373: The Individual Who Can Do Something The World Wants Done Will Make His Way. Booker T. Washington, "Up From Slavery"

Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915)[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington#cite_note-1 was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidents_of_the_United_States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community and of the contemporary black elite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_elite#United_States.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Washington#cite_note-2 Washington was from the last generation of black American leaders born into slavery and became the leading voice of the former slaves and their descendants. They were newly oppressed in the South by disenfranchisement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disfranchisement_after_the_Reconstruction_era and the Jim Crow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow discriminatory laws enacted in the post-Reconstruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era Southern states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 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 373 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  I was born a slave on a plantation in Franklin County, Virginia. I'm not quite sure of the exact place or exact date of my birth, but at any rate, I suspect I must have been born somewhere and at some time. As nearly as I have been able to learn, I was born near a crossroads post office called Hales Ford, and the year was 1858 or 59. I do not know the month or day. The earliest impressions I can now recall are of the plantation and the slave quarters, the latter being the part of the plantation where the slaves had their cabins.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  My life had its beginning in the midst of the most miserable, desolate, and discouraging surroundings. This was so, however, not because my owners were especially cruel, for they were not, as compared with many others. I was born in a typical log cabin about 14 by 16 square feet.

• 1:14Jocko Willink?

  In this cabin, I lived with my mother and a brother and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free.

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  Of my ancestry, I know almost nothing. In the slave quarters, and even later, I heard whispered conversations among the colored people of the tortures which the slaves, including no doubt my ancestors on my mother's side, suffered in the middle passage of the slave ship while being conveyed from Africa to America.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  I've been unsuccessful in securing any information that would throw any accurate light upon the history of my family beyond my mother. She, I remember, had a half-brother and a half-sister. In the days of slavery, not very much attention was given to family history and family records, that is, black family records. My mother, I suppose, attracted the attention of a purchaser, who was, afterward, my owner and hers. Her addition to the slave family attracted about as much attention as the purchase of a new horse or cow. Of my father, I know even less than of my mother. I do not even know his name.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  I have heard reports to the effect that he was a white man who lived on one of the nearby plantations. Whoever he was, I never heard of his taking the least interest in me or providing in any way for my rearing.

• 2:47Jocko Willink?

  But I do not find a special fault with him. He was simply another unfortunate victim of the institution which the nation unhappily had engrafted upon it at the time.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  The cabin was not our only, was not only our living place, but it was used as the kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin was without glass windows. It only had openings in the side which led in the light and also the cold, chilly air of winter.

• 3:20Jocko Willink?

  There was a door to the cabin, that is, something that was called a door, but the uncertain hinges by which it was hung and the large cracks in it, to say nothing of the fact that it was too small, made the room a very uncomfortable one.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  There was no wooden floor in our cabin. The naked earth being used as the floor. In the center of the earth and floor, there was a large, deep opening covered with boards, which was used as a place to, in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin, were not very different from those of thousands of other slaves.

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  I cannot remember having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Three children, John, my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself, had a pallet on the dirt floor, or to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon the floor.

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is some excerpts from the opening of the book called "Up from Slavery", written by Booker T. Washington. And as you heard from that excerpt, he was born a slave, clearly. But from there, after the Civil War, he went on quite the voyage. And he became educated, he became an author, he became the founder and leader of a college, which is the Tuskegee Institute. He became a speaker, he became advisor to several presidents. And in his time, he was the most dominant leader of the African-American community.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, some of his beliefs, which were focused on compromise and education and entrepreneurialism, that's what he thought was the best way forward. Eventually, some of those beliefs were overtaken by more aggressive stances on racial equality in America. But regardless of that, Booker T. Washington's basic principles in life.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  are applicable to anyone at any time and I wanted to review some of them today. So again, the book is called up from slavery and obviously as usual, we're not going to uh cover the entire book. Get the book. You can probably find a PDF of this for free. So many good lessons in it and I'm gonna not cover, you know, it, it, the books tells the story of his life.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  And we're not going to cover the entire story of his life. Just try, I'm going to try as much as I can to just focus on the principles that he talks about, but you're going to hear some of his life as well. So there you go. Booker T. Washington. Let's go to the book.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  "I had no schooling, whatever, while I was a slave, though I remember on several occasions, I went as far as the schoolhouse door with one of my young mistresses to carry her books. The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and I had the feeling that to get into the schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise." So that's an interesting statement. You think that's one of those things where you want what you can't have?

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yes, fully. And you figure-

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  Because when I was a boy and I saw school, it didn't look fun to me.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, I didn't want to go.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, and think, think of it in terms of like, what if there was a school that taught you how to like, do magic or something?

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, I can give you a better example. Have you ever, you ever seen like the James Bond movie, movies where they open up some door and there's some special operations training going on? There's like people rappelling. That is, this is what it looked like to him. He saw, he saw kids with books and pens and that was like what I saw when I saw James Bond movie or some kind of military movie where there's secret training going on. They give you a little glimpse.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, yep, exactly.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  For you, what would it have been? Like some kind of specialized athletic training?

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, jiu-jitsu is like that where, yeah, you know, when you old school, you watched the UFC.

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  What about when you went to, when you went to the University of Hawaii for the first time as a tour to see if you could play football there and you like saw the gym? Was it like a really good gym?

• 8:09Speaker 01

  No, we were not a good gym. We got, actually got one of the best facilities in the nation. One year in, yeah. One or two years in, yeah.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  Did you, when you toured and they were, did you get recruited type thing? What'd they show you to kind of get you in there?

• 8:23Speaker 01

  The games and stuff, the campus.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Campus was cool, but that was like for, that seemed like a big social draw, you know, the campus.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  But you know, you know, you go on Sorinex's website? And you see some of the gyms that they put together for some of these schools?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, oh yeah, I want to go there.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  So, even though you and I weren't, didn't have that academic desire like Booker T. Washington had.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:48Jocko Willink?

  That's the feeling that he got when he saw some people. Paradise.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yes, like, you know, Harry Potter, right? Isn't that a ma- I never watched it, but is that like a magic school?

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  It's a magic school.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  It's like that. Like, what if you saw a bunch of people in your community knowing how to do ma- magic? And then you see where they learn it, you're like, oh, I want to go there, you know, learn that stuff.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's it. And it's good, it's wild. We'll get into like what it was like for him to learn. Uh, but going back to the book, so, so far as I can now recall, the first knowledge that I got of the fact that we were slaves and that freedom of slaves was being discussed was early, one morn- one morning before day, when I was awakened by my mother kneeling over her children and fervently plant- praying that Lincoln and his armies might be successful. And that one day she and her children might be free. In this connection, I have never been able to understand how the slaves throughout the South, completely ignorant as were the masses so far as books or newspapers were concerned,

• 9:48Jocko Willink?

  were able to keep themselves so accurately and completely informed about the great national question that was agitating the country.

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. It's pretty, it's a good. Good thing for us, you can understand why he's got like, there's no newspapers, they don't know how to read. And yet they knew what was going on. That rumor mill was spreading. And this is the thing, you know, this is why, maybe that's why he put together the fact that education was so important. Because these other people that can read, it's like, it's like the power of the internet now. You know, people, people, if you don't have the internet, there's a whole bunch of things that you're missing out on. I mean, never mind social media and Instagram and pictures of whatever, cool cars, never mind that stuff, but I'm talking, if you want to get ahead.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Imagine if you didn't have, imagine if you were a person right now in America, but you didn't have, you weren't allowed on the internet.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  That would be a massive, I mean, it'd be an an infinite disadvantage to anybody that's on the internet. So, back in the day, reading is kind of the internet, right? And these guys didn't have it.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  And yet, there were still enough rumor that'd be like, if you didn't have internet, but someone's like, bro, you gotta know about this.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're still talking.

• 11:11Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he goes on to say, "I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together and God's blessing was asked and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner. On the plantation in Virginia, and even later, meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals get theirs. It was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another. Sometimes a portion of our family would eat out of the skillet or pot, while someone else would eat from a tin plate held on the knees and often using nothing but his hands with which to hold the food. When I had grown to sufficient size, I was required to go to the big house at mealtimes

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  to fan the flies from the table by means of a large set of paper fans operated by a pulley." Naturally, much of the conversation of the white people turned to the subject of freedom and the war, and I absorbed a good deal of it. I remember that at one time I saw two of my young mistresses and some lady visitors in eating ginger cakes in the yard. At that time, those cakes seemed to me to be absolutely the most tempting and desirable things that I had ever seen. And I then and there resolved that if I ever got free, the height of my ambition would be reached if I could get to the point where I could secure and eat ginger cakes in the

• 12:40Jocko Willink?

  way that I saw those ladies doing.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  So that's... So, you're not only living in the cabin with the dirt floor, which if that's the way things are, you're kinda like, you kinda get the impression in that first couple paragraphs, like, hey, that's just the way things are. And if you don't know any better, that's just the way things are. But then you gotta go to the big house. And now you see what they're eating, freaking ginger cakes? Yep. Sounds delicious. And, and that's, that's a lot harder. It's kinda like when we talk to guys that were POWs. Like if they just, if you were born into a POW camp, that's just the way it is. But when you grew up in America and then you get put into a prisoner camp, it's like, oh, you know what you're missing.

• 13:29Jocko Willink?

  So Booker T. Washington, by going to the big house, knew what he was missing.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  But that's interesting that they would sit there and listen to them talking about the war. And that's, well, obviously, that's where they're getting some of their information from. Maybe even all their information from.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  And the greatest thing you can imagine is these ginger cakes. See, I don't know if it's, um...

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what it is that, I don't know if this is uh

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  the way, I don't know if this is nature or nurture, right? I don't know if I was born this way, or if I was made this way. But like if I see something like that, it's gonna, it's gonna bother me. You know what I mean?

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that seems natural.

• 14:17Jocko Willink?

  It seems natural, right? But then the nurture is like, hey, there's nothing you can do about it. You're a slave, that's the way it is, you just gotta deal.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  And, I don't know, is, is rebelliousness a born trait?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, I'm sure the, the current conclusion is that it's a little both.

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. But, see, I have four children.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:42Jocko Willink?

  There's various levels of rebellion in each child.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:45Jocko Willink?

  All of them have a little bit, some of them have more.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  So, there's a little bit, you're looking at ginger cakes, bruh.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they, the kid's thing is, is when you think about it, you can actually go pretty deep, because just, you know, a lot of times you'll be like, hey, they're, they're so different personalities, you know, so that, therefore it proves that it's like nature. Right? Where it's like they're born that way. Which, you know, obviously it's both, so like, but if you're, let's say, the firstborn person, and you're, let's say you're a boy.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  That's way different than being the firstborn person as a girl. It's a whole different experience.

• 15:23Jocko Willink?

  But don't they have, don't they have like the similar personalities, though? There's all those firstborn traits. You're more conscientious, that's girl or boy, right?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't, I don't know, for sure, but all I'm saying is like, when, when you're born first, when you're born second, when you're born third, when you're a boy, when you're a girl, those are very specific, different positions to begin and go through life from, so, little personality traits, um.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Can be explained a little bit here and there from nature for sure, but the nurture is like always gonna be there. It's like unavoidable because even then they even me having a twin brother. You'd think, oh, they're gonna grow up pretty much the same because their experiences are gonna be the same and all this stuff or whatever. And it's not true because if you're kinda like my brother's a little bigger than me. So just that alone is gonna just that little like deviation in direction. Over time is gonna be a big, big difference, you know?

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  Leave a mark.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  It's gonna leave a mark.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  So, so there's like, you know, there's, there's that going on a lot of the time. So I feel like um to say, oh, they're, they're going through the same experience. It's hard to do that because just being born second, for example, is so different of an experience just in and of itself, you know?

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and speaking of experiences, that's another thing that really strikes me about this book and about Booker T. Washington's attitude. And you know, I think, uh, actually I know, episode 12 of this podcast, which is The Forgotten Highlander. And he, you know, he's a prisoner of war and it's absolutely just the most horrific story.

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  And we get done with that, with that podcast and, and you and I were both like, how can you ever complain about? How could I ever complain about anything? This is a guy that, you know, they're putting, they're putting maggots on their wounds to eat the dead flesh. That's how they're staying alive, starving, being beaten, being tortured, slave labor out in the jungle. And you just think to yourself, how could I, I'm never complaining about anything. And then this, and that's what's so impressive about Booker T. Washington, and you'll hear this. I mean, you can see him kinda breezing through and I'm, I'm reading some pretty big chunks about what it was like for him growing up. And he's like, yeah, we, yeah, we didn't need the family. Yeah, we had dirt floors. It's almost like it's just a report, not a complaint.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  He's just saying, oh, this is what it was. It's more like he's just stating the facts. And so that's the, and you're gonna, the theme throughout this book is. Is it really about, you know, what it's not about your circumstances, it's what you do with them. And, and so it's very powerful, but it also gives you the same feeling that, or gives me the same feeling that I got from the Forgotten Highlander. It's like, oh, I'm not ever going to complain about anything. And it's the same thing here. You're like, wait a second, you're living in this dirt cabin. And you have to go and, and be subservient slaves to these girls that are eating ginger cakes when you're getting fed scraps of bread.

• 18:32Jocko Willink?

  Kind of pissed when I say that.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  But that's the thing is you're gonna see like he's not a complainer. It's like, okay, this is the situation. It isn't even complaining. I mean, he'll, you kind of heard in, in part of that opening is like, oh, this is the institution that we were in. And it had to change, but it wasn't changed yet. So we had to deal with it. That's just incredibly kind of a stoic attitude about the whole thing.

• 18:57Jocko Willink?

  So, here we go. Back to the book. I have said that there are few instances of a member of my race betraying a specific trust. One of the best illustrations of this, which I know of, is in the case of an ex-slave from Virginia, whom I met not long ago in a little town in the state of Ohio. I found that this man had made a contract with his master two or three years previous to the Emancipation Proclamation, to the effect that the slave was to be permitted to buy himself by paying so much per year for his body. And while he was paying for himself, he was permitted to labor where and for whom he pleased. Finding that he could secure better wages in Ohio, he went there.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  When freedom came, he was still in debt to his master, some $300. Notwithstanding that the Emancipation Proclamation freed him from any obligation to his master, this black man walked the greater portion of the distance back to where his old master lived in Virginia, and placed the last dollar with interest in his hands. And talking to me about this, the man told me that he knew he did not have to pay the debt, but that he had given his word to the master and his word he had never broken. He felt that he could not enjoy his freedom till he had fulfilled his promise.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Some integrity.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  That's integrity. That's integrity I would not have. I would not have had this type of integrity. Uh, I might've gone back and taken some ginger cakes. I can tell you that.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's like the ultimate in not taking things personal right there. It's like so, it's like a set, like my word is, is my word. It doesn't matter, like all this other stuff, like one thing has nothing to do with the other. You know, kind of a thing. Where it's like, oh yeah, he was the, you know, this, you know, bad slave master, you know, slave driver, all this stuff or whatever. Like, yeah, yeah, but that has nothing to do with this other thing right here. See what I'm saying? Like it is what it is and this thing is what it is and you know, it's like, man.

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  That's how we're moving forward.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Some mental strength right there.

• 21:08Jocko Willink?

  Again, this type of attitude, we're gonna see this throughout and it's just such a stoic detached attitude. He says, "I pity from the bottom of my heart, any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery. I have long since ceased to cherish any spirit of bitterness against the southern white people on account of the enslavement of my race. No one section of our country was wholly responsible for its introduction and besides, it was recognized and protected for years by the general government.

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  Having once got its tentacles fastened onto the economic and social life of the republic, it was no easy matter for the country to relieve itself of the institution."

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like what you just said, it's like, okay, this is, this is how it was. How do I move forward? He continues to say, "Ever since I have been old enough to think for myself, I have entertained the idea that notwithstanding the cruel wrongs inflicted upon us, the black man got nearly as much out of slavery as the white man did." The hurtful influences of the institution were not by any means confined to the Negro. This was fully illustrated by the life upon our own plantation. The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labor as a rule to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority.

