396: Leadership in The Marines, Google, Facebook and CrossFit. With Don Faul

Don Faul, a former U. S. Marine Corps platoon commander and accomplished executive with more than eight years of CrossFit experience, is stepping into the role as the company’s new CEO. Prior to accepting this position, Faul held key operational roles at growth-oriented consumer technology companies, including Pinterest, Meta, and Google. 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 396 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  According to the Marine Corps,

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  quote, "Physical fitness includes a set of characteristics that people have or can achieve relating to their ability to perform physical activity. Our service members must demonstrate the ability to physically accomplish all aspects of the mission while remaining healthy and meet the criteria for deployment, retention, and continued military service. Many components of physical fitness are shared across the services. The common thread among them is that service members and their families benefit from a holistic approach to physical fitness. A well-rounded physical fitness program should include varied cardio training, balanced strength training that includes core strengthening exercises,

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  flexibility, speed, and agility training, appropriate amounts of sleep and recovery, and effective mind-body programs such as yoga, martial arts, and meditation.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  Physical fitness is a fundamental element of one's physical and mental health, mission performance, and readiness." End quote. And that is what the Marine Corps says about physical fitness, and similar statements to that are made by all the military branches and special operations. These ideas are taken to an extreme in many cases, but these philosophies are not only applicable to the military.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  The same things can be said for any human being in any walk of life. It is better to be stronger, faster, and healthier.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  And there are always people out there and companies and movements that try and share this mentality and help people find this path of health. And one of those movements, and really one of the most prominent of those movements, is CrossFit, which is a methodology that's made a huge impact on people around the world and continues to.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  Help people to get on that path to improve physically and in all those other aspects. And CrossFit right now currently is being led by a veteran marine infantry officer who graduated from the United States Naval Academy, who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  Got his MBA from Stanford, worked at some little tech companies like Google, Facebook and Pinterest. His name is Don Faul and it's an honor to have him here with us tonight to share his experiences and his lessons learned along the way. Don, thanks for coming down, man. Thanks for joining us.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, guys. The honor's mine.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, pretty, uh, pretty wild little story you've been on, little wild ride you've been on.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Never would have predicted. I, from the Marine Corps to Pinterest. I say Marine Corps to cupcakes and ponytails, so you can't ride it.

• 3:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we're gonna have to, we might have to dive into Pinterest a little bit, because that's the one social media thing that I, I don't really get too well.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Not made for people like you. Let's leave it at that.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  And then what bothers me is I'll search an image and I'll wanna, and one of their images will pop up and they, I won't be able to get it for some reason. You know what I mean? It's telling me to sign in with something.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Once again, by design.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're trying to keep me up there. Awesome. Well, we'll get there. Uh, in the meantime, let's, let's, I always like to start at the beginning, which is how you got to where you are. So you were born in what, in New Jersey?

• 3:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, little town called Allendale, uh, right outside of New York City, about 15 miles, uh, Bergen County, New Jersey.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  Is it, so New Jersey, is it far enough to be in the woods or is it city?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Suburb, like full on suburb of New York City. Yep.

• 3:55Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's places like the Pine Barrens that are full on woods in New Jersey people don't think of.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. I mean, New Jersey Garden State, most people scoff at that, but there are big parts of the state that are beautiful.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then there's the Jersey Shore, of course, as well. So there's a lot of variety in Jersey, but you're in a straight up suburb.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  Straight up suburb of New York City.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  And what'd your parents do?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Uh, so my dad was a environmental engineer back in the eighties, like early days. So when the EPA was first established, started cracking down on companies. My dad worked for a company that would take processed waste, uh, toxic waste and process it. My mom was a nurse, um, so she, uh, you know, went to nursing school, was a nurse until, uh, she got pregnant with me.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  And did you have any veterans in your family?

• 4:36Speaker 02

  I had an uncle who had been drafted in Vietnam, but was never talked about. Uh, I had both my grandfather served for a short period of time during World War II, but also it was never a topic of conversation. So I grew up in, in a family and in a town where the military service was not a thing. And I remember when I, when I was talking to my parents about this the other day, when I decided to go to the Naval Academy, I remember friends of mine asking me like, hey, what happened? I thought your parents could afford college. My mom was telling me several of my teachers called her and said, how could you let your son do this?

• 5:09Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which is really unfortunate.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  That's why, so before you, before you got to the academy, you're growing up, what are you doing in high school? Are you playing sports? You playing all sports? What are you doing?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  I was, I was super into sports as a kid. Unfortunately, not really great at any of them. Uh, played football, basketball, baseball, soccer, uh, really wanted to be an athlete and, uh, but was never great. I knew I had no shot of playing at the next level. So I, I graduated, it's funny, Castro, Dave Castro and I have a really similar story. I graduated high school with a chip on my shoulder because I was never as good an athlete as I wanted to be.

• 5:42Jocko Willink?

  Did you train hard?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  I did. Uh, I would say I was, I was somewhat disciplined, but I didn't re- really learn true discipline until I went to the Naval Academy.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  And what about just the training programs back then? I mean, there wasn't like,

• 5:55Speaker 02

  Didn't exist.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  Kids now, kids now, they're going to like special camps so they can work on their freaking forehand for tennis. They're doing their three week camp for forehand and tennis. They're doing a three week camp for single leg takedowns. Like they're getting real specific with these kids now.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Oh, and they've got, they've got multiple coaches on the side who are training them in strength and conditioning, who are doing mental training. No, that was, that was not the thing for me. Uh, obviously. Uh, no, I, you know, I, uh, you know, played high school sports and, you know, our, our football coach was our, you know, gym teacher. That was the standard thing. And, you know, that's where I learned to do the bench press and bicep curls, which was the extent of my strength and conditioning training for the next 15 years. Um, so I didn't really learn any of this until I got further down the road.

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  What were your grades like?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  I had good grades. I was, I had pretty decent grades.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  Were you, what else were you into? What about music? What music were you listening to?

• 6:49Speaker 02

  I was a disaster, much to my parents' grand. I play, oh, listened to. Well, I was, gosh, going way back. So I was a huge Bruce Springsteen. I mean, being from New Jersey, obviously.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  Did they issue those albums?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I wish, I wish. The tattoos when you turn, you know, 13. Big John Mellencamp fan, Bob Seger. And then the full 80s craze. So I was, you know, a child of the 80s and still an adult of the 80s. It's when I, when I train now in the mornings, I beg the coaches to put the 80s mix on. Everyone else hates it.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  And so, so at some point, though, you figured out, you, you saw the Naval Academy. How'd you see the Naval Academy?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got exposed to it. Actually, there was a weekend visit when I was a junior in high school. And I was thinking a little bit, you know, my parents definitely drummed into me the importance of service. So I, you know, I volunteered with the ambulance corps as an EMT when I was in high school. And my, you know, did Boy Scouts for a short stint. So my parents were really big on giving back. You know, we knew growing up that we were very fortunate. And so my parents, you know, certainly emphasized service. And so I went and checked out the Naval Academy. I thought something in the military might be interesting. Went down for a weekend, had absolutely zero exposure to the military before this. No understanding of what I was getting myself into, but I remember going down for the weekend and just being struck by how fundamentally different it was from every other college experience.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  So the other visits that I did, and it totally clicked to me. So I came back from that and said, this is my thing. This feels really hard. I have no idea if I'll want to do this for the rest of my life. I'm 17, I don't know anything. But even if, you know, I do my five years after graduation and get out, I will have had exposure to a bunch of life experiences that'll be good for me.

• 8:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you understand the difference between the Navy and the Marine Corps?

• 8:33Speaker 02

  No, not at all. And when I went to, I really did my homework. I mean, it's not like it was a big decision. I was just committing a decade of my life. Yeah, so I showed up and I thought, you know, if you had asked me on day one, I would have said I wanted to be a backseat pilot. I didn't have the eyes to be a pilot. So I thought, ah, maybe I'll be a naval flight officer, backseater.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  You know, and then got to the Naval Academy and got exposed to, you know, they expose you to each of the different parts of the Navy and the Marine Corps. And, you know, once I experienced the Marine Corps, it clicked.

• 9:02Jocko Willink?

  How was the, the check-in plebe summer and all that stuff? Was it a shock to the system? Did you have a? In the first forty-eight hours, did you think, what, why did I do this?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  Oh, within an hour. So I, I remember first day, they call it induction day and they, you know, they structure it, right? It's a shock to the system, just like the first day of any boot camp or basic training. But, you know, they shave your head, uh, put you in line, take all of your possessions away, right? The standard stuff and then they start. I remember we had a session where we could say goodbye to our parents. And then you walk back into, there's one big dorm that everybody lives in, four thousand people in one dorm. And up until this point, the pressure was like a six and a half. And then we walk in the door to go back to the dorm and then it's a full twelve. And I remember just, if I had any hair, it would have been blown back at that point. And, you know, by the end of that first day, I, I was really, you know, given a second thoughts.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  I, uh, I, I was in complete, uh, you know, paralyzed retreat mode. You know, they structure it, it's very obvious now where you, you can't succeed, right? Like you, you deliberately fail in everything, making your bed, your uniform, et cetera. I had never been in that type of environment before. I was used to things coming relatively easy to me and I just could not deal with it. And then I remember on my, my second day, it clicked. I was like, dumbass, you're not supposed to succeed. You just gotta make it through. You just gotta keep your shit together. And that, at that point, it got a little bit easier for me.

• 10:30Jocko Willink?

  So, once you get into, so plebe summer, you go through, how long is, how long are they messing with you in plebe summer? Is that like six weeks or is it the whole summer?

• 10:37Speaker 02

  It, it, it's the whole summer and actually you're, you know, they mess with you for the full first year. So it's most intense for the, for the summer. And then the rest of the, uh, class, the brigade comes back and you get treated like shit through the end, uh, through May of your, uh, first year.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  And are you doing sports? Cause you have to do sports, right?

• 10:57Speaker 02

  So you do, you have to do some sort of activity. So, you know, if you're not a varsity athlete, they make you go out and do something else. Again, I had no shot of being a varsity athlete there. And I had an uncle actually who was a rower, total stud. And, you know, I really admired him. So I went, Navy's got a good crew team. So I went out there for like a couple of days. I'm like, I'll go give rowing a shot. I gave that about three days. I was like, this sucks a lot. Um, I have a lot of admiration for rowers because you gotta, you gotta love suffering in that sport. Um, it just didn't click with me. The culture didn't click with me. And then I had an upper class. This was fall of my first year. Came into my room. He was a junior and he said, hey, do you play sports in high school? And I said, yeah, yes, sir. And he said, you play a sport here? I said, no. He said, you're playing rugby. Show up tomorrow.

• 11:41Speaker 02

  And that was it. There was no choice. And so I was like, geez, you know, I had never thought of it before. I didn't know a single thing about it. Hadn't watched a game in my life. Showed up and that was my thing. I played for four years. Uh, you know, thank God for that moment.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  Are they playing against other colleges? Is it like a D1, D2, D3 type thing? They have the whole nine yards?

• 12:01Speaker 02

  It is. It, back then it was largely a club sport. So every school but Cal Berkeley was club sport, but we played, you know, mid Atlantic regions. We'd play Georgetown, Loyola, Catholic, et cetera. And then they'd have a whole national finals kind of playoff system as well.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  And the Berkeley Bears just got to be league champs because they were the only ones.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  It was such bullshit and their, their coach, I mean, they won the national championship for something like 18 years in a row. Their head coach at Cal was also the US national team head coach. So they just had the deck stacked, but they were, they were really, really good.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, so what, what'd you end up studying?

• 12:36Speaker 02

  So I studied systems engineering, um, which is kind of a control weapon systems thing.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  Was this something that interested you?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  You're like, why the fuck would you do that? Um, yeah, I was a, uh, I was a more of a math and science guy. Like didn't, didn't like, uh, you know, the language arts as much. The, the math and engineering stuff resonated. My dad was an engineer and so for me as a kid, that was something that I'd always, I'd always aspired to.

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  It just made sense.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  It made sense and I enjoyed it actually.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  And then at what point did you hear about the Marine Corps?

• 13:07Speaker 02

  So after my, after plebe year, um, every summer you basically get sent out to get exposure to a different part of, of the fleet of the naval service. So first summer, um, I think it was first, after the first summer, did a little bit with the Navy and then did a month down in Quantico with the Marines. Uh, and after a week there totally resonated, you know, as you know, every service has a slightly different culture and the culture in the Marine Corps just really resonated with me.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  How hard is it to get a Marine Corps slot from the Naval Academy?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  So it's varied a ton over the years. I think, I can't remember if all the slots went out. There was a period of time during which they had to force people to go Marine Corps. So there'd be slots left over. And then I think after post nine 11, I can't remember my year, whether all the slots went out or not, but post nine 11, they were really sought after. So it was a really competitive thing. I think it's somewhere between 17 to 20% of Naval Academy grads going to the Marines.

• 14:00Jocko Willink?

  And when you're at the Naval Academy, looking back now, what are you learning from a leadership perspective there?

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Oh gosh. You know, I think first and foremost, the biggest thing I learned really early on was how to think about others and not myself. You know, I grew up as a kid, you know, going to school, even playing sports to some degree. The first orientation is like, you know, thinking about myself. Am I in the right spot? Are my grades good, et cetera? And, you know, that first summer, you learn, you know, it doesn't matter if your room looks good, if your buddy's room doesn't look good, like, and that was such a foreign concept to me when they asked me, why is so and so jacked up? Ask him, why are you talking to me? That mindset shift was massive for me. So like, really learning what it means to be a great follower in service of understanding how to be a great leader was formative for me there.

• 14:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, at some point, I'm going to have one of my roommates from Bud's on this podcast, and he's going to tell the story about, we had a room inspection and a, you know, bed inspection and a locker inspection and a knife inspection. So our knives, you know, we had to be sharp and rust free and all this stuff. And I, of course, was super militant about everything and doing everything. And we'd, I'd spend all weekend just sharpening my knife and polishing my boots and all this stuff. And so the instructor comes in and picks up my knife, and they would shave their arm with your knife, you know, and if you could shave their arm, it's a pass. And so he takes my knife and chafes arms, he's like, you know, basically, good job. And then he grabs my buddy's knife, and it's just dull as hell. And so, and I'm thinking like, I'm, you know, pretty much awesome, right?

• 15:36Jocko Willink?

  And the instructor's like, he's like, what's up with you, buddy fucker? You couldn't even, couldn't even help your friend. And he takes my knife. We had the bunk beds with the, there's like a metal rod across the bottom and he takes my knife and just like straight into this rod like, like it's like 10 times. There's just big giant like C shaped divots on the whole knife. And then I had to go hit the surf. So yeah, you learn pretty quickly that just taking care of yourself is, is, is not going to work out too well. And then on the summer cruises, so once you decided you were going to the Marine Corps, did you go to do something with the Marines every summer?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Uh, I did, let's see. Yes. So, you know, following summer then, so after your sophomore year, and I'm probably screwing up years here. I think I did every summer, something with the Marines. I did that, that initial session and then I went back for an intense a month. Where you did a month in Quantico and then I did another month in the fleet. So you would do a couple of weeks. I did a couple of weeks with a, a ground unit and then a couple of weeks with an aviation squadron. That was after my, my junior year. Uh, to then set up, uh, graduation.

• 16:40Jocko Willink?

  Did the dream of being a pilot or a backseater just die some, at some point?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it did. It did. I, I, I didn't have any interest, you know, two reasons. I didn't have interest in, the, in being a backseater. For me, I, you know, it was for me, frontseater, nothing. And, and actually just, you know, being an infantry Marine infantry leader really resonated with me.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  How bad was your vision?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Real bad.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  Did you get Lasix eventually?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I actually got PRK when I was in the Navy.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Uh, so it was like 2,400, something like that in my left eye. Real bad.

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you got, you got that while you were at the Naval Academy?

• 17:13Speaker 02

  I got that actually on active duty right at Balboa.

• 17:16Jocko Willink?

  Check. So you decide to go Marine Corps and you get selected. And then once you get selected, you graduate, you graduated, by the way, I gotta make a mention, you know, you graduated with a bunch of people. We have a bunch of uh, mutual friends, cause we're, we're actually in the same officer year group. So like all the Naval Academy guys that graduated in 1998, I was in the same year group, cause that's when I got commissioned was in 1998. Including a bunch of mutual friends that we have and then Leif, uh, Leif Babin. He was also part of that year group.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  So you graduate and then it's basic school?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  That's right. Yep. So down to Quantico. Uh, I spent almost just under a year in Quantico. So all marine officers go through this basic school. So, you know, the philosophy of a marine or rifleman where it doesn't matter what you do, you're going to go learn how to be an infantry marine.

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  Do you know you're going to be an infantry officer when you go to the basic school?

• 18:08Speaker 02

  You do not. So you know you're either ground or air contract. And then while you're at the basic school, about two thirds of the way through, they stack rank the class. You put in a bunch of lists and then you get assigned your MOS.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And they do that by what, what do they call that system where it's by thirds?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  Spread.

• 18:22Jocko Willink?

  Quality spread.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Very controversial. Yeah. So they cut it in thirds. They start from one, you know, up to the top of the first third. Yeah.

• 18:29Jocko Willink?

  To me, whenever people want to ask me about the Marine Corps and they want to get some details about why the Marine Corps squared away, I will talk, I will talk to them about quality spread because there's nothing that you could do as an organization that could more clearly show that what is important to the Marine Corps is the entire Marine Corps than quality spread. So quality spread, Echo Charles, what they do is they got a hundred people in the class. They cut it up into thirds and the first person in the first group gets the first pick. The first person in the second group gets the second pick. The first person in the third group, this is, this is ranked on order of achievement.

• 19:08Jocko Willink?

  So you could be a really, really great person and still get one of the last picks. You could be in the top third of the class and get one of the last picks in the class. So that's a, but it shows that the Marine Corps puts the Marine Corps above the individual.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Always.

• 19:24Jocko Willink?

  Without question. When you're at the basic school, was there any challenges that you faced?

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure. Yeah.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  What was hard?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  I mean, you know, a new level of, I'd say that, that was the first time I really got exposure to, uh, you know, being in the field and, and playing, even though you're, you're leading peers, doing it under quasi adverse conditions. Hadn't really been exposed to that at the Naval Academy per se. So, you know, being sleep deprived, being out in the colds, um, trying to motivate a bunch of peers who, many of whom could get, you know, if they're going to go be an admin officer, a pilot, could give two shits about how the patrol's going. Um, so, you know, keeping folks motivated and focused was a, was a real challenge.

• 20:06Jocko Willink?

  How much time do you spend in the field there?

• 20:09Speaker 02

  In the basic school, so we did did TBS first, I'd say, gosh, probably maybe, maybe 10% of the time. You do a lot of class stuff. And then I did infantry officer course after that. So all the infantry officers then, once you get your MOS, you go to your secondary specialty school.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  And basic school is like six months, right?

• 20:28Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 20:29Jocko Willink?

  And how long is infantry officer?

• 20:30Speaker 02

  I think I see is 12 weeks. I think it's three months.

• 20:34Jocko Willink?

  Then you so you get in there and what do you, what do you, what are your challenges when when you get to infantry officer school?

