365: Build A Palace, Or Struggle to Build a Lean-To. Leadership Lessons From Omar Bradley.

Leadership lessons from Omar Bradley. 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 365 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:06Jocko Willink?

  Also joining us tonight, Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. All of you here this evening are leaders. I am pleased to meet you. What you do may well dignify the past, explain today, and secure for all of us tomorrow. That's a little excerpt from a speech that was given and was captured in transcript from General of the Army, by the way. General of the Army Omar Bradley, who Dave and I, well, I mean, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  We are very fond of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle. So Omar Bradley, we're going to dig into this document, but a little bit about him. Born in a little farming town in Clark, Missouri, February 12th, 1893. Wicked poor, parents very poor, but he got into West Point. Went into West Point, graduated in 1915. Number 44 out of 164. There's only 164 people going to go into West Point in a class. You know, now it's like, I think it's about a thousand a class now. So he graduated with that class of 1915, which by the way, this is interesting.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  This class, Eisenhower was in that class, but 56 people in that class became generals. One class of 164 people became generals. So they call that class, the class that the stars fell on. World War I, he was in an infantry regiment, but he never left America, so didn't do anything. So that's rough. That's, that's, that's hard. Happened to some guys in the teams. They missed Vietnam and they were in the teams and there's nothing going on. And then they got out of the teams, September 11th happens. It's like a.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  A bad deal, a bad deal. So he's in World War I happens, he just never leaves America. In between the wars, he's

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  going to, you know, various assignments, spends a bunch of time as a student or a teacher at military schools, makes Brigadier General in 1941.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  1942 to 1943 commands the 82nd and 28th Infantry Divisions, March 1943. March 1943, he is requested by Eisenhower to go to North Africa. And this is when he becomes the Deputy Commander

• 2:48Jocko Willink?

  under Patton, which gets represented in the movie Patton. Two Corps. After that, he's selected as the Army Group Commander for D-Day, for Operation Overlord D-Day. And in D-Day, he's on the ground, leading the fights through the hedgerows of Normandy. And then after the Battle of St. Lo, August 1st, he takes command of the 12th Army Group. End of the war, he's now a full general.

• 3:16Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, check this out, full general, he's in charge of, overall in charge of 43 divisions. 1.3 million men. I think that's the largest army that's ever been assembled in America. 1945 comes back after the war, he becomes the Administrator for the Bureau of Veteran Affairs. Gets on with that job, 1948, back to the Army. 1949, first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So that's kind of a landmark role. First Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 1950, of course, Korea War starts in June. In September, he gets promoted to General of the Army, five-star.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  He's the fifth five-star general and the last five-star general that we've had in America. Army grows from 1950 to 1952, the whole Army grows from 1.4 million troops to 3.5 million troops.

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  Didn't really have a great relationship with MacArthur and I should say MacArthur didn't have a great relationship with him. Kind of convinces Truman to get rid of, to fire General MacArthur. And I tried to figure out exactly what this meant. I read several different sources about this. So he, he stopped active service in 1953, but he stayed on active duty. I guess it's because you're a five-star general. You're like permanent. Like you're not going anywhere. So he's still active duty, even though he's not maybe in the exact position, but he's still on active duty. And then, then he just like chairs a bunch of, you know, chairs the, the

• 4:58Jocko Willink?

  Commission on Veterans Pensions, a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. He's chairman of the Board of Belova Watch. How do you say Belova Watch Company? Belova?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Belova.

• 5:09Jocko Willink?

  Belova? Is that how you say it?

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or I've heard Belova, but the boat.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay. I don't know how to say it. American company. Did you know that?

• 5:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  I always thought it was a foreign company. No, it was an American company. Not made in America anymore, unfortunately. Wrote a book called Soldier's Story, which I'm sure we'll cover on here at some point. He was a consultant in the movie Patton, for the movie Patton, because of course Patton had died in what, 1947? It was even quicker. It's like 45. It's like right after the war. Like the war was just barely over. So Patton wasn't alive. And, and so he's a consultant on the movie Patton. And of course, in the movie, it shows them as kind of like friends, you know, close friends, little different personalities. But in reality, they didn't get along apparently very well. He died April 8th, 1981. So that means he was

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  on active duty from August 1st, 1911, when he, when he went to the, when he went to West Point until April 8th, 1981. He was on active duty for 69 years, eight months and seven days. Obviously a ton of experience. And like I said, I'm sure at some point we'll cover that whole book on the podcast. But I was reading this transcript the other day because he had visited the Carlisle barracks, which is where the Army War College is, and he had stopped by to talk to some students about leadership. And he had some great insights there that I thought it'd be worth sitting

• 6:43Jocko Willink?

  down and covering. So let's get into it. Omar Bradley, five-star general, stopping by to talk to your class about leadership. What do you got? So he starts off, like I said, I use already, all of you here this evening are leaders. I'm pleased to meet you. What you do may well dignify the past, explain today, and secure for all of us tomorrow. So that's how he, that's how he kind of kicks this thing off. Then he says, perhaps I can touch upon a few factors that will underscore the value of good leadership. Leadership is intangible. No weapon, no impersonal piece of machinery ever designed can take its place. Now, he didn't have AI yet, right?

• 7:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he did not.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  He did not have AI?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 7:29Jocko Willink?

  AI is getting close, man. Have you seen the chat GPT? You know what I'm talking about?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  No. What is that?

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  It's like this AI that's writing things for people.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Did you see the AI art?

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  It's like a trend now. Everyone's like doing their thing, whatever. But doesn't AI kind of defeat the whole purpose of art, though?

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, kind of. And the other thing that I've noticed about AI art, people that have posted AI art of themselves, is it's basically the most completely like fantasized vision of yourself that you could ever have.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:01Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, it's, it's me, Jaco, except for I, you know, just like a 270-pound shredded, six-foot-five dude with like, that's pretty much what it is, right?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Yeah, that's probably written into the AI. Like, they probably like plump your lips or something like that.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  To get you to, uh, get you to like the picture and post it.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Spread it.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  See where you got it from.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Spread it. That's how it, uh, what do you call when the AI takes over? It's like info, that's how it like disseminates, right? That's how it like freaking propagates itself.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So he's saying there's no machine that can take its place. But I'll tell you what, you can definitely make some incredible. Calculations using artificial intelligence. I think you're always gonna have a little sanity check on things. But according to Omar Bradley in 1971, which is when he made the speech, they're never gonna be able to replace leadership. He goes on to say, this is the age of the computer. He wasn't kidding. And if you know how to program the machine, you can get quick and accurate answers. But how can you include leadership and morale, which is affected by leadership into your programming? You actually can do some of that, right? Some of it.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  You have to be able to, right?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully.

• 9:20Jocko Willink?

  Um, let us never forget the great importance of this element, leadership. And while we use computers for certain answers, let us not try to fight a whole war or even a single battle without giving proper consideration to the element of leadership. I'm gonna concur with that. Another element to be considered is the man to be led and with whose morale we are concerned. I am constantly reminded of this point by a cartoon which hangs over my desk at home, which depicts an infantryman with his rifle across his knees as he sits behind a parapet. Above him is the list of the newest weapons science has devised,

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  and the soldier behind the parapet is saying, but still they haven't found the substitute for me. Now, I'm gonna tell you, they're getting closer. I mean, Dave Berke, you're all but replaced.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  You've been beating the aviation AI drum for a while. This is not like, this is not like a new thing. You've been thinking about, we've been talking, we've talked about this.

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  We have.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Uh, and I am of, I still think of the minority mindset that we're one airplane away from no longer having man fighters.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  Wait, there's, who thinks that we're, do people think we're more than that?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so.

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 10:42Speaker 02

  I think. I don't have any data to back this up other than just conversations. I think most people in aviation think we have more manned fighters to build. I think we have one more. I think it's not, it would not surprise me if we built one more.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  One more past the F-35?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:59Jocko Willink?

  One more. You think they're gonna need another manned aircraft past the F-35?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you don't?

• 11:04Speaker 02

  I do not. I'm telling you, I would not be surprised if the next one that they're designing now is the last manned fighter.

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  It would not, it would not surprise me at all. I think a lot of people would say, no way.

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  The other, the other interesting thing is there's a dynamic where you, there's no reason to even have a big aircraft like that, right? I mean, you could just make smaller, multiple smaller aircraft.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's a whole lot of things happening right now. Like, I forgot what the terms, but basically they're even looking at F-35. Certainly the next iteration of fighters is, oh, I think they call it like the swarm, which is all these, um, you know, smaller drones or, you know, remote pilots that, that this lead pilot, you know, when an actual aircraft might have a bunch of control over, but the swarm is all these unmanned aviation, you know, centric vehicles working with that person.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  The progress that they made with drones in like a few years was insane.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  We had one, we had these drones in Task Unit Bruiser. I think they were called Ravens. And they were sort of like a, a big, uh, model airplane, you know, little radio controlled airplane. And like single prop and you had to throw them into the air. And then you had to be a legit pilot to be able to fly them. And you'd be flying them around in circles around the target and the pilots all sucked. So they're like crashing them. Uh, it was one of Laves, one of Laves A O I's, no, one of Laves A O I C's. He begged me, we had something, he goes, hey, can I use our, our UAV for this? Can I launch the UAV? And I was like, all right. So we were on N A B Coronado, I think, and he throws this thing to launch it.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  And it, no kidding, goes like 80 yards and plows into a building just head on, right? Just totally blew it. And then the second time he's using it, we're out at our, our urban training and he like launched it. And again, imagine a little tiny model airplane. It's got a crappy camera. Like this is before, you know, this is like worse than a BlackBerry camera in 2005, right? This is just junk. It's not like now where you and I, like we're all sitting at this table. We all have like, how many megapixels are on our iPhone?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Did BlackBerry have a camera?

• 13:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it did.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause I, I have like a, a folder that says BlackBerry pictures. So yeah, it exists, bro.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  I didn't even know that.

• 13:24Jocko Willink?

  And they are low quality. So anyways, you got this knucklehead, you got this crappy camera, you got this knucklehead seal. Like that's like no pilot by any stretch. He probably went to a three week school or something and he's flying around a target. And try, and the camera's not like we take for granted now that you can just lock a camera in position. It's, it's got a little geostabilizer. And all that stuff. This didn't have any of that. It's like, it's just absolutely awful. It was literally worthless. So he's, he's telling me like, you know, hey boss, I got this thing. We'll go, we'll get the UAV. We'll get a look at the target. All right, bro. So he launches it. You can't see anything. We're waiting to launch. I go, hey man, just bring it back here. We gotta go. He brings it back and he tries to land and it crashes right over our Humvees, square into a tree, bro.

• 14:09Jocko Willink?