• 22:41Jocko Willink?

  Hence, labor was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place in large measure took the spirit of self-reliance and self-help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, ever mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry. The girls were not taught to cook, sew, or take care of the house. All of this was left to the slaves. Now, you want to talk about finding some positive?

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:16Jocko Willink?

  He dig it deep.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you kind of hear about that, right? Sometimes we're, as adults, you have these successful adults and they're very thankful for their hard childhood.

• 23:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Because it, you know, it built them into a strong, productive, like, person.

• 23:32Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  So, yeah, regardless of the beatings they took, or the bullying that they went through, or like, all this, like, bad stuff that you wouldn't wish on your kids or whatever, like, they're so thankful for that because of the benefits, the resulting benefits.

• 23:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, what's that cycle of wealth where, like, what, the one generation makes the money, the next generation builds the money, then the next generation loses the money? It takes like, three generations, because that, that third generation has no hardship. They don't learn anything. They don't learn any trade, they just have everything given to them, so they just fall apart.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  But that's a very positive way for him to look at this.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:08Jocko Willink?

  Which is incredible attitude to have. Uh, fast forward a little bit. Finally, the war closed and the day of freedom came. It was a momentous and eventful day to all upon our plantation. We had been expecting it. Freedom was in the air and had been for months. Deserting soldiers returning to their homes were to be seen every day. Others who had been discharged or whose regiments had been paroled were constantly passing near our place. The slaves would give the Yankee soldiers food, drink, and clothing, anything but that which had been specifically instructed to their care and honor. Or sorry entrusted to their care and honor. As the usual, as the great day grew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. It was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night.

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  Most of the verses of the plantation songs had some reference to freedom.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  The night before the eventful day, word was sent to the slave quarters to the effect that something unusual was going to take place at the big house the next morning. There was little if any sleep that night. At all as excitement and expectancy. Early the next morning, word was sent to all the slaves, young and old, to gather at the house. In company with my mother, brother and sister, a large number and a large number of other slaves, I went to the master's house. All of our master's family were either standing or seated in the veranda of the house, where they could see what was to take place and hear what was said. There was a feeling of deep interest or perhaps sadness on their faces, but not bitterness. As I, as I now recall, the impression they made upon me,

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  they did not at the moment seem to be sad because of the loss of property, but rather because of the parting with those whom they had reared and who were in many ways very close to them. The most distinct thing that I now recall in connection with the scene was that some man who seemed to be a stranger, a United States officer, I presume, made a little speech and then read a rather long paper. The Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading, we were told that we were all free and we could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that it was a day for which she had been so long praying,

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  but fearing that she would never live to see. For some isn't, for some minutes, there was great rejoicing and thanksgiving and wild scenes of ecstasy. But there was no feeling of bitterness. In fact, there was pity among the slaves for our former owners. The wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated, emancipated colored people lasted but for a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they returned to their cabins, there was a change in their feelings. The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their children seem to take possession of them. It was very much like suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world to provide for himself.

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  In a few hours, the great questions with which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had been thrown upon these people to be solved.

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  Now, I never thought of that aspect until I read that section. It was like, like, uh, the first time, yeah, like he says, like a little kid, like you when you're fourteen. Your kids aren't this old yet, but when they're like fourteen or fifteen, at some point, you're gonna have that conversation with them. Cause they're not gonna wanna follow the little rules that you're putting on them. And you're gonna be like, oh, you wanna, you, okay, cool. Yeah, you don't, you don't have to be a part of the house. Cool. You can go. Here's what rent is. Here's how much your phone costs. Here's what it takes to get to school. You, oh, you need to, oh, you need to pay for food. Like, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, trust me, they ain't going very far. When they run away at thirteen, they're coming back real quick. That's what they hit. They walk into that right there where they're like, oh, damn.

• 28:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm responsible for all this now.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's crazy, huh?

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know how like, um, you know, you get this, I don't know, seems like a movie thing where, you know, you have the boss and then you have the assistant, right? But the assistant is like a ninja with everything, boom, boom. They can handle everything. Yeah, once that assistant is gone, it's like, oh, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. I didn't even realize it, cause he just take it for granted after the, after so much time, you know? It's like, dang, that's your life now.

• 28:37Jocko Willink?

  So they're all fired up, but then they're like, oh, damn, gotta figure this out.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  That's interesting how, and it, it's not that surprise. I'm sure different households are gonna be different, for sure. But it's interesting how he mentions, um,

• 28:53Speaker 01

  That it's like, we're kind of like a family, really. Like, we had a role for sure, and it was like he was master slave, but it was like, shoot, I kind of like felt bad for them, you know, like if that were not their slaves anymore, that's a You have to be in a very specific position to have those feelings, you know, you'd you'd assume like, oh, screw these guys. In fact, when I'm listening to that, I'm thinking to myself, oh, I wonder if Knowing that my slave, let's say I'm the slave owner, knowing my slaves are gonna be free, am I kind of mad, like, oh, like, you guys Are gonna leave and all this stuff?

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  Like you said, Every household's gonna be different, but I'm sure there's some people like, oh, cool. Like, there's some slave owners that must have been like, oh shit. Like, I know where this is going. If you've treat people bad, if you treated all your slaves terribly, They might, they might be killing you, you know, they might be looking for revenge. So there's a lot of different ways that this could go.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, or like, hey, you're you're gonna be free next week, or whatever, you're not free now. So maybe they'll like, you know, I don't know, impose some, We'll say some negativity on to him before the freedom, you know, kind of, it feels like

• 30:00Jocko Willink?

  Either that or you try and be all cool to him.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  That's true, that's, that seems like a good strategy.

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  What a crazy dynamic. Like, it's so crazy to think about this dynamic.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Very, yes.

• 30:10Jocko Willink?

  Like, here you are, you're, and how old is his mom, you know, when is she thirty four years old? I'm guessing, no idea. But she's thirty four years old, her entire life, she's been a slave. Like, that's, and now all of a sudden, with no end in sight, by the way. And now all of a sudden, nope, you're free.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  Crazy dynamic.

• 30:33Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, so he gets a job

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  In a, in a salt mine. And there's other things that take place, like his mom gets married, so he has a stepdad now, and his dad, his stepdad has a job at this salt mine, In these salt mine furnaces. And this is like hard ass work, but hey, now that that's what they're doing. So he's working there. I'm gonna go ahead, go back to the book here. The first thing I ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while working in this salt furnace. Each salt packer had his barrels marked with a certain number. The number allotted to my stepfather was 18. At the close of each day's work, the boss of the packers would come around and put 18 on each of our barrels. And I soon learned to recognize that figure wherever I saw it.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  And after a while, got to the point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters. So that's his first actual like, understanding of any written word with this letter, the number 18 written on this thing. And he's old enough to not know what that was like. It's like, you know, there's some things that you did your whole life where you don't remember learning them.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  And he, so for us, you know, we don't remember when you learn the alphabet really, or when you started to recognize that. For him, he remembers it.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:55Jocko Willink?

  Like it was not there and now it's there. This is the thing.

• 32:00Jocko Willink?

  He says, I, and he, so then he gets fired up to become educated, which we already kind of knew because he, he loved, he loved looking at that school, looked like paradise. He says, I induced my mother to get a hold of a book for me. How or where she got it, I do not know, but in some way she procured an old copy of Webster's Blue Back Spelling Book, which contained the alphabet, followed by such meaningless words as ab, ba, ca, and da. I began at once to devour this book and I think that it was the first one I ever had in my hands. I had learned from somebody that the way to begin to read was to learn the alphabet. So I tried in all the ways I could think of it to learn. All of course, without a teacher, for I could find no one to teach me.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  At that time, there was not a single member of my race anywhere near us who could read. And I was too timid to approach any of the white people. In some way, within a few weeks, I mastered the great portion of the alphabet.

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  Just had to figure it out. You take it for granted. When you take it for granted, when someone helps you learn something, it's infinitely easier to learn.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  And, and for me, the easiest example is like jujitsu. Someone teaches you something about jujitsu that you didn't know. It would have taken you years.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  They would have taken you years to learn it if you ever actually learned it because there's something you just wouldn't have ever figured out.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, a lot of it you can't see. That's why.

• 33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like, you know, certain things are important and not important. Yeah, there's a lot you don't see.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  So to actually figure out the alphabet and what the noises were. That's like a crazy thing to try and figure out. Uh, he goes on to say, the opening of, so he goes, there's a school that opens up in Kanawha Valley. He says, "The opening of the school in Kanawha Valley, however, brought me to one of the keenest disappointments I ever experienced. I had been working in the salt furnace for several months and my stepfather discovered that I had a financial value. And so when the school opened, he decided that he could not spare me from my work. This decision seemed to cloud my every ambition. The disappointment was made all the more severe by reason of the fact that my place of work was where I could see the happy children passing to and from

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  school mornings and afternoons. Despite this disappointment, however, I determined that I would learn something anyway. I applied myself with greater earnestness than ever to the mastering of what was in the blue back speller." So not only is his dad's, his stepdad say, "Uh, you can't go to school because you have value. You can work. You make us money." Wherever he's working in this, in this salt furnace, he sees the kids going to and from school. So what does he do? He learns harder. This dude is legit, right? He's got to learn harder. Uh, and then fast forward a little bit. Finally, I, he, he basically pressures his mom, pressures his dad as much as he can to try and make this happen.

• 34:57Jocko Willink?

  "Finally, I won and was permitted to go to school in the day for a few months with the understanding that I was to rise early in the morning and work in the furnace till nine o'clock and return immediately after school, closed in the afternoon for at least two more hours of work." So he's just going to keep working and take a little bit of time during the day to go to school.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is, this guy's an excuse killer. Like whatever excuses you have, he's, he's got weapons to crush them. Making it happen.

• 35:27Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. When I, when however, I found myself at school for the first time, I also found myself confronted with two other difficulties. In the first place, I found that all the other children wore hats or caps on their head and I had neither hat nor cap. In fact, I do not remember that up to the time of going to school, I had ever worn any kind of covering upon my head, nor do I recall that either I or anybody else had even thought about the need of covering for my head. But of course, when I saw how all the other boys were dressed, I began to feel quite uncomfortable. As usual, I put the case before my mother and she explained to me that she had no money with which to buy a store hat, which was a rather new institution at the time, among the members of my race and was considered quite the thing for young and old to own, but that she would find a way to help me out of the difficulty.

• 36:10Jocko Willink?

  She accordingly got two pieces of homespun, this is like denim, and sewed them together. And I was soon the proud possessor of my first cap. And here we get to the lesson. The lesson that my mother taught me in this has always remained with me. And I've tried as best I could to teach it to others. I have always felt proud whenever I think of the incident that my mother had the strength of character enough not to be led into the temptation of seeming to be that which she was not, of trying to impress my schoolmates and others with the fact that she was able to buy me a store hat when she was not. I have always felt proud that she refused to go into debt for that which she did not have the money to pay for.

• 36:54Jocko Willink?

  Since that time, I have owned many kinds of caps and hats, but never one of which I have felt so proud as of the cap made by two pieces of cloth sewed together by my mother.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  I have noted this I I was keep looking where to stop reading this lesson but then he says I have noted the fact but without satisfaction I need not add that several of the boys who began their careers with store hats and who were in my and who were my schoolmates and used to join in the sport that was made of me because I had only a homespun cap have ended their careers in the penitentiary while others not able to now buy any kind of hat and he obviously ended up very wealthy so lesson learned don't try and keep up with the Joneses don't go into debt like these are these are good lessons for your life

• 37:46Speaker 01

  yeah

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  especially don't go into debt for something that just looks cool

• 37:50Speaker 01

  right yeah that's been kind of going around on the internet lately

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  what's that

• 37:53Speaker 01

  the the like it's like a list of life advice and one of them is don't go broke trying to impress others and I was like yeah man that goes so deep because sometimes it's like not as conscious sometimes you're kind of like uh you know like I want that nicer car and you're gonna have that pay that bigger payment or whatever that it's like sure I can afford it barely you know kind of a thing but I got this nice car and everyone's gonna see me in my nice car kind of a thing you know and it's a spectrum where some things are real obvious you're just doing it to impress others in the but some things you don't really realize it till you think about it you know I was like man it's a good thing to kind of think about

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  you can get sucked into little ecosystems of stuff too like watches

• 38:31Speaker 01

  oh yeah

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  you know what I'm saying like watches is a big one

• 38:35Speaker 01

  big one and recently I've been like man I think I need a while I went snowboarding and you know when you want to see what time it is you gotta undo the zipper and you know bust out your phone or whatever I to have a watch would would be a very useful but um yes but

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  so are you checking out like the big time watches

• 38:52Speaker 01

  see that's the whole point of me even bringing it up so you kind of think about it right because really if okay so the last watch I had and this is gonna sound like a joke but it's not the last watch I had was you know maybe I don't know eight years ago or something like that it was one of those old school calculator watches

• 39:11Jocko Willink?

  You can edit this out if you want, bro. You don't need to tell everyone you were running this calculator.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  The, the reason I had it though is, or the reason I had a watch was for workouts. So, you know, when you go to the gym, like I time my rest between sets. So I didn't, you know, I didn't want to bust up my phone and nothing. So if it's on your watch, it's like just way easier, you know, or and easier than just looking up at the clock, wherever it is, you know, kind of a thing. And I was like, oh, let me just buy a cheap one. And you go on Amazon, you see all the chi, and then I saw the calculator one, which reminded me of when I was, you know, in elementary school, the cool kids had the calculator one. So I got it like, kind of like, oh, that'd be fun, you know, I got it, whatever. But I was just looking for complete functionality though. So, but you know, wearing it or whatever, it's kind of like, yeah, totally functions. But then when I stopped, uh, working out at public gyms, like I didn't, I didn't need it, so whatever.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so what are you looking at for watches for when you go snowboarding?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know.

• 40:01Jocko Willink?

  How much you think you're gonna spend?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Put it this way, I will not go broke trying to impress all this, how about that?

• 40:07Jocko Willink?

  What do you think you'll spend on a watch? And I'm kind of curious on your whole gig.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't know what, I don't even know how much watches cost.

• 40:15Jocko Willink?

  They cost about seventy bucks.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would think like a hundred bucks for like a good functional one. But here's the thing, so last time I looked into watches was I was talking to Jason Gardner, and he had the one, and I keep forgetting what it's called. But I looked at it, I was like, hey, that's nice, it looks real durable, and you can tell it's quality or whatever. So I started looking into them, and then there's all these different models and all the things. So you go down rabbit holes, you wait, I want that, I want this one with this deluxe thing, you know, so. I, I don't know what watch I'm gonna get, I have to go to the shop.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm glad that you're not going out and buying a, like you can buy a $10,000 watch, by the way.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:51Jocko Willink?

  Or you can buy a $50,000 watch.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:54Jocko Willink?

  A $50,000 watch, it doesn't have, it has less functionality than my $30 watch.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Right, and, and it's like, your $30 watch can take abuse.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  A $50,000, no matter, actually, it doesn't matter if it takes abuse or not, if it's $50,000, $100,000 watch. Doesn't matter if it can take abuse, you ain't abusing that thing. The thing has its own case, its own lock, its own, you know, all that stuff, oh yeah. So that thing's gonna be pristine, so it kind of defeats the purpose in that way.

• 41:24Jocko Willink?

  The other interesting thing there is though, like, he's saying that the other kids that had stuff, nice hats, they end up in the penitentiary, or they can't afford a hat in the future for themselves. And it goes back to that thing we were saying earlier, like, he had to struggle. And that struggle made him kinda a little bit more successful in the long run.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it takes a certain kind of person to be that reflective, though. Where, I mean, it sounds like his mom had had a lot of integrity too, you know? So you get that, just that little influence or whatever, that'll help a lot because not everyone who struggled wound up this strong pillar of the community. A lot of people struggled in very similar ways.