• 20:41Speaker 02

  So infantry officer course takes most of it, I'd say, you know, much higher percentage of time is in the field. The bar is much higher in terms of kind of leadership, ratcheting up in terms of the adversity around, you know, sleep, food deprivation, cold, that's all dialed up. And then you're learning a bunch of, you know, strategy and tactics employed under pressure again for the first time. So just lots of lots of mistakes on that front, lots of learnings. Again, surrounded by your peers, all of whom now you've got, you know, a bunch of infantry officers. So, you know, within this cohort of officers, the most probably type A and learning how to lead in that group was was definitely a big, big challenge.

• 21:20Jocko Willink?

  I had James Webb on the podcast and he went through his, you know, he did the same thing, academy, basic school, infantry officer course, nine days leave or something like this, straight to Vietnam, gets to Vietnam, they take him out like in a Jeep, they point to a ridgeline and they say, your platoon's up there on that ridgeline. He walks up to this ridgeline.

• 21:45Jocko Willink?

  There's no officer to relieve because the officer had been wounded or killed. There's some sergeant that's been running the platoon. He takes over the platoon. That night, they get into a significant firefight and he has to call for fire. And I said, did you feel like you were prepared? And he looked at me and said, I was prepared. So that's, that's pretty, pretty freaking outstanding that you can take someone that's never been in combat before, and the day, the night they arrive in combat, they're doing significant call for fire. And that that shows you once again, the Marine Corps is a squared away. Entity without question.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  No doubt. Yeah. TBS was a great school. IOC was outstanding. The curriculum, the cadre, the leadership, the program in that, you know, relatively short time period, they got you about as ready as they could.

• 22:33Jocko Willink?

  Do you do a lot of live fire?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  You do a lot of live fire there.

• 22:37Jocko Willink?

  How about force on force training with like either paintball or laser?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  I didn't, I don't think we did it back then. That, that probably has changed in the meantime.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  I, I know it's definitely changed. Um, it, it changed in the SEAL teams. So what's this? What year is this? Ninety, ninety?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Ninety nine.

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  Ninety nine. So yeah, that's, that's around when we really started going very, very heavy with force on force training in the SEAL teams with simunition, with laser tech. We got a, did you ever use DITs?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  No.

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, not DITs. What's the old one? Uh, I forget what it's called, but there's an old laser system that the whole military used to use.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, we used that in the fleet a little bit.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's not good.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  No, it's terrible.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we got a system that was super high speed and it really allowed us to come as close to simulated combat at, that I can think you could get to. Uh, it was just awesome and it really helped us in the SEAL teams get better at everything. You know, it's really easy to assault a target filled with paper targets that don't move and don't shoot back.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  When those, when those targets are moving around, running and flanking you and shooting back it, it, you have to figure out, you have to, you have to really learn leadership. And that's what we found that that's how we were able to start to improve our leadership was by putting people in pressure situations and having the enemy do what the enemy's going to do.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  So, so then where, where did you head? So you graduate, obviously.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  So I graduated, I got stationed out of Camp Pendleton. So I got, uh, assigned to a unit called First Force Recon, or sorry, First Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion. So it was a mechanized infantry effectively. Um, now I got assigned to a platoon of 30 Marines, four armored vehicles, these light armored vehicles. They look like a Bradley but have wheels. So big 25 millimeter Bushmaster cannon, pretty badass. Less walking. So I got a lot of shit from the straight leg infantry that it wasn't real infantry. Um, yeah. And so showed up at my first command, you know, thinking, you know, after four years in the Naval Academy year in Quantico, that I knew what I was doing. And then cold reality hit me in the face when I got my first platoon.

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  Thirty guys in your first platoon and you're gonna be on deployment, are you going on like an ARG deployment or what was the situation?

• 24:54Speaker 02

  So it would have been a Mew and we had some time, I think at about a year and a half before, you know, chop into the Mew. So I had some time. But I came into it, you know, I came into a platoon, you know, normally as a brand new second lieutenant, you come in, you've got a seasoned staff NCO who basically unfucks you, right, and teaches you the job. I came into a unit with thirty Lance Corporals. I had two newly promoted Corporals to super junior NCOs. That was it.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  How come?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  It just happened to be at this point, I think this unit had just come off the Mew, so you had a bunch of folks rotating out, they hadn't fully staffed it up yet. And so truly the blind leading the blind, again, showed up on day one and I was like, holy shit. And first, I was very fortunate in that my first commanding officer, first company commander was prior enlisted, exceptional, and read me the riot act after about two weeks. And then I was very fortunate, got assigned a super seasoned sergeant, platoon sergeant, who was a retread. So he had been a sniper, Marine sniper during the first Gulf War, had gotten out and then came back in and basically taught me the job.

• 26:04Jocko Willink?

  And so then you go through a workup?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Go through a workup. So I spent some time with that unit, go through a full workup deployment, and then chop to the Mew, you go through, yeah, basically the Mew workup cycle, about six months, and then I deployed in, we left in August of 2001.

• 26:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 26:24Jocko Willink?

  When you're in this position, this is something that gets talked about leadership all the time. You're in this position, you're obviously not experienced, and yet you're in charge. What are some of the mindsets that you and some of the strategies you used when trying to lead these, you know, these Marines?

• 26:44Speaker 02

  The, you know, I mentioned I had, I was really lucky to have this pretty amazing commanding officer and he, he, after a couple weeks called me in and asked me the question you never want to get, how do you think it's going?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Like, oh shit. And so I, you know, I can't even remember what I said to him, but he basically said, you need to stop running around and trying to do your Marines' jobs for them. Your job's to lead. You need to give them the space to make mistakes. So I'd come out of this, you know, world growing up, part of the Naval Academy, where largely my performance was within my control. My grades, even military performance in the Naval Academy, there's a little bit of leadership, but it's largely how you show up. And I show up here wanting everything to be done well, because I've got a high bar, a high standard. I don't, I haven't learned yet what it means to lead under those conditions. And so I was micromanaging the shit out of my Marines, and we were failing everywhere. And so I had a very tough, very

• 27:40Speaker 02

  necessary conversation from this CEO saying, you need to give your Marines the space to learn and make mistakes. And thank God for that lesson. So that was a really big one for me of, but it was still hard, honestly. Like, I was not wired to be comfortable with mistakes and things not going well. So, you know, being able to get a little more comfortable with that, give my Marines a little bit of space, make mistakes was a really big, big learning experience for me.

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've been explaining that to people quite a bit lately. When you use decentralized command, there's risk involved. There's risk involved that, hey, the people that are on the front lines, they might do nine things right, and that feels great. And that 10th thing might not be quite what you would have done. It might even be a little bit outside the box. And if you decide, okay, well, you see, decentralized command doesn't work, I just need to control everything, then you're going to get back to the point, which is what you just talked about, which is another thing people have a hard time understanding. You can't control everything. There's no way you can control 30 Marines in a gunfight. You can't do it. You can barely control them, you know, loading up a ship. So if you think you're going to be able to control everything in a pressure situation, you're not going

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  to be able to. You have to develop young leaders. You have to have decentralized command. You have to be able to let go. And it's hard.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Yep. And you have to learn how to create clarity for people. And it's not telling them what to do. It's making sure they have the context, making sure they've got the intent. What does success look like? Make sure they have the skills, making sure they're getting feedback when they make mistakes. That was just a completely new skill set for me. I had never learned or experienced that.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting that in five years through the Naval Academy and then basic school and then infantry officer course, it wasn't quite there yet.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  For sure. I'll be honest, it's still not quite there yet. Like remain a work in progress.

• 29:34Jocko Willink?

  Check. So you're you're going deployment in August 2001?

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  Now, is this a shipboard deployment?

• 29:40Speaker 02

  It is. Yeah. So this is a this is a muse. You've got, you know, call it 3,000 Marines get aboard Navy ships. At this point, so this is, yeah, this is 2001. And so up until this point, it was go see the world. It was go go to Australia, go to the, you know, go to the Far East, get some cool level ports and come back. And obviously that changed.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  What ship did you deploy on?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  I was on the USS Pellul.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I did a cruise with the Pellul. Yes.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  They had a good weight room.

• 30:08Jocko Willink?

  What was it? I wasn't on the Pellul. Unfortunately, I was on one of the, I think I was on the either the Cleveland, the USS Cleveland or the USS Denver, which did not have that nice of a weight room, but we did the best we could. Echo, you would be happy. We brought a cruise box. And in the cruise box, we had dumbbells and we had 120s, 110s, like 100s, 90s and 80s. And then the ship had the rest. But obviously we didn't carry the cruise box and want, but we we brought the cruise box and then we locked the cruise box. And then if the Marines were the cool Marines, we'd give them the combo.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  What's the cruise box?

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  It's just like a big like floor locker. It's like a, it's like a treasure chest.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 30:50Jocko Willink?

  Just made of metal.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  It's a heavy ass.

• 30:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  You get a forklift or something like that?

• 30:54Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no. We we loaded the weights individually. Yeah. Individual breakup. So you're out there on deployment, August. Were you, did you make it overseas by September 11?

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we, you know, we headed out straight from left from San Diego, went to Australia. So went to Australia and we did a week of training in Darwin. So up in crack of our country, up in the north with the Australian Army. We had a week out in the field, came back first night off, first night off since we had left San Diego. It's almost a month. So as you can imagine, Marines are to the winds. I think it was 10 o'clock at night and I remember being in an Irish pub because there's Irish pub everywhere around the world.

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  There is.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  And watched 9/11 on TV through this haze of, you know, X number of beers that we had had at that point.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Then what happens?

• 31:43Speaker 02

  So we

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  They recall everybody as quick as they can?

• 31:46Speaker 02

  It was it was this insane trying to recall 3,000 Marines from across Darwin to, you know, to leave the next morning at 07:00. We, I think we got everybody but one or two Marines. They had to meet us. They were doing something that shall not be disclosed. And so they, they, you know, flew ahead and eventually met us and we headed out. We actually went to East Timor. So if you remember, there's a little bit of some ethnic cleansing issues there. And so we were doing some humanitarian stuff. We spent three days there and then we headed straight for the Arabian Sea at that point.

• 32:17Jocko Willink?

  And then where were you going?

• 32:19Speaker 02

  So we, we ended up sitting off the coast of Pakistan. And so this is probably now, gosh, late October of 2001, starting to do the planning for the invasion. And so we did the Mew, basically, we, we took our hovercraft into a little town, a little air force base in southern Pakistan and then flew from Pakistan into southern Afghanistan, just outside Kandahar.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  How was the, how was the attitude of the troops?

• 32:48Speaker 02

  I'd say, you know, a mix of excited, anxious, afraid, but not willing to admit it. Lots of, lots of speculation. I remember one morning, you know, one of the other platoon commanders came in and said, I heard this morning that Congress declared war on Iran. We're like, holy Jesus, this just got real. Fortunately, that turned out not to be true. And then it was just like, get ready. You know, I think there was the nervous anticipation.

• 33:15Jocko Willink?

  What was your, what was your tasking?

• 33:17Speaker 02

  So we originally, so we did a little bit of planning for a while. They were looking at, we thought we might have to do an evacuation of the US consulate in Karachi. That didn't go down, fortunately. Our tasking was we flew into a little airfield called Rhino in the middle of just about probably 60 miles south of Kandahar, I think. We flew into there and then we drove into Kandahar and secured the Kandahar airfield. And then that became a hub where we started bringing in, you know, other conventional units, humanitarian supplies, and we essentially did security operations in and around Kandahar, looking for, you know, Al Qaeda, Taliban.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  What was the atmospherics on the ground when you get, when you got there? I mean, at this point, they were super disorganized.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It was, it was surreal. I remember, you know, we drove, we landed in this airfield where there was no one. And then we drove through the desert, didn't see a person. And then as we started getting closer, we were literally just driving through farms and these little mud huts, right as you see over there. And, you know, we had a translator with us and you remember talking to them, they're like, oh yeah, we haven't seen these in, uh, it's been 20 years since the Russians were here. But so there's an element of like, we've seen this movie before and, uh, and then, you know, a lot of, uh, I did kind of, you know, uncertainty around what was happening in, um, in and around, uh, Kandahar.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  So you're, where, where are you based in Kandahar?

• 34:45Speaker 02

  We're based at the airfield.

• 34:45Jocko Willink?

  At the airfield?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we secured the airfield. We were basically sitting in fighting holes around the perimeter of the airfield.

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  How are you get, what are you eating?

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Uh, MREs.

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  How long are you in there for?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  We were there for, I think about three months.

• 34:59Jocko Willink?

  Once you had the airfield secured, now are you, they send you out on patrols to go make contact with the Taliban? They send you out to make contact with the local villagers? Like what?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  It was a little bit of both. Yeah. So we did a little bit of, it was security operations in and around the kind of hub of the airfield. So we would do a mix of just going out and trying to gather information, intelligence. So talking to local farmers and villagers about what was happening. There were a couple, um, a couple of interdiction operations, um, around one of the major highways that ran east, trying to, trying to catch some of the, uh, Taliban leadership that was still there.

• 35:33Jocko Willink?

  Were you thinking about IEDs really?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  We, uh, we were not, but we had a, unfortunately, we had a couple of Marines step on a, a landmine at the airfield. So there were, you know, I don't know how many thousands of landmines there from who knows when. They could have been Soviet era and unfortunately we had a Marine step on one and he fortunately survived, but lost part of his lower leg. So that, that changed the calculus really quick for folks.

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  But that you were looking at as if it was some old, it could have been some old Soviet, you didn't really know.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Like, uh, maybe, maybe the Taliban left it this time, or maybe it's just been here for 25, 30 years. Cause you would drive, you know, as you drive around there, you'd have these villagers would mark the, the minefields in the area. They put white rocks there for cleared minefields and red rocks for ones that were not cleared. Um, and so you would just, you'd see old ordinance sticking out of these farms. It, you know, it was crazy.

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's I I got to kind of see the escalation in Iraq. I didn't fight in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, you know, between my first between like 2003, 2004, 2006, like the escalation of the threat of the IEDs went went crazy and Afghanistan was worse in a lot of ways. Um, from what I can tell, the the way it went from sort of like IEDs weren't really a thing. And when they happen, you're like, oh, it might have been some to, you know, this is an absolute horror show that we have to be completely paranoid about every every step we take.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were lucky. I I think we were. We were there at a time where it was very offensive for us. They were it was still very early, so there wasn't much of an organized counteroffensive at all. So we didn't have to really think about or deal with those issues.

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  And then what was your op tempo like? Was it going out every night? Was it going out every other night?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  We were going out, I'd say probably once a day um for kind of limited work in and around the area, but it wasn't crazy.

• 37:23Jocko Willink?

  And then it's back MREs. Did you have any like bathrooms, shower facilities, anything like that?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  We did not.

• 37:29Jocko Willink?

  Big negative.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Big negative. And I will say I got the the the privilege there of serving General Mattis was the task force commander. Uh, amazing. So he he actually came in. He met us in the middle of the desert and rode in with us on our lead. He insisted on being the lead LAV, driving into Kandahar.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  What was his job?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  He was the task. He got appointed task force 58 commander.

• 37:50Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Amazing. So he uh he came in with us um and he was, I mean, as like what an extraordinary guy. I remember so many moments from, you know, we were our Marines were sleeping in fighting holes. Uh, they had the headquarters element in the terminal. Uh, we had a bunch of air force come in.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  Of course, the headquarters element gets the terminal.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Well, but General Mattis, early on, he said, not one of my, nobody will sleep on cots. If our Marines sleeping in the dirt, you will sleep in the dirt. Um, Marines will cold weather gear. Not a single senior leader will get cold weather gear and wear it until every single junior marine has it. He personally supervised it. You'd hear stories. I would walk the lines at night, you know, doing the check on my Marines and more, you know, frequently General Mattis would be there two in the morning, sitting next to Lance Corporal, you know, talking to him about where he's from and, you know, asking a very thoughtful questions around, hey, what's your mission? And, you know, it wasn't just getting to know him. He was inspecting us as well. Um, but, you know, that is a guy that Marines would walk through fire for.

• 38:49Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah. So.

• 38:52Jocko Willink?

  Any significant events that that left an impact on you as a leader there?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  I was, I remember at the time having this moment of, you know, I think when you're in a, for me at least, I felt like you've got the the privilege of being in command because it on on for a host of reasons, but being in a position where you had the the ability to think about others first. So you almost didn't have that. I didn't have as much time to think about. I mean, I was scared. Of course I was. But but being in a position where my first every day was let me make sure my Marines taken care of. Are they focusing on the right things? That was a really big takeaway for me as well as, you know, look, as we know, like, at the end of the

• 39:36Speaker 02

  day, my Marines were largely 18 and 19 year old kids. Kids who were, I had a Marine who was six months out of high school. You know, these are kids. And seeing how they showed up under the most stressful and adverse of circumstances. Man, what a privilege to to get a chance to witness that.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the amount of responsibility that some Lance Corporal has sitting out in a fighting position, making decisions that only he is going to be able to make at that moment in time. It's it's it's a freaking pretty amazing thing to witness.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  It is. It is.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  So how do you guys redeploy out of that situation? Do they do they fly you on helicopters back to the ship or something?

• 40:24Speaker 02

  We flew on, I think we flew on C 17s back. I can't remember. Oh, we flew to Bahrain. So I think we flew on C 17s out to Bahrain and then redeployed from there back out to the ship.

• 40:38Jocko Willink?

  And is it what what year? So it's still?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  So that's early 2002. Yeah.

• 40:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 40:45Jocko Willink?

  So did you feel like we kind of just did it? I know like my first deployment to Iraq two thousand and three, got back in two thousand and four, got home in two thousand and four. I felt like, man, I'm lucky I got to do this, like this war is going to be over soon and, you know, we'll all carry on with the rest of our careers. Did you have that feeling?

• 41:02Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, and we, we, you know, we were lucky in that I just happened to be on deployment. So when I got back, we were the only Marines in the Marine Corps who had served in combat. For twenty years.

• 41:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 02

  And so, you know, came back from that, we got relieved by an army unit and, uh, so I, you know, I got, I came back, transitioned to, to my follow-on unit and, and, you know, thought that was it.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  Hey, but you had that combat action ribbon, yo.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  That's right, big time. Eating a lot of MREs earned that combat action ribbon.

• 41:33Jocko Willink?

  So then, then, then, then you went to, uh, first force, is that right?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  I did, yeah. So I, I, when I got back, I transitioned over to first force and, and then I went into a schools phase. So force does, you know, you do an infantry tour. Most folks will come out of the infantry and then go to force and then they'll do all their schooling. So, you know, we have a, I don't know what they do now, what they call it, but we had a basic reconnaissance course, dive school.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  Recon course in Coronado, was that the one?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah, at the Amphibase, yeah. So we did a, a three-month, uh, course there, uh, went to dive school in Panama City.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  Wait, how's, how's that recon course?

• 42:06Speaker 02

  It was great. It was great. Yeah, I enjoyed it.

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  Is it, uh, indoctrination, like beat down si- situation, or are they teaching you?

• 42:14Speaker 02

  They, they're a little bit of both. It, it's, uh, probably fifty fifty. It's hard, you know, it's definitely some suffering, but it's, it's not like BUDS.

