34: Leif Babin – Ambushed Cops, Benghazi, Tempers, SEAL Combatives

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:27 - Is Darkness Taking Hold? 0:24:18 - When to fire someone. 0:37:32 - How Leif and Jocko met 0:58:08 - Thoughts on Bengazi 1:04:16 - Best BBQ in Texas? 1:06:52 - Having Hard Conversations 1:11:55 - SEAL Combatives and MMA 1:19:06 - Dealing with Tempers. 1:28:18 - Thoughts on Cops being ambushed. 1:52:20 - Metallica or Pantera? 1:54:05 - Thoughts on the deaths of BUD/s Students 2:07:34 - Dealing w/ rules of engagement. 2:12:36 - How often did you guys get shot in the body armor or helmet? 2:15:38 - Would Leif/Jocko consider politics? 2:19:32 - Muster 2016 Info 2:23:06 - Remembering Marc Lee, Aug 2nd 2:37:30 - Closing 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 34 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:09Leif Babin?

  Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  And tonight, we have a guest on the podcast back for a second time, my brother Leif Babin. Good evening Leif.

• 0:21Leif Babin?

  Good evening. Good to be back with you.

• 0:23Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't know who Leif Babin is, real easy thing to do is go back to Jocko Podcast number 11 and listen to that. I gave him a long introduction and tell you about who he is.

• 0:36Jocko Willink?

  Guy that I served in SEAL Teams with and like I said, go back to 11.

• 0:45Leif Babin?

  I think you guys wrote a book, yeah?

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  We wrote a little book called Extreme Ownership. I'm sure we'll talk about that tonight. Leif was one of the platoon commanders that worked for me in the Battle of Ramadi when we deployed in 2006 and just one of my brothers. So, thanks for coming on the podcast.

• 1:02Leif Babin?

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul?

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  Why would you say anything?

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  I've thought about it a good deal.

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  But he wasn't nothing compared to what was coming down the pike.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  They say the eyes are the windows to the soul.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what them eyes was windows to and I guess I'd as soon not know.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  But there is another view of the world out there and other eyes to see it and that's where this is going.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  It has done brought me to a place in my life I would not have thought I'd have come to.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  And I don't want to confront him.

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  I know he's real. I've seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I won't do it again. I won't push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  It ain't just being older.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  I wish that it was. I can't say that it's even what you are willing to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willing to die to even do this job. That was always true.

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  Not to sound glorious about it or nothing. But you do. And if you ain't, they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  I think it is more like what you are willing to become.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  And I won't do that.

• 3:26Jocko Willink?

  I think now

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  that maybe I never would.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  Now that's the opening from the book No Country For Old Men, which is written by Cormac McCarthy, who also wrote my favorite non-military memoir book, the book Blood Meridian, which is just an outstanding book. And No Country For Old Men was actually made into an outstanding movie as well, which almost follows the book word for word. It's, it's an awesome movie. And in the, in the movie and in the book, there's a, there's a guy, and that's who's talking in that opening. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell.

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  And he's explaining that he's seen evil in the world. A living prophet of destruction. And he's seen his work and walked in front of those eyes. And ultimately, and that's kind of what the book is about, Sheriff Bell is explaining that he doesn't really want to face this evil.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't want to put his soul at hazard.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  So ultimately, he doesn't really want to be a sheriff anymore. He can't face that kind of evil, so he leaves the police and he retires and stays in his own little world, and that's the basis of it. There's way more to it than that, then you should definitely read the book. The book, which is, it's set, I think it's set in about the 1980s, early, early 1980s, and the evil that he's speaking of, that he's having to now deal with as a sheriff, is the drug cartels coming out of Mexico, the border of Texas. They've escalated from petty little drug dealers back in the day, and now it's a ruthless,

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  organized crime syndicates, that murder with no mercy. And, like I said, it's just too much for Sheriff Bell, and he ends up walking away. Now meanwhile, in 2016, the evil that we deal with now is even more pervasive, and stronger, and completely without mercy, and it's everywhere. And we can try and ignore it, and we can try and act like it doesn't happen, but there's

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  some things that you cannot ignore. And in this case, it's something that we cannot walk away from. In late July of 2016, Father Jacques Hamel, an 86-year-old Catholic priest, was doing what he did every Sunday, conducting mass for his parish in Normandy, France. Obviously, the site of D-Day, where one of the most impactful operations in history in terms of protecting freedom and liberty took place.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  And there, in Normandy, France, in this church, two young men, and I use that term loosely, burst into the mass, brandishing fake guns, fake explosives, but real knives. And the fake guns and the fake bombs apparently allowed them to get control of the people in the church, including Father Hamel.

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  They forced him to his knees

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  in front of his parishioners

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  and they slit his throat.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  And in fact, they slit his throat with such force that the reports came back and said that they beheaded him.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  And one of the survivors, who was a nun, said that the attackers who claimed loyalty to the Islamic State smiled and appeared to be happy as they slit the priest's throat.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  And then these two savages attempted to use some of the nuns from the church as human shields to try and escape. And when they did try and escape, fortunately, there were some French

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  police snipers that shot and killed them.

• 8:04Jocko Willink?

  But obviously, the damage was already done. One priest

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  slaughtered. One of the nuns was wounded.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  And obviously, peace and serenity destroyed.

• 8:23Jocko Willink?

  And that

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  is pure evil.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  And that's the same evil that slaughtered eighty-nine innocent people

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  at the Badaklan Theater in Paris, the same evil that murdered twelve cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, the same evil that led an Islamic extremist to murder forty-nine people at a nightclub in Florida, the same evil that brought down the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon and has caused death and mayhem and destruction all over the world.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  And unlike Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in the book No Country For Old Men,

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  we can't just walk away from this evil.

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  Because this evil is everywhere.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  And I regret to tell you that it's growing and it's gonna continue to grow unless we,

• 9:34Jocko Willink?

  we, the civilized people of the world, do something to stop it.

• 9:49Jocko Willink?

  And of course with Leif and I background, you know, both of us spent a lot of time in the SEAL Teams, deployed multiple times overseas to confront this evil enemy.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  And of course, we get a lot of questions about our take on this. And to open up the questions for tonight, first question is here.

• 10:19Jocko Willink?

  Is the darkness taking hold? Or do you and Leif see the way out of another war? What can we do to prevent lone wolf attacks from happening in Europe and America?

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Leif, thanks for coming on. I know this is, uh, obviously something both of us think a lot about. And I know a lot of people are wanting to hear what we think about it, so.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  Is the darkness taking hold, my brother?

• 10:58Leif Babin?

  There's no doubt that there is some serious darkness in the world and I think that darkness, we've seen it grow. We've seen it grow. We've seen the number of jihadi terrorist attacks across the world grow substantially over the years. Statistically, that's just a fact. And I think it's something that, I think people need to understand, you know, across America, across the world, people need to understand just how evil this enemy is. We talk about darkness, we talk about evil, and you know, I think that "No country for old men" summary, that intro really captures it in a way. And certainly, we've seen that with, you know, drug cartels, some of the horrific things that were going on in northern

• 11:41Leif Babin?

  Mexico or even across the border, you know, in the United States. But this Islamic enemy in particular is, in my opinion, as evil an enemy as the US military has ever faced in our long history. And I'm very well aware of the horrific evils of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and I think this threat is every bit or even more evil than that. It is something that we're seeing, as you just described, from that one attack. That's one example of hundreds, of hundreds that you could use over the last year or two alone.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and a good point on that is, we hear about the attacks that take place in the Western world, right? That's what we hear about. If you start diving into the butchery and the slaughter and the torture and the rape that happens in their world, in the Islamic world, in the Middle East, and again, you and I that have been there, we know for a fact that the majority of people do not want to live under that reign of terror.

• 12:43Leif Babin?

  No doubt.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  They want to have normal lives. And I say this all the time, I know you say this all the time, they want to have normal lives. And they are being brought down and...

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  Driven by this, this, I mean, evil is, is, it's like, I want a stronger word. I don't know what stronger word there is, but this is like, this is a, this is a personification of Satan. That's what this is. So, and I know that's one of the things that struck me and, and as we were talking, that made me think of No Country For Old Men, because when he says, "I know he's real. I've seen his work," and, and I know both of us have, we know he's real. And anybody that's deployed overseeing, sees and seen what these people can do is, knows that this is real. Now, the, the other part of this question, Leif, was, what can we do to prevent these

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  lone wolf attacks? So, so what do you, what's your, what's your thoughts on lone wolf attacks?

• 13:51Leif Babin?

  Well, I think, first of all, the lone wolf attack is a myth. It's an absolute myth. And, you know, this idea that there is, these people are just randomly, you know, we, we also use the term, along with lone wolf, they use the term self-radicalization. You hear that all the time, self, he's self-radicalized. You know, he was a normal kid, everything was great, and all of a sudden, he, uh, followed a Twitter feed from ISIS and decided to go out and kill people. And, uh, in, in no case are we seeing that. We're seeing that to be true. And I think we're, we're discounting that this is, this is an ideology. It comes out of, uh, out of the, the radical Islamic jihadi movement, uh, and there's a Sunni component of that, there's a Shiite component of that, but there is, uh, there

• 14:36Leif Babin?

  are a lot of followers of this. And there are folks that, you know, when we're, the Orlando shooter is a great example. We have, uh, someone where like, oh, he's self-radicalized, and the reality was, I mean, you, you could go back and, and, and track the, the guy's father, uh, and, and see that his, he had pro-Taliban posts on, uh, his YouTube channel, and, and, uh, he, he's, he's anti-American, uh, pro-jihadi.

• 15:04Leif Babin?

  He learned this in his home. And the fact that the Orlando shooter also happened to go to the very same mosque where the only known American-born suicide bomber attended and went to the same mosque as well. A guy who traveled to Syria, joined up with ISIS, and blew himself up, an American citizen. And they both went to the same mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida. So where is this coming from? It's coming from ideology. And we have to recognize that that's a fact. So many people want to bury their head in the sand and say Islam's a religion of peace, this has nothing to do with Islam. It has everything to do with Islam, obviously. And as you said, of course, most of the Islamic world doesn't want to live under this brutal reign of terror.

• 15:48Leif Babin?

  And we're abandoning those people to the likes of the Islamic State and that reign of terror if we don't stand up and we don't do anything. And so we have to recognize that threat. It is an ideology that pushes that threat, and it is not lone wolf. They're connected by that ideology across the world, and that inspires people to join up. And I think, that ties us back to the first question about is the darkness spreading? There's always darkness in the world. There's always been evil in the world. What keeps that darkness at bay? You can go back to the Pax Romana and talk about peace in the ancient world and how it was imposed through strong military might. And it's no different today.

• 16:30Leif Babin?

  We have enjoyed the relative peace of post-World War II because we had the strongest, most dominant military in the world. And so we keep that darkness at bay. That wouldn't have been the case if the United States and our allies had not won World War II. The darkness would have taken over the world, or much of the world. So only through military power, peace through strength, can we ensure that there's light in the world, that the darkness does not take over, that we keep that in check. And I think people need to understand that this is an enemy that can be defeated, that this darkness is spreading only because we are allowing it to spread, only because it is metastasized only because we have not gone and rooted it.

• 17:14Leif Babin?

  And so, so many Americans, I know they asked you, just like they asked me, you know, years ago when we saw ISIS taking over parts of Syria, then coming back into Iraq and establishing a foothold there, taking over huge cities like Mosul and Fallujah, and then Ramadi, before they were pushed out, it's, people ask, well, why do we really care about that? Why does it matter? And I think now, as we're starting to see, the kind of horrific attacks that are inspired by their so-called caliphate, that that real estate absolutely matters. It matters to us, and it inspires, they can inspire attacks here among us, and we always try to connect it back. People always say, well, we don't know if it was related to ISIS, and if Abu Bakr Baghdadi,

• 17:59Leif Babin?

  you know, the Islamic, head of the Islamic State had given them direction, that doesn't matter. None of that matters. The fact is that they're able to inspire attacks where people here amongst us in America and Western Europe, and across the world, go out and kill innocent people, and declare their allegiance. And so, we have to go there, and we have to destroy them. And it is, it is worth the effort for us, and we have a military that is eager and is ready to do that. And they are itching to make it happen, because they understand the nature of this evil, just like me and you, they've faced it, they've seen it, and, you know, as we talk to our buddies, who've spent time there, or there now, they're frustrated, and they want, they want to close with and destroy this enemy, and yet, there's a lot of political strings

• 18:44Leif Babin?

  holding them back from doing so. And I think that's something that, it simply requires leaders who understand the nature of this threat, and understand that there is a military solution to this, and we have to lead that fight, America has to lead that fight, and I think we can absolutely do that, and we can have tremendous impact in the world, and make sure that people don't want to join the losing team, because the Islamic State is getting hammered, and people are dying in large numbers, and they don't want to go over there and be a part of that, they don't want to join up with the losing side. We gotta make sure that that's clear to everybody in the world, that if they want to be on the side of, of the radical Islamic jihadis, they're gonna die a bloody and nasty death.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that you mentioned real quick, and we were kind of going off, was the fact that these people are normal people. One of the things that you and I heard, so for those that you don't know, Leif and I fought with the 1st Brigade 1st Armored Division in the Battle of Ramadi in the summer of 2006, where the city of Ramadi was taken back from insurgents. And when we did that, it was a very tough fight, very fierce fight, and we were able to get that city turned around and turned back over to the city of Ramadi. And it turned into a flourishing city. It was very peaceful for seven years. And when ISIS then took it over, took it back, they, and again, this is what Leif and I were told by people that

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  we knew that were on the ground over there, ISIS came in and murdered. They had a list of about 500 families, and they went in and murdered every person in the family. This was a list of families, families of whom someone in the family had worked with the coalition forces, worked with the Iraqi government, been against, you know, this form of radical Islam. So ISIS came in and murdered 500 families, which, to me, it should tell everybody out there that this is an enemy that we must address, we must face, and we must destroy.

• 20:56Leif Babin?

  I think what people don't understand either is that those same people who were on that list that ISIS brought in, they were screaming and begging for our help. They wanted American troops on the ground to help them. They don't want to live under that brutal reign of terror. They want us there. They want us to be able to push that enemy back and give them the chance to live their lives in relative freedom and peace and security.

• 21:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a great video on Vice News that shows prior to ISIS coming back in Ramadi, it's very difficult for me to watch, it'd be difficult for you to watch too, because it's exactly showing exactly what you're saying. They're going around, they're interviewing people, and the guy that's doing the interviews is some kind of a... I think he's an Iraqi-American because he speaks Arabic and he's conversing with people and they're showing subtitles. But, everybody he's talking to, he's saying, "Well, what are you gonna do? It looks like ISIS is coming." And they're saying, "We want the Americans back. We want them to come here. We want them to help us." Then they got the governor of Ramadi, and they're, they show him on the phone, and he's talking to his, whoever his superiors, and he's saying, "We need the Americans out here. They're getting too close. The ISIS is getting too close. We need American support. We need them."

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's the thing that so many people miss in America, is the fact that the normal people in these countries, they do not want to live under this kind of regime. And, they, but they are, it's hard for them to defend themselves against it. And so, that's where America, the benevolent nation that we are, can provide this sort of peace and stability there. And it's gonna be hard, and I say this all the time, right? If you're gonna go to war, people are gonna die. Americans are gonna die, innocent civilians are gonna die. But look at what the alternative is. The alternative is, you have this disgusting, despicable ideology getting a foothold in

• 22:47Jocko Willink?

  the world, and it is absolutely disgusting, and it should not be stood for.

• 22:51Leif Babin?

  And I think people need to understand too, when we're talking about destroying the Islamic caliphate, as they, as they call themselves, and how that real estate alone, them owning that real estate inspires those attacks, it doesn't take giant ground invasions with hundreds of thousands of troops in order, in order to defeat this enemy. It, it takes a few thousand American troops to go and generate momentum to beat them back, partner with folks on the ground like, like Anbari Sheikh, that we, we worked with back in the day, and US forces worked with for the Anbar waking, and they're, they're asking for our help. We need to partner with folks like the, the president of Egypt, and, and King, the King of Jordan, who have talked about how this is a civil war within Islam, and they don't,

• 23:36Leif Babin?

  they don't want to subscribe to that, or live under that kind of brutal reign. They, they want to lead the fight against it. We gotta help them, we gotta support them, and we need to team up with folks like that. It is, we must do it, and if, if we don't do it, you're gonna see the darkness continue to spread, until we actually do something about it. So many people want to say, "Well, let's let others over there lead the fight."

• 23:59Leif Babin?

  That's kinda like Winston Churchill saying, you know what, the Nazis are in Czechoslovakia and France, that's their problem.

• 24:08Jocko Willink?

  Where are they coming next?

• 24:10Leif Babin?

  Exactly.

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 24:15Jocko Willink?

  That's the Islamic State for you folks.

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  Move on to the next question here. Jocko and Leif, how do you know if you terminated too early? I wanted to remove the toxicity before it damaged the team. When do you know it's time to fire someone? So, we'll get into a little, little change in pace here, going from the darkness of the Islamic State into something a lot more positive, which is people running businesses and...

• 24:45Leif Babin?

  It's good you clarified that, because terminated has a different context than previous topic.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  Check. So, this is a good question, and it's something we hear a lot. And we got a ton of questions when I put this out. So, when do you know it's time to fire somebody?

• 25:02Leif Babin?

  We get this question all the time, as you just said, and it's... This was always the most difficult thing. It is incredibly difficult, even for, you know, people who feel like they're super, super tough leaders, or strong leaders in the SEAL Teams, who've been through all our training and, and have proven themselves on the battlefield. It's hard to fire people. It's always difficult to fire people. It's hard to have those tough conversations with folks, and so,

• 25:28Leif Babin?

  we've, we talk about this, that the right time to fire somebody is when you don't feel bad about it. And what I mean by that, I don't mean just because you're cold-blooded, but that you actually, but that you actually have taken every step to mentor and train and provide resources and, and help that person achieve the performance that you need them to achieve in order to accomplish the mission. And you've given them every chance to succeed. And once you, you, you should feel absolutely confident, you've, you've, you have exhausted all options. And then you you're not going to feel bad about it because you've you've taken so much time and effort and they shouldn't even they they're not even going to be upset about it.

• 26:10Leif Babin?

