265: Don't Get Beat by Not Knowing You're In a Competition, MCD 1-4, w/ Dave Berke. Pt.2

0:00"00 - Opening 0:38:34 - MCDP 1-4 Competing, Chapter 2. 2:02:09 - Final thoughts and lessons. 2:05:31 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:22:18 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 265 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So last podcast, we introduced Marine Corps doctrinal publication one Tac Four, which is called competing. And of course, we only made it one chapter deep because, well, there's a lot to go into. And so we're going to continue on. But first, we're going to take a little tangential trip into my head a little bit. So

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  in reading that manual, and as I talked, and I talked about this, I started correlating competing with influencing. And you take that one step further, which isn't very, a very big step. What is influencing? Influencing is leading. That's what you're doing. So one of the main things that I liked about this Marine Corps concept of competing was this idea of this continuum of competition that they present in this book. It goes from pure peace on one side, just pure peace. And then it starts to move to the right. It goes to economic competition and then classic diplomacy and then political warfare. And then there's this gray zone and you get into hybrid, hybrid war. And then you get into

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  the threat of violence and then you finally cross the, what they call the violence threshold.

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you're now you're using violence and then even violence has a place that, that expands on this continuum. It goes to from conventional war and then it keeps going further and further to the right till you get to total war where one side is using any and all means necessary to completely destroy their enemy.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  And so with that, I started thinking about the continuum of influence or the continuum of leadership that we have to use every day to lead and influence people. And, and it draws some very interesting parallels

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  to the continuum of competition that the Marine Corps talks about. And there's one specific mark in there that really showed a lot of similarities to me. So if we look at this continuum from the beginning.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  Like on the far side, you have someone that you don't care about. You don't care what they're doing. You're not trying to influence them. You don't want them to do anything at all. You just don't care. That's they're off. They're like off the spectrum. I guess they're touching it, but they're not on it yet. So we don't have to worry about them. We don't care what they're doing at all. Now, as soon as you cross that first little threshold, well, now you've got someone that you want to influence. You want them to follow a plan, or you want them to execute an action, or you want them to execute a behavior. So now we're on to the continuum of influence or the continuum of leadership. So what does it start with? Well, it starts with we're trying to build a relationship with that person. That's where we're going to begin.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting, what's the best way to start building a relationship with someone? You let them start to influence you. So as soon as you're saying, oh, hey, that's a good, I like that. I like what you're doing. And you know, there's that. You've heard of this thing mirroring. Have you heard this? So mirroring is the physical, oh, if Dave's sitting with his hand on his, on his cheek, then I do the same thing. And it's a little indicator. I'm allowing you to see that you're kind of influencing me and it's a positive thing. So that's, that's the base thing right there. A physical, actual mimicry of what you're doing, mirroring what you're doing. And that's my first way of showing you that I'm allowing a little influence. So now that's starting to build a good, a good rapport between us. So that's, that's, you know, like the lowest level. And then what am I going to do? I'm going to listen to what you have to say.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  And so I'm starting to build this relationship and people don't think this way. People, people miss this, right? People don't understand that when I mirror you and when I listen to you, I'm actually starting to gain influence. People totally miss that all the time. They completely miss that. But that's level one, right? It's, it's a, it's an incredibly important level, but it's level whatever. Point 008, or whatever that number is. So, so we're just listening. We're letting them model, we're, we're, we're mirroring their behavior a little bit. Eventually, as we start to escalate, we start to model our behavior for them a little bit. We start acting a certain way. We're not asking you to do it. We're just doing it. And we're hoping that that influence rubs off on the other person.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  And now they start to.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  They start to do the same thing. And, and this is another thing that you can do. You do it subconsciously, maybe do it consciously, but you know, people are in a line at a grocery store. And a new line opens up. And if no one sees it, if you just, if no one sees it, you can just walk over to that line. And then people see it and they kind of model your behavior and you're kind of influencing a bunch of people that you don't even know. But it's just a way of, of, of modeling behavior and setting, well, this is what we hear all the time, right? Set the example, set a good example. That's a good way to lead for sure. That's, that's, that's outstanding.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Eventually though, maybe that's not enough, right? Maybe we're trying to, well, maybe we're trying to influence someone to do something. Either follow a plan, adjust their behavior.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  Take a certain action. We're trying to get someone to do that and we haven't, they haven't really followed our modeling. Now we gotta start escalating and going a little bit harder. So what's a little bit harder? Well, asking good questions, asking earnest questions. Oh, hey, hey Dave, why do you do this like that? And it's just a way, and then listen. So that as Dave explains to me why he's doing something a certain way, maybe it reveals to him. Cause now he's looking at it from a detached perspective. That's an amazing thing about asking someone a question. When you ask someone a question, it detaches them from what they're doing. That's what makes it such a powerful tool. Because when Dave is just sitting there with his pen and he's fiddling with his pen, he's not even noticing that he's doing it, which he's literally doing right now. But as soon as I say, hey, if I didn't want him to do that, if it was blurring the camera or something.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  Hey, why are you, why do you keep fiddling with that pen? He has to detach to actually figure out why he's doing it. Which is a great thing, because we always want people to detach and see things from the outside. So just asking an earnest question is a really good escalation on this continuum that we're going through.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  Now, that little question and answer session that we're having kinda leads to a discussion, where we're actually having a discussion. Well, you know, sometimes I just like to fidget. It makes me think, "Oh, that's interesting," you know, so we can have, we can have an actual conversation. And that whole discussion that we're having, if I'm, if I'm utilizing this correctly, I'm guiding you, I'm guiding Dave, in this case, I'm guiding Dave to discover what I'm trying, I want you to discover the fact that, hey, if you're fidgeting with that pen, people aren't even paying attention to what you're saying, and it's making noise on camera, and it's like, I want, but I want you to discover those things. And I want you to actually tell me about them, because then it comes from you, and then that's infinitely more powerful.

• 7:29Jocko Willink?

  So, but, but sometimes it doesn't work. And sometimes even though someone detaches, they just don't, they can't get far enough away from that thing. So where does it go from there? Well, now I'm gonna maybe offer an indirect little statement about what's going on. You know, just a little, you know, do you, do you think, do you think it's distracting when you do that? If someone's watching you? I, I've, you know, I've always found that distracting, if someone's talking to me, but they're fidgeting. You know, so now I'm just, I'm going a little, it's indirect, but it's still is, I'm starting to put a little bit more pressure with that statement. And of course, now, I'm gonna listen to what you have to say.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  And so where does it escalate from there? Now, Dave's still not, still not paying attention to one of them. He's still just sitting there fidgeting with the pen, and it's distracting to everyone, it's making noise, and it's messing up the focus, the cameras, all kinds of problems. But Dave doesn't care, or whatever, he hasn't, he hasn't seen it yet. So then maybe we escalate a little bit more, and now, you know, it's my, my metaphor is about to lose a little bit of traction, because that's such a minor thing, that this next step, it, well, to say, hey, why don't we make a pro, like a pro and con list about fidgeting your pen, right? Now, if we were talking about... You know, going into a new market area with a business and you were like, hey, we're going, we're going, we're going. And I had tried to influence you and I tried to ask you questions

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  about it and I couldn't get you there. Then my next escalation might be, hey, why don't we do a pros and cons on, on that? I'm, I'm still not coming at you. I'm just asking, asking like, hey, why don't we do some pros and cons? That way, once again, what am I doing? You're going to have to detach to a pros and cons. This is one of the benefits of doing a pros and cons list is it detaches you, takes some of those emotions away. And now we're sitting here saying, okay, Dave is detached to say, well, these are some positive things. It helps me think. It gives me something to do with my hands. Or let's go to the market area. Hey, here's the positive things about the market area. We don't have any stores there. Um, there seems to be a decent market. Here's the cons. It's going to, that's high rents in that area, whatever. So now you can start to reveal, you reveal,

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  instead of me revealing you, hey, man, the rents over there are ridiculous. Instead of me revealing that to you, which offends you, in general, it offends people to just tell them anything. It's much better when you tell me now all of a sudden it's your idea and this is a beautiful thing.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  So that's like sort of the next thing. So another little level of escalation that you could do on this continuum. Where I'm moving in that direction, I'm still trying to indirectly influence you. And maybe the next thing I do is offer some kind of a bargain, some kind of a negotiation, where I say, hey, you know, maybe now's not the right time to go in that market area. Maybe we look at it next quarter. Right? So it's a little negotiation to try and see if, if, if I can get you to think a little bit more about it. It's just a negotiation.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  And look, maybe you go, yeah, yeah, because maybe you saw just enough. Maybe you saw, maybe it just revealed just enough of the problems that you're going, yeah, you know what? Maybe we do, you know, do this. Maybe we, maybe we went to next quarter. Yeah, yeah, we can do that. And there's another little technique that's going on there too, which is I'm giving you an out. Right? Yeah, we'll wait till next. Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Right? So you are sort of, you start to see some of those issues, but you don't want to concede that your idea was not good. So instead you just concede that it will just push it off a little bit, but it's still a good idea. So that way your ego remains intact and it's all good. But maybe you didn't catch that. So now we're going to start to brush up against, we're starting to brush up against me being just direct with you.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  Which is revealing some shortfalls like just saying to you, hey, you know, the rents in that area are really high. And by the way, two similar businesses went into that market and both of them washed out and that happened in the last 18 months. Those are real concerns.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  And even when I do that, so now I'm showing you like those are no longer things that you revealed. Those are now things that I'm telling you. So this is a, this is a transition and,

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  and, and I'm sure you're tracking this, but this whole thing is interlaced with leadership capital. This whole thing is interlaced. So the other ones, when you, when I allow you to reveal something to me, my leadership capital goes up. When I tell you something, my leadership cap takes a little, it takes a little bit of it. Not, not nothing crazy, but we're not neutral, right? Some of those in the middle might be neutral. So I'm still going to give you an out, you know, when I say, hey, you know, the other, two other companies gone in their last 18 months and they, so maybe we should, and I give you some kind of an out, you know, maybe we wait another year and, and I give you some kind of an out where you go, yeah, you know, that's probably a good idea.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  So we're still, we still have a possibility that you kind of see what a good move is and you're kind of on board with what I'm saying, which is what I'm trying to do this whole time is I'm trying to influence you, right? Trying to lead you, trying to influence you.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  Then it's just straight up. I'm just going to tell you what the shortfalls are.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  And if that doesn't happen, you know,

• 12:46Jocko Willink?

  offer them another option. What's another option to their plan? What's another option to their behavior? You know, hey, maybe putting stores directly in that neighborhood. How about this one that's, you know, four miles to the north? So, so yeah, you know, that's also a good neighbor. So I give you an out, I give you an option that still kind of gratifies your ego and your idea, but at the same time, it moves you in a little bit of a direction where I want to go. So we're still doing all right. And then the, the, kind of the final sort of indirect way is, you know,

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  Hey Dave, why don't we put one in this market area over here now? And then next time we'll put one in this market area that you want to go into. So again, a lot of these are just kind of bargaining and kind of repetitive, but they're all different levels of bargaining from hey, we do this later to hey, we will do this. Or we hold off. There's a bunch of different ways to bargain through it. And then eventually, so now you've go through these methods, these attempts to discuss something or to to influence someone and every one of these attempts is an indirect attempt. Every one of these attempts is me trying to get you to kind of come on board with what I'm saying without

• 14:08Jocko Willink?

  by your own, by your own volition, right? It's your choice that you say, yeah, you know what? We should do this later or yeah, you know what? That market area to the north is good. So all those are your choice. Every one of these I'm giving to you, every one of these attempts. But we might fail even with all those attempts.

• 14:29Jocko Willink?

  And then at some point,

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  you know, so in the Marine Corps, what they do is they go through this whole continuum and then they get eventually to this point where they cross the threshold of violence. So what does that look like in influence? What does that look like in leadership? It's the threshold of going from indirect to direct. And now I am absolutely, this is going to cost me leadership capital. At this time, I'm now, it's now going to cost me leadership capital. Which hey, look, there's times we have leadership capital in the bank. And if I've been working with Dave for five years and we've done a bunch of stuff and it's all gone great. And he's risen up through the company. And all of a sudden I got to call in some chips and say, hey, man, you know what? We're not doing that. And he goes, got it. You know that I'm not saying it doesn't cost me something, but I can afford it.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  But when you cross the threshold of from indirect to direct, now all of a sudden, it's definitely going to cost you. Like I said, you might have money in the bank, but you might have leadership capital in the bank, but it's gonna cost you. So now, now is when we're saying, hey, you know what? We're gonna have to, we cannot go into that market area. Again, this is the most gentle way to do it. It's we, you know, it's, it's, it's us, it's our team, I'm on your side. You know, we, we can't go into that market area right now.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, then the response could still be, you know, if Dave's, if Dave's my subordinate, and Dave start, you know, he, most people get, hey, we can't go into it. Most people get the hint. And by the way, we'll get to this, the, the number of times that I make it in, across the threshold of direct is so, so miniscule, I can't remember times.

• 16:10Jocko Willink?

  So, most people by the same say, look, we cannot do, we cannot go into that market area. They go, ooh, Jocko's got a pretty good, oh, and they, they feel a little bit of it, they feel that direct, and they immediately say, okay, I got it. I see where, I see where we're going with this. It's not happening. Of course, sometimes it doesn't work, right? And sometimes you say, no, this, this is what we are doing. We are not going in there. And it can even escalate to, no, Dave, you cannot open up another store in that. Now this is direct, but this is it. I'm ordering you because I'm the boss, I'm ordering you, we will not go into that market area. We are not going to build a store there. And then you will not do that. So this is a direct thing. It's not, not even me anymore. It's not even us, it's you.

• 16:57Jocko Willink?

  And then, so what, what happens after that?

