210: Leadership Strategy and Tactics. First Look and Review, Pt.1 with Dave Berke

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:26 - Leadership Strategy and Tactics, by Jocko. Summary Review and Analysis. 2:40:32 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:03:39 - 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 210 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Dave Berke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. And the last time that Dave was on, we discussed Marine Corps doctrinal publication, three tac one tactics, which starts with a line that reads,

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  "This publication is about winning in combat," which is an outstanding way to start off any publication of any kind. And we actually ended up covering that manual on a series of four podcasts, 187, 188, 189, and 190.

• 0:46Jocko Willink?

  And that definitely is an outstanding manual.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  When it comes to winning in combat, for sure. It explains the concepts. It reveals the underlying philosophies.

• 1:00Jocko Willink?

  And there are other doctrinal publications from the Marine Corps on operations and on strategy and on campaigning. And there's manuals on intelligence and expeditionary operations and logistics and planning and command and control.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  There's a manual on the Marine Rifle Squad.

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  They got manuals for everything. There's even a Marine Corps warfighting publication of three tac 15.1

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  called Machine Guns and Machine Gun Gunnery.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  Which is a 406-page manual, by the way.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  406-page manual. This is the manual where you learn that quote, "This machine gun supports both the offense and defense. It provides the heavy volume of close, accurate, and continuous fire support necessary to suppress and destroy enemy fortifications, vehicles, and personnel in support of an attack. The long-range, close, defensive, and final protective fires delivered by this gun form an integral part of the unit's defensive fires."

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  So they're going deep. They're going deep on machine guns and machine gun gunnery. Is there a title of any book in the world that has gun in it more times? I don't know of any. It also shows you exactly how to fire from the bipod with a 240 Gulf. So firing from the bipod. When firing from the bipod, the rear sight is raised. Assume a prone position behind the gun with the right shoulder into the weapon. The right hand grasps the pistol grip and manipulates the trigger. Place the left hand on the comb of the stock, palm down with the cheek resting lightly against the cover and/or the left hand.

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Both hands exert a firm, steady pressure to the rear during aiming and firing. Unlike the tripod, the bipod mount is relatively unstable. Elbows and upper torso may move. A good sight picture must be regained before firing each burst.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  So we're getting detailed. There's no, there's not much room for interpretation. We're getting the instruction that we need. And by the way, the army also has a manual for machine gunners. The FM3 Tac 22.68 Crew Served Machine Gun, which doesn't actually cover the 50 cal. It's got another manual for that. It doesn't cover the Ma Deuce, but it's still 430 pages long.

• 3:44Jocko Willink?

  So they are not playing around. And by the way, we salute all the machine gunners out there. For what you do, laying down that suppressive fire.

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  And we understand that manuals get granular and show us how to do a specific job. Now, the leader, the, the military does have leadership manuals as well, and we've covered a bunch of them. And they are solid in explaining some of the principles of leadership. But I always wanted something that was more granular, more detailed, more specific for leadership, something that explained the actual strategies and tactics to be used when leading people, the little maneuvers that you make up and down the chain of command. And so.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  So I wrote a book and it's called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. And it is released January 14th, 2020. And I wanted to review it for you all right as it comes out to highlight what the book is, how you can use it.

• 4:56Jocko Willink?

  And what the book will do for you as a leader. And since I work with Dave all the time. First in the Battle of Ramadi and now at Echelon Front and since he's been on the podcast multiple times and since he listens to the podcast. And since he was the first person that I gave this book to to read, I figured it made sense to have him on here so he could help me introduce the book to the world. So Dave, thanks for coming on, man.

• 5:23Dave Berke?

  Good to be here, man.

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  You got a couple of versions. You got the early versions.

• 5:27Dave Berke?

  I did. I got a couple of early versions.

• 5:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was just, I was just spilling thoughts on the pages like this, this, this, this. And then I started to formulate them into categories and eventually turned them into this. So Leadership Strategy and Tactics. We're going to go to the book.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  And I kind of had to do a little bit of an explanation here in the beginning of the book.

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  Just to explain sort of what's going on here, who I am, what, well, it goes like this. Who am I to try and teach leaders how to lead? Where did I learn leadership? Much of my leadership education was luck. I say luck because there were a few fortunate coincidences that gave me the right frame of mind, the right teachers and the right opportunities to learn.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  One of the ways I was lucky and that made me focus on leadership was the fact that I wasn't really that naturally talented at anything in particular. As a little kid, I wasn't the fastest or strongest or smartest. I was never great at shooting a basketball, kicking a soccer ball or throwing a baseball. I didn't win any races or have a shelf of trophies and ribbons from sports. My report card was never exceptional either. I might have done well in a class if I was interested, but I usually wasn't and my grades reflected that. I was average across the board. Coming out strong.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  Coming out strong, average across the board. That's where we're at. And this is where it kind of ties in. So even from a young age, I needed to get others with more talent and more skill to do what I needed them to do. I needed to lead. Of course, I didn't think of it as leadership. I just thought I was making things happen and contributing by getting people to work together to support one another as we moved toward a common mission. Now, maybe that mission was building a fort in the woods or planning a mock military assault with squirt guns on another group of friends.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  And this is real. Like, I, I, I remember when I was, when it was time to build a fort, when it was time to organize an assault on some other group, I'd be like, all right, hey, this is what we need to do. And that's because I knew that little Johnny could run faster than me. I knew that Billy could scale that wall better than I could. But I could take a step back and say, okay, this is, this is how we should do it. This would be the best way to build this fort. This is what we need to do. So whatever the task was, I generally found myself giving direction to people who were stronger, faster, or otherwise more capable than I was. That seemed to be where I could help the most and the one area in which I could perform with a higher level of competency.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  I also always had a rebellious streak, which I think all, I think everyone has. I think, well, I shouldn't say that. I think many people, because how much of a rebellious streak did Kyle Carpenter have? Like, he didn't have much of a rebellious streak. I mean, he had enough to join the Marine Corps, but when you listen to him, he's like, yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't looking to rebel. He was just, just on the path from day one. Kind of got it. So maybe it's not every kid. But me, yeah, I had a little rebellious streak and maybe it was another way for me to leave a mark. I wouldn't conform to the way other kids acted. I acted differently. Listened to hardcore and heavy metal music and had a hardcore attitude about things.

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  That attitude set me apart from the pack. Once I was on the outside of the normal kids, I was detached from them. So I observed. Looking in from the outside, I garnered a better understanding of the people I was watching. I saw their emotions, their cliques, and their drama unfold from a detached position, I learned. So, so that's an interesting point, too, that I thought about while I was putting this together. I remember. Okay, so you know, you got the kids, uh, movie reference Echo Charles Breakfast Club?

• 9:32Dave Berke?

  Yes, sir.

• 9:32Jocko Willink?

  So you got the stereotypical kids, right? The jock.

• 9:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah, wrestler.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  The rebel guy.

• 9:37Dave Berke?

  Yep, John Bender.

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  The, the preppy or the, the popular girl.

• 9:41Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 9:42Jocko Willink?

  The nerd.

• 9:43Dave Berke?

  Princess, we'll say.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  The nerd.

• 9:44Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  And then what was the black haired girl considered?

• 9:48Dave Berke?

  Oh, like a recluse, like a hermit, like outcast.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  Artsy, artsy, right? Give me artsy. Artsy girl?

• 9:54Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah. Actually, she was artsy because remember she drew that picture of the snow cabin and then she made her dandruff go on it.

• 10:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you were correct. Okay, so artsy, jock, princess, popular, nerd, and kind of stereotypical rebel. So at my school, like, yeah, we had all those kids, right?

• 10:14Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  And I really wasn't in any of those groups. You know what I'm saying? So I kind of had, I kind of had friends in each one of those groups, which is kind of weird in its own right. I was friends with some of the popular kids. I was friends with some of the burnouts. I was friends with some of the metalheads. I was friends with some of the prep. Like I was kind of friends, had a couple of friends, but I wasn't really considered to be in any of those groups, which meant I was actually watching them. You know, even from a young age, I was going, oh yeah, I see how the burnouts are. I see how their little hierarchy is, you know? Which is different, but it, it allowed me to kind of like look and learn.

• 10:59Jocko Willink?

  Strange.

• 10:59Dave Berke?

  No, man, that makes perfect sense. I had a similar experience in high school. Look, first, just real quick, that act of rebellion, joining the military is an act of rebellion.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, it definitely was for me.

• 11:08Dave Berke?

  Kyle Carpenter is such a, such a great dude. He's just a good guy. But anybody that does that is doing something that's totally counter to what 99% of the world is doing. There's no question about that.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, his mom was definitely, uh, against it, we'll say. And, and yet, and but that's, that's a cool thing about Kyle is like he, he talked them through it, you know? He eventually was like good enough to be like, hey, this is what I really want to do. And he, remember, he went to, he went to college to kind of say, okay, I'll, let me try college and then, you know, he, he moved in that direction. I actually, I joined the Navy. I didn't even tell my parents. I just like joined. And then I told, actually, and I have, I, I, I noticed when I wrote this, I was like, um,

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  reading a little section, I said like, oh, I was talking to my dad and I had already joined the Navy when I told my dad, I was, I said, yeah, hey, by the way, I joined the Navy. And I think he was just kind of stoked that I was not gonna go to jail or just be an idiot for the rest of my life. Uh, so, yeah, it's interesting how as I reflect back, just being on the outside, gave me maybe the initial idea of being detached and looking at things from a different perspective. Only because I wasn't quite one of those, any of those groups. Interesting. All right.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, joining the Navy was still the best thing I could have done. It gave me a blank slate and clear direction. No one in the Navy cared that I didn't have the best grades in high school. It didn't matter that I wasn't the best athlete. No one was concerned about where I was from, what my parents did, or anything else about my history. They shaved my head, gave me a uniform and told me what I needed to do to be successful. Make your bed like this, fold your underwear like that, polish your boondockers until they look like mirrors. If you could follow the rules and do what you were told to do, you'd be put in a leadership position. I did follow the rules and I did what I was told to do and it paid off and I was made a squad leader in boot camp.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean tactically? Nothing. But it meant a lot to me at the time. I mean, think about it, a squad leader in Navy boot camp. That, that is a very minimal leadership role. But for me, at that time, it was a role.

• 13:32Dave Berke?

  What are the three squads? I mean,

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  I think there was more, I think there was like six squads, because we had a big open bay barracks and I think there was three squads on each side. Like, but, because you were basically grouped by your bunk beds.

• 13:44Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  And so, but yeah, you needed a squad leader. So I probably had, I don't know, 15 people in my squad. And there was another guy who was from New England and he was a wrestler and he was gonna be a SEAL and he ended up being a SEAL. He's an awesome guy. But he ended up being the master at arms because he had been to college and he, you know, so he was, and then our, our, the guy that was the recruit chief petty officer, the R C P O, so like the senior of all of the, of the recruits. This guy was, he had, he had turned down his commission or something like that. So he did R O T C for four years.

• 14:30Jocko Willink?

  The Navy paid for four years of college and he said, I don't want to get a commission. And they said, cool, you're going to be an enlisted guy for two years. And that's what he did, which, which is a really, look, I don't want to say it's a bad call, but that seems like a bad call to me. Like he got his commission. Yeah. Or he was ready to get his commission. Now, who knows? Cause everyone in boot camp lies to each other. When it comes to like, you know, you meet all these guys that were, I just, Wire there. Yeah. I was just about to be, you know, got, I just got drafted by whatever. The, the Miami Dolphins, but I really wanted to serve, so I enlisted in the Navy. You're looking at that guy thinking, wow, what position were you gonna play at 117 pounds? But yeah, so I'm not sure if my R C P O was actually,

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  like maybe he got in trouble, right? You go to four years of college, you're supposed to get your commission and you get a DUI or something, then they're like, hey, you're not getting a commission, but you do owe us two years of enlistment. So he was there, he was a squared away guy, never, I don't remember what happened to him. But the master at arms, who was a total, total stud, great guy, awesome wrestler, wrestler in college. And he was the master at arms and then I, with no experience, was a squad leader. So my first, my first leadership role. And I was stoked. Dude, totally. That's something. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:53Jocko Willink?

  BUDS was the same way for me. I still wasn't great at any particular skill, not the best runner or swimmer, not great at the obstacle course, but I could do what I was told. I could play the game and I wasn't going to quit. Some people say that everyone thinks about quitting during BUDS. I never did, not for a second. That thought never crossed my mind. Hell Week, a five-day block of continuous physical training with almost no sleep whatsoever and which causes the highest number of people to quit, was actually relaxing for me because during Hell Week, nothing is timed. During all other facets of BUDS, students are constantly on the clock. Timed runs, swims, and obstacle course evolutions take place every day. If you miss the time and fail one of them, you're on the bubble and if you fail again, you're out. That's what it was when

• 16:38Jocko Willink?

  I went through. It was stressful, but during Hell Week, nothing was timed. You just had to keep going. You just had to not quit. And for me, that was the easy part. Pretty straightforward. That's a good skill to have. It's like the other thing. Genetically, I don't have to sleep a lot. And that is, that was, I picked the perfect career for that. Like, I'm saying I wasn't good at anything, which is true. Not the best runner, middle-of-the-pack runner, middle-of-the-pack swimmer, middle-of-the-pack on the obstacle course. But, and I didn't really think about the not sleeping thing, but that is something that I had and I didn't really realize it at

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  that time. But when I got done with Hell Week, I remember my roommates were beat up, you know, and tired. And I remember, I remember I slept for, you know, like a solid eight hours or something. And I got up and I was doing eight-count bodybuilders and I was like, I'm ready to rock and roll. And they were like, oh, yeah. So, good times.

• 17:44Jocko Willink?

  When I got done with BUDS, I checked into SEAL Team One. Was fired up, as all of us were, who were checking into that sacred place of war heroes and legends. The Master Chief of the Command, the highest ranking enlisted SEAL at Team One welcomed us aboard. No one here cares that you made it through BUDS. We all did. It doesn't mean anything here. You have to prove yourselves and earn your Trident. So keep your mouth shut, your ears open, and don't forget anything, and be on time. Any questions? The Trident was the gold insignia worn on the uniform, which indicates you're a SEAL. To receive our Tridents, we had to go through a six-month probationary period, and then go through a written and oral review board with the senior enlisted personnel at the team. We were all nervous about that, and the Master Chief provided no comfort whatsoever.

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  In the early 90s, and again, I'm skipping through chunks of the book just to kind of get to the meat. In the early 90s, when I got to SEAL Team One, the training progression was different from how it is now. Back then, once onboard a team, you were eventually assigned to a SEAL platoon. This is where you would actually learn to be a SEAL. Up until that point, the training wasn't tactical. In BUDS, you don't learn very much about the actual job of being a SEAL. You learn how to be cold, wet, and tired and miserable, and not to complain about any of it. But you don't learn any of the job skills that make you into a professional operator. Those skills were taught to you once you were in a SEAL platoon. There, you learned through a fire hose. There was so much knowledge needed, so many skills to develop, so many tactics to understand. You felt as if you would never know it all.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  But like the rest of the new guys, I listened and learned every single day. In my first three platoons, I learned a few key concepts that stuck with me for the rest of my career. And they were also the base upon which I built most of the principles I ended up teaching to the rest of the SEAL teams, and eventually to companies, businesses, and organizations around the globe. These are examples of the lucky moments I referred to earlier. I was in the right place at the right time with the right frame of mind to learn what I did. Then I was lucky enough to have other experiences to overlay what I had learned, and slowly, subconsciously, begin to formulate a system of leadership that I was then lucky enough to apply

• 19:53Jocko Willink?

  on one of the most challenging battlefields in the world, the Battle of Ramadi in the summer of 2006. When I returned from that deployment... I took over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams where I formalized, codified, and transcribed what I had learned, but the roots of everything I eventually wrote down originated in a very non-traditional but highly effective learning environment. The SEAL platoon.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that's the opening, kind of a little, a little, what is it? An excerpts of the opening of the book, just to kind of, if people have no idea who I am, hey, this is who I am.

• 20:33Dave Berke?

  Yeah. The biggest takeaway from that, because most of the people listening, just like me, aren't SEALs and aren't gonna be SEALs. The thing that you said that I think is the most important of all that is the thing about frame of mind. Because what happens and the circumstances and all, you can't control any of those things. But everybody's gonna be exposed to some things in their life. And if you have the right frame of mind, you can, you can actually learn from it. You were talking about being in high school. It isn't just that you had different groups of friends. If you're like me, which I think you were, even in high school, you were looking and saying, I can see the glide path for that group. It's not guaranteed, but if they keep down this road, I could tell in high school where these different groups were likely gonna go. Some appealed to me, some did not appeal to me.

• 21:16Dave Berke?

  And even in high school, if you have the right frame of mind, you can actually start to learn, the biggest problem with that is I was an idiot in high school and I didn't have the right frame of mind.

• 21:27Dave Berke?

  You can't control those, those lessons, but if you actually have just enough, a tiny bit of willingness to just kind of pay attention to what's going on around you, you don't have to be in the SEAL teams to get these same lessons. They're all out there in life, everywhere. And that would be, people are always asking me, if you could go back and do it all over again, what would you change? And I'm like, I usually say nothing. I actually would try to tell young Dave Berke, hit your frame of mind, just paying, just pay a little more attention to what's going on around you, because it's all out there, even in high school. It's all there, man.

• 21:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep. The, I got asked this the other day, I was getting interviewed or something, and I've been asked it before.

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  And it's a similar kind of concept, right? The question was like, what was the moment? Where this all kinda came together? And I kinda wanted to give a dramatic, you know, a dramatic answer, a poignant answer. Oh, I remember it was a, it was a rainy day. And I was like, no, the, every one of these things is a slow build and like, you don't even know. You don't have the right frame of mind, right? You don't have the right frame of mind to say, oh, this is what, this is what's happening right now. But you can look back, that's what I'm doing now is even, you know, writing that forward, looking back in my life, saying where, how did I,

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  where did I come to these conclusions? Cause at some point I definitely did. At some point I recognized these things. But it was a slow, I shouldn't say that at some point, over time I got to a point, I arrived at a point. Now that is true when, when I, and you've heard me tell the story of taking over the training for the West Coast SEAL teams and I went out on that training operation. It was a total disaster. And I went back to my barracks room that night and wrote down the four laws of combat. That's, that's it right there. Like that was what happened. But when I wrote down the four laws of combat for the first time, I wasn't trying to figure them out. I wasn't trying to see what they were.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  I knew what they were and I just had to write them down. I had learned them over and over again from a bunch of different people in a bunch of different ways. And so now it was, okay, cool. How can I explain these to the rest of these guys that are going to be coming through this training? Where they can take them and implement them quickly? Yeah. So it, there's unfortunately, there's no point. Now, my curiosity is when someone gets fed this information now, right? When someone that's at the basic school in the Marine Corps Yeah. listens to the podcast that we did, that series of podcasts and goes, is that, do they get just a

• 24:02Jocko Willink?

  a hyper move forward? Because I look at it and think, man, if I would have had this podcast when I was younger, I'd been a million times in a better position.

• 24:15Jocko Willink?

  Is that, do people get a hyper boost, do you think?

• 24:19Dave Berke?

  I bet you some people do, but I still think that you're fighting against some of the human nature that I'm not even convinced that Dave Berke in a time machine would still have the maturity, even being told exactly how this could work in your favor, to have the frame of mind to listen to it. There's a, but there are undoubtedly some folks, I guarantee you that are seeing this and go, holy crap. Without this, my life would be different. And there's still a whole bunch of people that you can hit it over the head and they're not going to absorb it and they have their own timelines. But you can see when people get dialed in. And in the military, I mean, those culminating events, like you were just talking about, you get a couple of them in your career. You get maybe two or three, if you're lucky. Some people get one. A lot of people don't get any. I'm in

• 25:04Dave Berke?

  touch with a pretty good number of guys going through the basic school and social media and whatnot, and they are so much more dialed in than I ever was. So much more dialed in. And I think, you know, that's a combination of things. I started in the P sign Marine Corps. I think it's a different viewpoint and they started in Warfoot, wartime Marine Corps. But those kids seem to be way more dialed in and they're absorbing this and paying attention to this.