  Not that they necessarily love you or thank you for firing them, but so often you see people that are literally relieved. When we work with companies and we see this happen, we see people that are relieved because they're in a position where they just they're overwhelmed, there's massive pressure on them and they knew there it was beyond their capability and they just didn't want to say, I can't do this. And so when they got either fired or just transitioned to a different role, it was they were relieved and they said, thank you. And like it really was that was really eating at me that I I didn't feel capable and I didn't feel I knew I was letting the team down. Uh, and that's almost always the case. Every once in a while you get the tortured genius who's just can't take direction or won't listen, um, who's never going to see, never going to, you know, see that I'd have, but that that's okay. It's okay.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the the only other thing I'd say is laying out the real crystal clear expectations of where you need to be. Hey, if this is where you this is where you need to be. And if you don't get there, this is what's going to happen. And that's why you said it shouldn't be a surprise. It should be, hey, I knew exactly what the expectations were. I knew exactly what was required of me and I knew exactly what was going to happen if I didn't meet those expectations requirements. So that's how you know. And the only other thing is we sometimes, and it's totally normal, we build a relationship with our people. And so sometimes that relationship gets strong to the point where you might value that relationship

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  more than you value the performance of the team. And that is not a good situation because you have to look out for the whole team. And if I say, oh, this guy's not doing his job, but he's my bro, so I'm going to keep him on, I'm letting down the whole team. So that's just another little element that you have to pay attention to. And if you truly care about the person, mentor them, coach them, put them into a position where they can succeed. Sometimes people aren't good at something and you got to move them to a spot where they can, you can take advantage of their strengths instead of putting them in a spot where their weaknesses are going to be totally exposed. That's how you take care of someone. So that's what you got to do before you fire somebody.

• 28:12Leif Babin?

  One thing too, that I learned from you in in in the Navy, uh, during our time was When you have those tough conversations, you gotta write it down. You have to write it down and that's something that I thought was very powerful because so often, even in SEAL teams, you'd see leaders who would say, well, this leader screwed up, you know, this platoon commander, this chief's got an issue and we need to, he's causing, you know, he's dangerous or he's making bad decisions or he's unprofessional or he's, you know, he's, he's not getting his unit where they need to be and we need to call him in and tighten him up. And you'd have that conversation behind closed doors when the person isn't present and you're like, right on, let's call them in, let's tighten them up. You come in, they sit down,

• 28:56Leif Babin?

  and here you are face to face with that person and you just had that closed door conversation about how terrible they were and how they really needed, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna square them away. And now, face to face, the conversation goes like this. Well, you're doing, you're doing a pretty good job. You're doing a pretty good job overall. There's a couple of things we need to work on here or there, but you know, maybe not here. And I, I think that's, that, that doesn't help anyway. That's the false cheerleading is a disaster. And it's something that we talk about all the time in our business. I'm sure you've mentioned that on the podcast, you know, many times before, but when you write it down, you have it in front of you. So you have to have that tough conversation and you give them a copy. So they have it with them as well. And then they can take that and understand where they need to be and when they need to be there.

• 29:39Leif Babin?

  And, and that forces you to have those tough conversations. It's, it's absolutely a game changer and makes you, makes you address that. And then, again, the false cheerleading is a disaster, people. Then when you have to fire someone and they're like, wait, you just said I was doing a good job. So obviously you failed as a leader.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  And another, another good thing you can do to soften the blow of this stuff when you're, when you're delivering the heavy news is you're saying, listen, I wrote this down. I'm putting this in front of you. Why am I doing that? Cause I think you can do it. I want you to do it. I'm investing in you. This is not my way to, to make you feel bad. This is my way to make you get better. I want you to do better. So here's what, here's what you gotta do for me. Here it is in plain English. Do you understand this bullet point? Do you understand this bullet point? Do you understand this bullet point? That's the best possible thing you can do. And, and you gotta make that, them understand that. Cause otherwise they'll walk out of the room saying, oh, he's picking on me. He doesn't like me. No, no, no, no. The opposite is true. If I didn't like you, I would just fire you.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  I want you to perform. I'm mentoring you. I'm coaching you because I want you to do better. I'm giving you this list so you know exactly what you have to do to win. So don't take it the wrong way, my brother. Just get in the game and get this stuff done.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Hey, do you think, cause I remember you saying this.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Good evening. I remember you saying this to Jade, remember you were like, you were like, when you don't feel bad. I don't know if you put in those exact words, but that's basically the message exactly that they said, when you don't feel bad about it. You guys both know, you know? Do you think that there's a difference between like the SEAL teams, for example, because you can't just, or I'm assuming you can't just replace the guy. So it's like, it's worth it to invest as much as you possibly can.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  The civilian world and the SEAL teams, I thought this would be different. They're not different. They're the same. So in the civilian world, every company we go work with, doesn't matter what the company is, there, there's no immediate replacement for somebody that knows a skillset for a software engineer. Is there a great guy waiting to come in the door? No. Is there a great welder waiting to come in the door? No. Is there, just no matter what these things are, there, there's not a perfect replacement coming for it. It's the same thing in the SEAL teams. You don't have a ready replacement ready to come in. So of course you've got a person, you've gone through the agony of finding them. You've gone through the agony of recruiting them. You've gone through the agony of bringing them on board, issuing them their gear, getting them their computer, letting them understand the, the, the culture of the company.

• 32:02Jocko Willink?

  I've done, I mean, you've already invested so much, you don't want to just fire the person. You want them to work out. And so that's why it's important on either military and civilian, you got to, you've made those investments. The, the best outcome is to have them succeed. That's always the best outcome. And so that's why you've got to be a great mentor, a great coach, a great leader. And I've talked about this before, I'm not going to go into it right now, but some people are allergic to the words mentor and some people are allergic to the word coach. You get someone with an ego problem and I go, hey, Leif, welcome to the platoon. I'm going to go ahead and mentor you. You know what I mean?

• 32:36Leif Babin?

  I don't need you to mentor me.

• 32:37Jocko Willink?

  So, so there's a lot of people that, that, that they think, you know, that offends them because that implies, I've said this before, that implies that I know more than you do and you know less than me. And I'm the big guy that's going to help you little guy. So sometimes that direct kind of coaching is not the right answer. But you know, clearly when you're getting to a point where somebody's getting fired, you, you need to do some direct coaching. So that's why we're right now, we're getting it done correctly.

• 33:01Leif Babin?

  And one, one more point on that, which is a great, a great question, Echo, but it's. That's the easiest, I think, fallback. And we see that with a lot of leaders. We saw in the military and we see it throughout, you know, companies and organizations that we work with now. Oftentimes, it's people that, well, this person isn't good enough. I need to fire them and get someone else. And it almost, most of the time, that's not the case. Most of the time, it's, they just need to be led. They need to be led. They need to have the mission better explained to them. They need to have, you know, the training. They need to have better resources. They need to have mentorship. Uh, just as Jocko was talking about. And so that's, that's an easy fallback, but it's, it's not, it's an excuse. And it's the opposite of extreme ownership.

• 33:39Leif Babin?

  And really only the case of that tortured genius, right? That, that, that we wrote about the, the person that just cannot take any direction, no matter how, uh, how valid, uh, or, or, uh, positive, uh, and needed, or they can't take any criticism. They won't accept any responsibility. They, they have it all figured out. The world just can't see the genius in what they do. You know, that's kind of how they look at things. That's the only time that you really have to fire those, those folks generally.

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the, the thing you didn't say, you hit like four points. You wanna, one of the best places to start, if someone's not doing what they're supposed to be doing is explain to them why they're doing it. What, this is why I want you to do this. Cause then they can absorb it. They understand what the deep mission is. They understand kind of the commander's intent. So whenever someone's not doing this, and I, you know what? I'm just gonna go ahead and break out a story right now.

• 34:27Leif Babin?

  Good. Do it.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  So I got a seven-year-old daughter. She can't ride her bike yet. Right? That's not good. You should be riding a bike at four, right? In my family, it's four. So she can't ride a bike yet.

• 34:39Leif Babin?

  We're not two.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, and she's, and it's become a thing. It's become an issue, right? So the other day, and we're going on a big camping trip and it's gonna be necessity to be able to ride the bike. So the other day I started telling, okay, we gotta go work on your bike riding. So I'm like, come on, get your shoes on, get ready, bro. And she's immediately goes defensive. I don't know. I don't wanna ride a bike. I can't ride a bike. I'm not good at it. And I started getting right, you know, no, listen, get your shoes on. I went that route like an idiot. And I, luckily I didn't go too far down that road. And I just stopped myself after two direct orders with no explanation of why. And I said, hey, sweetie. We're gonna go work on your bike ride. Let me tell you why. Because when we go camping, almost everywhere we're gonna be going is gonna be on the bike.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  Especially when it's time to bike ride to go get ice cream. We're gonna have to ride bikes to get ice cream. And, and so all I wanna make sure is that you're able to come with us when we go to get ice cream.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I don't wanna have to bring it back for you. I want you to come with us. And you could see, you know, I just completely changed attack. And she was said, you know, okay, let, let me get my shoes on. And, and literally, that's an example with a seven-year-old, right? And first of all, the first note there is that I, Mr. Big Leadership Expert, completely went down the wrong road. And was like, listen to me because I'm the father and I know you do what I tell you. It's the wrong approach 100% of the time, even with a seven-year-old. And as soon as I went back and said, hey, here's why I want you, and you know, I told her a bunch of other things. You know, it's really good. This is how we're gonna do, get around. This is how you can get around the beach. All these things. And changed her attitude. It literally changed her attitude in a minute. I wish I would have videotaped the whole thing. Cause we could have posted it.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah, that would have been a good little case study.

• 36:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Flying through with the ice cream, money. The, would you say, back to the, the hiring and people, you know, you don't have just someone waiting in the wings to get hired to, to fill that position, remember?

• 36:36Speaker 02

  That kinda is the case, huh? Most of the time where if you fire someone, it's like, oh, we'll just replace them. Right? All that work and stuff, you gotta rehire somebody. Ben, that, you're wasting time and resources to do that. When you could just be investing more in that kind.

• 36:52Jocko Willink?

  Always want your, your team to succeed. And sometimes people take that too far. We, you get someone that just wants the team to succeed, why they're not gonna fire somebody? So, there's always a balance. There's always dichotomy there. But yes, that is true.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  So, do you make the exception? If, let's say you know, let's say, hey, I, I, I hired this, I don't know.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  You weigh it. You weigh the pros and cons.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  So, if you do have a guy kinda waiting in the wings, I don't know, my neighbor, you know?

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Hey, he's winning, so you're gonna invest less in this guy, cause we got this guy ready to go?

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, no, you, you, you won't invest less. You're not gonna invest anything. If you've got someone that's gonna come in and do the job and this person can't make it happen and has failed.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Right, currently.

• 37:26Jocko Willink?

  Get rid of them.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:29Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 37:32Jocko Willink?

  Good times. Yeah. Alright. Here we go.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  Jocko and Leif. Explain how you first met and worked together.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  And then the second part is how do you say, stay so disciplined every day? So Leif.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Meeting Jocko, good times. How was that?

• 37:57Leif Babin?

  We touched on this a little bit in pod, in podcast 11, but it was a,

• 38:05Leif Babin?

  it was a good time. I checked into, I checked into SEAL Team 3 back in the, the spring of 2005. And I was taking over as the platoon commander for Charter Platoon. And I see, I see the, I see the name on the board Jocko. And I already kind of heard his name around. People kind of knew who he was and, but I didn't, I didn't know much, I didn't know much about Jocko. It was like, but our chief, Tony, who we've also talked about, who was just a complete badass, amazing warrior, incredible combat leader. And he, he said, hey, Jocko's good to go. He's like, Jocko's who you want. It's like, right on. I'm looking forward to meeting Jocko. And at this time Jocko was the admiral's aide. So I think you were, you were still busy, kind of run around and trying to turn over those duties there.

• 38:48Leif Babin?

  A very busy job, difficult job, but, but an important job certainly. And so when Jocko finally showed up to the team, the first time I remember seeing you was it, was it, we had a morning formation. So we all, we all go to, you know, our, our morning meeting and then we stand in formation out back of the team. And everyone musters up and, and I just remember looking at Jocko and he had zero smile on his face, just a scowl. No smile whatsoever. In fact, I don't think you smile for the first two months.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I have a two month moratorium when I meet people for smiling.

• 39:23Leif Babin?

  And so he just came up to us and he just looked at us and said, I'm Jocko. And just staring through us like he wanted to murder us and, and you know, shaking our hand. It was me and then our other, the other platoon commander. Delta Platoon. And we, we knew each other, well, me and the Delta Platoon commander. And you know, we were, we were like looking at each other. He's like, he looks at me, he's like.

• 39:45Leif Babin?

  Jocko hates me, I can already tell it.

• 39:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Leif Babin?

  Jocko hates everybody. But what I didn't realize later until after we worked together, he gave me a copy of the book Boutface, which we've talked about many, you know, you've talked about many times on the podcast. Um, and it's a tremendously influential book. I know on you, certainly on me and on our entire generation, Boutface by Colonel David Hackworth, uh, I realized that that's what he did when he checked in and took over his unit, which he renamed the Hardcore and, uh, and actually, uh, he said, "I didn't smile at anybody for several, it was six weeks or something like the first, first couple of months he was there."

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  I like to be a little bit harder than Hackworth, so I go two months.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Wait, did you get it from Hackworth or was that, that was your thing anyway?

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember. I probably did. I ripped off so much stuff from Hackworth. I definitely ripped off like we, we, we renamed the task unit, which was called Bravo. We renamed it Bruiser. That complete ripoff from Hackworth. So, but I, but I, I always.

• 40:38Leif Babin?

  It worked. It worked.

• 40:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I always have, uh, have, I mean, I'm, when you meet me, I'm going to be standoffish. I'm not, I'm not a big, you know, I don't open, I'm, I'm just not generally like that.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was gonna say, you did me like that.

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Real cool. All that.

• 40:53Leif Babin?

  He probably didn't smile for the first two years that he knew you.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The tough, the tough thing is though, is when you take over a position like that in SEAL teams and, and Leif, you know this, you don't know who you're getting. You don't know anything about them. You have guys that you are gonna have to put trust and faith in to, to lead guys in combat. And it's, it's a very, that's the way I saw it. And, and I knew that with you guys, you guys were the platoon commanders. You guys were going to be on the battlefield every day. You guys were going to be leading guys in combat the most. There was going to be so much pressure on you guys. There was going to be violence. There was going to be war. And so I wanted to, and, and there was a chance you were going to get fired, you know? I didn't want to be friends with you yet.

• 41:40Jocko Willink?

  I wanted to make sure you made it through certain wickets. And then obviously, the more I got to know you, and actually, there was, at this time, you know, I wasn't, I guess the word is, I wasn't as mature as I am right now. So, I was talking to one of the, one of the senior officers at the team, and they were thinking about maybe switching guys around, or moving the platoons around. And now, at this point, you guys had, I had gotten to know you guys, you and the Delta Platoon Commander, and realized that you guys were exactly who I wanted to be with me in combat. Exactly the type of guys that I knew would never back down, would go forward, and would kick ass. And, I knew that.

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  But this guy says to me, he says, "Hey, you know, we're thinking about maybe moving some of the platoon commanders, or blah, blah, blah, blah." And I said, "No, no, the two guys I got are the two guys I'm keeping." And they're like, "Well, you know, do they have the qualities that you want, you know, for a..." And I said, "They have the two qualities." He said, "The qualities." I said, "I only need two qualities." They need to be able to listen, which means they're humble, and they need to be tough. And that's what those guys are. Because I dished out all kinds of crap on these guys, and they always just took it.

• 42:59Leif Babin?

  We wouldn't have lasted long. Because we were all training Jiu-Jitsu at zero five hundred every morning.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  That's how we roll.

• 43:07Leif Babin?

  And it was, we had an awesome task in it. And, you know, Jocko mentored and trained us. And I'm sure he was frustrated with our performance initially, because he had a lot more experience than me, or the Delta Platoon Commander. And, and yet, he spent the time to train and mentor us, and get us to where we needed to be. And by the time we deployed, you know, to the battlefield in Ramadi, he unleashed us on the battlefield to lead our platoons. And, and even, you know, underneath us, within the platoon, our assistant platoon commanders, and our platoon chief, and our leading petty officer, I mean, our senior leaders within that, they were out, leading their own elements on the battlefield. And so, he had to have tremendous faith and trust in those guys. And, and we certainly built that. And it was all certainly due to Jocko's leadership, to you Bruiser. Thanks to Colonel David Hackworth.

• 43:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you know, everybody should know that it's Leif and I are the mouthpieces right now for a bunch of badass guys that all stepped up and when we were going through training, crushing it, when we went overseas, crushed it. We're two, two, two people from a, from a big unit and all those guys, you know, were just getting after it. And we put, we put them all, you know, we didn't, it's, you know, we were just talking about firing people. We fired people from Task Unit Bruiser that didn't, didn't make the cut. And we tried, we did the things we were supposed to do, we mentored them, we helped them along and at the end of the day, they weren't ready. And so we got rid of them. So when we went overseas, we were, uh, we were ready to rock.

• 44:36Leif Babin?

  We knew we could count on everybody, no doubt. And that's, I think that's something that people, you know, miss and we talk about that all the time that, you know, what makes a team, the biggest lesson we brought back from Ramadi was that leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Leaders at every level. And so, you know, why we had an extraordinary task unit was because we had those leaders at every level that stepped up. Not just me, not just Jocko, our, our squad leaders in charge of eight guys, our fire team leaders in charge of four guys, the two man shooter pair down in the frontline trooper who just stepped up, owned his piece of the mission and, and led and got after it.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you, when you think about, actually as I'm, I'm sitting here thinking about, cause I haven't, I really haven't thought about this too much, about the process of going from, I don't know these two guys, I don't trust these two guys. That's the main piece of it, right? I don't trust these two guys because I don't know them. And so how do you build that trust? And, uh, and somebody asked me that the other day and, and just, it's a really good point of how do you build trust with people? And the best way I think to build trust is to give trust. So I said, you know, I'd look at Leif and say, hey, you run this operation. You know, you run this training operation. I trust that you can do it. Now, when I give him that trust, he's looking at me, thinking to himself, hey, this guy trusts me, this guy.

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  So, so we're building the trust. Whereas if I say, Leif, I'll run this, you just, you just follow me, you just get in the backseat, you just step aside. I, that's where you, we're not building trust. And if we went on deployment, if I had acted like that whole deployment, we got on deployment, I wouldn't, wouldn't have had built any trust. And I'll tell you one more thing.

• 46:13Jocko Willink?

  As I was sitting here thinking, we did everything together. I mean,

• 46:18Leif Babin?

  No doubt.

