268: You Make a Difference... But Only if You MAKE A DIFFERENCE. With Leif Babin.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:14 - The Squad Leader Makes a Difference. 2:23:38 - Final Thoughts 2:29:48 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:44:11 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 268 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  And also joining us tonight is Leif Babin. Good evening, Leif. Good evening. Good to be here. All right, so. I can't say it like Echo can, though. Well, I don't know. You put your own spin on it, right? I mean, that's hard. When he gets warmed up. He just does it so well, though. I mean, the bar is high. We were backstage at the first Jaco Live. Actually, it wasn't Jaco Live, it was in New York City.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  And someone said something to you like, "Are you nervous?" And you said, "Well, a little bit." And then...

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, okay, I'm trying to craft the conversation. Maybe that didn't happen the way you're looking at me like that. Somebody was talking to you and somehow you rehearsed your lines.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  What was it?

• 0:56Speaker 01

  It was Ty was making the video and you were like, "You know, I'm over here going over what I'm gonna say." And no, that was me taking a nap or something.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  I think it was just in passing, Ty was making a video.

• 1:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  And you were doing nothing, like you were doing whatever you're doing. And then I was just saying, "Good evening," on the side to be funny, I guess.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  Because that's your job.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  What's funny is I jammed that up.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  Did you?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  If you listen to that. For that.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  For 160 in New York.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, when I say, "Good evening," I was like, "Good evening," like I jammed it up, I think.

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that weird? You have one job.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  One job.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  But is the pressure greater on you to get those words right?

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  Since they're limited?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, right.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, what was crazy about that was like, you didn't know what I was gonna talk about.

• 1:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  And the only person that knew what I was gonna talk about was me. And I knew I was gonna go out there and talk about Seth, and it was gonna be like as hard of a thing as I could possibly have to go and talk about. And so you're all kinda, "Hey, you know, cool. This is the crowd. It'll be fun." And I'm sitting there thinking, "How am I gonna get through this?" And then I do get through my part, and then you screw up your part.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Thankfully, in a way, I screwed up my part before you did your part.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  So, you know, I knew something was kind of, I don't want to say off because it wasn't off, but something was a little bit different when you rolled up, like when you came onto the stage.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's when you-

• 2:26Speaker 01

  I was like, wait a second.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Something's different right now because I didn't know what was going on at that time.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  But-

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  Which is weird. I didn't give you any heads up at all.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  No, sir, you did not.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  What a savage.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  So, hey, man, it's real.

• 2:41Leif Babin?

  Yeah, you did that to me at the Jaco Live in Austin as well. No heads up whatsoever and you're read, you know, reading Seth's words and talk about us working together and stuff he'd written about me that I never even, you know, heard, heard before and it was, I was like bawling my eyes out in the back room.

• 2:59Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you came up to me afterwards and you go, you go, how about a heads up the next time? And I go, sorry, bro. You go, I was openly weeping. And I was like, dang, that's rough. Uh, yeah. Well, so anyways, let's hear your good evening one more time, Leif. I mean, what do we got?

• 3:16Leif Babin?

  Good evening.

• 3:17Jocko Willink?

  There you go. I mean, everyone always, everyone always likes the Leif Bab and Texas Batman thing that you, you've got going on, right?

• 3:25Leif Babin?

  I agree. I guess you can just gargle rocks or yell and scream over the sound of gunfire.

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember when we were in South Africa on the radio?

• 3:33Leif Babin?

  I do.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  Have, have you ever shared that story with anyone in your life, particularly the person that you're married to? We're on this radio show. It's a big popular radio show in South Africa. And, you know, we're getting interviewed about leadership and we're talking and these, these females are calling into the show and they're like, that man's voice is amazing. Whatever. I can't do a South African's voice, but it was, it was pretty funny.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Wait, that's, is that public, that, that interview? It's on YouTube, right?

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  It might be.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I saw that.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  It was pretty funny.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  I remember you guys being in South Africa on that, in that radio show and it's on YouTube.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, there you go. We can look it up.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  We can tag it. Wait, what do they say?

• 4:16Speaker 01

  We'll put that in the show notes.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  I would say that, but I know that there's a limited chance of you putting anything in the show notes.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  What's the show notes?

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I don't know. It's on, on the podcast. You know, you can put-

• 4:29Speaker 01

  On YouTube, the description part?

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  Description, but also people do that on, you know, when people put a podcast on iTunes, for instance, you can put links in there, echo. Yeah, you can put them in the show notes.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Imagine that.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  So people say, oh, link it in the show notes.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  So I'm not making any remote promises about anything being in the show notes. But I guess, I guess you can use your Google fingers if you want to see Leif getting complimented by the ladies of South Africa, or let's say some of the ladies in South Africa. It's on YouTube. It's, it's, it's out there. Alright, so now that we've gotten through that,

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  let's get into the subject of the night. The subject of the night is the squad leader makes a difference.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  The squad leader makes a difference. And with decentralized command, which is the fourth law of combat leadership,

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  this is undisputable. It's undisputable that the squad leader makes a difference because with decentralized command, everybody leads. You want everybody to be a leader. And lately,

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  I have been talking about the fact that the purest and highest form of decentralized command is actually culture. And if you have a strong culture inside of an organization, then the people in the organization at any level can make decisions based on the culture of the organization. Just based on the culture, they can figure out what to do. If you have a strong culture. If it's, we take care of the customer. Think of how many decisions you can make if you know, hey, our, our culture is to take care of the customer. You can make all kinds of decisions. If your culture is, we have the highest quality. We make the highest quality product. Oh, should I cut the corner here?

• 6:27Jocko Willink?

  No, you shouldn't. Should I, should I get a little cheaper, uh, uh, material to put in here? No, you shouldn't. We make the highest quality product, which means that culture drives decision making. We have the best value. We give the best value. What does that mean? We're gonna try and maintain that low price. We can make decisions. You know what? We can shave off a little bit of money there and we can get a better value for our clients. So you can make all kinds of decisions with that.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  And the military has culture too. And units in the military, different units in the military, right down to the platoon level, have a culture that can also drive decision making.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  It can drive good decision making, actually.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  And it can also make, it can also drive bad decision making, right? If you have bad culture, it can actually drive bad decision making. So, real obvious example, bad culture is a bad culture of blaming others, of not taking ownership. And if you're not taking ownership, you have a culture where nothing ever gets fixed. That's what's happening. So if our culture is to blame everyone else, we're not, we're not going to improve. We're not going to get any better, obviously. Again, if we have a culture where we're cutting corners, eh, don't worry about it.

• 7:47Jocko Willink?

  That's when accidents happen.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  If we have a culture where we're looking out for me, right? And that's looking out for, for Jaco. Well, then, um, we're not covering moving for each other. I'm not there to cover move for someone that needs help. If I've got a culture of micromanagement, guess what? No one's gonna have any initiative because the culture is, we'll sit around and wait and get told what to do. So you can see how these cultures drive bad decision making. Of course, culture can also drive good decision making, right? With, with good culture, if you've got good culture, if you've got a culture of ownership, if everyone in your team is, has got the culture where, hey, we take ownership, we solve problems, guess what?

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  That culture is gonna drive people to say, hey, you know what? That's my fault. Let me fix it. So we want that culture of ownership. We want the culture where people don't cut corners. We want the culture where people look out for their teammates. We want culture where people are empowered and they make things happen. So it's, it's real obvious how powerful culture can be. And I think sometimes people think about culture as...

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  Is like non quantifiable. Well, you know, they have a good culture, but what does that really, what does that produce? What does that give you? The reality is if you have good culture, it is extremely powerful. It's the highest form of decentralized command and decentralized command is extremely powerful in its own right. So then the question becomes, okay, how do we actually create culture? How do we do that? How are we going to create culture? And the answer is if you think about it for a little bit, the answer is that you create culture the same way that culture has always been created. How does culture get created? We have to tell the story.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  We have to, we have to, we have to share this story. We have to explain what we've been through, what we've done together, who we are, what our history is, what we stand for, and actually, and actually why we stand for that.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  And if you can carry on that story, if you can tell that powerful story, you can create a culture.

• 10:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, we can't just make the story up.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  We can't just, we can't, we can't just fabricate a story. Actually, no. We actually can. You actually can just create a, a, a story almost out of thin air. And if you, if you use that story, if you use that lie to replace the story and you tell that lie for long enough, it becomes the truth, right? 1984. That's exactly what, that's the whole premise of 1984.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  We control, he who controls, what is it? Who controls the past, controls the present? Who controls the present, controls the future? No, who controls the present, controls the past? And who controls the past, controls the future? Whatever order you want to put those in. If I can convince you that this is the story, this is the history, this is where we came from, I can manipulate the culture. So, so it actually can be done.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  But that takes like a massive kind of universal propaganda machine to make that happen.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  And I think the the better way to do that and what we should do and what good leaders do is to base the story that develops into our culture, base that, obviously base it in the truth. That's the most powerful way to create a culture.

• 11:32Jocko Willink?

  Is to tell that truthful story, to hold up those examples from the path, from the past, those those values that got us to where we are. Those heroes that stood for those values, you tell that story and that becomes the culture.

• 11:54Jocko Willink?

  And one of the strongest cultures that I've ever been around is the culture of the United States Marine Corps.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  And they do it in a bunch of different ways. But but what we're going to talk about today is a shining example. It's a shining example of how to create culture because they have a manual. They have a manual, the manual is called The Squad Leader Makes a Difference.

• 12:28Jocko Willink?

  Think about this black belt move. They make they make a document that's called The Squad Leader Makes a Difference. So obviously they want to have decentralized command, they want their squad leaders to step up and lead. So they make a whole manual that's called The Squad Leader Makes a Difference.

• 12:49Jocko Willink?

  And it goes further to set the culture inside the document itself. Because in this book, The Squad Leader Makes a Difference, which is subtitled, subtitled Readings on Combat at the Squad Level. And it's from the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, which is which is a legit name for something at Quantico. It's put, this thing was put together in 1998 by a couple of lieutenants.

• 13:15Jocko Willink?

  M.M. Obaldi, no idea how to pronounce your name, I apologize, and A.M. Otero. So these guys put together this manual and you're going to see that what it is actually doing is telling these stories and building a culture of decentralized command where everyone is a leader and the squad leaders can make a difference. Leif, I was thinking, when you were at the Naval Academy, what examples, how was that culture, like when you, when you looked at the Marine Corps, they, did, did that culture permeate into the young Leif Babin' brain and pull you in that direction a little bit?

• 13:57Leif Babin?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, we had some, some outstanding, uh, not commissioned officers. Sergeant Major that ran our, our PT and he'd come running by at four o'clock in the morning and yelling for the, the brigade of midshipmen to get up, you know? And, uh, it was, yeah, just, there was, there was a lot of that was, uh, in fact, I remember on Parents', uh, Parents' Weekend, so you go through like the plebe summer, which is so you just show up in the naval camp, it's kind of boot camp at the Naval Academy, is plebe, we call it plebe summer. So you show up and they're running all these midshipmen to boot camp, you're, you're kind of going to that boot camp style and toward the end of that, your, your parents show up, they show up for Parents' Weekend and they can visit for a few days and see you and then they, they take off. But he was, uh, he was

• 14:39Leif Babin?

  like talking to the parents, he was like, who hears, who hears from Maine? And, uh, and so, you know, a few people raised their hand like, oh yeah, he's, he's from Maine. He's like, I'm from Maine too, the Maine part of Paris Island. And he just starts laughing. It was, uh, just, you know, they, that was certainly instilled in us and, and everyone has to go through, you know, whether you're going to be a, a ship driver in the Navy or submarines or fly airplanes or, or whatever, you have to go through, uh, you know, at least a, uh, at least a two or three week program that's kind of like OCS, um, down in Quantico. Uh, it's, I mean, they, they do it at OCS in Quantico for the Marine Corps. You, you get a taste of that regardless. And, uh, so that whole, the whole thing of every Marine or rifleman and, and putting folks through that was, uh,

• 15:21Leif Babin?

  was very appealing to me. And I, I went there because I wanted to be a SEAL, uh, but, uh, certainly, um, Marine ground was my second choice, which I did not get selected for.

• 15:31Jocko Willink?

  Dang. Um, two things. Isn't it interesting the way that just saying that this guy would run by at four o'clock in the morning just makes you think, good to go?

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  That's number one. And when I was going through officer candidate school, which is also run by, well, the Marine Corps is, are the, are the drill instructors. And we would, we were, we were going for a run and every day we'd run through like a, like a officer, real officer housing, where the officers that were stationed in Pensacola lived. And, you know, every day we'd be singing cadence and then you go through there and you have to get quiet and they would just do like a quiet little cadence just to keep you in step. And then you'd get through and then you'd start singing again. And, you know, it'd be four or five o'clock in the morning or whatever. So one time we got this, this one drill instructor, wasn't my normal drill instructor. This other drill instructor took us for a run and he was, he was new and he was all kinds of fired up. And so we, so we get to that area and he like,

• 16:27Jocko Willink?

  gets real quiet. And so, you know, he's saying whatever the cadence was. And then all of a sudden, he, he sings as the cadence. He's like, get out of the rack, like quiet. And we're all like, get out of the rack. And he's like, get out of the rack. And we're like, get out of the rack. And he, get out of the rack. And so we're, we're five o'clock in the morning, run by all these officers housing. And by the end, we're just, get out of the rack and just screaming. And that was a good time. And I was like, hmm. So that's what the Marine Corps does. That's what the Marine Corps does. They make a human being say, I'm from Maine, the main part of Paris Island. That's what the Marine Corps does. And we must salute them for that. So this book is one of those things where I, when I'm on my,

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  when I'm on my tra- trails through the world, I stumble upon these things. This is one of those things. I saw that title. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. What is this? So, uh, the squad leader makes a difference. Reading on combat at the squad level, volume one. And by the way, this is volume one. I, I have not been able to find volume two, three, four, five, or six. So maybe these guys got sent somewhere from the Marine Corps War Fighting Lab and didn't ever make another one. But let's get into it.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  Here's the forward in combat.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes when I read these things, I think every single thing that I'm about to read, I just read it and stop. This is one of those things. So in combat, the actions of individual leaders affect the outcome of the entire battle.

• 18:06Jocko Willink?

  Squad leaders make decisions and take actions which can affect the operational and strategic levels of war. Well-trained squad leaders play an important role as combat decision-makers on the battlefield. Leaders who show initiative, judgment, and courage will achieve decisive results, not only at the squad level, but in the broader context of battle. Without competent squad leaders capable of carrying out of a commander's intent, even the best plans are doomed to failure.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  So you know, you hear about the general and the colonel and the captain and even the gunnery sergeant. You hear about the Marine Corps leadership and, and yes, they're outstanding.

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  But when you're a corporal,

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  and you read this, you think, you know what? I gotta get mine too. Think of how awesome that is. And, and from a, from a, you know, from a business perspective,

• 19:19Jocko Willink?

  how, how, how, how do you, what story do you tell your employees? What, what story do you tell the people that work inside your organization? What story do you tell them? Do you tell them that, that, that they are decision-makers? Do you tell them that their judgment and initiative will drive results at the strategic level? Do you ever tell your team that?

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  That's how you set the culture.

• 19:50Leif Babin?

  That, you know, as you, as you're reading that, I'm thinking about as a student of history and I love reading history books and obviously you do, you know, you've done some amazing books here on the podcast. But we always talk about it from the big, you know, the big, the commander, the general, you read, you know, Julius Caesar maneuvered his, his, or Alexander the Great did this, or Napoleon did this, or Patton moved his army here. And he might've been making some overall decisions, but the army that's moving is, is the, the frontline leaders out there, the squad leaders that are executing that and making it happen. And I love the way we do that echelon front. We're, our definition of leadership is everybody is a leader. And you said something recently that I, I hadn't thought

• 20:32Leif Babin?

  about it in that way, but we're, okay, who, who is actually a leader? If you interact with humans in some way and, and actually need them to go in a direction and work together and provide a resource or, or support, then you actually are a leader. And I think when you see yourself that way, I mean, the most powerful armies in the world, the most powerful teams, companies in the world are going to see themselves, where everyone sees themselves as a leader, able to solve problems and make things happen and move the team forward in the direction they need to go.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, um, and that's one of the best things about this podcast is that I get to, I get to read books, not written by the general, not written by the admiral, but written by

• 21:14Jocko Willink?

  a rifle, one of Napoleon's riflemen, or a machine gunner in Stalingrad. Like that's, that's who we're, that's who we're hearing from. And what's, what's, what's powerful about that is then you get to see,

• 21:27Jocko Willink?

  you get to know, you get to learn how that leadership is perceived by the troops on the frontline. I mean, that, that podcast that we did about Stalingrad where you, they were hearing Hitler talk about them being gone. They were still there. They were surrounded. They were fighting for their lives and they were hearing the broadcast of Hitler saying, "It was a great sacrifice and they stood to the last man." They're like, "We're still here. What are you doing? Give us help. Give us support. Let us, let us break out." No. And you realize, oh, those, well, those people on the front lines, they do, they, they make such a big difference.

• 22:12Jocko Willink?

  And if you set the culture correctly, they will have even more impact.

• 22:20Jocko Willink?

  Goes on. This, this public, this publication illustrates how bold imaginative squad leaders impact the outcome of a battle or campaign. The historical examples here represent some of the cases in which squad leaders were able to change the course of history.

• 22:37Jocko Willink?

  Did I just say a squad leader changed the course of history? Yes, I did. In each case, the squad leader had to make a quick decision without direct orders. Act independently and accept responsibility for the results. Short lessons are presented at the end of each story. These lessons should help you realize how important your decisions are to your Marines and your commander. In combat, you must think beyond the squad level. You must develop opportunities for your commander to exploit. Your every action must support your commander's intent. You must be competent in the combat skills required of a combined arms leader.