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  What happens after that is now you, now you, now you have to have a stick, right? Outcomes is because we, we were, we had the carrot out for a while. And some of those bargainings can be carrots. Hey, Dave, you know, if you can hold off on that merit market area, I'll give you this other market area over here. That's a carrot. I use that carrot. I didn't mention it, but yeah, that's another indirect way. If I can draw you away from this bad area to this other area with a carrot,

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  that's positive. Hey, we just got a bunch of intel that this other market area is really starting to ramp up. Why don't you put something there? All of a sudden you go, oh yeah, okay, I didn't know that. Cool. You jump on that carrot. Well, now, when you don't, when you go through this escalation, now at some point I have to get out a stick. And say, if you try and open up something in that market area, I'm actually gonna remove you from that position, or I'm gonna dock your pay, or whatever the punishment becomes, I'll write you up, whatever it's gonna become. And that's sort of where we get to,

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  you know, theoretically in the business world of the highest level of escalation is like, I'm gonna fire you. Right? Hey, if you don't do what I'm telling you to do, you are going to get fired. I'm going to fire you. And of course, you go outside the business world, you go into the, into the streets, as they say. Well, there's the, there's the threat of violence comes next, which is, hey, you either get, you either move your car out of my parking space, or I'm going to punch you in the head. That's a threat of violence. And what happens after that? Violence. I grab you, I put you back in your car, and I, you know, say, you better back out of this thing right now.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and if you really want to take this to the next level, the ultimate is the, the existential threat, which is if you don't do what I'm telling you to do, I'm gonna kill you. Right? So, so, and it's important to, it's important to understand that that's there. And I'll tell you why. Because a lot of people, they want to start, they want to start this, this continuum at the threat. That's where they begin. That's where they begin with their employees. They start with, this is what you're gonna do. That's where they start. And once, once you,

• 19:17Jocko Willink?

  well, once you cross, here's the thing. So, once you cross that threshold of direct or overt, that's another good word, overt leadership. Meaning, I'm telling you exactly, this is totally overt. There's no, there's no influence happening there. It's just me telling you what's gonna happen.

• 19:34Jocko Willink?

  And when we do that, when you start out there, you just don't have anywhere to go. You don't have anywhere else to go. So the lower you are on the continuum,

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  the better off you are as a leader.

• 19:52Jocko Willink?

  And in fact, in fact, if you go negative, if I'm your boss, Dave, and I go negative and I actually let you influence me, and I say, you know what, Dave, that looks like a great marketer. I didn't even think of going in there. Let's do it. I'm gaining even more leadership capital. So it's even better if I'm in the negative, if I'm in that other chart where you're actually influencing me.

• 20:16Jocko Willink?

  So

• 20:18Jocko Willink?

  if we can do that, then we don't ever have to get to that threshold.

• 20:22Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, the amount of times I've crossed that threshold in my life from a leadership perspective is freaking tiny. And I'll tell you where, let's just throw one place that happens all the time. It happens with kids all the time, right? With kids all the time, it's it's clean your room.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  Why? Because I said so. There you go. Yep. You just went right to the, hey, direct overt. I'm going to order you what to do. Horrible thing to do. It happens with employees.

• 20:57Jocko Willink?

  It happens up and down the chain of command. And here's what's interesting.

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  When you are, when you cross the threshold of direct and you cross the threshold of overt, you, there's a, there's a equal and opposite reaction. Right? So every time you bark at someone, they might do what you said, but there is an equal and opposite reaction. That they are looking for you to fail. They're looking to sabotage. They're looking to cause problems. The stronger the orders, the more you yell at somebody, the stronger that backlash is going to be.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  That's the reality of the situation. And a lot of people, a lot of people need to think about this. So in the same way that the Marine Corps put together this manual to let everybody know that there's, that they're competing all the time, you should also know that there's a continuum, that you're on a continuum of competition all the time. And there's also a continuum of leadership. And by the way, it's up and down the chain of command too. And I didn't even, I'm not going to like dig deep into this right now, we'll do it later. But when you talk about up the chain of command, there's a continuum as well. It starts off with just compliance, right? Dave tells me to do something, he's my boss, cool, I do it. What's the next level? I question what he's saying. Hey Dave, why are we doing that?

• 22:21Jocko Willink?

  What's the next level? Hey Dave, I don't think we should do that. We get some resistance going. Then we get to objection. This is a bad idea. And then we eventually get to refusal. And then we get to mutiny. So there's a continuum there as well. And there's some people that start off, you know, if they don't have a, if they're not thinking strategically, they go right to this, this doesn't make any sense. That's where, that's where they go right to. They're jumping right there. And now all of a sudden, what are they going to get back? An equal and opposite reaction, which says shut up and do what I told you to do. So we don't want to go to war. We want to build relationships. We want to build relationships with other country, with other nation-states. We want to have relations. We don't want to go to war. War costs us money and lives.

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  We don't want that. We don't want to go to war with our employees. We don't want to go to war with our teammates. If you recognize this continuum, you can start to say, oh, I see what's going on. I'm escalating. How much am I going to escalate? What's the next lowest minimum step I could take in my escalation? So that's what we need to do. We need to pay attention to that.

• 23:32Jocko Willink?

  I don't have to do this. I can barely think of times when I've had to do this. And why is because I listen to what other people have to say. I dig in. I mean, I don't dig in to my position. I don't think my position is infinitely better than yours. I think probably if you and I both wanna kill bad guys and win the war, our ideas are going to be pretty close. I think if we both wanna take care of our clients and and make profit, our ideas are going to be pretty close. They're gonna be pretty close. Close enough that I can be fairly agreeable with whatever it is someone else wants to do.

• 24:09Jocko Willink?

  But it's a continuum that we have to pay attention to. Just like competing. What do you got, Dave?

• 24:16Dave Berke?

  You're over there taking notes.

• 24:20Dave Berke?

  I was, I was just thinking, I mean, I'm listening to what you're saying and I'm making the connection and you're using, you're using examples that I actually get to live.

• 24:30Dave Berke?

  I lived in the military, but I get to live that now too because I have relationships with the clients we work with. I have relationships inside of Echelon Front. I have relationships at different, in different ways, even with you. And there are times that you and I are working together. There are times that you're helping me almost in a support role with a client and there's times that you're the CEO of the company. I'm running one of the departments.

• 24:49Dave Berke?

  As you're talking about that, I'm picturing this, this continuum and like, okay, where's the threat of violence? Where does physical violence, where does war come in? The more you make deposits or the more, the more you take the indirect approach, the more you get to keep doing that. And the more you go to the direct threat, the more you have to use that. And just the idea of the recognition is that, and I'm just thinking of those terms of, of the more indirect you are, the more leadership deposits I make, the more that's the technique I get to use. Because the more I let you influence me, the more likely you're going to be doing the things you want to do that help us get to the end state. And I never have to, I never have to move down that, I almost never have to move down that continuum. And I'm trying to think of a time where

• 25:35Dave Berke?

  I'm trying to think of a time where you had to escalate in a way that I recognized. And I, I've been working four years. Now, I'm not saying that that hasn't happened. I'm not saying that the escalation hasn't occurred, but it's, I can't think of a time where I went, oh, damn, I kinda, I kinda pushed him up the stair step. So it has been subtle enough, the times, however many times it's happened, but the reason it works, even those subtle escalations, the reason they work is because that's the technique you always use. So, so the idea of the threat of violence, especially if that's your first move, it's so limiting. It gives you so few options after that, that it, it's such a bad, it's not a bad first move.

• 26:16Dave Berke?

  It's even a bad sixth or seventh move. I think there's this idea that there are so many things. And I think the part of that as a leader is that I want to avoid war as well, even if I'm the boss, even if I'm in charge. It's not what I want. And I think the way you closed it was just because the equal and opposite reaction. And the satisfaction of knowing you're, you're gonna win is not, should not be enough to, to make, and I, as a parent, it makes the most sense. I know I'm gonna win that war with my kid. If I tell my kid to clean his room because I said so, he is going to clean his room.

• 26:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep. What a great victory.

• 26:45Dave Berke?

  What a win. Yeah. And, and yeah, for how long until the reaction from him becomes so big and so violent that I lose all influence over him?

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The, the other thing is, as I brush up against, um, hey, well, maybe it's the time. Maybe it's the time to go direct in this situation. Most of the time I have to weigh that against, okay, well, what does that get me strategically? Right? Where does that get me strategically? If I've gotta say, you know what, Dave, this, you, you need to, you need to do it this way from now on. I want you to use this font on the PowerPoints, right? Whatever, whatever thing you wanna come up with. Where does that get me strategically? All you have to do is take one step back and say, wait a second, where does that get me strategically? Does that improve my relationship with Dave? Does this make him wanna do a better job? Does this, like, you just have to take one step back and you go, oh yeah, this is dumb.

• 27:37Jocko Willink?

  This is a dumb move. What I should do is, is be a better influencer, have a better relationship, explain myself better. Do some bargaining, talk about it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the font that he's using is actually better for these. And, and by the way,

• 27:54Jocko Willink?

  Has he picked a font that's illegible? Right? Has he picked a font that's illegible? Is it? Is it Cyrillic? Is that the right word?

• 28:03Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 28:04Jocko Willink?

  Cyrillic, is that the right word? Like the Russian? Yeah. Is he picked a font that is illegible? In English?

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  And then, then I kinda have to make a stand. But if it's legible? If people can read it? Why am I freaking out? The answer is I'm stupid. I wanna waste my leadership capital on something that doesn't matter.

• 28:24Jocko Willink?

  But by the way, up and down the chain of command. Because if I said, "Hey Dave, what do you think of that font?" You know what you'd say to me? You're like, "Well, I've been using it, but what? Does it not look good?" And I'd say, "Well, I don't know. It's a little bit unclear from a distance." You'd say, "Oh, I'm gonna fall on my sword about this font." No, you'd actually say, "Oh, well, which one have you been using?" And I'd say, "Oh, I've been using Arial. Because it has sharp edges, which I like." And you'd say, "Hmm. Oh, click, down, drop, drop the menu. There's Arial, you click on it. Yeah, you're right. That does look pretty good, Jaco." And I go, "Gee, thank you." And you say, "You know what? I'm gonna change all my briefs to Arial." Because just vice versa. I'm not sitting here telling you use Cyrillic

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  fonts that can't be read by English-speaking humans. So you're... So what do we do? I'm, I'm offering a little suggestion and you're going, "Oh yeah, that's a great suggestion. My leadership capital went up. Your leadership capital went up. It's a beautiful thing." Or we can have World War VII about a font. It's such a tactical loss

• 29:34Jocko Willink?

  for you to say... It's, first of all, it's a tactical loss for me to say, "You need to change this font. This, you need to use Arial. Cause that's what I use." "Yeah, okay. Great. Oh, hey, by the way, it's different. That font's different on other systems. And now it looks like just a horrible thing." If you're smart, you go, "Hey, oh, you like Arial? Cool. Got it. We're moving forward."

• 29:58Jocko Willink?

  Be surprised. Be surprised. Alright. It's interesting, isn't it?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  It's interesting how you kinda used the pen fidgeting example on Dave over here, but you literally did me like that.

• 30:13Jocko Willink?

  Did I really?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have it. Remember I was clicking the pen? A long time ago.

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  It was on, online.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you need to post it then.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  And you, I did post it.

• 30:23Jocko Willink?

  I know what I said. I said, "Do you think the mic picks up that noise?"

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, do you think the mic?

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  And you know what you said? You said, "No, I don't think so," but you didn't dig in.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  But then you kinda clicked it a couple of times while we were just quiet. And you know what you heard? Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. And then I laughed.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I did, it was weird. It kinda was, it was almost like in, not slow motion, but kinda like, I could slowly, within the span of, I would say, maybe six seconds, I slowly picked up on what you were doing there. Like, why you said it like that. Like, you're saying, "Hey, stop doing the clicking. Just stop clicking." That's what you're saying. But you said it in this way of, "Hey, do you think that that's gonna happen?" And the way, the tone, everything, like, you could tell you knew what you were doing with the way you delivered that question.

• 31:11Jocko Willink?

  Here's the, here's the no kidding.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  The, the no kidding, when I asked you that question, I was earnestly asking that question, like, "Do you think that's gonna show up?" Now, it's an earnest question. Do you think that clicking is gonna show up on this podcast? It's an earnest question. I probably had a pretty good suspicion, because I can freaking hear it through my headphones for 15 minutes.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  But you gotta detach from those emotions, and you gotta ask an earnest question, because maybe, if it's not gonna show up, why am I worried about it? I'm not gonna let it, I'm not gonna let it bother me. If it's not gonna show up, it's not gonna be on the audio, then who cares? I'm not gonna care about that. If you wanna click your pen all day, cool. It's not bothering me. It's not gonna be on there. We're good. So it's an earnest question. But, I mean, it's, it's, we did know the answer.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  Kind of, because we can hear it.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  You know, it's kinda. Interesting, we'll say, because you know, I did kinda say, no, I don't think so, or I forget exactly what I said.

• 32:06Jocko Willink?

  We have to get the replay.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I feel like if I remember correctly, I was kinda, at least at the very least implied that like, no, no, no, it's all good, almost. For just for a split second, though. The thing is, that was a version of me like defensively.

• 32:20Jocko Willink?

  I was about to say, that was a, that was a instinctual defense.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  Instinctual, exactly.

• 32:25Jocko Willink?

  It's like that instinctual defense.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, and then, but I was so, it was so not, like.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Just natural.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was so not called for, like on a, like a primal level, if you will, like, it was so not helpful that I felt that it was so not called for, and I don't, I don't have to dig in on this. Clicking the pen, let's face it, like, I know that it's like a habit, you know, I mean, clicking pens is a habit. And then what made it additionally interesting, just that little teeny tiny interaction was that, I was like, oh, man, I do it like out of habit, right? There's the excuses, like trying to explain, like, I do out of habit, and then instead of you saying, there's no excuse, or whatever, you were just like, oh, and then you grabbed like, the nearest non-clicking pen and just simply gave it to me.

• 33:08Jocko Willink?

  Bargaining with options.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Advanced, well, advanced. That was the carrot, right? The carrot, like, oh, maybe deviate your attention from that.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Effective.

• 33:19Dave Berke?

  You know, the, the things that fall into the category of indirect and direct, like the, the techniques you can use can actually, I was thinking about that conversation, can actually change.

• 33:31Dave Berke?

