228: Put Pressure on Your Mind, Be Your Own General and Be Your Own Soldiers. MCDP 7, Pt.2 With Dave Berke.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:35:49 - MCDP 7, Learning Pt.2 2:24:53 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:40:25 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:06:46 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 228 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight, once again, is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So, we only got through the first two sections of the Marine Corps Doxinal Learning Publication last time, or the Doxinal Publication Learning last time. So, we're gonna finish it up today. And, I must say, that since we covered that, since I read this for the first time, I've been trying to pay attention to things from a learning perspective. Learning things. And I've actually talked to both of you

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  about squeezing your brains. And we mentioned it on the last podcast, and we kind of breezed through it, like, I think I just said, oh yeah, I've been talking to you guys about squeezing your brains. Kind of breezed through it. Didn't really talk about what that actually means. So, I wanted to, I wanted to kind of do a little discussion or dive into, what does that mean? What does it mean to squeeze your brain? Because it's important.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  It is so important to put pressure. The presh, put the pressure on your brain, on your thoughts, on how you're thinking, because that pressure creates heat. And pressure in your mind, therefore, creates energy. It creates ideas. And that is how

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  we learn. That is how we get smarter. That is how we get better, from that pressure.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  And it ties back into something from the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which is question everything, right? Question everything.

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  No matter where it's coming from, question your own ideas, question other people's ideas, you gotta have that mindset, that kind of rebellious mindset where you're always gonna push back against things. And I'm not talking about just being a contrarian where Dave comes up with an idea and I say, "Well, what about this?" I'm not talking about that. But I am talking about a subconscious dialogue that's happening where that's, I would say, my original form of applying pressure to my mind was sitting there saying, "Is there a better way to do that? Is there?" I'm not saying I'm gonna confront you, but I'm thinking to myself, "Is there a better way to do that? Am I wrong about it? If I come up with it, am I wrong about this idea?

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  Is the tradition wrong? Is the way, you know, the complaint about, "Oh, this is how we all do it"? What are you constantly saying, "Well, just because we do it that way"? Is that tradition wrong? Is that standard wrong? And in order to answer those questions, in order to answer those questions, it puts pressure on your brain, it puts pressure on your mind. Because oftentimes, the ideas that you're questioning, the ideas that you're questioning, the standards that you're questioning, the tradition that you're questioning, are things that have been around for a while. They've survived some level of pressure. So to think that you're gonna come

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  up with some new way is, it's a little bit ridiculous, but at the same time, you have to do it. You have to do it to free your mind. Which, I used to post that on a pretty regular, "Free your mind!" But in order to free your mind, you actually have to add weight. You have to add, you have to, you have to put a force on top of your mind and your ideas in order to, in order to squeeze out results in order to free it.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  And when you do that, then that's when you improve.

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not talking about the, the kind of, um, hey, you know, oh, constant self-improvement, right? I'm not talking about, I'm talking about actually getting better. I'm talking about actual answers to, real answers to questions. Actual improved understanding of the world.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  Improved understanding of the world.

• 4:32Jocko Willink?

  So I've been, you and I have been talking about this, Dave. And this is just kind of happening. I think, I think I sensed a, a light switch flip, or whatever you want to call it. EF Online, you were coming up with sort of the discussion point for the day. And so EF Online is, uh, we got a bunch of people coming on. They're interacting with us. It's a Zoom meeting, which I think the whole world is now familiar with Zoom meetings. So we've expanded our online presence and we're really putting a lot of time and effort behind EF Online. And so you were, and so we're, we've been running these three times a week,

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  online, community brigade of people. And so you were, you were, you were kind of leading the discussion on this particular one. And I think the question that spurned you to squeeze your brain a little bit was, how do you adapt to a changing world? And you went through this story about when you were in the Marine Corps and when you were a Top Gun instructor. And what the Marine Corps was doing and what Top Gun was doing was preparing, being prepared to fight the MiG 29. The MiG 29 Fulcrum. Which is an aircraft that is, correct me if I'm wrong. The Fulcrum is not as good as our aircraft, not as good as an F-18?

• 5:55Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  F-14?

• 5:57Dave Berke?

  Uh, probably better than the F-14.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  So better than the F-14, but not, not as good as an F-18?

• 6:00Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you, when you went to Top Gun as a student, that's what they were telling you, okay, this is, this is what you need to be prepared to fight. The MiG 29.

• 6:10Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  An aircraft that's not quite as good as yours, not quite as good as your F-18. That's what they were telling you. So then you leave, am I getting this right? You leave Top Gun School.

• 6:22Jocko Willink?

  And when you come back now to be the instructor, the senior instructor eventually.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  The Russians had a new aircraft.

• 6:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  That was the SU-27 Flanker, which actually, little side note, that happens to be my favorite bird. I like, have you ever seen that bird?

• 6:40Dave Berke?

  No.

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  It looks like a, it looks like a Cobra that's getting ready to strike.

• 6:46Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  It's just an awesome looking aircraft.

• 6:47Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  And it was, now this aircraft is better than an F-18.

• 6:52Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  Were you in for the F-14s at all?

• 6:56Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  So I- When did they phase out F-14s?

• 6:59Dave Berke?

  So the last F-14 class at Top Gun was probably 2004 is when we phased them out. They probably flew a little bit in the fleet, but I was there as an instructor during the last Tomcat class.

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  Correct me if I'm wrong, in my mind, the F, the, the Tomcat has always been the muscle car of the fighter jets.

• 7:20Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's like an icon, yeah, the iconic muscle machine, yeah, for sure.

• 7:24Jocko Willink?

  Meaning I've got a lot of power.

• 7:25Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  I can go fast.

• 7:26Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 7:27Jocko Willink?

  I'm, I'm not gonna corner a great, right?

• 7:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah, it's a more of a brute force machine, really fast, really cool airplane, but a little bit dated by the time I was there at Top Gun.

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  So you're used to the F-18, now the SU-27 is now a real thing.

• 7:42Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  And you come back as an instructor and the people, the, the, the thing that you all were preparing to fight was still the MiG-29.

• 7:52Dave Berke?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  And you, I guess, looked at this and said, "A, uh, not a good plan, there's something better. We should be prepared to fight the worst case scenario, which for us is the SU-27."

• 8:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that's right. And it wasn't even just the worst case scenario, it was just the reality that this thing was being proliferated. So they're not, the Russians weren't just building it, they were selling it. So it was going other places too, so you could have, well, we're not gonna go to war with the Russians. Like, okay, maybe not, maybe we're not gonna go to war with the Russians, but this airplane's gonna find itself in places that we wouldn't even know. And if we showed up to meet that thing and we were unprepared, we're gonna get rolled. And that was a big deal, we're gonna get rolled.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  So you saw this new world, basically, and you adapted to the new threat. You adapted to this new reality. And that was the lesson that you were trying to share on EF Online, which was, hey, when you get a new reality, which by the way, this is all in reference to COVID-19, what's the new reality? And we've got every different spectrum of business on there. So it means different things to different people. And the bottom line is, the lesson was, you get ahead of the new reality. You don't wait for it, you get ahead of it. And when we got off the call, or whatever, and I talked to you about it, and I said, something like, hey, that was a solid lesson. Like, did you squeeze your brain to get that out?

• 9:13Jocko Willink?

  And you said something like, yeah, I did. I squeezed my brain. I thought about, you know, what is this situation? And how can I explain it better? And when you do that, you understand better, right? Like you, Dave Berke, when you, when you, when you put that thread out there and you carried us through that story, you understood things better. And that's why when I get all excited about understanding the world in a better way, that's an example of how even you, this is something that you know, it's something that you actually did as a human being. And yet, until you recognize it from that other perspective, until you scream, you

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  squeeze your brain and put pressure on your brain, you don't get the benefit of it, the real benefit, the next level of benefit. And then when you start to tie these threads to other things, other things that don't always appear to be related, like COVID-19 and MiG-29s, but they are related.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  Then you win.

• 10:27Jocko Willink?

  So every time you put pressure on your mind, you force yourself to think better and get better. And this happened to me the other day. Again.

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  And it happens to me, I'll be honest with you, it actually happens to me a decent amount. Cause I'm always, again, I'm always trying to put that pressure on there. I'm always squeezing it. And it was another EF online scenario. And what's good about EF online is, look, when people send me a question over social media, it's cool and we try and answer the question, but you can't get any context around it. On EF online, you're getting the context, the person there. In this case, in particular case, it was a guy named Ben. And he was talking about being on the path. And at the time, and you know, it was something along these lines. He's been furloughed. He's not in charge of anyone right now. He's stuck at home. It'd be a good time to get in shape, but he's having trouble doing it. Right?

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  So I went down the path of, again, because of the way this story was unfolding from him. He's normally at work. He's normally in charge of people. So we're talking about it from a leadership perspective. And I said something like, hey, you are not in charge of anyone else right now, but you're your own CEO, which is something we hear all the time, right? You're your own CEO. You're your own supreme commander. You're your own general. And he got it. He said, thanks. And that was cool.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  And then I kept thinking about it. Cause there was some like thing in my brain where it makes sense,

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  but it's not that easy. It's actually not that easy. Because here's the deal. You are your own general of your life. You're going to come up with a plan. You're going to make decisions. You're going to give orders, right? That's what's going to happen. Here's the part that I was kind of missing. Is that yes, you're your own general. You're, you're your own commander on the battlefield, but you are also the soldiers.

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  You are also the troops. You are, and we actually know factually that troops don't just blindly follow orders. That doesn't happen. We, hey, look, we would like that to be happening, right? We, well, let me rephrase that. That's the scenario that people think would be totally ideal, that I bark orders and everyone listens to me. But we know, we know that that doesn't work. It doesn't work in the military, it doesn't work in business, it doesn't work with your kids. It doesn't work.

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  You have to get people to a certain point. They have to be trained, they have to be educated, they have to be disciplined. They have to know why they're doing what they're doing.

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't explain these things to them, then they're not going to do what they're supposed to do, right? They're not going to do what they're supposed to do. If you're, if you don't build that relationship, if you don't have that unifying mission, it's not going to work. So if you're too close to your feelings, all kinds of parallels, if you're too close to your feelings, right? If you're reacting to your feelings like, oh, I really don't feel like doing this.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  Then your feelings are going to start to drive the way you act. And we don't necessarily want that all the time, just like a leader. If a leader is too close to his troops and the troops are pushing back, he says, oh, we don't want to do that. Okay, you guys don't feel, you see what I'm saying? It's like a perfect, it's a perfect parallel.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  At the same time, if you just bark orders at your troops and they don't know why they're doing what they're doing, then they're not going to commit to doing it in any meaningful way. And just like troops, you know, if I bark, if Dave, if you're a grunt and I bark orders at you, you go, yes, sir. You go do it.

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  I do that to you the next day, you go do it. I do that to you the next day, all of a sudden, you're not, you're lagging. I do that to you for a month, you're not invested anymore. Same thing, so, so when you say to yourself, "I'm just gonna get up, I'm gonna get up and do it." That's cool. It might work for a day, it might work for two days, it might work for three days. And sometimes I absolutely use that, use that type of leadership with myself, where I'm, you know, "Hey, look, there's no time to debate right now. You need to get up and go do your workout." But if you try and make that the way that, the only way that you're leading yourself,

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  functionally over time, it's gonna fall short.

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  If you push your troops too hard, they're gonna break. Right? You can actually push yourself so hard that you, you, you break. You can overtrain. If you're too easy on your troops, you can get soft. Same thing with what, the way you, happens with yourself.

• 15:20Jocko Willink?

  The better you try, this is an important one, the better you train your troops, the better they respond. So, once my troops are used to, "Hey, this is how I do it, this is why I do it." Once they're used to that, they respond better. They know what it is I want from them. They want to give me that response. Just like when you follow a routine every day, and you know what you're supposed to do, and your troop, your mental soldiers know what they're supposed to do, they start to respond better. You know, when you, when you realize when your mental troops know that, "Hey, Jocko's gonna work out. It's gonna happen. And we could either stand around and procrastinate,

• 16:02Jocko Willink?

  or we could just suck it up and go get it done." They go, "You know what? Hey, this is going that way." So the better you train your mental troops, the better you're gonna get a response from them. The better, the better you take care of your mental troops, the more they're gonna take care of you. As long as you don't coddle them, as long as you don't spoil them, because once again, they're gonna be soft, and they're gonna be worthless.

• 16:30Jocko Willink?

  So, you are leading yourself. That's the thing. You are leading yourself, you are in charge, but you are also the troops that have to do the work.

• 16:43Jocko Willink?

  And if you understand it that way, then you can actually start to pay attention between the relationship that you have with you as the leader and you as the troops. And the connection between where you are and where it is you want to go. Because the general might want to secure a beachhead,

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  but that's meaningless. Without the troops taking action and actually making it happen. So the ideas and plans of the generals have to be executed by the chain of command.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  And they might do it out of fear for a minute, but they're not gonna do it for a long period of time. They will do it out of honor. They will do it out of pride. They will do it if they understand the long-term goal.

• 17:33Jocko Willink?

  They will do it if the goal of the general is aligned with the goals of the troops. If they're not aligned, we're not gonna get what we want.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  So whether you're talking about the the chain of command inside your own head, or

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  the chain of command in the military, or the chain of command in business, leadership is leadership. And we

• 18:02Jocko Willink?

  we cannot, we cannot lead if we don't learn.

• 18:07Jocko Willink?

  And we can't learn if we don't put pressure on our minds to make them figure things out.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  Learning.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  And with that,

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  let's go back to the book.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  You ever seen the movie Goodfellas?

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  So there's a scene, you ever seen the movie Goodfellas?

• 18:31Jocko Willink?

  I have.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  So there's a scene where, uh, was it Joe Pesci? I think his girl just came from the airport, smuggled some diamonds in her hair. Remember that part?

• 18:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  It's a long movie, for sure. And she's like, "Okay, let's get these diamonds out." And she's doing this, and they're all falling out. And she's like, "Yep, that's it," you know, right? And he's like, "Hey, you sure you don't got, there gotta be more in there. There has to be." And she's like, this is it, this is it. So she, he's like, oh, there's no, and he essentially squeezes her little hairdo and shuffles them and a few more diamonds come out.

• 19:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Right?

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, look at this guy with the metaphor.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  It's the same thing. You do a little bit of a brain, and remember how we were, because we were talking about this before where you're, essentially when you told me about the brain squeeze was a, essentially a rebuttal to the idea that,

• 19:25Speaker 02

  oh, if it's just not coming to me, hey, it's not, it's time, you know, it'll come in time or not at all. Right? Like then it's not meant to be almost kind of thing, right? That was your rebuttal because you thought that that's essentially what I was saying. I wasn't saying that, but that's what you thought I was saying. And, and that makes sense. Especially when you go about, not especially, but when you go back to the Goodfellas analogy where, you know, in her mind, yeah, hey, that's it. That's all we got. You know what I'm gonna do? Rip, shave my head? No. Right? That's all I got. You know? And Joe, but she was like, oh man, we're gonna do that little brain squeeze. We're gonna get a few more diamonds out of you.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  That's, uh, that's, that's sensible.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  You get one credit for today.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  I think I understood.

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  We're in the black already. Yeah, well, you talked to me about that. I forget, you were talking about making videos, which is your creative pursuit on the earth.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Sure, one of them.

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  And you were telling me that sometimes, ah, you know, this, this idea is a little bit of an idea, whatever, and then it fades and you forget about it or you don't execute on it. And I was telling you that in fact, the little ideas just aren't gonna grow to be outstanding without some pressure on them. About putting a little squeeze on them. You're not gonna get those diamonds out.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yep. Otherwise they're gonna hang out and, you know, I guess maybe part of me, when I'm kind of thinking back on that whole scenario, or a scenario, scenarios like it, where I'm kind of like, or I was with the philosophy of like, well, hey, look, if there's some diamonds in there, hey, they're gonna come out. You know, let's let them come out naturally so they can kinda, you know, through their own volition kinda manifest themselves kinda thing, you know? And I think after thinking about it, it's like, man, I don't know if that's the best way.

• 21:09Jocko Willink?

  I I'm reviewing my entire life right now in my head, all of it, as fast as I can. And I'm gonna say that I think if I didn't put pressure on my head, I would be zero, I would be zero. My score would be zero. There would be zero diamonds on the table. Zero. Not that I'm saying I got diamonds on the table, but at least there's some pieces of coal that have come out and they can, they can, whatever, we can scratch some black marks on a, on a page or whatever, like at least it's something. It's not nothing. Right? So we're gonna have to do it. But this perspective of learning and one of the, one of the things that I realized that I never thought about before, when they talk about learning, as we covered on the last podcast,

• 21:54Jocko Willink?

  they're talk, they're talking about if I see the enemy do something that was effective, I learned. I've never thought about learning from that perspective before in my life. So this is a new development. But now I just took that idea and started thinking about how there's a lot of things I've learned along the way. And I was trying to pull the thread and see what the source of that was. And a lot of it boiled back down to like asking questions of everything that I see. And again, I'm not talking about being a contrarian because contrarians, they have their, they have their time in place and I'm sure sometimes I might be a little bit, actually I don't, I actually don't think that.

• 22:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't think I'm a contrarian. I think I will, if there's an idea that is contrary to what someone is saying and I would like to explore whether it's right or not, I will bring it up all day long. But I won't bring up an idea just to kinda. Be different.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  For the sake of doing it, yeah.

• 22:54Jocko Willink?

  I've worked for people like that.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's like part of their personality, I think.

• 22:57Jocko Willink?

  I worked for one in particular and it was just super annoying. I, you know, and I just have to be like, mm-hmm. Especially because he was a senior guy and so his little contrarian statements would, would send people in directions that I wished we were not going because I knew that they were not gonna prove, they weren't gonna provide any fruit on the other side. Definitely no diamonds were going out.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  No, sir. The, the brain squeeze, uh, also, it does like secondary stuff too, where, let's say you're trying to squeeze your brain, right? I need this idea to kind of fulfill this last element of this comprehensive idea that I want to put out.

• 23:34Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  I need this one little element and I'm squeezing my brain, right? No diamonds yet, but other stuff is coming out.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  Getting some collateral.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Maybe some, you know, maybe a ruby over here or what do you call those blue ones? The sapphire, whatever, maybe over there, we, I, I don't need that right now. But that came out, maybe I'll save that one for later. Maybe, maybe those will be part of a future idea, you see what I'm saying?

• 23:59Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  So boom, you got all these jewels essentially and then finally, let's say the diamond doesn't come out. Let's say it straight up doesn't come out.

• 24:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  You got all those rubies and stuff. If you didn't do that brain squeeze, you would A, have no diamond anyway, without those other jewels, you see what I'm saying?

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I, I'm taking a, like a subconscious kind of note to myself. Or, or I'm putting myself on subconscious notice because like you and I are sitting here just throwing around that we're just producing diamonds. And that's so just not true, you know, but I, it's a metaphor.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 24:33Jocko Willink?

  Producing an idea which may or may not have value. But the, the, the thing is, it doesn't exist unless you put some pressure on your, on your mind. And it's so, just like working out, right? You're not going to get stronger if you don't put some pressure on you. You're, you're, you're not going to get better at jujitsu unless you get some pressure put on you. Doesn't happen. So you have to put pressure on your mind. The thing is, you can so easily go through life right now. Without putting any pressure on your mind at all. You can go through life right now, and I guess what I'm talking about my, you know, you can be a thirty-six-year-old, a forty-two-year-old, a nineteen-year-old, and put no pressure on your brain and just

• 25:15Jocko Willink?

  resort to the modules of knowledge that you have. And if they don't fit that well, it's cool, just, just, you know, put some spackle over it and call it good.

• 25:31Jocko Willink?

  All right. Dave, relatively quiet over there.

• 25:34Dave Berke?