• 25:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, even Jason Garner at some point was saying, I think it was the one who was on the podcast. He was saying like, hey, he started adjusting, he was a master chief. And he was adjusting his game. He was listening to the podcast. He was like, yep, but here's what's going on. Here's what's going on. He's like, he, and so his mind was open enough. You know, it reminds me, I was, I don't know what age I was, but I wanted to get a new bike. And I was at that age where, you know, I grew up in a small town and if you were going to ride somewhere, it was a, you know, it was, it was work, right? It wasn't, it was more than a three minute bike ride, you know? And I think I had saved up whatever,

• 26:09Jocko Willink?

  70 bucks or something. And I asked my dad, hey, I really need a new bike. Can you, can you, can we split the cost or whatever? And he says, okay, you know, so cool. Cause what does that mean for him? Means doesn't have to worry about driving around. I mean, it's basically, I'll leave him alone. So I go and you know, we go to the bike store and I go to get the bike and I'm going to get a BMX bike. And I'm at that age where I could get a 10 speed. So that it was that point, like I'd never even had speeds before, but all of a sudden I'm old enough. So I was probably 12 or something where I could get a 10 speed. You know, with the curved down handlebars.

• 26:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Jocko Willink?

  And my dad's thinking, yeah, you know, you got a bike, three, four, six miles, five miles, whatever. You're going to want this 10 speed. And of course I'm like, no, I want this BMX bike. So we end, he ends up, I mean, he's, you can see, looking back at the conversation. He's just looking at me saying, thinking to himself, you're an idiot. You're going to want this bike. And I said, no, I definitely want this BMX bike. So I'm going to go off road or whatever. And sure enough, we get the, we get the BMX bike. And you know, two days later, after my fourth, you know, six mile bike ride into town. I'm thinking I wanted that Ted speed. So there's certain, this is the problem with life. The problem with life is that there's certain lessons.

• 27:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  That only life can teach you. Now, what I hope is like, when you give me that feedback about the basic school, like what I hope is you go, okay. Yeah, I, there's, there's some lieutenants going there and I get the same thing, guys in the teams right now, the young JOs in the teams. I get army, I mean, we have all kinds of army guys, even in Australia, that was cool. A bunch of army, a bunch of army guys that were coming up saying, hey, this is what I'm doing. Thank you. Yep. Learn this, learn that. So I think you can make more rapid progress if you have the right frame of mind going in.

• 28:11Dave Berke?

  Without a doubt. And there's more out there now than there was to be able to figure that out sooner. And there are guys and gals out there, certainly in the military, doing it way sooner than I did.

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in the SEAL teams, when you get done with a job. Like you get done with being an assistant platoon commander and now you're ready to be good at it. You're not allowed to do it anymore. It's over. By the time you have it figured out, you're done with it. It's platoon commander. Hey, all right, I think I've got this dialed now. It's over and it's time to become a tasking commander. By the time you feel good about being a tasking commander, okay, you know, I'm sorry. And I was super lucky again. See, I talk about luck a lot. So I was a prior enlisted guy. When I was an assistant platoon commander, the only person in my platoon at SEAL Team Two that had more experience than me was the platoon chief, who was another guy from Team One that we kind of grew up together in the teams.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  He was, he was a little bit more, he'd been in the teams a little bit longer than me, but not too much longer. So we were like the experienced guys. When I was a platoon commander, same thing. Like I was, my platoon chief had been in for probably an extra six months longer than me, but after that, it was just a bunch of, you know, basically guys that had been for six years. We'd been in for 13 or 14. And then when I was a tasking commander, it was like Tony, Tony Frady. And he had been in for probably two or three years longer than me, but then after that, it was just people that had been in for, you know, less than half the time and half the amount of experience. So that's luck, you know?

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  So when I'm doing a tasking commander now, I'm talking about how I was developing my skills even as a tasking commander. I'd been in for 15 years. Imagine a normal tasking commander that's only been in for six years or, or no, I guess they've been in for seven years or eight years. That's a normal tasking commander. I've been in for 15. I had taught, I'd been an instructor at SEAL Team One in the training department. I'd done land warfare trip after land warfare trip. I'd done CQB trip after CQB trip. I've taught, I taught everything. And that was when I was, when I was a young, single guy too. I was in the training command and guess, guess what trips I went on?

• 30:19Dave Berke?

  All of them.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  All of them. Like, oh, you need someone to go out to the desert? Cool, I'm, I'm in. You need someone to go to this new mount facility that we've never taken a platoon coach? I'm going. No factor. So that's why I was so lucky because, and this is another thing, when you're an instructor.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  When you're an instructor, you're de facto detached. So now I'm watching these J O's go through and I'm like, oh yes, this guy's making all kinds of mistakes. Here's what, because he's all caught up in it. Whereas I can see everything because I'm watching him and I can connect the dots. Oh, when you can see everything. Matter of fact, I was talking to Andrew Paul about this. Andrew Paul was going through something as a reserve, because he's a reservist in the teams and he was going through some training, but he was observing and he's like, yeah, I could see everything. And I go, yeah, man. Yes. Yes. That's it. That's, that's the mindset you have to have. So that's why, you know, I, I like to emphasize the fact that I was very lucky. The, even the, the frame of

• 31:19Jocko Willink?

  mind that I had wasn't because I was advanced beyond the other people. It was, it was I got lucky that I had had a little bit more. I wasn't more senior, but I had more time, I had more experience and those experiences early on opened up and put me in the right frame of mind, luckily.

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  So what I do then in this, in this book, I go through these first three SEAL battalions, which are very, there's this kind of, does this happen? I guess it happens in everything. When you learn something for the first time, this happens in the teams all the time. The way people learn something for the first time is the way they think is correct forever.

• 32:05Dave Berke?

  For sure.

• 32:05Jocko Willink?

  And it takes like a beat down to get it out of them.

• 32:08Dave Berke?

  Dude, unlearning that, yeah. It's, I think it's probably the same everywhere, but certainly in, in aviation too. The first, when you learn it from somebody else, because first of all, the guy teaching you, you think is a god, because he's teaching you. You don't know anything about him other than he's the teacher. So he must be better than everybody at this. And when you learn it and you figure it out, that is the answer forever.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy, I had two guys that were like Vietnam era and one of them was saying to do something some, a way. And I knew it was wrong, which is crazy to think about, right? But what happened was we were doing, well, I had done two back-to-back ARG deployments, which is out on a ship with the Marine Corps, with the Navy. We're doing over the beach all the time. Every operation we did was, was from the ship to the ribs, boats, from the ribs to Zodiacs, from the Zodiacs across the beach. I mean, I did it over and over and over. I had done, I did so many over the beach ops. We, and it's, over the beach ops are so, did you ever do over the beach ops?

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're so ridiculously, they're so ridiculously hard. I mean, everything, like, you're gonna swim in, so everything is gonna be wet, all your radios are gonna be, and this is before we had waterproof radios, so everything had to be waterproof properly, your weapons are gonna get trashed, I mean, you're gonna be freezing, it's gonna be, there's waves, it's, it makes everything, I wanna give an accurate assessment. I would say that if you compare to, like, hey, we're gonna take a helicopter to this target, and we're gonna land it, we're gonna patrol in, compared to, we're gonna take boats, we're gonna go over the beach and swim in, I think it's probably, I would say, six times harder.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  It's six times harder, because of, wait, maybe, maybe, maybe four, maybe four to six times harder, it's that much harder. I'm thinking about the preparation that you'd have to do, and the worries that you'd have to, where you'd have a problem, like, you're, let's face it, once you're on the ground, you're not gonna have a problem. Like, we got this. You're, you're bringing the boats in, at night, you're sending swimmer scouts in to go there and signal that the beach, I mean, you're losing people, bro, it's crazy. And then you're swimming in, there's waves, your boats can get turned over, your motors can fail, there's just total, it's, it makes everything so much harder. So, I had this Vietnam guy, Vietnam-era guy, that was saying to do something a certain

• 34:37Jocko Willink?

  way, and I'm not gonna get into the tactics, but he was saying to do a thing a certain way, and I knew that it was wrong, cuz I had just got done with two ARG platoons where I did mission after mission after mission, and I knew that that was not the right thing to do. And the other Vietnam guy said, hey, man.

• 34:55Jocko Willink?

  He's wrong. He's wrong. Just play the game a little bit. And and the actual thing that he told me was people don't always remember things right. That he was just being merciful about it. He wasn't being a jerk. He was just like, look, people don't always remember things right. So those but but the way you learn something in your first season. So this guy probably learned, the guy that was telling us to do something a certain way, probably learned this from somebody somewhere along the route. Oh, along the way.

• 35:25Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Jocko Willink?

  And just thought it was the right way to do things. And I had learned through actual experience, like, hey, you do this enough times, go over the beach. Go to Red Beach Camp Pendleton in the middle of the winter when there's a eight foot swell. And you're getting cleaned out. You learn and you learn what to do and you get good at it. And

• 35:49Jocko Willink?

  I think that the way people learn things for the first time is it leaves a mark on people and it's very hard to change their minds. So you got to be careful of that. There's probably so. Is there a bias around that Echo Charles?

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  Like an official bias? Like the way you learn something for the first time. Are you always biased towards thinking that's correct? Is that an official type of bias?

• 36:11Dave Berke?

  Not that I can think of, but it's very possible. Yeah.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we have a possible bias.

• 36:16Dave Berke?

  Possible bias. Dude, I think that's really hard to undo. Really hard to undo. I saw that all throughout my career and a whole bunch, not just in flying, a whole bunch of different things. People wrap their heads around that and it's really hard to undo that.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I saw that all the time and and I saw it in myself and as soon as I saw it myself. I recognized, okay, you're this is just what you learned and what you learned can be wrong.

• 36:41Dave Berke?

  Yeah, I mean, that's the frame of mind we were talking about before you you and I, we talk about all the time is the phrase of question everything. And it's not question everything to be a jerk about things. It's it's actually question yourself more than anything is do I not actually understand this the way I think I do? Does that guy know something or have seen something or experienced something that maybe I haven't? And the questioning is what it is is actually questioning yourself more than anything is is what I know actually correct? And that's, I think that's part of the reason why it's so hard to undo that is that people are convinced they understand it and it's really hard to undo that. Uh, the questioning is yourself of is this right? And a lot of people aren't, don't have the frame of mind to do that.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  It's a trap. It is a trap. It's a trap. You gotta be careful of it. So, um, getting back to the book here, I, in this part, section one, foundations, this is I go through kind of these first fundamental three platoons where I learned, and the reason I went on this whole tangent about learning things for the first time is because this is where I saw these certain principles for the first time. And again, it wasn't like I saw the principles like, oh, there it is. I got this. It was like, this is where the seed got planted and it started to grow. The first platoon, the first section here is called detach. It was in my first platoon that I learned the power of being able to detach myself from the chaos and mayhem going on. Take a step back and see what was actually happening.

• 38:03Jocko Willink?

  I was lucky that it happened the way that it did. So I go through the entire, I go through the entire evolution of me learning that. And that is one of those moments where I absolutely remember it happening. So when the, if the guy would have asked me, hey, when did you learn to detach? Instead of asking me broadly, hey, what, when did all this stuff come together? I couldn't answer that. But when I learned to detach, absolutely remember it. On an oil rig, doing training, no one's making a call. I end up making the call. My second platoon, what I learned in my second platoon, second platoon had a, had a mutiny.

• 38:40Jocko Willink?

  And, and I saw the difference between arrogance and I saw humility and I saw,

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  I saw the stark difference into what following someone that's arrogant was like and following someone that is humble is like. And I ended up with, I started with the most arrogant platoon leader.

• 39:05Jocko Willink?

  And we had a mutiny. And we rebelled against him and he got fired. And then we ended up with the most humble and knowledgeable and squared away platoon commander. And the attitude that we had with the arrogant guy, we would, I don't think we sabotaged.

• 39:28Jocko Willink?

  On a regular basis, but there was like subconscious, like we'd be doing a mission, a training mission that he had forced his plan down our throat. We didn't want that thing to succeed. We wanted to prove him wrong. And I don't know if that was always a conscious thing. I think most of the time it was subconscious, but no doubt, we didn't want to follow him. And think about, think about how disturbing that is. You're in a SEAL platoon and the platoon commander, there's not one single guy in the entire platoon that actually wants to follow that guy. And this is the frame of mind thing. I, I had to trace this back. I didn't say, why? I didn't say, we don't like him because he's arrogant. I didn't, I couldn't, I wasn't smart enough to figure that out. I just knew that we didn't

• 40:12Jocko Willink?

  like that guy. We don't like that guy. And what made it so clear was when the next guy came in to take his place and he's, and he's super humble. And even then it didn't strike me. It wasn't until I actually thought about it from a leadership perspective. Why did we hate that guy and wouldn't want to follow? We, no one in a SEAL platoon wants to follow their leader. That's disgusting. And then you get another guy, same group, same SEAL platoon, exact same guys, and you get a humble guy that gives ownership and all of a sudden, we will do anything for this guy and to make sure that we don't let this guy down.

• 40:49Dave Berke?

  Yeah. But when people get, people are going to get the book when they read it, there's more in there when they, and I won't give it too much away, but you talk in more details. There's other things about the lessons that in looking back on, you can call those luck too, but you were actually lucky that your boss in that very first story didn't crush you and just destroy and wipe out the opportunity to learn that lesson when you made that call. Because some bosses could have just worn you down and put you in a position to never do it again. You're actually lucky that on that second platoon, That that mutiny story. You're actually lucky in some ways that they let you know that, hey, we don't do this.

• 41:32Dave Berke?

  So there's others, there's all these other layers of things in there. It isn't just that, hey, we had a bad boss and then we had a good boss. It's actually that you could, that you had the frame of mind, and we keep saying that over and over again, to look back and you didn't get validated like, oh yeah, well, you have a problem, just come to me and I'll take care of it and these problems go away. It was like, no, you go back to work. And so there's other pieces in there too.

• 41:52Jocko Willink?

  I gotta cut you off because you go back to the first example. And this is why luck is important. Because the first example is we're on this oil rig and no one's making a decision. I take a step back and I make a call. And to your point, I didn't get crushed. I didn't get told, shut up. I didn't get called told, hey, new guy, you need to, you need to, you know, shut up and do what you're told to do. That, the fact that no one did that to me, made me say, oh, okay, this is a good thing. So, so that is luck. Because believe me, you have a SEAL platoon of 16 guys. The chances that there's a brow beater, I didn't even know what the word brow beater was. That is an actual type of human being, right? I'm surprised there wasn't one in the Breakfast Club, a brow beater. You know what I mean?

• 42:36Jocko Willink?

  Actually, I guess there was. What about the principal? What was his name? Echo Charles, this is your moment of truth right here. Becker, Decker?

• 42:46Speaker 02

  John a blank. I wasn't ready.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  But he, what's a brow beater?

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  Is there someone when you give your idea? And you just, they just come at you. I mean, they're just throwing offense. They're basically, they're just, they're just punching you in the face with, you know, you come and say, hey, do you think it'd be good to start releasing the podcast on Tuesdays? That's, actually, that's one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. So you know what? Actually, you haven't even thought, if you even thought through that, you haven't thought through that. Because if you would have thought through that, you'd realize that Wednesday is the day when people are waiting for the podcast. If we put it out on Tuesday, you know what? Actually, don't come to me with any more ideas that don't make any sense whatsoever. Validate them through common sense before you approach me. Because it's actually a waste of my time. It's a waste of your time. It makes you look stupid. That's what a brow beater is. They just bring it.

• 43:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's kind of built up over.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  I see, understood.

• 43:37Jocko Willink?

  So you, you, you have a brow beater? If I would have had a brow beater in that first platoon, and actually. There was a couple of guys that were borderline brow beaters. Sure. And for whatever reason, probably because it was the right thing at the right moment, they decided not to beat me down. So is that luck? Yeah, that is luck. Now, the second story, and again, as you mentioned, like the details of these stories, I put a lot of details so people could really Yeah. learn what I learned. Yeah.

• 44:07Jocko Willink?

  That mutiny we had, the arrogant platoon commanders out of line, takes a swing. That one of the enlisted guys tries to hit one of the enlisted guys. We break them up. And again, I explained this in the book. People getting in a fight in a SEAL platoon is no, this is not, this is not a big deal. This is, this is a violent group of dudes that are on all kinds of, they got all kinds of testosterone running through their blood. Like this is a, this is a gang. Yeah. You know? And, okay, so it's not that big of a deal. But when it's the platoon commander that no one likes and that no one respects and that is totally arrogant, all of a sudden we turned on him like boom, now we had something.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  But even then, to your point, Dave, the commanding officer wasn't like, okay, guys, thank you for the input. I'll get rid of him. He goes, you guys, this sounds like a mutiny. We don't have muties in the SEAL teams or in the Navy. Get out of here. Go do your jobs. It's like, okay. Like, well, that was not a good, this is not normal. And then luckily, that commanding officer was smart enough to actually dig into it further and he relieved the guy, got fired, he fired him. So, and that is luck. It's luck that the commanding officer, number one, told us, shut up, do your job. And number two, he was smart enough to say, you know what, I'm going to get rid of this guy. Those are lucky circumstances.

• 45:33Jocko Willink?

  So, that contrast, another thing that was lucky. If I would have had the horrible platoon commander and then an okay one,

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  I may not have noticed. If I would have had an okay platoon commander and then a phenomenal one, I may not have noticed. I went from one end of the spectrum from, from the worst platoon commander that I could imagine to the best platoon commander that I could imagine. And It's just like anything else, right? You don't, we need to, as human beings, there needs to be some discrepancy for us to notice it, right? We need to, there needs to be, yeah, some contrast. There was a big enough contrast that even my dumb ass at whatever 22 or 23 years old went, "Oh, I see what's going on. I see what's going on."

• 46:23Jocko Willink?

  And that second, that second platoon commander, the good one, that's actually the seed that started in my mind of, "Oh, he's an officer. He was enlisted like me. I'm enlisted like he was. Maybe I could become an officer." Just like this weird, because I wouldn't have even imagined that. It wasn't even something that I thought about. It wasn't like, "Hey, you know, I need to become an officer." It never even crossed my mind. Because we were, you know, the enlisted, the E5 mafia at SEAL Team One. We didn't want to be officers. We didn't like officers. You know, it was that whole attitude.

• 46:57Dave Berke?

  There's so much detail though, that those details are really important. And the takeaway, so you still have to be looking for that stuff. And you can now, if you can look for that, that contrast is actually out there. And I know you can't cover everything in the podcast, but those details, even in the book, the way you wrote it, each one of those details is something to pay attention to, those little things. So when you read this, I mean, you have to read every line and every piece of that, because there's a takeaway from each one of those. The contrast is there if you know to look for it. And the biggest problem, certainly for me, and I'm sure is you just don't know to look for it. And luckily, those things happen with enough contrast for you to recognize or even look back on it.

• 47:41Dave Berke?

  You gotta know to look for it.

• 47:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I think, well, what we do now, we don't need to see, we can see little gray area. We can go, "Oh yeah, here's what's going on here." We don't need to see someone that's a total arrogant person, that's only my way of the highway. We don't need to see all that. We can see someone that's leaning in that direction and say, "Hey, you know why you're getting this pushback here? Here's why." It's just a little pushback because you're doing this. And we get to see that easier because we're looking for it.

• 48:07Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  But whether I would have seen this out of the gate without that broad contrast, probably not. Too dumb. So then we get to the third platoon, and this is where, again, I go into a lot of details on the story of what actually happened that you can pick apart, you can say, "Oh yeah, that's what that was." But fundamentally,

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  I did the same thing I did in that first platoon where I made a call. I made a decision. I was detached. I was doing the right thing. I saw what the call to make and I made a call. And once I made the call, the platoon commander was like, mm, hey, why did you do that? And I said, well, and I reviewed in my mind.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  The cocky arrogant. The ego, my ego was the immediate voice that popped up. You know, the Terminator, you know, when the Terminator echo?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  When you, when he's gonna say something and he gets an option of multiple responses that flash up in his LED heads up display.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  H U D.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What is it? Yeah. This heads up displays H U D. So I get that. When this guy says, why did you make that call? I get the well, because you're too slow to make a call, or you should have been quicker, or you didn't see what was happening, or because I'm detached and I see all those little arrogant responses popped up and I, and thankfully, thankfully, I just jerked the collar on that. Just the chain and said, well, you're arrogant right now. Probably a little bit of that arrogant platoon commander that I had. I felt that little, I felt that little, I felt his spirit in my brain. I smashed it with the good, with the humility.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  And I, I did respond saying, well, you know, I, I wasn't sure. I didn't hear you make a call. So, you know, I just, I made one. And then he said, well, I didn't want to, I didn't want to retreat from the target I wanted to push to. And, and then I realized that

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  number one, being a leader doesn't mean that you have to be making the call every single time. It doesn't mean that at all. In fact, being a good leader means you're supporting what the leader, the real leader, the overall leader is wanting to do. What's good for the TPU? That's what you're supposed to do. And it was a good ego check for me. It's not all about me. And so. Let's always take a step back and make sure, you know, it's cool to detach and see what to do tactically. How about Jocko detach and see what's best for the team and see how you can support your leader? And see how you can be a team player.