• 42:20Jocko Willink?

  And people aren't quitting because they've already been.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think so. I don't think we had anybody quit.

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  Is it hard to get selected to go to force recon, or was it because?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, as, as, you know, on the officer side, the Marine Corps, you know, back then, we only had, there's only three force recon company size elements in the entire Marines.

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And each of them probably has three or four platoon commanders. So at any given time, there might be one or two open billets for officers, company-grade officers in the Marine Corps. So a lot of it is timing. You know, you know, does that line up for you? And then they had a mix of, you know, you've got a physical test and then some interviews that you do as well.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you cross the physical test or what?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  I did, I did well on part of it. I. Almost did not pass the swim, actually. There was a rifle carried rifle tow and my form was shit on it. And I made did like the last 10 meters underwater.

• 43:15Jocko Willink?

  Breath hold.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Breath hold, just gunning it through. So, yeah.

• 43:19Jocko Willink?

  But you had, obviously you had a good record and you'd been in combat and you were like the first people on the ground. I mean.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was lucky. I was lucky and I was really fortunate to have, I had a battalion XO, executive officer at my first unit that was great mentor and advocate for me. So he went out on a limb to write letters of recommendation. He talked to the monitor, he talked to, to the company about making sure that I was spot lined up.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  Are you thinking about Marine Corps for life at this point?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  I'm probably, I didn't think I would serve for life, but I was open minded around when. So going to force, the Marine Corps has this philosophy where they want to build really well-rounded officers. So, you know, unlike some of the other services, even on, you know, on the force recon side, as an officer, you could not spend your career there. You could do a company grade tour for maybe three years if you're lucky. And then maybe you come back and command one of the three units as a, as an O5 lieutenant colonel. That's it. And so I knew that I, you know, going to that unit was also kind of a strike against you in terms of the career path because they'd say, actually, if you want to be well-rounded, instead of going to force, you should go do a recruiting tour. You should go learn this other side of the Marine Corps. I personally didn't have any interest in doing that.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  And I knew going to force that it probably meant it was a little bit of a step back, but I, I didn't have aspirations of staying in for my career. But I wasn't, you know, I also didn't say, hey, I'm going to get out after this tour. I was kind of, look, as long as I love what I'm doing, I'll stick around.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  That was the game plan. So you go to the AMP, the, the recon school and then you go to dive school?

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:56Jocko Willink?

  Is dive school hard for you since you suck at swimming?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  It was hard for me. I'm a.

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  So do you actually suck at swimming?

• 45:01Speaker 02

  I, I do suck. I am comfortable in the water, but in terms of like stroke and speed, I'm awful. And I got really unlucky actually because. I show up there and you know, they pair you with a swim buddy and the way they pair you with the swim buddy is they have everybody swim and then they just go by speed. Okay, and I was a decent swimmer, not a really good swimmer. And then, so I ended up second in our class in terms of speed. The number one guy was a former competitive swimmer, lifeguard in Hawaii, Ironman triathlete, total stud, not the guy you want as your swim buddy that you're tied to when you're doing these underwater swims and he dragged my ass all over Panama City. It was brutal.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  So wait, I said you sucked at swimming and you were number two in the class?

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I didn't say, there weren't that many of us that were great swimmers. We had one guy that was great. I was enough to kind of get by, could get my way through it.

• 45:57Jocko Willink?

  Do you learn closed circuit when you're down there?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so this is you get your full diving package, you're going to be a full fledged combat swimmer.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  When you get done with that. And then what? Do you go to airborne after that?

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Uh, so you normally go to airborne, you go to airborne, then you go to free fall, but I got pulled out at that point of my school's phase to go to Kuwait. So this is now end of 2002 and they say, hey, just kidding on airborne, why don't you come back, do a really quick workup with your platoon and then deploy to Kuwait. I think we deployed in maybe February of 2002.

• 46:29Jocko Willink?

  February of 2002.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  Is that right? No, 2003, sorry.

• 46:34Jocko Willink?

  February 2003, because now they're getting us over there. So now we're looking at Iraq.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  That's right. So yeah, exactly.

• 46:41Jocko Willink?

  What had you done with your platoon to, before deployment? Did you do a normal workup?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  We did a very hasty three month workup. So I think we went out to NTC at Fort Irwin. We did a mini shooting package, we did a patrol package and that was it. So it was really hasty.

• 46:57Jocko Willink?

  And how's this force recon? So you're a platoon commander in force recon?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  I'm a platoon commander, yep.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  And how many guys you got in your platoon?

• 47:03Speaker 02

  About 30.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so it's about the same size. And how's this platoon?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Amazing, but I, you know, I entered this platoon now as I think I had two Marines who were younger than me. Everyone else was more experienced, had a bunch of tours under the belt. I was the, the FNG for sure and very intimidated coming into this. I had, now I had the, you know, the combat deployment under my belt. So I had a little bit of experience, but I also hadn't gone through normally as a new platoon commander, you're going through a full shooting package, a full weapons and tactics package. You're going through all of this. I had a compressed piece of that. So that was a, that was a hard transition for me, but I was really lucky to have an exceptional platoon sergeant and amazing team leaders.

• 47:46Jocko Willink?

  So when you get to Kuwait, the, the invasion's imminent?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  It is, and we don't know how long. So we basically show up and say, hey, hang out in Kuwait in this tent city and train. And at some point, you know, we think the invasion's coming. And I think it was maybe two months, something like that.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If you got there in February, it must've been like two months. And so what was your mission tasking when the invasion happened?

• 48:10Speaker 02

  So we did, um, we put some teams in really early in the first couple of days. I think, uh, first day we put a team up near, um, I think north of Al Qut, um, looking at, so these were deeper reconnaissance. The Marine Corps Force Recon basically had, you know, kind of dual mission set. They did the green side, deeper reconnaissance mission. And then there was the direct action piece. We did all deeper reconnaissance stuff. So early on it was looking at, uh, major highways, keeping an eye on major Iraqi units to get advanced intelligence on things. Um, and then, uh, we did a similar mission, um, in, uh, Al-Hala. So we ended up in Al-Hala for a while. We spent a little bit of time on the Iranian border, basically staring at sand, doing nothing.

• 48:53Jocko Willink?

  So let's say Hala.

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  So you guys go into Hala or you're out on the outskirts of Hala?

• 48:58Speaker 02

  We are right in, we are right next to the, the, uh, ruins of Babylon there, like literally sitting right on the river.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  So are you guys done again? Are you hiding? Are you like in that kind of mode?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  We're in a relatively secure area, um, going out and doing, um, kind of missions in and around that space.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  And you're reporting back what you're seeing. Had the push already gone past Hala at this?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  It had, it had.

• 49:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you guys were like a stay behind force that was gonna check things out and see what the atmospherics are there?

• 49:27Speaker 02

  And, and you know, I think at that point, looking back, I don't think we necessarily had a really good, clear mission. Like, we were supposed to be, Force is supposed to be a meth asset out, way out in front, and we ended up after those initial few days of the war, I think, with a little bit of a question mission for the next month or so.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  How was the mentality like, but, once the war kicked off?

• 49:50Speaker 02

  It was, uh, you know, I think excitement, um, little bit of candidly frustration. So we got into a couple places, like, sitting up on the Iranian border, sitting in Al-Hala, where we were twiddling our thumbs, and felt, feeling like, gosh, we could, we could be doing a lot more, we could be adding a lot more value. Um, a lot of frustration from folks, uh, on the team.

• 50:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I didn't know, I didn't know that you guys did those, like, kinda straight reconnaissance missions in the, in that war. I didn't know that until you just told me.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  And that was just the, that was just the initial kind of roll-up. So, you know, the, the division moved so fast, so it wasn't a long period, it was maybe a week, maybe. Um, and then we ended up where, um, you know, essentially behind forward lines, doing kinda local operations.

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  Any, any significant thing happen there that?

• 50:40Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 50:41Jocko Willink?

  Leadership lessons learned?

• 50:42Speaker 02

  Uh, well, definitely some lessons learned. We had, you know, during that period, our, uh, so I came into Force, and I worked for, my boss was the company commander, which, that bill was in oh-five, lieutenant colonel in the Marines. Uh, I had a great lieutenant colonel when I came in, checked in, and then he got replaced. And the guy that we deployed with, our commanding officer there, was challenging. I'd say, uh, from a leadership perspective,

• 51:12Speaker 02

  very self and career oriented. Uh, lot of decisions that were transparently about him and his advancement in his career, some decisions that put Marines' lives at risk. And so we had this really, really, uh, challenging and fraught scenario where, and all the Marines could see it, you know, and the, and the general, right, in, in Force reconnaissance, we were dealing with more seasoned, more experienced, they all see what's happening. And it led to a very, very tense, very challenging environment where you had a lot of Marines get very, very frustrated at the leadership they were seeing with, you know, a few of us sitting in the middle and, and trying to deal with it.

• 51:51Jocko Willink?

  So I just wrote down, we know, and that's just a message out there to everybody. If you're in a leadership position and you're doing things that are for yourself, we know, we know what you're doing. Everyone sees it. You, no matter how smart you think you are, we know what you're doing. We see right through it. You can't fool us. What did you do to try and buffer this guy from your troops?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  It was, I look back on it. Actually, it was, I mean, this is cliched, but true. I think I probably learned more from working for that leader than I did from working for the great leaders. I think there were some things I, I tried to do to protect our Marines. So I, I, I did my best to, when I was in front of them, I didn't express my frustration with him. You know, I supported the mission. I supported the decisions that we were making, even the ones that I disagreed with. So I didn't want them to see me undermining decisions that were being made. We already had enough challenges with confidence in the chain of command. Uh, at the same time, uh, I, he definitely influenced my, the way I showed up in a way that was not as constructive. It became, I got to a point where every day I was like, fuck this guy.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Whatever comes out of his mouth, I'm not, it doesn't even matter if I agree with him. I'm going to fight him on everything. And, and you know, we would sit as peers, you know, in our tent at night and just bitch about this guy. It did nothing to help us. It was so, you know, we, we finally got to a moment where I think it, it finally hit home for me where I was like, Jesus. I, I get to choose how I show up and I'm letting this guy affect the type of leader I am, my mentality, my mindset. And, uh, you know, I look back on that as a, one of probably the most profound learnings I've had as a leader. Like you can go through shit circumstances. You always have a choice in, in how you show up.

• 53:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I get asked that question probably 10 times a month, you know, I've got this bad person I work for and my, my answer is always. The answer that people don't want to hear is like, oh yeah, you have a bad leader. Cool. Build a good relationship with them. This is the best possible thing you can do. The best possible thing you can do is try and build a good relationship with them. So you have some kind of influence over them because if you don't have a good relationship with them, you have no influence whatsoever. So the best thing you can do, try and build a good relationship with them. And then you can maybe sway sway them in one direction or another a little bit. But just deciding that, oh, this guy's an asshole and so I'm going to be an asshole. You're just not going to be, you're going to be in a worse spot.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  Essentially.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And by the way, that, you know, that was, I was relatively young, having the benefit now of, you know, a couple of decades, you know, in your career, this is going to happen to you multiple times. Guaranteed. Military, civilian, business. And I remember someone saying to me once, um, you know, the, the goal is being able to look at every scenario and be proud of how you showed up. No matter what the circumstances are, you look back and feel good about how you showed up as a leader.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I always tell people that you can go meet, there's leaders that I worked for that I definitely did not like very much. And they never knew it, you know, like I was just professional. Okay, sir, that's what we're doing. Yep. Sounds good. Let me do, let me see what I can make happen here. That's, and again, no one wants to hear that because everyone thinks, well, you know, if someone's taking care of themselves, you should stand up to them. Cool. It sounds cool. It does. It sounds cool. It sounds heroic even. But then what happens? You get fired or you get dealt an even worse hand and you didn't take care of your guys. You have less ability to take care of your troops. You have less influence on the mission. So it, your ego feels good. It's an ego victory, but it's, it's essentially in the, in the big picture,

• 55:30Jocko Willink?

  in the strategic picture, it's a loser.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  I was very lucky. So I was a prime list of guy for eight years. So by the time I was an assistant platoon commander, I was 28 years old or 27 years old, which might not seem like that big of a deal, but compared to 22, that's a big deal. So I, I was lucky in that respect and I was starting to learn these lessons. So I was a little bit, a little, I always feel like I was just ahead of. Just ahead of some of the stupidity I would have pulled off three years prior, two years prior.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  I look back, I'm like, I'm glad I was in that position when I was, you know, 22, because I would have been like, you gotta be kidding me. This guy's a piece of shit. You know, and I just was, like I said, I was just lucky enough to have been a little bit older and be able to pull that off. So how long were you guys, how long do you guys stay?

• 56:21Speaker 02

  We were there through, I think probably July of 03. So I think I rotated back in July 2003. And at that point, you know, so I'd been with the unit for a little over a year at that point. And was about, would have gone into, uh, you know, workup cycle. So deploy again with the Mew, probably go back overseas.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  Would you have stayed with Force Recon?

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yes. So I would have been able to finish out my tour there. And I decided at that point, um, I'm not working for this guy for another year and a half. And I spent a lot of cycles since thinking about that decision. And, um, you know, it was, I, for me, that my career in the Marine Corps was about trying to create the opportunity where maybe I could have a shot at being that platoon commander. And, you know, walking away from that was a hard decision, but I felt like it was the right thing for me at the time.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  And again, lots of mixed feelings looking back on it.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  So what's your move when, when you decided to get out of the Marine Corps?

• 57:19Speaker 02

  So, you know, I had, I decided at that point, hey, I'll, I'll get out. And, you know, initial emotion is excitement. You know, I, uh, get to think about what's next, not being a Marine. I've been on active duty for 10 years. Don't have to shave every day. I can go more than a week without getting a haircut.

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  I'm growing a goatee, everybody.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. If I could do that, I would do that. But, uh, and that was followed very quickly by terror of, holy shit, I have to get a job and I don't even know where to start. And so I enjoyed a little bit of the San Diego summer. And then I, I thought, well, maybe I'll just go to grad school. I don't know shit about business. I actually spent some time here in San Diego in there. There's a bunch of military recruitment firms. And I met with some of them and nothing that I saw there was interesting. And I went through this crisis of like, oh shit, what did I just do?

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  They offer you, it's like they show you the entire menu and you're like, I'm not hungry.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  Oh dear God. Uh, and uh, it's, so I decided to go, you know, apply to grad school. So, you know, studied for this test and applied and put my application in. And that would have been, this was summer of oh three. So it was to start in the fall of oh four. So I basically had a year.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do for a year?

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Moved to Colorado and ski bummed.

• 58:33Jocko Willink?

  So did you grow up skiing in New Jersey?

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Uh, I did. Um, yep. So, uh, ski with my parents up in the, in the Northeast and had a buddy of mine. Uh, we would go to Killington, Pico, uh, J's Peak and

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  Just the whole, the whole gig.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  The whole, you know, sheet of ice here, sheet of ice there, you know, that for sure sharpen, sharpen those edges, freeze your ass off. Um, and so, yeah, I figured, hey, I've got some time. When am I going to have the opportunity like this? I was single, uh, and so moved to Colorado with a buddy who I served with and we had a great time.

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  How long was your hair?

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Uh, it got pretty, pretty long. Uh, my hair does not look good long. I start getting these like wings on the side. It's pretty bad. So, uh, but, but it was awesome. So

• 59:16Jocko Willink?

  Where in Colorado?

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Uh, so I got a, I worked at a bar at Keystone and I was lucky. My employer was Vale Resorts. So I had a, you know, with that job, I got a season pass to, you know, four or five resorts there and got a job bartending, which is hands down the best job in a ski town. You show up for work at 3pm, you work late, you make decent money in cash tips and you can ski every single day. So I skied a hundred something days that year. Uh, and then ended up, um, starting grad school the following fall.

• 59:46Jocko Willink?

  And this is up in Stanford?

• 59:48Speaker 02

  Correct. Yep.

• 59:49Jocko Willink?

  And, and then how's this go down? How's this, you learning stuff? Is it cool?

• 59:53Speaker 02

  So I, you know, went through another like similar moments of like, you know, you show up. This was for, you know, business degree and show up and most of my classmates are coming out of investment banks and consulting firms. And I, you know, know the lingo or raising their hands in class. They've seen it all before. I knew nothing. And so like huge crisis of confidence at this point of like, once again, shit, how am I ever going to find a job? You know, the way, you know, business school setups, you do your first year and then you apply for an internship in the fall of your first year for that follow on summer. And then you come back for your second year before you go work full time. And, you know, so I applied for a bunch of jobs.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  At Stanford, they have this system where you, companies will come on campus. So let's say it's a Morgan Stanley comes on campus or Google comes on campus. And they say, hey, we're going to interview 20 people. You submit your resume if you're interested. They pick 10 of them. And then Stanford says, you know, we want to give people who have non-traditional backgrounds a shot. So we're going to let people bid on the other 10 spots. So in my two years there, I didn't get picked for a single interview.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  So, you know, kind of reinforcing this shit. This isn't going to work out, but.

• 1:01:05Jocko Willink?

  Seems weird to me.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  You know, there's a lot of, I'd say, I was in the very early wave of like post nine 11 veterans. So, you know, today, tons of veterans who have done amazing things in the valley, but at this point there were not that many. And a lot of these companies that are up and coming are only a few years old. So, you know, I applied to Google in oh five and Google hadn't been around that long. So you're dealing with.

• 1:01:31Jocko Willink?

  We don't need some freaking marine here. They're like, we need this tech dude over.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Totally. So you've got a recruiter that's well intentioned, has respect for the military, but looks at my resume as like, I don't even, I don't even know how to, what this means.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  Platoon commander. We don't need a platoon commander.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Pretty sure we're not looking for that. Exactly. So I got lucky at Google because I had submitted my resume. There was a naval academy guy who was working there. I reached out to him. He was kind enough to grab some time with me and literally hand walk my resume to a recruiter and help translate it.

• 1:02:00Jocko Willink?

  What was his job at Google?

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  He was working on the team that supported advertisers. So he was managing kind of a sales and operations team that supported advertising clients.

• 1:02:11Jocko Willink?

  So this is after your first year at Stanford? So you, you.

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  No one's, none of these companies select your resume. Stanford gave some of these companies your resume like, hey, can we throw this, can we throw this dude?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  This knuckle dragger.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  Right. And, and so one of them was Google.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  So Google actually came through an outside. So I applied to a bunch on campus. Google, I had to work through this veteran. So I reached out to him and said, hey, would you mind? Is there anything you can do? I think I had applied directly, didn't hear anything. This is 2005. Google's growing like crazy and was super disorganized. So, um, the only way I got my foot in the door there was through this other vet who was nice enough. That led to an on-campus interview. Uh, I met with a guy and went through the interview and, and things worked out.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  And so this was for your summer internship?

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And then how's that summer internship?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  It was great. I mean, it was, you know, it's funny. I, I had not worked a single day in technology, you know? My last job was besides bartending, I had to experience, you know, tending bar and, and, you know, lugging an M4 around. And so I show up on Google's campus and Google's campus is like, for me, it might as well be a carnival. Like there are pool tables and ping pong tables and it's this beautiful, spectacular and incredibly intimidating for me. I remember I did my interview and, you know, they had made me an offer for the internship, which I pretty, you know, was pretty sure it was a mistake. Um, and I go to meet with the guy who I'm going to be working for, my host for the summer. And he's like, look, I, what do you want to work on?