  If early in a relationship, a relationship that doesn't have a lot of mutual respect, or you don't have any of that leadership capital built, you can say, hey, Dave, don't, don't click your pen. And I'd be like, okay, I'd probably comply, but in my mind, like, dude, what's the deal? And I might, I might have that natural, that little reaction, that little ego hit, and then, that little resistance, or even maybe a little resentment, whatever it is, and this is a small example, but it would fit in the category of direct. I don't naturally like that. But over time, if you've actually done the things you were just talking about and you've you've built enough capital, what falls as indirect or influence, that actually can expand. You can say to me right now, hey, don't click that pen, and I'm gonna have no reaction to it, because I'm gonna think, oh, he's only telling me that for my own benefit, for the

• 34:15Dave Berke?

  benefit of the like, I'm not gonna have that reaction that that what appears to be a direct, that you're saying something directly to me, I don't even register that as a direct thing that actually fits in in the category of, at a minimum, there's no withdrawal there. So even the things that you do, as little as they are, the options for indirect leadership actually can grow, things that would normally be outside there, where I would have some sort of problem with you saying that, we're at, I think, muster three, and you go, hey, when you're doing Q and A, you say, I think you said something like, you say, uh, in between, don't do that anymore. And the way you said it didn't bother me at all. But it could be that if you have that conversation with somebody, and you don't have any leadership capital

• 35:00Dave Berke?

  built up, they might not like that. So you being able to say that to me is a function of the trust that we have, the the influence that that we've shared, and the amount of leadership capital you have, that you can actually kind of be direct, and it doesn't bother me that it would, in a way that it would, had just come in, you know, day one, be like, I don't like the way you talk, do it differently. And I'm not gonna like that, no matter who I am. So even what you can do, what you can get away with in a sense of what is still a leadership capital deposit, that will grow as well.

• 35:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that that's, that's why it's all interlaced with leadership capital. Because if you start off day one, by saying, I don't like the way you talk, that's, you just went into a deficit immediately. And now you gotta dig your way out of that. That's why it's totally interlaced with leadership capital, because the more leadership capital you have, the more when you need to now, if I said, hey, Dave, you're saying, oh, when you talk, and hey, Dave, this answer was bad. And hey, Dave, the way you presented this, your slides were all, they didn't look good. And hey, and I just started, everything was negative. Well, I'm eventually gonna run out of leadership capital, I'm gonna start going in a bad way. And your your attitude is All Jaco does is just tell me what I do wrong. And I guess I can't do anything right.

• 36:12Jocko Willink?

  And I guess I just don't even need to be here and I need to go look for another job. It just get, you know, because I've, I've expended all my leadership capital. So it's completely intertwined with leadership capital. Completely intertwined with leadership capital. But just like people, you know, I said this on EF online the other day. I, people usually think they have more leadership capital than they do. They, they usually think they're just rolling deep in, in, in leadership capital. In their own little heads, they think, of course. So I always kind of treat every situation as if, okay, you know, I, I'm, I'm lean. I'm running lean. It's gonna be a lean Christmas. As my parents used to tell me, gonna be a lean Christmas.

• 36:55Jocko Willink?

  So I always think, I don't have leadership capital to spare because also, what if I really need leadership capital tomorrow? What if tomorrow I go, hey, Dave, I know it's your, your anniversary, your 10 year anniversary, your 20 year anniversary or whatever. And I know that you're supposed to go to the mountains with your wife for three days. And we just had a client call and you now have to go to Oklahoma to talk to them. And that I might have to do that tomorrow. And that's the way it is. So am I really, how much, how, where do I want that account? Right. I want that account to be as built up as I possibly can. So that means I'm not going to waste leadership capital on little things that don't matter. Not going to happen.

• 37:36Dave Berke?

  Yeah. That's why the default, no matter where you are, should almost always be, almost always be on that side of the, the default should be on that side of the spectrum.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's weird too, because you have the, you have the threshold of violence. We have the, on the continuum, on the war continuum, on the comp, on the competing continuum, there's a threshold of violence. There's actual real violence with, with influencing people. Like you have to admit that, that you can push people around and you can smack them and you can beat them up. Like that's a, there's a, there's a threshold of violence on the, on the influence, on the influence continuum. Before that, there's, there's a one between direct and indirect. So you cross that one, which is a, which is a huge one. That's like the big one. Now, of course, I guess the threshold of violence is a big one too, on influence. Cause now you're getting charged with assault.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Or murder.

• 38:26Jocko Willink?

  Or murder, depending on what level of violence you took it to. So it's important to think about these things.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  And with that, we're going to jump into this, this, this whole thing, man. I mean, I just like, have just been thinking about this nonstop. Which is pretty normal for me to think about these things nonstop. So competing. We're US Marine Corps, brand new. Manual. One tac four, it's called competing last, uh, last time we covered chapter one, this time we're covering chapter two. This one's, chapter two is called the theory of competition. And it says, competition as an act of policy. As states engage in competition or try to shape the competitions ongoing among the range of state and non-state actors involved.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  In areas of interest to states, they develop policies frame to frame order and apply resources to this activity. Marines need to understand policy, how it's developed and how it relates to ongoing competition.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  My little note here just says, what are you doing? This is me making notes to myself, what are you doing? What are you doing? Where are you at? Do you know what you're, what competition are you in?

• 39:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, I had a. It was an early, it was a pretty early podcast. I don't know which one, but when I started talking about what game are you playing? And, and you can be playing the wrong game. With your life. And if you're looking up and you're like, man, I'm doing everything I can, but I just, I'm not putting any points on the board. Well, if you're playing soccer, you might not be putting any points on the board because there's only one goal a game or three. Maybe you should be playing basketball where you can score 48 points a game.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  So with this competition, what are you competing in? And who are you competing against?

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  Goes on Marines are frequently asked to provide input to policymakers as they deliberate. Understanding the larger context around policy decisions helps Marines determine the broader intent beside behind specific decisions, which in turn helps us make sound supporting plans. What does that mean? Everyone should know why they're doing what they're doing. Like war Marines should think of competition as serving policy. Since we acknowledge competition as an enduring condition. That's a great, that's a great phrase. I want to adopt that one enduring condition. It's just ongoing. It's forever in internal relations.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  Then we need to take equally an equally long view when it comes to policy as well. U.S. Vital interests have remained relatively stable over time. For example, since World War II, they've been framed in various ways while consistently calling for the maintenance of our constitutional values. Protection of the American homeland and people, promotion of American prosperity, and the advancement of the American influence in the world.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  The contemporary environment will affect these specifics of policy, but these but the enduring foundation for it consists of stable. Interests such as these. So what what the reason I and again, sometimes I look like, oh, we can kind of breeze over this part. And then I say, no, you can't. Because if you if you think about your life, okay, you can think about your business for sure. What is it that your business is trying to do?

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  Like, do you think a Marine wakes up in the morning and says, okay, today I'm going to maintain our the maintain our constitutional values? Is he saying, all right, I've got to protect the American homeland of people? We kind of, we kind of know that one promotion of American prosperity. So there's these, there's these things that are so big. Such big strategic goals that they shape every decision that you make. They should. The advancement of American influence around the world. If a Marine goes out and does something stupid in.

• 42:20Jocko Willink?

  Name a foreign country, goes out and acts like gun, gets drunk and act like an idiot. Has he helped the advancement of American influence in the world? No, he hasn't. He, and, and, and that's what he's gonna hear from his commanding officer. You just made all Marines look bad and you just made America look bad. By getting drunk and getting in a fight or whatever you did, that was stupid. And that Marine can't deny that. He says, Roger, sir. It was a bad move. If that Marine would have been thinking a little bit more strategic, maybe he would have maintained a little bit more level head on the beers. You know, I had a Marine one time, I was on a ship. I was on a ship and, look, we know, we, we know that I love the Marine Corps.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  I was on a ship and when you'd pull into port, you have to get in line to get off the ship and sometimes it'd take an hour or two hours. So what we would do is we'd work out as soon as we got, as soon as we hit the pier, we would work out, this is like 1990, whatever. We'd, we'd hit the pier, work out, and by the time we got done working out, took a shower, then you could just walk right off the ship because all the Marines were already gone. So one time I did that, like me and my buddies, we got, we hit the pier, we start working out, we get done working out, take a shower, it's been an hour and a half. We come walking up to leave, so these guys have been off the ship for an hour and a half. They are carrying a young Marine back onto the ship, just completely brain dead from alcohol.

• 43:45Jocko Willink?

  So, gotta be careful out there. Um, but, so, so, so when you look at, if you look at the Marine Corps has these kind of broad things that they're saying, this is what we're doing. What do you have in your life? What do you have in your business? What do you have in your business? Okay, just like that young Marine, if he's led well, he's gonna say, you know what? I, I, the whole Marine Corps is relying on me to make America look good. Got it. That's what a good Marine is gonna say. If you're running a business and you got a cashier, I've been using cashiers a lot because you know why? Because they're frontline and they're interacting with people. If you've got a cashier that treats a customer bad, he's making the whole company look bad.

• 44:29Jocko Willink?

  If he doesn't know that, okay, then what about your life? What are you trying to do in your life? What are you trying to, where are you trying to go with your life? What's the broad, what's the broad strategic mark that you're trying to make? Do you have one? Do you have one? And if you don't have one, what, how are you making decisions? You're making decisions for, with no, with no steering whatsoever, without a compass.

• 45:02Jocko Willink?

  So these, these are enduring interests.

• 45:06Jocko Willink?

  Enduring interests provide Marines a potential source of competitive advantage. Adhering to our values when done as part of a comprehensive strategy can serve to attract others and work in harmony, harmony with Marines, with what Marines learned from an early age. Values such as freedom of expression and press freedom can help frustrate the plans of some competitors. Positive some interests such as increasing American prosperity also help attract allies and partners. This is especially true when we can, when we can show how our interests align with theirs.

• 45:46Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that interesting? If we can work together, we're going to be better off. We're stronger together. We're stronger together than we are fighting each other.

• 45:56Jocko Willink?

  Domestic policy, politics affects the policy decisions of almost all competitors and the resulting character of all, nearly all competitions.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  Everything you do, everything you do impacts the competitors and the competition itself.

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  As mentioned in chapter one, there are often multiple centers of power in each nation and the struggle amongst them often creates ambiguity in the minds of outside observers. These struggles affect internal politics and often drive or limit current policy choices. This is true in the United States. For example, when we see the deliberations on national policy among three co-equal branches of the government, in other less open societies, domestic considerations have major impact on policy, even though these considerations are often harder for outsiders to understand. This happens in businesses a lot. You've got some people with different ideas of how we're going to get where we're going. Sometimes unfortunately even disagree on where they're going, which is bad. And that's something with all the political mayhem that we're facing

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  in America right now. I guess maybe mayhem's, well, with what we're facing right now, we'll just call it, we won't, we won't, we won't put a, we won't put a, we won't assign a word to it, because different people assign it different words. We'll say that there's disagreements in America right now. But

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  this is what, this is, this is, a democracy is going to be messy.

• 47:31Jocko Willink?

  But you're going to get a better result in the end. So if you, if you have a platoon where,

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  hey, I'm going to take input from the troops and they're going to let me know. And sometimes they're going to argue with me about some stuff or not argue, but we're going to disagree about some things. Now, if it turns into an argument, we start fighting, that's bad. But for, for my point man to say, hey, Jaco, I don't think that's a good route to get into the target. And me to say, well, why not? And for us to have a discussion about that's totally positive thing and we're going to come to a better conclusion. That's what's supposed to happen in a democracy. We have a discussion, but we're both trying to get to the target. My point man wants to get there, I want to get there. In America, we got, what are we trying to do?

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  We've got to hope that we are aligned enough that we say, oh, we want our economy to get better. Okay, can anyone, does anyone disagree with that? All right, maybe we disagree on how we get there, but at least we have this one thing that we know we're moving towards. And you can say that a bunch of, do we want there to be poverty in the country? Is there anyone that says, yeah, what I really think we need in America is more poverty? No, no one's saying that. There's not one person that's saying we need more poverty in America. So no matter who you are, you're saying, yep, you know what? We don't want poverty, we want less poverty. Great. Now you might think we get there one way, someone else thinks you get there another way. Okay, let's figure out what those things are and then we can discuss how we get there.

• 48:54Jocko Willink?

  But it's okay if we disagree because we're just trying to find the best solution. And when Dave's solution is different to me than me, than how we, to how we get to the target and he's the point man. And I say, shut up, we're going my way. And he goes, no, we're not that stupid. And all of a sudden we're in a fistfight, our platoon is falling apart. So what we do is we listen to each other and we look for the best possible solution. And maybe, you know, as I always try and just agree with the other person. What does that mean? Does that mean I just always bow down and say, oh, you know what, Dave, yep, I can't make any decisions. So we're going with what Dave says. No, because Dave wants to go one way that I think is gonna, gonna take an extra 15 minutes.

• 49:35Jocko Willink?

  The route that Dave chooses as the point man is gonna take an extra 15 minutes. So you know what? We're not doing it that way. We have a seven hour patrol. My way is gonna take seven hours, Dave's way is gonna take seven hours and 15 minutes. We're doing it my way. No, actually, Dave, you know what? Your way sounds great. Why? Because I already, I just, I just in that moment, I saved 30 minutes of you and I arguing about it. And now we can focus on something more important. And by the way, we're still getting to the target. And by the way, there's so many unknowns on that route that I don't know and you don't know and no one can know. And so I'm actually arguing about something that I have no idea. Where are the landmines? Where is the, what is the actual terrain like? What, how tall is that little cliff that I see? Is that something we can get up or do we need to bring ropes?

• 50:20Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden it takes 45 minutes just to get up that little thing and we gotta carry extra gear? I don't know any of that. So guess what? Am I gonna argue with you for 15 minutes of difference? No, sounds good, Dave.

• 50:33Jocko Willink?

  So why don't I have to, why can't I let Dave do whatever, why can't I almost always say I'm gonna go with someone else's plan? Because I worked with Dave for long enough, and by the way, I actually taught Dave land navigation. So when Dave comes to me and he says, hey, here's how I think we should go, there's a 98% chance that it's pretty freaking close to what I would do in the first place. And by the way, either way, we still get to the target, which is where we're going.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  For United States Marines, understanding current policy relies in part on understanding the interplay between domestic politics and our enduring vital national interests. Shouldn't everyone just kind of have enduring vital interests for their family, for their business, for their life? Shouldn't we all have those things? Yes, we should.

• 51:26Jocko Willink?

  As a nation, yes, we should. Aspects of domestic politics like the election cycle and contemporary societal issues affect current policy. These aspects are typically felt by Marines through such things, resourcing decisions, guidance on the composition of the force, and specific direction to focus particular national interests or particular competitors.

• 51:49Jocko Willink?

  You should know the story about what's going on.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  That whole thing right there, hey, Corporal Smith, that just heard me read that, that said, hey, bro, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not tracking. What this means is you need to know what's, just, just understand what's happening in the world and understand that what's happening in the world is gonna sort of guide what the Marine Corps is doing.

• 52:13Jocko Willink?

  International competition, particularly among nations, plays out over a long timeline. Oh, what timeline is that? Life. Pursuing the goals put forth by the Constitution and its amendments has been an enduring vital interest of the United States since the day it became effective in 1789. This contrasts with our desire to bring war to a conclusion as quickly as possible.