• 50:47Jocko Willink?

  So that was the, you know, the next important sort of lesson that I learned that stuck with me. Cause how many times throughout the rest of my career? Was it, hey, it's this guy's idea or that guy, or it's my idea or the other guy's idea? How many times did I, did that play out? You wanna, I cannot count the number of times the, your idea versus my idea. That happened an infinite number of times. Yeah. Your idea versus my idea and learning that lesson of, you know what?

• 51:22Jocko Willink?

  What's, what's, what's the best idea? And what are we really trying to get done? And is the boss, whoever that boss is? Cause man, it's so easy, especially when you're young and

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  you're young, you wanna do well, you wanna perform, you, you wanna be the guy, right? It's so easy that when the opportunity comes for you to be the guy to just jump up and beat your chest and be the guy.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  And it feels good that, that short-term gratification of like putting your chest out like, yeah, I made that call. And it's such a short-term gain and long-term strategic loss to do that. And that's what I learned when the time I made the call and I actually shouldn't have, I actually should have kept the mouth shut. Alright, so those are the first, the first little sections about that. And then I get into the laws of combat and the principles of leadership and

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  pretty, pretty straightforward, like a review, you know, cover, move, simple, prioritize and execute, decentralize command. I'll, I'll tell you what though, as I'm writing that down,

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  it's interesting because now, you know, we've traveled the world. We've taught these principles over and over again to people and teams and organizations of every imaginable kind. And it's, these things apply.

• 52:57Dave Berke?

  The biggest question I get when I'm, when we're working is how do you apply, they understand what they mean and you can say those words and they can define them and explain them. And the question people always have is how do I apply this? And those, those three, the stories of those three platoons, and then when you kind of, basically you review, Extreme Ownership and Dichotomy, you know, briefly, but you kind of just go through the review and where they came from, is really what sets the stage for how these, where these fit and how to look for where, for where they fit. I mean, even that story about the, the platoon commander of whether or not you should have made the call. I mean, there's, there's the seeds of, of balance in there too is, hey, same situation, previous platoon. Actually, that, that platoon commander did the exact same thing, but for a totally different reason.

• 53:38Dave Berke?

  Oh, my people are all different and the way I treat this one guy and relate to this one guy doesn't work in every situation. And when you talk about that too, is when you look at other people's plans, because ego is always the biggest issue with every client we work with. It's always ego is at the top. And the question that you ask, how important is this plan to that other person? Because if that other person has to do this plan, the worst thing you can do is fight them on the plan, no matter whatever the quality of the plan is. And even having the humility of saying, hey, in this situation, it isn't even about what is the best plan. It's what's the best way to implement the plan because if I prove that I'm right and my plan is better,

• 54:20Dave Berke?

  and this guy has to admit to me and acquiesce to me, okay, your plan is better. What is the likelihood that guy's going to be totally on board with supporting my, it's not going to happen.

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  What is the likelihood that person's looking for you to fall on your face? What's the likelihood they help you fall on your face?

• 54:34Dave Berke?

  Yeah, that they, even, even by, kind of like you said on that second platoon, maybe not sabotage, but by just doing nothing, when you actually, what you need them is to do the exact opposite of that, which is totally be in the game. So even as you read those reviews, those first three to set the stage, and even the review of EO and Dichotomy, I don't care how many times you've read those books, read it in this context, because it changes in your mind how they apply. To the world that, that you care about, which is your world, which doesn't have to be the SEAL teams. It's not what this is about, it just, that's just the backdrop. It's actually where, where it fits in whatever world that you're in.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Not to mention the future, by the way, like, you know, if you have a better plan, they have a good plan, you have a better, you have a level 10. This guy's a level nine. And he's like, no, no, this plan's good. This plan's good. And you're like, no, no, no, mine's so much better than yours. And boom, force him to do it, right?

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  And not only during that plan, they might not do their best, but in the future, you're like the guy who's like, oh, you just think your plan is better. So even in the future, he might not have your back as much.

• 55:33Jocko Willink?

  Why would you even, why are you even going to put forth that effort, Echo? If when you brought me a plan, that was a level nine.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, good plan.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  A good plan. And I was like, no, mine's a level 10. We're not using your plan. How much effort are you going to put in next time to come up with a good plan?

• 55:49Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 55:50Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that's.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  We'll just say less, potentially less. I'll tell you that.

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  And I mean, you want to talk about this is real world application? I mean, this is you and I work together, you know, you come up with plans for things.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Sometimes, yeah.

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and unless the plan is egregious, I'm sitting back over here going, okay, that's the way you want to set the stuff up. Cool. Like, okay, sounds good. You want to, you want to show up at nine 59 for a 10 o'clock?

• 56:17Jocko Willink?

  For a 10 o'clock, you know, scenario? But even with that, if it's you and me, I go, hey, 10 o'clock, you know, nine 59, all good. If, if it's you, me, and, and let's say we're having a guest on, and I'll be, hey, man, guest. And I know you know what that means. That means like, hey, that means you're not letting me down. It means we're looking bad. We don't look bad, you know? So, all good.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying, hey, there's a guest. You better be here by nine 30, all set up. I just tell you what's up and you know what to do.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Yep, that's true.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  Communication.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  Understanding, understanding the intent.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  Dave Berke maybe doesn't fully qualify as a, as a full guest anymore in your mind.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  He's like a hybrid, like a guest friend.

• 57:09Jocko Willink?

  He was not quite enough to get here at nine 30, but a solid nine 50.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, the space that I was here in at nine 59, but you do, the point remains, yes, yes, 100%.

• 57:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, check. Check. I mean, this is, you know, and same with like at Echelon Front, we're doing all kinds of things at Echelon Front. All kinds of things. I, I actually talked about this in the Mustern Australians, really the most I've talked, really, I mean, not a ton, but several times I used in his example that.

• 57:43Jocko Willink?

  At, you know, the Echelon Front muster, there's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of things happening. There's, there's video, audio, visual stuff happening. There's kits being made to hand out to people. There's PT going on. There's so much, there's, there's registration happening. There's check-in, there's handout of stuff, there's organizing of tables. There's all this, there's, there's just, just huge logistical things that are happening. How much do I know of what's going on? Next to none. Next to none. And Jamie, who runs the muster,

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  like she knows, she knows what the intent is. And if she feels like there's a little, oh, oh, where, I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent on this one. I'm not sure. She'll be like, hey, Jocko, should we do this or this? And I'll be like, what do you think? And she says, well, I think it'd be smooth if it's like this. Cool. Makes sense. But as far as me actually directing anything, it's very, very seldom am I saying, no, we need to do it this way. Occasionally, we will. Occasionally, we will. Occasionally, I will. Occasionally, I'll say, no, that's not a good plan. And we're not going to do it that way. And when, and as you see, when I say that, people go, cool. Yeah. Very seldom does someone want to get in a debate with me about something that I'm firm on. I'm firm so seldom.

• 59:06Dave Berke?

  Because you hardly ever do it.

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I'm firm so seldom that when I am, people go, hmm, there's something that we're not seeing here. So, so yeah, it's, it's.

• 59:17Jocko Willink?

  The, going back to this, the just review of Extreme Ownership, the review of the dichotomy of leadership. Important because just like when you read the manual about machine gunning, cool, it talks about the purpose of the machine gun. Right? And that's why I specifically read those two sections from the Marine Corps. One of them is, this is the purpose of the machine gun. This is the principle of what a machine gun does. The next one is how you actually do that.

• 59:42Dave Berke?

  That's how it applies, yeah.

• 59:43Jocko Willink?

  This is how you shoot that weapon from a bipod. Here's where you put the, the shoulder, here's where you put, put the weapon on your shoulder. You apply pressure. That's what I'm talking about here. So we got the principles and I have to cover them here. But then, how do we get into, you know, actually putting that, shooting that weapon from the bipod? How do we actually fire these principles? How do we execute them? All right. Next section.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  And again, I know we didn't coordinate about which sections to talk about and there's a ton of sections. I just tried to, I just kind of was going through going, all right, this one, this one will be good. But skipping here, this one is called the power of relationships.

• 1:00:26Jocko Willink?

  The power of relationships, and this is one of those things, one of those things you hear all the time, right? Relationships are important. Let me tell you how important they are.

• 1:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Ninety-nine point nine percent of the things that I did in my entire military career were based on relationships and not based on chain of command. Ninety-nine point nine percent. I'm not even, I can't remember what the other point one percent is. I'm sure it's in there somewhere. But ninety-nine point nine percent of the things that I did in my military career were based on relationships. So that goes when I'm talking about being the commander of task unit bruiser and we have an operation and Leif is going to be the assault force commander or the ground force commander on an operation. I'm not saying, hey, Leif, here's how you're gonna do it. I'm saying, hey, Leif, here's what we got. What do you think? And we together

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  have a relationship. We formulate a plan or he forms a, formulates a plan and comes to me and says, hey, this is what I want to do. And I go, yeah, it looks good. Right down to when my boss would say, hey, Jocko, here's what I want you to do. I'd say, okay, boss, let me interpret that. Does this make sense? Is this what you really want? Is this, does this, is this, can I turn this on this direction and move a little bit more in the opposite way so I can achieve this result instead? All that is based on relationships. So developing these relationships is, is the most important thing. Ninety-nine point nine percent of what you do should be from the relationships you have. Going, going back to the book, there is another key element to leading any exceptional team, relationships. Leaders, leadership requires

• 1:02:05Jocko Willink?

  relationships. Good relationships with people above you, below you, and beside you in the chain of command are critical for a strong team. The better the relationships, the more open and effective communication there is. The more communication there is, the stronger the team will be. For example, there are times when a boss is driving forward on a less than ideal path that needs to be redirected. If you have a good relationship with a boss, you can explain tactfully what you see to be errors in their thoughts and ideas. As always, the approach you use to discuss this is important. Put the onus on yourself as to why the idea doesn't make sense. For example, you know, boss, I really want to support the plan to the best of my ability, but I'm having a hard time understanding how to execute this part of it.

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Can you explain why you want it done that way so I can get it right? So that right there is how you shoot the weapon from a bipod, right? And that is it. Now the conversation is open and you can begin to figure out why the boss's idea is what it is and what you can do to influence that idea. But before even getting to that point, ask yourself some simple questions. First, how much will be gained by approaching the boss and trying to convince them to change their plan? If the difference is minimal, it's probably not worth investing any time or effort into it. Next, ask yourself how much of your concern is just your ego? There is a chance that you see it your way of doing things.

• 1:03:28Jocko Willink?

  There is a chance that you see your way of doing something as smarter or more efficient than what the boss has offered. If that is the case, and you don't truly think there is much to be gained by using your method, let it go. Don't create drama over your ego. Lastly, ask yourself if you will be moving your relationship with your boss forward or backward by raising this issue. Man, I've been hammering that like at the muster, at the muster. I've been saying, hey, every conversation I'm going to have with another person is to improve the relationship. That's like priority number one. Prioritize next to you, priority number one, I'm going to improve our relationship. If I'm going to have a conversation with Dave, our relationship is getting better. Dave's walking around, walking away from the conversation going, man, I, I, I hope I can do good by Jocko.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to walking away, shaking his head going, I hope that guy forgot to take out his garbage Monday morning and he has to wait another week, you know, like just small curses you can put on me. Right? You ever had that happen, Echo Charles? Yes, sir, I have. That's why it's so funny. It's kinda annoying. Very annoying. It's not like, it's not like a life-threatening thing, but we don't like it. And so Dave walks away from the conversation. He doesn't wanna, he doesn't wanna kill me, but he doesn't want me to have clean garbage cans either. So when I have a conversation, I'm looking to improve the situation.

• 1:04:48Dave Berke?

  Dude, we, we talk about leadership capital. Flynn and I work, Flynn Cochran and I are working together all the time. We're at the point now that we talk about that concept of leadership capital, not in, in sort of a theoretical lens. We, at the beginning of our training, when we start to work with companies that we're gonna do for years, the very first thing we start with after setting the table of all these concepts is leadership capital. And the question you ask yourself every single time, is what I'm going to do a deposit? Or is it a withdrawal? And when people think in those terms, they, this book is called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. Are you thinking strategically in this, even in this conversation that we're having? And you know, the idea of what is the likelihood this is gonna advance my relationship?

• 1:05:32Dave Berke?

  The answer is 99.9% of the time gonna be super obvious. It's gonna stare you in the face. And if you think strategically, you will almost never make a leadership withdrawal. You'll almost never have any capital you're taking out of the bank. And then when you, you said, don't, don't create drama over your ego. And when your ego gets in the way, almost every single time, even when you get what you want, you are taking, you are taking money out of the bank. You're depleting your leadership capital until eventually you have none and nobody wants you to win.

• 1:06:03Jocko Willink?

  It's amazing that it's so obvious. Like, this is so obvious.

• 1:06:09Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Jocko Willink?

  And yet, people make, people absolutely make that mistake time and time again. The other thing about this that's interesting, or if you wanna take a, like, another perspective of it, is...

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  If my goal in going into a conversation is to improve my relationship with you, does that make me some kind of a fake person, right? Oh, I'm a fake person because I'm just trying to trick Dave into liking me. It's like, no, actually, I want us to win.

• 1:06:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:39Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you know, this goes back to the difference between leadership and manipulation, which I talk about in the book. So if my goal is to get you to do something that's going to benefit me, yeah, that's manipulation and it's wrong. If my goal in getting, improving our relationship is so that our team can do better, we can accomplish our mission and both those things, by the way, benefit you, well, guess what that's called? It's called leadership.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  So you know, with that, you know how, because some people on the flip side of that whole spectrum is like, they'll do that, but it's almost like, and I guess it's a question for you. So you know, like, okay, you ever watched Coming to America? Remember that, that show, Eddie Murphy? So it was where Eddie Murphy's African guy comes in.

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  And they, they're like princes or something in Africa. Yeah, yeah, I remember.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  He comes in.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Arsenio Hall was also in that, correct?

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was in there a bunch, yes, sir. So anyways, so someone tells him that he's like, hey, you gotta get in good with the dad. That's how you do it. So he's like, okay, he's going to build this relationship, apparently. He goes in and he'd like, it's like weird, you know? Essentially, the point is he forced it. He tried to force it, so it didn't work. So in real life, how that looks is like, you ever get like, I don't know, your friends like a real estate agent or something and he's sending you like handwritten notes like, hey, just wondering how you're doing. You're like, bro, I don't even know you that good. You know, it's like, well, it's real obvious, the one they try to force a good relationship, you know? And it almost makes you kind of suspicious. I mean, nowadays it does. So it's almost like.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  It's called a brown-noser and people can, yeah, if you're a brown-noser, that's, that's, that's a good point. Right? There's a dichotomy with everything. If you go so far that all I'm looking to do is please Dave with this conversation, there's no tension at all, there's no, there's, there's nothing, just me put, being a pushover. Well, guess what, what happens with his respect for me? It's respect goes down a little bit. So I'm not talking about you gotta be just a brown-noser at all.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, no, and then there's, that's true too, but there's a. And the one I was thinking about, or the type of person I'm thinking about is like, you can tell that this person, you're just trying to build a relationship for me or with me. I don't know why. I can suspect why. Maybe you want my business, or maybe you want something. You want something. I know. And that's kind of the, at the forefront.

• 1:08:49Jocko Willink?

  So, I mentioned this later in the book. You know how you just crush that? I'll tell you how you crush it. When I'm talking to Dave, you know why I'm talking to Dave? And you know why I want to build a relationship? Cause I care about Dave. The number one thing for, oh, when I'm talking to Dave, Dave knows that, you know what? I care about Dave. If that's the underlying, if that's the underlying, uh, uh, principle on which we're, that I'm doing this, is because I care about him? He's gonna know that. Subconsciously, subconsciously, and maybe sometimes you gotta be a little bit more proactive and make sure that, you know, someone understands it. Like, I mean, and it doesn't mean proactive by saying, "Hey Dave, I really care about you." It doesn't work. You can't just say it.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  You gotta prove by your actions. You gotta show people like, "Hey, guess what's more important than me? You." So when I'm talking to you, and I'm listening to you, and I'm taking your advice on board, and I'm saying, "Yeah, you know what? Let's go with your plan." I'm doing that because I want you to execute your plan. I want you to learn from your plan. I want to support your plan, cause I care about you.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that makes, actually, that's, that's good, right? That makes sense now. So, so it's almost like, actually it is, where if I want to build a relationship with Dave, I'm not gonna think, "Okay, let me focus on build, let me actively build a relationship just out of the blue or out of nothing." It's like, it's more like, that's almost in a way secondary. Well, the, the first, the primary thing is like, "Do I need to talk to Dave? Then yeah, I'll talk to Dave. But while I do that, the point is to build a relationship with him." I'm not gonna be like, "I need to build a relationship with Dave. Hmm, where's Dave? Let me, let me call him up and start trying to build a relationship with him."

• 1:10:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so, you, you're right. And there's, there's a danger here that...

• 1:10:34Jocko Willink?

  You're you're someone's going to be in court courage to force their their impose good relationships on people, right? So yeah, that you gotta be careful about. And and again, and actually, here's the next line in this book. You are not building the relationship so you can garner favor from the boss. No, you're trying to build a relationship so the boss trusts you and will listen to you. So you and the team can more effectively accomplish the mission.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  That that's what you're doing. You want to accomplish the mission, which is good for everybody. And then it goes back and says, for these reasons, choose your battle carefully. Because if you remember, this whole paragraph is about like, when do you actually approach the boss? When is it worth saying to the boss, hey, hey, boss, can you explain this to me? Because I'm not sure that I understand what you want to have happen here. If it's not worth that conversation, because it's not going to be that big of a difference. Just go with it, you know, just just go with it.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  But what I'm saying is like, I could see someone maybe reading this. I could see me reading, let's face it, I see me reading that and and go into like, let's say I had a a job. And I could read that and I'd be like, hey, oh, let me build a relationship with Jocko. And then I'll just roll in kind of out of the blue and be like, hey, because I'm building my relationship. So I can garner trust. That's what I'm doing right now. So this is what I'm gonna do. Hey, Jocko, did you catch that that football game last night? And you're like, what are you talking about? Like, you're acting weird.

• 1:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Here here's the deal. If the premise that you go on in on is you want to build a relationship with me for your own benefit. The I'm going to see right through that. So is anybody else? If the premise that you go in is because you care about me and you're wondering if I saw the football game. Because you know, I like football and you want to talk to me about it and you care about me. Yeah, that's going to shine through and I'm not going to think this other negative thing. So yes, if you're a person that's walking around and you're going to use the principles in this book to benefit yourself. Everyone's going to see through it. It doesn't it doesn't work. And what's really cool, and this is all the like, the closing of the book is what we're getting to right now is. If you want to, if you want to have a successful run as a leader and you want to rise to the top.

• 1:12:37Jocko Willink?

  The best possible way to do that is to care about your team, care about the mission, take care of them. And that will show through and eventually you will get to the top. If you're if you're sitting there thinking, hey, I want to get to the top. So I'm ready to do whatever it takes and step on people or use people. It's it's so obvious. It's so obvious when someone's playing that game. And you can barely even fake it.

• 1:13:01Dave Berke?

  You can't barely even fake it like, well, I'm, look, I'm gonna get to the top, but I know I have to be cool with Dave. My boss, so I'm gonna manipulate here. It's you'd, and here's the, here's the really sad thing. If you're that person, you think no one can see it.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:19Dave Berke?

  And everyone can see it.

