind of fine, fine sand. Again, I'm sure there's some scientist that's gonna say that what it specifically is. But as far as I'm concerned, it's moon dust. That's where it came from.

• 1:02:29Leif Babin?

  This is, we're not talking about like, uh, on the beach, you know, in Hawaii. We're talking, this is like, if you, you walk through this stuff, it's all over you. It gets everywhere. There's literally walking through it and there's like a cloud of dust coming behind you. It's so fine.

• 1:02:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, when a vehicle would drive by, yeah, when a vehicle would drive by, same thing, it'd be just a jai, you'd be walking and you, you're just breathing this moon dust in. It's, and it's nasty.

• 1:02:52Leif Babin?

  You blow your nose and it's just.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's brown. It's the color of the moon dust, dirt.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, like when you, um, you ride dirt bikes or something in a more of a dry area. I mean, obviously I'm sure it's way worse than, you know, in Ramadi, but same thing. When you breathe, you breathe it in.

• 1:03:08Jocko Willink?

  It's just dirt, you breathe it in, you cough, it's gonna come out. Yep.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:10Jocko Willink?

  Blow your nose, it's just that.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  That's just how it is over there. Just moon dust everywhere.

• 1:03:16Leif Babin?

  Good times.

• 1:03:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm taking us back to the book. They moved like mules.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  By daylight, they took sniper fire. At night, they were mortared, but it was not battle. It was just the endless march, village to village without purpose. Nothing won or lost.

• 1:03:39Jocko Willink?

  They marched for the sake of the march. They plotted along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking. All blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs. Toiling up the hills and down into the patties and across the rivers and up and down again, just humping. One step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic. It was anatomy and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage. The hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dulness of desire and intellect and conscious and hope and human sensibility.

• 1:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Their principles were in their feet.

• 1:04:32Jocko Willink?

  Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes setting fires and sometimes not, then forming up and moving on to the next village, then other villages where it would always be the same.

• 1:04:57Jocko Willink?

  They carried their own lives.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  The pressures were enormous. In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous, but which helped ease the strain.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Now, that, that section obviously paints something different than what we experienced because, and, and, and you can see what he's talking about. You know, you've got soldiers that don't know what the mission is, that don't understand what the strategy is. And, and you know, there's all kinds of books about Vietnam and, and at the highest, you know, we talk about sometimes how maybe we didn't do a good job of telling people what the strategy was and but at the highest levels in the Vietnam War, there's confusion on what the strategy is. So there's no way that some frontline grunt understands why he's clearing this village and not that village, or why it's that, that village and not this village. They just don't know. So what does it become? It becomes like they are just

• 1:06:03Jocko Willink?

  robots, human robots, moving forward. And I think we were very fortunate to be in a situation where, you know, we had a better understanding and, and, and again, we talk about this in the book. We could have done a better job and should have done a better job of making sure that everybody understood more.

• 1:06:24Jocko Willink?

  But there was understanding, there was at a minimum. Everybody understood, at a minimum, the evil that was there. The evil that was there in Ramadi, in Iraq, that was torturing people, raping people, killing people, trying to enslave people. Everybody understood that. There was evil there, and that's what we were fighting against. Trying to help this local populace who was completely at the mercy of this insurgent group, which by the way, had no mercy. So I think we had that benefit for us.

• 1:07:02Jocko Willink?

  But one thing that is completely unchanged is this talk of this strain. This strain that is put on the soldiers on the ground. And when you think back to the strain that you felt, that your men felt, what do you think of, what do you think of when you think of the strain?

• 1:07:26Leif Babin?

  I can absolutely relate to that. I mean, it's, it's the, it's something you and I talked about, right? When we got home. When we got home, it was, you called it the burden, right? When we got, we got home and we, I didn't even recognize how powerful that was. You know, and I remember talking to you about it. We were like, we, all of a sudden, we could relax. Like, there weren't, weren't people trying to kill us, right? There, there were, when we arrived back from that deployment to Ramadi, and we're back in San Diego, and, and you, and, and just the recognition that, it's not just from our personal, like, hey, people aren't trying to kill me, but like, I no longer am carrying

• 1:08:08Leif Babin?

  the burden of the decisions that I make and people's lives are on the line, right? That, like, at this moment, right now, and I want to make sure that I've thought through all the contingencies. You know, are we ready, you know, for, for these worst-case scenarios? Have we, have we planned? You know, have we rehearsed these things? Have we trained? Have we thought through what the enemy might do? How could they hit us where we hadn't even foreseen it? You know, that, that burden that you just carried all the time. And, and for me, you know, man, after, after Mark got killed and Ryan got wounded, it was just, um, you know, four months into our deployment, it was just this recognition of, like, man, we're... That can happen at any time and I knew it could happen anytime prior to that.

• 1:08:48Leif Babin?

  You know, it wasn't that we got complacent or that, but it was, we've gotten away with it so many times that you all, you, you start kind of, kind of see like, maybe we can make it through this thing. You know, without losing people as, as, uh, and just going out there and, and you know, as you've talked about, you can just only get lucky so many times. Like with all that evil and all that horribleness out there that, uh, that it can happen at any time. And, and that's the strain that I think that I certainly I felt that for other guys felt when you see that your, your brothers killed or wounded. Uh, when you've had close calls and you recognize like just how, um,

• 1:09:28Leif Babin?

  how close we are to death every anytime, anytime we're rolling out there that, uh, um, that is a strain. It is a strain on you and it's something that wears on you. Um, and I, I think, um, for me, it was just always, always worried about like just the, the, and, and when you see the violence of it, you know, the, the vehicle graveyard that we rolled out through every time we're driving out the gate and just the, the twisted hulks of metal that used to be a vehicle that carried men or women in them, uh, you know, and those were US troops that were either killed or horribly wounded that were in that vehicle that were destroyed.

• 1:10:07Leif Babin?

  Or if you, you see an ID go off and there's a hundred foot fireball in the air and just frag, you know, the, the metal fragments raining down, you know, for hundreds of yards in all directions from something like that. You're like, just the power of that, you know, the, the violence of machine gun fire that's coming in close to you. And I often describe it as just the, you know, I wrote about in the book, the, the biggest, strongest guy you can imagine just smashing the wall with a hammer next to you as hard as he can. An inch from your head. An inch from your head, just throwing concrete fragments everywhere and there's, um, and, and you know, now it's seven to 800 rounds per minute. Of that. Of that coming in at you with a belt fed, belt fed machine gun. Maybe there's multiple ones shooting at you. RPG rockets, just this rocking explosion, this rings your bell.

• 1:10:53Leif Babin?

  You know, even if it's just, just on the wall outside, you know, if one of those things hits the window and, and, and detonates on the bars on the window, it's going to just frag everybody in the room. It's going to be horribly wounded or killed. So that, that was a strain all the time. And I think the difference for us though is, is the. You know, and, and, you know, there isn't, there were some, certainly some guys, and you talk about leadership that we learned, right? The guys carrying those heavy machine guns, the, the belt fed machine guns and all the gear that with them and they're like, man, do I have to carry this thing, you know, as a leader, we had to remind them why that was important. You know, they got that love hate relationship. The machine gunners, they love to shoot that machine gun and they're awesome at it. They hate to carry the machine gun, right? It's a, it's that love hate relationship.

• 1:11:34Leif Babin?

  And so when they're going in on a full patrol, that's a, you know, a mile, you know, mile and a half full patrol into a, to a tough area and they're carrying all that heavy weight. They get focused on that. So you got, you gotta help them recognize like this is, this is why you're such a critical part of the team and why we gotta have these machine guns. So you gotta do, you know, as a leader, it's something we had to do all the time. But I, I think for these guys in Vietnam, they're, you know, they're, they're driving or flying into an area, patrolling into an area that's that it seems like they're seeing, they're seeing new terrain all the time. You know, for us in Ramadi, it was this tiny city that was, it's like what, three by three miles, you know, across? You're talking about just the, the set, the central, central Ramadi piece of it. Very small and we're going into the same areas all the time, you know, J Street, the J block, you know, Papa 10.

• 1:12:19Leif Babin?

  Um, you know, these areas that, uh, going down baseline road and, you know, to 20th street and these areas that we, we got to know. And we understood, you know, where the, the, the, uh, the bad guys were operating out of. And we'd been in so many of these buildings and we, so then we had to have the, we had to mix it up and not patrol down the same streets every time and try to come in and do some misdirection stuff. Uh, but we got to know these areas. Um, and you know, even though it was a small area, you know, and these tanks might be less than a mile away from you. Maybe they're even a half mile down the road. You know, in that environment, if there's, if there's, you know, 35 IEDs that could destroy, any one of which could destroy the, the tank between you and them, half a mile away, they might as well be a hundred miles away. Doesn't matter. So, you know, we had to plan for those continues, we had to be ready.

• 1:13:04Leif Babin?

  But that was a strain that I certainly remember well. And, and I, I remember that conversation as I'm sure you do, coming back and, and recognizing like. Wow, I didn't even realize how heavy that strain was until we got back and it was lifted.

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it didn't happen right away. It happened like we were, at least I feel like we were conditioned. It would be, it would be like going to a planet where there was much, much higher gravity. And you don't even realize how much more weight you're carrying. And then when we came home, it wasn't like instantly the gravity changed. It was like it slowly and one day, for me, it was about a month. That I, all of a sudden I woke up and instead of the first thought I had when I woke up of like, what's gonna happen today, what bad thing can happen today? It was like, oh, I think the waves look good and I'm going surfing.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  And to go from that thought process from, like you said, it's the horror of the imminent danger. Because like, like you said, you can only get lucky so many times. And you go out day after day after day and you got, I'm watching guys all over, my guys all over Ramadi. There's no possible way that they can make it through today without taking a casualty. And then they, and then they make it through that day. I got five elements, three elements, five elements, two elements, all out on the battlefield at the same time. There's no way they're gonna make it through today without a casualty. They make it through today.