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  I'm like, I don't even know what to say. And he's like, I got seven projects. Let me just read them off to you and you can choose. So he reads through all these projects. I have no idea what he's talking about. Like none of them mean anything to me. And the last one, he's like, hey, we're about to launch this AdSense API. And so we need someone to work on that, you know, go to Mark's strategy for the AdSense API. And I was like, that sounds amazing. I'd love to work on the AdSense API. I don't know what API I should use. I had to go look it up. So I go into that being like, I'm going to make a complete ass of myself. I know nothing about technology. I can't write a single line of code. My perception is you've got like the smartest people in the valley working there. And I remember I had this, this amazing professor at Stanford, guy named Irv Grossbeck, who teaches a class on leadership there is exceptional. He built Cablevision, huge cable

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  conglomerate. And he basically gave this advice. He said, look, just simplify things like be useful and be liked over the summer. Just when it comes down to that. So I showed up and, you know, I worked hard and learned over the course of the summer that, you know, a lot of the things that I had learned in the Marine Corps, a lot of the things I had learned, like turns out getting shit done, working hard, holding a high bar, being a great teammate, those things pay dividends in this completely different and foreign environment. So left that summer, had a great time, loved it, learned a ton, and left with an opportunity to go back there after my second year.

• 1:05:05Jocko Willink?

  So then it's another year at Stanford. What's your schedule when you're at Stanford Business School?

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  So, business school and law school are very different. At law school, you study a lot and learn stuff. Business school, the first year is, is like, everyone comes in as like gunners, ready to do a great job. And then the second year is very social. So, and then the class bifurcates into the people that like, want to spend their time on, on the academics. And my second year, I spent more time, you know, with friends and classmates, and we did some volunteer stuff. And so, you know, you had a few hours of class every day, did a lot of training in sports. So you had a lot of former athletes. So we'd, we'd get after it together. And then a lot of social stuff as well.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  What, what sports are you doing at this point?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  So we are playing a ton of pickup basketball. We're doing, we had this big, actually pretty cool. They had this competition between West Coast Business Schools where it was a mix of charity and sport. So you would compete on raising money for Special Olympics. And then we would host all these schools at Stanford. And it was a weekend of sports competitions. And so you'd play flag football and basketball and softball and run a 5K and just get after it. We're not in the best of shape. So you have a lot of, a lot of injuries after that weekend. A lot of pulled hamstrings, but it was a good time.

• 1:06:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What do you, what are you learning?

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  I'd say mostly at, you know, in business school, you know, I tell folks now, like, you don't come out of business school with the next expertise to do any job in business. What you get out of business school is like broad exposure into frameworks, concepts, the ways to think about things. So what is marketing? What is finance? How do you think about it? So if you do a good job, I think you can come out and ask the right questions, but you certainly don't come out with a level of expertise that sets you up to be really great in any particular role. So for me, I had zero business vernacular, zero coming out. So I learned a lot about that type of stuff.

• 1:07:04Jocko Willink?

  So then you graduate from there and now it's Google?

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Now it's Google. Yep. So I go back.

• 1:07:09Jocko Willink?

  And how's that?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  It was great. So I went back to Google and I got a chance to work on, so I worked on what was effectively kind of customer support and sales. And this is 2006.

• 1:07:21Jocko Willink?

  Do they throw you in charge of a team?

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  They do. So that was really important to me. So I, when I came out of my first summer, I worked a little bit on, in an area called product management. So at Google, I would say if there is an internal hierarchy of influence, product management is probably at the top, product, yeah, product management and engineering at Google rule. So they're figuring out what the strategy is, what to build. And then I spent the other half of my time working on operations or customer support. And on the product management side, really interesting, you get to work with the engineering team, a lot more influence. I'd say was perceived within the valley as a much more attractive career path and certainly valued that way internally. But for me, I got to the end of the summer, had to choose,

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  do I want to go the product management route or the operations route? And most people thought I was nuts to even think about it. Like, of course you go product management. And I decided to go operations because in operations, you had the chance to lead a team. And in product management, you didn't. And someone had given me really good advice around that. And thank God, because I would have been, I'd say, a mediocre at best product manager, maybe slightly better than average.

• 1:08:32Jocko Willink?

  So product manager means that we're building Google Docs, or we've got Google Docs, and it needs an upgrade on this, and you're going to kind of oversee that. Am I close?

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  You're figuring out what's the strategy, and who's the customer, and what their needs. So you're working with the engineering team to help them understand what to build. Exactly.

• 1:08:48Jocko Willink?

  And then what's the job that you took instead?

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  What I didn't said was answering emails from pissed off users of the product, aggregating the top requests, dealing, you know, managing a team of folks who are working directly with your customers, dealing with the day to day issues that come up as part of it. So customer support. I always said, like, for a long time, I always worked on teams that had the biggest, like, self-esteem issues within these companies. It was the teams that were perceived as like, our team, our work isn't as important as these other teams. And so that was a really good learning for me early on. How do I articulate what we do in a way that really resonates with these folks to keep them motivated and excited?

• 1:09:25Jocko Willink?

  And the leadership that you learned in the Marine Corps still works.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Still works. I mean, I had a little bit of an adjustment phase. Some of the language and vernacular had to change a little bit, but that was, you know, it seems so dumb to say it, but I learned that, like, you know what? Human beings are human beings, right? Leadership, there are so many of the principles that are universal, and I learned that there for sure.

• 1:09:47Jocko Willink?

  So then how long were you at that job for?

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  I was there for only a little under two years. So I was there for about two years, loved it, learned a ton. Google was a really fun and exciting place to be at that point. And I was looking at another role internally, and a friend of mine from grad school called me and said, hey, he was working at Facebook at the time, called me and said, hey, we are building a support team, building an operations team, we're looking to hire someone to build it. Do you want to come over and interview? And at this point, I'm like, dude, I have less than two years' experience outside the Marine Corps. And he's like, look, you should just come over and interview. So this is 2008. So I went over and interviewed, interviewed with the, you know, the executive team. So, you know, with, with Zuck

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  and a bunch of the other senior leaders at that point and got hired into this role that I was totally unqualified for. It just incredibly lucky that the person who hired me didn't realize how underqualified I was because he was a business development guy, not an operations guy, you know? And so I came into this role and, you know, at the time, in retrospect, looks like an obvious shift. At the time, people thought I was nuts to leave Google. This is the point when Google's, you know, grown really fast.

• 1:11:05Jocko Willink?

  So you're being extremely humble here. Obviously, you know, I didn't know what I was doing and all this stuff. But is it that humility you think that is getting you these positions? Because I know the number one quality I tell people to look for when they're hiring people is look for someone that's humble. Because you take someone that's smart enough, they're getting in there. If they're humble, they'll figure out what to do and they'll make it happen. Would you say that's, you know, instead of just blaming the guy that hired you for not recognizing how dumb you were? Giving yourself a little bit of credit to say, look, you went in there and when they asked you a question, you didn't know. You said, you know, I'm not really sure about that, but I'm sure we could get it figured out.

• 1:11:41Speaker 02

  For sure. And, and, you know, that's absolutely part of it. The other thing I'd say is I think my,

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  I think coming from a different domain was, ended up being a huge advantage for me. So the thing that I was most worried about was I'm going to come in and interview for a role where the requirements are 10 to 15 years of experience in consumer technology leading teams. I don't have that. I've worked for 18 months in tech in total. And so the way I compensated for that said, look, I can't manufacture experience, but what I can do is make sure I'm the most well-prepared interview ever. So I would read, I read. Everything. I read their 10 Ks even though I didn't understand them. I used every product. I would support, submit support requests for all the products. I'd use their competitors. I got to the point where if I was Well, you did that for the interview? Oh, yeah. Squirt away right there.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Everyone. I knew there was a little more to this game, right? Hey, a little bit more than luck. Well, it's, you know, it would, that's, and that's what I learned in the military. Like I will be the most prepared. And so I got in and I remember my early interviews. I was lucky to get my early interviews out of the way at Stanford and I was a train wreck. Like, thank God, none of those are on video. But I got to the point where I, my mentality was if I get asked a question that I do not have a prepared answer for, I've failed. And so I had a, you know, dozens and dozens of pages. I would write out all the questions. And I would think about, I knew I had the challenge of, look, I can't just recite military experience because people don't get it. I have to help them understand how my experience is relevant in this totally different cultural context.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  So how do I think about the stories I tell and the way that I tell them that aligns with what they're looking for? So what is the culture here? Okay, great. What's the misperception I've got to overcome? Okay, leadership in the military is top-down hierarchical, misperception. Okay, I know that that is a perception this person's likely to have. How do I make sure whether they ask me directly or not? That that answer gets into the conversation and dialogue. So I got to the point where I prepared, you know, knowing that I didn't have domain expertise. I walked in just about, and I still do that now. I think I, my aspiration when I interviewed for the CrossFit job, I'm going to be without question, the most prepared person they talk to. You know, this is 20 years into my career and, and so, um, that was something I learned early. What year is this?

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  This is 2008, Facebook. So the economy already crashed at this point? It was, uh, just before. So this is February, uh, 2008.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Just before the economy crashes, um, Microsoft had invested at Facebook, just invested in Facebook. Facebook is making a little bit of money, but it's mostly bleeding money. You know, the narrative at this point is everyone told me, social media is, you're never going to make money. You're an idiot.

• 1:14:31Jocko Willink?

  What, why do you think you made that decision?

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  I was, um, I was still pretty young and I was, uh, the same reason I went into the Marines, the same reason I wanted to go to force, like it was hard and new and I didn't know if I could do it, but, uh, I, I was really seeking like risk seeking at that point still. I love the people, I love the culture and I thought this is going to be an amazing experience.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  How many people were at Facebook at the time?

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  Probably about 350, 400, somewhere in that range. And it was probably maybe somewhere 30, 40 million users, mostly college in the US still, had just launched internationally, so it's still pretty early.

• 1:15:07Jocko Willink?

  When did Facebook like ramp up completely?

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  Well, it depends how you define that. I, I'd say that over the next-

• 1:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Cause I guess 30 million users isn't ramped up enough.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  I mean, now it's, now it's peanuts. 30 million users is nothing. You don't get out of bed for it in social media. But, uh, I'd say that like within the next year or two, things started to really turn. And we started to build the ad business, started to scale it. We started to put the infrastructure in place internationally where folks were like, oh, okay. This isn't a novelty. When I joined Facebook, MySpace was bigger. So MySpace was still winning at that point. So, but within a year or two, it became pretty clear that Facebook was on a really strong path.

• 1:15:41Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So you get there and what's your job while you're there?

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  So I, I show up my first week, just left Google and I was supposed to come into this job, managing this online sales team, which is basically selling medium-sized advertisers, getting them to buy Facebook ads. So I show up on my first day, excited for the new job, a little anxious because I just left Google after I feel like I've finally figured things out. And my buddy who had introduced me there introduces me to another guy and he says, hey, Don, meet so-and-so. And I said, oh, you know, really nice to meet you. What do you do here? And he said, well, I manage a team that supports medium-sized advertisers. And he says, what are you going to do? And I said, uh, I thought I was going to do that, but there's got to be a good explanation for this. So I go back to my, the guy who hired me and I said,

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  hey, I'm trying to be diplomatic. It's day two. Um, hey, I talked to so-and-so and, and can you help me understand your vision for this role? And he, you know, basically says, yeah, yeah. We're basically going to do, this guy reported to one of his peers. They did not get along. And he said, we're going to take all the most profitable advertisers from that guy's team and we're going to manage them. Now, keep in mind, these two executives, my boss and this other guy's boss, both have a revenue number they're responsible for. They don't like each other. So my second day, I realized I have no job. This other guy's like, fuck off, basically. Three days later, my boss pulls me in and he's like, hey, how's your first week going? I'm like, well, a couple of bumps I didn't anticipate, but he's like, yeah, well, I'm leaving the company.

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  So by day five, I have no job and no boss. And he's like, but uh, look, you're going to report to so and so, it'll be great. So I talked to this other guy, he said, in the meantime, if you've got some time, why don't you see if you can walk up and down University Avenue in Palo Alto and see if you can get some of the restaurants to buy Facebook ads? And so, yeah, I'm on my first week. Exactly. And I'm like, holy shit. And I just left Google, I have no job, my boss is leaving. And uh, you know, so that next week I showed up and I remember there was another inside sales team that they were trying to hire someone for. I'd never done that. And I just came in and said, I'm going to start building this team. And I know I'm not qualified to do it, but when you hire someone, I'll hand it over.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  And then you can figure out what to do with me at that point. So I brought him my business school textbook on how to build a sales team. I'm sure everybody was laughing at me and terrified and started building the team. And did that for three or four months. And then a woman who I had worked for at Google came over, became my new boss. She consolidated a bunch of the operations under me and you know, uh, things kind of grew from there. But it was a little bit of a shaky first experience.

• 1:18:17Jocko Willink?

  And then how long, how long were you at Facebook?

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  I was there four years.

• 1:18:20Jocko Willink?

  And then what did you grow to? Like what was your senior position? And how many people were you in charge of?

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  So I, when I started there, the team was probably, the initial team was probably four or five. Um, and then took on some other teams. When I left, team was probably six, 700. Um, and that's probably about 20, 25% of the company. Um, we had-

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  So you grew from five people to, what'd you say, 600?

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  600, 700, somewhere in that range, probably. Yeah. So we grew really fast. So insane growth.

• 1:18:52Jocko Willink?

  It's hard to onboard 600 people.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  When I was at Google, Google grew with a similar capacity. We had no constraints on hiring. They said, basically, if you can get people through the process, you can hire as many people as you want, which is kind of insane to think about. Facebook was a similar rate of growth. So we had to figure out, like, how do you preserve quality? How do you put the right process in place? But I got a bunch, you know, I was so lucky. I got a chance to do so many things there. I got to open our office in Dublin. I got to open an office in India. We got to build new functions from scratch, got to deal with governments. Again, a whole host of things I had not done before. And Facebook was really cool at that point because the environment was just, look, we're going to give you the space. If you demonstrate you can get stuff done, you can earn as much scope as you can take on.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  It was all about impact. It was, it was very meritocratic in how things were structured. And that was really, really energizing for me.

• 1:19:45Jocko Willink?

  And they went from 30 million users when you started. What were they up to in four years later?

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  I don't know the exact number.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Some exponential crazy number.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Hundreds of millions.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  So what year is it when you leave?

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  So I left in 2012.

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  And then what, what brought about that decision?

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  So I'd been there for four years, loved it. So I went, you know, went from a job where it was, you know, small team, very hands-on, a lot of early building to, you know, by 2012, had built out. We had an amazing team, senior leaders. A lot more of my job became interfacing with other parts of the organization. And I felt like my personal kind of learning curve had slowed down a little bit. So I was kind of ready for the next thing. At this point, I knew, I knew what I was better at and I knew what I was not good at. And so for a little bit, they said, ah, why don't you try something in marketing? Did not go well, reinforced for me. That was not the right path. And so I loved Facebook. I wanted to stick around.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Hold on, you're good at building sales teams, but you're not good at marketing?

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, different skill set. So, so on the marketing side, I think that the, the skill set around the storytelling.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  Like the creative stuff, the reason that you were an engineer in college and not an English major.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Exactly right. Exactly right. And on the sales side, a lot of, a lot of it was about team and team building and structure and process. Those are the things that I was more comfortable with. So yeah, I was, you know, at this point, I talked to my boss and said, hey, look, I love it here. I'm ready for something new. There wasn't a role that really made sense for me. And then had a friend call me who was at Pinterest and said, hey, um, you know, it's, this is 2012. Pinterest had gone from hundreds of thousands to I think north of 10 million users in like four months. Insane growth. And the team was about 35, 40 people. And he said, hey, you know, we're building the team. What do you think? So it's similar to moving from Google to Facebook.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  You know, I thought to myself, gosh, this is a great opportunity to go to another fast growing company. This friend of mine and some of the other leaders were some of my favorite people from Google and Facebook. So I felt like the team was an amazing fit and it was a role that had the opportunity for some new learning for me. So not only operations, which I had done, some of the sales stuff, but managing now a senior marketing leader. So not doing the marketing myself, but hiring a, a, a marketing leader, building out early on our, our human resources and people team. And so it was a chance for me to, to kind of take that next step and learn a bunch more.

• 1:22:21Jocko Willink?

  Same thing. You roll into the interview, just study hard for it, be ready. And now you had a bunch of experience.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  I had a bunch of experience and, and actually the founder of Pinterest, I had worked with his wife. She was my, uh, she partnered with me on the human resources team at Facebook. So I knew her well. She was good people. I knew the founder. Um, and so I had a little bit of a relationship. He knew me a little bit through her, um, and through some of the other executives who I had worked with before.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, um, in these tech companies, I know I've gone up and worked with a bunch of them and, and you see like what you were talking about earlier. You know, they've got like the pool tables and like the Lego room and like all these things. But, and it was a while ago, I guess it was as the work from home stuff and people were kind of talking about that. There was some video that came out of someone that worked at Twitter and they were like lounging around all day. But what I, when I was, when I worked with those companies, like they're busting their ass. And the reason they have food there is so they don't ever have to leave. And the reason they have like a place to lay down is so they can lay down for half an hour and then get back to work. What kind of hours are you and your team putting in when you're at Google and Facebook and then Pinterest?

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, particularly Facebook was an incredibly intense environment. So I was, and it was not a healthy period for me. So I was, you know, five, six days a week, I'd, I'd roll into the office at 6 a.m., would skip the workout, eat like shit, work till, you know, three days a week I was there, probably past midnight, back in at 6 a.m. the next day. You've got people there till 2, 3 a.m. grinding. That was pretty common. And when you're at home, you're working.

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Are you making a shit ton of money at this point?

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  Not, not, you know, at this point you have, you know, the promise there was, was the equity, you know, so what the company would be worth. And, you know, that was there, I'd say, but what was driving people was, was the excitement and the impact in the culture. And early on, it was really.

• 1:24:17Jocko Willink?

  We can do this.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  We can do this. Yeah.

• 1:24:19Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna win this thing.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was exciting. And, uh, and so that was, that, that culture of people working hard. And you're right. Like, I think the culturally, the inception of a lot of those things was in service of how do we enable people to, to, to, to work their highest level of productivity?

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Eighteen hours a day.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  Eighteen hours a day.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  And I think at a certain point, companies get big enough where they still have all those amenities, but they don't have that, you know, same drive anymore. And then you can see where it starts to become like, oh, you're in the Lego room again.

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Like you've been in the Lego room for two and a half hours? What, what's going on?

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  And, and exactly. And I think at some point, you know, I think early on, we understood the intent behind them. Everyone did. Like, this isn't so you can fuck off for three hours a day. This is it. Look, if you need to create some space, if you need to work it off because you're grinding, great, we're gonna make that available. But the expectation is you're gonna be here and get after it. And I think at some point, when you lose the why and the intent behind it, and you've never heard it before, you have this really dangerous slippery slope where now the expectation is, wait, how dare you not serve me three meals a day?

