142: Face The Unforgiving World. "Men Against Fire", by S.L.A. Marshall

0:00:00 – Opening 0:27:36 - Men Against Fire, by SLA Marshall 2:50:47 – Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:54:09 – Support. 3:19:08 – 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 142 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  S.L.A. Marshall could be a braggart of the first order. "I could write on toilet paper with a crayon and sell it," was a routine boast. But his favorite claim to fame was at first the most puzzling to me and years later, the most significant in terms of unraveling the hustler and the phony that he was and how he was nonetheless able to make such a mark on the U.S. Army. Slam regularly brought up the fact that the Army had made him a general despite his never having attended even one military school and that he was the only general in the Army to have this distinction. He neglected to say and never would have had I not followed it up out of sheer curiosity

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  that he'd gotten his star not in the regular Army but in the reserves. Meanwhile, with no reason not to believe him, I accepted Slam's story of World War I, his experiences as an infantryman in all the major campaigns, his battlefield commission to become the youngest second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the war, the romantic tale he spun of Armistice Day when he saw in the end of the war, sharing his canteens with his brigade commander in the trenches. With no reason not to believe him, I accepted Slam's tales of World War II too, his participation in the fighting in the Pacific as well as his service in Europe, which had him in the front line of the Normandy Invasion.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  It would be many, many, many years in which Slam repeated the stories endlessly, in which his reputation was only further bolstered as one or the other appeared in everything from current biography 1953 to the obituaries upon his death in 1977 and in his autobiography published two years later before I would discover it was all a lie.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  Slam had been an enlisted man with the 315th Engineers 90th Infantry Division during World War I and spent his time not fighting as an infantryman but repairing French roads until just before the wars end. He had not been battlefield commissioned and he wasn't anywhere near the trenches on 11 November 1918 in being instead at the Army France-based Officer Candidate School, then called Infantry Candidate School. The self-proclaimed youngest lieutenant in World War I, who in fact never served an officer in any outfit, regular or reserve in any capacity ever, was not commissioned

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  until April 1919, long after the last angry shots were fired. According to his service record, Slam saw no infantry combat in World War II either, although he was awarded a CIB for the Marshall Islands Campaign while serving on the DA staff. And far from being on the ground from the earliest hours of the 6 June 1944 Normandy Invasion, Slam didn't even arrive in the European Theater until July. And then it was as a staff officer/historian reconstructing the operation. And while Slam would speak with pride of being the only American soldier to serve in all

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  four of America's great wars in the 20th century, it was a claim more than a little deceptive. His Korean War experience covered exactly three months, December of 1950 to February 1951, when he was recalled from the Reserve to active duty as a historian/operations analyst for the 8th Army, a stint for his country that produced "The River and the Gauntlet" for himself. And his service in Vietnam was undertaken as a six-year retired Reserve General and a 40-year experienced journalist. Slam's job when he wasn't wearing a khaki, looking for a story on the Army's tab.

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  A historian as careless with his own history as SLA Marshall was could hardly be a careful historian, and Marshall proved the rule. Veterans of many of the actions he documented in his books have complained bitterly over the years of the inaccuracy or blatant bias.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  With it all though, the truth was that Slam was a fallen and irrevocably smashed idol in my eyes. He knew I'd grown away from him throughout our time together, but it was not something to discuss. I cherished my career too much to risk getting on his bad side, and I was opportunistic enough to see the value of my staying on the good side. But there must have been many like me, whose silence in the face of Slam's power only added to it, and gave credence to his dubious expertise, who allowed him to have an absurd amount of influence, which fed his ego and lined his purse, and for years, did an incalculable horrific disservice to the Army, the thing he

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  professed to love above all, not to mention to the nation and to the men who fought and died in Vietnam. When General Johnson had warned me, "Take care with Slam, he is the Army's powerful friend, but he can be a treacherous enemy." I had not understood what he meant. But when I finally did, I understood too, that the Chief of Staff had gotten it backwards. The reality was that Slam Marshall was the Army's powerful enemy, because he was its most treacherous friend. And if he were alive today, perhaps even more than the Vietnam-era generals who determinately maintained

• 5:46Jocko Willink?

  "We won the war, we lost in their hands," SLA Marshall would have plenty to answer for.

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  That, right there, is a section from my favorite book about face by Colonel David Hackworth, and he's talking about his experience with a guy by the name of S.L.A. Marshall, otherwise known as Slam, SLA Marshall, and that's a pretty devastating opening. That's a pretty devastating, that's a pretty devastating opening. You can hear what his career was, so there's a lot of negativity around S.L.A. Marshall. And for me, coming from Hackworth, that's basically all I need to hear. That's all I need to hear, is when Hackworth, you know, goes, and, and, so Hackworth worked with him and did a tour in Vietnam with him, they were going around documenting things,

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  and he got to know him, and at first, he kind of idolized him, and I'll talk about that a little

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  But that and that's one of the things that Hack mentions in About Face was that he had this huge impact on the army and and Hack says that he used to read his books over and over again and and so it's kind of a weird dichotomy there is that Hack got information from some of S L A Marshall's famous books that he wrote about combat but then and and but then he turned out to not have told the truth so one of the books that he talks about that he read a bunch is a book called Men Against Fire and it's based on his interviews

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  and reporting on World War II and that book made some claims and some of the claims that the book made are just patently untrue just lie they're just not true and the biggest of the lies is that is that right to call it a lie the biggest of the claims maybe it's a lie the biggest of the untruths we'll call it that the biggest of the untruths revolves around this notion that S L A Marshall presents that in combat only about 15% of the soldiers on the battlefield in combat actually fires a weapons at all 15% now that's a really strange

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  thing to say now and and knowing what I know now I think he may have done that for a couple of reasons and I'm not making excuses I'm saying this is why I think he would do that because there's no excuse for doing this the first is I think he wanted to have a theory or hypotheses that was like kind of shocking and and would gain him some publicity right that's a shocking thing when you hear hey in combat only 15% of people fire their weapons right you're you're going what are you talking about that's crazy so I think he wanted to have something to discuss that would that would bring him out to the limelight you know the shocking claim and second I think he saw that there was an actual problem

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  right that maybe not as many people shot their weapons in combat as should and he wanted to fix that problem so

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  Was it 85% of the people that weren't shooting the weapon? No, but maybe the number was a decent percentage that that didn't shoot or could have shot more. Is that possible? Yeah, I could say that that's possible. Maybe not as many people were not as many people were shooting as you would have liked.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  So that's that's why I think he got focused on that particular subject. And I think the normal human life things, right? I think he had a big ego, which actually I don't think he did. He had a big ego. He was insecure. I think he made up some of these other stories, which which are horrible to make up stories about your combat experiences. Is a big mistake. I think this is, you know, in many ways, this is like one of the first documented cases of stolen valor. Right? And obviously I don't like stolen valor. So there's a lot of negativity around S L A Marshall. And I have to be careful because I it's it's very easy for me to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Right? And when you, you know, okay, so I'm here to learn.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  Right? And despite these very, very significant character shortfalls, here's the facts. The books that he wrote guided the military and had a significant impact on military leaders for many years, including Hackworth, including Hackworth. So eventually I had to look and see what is in these books? And what, if anything, I could learn from the books? And I think from my perspective, okay, so so he did massive amounts of interviews with people. And he did have, you know, he was, okay, he was an N D day.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  He was there a month later interviewing people, finding out what happened. So we talked to a lot of people. And I think his perspective and same thing with World War One, he wasn't there, but he was close to it. And he talked to a lot of people and then he spent his time in the Pacific Theater. He spent time in, so he had perspective. It's not the perspective that he claimed to have. And if he would have been smart and just said, look, I wasn't on the front lines, but I talked to a lot of people. I have, I was in the military, I have a good perspective. Here's what I've learned. If you would have said that, it would have been fine. Unfortunately, he didn't say that.

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater? The, the, the, my initial like gut reaction is yes, liar, right?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Right? Hey, no, I'm not gonna listen to this guy.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  But I had to think about it. If this book influenced the military so much, and this book in particular, the book is, is Men Against Fire is the big book that he wrote. I, I say the big book. It's the book that he wrote after World War II. I think it came out in 1947. And it's, it had a big influence. And I can tell you that it had a big influence. It had a big influence, and this is what's funny. It had a big influence because despite, so I guess the facts about his career came out after he died. He died in 1977 and the facts came out some years after that, right? I would hear quotes from S.L.A. Marshall all the time when I was in. This guy is a known liar.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  Again, maybe that's a harsh word, but he did not tell the truth. And you know, when it comes to like making up what you did in combat, you kind of, you kind of earn yourself the, the, the name liar. So the guy lied. And yet I would hear quotes from what he said and what he taught and what he thought.

• 12:51Jocko Willink?

  And a lot of it made sense, right? So, okay, is it true that even a broken clock is right twice a day? That's, that's still a pretty small percentage, but I'd hear quotes from, from S.L.A. Marshall that were correct, and it wasn't a small number of quotes. And so I think despite his ego, despite his lying, he had a lot of good. He had gathered a lot of good information and talked to enough people that he actually started to make sense and he saw people in multiple different wars. Again, did he see it to the degree that he claimed to? No. But, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of military historians that were never in any kind of combat whatsoever, that were never even in the military.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's plenty of very respected. I've got books in the queue. And I don't know if I'll ever cover them, but I've got books in the queue that are great books about war and about the military that were written by people that were never in the military. There's military theorists that were never in the military that I have a great deal of respect for. So.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  Then that they say sensible things. So, so is there a question of character? Yes. Are we gonna throw the baby out with the bathwater? I'm gonna try not to. I'm gonna try and see what we can learn. And I think from when I read um this book, and I read this book a long time ago and I don't know.

• 14:11Jocko Willink?

  Anyways, I got stuff out of it. And I think there's actually, I'm gonna tell you, I think there's actually a lot to get out of this book. And if nothing else, it reflects and reinforces some lessons and brings some other ones, paints them a little bit more clearly. So, without further ado, and I found myself as I was, as I was reviewing this book again, like about halfway through it, I totally forgot that it was this guy that I consider a liar, right? I got over that, right? Cause I'm thinking, yeah, that makes sense. Yes, that does that. And he's pulling in quotes from military leaders and.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's.

• 14:49Jocko Willink?

  Are you with me? I mean, does it make sense?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  It makes hundred percent sense. Cause remember back in the day, remember Milli Vanilli? Remember that? There was that group.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, the two guys.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so everyone was.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  They were liars.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, in that way, yeah. So it wasn't them singing and all this stuff, as it turns out, as it turns out. But when they were, you know, on the radio and stuff, everyone liked that, you know, like, you know, blame it on the rain or whatever.

• 15:11Jocko Willink?

  Did they, uh, did they recover? They did not recover from their situation?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Negative.

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  And S L A Marshall was dead.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, one of the guys committed suicide in Milli Vanilli. It was like, you know, it got heavy, but nonetheless, the point is, it's like, yeah, it's not them singing it. You know, they're liars or whatever, but the songs were kinda dope. That's the thing. So, you know, same deal. So I get it.

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  Marshall, Milli Vanilli.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, same thing.

• 15:36Jocko Willink?

  Same, same situation.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  I'm saying if you put on one of the Milli Vanilli songs right now, it'll bring you right back, you know, to the dance or whatever. And, you know, it's still good. It's good. So you kinda lose that part of it.

• 15:47Jocko Willink?

  The guys that actually sang it? Or why don't you teach those two guys how to sing? Is that hard to sing?

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, so one time, not to go too deep into it, but they tried.

• 15:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause we could just do a podcast about Milli Vanilli up in here.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  They went into it and they were like, hey, we think you could, cause they messed up on stage, right? The, the, the.

• 16:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's how they got busted?

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Skipped, yeah. And, well, and so they're like, oh my God, they panicked, they ran off stage, all this stuff. They could have just been like, yeah, we were lip syncing for that show. But then, I forget how they handled it, but then people were like, hey.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take the guy to kill himself?

• 16:19Speaker 01

  Oh, a long time, like years, you know, they got exposed and all this stuff, but he was just, and so they're like, they're like, no, we'll prove it, you know? And then, so the people came in and listened to him like actually singing the thing. It was like, oh my God, not even close. These guys can't even sing.

• 16:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's, you, you gotta tell the truth about what's going on, man.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. And that's the thing, like, just like I said, like, why not just get, here, the, the people who really sang those songs, they were older people. They were like old, like fifties or something like that, like, so they didn't have the pop culture kind of feel, so they were less marketable in that way.

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  Did they just hire a couple, like, vocalists? I mean, how bad can those guys sing?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Terrible. Like, the real guys? Oh, man. Yeah, you can watch, watch the little documentary thing, whatever, and he's like, and they have thick German accents, too. That's the thing, too. Yeah, they're from Germany. So it's like, it's a, it's night and day. They're different. And, but the real people who sang it, they're like, like I said, like, old, you know, funky, like, kind of jazz type people, um, from what I remember. They're just less marketable. But just like I said, sure, they're less marketable, but man, they're putting out some pretty cool songs. I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know. The marketing, I think that's a big part of it. I don't know, man, but I'm, you are right.

• 17:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's weird. It's also because the stuff that, the stuff that S.L.A. Marshall says in this book, he, he's making, he's making statements that they stand on their own. You don't need, you, you know, to be able to say, look, I was here, so therefore what I'm saying, you should listen to. Like, no, the, the, the value of what you're saying should stand on its own. You don't need to be, you don't need to be, uh, have some certain experience. You know, it's like Leif and I talk about. And I would say, you can't, if you're trying to prove a tactic to someone,

• 18:07Jocko Willink?

  like, if I say, hey, when you get in this situation, here's what you should do. I shouldn't say, because this is how we did it when I was in Baghdad, or when I was in Ramadi, or when, whatever. Or when I was in Nam, like, like, no, here's the tactic. And, and look at how it performs. Go and do a trial run. Go and do some force on force training. You'll see that the tactic works. And S.L.A. Marshall, smart guy, great writer. Got, you know, could have said, hey, here's these tactics that I learned from these other people that just got out of it. And that wasn't good. That's a little ego thing, isn't it? Just wasn't good enough for him.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Didn't you guys have a name for that? When some, someone would bust that out?

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wee Weeb. Wee Weeb, which is when I was in Baghdad.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:47Jocko Willink?

  When I was in Baghdad, like, hey, when I was in Baghdad, we did it like this.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  And you can't stand, you can't stand on that, right? Is it good to have experience and say, hey, look, when I was in Baghdad, this is how we did it. Perhaps we should try it this way. That's one thing. But to say, when I was in Baghdad, this is how we did it. So that's how is the best way to do it, which is just not true. It's not true. Things evolve. The, the fundamental principles of combat leadership don't change, but the tactics that you use can definitely, you have to modify your tactics. The enemy's going to modify their tactics, so you have to adjust as well. And so to rely on your personal experience as how you bolster your arguments is wrong. It's, it's a, it's an additive, right? It's, it's good to say, hey, look, I've done this before.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  And this is a good way. I, I remember I had a situation where I was teaching how to go over the beach with boats, right? And I brought up some things and I said, hey, look, I've done, and I, I had happened to have done multiple deployments on a ship. And when you're on a ship, you go over the beach a lot. And going over the beach is a complicated operation. I don't care. There's no easy way to do it, man. You got here that's going to flood out and you got waves, you got tide, you got surf, you got sand, you got saltwater. It's a nightmare. And that's one of the things that, that makes the seals good is that we have to do this. So when you go, when you insert any other way, it's freaking easy.

• 20:11Jocko Willink?

  Like you step off a helicopter, everything's fine. You see, you know, you, you, you, uh, you get dropped out of a vehicle, everything's fine. You come over the beach, everything is a disaster. There's salt everywhere. There's water everywhere. Everything's flooded and broken and you're freezing cold. It just sucks. And that's, that's our normal mode of operation is right there. So everything else seems easy. But I had a guy that was saying, don't, uh, don't ever bring the boats in. And I totally disagreed with that. It was like, well.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  You have to think about what you're gonna do is basically what I'm saying. You have to think about what you're gonna do. If you can avoid, if the boats come in and they flip, it's a real problem. Right? It's a real problem. If there's surf, it's a real problem. And you need to have like elements ready to just handle the boats. Cause if something goes wrong. So you can't, you, you have to really think about what you're doing. And anyways.

• 21:09Jocko Willink?

  I almost fell back on like, look, I've done this. I've done over the beach over and over again. I know the deal. It's like, no, no, actually, cause the deal is many times when you look at the surf and you, you go, you know what? We need to swim in. It's gonna suck, but we need to swim in because risking the boats going through and it's, there's two, there's two things that are pulling at you. The waves are big, right? You're thinking, hey, we better get the boats to bring us in. That's actually counterintuitive because the waves are big, man. You flip a boat over and you got, it's a disaster. It's a disaster. So anyways, I almost relied on the hey. This is the way we did it and I've done this a bunch and it's like, no, that's not merit. You have to be able to explain, okay, here's what can happen. Here's the problems and here's, and there's problems for both of us.

• 21:53Jocko Willink?

  There's times we swim in, there's times we don't, but you have to understand why you're making that decision. You can't just blanket a decision. Cause it gets sketchy. Alright, anyways. This is a big introduction to SLA Marshall. Here we go. I gotta say one more thing, bro. And, and you know, Leif and I, we've written two books about our experiences. They're not, they're the leadership books, but you know, we make it very clear that like, hey, this is our memory to the best of our ability. But there's some things that you just don't. You, if you don't know something, you shouldn't make a claim. But there's something like you know, if you were participating in D-Day. You don't mess up that fact. Like for me to be like, hey, I, oh yeah, I was on that mission.

• 22:37Jocko Willink?

  And someone to be like, oh, well, actually you weren't. I mean, like, well. When was it and well, I did whatever I was on hundred operations. Oh, I don't know if it's on that one or that well, you know, you know, like it's understood, right? People make mistakes, people, your memory, it fades with memory. I think Leif and I, I mean, we in both the intros to Extreme Ownership and Dichotomy Leadership, we spelled out, you know, this is to the best of our memory. This is a historical document. And we, you know, at some point, I'm sure we'll go back and and actually get the dates and explain every single thing that happened by date and who was there and what experiences took place. Like, yeah, that would be good to have. And especially now, it's probably it's all unclassified now because it's been a long time.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  But the the kind of errors that he's making in are like, I was at D-Day. Or I was in the trenches with my brigade commander on the day that World War One ended.

• 23:34Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's not a small, like, your memory is not going to forget that, right? It's just not going to happen. So, tell the truth. And what sucks is, this is what sucks. If you don't tell the truth,

• 23:48Jocko Willink?

  you discredit everything that you've said that actually is truthful. That's the problem with this book. That's the problem with this book. Everything that it basically, you could take this book and throw it in the garbage can and no one could really argue with you. Oh, that guy lied about a bunch of stuff. Okay, well, throw it in the garbage can. I get it.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  And if it wasn't for the fact that Hack actually had learned a ton from this book, I would be like, well, we'll throw it in the garbage. But if he learned from it and then used what he learned from it to implement in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, it's like, okay, you know what? I'm going to pay attention to it.

• 24:23Jocko Willink?

  That's a rough die. This is a rough die. It took me a long time to decide to cover this book, actually.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Makes sense, though. Totally makes sense.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  Wait, makes sense that it took a long time or it makes sense that we're here right now with book in hand?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Both.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  I mean, more the long time thing. Of course, yeah, you got to consider, just like that one, there's like a reporter, like a, like a news reporter who like said he was in a helicopter and it got took fire and all this stuff.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  Hillary Clinton.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  Said that she took sniper fire coming.

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Right, but there was a reporter that did that, too.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  And it was like a legit reporter. And then he said, like, he did took all this stuff. And then he was like, well, I was in the helicopter. Like, two, two helicopters behind and I saw it, you know, it's, ah, you know, meanwhile, he has some good stuff.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  He shouldn't have said that, you know? Just like I was saying, you don't have to say all that.

