524: How Soldiers and Soldiering Reflect Real Life Every Single Day

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Focusing on what makes effective commanders: robustness under stress, calmness, boldness, common sense, logistics, and staying connected to the troops—plus why “luck” usually follows action and risk. Breaking down leadership lessons from Field Marshal Archibald Wavell (and his “In Praise of Infantry” / Soldiers and Soldiering). Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 524 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier. He suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm. The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battlefield.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  We ought therefore to put our men of best intelligence and endurance into the infantry.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a quote from Field Marshal Archibald Wavell. He's an Earl and the article was in the London Times in 1945. The article was titled "In Praise of Infantry." And Archibald Wavell was the son of a major general, a major general in the British Army that fought in the Second Boer War. Commanded Johannesburg after its capture. Wavell went then went to the Royal Military College in Sandhurst. He was commissioned in 1901 as a second lieutenant in the Black Watch. He himself fought in the Boer War.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  So I guess he was working for his dad at some point. Then he was off to India. He fought in the Bazar Valley Campaign, which was a punitive expedition against a tribe on the Northwest Frontier. And punitive expeditions don't, not quite politically correct evolutions.

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  They are not considered very politically correct evolutions. Uh, it is what it sounds like. It's like a punitive, like someone in some tribe does something to let's say the colonialists and then they go and just punish that group. So they could be pretty devastating. Uh, he then went to staff college, spent a year as a military observer with the Russian army, working as a staff officer when world war one began, wounded at the second battle of Ypres, lost his left eye, awarded the military cross, but stayed in, worked as a staff officer, um, 34 years old, became a general, one of the youngest generals in the British army, part of the Egyptian expeditionary force until the war was over. And then between wars, he kind

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  of continued with his military career. Um, 1937, he was a general officer commanding of British forces in Palestine and Transjordan, fought against the insurgents there, continued various assignments in the Middle East and Greece and the Baklans. And then when world war two kicked off, he once again went through a bunch of different assignments, started in the Middle East, went to Africa, fighting in Somali land, Eritrea, Mogadishu, Libya, uh, eventually was there when they withdrew troops from Somalia, from Somali land and was part of that push, one of the leaders in the push into Greece and Crete in 1941, which didn't work out well, fought early battles against Rommel in 1941, which also didn't work out well, assigned as

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  the commander in chief of India and was responsible for the defense of Southeast Asia from Japan, and also the defense of Burma, was preparing for long range operations behind Japanese lines when the war ended. He stayed in India until 1947, returned to England,

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  served as Lord Lieutenant of the County of London, and thankfully, he wrote.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  About military campaigns, wrote about military history and wrote about military leadership. And fortunately for us, in 1953, they put together a little compilation of his works. And this little book is called Soldiers and Soldiering, and we're going to take a look at some of the lessons he got from this pretty, pretty long and varied military career with some wins and losses, by the way. So, let's get into it. Field Marshal Earl, he's an Earl.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  What's an Earl?

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  I thought his first name was Earl when I first started reading about him. But that's his title.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, what, what, do you know what that is?

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  There's a bunch of different titles in the British royalty caste system. And this is one of them, you know, it's like Lord.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Knight.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, knight is would be subordinated, I think, to Earl. But Earl is one of the titles that you can get.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Isn't there like Count?

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like this is in the Count genre.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  I'm married to a Brit. I didn't have time to research it with her because plus she gets really hyped up when she starts talking about,

• 4:53Jocko Willink?

  you know, British activities, royalty activities. So this, but it, but this is a book. It's one of those books where you read and you go, dang, that's a good way of thinking about it. Oh, he thinks that too, or oh, that's an angle I didn't think of. So let's get into it. Fast forward a little. I'm not proposing to deliver to you an apologia for generals, but to explain the qualities necessary for a general and the conditions which he has to exercise his calling. So he's just talking about what are the qualities that it takes to make a good general? And he read a bunch of, he says, I read a bunch of expositions from various writers about the virtues, military or otherwise that are, you know, considered to be required. And he ends up landing on Socrates and Socrates said,

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  "The general must know how to get his men their rations and every other kind of stores needed for war." That's the opener, opening thing. You need to be able to feed your people. "He must have imagination to originate plans, practical sense and energy to carry them through." This is an interesting topic, this energy thing, energy, energy.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, Ran, all right?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  She says, she says, energy quite a bit.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  And she'll say it multiple times like I just did. Energy, energy. Uh, he must be observant, untiring, shrewd. And this is where we get into some, he's gonna rattle off some dichotomies here. Kindly and cruel. Simple and crafty. A watchman and a robber. Lavish and miserly. Isn't this like, this is the literal dichotomies of leadership right here. Generous and stingy. Rash and conservative. So he's, this is, this is Socrates rattling off dichotomies that a leader has to be. All these and many other qualities, natural and acquired, he must have. He should also, as a matter of course, know his tactics. For a disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials as a house.

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  Facts. He goes on a little bit here, but even this definition of Socrates does not, to my mind, emphasize sufficiently what I hold to be the first essential of a general. The quality of robustness. The ability to stand the shocks of war. So this is for him is the number one quality. And this is, man, when you look back at life, your life and people around you, and you think about how well did they stand the shocks of life or war? It's pretty telling. Probably this factor did not apply as much in Socrates times. People did not then suffer from what is now elegantly known as the jitters. Yeah, you're right. Cause in Socrates times, they weren't sitting in a trench,

• 7:32Jocko Willink?

  waiting to die for months on end from a overhead fire, indirect fire. I can perhaps best explain what I mean by robust, by robustness, by a physical illustration. I remember long ago when I was a very young officer being told by a mountain gunner friend that whenever in the old days, a new design of a mountain gun was submitted to the artillery committee, that august body had taken it to the top of a tower, some hundred feet high, and thence dropped it to the ground.

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  If it was still capable of functioning, it was given further trial. If not, it was rejected as flimsy. The committee reasoned that mules and mountain guns might easily fall down the hillside and must be made capable of surviving so trivial a misadventure. On similar grounds, rifles and automatic weapons submitted to the small arms committee, I believe, are buried in mud for 48 hours or so before being tested for their rapid firing capabilities. The necessity for such a test was very aptly illustrated in the late war, when the original Canadian contingent arrived in France armed with the Ross rifle, a weapon which had shown its superior qualities in target shooting at the B- Bizzley ranges in peace.

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  In the mud of the trenches, it was found to jam after a very few rounds, and after a short experience of the weapon under active service conditions, the Canadian soldier refused to have anything to do with it and insisted on being armed with the British rifle. So you're gonna use something in combat, you need to test it. Put it in mud, shoot it. And I gotta see a bunch of these tests happen with some of the various weapons. We'll have to talk to Cappy Army through all that stuff. But that's what they do. They take military weapons and there's certain tests that you have to put them through. And one of them is like burying them in mud, freezing them, put them in water, pulling them back out, letting them rust, see how much rust they can take, you know, just all these things. How many rounds can they shoot without jamming? They do all these kind of things because they gotta be robust. And what he's saying, it's the same thing for a general, going to the book.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  Now, the mind of the general in war is buried, not merely for 48 hours, but for days and weeks in the mud and sand of unreliable information and uncertain factors, and may at any time receive from an unsuspected move of the enemy, an unforeseen accident or a treacherous turn in the weather, a bump equivalent to a drop of at least 100 feet onto something hard. Delicate mechanisms is, delicate mechanisms is of little use in war.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  And this applies to the mind of the commander as well to his body, to the spear of an army as well as to the weapons and instruments with which it is equipped. All material of war, including the general, must have a certain solidity, a high margin over the normal breaking strain. It is often said that the British war material is unnecessarily solid and the same possibly possibly is apt to be true of their generals. But we are certainly right to leave a good margin. So I, I, you know, it's one of those questions. Where does that come from? Where do you get that solidity as a human being? Does it come from your upbringing?

• 10:46Jocko Willink?

  Is it something that you're born with? Is it a little bit of both? Are you, you know, a nine-year-old that's in wrestling practice, gutting it out every single day and you just get tougher? Are you home alone a lot and you gotta figure out how to fend for yourself? Like what's going on in your childhood? Or is it just like, oh, this is just who you are? And you'll get, this is one of those things that who knows, maybe we'll never know, but basic SEAL training, there'll be a guy that grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth and he'll make it through, had a very nice little easy life, made it through and some

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  other guy that grew up in the ghetto with, or out on the farm or in some really rugged environment and quit and the same and both, some guys that are rich quit or some guys that grew up in the silver spoon quit, some guys that grew up really tough, make it. So you just don't know what's gonna happen. So where's it come from? We don't know. But I can tell you, we can find out who's got it. We might not know where it comes from, but we can find out who's got it. It is sometimes argued whether war is art or science. I noted that in the invitation to me to deliver these lectures, I was to choose some branch of the science of war. Perhaps I'd been lecturing at a rival university. It might have been termed the art of war.