• 23:23Jocko Willink?

  You are the primary warfighter of the Marine Corps. Boom.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  Freaking legit.

• 23:35Leif Babin?

  I think about how often, like how different that is, right? For the, a culture of centralized command. Where the, the senior leaders like, we know the frontline troops just don't get it. They don't know what's, they don't understand. And then, and then the frontline troops are like the, the, the guys up in the ivory tower, you know, the senior leaders, they don't get it. They don't understand what's going on here. Versus it, you know, where people are just sitting around waiting to be told what to do versus the, the team that's actually empowered to step up and lead and make things happen. And that team is just unstoppable.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  Unstoppable.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  Here's some quotes that this thing starts off with. The most brilliant plan depends for its tactical execution on the squad leaders. Poor squad leaders may ruin the best laid plans. First rate squad leaders often save badly devised plans. The squad leader is the sole level of command that maintains direct contact with the men who do the actual fighting.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  It follows then that the squad leader is to be trained as a tactical commander and as an educator of his men. That's interesting because, you know, when we talk about span of control and on the battlefield, you know, you can have four, five, six guys and you can pretty much control them. You can, you can, you can, you can make things happen. You know, when you've got four, five, six guys, maybe seven, it starts getting really wonky at eight. But that's because you can see them. They're right there. You can, you can move four feet and you can grab Leif and say, hey, move, move a little further forward. You can actually just make things happen through direct supervision. So that's,

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  that's, that's very important to remember that these squad leaders are the ones that actually are, have the contact to make things happen. You go up one level, you go from the squad to the platoon. Well, that platoon commander can't get to that kid over on the left flank. He can't get to that machine gunner up on that knoll. He's not going to be able to get there. He's not going to be able to make it happen. And that's why as you grow, you have to get better at the laws of combat. You have to get better decentralized command. You have to get better to keep things simple. You have to get better prioritized next. You have to get better cover move because you don't have that direct control anymore. You can't just, you know, use your force of will to make things happen. Go grab a guy. You need to get over here. Doesn't work anymore.

• 26:01Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, the IDF, this guy's Israeli, the IDF squad leaders are trained to command independently in the field. Modern armies operate in small dispersed formations. All levels of command must be trained to think and act independently. Modern weapons which provide small groups of men, greater firepower and flexibility of movement call for a high standard of command at all levels. And this is something that we've been able to walk through and I apologize that it hasn't been chronological in nature, but.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  When the machine gun came, we had to start using decentralized command. Because if we're all bunched up together, we're all gonna die together. So that's when World War I, towards the end of World War I, we started getting decentralized command and started having the squad like, "You're not gonna be with me anymore." "Hey Leif, when we go on this mission, I'm not gonna be able to give you any guidance at all as the company commander, because you're gonna be 400 meters away. We have no radios, and you just are gonna have to make things happen. You have to know what we're trying to make happen. You gotta go do it on your own." So, this idea that, you know, when you saw the redcoats, right? Line up and we're gonna march together. That's the old way of war. I mean, the Romans, the Phalanx,

• 27:18Jocko Willink?

  like, all the old formations of war. It was like, "We're all together. We can just maintain good control over this big group easier because we're all co-located." And modern warfare brought us to, "Hey, I'm not right there. We launched on this mission and I might not see you again until the mission's complete."

• 27:40Jocko Willink?

  So, the people that are out there leading have to know what they're doing, why they're doing it. They have to understand the commander's intent and they have to take initiative to get to that goal.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  And he concludes this with, "The squad leader therefore, the squad leader is therefore to be trained technically as an officer, not as a corporal." And that's from Yigal Alan, who is a field commander in the Israeli Defense Force. And he actually was a scout with the Brits in World War II, fought in Syria, fought in Lebanon, founding member of the Israeli Strike Force. So, some experience.

• 28:24Jocko Willink?

  First, they kicked this whole thing off, and this was, this was actually a big shocker to me. They, they kicked us off by talking about Corporal Alvin York, United States Army. Alright, so I expected this to be all Marines, but the Marine Corps is awesome. And they said, "Hey, these are awesome examples of where a squad leader made a difference, and we're gonna use them."

• 28:50Jocko Willink?

  France, 1918. The Meuse-Argonne Offensive was the last important battle of the First World War. On the night of 25 September 1918, over 1 million American soldiers moved up to relieve the French forces on the front lines. The American advance that ensued swept easily through the first two lines of German trenches, and then progress slowed. Facing stiff resistance, the Reserve Division was called up. Corporal Alvin York served as an infantryman in the 82nd Division.

• 29:26Jocko Willink?

  York's company started across a valley at 6:00 in the morning. As they began to move, the company came under heavy fire. From behind a hill, enemy machine guns mowed down the first wave of advancing Americans. No one knew where the deadly fire was coming from, so York's platoon sergeant decided to take the platoon on a mission to find it. The platoon found a gap in the enemy lines and circled to the rear where they thought the machine guns might be. The group of Americans stumbled across two German litter bearers, whom they followed back to the headquarters of the machine gun battalion. The Americans walked right into the German machine gun command post, opened fire, and the Germans immediately surrendered. Upon hearing the fire behind them,

• 30:09Jocko Willink?

  the Germans that were dug in near the command post swung their weapons around and began firing at the Americans. Caught in the open, in a hail of automatic fire, the Americans instantly took casualties. Corporal York took aim at the nearest machine gun about 25 yards away and killed the man behind the gun. He continued to fire at each German who popped his head out of a foxhole. After watching his troops being massacred by this lone sharpshooter, the German major in command yelled to York, "If you'll stop shooting, I'll make them surrender."

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  Work on your marksmanship, people. Work on your marksmanship.

• 30:53Jocko Willink?

  Within minutes, the remaining American troops had captured ninety German prisoners, but they were behind enemy lines. Corporal York took charge and quickly organized his platoon. He decided to move back towards friendly positions, straight through the German lines. York ordered the German prisoners to carry back the American wounded. Every time the group came upon a German position, York told the captured German major to order the troops to surrender.

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  The well-disciplined German soldiers never questioned the order, and by the time York's small band reached friendly lines, they had acquired one hundred and thirty-two German prisoners. In their wake, York's platoon left thirty-five deserted German machine gun positions and a significant gap in the German defenses. This gap, which York had created, was a vital element to the success of the division's advance. This advance gave momentum to the American forces and contributed to the success of the offensive.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  Phenomenal. Here's the lessons. Corporal York was quick to exploit the opportunity which had been created. He realized that his actions would affect the outcome of the battalion's advance and made decisions which supported his commander's intent. His strong situational awareness guided him in taking action which had decisive results. You know, when you think, even what I think, when I think of World War I soldiers, you, I definitely envision someone that's much more obedient than what we have in the modern all-volunteer military today, right? You've got someone that's, hey, I mean, I would say the whole world was more obedient, right? You had a much more stringent class structure in America.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  You had the much further separation between the officers and the enlisted. And so, so for this kid to be like, "Oh, I got this", it's, it's incredible. It's incredible to show that kind of initiative. And I think the fact that it was in World War I is even more incredible.

• 33:05Leif Babin?

  Think about what would have happened if he was just standing around waiting to be told what to do in that situation though, which is what so many leaders we work with think is the right call. Like you should just wait to be told what to do and then do, you know, carry on orders without question. And, uh, and he would just be standing there waiting to be told what to do and they would fail. And maybe the whole offensive fails as a result. Instead of someone who actually understands the why, understands the commander's intent and the purpose behind what they're trying to do and can take the initiative to go make things happen.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what, uh, I often say, and I wrote about, I don't want yes men, right? I don't want to know someone that's just like, yep, hey, sounds good, Jaco. Hmm. Sounds great. You know, you want someone that's going to push back and like, hey, I don't agree with that. Wait, what about this? Take that one step further. It's like, I want someone that's just gonna figure out what to do and go freaking execute it, right? That's what we want. That's what we're trying, that's what we want. That's what we're trying to grow. That's what we're trying to develop in our subordinate leadership is that they are gonna look, even look beyond, even look beyond what I can see and say, oh, I bet if I did this, it would be a good move. And maybe they're batting 80%. I'm good with

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  that. I'd rather have somebody batting 80% on 80% good moves that took initiative and made things happen. And 20% of the time I gotta go, oh, hey, hold what you got, man. Don't go over there yet. Much rather have that initiative.

• 34:30Leif Babin?

  But that's something you've, you've helped me with as well though, with, because I think it's a hard thing for a lot of leaders to accept. It's like, well, you know, we gotta come up with the right solution. We don't want to make mistakes and we want to move forward. And when you're, you're like, listen, 80% solutions ago, 80% solutions ago, where we're never gonna have a perfect plan. So let's, let's get the plan as close, you know, in a good direction and then execute and execute, execute and have the initiative, be default aggressive. Uh, I think, I think that's, I know it can stifle me, uh, and I've struggled with that. And I'm, I'm not executing because I'm trying to get it to the 97% solution. Like, listen, 80% solution, start moving things forward, execute. And I think that's very empowering to think about that. You don't have to have the perfect plan.

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:13Leif Babin?

  You gotta just go.

• 35:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Very liberating to be like, oh yeah, I don't care about that. Hey, we, we might not be, oh yeah, I don't care. You know, we, well, what if, you don't care about that. That hill over there? Yeah, get there.

• 35:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, do you want me to have a logistics? No, I don't care about that. Well, do you want me to do it in the daytime? I don't care. Well, do you want? No, I don't care. I want you to get that hill.

• 35:36Leif Babin?

  Okay.

• 35:37Jocko Willink?

  But let's do it.

• 35:38Leif Babin?

  The, the point I'm making here though is, is, you know, e- even whether it's Echelon Front or working together, Tasking a Bruiser. In, in, you know, there can be something like in my mind, I'm like, hey, you know, Jaco's really good at this and I, I gotta make sure that Jaco under, you know, has, like this is the right plan and it's going to meet every single thing that, you know, he wants to do. So you, you start putting these self-imposed restrictions. Instead of like, when you're like, hey, man, 80% solutions, go, bro, let's execute. And that, that's, it's super liberating to think about it that way. And you realize like, hey, what I thought, you know, I've got to get this thing perfect. So, you know, Jaco's like, yeah, that's good. I actually don't and I'm actually, I'm actually failing if I'm not executing and I'm, I'm sitting here trying to come up with a perfect plan.

• 36:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a, some report you were trying to get. And you were like, hey, you know, I haven't gotten you this report because I, I can't quite figure out this little detail at the end to make sure that it's a hundred percent. And I just, I, I, I'm just not getting it to you because I, I don't want it to be inaccurate. And I don't want to have you like pissed. And I was like, bro, actually I, I said, have I ever sweated you for the details on anything in the past 15 years? And it was funny, you, you kind of, you tilted your head a little bit and you went, nope. And I was like, why do you think I'm gonna start sweating these little like literally in,

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  meaningless, meaningless, uh, details. And you're like, Roger, I'm an idiot. Cool. Got it. So no factor.

• 37:05Leif Babin?

  And that's a, that is, that is a great example though, because here I am stewing about trying to put together a multi-page report and you're like, hey, bro, just send me a, just, just say, hey, I don't have the, I don't have all the information yet. Here's what I think we're doing. Here's kind of the general, you know, direction we should go. And as soon as you said that, I was like, Just another reminder that it's self imposed restrictions and it's it's really it can cause all kinds of problems. So

• 37:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and obviously that means I'm doing a bad job of, you know, telling you what the parameters are of success, you know, if I'm like, hey, can you tell me what these numbers are? You're like, cool. Yeah. But it's going to take me three weeks to dive into all these details. If I was like, hey, and I, you know, I was like, dude, I just need to know like ballpark. Where are we at? Okay, got it. Cause I can give you that in 13 minutes. But, you know, it's the, it goes back to some of that implied implied commander's intent, right? Because the implied commander's intent is that when I ask for something, I need that thing, right? Hey, you know, when Jaco asks for something, because he doesn't ask for much, when he asks for something, he must want that thing really exact. The implied intent is that

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  I want, the implied intent with me is basically, I want perfection, right? That's, that's, that's a complete implied intent. And for some reason, Echo's never really picked up on that implied.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  No, that's actually not true. If I think about it, like the, the way, there's been some things where I've seen, I found out after the fact, what you did to reach a level of as close as a human can get to perfection on something where I've been like, hmm, I didn't expect him to do all that, but he did it. So that implied level of perfection, just from my own stupid personality is like enough to make someone say, I, I better get this right before, you know, we go forward and that sucks. And, and I talked about it at Gettysburg. It was like, you've got to think about what your implied, what your implied commander's intent is.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  And if, especially if you're going to ask them to do something that's outside that normal implied commander's intent. And, you know, we talked about it with, with General Lee and some of his, some of his subordinate leaders that, hey, General Lee was about kicking ass. So we're moving here. What's General Lee going to want me to do? He's going to want me to kick ass and go forward, but. He said, hey, you know, don't go forward right now, but they get that word. They're like, yeah, but it's generally, I'm going to go get some and they messed things up. So you got to pay attention to that implied commander's intent that just your personality has your own personality has a, has a culture to it and you got to pay attention. Scary.

• 39:45Leif Babin?

  That was a, uh, that was some rare praise for, for Echo Charles. We got to note that down. Take a well deserved, well deserved, obviously. Thanks.

• 39:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm thinking like the first time we ever went to like travel to do the podcast and you had like, and I expected, I was like, I had my fingers crossed, my toes crossed, my ears crossed, hoping that, you know, all this quote, all this equipment showed up and we'd be able to, you know, we have some guests coming and it's going to be there. The time is valuable and all this stuff. And I'm like thinking, oh, I hope this, and yet you had it all, you know, in the Pelican case.

• 40:26Leif Babin?

  Yep.

• 40:27Jocko Willink?

  Everything was there. I was like, hmm.

• 40:29Leif Babin?

  Squared away.

• 40:30Jocko Willink?

  Squared away.

• 40:31Leif Babin?

  As it were.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  Which is not, you know, maybe what everyone expects. Maybe some people have a different implied scenario.

• 40:39Jocko Willink?

  All right. Next one, Sergeant Henry, and that's, I haven't even said this yet. That's what this whole manual is. It's just anecdotal, one-page stories where the squad leader makes a difference. Sergeant Henry Hanekin, US Marine Corps, Haiti, 1919. Following serious rebel uprisings, the United States began a prolonged occupation of Haiti in 1915.

• 41:07Jocko Willink?

  Charlemagne Peralta was the leader of the rebel army known as Takos. The second Marine Brigade spent several months in unsuccessful attempts to topple Charlemagne's group. Henry Hanekin, a sergeant in the brigade devised a bold plan to separate Charlemagne from the bulk of his troops and ambush him. Sergeant Hannigan sent one of his most reliable men to become a member of the CAECOS band. In a short period of time, the infiltrator had earned the outlaws' trust. Then Sergeant Hannigan had his spy feed the CAECOS location of a marine unit that was vulnerable to attack. I'm talking about putting the bait out there. Sends a little spy in there and says, "Hey, there's gonna be these marines, they're gonna be vulnerable to attack."

• 41:52Jocko Willink?

  Hannigan's spy soon returned with information of a rebel plan to attack these marines, as well as Charlemagne's location during this attack. On 31 October 1919, Sergeant Hannigan led 22 local militiamen in an attack on Charlemagne, disguised as rebels. This is, you know, this is freaking getting it. "Disguised as rebels, Hannigan and his unit moved through several guard posts and boldly walked into the unsuspecting rebel camp." When he was within 15 yards of... You know where this story is going? It's going right where you want it to go. When he was within 15 yards of Charlemagne, Sergeant Hannigan drew out his pistol and shot and killed the rebel leader.

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  In the firefight that followed, dude, in the firefight that followed, the small raiding party captured the rebel position and defended it from a series of counterattacks. The marines, who were the target of the rebel attack, had been warned by Sergeant Hannigan of the impending strike and were well-prepared for the rebel attack. The rebels were thoroughly defeated. The morning after the action, Sergeant Hannigan reported his exploits to his commanding officer. His commanding officer didn't even know what he was doing. He was just out there getting after it. Hannigan's actions had routed more than 1,000 outlaws, killed their leader, and virtually shattered the entire bandit resistance movement in northern Haiti. For his actions, Sergeant Hannigan was awarded the Medal of Honor. I mean, what up?

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  Talk about taking commander's intent and just running with it. Default aggressive to the court, right? That is like the riskiest bunch of actions, right? "Hey, I'm gonna set these guys over here as bait, I'm gonna sneak in there, we're gonna get dressed up as rebels. By the way, when I get in there, I'm just gonna shoot this guy the first chance I get."

• 43:40Leif Babin?

  I wonder had he had he had some direction or approval from his commanding officer if that would have gotten approved?

• 43:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's

• 43:49Leif Babin?

  That's too risky, don't do it.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  That that that may have happened, you know, I every time I talk to Tilt, I'm like, Tilt, I'm sorry, if I was in charge, man, I don't know if I would have improved any of your operations. I'm gonna go 24 miles into Cambodia with four other guys and we're gonna sit around and wait to get attacked by a freaking division of NVA soldiers? Okay, cool, let's do it.

• 44:14Leif Babin?