• 52:38Jocko Willink?

  Marines need to understand this distinction.

• 52:45Jocko Willink?

  Competitive advantage. Advantages is relative to a competitor when one actor is able to do something better than its rival or rivals. Check. We get that.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  What's that, Corporal?

• 53:00Jocko Willink?

  Terminal Lance. That's what we should be using Terminal Lance. That guy's legit. Terminal Lance is a cartoon. And he's actually a whole book, too. Terminal Lance, props.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  A business enjoys, it's interesting, here we go back to business. A business enjoys competitive advantage when it can sell a product at a lower price than other businesses, assuming other factors like quality stay the same. Nations also have relative competitive advantages, also referred to as comparative advantages. Historically, the innovative culture in the United States helped bring it new goods and services to the international marketplace faster than others. The cost of labor in some countries is lower than in others, which makes them more attractive for labor-intensive manufacturing businesses. It follows then that we must understand our potential rivals if we are to develop and maintain a competitive advantage against them. Gee, we must understand our potential rivals. Sun Tzu, Art of War, know who you're fighting.

• 53:59Jocko Willink?

  The United States has many competitive advan-, oh, by the way, obviously, this is something that we are doing all the time at Origin, right? We're competing against nations that make the same basic products that we make, but they're doing it with slave labor, or they're doing it with someone that's getting paid, you know, in horrible working conditions. And so we've had to find ways, and we continue to find ways, that we can compete with them. And not only are we competitive, we're better, because our product ends up better. And because we're here, now you get into shipping, and what does it cost to ship things from overseas?

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  What does that do to the whole picture? So we're figuring out, and we have figured out how we have a competitive advantage, even though we take care of our workers, which we actually also feel is a competitive advantage. Taking care of your people is a competitive advantage, because now your people care about the product that they're making. They want to do a good job.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  Not slaving in a sweatshop.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  Instead of looking, instead of looking at slave labor as an advantage, I look at it as a disadvantage. We've got the advantage because we have a better workforce who, who care about the company. The United States has many competitive advantages in international competition. The world's largest economy and an international financial system that uses the dollar to make transactions are strong economic advantages. Yes, the enduring US interest in freedom of navigation on the seas attracts many partners because free navigation reduces the overall cost of trading between nations. The US higher education system attracts students from all over the world. The list goes on and on, but these illustrations show that we should look for a nation's competitive

• 55:52Jocko Willink?

  advantages among its enduring qualities such as values, interest and culture. And this is what you need to do. So how does this tie into everybody? What about your business? What about your business? How, how do you have the culture and do you have the values inside your business that are actually competitive advantages? Do you have that? If you don't have that, if you don't have values, if you don't have a culture that's a competitive advantage, you're wrong. The competitive advantages in the military component of DIME are naturally of great interest to Marines.

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  Since World War II, the United States made the use of several military advantages such as the joint forces ability to project and sustain power globally, its skill at operating across domains and its expertise in precision, targeting and strike. The US military's principled professionalism can also present distinct advantages. For example, when it's properly contrasted with competitors seeking to extend authoritarian government without regard for rule of law or protection of civilians. So that's a huge advantage that we have is that we have military professionals. And that's what they do. And it's also an advantage, as far as I'm concerned, that we have reservists that come and serve in Iraq, come and serve in Afghanistan, that go for the weekend and see how the military's

• 57:20Jocko Willink?

  doing and take their civilian expertise into the, into the reserve unit or the National Guard unit for the weekend. We have both those. And there's advantages to both of those.

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  Talking about that, I think it was the Guadalcanal recent podcast. We're talking about how some of the reservists were the people that said, hey, that's a dumb idea. We don't want to do that. Some of the, because they hadn't been indoctrinated as fully as somebody that had been, you know, an infantry officer for 18 years. And he's looking at the problem going, hey, I know how to solve this problem. It's in the book. I know what to do. And some reservist is like, hey, bro, I hunt in Tennessee and that doesn't make any sense. So we like, we use this as a competitive advantage.

• 58:10Dave Berke?

  I'm just thinking this, this whole time about the connection between this, these military examples. And I'm going through my head, things that I remember as a Marine and how closely connected they are to just everybody's, everybody's life in both business and in life, just the connections to your family has, you have long range plans for your family. You have these strategic, long range plans for your family. That's really no different than I think they called the, the enduring values of the country that you need to keep in mind that might actually change or influence the smaller things that you do.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and that's something I've been hitting on a lot. The fact that culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command. Culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command where now we have a cashier that knows how to treat a client and knows how to treat a customer because understands the culture of the company. Now we have a Marine that can be out in town, can see a situation unfolding and knows what decision to make just based on the culture of the Marine Corps, of the SEAL teams, of the Army, of the 82nd Airborne, of the 101st Airborne Division. If you have that culture correct, that soldier, that Marine, that cashier, that frontline salesperson, they know what decision to make just based on the culture that you have inside the organization.

• 59:27Dave Berke?

  Totally. And that's a two way street too, because if I'm running, you know, a grocery store and I've got a cashier, I'm not going to spend all day, every day, just talking to that cashier about long range strategic things for the company. I actually need that person up there ringing up customers as they're coming through. But if I don't, if I, as the CEO of that grocery chain or the CEO of that company, don't think that that cashier can't make a strategic, a tactical decision that has massive strategic implications and I lose sight of the fact that they actually do at certain intervals, need to understand how what they do affects the big picture. Then I'm actually setting myself up for failure. Any Marine that's ever been to Okinawa knows that when the Marine goes out in town, steals a car and runs into a fire hydrant,

• 1:00:10Dave Berke?

  that Marine doesn't just get in trouble for stealing a car. That is an international incident that undermines the relationship between two countries. And it happens all the time. And if you don't think your young folks that are doing these very tactical things, don't have to have some connection to the big picture enough to guide their day-to-day decisions, you are setting yourself up for long-term failure. And that that works both ways. That cashier has to know, hey, I've got to treat this customer with some respect because if I don't, it's going to go on Yelp, it's going to go on YouTube, it's going to go on Instagram, or whatever that might be. And I could take down the whole company if I'm not careful. You don't want to create paranoia, but they have to understand those those small, appearing to be small tactical things can actually influence the entire organization. And they have to be able to make that connection.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  If you are in a situation like that, and you're employing frontline troops to carry out these sort of tactical day-to-day things, it's pretty easy to end up in the in the job market, the people that you're hiring, the human capital that you have available to you, it's pretty easy for them to be, hey, I don't really, actually, Dave, CEO Dave Berke, I actually don't really care about the company that much. And if you fire me tomorrow, I'll go get another minimum job, minimum wage job somewhere else. And I don't really care. And so you sitting here telling me about how we can have a strategic loss at your company because I don't treat a client right, whatever, right? So what

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  do you do then? And what you have to do is you have to, you have to then, you have to then explain to people that when, that they have strategic goals in their life, that they need to have some kind of a path that they're going on, that, hey, listen, listen, Echo Charles, I know you don't really care about working here. That's fine. I get it. Listen, at a minimum, if you do a good job here, you work here for six months, you work here for 10, 12 months, I don't know how long you're going to work here for. When you leave, I can give you a recommendation that'll get you a better job somewhere. That'll put you on a better path. And that's all I want. Look, I know you don't necessarily care about my company here.

• 1:02:22Jocko Willink?

  You don't like flipping burgers. I get it. But guess what? When you get done flipping burgers here, you can go get a job doing something that's a little bit better. So I don't, this isn't just about me and the company here, Jaco's Burgers. Look, I'm gonna be selling burgers for a long time. That's what I do. I love burgers. I know this isn't your life goal. Guess what? What is your life goal? Where is it? Where are you at? Because I can promise you this, if you take care of me here, at some point you're gonna leave, I expect that. You got a lot of potential. When you leave here, I want to leave, I want you to leave on the best foot possible, set up for a long-term, better situation. I don't want you flipping burgers forever. But if you flip burgers well, that's the path to not flipping burgers. Which is really interesting.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  One time I said, there was a person that talked about, uh, do I really need to learn jiu-jitsu? If I don't like to fight? And I said that you actually should learn jiu-jitsu more than anybody else if you don't like to fight. Echo, if you don't like flipping burgers, you, more than anyone else, should say, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna be the best burger flipper that I can be. Because that's gonna allow me to step up into the next round. Because if you can't flip burgers, bro, how can I expect you to do anything else? You're definitely not stepping up to salad bar. And if you can't handle salad bar, you know, you're not gonna be the day opener. Right? And if you can't be the day opener, you're not gonna be the general manager. If you're not, well, you're not gonna be the store manager, then the general manager, right?

• 1:03:52Jocko Willink?

  You see where this goes? And by the way, if you don't want to get in the restaurant business, that's fine too. When you go to work at a mechanic's shop, you want to be an automotive mechanic, and that's where you want to go. What do I tell them when they call here to say, could Echo Charles flip burgers effectively and efficiently and reliably? And I have to say, no. He couldn't. He was late on a regular basis. Or whatever. What if I say, hey, you know what? Echo is, he was totally reliable, good to go, great attitude. Yeah, if you're looking to hire somebody that's gonna be able to be a real bonus inside your organization, Echo Charles the guy. That's what I want to do for you.

• 1:04:38Jocko Willink?

  But you gotta at least, you gotta do a little something for me too. So if you're running, if you're working with that, those, those kind of entry level positions. Sure, show them the strategic for the company, for the business, but also show them strategically. Cause look, kids don't get that these days. I, but never mind these days. I didn't, you know, you know why I ended up doing okay in life? Is because I joined the Navy and they were like, do this. And I said, Roger. Wanted to be a good SEAL. Just that, that enough, that guidance, that, that goal was enough for me to like, keep me out of trouble. Keep me from being a total idiot. I was a partial idiot plenty of times. Kept me out of being a total idiot.

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  So when you have the opportunity to show somebody, show a younger person, hey, what you're doing right now is connected to the future. You might want to think about it. Here's what is your future? Oh, okay. Well, you want to be, uh, whatever you want to be? First step is flipping burgers. And that's okay. Flip them good. Don't burn them. Keep them, keep them together.

• 1:05:48Jocko Willink?

  Note that these competitive advantages exist across the competition continuum and not only in the time of war. We conduct exercises in part to demonstrate that the United States has a military capability. It could use if necessary. The existence of these capabilities can impose cost on a potential rival. Because the rival may need to expand resources if they want to overcome or negate a US competitive advantage as the rival pursues their goals. So you're, you're making other people pay.

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  Another little, little plug for the Marine Corps. Hey, you gotta have us. You gotta have us and you gotta have us well trained. And you gotta have us well prepared for battle because that makes everyone else, it imposes a cost on everybody else, which is a positive thing.

• 1:06:34Dave Berke?

  Marine Corps needs more exercises.

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  When viewed from this perspective, we gain an insight of into how a military competitive advantage can help us compete with a rival. Also note that it needs to be a conscious decision on when and how to reveal our most sensitive competitive advantages.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  At a minimum, we should leverage such revelations for advantage in the information element of power. Other capabilities might be cloaked in secrecy until they're actually needed to be used. So there you go. Awesome. Right? Don't just reveal the special move that you have to kick someone's ass.

• 1:07:12Dave Berke?

  Yeah, man. We're celebrating, I think, at least I am, just this is the anniversary of the kickoff of Desert Storm. Just, I think it was, well, when we're recording, it's called January 17th, 1991. That was the kickoff of Desert Storm. And, you know, I was kind of a kid wanting to be a pilot and that was the, the big reveal for us on that one that people don't understand is, is the stealth fighter. And all of a sudden, like, there's this big trip lay and anti-aircraft system and it's going to be the most robust air defense system ever. And night zero, you know, in Iraq and all of a sudden things just start blowing up in Baghdad and nobody has any idea why. They're just sitting there watching things blow up. There's nothing on radar. There's nothing out there as far as they know, except they can hear airplanes flying

• 1:07:54Dave Berke?

  overhead because the jet engines are making sound and then things are just blowing up. And we're basically told the world, oh, by the way, we hated to have to do this, but if you're wondering, this is what we can do. You might want to, and that, that's 30 years ago. Our competitors are just, just now, I think the amount of time and money invested in them trying to build stealth technology, which has been a huge race and a big competition. We showed that to the world on day zero of the war. And as a pilot, obviously we think about that too, is the competitive advantage makes other people go, well, maybe it's just not worth going to war with them. Maybe this just isn't worth it. Maybe this investment we're making is not worth it because the outcome, they can do things we didn't even know exist.

• 1:08:35Dave Berke?

  So the revelation of that, when carefully placed and timed well, can, can be a huge advantage.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, not to mention they had no time to adapt to it. Cause if we would have told them, they would have figured out some methodology or at least attempted to figure out a more accurate radar or some kind of a defense system that could spot these aircraft overhead. Yeah, that's a great example of how you do it. It's it happens in jujitsu too, like if you have that move that you're pretty good at, and you go for it, it's not a surprise anymore. I'm not saying you're not gonna get it, but it's not a surprise. And now the person's expecting it to come. So you want, if you're gonna do it, might wanna hang on to it just for, you know, little bit deeper into that role. Let that person be breathing hard. Let the O2 start to lack.

• 1:09:26Jocko Willink?

  All types of competitive advantages can atrophy, however, they all need appropriate practice, exercising, and improving if they are to remain advantages in the dynamic environment of international competition. Just you can't, you can't rest on your laurels ever. You can't rest on your laurels ever. Competitors as systems, competitors are complex adaptive systems. Again, this, this,

• 1:09:53Jocko Willink?

  competitors are complex adaptive systems. I guess we kinda need to say it, right? We need to make it clear. And then, but it does make it even more clear, meaning they have many parts and these parts interact with each other in nonlinear, often unpredictable ways. Consider Iran's national security decision-making structure. To some outside observers, it may appear to function as a strictly hierarchical organization with all important decisions being made by the supreme leader and president at the top of the pyramid. However, the real story is much more complex. Much of the supreme leader's authority comes from informal relationships. He has with top commanders in the national security infrastructure and through the presence of his clerical representatives in military organizations.

• 1:10:35Jocko Willink?

  Even though the president is the chairman of the supreme council for national security, his power ebbs and flows because the supreme leader is the commander in chief and may bypass the president through his informal relationships.

• 1:10:49Jocko Willink?

  So even in that,

• 1:10:53Jocko Willink?

  like they said, very strict, what appears to be a strict hierarchy, all over the place. Guess what's more important? Relationships. Relationships are more important than the chain of command, even in an autocratic country like Iran.