  Dude, I'm listening, man. That's, uh, that was pretty legit. And yeah, squeezing your brain, you and I talked about that for a while. And that, that particular case was kind of cool because I didn't know that I was going to be leading that, you know, taking point on the initial conversation. But a couple of days prior, after we talked about it, I started thinking about it. And so Leif called me and was like, hey, man, can you, uh, can you take lead on the EF Online on Wednesday? I'm like, absolutely. I've already been thinking about it. Which was also a really cool thing that I didn't think about when we were talking about the squeezing your brain. It makes you feel more prepared about things in life in general. Not that I was trying to produce, I wasn't thinking to produce something for the, for the EF Online module. That wasn't why I did it.

• 26:17Dave Berke?

  And then when he asked me, I'm like, yes, absolutely. And then I spent more time creating that, you know, but I'd already been thinking about things to make the connection because we'd been doing that so much and the world has been changing for a lot of people.

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 26:30Dave Berke?

  And I just started spending some time squeezing my brain not to produce something that was for a deliverable or a client request that wasn't about the outcome. It was about doing it and it was pretty interesting how those two aligned. And he's like, hey, can you do this? I'm like, actually, no factor because I've been thinking about it.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  So you, so you've been getting kind of broad questions from clients about how do we adapt to what's happening? And you started squeezing your brain to figure out a way to explain that that would be very clear and, and would make people connect the process of doing it to a story which makes it easier to understand.

• 27:10Dave Berke?

  Well, the stories are important, but as we've, as we've, as we've been continuing to answer questions, you have to find more ways to convey that message. Some resonate and some don't as well. And sometimes what, what was going on a month ago is actually a little bit different than what's going on now. So I wanted to think of more effective ways to be able to communicate. Things for people to listen to and do something about, and that was what the squeezing the brain was initially for me is I have to be better at explaining what I think is going on, so people can do a better job dealing with it. And if I just kind of go with the same way I've done it, that little rolodex I've got, like I'll just go back to module B, like well, module B doesn't always work for everybody. It's made, it makes me smarter like you described, but it also makes me more effective for those people.

• 27:54Dave Berke?

  So I was just thinking about it in those terms. And then he's like, hey, man, can you do this? I'm like, yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And of course, we've been talking about it and I've been thinking about it a lot in general, in a whole bunch of different ways. And it isn't always just like, what can I do to convey for other people? This is actually more about me and just getting better at thinking about things and getting better at making decisions and getting better at solving problems. Because I actually am not as good as I need to be on that, not even close.

• 28:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the idea that what you're talking about is learning. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about learning and learning can be a passive thing where you're, you're waiting for someone to show you the way, or it can be something that you're proactively engaged your brain in.

• 28:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And I think this, I can't remember exactly, this idea of this learning being continuous process, the biggest weight against me personally, this is probably true for a lot of folks, continuing to do this, is looking back and be like, I have done pretty, pretty well for myself. You know, I'm at this stage in my life, I've accomplished these things. And that's the biggest weight against continuing to do this. And this is what keeps me from getting complacent, is what keeps me from getting comfortable what I've already done. And we laughed about it the other day, I was telling you like, I actually forgot I was in the Marine Corps for 23 years. Cause I'm so focused on trying to figure out a whole bunch of other things that I'm not good enough at yet. And it's actually healthy to not rest on the laurels of whatever I did in the past.

• 29:21Dave Berke?

  Uh, cause that actually isn't enough to keep me moving forward. And if this actually is continuous, if you want to do this, you have to do this thing all the time, all the time.

• 29:29Jocko Willink?

  Don't you find though, um, reverse, kind of overlaying new information on what happened in the past? Speaking of EF online, I did that today, I was talking about. Mike Sorelli, we covered it when Mike Sorelli was on the podcast. The first thing I did when Mike Sorelli checked in to Task Unit Bruiser, he was checking in late, is I gave him a counseling, a written counseling. And I was explaining why I did it. And I actually, like back then, whatever it was, 15 years ago, or something like that, 15 years ago, when I met him, if you would have said, "Why did you do that?" You know, and I would have said, "'Cause he checking in, he needs to be squared away," or something like that. I would have given this.

• 30:11Jocko Willink?

  But if you would have actually squeezed my brain at the time and said, "Wait a second, no, Jaco, you're in a leadership position, you take action because, for a reason. Tell me why you actually, why did you actually decide, of everyone that's in Task Unit Bruiser, you've got this new guy coming in, why is it him that you've decided at this point in time that you want to give him a written counseling the minute he checks in?"

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  And I was thinking about it. And I was squeezing my brain, and I realized a couple of things. You know, number one, he was coming from a task unit that just self-destructed, and I didn't want any of that drama. Number two, I wanted him to know that I was serious about what we do. And the last one, the one that I had to squeeze my brain to get to, is I didn't know Mike, and we were gonna deploy in a few months, and I needed to know who this guy was. I knew he was a prior Marine, I knew he was a prior recon, I knew he was a prior sniper.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  And I, but I didn't know him. And so by me taking this young officer, date, the minute I meet him and say, "Yeah, come talk to me," and I hand him a counseling sheet. And what it said was something along the lines of, "Hey, there's no drama in Task Unit Bruiser, so don't bring any drama in Task Unit Bruiser." And Mike was like, "Roger that," and he signed it, and... That moment where I saw his reaction is what this whole thing was really about. It was really just a test to see who am I getting? Is this guy have a big ego? Does this guy have a bad attitude? Does this guy think he's smarter than everybody else? Is he? When I say, hey, I want you to sign this counseling sheet, he's going to say, this is ridiculous. Why should I be? Or is he going to roll his eyes at me? Or is he gonna, you know, huff and puff or whatever?

• 31:59Jocko Willink?

  Is his ego gonna come out? That's, that's the purpose. And I can now look back and see, hey, totally. That, that's, that's, that's one of the reasons why I did it. And that all came from, that all came from the fact that I was talking to this other woman on EF Online and talking about the Willy Wonka freaking example of how you test somebody. The end of, you ever seen the movie Willy Wonka, Echo Charles? The original?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  No, sir, I have not.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  That's pathetic. The end of the original Willy Wonka, he goes off berserk and, and tries to get the person to, uh, change his mind or to, to reveal himself as either being a thief and untrustworthy or being trustworthy. So I had explained that to, and so now I could see clearly why I'm doing this. So even though you might say, ah, I forget about being in the Marine Corps, and I get what you're saying, like it's a, it's a, uh, yeah, I get what you're saying, but, but the reality is you take what, you take this new thing, that this new thing that came out of your brain and you overlay it on the past and you go, oh, this makes total sense now. Oh, I totally see why I would do that. And so it's a little reverse engineering.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  It's actually a lot of reverse engineering, but it also reveals, hey, where did I make mistakes? What did I do wrong? Why did I do, why did I act this way when I shouldn't have?

• 33:20Dave Berke?

  If you want to take the things that you've learned and turn them into a little bit of wisdom that might be helpful for you or your kids or the people around you, you have to do what you just described. It's, and, and that's been the part that I've been wrestling with is I look back and think, I did a lot of things, but I didn't think about why I was doing them nearly enough to be as wise or articulate as I should be to look back. And so I'm taking those lessons now. And that was just one of a million different things I could think of and think. What were we really doing when we were doing that? And if you don't do that, all it is is an experience. And the thing that matters the most is what you took from that, not just for you, but for the people around you. If you want to create some wisdom from that, you have to do what you just described. And that was one of a million more things I have to do.

• 34:05Dave Berke?

  And that's part of the reason why it was so fun is I took this cool story from Top Gun. I'm like, you know what? I didn't really think about why we're doing it. It was a big thing while we were doing it and I didn't really think about it. And there is no way I would have thought, could what we are doing now somehow be helpful somewhere else down the line? Other than re-baselining Top Gun training for this next aircraft? That's what I thought we were doing. That is not what we were doing. There was so much more going on there. And the squeezing of my brain is trying to create a much larger context for all these things that I did in those 23 years. That I look back and I'm like, dude, if you want this to be useful, you have to think about it a lot more.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's crazy that when you see the patterns, the pattern recognition over time, you go, yeah, that's what I was doing there. Yep, that's what. And for me, that a lot of that stemmed from Jiu-Jitsu. Because that's when I started connecting the dots of, oh, you don't want to attack an area that's reinforced in, on the battlefield, in Jiu-Jitsu or as a leader. You don't want to attack an area, okay, I got that. Oh, you need to maneuver. You need to, you need to be able to move, right? Think about that, just think about that concept in Jiu-Jitsu. When you get, when you get immobilized, you are on the way to defeat. The minute that you can no longer move, you are on your way to defeat.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, on the battlefield, if you can't maneuver anymore, if you dig in and you can't move, you're on your way to defeat. And mentally, if you close your mind and you stop thinking and seeing other perspectives and keeping an open mind, you are on your way to defeat. So when you start taking these and seeing them in other areas, it opens your mind up. It frees your mind in so many different ways. And that is learning. That's what it is. All right, um, little preamble.

• 36:00Jocko Willink?

  So, chapter three, the learning environment. It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself. That's Admiral Rickover. Next one. Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees. So our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience. And the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms.

• 36:44Jocko Willink?

  So new things are going to come about and you gotta be, he's using, he's using kind of a different metaphor. I'm saying, keep your mind open. He's like, you gotta be ready. Ready to adapt.

• 36:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, keep your mind under pressure.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, under pressure, exactly.

• 36:58Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Jocko Willink?

  Next here, victory does not necessarily go to those who have the largest or most modern forces, but to those who are able to recognize the need to adapt, generate intelligent decisions, and execute them more quickly than their enemy.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  Victory does not go to the person who's the biggest and strongest. Echo?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 37:24Jocko Willink?

  Goes to the person who can adapt, who can make intelligent decisions and execute them quickly.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  Skipping ahead, in the progress, in the progression of learning, training should provide Marines with an opposing will to practice against. Through repetitions in a training environment, Marines learn to outthink adversaries and overcome friction prior to encountering these factors during real world operations. Therefore, Marines must integrate lessons learned from current and previous conflicts to adapt their learning environments, methods, assessments, and feedback to reflect evolving threats. Got a lot, got a lot of questions about this one, right? A lot of questions of how do I get my mind ready to do this? Like, it's easy to sit here and talk about it. Hey, you want to be adaptable? Hey, you want to be able to detach? You want to be able to handle pressure? How do I actually do that?

• 38:15Jocko Willink?

  It's like, oh, you gotta put yourself in those environments. You've got to go against a, an opposing will in order to practice.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Sparring, right?

• 38:26Jocko Willink?

  That is jujitsu, yes.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  You know what, what is, uh, very, well, for you, it might not be underrated because you, you guys seem to know the importance of it, or the value, but, uh, role play, right? Like role playing scenarios or whatever?

• 38:41Jocko Willink?

  Yes, we do 100% see the value.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Right, but that, role playing goes deep though, because, and I, I don't want to say I learned it from you, but you really, you brought it to light, the importance and how of how good it, it works, but just how easy it is to do. So I think like, okay, so I was with my kid, he's three, and I'm gonna say, hey, you don't like whine or whatever, and don't be like, what? Or don't be what I say, you say, you stand up straight and you say, yes, sir. When I say your name, you say, yes, sir. I don't require him to do that, but it was like a practice to have a certain attitude. So like, I say, if I say your name, you say, yes, sir. Don't say what, don't say like that. I say, when I say your name, you say, yes, sir. And he's like, okay, you know.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  No role play, I'd be like, okay, so next time it happens, I expect you to do that kind of thing. But I said, no, no, no, we're gonna go through it. Let's practice. So I do it like two times. Took like, what, 30 seconds? Not even 30 seconds. Now, every single time. But I gotta say it in a certain tone, but still, it's in his head now, you know, because he's sort of been there, you see what I'm saying? Rather than just some idea on a paper or out of my mouth or whatever.

• 39:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the value of role play is equivalent to the value of rolling in jujitsu.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:53Jocko Willink?

  Sparring.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  That's essentially what sparring is. It's role playing.

• 39:56Jocko Willink?

  It is role playing.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  With, with additional motivations, of course, but yeah.

• 40:00Dave Berke?

  I mean, that's really the story that you led in with is what we were talking about earlier is, everything we did at Top Gun was role play, because nothing was live. You're not fighting against a real enemy. And our problem is we were role playing against somebody who wasn't good enough to make us better. And like, hey, I'm doing everything right, I'm winning. And, and that meant I was gonna, but the role play, the other person in that role play wasn't, wasn't role playing a hard enough situation for us to, for us to be effective in.

• 40:28Jocko Willink?

  And, and just like jujitsu, you wanna roleplay against the best possible opponent you can. Look, can you overdo that? Yes, you can. If all you do is just get smoked. And I bet you guys at Top Gun, as instructors, had to back off all the time.

• 40:40Dave Berke?

  All the time. And, and we, we had dials, we did, we dialed by design, and we knew what we were doing. But ultimately, there has to be some place where the roleplay isn't designed just so you can win. The roleplay is designed so you can be challenged correctly. And, you know, we're gonna talk about adaptation, but the more effective your counterpart is, the more you have to adapt, the less effective they are, the more you can just stick to your plan and you win. And that's a really bad lesson. It's like, I just keep doing what I'm doing, I'm gonna be okay.

• 41:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the more effective your opponent is, the more pressure he puts on your brain.

• 41:08Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 41:08Jocko Willink?

  And the better results you're gonna get. The more diamonds are gonna shake out of your hair.

• 41:12Dave Berke?

  Yes, sir.

• 41:13Jocko Willink?

  Learning environments. There's not a single correct design for creating the ideal learning environment, because each learning objective, marine team, and condition will differ. Therefore, Marines modify learning environment to most effectively meet their, the learner's needs and reflect the conditions that they expect to encounter. Effective learning requires environments that foster flexibility of thought, reasoning, and the creation of the potential solutions to the problems, and encourages Marines to explore alternative courses of action. I, I had to highlight that part, because effective learning requires environments that foster flexibility of thought, reasoning, and the creation of potential solutions.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  So that, so if, if at Top Gun, what you did was, said, okay, Bill, on this run, you're gonna go up, you're gonna do this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver. And you're gonna do them in this required timeline. Like, you could create some false pressure with the required timeline. They would get good at doing this maneuver, this maneuver, this maneuver. And then as soon as a real thing happened and they got a wrench thrown into it or you came at him or you just annihilate him. Same thing with jiu-jitsu or the old school, the kataz.

• 42:30Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 42:30Jocko Willink?

  Right? The kataz in whatever traditional martial arts. Here's the move. You know, there's a downward thrusting blow from your opponent. You do the X block and then whatever. You do these coordinated moves, which is what made those type of martial arts when UFC started or when they were doing NHB in, in Brazil or Vale Tudo in Brazil, Brazil, then the traditional martial arts that had been not learning in this way, not learning for flexibility of thought and reasoning and creation of potential and what they didn't train for that. They trained for a downward thrusting, whatever. And when they got an uppercut or a leg kick that they

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  didn't know how to work against, they were dead in the water.

• 43:19Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with when I was training, well, the SEALs, that's how we train the SEALs. We're not training, hey, here's the, here's the, um, here's the next maneuver that you're going to do is called a, a center peel. Now walk down the ravine and when the whistle blows, you guys do a center peel. Actually, that's how we start off, right? That's the beginning. And I'm sure there's maneuvers you guys taught at Top Gun. Hey, here's the maneuver. Here's what you do. Yes. But eventually you got to figure out what's maneuver you're going to do, when you're going to do it, how long you're going to do it for, what's your next maneuver going to be?

• 43:47Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And what little changes are you going to make to that maneuver in real time? Cause it's not going to be the rote application of that maneuver you learned. It's going to be a variation of that.

• 43:59Jocko Willink?

  Try and expand people's brains.

• 44:02Jocko Willink?

  An effective learning, back to the book, an effective learning environment enables Marines to clearly understand the intended warfighting doctrine, concepts, tactics, techniques, procedures, and learning outcomes. It clearly identifies the expectation for the learners, whether exercising Marines' critical thinking and problem solving skills or understanding circumstances where immediate obedience to orders or application of specific basic skills such as good marksmanship are required. So there's times where you are gonna just straight up say, Roger that, got it.

• 44:33Jocko Willink?

  And then there's times where you're going to have to push back or get creative. Additionally, effective learning environments provide opportunities for Marines to execute the required repetitions under different conditions to achieve competency.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever read the book outliers?

• 44:52Speaker 02

  No. Gladwell?

• 44:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes. So, one of the things that, one of the experiments that they go through in that book is there's, they're training two groups of kids to throw a ball into a basket or something like that. Not a basketball, but just a ball into a basket. And there's one group of kids that do it at varying distances, five feet, seven feet, four feet, three feet, eight feet. The other kids are just doing it at six feet every single time. Test day comes, the basket's at six feet. Guess who does better? Echo Charles.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  The six feet people.

• 45:24Jocko Willink?

  Nope.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Really?

• 45:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep. It's the people that had the variety, the flexibility. They trained and they were able to outperform.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's counterintuitive.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  Right? We think, hey, just do the same thing. That's why, that's why like the multi-sport athlete has this extra capability and they tend to do well. I just watched a documentary about different really successful athletes. The, the oftentimes, not all the time, oftentimes, the player that does the best is not, the, the best baseball player is not the player that just played baseball. It's the player, the player that played football, basketball and baseball. And then when he was 14, he focused on baseball. But he had all this different athletic training.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. He was, he was more capable with his body in general.

• 46:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes. In moving his body through space.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  With force.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  Wow. I had to go deep on that one.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:24Jocko Willink?

  First and foremost, the learning environment focuses on the learner's needs, enabling Marines to understand, develop and retain the necessary knowledge and competencies they will use in combat. Fast forward, although Marines strive for learning efficiencies, improving the learning environment does not necessarily mean making it more efficient.

• 46:44Jocko Willink?

  For example, though rote memorization or reciting facts can be very efficient and useful for developing basic knowledge such as memorizing standing orders, they are not effective methods for all learning. Effective learning often requires approaching material from different perspectives, applying information in context and explaining how and why actions occurred in addition to what occurred.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  How many times echo Charles? Have you heard me say you learn an arm lock from a different professor? And from different angles, it will make your arm lock better. So if Dean Lister teaches you an arm lock, he's going to show you a couple of details. If I teach it to you, I'm going to show you a different detail. If Jeffy Glover teaches it to you, it's going to be an even different detail. And each one of those different levels, those different perspectives is going to make you better. Then if you, when you learn the arm lock from the mount, but then you also learn it from the guard, both the arm lock from the guard and the arm lock from the mount, both get better.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Yes, many times, yeah.

• 47:50Jocko Willink?

  Many times better. So, learning from different perspectives. Important tool, important tool you gotta have.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward. Setting the conditions for success. Recognizing these surfaces and gaps requires awareness, honesty, and judgment because they are often unique to the individual or the specific unit. A surface in one learner or unit may be a gap in another. It is incumbent upon leaders, instructors, learners, and their peers to actively seek out these gaps through continuous and aggressive reconnaissance.

• 48:32Jocko Willink?

  Learners should not hide gaps in their knowledge. Instead, they should exercise intellectual humility to identify and fill these gaps in order to improve.

• 48:48Dave Berke?

  Intellectual humility.

• 48:51Dave Berke?

  I mean, that's huge, man.

• 48:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 48:54Dave Berke?

  That is, that is not easy to do. To in front of your peers, especially if you're in charge. If you're like the leader of a team or an organization, or even the instructor. Which, you know, my time at Top Gun. Anything I can think of where I was the leader of the team, that intellectual humility.

• 49:14Dave Berke?