• 12:12Jocko Willink?

  I know of no branch of art or science, however, in which rivals are at liberty to throw stones at the artist or scientist to steal his tools and destroy his materials while he is working, always against time on his picture or statue or experiment. So there you go. Is it art or science? Well, I never said anybody trying to murder the scientist or the artist while they're working on their experiment or working on their piece of art. So he's like, dude, this is a totally different thing.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  Under such conditions, how many of the great masterpieces of art or discoveries of science would have been produced? No, the civil comparison to war must be that of a game, a very rough and dirty game for which a robust body and mind are essential. The general is dealing with men's lives and must have a certain mental robustness to stand the strain of this responsibility. How great that strain is, you may judge by the sudden deaths of many of the commanders of the late war. When you read military history, take note of the failures due to lack of this quality of robustness. I propose to say a few words about the physical attributes of a general. Courage, health, and youth. Personal appearance, we need not worry about.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  An imposing presence can be a most useful asset, but good generals, as the story of good racehorses, run in all shapes. Yeah, you can look like anything. Physical courage is not so essential a factor in reaching high rank as it was in the old days of close range fighting, but it still is of very considerable importance today in determining the degree of risk a commander will take to see for himself what is going on. And in mechanized warfare, we may again see the general leading his troops almost in the front of the fighting or possibly reconnoitering and commanding from the air. So he's saying, look, physically, sure, it's good to have that big physical presence,

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  but it's not a necessity. And then courage, good to have, sure, but it's different now that you're not like charging across the battlefield with a sword.

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  An example of the extent to which generals came under fire in the old days, you may like to know that at Marlborough's assault on Schellenberg during the Blenheim campaign, which is like the 1700s, six lieutenant generals were killed and five wounded in the Allied Army, while the 1,500 British casualties at the action included four major generals and 28 brigadiers or lieutenant colonels. So that's some serious sacrifice from the head shed there. There's a good story told about of one of Napoleon's marshals, La Fiebre, the gallant old soldier who became Duke of Danzig. A civilian friend was once envying him at his house and the decorations

• 15:09Jocko Willink?

  and other awards he had. At last, the old marshal got tired of it and said to him, "Well, if you want all these things, come out to my garden and let me have 10 shots at you at 40 paces. If you survive, I'll hand over to you my house and everything in it." His friend, perhaps naturally objected. "All right," said the old man, the old marshal, "but remember that I had several hundred shots fire at me at that range before I got all these things." Yeah. Courage, physical and moral, a general undoubtedly must have. Voltaire praises in Marlborough that calm courage in the midst of tumult, that serenity of soul in danger, which is the greatest

• 15:52Jocko Willink?

  gift, nature, of nature for command. So staying calm, staying calm, the greatest gift you can have is to be able to stay calm. Isn't that wild? It's wild to think that people are gonna be in a senior leadership position and still have to contend with keeping their emotions under control. It's kind of wild for me to think about that.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  How much of that do you think is? I guess it's no way of knowing, but how much, how much of that do you think is like them or people thinking that it's like cool?

• 16:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're gonna get to that.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  There is a section there where he talks about like what people think of it. And certainly it can be seen as a, I mean, it can be seen as a tool that you could use.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:47Jocko Willink?

  But usually it's a tool for the weak, you know, you, you, you mess something up. Like if I've got, if I've got to like blow my, lose my temper and, and I will say like calculated loss of temper, you know, is obviously, uh, do I recommend it? No. Have I had to use that? Yes.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  Probably three times.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's.

• 17:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, if I include my kids, maybe like, yeah, maybe like five times. If I include like my kids where I had to be like, oh yeah, they, they don't think this is a big deal. And you have to like escalate.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I wouldn't maybe not quite call it like losing my temper, but at least escalate where they feel like some emotion, right?

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  It's the. But that's like five times in the last, like, I don't know, how old am I? Fifty-four? Yeah, this is, I don't, I, I mean, this is a long, long time, bro.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's kinda how it has to be. Otherwise, cause it loses its effectiveness pretty quick. It's kind of almost like irony in a way where.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  When, when you do it, it's kinda like, it can be effective. You do it again and it's like 50% as effective. You do it again, 10% effective. You keep doing it and zero.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, y- yes, I agree with you, but also, and I agree with what you're saying, but also what you're not saying is that there's also a different effect that can happen because if you come and present me with something and I yell at you, are you gonna present me with something again?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:13Jocko Willink?

  You're not. So eventually you just, you just are not gonna present anything. You're not gonna take an initiative. You're just gonna be a, a robot that's just trying to stay out of trouble. So it has an effect. Maybe the first time, you're right. Like it has an effect like, oh dang, Jock was serious about this. I better get that. I'm gonna make that happen. But then I do it again and I do it again. Then I do it again. Not only is the effect diminish, it's diminishing to have the impact that I wanted, but it's having a different impact. And the impact that it's having is just like, you're not looking to like even.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Engage.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  Engage.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Anyway, yeah.

• 18:44Jocko Willink?

  So being calm, a- and by the way, when I said, he talks about this in a little bit. This kind of contradicts that because he talks a little bit more positively than I do. Well, a lot more positively than I do, you know, I don't think losing your temper is good. I think it's weak.

• 19:04Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book here, a later military writer who had no great admiration for Joffre, was compelled to admit that his stolid, calm and obstinate determination in the darkest days of the retreat had an influence which offset many of the grave strategical blunders which he committed. That's a, you ever seen somebody do something like stupid, but then they act cool? And they kind of get away with it?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, what do you mean like they play it off?

• 19:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, they play it off.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  Like you'll even see someone, you know, uh, like fall down.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  And like roll out of it.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  Cool, like in MMA, people do that. MMA like a guy will like throw a kick and like slip and fall and then like roll out of it and like get his fists up again. You're like, did he mean to do that? Like there's a little part of you that's like, wait, was that supposed to happen? So if you remain calm and you don't freak out, even when you make a mistake, you're like, yeah, you know what, go ahead and pull back and we'll start moving in this direction. As opposed to like, I don't know what's going on, you know? Uh, health in a general is of course most important. Oh, health is most important, but it is a relative quality only. We would, all of us, I imagine sooner have Napoleon sick on our side than many of his opponents whole. Yeah, that makes sense.

• 20:24Jocko Willink?

  A great spirit can rule in a frail body as Wolfe and others have shown us. Marlborough during his great campaigns would have been plowed by most modern medical boards. Next comes the vexed question of age. And he goes through talking about some of these people, uh, Caesar and Cromwell began their serious soldiering when they were well over the age of 40. Um Marlboro was sixty one at the time of his most admired maneuver. Tren's last campaign at the age of sixty three is said to be his boldest and best. Moltke, the most competent of the moderns, made his name at the age of sixty six. Bro, I got, I got room. I got room.

• 21:08Jocko Willink?

  And confirmed his reputation at seventy. And by this is the old days, bro. These guys weren't like, like on the path. These guys weren't on the good nutrition, but you know, they probably weren't eating a bunch of processed junk either, right? And plus they were living out in the field, at least a little bit. Roberts was sixty seven when he went out to South Africa after our first disastrous defeats and restored the situation by surrounding the Boer army at Perdeberg and capturing Blomfontein and Pretoria. Folk at sixty seven still possessed energy and vitality and great originality. So he's basically rattling off a bunch of people that got it done when they were in their sixties and even seventies.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  When you think about that, that's if you think about it for a second, it actually doesn't come as that big of a surprise because, okay, remember when you were like, let's say twenty, twenty, twenty one, right? This idea of you being forty, we'll say. If you really rewind your mind and think of what was I thinking at that time, the, the age of forty is completely over the hill. Completely.

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  You think so?

• 22:09Speaker 01

  I, that's what I felt when I was like nineteen, twenty years old. I thought forty is like, yeah, like I really pray that I have done everything that I set out to because at forty, you're, you might as well just be. Yeah, yeah, that's grandparents age. You're not doing nothing, you know? And even when you see like older people. I don't know. To me, it was like this, it seemed like their life is kind of like an over the hill life, you know? Like they're not having fun out there. They're not exploring new things, you know, kind of thing. But then when you get to forty, you're kind of like, oh, this is kind of where it mature life begins, like the real stuff. The other stuff was more like elementary school kind of a thing.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  Just learning.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, the thing that I always think back to is that interview with Kasparov, the chess player, when Rogan asked him if he could beat or how he would do against Magnus Carlsen. And he said, he said he would lose and he gave two reasons. The first reason was because Magnus Carlsen got to start knowing all these other chess moves that had happened in the last 50 years. You get those delivered to you, right? It's like jiu-jitsu, like if you went back to in, if you went back with a buggy choke to 1990, you'd be tapping a lot of people out, a lot of people, but that right now you wouldn't tap that many people out with a buggy choke or whatever, umapla, you pick whatever modern technique.