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's something else that happens. This catches people. When it comes to storytelling, okay, I'm gonna explain this. If I'm telling you a story about something taking place.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not a great storyteller. I want you to feel how I felt. So if I say to you, like, let's say I got a mortar that exploded fifty yards from me. Fifty yards, I'm pretty safe. Could I get fragged? Sure, I could get fragged, but I'm pretty safe. It's still pretty shocking. Whoa, it's loud, boom. And when that first mortar hits, you're like, oh, wait, is another mortar gonna hit me? What's going on?

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, when I tell you, hey, a mortar hit and it hit fifty meters from me. I'm thinking, well, that doesn't really convey how I felt at that moment. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna cut that down a little bit. I had this mortar hit ten meters from me. And now you're thinking, oh dang, like even you, I can see it on your face. You get it now. So in order for me to try and convey the emotions that I actually felt, people start to adjust. And you gotta be careful of that. I don't think they're doing it intentionally, you know? I always, I just put myself in check, like, okay. I need to tell a good story, but I need to keep the facts straight.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:28Jocko Willink?

  Right? Sketchy.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the thing, the facts. So there's a difference between saying, hey, this was the biggest explosion you'd ever seen in your life. You know, like saying that is different than like, this explosion was literally, you know, two hundred feet in the air or something like this.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, you could say, oh, this was a four hundred pounds worth of TNT.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't make those factual.

• 26:49Jocko Willink?

  You can't make those factual, but hey, something hits fifty meters from you and you've never been mortared before? That will, that is a scary thing.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  It's a scary thing.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Do a metaphor, though.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying?

• 27:01Jocko Willink?

  But here's what's, here's what's cool, or here's what you need to, here's what I always need to remember. When I tell you I got a mortar that landed fifty meters, most people are like, damn, that's scary enough. I don't need to make it more scary.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  Let's just keep it real.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you even mentioned the smoke trail behind the mortar when you see it going up. To me, that's scary.

• 27:20Jocko Willink?

  That's scary.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't care how many meters away.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  It's not really smoke, it's a, it's like little sparks, like a sparkler.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Oh, like a trail.

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Shing, that's what it sounds like, too.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  That even sounds scary, by the way.

• 27:32Jocko Willink?

  So, um, here we end up, we end up with S L A Marshall's book, lots to learn from it. And. Yeah, so let's get into it. We'll, we'll, we'll

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  try and take it for what it's worth.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  And I believe you're gonna find, as I was reviewing this book, I'm like, yeah, there's so much good information in here.

• 27:55Jocko Willink?

  Here we go to the book. "In the early years of World War II, it was the common practice of public spokesmen in the United States to magnify the role of the machine in war, while minimizing the importance of large forces of well-trained foot soldiers."

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  Hey, World War II, we're just gonna win this thing with all these big machines we're, we're, we're creating. "Once the total contest between national societies is predicated, it becomes impossible to write off the ultimate clash between the masses of men who fight on foot. They are the body of the national defense. There is no other way out.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  The society which looks for an easier way is building its hope on sand."

• 28:43Jocko Willink?

  See, I'm already getting kinda fired up.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Dig it.

• 28:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's rea- that's real.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  Improvisation is the natural order of warfare. "The perfect formulas will continue to be found only on charts."

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  That's good. What's the quote that you clipped out of Dave Burke saying?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good deal, Dave. Saying, he said it at the muster, "It's not a spreadsheet."

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, this isn't a spreadsheet anymore.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  This isn't a spreadsheet anymore. And that, that's kind of what I, that, that made me think of that. Because leadership is not a spreadsheet. It's not a spreadsheet, it's not a perfect thing that you can just put out on a spreadsheet and okay, here's the decision we're gonna make. Doesn't work that way. Alright, here we go. Getting back to the book. "Since more than a century ago, when the rifle bullet began its reign over the battlefield and soldiers slowly became aware that the day of close order formations in combat was forever gone, all military thinkers have pondered the need of a new discipline. It has been generally realized that fashioning the machine to man's use in battle was but half of the problem. The other half was conditioning man to the machine."

• 29:57Jocko Willink?

  The mechanisms of the new warfare do not set their own efficiency rate in battle. They are ever at the mercy of training methods which will stimulate the soldier to express his intelligence and spirit. The philosophy of discipline has adjusted to changing conditions. So think about this, talking about discipline. The philosophy of discipline has adjusted to changing conditions. As more and more impact has gone into the hitting power of weapons necessitating ever widening deployments of the forces of battle. Key part, the quality of the initiative in the individual has become the most praised of the military virtues.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  So as we got these weapons that can shoot and kill more people at greater distances, people got more spread out. The more spread out people got, the more it becomes important that you have initiative.

• 30:52Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. It has been readily seen that the prevailing tactical conditions increase the problem of unit coherence in combat. This, the only offset, so people are more spread out. The only offset for this difficulty was to train for a higher degree of individual courage, comprehension of the situation, and self-starting character in the soldier. So the more spread out people get, the more you have to rely on these individual soldiers to make the right decisions out there to show initiative. That becomes the new discipline.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  This is decentralized command. By the way, from this realization have come new concepts of discipline which have altered nearly all the major aspects of life and of human association within Western armies. We have continued to grapple with the problem of how to free the mind of man. How to enlarge his appreciation of his personal worth as a unit in the battle. How to stimulate him to express his individual power within limits which are good, which are for the good of all.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  How do we free the mind? How do we? And notice this is a little dichotomy here. Free the mind to express individual power. But here's the dichotomy. Within limits, which are for the good of all. So you can't just be doing what's good for you. You can't just express your, be free your mind and do whatever you think is right for your own purpose. You need to do it for everyone, the good for all.

• 32:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. It is universally recognized that as the means of war change, so must the intelligence of man be quick and keep pace with the changes. Our weakness lies in this, that we have never got down to an exact definition of what we are seeking. Failing that, we fall short in our attempt to formulate in training how best to obtain it. And our philosophy of discipline falters at the vital point of its practical tactical application. I say that it is a simple thing. What we need in battle is more and better fire. What we need to seek in training are any and all means by which we can increase the ratio of effective fire when we have to go to war.

• 33:04Jocko Willink?

  The discipline, training methods, and the personal policies of our forces should all be regulated to conform with this one fundamental need. Now. You can see what he's getting at here. This is his big statement. This is his big hypotheses. So it's, it's actually, he says, I say it's a simple thing. We, what we need in battle is more and better fire. That's his big statement. I don't agree with that. Like there's other things, there's a lot of other things going on, leadership. I think actually the things that he talked about prior to this are more important than fire. Decentralized command and making people take initiative and having people step up and do the right thing for the entire team. But with a free mind, making these things happen. And for some reason, he just bypasses all that super important stuff. It says, hey, no, the most important thing we need is more and better fire.

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  Fire is important. Hell, yes. Fire is important. That's why I love machine gunners. It's all my machine gunners out there. God bless you. You lay down the fire. To all the supporting fire elements out there. Artillery, close air, love you. Thank you. We need more fire. I agree with that. But that's not, that's not the, it's not the thing that we narrow everything down to, which is his hypothesis. So. Lot of good information there. He narrows it down to a different direction. Don't agree with it. And actually, I'll go ahead and say, not true. It's all these factors that we need to improve. Fire is not the sole thing. Fire is absolutely important. Fire wins, firefight, absolutely. Fire maneuver.

• 34:36Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move wins firefight. It helps. So fire helps win firefight. It doesn't win on its own.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter is called on future war. He says, "The battlefield is the epitome of war. All else in war, when war is perfectly conducted, exists but to serve the forces of the battlefield and to assure final success on the field. It is on the battlefield that the issues of war are decided." Check.

• 35:05Jocko Willink?

  Concur. "It should be noted that all military power is dependent on civil will." "It is the nation and not the army which makes war." So I've talked about that before. The will. You gotta have the will. If you don't have the will as a nation, you're not gonna win. And I've talked about it before, the wills you gotta have are the wills to kill and the will to die, because that's what war is. It's killing and dying. And if you don't have those, if you don't have the will to do those two things, you should not be entering war. Because the outcome is not gonna be good.

• 35:43Jocko Willink?

  "Every improvement in weapon power is aimed at lessening the danger on one side by increasing it on the other. Consequently, every improvement in weapons is eventually met by a counter improvement."

• 35:56Jocko Willink?

  That's jujitsu, right? You got the counter. Come up with a new move, guess what? Somebody's gonna come up with a move to counter it. That's always happening with weapons. I like this little line right here. "Decision in war is a clinching act." "It is the action which finally delivers the victory surely into one's hands." Decision. Decisiveness. Making the call. That's what you need to do.

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter, man on the battlefield.

• 36:28Jocko Willink?

  On the battlefield, the real enemy is fear and not the bayonet or bullet. All means of union of power demand union of knowledge. That's a quote from Robert Jackson. And he continues here, "It is of the battlefield that I speak in saying that the mind of the infantry soldier should be conditioned to an understanding of its reality through all stages of his training." And, and that's one of the reasons why I heard so many quotes about S.L.A. Marshall is while we were getting trained, people would refer back to S.L.A. Marshall. And when I ran training, I, I knew I had to bring it up sometimes because I'd say, "Look, here's what's going on. We need to think about this." And I'll get to some of those points later. But training, his methodology, when he wrote this book, part of the focus is like, "Hey,

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  we need to train people differently." And, and what he says about training is 100% valid. 100% valid.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "He needs to be taught the nature of the field as it is in war, and as he may experience it someday. For if he does not acquire a soldier's view of the field, his image of it will be formed from the reading of novels or the romance written by war correspondents," of which he was one, by the way, "or from the viewing of, or, or from viewing the battlefield as it is imagined to be by Hollywood. One of the purposes of training should be to remove these false ideas of battle from his mind." Totally agree. Absolutely. "To give the soldier a correct concept of battle is a far different thing from encouraging him to think about war." This is, so think about what I just said. "To give the soldier

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  a correct concept of battle is a far different thing from encouraging him to think about war. The latter is too vast a canvas. It includes too much detail, which is confusing to his mind and immaterial to his personal problem." He's like, "Don't think about this big picture. You need to think about what's happening." We have surpassed all other armies and outstripped common sense in our effort to teach man something about war. He's counseled about wars causes, which is a good thing on which those rare occasions when he is, when the instruction is in qualified hands. He's told about how the soldiers and sailors of other nations observe courtesy and foster tradition. He is even bored by lectures on the strategy and logistics of high command.

• 38:44Jocko Willink?

  But he does not get what he requires most, the simple details of common human experience on the field of battle. As a result, he goes to the supremely testing experience of his lifetime as almost a total stranger. So you learn all the, you know what? Actually, when Leif took over the junior officers course coming out of BUDS, it was very focused on the big picture stuff. And it wasn't helping these guys being prepared to be in a SEAL platoon. And Leif was like, no, I gotta change this. You can still talk about the stuff and it's important to, you don't throw it out. But you gotta teach people what the human experience on the battlefield is.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  And, and that's what Leif tried to do. And that's what I tried to do when I took over training and, and my training was further along when I took it over, you know, we were already moving in that direction. Or it already reflected that. But a lot of the stuff that Leif was being taught in Leif's course was not

• 39:44Jocko Willink?

  the human experience on the field of battle. Leif tried to get that in there and he did a good job of it. Back to the book, the price for failure. So the, so you're talking about to train these people correctly. The price for failure is paid all up and down the line. Men go into action the first time, haltingly and gropingly as if they were lost at night in the deep woods. Lives are wasted unnecessarily. Time is lost. Ground that might be taken is overlooked. It is not necessary that these misfortunes befall organizations simply because they are new to battle. It is possible that the infantry soldier can be trained to anticipate fully the true conditions of the battlefield.

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  It is possible that units can be schooled to take full and prompt action against disu-, against the disunifying effect of these conditions. presence but the but is the uncontrolled fear that is the enemy of successful operation and the control of fear depends upon the extent to which all dangers and distractions may be correctly anticipated and therefore understood you gotta simulate battle that's what you gotta do and they did a great job when I was going through my workups they did a great job of doing that when I took over and was running training we brought it even to the next level it was freaking mayhem out there and I had many people and we're gonna have some guys that are retiring in the future that are coming on the podcast that went through my workups they will tell you

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  being an actual combat was easier it was easier and that's what my goal was we want this training to be so chaotic and what you think about this right here when you think about law enforcement training should be the same way you want these guys completely tested you want it to be harder than anybody they ever have to deal with you want the situation to be more stressful than they're gonna deal with in real life and that's how you get them prepared

• 41:29Jocko Willink?

  next the heart of the matter is to relate to man is to relate the man to his fellow soldier as he will find him on the field of combat to condition him to human nature as he will learn to depend on it when the ground offers him no comfort and weapons fail he talks a lot about human nature I talk a lot about human nature

• 41:52Speaker 01

  when you were when you'd hear about this this guy or this did you know that he was a faker back then

• 42:00Jocko Willink?

  it was yes but it was

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  you know how there's two sides to every story yeah it seemed like to me until I read about face and I was like okay there's the actual side there's the actual side is because you know Hackworth said look this is what he actually did here's his military records so but up until I read about face it was kind of like oh there's some weird stuff about his career but you know yeah kind of what is it gray area

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  But not everyone, some people would talk about him like he was the man without any demerits against him. Without any question against him.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Right, which kinda adds to the little hodgepodge opinions.

• 42:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that was, that was a crazy thing. I mean, when Hackworth was just talking about opening that I read, this is something that is just, when you read it, you go, oh, God. So, he's saying that, Hackworth is saying that, basically, he, he didn't want to bring up the fact, he stayed on his good side, right? Hey, he valued his career, um, Slam had a lot of power, so he's just gonna stay on his good side. And then he's saying, how many other guys were doing that? How many guys were just staying on S- SLA Marshall's good side? Cause they wanted to continue their career. And, and in order to do that, they're like, oh, you know, I'm not gonna say anything about it. And that actually bolsters his power, cause Hackworth at this time,

• 43:26Jocko Willink?

  right, if you get a blessing from Hackworth, it's like, that's real, pardon, remember what, remember what, Mook? Jim Mookiyama said about Hackworth? He's like, everybody knew Hackworth, everybody knew him. He was Mr. Infantry. Coolest nickname ever, by the way.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  If I come back in another world, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to earn the nickname, Mr. Infantry. That's just as legit as it gets. So, but when you got Hackworth going, oh, yeah, yeah, I worked with Slam, good guy, right? That's a little, oh, that's Hackworth saying that. So, it's, it's like, and, and now there's other generals are saying this, cause everybody just wants to protect their little career. And he's saying he was opportunistic, this is Hackworth coming out, straight up, calling himself guilty.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, do you think?

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  This happens all the time, though, right?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying, yeah.

• 44:13Jocko Willink?

  It happens all the time.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  So, do you think that it's kinda in a way your duty to, to, to kinda, to call it out?

• 44:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, there's two ways to answer that question. If you call it out, and it doesn't work, and you get blacklisted by SLA Marshall, and now you don't make rank, and now you're not in charge, and they shove you off to some billet over in wherever. And now you have no more influence. Did you do a good job? Did you make a right call?

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  If you play the game and you just go along with it and you try and get yourself to a position of power where you can actually have more influence than you would have had and you had to you had to bite your tongue. Was that the good move? But what if you didn't really get to where you wanted to be and now you accelerated him and he turned it again? You know, I mean, that's a very tough decision to make and that's why. That's why you gotta be, that's why you gotta be tactful. You gotta think about what's going on. You gotta think about the long-term consequences of what you're about to do. That's why leadership is challenging. And that's why playing these little political games, which you have to play in every different organization. People don't think there's political games in the military. Oh, it's a big political game. It's a big giant political game. And same thing in companies, corporations. Right? That's the way the world works. You gotta play the game.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like even socially, you know, where let's say you know a person and I've been in this situation before, not even necessarily in it. I'm not saying that, not saying that either, but I'm saying.

• 45:35Jocko Willink?

  Plausible deniability just came out. Good job, Echo Charles.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  But you know, you know of somebody who um they're they're like a complete like faker liar and you know, they they I don't know. And you know, just I'm saying. You know, social scenario where you know, they have a nice car, but then they owe like 10 people, like tens of thousands of dollars because of how they screwed them over. In something like their friends and all this stuff, right?

• 46:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Meanwhile, there's a small group of people who know all about that stuff and we see, you know, we'll see or you'll see this person as this huge faker going around town as this huge faker. But everyone else who's not in it sees him as this great person who's like, you know, whatever.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Is it your duty on a social level? See what I'm saying? Like to be like, hey, because you know, I guess it could be said like, hey. You're kind of protecting other people from getting screwed in that same way.

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Um, but at the same time, it's like, yeah, do you especially if you don't have a dog in the fight.

• 46:35Jocko Willink?

  Have to look at what the what, what is this person doing that's benefiting anyone? If all they're doing is screwing people over, I'm gonna say something for sure.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  If if this person, if this individual was somehow.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, running a big charity organization, right? Right? Like, that's a legit thing, right? That could happen is donating money or getting people to donate or whatever. Maybe I'd try and mitigate it more. But, you know, in a social situation, this person just sounds like they're gonna screw people over. I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna drop dime.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, on one hand, you're kinda like, yeah, let me, let me, and not the kind, you're not gonna go on the radio or something and broadcast it.

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, you don't have to go on the radio all these days, right? You can go on the, you can go on the social media.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  I know, that's what I mean, but you're not gonna go on and announce these things. It's just like, if it ever comes up.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here's, here's a situation that could unfold. If you call this person out, now that no, now they stop whatever form of income they have, now no one that they owes money to is actually gonna ever get paid back.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  So that could be problematic.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, or you, now you have like a little conflict with this person. Now you gotta deal with whatever comes of that. You see what I'm saying? It's kinda like, don't like, what do you call it? When you, you know, muddy the waters or whatever, like, don't disturb the waters kinda thing. And then hopefully, which usually actually is the case, and especially in social situations, where they're gonna play themselves anyway. So, you know, that gets out, you can't like.

• 48:03Jocko Willink?

  But I don't like people taking people's money. So I'm gonna have a problem with this person.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  That's the bottom line.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully, and I think most people, that's how it is, you know, they don't like that, so.

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  And I think the weird thing is social people, they don't, they don't, they don't, they don't be coming around me if they, I kinda give off the vibe of like, hey, you don't wanna be acting that way around me.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  So I don't have a lot of people like that hanging around.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. There it is.

• 48:29Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book. Only when human, rather than material, aspects of operation are put uppermost, can tactical bodies be conditioned to make the most of their potential unity.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  So the human being, he's saying that human beings are more important. It is beyond question that the most serious and repeated breakdowns on the field of combat are caused by failure of controls over human nature. I'm gonna read that again. It is beyond question that the most serious and repeated breakdowns on the field of combat are caused by failure of the controls over human nature. Not tactics, not weapons, not machinery, not physical strength, but human nature. And guess what? I agree with that.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  I agree with that.

• 49:22Jocko Willink?

  We all grant that the soldier must be trained for initiative and encouraged to think about what is problem while in combat. So, again, he talks a lot about initiative and that's one of the things that

• 49:36Jocko Willink?

  that I think was very positive. That's one of the things that influenced me, knowing that it was important for people to have initiative and knowing that you can't control everyone on the battlefield and understanding decentralized command. Back to the book. Our training methods are conditioned by the ideal of automatic response. So he's saying like, we think that the best thing, the best ideal is just automatic response. That's what we want. At the same time, our observation of the battlefield's reality makes it clear to us that we need men who can think through their situation and steel themselves for action according to the situation. So we don't want automatic response. We want people that can think. The thinking soldier, the man who's trained for self-starting cannot be matured in a school

• 50:21Jocko Willink?

  which holds to the vestiges of the belief that automatic action is the ideal thing in the soldier.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is undeniable. Undeniable. We want people that are, that think for themselves.

• 50:40Jocko Willink?