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  And they're right next to the guys in jail.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, so now he's talking about these difficulties that I had in school. First one was missing the hat and he says, "My second difficulty was with regard to my name, or rather a name. From the time I could remember anything, I'd been called simply Booker. Before going to school, it never occurred to me that it was needful or appropriate to have an additional name. When I heard the school roll called, I noticed that all the children had at least two names and some of them indulged in what seemed to me the extravagance of having three. I was in deep perplexity because I knew that my, that the teacher would demand of me at least two names and I only had one.

• 42:47Jocko Willink?

  By the time the occasion came for the enrolling of my name, an idea occurred to me, which I thought would make me equal to the situation. And so, when the teacher asked me what my full name was, I calmly told him Booker Washington. As if I had been called that name my whole life. And by the name, by that name, I have been since known. Later in life, I found that my mother had given me the name of Booker Taliaferro. Soon after I was born, but in some way that part of my name seemed to disappear for a long while was forgotten. But as soon as I found out about it, I revived it and made my full name Booker Taliaferro Washington.

• 43:31Jocko Willink?

  And think there are not many men in our country who have had the privilege of naming themselves in the way that I have.

• 43:40Jocko Willink?

  Just like legit.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  A kid just figuring out what his name's gonna be while the teachers, while they're waiting to call on you. I was thinking of. You go to a restaurant with a bunch of people.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 43:51Jocko Willink?

  And like, I'm already know what I'm getting when I get to the restaurant.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  And so as soon as the waiter comes over, I'm like, we're ready to order.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00Jocko Willink?

  But I know that there's someone at the, I'm like, I know what I'm, I'm gonna order, I'll go first. And I know that my wife is like, she's feeling like Booker T. Washington. She's like, wait a second, I gotta figure this out. That's how he gets to me. So. He was feeling that pressure.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yep. Uh. The name thing is crazy, you know, like you. So back in the day, a lot of slaves inherit their owner's name. So when I think of it like my, I'm a descendant of slaves, so. And I get reminded by like this kind of stuff where it's like Charles, the last name Charles is. Somewhere along the line, it was like our slave master. Like that's whose name I, I literally have my ancestor's slave.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  Is that confirmed? Or is that an assumption?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  It's assumption.

• 44:49Jocko Willink?

  Cause I mean, someone along the line might have just. Taken that last name.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, huh. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, the, uh, I did my ancestry.

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  And here's the, here's the, when I think about the reading thing too. So when you can go back far enough and they have like old school documents. And it's like, uh, what do you call it when like, if I sell you a big crate of stuff? It'll have the list of all the stuff, like a packing list almost.

• 45:16Jocko Willink?

  Packing list.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  That's what it looked like, all handwritten, by the way, in cursive. So. It'll have this, what looked like a packing list was, there was names on it. And there's these columns, like yes, no, right? And one of the columns was Ken Reed. So each name and all of them, so this was like a packing list for slaves essentially. Like, hey, you're gonna buy.

• 45:39Jocko Willink?

  Was this your direct ancestry?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. One of my ancestors was on that list. So if you, if you go to, uh, I think it's ancestry.com, one of these ones, right? And you can look, look up all, all these people in all these different ways. So you don't, not everyone, especially when you go far back enough, they don't have like an ID or something that you can see on there, right? So it's just any document that was recorded on there. And sometimes it's like the draft card or sometimes it's like this, they, they don't, some have pictures, some don't, you know? So anything like, if, you know, if it's just their name on some arbitrary document, they'll be like, oh, that's that person. And it's confirmed in all these different ways. And it'll have that document and then you'll see their name will be like highlighted.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you tell me there's a um a photograph of someone on your dad's side?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  Was it your like great, great, how many, his grandma or something?

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, aunt. Yeah, but I found out later she she wasn't, she was this daughter of a slave.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  So she was born after Emancipation Proclamation. But yeah, there's a photo of her.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  So we don't know where the last name Charles come from officially?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Officially, no.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  It could have been tagged or created after the Emancipation Proclamation. Or it could have been, and even even then it could have been like, well, I came from the Charles plantation. So we're just gonna take Charles.

• 47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I heard, and this is not confirmed in, you know, in, I'm sure there's an official way to confirm it. But from what was told to me is, yeah, it was the Charles plantation in South Carolina.

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  So we need to research that and find out what's up.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  I did, man. I went through like, I went down huge rabbit holes with that, but I couldn't really like nail it down through.

• 47:21Jocko Willink?

  But I think they've probably got even better records. When was the, when did you go through the rabbit holes?

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Last year, maybe two years ago.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so I don't know if it's proof that much.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Well, you can. So there's all these tools online that you can go and they, what you do is like, and I'm pretty sure it's Ancestry. It is ancestry.com. You go and you enter in all the information that you know about everyone. I mean, as many people as you want, basically, right? So if you want to like really go down, you enter in all the information that you know about everybody.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  In that, with that lineage or through that lineage, right? So you enter in that information, you, you know, save it or whatever. The system will cross cross-reference it to any potential matches of other people doing the same thing. Whether they're.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  This, and this is absent of genetic testing like 23andMe, right?

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's a whole different ballgame.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can do that part too, and that's, I didn't do that. So, and I've heard of some people in my family have done that. So there's that information, but I I don't know about that as much about that information as this other, this other way. So slowly by slowly, everyone's information all merges together for confirmation. So it's like, hey, we have a, uh, I think they call it a hint or something. We have a hint here. Where it's like information entered by other people and then you, then you can look at it and confirm, yes, that's him. That's who I'm talking about, or that's who I'm not talking about, you know? So it slowly confirms all this information and it all kind of comes together from everyone, kind of whoever's doing it.

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  So what was the furthest back that you got? So the first back you got was, uh, plantation in South Carolina?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that, South Carolina is, is pretty quick. It's like two generations, maybe three.

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  So didn't, didn't your dad move from South Carolina?

• 49:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it was his dad?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, my grandfather and grandmother. They were both in the same like town or something.

• 49:20Jocko Willink?

  And they made the Great Migration. Yeah, you kind of have the, uh, sort of the stereotypical path of the Great Migration North up to New York. And then the standard, not the standard, but that's, that's like, that's what happened. That's why it's called the Great Migration.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they went, yeah, they went to, from South Carolina to New York and then after New York went to New Jersey, which is right next to it. But, and then of course my dad went to, when he was like early, early twenties, he moved to Hawaii. So that's obviously that's different, but yeah.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  That's a great migration.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a bigger, bigger migration.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  Get out of New Jersey, head to Hawaii.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he, they, they had a little bit of a rough childhood there in the, he grew up in Brooklyn and you know, he was born in what? Forty-four. So you figure the fifties and then in the sixties, I think that's when he moved to Hawaii, something like that. I forget. Actually, I think he moved to like LA first or something like this, but.

• 50:16Jocko Willink?

  Gotta make that stop in LA.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Gotta.

• 50:18Jocko Willink?

  And then you realize LA ain't the place to be.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Hawaii, all day.

• 50:23Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. That's how, that's how Booker T. Washington got his name. That's how possibly Echo Charles got his last name.

• 50:33Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book. More than once I have tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honored and distinct distinguished ancestry, which I could trace back through a period of hundreds of years, and who had not only inherited a name, but a fortune and a proud family homestead. And yet I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these and had been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my color to do that for me, which I should do for myself. Come on, bro. That's freaking legit.

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  Years ago, I resolved that because I had no ancestry ancestry myself, I would leave a record of which my children would be proud and which might encourage them to still hire effort. Squared away. Fast forward a little bit, after I had worked in the salt furnace for some time, work was secured for me in the coal mine, which was operated mainly for the purpose of securing fuel for the salt furnace. Work in the coal mine, I always dreaded. One reason for this was that anyone who worked in the coal mine was always unclean, at least while at work, and it was a very hard job to get one's skin clean after the day's work was over.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Then it was fully a mile from the opening of the coal mine to the face of the coal. And all, of course, was in the blackest darkness. I'd not believe that one ever experiences anywhere else such darkness as he does in a coal mine. The mine was divided into a large number of different rooms or departments, and as I was never able to learn the location of all these rooms, I many times found myself lost in the mine. To add to the horror of being lost, sometimes my light would go out, and then if I did not happen to have a match, I would wander about in the darkness until by chance I found someone who'd give me a light. The work was not only hard, but it was dangerous. There was always the danger of being blown to pieces by a premature explosion of powder

• 52:38Jocko Willink?

  or being crushed by falling slate. Accidents from one or another of these causes were frequently occurring, and this kept me in constant fear.

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so people talk about like being in the SEAL teams and like, oh, it's a hard job.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you put me in a coal mine, bruh.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  That's hard.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  It's like a totally different ballgame.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm not, that's, that's, that's freaking, that's a cra- just that description?

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  In like, being in that just complete darkness, a mile to get to like underground?

• 53:16Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, one day while I work at the coal mine, I happened to overhear two miners talking about a great school for colored people somewhere in Virginia. This was the first time I'd ever heard of anything about any kind of school or college that was more pretentious than the little colored school in our own town. In the darkness of the mine, I noiselessly crept as close as I could to the two men who were talking. I heard one tell the other that not only was the school established for the members of any race, but the opportunities that it provided by which poor but worthy students could work out all or part of the cost of a board and at the same time be taught some trade or industry. So he hears these guys talking about this school.

• 53:55Jocko Willink?

  There, then shortly after that, he hears that there's an opportunity to be a servant for this woman, Ms. Viola Ruffner, who apparently had like the harshest reputation of being super strict, like psycho strict. But she was the, she was the wife of a northern general.

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, or he might not have been a northern, he was a general, but she was a Yankee. She was from Vermont. And so she gets, he gets hired at the doll, at the salary of five dollars a month. And he says this, "I'd heard so much about Mrs. Ruffner's severity that I was almost afraid to see her and trembled when I went into her presence. I had not lived with her many weeks, however, before I get, began to understand her. I soon began to learn that, first of all, she wanted everything to be kept clean about her, that she wanted things done promptly and systematically, and that at the bottom of everything, she wanted absolute honesty and frankness. Nothing must be sloven or slipshod. Every door, every fence must be kept in repair. I cannot recall, I cannot now recall how long I lived with Mrs. Ruffner before going to Hampton." That's where she ended up going to school.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  But I think it must have been a year and a half. At any rate, I hear repeat when I've said more than once before that the lessons I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as any education I've ever gotten anywhere else. Even to this day, I never see bits of paper scattered around a house or in a street that I do not want to pick up at once. I never see a filthy yard that I did not want to clean it. A paling, a paling off of fence that I did not want to put it on. An unpainted or unwhitewashed house that I do not want to paint or whitewash, or a buttons off one clothes, or a grease spot upon the floor that I do not want to call attention to. This dude got militaristic brainwashing.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  So let me ask you this too. I mean, this applies to your kids as well. So let's say I want my kids to be clean, or we'll say like tidy, right? You know, some kids are just messy and so. So I

• 55:51Speaker 01

  So my friend Squatty Lewis, I mentioned him before. He's a cop in the Big Island, by the way. He, so when I met him, he was always like super, everything about him was super clean. Like his shoes, his clothes, like clean, you know, like, and you know, some people, they'll have like a little bit of a stain or something, and it's kind of okay. And then some people are just crispy clean, right? He was one of these crispy clean guys. You go to his dorm room, everything squared away, like clean, right? So I'm like, huh, this guy almost like, kind of like to a crazy degree. Just a little bit, you know? So we go, first time I go to his house, Big Island, same deal. Inside clean, no dust, like nothing compared to my house, which I mean, it's not a messy house,

• 56:32Speaker 01

  but it's like, this is like museum level clean, everything. I'm like, huh. It would be cool to have kids that are kind of like that, where they're clean, you know, they, if he goes somewhere, he'll be like, and something's messy, he'll like, clean it up real quick, you know, he's like that guy. So I'm like, all right, how do you, how do you develop that in someone? So I had, I kind of landed on two little theories that I don't even know which one is correct. I probably felt wrong, I don't know, but. It's like, do you teach them to clean when they're young? Or do you make sure everything is clean when they're young?

• 57:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think both.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Both, right?

• 57:06Jocko Willink?

  But what you know what you gotta watch out for? Is if you impose it on your kids. This is the kid when you go to like their college dorm room and everything's disaster.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  Because everything was always clean going up and they're like rebelling against it.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I that's what I the thoughts I have too, right? Where I'm like, but then on the other hand, it's like, what if you? In whatever way provide just everywhere that you go and everywhere that that they grow up in or whatever the house. There's you know, the room is clean, so they get used to that standard of clean. So now if they go somewhere messy, it's kind of like they're uncomfortable. So they gotta clean it up real quick. Is what I'm saying, that's what Booker T kind of was. Or that's what he's saying he he felt.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  It's weird because I think you see people that get in the military and the military, you're gonna be like you're going through boot camp.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:49Jocko Willink?

  Things are gonna be squared away, things are gonna be clean.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:52Jocko Willink?

  I mean, they're gonna be clean, they're gonna be full, they're gonna be neat. Some people get done with boot camp, they stay that way. I mean, Leif Babbin still folds his T shirts the same way he learned at the Naval Academy, right?

• 58:01Speaker 01

  That's what I.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't do that.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  In fact, I only fold like my T shirts in a very sloppy way. Like just so they don't look, I don't just so they're not wrinkled, right?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  But there's no discipline in the way I fold my T shirts.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:16Jocko Willink?

  So you took the way it hit Leif was like, gotta fold the T shirts that way. And Leif's not a neat person, by the way, you know, that's just like one of the things.

• 58:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  Um, so I don't think I don't think there's a legit. I don't think there's an answer, I don't think any, I don't think a psychologist could answer this question.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, like there's not, there's not a very specific method.

• 58:35Jocko Willink?

  Protocol.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Huh, yeah, I wonder. But yeah, you because you can see that distinction with some people.

• 58:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And they're like, hey, that's. Also, people let it get out of control.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yes, in both ways, yes, exactly, yeah.

• 58:47Jocko Willink?

  So you want to be that nice balanced, you know, situation.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:51Jocko Willink?

  Clean, I like things to be clean and functional. In fact, when things are not functional, it bothers me a lot. Like if something's messy to the point where it's not functional, it bothers me.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  But I also am not gonna waste time doing something that's. That doesn't make sense. It's not necessary.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like there is a degree far enough on that spectrum where it's kind of obsessive.

• 59:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  They're unnecessary.

• 59:16Jocko Willink?

  It sounds like maybe our girl, Mrs. Ruffner, had a little bit of that going on.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:20Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 59:21Jocko Willink?

  When he gets done with Mrs. Ruffner, this, this, there's this, uh, school in Hampton. He's got to go from his place in Malden to Hampton, which is about 500 miles. This is where his school is going to be. And dude, he goes through this whole thing of what he's going through. He's begging rides, walking, hitching. Um, finally ends up sleeping under a sidewalk to, that's where he spends a couple of days. He goes and, and unloads a, a ship for money. He goes up and says, hey, do you need help unloading this ship? They're getting a bunch of iron off this ship. So he goes that. Spends more days underneath the sidewalk as he's saving up money. And the sidewalk thing comes back into play because he ends up going in the same, in, in, into the same city again.