  You know, as I think about that, though, a lot of people, obviously, you can be too aggressive, right? We we gotta be default aggressive, but not not not too aggressive, not reckless. And it sounds like they they mitigated the risk, they they needed to, obviously, it was successful, you know, in in that regard, but I think what a lot of leaders miss is and really, we we got a lot of scrutiny on on our pretty bold and aggressive operations in in Ramadi back in in 2006, is that by being default aggressive, you can actually mitigate risk. So by by going into areas where the the enemy, there were insurgent neighborhoods that no no one else could get into, they had no US or coalition forces presence, they had no expectation we were gonna be there. So we'd show up in places that would catch them off guard, they they we had the initiative, they didn't.

• 44:57Leif Babin?

  And it sounds like that's exactly what happened in that situation. And I think some leaders, you you gotta think about that, look, you can actually mitigate risk by being default aggressive and something that I, you know, you were you were all about in tasking a bruiser, and I think we utilized our advantage.

• 45:11Jocko Willink?

  Were you in the chow hall, in the in the Camp Mark Lee chow hall, like, early in deployment, when our commanding officer was talking to me? And he says, you know, what about all these these guys with IEDs? Because I was telling him that we were gonna be going on patrols and it was gonna be very dangerous. And he said, what are you gonna about do about these IEDs and these guys that are putting IEDs in the ground? And I go, we're gonna kill them. And that was my mitigation plan, which is a very good mitigation plan. Get in a position where you can kill those guys. So your Overwatch team sets up and you got people patrolling, kill the bad guys. And he was like, go kick, sounds like a good plan, right? And and yes, and that that's an example of. How are you going to stay safe? By being aggressive. That's absolutely true.

• 45:56Leif Babin?

  But just, okay, take the ID threat as an example, right? If, if we're patrolling through an area where they have no expectation we're going to be there, the locals are out on the street. I mean, there's, we're actually much safer from IDs than we are if we're

• 46:08Jocko Willink?

  Rolling down route.

• 46:09Leif Babin?

  Rolling down the main route where they're expecting it to US forces to be. And, and that's, I think that's a great example. And in, in, in our CEO's mind, it's like, how do we do this? This is dangerous. And, and I think actually thinking, it's actually less dangerous to be super aggressive and to be someplace where they have no expectation versus them sitting back and waiting the ideas where they know we're going to be.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  Lessons. Sergeant Hannigan displayed outstanding initiative. That's the understatement of the year. And tactical proficiency. Okay, maybe that's the understatement of the year. In devising and acting upon a plan to defeat a large rebel force, his plan supported the brigade, the brigade's mission in Haiti. Sergeant Hannigan accepted great risk, but displayed the courage and nerve to see his plan through. His bold action achieved decisive results. With a small band of men, Sergeant Hannigan was able to defeat a larger rebel force by adhering to tactical fundamentals. His 22-man main effort attacked the enemy center of gravity, the rebel leader. Without leadership, the rebel force quickly disintegrated. Sergeant Hannigan used the elements of surprise and deception to execute his attack. Surprise is one of the most important tactical fundamentals and was essential to this tactical

• 47:16Jocko Willink?

  undertaking. Sergeant Hannigan's actions illustrate how tactical decisions at the squad level can impact the operational and strategic levels of war and can ultimately affect US policy. Sergeant Hannigan's attack greatly affected the balance of power in Haiti, lessening the turmoil in the country. It was a major step towards ending the rebellion on the island. So there you go. It's a strategic move. And we, we always try and point out to companies that your frontline troops can have a negative strategic impact or a positive strategic impact. And it's even, that's even more accentuated in this day and age now that we have social media and you can have one employee at one of your stores either do something horrible

• 47:58Jocko Willink?

  and, and really damage your reputation or do something heroic and really help your reputation. So do you, have you in place the culture that's going to drive those frontline people to do something heroic? Or have you got a culture where they're going to be driven to do something horrible? I don't know. That's on you. Your team.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  The prospect of surprise is always the surest guarantee of victory. That's from von Melanthin, who's a World War II general. He wrote the book Panzer Battles, which we haven't gotten to yet on the podcast. We'll get there. No tactical action should ever be undertaken without the element of surprise. Speaking of Germans. This here, I already thought this book was going to be about Marines. And now we already have Army, Marine. I certainly thought it was going to be about Americans. This is about a German. So the Marine Corps' attitude is wide open. Sergeant Wenzel, German Army, Belgium, 1940. The German plan to invade France included the invasion of Belgium and Holland.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  The French had not defended their border with Belgium, leaving it open to attack. The Belgians, however, had constructed a series of forts along the canals throughout the countryside. The most formidable of these was Evene Meille. Manned by 1,200 Belgian soldiers. The powerful guns of Evene Meille commanded the eastern approaches to the Belgian border. If this fortress was not eliminated, the German army would have significant difficulty crossing the Belgian border. Sergeant Wenzel was a member of Germany's parachute forces. Must have been rad being a paratrooper in World War II. You're the cutting edge of tech.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  I mean, what, a few years earlier, it wasn't even an idea that you could huck a person out of a plane with a piece of, with a freaking piece of cloth above them and they'd live? And here they are, just doing assaults. This one, they weren't paratrooping, actually. On 10 May, 1940, his paratroop company daringly landed on the top of Evene Meille in gliders with the mission of silencing the guns of the fortress in order to allow the German army to capture bridges to the east. When Sergeant Wenzel landed atop the fortress, he realized his commanding officer's glider had not made it to the objective. This left Sergeant Wenzel in command of 80 parachutists. In four man teams, the Germans used flamethrowers and special shaped charges to attack each gun turret.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Wenzel commanded his unit from a captured pillbox. The situation became tenuous when the Belgians prevented the German reinforcements from arriving by blowing the bridge on the main route of the ground attack. The paratroopers were cut off. The Belgians were also calling artillery on the Germans and enemy infantry could be seen preparing to counterattack the paratroopers. And as I was reading this, I was like, wait a second, enemy, who are we talking about? They're talking about the Belgians. Sergeant Wenzel continued to lead the parachutists for three more hours as each Belgian gun position was eliminated. After the sun had set, Sergeant Wenzel linked up with German forces from the east. Even a male had fallen. Sergeant Wenzel's actions allowed German forces approaching from the east to advance unmolested across the canals.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  With a force of 80 men, he had subdued 1,200 of the enemy.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  The defense of Belgium was broken and the German army was able to rapidly defeat Belgium and move into France. The northern wing of the German army rapidly outflanked the French army and brought about a defeat to the French forces in a mere six weeks. For his heroic actions and outstanding leadership, Sergeant Wenzel was awarded the Knight's Cross.

• 51:44Jocko Willink?

  When you think about 80 men beating 1,200, I was sitting here, in my mind, I'm thinking like, how do you even do that? But then you have probably heard me say, don't dig in. Don't get in a position where you can't get out of. Well, if you set up a fort where you're all in bunkered positions and all of a sudden the enemy gets in there and they can maneuver really quickly and you're stuck in this pillbox or you're stuck in this gun emplacement. While the other, while your bad guys, the people that are trying to kill you are running around and sneaking around and can get free fields of fire because you're stuck in this box. That's, that's in my mind, how it happens. You do have to recognize that even a male was probably the most impregnable force fortress in the entire world.

• 52:29Leif Babin?

  Freaking monster.

• 52:30Jocko Willink?

  It was like, I think 200 foot high walls along the now. I mean, so they, they probably felt like completely safe. No factor, there's no way the Germans are coming. But I, I think what's crazy, and we talked about the element of surprise in that situation.

• 52:44Leif Babin?

  The Germans knew they were coming. I mean, there was an attack coming. Obviously, the Germans knew they were coming. They had every expectation.

• 52:49Jocko Willink?

  You mean the Belgians knew that they were coming?

• 52:50Leif Babin?

  I'm sorry.

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  The Belgians knew that.

• 52:52Leif Babin?

  Yes, I'm sorry. The Belgians knew the Germans were coming. So the Belgians, they didn't have the element, the Germans did not have the element of surprise there because the, but they didn't know the manner in which the attack was coming. And I think technology played a key role because I believe that might have been the first use of gliders in combat ever, if I remember that correctly. It was certainly one of the first, if not the first. And so they, they didn't have the expectation that they could land on top of this fortress. It was also the first use, I think, of shaped charges as well. That was invented, a brand new technology. So they felt safe in these giant caissons of, you know, concrete and steel. And I think, what an amazing victory

• 53:32Leif Babin?

  of just being default aggressive to the core, hitting them, even when they expected that the attack was coming, they didn't realize the manner in which it was coming. And I think they just overwhelmed them with, now they're in the fortress and we felt safe. What do we do now?

• 53:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think, well, the, the technical, I guess, definition of surprise.

• 53:55Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know, if, if, and jiu-jitsu, right? You know, you're going for an armlock. You know, you're going for an armlock. You know, I'm trying to tap you out, right? You know, I'm trying to tap you out. You know, I'm trying to tap you out. So I'm grabbing your neck and you're, you're, you know, I'm trying to grab your neck and boom, I go for your arm, right? So it's a surprise, even though you know I'm trying to tap you out. I'm still going to surprise you. It's like a similar thing, right? We know we're going to get attacked, but what are these weird, quiet winged things coming from the sky? And why are they filled with people? Eighty people versus 1,200. That's freaking insane.

• 54:29Jocko Willink?

  Lessons. Sergeant Wentz realized that it was his responsibility to complete the mission after his commanding officer's glider failed to land on the fortress. How's that guy feeling afterwards? Bruh. He's like so bummed.

• 54:48Leif Babin?

  Well, if he was still alive.

• 54:50Jocko Willink?

  If he was still alive. He worked with the existing plan and took advantage of the element of surprise that his airborne landing had given him. Taking charge of eighty men, Sergeant Wenzel showed outstanding leadership and courage as he commanded the efforts against the fortress for three hours against Great Out. Sergeant Wenzel's understanding of the plan allowed him to shoulder the burden of responsibility of leading the assault force. He clearly understood his pivotal role in the invasion of Belgium, and his actions fully supported his commander's intent. Sergeant Wenzel's company-level raid permitted a regimental river crossing, which in turn allowed the German army to rapidly pour into Belgium. This eventually led to the fall of both Belgium and France. So, there you go, totally pivotal moment.

• 55:32Leif Babin?

  One thing I wanted to say, I don't disagree with you very often there, but yeah, it would, from a personal perspective, you're like, man, I'm so bummed I wasn't there, wasn't able to lead that. But actually, from a leadership perspective, you should be absolutely stoked.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:46Leif Babin?

  That your frontline leader stood up, made things happen, got the job done even without you there. And obviously, that's the real testament of leadership, that it's about the mission, it's not about you.

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's the, on a personal level, of course, the guy's bummed. On a professional level, he's totally stoked. And yeah, obviously, on a personal level, you're like freaking totally stoked that your frontline troops got the job done while you were, you know, while you were in some vineyard somewhere drinking wine.

• 56:14Leif Babin?

  I will say, as a couple of times that I was acting, tasking a commander and tasking a bruiser while there was some huge operation going on with most of Charlie Platoon and Delta Platoon, and you were out in the battlefield, I was like, this is not fun.

• 56:28Jocko Willink?

  See, that's what I'm talking about.

• 56:29Leif Babin?

  On a personal level, I am extremely bummed that I'm not there right now.

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  Says here, ends this one with a quote, "It is not the big armies that win battles, it is the good ones."

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  That's Field Marshal Maurice de Sax, which?

• 56:48Jocko Willink?

  Born in 1696, podcast 110, we covered his book.

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  And he's a weird, he's got a weird background. He's all kinds of things. He was like Polish and German and French and, and served in the Imperial Roman Army, but he wrote that book. I think it's My Reveries on War. It was a good book. Podcast 110.

• 57:07Leif Babin?

  He's got the title Field Marshal though. That's pretty cool.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 57:12Leif Babin?

  Remember we had a, uh, in Tasking and Bruiser, we had, we had a Captain Obvious and, uh, and so he, he was kinda over the top with like the obvious comments. So we promoted him to Admiral Obvious and then it kinda went beyond that. I was like, what, what sounds even cooler or bigger? So he became Field Marshal Obvious.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  There's only been, I mean, as far as I know, at least in the, in the US Navy, there's only been one Field Marshal of the Obvious. Which is a big promotion, you know, it's a big promotion. It's almost like a five star. It's beyond, it's beyond, it's not quite a five star, but it's definitely, you are definitely putting out some obvious stuff.

• 57:48Leif Babin?

  You don't want to be Field Marshal Obvious.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  Not a compliment. But it's weird too, because you'd think when you got, when you caught, you know, Captain Obvious, right? When you catch that nickname, you're going to start maybe paying attention, right? Putting yourself in check. When you get promoted, what was the next promotion Admiral? When you get promoted to Admiral Obvious, you're like, all right, this is definitely gotta stop. I gotta just, just, just bite my lip a little bit more. Still don't, still don't quite pull it off. Guess what? Once you're Field Marshal, well, I think once you Field Marshal, own it, right? Own it. Hey, I got a real couple of obvious points to point out.

• 58:28Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Rhubarth, back to back German Army, France, 1940. In the spring of 1940, the German Army invaded France. As the campaign, campaign progressed, the 10th Panzer Division was directed to cross the Meuse River and continue to attack toward Paris. The French realized.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  That the river provided a natural obstacle that could be used to halt the advancing Germans. Sergeant Rubarth, the leader of a squad of assault engineers which was attached to the German 69th Infantry Regiment. The Germans were, the Germans controlled the east side of the river and the French were dug in on the west. The French defenses included artillery and machine gun bunkers all along the river. After a violent Stuka air attack, Sergeant Rubarth's squad attacked with infantry. As his rubber boat reached the far shore, Sergeant Rubarth's squad attacked and destroyed the nearest bunker. On reassembling his squad, Sergeant Rubarth realized only two boats had successfully crossed the river. Leaving only his squad and one infantry squad on the west shore to create a breach in the French defenses. How many people were supposed to go?

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  Assault engineers, I wonder how many boats they actually had? Only two made it, okay. Undaunted, he ordered his unit to attack another bunker with grenades and a satchel charge. The French soldiers inside surrendered and their white flag was replaced with German colors. This drew cheers from the Germans on the far side of the river and demoralized the French defenders. Sergeant Rubarth then advanced and aggressively took two more bunkers. Creating a mere 300 meter gap in the first line of French defenses. More German forces then followed him across the river after receiving a fresh supply of ammunition and four more men. Don't worry, you got four more men. Proceed. Sergeant Rubarth continued his attack.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  And as enemy artillery started raining down on them, Sergeant Rubarth moved his squad quickly so that the artillery fire could not adjust to them. His squad overtook three more bunkers and broke through the second line of enemy positions. The second line of enemy positions. After seeing several of their bunkers blown up, the French forces assumed that they were being overrun. Their spirit crushed, the French began to withdraw. The action became a rout as the advancing German pursued, Germans pursued the French forces. For his achievement, Sergeant Rubarth received a battlefield commission to lieutenant as awarded the knighthood of the Iron Cross.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  When I think now, thinking to that last one and this one, let's face it, you got a small number of guys and you just start going ham, just start attacking and people aren't expecting you to do that, right? They don't expect, they see two boats show up, they're like, oh, whatever. And then all of a sudden their bunker is getting, you know, shaped charge on it and you're getting jacked up. Going and moving quicker than these people that are in these static positions. This is maneuver warfare, right? This is like the beginning of maneuver warfare. I can move and you can't. Just think of that, think of that, and then think of it from a leadership perspective. Think of it when you say, this is what we need to do.

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  And now you've just dug into your position, you can't move anywhere. And Malef says, hey, Jaco, I know that's what you want to do, but what about, you know, what about this over here with these other clients? And I go, we're sticking to the plan, right? It just doesn't work. Whereas I'm like, hey, this is where I'm at right now. What do you guys think? Or this is where we're at right now, but we might have to flex. That's all you need to say. That's all you need to say is, hey, I have an open mind. That's all you need to do is have an open mind. Present your idea with a, with an out, right? Take your position, but give yourself an out. That's all you need to do. So you can maneuver a little bit.

• 1:02:16Leif Babin?

  I, I think that mentality, like from a defensive perspective, you know, I know Klauswitz talked about the defensive position being, you know, the strongest and, your mentality is like, you know, you're giving the, all the momentum, all the initiative. Uh, and I think particularly when you're in a fortress where it's even a male or, you know, this, these positions, they probably had no expectation that someone could be inside their fortress. Oh, we're totally safe here. We're totally good to go. We have the advantage. And so as soon as that happens, I mean, and that doubt starts to creep in like, man, uh, you know, you're, you're, you're done. They've, they've lost, they've lost all morale. People are ready to surrender. People are ready to retreat. I think that's, there's something about just being on the advance that gives you, I don't know. I think all the advantage in the world.

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Did you?

• 1:03:04Jocko Willink?

  When I was talking about the fact that they raised the German flag and that helped morale, I had a vision of a certain American flag going up in random buildings over the city of Ramadi sometimes.

• 1:03:14Leif Babin?

  I don't know what you're talking about, boss.

• 1:03:17Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that was very helpful for morale.

• 1:03:19Leif Babin?

  I can neither confirm nor deny that, uh, that the, uh, the American flag was running up. Well, you, you know, you talk about, hey, we're going in there and you know, we get approval for these missions. Like, you know, we're going to be a sneaky sniper overwatch. We don't want the bad guys to know where we are. Couple of times we just, just had to run the old stars and stripes up in the middle of the city and say, we're right here. Bring it. And, uh, we did get, uh, in fact, Dave Burke called me on the radio to pass, good deal, Dave. Good deal, Dave. Called me on the radio to pass the word to us in one particular position that, hey, there were some troops massing. And I was like, bring it on. This is, that's exactly what we're hoping for. Mass attack. Bring it on.

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  Good morale for the troops.

• 1:04:02Leif Babin?

  I don't know if that could have gotten, it was like plausible deniability for, uh, Jaco as task unit commander there. We didn't exactly run that one up for approval.