• 23:30Jocko Willink?

  Look what, look what Dean List did in ADCC 2003, you know, just like, oh, well, I'm just gonna footlock a bunch of people. They don't know, he'll hook them. They don't know what's happening. So, but, but today, you just get that heel hook, you know, you get that footlock, you get that 50/50, you get, you get all that stuff. You just get it given to you.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  And there's a, yeah, that, yeah, and there's a lot of that.

• 23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  You know, even like the smallest, yeah, jiu-jitsu is a good example. But yeah, you, cause there's an element of trial and error, you know, that, that happens throughout any kind of learning process or whatever, but like even think of like the arm bar, right? Like, let's say you get an arm, look at an arm bar back in.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  You really want to go back, go, you know, 19, when was it? You know, back in the Helio Gracie days.

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, you want to go back to like the 30s.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  And then try doing arm bar like that, right? You'll never get the arm bar. Cause just with all the little details of how to escape the arm bar, real fundamental now. You know, hitchhiker escape and all this, and it's like, but yeah, there was no, no knowledge of that. Now it's like, no, no, don't do it that way because you can just do this and boom, you have the knowledge right there, you know, so it kind of, it does make sense.

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So Magnus Carlsen was just given all that. The platform he was allowed to operate on was automatically elevated. Same thing with skateboarding, like everyone can do a kickflip now. It's just like a joke.

• 24:56Jocko Willink?

  But back in the day, if you could do a kick, like professionals could do a kickflip amateurs could not. Yeah. I mean, it it didn't last for long, like pretty, once it got out there, but man. Yeah. Can you do a kickflip? Yes. Right now? Yeah. I mean, it might take me some, some cracks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know, do you know an ollie is? Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. I mean, there were like, it, when, when Tony Alva first like got four inches of air out of a pool. It was like, bro, you know, like this, the whole world was, well, that's the limitations. You know what? Well, I guess. This professional is going to be able to go four inches out of a pool. You know, now guys go like freaking however, and Rodney, but Rodney Mullen took the ollie.

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  And started doing it on the ground and then started flipping the board around and all this other crazy stuff. But his, but now people just get to see that it's possible and you learn the technique. Like there is a specific technique. Of where you put your foot when you do a kickflip. You gotta put your, you know, I'm a goofy foot. My foot goes out a little bit further to the right and the front of the board. And then, you know, that's the way you do it. And so, and i- if you just had to learn that by your own. Yeah. It would take forever. So you, so being able to say, oh, here's the move. Here's how you do it. Now, listen, and this is what I always say about jujitsu is. There's 10 things that you have to do. Let's say theoretically, there's 10 things you have to do to make a move work. I can teach you five of them and the other five, I can teach you where to put your arms, where to hold your grip.

• 26:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I can tell you where to put your weight. But you're gonna have to feel it as well. And then the other five things, you're gonna have to figure out for yourself. Because it's gonna be a little bit different for you. And there's some things. You ever, you ever, uh, when you're teaching something in jujitsu and you, you do it to someone. But you have to kind of do it to everyone in the class because they, there's no possible way they can visually see what you're doing. Yeah. So how are you gonna teach that? Like you can, you can let them feel it as well, but then they've got to try it and then they got to do it back to you and they got to be like, hey, is this right? You go, well, not really. Put it a little bit more towards the shoulder. Okay. Yeah, that's a little bit better. And, and sometimes it's like really hard to transfer the knowledge. Yeah. And you notice there's some things in, in the world that when you do it.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  You you have to just, you have to get it right one time, kind of on your own. I was recently toe in surfing. You ever heard of this before?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  So I'd never done it before and I'd never, I'd never done wakeboarding either, which is very similar. But like, people are talking to me, telling me like, how to do it and they're giving me clear instructions. But like, each time I was doing, I was making little mistakes and I had to feel like, oh, what was that mistake? What was that mistake? What was that mistake? And eventually, I got it. And then once you get it, you're like, okay, I know how to do this now. It's sort of like dropping into a halfpipe on skateboarding or standing up when you're like on a surfboard. Like, the first time you do it, you're gonna fall like four, five, seven, eighty times, sixty times. Once you stand up once though, it's like you can almost immediately stand up again.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  So there's some things that you have to do, you have to, you have to learn for yourself. But if someone tells you, okay, when you stand up on your surfboard, here's where you're gonna put your hands. You know, here's the weight, here's when you're gonna do it. Like, when you feel the, the board start to pick up speed on its own, put your hands here. You know, push yourself up, bring your feet up like they can, and then we can do that a couple of times on the beach. Whereas if I just said, hey, take this board, go out there and stand up on a wave, it would take you a month to even figure out how to catch the wave.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  So you have to learn the moves from somebody.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  It's crazy how that there's certain, like even riding a bike, for example. Like, riding a bike is one of those ones where you can never study your way into riding a bike. You gotta do it, a hundred percent, yeah.

• 28:48Jocko Willink?

  Yes. But when things are more technical, you have to get shown how to do the physical aspects of the movement. And then, you know, the, the rote, there's like a certain number of rote memorization of physical movement you can do. And then, once you have that, then you have to try it. And once again, and we, we see this all the time, you used to see this when, you know, back in pre UFC days. Oh, I'm gonna throw the, the whatever combination I learned in Taekwondo at you. And you're gonna, it's gonna cause this reaction. But then when we fight for real, bro, you don't react at all like the way the instructor said. So now we have a totally different situation. So you have to learn the physical way to do it, but then you have to go and spar.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's what's so good about jujitsu is you can take that, you can learn the moves and then you can go and spar. You know, what we call rolling and you can do that at a hundred percent effort because you can resist me a hundred percent. And if I do the move correctly, I can get you still. So that's what, that's the advantage that Magnus Carlsen has. He got all this knowledge. So that was one thing that Kasparov said. The other thing Kasparov said was like, oh, plus I'm older now. My mind doesn't work as well as it used to. And I was like, no. Because I thought, dude, I'll kick, you know, you would think you've been doing this for longer, you'll win. You know, it's kind of like jujitsu. Well, this guy is a black belt. He's been training for 30 years. This guy is a brown belt. He's been training for nine years.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  But if that brown belt is a badass and he's like fully in the game, yeah, guess what? It's a, it's a problem.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Do, because it feels like when you get older, your sense of competition kind of fades as well. Like you're less competitive, it seems like.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, maybe that's you.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it totally is me.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Bro, I thought it was everybody. But it feels like there's a, there's a certain logic to it too. Not, not necessarily it, like, sure, it's probably physiological, you know, I'd imagine, but it feels like it's logical as well. You know how like, cause as you grow up, your value systems change, you know?

• 30:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, maybe you're competing in a different genre. You're competing in a different game. Like right now, you're more competing in trying to, you know, be a good dad. You know, again, are you competing against like your neighbor like, oh, wait.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  She got his kids, those presents. I'm no, no, but I'm saying here, you're trying to, you know, you're, you're focused on performance. It's performance of your duties as a dad, as a husband, as a business partner.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, but and that's I think that actually that is the sense of competition that I'm talking about competing with other people. So you know how like, you know, let's say the fundamental like when you're a little kid, right? Especially boys, right? Everything's like a little look a race or a this or a that or, you know, so you can throw this rock the farthest, you know, that you know, that sense of company. And then as you get older, like, let's say we're playing chess, right? For example, me and you, when I'm young and you beat me, I'm gonna be like, I can't wait to like, I don't know, practice and get you back, right? Because that sense of when I'm get when I get older, I have so many other things that are more important than me beating you in chess.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying? And they're not competitive things. They're things I just need to focus my mind on. Yeah, there's probably just a re-prioritization. Yeah, you recognize like, oh, if someone catches

• 32:14Jocko Willink?

  you in jujitsu right now as a how old are you 48? 48. As a 48 year old dude with like, a wife and kids and a job, like, it's gonna bother you less than when you were a bounce, a single bouncer at the bitter end. And you're you're you're proud of some different things back then. Yeah, that makes sense. But that's what we have to contend with. So I heard some other horrible fact that when you look at like, people that do great, either creative or scientific efforts in their lives,

• 32:52Jocko Willink?

  it all happens when they're like, 25, 28, 30, the even like the big scientists, like they make their big discoveries when they're in that age group. And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that, right? There probably is a whole bunch of reasons for that. I mean, then again, we're talking about guys right now that that did their best work at 63 and 67 and 70 and 66. So it can happen. Because I'm sure like you like. What are the chances that someone that's 26 is in a place in their life where they can fully focus their efforts on their art or on their science, right? They're sleeping in the lab, they don't got no one to go home to, they got no bills to pay. You know, so of course they got, but, but then that person, if they, if they made it through

• 33:37Jocko Willink?

  those years and now they're 50 or 43, they got a mortgage. I mean, even back in the day, they're like trying to provide for their family. They, they can't sit around and freaking be working on their song. That shit ain't happening. So, but, but that being said, still going back to Kasparov, that mind is humming at probably 30. And that's when they're like, the big, the good ideas come out. Now, he goes on to say this book, "It is impossible really to give exact values to the fire and boldness of youth as against the judgment and experience of riper years.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  If the mature mind still has the capacity to conceive and absorb new ideas, to withstand unexpected shocks and to put into execution bold and unorthodox designs, its superior knowledge and judgment will give advantage over the youth." So that's, you know, those are all things to keep in mind. How often does someone that's older not have the ability to absorb new ideas, right? How, how much more difficult is it for them to absorb unexpected shocks? You know, one thing that's, I mean, when I look back and people are like, oh, how would you do in BUDs now going through skill training? And I'm always like, no factor, right? Cause you know, I'm just, I'm just holding the line.