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? You wake up the next day and now you're carrying that day and today. So you make it through that day, now you're carrying three days. And that just built and built and built and every once in a while, obviously, we would take a casualty. And maybe you get a little reset, but you don't. It's just there and it's there heavy all the time. And what's really interesting about this is you might be thinking as Leif explained, as you explain, you know, those feelings and as I'm talking about right now, you might think that we were sullen and worried and sw- and, and panicking or, but, but I'm sitting here thinking about it, we would,

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  and everybody in the, in the task unit, we were having fun, we were laughing, we would have conversations, we'd make fun of each other, we'd make fun of our friends, we'd make fun of our boss, we'd make fun of everybody, we'd laugh, we'd have a great time. And the, the, the strain.

• 1:15:35Jocko Willink?

  Even though there's, there's, you know, fun and good times on top of it, that strain is absolutely there and it stays there the whole time and it just builds.

• 1:15:45Leif Babin?

  I think the big illustration for that to me was when an operation was going on, right? And vehicles were lined up, like the vehicles are lined up on the, we had this, that main street, you know, outside of the TAC, Tactical Operations Center and, you know, where your office was and, and I remember that, that bond that we had in Tascana Bruiser, you know, so often you get, well, the SEALs are doing their thing and you got the support personnel that are running the radios and the CBs that run the camp and they, they just do different stuff and they don't, you know, what was so awesome about Tascana Bruiser was that you line those trucks up and we know we're going out, you know, we're going out at operation and, and if you were, weren't, if you weren't coming on the op, I know you would, you would always be out there, you know, out there shaking everybody's hands

• 1:16:28Leif Babin?

  and talking to them and, and not in a way of like, you know, not in a way that there was morbid, right? But in a way of like, just the respect and, and knowledge that any time we're going out, like, any one time, there may be, there may be, any of these guys that are rolling out may not be coming back from this. They may be coming back in a body bag and, and that we had to be ready for that all the time because it was almost a daily, daily thing. And I just, not only, you know, for, for you and the, the support person, the comms guys, you know, our, our, our radio when they were out there, these aren't SEALs and they're, but they're out there getting the radios ready and helping us out and people just come, you know, you know, our, our, our operations specialist, you know, chief coming out there. I remember all those guys just lined up shaking hands,

• 1:17:13Leif Babin?

  talking to people. It was just that, and for the few ops that, you know, that I didn't go on with another, another, if we had something else going on and another unit's going out with our guys on a different operation, I'm not a part of the same thing, like going out there, talking to those guys, shaking their hands and knowing that like, they may not be coming back from that. And I think that was the biggest. That was the biggest to me like illustration of like that strain. And again, we laughed, we joked, it wasn't, there was nothing morbid. We were telling jokes and laughing and kidding each other. But, uh, but that was really there. And I remember we got relieved, you know, by the next SEAL Team, SEAL Team Five that came in.

• 1:17:48Leif Babin?

  And, you know, good, good bros of mine that I'd served with, cause I'd come from SEAL Team Five. And I knew those guys when they were going out too. You know, I knew what they were going out into, you know? And I just remember, uh, going out there for that goodbye to them and shaking their hands and talking about, cause we knew exactly what they were going into and they're gonna keep, keep getting after it.

• 1:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was one of the, I remember when those guys came and I was doing like the turnover brief to their whole troop. And I was, you know, I had to sign, I put a slide up and I was going through this and that and the other thing. And I'm like, okay, you guys are going to take casualties. And, and like, I never thought in a million years that somebody would be briefing me, hey, you guys are going to take casualties. It wasn't like, oh, you guys might, hey, it's dangerous. It was like, you guys are going to take casualties. That is what is going to happen. And that might sound negative, but that was the facts. That it was a hundred percent true that they were gonna take casualties and we knew it, we knew it.

• 1:18:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's what was so hard to shake their hand and tell them goodbye and good luck and, and watch them roll out for the first time alone without us and know that could be tonight. And could be tonight.

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna, uh,

• 1:19:22Jocko Willink?

  hit one, hit another section right now.

• 1:19:28Jocko Willink?

  This is talking about, talking about the men, again.

• 1:19:34Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to the book.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  "For the most part, they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said, 'Dear Jesus,' and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die."

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  And back to what we were just talking about.

• 1:20:24Jocko Willink?

  To have guys, and you know, we, we did a podcast about a guy named Colonel DePique and his, his book called Battle Studies, and when he describes men, and one of his key points,

• 1:20:41Jocko Willink?

  is he's saying that men are horrified and they're scared of death, and that they have this just incredible, obviously this under, underlying will of self-preservation, right? That's the, that's the thing that fuels people, and he just talks about this tiny percentage of, of men that will overcome that, and they'll be brave.

• 1:21:12Jocko Willink?

  And to think that we were lucky enough to serve with guys in our task unit, and to see the next task unit to come in, and to see the soldiers and see the Marines to overcome that strain on a daily basis.

• 1:21:34Jocko Willink?

  That is absolutely one of the most humbling things that I think I will ever experience in my life.

• 1:21:41Leif Babin?

  That's what, that's what courage is all about, you know, I think, uh, just to, to see guys, you know, that are just in the thick of the fight with bullets missing their heads by inches. You know, I remember, uh, I remember on the rooftop of Building 99, right on 20th Street in the war, we were getting hammered, I mean, enemy rounds coming in by hundreds and hundreds of rounds coming in, shattering the windows. And I remember our, our EOD bomb disposal technician, awesome, awesome guy, and he's, he's laying on the rooftop and there's armor piercing rounds coming through the roof, punching through concrete wall, you know, that's just like three inches over his head.

• 1:22:24Leif Babin?

  And he's just laying there and, and I remember crawling up there trying to figure out, hey, is everybody okay? And he's like looking at me like thumbs up, laughing about it. And I mean, just the humor of those guys, right? Dealing with that, um, and knowing, you know, again, that, that could happen at any time, but you know, um, just seeing the guys, guys like Mark Lee, or just the most hilarious guy you could imagine, just cracking jokes, you know, and singing the, you know, the cheese ball 80s tunes, you know, I am the warrior and, and, uh, and us laughing about and talking about that stuff and just, just, that's how they dealt with it, you know, and, and, but it just tremendous courage and, you know, not just our SEALs, not just guys that, that we work with, those, those Marines and the soldiers that we served alongside and just,

• 1:23:07Leif Babin?

  um, watching those guys day in and day out, you know, um, who often didn't have as much control over what they were doing as we did, you know, at, down at the frontline level, um, but just out there getting after it with a great attitude. Uh, and you know, no, nobody's fearless, right? Nobody, you know, some people think, oh, the, uh, you know, we get that question all the time, right? From businesses like, well, it's, you know, it's, Mortals are fearful, but you guys are fearless. Like, no, nobody's fearless. Like, you recognize how mortal you are, and that can happen anytime, and yet you see these guys just totally selfless, you know? Courage, with just incredible courage to overcome that, and just amazing.

• 1:23:48Leif Babin?

  That's really, to me, that is the bright light, you know, that we brought back from, you know, from that conflict, to see and witness that, and just the tremendous human spirit that can overcome anything.

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, gonna kind of wrap up this section right now with one last little piece of the book here, and this is one of the guys named Lavender, last name Lavender, he gets killed, and the lieutenant takes the blame himself. He feels that blame.

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  And part of it, he kind of blames on his thinking about his girl back home, Martha, and he's thinking he wasn't doing everything he could do. And

• 1:24:40Jocko Willink?

  what could he have done better, and where did he let his guys down, and what he could do different from now on? And I'm going to the book. "He loved her, but he hated her."

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  "No more fantasies," he told himself. "Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere." "He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world." "Where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity."

• 1:25:24Jocko Willink?

  "Caywa was right." Boom. Down. And you were dead, never partly dead.

• 1:25:34Jocko Willink?

  Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha's gray eyes gazing back at him.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  He understood.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  It was very sad, he thought.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  The things men carried inside. The things men did, or felt they had to do. He almost nodded at her, but he didn't.

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  Instead, he went back to his maps. He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn't help Lavender, he knew that. But from this point on, he would comport himself as an officer. He would dispose of his good luck pebble, swallow it, maybe, or use Lee Strunk's slingshot, or just drop it along the trail.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  On the march, he would impose strict field discipline. He would be careful to send out flank security, to prevent straggling or bunching up, to keep his troops moving at the proper pace and at the proper interval.

• 1:26:44Jocko Willink?

  He would insist on clean weapons. He would confiscate the remainder of Lavender's dope. Later in the day, perhaps, he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it.

• 1:27:04Jocko Willink?

  He would look them in the eyes, keeping his chin level, and he would issue new SOPs in a calm, interper- impersonal tone of voice, a lieutenant's voice. Leaving no room for argument or discussion.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Commencing immediately, he'd tell them, they would no longer abandon equipment along the route of march. They would police up their acts. They would get their shit together and keep it together and maintain it neatly in a good working order.

• 1:27:39Jocko Willink?

  He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength. Distancing himself.

• 1:27:56Jocko Willink?

  So he falls back on what we fall back on all the time, on discipline, on standard operating procedures, on maintaining everything in good working order. And one of the things that you can see here, and people, we get this too, is you'd think these guys are in Vietnam. Of course, they're going to be paying attention. Of course, they're going to keep their weapon. Your weapon keeps you alive in a firefight. Of course, you're going to keep your weapons clean. But he, as the leader, he has to lead.

• 1:28:33Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's a common misconception.

• 1:28:35Leif Babin?