  I hold it to be one of the simplest truths of war, that the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  It happened too frequently in our army that a line company was careless about the manner in which it received a new replacement. The stranger was not introduced to his superiors, nor was there time for him to feel the friendly interest of his immediate associates before he was ordered forward with the attack. The result was the man's total failure in battle and his return to the rear as a mental case.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  So it is far more than a question of the soldier's need of physical support from other men. He must have at least some feeling of spiritual unity with them if he is to do an efficient job of moving and fighting. This is very important, and I work with companies all the time.

• 51:35Jocko Willink?

  So you take an army unit, and you throw a random guy in there, a random replacement, and no one meets him, and no one talks to him, and all of a sudden they're going on an attack, he's gonna fail. That's the statement. Cause he doesn't under, he doesn't know anyone else. And he goes more into detail in this, in the, in the book. But that happens with companies, where they have some new, new person check onboard. They get hired, they check onboard, no one meets him, no one greets him, no one becomes friends with him. They're in their own isolated little world. The pressure starts to come, and they bail, or they break.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  He talks more about this in chapter four, which is called Combat Isolation, and there's a quote that it starts off from Major General Charles W. O'Daniel, and it says, "The finest theories and most minute plans often crumble. Complex systems fall by the wayside. Parade-ground formations disappear. Our splendidly trained leaders vanish. The good men which we had at the beginning are gone. The raw truth is before us."

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  That's good, right? Yeah, and obviously, law of combat, number two, keep things simple. That's exactly what he's talking about. You gotta keep things simple. But he's also saying that everything that you come up with, these complex things, they're gonna fall apart in combat. That's what happens.

• 53:01Jocko Willink?

  And now he's talking about the name of the chapter is combat isolation, and he starts talking about what it's like when these soldiers get on the battlefield. He's talking about the battlefield's cold and the and it's harsh and it's empty and there's, it's, it chills a man's soul is what he's saying. And then when the fire starts, here we go, back to the book, he finds himself suddenly almost alone in his hour of greatest danger. And he can feel the danger, but there is nothing out there, nothing to contend against. It is from the mixture of mystification and fear that there comes the feeling of helplessness, which in turn produces greater fear.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  That is what green troops are up against. Time and again, I have heard them say after their first try at combat, by God, there was never a situation like it. We saw no one, we were fighting phantoms. And as frequently, they have, and as frequently they have added this, though their convictions about the matter were wholly at odds with the fact of the situation, we had to do it all alone. We got no support on either flank.

• 54:08Jocko Willink?

  So he's talking about the fact that we feel alone on the battlefield. And the fact that guys would come back and say, even though they were fully supported, it didn't matter. They thought they were alone out there. And that's what he's talking about. He goes on, the enemy, now he's talking about a firefight situation, the enemy fire builds up, its aim becomes truer. The man spread, the men spread further and further from each other, moving individually to whatever cover is nearest or affords the best protection. A few of them fire their pieces. At first, they do so almost timidly, as if fearing a rebuke for wasting ammunition when they do not see the enemy. Others do nothing. Some fail to act mainly because they are puzzled what to do, and their leaders do not tell them.

• 54:54Jocko Willink?

  Others are wholly unnerved and can neither think nor move in sensible relation to the situation. Such response as the men make of to enemy fire tends mainly to produce greater separation in the elements of the company, thereby intensifying the feeling of isolation and the insecurity of its individuals. The junior leaders are affected as much as the rifle files.

• 55:19Jocko Willink?

  So when chaos starts, people start to be alone.

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  Again, this can apply to the battlefield. This can apply to the business world. When chaos starts, people start to focus on their own little world. And the more you focus on your own little world, the more separation there is, the less unity there is in your unit to make something happen. Now he goes on back to the book. Could one clear commanding voice be raised? Even though it be the voice of an individual without titular authority, they would obey. Or at least the stronger characters would do. Would do so and the weaker would begin to take heart because something is being done.

• 56:01Jocko Willink?

  I got to see this over, when I was running training, I got to see this over and over and over and over again. As a matter of fact, we, uh, Leif wrote a chapter about it in the dichotomy of leadership of situations where, uh, one situation in particular where there's no voice. No one's taking charge. Finally, someone steps up and take charge and it's like boom, everything changes.

• 56:24Jocko Willink?

  But clear commanding voices are all too rare on the battle, on the field of battle. So they wait, doing nothing, and inaction takes further toll on their resolve.

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  More grievous losses will no doubt come to this band of men in time, but as a company, this is the worst hour that they will ever know. So it's a downward spiral. If no one steps up and starts making calls, you start taking casualties. Now if people panic even more, they get more in their own little world. They become more detached from each other, less unity of what you're trying to make happen.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "It would serve no purpose to dwell on the discouraging detail of this ordeal if it were not for the belief that much of it is unnecessary and that the infantry soldier can find a better way."

• 57:09Jocko Willink?

  "One must not come to rest on Clausewitz's gloomy warning that, quote, "In war, the novice is met only by pitch-black night." On beyond that, there are words to be read. "It is of the first importance that the soldier, high or low, should not have to encounter in war things which, seen for the first time, set him in terror or perplexity." So, that's Clausewitz talking about training. You've gotta get people ready for this chaos and mayhem. You've gotta get them ready for it. You've gotta get them ready. You gotta show them that when people panic and people are getting separated, that one commanding voice, one leader stepping up and leading,

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  will have a massive impact on the situation. And failure to do that will also have a massive impact, but it'll be a massive negative impact.

• 58:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, he talks, "Chapter 5 is called Ratio of Fire." And here we get into his little hypotheses. I'm not gonna waste a lot of time on it, but I'm gonna bring it up. Back to the book, "Now, I do not think I've seen it stated in the military manuals of this age or in any of the writings meant for the instruction of those who lead troops, that a commander of infantry will be well-advised to believe that when he engages the enemy, not more than one-quarter of his men will ever strike a real blow unless they're, unless they are compelled by almost overpowering circumstances or unless all junior leaders constantly ride herd on troops with specific mission of increasing their fire."

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  "The 25% estimate stands for, even for well-trained and campaign-seasoned troops. I mean that 75% will not fire or will not persist in firing against the enemy and his works. These men may face danger, but will not fight." So, that's his hypothesis, and actually, the beginning of this book has a foreword in it that I'm just gonna touch on. The foreword's written by a guy named Russell Glenn, and he, he points out some of the disputes against this.

• 59:21Jocko Willink?

  About this, this low ratio of fire. So here we go back to the book. This is the introduction. So this isn't S L A Marshall. This is from the introduction from Russell Glenn. Marshall's ratio of fire values did not go unchallenged even when they first appeared in 1947. General James M. Gavin, World War II commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, discounted the low estimates, as did Harry W. O. Kennard, who served in the 101st Airborne Division in every one of its combat actions during World War II, and later commanded the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam. The legendary General Bruce Clark, commander of the US forces that defended St. Vith during the Battle of the Bulge, flatly discounted Marshall,

• 1:00:05Jocko Willink?

  finding his values ridiculous and dangerous assertions absolute nonsense. Another combat veteran, British author George MacDonald Frazier, instead questioned Marshall's explanation for why soldiers failed to engage the enemy. Frazier had served. So one of the things that Marshall says is that people aren't, aren't, are taught not to kill. And you know, it's against the commandments of God and it's bad to kill. And so that's one of the things we have a moral, an inherent moral objection to killing. And so, so this guy, Donald Frazier, Frazier had served in Burma as an infantryman.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Though he recognized that moral upbringing might influence men's behavior, his firsthand experience failed to support Marshall's rationale. Frazier wrote that, "We all have kindly impulses fostered by 2,000 years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbor. But we have the killer instinct too, the murderous impulse of the hunter."

• 1:01:14Jocko Willink?

  And so the introduction of the book goes on and talks about many vets that just outright deny this. And I do too. And I never saw, I never saw or felt any hesitation or saw anyone that I was with hesitate in any way to engage. In fact, quite the opposite. Most guys were more than ready to get after it. And I'm not just talking about SEALs. I'm talking about Army Infantrymen. I'm talking about Marines. The guys are, guys are not hesitating. I mean broadly, you could never make a statement like this. Could you make a statement that some people hesitate? Yes, you could make that statement. But to broadly

• 1:01:59Jocko Willink?

  say that only 15 to 25% of people are going to actively engage the enemy from everything I saw, that's patently untrue. Now, the advantage and, and what we had for an advantage and Marshall kind of claims this too, is that once World War II is over and they started training us to shoot at, one of the big objections he has that, that guys were getting trained to shoot bullseye targets, right? So you're training to shoot a bullseye when you first see a man, you're like, oh no, that's a man. We, my whole career, I barely ever shot a bullseye target. We did that when we had to qualify with a rifle or a pistol. Every

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  single other time we shot, we were shooting a man shaped target. I mean, we would shoot little round targets. What were they called? Head plates, right? We're shooting at heads. We're shooting body shots. We're shooting, that's what we do all the time. And we'd shoot, so we'd shoot targets with pictures on them, with faces on them that look like people. And then on top of that, we did force on force training where we're actually shooting paintballs or simunition at other human beings and we're gunning them down. So there's a lot of conditioning that we had that maybe that's why we were so much more apt and able and willing to shoot. But

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's um

• 1:03:24Jocko Willink?

  from, you know, you can see from what these other vets said and these other leaders said and my personal experience, um, and you'll find that I think SLA Marshall, like I said, I think he just had a hypothesis he wanted to talk about and threw it out there without really good facts behind it. So I'm not going to waste a bunch of time talking about that and I'm going to go into the next chapter. Fire is the cure.

• 1:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Finally, it is the volume of fire that counts. You win if you kill more of the enemy than he can kill of you. If you cannot, you're defeated. And that's Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson. And again, I'll go back to this. Fire counts for sure. It's important, but you got to maneuver. It's cover and move. It's not just covering fire. It's like you got to cover and move. That's, that's to me, they go hand in hand, which actually he says.

• 1:04:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, fundamentally, fire must always be beaten by fire. Fundamentally, movement is the means of increasing the efficiency of one's own fire until the last strength of the enemy's fire is reduced to a vanishing point. Okay. I mean, okay, if you want to say that you're maneuvering so that you can maneuver so you can fire even better, that's, that's technically true. Or you're maneuvering so you can break contact, but you could say that.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Here's another quote, "Let us not think of mobility in an army," General Charles P. Summerall once said, "unless we think of mobility accompanied by violence." That's cover move. That's fire maneuver. That's what we're talking about.

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  Combat can cannot ever approximate the conditions of field maneuvers. Fears of varying sort afflict the soldier in battle. The unit commander soon comes to realize that one of his difficulties is to get men to leave cover because of enemy bullets and the fear they instill. In training, there being no real bullet danger, even on the courses which employ live ammunition, every advance under a supposed enemy fire is unrealistic.

• 1:05:38Jocko Willink?

  Two, in training, the soldier does not have a man as his target. He is not shooting with the idea of killing. There is a third vast difference in the two conditions. The rifleman in training is usually under close observation, and the chief pressure upon him is to give satisfaction to his superior, whereas the rifleman engaging the enemy is of necessity, pretty much on his own, and the chief pressure on him is to remain alive if possible. When the infantryman's mind is gripped by fear, his body is captured by inertia, which is fear's Siamese twin. In an attack, half of the men on a firing line are in terror, and the other half are unnerved,

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  so wrote Major General J.F.C. Fuller when he was a young captain. So, again, this is what I kind of already talked about. The idea that in training, you're not shooting with this intent to kill, and that's what we did all the time. I mean, that's just how we rolled. In fact, they make targets where, like, blood comes out. You shoot, and a balloon blows up, and you see blood. So they're trying to condition you. And they talk about this with video games, too, right? That these young kids come up killing all the time in these video games, which are very, very realistic, and therefore, they get conditioned to killing. And they don't think it's a big deal anymore. Which, clearly, you could tie that into, uh, school shootings. A lot of people tie that into school shootings and say, "Hey, these kids were playing these video games, and they're just killing people all the time."

• 1:07:05Jocko Willink?

  And that conditioned them to be able to kill these innocent people in a school. So, there is... Like I said, for me, all I ever shot at, basically, was human targets. Things that look like people. And, again, I've seen video games that... They are so realistic, it's unbelievable. And so that's another good form of conditioning, to get you over the... if you have any moral objection to killing. Now, the...

• 1:07:34Jocko Willink?

  Counter statement to that is is it good for people to get over the moral condition of killing? Some people know if you're not a soldier, that's probably a bad thing, I would say.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, even the the video game thing, it seems like there's like a step before that to for someone to get conditioned to killing because. I don't know, obviously, my last intense video game experience is like PlayStation two. Which seems like a long time ago, but. So, yeah, the video games are realistic, but it seems like that they they have to get past a certain step to consider the video games as being training. So you guys like when you guys were, you know, in training and, you know, in the SEAL teams, you guys are specifically training for that specific thing. That was on your mind. So you're past the point of the moral objection. Part of it, see what I'm saying? So let's say you weren't past the moral objection part of it.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  And you were just shooting, whether it be video games or shooting at the range or shooting at these other things. And you were like, hey, I know this is, I'm not training for anything specifically. I'm just sort of doing it, whether it be for fun or to get better at shooting or or better at this game or whatever. If you're not past the moral objection part, is it really training you to be? Less more morally.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'd say if you're a kid that's like got some major issues and you're thinking about doing a school shooting. And then you're sitting there playing these video games and you're killing people over and over again. It's conditioning.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you put anyone in a, you know, you get someone that works in a slaughterhouse. They don't think twice about killing a pig or killing a cow or whatever. That's what they do. They don't think a millisecond about it. Whereas you take someone that's never seen an animal killed before and it'll be disturbing to them. So that right there is their conditioning is a thing, right? And if you watch a bunch of. You know, a bunch of videos of something being killed, you would become conditioned to it. And if you play a game where you kill people all the time, you will become conditioned to it. And I don't even think this is even debatable.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I feel, yeah, I agree. But I feel like there's this one kind of crucial step before that, like if you consider a slaughterhouse person. Like, there's a difference between working in a slaughterhouse and being conditioned to the sight and the smell and the experience of doing it. But not having the barrier that's like, okay, I'm gonna make a decision to do this under, you know, a different circumstance, something that's more morally tied.

• 1:10:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, I mean, and let's face the fact, there's millions and hundreds of millions of people that play video games all day long. And they're not going out there and have no intention of going out there. But, okay, so, yeah, I see what you're saying. If you start thinking that way, and that becomes your intent, then it is conditioning.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Because you can even consider someone on the opposite, where, let's say they're morally, what do you call it? The moral barrier has been crossed in their head, or they're weird, they're a psychopath, I don't know, you know, in their brain. And then they've never killed anyone or anything like that. So I heard, actually, I read this thing on Saddam Hussein's son, sons, two of them. And so the first time, how they'd quote-unquote "condition them", they'd be like, hey, you know, here's some prisoners, shoot them, kill them, right? So the first time, now, the first time, not, these kids not conditioned in this way to, you know, to have the experience of killing somebody and watch them die and whatever. So the first time, they give them the gun, the kid shoots them up, empties the clip, right?

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  The kid was past that moral barrier a long time ago. But first time, unconditioned as far as the experience goes. He turns to the guard and goes, hey, can I have another magazine to do it? So he really liked it. He didn't need necessarily conditioning because he was past that moral part, see what I'm saying? So, yeah, it feels like they are two separate things. But once you kind of cross that initial moral barrier, oh, yeah, the more conditioned you are, the, you know, the more effect, I mean, I hate to use the word "effective", but the more into it you are. Or the less impact it'll have like on your brain or whatever.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and again, we would get, this is one of the things we get quoted on S L A Marshall, was this stuff about how as the targets got more realistic, it encouraged people and it made them more comfortable with shooting and killing.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  That's the point.

• 1:11:55Jocko Willink?

  And I believe, yeah, that's true. It's true. This is the way it is. Uh, going back to the book, as another experiment unwilling rifleman may have, may be switched to heavier and more decisive one man weapons. This sounds like a paradox to expect greater response to come from increased responsibility. This is, this is good. So he's saying you got a rifleman that doesn't want to shoot? Give him a bigger, more effective weapon.

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  He says, this sounds like a paradox to expect greater response to come from increased responsibility, but it works. I've seen many cases where men who had, who had funked it badly with a rifle responded heroically when given a flamethrower or a bar. Self pride and the ego are the touchstone of most of these remarkable conversions. A man may fail with the rifle because he feels anonymous and believes that nothing important is being asked of him. So that's pretty cool because I talk about this all the time.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Why? Because he has, because everyone has a rifle.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Everyone's got a rifle and he's like, okay, this is not really, I'm not really that important.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:03Jocko Willink?

  But then you give him like a heavy weapon or a heavy machine gun or a flamethrower and all of a sudden he's like, oh yeah, I'm the man. I'm going to step up and make this happen.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  Which, if, I've talked about this many times on the podcast, if you get someone that's not doing their job, or they need to do a better job, or what have you, if you can give them more responsibility, they have a good chance of actually stepping up and making things happen.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.

• 1:13:25Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I'm not familiar with the what?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I'm familiar with Rudolph the red nosed reindeer.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so Rudolph was the only one with the red nose.

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And before they were like, they used to tease him and all this stuff, you know? So he thought he was inferior, but when Santa was like, hey, your nose is so bright, won't you guide my sleigh to, tonight I get to guide the sleigh? Hell yeah, steps up, does the job.

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Check.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, same deal.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  You can edit that out if you want.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  No, no, but it's the same thing conceptually.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Conceptually.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:13:55Jocko Willink?

  It's true. All right, next. Back to the book, and last, if we are to strengthen sound training principles and establish mental attitudes which are essential to the understanding of the decisive importance of fire in tactics, we will be well advised to cease talking about fire and movement, as if the latter were separate and apart from the former. In tactical fact, there and there did not exist an automatic and unbreakable connection between them. So now he's saying the same thing that I was saying earlier, is fire is not more important. They're the same thing. Fire maneuver, cover and move have to happen together. That's what

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  he's saying. Fire is the key to mobility, to fire is to move. So, he goes on. Now, this next section, again, this is great because, next section is called multiples of information. The multiples of information. And what's great about this is he's no longer talking about, he's no longer talking about tactics of fire maneuver and this percentage of fire and all that, because he's out of his element there, to be quite honest with you. This one, he's going to get into his element, which is, well, I'll go to it.

• 1:15:13Jocko Willink?

  "I consider to be of utmost importance the keeping informed of our men as to current situations so that each man may perform his duty with understanding of its importance." And that's Sergeant David Tebault, in a letter written from the African Theater.

• 1:15:29Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta keep your people informed.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  "Having started to call this chapter communications, I decided against it for fear that use of that rather formidable word might interfere with my communicating to the reader what I regard as a vital but frequently overlooked principle of minor tactics. If a word comes to mean too many things, it frequently misses fire at the critical point. That has been the fate of the word communications. It has become another military catch-all, and because it means so many things, it is quite frequently means nothing." To illustrate, a regimental commander asks the company commander, "How are your communications?" And the latter replies,

• 1:16:14Jocko Willink?

  "Excellent, because his telephone line is working and his supply is coming forward." And at the same time, he is at the point of despair, because he hasn't had anything worthwhile, any worthwhile intelligence from his flanks for hours. So there's a difference between communication, like I can talk to you, and actual communication, you're telling me what I need to know.

• 1:16:38Jocko Willink?

  One would think that it would become almost second nature to the commander to reach eagerly towards supporting forces. One would imagine that whenever on the field of battle, he made contact with a friendly element, that fact would flash a red light in his brain, causing him automatically to raise the question, "Have I established full communications? Do I know the strength and intentions of the force now helping me? Do they know my strength and intentions?" But indeed, such is not the case.

• 1:17:06Jocko Willink?

  Communications.

• 1:17:10Jocko Willink?

  Information is the soul of morale in combat and the balancing force in successful tactics.

• 1:17:19Jocko Willink?