• 1:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Instead of sleeping on the sidewalk, he's all kind of a done well in his life and it comes back. But he says this, when I'd saved enough, when I'd saved what I considered enough money with which to reach Hampton, I thanked the captain of the vessel for his kindness and started out again. With, without any usual, without any unusual occurrence, I reached the, I reached Hampton with a surplus of exactly 50 cents with which to begin my education. To me, it had been a long, eventful journey, but the first sight of the large, three-story brick school building seemed to have rewarded me for all that I'd undergone in order to reach the place. If the people who gave the money to provide that building could appreciate the influence of the sight it had on me,

• 1:00:47Jocko Willink?

  as well as upon thousands of other youths, they would feel all the more encouraged to make such gifts. It seemed to me the largest and most beautiful building I had ever seen. The sight of it seemed to give me new life. So then he goes in, he presents himself to the head teacher. And of course, this guy's been living on the streets, unloading iron from a ship. He has no change of clothes. And he rolls in there and is like, yo, I want to go to school here. And she's kind of like, uh, you look like a dirtbag. But he hangs out, he just waits, waits. And finally he says this, after some hours passed, the head teacher said to me, the adjoining uh, recitation room needs sweeping. Take the broom and sweep it.

• 1:01:29Jocko Willink?

  It occurred to me that, it occurred to me at once that here was my chance. Never did I receive an order with more delight. I knew that I could sweep for Mrs. Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do it when I lived with her. I swept the recitation room three times. Then I got a dusting cloth and dusted it four times, all the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, desk. I went over it four times with my dusting cloth, cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been thoroughly cleaned. I had the feeling that in a large measure, my future depended upon the impression I made upon the teacher in the cleaning of that room. When I was through, I reported to the head teacher. She was a Yankee woman who knew just where to look for the dirt.

• 1:02:12Jocko Willink?

  She went into the room and inspected the floor and closets. She took her handkerchief and rubbed it on the woodwork about the walls and over the table and benches. When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor or a particle of dust on any furniture, she quietly remarked, "I guess you will do to enter this institution." So there you go. The sweeping of the recitation room in the manner that I did seems to have paved the way for me to get through to Hampton. Miss Mary F. Mackey, the head teacher, offered me a position as janitor. This, of course, I gladly accepted because it was a place where I could work out nearly all the cost of my board. The work was hard and taxing, but I stuck to it.

• 1:02:55Jocko Willink?

  I had a large number of rooms to care for and I had to work late into the night while at the same time I had to rise by four o'clock in the morning in order to build the fires and have little time to prepare my lessons. In all my career at Hampton and ever since I have been out in the world, Miss Mary F. Mackey, the head teacher to whom I have referred, proved one of my strongest and most helpful friends. Her advice and encouragement were always helpful in strengthening to me in the darkest hour. I've spoken of the impression that was made upon me by the building, by the buildings and general appearance of the Hampton Institute, but I've not spoken of that which made the greatest and most lasting impression on me.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  And that was a great man, the noblest, rarest being that has ever, that it has ever been my privilege to meet. I refer to the late General Samuel C. Armstrong.

• 1:03:47Jocko Willink?

  One might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, classrooms, teachers and industries, and given the men and women there of opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, and that alone would have been an education. It would have been difficult, it would be difficult to describe the hold that he had upon the students at Hampton or the faith they had in him. In fact, he was worshipped by his students.

• 1:04:10Jocko Willink?

  While I was at Hampton, I'm just reading little chunks of this. While I was at Hampton, while I was a student at Hampton, the dormitories became so crowded that it was impossible to find room for all who wanted to be admitted. In order to help remedy the difficulty, the general conceived of a plan of putting up tents to be used as room. As soon as it became known that General Armstrong would be pleased if some of the older students would live in the tents during the winter, nearly every student in the school volunteered. I was one of the volunteers. The winter wait that we spent in those tents was intensely cold and we suffered severely. How much I am sure General Armstrong never knew because we made no complaints. It was enough for us to know that we were pleasing General Armstrong and that we were making it possible for an additional number of students to secure an education.

• 1:04:54Jocko Willink?

  More than once during a cold night when a stiff gale would be blowing, our tent was lifted bodily and we would find ourselves in the open air. The general would usually pay a visit to the tents in early in the morning and his earnest, cheerful, encouraging voice would dispel any feeling of despondency. So there you go, General Armstrong.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, when I first went to Hampton, I do not recall that I had ever slept in a bed that had two sheets on it. In those days, there were not many buildings there and room was very precious. There were seven other boys in the same room with me, most of them, however, students who had been there for some time. The sheets were quite a puzzle to me. The first night I slept under both of them. The second night I slept on top of both of them, but by watching the other boys, I learned my lesson and have been trying to follow it ever since and to teach it to others.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Ah, another one here. The great prevailing idea that seemed to take possession of everyone was to prepare himself to lift up the people at his home. No one seemed to think of himself and the officers and teachers, what a rare set of human beings they were, they worked for the students night and day and seasons in and out of season. They seemed happy only when they were helping the students in some manner. This is whole next chapter is called helping others. That's his driving force.

• 1:06:15Jocko Willink?

  He says, when I left school at the end of my first year, I owed the institution $16 that I had not been able to work out. I economized in every way that I could think of, did my own Washington, went Washington, went without necessary garments. But still I found my summer vacation ending and I did not have $16. One day during my, during the last week of my stay, I found one of the, I found, oh, he's working at a restaurant. One week, one day during the last week of my stay in the restaurant, I found under one of the tables, a crisp new $10 bill. I could hardly contain myself. I was so happy. As it was not my place of business, I felt it was a proper thing to do to show the money to the proprietor. This I did.

• 1:06:56Jocko Willink?

  He seemed as glad as I was, but he coolly explained to me that as it was his place of business, he had a right to keep the money and proceeded to do so. This I confessed was another pretty hard blow to me. I will not say that I became discouraged. For as I now look back over my life, I do not recall that I ever became discouraged over anything that I set out to accomplish. I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who were always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. I determined to face the situation just as it was.

• 1:07:38Jocko Willink?

  At the end of the week, I went to the treasurer of the Hampton Institute and told him my frank condition. To my gratification, he told me that I could recenter the institution, re-enter the institution. And then he would trust me to pay the debt when I could. During the second year, I continued to work as a janitor. So there you go. Not mad. Look, I found $10, which by the way, there's a decent chance that might be going into a brother's pocket. Like $10? Yeah. He went to school for a whole year and I was 16. So $10 is a big number. It's a lot of money. But he just doesn't let it get him down and he doesn't accept excuses. He's in no, hey, that's what it says here. I never had much patience for the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain

• 1:08:21Jocko Willink?

  why one cannot succeed. That's excuses. No excuses for Booker T. Washington. Well, tell me why you can't get it done. I'm really, I'm not playing that game.

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Perhaps the most valuable thing that I got out of my second year was an understanding and use of value of the Bible. Miss Natalie Lord, one of the teachers from Portland, Maine, taught me how to use and love the Bible. Before this, I had never cared a great deal about it, but now I learned to love and read the Bible, not only for the spiritual help which it gives, but on account of its literature. The lessons taught me in this respect took such a hold upon me that at present time, when I am home, no matter how busy I am, I always make it a rule to read a chapter or a portion of a chapter in the morning before the beginning of each day of work. Whatever ability I may have as a public speaker, I owe to, I own measure to Miss Lord. When she found out that I had some inclination in this direction, she gave me private lessons in this matter of breathing, emphasis and articulation.

• 1:09:15Jocko Willink?

  Simply to be able to talk in public for the sake of talking has never had the least attraction to me. In fact, I consider that there is nothing so empty and unsatisfactory as mere public speaking. But from my early childhood, I had a desire to do something to make the world better and then to be able to speak to the world about that thing. So people are just investing in him as a person. And so I, when I'm working with companies, I'm always like, hey, whoever had somebody invest in you, like take personal, personal time, personal effort to make you, to make you better, to help you along the way. And usually 95% of people raise their hands, myself included. And then you think, oh, how much did that help you?

• 1:10:00Jocko Willink?

  It helped me a lot. And then how much do you appreciate that person now, today? And everyone raised their hand, of course, a ton. And you can see this guy's writing a whole book about somebody that took a little extra time to help him learn how to talk, learn how to speak better.

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy because he references those skills too, where it's like, oh yeah, I did this and I knew how to do this because of this person and they taught me all that, you know? So it's like, it's like, it's very fresh in his mind, you know, where all these skills come from.

• 1:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Lasting impact.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Last.

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  Lasting impact. And that's what this book is about, helping people and how appreciative you can be and how if you want to do something good in your life, you help other people out. So this book is about, and he's talking about people that helped him. I get some with his second year at Hampton, he was able to go back home and spend his vacation in, in West Virginia.

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  And then this happens about three o'clock in the morning, my brother John found me asleep in this house. He'd been working at a house, or sorry, traveling and spent the night in a house. About three o'clock in the morning, my brother John found me asleep in this house and broke to me as gently as he could the sad news that our dear mother had died during the night. This seemed to be the saddest and blankest moment of my life. For several years, my mother had not been in good health, but I had no idea when I parted from her the previous day that I should never see her alive again. Besides that, I had always had an intense desire to be with her when she did pass away. One of the chief ambitions which spurred me on at Hampton was that I might be able to get in a position in which I could make my mother comfortable and happy. She had so often expressed the wish that

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  she might be permitted to live to see her children educated and started out in the world. Fast forward a little bit, three weeks before the time for the opening of the term at Hampton, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter from my good friend, Miss Mary F. Mackey, the lady principal, asking me to return to Hampton two weeks before the opening of the school in order that I might assist her in cleaning the buildings and getting things in order for the new school year. This was just an opportunity that I wanted. Gave me the chance to secure a credit in the treasurer's office. I started for Hampton at once. During these two weeks, I was taught a lesson which I shall never forget. Miss Mackey was a member of one of the oldest and most cultured families of the North, and yet for two weeks, she

• 1:12:13Jocko Willink?

  worked by my side, cleaning windows, dusting rooms, putting beds in order and whatnot. She felt that things would not be in condition for opening of school unless every windowpane was perfectly clean, and she took the greatest satisfaction in helping to clean them herself, the work which I have described she did every year that I was at Hampton. It was hard for me at this time to understand how a woman of her education and social standing could take such delight in performing such service in order to assist in the elevation of an unfortunate race. Ever since then, I have had no patience with any school for my race in the South which did not teach its students the dignity of labor.

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  This dude is all about hard work, by the way. And you're gonna see this theme throughout this, this whole book, the theme of being able to understand how to do things, learning how to do things, and then working hard to do them, is what this guy, one of the underlying things this guy believes in, which is a great lesson for any human being. You know, you hear it all the time, it's a, it's a, it's almost become, you know, it's like, oh, the grind, it's basically the grind. This guy's the original person on the grind, grind culture.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Yep, that's him.

• 1:13:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, Booker T. Washington is on the grind.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  And so, apparently, was Miss Mary F. Mackey. She's on the grind.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:37Jocko Willink?

  She's rich. She's from a great family. She's still on the grind.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:40Jocko Willink?

  Getting in there. This is a leadership lesson, too. This is picking up the brass, right?

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, this is her. She doesn't have to do this. I mean, she's the freaking head of the school. She's in there cleaning windows. Respect.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  I noticed that's the second time where he probably says it a bunch more, but how he mentions he has little patience for people who are not like that. Yeah. It's like, huh.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  It's a nice way of putting it.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:14:08Jocko Willink?

  All right. Fast forward a little bit. The greatest benefits that I got out of my life at the Hampton Institute perhaps may be classified under two heads. So this is the big lessons that he took away. First was the contact with the great man, General S. C. Armstrong, who I repeat was, in my opinion, the rarest, strongest, and most beautiful character that has ever been my privilege to meet. Second, at Hampton, for the first time, I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there, I had a good deal of then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton,

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor's own sake, and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings.

• 1:15:13Jocko Willink?

  At that institution, I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness. My first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy.

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  So, like I said, this book is about hard work and the value of hard work.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  And to love labor. For its own sake, like the work itself is good. Never mind the paycheck that you're getting, just the work itself.

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a very interesting and memorable and useful.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Thing he said there where he mentioned the world needs things done. And that is kind of like a good way to look at it where you can find yourself getting sucked into certain things. But the result of those things, like you're not going to be any use to anybody. And you can kind of differentiate what you're doing and you know, what game you're playing, if you will. If you look at it through that lens, you know?

• 1:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what's on the Warrior Kid podcast of, you know, if kids like, oh, what can I do for work? And I always say, find something that people don't want to do that they need done. This is the exact same advice he's getting, then do it, do it well. And you're gonna, if you can do something for people, or you can give them something, you can make something for them that they want, that they need. You're gonna be set. That's what it is.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you, you could, you could look at it as a binary, like, hey, are you gonna be useful or useless?

• 1:16:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  If you look at it in those terms, you'd be like useful all day.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep, and you can look at it in non-binary, are you going to be useless? And then once you get into useful, how useful are you going to be? Cause the more useful you are, the better results you're gonna have in everything.

• 1:17:04Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. I was completely out of money when I graduated in company with other Hampton students. I secured a place as a table waiter in a summer hotel in Connecticut and managed to borrow enough money with which to get there. I had not been in this hotel for long before I found out that I knew practically nothing about waiting on a hotel table. The head waiter, however, supposed that I was a accomplished waiter. He soon gave me charge of a table at which there sat four or five wealthy and rather aristocratic people. My ignorance of how to wait upon them was so apparent that they scolded me in such a severe manner that I became frightened and left their table, leaving them sitting there without food. As a result of this, I was reduced from position of waiter to that of dish carrier, but this guy is like hard to discourage, but I determined to learn the business of waiting

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  and did so within a few weeks and was restored to my former position. I've had the satisfaction of being a guest in this hotel several times since I was a waiter there. You started at the bottom. My man.

• 1:18:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, while it was while at my home, it was while my home was at Malden that what was known as the Ku Klux Klan was at in the height of its activity. This is fast forward a little bit. The Ku Klux were bands of men who had joined themselves together for the purpose of regulating the contact of the color, the conduct of the colored people, especially with the object of preventing the members of the race from exercising any influence in politics.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Like patrollers and they go, he, he gives a little thing about the patrollers back in the day that were basically trying to keep, trying to make sure slaves were being kept and not escaping or not causing problems. And he says, like the patrollers, the Ku Klux operated almost wholly at night. They were however, more cruel than the patrollers. Their object in the main were to crush out the political aspirations of the Negroes, but they did not confine themselves to this because schoolhouses as well as churches were burned by them. And many innocent persons were made to suffer during this period, not a few color people lost their lives. The Ku Klux period was, I think, the darkest part of the Reconstruction days.

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  I have referred to this unpleasant part of history of the South, simply for the purpose of calling attention to the great change that has taken place since the days of the Ku Klux. Today, there are no such organizations in the South, and the fact that such ever existed is almost forgotten by both races. There are few places in the South now where public sentiment would permit such organizations to exist.

• 1:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Well,

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  there you go. I think we, sometimes I think we're heading in a different racial direction. There's a lot of people that focused on, focus on race more than any other part of existence.

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  But at the time, you know, and this is around the turn of the century, he's like, hey, look, these things are done. At least from his perspective.

• 1:20:12Jocko Willink?

  He says, "The years from 1867 to 1878, I think, may be called the period of Reconstruction. This included the time that I spent as a student at Hampton and as a teacher in West Virginia during the whole of the Reconstruction period. Two ideas were constantly agitating in the minds of colored people, or at least in the minds of a large part of the race. One of these was the craze for Greek and Latin learning, and the other was a desire to hold office."

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  So there's two things that he's going to address here, this, this desire to learn Greek and Latin. He kind of puts that as a whole genre of learning. You can probably guess where this is going. These are languages that people don't speak anymore. And he kind of, his basic assessment is like, why are you trying to learn something? That is, doesn't exist anymore. Greek, Latin. And no offense against the people out there that are starting Greek and Latin, good on you. But back in the day,

• 1:21:10Jocko Willink?

  He's saying, what are you learning this for? And the political thing. He says this about the political thing. The temptations to enter political life were so alluring that I came very near to yielding to them at one time, but I was kept from doing so by the feeling that I would be helping in a more substantial way by assisting in the laying of the foundation of the race through a generous education of the hand, head and heart. I saw colored men who were members of the state legislators and county officers who, in some cases, could not read or write, and whose morals were as weak as their education.