• 1:25:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  And.

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  The wine bars, the like multiple, like, oh, this corner over here is Asian food, this one's Italian food, this one's American food. And this is going like 24/7. It's freaking kind of amazing.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  You see these things. But then I remember, you know, like you're going, oh. There's a bar here. These people aren't even gonna leave like they're gonna have after work, sit around and talk about whatever project they're working on and drink wine. I see what's happening here.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Exactly. Crafty.

• 1:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So the Pinterest thing, which we discussed a little bit in the beginning, which I, I'm not a huge, I don't understand Pinterest that well, but what was the deal? What's the deal with Pinterest? Bro, what? Brief me on it. Should I be on Pinterest?

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  I think you're probably safe not being on Pinterest. The idea is, um, is that it's a virtual pinboard, a place to discover and save the things that you're interested in, passionate about. It, Pinterest was really interesting on a number of levels. I think it was almost the inverse of a lot of the companies that took off in the valley early on. So if you look at the Facebooks of the world and the Googles, they took off amongst mostly tech dudes on the coasts. Pinterest resonated with women, you know, Midwest, South, um, who were cultivating and crafting these virtual pinboards, saving things that they loved. And so it was really interesting for us early on.

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  So it's base, it's a scrapbooking.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  It's a scrapbooking. That's exactly right. It's a virtual scrapbooking and kind of discovery thing. So if you're

• 1:27:04Jocko Willink?

  So it's not a surprise that I missed out on this gig.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  That you missed out on this. And it was really interesting for us over time, thinking about like, how much do a pu- of a push do we make in getting men on this? Or do we just double down? Cause it's working so extraordinarily well for women.

• 1:27:19Jocko Willink?

  So where did that go? What was your job there?

• 1:27:22Speaker 02

  So I was, um, my title was head of operations, which was basically kind of the biz, managing the business teams. So it was when I first started, you know,

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  Wait, was this the COO?

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  Well, it's kind of, it wasn't that in title, but it was a similar scope in terms of role. So

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  How many people were there when you show up?

• 1:27:40Speaker 02

  Uh, about 35, 35 to 40 total in the company. Um, I inherited a team of I think four people and

• 1:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Were you getting offers for like knucklehead.com as well? Like, how did you select Google? Then you selected Facebook, then you selected Pinterest. Like, how come you didn't get a job at freaking, we're about to fail.com?

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  Pets.com? Yeah. Um, you know, honestly, a lot of it was, you know, probably luck and then some. I think coming out of Google, I was exposed being in an environment where you start to soak in what matters and you start to absorb some of the signal around things.

• 1:28:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, it sounds like both, both Facebook and Pinterest had like a trajectory that was visible. They had a visible trajectory that you saw and you're like, yo.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  And I was like, again, really lucky. Like, Google, the other thing too is, is, you know, looking back on this, really fortunate to get the job at Google. Coming out of Google, Google was one of the only places that had the type of scale in the valley that these other companies were looking to replicate. So if you're at Facebook and you're like, okay, we need to build a team that can support hundreds of millions of people all around the world and build an operations team that combines technology and people. Where do we find people to do that? Oh, let's go look at Google. So I, you know, I was lucky to be in that place. And then I got Google and Facebook. And so I get the luck of like a little bit of the double whammy of it and, and all the lessons that come along with it. And, and, you know, that, that was a really interesting place where you're at

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  these companies where the product, you know, in the, in the valley, people will say product market fit. Like, you build something that like resonates and then the software things can just take off. And I joined right after, you know, probably a couple of years after things had taken off at Google, a year or two after things had taken off at Facebook, the year things had taken off at Pinterest. And that's a really fun time because you've got the growth and you have to build all of the, you have to build the team and the infrastructure to support it. And so, yeah, I was, I was, you know, I think a lot of it was having those different experiences and then knowing people.

• 1:29:44Jocko Willink?

  And you rolled into basically unconstrained capital into all these companies?

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  For the most part, you know, it was, yeah, they were growing so fast. Google's, I think, probably already profitable at that point. And then Facebook was growing so fast that they could raise money. Yeah. So you had effectively unconstrained capital and resources.

• 1:30:04Jocko Willink?

  Hire whoever you can.

• 1:30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, for a period of Google, that was the thing. If you can get them through the hiring process, you can hire them.

• 1:30:11Jocko Willink?

  So then you're also saying that at this time, you're working so much in some cases that you're not working out, you're kind of like being lazy, you're eating too many freaking donuts from the cafeteria, the whole nine yards.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, they had these really dangerous micro kitchens at Facebook and Google.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  I don't even know what this is, but we know it sounds good.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  Are you salivating right now?

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  But the yogurt covered pretzels were my downfall. So I, you know, you know, when you get tired, like that whole cycle, I wasn't getting enough sleep. I was eating like shit. And I remember I had a moment where I, I was into triathlon at this point and I had done a race up in the city in San Francisco and posted the picture on Facebook and one of my buddies, you know, you know how your buddies in the military are, they show affection by cutting you down.

• 1:30:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  And so I posted this picture and just savage comment from one of my buddies about my gut. And I remember reading that and being like, I need to get my shit together. This is embarrassing. And so that was, I got my act together a little bit at that point.

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  And, and then are you, are you married at this point? Are you?

• 1:31:13Speaker 02

  I'm not. So I met my wife. So I'm dating at this point. So my wife, I met my wife during my internship at Google. So she was, she had gone to school undergrad in the area. She had just started full-time at Google. We met during my internship and then we dated during my time at Google. We both worked there. I moved to Facebook and then she moved over to Facebook two years later. So we worked together for a while. And then we got married in 2010. So that was when I was at Facebook.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you are married. Now you're at, now you're at Pinterest.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  She's still at Facebook?

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  She's still at Facebook.

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  At that time?

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  And what, at what point did you get into CrossFit?

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  So I got into CrossFit while I was at Pinterest.

• 1:31:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  So, so I had, you know, when I got out of the Marines, I had gotten into when I was on active duty into triathlon. So played rugby in college, played a little bit after college when I was on active duty, got all jacked up, blew out my shoulder, got into triathlon, did that for a while and blew out a disc in my lower back. So this is, you know, I'm now at Pinterest, probably 35, 36. My low back is jacked. I'm, I'm running quite a bit and doing the like, you know, Global Gym Equinox three days a week. And you know, a couple of times a year, having like a, some sort of back episode where I am laid out on the floor, immobile, bad. And had a buddy of mine, um, who I used to run with in

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  the city, say, hey, this is 2014. What do you think about CrossFit? And I'd, I'd heard about it. I had missed the wave on active duty, so I didn't see it then. I didn't know a lot about it. And my initial reaction was like, I can't do that with my back. Like, there's no way I can do that.

• 1:32:56Jocko Willink?

  You looked at the website, it was like kettlebell swings and deadlifts.

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  And you're like, 7,000 kettlebell swings. Yeah, so I, you know, it, my initial response was, hey, sounds awesome, but no. And then he was persistent. And I said, okay, like, let's go give this a shot. I'll get, I'll give it a try. So he and I signed up, went to a, a, a box in San Francisco, about a mile from Pinterest, dropped in and, you know, I would have said, walking in that I was in good shape. I was running 50, 60 miles a week, could run pretty fast. I was doing a marathon about every year, lifting quite a bit, and just got absolutely smoked.

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember what the workout was?

• 1:33:34Speaker 02

  I don't, I wish I'd written it down. But I do remember, for the first probably, two to three weeks, I came in last in every workout. I remember looking around and like, you know, men, women in their 50s are destroying me. And it's, you know, my friend and I had, you know, at that point, I was sore as hell. I could only do like two days a week, but I was completely hooked.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  That did it for me. So I did that for, you know, about a little over a year in San Francisco. And then when I left Pinterest to go to my next job, founded a gym down in Palo Alto.

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  And then what was the next job?

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  So I left, uh, left Pinterest and went to a, a really small, early-stage company called Athos. So, uh, I had worked with a guy at Facebook who was, who left Facebook to invest. And he had invested in this company called Athos, which made compression apparel with embedded sensors that track muscle activity. So really interesting technology. It captured the electrical signal at the major muscle level. So you could look for an athlete as you trained, which muscles are firing, how hard are they working? When you looked at that kind of data, you could look at overall movement patterns, you could look at overall load on the body. Um, so you could see patterns that were predictive of injuries. So for me, it was kind of the intersection of two things I was super interested in, the sports, fitness, human performance, technology.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  And I had, you know, been at now three companies that had taken off. And I wanted to try something earlier stage. And I remember meeting with this. So I I met with this investor and I had known him pretty well from Facebook. And I talked to a bunch of other companies. Uh, and came down to, uh, Athos and Airbnb. And, um, I had gotten to know the founder at Airbnb, amazing, spent a bunch of time there, incredibly impressed, great company, great culture. The job was very similar, would have been somewhat similar to what I had done. So another fast growing company doing operations. And I I met with this investor and he knew me well enough. He's like, yeah, interesting. Airbnb is interesting.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  But you've done a version of that job. You know you can do it. This other job, you've never done this. You don't know if you can do it. I don't think you can do it. And that was it. I walked out. I was like, fuck you. I'm taking this job. And, uh, so for me, it was like doing something early stage that was high risk of failure. Totally different environment.

• 1:35:57Jocko Willink?

  Was Airbnb that early stage at this time as well?

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  It was.

• 1:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Already kind of with the trajectory.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  They were pretty big. Yeah, trajectory. They were well past product market fit, really strong growth, great brands, still a ton of opportunity.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You just figured, I don't want to jump on this another incredibly, uh, beneficial rocket ship again.

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Okay. When you put it that way, it makes you sound like a complete asshole. I wanted, I wanted a new experience, you know, like I was, it was amazing. And that was really hard because that.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  How many people were at Athos at the time?

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  Probably 50, 50, 55. And, um, you know, two founders, two young founders, um, two guys out of Waterloo in Canada. Amazing guys, great culture. And yeah, so I, you know, I started there and, you know, I figured, hey, this is as close for me in terms of what we're building. This is as close to a 10 as it gets. Sports, fitness, human performance, technology. Uh, we were doing some work with DOD, doing some work with Pro Sport. Really, really interesting. And it was an opportunity to kind of learn this new stage.

• 1:36:59Jocko Willink?

  So this is like early in the wearables.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Very early. So this is.

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  And, and.

• 1:37:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:37:04Jocko Willink?

  The higher capability wearables.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  This is tracking.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  So this is, you know, when, maybe when Fitbits at its peak. So it was, hey, you got Gen one wearables, which was, in my mind was, okay, there's a ton of demand here. But also, hey, Gen one is Gen one. There's an opportunity to build something that's a lot more sophisticated than just movement. And so Athos was this, we had this really interesting data set, like we could see what people's muscles were doing. So I thought in that there was a lot of potential and working in a space that was really fun.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  And then what happened with Athos?

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  So I, you know, I started there as COO and about 10 months in, so founder, amazing, the two founders incredible, one of them was CEO, both amazing entrepreneurs, amazing human beings. About 10 months in, founder and I switch roles. So he moves into a more technology focused role, what he loves, what he's world class at. I moved into the CEO role, first time for me being a CEO. And then, you know, six years of battling the startup grind. And so, you know, if there's a mistake to make early stage, we made it. I made it. Very humbling. Like, oh, it turns out it's not as easy as Facebook and Google and Pinterest

• 1:38:18Speaker 02

  make it look. Doing this shit is really hard. Lots of cultural stuff that was hard, you know, being on the, being on the cusp of running out of money constantly, keeping people motivated, focused. So it was, you know, I say Athos was for me by far the least successful in terms of the outcome. But, you know, in my, my time in technology, my favorite experience and the, the experience I learned the most from as a leader, without question.

• 1:38:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you had some survivor's bias going into it, being that you'd just been a part of companies that were just rocket ships. And then you jump into this company and it was six years you were there.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  I was there six years.

• 1:38:59Jocko Willink?

  Where is it at right now?

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  Uh, we basically sold part of the team and wound it down. So we didn't make it. Yeah.

• 1:39:06Jocko Willink?

  And that's normal.

• 1:39:07Speaker 02

  That's

• 1:39:07Jocko Willink?

  Just so everyone knows.

• 1:39:08Speaker 02

  That's 90% plus of startups. And I knew that going in.

• 1:39:11Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  The, I was up at MIT and doing some work with them and just the way that whole system works, it's sort of like, um, so the same things happens with book publishers. So book publishers, they buy a hundred books. They give a hundred people a hundred grand to write a book and none of them sell. Well, let me rephrase that, three of them sell.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's where they make all their money. And the folks up at MIT, when they talk about all the money that they're putting, starting up all these, it's the same thing. They're gonna, they're gonna put money into a hundred different businesses. Three of them are gonna make it and they're gonna make all their money back and a lot more.

• 1:39:52Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  Very similar math.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, so you end up, so what happens at the end of this?

• 1:39:58Speaker 02

  So we, we got to a point where, you know, I'd say we were, let's call it a year out. Uh, our, our focus was we were selling a bit into kind of pro and college sport. And so our use case basically was injury prevention. So we could see if you're a, you know, wide receiver on a college football team, we could see a hamstring imbalance present before anyone could see it. And then we could help with protocols that would mitigate and reduce injury risk. Great for college and pro sports, but college and pro sports is a shitty business. Small markets, very hard and costly to sell into. So it was great from a brand perspective. And then we were doing work with DOD actually. So, you know, we looked and said, you know, musculoskeletal injuries and DOD are catastrophic in number and cost.

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  Most of them are repetitive stress. Uh, they can be mitigated. And so we were doing a bunch of work there. We had some early contracts with the Air Force with AFSOC, um, down at Lackland's with some really good outcomes. Uh, but unfortunately just couldn't get to, uh, kind of cross the chasm and get to big contract.

• 1:40:58Jocko Willink?

  So then when did the CrossFit opportunity present?

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  So I left that, you know, we made the decision, you know, we essentially said, hey, we're gonna wind the company down. Look for a buyer. We did that, um, you know, wound it down. And then I spent a little bit of time, um, you know, with family and then had a friend of mine, uh, call me and say, hey, you know, I heard CrossFit's looking for a CEO. Do you have any interest? So he had talked to the recruiters. This is probably. April of last year, so a little over a year ago. And I said, absolutely, would love to be considered for it. I knew I was a really non-traditional. I had not worked in any sort of, you know, fitness or franchise per se. I worked in technology, but I'd been in the community for a long time.

• 1:41:43Speaker 02

  And so he connected me with the board and the executive recruiters. I went through the process. You know, had this very funny experience of my wife and I had had planned to be off. So we planned a three week trip to Central America and went through the final stages, the interviews, doing interviews over Zoom from Nicaragua, praying that the power wouldn't go out. And that culminated, you know, that wrapped up right before the CrossFit Games last year.

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  When you were studying for the CrossFit CEO role, what was your, what did it say on your flashcards, on your studying flashcards? What were you looking at? What were you trying to understand about the company?

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  So, you know, I wanted to understand a few things. I wanted to understand just the overall state of the community. So, you know, how was the average affiliate owner feeling? How's the average coach feeling? How's the average member? Is it growing?

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  Did you reach out to affiliate members and members and coaches at this time? And what were they telling you?

• 1:42:39Speaker 02

  I did. So I, you know, I reached out to you. So I had trained for, when I moved from Pinterest down to Athos, I started training at NorCal CrossFit in Redwood City. So Jason Kalipa's gym, NC Fit now. And so I had met Jason a couple of times. And so I sent him a note and said, you know, essentially, would you be willing to share some advice and feedback and I pick your hand? So I talked to Jason, talked to a bunch of other folks. I'd gotten to know Dave Castro. So I'd met Dave through another friend. And so I reached out to Dave and he was kind enough to kind of share his perspective. And so I wanted to get a sense for, you know, where's the business? Where are the state of things? Where's the team and where's the culture? Where's the state of the community and the ecosystem? And then I wanted to get a little

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  bit of a sense for, I also wanted to understand the, the ownership and, you know, who these investors were, what their priorities were. And then I tried to use that, you know, to, to come in with a point of view on, okay, here's my, albeit with a limited context, here's my perspective on, on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities. What does that look like? You know, going into the conversation.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  Because it was trouble at the time. I mean, when, so, so what happened was, let's see, uh, Coach Glassman, who was the founder and I think 100% owner of CrossFit.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  He had like tweeted a bunch of, he tweeted some things, he got, had to step down, like, it was around George Floyd, it was just kinda crazy. He pulled all their social media, like off social media, stuff like this, and again, I'm, I'm not getting it all, all right, because I didn't track it that closely. But you know, you'd see this stuff happening. I've had a CrossFit affiliate since 2007 or 2008. So I have to know a little bit about what's going on. But, so, so that's happening. You had a bunch of the affiliates were like, oh, CrossFit's gone crazy or whatever.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  We're out. So you had that happening. There's, I wouldn't say there's, well, there's, there's always been some level of negative press around CrossFit with people getting injured, with people getting rabdo, with people being assholes, with people being elitist, like these kinds of things. You, you had those things, which I think were, all these things were sort of,

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  maybe things to consider for you, right?

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  Give me a moment of pause.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, things to consider. And yet, here's the, here's the thing that I would, I would assume you latched on to, which is the same reason why I still have a CrossFit affiliate. You have something that is very, very strong at its core. It unifies people. It definitely, if, when, when done properly, it turns people that are in terrible shape into great shape. It brings them together. It makes them stronger mentally, physically. It, it just has, has had a huge impact and.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  Very much like jujitsu. You ever trained jujitsu?

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Uh, not seriously.

• 1:45:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, if it wasn't for the Gracie family, like you can, Gracie has the same, you can say the same thing about the Gracies, right? People can say, oh, you get hurt. People can say, oh, it's cultish. People can say that they didn't evolve their beliefs. Like, there's a bunch of negative things you can say about the Gracie family and about the, about Gracie Jujitsu.

• 1:46:09Jocko Willink?

  That being said, if it wasn't for Gracie Jujitsu, like, well, first of all, Gracie Jujitsu also is incredible, like, amazing. I know all the people from the Gracie family. They're all good people. So there's that. But also, if it wasn't for Gracie Jujitsu, the UFC wouldn't exist. And the UFC has now gotten all kinds of people into all kinds of martial arts. And that's undeniable. No one can deny that fact. So for me, it's a very similar thing. You have some, for lack of a better word, drama around this element. But at the same time, the element itself is so powerful and so good that it just helps a bunch of people.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  So everyone should, you know, you, in California, I mean, in San Diego, you can, there's jujitsu schools on every corner. And, and not only that, you can go anywhere in the country now and there's a jujitsu school. People email me from wherever, east, wherever. And they, you know, is there, is there, is there, is there a, is there a jujitsu school in wherever Idaho? And I'm like, Google it. Yep, there's one. So they're everywhere. So that's because jujitsu is awesome.

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17Jocko Willink?

  And I can tell you right now, like, people that talk about Olympic weightlifting. Guess what brought Olympic weightlifting into the limelight for, it's, it's CrossFit, powerlifting, same thing, gymnastics, same thing. These were, these were, and, and look, I've been, do you know what Milo Magazine is?