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  The military structure itself can act in unpredictable ways, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

• 1:11:18Jocko Willink?

  They've developed significant and separate political power based on its financial resources because it controls many businesses in almost every sector of the Iranian economy. Each of these power centers, among others, jockeys for power inside Iran, working to advance their own internal or domestic interests. So it's complicated.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  It's complicated. And you know what's crazy? When you see like video, you ever seen videos of in our pictures in Iran in like 19, whatever, 1973? It's totally westernized. Totally. Looks just like everything's good to go.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Skipping forward a little bit. Developing a model of how a competitor's system fits together helps identify their competitive strengths and weaknesses. At a basic level, each of these systems consists of people, ideas, and things. The people make the system work. They also analyze its performance over time because they are also responsible for sustaining or improving the system's competitive advantages.

• 1:12:24Jocko Willink?

  The ideas of the system are found in the goals it pursues and in concepts it processes and processes it uses to operate in the world. Mao famously stated, "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed." This quote suggests a mindset that blurs the lines between peace and war. The mindset this idea creates may give a competitor an advantage in operating near the threshold of violence. So that's that statement from Mao is sort of the same thing that this whole, there's a continuum, right? You've got politics, which is just war without blood. And then at some point you turn it into war. Now we've got politics with bloodshed.

• 1:13:05Jocko Willink?

  But I'm going to dig into this one a little bit. Ideally, there are things then added or created to support the people and the ideas within the system. So we're talking about people, ideas, and things.

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  With this in mind,

• 1:13:20Jocko Willink?

  within the system, helping it achieve its goals. With this in mind, we can look at a competitor's system and create a model of how it fits together, where it is strong and where it is vulnerable.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Finally, after creating this model, Marines must remain disciplined in its use. Models are useful but imperfect. They are theories about the systemic structure of our rival. We need to remain alert for opportunities to improve our models as we learn more about how real, how our competitors operate in the real world. Now, this is, this is the, the thing that I, so, so they talk about this, people, ideas and things, like that's sort of what a competitor's system is. And I added some, well, this is up for debate, but I'll throw it out there for you. People, ideas and things, that's sort of what you judge

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  how your competitors going to operate. I, I, I think perhaps there's possibly one more that needs to be added.

• 1:14:21Jocko Willink?

  And it may be covered by people and it may be covered by ideas and it, not things, but a little bit. That is, that is the idea of execution.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Or taking action. So you can have people, you can have ideas and you can have things.

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  But if you can't execute, then you're, you're dead in the water. Now, you could say that it's people that needs to make things execute. So, okay, I get that. But I just felt the need to kind of call that out. Because when I look at a competitor,

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  I think about, yes, they got these people. Yes, they got their, they got this team, they've got these ideas. Okay, I get, they've got some competitive advantages there or disadvantages. And they've got things, they've got, they've got things.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  But all three of those things without execution, to me, I'm not even worried about you. I'm not even worried about you if you can't execute. So, I don't know. Am I, am I reaching to you, am I not giving enough credit to people? Possibly?

• 1:15:27Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I guess that you could dig into deeper on what they mean by that, but when you said it, the first thing that went into my mind, works in the opposite direction too, is that, hey, they might not have the best, well, most well-trained people. Uh, a- and maybe their tools are kind of outdated and their systems aren't so great because they're antiquated and maybe they don't have big budgets, but if these people have been executing and, and what brought me to is how many times you've said on this podcast, is who we were fighting in Iraq. Who we were fighting against Al Qaeda, their things? Their things were garbage on paper compared to ours, garbage. They were rusty, they were old, they, and, and their people, and I don't mean it like they're, they're people like something wrong with their people, but they didn't have the training we had, they didn't have the resources they had, their people

• 1:16:11Dave Berke?

  weren't invested in the way that we invested in our people. But you know what they had been doing? They'd been executing for a really long time. So that piece, a- and maybe somebody could say, well, that's what people is and, and you might be missing that, but I'm thinking of people like, I know what American Marines and soldiers, I know what those people are. And it's really easy to look across and go, those people, those people, and, and just dismiss what they are. But those people had been executing and they were really good as a result, and offset where we thought we had this big advantage. Look at our gear. Look at our training. On paper, it should have been, it, it should have been a one-sided affair. If you measured it with those two things, and what they weren't measuring was the, the, the value of the, I think what you're saying is the execution.

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and even what you just said, like, um, if you take a group of Marines, or you take a group of soldiers.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  And they have training and it's all good, but if, look, if they don't execute and, and you could say, well, a marine is going to execute. We know that's actually not true. It's, it's a good ideal. We could say a soldier is gonna, a soldier with a, with a platoon leader is gonna execute. Not necessarily true. So to me, it's all, it's almost like a fourth thing that does make sense in there.

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually thought that the third one was gonna be the execution, people, things and.

• 1:17:32Jocko Willink?

  People, people ideas.

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  Ideas and execution. Yeah, that, what, so it's almost like in listening to you guys and you said a good thing, you said, um, Dave, said on paper. Cause like, that's kind of really what that whole thing kind of seems like it is. Cause, okay, so you got people, um, ideas. And things, but people and ideas is, it's almost like people is what you can do. And then execution is what you will do. So the, so again, on paper where you have this capability, you have this many people with this capability. With these tools and what they can do with these tools. And then, but then, just like I said, it doesn't mean that they're gonna do.

• 1:18:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  It, you know, like just, you guys say default aggressive. It's like, that's that, that third kind of thing that you have to implement. To create this execution.

• 1:18:22Jocko Willink?

  You ever seen an MMA fight that was about to happen and on paper?

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  That got fighter A should destroy fighter B and what, what, what is the problem when he loses? The problem is he doesn't execute.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the good and not to go too deep into the MMA thing. So remember certain cowboy, Saroni and Conor McGregor, right? So you had like, Saroni is an executor guy. He executes, he executes, but then Connor is like a cerebral guy. Like he'll play up stuff before the fight as well to kind of create that, that third man in the ring. And that third man in the ring in this case was to get in the way of execution. And there's like a video on it to, that theorizes this where Conor McGregor was, usually he's talking trash to the guy, telling him basically how much. Like junker of a fighter than, than he is or whatever, but it was the opposite this time. It was like, he was saying, oh man, I respect him. And it was friendly. It was really friendly actually. So it theoretically created this mindset.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  On Donald Sarone's in his mind that it's like, oh, that and it kinda took away from his execution instinct. You know, so he was like, oh, it's like, oh, it's not as

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  We're kind of bros.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  Bros in a way, you know, it's like super respectful fight. And then you see Connor, how he came out in the fight all crazy. And it's almost like he almost in a weird way surprised him with how hard he was executing on a guy who usually executes. But that element didn't seem to be there as much, you know? So it's like, man, that execution part of it, brother, that's a huge, huge deal.

• 1:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And just, um, props to Cowboy, props to Connor. Cowboy dude, he, he's got some scraps. And he does eight million other things.

• 1:20:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um.

• 1:20:14Dave Berke?

  I wrote something down as you were getting to the, you know, connecting those two paragraphs. And it's, it's really interesting to hear, hear the conversations that you just had and that adding that additional piece. I wrote down in my margin here, you don't know. And so this model, this thing that we create and, and the military does this, all that, we create models for everything. And we're like, hey, I'm going to run a thousand simulations against my machine and that we do models for everything. We create this and it was saying like, hey, don't rely on that model. That's even more evidence, the, the, the, you don't know. We can create a model that can be useful for what competition is going to be like, what we think the economy is going to look like. And we can look at history, we can create a whole bunch of things that help us make decisions. But at the end of all that, you don't know, you don't know.

• 1:21:00Dave Berke?

  And so if you don't know, how useful is it getting back to the first thing you said, how useful is it to dig in on your way of doing it? If you really don't know, and that's really what this is saying, even I could say, Jaco, I've run the numbers. I've done this analysis, I've compared to these last three, a rollout to these different, I could give you a thousand reasons why this is the answer. And at the end I should say, but I, but I still don't know. Because you don't know, and that's really part of what this is saying too. And the piece in there, when you talked about the implementation, that's where the execution, where it's all going to happen. So not knowing and acknowledging you don't know is also a really powerful thing is you're building this framework in your mind of how things are gonna be.

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it also that introduces the idea of I know what you think is gonna happen. And I'm not going to allow that to occur, which is, you know, what game you think if I can convince you that, all right, Dave, you and I are gonna stand up and you see this is like the the the most lame example, but you know, someone that's like, oh, you know, some wrestler that's like, no way, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna knock him out, I'm gonna knock him out, I'm gonna knock him out. And he's trying to convince the other person that like, we're gonna stand and fight. So you don't have to worry about your ground game or whatever. And then he goes out and takes him down and does what he's gonna do. It's what game are you gonna play? Like, I'm going

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  to get you out of your game. That's what I'm gonna do.

• 1:22:27Dave Berke?

  Take away your competitive.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, actually, Jeremy Stephens against Pettis, Anthony Pettis. And, you know, Anthony Pettis is a striker primarily. And I was cornering Jeremy on that fight. And Jeremy's got, you know, fists of lead. And he knocks people out. And he might not be the most technical striker. I'm not saying he's not technical, he's not, I would say he's not as technical as Anthony Pettis was at that time. And so we're going into the fight, Jeremy definitely going into the fight thinking, hey, it's, you know, cool. I'm gonna stand up, I know I can take a punch, and I'm gonna connect at some point with Pettis's chin, and I'm gonna win. What did Pettis do?

• 1:23:11Jocko Willink?

  Came out, took him down. And it was a surprise, surprise to me, surprise to Jeremy. And that's the way it went. But he changed, he did what we didn't expect him to do, which is just a brilliant move, right? So all the things that you think you know, don't happen. Had another fighter was like, hey, aren't you gonna work ground game? And he's like, I can't, I'm not gonna get taken down by this guy. And I said, man, you better at least, you know, work to get up off your back. I'm not gonna get taken down. He's not good enough of a wrestler to take me down. He's a striker. Okay, cool. What happened? This was after the lessons learned, right? The lessons learned from Jeremy's, you better be ready for whatever, you better train to fight.

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  Because you can't predict what the enemy, what you're saying, Dave. I can't predict what the enemy is going to do. Can't predict it. I don't know what the enemy is going to do. I might think one thing, but I can't, that doesn't mean I can blow off every other possibility at all. What I need to do is be prepared to fight. You know, the closest thing that they say in this is, um,

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  performance. They kind of, I'm trying, I like dug through this, like where am I missing it? Maybe they are talking about execution. I just don't see it. Like the closest I think they have is they say, analyze, you know, the, the opponent's performance over time. So you're sort of talking about execution. Maybe he doesn't really do it. But I think maybe an additional item to assess your opponent is necessary. And that is people, ideas, things, and execution.

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  We also look at our own, our own system to increase our competitive advantages or create new ones. For example, do the people in our system have their necessary skills and aptitudes required to sustain our competitive advantages? Do they have the skills to build new ones? At a national level, does the target population for our recruiting efforts have the right education? In a similar way, can we look at our ideas? Do our operating concepts give us an advantage? And things, do, does any of our equipment provide overmatch? To evaluate our competitiveness of the system. Again, to me, we can check those, we can check the ideas, we can check the things, we can check the people. I better check the execution. Because none of this stuff matters without execution.

• 1:25:30Jocko Willink?

  It's not always true that the organization with the newest or most equipment wins the competition. Quote, Dave Berke. Sometimes a side that is able to combine adequate material with innovative new ideas becomes the winner. From this analysis, we can then increase our existing advantages or create new ones as deemed necessary.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Means in competition as similarly described in warfighting, the highest level of competition involves the use of all the elements of power. Marines are primarily concerned with the military aspects of competition, but we must not consider it in isolation from the other elements of national power. Warfighting states, quote, "The use of military force may take any number of forms from the mere deployment of forces as a demonstration of resolve to the enforcement of a negotiated truth truce to general warfare with sophisticated weaponry."

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  End quote. Here we see the alignment between our warfighting and competition doctrines start to emerge. So, the whole point of this thing. In war, we impose our will on our adversary. Their cooperation is not required.

• 1:26:37Jocko Willink?

  Going back into influence and leadership, right? In competition, we make use of military force to attract or coerce.

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  When using attraction, we use incentives, talking earlier about the carrot. We use incentives to induce a rival or other political actor to adopt a position favorable to us or otherwise allow us to reach our goals.

• 1:27:00Jocko Willink?

  And you know what?

• 1:27:04Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes when I'm talking about leadership, I talk about efficiency. And sometimes people think the most efficient thing for me to do is say, "Dave, you need to use this route to get to the target." And people think that's the most, hey, and it's really hard to see past that. Because clearly, if I have to say, you know, "Hey Dave, well, how do you want to do it?" And we have to have a discussion about it. It takes us another seven minutes before I finally comply with actually what you want to do. And that seems a lot less efficient. Yeah. But the efficiency comes out tenfold in the field and in the execution. Let's think about the execution.

• 1:27:42Dave Berke?

  It's because as a leader, you have to recognize that what you're doing is not getting 2.8 to point B in this patrol. That's not what the actual goal is. That might be this little mission, this little tactic about what you're trying to do is create a leader that at some point can go fight a war for you independently without you being there in a way that reinforces it. So it's this recognition that's not, that's not even what you're trying to do. And it's that, it's that mirage of this is the best way to get it done. I get in your face to tell you what to do and look what happened. He did it. Mission accomplished. That is only true if the only thing you're actually doing is getting from point A to point B, which simply is not what you're doing. That's not what you're doing.

• 1:28:20Jocko Willink?

  That's zero percent of the time.

• 1:28:22Dave Berke?

  Zero. It's not what you're doing.

• 1:28:26Jocko Willink?

  Uh, when using coercion, we compel a rival to take an action in our favor or to stop taking action that's not in our favor, or we make use of military force to deter a rival from taking action in the first place. For both compelance and deterrence, our goal is to use the threat of military force to achieve our desired outcome. For this to be the case, our competitive advantage must be clear enough to our rival that it affects the decisions they make. What's interesting about this is when I'm your boss, Dave, I have to remember that when I'm talking to you, there is the threat of me being able to fire you. I might not even say a word about it. So I have to kind of consciously mitigate that threat

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  so that you will push back against me, so that you will understand that I'm open to your ideas. I have to consciously do that.

• 1:29:18Dave Berke?

  So I'm not, so I'm not just compliant?

• 1:29:19Jocko Willink?