• 34:57Jocko Willink?

  But what, what I actually think about was like, oh man, can I, what, how painful would it be to be in like Navy boot camp right now? To have like, oh, it, hey.

• 35:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, you have to do this at this time today. And then after that, you have to do this, and then after that, you have to do this. You know, just, just that would just be a shock to the liberty that I have constructed in my life.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  And then the, how often is someone that's a little bit older willing to take risks? Like when you're young, again, going back to someone that has no mortgage, no, you know, no mortgage, no kids, no, no spouse. They can roll the dice all day with their money because they got nothing to lose. But when you got more to lose, even then, let's say like a military person and you're putting on the line, your reputation and your career. Or you're a politician, you got your reputation, your career, like that can be very difficult. So, but if you can do that, if you can keep an open mind, you can have new ideas, then you can, then you can use your, your knowledge to have an advantage over youth. And it says, at the same time, there is, there is no doubt that a good young general will usually beat a good old one.

• 36:09Jocko Willink?

  And the recent lowering of age of our generals is undoubtedly a step in the right direction, even if it may sometimes lose us prematurely a good commander. So there you go. And I think, uh, one, my whole comment about the whole age thing. It's kind of like when people would say, hey, how much does your ruck weigh? Doesn't matter. This is what I'm carrying. So how old are you? Doesn't matter because this is what we're doing. Uh, fast forward. I don't, I don't think I need to expatate for long on the moral qualities of a lever, of a leader. No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one.

• 36:53Jocko Willink?

  The qualities of a leader are well known to you and I. And I shall deal with them further in my second lecture. So we'll get there. Here I will mention only the barest essentials. So it's interesting, you know, he says that no amount of studying or learning will make a man a leader unless he has natural qualities.

• 37:12Jocko Willink?

  I.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  Here's what I've always said about that. If you, there are leadership, leadership is a skill and you can certainly get better at it.

• 37:25Jocko Willink?

  Will you, if you were going for the NBA and you're only five foot eight? Is any amount of practice going to make you six foot four? No. If you're a leader and you have a certain God given ability with speech,

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  you can get better at it, but you're not, you may not have the ability to be Martin Luther King or John F. Kennedy when you speak. It just, that's, that's the way it is. So, but can you get better? Yes, you can certainly get better. And there's so many little qualities that a leader is supposed to have or should have. And you can make all of them a little bit better. And so if you make all of them a little bit better, you can improve as a leader. So you may not have the gift of being six foot four to be in the NBA, but you can be, still be Steph Curry, what's Steph Curry, six one?

• 38:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, whatever he is, or Muggsy Bogues, who's five, three, I think. And he played in the NBA. So, but he did it through a different approach and massive skills. So you can become a leader by you, by utilizing and studying and learning the skills of leadership. As long as you have the most important one, which is humility. Going on.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  He says he's going to talk about the barest essentials. He must have character, which simply means he knows what he wants and has the courage and determination to get it. He should have a genuine interest in and a real knowledge of the raw material of his trade. And most vital of all, he must have what we call the fighting spirit, the will to win. You all know and recognize it in sport. The man who plays his best when things are going badly, who has the power to come back at you when apparently beaten and who refuses to acknowledge defeat. There is one other moral quality I would stress as the mark of a really great commander as distinguished from the ordinary general.

• 39:34Jocko Willink?

  He must have a spirit of adventure, a touch of the gambler in him. As Napoleon said, "If the art of war consisted merely in not taking risks, glory would be at the mercy of very mediocre talent." Napoleon always asked if a general was lucky. What he really meant was, is he bold? A bold general may be lucky, but no general may be lucky unless he is bold. The general who allows himself to be bound and hampered by regulations is unlikely to win in battle. So, good, you know, there it is.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  We think we're looking for that disciplined, rigid individual that's going to follow all the rules, but we literally can't be bound or hampered by rules and regulations. And I really like the idea of, you know, are you lucky? You're only going to be lucky if you're bold. And that's kind of the SAS saying, "Fortune favors the bold. Who dares wins." You know, those are kind of the, some of the Brit sayings. So far, we have dealt with the general's physical and moral makeup. Now for his mental qualities. The most important is what the French call "Le sens de practicable," what we call common sense.

• 41:02Jocko Willink?

  I was going to try a French accent and I voted against it. I understand. My daughters speak Spanish with no Spanish accent. Cause you know, in Southern California, you take Spanish in high school, but they speak Spanish and they, they, they can do, they, they have a good vocabulary and can communicate in the proper conjugates and whatnot, but they just do it with no Spanish accent. They just do it as pure gringos and it's pretty funny to listen to. What we call common sense, knowledge of what is and what is not possible. It must be based on a really sound knowledge of the mechanism of war, i.e. topography, movement, and supply. Man, in common sense, you know, the old thing, common sense is not too common, right?

• 41:47Jocko Willink?

  And isn't it weird? I've, I've.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  I've earned a lot of, I've earned a lot of uh

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  head nods, you know, like we agree by just saying some pretty common sense dumb stuff, you know, in my days like, um, maybe we should just do this. Oh yeah, that's a good point. You know what I mean? We get operation complication going on and everyone's getting nuts like, mm, we could probably just do this. These are the real foundations of military knowledge, not strategy and tactics as most people think. It is the lack of this knowledge of the principles and practice of military movement and administration. The logistics of war, some people call it, yes, that's what we call it there, Earl. Which puts what we call amateur strategists wrong, not the principles of strategy themselves,

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  which can be apprehended in a very short time by any reasonable intelligence. So it's like, oh, the, the, the, the little warfighting stuff, the little tactics of like killing each other? That's not that, that's not that hard. That's what he's saying. But the administration, the logistics, that's the hard part. And that's what he's talking about. What is possible, that's a little common sense activity. He says, unfortunately, most military books, strategy and tactics are emphasized at the expense of the administrative factors. So, and it's the same thing with business too. Like the logistics of business?

• 43:11Jocko Willink?

  You, you can do good on the front end, right? Making a good product, designing a good product, uh, marketing a good product, but logistics wins wars and logistics is what keeps you in the game in business as well. So you gotta be, you gotta be professional to make that stuff happen.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Kind of pretty much any operations, for whatever reason, I thought of concerts, you know, like, or like some music festival, right? You always hear like, oh, it's a good festival, but then you, when you think of a festival or a concert, we'll say with poor logistics, then you got bathroom issues, you got trash issues, you got all, you know, you have congestion issues.

• 43:51Jocko Willink?

  You got Woodstock 1999, right? All these people like, it went crazy. Did you ever see a documentary called Fire Festival? The guy had like a party or something, like a big concert party on some island somewhere. And they did not have good logistics and everything went to shit.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought, I thought that was like the, is that the scam one?

• 44:13Jocko Willink?

  I think it may have been viewed as a scam once it was over because the way everything logistically fell apart, you know, like we don't bands show up to play and there's nowhere for them to plug in their equipment.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  Where we you flew us out here, we want our money and then you know, so it probably, I don't think, well, I'd have to re-watch it. I don't know if it was a intended scam. But I think it ended up being just such a logistical logistical failure. It's exactly what we're talking about. You're right. Like such a logistical failure that it'd be like if you paid whatever $500 to go to this festival. And then you got there and there was no food, no water, nowhere to go to the bathroom.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  You would think that that was a scam because you think this guy took my money and didn't get, you know, deliver any product. So that seems like a scam. I think he just logistically didn't know how to do it.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Right. And that, and, and that does make sense, especially like, you know, as far as you talk about this, uh, that element from the book. Where you don't think of that on the front end, you know, you don't think about like, oh, I can't wait to go to this freaking Guns N' Roses concert because of the bathroom. Spaces, you know, like there's so many bathrooms there. It's so legit. Like you don't think about that part of it. Even though that part of it is probably more foundational to the whole experience.