  And now he talks a little bit about communication. He gives some guidelines about them and what the problems are. So information is super important, but here's some of the problems. One, there is a lacking, there is lacking a general recognition of the supreme importance of the lateral flow of information. Two, command at the lower levels is too often neglectful of the principle that it is not a channel of information only, but a distribution point. So you've got to pass the word. Three, commanders at the lower levels tend to be arbitrary judges of what information deriving from a source lower would be highly useful to the other elements lower down.

• 1:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Instead of abiding by the rule, when in doubt, pass it along. So when in doubt, pass along, now I do have to throw out that there can be a dichotomy, there's a dichotomy there because you can communicate things too much. You can send too many emails, you can send too many messages, you can do that. That can be a problem. And he actually talks about that dichotomy a little bit. So he's just talking about how much you should communicate. And then he gets to this point, back to the book. "In the Pacific fighting, I found company commanders joining a platoon in the line just to isolate themselves from their telephones. They were literally tired to death of having the battalion commander insist on having a fresh progress report every 15 or 20 minutes.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  And the battalion commander, poor devil, was only passing on the pressure which he had in turn received from a regimental commander who is trying to placate division. Yet one would observe that unless a battalion commander is wholly lacking in judgment or intestinal fortitude, he should be strong enough to take this on his aching back and not pass it down to the headquarters, which is at grips with the enemy." This happens all the time in the military for sure. The senior commander's going, "I want to know what's going on." And tells that to the next junior guy, he says, "All right, I'll find out. Hey, what's going on?" And that guy says, "I'll find out. What's going on?" And the people on the front line, they can't even fight because they're too busy trying to answer the damn questions from up the chain of command. So don't let that happen.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "In the Burton Island fight during the invasion of the marshals, one of these prodding demands for more progress raced from division right through lower headquarters to a platoon which had been stopped cold by JAP fire coming from spider holes arranged in great depth along the beach. The lieutenant got the message and crawling forward to his most advanced rifleman told him to get up and go on. The boy screamed, "So the whole goddamn army wants to kill me, does it? Okay lieutenant, here I go, but watch what happens."

• 1:20:06Jocko Willink?

  He was shot dead almost before he had gotten out of his tracks. That incident seared deep into the brain of every man who witnessed it. It was final judgment on the futility of that kind of leading.

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Decentralized command, who's going to make a better call? Somebody back in the rear or this lieutenant that's there on the beach?

• 1:20:30Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "The all-too-frequent consequences of such pressure are lying, exaggeration, and distortion of the situation at lower levels resulting in a false concept of the situation at the higher. The average company commander can stand only a limited amount of this heat, and then he will knock over a couple of outhouses and report that he has captured a village."

• 1:20:54Jocko Willink?

  And also, this effect also makes a wishful thinker of the most objective soldier. He reasons to himself, "I'll have that position in another hour, so I'll tell them that I have it now and get them off my back."

• 1:21:12Jocko Willink?

  So, lots about communication being important. Next is the riddle of command. "Many headquarters people become strangers to the front and cannot speak its language or understand its tribulations." Okay. You don't know what's going on the frontlines? If you don't have any idea, if you can't even speak their language anymore, you need to get down there. You need to find out what's going on on the frontlines. Businesses, that means you too.

• 1:21:38Jocko Willink?

  "The diabolical effect of even such a relatively simple instrument as the field telephone is that it may come to command the commander."

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  The phone actually gets control of you. It chains him to a system of remote control. At first, he sees it only as a useful channel for quick communication in combat. Then he fears to leave it lest it should require his presence in headquarters the moment after he leaves to go forward.

• 1:22:08Jocko Willink?

  This state of mind in turn creates its own illusion, fostering the conclusion that under the new system of war, all matters can be settled at a distance. All problems arising within the zone of fire can be fully understood without ever going there, and all moral values which once attended the commander's effort to impress his men with his personality and character are somehow sundered by the new technology of operations.

• 1:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Out of sedentary generalship arises evil of troops which while obeying mechanically have no organic thinking response to the commander's will. So, I mean, how poignant is this for what we live in today, right? Everyone thinks they can just send a text message and the problem solved. Make a quick phone call and the problem solved. And actually, the reality is sometimes you need to get down there.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, the whole thing about it controlling you, you know, I mean, do you ever forget your do you have that at all? Like when you leave your phone at home or in the car or something like that where you don't have it for like

• 1:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I don't forget things a lot.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  So I don't, that doesn't really happen to me a lot. Um, but yeah, I would say if I left my phone somewhere, I would be like, oh dang, I wonder who's trying to call me right now. I wonder if there's an emergency going on.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's weird. But you know, back in the day when we're, you know, whatever teenagers or whatever.

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  Pre-cell phones. Were you a teenage pre-cell phone?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  I was right on the deal.

• 1:23:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was no, there was no, there was no internet. I was telling my kids the other day that when I was a kid, there was no internet. That it was not a thing.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Funny. Yeah. It's like saying there is no roads.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. For them, that is the same thing.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  For my kids, they're like, what they were looking at me like, what, what did you, how did you even live?

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  How did you not just die?

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause you had to go to the library to look something up, get an encyclopedia. I remember thinking encyclopedias were, were, were like holy.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? There was so many dictionaries. I thought that was like a, like a holy book filled with, my mom had a, had a, had an OED, Oxford English Dictionary, not the full, the full one is volumes, the full one is 26 volumes or something crazy like that. But my mom had one that was big. I mean, it was big. It was six inches thick. Yeah, it was like six, maybe six inches thick and big. And it had little tabs, little invitations. Yeah. But I, to me, that thing seemed like Some kind of Bible, like some kind of, it just seems so filled with knowledge. And if you didn't know what a word was, you just had to go look it up in that thing.

• 1:24:49Jocko Willink?

  You didn't know what a thing was, you look it up in the encyclopedia, you go to the library and look it up in the encyclopedias. Nowadays, you're three seconds away. You got that Google.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you wanna look in the dictionary.com.

• 1:25:00Jocko Willink?

  Dictionary.com.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  You don't need those fingers.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Unless you got that OED app.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  OED app, boom, even better, you see what I'm saying?

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Cause you gotta wanna get that etymology of the word too, you wanna know where it comes from.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  All that stuff.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Then you got, um, what, what's the, the, what, the street language one, what is that one? The one, uh.

• 1:25:17Jocko Willink?

  Urban Dictionary.

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  Urban Dictionary, yeah, yeah, that was kinda fun.

• 1:25:19Jocko Willink?

  That one's hilarious.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  But here's the thing, it's weird, it's like, it is fun and it's funny, but it's very useful. Cause you know when people, they'll say stuff and you be like, wait, wait.

• 1:25:27Jocko Willink?

  I've had to look some things up on Urban Dictionary a couple of times. I'm trying to think of a good example right now, but I can't think of one. Next time I will, I will, I will note.

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:36Jocko Willink?

  That, cause you know, I got teenage kids.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  So sometimes they got some words.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta know that language.

• 1:25:42Jocko Willink?

  They were saying something a couple of years ago.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Hyphy, remember?

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  No, I don't remember that.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  Well, I don't, that's not old, that's new, hyphy.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  What does it mean?

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Uh, well, I, I don't know if I can define it specifically, but it means like get fired up, like it's like dope.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Hyphy, oh, who's, ah, fifty cent or somebody, I don't know, anyway. But yeah, but yeah, but that's the thing though, you, you lose or you forget your cellphone, you go to the store. I don't know, you go to Vons and you leave by accident or whatever, your phone at home. It's like, oh yeah, and, and just like how you said, you got those thoughts like, oh, what if there's an emergency, what if someone's calling me kinda thing? All you gotta do is flashback.

• 1:26:21Jocko Willink?

  Calls.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:22Jocko Willink?

  It might be the president.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Or this is the one day that there's like an emergency, not to say that you can't have an emergency, you totally can, but it's like of literally the ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine percent of the time you have access to that phone. That one teeny, teeny tiny sliver of time that you don't, oh, now the emergency's gonna come, see what I'm saying? And you think back to when you, when there was no cell phones, it's like, how did you ever get along? No, I'm doing that right now, I'm going with my, without my cellphone.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  But everyone around, here's the thing though with that. Everyone around you kind of feels the same thing. So like, for example, if you go to the store or I, if I go to the store. People know I go to the store or people know I went to store. My wife knows, you know. Maybe if I'm like hanging out with friends, right? I'm going to the store real quick, right? We're having a barbecue. I don't know. They expect me to have my phone and I expect to have a phone. So it's like that communication now communication, the standard of communication is way higher now.

• 1:27:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? Like your access to someone else is higher.

• 1:27:22Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you one thing that is a kind of a bummer and I. You know, for a long time I responded to like everybody that reached out to me. And, and I just can't, I mean, I can't do it. I just, it's physical. I would be doing nothing but sitting around doing that.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  And it's really cool, man. I get letters and emails and Facebook and DMs on, you know. And I just don't have time. I feel bad. You know, I read most everything, but it's been getting crazy.

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  And here's the thing, and I think this is important to understand overall for kind of for you for sure. For everyone, when someone, you know how like someone will text you or someone will send you like a message, like a long message? And some, it's easy to think like, hey, you could have responded with like just something, you know, rather than nothing. But here's the thing. That's not true because if someone sends you a text message or especially something long and meaningful. Like you don't want to just reply back with, okay.

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  Or, okay, I'll text you later more about this message. That, that makes way less sense. You want to have something kind of thought out.

• 1:28:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  So it's not just a small little response or you, who doesn't have time to send one text? Well, the thing is. Yeah, physically sending the text doesn't take any time, but to consider you're a valid or appropriate response to most texts. And especially in your case where you get messages, legit messages. You can't just be like, cool.

• 1:28:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  And then move on to the next thing. You can't do that.

• 1:28:54Jocko Willink?

  No, I know, man.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  So you gotta like consider all these things and then all that consideration. That's what takes the time.

• 1:28:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  And mental energy, by the way, like, like, like you can't go in one direction mentally and just pivot real quick and be like, yeah, let me just mentally accommodate this. You know, it's like, man, it takes more thought than that. So it's hard to fit it all in, especially for, you know.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  It is, man. I feel bad when I can't get back to people. But I appreciate them reaching out and letting me know that they're getting good information, right? Whether it's work related, whether it's individual person related, their kids, whatever warrior ki- I mean, all kinds of good stuff. And I'm so stoked, but like you said, it's like, like, I can't, literally just cannot. I tried.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:44Jocko Willink?

  I tried. So I posted, uh, today. I was like, hey, it's Monday. Sometimes life gets upper hand. You gotta go, you gotta attack.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  And that's why I was feeling this weekend. I was like, cause I've been on the road. We went to Maine, didn't get a lot of work done in Maine. Cause we were working in Maine. We were rolling and then we were working and recording podcasts and interviewing and all this other stuff. So didn't have a lot of time up there. Got a little bit behind. Life got the upper hand on me. And so I was kind of feeling it on, when I got home. And then what I said was, oh, you know what I'm gonna do? So Sunday, I just, I'm just gonna work all day. Just get, just get busy.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Get the upper hand.

• 1:30:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause people were talking to me about the kids podcast.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  Kids podcast, yeah. Where's the other, you know, hey, hey, my kids love listening to it. We're listening to it for the, we're listening to the first 16 episodes for the ninth time now. Can you make another one? Or are you giving up on that? I'm like, ooh.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  Those are straight up fighting words for you.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  So, so I got after that, recorded some of that today, but, but that's what I did. Go on the attack. Like, and that really does, really like by the end, by, by the end of Sunday, I was like, oh, I got, and I thought, I thought it's gonna be a late night on Sunday. I thought midnight, which, you know, I don't wanna go to bed at midnight on a Sunday night. Got to, got done. It's like nine 45 at night. I was like, oh.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Straight up on the attack.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  And I was ahead. I was back ahead, but I had to get aggressive. I had to dig deep. I had to go like, okay, this is what's going on. So if you start feeling that little, life's getting the upper hand. If you, if you let it continue to maneuver on you, it's gonna get worse. If you go, "Oh, oh, you think you're gonna get the upper hand of me?" Watch this. I'm gonna get aggressive. I'm gonna knock out so much stuff in the next 24 hours. You're not even gonna know what just happened, son.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, huh.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  So that's how I went at it. Is, is actually, I made the video on Monday. Technically, it was a Sunday evolution, but by the time Monday rolled around, I was back in the game.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, huh? It's like, if you get the, or some, someone else, something else gets the upper hand. It's like, dang, you gotta work double time just so it doesn't have the upper hand anymore. Once you get the upper hand, okay, now you can, boom, you can find your rhythm.

• 1:31:55Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when, when you get the upper hand, it's like when you're playing a sport. And the team starts to get the little upper hand, and then they just, they can start taking a little bit more risks. They get a little bit more confident. Yeah, and they get the momentum. Yeah, they get the momentum, and they start going, and that's productive, right? That they widen that score, run up the score, boy.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  And so that's same thing. I'm thinking, but I had me on the ropes a little bit, you know? I was on the ropes. I was on the ropes over here, and I had to, I had to get a, I woke up early. And I was just, boom, I'm gonna start hammering, and that's what you gotta do. Finished reading a book, wrote another book, edited a book. I had a stack of stuff. Come get some. Be aggressive. Oh, okay, so the communication thing. So here's the other thing that happens with modern communications. Text messaging, emails. You start losing that little personal touch, which is important. Here we go, back to the book where this characteristically warm-humored General Eisenhower

• 1:32:59Jocko Willink?

  has commented on the value of the personal factor in the commander's relation to his men under the conditions of modern war. "I found that it did a great deal of good to get down to my troops in the combat area." My presence relaxed them and made them feel more comfortable about the situation. But I was not deceived as to the reason. I knew what was running through their minds. They were saying to themselves, there must be less danger than we thought, or the old man wouldn't be here.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, get down, talk to troops. Here we talk about this is a part of the nature of the combat soldier. Once he loses that faith, it becomes very difficult to resolve it. He will lose it very quickly when he sees that casualties are wasted on useless operations. Or when he begins to feel that he is in any respect, the victim of bad planning or faulty concepts.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  That's important.

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  Then he responds to that principle, which was once well stated by General James Harbord. Discipline and moral influence. The inarticulate vote that is constantly taken by masses of men when the order comes to move forward. When the order comes to move forward. A variant of the crowd psychology that inclines it to follow a leader. But the army does not move forward until the motion is carried. Unanimous consent only follows cooperation between the individual men in ranks. That's a bold statement, like, hey, you can give that order, but until everybody kind of knows that it's a good plan, we're not going.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Here's another good statement. By rough approximation, 60% of the art of command is the ability to anticipate. 40% of the art of command is the ability to improvise. To reject the preconceived idea that has been tested and proved wrong in the crucible of operations. And to rule by action instead of acting by rules.

• 1:35:11Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one.

• 1:35:13Jocko Willink?

  By the way, that's the entire art of command, right? That's, that's a hundred percent anticipation and ability to improvise. Obviously, there's some more factors in that, but those are some important ones. There's, and I don't think I pulled it out, but there's also one part in the book where it says anticipation is important. But it's, but it's, you can't just say someone, "Hey, anticipate harder."

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  Like, "Hey, anticipate more." Like, it's hard to say to that someone. Someone's gotta have experience, someone's gotta have the mindset for it. They gotta, they gotta free their mind and open their mind so that they can be aware of little nuances that are happening and changes that are occurring. And you can't be down in the weeds or else you can't anticipate anything because you're getting knocked around in the, in the dust and the dirt.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's kinda like a, a pay attention kinda thing. Like, it's a, it's a way of paying attention.

• 1:36:04Jocko Willink?

  I think really the key is detachment.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  Because if you can't detach, you're not gonna be able to anticipate anything because you're in. And that's why there's an obvious dichotomy here. Yeah, do you wanna go down and be with the troops? Absolutely, but can you go down and be with troops so much that you lose track of what's happening at a strategic level? And you can't anticipate what's happening? No, you can't do that. Dichotomy in leadership, you gotta balance it.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. During war, it oftentimes happens that one company by trial and error finds the true solution for some acute problem, which concerns everyone. But when that happens to a company, I can assure you that is the exceptional company officer who takes the initiative and passes it, passes his unique solution along to his superiors even after he has proved in battle that the idea works. A good company idea in tactics is likely to remain confined to one company indefinitely, even though it would be of benefit to the whole military establishment. And this is, well, this is just dealing with silos. It happens in the military, it happens in the civilian sector. Somebody figures something out and they keep it to themselves.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  The fundamental purpose of all training today should be to develop the natural faculties and to stimulate the brain of the soldier rather than to treat him as a cog which has been fitted into a great machine.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  Gotta keep pointing that out.

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  Loyalty in the masses of men waxes strong in the degree that they are made to believe that real importance is attached to their work and to their ability to think about their work. So, you gotta get people engaged and people gotta understand and believe that what they're doing is important and they gotta have some kind of say, they gotta have some control over their own fate. It weakens at every point where they consider that there is a negative respect for their intelligence. This rule applies whether a man is engaged in digging a ditch or in working up a loading table for an invasion.

• 1:38:08Jocko Willink?

  So if you have negative respect for people's intelligence, they're not gonna do a good job. Big chunk, little bit of a big chunk here. "To square training with the reality of war, it becomes a necessary part of the young officer's mental equipment for training to instill in him the full realization that in combat many things can and will go wrong without it being anyone's fault in particular." So, what did I just say? Things are gonna happen, it's no one's fault. Does that really, does that really marry up with the idea of extreme ownership? Well, not really, right? Cause I'm taking ownership of anything. However, keep listening. "War is aimed at destruction.

• 1:38:51Jocko Willink?

  The fire and general purpose of the enemy are directed against one's own personnel, materiel, and communications with the object of keeping one's own design from coming into play. Small plans miscarry because the wrong man happens to be hit at the critical moment or the guns which were counted on are knocked out of action. The problem of command in battle is ever to establish a safe margin which will allow for such misadventure." There you go. So, things are gonna go wrong, but what you have to take ownership of is, is figuring out how you're gonna have a plan that's gonna overcome those problems.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, but this much is certain. There is no system of safeguards known to man which can fully eliminate the consequences of accident and mischance in battle. Hence, the only final protection is the resiliency and courage of the commander and his subordinates. So what does that mean? When something goes wrong, when something bad happens, you adapt, you adjust, you, you alter your plans and you continue forward. You own it.

• 1:40:00Jocko Willink?

  It therefore follows that the far object of a training system is to prepare the combat officer mentally so that he can cope with the unusual and the unexpected as if it were the altogether normal and give him poise in a situation where all else is in disequilibrium.

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  I'm saying all over and over again. And how do you do that? How do you do that in the civilian sector, right? Prepare your people, you role play with people, you give them hard problems, you make them figure things out. You put them in tough situations so that they become accustomed to it.

• 1:40:38Jocko Willink?

  But how to do it? I would say that the beginning lies in a system of schooling which puts the emphasis on teaching soldiers how to think rather than what to think, even though such a revolutionary idea would put the army somewhat ahead of our civilian education. That's a common thing that gets said in military training is teaching people how to think, not what to think.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  And this is a good, "The test of fitness of command is the ability to think clearly in the face of unexpected contingency or opportunity. Improvisation is the essence of initiative in all combat, just as initiative is the outward showing of the power of decision."

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  Think about this when you're raising your kids too. There's a good little something to think about. You want your kids to be able to think.

• 1:41:30Jocko Willink?

  Think. That's why you gotta have them doing some creative stuff, right? Sure, jiu-jitsu is creative, but you gotta throw some other stuff at them.