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  We ate dinner, we worked out, we did jiu-jitsu. This was you, me, the other platoon commander, the other Delta platoon commander, we did everything together. I mean, you guys lived together. And we all lived in the same neighborhood. We surfed together, we lifted together, everything was together. We debriefed together, and that is how you get this bond and this massive amount of trust where I look at you and know, I don't have to say a word. You know the deal, I know the deal, and we go forward.

• 46:48Leif Babin?

  One thing I was just thinking about too is, uh,

• 46:52Leif Babin?

  this is something that I think, I think you brought to the table. I mean, as you were, you know, training us and mentoring us and spending time with us and building, building that trust as, as we were going through all this training to get ready for combat deployment. You know, if you come in and say, you talked about before, like, I'm, I'm gonna coach you, I'm gonna mentor you. Obviously, that makes people like, when, when you actually say, you know, when you said to me, like, Leif, you got this, or like, hey, run this. And then I'm put in a situation where I know Jocko's got a bunch of experience in this, you know, this, this particular direct action, you know, raids, he just come back from Iraq and had a bunch of experience. I didn't have any experience in that. I'd led a few sniper operations. Uh, you know, but that was it. And, uh, I didn't, I hadn't done any, you know, direct action raids like that. So, uh, here, here we are getting, getting, I'm getting thrust into it. I'm in charge. I gotta make some calls.

• 47:36Leif Babin?

  It's humbling. So what does that make me do? It makes me be like, hey, Jocko, what do you think about this? Hey, what, you know, here's kind of what I'm thinking here. What do you think? So it, it opens up the conversation of like, hey, uh, I'm looking for mentorship. I'm looking for training rather than I got it all figured out. So even had I thought that initially, you know, at that point, when you don't have experience, you don't even know what you don't know. So when, when you put people in a situation that there, it's beyond their comfort zone. It's outside of, you know, their real knowledge base, then they look, often they're looking to you for help. They're looking to you for guidance.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  That's a good point. And actually, somebody, somebody point, we were working with a company the other day on the East Coast, and we were going through something, and, and, and we were, you were describing me. quote unquote mentoring you and again I hate to use that word but but when you described it you said hey Jocko asked me this and then he asked me this and then he asked me this and what I was doing was saying hey Leif why are you doing that right there and Leif said well this is what I thought and I said okay well what would you do then if this happened and Leif said oh that's a good point and so instead of me saying Leif don't do that do you do this right here I didn't do that I was asking him questions and letting him find the answer and also the other point of this for real is I wasn't just asking the question like so that

• 48:52Jocko Willink?

  I could guide him down the perfect path I'm legitimately asking him like why are you doing that right there because maybe he's got an idea in his head that that could be positive

• 49:00Leif Babin?

  I uh I can I can talk through that example because that was in that was in the kill house

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  yeah

• 49:05Leif Babin?

  we're working through the kill house and you know for those that don't know who the kill house is you got a you've got a rooms and hallways in a building and oftentimes it's ballistic walls so we can shoot live fire in there same thing SWAT teams use or you know any military in the world but it's it's you work on your close quarter combat skills or CQC where you you enter doorways and you work you're working together as a team clearing these halls and rooms and moving through a target building in a training environment and often they can change them and move the move the hallways around or change doorways so so it mixes it up every time you can't really get used to you know doing it one way or the other and and and so I'd been told as an officer my job was to stand in the back and just take

• 49:48Leif Babin?

  the report so that's what I did and the report being how many how many people have been shot how many hostages have been captured how many seals have been wounded exactly I've got the little quarterback sleeve on my arm with a grease pencil and I'm just standing in the back doing that and the question Jocko asked me was hey Leif he literally asked it wasn't condescending it was you know the tone really mattered and he said why are you in the back and he was very curious about why I was in the back what was it what was my tactical reasoning for that and I looked at him I was like that's what I was told to do and someone who had told me that didn't really have any real experience on a real battlefield and said well you're an officer you just stand in the back

• 50:32Leif Babin?

  And so, uh, so I thought I'm gonna aggressively do that. That's what I'm gonna do. And that's, that's where I was.

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  Aggressively stand in the back.

• 50:38Leif Babin?

  And I'm a pretty default, I'm a pretty default aggressive leader. And I was like, hey, if my job is to stand in the back and take this report, I'm gonna do it better than anybody. Watch this. And when Jocko asked me that, he's like, well, why are you in the back? And I was like, cause that's where I thought I was supposed to be. And then he asked me another question was, uh, well, do you know what's going on up in the front of the train right now? You know, I've got, I've got 15 guys spread out through, through the building. They're in different rooms and stuff. And I was like, I have no idea what's going on in the train up front. And, and so then the, the follow on question from him was like, well, how can you, how can you lead these, how can you lead this team? How can you be the commander of control for your team if, if you don't know what's going on up front?

• 51:18Leif Babin?

  And I was like, I mean, it was just light bulb moment go off. Like I have to, I have to be in a position where I know where, you know, where I need to be. And that was, it showed me that I was, I was, not only was I wrong in, in where I was, but I, I was failing as a leader and failing my team. If I couldn't actually lead them and know what's going on. So the proper position for me was forward, somewhere in the middle generally, and I could move around. I didn't want to get so far forward that I'm getting sucked into every room clearance or getting in a gunfight in, you know, in the hallway. Cause I gotta be able to stand back and see, see what's going on, but not so far in the back that I don't know what's going on up front. So, uh, that, he never needed to tell me that again. It was, I knew where I needed to be. I understood that, uh, it made sense to me.

• 51:58Leif Babin?

  And I think if you wanna, that's a great example of being able to successfully mentor your people. So they understand, you know, to ask them those questions in a way that's meaningful. It's not condescending. It's not, you know, I know everything, uh, you know, why are you doing that? But, uh, or don't do this, but, but actually ask me the questions and I didn't have a legitimate answer. Light bulb goes off. Nobody ever needs to tell me that again.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like that's like such a critical component, the tone. How you can say the same exact question, but you say it in all these different tones. So like, like what were you, you know how you like, you always say this, like, what were you thinking there on that thing or that, when that went down? As opposed to what were you thinking? You know, like that kind of thing. That's common. What were you thinking? Like you're so dumb.

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  And I think the factor is there is that I recognize, I truly recognize that I could be learning something and there might be something I don't see. I, and I'll tell you what, Leif talked about this earlier, man. Combat is humbling and I've been in situations combat where I did not have control.

• 52:56Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  And I did not do good. And I look at those situations and I don't know if that's going to happen again in whatever situation. So my mind is not sitting there saying, I know everything because I know I don't.

• 53:09Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 53:10Jocko Willink?

  So when I'm asking those questions, I am legitimately asking you the question. Hey Echo, what did you, what were you thinking when you, when you spliced this thing together? Or what were you thinking when you, when you, when you posted this thing on that video? What's the purpose of that, you know? And I, I actually want to know. Um, so that's why I'm not saying Echo, why the hell did you post that? You know what I mean? It's, I, I generally, I genuinely am not, am not overconfident and, and don't think I know everything.

• 53:37Leif Babin?

  And that was, that was one of the biggest lessons are, you know, in addition to this leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. One of the other big lessons learned was humility and that, you know, at that time I had deployed to Iraq before. So I was a one platoon wonder.

• 53:49Jocko Willink?

  One cruise wonder.

• 53:50Leif Babin?

  Exactly.

• 53:51Jocko Willink?

  One pump chump.

• 53:54Leif Babin?

  It's a, and you, you really feel that, that happens when you have, I've deployed or I've been overseas. And I've done a few combat operations, you get that on your bill, and yet you don't even realize what it feels like to be overwhelmed, to have things that are out of your control, to, to have the enemy flank you or do something that you hadn't foreseen. And I think those just sustained combat operations for almost seven months in Ramadi, just a day in and day out of intense gun battles, was something that it was humbling. And I think that was one of the biggest lessons are we were able to come back and pass on to others was just, wow, if you think you got it figured out, you haven't really done anything real.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and the, the other thing that happens, and this is, this is actually to, to exactly to your point. Somebody goes overseas and they, they, they do some combat operations and they don't get challenged. They don't get tested truly, and it actually falsely increases their confidence. And we see this in the business world too, like you have a, you have a company that came out of the gate and that they just timed things right. They were ahead of the curve and all of a sudden they're doing fantastic and they think they can make no mistakes. And they're not humble. So their success, their success actually makes them get arrogant. And I'm, this is real obvious. I mean, look at Rhonda Rousey, right? Rhonda Rousey, she thought, hey, I'm good to go.

• 55:14Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to beat all these people and that, that, that arrogance will bite you. And so I, I think we saw that. In in the SEAL teams where guys go overseas, do a do a quote unquote combat deployment, they'd get some experience, but it wasn't like hardcore sustained combat operations. And so that that that actually it would be a negative. It'd almost be better not to have any experience, almost. It's probably better to have some experience, but you definitely. So so my point is whether you're in combat, whether you're going into combat, whether you've been in combat, whether you're in business, whether you're in a sport, just because you've had some success, don't start cutting corners, don't let, don't get arrogant. I mean, this is common sense stuff, but we still see it all the time.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you're in the mix, you it's you just you're just compelled to do it.

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  Like, I'm winning.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:04Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I don't need to train any harder. You know, I don't need to train any harder. I'm good to go.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  It's like that guy running the mile. You know, the guy who's running the mile, right? He's beating everyone, he's winning. But then you got the guy who's had some adversity through the four laps and at the end, he's turning it on and the guy ran the mile, he's like, oh, I'm cruising. Then the guy passes him. Same thing.

• 56:23Leif Babin?

  That's why it's always easy to be the underdog because it's it's you can just take advantage of of of overconfidence, of arrogance, of someone who just doesn't think.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's like what you were saying, like I'd gone to Iraq, we'd done, we'd done a bunch of operations. But I'll tell you, in my mind, I I didn't feel like I had been tested, I knew a lot. I felt like, hey, I we still got to be, that's why we always thought worst case scenario, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? What's how bad can this get? That's what I was always looking at and still look at. And when I when we were running training, when I was running training, when you run training, we're always looking at that. What we want, I want the training to be harder than combat, you know? So keep your ego in check, people.

• 57:03Leif Babin?

  And we we talk to leaders about that all the time. I just had a conversation with a leader not too long ago about how he's telling me everything's going good, you know, he's implemented the stuff we talked about. He's he's rocking roll with these principles, his team's going great. I'm like, OK, well, where can it go bad? Where can it go bad? You know, where what what did you miss? What risk did you, you know, are you not taking the proper steps? What's the worst case scenario that can happen? I think good leaders are going to be doing that all the time, never going to be satisfied, always thinking, what what did I miss? There's always those little butterflies there. And I think when you're when you're at an op and thinking, I got it all figured out, what bad could possibly happen? We're going to crush the enemy.

• 57:40Jocko Willink?

  Watch out.

• 57:41Leif Babin?

  It's going to go bad for you.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  All right, moving on to the next question.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  I'll tell you, though. What's easy about being the underdog is that not much is expected out of you. So even if you fail it, everyone's like, whatever, it doesn't throw up any kind of red flag, doesn't move the needle. But when you do good, it moves the needle because no one expects much out of you.

• 58:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep, being the underdog is the easier position, less pressure.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it can be seen that way, yeah.

• 58:10Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  Next question, uh, here we go. Jocko and Leif, what, once the crisis started in Benghazi, was a QRF practical?

• 58:25Leif Babin?

  You know, this is something that, uh, there's been so much discussion, obviously with the heated, uh, political debate, you know, of election season. And, uh, a lot's been said about Benghazi and, uh, I think what bothers me so much about that is the answer is yes. Of course, a QRF is practical and a QRF should have been set up and ready to go in the event that this happened. And so the issue with this is, you know, with Benghazi and why it's a big deal and why it's important is, uh, particularly for those of us in the military.

• 59:00Leif Babin?

  Um, is because when US military personnel or, or employees of the US government anyway, are out in harms way and they're calling for help.

• 59:19Leif Babin?

  Leaders, real leaders are going to step up and get that help to them and make it happen. And I think, you know, what, uh, whether or not a QRF, which is a, a quick, quick reaction force. Uh, we're talking about sending in a, you know, a force, maybe it's Marines, maybe it's soldiers, maybe it's special operations forces.

• 59:37Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it's just air support.

• 59:38Leif Babin?

  Maybe it's air support, close, close air support, uh, which could have gotten there certainly, uh, you know, in a matter of, of hours. Um, it's.

• 59:47Leif Babin?

  Those things would probably have made a huge difference on that battlefield. Would they have saved the lives of Ty Woods, who was our teammate and Glenn Doherty, another teammate? And those, the two State Department officials lost their lives, including the Ambassador Chris Stevens? I don't know. I don't know that it would have saved their lives and no one could say that. But that's not what leaders are asking themselves. They don't know the outcome. I think a true, good leader is gonna, is gonna, when bad things are happening, is going to say, "How can we resolve this? How can we help those guys?" And I think the hard thing when you look at this scenario is, from everything that we've seen and understand about what happened in the wake of Benghazi,

• 1:00:29Leif Babin?

  is when the call came in that US forces are under attack, the immediate response was, "How can we twist this? How can we make this better for us politically?" Spin it. "How can we spin it?" Yeah, exactly. So, how can we do that? Well, Libya had to be, because that was the party line at the time. Libya had to be a big win. We liberated Libya, you know, US forces winning air power liberated Libya from the, you know, evil dictator Muammar Gaddafi. That has to be a victory for us. We can't say that al-Qaeda or terrorist groups have taken over, that the threat level's there. So, we have to put a spin on this. So, let's, let's, we can't say that there's a threat. Let's come up with a story about the video

• 1:01:14Leif Babin?

  and how the video inflamed, you know, hatred against Americans and blame that. And so, that was the crisis response and no one ever said, "Send every asset we have to help those guys." And, you know, there's all this, you know, the paperwork and the permissions that are required to enter another country's airspace. Let me tell you something. If someone, if the President, at the very top says, "Get US aircraft there now", they're gonna get there now. And what is Libya gonna do for us? I mean, particularly when they're a nation that's not, I mean, they've got kind of a pseudo-government at that point, post, you know, post-revolution. So, it was, it's a travesty and I think it's a real stain on...

• 1:02:00Leif Babin?

  American honor that when US troops were in harms way calling for help, uh, America did not send help.

• 1:02:08Jocko Willink?

  So a couple of things from my perspective. Number one, and you kind of touched on this. The preparation was awful. There's all kinds of documents showing that these guys had felt the threat, analyzed the threat, knew the threat was real, and did not get the support that they wanted down there. That's just step number one. So from the beginning, never mind once this, once, once, what was it, was the question? Once the crisis started, the crisis shouldn't have started. You should be proactive, you should be aggressive in your contingency planning, you should be aggressive in your security measures, you should be aggressive against a known and quantifiable threat all the time. So, so there's number one, there's the first failure. Then the second failure, you already said it.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna tell you what, you got American troops in harm way, harms way, we are going to do everything possible to get there now. And you know what? How long is that crisis gonna last? You don't know. You don't know how long a crisis is gonna last. So if the crisis starts and I know what's going on, I'm sending help. And I'm sending the first, the first help I can get out that I'm sending there, and as soon as I can establish more help, I'm gonna send them too. And if the crisis is over and the, and the embassy is overrun in 20 minutes and we're too late, okay, we did our best. If the crisis lasts six hours and the, the patriotic heroes that stood the line and fought, held those guys for five hours or seven hours, long enough to get support there, then guess what?

• 1:03:36Jocko Willink?

  We win, everyone's alive, and we did our job. So it was just a disaster across the board and, uh, like you said, a real, a real, not only a stain on, on American presence in the world to have an ambassador, a sitting ambassador murdered, but our reaction to it was completely.

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was a travesty and not to mention of course, the loss of uh some real heroes that, that stood up and held the line, even without the support that they needed from their country at that time, which is hard for me to even say.

• 1:04:18Jocko Willink?

  I'll, I'll back us down a little bit, take a little breath, throw you a little softball from the, from the troopers out there and I, and this is actually something, might be a softball, Leif, but I know you're passionate about this.

• 1:04:31Jocko Willink?

  What's the best barbecue in Texas?

• 1:04:35Leif Babin?

  That's uh, those are fighting words right there, cause uh, people have their favorites. That's for sure.

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  You know what, today, we're gonna talk about, you know, politics, we're gonna talk about religion, we're gonna talk, I said Leif, they're asking about barbecue, he's like, I don't know, man. Touchy subject.

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  It's heavy.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  We, we might not wanna get there, man, I don't wanna, I don't wanna get a bunch of Twitter haters. Say the wrong barbecue, I don't know.

• 1:04:56Leif Babin?

  Any true Texan's gonna take their barbecue very seriously, there's no doubt about that. I uh, it's uh, it's certainly a passion down there in Texas and it's a, it's a big deal, but I gotta go with um, I gotta go with Cooper's Pit Barbecue.

• 1:05:11Jocko Willink?

  Where's that?

• 1:05:11Leif Babin?

  In Lano, it's in Lano, Texas, the, the original, they've had it, they've had a couple more that have opened up in Austin area now, but uh, it is, it's awesome. You walk in that place, you get just a big, plastic tray and there's just giant smokers around, you go up and you just like, I want that piece of brisket, I want those ribs, I want that sausage, and you just take it and you weigh it and then you just get after it. Jocko, you probably wouldn't lie, I mean, I know now that you've gone vegan, you probably uh...

• 1:05:40Leif Babin?

  Jocko is not a vegan eater, for those out there that are listening, uh, he is uh, very, very much a carnivore.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Awesome. Wait, what's the spot again?

• 1:05:50Leif Babin?

  It's Cooper's Pit Barbecue, in Lano, Texas.

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  All right, next question. Is there a way to practice, this is back to leadership. Is there a way to practice the hard conversations? I'm not known for my delicate finesse.

• 1:06:09Leif Babin?

  Well, I'm glad you're not known for your delicate finesse because neither am I generally. I'm a pretty direct guy and I'm a default aggressive leader, I think by nature. But that's something that, you know, I learned from Jocko really is, you know, you always, you always use jujitsu as, as an analogy. And, you know, how the, the direct approach. And particularly, you know, as, as a, as a white boat wonder myself, and when you're training jujitsu, it's like, you're going for the three moves that you know, people know it's coming and it's very easy to defend. Right? So if you can, if you can set up like, I'm going for this, but then I'm going for something else. And it's that indirect approach, uh, generally, generally is more, more successful. You just talked about that with the ice cream, ride the bicycle with your, your daughter.

• 1:06:53Leif Babin?