  And we do talk about it all the time. And it's one of the most frequent questions I get asked, like, well, you know, in the SEAL teams, you've got, everyone's motivated and everyone's focused, and it's a life or death. You know, so they're going to stay sharp, and they're going to follow procedure no matter what. And, you know, my, my team's not like that in the business world, or, you know, people I work with aren't like that. And the best teams, they only follow that procedure, right? Because they've got leaders that are stepping up and making it happen. And, and look, we have some amazing people in the SEAL teams, just like we have some amazing people in the military, in Army, in Marine units, and other, and other special operations units, etc. But even with life

• 1:29:17Leif Babin?

  or death on the line, people get complacent. People start letting the ball drop, not cleaning their weapons when they need to, or, or not following a procedure, or letting their guard down. Because, well, we've done this operation a dozen times, and nothing bad's happened, so nothing bad's gonna happen, right? That's, it's like this common human emotion that you just make these assumptions. And so the only way that units are going to stay focused, and not have that happen, when they've got good leaders. They got a fire team leader in charge of his four guys, is stepping up and making sure that his guys are squared away, and staying focused. They've got a, you know, they've got a squad leader, making sure that his squad is squared, the LPO, leading petty officers out there, making sure that guys are dialed, they're not cutting corners. I mean, I always saw that with guys, you

• 1:30:00Leif Babin?

  know, we've been these sniper overwatch positions, you got like, some of them had like one stairwell in and out. And someone's got to watch that stairwell. Someone's got to have a weapon and looking down that stairwell for 72 hours. Yeah, and so, you know, hopefully we can rotate some guys out so it's not just the same guy. But, but even so, if you're, it's gonna be several hours that you watching down that stairwell. And it's boring as, as hell, right? And guess what? You're the only guy watching that stairwell and everyone else has got their backs to you. So if you're not doing your job, you're gonna get, those people are getting shot in the back. And yet if, what happens? Hey, we, I've been here, I've been on the stairwell, look, man, doesn't, we've done this operation a dozen times. Or we've been in this building multiple times. Nobody's ever come up the stairs. I've been sitting here for hours on end, like, hasn't happened.

• 1:30:43Leif Babin?

  So you, people will fall asleep. People will stop paying attention. And only if you've got good leaders who are gonna go check on that guy and make sure that he recognizes that, listen, everybody's depending on you. You know, not only are you gonna get killed if someone slips up the stairs, but the guys, people are gonna get shot in the back. And they were depending on you to have their back. And it requires those good leaders at every level stepping up and going and checking on that guy. And if he is tired, he can't stay awake, rotate him out, put somebody else in there. But it requires leadership at every level. Um, so even with life and death on the line, people get complacent. And this really goes to what, you know, you and I talk about all the time, which is, what does it really mean to take care of your people? You know, that you're, well, I want to be liked, you know, so I don't want to be a real hard ass.

• 1:31:26Leif Babin?

  And I don't want to, you know, I don't want to like, um, you know, I, I don't want to push too hard in that direction. Or like, if they cut this corner, maybe it's not that big of a deal. Uh, and, and obviously you can go too far in that direction, right? But you become the slave driver. But, but are you really taking care of your people? If you're allowing them to cut some corners that they shouldn't be, you know, or to get complacent when they shouldn't be. And the answer is no, of course not. You're setting them up for failure. Uh, and so you as a leader have got to step up and, and make sure that your peer, you know, the peers around you, if you're not in a leadership position, um, it would certainly, as a leader, make sure that your team and those around you are toeing the line and following those standard operating procedures and, and achieving that highest standard possible.

• 1:32:07Leif Babin?

  Because that's what is gonna allow them to stay alive on the battlefield, uh, and ultimately accomplish the mission. And certainly dominate and win on their battlefield anywhere, you know, in business and life.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can definitely see that all the things that Lieutenant Cross rattles off that he's gonna now start imposing. He's gonna start taking care. He thought he was taking care of his men before by, by letting them have dirty weapons and not hounding them about that, by letting them drop gear on the trail, by not sending out flank security because it's a pain in the ass. He thought he was taking care of his guys and he got one of his guys killed. And that is exactly the point. When you're taking care of your people, that means you're taking care of them. That means you're holding the line, you're holding the discipline, and you're making

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  sure that they are as safe as you can possibly make them while still accomplishing the mission. And that is the, it's pretty much what we had for this book, by the way. Again, it's called Tim O'Brien. The name of the book is called The Things They Carried. Definitely a, a, a solid read and, and I would check it out and Echo will have it up on the, on the website. And yeah, I know, for those of you that are gonna come at me and say it was a fiction book, so now you're gonna start submitting to me every fiction war book that's ever been written.

• 1:33:38Jocko Willink?

  And I know there's some damn good ones out there and there's probably some I'm gonna end up doing, but yeah, this is one of them that is, and again, it's, it's, it's fiction, but clearly it's based on experiences. And it, and, and once again, you can see that even though war evolves and war changes, the, the fundamental, the fundamentals of human nature in war don't really change.

• 1:34:07Leif Babin?

  I'm, I'm not into fiction books. I don't remember the last time I read a fiction book. I'm gonna read that book because that immediately resonated with me and puts me back in those, just the sights and smells and the, and the stuff that we carried and, and opens up some, you know, it's just, I look, I look forward to digging into it in some detail.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  It's a good one. And you know, that's the thing, when, when you are dealing with these books and you start to really...

• 1:34:34Jocko Willink?

  Really listen to them and read them. There's just, there's always so much more than,

• 1:34:40Jocko Willink?

  than you get out of it the first time you go through it. So that's why for me, you know, reading it and then going through it again, and then sitting here and reading it. And now, when I put the headphones on and read it, it's, they definitely, they definitely hit you and you get more out of them, in my opinion.

• 1:34:56Leif Babin?

  No doubt. There's something magical about putting the headphones on, you know, because you, you had read a couple of those excerpts and we were talking about this over the last, last couple of days and what the podcast is going to be about and, and it did not, it did not, you know, once sitting here listening to you read it with the headphones on, it's like, takes me immediately back to Ramadi, thinking about the stuff that we, you know, the things that we carried with us and the moon dust that we patrolled through and those smells and staches and the heat and frankly, I'm, I'm pretty eager to go back and get some right now. I'm ready to make it happen.

• 1:35:26Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. And you know what we gotta do is it's the same thing with, with these other books with, with our book. And, and I know, you know, we were kind of talking about this a little bit, you know, when you write a book, you're confined in, in some way to the structure of the book and to the length of the book and to the balance of the book. And so you can't just drill down on some facet that might be, it might not be totally pertinent to that particular way that it's laid out. But what we're gonna have to do is we're gonna have to get, next time you come on, we gotta do, we gotta do our own

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  book. We gotta do Extreme Ownership, at least get it through a few chapters. Because, because we, we know the authors, you know, and we know that there's so much back behind those that it would be awesome to sit there and, and kind of give a bunch of those, you know, a bunch of the backstory behind these things. And, and I think next time we gotta, we gotta make that happen.

• 1:36:26Leif Babin?

  Let's do it. I like that idea. There's, there's so much there and it is, even going back and reviewing the book, you're thinking about these little things. I'm like, oh, we should have said that. And obviously it doesn't illustrate this, you know, the, the point and we gotta focus it. But yeah, there's a lot, a lot behind that. I mean, I think about that blue on blue scenario, you know, you know, just an opening chapter, Extreme Ownership and what that was about and all that went into that. And yeah, be great to talk about that in some detail.

• 1:36:51Jocko Willink?

  We'll have to get that next time. Now,

• 1:36:54Jocko Willink?

  Extreme Ownership, name of the book. Extreme Ownership is also the name of something else that's about to happen. May 4th and 5th, the muster. The Extreme Ownership muster. Leadership conference. I guess, is that appropriate? To call it a leadership conference? I'm not sure.

• 1:37:13Leif Babin?

  I guess if you had to classify what it is, then maybe we put in that category. But to me, the muster stands by itself. You know, and I think the definitions that, you know, that we utilize a gathering together of troops. Uh, to prepare for war.

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  I guess that fits very probably so. I, I can't say I go into like big details about the muster. But I, I just mention it in case people are interested in getting better. Especially from a leadership perspective and really from a human potential, you know, getting to where you think you can get. Getting beyond where you can think you can get. I don't talk too much to you, but if you, so since you're here and you're sitting here. What do you think? What's, what, what, what did you, what were like the highlights of the muster? Cause we just did the first one last year in October 2017. I thought it was gonna be cool.

• 1:38:09Leif Babin?

  2016.

• 1:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, sorry, 2016. I, what did I say?

• 1:38:12Leif Babin?

  2017.

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that hasn't happened yet. I, I thought that the muster would be cool. You know what I mean? I thought, hey, this is gonna be cool. Like it's gonna be cool. We're gonna, you know, meet a bunch of cool people and we're gonna talk about all this cool stuff and, and do our best to pass on information and give and receive information and all that. So I thought it was gonna be cool. But it was a lot better than cool. It was, it was freaking awesome. And what were like some highlights for you when you think about it? What are you excited about for New York?

• 1:38:43Leif Babin?

  Well, you know, we talk to so many people all the time, right? And, and, and awesome leaders, you know, from companies that we work with and uh, different organizations out there and, and it's just love, love working these leaders, love talking to them. I, I think for, but the muster was, there was just something magical about that. You know, I remember, uh, I, we couldn't have even predicted that, right?

• 1:39:03Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I think, I think you just came up with a new tagline. Come to the muster. It's magical.

• 1:39:07Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Jocko Willink?

  Come up with a new word.

• 1:39:11Leif Babin?

  I'm gonna take some shit for that.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  Come to the, we're gonna call it the magical muster.

• 1:39:17Leif Babin?

  Maybe we need to cut that, maybe we need to cut that piece out.

• 1:39:19Jocko Willink?

  What was, what was magical about it?

• 1:39:23Leif Babin?

  Look, for me, what was, here's, here's, here's what, coming off the stage, what we're talking about, you know, we're leaving people the idea of why, you know, they need to take advantage of every day. The gift that's been given to them by those brave warriors that gave their lives so that they have the ability to pursue that, you know, and I remember cutting off the stage and you gave, you just came up and gave me a big hug. You're not a hugger.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  I don't hug people very often.

• 1:39:51Leif Babin?

  Not at all.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  I was actually working on a takedown, but we'll call it.

• 1:39:53Leif Babin?

  I, I thought maybe something like that was coming. I was getting, I was getting ready. I was getting, getting ready to, to, as a sprawl. But I, I remember that, just, just that emotion of like, this was an amazing event. It was an amazing event. I think what made it amazing was the, you know, we were able to interact with so many people, you know.

• 1:40:11Jocko Willink?