• 1:04:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess there was some indication because, uh, well, since we're putting ourselves on report here, we weren't, you weren't allowed to fly an American flag, period. And we did have a American flag on Camp Markley.

• 1:04:25Leif Babin?

  24/7 all the time.

• 1:04:28Jocko Willink?

  Affirmative. So maybe my implied commander's intent was if you gotta run up the stars and stripe, if you gotta run up the stars and stripes, make it tall.

• 1:04:42Leif Babin?

  Make it tall and have a lot of machine guns and pointing in all directions, which we did.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:04:50Jocko Willink?

  Lessons Sergeant Ruebarth clearly understood the importance of rapid crossing

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  of the river. The commander's intent at all levels from squad to division was to cross the river quickly in order to maintain the momentum of attack. A delay at the river would have given the French time to strengthen positions closer to Paris and possibly halt the German offensive. So that's a, that's a really good, simple example of commander's intent to say, hey, listen, the commander's intent of this operation is we have to get across this river as quickly as possible. And now everybody in your division knows we're going to get across this river. That's the goal. And I'll do whatever I gotta do to make that happen. That's a very nice, clear example of what a commander's intent is. Now, everybody, now, everybody knows what we're trying to do. And if something changes, enemy does something I don't expect, guess what? Cool. I'm

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  going to adapt and I'm going to get across this river. I'm going to take as many of my guys with me as I can.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Taking on the role as the main effort of the German attack Sergeant Roubert displayed outstanding leadership shouldering the responsibility of creating a breach in the French defenses. Though greatly outnumbered on the far shore, the squad followed their courageous and decisive leader. Sergeant Roubert's bravery and judgment allowed him to succeed despite being isolated and under attack by French artillery. Sergeant Roubert did not wait for reinforcements but continued to attack the enemy deciding that rapid action was necessary. This is where action versus inaction, right? Action versus inaction? What was I saying yesterday when we were recording EF Online? I was like, nine times out of 10, action is better than inaction. This is an example.

• 1:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, is there a case where perhaps it would be better to wait for reinforcements? But I'll tell you what, here's the deal. If you take action, you know what? We got enough guys, right? We're gonna push, we're gonna go. Maybe you get stopped, maybe you meet heavy resistance. Now you know that, now you know you actually can't proceed. But if you go and you're like, hey, actually, we just, we just took another bunker. Hmm, let's take another one. You take small steps, you go forward, you take action, and then you learn from the feedback. If the feedback would have been, hey, we just tried to take another bunker and we got shellacked. Okay, well, we're not gonna move anymore, we're gonna wait for reinforcements, fine. What should your default mode be? Be aggressive, make it happen.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  His actions created an opportunity which his commanders took advantage of by pouring forces through the breach and decisively defeating the enemy. Sergeant Roubert's actions contributed directly to his battalion's crossing, his division's attack, and the eventual defeat of France five weeks later.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Far better it is, quote, "far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor, that neither enjoy much nor suffer defeat, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat." And that's Teddy Roosevelt.

• 1:07:51Jocko Willink?

  Medal of Honor Cuba, his son Medal of Honor, Utah Beach. All right, next up, the Marine Corps brings it. We got, we got Sergeant John Basalone, US Marine Corps, Guadalcanal, 1942. August 1942, the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal, encountering stiff resistance from the Japanese defenders. Sergeant John Basalone served as a machine gun platoon sergeant in support of Company C, 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. On the night of 24 October, Sergeant Basalone's platoon occupied a key position in the battalion's offensive perimeter on a jungle ridge. Just past 2130, the Japanese began a ferocious

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  attack. In the dark rainy night, intense fighting followed, and soon the machine gun unit on Basalone's right was overrun by screaming Japanese soldiers hurling grenades and firing rifles.

• 1:08:49Jocko Willink?

  At the same time, Basalone's machine guns started running low on ammunition. Basalone knew that the enemy that had broken through on his right were between him and the ammunition dump, but he decided that if his gun teams were not resupplied, the positions would fall. Sergeant Basalone took off his heavy mud caked boots, stripped himself of all unnecessary gear, and sprinted down the trail. After returning with several belts of ammunition, he set out for the unmanned machine gun pits to his right, knowing that those heavy weapons were vital tools in the defense of the ridge. When he got back to the gun positions, he found two unoccupied machine guns jammed, and ran back to get one of his own. He ordered a team to

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  follow him. After Basalone's gun crew reached their destination, he immediately put them into action. Basalone lay on the ground and began repairing one of the damaged weapons. Once the gun was repaired and loaded, he got behind the gun and began engaging targets. The fight raged on, and Japanese bodies began to pile up in front of the machine guns. At one point, Sergeant Basalone had to direct his Marines to push back the piles of bodies to maintain clear fields of fire.

• 1:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Several more times during the night Sergeant Bazalone made trips back to the command area for desperately needed ammunition. Eight separate attacks were sent against the Marines that night and Bazalone's platoon fired over 25,000 rounds.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  They were credited with killing an estimated 300 enemy soldiers, playing a major role in thwarting the Japanese attack. This successful defense reestablished the perimeter of the 1st Marine Division, protected the vital airfield, and led to the conquest of Guadalcanal, the first island taken from the Japanese. For his initiative, resourcefulness, and leadership in defense of the ridge Sergeant Bazalone was awarded the Medal of Honor.

• 1:11:04Jocko Willink?

  Lessons.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  Tactically Sergeant Bazalone understood his role in the defense of the ridge and the intent of the company and battalion commanders. His machine gun served a pivotal role in the company and battalion defense line, plan. He took numerous actions necessary to ensure his battalion's success. This included making the decision to weaken one position in order to fortify an adjacent unit's position to his right.

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Bazalone exhibited great leadership during the defense. He went to great lengths to provide his unit with whatever tools were necessary to maintain the defense of the ridge. His courage in braving enemy fire to deliver ammunition set an example for his Marines.

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting

• 1:11:57Jocko Willink?

  when you think about their low on ammunition.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  And his decision is I'm going to get, I'm gonna go personally get the ammunition. And I can see a couple of factors playing into that decision. One of them being if we don't have ammo, we're all gonna die. So it doesn't matter, you know, I could send another guy, but and I could stay here to try and help, you know, maintain our position. But without, without ammunition, we're all gonna die. So the number one thing we need is ammunition. And these guys know what they're doing. They got this, but without bullets, we're, we're gonna get overrun. I am going to do this.

• 1:12:43Jocko Willink?

  That's a, it's an interesting thing because, you know, sometimes leaders gotta say, okay, this is what's going on. Here's the absolutely critical task and I'm actually just gonna go do it right now. Because if it doesn't get done, we're all doomed. Taking off his boots. That's a, that's a hard thing for me to think about because my feet are soft.

• 1:13:10Leif Babin?

  Man, I think every time we turned on Basileon Road, you know, up there at Camp Pendleton, going to our ranges and, and, and training, uh, you just think about, think about, uh, you know, the exploits of, of John Basileon, that's, that's incredible. And I, you know, I think the other thing too, to think about here is these other, these other illustrations we're looking at, I mean, obviously amazing illustrations of a junior leader, you know, squad leader stepping up and making these calls. But, you know, the previous ones, the World War I and II, uh, you were talking about, you know, look vicious fighting, obviously people are dying and, and, and being, uh, you know, shot and blown up or bayoneted or whatever. But those particular charges, bonsai charges like that in, in, uh, in Guadalcanal, like there's zero quarters gonna be given. So you're overrun and like everyone's gonna get killed.

• 1:13:54Leif Babin?

  And, and I think, uh, you know, I think that was, uh, it's a different situation, you know, uh, and I think a lot more desperation there. You can't just throw up your hands and surrender like the Germans did to Sergeant York or Corporal York in that, that particular situation.

• 1:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I almost didn't even make it past the sentence, "In the dark rainy night, intense fighting followed and soon the machine gun unit on Basileon's right was overrun by screaming Japanese soldiers hurling grenades and firing rifles."

• 1:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Just dark and when you're in dark and especially in a jungle like that and it's dark outside and then you shoot your gun and now you've seen the muzzle flash like you can't you can't see anything now like it's dark it's black and so now the only thing you're hearing is screaming Japanese they're throwing grenades which again is ruining your night vision you're seeing muzzle flashes you're shooting back at muzzle flashes freaking just horror just horror

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  yeah that's some unbelievable heroism there

• 1:15:07Jocko Willink?

  I think you're hitting on a good point though about the prioritize and execute piece and I think you know we generally would say leaders don't want to be down on the details you want to be detached but you know to your point if you in the prioritize and execute say if I don't go do this now none of it matters we have to do that and it's the existential priority if if we don't execute this priority we will not exist anymore it's an existential decision and there's only you look and he probably looked said you know I got this guy he's working that gun he can do that there's one person that could actually make this happen right now and it's me I'll be back in seven minutes with some ammo fellas

• 1:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Bazey

• 1:15:53Jocko Willink?

  next up Sergeant Jacob Pavlov Russian Army Stalingrad 1942 in the fall of 1942 the German 6th Army was pushing into the Russian city of Stalingrad the Russian strategy was to draw the Germans into the city and fight them from building to building Sergeant Jacob Pavlov of the Soviet 13th Guard Division was called into his battalion map room and ordered to recon a four-story house in order to develop a company plan to attack the building that night Sergeant Pavlov selected three men from his squad and set out on the reconnaissance so hey go and do a recon of this building so that we can do a company-sized 150-man assault on this building

• 1:16:39Jocko Willink?

  When the four man team reached the objective Sergeant Pavlov realized that the house was occupied by only a few German defenders. He decided to seize the house immediately with his small team. He quickly devised a plan and within minutes had attacked and taken control of the house. Using captured German machine guns and their own Tommy guns Sergeant Pavlov led his men in fighting back wave after wave of German counter attacks. The next night Sergeant Pavlov sent a messenger back to his battalion. By morning his group was reinforced with 16 men, three anti-tank rifles, two mortars, and more machine guns. His defensive preparations continued. He directed the placement of a minefield around the building. He ordered his men to take out the interior walls of the building to allow freedom of movement.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  He posted sharpshooters and observers in the top of the building and fortified his command post. A 200 yard trench was dug for resupply. When the German... that's a lot of things to get done. Digging a 200 yard trench is no joke. What is that digging a 200 yard trench? And posting sharpshooters and removing the walls inside the building so you have better freedom of movement. This guy was not playing. When the Germans sent larger armored forces against him Sergeant Pavlov improvised new tactics to fight them. This is beautiful. Due to the limited elevation of the German tanks Pavlov sent his machine gunners to the top floors and his anti-tank crews to the basement.

• 1:18:05Jocko Willink?

  From these positions his men put accurate suppressing fire on the German infantry while destroying the army of the armor. So a tank gun can only go so far up and so far down and apparently they couldn't go far enough up to hit the roof where the machine gunners were and couldn't go far enough down to hit the anti-tank weapons. Pavlov's house proved to be a key Russian position in the battle for Stalingrad. The building's height allowed Pavlov's observers to call accurate artillery fire in any direction and snipers chalked up hundreds of kills from the attic.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Upon finding his obje- this is the lessons, upon finding his objective lightly defended Sergeant Pavlov ignored his orders and used his initiative to take the house by surprise. This key decision fully supported his commander's intent. Now, what's interesting about this is, we dig in a little bit.

• 1:19:06Jocko Willink?

  If I was sending you, Leif, to go and do a recon of a building that we were going to attack tomorrow with 150 men,

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  I might not even cover the contingency. We might not even cover the contingency of, hey, if there's no one in there, just take it. Like, because you're not expecting,

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  if you're expecting to need 150 people, you're not expecting that four people. So you might not even consider that, hey, and by the way, if there's light resistance, just take it. Because even light resistance with four guys going into a defended position, it's gonna be hard. All you need is one person with a machine gun at the end of a hallway and you got real problems. So, the fact that he just said, huh, I think we, hey, I think we got this. Right? And then get it done. And, and, and there's no radios. There's no radios. They're not calling up and saying, hey, hey, hey, Jocko, this is Leif. I took the building. Send reinforcements. No, you're just there.

• 1:20:03Leif Babin?

  Well, you said he sent a messenger the next day, 24 hours later.

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  After you hold station for 24 hours.

• 1:20:09Leif Babin?

  With four guys. That's, that's crazy.

• 1:20:13Leif Babin?

  That's, that's the power of the commander's intent, you know, and understanding the why. And I think if you,

• 1:20:20Leif Babin?

  and certainly, I mean, the, the culture in the Soviet Army at that time was, was pretty centralized. You know, as far as decisions to be made. So I, I can't imagine that he got briefed for that contingency. I think that that's highly unlikely. So someone just to be like, hey. But think about what happens here, though, if he goes back, you know, he goes back and says, "Hey, there's only, you know, it's the only like resistance there. We can attack now." And maybe, maybe by the time they plan their attack and 24 hours later, it's reinforced and there's 200 people there, you know, instead of a dozen or whatever it was. So that's a, that's a pretty amazing initiative to say, "Okay, what they actually, what we want to do strategically is take this, this key piece of terrain and I'm going to take it right now

• 1:21:02Leif Babin?

  because there, there's the initiative. Here's, here's the opportunity in front of me and, you know, to seize the initiative. That's, that's incredible."

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  Let's get it. That's Leroy Jenkins just showed up in Stalingrad.

• 1:21:15Leif Babin?

  Leroy Jenkins. But I, you think about that, though, from a perspective, leaders, they, they don't, you think that you don't want your people to do that. I don't want them to go too far. I don't want them to get too, too aggressive. I don't want to, you know, you, you wait for my orders and, and so, so there are plenty of leaders who would be upset with a squad leader like Pavlov executing on something like that, instead of actually saying, "That's awesome. And if I had a bunch of Pavlov's, we're gonna, we're gonna win this thing." And that is gonna make all the difference.

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  I, I used to tell the, the task unit commanders and then I'd tell the whole task unit, but I'd pull the task unit commander aside and I'd say, "Hey, you know, there'd be chaos going on and they wouldn't be getting anywhere. They'd be bogged down. They'd be getting shot up with paint. All those problems would be happening during training." And I'd say, "Imagine if each one of your fire team leaders was doing something smart to move you where you wanted to go. Imagine how easy things would be." And they'd look at me like dumbfounded because they'd know that's true. Like, let's face it, if a fire team leader goes, "Hey, we got a wounded guy. We need to move him." And the boss just said, "We're moving south to the rally point." If, if we all know we're moving south to rally point, every fire team

• 1:22:29Jocko Willink?

  can, can start to make that happen. And that was one of the things that would help. Help move a, a task unit from centralized command to decentralized command. Just that little conversation, which I had dozens of times. Hey, what do you, what do you, how do you think it would be if every one of your fire team leaders right now was doing something that you wanted them to do? That was, that was moving them towards your goal. How, how, how do you think that would affect you right now? They'd be like, it would be very helpful. And I'd be like, yes, it would be. Why don't you tell them all what that overall goal is right now? You're in a perimeter, everyone's, everyone's within 50 meters. You could actually just yell it out right now. We're moving south to rally point alpha. Let's go. Okay.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Maybe one fire team leader looks at another fire team leader and says, hey, I got cover. You bound back. All right, that's two, that's it. That's eight guys moving in the right direction. Some other fire team leader goes, hey, we're good. We got dead space. Let's move. Okay, that's another four guys moving. See, and you just need to think that way. You need your team to go out and make things happen, but they can only do that if they know where they're going.

• 1:23:38Leif Babin?

  I watched you have the, the other side of that equation as well, you know, which is something we talk about a lot at Echelon Fraud. And that's when, when we would see the, the, the recognition in these young leaders of the power of leadership. And whether it was a fire team leader or a squad leader or

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Or a machine gunner.

• 1:23:53Leif Babin?

  A machine gunner who wasn't in charge of anybody else. And they're standing out in the street in this total, you know, this mount town, the urban, urban, you know, training environment. And there's paintballs flying around and explosions going off and total chaos. And, and that was, it was so much like the leadership laboratory that you always talk about was just an incredible thing to watch. And when I was out there, you know, in my, my, my last command as a, as a senior leader, just observing my, my team and being there with you as, as you're, you're, you're mentoring and training folks and walking up to some, some machine gunners and hey, uh, what's going on right now? They're like, I don't know what's going on. Somebody needs to make a call.

• 1:24:31Jocko Willink?

  This is ridiculous. What, what do you, what do you, what do you think you should do right now?

• 1:24:34Leif Babin?

  We should get in that building over there.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Why don't you make it happen? I, I remember I'd get the blank, this is the blank stare of like, wait a second. You're telling me that I could get people to go over there and they look at me and kind of tilt the head and say

• 1:24:50Leif Babin?

  I'm gonna get in trouble if I do that. I can't do that.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  Actually, no one is doing anything right now. I just walked by your platoon commander and he was sitting there talking to your task unit commander about spaghetti for dinner because they have no idea what's happening. And if you don't make something happen, no one's gonna be eating anything tonight because we're gonna do this over and over again.

• 1:25:11Leif Babin?

  Well, but you would ask the question like, hey, do you think your task unit commander wants you to be sitting out in the street getting shot right now? And the answer is of course not. Of course they don't want. They're tied up with some other problem where there's spaghetti dinner, whatever it is. But once you, once they recognize the power of leadership and you encourage them to make that call, they're like, hey, fall back in the building. And now all of a sudden, you got, you got leaders at every level that are stepping up and making things happen. So, so you having both of those conversations with the leaders

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Both ends.

• 1:25:39Leif Babin?