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:47:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, Milo Magazine is like a strong man Olympic lifting magazine. I've been a subscriber to that, doesn't exist anymore. But I was a subscriber to that since 1994. I was into this stuff. But I'm telling you, this stuff has been a niche market around the world. You couldn't go into a freaking gym. In 1997 and find an Olympic lifting platform. Zero. I never went into a gym. Echo Charles, back me up.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Oh, no, not a public type.

• 1:48:03Jocko Willink?

  No, not a public type gym, like not a 24 hour fitness, not a normal gym that you could go into and pay a fee. There was no pull up bars in many cases. There might've been one of those like weird, like curvy pull up bars. You know, that I, that I'm against. Yeah. On a universal, whatever. But there was no squat rack with pull up bars. That didn't, there was no dip bar attachment to it. These things didn't exist. There were certainly no rings hanging from the ceiling. So you had this thing that had issues, but damn, if it didn't have, if it hadn't had a major impact and a lot of people had been hugely beneficial. So is that kind of what you were weighing out in your head?

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah. And I, you know, I think you frame that really well. And it's funny, when I talk to people, you know, people who love CrossFit, they, they would say to me, and then more than one person saying, that sounds amazing. You should definitely not take that job. It's impossible. You know, with all of the love for the community because they saw both sides of the coin. For me, you know, I personally had had, you know, this, uh, really life-changing impact. You know, I was, when I, my back was jacked, I thought I was done getting after it in the way that I used to. I was 35 being like, all right, for the rest of my life, every morning when I wake up, it's going to take me 20 minutes

• 1:49:26Speaker 02

  to be able to stand up straight. That is just like the price I pay for being dumb when I was in my twenties. And so, you know, for me, totally transformative. Um, you know, not to mention meeting this amazing community of folks now who I've known for 10 years that I train with every day, who are, you know, good friends. And I saw the same thing happen for, you know, hundreds of other people. And so for me, yeah, there was, there were all of those challenges. You know, all of the things that I knew was going to make the job really hard, but I had never seen or experienced anything that had the type of impact on people's lives that CrossFit does. Never. And I, you know, I was lucky to work at companies that have billions

• 1:50:07Speaker 02

  of people using their product. Not one of those companies has even close to the type of impact. In the last year for me, just reinforcing it, like my, my wife is kind of sick of like me going home and like, let me tell you another story. I dropped into a random affiliate today. You will not believe this. And so for me, I looked at that and thought, gosh, it's already had a huge impact on so many people's lives and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Like we, we have all of these challenges, but those are also opportunities. If we can, we know it's not as dangerous as people. It's not dangerous when done well. We know it's not just for young, super fit people. We know if you walk into an affiliate, you're going to see young, old folks who are fit, folks who are just starting in their journey.

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  If we can just help people understand that and start to shift those perceptions, holy cow, like we can magnify the impact of this thing even more.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  So when I look at sort of the, the, the, the past CrossFit, okay? It seems to me like some of the problems of it were you had Greg Glassman, who was, he's like an ultra kind of libertarian type of guy, right? Like, hey, the, the, the, the best will rise to the top and if you're not good, you'll just fail. So it seemed to me like that attitude, look, I'm, I'm pretty much a, I feel that way about most things too. It's like, hey, you work hard and you do a good job, you're gonna excel and you're gonna get credit and things are gonna go well for you. And, but it seemed like,

• 1:51:40Jocko Willink?

  so if you were a person that wanted to open a gym and you were a badass person and you cared about your clients and you learned good technique and you maybe had some background in Olympic lifting or you had some background in gymnastics or you had some background in some sport that you became a good coach and you would open your affiliate somewhere and you would transform people's lives and they'd invite their friends and all of a sudden they'd have an awesome gym and doing great and making a bunch of money and changing people's lives. And then you've got someone else that's like, maybe didn't do any sports, maybe isn't the best person, maybe he's not the best coach, and yet they could kind of go through the certification, become a coach, and you know, maybe they got a big ego, right? And they want to compete, or they want to yell at people, or they want to force people to do

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  things that they shouldn't be doing, and all of a sudden you have someone get hurt, right? Which certainly, if you do stupid things with heavyweights, you can get hurt.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  And I, from my perspective, because again, it's like the same thing we just talked about, because CrossFit was so strong, even some of those coaches that shouldn't have been there, were still able to bring people in because, you know, people saw an article about CrossFit, and a person, you know, they went on vacation and someone said, "Oh, how'd you get in shape?" "Oh, I do CrossFit," and they go back to their hometown, "I want to do CrossFit too," and they roll into this gym, and it's not the best coach, and they're not getting the right instruction, and so things turn bad. So, when we talk about like, the dangers of CrossFit, which you just, which you just said, is, if you do it right, you'll be okay. Like, you can do a clean and jerk with a PVC pipe, and you should, when you start doing clean and jerks.

• 1:53:18Jocko Willink?

  So, now that, now that we're, in current days, what are we doing to address these types of issues, and sort of standardize and professionalize the force?

• 1:53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, a bunch there. I think the first thing I'd say is, I think it's, we have to, you know, make sure that we recognize, I think, part of Greg's genius early on, was understanding that that initial model was essential in attracting the type of entrepreneurial, independent, small business owners, that make CrossFit what it is today. And so, a model in which, we say, "Hey, look, we're going to give you the power to run your own business, and exercise your creativity, and build something that works for your community," I think was really, really important. Uh, it also, you know, without a, a model like that, we wouldn't have 13,000 gyms today. There's no way. And so, I think for us moving forward, we have to be thoughtful about making sure we preserve

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  The autonomy and the flexibility that allows our affiliate owners to do what they do best.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  It's what you and I learned in the military is decentralized command.

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  Decentralized command. And so that is, it is, you know, if you look at a traditional franchise business, you exercise quality by control, by very directive leadership. You will do X, you will do Y.

• 1:54:38Jocko Willink?

  Here's the 742-page document that's going to explain exactly how everything's set up.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  And we're going to come in and check every single box. That will not work for us. So we have to do, you know, what we learned to do in the military, which is now, we have to be really clear about the standard. Okay, what is the standard? And, you know, Greg was right, like excellence and virtuosity. That should be our standard. Excellence in coaching, excellence in how we run our affiliates, excellence that you don't have to think twice. You can walk into any one of our 13,000 affiliates and you're going to have a great experience. Now, that doesn't mean they're all going to look the same. They won't. They shouldn't. Part of the beauty is there's something unique about everyone. But what should be consistent is the quality of the coaching. What should be consistent is how you're supported and treated, the investment in the community, the things that we know really fundamentally

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  matter. So the challenge for us is figuring out, how do we think about, you know, we have to clearly articulate what the standard is, and we have to figure out how to create the right incentives in the community that allow people, that reward the folks who deliver on that. And then in some cases, for folks who are not, it's our responsibility, we have to be a custodian, HQ, we have to be a custodian for the brand. Because every affiliate owner who is doing their part, who is holding the line, is counting on us. Because we know if you walk into, if somebody walks into an affiliate who's not doing a great job, it doesn't just hurt that affiliate and that individual, it hurts every single other affiliate. And so they got to hold us accountable. We got to do a great job of holding the overall community of coaches and affiliates accountable for delivering that exceptional experience.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  And then as part of that, we got to make sure they have the resources to do it. And so this has been a big shift for us. Early on, CrossFit was really a, hey, send us X amount each year, license the brands. It's on you. Over the last year and a half or so, we've invested a lot in a team and in resources that give owners tools and, and, and things that they can use to up level their coaching, to build a great business, to learn how to support customers through onboarding and all the things that we know to be important.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like the restaurant business. If you're going to open a restaurant or you're going to open a bar, let's say, you gotta be personally invested in that bar. You gotta be in there and like, "Hey, what's up Fred? Yeah, you having your, you gotta, but you gotta build that thing." And it's, that's what, that's what like, you know, at my gym, that's what I realized almost as soon as we opened up. I was like, "Oh, this is all about these relationships with all these people that are inside this gym." And you can get to a point where the people in the gym have a relationship with each other and that's awesome too. But yeah, you gotta get people that are gonna set things up the way they like them, which is the way other people coming into the gym like them. They kind of like really care about it. And just like the best restaurants in the world aren't

• 1:57:26Jocko Willink?

  franchises. It's not, it's not like Chili's, right? I mean, nothing against Chili's because that used to be like kind of the go-to restaurant back in the day. But no one, that's not on the list, you know, of top restaurants in the world, even though it follows a perfect protocol. There's a franchise. They get, they all get the same food, comes from the same place. You know what you're gonna get. But that's not the best restaurant. It's not, that's not the best restaurant in San Diego. It's not the best restaurant in Chicago. There's Chili's in everywhere, but those aren't, and they're fine, but they're not the best. So if you want to go up a little bit higher, you gotta give those people, the people that are there, the people that own it, you gotta give them the autonomy to make things happen with decentralized command.

• 1:58:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, couldn't agree more. They've, they've got a, they've got a feel true ownership.

• 1:58:10Jocko Willink?

  What was it like when you took over? I mean, what, what, what, go ahead.

• 1:58:16Speaker 02

  I was laughing because it, my first week was the week of the CrossFit Games. So it was insane. It was awesome, but it was six days of, I think I met 2,000 people in four days. It was phenomenal. Very humbling. I learned a ton, you know, and so I felt, I was very lucky, even though it was a crazy first week. I got six months worth of learning compressed into six days.

• 1:58:43Jocko Willink?

  What are people telling you?

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  Oof, you know. I think by and large, the top points of feedback were from inside and outside the company, hey, we love CrossFit. We love this community. We want it to be successful. We need to understand where we're going so we can line around it. And so we need clarity of vision. Two, we need consistency. You know, the prior X years had been a ton of ups and downs. And for a lot of owners, the changes that we were going through at HQ impacted them. Like it, we cannot be a liability for them. Our job is to support them. And so they ask, hey, look, we need stability. We need confidence in where HQ is going, where

• 1:59:26Speaker 02

  the brand's going. From the team, I'd say, the team was pretty banged up. You know, and I think that the team was candidly, probably, you know, let's say, maybe cautiously skeptical. Hey, we've had a bunch of leadership changes. You know, we've gone from Greg, this visionary founder who created this thing that has impacted so many people that that now foundationally is a part of people's identity. You're now the next new guy. There's been a bunch of turnover. What's coming?

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  How many weeks are you going to be here for?

• 2:00:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And oh, by the way, we know this is a job that is really hard to come into and be successful in. And so people were incredibly supportive. People were really candid with me. So I, you know, I walked out of that first week with a lot of excitement, but I'd also say, you know, reasonably grounded in the areas where we had a lot of work to do.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  What, what did you get told that made your fears increase?

• 2:00:25Speaker 02

  Um, we as a, at HQ were, we have, we at that point continue have extraordinary people. Like the, rivaling the Marine Corps and people's intrinsic connection to the mission and the cause. Just unbelievably selfless, extraordinarily talented people. We were a shitty team. The company was incredibly siloed. So we have roughly these, we have our affiliate business. We have a business around sport and partnerships and then we have our education. Those teams didn't really talk to each other, didn't really work together. I'd say we didn't

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  have a, a culture internally that was grounded in high trust and clarity. And so, you know, we were not partnering well. We were not showing up. We were speaking to the same customers from different parts of the organization and ways that weren't coordinated. We were stepping on each other. There'd be, you know, well-intentioned mistakes that blossomed into issues because there wasn't a foundation of trust internally that really brought it all together. And what I heard from folks is, hey, that the, the higher you get in the organization, the worse it gets. So, and I had spent enough time with the leadership team that knew that we had great people, but we had some real cultural challenges.

• 2:01:47Jocko Willink?

  And then the positive thing was everyone freaking loved CrossFit.

• 2:01:50Speaker 02

  Everybody was, exactly, exactly.

• 2:01:53Jocko Willink?

  How did you go about crafting? So you hear from these, from the team, like, we don't even know where we're going. How did you go about crafting that? What does that look like?

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  So I spent the first couple of months just trying to get out and talk to as many people. So I thought about, okay, I need to spend a lot of time with our team and get to know and hear from them. We've got so much collective knowledge and wisdom internally. Spent a lot of time with owners, affiliate owners, spent time with coaches, and then talked to partners as well. And then also, you know, we have a bunch of folks, kind of endemic press within the CrossFit ecosystem. So anybody who was willing to talk to me, I tried to just pick folks' brain. And then, you know, I got out on the road. So I went to, to South America, went to Australia, wanted to make sure I got the international piece as well. That, for me, as I had those conversations, you know, themes started to emerge. Okay, here are the things that, you know, people are saying that are great. We want to make sure we preserve. Here's some of the challenges.

• 2:02:47Speaker 02

  And you know, I kind of put that together into, we sat down as a leadership team and said, "Okay, our, our, our job is to serve and support the organization. We owe them clarity." And so that clarity needs to be supported first. We need a long-term vision. So we are very short-term oriented right now. People don't understand what success looks and worse, actually, their worst fears are now that Greg has sold the company and we have a new investor, all they care about is money and we're going to ruin everything that made the special. So we need to communicate a vision to them that they can get excited and, and rally around. So we laid that out and we said, "Okay, on top of that, then that, let's call that it was 2023." So I said, "Let's round it off to 2030. Let's

• 2:03:31Speaker 02

  say a seven, seven-year exciting vision. We're going to do that work. Then we're going to do a work at three to five-year strategy." So that the vision helps us understand what it looks like. Then we need to do the hard work of figuring out how we get there. And then ultimately, we're going to enter by the end of the year, we're going to have a plan that has a clear set of outcomes and goals for next year that ladder up to our three to five-year plan and ladder up to our vision that we can communicate inside the company and we're going to share outside the company as well. And ultimately, that'll be aligned against a set of very objective goals we can measure our progress against.

• 2:04:01Jocko Willink?

  And so where are you at with that right now?

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  So we did that work in the fall. So we started as a team and you know, I, you know, the way we approach it, you know, not right or wrong, I'll start and write a, you know, I write a, write it down on paper. I'll write a doc. So I think I wrote a, I don't know, five to six, seven-page, here's a vision doc and sent it to the leadership team and said, "Look, most of this is probably wrong or really off, but it's a starting point. So I'm going to try to outline my thinking and the rationale for it. A bunch of my assumptions will be wrong. Help me inform it." So we spent a lot of that time as a team, got to a place where the team felt really good about it. We went then and shared it with the company and said, "Okay, great." And then we shared it externally. So we went to our affiliate owners and in January, right in Pleasanton, up in the Bay Area, went to affiliate owners and said, "Hey, here's our vision. Here's what we're

• 2:04:48Speaker 02

  focused on. Here's what you can expect from us. We're accountable to you. We're going to be working on your behalf. Here's what you can expect from us in the short, medium and long run." And then, you know, that setup for us allowed us to enter this year with a set of goals that we set. So we do it like roughly six months, we'll look and say, "Hey, You know, by mid-year, we want to be here. We'll take a minute and do effectively an after-action. So we'll look and say, okay, what went well? What went wrong? What were the assumptions we had coming in? And then how do we make sure that we learn from those to adjust our strategy? So we just went through that process for the second half of the year. And we communicated that back out to our affiliate owners up in Portland a couple of weeks ago.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  And how's the reception?

• 2:05:27Speaker 02

  It's been good. It's been really positive. I think generally, I'd say, um, you know, we've communicated that our, at the end of the day, like, what drives everything we do is, is reaching more people and changing more lives through CrossFit. So it's not about revenue. It's not about profit. It's how do we take this thing that is pretty amazing and reach more people with it? And oh, by the way, if we do that, this should be a great business. But, but for us, um, the financials are not the outcome. And then we talked about, okay, great. What that means is if we're going to get there, if we're going to reach more people, we got a bunch of problems we need to solve. So we got to address this issue around how the brand is perceived, that it's dangerous, that it's intimidating, that it's only for folks who are already fit. Okay, great. We've got a strategy. We're going to work on that.

• 2:06:13Jocko Willink?

  And what's that strategy look like, just generally speaking?

• 2:06:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's, it's a mix of, I'd say, kind of two high-level things. One, it's, um, doing a bunch of work on the storytelling side to elevate stories that start to shift that perception. So I think the good news for us is we don't have to change CrossFit to come up with something that works for folks who are older. Like, we already know it works.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  It's already been there forever.

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  It's been there forever. All we have to do is elevate the stories that are happening and do a better job of that. So we got some work to do on that front. So a lot of it is just storytelling. And this is an area our team has been really good for some time. The other side of it is we got what we're not great at historically is measuring the efficacy of our storytelling. So, okay, great. We just shipped X pieces of content. Which of them are working so that we can double down on those that are working and those that aren't? We have a lot of like gut feel. So we need to know actually which of those is driving traffic? How is that traffic converting? We, we should be accountable to our owners around it.

• 2:07:08Jocko Willink?

  It's funny how wrong your gut can be.

• 2:07:10Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. And, and people will say with a thousand percent conviction, I know this is right.

• 2:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Watch this video. This thing's going viral. Like, no, it got nine views and three downvotes.

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  Right, but you you get that feeling like, oh, this this is it. This is a great story.

• 2:07:26Speaker 02

  Especially with something like CrossFit, which people are so viscerally connected to.

• 2:07:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:07:32Speaker 02

  And so that's one of the areas around our culture that we're trying to shift a little bit. The passion's essential, but we gotta be rigorous. We gotta validate our assumptions.

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  So we're doing better storytelling, getting the word out there. What else?

• 2:07:43Speaker 02

  Better measurements and then better. One of the things we don't do a great job of now is if you get to our website, um, we do a shitty job of handing you off to an affiliate. So our job should be for folks who are sitting at home, pique their interest in CrossFit, get them to crossfit.com and then hand them to a local affiliate where they can start their journey. And right now, the the experience on the website for us is is not as tight uh as it needs to be. So we're working on that.

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  So are you gonna have a map like a geolocator, put your zip code in here?

• 2:08:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we've had we've had a map for some time. We're about to come out with in the next couple of weeks, an update to the map, which has been overhauled. So it's much better designed. And most importantly, what it'll allow us to start to do is actually measure the number of people that we're handing off to affiliates. So at the end of the day, we need to be able to understand for the amount of cycles that we're spending on telling the story. How many people do we hand off? And how many of those people become new members at a CrossFit affiliate? And so making sure we've got a really well-designed, you know, we'll call it a marketing funnel that allows us to see exactly how we're doing that work. So we can hold ourselves accountable and we can communicate to affiliates, hey, you're you're spending money with us every year. We're putting that money to good use. Here's how many people we are sending on your behalf.

• 2:08:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, a few years ago at this gym, we all of a sudden, we just like start our whatever new inquiries of people walking in and saying, hey, you know, I want to train. It just went down a lot and we spent like two months. And my business partner's like, yeah, I don't know what's going on. Like, we're we're not just not knowing what's happening. And sure enough, we'd somehow fallen off of Google Maps, right? Google Maps didn't have our gym anymore. And all of a sudden, like, we didn't even know what happened. And so that's when we started paying attention to all this kind of stuff. But there's this this the way it works, right? I mean, you've got to get, you've got to be able to get people to. Know where to go.