  We call that a brutally honest self-assessment.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what's interesting is that

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  if you think, if you're not gonna be humble and you're not gonna admit your mistakes, you're gonna look stronger to your troops, you're completely and utterly wrong.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, when you say it's not easy to do. If it's not easy to do and you choose, subconsciously or consciously, you choose not to do it, actually it's intellectual humility that is. And you choose to hide your gaps, what's it called?

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  Surfaces and gaps.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Gaps, gaps in knowledge. Yeah. If you choose to hide your gaps in knowledge and you, and that's sort of the way you are, that's just how, you get good at hiding the gaps. And then you become essentially successful at hiding the gaps. Then you get, so that will stunt your learning in that way. How is it, I mean actively, yes, but it makes it harder and harder and harder as you go on.

• 50:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  You know, so, because the more you hide your gaps and the more you're committed to hiding the gaps. The more like when you get, start to get exposed, the more you're gonna hide your gaps.

• 50:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and also you can only hide your gaps for so long. I mean, people recognize it. When you don't have that part of the, your game. It's not like people don't know it, man.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Man, yeah, and I'm thinking Jiu-Jitsu 100%, where, you know, those guys where it's like, man, what, they don't wanna roll with certain guys, or they don't, you know, like, it's, everyone sees it, everyone sees what you're doing.

• 50:43Jocko Willink?

  Marines mitigate weaknesses by leveraging their strengths to form new understanding and focus on learning to eliminate gaps. This can only occur when learners first acknowledge their weaknesses and resolve to leverage their strengths to build meaningful connections.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  Should we make a poster that says that? You know what I mean? Like, just so important and so seemingly obvious. And once again, you wonder why someone would have to take something so seemingly obvious and put it into a book. It's because even though it's seemingly obvious, it's hard for people to do.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  Next section is called the expeditionary nature of learning. Marines recognize that to be effective warfighters, they must be warrior scholars. They must seize initiative to study the profession of arms whenever and wherever learning opportunities arise.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  And once again, I like, I like, I like how the, the Marine Corps manuals just state things as a matter of fact. If you're a Marine, then you obviously recognize that you need to be a warrior scholar. That's just how it is.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  Now that goes into a little subsection here. And it's talking about force on force exercises to simulate war's complexity. Force on force exercises are purpose driven learning environments that approximate the complexity of war. When developing such exercises, Marines focus on designs that enhance problem solving and promote decision forcing events. This enables Marines to practice and better understand how to get inside the enemy's decision making process. There is no substitute for fighting against a competent, realistic thinking, adaptive enemy, even if that enemy is simulated by other Marines. This practice ensures that challenging learning environments provide a place to practice,

• 52:44Jocko Willink?

  develop, experience, allow errors, adapt and learn how to fight and win.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  That's the very premise of Top Gun, needless to say. That is the very premise of Top Gun, that is the very premise of the advanced SEAL training, where you are in fact fighting against other SEALs all the time.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  And what's, what might be hard for people to grasp, and you might even be able to have a more linear exposure to this. I could watch a young SEAL officer get better at decision-making events. I could watch a young SEAL get better at being in chaotic situations, taking a step back, detaching, looking around, figuring out what the possibilities are, choosing a course of action, executing it. I could watch someone get better at that. It's hard to, it can be hard to quantify what that, like, what that actually looked

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  like, but I'm telling you, I'm trying to tell you what it looked like. It looked like this, why I think you might be able to give a better example. You'd see a young SEAL, day one, going through land warfare training. And, or day, his first, we'll call it field training exercise, or his first immediate action drill in an uncontrolled environment where he doesn't know what the call that he's gonna, gonna make is. Patrolling out there, boom, the targets pop up, the, the simulators start going off, his people react, and the first time it happens to him, he's totally overwhelmed, doesn't know what decision to make, he's shooting his gun, he's looking around, but not with any purpose, no call gets made, eventually the platoon chief goes, hey, peel right, or whatever.

• 54:36Jocko Willink?

  Then, you know, you debrief him, you go, hey, what were you thinking about when the shooting started? Well, I saw that target out ahead of us. Okay, what else did you see?

• 54:45Jocko Willink?

  You didn't see anything else, did you?

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  No, I didn't see anything else. Okay, cool. Next time? I don't want you to even shoot your gun. Okay.

• 54:58Jocko Willink?

  Same thing happens now. At least the debrief, he says, yeah, I kind of saw that. I saw that little piece of terrain we could get by. That seemed to be a good spot. And then chief made the call. And they're like, okay. So your, your, your eyes opened up a little bit more. And this continues down the road until finally he can actually make a decision on his own in these pressure environments. So you can watch someone get put into the chaos and get better at handling it over time. What did it look like at Top Gun?

• 55:29Dave Berke?

  Similar? Yeah, very similar. And what I was actually thinking with that is when you're talking about the progression is the, the end of the progression, you know, we'd go through this multiplane environment, which is, I think more replicates what you were doing, not just the one against one, but multiple friendly aircraft and multiple enemy aircraft. And it, it appears as if the enemy could give you any number of, an infinite number of possible options to attack us. But we actually didn't do that. We had kind of not quite scripted, but some of the basic formations of basic ways we wanted them to do it. And at the beginning of those phases, the student leaders would come back and just be like completely overwhelmed. And by the end, they, they, they wouldn't be, they'd be handling, and they would ask, hey, what are you doing so, what's so much different about these last runs where I've been doing well? And you're like, nothing. Nothing.

• 56:15Dave Berke?

  And it's when they, you would see them starting to see what's happening. And then their minds are thinking, wow, they're either dialing it back or they're making, and we weren't changing anything. But that they were able to see that time was slowing down, their decisions would make more sense. And they'd ask the question of, hey, what changed? Like, hey, man, nothing changed here. What you're able to do now is see. And so the, the parallels there are amazing how similar those two situations are. And it also goes to show how much more thinking I have to put into how we were doing the training and where it fits elsewhere, other than just making pilots ready to go to war.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would get asked the same question. Hey, thanks for backing off tonight. I'd be like, hey, thank you for utilizing decentralized command and letting your subordinate leaders go on the assault. Yeah. Go on the attack, go on the offense, because when you do that, my guys are pinned down. They can't do anything. You know how many guys I had tonight out fighting you? How many? Four. You know how many I had last night? Four. You know how many I had the night before? Four. No change in the number of OP4 you're going against. What's changing is your ability to lead, is your your team, your subordinate leader's ability to step up and make things happen, your ability to give good guidance, your ability to make decisions, your ability for your team members to make good decisions. Because that's the other thing that makes it really drastic.

• 57:34Jocko Willink?

  Is as eight fire team leaders, all of a sudden, you know, when they show up, two of them are kind of proactively making things happen. And then it becomes three, and then it becomes four, and then it becomes five, and then it becomes six out of eight fire team leaders are proactively getting after it. It's going to be hard to contain them. And that's when I would have to step up. I wouldn't back off. I would step up my trade at guys. I'd be like, okay, hey, we need to bring it. We need four more guys. We need to put somebody over here and we'd try and screw them over, but we wouldn't be able to beat a good task unit with good decentralized command, with simple calls, doing cover and move. We couldn't, you couldn't beat them. You could not beat them. Right. So you can get better at this stuff.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Marines guard against complacency because they know that their adversaries are always watching what the Marines are doing and they are constantly making changes to adapt in an attempt to defeat us.

• 58:38Jocko Willink?

  If Marines settle for what they think is good enough, it may result in high casualty rates for the next fight.

• 58:49Jocko Willink?

  Marines, just FYI, are not complacent. Next question.

• 58:57Jocko Willink?

  A learner-centric model, this is the next section is called a learner-centric model. The learner-centric model ensures that content is relevant to learners, actively engaging and challenging Marines in a positive instructional climate. For example, discussions on problem solving between the learners and leaders and instructors are an effective method to motivate learners and build teams as they analyze information, consider alternatives, and work together to develop a solution to the problem that's posed on them. Now, I am going to venture to guess that some of this section is aimed at

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  an old philosophy of training which existed in the military, well, it definitely existed in the SEAL teams, which is, hey, we're going, we're here, you're going to do what we tell you to do. If you don't do exactly what we tell you to do, it's because you're all screwed up and you need to do it the way we showed you. Which does not promote this whole idea of thinking and learning and developing. You know, hey, you entered that room wrong.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  This is probably one of the first little, the first little things that I noticed as I'm peeling back my career when I was at Team One.

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  And I was, I would be instructing, and I was never the lead instructor, but I'd go out, we'd be doing some close quarter combat training. And someone would do something. Someone would enter a room, right? They enter a room, they go left, they go right, whatever. They, they make a decision.

• 1:00:46Jocko Willink?

  And some of the instructors, some of the more old school instructors would say something along the lines of, you went left, that was wrong.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  And I'd say, "Hey, why did you go left?" And they'd say, "Well, when I approached the door, I looked at the hinges. I could see which way it was going to open, and I thought it would be the quickest way." And you go, "Okay. Here's the thing." And maybe there's a rebuttal to that. Maybe there's a, "Hey, listen, you can't presume that because you saw this, that's going to happen." Maybe it's the wrong, but maybe you go, "Okay, I understand what you were thinking. Here's something else to think about, but here's why it also may have been correct." And I used to say to guys, "Hey, you did what you did. You did what you did. Look, you're going to be going into houses you've never been in before. That's the whole goal of this, that you can go into a room you've never been in before, and you're going to react

• 1:01:42Jocko Willink?

  how you react. We need to understand why you're reacting that way. If there's a better way to do it, let's think about it. But let's not X out what you did as if this was the wrong thing. By the way, you don't get a second chance. In combat, you did, whatever you just did, you just did. And now you've got to deal with it.

• 1:02:04Dave Berke?

  Think about from a leadership standpoint, too, what actually helps that person more? Then you could do something like, "Jaco, that was wrong." Like, "Roger that. Do it the way I told you to do it." "Okay, Roger that." You actually may do it the way I told you to do it. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Maybe you're just stubborn, or you're going to not, but you're going to just do what you do. But if I actually show you like, "Hey, man, hey, can you just explain that to me? Your willingness to listen to me goes up infinitely. And then if there is ever a time that I go, "Hey, man, you got to do this thing," you're going to be like, "Yeah, Roger that. I'll do that." But just by asking the question, and I almost knew what you were going to say was, "Hey, just tell me why you did that." It doesn't mean that they're still right, but it means that you actually want to understand what they were thinking. And if

• 1:02:49Dave Berke?

  you understand what they're thinking, it's so much easier to train and work with them than if you're just trying to force them into what you want them to do.

• 1:02:55Jocko Willink?

  And what's incredible is this section captures that whole thought process in the title of the section, "A Learner-Centric Model." So if you're a trainer, or you're an instructor, So often, people set up instruction as if it's around me, right? This instruction around me, "Hey, this is how you do an arm lock, right? This is how you do it. Watch me and then do what I just did." Instead of, "Hey, let me see your arm lock." You know who does this? Dean Lister. He'll watch you do something. And when we were at camp up in Maine, people would say, "Hey, Dean's so awesome." And I'd be like, "Oh, why?" They'd say, "He was, he came from across the room."

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  So giant mat space, thousands of square feet of mat with 100 people on it. And they'd say, "He came from across the room and said, 'Hey, I see where you're putting your foot on this position, and it'd be better if you'd move it four inches over here to the right. Try it, and then it would work.'" So it's learner-centric. It's not about Dean. It's actually about the students. And that's a, Dean's very good at that. It's fully about the learner. It's a learner-centric model.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps, but I think, I think that there is an old-school mentality of instruction in the Marine Corps, possibly. I was never in the Marine Corps, but I did go through multiple training events with the Marine Corps, and I definitely saw some instructor-centric models. You know? And some, and I think actually Dean dealt with some instructor-centric models. Dean went up to do some combatives training with the Marine Corps, and the instructors were there. And instead of them being like, "Okay, well, how would you do this, Dean Lister? Multiple-time world champion jiu-jitsu, how would you do a rear naked choke?" Instead, they were saying, "We do it like this."

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  And Dean said, "Okay, try that on me." Guess what? There's some holes in the plan.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Check. Next section, self. And the caveat, haven't thrown it out there yet. No, I'm not reading this whole entire book. We're skipping big chunks. You can get it yourself. It's free. It's online. It's PDF. You can download it. The Marine Corps is very generous with their knowledge. Next section, self-directed learning. Like mission tactics, self-directed learning benefits the leader and instructor by giving the learner more ownership and autonomy, which enables the leader or instructor to focus on learners who need more help or to explore alternate ways to improve the learning environment.

• 1:05:47Jocko Willink?

  The commander, leader, instructor, or mentor agrees to provide the learners with the necessary support and guidance to help them accomplish their missions without unnecessarily prescribing their actions. Oh, decentralized command. We, we want you to know how to do this. We want you to take ownership of what you learned. Why? Because then you're going to be more invested in it.

• 1:06:12Jocko Willink?

  It's just

• 1:06:15Jocko Willink?

  good to go. Vicarious experience is critical because even the most realistic training experiences in military education fall short of the reality of combat. Therefore, the more vicarious experience that a Marine obtains, it, the less likely that a new experience in combat or otherwise will be completely unique. Yes, you cannot simulate everything. I used to joke about this at trade at, I would say.

• 1:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, I can't just shoot you guys, you know? And they laugh because we do everything else. I was standing with the commanding officer of a SEAL team as one of his SEAL task units was out in the, out in the. Desert in the Imperial Valley of California and there was total mayhem going on and we both have radios on we're listening to all the calls getting made there's strobes going off there's there's explosions going off there's communication

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  just all this is happening and it's we have the perfect view there's guys on the ridge and we're looking at like a bowl a valley and then guys are up on the ridge lines and you can see them all from our vantage point and I just looked at him I said there is no better training in the world for guys than what these guys it's so realistic it was so crazy

• 1:07:40Jocko Willink?

  but my point was even with that there was things that you can't simulate you there's things that you cannot simulate and so you have to use these vicarious experiences so that people can learn

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  continuing on Marines can use mental imagery to gain confidence prior to executing a skill emphasize key points in after action reviews examine possible outcomes of decisions and explore options mental imagery also provides an effective mission rehearsal technique when using mental imagery a leader pictures himself or herself in the operation vividly visualizes different scenarios including possible branches and sequels and rehearses the decisions he or she may make given specific conditions and enemy actions this way the leader mentally prepares for multiple potential enemy actions and reduces the possibility of surprise when the enemy reacts now

• 1:08:39Jocko Willink?

  what you're trying to do is close the gap between how hard you can train and what it's really gonna be like right and you can't look you can't you cannot fully get there you can't fully get there there's emotions that you cannot trigger unless someone is about to could die right now right in jiu-jitsu right there's you you train for MMA not even jiu-jitsu MMA We can throw punches, we can grapple, we can exhaust them, we can do all these things. But you can't have them walking into the octagon in the UFC. Even if you, and I used to, like, we, when we used to spar, we used to do it on Saturdays when there was a crowd here,

• 1:09:23Jocko Willink?

  get the crowd to start commenting. You can do all those things. But that last little thing, you cannot simulate, you cannot simulate. And so you want to build up, you want to close that gap as much as possible. Part of it is through the training, part of it is through these vicarious experiences and reading and learning about them. But there was a guy on EF online today saying, hey, I understand that I'm supposed to detach. But there comes a point when it starts happening and I, how do I get ready for that?

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:57Jocko Willink?

  And the thing was, I, the advice I gave him, I was a little, let's say I was a little nervous about the advice I gave this guy. Because I was saying, hey, you need to set yourself up for surprise things that you're not ready for. You actually want to tell, like, if I want to get ready to defend myself and not freak out, I need to tell Echo, hey, man, occasionally, I want you to just attack me.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  And here's where you got to be careful. If you do that, let's say you go, okay, all right, I got this. And you start tracking on me and one night at Vaughn's, you know, I'm out there getting some, picking up some steak. And you, I get into my car or whatever, I'm getting in my car and you spring out of somewhere and start yelling and screaming with a knife in your hand to see how I react. And next thing you know, you got two shit, two, two gunshots to the head. Right? And how am I going to explain that one away? Right? It's going to be tough.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:55Jocko Willink?

  So we gotta be, we gotta do, have to put some parameters around it.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Cause I don't want to shoot you.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  Wait, that's what, is that essentially what, I mean, obviously not the shooting thing, but that's what, that's what your answer was?

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, what I said was, listen, you know, talk to your wife and have your wife throw scenarios at you. And then I had to give the same parameters. Cause if you go, imagine if you said, and I said, listen, you want to practice being in these turbulent situations, you have to be in them as close as you can get. So I said, if you tell your wife that, say, hey, I want you to throw some just crazy stress at me. When, you know, and don't even do it to me today or tomorrow, wait like a week till I really don't expect it.

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  But then I told him, hey, you need to put some parameters around this, right? Cause his wife might come home and say, his wife might come home and say, I've decided to leave you. And then he goes, good, I was gonna leave you anyways. And all of a sudden we have a total disaster, right?

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  So we have to put parameters on it. We have to think through it. But if you really want to, to get someone used to being under stress, that's what you do. You put them under stress. That's what you do. And it's hard to do that if you, if someone knows it's a role play, there's a little thing in the back of their mind. But if they don't, hey, you can, you can create a lot of stress on someone.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, if you fail that, like those test scenarios that they spring out at you, if you fail that test, you can do some damage in your relationship.

• 1:12:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. You gotta be careful.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, man. Cause what if, yeah, what if your wife says, like essentially a fake, a mock, like, uh, whatever, right?

• 1:12:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm leaving you.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  I'm mad at even like a something small. Let's say, um, hey, you didn't take out that trash or whatever. And just with a slight attitude, what if I fail the test and I'd be like, it's not my job. I bring up something that actually does really in real life, trigger her a little bit, just a little bit.

• 1:12:44Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Cause she's playing the role, but hey, what if she can't detach either, you know, which is normal. And now it just escalates from there and there, which started to be a test now, man, relationship damage.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  It's like the office, the fire test with, uh, with Dwight, right? Supposed to be a test. Now we got people throwing copy machines out the window.

• 1:13:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah. In the military, we grew up with something called, and I assume you got the same thing. We, we had something called the training timeout. So in a scenario, like they'd brief, okay, we're gonna go do this training. And if something happens that you exceed a threshold of whatever, you put your hands up in a T or you put your arm up and say timeout, and then we'll stop the drill. Which is kind of like rudimentary training, you do that. And so you kind of always knew in the back of your mind, like, okay. This could get bad, but if it gets too bad, I can stop the training.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  What would be certain or what would be like an example of?

• 1:13:36Dave Berke?

  My recollection of the first time that I was briefed on the training timeout was during like the first week of TBS where we do swim qual. I was gonna say the water. Yeah, the water is, hey, look, if you know, there's five instructors, there's 40 dudes in a platoon, we're watching you. But if you get to a place where you are, you can't handle this, you can throw the hands up and we'll see that we'll stop the training. So you can introduce this concept early on and then, you know, as you evolved in fighter aviation, we have the knock it off. Which is actually kind of like, in some ways, it's kind of like tapping. So I can do this fight with you and we're finally, if I get to a point where I feel like I've reached a limit, I don't think this is safe anymore. I can't keep doing this or whatever. I can say knock it off and you will stop training.

• 1:14:18Dave Berke?

  You will stop being the aggressor, but you don't get to do that in combat. There is no training timeout, there is no knock it off, but it's impossible for any training scenario to remove that thing of, hey, if your life is now at risk, there is no training situation that we would allow that to happen. We would never get to a place where you're going to get hurt or killed to prove a point. But you actually kind of know that subconsciously and so that limit is there.

• 1:14:42Jocko Willink?

  That's the gap.

• 1:14:43Dave Berke?

  That's the gap. Yep, that's right.

• 1:14:44Jocko Willink?