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  That was kind of the point there where like, you gotta be careful with that kind of stuff where like if, if I'm trying to build a relationship like, bro, they can see what you're doing, you know, like, cause again, this is part of-

• 1:13:31Dave Berke?

  You gotta be careful with it. Here's how you be careful with it. If you're trying to do this for yourself, it's not gonna work. If you're trying to do this because you care about the team, it's gonna work and you're gonna win.

• 1:13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Dave Berke?

  You personally are gonna win if you do this. If you do this because you wanna win, you're gonna lose. If you do this because you wanna take care of those people and you want the team to win and you want them to accomplish the mission so that they can elevate.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Dave Berke?

  It will work.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. If I wanna win.

• 1:14:01Dave Berke?

  If you're, if you're a young leader right now, listening to this conversation and thinking about how you can build a relationship and the power of the relationship with your people. Actually, those individual, how you interact with that individual person isn't the biggest thing, cause what those people in your team are doing is watching you. So maybe Jocko comes out and wants to build a relationship with me and, oh, okay, I'm trying to figure it out. Is he authentic or genuine? What I actually get to do is watch Jocko with the other 10 dudes on the team. And over time, if Jocko is just how he is and he believes in that and that actually, he's gonna treat everybody the same way. And, and it's not gonna be what he does or, or says to me that gets me to, to buy off that he's on board of this, is I'm gonna see him in all the other, in everything else that he does.

• 1:14:42Dave Berke?

  I'm gonna come to the conclusion like, dude, this is legit. That guy, that guy doesn't, that guy cares about everybody else being successful. And then those oppor- look, your people are gonna need you at times. And there, you will have opportunities to build relationships, but the authenticity isn't just, what do I say to Echo to get Echo to like me or curry favor with Echo? Cause actually what you're doing to, to, to, to your leader is you're watching everything they're doing. And the reason being fake about it doesn't work, isn't because I just see it with me, is I see you do with everybody else. That's why it's so obvious, cause you're out there trying to figure out how to play the game with all these 10 different people and if you're, if you're faking it, it, it's gonna- It's going to be completely obvious, not because of how you and I how interact.

• 1:15:23Dave Berke?

  So the thing that actually has to start with, if you've now put in charge of a team or a leader, go back and read that second platoon commander from Jocko's second platoon. He didn't walk in and go, "I'm honored to lead you, to count you as people that work for me on my team." He just said, "I'm happy to be a part of this and I'm happy to help make this team win." That's it. You don't need to elevate the stature. Everybody knows who the boss is, the chain of command is understood, everybody's got that hierarchy. What you actually need to do is look for ways to break down those barriers and just have them recognize, "All this guy cares about is us winning. That's all he cares about." And by behavior after behavior after behavior, eventually, you're either doing it or you're not. And if you're doing it, people are going to get on board. If you're not, you're going to fail no matter what you do. And people are going to see that a mile away.

• 1:16:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, smell it on you.

• 1:16:09Jocko Willink?

  This continues on. It is obvious that building a trustworthy relationship with your superiors is important, but how do you do that? One of the simplest ways is obvious but often gets overlooked. That is performance. Your boss expects you to complete certain tasks, so complete them. Do them on time, on budget, and with as little drama as possible. Get the mission done. This includes doing things you might not be 100% in agreement with. I did this throughout my career and it always served me well. Boss wants me to fill out some extra paperwork? Cool, I'll do it. Boss needs me to cover a shift for someone else on the team? I've got it. Boss needs me to help clean up some administrative mess that got spilled?

• 1:16:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm on it. Boss has a nasty, low reward mission that needs executing? I'm all over it. With each one of those problems, I am the solution. With each problem I solve, the level of trust with the boss goes up.

• 1:17:06Jocko Willink?

  And I will continue on that path. I won't complain or try and shift bad jobs onto someone else, or even look for some kind of praise. I will simply put my head down and do the work. Over time, my boss will know that I am the person who can make things happen. And more important, I gain clout with the boss. This is the opposite of the subordinate who complains and objects, or always thinks he has a better way to do things. He loses influence with the boss every time he opens his mouth. Any objection from that subordinate is seen by the boss as another typical excuse. The more you talk, the less people listen. On the other hand, when I do what needs to be done, the boss trusts that I can make things happen. The boss also knows that if I do raise an objection,

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  it is likely to be founded on solid facts that should be considered. Since I get things done and don't constantly voice my objections, the boss actually listens. I always utilize this strategy with my senior leadership and it worked well. I would simply make things happen as often as I could. Now, here's where this is gonna, I'm gonna preemptively shut down your next comment, Echo Charles. Okay. Cause I know, I can already see from this conversation where your head's at. So, listen to this.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  And this is, this is where I kinda feel like I make my money. Sure. Right here. Lay it on. This is the next level, okay? But, how does that appear from the perspectives of, of your subordinates? Right? Cause now everyone's looking at you going, "You just do whatever the boss says." For instance, if I recognize that there are some flaws in my boss's plan, then my subordinates certainly recognize the same thing. What do I tell them? How do I preserve their respect? If they think I can't see the errors the boss is making? The answer is simple. I tell them the truth.

• 1:19:00Jocko Willink?

  I say, "Hey, team. I know there might be some better ways to skin this cat, but at this point, the effort to change the plan would take almost the same effort that it will to just get this job done. So, we are just going to do it. And let me tell you what else we're doing by getting this done. We are building trust with the boss. Every one of these little tasks from him that we crush, allows him to trust us more and more. And that gives us the ability to get listened to. So, when something comes up that really doesn't make sense, he will listen. That is why we are going to execute this plan to the absolute best of our ability."

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  There you go, Exo Charles. Your next question just got preemptively answered.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  No more questions.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  You're welcome. That's the part, see, that's the part where people get worried and that's the answer. People get worried, what did the guy's gonna think?

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah. Especially when you, and then when you say like, we're gonna build trust with the bosses, like, man, that's like, I have no argument to that. Like, when I'm saying, I don't want to build trust with the bosses, you know? Unless you're just some, like, anti-team member, you know? And no one's that, really, and well, we don't want to be that. But yeah, that's, um, yeah, that's good. Thank you.

• 1:20:16Jocko Willink?

  You're welcome.

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  I skipped to this section now called, "Play the game."

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  You have to play the game. To be more specific, you have to play the long game.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  No one wants to hear this, especially from me. People don't want to hear about building relationships. They want me to say, "You achieve victory through blunt force trauma." If someone gets in your way, go through them. Any political situation that is not turning out how you wanted it can be solved with a battle axe. And this was a little thing that was a problem in the teams for me. So if, if somebody knew me from like, the periphery, from like, the outside looking in, kind of saw Tasking a Bruiser, or saw my platoon, or saw me at Trade At, they would kind of get this idea like, oh, okay, you know, this is, this, you know, that's how Jocko cut rolls.

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes those guys would never get to see the rest of the picture, which, which, which would not work out well. And this is something that Leif talked about. You know, Leif would see guys that he'd go, yeah, they're, they're trying to get their Jocko on. And they understand, they understand the, what is it, the front-facing Jocko, right? The front-facing Jocko. They don't understand the backside and what's going on behind, in the rear-facing.

• 1:21:40Jocko Willink?

  That type of hyper-aggressive, "take no prisoners" mentality is certainly simple and straightforward, which is often the kind of leadership advice that people expect from me and what they want to hear. Because that attitude is so simple and straightforward, it hardly seems it could fail. And often, that attitude doesn't fail.

• 1:21:59Jocko Willink?

  At least not at first. A heavy handed and hostile approach usually works for a little while. You may be able to bludgeon people into doing what you want them to do for a day or two, maybe a week, maybe even a solid few months. Perhaps you can force a couple of projects to completion through ruthless and aggressive offense. But those successes will be short-lived. As you trash relationships, burn bridges and leave scorched earth in your wake, you will soon look up and realize you are done. You have destroyed everything for short-term gain. You have nothing left.

• 1:22:42Dave Berke?

  That last part is so important. The chain of command actually works and you can utilize the chain of command all you want and you can get things done. I can just force the outcome. I can. If I am in charge of you by rank or position or title, I can force that. The lesson that needs to take away, that will work until it doesn't. And then the results are catastrophic. They're not like, ah, a little setback or maybe I gotta come up another way. When you go down that path, when you finally hit the end, and you will, maybe six months, maybe a couple of years. Some guys get by for a while. They do. They get by longer than we want them to. But when you get to the end and it stops working, then you're in catastrophe. Then it's complete disaster and there's no recovery from that.

• 1:23:24Dave Berke?

  So if you're going down that road, there is no easy end to that. As opposed to, hey, you know, I worked through a relationship and maybe hit a brick wall and things don't work out. I gotta take a little bit of step back and things don't work out. The other approach, that frontal assault approach, when it ends. And I saw throughout my career, I watched guys hit their limit. Some guys would be in a matter of weeks in their first new position, leading enlisted Marines for the first time. Sometimes it happened to guys when they were squadron commanders. I mean, they made it a long way, longer than they should have.

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:54Dave Berke?

  But eventually they hit the wall.

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's a reason for that. And that's as soon as you were talking about this, I was thinking the in the military. As I said earlier, you get that job for long enough to just barely start to learn it and then you're on to another job.

• 1:24:08Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Jocko Willink?

  So what happens, it happens, it happens a lot in the military, too often. A guy's just a guy that leads by blunt force trauma and he, he gets done with his.

• 1:24:18Dave Berke?

  You, you talk about in the book, there's like, rest of the guys in the squadron are willing to just take the abuse. I don't care if my boss is a jerk, I'm actually going to be successful anyway. And you got a bunch of core guys in the squadron that have no problem enduring that.

• 1:24:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:30Dave Berke?

  This guy sucks, but I don't care because I want to win, we're going to be successful and they actually benefit from that.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  And he's gone in 24 months.

• 1:24:37Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 1:24:38Jocko Willink?

  So this is what happens and we see this as well. You have a person that was in the military that rose through the ranks and did a good job, uh, on paper, but was abusive and blunt force trauma, beat down people on his rise up, retires from the military, gets out of the military and then all of a sudden gets a job in the civilian sector and doesn't last. Because as soon as he tries that, people are going, wait a second, you, you think you're going to be here for the next 10 years? I'm not putting up with this.

• 1:25:08Dave Berke?

  No.

• 1:25:09Jocko Willink?

  No one in the chain of command is putting up with this. And then, and then you know what they say? Well, you know, when I was in the military, it was so much easier, the people are better, they all have the. They have a million little excuses that they tie into it. Everyone's got this common goal, everyone's already been screened, everyone's got, they got the million little things, they respect the chain of command. It's like, no, actually you're a bad leader. You're a bad leader. Being in the military and even getting promoted through the military does not by any stretch

• 1:25:34Jocko Willink?

  mean that you're a good leader.

• 1:25:37Dave Berke?

  No.

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  At all.

• 1:25:38Dave Berke?

  Nope, no guarantee.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  And this is the type of person who gets done with a platoon, they get a good fit rep. This is another scary thing about this is sometimes up the chain of command, these people look great. From the people that are above them, they, their boss loves them. Their boss is like, hey, they got everything done, you know, he was aggressive, really liked him. You go into that platoon and you guys, you realize or go into that unit and everyone goes, oh, we hate that guy.

• 1:26:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:02Jocko Willink?

  But we're going to endure him. And we still, and we are going to endure him. He's only going to be here for 18 months or 24 months. And by the way, we still care about our job and we still have pride in our unit. So we're going to make him look as good as we can, but we hate him.

• 1:26:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  But we know we can outlast him.

• 1:26:18Dave Berke?

  Yeah, we're over here playing the long game. Don't care, I hate him, fine, I'll hate him, but what I actually really want is in the long run, all my Marines, all the people on my team, I want them to be successful, so I'll, I'll play that game. And you know what? If he, if he gets promoted, looks good. The only thing that will stop me from playing the game, working for a boss that I hate, and, and bro, I have worked for bosses that I hate. The only thing that's gonna stop me from doing that.

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  Me too, by the way.

• 1:26:42Dave Berke?

  Yeah. The only thing that, that stops me doing is my own ego. That's the only thing that keeps me going, you know what, this guy sucks, and you know what? I'm, I'm putting a stop to it right now. The, the only thing that, that forced me down that road is my own ego. Just keep it in check. You are playing the long game, and you might get not, you might not get that satisfaction of seeing him fall. You might not get that. But if you are playing the long game, so you and your people are successful, it won't matter. It won't matter. And it may take longer than you want, but it will not matter in the end if you are indeed playing the strategic game.

• 1:27:17Jocko Willink?

  And so there's someone that's listening right now going, well, oh, I'm gonna let my boss abuse my people? It's like, no, no, actually not at all. However, and I, there's a whole section in this book that covers this. Oh, if, if I got someone that's abusing my people or is doing something unethical, unsafe, yeah, maybe it is time for a mutiny, but, and we'll get into that, how you make that decision of when it's time to actually draw a line in the sand. We'll, we'll talk about that. Going back to this section is, you know, talking about the, the person that just uses blunt force trauma. And I say, don't do that. Instead, you have to play the game. That means I try to support my boss and perform my duties to the best of my ability in playing the game.

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm building up trust with the boss. I'm building a relationship. Why is it so important to build a relationship with my boss? Is it so I can get promoted? Is it so I can get assigned easier tasks? No, I am trying to build the relationship, not for my own personal gain. I'm trying to build a relationship with my boss so we can better accomplish the mission. And playing the game doesn't only go up the chain of command. It goes down the chain of command, too. When you are the boss and your subordinates come to you objecting to something you say, listen and ask for alternatives. And when they give you a decent one, say yes. And utilize their alternative. Even if their alternative doesn't seem quite as effective or efficient as your methodology, let them do it. This builds trust and relationship with the people below you in the chain of command.

• 1:28:47Jocko Willink?

  As often as you can, listen and say yes.

• 1:28:52Jocko Willink?

  That's a nugget of beautiful advice. That's so many people don't follow. As often as you can, listen to your people and say yes to what they are saying to you as often as you can. That's how you empower people.

• 1:29:06Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:07Jocko Willink?

  That's how you build trust with them. That's how you build a relationship with them.

• 1:29:10Dave Berke?

  There are no 10 out of 10 plans. They don't exist. Dave Berke, at the height of his career at Top Gun, never had a perfect plan. There is no such thing as a perfect plan and your idea is not perfect, no matter how experienced you are and how smart you are. Now, their plan might be an eight and yours might be a 9.9, but the deciding factor isn't the quality of the plan. The deciding factor is the person's willingness to be successful when that plan has a problem. So if somebody has a plan that's just barely good enough, but they really want to do it, say yes. Because what they're gonna do is they're gonna hit a wall and they're gonna try to find a way to get over or around or through that wall. That's what they're gonna do. Your plans are not perfect. Neither are theirs. So just go with their plan as often as you can.

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, eventually when a subordinate from the team comes to you with an idea that doesn't make sense, you can say no and they won't begrudge you for it. You simply explain the issues with their idea and why you weren't gonna do it that way and they will be okay with it. They will accept your direction without feeling that you don't listen and they will move forward with full commitment to accomplish the mission.

• 1:30:19Jocko Willink?

  I was getting there, but this is the little section on when is mutiny in order? And we just touched on this and I give some good background on it. And then I say, as we try and, as we try and work to get our boss to support what we're saying, right? We make that effort and I explain how to do that. And then we get to a point where I say, okay, but even that doesn't always work. Sometimes a boss digs in and will not change their mind. Is it time for a mutiny? Is it time to draw a line in the sand? You could tell your boss, absolutely not. I will not do this your way. It might be time to say that, but it also might not be.

• 1:31:01Jocko Willink?

  There are many variables to assess and I talk about some of those variables. But then I jump to, I'm going to jump to here. Here are some possible outcomes when the subordinate refuses to comply. So this is when you decide, you know what? My boss came up with this plan or my boss wants to do something and I will not do it. Here's some things that can happen. One, the leader recognizes that the subordinate is extremely concerned about the plan. So concerned they are putting their career at stake and risking possible punitive actions. Because the plan is actually really bad. This is the best possible outcome. The leader awakened by the refusal of his or her subordinate to execute a plan, reconsider's the options and decides to execute a different way.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  Now the subordinate should rejoin the team, throw their support behind the new plan and go help the team execute. So there's like the flowery outcome. You know, Dave orders me to do something. I say, Dave, I refuse to do this. This is an unsound plan and I will not execute. And Dave goes, wow, wow, this must be a bad plan. Let me reassess. Okay, Jocko, explain it to me one more time. Okay, let's come up with a new plan. And then I say, thanks, Dave, and we're good. That's the, that's the best case scenario.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  Here's a possibility. Number two, the leader digs in even deeper and will not change the plan. Since the subordinate has refused to participate, the leader fires that subordinate and puts a new leader in place who has been handpicked for unquestioning obedience. For the boss, the problem is solved, but the team will absolutely suffer. Since now the voice of reason has been replaced by one of the boss's yes men. It will be the boss's plan and that is it. No one will have any choice or control. This is a horrible situation. To avoid it, consider the fact that since the boss is refusing to listen to suggestions about the plan,

• 1:33:00Jocko Willink?

  it is probable that the boss has a big ego and is likely to put a yes man in to execute his or her vision without resistance. If this is a possible outcome, it must be weighed carefully. So when you're dealing with someone that's like, "I'm not listening to your plan", as soon as you draw the line, they're not like, "Oh wow", chances are, they're not now all of a sudden ready to shift their mindset.

• 1:33:21Dave Berke?

  And what are the attributes of a leader that comes up with a plan that's utterly catastrophic, without vetting it through anybody and tells everybody this is the plan? Super humble, team player that's on board for the big win? Is that the type of leader you're dealing with here?

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's bad. Continuing on, if a subordinate draws a line in the sand and refuses to execute a plan, or outright quits the position as protest, they instantly remove all influence of any kind over the boss. So while the subordinate has made a very loud and clear statement, once that statement has been made, there's nothing else they can do. They are no longer a factor in the outcome. And that's one of the, you know, questions I have about David Hackworth's decision to be interviewed and state in an interview that if we didn't change the way we were fighting the war in Vietnam, we were going to lose. When he did that, when he kind of drew a line in the sand, he was out of the army very quickly and out of command. And that was that, which means he lost influence.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  And let's face it, he would have been a general. Who knows how high he would have gone, but he would have, he would have been a division commander, you know? I mean, eventually. And then maybe he could have influenced and moved the war in the right direction. But instead, he drew a line in the sand and he lost all of his influence. So now, let's put ourselves in David Hackworth's shoes, right? We love soldiers. We love the army. We love our men and our men. We see, we see men in the army, in the Marine Corps, throughout, grunts being killed in Vietnam. And it breaks your heart every single time.

• 1:34:59Jocko Willink?

  And then he gets control of his own battalion and he starts to save their lives and they start to win. But no one else is doing it.

• 1:35:08Jocko Willink?

  And with his heart being broken over and over again, he can't take anymore and says, you know what, I'm drawing a line and said, can I see how that could happen? Oh, absolutely. So this is one of the things that you have to weigh and think about as a leader. The last one, if the subordinate tries every possible method to convince the boss that the plan is wrong and sees no way of changing the boss's mind, then perhaps the better option is for the subordinate to make one last statement of concern and then proceed to lead the team in the execution of the plan to the best of their ability. This way, the subordinate leader can at least do their utmost to mitigate the negative impacts of the poor plan, note the harmful results, so they can be explained clearly

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  to the boss and continue to play the long game in building a relationship with the boss so they can convince the boss there is a better way to execute going forward. The inherent risk is this, in this, of course, is that, as Napoleon said, the subordinate is still culpable for the outcome. This is Band of Brothers, Band of Brothers, Dick Winters, they get ordered to do recon, the war is all but over, they get ordered to do recon across the river, they go do the recon across the river, they have a guy get wounded, they have a guy get killed, they come back, the next night, his boss says, do another recon. And he says, boss, not a good idea, we didn't learn anything last night, however, we did

• 1:36:33Jocko Willink?

  lose a guy and another guy wounded, and it could be even worse, I recommend we don't do it, nope, do the recon. Boss, not a good plan, do the recon. And what does Dick Winters do? Dick Winters says, got it, boss. Cool, tells his guys, alright, we're doing a recon tonight of this basement over in this building and bring some wine. So, that's a classic example. Was that the right thing to do? Yes, yes. Now, if he would have quit and said, no, I refuse to do this, that lieutenant colonel would have said, cool, okay, later, Dick Winters, I got this next guy, he'll take a recon over there tonight, doesn't matter. So sometimes, and you know, I heard this about SEAL platoons in Vietnam as well.