  Just totally destroyed. So they've made massive progress. I think, I don't, I mean, I think your, your crew is definitely out of a job in Next Fighter for sure. Who's thinking you still need to be in there?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  I think a lot of people.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  What, what is it? What, if you were to argue their side, what would you be saying?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  I think the argument of their side is like, all the nuance that goes in with real time decision making. And the flexibility that goes along with that requires a human being to understand sort of the nature of the, the, the three dimensional. Unpredictability in the fog of wars. You need a human being to be able to make decisions as opposed to a computer. I'm not an expert on AI, but it is startling. And it's not just what it can do. I think your point is a more important point is how, how steep that curve is. And if you think about like, if you think about 30 years and how much happens in 30 years, that's why I'm looking at it like, all right, we're gonna start designing this thing now. Like we'll, we'll buy it and we'll build it and like we'll fly it. And then like 30 or 40 years from now, we're gonna do it again.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  And I'm like, 40 years from now, like, if I think about how old I'm gonna be and how much is gonna happen in that 40 years or 30, 40 years. I think it's really hard to not at least envision.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  It's it's gonna be dramatic how much different the world is and just the concept of even what AI means. It's not like it's going through something where it can like cook food for you or draw a piece of art. It's like doing level, eye level thing that is well beyond anything you can comprehend and just visualizing. It'd be like saying to the Wright brothers, so like, hey, you just flew an airplane, that's amazing. In 40 years, we're gonna walk on the moon. They'd be like, that doesn't compute. They can't make the connection of like 40 years later, it'll be like the 50s and we're gonna start putting people in outer space. So I think if you think about that, like what's gonna happen in 30, 40 years, I think that curve is so freaking steep that it's hard not to visualize. It's gonna be something way beyond what we can imagine.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  And the idea of like me, Dave Berke, you needing me to do that is, it's a little arrogant, I guess, based on if you think of it like, hey, man. You know, I love to consider myself a smart guy, but give the computers 35 years from now, I think, I think a lot is gonna change.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot of things changing right now. You know, there's a lot of things changing right now. The, you know, the battlefield in Ukraine right now, the tanks are getting taken out at like a couple miles away. With no, you know, by a ground, by a man-packed munition. That's a game changer. Like all of a sudden, in one short period of time, tanks are a little bit obsolete if you look at it from that perspective. So, things are changing. All right, back to leadership here. Of course, with this particular group of service personnel, I am considering leadership as it applies to a military unit. However, having been associated with industry for some time now, I find it difficult to completely separate the principles of military and industrial leadership. They have much in common.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  So he agrees with us. Leadership is leadership. In selecting a company in which to invest our savings, we often give primary consideration to the company with good leadership. In a similar manner, a military unit is often judged by its leadership. Good leadership is essential to organized action where any group is involved. The one who commands, be he a military officer or captain of industry, must project power and energizing power which coordinates coordinates and marshals the best efforts of his followers by supplying that certain something for which they look to him. Be it guidance, support, encouragement, example, or even new ideas and imagination.

• 17:53Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, this is, um, this is what, why leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield, right? But it's so, it's so interesting that this guy,

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  he's talking about these, these like, this guy that spent his whole life in leadership can't really put his finger on what he's talking about. You know what I mean? He's like, could be, could be guidance, could be support, could be encouragement, could be example, could be new ideas. That's a, that's a wide range of stuff.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  "The test of a leader lies in the reaction and response of his followers." Now, that's a good, that's a good statement. If your people aren't doing what you need them to do, you're, you're doing something wrong.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  "He should not have to impose authority." "Bossiness in itself never made a leader." So, there you go. Which is also, again, for those people that are up there with a stereotype of the military leader, here's this guy saying you shouldn't have to impose your authority.

• 18:57Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? We were at Gettysburg and I started talking about authority and like, authority, the things people call on for authority. Rank, time, inexperience,

• 19:12Jocko Willink?

  knowledge, technical knowledge, like all those things people can call on that and use it as authority. Like, "I've been doing this. Hey, I've been podcasting for three years, man. You don't know what you're talking about." Like, that kind of thing. That's just a, that's just an argument of authority. So, it goes beyond just rank.

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  "Continue on. He must make his influence felt by example and the instilling of confidence in his followers. The greatness of a leader is measured by the achievements of the led. This is the ultimate test of his effectiveness."

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  Chuck.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  I'm on board of that.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  And, and listen, I'll, I'll make this comment now so I don't have to come back to it. Like that comments, I would say a timeless comment. Your achievement as a leader is based on what your people accomplish. If you've listened to what I said five minutes ago and you're like, oh, I'm just going to outsource my leadership to a computer down the road. That's not a good plan. The attributes, the, the, the behaviors of good leadership, regardless of what computers might be able to do in the future. The most important thing you could ever possibly do is make you and the people around you better leaders. So don't get all wrapped up in this AI is going to solve your problems. Uh, I don't know when it will, if it ever will, but between now and then, learning how to be a good leader is a really good use of your time.

• 20:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's the most important thing. Nothing, nothing that you can do as an individual human can ever compete with what you can do with a team. That's it.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:37Jocko Willink?

  Too frequently, we use the words leader and commander synonymously. We should not forget that there are far more staff officer assignments than there are command billets. And a good staff officer can and should display the same leadership as a commander. While it takes a good staff officer to initiate an effective plan, it requires a leader to ensure that the plan is properly executed. That is why you and I have been taught that the work of collecting information, studying it, drawing a plan, making a decision is 10% of the job and seeing that the plan, seeing the plan through is the other 90%. A well-trained officer is one who could serve effectively either as a staff officer or as a commander.

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, this is the, the conversation that you and I have, we've had it at the muster a few times because uh, when, and I wrote about it in Extreme Ownership with Seth Stone and writing on his, writing on his Humvee window. Relax, here's what you do when you start getting shot at, bro. One, relax. Two, look around. Three, make a call. And then you and I had a conversation about, about it and you were lining it up with the OODA loop and the last thing in the, in the OODA loop is. Act, after you decide, you act. And they didn't quite line up because I didn't say execute or act when I put that thing on Seth Stone's board on his window. And the reason I didn't have to say that is because his platoon was like

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  ready to do whatever the hell he said to do, right? They weren't having a problem with execution. He was just having a problem with decide.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  You were only solving the part that he wasn't doing. So you didn't need to add a component that was already happening with that guy. Yeah.

• 22:18Jocko Willink?

  And that's what this is. Getting people to actually do things, that's what he's saying is 90% of the job. Sitting there and coming up with a plan is okay. I mean, it's, you know, there's, there's some small challenges to coming up with a plan, but not really. I mean, if you have time to plan, then you have time to assess different angles and look at things and come up and try different little courses of actions and run through some war games, some, some possibilities. And then you got a plan, you're good.

• 22:47Jocko Willink?

  But getting people to actually execute that thing, that's what's a challenge. That's where things fall apart, by the way. That's where dreams die. I'm gonna tell you that right now. Dreams die in execution. They don't, the dream comes out, man. The dream flourishes in someone's mind, right? People go, people live out the entire fantasy, the entire dream. People live out, like Echo comes out up with an idea for a movie, right? He lives out the whole fantasy, the Oscar Awards, like the whole thing, the limos, like the red carpet. He's got that whole thing. But guess what he fails on? Execution. Like, it's like, oh, but now I gotta work. Like, now I gotta

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  take and I gotta do this thing. So dreams die in that, in that space between decide and act, that's where dreams die. Between idea and execution, that's where dreams die. And that's why a leader's, a leader's job is to make that execution happen. And here's the thing. This is another thing. Seth Stone, we got interviewed about the Battle of Ramadi and Seth told the interviewer that I had to like beat, I had to beat my head against the wall for every operation that we were able to do, which was an exaggeration. But the fact of the matter is, and I would tell that story to the young officers, like, if you think you're gonna do a mission without like making that mission happen, you're not going to be able to. You're, it's almost, it's very rare that

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna be able to. That that an operation you come up with a plan and like, okay, I set it in motion and now it's just gonna happen. No, you have to like fight every step of the way. And that's the way it is in business. That's the way it is in life.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I I'm picturing trying to convince other people that that you need to be on board with when you've come up with a plan. Knowing that they're gonna have to be on board with that plan. And when when he says you're gonna beat your head against the wall, I think, like you said, your point is just the amount of sheer work that it takes. You don't just like, hey, you guys. And they're like, cool. And it just happens. It's all the other people and all the things they have to do. And where leadership comes in on that, just to convince people, and I hate to say it, there are times that are people out there that just want to say no. They just want to say no to your plan.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  And you, especially if there's rank involved, you can't just tell those people what to do. You gotta lead your way around those things. And they're so much harder than sometimes people give credit for. And how often I'll see people run into a a barrier and then stop and and give up then. And so I literally wrote down dreams die of execution. I mean, it's kind of funny when you say it. But that's the hardest part, not the I could sit at my desk and I would do this all the time in Ramadi, I had these ideas like, hey, we're gonna do this, we're gonna go here, we're gonna make all these things happen. And then reality is in there. And the hardest part about there that is the people you have to get on board to making this stuff happen. Not your people going ready to go execute, but all the things that get in the way of to the point where you can go execute that plan.

• 25:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you you ever heard the term idea guy?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  And he's not a guy.

• 25:50Jocko Willink?

  You know, which is a bummer. It's it's what and this is, this is a huge dichotomy is that

• 25:58Jocko Willink?

  for me, like, okay, let's say I'm gonna write a book. Let's say I'm gonna write Wave the Warrior Kid. The idea is the is by far the hardest part of that. It is so hard to come up with an idea like that's viable and good. It it well, I shouldn't even say it's hard work. It's almost like a it's almost like life. It's almost like life like you can't you can't create life like hey. A scientist knows the various ingredients that are in a cell. But they can't make it. They can't mix them together and make it come to life, right? As tenacious D said, you can't manufacture in Sporato. So so it's it's this dichotomy because the hardest thing you could do like write a hit song.

• 26:41Jocko Willink?

  Right? Oh, my gosh, like, everybody knows what chords it is like there's four chords, five chords that you're gonna be using, whatever. And yet. Jack White is writing hit song after hit song after hit song coming out. He's he's bringing them out of thin air, right? And yet someone else is spending their entire life trying and they can't make it happen. So it's weird that you can have because I kind of wrote down a note. I was like, ideas have no value. Because ideas by themselves have no value. They have no value. And you have a riff in your head or you got an idea for some new component or whatever. If it's just an idea, man, it has no value. And that's proven out in the fact that if you go and find investors for your idea.

• 27:23Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna buy your idea for pennies on the dollar. You're gonna own like a little tiny piece of it if you're lucky. If you are if now if you are able to hang on to the idea and you're able to execute, you could end up being, you know. Peter Thiel or Elon Musk that came up with the idea of PayPal and held on to it for long enough that, okay, here we go.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  Have you got a you got a just like it's like it's like a it's a war, man. It's a war, the whole thing. From the idea that you come up with, that's great to the execution. And by the way, if you're an idea guy.

• 27:59Jocko Willink?

  And you're stubborn. The don't be I'm gonna I'm gonna give you some advice. Don't be stubborn. Find somebody that's an execution guy. And be like, hey, dude, I got a really good idea. Do you want to help me execute this thing? And there's all kinds of different people out there. And some people are idea people and some people are execution people and you gotta work with these other people to get things to move. Very few people. Are gonna come up with an idea. Execute the idea properly with the right logistics to make this thing work. That's why you build a team. So I was a radio man. In the day, it was broken in the day. So I was a radio man, which meant I was always out in the field and I had a little flashlight with me, right? I had a little red lens flashlight and I would tape it up so it'd be really, really dim. Cause a little bit of light goes a long way and you just need to look at your, your, uh, radio in the dark and you gotta

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  turn on your little flashlight. But you know, you have a A batteries and they wear out and you know, it gets left. Like there's all kinds of problems and it's big. And I remember one day I was in a helicopter. And I'm looking at the pilot and the pilot's reading his map and he's got a lip light. You know what this is, Dave Berke? I'm sure you do.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's like, so where they, where their headset, you know, where their radio comes out? There was a little, how did you turn it on?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  I think like either like your tongue or something like whatever the, uh, magnet electro or I'm drawing a blank, but like your, your contact with it illuminated the light. Like you bite down on it or to close your little.