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  He's got his own. He's, he's, he's, he's holding the line. Yeah. In the fall of 1878, after having taught school in Malden for two years, and after I had succeeded in preparing several of the young men and women besides my two brothers to enter the Hampton Institute, I decided to spend some months in Washington DC studying. I remained there for eight months.

• 1:22:08Jocko Willink?

  And this is where he gets into this, um, he, he talks about there's no in- industrial training like he had at the Hampton Institute. He says, "The students at the other school seemed to be less self-dependent. They seemed to give more attention to mere outward appearances. In a word, they did not appear to me to be bringing, to be beginning at the bottom on a real, solid foundation to the extent they were at Hampton. They knew more about Latin and Greek when they left school, but they seemed to know less about life and its conditions as they would meet in their homes." So, this dude was thinking, you gotta learn how to do something. You know? This was got, not a guy that was getting a, a degree in, you know,

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  some liberal arts major.

• 1:22:59Jocko Willink?

  He was getting a degree in like, something. Engineering. You're gonna, when he opens up the Tuskegee Institute, like, they start, this is what you're gonna learn. You're gonna walk out of there, you're gonna be, you're gonna be an employable dude. Useful. You're gonna be a useful person. Cause there's male and female, I shouldn't just say dude. But male and female, if you go to the Tuskegee Institute, when you get done there, you're gonna be a productive member of society with like multiple skillsets. You're gonna get educated, you're gonna, you're gonna learn classic education as well, but trust me, you're gonna know how to make bricks. You're gonna know how to build, you're gonna know how to do carpentry.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  What do you say, hand, heads and hearts?

• 1:23:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, hands, heads and hearts. There you go. That's a good thing to, good thing to do.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  How do you train someone's morals?

• 1:23:46Jocko Willink?

  I think you have to, I think you learn them through stories, right? I think that's, you know, when you look at how we learn morals and how we pass them on, the best, the most common way to do that is through stories. You know, that's where the Bible is a bunch of stories about how things happened. But any of these parables that you get from the Bible, but then also, you know, the boy who cried wolf, right? All those are just stories. So those, those moral, those morals come from hearing stories. Where the stories come from is, you know, you could be a lot of different sources. But it's everything from the Bible to nursery rhymes to whatever. They're all, that's where you're gonna learn this stuff from.

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels like that's like one of those, kinda like in a way like leadership where it's seen from the outside, it seems like, hey, this is just something you sort of develop incidentally almost through, you know, as you, as you grow up. But there, yeah, it feels like there has to be a way to actually train morals, like you get a, you know, a young man or whatever who is weak morally.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is one of the reasons why The Way of the Warrior Kid. You know, one of the reasons that I wrote that book was to give this code for kids to go off of in life, because that's a moral code. You know, that is a moral code and it's a simple one, it's a straightforward one, it's a basic one, but you can apply that thing. You know, through your whole life. But the reason is, is because we've gotten to a point in society where you're not getting your morals from school. You're not getting from church, because a lot of people aren't going to church. You're not getting them from school because they're not teaching them in school. You're not getting them from. The Boy Scouts, because the people aren't doing that anymore.

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  So where are you getting your moral code from? So, oh, Way of the Warrior Kid is one place you can get it from. And, and same thing with the, the Code Diva, the Code and the Protocol book that Dave Burke and Sarah Armstrong and I wrote. It's like, just, just read those things. Look, you can make up your own code, which is awesome. But if you don't have a code that you're living by, problematic. But, you know, back in the day, Ten Commandments, right? Here's kind of the basic rules that you need to abide by. And yet, when you ask the question, where do you teach people morals? Well, you used to get it, some from school, some from church. Where do you get it from now? Uh huh. There's a gap there.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, seems like it would have to be within the family, I guess, in one way or another.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, I guess I should have put that as the primary place, right? The primary place, but you're right in the fact that you should be getting it from your family. But where's your family getting it? Your family's getting their code from church or from school. They got it from school. And so, yes, you're right. The primary place should be the family. But again, another reason for the Warrior Kid books. Like, a lot of times, the family's a little different now. You know, how often is the family sitting around and having dinner every night? You know, how often they get around the table and sit down and eat dinner? I can tell you this, when my kids were younger, I didn't do that at all. Didn't do it at all. And, oh, I should just, let me rephrase it. Very rarely, no more than once a week, would me, my wife, and all my kids get around the table and eat a meal.

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  I would like to go back in time and fix that, but it's gone. And, you know, everyone's got things going on. They got work, they got this, they got that. And, and so, where, your great question. And you know what Booker T is saying is like, oh, we need to teach their minds, their hands, and their hearts. That's, we need to teach them morals. Because otherwise, like you're saying, these aren't, these aren't. These aren't, you're not born with morals. You're not. You need to be taught them. And people along the way can teach you, and that's what is so cool about this book is he's kinda, you can see where he's piecing these things together. He's getting it from people, right? He's getting it from General Armstrong.

• 1:27:44Jocko Willink?

  He's getting it from Olivia, what's her name? Violet.

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  Viola.

• 1:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Viola, he's getting it from Viola, he's getting a little bit of his morals from Viola. Oh, you gotta be neat and clean. He's getting stuff from General Armstrong, gotta help other people. He's, he's getting it from Miss Lord, who's teaching him the Bible. So he's getting, he's building his moral structure as he's growing up. And that's one of the coolest things about the book, is you can see this kinda thing, you can see it kinda build as he goes through his life.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're coming from sources that seem strict and consistent.

• 1:28:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes, strict, consistent, positive, right? Because think of the other morals that you can grow up with, right? I mean, it happens all the time, you know, if you're, you're around a bunch of people that are, you know, thieves, or they're scamming people, or they're hurting people, like you grow up, that's what the morals you're gonna get.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Right. You, that, and I didn't even think of that.

• 1:28:36Jocko Willink?

  Those are the morals you might get, cuz you might be able to say, I don't wanna act that way.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Right, and, and it can be inversely, and you met, what you just said, positive, you added positive, which the more I think about that even right now, it's like dang, that's really, really important, because you can be strict and, and consistently strict too. Or, or sorry, strict and consistent, but if it's like, if the kid or whoever, right, the, the, the learner, if they're, if they regard it as negative, or abusive, or anything negative, they're, the chance of rebellion is super high. It seems like it anyway. But if it's positive, like, man, you're just gonna take that, like, that's like one of the better ways to learn things, especially hard and useful things.

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  That positivity.

• 1:29:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Strict, consistent, positive.

• 1:29:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I think there's a, uh, you know, you talked about integrity earlier. I think there's a level of integrity, you know, if you're my kid, and I'm telling you one thing, but I'm acting a different way. I think that's a real problem.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's a real problem.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's part, that's kinda part of that consistency piece as well, where, you know, like,

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  You should be getting good grades, right? And then sometimes it's not that big of a deal. So it's kind of like, I have no real integrity, no, no real direction, you know?

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Consistency, absolutely.

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:56Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  So now he's actually going, he starts doing some speaking. Um, he's taking a train back to Hampton at this point to give a speech, a commencement day speech. He says, "The address which I delivered on commencement day seems to have pleased everyone, and many kind encouraging words were spoken to me regarding it soon after my return home to West, to my home in West Virginia, where I had planned to continue teaching. I was again surprised to receive a letter from General Armstrong as asking me to return to Hampton, partly as a teacher and partly to pursue some supplementary studies. This was in the summer of 1879. About this time, the experiment was being tried for the first time. General Armstrong of educating Indians at Hampton.

• 1:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Few people then had any confidence in the ability of the Indians to receive education and to profit by it. General Armstrong was anxious to try the experiment systematically on a large scale. He secured from the reservation in the western states over 100 wild and for the most part perfectly ignorant Indians, the greater proportion of whom were young men. The special work which the general desired me to do was a sort, to be a sort of house father to the Indian young men. That is, I was to live in the building with them and have charge of their discipline, clothing, rooms, and so on. This was a very tempting offer, but I had become so much absorbed in my work in West Virginia that I dreaded to give it up. However, I tore myself away with it, from it.

• 1:31:28Jocko Willink?

  I did not know how to refuse to perform any service that General Armstrong desired of me. On going to Hampton, I took up my residence in a building. With about seventy-five Indian youths. I was the only person in the building who is not a member of their race. At first, I had a good deal of doubt about my ability to succeed. I knew that the average Indian felt himself above the white man and, of course, he felt himself far above the Negro, largely on account of the fact of the Negro having submitted to slavery, a thing which the Indian would never do. The Indians in the Indian Territory owned a large number of slaves during the days of slavery. Aside from this, there was a general feeling

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  that the attempt to educate and civilize the red men at Hampton would be a failure. All of this made me proceed very cautiously, for I felt keenly the great responsibility. But I was determined to succeed. It was not long before I had the complete confidence of the Indian, and not only this, but I think I am safe in saying that I had their love and respect. I found that they were about like any other human beings, that they responded to kind treatment and resented ill treatment. They were continually planning to do something that would add to my happiness and comfort. The things that they did, the things that they disliked most, I think,

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  were to have their long hair cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking. But no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man clothes, eats the white man's food, speaks the white man's language, and professes the white man's religion. So, a very interesting aspect here, um, from his perspective, as these Indians show up. And the key part that I underline that is, this is a good lesson for everybody. I found that they were about like any other human beings,

• 1:33:36Jocko Willink?

  that they responded to kind treatment and resented ill treatment. You want people to do, you want people to get on board, treat them well. Treat them with respect. Listen to what they have to say. That's what you do. And also imposing your culture on other people doesn't, doesn't, doesn't work. That's not a good way to move forward. And this is like, I'm just talking about culture like in a company. You know, if my company acquires your company and I say, this is how we do it here. Oh, we don't know. How do you guys do it? And, and, and then you let the culture sort themselves out because there's some things about you, culture in your company that might not be as good as the culture I have in my company.

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, when, when we started working with the army or the Marine Corps, we didn't say, well, this is how we do it in the SEAL teams. We didn't say that. Nope. How do you guys do it?

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  How do you want to make this happen?

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  He goes on to say, while I was in charge of the Indian boys at Hampton, I had one or two experiences which illustrate the curious workings of caste in America. One of the Indian boys was taken ill and it became my duty to take him to Washington, deliver him over to the Secretary of the Interior and get a receipt for him in order that he might be returned to his Western Reservation. At the time, I was rather ignorant of the ways of the world during my journey to Washington on a steamboat. When the bell rang for dinner, I was careful to wait and not enter the dining room until after the greater part of the passengers had finished their meal. Then with my charge, I went to the dining saloon. The man in charge politely informed me that the Indian could be served, but I could not.

• 1:35:08Jocko Willink?

  I never could understand how he knew just where to draw the color line since the Indian I were about the same complexion. The steward, however, seemed to be an expert in this manner. I had been directed by the authorities at Hampton to stop at a certain hotel in Washington with my charge, but went in. But when I went to this hotel, the clerk stated that he would be glad to receive the Indian into the house, but said that he could not accommodate me.

• 1:35:37Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  He goes on to talk about, well, that's, that's just interesting, you know, it's like the times. I mean, what, what, like, what does, what heinous way to go through? What a, what a heinous history, part of history that is.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about this as, as this really helped him. Again, like he talks about how this helped him learn how to help people prepare for this type of behavior in the future. And when he ended up with the Tuskegee Institute.

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  This is that these, the type of things that helped him learn to teach.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. General Armstrong asked me to take charge of the night school and I did so. At the beginning of this school, there were about 12 strong, earnest men and women who entered the class. During the day, the greater part of the young men worked in the school's sawmill and the young women worked in the laundry. The work was not easy in either place, but in all my teaching, I never taught pupils who gave me much genuine satisfaction as these did. They were good students and mastered their work thoroughly. They were, they were so much in earnest that only the ringing of the retiring bell would make them stop studying. And they would often urge me to continue the lessons after the usual hour for going to bed come.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  So he was just talking about how these, this night school, these kids had to work and they were the hardest working kids. They appreciated it.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  In May of 1881, near the close of my first year in teaching at the night school in a way that I had not dared expect. The opportunity opened for me to begin my life work. One night in the chapel, after the usual chapel exercises were over, General Armstrong referred me, referred to the fact that he received a letter from some gentleman in Alabama, asking him to recommend someone to take charge of what was to be a normal school for colored people in the little town of Tuskegee in that state.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  Before going to Tuskegee, I had expected to find there a building and all necessary apparatus ready for me to begin teaching. To my disappointment, I found nothing of the kind. I did find, though, which no costly building and apparatus can supply, hundreds of hungry, earnest souls who wanted to secure knowledge. So there you go. He gets assigned to open the school, the Tuskegee Institute. He goes, there's nothing there. This guy doesn't care, though. That's just like, whatever. This is just no factor for him. He lives a life of no factor. I'm a slave, no factor. Oh, I'm getting, I have to work in a, you know, in a coal mine? No factor. I'm getting racially discriminated against? No factor. Watch this.

• 1:38:39Jocko Willink?

  So, fast forward. On the morning that I opened, that the school opened, thirty students reported for, this is the Tuskegee Institute. On the morning that the school opened, thirty students reported for admission. I was the only teacher. The students were about equally divided between the sexes. It was interesting, it was also interesting to note how many big books some of them had studied, and how many high sounding subjects some of them claimed to have mastered. The bigger the book, and the longer the name of the subject, the prouder they felt of their accomplishment. Some had studied Latin, one or two had studied Greek. This, they thought, entitled them to a special distinction. In fact, one of the saddest things I saw was a young man who had attended some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin with grease

• 1:39:24Jocko Willink?

  on his clothing, filth all around him, and weeds in the garden, engaged in studying a French grammar. Let me just make sure you understand that. He's like, totally, one of the saddest things he saw was this kid that looks like crap, looks like a slob, he's all dirty, and yet he knows how to speak French. He's like, bro!

• 1:39:45Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing speaking French? You haven't learned how to do your laundry. You've learned how to build, uh, you know, build, improve your cabin.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  The students who came first seemed to be fond of memorizing long and complicated rules in grammar and mathematics, but had little thought or knowledge of applying these rules to their everyday life.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he goes, "On the end of the first six weeks, a new and rare face entered the school as co-teacher, Miss Olivia A. Davidson, who later became my wife. Miss Davidson was born in Ohio and received her preparatory education in the public schools of that state. When little more than a girl, she heard of the need of teachers in the South, and she went to the state of Mississippi and began teaching there. Later, she taught in the city of Memphis. Miss Davidson's experience in the South showed her that people needed something more than book learning. She heard of the Hampton system of education and decided that was what she wanted in order to prepare herself for better work in the South. Miss Davidson and I began consulting as to the future of the school from the first. The students were making progress in learning books and in developing their minds, but it came apparent at once, if we were to make any permanent impression upon those

• 1:40:52Jocko Willink?

  who had come to us for training, we must do something besides teach them mere books. The students had come from homes where they had no opportunities for lessons, which we would teach them how to care for their bodies. With few exceptions, the homes in Tuskegee in which the students boarded were but little improvement upon those which they had come. We wanted to teach the students how to bathe, how to care for their teeth and clothing. We wanted to teach them how to eat, how to eat, or sorry, what to eat and how to eat it properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this, we wanted to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with the spirit of industry, thrift, and economy, that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they left us. We wanted to teach them to study actual things instead of mere books alone."

• 1:41:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, this would be a really helpful thing for educators to be paying attention to right now. Cause a lot of kids, they get it done with college. I mean, high school, same thing. They, they go to high school, they learn how to get into college. They didn't learn how to actually do anything. They don't know how to fix a car. They don't know how to do plumbing. They don't know how to install electrical. They don't know how to do any of that stuff. They know how to take a test to get into college. What do they learn in college? Is that where they learn electrical? Is that where they learn plumbing? No, no, no. Some of them do. Not a lot of them.