  The gap is when you've got a platoon of guys and they're receiving enemy fire, air quote enemy fire. And one of the guys just gets up and charges, you know, the bad guy and it's great and he happens to get him or whatever. But if those are real bullets, the reaction might, it might be different.

• 1:15:07Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:15:07Jocko Willink?

  You can't, and it goes both ways too, because I used, I used to explain that's what evens it out for our training. What evens it out is the, the bad guys, the op, my op for, they don't care if they die either. Because they, they're going to get reset and we'll go again.

• 1:15:21Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  But actually the Mujahideen often didn't care if they died. And so they have an advantage there. We care about our friends. We care about our comrades in arms. So we're going to fight a different way than the Mujahideen. That's just, they don't care. Not all the time, but that's a part of their mindset is, hey, if I die, that's cool, martyrdom.

• 1:15:41Dave Berke?

  They would have suicide missions.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:15:44Dave Berke?

  I, we don't do that. We don't be like, hey, look, you're going to die on this one, but I want to talk about the plan. We don't do that.

• 1:15:50Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:15:51Dave Berke?

  And they would, they would do that actually all the time.

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  All the time.

• 1:15:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and that, and that. I think the point about this, there are things that you simply cannot replicate and that's, that's one of them. Not just the risk to your own life that you're going to mitigate, but the willingness of the other person to have no regard for that.

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Dave Berke?

  Which is something that's hard. You cannot get, that gap will always persist until you experience it for the first time.

• 1:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then you've got to try and close that gap to the best of your ability. And the way you do that is different instructors, different angles. And then, as we're talking about here, vicarious living, vicarious experience. Hey, tell me what that was like from you. And there's a chance that you go, you know what? Oh, I know what. I remember this guy. I remember this. All right. I've seen this before. This whole book starts off with Matt is saying, hey, you shouldn't be surprised by anything. You should have read about it. There's no, there's no thing that you can't say, I've seen something like that before. Which is what they're going for. All right. So going back to the book here.

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  Go back the, if, to rewind a little bit. So the, the whole test about the guy that you're giving advice to, to this, you know, have yourself tested.

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Have yourself tested. Put yourself into pressure scenarios.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. For detachment practice essentially. So I think first, I think those should always be at a level one. That's, I think, just for safety, if that's your weakness.

• 1:17:09Jocko Willink?

  Meaning we don't want, we don't want, uh, we don't want Echo Charles to catch two hydro shocks to the grave. In the Vons parking lot. Cause you threaten my stakes.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Especially if you're weak, or let's say detaching in moments like that are, are part of your maybe weakness, we'll say.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Right. Which is why I'm actually requesting for the training, right? So it is a weakness. So we got to figure there's some possibility that I am not going to detach. I'm not going to see that it's you and I'm just cracking off my rounds with a good shot plays.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  So yeah, so I think level one to, I don't know, this is my, but I think part of, or at the very least, the beginning of the answer to someone with that kind of like a detachment kind of weakness or whatever, is the leadership primer, you call it?

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  So, okay. So before you even said the word leadership primer.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  I would essentially prime myself by doing this and a lot of people do do this they'll like tell me this they'll be like what would Jaco do in this situation like anytime a stressful situation came up or a decision had to be made they'll be like oh what would Jaco do? In fact they'll say hey make sure this is what would Jaco do kind of thing and I'm like yeah so essentially I thought the same thing but not what would Jaco do but more like hey I'm the leader so what should the leader do right now? You know it's like or and then so along with being the leader is it's your responsibility uh you can you cannot it's against life rules to blame anyone else? You have to take a hundred percent of the blame and come up with a hundred percent of the solution if someone helps you good but you have to come with a hundred percent of the solution right now?

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Even if you're being attacked and feeling underappreciated blah blah blah it's a hundred percent up to you to cut to to manufacture a good outcome right so so that's essentially what would Jaco do right that's like the press so I would essentially prime myself like if something some stressful situation that's the rule like any stress that comes in some big or small boom I'm the leader you just you have to essentially prime yourself into being like the leader

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  and what's hard is is is being primed right cuz you're you're not walking around like that it takes a long time to develop the instinct of your very first reaction your initial reaction is detached take a step back and take a breath and make sure you understand what's happening that's a really hard thing to train in yourself it's a really hard thing to train yourself so for the leadership primer which again this is EF online we got this thing called the leadership primer where you you know you can just press play leadership leadership primer and it's me saying hey this what you think about this? And it just gets you in the leadership mindset because

• 1:19:50Jocko Willink?

  if you're there already that's one less step you have to think hey if I tell you hey Echo you're gonna walk in that room and you're gonna get into a fight If I tell you that there's a guy waiting to fight you in that room, you are gonna do eight times better than if you just walk into that room thinking about, you know, getting sushi. Right? You're gonna do eight times better, minimal. You're gonna be ready, you're gonna be primed, you're gonna be thinking, you're gonna be looking for an exit, you're gonna be looking for an entrance, you're gonna see what is weak, you're gonna size up your target, all that's gonna happen the second you walk in there. If you're not expecting it all, it doesn't happen at all. So getting yourself thinking that way is absolutely important. And you know, I'll take this whole thing one step further.

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  The idea of like, what would Jaco do? I get it as like a leadership primer. You actually have to ask yourself one level deeper than that. Which is, for lack of a better way of explaining it, what would Jaco actually do right now? Because the surface answer of what would Jaco do is like, oh, you just BTF through this, right? That's the surface answer. It's not the real answer. And that's the difference. And I did a bad job sometimes in the teams of guys that worked with me, but they didn't, they got the surface Jaco, but they didn't get the next level. And so they'd go overseas and have to report to some army,

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  some army major that they didn't get along with. And they'd think, what would Jaco do? Jaco would tell this guy, he better straighten himself out. No, and actually that's the wrong answer. Jaco would actually develop an awesome relationship with this guy, get to know him really well, and start planting seeds in his head where we ran everything. That's what Jaco would do. So it's a little bit deeper than that. You have to go next level. Before we end up priming ourselves for, hey, if it's just like this, if I said, okay, Echo, when you go in this room, someone's gonna attack you. And you walk in, first person you see, you punch him in the face. And it ends up being whatever. Someone that didn't deserve it, right?

• 1:21:58Jocko Willink?

  That's a problem. You were overly primed and you didn't really think through the problem. So there's a, there's another level there that you gotta go. But to your point, correct.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  How can you get yourself primed? You know, I talk about leadership strategy and tactics. There's a list of 12 things to do as a leader. And I'm like, look, you can't read this list of 12 things and be like, okay, good, cool. Now, no, if you're a new leader and you check in before you go into the meeting with your subordinate or with your leader, you just take a look, take three minutes and read through the thing and be like, all right, I'm thinking the right way. I've got my mind primed for what I'm going to go make happen right now. And when somebody blames me for something, instead of going, actually, it's not my fault at all. Instead, you go, yeah, okay, you know what? Let me get out my notebook and actually write down what you're saying.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:45Jocko Willink?

  So I can make sure I can get it fixed because I don't want to be the person that's responsible for making mistakes.

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  But I'm ready to take it on and fix it. Boom.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and of course, just to be clear too, like I by no means am saying people, hey, do this, this is what all you gotta do, or not all you gotta, this is what you gotta do. Ask yourself, what would Jaco do? I'm not like advocating that at all. I'm saying that is a different way of explaining what I would do. And it's, it wasn't like, what would Jaco do? It was what would like the leader, quote unquote, the leader do? And I used you as a reference. And here's the thing, I know you're second and even sometimes third level. Like I know, I think I do anyway. It's been effective with behaving like I do, put it that way. Um, so to me, I just worked on being that way the whole time, 100% of the time.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  Cause it's easier to like de-prime than it is to like prime when you're like laid on the priming kind of thing, situation, when a situation arises, you know?

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And here's where all this is hard, right? All this is hard is that there's a gap that you gotta be able to fill. That's, that's what this is all about. The gap is I'm, I can get primed for so much. I can think about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to act and I'm going to make this call. And if somebody confronts my ego, I'm going to detach. But then the person that you didn't expect to confront your ego, the person that you didn't expect to say a nasty comment to you, that happens. And before you can get, think through it, you go, well, who are you to even be calling out someone with what you did last quarter?

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden, we've got an escalation on our hands. So how do you get ready for that? The answer is you do these training scenarios and you, as much as you can, you say, look, Hey Dave, I've been having a problem losing my temper with people. Can you do me a favor and just put me through some temper tests? Now, look, we gotta put some safety parameters about it, because I don't want Dave to say, I don't want Dave to say, Dave says, you know, "Hey Jaco, this isn't a good example for you to set at Echelon Front if you're not even submitting this paperwork on time." And I go, "Well, you're lucky you're even at Echelon Front, Dave. I don't even know why you're here." And all of a sudden, we have a real brawl about this, right? So let's put some control parameters in place.

• 1:25:08Jocko Willink?

  And then immediately, Dave calls a training timeout, because it's about to get, you know, we're about to just throw everything under the bus. Why? Because he was role-playing. So, yes, you gotta put parameters around it, but other than that, like if you want to see how you're gonna react, you're gonna see how you're gonna react, so be careful. No Hydra shocks to your friend's chest because they surprised you trying to steal your steak.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  It's kind of like a safe word, like...

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  That's what training timeout is.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a safe word.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  It's like, "Hey, you need to stop. You need to stop." You know who tries to get me to take some kind of a training timeout? Dean Lister.

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, see, and that's the thing, and that's a whole rabbit hole too, Brad. There's so many ways to do that, to call for a training timeout, because in jiu-jitsu, it's like, sure, there is the training timeout, straight up.

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  It's tap.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Like, hey, that's one of them. Oh, yeah. Like, you can, let's say I'm a, you know, maybe kind of injured, or maybe just a super, you know, let's say I'm a smaller person, less like physical capability against a crazy, you know, 21-year-old, 235-pound, white belt spaz, right? I can call a training timeout. I can be like, "Hey, like, I respect you, but this seems like kind of dangerous. I'm not gonna train with you specifically." That's a training timeout, really. But you could also be in a scenario where you're out of shape. You have a high level of jiu-jitsu, but you're out of shape, and you're going with the monster guy who's, who's really good at jiu-jitsu, he's getting the better of you. You're gassing. You're like, you're getting, you're getting beat down, is what, and you kind of don't like that. You can call it a little training timeout.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  How do you call the training timeout?

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  Here's where the subtlety kind of arises. You can like fake an injury. You can be like, "Oh, like, oh, my finger was caught in your shirt, your shorts," or, you know, something to give you like... And again, it's a spectrum. You can get like maybe 10 seconds training timeout, then get back into it. Or you can give yourself maybe like a minute or guys used to do, I remember rolling with a guy and he was a higher belt than me. And I was in shape. I wasn't better than him, but I was in shape. I kept going, going, going and he kept like, we're doing gi and he kept like,

• 1:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Coaching you.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  No, no, he'd take time to tie his belt again. I'm like, bro, why are you even, bro, our belts fly off. You just keep training, right? He kept like, and the kind like flagrantly taking like 20, 30 seconds to tie his belt and he did like six times. That's a training timeout too.

• 1:27:31Jocko Willink?

  The only thing about, I think a training timeout is, is known and admitted to both sides. Like a training timeout, you're talking about little tactics, little sneaky little tactics to catch a breath. Brother, catch a breath over here. So it's a little bit different, but there are, I mean, tapping out is kind of a training timeout.

• 1:27:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, a training timeout would be like, actually, remember when you used to be claustrophobic?

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  When you remember when you used to be more claustrophobic?

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:28:06Jocko Willink?

  You would kind of, your training timeout was, I look, I didn't have a submission on you at all, but you would tap out and just say, I, there, there was a guy when I was at team two that I used to train with and he would get so mad. And he would just go, he would just be, just get off me, just get off me. And then I'd get off and he'd be like, God, and he would be so like mad at me as a person.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Oh, for a man at you.

• 1:28:31Jocko Willink?

  Because I was putting this, the pressure.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Jocko Willink?

  Putting the pressure.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was weird. Like when you would, when you would make it known that you were trying to make me claustrophobic, it'd be less claustrophobic. The most claustrophobic for, I would get from you is when like, you'd be pinning me down and it seemed like this was part of your like, tactic to like slowly submit me. Like I'd have this feeling like, bro, I'm, I'm never gonna get out of this like situation. And I'm probably gonna die under here kind of thing. But if you're like, one time this is what you did. You were like, Oh, you're better at your claustrophobia now. Watch the kind of you said something along these lines. And then you put all your weight on me and you put your feet on the wall. So all your weight was on me and you're essentially saying whatever words you're using, you're saying like, yeah, like, how does that feel kind of thing? And I was like, bro, I'm not claustrophobic at all right now.

• 1:29:21Jocko Willink?

  You want to know why? You were primed. I told you I was gonna do it. You were ready for it. You were ready with the resist.

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and my mental state was kind of like, this is me against you now. It's not me against any claustrophobia situation. Like my mind, the battle was different. Yeah. That is interesting.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Marines need time to reflect on new learning experiences to exploit their lessons. Self-reflection internalizes experience and increases mental preparedness for employment across the range of military operations.

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta think about what happened. Little thing about Madison here and then on to General Al Gray. And they're the sum of what it's saying about they're saying Marines need to make time to reflect in order to build understanding, exploit lessons and be ready to adapt as situations change.

• 1:30:15Jocko Willink?

  So you kind of have to debrief and you have to debrief yourself.

• 1:30:23Jocko Willink?

  Next section, the role of the instructor. Regardless of the location of location or position, Marine instructors are knowledgeable, skilled, competent and confident in their abilities. Once again, this is a statement of fact. That's the way Marine instructors are. They're knowledgeable, skilled, competent and confident in their abilities.

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Assessments. Assessments are employed to provide learners with constructive feedback so that they can further develop professionally rather than an arbitrary test score that does not capture growth or change. The most effective instructors use the coach, teach, mentor approach to provide learners with constructive feedback.

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, as we covered the code, the evaluations, the protocols, and I think I got asked, somebody asked me, "Would you recommend doing this in a company?" You know, in a company? And I'm like, "Yeah." The biggest problem with the Navy and the Marine Corps evaluation systems is that they're annual, certainly coming out once a year. This idea here that you have to provide assessments more often than that. They don't necessarily need to be official, but you've got to give people feedback. Fast forward, learners and instructors alike should understand that Marines learn because of their errors, not despite them.

• 1:31:53Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that a smart thing to think to yourself? Is that my employees, my subordinates, my kids, echo Charles, are going to learn because of their errors? Changes your mindset a little bit when the kids make a mistake. It's their turn to learn. Next section, technology in support of learning. Just as MCDP-1 confirms that war is a human enterprise and that no amount of technology can reduce the human dimension, the learning environment is also primarily based on human characteristics rather than equipment.

• 1:32:38Jocko Willink?

  Technology can support, expand, and individualize learning. It is one of the many tools to support learning objectives. So, look, it's a tool. Technology is a tool, but it doesn't replace the human element of learning. The conclusion here, "Battle is the ultimate," conclusion of this section, "battle is the ultimate test of military learning, and training as Marines will fight is a time-honored Marine Corps principle. Train as you fight." In preparing for battle, Marines leverage the art and science of learning along with helpful technologies to enhance learning environments, tailor learning experiences,

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  and provide constructive feedback to accelerate learning." There you go.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  And now we get into the last section of this.

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Chapter four, The Learning Leader.

• 1:33:39Jocko Willink?

  It all just kind of comes together in this section four, doesn't it? The Learning Leader. Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. John F. Kennedy.

• 1:33:50Jocko Willink?

  The future operating environment will place new demands on leaders at all levels. Our leaders must have the training, education, and experience to meet those demands. And that's General Dunford, 36th Commandant of the Marine Corps and

• 1:34:07Jocko Willink?

  the 19th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And the last quote.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  Throughout history, the difference between brilliantly performing armies and mediocre ones has always depended on a small handful of combat leaders. And that is Dave Berke's friend, John Boyd. Throughout history, leadership has been the most important thing on the battlefield. Small handful of combat leaders. When you're in a, in a, what's it called when there's a whole bunch of airplane in the sky? What are those, all those airplanes together called?

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Is that like a squadron? Is that a, is that a wing? So if you're going on an assault, what do you call all those aircraft together?

• 1:34:54Dave Berke?

  We'd call it an air wing in the Navy and Marine Corps.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  And if you're going, would you go on a mission? Like I would go on a mission with a SEAL platoon, you would go on a mission with an air wing?

• 1:35:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah, if it was everybody, it'd be the air wing and there's smaller components of that. You know, you'd have like a division, a section. That's right. You'd break them down much like, you know, fire team, squad, things like that.

• 1:35:15Jocko Willink?

  Is it true or is it, is it also true in an air wing on an assault? That a couple combat, a couple good leaders, good pilots can make a big difference?

• 1:35:25Dave Berke?

  That is true.

• 1:35:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:35:28Dave Berke?

  Absolutely.

• 1:35:30Jocko Willink?

  We're working together in pairs, basically. Is that the smallest unit that we're working in?

• 1:35:34Dave Berke?

  Yeah, despite the fact that there is an air wing, there's a Marine Corps, you know, MAGTF air wing component and the Navy has an air wing, the most common formation that we go out there is a two, sometimes a four ship, but a two ship formation, we called it a section, is the most common war fighting element. When things break down into individual implementation, two is the minimum.

• 1:35:55Jocko Willink?

  And how many, how many aircraft, how many sections would you go out, roll out on, on a,

• 1:36:02Jocko Willink?

  on a mission that you would train for at Top Gun? And the reason I'm saying that, like, when you talk about you have multiple aircraft, like sort of the FTX scenario, the final training exercises, how many aircraft are going out? How many sections?

• 1:36:13Dave Berke?

  Top Gun, the culmination of a Top Gun would be four sections, be eight aircraft.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  Eight aircraft going out to assault a target, then some, some bogies come out and,

• 1:36:22Dave Berke?

  A lot, yeah.

• 1:36:23Jocko Willink?

  And they are going to try and bring it. And so, does the, do the sections have a overall leader?

• 1:36:31Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  If that guy's not quite as good, but there's a couple pipe hitters in there, all the difference in the world.

• 1:36:37Dave Berke?

  All the difference in the world. I think all the same fundamentals that you've always talked about, if you put them into leadership in the air, it's exactly the same thing. You do not have to be the mission commander to be the most influential leader in the formation.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Legit. When you go with the air wing to Fallon, Nevada, how many, how many aircraft roll out on those missions?

• 1:37:04Dave Berke?

  Now, now you're talking, you know, you could have 20. Now you'd have much, much bigger, much more complex, different missions, all at the same time, a lot more coordination, 20 aircraft plus sometimes.

• 1:37:14Jocko Willink?

  Then that's the carrier air group going up to Fallon to run big exercises, getting ready for deployment.

• 1:37:19Dave Berke?

  And a carrier air group would be, you know, three full squadrons of 12, you'd have a squadron of six, you'd have a squadron of four, you know, you'd have 40, 50 airplanes in an air wing.

• 1:37:28Jocko Willink?

  I did that trip, three, I did three strike group carrier interoperabilities at Fallon.

• 1:37:36Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:37Jocko Willink?

  Which is just so, so lucky on my part. As I was a, for, for two of them, I was a radio man, for one of them, I was the J, assistant platoon commander. But just the amount of visibility that gave me, because it wasn't normal for SEALs to do that trip. We would have a couple SEALs that were stationed up there. But we, but to actually get up to be able to go up there and go in the field and do all the close air support, very, very helpful for me.

• 1:38:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:04Jocko Willink?

  We did some long patrols too, from one end of that valley over to the other end. Oh, 12, 12 kilometers in a night, lay up for the day, recover a down pilot, 12 kilometers back out the next night. Did you ever get to be the down pilot up there?