• 29:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was something, but all it was was an LED, a little dim LED light that you could see. And it's like LED, like every light in my house right now is an LED light. But I, but I didn't think, oh, I should make flashlights, little tiny, tiny flashlights like that. Because you had, you wouldn't have looked at, remember when you were a kid and you had some kind of a toy? That was lit up with an LED light? It was like any random toy. They had little LED lights. Those are bright enough to be a flashlight. And I was a radio man and I didn't put two and two together. And by the time when Iraq, the Iraq war started, someone else came out with little LED flashlights and now that's all that everybody uses. Period.

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  So there's a classic example. I, I didn't, that idea is worth probably hundreds and hundreds of millions. Probably worth billions of dollars now of LED flashlights. It was right in front of me. It was dancing around. I didn't see it. So that, that idea would have had unlimited value to me if I could have executed. But I couldn't, I didn't know it. I just didn't know it. So. That's why the idea has limitless value, but at the same time, if you don't execute something, no value at all.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  That's kind of the same as Bluetooth. Remember, because when Bluetooth came out, right? It was like, just the earpiece. It's like, that's Bluetooth. Now, like, everything is Bluetooth.

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  Bluetooth.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  There's like no wire. There's no wire anymore. Necessary.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  And Bluetooth owns like Bluetooth. They own that stuff. So they're getting paid. Imagine getting paid on every set of head of Bluetooth headphones now and every Bluetooth speaker and Bluetooth, yeah. So there's a, there's a good one. Little technology activity. All right. Going back to the book here. I can recall a former vice president of one of the companies with which I'm associated. He would formulate some good plans, but never followed up to see that his plans got expected results. I knew he had served in World War II, so out of curiosity, I looked into the nature of his service and found that his entire period of service was a staff officer. He had never had the advantage of a command job, so his training was incomplete.

• 31:26Jocko Willink?

  Maybe if he'd remained in the service longer, we could have deployed, developed his leadership qualities as well, and this man would still be with the company. This dude got fired. So there you go. Couldn't execute. Good at coming up with plans, just couldn't get them executed. You may have heard the story about General Persing, World War I. While inspecting a certain area, he found a project that was not going too well, even though the second lieutenant in charge seemed to have a pretty good plan. General Persing asked the lieutenant how much pay he received, and when the lieutenant replied $141.67 per month, sir, General Persing said, "Just remember that you get paid $1.67 for making your plan and issuing the order and $140 for seeing that gets carried out."

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  I think I heard that story about Patton, too. I guess maybe Patton heard it from Persing.

• 32:17Jocko Willink?

  "I am not sure that I would go to that extreme. Certainly, in these days, problems are complex and good staff work plays a large part in resolving them. I have known commanders who were not too smart, but they were very knowledgeable about personnel and knew enough to select the very best for their staffs. Remember, a good leader is one who causes or inspires others, staff or subordinate commanders, to do the job." Isn't that an interesting word? Causes. Or inspires. Like, it's just happening.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  Furthermore, no leader knows it all, although you sometimes may find one who seems to think he does, and that's coming from, that's from the document. Even he had to deal with people that thought they knew everything. A leader should encourage the members of his staff to speak up if they think the commander is wrong. He should give, he should invite constructive criticism. It is a grave error for the leader to surround himself with a yes staff.

• 33:19Jocko Willink?

  See, he developed this idea and I executed in the book Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Don't be, you know, no, no, yes men, right? He's knowing this.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  General George C. Marshall was an excellent exponent of the principle of having subordinates speak up. When he first became Chief of Staff of the Army, the Secretariat of that office consisted of three officers who presented orally to General Marshall the staff papers or studies coming from the divisions of the General Staff. I was a member of the Secretariat. We presented in abbreviated form the contents of the staff studies citing the highlights of the problem involved, the various possibilities, various possible courses of action considered, and the action recommended. At the end of his first week as Chief of Staff, Marshall called us into his office and opened the discussion by saying, "I am disappointed in all of you."

• 34:13Jocko Willink?

  When we inquired if we might ask why, he said, "You haven't disagreed with a single thing I have done all week." We told him it so happened that we were in full agreement with every paper that had been presented, that we knew what he wanted, and that we would add our comments to anything that we considered should be questioned. The very next day, we presented a paper as written, and then expressed some thoughts which, in our opinion, made the recommended action questionable. General Marshall said, "Now that is what I want. Unless I hear all the arguments against an action, I am not sure whether I am right or not."

• 34:54Jocko Willink?

  I was at FTX with Ashelam Front and I said something along the lines of, and I actually wrote it down, but it's something along the lines of if you don't get any pushback, it's a warning. And that's as a leader and it could be a warning for a bunch of different, it's a symptom for a bunch of different problems. Like the primary one, hey, maybe everyone's scared of to tell you what they actually think of your stupid plan. Maybe you're hoarding information so they can't even assess whether a plan is accurate or not. Maybe you've got them trained to a point where all they want to do is agree with you. If you train your leaders, like you can do such a exquisite job training your leaders

• 35:39Jocko Willink?

  that you've replicated yourself and you don't want to replicate yourself. You want to have people that have different perspectives. That's the goal.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wrote down, you were going, kind of going through that list of the potential reasons why I know there's more, but I wrote down, we all see it the same way. And how easy is to fall in the trap of like, that's a good thing. That's not a good thing. We, I don't want, and the whole point of the risk behind that is, is we could have a great relationship. You see the way I operate, we get aligned, we get fundamentally observing the world the same way. And that seems like such a good thing, but it's not. I actually want you to see it from a perspective, from a perspective that I don't see and be like, hey dude, you don't see what I'm seeing over here. So when we talk about being aligned, we want alignment on what our outcomes want to be and what the objective is, but I don't want everybody seeing the problem the same way that I see the problem.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  And you know, even checking out what we want our outcomes to be. I've worked with clients before where I'm like, well, why do you want to do that?

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  I remember I was working with a client that was like, we want to grow by X percentage. I was like, why do you want to do that? Yeah. What's the reason? Well, because, because we want to grow. Okay. So what is it going to take to grow? And you start, like, why do you want to do that? Some, some businesses, they get into a good spot. And look, we are programmed now in the business world, right? Programmed to, hey, growth. Growth is success. And there's a lot of reality to that, right? There's a lot of reality to growth is success, depending on the type of business. But like you, you get a small family business. And well, they got, you know, husband and wife. They got a good business going and they have a kid.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  And they want to grow the business. Well, you know, what does that kid want to do? Does that kid want to take over the family business? Is, do they want to keep this business at a sustainable rate where they can kind of continue on with their business and don't have to? Look, you're getting, oh, you, oh, you go to, uh, you go to Florida every, every winter for three weeks. When you're, if you grow your business, all of a sudden that Florida trip, three weeks, you can't do that anymore. So you, listen, what are you trying to do? So even like, where's our outcome? You need to even question that. And this is a great example, you know, we've gone through in the, well, with Vietnam, with Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, um, to what end? Yeah.

• 38:16Jocko Willink?

  And I, I know Jamie just did on the woman's assemble, she talked, she talked about to what end, which is a book by Ward Justin. And she took what I had talked about at the council. At the council, I kind of opened up talking about to what end? And this is what Ward Just was asking about the Vietnam War. Here we are, we're spending billions of dollars, we're losing American lives.

• 38:41Jocko Willink?

  We're killing a bunch of Vietnamese people. To what end? What are we trying to do here? And if you have that attitude in every decision that you make, you know, when Echo wakes up in the morning, goes down, you know, to the donut shop and orders a donut, like, to what end are you doing this? If you ask yourself that honestly, to what end? Well, I know it's gonna taste good. Okay, but like, where are you gonna be in a few years? Well, you know what, actually, I'm doing this right now. I get it. I'm just gonna have this donut, but, you know, I'm gonna do a hard workout later and I'm not gonna eat anything else sweet for the next, you know, couple of days. So, okay, so you have a plan. But where people lose it is when they're not actually thinking about where they're trying to go.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  That's a problem. So, ask yourself that question. To what end? And if your boss is telling you to do something,

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  or your boss has come up with a plan, or you're presenting a plan to your boss and your boss doesn't agree with you, you might be, you might not be aligned on where you're trying to go. Well, wait a second. Are we trying to grow the business? Okay, well, what part of the business are we trying to grow? There's all kinds of questions to be asked here. So, pay attention to those things.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  If you happen to be a detail, if you happen to be detailed to a staff, try to be a good staff officer and if possible, avoid being a yes man. I would suggest to all commanders that they inform the members of their staffs that anyone who does not disagree once in a while with what is about to be done is, is of limited value and perhaps should be shifted to some other place where he might occasionally have an idea. So, you got someone that never disagrees with you, get rid of them. They're, they're not helping you.

• 40:27Jocko Willink?

  Of course, I am thinking about the decision-making process. After a decision is made, everyone must be behind it 100%. I thought the British were admirable in this respect during World War II. No matter how much discussion there had been on a subject, as soon as a decision was made, you never heard any doubts expressed. You had to believe that everyone involved in making the decision had never entertained any ideas, except those expressed in the decision.

• 40:55Jocko Willink?

  We could talk for a long, long, long time about this.

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  And the reason we could talk for a long, long time about this is because there's an element that comes into play when Dave and I are, and Echo are discussing how we're gonna execute something. And that's, that thing that comes into play is Dave's ego, Echo's ego, and my ego. And once those things are in play, all of a sudden, it's very difficult for us to walk out of the room feeling like I support Dave's plan 100%. It's very, very difficult because damn, I'm just a little bit more tactically savvy than Dave is. And he's imposing this plan on me and he's not listening to what I'm saying and I'm gonna be pissed.

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I'm pissed, Echo's even more pissed. Because his plan was even more disparate than mine was from Dave's plans and his ego's even bigger. So now, we, now he's totally against what we're doing. But you've barked the order, so we're gonna go do it and we're gonna do it pissed and we're not gonna be successful. When you put ego into this equation, this is what causes the problem.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that ego,

• 42:06Speaker 02

  that ego, when it comes out, will reveal itself when I now have to do your plan and it doesn't quite go the way that you were thinking and I kinda know that that's gonna happen. That my ego's almost gonna be happy to see that failure. I'm gonna take some, and I might, I might be keeping my ego mostly in control, but there's a little part of me, if I don't really have that thing in check, a little part of me that's, wants this little hiccup, this little error, this little failure, this little setback, I almost want it to happen. And when I get to the point of how I'm actually supposed to work through that and solve that problem, and my ego's really barking at, hey, you knew this was coming, you knew Jaco's plan was stupid, you knew this was gonna happen. It's almost like I want that failure to occur, so I can see to you go, "Told you, man."

• 42:51Speaker 02

  As opposed to solving that, which I probably can, but how powerful the ego is, and I think you've said it, like, I'd rather... Be right than win.