  To encourage, encourage their, their junior folks to step up and make calls and then with the, the junior frontline troops that are executing, and then you actually have decentralized command that's out there making things happen.

• 1:25:51Jocko Willink?

  It's a powerful, powerful tool, decentralized command. Sergeant, back to the book, Sergeant Pavlov showed exceptional leadership skills while defending the house. He organized and led an effective defensive position for over six weeks.

• 1:26:07Jocko Willink?

  He showed tactical improvisation and skill as a combined arms leader. Sergeant Pavlov's actions show how one leader's actions can contribute to an overall battle. His platoon-sized defensive strong point became the key position for his battalion, which in turn became the main effort of the division.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  Friggin awesome. It's better to be, it's better to be on hand with 10 men than to be absent with 10,000. That's from Tamerlane, a Mongol emperor.

• 1:26:41Leif Babin?

  That would, uh, that would be, uh, Genghis Khan or Jenghis Khan.

• 1:26:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, what that Mongol emperor?

• 1:26:53Jocko Willink?

  No. It's not him. Is it not? It's not him. It's not him. I don't even actually know if those two were related. But same area of the earth, that's for damn sure. And apparently, apparently both of them. Like kicking ass. What was, what was, what was Genghis Khan's real name? I can't think of it right now. I thought it was. No, it's not it. Um, it's. I gotta go back and review the book I read a few years ago. You're right. It does begin with like a T. It was a T. And they make, they made some kind of a movie about it. Echo, maybe you could help out here. There's a movie about it. Dude, that's weak for neither one of us to be able to recall that right now. I gotta research that for sure. More discipline, go.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  But I know that that's not him. Um, all right.

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Thornton, British Army, France, 1944.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Vital to the success, I like I said, that life just pounded some. I need to remember that name. Let's bring the clarity. Vital success of the 1944 Allied invasion of Europe was the capture of valuable bridges inland of the beaches. This was to be done by parachute forces the night before D-Day. If these bridges were not taken, the German army would be able to counterattack the landing forces and push the Allies into the sea. Just after midnight, in the early morning hours of 6 June, the 5th parachute brigade of this British 6th Airborne Division landed in Normandy. One glider company was tasked with the vital mission of seizing and holding the Pegasus Bridge, which crossed the Kane Canal

• 1:28:29Jocko Willink?

  and secure the east flank of the British landing beaches. If this bridge was not secured, the Germans would be able to launch a flank attack into the exposed left wing of the British invasion forces. After seizing the bridge in a daring assault, the company established a defensive perimeter facing east towards an intersection. At 0132, tanks of the 1st Panzer to Engineer Company with infantry support crept toward the bridge as the lead element of a German counterattack. The only, this is a good story. The only anti-tank weapon available to the platoon covering this approach was a small Piatt rocket manned by Sergeant Thornton.

• 1:29:09Jocko Willink?

  The paratroopers were fearful that a tank attack could not be stopped. Sergeant Thornton laid, lay hidden in a pile of equipment. Knowing the limited range of the Piat and the vulnerability of his platoon's position, he decided to wait until the tanks were a mere 50 yards away before firing.

• 1:29:28Jocko Willink?

  Thornton fired the Piat gun and scored a direct hit on the lead tank. The round penetrated and caused a magnificent explosion. Shells inside the tank began to cook off, creating a fantastic light show. The German company commander was mortally wounded as he tried to flee the burning Hulk. The display and numerous explosions acted as a beacon for other paratroop forces lost in the dark. They converged on Pegasus Bridge, believing that British forces had come under severe attack. The second German tank immediately reversed course. The lieutenant in the tank reported that the British had occupied the bridge in force and were equipped with six-pound anti-tank guns.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  The German commanders decided to wait until daylight before launching another attack. As morning approached, the Allied forces were able to land on the Normandy beaches and protect from a strong German counterattack. The German delay allowed the Allies to build up combat power on the beaches and rapidly strike inland. The invasion of France and the drive across Europe led to the defeat of Germany in less than a year's time.

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  So some lessons here. Sergeant Thornton knew that his Piat gun was the only defense the paratroopers had against the German army. He decided to hold his fire until the lead tank was danger close, lowering the Germans into a trap.

• 1:30:45Leif Babin?

  This is legit. That is, that is badass right there. You gotta think what's going through that guy's mind. I mean, just being in close proximity to tanks in Iraq, 50 yards away.

• 1:30:57Jocko Willink?

  It just that noise and knowing the power of that thing and you know.

• 1:31:01Leif Babin?

  And you know, his guys are like, dude, what is, what's he waiting for?

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you got that thought going through your head of like the caddy shack like, noonin'. Like, don't miss.

• 1:31:11Leif Babin?

  Yeah, you got one shot.

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  You got one shot.

• 1:31:13Leif Babin?

  To quote the great Echo Charles, all you could say is dang.

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a tough one. When Sergeant Thornton's round hit the tank, it set off a chain of events which helped ensure the success of the D-Day invasion. The British were able to reinforce and reconsolidate in the dark. The Germans decided not to risk a night attack against strong unknown forces. The burning tank itself prevented the Germans from approaching the bridge. When the British, when the Brit, with the bridge in British hands, the paratroop company held an entire Panzer regiment at bay. Damn. If that Panzer regiment had been able to penetrate into Normandy, into the Normandy beach, had the ally invasion might have failed. The company's pivotal position supported the airborne division's mission and allowed the British landing forces to free access to the beaches.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  One shot potentially shaved the left flank of the allied invasion. One shot saved the left flank of the allied invasion. And there's a comment here.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  A tactical success is only really decisive if it is gained at the strategically correct spot. That's von Morki, which we haven't done him yet, but we got him in the books. All right. So while I was reading that, I thought of something. So I was talking about the fact earlier that when we got to modern warfare, when we got machine guns, we started to decentralize command because now Leif's squad is 100 yards away from me. So that way we have some dispersions that we all, we all don't get killed at the same time. So that way I just gotta say, hey, like Leif, here's our objective. You gotta go make it happen.

• 1:32:56Jocko Willink?

  So now when you're talking about going in right, like you're going into gliders and it's in, in Band of Brothers, when you're watching the gliders come in, you're going in the dark, you're hitting, you're just, you're just gonna be alone when you hit the ground. That's what's gonna happen. You're gonna be with what? You're gonna be with whatever 22 other guys. That's what you're gonna be. Who knows where your commander's gonna be? You're freaking flying in the dark or you're jumping out of an airplane? How, what's your grouping? How many people are you gonna be close to?

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  So that not everyone, I mean, they have almost no communications. So what we have to do is we have to make sure that everyone understands the commander's intent. Everyone has to have some kind of objective.

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  So the more we got to this modern warfare, the more decentralized command was and the more importance there was on commander's intent. Then what happens? Then we start getting radios. Right, so now all of a sudden, hey life, you go there, I'll call you.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  I'll let you know what to do when we get there, or if you get into trouble, or if it's not what you expected, give me, make comms.

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  So now all of a sudden, I'm allowed to de, or I'm not allowed, I naturally ease towards taking the stress off of commander's intent, because I figure, just give me a call when you hit the ground, if it's not what we expected.

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  So, when you think about, if you're gonna freaking launch gliders and paratroopers into France for D-Day, you gotta expect, they're gonna hit the ground, they're gonna have no idea where they are, what to do, they're gonna have no communications with you, they better, they, let me rephrase that, they're gonna have no communications with you when they hit the ground. They are probably not even gonna have communications with more than five or six people when they initially hit the ground, maybe ten. You know, maybe if it's in a glider, they're all together, but they're gonna be isolated. So they have to understand the commander's intent, otherwise, it just stops right there. But as soon as we get radio communications, now it's like, okay, well, you know, when

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  you hit the ground, check in for the objectives, or, you know, if you, if you're not sure where you are, give us a call, and we'll, so all of a sudden, commander's intent becomes less important, and then you get to...

• 1:35:24Jocko Willink?

  Less important if you, if you can make radio comms. Less important if you can make radio comms. So then you get, you fast forward, you know, to Vietnam, where maybe now every platoon has a radio, right? Every platoon has a radio. So now, well, we at least can, can control that, then you fast forward to the, to the 90s, like even when I first got in the teams, we might not have a radio for each guy in the platoon, there might be like, four guys don't get a radio. Hey, make sure you stick with one of the, you know, because you're doing like a shipboarding, you're like, hey, if you don't got a radio, make sure you stick with somebody that does. But now, pretty much, we don't need to even know anything. By the time we get to the teams in 2000...

• 1:36:09Jocko Willink?

  We've all got radios. We've all got radios. So, so now I can control more. Leif, tell me what's going to, hey, give me a status update so I can tell you what to do next. And then you go to the 2010s. Now all of a sudden, I got a Blue Force tracker. I got a video of what we're doing and you can see where now we're becoming, we're going away from decentralized command and moving closer and closer to more micromanagement because the technology allows me as the leader to move those chess pieces as I see fit. And it feels comfortable, it feels more comfortable to do that. Of course, we know it's wrong.

• 1:36:52Jocko Willink?

  Because for me to be like, Leif, give me a status update so I can give you, you know, your next move. Oh, well, my status update, oh yeah, Jaco, we're getting flanked right now. What do you want me to do? Oh, I want you to, oh, Leif just got shot. Why? Because he didn't react quickly enough because he's sitting there waiting to be told what to do. So what we're seeing now is a tendency to move more towards centralized command because we have the technology to facilitate centralized command. I'm not saying it's right. I'm saying it's bad. It's wrong. But if that's the reason that it's happening. We're starting to see more and more micromanagement because we have the technology that facilitates it.

• 1:37:33Leif Babin?

  As you're saying that, I'm thinking about, you know, I'm thinking about as the training that you ran was, you know, which was the best freaking training in the world when you were the officer in charge of training detachment, you know, here for the West Coast SEAL Teams. And, you know, your instructors were out there to teach, to teach people how hard it was going to be, particularly in the urban environment, you know, in a combat situation, how easily you can get in a blue on blue situation, how easily things could go chaotic, how easily you can't actually make comms on the radio, you know, or the land warfare environment, exactly same thing, and distances, or ridge lines in the way, or whatever it may be. And, because it seems that way in theory, you know, it seems that, oh, in theory, we just talk to everybody on the radio.

• 1:38:15Jocko Willink?

  Give me a call, hey, just radio, we'll get to you, we'll de-conflict.

• 1:38:18Leif Babin?

  Oh, great. And then when you realize like, hey, that's not going to work if we can't make comms. And you talk about ship boarding, that's a great example of like, hey, I'm down in the engine room and there's a whole bunch of steel between me and you up on the bridge. I got no comms with you whatsoever. And if we're thinking that like, hey, I just made a call on the radio and everyone heard me. And I tried to do that. I mean, you taught me that. And it one of the, one of the biggest lessons for me, you know, as, as we've talked about here and, you know, podcasts, you know, years back is, is, is trying to put out, you know, a, a message over the radio. Hey, everyone do this, do that. And you were like, use verbal commands. And that was one of those things like, not everyone is hearing me on the radio. They're in the middle of doing stuff. There's people that are on the third story and they're talking to a bunch of walls and they're might,

• 1:39:01Leif Babin?

  they may not even be hearing your transmission. So this illusion that I'm communicating, you know, is, is, uh, is, it's a total illusion because it's, it's not the reality. And, and if people don't have commander's intent, they can't execute and there's no substitute for that at all. And we see that now, right? We, in, in the business world, as leaders send out an email or, or, you know, hey, I told everybody what to do. They should just read their email. Like, hey, are your guys in the field on their email 24/7? They're, they're in the middle of doing stuff.

• 1:39:28Jocko Willink?

  By the way, they got 14 emails at 6 o'clock in the morning. And you think that they're going to take that one from you and be like, oh, especially, especially if you're the kind of leader that sends out, hey, just checking in with everyone, letting everyone know what's going on. Like, no. No, don't send me checking emails. You're going to email, if I'm emailing you, there's a reason for it. You need to open it up and read it. That means I'm not going to email you 12 times a day. I'm not even going to email you three times a day. When you get an email from me, it's important. If you set the precedence that I'm going to send you a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter, guess what? Same thing with, with coming up on the radio. Hey, I actually need a, hey, anyone's got a, another, uh, a Humvee we can push back in this area. I can't bring in two more guys. I'm just talking on the radio,

• 1:40:12Jocko Willink?

  talking on the radio, talking on the radio. Eventually no one's listening to you anymore.

• 1:40:17Leif Babin?

  We worked with a company recently where, uh, they're, they're running the plant and the plant is being managed from a couple hundred miles away. We're in like a, a command center. Uh, and they lost power.

• 1:40:29Leif Babin?

  So they lose power and then all of a sudden like hey, they got no comms at all. Everything has to be done on site, you know, and if you don't understand commanders of 10, if you don't understand what those procedures are, I mean, you've got to have those contingency plans in place. And I think that was what was so awesome about about seeing that at, you know, at trade that when you were running things is you're instilling those lessons of like, okay, this is why I've got to make sure that my junior leaders, my squad leaders, you know, can step up and make calls. Because if regardless of the technology that we have, we're going to fail if they can't.

• 1:41:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there would always be the the troop coming through and they'd say, well, I'd say, well, how are you coordinating that? They were like, oh, we're just going to get on the radio and when it's go time. And I'd be like, what if you don't get comms? And they would kind of look at me puzzled. And if you if you make your plan, this is the this should be the fifth law of combat. The fifth law of combat is if you make your plan, and it's based on making radio communications with some other element, and your plan relies on that, it will not work. It will not work. It is going to fail. You've got to have, you know, secondary tertiary forms of communication that overcome the radio.

• 1:41:37Leif Babin?

  As you're saying, I'm thinking about the image of you standing on top of a Humvee at entry control point three on the far side of the canal. And we had all this danger of snipers around there. And we knew that this was there was sniper activity and like no one actually peeked their head above the big HESCO barriers. Jaco's standing on top of the Humvees with his tape antenna, you know, extended to like six or eight feet above his head to make comms with me, you know, as I was we were forward in in an overwatch position. And even then, it was it was it was the recognition of like, hey, we we're it's going to be really hard to talk on the radio. You know, and you didn't you put yourself at risk to do that. But if I didn't have commanders of 10, I mean, I there's no way

• 1:42:22Leif Babin?

  I could I could rely on that to have you make the calls for me, you know, from a distant position.

• 1:42:30Leif Babin?

  I wanted to say one thing about this and you talked about, you know, the, the power of the flag and we talked about in that previous, you know, the Germans that run up the flag and the French were demoralized. Nothing more demoralizing than a giant burning tank hole. You know, the, the Hulk of that tank just, just burning there that all the, all the others could see. And that, that was obviously incredibly demoralizing in this particular situation. And I think when you've

• 1:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh, I see what you're saying. You're talking about this particular where, where he hit this tank with the, with the PI.

• 1:43:04Leif Babin?

  Yeah, he hit the tank with a rocket. All of a sudden, you know, the, the tank explosions, a big fireball. And clearly that was a massively demoralizing thing for the German forces there, which, which turned it around for, for the Brits. But I think, yeah, running up flags is great. Blowing up tanks and having a burning vehicle and for all to see like, ooh, I don't want that to happen to me.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The reason it took me a second there is because the times that American tanks got blown up in Ramadi and it would take, you know, 24 hours to get a 88 down there to drag them out. And that was freaking demoralizing too, you know, and we, we talked about the vehicle graveyard, but just knowing that they're going to get some, the enemy's going to get theirs. And it's freaking horrible.

• 1:43:53Leif Babin?

  It was incredibly demoralizing to drive, to drive down, you know, Route Michigan and see some burned out Hulk of a vehicle on the side of the road. But the good news was on our side, it was also very demoralizing, you know, when the bad guys could observe their, their buddies laying out in the street after some SEAL snipers put them in the dirt.

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:10Leif Babin?

  And that was pretty demoralizing as well for them, which we took some pride in.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Chuck.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  Next Sergeant Stephen Gregg, US Army, Italy, 1944. In August of 1944, the Allied offensive in Italy was stalemated. An amphibious landing at Anzio was executed in an attempt to outflank the German defenses and capture Rome. The landing units became stalled on the beachhead, allowing the Germans to reinforce their defenses. The day after the landing, L Company of the 143rd Infantry was moving north towards Rome. The Germans were waiting in ambush and the company was quickly pinned down by enemy fire. Realizing that the fire was too heavy for the medics to tend to the wounded, Sergeant Gregg, a mortar man, picked up a 30 caliber light machine gun and advanced on the enemy position.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  His measured accurate bursts suppressed the enemy long enough for the casualties to be evacuated. Unfortunately Sergeant Gregg ran out of ammunition and was captured.

• 1:45:26Jocko Willink?

  While Sergeant Gregg's captors took cover from incoming American artillery, Sergeant Gregg grabbed the machine pistol and fought his way back to friendly lines.

• 1:45:40Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I pause because I'm thinking about these things in a little bit deeper level, like picking up a 30 caliber light machine gun, which it says light machine gun, a 30 caliber machine gun is not light. And just advancing on the enemy position. That's just awesome. And then you picture this guy, we start getting hit with artillery and all the captors hide. And he's like, oh, Jack, you little babies, watch this, grabs a machine pistol, fights his way back to front lines. The next day, the Germans counterattacked L Company.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Sorry, the next day, the Germans counterattacked. L Company was ordered to hold the line on a hill captured the day before. Acting as a forward observer, observer Sergeant Gregg directed over 600 rounds on to the enemy until he lost communications with the mortar section. Knowing how important the mortar fire was to the defense, Sergeant Gregg took the initiative to find out what had happened to the phone line. Upon nearing the mortar section, another soldier yelled that the Germans had seized the mortar position and were dropping rounds on the Americans. Sergeant Gregg assaulted the Germans, taking two prisoners. He quickly put the mortars back into the fight by gathering up a handful of American troops and teaching them how to fire mortars.