  And so many people that were in the game and had the same goals, the same drive.

• 1:40:19Leif Babin?

  Exactly. And from so many different walks of life, you know, we had some awesome, we had some really high power, you know, senior executives from, from some great companies, uh, to, you know, mid-level managers and, and frontline leaders that are just aspiring to take on greater ownership, entrepreneurs, you know, the, the, uh, um, military, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, I mean, across the space, some people that we couldn't even envision or imagine from, you know, from, from volunteer, you know, nonprofit organizations and things like that. Um, and interacting with so many different people that are eager to learn, to implement the, the principles of extreme ownership into their lives. That was awesome for me. And it, it was interesting to me, something I hadn't even thought about

• 1:41:00Leif Babin?

  is the fact that, um, you know, after we spent, folks, so many people had come up to me and said, you know, man, it was, it was worth the price of admission alone, just to meet other participants here, uh, and learn from them and, and, and learn from each other, you know, fellow troopers and, uh, and it was, it was just, it was awesome to see that. So for me, you know, all of this, we speak at events all the time and we, and we, we speak at great events, uh, and we work with great leaders, but it, it was the absolute. Best event of all time that I've ever been a part of, best audience, you know, and I'm so fired up to go back. And it's gonna be, it's gonna be that much better in New York, right? It's gonna be, there'll be a few of the same folks that are gonna come and attend that were there in San Diego. And there'll be a whole new group of people, you know, who couldn't come. It'll be even bigger. And it's gonna be awesome.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that that was awesome for me, and I know it was awesome for you too, because we talked about it, but the interaction that we had with everybody, right? And, and I remember when we were kind of setting and planning the event. That was one of the things where, you know, we were talking about this, we're gonna, hey, we do this, we can have this person. And, and finally, I just was like, hey, bro, you know what we need to do?

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  We need to just be there, no backstage, no curtain, nothing. We need to meet and interact and answer questions. And get in the game with everybody. And that's exactly what we did. Like, for instance, you know, there's, there's, we do a section, we'd be up, we'd be up talking for an hour, answering questions for an hour and a half. When we'd get done with that hour and a half, we would just step forward to the stage and step down onto the floor. And there'd be people lined up to say, hey, what about this? Hey, you just said that. And what do you think I should do here? And it was like that for, for two straight days.

• 1:42:42Leif Babin?

  And not just after the sessions, but morning workouts, right? We, our, our zero four forty-five club PTs that were cranking out these awesome workouts and, and, and we, I mean, all levels of athletes, there were some really high-end, you know, athletes or black, black belch, you know, jiu-jitsu players to, to the, you know, just, just some folks who've just started training or just started hitting the gym, been encouraged to by the podcast or whatnot. And came out and participated in that. And, and walking, you know, jogging over to or walking back from those, the, those workouts, talking to those leaders and people talking about, hey, what would you do in this situation? You know, I remember, uh, uh, having those conversations with people and you're helping them apply that stuff. We've heard through social media, so many of those people, some of those specific conversations, like, I can't believe how good this worked.

• 1:43:26Leif Babin?

  Here's what's going on. I'm now, I'm now able to, I just got a promotion, you know, based on this, you know, those kind, that kind of feedback. We always talk about, right? There's only two measures that matter. Effective and ineffective and how do you measure that it's whether the team is is accomplishing the mission you're effective if you're not accomplishing mission doesn't matter how hard you're working you're not effective and for us that measure of effectiveness is that people are actually going out and kicking ass in their world and they're getting promoted they're accomplishing their mission they're building a better team they're building better relationships with their boss you know with their peers with the subcontractor they work for with you know and they're they're being more engaged members of their community you know a better parent a better coach a better team member across all walks of life and I think that's really our

• 1:44:09Leif Babin?

  measure of effectiveness and it was it's just awesome to see so many folks doing extraordinary things that were part of that the muster and so looking forward to that may 4th and 5th in New York is going to be awesome and it's going to be exactly what you described we're gonna we're gonna keep that no matter how how long we do this or how big the musters get I I never wanna never want it to be to lose that of of me and you staying engaged you know with participants not hiding behind the curtain somewhere in the green room but being out front talking to people talking with leaders you know and helping them apply this stuff to get better what they do

• 1:44:45Jocko Willink?

  This ain't the Wizard of Oz we ain't gonna be hiding behind the curtain and you know and you talk about measures of of success effective ineffective well for me like the biggest reward from doing the muster it's it's similar to what we do with our with our business of helping businesses and it's always great to get that feedback but to get a mass scale of you know three or 400 people and get that feedback about the promotions the advancements the the goals achieved the fitness goals achieved the relationship goals to get that feedback has just been it's been awesome so like you said we look forward to seeing you there and you know actually

• 1:45:27Jocko Willink?

  speaking of the muster you're gonna see life yeah you're gonna see me of course you're gonna see JP and Dave Dave Burke JP Danell they're gonna be there

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  You're also gonna see Echo Charles. He's gonna be there fully.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Fully.

• 1:45:47Jocko Willink?

  And kinda cruising too, but he's gonna be there fully cruising hard.

• 1:45:52Jocko Willink?

  So you can get to meet, most people wanna meet Echo the most. He's like the bass player in the band that like, you know, there's the lead guitarist. And then there's the lead vocalist who's out front with the weird pants on. But everyone looks at the bassist in the back that's hammering down the tracks, laying it down.

• 1:46:11Speaker 01

  Cruising.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles cruising. You're gonna get to meet him. So, yeah, that was amazing to me. Actually, the number of people lined up to, to take pictures with you and talk to you. I was, I was getting jealous. It was like, that was awesome.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  It's funny. They don't ask me like real questions though. It's more like on a social level, which I liked that.

• 1:46:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, you wanna keep it that way.

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, easy questions.

• 1:46:33Jocko Willink?

  If you got like a leadership question, you can go to Leif, you can go to me. If you wanna do some socializing, like get in that Echo Charles line. Go and shake his hand.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  You wanna get in that Echo Charles line. One, one thing about the muster in New York in particular is, uh, you know, like anything in New York City, got a limited space. And, uh, we, we sold a lot of tickets to that thing already. If you wanna be there for, for May 4th and 5th, get your tickets now, cause I think we're gonna sell this thing out. And, uh, I think that's, that's highly likely. So it may, those may not be there. I, I would, I would get those things purchased ASAP. Um, if you, if you wanna be a part of that. Yeah, do it.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Big part that I noticed from the last muster is the P, you mentioned this before, where people, they'll come in, they'll learn all this cool stuff and, you know, like-minded people. But they become like real good friends, you know? So like, uh, like that night when we had, uh, the jujitsu training that night. You could tell, I thought that, oh, these guys came, they all came together.

• 1:47:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  No, they didn't come together. They just became friends and now they're cruising as friends now.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  And there's people, you know, doing things now.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Jocko Willink?

  We got podcasts.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:41Jocko Willink?

  Ow.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brady and Simon.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  Brady and Simon also.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  Debbie.

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  Debbie.

• 1:47:48Leif Babin?

  Debbie and Sonia.

• 1:47:48Jocko Willink?

  And Sonia. Yeah, they got a podcast going. But there's someone else. Anyways, so there's people that are, that's the what, uh, Athena's podcast. You got the Trooper podcast.

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Trooper project.

• 1:47:59Jocko Willink?

  Trooper project.

• 1:48:00Leif Babin?

  Modern Athena.

• 1:48:01Jocko Willink?

  Modern Athena. So there's things that are coming out. Those, those are people that just met. They weren't friends rolling into the muster. They formed relationships and now they're out just crushing things.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's how, you know how like, I mean, Jiu Jitsu does this a lot where you come in and you're like, you know, by yourself. And then after a while, hey, this guy likes Jiu Jitsu. This guy likes Jiu Jitsu. Oh, wait, but wait, hey, you watched, I don't know, you know, same, the same show and slowly.

• 1:48:24Leif Babin?

  Like Hawaii Five O.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  Slowly, you start to gravitate towards these people. But this, in this kind of situation, everyone's kind of like, um, like they're trying to get better, you know, better at this. And it's so it's real similar.

• 1:48:39Leif Babin?

  Better at life.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  At life in general. So it's almost like a double gravitation effect, you know, where people like.

• 1:48:47Jocko Willink?

  That's a scientific thing too, by the way. Something that, you know, a lot of people don't know about the double gravitation effect. But with the muster, double gra- gravitation effect is in full effect.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, across the board. Bro, and it's funny because you see it. You see like, everyone's all talking. You know how like, if I step back, I see you and Leif talking. You can kind of tell like, oh, you guys have known each other for a long time. That's kind of what you see. But then you realize, oh, they haven't known each other for a long time.

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  It's just pure double gravitation.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, the double gravit- gravitation effect.

• 1:49:15Leif Babin?

  I, I think some of that crossover too is, you know, when, when you realize that, you know, a police officer who's sitting next to you has some of the same challenges that you have as, as a, as a, uh, a small business, you know, entrepreneur.

• 1:49:27Jocko Willink?

  Who has the same problems as this guy who's the CEO of a big company. Who has the same problems as this person who's in a startup. So yeah, who have, by the way, the same problems that Leif and I saw and experienced on the battlefield. And there's solution. This is the thing. Those problems, there are solutions to them. They're, they're out there. This isn't, this isn't magic as a matter of fact. I know I'll bust you down here, but there ain't no magic. There's knowledge to begin. It's like Jiu Jitsu, right? Jiu Jitsu isn't about magic. There's no magic to Jiu Jitsu. Sometimes I do say magic.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  It's magical.

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Magical. But you do say it's a superpower. It's a superpower. And speaking of Jiu Jitsu, we're going to be training some.

• 1:50:06Leif Babin?

  That's right. That's right. Friday evening, we're going to be getting on.

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  So if you come to the muster. I'm gonna go no G for travel purposes. Is that cool?

• 1:50:15Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we'll go plan the no G situation. Plus Echo like, do you like no G better?

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it goes in phases. So right now I'm.

• 1:50:24Leif Babin?

  It's only only so you can wear your uh, your trooper, your trooper.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  The rash guard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:50:29Jocko Willink?