• 1:41:43Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the darkest hour for the novice in war comes with the recoil after the unit has been badly hit. It is then that the young commander has greatest need of the friendship and steadiness of his superior or of any other officer whose judgment he respects. Criticism or tactical counsel are of no value at this time. They can be given that later if necessary, but in the wrong hour, they add to the hurt. Let him get out his crying towel. When he is told how it happened, the important thing is that he be given a pat on the back and insurance, and assurance that he did his full duty and some little reminder that

• 1:42:24Jocko Willink?

  while he may feel that his losses are excessive, such incidents are unavoidable feature of combat and do not keep one from coming back in the next round. In Siegfried Sassoon's Memories of an Infantryman, the young lieutenant tells of emerging from a bloody trench raid and meeting his Colonel. This was Colonel Kinjack I'd never met before, and it was the first time I had ever shared any human equality with him. He spoke kindly to me in his rough way, and in doing so, he made me very thankful that I had done what I could. So, I mean, this is a very important, especially for folks that are in the military or in

• 1:43:07Jocko Willink?

  services where you can take losses. And that is, when you're in charge, it's the time is not then to provide tactical counsel, right? That's not the time. First, you gotta let the person get over the emotional hump, help them through that, and if you gotta go back and debrief them later, that's what you do. Think, I think everybody needs to pay attention to that. And, I mean, you could say the same thing for businesses, you know, if somebody makes a big mistake and they feel bad about it and it hurts them, or they get people fired or they cost a bunch of money or something like, you might not want to jump on their back immediately.

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  A man remains a man after he puts on a soldier's suit. Death in the company is like a death in the family. Talk relieves tension.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay, talk relieves tension. This is a tough one. Because guess what? Some people, when something bad happens, you know what they want to do? They want to be left alone.

• 1:44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  And, and yet, it's talk that relieves tension and getting that out of them, which I agree with. But, again, you gotta be tactful. There's a dichotomy. You just can't go, hey, man, I really want to talk to you about what happened. It's like, hey, maybe that person needs a little time. Maybe that person needs a little space. But you can't give them too much time because they're gonna sit there and dwell on it. So pay attention.

• 1:44:25Jocko Willink?

  The unit which fights successful action but is without knowledge of its success may even ensure a great victory for some larger body and still emerge from the battlefield with a feeling of inferiority. It's a complex sentence, but what he's saying is like, you make sure when your people do something good, you tell them. Because there's a lot of times where people don't, people don't understand what they did and how big of an impact it had, and that's bad.

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Here's a good one. In combat, nothing succeeds like success. The knowledge of victory is the beginning of a conviction of superiority. Just as truly, the savor of one small triumph will wholly drive out the bitter taste of any number of demoralizing defeats.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  Nothing succeeds like success.

• 1:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Now we get into section tactical cohesion.

• 1:45:19Jocko Willink?

  Important. We're gonna think about that.

• 1:45:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's a story in Extreme Ownership about the boat crews and the boat crew doing well. And sometimes people will say, what, you know, what did the guy that do, do different? What did the new leader do? And I always say, well, what he got the team to do is get everyone in the boat, rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time. Like, if you can do that, you're winning. If you can do that as a leader, if you can get everybody in the boat, rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time, you're gonna win. And you'd be surprised how often I see companies, I see businesses, and I see military units where people are not rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  So that's what tactical cohesion is. Tactical cohesion is how can we get people to be working together? And here we go. Getting the troops to that cohesiveness back to the book. It may be done through one bold individual, standing erect and saying to a few others, "Follow me. We are going on."

• 1:46:19Jocko Willink?

  If a few rise and follow, the entire line is apt to get in motion. On the other hand, if this same individual advances alone but says nothing, it is unlikely that he will have any followers. One word, "Come," makes his action tenfold as effective as if he plunges gallantly ahead in silence. The act of moving is initiative. The act of coupling motion with speech is thinking initiative.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  Important.

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Very important.

• 1:46:53Jocko Willink?

  Here's talk about getting a gunfight. The first thing you do is you hit the ground is reestablish contact with your men. Determine where they are and let them know where you are. This, this happens in business too. Something bad happens and we all go into panic mode and start focusing on our little world. As a leader, you need to say, "Okay, guys, here's what's going on. Here's where I am. Here's what we're gonna do."

• 1:47:12Jocko Willink?

  Leadership, leadership, leadership, leadership.

• 1:47:17Jocko Willink?

  The majority of small unit leaders do not take any steps toward restoring control from which alone can come unity of action. Some try to contact their men by voice or by relay of voice during an action while the men are prone, the voice will rarely carry more than 25 feet. This means that unless there is a relay of all hands under, and, and all hands understand what is being attempted, the voice method is ineffective. In the SEAL teams, when somebody yells out a command, everybody says it. And it's the best, it's the coolest thing. It's not the coolest thing, but it's, it's pretty cool when you hear that word getting passed and you hear the criticalness of an important command coming out and everybody says it and the, it's just, that's what you have to do. And we're so well-trained at that.

• 1:48:03Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the few tactical things that you learn in basic underwater demolition SEAL training is you better pass the word. Pass the word, man. It's one of those things. It's one of those things. You learn to pass the word.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is a great point. The company coming under fire literally begins its engagement by falling apart. So when you start getting shot at, guess what you do? You get down, you can't see anyone else. And you don't know what's happening. So your first thing that happens when you get engaged is you fall apart.

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  Thereafter, so long as it continues to engage, the overriding problem of the commander is the reunification of his elements. This is a great way to think about. So are you tactical leaders out there? Military, police, firefighters? This is important. Think about this. After the thing, after the engagement starts, the overriding problem of the commander is the re-unification of his elements. Proper fire support and direction are coming, are among the tools which he uses in bringing about cohesion. But the fundamental means is communication. Getting his men to link up by talking to one another and sending along word of what they are doing and what they have seen. Now, this is a very simple thing. It is so simple.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  That it recalls the warning from Colonel GFR Henderson. In war, the simple things are the most difficult.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  Pass the word.

• 1:49:33Jocko Willink?

  We say that we seek initiative in our men. That is the American way of fighting. We say that we want men who can think and act. We are just as steadfast, however, in proclaiming that the supreme object in training is to produce unity of action. These two aims are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are complementary halves of an enlightened battle discipline. So, did you catch that? We want our people to act. We want our people to act for themselves. We want them to think and act. And at the same time, we want unified unity of command. We want them to be working together. So we want them to act alone and we want them to work together. There's obviously a dichotomy there. Those are the complementary halves of an enlightened battle discipline. Here we go, this is beautiful.

• 1:50:18Jocko Willink?

  But the various curious part of it is that, is that training largely ignores the sole principle, which makes these two basic ideas fully and finally reconcilable. We do not teach our men from the day they first put on the uniform, that speech in combat is as vital as fire in combat.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  Speech in combat is as vital as fire in combat. We do not say to them that for a man to be able to think straight about his tactical situation is not enough. He must communicate his thoughts to others before they can begin to produce unity of action.

• 1:51:04Jocko Willink?

  Out of speech, or from the written word, which is its substitute, comes all unification of strength on the battlefield. And from the latter comes decisive action. This applies to two men serving together on an outpost. It applies equally to the battalion or the regiment.

• 1:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Right there. Right there. If you can't communicate with the other people, and people don't spread the word, and your team doesn't communicate well with each other, you're not going to be able to join these two halves. Which is acting and being decisive and being using initiative and cohesiveness of your unit.

• 1:51:51Jocko Willink?

  The question still remains, what kind of initiative is beneficial and what kind is harmful? And how may troops be, might, might be taught to distinguish between the two, right? So could a person on your, in your platoon, take so much initiative that it hurts? Oh, yes, they can. I've seen it many times before. Many times before I've seen that. So the question is, how do we know how much, there's a dichotomy, right? We want people to act, but we don't want them to take too much action. I'm glad I wrote the book, Dichotomy of Leadership. And here's, here's his way of trying to define that. Is the soldier acting on his own to advise others of his tactical situation, or conveying any other information which may be of general benefit

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  in furthering the tactical situation of the company, or in enlisting the aid of others in carrying out any action which will benefit the tactical situation of the company? So you, you, you need to take action, you need to take initiative, as long as it's benefiting the company.

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  As long as you're, and you know what we talk about is commander's intent. Like you can do whatever you want, as long as it's in support of commander's intent. If it's not in support of commander's intent, we got a problem.

• 1:53:05Jocko Willink?

  In the Army of the United States, we act towards speech as if it were mortally, as if we were mortally afraid of it. We tell our men to think, yet we never tell them that if in combat they remain dumb, it is slow suicide. Slow suicide. The period between wars was an age of rapid advancement in communications technique. Radio was born, the telephone was vastly improved, the teleprinter appeared, and television waited just around the corner. It all came so fast that we were struck dumb by our own magic. How brilliant is that? We were struck dumb by our own magic.

• 1:53:45Jocko Willink?

  How many people these days are not becoming good communicators because they're not interacting with people enough? Because instead of talking to them, they're sending them a text. Instead of talking to them, they're sending them an email. How is that affecting us?

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Pretty much everybody.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  Pretty much everybody.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  I'm one of those people, by the way.

• 1:54:04Jocko Willink?

  You've got emojis coming out, right? You've got issues.

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  I don't know, that might be a step in the right direction, right? The additional emojis, additional communication.

• 1:54:12Jocko Willink?

  You know what? It is. It does add some clarity to your statements. I'll give you credit. Maybe I need to get in the emoji game.

• 1:54:19Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:54:20Jocko Willink?

  Not happening. But, you know, that's a great thing. Talk about raising kids, to make sure you talk to your kids. I worked with someone once that had a kid that had like a speech impediment. And this kid would just sit down and talk your ear off with speech impediment. And, and I talked to the parent and said, hey, you've got one confident kid, you know, with speech impediment. How did you get him to overcome, you know, this, this speech impediment? Or the, it's not so much the speech impediment, because he didn't overcome it, still had it. But guess what? Was going to talk your ear off, and was going to sit down and act professional and get it, convey his message. And the response was, got him to talk to people all the time. And, and made him talk to people.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  And so that's what you do. Get, have conversations with your kids, how's that?

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:10Jocko Willink?

  Have conversations with your people on your team. How's that?

• 1:55:17Jocko Willink?

  Is that one of the reasons why podcasts are popular? Cause you get to hear conversations between people because you're not hearing them otherwise.

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, maybe.

• 1:55:27Jocko Willink?

  Here's, he's saying, uh, this is just good advice for this is for all you folks that are thinking about joining the military. Here we go. When you prepare to fight, you must prepare to talk. You must learn that speech will help you save your situation. You must be alert at all times to let others know what is happening to you. You must use your brain and your voice anytime that any word of yours will help you or others. You are a tactical unit and you must think of yourself that way. Don't try to win a war or capture a hill all by yourself. Your action alone means nothing, or at best, very little. It is when you talk to others and they join with you that your action becomes important.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  Gotta communicate.

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is, Leif tells a story about me telling him to use verbal commands. And we've got that story over and over again because I've done it with so many different people. Like you need to, you need to use your man voice right now. Like you're not being loud enough. And that was a classic example of that, you know, Leif trying to communicate over the radio. And people aren't really listening because it's noise in your ears. There's all these things happening, you know, you hear a little voice. And in the SEAL teams, like I said, we're so trained to repeat those commands. And I'm like, Leif, you gotta try using verbal commands, bro. You gotta try it. And he kind of looked at me like, man, I'm giving the perfect brief over the radio right now. My men will respond.

• 1:56:56Jocko Willink?

  And so finally, you know, he was, you know, angry Leif came out and he's like, ah, everyone, he yelled and everyone repeated. And everything happened. And it was one of those things and it's, I mean, this is what 10 years ago, 50, 12 years ago. But it was definitely, we all had radios on, everybody, every single person had a nice radio. The same radio that's being used today with a, with a noise cancelling headset. Do you know what that is?

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do.

• 1:57:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah. So a noise cancelling, so you'd think, what could be better? Than that? What could be better than this brand new, modern technology with a noise cancelling headset? You know what's better than that? Your voice.

• 1:57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  It's some.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Dang, that's saying a lot with the voice cancelling headset and even the, even then, the voice is better.

• 1:57:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, when you got the noise cancelling headset. It shuts off the sound, so when you're shooting your gun, there's no sound coming in. Now you don't hear whatever's being told to you.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:48Jocko Willink?

  Check. Alright, one final statement on that. "Men govern by words. Speech galvanizes the desire to work together is the beginning of the urge to get something done." So, learn how to communicate. Read, study English.

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  Learn how to write, it's gonna make you a better communicator. Alright, now we go to "Why Men Fight." "When a retrograde movement becomes necessary in combat, it is an invitation to disaster to move before the men are told why they are moving. If the pressure has made that fact obvious, then they still must be told how far to go, and the line or point to which they are withdrawing must be made clear and unmistakable. Otherwise, they will keep moving and all control will be lost. The spoken word is the greatest of steadying forces in any time of crisis." Think about that. "The spoken word is the greatest of steadying forces in any time of crisis."

• 1:58:52Jocko Willink?

  An excited lieutenant shouting "Get the hell out of here and follow me to that tree, follow me to that tree line on the far side of the creek" will succeed.

• 1:59:01Jocko Willink?

  Though a perfectly calm captain, trying to bring off the same movement but keeping his voice calm, keeping his voice down with the result that the men do not hear him, will fail. That's obvious.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  "Formal language under these circumstances is almost unknown in the Army of the United States. In fact, 'Get the hell out of here' has virtually established itself in our jargon as the customary order."

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  Said General Dragomiroff. "A strong moral education is the best safeguard to solidarity of troops under fire. Even so, the soldier will forget or discount much that training has taught him as the danger mounts and fear takes hold. It is then that the voice of the leader must cut through fear to remind him of what is required."

• 1:59:59Jocko Willink?

  The reasoned explanation of why this is true has never been more clearly stated than by Staff Sergeant Pete F. Dine of the 17th Infantry Regiment after he had won the Silver Star for taking over the leading of a demoralized platoon during the Burton Island Fight.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  And here's Staff Sergeant Pete Dine. "I knew that the men were afraid and careless at the same time. Though some were being killed, the others would not take even average precautions in going after the enemy installations as we passed through them. I knew they were afraid because I was aware of my own fear. Then I asked myself why it was that we felt fear in each other and I realized it was because all of the leaders had quit talking.

• 2:00:52Jocko Willink?

  I knew then that the only way to get confidence back into the platoon was to talk it up as a man might do in a football game. I continued my own attack on the enemy shelters and spider holes, but there was a difference. That now began yelling, that I now began yelling to others, "Watch me. This is what you're supposed to do. Get at it. Keep working. Keep your eyes open." Soon the platoon became collected and began to operate methodically. But I kept talking until the end because I had learned something new. Leaders must talk if they are to lead. Action is not enough. A silent example will never rally men."

• 2:01:35Jocko Willink?

  Get some. Or get at it.

• 2:01:40Jocko Willink?

  In battle, back to the book, in battle, the voice of the leader is always needed to call back the men from carelessness. It is their chronic attitude in and out of danger, even in veteran troops, it is not expected. It is not the expected presence of the enemy which keeps them alert on a hostile field, but the force with which they feel pressing them at any given moment. When fire comes against them, they sense danger from every direction. Unless they are informed of the source of the danger, there is apt to occur a swift moral transition in which they become mentally pinned by the mere incidents of fire. I like that term mentally pinned. You just don't know what's going on. Pin down.

• 2:02:25Jocko Willink?

  This was interesting. On seven occasions has been my part, part of my duty to investigate the sources of panic along the battle line, twice in the Pacific and five times in Europe. So, there was times where people just panicked and left the line, and he had to investigate them. And he goes into, that was how each of these incidents, each of these seven incidents got its start. One or two, one or two or more men made a sudden run to the rear, which others in the vicinity did not understand. But it was the lack of information, rather than the sight of running men, which was the crux of the danger. For in every case, the testimony of all witnesses clearly developed the fact that those who

• 2:03:08Jocko Willink?

  started the run, and thereby spread the fear which started the panic, had a legitimate or at least reasonable excuse for the action. It was not the sudden motion, which of itself did not, did the damage, but the fact that the others present were not kept informed. Gotta, your people gotta know what's going on. For example, a sergeant in the 1st Battalion 502nd Infantry was hit through an artery during the Keraton-Cosway fight on June 12th, 1944. It happened in a flash. One second he was hit, and the next he was running for a first aid station without telling his own squad why he was getting out.

• 2:03:51Jocko Willink?

  They took out after him, and then the line broke. Others who hadn't seen the sergeant make his dash, saw someone else in flight. They ran too. Someone said, "The order is to withdraw." Others picked up the word and cried it along the line, "Withdraw, withdraw." It happened just as simply as that. You can see how that happened all day long, right? The term "control" is not in this instance to be considered as synonymous with the voice of authority. Control is a man-to-man force on the battlefield. No matter how lowly his rank, any man who controls himself automatically contributes to the control of others. That's legit. Any man who controls himself automatically contributes to the control of others.

• 2:04:36Jocko Willink?

  Fear is contagious, but so, but courage is not less so. To the man who is in terror and verging on panic, no influence can be more steadying than that he sees some other man near him who is retaining self-control and doing his duty.

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  It's weird how people are just so influenced by other people.

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 2:04:58Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you see it everywhere.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Personal honor is the one thing valued more than life itself by the majority of men. The lips of the dying attest how strongly this force influences individual conduct in battle. A young company runner hit by a shell at Keraton collapsed into the arms of his commander. And with his life swiftly ebbing, said, Captain, this company always called me a screw up. Tell me that I wasn't. Tell me that I wasn't one this time. The captain replied, no, son, you sure weren't. And the board died with a smile on his face.

• 2:05:44Jocko Willink?

  But while an army is a collection of individuals, it is also a crowd under pressure. And under pressure, it tends to ever to revert to crowd form. The seeds of panic are always present in troops so long as they are in the midst of physical danger, the form of which changes moment to moment. In the majority of men, the retention of self-discipline under the conditions of the battlefield depends on the maintaining of an appearance of discipline within the unit.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  So obvious. See with businesses, man. With businesses, you'll get a business that like people are squared away. That's how they roll and everyone acts squared away. And you get some people that aren't. And that's the, that's the image, that's the culture of the company and no one squared away.

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Should the latter begin to dissolve? So should the discipline within the unit begin to dissolve? Only a small minority of the most hardy individuals will retain self-control. The others cannot stand fast if the circumstances appear to justify flight. When other men flee, the social pressure is lifted. And the average soldier will respond as if he has been given a free release from duty. For he knows that his personal failure is made inconspicuous by the general dissolution. To it is a normal tendency in troops that they will drift rearward from the fire line unless they are being given an active direction. But it is just as normal that they will reverse themselves quickly and return to their duty if given a firm order by someone whom they know.

• 2:07:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and have you ever been in a situation where you just like put out word? Like, like, like just something stupid like, um, like you'll be in a store or something and people, people will be like not knowing, hey, they're just someone say, hey, there's a register over here. Or like you're at a waiting in a line at a, at a, at a public event of some kind, you know? Hey, wrap this thing around, wrap the line around. And everyone just does it.

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, like at the, I, I think this is kind of what you're talking about too, like at the airport. Remember that day I was super late? Remember? To get on the plane. I watched in DC and went to the wrong airport. Last minute, last second, by the way. Anyway, I'm standing in the TSA line. I see, it's super long, by the way. When I say super long, I mean like.

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  Like you ain't gonna make your flight.

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is long, long, like a long line, like there was a crowd. So I'm standing in line, I'm like, you know, when you're in a hurry, you're always looking for little shortcuts and I'll violate a few rules, you know, to get there quicker. So I'm on the lookout. Everyone else is cruising, just falling in line, literally. So I look and I see a weird sort of line start a kind of the forming. Way shorter too, like the kind like I can, I can literally, literally walk about 15 meters.

• 2:08:41Jocko Willink?

  Ahead.

• 2:08:42Speaker 01

  To the end of this weird little line forming. Everyone sees it. It's a little line, but it's kind of like one of those things like, oh, that's not what we're doing. And I think the lines make it even more psychologically rigid, you know, where it's like, we're in line and to get out of line, that's a kind of a big deal.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it says it's the social, what is he calling it here? The social, you get the release from social duty, right?

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so if everyone's standing in line and you're just doing what everyone else does, there's like a social pressure to stay in line.