• 1:42:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so that's, so that's what they set this education system up for. Um, they end up, he's making moves. I'll tell you what, he's, he's, he's a good businessman. He's making moves. He's growing. They end up, there's an old plantation that's for sale next door.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  He wants to buy it. Doesn't have any money, but gets a general, general J F B Marshall, who's the treasurer of the Hampton Institute. He decides he's gonna lend with his personal funds to buy this chunk of land. Um, he says, "Our next effort was in the direction of increasing the cultivation of the land so as to secure some return from it, and at the same time, give the students training in agriculture. All the industries in Tuskegee have been started in natural and logical order, growing out of the needs of a community settlement. We began with farming because we wanted something to eat." So there you go. Oh, we bought land. Now we're gonna start farming the land. And what do you get to do when you farm the land? You get to teach the people how to farm.

• 1:43:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, it goes on.

• 1:43:26Jocko Willink?

  They needed a building. They start building this building. "Before the building was completed, we passed through some very trying seasons. More than once, our hearts were made to bleed, as it were, because bills were failing, were falling due that we did not have any money to meet. Perhaps no one who has gone, who has not gone through the experience, month after month, of trying to erect buildings and provide equipment for a school when no one knew where the money was to come from, can properly appreciate the difficulties under which we, we labored. During the first years at Tuskegee, I recall that night after night, I would roll and toss my bed without sleep because of the anxiety and uncertainty which we were in regarding money. I knew that in a large degree, we were trying an experiment, that of testing whether or not it was possible

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  for Negroes to build up and control the affairs of a large educational institution. I knew that if we failed, it would injure the whole race. I knew that the presumption was against us. I knew that in case of the white people beginning such an enterprise, it would be taken for granted that they were going to succeed. But in our case, I felt that people would be surprised if we succeeded. All of this made a burden which pressed down on us. Sometimes it seemed at a rate of a thousand pounds to the inch."

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, I was married to Miss Fanny N. Smith of Malden, West Virginia. So he briefly talked about that, he gets married as she ends up passing away. Um, but I wanted to just mention that. Fast forward a little bit, "From the very beginning at Tuskegee, I was determined to have the students do not only the agricultural and domestic work, but to have them erect their own buildings. My plan was to have them, while performing this service, taught the least, the latest and best methods of labor, so that the school would not only get the benefit of their efforts, but the students themselves would be taught to see not only utility in labor, but beauty and dignity.

• 1:45:23Jocko Willink?

  Would be taught, in fact, how to lift labor up from mere drudgery and toil and would learn to love work for its own sake. My plan was not to teach them to work in the old way, but to show them how to make the forces of nature, air, water, steam, electricity, horsepower, assist them in their labor. At first, many advised against the experiment of having the buildings erected by the labor of the students, but I was determined to stick to it. I told those who doubted the wisdom of the plan that I knew that our first buildings would not be so comfortable or so complete in their finish as buildings erected by experienced hands of outside workmen, but that in teaching of the civilization, self-help, reliance, self-reliance, the erection of buildings by the students themselves

• 1:46:07Jocko Willink?

  would more than compensate for any lack of comfort or fine finish." So this dude's like, "Hey, we're building our own buildings." That is no small task. We just decide, "Hey, I'm gonna take a bunch of students and we're gonna do our best to build the buildings." And he says, "Look, they're not gonna be that, they're not gonna be perfect, I get it. Be some rough edges, but it's gonna be worth it." He says, "Not, fast forward a little bit, not, not a few times when a new student has been led to the temptation of marring the looks of some building by lead pencil marks or by cuts of a jackknife, I have heard an old student remind him, 'Don't do that, this is our building, I helped put it up.'" "Bro, don't be, don't be putting graffiti marks on this thing, I built it."

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  This little, little bit of ownership right there.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what color of skin merit is found.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  I have found too, that is the visible, tangible that goes a long ways in softening prejudices. The actual sight of a first-class house that a negro has built is 10 times more potent than pages of discussion about a house that he ought to build, or perhaps could build. Man, go out and do it. That's what he's saying. Do it. Get it done.

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  Nowadays, we say, uh, don't talk about it, be about it.

• 1:47:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go. That's what, that's what Booker T was saying. Even back in the day, he had a little, he had a little head start on Echo Charles and your people that are out there saying this. The same principle of industrial education has been carried out in the building of our own wagons, carts and buggies. We now own and use on our farm and about the school dozens of these vehicles and every one of them has been built by the hands of the students. Aside from this, we help supply the local market with these vehicles. The supplying of them to the people in the community has had the same effect as the supplying of bricks and the man who learns at Tuskegee to build and repair

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  wagons and carts is regarded as a benefactor by both races in the community where he goes. The people with whom he lives and works are going to think twice before they part with such a man. Like, that's what we're talking about. Like, make yourself valuable. Hey, guess what? If we got a wagon and there's someone that knows how to fix a wagon, that's a, we appreciate this dude. You know, like, oh, you, you got a car? If you don't know how to fix a car, you know someone that does? This person has value.

• 1:48:46Jocko Willink?

  He says this, "The individual who can do something that the world wants done will, in the end, make his way regardless of race. One man may go into a community prepared to supply the people there with an, with an analysis of Greek sentences."

• 1:49:05Jocko Willink?

  The community may not at the time be prepared for or feel the need of Greek analysis, but it may feel its need of bricks and houses and wagons. If the man can supply the need for those, then it will eventually to, then it will lead eventually to a demand for the first product. And with the demand will come the ability to appreciate and profit by it. There you go. It's a good rule. Figure out how to do something that people need done. By this time it had gotten, fast forward a little bit, by this time it had gotten to be pretty well advertised throughout the state that every student who comes to Tuskegee, no matter what his financial ability might be, must learn some industry. Quite a number of letters came from parents protesting against their children engaging

• 1:49:50Jocko Willink?

  in labor while they were in school. Other parents came to protest, came to the school to protest in person. I gave little heed to these protests, except that I lost no opportunity to go into as many parts of the state as I could for the purpose of speaking to the parents and showing them the value of industrial education. Besides, I talked to the students constantly on the subject. Notwithstanding the unpopularity of industrial work, the school continued to increase in numbers to such an extent that by the middle of the second year, there was an attendance of about 150, representing almost all parts of the state of Alabama and including a few from other states. So he's getting it done. Making it happen. As I look back now, I'm fast forward, as we look back now over that

• 1:50:33Jocko Willink?

  part of the struggle, I am glad to see that we had it. This is just like the whole thing, the building of the, the being cold, the, the, the issues that they had when the buildings didn't come out right. They had to take it down and rebuild, like all these things. He says, as I look back now over that part of the struggle, I'm glad to see that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and inconveniences. I am glad that our students had to dig out the place for the kitchen and dining room. I am glad that our first boarding place was in the dismal, ill-lighted and damp basement. Had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have lost our heads and become stuck up.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  It means a great deal, deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one's self.

• 1:51:23Jocko Willink?

  When our old students return to Tuskegee now, as they often do, and go into our large, beautiful, well-ventilated and well-lighted dining room, and see tempting, well-cooked food largely grown by students themselves, and see tables, neat tablecloths and napkins and vases of flowers upon the tables, and hear singing birds, and note that each meal is served exactly upon the minute, with no disorder, and with almost no complaint coming from the hundreds that now fill our dining room, they too often say to me that they are glad we started as we did, and built it ourselves up, year by year, by a slow and natural process of growth. So, there you go.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  Pretty awesome.

• 1:52:12Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. General Armstrong comes to the school. The first visit with General Armstrong made to Tuskegee gave me opportunity to get an insight into his character such as I had not before had. I refer to his interest in the southern white people. Before this, I had had the thought that General Armstrong, having fought the southern white man, rather cherished a feeling of bitterness toward the white South, and was interested in helping only the colored man there. But this visit convinced me that I did not know the greatness and generosity of the man. I soon learned by his visits to the southern white people, and from his conversations with them, that he was anxious about...

• 1:52:54Jocko Willink?

  He was as anxious about the prosperity and happiness of the white race as the black. He cherished no bitterness against the South, and was happy when an opportunity offered for manifesting his sympathy. In all my acquaintance with General Armstrong, I never heard him speak, in public or private, a single bitter word against the white man in the South. From his example in this respect, I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred. I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong, and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.

• 1:53:40Jocko Willink?

  It is now long ago that I learned this lesson from General Armstrong and resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  With God's help, I believe that I have completely rid myself of any ill-feeling toward the southern white man for any wrong that he may have inflicted upon my race. I am made to feel just as happy now when rendering service to southern white men as when the service is rendered to a member of my own race. I pity from the bottom of my heart any individual who is so unfortunate as to get into the habit of holding race prejudice.

• 1:54:28Jocko Willink?

  Good old General Armstrong. No, that's, that's, uh...

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  That's like, uh, Chamberlain. You know, Joshua Chamberlain at the end of the Civil War, like, salutes the soldiers, salutes the Confederate soldiers, like, alright, we're done. Let's move on.

• 1:54:51Jocko Willink?

  Taking the high road, as one might say.

• 1:54:57Jocko Willink?

  He says here, fast forward a little bit. "It was my aim from the first at Tuskegee, not only to have the buildings erected by the students themselves, but to have them make their own furniture as far as was possible. I now marvel at the patience of the students while sleeping upon the floor while we made it for some kind of bedstead to be constructed, or they're sleeping without any kind of mattress while waiting for something that looked like a mattress to be made." I just had to add that in there too, right? Because it's like, oh, you want a good way to motivate people to learn how to make furniture? Don't have any.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Straight up making the mattress as well? Jeez.

• 1:55:37Jocko Willink?

  This is a great lesson for life.

• 1:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, the first time I ever saw the late Collis P. Huntington, the great railroad man, he gave me $2 for our school. The last time I saw him, which was a few months before he died, he gave me $50,000 toward our endowment fund. Between these two gifts, there were others of generous proportions which came every year from both Mr. and Mrs. Huntington. Some people say that it was Tuskegee's good luck that brought us to this gift of $50,000. No. It was not luck. It was hard work.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  Nothing ever comes to me that is worth having, except as a result of hard work. When Mr. Huntington gave me the first $2, I did not blame him for not giving me more, but made up my mind that I was going to convince him by tangible results that we were worthy of larger gifts. For a dozen years, I made a strong effort to convince Mr. Huntington of the value of our work. I noted that just in proportion as the usefulness of the school grew, his donations increased.

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  Somebody gives you $2. You can definitely take two approaches, like someone that's so rich. I mean, this guy's a freaking railroad tycoon. And you approach him and you ask him for a donation, he gives you $2.

• 1:57:11Jocko Willink?

  It'd be real easy to be salty about that, right? That's the right word, right? Yes. Because that's a modern word, salty. Sure. Right? Means like I'm mad about. It'd be easy to be salty about a really, really rich guy giving you $2. But instead, being like, oh, cool. We've got a little relationship going. I'm going to make it my goal to prove to him how valuable we are.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:57:38Jocko Willink?

  Another little section here.

• 1:57:43Jocko Willink?

  Um, in 1885, Miss Olivia Davidson, to whom I've already referred as being largely responsible for the sex of the school. And I were married. So remember, his first wife died. So now he's on his second wife. During our married life, she continued to divide her time between our home and the work of the school. She not only continued to work in the school, Tuskegee also kept her habit of going north to secure funds in 1889. She died after four years of happy married life. And eight years of hard and happy work for the school. She literally wore herself out. In her never ceasing efforts in behalf of the work that she so dearly loved. During our married life, there were burned two bright, beautiful boys. Booker Taliaferro and Ernest Davidson.

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  The elder of these Booker has already mastered the brickmaker's trade at Tuskegee. Yep. Hey dude, this is Booker T. Washington is all about education. Cause guess what he's proud of? He's proud that his son, who's named after him, knows how to make bricks.

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  He starts giving, he's giving more speeches. He gives a speech at the National Educational Association.

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  He says, when I first came to Tuskegee, I was determined that I would make it my home. That I would take as much pride in the right actions of the people of the town as any white man could do. And that I would at the same time deplore the wrongdoing of the people as much as any white man. I determined never to say anything in public address in the north that I would not be willing to say in the south. I early learned that it is hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him. And that it is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to the evil done. Those are just like indirect approach all day long. Oh, you, if I want to convince you of something, I don't attack you.

• 1:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Instead, I figure, hey, where do we, where do we agree? What have you done? That's positive. How do I form a relationship with you?

• 1:59:46Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, while pursuing this policy, I have not failed at the proper time and in the proper manner to call attention in no uncertain terms to the wrongs which any part of the South has been guilty of. I've found that there is a large element in the South that is quick to respond to straightforward, honest criticism of any wrong policy. As a rule, the place to criticize the South when criticism is necessary is in the South, not Boston. A Boston man who came to Alabama to criticize Boston would not affect so much good, I think, as one who had his word of criticism to say in Boston.

• 2:00:26Jocko Willink?

  So you can kind of get that feel for the division that still existed between the North and the South. He's like, I'm not going to go come down here and like talk smack. If you're going to say something, I'll say it to you. Good rule of thumb. He goes on to say that this was one of the addresses that he made. In this address, I said that the whole future of the Negro rested largely upon the question as to whether or not he should make himself through his skill, intelligence, and character of such undeniable value to the community in which he lived that the community could not dispense with his presence. I said that any individual who learned to do something better than anybody else, learned to do a common thing in an uncommon manner,

• 2:01:08Jocko Willink?

  had solved his problem, regardless of the color of his skin, and that in proportion as the Negro learned to produce what other people wanted and must have, in the same proportion, he would be respected. This is sort of the main thrust of what Booker T. Washington is saying to get equality. It's like, yep, become indispensable, work hard, use your skill, do common things in an uncommon manner. That's a good little statement.

• 2:01:45Jocko Willink?

  He says, "In early life, I used to cherish a feeling of ill will toward any people who spoke in bitter terms against the Negro or who advocated measures that tended to oppress the black man or take from him opportunities for growth in the most complete manner. Now, whenever I hear anyone advocating measures that are meant to curtail the development of another, I pity the individual who would do this. I know that the one who makes this mistake does so because of his own lack of opportunity for the highest kind of growth. I pity him because I know that he is trying to stop the progress of the world and because I know that in time the development and the ceaseless advance of humanity will make him ashamed of his weak and narrow position.

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  One might as well try to stop the progress of a mighty railroad train by throwing his body across the track as to try and stop the growth of the world in the direction of giving mankind more intelligence, more culture, more skill, more liberty, and in the direction of extending more sympathy and more brotherly kindness." Boom. End quote. You can't stop it. He says, "I now come to one of the incidents in my life which seems to have excited the greatest amount of interest and which perhaps went further than anything else in giving

• 2:03:13Jocko Willink?

  me a reputation that in a sense might be called national. I refer to the address which I delivered at the opening of the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, September 18th, 1895." So basically, he gets the opportunity to give this speech at this huge convention. And, you know, it's in Atlanta, Georgia, and he gives this whole, very eloquent, speech of which I'm not going to read the whole thing because it would be long and I don't think I could do it justice. But...

• 2:03:53Jocko Willink?

  Here's a highlight.

• 2:03:55Jocko Willink?

  Or should I say some highlights? He says, "It is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear. When it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negroes, that the Negro is given a man's chance in a commercial world, and in nothing is this exposition more eloquent than emphasizing this chance." So he's like, "Hey, you can say what you want about the South, but here I am, speaking at the biggest exposition that they have down here." He says, "Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  are to live by the production of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into common occupations of life. Shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between superficial and substantial, the ornamental gee-gaws of life and the useful." And I had to look up that word, "gee-gaws" actually, and it means something that's useless. "No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin and not at the top,

• 2:05:25Jocko Willink?

  nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities."

• 2:05:35Jocko Willink?

  Imagine that. We shouldn't permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.

• 2:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Lesson learned, right? How often do we catch ourselves doing that? We're complaining about things. We're complaining about our grievances. Instead of looking at our opportunities. This is coming from a guy that was an actual slave, right?

