Jocko Underground: The Safety Protocol for Your Kids When They're On Their Own.

>Join Jocko Underground Full Episodes< https://app.redcircle.com/shows/64a89f88-a245-4098-8d8d-496325ec4f74/exclusive-content What is the safety protocol for your kids when they are on their own. Training Jiu Jitsu with limitations. The difference between a leadership failure and a hiring failure. How to eliminate crippling doubt while achieving your goals in life. What to do if you suspect your leadership is working against you . 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 the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 227 with Echo Charles and me. We are sitting here and we've got some questions from you all and we're going to provide some answers to the best of our ability. And perhaps at a minimum, we will provide some courses of action that can guide you through whatever challenges you might be facing in life. Let's get to it.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  First question, Jocko Echo. My teenage daughter and her boyfriend are attending a concert at a state fair soon. This will be their first major outing without parents. They'll be with a group of friends, which gives me some reassurance, although I also know wisdom can disappear pretty quickly in a group of teenagers. I'm approaching this as a preparedness and risk management exercise. Beyond the basics of hydration, charge phones and backup battery. I'm insisting on the following standards, which yes, I've already exhibited with our family.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  But could, could be overlooked unnoticed or otherwise taken for granted as a norm in our family. Okay. So here, here they are. Never go anywhere alone. That's one. Number two is never leave each, each other isolated. Number three, maintain an escape route. Number four, cover and move.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Which is teamwork. Number five, know where help is before you need it. So for your perspective, I'm, am I missing anything? Are there blind spots in how I'm thinking about this or anything you would change in the guidance? Appreciate your help.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, those are some good rules, good start. I hope she's been training jujitsu. If not, she should be started now, you know? Because that just provides a whole

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  another level of personal security for her. And by the way, if you're one of these people that's like, oh, what are you going to do with jujitsu? Hey, you can do a lot with jujitsu. And as I tell, you know, when I train females in jujitsu, especially from a self-defense perspective. And you know, a hundred pound woman is, you know, wondering if she can, if she trains jujitsu enough, she'll be able to defend herself from a 225 pound man. And the answer is usually no.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  But guess what? You can make enough resistance that it becomes problematic for the 200 pound man. And at a minimum, you can make things more difficult. And perhaps those couple of seconds, 10 seconds, seven seconds, 14 seconds that it takes for a guy to get control. Is the seven seconds, 10 seconds, 14 seconds that a police officer or that someone sees it or that someone hears it. So that's why we're training jujitsu. A couple of other things here, a rally point, right? You're at a, you're at a, you're at a fair scenario. What's a, what's a rally point? If we get split up, something goes on, where are we going to meet? Probably have one inside the fair area and one outside.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it's the car, maybe it's a certain area by the car, something like that where, hey, if we lose each other, this is where we're going to go. I'd probably have one inside the arena. The secondary is like the car. And if for whatever reason, one that's not even the car, further away, further away than the car. Maybe it's the, you know, the McDonald's up the street or whatever, some other rally point. Should also have an extraction point. Right? For you and for them. So if something goes wrong, the boyfriend, whatever, he gets drunk and starts acting like an idiot. She just calls you and she gets the hot extract from a certain point. She doesn't even have to say anything. She passes a pro word. Right? She passes a pro word.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  She says, dad, cowboy, cowboy, cowboy. You go, stand by. And whatever, you already have it timed out, takes you 12 minutes to get to the fair. She already knows to go to the, the entrance gate on the right-hand side, on the south side of the entrance gate. She's going to be, that's where you're going to be waiting for. Boom. So have an extraction, a pre-designated extraction point, primary and secondary.

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  Also just the call me if you need me. Right? If anything happens, give me a call. It's two o'clock in the morning, give me a call. It's 10 o'clock at night, give me a call.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  Maybe some calm windows. This might be getting a little bit in the micromanagement territory, but since it's the first time, you know, she sends you a text every hour. All good. Just a little all good, little comfort zone. Right? Make sure everything's cool. Do we have a loss of communications plan? So if you don't, where she, you don't hear from her, where's she going? Sure. She loses her phone.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  And where's she going to go? She loses her phone, the dude freaks out, he throws her phone off the Ferris wheel at the, at the thing. She doesn't know, she want, doesn't want to talk to him, she leaves. No comms, you have no comms with her. What are you going to do? Midnight, if I don't hear from you at midnight, I'm going to be right here. That's what we're doing.

• 5:03Jocko Willink?