  So, I mean, I think that's, uh, there's so many examples of that where we see. And often that direct approach, hey, my way, do it this way, just doesn't get the job done. I think, is there a way to practice the hard conversations? 100% there is. And so many people think they're above rehearsals, role play. Those are, those are things that are critical to SEAL performance on the battlefield. I think a lot of people don't realize that. We actually, we, we do rehearsals and walkthroughs before every single operation. And we try to mimic that, maybe it's, you know, when we're out training in the desert, we might even have like,

• 1:07:31Leif Babin?

  you know, we might lay out rocks or, or put tape on the ground so it, it mimics, if we, if we, if there's not actual buildings to use for training facilities or, or, uh, uh, and we have everyone stand together and their sticks and we know who's getting on the helicopter here. And, and these guys are going to be on the second helicopter there. Those are the kind of things that allow people in the dark of night, when it's crazy and it's chaotic, to go to the right place. Do what they're supposed to do. Everything is simple as unloading from a vehicle. Just, we would practice that. We had this giant truck that we used. When the IED threat started getting really bad in Iraq, initially SEAL assaulters were riding in the back on benches in the back of a Humvee, kind of an open bed, like a truck, truck tied

• 1:08:15Leif Babin?

  back. And then the IED threat, the roadside bomb threat started getting so dangerous that we had to put guys inside armor. And so that means the Humvees can only carry five guys, you know, if you don't have guys in the back. So we had to take this giant, we call it the man truck. And I think we nicknamed it Big Zev. It was our truck. And it was a big five-ton truck, and you know, a flatbed truck. And they, I don't know if previous SEALs or if the Army had done it, or Marines, but we had welded these quarter-inch steel plates around it. And then we had, then we had sandbags in the bottom of it. So that was like our, that was our protection. And most of the sandbags were like torn up because of boots

• 1:08:57Leif Babin?

  going in and out. And so it was, you're just sitting on sand. So if you got blown up, it would not have provided a whole lot of protection for you. But

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  You'd be blown up in sand.

• 1:09:05Leif Babin?

  Getting out of the truck is substantial. When you got 20 guys sitting in the back of that truck, and they're, you know, with some of our guys, Iraqi soldiers that were with us, our Jundis, and you got to swing open this giant, heavy, you know, quarter-inch steel doors in the back, and then you got to put a ladder out, and everyone's got to climb down that ladder, that takes some time. And guess what?

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  That can turn into Three Stooges real quick.

• 1:09:30Leif Babin?

  No doubt. People can get injured. We've had guys fall off of trucks like that and dislocate their shoulders and literally have to get sent home. But more important, if it takes three minutes or four minutes to do something like that, that's three or four minutes that you don't have guns pointed in every direction. And it's critical. So we had to practice that and practice that and practice that until we could do it in less than 30 seconds. And then if we have two different assault forces, we got to make sure Assault One's line up on the left side of the road, Assault Two's line up on the right side of the road. I mean, those things that you, we have to practice that over and over and over again. And it seems really juvenile. It seems very elementary. But if you took the time to practice that performance, Your performance is so much better when you actually get out in the dark at night, the

• 1:10:13Leif Babin?

  chaos of being in an unknown area and worried about, you know, bad guys and where they are and all those things happening and making sure people went to the place they need to go. So having those conversations, practicing it, sitting down with someone who understands how that person might respond for a tough conversation, role play, maybe, you know, they, they, they try different scenarios where they're, they're really, it's a softball or easy scenario, it's a difficult scenario and, and

• 1:10:36Jocko Willink?

  It's the worst case scenario?

• 1:10:37Leif Babin?

  The worst case scenario. So the more you do that, the better it is. And this is something that Jocko and I have done quite a bit is with companies we work with is role play. You gotta counsel a guy. And it's easy just to say, well, you screwed up, we're firing you. But if it's, this is a good guy, he messed up, you gotta try to get him on board to use this plan, or you have to talk him down from doing this out on, you know, he did something out in town that is making the company look bad, whatever it is. And you have to talk to them. And that role play is critical. And it makes you better and enables you to perform better. And so, yes, you have to do that.

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  Rehearse. Yep. Three or four iterations with someone dealing with in a role play scenario, they get better. You can literally see them get better. It's pretty, uh, pretty cool.

• 1:11:20Leif Babin?

  We got pretty good getting in and out of Big Zev.

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Nice. All right. Next question. There was recent news about combatives in the SEAL Teams. What was the evolution towards MMA? So the SEAL Teams has gone through a whole plethora of various kind of hand-to-hand combat type things. When I, when I first came in, there was something called scars. And I, it stood for scientific something, something, something, something. But it was, uh, it sort of looked like a

• 1:11:56Leif Babin?

  Kung Fu?

• 1:11:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was, it was very, um, actually, I think it was based on, on Sansu, right? Uh, which is a martial art. Anyways, so that was kind of when I showed up there. Then we kind of morphed towards something a little bit more modern. And then we morphed towards something else. And so we were constantly kind of looking and searching for something that was efficient. We ended up going with, uh, this one, this one contractor for several years. And, you know, so use this, this one contractor for several years. And then eventually, especially once the war started, and we had guys on a regular basis.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  Doing hand-to-hand combat against the enemy. And for those of you that don't understand when that would happen, if we go into a building and there's people in there that don't have weapons, well, you can't just gun them all down. You have to get control of them. If they're military-age males, you probably gotta cuff them. You gotta get them down to the ground. You gotta control them. Now, there's a whole variety of things that can happen. The guy can be unarmed, but literally combative. You know, he can square up and say, "Okay, it's on." We've seen that.

• 1:13:05Leif Babin?

  And people might be surprised to hear that people actually do that. You know, you've got a gang of big, tough SEALs there that are gonna put you down. We've had multiple people like, "Not comply. You're not gonna put me down." And it doesn't usually go too well for them.

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  So that's one end of the spectrum. Then you go down the spectrum where it's someone that just is scared and they're frozen with fear. But you're yelling at them to get down, and Arabic, which is, you know, your Arabic's not great. You're yelling at them. They're scared. They freeze. So now, what are you gonna do? You can't just stand there and keep yelling at them. You've gotta get them to the ground, get them in control, so you continue the clearance. Then there's people that are gonna... So then, all the way down to someone that just, you know, they see you. They put their hands up. They lay down. That's great. That's easy. So as we started getting into these scenarios on a regular basis, we realized that the system that had been taught was ineffective. And also, luckily, we had a bunch of guys in SEAL teams that were into jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai and wrestling

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  and MMA in general. And so, that kinda came in and started... People started saying, "Hey, why don't you just do this?" And this will actually get a person under control. And actually, you told a good story to me today when we were talking about jiu-jitsu about that. Tell that. That's a good little explanation of where we were and where we got to.

• 1:14:20Leif Babin?

  Yeah. In my first platoon, we went through that training. And that was our prisoner-handling training. So that's what we did. And that's what we practiced handling prisoners and searching them and putting them on the ground, all that stuff, handling them. And so, you know, we're told this is the way to do it. This is, you know... Well, when we start going against role players, I remember one in particular, we're going against... We're in the kill house, and we're moving through. And of course, this isn't live fire. You're going against role players. They're shooting back at you with simunition, which is a paint round through our actual weapons. It's great training, because then you have to deal with people. You have to actually wrestle with people. You actually have to engage targets, or they're shooting back at you. Outstanding training. And we've talked about that before. But it is...

• 1:15:06Leif Babin?

  One of the things that really stood out to me was, I remember one, one particular guy, one of the role players was a, a pretty large guy. I mean, he was probably 6'4", 6'5", like 250 pound guy, big guy. And me and- And this guy wasn't a SEAL. He wasn't a SEAL. I think he was a gunner's mate or something. He was just volunteering to come up and be a role player. Great, you know, helps us with training. Um, and so, you know, a smaller role player, you're able to get them down to the ground, hold, hold them and, and, uh, you know, get, get a search on them. And, um, me and, and another one of our guys, who was a big, a, a big guy, I mean, this guy, arms as big around as my legs, a SEAL was, was a large, large man, very strong guy. And, uh, we grabbed this guy, we're, we're trying to get him to the ground and he's not being compliant.

• 1:15:49Leif Babin?

  He is being, he's resisting us and it's hard. I mean, this, this is difficult for me and this other guy. And we're not, we're not small guys. I mean, we're, we're strong guys. We're, we're getting this guy to the ground, but he's not cooperating and we're having a hard time keeping him down. Another one of our guys, who was actually a lot smaller than us, he was probably a 180 pound guy. I'm 200 pounds and, and the other SEAL I was describing is probably 230 pound guy. And, uh, his, uh, so this, this other SEAL comes up and he's like a 180 pound guy. He's trained jujitsu. He's got a little bit of that jujitsu. He spent, uh, spent a little time, you know, at, at the Gracie Academy and, and, uh, had, had, was one of the, one of the first guys I knew who, who, who was pretty, pretty skilled in, in jujitsu and, and, uh,

• 1:16:30Leif Babin?

  he, he gets this, this, uh, this big guy that, you know, the role players wrestle around, that gunner's mate and, uh, not cooperating. We're wrestling around with him. He comes up there, gets the guy, gets a, gets a knee on him, goes like knee on stomach. And the guy, the guy can't do anything. And, you know, here's this 180 pound guy, completely controlling this large guy that two of us couldn't do before. And I was like, I need to start training some jujitsu because that stuff works. And it was just a, it was just a reality of like body control. I can control this guy. I mean, knee, knee on stomach, get his arms, got him zip tied, done. I mean, he's, and he actually, when we debriefed with him, you know, he, he comes, now, now he's out of his role player element. He's like, he's like, hey, that was pretty cool.

• 1:17:12Leif Babin?

  And then I think he actually probably started training some jujitsu because he, he, he realized like just how effective it was for a guy who really understood body control, to be able to just get a knee on him, hold him down, you know, and, and be able to control him even though he was half the size of this dude.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  Interestingly, that's how most, that's why most of us start.

• 1:17:29Leif Babin?

  Because they feel it.

• 1:17:29Speaker 02

  It happens to you and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That was like.

• 1:17:33Leif Babin?

  You're like, how's this guy who's, you know, wait, you know, he looks so much smaller than me and he's just crushing me. How's that possible?

• 1:17:40Jocko Willink?

  So that was, you know, and that, that case that you just described happened, but, but, you know, every day in the SEAL Team, somebody else that, that knew some jujitsu, you know, would, would have that scenario happen. And eventually the, the, the correct answer rises up and people say, hey, look, this is working, this is not working. And so that's how we ended up with, uh, with more of an MMA based approach because it's not just pure jujitsu. It's everything. It's Muay Thai, it's boxing, it's, it's, you know, weapons retention pieces to it. It's hitting people, learning how to hit people with your gun. What we call a muzzle strike, which is again, this is one of those things where

• 1:18:25Jocko Willink?

  we kinda would get, be told that they're like the muzzle strike would, would just.

• 1:18:30Leif Babin?

  It will kill people.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it will kill people or it's gonna definitely incapacitate me instantly and knock people out. And the fact of the matter is, and I know, I know Leif and I have seen, I don't even know how many people, I've seen muzzle strikes over and over and over again. And it just, the, the amount, I don't even think I ever saw an actual knockout. I mean, you see some damage, it hurts and it cuts the person's face open and it makes them bleed everywhere and it's a complete nightmare and you have to take them to medical and it's, it's just a bad thing. Whereas somebody that knows a little bit of MMA can go in and get control of these people and take them down and it's, it's no factor. So that's what ended up taking over and it's definitely a, a good thing and a positive thing. And it's been, it's been cool to talk to the guys that are now carrying on with the program. Next question.

• 1:19:16Jocko Willink?

  How do you deal with anger? And flared tempers in yourself or your team?

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Leif, I'm gonna go ahead and turn that one over to you.

• 1:19:27Leif Babin?

  I got a lot of experience with this one.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  Leif's way more experienced than me.

• 1:19:32Leif Babin?

  Yeah, and losing your temper. I've, I've got a lot of experience in this one. And I talked about being a direct guy, being, being a, a default aggressive guy and,

• 1:19:44Leif Babin?

  and that's good. There's a lot of good in that. There's also some bad when you lose your temper, when you, you know, you lose your cool. One, you know, when you get emotional about things or react to stuff, you don't make good decisions. And so, you know, we, we always taught our, our guys that the most important quality they could have as a combat leader is to remain calm and make good decisions under chaos and pressure. So, uh, that doesn't happen when you lose your temper. So, uh, you know, when I, I look back on that, the other, the other thing about it too is when you do lose your temper about stuff and it's, um, I can give you a number scenarios where it happened where, you know, if guys had, uh, and, and people always think like SEALs are always focused all the time, you know, and it's life and death for you guys out there.

• 1:20:29Leif Babin?

  When we talk about businesses, they say that all the time, like it's life and death for you guys, you know, so it's not really life and death for my guys, but how do I get them to stay focused? Guess what?

• 1:20:38Leif Babin?

  People lose discipline, right? People lose discipline if there's not leaders that are holding those standards and, and pushing it hard. And I remember one time in particular, there's, we were patrolling back to our combat outposts and, uh, we've been on a long operation. It was a foot patrol into a dangerous area and, uh, we captured a bunch of prisoners and we had to, we had to, uh, walk them back on foot because there, there were so many IED threats in that area. Um, I think we finally met up with some Bradley fighting vehicles, a smaller tank from the army that came down. We loaded them up in that and, and, uh, and they took, they took them back from there. But so we're walking back, uh, patrolling back and we're almost, you know, we're, we're still a few hundred yards back away from this combat outpost, but we're in enemy territory. And I could see that some of the guys are. Starting to not be as focused, like looking down their weapons and dropping security and those

• 1:21:23Leif Babin?

  things and um and I was infuriated by that. I was totally infuriated by that and it was because I I knew what was at stake that look if if we're not disciplined all the way back until we're inside that wire of the of the friendly combat outpost, we could take fire at any moment and if we're not watching, you know, at that very second we get shot at, people might get killed, you know, it decreases our probability of winning that firefight of of bringing everybody back. So uh so it was a big deal and and uh but I I definitely lost my cool on that. I when I came back, I was chewing ass and like fired up at people and like here, this is why this is important. And I and I looking back on that now, like that's that's not the best way to do that, right? The best way to do that is to say, um, well, I mean, force guys to to to to keep security, remind them to

• 1:22:07Leif Babin?

  keep security certainly while while it's happening, uh but getting back and saying, guys, here's why we gotta keep security. I know we're only, you know, a couple of yards from the combat outpost, but recognize there are enemy fighters out here and they're gonna hit us when we least expect it. Uh just because it hasn't happened to us before, you know, even though we've done this dozen of times, does not mean that it won't happen to us the next time and we can't, you know, this is important. Think about how you would feel if somebody got killed when you were supposed to be holding security as they were crossing the street and you weren't paying attention.

• 1:22:36Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's interesting you use that example. I almost feel that you showing legit anger at that point was a positive thing. Like, you want to make it perfectly clear to everybody and the way you get their attention, because it's not like you lose your temper all the time, is by, you know, getting angry and people go, oh, you know, he's he's he doesn't lose his temper very often. Here he is, super fired up.

• 1:22:58Leif Babin?

  Well, I don't I don't think it's I don't think it's a problem. It's not a problem to get angry. I got really, really angry.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:23:04Leif Babin?

  So it's one of those things where it it would have been more effective for me to be stern and and and not back down from that in in the least and not treat it lightly in the least. I'm not saying that at all, but I think just to to yell and scream and those things, it's just never the best way to get

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  You're right. You're right. That is true. If you if you completely lose and you're yelling and screaming, it's it's it's it's not a good

• 1:23:25Leif Babin?

  And even though you're absolutely right, it was important and and I I I wanted that addressed. It was like, it it just wasn't the best way to address it, looking back on that now. One time in particular, too, was uh, I can think uh when uh you wanted to make some changes to our operation.

• 1:23:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 1:23:44Leif Babin?

  I can't remember if we talked about that in the last podcast or not, but we, we, uh, I was ready to cancel the op. Jocko came in and was like, well, what, what about this? You know, maybe, yeah, do we look at it from this direction? Why, why don't you guys maybe patrol in on this route and not go across this bridge where there's a choke point and they might bury IDs in the road? And I was like, we've been looking at this for hours. It's like, now he's changing to 10 minutes prior, like cancel the op. And Jocko, he, he could have got, he could have lost his cool with me because I just lost my cool. And, you know, I've been, we've been hours at this and I was frustrated. I was ready to get, get this op launched and all the paperwork requirements and the levels of, of approvals that we need and running around trying to, you know, fix all these things. And, and, uh, he actually just looked at me

• 1:24:28Leif Babin?

  and was like, we don't need to cancel the op. It's fine. It's gonna be fine. And then, and then you, you actually again, asked me some questions like, is, does what I'm saying make sense? And I wanted to be like, no, I can't, you know, but it was like, yes, I hit it when Jocko's right. Yeah. It totally makes sense. You're like, okay, how long is it gonna take to change it? You're like, I was like, two minutes. Like, well, we have eight minutes left, so no problem. Let's get it done. We don't need to cancel the operation. I was like, no, we don't.

• 1:24:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and, and like you said, it's important to maintain your, your cool. And the way I do that is by being detached. Talk about it all the time. In that situation, when you got all fired up at me, I was like, like, okay, you know, like, Lacey's getting fired up. And I didn't think Lacey's getting fired up because he's immature or because he's doesn't, can't control himself. I thought to myself, hey, you know what? He's been working on this all day. He's, he's got a lot of pressure on him. There's a lot of frustration when you're doing these plans and doing all this paperwork. I understand where he's coming from. Let me give him some space. Let him vent a little bit and then let's re-approach this thing. That's how I'm coming at the situation. So.

• 1:25:39Leif Babin?

  How you handled it though is perfect because had you blown back up at me, which is what the natural human reaction is, right? Then I get mad, we're yelling each, even though we have a tremendously close relationship.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  We would have canceled the op.

• 1:25:51Leif Babin?

  Yeah. It would have been a big deal. It, or even if, even if you end up saying like, you know, as so many leaders would do, like, You're gonna do it this way and then I I'm mad at you and I'm I'm all pissed off and you you you know you came in and trumped me.

• 1:26:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. By the way, what happens when something goes wrong on the operation?

• 1:26:06Leif Babin?

  And I'm like Jocko told us to do it. You told us to do this. And then then you have those frictions, but the best the the best thing that you did in that situation was you actually just smiled and laughed at me like. Just take it easy.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, I didn't like just just to make that clear. I didn't laugh at him like he was a little kid, you know, just like, hey, man. You know, and he knows me and he knows exactly where I was coming from. Like, hey, I know it's I know what's going on.