  Rash guard.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, hash guard.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  Hash guard.

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:50:34Jocko Willink?

  So that is gonna happen. Echo, like I said, back to my point, Echo Charles will be there. And come and see him. And in the meantime, Echo, if somebody does want to support this podcast.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  Can you let us know how to do it?

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, there's a few ways. Uh, but I recommend supporting yourself. We talked about being prepared, right? Life bepin'. Um, so a good way to prepare is to train. And with training comes help, which is supplementation. I was one of these guys who wasn't into supplements, ever. Like, oh, that's like, it's fake. It doesn't work. Don't need it. And really, it's kinda true. You kinda don't need it. So I thought, but if you get the right kinda sub, like, okay, so you, you know, we talk about krill oil, okay, okay. Supplements do matter. So I'm gonna talk about some. So, uh, were you there when I rolled the other day on? When's the last time I saw you?

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  A couple of days ago. I don't know.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, I went in, I like trained with Chris Ruiz and he's.

• 1:51:41Jocko Willink?

  I saw you guys rolling. Yes, so I was there that day.

• 1:51:43Speaker 01

  Okay, so we.

• 1:51:44Jocko Willink?

  Soap fish, by the way.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he goes hard. Black belt goes hard.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  And I think I did three rounds with him.

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  Soap fish.

• 1:51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  Why do we call him soap fish?

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  Cause he's hard to get a hold of.

• 1:51:54Jocko Willink?

  You can't hold, is that a fish covered in soap? You can't hold on to him?

• 1:51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:57Jocko Willink?

  He's like slick and wiry and greasy.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  With a black belt.

• 1:52:02Jocko Willink?

  And has the black.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one thing to be like a, you know, an untrained soap fish, which can be hard enough, by the way. Anyway, the point is, I go with him. I did three rounds with him, you know, and a few more rounds with other people and. You know that feeling when you do a workout and you're like, oh, I feel like, I feel like the workout's not done. I don't feel like as not like exhausted as I need to be after workout like this. So I kind of had that feeling where I'm like, okay, I need to do it. Like, who can I go with? Like a hard, you know, I need to go like another round, right? And I remembered I took the Shroom Tech.

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:37Speaker 01

  You kind of forget about it because I took-

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  I don't mean this in a bad way. I don't.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:43Jocko Willink?

  I don't mean this as a backhanded-

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  This is gonna be bad.

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  Comment.

• 1:52:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  But for everyone that doesn't quite know, I don't normally see you as a guy that's going, I need to get one more round.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was-

• 1:53:01Jocko Willink?

  You're right. A lot of times you're like, nah, I'm actually good, you know, at that one.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  No, you're actually not, right? Oh. You know, you're talking about the old me.

• 1:53:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:10Jocko Willink?

  This is the pre-

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  This is-

• 1:53:11Jocko Willink?

  Pre-Shroom Tech.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  This is the, well, that's the one you were talking about, pre-Shroom Tech, pre-MetCon.

• 1:53:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Pre-In shape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So no, that's not me, you know?

• 1:53:20Jocko Willink?

  I like, you know what, that is, to your full credit.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:25Jocko Willink?

  You are different now, not just because of your skill level in Jiu-Jitsu, but also because of your, your MetCon, your endurance and all that. You've definitely, you, you used to be done.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, so, and I, and I talked about this before, where that's a good point, though, because one kind of plays off the other, especially if you don't like being tired. So if you get tired early, you're like, you're gonna do less and you're gonna try less things. You're gonna, you know, because you're kind of fighting that fight as well, you know? So when that tiredness goes away and you know how to deal with being tired, you're like, okay, now I'm kind of free to try this. If it fails, I can try it again. I cannot, you know, if you're, if you're not in good shape or if you, if you buckle to being tired, it's like you only have a few bullets in the clip. And once you're done, you're kind of like, oh, my gun's worthless now, you know? The gun looks good from lifting weights and you know, all this stuff, but it's done after a few bullets.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  But you load up the bullets, endless bullets, right? You can go shoot targets here, anyway.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, it is, I will get, since I gave you a, a, a negative on the old you, I'll say the new you. You got some, you got some good, you got that jujitsu.

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Which is way better than it used to be. Even, even the old Echo Charles though, when, uh, when we were rolling back in the day with, uh, our, uh, our, our mutual friend Cake Nutz and I, he, you always, you always, he'd go another round, particularly for us, it was when he is, our skill level was far below his. Oh, he liked those rounds. Way easier. Let's do another round with me smashing you.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  And keep in mind, in my defense, this is Jocko's evaluation of me. When he's like, you're done. Well, yeah. When you're rolling with Jocko, you're kinda done, you know? But I, it's not like I was just this sack of potatoes that was just done. It wasn't like that.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  With the white belts you have are full of rounds. That's what I'm hearing here from Leif.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  The standard that comes out of Jocko is, is very high, I'll say.

• 1:55:22Jocko Willink?

  Understatement, understatement of the year right there.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Not that he's wrong, not that he's wrong.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Listen, I mean, and he's also, he's just full of compliments all the time. Leif just said that to me, it is, I was like, hey, did I say something like this? You know, I think, and it was like something positive about Leif and he's like, yeah, you did say that and I remember it cause it's like the, one of the four compliments you give me in the last 12 years. I was like, oh, that's cool. Don't happen often, gotta note them, gotta note them when they happen.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  But that it, that is true and it does help and not in just that way though, not in just the way like, oh, I can, um, I'm in better shape and that's good. That's true. But you just, you can do jujitsu now without that added enemy in there. So you're like free to do more jujitsu and you get better at jujitsu.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  So to sum up the last 12 minutes of conversation, what you're saying is,

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:56:08Jocko Willink?

  On a.com slash Jocko.

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I got into the story. It was a good one, in my opinion.

• 1:56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that day, that's how I felt. I felt like my workout, physically, I don't feel like I'm done.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  I was actually thinking the same thing. Cause the other thing about Chris, Chris Soapfish is he moves a lot.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  He's a mover and when you move, even if the guy's lighter than you, you have to move with them or you're, or you're gonna get, you're, you're gonna get caught. And so you had to move, you couldn't stop moving and he's gonna move all the time on you. And tha- that's why I was really impressed.

• 1:56:45Jocko Willink?

  With the fact that I've trained you so well.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  I was impressed with how you kept bringing, you know, kept, and you want to do another round, I could see it.

• 1:56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  Good on you. Good on you, Shroom Tech.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  And I did take, and.

• 1:56:55Jocko Willink?

  Metcon.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  The thing is, you forget, you take it.

• 1:57:00Speaker 01

  I took it like, like an hour before I even, um, well, I guess it was about an hour before I actually was rolling. But it was like, maybe half hour before I left.

• 1:57:08Jocko Willink?

  I, I.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  So I kind of forgot.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, in this whole idea of Shroom Tech and what's the other one, performance?

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Total strength.

• 1:57:14Jocko Willink?

  The coconut thing? Or it's like a coconut, strawberry banana?

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  That, so if that's considered cheating, then I've been cheating a lot lately. Cause if I'm rolling in, man, a lot of times, I've already worked out in the day. I've been up all day. I went, sir, I did a bunch of stuff. So it's not like I'm rolling in to the gym or to, to, to, to train the jiu-jitsu. Being all fresh.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:36Jocko Willink?

  I haven't been getting a massage all day. No, I've been actually grinding it out all day. And so sometimes I need to get on some of that.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:43Jocko Willink?

  And so I'm gonna call it good.

• 1:57:45Speaker 01

  This is really why I say it's cheating, because I'm always saying it while I'm looking at you. And it's cheating if it's like me against you, who's, you know, who's the batter warrior kind of thing? It's all, but you're on Shroom Tech. Okay.

• 1:57:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:57:58Speaker 01

  So you have a little help then. So, you know, but no, if you're training and you want to learn jiu-jitsu or you want to, um, you know, push performance so you, cause that's how you get gains. You recover from exercise and you want to push exercise? And you want to, in jiu-jitsu situation where you want to train, be able to train longer without, you know, the burden of this fatigue where you might have to quit at a certain time or whatever.

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  Don't have to quit.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  No, well, you know, you know what I mean?

• 1:58:24Jocko Willink?

  You don't have to quit.

• 1:58:25Speaker 01

  It is helpful, this Shroom Tech.

• 1:58:29Jocko Willink?

  It's, at some point when you get rabdo and you start pissing blood.

• 1:58:32Speaker 01

  No, right, yeah.

• 1:58:32Jocko Willink?

  It's probably time to.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  You gotta stop.

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  Time to take some recovery.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:35Jocko Willink?

  All right, this is my non-verbal signal for, let's move to the next item when I do this.

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, but there's still a lot to be said though. That's the thing, see? And I think that's really the value of this whole thing. Is that this needs to be talked about. If I knew this, like, back in the, you know, that guy that you were talking about, that Echo that you were talking about, if I knew this kind of stuff.

• 1:58:57Jocko Willink?

  Echo 1.0.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would have spent very little time at Echo 1.0.

• 1:59:01Jocko Willink?

  Do you hold that against me? Cause I could have told you about this stuff earlier.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  No, I don't, man. You know, that's life.

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I was afraid to.

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:59:10Jocko Willink?

  No, I wasn't.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  If, Leif, I don't know if you're on the Shroom Tech or whatever. Krill oil, that's a big one.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  I haven't tried Shroom Tech, but I just got a new order of Krill oil, actually from Onnit.

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  Just pull that. I got, I got some Strong Bone as well.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:23Jocko Willink?