• 2:09:39Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:09:40Jocko Willink?

  We, I thought about that, doing that a long time ago. I should have, we should have echoed Charles. Cause people would always say, where should I train jujitsu? Where should I train jujitsu? And it, it doesn't matter as much anymore. That's why I haven't made an effort to do it anymore. Cause now jujitsu is so popular and there's so many people and people that aren't good coaches. They don't survive. They, the internet will eat them alive. Like you can't be a fake jujitsu black belt and be teaching because you'll just get annihilated. So, but for a while, maybe like five years ago, I was thinking we should do sort of like a, you know, Jaco approved, this is an approved, jujitsu approved place to train and have a map and you put in your zip code and there you go. These, these are some cool instructors. Here's the vibe there. And, cause it's so important. People get that interest. They do the Google search.

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  And yet, the next step, that's a big next step. You know, I sell stuff online. That's a smaller step to click.

• 2:10:31Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Cart or whatever.

• 2:10:32Speaker 02

  Yep. But you're losing people at each stage.

• 2:10:34Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 2:10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we, we haven't, you know, for the past, at least few years, haven't been doing a lot of the, the basic blocking and tackling. So, uh, you search for CrossFit on Google and our competitors have the first row of paid ads. And that's not an untraditional thing, but we weren't even playing there.

• 2:10:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  So we weren't even making it hard for them. So there's a lot, a lot of stuff that we're doing now there that'll have a big impact.

• 2:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's like when people have the actual name Jaco. They'll buy my name on Amazon or on Google. And we, we're pretty good about it now. We've, we've made it cost them a lot of money if they want to play that game. But, uh, you know, it's pretty insane that that's what goes down.

• 2:11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. That you can, you can bid on those keywords on somebody else's trademark. It sucks.

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  That's how these, that's how year old stomping grounds make money, right?

• 2:11:24Speaker 02

  That's right. You can hold me accountable. Trust me. I was very far from any important decisions like that.

• 2:11:30Jocko Willink?

  And so then what does it look like? Uh, so we got the, um, The CrossFit Games coming up.

• 2:11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:36Jocko Willink?

  What, in a week?

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, it starts next week.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Are you going?

• 2:11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:11:40Jocko Willink?

  Cause I'm going.

• 2:11:41Speaker 02

  For sure, sweets.

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  I, I unfortunately, I didn't get it scheduled early enough, so I'm there for like a day.

• 2:11:47Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:11:48Jocko Willink?

  We got the bunch of people coming up from Jocko Fuel to check it out. I have only watched CrossFit Games on TV. How hype is it live?

• 2:11:57Speaker 02

  It's amazing. It's super awesome. I, uh, last year was my first Games, um, which I immediately regretted not having gone before. The, watching the competition's amazing, but just being in, in and around the community. So CrossFit, like I, I, but huge part of CrossFit's magic in my mind is our community. It's just so, it's super special and part of that for most folks, the community they experience is in their own affiliate. And that's awesome and amazing, but there's also this other community of millions of people. And when you go to an event like the Games, I remember walking around last year, probably day three for me, and thinking to myself, there are few places, right? You could draw a ring around the Games right now, this event.

• 2:12:40Speaker 02

  And there are probably not another 15,000 human beings who are happier, healthier, fitter, more resilient on the planet anywhere. And you walk around and you see people, the, the level of happiness and excitement and standing in stark contrast to what you see sadly in most of our society. But that really struck me, so it's just a super fun, high energy, positive environment. We've got a really, we've done a lot of work to, to build out experiences for the fans. So we'll have, uh, throw down training sessions where we effectively allow fans to do similar workouts to what the elite athletes are doing under conditions that feels like you're getting after it. I did one in Berlin.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  You have an announcer, you have a DJ, you're doing the same. I mean, it is, that is as close as I'll ever get to anything quasi-elite, but it's super fun. And then we do a bunch of work for our affiliate owners as well.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, a good point when you get around, like I go to Jiu Jitsu events and you get that same thing because everyone there's, is 99% of the people there are training and they're in good shape and they're working hard. And just like, you know, the Marine Corps said, what I opened with, and just like I wrote about in, in Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and just actually, one of the most key things that Echo Charles ever said on this podcast was, There's nothing that, there's nothing that you can do in life that's gonna positively impact more other things in your life than exercise. Like if you're a person and you don't work out, you know, that was another thing I was considering

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  reading on this was there's a, the opening of the book, Starting Strength. And in the opening of the book, Starting Strength, he basically says like, hey, I understand that people are out there doing their jobs and maybe you're an accountant and maybe you're doing a good job with that, but, and, and no one would say that this guy's unhappy because he's an accountant, but wouldn't he be more happy if he had a 405 squat? Always. It's like, yes, you will be happier. You'll be a happier human. So that's a, that's a good way to go. What else, man? Does that get us up to date? I think so. Yeah. Next week. Next week. It would be good to have you there. Yeah. We have a partnership with Jaco Fuel and CrossFit, which has been freaking awesome. Awesome to launch.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  Again, we, I go to events, you know, I just did a couple of live events. We did Detroit, we did Chicago, we did Boston, we did Philly. And it's the same thing, like people are in the game. People are trying to get better and you can just see the attitudes of the people there. We always have to warn our, like when we do events at Echelon Front, we do events, we'll tell the hotel, like, hey, just so you know, we're opening the doors at eight, people will be outside, you know, an hour and a half earlier. And we're doing a PT at, at 4:30 in the morning or 4:45 in the morning. They're like, what are you talking about? There, is anyone gonna go? We will say, yeah, 900 people are gonna be out there. And they don't understand it. Yeah. Cause it's a different group of people.

• 2:15:46Jocko Willink?

  And again, when you have people that are focused, when you have people that are, that are exercising and being able to exercise with other people and being in a friendly yet competitive environment and pushing each other and pushing themselves.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  It's a win.

• 2:16:03Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. People are showing up that early excited to do really hard shit.

• 2:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  And walk out the other end of it just buzzed.

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you've got to remember how good that's going to make you feel when you get done. Because prior to and during, sometimes don't feel too good, right? Sometimes those squats get a little bit painful.

• 2:16:25Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 2:16:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so for where can we find, where can we find you? Right? You're on Twitter?

• 2:16:34Speaker 02

  I'm on Twitter. Um, and despite having worked in social media to my wife's great chagrin, I think I have 12 Instagram posts since 2012.

• 2:16:41Jocko Willink?

  Your, your game is weak.

• 2:16:42Speaker 02

  My game is extremely weak.

• 2:16:44Jocko Willink?

  I checked out your Twitter. I checked out your Instagram. I checked out your Facebook. For a guy that worked at Google and Facebook and Pinterest, maybe, are you hiding on Pinterest?

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  Maybe. You're not going to find me though. I'll tell you that right now.

• 2:16:56Jocko Willink?

  But you're there, but I guess if people really want to know what's going on with what we're talking about, it's, it's at CrossFit.

• 2:17:01Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:17:01Jocko Willink?

  It's uh, CrossFit.com. It's at CrossFit. They're on all social media platforms. They've got the YouTube channel. Apparently the website's being improved as we speak.

• 2:17:09Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:17:09Jocko Willink?

  Things are moving in the right direction and um, that's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Echo Charles.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:17:17Jocko Willink?

  What do you got? You got any questions?

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, kind of like, like questions. Um, so I've been to a few CrossFit gyms and, but all the times that I've went, with the exception of this one here, um, it, there was like an actual like class going on.

• 2:17:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  Can you just roll in and do your own workout or like, how did, what's the tradition?

• 2:17:36Speaker 02

  So the, for most folks who are getting started with CrossFit, the traditional thing is just show up. If you've not done CrossFit before, um, each gym's a little bit different, but a lot of gyms will have kind of an onboarding class or session. Sometimes it's one-on-one and if you're not familiar with Olympic lifting, for example, um, the coach will walk you through kind of the fundamentals, you know, everything comes bound to, down to, you know, CrossFit, making sure you get the mechanics right, getting them consistent before you introduce any sort of load or intensity. And so there's usually an onboarding class. That'll then graduate to, and again, it depends on the gym, but graduate into folks jumping right into sessions. And again, the beauty of CrossFit is you could be doing a class, it could be your third day where you're super unfamiliar and you could be training some next to someone who's going to the CrossFit Games in their age group.

• 2:18:20Speaker 02

  And the nature of how that class is run and how it's scaled makes it possible for folks to train together in a way that feels really comfortable, motivating, et cetera. Most gyms also have open gym time. So for a lot of folks that they want to do accessory work or some additional that you can schedule that as well.

• 2:18:36Speaker 01

  If I go in a CrossFit gym on open mat time, open gym, and I do curls in the squat rack, whoa.

• 2:18:44Speaker 02

  Bonus points.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  Can I still come? Oh, okay.

• 2:18:45Speaker 02

  It was fine. Physic curls are universally praised in every sport methodology, so.

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  Alright, so I'll still be allowed back the next day?

• 2:18:54Speaker 02

  You gotta do, you gotta do the CrossFit workout as well.

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  Okay, alright.

• 2:18:58Jocko Willink?

  I would encourage, I've been to CrossFit gyms where they have open gym. I'm so happy when they have open gym. I would encourage if you have a CrossFit gym to have open gym as much possible time as you can. And I think that's very helpful. There are some gyms, usually it's when they're really small. They don't, they don't have any open gym, but I would encourage you to have open gym. I think it's healthy. I think it's healthy to be getting in there. And, you know, not gonna get to train too much, right?

• 2:19:29Speaker 02

  Well, I think what you find too with open gym is I think one of the cool things about CrossFit is you've got this constant journey of getting better. And there's so much, you know, potential complexity, need advancement in everything you do. So you're gonna find Games athletes who are still working on, at the very highest level, who are still working on some of their gymnastics movements. And when you get started, so for me, I've been doing it nine years now, I do open gym because there's a few weaknesses I want to work on. And so you're constantly thinking about, okay, like, my ring muscle ups suck. I am not good at them. I'm gonna get some extra time so I can start to work on it. And you start to develop that attitude within it where it's constant progression and evolution.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Anything else Echo Charles?

• 2:20:09Speaker 01

  No, that's it.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, I would say over the years I have gotten Echo Charles to start doing metabolic conditioning. Do I get credit for the MetCons?

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  You do.

• 2:20:19Jocko Willink?

  I do get credit for the.

• 2:20:20Speaker 02

  What's your favorite workout? Or least favorite?

• 2:20:24Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, what is a MetCon an actual workout like a?

• 2:20:28Speaker 02

  It's any type. It's yeah, like a, like a WOD metabolic conditioning. So a variety of different stuff. High heart rate.

• 2:20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So just circuit training. So kettlebells, actually my favorite one. Are you asking me what my favorite one is? Okay, so it's a circuit of kettlebells.

• 2:20:41Speaker 02

  If there's bicep curls in here, it's getting disqualified.

• 2:20:43Speaker 01

  No, yeah, no, I did the bicep curls before. So nowhere is there good to go. Kettlebells, clean and jerk, is it?

• 2:20:51Jocko Willink?

  Could be a press, could be a jerk.

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  So I go from that to burpees to jumping jacks, mountain climbers.

• 2:20:58Speaker 02

  All right, legit.

• 2:21:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:21:00Jocko Willink?

  And then how many, how many rounds do you do that?

• 2:21:02Speaker 01

  As many as I can for whatever. Sometimes it's like 25 minutes.

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  25 minutes of that, huh?

• 2:21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:09Speaker 02

  That's aggressive.

• 2:21:09Jocko Willink?

  That's, we don't even, we're not a hundred percent sure if that's a MetCon anymore.

• 2:21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:14Jocko Willink?

  It might just turn into like, you know.

• 2:21:16Speaker 01

  But it goes as low as six minutes too. So.

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  What's worse? What's harder?

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  What?

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Six minutes or 25?

• 2:21:23Speaker 01

  25. Five, like 25 is.

• 2:21:26Jocko Willink?

  You say that to me like I'm an idiot, right?

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  But here's the thing, here's the thing, right? For me, there's days where six minutes is going to be heinous. But 25 is going to be okay because I'm like going to be able to like, you're going to, you're going to have to back off a little bit.

• 2:21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:42Jocko Willink?

  And then there's days where 25 minutes is going to be heinous and six minutes is going to be, I'll, I'll get some.

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so and I get it. I understand fully. I, I get the, um, the six minutes, even if it's super hard. Usually it's like 10, under 10, like eight.

• 2:22:00Speaker 01

  Eight and a half.

• 2:22:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:01Speaker 01

  That's usually where it kind of sorts itself out because it's the perfect, in my opinion, the perfect balance of like actual the strength part of it, you know, the 25 minutes, that's like I'm using lightweight, it's kind of like a more of a cardio thing.

• 2:22:11Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I get super bored with that. So, once you reach like the 15 minute mark, I'm like, bro, this just sucks, this is not even fun anymore. The six minutes is like, sure, it gets, it can get super hard, but at least it's kind of exciting in there. At least you gotta get yourself fired up, you know? I'd way rather endure that than the boredom part of it.

• 2:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  What do you think?

• 2:22:30Speaker 02

  Uh, the really short workouts were worse for me.

• 2:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:22:33Speaker 02

  Like doing a Fram, which is like a three to four minute, just like your lungs hurt for, you know, you're rolling on the floor. Those are the worst workouts for me.

• 2:22:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those are, those are horrible and glorious.

• 2:22:45Speaker 02

  At the same time.

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:46Speaker 01

  They're more exciting though, right?

• 2:22:48Jocko Willink?

  They are.

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  Don't you get like more fired up for that?

• 2:22:50Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  I feel like that.

• 2:22:51Speaker 02

  I agree with you on the boredom piece. It's a different type of grind.

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:55Jocko Willink?

  It is weird how emotionally, I'm going to say that word.

• 2:22:58Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Emotionally, for a, like a four minute Fram, emotionally, the first minute and a half is actually just no factor and you're kind of like, oh, I'm, I'm a badass. And then you get hit in the face with a baseball bat and you're like, I want to die.

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:16Speaker 02

  And you know you can do more and they hurt so bad. Yeah.

• 2:23:20Speaker 01

  Did you run track before by chance?

• 2:23:23Speaker 02

  I did, my wife did.

• 2:23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a, there's a race, the 400 meter, and they would say that that's like the worst one.

• 2:23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:30Speaker 01

  Because it's right in the zone.

• 2:23:32Jocko Willink?

  I thought they said the 800 meter is the worst one.

• 2:23:34Speaker 01

  Well, in, I don't know, and maybe in, uh, when you get a higher level for sure, but in high school, it's 800 is kind of more of a distance kind of scenario. I'm sure it would suck, but because of 400, once you get past 200 meter, you're just like.

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  Holding on.

• 2:23:48Speaker 01

  You leave your body, yeah, it's like harsh, man.

• 2:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think the professionals, it becomes 800 meters because they become so conditioned.

• 2:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:55Jocko Willink?

  But for them, they get to the 400 meter and they got another 400 to go and it's a complete freaking utter nightmare.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:02Jocko Willink?

  So, you don't want none of that, apparently.

• 2:24:05Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:24:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Don, you got any closing thoughts?

• 2:24:09Speaker 02

  Just thank you guys. Really appreciate the opportunity.

• 2:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well.

• 2:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming down and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of you in the future and I look forward to seeing you out at the games. That'll be fun. And um, thanks for coming out. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I mean, that's a pretty wild ride you've been on so far. And I know you're just getting warmed up. And thanks for sharing your lessons learned. And of course, thanks for your service in the Marine Corps, you know, can't ever underestimate when people step up and serve their country. So thanks for doing that. And of course, uh, thanks for doing what you're doing today to help people get stronger, faster, and healthier. Love it. Appreciate it.

• 2:24:53Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Don Faul has left the building.

• 2:25:01Jocko Willink?

  So, looks like we're working out. Looks like we're doing metcons. Looks like we're getting stronger. Looks like we're pushing each other. Looks like we're rolling into the box, the CrossFit, getting after it. That means you're gonna need some fuel. Some fuel for that evolution.

• 2:25:20Jocko Willink?

  Good place to get fuel, the right fuel, the clean fuel, Jaco Fuel. JacoFuel.com. Get some milk, which is protein. They're a little bit mad at me. Who? Uh, everyone at Jaco Fuel. Especially Joe Moss. That makes sense. Well, I'll tell you why. Because I called the protein milk, right? Which is its own word, its own name. And people don't know what it is. Initially. So unfortunately, for the team, they have to explain it a thousand times. They go, do you guys want milk in your store? And they go, what's milk? And they say, it's protein. They say, yes. That took them an extra

• 2:26:04Jocko Willink?

  three seconds. Can be, can be a pain, right? After your 17,000th time. But for you out there, you, you should know what milk is. If you don't, it's protein, clean protein, tasty protein, dessert protein. You can get it in powder form, pow pow, or you can get it, or you can get it in ready to drink form. Whichever form you get it in, it will take out, take you out of your catabolic state where your, your body is destroying itself. And will start to build and rebuild. So you can get some of that.

• 2:26:41Speaker 01

  That's what it works. Hey, here's a, here's a tip. Not a tip, like, but what you do is you call it milk protein.

• 2:26:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what we try and do now. Yeah, milk protein.

• 2:26:52Speaker 01

  Cause actually they have a point if you, if, if we're just saying milk and you know how you just kind of implied, oh, it takes three seconds or whatever, which I dig, I dig it.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  No, this is a viable, this is, I, I, I, what's the word? I downplayed it, but it's a legitimate thing. So you're correct. So go ahead.

• 2:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause you know how you, when you, um, when you inundate someone's brain with decisions, right? They start to get, um, like diminish, what do you call it? Like the, their decision making, like people don't want to make a bunch of decisions. That's why if you have a menu with like a million items, it's like you, you risk selling nothing kind of a thing. But it, so if you're like, hey, you want some milk? It's like frick, let me think. I don't know. Do I? Don't I? I don't even know what that means. Now you just, you're giving them a decision fatigue. Just from, from that one little unnecessary time. Yeah. See what I'm saying? And, and especially if you're in a sales situation. There's, what's it called? Sales resistance or sales, the thing where you know someone's selling you something. So you automatically have your defense up. It's called something. I think it's like sales resistance or whatever.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  So if you're like, hey, you want some milk in your thing? The sales resistance is up because I don't even know what that is. Stop trying to sell me something I don't need. You know, the resistance is, is going to be way more up. But if you say, hey, you want some milk protein or you want some protein powder? It's like, hmm, wait, we, we might, you see what I'm saying? The resistance is not as, as much.

• 2:28:05Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is why, this is my fault, obviously. And here was my little. Rationalization when this happened.

• 2:28:14Speaker 01

  What, the three second thing?

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  No, when I made up the name Molk.

• 2:28:17Speaker 01

  Oh, got it.

• 2:28:18Jocko Willink?

  For me, Molk, that it tasted so good. And it was so good for you. To me, it was a different thing. Like, protein shakes taste bad. Milkshakes aren't good for you. We have something new. It tastes good and it was good for you. It's something new. We need a new name for it. And in my mind, I was, this is gonna be like a Xerox machine. Like, you know how people say, hey, can you make me a Xerox of this? People needed something, a different name for it.