• 1:26:28Leif Babin?

  It was the perfect way to deescalate the situation, which which made me deescalate.

• 1:26:32Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:26:33Leif Babin?

  And made me realize like, yeah, it makes total sense. And then we executed. It was no problem.

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That's how you deal with. That's how you deal with. So when someone gets mad at you, deescalate. When you feel yourself getting spun up, detach.

• 1:26:45Leif Babin?

  When have you got spun up and lost your cool?

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I've said this before on the podcast. Printers and copy machines, they they don't like me.

• 1:26:57Leif Babin?

  And I don't like them.

• 1:26:59Jocko Willink?

  And so.

• 1:27:00Leif Babin?

  Are we talking straight up office space style?

• 1:27:01Jocko Willink?

  Office space style. I'm I'm I don't like I don't like printers and copy machines. They don't ever do what I want them to do. And so I get I get angry at them. So I'll lose I'll lose my mind a little bit. Uh, but no, I don't I don't lose my temper very often. You know, it doesn't doesn't do me a lot of good and it usually it usually doesn't help the situation, you know, doesn't help you solve the problem. And and my mind is always, all right, how do I get this thing solved?

• 1:27:25Leif Babin?

  It never helps you solve the problem, that's for sure.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  Nope.

• 1:27:28Leif Babin?

  So if if you're like me and and you lose your cool, you gotta you gotta practice it. You gotta rehearse that. You gotta make sure that you're detaching and uh, not losing your cool so that you can get the job done and win.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  That's that's what it's all about. And the Delta Platoon commander, you know, he'd go into a little bit of rage from time to time. And and you know, one day the Delta Platoon commander is gonna be out of the military and he's coming right on this podcast and he knows it. He's fired up. But, uh, you know, he's my my other brother and that's gonna be a good time. But, you know, he would get some rage going and I'd have to I'd have to, uh, back him down a little bit and say, bro, it's me. The reason to get fired up right now. We're we're here to win.

• 1:28:13Leif Babin?

  Yep.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  And I'm here to help you. And you go, I know, but damn.

• 1:28:20Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. All right.

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Next one, and this is a, a pretty, uh, pretty heavy subject, actually. Jocko and Leif, thoughts on cops being ambushed? What should police departments do, be doing to prepare, especially with no command support for training? ISIS is an American law enforcement role in battling this terrorism? We've been training active shooter lots. These are, this is actually a conglomeration of a few questions, but the, the basic question is thoughts on the cops being ambushed? What should police departments be doing to train for that and prepare for it? And then, how do civilians fit into that picture?

• 1:29:05Jocko Willink?

  And what can civilians do to help? Leif, the horrible shooting that took place in Texas?

• 1:29:14Leif Babin?

  Horrific, horrific stuff. And, uh, certainly we lift up the families of those lost and our prayers and, and the entire, you know, the entire police force there in Dallas and Baton Rouge and, and across the country, uh, where they've, uh, they've lost, lost their brothers. Uh, I think, first of all, I, we have tremendous respect for law enforcement, for, uh, you know, the boys in blue and, and, uh, but where there's police departments, you know, sheriff's deputies, federal law enforcement, you know, they, they protect the home front. And we have to have that. We have to have that. We have to have, we have to be a nation of laws and, and, uh, without that, we've got complete lawlessness. And so, uh, I think Americans need to show appreciation for their police departments

• 1:29:59Leif Babin?

  and for their law enforcement officers. Uh, we can't do that enough. We gotta thank those, those folks. I think, uh, as far as there, you know, this is just another example. You know, when we were talking about these, the police ambush, this is another example that just as we talked about in that first question, darkness, right? The evil that's in the world. There are some evil people that celebrate this evil like it's a great thing. Um, and, uh, I think, uh, uh, you know, there's just no, no justification for, for the kind of horrific stuff that we've seen, uh, you know, these ambushes on, on police officers. And, uh, so- I think police need to start, you're already seeing, you're already seeing police, police that are getting, they're getting long guns for the forces that didn't have them. A lot of them had them, but maybe they didn't have access to them or couldn't get to them quickly.

• 1:30:44Leif Babin?

  They're gonna need to have those long guns where if someone's targeting you with a rifle and all you have is a pistol, it's not good for you. That's not a good scenario.

• 1:30:52Jocko Willink?

  For those of you that don't know anything about guns like Echo, the difference between having a rifle and a pistol is night and day. I mean, let's just break it down. A pistol, if you're a good shot with a pistol, maybe, if you're a great shot with a pistol, maybe you're getting out, what?

• 1:31:08Leif Babin?

  What?

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  Fifty yards. Fifty yards. You're a good shot with a rifle and you're out to 800 yards, pretty easily. Now, on top of that, you've got a pistol, you can, a pistol round will stop when it hits something, you know, sometimes pistol rounds stop when they hit regular windows on cars. A, a, a high-powered rifle is gonna rip through the doors of cars, no problem. It's gonna be, so there is a, there is a massive, massive difference between being out in the street with a pistol and being out in the street with a rifle. So luckily there's, well, not luckily, but they are starting to arm the police for these scenarios that you're gonna get in.

• 1:31:47Jocko Willink?

  I remember the first time, first patrol I went on in Iraq, in Humvees, and we hit, we, we hit a, a steel hedgehog, right? The little obstacles that Americans put out. I don't know if they left them there, there'd been some problem. So I'm driving along, all of a sudden, boom, we hit one. It was my vehicle. And I thought to myself, I just hit an IED, I'm about to die. But our vehicle gets jacked up, we're like propped up, and everyone poured out in the street and like took up security. But everyone's out there with their little M4s. And, and you feel even, you know, because we wanted machine guns. And we never went out again without, you know, two heavy machine guns per Humvee, because we wanted to be ready to rock and roll.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so that's the same feeling you're gonna get rolling out with just a pistol. So that's number one. Number two, these, the, the police departments, they gotta start looking at tactics, at urban combat tactics.

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  And how to handle these situations, how to cover and move primarily, how to cover and move. It always is shocking to me when I see the, the, when I see people not using the use of cover. When, when, when there's gunfight or potential gunfight, or even if there's not, that's one thing in Ramadi, like when you're walking down the street in Ramadi, you don't walk down the street, you're moving from cover to cover. And if you're a police officer, let's at least be near cover. So if shooting starts, you can get in cover. When I see arrests happening, actual arrests happening, they're trying to, they're trying to get someone to stop and the, the police officers are standing out in the open to try and tell someone to stop. Don't stand out in the open, stand behind cover.

• 1:33:23Jocko Willink?

  Now there's a, there's a complexity there because you want the person that you're trying to stop to be able to clearly identify that you're a police officer, right? But let's make the error on the side of being behind cover. So if that person does draw a gun, you can be able to react them from a place of cover. Cause if you're, the difference between standing behind cover and standing out in the open, i- if someone starts shooting at you, oh, if you've got cover, you're good to go. That's literally, you're good to go. They have to do, they have to hit a tiny, tiny little target of whatever's exposed to you, you know, part of your head. Whereas if you're standing in the open, they're gonna hit you. So I think, I think those tactics need to start be looking at, they need to start looking at the individual tactics of doing arrests and then they need to start looking at the

• 1:34:05Jocko Willink?

  larger group tactics when you have either one, you know, you've got your partner out there, how do you operate together? How do you cover and move together? What's the best way to react to these scenarios? And then furthermore, when another group, when, when other police show up, how do you then quickly organize into elements that can operate together like a military unit? And I know that's gonna make some people scared, but like that's the, they shouldn't be scared of that. When you're in a gunfight, you need to use tactics, gunfighting tactics, and those come from the military. So they should be able to operate in pairs, they should be able to operate in elements and, and grow until you get to a point where you can handle these situations. And that's gonna take a lot of training and that's gonna take money and that's gonna cost.

• 1:34:49Jocko Willink?

  And I was talking to some of my friends that are police officers and as a matter of fact, one guy just Met, really good guy, really fired up jiu-jitsu player, of course, and he said the amount of training that they get is very, very minimal. So for example, a regular police officer, they actually don't, oftentimes they don't have designated times for training. They don't have times to say, okay, you're gonna work 40 hours this week, four of those hours are going to be training. And that's completely wrong. You should have mandatory, real good training, force on force training, and that's what Leif talked about earlier, where you're shooting live, or simunition rounds, or paintball rounds at each other. So you're getting

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  used to those stressful situations. So, cause I'll tell you what, you square off with a guy, three, you square off with a guy one time and he's got simunition, and you stand out in the open and don't get cover, and he pulls out that gun and shoots you three times in the face with, with simunition, and then the next time you go again, you're gonna be behind some cover. It's gonna happen. And that's what we want people to do.

• 1:35:53Leif Babin?

  You know what's interesting about that is, we, there was a real emphasis on live fire, when I first came in, into the SEAL teams, and a lot of the instructors that were putting us through training had not had any real experience yet, any real combat experience. And so, we still had those folks that were saying, well, we're gonna focus on live fire, cause that's more important and that's better training. And the reality is, it's not. It's actually worse training, cause you're dealing with paper targets. And it's, it's simple, it's like, either they're armed, there's a, there's a weapon in their hand, or they're not. Shoot them, don't shoot them, did you hit the target, did you not? So, while it's important to be able to operate with live fire, and that's, that's great, so much better to operate against a role player. Now, you go into a room, you're like, the guy's moving, you can't see him, he's trying, you know, is he shooting you, is

• 1:36:36Leif Babin?

  he not shooting you, is he, maybe he isn't armed, but if he's bum rushing you, and, and for us, you know, if a guy's yelling Allah Akbar, and, and running at you, he's probably a high suicide bomber threat. So, he's getting smoked.

• 1:36:51Jocko Willink?

  He's getting smoked, Chad.

• 1:36:52Leif Babin?

  So, it's a... So I, I think police, police forces have absolutely got to make time for training, but they got to put those realistic scenarios in there too. And, and, and you know, our, our police officers and, and as Jocko said, we've got many, many friends who are in, in law enforcement. Some of them former SEALs that we worked with have gone, gone that route now. And they're in very difficult scenarios all the time. It's, one of the hard things about close quarters combat is our instructors always tell us like, don't game it. Don't game it. Meaning, and I talked about with a kill house, how you can change the walls and maneuver around. When you're thinking in your mind, I know what I'm going to see when I enter this room. That's what you generally see. And so it's, it's a difficult thing. You've got to make

• 1:37:34Leif Babin?

  sure, it's easy to get really amped up. Your heart rate's going and you're like, like, you know, you know, because there's pressure on, you've got instructors there and you want to make sure you make your shots and make good decisions. And particularly as a new guy, when you haven't done that before and you're going through it for the first time. And so it's, if you're gaming it and you're, you're already envisioning what you're going to see, that's how you react to it. And you end up, I mean, I remember I shot a target and the sergeant's like, bab, and look at that target. And there's no, it's, it's a, there's nothing in the guy's hand. There's no, and I, I, I thought I saw a weapon on the target and I, so I, I hammered the target, you know, with, with rounds. And I'm looking at the holes, you know, the chest of the target.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  You vaporized a hotel.

• 1:38:13Leif Babin?

  Did you engage hostiles?

• 1:38:15Jocko Willink?

  I vaporized hostiles.

• 1:38:16Leif Babin?

  Think about the movie Navy SEALs. But that's, that kind of thing can really get to you. So, and only, you only learn that when you, you only realize how easily that can happen when it happens to you in training. And when they change those things around, so that you go in there and it's a, the hallway's different and you're moving in a different direction and the, there's, you know, it, it causes those kinds of issues. So.

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  The, what you're talking about is you want to train for the unexpected. That's what you want to have happen. And the things that you see in combat are crazy. The things that cops deal with, go watch YouTube. I said this last time we talked about this subject. Go watch YouTube and watch, see the crazy things that people do out in the, in the world. And you got to be prepared for all those things. And how do you prepare? You got to learn to think and you got to learn to think quickly. I was talking to one of our guys from Task Me to Bruiser the other day. And it's a. I'm not gonna say his name, obviously, but he's one of my favorite guys who did that deployment with us, came back, and I think it was either his next deployment or the deployment after, went to Afghanistan. And did a lot of incredible stuff in Afghanistan.

• 1:39:22Jocko Willink?

  And again, I put him through training for that. So I was running training and he was just a great guy, stepped up. And I said, "Hey, man." What was it? Because I didn't fight in Afghanistan. I said, "What was the difference between your deployment to Afghanistan where you got in a bunch of gunfights and got after it compared to what it was like in Ramadi?" And he said, "You know, the biggest difference was, in Afghanistan, when things are happening, they're usually at a distance. You know, you're looking across a valley, you're looking down a ridge line, you're looking, you know, you can observe and you've got some time to think and you can get some cover and think, 'Okay, I think this is where they are, let me take another look.'" You can pop your head out, you can assess.

• 1:40:04Jocko Willink?

  And he just looked at me and he said, "In Ramadi, you had to make a decision now." And I started laughing, because that, you know, there's no distance. The person is across the street, the person is two buildings away, and you, as a leader, or even not as a leader, as a shooter, you've gotta make a decision right now. As a matter of fact, the leader's not gonna tell you what to do. You get engaged from across the street, you're not gonna wait for the leader to tell you what to do. You gotta know what to do, you gotta act. And that intensity of urban combat, and again, you know, this is like when we talk about the Chechen war and what those guys, that's what was so stressful, and those lessons learned where they said, "Hey, in the urban combat environment, these guys need to be cycled out of the urban combat environment because of the ID threat, because of the sniper threat, because of the immense pressure of having to make decisions now."

• 1:40:49Jocko Willink?

  They should be cycled out, like I think it was every two months, and here we were. I'm putting you guys out in the field for six straight months into an urban combat. Apologize, Leif. Apologize to you Bruiser guys, damn hard. We loved it. But, so that, and that's what these cops are dealing with, that's what these police officers are dealing with, is they gotta get practice and rehearse making these decisions now, because that's what they have to do. So now, what can you do to buy yourself an extra quarter second, an extra half a second? Well, don't stand out in the open, create some distance. Why are you approaching the person? Ask yourself, "Why?" What, I mean, "Where's this guy? Is he gonna run from me? If he runs, what's gonna happen? Is he gonna become more of a threat, less of a threat?" So you can make those decisions. Another piece of this.

• 1:41:32Jocko Willink?

  Citizens of America. I think we actually need to teach in high school, in 9th grade freshman classes, I think there needs to be a class called, "How to Get Arrested By The Police." And they tell you what you should do when you get pulled over by the police, or you get told to get down by the police, or you get told to get away from the wall by the police. You know what you do? You do it. You do it. That's what you do. You show them your hands. You get your hands out of your pockets, you put your hands in the air. And you know what part of that class should be? Is the students that are going through the class, get to be the cop. And get to use ammunition, get to feel what it's like to know,

• 1:42:14Jocko Willink?

  to not know, actually, to not know, when you pull this guy over, is he... What's he gonna do to you? And I watched a video the other day, they did a great job. Somebody suckered me in on the internet on YouTube. It was, um, "Watch Another Horrible Police Brutalities." It's like some kind of title like that. And I'm watching it, and this, this guy, that's in the car, so it's a, it's a traffic stop, and the guy that's in the car is, is being totally compliant. And I'm like, "Oh god, I can't believe this cop is gonna do anything to this guy." Look at this guy, he's getting his license like he was asked to. I'm like, "Oh, I, I could barely watch it, because it's like, 'Another Shooting,' that was the title." "Another Shooting, Another Death." Because I, I always think those things are horrible to watch, I'm watching, waiting for this cop just to

• 1:42:58Jocko Willink?

  pull out his gun, or see a quick movement and pull out his gun and shoot the guy. And the guy's just being compliant and nice, and, um, reaches in, uh, to grab something, grab his wallet or whatever, pulls out a gun and shoots the guy, gut shots the cop, gut shoots the cop, busts out of the car and runs. Totally caught me by surprise. So, when you are getting arrested, and we need to educate the citizens of America, on how to get arrested.

• 1:43:26Jocko Willink?

  And I think that would be very helpful. Instead of protesting the cops for shooting people, they should say, "Okay, what can we do?" We should take some ownership of this. What can we do as citizens to do a better job of getting arrested? You know, be compliant, show your hands. That is... And again, I think it's important to understand the pressure that police are under. And, and hey, just so everybody knows, some of those videos that I watch, I know for it's horrible and the police have taken shots that have made me, made my stomach turn. Because they've been a nightmare. Although, I already described one of these on the podcast, but that one where I saw the guy with the headphones on and hoodie on,

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  couldn't hear what the cop was saying, reached into his pocket to turn off his iPhone and the cop drilled him. You know, where was the cop standing? He was standing out in the wide open. In a wide open of a 7-Eleven parking lot. So he has no cover, no concealment. He's yelling at this guy, the guy turns around, wants to shut off his iPhone, where he's listening to music so he can hear what the cop is saying. Cop drills him. And the call was, you know, a guy with a gun. So, I understand the anger at police when police make bad shots. But let's figure out, not, let's, let's, let's... We just talked about this. Let's not be temperamental about it. Let's not use rage. Let's, that's not going to solve the problem. What is going to solve the problem is take a step back.

• 1:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Let's analyze what we can do as citizens to de-escalate all these situations.

• 1:44:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, that's a good idea right there about let the, you know, in your, it was high school, your example was high school, but let the citizen know how it feels to be the cop. Because really, that's all you see, because the cop has all this power, you know, and all this stuff. But, they don't know. I think when they see that kind of stuff, they don't know because, because of the emotions that get invoked when they see it. So, if they understand, that's like a two-way street to facilitate that learning process. So when you... So on the, so let's say that was a common thing. That was one of like a normal thing, one of the normal things.

• 1:45:31Jocko Willink?

  What was a common thing?

• 1:45:31Speaker 02

  For, to people to go through this training.

• 1:45:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  In one way, and that was just kind of part of our, our culture, you know? Where as a citizen, we know, we're well aware of what cops go through and all this stuff. Because we've been through it and we understand, we just totally understand. That would make the whole landscape of cop versus city, or cops working alongside with citizens. It would stick out like a sore thumb when someone was suspicious.

• 1:45:54Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Otherwise, people would be just, yeah, I know exactly what to do. It'd be like clockwork, routine.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  And, and myself, I've done vehicle interdiction over in Iraq. And I know what it's like to walk up those cars and see what those people are looking like. And, and so when I, when I get pulled over by the cops, which hasn't happened to me a lot, but you know, speed, I've gotten busted for speeding. I'm, I'm sorry, citizens of America. But, you know, I've got pulled over, I'm, you know, totally.