• 43:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, there's been countless people and and you know, a good the the ultimate example of that is there's people that would rather die themselves and get their men killed than subordinate their ego to someone else or admit that they were wrong about something like that. And then there's there's examples throughout history, disgusting examples like that. Now, here's a I'm going to give everyone just a beautiful, beautiful piece of advice right now. And you know, I don't say this very often. This is a beautiful piece of advice for everyone. Here's my default mode when I walk into the planning room with Dave and Echo. My default

• 43:44Jocko Willink?

  mode is going with Dave's plan, or I'm going with Echo's plan. My default mode is to support someone else's plan. That's my default mode. My default mode is not to impose my plan on everybody else. Never. And by the way, it doesn't matter if I'm the boss walking in to talk to you guys, or if I'm the subordinate walking in to talk. It doesn't matter. My default mode is I'm going to go with someone else's plan. I'm going to go with what you recommend. The only and look, if you come up with the most wazoo plan ever created, BTF Tony, BTF Tony, who I love, who's freaking tactical, he's he's as tactically sound as any human has ever been. And like, he came up with Ramadi, he's like, I want to take

• 44:27Jocko Willink?

  the freaking like, he wanted to, he it was something that was like legitimately insane. He wanted to take the little side, like a little side by side with him, just by himself and do like a patrol out into some random part of Ramadi and set up in a building or something because he thought he could get away with it just going by himself. I was like, Tony, bro, you can't do that, dude. You can't. You can't just go by yourself. And you know what? Hey, there's actually a 90% chance that it would have worked. There's also 10% chance we never saw Tony again, which I wasn't going to put the risk out, right? So, Tony, I'm sorry. But like, unless someone just comes up, but other than that one time, Tony and I, in the time that we worked together, we were never in disagreement

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  about a plan more than like 0.01%. You know, like, oh, hit it from here up. Sounds good. And you know what? Basically, eventually, as I worked with Leif and Seth, it all became that. Now, what I had to be careful of. Is what you already gave warning of like, I didn't want to say like, oh, Leif came up with a plan. That's great. I don't question. I would always pull myself back far enough to go, okay, just make sure Leif, look at Stoner's plan. I'll just make sure, yep. Hey, is there anything I could, can I poke any holes in this? I hate saying devil's advocate, but you have to be a little bit of a devil's advocate to make sure that you're, you're trying to poke holes in plans to see if there's any holes in there because you don't want to miss anything.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  And the only way to be able to do that is if you're detached, obviously. But default, subordinate your ego and let's go with Dave's plan. Sounds good, man. And, and that's how you roll. That's how you solve that problem. And by the way, the only part of you that really thinks your plan is better is just your ego. Cause, cause here's what you're planning. What you're planning is something that you can't know. You're planning something that's going to happen in the future, something that's going to happen on enemy territory or against a competitor or in a market you don't understand. That's what you're doing. So when you come up with a plan, it's about something that you can't guarantee anyways. So why would you commit

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  or over commit to it? Doesn't make any sense.

• 46:44Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of that.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  I don't want to over emphasize leadership of senior officers. My interest extends to leaders of all ranks. I would caution you to always remember that an essential qualification of a good leader is the ability to recognize, select and train junior leaders. I would like to quote from a book entitled Born at Revelry and written by Colonel Red Reader. I have this book in the queue, by the way. Colonel Reader was on a trip for General Marshall and one of his assignments was to inquire into his junior leadership. This is an account of his conversation with Colonel Bryant Moore on Guadalcanal. Colonel Moore, I said, tell me something about leadership. I had hit a sensitive spot. He forged ahead. Leadership.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  The greatest problem here is the leaders and you have to find some way to weed out the weak ones. It's tough to do this when you're in combat. The platoon leaders who cannot command, who cannot foresee things and who cannot act on spur of the moment in an emergency are a distinct detriment. That's what's so interesting. This had a bunch of conversations with my last client about,

• 48:00Jocko Willink?

  the psychology of military incompetence and the authoritarian mindset and how people do well, that do well in garrison, don't do well in combat.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  And that's what he's talking about. People who can't foresee things, people who cannot act on the spur of the moment in an emergency. He goes on to say here, "It's hot here. As you can see, men struggle. They get heat exhaustion. They come out vomiting and throwing away equipment. The leaders must be leaders and they must be alert to establish straggler lines and stop this thing. The men have been taught to take salt tablets, but the leaders don't see to this. The result, heat exhaustion. The good leaders seem to get killed. The poor leaders get the men killed. The big problem is leadership and getting the shoulder straps on the right people.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  60 millimeter Japanese mortars fit shells fell about 30 yards away and attacked a number of coconut trees. I lost interest in taking dictation and the Colonel stopped talking. When the salvo was over and things were quiet again, Bryant Moore said, "Where was I? You saw that patrol. I tell you this, not one man in 50 can lead a patrol in this jungle. If you can find one who the good patrol, if you can find out who the good patrol leaders are before you hit a combat zone, you have found something.

• 49:27Jocko Willink?

  I have had to get rid of about 25 officers because they just weren't leaders. I had to make the battalion commander weed out poor junior leaders. This process is continuous. Our junior leaders are finding out that they must know more about their men. The good leaders know their men."

• 49:52Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  The um. It's weird that he would wrap up that section with good leaders know their men. After talking about all these other things, good leaders know their men.

• 50:07Jocko Willink?

  He goes on, now this is getting out of the quote from that book. I'm raised or born at Reilly. Says, what are the distinguishing characteristics of a leader? There are many essential characteristics that he must possess, but I will mention a few that come to mind as perhaps most important. First, he must know his job without necessarily being a specialist in every phase of it. A few years ago, it was suggested that all engineering subjects be eliminated from required studies at West Point. I objected, for example, bridge building is a specialty for engineers. Yet I think every senior officer should have some idea of what is involved. When we reached the Rhine in World War Two, it was not necessary that I know how to build a bridge.

• 50:50Jocko Willink?

  But it was very helpful that I knew what was involved so that I could see that the bridge engineers received proper support to in tonnage. Allowed and the an idea of the time involved. Specialties dominate almost every problem faced today by the military leader or the business manager. The the this individual must get deeply enough into his problem that he can understand it and intelligently manage it. Without going so far as to become a specialist himself in every phase of the problem. You don't have to be a tank expert in order to effectively use a tank of your command.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, this makes me think of the basic school for the Marine Corps. Is that philosophy is I don't care what your job is going to be, you're going to have some exposure to everything else. You're not going to be an expert in any of it. But it sure does help a lot if I'm going to work with you and you're an engineer and have some framework for what you're doing. So I know what the challenges are. So I know how to help you or support you or make sure you're at least getting what you're what you need. Uh, and the idea of not being a specialist, but knowing what all your specialists are dealing with. I mean, that served me well. And I think the very start for that for them for me was the Marine Corps, the basic school.

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they get that baseline set for everybody.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Everything.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  And and look, when you're at a business or you go into a business or you take over a business or you move into a new department, you don't have to become an expert, but to sit down and walk around, walk the floor, go and do that thing. You know, go, go get on the manufacturing line and do the various parts of the job. So that you look, you're gonna be terrible at it. You've never done it before. But go do it.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's crazy how how easy that is and how much and I'm not exaggerating like in one day, in one day, how much you can learn from just spending one day out there. You do not need, nor do they expect you to be an expert on any of this stuff. And not just the mileage you get by just building the relationship, but the amount of time that it takes to get exposure, what they're doing is actually really small. You don't need that much time to get out there on the line and go, oh, hey, let me try that. Hey, can I see that? Hey, how does this work? And just in a few hours, what you can learn, especially when you're starting at zero. If you're starting at zero, you're gonna learn infinitely more in just a little bit of time. So if you see this some giant daunting task, it's really not, it's not nearly as hard. And I remember this, learning about, you know, inside of a squadron, all the different things worked.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  You spend an hour or two with somebody and just sit with them and have them show you their job and then you do their job for a little bit. In a couple hours, what you can learn from that.

• 53:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And compared to the people that didn't do that, you're a freaking expert.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 53:28Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  All right, here's one to here's one to remember. Thomas J. Watson of IBM once said that genius in an executive is the ability to deal successfully with matters he does not understand.

• 53:48Jocko Willink?

  So good. And, and my note when I read that is the genius. What will make this person be able to successfully deal with matters that they don't understand? Is having the humility to admit that they don't understand and saying, all right, let's, let's get this figured out because I don't know what to do right now.

• 54:13Jocko Willink?

  This leads to another principle of leadership, which I have also often found neglected, both in military and in business. While you need not be a specialist in all phases of your job, you should have a proportionate degree of interest in every aspect of it.

• 54:29Jocko Willink?

  And those concerned, your subordinates should be aware of your interest. That's what you just talked about, Dave.

• 54:36Jocko Willink?

  You must get around and show interest in what your subordinates are doing, even if you don't know much about the technique of their work. And when you are making these visits, try to pass out praise when due as well as corrections or criticism. There you go. That's what you just talked about. Go light on the criticism part. You don't even know what the hell you're doing. Let me show you how to work that thing there, Son. No, don't do that.

• 55:00Jocko Willink?

  We tend to speak up only when things go wrong. This is such a well-recognized fact that a complaint department is an essential part of many business firms. To my knowledge, no comparable faculty exists anywhere to expedite the handling of praise for a job well done.

• 55:19Jocko Willink?

  It's a good point.

• 55:22Jocko Willink?

  We all get enough criticism and we learn to take it. Even Sir Winston Churchill, despite his matchless accomplishment, found occasion to say, "I have benefited enormously from criticism and at no point did I suffer from any perceptible lack thereof." So he's always getting criticized, even Churchill. But let us remember that praise also has a role to play. Napoleon was probably the finest exponent of this principle of recognition through his use of a quarter inch of ribbon to improve the morale and get results. That's the quote from Napoleon where he said, "You can basically get someone to do anything by giving them a little ribbon." And he's right.

• 55:59Jocko Willink?

  Both mental and physical energy are essential to successful leadership. How many good leaders have you known who were lazy or weak or who couldn't stand the strain? Sherman was a good example of a leader with outstanding mental and physical energy. I cite him with some trepidation because some of you may be from Georgia.

• 56:20Jocko Willink?

  However, during the advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta, he often went for days with only two or three hours of sleep per night and was constantly in the saddle, reconning and often knew the dispositions and terrain so well that he could maneuver the enemy out of position without a serious fight and with minimum losses.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  Conversely, a sick commander is of limited value. It is not fair to the troops under him to have a leader who's not functioning 100%. I had to relieve several senior commanders during World War II because of illness. It is often pointed out that Napoleon didn't lose a major battle until Waterloo where he was a sick man. So lazy, weak. That's a problem.

• 57:08Jocko Willink?

  A leader should possess human understanding and consideration for others. Men are not robots and should not be treated as though they were machines. So this goes back to the idea of AI. But I think they're pretty easily going to be able to put morale and emotional programming into leadership decision making. Oh, squints, squints over there from Echo Charles, am I wrong?

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Eventually, I mean, I guess an argument for AI is like, you know how AI works, it's like it's a constantly learning, learning, learning, learning, right? From like input, input, learn, learn, learn. So in the beginning, it'll probably be like freaking, you watch Demolition Man, remember that movie?