• 45:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I just saw Guns N' Roses. I, I'm trying to, I'm gonna coordinate with Jack Osborne and come and debrief the Black Sabbath last concert, you know, obviously with his dad, his dad dying a couple of weeks after that, we haven't really gotten around to it, but

• 45:51Jocko Willink?

  logistically, it was incredible the way they pulled it off. But you mentioned Guns N' Roses.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  And Guns N' Roses, dude, they crushed. And Guns N' Roses played deep cuts. They played deep Black Sabbath cuts because the way they put that whole show together. They had a bunch of different bands and every band played like one, two or three of their own songs and one, two or three of Black Sabbath songs. With very, and then there were super groups that came out. So it was awesome, but Guns, I, look, I try not to get engaged in comments, right? About stuff, but I saw some people saying some negative things about Guns N' Roses. And. Man, they rocked and they played deep cuts and good for them.

• 46:35Jocko Willink?

  Sorry, I just went into a little logistical.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Totally understand.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  Aspect there.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but it's a lot. When you go through the experience of whatever, those logistics, when they're handled properly versus improperly are such a big deal.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  And so I went to this place, did the video.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  The muster.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  No, no, it was the muster.

• 46:54Jocko Willink?

  The muster. So at the muster, though, logistically, it is such a, we, we focus so much on logistics for this very reason.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:03Jocko Willink?

  Because if it takes, if you show up to the muster, which is an event we have at Echelon Front, if you show up to the muster and it takes you, you know, an hour to check in and register, you're like, dude, what is like, this is, why am I standing in line?

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:17Jocko Willink?

  We, at the muster, it takes, we, we get it done. Like you will register in 30 seconds. Like everything is streamlined, everything is, because we realize that we, we're being judged. Just like you're saying, you judge stuff on logistics. The muster is judged at least at some level on the logistics of the operation. Because if we at Echelon Front, as a leadership consultancy, can't run a squared away event, then why, why would you talk to us? Why would you listen to us? You wouldn't. So logistics are key. Proceed. Sorry.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, because again, when you go through the overall experience, again, since not the, since logistics is not the front running like element that you kind of pay attention to, you don't think about it, but when you actually go through it, you'd be surprised. Okay, so I was at this place, uh, doing a video and it was a, a location, right? And it was a business where, okay, it was a gym. It wasn't Victory. It was a different gym.

• 48:16Jocko Willink?

  Victory is almost open.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  I've never been to this gym before. So I come and you know, you go on the map or whatever. And I go to the gym and there's no parking lot for this gym at all. It's a big, kind of a big gym too. There's no parking lot. You just park on the street, surrounding streets. And I remember thinking, I would never join this gym now just because of the parking. Like to, to go to the gym and then to contend with parking. It's like, bro, that takes away. About ninety percent of the gym experience right there for me. That's how I was feeling at the moment. See what I'm saying? But you never really think about that. See what I'm saying?

• 48:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, you obviously thought about it.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, when you're in the moment, but before that, you know, you're thinking about, oh, how, you know, what kind of weight set does this gym have? What's even all the way down to like, what does the lighting look like? How many mirrors? You know, like all these details about the gym, but not the logistical part of it.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Logistics wins wars and you gotta know them.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. In conclusion, I wonder if you realize what a very complicated business this modern soldiering is. A commander today has to learn to handle air forces, armored mechanical vehicles, anti-aircraft artillery. He has to consider the use of gas and smoke offensively and defensively to know enough of wireless to make proper use of it for communication. To understand something of the art of camouflage, of the business of propaganda, to keep himself up to date in their developments of military engineering. All of this in addition to the more normal requirements of his trade. On the battlefield, of course, conditions are completely different.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  In the conditions of the late war, no battalion commander launching his reserve company had anything like such a clear picture of the situation as any of these, while the commander in chief was not on the battlefield at all, but sitting in an office many miles back or recklessly pacing the garden of a chateau, waiting for news that seemed to never come. And when it came was usually misleading. So you're gonna be making decisions. You're not gonna be there, you know, and I kind of skipped over a part where he was talking about how previous commanders in different wars, whether it was Marlborough or Napoleon or Wellington, they would move to places where they could kind of watch things unfold.

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  And that that is very important for your, you know, for to be to lead. But these guys, they're like back from the lines and you can't get up there because of modern warfare is just different. I was talking to a uh wildland firefighter the other day and she was saying that she was like, I think they called a that she was in charge of a big fire that was happening. And as her firefighters were fighting the fire, she had to move across the valley to the other ridgeline where the fire wasn't. So she could observe what the fire was doing and then call them. Because you know, what can you see when you're fighting a forest fire? You can see like fire and trees.

• 51:19Jocko Willink?

  She had to move into basically an elevated position where she could watch what's happening and give directions. So sometimes, you know, that's what you have to do. But in this case, in this modern warfare case, you you get separated to a point where you actually can't visually see. And you're having to assemble misleading information to try and make decisions. And if you don't make any decisions, obviously that's going to be failure. So you've got to do something, got to make something happen. So that's the way this modern warfare happens. As much as you want to get into the high ground and watch what's happening, like my friend Momo was doing. You you don't get that opportunity. Fast forward a little bit, the commander with the imagination, the genius, this is a, sorry, this is a part about um

• 52:04Jocko Willink?

  military genius, the commander with the imagination, the genius, in fact, to use the new forces may have his name written among the great captains, but he will not win that title lightly or easily. Consider for a moment the qualifications he will require on the ground. He will have to have, he will have to handle forces moving at a speed and ranging at a distance far exceeding that of the most mobile cavalry of the past. A study of naval strategy and tactics as well as those of cavalry be will be essentially essential to him. It seems to me immaterial whether he is a soldier who has really studied the air or an airman who has really studied land forces.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  It is the combination of the two, never the action of one alone that will bring success for a future war. You've got to understand air and war. And this is a, this reminds me of jujitsu when you're, when you get, I would say it's mid to high blue belt level.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  Is when people start to use their arms and legs at the same time. Because sometimes, you know, you have to use them together. You have to be using, you have to be moving your arms and you have to be moving your legs at the same time, but the human mind doesn't do that very well. And it's like, have you ever played drums before?

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  I actually have. Like, yeah, I, I've, I've never really played them, but like I'll get on the kit sometimes and bang out a couple of songs, right? My right hand and right foot might as well be tied together. Because they will not do something different and my left hand and left foot might as well be tied together too. They, because they're gonna do this, they're gonna move together. That's just the way they are. And you could train yourself out of it. That's something I look forward to doing in a few years. I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn to do that. You know what I mean? Like, I'm gonna learn how to make my right foot and my right hand do something different than my left foot and my left hand do something different. But when people do jiu jitsu, they get that stage where they'll, you'll be like, hey, you need to do this. You know, you need to frame over here and push their hip this way with your hand.

• 54:07Jocko Willink?

  And then when they do that, they stop moving their feet.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:10Jocko Willink?

  Or, and then when you tell them, hey, man, you gotta make that hook down there with your foot. And they'll be like, cool. But then they stop moving their upper body.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  So you have to use both.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  There's a lot of things that could, because it kind of becomes this physical language, right? All these, even drums, piano is another one where it's like you're kind of playing on one side and then, you know, you're kind of using both hands. Like, um, what's that thing when you're a little kid? You pat your head and rub your stomach or whatever. It's kind of that, really.

• 54:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  But for a different intention. So it's like, yeah, it becomes, because Sam Harris talks about this where it's like two different parts of your brain.

• 54:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  So like, one is like, if you translate a different language to English word for word, you're not really kind of speaking the language. You gotta just understand just saying it. You know, this jiu jitsu scenario, you're like, okay, consciously, okay, I gotta put my hand here. I gotta put my foot here or whatever. You're not speaking the language yet. After a while, your body just does it. See what I'm saying? So it's like, yeah, two different things like that.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  Continue on here. Add to this. So he says you gotta be able to do both air and land. Add to this and see, add to this, that the commander's studies must have a background of solid common sense and a knowledge of humanity on Hughes peculiarities and not those of machines. The whole practice of wars, warfares is ultimately based. So there you go. Like, hey, we're talking about all these different weapons, systems and air and land and sea naval power and all this stuff, but it's ultimately it's just humans. You gotta know humans. Fast forward a little bit. The section is called the general and his troops. I now want you to consider the general in relation to his troops. I will begin with a few words about his staff. Where are the means by which he controls and directs his army?

• 55:53Jocko Willink?