• 1:38:22Dave Berke?

  No, never did. I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:38:25Dave Berke?

  I got to assign the down pilot.

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because that guy had to work, walk half those.

• 1:38:30Dave Berke?

  That was not a job most people wanted.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they didn't see us chilly, it was in winter time.

• 1:38:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah, we did every air wing and every, every course went through you to have a down pilot scenario. And you'd send a guy out there.

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  Sidetrack, two things in, two things in my time in the SEAL teams, where I, I got to see something in nature that a normal person doesn't get to see, one of them locked out of a submarine in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And it was, it was the brightest blue, it was daytime, we were doing a rehearsal. It was the brightest blue, most beautiful ocean. And it was not, it was incredible visibility and there was like a pod of dolphins coming alongside of us and just swimming. That's number one. Number two, I'm in Fallon, Nevada, I'm in a helicopter and it's early spring, so there's

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  still snow on the ground and we're flying nap of the earth up through these hills and we come across a pack of wild Mustangs, horses that are charging through the mountains. And we're, we're, we're so low, close to them and they're, and we're like slightly above the tree line or whatever, I don't know if there's a tree line, but there's no trees, various like shrubs and these things are just charged, this big pack of wild Mustangs. It was freaking epic. One of the coolest things I've ever seen. In nature, that's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. All right. So.

• 1:40:01Jocko Willink?

  Leaders at all levels are responsible for their own learning while supporting their subordinates development. Each Marine is either a leader or a future leader, whether by rank or by their experience and influence on other. You know, that's something I said at the early musters. I think I said it every muster, but I would say training is the solemn duty of the leaders. Because if you've got some training command and they're not doing what they're supposed to do, you need to still do it. You need to make it happen. You're in charge of training. You're in charge of education. You're in charge of making sure people learn.

• 1:40:38Jocko Willink?

  An excellent way to master a topic is to endeavor to teach it well to other Marines. Marines can develop leadership skills and improve communication skills through learning. Marines succeed with leadership styles that provide clear intent through mission type orders and decentralized execution.

• 1:40:55Jocko Willink?

  We are in full support of this document. You want to get good at something, by the way? Teach it. Teach it. Do you think your leadership capabilities improved since you got to echelon front and you teach leadership?

• 1:41:07Dave Berke?

  I wrote a note when I was, when I was going through this myself, I wrote down the word, "leading is teaching." That was just a note I just put in the, in the, in the margins. I was just running through this document a couple of times. The answer to the question is yes, I do.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  That is, that is-

• 1:41:22Dave Berke?

  So it's, you, just even the way you described it, it can be a little bit of a slippery slope. You, you said as a leadership instructor at echelon front, which kind of implies my job is actually to teach. I'm an instructor. I'm, I'm here to teach leadership. And it's leadership at all, leaders at all levels responsible for their own learning. I assure you that at a minimum, it's equal and the truth is it's probably tenfold in my favor. I have learned way, way, way more than what I have taught in terms of like what I get. Because every time I teach something, assuming I do the things we talk about, I, I learn something while doing it. And I've told you this a bunch. That's been the biggest surprise of my second career.

• 1:42:07Dave Berke?

  Was having to acknowledge of how much more there is for me to learn out there. So just that title, leadership instructor, if you have the word instructor anywhere in there, I was a Top Gun instructor, whatever it is, your job is actually to learn and then help impart that with other people, not just that you are the teacher.

• 1:42:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got so lucky that when I was at SEAL Team One, as a young enlisted guy, I eventually went into the training cell and taught and I taught everything luckily. And just seeing it, teaching it, you get so much, such a, such a much better understanding of the subject that you're trying to teach.

• 1:42:47Dave Berke?

  That, that's the coolest thing about being a student of Top Gun is that Marine Corps sends you to Top Gun to come back to be an instructor, just in your squadron. You don't have necessarily the title of instructor, but as a Top Gun graduate, we, especially when you're on the boat, if you're not flying, there's really not much else to do. So you're training, that's all you're doing, you're training. And so every brief, everything you're doing, it's on, now that doesn't mean you teach all the briefs, it might be that you take a brand new guy and go, hey, you're going to give a brief on how the countermeasure system works in the F-18. And you, in my mind, I might know that thing like that, I could draw that thing out down to the, you know, to the, to the battery. But this guy doesn't, doesn't know anything about it. And, but as a Top Gun graduate, you are responsible for either teaching or training every single thing that goes on.

• 1:43:31Dave Berke?

  That is the coolest part about being a Top Gun graduate, is that you're the focal point of making sure the squadron gets trained. And so you get to be a part of all the training evolutions.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  How many Top Gun instructors on average would there be at a squadron?

• 1:43:44Dave Berke?

  Two. If you were really lucky, sometimes you'd have a third patch where, pretty common, one, maybe two.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they, they ended up, kind of by necessity, but also just by design, it kind of ended up that in the SEAL, when I was in the SEAL teams in the early days, you would go to training cell at a team, the team owned their own training cell and you'd be in there. And if things worked out because you were...

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Whatever you're you didn't have orders for a certain amount of time or you had already done a bunch of deployments they put you in training cell. And a lot of guys didn't want to go into training cell because hey, you know, why would you want to go into training cell you will you're there to deploy and I went into training cell as I was as I was putting in my officer packages. So it was hey, go into training cell and they'll give you some time to get because otherwise it's what are you going to do do another deployment of course, what of course I'm going to go do another deployment. Luckily, the master chief, master chief faculty, you know, he told us if you want to get good at this stuff, you need to teach it, you need to come in here and teach it and thank God because that's was hugely that that had everything to do because you're de facto detached when you're instructing, by the way, when you're watching guys do immediate action trials out

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  in the field or you're watching guys clearing rooms, you are de facto detached, you're literally watching right, so you can see these mistakes and if you pay attention to it, you can learn a lot from it. Marines hold a special relationship with each other that is akin to the relationship of mature siblings. They build each other up, share experiences and hold each other accountable. This relationship begins with shared experiences in entry level training and instills shared understanding of honor, tradition, and the importance of leadership. These are your brothers. Learning is necessary to leadership. Strong leaders promote learning in subordinates.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Needs no explanation whatsoever. Thank you, United States Marine Corps. Foster and encourage the next section. Leaders model and set an example of learning for the Marines in their charge by openly seeking out and pursuing professional development for all Marines, including themselves.

• 1:45:59Dave Berke?

  In italics.

• 1:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Yes. The number one person that you should be getting to learn is you. JP was reminding me the other day that at some point I said, hey, you need to start re like this was when we were back in times and I told him, hey, here's these websites you should look at these so you know what's going on in the world, you know, just not even news, but more intel kind of driven websites.

• 1:46:28Jocko Willink?

  And it's, I didn't remember, as soon as you reminded me, I remember doing that. But that was me saying, hey, man, you need to know what's going on here.

• 1:46:36Jocko Willink?

  As stated in MCDP 1, which is warfighting, "A leader without interest in or knowledge of the history and theory of warfare, the intellectual content of the military profession, is a leader in appearance only.

• 1:46:51Jocko Willink?

  Self-directed study in the art and science of war is at least equal in importance to maintaining physical condition and should receive at least equal time." At least equal time, you should be working out and studying the profession of arms. Leaders who set an example with their actions and words that learning is important for the profession of arms inspire other Marines to learn more about the profession and its application. Marine leaders prioritize learning for themselves and others, taking an active role to foster and encourage marine learning.

• 1:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Leaders foster learning by engaging their Marines, taking interest in their well-being, and supporting their professional development. Leaders are justifiably proud when their Marines succeed. Conversely, leaders help them overcome mistakes when they struggle.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  Leaders do not wait for mistakes or failures to highlight a learning opportunity. Leaders provide subordinates with the sufficient freedom of action to learn and develop without ceding responsibility to monitor, supervise, and correct subordinates' actions when necessary. We cannot rightly expect subordinates to exercise boldness and initiative in the field when they are accustomed to being oversupervised in garrison. The goal is for Marines to seek learning opportunities on their own accord, even if the leader is not present. So they've embedded decentralized command into the process of learning in the Marine Corps.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Making it a part of your very being.

• 1:48:24Dave Berke?

  And if you don't do that, you're putting your Marines' lives at risk.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Factual.

• 1:48:31Jocko Willink?

  Teaching and leading, next section. Teaching and leading cannot be uncoupled.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  Think about that one, Echo Charles.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:48:41Jocko Willink?

  Marines who cannot teach will struggle as leaders. Strong leaders do not berate a subordinate for making their first mistake. They turn mistakes into teachable moments.

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's, you know, if you imagine if you don't have control over your temper, and someone makes a mistake and you lose your temper, you've just thrown away an opportunity for someone to learn, you've squashed their initiative, all kinds of problems. Leaders encourage Marines to pursue learning opportunities and cultivate an open dialogue to discuss lessons learned when mistakes are made. It is the leader's responsibility to recognize, act on, and correct the mistakes by turning them into learning opportunities, understanding that it's far better to learn in a training environment than to make mistakes when deployed.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's...

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  The idea that you're gonna, you're gonna take people's mistakes and turning them into teachable moments, there's like another kind of thing that I would see, and I still see it. And that's this underlying...

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  The underlying ego that gets involved. The little thing, the little thing that you can't... Look, I'm gonna make this a teachable moment for you, Dave. Because obviously, this was a little bit tricky for you. You know what I mean? Like, there's that little thing. And even that right there, even that right there detracts from the learning moment. Just when I let my ego shine through my beady little eyes and pierce into your ego, it's just detracting from the teachable moment.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  So what does that look like, just like the way you say it?

• 1:50:34Jocko Willink?

  No, yeah, yeah, yeah. The way I say it, the way I come across with, uh, hey, uh, hey, Dave.

• 1:50:44Jocko Willink?

  Clearly, that question kind of stumped you on the webinar. You know, why don't, why don't you, why don't you, uh, why don't you give me a call later? I can help talk you through it. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:50:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, the whole.

• 1:50:55Jocko Willink?

  Just the whole vibe, the whole presentation.

• 1:50:59Dave Berke?

  It also lets the other person know what you think of the relationship. This is kind of the nature of our relationship. I'm here to mentor you. We get this question all the time. It's like, hey, I really want to have a mentor. I think your answer is actually really good. It was like, hey, I, I, I never like assigned a mentor or assigned myself as a mentor, either one. You should try to learn from as many people as you can. But the one that I would see get people fired up the most is when someone would go, bro, I'm trying to help you here. And that would set people off all the time, which was, hey, I'm doing you a favor. I know something you don't know, and I'm here to help you learn. Even that would put someone who, and look, the ego is on both sides, because I, if you were to say that to me, even like that, I'd be like, right on, what do you got?

• 1:51:43Dave Berke?

  I mean, that would be my goal as to how I'd respond to that, which is easier, easier for some people than, than for others.

• 1:51:48Jocko Willink?

  The ego's on both sides, but you can only control your own.

• 1:51:50Dave Berke?

  You can only, you can only.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  So even, if Dave has the most, the most totally humble attitude, he's open, that's great. I got lucky, right? But any other guy is going, well, you know, actually, the way, the way you talked about it yesterday didn't even make sense. All of a sudden, we're in a combative mode.

• 1:52:07Dave Berke?

  What do you know?

• 1:52:08Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I'm just running a little training drill on him. Little ego check.

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  Detach.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  Make sure he's good. Yeah, I threw that, I threw that out today. I was like, I, my ego tour, my, my test on Jamie, I was like yelling, like pretending like I was going to yell at Jamie.

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  Did you know you were pretending?

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I was just using it as an example. But Jamie was just smiling because she knows, oh, I know factually that Jamie would be like, oh, okay, Jaco, I appreciate it. Let me, let me go find out. Cause she would just de-escalate. Cause she's dealing with this crap all day long, you know, that's what she does, you know? So she keeps it real, real, real. All right. General John A. Lejeune.

• 1:52:51Jocko Willink?

  13th Commandant of the Marine Corps, World War I. General. "The relations between officers and enlisted men should in no sense be that of superior and inferior, nor that of master and servant, but rather that of teacher and scholar." Now, I want to hold up right there.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  Because that right there is not correct. And if there's a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps, and he's working with his gunnery sergeant, he is by no means, by any stretch of the imagination, the teacher

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  to a student at all. It's the opposite, actually.

• 1:53:31Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 1:53:31Jocko Willink?

  So, I, I, I think, you know, if you were to take a look at this in present tense, it would read a little bit differently. It goes on. "In fact, it should partake of the nature of the relations between father and son." Again, that's not a great analogy, because if, unless you're now flipping it to the gunny is the dad, and the second lieutenant i- is the, is the son. Uh, "To the extent that officers, especially commanding officers, are responsible for the physical, mental, and moral welfare, as well as the discipline and military training of the young men under their command." That is true.

• 1:54:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I, I picture this in the context of being a senior officer with young junior enlisted, very young junior enlisted Marines. But it, and, but this to me kind of highlights some of the problems with the chain of command. The chain of command actually can be really good. It's good to have a good chain of command sometimes, and a well-defined hierarchy. But there are huge pitfalls in that, because organizationally, as soon as you figure out who you are in the organization, you presume to take on some sort of set of roles that comes with that. I think on my very fir- first podcast with you, I even talked about my very first job as a lieutenant. I got lucky, because I had one of those gunnies that was like, right out of the dream scenario of, "Who do you want to be mentoring you in your first job?"

• 1:54:45Dave Berke?

  It was this guy named Gunny Pilgrim, who was like, "You couldn't, you couldn't make a better Marine who was my subordinate."

• 1:54:56Dave Berke?

  I was his boss and in no way was I leading him or teaching him or doing it. All it was a one-way relationship where I just learned everything I possibly could from him because he was the type of gunny that knew where he was in the chain of command, but also knew what his job was. But it actually does require you to to look at you where you are in the chain of command and detach from that piece and say, where am I in this relationship? And what do I actually need to learn from this? And if you can view it like that, the chain command really is sort of insignificant there because as a junior officer, I had nothing constructive to offer this guy. Nothing.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  Gunny pilgrim.

• 1:55:30Dave Berke?

  Gunny pilgrim, if you're listening. He knows what's up.

• 1:55:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're gonna have to bring him on here and get some good stories about second lieutenant.

• 1:55:40Dave Berke?

  We should bring.

• 1:55:41Jocko Willink?

  You weren't second lieutenant, huh? Were you?

• 1:55:43Dave Berke?

  First lieutenant at the time.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  You were first lieutenant by the time you got to?

• 1:55:45Dave Berke?

  To the fleet, yeah, yeah.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  Leaders who and this so that that ends that quote. And like I said, there's some just some perception that quote that I think is a little bit off, a little bit off. I think it's more like if you if you were just to say universally on this quote universally, what Marines are to each other, Marines are to each other, you know, because I can always learn, I can learn from the most junior guy, I can learn from the most senior guy. So just depending on what dynamics are happening in that relationship, you, you know, I might be the the master in one situation and 20 minutes later, you're the master, right? That can happen because there's different parts of knowledge and you got to be open and flexible to do both those.

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, leaders who encourage an open discussion with their Marines about how thoughts and actions contributed to outcomes will have greater successes at teaching compared to leaders who simply point out mistakes for a Marine to improve upon without context or explanation.

• 1:56:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, then again, I think that's some old school, at least in the SEAL teams, that was more old. And it wasn't always like this, but there would certainly be some guys in the SEAL teams in the, when I was in, in the 90s, that their role as an instructor was to point out your mistakes and tell you how to do it right. Not a conversation, just, and it just instruct, just direction. That direction is like rope memorization. You tell me to memorize something, cool, I'll remember, I'll memorize it. I'm actually really good at memorizing things, I'll memorize it. But I, what I really don't want, what I really want to do is not memorize something. I want to learn how to calculate what to actually do based on thought.

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Little note on here about constructive feedback. The goal is not a simplistic discussion of the right answer according to a leader's personal views, but rather for the Marine to develop greater self-awareness and understanding of the situation and task, and to be able to adapt the lessons learned for future situations.

• 1:57:56Jocko Willink?

  Again, not memorization. I'm, like, when I went to college, some of my classes were, I, I wanted to get an A on the test. Yeah, you said this about OCS as well, or did you go to OCS or TBS?

• 1:58:11Dave Berke?

  I was talking about TBS.

• 1:58:11Jocko Willink?

  TBS, yeah, memorize this, like, hey, Roger that, I will memorize this. I will make flashcards, I will memorize this. And it would have been so much better if every minute that I had spent memorizing things, I was actually having a legitimate conversation about what the meaning of these things were.

• 1:58:28Dave Berke?

  The learning and the material, yeah, totally.

• 1:58:31Dave Berke?

  When I went back, we talked about, I think it started with the first one, when we did warfighting, or whichever one we did, the first Marine Corps Doctrine Pub you and I did together. It was when I went back to start reading these again, and I've, we've read a bunch of them. I read this last one, like, I was like laughing, I was, I had so much fun reading this. I had no fun reading these pubs. I read all these pubs at the basic school, all of them. I didn't enjoy any of it, because I didn't have this, I wasn't there trying to learn. And the, the, the mistakes that I made, I think I've said this several times, looking back, if you could just figure out how to take the things out of there and have it make sense in your head and learn something from it, it's actually fun. Learning is a, is, is, is awesome, and I was going back through these pubs as a, as an adult.

• 1:59:14Dave Berke?

  Thinking, man, my experience reading this was nothing like this the first time. What a total waste. So much I could have taken from that. So I could have learned so much more, so much faster. If that's how I viewed reading these things.

• 1:59:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that is a big part of the very nature of this podcast. Is, hey, don't just read it. I'm not just reading this section and, you know, that's that. How am I putting it in context with what I've been through? How are you putting it through context with what you've been through? And then how can someone that's listening, take that and tie them together and say, okay. Yeah, there's, you know, as soon as you hear me read from a book. And then say, oh, that reminds me of, I'm just at that moment in time.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Giving you another angle, another piece of context, another way to triangulate that idea in your own head. Which is what makes it worth. Otherwise, otherwise people just grab the audio book or just read the book. Yeah, cool. I read the book. I even, for me, for me getting, of course, more out of it than anybody. Because I'm reading it and thinking about it. And then overlaying and then getting feedback about it. So it's this. It's a, it's a, it's a exponential learning. It's an exponential pressure on my brain. Very lucky to be in that situation.

• 2:00:53Jocko Willink?

  Continue on, for example, providing topic areas for discussion. Using the Socratic method, asking and answering questions to simulate critical thinking. Draw out ideas. And identify underlying assumptions during, during debriefs. Rather than simply criticizing Marines' actions can be much more effective in fostering learning. Positive feedback is constructive positive feedback makes learners aware of what they did correctly. Reinforces desired behaviors and identifies areas to improve. Negative feedback that unnecessarily tears a Marine down seldom leads to effective learning and can stifle initiative.

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  It's a different mindset. This is the type of thing, Echo, when you're talking about priming, you know, and priming your brain, if you're an instructor situation, just reading that right there before you go and instruct your class is going to help you, is going to help you teach, and it's going to help them learn.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  The next section, oddly enough,

• 2:01:55Jocko Willink?

  is called humility. That's the name of the section, by the way. It's just humility.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  When you are a 15-year-old kid, and you are thinking about which branch of service you are going to join, and then you are very rapidly coming to the conclusion that the best branch of service for you to join would be the Marine Corps, you are not thinking about humility. No.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  You are not thinking about humility. You are thinking, "We are the best. The Marine Corps is the best. I'm going in the Marine Corps because they are the best." There's no humility in that whatsoever. And you end up realizing that that's wrong. And one of the things that makes the Marine Corps great and makes any organization great is humility, which is why they have a section called humility. Here we go back to the book. All Marines, especially those in positions of leadership, can learn from anyone if they are ready and willing to learn. However, ego can hinder learning. Commanders, other leaders, and instructors learn from the Marines in their charge while also leading those Marines to learn. So this is what we just said. I can learn from anybody. I can learn from anybody in the chain of command.