• 2:09:10Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right. So, but boom, I, man, I was gonna miss that flight. So.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  I ask, oh, how's this? I asked the guy, not like in that line, because it's way ahead. I asked the guy in the next line, who's like maybe two, three people ahead of me, but in a different line. I was like, is that another line? And you know what he says? He said, yeah, it is. He goes, yeah, it is. I was like, oh, I just go. He already knew it, but then he was like standing in. But he didn't do it, probably from that social pressure. So of course I go.

• 2:09:42Jocko Willink?

  And then everyone follows.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  Bruh, I look behind everyone. I fear like a commotion behind me, but it's just so many people filling in. That's how freaking.

• 2:09:49Jocko Willink?

  Leading from the.

• 2:09:50Speaker 01

  Leading. And I made the flight by literally like, what? 10 seconds, probably.

• 2:09:55Jocko Willink?

  You were close.

• 2:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:00Jocko Willink?

  This is a, again, I kind of covered this, but I'm gonna hit it one more time. Individual straggers had almost no combat value when inducted into a strange organization. The majority of them were unwilling to join any such solid unit, which still facing the enemy. The minority, even after being given food and a little rest, took their place in line. But the moment the new unit came under enemy pressure, the individuals quit their ground and ran rearward or sought cover behind, somewhere behind the combat line. So this is what I already talked about. You get a new person and they don't know anyone, they're not gonna do their job. On the other hand, this is important for businesses. On the other hand, that was not true of gun crews, squad groups or platoon, which had been routed from their original ground and separated from their parent unit, but had

• 2:10:45Jocko Willink?

  managed in some way to hold together during a fallback. Upon being inducted into a strange company, they tended to fight as vigorously as any element in the command, which they had newly joined and would frequently set an example of initiative and courageous action beyond what had been asked of them. Think about that. Keep your, keep your little elements together. I used to be real big on that. You got your little fire teams? And I would always try and keep the little fire team integrity. Keep that fire team integrity. And these would be like in a SEAL platoon, there's four, there's four fire teams in a, in a task unit, you know, there's eight fire teams. Try and keep, these guys still know each other, but they're gonna do a little bit better. They just keep that fire team integrity. They already know each other. They already know what's up.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  In our striving for a system of discipline which recognizes in theory, though the theory is often ignored in practice, that the relationships within our army should be based upon intimate understanding between officers and men rather than familiarity between them, on self-respect rather than fear, and above all, on uniting comradeship.

• 2:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Self-respect rather than fear. This is...

• 2:12:01Jocko Willink?

  They have destroyed the name and tradition of old and honored regiments with the stroke of a pen for convenience sake. They have uprooted the names and numbers which had identity with a certain soil, and moved them willy-nilly to another soil. They have moved men around as if they were pegs and nothing counted but a specialist classification number. They have become fillers of holes rather than architects of human spirit.

• 2:12:30Jocko Willink?

  That's bold, isn't it?

• 2:12:31Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 2:12:32Jocko Willink?

  You like that one?

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  I do.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  So, sometimes the army, and the army does this more than anyone else, I believe, they'll just like, take a unit that's been around for 122 years, fought in all kinds of wars and just disband them. They're done. Just get rid of them. And just, and sometimes they bring them back, thankfully, but that's not a good idea. There's a certain power in tradition, right? There's a certain power in tradition. There's a... When they formed up SEAL Team 5, they took, they, they took SEAL Team, or sorry, Underwater Demolition Team 11.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  And they disbanded it and basically reformed it as SEAL Team 5. But if you look at the, the symbol of SEAL Team 5, there's a setting sun and on the setting sun is the number 11. You can see it going down. Little, little fact for you.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  UDT.

• 2:13:24Jocko Willink?

  Pretty cool, but they at least kept that tradition alive, right? At least kept that tradition alive.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  And yes, this idea of fillers of holes rather than architects of human spirit, you gotta think about what you're doing with little units when you start breaking them up and moving people around. There's relationships there that you're messing with. You might not be doing a good thing just because this guy has a certain qualification. Oh, put him over there.

• 2:13:46Jocko Willink?

  Therein lies a great weakness and we have suffered from it through every war. For it must ever remain that acquisition of a truer knowledge of the nature of man in war will suffice very little if put to work only by the local commander on limited ground.

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  So everybody's got to understand that there's human beings working here, that you're dealing with humans, that you have to be an architect of the human spirit. That again leaves too much to chance and puts too high a premium on the virtues and talents of the average leader. What is needed primarily if we are to go forward, the policies stemming from the top, which are based not upon slide rule calculations, but on knowledge of the human heart.

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter. The aggressive will.

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  I like this little section. Morale is the thinking of an army. It is the whole complex body of an army's thought, the way it feels about the soil and about the people from which it springs, the way that it feels about their cause and their politics as compared with other causes and other politics, the way that it feels about its friends and allies as well as its enemies, about its commanders and gold bricks, about food and shelter, duty and leisure, militarism and civilianism, freedom and slavery, work and want, weapons and comradeship, bunk fatigue and drill, discipline and disorder, life and death, God and the devil.

• 2:15:24Jocko Willink?

  That's a big, that's a big, that's what he's saying. Like you've got human beings and the morale of the army is all of that stuff combined together. You have to account for it.

• 2:15:38Jocko Willink?

  The definition cuts through one of the oldest myths in the military book, that morale comes from discipline.

• 2:15:47Jocko Willink?

  The process is precisely the reverse. True discipline is the product of morale.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  Right? I never really thought about that too much. How's your morale?

• 2:16:04Jocko Willink?

  If you have good morale, you're gonna have better discipline. If your morale is weak, what happens to your discipline? Goes out the window.

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  "The soldier needs a sound and vigorous body if he is to contend in modern war, but this itself should be the object rather than the perfecting of him in drills, not even remotely related to use of his weapons, out of a mistaken and obsolescent notion

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  that they somehow improve his discipline. There is no such time for this method."

• 2:16:40Jocko Willink?

  So, doing stuff just to do it, to like improve your discipline, is not what we're talking about here.

• 2:16:47Jocko Willink?

  "Beyond the basic physical requirement, the essential is that he be given the freedom to think with a clear mind, which freedom can be his only when he becomes convinced that the army and particularly the army as represented by his immediate superiors is doing everything possible for his welfare." You gotta care about your people, that's what... That's what Mooc said, that's what General Mukuyama said. You gotta care about your people. 100% agree. "Soldiers can endure hardship. Most of their training is directed toward conditioning them for unusual privation and exertion, but no power on earth can reconcile them to what common sense says is unnecessary hardship, which might have been avoided by greater intelligence in their superiors."

• 2:17:33Jocko Willink?

  That is awesome. If your people do all kinds of... Take all kinds of punishment for you. But if they see that there's a way you could have avoided punishment for them, and you didn't do it because you were dumb, they're gonna rebel against you.

• 2:17:47Jocko Willink?

  The more intelligent... The more intelligent the soldier, the more likely it is that he will see as a sign... See that as a sign of indiscipline up above and will answer it the same way. So if the upper chain of command's dropping the ball, guess what's gonna happen in the lower chain? We're dropping the ball too. "Nothing more radical is suggested here than that the leader who would make certain of the fundamental soundness of his operation cannot do better than concentrate his attention on his men."

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  That's a bold statement. There's nothing better you can do than concentrate your attention on your men. If you want something to be successful, concentrate on your people. There is no other worthwhile road.

• 2:18:37Jocko Willink?

  They dupe only themselves who believe that there is a brand of military efficiency, which consists in moving smartly, expediting papers and achieving perfection in formations, while at the same time slighting or ignoring the human nature of those whom they command. The art of leading in operations large or small is the art of dealing with humanity

• 2:18:59Jocko Willink?

  and working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems. These are the real basis of commanders' major calculations. That's just awesome, that whole thing. The art of leading. Dealing with humanity. Working diligently on behalf of your men. Being sympathetic with them. And at the same time dichotomy, insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems. Boom. Men who have been in battle know from firsthand experience that when the chips are down, a man fights to help the man next to him, just as a company fights to keep pace with its flanks.

• 2:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Things have to be that simple. An ideal does not become tangible at the moment of firing a volley or charging a hill.

• 2:19:56Jocko Willink?

  Having already suggested that the thinking bayonets can never be subordinated by the routine methods of a discipline which is based largely in mechanical procedures, I will add that no leader will ever fail his troops, nor will they fail him who leads them in respect for the disciplined life.

• 2:20:19Jocko Willink?

  Between these two things, discipline in itself and a personal faith in the military value of discipline, lies all the difference between military maturity and mediocrity.

• 2:20:33Jocko Willink?

  A salute from an unwilling soldier is as meaningless as the moving of a leaf on a tree. It is a sign only that the subject has been caught by a gust of wind, but a salute from the man who takes pride in the gesture because he feels privileged to wear the uniform, having found the service good, is an act of the highest military virtue.

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  One further fact that needs to be stressed about the character of those officers whose capacity could be measured in the efficiency of their companies, while they were scrupulous in the care of their men, they were not wet nurses. They treated their subordinates as men. They did not regard them as adolescents and they did not employ the classroom manner in dealing with them individually or in the mass. That was an important part of their hold upon the men. The men prize a commander the more if he looks and acts the part of a soldier, but the characteristic of a fine appearance will but betray him the sooner

• 2:21:41Jocko Willink?

  if he has no real kinship with the men. So, this is dichotomy. You gotta take care of your men, but you're not a wet nurse. You don't treat them like little kids.

• 2:21:53Jocko Willink?

  The characteristics which are required in the minor commander if he is to prove capable of preparing men for and leading them through the shock of combat with high credit, may therefore be briefly described as, one, diligence in the care of men. So here's the characteristics. Number one, diligence in the care of men. Number two, administration of all organizational affairs such as punishments and promotions according to a standard of resolute justice. Number three, military bearing. Number four, a basic understanding of the simple fact that soldiers wish to think of themselves as soldiers and that

• 2:22:33Jocko Willink?

  all military information is nourishing to their spirits and their lives. Number five, courage, creative intelligence and physical fitness.

• 2:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Number six, innate respect for the dignity of the position and the work of other men. I'm gonna tell you, those are some good rules. Some good things to think about if you're in a leadership position. Here's a little commentary, and it was written in 1947, might still be true today. It is my belief that there is no more hurtful doctrine put before our people today than that the army should duplicate the arrangements which obtain within the civil society, slavishly imitating the latter's comforts, social customs, and ideas of regulating justice, and insisting on no higher standards of personal responsibility for its people.

• 2:23:33Jocko Willink?

  So, hey, guess what? The military is not the civilian world. And we shouldn't be trying to make it that way. The military is the military.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  That's 1947, he's saying that. I'm gonna have to say, I agree.

• 2:23:52Jocko Willink?

  In my opinion, and I do not say this lightly, the fault in our disciplinary level during World War II was not primarily that the discipline of the ranks needed to be more relaxed, but that the discipline of a considerable percentage of our officers needed to be tightened. For this simple reason, insofar as his ability to mold the character of troops is concerned, the qualifying test of an officer is the judgment placed upon his soldierly abilities by those who serve under him.

• 2:24:25Jocko Willink?

  You can only mold your troops if they judge you worthy of molding them. Think about that for a minute. If they do not deem him fit to command, he cannot train them to obey.

• 2:24:40Jocko Willink?

  Thus, where slackness is tolerated in officership, it is a direct invitation to disobedience. And as disobedience multiplies, all discipline disappears.

• 2:24:58Jocko Willink?

  I love this little section right here. "No officer can command unless he is certain of himself and confident that his orders are likely to lead to success. On the other hand, command does not create its own magic. Men who are filled with the spirit of disobedience will break the heart and ruin the character of the finest officer who ever lived." Man, you're gonna deal with some rabble-rousers out there. You're gonna deal with some tough cookies.

• 2:25:27Jocko Willink?

  "The way in which the loss of moral incentive is reflected in the tactile behavior of troops was thoughtfully expressed many years ago by the British teacher Colonel G.F.R. Henderson. When troops once realize their inferiority, they can go, they can no longer be depended on. If attacking, they refuse to advance. If defending, they abandon all hope of resistance. It is not the losses they have suffered, but those they expect to suffer that affect them. Consequently, unless discipline and national spirit are of superior quality and unless the soldier is animated by something higher than the habit of mechanical obedience, panic,

• 2:26:08Jocko Willink?

  shirking, and wholesale surrender will be the ordinary features of a campaign."

• 2:26:16Jocko Willink?

  Pretty harsh warning. "Nothing more unfortunate can happen to the commander than to come to be regarded by his subordinates as unapproachable. For such a reputation isolates him from the main problems of command as well as its chief rewards." So, you gotta be approachable as a leader.

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  They're saying there's nothing more unfortunate than being regarded as unapproachable. It is, back to the book, is never a waste of time for the commander to talk to his people about their problems. Here's a good people ask me, I get all the junior leaders from the military, from the civilian sector, from everywhere. And they ask me, what am I supposed to do? To the young officer who's conscious of his own reserve and is anxious to do something about it. I can suggest nothing better than to make a habit of full physical participation. That is, instead of watching the squad or platoon work out a problem and either directing or criticizing its action, let him pick up a weapon, relieve one man in the group, then let himself be the one commanded

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  until the conclusion of the operation. Is this course of contact beneath the dignity of the American officer? Certainly not. So what was it? Get in the game. Get in the game.

• 2:27:34Jocko Willink?

  In the United States service, we are tending to forget because of the effective motorization that the higher value of discipline of the road march in other days, that it wasn't that it hardened muscles, but that short of combat, it was the best method of separating the men from the boys. Always get back to a little road march action. Best method for separating the men from the boys is the road march. This is true today. Despite all the new conditions imposed by high velocity warfare, hard road march is the most satisfactory training test of the moral strength of the individual man. The great advantage of the gain in moral force

• 2:28:15Jocko Willink?

  through all forms of physical training is that it is an unconscious gain. All forms of physical training are going to give you an unconscious gain of moral force. Let that propel your workout tomorrow morning. Willpower, determination, mental poise and mental control all march hand in hand with the general health and well being of the man. Fatigue will beat men down as quickly as any other condition for fatigue brings fear with it. There is no quicker way to lose a battle than to lose it on the road for lack of adequate preliminary hardening in troops. Such a condition cannot be redeemed by the resolve of a commander

• 2:28:56Jocko Willink?

  who insists on driving troops an extra mile beyond their general level of physical endurance. That's important to remember. If you've got people that aren't ready, doesn't matter how much you try and make them do something, they're not physically capable of doing it. That's the reality.

• 2:29:14Jocko Willink?

  Extremes of this sort make men rebellious and hateful of the command, and thus strike at the tactical efficiency from two directions at once.

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  For when men resent a commander, they will not fight as willingly for him. And when their bodies are spent, their nerves are gone. In this state, the soldier's every act is mechanical. He is reduced to that automatism of mind which destroys physical response. His courage is killed, his intellect falls asleep. Truly then, it is killing men with kindness, not to insist upon physical standards during trainer, during training, which will give them a maximum fitness for the extraordinary stresses of campaigning in a war.

• 2:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Killing men, truly killing men with kindness, not to have them physically ready. As the body is hardened, so must the mind be steadily informed so that the soldier will take a reasoning view, not only of the privations of the field, but of that which is being attempted. Once we depart from the ideal of automatic response as the condition most likely to produce unity of action in battle, the only substitute for it lies in the possibility that more and more men in the ranks can be trained to see and think through the haze of battle in unison with their commanders.

• 2:30:34Jocko Willink?

  You can see, you can see, I mean, when you read about face, there's Hackworth. This is what Hackworth did, man. This is how Hackworth rolled.

• 2:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Fact. Back to the book. Why is the will of the military commander deemed more decisive of success than the will of leadership in any other calling? Clearly, it is because the inertia, frictions, and confusions of the forces of the battlefield make all positive action more difficult.

• 2:31:05Jocko Willink?

  And yet, the principles which win intelligent man-to-man cooperation apply equally in all circumstances. The same rules work on the battlefield as in an office.

• 2:31:18Jocko Willink?

  That's why we got a little something called echelon front.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  The will does not operate in a vacuum. It cannot be imposed successfully if it runs counter to reason. Things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it. They are done because they are doable. Okay, this is a really important little section.

• 2:31:41Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I, I, you know, I talk about force of will sometimes. You gotta make something happen, force of will. But there's a very important, I've called a caveat to that. And we're about to get into this caveat. So to say that again, things not done in war, things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it. They are done because they are doable. The limits for the commander in battle are defined by the general circumstance. When he asks, what he asks of his men must be consistent with the possibilities of the situation. That might seem like common sense, right? Hey, I can't ask you to do anything that cannot be done.

• 2:32:22Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, what can be successfully willed must first be clearly seen and understood. If amid the confusion of battle, the commander sees what is required by the situation. If amid the miscarriage of arrangements and other assailing doubts of other men, he measures the means of doing it. And if he then gives his order and holds his men to their duty, this is the ultimate triumph of the will on the battlefield.

• 2:32:47Jocko Willink?

  To reflect on this thought is to note that he exercises his will far less upon his men than upon himself.

• 2:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Should he, on the other hand, attempt to will that which his men know cannot be done? Or feel unanimously is utterly beyond reason? Or should he base his order on assumptions which they recognize as false? His will becomes temporarily without power and cannot help the situation. This is one of those things where people think, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna tell them to do it and we'll see what they can get done, right? Like, no, they're not gonna, they're gonna see that they can't do it and they're just gonna say, we're not gonna even try. Make your goals realistic, make them not, not just realistic, but make them achievable.

• 2:33:38Jocko Willink?

  There is scarcely any commander with any time in combat, but has had his experience of having willing troops become suddenly unresponsive because his facts were not straight.

• 2:33:55Jocko Willink?

  So sometimes the troops aren't going to do what you want them to do, even though you have this strong will, they're not going to do. Why is that? Here we go. It happened to Lieutenant Colonel H.W. O'Canard during the night advance of 1st Battalion 501st Parachute Infantry against the German-held Dutch Village in September 1944, the village of Schindl,

• 2:34:18Jocko Willink?

  which I have praised elsewhere in this book as one of the most brilliant battalion actions of the war.

• 2:34:27Jocko Willink?

  The column had advanced only 500 yards beyond its outpost line when it came under machine gun and anti-tank fire. Canard heard some of the fire clipping the branches of the tree above his head and judged it was all going high. But the lead company had stopped and the men had jumped for the ditches. He ran forward shouting to the men, "Keep going, keep going, that fire is high." But his personal advance had no effect. Not a man stirred. So this is a incredibly, like, seasoned, I mean, tough, well-trained group, and he's telling them and he's personally leading them forward saying, "Go, go, we gotta go.

• 2:35:10Jocko Willink?

  Don't worry, that fire is high," but has no effect. Not a man stirred. Back to the book. Within a moment, he understood why he had failed. From one of the ditches, a rifleman answered him, "If you think the fire is high, Colonel, come over here. We've had eight men hit in the legs."

• 2:35:29Jocko Willink?

  So you've gotta think about what is actually possible.

• 2:35:35Jocko Willink?

  The supreme trial of the commander in war lies in his ability to overcome the weaknesses of human nature in the face of danger, and these are the matters which he cannot know in full unless he has served with men where danger lies.

• 2:35:54Jocko Willink?

  Check. Chapter 12, Men Under Fire.

• 2:36:02Jocko Willink?

  To those that have known the firing line, it would scarcely be necessary to point out that morale in combat is never a steady current force, but a rapidly oscillating wave whose variations are both immeasurable and unpredictable.

• 2:36:16Jocko Willink?

  It is in this respect chiefly the rapidity and capriciousness of its variations that the morale, that the morale problem in the zone of fire differs from that, from that of a rear area soldiering. A band of men go, may go through a terrible engagement, take its losses bravely, and then become wholly demoralized in the hour in which it must bury its own dead. A regiment, fretted to utter objection by a protracted stay in the lines, may find its fighting spirit again in a six-hour of spite, during which the men are deloused and giving a chan, given a change of underwear. A battalion, advancing boldly, may be brought in check because its commander did the disservice

• 2:37:01Jocko Willink?

  of going too far forward and getting himself killed within sight of the ranks. A platoon may charge and capture an enemy held hill, losing half its numbers in doing so, then run down the hill again because one of its own artillery shells landed too close and hit one man.