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  Getting tasked with doing a patrol or an ambush in an area that was really bad, that they didn't feel like was going to be a fruitful ambush and get ordered to do it. And they're like, hey, Roger that, Roger that boss. Cool. Patrol out the gate. Go 200 meters into the jungle. Set up a, set up a perimeter. Sit there for six hours. Come back, say, yep, we didn't see anything.

• 1:37:42Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Is that ideal? No. But.

• 1:37:48Jocko Willink?

  What are you gonna do? This, this is.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  These are the things you have to consider as a leader.

• 1:37:56Dave Berke?

  I had in the military all the time, happens now all the time is people that is that phrase falling on your sword. And I think most people understand that. I don't think it's just military. It's just the idea of when are you going to hold your ground? And when are you going to be willing to, to fall on your sword for whatever this idea of this position that you think you have? And what you have to recognize, I think is two things is, is when you do that, it's catastrophic for you. That's what the saying means. It's catastrophic for you. But the other part of that, that comment you, that, that Napoleon comment was, it doesn't, that's not a free pass for you. The outcome is still yours. And it won't make you feel better. And it won't give you a sense of accomplishment if you fall on your sword and your team still ends up losing or something catastrophic happens.

• 1:38:40Dave Berke?

  Just to say, well, I, I held my ground and I told the boss we're not doing it. You get removed, you get countermanded or, or worse, you get fired or, or something really. The outcome is still yours. Uh, and again, the piece that drives people more often to do that is, is your ego. Convincing yourself that. What I'm being asked to do is catastrophic. There are times it's actually true. Sometimes you get orders that are wrong. They are, they will be catastrophic. And that story, you know, the, the Dick, the Dick winner story there of it, when, when they lost that guy, the real question was, this is a waste. This is a wasted life. This was something we shouldn't have done because it had no real, real benefit. That, that is catastrophic. But more often than not, when we get asked to do things that we think are wrong,

• 1:39:25Dave Berke?

  if we can actually detach a little bit and think, okay, what is the worst outcome of this? Is it really catastrophic? Is it really worth falling on your sword? Or if you stay in position, can you exert enough control that you are the reason why it is not catastrophic? That you are the one that prevents the potential catastrophe from happening? And the answer to that is. Almost never is it actually kind of almost never. Um, and even if it is the most influential thing you have to prevent the catastrophe is your leadership. And, uh, that's hard. I think for a lot of people's like, cause falling under sword has this. It's like a cliche that people almost want to do.

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, you get to be the martyr.

• 1:40:04Dave Berke?

  Yeah, you're the martyr and, um.

• 1:40:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And also how often are you failing as a leader to articulate the issues well enough with your boss that they actually understand. So instead of trying to formulate a better argument for your boss to understand what you're trying to say. You just say, well, he doesn't get it. I'm going to fall on my sword. I mean, how often had to, you know, why is it so rare that it's catastrophic? Because how often is a boss getting told that there's going to be a catastrophic outcome? Hey boss, I think if we open this building, if we, if we get a lease on this building, we try and, we try and set up shop there. I think we're going to lose a lot of money and we're going to burn a bunch of our employees. And it's going to be a complete and utter catastrophe. And the boss is like, hey, I still like it. Go.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Right? Or in the military, hey, I boss, I am very concerned that we are going to take heavy casualties and there will be no gain. And the boss goes, no, I, I like it. Go ahead.

• 1:41:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  I've never even had a boss do anything even close to those things. Now, could it be, hey, you, I want you guys to approach the target from here. Well, boss, I don't agree with that. Well, I'm telling you to do it. Okay. Well, how catastrophic is that? Guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to get onsite and I'm going to get boss, you know, hey, pass the pro word that, that, that avenue of approach was blocked. And we're now approaching from where I planned to, but I wouldn't say that, but I'd say now we're going to have to approach from a different direction. Sorry.

• 1:41:34Dave Berke?

  Did you say pro word? Pro pass the pro.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Pro word. Yeah. They're just, uh, words that like, they're like code words. And they, and it's not like they're a secret, but you might want to tell the upper chain of command that we have passed through. Phase line red, and we are now approaching the target building. And instead of saying all that, you just say, you know, Chevrolet. And they go, cool. Yep.

• 1:42:03Dave Berke?

  The reality is that that first scenario with this, this boss wants the catastrophe. The reality is, is that it almost never happens.

• 1:42:12Jocko Willink?

  It almost never.

• 1:42:12Dave Berke?

  And the likelihood that it's happening to you is almost zero. I, I'm not saying it's zero, it's not zero, but it's.

• 1:42:17Jocko Willink?

  It can't happen.

• 1:42:17Dave Berke?

  It can't happen.

• 1:42:18Jocko Willink?

  It can't happen. And in that, in those cases, you may have to fall on your sword and say, I refuse to do this.

• 1:42:24Dave Berke?

  That's right. That second scenario happens all the time, all the time. And actually, that's the one that you should be, be planning for to how to manage that all the time. Which is that, ah, man, this is actually not a good plan. And you know what? I'm in the ideal position to mitigate all the risk associated with it. And I'm going to do exactly that. Hey, boss, we're going to accomplish that mission. Let's go make that happen. And then do, like you said, all those things. What you should be planning for is, is that second scenario. Cause that's going to happen throughout your career all the time. Scenario number one, almost never.

• 1:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Uh, don't think it ever happened to me. And I would say it's a pretty good statement because I think I would remember if it did. I'm going to think about this though. I'm going to think about if it ever, if I ever got ordered to do something that I was in complete and utter disagreement with.

• 1:43:18Dave Berke?

  Especially something that's not in training. I've had some pretty bad training plans.

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but those are training.

• 1:43:22Dave Berke?

  But those are training plans. So whatever. In, in my real, you know, real combat situations, I, I would have to put some thought into even what I think even comes even close to that.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  What even was close.

• 1:43:32Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Jocko Willink?

  All right. Well, did some, and I just took that thought one step further. Did I sometimes hear some crazy plans coming down the chain of command? Yeah. And then I would say, hey, boss is crazy for the following reasons. The boss is like, oh, cool. Thanks for pointing that out. Don't do it. Pretty, pretty straightforward. I didn't, you know, boom. All right. Uh, skipping forward to another section here.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  The section is called subordinate your ego.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  Which is a good phrase, powerful phrase. And I actually go through a pretty detailed example of when I had to subordinate my own ego. And how that helped solve this certain problem and.

• 1:44:19Jocko Willink?

  I end up kind of going into an explanation of what the ego is, how it's playing out granularly. Here we go. Back to the book. Ego is like reactive armor. The harder you push against it, the more it pushes back. Do I get some good credit for that one? That is The tankers out there ought to appreciate that. That is, and that is, that is so true. Yes. Someone, someone that doesn't, someone that's got an ego, like you might not even notice until you brush up against it, then all of a sudden it reacts.

• 1:44:52Jocko Willink?

  Continues on, if I had confronted the CEO, and that goes back to the story, if I had confronted the CEO about his attitude and told him he had a big ego, he would have dug in even deeper. So I did the opposite. I disarmed his ego by subduing my own. Now, this is why I wanted to bring this up today.

• 1:45:10Jocko Willink?

  You might be afraid that if you subordinate your ego, you will get trampled. But that normally doesn't happen because subordinating your ego is actually the ultimate form of self-confidence. And I think that line right there is one of the lines when I was writing this book, I just like took a screenshot of it and texted it to you, Dave. I was like, that line right there. If, because subordinating your ego is actually the ultimate form of self-confidence. That level of confidence earns respects, earns respect. So while the initial thought or feeling might be that you back down, you've actually shown that you have the strength and confidence to give the other person credit.

• 1:45:53Jocko Willink?

  And they will recognize and respect that confidence either consciously or subconsciously. They feel it. They feel it. Echo Charles, when you're getting ready to roll jujitsu and you have never rolled with this person before and you lock up with them. You know, right? You can feel it. And now whether you want to admit it or not, you know. And that's what this does. When someone says, hey, you know what? Go ahead and run with that. And Dave might think, well, that's right. That's right. I'm going to run with it because my panel is better. And in the back of his mind, he thinks, man. Like when someone says, oh, you want to start a cross side? That's basically what you're saying. That's basically what you're saying. You want to start in a dominant position? Go ahead. It's fine. It's fine with me.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm so confident in my jiu jitsu that you can basically start anywhere. You can start in a totally dominant position and I'm going to be fine. When you subdue your ego, when you subordinate your ego, that person, now that person, you might be thinking, oh, yeah, I'm going to start on the mountain. I'm going to kill you. And you think that, right? And you feel powerful. But in the back of your mind, you're thinking, oh, maybe subconsciously you're thinking, wow, this person is confident. This person knows that they're going to win. And so that's the same thing that happens here. Hey, you know what? Why don't you take, why don't you go ahead and run with this? And you go, yeah, that's right. I won. And in the back of your mind, you think, man, Jocko doesn't even really, he doesn't even care where this ends up.

• 1:47:17Dave Berke?

  The word subordinate is such a good word because when you tell me about check your ego, it's like, okay, I can check my ego. But if you're the type of person that reads the word subordinate and it bothers you, you are the person that's being spoken to right now because your ego says, I am not going to subordinate because it's submissive or has this feeling of, that's why that word is actually so good because most of us don't want to do that. They don't like, I don't like that word subordinate. I don't want to subordinate. I don't want to be submissive or passive. That word is awesome because if you feel yourself right now reading that going, I don't like that, read this again and again, and because it's actually what you need to do.

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  And check this out. If you're reading this and you're going, I don't want to subordinate my ego because I'm powerful, then read the next part, which says, if you're truly powerful, you've got no problem doing it. Guess what? Hey, you know what? I don't need to be the, I don't need to be the star of the show because I'm just going to be over here and it's going to be fine. You guys can, you can, you can pay attention to the other guys. That's cool. I'll be over here just, and I'm good with that. I don't need to say anything. I don't need to start in the best position. I'm good. I'm confident. Been doing this game for a long time. We're good. It continues on. So after I say either, um, they will recognize and respect that confidence, either consciously or subconsciously.

• 1:48:39Jocko Willink?

  It says, and that is the truth to put your ego in check, to subordinate your ego. You must have incredible confidence.

• 1:48:50Jocko Willink?

  If you find you cannot put your ego in check because you're afraid it might look, might make you look weak, then guess what? You are weak. Don't be weak, subordinate your ego, build relationships and win the long game.

• 1:49:09Jocko Willink?

  That's a pretty important chapter in this book.

• 1:49:11Dave Berke?

  That's huge.

• 1:49:14Dave Berke?

  I mean, that gets to the core of what infects almost everything we do. There almost isn't a problem in the world that exists in your life that isn't connected to your ego. And that is the lesson for that. And the amazing thing about that is that not only are you strong, if you could do that, you just start winning everywhere. You just start winning everywhere in life. You just start winning when you do that. When you look around and go, oh, no, no factor, go for it, do that. You win. Life gets so much better when you're able to do that.

• 1:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Just let it go. And the supreme confidence, this is the weird part, so people don't understand. The supreme confidence that that exudes. When you go, oh, you want to take lead on this? Cool, go for it. Cool.

• 1:49:59Dave Berke?

  Yeah, what can I do to help?

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, what can I do to support you? Sounds like, it sounds like you got this handled. What can I do to help? The supreme confidence that that exudes is

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  is powerful.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like when someone gets in your head on the map, right? Yeah. When they go, cool, you can start wherever you want, bruh.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  I'll tell you a even more powerful moment, smaller, seemingly smaller, but it's way more powerful when you think about it. So let's say me and you are rolling, right? And then you, uh, let's say I get a good position on you, right? And you, um, and then we sort of drift, let's say get mount, whatever, great position on you. And we sort of, we're scrambling, whatever, I still got mount. And then we kind of drift out of bounds, right? Or we run into somebody, whatever, where we got to kind of stand up, you know, get out of the position, stand up and walk to a clear part on the map. And then so, cause that'll happen sometimes and the person in the bad position will just sort of clap your hand like you're starting all over.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that's even, yeah.

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  You see him saying, you know, they'll be like, oh yeah, we're, we're.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say maybe a small adjustment, maybe I like, oh, we're going like, you're mounted, but I got my elbow already in, so it's gonna be okay.

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  But that's a little bit more sneaky.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  In a, I mean, it's probably just as sneaky, but just in a different way. It's a different thing in a little bit of way.

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Well, they're both, they're both gonna send the same message.

• 1:51:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:16Jocko Willink?

  I'm scared.

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  But this. Exactly right. So here's.

• 1:51:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm not confident.

• 1:51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Right. So let's go one step further. So let's say we roll. Uh, I get into a good position on you. We go back to the center of the thing. You slap my hand and you get into like the, the neutral position, right? And it's like a little dance, you know, someone, someone's gonna lead this and lead that, right? So you slap my hand, we get into a neutral position. The confident guy would just be like, cool, we're in a neutral position now. Cool. And we just keep rolling.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, the unconfident.

• 1:51:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, wait, wait, I had mount. I had mount. No, let's go back to mount. You see what I'm saying?

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  Even though he, he'd still be justified, but the supremely confident man, that's a slide.

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, cool. Yeah. Start to, I'll tell you what, why don't you mount me?

• 1:51:58Speaker 02

  Don't say anything. Just be like, whatever. This is what we're doing. I don't even, I don't need it. I don't need attention to, to let you know that that's how supremely confident I am. You know, see what I'm saying? Like, like I'm so confident, I had mount, I'll let it slide, you know, I don't have to say that. Just do it, whatever.

• 1:52:15Jocko Willink?

  Be that guy.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  Be that guy. Hundred percent.

• 1:52:18Jocko Willink?

  All right, moving on to this next section, core tenants. The first one is called, be capable and ask for help. A leader must know and understand the jobs, skills and equipment used by the people below him or her in the chain of command. This isn't to say a leader needs to be an expert in everything. That is impossible. The team commander does not know as much about shooting as his snipers do. He can't understand the various radios as well as his radio man does. He will not know the details of routes to and from a target like the point man will. On a construction site, the foreman won't be able to operate the equipment with the same efficiency as those who operate that equipment all day long. He won't be able to lay block as well as the masons or tie rebar like an ironworker.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  In the manufacturing business, a plant manager might not be able to run each machine or handle every task on the line. But in these cases, the leader must at least be familiar with what goes on below him in the chain of command. What should a leader do if he doesn't know or understand a skill or job that plays a role in the accomplishment of the mission? Simple. Ask. That's right, go and ask. And not just for an explanation, ask to learn and actually do. Sight in that sniper weapon, program that radio, lay some block, run that piece of equipment for a little while, get familiar, and then actually practice the task. Unfortunately, most people avoid this process because they fear they will look stupid.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  They think their subordinates will lose respect for them. But the opposite is true. This is another area where ego can be a real impediment to success. Some leaders feel it is a weakness to ask for help. That couldn't be further from the truth. Subordinates will actually respect the leader more if they come and try to learn and perform the task. What subordinates don't respect is a leader who tries to appear to know everything. I know this from experience. When I was a junior ranking SEAL, I was always impressed by a boss who would come and truly show interest in what we were doing on the front lines. I was even more impressed if they asked questions and wanted to really understand my perspective. And I would be completely impressed if the leader physically tried to do what I was doing. Program a radio, shoot an advanced weapon system, or build a demolition charge.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  If you need help with something, ask for it. Subordinates understand that their leaders might not know everything. Put your ego in check and ask for help. You will do a better job and you will gain respect from your team. Stepping down and learning frontline skills also shows your humility. It proves you aren't above what the frontline troops are doing and it shows you know their job is hard. Seems like common sense.

• 1:54:59Dave Berke?

  It does seem like common sense. And I see that very rarely in certain leaders in the private sector.

• 1:55:10Dave Berke?

  And I think it's exactly what you said, there's this fear of looking dumb. Uh, when I had my first real job in the Marine Corps, I had a, it was called Powerline, I had thirty-eight Marines. It was a big position for a lieutenant. As a young officer, I had thirty-eight Marines, and their job was essentially service the engines of the aircraft and make sure the jets were good to take off and land. It was a big, huge responsibility. And there's a qualification to get that. And when I took over that job, I got that qualification, which was not really what I was designed to do, but I wanted to do it to learn. So I learned all the things that I needed to know. And I got this designation, this qualification to be able to do this launch and recovery.

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  Is that normally an enlisted guy's job?

• 1:55:47Dave Berke?

  It is. It is an enlisted guy's job. But I wanted, it was my first job, I wanted to know what, I wanted to know what they were doing. And guess what? We had twenty-four plane captains in the squadron. I was the worst one by far. I was terrible at it. And I didn't have a ton of experience, a ton of history. But not just what I learned from doing it, but the connection I made with those guys that I was just willing to do that. And it isn't like some gesture of, hey, I want to spend, it's to actually learn what's going on in their world. It made me so much smarter, because I understood what the problems that they were dealing with. Getting down with your folks, if you're gonna do it just to kind of put on a good show, don't waste your time. But if you're actually willing to go down there and look stupid, their respect for you will go,

• 1:56:31Dave Berke?

  because most people aren't willing to do it, it'll go off the charts. And it seems so obviously such common sense, and it's actually an easy thing to do.

• 1:56:38Jocko Willink?

  It is counterintuitive, even though it seems common sense from us looking at it right now. It's super counterintuitive, because you think, well, I don't really know how to do the job, so I'm gonna hide from it. So that way, they won't know, and I won't look bad.

• 1:56:53Jocko Willink?

  Had to throw this in there. One of the most important tenets of leadership I adhere to as a leader.

• 1:57:03Jocko Willink?

  Is the idea of extreme ownership. The idea of extreme ownership has struck a chord with people. And it has been incredibly effective effective in helping those in all kinds of leadership positions, leading all kinds of teams in all kinds of industries, businesses and professions. Leaders found that when they took ownership of everything in their world, they saw other members of their teams, both up and down the chain of command, taking ownership as well. When people take ownership of their jobs and their mission, the job gets done and the mission gets accomplished. When there are problems and people take ownership of those problems, the problems get solved.

• 1:57:37Jocko Willink?

  While extreme ownership might seem like a fairly simple concept to understand, it can be difficult to fully comprehend what it really means. What it really means is that the leader is responsible for everything, absolutely everything. This can be hard to fully understand because there are times when a subordinate does something that the boss feels they cannot control and cannot possibly be responsible for. A subordinate might make a mistake or take an action that is completely unexpected. How can that be the leader's fault? I like to use the example of a young machine gunner in a SEAL platoon to exemplify how a leader truly is responsible for everything that happens. A SEAL machine gunner plays a key role in a SEAL platoon. As the name implies, he carries a machine gun, a heavy belt fed weapon capable of firing over 700 rounds per minute.

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  The machine gun's ability to lay down such massive firepower makes it critical to a SEAL platoon or squad because it is the main weapon that puts down suppressive fire on the enemy. It keeps the enemy's heads down, allowing the rest of the SEALs to maneuver. The machine gun provides the main source of cover in the fundamental tactic of cover and move, the first law of combat. Of course, the machine gun doesn't operate itself. It's worthless without the machine gunner. The machine gunner carries the weapon and its ammunition, maintains the weapon, loads and fires the weapon. Those are the mechanics of the job, but a machine gunner must also be aware of how to best employ his weapon. He must understand how to get in good position, from which to best engage the enemy and provide cover for his team. He must also understand.

• 1:59:05Jocko Willink?

  The terrain he is in and see how it can be used to his advantage and to the advantage of the platoon and how the enemy can also use the terrain to their advantage if allowed to do so. The machine gunner must also understand his field of fire. Field of fire is the area of the battlefield a SEAL is responsible for, whether a street, hallway, valley, or cardinal direction. In that area, he must locate and engage the enemy. But field of fire is equally important in its limitations. Outside one's field of fire, there might be innocent civilians, other friendly forces, or perhaps even your own SEALs. Bluntly stated, staying within your field of fire prevents you from shooting your own people. So the machine gunner can have a lot on his mind, but because his job is to shoot, there generally isn't much leadership required from him.