  Strong Bone is good.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are good because they keep you in. Like you can, yeah, I do like super deep squats and I had knee surgery, full on ACL, like all this stuff. Deep, deep squats all the way, no problem. No factor. Krill oil, just boom, taking it through. Nonetheless, if you guys like these types of supplements, go to Onnit.com.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Slash Jocko.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  If you want 10% off, you add a slash Jocko. Boom. Get yourself, keep yourself in the game. Also, good way to support Amazon. If you shop Amazon, click through our website, JacoPodcast.com. There's a little Amazon banner there on the site. It's actually in the menu too now. You just, you know, on the top navigation menu is what you call it. Click on there before you do your shopping, whatever you're buying, whether it be these books or whatever. Um, you know, do it like that. You can support small, teeny tiny action, great support.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  Another way of course is to subscribe if you're on iTunes or any of these other podcasting platforms. Whatever they may be, Stitcher, Google Play, all these ones. There's other ones too, but I'm just saying subscribe. That's the point, you know? Um, even though you probably have already, so. Also YouTube videos, more videos. I think I'm going to release one tomorrow.

• 2:00:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:00:43Speaker 01

  Cool one. Little fun one.

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  By tomorrow, you mean tomorrow from today?

• 2:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it already have been released.

• 2:00:50Jocko Willink?

  So there's going to be a new one out?

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Maybe. I might not. Boom. Unpredictable. You know, we call that variable reward system that I'm delivering right now. Anyway, um, YouTube channel, we have some videos on there. Uh, if you like the video version of the podcast or you like these other like chunks of lessons or whatever that Jocko talks about, um, subscribe. You'll get a little notification when they come up, when I upload them.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  If you want it.

• 2:01:13Speaker 01

  If you want, yeah, of course.

• 2:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Because sometimes people don't, don't like to get notified.

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  I like to get notified because sometimes such a long period of time comes. Between when a video comes out from you?

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like that before. I know, man. Those were hard times. You know, it's not like that anymore.

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  There's no way I could ever possibly know unless I got that little notification that says Jocko Podcast has just uploaded a video. And then I rejoice.

• 2:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you kind of forget about it, really.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Then I rejoice.

• 2:01:41Speaker 01

  Situation. But yeah, no, I had to turn off the notifications for that one because it'll go off right when I finish uploading. So I already know when they're uploaded. See what I'm saying?

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  I do see what you're saying.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  Sensible.

• 2:01:53Jocko Willink?

  I do, too. Makes sense.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  Cool. The, not the last way, but another way is if you wear t-shirts and you want to represent.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  Who doesn't wear t-shirts?

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Not me. I wear t- that's it. That's my whole uniform. T-shirt. Boom. But yeah, if you like t-shirts, you want to represent in this way, boom, Jocko Podcast shirts. Multiple types of shirts. Rash guards as well for the no gi situation, jujitsu. Or like anything where you need range of motion, like running, cycling, CrossFit, all this stuff. Anyway, they're good. May or may not give you 19% improvement in all performance.

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  Why are you saying may not?

• 2:02:35Speaker 01

  I think that's like the scientifically literate way to put it.

• 2:02:39Jocko Willink?

  No, but there's, it's, it's actually will because there's no one that said, hey, I didn't get the 19% out of this gig.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it, yeah. Actually, yeah, you're right. There you go. Boom, Jocko said it.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  18.7%.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, you get one of these slackers that maybe, you know, I don't know. If you have the rash guard, you're probably not a slacker. So I guess that's invalid as well. But yeah, anyway, jockostore.com. That's, that's where you can get all the, you know, rash guards and cool shirts. I think they're cool. We made a, we went through great lengths to get the good shirts, like good quality.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  One guy emailed me, actually not one guy, just I got another recent email said, it's my favorite shirt to wear because of how it fits and it, because it's good, you know? It's not like a giveaway free shirt you get, you know, when you go to the soccer game or wherever you go. Anyway, they're cool. Check them out. If you like them, support that way. Get one and represent. And Psychological Warfare. Okay, so I'm gonna go into Psychological Warfare. If you don't know Psychological Warfare, if you're at a moment of weakness in your diet workout, waking up in the morning, you need a little boost, little like, someone there to sort of gently spot you, help you through these moments of weakness. You go on iTunes, maybe Amazon Music, wherever you can buy MP3s.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Get Psychological Warfare, Jocko Willink. The little tracks you can listen. You can put it as your alarm if you want, or just listen to the, whatever track you need, and he'll get you through it. I'm telling you, here's the thing. So, yes, day before yesterday, not yesterday, yes, day before yesterday, I was about to work out. Felt like working out. Rested, boom, you know, took my pre-workout stuff, ready. I was like, alright, I'll listen to Psychological Warfare at my moment of strength.

• 2:04:22Jocko Willink?

  Has this ever been tried before?

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  I don't know. That's the thing. That's what I was thinking at the time. Bro, it's kind of like abuse. You know how like, you know how like you drink coffee or something, you're like, fuck, I'm kind of tired, I'm gonna drink some coffee. And when you're not tired and you drink it, it's like, I'm buzzing off there, and you have that good feeling. Now you're like, double coffied up, ready to get after it. That's how you feel. It's like, I'm abusing the Psychological Warfare.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  So it's not only for moments of weakness?

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  For moments of triumph, is what it is. That's it. Not even, so even if you're feeling weak and you want a moment of triumph, that's what it is.

• 2:04:55Jocko Willink?

  So what, how was the workout, is the question?

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Workout was dope. Of course it was dope. Check me out, bro. Pump's still on. Anyway.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  Good. Um, you know, while you're clicking through Amazon, by the way, you can get on amazon.com, you can get Jocko White Tea. Now, there's, other reports have come in. And this report, what I found interesting, because this is a side effect, apparently.

• 2:05:20Speaker 01

  Of the tea?

• 2:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Of the tea. And that is, and this could be a positive side effect, or it could be a negative side effect, depending on who you are. But one guy reported that he drank some tea at night, and he had 1.5 inches of beard growth overnight. So if you want that, it could be positive, it could be negative. And also, we had a police officer out there. And, and again, this is just, I'm just giving some new... Some new testimonies that have come in. This one, um, one police officer, he's shooting the El Presidente drill, which is a drill where you have two targets and you shoot two rounds at each target and you do a reload. And his time has decreased, which is an improvement, right?

• 2:06:03Jocko Willink?

  So he's be able to do this faster, 31%, which I think is really good, especially. Big numbers, yeah. This is a critical situation, right? You've got two bad guys and then you gotta do a reload. You might want to have some Jocka White tea. That's, that's almost double the 19%. Yeah, it's good. Dang, yeah. And, and the thing is that I want to make sure everybody understands is that this isn't like conjecture and some pseudoscience that I'm talking about here. This is 147% factual. So everyone should know that. So order the tea, the Jocka White tea. Also, you can order a, a, a new book, which is called Way of the Warrior Kid. And I got asked why I wrote this the other day.

• 2:06:46Jocko Willink?

  And one of the things that propelled me to write this book was I was looking for a book. When my son was a little younger, I was looking for a book for a boy to read. Let's get a book. And so, you know, I wanted him to read kind of a, right? Kind of a book about getting after it, right? So I went out and I looked through a couple of books and I finally found this pirate book. And I go, ah, cool pirate book. I didn't pay too much attention. I didn't like look through it because it's a pirate book, right? Pirates are swords. Yeah, man. Ships taking over, right? Storming vessels at sea. So going to the book, I bring it home to my son. We start reading the book and, um, they were weak.

• 2:07:31Jocko Willink?

  And so now I'm like trying to get my son, you know, up and in the game. And he's reading about weak pirates. They weren't, they didn't even attack anybody, right? So I realized that there's a dearth of books for children, not just boys, but boys and girls, that will show someone how to get after it at a young age, right? Which you can start getting after it at birth. By the way, there's no reason to wait. There's no legal minimum age. You have to be 18. Oh, can I see your get after it license or get after it ID card? No, you can start getting after it at birth. That's so true. So that's one of the reasons that I wrote a book about a kid who's.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Not gonna be a pansy and not gonna be wimpy. He actually is in the beginning. He's feeling pretty weak. You know how many pull-ups he can do?

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  How many?

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Zero pull-ups. It's not good. You know, you know what he's, you know, you know how well he knows his times tables?

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  How well?

• 2:08:28Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't know them. Doesn't know his times tables. That's weak. And guess what? Can he swim? No, can't swim. And last thing, is he getting picked on? Yeah, Kenny Williamson. Kenny Williamson, the bully, he's all up on him, pushing him around. He can't stand up to him, doesn't know what to do. So, is that a good way to go through life? I don't know, you tell me. Zero pull-ups. Do you wanna be able to do zero pull-ups?

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Lath?

• 2:08:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Not good. Gotta be able to do some pull-ups.

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 2:09:00Jocko Willink?

  That's why I wrote the book. So that the kid out there that can't do any pull-ups, maybe he's getting picked on, maybe, maybe he can't swim, but maybe there's some other thing in his life that he, we all got issues. You know, we all got something we gotta overcome. We all got fear to overcome. Guess what? We talk about fear in the book, cuz everyone, Lath was talking about today. We all get afraid. How you gonna overcome that?

• 2:09:19Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 2:09:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, luckily for Mark in the book, his Uncle Jake shows up. Uncle Jake was in the SEAL teams. And he's got some lessons to teach to young Mark, and that's what he does. So... You can preorder it right now, Way of the Warrior Kid. And you know what? We gotta make some t-shirts on that one.

• 2:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Kids t-shirts.

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, the few parts that you did tell me, it's... Even you explaining, like, that's a good little explanation of it, and it's good.

• 2:09:49Speaker 01

  But the little parts that you were telling me were, were kinda impressive, like, there is, that's kinda advanced for a kid's book even, you know, in a good way. Meaning like, it's not, you know, there's certain obvious things that you, you, you know you're gonna find in a kid's book.

• 2:10:03Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  Even with stories like this, it's like, okay, I know the narrative, I get it. And it has to be that way to, you know, to teach the lesson effect of all this stuff. But the little hints of complexity. They were impressive, I gotta say.

• 2:10:16Jocko Willink?

  The other thing that is, even when I read it right now, just finished finalist edits, and you're like...

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  There's so much in there that's actually from the podcast. But it's for a kid. It's put in a kid's language. Uncle Jake's breaking it down real simple. So that's why, that's why, I don't care who you are. You want that broken down. That's a law of combat in the book Extreme Ownership, written by Leif Babin and myself. Gotta keep things simple. So it's in a simple way. So that's way the warrior kid. And also, by the way, just released another book. It's called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. And this is the, this is the ebook that I talked about here not a long time ago. I'm gonna write an ebook. Well, it turned into a real book and it's broken into two parts. One part is called Thoughts.