  Just, yeah. Yep. Cause that threat's there. And sometimes we work with companies where their people are just scarred. No one will say anything back to the boss because the last boss was a tyrannical idiot that barked at everyone and told them what to do and fired half the organization and everyone was, was scared all the time to make a move. And that's why, and by the way, that's why we show up there because the business is failing because there's total centralized command and it doesn't work.

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  So you've got to use the threat of military force for this to be the case. Our competitive advantage must be clear enough for our rival to that it affects their decisions. Note that a competitive advantage does not necessarily equal military superiority. A competitive strength of will along with non-military tools of policy are part of the equation too.

• 1:30:05Jocko Willink?

  Attraction. Political actors often use various forms of attraction to achieve their goals. To attract someone to attract someone is to induce, entice, or persuade someone into doing something. In a negotiation, it's a reward or incentive for someone to make a choice that is favorable to us. We can say that then that attraction is the counterpoint to coercion. Instead of using pressure to help our goals, we use some type of reward instead. Okay, carrot stick. That's what we're talking about.

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  Marines participate in attraction strategies all the time, demonstrating our professional commitment to our national values when conducting bilateral training. In recent years, for example, as part of US larger US attraction strategy, Marine Marines provided training on amphibious operations to an important ally, Japan. Check. That's what that's what the Marines are doing all the time. That's what the entire military is doing all the time. That's what we need to continue to do. We get into coercion.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Political actors often use coercion as a way to achieve their goals. To coerce someone is to pressure, intimidate, or force someone into doing something, or to reach one's goals through the use of pressure, threat, or force.

• 1:31:19Jocko Willink?

  There's a big difference in jujitsu between attraction and coercion. Right? Attraction is like you get someone to defend their neck so that you can take their arm.

• 1:31:30Jocko Willink?

  You can also force them to put themselves in a certain position. I guess, but that one's a little bit of a bad example because you kind of have to defend your neck. So you're coercing them to get those hands in position. It does. It does this by influencing the adversary's will or incentive structure. It is a strategy that often combines the threat of force, and if necessary, the limited controlled use of force with positive inducements. Coercion has two forms, compelance and deterrence. Compelance is a threat intended to make an adversary do something to take a specific action. Deterrence is a threat intended to inhibit an adversary adversary from taking a particular action to prevent it from even getting started.

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  In both cases, the target of coercion must be cooperate, must cooperate. Because the target must decide to comply with the goal of an actor who is applying the coercion. This cooperation is not friendly or willing, but still must exist for coercion to be effective. Not friendly, not willing.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  So, so the, just to kind of be clear, so the coercion, positive and negative, or the, or the, so coercion, like, oh, okay, I'm gonna force this guy or intimidate this person to do something versus, not versus, but on, and then additionally, the other coercion method is to intimidate them to not do something?

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Either compelling him to do something, or you're deterring them from doing something, but you kind of have to participate in it.

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  Right, like you gotta, like, um, like, you know, I don't know, the, the security guard or something, like, hey, don't tell on us, or don't, whatever. Cause we're gonna go in this back door to rob the bank, or whatever, you know, right, like, so if I'm a bank robber, I wanna go rob the bank. I know the security guard, I'm gonna say, hey, I'm gonna, we're gonna rob your bank, don't stop us, or else we're gonna kill you, or whatever.

• 1:33:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yes, that's coercion.

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, from, to force him to not do something.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Right, but he, but the point here is that he has to, he has to be willing to do it.

• 1:33:30Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  But you're not just for, you could, you could tape his head up, where he can't even talk or move. Now, doesn't matter whether he's willing or not, he's not doing it.

• 1:33:38Speaker 02

  Right, but I'm saying like,

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  Remove that ability.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  Before the bank robbery, it's like in the planning process, you know, maybe the bank, uh, not bank robber, but the, the security guard is my neighbor, or something. And then I'm gonna be like, hey, we're gonna rob the bank on your shift. If, so you can't call the cops, you know, or you can't sound the alarm, or whatever.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Or we'll kill you.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  Or we'll kill you, or whatever.

• 1:33:58Jocko Willink?

  It's coercion.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  It's also a bad plan.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would think so.

• 1:34:01Jocko Willink?

  But now he's gonna tell on everybody, before it happens.

• 1:34:06Speaker 02

  Not if I coerce him correctly, you see, see?

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  You better have like his child in the trunk of your car. Forever.

• 1:34:15Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you're right, you're right.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  The idea of using coercion in a competition can be misleading if we do not identify the assumptions that support its use. It's often assumed that a stronger nation can naturally coerce a weaker one into doing what it wants. However, this assumption may not be true if the weaker nation is willing to absorb but more punishment than the stronger one can or will deliver or stay committed to its goals over a longer period of time. This is one of the things that we always have to think about this is in the Vietnam War, when we tried to say, you know what? We can kill 150 of them for every one of us that they kill. And we said, that's a win. How do we lose that? I'll tell you how you lose it.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Those 150 mean less to the communist government than the one does to the American people and the American government.

• 1:35:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah. When your model places the same value on people for your enemy as it does for yourself and go, we've run, nobody would tolerate this. We would never tolerate this loss. I'm like, well, they will. And I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking of what, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And again, how lopsided that appeared, but in terms of the interest and what they were willing to endure and how long they're willing to endure it, sooner or later, it's like, hey, we're not, we just, we can't do this anymore.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  We're done here.

• 1:35:36Dave Berke?

  We're done here.

• 1:35:37Jocko Willink?

  It says the next, we call this asymmetry of interests. In this case, the weaker nation has the more powerful desire to achieve its interest in the stronger nation. This is, you have to watch out for this. So you have to watch out for that from, as a leader, when you're working with a subordinate and you start to escalate through the continuum of influence and you don't recognize that maybe they don't care if they get fired. And all you think, you know, you, one more word out of you and you're going to get fired. And they don't care.

• 1:36:12Dave Berke?

  The example as a parent with kids probably resonates with a lot of folks. Because as you know, certainly as your kids get older, that threat of violence becomes so much less useful. Like, hey, if you do this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ground you. Like, okay, I'll just sneak out. If you sneak out, I'm gonna take your car away. Cool. And the, the willingness for them to just outlast you on principle alone, or the willingness to endure whatever you are going to impose on them, you have to calculate in your mind what they're willing to endure.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  So you wanna hear about some miscalculation? So my, uh, my son had gotten a little out of line. This is when he was young. And he was in a very austere, I put him into a very austere environment to

• 1:36:59Dave Berke?

  To coerce him to

• 1:37:00Jocko Willink?

  coerce him to understand what he had done wrong and how we don't do this kind of thing. And it was really strict. And it's not, and by the way, it's no fun for your, for the parent, right? We don't wanna be strict. We wanna like have fun and it's all good. And we wanna buy toys and we wanna just, but you, but when you go austere, then you're not doing any of that and it's not fun. So over time, as you know, he, he was straightening out and he's probably like seven.

• 1:37:30Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, you know, he had gotten, you know, some toys back. And then he had gotten, you know, his, uh, he could use a pillow again in his bedroom. And, uh, you know, those kind of creature comforts started coming back. And then, you know, two, three months later,

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  I, he's, you know, something, some little spark of like, mm, wait a second. And, and what I called this, cause he was young, I, I called this, uh, you know, I, I have to be strict with you. So then I started being less and less strict. He started getting some of these privileges back. And then one time he started stepping out of line a little bit and I said, hey, am, am I gonna have to get strict with you again?

• 1:38:14Jocko Willink?

  And he said something along the lines of like, I think maybe you should so that I can be tougher.

• 1:38:26Jocko Willink?

  I did not, I didn't want to be strict with that. I wanted like, let's go back to party time. Let's go back to freaking, you know, playing with toys and having a good. He says, maybe, maybe you should, so I can be tougher. And I was, damn it. He just won. The test of wills, you won. Like, you can take, go ahead. You should. Actually, you actually went one level deeper. Like, you should. It's in my best. Yeah, it's in my best interest for you to do that. Let's do it immediately. So you gotta, you gotta pay attention. The kids will come at you, Ben. They'll come at you. Psychological warfare.

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Information. Information plays a special role in competition. Narratives play an important part because they are what gives meaning to a set of facts. For example, two competitors may both desire to possess a particular island. One of them may have a narrative that explains their claim to the island on the basis of historical ownership. The other may have a narrative that says some of the people that currently use the island and current possession makes their claim stronger. Two narratives compete with each other to give facts and meanings. I got a good question on EF Online the other day. I think it was EF Online, it might have been a client. But it was along the lines of, hey, how do we develop this culture? And my answer was, you need to tell the story of what's going on. And

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  when we talked about on this podcast, the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps tells the story. Yeah, that's what I was going off on the last podcast about, about the squad leader makes a difference. That thing is primed and ready to rock and roll on the podcast. So, the narrative that you tell, the information that you put out there, is just

• 1:40:06Jocko Willink?

  so important. Demonstrating a capability and exercise and then think, and then communicating so that it affects a competitor's thinking is another way Marines use information. Leaders determine what capabilities to reveal and when to reveal them as part of a larger approach. However, much is specifically revealed. Publicizing adherence to high standards in realistic training can help sustain the Marine Corps' reputational advantage and affect the thinking of our nation's competitors. Once again, the Marine Corps, with this manual, is increasing their budget.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  It's attraction for the DOD is what it is.

• 1:40:48Jocko Willink?

  Marines need to understand the impact of culture when they use information as a competitive tool. Cultural differences affect how narratives are interpreted by various audiences. One message might be understood in one country in a way that is significantly different from how it is understood in another. Marines must account for this and focus the narratives we use so that our target audience understands our message the way that we intend. Yes, know the story. Know the story. Going back to the unraveling podcast. What is your story? Know people's stories.

• 1:41:21Jocko Willink?

  The spectrum and styles of competition. The next section. The usual condition of internal relations is one of competition across the elements of national power.

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  Below the violence threshold, we typically see activities from the non-military aspects of national power. For example, economic competition is seen as the national, at the national level, in the struggle for market share in particular industry, or the effort to negotiate favorable terms in a trade agreement. Escalation on the spectrum, we might see sharper economic acts like industrial espionage, the theft of intellectual property, use of sanctions. What's interesting about this is, how often do we go to war?

• 1:42:05Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like, if you think about all the interactions that America has globally for the last 250 years, all these interactions, all the time are constantly happening, tariffs and sanctions and all these things are happening all the time. And very seldom do we actually pull the trigger and cross into the threshold of violence.

• 1:42:26Jocko Willink?

  And that's, we should do that as, as infrequently as possible, obviously. And you should assess your own leadership in the same spectrum. How often do I have to use direct leadership? It should be extremely infrequently.

• 1:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Repetitive actions can also move the line up or down over time. This is about the, this is about how you, how you kind of move up and down these continuums all the time. Gradualism and salami slicing, which we talked about in the last one. Competitors use these activities in an effort to achieve their aims without provoking a state of war, or even a strong reaction.

• 1:43:17Jocko Willink?

  In addition to competing through attraction, coercion, and various forms illustrated above, Marines can also compete by imposing costs. We impose costs on arrival when we develop a credible capability and a rival must spend resources in order to try and counter it. For example, the Department of Defense has experienced increasing cyber attacks in the past decades. This has imposed costs because the Department of Defense has to spend time and money to develop civilian training to counter those attacks. We can also, fast forward, we can also impose costs during war when we first force the adversary to divert resources from their preferred actions in order to counter one of our capabilities. And then we get into the threshold of violence.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  The threat of violence and violent acts are competitive tools in international relations. The goal of posturing is to affect the decision-making of the target, to make them so fearful of the damage they might receive if the posturing escalates to violence that they submit, and let the posture achieve their goals. And it places one into a favorable position should violence follow. Just think about that psychologically. If we start to think about the continuum of influence or leadership, and you start using direct influence, that's what you're doing. You're crossing over that threshold where people are forced to submit. That's why you get the equal and opposite reaction.

• 1:44:46Jocko Willink?

  In some cases, the poaching briefly crosses the threshold and violence occurs to demonstrate the resolve of the actor. The brief, this brief use of violence still has the same aim, which is to affect the target's decision. Many actors intentionally try to obscure or confuse exactly where this threshold lies. Oh, man, that's a good one, right? Where is that threshold? You ever, you ever known someone like that just crazy eyes, like a crazy eyes person? How about, how about your bar, you're bouncing at a bar? There's some people where you don't know where the line is. They could shank you at any moment, right? And now you have to contend with that.

• 1:45:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  And there's people that proactively, proactively prop up that image, right?

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Yes, they do.

• 1:45:36Jocko Willink?

  It's a good move. What, where, where you have, you might think that's a good move as a leader. But what you're really doing is now what you're doing is you're inducing more fear. And now people don't know when you're going to lash out. And so now they're on eggshells and they're afraid to speak up and speak out and it's a problem. This has been, oh. They do this to cause enough ambiguity and hesitation that they can achieve their aims with little or no interference. This has been true historically and will likely increase in the future.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Some rivals use capabilities like certain cyber and space activities that have destructive effects but fall short of some definitions of violence and effort to obscure whether or not they would have crossed the threshold as a push in the envelope. In support of U.S. goals, Marines performed missions on both sides of the violence threshold. In some cases, Marines were introduced into situations below the violence threshold, but then a political group performed a violent act against U.S. interests. The disciplined response of the Marines then occurred above the threshold of violence, but the violence was limited and did not reach the level of conventional war. Following these brief periods of violence, the competition again fell below the violence threshold in most cases. Now we get into decision-making, initiative, and response.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  You might just call that whole thing execution. I'm not 100% sure, but you might. Marines are taught that decision-making is essential since all actions are the result of decisions or of non-decisions.

• 1:47:23Jocko Willink?

  It's so powerful to paint things so clearly. This is whoever wrote this opener right here, because you know, you, how many people wrote this book, Dave? Six? Six, yeah. Six?

• 1:47:38Jocko Willink?

  The person that wrote this section gets a little bonus credit, right? Marines are taught that decision-making is essential since all actions are the result of decisions or of non-decisions. If we lack the will required to make a decision, then we have willingly surrendered the initiative to our foe.

• 1:47:59Jocko Willink?

  If we consciously postpone taking action for some reason, this is also a decision. So there you go. Boom.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  That's the little section you gotta highlight. Terminal Lance out there. This is what, where's what we're talking about. Initiative is in, is it, is as important in competition as it is in war. Gaining the initiative means our competitor must react to us. We can gain it by presenting a dilemma to our competitor and also by setting the tempo of the activity taking place.