  I will give you two simple rules, which every general should observe. First, never try to do his own staff work. And secondly, never to let his staff get between him and his troops. What a staff appreciates is that it should receive clear and definitive instructions and then be a left to work out the details without interference. What troops and subordinate commanders appreciate is that the general should be constantly in personal contact with them and should not see everything simply through the eyes of his staff. The less time a general spends in his office and the more with his troops, the better.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  So that is one thing that's a little bit of a curve ball is he says, never try to do his own staff work. You know, my first, when I read that, I was like, oh yeah, you can't, you don't have the time to be doing this staff stuff. I was thinking of it from a time management perspective, but he's talking about a micro management perspective that if I'm doing your job for you, Echo, you're not doing your job. I'm focused on that. You're not like, it's just, it's, it's centralized command is what he's talking about. And then obviously getting out with the troops. That's what you need to do. As fast forward a little bit, as to a general's relations with his subordinate commanders,

• 57:12Jocko Willink?

  it happened, it is important to him to know their characteristics, which must be held back and which urged on, which can be trusted with an independent mission and which must be kept under his own eye. Some want very detailed and precise orders, other, others merely a general indication. There are many generals who are excellent executive commanders, as long as they are controlled by a higher commander, but who get out of their depth at once and sometimes lose their nerve if given independent command. Others are difficult subordinates, but may be trusted on their own. It is important not to get these two sorts mixed. In other

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  words, a higher commander must be a good judge of character. And we've seen this over and over and over again. Everyone's got their own little personalities. And decentralized command might mean, oh, Echo, I can kind of let him do whatever he wants. Fred, I gotta keep close control over him. We as leaders have to know which is which.

• 58:14Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward now, now to come to the general's relations with the troops themselves. You will realize what a wide subject it is and how impossible to dogmatize about. The outlook of the officer, the regimental officer differs naturally from that of the men. And different nationalities demand different treatment. Mes enfants, my children, says the Frenchman, and may speak of the glory of the fatherland. Men, says the Englishman, on rare occasions when he feels called on to address his troops collectively. Comrades, says the Soviet Russian. The German commander of the future will perhaps cause a thrill of pride to run through the ranks with a cry of fellow Aryans.

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  But whatever the nationality, whatever the condition, there remains the basic problem. What induces the man to risk his life bravely? And what is the general's part in fostering his endurance? No man wants to die. What causes him to face death? Maybe a hope of loot or glory, discipline and tradition, devotion to cause or country, devotion to a man. Glory or loot appeals to few these days. Nor indeed is much glory or loot to be had. Decorations and promotions count for something, but maybe cause, but may cause much heart burning unless carefully distributed.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  Belief in a cause may count for much, especially if fostered by mass propaganda. Yet there is truth in the following. From a book on the late war. So here's a quote. A man does not flee because he is fighting an unrighteous cause. He does not attack because his cause is just. He flees because he is the weaker. He conquers because he is the stronger or because his leader has made him feel the stronger.

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  It's weird when you break down stuff like that, right? Yeah. Like, why did he lose the fight? He was weaker. Why did he start backing away? He was being overpowered.

• 1:00:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what causes the troops to keep pushing because they think they can win. They believe they can win. They believe they're stronger. I've always

• 1:00:34Jocko Willink?

  kept the idea that I'm not going to get into a fight that I'm not going to win. And I'm not going to get into an argument that I'm not going to win, by the way. So if you hear me arguing with someone, which you hear very seldomly, but if you hear me contending with someone, if you can, put money on me. Because I know I'm gonna win. Right, right. If you're arguing with me. Now, if we're having a discussion and I'm asking you earnest questions, I'm, I'm open minded. I may be right, I may be wrong, I might be have an idea of what the deal is or not, you know, but I'm not confirmed of it. But if you hear me, if you hear me saying, no, we should not do it like that, you should put money on me.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  Because I know I'm right. I, how often have you heard me say, I know I'm right?

• 1:01:13Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I can't remember you saying that ever. Yeah, so it's gonna be very, very seldom. Yeah. So you, you getting in entanglements where you think you're gonna lose is not a smart move. And I don't do it.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  That now here it goes, um, to continuing on with why are guys gonna fight, right? But tradition and discipline anyway, so far as the British are concerned, are the real root of the matter. I have not the time here to enter into any discussion on the subject of discipline. I will only remark that with the na- that with national armies, as all armies, even the British, will be in a future war and general education, discipline should be a different matter from the old traditional military discipline. It has changed greatly since I joined and is changing still, but whatever the system, it is the general's business to see justice done. And here we're talking about like, you know, military discipline for not doing the right thing.

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  The soldier does not mind a severe code, provided it is administered fairly and reasonably. As an instance, here is the verdict of a private soldier on Crawford in the retreat to Karuna. If he flogged two, he saved hundreds from death. Discipline apart, the soldier's chief cares are first, his personal comfort. So this is what, this is what a soldier cares about. His personal comfort, i.e. regular rations, proper clothing, good bullets and proper hospital arrangements. And secondly, his personal safety, i.e. that he shall be put into a fight with as good a chance as possible of victory and survival.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  Those two things combined, guns and butter, in other words. So are you putting me in a situation where like, I don't have a really good chance of winning, or at least as good a chance as I can possibly have of winning? If you're, if you're not doing that for me, it's gonna be a problem. And have you given me food when you can and clothing when you can and gear when I can? If you, if you haven't done that, that's a problem.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  It's funny to think about like in the SEAL teams. Everyone's always trying to like get gear. Everyone's trying to get more gear and I've never really thought of it as such a morale boost. You know, it's for the, if I would have known that back then, I'd be like, sir, we need to get these new boots. Why, why do you need them? Well, you know, first of all, for this type of environment we're going into, but also for the morale of the troops.

• 1:03:50Jocko Willink?

  Modern generals are hardly known to the large armies they command. But without placing himself and fast forward a little bit, but without placing himself at the head of his troops in battle, a modern commander can still exercise a very real influence over the morale of his men. An outstanding example is Allenby's regeneration of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the summer of 1917, after their two repulses at Gaza in the spring of that year. Australians are not easily impressed by British generals, but the following extract from the Australian Official History shows the impression made by Allenby. And here we go, quote, "There was nothing familiar about Allenby's touch with his regiments

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  and battalions. He went through the hot dusty camps of his army like a strong, fresh, reviving wind. He would dash up in his car to a light horse regiment, shake hands with a few officers, inspect hurriedly but with a sure eye to good and bad points, the horses of perhaps a single squadron, and be gone in a few minutes, leaving a great trail of dust behind him. His tall and massive but restlessly active figure, his keen eyes and prominent hooked nose, his terse and forcible speech, and his imperious bearing radiated an impression of tremendous resolution, quick decision, and steely discipline. Within a week of his arrival, Allenby had stamped his

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  personality on the mind of every trooper of the horse and every infantryman of the line."

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  So you can have an impact.

• 1:05:23Jocko Willink?

  And this is an interesting little section here. Should a general address his troops collectively or individually? Or individually, I only I think if he has a gift that way. A gift not of eloquence necessarily, but of saying the right thing. He must be very sure of himself. He risks more loss of reputation than he is likely to gain. An unfortunate remark or tone or even appearance may lower his stock and do more harm than good. So you got like, you know, as a leader, you gotta watch it. If you're gonna be, if you're gonna be talking. You gotta be careful if you're gonna run your suck, as we say.

• 1:06:04Jocko Willink?

  I've been to a couple, man, I've been to, I've been to. Ah, I don't want to exaggerate, but I've been to some briefs in my time. Where I was completely demotivated by what was being said. You know what I mean? You're like, dude, and, and, and sometimes I've had the sad occasion where. My troops, my troops are getting collectively briefed to by someone. And it's landing so wrong. And you're like, bro, just, I wish you wouldn't have said anything, you know? And, and sometimes trying to say something, you know, like cool or whatever. That can backfire in a kind of a big way, too. Sometimes, you know, if you just, if you're not sure if you should talk.

• 1:06:49Jocko Willink?

  Be brief, be bold, be gone, as, as a Megan, Major Megan McClung. Uh, was known to say, be brief, be bold, be gone. Like, if you don't, if you don't, if you're talking to the troops. And you're not really sure, bro, just say something quick, you know? Don't try, don't try and be Shakespeare out here. Just try and say something quick, be brief, be bold, be gone.

• 1:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Now this is we're going back to the temper. So we said back, we're going to get back to temper. Explosions of temper do not necessarily ruin a general's reputation or influence with his troops. So, so he says it doesn't necessarily ruin it, right? So that's, that's a pretty negative statement. It's saying, look, it does kind of ruin it, but not necessarily. He says it is almost expected of them, which I think is bullshit, especially in this day and age. And it is not always resented, sometimes even admired, except by those of me deeply concerned. I just don't think that to be true. I, I, I disagree. And it's kind of weird hearing that from a Brit, because Brits are, you know, stiff upper lip. Yeah, kind of like limited emotions, especially British officers.

• 1:07:59Jocko Willink?

  So this kind of what this one kind of hit me out a little bit out of left field. I just don't agree with it. I don't, I've never, the only thing I guess maybe is what you pointed out earlier. And I think this happens with kids and I've talked about this with JP Denell. Is like, when you see your, when you're a little kid and you see your dad loses temper. And it seems like kind of a superpower because everyone kind of gets out of their way. And like, okay, I guess we're just going to do what dad says. That can rub off where now you think like, oh, other people are kind of thinking that. But then you forget that other people are now 24. And you're like, bro, what do you, you can't control your freaking temper. You're yelling and screaming. Well, what's wrong with you?