• 2:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Leaders recognize that humility is a part of the career-long learning process. The best leaders at the highest levels recognize that the more they learn, the more they need to learn. And they set the example for their subordinates.

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  How much you don't know, that's the initial stages of jujitsu. You get the, after like your third class, when you think you mastered the whatever, the two moves that you learned, and then you realize, oh, wait a second, this never stops. Effective leaders also recognize that we are not an expert in every topic. So we seek out those who are experts and learn from them regardless of relative rank or position. The Marine with the authority, the Marine with authority must make decisions, but until a commander has reached and stated a decision, subordinate should consider it their duty to provide honest professional opinions,

• 2:04:08Jocko Willink?

  even though these might be in disagreement with the seniors' opinions. As I call that, pushback. I want pushback, I need pushback, that's how we pressure test our ideas. And of course, it's the Marine Corps, so they throw in until you've made your decision. Because once that decision comes, we're gonna get on board with the program. Hey, what if it's illegal, immoral, unethical? We're still gonna pushback. What if it means, hey, we could get a lot of guys died, killed here unnecessarily? We're still gonna pushback. Leadership strategy and tactics cover that whole thing in ad nauseam.

• 2:04:44Dave Berke?

  You went, when we were at Top Gun, one of the things we had is something called a standardization board. Which is like the, all the senior instructors get together to make these really hard decisions. Big decisions that had to be made. And as you might guess, you get 26 people in a room, all Top Gun instructors, all kinda the, the top of their game. You'd have really, really strong opinions. And I think what stood, stood out to me with this comment, isn't like the idea, hey, I've made a decision, I want you to get on board. It's, once we've actually gone to the mat, hashed this out, we've talked everything, we've made a decision, what I need you to do is be on board. Not that you can't dissent, but what I can't have you do is walk out and be like, yeah, we're doing this, it wasn't my idea, this is really stupid, but that's what the boss said. Is not the same as, hey, we all argued, we, we put it out there.

• 2:05:29Dave Berke?

  Maybe we went in a direction that isn't what you wanted, but it's still gonna work and it's a good idea, or we can still do this. And you come out and go, hey, listen, this is what we're doing, this is why I'm, I'm on board with this. Those are two very different things. So questioning those things, there are certainly times to do that. But just because you didn't get your way. Doesn't mean that it's wrong. It actually might mean that you need to just get on board because you might be the one that maybe you got something to take from that. So when we have these standboards, kind of the standing rule is when we're done. If you were on the losing argument, that doesn't mean you walk out and go, yeah, well, I lost that argument. This is stupid. I'm going to do it, but I'm not really going to do it.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying, I'm sitting here, I was, I was kind of racking my brain over here, thinking about. Why is it that me, I, in my experience?

• 2:06:20Jocko Willink?

  Was never, was rarely that I can even remember in a situation where. I was saying, hey, guys, here's what we're doing. Why is that? Why is it that throughout my career and life? So seldom that I can't remember an example of where I said, hey, listen.

• 2:06:41Jocko Willink?

  We're not, this is the plan we are going with. Why is that? I'm sitting here trying to rack my brain and it's pretty obvious and. It's like this.

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  If Dave comes to me with his idea. And his idea sucks. It's very easy to explain to him that his idea sucks. And he goes, yeah, you just poked 14 holes in my 15 ideas. So obviously that's not squared away. So that means, you know, it's pretty easy to win an argument when you are that right. When you are that right, it's pretty easy to win an argument. And, and I'm decent at arguing. So if Dave comes to me with a crappy idea, it's not hard for me to go, yeah, Dave, I get what you're trying to say, but this, this, this, and this. And Dave goes, oof, okay. I'll go back to the drawing board. So, so that's one reason because.

• 2:07:37Jocko Willink?

  When I'm right about my decision, it's because you're freaking just wrong. You've come in with a bad idea. So that's, that's, that's half of the solution. That's half the reason why I'm not saying, hey, everyone, no more discussion. This is what we're doing. That's 50%. The other 50% is because when Dave comes to me and says, hey, here's what I think we should do, and it's 13 or 12 of the points are pretty good. And even though I could lock down 15 out of 15, I'm totally good with going, sounds good, Dave. You win. Roll with it. And

• 2:08:18Jocko Willink?

  what does that mean? The amount of times, because otherwise, if I say, no, Dave, my 15 ways, my 15 points are better. And you're like, no, my 13, and we get in an argument about it. Finally, I say, shut up and go do what I told you to do. And now you go do it, and you resent it, and you're pissed off, and whatever. But 50% of the time, or 50%, the solution for me is, hey, you're so wrong that you can't argue with me. And I don't say that, but I just point out all the things, and you go, yeah, good point, good point, good point. And you're not gonna, you're not gonna fall on your sword when you are just blatantly wrong. People don't do that. Even the most, even the most dug in person, when they get shown the 19 reasons why they're wrong, they retreat. So therefore, we all go out with the same plan. Or you come with a plan that's freaking

• 2:09:02Jocko Willink?

  close, and I go, sounds great, man. Let's execute.

• 2:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Coming down the chain of command, meaning how many times did someone tell me, hey, Jaco, shut up and do what I told you to do? Again, racking my brain a little bit, can't think any off the top of my head. Why? Same thing. Most of the time, when my boss had a bad idea, I was able to articulate and convince him of a new way of doing it that made more sense. Or I was able to say, you know what? That'll work. I can make that work. I can make anything work. I can make that work. You know, this isn't a, this isn't a suicide mission. This may not be perfect, but I can go out there, mitigate the little downfalls, no factor. So that's why when I read these things, it's like, I know what they're talking about,

• 2:09:55Jocko Willink?

  but I very rarely experience it, very rarely experience it. I can't, even at Echelon Front, the amount of times I've said, all right, guys, lock it up, this is what we're doing. I think we've talked about one of them is like a PT evolution at the muster muster four or something where there was a crazy plan floating around. I was like, you know what? There's a lot of risk with that plan. There's no risk with a known plan. Hey, we're just gonna go with a known plan. By the way, we gotta go.

• 2:10:18Dave Berke?

  Seven minutes.

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  By the way, we got like seven minutes to execute this thing. We gotta make a decision. That's like one of the few, almost every other time. And if we would, if I would have done a better job saying, hey, brief me on what we're gonna do tomorrow and we can do a dry run and all that. I would have been able to say, hey, we could have gone through the cycle of actually figuring out, A, whether that plan would have worked, which it might have, or B, what little adjustments we need to make and then everyone's happy.

• 2:10:46Jocko Willink?

  This mentality of open discussion hinges. So by the way, all this revolves around open discussion, right? All this revolves around me listening, you talking, you listening, me talking. It all revolves around that. This mentality of open discussion hinges on the leader's willingness to remain humble and accept honest feedback. Therefore, all Marines prepare themselves to become leaders by exercising humility and being open to constructive feedback. Boom. This is a message to everyone in the world.

• 2:11:18Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, the path to mastery starts out, starts with a sense of humility. The path to mastery starts out with a sense of humility. Marines recognize that they do not know everything and therefore must remain humble as they pursue greater understanding and competence. Marines should always recognize that there will be more to learn and they must embrace their curiosity in order to continuously learn. Curiosity will lead Marines to knowledge required to fill their own gaps and experience and improve their skill set. And that curiosity is tying back to what I started this whole thing off with. Me like wanting to know a better way. Is there a better way to do this? Is that tradition right? Is that standard operating procedure correct?

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  When a Marine begins to feel more confident, it is because he or she is closing the gaps between their goals and their actual capabilities. Reaching a goal along the path to mastery is an indication that it is time to move on to a more challenging goal. Boom. Next section, technical and tactical proficiency. Marines begin their pursuit of mastery by developing brilliance in the basics of technical and tactical proficiency. At all levels, technical and tactical proficiency requires Marines to reflect upon what they have learned, identify learning gaps and close them. Self-reflection enables Marines to evaluate the quality of their practice, recognizing

• 2:12:51Jocko Willink?

  that deliberate, purposeful, quality practice leads to mastery. Incorrect practice and lack of focus does not lead to perfection. It leads to negative training that could be transferred into the battle space. Marines focus on doing the basics correctly, building speed and agility. No, no reason to get crazy. It's a pick and roll. There are many technical skills that Marines learn. Some are standard battle skills training and others vary across military occupational specialties. Marines build foundational technical skills such as marksmanship and operating as part of a team in entry-level training.

• 2:13:35Jocko Willink?

  Marines learn to be technically proficient as rifleman, which provides a common identity among all Marines. The larger lesson for Marines, for all Marines to learn, is the hard work, dedication and persistence required when seeking self-improvement. That's what you're learning in boot camp. That's why every Marine is a rifleman. Yeah, look, do we need you to know how you work your rifle? Yes, we do. What's more important than that is the lesson that you learn, that it takes hard work, dedication and persistence. That's what it takes. That's what you learn from becoming a rifleman.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  Marines build on this lesson as they move on to the next technological challenge.

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  And then it kind of advances here into the larger picture. Marines develop teamwork competencies so that they are technically and tactically proficient as individuals, teams, units, and magtaffs. Collective learning experiences build teamwork that enables success. Teamwork building exercises provide the opportunity for Marine leaders to both lead the development of their Marines teamwork and learn from these exercises. During these learning activities, leaders who demonstrate humility by discussing what they did and why, subordinates to reinforce learning at all levels of the team. Learning takes time, dedication, and diligence in the pursuit of mastery.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  And the reason I had to call this out is that in an organization, the organization is collectively also learning.

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  That's the, that's the big separation between like basic SEAL training and even the, when you get done with basic SEAL training, then you go to SEAL tactical training, or what they call it now.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  SEAL qualification training. Both those are pretty much individual skillsets. It's not until you get into a SEAL platoon, now it's collective learning. Now you're learning how to do things as a platoon, which is totally different and yet builds upon what you learned to do as an individual.

• 2:15:44Dave Berke?

  What was, the training that you led, what was the, the title of that training? It was West Coast SEAL training, was that, is that SQT or what, what was that called again? I know that's not-

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  It's pre-deployment workup. Pre-deployment, pre-deployment training cycle. I usually call it advanced training, even though technically, the, if you looked by the book, the advanced training that is run is actually advanced individual training. That's what they call advanced individual training, which is, hey, you're going to learn to be a sniper, you're going to learn to be a parachute rigger, you're going to learn to be a medic. Those things are advanced, training is what they call it.

• 2:16:20Jocko Willink?

  The simplest way to explain what I did is I just call it advanced training. There's a SEAL that would be sitting in the audience go, you didn't run advanced training. It's like, no, I ran advanced collective platoon training. So a simple way to put it is to say advanced training, even though there's a technical, there's a, there's a command called advanced training. It's ATC, advanced training command. And they teach dive supervisor. They teach radioman. They teach individual skills. But it's, what I taught was the advanced, and usually what I actually call it is advanced tactical training. Cause that's what it was. And that's what it still is. It's advanced tactical training. It's how do you

• 2:17:02Dave Berke?

  And that's the units.

• 2:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Collective, unit level trainings that we, and actually now that you say it, what I actually taught is called ULT, unit level training.

• 2:17:14Dave Berke?

  How much, just hearing you say that, how much has BUDS evolved and changed what they did compared to what you did and how much that evolved?

• 2:17:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Unit level training evolves all the time.

• 2:17:26Dave Berke?

  All the time, right?

• 2:17:26Jocko Willink?

  BUDS is a, BUDS is what BUDS is. And you can, you know, there's, there's something, if, if, if somebody that went through BUDS in 1964, went and watched BUDS right now, they would go, oh yeah, oh yeah, we just, oh yeah. They'd get a lot of reminders. If they came and watched a SEAL platoon going through urban warfare training, they'd be like, damn. They'd say, damn. Now, the land warfare stuff has been, it's, it's really been very similar. Although now I can't even say that because we have the, the, the laser tag system. We got all the, they would do pyro and stuff, but we, the laser tag system and the paintball and stuff was just.

• 2:18:11Jocko Willink?

  I was around when paintball started to come out in the SEAL teams and it and it changed everything for us. It changed everything for us because unfortunately, most of the Vietnam guys were gone. And so, all of a sudden, we started doing rote things. Rote things, meaning here's the problem, here's the solution.

• 2:18:32Dave Berke?

  And that's not what a learning organization does. They don't do rote things.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  No, they don't do rote things. But hey, if you get contacted from this position in your patrol, here's the rote answer to that, do that thing. And what happens is, the enemy that you're going against is paper targets. They don't move and they don't shoot back. They don't maneuver and they don't shoot back. Well, guess what? That's actually what combat is. Combat is fire maneuver. And now you're going against an enemy that doesn't maneuver or shoot back. It doesn't cover move, doesn't fire maneuver, doesn't do anything. So, it's it's not that it's worthless, because you will learn what the mechanics of movement are.

• 2:19:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  But, and and we used to do this too. We would do no fire drills, where hey, you're gonna get contacted from a bunch of different places, but you're not shooting. Or we use blanks. We use ditz gear. Did you ever use ditz gear? Oh, no, it's not ditz gear. What's it? Miles gear?

• 2:19:23Dave Berke?

  Miles, yeah, for sure.

• 2:19:24Jocko Willink?

  So, ditz was like the modern, for us in the SEAL team, ditz was the modern version of miles gear. Miles gear was kind of, it had, it had a lot of, it had a lot of, had a lot of issues with miles gear, the old miles gear that we had in the 80s and 90s. Had, it wasn't, you know, didn't work really well. And it was just, it wasn't great. And you couple that with a bad attitude, which is, here's something I heard, in the day, was, um, was, it's gonna give you training scars. Like, they would say that about paintball. They'd say, hey, if you're using paintball guns, you're gonna get training scars, meaning...

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna forget how to load my real weapon because I'm used to reloading a paintball gun. And so now when the moment hits, I'm fumbling around looking for a hopper to put my more paintballs in. We can't do it because of that. And what that essentially does unfortunately throws the baby out with the bathwater. Because the training scars that you get from only fighting against paper targets are worse than the training scars you get from having to use a different weapon to run these scenarios.

• 2:20:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:36Jocko Willink?

  So to go back to your point, and I see where you're going with this, the basic level training of individuals has advanced and evolved a lot less than the unit level training where we were constantly adapting from what was happening on the battlefield. Was that similar for you guys? I mean, if somebody went through flight school right now, it would look very similar to World War II flight school.

• 2:21:00Dave Berke?

  That thing is not evolved, and it was just this idea of what a learning organization was. It's the organization has to learn. And look, and I'm sure it's true for Buzz, you've described it, but you know, OCS, primary flight training, they serve a very specific function, but that function is not to teach warfighting. And so the evolution of those organizations really isn't that dramatic. It doesn't change very much because it's teaching these fundamental skills that are absolutely required, but they're not the skills that you would utilize in, the only schools utilized for warfighting. I just think this point as a leader, when you read that idea about learning organization, is that a learning organization evolves and adapts and changes and right back to the, what you started with was my story at Top Gun,

• 2:21:43Dave Berke?

  which was you actually need to be out in front of that and leading your organization. So your organization is designed to learn, the organism that you're a part of learns. And when you start in the military like OCS or boot camp or even a little bit TBS. I bet if I went back to OCS right now, I'd exactly, yeah, that's, that's about right. I see guys marching on the grinder. I see guys ripping their, their bed sheets off their racks and throwing their mattresses on the floor. I see people yelling and screaming and this probably looks much closer. And if I went back to, if I went to air wing training at Topkin up at Fowler now, like damn, you guys have up your, I guarantee you, I'd say you guys have upped your game a lot just because I've been out of it, you know, for long enough.

• 2:22:26Dave Berke?

  Cause that is a learning organization. That's really, I think the goal. And I think again, the parallels are, are pretty obvious and how clear that is. And it's not to imply that those basics aren't important. They're critical.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

  And they mentioned that here, just a little bit ago, they're saying, look, what Marines do is get brilliant at the basics. And, and when I was running trade at, I actually changed the terminology that we use to describe basic IADS. I changed it from basic to fundamental.

• 2:22:56Dave Berke?

  Fundamentals, yeah.

• 2:22:57Jocko Willink?

  Because it's truth. Cause guys would think, well, I'm walking into the basics. But these are fundamental.

• 2:23:02Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Fundamental. This is what it actually all boils down to. These things, these fundamental things. And you know what? There, there have been changes, but guess what's never changed? Cover and move. Keeping things simple, prioritize next to you, decentralized command. Those things have not changed. And I don't foresee them changing.

• 2:23:22Dave Berke?

  Legit.

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Conclusion.

• 2:23:26Jocko Willink?

  Strong leaders are also teachers and mentors. Every Marine is a current or future leader and therefore leads by example to seek learning opportunities for themselves and other Marines.

• 2:23:41Jocko Willink?

  All Marines, especially those in positions of leadership, should strive to remain humble. So they are ready and willing to learn from anyone at any time in any place.

• 2:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Learning is an institutional priority and a professional expectation for all Marines. Continuous, disciplined, and progressive learning is necessary for warfighting readiness.

• 2:24:12Jocko Willink?

  Learning is the foundation for all that Marines do. It is the key enabler for all warfighting functions. Think about that statement. Learning is the key enabler for all warfighting functions and our purpose as the nation's naval expeditionary force in readiness. Marines learn to quickly recognize and understand important information, adapt, make sound decisions, and act, which is especially important in the fog and friction of war. All Marines must understand that continuous learning is a priority and key to our readiness

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  as the nation's first line of defense, always being ready to be the first to fight.

• 2:25:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's the last line of that document, aside from a giant bibliography of all the different documents that they cite in there, many of which are actually other Marine Corps pubs, which would seem like, oh, that's incestuous if those original pubs weren't so freaking solid. But that idea that learning is the foundation for all that Marines do and it's the key enabler, the key enabler to be able to collect, absorb, and understand information and then use that information to make good decisions and execute is all, all based on learning.

• 2:25:44Jocko Willink?

  And that obviously doesn't only apply to Marines.

• 2:25:50Jocko Willink?

  It applies to everybody.

• 2:25:53Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, I think we've had this, how long have we been, when did I, what has this been about, a month cycle of us with this document? It's been about a month?

• 2:26:05Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:05Jocko Willink?

  I have been paying attention and have realized

• 2:26:11Jocko Willink?

  what, a better understanding of what, I haven't realized fully what it is, but I have a better understanding of learning and that I have been learning.

• 2:26:23Jocko Willink?

  And more important, what difference it makes when you are proactively learning, when you are actually engaging, you're, you're, you're putting pressure on your brain to proactively learn.

• 2:26:40Jocko Willink?

  Makes a huge difference. Learning because you're experiencing something or learning because you are being taught. Like, think of those two things. Learning because you're experiencing it and learning because you're being taught. That's one level of learning. But when you learn because you are actively engaging your brain and processing information and making it part of your usable knowledge. Making it part of your usable knowledge. Hey, I'm not just taking this fact and storing it in there and not being able to take it out and recollect it. Not only recollect it, because who cares about recollecting it? But taking it to apply it to a problem and solve a problem?

• 2:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Or use it, look, what are the chances that you come up with a problem that fits this thing that you learned and it's an exact fit? No, you gotta take six different little elements that you've learned, actively learned. You've engaged your brain and you apply a little piece there and a little piece there and a little piece over there. And then you have that knowledge and you use it and you apply it and that is the deal. That is the game changer. And that is learning. We're pretty fired up about learning over here on my side. Echo Charles?