• 2:06:01Jocko Willink?

  What are we complaining about?

• 2:06:04Jocko Willink?

  This guy was owned. His mom was owned. His brother and sister were owned. He had to sit there and pull a little cord to fan the white folks and keep the flies off their dinner.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  And he's not letting these grievances overshadow his opportunities.

• 2:06:26Jocko Willink?

  And that's like a little excerpt of the speech. Get the book, you can read the whole speech, but the speech was huge. And it got transcribed into all different newspapers. And he became, and I use the term, I wrote down the term overnight success. Cause you know how everyone says, oh, you're like, oh, you calling it overnight success? You don't see what I've been doing behind? And it was kind of like that. I, the way I perceived it, it was like that for him here. Like he'd been, obviously been gone to school. He'd put himself through school. He started the Tuskegee Institute. He was making speeches before this one, but he made this speech. And he became, you know, quote unquote, an overnight success.

• 2:07:08Jocko Willink?

  And then this was just interesting. Cause it, again, this is something that applies. So now he's, now he's kind of famous.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  He went viral.

• 2:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he went viral.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  That's like the old school version of going viral.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  You're right, a hundred percent. Like they printed the whole, the whole speech was transcribed in newspapers across the country. That he went viral back in the day. He says here, "The number of people who stand ready to consume one's times, one's time to no purpose is almost countless." "At one time, I spoke before a large audience in Boston. And in the evening, the next morning, I was awakened by having a card brought to my room. And with a message that someone was anxious to see me, thinking that it must be something very important. I dressed hastily and went down. When I reached the hotel office, I found a blank and innocent looking individual waiting for me. Who coolly remarked, I heard you talk at a meeting yesterday, last night. I'd rather like to talk, so I came this morning to hear you talk some more."

• 2:08:04Jocko Willink?

  Then he says, I'm often asked how it's possible for me to super intend the work at Tuskegee and at the same time be so much away from the school. So how's he overlook? How's he keep track of what's going on Tuskegee when he's on the road all the time? In partial answer to this, I would say that I think I have learned in some degree at least to disregard the old maxim which says to, which says, do not get others to do that which you can do yourself. So he's like, oh, people say, don't, don't, don't get others to do things that you can do yourself. And he says, my motto, on the other hand, is do not do that which others can do as well as you.

• 2:08:46Jocko Willink?

  This is decentralized command all day long. He doesn't need to be at Tuskegee all the time. He's got people that can run that.

• 2:08:54Jocko Willink?

  Decentralized command. He says, in order that I may keep in constant touch with the life of the institution, I have a system of reports so arranged that a record of the school's work reaches me every day of the year, no matter what part of the country I'm in. I know by these reports even what students are excused from school and why they're excused, whether for other, whether for reasons of ill health or otherwise. Through the medium of these reports, I know each day what the income of the school money is. I know how many gallons of milk and how many pounds of butter come from the dairy, what the bill of fare is for teachers and students, whether a certain kind of meat is boiled or baked, and whether certain vegetables in the dining room were brought from a store, were bought from a store or procured from our own farm. Now that sounds a little bit micromanagement to me, but you can tell he knows what's going on.

• 2:09:39Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, I'm often asked, in the midst of so much work, a large part of which is for the public, I can find time for any rest or recreation. And what kind of recreation or sports I am fond of. This is a rather difficult question for me to answer. I have a strong feeling that every individual owes it to himself and to the cause of which he was serving, to keep a vigorous, healthy body with the nerves steady and strong, prepared for great efforts and prepared for disappointments and trying positions. As far as I can, I make it a rule to plan for each day's work, not merely to go through with some routine of daily duties, but to get rid of the routine work as early as possible in the day and then enter upon some newer advanced work. So that's a good plan. Hey, get done with the stuff that just got to be done, the routine stuff working out.

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  Whatever, answer a couple of emails and then get into the good stuff. Get the, get the crap out of the way. Says, I make it a rule to clear my desk every day before leaving my office of all correspondence and memorandas. So that on the tomorrow, I can begin a new day of work. I make it a rule to never let my work drive me. But so, but to so master it. Oh, this is a good one. Let me read that again. I make it a rule never to let my work drive me, but to so master it. And keep it in such complete control and keep so far ahead of it that I will be the master instead of the servant. Don't let your work control you, get control. This is where I learned it. When I, when I went to college, I was really good at this.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Cause remember I was a 20, I don't know, 20 like seven year old man or something when I went to college.

• 2:11:13Speaker 01

  Old school.

• 2:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I was like, oh, I'll be ahead. Like they, they did not control me at all. I would, I would have 20 page papers written weeks in advance. I was such a dork, but you know what? That stuff didn't control me. You know what I mean?

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:32Speaker 01

  To, to develop that skill young.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  I feel like that could have been a lot very useful for me.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  I think it could be useful for everybody.

• 2:11:41Speaker 01

  For everybody.

• 2:11:41Jocko Willink?

  I think maybe it could even be useful to you today.

• 2:11:45Speaker 01

  Right now, yeah. Yep. And that skill doesn't seem like a skill that would become less useful.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  No. He says, there is a physical and mental and spiritual enjoyment that comes from a consciousness of being the absolute master of one's work in all its details. That is very satisfying, satisfying and inspiring. My experience teaches me that if one learns to follow this plan, he gets a freshness of body and vigor out, out of mind, out of work that goes a long way toward keeping him strong and healthy. I believe that when one can grow to a point that he loves his work, this gives him a kind of strength that is most valuable.

• 2:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Legit, right?

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:12:34Jocko Willink?

  So now we get to another, again, this is kinda like the daily, you know, you know how in the the productivity world, this whole little section, these sections kinda like that?

• 2:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  From Booker T.

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 2:12:46Jocko Willink?

  He said, "I've said that I make it a rule to finish up each day's work before leaving it. There is perhaps one exception to this. When I have an unusually difficult question to decide, one that appeals strongly to the emotions, I find it a safe rule to sleep over at four night or wait until I have had the opportunity to talk it over with my wife and friends." Boom. Good piece of advice right there.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:11Jocko Willink?

  He goes on to say, "The time when I get the most solid rest and recreation is when I can be at Tuskegee and, after our evening meal is over, can sit down, as is our custom, with my wife, and Portia, and Baker, and Davidson, my three children, and read a story, or each take turns telling a story." That's a good idea of making or having your kids tell stories.

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:13:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause storytelling is such an important skill to have.

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:13:41Jocko Willink?

  Let's get into that a little bit more.

• 2:13:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:13:43Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? You, your kids are young enough to do that with. My kids are too old for that now.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:48Jocko Willink?

  But your kids, yeah, to have them tell you a story.

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  That's a smart move.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially actively do it, cause my daughter,

• 2:13:55Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  she's, she's into it and she does tell stories sometimes, like she'll take over and ask questions to, you know, I told you that we do this like protocol at the end of the night where before bed, we, I give them like basically quizzes.

• 2:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:14:08Speaker 01

  Like, name which planet is this one and you know,

• 2:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:14:12Speaker 01

  but sometimes it'll be like a story or just like talking about stuff or them, but sometimes she'll ask the questions and tell the story. But I never approached it as like, hey, let's do this on like deliberately, you know? So that, yeah, that's a good little take right there.

• 2:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Good little take. I wish I would've thought of that. Get your kids to tell stories.

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Another thing he says, "My garden also, what little time I can be at Tuskegee is another source of rest and enjoyment. Somehow I like as often as possible to touch nature, not something that is artificial or an imitation, but the real thing. When I leave my office in time so that I can spend 30 or 40 minutes in spading the ground and planting seeds and digging about the plants, I feel I am coming into contact with something that is giving me strength for the many duties and hard places that await me out in the big world. I pity the man or woman who has never learned to enjoy nature and to get strength and inspiration out of it."

• 2:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Solid. And then the last little section here, fast forward a little, he says, "Games I care little for. I have never seen a game of football. In cards, I do not know one card from another. A game of old fashioned marbles with my two boys, once in a while, is all I care for in this direction. I suppose I would care for games now if I had any time in my youth to give to them, but that was not possible." We're not playing games over here.

• 2:15:47Jocko Willink?

  Little note here. In 1893, I was married to Miss Margaret James Murray. So he got married three times. A native of Mississippi and graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, who had come to Tuskegee as a teacher several years before. And at the time we were married, was fulfilling the position of lady principal. So, there you go. Now, the school continued to grow. And I'll close out with this section. Again, look, I've barely read 5%, less than 5%. A tiny fraction of this book. Get this book, Up from Slavery. But I want to close out with this section right here.

• 2:16:31Jocko Willink?

  About the growth of the school and about sort of leadership and life. Some good points. He says, "From 30 students, the number has grown to 1,400. Coming from 27 states and territories, from Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and other foreign countries. In our departments, there are 110 officers and instructors. And if we add the families of our instructors, we have a constant population on our grounds of not far from 1,700 people. I have often been asked how we keep so large a body of people together and at the same time, keep them out of mischief. There are two answers, that the men and women who come to us for an education are in earnest,

• 2:17:15Jocko Willink?

  and that everybody is kept busy. The following outline of our daily work will testify to this. 5:00 AM, Rising Bell. 5:50 AM, Warning Breakfast Bell. 6:00 AM, Breakfast Bell. 6:20 AM, Breakfast Over. 6:20 to 6:50 Rooms Are Clean. 6:50 Work Bell. 7:30 Morning Study Hours. 8:20 Morning School Bell. 8:25 Inspection of Young Men's Toilets in Ranks. 8:40 Devotional Exercises in the Chapel. 8:55, Five Minutes with the Daily News." I like that. Five minutes. You should think of that for your social media. You have five minutes for your social media enactor. 9:00 AM, Classwork Begins. 12:00, Classwork Closes.

• 2:18:00Jocko Willink?

  12:15 PM, Dinner. 1:00 PM, Work Bell. 1:30 PM, Classwork Begins. 3:30 PM, Classwork Ends. 5:30 PM, Bell to Knock Off Work. 6:00 PM, Supper. 7:10 PM, Evening Prayers. 7:30 PM, Evening Study Hours. 8:45 PM, Evening Study Hour Closes. 9:20 PM, Warning Retiring Bell. 9:30 PM, Retiring Bell.

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  You're not getting in trouble. We don't have time to get in trouble.

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  No, that's the schedule.

• 2:18:31Jocko Willink?

  Right there. He says this. "We try to keep constantly in mind the fact that the worth of the school is to be judged by its graduates. Counting those who have finished the full course together with those who have taken enough training to enable them to do reasonably good work, we can safely say that at least 6,000 men and women from Tuskegee are now at work in different parts of the South. Men and women who by their own example or by direct efforts are showing the masses of our race now to improve their material, education and moral and religious life.

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  What is equally important, they are exhibiting a degree of common sense and self-control, which is causing better relations to exist between the races and is causing the Southern white man to learn to believe in the value of educating the men and women of any race. Aside from this, there is influence that is constantly being exerted through the mothers meeting and the plantation work conducted by Mrs. Washington. Wherever our graduates go, the changes which soon begin to appear in the buying of land, improving of homes, saving money in education and in moral character are remarkable.

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  Whole communities are fast being revolutionized by the instrumentality of these men and women.

• 2:20:03Jocko Willink?

  The greatest human law that in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal.

• 2:20:16Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:20:19Jocko Willink?

  The great human law that in the end recognizes and rewards merit is everlasting and universal. Those are some incredibly powerful words, especially from someone that was born a slave.

• 2:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Because you can, you can, you can imagine the excuses that he can come up with and the blame that he could place on society, on slavery, on prejudice, on the destruction of his family, on the lack of his father, on the deaths of his wives, like there's, he has had an extremely difficult life. And yet he says that in the end, merit is going to be recognized.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause he didn't make any excuses, he didn't cast any blame, he freaking worked.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Worked at the salt furnace, worked in the coal mine, worked unloading pig iron from, from ships.

• 2:21:24Jocko Willink?

  And as hard as he worked in that physical labor, he worked even harder

• 2:21:30Jocko Willink?

  to become educated, to teach himself the alphabet, to learn how to read.

• 2:21:39Jocko Willink?

  He worked to be educated, he worked to become

• 2:21:44Jocko Willink?

  successful in life. And that

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  is an inspiration and a goal

• 2:21:52Jocko Willink?

  for anybody, for all of us.

• 2:21:57Jocko Willink?

  Earn it.

• 2:22:00Jocko Willink?

  Do better.

• 2:22:03Jocko Willink?

  Be better. Booker T. Washington.

• 2:22:09Jocko Willink?

  There you go. What's your reflections, Echo Charles Booker T. Did he deliver the goods?

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  He delivered. So, and you know, it put, and I know about Booker, I'd actually studied African American history a little bit in college. So, I'm familiar with Booker T. But just listening to this part, this book and you know, you going over that, it kind of paints this overall picture of just a very basic attitude. And for him, that it was almost like he didn't take slavery personally at all, like literally like zero, zero. Cause that's how you would act.

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine how hard that is?

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  Oh, borderline impossible.

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  Borderline impossible. The people, these, I got, my, my forefathers got captured.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  Chained, put onto a tiny ship, bunch of them died sailing over here. And now we're actual slaves.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna be like, okay, that happened, I'm moving forward.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and not taking, not taking it personal and not blaming, right? That's like the thing and he did it because and so you think about it, right? This is why I was like this, that's really the, um, the what like that's the, the critical factor right there because let's say, let's say it wasn't a, a human, let's say you got trapped somewhere on accident, right? So you weren't, and you could see outside, I don't know, a cave or some bars or, you know, jail cell on accident, right? Like maybe even by your own slip up or whatever and you're in there for years and you're like, shoot, I'm never gonna get out of here, whatever, you know, kind of thing. And then you see all this activity going on outside, see people going to school and having

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  kids and just all this activity going on outside. And one day you wake up and like you see a little crack in the wall or something, you're wait a second, I can get out of here and then you get out, you're free now. Act like you're free, go do all the stuff that you couldn't do, go do all that stuff, you know? And that's kind of what he did, essentially, that is what he did. So he, if you did, if he did take it personal, he would be looking back into that, that jail cell, he'd be looking back in there and being mad at it and focusing at the very least some of his attention on that, he didn't, it was like none of it.

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Even to take the time to tell the people that were walking around out there, what you, hey, you're lucky, you got to be here, I've been over there. It reminds me of, uh, remember when we had Jim Sersli on the podcast and he was in Vietnam, volunteered, volunteered for the army, volunteered for Vietnam, ended up, uh, losing both legs and one arm.

• 2:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Came back from Vietnam, spent nine months in the hospital and learning how to adapt to his new life. Which, which by the way is like a crazy new life. This isn't like, oh, you got a new life because this little thing changed. This is a huge, just alter, a huge alteration to everything that you are. You now have to do everything differently. He came back and he was like, okay. He never complained about it, never, never looked back, never said, why me? He's like, okay, cool. Here's what I can do. Remember he started, we started going to college, started a roofing company, a roofing company.

• 2:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Started a real estate company, started hunting, started doing all these things.

• 2:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Because instead of sitting there saying, woe is me, move forward. And it seems like that's what, that's what Booker T. Washington's doing too. I'm gonna move forward. Here I am. The past is past. I'm gonna move forward. I'm gonna make the best of everything that I can, starting right now. And that's what he did.

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  You notice that he referred to it as the institution of slavery. It's not like, I was enslaved by this person or these people. It was the institution of slavery, real non-personal. That's what it like, how it landed on me, where he was just like, oh, this is a thing that exists. Was it a bunch of people, which it was, but he didn't look at it like a bunch of people against him, holding him down. It was the institution, which is now gone. So what is there to blame kind of an attitude? You know, the institution literally doesn't exist anymore. See what I'm saying? Very, very interesting way to look at it.

• 2:26:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And once again, if men like this, people like this can have this kind of attitude after being in.