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  OJT. L Company held the line. Sergeant Gregg's bravery, initiative, and situational awareness contributed to his unit's successful defense. The defeat of the German counterattack led to the Allied breakout from the beachhead and the eventual capture of Rome. That's just a solo op right there. That's crazy. This solo operation, have me go check, check out, we'll go find out what's going on with this phone wire. Oh, wait a second. There's some Germans with our mortars. Cool. I'm, what do I do? Oh, I attacked them. Give me a 30, 30 cal machine gun. Let's get some.

• 1:47:35Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Gregg displayed keen, say, lessons. Sergeant Gregg displayed keen situational awareness during combat at Anceo. While acting as a forward observer, Sergeant Gregg realized the importance of his unit's role in the company defense and did everything in his power to keep the mortars firing. So this says he realized the importance role, like he realized what was going on. There was no one told him, we better get those mortars up. He realized it and made something happen. When ambushed, Sergeant Gregg displayed the bravery and decisiveness to take action. His individual attack on the Germans lifted the pressure on his unit and allowed the wounded to be evacuated. Sergeant Gregg's leadership abilities and strength of character allowed him to take a handful of Americans not under his command and train them while under enemy fire. Sergeant Gregg's improvised section maintained the supporting fires, which were so critical

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  to the company's defense.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Action. That was just the common theme. Action. Look, they talk about initiative. That's good. They talk about understanding the commander's intent, but actually taking action is, is what we need to do.

• 1:48:45Jocko Willink?

  In the book called Extreme Ownership, when we talked about prioritize and execute, one of the things that I had told Stoner was, you know, wrote it on his thing, relax, look around and make a call. And what's interesting about that is when I wrote that, there's a part missing. There's a part missing to that. So when you get into a situation where there's a lot of mayhem going on, what you need to do is relax, you know, take a breath, look around, actually observe what's happening, and then make a call. Right? Make a call. Now, there's a part that's, when you line that up with the OODA loop, it almost

• 1:49:22Jocko Willink?

  lines up perfectly. Because observe, orient, decide, and act. We got relax, which is like, alright, look around, which is definitely observe. And then make a call is decide. The thing that I didn't say to Seth was, was act. And I would have said execute. I would have used the word execute. I didn't put that on the windshield for him. The reason that I didn't put that on the windshield for him is because

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  when you tell a SEAL platoon to do something, nine times out of 10, it's going to get executed. When someone says, online, the word gets passed, they get online. When someone says, peel right, they get online, they peel right. When someone says, strong right, strong left. When somebody makes a call, it gets executed. And his platoon was executing stuff. It was him that needed to make a call. So- That's, that's the piece that I didn't tell Seth because I didn't need to because it wasn't him that was gonna, he was gonna make the call, his platoon was gonna execute. And, and believe me, they did. You know, when, when he would make a call or when someone would make a call, they'd execute. That's pretty normal. It's very normal for a SEAL platoon. It's very seldom that a SEAL platoon, when they get,

• 1:50:43Jocko Willink?

  when they get told to execute something, that they don't do it. If you make a call, JP Denell is executing. People are gonna, yeah, you picture you've got 16 JP Denells, or even if you've got five JP Denells and some other guys, shit's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. So, when I wrote that for Seth, it was about him. And the execute part, I didn't have to say anything because I knew if he made a call, it was gonna happen.

• 1:51:06Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's a big assumption for a lot of, for, it's a big assumption for us as individuals, and it's a big assumption in a normal team, right? Look, I knew Delta Platoon at that time. And like I said, most SEAL platoons, quite frankly, they will execute, as we just said. But that's not always common. And it's something that you should, we should actually add. If you're gonna say, hey, if, when there's things happening, relax, look around and make a call, the, the next thing should be execute. Because there's people that make calls, there's people that make calls in businesses, there's people that make calls in dynamic situations, they make a call. But if you haven't trained and been, been, for lack of a better word, programmed,

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  that when you hear a call, you're gonna execute, there's oftentimes when the execution doesn't happen. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I, I was thinking about this because every one of these things, the common thing is that somebody's taking action. It's not someone's making a decision, they're making a decision too, but they have to act. And even when Dave talks about the Oodaloop, you know, he, he says that the most important part of the Oodaloop is action. It's action. You gotta, you gotta take action. If you don't take action, look, you can observe, orient, decide all day long. If you don't act, doesn't matter. And same thing with relax, look around and make a call. Hey, you can relax and orient yourself and observe what's happening and make a call,

• 1:52:29Jocko Willink?

  but if nobody executes that call, you're dead in the water. So, these things are all about actually taking action.

• 1:52:38Leif Babin?

  It's a, it's a great observation because that's, that's the breakdown for a lot of leaders. And we see that all the time, you know, with a decision gets made and we'll work with a company and you know, they've got a problem performer and they've done everything they can to train and mentor them and they, okay, we're gonna have to actually make this decision to, to, to let them go. And then you come back and talk to them six weeks later and decision got made, but they never executed and the performer's still there. And then it takes six months or nine months to get that done and, and it's so much harder to do then. Uh, and, and all the damage has been done. And, and I think that's a great observation to make because it's a, you know, you can make a decision, but if you're not actually executing it and it doesn't, it, it gives you, uh, you're setting yourself back, you're losing the initiative, uh, you're wasting, you know, momentum, you're giving your competition, uh, a leg up and,

• 1:53:23Leif Babin?

  you know, to your, to your point earlier, like nine times out of 10, action is the best thing.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:28Leif Babin?

  Take action, take an interim step in the direction you need to know, you need to go. Uh, and it just gives you all the advantage in the world.

• 1:53:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And occasionally you could get a platoon where they're not, you know, they don't have that, they don't have that attitude where they're like, okay, the calls got made and we're gonna go make this happen. Occasionally you would get a platoon like that and then it, then it would be, hey, when you hear that call, you gotta, you gotta go get on that. You gotta make that happen. You gotta, you gotta execute. Like I said, Delta Platoon didn't need that. They just needed Seth to freaking relax, look around and make a call. Once the call was getting made, they had experienced guys in there. And like you said, you got some, you got some JP D N Ls and, and some other freaking guys that are gonna make things happen in there. It's no factor.

• 1:54:13Jocko Willink?

  Action.

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  Next one, Corporal David W. Lamb, U.S. Army, Korea, 1951. In October 1951, G Company, 23rd Infantry Regiment was battling for Hill 520 of Heartbreak Ridge. The company had been withered by repeated fights with the North Korean forces. Corporal Lamb was acting platoon commander of the third platoon of a unit of about 20 soldiers. So we got the, the freaking E4 out there acting as a platoon commander.

• 1:54:49Jocko Willink?

  Following heavy bombardment and supporting fires, Corporal Lamb's platoon made a direct assault on Hill 520. Upon nearing the enemy, Lamb's platoon was halted by enemy fire and began taking casualties. Lamb called back for reinforcements. Lieutenant Dano.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  Gathered his first platoon and moved towards Lamb's position. Gano's platoon began to take casualties and halted when the young lieutenant was killed. Private High stepped into the role of platoon commander and rallied his platoon. While under fire, Corporal Lamb directed the use of supporting fires and planned a new route for the enemy attack, for the company attack. After a bitter fight, the two platoons breached the enemy defenses. During the assault on the position, Corporal Lamb was wounded. Private High was now the main effort of the attack. He directed the remaining soldiers in taking out the bunkers in the enemy defenses using grenades and flamethrowers.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  Three hours after the attack had set off, the enemy position was secured. Corporal Lamb's leadership had pulled his platoon and the remainder of G Company forward through the withering fire into the enemy's position. The attack pushed the enemy off Hill 520, an important, an important step in removing resistance from heartbreak ridge.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's interesting, a lot of times tell leaders, you know, you should have, if you got seven or eight direct reports, you should have two or three of those direct reports that are ready to step up and, and take your job.

• 1:56:25Jocko Willink?

  And, and here you got a private, you know, this guy is, this guy is a freaking private. And he takes charge and makes things happen. That's next level, right? Hey, it should be, imagine me saying, hey, look, you got your direct reports and if all your direct reports, your eight direct reports, you should have two people that are ready to take your job. And by the way, in their direct reports, there should be five people that are ready to take your job. That's impressive.

• 1:56:53Jocko Willink?

  And if you, if you made that your goal, that the people, not just your subordinates, their subordinates, there was people that were there, there were two levels below you in the chain of command that were going to step up and take your job if it need be. Imagine how effective and efficient those individuals would be.

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome.

• 1:57:11Leif Babin?

  Like you talk about all the time, like every leader should be trying to work themselves out of a job. And I think it's so hard to do that because our egos get involved. You're like, well, I want to be the one that makes calls, you know, but you, you insisted on that. I know you'd learned that from, uh, from Delta Charlie in, in your time in, in the SEAL teams and putting like Ryan, Ryan Jobe was our, our most junior ranking guy as, as a, an E3 and we put him in charge of running an entire assault, like planning and executing that assault. And you know, he did good. It was, it was, it made him so much of a greater contributor because he understood what, you know, the, the, he understood the challenges of leadership. He understood how he could best support, you know, the overall team and then what kind of information we needed to make

• 1:57:53Leif Babin?

  decisions. And I would have never done that without your encouragement. And in fact, I think I pushed back on a little bit. You're like, hey, why don't, why don't you let, who's your most junior, why don't you let, why don't you let, uh, Biggles run this? And I was like, are you sure about that? Are you like, he's a, he's brand new and, and you're like, yeah, just let him run it. Let's see what he does. He'll do fine.

• 1:58:10Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And that's the, that's, that's the crazy thing right there. Right? It's like, he'll do fine.

• 1:58:15Leif Babin?

  And he did?

• 1:58:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, totally fine. He'll do, he'll do fine. He'll do fine. It's like even when we run FTX is like the FTX trading program for civilians. Would, I, I, I don't know how we had this talk or when it was, but the overall, the overall,

• 1:58:36Jocko Willink?

  the overall meaning of the talk was, was like, they'll be fine. Like the, these civilians that got 45 minutes of training of how to assault a building, they're actually going to do fine. It won't be that big of a deal. Look, is a SEAL platoon better trained? Yes. But I'm saying the general idea of what they're doing is going to be, it's going to be fine. It's going to be enough to work with. And, and so someone like Biggles who was like in the platoon and is going through the workup and understands things is like, he, he, he'll watch this. He'll do it. He'll do it fine. And you know, he'll make the same, he'll make. You just did it, Leif Babin, the platoon commander from the Naval Academy, you know? You just did it and you made four mistakes.

• 1:59:19Jocko Willink?

  And Biggles is about to do it and he's gonna make five. It's not like Leif just did it and he made one mistake and Biggles is gonna do it and he's gonna make 80. No, it's like, it's like comparable.

• 1:59:30Leif Babin?

  I made seven mistakes and he made three.

• 1:59:31Jocko Willink?

  That's, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like that crazy. And, and the, the thing that you mentioned about how much more it opens up somebody's brain? When they get to see like all that, when you're in charge of all this, exactly, you called it. This is what Delta Charlie did to us. Hey, you're in charge of this. You're running this. And all of a sudden, instead of me looking at this little tiny sliver of the plan? And the sliver of the execution, I'm looking at this whole big thing. And so I see so much more, see how things are interconnected. That was such a powerful, am I gonna use this word? Yes, I am. Life-changing. Life-changing for me to have the vision and to have my boss say, you're gonna run this?

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and get to run it and see all these things that I'd never seen before? And be like, and then the next mission, by the way, I'm back to just being a radio man. But I can see all the connections. I know the importance of the job. I know that I, my, I know that this would help my boss. I know that this would help the other, the other squad leader. I know that I should talk to this guy about, it just makes you infinitely better.

• 2:00:38Leif Babin?

  That was a really powerful lesson that, that, that I learned from you and, and saw the impact. And I think that if leaders can just simply put their ego in check and realize, just to your point that you had with those SEAL platoon commanders and task commanders. Think if you had, think if you had 16 or 40 of those guys out there? Who can see that vision or thinking about not just their task, but every, how can they can help the overall mission and the intent? Of the purpose that you're out here, you know, trying to accomplish. It's just absolutely life-changing and game-changing and that, that team is just, they just dominate. There's no, there's no stopping that team. They're, they just crush everything.

• 2:01:16Jocko Willink?

  Some lessons. Corporal Lamb displayed tremendous leadership abilities. His fellow soldiers benefited from his competence when he assumed command of the platoon and led a company-sized attack. When the time came for him to command at a higher level, he was able to shoulder the responsibility. Tactically proficient Corporal Lamb had learned the necessary skills for commanding a platoon in combat. Check. He was able to coordinate supporting fires with his company commander. Direct actions, direct the actions of other platoons and inspire the men under his command by his personal leadership. His knowledge and ability met with the success on the battlefield. By the way, I got a, I got a text from Tilt the other day.

• 2:02:00Jocko Willink?

  And it was after he listened to a podcast with, um, with Dave Burke.

• 2:02:05Leif Babin?

  Good deal Dave.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Yes, good deal Dave. And good deal Dave was telling, uh, you know, talking about calling for bombs, calling fire, calling for fire in Ramadi. And I, I don't know the number of times that, that Dave was on the ground to drop bombs, but you know, it was.

• 2:02:21Leif Babin?

  A lot.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was a lot.

• 2:02:27Jocko Willink?

  And then Tilt listened to it. And Tilt was like, hey, really liked listening to your, your podcast with Burke. Let him know that I got to call some fire too. Only I was an E4 when I did it. And, and, and, and it is, you could not, you could not compare the amount of times that Dave Burke dropped bombs in his entire career, including training. You could not compare that amount with the amount that Tilt dropped on one operation, one operation,

• 2:03:07Jocko Willink?

  where he's sitting at night for 12 hours with continual close air support.

• 2:03:15Jocko Willink?

  Tilt will make you feel like a baby.

• 2:03:21Leif Babin?

  Yeah, I don't think you're, uh, I don't think you're measuring up to, uh, I don't think you're measuring up to that in any way, shape or form. But look, that's, you know, we talk about humility and I think that's anytime I think I've done something or we saw some combat, you know, and you start reading books. I mean, every single one of these, of these illustrations here, I mean, it just, just blows away, you know, anything that I saw or did. It's incredible.

• 2:03:45Leif Babin?

  I will say this, though, I talked to, I did, I talked to a, you know, a couple Vietnam SEALs that are outstanding, you know, folks that had some awesome experience and had served as SEAL machine gunners in Vietnam. And they talked about being in some gunfights and, I mean, these guys, I mean, amazing, you know, incredible people who had awesome experiences, our forefathers that created this legacy, you know, for us in the SEAL teams. And we were talking about, you know, SEAL machine gunners, you know, and how, man, it was really cool to see, our belt fed machine gunners kept us alive and how awesome they were. And, and we were talking about like, how often, you know, so I asked, I asked one of them, a good friend of mine, I'm like, hey, how, how many times do you have to reload your machine gun? And he's like, oh, man, maybe a couple of times. I was like, well, how many, I mean, you must have shot your whole loadout a few times, you know, a bunch of times.

• 2:04:30Leif Babin?

  He was like, no, I don't think I ever shot my whole loadout. And I was thinking like, dude, our SEAL machine gunners shot their entire 600 round loadout and then maybe four or 500 more rounds that everybody else was carrying like, all the time on so many of those operations.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, I, I had the same conversation with, with, well, I had this exact same conversation with one, you know, badass forefather Vietnam SEAL who was a machine gunner in Nam. And he said the same thing, you know, he was like, I think he said, he's like, yeah, we got in six firefights. But that's what I also learned is that, much like current SEAL deployments, you could have one SEAL deployment in Vietnam where you go to a certain AO and the enemy's acting a certain way. And it's freaking like daily craziness and they were doing what they, oh yeah, they do, since they would do squad operations, so they'd go every other night, your squad, my squad, your squad, my squad.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  And they would do operations all the time. So it's also, you know, based on the particular AO that you, you know, that you were in. I mean, even when we were, when we were in Ramadi, the guys that were over in another city, you know, whatever, not, not that far away, some of those guys didn't, didn't, I don't even know if they got in firefights. So, or maybe they got, you know, two or three. So it's one of those things where I hate to use this word, but you gotta get lucky with your AO, you know? And then of course, you gotta make your own luck.

• 2:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Next up Sergeant Steven Bouchard, US Marine Corps, Vietnam, 1967. In July of 1967, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines took part in Operation Buffalo, designed to defend the border between North and South Vietnam, known as the demilitarized zone. During this operation, the battalion was ambushed by an entire North Vietnamese Army regiment and took very heavy casualties. The 1st and 2nd battalions, 3rd Marines were sent to rescue 1-9 and stabilize the area. Sergeant Bouchard served as the right guide for 2nd Platoon, A Company, 1-3. The platoon's mission was to clear the area where 1-9 had left their dead.

• 2:06:39Jocko Willink?

  As A Company moved out of its positions, 2nd Platoon came under heavy shell fire. The platoon commander was wounded and had to be medevaced. The platoon sergeant took command. The NVA began firing from bunkers in the far tree line. The platoon sergeant froze with fear, leaving the platoon without leadership. Sergeant Bouchard unhesitatingly took command of the platoon and played an important role in the company's subsequent actions. Sergeant Bouchard's strong leadership pulled the platoon through the horrible task of retrieving the corpses of 1-9 while under enemy fire. While manning a defensive position, a breach in the battalion line was created between Bouchard's platoon and the adjacent B Company.

• 2:07:21Jocko Willink?