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  I think, I'm pretty sure I walked out of the movie Demolition Man.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 57:57Jocko Willink?

  Did I miss something, babe? Because that looked like it was dumb.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  Look, I'm not going to argue whether or not it was dumb.

• 58:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I walked out of it.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  It was dumb. So it was dumb seemingly.

• 58:07Jocko Willink?

  It was really dumb, right?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Seemingly, but.

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there's an odd layer I missed out on, just a metaphorical masterpiece that I get snuck by me.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say masterpiece. But there's a part on there, real subtle part.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  Subtlety.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Subtlety, where Simon Phoenix, right, he's a bad guy. Got to cryo-prison, whatever, and he goes to one of these booths, there's these booths rolling around, like, there's just a booth for like, whatever you want, kind of a thing. It's like an ATM for anything. So this booth can give you like, it's like the internet is on there and all this stuff. But it can give you a mood adjustment. So if you're like, oh, I want an ego boost, right, and you press the buttons or whatever, and it says, boy, you look great today. Like that kind of stuff. But in real life, that wouldn't really work, right? Because you're programming the machine, I need an ego boost. Oh, you look great today. A machine giving me compliments after I ask it, like, brother, it doesn't work like that. But the AI thinks it does. See what I'm saying?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  So if you're trying to program emotional stuff, like morale boosting stuff in an AI, at first, it's gonna look like that.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but, but here's my counterargument, and I don't really want to go full like Lex Friedman, like, discussion on AI, because I don't know enough about it. But you could probably put a program in there that would say something like, "Hey Echo Charles, I've assessed your appearance, and comparatively to the rest of the population today, you are in the top 6% of looking good. Congratulations Echo, go have a fun day." So now all of a sudden, it's giving you some data to convince you.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  I get it, and look, that's not a terrible assessment, but I would think, I think anyway, and try to search your emotional soul, not you, Jaco, Dave, search your emotional, like, part of you, where like, even if it's true, if it's coming from a machine, who cares? It has to come from an actual person who quote-unquote "understands me" at the very least as a person. See what I'm saying? So like an ego boost from a machine, just the mere fact that it's not from an actual person, bruh, it's hard.

• 1:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever had any kind of like feelings?

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Towards an inanimate object. Like a guitar, like you've had like real expensive computers, right?

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:27Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever had a computer that you kind of had like some kind of bond with?

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  No. No, and here to answer your question.

• 1:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Dave, did you have any kind of bond with your airplane?

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Oh, hell yeah, absolutely. As soon as you said that, I'm like, I have feelings for the airplanes that I flew. And I remember looking at them going, damn.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  And I would be surprised if you didn't look at a heavy machine gun and go, I really like the way you look today.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but the machine isn't the thing that's giving you the compliment. It's like, it'll have to do, I think, you know, I don't know, I could be wrong. I'm not Lex Friedman, you guys know this.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  It usually has to do a lot with, or probably everything to do with what you specifically did in with this machine that gave you certain personal feelings, like personal, unique, very unique, in like not replicable.

• 1:01:13Jocko Willink?

  You gotta remember, like right now, there's chat, there's people right now, there's bots on Twitter today, probably less today, but there's, there's bots and stuff out there that are having conversations with people that people can't tell.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, they can't tell. Yes, true. But once they knew it was a bot, if you tell them it's a bot, brother, it's gonna change. They're not gonna be, oh, equally as in love.

• 1:01:32Jocko Willink?

  The only thing you gotta get over is like the little hump of you just tell people like, oh, no, this thing can actually assess where you're at. And then people go, okay, this computer's smarter than your wife. So your wife telling you look good is fine, but this thing telling you look good is factual. So there you go. Believe it. Ego up. What'd you say? Ego boost?

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Ego boost, yeah.

• 1:01:56Jocko Willink?

  Ego boost.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think like, cause now that you put it like that, I kind of like, yeah, maybe, but like, I still, it's hard.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example. JP Denell.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Sure. Hell, yeah.

• 1:02:09Jocko Willink?

  He was wearing like a wrist strap that told him if he was tired or not.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Jocko Willink?

  He believed it.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Jocko Willink?

  He took it off.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Jocko Willink?

  Because he was having bad days.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Because that thing told him he was tired. He didn't feel tired, but he, that thing said, hey, you're tired. And he was like, oh damn, I'm tired. Yeah. And so he did, that happened a few times. He said, you know what? This is bullshit.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 1:02:34Jocko Willink?

  So he believed the machine. It affected his mood because it had the data. So, end of discussion. I think you can just stand down, bro. Cause I think that he just got proven wrong.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  So like if it was like an eval

• 1:02:49Jocko Willink?

  You just got ego down.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  So if it was like a report card, like

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  a report card that maybe, because think about it, okay, this team needs a morale boost. They're losing. Right? Or whatever. So what, what would the machine do? Like assess the good things that are happening and report back?

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, imagine, imagine at halftime, the, the coach comes in and he's like, hey, I'm checking your, your whoop straps right now. I'm checking your data. Everyone has more energy than they had at halftime than we did at the last game that we won. You guys have the power to get.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  And that was true.

• 1:03:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that, that machine can affect your mood is what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  I guess like hidden information or something that you might be ignoring, like that's something like that?

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  I'm saying that

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  a machine can affect someone's mood. Hey, you know when I have a machine affect my mood? Damn printer doesn't work.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:51Jocko Willink?

  Right? Printer doesn't work. All of a sudden I'm like, damn, I'm mad. I get angry.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  I think that's a different thing, but.

• 1:03:59Jocko Willink?

  All right. So check this out. What we're saying is men are not robots and should not be treated as if they were. And he says this, I do not by any means suggest coddling. But men are highly intelligent, complicated beings who respond favorable, favorably to human understanding and consideration. By this means their leader will get maximum effort from each of them. He will also get loyalty and in this connection, it is well to remember that loyalty goes down as well as up. The sincere leader will go to bat for his subordinates when such action is needed. Take care of your people and your people will take care of you.

• 1:04:43Jocko Willink?

  A good leader must sometimes be stubborn. Here, I am reminded of the West Point Cadet Prayer. A leader must be able to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong. Armed with courage of his convictions, he must often fight to defend them. Then he has to come to decision after thorough analysis. And when he is sure he is right, he must stick to it even to the point of stubbornness. Grant furnishes a good illustration of this trait. He never knew when he was supposed to be licked. A less stubborn man might have lost at Shiloh.

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you've heard the story of Grant in the Richmond campaign when, after being up all night, making his reconnaissance and formulating and issuing orders, he lay down under a tree and fell asleep. Sometime later, a courier rode up and informed the general that disaster had hit his right flank and that his troops at the end of that line were in full retreat. General Grant sat up, shook his head to clear the cobwebs and said, "It can't be so." And went back to sleep. And it wasn't so. He had confidence in himself and in his subordinate leaders. So, there you go. And we just, have you had a chance to listen to Civil War? No, not yet. Excursion, we're just about, Grant's just about to roll in the scene from the east.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, from the west, the western, of the western campaign, Grant's about to roll in there because he's winning. So, it's gonna be, it's gonna be cool to get into him as a leader. He goes on to say this, "I do not mean to infer that there is always just one solution to a problem. Usually, there's one best solution, but any good plan boldly executed is better than indecision. There is usually more than one way to attain results." This goes back to what I was saying earlier. That's why I'll go with Dave's plan, I'll go with Echo's plan, I don't care. I don't care because the time we waste arguing about which way is better is time of indecision. And that's what's gonna cost us. So, Dave, you got a decent plan, a minimally viable plan? Cool, go, execute. Damn, we, we work together right now, Dave.

• 1:06:49Jocko Willink?

  You are executing things like wildly, uh...

• 1:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Often executing plans, executing missions. And I mean, you usually sometimes give me like a after action report sometimes about how it went and everything. If there's something outstanding that happened outstanding in any direction, maybe something good, maybe something like, oh, this week, we could have done this better.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, that's how you have to run things so much easier.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I, there's a lot of these comments that he's made, like the quotes that you're reading. I'm trying to picture hearing this and there are times you say something and, and people like, oh, he just said defend, defend your convictions. And it's like a little, if you don't understand the context of that, there's a little bit of risk in there because that can be like, hey, listen, I'm sorry, Jaco, but this is how I want to get this thing done and I'm going to defend that conviction. And I just can't help but think about like the example you and I, that you were just talking about, about you and me. And something we have to think about echelon front all the time is a lot of times when people hear these military examples,

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  we're talking about the conflict we're having with our enemies. Like he just told that story of like a lesser man when I've lost that battle. Hey, listen, when you're fighting like an actual enemy, defend those convictions. But if Jaco and I are on the same team and we're actually working together, I am far less inclined, I'm almost not inclined at all to defend my convictions. And of course I got to be careful with that too. You said it well, that's a dichotomy. I don't want to just roll over and say whatever you want, but if I come in with a plan, you come into the plan, I go, oh, huh, dude, that's a, that's a totally reasonable plan. My plan will probably work. I am not inclined to defend my convictions against you, who is my ally, who's my friend, who's, who, who wants the same out, you know, good outcome that I want, which is very different from.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  An actual opponent, an actual enemy, you know, in the military, those are very stark, obvious contrasts. We're fighting against the Nazis. We're gonna, I'm gonna defend those convictions to the end. Or like another company that they don't want to coexist with. They want to take all your clients and run you into the ground. So just even being cautious with the idea of defending those convictions. If it's someone on my team and they have an idea, the chances are, especially if it's like most companies, most people aren't dumb. Most people are pretty smart. They got an idea. They thought about it. If I can find any reason to abandon my position and go with your position, I'm gonna do that. Unless once, like you said, once in a blue moon, like dude, your idea is terrible. And we just kind of talk through it. It's not that big of a deal. I reveal a couple of things, move on. But 99 times out of 100,

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  your ideas and my ideas, they're actually both gonna work. And if you've got an idea, I am not inclined, to be quite honest, I am not inclined to defend my idea. Not because I wanna, I don't want to upset you and you're my boss. It's because I'm gonna go, dude, that's totally gonna work. Let's just go execute on that. And what that actually gives me is what you just described at the end is, and I want to be careful with this, but I don't spend a lot of time telling you what I plan on doing. Now, listen, we are strategically aligned. We have, we, as a whole company, we meet and we get aligned strategically. And I don't mean to say that people should be out there operating with total autonomy. But in terms of this day, this event, this thing, it's, I don't spend a lot of time walking you

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  through with my, what my plans are. Because six, seven years into this, we've gotten to a point where Dave can go execute and you're comfortable with that. And my point to that is because I don't spend a lot of time trying to force my way into what I want to do. You've learned like, hey, Dave's a flexible guy. He's, he's gonna get to the same outcome. His way, my way, doesn't really matter. And that's cultivated a bunch of trust. So defending your convictions, if you're not careful, can actually make you appear to be stubborn to a fault. And now Jaco might be like, oh, is, is Dave gonna adjust as he needs to with this client? Or is he gonna just dig into his plan? So be careful about defending your convictions as well, depending on the situation, especially what it is that you're trying to accomplish.

• 1:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think what could get confusing for someone is just confusing the words conviction and idea.