• 2:11:09Jocko Willink?

  The other part is called Actions. These are actually my thoughts. And my actions. So what are thoughts? Well, what do I think about what's going on? What do I think about when you run up against weakness? What do you think? Those are the thoughts. And then actions is, okay, how do you act? Which means workouts are in there, which means talks about martial arts, talks about what I eat, how I sleep. And that kind of stuff. So preorder it. Check it out. And it will help them logistically when the book comes out because see the publishers.

• 2:11:48Jocko Willink?

  They don't understand what we're doing here. They don't know what we're doing here. They don't know. And when I'm talking about we, I'm not talking about you and me. I'm not talking about we. I'm talking about we.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  They don't understand what we're doing here. They don't understand that there's troopers that want to get after it.

• 2:12:06Jocko Willink?

  So when they don't understand that, they're like, okay, well, you know, I guess we'll print, I guess we'll print 400 copies of this. And that way, you know, again, someone can buy it. Like they don't know.

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  The formula is good.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  They don't know what they're talking about. So preorder so that they understand what we are doing here. Maybe we'll get some of them in the game, actually. Okay, so that's that. And, you know, speaking of books.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Leif, I was talking about a little book called Extreme Ownership.

• 2:12:38Jocko Willink?

  What are you hearing from the field on Extreme Ownership right now? The book that we wrote?

• 2:12:43Leif Babin?

  I'm hearing a lot from the field on Extreme Ownership. I mean, what's awesome to me about Extreme Ownership is just continues to resonate with people. You know, and even, you know, we're over a year and a half out of publication now. And that this thing continues to be in the top, you know, 150 or 200 on Amazon. And so much of that is word of mouth driven, you know, that people are buying that for their team. You know, and holding.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Wait a minute, well, did it help with that big ad that we put in the New York Times? Did that help sell it? Oh, wait, no, we didn't do that. Oh, maybe it's the TV spots that we did. Oh, no, we didn't do that either. So word of mouth.

• 2:13:19Leif Babin?

  It is exactly. And, you know, for that, that's the real testament, I think, for, you know, for me, that, that we wrote a book that's resonant with leaders. That's helping them get better, to lead better teams, for people to, to be better teammates and employ these concepts in Extreme Ownership. You know, when we see the, you know, the, the fire service training that's going on, you know, and firefighters are using that as their, their training. Man, conducting these, these training, or we see police, police units doing it. We see businesses, you know, and some of them bring us in and have training. Some of them, they're holding their own training and they're buying that book and they're, they're, they're learning out of it.

• 2:13:56Leif Babin?

  I was working with a business just, just a couple of weeks back where they, you know, each, each group in this, the leadership team was assigned to study a chapter and talk about how, what did that chapter apply to them? And they're, they're, they're learning out of that and it's inspiring to see that stuff. Because not only is it, is it, you know, does it say, hey, we wrote a book that's having some impact. But when you see the things that they're doing, when they're implementing Extreme Ownership, when they're using CoverMove and they're not focused on themselves, but about the mission and working together as a team and, and using decentralized command. You know, explaining the why to their teams and, and the results are amazing, you know, see that happen. And, and that's really, you know, that's really what it's all about for us, I think, is seeing that kind of impact.

• 2:14:37Leif Babin?

  So it's been awesome to see that and looking forward for that to continue to, to grow and expand its reach across the globe.

• 2:14:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, we, we talk about in the book, we talk about working with Iraqi soldiers and one of the hardest things, obviously. Even if you took a great soldier, but they don't speak the language you speak and you have a language barrier, that's a real problem. So a lot of times in these teams, what the book gives them, what Extreme Ownership gives them, it gives them a, a language, a common language to talk about the issues, the leadership problems that they're having, they can identify. Because how can you fight an enemy that you can't identify? So if you know, if you don't know that, hey, our decentralized command is weak, and if you don't know what that is and you can't identify it, how can you fix it? If you got a cover move to solve problems and work together, but you don't know what that looks like, or you don't even know what to call it, how are you going to get it solved? So that's one of the things that I notice

• 2:15:30Jocko Willink?

  when we show up at a company that already is, is using it and have read it, they're immediately saying, you know, hey, this is the, this is the situation, we got, we got these divisions over here and this division over here, and we're not covering, moving for each other, we, we got to identify. And you go, okay, so they've already got a grip on it. When people that we go and talk to, they, they haven't read the book yet, they can't even really identify what's wrong. They just don't see it. They don't have the, the ability. It's like not having night vision. They just, they just don't see it. So the book, when you get that book out there to everyone on your team, and all of a sudden they all have that common language, they all can identify targets, they know what the bad guys look like, and they know how to fix it. And that's, that's what I notice that's awesome about when we work with these companies and they're, and they're in the game big

• 2:16:15Jocko Willink?

  time. And then the muster. May 4th and 5th, New York City. Go to extremeownership.com, sign up now. Like I said before, I think this thing is probably going to sell out. So if you want tickets, if you want to be there, if you want to be a part of this badass event that we just, we were talking about, just this amazing group of people, of leaders and aspiring leaders to get in the game, sign up now. Extremeownership.com.

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  I will not be doing a speech.

• 2:16:43Jocko Willink?

  For the record. Just so you know, everyone, Echo doesn't think he's gonna give a speech. We think he probably should. How about a side speech? No speech. I give those all the time. Echo was, Echo was, Echo was a very laid back, you know, the, the, the good, the good island attitude. When we put him up on stage for the muster, he was not happy about that. Nah. And that was just to say, thanks. Yeah. You went in your shell. Nah, man, I got it. You're welcome. Hey, you know, on with the show. So you know what? We, you gotta, we talked about, you gotta focus on your weaknesses, right? So I, I think you need to present at least for a couple of hours on the stage. So I gotta talk about this one thing, cause it just happened again. So Echo's got this thing where he goes into this alternate

• 2:17:26Jocko Willink?

  voice at the end of some sentences. And I noticed in one of the last podcasts that I actually started doing it too. So everyone has been saying, hey, Jocko, what have you gotten from Echo? Well, I think the one thing that I could say I definitely got from Echo is doing this thing right here. Cause that's what he, he just did it. He just did it. So pay attention to that. I don't know. You know what I call that? I'm gonna call that the Echo voice escalation. So you're just talking normal and then all of a sudden you go into that echo voice escalation. So that you got your own thing now. It's effective. It's effective. See? See how you do that? That one? That one? A before the muster, until the muster, if you want to, uh, give us feedbacks or comments or whatever, do you want to continue this conversation?

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  You, you can actually find us, not hard to find, and find us on the interwebs. Uh, Twitter, Instagrammy. And of course, of course, you're gonna find us on that Facebook.

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  We gotta be there, that one. Leif is at Leif Babin. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink Echo.

• 2:18:41Leif Babin?

  Do you have anything else to add right now?

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  No, man. Oh, yeah, actually I do. And I heard you mention this before where you're talking about in Ramadi where, you know, the sun comes up and you say you hear the call to prayer. I know what that is, but what would it like, what does that sound like? What is the call to prayer?

• 2:19:00Leif Babin?

  You know what?

• 2:19:01Speaker 01

  Is it a person like on a?

• 2:19:03Leif Babin?

  It is a person. It's a person on a loudspeaker, right? So each mosque has a minaret, which is a tower. And they generally have a loudspeaker and so you've got, I forget what the title is in in the Islamic world, there's a specific title for the prayer caller that's gonna get up and sing this prayer. But yeah, you just hear these speakers going off all over the city.

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  And it's like a chant?

• 2:19:26Leif Babin?

  Yeah, they're, it's a, they sing.

• 2:19:30Jocko Willink?

  It's a song.

• 2:19:31Speaker 01

  Oh dang, okay.

• 2:19:31Leif Babin?

  It's a, so it's something that, you know, when you hear that, you know, like the, so there'll be one early in the morning. So like before the sun comes up and we had to be in place, you know, you're going, you're going in enemy territory. You had to be in the building lockdown, ready to go, because as soon as the call to prayer goes down, you know that the city's gonna start awakening. People are gonna start, you know, coming out of their houses and cars starting up and people moving around and, and the sun's gonna come up, you know, pretty soon. And so, yeah, there's, there's five of those throughout the day. And, you know, that would be the, you have to hear that, that morning call to prayer was like, we're gonna get some.

• 2:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because the enemy, the enemy in Ramadi, for the most part, didn't operate at nighttime because we had all the advantages of night vision and everything else. So they operated during the day. So the indicator that the day was starting is the first morning call to prayer. And when you'd hear it, you'd know.

• 2:20:20Speaker 01

  Man, that's so crazy how it's like, it's like this official beginning of a day, you know? That's like the official fucking commencement of the day. Isn't that crazy?

• 2:20:31Jocko Willink?

  I guess you could think it's crazy.

• 2:20:32Speaker 01

  I mean, we have that individually, you know, your alarm clock or your whatever, but like for everybody.

• 2:20:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's what, that's one of the things that makes it so so crazy is that it's, it is the whole city.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 2:20:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, because like one, actually this was funny. At one point they said, hey, you weren't allowed, and what they said, we weren't allowed to go within a block of a mosque or something like that. And there's so many mosques in Ramadi. We just showed them a map and we're like, okay, so you don't want us to do anything? Because if we can't go within two blocks of a mosque, or whatever the rule that they tried to throw at us. You know, I said, so you don't want us to do anything else on this deployment? Because here's a mosque, here's a mosque, here's a mosque, here's a mosque. And by the way, intel says this mosque is okay, local mosque, intel says this one's bad, this one's bad, this one's good. So we had, you know, different, yeah, different, um, you know, because just because someone's, the mosque, some of the, some of the neighbors are saying, oh, great, it's called a prayer, we're ready to start a beautiful day. Some of the people, the, the smaller group of people were saying, oh, here's the call to prayer.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Let's go and attack Americans and, and torture the local populace, so.