• 2:26:50Jocko Willink?

  The worst possible conditions, because the worst possible condition is you're not a free human being. That's the worst possible condition. It's the worst possible condition. Doesn't get any worse. We take it for granted. I know that. We take it for granted, but there's nothing worse than losing your freedom. Or, I guess the only thing worse than losing your freedom is never having freedom. And growing up without freedom, growing up in a fate of slavery. And then to have that washed away, and to look up and move forward. I think we can all learn something from that. So, thank you, Booker T. Washington.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  So, Echo Charles, what do we got?

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  Well, Booker T., another thing that I did notice, maybe you did too, he's a hard worker.

• 2:27:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  He's down for the hard work.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Definitely. He's not playing, he's definitely working hard.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:27:55Jocko Willink?

  We'll say that's 100% factual information.

• 2:27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, and the make yourself useful philosophy, that's like one that like, man, if you can just keep that in mind, I think that's gonna, you're gonna take yourself far with that philosophy.

• 2:28:09Jocko Willink?

  Yep. One of the most important things of making yourself useful is making sure that you're physically fit to do your, there's a meme.

• 2:28:19Speaker 01

  Sure, meme, hell yeah.

• 2:28:21Jocko Willink?

  Going around right now. My kids are into memes, bro. You better watch out. If you're on a thread with my family, you're getting memes. You're getting memes, left, right, they're throwing all kinds of memes around. My wife will be sending a meme of a cute dog. My kid will be sending a meme of jujitsu. My daughter will be sending a meme of jujitsu. My other daughter will be sending, whatever. They're sending memes. Funny memes, weightlifting memes, jujitsu memes, dog memes, cute animal memes, right? So the meme's going down. I forgot what even meme I was gonna tell you about right now. There's so many memes in my head right now.

• 2:28:55Speaker 01

  Physically fit.

• 2:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Physically fit. Did you see the meme where it's a guy? Who's being rescued in some way? And there's a guy carrying like a little pair of sandals? And then a then a dude in uniform is carrying that guy's kid through like floodwaters? And the meme is kind of like, hey, don't be the guy carrying the sandals, right? And look, who knows what the situation is. It's a meme. I get it. That guy was probably like, hey, I don't have shoes on. I don't want to drop my daughter. You take her because she'll be safe. I get it. I'm not trying to call this poor guy out.

• 2:29:34Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:29:35Jocko Willink?

  But the sentiment is, don't be that guy.

• 2:29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:40Jocko Willink?

  You want to be the person that's strong enough? Mentally fit enough to handle situations when they come? So that means we're working out. That means we're doing jujitsu. How was that jujitsu you had the other day?

• 2:29:53Speaker 01

  Good. Intense jujitsu. That's um, yeah, that was like the old school because we used to do that every Wednesday.

• 2:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:00Speaker 01

  But yeah, so.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Every day.

• 2:30:03Speaker 01

  No, I mean that group, that kind of that group.

• 2:30:05Jocko Willink?

  We had that Wednesday crew going. You felt good about that one?

• 2:30:08Speaker 01

  That was solid. Yeah. And some new, new.

• 2:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:10Speaker 01

  Characters with Sloan and Keenan Cornelius. Actually, Keenan would come every once in a while.

• 2:30:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:15Speaker 01

  The old school.

• 2:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, Mihon wasn't there. Mihon's in the game. Yeah, it's good. It's good. I I posted a picture.

• 2:30:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:30:22Jocko Willink?

  And I said, no easy rolls.

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:24Jocko Willink?

  No, no easy rounds or something like that. Because it's one of those days, right?

• 2:30:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:30:27Jocko Willink?

  You're not getting a restaurant.

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:30:29Jocko Willink?

  There's nobody there that I could be. You're going into chill mode. It's not happening.

• 2:30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:35Jocko Willink?

  Especially because I'll be like, oh, you want to go again? Want to go again?

• 2:30:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  Just get beat up.

• 2:30:38Speaker 01

  I I did the math and I think what total was what 11 rounds?

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Something like this.

• 2:30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like 11 rounds. Um, I took off one round, actually two rounds. I took off technically because I filmed one. That's technically a restaurant. But so what? The 11?

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  I'm kind of happy about that.

• 2:30:56Speaker 01

  So nine rounds, you figure? With yeah, no, easy rounds, no.

• 2:31:01Jocko Willink?

  No easy rounds.

• 2:31:01Speaker 01

  Even the lightest guy, physical weight is Greg Train.

• 2:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:05Speaker 01

  Who has twenty years experience.

• 2:31:06Jocko Willink?

  He's like, uh, he's like Mjolnir Thor's hammer. And that just doesn't look like it's gonna be that heavy, but then you can't move it.

• 2:31:13Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:31:14Jocko Willink?

  That's Greg Train all day.

• 2:31:15Speaker 01

  Perfect analogy right there, yes.

• 2:31:16Jocko Willink?

  Greg Train all day. Yeah, I guess Adam was there too, and he is also not a heavyweight.

• 2:31:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:31:22Jocko Willink?

  But he, he also has like weird, you know, weird jitsu and he puts his, he got that, he's like a breakdancer. You know what I'm saying?

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:31:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Seriously.

• 2:31:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:33Jocko Willink?

  Like bouncing on his head and you're like, what are you doing?

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:36Jocko Willink?

  What's happening? But the, but yes, so it's no easy rounds.

• 2:31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, really good. I had doms in my face. From getting shot, and I was trying to like backtrack, where was my face getting abused in that way? Cause it wasn't like, uh, friction, nothing, it wasn't that, it was like, you know, the muscles in your face from tensing up from getting your head choked? And I'm pretty sure it was Sloan.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:31:59Speaker 01

  Pretty sure.

• 2:32:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you, if Sloan has a hold of your head, there's gonna be.

• 2:32:04Speaker 01

  There's gonna be some pain.

• 2:32:07Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, confirmed, confirmed.

• 2:32:09Jocko Willink?

  There's gonna be some tension.

• 2:32:10Speaker 01

  But very good, and to your point that you make a lot is like, when you go through good, and this goes for pretty much all exercise, where if you go through some, a good, a good, um, sesh. Jiu Jitsu. Lift, lift, running.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Surfing.

• 2:32:26Speaker 01

  This was one of those sessions where it was like, yeah, it's like hard for sure, but at the end, you're like, man, that was solid.

• 2:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  You mean rounds I took off?

• 2:32:35Speaker 01

  I don't know how many. Zero, no rounds, dang.

• 2:32:39Jocko Willink?

  No rounds.

• 2:32:39Speaker 01

  You're savage. Uh, nonetheless, uh, are you on the creatine?

• 2:32:44Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:32:44Speaker 01

  Cause you gotta be consistent, right?

• 2:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you do.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  You can't just like take one here and there, like, like a milk or something.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  It's feeling good too.

• 2:32:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:50Jocko Willink?

  Cause I was off the creatine train for a while, you can feel it.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  You can feel it, it's legit.

• 2:32:57Speaker 01

  So isn't there like, and I don't know, I gotta look into it more, just for the sake of understanding, I mean, I know the protocol, but like, why, isn't there like an actual loading phase?

• 2:33:06Jocko Willink?

  That was the old school sort of thing.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  So if I'm remembering correctly. Maybe I'll get tuned up again, just for the sake of information.

• 2:33:14Jocko Willink?

  You might need to refer to the bro science manual on this one before you start putting out word.

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  I think you, it takes a while to get to roll into your system. You just don't have to load like take like more in the beginning and then taper out. You don't have to do that.

• 2:33:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I guess you can, you can. You want to get old school about it.

• 2:33:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:33:32Jocko Willink?

  So yes, creatine. Oh, by the way, if you need creatine, go to jockofuel.com. Get yourself some creatine, get yourself some joint warfare. You get done rolling with Sloan. You need some joint warfare.

• 2:33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, just take that.

• 2:33:44Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you could get joint warfare injected into your neck.

• 2:33:47Speaker 01

  My face.

• 2:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Into your face. Super krill. Uh, Molk, you know what I love right now is I know when I, as soon as I get done, take a shower on my way out of here, I'm grabbing that ready to drink Molk.

• 2:33:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:00Jocko Willink?

  Getting thirty grams of protein on the way home. It's a, it's a six minute drive and I have thirty grams of protein when I walk through the door of my house. That's already being digested, already being sent into the system, already getting refueled. This, it's hard to keep that stuff in stock here. Cause everybody has the same thought. I just, I need fuel now. I need to rebuild. And that's everyone's thinking that and you walk out and there's a rebuilding, uh, glory. Tasty glory.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  And that's a big part of it, the tasty part. Cause you know, we all, we all know the chalky, old school protein powder. That like kinda tastes like chocolate or whatever flavor, but it tastes like, like chalky, like protein powder, you know? Health powder, whatever.

• 2:34:43Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, that's not, we're not doing that anymore. No need.

• 2:34:47Speaker 01

  Nope, no need, no need. I was in Big Bear. Few days ago.

• 2:34:50Jocko Willink?

  Shredding?

• 2:34:51Speaker 01

  Shredding.

• 2:34:51Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:34:52Speaker 01

  Greg Train, speaking of Greg Train, he was there too.

• 2:34:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:34:54Speaker 01

  We had a little overlap sesh, went night, uh, skiing or went snowboarding. Um, but he brought up the Molk. He was like, hey, you guys nailed that formula, like how it tastes, whatever. He was like, it's just like, I gave him another one. I had a little stock up there. But yes, very good, uh, tasting the protein, kind of groundbreaking.

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:35:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 2:35:14Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I think it's Nobel Prize. I think they've been put in for the Nobel Prize at, at Jocko Fuel.

• 2:35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard that.

• 2:35:20Jocko Willink?

  Protein supplementation. So anyways, Jocko Fuel, you know the deal. Get it at jockofuel.com, get it at Wawa, get it at Vitamin Shoppe, get it at the Military Commissaries, HEB, Meyer. I mean, we got it. We got it where you're at. Hannaford. Um, yeah. Go get yourself some. Go get yourself some. But did I say Vitamin Shoppe?

• 2:35:39Speaker 01

  Vitamin shop. Yeah. And if you don't see it in there, hey, chocofuel.com all day.

• 2:35:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes, all day. There you go. Also.

• 2:35:46Speaker 01

  Origin.

• 2:35:48Jocko Willink?

  Origin USA, originusa.com. If you need for these jujitsu sessions that you're in, you need a gi, you need a rash guard. Have you, have you tried the comfort fit rash guards?

• 2:35:59Speaker 01

  No, um, I don't really use those. Actually, I have like a, like you saw a shirt I was wearing, right? It's like a, it's almost like a dry, dry fit. It's like.

• 2:36:10Jocko Willink?

  I didn't see it.

• 2:36:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:12Jocko Willink?

  When I saw it.

• 2:36:12Speaker 01

  I think it is the same thing though, but I actually typically that's not the, the no gi wardrobe.

• 2:36:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you need, if you need a rash guard,

• 2:36:25Jocko Willink?

  you can get them at originusa.com, but they're made in America. They're not made with slave labor. Look, we just talked about, we just talked about Booker T. Washington. People that are slaves and we think, oh, that must've been so horrible back then. It's still going on. It's literally going on today and they probably made that shirt that you're wearing right now. Probably made that rash guard that you're wearing right now. They're probably, they're definitely wearing that gi. If you're wearing a gi and it's not from Origin USA, it's made by slave labor. So go to originusa.com, get some hunt gear, get some jujitsu gear, get some jeans. You got, you want, you want to support America. You don't like slavery. We fought a civil war to end it.

• 2:37:09Jocko Willink?

  But now we just gonna let these other countries just have slaves? Is that, is that what we're doing? No, it's not what we're doing. This is America.

• 2:37:16Jocko Willink?

  Go to originusa.com, get yourself some American freedom.

• 2:37:23Jocko Willink?

  For clothing. This is freedom that you put on your own body. Let's make it happen. OriginUSA.com.

• 2:37:32Speaker 01

  Also Jaco has a store called Jaco Store. That's a, you know, some good merch you want to represent on the path. Discipline equals freedom. Good. All this stuff. This is where you can get it. Also, there's a thing called the shirt locker. That's a new shirt every month. Different kind of designs, but still representing our people seem to like that. But yeah, JacoStore.com.

• 2:37:51Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jaco on the ground.com. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Origin USA. You know, Jaco Fuel has a YouTube channel now. Everyone's making their own YouTube channel. People are just out there just making YouTube channels. We got three of them that are actually pretty dope. This one, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel, Origin USA, Jaco Fuel. Check out those and, and then subscribe to the YouTube channel. Well, that way, why would you do that? Why would you do that? You do that so that when a new video comes out, pops up, you get to see it. See, see what's happening. See what's happening at Jaco Fuel. See what's happening at Origin. See what's happening at Jocko Podcast. There you go. Uh, psychological warfare. We got flip side canvas by Dakota Meyer. I've written a bunch of books, you know, get them. If you got kids, just get them the Warrior Kid books, all of them, all of them.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  And you think, oh, my kid doesn't really like to read. Of course they don't like to read. You've been buying them crap books. Check out the way the Warrior Kid podcast. We just put up three new ones. Check that out. Don't buy your kids junk books. Buy them good books. There's only five of them. Actually six. Way the Warrior Kid series. That's five plus Mikey and the Dragons. There's six books. You don't think your kid wants to read them because your kid doesn't read your kid because you're buying your kid junk books. Don't do that. Buy them the good stuff. Buy them a book that's going to give them an upper hand in life.

• 2:39:07Jocko Willink?

  And you should do this for other people that you don't think that, oh, I'm not going to get little Johnny, my neighbor. I'm not going to get him one of these books because I want my kid to do better. Don't think that way. Actually, what you want to do is you want your kid to be in a little gang of Warrior Kids and that the way they're all peer pressuring each other to do better. Be stronger, do more pull-ups, do better in school, be more squared away. That's what you want. You want your kid to lone Warrior Kid under peer pressure from a bunch of other kids that are telling them to do drugs and not study and not work out, which is what's going to happen. I'm not trying to fear monger you. I'm just telling you what's going on.

• 2:39:43Jocko Willink?

  Way the Warrior Kid. Get these books for your kids. Seriously. Uh, Echelon Front Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Echelonfront.com for details. Also Extreme Ownership Academy. We are online. Just ran some stuff online today. Online training. People are just asking me questions. If you go to extremeownership.com, we've got some free courses on there about how to take ownership, about what that looks like, about what to say, about what the barriers are. Extremeownership.com, come and join the academy. Become a good leader, become a good human. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization.

• 2:40:26Jocko Willink?

  If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And don't forget about Micah Fink. Right now, what's he doing right? Oh, let's do a little check in with Micah Fink. Oh, right now, Micah Fink just rappelled down a cliff with a lasso in one hand, and he's got a bear and a mountain lion in the other hand. He's up there, heroes and horses, helping, helping veterans find themselves again. Heroesandhorses.org. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs, echo's at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. But listen, five minutes, five minutes. Booker T.

• 2:41:09Jocko Willink?

  Washington is giving you five minutes to catch up on news, and we're going to slide social media in there. Well, you want to cover social media, okay, get 10 minutes. News, news followed by social media, you got 10 minutes. Otherwise, the algorithm grabs you, chokes you out. Be careful. And thanks to all the people out there in uniform who fought for and protect freedom around the world. We are only free because of your sacrifice. And thanks also to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. You all protect us here on the home front, and we thank you for that. And to everyone else out there, one more quote from Mr.

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  Booker T. Washington. Quote, "Character, not circumstances, makes the man." End quote.

• 2:42:04Jocko Willink?

  Which means it's not the situation that you're born into. It's not the scenario that unfolds around you. It's not the hand that you get dealt in life.

• 2:42:14Jocko Willink?

  What matters is the character with which you live. So do not, do not permit your grievances in life to overshadow your opportunities. Instead, go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco out.