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Maybe that's, maybe that's why they, the British kind of consider this to be the case because culturally, they don't lose their temper. Culturally, everyone's like, so when they do, it's kind of like this big deal. It's kind of this exceptional moment. See what I'm saying? Because if it's not an exceptional moment, that's kind of like, bro, this guy's flying off the handle again. You gotta get, you know, get his act together, kind of.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe. Um, I don't know. I'll go with, hey, it doesn't necessarily ruin your leadership capital. Necessarily, but chances are.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Chances are like it ain't good. I could see like, let's say you're a really good leader and somebody does something that's out of line and you you show some emotion and anger towards them. And then everyone goes, damn dude, like, you know, Echo just said, hey, he's really, he's really serious about like, we can't, whatever, we can't show up late, like, we're gonna be. So I think that might be the situation where you could kind of get away with it, but even that is like a stretch for me.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. It feels like you kind of got to thread a needle, like, very specifically to pull that off where it's like effective. And then you can only do it one or two times, like I said.

• 1:09:50Jocko Willink?

  In your life.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, in your, in your inner workings with that team, like, this cannot be.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Basically, any, anytime that you you come off as overreacting, you're gonna jam yourself up, pretty much. So, yeah, so if you do it often, I feel like that's overreacting.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  It also has one sentence here. It says, but sarcasm is always resented and seldom forgiven. I was kind of a little bit surprised at that. I get it. You gotta use, you gotta be careful with sarcasm, sarcasm, especially in a leadership position, because it cuts way deeper than you mean it to.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta be careful with that. But, uh, I don't know, but being resented seems a little bit strong.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  I feel like sarcasm, well, because sarcasm is humor, right? Would you say? To me, the rule has always been, since I was a kid, up until literally right this moment, the rule is if it's more funny than it is insulting.

• 1:10:48Jocko Willink?

  You're clear.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  It's valid. Exactly right. But I think you're, I think you're right, though, where, yeah, when you're the leader, it cuts different. Like, because the subordinate will be like, oh, wait, is he serious? Like, you know, is there a for real problem within that joke, you know, kind of a thing? So, yeah, it makes sense. It's not even, you know, but peer to peer, that's the rule.

• 1:11:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of humor, should the high commander have a sense of humor? Certainly, a sense of humor is good for anyone, but he must not display it too much or too often. I'm I'm okay with that. We had the one guy at the muster a long time ago. Says, uh, you know, hey, I'm a guy. I like to joke around. I like to get my shots in and no one takes me seriously. I was like, hey, bro, stop making so many jokes. Same thing here. The British soldier, fast forward a little bit, the British soldier himself is one of the world's greatest humorous. That humorous race that, sorry, this was funny. I just had to read this.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  That unhumorous race, the Germans, held an investigation after the late war into the causes of morale and attributed much of the British soldier's staying power to his sense of humor. They therefore decided to instill this sense into their own soldiers and included in their manuals in order to cultivate it. They gave an illustration in the manual. Uh, one of Baron's father's pictures of old Bill sitting in a building with an enormous shell hole in the wall. A new chum asks, what made that hole? Mice replies old Bill.

• 1:12:29Jocko Willink?

  So they got this, you know, a picture and there's a big shell hole in the wall and the old salty soldier soldier sitting there. And the new guy's like, what made that hole? And the guy goes mice. And then it says, in the German manual, a solemn footnote of explanation is added. It was quote, it was not mice. It was a shell. So they had to like, explain the humor and I thought that was pretty funny.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward in the lecture hall of a French infantry school, which I once attended was written the following from Ardon to Peak, which we covered his work on this podcast. We covered this quote as well. The man is the first weapon of battle. Let us then study the soldier in battle for it is he who brings reality to it. Only study of the past can give us a sense of reality and show us how the soldier will fight in the future.

• 1:13:24Jocko Willink?

  Gotta know people. And it kind of goes into that a little bit here. To learn that Napoleon won the campaign of 1796 by maneuver on interior lines, or some such phrase, is of little value. So like, whatever tactics and actual battlefield maneuver Napoleon used, doesn't really matter. It's little value. If you can discover how a young, unknown man inspired a ragged, mutinous, half-starved army and made it fight, how he gave it the energy and momentum to march and fight as it did, how he dominated and controlled generals older and more experienced than himself, then you will have learnt something.

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Napoleon did not gain the position he did so much by a study of rules and strategy as by a profound knowledge of human nature in war. Well, it goes back to human nature once again, Echo Charles. A story of him in his early days shows his knowledge of psychology. When an artillery officer, when he was an artillery officer at the Siege of Toulon, he built a battery in such an exposed position that he was told he would never find men to hold it. He put up a placard that said, "The Battery of Men Without Fear", and it was always manned.

• 1:14:51Jocko Willink?

  It goes into this a little bit here. "Are a few principles that seem to me to embody the practice of successful commanders in their relations with their troops. A general must keep strict, though not necessarily stern, discipline." And again, you're gonna find a little, like, a little nice dichotomy, balancing of dichotomies here. "He should give praise where praise is due, ungrudgingly by word of mouth or written order." "He should show himself as frequently as possible to his troops and as impressively as possible." "Ceremonial has its uses."

• 1:15:31Jocko Willink?

  "He should never indulge in sarcasm, which is being clever at someone's, someone else's expense, and always offense." Maybe they have like, a little bit more of a nuanced, specific definition of sarcasm, being very directed at a, as a, at a person.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  He should tell his soldiers the truth, save when absolutely necessary to conceal plans, etc. Few things annoy the soldier more in the late war than the acts, than the extracts published by the intelligence to make out that the German soldiers were fighting badly, etc., when the soldier knew they were fighting as stoutly as ever. And we'll close out this section of the book. To sum up, the relationship between a general and his troops is very much like that between the rider and his horse. The horse must be controlled and disciplined, and yet encouraged.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  He should, according to an old hunting maxim, be cared for in the stable as if he was worth 500 pounds, and ridden in the field as if he were not worth half a crown. And the horse knows not only by his own comfort whether he's being ridden well or badly, but he knows if his rider is bold or frightened, determined or hesitating. A general must drive his men at times. Some of the best and most successful riders and horse masters are not those who are fondest of horses. A general may succeed for some time in persuading his superiors that he is a good commander.

• 1:17:15Jocko Willink?

  He will never persuade his army that he is a good commander unless he has the real qualities of one. And I got a little bit, a little bit touched, or perturbed, or a little bit, a little bit annoyed by the statement that some of the best and most successful riders and horse masters are not those who are fondest of horses. Because for me, if you're not a guy that loves your troops, loves your soldiers, then, then we got a problem. Because we gotta care about our soldiers more than anything. But then I thought about this, and I think this is where, this is where I'm gonna take it anyways. You know,

• 1:17:57Jocko Willink?

  You get dogs and someone that just spoils a dog, what kind of dog do you end up with?

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Spoiled dog.

• 1:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Spoiled dog. Someone that just spoils their kids would end up with, are they going to be functional kids? Are they going to be reach their maximum potential? We know that they're not. So you have to, you can't overly care. You can't care to the point that you are not willing to push them. And what's the word he used? Uh, yeah, drive, right? You gotta, you gotta push your kids. You gotta push your troops. You gotta make sure that they're do, they're, you know, that they're, they're learning the path of discipline. And if you don't do that, they're not going to reach, reach their potential. And if all you did with your troops was, oh, you guys want to go home? Oh, you guys want to go to the bar tonight? Oh, you guys don't want to come into work tomorrow? If that's what you do, your troops, you're not making good troops. And they're going to regret it. It's going to be worse for them.

• 1:18:48Jocko Willink?

  But I love that, that kind of point that I closed with. He will never persuade his army that is a good commander unless he has the real qualities of one. And like, what that means to me is you can't fake it, man. The horse knows you're faking it. Have you ever ridden a horse before?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The horse knows you're faking it. Yeah, they know. You talk to anybody, like, tho- those horses know what you're thinking. Pretty much kind of more than you do. You know, you go with Iris Gardner on a horse, like, she will tell you like, hey, you're acting nervous. You're like, what are you, what are you talking about? Like, no, the, the horse can see it. The horse can feel it. And dogs do that to some extent, too.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what, I remember Mike Rittlin said that, where he put, he put it in, I'm totally paraphrasing, but he was like, hey, you know when like a person walks in a room, for example, and they're like fidgeting and their, their eyes are darting around and, you know, you can pick up on that, on a person, right? So dogs, they have that sense with you. Where, so if you're like nervous, they can feel your nervousness, you know? It's like, huh, it makes sense because dogs don't talk to you, you know? So that's kind of all they have is their little vibe sensory scenario, you know?