• 1:46:17Leif Babin?

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, totally, you know, just, just hands, very slow movements. I don't, you know, I want to make their job as easy as possible. As easy as possible, because I know they're stressed. You know, hey, officer, how you doing? Sorry, it's going a little fast. You know, what, what do you want from me?

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:34Jocko Willink?

  I'm here to comply.

• 1:46:35Leif Babin?

  On that note too, I mean, of course, they're gonna, they're gonna be, they're gonna be police that don't make good decisions and, and, and maybe go over the top. Or maybe they're, you know, they're, they lost their cool for some other issue. Or they, or they got a call. I mean, often, and this is kind of where it was going, I was talking about this earlier, was if they get a call, like I saw an armed guy, or you fit the description of someone you're looking for, they're already seeing you as a threat. So ha- having that, you know, if you feel like you're not getting, and, and believe me, this is, this is always the kind of myth in our culture as well. Uh, I'm about as a white boy as you can get, as, you know, a, a blond headed, uh, uh, pale skinned guy. Uh, I've been mistreated by the police, that's for sure.

• 1:47:13Leif Babin?

  And it, when, uh, when that was happening, uh, when I got shoved on the ground, a little short barrel shotgun jammed into my, my skull, uh, even when I was being compliant, I, I didn't lose my cool. Because what does that gain me? I, I, I'm not gonna resist arrest. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna, I gotta, I gotta suck that up. Then I can, uh, you know, if you are, I'm gonna complain about my rights later, I, I can do that, you know? Now, look, I was being a knucklehead as a, as a young, uh, You know, as a young guy back in the day, but uh, and I probably deserved to be roughed up. But it was, it was one of those things where like, I, then now's not the time to complain about it. You, you cooperate with the police, you wanna file a complaint later, you can do that.

• 1:47:51Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that typically ends up to be, well, I mean, I guess, you know, it's debatable, I guess, but that typically becomes the best discourse. Because at the time, if the, if a cop or whoever, whoever, I used to be a bouncer. So it's on a way lower level, it's kind of the same thing.

• 1:48:08Leif Babin?

  I remember those days, Echo. I think you had to bounce me out of the bar a few times, Ed.

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably. But um, if, if you start taking it right then and there, where you know, you're losing your temper or something like that, making the, the, the job difficult. Like, just like you said, like, that's not gonna, you're not gonna recapture your rights at that time. Like, if you think your rights are being violated, you're not gonna, you're not gonna get your rights back at that time. The, the ones that are being violated.

• 1:48:37Jocko Willink?

  Let me say something worse than that. You have a rookie cop that doesn't know what he's doing that well, and he, for whatever reason, decides he's gonna take that shotgun off safe.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:48:46Jocko Willink?

  Or he decides he's gonna put the finger on the trigger, and now you start jerking around and moving, and all of a sudden you got an accidental discharge into your head.

• 1:48:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:48:54Leif Babin?

  And that, that's not real beneficial.

• 1:48:56Jocko Willink?

  It's not beneficial for life.

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  But even before, before it gets to that, it, think about just the person who's gonna make the decision to either resist or put up a, a, a fight about their rights or, um, you know, or this officer being a power trip, having a power trip or whatever. Just think about that person's decision making, right? Rather, as opposed to, we're gonna let this happen, I'm gonna cooperate fully regardless of your power trip, or regardless of the rights that you violated or whatever. And then if I believe that my rights are violated, to pursue it later. Like how you're saying, because if you choose to pursue it right then and there, it's not gonna work out.

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  And you know, actually now I'm sitting here thinking about this, it, it doesn't need to be like a high school education thing, that'd be great. But like, what could we do in the immediate, the, the, the government, the police should get together and start making videos of saying, hey, here's what's going on, here's what the cops feeling, here's what the cops thinking, watch this live. You know, there's plenty of body cams now, you could say, here's what the cops thinking, here's what, like, they just. Just had a shooting of a white guy up in Northern California a little bit ago. And he, you know, they showed him reaching for his, reaching behind him after he was being competitive and walking towards people. So it would be cool to just freeze that frame and say, this is what a police officer is thinking right now when you're doing this. He's thinking, does this guy have a gun? Here's the report that I got. Here's the situation I'm in.

• 1:50:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, think about what you're doing and do the right thing. If you're getting told to get down, get down. If you're getting told to show your hands, show your hands. And I think we gotta start educating. We gotta start training our police better. They deserve it. We owe that to them so that they know how to work as an individual to use cover, as pairs to use cover and move, as elements to use cover and move. And then we need to put them in the stressful, realistic environments that are changing all the time, that they have to learn how to think now. And then on the civilian side, our civilians need to be educated as well on

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  how to get arrested, how to comply, what it feels like to be on the other side.

• 1:50:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, man. And like I said, I think that does create this kind of, this overall understanding of the process. Like I remember I used to be a bouncer and you know, it's like check IDs, right? Check IDs and when someone has a fake ID, usually you can tell in their behavior. And I'm not saying I can tell a guy's underage or whatever, if their behavior, I'm not saying that. But if there's some suspicion or whatever, his behavior is going to tell more of the tale, you know? But there is this kind of standard, standard operating kind of way when you present your ID. Show your ID, you be quiet and you just kind of stand there so they can look at your face, the bouncer. I'm just saying that's what typically what people do automatically. But when people do other things, it sticks out, you know?

• 1:51:40Speaker 02

  So like I said, I think like you were saying, if there is this understanding, like I know how it is to be the cop, I know how to get arrested. They'll do that and they'll create this pattern, like I said, where when they are acting suspicious, it won't be he was just kind of generally suspicious, it'll stick out way more.

• 1:51:57Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  That's a good idea, man. I don't think I ever heard that before.

• 1:52:04Jocko Willink?

  Leif, next question. Metallica or Pantera?

• 1:52:10Leif Babin?

  This is opening up a big can of worms, because we used to have quite a big debate about this in TU Bruiser.

• 1:52:18Leif Babin?

  Back in the day, and Jocko gave me a hard time, because I grew up in the Metallica Black Album era. Which Jocko didn't even consider real Metallica.

• 1:52:30Leif Babin?

  He was going old school. Ride the lightning, kill them all. But, yeah, for me it was-

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  You know what's funny? I used to think about Vietnam, the Vietnam War, and these guys are going to the Vietnam War, and they're listening to, um, um,

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  Crosby, Stills and Nash, right? They're listening to the Grateful Dead. I mean, a large portion of the population was. "We're going to war, listening to Metallica, kill them all." Little mindset shift there.

• 1:53:02Leif Babin?

  That's pretty good. I gotta say though, I think Pantera crushes Metallica, and I gotta say that, "Cowboys from Hell" is probably the greatest rock song of all time.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Roger that. I'm, uh, I actually, I actually really like the early Metallica, and then I thought that Pantera got better after that album and moved towards Vulgar Display of Power.

• 1:53:28Leif Babin?

  Vulgar Display of Power was good.

• 1:53:29Jocko Willink?

  When they stepped up and went harder.

• 1:53:30Leif Babin?

  Hold your mouth or war.

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to Metallica who got softer. So, dig them both. And when I got to SEAL Team One, there was a big stereo system in the gym, and it had a glass case in front of it, and they'd welded like a rod into the case where you couldn't open it. You couldn't open the case. And it was locked shut in the first five. You remember the old days, they had the CD disc changers? There was, you know, this was a five-disc CD changer. The first five Metallica albums were in there, and they could not be removed. If you went in the gym, that's what you were listening to, back in the day, Team One style. Good times. All right.

• 1:54:13Jocko Willink?

  I'd like to hear what you both think regarding the deaths of Bud's trainees in the past few months.

• 1:54:22Leif Babin?

  Yeah, look, this is something that's been all over the news. Our BUDS is basic underwater demolition SEAL training and that is, that is the basic SEAL training program. That's the pipeline that we all go through, that, that we graduate from. It's about a 27 week program or so. It's got a 70, 80% attrition rate. It's why they consider some of the toughest military training in the world. It's tough training and, and it needs to be tough training. Because we expect SEALs to be able to perform at a very high level on very dangerous battlefields across the globe and a lot of highly dynamic and high pressure situations. So, we gotta keep those standards high. One thing that's misleading is, there was, you know, they're saying, well, three, three

• 1:55:06Leif Babin?

  deaths happened in a short period of time, you know, a few months back at, at BUDS and, and that's, that's actually not true. It wasn't, two of those, two of the three deaths actually didn't happen in training. And so, people need to understand that.

• 1:55:18Jocko Willink?

  So, what were the three deaths?

• 1:55:20Leif Babin?

  So, there was, there was a, one, one death actually happened in training. There was a death of a student that drowned in the pool while going through an evolution. And the instructors, you know, were there, they tried to resuscitate him, got him in the hospital, but they couldn't bring him back. He was gone. So, that's, that is a training death. That's, that's the one training death. The two others that happened was, a student that quit training, dropped, he dropped on request as we call it, which is, again, you know, most of the students that go there, this, this ends up happening, had.

• 1:55:53Jocko Willink?

  Most, most people quit.

• 1:55:55Leif Babin?

  Most people quit. That the 70, 80% attrition rate means, most of those folks are walking away. So, they're ringing the bell and, and dropping on request, which is, you know, quitting the program. So, a horrible situation, but this individual, the student, you know, apparently that was weighed heavily on him, that he quit his dream to go to BUDS. And on liberty.

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  Meaning, meaning, he, he quit and then he went out, wasn't under supervision anymore, went into downtown San Diego, went to a hotel, jumped off the 22nd floor, killed himself.

• 1:56:28Leif Babin?

  Which is horrible. Which is horrible. But that, that was not a training death.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:56:33Leif Babin?

  Even though he was attached to the command at the time. And there's, certainly, I'm sure they're taking some substantial steps to maybe, try to monitor guys a little bit more, but you can't, you can't put. You can't, while horrible and tragic, and they're gonna try to do everything they can to prevent that, you can't put guys in jail for six weeks after they quit. I mean, you can't be with them 24/7. So, um, so I think it's hard to hold, you know, the center responsible, our training center responsible for that. And the other one that happened was, uh, another guy who had, who had quit training, a student who had quit training while on liberty, got, uh, got drunk and crashed his car and was killed in a car accident.

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  Motorcycle. Was it a car?

• 1:57:11Leif Babin?

  I think it was a car.

• 1:57:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you know what? I think you just kind of explain these things, you know? Well, one of his training death, training deaths shouldn't happen. It's horrible when it happens. A lot of times, there's been other drownings in the past. Oftentimes, there's some kind of a, some kind of a medical issue that the person had. I don't know what the results of this guy's autopsy are, but the guy that killed himself, this was one thing that I found interesting. I was talking to one of the guys, one of my buddies that, that works over there still. And I saw a picture of the guy that killed himself. And dude looked like a stud, you know? He had a couple of pictures of him, it almost looked like a, almost like a professional photography of a, of a guy. You know, he was, he was like

• 1:57:56Jocko Willink?

  a rugby player and he was kinda, he looked like a stud. And I mentioned this to the, to my buddy that's an instructor over there. I said, "Hey, man, that guy looked like a stud. What's going on?" And my buddy said, "Hey, Jocko, they're all studs." So when I went through training, no one knew about the SEAL teams. We, there wasn't this big giant, you know, we didn't have this huge, um, publicity that we have now. And so if you want to go to SEAL teams, you kind of had to search it out. It wasn't just gonna, the SEAL teams weren't gonna just land on your doorstep. You had to figure it out and go for it. And so there's, there wasn't a lot of, there was all kinds of knuckleheads going through training. And he said, he said, when you look down the line and you look at, when you talk to these kids,

• 1:58:39Jocko Willink?

  they're the captain of the, the team. They're the, the class president of the high school. They're, they're, they're studs. And so it's no, it's no different with this kid. The kid was a stud and I, I think, and, and actually in reading some of the articles about him, he, this was his lifelong dream. He had told everybody, I'm going to be a SEAL. I'm going to be a SEAL. I'm going to be a SEAL. And I think he quit on Wednesday. I want to say a Wednesday. I don't know. I don't know when he quit, but he quit anyhow week. And since he told everybody that's what he's going to do, you know, that was, uh, the stress was too much to bear to go back to everybody and say, yeah, I didn't make it.

• 1:59:15Leif Babin?

  So I, I just, I want to be clear. I mean, that, these are horrible. It's horrible to lose young, you know, good young men who aspire to be SEALs. And whether they're killed in an auto accident, uh, you know, drinking and driving or not, or, you know, a suicide, this is horrible. And we want to try to prevent that. I'm sure, I, I, I know that the, our training center is doing everything they can to try to prevent that. But again, you can't lock these guys up. You can't be, at some point, they have to be released to be on liberty. They, they, we can't be with them 24/7. So, uh, you know, you can counsel guys, you can talk to folks. Uh, and what's a shame about, you know, the, the, uh, the, the suicide is, I mean, some of the, the best guys we served with, guys like Mark Lee and Mike Montour, both had quit BUDS, rang out, uh, got some maturity, went to the fleet, you know,

• 2:00:01Leif Babin?

  worked hard to get ready and come back, came back, knocked that training out of the park and were outstanding team guys. So that's, uh, that's just, that, that's a horrible tragedy, definitely. But I, I think what's important for people to understand is, you know, for the actual training death, this stuff is, there's a lot of protocols in place. It's very, it's very, when, when I was an instructor there.

• 2:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause you were an instructor there. For those of you that don't know, Leif was an instructor at BUDS. I was never an instructor at BUDS, but Leif worked there. You worked hell weeks.

• 2:00:28Leif Babin?

  I did. And so what you don't realize, when you're going through as a student, it just seems like mayhem. These guys are, you know, putting you all these difficult, these difficult things. Well, it's very controlled. It's very controlled. And there's, you know, there's, um, there's a lot of supervision and there's a lot of different safety checks and medical checks and all. Things that are happening all the time that are going on behind the scenes that the students don't even realize. So, you know, it doesn't mean every instructor always behaves the way they should, but most of those guys are outstanding professionals. There's a, there are levels of leadership that are there to ensure that they, they perform, perform well and do what they should do. And in almost every case, that's, you know, that's the case. Those instructors are doing an outstanding job. I think the, the, the important thing

• 2:01:09Leif Babin?

  here too, is to understand that those standards have got to be high. And there are people, a lot of people outside the SEAL teams, we've had a lot of pressure on us right now, particularly with the push to open up all the special operations to, and infantry units to, to women. This is a, this is a new push under the administration and our, our secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, has been all over this and, and pushing that and wants to see women graduate from the SEAL teams. And I think that's pretty, he's pretty open about that. And so, uh, um, this is, I think the, the danger here and the concern I have is that they'll use something like this, the politicians who don't know what, what a, what

• 2:01:51Leif Babin?

  makes a good SEAL. You know, they, they like, they like, they like to think they do, but they don't. They have no idea what makes a good SEAL. And, and they don't understand how difficult combat is. You know, people ask us sometimes, Jocko, when I get questions like, tell us a good BUDS story. Like, we don't talk about BUDS because everybody's been through BUDS in the SEAL teams. And, and listen, BUDS is a kick in the nuts. It's a, it's a good training program. Uh, there's some stuff that's hard. Certainly. Uh, there's some stuff that wasn't as hard as I thought it was, you know, it was going to be or, or should have been, but, uh, but a lot of it's quite challenging and difficult. Um, but it's a screening process and it, it to, to weed out the guys that we don't believe have the characteristics that are going to enable them to succeed on the battlefield. A lot of that is just the will to succeed through some, and persevere through some really difficult

• 2:02:33Leif Babin?

  challenges. So it is critical that those standards remain high because combat is so much harder, physically harder than training.

• 2:02:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I was about to say. You said, hey, it's important that we find that they have the will. There's also a level of physical toughness that you have to have. That there just is. And, and when I say physical toughness, I'm talking about the actual of Ability to your, for your body to withstand wear and tear. And that's one keep, you know, with the 80% attrition rate, not all those people are people that quit. It's people that can't stand the cold. They physically can't handle the cold. It's people that physically can't handle the, the stress on your shoulders, on your neck, on your back, on your knees, on your ankles. It is very hardcore. You know, there's a great article that was written by two female Marines that were in, in Afghanistan that got kind of got put out at an outpost where they were, for all practical purposes,

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  alongside the male Marines in a field environment. And they both wrote and said, women should not be doing this. And by the way, they were both, they were both really awesome Marines who had been like some kind of collegiate athletes. They were studs. And they just said, look, we didn't have, our bodies didn't hold up. And that's one of the many things, you know, you just said it. When you're in combat, it's not, it's not, it's not a sport. You don't get the, you don't go to the training room afterwards and get an ice bath and a massage. You don't. And if something happens, they don't blow the whistle and come out on the field and let the trainer work on you and then pull you off and put a substitute in. That doesn't happen on the battlefield.

• 2:04:04Leif Babin?

  And there aren't weight classes either.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's no weight classes for sure. It's, um, so yeah, uh, they, they need to maintain the standards.

• 2:04:14Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:04:16Jocko Willink?

  they need to maintain the standards.

• 2:04:18Leif Babin?

  And I think we, we cannot allow that to slip. And I think those instructors are doing their utmost to make sure that that happens. The other thing people need to understand too is when you're a student going through this, for me, this is my dream. And guess what? When every time I'm going to med, a medical check during our hell week, which they do, you know, every, every day you're getting, you're getting checked every morning and they're taking your temperature and they're, you know, they're, they're taking your SPO2 and, and making sure that, uh, you don't have pneumonia or you don't have some other, you know, uh, dangerous physical, uh, medical condition.

• 2:04:50Leif Babin?

  You're sweating it out. You're sweating it out because you know, you know, I'm not going to quit this training, but what if something that I can't control happens? What if I get pneumonia? I get fluid in my lungs? What if I get sick or something happens or I get some infection in my leg or I break, you know, my ankle? I mean, these things happen to guys. And so then you end up, you can get rolled out of training. Maybe it's just compounds into an issue. So you're doing your utmost to make it through those medical checks. And people need to understand that the, the students are trying to get under the radar and make it happen and will often push through injuries. A mutual friend of ours made it all the way through his hell week with a broken ankle, you know, running on it. He just wasn't gonna stop. Just be tough. Wasn't gonna stop. He was being tough. So, you know, so that's the kind of people that we want

• 2:05:32Leif Babin?

  on the SEAL teams, you know, but, but on the other hand, instructor staff has a difficult job because they have to make sure that those guys aren't hurting themselves. And I've actually talked to, uh, I've talked to some folks who wanted to go into SEAL teams and, uh, had some medical condition that they, you know, they weren't getting, they were failing their Navy physical. It's a very difficult physical exam. You have to take, you know, medical exam and, uh, said, you know what? Uh, I, I just need a waiver for this and, you know, they just give me this. And I, I had to, I've explained this to multiple people when they told me that and say, listen, those waivers are there to protect you. They're there to protect you to make sure that you don't get killed in training or, and, and to protect the team that, you know, when, when people relying on you and you're carrying some critical piece of gear and we're covering, moving that you don't go down. So

• 2:06:17Leif Babin?