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  Right? For me to have a conviction that we should take care of our clients.

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna defend that conviction. So when Dave rolls up to me and is like, hey Jaco, I think we can screw this client over and get some more money from them and do less work. And it doesn't really matter about what the outcome is.

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  Now we're, I'm not gonna be like, ah, sounds like a good idea to do that.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have a problem, right?

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we have a problem because we're not aligned. Now, but defending ideas, which is like ideas, like I said earlier, ideas can be pretty much worthless, right? And, and if we are going to assign value to an idea, we're assigning value to my idea and assigning value to your idea. We can't assign a lot of value to either one of those things because neither one of them has any execution behind it yet. So we're just basically assigning value to air. It's like, it's like Dogecoin, right? We're just kind of assigning, or what is it? FTT, which is the, FTT is what the FTX token. So this is the guy Sam Bakeman Friedman, Sam Bak Friedman? SBF. This guy ripped off billions of dollars from people.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  And one of the ways that he did it was they made their own little cryptocurrency and just assigned value to it. Said, oh yeah, this, this has this value. And then they borrowed money against this thing that they made up. And everyone said, oh, this guy's smart and he's really nice. So we're gonna give him, we're gonna let him keep doing it. That's what, that's what, so when we, if I assign my idea value and I assign your idea value, I can't assign it that much value because it's just something that we both made up.

• 1:12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  So why am I gonna over invest in FTT? It's worthless. It has no value.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  You also can't see the future.

• 1:12:50Jocko Willink?

  I can't see the future.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  What are you arguing? What are you fighting me over?

• 1:12:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  The, the unknown of the outcome.

• 1:12:55Jocko Willink?

  So the convictions, you know, when we're in combat and the conviction of, hey, we need to do, to have the high ground morally with the enemy. Yes. I'll defend that high ground. I'll defend that conviction all day. Now.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Even the idea of, hey Dave, we need to get the high ground tactically. I'll defend that really strong, but you might say, hey, Jocko, listen, we got an AC 130 that's going to be overhead. And we don't need the high ground and we could, it'd be much smarter to have these troops over here on this piece of terrain, which will set up a blocking force from where the enemy is located. I'm, I can adjust that. That's an idea. Now, and look, I'm as, I'm as about committed to the tactic of taking the high ground as a human could possibly be. But I'm not going to die, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna die on it unless, you know, Dave's like, well, the high ground doesn't matter, whatever. And I'm looking at it, well, what are you gonna do if the enemy gets up there?

• 1:13:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm not worried about it. Okay. Well, we need to worry about it. So that's a different, so just don't confuse defending your conviction with defending your idea, defending your plan, defending your thoughts even, and open your mind.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  That, that conviction versus ideas is awesome because the conviction we actually have to agree on, we are going to take care of our people. We are going to help these clients be successful. And if you discover that I'm like, actually what I want to do is I want to lie to them to make some money. Yeah. That's the conviction. And then the idea is it's so much easier to not care so much about the ideas if you know that we're aligned on that conviction. Like, oh, Dave's going a totally different direction. He's going to get to that high ground. It's just his way of doing it, but he actually sees, that client's getting taken care of, we're giving them an impact. And my point to that is we don't talk about the tactical ideas nearly as much as we used to because you're like, oh, yeah, I know where he's going. I know what Dave's doing and, and

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  yeah, we have a pretty good thing going and, and you don't just cut people loose, but if you can be aligned on the convictions, it's so much easier to be flexible with the ideas.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Like, worst case scenario, you didn't actually, you, like, as long as you're not going against the convictions that we share, there's actually nothing you can screw up bad enough to like, have a problem.

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's nothing that we can't clean up on a phone call. We're like, hey dude, I over indexed a little bit. We spent a little too much money on this client and I owe him another two gigs. And by the way, they really want you. So you're coming to it. I'm like, all right, cool. You know, Jamie booking me for free gigs across America. Jamie Cochran, thank you. No, don't call Jamie. She's not doing it anymore. All right. Going back to the book here. Another quality of leadership that comes to mind is self-confidence. You must have confidence in yourself, your unit, and your subordinate commanders, and in your plan. This recalls a couple of incidents. Just before the invasion of Normandy in 1944, a story went around that some of the units were making the assault on the beaches, that they would suffer 100%

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  casualties, that none of them would come back. I found it necessary to visit these units and talk to all ranks. I told them that, of course, we would suffer casualties, but certainly our losses would not be 100%. And that with our air and naval support, we would succeed. After our landing, a correspondent told me that on his way across the channel, in one of the leading LSTs, he had noticed a sergeant reading a novel. Struck by the seeming lack of concern by this sergeant, he asked, aren't you worried? How can you be reading at a time like this? The staff sergeant replied, no, I'm not worried. General Bradley said everything will go all right. So why should I worry?

• 1:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, confidence. Right there in the middle. Right there. Nice and balanced confidence, not overconfident, not arrogant, but not self doubting. That's for sure. I might relate another incident where there's a lack of confidence. Where there's a lack of confidence. I had to relieve a senior commander because I learned his men had lost confidence in him. This meant, of course, that we could not expect maximum performance by that division. After being relieved, the officer came through my, came back through my headquarters and showed me a file of statements given to him by his request, I am sure, by the burgo master of all the towns his divisions had passed through. If he had confidence in himself, he would not have felt the need for those letters.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  Pretty good one. Sir, you shouldn't fire me. Look at everyone loves me. I've got a bunch of letters to prove it. Okay. After seeing the letters, I told the officer that if I had ever had any doubts as to whether to relieve him, those doubts were now removed. His letters proved beyond question that he had lost confidence in himself. So it's no wonder his men had lost confidence in him too. A leader must possess imagination. Whether it be an administrative decision or one made in combat, the possible results of that decision must be plain to the one making it. What will be the next step and the one after that?

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  He only wrote one little two paragraph sentence about imagination.

• 1:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Wish I had a little bit more.

• 1:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Next, while there are many other qualities which contribute to effective leadership, I will mention just one more. But it is a very important one. Character. This word has many meanings. I'm applying it in the broad sense to character. I'm applying it to the broad sense to describe a person who has high ideals, who stands by them and who can be trusted absolutely. Such a person will be respected by all those with whom he is associated. And such a person will readily be recognized by his associates for what he is.

• 1:18:44Jocko Willink?

  Circumstances mold our character. These circumstances affect different people in different ways. From exactly the same set of circumstances. One man may theoretically build a palace. While another may have difficulty building a lean to.

• 1:19:08Jocko Willink?

  It has been said that a man's character is the reality of himself. I don't think a man's strength of character ever changes. I remember a long time ago when someone told me that a mountain might be reported to have moved. I could believe or disbelieve it as I wished, but if anyone told me that a man had changed his character, I should not believe it. So this is a very. This whole thing about character. First of all, it's a little strange. There's a little contradiction in there. That he made, which is circumstances.

• 1:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Mold our character. So he's saying that your circumstance, that your character does change. Based on circumstances, circumstance molds your character. And then he's saying that character is not going to change. It's more likely that a mountain gets moved than your character changes. So he's, he's got a little hypocritical statement here. But I think I understand what he's getting at, right? Um, I mean, I think he's just talking about the fact that your character is molded over time. But once that character is established, it can't be changed. Now, I can tell you this, I've seen people's character changed. Right?

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Usually it takes a pretty significant event to change someone's character. Uh, maybe they get fired. Sometimes people get fired and they, there's no, no character change whatsoever. They're just still pissed at everybody else. But someone gets fired, someone gets killed, like something, some very big event can change someone's character. Also, a series of smaller events. I mean, you look at someone that, you know, the kid that you went to high school with, and then they joined the Marine Corps. And you see him seven years later and you're like, damn, that's a, that's a different dude. That's a changing character. So I think the character can change. In fact, I know it can.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, I'm, I'm, I'm going through what you're doing, trying to latch on what he's saying and understand where he's coming from. And I, I a hundred percent agree with you, like, I have seen enough things happen in my life around people that those are character changing events like, like you've described. I'm just thinking of the other side of it too, trying to contemplate what he's saying is, and we've talked about this, when someone reveals their character to you, believe them. That component of like, hey, if Jaco, if I catch him and go, oh dang, Jaco's maneuvering for himself, or Jaco deep down is actually trying to do this for him. I have to understand like that's who he is and there's a balance inside there too but I'm

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  just like I said I'm trying to latch on what he's talking about and we've talked about this idea of somebody's character if they reveal something about themselves you you have you you cannot pretend like that's not the case or just through some conversation you're gonna change that character so I do believe that well I don't believe I know that people's character can change and I don't think there's some age by which it it's now immovable I think the older you get the harder that is but don't be naive about someone's character either

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the tricky thing about that is you know many of us myself included we're optimist we're optimistic people and so I see Dave like shortcut in something and I was like oh he's you know he's part of my team like we're on the same team yeah he's not he's not gonna do that you see it again you're like oh you know he probably just doesn't you make a bunch of excuses for somebody and what you're saying is important you need to when you see those things you need to put it in the calculus man put that into the calculus cuz it's that is a that is what you're dealing with right that is what you're dealing with as a person is what is

• 1:22:56Jocko Willink?

  their character the thing about the other huge takeaway from this which is extremely important is that you can take two people with different character put them in the exact same circumstances one person's gonna build a palace the other person's gonna have difficulty putting up a lean to and what that means is you as an individual you you need to take ownership of what's happening and make things happen like that's this is this is extreme ownership right one person can look at a situation and go okay well hey there's a bunch of rock here well I guess I'm gonna build a palace another person looks at it and goes oh there's a bunch

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  of rock here how am I gonna build a lean to there's no sticks like they can't figure it out so

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  Getting and surrounding yourself and training people. This, I believe, is a trained attribute as well. Look, just like every other attribute, some people have a more positive outlook, right? You got the guy in your company, you got the guy in your platoon that's like, oh, this is never gonna work. What is it? I think Leif Babin likes to quote the alien guys, you know? Seventeen days, we're not even gonna make it seventeen minutes, man. Like that kinda, that guy, there's one of those guys in every platoon. Totally. Right, they're in every platoon, they're in every company, every team. There's no way we're gonna beat the competition with this thing, this, oh, this is never. Like, they're hating life. You know, it's funny, I wrote down, I didn't say it, but you know, the negative people, we have a name for them. It's naysayers, right? There's an actual word for that person.

• 1:24:31Jocko Willink?

  The English language is so filled with people like that, that we have a word for them. It's called a naysayer, right? They exist, they're a type of person. But I think, over time, you can train people where they start looking, oh, that's a problem, cool, but I'm not just gonna find a solution, I'm gonna take advantage of this situation. We're gonna do, we're gonna do even more, we're gonna do even better. Positive things are gonna happen. Yeah. So, take that into your next scenario. The next circumstances you're put in, and ask yourself, I'm gonna build a palace, or I'm gonna build a lean to. Which one am I gonna do? I'm gonna build a palace, or am I gonna struggle to build a lean to? That's the question.

• 1:25:13Jocko Willink?