• 1:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Brian Stan, when he was on, he was operational tempo. He, like, he, what, you know, everyone's got their move, right? In jiu-jitsu, everyone's got their, you know, they got that guillotine, they got that kamura, they got that heel hook.

• 1:48:49Jocko Willink?

  When Brian Stan was on here, I, I just remember him just talking about that operational tempo where it's gonna, and I was, mhm. That's what he, that's what this guy's talking about.

• 1:48:59Jocko Willink?

  Setting the tempo of the activity. Marines must assume that potential competitors understand initiative as well as we do. Thus, they will take actions in order to gain the initiative. Many competitors also seek to create ambiguity about their actions, which leads to a problem of attribution. If we are not certain who performed a certain action, then we cannot attribute that action to any particular actor. This often delays our response and slows our tempo. Conversely, if we improve understanding of how of our competitor, we can be primed to attribute their actions in ways that slow their tempo instead. It's to know that and to be able to recognize, oh, this isn't just, it's not just that I

• 1:49:43Jocko Willink?

  can't figure out exactly who did this. It's that I am now, my Oodle Loop is slowing down right now. Because I think they did it, but I can't be sure. While competition essentially always exists, its intensity varies over the course of time. We must also understand that the long timelines involved in competition mean decisions and actions sometimes play out over months or years, even decades in some cases. This often results in opportunistic behavior as rivals take advantage of conditions to achieve their strategic goals without crossing the violence threshold or crossing it briefly and then returning below the threshold before triggering a war.

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  Opportunities often created when conditions suddenly change or temporarily, such as when a pandemic strikes, pandemic strikes, which is interesting. I don't know if they wrote this before or after. I get they, they probably slid it in there. You think they slid it in there?

• 1:50:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I think this was drafted like this last year.

• 1:50:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they slid it in there.

• 1:50:43Dave Berke?

  Such as?

• 1:50:44Jocko Willink?

  This diverts attention and resources, which creates a gap for an alert competitor to exploit.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  Having no fixed timeline for achieving goals, plus opportunism also leads to incrementalism, which is the effort to achieve a goal by adding together a number of small steps taken on a path toward it.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  Achieving our goals in competition requires action which comes from making decisions. Therefore, what Marines are taught for warfighting serves them well here, provided they also apply judgment in recognizing how timelines can differ between war and the rest of the competition continuum. So this idea of incrementalism is something you gotta be on the lookout for. You gotta be on the lookout for that slow creeping maneuver that your enemy's making.

• 1:51:40Jocko Willink?

  And at some point, you've got to draw the line. What I recommend is, instead of drawing a line, what you do is you incrementally respond. So when Echo makes a little maneuver, that's a little bit offensive to me. I just don't say, "Well, he hasn't really crossed the line." I actually give him a little bit of a check. Little check. That's a little check. So from a leadership perspective, what does that mean? It means when Dave decides he's going to spend a little bit too much money on the company credit card, I don't just go, "Well, he didn't really cross the line." I might say, "Hey, Dave, I see you got some expenses here that are... What is this? What did you buy?

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  Just checking." "Oh, yeah, you know, I just needed some oil for my car." "Okay." "But for your car?" "Yeah, yeah, well, okay." "Was that for a company trip?" "No, no, no, hey, I'll change. I'll talk to you, you know, we'll get it straightened out." "Okay." Because you're trying to incrementally see if you can start putting real stuff on the company credit card. No, you can't.

• 1:52:52Jocko Willink?

  But if I don't check you, if instead I draw a line in the sand, well now all of a sudden you've developed a pattern and you've gotten habit and you could actually come back to me and say, well, I've been doing this for a while. I don't want any of that. So I'm going to check you. Am I going to check you with a, with a hockey stick across the face? No. I'm going to give you a little, just a little, I'm here. I see what's happening. I don't draw a line in the sand. Because a line in the sand can be offensive.

• 1:53:26Jocko Willink?

  And why did you break a rule? If you knew the rule was there. If you broke a rule, I probably did a bad job of explaining that, hey, man, company credit cards, we use them for company business. And what we can't do is we can't have a bunch of little charges adding up over time and then we look up and we, we, we have lost a bunch of money and spend it on things that don't really benefit the company. So anything that you think you're using for your personal gain or for your, for your personal life is not allowed.

• 1:54:07Jocko Willink?

  So that's a little bit of a line, but I'm, I'm not, I'm not smacking you with it. I'm showing it to you.

• 1:54:12Dave Berke?

  And you've got, you have options when you take that approach. You can, there's, there's a lot of different things you can do in there. And the, the problem with the line is that, that basically commits you to, to, to a response, to a course of action that you, it's really, really hard to maneuver away from that. And if you're using the line like, hey, if I just draw the line, then, then Jaco's not going to cross the line. And I use it more as a tool to keep you from doing it than it's actually what I'm really willing to do. You have almost no maneuver space there. And you talk about this all the time. You want to keep as many options, as much maneuverability as you can. And that line takes all that away from me. And if the line is just a tool to get you to comply and that person, this is talking about

• 1:54:56Dave Berke?

  an adversary, this is an alert adversary looking for ways to commit you. That, that limits, anything that limits your options, and certainly I know this about the Marine Corps, is something we don't want.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it a beautiful thing when?

• 1:55:11Jocko Willink?

  The line is implied with such strength that I never even said it, but you knew not to cross it. How many, how many, how many charges have you made on your company credit card for your personal gain? The answer is zero, right? We're not doing that here.

• 1:55:25Dave Berke?

  And not out of fear of compliance either, or, or, or compliance based on fear, but out of a recognition of why that actually is what you should be doing. And, and, you know, there's some things inside here that translate perfectly. And there's some things you actually kind of have to think about because there, there, this, this publication of this, this manual is, is really in a lot of ways talking about competitors. And there's the, there's a component there that, that directly, that aligns well when you're competing with, you're running a company, there's a competitive company. But the connection to the leader, uh, leadership piece to your people, you gotta kind of translate that a little bit. You don't want to go to war with your people. Your goal isn't to set that line to establish your authority so they comply.

• 1:56:10Dave Berke?

  You want to avoid that at almost all costs. But you need your, it's the same thing with my kids. Do I want my, my son to know that there's a line? Yes. He, and he knows. He almost, well, it happens, but he doesn't cross that line very often. I'm not forced to respond in a, in a limited way very often, but I want him to know that.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So let's say there was a street in front of your house, really busy. Would you put the line that your son, when he's four years old? Would you put the line at the street?

• 1:56:42Dave Berke?

  No.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Hell no. You'd put the line a little further back and would you, would you then escalate like, hey, you can't go past this? This is, this is 20 yards from the road where you could get killed. That's what we do.

• 1:56:57Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  Now, even the, even the actual line where you're going to like give significant punishment, because you have to, because you have to, you have to, you have to impress upon the kid. Like my, uh, my dog, kid, dog. My dog, I have this at my house. If my dog goes out off my front porch, he's going to be on a street where there's cars.

• 1:57:22Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:57:24Jocko Willink?

  I gave him hard corrections when he was a puppy. That dog doesn't leave there. He knows what's up. He knows that he can't do it. So that's where the line and the but the line isn't. It he could go off my porch and go another. 15 yards before he'd actually get hit.

• 1:57:39Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Jocko Willink?

  But I don't give him that extra 15 yards. I give him like, okay, here it is. Don't go, don't go across this line. And he's been trained and he understands it. So that's um. What you gotta watch out for?

• 1:57:52Dave Berke?

  And your dog. Might not ever make this connection, but the obvious goal with your people is that. The recognition is that it's in their best interest. You're trying to help them. And that's that's the piece of like, hey, when you're talking about your adversaries and you even talked a little bit about coercion. In some way, we're actually even with our adversaries, basically trying to say, hey. Don't do this.

• 1:58:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:13Dave Berke?

  This is in your best interest. Please don't do this. Or, hey, I'm gonna really need you to do this, but. And from a leadership standpoint, all those things, even those lines that you draw. The ideal situation is use a leader is actually what's in their best interest and they're and they're pushing against it. You might want to find out why they're pushing against that. Anyway, just think that that connection of what's in their best interest and. That that line, I mean, we. You want to be able to maneuver as much as possible all the time and keep as many options open as as as possible. And so that line should be. Just be real cautious about drawing that explicitly. And if you do. If you can get them to understand why that's there, that's so much more powerful than it's just, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hammer you if you hit across this line.

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:00Jocko Willink?

  The why is huge. And if they don't understand why, then it's an arbitrary thing that you threw up there. And look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have that, because if people, you should absolutely have lines where, hey, you crossed this line, you made it this ethical mistake, you did something that's. That's actively freaking criminal. You're done.

• 1:59:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  That's where we're at. Just so everybody knows, you do something like that. You're you're done. Period. End of story. There's no, there's not even discussion. So don't do that.

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Getting into the conclusion, like war, competition serves policy, but usually does so over longer spans of time. These long timelines lead us to look for policies, aims in our enduring national interests with aspects of these interests emphasized by current state of domestic politics. Again, apply that to your personal life. Apply that to your business. What are you trying to do? What are your enduring interests? Attraction is important concept in our theory of competition. It uses incentives and rewards to get another political actor to act differently in ways that are aligned with our interests.

• 2:00:12Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing as a leader. We're using attraction. We're using coercion. We're using the stick. We're using the carrot. What do we want to use? We want to use, we want to use the carrot as much as possible. And you know what? We want them to think they found that carrot. Coercion is another important component of our theory. It takes two forms, compelents to cause a rival to take action favorable to our goals and deterrence to cause a rival to not take action. That's what you were asking earlier, I think, Echo. I don't know if I gave you that clear of an answer. In war, we impose our will on an enemy. With

• 2:00:55Jocko Willink?

  coercion, we need our rivals' cooperation because they must decide to comply with our wishes, even if their cooperation is unwilling. The existence of the Marine Corps is a coercive tool for the nation if its competitive advantages, advantage is made clear to a rival. Competitors act like systems. They have many parts that interact with each other in complex, often unpredictable ways. This also means competitors have strengths and weaknesses. As competition unfolds over time, the rival systems can sense what their competitor is trying to do and adapt or evolve in an effort to improve their competitive advantage. It's

• 2:01:37Jocko Willink?

  always adapting. These will often blend the threat of violence or the use of violence itself with other tools to gain an advantage. This constantly shifting mixture can get confusing, which is part of the goal. Competitors often intend for this confusion to help them reach their goals by causing their rivals to hesitate.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  This also helps them gain the initiative so that they can set the pace, the tempo for the competition.

• 2:02:13Jocko Willink?

  We're two hours deep right now. I'm not even getting it. We're at the chapter threes next.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, something that I, I, I say, and I know, I think you and I discussed this the other day on the phone, Dave.

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  The best way to win is when the enemy doesn't even know they're fighting, right? The, the, what Sun Tzu was the supreme, what Sun Tzu said was the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're trying to do, to win, to, to influence Dave without Dave even knowing that I influenced him. I want to maneuver my ideas into your head so that you think they're, they're, that you're, they're your ideas.

• 2:03:00Jocko Willink?

  I want to preemptively remove your will to fight before you even think you should be in a fight. Before, before you even think you should be putting up resistance, you already are thinking that you don't want to resist. That's my goal.

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  I want to make you a champion of my cause as if it were your own cause. That's what we're trying to make happen.

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, what, what makes this easy-er, what makes this, and actually makes it easy, is when my cause is your cause. Because you're, it helps you. If I'm over here trying to convince you to do something that doesn't help you, man, it's freaking hard. But when I can align my goals with your goals and I can give you ownership.

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  That allows, that allows these strategies and tactics. For you to get on board with what I want you to do and you don't even know that I'm trying to make you do it.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  So it's one of the most important things about this manual, simply making you aware that you're competing and you have to be aware that you're also influencing all the time and you're on that spectrum and you're you're on that continuum and you're either gaining leadership capital or you're spending it. And if you do it right, people are on board. And the and the deeper part of that is you are actually propelling them towards victory for them. If you do it right, you're propelling them towards victory and they are happy to be moving there.

• 2:04:50Jocko Willink?

  And if I'm trying to get Dave to do something that he's resistant to and it's going to help him in the long run, it's going to help us in the long run, why is he resistant? I need to listen to him to see what what his resistance is. Why is he resisting? That's what we're doing. We're on a constant continuum of influence. Yes, we're competing, but we're influencing as leaders.

• 2:05:33Jocko Willink?

  Echo, we're also competing, obviously.

• 2:05:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  We want to stay competitive, right? In a multitude of ways, we'll say. Any, um, any ways that you can recommend for us to maybe maintain or improve our competitive advantage in the world? What do you think? What do you got?

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Advantage, big time. First one, which I think kinda goes unnoticed and you do a good job in reminding us from time to time is what game are you playing? So isn't that like kinda one of the questions you used to always get? Like what motivates you, right?

• 2:06:12Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I used to get that one a lot, yep.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  And still kind of a question like, um, That you kind of got to ask yourself a lot of the time like because it kind of seems like okay so like getting in shape right for example or being in shape staying in shape whatever right like for some for the average person uh whatever that even means because I don't know what that actually even is but to wake up at four thirty and do and it's not like you're waking up in four thirty and doing like a you know a stretching routine for ten minutes like right you're kind of going hard you know

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  We're going hard.

• 2:06:45Speaker 02

  And that's every single day not to say you're going full speed every single day yeah but I'm just saying your routine is like the average person not going to do that you know so you're over here going going hard but why you know

• 2:06:58Jocko Willink?

  Competitive advantage seeking a competitive advantage.

• 2:07:01Speaker 02

  Exactly right so what I'm saying is in your head it's there you know but I think in like all a lot of our heads it's like man it's not always there like we gotta kind of get reminded every once in a while.

• 2:07:11Jocko Willink?

  Just to confirm things in the world you know in Discipline Equals Freedom field manual I I talked about like how if you exercise you'll be sharper right mentally sharper and then hearing that chess player the other day Gary Kasparov talk about how if you're in shape it's going to help you win at chess. I was like keep working out people keep working out people that's what you need to do.

• 2:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah and I and you're kind of always your minds kind seems to be anyway always kind of in that zone where it's like you're kind of looking for some kind of advantage or something to to add to you know your deal or whatever but for the average person I think some of us don't do that all the time because we kind of forget or maybe to get distracted or whatever maybe that's the same thing but where that's why people they they'll work out less more things going on all this stuff right so they forget.