  Here's probably the most important stuff.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  Don't do anything dumb.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  It's small, it's a small statement. But hey, sweetie, go have a good time tonight. Don't do anything dumb. Because she's going to get an opportunity to do some dumb stuff. That's what, that's what happens in your teenage years. There are dumb opportunities lined up, lined up for you.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  And you want to give her that last little bit of, you know, hey, don't do anything dumb. And by the way, it's also infused with, I trust you. That's where you're going. I trust you. Hey, I know you're, hey, you know, I trust you. I know you're not going to do anything dumb. That might be a good way to phrase it. I know you're not going to do anything dumb because I trust you. Boom. That might be it. Just that simple little statement. Because you have hopefully infused her with good values at this point. Where when dumb stuff gets presented to her, she knows the deal.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  Maybe, you know, and hopefully you've had those talks with her about things that she can do right now that are dumb and will hurt her reputation and hurt your family's reputation.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, sometimes people, sometimes people care about their own reputation. Sometimes they keep, they care about their family's reputation. Like sometimes you don't want to let your teammate down. Sometimes some people don't want to let, they'd rather not let the team down. Some people would rather not let themselves down. So cover both those bases. Hey, just remember the way you act, it impacts your reputation and it impacts our family's reputation. So that way, if, if she's not really, doesn't care about the family, cool, it's your reputation. If she doesn't really care about her reputation because she wants to have fun, cool, that's the family's reputation. Hopefully one of those lands properly.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  This is, you know, trustless and respected influence and care, right? You've given her the trust, you're giving her the trust to go there. You've allowed her to influence you. You, you're showing her that you respect her. And hopefully she has a good time. So I think that's what I would, those are my little additions to the, to the plan here. And enjoy.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm with this guy. You know, these, these are strong ones and I'm, I'm kind of looking to you for some cool additional ones. So thank you for that.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Check.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  My daughter is 13.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  So she's entering this zone, you know, she goes, I feel like ours is like a, which I've found to be successful. That's the reason I'm sharing it. So, so far, so good.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  There, when she, you know, she's 13 now, so her radius of independence from the house or from wherever I am, that's actually the house. If we go somewhere else, the radius is very, way, way smaller. So it, as she gets older and proves to be responsible, the radius just gets, you know, bigger and bigger as the years go on. It's like kind of it, you know? You know, in the meantime, I'm looking, I'm seeing who she's hanging out with, how her behavior acts, like literally minute to minute. Cause you know, sometimes friends can come over. And I'm not going to say this has not happened. So friends will come over and then, oh, I see a little bit different behavior. For better or worse, by the way, sometimes better, sometimes I'm like, she's kind of like, you know, a little bit braver or a little bit more, uh, uh, you know,

• 8:28Speaker 01

  loosening up the, maybe coloring outside of the lines a little bit, you know? Well, it usually starts in a fun way because I'm like that. So which is good. Cause it could be worse, but you know, paying attention to these things. Okay. When she hangs with Linda, she's really polite. She's really, you know, they're trying to live up to a standard together. I like it, you know, kind of a thing. Cause Linda's squared away. But when Jenny comes over, you know, she's a little bit this, which is cool. We don't judge. Hey, we, hey, we all have different flavors of friends. I get it. But I see how her behavior, so now that radius with Jenny is going to be a little bit tighter, a little bit more monitored. Do you see what I'm saying? So it's kind of that.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I was probably shockingly liberal with my kids and their, what they were doing. Like I gave them all kinds of leeway to do stuff. You know, with my girls, I was a little bit, a little bit more, barely. I mean, I don't, I don't think I said no to my son to do stuff. No, I take that back. There was one time. I told him, no, you're not doing that.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You remember what it was? Yeah. It was, it was during the COVID, George Floyd riots and protests and stuff. And he's like, hey, I'm going to go down to the protest tonight. Like he didn't have any like political, he wasn't like, I'm going to go down there, you know, and support the police or go support the, the, the BLM. He was just going down there because shit was going down. You know what I mean? Cause it's chaos. And the funny thing is when I was like, oh, no, you're not. And he was like, he, he like, didn't understand what I was saying. And he's like, no, no, no, it's going to be, you know, it's like, we're going to be going with this kid and this kid. And like, we're just going to go down. And I was like, no, no, no, you're not. He's like, no, no, no, it's, it's tonight. I was like, nope. And um,

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  I was like, hey, this is the situation where someone can easily

• 10:25Jocko Willink?

  get killed. You can get wrapped up in doing something stupid. You can have something stupid done to you. You can get killed by a protest or you can get killed by a cop. And I know you're just going down there to freaking experience chaos because that's what a, a young kid wants to do. You know, oh, there's mayhem going on. You know, this is what, he must've been like around 14 or something like that. But that was the only time where, or maybe he was 15. I'm like, no, you're, you're, no, actually you're not doing that. Because there's so much chaos in those riots and every, when a riot, like riots are not good scenarios. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 11:11Jocko Willink?

  go to jacounderground.com and subscribe and we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacounderground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us, we can still support you. Just email [email protected] and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  Underground.