  All right, then he goes on to say, um, all leaders must possess these qualities, which I've been discussing, and the great leaders are those who possess one or more of them to an outstanding degree. Some leaders just miss being great because they are weak in one or more of these areas. There is still another ingredient in this formula for a great leader that I have left out, and that is luck.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  He must have opportunity, then of course, when opportunity knocks, he must be able to rise and open the door.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Some may ask, why do you talk about the qualities of leadership? They maintain that you either have leadership or you don't, that leaders are born, not made. I suppose some are born with a certain amount of leadership. Frequently, we see young children inclined to take charge and direct their playmates. The other youngsters follow these directions without protest. But I am convinced nevertheless that leadership can be developed and improved by training. Well, there's no doubt about that. And that's again, something else I stole. Like I hadn't read this before I wrote Leadership Strategy and Tactics, but you know, it's a, are leaders born or made? The answer, yes, they are born and they are made.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  And he says, there's no better way to develop leadership than to give the youngster or other individual a job involving responsibility and let them work it out. Again, this is my favorite, Leadership Strategy and Tactics. What's my favorite tool for leadership? Leadership.

• 1:26:39Speaker 02

  Put them in charge.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  Put them in charge. Put them in charge. That's what you do. Try to avoid telling them how to do it. Boom. Decentralized command. That, for example, is the basis of our whole system of combat orders, which there's a whole, we've talked about this on multiple different podcasts, but you know, mission type orders, not telling people what to do, just tell them what needs to get done, why it needs to get done, and let them go figure out. We tell a subordinate unit commander that we want him to do what we want him to do, and then we leave him to the details. I think this system is largely responsible for the many fine leaders in our services today. We are constantly training and developing younger officers and teaching them how to respect, uh, accept responsibility.

• 1:27:25Jocko Willink?

  And this is, uh...

• 1:27:28Jocko Willink?

  I was saying this, I said this at a muster, like every moment of every day is an opportunity for training your people. Like anything that you do, if you, it's so awesome. You don't need to go on some big, uh, training trip with your team. No, you work in the, you work in a sales group, cool. You're, you're doing a presentation to some client, potential client, cool. Junior guy, echo, hey, you're going to present these guys. Hey, you're not, oh, you're not ready to present to me. You're at least going to put together a plan. You're going to brief me and that way I can get to know the numbers and then I'll brief it because you're not there yet. Uh, we own a construction company. Okay, cool. Echo, you're going to come up with a plan on how we're going to do this concrete pour. You're going to brief me it. I'm going to poke some holes in it, but you know, that's pretty

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  much what we're going with it. Look, if it's bad, if it's horrible, if it's going to be disaster, then we're going to stop and, and I'll make the adjustments, but you're going to come up with a plan. And that's what you do. You have the opportunity to train people all day, every day with everything that you do. Your family, you gotta make dinner, you gotta go to the grocery store. You got to get the yard cleaned up. Every single one of those things is an opportunity for you to train your team, your, your, your children on how to come up with a plan, how to execute a plan, how to build teamwork, how to do things efficiently. Like these are all opportunities. So everything that you're doing all day long, you have the opportunity to train people.

• 1:28:49Jocko Willink?

  He goes on to say, however, don't discount experience. Someone may remind you that Napoleon led armies before he was 30 and that Alexander the Great died at the age of 33. Napoleon, as he grew older, even commanded even larger armies. Alexander might've been even greater had he lived longer and had more experience. In this respect, I especially like General Buckner's theory that judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. And then he goes on to say, I have been asked to speak on leadership in the past. I have fairly well covered these same thoughts with other groups. Somehow, however, somehow,

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  however, at the moment, these thoughts take on added significance for me. You see, my first great grandson was born a year ago. We call him Fat Henry. What happens to his life and to the lives of his contemporaries may well be in your hands. Thank you.

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  And that is the end of this, uh, that's the end of this particular speech in it. You know, I've got a book, I've got a manual, Department of the Army pamphlet 600, Tac 65. That's just got, it's got a bunch, it's just, it's a book of military quotes. And there's a bunch in there from O.R. Bradley. "The greatest leader in the world could never win a campaign unless he understood the men he had to lead."

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Good to know. "The American soldier is one proud, is a proud one, and he demands professional competence in his leaders. In battle, he wants to know that the job is going to be done right with no unnecessary casualties." "The non-commissioned officer wearing the chevron is supposed to be the best soldier in the platoon, and he's supposed to know how to perform all the duties expected of the American soldier." The, uh, period, "The American, American soldier expects his sergeant to be able to teach him how to do his job, and he expects even more from his officers." Boom. "Fairness, diligence, sound preparation, professional skill, and loyalty are the marks of American military leadership."

• 1:31:00Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  Another one. "In war, there is no second prize for runner-up." It's a good one to remember. Another one. "Leadership in a democratic army means firmness, not harshness. Understanding, not weakness. Generosity, not selfishness. Pride, not egotism." So he just kinda rolled out some dichotomies for you, he's giving you the balanced one, and he's giving you the tendency that most people have.

• 1:31:31Jocko Willink?

  "Military organizations' success and success in battle depend upon discipline and a high sense of honor."

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  They just roll out these quotes.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  "The nation today needs men who think in terms of service to their country and not in terms of their country's debt to them." That was 1948, I think maybe JFK jacked that one a little bit, right? Did JFK jack that? Sounds like it, yeah, a little bit.

• 1:32:00Jocko Willink?

  Remember, a good leader is one who causes or inspires others. Staff or subordinate do the job. We already hit that one.

• 1:32:08Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. This guy, definitely some good information, some good things to think about. And, you know, it's leadership. And it's leadership as applied to life. So, um, more leadership, more life lessons to be learned. Trying to get better.

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, speaking of trying to get better.

• 1:32:34Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't really talk much about working out that much.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  No, no, he did say, he did say physically fit.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, back.

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  That one, he said, you gotta back it up.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  He did.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  You can't be weak. He said, weak leaders.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  Weak, yeah. That was a general term, but yeah.

• 1:32:50Jocko Willink?

  Squats, bro. I agree. He didn't say do squats.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Or curls.

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  He didn't say, guys or girls do squats. But there's an inferred kind of implied thing that we all kind of heard, right?

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's face it, if you're not doing squats, it doesn't sound like he'd kind of dig you that much. Given the whole nature of the whole deal. I get it, but for those of us who are doing squats, which is pretty much all of us, am I right? Uh, we got some, some supplementation for you, you know, through this path, a lot of pain in this path, not pain. Say discover discomfort, pain, no suffering.

• 1:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Wait, is that pain, no suffering?

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  No suffering, no, no, there's pain, but there's no suffering. Cause suffering is like your, the meaning of pain or like, well, the meaning you put on the pain that you get. I think that's like the suffering.

• 1:33:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:37Speaker 01

  Like doms, pain, not suffering.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  Tear your bicep, pain and suffering.

• 1:33:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  Cause you can't do curls for a long time. You understand what I'm saying?

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  I guess, man. I'm not sure a hundred percent I'm tracking you, but I don't really want to know.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  No, no, this is important because it can actually, uh, help diminish some of your suffering if you understand this.

• 1:34:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  This is what I learned.

• 1:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Philosophical Echo Charles coming in hot. What do you got?

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  So, pain and suffering are two different things. Suffering is just like what you, uh, basically the conclusion you make, given the pain that you have. So if it's like, um, if you think your pain is like bad, it's for the negative, it's destroying you, it's whatever, then that, that elicits suffering. But if you say, hey, this is part of the process that I need, or that I have embraced, or whatever, it's still pain, but it's not suffering. See what I'm saying?

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Okay. And so you can assign meaning to whatever you want, including pain, and you can assign whatever meaning you want to anything.

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  It's sort of like building a palace instead of a lean to. So I could be feeling pain and be like, this is part of me building the palace. Or I could be feeling the pain going, dude, this is horrible. I can't, I'm not gonna be able to sleep here tonight, because I gotta lean to.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Alright, see? So you do understand. It's true. Either way, when you do feel this pain, eliminate the suffering, got some supplementation will help you, for real. Mentally and physically. Yeah, the Molk, that's a, yeah, that's a big one. Because if you don't get your protein, which is hard to do, by the way, we established that a long time ago. It is hard to do, just to just eat food and get the amount of protein that we're gonna need. It's true.

• 1:35:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not anymore, not, now that we have Molk.

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? And it tastes good.

• 1:35:17Jocko Willink?

  The marketing guys are like, well, the thing is with the Molk name, we gotta explain what it is.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Molk. Additional protein in the form of a dessert. That's the problem.

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  Not that hard, dude.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:35:31Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. What is Molk? And we couldn't just call it a protein thing, because it tastes too good.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it doesn't have the, it might have the stigma of like a protein.

• 1:35:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  Something.

• 1:35:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if I said, hey, do you want this broccoli, but the broccoli tasted, but the broccoli tasted like, like, really good?

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50Jocko Willink?

  Tasted like really good?

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Like quiche.

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Would I call it broccoli? No, I'd call it something else.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:56Jocko Willink?

  If I said, hey, do you want all the goodness of broccoli, but it tastes really delicious? Would I call it broccoli?

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  I understand what you mean.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  So if I make a thing that's got protein in it, a bunch of really good protein, and it's really good for you, but it doesn't taste like your typical trash, then why would we call it protein? We call it milk. Had to have its own word.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Okay, so Dave Berke, let me tell you, or let me ask you what you think about this. So I drink milk chocolate most of the time. See what I'm saying? But so sometimes when I make coffee, I make a mocha, right? You put a little bit of chocolate milk in the in the coffee.

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  Right? It's a mocha. Oh, wait, or chocolate, whatever. Chocolate, chocolate milk, whatever. What if I put the chocolate milk in the coffee? That's a mocha.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? So now, and this is my question to Dave Berke, if there was a nut, do you drink coffee, right? Sometimes?

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Oh, brother, it's not even, oh, this question not for you then. It's for my people then.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm not a coffee drinker.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  If there was a milk flavored coffee chocolate called mocha with caffeine, would that be viable?

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get a lot of yeses on that because I'm getting hit up for that.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  I think so too.

• 1:37:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:37:07Jocko Willink?

  The mocha. Because there's there's things like that that are out there, but they're not good for you. There's downside, a lot of downside, a lot of sugar, a lot of crap in it. So there's things like that exist, but they're not clean.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Right. That's what I'm saying. So what if this right here, right? Milk RTD, ready to drink.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  Chocolate flavored. What if we'd added some coffee flavored? Or just some coffee in there. See what I'm saying?

• 1:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Like iced coffee in there.

• 1:37:37Jocko Willink?

  There's demand signal for that hundred percent.

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Bro, I think I could get down with that.

• 1:37:41Jocko Willink?

  I know you could.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  That sounds like a really cool idea.

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. But I do know the team. We are very close.

• 1:37:52Jocko Willink?

  I'll give you for your idea, one dollar.

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't. Yeah, yeah, I don't want to. No, no, no, no. All good. It's a fantasy. Right now, it's just a fantasy fantasy network worth nothing. But I do know a group of people who can execute that.

• 1:38:03Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever had somebody present an idea to you that they made you like sign an NDA and they presented? But then, no, but then they present the idea and you're like, brother, this is the dumb or or this is the most obvious thing that like, is like, why? I can't believe you're you're presenting this.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I know you guys were laughing, both of you laughing at me or whatever when I brought this up. But all that stuff that I said about the ideas in the, you know, the cancer pill and all that's from a from a series of real stories that actually happened to me. Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:30Jocko Willink?