  Because you're covering up some injury. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, it's not about you. It's about the mission. And, uh, and so, you know, unfortunately, this is when you're talking about these, these units, it's just not everybody participating in that. Listen, I would have, I played high school football as a linebacker and fullback. I'm 5'10", you know, 200 pounds. Uh, I, I would have loved to played in the NFL. I'm not big enough or strong enough or fast enough to play in the NFL. So, um, the, the NFL teams are not going to benefit if I'm playing linebacker or fullback on their teams. They're going to be weaker. They're not going to be as good. Um, so, uh, that's just the reality of it, right? We got to keep those standards high. Um, and, and, you know, political pressure, uh, I think is a, is a very dangerous thing. And, and all it takes is for, you know, we've, we're

• 2:07:02Leif Babin?

  lucky. We have some great leaders that are leading that training that are going to keep those standards high and understand how important that is. Unfortunately, it takes one week leader, you know, to go, to go in there and, uh, uh, fold, fold to the political pressure and, uh, and standards drop. And the world is, uh, that darkness continues to spread, particularly with that, that conversation that we opened this with, as darkness spreads throughout the world, we need our SEAL teams and special operators and infantry units to perform at the highest levels possible to go and, and be able to close with and destroy that enemy.

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. Speaking of destroying the enemy, next question is, how do you deal with rules of engagement? Are they necessary? Did they inhibit you?

• 2:07:50Leif Babin?

  This is a question we get all the time and people want to talk about rules of engagement. You know, everyone, there's always complaints, guys, you come back from the battlefield like the rules of engagement are so stringent. And these are different wars we're fighting. These are counter insurgency wars and oftentimes people use the term civilian casualties, uh, in a way of that, that's, you know, they're talking about innocent civilians. But what they don't realize is that everyone we're fighting is a civilian. None of them are uniformed members of, of an opposing military. They blend into the populace. They act like they're normal people. They hide amongst the, the people, oftentimes use them as human shields and then they're shooting at you and shooting RPGs or, or, uh, machine guns at

• 2:08:33Leif Babin?

  you and they maneuver. So it's a very challenging environment. Um, but the rules of engagement really don't change. Uh, the rules of engagement are pretty clear and, uh, they're, uh, you observe a hostile act, bad guys shooting at you or shooting at friendlies, or a hot, you, you observe hostile intent, meaning that, and that's where it becomes a little more gray area to say, okay, was this, was that person acting in a manner that had a reasonable certainty of hostile intent? And so, uh, it's, it's a judgment call up, up to the troops on the battlefield and, and those rules of engagement don't change. They're, they're always the same. I think what changes is leaders. Leaders change and there's some leaders that are willing to delegate that down to the lowest level troopers, trust in

• 2:09:16Leif Babin?

  their guys, train them, make it, make them understand, um, just how important it is to make sure, uh, you know, that, that, uh, they're operating within that rules of engagement, that they are, you know, not, uh, accidentally engaging some innocent person and causing, you know, collateral damage that they didn't mean to. So, uh, and there's some leaders that won't delegate that and keep it tight and, and want to really scrutinize guys for making the call. I think the best way, uh, for us, this was incredibly important. People need to understand how You know, our troops are put in a tough position because we know that anything we do in today's world with social media, with news, you know, news cycles could be absolute front page headline news in a heartbeat.

• 2:09:59Leif Babin?

  And, uh, and those can have massive catastrophic effect on, on the entire, you know, strategy.

• 2:10:05Jocko Willink?

  Strategic.

• 2:10:06Leif Babin?

  Yeah, the strategic, uh, mission. So this is, uh, this is something that we have to deal with regularly. And, uh, and if a guy thought, you know, he, he thought he saw someone digging in the road and there were an ID layer and, and, uh, he decided to pull the trigger on, on someone that he thought was an ID layer and it turns out it's not, we get investigated for that. We, it becomes a big deal and, and that shooter, our, our US serviceman who, or, or, or woman who engaged, uh, is potentially looking at going to prison for, uh, you know, for something like that. So it's a big deal if they violate the rules of engagement. One of the ways that, uh, Jocko did an amazing job of this and, and, you know, one of our

• 2:10:48Leif Babin?

  four principles, our laws of combat that we talk about is simple. And one of the ways that he did this for us was, you know, all this lawyer speak of reasonable certainty of hostile intent and all these things, he would stand up before we rolled out the gate every time, every single operation and say, if you have to pull the trigger, you better make sure the guy you're killing is bad. Simple. Everyone understood that and it, we had total faith and trust in our guys to do that. And I'm so proud of that, that they were able to execute with tremendous discipline and, uh, and minimize collateral damage in, in a way that other units couldn't, you know, in, in the way we did that.

• 2:11:31Leif Babin?

  So, uh, I think, uh, rules of engagement are necessary. People have to understand them and it's really whether or not, uh, you, it's delegated down is entirely up to a leader.

• 2:11:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you could see the, uh, the, the, the situation that led up to me lie, which we did a couple of podcasts ago, that the rules of engagement were the, the way that they were briefed. It wasn't, hey, make sure the people that you're killing are bad. It was everyone in this area is hostile. Everyone has been warned if they're, that to leave. So everyone you see is either Vietcong or Vietcong sympathizer.

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Kill them. And there's some scrutiny about whether they said kill them or not, because that because that was a pretty simple, clear message. But, you know, the difference in that, the way that the rules of engagement were briefed, were definitely a, a,

• 2:12:31Jocko Willink?

  a cause, one of the causes for the Milai massacre happening. It's, it's an awful situation. Rules of engagement.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  All right. Next question's probably pretty quick, but how often would guys take shots in their body armor or helmet?

• 2:12:52Leif Babin?

  All the time. This happened all the time. And when we were in that urban combat, in sustained combat, day after day after day, both for, for us in Charlie Platoon and in our, our Central Platoon, Delta Platoon, that was operating on the other side of the city, it was just, this happened regularly. I mean, we had guys, you know, on patrol with a Camelback, you know, and, you know, the Camelback's got, is, is a water bladder on the back. You wear the backpack. It's got the little hose tube that you can, you can drink water on, on, on the move. Guys, no, no water in his backpack. Realized later, round went through it. I mean, you're talking inches away, you know, from his back. We had multiple guys shot in the plates,

• 2:13:32Leif Babin?

  uh, front plate, back plate, um, and guy, uh, one, one of our guys peeking up over the rooftop during a big gunfight, bam, takes, takes, uh, all of a sudden he felt like, felt like somebody punched him in the face and, uh, kind of falls back down below the roof and kind of gets up, wondering what's happening and takes off his helmet, looks at his helmet, realizes he's been shot in his night vision mount, uh, which meant that that round came in directly, you know, at, at his face, hit, hit his, hit his night vision mount and ricocheted up. Had it hit just, you know, millimeters lower, it would have taken his head off. So that happened all the time and, and I, I, I'm sure Jocko, you remember this many times, I would, we'd, we'd come back from an op, park our Humvees, I'd walk in the door, I was gonna check in with Jocko, let him know, you know, what, what, what we, what happened out there,

• 2:14:17Leif Babin?

  what's going on, you know, what's, what's happening, you know, uh, now, you know, are there other ops we need to get reloaded for, things to think about. Walking in his office, you know, and first thing I would generally say was, God is a frogman. God's a frogman. He's looking out for us. I don't know how we made it out of that without losing guys or, you know, this was so many close calls, uh, and it was just a constant thing all the time.

• 2:14:39Jocko Willink?

  Wear your body armor, wear your helmet.

• 2:14:43Leif Babin?

  Yeah, we, we always had guys on our, and you've, you've talked about this on the podcast before, but my first deployment, we would have guys that would wear body armor that was like, like six inches by six inches.

• 2:14:55Jocko Willink?

  Minimalistic body armor.

• 2:14:56Leif Babin?

  Tiny little body armor, nobody, uh, you know, and, and in Ramadi, getting into those kinds of gunfights, everyone was like, hey, can we get a little bigger place?

• 2:15:06Leif Babin?

  Some guys wanted to cut their helmets into half shells before we got there. After we got there, it was like,

• 2:15:10Jocko Willink?

  nope, not doing it.

• 2:15:11Leif Babin?

  I'm not cutting my helmet.

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  Some of the army guys, some of the army guys, they would have the full, they look like, almost like knights.

• 2:15:19Leif Babin?

  The crotch protector.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the crotch protector, the collars, the arm sleeves, the side sappy plates, they, they were covered up good on them. Cause they were, uh, you know, taking real risks out there. So yeah, but you know, Jody Middick and I, when he was on here, we had a little conversation about body armor. They didn't op and expected to be in a certain spot. They weren't there. They didn't have body armor helmets on and he, you know, he's sitting here saying, I wish I would have had them. So, wear your body armor, wear your helmet all the time.

• 2:15:46Jocko Willink?

  Next one, Leif. We truly appreciate your father's work here in Texas.

• 2:15:53Jocko Willink?

  Would you ever consider a career in politics?

• 2:15:57Leif Babin?

  Well, I appreciate that. Uh, there's, uh, just to, so everybody understands, uh, my dad is a, a, a US congressman now. Uh, he's a freshman US congressman from, uh, Texas, district 36 in southeast Texas. And, uh, I'm very proud of him. He retired after a, a career as a, as a small town dentist, uh, you know, business, uh,

• 2:16:18Jocko Willink?

  former army and air force.

• 2:16:20Leif Babin?

  Army, army and air force veteran. And, uh, he was fed up with Washington and didn't like the options that he saw. Uh, you know, that he knew were going to be running for that seat. And he said, you know what? I'm throwing my hat in the ring. I'm going to go up there. I'm trying to make a difference. And I, we need more people like that in Washington. Dad is, my dad is there to make a difference and only to make a difference. He doesn't care about a career. He doesn't care about being there for decades and decades and decades. You know, he's, uh, he's retired and he'd rather be fishing, hanging out with his grandkids and, uh, and hunting, but, uh, he would.

• 2:16:49Jocko Willink?

  But he cares about the country.

• 2:16:50Leif Babin?

  He cares about the country and he is sacrificing to be there, uh, and to lead and I'm, I'm, and I'm damn proud of the job that he's doing, uh, and stepping up. Would I consider a career in politics? I can't imagine anything to be more miserable than that. You know what? On the other hand, when I look at our nation, just as my dad has felt called to do that, to step up to lead, if we don't do it, who's gonna do it? So, somebody's gotta step up, somebody's gotta lead. And I think when you look at the direction of our country right now and the political climate and all that's going on in this electoral cycle, would I do that?

• 2:17:32Leif Babin?

  Maybe. I just might be able to be talked into it. We shall see.

• 2:17:38Leif Babin?

  What about you, Jocko?

• 2:17:39Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 2:17:40Leif Babin?

  I mean, we got the bumper stickers.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  Jocko 2016.

• 2:17:46Leif Babin?

  Currency of Echo Charles.

• 2:17:47Jocko Willink?

  I think I would be running as, if I was to run for political office, I would run as dictator and supreme ruler of America. And that's what I would do.

• 2:18:01Leif Babin?

  We could bring back some of the Roman rule of triumvirate. So, me, you and Echo, we could just take over.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if I have the stomach for politics. I really don't like the political arena too much. And not sure it's something I would ever have the desire to do. You know, I guess that's where I sit. Maybe when I was 70 years old, yeah.

• 2:18:31Leif Babin?

  People have asked me, you know, like, hey, if you were president, what would you do about the situation with Iran and their development of nuclear weapons? Or China getting, you know, making big moves in the South China Sea? Or Russia pushing the envelope and kind of thumbing their noses at us? And often I've told them that if I were president, I would immediately nominate Jocko Willink as Secretary of Defense. We would change Secretary of Defense to the previous title of Secretary of War. And I think those problems would disappear immediately.

• 2:19:04Jocko Willink?

  I think if I was president, it'd be very, my policy would be pretty simple. My policy would be kick ass. That's what we would do. Economic, what's your economic plan, Jocko? Kick ass. What would you do with this situation over here in the Middle East? Oh, there? Oh, yeah. Well, what we're gonna do is we're gonna kick ass.

• 2:19:26Jocko Willink?

  What about the drug problem that we got coming in through the borders? Oh, the drug cartel? Yeah, we're gonna kick ass on that. So that's my policy. I like it. So this is why I probably wouldn't be the best politician in the world.

• 2:19:37Speaker 02

  That kinda like BTF?

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Alright, next question.

• 2:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Can you give us details of the muster? So for those of you don't know, we're doing an event in San Diego, California. Leif Babin and I, and you know what? Echo Charles is gonna be there. Maybe. He's gonna be there in the sidelines. He's gonna be signing t-shirts and cutting videos. Uh, we're doing an event, October 20th and 21st. And what it is, it is a deep dive into combat leadership. What combat leadership is all about, how to apply combat leadership to your business, to your life. How to get out there, lead and win. The reason we're doing this is,

• 2:20:29Jocko Willink?

  as you know, Leif and I have been doing this gig for the past five years, working with a bunch of different companies. We wrote the book Extreme Ownership. It's very popular and we get a lot of requests. And we've, you know, we've, honestly, we're in a lot of demand and people want us to come and work with a bunch of different companies. We can't always do it. We've actually had to raise our prices so that we could kind of slow down a little bit, slow down the demand. But when we're doing that, that means we're cutting a lot of people out, you know? And I'm a man of the people and I want to support the work. And man, so how can we get something where, where regular people can come? Maybe they don't have, maybe their company doesn't support bringing us out or it's too expensive for us to come out. Well, how about you send two or three of the critical leaders out there?

• 2:21:11Jocko Willink?

  We spend a day and a half, get deep, working, working through the things that we've learned. Going face to face with people and explaining, explaining things to them, how to deal with it. This is not, one of the things this is not gonna be, this is not gonna be a... A feel-good seminar. This isn't going to be, "Hey, we're here to pump you up." And that's not what we're doing. We're here to educate. We're here to talk about leadership. We're going to learn too. It's going to be great to have a bunch of people in leadership positions that we can talk to, that we can communicate, that we can learn from situations that they've been in. You know, we get, when I put out that you were coming back on the podcast, we get hundreds and hundreds of questions. I get thousands of questions. I have, on the podcast question bank,

• 2:21:52Jocko Willink?

  it's 82 pages long. 82 pages worth of questions is what I have right now. I'm answering five or six questions a podcast. So let's get people that want to come out, want to get face-to-face with Leif and I, and learn about leadership, learn what we've learned, and how to apply it in business and life. That's what we're doing with the muster.

• 2:22:13Leif Babin?

  It's important to say too, this is not a tour. You know, we're not going to take this from city to city to city to city. This is, we're going to have one muster. This is an annual event. You know, maybe at some point we'll expand to one West Coast, one East Coast. That's a maybe. You know, right now, we're going to do, we're going to do one muster annual event. And this is for leaders, whether you're a leader, follower, anyone who wants to better themselves, to dive deep into these issues of leadership, of teamwork, of extreme ownership, of the laws of combat, and how to apply them, this is for you. You know, come to San Diego, join us. We're looking forward to diving deep into those issues, helping you solve some challenges to lead and win.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Come out to the muster. There's a website for it, and we'll tweet it out. Go to echelonfront.com. You can find it on there. That's our company. So you can go check that out. We're looking forward to the people that want to come out, come and get some.

• 2:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Now, the reason that Leif was out here with me here in San Diego was for a series of events to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of August 2nd, 2006, which is the day that Mark Allen Lee, who was the first SEAL killed in Iraq,

• 2:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Was killed in Ramadi. And also the day where Ryan Jobe, otherwise known as Biggles, was gravely wounded, shot in the face into wounds that ultimately led to his death as well.

• 2:23:59Jocko Willink?

  This particular events were focused on, on Mark, in, in an event to support a charity organization that his mom runs called America's Mighty Warriors.

• 2:24:18Jocko Willink?

  And at

• 2:24:23Jocko Willink?

  one of those events, I was honored to give a speech from my perspective

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  on Mark.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  And here it is.

• 2:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Ten years.

• 2:24:44Jocko Willink?

  Ten years is a long time, a decade.

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  And in many ways, it seems so far in the past.

• 2:25:00Jocko Willink?

  In some ways, it doesn't seem so far away at all.

• 2:25:10Jocko Willink?

  It isn't hard to remember being deployed in Ramadi, Iraq in the summer of 2006.

• 2:25:20Jocko Willink?

  And yes, sometimes that seems like a distant place, a long time ago.

• 2:25:29Jocko Willink?

  And yet, sometimes it feels like we were just there yesterday. The sweltering heat, the dust, the danger, the crystal clear focus on our mission. When we had but one purpose in our lives, to close with and destroy an evil enemy bent on destroying us and our way of life.

• 2:25:57Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't take much for the mind to return there, to regain that mindset, to get into the combat mode.

• 2:26:10Jocko Willink?

  And remember.

• 2:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Remember the operations out in the city.

• 2:26:18Jocko Willink?

  Remember the tracer rounds in the night sky, explosions shaking the earth. The weight of body armor and weapons and gear on our shoulders. Remember the stress and the violence and the sweat and the blood.

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  And remember the evil.

• 2:26:40Jocko Willink?

  The pure evil. That infected the city and committed savage, vile, and disgusting acts of mortal sin. Murder, rape, and torture.

• 2:26:58Jocko Willink?

  And inside that dark world. A world ripped apart by war, a world where sometimes humanity seemed all but lost.

• 2:27:11Jocko Willink?

  That is where we got to see and experience the polar opposite, the counter to all that darkness.

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Against that backdrop of evil. We, young men.

• 2:27:30Jocko Willink?

  We band of brothers, we got to witness light and life and love so strong that it makes the darkness fade and makes the evil cower and hide its wretched face.

• 2:27:44Jocko Willink?

  Evil bows down when it sees the bond we developed with the soldiers and Marines we fought alongside.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Evil cannot contest the bond we formed with our brother SEALs.