  Bouchard's platoon counter-attacked into the breach and sealed off the NVA who had infiltrated the perimeter. His unit then made contact with approaching forces wearing Marine gear. Sergeant Bouchard ordered his Marines to hold their fire until the figures had come into within hand grenade range. At that time, Bouchard decided to open fire on the approaching soldiers who were NVA, wearing stolen gear from the dead of the 1-9. Bouchard's tactical actions broke the enemy attack and the Marines went on the offensive. Sergeant Bouchard remained in command of 2nd Platoon until the unit was ordered to pull out.

• 2:08:03Jocko Willink?

  A-1-3 was the last unit to leave the battlefield before B-52 strikes leveled the area.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Bouchard was both willing and able to take responsibility of leading the platoon. His tactical skills allowed the platoon to play a major role in the company's combat operations. Sergeant Bouchard was able to take charge by being decisive. We recorded a whole thing yesterday on, for EF Online, on being decisive.

• 2:08:33Jocko Willink?

  The squad leaders did not respond to the platoon sergeant who was too fearful to lead. Sergeant Bouchard took decisive action and was not afraid to make tough decisions and carry out difficult tasks. And once again, what did he do? He took action.

• 2:08:49Jocko Willink?

  Taking action. His decision to open fire on the individuals in marine uniforms required decisiveness and acceptance of responsibility. Sergeant Bouchard led his platoon by example. Many Marines were devastated by the sight of the marine dead left behind by 19.

• 2:09:06Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Bouchard's capable and firm leadership held second platoon together. And that right there, I mean, is just devastating. You know, we talked about how much it hurt to see an American tank burning in the streets in Ramadi. I mean, can you imagine your platoon is now out there just recovering body after body after body of your fellow Marines? I mean, it's a nightmare. And obviously, they didn't go into it too much. And I'll have to do some research and if I can find any more information about this, but you know, they clearly mention it here. Many Marines were devastated by the sight of the marine dead left behind by 19.

• 2:09:53Jocko Willink?

  Realizing that his unit had to be at the right place at the right time in order to make a difference, Sergeant Bouchard led a counterattack to plug the gap in the lines between A and B companies. This platoon-level tactical action secured the company flank and prevented the battalion from being split and overrun.

• 2:10:12Jocko Willink?

  Then there's a quote here from the German army that says, "It's better to have a good sergeant in command than a bad officer."

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  We'll take that one. That's a great quote right there.

• 2:10:27Jocko Willink?

  Corporal Lester A. Tully, US Marine Corps, Vietnam, 1968. The 1968 Tet Offensive took American forces in Vietnam by surprise. Way City, the ancient imperial capital of Vietnam, was quickly overrun by the North Vietnamese Army, the NVA. Given the mission of relieving the 1st Arvin Division Command Post, G Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, advanced on foot through the city. The 1st Arvin Division CP was located at the northern corner of the Citadel, a historic fortress. G Company's route of advance would take them right through the Citadel. The company advanced along Highway 1 with 2nd Platoon in the lead,

• 2:11:11Jocko Willink?

  until it became necessary to cross a bridge over the Perfume River. Just as the lead squad crested the center of the span, an NVA machine gun, implanted in a fortified bunker, opened fire. The company was pinned on the bridge, and the lead squad took multiple casualties. An M60 was set up to counter the NVA position, but the team leader was killed moments later. As sparks flew from enemy rounds hitting the bridge structure, Corporal Tully decided to take matters into his own hands. Corporal Tully was 2nd Squad Leader of 2nd Platoon. On the bridge, his squad was located directly behind the lead squad.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Assessing the situation, Corporal Tully decided upon a course of action that would allow his company to advance. Realizing that his squad was protected from fire, and was the nearest to the enemy, Corporal Tully charged up a walkway and threw a grenade into the enemy position, killing 5 NVA and silencing the position. The company followed Corporal Tully's squad, crossed the bridge, and advanced upon the Citadel. As the company neared the Citadel, it met heavy resistance from Northern Vietnamese Army regulars. While forced to withdraw, Gulf 25 clarified the situation around the Citadel. American commanders had gained a much-needed clearer picture of how strong the enemy was in Way City.

• 2:12:34Jocko Willink?

  Now, the American commanders could concentrate on what to do, rather than wondering what was going on.

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  That's a, you know, we used to set up the, uh, the old barricaded shooter down a hallway. This is just an awful one, a barricaded shooter down a bridge.

• 2:12:56Jocko Willink?

  And, and what are you gonna do? You got downed men on that bridge because you think, oh, well, I'll just jump off the bridge and we'll be okay. What about your wounded friends up there? So you can't just abandon it. It's a nightmare.

• 2:13:08Jocko Willink?

  What's up with a, what's up with a grenade killing five NVA? That's a, that must've been a, that's a tight shot. They must've been closely grouped. I mean, like way tightly grouped.

• 2:13:21Leif Babin?

  That's a well, well thrown grenade.

• 2:13:23Jocko Willink?

  That's a well thrown grenade.

• 2:13:26Jocko Willink?

  I always loved that, that, that they, you know, the, uh, I guess.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the, the American grenades being like baseballs. Baseball side and the Germans, they couldn't, they couldn't hang. Cause they play soccer. And so they, you know what a potato masher grenade is, Echo Charles?

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:13:46Jocko Willink?

  You're, you ever seen a, a grenade with like a long stick on one end of it?

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, like on Red Dawn.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's called a potato masher because it looks like something you'd mash potatoes with. But the reason that it was created was you can use it like with leverage to throw further.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Because you can't kick a grenade like it's a soccer ball. So they couldn't throw it like America, you take an American kid, man, come on. He's gonna take that little baseball sized grenade and huck that thing, strike. He's gonna go put it into a machine gun pit, go five people. Freaking awesome. Yeah.

• 2:14:17Leif Babin?

  If you remember from, from Easy Company that with, with, uh, the two 506, the Band of, Band of Brothers, if you've seen the, the, uh, the television show, read the book, but, uh, remember Buck Compton was a all-American catcher for UCLA's baseball team? And he was like, he was apparently direct line drive hitting German soldiers with, with hand grenade.

• 2:14:38Jocko Willink?

  That's so freaking epic.

• 2:14:41Jocko Willink?

  That's so epic. I was, uh, when I was going through STT, like the what became SQT. So, you know, the, the, you get done with basic seal training and you show up at a team and then they put you through training. And we, we, we went to a grenade course, which was just run by team guys, but we were throwing pineapple grenades. Straight up pineapple grenades. The crates were marked 1947.

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  What's a pineapple grenade?

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Like that tradish looking grenade. It sort of looks like a pineapple. It's got the little like spikes, spikes on it.

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a, like a, like a quad pattern. Oh, yeah.

• 2:15:18Jocko Willink?

  It's just like a stereotypical grenade.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, like, okay.

• 2:15:21Jocko Willink?

  What you look like, if someone's gonna get a tattoo of a grenade, that's what they get.

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  Okay, so the, and then what, then the kind of modern grenades, that's just the round one?

• 2:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it just looks round. But that, that, those pineapple grenades, so we go up there and this is just dumb team guy stuff. So we start throwing these grenades and like a bunch of them are not working because they're whatever at that time, like 50 years old or something crazy like that. So we're hucking these grenades and, uh, the chief that was running the training, who it was a freaking more like badass team guy. Matter of fact, Tony mentioned him because he, he, uh, died. But his name is Tim Farrell and so we're throwing these grenades and when they would, so if, if you threw a grenade and it didn't go off, the protocol was shut down the range, call EOD, EOD can come out there, whatever in five hours.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna sit there for five hours waiting for them to show up. So Tim Farrell didn't want us to miss training. So he's going out on the range. He'd like, be like, he'd give it like, whatever, a few minutes. And then he'd take another grenade, another freaking

• 2:16:30Jocko Willink?

  old rusty pineapple grenade. He would go out, pull the pin, set it down next to the one that was the dud after he went out there and looked for it.

• 2:16:37Speaker 01

  That's ballsy right there.

• 2:16:38Jocko Willink?

  Set it down and then run back. I jump into the pit and dude, I'm a new guy. I'm like, dang dude, this dude's a badass. Like this guy's crazy, but that's, you know, that's how.

• 2:16:48Leif Babin?

  If you're out there running hand grenade ranges, do not, do not do that.

• 2:16:51Jocko Willink?

  Do not do that. Do not do that.

• 2:16:54Leif Babin?

  Not advisable.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, dumb team guy stuff, freaking dumb, real dumb.

• 2:16:59Leif Babin?

  Those, those pineapple grenades though, that, you know, the M67, which is the modern round grenades we use, that, it, the frag pattern is, is so much, the frag is tiny. It breaks up into those little, little small pieces where the pineapple grenade's got the big old chunks. And that's what the, that's what the, the insurgents had in Ramadi.

• 2:17:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. They have those, uh, they have those Russian ones that are more cylindrical.

• 2:17:21Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:22Jocko Willink?

  They're cylindrical and they still have the grid pattern on them.

• 2:17:25Leif Babin?

  Yeah. We recovered a bunch of those out of that, that one moss that we cleared with Iraqi soldiers.

• 2:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Imagine that.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  So wait, you guys don't use, uh, so you don't use the pineapple grenades at all anymore? Long time?

• 2:17:37Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  Dang, that's kind of the iconic look, right?

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. If you're gonna get a tattoo of a grenade, you're gonna get that one. Most like, I've never seen anyone with an M67 grenade tattoo. Have you?

• 2:17:48Leif Babin?

  I haven't.

• 2:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause it, it's kind of round, right?

• 2:17:51Leif Babin?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't quite have the,

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  Kind of boring.

• 2:17:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a little bit. Unless you're hucking it.

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Unless you're using it.

• 2:17:57Jocko Willink?

  Then you're kind of pumped.

• 2:18:00Leif Babin?

  I'm okay. I remember some of those, some of those pineapple, the Russian pineapple grenades, those things were heavy. They had a lot more, lot more weight to them.

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  A little more oomph to them.

• 2:18:07Leif Babin?

  For sure.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  It seemed like most, well, like you said, the frag was heavier. You know, like just the, just the metal was heavy. I don't know what the explosive weight was off the top of my head. They're definitely bigger.

• 2:18:20Leif Babin?

  They're, uh, they make a big boom. I can tell you that.

• 2:18:23Speaker 01

  So there's different sizes of grenades or no?

• 2:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes, there are.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  Like, so, well, you, you mentioned that the grenade killed however many guys in one shot.

• 2:18:32Jocko Willink?

  That was more a statement of like, that must have been a hell of a shot and the guys must have been close together because a grenade is a very small explosive. I mean, it's a small thing.

• 2:18:42Leif Babin?

  Five, five meter kill radius on it.

• 2:18:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, so it's.

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, if they're all cruising together, boom.

• 2:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:18:49Leif Babin?

  Here's a note for Echo Charles, though, uh, the movie master.

• 2:18:52Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:18:52Leif Babin?

  The, so the, the, the five meter kill radius for M67, our, our, our hand grenade, a frag grenade is the same, it, it's the same kill radius for a golden egg, which is a 40 millimeter grenade that you shoot out of your, your M203 grenade launcher, or the old school M79s that we, we carried. And unlike what you might see in the movie Commando, when, when you, when you shoot a, a 40 millimeter grenade, the building doesn't blow up. And we had several times where it, it just, it fragged people and they run off and so.

• 2:19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a common misconception.

• 2:19:24Leif Babin?

  A little disappointing.

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  No, that's a common misconception that actually is true and Commando is actually, factually, the proof that it, it does do that.

• 2:19:33Leif Babin?

  Well, all I gotta say is I, I tried that many times and as an officer, you know, my, my job is to stand back and, and high port my weapon and be detached. But that also means that if I'm in the back, I can shoot some 40 millimeter grenades and we, we shot quite a few of those things, which was awesome.

• 2:19:48Jocko Willink?

  I, I remember you, uh, often coming back with, uh, empty bandoliers.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  So wait, on Predator, not to go too deep.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, dude, let's go.

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  They started, totally did start it. Um, remember the, the scene on Predator, Jesse Ventura, Blaine, AKA Blaine, says, I don't, I don't have time to bleed, right? Remember that part?

• 2:20:07Leif Babin?

  Yep.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  It's like, hey, bleed. And then the guy Poncho said, okay, do you have time to duck?

• 2:20:12Leif Babin?

  Exactly.

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  He came out, shot, is that the 40 millimeter?

• 2:20:15Leif Babin?

  That's a 40 millimeter grenade. Yeah, he had a M203. So he's launching that into the, unlike, like, look, it would definitely keep guys heads down and if, and we did have, we had a couple of guys that just scored, scored some direct hits with a 40 millimeter grenade, which is, if you take one of those in the chest, it's game over for you.

• 2:20:33Leif Babin?

  That was pretty epic, but, uh, but there, there is, uh, what, what doesn't happen is like you saw in Predator, where you launch a 40 milli, a, a 40, 40 mic, mic into a bunker and like, a giant explosion happens and six guys go flying 10 feet in the air in all directions. That doesn't happen. That was pretty disappointing.

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  Did you see my Instagram post where I said, hey, people are parking in front of my driveway and then I shoot the cars?

• 2:20:58Leif Babin?

  Yes.

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  Is that a 40 millimeter? I mean, I guess.

• 2:21:01Leif Babin?

  I thought you had a rocket. Wasn't that a rocket?

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  No, it was like one, you know, the, the big. I think like six of them fit in there.

• 2:21:08Leif Babin?

  Oh, you know what? You did have, you had the street sweeper. There's a street sweeper forty millimeter grenade, which the Marines had. Three Marines had some and they're heavy, but it's pretty awesome. It's just, it's a cylinder. And so, yeah, you can just launch a whole bunch of.

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:23Leif Babin?

  It's basically like a gigantic revolver with forty millimeter grenades in them.

• 2:21:27Jocko Willink?

  That wasn't real?

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  It was real, but I don't look at the, the tag, the, what do you call the instructions or whatever, the names?

• 2:21:34Leif Babin?

  I, I did shoot some vehicles with forty mic mic. It does create quite an explosion and if you can ignite the gas, uh, you know, then, then it will catch on fire. There wasn't a gigantic explosion that happened though. That was a little disappointing. But that, you gotta call in good deal Dave for the bombs.

• 2:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's just not that much explosive inside. I mean, you know, like how big a M80 is?

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  I mean, think of how big an M80 is. Well, then think of how big a grenade is. I mean, I can just kind of multiply that and you're going to get something similar. So.

• 2:22:04Leif Babin?

  Do you remember that they, they gave us the thermobaric forty mic mics?

• 2:22:08Jocko Willink?

  I do remember that.

• 2:22:09Leif Babin?

  Which, which create a much larger explosion and supposed to kill people with the overpressure and they, they gave us a bunch of like several cases of them and that was supposed to last the entire deployment and we shot every single one of them, uh, on one operation within about a, a one hour period. Which was awesome.

• 2:22:28Jocko Willink?

  That was awesome, but what was also additionally awesome was I got an email follow up. And the, they said, uh, he said something like, hey, we're wondering if you've had a chance to utilize the, because they were, they were testing, they were testing them. Uh, we were wondering if they've had a chance to, if you've had a chance to use any of these thermobaric grenade, uh, forty millimeter grenades. And have you had a chance to fire any of them yet? And I was like, I was like, hey, life. Have you, I was like, have you, you shot some of those out? How were you? He goes, I shot all of them. I go, how were they? You're like, they were awesome. And I just wrote back, uh, work good, send more.

• 2:23:08Leif Babin?

  I think I, I think I asked for more of them. The only thing that was different is that they, they were much heavier. So I guess they're a lot larger and the explosion is much, much more powerful. So a little closer to what you might expect.

• 2:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Gotcha.

• 2:23:18Leif Babin?

  But you, you gotta account for that in the trajectory because, uh, where you're aiming, yeah, where you're aiming it is they're falling like, you know, 50 meters short.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's kind of hard to dope in on, on Camp Mark Lee. Just roll out and dope in your 40 mic, like, that's crazy.

• 2:23:37Jocko Willink?

  All right. The lessons from that one. Corporal Tully knew the mission of the company was to relieve the first Arvin Division Headquarters. When the company was halted by fire, he took decisive action in support of the commander's intent to free up the movement of the company. So the mission could be continued. Corporal Tully acted, Corporal Tully acted on his own initiative. Being the second in the company formation, he was in the best position to evaluate the situation and take advantage of the opportunity developed by the point squad.

• 2:24:19Jocko Willink?

  So what we have here, again, we've got somebody that's in a position.

• 2:24:26Jocko Willink?

  They're not the leader. This isn't the gunnery sergeant. This isn't the platoon commander. This isn't the company commander.

• 2:24:34Jocko Willink?

  This is the squad leader.

• 2:24:37Jocko Willink?

  Who takes action. And, and makes a difference. And look, we, we saw this kind of thing all the time. And we were lucky enough to work alongside the army, work alongside the Marine Corps and see,

• 2:24:53Jocko Willink?

  you know, not just from our own platoons, not just from Charlie and Delta platoon, see our young E5s and step up and make things happen. We got to see things like this. We get to see things like this all the time. All the time.

• 2:25:07Leif Babin?