  Wait, the actual cancer pill thing?

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Cancer pill was my rebuttal to like the person saying how good their idea, how valuable is. It was an NDA day, by the way. Not to mention, oh, let's meet up at this coffee shop and like, I want to really present, bro, full on. Oh, yeah. It's so annoying after. Ask my brother. He makes apps. So he's like really in that game or whatever. But yeah, when we, when I made websites, bro, you especially back in what? Oh, eight? Bro, everyone and their mom had ideas for a website. Bro, I'm gonna have a website where it does this and that and this and that.

• 1:39:03Jocko Willink?

  NDA.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  NDA, because I don't want you to steal my idea. See what I'm saying?

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  But this monk idea is very executable.

• 1:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep. No, though, that's that's probably that's gonna happen. I'll say that. I'll say that. So there you go. Uh, jockofuel.com, get more, get, get, get some discipline. Go. Energy, you know, that's another thing like it's called an energy drink, but there's no downside. So it's not really in the same category. Actually, they're kind of having a new category of healthy energy drinks. Based on the drink that we made.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Like some of the retailers that we work with, they're making a new category area. It's like, oh, you can get this junk poison that'll give you a thirty minute, a thirty eight minute freaking methamphetamine freak rush. And then you'll crash and burn and be, you have type two diabetes or you can just take one aisle over. And here we are. This thing's clean and makes you feel good.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  I wonder if they'd put it one aisle over though.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  They put it right next to it. It's like.

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I shouldn't say aisle, one shelf over.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like one little section over.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like.

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 1:40:10Jocko Willink?

  This one says poison. It's got a skull and crossbones and like a radioactive thing. And then this one says healthy. It's got like, like a strong muscle. Like a flexed arm.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  A life force logo or something like that.

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  What's life force logo? Is that a thing?

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Maybe you need to make one.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  That's the beginning of my idea.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's a good idea. Life force.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  Life force logo.

• 1:40:29Jocko Willink?

  Logo. Yeah.

• 1:40:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's true, though.

• 1:40:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're over there creating logos on a bunch of ideas, too. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  I'll get the website soon. That's another part of that process. I already brought the domain.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Dude, you have any URLs I own? I own URLs, you know, like, you know, lifeforce.com. And it's like just ran. I'm probably gonna buy that in the next three minutes. Probably somebody already bought it.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  So the URL domain name is like 1% better than the idea. Maybe 10% because ideas is close to zero.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it's close to zero, but the URL is like, literally like, I mean, you can get a URL for $9.99.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Jocko Willink?

  On, on GoDaddy. Is GoDaddy the only one that does that?

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  No, no, no. Plenty, plenty, plenty of spots. Domain.com, GoDaddy, freaking, there's one called Domain. Yeah, there's a lot of places. It's called a registrar.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Is GoDaddy the big, the big one?

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one of the main ones.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  Dude, that's all my, all my stuff is GoDaddy.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever look at, because you got access to my Go, do you ever look on there and go like, well, I wonder what this idiot was thinking here with freaking www dot plantingrocksintheworld dot com.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  The thing is, that sounds funny to you, but to me, I see all those. I say, okay, I see what he was, I see where he was going. Because, bro, you look at mine, you're gonna be like, bro, what the hell is this guy thinking? Bro, you, you haven't, you haven't lived.

• 1:41:51Jocko Willink?

  Give me your worst domain name that you own.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  I can't, I don't know it offhand, but a lot of them have expired too. But, bro, that's, that's back in the day when I used to stay up drinking and stuff and doing like quote unquote creative stuff.

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  Just buying URLs for $9.99 or a crack.

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  And like I said earlier, you have the whole dream in your head.

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Play out the whole thing.

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, it was, it was bad with me for myself. I didn't go to other people saying like, hey, you do the, you know, I have this idea, you do the rest. That was a violation.

• 1:42:21Jocko Willink?

  You woke up in the morning, had to do the walk of shame back to your computer to see what your GoDaddy bill was.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  You're right. That's the funny thing. You're a hundred percent right. When you're like, wow, what did I do last night? I'm so dumb. Like looking at these things. Like, what was I thinking? I think, but, but the, what made it bad for me is when I drink, I'd be like, wait a second, I could do, I could literally pull this off, this little idea that I have. Like, I know how to make websites. I know how to make video. I know you go through the line of assets that you bring to the whole project. And then you do it and you're like, no one's gonna do this.

• 1:42:52Jocko Willink?

  You're cashing checks. You're all but cashing checks. Like all but checking into the Academy Awards for your movies. URL.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:43:00Jocko Willink?

  All right. So there is a URL that has proved out to be pretty valuable. And it's called jockofuel.com.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  Which is one that, you know what? I just kind of grabbed.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10Jocko Willink?

  Right as the whole idea came to fruition.

• 1:43:14Speaker 01

  You want to hear something really, you might already know this, but Trey, go on GoDaddy or wherever and go look for URLs containing Jaco something, like something real, like, I don't know, Jaco microphones or Jaco bottle, or I don't know, something. You'll find that a lot of them are taken down.

• 1:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Speaker 01

  That's, that's those people.

• 1:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Bro, thank you. To get Jaco.com, that was freaking awesome.

• 1:43:39Jocko Willink?

  He totally hooked me up. Great guy. Great guy hooked me up with that. Sold it to me for $1. Jaco.com.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  It's legit.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  So appreciate it. All right. All right. So jockofuel.com, originusa.com, another URL. Had to pay it for that one. Had to pay some real money for that one.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:55Jocko Willink?

  For originusa.com. That was a bummer, but we got it. And now you can go and get American made gis, boots, jeans.

• 1:44:05Jocko Willink?

  T-shirts, hoodies, rash guards.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  I just got another pair of jeans, by the way.

• 1:44:12Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what?

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  Delta sixty-eight.

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  But which ones?

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  Different wash, the middle.

• 1:44:15Jocko Willink?

  The middle wash, the middle wash is legit.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  That's two pairs for me, by the way.

• 1:44:18Jocko Willink?

  You're in there. All right, Origin USA, a bunch of cool stuff, JacoStore.com.

• 1:44:22Speaker 01

  Yep, it's true. It's where you can get your apparel, you know, represent on the path. Discipline equals freedom, standard issue, Dave Berke, representing the Marine Corps colors. I dig it. Actually, I don't think I've ever revealed that.

• 1:44:32Jocko Willink?

  You just did.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  What the color schemes are for, but nonetheless, it's true. It's absolutely true. Dave Berke represent. But yeah, if you want to represent on the path, discipline equals freedom. Good. Stand by to get to all this stuff. JacoStore.com. We have the shirt locker on there, too. It's a subscription scenario where you get a new shirt. Cool designs on that. A lot of people like that one. So check those out if you like that one. Subscribe for that one. It's a good one.

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to Jaco Underground, too. We have a little extra podcast. We're answering questions. We're doing. We're covering topics that are there, that are adjacent to what we talk about on this podcast.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  They're contemplative, I think.

• 1:45:10Jocko Willink?

  They're contemplative, they're adjacent, they're very life focused, right? Sort of fall in the category of how can I be a better human?

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:19Jocko Willink?

  I'd say that's right. And then we answer a bunch of questions from everybody. So, so JacoUnderground.com.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  You know what I found about your topics? Is they, if you can like grasp these topics and keep them in mind, and for real, keep them in mind, you will avoid so many of the pitfalls in life.

• 1:45:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Telling you.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  And you know what I've noticed about your topics?

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  So, here we go.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  What number? I think we're on, I think we're on the, something like the sixty-five, sixty-five, seventy, something like this, that we've done. I think four topics have been yours.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Of the weekly list that you sent me of potential topics.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Cool, I'm on the grid.

• 1:45:54Jocko Willink?

  I might have, one of our topics might be topics that Echo has suggested.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  We could just get a kick out of that. We could cover that. We could cover Echo's URLs.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  It's a good idea.

• 1:46:02Jocko Willink?

  That would be another good one. Just go through the list. We could cover my dumb URLs, too. We could just get dumb URLs out here.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  All right. That's a good idea, actually.

• 1:46:09Jocko Willink?

  So, check. That's.

• 1:46:13Jocko Willink?

  The Jocko Underground. If you want to subscribe to that, we do that other podcast YouTube, subscribe to that, Psychological Warfare, FlipsideCanvas.com, bunch of books. You know where to get them. You can get them at jockopublishing.com. You can go to amazon.com. I mean, Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. We reprinted some of those. Grab, grab that book. It's a fantastic book. Echelon Front, where we have a leadership consultancy. Dave and I, Echo is not on the leadership consultancy.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I am.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're the CMO.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Official. It's all good.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Official. But you don't interact with clients.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 1:46:52Jocko Willink?

  We, and you know what? Surprisingly, we haven't had, have we had a request for Echo to come? There's been no request, bro.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Uh, I know factually that, that I, I guess you got, and this is how I found this out. This happened one time, by the way, probably out of about one million inquiries, but whatever. So I guess what, when you sign up to ask for, or to.

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  You request an instructor.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's like a hierarchy, right? Your first, first choice, second choice, or something like that? I guess I was the second choice on one of them.

• 1:47:18Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:47:20Jocko Willink?

  Did you do it?

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  No, bro. It was, no, Jamie told me like laughing, like.

• 1:47:26Jocko Willink?

  That's nice of Jamie.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  I would, I would literally bankrupt your whole company with my advice.

• 1:47:32Jocko Willink?

  Shit. But Dave and I, and a bunch of other people, Leif, JP, Jamie, Jason, Steve, Meg, we got a bunch of people. Who'd I miss? Corey. Anyways, we have a leadership company, EchelonFront.com. This is what we do. We teach leadership. All the problems that you have inside your organization are leadership problems, and we fix them. If you want to improve yourself on an individual basis, you can go to ExtremeOwnership.com, where we teach these principles, principles of leadership, principles of life. ExtremeOwnership.com. And if you want to help service members, active or retired, want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate, you want to get involved,

• 1:48:14Jocko Willink?

  go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And also check out what Mike Athing is doing up in, up in Montana, HeroesAndHorses.org, doing stuff for vets. And if you want to connect with us, Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. We're on the social media things. Re-engage with Twitter, you know, Twitter's a little wild right now. Some wildness going on in there, but it's kind of fun.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:43Jocko Willink?

  So we're there, we're on the gram, but just watch out for the algorithm on all these things. You gotta be careful. Thanks for listening and thanks to all of our military personnel out there standing to watch around the world, keeping us safe. Same goes for our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders, you all also out there standing to watch here at home, keeping us safe. Thank you.

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  Mind everyone else out there, let's just remember that little piece that Omar Bradley said about about circumstances and character.

• 1:49:21Jocko Willink?

  And circumstances mold our character, but different people with different character react differently to different circumstances from the exact same circumstances.

• 1:49:34Jocko Willink?

  One man might build a palace. While another man's gonna have difficulty building a lean to. A palace versus a lean to. This is factual.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  This is factual. Some men, women go through life, they build a palace. And some men and women go through life, they build a lean to.

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  We've all seen it. We control our own destiny.

• 1:50:07Jocko Willink?

  So let's get out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco.

• 1:50:15Jocko Willink?

  Out.