• 2:28:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, you make a good point with like, you say usable, usable knowledge. Totally different thing. So that's weird because, okay, so you don't remember when you're in school. I don't know. Dave Berke, were you a good student?

• 2:28:20Dave Berke?

  I was okay.

• 2:28:22Speaker 02

  You seem like you're like, you'd be a good student. As opposed to say?

• 2:28:26Dave Berke?

  No, I was, I was not a troublemaker. I was quiet. I did well in school. I did not work very hard. So I wasn't like a studious guy. I didn't like try hard in school.

• 2:28:36Speaker 02

  Right, right. Okay. So for lack of a better way of putting it, maybe just happened to get good grades kind of thing, given kind of who you are.

• 2:28:44Dave Berke?

  You could say that, I guess.

• 2:28:45Speaker 02

  Sure. I would say that, but I will also say, Jaco, what, were you a good student?

• 2:28:51Dave Berke?

  In high school?

• 2:28:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:52Dave Berke?

  No.

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  Okay, so, a lot of, it seems like in school, you know, hey, learning should be fun, which you said, by the way, today. Learning should be fun, right? I've heard that before. Learning should be fun.

• 2:29:03Dave Berke?

  True statement, actually. I like it.

• 2:29:05Speaker 02

  I, yeah, as an adult, I think we can realize that a little bit more, especially when we're into learning. But you know how like when you're in school, they're like, yeah, learning should be fun. You're like, well, I'm doing it wrong because this is super boring. You know, like playing at the park is fun. The slides fun. Recession is fun. Lunchtime fun. Learning part, not so much. Pretty boring. And this is what I think is, this is why I think, because it's not usable knowledge in your brain. It is long term, for sure. But you don't, you don't feel it. You don't feel that.

• 2:29:37Dave Berke?

  I'm gonna let Jaco talk, cuz I, actually, I'm not. I'm gonna say something, because it might be kinda what we're thinking.

• 2:29:44Dave Berke?

  I just said I had fun reading this. I had fun reading this book, this pub. I had fun doing it, which is kinda crazy to think about, cuz the first time I did it was just purely a chore. I actually think learning is fun. So I do stuff with my kids. I got a six-year-old boy. Like, we are doing things now. He's able to do things with his hands and build stuff. And he's learning things and he's having fun doing it. It's, what is the problem is that the inability to make the connection, that everything they're learning, even the ones that feel like a chore, if I could somehow convince my kid, listen, buddy, I know it doesn't make sense right now, but there, you will one day make the connection between this and other things, if I could, which I can't do cuz he's six. If I could help him make that connection,

• 2:30:28Dave Berke?

  he would be much happier learning things that don't make sense as to why he's learning them. It's the inability to make the connection. The thing of it is, is that you said something a minute ago, like, since I cracked this thing open, I, like, I said this to you a little while ago, hey dude, this is coming out. They're about to publish this thing.

• 2:30:46Dave Berke?

  Even in the last month, I am looking around and seeing things that I've been looking around and seeing in my entire life. And that's because I can make the connection between learning things and how it creates, not just the usable knowledge, but how it makes my life better and helps me be better at what I do. It isn't that if you could make that connection for your kids, and I think that's the hardest part for me is, hey bud, we can't just all do the things that you're enjoying. We gotta do some of these other things too that are important, but I promise you they'll have value and meaning. That's hard to make, to cross that bridge and make that gap for a six-year-old. But I've never seen anybody who learned something not enjoy learning it once they've figured out what they're doing.

• 2:31:24Jocko Willink?

  You were so close.

• 2:31:25Dave Berke?

  So close.

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  So close. You were so close to just taking my thunder away. You were so close. I'm glad I gave you the opportunity to attempt. And you were dancing around it. You were dancing around it. And tell me if I'm wrong.

• 2:31:38Dave Berke?

  Well, I was thinking, and I'm like, man, I'm gonna start saying something he's gonna say. And every time I try to say something he's gonna say, Echo says, if you could say it like him, it'd be better. So I almost, I should've just followed my instinct, which is to say nothing.

• 2:31:49Jocko Willink?

  You were dancing around what I was thinking.

• 2:31:52Dave Berke?

  Okay.

• 2:31:53Jocko Willink?

  Which is this, you're saying, hey, you've got this thing and you can't make a connection in the future. I'm gonna take that one step further. Imagine this, which I thought you were gonna say is the key phrase. And then I thought you were gonna say is the key phrase. The application of knowledge, actually being able to use it, is where that connection gets made. So, when you teach your son how to do something that he can apply immediately, that's fun. Imagine if in jujitsu, what you had to do was do an arm lock on a grappling dummy. That's what your lessons were. Would that be fun? Right? Marginal.

• 2:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, since you're not, wanna give me a solid answer to that, what's more fun? Arm locking a grappling dummy or arm locking a training partner? Let me ask you this, how many arm locks have you done on a grappling dummy?

• 2:32:49Dave Berke?

  One.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, how many arm locks have you done on training partners?

• 2:32:52Dave Berke?

  One million.

• 2:32:53Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. So, this, every, what, what you said, Dave, totally accurate. And I think where that connection actually gets made is when you are, have the cap, have the opportunity to apply that knowledge. So if you teach your kid something and all of a sudden, they go to the store and you go, "Hey, it's 78 cents, you know, get out the coins." And the kid gets to take out three quarters and three pennies and put them on the table and he applied that and you give him the nod. Right, and he got to apply that and boom, yeah, the cashier goes, "Thank you, son." So, as much as we can, if we can teach people something,

• 2:33:38Jocko Willink?

  and then we find an avenue for them to actually apply that knowledge, and who knows? Maybe this could, maybe the, the, the goal is to actually teach people in stages where you're teaching them things that they can actually apply. Like, if you can set it up that way, that you're not trying to teach them advanced physics before, but when there's no application for it, but then when they get to a point where you can start to say, "Hey, you wanna check out, you wanna know what the tide's gonna do? We can actually figure that out from, from, from astrophysics. We can actually figure that out. Here's what it is and here's how it works." And then people say, "Ah." So, yeah, application of knowledge. What do you think, Dave?

• 2:34:19Dave Berke?

  Yeah, dude, totally. And, and the piece that I still am grappling with, the larger connection, and, and I wish I could say it more clearly, is the piece that I'm struggling with, and I think most people struggle with, is what you're learning doesn't have to be applied in that same way. Meaning, so, hey, you learn, we teach a kid how to count money, and then he gets to count money, but if I were to tell you that you could be better at arm locking your opponent by reading the Marine Corps Pub on Strategy, because there's something in there that makes you think and see differently, and some people don't wanna read that stupid book, 'cause it has nothing to do with what they wanna do. Actually, actually... It does. And if you can make that connection of this thing that seems totally irrelevant to your world.

• 2:35:02Dave Berke?

  I don't like math. I'm never gonna go be a math teacher. My daughter will say, I'm not good at math and I'm never gonna go be a whatever.

• 2:35:10Dave Berke?

  There's a connection there to every other thing that you're doing. And that's a gap that's hard to bridge. It's like, it's not that that you're gonna go, but you don't have to become a mathematician for math to be important and fun in your life. I'm gonna stop there cuz I, I, I, what do you have to say? But that's the gap that I'm talking about.

• 2:35:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, that's the original idea of the thread, right? The original idea of the thread is like, all these things are connected.

• 2:35:30Dave Berke?

  Totally.

• 2:35:30Jocko Willink?

  And if you realize that they're connected, then you'll understand them better. And the better you understand this scientist from 1820,

• 2:35:38Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  the better you'll be able to relate to this artist in 1904. Like, those things are real. And, and the mind, the brain is a muscle that the more you use it, the more you utilize it, the better you can respond. And so, yeah, I think you're actually absolutely right. That's when, when, and I was kinda stuck in the six-year-old brain, right? Cuz it's really hard to explain to a six-year-old, hey, this math that you're learning is gonna help you, give you a greater capability to win in a soccer game, right? Like, that, even though we all know it's actually true, because you're sharper, you're smarter, there's a million reasons.

• 2:36:23Jocko Willink?

  So, finding it, the, finding the application of it, and when you recognize that application, and I think that's where I've been very, very lucky, because at some point, again, at some point, I said, oh, I can take what I learned in jujitsu, and I can apply it to combat, and I can apply it to leadership. And by the way, I can take something that I learned in leadership, and I can apply it to jujitsu. And all the, all the way across those, those, uh, those modalities. And by the way, those modalities, as soon as you step into some other modality, if you have the open mind, you see the application again, and you see it again, and you see it again. I mean, we do this all the time at Epsilon Front. We're working with a company that we've never worked with this company before.

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  And you take a look at what, what they're doing, how they're doing it, and you can apply the principles that we know. And if you don't understand that, look, you gotta take this little piece of this, this principle and this little piece and you put them in place. And look, we get people at Echelon Front, clients that they've read the book thousand times. They've listened to every single podcast. And as soon as you roll in and you start talking about it, they don't quite have the skill yet of maybe how to apply it. And as soon as they see how it applies, all of a sudden their mind Yeah. expands. And you go back three months later, and now they don't need, they don't need us anymore. They don't need Echelon Front anymore. They've figured out the application process. And that's where they go next level. Yeah, totally.

• 2:37:52Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of learning.

• 2:37:55Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles.

• 2:37:56Speaker 02

  Closing the knowledge gaps.

• 2:37:57Jocko Willink?

  Yes, speaking of closing the knowledge gaps.

• 2:37:59Speaker 02

  By the way, don't hide them. Hide knowledge gap. You know why I think it's fun as an adult, I think, more. So like when you're young, and maybe this has to do with part of the brain, maybe not. I don't know. From what I hear it does. When you're young, everything is short term, everything.

• 2:38:15Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:38:15Speaker 02

  Like the long term, boom, the brain has a hard time to comprehend that, you know? So like you'll get students, like young students or whatever, who get really good grades. But that tends to be because their goal is to get good grades. It's not to like learn math so I can apply it to life necessarily. Maybe that's what they're told. Maybe, maybe not. But as far as their actual like desire to learn the math, it's like to get good grades. Trey, you ever done, okay, so I taught my three year old how to shoot a slingshot.

• 2:38:48Jocko Willink?

  How to what?

• 2:38:49Speaker 02

  Shoot a slingshot.

• 2:38:51Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:38:51Speaker 02

  So I shoot a slingshot. You watch a three year old boy, by the way, you know, probably girl too. But shoot a slingshot at a bottle in front of a three year old. They're gonna think it's the most awesome thing in the world. And then they say, oh yeah, you try. He doesn't know how. He doesn't know how to put the thing in. He gets all mad or whatever. I teach him, he's focused on that thing like, man, this is, I'm gonna learn the world's solutions right now. This is the best thing in my life and I need to learn this. Trey, teach him how to like memorize the alphabet. He'll be like, bro, I'll listen to you, but bro, I'm not into this right now, you know? It's just night and day, you know? Um, or, or try to do a puzzle with a kid. You're just looking for that one piece that fits. And when it fits, it's like, cool.

• 2:39:35Speaker 02

  But meanwhile, as an adult, you're like, cool, that is cool. That's good incremental like progress that we're making, but it's really cool when this whole corner is developed. And then this whole corners, and then you put them all together and boom, the big puzzle. See what I'm saying? It's like a bigger picture kind of thing, way of thinking. Anyway, that's why I think, and then not to mention, when you're in an adult, what you're learning tends to be something you chose to learn. And that's already, you're just already going on that path of fulfilling like little gaps in your knowledge that you need to be filled. You know, so like actionable knowledge kind of thing. It's already gonna be set up like that, just, just by the very nature of you choosing what to learn. See what I'm saying?

• 2:40:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's why it's important for parents, teachers, human beings to try and get the kids to recognize what that thread, that, that thread ties everything together. The, the long, cause if we're learning for short term, we're learning for short, for short term, and it's hard to see where it all ties into.

• 2:40:32Speaker 02

  Yep, that's true.

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  With that.

• 2:40:37Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:40:38Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of long-term, short-term learning, what do you got for us? Echo Charles?

• 2:40:41Speaker 02

  If you have, I'm gonna go with the knowledge gap situation that really, uh, cause that's a big one. Hiding knowledge gap or closing.

• 2:40:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, exposing and therefore closing.

• 2:40:51Speaker 02

  Closing, yes. So, jujitsu, let's face it. Let's face it. I don't need to learn how to fight, right? Cause I don't fight.

• 2:41:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:03Speaker 02

  Thing, if that knowledge gap is exposed in the real world, you can have a problem. We are gonna have a problem. So let's close that knowledge gap when we take jujitsu. When we take jujitsu, what do we need? Jujitsu training, gear. Gi, if you're doing gi, rashkar, if you're doing no gi. Okay, so we're getting all this stuff, there's more stuff, by the way. Orjamine.com, that's where you can get your keys, best keys in the world, American made, 100%.

• 2:41:30Speaker 02

  Are we back making jeans yet?

• 2:41:32Jocko Willink?

  We are making jeans. We are back in the game, jeans are being made.

• 2:41:36Speaker 02

  Good.

• 2:41:38Jocko Willink?

  You can order them and you will get them. We have, we're, we're making so if you don't know, we, we started making masks, face coverings, actually, because we don't want people to get confused and think that this is an N95 masks. They're not, but there's recommendations from all kinds of people, including law enforcement that will find you here in the state of California if you're not wearing a mask.

• 2:42:04Speaker 02

  No kidding?

• 2:42:05Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Is that under certain circumstances?

• 2:42:08Jocko Willink?

  You're outside. Started May 1st.

• 2:42:10Speaker 02

  No kidding?

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So anyways, at Origin, we started making masks so that people face coverings. So if you want to get those, go to originmaine.com. You can also get a bunch of other clothes, including jeans. Yes. You can also get, let's say you're in lockdown at your house.

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  You didn't have a gym. No gym. Your gym is shut down because of COVID-19. Now you have no weights, no gym. What are you gonna do? Well, you want to work out. You want to train. Guess what you can get from Origin Maine? Two items right now. One of them is a plyo box, right? You want to get your jump on. And there's all kinds of things you can do with a plyo box. You know what I do with a plyo box?

• 2:42:57Speaker 02

  Pushups.

• 2:42:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, pushups. Yes, jumps. Yeah, all that stuff. You know what else I do? Stretch. Oddly enough.

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  It's one of those things. You use it to get yourself in positions that force you to stretch, and I am not a good stretcher.

• 2:43:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:13Jocko Willink?

  And then we also have something known as the burden.

• 2:43:19Speaker 02

  The legendary.

• 2:43:20Jocko Willink?

  The burden, which is a, what would you say it is?

• 2:43:24Speaker 02

  A leather kettlebell.

• 2:43:26Jocko Willink?

  It's a leather kettlebell. So it shows up to your house with no weight. And then you can fill it with whatever you want to fill it with. My recommendation, actually, pennies. Go to your bank. Go to your bank and get. Fifty to seventy-five dollars worth of pennies. Load them into the burden. So, uh, stitch it up, not stitch it, but you tie it up, it's like shoelaces. And then you have. You got about a thirty to forty pound kettlebell, depending on, on how much you fill it up.

• 2:43:57Speaker 02

  Yeah dang, that's a good idea. Pennies are heavy, man.

• 2:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Pennies are heavy. And they're readily available. They have them at the bank. There's gonna be a run on pennies in America. They're gonna go up in value.

• 2:44:08Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, you know, they're going out, they're phasing out pennies. They were.

• 2:44:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, we'll have some.

• 2:44:12Speaker 02

  Even have them at the bank?

• 2:44:13Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  They do.

• 2:44:14Jocko Willink?

  They do. Yes, they do.

• 2:44:15Speaker 02

  I heard like five years ago that they're straight up phasing pennies out of the whole game.

• 2:44:21Jocko Willink?

  The cool thing, forty pounds might seem light for a kettlebell. If you've never used a kettlebell before, or you don't work out, you're gonna be surprised forty pounds is heavy, is more than, you're gonna have to go lighter than that. But dealing with the burden, because it's pliable. It's actually harder to you, it's harder to work with than a kettlebell. So, like, you know, a kettlebell is harder to work with a barbell because it's odd shape and it's whatever. This is one step even harder.

• 2:44:48Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:44:49Jocko Willink?

  So, you can get really kinda savage workouts just with the burden.

• 2:44:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Cause it's like, you know, that's the whole thing with like, uh, like sandbags or, you know, that kinda thing. Yeah, the awkward is like working more your muscle.

• 2:45:06Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a burden, Dave?

• 2:45:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:45:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang, your relationships must not be very good right now over at Origin.

• 2:45:14Speaker 02

  Well, it's a hot commodity. That thing is good, man.

• 2:45:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we sold out immediately, but we got more leather. So, we're back in the game.

• 2:45:24Speaker 02

  Making them happen.

• 2:45:25Jocko Willink?

  Making them happen.

• 2:45:26Speaker 02

  More burdens.

• 2:45:27Jocko Willink?

  Yes, more burdens for the world.

• 2:45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was good.

• 2:45:30Jocko Willink?

  Carry your burden.

• 2:45:32Speaker 02

  Also, boots, or we're back doing the boots thing. Do you have boots, right, Dave?

• 2:45:37Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:45:37Speaker 02

  No boots either?

• 2:45:38Jocko Willink?

  No boots. Very bad relationships over there.

• 2:45:40Speaker 02

  Either that or, or they know me really well.

• 2:45:43Jocko Willink?

  You're not wearing boots.

• 2:45:44Speaker 02

  Probably not wearing boots.

• 2:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, check.

• 2:45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, well, yeah, you won't wear boots like just around.

• 2:45:51Jocko Willink?

  No, I don't wear boots just around. No, but when I go on the road, I only wear, I only wear boots.

• 2:45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, cool. Makes sense. Everything at originmaine.com. Also supplements. If you are not keeping your joints in order, you're not gonna be happy. Big picture. Cause after a while, they, they, they, they jam up. Trust me. So yes, joint warfare from Jocko Joint Warfare, uh, super krill oil.

• 2:46:18Speaker 02

  Also, we have the discipline. Keep your mind in the game, your brain in the game. Dave Berke, super excited about the discipline. Pretty much daily.

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Not pretty much. It's daily. It's actual daily. Yeah, hey, we spun up some more Cold War too. So, yeah, if you, if you need that little immune system hitter, you can jump on the Cold War and get some of that. Uh, the cans

• 2:46:49Jocko Willink?

  of discipline go, ready to drink. And there's a new flavor that will be coming out. Actually, there's a couple of new flavors that will be coming out. One of them is called Sour Apple Sniper. The JP Denell Signature. And then also, we will be announcing

• 2:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Afterburner Orange, the Dave Berke Signature Model. And then Echo Charles, we don't have a name. We don't even have a flavor yet. But I sensed in the room today when we started talking about Afterburner Orange, let's just say some of us weren't as excited and maybe thought that maybe they should have their own.

• 2:47:28Speaker 02

  What are you talking about, bro? That's not even true.

• 2:47:32Speaker 02

  You put that on me, that's not true. It's not true at all.

• 2:47:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I think you need your own flavor.

• 2:47:36Speaker 02

  Alright, there you go. Well, thanks, bro.

• 2:47:40Dave Berke?

  But yes, FYI, I, I got a sample of the Sour Apple Sniper.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  You still watch this?

• 2:47:45Dave Berke?

  Dude, it is so good. And I, I did my first two samples of, of the Afterburner Orange. Right now, that Sour Apple Sniper, they have that, they've dialed that thing in. That thing was good.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it'll take, it'll take some iterations.

• 2:48:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I've done two. I did two, I've done two trials so far.

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  Of Afterburner Orange?

• 2:48:05Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I got the first two, got the family, everybody got in on it, tried it.