  You gotta, you gotta think about how young these guys, inexperienced these squad leaders are as well, too. And I was, you know, as we're, as we're reading, hearing those stories, I'm thinking about a, a young squad leader that we worked with from 38 Marines Lima Company, named Joe Thompson, Corporal Joe Thompson. And we did probably a dozen operations with Corporal Thompson and his, his squad. And we learned a lot from those guys. I mean, they, they had been in Ramadi for several months prior to us, and had fought through some of the most difficult, dangerous neighborhoods. And he was, he was 21 years old. So here's, here he is in charge of a squad of Marines, leading those Marines, a beloved squad leader,

• 2:25:50Leif Babin?

  stepping up and making calls, supporting the chain of command, you know, and just, just executing and getting things done. And I had so much respect and, you know, to, to be able to work with, with a Marine like that. And, and tragically, Corporal Thompson was killed on August 2nd, 2006, the same day that we lost Markley, same day Ryan Joe was shot and blinded. And we, we lined up next to those Marines from 38 Lima Company. And we put both Joe Thompson and Markley on that Angel Flight at the same time. And I remember the silence of, of, of all the Marines next to us as, as our SEALs from Charlie between carrying those, our brothers in, in body bags and putting them on that

• 2:26:34Leif Babin?

  Angel Flight as, as they took off and just the, the glow of that, of that helicopter going, going, going around as, as they took off to fly those guys home. And what a loss. I mean, just seeing how crushed those Marines were, losing their, their brother and this beloved squad leader. And, and I was just thinking about as, as we're hearing those stories, it's hard to, to imagine that these guys, how young they were, you know, a guy like Corporal Thompson, 21 years old, and with all that, you know, with just limited life experience, and yet in this massive position of responsibility, that are playing such key roles in, in whether or not their team succeeds or fails. And just my hat's

• 2:27:14Leif Babin?

  off to all the squad leaders out there. And what an honor to work with a guy like that. And, and to reflect on, on the impact that he had on, on all the Marines that he, he led.

• 2:27:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking that's probably a pretty good place to stop for today.

• 2:27:49Jocko Willink?

  We got some more, we got some more things to cover and

• 2:27:59Jocko Willink?

  it's important to remember that these guys,

• 2:28:05Jocko Willink?

  you know, the guys that we're talking about in this book, when you're talking about Corporal Thompson, when you're talking about Mark.

• 2:28:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, we talk about how they make a difference on the battlefield and make a strategic impact, but

• 2:28:20Jocko Willink?

  their actions and the way they lived and the example that they sent definitely have made a difference in the way that I think and the way that you think.

• 2:28:33Jocko Willink?

  And the impact that they had, not just on the battlefield, but to see an example, to be examples of what a leader is.

• 2:28:47Jocko Willink?

  And more important, what a person can be.

• 2:28:59Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, we'll, we'll pick this up on the, on the next one.

• 2:29:09Jocko Willink?

  But from, from these stories that we heard already.

• 2:29:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, I kept referring back to taking action and, and these, these squad leaders, they take action and they, and they make a difference.

• 2:29:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and that applies to us as individuals. Our actions make a difference. Our actions that we take as people make a difference. Not just on the battlefield, not just in business, but in life.

• 2:29:54Jocko Willink?

  So step up, take action, and make a difference.

• 2:30:06Jocko Willink?

  Alright Echo Charles, it's been awhile but I need some help over here.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  Yes sir.

• 2:30:12Jocko Willink?

  I want you to talk for a little bit.

• 2:30:13Speaker 01

  Alright, well, I did talk about taking action, which I agree with, obviously. Uh, well, we're gonna start small, how about that? As far as taking action goes, so, the best action that we can take

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  to improve, is to improve our physical health. Starts there. This is, this is essentially the foundation for pretty much all other action, when you think about it.

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I was feeling, like, obviously I was getting a little bit emotional there. I'm done now, you can stop talking.

• 2:30:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  We're trying to cool down, I think I'm cool, we're good.

• 2:30:54Speaker 01

  Good, what I was gonna say is, we gotta start small, okay? We're not all, we're not all dressing up like rebels, you know, with our friends, going in and shooting the rebel league, we're not all doing that.

• 2:31:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it, Jack.

• 2:31:05Leif Babin?

  That was epic though.

• 2:31:06Speaker 01

  Most of us are just kinda, you know, just going day to day with, you know, with our lives, and tactically and strategically trying to do the right thing, alright? Starting small, best way to take action, or the best thing to do, is to maintain or improve our physical health.

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  Let's just say it's a great place, it's definitely a great place to start.

• 2:31:29Speaker 01

  Yes sir.

• 2:31:29Jocko Willink?

  We like it.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  Yes sir.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  Can't argue.

• 2:31:31Speaker 01

  No, can't. So, improving physical health takes what I used to call beat downs, you gotta beat down your body a little bit, varying levels of beat downs.

• 2:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  We all worked out today.

• 2:31:44Jocko Willink?

  Affirmative.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  Some of us plan to work out.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, did you not work out today?

• 2:31:49Speaker 01

  No Brad, not yet, I'm working out later, is all I'm saying, see what I'm saying?

• 2:31:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:31:53Leif Babin?

  He was, he was saying, Echo, Echo was calling me out earlier for not throwing around the hundo, uh, the, the hundo kettlebells.

• 2:32:00Jocko Willink?

  Leif, you're, you've been in town for two days. Would you be more consistent if you worked, with your workouts, if you lived in San Diego with me? Or like, near me?

• 2:32:10Leif Babin?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:32:12Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I'm like, I wonder if Leif really wants to show up at my house at five o'clock in the morning. Then you get there. Well, how do you feel when you get there? How do you feel once you're working out?

• 2:32:23Leif Babin?

  That's awesome.

• 2:32:23Jocko Willink?

  How do you feel once you're done?

• 2:32:24Leif Babin?

  It's the best.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  The best.

• 2:32:26Leif Babin?

  It's the best. And luckily, I got a, I got an early CrossFit class that I, I usually hit at 5:30 in the morning. Get up at 4:30, stretch out.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's in dripping, dripping springs.

• 2:32:36Leif Babin?

  CrossFit second wave. Yeah. Awesome.

• 2:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Plug coming at you. CrossFit second wave.

• 2:32:41Leif Babin?

  Awesome gym.

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  How many classes do you have?

• 2:32:44Leif Babin?

  Four or five a day. Outstanding coaches.

• 2:32:48Leif Babin?

  Great, uh, great instruction. So we get after it.

• 2:32:52Speaker 01

  Here's a question. I have a question for you.

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  Straight up. You know, like, okay.

• 2:32:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:32:59Speaker 01

  Okay. So you know what you just said, like Leif, would you, do you think you'd paraphrasing? Would you make workouts if you live in San Diego? Right? So the whole accountability.

• 2:33:07Jocko Willink?

  The early workouts.

• 2:33:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  When he's gonna get his.

• 2:33:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you have this thing where, and this kind of me just assuming where, you know, when you have a workout partner, you're way less likely to skip workouts, right? So for you, you might think of yourself, you're like, you know, that doesn't apply to me because I ain't skipping workouts. Hell no, kind of thing, right? But do you believe that that's a, a sound theory?

• 2:33:29Jocko Willink?

  I do believe it's a sound theory.

• 2:33:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is, right? Yeah, it is.

• 2:33:34Leif Babin?

  Yeah. So when Jaco's like, all right, I'll see you at five, it's, uh, you're gonna be there. You're gonna get some.

• 2:33:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense. But yeah, so through workouts, sometimes, you know, you, you gotta beat down your body so you can recover. You know, and through that recover, beat down recovery process, we may need a little support. So we'll start with the joints. Another foundational, uh, concept, your joints on your body.

• 2:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  So we've got some supplements. We've got a lot of supplements.

• 2:34:01Speaker 01

  For pretty much everything. So joints is joint warfare, super krill oil. These things maintain your joints, so you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. So you just worry about the workout, making it to the workout, in Leif's case, and, you know, and pushing hard, again, in Leif's case.

• 2:34:15Jocko Willink?

  I like it. So here's what we're gonna do. For Leif.

• 2:34:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:18Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna, he's gonna get some good sleep, maybe take some of that hypnosis, then he's gonna wake up, maybe have a little discipline hitter to get to the workout. He's gonna have joint warfare, cuz his joints are gonna be functioning well with krill oil.

• 2:34:31Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  That gets him, that gets done, guess what? He's coming at it. Some milk, gonna rebuild with the protein activity.

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  Well, boom, easy money.

• 2:34:41Jocko Willink?

  And then he's gotta roll in here for the podcast, cracks open a discipline go. By the way, pretty soon, pretty soon, one Leif Babin is gonna have his own s- signature.

• 2:34:54Jocko Willink?

  We're working on that. Hey, um, uh, if you want any of this stuff, this is, we just started this. We're trying to do a better job of helping you help yourself. So if any of this stuff that you want, you subscribe to it at originmaine.com. If you subscribe to it, we will ship it to you for free. That's what I said. I said what I said.

• 2:35:19Leif Babin?

  That, that subscription is awesome, too, cuz that there's, I've, over the last couple of years, like, the joint warfare and krill oil, that, that is the super krill. If I don't take that stuff, like, I feel it.

• 2:35:30Jocko Willink?

  It's a problem.

• 2:35:30Leif Babin?

  I absolutely feel it. It, there's no question it makes a difference. So that subscription of it just shows up, you're never out, it's, it's awesome. I love that.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  And also too, like, okay, so, and consider this, which, this is something you don't really think about, the joint warfare and the krill oil. You don't go, like, through the day thinking, oh, can't wait to take my joint warfare. Like, it's not on your mind, until it's time to take it. So, like, milk, sometimes you can be like, hey, I can't, kinda can't wait for that milk later.

• 2:35:57Jocko Willink?

  I know that feeling. I'm feeling that right now.

• 2:35:59Speaker 01

  It's just different, you see what I'm saying? So. When you get into the red zone as far as supply of the joint warfare, it's like, oh, you can kind of understand how you'd get there. You know, but when you have the subscription, man, that problem's kind of avoided. It's true though. You know, for that kind of stuff.

• 2:36:16Jocko Willink?

  So you can get it at Wawa. By the way, you can get the drinks at Wawa. Holy East Coast, by the way, we're in. We're in Holy East Coast. Everyone that helped us by, everyone in Florida that helped us by going in. And clearing shelves is much appreciated and you did it. You did it. You got Wawa full chain, Holy East Coast. No matter where you go, you see a Wawa, you can go in there and get yourself some, some discipline. Go also vitamin shop, you can get it there. So that's cool.

• 2:36:42Speaker 01

  Yes, also origin main.com.

• 2:36:46Jocko Willink?

  Origin main.com. You can get American made gis because we're training jujitsu.

• 2:36:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:36:52Jocko Willink?

  You get American made gis, rash guards you can get. That's cool. When you're training, we can't wear gis. In the streets, you can not considered, not considered what?

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  Appropriate.

• 2:37:03Jocko Willink?

  Appropriate. We want to wear jeans.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. We got American made jeans, American made jeans, American made boots, t-shirts, hoodies. Just all kinds of American made gear.

• 2:37:18Speaker 01

  It's true. Speaking of gear. Jaco has a store with gear. Jaco store.com is where you can get your discipline equals freedom gear. Your good gear.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Your, your, your stand by it gets some.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  Let it get some gear. Yes. Oh yeah. So yeah, a good way to represent apparel wise while you're on this.

• 2:37:39Jocko Willink?

  Your hardcore recondo.

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  Oh gear. Yeah. Hardcore recondo all day. Yes. All available. Like I said, Jaco store.com. Also. We, we have a little, uh. What's called, what we call the shirt locker.

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  You don't like how I said it.

• 2:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, I don't know why you made it this weird thing, but we have the shirt locker.

• 2:38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. See what I'm saying though? Like, yeah, you didn't like how I said it.

• 2:38:04Jocko Willink?

  The shirt locker.

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  You totally called it weird. Well, because it's like the hurt locker. See what I'm saying?

• 2:38:11Jocko Willink?

  I see what you're trying to do.

• 2:38:12Speaker 01

  Anyway, okay, either way, it's you get a new shirt every month.

• 2:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you put like little tags in those that says death on it?

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  You like that?

• 2:38:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:22Jocko Willink?

  The details with that one.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  There's some details in there. Yes. There's some layers in there as well. Anyway, some, so these are cool design ideas.

• 2:38:30Jocko Willink?

  Did you steal that idea from Lululemon?

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  I thought it was Lululemon.

• 2:38:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 2:38:38Speaker 01

  No, no, I didn't though. No, the answer is no.

• 2:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, it looked way cooler.

• 2:38:42Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 2:38:43Jocko Willink?

  So you're good.

• 2:38:44Speaker 01

  Either way, yeah, look into that. A new shirt every month. Cool layers, designs represent. Boom.

• 2:38:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to this podcast. Subscribe to the Jaco Unraveling Podcast. Daryl Cooper's in town, by the way. We're going to be recording. Grounded Podcast, Talking to Dean Lisch, trying to get moving on that Warrior Kid Podcast. I know.

• 2:39:05Jocko Willink?

  I told you when I finished my last book and got it turned in, we'd, we'd get cracking on that. So that was two days ago. Another deadline met. Uh, also we have the underground, the Jaco Underground, JacoUnderground.com. If you want to get a little bit more amplifying information.

• 2:39:23Speaker 01

  From the underground?

• 2:39:24Jocko Willink?

  You want to, you want to see something, a little bit what's going on behind the scenes? You can go to the underground. We have a bunch of stuff going on there. We're, we're doing this podcast on there called the Jaco Underground. It costs money. It costs money because we don't want to have, we don't want to have sponsors. Look, I know it's hard enough to listen to us talk about this stuff right now. Imagine if we were talking about something that we actually didn't like. It would suck really bad.

• 2:39:50Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  So we only talk about things that we actually use, that we actually own. That's what we're doing. We don't want to have somebody else hold us hostage with their money. Eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. Or if you want it, if you want, if you can't afford that, it's okay. Email assistance at Jaco Underground dot com and you'll get taken care of. So if you're gonna, if you're, if you're feeling a little bit angry, what are they doing? Well, first of all, this podcast's the same. As long as it can be this way, it will be. But if you can't afford it, it's okay. We want to help. Have you explained the eight eighteen?

• 2:40:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:40:24Jocko Willink?

  Cause I've had quite a few people ask me that. We haven't yet. We're not ready to put the word out yet.

• 2:40:28Speaker 01

  No. One person that I can remember guessed the exact one. But that's sort of it.

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  Layers, layers. We got YouTube. Subscribe to see Echo's legit videos where he has one of, considered one of the be the best assistant directors in the world. Who really kind of guides the, the, the whole tone of the videos. That's me.

• 2:40:52Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:40:53Jocko Willink?

  So you're welcome. But you know what? I'm humbled that way. I just let him, I let him, I let him kind of take the credit for the videos. Uh, psychological warfare, a bunch of album, a bunch of tracks on there. Flipsidecampus.com Dakota Meyer making stuff. We got books. We got a bunch of books. We got Final Spin, A Story, A Novel, A Poem. I'm not sure. You're gonna have to judge for yourself. It's available for your order right now.

• 2:41:18Jocko Willink?

  Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Cold Evaluation of Protocols, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid Four Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid One, Two, and Three, Mike and the Dragons, About Face by Colonel David Hackworth, and of course, of all those books that I've written, the ones that Leif actually thinks are the best are Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership. So you can get those two, which we wrote together. Echelon Front, that is our leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. We have EF Online, which is, that's why Leif's out here. We just recorded four new sections for EF Online where we go, on

• 2:42:02Jocko Willink?

  this particular course, we are going deep into the, into the principles that are in Extreme Ownership, because you read about them and you start applying them and you need some help and you need some adjustment. These are like advanced courses on those fundamental principles. And then we're, very soon, we're gonna have, we're gonna have those available for all 12 chapters of Extreme Ownership. We got, we got an hour long plus of content in each of those courses that match each chapter. It's gonna be, gonna be awesome. And there's quizzes. And then we do, we're doing live stuff all the time on there. So if you've got a question, you can come and ask us. That's EFOnline.com. By the way, if you really want to see Jaco get animated, EF Online, live. I have fun, man. I have fun. He brings it.

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  I have fun. That's what I do. We have the muster in 2021. Those have kind of changed, but go to extremeownership.com if you want to come to a live event. We've got also the FTX, which is field training that we talked about a bunch today, how these guys are learning about leadership. You want to go through that? Come to our FTX. That's what it is. And also, we have EF Battlefield, where we will take you on a guided tour to learn the leadership lessons from the Battle of Gettysburg. So, check those out. EF Overwatch, where we are placing, we are placing executives into your company that have experience from the military, that know the principles that we talk about all the time. Go to EFOverwatch.com. And if

• 2:43:26Jocko Willink?

  you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, well, a good way to do it is check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 2:43:43Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to, if you just feel the need to listen to more of my protracted presumptions, or you need to hear more of Echo's unavailing articulations, or Leif's tiresome tales, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which Echo only refers to as the Gram, and on Facebook, Leif is at Leif Babin. On the Gram, Leif is at Real Leif Babin, because you don't want to get the other Leif Babin.

• 2:44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, the unreal one.

• 2:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Echo, that'd be kinda cool if you were kinda unreal. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all the folks out there in uniform, especially the squad leaders. Squad leaders of the world, you make a difference in keeping the world safe. And to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders, thank you for making a difference by keeping us safe in our worst times.

• 2:44:49Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there,

• 2:44:54Jocko Willink?

  remember that no matter where you are, no matter what is happening, no matter how outnumbered, outgunned, outmatched you might be at any particular moment, you make a difference.

• 2:45:09Jocko Willink?

  But you only make a difference if you make a difference.

• 2:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Your actions matter, your effort matters, your tenacity matters. So don't let off the gas.

• 2:45:24Jocko Willink?

  And don't wait for someone else to handle it for you. Don't accept your fate if you don't like it. Take action.

• 2:45:34Jocko Willink?

  You make the difference, and you make the difference by taking action. And of course, by getting after it. And until next time, this is Leif and Echo and Jaco. Out.