• 1:59:50Jocko Willink?

  Machine gunners are almost always part of a small fire team of four to six people, which is led by a fire team leader. With the lack of leadership opportunities, being a machine gunner is a job that is generally held by relatively inexperienced new guys who are in their first or maybe second platoons. Because of the size of the machine gun, it is also often referred to as the pig, which makes the machine gunner a pig gunner. Also because of the size of the pig gun, it usually requires a SEAL who is slightly larger to carry it. While it is not always true, it is common for new guys to be assigned as pig gunners if they are large-framed, strong individuals. There is also an ongoing stereotypical joke in the SEAL teams that pig gunners, being

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  big, strong new guys, aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Any new guy that does something dumb will be told he will make a good pig gunner. When a briefing is completed, it would not be uncommon for the platoon chief to ask, "Do you pig gunners understand?" This is why the stereotypical pig gunner makes the perfect example of extreme ownership, because the stereotypical pig gunner is going to make mistakes and they are a very easy target for blame. I heard it on a fairly regular basis from young SEAL leaders on training operations that I ran. The young leaders didn't fully understand their roles and the concept of extreme ownership. The training operations I ran were very complex and stressful combat simulations. We had a large budget for training and we utilized it to replicate the chaos and mayhem

• 2:01:20Jocko Willink?

  of combat to the best of our ability. We hired Hollywood set designers to make our training areas look like cities in Iraq or Afghanistan. We use role players to mimic the actions of both enemy combatants and friendly civilians. We simulated weapons with paintball or other high-end paint marking rounds, or with multimillion-dollar laser tags system.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  This simulated combat zone not only taught tactics, it was the ultimate leadership laboratory. And this is where I would see young SEAL leaders reveal that they didn't understand what extreme ownership really meant. Let's say your pig gunner, let's say a young pig gunner shot his weapon in the wrong direction outside his field of fire. When I would ask the pig gunner's leader what had gone wrong, it was very easy for him to say, "Well, the pig gunner made a mistake. He shot in the wrong direction." "Whose fault is that?" I would ask. "Well, the gunner aimed the weapon, he pulled the trigger. It is his fault," would be the reply. Actually, I would explain, "It's your fault."

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  "How can it be my fault? He's the one that shot the weapon," the young leader would object. This was a pretty common response, but it was wrong. You see, if the pig gunner makes a mistake, it means he hasn't been trained properly. The leader is responsible for training the gunner. If the gunner shoots in the wrong direction, it means he hadn't been briefed so he fully understands his field of fire. The leader is responsible for briefing the gunner. And yes, it could also mean the pig gunner is completely incompetent in understanding his task and knowing his field of fire. If that is the case, is the leader's responsibility to identify that shortfall and either train the gunner so he does understand, remove the gunner from his position and place him into a job he is capable of, or as a last resort, fire the gunner from the team so he can, if he cannot do his job properly?

• 2:03:03Jocko Willink?

  So regardless of the reason the gunner failed, it is the leader's fault. A leader is responsible for everything a person on his or her team does. I even felt like this when one of my guys would get in trouble off-base. If one of the SEALs who worked for me went out in town and drank too much and got into a fight, I always thought, "Where did I mess up? How did I fail to make that individual realize the consequences of his actions? Why didn't I know he was headed for trouble and keep him from going out?" Taking extreme ownership means that leaders are responsible for every action the people on their team make. It is as simple as that.

• 2:03:45Jocko Willink?

  You might wonder why I had to put that section in there.

• 2:03:50Jocko Willink?

  But we hear this all the time.

• 2:03:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not really my fault. I mean, I get it.

• 2:03:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, of course, I'm responsible, but hey, the big gunner doesn't really, he's not that good. Like, no.

• 2:04:07Jocko Willink?

  The marketing department, I know it's my responsibility, they released something that should have been released, you know. It's my fault, but I'm gonna fire that person.

• 2:04:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:04:19Jocko Willink?

  It's not my fault, it's their fault. It means everything. And then we get into this preemptive ownership. When a leader knows they cannot blame anyone or anything else, they will implement what I call preemptive ownership. They will take ownership of things to prevent problems from unfolding in the first place. The leader who knows he can't blame his machine gunner, when the machine gunner makes a mistake, is going to take preemptive ownership and focus on training that machine gunner and ensuring he understands the plan and his part in it. The leader who knows bad weather is no excuse not to execute a mission will take preemptive ownership to ensure there are layers of contingency plans in the event the weather takes a bad turn.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  The same is true for any team. If the leader knows there truly are no excuses, then he or she will make every conceivable effort to prepare. Ownership isn't just about taking responsibility when mistakes happen. The highest form of extreme ownership takes place preemptively before mistakes occur. So don't just take extreme ownership after the fact. Take preemptive ownership to mitigate problems before they even happen.

• 2:05:38Jocko Willink?

  Some people don't make that connection. Extreme ownership is not only in the past tense. It actually is the present tense and future tense.

• 2:05:51Dave Berke?

  Yeah, there's also a reason why this is in the strategy section of this is that this is this is sort of the highest level of the mindset of if you really believe everything is your fault. If you really believe that, not with a little caveat or like, well, in this case, if you can take the butt out of it and it's just, it's just my fault, period. If you actually have that frame of mind, genuinely, and you actually truly believe that this idea of preemptive ownership is actually really easy. Cause you just start to look for, for things well in advance of what pitfalls are going to come. And doing this isn't as hard as it, as it might sound. The, the barrier isn't taking preemptive ownership.

• 2:06:30Dave Berke?

  The barrier is actually believing that there are no little exceptions to where it's actually not your fault. That's the piece that's hard for folks and it's hard everywhere. It's hard in the military, it's hard in the private sector, it's hard in families. But when you see the ones that do it, this thing that you just talked about, they're, people are doing it all the time. The ones that truly are there, that's all they're doing is looking for, for those, for those places ahead of time. And those people ironically are the most successful. Their plans are the ones that achieve the highest amount of success because they've, they're way out in front of, of all those potential pitfalls.

• 2:07:00Jocko Willink?

  You gotta throw a dash of,

• 2:07:06Jocko Willink?

  you gotta throw a dash

• 2:07:10Jocko Willink?

  of long game strategy into this because if what I do is, okay, there's no excuses. Dave, you're running this mission. Um, cool, I'm going to direct and I'm going to, I'm going to micromanage you to the point where I promise there'll be no mistakes. Okay, I now this is why you gotta throw some long game in there, some strategic vision. That's why it's in the strategy section because if that's what I do, what have you learned? You haven't learned, you haven't figured out how to plan on your own. You haven't figured out how to execute the operation on your own. So even though you're responsible for everything, which you absolutely are, that doesn't mean that you do everything. And by the way, you can't do everything.

• 2:07:52Jocko Willink?

  You don't have the time or the cognitive capacity to handle and make every decision. You can't do it. So. Taking extreme ownership of everything doesn't mean doing everything yourself and micromanaging and making every decision at all. That's a short term and like I, like we said earlier, that's like a brute force thing. It can work for a little while. Like I could be like, okay, Dave, oh, you're going to talk to a company. Cool. I'm going to go with you. I'm going to write your brief for you. I'm gonna, you know, sit in the back row and make adjustments as you talk. Okay, cool. I can do that one time, but what about Mike Sorelli who's out there? What about Andrew Paul? Am I going to do it for everyone? What about Flynn? What about Lit? Am I going to sit there and do it? No, can't do it. It's impossible to do. So yeah, I'm responsible for what we're saying.

• 2:08:33Jocko Willink?

  I'm responsible for our mission, but I gotta make sure that the training is happening, that the knowledge is there, and then you gotta take a step back. Speaking of which, I'm jumping to this section called leading from the rear. One of the most common mantras that leaders hear is lead from the front. And it makes sense. After all, some critical things happen when leaders lead from the front. When a leader leads from the front, he or she is setting the example, showing exactly what to do and how to do it. This model can be critical during fear inducing moments. There are many examples in combat where the situation is dire and it is leadership from the front that changes the outcome. Perhaps there is an, perhaps there is some open terrain to cross. Maybe there is an enemy sniper waiting to take a shot.

• 2:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Maybe there is a room with enemy fighters behind the door that needs to be entered. Any of these scenarios can cause people to become fearful and freeze. Who wants to risk death? But any of these situations, any of these situations can grow infinitely worse if no action at all is taken. Most types of combat examples prove that someone needs to act. More often than not, that someone is the leader. When no one else has the courage to take action, the leader has to lead from the front. The leader has to charge across the open terrain, maneuver in the enemy's sniper's line of fire, or breach the door to engage enemy fighters. If the leader doesn't take action, no one will. The troops will freeze. The enemy will seize the initiative, get the upper hand and win.

• 2:09:59Jocko Willink?

  It is not only combat situations where leaders need to lead from the front. In any situation that is stagnated because of fear or apprehension, a leader stepping up and taking action is a solid solution. The same is true of terribly arduous tasks. People tend to shy away from suffering. They will procrastinate and avoid getting started. But when the leader jumps in and starts attacking the job, others will jump in and get started as well. A leader must also lead from the front when it comes to setting a good example, treating people with respect, taking care of one another, and being professional at all times. If the leaders lead in this manner, others will follow. Examples like these prove there are plenty of times when a leader must lead from the front. But there are also times when a leader must lead from the rear, or perhaps from the middle.

• 2:10:46Jocko Willink?

  So, plenty of times where a leader has to lead from the front. That absolutely makes sense. I've seen it. I've done it. It happens. But, back to the book, when I served as a SEAL Assault Force commander, I always tried to avoid being one of the first six to eight people to potentially, to enter a potentially hostile building during an assault. I did this because the first six to eight people would be clearing rooms, perhaps getting in gunfights, and at a minimum, detaining potentially resistant prisoners. In short, the first six to eight people would be heavily engaged in dynamic, fluid situations that required their full attention. If those first assaulters got into a firefight and were immersed in trying to stay alive and eliminate the enemy, who would call for supporting assets?

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  If they were overwhelmed by a large number of detainees, who would call for reinforcements? If possible enemy personnel were seen departing the building, who would notify the external security elements that this was happening? In any of those cases, while the assault team was dealing with the immediate tactical problem, someone else had to lead. In those situations, it was on me to lead. My job was not to clear rooms, engage targets, or grapple with detainees. My job was to detach, assess all the dynamics of the situation, and get my men the support they needed. So when I approached a building, if I happened to end up as one of the people toward the front of the assault team, I would step back, high-port my weapon, and let some of the other SEALs go in

• 2:12:11Jocko Willink?

  front of me. As soon as my SEALs saw me do that, they immediately knew what was happening and would move past me toward the target. The momentum would not be broken.

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  But is not only on the battlefield where a leader has to be cautious about leading from too far to the front. Planning is another time it is important to consider where to lead from. Instead of the leader coming up with a plan, the preferred method is to let the team members come up with a plan. Let it be their idea. When the leader allows the team members to come up with a plan, those members have already bought into it. There is no need to convince them of it. Of course, if the planning process gets bogged down or different members of the team can't agree on a course of action, it might be necessary for the leader to step in and provide guidance or even make a decision on which course of action to use. So, and it just closes this out, but it is almost always preferred for the leader to

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  lead from the rear to allow the troops to take lead on the plan and to take ownership of it. The best ideas often come from the people on the team who are closest to the problem. Those are the folks on the front line. Don't inhibit them. Instead, allow them the freedom and authority to create and execute new plans and ideas. They have the knowledge, give them the power. Don't feel the need to always lead from the front. Take a step back and let your team lead.

• 2:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, you know, Dave, you've been working with me long enough that you've probably seen me, how long, how long have you been working together now? Three years. Three years. You've probably seen me, I'm going to guess, seven times in three years, you know, have something going on and me say, all right, here's what we're doing. Z, what do you think? Is that a good assessment? Yeah, seven or less. Seven or less. Seven or less, and this is a lot of things. Lot of things. Lot of, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of decisions. Yes. That get made at Echelon Front. And seven times. Yeah. It's been contentious enough or bogged down enough where it's like, okay, well now

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  we're not actually making progress and nothing's happening. And it's like, okay, guys, here's what we're doing and. You know, it's the same thing that when I was on a ground force commander, an assault force commander, I wasn't going to say anything because the guys knew what to do. And then occasionally, they didn't know what to do. And when I talked, people listened.

• 2:14:38Dave Berke?

  It's that, I think, more than it being contentious or bogged down. It's actually the few times where, like, you know what, damn, I don't know what to do here. And that little vacuum that gets created is when you step in, typically. Not when, you know, it's not like me and Flynn are arguing, or Leif and I are arm wrestling over something, you're going to come in and adjudicate it. It's actually when you see, oh, you know what, there's a place that these guys, Dave isn't actually know what to do here.

• 2:15:05Jocko Willink?

  Progress is not being made.

• 2:15:06Dave Berke?

  That's right. We're not moving in the direction, and I'm going to step in and do that for him or for the team or whatnot. And then typically, the day after a conversation is, hey, there's some things I could have explained, or there's a way that I could have set you up to be more successful in that situation. But the comment of it's almost always preferred to lead from the rear, that is met with heavy resistance. We use a version of that. I explain that to the key, you know, when we work in a lot of companies, a lot of times we're working with really senior leaders, C-suite, you know, executives, CEOs, high level in the organization, they don't like the idea of not leading from the front. And what they typically complain about the most is that they don't have enough time. There are too many things, and it's always that they can't get everything done that they

• 2:15:51Dave Berke?

  want to get done. And it's for that reason alone, is that they're in charge of everything, which is why they don't have time, and why their teams are underperforming, or why they're struggling, and why they need that help. But that comment of, don't, you know, that's preferred a lot of times to not be in the front, is there's kind of that immediate reaction of, I don't like the way that sounds. You have to explain what that means.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you get told that all the time. I mean, how common is the phrase, lead from the front, lead from the front?

• 2:16:20Dave Berke?

  Day one, Marine Corps training, lead from the front. Day one, especially in officer training, like, that is it from the beginning. And, you know, we are, you know, complimented on, you know, this iron mic, he's out in front, he's got his arm up, he's pointed with a weapon, it's the follow me, you know, mantra, mindset, that's all throughout military training. And just like you described, that doesn't mean that you don't have to set up and do that. But when you're actually supposed to do that, is when there's a vacuum and a void. That's when you go, hey, I have to get out in front of this. That happens if your people are well-trained and resourced. That doesn't actually happen very often. It actually happens about seven times every three years. Is kind of the rate that you should be thinking that you need to be out front. Uh, because the rest of the time, if you're actually doing your job, those vacuums, voids aren't there.

• 2:17:05Dave Berke?

  Now, if you're adjudicating conflict, those are, those might be some other things, but it's really the vacuums of decisions where your people like, you know what, boss? I gotta be honest with you. I don't know what to do here, or you see or feel that is where you need to get out front. That doesn't happen all that often.

• 2:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which also means, as you said earlier, with the minute I have to go, okay, here's where we need to go. I'm, I'm 20 seconds later, I'm thinking to myself, okay, they, I'm not doing a good job of explaining the intent here.

• 2:17:31Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 2:17:31Jocko Willink?

  And the team doesn't understand the strategy. Yeah, this is, this is, this is on me. And I need to make that more clear, which usually that whatever situation unfolded is a real opportunity to say, hey, look, this is what, this is what we need to do, and here's why. So the next time we see this, we know what to do.

• 2:17:50Dave Berke?

  And if you've cultivated all these other things that we, we've been talking about, that you wrote about here, those times that you as the leader step in, your team doesn't resent it and they're not annoyed or frustrated with you. They're thankful and they're glad. So the explanation is, is way easy. It's a huge deposit and, and you don't have to worry about doing those things because nobody pushes back on it. They're actually relieved, man, I was hitting a brick wall here and, and that's actually what I needed. As opposed to he's in my business and tell me what to do, which is the exact opposite of what you're, you're talking about here. Which actually happens if you think you need to be in front all the time, what you're doing more often than not, 93% of the time, you're stepping on people's toes and you're, and you're hurting them in the long run.

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:29Dave Berke?

  Rather than letting them be successful.

• 2:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've, we can cover it. I got a whole section on there on when to step up and lead. Like, when do you actually have to fill that leadership vacuum? How do you do it? And this is another one of those things that as I reflected upon, I was like, yeah, here's what I, it's so obvious to me, but never really articulated it because never really had the, never really got asked that, got asked that pointed of a question. Never got asked, how do you, you know, how do you shoot that weapon? Where do you put your hand, where do you put your shoulder on that 240 golf when you're engaging from a bipod? I never got asked, wait, when is it?

• 2:19:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Everyone just sees you do it and they just think, okay, well, I kind of get that, but no, you need to write that stuff down.

• 2:19:10Dave Berke?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:19:11Jocko Willink?

  Uh, this is a section that, that you were talking about earlier today. The, the section is called, don't care. And it's a form of detachment and and people know about it because of the idea of negotiations, you know, the ability to walk away from negotiations. Oh, you don't want to you don't want to lower your price?

• 2:19:27Dave Berke?

  Cool. Yeah. The willingness to walk away.

• 2:19:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, but it it it's something that you can use as a leader.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  If you drill down, go into the book, if you drill down on things you care about, you will find that many of them are rooted in ego.

• 2:19:46Jocko Willink?

  Even the simplest examples. So like when you're a leader, not caring is a powerful tool. You want to utilize your plan instead of mine? Cool. I don't care. You wanna you want me to do some crappy job for you that others find demeaning? Fine. I don't care. Oh, you want me to give someone else the opportunity to lead a project? Awesome. I don't care. And then I'll give them a bunch of support. That that's what it is. And then once again, this kind of ties back into this idea of like this supreme level of confidence, which is when you can put your ego in check, when you can subordinate your ego, it's because you're so you have confidence.

• 2:20:22Dave Berke?

  Yeah. And not caring when you're supremely confident is different than not caring.

• 2:20:27Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it's totally different.

• 2:20:28Dave Berke?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:29Jocko Willink?

  Those are two, those are, those are like clickbait titles, aren't they? Don't care and lead from the rear.

• 2:20:35Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Those are clickbait titles. I just realized. Maybe I'll have to make, Echo, can you make a, you know, a couple of videos with those? Don't care and lead from the rear.

• 2:20:45Dave Berke?

  Yep.

• 2:20:45Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Clickbait. But to your point, even though they sound clickbait.

• 2:20:51Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:51Jocko Willink?

  And they and they almost, I mean, can you imagine going in in the Marine Corps and being like, okay, lead from the rear and don't care. Like, that's the opposite of everything that you would learn as a leader.

• 2:21:02Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  So and and not to mention, we talked for already 20 minutes today about the fundamental thing that you're doing as leaders, caring about your people. So, yeah, you have to read and fully understand what we're talking about here.

• 2:21:14Dave Berke?

  Yes. In that section, you got to read all those details. The idea of when you say, I don't care about you asking me to do a demeaning task, it means I'll do anything. I don't care what it is because I'm here to help the team win, not the passive aggressive, I don't care and not caring.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  It was fun. The last muster in Australia, there was a lot of this going on and it was cool because we know we you you rewind three or four musters ago and all of a sudden someone saying, I I want my slide here. Or hey, I want to use this font or you know, I, I, I need this much time to cover this topic. And this time I, it was just, hey, how much time do you, do you need to cover that? I don't care. I remember there was some conversation and I think Jamie was like, hold on. She was doing the calculation for how much time each person gets for each slot. And she's like, wait, Chaco, um, this thing that I gave you 45 minutes, you, you, can you cover it? Uh, it actually turns out to be only 20 minutes. And I was like, cool, don't care. Like it literally doesn't matter.

• 2:22:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You want me, I'll, I'll talk about the subject for 20 or 45, it's fine. And oh, wait, someone else wants to cover that topic. Cool. I don't care. Let's do it. Whatever you want to do.

• 2:22:26Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Or the, it'd be easier for these guys that they did it this way, but it can affect you a little bit.

• 2:22:30Jocko Willink?

  Cool. I don't care.

• 2:22:31Dave Berke?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 2:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:33Dave Berke?

  Is it easier for them? Do it. No factor. Don't care.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is a great attitude to have. Great attitude to have. Man, it makes your life easy. I mean, think about if you impose that or not impose it, but if, think if you utilize that with your wife, right?