• 2:37:21Jocko Willink?

  So that, the morale of the troops is constantly at, at risk of going up or going down.

• 2:37:31Jocko Willink?

  The near presence of death and the prospect of meeting it at the next moment move men in many curious and contrary ways. Many men, many men seem to change character under the guns.

• 2:37:45Jocko Willink?

  The life of hardship and of danger gives new strength to the truly strong and greater weakness to the truly weak.

• 2:37:54Jocko Willink?

  So combat is going to have an effect on people. It's going to amplify their situation.

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  What normal man would deny that some of the fullest and fairest days of his life have been spent at the front, or that the sky ever seems more blue, or the air more bracing than when there is just a hint of danger in the air?

• 2:38:20Jocko Willink?

  This is an important thing for leaders to understand: The man who cannot bring himself to trust the judgment and good faith of other men cannot command very long. He will soon break under the unnecessary strain he puts on himself. Sleeplessness, nervous irritation, and loss of self-control will be his

• 2:38:41Jocko Willink?

  will be his lot until he is at last found totally unfit. The ideal relationship between a commander and his subordinate is nowhere better illustrated than in a passage from the Letter of Instruction wherein Grant told Sherman to proceed to the destruction of Johnson's army. Quote, "I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of campaign, but simply to lay down the work it is desirable to have done and leave you free to execute it in your own way." Some decentralized command right there.

• 2:39:22Jocko Willink?

  This is another good one. "When a company is stopped by physical shock, restoration of its movement becomes a problem for the battalion. When a company is stopped by psychological shock, the continuing of the advance remains the problem of the company commander."

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  And here's some advances, some examples of that. Diffusion of the company over too wide a sector, a retrograde movement by supporting weapons such as armor, the death of a well-loved officer, light losses from friendly supporting fire, the appearance of some new and unexpected weapon in the enemy sector, such are a few of the causes of psychological shock. The local treatments are as many and as varied as are the diseases. With respect to the effect of friendly fire hitting among troops, however, it is to be observed that if circumstances leave any room for doubt as to the source, the men will jump to the conclusion that they are being victimized by their own guns.

• 2:40:18Jocko Willink?

  It is, in instances where it is unmistakable that they have been hurt by their own fire however, the commander is ill-advised to lie to them. They will usually learn the truth later on and when they do, it strikes a blow to his prestige.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  The experienced combat soldier knows that such occasional accidents are part of battle and he accepts them as such, but he cannot make any good judgment to the realization that his commander is either a fool or a liar.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  No gain ever comes from being slick with troops, from acting deviously instead of forthrightly, from posing as having superior knowledge or from being secretive or discounting the common sense of the majority. See, a lot of people do that. They discount the common sense. They think they're gonna get away with that with, with trying to bullshit the troops and it doesn't work.

• 2:41:10Jocko Willink?

  The most common cause of psychological shock however, is partial victory. The adage that the weakest point follows success is a fundamental truth of minor tactics and the danger is always greatest when success is too easily won. Success is disarming, tension is the normal state of mind and body in combat. When the tension suddenly relaxes through the winning of a first objective, troops are apt to be pervaded by a sense of extreme well-being and there is apt to ensue laxness in all its forms and with all its dangers.

• 2:41:49Jocko Willink?

  He, he hammers this home. "It might be well to speak of the importance of enthusiasm, kindness, courtesy and justice, which are the safeguards of honor and the tokens of mutual respect between man and man. This last there must be if they are to go forward together, prosper in one another's company and find strength in the bonds of mutual service and experience a common phallacity in the relationship between the leader and the lead. Loyalty is the big thing, the greatest battle asset of all, but no man ever wins the loyalty of troops by preaching loyalty."

• 2:42:32Jocko Willink?

  No man ever wins the loyalty of troops by preaching loyalty. It is given him by them as he proves his possession of the other virtues.

• 2:42:46Jocko Willink?

  The doctrine of a blind loyalty to leadership is a selfish and futile military dogma, except insofar as it is ennobled by a higher loyalty in all ranks to truth and decency.

• 2:43:00Jocko Willink?

  War is too, war is much too brutal a business to have room for brutal leading. In the end, its only effect can be to corrode the character of men, and when character is lost, all is lost.

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  The bully and the sadist serve only to further encumber an army. Their subordinates must waste precious time clearing away the wreckage that they make. The good company has no place for the officer who would rather be right than be loved, for the time will quickly come when he walks alone. And in battle, no man may succeed in solitude. That's worth repeating. The good company has no place for the officer who would rather be right than be loved. We talked about that when Jordan was on. You don't need to be right when you're dealing with your significant other.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  That's not important.

• 2:44:00Jocko Willink?

  I have known a few brutes in battle whose talents were so limited that they could try no other means of command than the abuse of men. But I have yet to see one who did a good job of holding his command together when the going became rough, and in the ranks, fear of the enemy began to eclipse fear of the man up top.

• 2:44:19Jocko Willink?

  Now, here comes the dichotomy.

• 2:44:23Jocko Willink?

  Because he's talking about all these kindness and courtesy and justice. And then he says ruggedness, ruggedness toughness. Ah, these are quite different things. So long as they are only the outer reflection of an inner determination. And so long as the inner fire is tempered by a heart having real compassion for men. These are the best hands for the business. They will win the hearts of other men and will stimulate their valor. These others will try to be like them. For it is a truth not to be denied that the rugged way is the natural way in battle. Dichotomy right there. It tells this quick story.

• 2:45:07Jocko Willink?

  There comes to mind one last picture. From the same campaign. The scene is stone walled Fort Montberry. The last obstacle barring entry into Brest. A battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment under Major Tom Dallas has had the fort invested for three days. But the defenders have withdrawn to within the inner walls and will not surrender. The infantry fire cannot get at them. The ports have been flamed, but without visible effect. Finally, Dallas asks for three tons of TNT to blow the walls. He is given one ton.

• 2:45:47Jocko Willink?

  Assisted by the infantry, the engineers lay the charge in a gallery under the wall. The work completed, Dallas is ready to give the orders. Then he remembers on the night before the battalion had attacked. And Lieutenant Derwood C. Settles had been killed in the moat. There had been no chance to recover the body. It is still there and will be crushed by the falling masonry. So the demolition is held up and Dallas asks for a volunteer to go down to the moat under fire and bring out the body. A young lieutenant named Kelton responds.

• 2:46:32Jocko Willink?

  In a few minutes, Kelton returns with his burden. He says to Dallas, we are ready now.

• 2:46:41Jocko Willink?

  Dallas replies, "Ready, then blow them all to hell."

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  The charge goes off, the earth shakes, the walls collapse with a roar.

• 2:46:54Jocko Willink?

  There is a stunned silence from within the fort.

• 2:46:58Jocko Willink?

  Dallas stands there for a few seconds and the tears fall as he looks down at the body of his dead officer.

• 2:47:08Jocko Willink?

  And that is loyalty.

• 2:47:14Jocko Willink?

  To close this out with a couple more things. In every action, large or small, is decided by what happens up there on the line with where men take the final chance of life or death.

• 2:47:28Jocko Willink?

  Though I would not for a moment contend that modern war can be fought and won without vigorous thought and action on the home front, I deny absolutely that these things can vouch safe military victory anymore now than in the days when men fought with spears and crossbows.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Any who look at war and think otherwise are sighting through the wrong end of the telescope.

• 2:47:52Jocko Willink?

  They have become deceived by the vastness of the national preparation, how differently they would see things if it became their duty to measure the thin margins between victory and defeat on the field itself. The great victories of the United States have pivoted on the acts of courage and intelligence of a very few individuals. The time always comes in battle when the decisions of statesmen and of generals generals can no longer affect the issue, and when it is not within the power of our national wealth to change the balance decisively.

• 2:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Victory is never achieved prior to that point. It can only be won after the battle has been delivered into the hands of men who move in imminent danger of death.

• 2:48:41Jocko Willink?

  Courage is the real driving force in human affairs and that every worthwhile action comes of some man daring what others fear to attempt.

• 2:48:55Jocko Willink?

  The man who is willing to fight for his country is finally the full custodian of its security.

• 2:49:03Jocko Willink?

  If there were no willing men, no power in government could ever rally the masses of the unwilling.

• 2:49:13Jocko Willink?

  To men who have been long in battle and have thought about it deeply, there comes at last the awareness of this ultimate responsibility that one man must go ahead

• 2:49:26Jocko Willink?

  so that a nation may live.

• 2:49:32Jocko Willink?

  And so, the final and greatest reality.

• 2:49:37Jocko Willink?

  That national strength lies only in the hearts and spirits of men.

• 2:49:44Jocko Willink?

  The Army, Navy, and Air Force are not the guardians of its national security.

• 2:49:52Jocko Willink?

  The tremendous problem of the future is beyond their capacity to solve.

• 2:49:58Jocko Willink?

  The search begins at the cradle where the mother makes the decision either to tie her child to her apron strings or to rear him as a man.

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  It continues through years of schooling when children are taught either to place personal interests uppermost or to think in terms of their responsibility toward their society, their country,

• 2:50:28Jocko Willink?

  and all of mankind. And, there you go.

• 2:50:36Jocko Willink?

  Strength lies in the hearts and spirits of men.

• 2:50:45Jocko Willink?

  And, freedom lies in the courage and the discipline of daring to attempt what others fear.

• 2:51:01Jocko Willink?

  And I think that that reflects not just the strength and freedom of nations, of countries, but also of individuals.

• 2:51:17Jocko Willink?

  We are ultimately responsible for ourselves, for our own freedom, for our own security. It is on us.

• 2:51:28Jocko Willink?

  And I think that is one of the,

• 2:51:33Jocko Willink?

  one of the most valuable lessons to learn from S.L.A. Marshall.

• 2:51:39Jocko Willink?

  And you know, unwillingly, he also taught us a lesson

• 2:51:44Jocko Willink?

  about being truthful and honest, which he was not.

• 2:51:52Jocko Willink?

  And had he listened to some of his own teachings, he might not have made that mistake to tarnish his reputation. It's not worth it.

• 2:52:03Jocko Willink?

  He failed to listen to his own lesson.

• 2:52:09Jocko Willink?

  And maybe that's the last thing we learned, is that we ju- just don't, just don't talk the talk, just don't preach.

• 2:52:21Jocko Willink?

  But walk the walk and live the life, live correctly and follow the rules that you've set for yourself.

• 2:52:37Jocko Willink?

  And then you go and you live with the courage and the strength and the discipline.

• 2:52:47Jocko Willink?

  So that you

• 2:52:50Jocko Willink?

  can truly free your mind.

• 2:52:57Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight. Echo Charles.

• 2:53:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:53:04Jocko Willink?

  So, speaking of, uh, strength and discipline.

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  And walking the walk.

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  And walking the walk and living the life, staying on the path.

• 2:53:16Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you've got some things that could help us uphold the personal standards that we set for ourselves.

• 2:53:25Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. I can. I will.

• 2:53:29Jocko Willink?

  S L A Marshall. Taught us a lesson. He didn't want to teach us about that, didn't he?

• 2:53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's one of those things where I was kind of getting into it, you know, like, I'm like, yeah, dang, that's true. That's true. Yeah. That's and then like, kind of like how you mentioned before, I'm like, wait, but this guy, but then, you know, it's like, it's the, it's the dichotomy.

• 2:53:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a dichotomy. It's an unfortunate dichotomy.

• 2:53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. See, that's why, man.

• 2:53:51Jocko Willink?

  If this guy, if this guy, if we just knew about his normal military record and you never said he did any of that stuff, this would have so much more impact.

• 2:54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:00Jocko Willink?

  The fact that he lied, just, just, it just hurts it. It's all there is to it. Jammed him up, as Echo Charles would say.

• 2:54:10Speaker 01

  But, you know, if you can, how, as it were, not throw the baby out.

• 2:54:16Jocko Willink?

  With the bath water. Yeah. Yeah. There's some good stuff in there.

• 2:54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'll tell you what is possible is for us to stay on the path. And in that path, on that path, is jujitsu, of course, right? Better be, should be, should be, in my, in our opinion.

• 2:54:33Jocko Willink?

  You actually said today that that was one quarter of your life.

• 2:54:35Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  In your life.

• 2:54:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:54:37Jocko Willink?

  One quarter of the things you do is jujitsu.

• 2:54:40Speaker 01

  Yep. Of, of the total things that I do. Oh, yeah.

• 2:54:44Jocko Willink?

  Important things. Cause there's things that aren't on that list, like going to the grocery store.

• 2:54:48Speaker 01

  Well, going to the grocery store does facilitate one of the other things in my life. See what I'm saying?

• 2:54:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not one of the things.

• 2:54:55Speaker 01

  It is not one of the things. No, that's like saying, oh, breathing, you know? Oh, breathing's not a part of your life? Well, yeah, but it facilitates other things. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:55:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so if that's the case, does Origin facilitate jujitsu?

• 2:55:08Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, it does. Big time.

• 2:55:10Jocko Willink?

  Which is good, right?

• 2:55:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:55:11Jocko Willink?

  You gotta eat food and you gotta have Origin.

• 2:55:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:55:14Speaker 01

  Big time. And, okay, so Origin, okay, originmaine.com. This is where you can get your gi for jujitsu if you haven't got one already. Go get one. There is people out there who don't know any other gi except for Origin gi. Actually, someone contacted me. It was like, hey, I realize, um, you know, Origin is the gi to get. But before I buy one, would you consider donating one to my cause? Uh, I think they're like saving up for one, you know, because sometimes that's how, you know, you save up for your gi, whatever. So I'm thinking, on one hand, the dichotomy, sure, I'm never using these other gis again. I wouldn't.

• 2:55:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I see.

• 2:55:50Speaker 01

  But on the other hand, why would I want to bestow a substandard gi onto someone just starting, by the way?

• 2:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Ooh.

• 2:55:57Speaker 01

  So it's like, boom, they got that. But then again, uh, eh, I'll, I probably will. Assuming that the size, you know? All right. Well, that's neither here nor there. Nonetheless, the point is, if you want a gi, a good gi, all made in America, various types, options.

• 2:56:10Jocko Willink?

  I had, when we were in Maine, so after the camp was over, Pete and I were at the factory. We were just getting stuff done and planning and everything, but he went into depth on weaving the fabric, on the lube and everything.

• 2:56:24Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:56:25Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 2:56:27Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking crazy. I've got full understanding, though.

• 2:56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  And it's awesome.

• 2:56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:33Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome to see.

• 2:56:34Speaker 01

  It's interesting to s- to watch Pete get into it. Just let him go. Just let him talk.

• 2:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 2:56:39Speaker 01

  Oh, man, this, that's why these things are like so dope when you look at them and stuff like that.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  That's why, that's why, that's why the company is where it is.

• 2:56:48Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:56:48Jocko Willink?

  Because without that passion. For him, for the team, like when you talk to anyone on the team at Origin, they're like wanting this stuff to be awesome. And so that's why it's that way. Yeah. So it's cool. If you ever get a chance to go to the factory up there, it's worth checking out.

• 2:57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz it isn't just like, oh, a factory. It's like a factory. You can kind of hang out there. It's kind of like a, what do you? It's a pro shop. Like a pro shop. Yeah, you can kind of go in there and then they have, it's like kind of open. You can talk to the people. It's good, man. That's good.

• 2:57:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:20Speaker 01

  So, yeah, oh, yeah, I would recommend that too. In Farmington, Maine, by the way.

• 2:57:26Speaker 01

  That's where it is. Anyway, also on there is joggers and rash guards and clothes.

• 2:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep, for sure, for sure. The rash guards.

• 2:57:37Speaker 01

  Compression gear.

• 2:57:38Jocko Willink?

  Compression gear.

• 2:57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:39Jocko Willink?

  We got supplements as well. So we got for supplements, joint warfare, which is gonna help your joints for a bunch of different reasons. I get awesome compliments about that, that I'm stoked on. That krill oil also gonna help your joints and it's gonna help you just the whole life. And then you got the discipline, which I'm on a lot of discipline right now. And I didn't even realize we were in a three hour podcast at this moment in time. And we recorded a couple other podcasts today.

• 2:58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:10Jocko Willink?

  Shorter podcasts, but podcasts nonetheless.

• 2:58:12Speaker 01

  You over here getting the upper hand on life.

• 2:58:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:14Speaker 01

  That's what's going on. Plus I did the three scoops of discipline. So, um, I'm doing, I have to feel like I understand it.

• 2:58:20Jocko Willink?

  So discipline, pre-life, pre-mission, pre-function.

• 2:58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, pre-function.

• 2:58:27Jocko Willink?

  Pre-get some.

• 2:58:27Speaker 01

  Pre-get some.

• 2:58:31Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get some in any format, mental format, physical format.

• 2:58:37Jocko Willink?

  My middle daughter took the ACTs on Saturday. And she came home, I kind of fueled her up on some discipline before rolling in and she came back fired up.

• 2:58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:51Jocko Willink?

  She was like, yeah, no, I felt so, I was getting off. And I was like, yeah, you're just, you're on the discipline.

• 2:58:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's one of those.

• 2:58:58Jocko Willink?

  You know how many scoops I gave her? And, you know, she's not as big as me, but I still gave that girl three scoops of discipline.

• 2:59:06Speaker 01

  I'm down for the three scoops of discipline, by the way. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it's a, it's kind of a double effect and I could see how that could be, especially if you're going into some situation like a test. Or even like a jujitsu situation, whatever.

• 2:59:17Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu situation for sure.

• 2:59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then even afterwards, when you remember how like solid you were, you're like, it kind of gets you fired up. Yeah, it's true. It's like a double layered.

• 2:59:26Jocko Willink?

  You got fired up because you got fired up. You like that, don't you?

• 2:59:30Speaker 01

  Yes, I do. Very much.

• 2:59:31Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, oh yeah, and the last thing is, and it's not the, it's the last, but certainly not the least, is, is something called Molk.

• 2:59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59:38Jocko Willink?

  If you want to know what Molk is, it's real simple. Molk is Molk.

• 2:59:41Speaker 01

  It's Molk straight up. Yeah, if you want some additional protein, bruh. I made Molk pancakes, straight up.

• 2:59:47Jocko Willink?

  How did you do it?

• 2:59:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so now you're going down this rabbit hole of just making Molk everything.

• 2:59:52Speaker 01

  Okay, here's the thing. I'm sketch about the pancakes, right? So.

• 2:59:55Jocko Willink?

  First of all, I don't even like, I, I straight up don't even like pancakes at all.

• 3:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 3:00:01Jocko Willink?

  For me to even think about making Molk pancakes, maybe it's something I could try, cause maybe I would like it.

• 3:00:06Speaker 01

  Well, if you don't like, here's the thing, I'm not a Molk pancake, like, expert at all.

• 3:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so tell people how to make it.

• 3:00:12Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing, this is how I made them. Okay, so I get tasked with.

• 3:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Wait, were they good? Cause if they weren't good, then let's not talk about it.

• 3:00:19Speaker 01

  Oh, they're real good. Yeah, so.

• 3:00:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you put maple syrup on them?

• 3:00:22Speaker 01

  I did.

• 3:00:25Jocko Willink?

  Come on, man. Did the maple syrup come from Origin Maine?

• 3:00:28Speaker 01

  Negative.

• 3:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's a bummer.

• 3:00:29Speaker 01

  Then again, no, I can't say that. I don't think so. Not that I know of, but I didn't read the bottle or nothing.

• 3:00:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:00:34Speaker 01

  It's good though. Oh, well, okay, on Saturdays or Sundays, depending, I get, I make pancakes. So only one day. And then it's for the kids and all this stuff. So here's the thing.

• 3:00:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's cool. Hey, you know what I'm gonna do for your kids this weekend? I'm gonna give you a bunch of carbohydrates and poison you.

• 3:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, in, in my defense.

• 3:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Maple syrup.

• 3:00:51Speaker 01

  I got these, or my wife got these paleo, it's paleo pancake mix.