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  I used to have that with, uh, my wife when, when Odin was out and about.

• 1:20:06Jocko Willink?

  She, she would get nervous when he was around other dogs, right? Cause always he gonna bark, he gonna lunge like, you know, kind of like a level of embarrassment. You know what I mean? Like, I'm a little bit embarrassed if he barks at this dog, it's a little bit embarrassing. And that, what did that nervousness do? It made, made Odin think like, oh, this dog that's walking towards me is a problem.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  And guess what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna bark, I'm gonna let him know, do not be a problem with my, with my mom over here.

• 1:20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Jocko Willink?

  So, so her being concerned that he was gonna bark, made him bark.

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:38Jocko Willink?

  So I had to be like, oh, just like, it's okay, just chill and have good time and it chilled him out. But you're, yeah, you gotta be careful with that. But, but the dog knows, the horse knows, and your team knows. And you can't, you can't fake it. It's not one of those situations, fake it till you make it. Uh, they'll pick up on it. So we'll, we'll hit some of the, uh, remaining sections of this book on the next podcast. We'll talk about the, the soldier and the statement. We'll talk about unorthodox soldiers, what it means to be a good soldier. Very interesting take he's got on that. And then how to command and then some other rules and stratagems of war, which obviously,

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  transferred over to the rest of our lives. Didn't plan to work with today. Lots of work to make us better. And there's always work that we have to do to make us better. Hey, mental work, but remember there's a lot of physical things as that, as that leader, gotta be physically ready to withstand the shock of war. And look, the shock of war might not come from war, might come from life. In fact, I'll tell you what, it will come from life. So that means we gotta be physically ready, mentally ready. That means we're training. And when we're training, when we're lifting, you'd be back on the mats of justice there, Echo Charles?

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, a bit here and there.

• 1:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Back in the game, as they say, what you roll with?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  You know, um, actually an old friend, Scott Cruz, who used to, um, I don't know what belt he is, he got his blue belt back in 18, so he's, you know, experienced guy, but good guy. He used to work for, with my brother, back in the day. And then Anthony, Unchained Fit, you know, did some rounds. And then, um, who else? Oh, Dr. Luke, of course, as always.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  Dr. Luke, Boja.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  But yeah, yeah, it's good.

• 1:22:17Jocko Willink?

  So when we're training, lifting, um, need fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Now, is it true, Echo Charles, that Echo Charles is in a little bit of a cut phase right now?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Are we cutting?

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, we we're in a cut.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay, hey, you know, time to get shredded, summer shred. Is that what we're doing?

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Uh, well, yeah, yeah, we'll call it that. Hell, yeah.

• 1:22:37Jocko Willink?

  I mentioned to you, um, Jocko Fuel Burner.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  Which you have not tried.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:22:43Jocko Willink?

  So I've tried it because I like to try the various products.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  And one thing that is really kind of surprising is the is the like hunger diminishment when you take it. It's got like the, you know, the the herbs in it to mitigate hunger.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Jocko Willink?

  And that seems like, oh, that seems like a little bit of voodoo, but man, I'm I'm telling you, if you take some of that. Look, it also has got some caffeine in it, so it gives you a little bit of that, too. But, man, it definitely quells your hunger if you want to try it.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, fully.

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, we got weight cutting that goes on in my family.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:22Jocko Willink?

  You know, we got various, various athletes that are in the weight cutting programs for various combat sports. And so, yeah, that burner stuff is really kind of good to go. And it's kind of good to go. Like I said, I was telling you before we hit record today is, let's say you, let's say you normally, like I normally eat around like 10. If I normally eat around 10, I would take that burner stuff at like 9:45, maybe 9:30, 9:30, 9:30, 9:45. And you're not hungry. You know, and you feel good. So Jocko Fuel dot com, you can get burner, you can get protein, you can get energy, you can get hydration, you can get joint warfare.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  You can get time war. Man, I recommend you take time war. Time war, just freaking GTG.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Keep you in.

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Because let's face it, we don't want to know about that 67, uh, 70 year old situation. We ain't looking for that. But that's what's happening. So, you know, try, we were fighting that war, time war.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Time war.

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  The time war is effective.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, when that day comes, where do you want to be? You know? You want to be still in the game?

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  Still in the game.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  You're gonna be seventy.

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's coming. For some people, for a lot of people.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  So when that day comes.

• 1:24:45Jocko Willink?

  I'm over here staying thirty-three.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Stayin' thirty-three, man.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, JacoFuel.com, check it out. Also, check out OriginUSA.com. We got all kinds of like new products coming out. Did you see we're coming out with some surf shorts, like board shorts?

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Jocko Willink?

  So, super stoked on that. We got the little cargo pockets where we're all happy, you know? It's, listen, are these the shorts for surfing? No, because actual, if you're going surfing in Hawaii, you're gonna wear surf shorts that are meant for surfing. They might have like a little tiny pocket, but they're, they're, they're just a little bit different. These are board shorts for life.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Hybrid.

• 1:25:27Jocko Willink?

  You know, they're, yeah, they're meant, they have, they got a pocket, you can put your wallet in there, put your, put your, uh, keys in there or whatever. And, and yet, dual purpose, like you said, like, hey, look, do we need to jump in the water? Make a save or whatever?

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Do it. So we got that. We have all kinds of good stuff at OriginUSA.com. A hundred percent, a hundred percent American made. So, check that out.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Also, this Jocko store, be able to look out for some new stuff on there. As always, what's going on right now? Get after it. That's gonna be the newest one, coming out any day now. I can't say when. Cause you know, it depends on some things, but if you want to know when, just sign up on the email list. It's at the bottom of the page, JacoStore.com. Uh, but yeah, some good stuff, good, discipline equals freedom. You know, you want to represent, that's where you can get it. The Shirt Locker is in full swing, has been for years. So.

• 1:26:16Jocko Willink?

  People like that one.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  People like that one. So yeah, if you're thinking about it, it never pulled the trigger on it, you can go, you can check out what it's all about on the page. Click on the top, says, join the Shirt Locker, you can see what it's all about. Anyway, subscription scenario, new design every month. It's good.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  Is it true that when you were a little kid and you got new sneakers, you could run a little bit faster and jump a little bit higher?

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  That is a hundred percent true.

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Is it true that when you get a Jocko? Store shirt, you're a little bit more disciplined and a little bit more focused. That is true. Yeah, it is. Check jocko store.com. Also, we got some books, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones. We got Dave Burke's book, Need a Lead. We got Things My Brother Used to Say by Ryan Mannion. We got Warrior Kid books. We got Extreme Ownership, all those. You guys know the deal. Can check those out. Also, we have Leadership Consultancy, Echelonfront.com. You heard me mention a couple of times today, we do live events. One's called The Muster. If you want to come and check out logistical flow, come to The Muster, check it out, and then you can learn how we make that happen. So that is at

• 1:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Echelonfront.com. We have online learning as well, teaching these skills of leadership. Because listen, you heard me talking about it today. Hey, are you born with all the great qualities of a natural leader? Maybe. Maybe you got, maybe you got a seven in this category and a nine in that category, but a five over in this other one. So we can maybe bump that nine to a nine, five, maybe bump that four up to a seven. You see what I'm saying? We can get better across the board. Then are we a better leader? Yes, we are. You can do that right from the comfort of your own home. Echelonfront.com. Check it out. The Skills of Leadership. Check out primalbeef.com. Get yourself some steak.

• 1:27:57Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. Also, if you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help out their families, Gold Star families, go to Mom Ali's website. Mark Lee's mom, she actually gave an amazing speech this past weekend at the Ready First reunion down in Fort Bliss, Texas, gave an amazing speech just about Mark and what we're all doing here, trying to be better, do better, be more, and give more. So if you want to help out America's Mighty Warriors, check out that website, AmericasMightyWarriors.org. You can donate or you can get involved. Also,

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  check out HeroesAndHorses.org, and finally Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. You can also check us out. You can check out jocko.com. And then on social media, I'm at jocko willink, echo's at echo charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm. And it'll consume your brain if you're not careful. And even if you are careful, it can still consume your brain. It's called brain rot. They have a name for it. Yeah. Yeah. And now it's brain rot plus AI slop. Oh, yeah. It's like slop rot coming at you.

• 1:29:14Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of soldiers and soldiering, the title of the book we read today. We are grateful for all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are deployed around the globe right now, protecting freedom and our way of life. We thank you. Also thanks to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders who are deployed around our country right now, protecting us here at home. And for everyone else out there, I think it's important to remember this concept that we went over today from Field Marshal Wavell.

• 1:29:51Jocko Willink?

  And that is the relationship between being lucky and being bold. You're not going to get lucky if you're not bold. You have to step up. You have to make things happen. You have to be default aggressive. And if you are default aggressive, and if you are proactive, and you do have a bias for action, the luck will come. In order to make that happen, well, go out there and get after it. That's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.