• 2:22:48Speaker 02

  Got to be careful though.

• 2:22:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:22:50Speaker 02

  The wording tones.

• 2:22:51Jocko Willink?

  And there's also, there's also trapping. We're getting real specific into domestic scenarios unfolding. This will make my wife mad. Uh, what do you want for dinner? Don't care. That, that actually, my wife doesn't like that, you know? So what do I want for dinner? Well, steak, girl. Let's go to a steakhouse. That, that's cool. And then she can, uh, she can lead by negation, right? No, I don't want steak. Cool. Let's go get something else, right?

• 2:23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, well, it seems like don't care saying that or being like that is different. If someone really wants an actual answer from you, you know?

• 2:23:28Jocko Willink?

  There's got to be a better way to phrase it in a domestic scenario. So I think the way you phrase it in a domestic scenario is right here. That sounds good.

• 2:23:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:38Jocko Willink?

  Think about that.

• 2:23:39Speaker 02

  Technically not the same as I don't care.

• 2:23:41Jocko Willink?

  I know, but doing it mentally.

• 2:23:43Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. Same attitude.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  Mentally, it's the same thing. Hey, do you want to watch this rom com tonight?

• 2:23:50Dave Berke?

  I don't care what we watch as long as I'm with you.

• 2:23:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's good. But you know what I'm saying is better? Is that sounds good.

• 2:23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:57Jocko Willink?

  That sounds good. My wife might not buy it on the rom com.

• 2:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Let's go domestic scenario. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say that's good. Oh no, sounds, that sounds good. Cause hey, do you want to go out to the foo foo new Italian restaurant?

• 2:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Sounds good. Just think of that right there. Look, you might not even eat because you're not gonna go out. You're not gonna go out and say, hey, I want to get a, can you just inject me with diabetes right now with a plate of pasta? You're not thinking that. But you know what? What is it worth? Because the reality is, order the chicken Parmesan and don't eat the pasta. What?

• 2:24:32Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Borderline, but we're still good. We're still in there. We're still like maintaining.

• 2:24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 2:24:38Jocko Willink?

  So that sounds.

• 2:24:39Speaker 02

  Is this hitting close to home right now, man?

• 2:24:43Speaker 02

  Again, the, I don't, because technically it fundamentally goes against pretty much anything. Well, in my situation that my wife even lives for, like the whole idea, I don't care, but you gotta care.

• 2:24:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm saying. That's why it sounds good. That sounds good.

• 2:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's correct.

• 2:24:59Jocko Willink?

  But it's the same attitude, but you keep that, you know, you keep that under wraps, Echo Charles.

• 2:25:05Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Just, hey, that sounds good. Hey, do you, what is she? Oh, yeah. Does your wife likes to watch reality television?

• 2:25:11Speaker 02

  From time to time.

• 2:25:13Jocko Willink?

  Right. So when she says, hey, hon, Real Housewives of Orange County seven is on.

• 2:25:20Speaker 02

  My man.

• 2:25:22Jocko Willink?

  Do you want to watch it? That sounds good.

• 2:25:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:25:26Speaker 02

  Well, she would never ask.

• 2:25:27Jocko Willink?

  Play the game a little bit.

• 2:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay. Cool. Good. Good tips for sure.

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  Check. Next section.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Know what is important and what isn't. One of the things that distinguishes a black belt in jujitsu from a white belt is the black belt's understanding of what is important and what isn't. A black belt sees past insignificant movements, ignores trivial actions and focuses on what actually matters. A good commander on the battlefield does the same thing. The commander can tell when the enemy is shooting. When the enemy shooting is merely reconnaissance by fire. A good commander understands when the enemy movement is just a ploy. A good commander ignores things that will not have an impact on the battle. Like the black belt and the battlefield commander, any good leader must be able to do the same thing discriminate between what is important and what is not. For a leader in any situation, changes are everywhere, both external and internal.

• 2:26:21Jocko Willink?

  External changes can occur in the environment, the behavior of the enemy, the market, the weather, or the timing of a scenario. Internal changes can be emotions of individuals, relationship dynamics, or the morale of the team. Change is the reality of life. Almost everything is in constant state of flux. And it is crucial, it is a crucial part of the leader's job to figure out which changes are important and which changes are mere distractions. This is not always easy to do. I see leaders get caught up in all the time in things that do not matter. They waste their time and energy on meaningless events or minor problems that will not impact the overall results they are trying to achieve. A black belt in jujitsu is a master of energy conservation. Not one movement is wasted defending against attacks that do not matter.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Leaders must do the same thing. Try to give a little insight on how to actually do this. A good leader detaches and elevates above the tactical situation where they can see what really matters. Before they dive into a problem, they ask themselves questions. How will this problem impact the team's strategic goals? Can it cause mission failure? Is it worth my time and effort to engage in? How bad can it get if I leave it alone? The answers to such questions should make it obvious to a leader if a problem requires their involvement. A good rule to follow is that the leader should err on the side of not getting involved in problems.

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  The goal is always to allow problems to get solved at the lowest level. When subordinates are solving low-level problems, it allows the leader to focus on more important strategic issues. So there you go. And of course, there's a dichotomy with that because if you become too detached and you don't pay attention to any of the problems, you can have some issues.

• 2:28:03Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:04Jocko Willink?

  The next section. It's called principles. And again, we're getting more and more granular like as each section goes by. Talk about who's the most important team member in a team.

• 2:28:16Dave Berke?

  Yeah, just we've said it already, but just kind of revisiting. This is all under strategy. These are all the the frame of minds. There's all the the mindsets you as a leader should have for all these things. This isn't prescriptive in every single situation. There is a dichotomy with everything and and there are circumstances which will drive you to be heavily involved in things. But it's the mindset of how do I want to view my role as a leader as it applies? That's the stretch strategic part of this and why it fits in there. And that's why if you don't know and you're looking for a place to bias bias in that direction doesn't mean 100% of the time that there that isn't the answer all the time. And this isn't the tactical solution of what's going on. It's how you should perceive your role as a leader and what your bias should be.

• 2:29:00Dave Berke?

  For and then tactical situation might change and you might need to get more or less involved and do a whole bunch of different things. And that certainly comes later. But that mindset and we kept saying frame of mind from the beginning is crucial to understanding why this sits in the book the way it does.

• 2:29:12Jocko Willink?

  Even shooting a 240 goal for the bipod. There are times when you are going to whatever. You are going to get that thing off the bipod and shoot. There's things that you're going to do. You have to understand that this what the what the strategy is. And then, yes, absolutely right. You have to use your brain.

• 2:29:34Dave Berke?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:34Jocko Willink?

  Fortunately, the more you understand the strategies and the more tactics you know and understand, the more effectively you can use your brain to overcome some of these scenarios that unfold in the real world.

• 2:29:47Dave Berke?

  Yeah. The lower down in the organization, the more tactical the behaviors of those people are, and to the point that sometimes you might have a machine gunner that really doesn't understand much of the big picture at all. But when you have the times to go down there after they've made some tactical decision, especially if it's a good tactical decision and you can explain, hey, What you did made a huge impact upstream in the organization. You made a massive help, a support for the larger strategic goal. When you can make the connection for them and they recognize how what they're doing, this tiny little task that seems almost menial or small, actually contributes to the big picture. How powerful that is to be able to continue to be more and more and more detached and they continue to do things without your help because they know what they're doing and

• 2:30:30Dave Berke?

  how it affects the connection between their tactics and the strategy. Your ability to explain that makes huge headway with them.

• 2:30:40Jocko Willink?

  So we get into section three and again, talk about the most important team member. Talk about span of control. So people understand what the best way is to do that. Talk about taking care of your people with discipline. Discipline is the best way to take care of your people from day one. As a leader in the military, you are told over and over again that you have to take care of your people. But some leaders get confused about what that means. They think taking care of your people means making sure they are comfortable and happy, coddling them, giving them as much time off as possible and not pushing them hard. This is wrong. In fact, the opposite is true. In the SEAL teams, if you really care about your people, you won't coddle them at all. You will push them hard, you will train them hard, you will make sure they understand the

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  tactics of war and the weapons and radios they will operate. You will ensure they are in top physical condition and prepared for the mental and emotional stress of combat. You'll do everything in your power to prepare them for combat so they can, so you can give them the highest probability that they and the rest of the team return from the battlefield. If you really care about your people, you want them to go home to their families. The best way to make that happen is through hard training that comes from discipline. The same thing is true in business. While lives might not be on the line, if you really want to take care of your people, you need to push them. You need to make sure they understand their jobs. You need to drive them toward their goals. If they fail professionally, they fail to achieve their financial goals and they cannot take care of their families or provide for them the way they want to.

• 2:32:08Jocko Willink?

  So when you are a leader, the best thing you could do is push them toward their goals.

• 2:32:14Jocko Willink?

  And of course, this drive has to be balanced. And then the reason I kind of had to put that in there is because I wanted to go a little bit deeper on imposed discipline.

• 2:32:23Jocko Willink?

  Because I say over and over again that discipline shouldn't be imposed on people. And it usually has a bad outcome, or at least has a negative taste. It leaves a negative taste in people's mouths when you impose discipline on them. So going back to the book, optimal discipline in a team is not imposed by the leader. It is chosen by the team itself. Optimal, optimal discipline is self-discipline. But teams do not always have self-discipline. They may not understand the rewards that come with it. When that happens, it may be necessary for a certain level of discipline to be carefully applied and imposed so the team understands the benefits. And I kind of go through how you do that.

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  How do you impose that discipline without leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth? Yeah. Good methodology. It's also a good way, this kind of leads into the next topic, which is pride.

• 2:33:21Jocko Willink?

  Because pride is a powerful force. When, when people have pride, it, it can change an organization. Going back to the book, if there is pride, the team polices itself. The team will not allow substandard performance. Anyone who slacks off is corrected, not by the leadership, but by the team itself. That is the power of pride. What then of a team that lacks pride? Perhaps it doesn't have a storied history. Perhaps it doesn't have a history of victory to hold high. What then? It is one of the most critical tasks as a leader to instill pride in your team. How do you do that? How can you build the morale of troops and create the strong bonds of pride that result

• 2:34:04Jocko Willink?

  in an attitude where everyone on the team gives more than what is required? Cause that's the truth right there, right? You have a team that has pride, they're given more and they're self policing. You have a team that doesn't have pride, they're given the minimum. The minimum.

• 2:34:20Dave Berke?

  The self policing part of that is is so powerful when you don't need to impose any correction on your team simply because they care enough to do it themselves.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. As I've talked about on this podcast before, the amount of times that I had to talk to a guy in tasking a bruiser because they were late is zero, right? Was guys late? Yeah, but it never made it to me.

• 2:34:44Dave Berke?

  Right.

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  They were getting tightened up on the front lines, right? Oh, a guy doesn't have his gear squared away? Cool. That you think I was down there counseling that person? No, they were getting tightened up. Old school. They were not going to make that mistake again. Why? Pride. So how do you get? How do you? How do you establish pride? Back to the book, the answer is simple. You give them the opportunity to earn it. Pride does not develop simply by telling team members that they are great or by hanging up banners. All the banners and signs and flags mean nothing if they aren't earned. To build pride within a team, you have to put the members in situations that require unity, strength and perseverance to get through. You have to push them in training to a point where they are truly tested. And in that, they will develop pride in what they have accomplished.

• 2:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Skipping forward to another section here, it's called yes men.

• 2:35:39Jocko Willink?

  As a leader, you should not want to be surrounded by yes men. People who agree with everything you say. As a subordinate, you should not be a yes man. So this is like the counter to the whole initial part of this conversation, talking about, hey, boss, yes, I got this. Yep, boss, I got that. Yep. You want me to do that extra paperwork? Yep. You want to cover there? Yeah, that's that's totally true. And here we go in the other direction. As a subordinate, you should not be a yes man. You should speak up when something doesn't make sense. This concept sometimes worries leaders. Because essentially, what I am saying here is that subordinate should always be pushing back against their leaders, always asking their leaders why things are being done a certain way and always offering up information and recommendations from their perspective on the front line.

• 2:36:25Jocko Willink?

  That scares some leaders. Some leaders would rather just have their subordinates do exactly what they are told to do. But that is a bad idea. So I get this all the time. That makes people nervous. But the problem is when you're surrounded by yes men, it's your brain against the world and your brain is not strong enough.

• 2:36:49Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna make bad plans, bad decisions, and if all you have is a bunch of people that say, "Yes, boss, you're right," you're gonna end up in a bad situation.

• 2:36:57Dave Berke?

  Yeah, and leaders who aren't surrounded by yes men, who are surrounded by people who are willing to push back, worst case scenario for them is, things don't go well, they regroup, they come up with it to solve the problem, they move forward, they might have some back and forth, but it's not catastrophic. If you're surrounded by yes men, when you finally fail, again, it will, it's gonna be catastrophic, because there'll be nobody there left to help figure out what it is that you need to do. So, their recognition too, as a leader, that if you actually really care about winning, which a lot of times drives the ego, the worst way to do it is surround yourself by yes men, because when you fail, you'll fail catastrophically. And you don't have that in organizations where people push back, which is, that's the fear, like, "I don't want people pushing back against my plans, because I think I

• 2:37:39Dave Berke?

  might look dumb." Actually, you do, because what you really want to do is be successful. And that catastrophic failure is what you see with companies and teams, where everybody just, "Whatever you want, boss, whatever you say, boss," you know, in a way that's not constructive, but just, whatever they want to hear to just kind of move past it. The failures they see is when companies, they lose everything.

• 2:38:00Jocko Willink?

  Do not surround yourself with yes men. And that means, don't be one. Now, this doesn't mean that you form bad relationships with your boss. And I actually, in the book, like, explain how to do that. What does this sound like? So you'll have the ability to speak properly and not develop an antagonistic relationship with your boss. You can get that in the book. You know, one more little section here, for this part of the book, for the strategy part. The exception to no bad teams, only bad leaders. In Extreme Ownership, we wrote that there were no bad teams, only bad leaders. We were not the first people to make this claim. Napoleon said there were no bad regiments, only bad colonels. And

• 2:38:41Jocko Willink?

  US Army Colonel David Hackworth said in his book about face, that there were no bad units, only bad officers. Yet there are still people who feel that a bad team is a legitimate excuse for bad performance. This is simply not true. There are no situations and no exceptions where a subordinate is ultimately responsible for the performance of a team. It is always the leader's fault. And hey, imagine what I went through to write that sentence. That's a bold sentence. There are no situations and no exceptions where a subordinate is ultimately responsible for the performance of a team. It is always the leader's fault. I believe me, I have racked my brain. Hopefully, maybe someone will come up with an example where

• 2:39:26Jocko Willink?

  that's wrong. I haven't figured one out yet. Going on. That being said, there is an exception to the rule that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. The exception is that it is possible to have a good team that delivers outstanding performance despite a bad leader. How does that happen if leadership is the most important thing in the success or failure of a team? It happens when there are subordinates in the team who lead regardless of their rank. They are tactful individuals who know how to lead despite not having been given official authority. And this is what you've been talking about a bit today, Dave, already, which is, look, you can have a bad leader, and the team is good, and they want to get the job done,

• 2:40:10Jocko Willink?

  and they believe in the mission, and they will win despite bad leadership. Despite bad leadership. All right, so we're approaching, we're approaching three hours, I think, right now. And we just finished. So that that good place to take a break. And we will get back. So we finished the strategy part of leadership, strategy and tactics. And on the next podcast, we will cover part two, leadership tactics. In the meantime,

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  I guess if you like listening to us, I'm gonna be talking some more at some live events around the country.

• 2:40:56Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 2:40:56Jocko Willink?

  Does that sound like a tour?

• 2:40:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:41:00Jocko Willink?

  That's a classic.

• 2:41:01Speaker 02

  It's a tour.

• 2:41:02Jocko Willink?

  Classic example of what not to do. What did I do? I said, "Hey, we're not a rock band, we're not going on tour." And guess what I'm doing now? Going on tour.

• 2:41:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:41:11Jocko Willink?

  Kind of. Doing some live gigs. January 6th in DC. January 11th in Austin. January 16th in New York. January 20th in LA. January 27th in Seattle. And January 28th in SF. Some of the gigs are already sold out. Go to jockolive.com if you, if you want to come and get engaged. It's called decisive engagement. That's the name of the event.

• 2:41:39Speaker 02

  The tour.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Decisive engagement. Yeah, the events, the tour.

• 2:41:43Speaker 02

  Tour.

• 2:41:43Jocko Willink?

  It's the decisive engagement tour.

• 2:41:44Speaker 02

  Tour, yep, straight up.

• 2:41:46Jocko Willink?

  So, I will be talking, I will be answering questions, meeting with you, looking forward to it, getting to those cities and hanging out with y'all. And what else? We talked a bunch about leadership today.

• 2:42:00Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What about leading ourselves? Is there anything, you know, what can we do to lead ourselves?

• 2:42:07Speaker 02

  We can do many things. A lot of, not a lot, but some jujitsu references.

• 2:42:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:13Speaker 02

  In the old leadership strategy.

• 2:42:14Jocko Willink?

  Once again, amazing how jujitsu is a thread that is, runs through everything.

• 2:42:19Speaker 02

  Jujitsu is life.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:21Speaker 02

  So, participate in life, right? So, yes, you're joining jujitsu. We're doing jujitsu still, people every day, daily, semi-daily, twice daily sometimes. People saying, "Hey, I am either thinking about it or I just joined." So, when you join, you're gonna need a gi. This is less of a question, by the way, because we all know this. So, we're gonna get an origin gi, get it from originmaine.com. Rash card as well, for no gi.

• 2:42:47Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:42:48Speaker 02

  There you go. Boom, jujitsu, that's one thing. Is wearing jeans, uh...

• 2:42:56Speaker 02

  way to get better.

• 2:42:58Jocko Willink?

  I will say this, if you're wearing jeans that A are allow you complete freedom of movement. Right. That's one thing we tried to do to the enemy in a war. We try and limit their freedom of movement.

• 2:43:10Speaker 02

  Yes, and jujitsu, by the way.

• 2:43:11Jocko Willink?

  The jujitsu, we try and limit our opponent's freedom of movement. So why would you actually voluntarily put on a garment? That restricts your freedom of movement. You don't want to do that. That's why getting origin jeans, which

• 2:43:26Jocko Willink?

  have stretch in them.

• 2:43:28Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, you can't tell from looking at them. It's not like you look at them, you go, oh, those are kind of some high fashion thing. No. They look like a pair of work jeans, but guess what? You're fully mobile. You're not pinned down.

• 2:43:40Speaker 02

  It's like fashions.

• 2:43:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:43:42Speaker 02

  When, when you're wearing them, you don't, you know, I'm just saying you kind of can smell some fashion on them.

• 2:43:47Jocko Willink?

  Depends on who's wearing them.

• 2:43:50Speaker 02

  Me.

• 2:43:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah, but you kind of stink of fashion.

• 2:43:53Speaker 02

  When my, when my lovely wife is giving me a thorough evaluation of my aesthetic value. At any given time while wearing these origin jeans, the fashion element is prevalent.

• 2:44:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, good. So I'm glad you like that. But to answer your question, because I wasn't talking about fashion, I was talking about function. Functionally, yes, we're good to go. This is a positive thing. This is a positive thing in your life. On top of that. Why not doing some, why not do something where you are actually helping the country that you live in? Become a better place.

• 2:44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:44:33Jocko Willink?

  Why would you not do that? Why would you not support the very country that provides you with the freedom to move? So you get a pair of jeans that give you the freedom to move and then, and then you support the nation. That provides you with that freedom to move, the freedom to do jujitsu.

• 2:44:49Dave Berke?

  I'm going to come to Echo's defense just a little bit here.

• 2:44:52Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:44:52Dave Berke?

  Because you guys both know, I can't give away my source, but I might already have those jeans you're talking about with that little stretch, little.

• 2:44:58Jocko Willink?

  They all have that little mobility.

• 2:45:00Dave Berke?

  Yeah, there's a, I got a, I got a little advanced.

• 2:45:03Jocko Willink?

  You got Delta 68s?

• 2:45:04Dave Berke?

  Yes.

• 2:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay, check.

• 2:45:05Dave Berke?

  Sorry.

• 2:45:06Speaker 02

  Oh, that's cool.