• 2:21:35Leif Babin?

  And unfortunately, because, uh, the mosques were protected and we had to get massive approvals all the way up to like the highest levels to be able to enter, enter the mosque, uh, the, the bad guys knew that and they'd use those mosques to, to stage attacks out of. You know, and they, they'd stockpile weapons and ammunition and, and, and that stuff there. So, uh, the bad guys figured it out. It was, uh, it was not good.

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  Crazy, man. It's crazy, the little details though, you know what I mean? That I, I mean, I always hear from like you guys, just a little detail, stuff that you don't necessarily think about. You only think about, oh yeah, the, the gunfights and like all this stuff, but just those little details kind of makes it real, man. It's crazy.

• 2:22:14Jocko Willink?

  Any other questions? Echo Charles or comments?

• 2:22:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:22:19Leif Babin?

  Sorry.

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Very good to see Leif again. That's it.

• 2:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Good. Leif, you got anything else, brother?

• 2:22:26Leif Babin?

  Yeah, just great to be back on here with you guys again, you know, it's, it's awesome, uh, uh, thinking back to the, you know, podcast 11. You know, I was the first guest, uh, and just getting this thing up and running, you know, and, and to see the reach that it's, uh, that it's had. And, and as, as the expansion and, uh, you know, where we're sitting today, you know, versus where it was then. You know, the third time I'm back on, it's pretty, pretty awesome, pretty awesome to see that. And I've so many people, I've, I've been sitting in jujitsu classes before and someone hears me talk and like, are you Leif? I guess it's the, yeah, the raspy voice is, uh, is, is giving me away, but they're like, I started training jujitsu because of the Jocko podcast. And I've, I've had that happen multiple times, um, you know, uh, whether in jujitsu class or meeting someone, you know, uh, uh,

• 2:23:11Leif Babin?

  randomly in an airport or those kinds of things. And, uh, it's just awesome. It's awesome to see troopers all over the world, uh, you know, all over the, all over the place getting after it. You know, through, and, and loyal listeners to Jocko podcast and passing it on to others. I uh Echo asked me that because we get a lot of people that on social media they say, "Hey, I just enlisted in the Army. I just listened to Marine Corps. I'm going to OCS." A lot of people, you know, "Thanks for, you know, pushing me that way or whatever." And Echo says, you know, like, "Hey, do you think, how many people do you think have actually joined the military because of the podcast?" And I said, "You know, I don't know what that number looks like, but there's, the amount of people that have started jujitsu because of the podcast is a big number."

• 2:23:56Jocko Willink?

  It's a big number, which is awesome because obviously jujitsu is really good.

• 2:24:00Leif Babin?

  I think the number of people who joined the military is probably substantial as well. In fact, I was just talking to a young lady last night at the event we were speaking at, who came up to me and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about joining the Navy." And, you know, I'd said she just started listening to the Jocko Podcast. Those are very much related. I told her to go buy a copy of Extreme Ownership and, you know, to, uh, to learn from that and take ownership of everything in the world. She was gonna do well. So she was, uh, she was at EMT and, uh, wanted to be a Navy corpsman. So I think so many people from all walks of life influenced for good by the Jocko Podcast.

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  I think so. It's, uh, definitely, definitely, definitely awesome for us to be a part of it and get all that feedback all the time. And, and of course, there's no coincidence to the fact that you were the first guest on here, obviously. I just did an Echo escalation.

• 2:24:48Leif Babin?

  That was, that was a good one.

• 2:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:50Leif Babin?

  Echo, you're having influence in the world.

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, finally in life.

• 2:24:54Leif Babin?

  I hope, I hope there's not someone out there that doesn't like it and blames you and then goes on a crazy like stalker mission to eliminate you from the world.

• 2:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:02Leif Babin?

  Dang. Lucky he's pretty good at jujitsu. I think he can take care of this. And he's got a lot of knives and hatchets, so.

• 2:25:09Jocko Willink?

  Nice, nice. Any other closers?

• 2:25:11Leif Babin?

  Yeah, you know, I was just thinking, um, we were having that conversation yesterday, you know, and, uh, as a dad of young kids, you know, I've got, I've got a toddler and a baby, um, and, uh, you know, I know Echo, you've got, you've got young kids as well. Um, and, um, you know, just thinking about, it can be. All you parents out there know what I'm talking about, right? It can be exhausting. You know, we gone through a time, it's winter time, you got kids, you've got colds and they're sick and they're waking up multiple times in the night, cutting into my, my 4:45 club workouts, you know? And it's, it's easy to like, it's easy, you know, when my, my little baby girl crawls around the floor, she just tries to eat everything, you know, picks up the choking hazards and,

• 2:25:54Leif Babin?

  and, and shoves them around, like, and you gotta keep an eye on them constantly, you know? And my son is just a wild man. He's just, he'll, he'll just, no fear of anything. He's just, I'm learning that he's just like me, and I realize what my parents actually put up with, but he takes off running for the most dangerous thing within a mile radius. Uh, and, and he just like, without looking back and without heeding any warning or, or command to stop from me whatsoever. So, so it's, it is full time and I'm in the game all the time and it can be exhausting. You know, it can be, um, it's something that, uh, you can think, oh man, I just can't wait till they get a little bit older and I don't have to, you know, I can tell them to stop or he knows not to run in the street or my daughter's not choking on some, something as you, you know?

• 2:26:36Leif Babin?

  And, uh, and, and the reality is, you know, just being out here with Jocko and, and seeing his kids, you know, and your oldest daughter's about to graduate now from, from high school, which is amazing to me, cause when I left, you know, San Diego here, uh, your, your, your kids, they were kids, they were little, you know, and to watch them grow up into teenagers now, and, you know, when we first met, we started working, they were testing and they were really little, you know, uh, your youngest hadn't even been born and your son was just a, I mean, just a baby. Like two or three years old? Yeah, and, and so, I just re, I realize, it doesn't seem like I left the Navy that long ago, you know, it's, it'll be six years this summer, um, and I realize that time has flown by like that, it has just gone by like that.

• 2:27:18Leif Babin?

  And, uh, and so seeing that, you know, and seeing your kids now, I, I gotta take a step back, the detachment that we always talk about, right? To be able to see with a bigger perspective and to think.

• 2:27:30Leif Babin?

  These moments, right, they they're awesome and I gotta relish every nanosecond of them because my kids are gonna grow up and they're gonna be teenagers and they're gonna graduate from high school and they're gonna go off and I gotta rest, you know, for me and my wife, um, we gotta cherish those moments and people tell you that, you know, but you you still don't even like embrace it, you know, you still like, oh, if I can just get to this level.

• 2:27:54Jocko Willink?

  You're worried about the diaper, the dirty diaper and the applesauce.

• 2:27:58Leif Babin?

  Exactly, exactly, you know, and, uh, or, or, you know, my kid just went through my drawer and threw everything out and now I gotta clean that up and we're trying to get the door. So I think for me, it's a great recognition of like that those moments are fleeting and they're precious and you gotta enjoy every second of that. So for you parents out there listening to this, um, if you're in that boat with with with me, detach, take a step back, think about how wonderful those moments are, um, and, uh, and just, just relish it, relish every, every moment and, uh, don't let yourself get flustered, don't let yourself uh, get overwhelmed. Um, if your kid's getting up before 3:00 in the morning, maybe it's

• 2:28:38Leif Babin?

  time to back it up to, uh, zero 300 club. But, uh, embrace every, every second of that as, as a parent and, uh, cherish those moments because those are the most important things of all.

• 2:28:49Speaker 01

  Brad, I'll give you a, not you, I'll give a small tip that helped me with that. You know, when like certain things get overwhelming, you're trying to do this and they're crying and then the other one's doing something and you're like, you kinda wanna yell at them and be like, hey, I need a minute or something, but they're like, kids are like, a minute? Like, what does that even mean? Kind of thing. They don't know. So the tip there is anytime you feel it bubbling up like you're getting frustrated, understand that you're at that moment making it about yourself and it's not about yourself. You know, it's about the, whether, and you can look at it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it about the mission or I'm gonna make it about these kids. Make it about something other than yourself and you won't be frustrated anymore. I'm telling you anytime, anytime you're like, "Oh, I've been up all night.

• 2:29:32Speaker 01

  This baby's been crying away." You're just making it about yourself right now. "Oh, you. Oh, you. You poor parent," you know? Meanwhile, everyone, you know how many parents have been through the exact same thing? You're making it about yourself right now. You're feeling sorry or whatever, you know? Just don't make it about yourself and know that that's what you're doing if you feel that. And then it's solved.

• 2:29:49Jocko Willink?

  That's exactly right. Exactly right. Check the ego.

• 2:29:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, essentially, yeah.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  It's about the mission.

• 2:29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's not about you right now.

• 2:29:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one. Yeah, it's great. Great advice, Leif, and, uh, having seen my kids grow up and see them about to leave the nest, as they say, yeah. Embrace that whole time and thanks, obviously, for coming on again. I'm sure this won't be the last time and we'll, we'll do it again. And everyone else out there that's listening, thank you all, especially, especially the military personnel across the globe right now. By the way, they're not getting to enjoy those moments with their family. They're out there in harm's way, standing the watch for us.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  So, thank you to all of you, to the police and law enforcement. Stay proactive and aggressive in your fight against crime. And stay safe out in the streets and thank you all for keeping our streets safe. And the firefighters and the EMTs, and again, who we call and we thank only when we need you. Thanks for being there, waiting to help us when we need it. And to the rest of you out there doing what you're doing,

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  as you go out there and do it, don't do it easy. Don't take it easy. And if someone says to you, "Take it easy." Tell them no. Tell them you aren't gonna take it easy. Tell them you're gonna go hard, as hard as you can. Tell them you're gonna push and grind and fight and work as hard as you can until you have nothing left.

• 2:31:55Jocko Willink?

  And then turn around and walk away from that person and go do just that and do it hard.

• 2:32:07Jocko Willink?

  And so, until next time, this is Leif and Echo and Jocko.

• 2:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Out.