• 2:28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause it was so different. Or like, people say, oh, can you pass me a Kleenex? That's the name brand. I thought the world, all over the world, people would be like, hey, I need a Molk. Not a protein shake, cause they didn't want that. And not a milkshake, cause they don't want that. They're gonna be like, oh, I need a Molk, just what we call it now.

• 2:29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:01Jocko Willink?

  So, in my little infantile brain, that's what I thought would happen. What I should have done something similar is energy drinks. Because our energy drink is truly good for you. Truly good for you. And yet, when people think energy drinks, they think bad for you. They think chemicals, they think high caffeine, they think sugar.

• 2:29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  And we don't have sugar, we don't have chemicals, and we have a good, serviceable, good-for-you level of caffeine.

• 2:29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:34Jocko Willink?

  So it's a good thing. But we didn't make up a word for the energy drinks.

• 2:29:39Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I should have.

• 2:29:41Speaker 01

  Maybe you still can.

• 2:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we have, you know what, apparently in the streets.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  From the field.

• 2:29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, in, in Philly, coming back from Jaco Live, they call it Jaco.

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  They call it one word, like Jaco. Oh, yeah, oh, you got the Jaco drink.

• 2:29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:29:59Jocko Willink?

  So it's like Jaco, but they say go, kinda Jaco. Like, oh, you got that Jaco drink. They say it in one word. So there's the people.

• 2:30:07Speaker 01

  Has legs, I think.

• 2:30:08Jocko Willink?

  That's what they're calling it, right?

• 2:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:11Jocko Willink?

  So, maybe I made a mistake with the Molk. Maybe I made a mistake by not coming up with something better for the energy drink. But these are the mistakes that I've made. I apologize. We'll, we appreciate you working with us to take what's good for you. You know, uh, we got joint health stuff, joint warfare, we got super krill oil, we got...

• 2:30:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, immunity, Cold War, Cold Wars, if you're on the road, take Cold War. It's like a hundred percent good to go.

• 2:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  You don't, you go and shake a bunch, you're sitting in an airplane, shaking a bunch of hands, like what you're doing. You're getting your disease. Gotta fend it off.

• 2:30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  So, jockofuel.com, check it out. We got everything that you need on there. You can get it at Wawa. Slim pickings at Wawa due to the, the, the beverage empires that are out there trying to shut down the rebels. They're buying all the slots. That's what's happening. We're hanging in there, but in the meantime, vitamin shop, GNC, military commerce, commissaries. Afees, Hannafords, Hannafords going hot.

• 2:31:21Jocko Willink?

  Dash stores, Wakefern, ShopRite, HEB. HEB in Texas. Hey, thank you, HEB, and thank you, state of Texas, troopers. Folks that are out there in the game, just going in, we're crushing in HEB. So, thank you. Same thing with Meyer up in the Midwest. Harris Teeter, we got Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and look, CrossFit, we're talking about CrossFit today. If you want to sell this product in your gym. Email J F sales at jockofuel.com and we can get it in there for you. Get you, maybe get you a little refrigerator, you can just have it ready to go. Same thing, you got a little Jiu Jitsu Academy? You got that academy? You want to sell some good stuff?

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  You want to help your clients, help your students? And you help yourself because you know it's going to another little bit of an income stream, right? So, let's get, let's make it happen. There you go. That's what we're doing. jockofuel.com.

• 2:32:17Speaker 01

  Yep. Also, Origin, USA. These are, this is where you can get your, okay, RTX, run, train. Everything else.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  Execute is.

• 2:32:27Speaker 01

  Execute.

• 2:32:28Jocko Willink?

  I think I say execute. I think maybe Pete says it's like an X, like a variable.

• 2:32:32Speaker 01

  Like a variable, yeah. Hell, yeah. Yeah, I like that one. I guess execute's cool too, but isn't, isn't execute a E?

• 2:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  But X is like trendy. It's like hip. I don't know. Either way, it's athletic gear.

• 2:32:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:32:45Speaker 01

  But yeah, cool. Athletic gear. Good. That is very good, but it's all made in America, which is even better. Like adds the additional, but also they got some Jiu Jitsu stuff on there, gis and rash guards.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  Some Jiu Jitsu stuff. They got all Jiu Jitsu stuff.

• 2:32:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:32:59Jocko Willink?

  What else do you need from Jiu Jitsu?

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  That you can't buy at Origin?

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  You get the gi, you get the rash guard, you get the shorts.

• 2:33:06Speaker 01

  Yep, that's right.

• 2:33:07Jocko Willink?

  You're ready to go.

• 2:33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just meant it as there's some, you go to OriginUSA.com. You can get the RTX stuff, you get the Jiu Jitsu stuff specifically for Jiu Jitsu. Then you also got the jeans, the boots, you see what I'm saying? So I say some Jiu Jitsu, that's just part of what Origin offers, is what I'm saying, what I'm implying.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, I don't know why my son asked me this the other day, but he said, how many times have you worked out in pants? In sweatpants in your life?

• 2:33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:34Jocko Willink?

  No, he said, when's the last time you worked out in sweatpants? That's what it was.

• 2:33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:37Jocko Willink?

  I said, I don't think I've worked out with sweatpants in, in, in at least a decade. And I don't think I've ever worn pants, sweatpants while working out three times in my entire life.

• 2:33:49Speaker 01

  Damn, alright.

• 2:33:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, my legs don't get cold.

• 2:33:52Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  But if your legs get cold, which maybe your leg's a little bit more

• 2:33:58Jocko Willink?

  aerodynamic. A little bit, you know what I mean? Like that a little bit.

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  I know what you mean.

• 2:34:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, some people think you have skinny knees.

• 2:34:07Jocko Willink?

  Maybe they get cold.

• 2:34:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:34:08Jocko Willink?

  You get some joggers.

• 2:34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, here's the thing, if it's cold, well, it's not necessarily, oh, my legs feel cold. It's not that, it's for like, hey, when you're warming up, like, okay, you ever worked out in a sweater? Or not a sweater, like a hoodie or something like this? You have?

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Most of, yeah.

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  Why?

• 2:34:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause keep my upper body, get my upper body warmed up.

• 2:34:28Speaker 01

  Warmed up for that workout.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? Same deal.

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:34:32Speaker 01

  Right, you're doing some squats.

• 2:34:33Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  Some deep squats. Better be warm than not warm, I'll tell you that. Better be loose than not loose than stiff.

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  Concur, maybe I need to give it a shot.

• 2:34:42Speaker 01

  That's the justification on that one.

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  Ah, so there you go. Go to OriginUSA.com, get some American-made quality.

• 2:34:52Jocko Willink?

  Make it happen.

• 2:34:53Speaker 01

  Make it happen. Also, JacoStory.com, this is where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom shirts, hats, some hoodies on there, some accessories on there. You want a flag? You want to fly the flag of discipline? We got one on there.

• 2:35:07Jocko Willink?

  The Defcore flag.

• 2:35:09Speaker 01

  Defcore flag, X flag even. That's when you're going deep, right there. The X flag. It's actually, a lot of people have that one. It's a good one. Also, there's the Shirt Locker, which is a new shirt. A lot of representatives of the Shirt Locker at Jaco Live this past weekend.

• 2:35:23Jocko Willink?

  I saw a comment in, it said, "Oh, I don't see many Shirt Locker shirts," because I posted a picture or something. I don't know what moment I caught, but there was Shirt Locker shirts in a big way. It was pretty awesome.

• 2:35:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yes.

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  I would go so far as to say forty percent of the people at these gigs were representing while on the path.

• 2:35:51Speaker 01

  That's what it felt like. I would have guessed forty percent.

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:35:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:35:53Jocko Willink?

  That might be a little bit high, but not too high.

• 2:35:56Speaker 01

  No, it was, well, the people I saw, I mean, granted, I didn't look at what everyone was wearing, but the frequency in which boom was, it was hitting me. Yeah, I think forty percent.

• 2:36:05Jocko Willink?

  Pretty awesome.

• 2:36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Very good. But if you don't know what this is, it's a new shirt. It's a new shirt every month. Different designs that represent the path in various ways. One of them, which a guy was wearing, by the way, I got like literally scolded for.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  For what?

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  For one of the designs.

• 2:36:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:23Speaker 01

  The "Don't F It Up" one.

• 2:36:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:25Speaker 01

  But it just said "Don't F" with a flag. There was a K, so I guess there was an implied swear word there. "It Up."

• 2:36:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:33Speaker 01

  Pretty big, but kind of muted, though. It's not all bold or whatever. It's kind of muted a little bit. But nonetheless, that's just, that was the most controversial one.

• 2:36:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm not a hundred percent sure if that shirt would have passed my scrutiny.

• 2:36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:48Jocko Willink?

  But I think it probably would have.

• 2:36:50Speaker 01

  You think so?

• 2:36:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, because occasionally, you gotta go outside the box just a little bit.

• 2:36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, to me, when the reason that... It probably wouldn't have been. The first complaint I got, I was like, ah, I think he's right. You know, like I was always sketch about the swearing, wearing shirts with swearing on it. But then again, bro, there's more people than me, just me, you know? There's a lot, there's some of them that I'm like, bro, this one is gonna Latin, bro, everyone's gonna love, this is the best one. This is the best one. And then people won't like it. And then there's ones that I'm like, okay, this one's cool, but you know.

• 2:37:20Jocko Willink?

  People really dig it.

• 2:37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. So you just never know, everybody's different. And that's kind of part of the reason for this whole thing. Whereas you get a wide variety of cool stuff. In my opinion, eh, eh, look, you're gonna find something cool. See what I'm saying? Even if you don't think every single one is cool, a cool one's gonna come in, you're gonna be excited about that one.

• 2:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, there you go.

• 2:37:37Speaker 01

  Anyway, jocko store.com, that's where you can check them out.

• 2:37:40Jocko Willink?

  Hey, also check out primalbeef.com. Primalbeef.com. We got Sean Glass, veteran, former SEAL officer. And he has got a little, little beef thing going out there.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  They got ribeyes on there?

• 2:37:58Jocko Willink?

  They got ribeyes. Primalbeef.com, and it's one of these things where you can order like a, an assortment of meat. Yeah. They got a bunch of different ways. They got a kick ass packaging thing set up. I already got my first box and this meat is good. GTG. You know what that means?

• 2:38:15Speaker 01

  Yes, I do.

• 2:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. This meat is a cut above GTG. It's freaking good to go. So go on there. You wanna support veterans? You wanna support like good farming? Go ahead and check it out. Primalbeef.com. Get yourself some steak. Get yourself some burgers. Get yourself some, some beef hot dogs. That's what we're doing. Also, uh, subscribe to the podcast, cause we're here.

• 2:38:45Jocko Willink?

  We used to argue about whether it was worth saying that for about probably 90 episodes. I'd say, why are we still saying this? And yet I just said it. And now it's been 397 episodes. So anyway, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't yet. And also subscribe to Jocko Underground. We just got done recording a new Jock, Jock Underground, talking about compromise. We talk about all kinds of subjects on there. We also answer a bunch of questions. Subscribe to that, jocko underground.com. Also YouTube channel, also Psychological Warfare, also flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff for you to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. We got, you know what I haven't talked about? The ABCs of Jiu Jitsu. By, by Coach Adam Mason.

• 2:39:31Speaker 01

  The same Coach Adam from Way of the Warrior Kid. Is that the same Adam?

• 2:39:35Jocko Willink?

  Coach Adam. And Chris Ayers, who's another Jiu Jitsu guy, did all the artwork. He's a tattoo artist, but he's also a sick, just artist, artist. He did the artwork in there. And where would you, where does this book land? It's, it's like not quite a kid's book. But it is a kid's book. It's not quite an adult book, but it is an adult book. It's just like, it's for everyone, I guess.

• 2:39:56Speaker 01

  And if you, this is actually one of the things I noticed when I was kind of going through it like halfway. I'm like, wait a second, is this a coloring book too? And you know what he said?

• 2:40:04Jocko Willink?

  Can be. Can be. The thing is, the art alone is, it's the kind of art you could just hang on the wall. In fact, we should, maybe we should offer some prints. Anyways, um, check it out. ABCs of Jiu Jitsu. Also, I wrote a bunch of books too. You can check those out. Final Spin Leadership Strategy and Tactics, Field Manual Code, Evaluation Protocols, Discipline and Freedom Field Manual. Way of the Warrior Kid. Let's get those for every kid that you know. Mike, you in the, I signed so many Way of the Warrior Kid books. And little warrior kids were coming out to the live events. And I'm talking about some heavy stuff in those things. I'm talking about life, death, disease, trauma.

• 2:40:46Jocko Willink?

  And these kids are there in the front row, big eyes, taking notes. What's up? Warrior kids. So check all that out. Plus we got Hackworth, signed a bunch of Hackworth, bunch of About Face, obviously, Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership. Check out all those books. And speaking of Dichotomy of Leadership and Extreme Ownership, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to eslonfront.com. We sold out the Dallas gig, the Dallas muster. There's still a few slots left for FTX, Individual FTX down in Texas that JP's running. Go and get, go and engage in combat situations, simulated combat situations, and learn how to lead. Check that out. We got the Women's Assembly coming up,

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  which is September 14th through the 16th in Phoenix, Arizona. Jamie Cochran was getting pictures taken with people. They know who she is. They understand that she understands. So go check that out. You can find all of this stuff and plus you can find out about our consulting services at echelonfront.com. We also have an online academy. So you can learn about leadership while you're sitting in the comfort of your home. You don't have to pay some crazy amount of money to travel. You don't have to bring in echelonfront to your organization. You can just go to extremeownership.com and you can take courses, you can ask questions on live sessions. We've got all kinds of incredible ways to teach you

• 2:42:13Jocko Willink?

  the skills of leadership that you can apply. You can apply with your boss, you can apply with your peers, you can apply with your subordinates, you can apply with your husband, you can apply with your wife, you can apply with your kids. You will learn how to lead and it will make every aspect of your life better. Extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, you've got Micah Fink, he's got HeroesAndHorses.org. He just got a group out of the field. They spent 41 days in the field getting reconnected

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  with their soul. It's an awesome program. And if you want to connect with us on the interwebs, of course, we've got CrossFit.com. If you want to check out this whole CrossFit thing that we talked about today, all kinds of positive things will come out of your life if you start to get in better shape. If you start to connect with other people that are in good shape. If you start to exercise and have a routine. This is all positive. It's all going to help you in every aspect of your life. And that's a quote from Echo Charles. So check out crossfit.com and go check out the, you know, social media channels at CrossFit.

• 2:43:39Jocko Willink?

  And as well as Don, who is terrible despite working at Facebook, despite working at Pinterest, despite working at Google, he's got nine Instagram posts. So go hassle him at Don Faul. It's D O N F A U L. And Echo's there as well. He's Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. And all's I'm gonna say is, look, you can be in good physical shape. You can know jiu-jitsu. But you can get caught up by that algorithm. I know Echo Charles the other day. He was in the hotel. He's in the lobby. I came out, I looked at him, I saw him, he's wrapped in the algorithm. The algorithm had him by the throat, had him by the neck.

• 2:44:13Speaker 01

  No, it didn't.

• 2:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 2:44:14Speaker 01

  I was playing chess.

• 2:44:15Jocko Willink?

  You were wrapped up in the algorithm.

• 2:44:17Speaker 01

  Don't, alright. I mean, hey man, if you say so, but eh, I deliberately seeked, sucked, seeked?

• 2:44:24Jocko Willink?

  Sought.

• 2:44:24Speaker 01

  Sought out a specific app.

• 2:44:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so for those of you that don't know, and apparently we all need to know this. Echo's going down the, he's in the chess game right now. He's been playing chess. He's on chess.com. What's your call sign?

• 2:44:39Speaker 01

  EchoCharles24.

• 2:44:41Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to challenge EchoCharles24 to a chess match, he's on their chess.com.

• 2:44:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:44:46Jocko Willink?

  He is looking to gain experience. He's learned a few lessons so far. He's learned about cover and move.

• 2:44:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:44:53Jocko Willink?

  He's learned about decentralized command. These things are all applicable.

• 2:44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:58Jocko Willink?

  They're all applicable.

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say more so than I'm looking for, what'd you say I was looking for?

• 2:45:03Jocko Willink?

  Challenge matches?

• 2:45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm looking for challenge matches for sure. I'm not looking for experience. I'm looking for the experience of the challenge match, grudge match.

• 2:45:12Jocko Willink?

  Do you put money on these games?

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  No. I don't.

• 2:45:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So, there it is. You can find us. And it's better that you play chess than you are scrolling through the gram.

• 2:45:24Speaker 01

  It's true, bruh. It was weird, cuz you know how like you stumble onto something, you're like, oh yeah, you're kinda into it or whatever, and you don't realize? Where, bruh, I wasn't on Instagram for like two days, not at all, not one single time for two days. But I was on, I was on the chess.com for probably more than I should have been, but, but still, it's better than Instagram.

• 2:45:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you got challenge matches going with your son, right? Is that what's happening?

• 2:45:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, with my son, I just put Main Tai on there and Liam on there.

• 2:45:48Jocko Willink?

  Bro, don't put those guys on there. They got work to do.

• 2:45:50Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  They need to be editing videos.

• 2:45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. So that's gonna be on them. You know, they're gonna exercise discipline. See what I'm saying?

• 2:45:58Jocko Willink?

  Alright, well, there we're at. Watch out for the algorithm. Go to chess.com, I guess is what we're doing. Echo Charles 24 Challenge Matches. Let's go. And thanks once again to Don for coming on and for his service. And thanks to all our service men and women out there who are staying fit.

• 2:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Stay fit. If you're in the military, please get after it.

• 2:46:26Jocko Willink?

  That way you are better prepared to protect us and our freedoms. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Same message for you. Be in shape. Be fit. Usually they have good deals to go to CrossFit and your law enforcement, your police, jujitsu gym, same things. People take care of you in these communities. So go and check it out so you can do your job better and protect us, which we thank you for. And everyone else out there, you gotta prioritize your health. That's what you gotta do. You have to do everything that you possibly can to maintain your health.

• 2:47:11Jocko Willink?

  And it is a struggle.

• 2:47:14Jocko Willink?

  It's an uphill battle and the slope is slippery.

• 2:47:19Jocko Willink?

  And listen, you know what? I understand that there are things, there absolutely are things that we cannot control. There's wretched diseases that we cannot control. There are accidents that happen that are beyond our control. Sometimes we just have bad luck.

• 2:47:43Jocko Willink?

  But remember that there is so much we can control. So much that we can control. Namely, what we eat. And how we exercise. And these are the two biggest things that impact our health.

• 2:48:02Jocko Willink?

  So don't take your health for granted. Make it, truly make it your number one priority every day. And, and look, if you go through a spell where you've got something going on and you gotta, you gotta refocus for a little while, a couple of months goes by, look, I get it. We all go through times like that. We got a sick kid, we got a project that's going on, we got things that happen that are beyond our control, but listen, don't let that become the norm.

• 2:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Get back on the path.

• 2:48:36Jocko Willink?

  And you do that by going out there every day and getting after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.