• 3:00:55Jocko Willink?

  Check, check, check. Was that almond powder or something?

• 3:00:59Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, paleo pancake mix, check.

• 3:01:02Speaker 01

  So boom, I go in and you know pancake mix is like a certain kind of mix to create like a pancake consistency. I don't, I don't know how to make it, but then I'm like, wait.

• 3:01:11Jocko Willink?

  It's made to create pancakes.

• 3:01:13Speaker 01

  Mix, pancake mix, I could. I could easily jam this whole thing up easily and I'm not making it just for me as an experiment. My kids are about to wake up. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, they're about to wake up. But I give them milk pancakes. They are not correct. I will hear about it and the whole thing is a flop.

• 3:01:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:29Speaker 01

  I guess technically I just make regular pancakes later, but it wasn't about that right then and there. I was trying to deliver big time. So I can't just start throwing random ingredients and a recipe in the back of it. So this is what I did. It called for a cup and a third of pancake mix. I just put like a little less than a cup and then, you know, a third, a little bit over a third cup milk. Milk in there, a little bit of water, uh, some MCT oil I put in. It calls for like, you can put butter and I did put butter, like grass fed butter, by the way. And there was, oh, and eggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you put an egg, boom, mix it all up.

• 3:02:08Speaker 01

  Pancakes. Oh, I put chocolate chips in the form of a happy face, too. We do that from time to time. And yeah, so I did that.

• 3:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, more like a sad face at your house. Uh, but boom, I make them a little bit darker. Obviously because the choc- it was the chocolate peanut butter, by the way. It wasn't the mint. Yeah, well, yeah, there is darker brown. Yeah, not the mint too, by the way. I think that you're risking jamming up pancakes for the mint. I think, I don't know. I didn't do it. Anyway. Yeah, came up good. Boom, maple syrup. Boom. Big hit. Kids liked it. Kids didn't know, but they, it had the peanut butter kind of flavor in there. It was good. Yeah.

• 3:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's the milk. It normally goes with milk or you can put it in water, but that's like a ham sandwich. Whereas if you put milk in there, it's like a delicious.

• 3:02:55Speaker 01

  You know what I did too? I put a two drops of vanilla in there.

• 3:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Andy, Andy Burke came home from camp and we were just talking about camp and it was cool. You know, he's like, that was awesome. Meeting everyone and training and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, you know what I really liked though? And I was like, oh, what? He said, this is my first time having milk.

• 3:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you told me that too.

• 3:03:14Jocko Willink?

  He's all.

• 3:03:15Speaker 01

  He's like, this is surprisingly good. Like, like, bro, we, we already knew that. And I was like, ah, you, you.

• 3:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Do you think people don't believe it? Is your instinct to think, oh, this is some kind of a supplement. It's going to taste bad. I just have to deal with it. But this one may maybe tastes okay. And therefore, you know, these guys are talking it up. But the re- the reality is, the reality is it's good like a dessert.

• 3:03:39Speaker 01

  Straight up. Yep.

• 3:03:40Jocko Willink?

  Like a milkshake.

• 3:03:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:03:41Jocko Willink?

  That's the milk and has. It's good for you. That's the crazy thing. Alright, so cool. Then you can get all that stuff at originmaine.com.

• 3:03:49Speaker 01

  Yes, and also Jaco's store. It's called Jaco's store, and this is where you can get shirts,

• 3:03:56Speaker 01

  hoodies, rash, other rash guards, more skewed towards the path, the message. We'll call it the message. Anyway, there's some cool stuff on there. If you want to represent, discipline equals freedom, because discipline does equal freedom, by the way. That's one of those things, like, you can think about that for like 20 days, and it'll, it'll make more and more sense over the 20 days. And then, after two years, and in my case, three years.

• 3:04:21Jocko Willink?

  Makes even more sense.

• 3:04:22Speaker 01

  Even more sense. You see it everywhere. Yeah, and so it does. And if you want to represent, jacostore.com, that's where you can get the stuff. Cool stuff on there. Some new stuff on there, too, by the way.

• 3:04:33Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 3:04:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:04:34Jocko Willink?

  I E? Because you're always making stuff I don't even know about, decentralized command style.

• 3:04:39Speaker 01

  Well, we got a few novelty items.

• 3:04:41Jocko Willink?

  Novelty? What even is that?

• 3:04:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I'm assuming if I have it correctly, it's just something that's pretty cool, you know? Got to go in there and find out.

• 3:04:50Jocko Willink?

  A novelty item?

• 3:04:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:04:52Jocko Willink?

  You think people are gonna, you think people on the path are out spending their hard-earned money on novelty items? Is that what's going on?

• 3:04:57Speaker 01

  Uh, well, there's always layers, so it's not just novelty. It's still, you're still representing big time, 100%, but some, one of the layers is just quite novel, in my opinion. Anyway, go there, jacostore.com.

• 3:05:11Jocko Willink?

  I actually have no idea what you're talking about.

• 3:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's why you gotta go to Jaco's.

• 3:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Check Jaco's store.com.

• 3:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, anyway, hats on there as well. A lot of just cool stuff. Anyway, jacostore.com. Good way to support, good way to stay on the path. It's just good all around. Good. Hey, did you see, uh, what was it? What's his name? Not what's his name, but the, you know, the Nike commercial, right? You know, the Nike commercial's been in the news, right?

• 3:05:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:05:39Speaker 01

  Whatever. And Theo Von was like, hey, did Nike borrow?

• 3:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, Theo put that out. What's up, Theo?

• 3:05:48Speaker 01

  You know what that is? Maybe, maybe, maybe not, obviously. You know, when you look at it, it's like, hey, yeah, they did the same thing. Put it that way. I don't know whether they got it from you or not, okay, whatever. But they did do the same thing. But here's, here's what I really got from that whole thing, especially his video, how he did it. He's like, watch it. You know what it did? It really illustrated that, that concept, like how we used to talk about all the time where... When you, when someone says good like that, it really stands out now. Like you, you see that everywhere. Even if you see the word good written on the, on a sign or something, you're like, this is a chocolate set. You see what I'm saying? So it sticks out in your mind just way more. And again, whether that happened or not.

• 3:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a weird word to pick.

• 3:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:30Jocko Willink?

  That's not, that's a weird word to pick for the ad, for the Nike ad. It's a little bit of a weird word to pick. It's a little bit, it's not a normal word to pick.

• 3:06:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:41Jocko Willink?

  In my opinion. It's a, it's a good word to pick.

• 3:06:48Jocko Willink?

  But anyways.

• 3:06:48Speaker 01

  Anyway, nonetheless, good. That's, it's all good, Ben. You're the man. Um, also, good way to support yourself.

• 3:06:56Jocko Willink?

  Theo kinda had my back though, didn't he?

• 3:06:57Speaker 01

  Oh, big time.

• 3:06:58Jocko Willink?

  Theo, what's up?

• 3:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it, and it makes sense to, yeah, just the whole deal. I mean, you know. But yeah, I think that when you hear that, you, I, I always hear, oh, Jock, I just hear you saying it, you know? Even if I see the, the word good in all caps in a regular sentence. Like in a different context, I'll be like, oh, it'll remind me of it. See what I'm saying? It just sticks out like that.

• 3:07:21Jocko Willink?

  That's funny.

• 3:07:22Speaker 01

  Anyway, good way to support also is to subscribe on iTunes and Stitcher. If you're Android, Google Play, and you know, wherever you, wherever you listen to your pod, your podcast, just subscribe.

• 3:07:33Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget that there is the Warrior Kid Podcasts, of which we recorded a couple more today. So we've got some fresh ones out there. I apologize for, to everyone for taking so long to get those out. Life got the upper hand a little bit. We back.

• 3:07:48Speaker 01

  But that's life.

• 3:07:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I had to get default aggressive this weekend and just crush some of those. Yeah. So Warrior Kid Podcast for your kids and for, well, really Uncle Jake has lessons for everybody. Also Warrior Kid, there's a Warrior Kid at IrishOaksRanch.com. Aiden. He's up there working hard and he's making, he's got a business. He's making soap, Jaco soap.

• 3:08:12Speaker 01

  Good soap.

• 3:08:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good soap.

• 3:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08:14Jocko Willink?

  And you can get that there. Help, help yourself. And you help yourself by stay, staying clean. That's the idea. Stay clean.

• 3:08:23Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 3:08:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The YouTube channel, if you wanna see Echo's legit video, did you post the, um, the, uh, the video that you just made?

• 3:08:32Speaker 01

  Forgive.

• 3:08:33Jocko Willink?

  The revenge.

• 3:08:34Speaker 01

  Revenge.

• 3:08:35Jocko Willink?

  I called the revenge video. You called the forgive video. That's interesting.

• 3:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is interesting.

• 3:08:39Jocko Willink?

  There's something strange there.

• 3:08:40Speaker 01

  Uh, I have not posted that yet, but yes, yes.

• 3:08:42Jocko Willink?

  That's the YouTube video, YouTube channel, which is called Jocko Podcast. It's a YouTube channel. You can watch all the YouTube videos on there and then you can leave crazy comments from some anonymous thing about all kinds of crazy stuff, which is fun.

• 3:08:57Speaker 01

  Sure. Whatever you like. Also, back, back to working out. I got, okay, onit.com, onit, the company, onit, dope. I got rings. I told you recently, here's the thing about rings. I, here's, and again, I said this before, where you, you know, you're always preaching about the rings, right? It's like one of the, to the, what do you call it? The staples.

• 3:09:16Jocko Willink?

  It's actually, in many ways, considered to me to be the first thing you could get. If you, if you had one thing you could get, you could get rings and you could do really well with them.

• 3:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm, I'm now reaping the, the benefits of the rings. I got them rings, onit rings. They're like, they're actually pretty dope. They're like wood.

• 3:09:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we gotta get wood rings. I always tell everyone, get wood rings, not plastic rings, not metal rings, get wood rings, cause they absorb the sweat. They, they durable. Yeah, anything else is slippery.

• 3:09:42Speaker 01

  They'll get slippery, yeah.

• 3:09:42Jocko Willink?

  It's horrible.

• 3:09:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, and my kids are, you know, and they're adjustable, you know, I mean, I've, I've only had onit rings, so they, they're cool. They're adjustable by number and it's all this stuff. So my kids, two years old and five years old, like they'll swing on them, like shit, they get real creative with them.

• 3:09:57Jocko Willink?

  Most of them?

• 3:09:58Speaker 01

  No, not yet, but not yet. But I'll do the, um, All these little functional things. Anyway, there's a lot to be gained with the rings. I'm agree. I'm a believer of the rings now. And now I would agree with you 100% that that should be kind of the first thing, I think.

• 3:10:14Jocko Willink?

  I used to say a pull up bar, but you might as well get rings. Rings, you do pull ups. And you can do dips and you can do pushups and you can do muscle ups and you can do like weird kind of squatting, planking, all kinds of stuff.

• 3:10:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, ab stuff.

• 3:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Iron cross, which I can't do, by the way. Just in case anyone gets the idea that I can do an iron cross, I'm here to tell you I cannot even come close.

• 3:10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that'd be pretty impressive. Good. That's impressive, even if a little guy can do it.

• 3:10:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:37Speaker 01

  But here's the thing about rings and pull ups specifically. This is why it's better than a pull up bar, because pull ups, pull up bar is cool and it's good, really good. I've had a pull up bar for a long time. But the rings is like, yeah, you can adjust for pull ups and then you can adjust them down. So you can do kind of like a rose situation. They're all adjustable. So you can do a stuff.

• 3:10:55Jocko Willink?

  Get you some rings.

• 3:10:56Speaker 01

  Oh, man, rings all day.

• 3:10:57Jocko Willink?

  That's the overall.

• 3:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. It expanded my workout literally by like 30%.

• 3:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 3:11:03Speaker 01

  30. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Cause there's other, like, I use them every single time. In different exercises, majorly. Anyway, anyway, those are rings. There's a lot of other cool stuff on onit.com. So, yeah, man, browse around, see what up.

• 3:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Check Psychological Warfare album. We're working on the next one. I'm thinking that the next one is not going to come out. It's going to come out right around Christmas, is my guess.

• 3:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:27Jocko Willink?

  So if you have anything, somebody wants one about shopping. Compulsive, how do I shop? Stop compulsive shopping.

• 3:11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:11:33Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if I can tackle that one. You know why? I have no compulsion to shop. I don't even like shopping. I don't even like going to the store.

• 3:11:39Speaker 01

  You don't know.

• 3:11:40Jocko Willink?

  I don't buy anything.

• 3:11:40Speaker 01

  What the demons of shopping look like.

• 3:11:43Jocko Willink?

  I've seen, I will say I've seen it, because you see people that buy things that they can't really afford. So I guess maybe we could talk about it, because, yeah, no, actually, now that I think about it, I could talk about that. We can, we can, we can put together a little something. So Psychological Warfare, if you've got little moments of weakness you want to overcome, I can talk to you personally about that through your iPhone. Google Play, iTunes, MP3, through your, through your Android. I don't want to leave you all out. Through your Samsung, right?

• 3:12:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Equal opportunity platform.

• 3:12:14Speaker 01

  Device one.

• 3:12:15Jocko Willink?

  Devices.

• 3:12:16Speaker 01

  Actually, in every scenario, I'd say, yeah.

• 3:12:18Jocko Willink?

  And also you can get that Jock Whitey.

• 3:12:22Speaker 01

  I'm on that train too, bruh. There's a lot of trains in the Jaco situation, uh, uh, supplementation situation.

• 3:12:29Jocko Willink?

  It's been hot.

• 3:12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12:32Jocko Willink?

  And, well, when it was hot up in Maine at the camp, how good did that tea taste?

• 3:12:36Speaker 01

  Legit.

• 3:12:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause they had it chilled on the cans. That was ridiculous, man.

• 3:12:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, right.

• 3:12:41Jocko Willink?

  That was just crazy. So, yeah, you can get that, the, the dry tea as well. If you wanna brew your own tea now that winter is coming. You need to get the hot tea so you can have a little, little warmth on your throat.

• 3:12:53Speaker 01

  But that was never really your thing, right?

• 3:12:55Jocko Willink?

  No, it wasn't, but it is now.

• 3:13:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You make the adjustment. You're like, oh, I've been missing out on this.

• 3:13:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cause sometimes, sometimes you just, like, it's a little chilly out. You need a little comfort.

• 3:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, comfort, bruh. That's what you need all the time. Jaco comfort, solid.

• 3:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, okay. So then I also got some books. We got The Way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission. This is for kids between the ages of four and eighty-four. Cause everybody can get something.

• 3:13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got my five-year-old fired up about getting a job, by the way.

• 3:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in the second book, Mark, who's a young character in the book, wants to get, wants to get a new bike.

• 3:13:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:13:42Jocko Willink?

  But he needs money. And in order to get money, guess what you need? You need a job, son. You need a job.

• 3:13:47Speaker 01

  Or sell some stuff.

• 3:13:48Jocko Willink?

  Or sell some stuff.

• 3:13:49Speaker 01

  Or a job and sell some stuff.

• 3:13:51Jocko Willink?

  That's what he has to do. So, yeah, if you want to give your kids a good book that will teach them about discipline, hard work, being kind, but the dichotomy of being strong, it's all in there.

• 3:14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, it's so.

• 3:14:07Jocko Willink?

  It's all in there.

• 3:14:08Speaker 01

  You're like, you explain it while you, Uncle Jake, whoever, one of you guys. It's good how you explain it in real simple terms and then you get this kid Mark. Especially in the side, I'm talking about the side corner right now where he's like, he kinda, he overcame some stuff. He's super strong right now, you know, but still a lot to learn. So he understands it. And then at first he's like questioning it. Then he starts to understand. And he questions it, then he understands. Then he's fired up about doing it, you know what I mean? Cause he gets, but it's really good. And that's literally how like the kid, whoever you're reading, in my case, I'm reading to my daughter. By the way, she's five. And I watch her getting just as fired up as Mark. Where he's like, "I'm a business owner." She's like, "Oh my God." You know, she gets fired up. It's really good, man. Really. It's interesting to see the little transition.

• 3:14:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've get so much good feedback. Anyways, that's that way the warrior kid and Mark's mission. Also, the Discipline Equals Freedom field manual, which is solid, which is solid. It's a good daily reminder. It's not, you don't need to read that whole book every day. You can read one, you can read three pages. And you can get yourself, you know, you might've been veering off the path, but get yourself right back on the path.

• 3:15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15:17Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing to read. You could like read that, read a page, two pages, three pages every day. It will, would you, I would say this, it will absolutely help you if you read three pages a day.

• 3:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15:29Jocko Willink?

  That's a bold statement too. I'm saying this book, a book, this isn't a, this isn't a, this isn't a, an exercise program. This isn't a supplement that you take. This isn't a, this isn't a treatment that you get. This is a book, pages in a book. If you read them, it's gonna help you. That's, that's what my statement is. And I believe it to be true. Why? Because I read it. I wrote the damn thing and I still read it. And it's helpful. And then we got Extreme Ownership, which is combat leadership. I wrote it with my brother Leif Babin. And how to take the principles that we learn in combat and use them in, in your business and life. And the follow-on book to that, The Dichotomy of Leadership, which I've mentioned the word dichotomy quite a bit.

• 3:16:09Jocko Willink?

  Dean Lister says it's my favorite word. Uh, I'm not so sure it's my favorite word. I think my favorite word is discipline, but um, I don't know if I have a favorite word. Anyways, I do talk about the dichotomy a lot because the dichotomy is present in everything that we do. So. If you want to get this book, it comes out September 25th. If you want to get the first edition, you should order it yesterday or right now because, well, you don't want to miss out on the first edition. I got my first copies. I'm holding one right there. There it is. So dichotomy leadership. Order it now. September 25th, it'll come to your door.

• 3:16:51Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of leadership, we got a leadership consulting company called Echelon Front and we solve problems through leadership. It's me. It's Leif. It's JP Denell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochran. We also got Mike Sorelli on board. We got a couple new members joining the team right now. If you want us to come to your company, go to echelonfront.com. That's what we do. Also, the muster in San Francisco, California, getting close to sold out. We probably have a little bit left right now. Maybe by the time this podcast comes out, it might be sold out. If you want to come to the muster, leadership event, San Francisco, California, October 17th and 18th. All the other ones have sold out. This one is going

• 3:17:34Jocko Willink?

  to sell out too. If you want to come, don't wait till the last minute. Don't wait until I post on social media that the muster is sold out and then call up and say, can we please fit one more people because we can't. If we could, we wouldn't say it was sold out. So just, just register now for the muster. And for current uniform personnel, military, law enforcement, border patrol, firefighters, paramedics, first responders, we got the roll call. September 21st, we just opened up a few more seats. I think we opened up 50 more seats. We've done that twice now, but it's going to be, I don't know if we'll be able to do it again because registration is going to be closing soon. That is also registered at extremeownership.com. And of course, now we have EF Overwatch where

• 3:18:19Jocko Willink?

  we are connecting spec ops, veterans, combat aviation veterans with companies that need solid, proficient leaders that understand and

• 3:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Can bring the attitude of extreme ownership into your company. If you want to, on either side, if you're a vet and you want to get in, get, uh, look for a job, if you're someone that needs a leader in your company, go to efoverwatch.com to get in the game. And if you want to keep cruising with Echo Charles and me, and you're not at one of those events, or you're not at one of those events yet, well, then you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Keep on. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink.

• 3:19:19Jocko Willink?

  And lastly, to everyone that is serving and that has served in the US military, thanks to you and your families for shielding us from evil and keeping us free. And to police, law enforcement, correctional officers, border patrol, firefighters, paramedics, other first responders here at home. Thanks for being vigilant and protecting us and our families. And to everyone else out there, keep learning, keep striving, keep trying to figure out where you can get better and be better. And it isn't easy. And it takes courage and it takes strength and it takes discipline,

• 3:20:00Jocko Willink?

  day after day after day to get up and face the unforgiving world and get after it. So until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.