• 2:45:07Dave Berke?

  I got it.

• 2:45:07Jocko Willink?

  I know.

• 2:45:08Dave Berke?

  So. I got it.

• 2:45:09Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 2:45:10Dave Berke?

  And you guys both know, I don't do jeans. I do shorts and basically 99% of the time, I gave the caveat was, well, if I ever got a pair of jeans I ever wanted to wear. Maybe I'd wear jeans. Well, they showed up. I put them on my wife who I don't know the last I honestly do not know the last time she seen me wear a pair of jeans. It is years. She said dang, those look good. That was the first thing she said. So I understand where you're coming from. Now, I didn't wear them for the fashion, but the first words out of her mouth were those look good.

• 2:45:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, undeniable fashion, undeniable.

• 2:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Is there a difference between they look sharp and fashion?

• 2:45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, you you got triggered by the fashion word.

• 2:45:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:53Speaker 02

  That's it. Sorry, bro. Sorry. Hey, that actually that's saying a lot. Dave Berke mean or Dave Berke came shooting at the gun range with me, straight up shorts, flip flops. So that that I can confirm that whole notion that he does not wear jeans and shorts and flip flops are his main, what do you say, modus mode situation. Unless, yes, that is true about the jeans. I don't have the Delta 68.

• 2:46:22Jocko Willink?

  You should be getting them soon. They're they're in production. Well, actually, they're they're live right now. By the time this podcast come out.

• 2:46:27Speaker 02

  Well, that's interesting. I'm just saying Dave has them.

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what you should do? Build better relationships with people.

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  Because apparently someone's winning over there.

• 2:46:35Speaker 02

  I know, man.

• 2:46:36Jocko Willink?

  Building good relationships. And he's not doing it. He's not doing it so he can get jeans. That happens to be a byproduct.

• 2:46:41Speaker 02

  Yes, look at this guy.

• 2:46:43Jocko Willink?

  We're talking about Delta 68 jeans are the lightweight jeans. There's there's regu- there's regular jeans, which is like when I go to Montana, I wear the regular jeans when I am in Southern California or the more temperate regions of America. And actually, most of the time, it's the Delta 68 lightweight jeans.

• 2:47:00Speaker 02

  Right. It's good. I look forward to that. Brian, Pete. Oh, you got wait, wait, that would be Pete.

• 2:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that would be Pete.

• 2:47:10Speaker 02

  Both you guys just side note.

• 2:47:11Dave Berke?

  Or somebody else.

• 2:47:12Speaker 02

  Forward to that.

• 2:47:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:15Jocko Willink?

  A real player, a real player would know the people on the front lines.

• 2:47:19Dave Berke?

  And for you, Echo, just as you're as you're looking, projecting down the road of your of your relationship building.

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:47:25Dave Berke?

  When things show up unrequested or unsolicited, that means you're winning. You gotta go out and ask for them and say, get these to me. You're not winning as much as when like, wow, thank you very much for this.

• 2:47:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, what's interesting is, I mean, what's interesting is, when is the last time you just shipped a nice little box of, you know, Jocko Podcast t-shirts out to Pete?

• 2:47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:47:46Jocko Willink?

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:47:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:47:47Jocko Willink?

  He's looking at you like, you know.

• 2:47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't even have a relationship.

• 2:47:51Jocko Willink?

  No quid, no quid pro quo here.

• 2:47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, alright, there you go. Hey, these are all good tips. Hey, I'm learning.

• 2:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:47:59Speaker 02

  You ever, you ever find when people say, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm learning, you know, like, almost like, it's like, almost like a cop out for their bad behavior. I'm still learning.

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  I hadn't really thought about, but I just kinda felt that.

• 2:48:12Speaker 02

  Shit, I felt it too, man. Anyway, jeans are, are, they are awesome regardless of my relationship or lack thereof with Pete and Brian and everyone at Origin.

• 2:48:23Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of supplementation, we also have supplementation at Origin. And actually, speaking of triggered, Dave Berke, Mr., um, you know, hey, try and keep it clean and professional. In one of the outtakes was describing how much he liked strawberry mulk and he dropped an F-bomb.

• 2:48:47Jocko Willink?

  I mean, like a full-fledged with authority and passion.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  Well, for the people who know me and how almost never I say that word, certainly in public setting, that just indicates how much I still like strawberry. Yeah.

• 2:49:02Jocko Willink?

  And, and you only mix it with milk, strawberry mulk, and shake it up and you're good.

• 2:49:08Speaker 02

  That's it. I hear all these stories of all these concoctions everybody's doing. It's mulk and milk in a cup.

• 2:49:14Jocko Willink?

  And you just.

• 2:49:15Speaker 02

  And it's like.

• 2:49:15Jocko Willink?

  Every time.

• 2:49:16Speaker 02

  And the F-bomb, just.

• 2:49:17Jocko Willink?

  That's your jam. Cause I made one the other day and this was a, there's a little violation here, whatever. I'm, I'm gonna, I'm coming clean to the world. So I had, you ever eat dinner and you're like, you know what, not only was it not satisfying in volume, it was also unsatisfying in taste, right? And I'm not gonna call out the person that executed this thing that I'm married to. But it was not the deal. So I got done and I had like, not just a craving for more food, but tasty food.

• 2:49:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:49:53Jocko Willink?

  So I made this mulk. I made, I said, what did I do? Milk, peanut butter, mulk.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Milk peanut butter milk, two scoops of peanut butter.

• 2:50:08Jocko Willink?

  And then two scoops of vanilla ice cream.

• 2:50:12Jocko Willink?

  This thing was ridiculous. It was so good that I shared, which is, which is just a whole nother thing. I said to my son, I said, hey, I got, you gotta try this.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  All that, okay.

• 2:50:24Jocko Willink?

  And then he, cause normally if it's, if it's just really, really good, I'm like, this is all mine. I made it. I paid for it. I, I created it. It's mine, right? You want, you, hey, there's, go get, go mix one. This was so good. I said, no, you, I, I want to give this away.

• 2:50:38Speaker 02

  You gotta share it.

• 2:50:39Jocko Willink?

  You gotta try this.

• 2:50:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 2:50:42Jocko Willink?

  You know what he said when he drank it? Oh my God.

• 2:50:47Speaker 02

  But you shifted to a little bit of short term there. Little short term, share with the ice cream man, the ice cream.

• 2:50:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:50:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, just a little bit, not too much though. That's kind of the good thing.

• 2:50:57Jocko Willink?

  I think, well, I think what it was, was uh, you just, you get that caloric deficit.

• 2:51:03Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 2:51:04Jocko Willink?

  Just thinking, man, that dinner was, just didn't have enough. So I'm getting crazy. So yeah, we got some months, milk.

• 2:51:11Speaker 02

  Sounds like a justification, but yeah, man, also a Jocko white tea. You know, in the event of you wanting something light, you know, if you're in a caloric deficit, this, this might not help you in that regard. Might not.

• 2:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it might give you a little kicker.

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  It'll give you.

• 2:51:26Jocko Willink?

  There's some kick, there's some caffeine in it.

• 2:51:28Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:51:29Jocko Willink?

  And will you feel like a food snob and start looking down on other people when you get done drinking a Jocko white tea? Because it's certified organic, will you start looking down your nose a little bit at people?

• 2:51:40Speaker 02

  Potentially, yes.

• 2:51:41Jocko Willink?

  And say, oh, I, that looks like a interesting snack you're having. Doesn't look very organic to me.

• 2:51:49Speaker 02

  But it is true nonetheless. Yes. Also Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko's store. This is where you can get shirts representative of the path. Directly representative, by the way. Discipline equals freedom. The one I'm currently wearing.

• 2:52:06Jocko Willink?

  Good deal, Dave.

• 2:52:07Speaker 02

  Good deal, Dave. Good deal.

• 2:52:09Jocko Willink?

  Repping.

• 2:52:10Speaker 02

  Representing big time. Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff.

• 2:52:12Jocko Willink?

  Does your mom, does your mom have a good deal, Dave shirt?

• 2:52:14Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 2:52:15Jocko Willink?

  Does she have seven of them?

• 2:52:16Speaker 02

  She has two.

• 2:52:18Jocko Willink?

  Your mom is fired up. She's like, oh yeah, I am representing. We gotta make a shirt. We gotta make a good deal, Dave, just for her. That's just got your face on it. So she could just be stoked.

• 2:52:29Dave Berke?

  My mom sent me a screen capture the other day. She got some sort of thing. Apparently Facebook tracks this, but when you comment more than other people, you get a notification that you're a top fan. She is one of your top fans. She got notified that she's a Jocko top fan. Screen capture that sent me this that says Arlene is a Jocko top fan.

• 2:52:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:47Dave Berke?

  She is in the game, dude.

• 2:52:48Jocko Willink?

  She is 100% in the game. That is awesome. We need a, we need a good deal Dave shirt with. And, and speaking of which, factually, so when's the new Top Gun come out?

• 2:52:58Dave Berke?

  Summer of 2020.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man. Okay. Well, we'll do, what's the best, we need to do a, a, a, a, like a fight recap of it, right? A breakdown of it. So we'll, we'll, we'll do that. And, and what's the, what do you think the, when, when will it be out on like, um, Netflix where we can like actually watch it? As it's doing it and comment on it without violating the, you know, the, the copyright laws or whatever.

• 2:53:23Speaker 02

  Actually, no, you can do it whenever. Uh, it's long. I don't know if it's in the theater.

• 2:53:29Jocko Willink?

  No, we need, we need to be able to watch it on a computer.

• 2:53:31Speaker 02

  Right, right. But you can do it. It's called commentary. Fair use. You can, if you're doing commentary on something or yeah, it's free. You can do it.

• 2:53:38Jocko Willink?

  So we're gonna absolutely do that. 100%. We're gonna sit in here. You're gonna go line by line. You're gonna explain stuff. I'm gonna ask you stupid questions. Yeah.

• 2:53:47Speaker 02

  I'll be all up in, yeah.

• 2:53:48Jocko Willink?

  Are you pumped for it?

• 2:53:49Speaker 02

  That's a good idea.

• 2:53:49Dave Berke?

  I am totally pumped. Absolutely.

• 2:53:51Speaker 02

  Wait, so were you, I forget if I asked you this. Were you really into Top Gun, the, the OG?

• 2:53:56Jocko Willink?

  Bro, that's why, that's his entire life was based on that.

• 2:53:58Speaker 02

  I mean, the movie though.

• 2:53:59Dave Berke?

  You mean, you mean when I was 14 and I stopped Top, Top Gun, did I think it was cool?

• 2:54:03Speaker 02

  No, well, no, I'm asking like more than that. Like was that your jam for?

• 2:54:08Dave Berke?

  That was, yes. Yeah. 100%.

• 2:54:10Speaker 02

  Cause I knew like one of my good friends from when I was little, Eric Masters, still pilot too, by the way. Oh, Air Force. Top Gun, that was his jam. You go to his house, it's in the VCR.

• 2:54:22Dave Berke?

  Doesn't matter what service you're in, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, if you watch Top Gun, that's why you want to be a pilot.

• 2:54:27Speaker 02

  Naval aviation.

• 2:54:28Dave Berke?

  That's right.

• 2:54:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:31Speaker 02

  It was good.

• 2:54:31Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's kind of interesting. Dave was on the podcast before and we, we talked through that entire thing.

• 2:54:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Explain the entire thing and, and just kinda FYI.

• 2:54:42Jocko Willink?

  The trajectory of Dave's entire life is kind of fundamentally rooted in the movie Top Gun.

• 2:54:49Speaker 02

  But I appreciate the question. So it's cool. I'm saying, hey man, you know, I'm trying, I'm trying to build the relationship, you know.

• 2:54:56Jocko Willink?

  And Leif Babin is Navy SEALs. He saw Navy SEALs and was super fired up for Navy SEALs.

• 2:55:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I used to watch Roadhouse a lot, so I guess maybe.

• 2:55:07Jocko Willink?

  That's how you became a bouncer.

• 2:55:08Speaker 02

  It's kind of the same deal.

• 2:55:12Jocko Willink?

  That's good. I like it, man.

• 2:55:13Speaker 02

  Maybe not. I don't know.

• 2:55:14Jocko Willink?

  Did you kind of see yourself a little Patrick Swayze vibe?

• 2:55:18Speaker 02

  Dalton, bruh.

• 2:55:18Jocko Willink?

  Dalton, I mean.

• 2:55:20Speaker 02

  In a way, but they always, here's the ongoing thing about Dalton. They, they always tell him, oh, I thought you'd be bigger. So I couldn't relay. My whole thing was not to be the guy who they thought would be bigger. You see? Anyway, nonetheless, uh, yeah, Jocko Store. Yeah. Represent. Go there. JacoStore.com. If you like something.

• 2:55:39Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:55:39Speaker 02

  Get something. Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. Is this important? Maybe, maybe not, but it is, we'll say useful. Useful. See in the game, right?

• 2:55:52Jocko Willink?

  Write, um, reviews of the podcast. That's a good way to give us feedback.

• 2:55:57Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:55:58Jocko Willink?

  On the podcast. So you can write, hey, I think the support section should be much longer. I don't think I hear you talking enough about Origin Jeans.

• 2:56:09Speaker 02

  I need way more info. Yeah, yeah, you're right.

• 2:56:11Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a lot. So if you want to add that to the commentary, go leave a review.

• 2:56:15Speaker 02

  Do it.

• 2:56:16Jocko Willink?

  Go leave a review. And don't forget, we have other podcasts. We got a podcast called The Grounded Podcast, which Dave Berke has been on.

• 2:56:25Jocko Willink?

  It's not what people expect, apparently. Is it about jujitsu? Kind of. Is jujitsu about life? Very much so.

• 2:56:33Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, it is.

• 2:56:33Jocko Willink?

  What is it about then? About everything.

• 2:56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, about life.

• 2:56:36Jocko Willink?

  Relaxed version. Like you're going to get relaxed fit jeans if your jeans were, um,

• 2:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Constrictive.

• 2:56:44Speaker 02

  I think those skinny jeans.

• 2:56:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you can get relaxed fit.

• 2:56:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:56:49Jocko Willink?

  This is the relaxed fit podcast.

• 2:56:51Speaker 02

  Oh, John, Jocko Podcast. So Jocko Podcast is skinny jeans and grounded is relaxed fit. But I thought that's what you're saying.

• 2:56:58Jocko Willink?

  No, not at all.

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  Are you sure? Is that what you're saying? That's what you're saying, huh? Most certainly not.

• 2:57:05Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Podcast is the, is the fatigues, is the uniform. All right? Back off. You almost caught me right there. Nicely done. And we also have the Warrior Kid Podcast. We got four new episodes are out. So check that out. And then there's Warrior Soap, IrishOaksRanch.com, Warrior Kid Soap, Aiden on a farm. And you know what he learned on a farm? He learned that he needed to make soaps that he could stay clean.

• 2:57:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good. Anyway, YouTube. If you want to know what Dave Berke looks like, we have a YouTube channel, video version of this podcast. And yes, there are excerpts, just in case you don't want to, you know, necessarily, or I don't want to say if you don't want to sit through the three, four, sometimes five, sometimes five and a half hours of, you know, whatever we're talking about. I'm not saying that. I'm saying sometimes, you know, maybe we got other stuff to do that day. That's all I'm saying. So maybe you can watch some excerpts on YouTube channel. That's what I'm saying.

• 2:58:11Jocko Willink?

  Also, you can get Psychological Warfare, which is an album, which will help you through moments of weakness. Also, you can get FlipsideCanvas.com, Dakota Meyer. From Podcast 115, he has a company where, an American company, American made, graphic representations of the path and other cool looking stuff. So you can check that out. Got some books. We've been reviewing Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. Dave Berke was the fir-, one of the first people, actually, I think you might have been the first person to read some semblance of it. I can see by your reactions today, it's approved.

• 2:58:53Speaker 02

  Approved.

• 2:58:54Jocko Willink?

  And then there's the Way of the Warrior Kid series, Way of the Warrior Kid one, two, and three. Those are all, you know what? You can get your kids on the path right now. You can point them on the path. You're not going to impose discipline. You don't even have to. It will work for you. Get your kids, get your nephew, your niece, some random kid down the street, get those kids the Warrior Kid books. It's, the feedback that I get of the impact that it's having is beyond comprehension. It's awesome. And you can help a kid, you can help a kid so much. Get them those books. If you've got a little kid, get a Mikey and the Dragons, so that when the entire world is something to be afraid of, they learn how

• 2:59:38Jocko Willink?

  to overcome fear. And then we've got Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, which are the books that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin about leadership. Some of the principles that we talked about today, these are the fundamental versions of those. The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. For the adult that needs to be on the path, that needs the reminder, get that. And then there's Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy, where we take all these things that we talk about, and we align leaders inside of organizations to work together and win. Go to echelonfront.com for details

• 3:00:21Jocko Willink?

  on that. EF Online, what about EF Online, Dave?

• 3:00:26Dave Berke?

  One of the most common questions we get with those companies we're working with is, what do we do when we're not with them? How do we continue to do this? It's really the question is, how do we get reps? Leadership is a skill. It requires reps after reps after reps. And one of the best ways is EF Online, because you can get all the reps you want with you and your team.

• 3:00:47Jocko Willink?

  EFonline.com, it is.

• 3:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Online training, which sounds weak. I need to come up with a better name for it. Right? But it is not weak. When you do it, I thought it was going to be weak when we first came up with the idea. It was like, okay, well, we'll just kind of suffer through some weak technology and no, it's not. It's totally legit. It's interactive. You actually have to answer questions. You have to actually make decisions. So efonline.com, we got the muster, leadership seminars, events, conventions, that the entire Echelon Front team executes. Go to extreme ownership.com for details. Muster 2020, this is where we're going to be. We are going to be in Orlando.

• 3:01:34Jocko Willink?

  We are going to be in Dallas and we are going to be in Phoenix, Arizona. So if you want to come to one of those musters, that's what we're doing. There's only three a year. We're not going to go to whatever random town you live in. You're going to have to come to us because we're not a rock band and we're not on tour. I am going on a tour.

• 3:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, yes, you are.

• 3:01:54Jocko Willink?

  And, and then we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. Dave, EF Overwatch and EF Legion, what do you think?

• 3:02:03Dave Berke?

  Dude, what, what Mike Sorrelli is doing with that, and I told you about a common question we get. Those other common question is, hey, I want more people in my organization that are going to be on the path and in the game. What can I do to do that? And for your, if you're in the military, looking for a way to do something that contributes every bit as much as it did in uniform, there's a way to do that. There are companies out there that need people like you right now. They need you. And for the companies that don't know where those people are, they actually all intersect in the same place. They intersect right there at, at, at what Mike's really built with.

• 3:02:40Dave Berke?

  With Overwatch and Legion is where those people are to connect the people that need them, the people where they want to be. It is unreal how much that is exploding in recognition, how important that is, man. It's awesome.

• 3:02:51Jocko Willink?

  And we're doing some things with EF Legion to EF Legion, if you're a vet or you're in right now and you think you're ever going to have some other kind of job or you're ever going to get out of the military, which you are, I hate to tell you, go to EFLegion.com right now and get yourself enrolled in the system. We're offering, we're going to be offering webinars on how to like make that transition. You're going to have, you're going to be able to, other companies are going to be able to look at you as a candidate. They're going to be able to see you and you're going to be able to see what they're looking for. So go to EFLegion.com for that.

• 3:03:24Dave Berke?

  So legit.

• 3:03:26Jocko Willink?

  And if you still want to hear from us after however many hours we've been talking, then we are all available on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on that face.

• 3:03:44Jocko Willink?

  Dave is at David R Burke, Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all those military folks out there that are holding the line currently, and when I say currently, I mean right now, right this moment in time, there are folks out there holding the line and protecting freedom and democracy for us. So to all of you right now, thank you for what you're doing. Same thing here at home. We got police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all those first responders, same thing, holding

• 3:04:26Jocko Willink?

  the line, protecting us here on the home front. And last thing, to everybody.

• 3:04:38Jocko Willink?

  This is a book about leadership. And guess what? Everyone is a leader. You're leading your team. You're leading your family. You're leading your friends. That's what you're doing. So pay attention to what you're doing. Get the right frame of mind.

• 3:05:00Jocko Willink?

  And then take that frame of mind and go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Dave Berke and Echo and Jocko. Out.