• 2:08:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah yeah you got that.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, if you pour all your efforts into your job, your family and your physical health are gonna fall. If you pour all your efforts into your family, your job and your physical health is gonna fail. If you pour all your efforts into your physical health, your job and your family are going to fail. So we have to be balanced.

• 2:08:36Jocko Willink?

  If you let the physical one fall apart, that's gonna negatively impact the other. Actually, they all, they all impact each other, right? They all impact each other, but let's face it, as you pointed out on one of the earliest of these podcasts, the physical one will help you across the board in all aspects of the game.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  So in a way, maybe the best-

• 2:08:56Jocko Willink?

  Which game? The game.

• 2:08:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the game, straight up. In a way, the best way, the best strategy, you know, instead of pouring everything you have into your X, Y, Z, whatever, one thing, you align them all and understand that they're all this, what do you call it in business? Vertically integrated or whatever, right?

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  We just called it the path.

• 2:09:13Speaker 02

  The path, yeah, same thing. So look, I'm gonna exercise, be capable, I'm do jiu-jitsu, I'm gonna improve all my applicable skills. So I can be a better, whatever those things are, whatever you are, you seem to-

• 2:09:28Jocko Willink?

  I think I know where you're going with this. People should get supplements from where you made it. Is that where you're going with this? I think, I think I just saw a little, a little connection getting made.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, and thank you for-

• 2:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause I was thinking, starting to think like, like, hey, if we're gonna make that connection in a minute, maybe two minutes, I'm down, I'm down. See that kinda artistic maneuver? The intellectual sharpness as you bring it in for the big win and all of a sudden you're talking about how we're gonna get some supplementation? I'm hype on that.

• 2:09:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:09:55Jocko Willink?

  But when we start going 12 minutes and we're talking about alignment and vertical integration-

• 2:10:01Speaker 02

  This is an important thing.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'll just say it. Now, you did have one person respond on social media that they are listening. Right now, so that person is happy that you're going down the path of whatever you're going down.

• 2:10:13Speaker 02

  Hey, look.

• 2:10:13Jocko Willink?

  Which is fine.

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  Oh, all right. Well, hey, better to be over informed than under informed. Okay. So, hey, look, Dave.

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if we can make that necessarily a blanket statement. Cause I think there's people that are right now questioning.

• 2:10:26Speaker 02

  Well, how about this?

• 2:10:27Jocko Willink?

  In this scenario that we're in at this moment.

• 2:10:29Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks for helping it along.

• 2:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:10:31Speaker 02

  You know, you're, you're.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  Little bump, little push.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  You do a great job.

• 2:10:34Jocko Willink?

  Little influence, little influence, little influence.

• 2:10:36Speaker 02

  Anyway, all right, cool. We're over here trying to compete, stay competitive, improve and maintain our competitive advantage. Okay, look, we need supplementation.

• 2:10:45Jocko Willink?

  See how quickly that worked? I set, kind of set you up like, hey, how can we maintain competitiveness? You said boom, and you were there.

• 2:10:51Speaker 02

  I know, man, it seems like my idea too.

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  There wasn't.

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  The seed in my head and man, I was like, man, the best idea ever came up seeming, seemingly.

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  That's a good job.

• 2:11:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Anyway.

• 2:11:04Speaker 02

  So I'm taking discipline and discipline go. That's probably why my brain is so sharp.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Let, let me, let me, let me say something.

• 2:11:11Jocko Willink?

  Cause even as you're talking about this, people are thinking, okay, well, what does this all mean? Here's what, here's, here's a bonus thing, cause we repeat a lot of the same stuff, right?

• 2:11:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  We certainly seem to repeat. What are you writing now?

• 2:11:22Speaker 02

  Nothing. Just continue please with your thought.

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  You're making notes, not using this indication or something. Are we editing stuff out?

• 2:11:29Speaker 02

  Please continue.

• 2:11:30Jocko Willink?

  Are we editing things?

• 2:11:33Jocko Willink?

  You can edit it out. Check this out. I got good news. Everything that you're about to talk about.

• 2:11:41Jocko Willink?

  Is available. With free shipping at originmaine.com. If you get a subscription. So if you want, what do you take every day?

• 2:11:50Speaker 02

  All of them. Uh, joint warfare.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:11:52Speaker 02

  Super cool oil, vitamin D, discipline in some form. Okay. Every single day.

• 2:11:56Jocko Willink?

  Dave, what are you on daily?

• 2:11:58Dave Berke?

  Cold War.

• 2:11:59Jocko Willink?

  What about, what about curl oil?

• 2:12:00Dave Berke?

  Vitamin D. So I guess I have to remember, I have such a stash of this that I forget.

• 2:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Jeez.

• 2:12:08Dave Berke?

  So, so I'm, I am, I'm almost ashamed to say that, but the only one I don't have a huge stash of is Cold War. I think you said vitamin D, maybe that's what you were.

• 2:12:20Speaker 02

  Alluding to

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  Wait, what did I say?

• 2:12:22Speaker 02

  You said vitamin D.

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  I, I say Cold War. That one is now, that one is now on regular shipping.

• 2:12:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  Every thirty days.

• 2:12:31Jocko Willink?

  So if you go on that, if you subscribe.

• 2:12:34Speaker 02

  Yes, and of course, go.

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  Then you get free shipping.

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Which is pretty awesome.

• 2:12:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:12:39Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to get any of these items on a regular basis, which we recommend you do.

• 2:12:47Jocko Willink?

  Get subscription.

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  That's the deal.

• 2:12:48Jocko Willink?

  Get a subscription and you get free shipping.

• 2:12:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:12:51Jocko Willink?

  Done.

• 2:12:51Speaker 02

  So let me go down the list. These are all beneficial things. Maintain the competitive edge. Joint warfare for your joints. Don't worry about that stuff. You don't have to worry about your joints anymore. Super career oil, same deal. General health, other benefits. Vitamin T3 is another one. Also Cold War. This for immunity and other health benefits. Better to have health benefits than health. Detriments.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  You got this. Facial expression said, I don't know what to say. And then you pulled it off. Credit.

• 2:13:23Speaker 02

  Negative.

• 2:13:23Jocko Willink?

  Credit.

• 2:13:24Speaker 02

  It was in the, you understand what I'm saying. Anyway, back to the supplements. Discipline and discipline go. So discipline, the powder for your brain, for your body. Discipline go, brain, body, just on the go. Quicker delivery system, capsules, and also the energy drink form. It's a healthy energy drink, by the way, if we didn't already know, even though we do. That is, those are the facts. Also milk for extra protein, form of dessert. Super delicious tasting protein as a dessert.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You could say extra protein, or you could just say, oh, if you want, also want a dessert, cool, you can get some milk. You get them at Wa, you get the drinks, you can get the, the, the ready to drink, the cans at Wawa. All the Wawas, by the way. They're in there. And vitamin shop.

• 2:14:08Jocko Willink?

  So you can, you can get them there, or you can get them at originmaine.com. And if you get a subscription.

• 2:14:13Speaker 02

  Dang. There's a little issue with the Wawa scenario.

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  What is it?

• 2:14:18Speaker 02

  I got a lot of videos of people just going in there and cleaning it out. So people will go in there with coolers.

• 2:14:24Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:14:24Speaker 02

  Go into the shelves of Wawa and empty every can. So be warned.

• 2:14:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They're getting after it.

• 2:14:30Dave Berke?

  People are getting after it.

• 2:14:31Jocko Willink?

  But the great, the great thing is, uh, we, we started off in Florida.

• 2:14:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  And it was sort of a test run for Wawa. And everyone went after those, went after those dissos in Wawa. And just almost, uh, like less than a month into it. Less than a month into a three-month trial. Wawa came to us and said, we want you in all the stores. So, thank you for, for getting after it and Wawa's gonna deliver.

• 2:15:00Dave Berke?

  Wawa was also in the game because they get tagged a lot from people out there shopping Wawa's and they always get a good reply.

• 2:15:05Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:15:06Speaker 02

  Interesting that, yeah, I saw that with a guy with the cooler, it was like a bin. And he was like, boom. And I was like, hmm, that's interesting. I don't think I've ever been really that compelled to do that with it, with the, like a drink or whatever. I'm saying, under what circumstances would I be? And then I thought back to, it was like maybe, eh, like four days or so before where I texted belittle with the emergency scenario because I was only on my last one this one. Here's the thing, they'll send it, they'll send it and I, because usually I don't go to my last one. But what if I'm on my last one and I'm like, wait a second, I can go to Wawa and restock.

• 2:15:41Jocko Willink?

  Then you're bringing a cooler.

• 2:15:43Speaker 02

  So it makes, it makes sense, exactly, right?

• 2:15:46Jocko Willink?

  That's another good reason, if you're on a subscription, that day doesn't come.

• 2:15:50Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 2:15:50Jocko Willink?

  That day does not come and we don't want that day to come.

• 2:15:53Speaker 02

  Nope. So yes, uh, you've mentioned originmaine.com, that's where you can get it as well. Also on originmaine.com, you can get jujitsu stuff, gear, gi's, rash cards, I can stuff, also shirts and sweats and cool clothes as well. This is all American-made stuff, by the way.

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  Big deal.

• 2:16:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, huge deal.

• 2:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Competitive advantage.

• 2:16:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  Competitive advantage to have, not slave labor, but awesome people.

• 2:16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you you mentioned that like slave labor, like when you kind of, you know, the front end of the slave labor situation, right? You just be like, oh, yeah, we'll just make it super cheap, you know, these guys are making it and we can sell it for higher, whatever. But if someone cares about what they're doing on every step, you know, like manufacturing, like, okay, my job is to do this and do this and to do this, and I'm gonna just do it. But I care about doing it. Bro, that's way better. Like, quality wise, in every capacity, and sustainable.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:47Speaker 02

  So, yes, that is a competitive advantage. What if everyone on your team cared about what their job was?

• 2:16:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go ahead and say you just nailed that.

• 2:16:56Speaker 02

  Sure, I agree that that is the case. Nonetheless, back to how we can all support ourselves. Jaco's Store, it's called Jaco Store, and it's where you can represent your apparel while you're on the path, maintaining your advantage competitively. We have shirts and hoodies and hats. They all say discipline equals freedom, or something along those lines.

• 2:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Good.

• 2:17:19Speaker 02

  Good. Same thing, in a way, kind of. Part of discipline, anyway. You understand what I'm saying? Some good stuff on there. There's a t-shirt club. It's called The Shirt Locker. S-H-U-R-T.

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Thank you to whoever made that suggestion.

• 2:17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good one.

• 2:17:32Jocko Willink?

  It was a lot better than the other name that we had been using here.

• 2:17:37Speaker 02

  The thing is, to be honest, like, the more I think about it, The Shirt Locker is like, it didn't even matter what the name was before. That one would probably be better because it's like perfect.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  That's the perfect name. The Shirt Locker.

• 2:17:47Speaker 02

  Yep. And that is also a subscription scenario where you can get kind of different types of shirts from us. Little, not hardcore discipline equals freedom stuff, but some fun stuff. It's a cool, it's a cool little deal. So, look into that. If that's for you, do that, man. JacoStore.com.

• 2:18:04Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to this podcast. You can also join us on the underground. Go to JacoUnderground.com. It's alternative podcasts, some amplifying information, some behind the scenes, some Q and A, some live stuff, and we're gonna, we're gonna actually record yet another underground podcast right now about going into some other...

• 2:18:32Jocko Willink?

  Facets of these discussions and and reason we're doing that we don't we we need to have an alternative platform. We don't want to take on sponsors where we have to say what they say us was say what they tell us to say and then also not say what they tell us not to say. We don't want to do that. We definitely don't want to have anyone critiquing how certain people on this podcast talk about the items that we're discussing.

• 2:19:06Speaker 02

  Oh, Dave, you like that. Oh, no. Look at Dave. Look at you. All right.

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  Hey, it costs $8.18 a month, or you can email if you can't afford $8.18 a month. By the way, this is what supports this podcast too, but we don't want to have the Jocko podcast behind a paywall. I always say firewall and you like correcting me right before I even said it, which is good because I saw you.

• 2:19:30Speaker 02

  Right, my mouth.

• 2:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Lip sync, is that that?

• 2:19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, lip sync. Well, firewall is an actual thing in like programming or something like this.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, we just have a we don't want to put it behind a paywall because we want everyone to be able to hear it. And so that's why $8.18 a month. If you can't afford that, it's okay. Email [email protected] and we will take care of you. We also have Jaco Unraveling Podcast. We have the Grounded Podcast. We have the Warrior Kid Podcast. We have a YouTube channel where Echo puts his legit videos. A lot of those, most of the good ones are ones that I'm the assistant director on and you'll notice a trend there.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  The good ones. Psychological Warfare album on iTunes. If you need a little help getting over a little whatever moment moment momentary weakness, maybe permanent weakness.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 2:20:25Jocko Willink?

  You'll be listening to that thing a lot if you have like permanent weakness. So you get that on any MP3. Also got flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer's company. Got a bunch of books. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. That's ready for you. All the answers are in that book. What do you think, Dave? Yes.

• 2:20:45Jocko Willink?

  The, the code, the evaluations, the protocols, we got about face with, I wrote the fore, honor to be able to write that. This one goes Freedom Field Manual, Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four, the Way the Warrior Kid Field Manual is out, Mikey and the Dragons, and Extreme Ownership, and the Dichotomy of Leadership. We also have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. We have EF Online, where we are, have courses that you can take on leadership. We have live interactions there. Go to EFOnline.com. We have the muster in 2021, which is our leadership conference. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com for details. We're making some adjustments on that right now,

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  on when those are going to take place. EF Overwatch, Executive Leadership for Your Company. Go to EFOverwatch.com. If you want to help service members, active service members, retired service members, if you want to help Gold Star families, and service members, families at large, then you can check out Mark Lee's Moms Charity Organization, Mom and Lee. If you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you didn't get enough of my severe circumlocution, or you need more of Echo's

• 2:22:07Jocko Willink?

  befuddled bulletins, or Dave's exhaustive explanations, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which obviously Echo only refers to as the Gram. And on Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all the military personnel out there in all branches of service, in uniform, around the world, keeping us out of harm's way by going into harm's way yourself. And also thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders, we thank you for the

• 2:22:51Jocko Willink?

  same, for going into harm's way to keep us out of it.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, you are somewhere on that continuum. On the competition continuum, on the leadership continuum, on the influence continuum. It's happening every moment of every day. So don't lose track of that and don't get beat without knowing you're competing. You are competing. So stay in the game by going out there and getting after it. Until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.