• 2:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just gonna take, it takes iterations to get it there. The, I mean, for the first mulk. For Mint Mulk, I went through 10 iterations. Tried again, tried again, tried again, and then finally I was like, yep, there it is. So, all that good stuff. Warrior Kid Mulk, Jaco White Tea. Man, I made a Jaco White Tea the other day, like, from the tea bags. That is so legit. And all this stuff is available at the Vitamin Shoppe. If the Vitamin Shoppe is open in your area right now, since we're all locked down, you can check it all out there. OriginMaine.com. OriginMaine, M-A-I-N-E. OriginMaine.com for any of this gear. And it does support.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  Yes, does support. The whole game, the whole system, really. Also, Jaco has a store, and it's called Jaco Store, so.

• 2:49:00Jocko Willink?

  Super original.

• 2:49:01Speaker 02

  Yes. We go to JacoStore.com, and you can get, you know, what do you call it? Merch. Is that what the kids say? Merch? Yeah. Unless t-shirts, hoodies, more rash guards, beanies, some women's stuff on there, tank tops and whatnot. You know, discipline equals freedom, you know? The whole, the whole, uh, how should I say?

• 2:49:25Speaker 02

  As far as representation goes, you will be representing the path. We'll say that. I got a good quarantine shirt on there, too. If you want to represent in lockdown, you're still putting in the work. You're still doing your decline pushups on the plyo box. You're carrying the burden, you see what I'm saying? And you want to represent, we got a good quarantine shirt for you, a good one. Got women's tank top, too. Tank tops, too, by the way. Anyway, JacoStore.com, good stuff on there.

• 2:49:54Jocko Willink?

  I'll just leave that out there for you.

• 2:49:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good, man.

• 2:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't yet. Leave a review.

• 2:50:04Jocko Willink?

  So we can read it. Hopefully, it's funny. Hopefully, it's impactful. Also, got some other podcasts. Got a podcast called The Thread. The episodes are out. They're on YouTube. It's a different, what is it? Podcast feed.

• 2:50:22Jocko Willink?

  What is it called?

• 2:50:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is called the feed. Yeah, that's true.

• 2:50:24Jocko Willink?

  So there's a, there's a different feed for the thread. There's a different feed for grounded. So the thread is about, well, it's about what we were just talking about. The thread of things, how things connect together in the world. And we, myself, Daryl Cooper of Marder Made, have been doing that podcast. It's been, it's been wild, to be honest with you. He's bringing things up in my mind, making me remember things. One of the coolest things that he made me remember was this conversation with contractors. I'm in Baghdad, it's 2003, 2004, and there's contractors that show up in Baghdad. These guys are Blackwater guys or whatever, triple canopy guys.

• 2:51:02Jocko Willink?

  And these guys come in to our compound and they just kind of arrived in country. And a couple of them are former SEALs, you know, probably in the 90s, no combat experience. And they're talking to us and, you know, we're looking at their gear and we're kind of giving them a heads up. And I, that Daryl, because he's good like this. We were asking the guys, because they were, they were about to go to Fallujah. And they were taking up armored Ford Explorers, which sounds badass. But the up armored Ford Explorers were actually horrible. All they were was a regular Ford Explorer, two-wheel drive Ford Explorer,

• 2:51:44Jocko Willink?

  with like a little bulletproof glass mounted inside of it. They didn't make any adjustments to the suspension. They didn't make any adjustments to the power. It was just, they were junk. And so we're looking at these guys, getting ready to go in Fallujah. And we're asking them, hey, do you guys have run flats for your? Okay, we're asking, hey, do you have this? Do you have this? Do you have a radio? Do you have this? And then it's like, hey, do you have run flats for your, for your Ford Explorers? And they're like, no. And, and Daryl named the podcast, you know, Do You Have Run Flats? And it's such a great name because that really shows you where we were at. That was towards the end of my deployment. And these guys are just showing up.

• 2:52:28Jocko Willink?

  And you're, we knew how bad things could get and how quickly they could get bad. And these guys who had just showed up had no idea what they were getting into. And within a month, the contractors that got, that got ambushed in Fallujah and strung up on the, on the bridge. Then we're there. So we go into all kinds of things like that type of story, like that type of information, which I really haven't talked about in that podcast, the thread, and we're gonna, we got China coming up, we're going deep on China. And so we also have the grounded podcast, which is about jujitsu. We have the Warrior Kid Podcast, which is for Warrior Kids latest, latest episode, I think it's the latest episode is about Johnny Kim.

• 2:53:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:12Jocko Willink?

  Johnny Kim's on it. Guest, guest starring astronaut, doctor, and SEAL Johnny Kim. Warrior Kid Soap, don't forget about that. It's available on Jaco Store now. Is it, are we there yet?

• 2:53:25Speaker 02

  Are we there yet? Yes.

• 2:53:27Jocko Willink?

  That was a massive hesitation. Warrior Kid Soap, get some killer soap for yourself, and that way you, your family, everyone you know,

• 2:53:37Jocko Willink?

  can stay clean.

• 2:53:38Speaker 02

  Stay clean.

• 2:53:39Jocko Willink?

  Stay clean.

• 2:53:40Speaker 02

  Speaking of staying clean, we have a YouTube channel, very clean YouTube channel. Uh, where?

• 2:53:46Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I'm not sure how clean that YouTube channel is. Why can't you just go in and do like, you need to make channels within the channel, one that says, you know, whatever you call hype videos, or one of those things. What enhanced, you should have enhanced videos, you should have excerpts, you should have the thread, you should have grounded, you should have grounded all in separate channels. That's my humble opinion.

• 2:54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:09Jocko Willink?

  You know what? I'll go home and do it.

• 2:54:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Alright, taking action. Well, they are, they're in playlists, right? So it's called playlists, that's what they're called.

• 2:54:17Jocko Willink?

  So you've done that already?

• 2:54:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've done that, but here's the thing, what you're talking about, which I agree.

• 2:54:22Jocko Willink?

  Is it, I've done that? Or is it, here's the thing? Which one of these two are we talking about?

• 2:54:27Speaker 02

  It's actually technically both. So that is done, they're in playlists, so you can go to the playlist section, then they'll be organized. But if you go to the main YouTube, then there's a way to organize it where it displays your playlist with, which is what I think anyway, that you're, you're talking about, right? Like channels within the channel?

• 2:54:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:46Speaker 02

  So when you go to the main page?

• 2:54:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:48Speaker 02

  It's like you can, nonetheless, yeah, it is done. So yes, they can be played in a row, in order, whatever. And, you know, be, not filtered out, but like if you just want to listen to the thread, right? And you just let them play, boom. See what I'm saying?

• 2:55:02Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:55:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, got them all. Anyway, yes, we do have a YouTube channel, Jock Podcast YouTube channel. Video version, video. See what Dave looks like. See what we all look like, whatever. Also excerpts on there.

• 2:55:11Jocko Willink?

  We got psychological warfare. If you need a little psychological hitter to push you through a moment of weakness, you can check that out wherever MP3.

• 2:55:23Speaker 02

  Are sold.

• 2:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Wherever MP3, I was gonna say songs, but they're not songs. Wherever MP3 audio is coming at you, check it out. Psychological Warfare is the name of that. Flipsidecanvas.com. Dakota Meyer making psychological warfare for your eyeballs. Go to Flipsidecanvas.com. Books, we got some books. What book? How about The Code? The Evaluations, The Protocol, Dave Berke. How's it going?

• 2:55:51Dave Berke?

  It's going pretty good.

• 2:55:52Jocko Willink?

  Uh, how, are you happy with the product?

• 2:55:55Dave Berke?

  I am. I've been more happy with the interaction that the product has created. Yeah. A ton of interaction, man. It is so awesome to see how many people got it and got either back on the path or understood the path better. Uh, the interaction from that has been awesome, man. I'm stoked to be a part of that.

• 2:56:13Speaker 02

  That is the, that book is like, this is another thing that it, that it sort of does. And whether, is this surprising? Hmm, maybe, maybe not. But it's like, okay, so you read it, right? You could refer to it, all this stuff. It's like a big part of it is just a reminder to just evaluate how good you're doing and, and really remember that you have, you do have a goal, right? And if you don't, then make a goal, whatever. So like, this is what it'll do, like if I'll work out, which is a normal thing. You know, try to work out, but I'm mentally conscious of like, okay, what kind of workout was that? Was that a two? Was that a five? You know, and I'm kind, like at the end, I have a straight up number done, straight up. And then I'll like share it with somebody. Just threw up a four today, you know, whoever, you know, if they're sort of in the game as well.

• 2:56:56Speaker 02

  Like that's what it'll do, you know? So it'll keep you on track, man, in that way.

• 2:57:00Dave Berke?

  Dude, without a doubt, you start thinking about things you've never thought about before.

• 2:57:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Also just being able to say, I just need to at least get a one over here. Just at least like, hey. And you also look at some cookies and you say, no, I'm not gonna go to zero right now. Mae Favan was telling me he had a little scenario unfold and he was like, hmm, this could be a zero. A little zero on the diet. I had a little scenario yesterday. Just had to throw up a zero. On food, on on fuel intake.

• 2:57:33Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 2:57:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:34Speaker 02

  What, mint chocolate chip ice cream?

• 2:57:36Jocko Willink?

  No, no, worse, way worse.

• 2:57:38Speaker 02

  Donuts.

• 2:57:39Jocko Willink?

  No, no, I'm never gonna eat donuts again. If you see me eating donuts, you can stab me in the face. Um, cause I'm just not gonna do it. But, uh, just straight up American, uh, bacon cheeseburger.

• 2:57:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:53Jocko Willink?

  Which, right, we're, we're already not good, but fries with it. That's just no fat. That's just unsat.

• 2:57:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:00Jocko Willink?

  It's just unsat.

• 2:58:00Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, that does, uh, what is that? The, the, that amounts to a zero. Yeah, for sure.

• 2:58:05Jocko Willink?

  That's, I was actually, I, I asked Leif, I was like, maybe I should have put some kind of negative numbering, like, you, it's gonna actually take you time to dig out of the hole. Right? You had bacon double cheeseburger.

• 2:58:19Dave Berke?

  The carryover for the next day's diet. You're carrying that with you. You're counting another point on tomorrow's number.

• 2:58:24Jocko Willink?

  It should be a negative. Even if I ate today, you know, a grass fed steak, I, you know, whatever, and, uh, and a salad, I would still not even be able to dig out of the hole of french fries. I don't eat french fries, come on.

• 2:58:39Speaker 02

  What's a, what would be a one as far as a meal goes? You think?

• 2:58:46Jocko Willink?

  I think just a no, I think, I think, uh,

• 2:58:50Jocko Willink?

  well, I don't know.

• 2:58:51Speaker 02

  Because look, if there's, if there's a potential for a five, a meal that's a five, a four, a three, a two, and a one.

• 2:58:57Jocko Willink?

  Well, first of all, it's a whole day, right? It's a whole day.

• 2:58:59Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:58:59Jocko Willink?

  It's a whole day. You can't just give one meal.

• 2:59:01Speaker 02

  Oh, got it. Got it.

• 2:59:02Dave Berke?

  You don't get up, have, have a ideal breakfast and give yourself a five for diet for the day and call it good. You gotta do the whole day and, you know, if you're on a five for a diet, that diet is, that consumption is tethered to other things that you're doing. You are optimized. A one is like, I, I didn't do anything bad. But I didn't do anything like constructive either. I'm not like managing what I'm intaking.

• 2:59:25Jocko Willink?

  A one's like you ate to survive, you, and you didn't do anything that took you going backwards.

• 2:59:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like what though?

• 2:59:33Jocko Willink?

  There's no french fries involved. If you ate french fries in the day, you're not getting a one.

• 2:59:37Speaker 02

  Okay. Is this a one day? We'll say breakfast, lunch, dinner, keep it simple. Okay, uh, breakfast, we ate.

• 2:59:45Speaker 02

  Frosted mini wheat?

• 2:59:46Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:59:47Speaker 02

  You're already it's no cereal.

• 2:59:49Jocko Willink?

  What are we talking about?

• 2:59:50Speaker 02

  Frosted mini wheat.

• 2:59:51Jocko Willink?

  We're serious right now?

• 2:59:53Speaker 02

  What about shredded wheat?

• 2:59:54Jocko Willink?

  No, brother.

• 2:59:55Speaker 02

  What? No wheat?

• 2:59:56Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:59:56Speaker 02

  No whole wheat, nothing.

• 2:59:57Jocko Willink?

  Cereal.

• 2:59:58Speaker 02

  What about granola? Granola out. That's not, that's a zero?

• 3:00:01Jocko Willink?

  Hey, look, here's the other thing. We gotta look at what is, what is it that you've set up for yourself, right? Because some people, if you're running a marathon, all of a sudden you're gonna need certain foods that you would not need had you been trying to cut weight or had you been trying to gain weight, right?

• 3:00:17Speaker 02

  Right, so it depends on the goal.

• 3:00:18Dave Berke?

  Listen, there's a thing here that's larger and we've had a lot of questions about this. First of all, whoever's, you mark yourself whatever you want. This is your evaluation. If your habit, if you're, if you're someone who's spent the last 10 years and you get up in the morning and your breakfast is donuts, like that's just been your thing, donuts and coffee, and you get off the donut and coffee train and you get up and you have some sort of whole wheat cereal thing to replace that, you, you're doing, you're improving, you're getting better. Now, is that a five? No, that's not a five. And, and it's not to like punish you for making one small mistake, but it's the measurement of are the things that you're doing, probably the biggest takeaway is what you said is, are you thinking about this? Because if donuts is part of your diet, every, that, that's, you're, you're a zero for nutrition

• 3:01:03Dave Berke?

  in your life and you need to get on a path by which that is no longer part of your repertoire. And when you don't do that, you gotta account for that.

• 3:01:10Jocko Willink?

  You know what? Why even play around? I have the book right here. Here's the deal. Here's a score of one, where at the end of the day, you ate everything you're gonna eat. Here's the score of one. Food intake was effective to sustain health but did not optimize nutrition or participate in health enhancing program.

• 3:01:26Dave Berke?

  Got it.

• 3:01:27Jocko Willink?

  So maybe you had some little granola, like it sustained you, but it didn't optimize.

• 3:01:34Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. It wasn't, you weren't recovering from the week's workout from Monday.

• 3:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Score zero is did not eat properly and did not provide any nutritional benefit to perform critical daily tasks. That's your donuts.

• 3:01:46Speaker 02

  Donut.

• 3:01:46Jocko Willink?

  And a pizza.

• 3:01:47Speaker 02

  Pizza.

• 3:01:48Jocko Willink?

  Right? You're just, you're getting a zero.

• 3:01:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Five, consumed ideal.

• 3:01:54Jocko Willink?

  Ideal food intake and maintained perfect adherence to diet or fasting.

• 3:02:00Dave Berke?

  Got it.

• 3:02:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, every calorie was optimal. What?

• 3:02:04Dave Berke?

  Gotcha.

• 3:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Every calorie was optimal and nothing was consumed that didn't contribute to health or nutrition, allowing for a sustained peak level of performance throughout the entire day.

• 3:02:16Dave Berke?

  Okay.

• 3:02:16Jocko Willink?

  No big deal.

• 3:02:17Dave Berke?

  No big deal. I had an interesting situation to throw to the crowd here. Happened to me on Saturday night.

• 3:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:02:23Dave Berke?

  So, normal day, Saturday, we're out. It's a good day. Took my kids mountain biking. We had a good day.

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:02:30Dave Berke?

  Came back, had a good, I think I grilled. We had a normal dinner and then we had a little adult, a little situation at the neighbors. We had some, we went to the neighbor's house. We did some social distancing, hanging out. Everything was cool. They're all drinking. I don't drink. I'm hanging out. It's all good. We had a good time. Get home just before midnight.

• 3:02:48Jocko Willink?

  Feeling hungry, Dave.

• 3:02:49Dave Berke?

  Feeling, so at, at literally the stroke of midnight, I am consuming strawberry milk.

• 3:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:02:57Dave Berke?

  At midnight.

• 3:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm, I'm good with that.

• 3:03:01Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm totally.

• 3:03:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. My last meal was way after. I didn't need, I should have just, I didn't need a meal, but I was, I wanted something that tasted good so bad that I just.

• 3:03:12Speaker 02

  That's a good question right there though.

• 3:03:13Jocko Willink?

  One of the good things about milk, just check it out. You might feel guilty because it tasted so good, but you're actually being clear.

• 3:03:19Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:21Dave Berke?

  This cannot be good for me at midnight.

• 3:03:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the motive too, right? You weren't like, hey, I'm on this program. This milk needs to facilitate the program. You're like, hey, I need something that tastes good. There's the milk. So it's kind of a question. Is that, so what is that? Is that like a two? It has to be something because milk is good for you. Are you, if you're, uh, working out on any regular basis, milk is good for you and it does support your goals. Hundred percent.

• 3:03:45Dave Berke?

  Milk is good for you, period.

• 3:03:46Jocko Willink?

  I don't even think this is a question, actually. This is a positive.

• 3:03:49Speaker 02

  That was a good thing. Good deal.

• 3:03:51Jocko Willink?

  It's just a little guilt because it tastes so good.

• 3:03:53Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, leadership strategy and tactics. So the code, you can get that one. It's up and running. We had a little lag time. I apologize. I didn't realize that every single person was going to buy it immediately. We're back up to speed. Sorry about the delay. We also have Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We have Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. We have Mikey and the Dragons. We have Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. We have Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. We also have Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. A lot of that right now is taking place on EF Online. You heard me reference it a bunch today.

• 3:04:35Jocko Willink?

  Go to efonline.com. If you want to interact with us, check it out. We're on there. We're live. Not just me, but all the instructors at Echelon Front. Different times a day, different subjects, lots of interaction, Q and A, Leadership Primer. We talked about that. Immediate action drills, all kinds of stuff going on. Efonline.com. Check that out. muster2020. Orlando's canceled. Phoenix, Arizona is up next, September 16th and 17th, and then Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Check extremeownership.com if you want to come. We canceled an entire muster with 900 people. Some of those people are going to Phoenix and/or Dallas. So those are going to sell out earlier than

• 3:05:20Jocko Willink?

  we thought. Get on it earlier if you want to go. And of course, we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. If you are in the military, go to eflegion.com and enroll. There's companies that are hiring right now, even though there's companies that are laying people off and furloughing. There are other companies that are exploding in growth and need people. So go to EF Overwatch and EF Legion. EF Legion is where you can just enroll immediately. EF Overwatch is for companies that are searching for executive position. EF Legion are looking for frontline leaders, frontline managers to make things happen. Also, AmericasMightyWarriors.org. This is Mark Lee's Moms Charity Organization,

• 3:06:05Jocko Willink?

  helping service members worldwide. Go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Donate. You can donate right there. There's a little section that says donate, and she spreads the love to service members, their families, and Gold Star families. And if you haven't had enough of my oppressive...

• 3:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Elocution, or Echo's farcical blathering, or Dave's Top Gun talk, then you can locate us on the interwebs, as well as Twitter, on Instagram, and on

• 3:06:50Jocko Willink?

  the

• 3:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Dave is at David R Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all the men and women out there in uniform, our military members who fight and risk it all for our way of life. Thank you to the police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service.

• 3:07:15Jocko Willink?

  Thank you all for taking care of us here on the home front, and to all the doctors, nurses, and medical personnel that are working to keep us safe and healthy. Thank you for dedicating your life's work to the care of others.

• 3:07:33Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there, remember that you are your own commander. You are in charge of your life. You are the general.

• 3:07:46Jocko Willink?

  And you are also the soldier.

• 3:07:49Jocko Willink?

  You have to lead,

• 3:07:52Jocko Willink?

  but you also have to follow. That is how you achieve your mission.

• 3:08:00Jocko Willink?

  So go out there

• 3:08:03Jocko Willink?

  and get after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jaco. Out.