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  With whom we had become so close that there is no stronger force in the world, nothing more powerful, nothing more meaningful than knowing that these men, these frogmen,

• 2:28:14Jocko Willink?

  that we would do anything for each other.

• 2:28:20Jocko Willink?

  We saw powerful acts of heroism and courage on an almost daily basis which reassured us solemnly

• 2:28:30Jocko Willink?

  that good would triumph over evil.

• 2:28:36Jocko Willink?

  And amongst all that glory,

• 2:28:40Jocko Willink?

  there were a few men, the true heroes, the ones that rose above the rest of us to symbolize and personify courage and faith and selflessness and love.

• 2:28:59Jocko Willink?

  Mark Allen Lee was one of those rare men, one of those heroes.

• 2:29:08Jocko Willink?

  One of the few men in my life that I literally describe as a saint.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  That is who Mark was. A mighty warrior whose ferocity in combat was perfectly balanced by faith and humor and compassion.

• 2:29:31Jocko Willink?

  A man that left his mark on everyone that he met. A mark of happiness and positivity and of humility and of joy.

• 2:29:45Jocko Willink?

  A man whose love for his family and friends was so unbounded and so limitless that you could actually feel it emanating from his heart.

• 2:30:02Jocko Willink?

  And now,

• 2:30:05Jocko Willink?

  he has left his mark on the world.

• 2:30:12Jocko Willink?

  Mark Lee

• 2:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Mark Allen Lee

• 2:30:20Jocko Willink?

  When faced with fear

• 2:30:24Jocko Willink?

  Who else could bring a smile?

• 2:30:28Jocko Willink?

  When faced with sadness Who else could bring laughter?

• 2:30:36Jocko Willink?

  When faced with hate

• 2:30:41Jocko Willink?

  Who else could bring love?

• 2:30:45Jocko Willink?

  And when faced with death Who else could stand and say, "Take me, Lord, not my brothers." "I will be their shield now from death." "Take me" "And let them live on."

• 2:31:07Jocko Willink?

  And that is what Mark did.

• 2:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Full of youth, and energy, and courage, and humor

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  And full of love

• 2:31:22Jocko Willink?

  He stood.

• 2:31:25Jocko Willink?

  He stood against evil, and he stood against death, and he gave his life

• 2:31:32Jocko Willink?

  For his brothers

• 2:31:35Jocko Willink?

  And for our freedom.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  On August 2nd, 2006 In Al-Rahmati, Iraq.

• 2:31:52Jocko Willink?

  Ten years ago.

• 2:31:56Jocko Willink?

  Ten years ago.

• 2:32:03Jocko Willink?

  And in those ten years, think of all that has happened in our lives. Big events like marriages, children born, birthdays, new houses, new jobs, new careers.

• 2:32:23Jocko Willink?

  And small events.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  A morning surf session.

• 2:32:30Jocko Willink?

  Lunch with your buddies. A weekend in the mountains. A cold iced tea on a hot summer's day.

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  Smile. A laugh.

• 2:32:48Jocko Willink?

  Life.

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Joy.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  Happiness.

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  And every moment of that happiness is a gift.

• 2:33:12Jocko Willink?

  A gift. A gift given to us by Mark, who sacrificed everything for us. Who gave up his own precious smile

• 2:33:27Jocko Willink?

  so we could all have ours.

• 2:33:33Jocko Willink?

  Now I can tell you

• 2:33:36Jocko Willink?

  without a shred of doubt that on this day, today, Mark would not want tears. He would not want sadness. He would not want sorrow.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  He would want smiles and laughter and joy because that was his gift to us.

• 2:33:58Jocko Willink?

  Every smile. Every laugh. Every ounce of life and love is all a gift

• 2:34:10Jocko Willink?

  from a warrior.

• 2:34:14Jocko Willink?

  A friend.

• 2:34:17Jocko Willink?

  A comedian. A son. A brother.

• 2:34:24Jocko Willink?

  A hero.

• 2:34:29Jocko Willink?

  A saint.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  And what do we owe Mark?

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  For Mark,

• 2:34:47Jocko Willink?

  each and every one of us must relish the gift that he gave to us and cherish each and every day

• 2:34:56Jocko Willink?

  while remembering the incredible man that gave us this gift

• 2:35:04Jocko Willink?

  of life.

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  And to

• 2:35:15Jocko Willink?

  the SEALs

• 2:35:18Jocko Willink?

  that are listening,

• 2:35:21Jocko Willink?

  the Frogmen, you owe Mark what we owe all our fallen brothers, the grave commitment to carry the fire, to hold the torch and hold it high,

• 2:35:36Jocko Willink?

  to take the fight to the enemy every chance you get without mercy and without remorse

• 2:35:46Jocko Willink?

  until they are vanquished

• 2:35:50Jocko Willink?

  and there is peace.

• 2:35:59Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, Mark. We will never forget you.

• 2:36:06Jocko Willink?

  God bless Mark's family. God bless the teams. God bless America. And God bless Mark Allen Lee.

• 2:36:25Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's

• 2:36:28Jocko Willink?

  all we've got for tonight.

• 2:36:33Jocko Willink?

  And I want to thank everybody that's out there. That's listening.

• 2:36:39Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for remembering.

• 2:36:46Jocko Willink?

  And that's one of the things that we do here.

• 2:36:51Jocko Willink?

  Remember.

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  And I want to thank Leif for coming on.

• 2:37:00Jocko Willink?

  We've been

• 2:37:07Jocko Willink?

  we've been tied into so many things. And you were pointing that out to me the other day, Leif.

• 2:37:15Jocko Willink?

  We've been tied into so many different things and so many far-reaching

• 2:37:22Jocko Willink?

  stories that we've been a part of.

• 2:37:26Jocko Willink?

  And I thank you for coming on here. And helping to share some of these stories with me for everyone to hear.

• 2:37:37Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for having me. Everyone can remember.

• 2:37:43Jocko Willink?

  Those of you that are out there. And you want to keep listening. And you want to keep remembering.

• 2:37:53Jocko Willink?

  Echo.

• 2:37:56Speaker 02

  How can they support this?

• 2:37:57Jocko Willink?

  Help me out here.

• 2:37:59Speaker 02

  Red Cluster.

• 2:38:01Jocko Willink?

  Red Star Cluster.

• 2:38:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for coming on, Leif.

• 2:38:05Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for having me, Echo.

• 2:38:08Speaker 02

  We didn't talk much about working out or you know, that kind of stuff, but if you're into supplements, even if you're not into supplements, my opinion. Go to onit.com slash Jocko, get on it supplements. That'll help you out a lot and 10% off. So we said it a bunch of times, but I can't, I kind of can't say it enough really as far as benefits. It'll put you ahead for sure. So yeah, get 10% off that. If you want to support with the Amazon situation, the one where you

• 2:38:40Speaker 02

  Go to the website, click on the Amazon link, you know, before you do your shopping.

• 2:38:45Speaker 02

  That's a good way to do it. If you have a hard time remembering, we have the Trooper Tool, which is good.

• 2:38:51Jocko Willink?

  Brady.

• 2:38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, Brady, boom, came through on that one.

• 2:38:56Speaker 02

  It's a thing you go, there's a link on the website, it's called the Trooper Tool, you click on it, it takes you to the page, you click on it, you say yes, that's it. It puts a little thing, so it automatically

• 2:39:07Speaker 02

  directs you to the Amazon wa- uh, it adds the affiliate link, so you support the podcast. You don't have to go through the websites anymore. That's a good one. Um, yeah, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, that's a good one, huh?

• 2:39:21Jocko Willink?

  And where, there's other places to subscribe to it.

• 2:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, YouTube.

• 2:39:26Jocko Willink?

  Google, Google Play, by the way.

• 2:39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Stitcher too, if you're into that. iTunes, I think, is the main one, but hey, man, Stitcher's dope as well, Google Play too. It's on there. Um, so yeah, and go to the YouTube channel, I was gonna re- release a video today, it was like a, uh, outtake or whatever.

• 2:39:45Jocko Willink?

  But what? You're protesting?

• 2:39:48Speaker 02

  I was too fired up, yeah, man, I was too fired up with other stuff. I'll post it tonight, it'll be good.

• 2:39:54Jocko Willink?

  So it's an out, what is it, outtake video?

• 2:39:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, one was the, the, the...

• 2:40:00Jocko Willink?

  Now, you see what makes me nervous about this is, I believe in decentralized command, alright? Leif can attest to that, right? For sure. Totally believe in decentralized command, but now I'm starting to deal with a possible trust scenario here. It requires trust and competence, that's for sure. Yeah. What if my brother Echo Charles, I haven't seen it, so this is the unauthorized outtakes?

• 2:40:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, so here, and we're gonna, we're gonna ease into this whole thing. So, there's one, and I'm, this is just off the top of my head, where I was telling you about my, my children's book idea.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah. You're gonna make, okay?

• 2:40:36Speaker 02

  It's a good idea.

• 2:40:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that was the fish in the water. I actually remember right now. It just hit me, right?

• 2:40:42Leif Babin?

  I'm okay with it. I was just, uh, I was a little concerned that he might have, uh, you know, a rendition of me and you singing "We Are The World."

• 2:40:49Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes. Luckily, I don't think we hit record yet.

• 2:40:52Leif Babin?

  We don't want that. We don't want that on the internet.

• 2:40:54Speaker 02

  I have it on my iPhone.

• 2:40:54Jocko Willink?

  When Leif and I would put the headphones on and the mics in front of us and we were standing here looking at each other and it felt very much like if you were alive during the eighties, they did the "We Are The World" video and for some reason that just hit us both at the same time. We busted out.

• 2:41:08Leif Babin?

  We just busted out "We Are The World." Mark Lee would have been proud.

• 2:41:11Jocko Willink?

  He would have indeed.

• 2:41:13Speaker 02

  I was proud, for sure.

• 2:41:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and yeah, so the YouTube videos, I, I told you guys last time, Echo needs motivation. He's, you know, he's just a laid back guy. And so we need to motivate him and he, but his excuse was, "Well, you know, we've got so many subscribers on YouTube."

• 2:41:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:41:32Jocko Willink?

  "No big deal."

• 2:41:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:33Leif Babin?

  That doesn't sound like extreme ownership. Why should a watch that be making videos?

• 2:41:36Speaker 02

  I never said that. That's the thing.

• 2:41:38Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so cool.

• 2:41:39Speaker 02

  Not to get too technical, it's not, I don't need motivation, I need incentive. So tech, they're just, they're different.

• 2:41:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:41:46Speaker 02

  I don't want to get into a big thing.

• 2:41:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I don't want to either.

• 2:41:51Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Uh, so that's it. Thank you.

• 2:41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, or the Jocko Store is a good one. You know, get a shirt if you like those, um, and a bumper sticker. Whatever, if you like those.

• 2:42:00Jocko Willink?

  I forgot about the t-shirts in the store, the Jocko Store.

• 2:42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good one, man. But, yeah, if you like them, yeah.

• 2:42:07Jocko Willink?

  If you don't like them, don't get them.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:42:09Leif Babin?

  Oh yeah, I've seen a lot of those on Twitter.

• 2:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, awesome.

• 2:42:12Leif Babin?

  Cranking pictures of, uh...

• 2:42:13Jocko Willink?

  We do dig that. But I'll tell you, should we just say, "Stop asking us for like a donation page?"

• 2:42:20Speaker 02

  No, we shouldn't say that.

• 2:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:42:22Speaker 02

  But, and...

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, don't ask for Patreon, Patreon?

• 2:42:25Speaker 02

  Patreon, yeah, Patreon.

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  We're not gonna do it.

• 2:42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, probably not gonna do it.

• 2:42:29Jocko Willink?

  We're not gonna do it. If you want to donate, you can donate through PayPal.

• 2:42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you can, that's good. And that's cool. It is. It is cool to see those because it's like 434, you know?

• 2:42:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because that's, that's, that's the cool, that's what the cool kids do.

• 2:42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:40Jocko Willink?

  They donate $4.34 a month.

• 2:42:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  To keep them up and engaged, up before the enemy.

• 2:42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is cool.

• 2:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, by the way, sleep deprivation, I'm on it right now because Leif and I were out late last night and we were up very early this morning to work out and then go surfing. That's right. We were all, we, we will work and play on this trip.

• 2:43:00Leif Babin?

  You know what I have to say about that? Good.

• 2:43:02Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, awesome, awesome.

• 2:43:05Speaker 02

  But yeah, those are the ways.

• 2:43:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay, good. And then, uh, also, if you want, you know, believe it or not, this guy sitting here with me, Leif Babin.

• 2:43:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  I know he and I might not look like the smartest people in the world and we might actually not be the smartest people in the world, but we did write a book.

• 2:43:23Leif Babin?

  People, people look at me and probably think I can't spell my name or read, much less write a book. But, uh, we did write a book, uh, the books continue to do really well. And you know, if you, if you're interested in, if you're interested in the book, if you're interested in the, the concepts that Jocko talks about, the stuff that we just talked about, and we talked about in, uh, episode 11 of the Jocko Podcast, uh, get the book and dive into that stuff deep. Talk about extreme ownership, talk about the laws of combat and how they apply. We use combat scenarios, we talk about the principle, and we talk about how it applied to different businesses and organizations that we work with over the years. It's, uh, something that for us, our mission was to write a book that could be useful for leaders as a reference.

• 2:44:04Leif Babin?

  A, a, a good read that, uh, that people can, can get into and have some exciting stories that, that are applicable, but, but also is a useful reference for, uh, for leaders to highlight, underline, tab, refer to regularly. You know, dog ear pages and, and, and as we've received that kind of feedback and people post, uh, messages on, on social media about, of their, their books and the dog ear pages and the tabs or the highlights. And the feedback we've received has been tremendous and, and, uh, if we've done that and, uh, and, and accomplished that for those leaders as, as that useful reference that has helped them be better leaders, better followers, better team members, accomplish. Their mission to win, then we've succeeded in our mission.

• 2:44:45Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you what fires me up too. I, I love seeing that. I love seeing when people are like, um, they're showing a, they, cause I post pictures of the books that I do on the podcast and they're all, they're all notes and all that stuff. Cause I'm getting ready. I dive deep. And so people do that to our book. And like you said, that's awesome. And we love signing books that have massive, uh, the other cool thing, there's two other cool things. They're kind of related. One of them is when people send a picture of a stack of books and they're like issuing these to my teams today. We're going to get it on.

• 2:45:16Leif Babin?

  That's awesome.

• 2:45:17Jocko Willink?

  And there's something else that happens. That's a little bit, it might be more awesome. It might be the same awesome, but it's definitely awesome. And that's when they're, when they're giving the book to their boss, right? And there's, and somebody, somebody hit us up the other day and like, you know, how do I give this book to my boss? And, and I think Leif wrote, you know, something along the lines of, hey, it's, it's a great, it's a great thing to give to your boss. And when you do it, say, hey, man, I learned, you know, you don't want to say, you, you, the thing, the thing you don't want to do is say, you need to get some extreme ownership. So I'm giving this to you as a hint. No, what you want to say is, ah, I got so much out of this book and I'm going to turn, you know, I look forward to applying what I learned.

• 2:45:59Jocko Willink?

  I just want, if you see a change in attitude, I want you to know where it's coming from. Do something like that. Be tactical.

• 2:46:04Leif Babin?

  Well, interestingly enough, ironically, looking at someone and saying, you need extreme ownership is not extreme ownership, right? Cause extreme ownership is about you and you gotta control that relationship. You gotta build that relationship. So if you feel like the boss, uh, needs a little extreme ownership, then you gotta own that.

• 2:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:21Leif Babin?

  And you gotta lead up the chain of command, which is one of the chapters he wrote about.

• 2:46:24Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's cool too. You know, we're out here, obviously this weekend, we saw a lot of our, of our SEAL buddies and it's interesting. I was having a conversation with, I think there's three or four of us standing in a circle, but they were talking about the book and, you know, it's, it's guys that were junior to us at the time. And now they're saying, hey, you know, this is awesome. Uh, I'm getting a lot out of it. And then guys that are senior to us. With the, I wish I would have had this book. And you know what I say? I do too. I do too. I wish I would have had this book. I mean,

• 2:47:00Jocko Willink?

  It's just like a little step up to just know and be able to read and it just gives you that insight and so it's awesome. We appreciate, appreciate that, appreciate everyone giving us the solid feedback. Killer. And you got anything else, Leif?

• 2:47:17Leif Babin?

  That's all I got. Thanks for having me on. Good to be on with you guys again.

• 2:47:20Jocko Willink?

  Always.

• 2:47:21Leif Babin?

  Looking forward to the next time.

• 2:47:23Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles closing comments. Plinko?

• 2:47:27Speaker 02

  No, Plinko. Leif does sound like Batman. That's all.

• 2:47:33Jocko Willink?

  The Texas Batman.

• 2:47:34Leif Babin?

  The Texas Batman. Leif Babin. I actually never heard that. I never heard that until the audiobook.

• 2:47:41Jocko Willink?

  You never heard of Texas Batman?

• 2:47:42Leif Babin?

  Jocko and I actually, we read the audiobook. James Earl Jones wasn't available, so we read it ourselves. I would have, I would have given it up if James Earl Jones had done that. But we read it ourselves and that's the first time I started hearing that. People were like, "You sound like Texas Batman or Southern Batman." I was like, "What are you talking about?"

• 2:48:00Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 2:48:01Leif Babin?

  I don't even like, I don't even like comic books.

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  And then you press play and you said, "Oh, man."

• 2:48:04Speaker 02

  I like that, man. Yep.

• 2:48:06Leif Babin?

  You know what? One too many immediate action drills over the years, I guess. Screaming out some commands or maybe it was when I lost my cool. We talked about, I should have done less of that.

• 2:48:16Jocko Willink?

  Blew your voice out. Awesome. Well, as always, if anybody out there wants to continue this conversation, we're all up on the interwebs. Twitter, the Facebooky, Instagram. Echo is at Echo Charles. Leif is at Leif Babin and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all those folks out there in uniform, those in the military on the front lines, in the war against evil.

• 2:48:50Jocko Willink?

  Those police on the thin blue line. Fighting criminals and terror here at home and the firefighters that run towards the danger. To protect us in our homes.

• 2:49:08Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to you all for everything that you do.

• 2:49:12Jocko Willink?

  And the rest of the troopers out there in the world. Moving forward, stepping up, taking charge in business. In education, in healthcare, buying, selling, building, creating, making the most of this gift.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for listening. Thanks for spreading the word. And thanks for grabbing life by the horns. Going out there aggressively every day.

• 2:49:50Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it.

• 2:49:53Jocko Willink?

  So until next time. This is Leif, Echo, and Jocko. Out.