251: Set The Standard. Set The Example. How to LEAD. "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" (Gen. Bruce Clarke), with Leif Babin.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:12:18 - "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander", General Bruce Clarke 2:15:49 - Get a routine. How to stay on THE PATH. 2:58:55 - 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 251 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:06Leif Babin?

  Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  And also joining us tonight is my brother Leif Babin from Podcast 11, first guest ever on the podcast. 34, 65, 114, and 138. And obviously Leif was in Task Unit Bruiser as the Charlie Platoon Commander. In the Battle of Ramadi, we wrote Extreme Ownership, we wrote the Dichotomy of Leadership together. And we have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. And I, at one point in my life, gave him the book that I've been reviewing for the last couple of episodes that I wrote the new foreword to. The book is called About Face. And we're going to talk a little bit about that, but then we're going somewhere else.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  Leif, thanks for coming back. Oh, man.

• 0:56Leif Babin?

  Thanks for having me.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  Last time you were on was 2018.

• 0:59Leif Babin?

  14 August 2018. The world has changed drastically since then.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's kind of crazy. It's crazy that as much as I see you, we just didn't coordinate for another podcast in over two years.

• 1:16Leif Babin?

  That's apparently.

• 1:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you say everything you had to say on the first five?

• 1:20Leif Babin?

  Apparently so. That's just the way it is.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  You were telling me about About Face in the Battle of Ramadi. Me kind of saying, hey, check this out. Check out this, check out this section. What were you thinking when I'm reading you about like the South Vietnamese Army and how corrupt they were? Whatever, like all these different examples.

• 1:42Leif Babin?

  Yeah, I mean, just, I thought it was so awesome that this new, you know, this new book with the new foreword written by you, you know, for About Face, the new, the new version of it that's out with the new foreword. And I remember distinctly coming back from operations in Ramadi multiple times, probably at least four or five different times I can remember. Where I'd like walk into the, your office in the Tackle Operations Center at the Camp Markley and you'd say, "Hey, listen to this." And I was like, "Okay." And you'd bust out the book, you'd open it up to like a highlighted section, read the section, and it was mind blowing because it was just like, it was written about the operation that I was just on like an hour ago. And instead, it was written 40 years before about Vietnam. And, and it was, it was pretty, pretty eerie.

• 2:27Leif Babin?

  And that was, it had, I'd never realized all the influences until later when you gave me a copy of the book, um, which is the one thing that you gave to me and you gave to Seth Stone, the Delta Battalion Commander, when we, when we finished Task Unit Bruiser, we came home. I still have that book. It's dated, you know, January 2007. We'd just been home for two months at that point. But, uh, now going through that book, I realized like where you got, you know, renaming Task Unit Bruiser, uh, you know, all those things, like there was so many things that came from that. So it's, it had so much influence on you and through you on me and, and everybody in Task Unit Bruiser and then every generation afterward.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. Uh, now, in that book, in the book about face, there's two quotes that always bothered me. Here's the first one. "Men in battle, men will do in battle what they have been in the habit of doing in training." General Bruce Clark, one of the US Army's greatest training generals, had written in his then recently published Guidelines for the Leader and Commander. So that's the first quote that bothered me. The second quote that bothered me was this quote. "The troops responded well to hard, hands-on, repetitive, but still interesting work.

• 3:47Jocko Willink?

  They may not have wanted to go to Vietnam, but they sure as hell didn't want to die there. So they even flocked to off-duty classes like Rakhondo. Meanwhile, I established the requirement that all officers and NCOs in the battalion read and carry on their person." General Bruce Clark's Guidelines for the Leader and Commander. As far as I was concerned, the finest little handbook on leadership and training ever written. And adopt as their own philosophy, the one that I'd learned from a five by seven card, which I still had issued to me in Clark's Seventh Army in Germany,

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  which stated, "An organization does well only those things the boss checks." End quote.

• 4:37Jocko Willink?

  So why did those two quotes bother me? They didn't bother me because I didn't agree with them, obviously. They bothered me because I could never find this specific book called Guidelines for the Leader and Commander. And I always searched for it. I would look for, and you know, these days you can pretty much find anything online, especially like a lot of the old manuals that I read, old army manuals. On, you know, they've been out of print for a long time, but you can go find a PDF. Somebody uploaded it. This thing has been nowhere forever. And here I was, learning from this book that Colonel Hackworth wrote, but I could never find the book that Hackworth learned from. And that did not make me happy. So, so who was this guy?

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  General Bruce Clark. He was in World War I, World War II, Korea. He enlisted in 1917, ended up going to West Point. Hope you don't hold that against him, life.

• 5:32Leif Babin?

  Good to go. I, I turned down my appointment to West Point, but it's a, it's a great place.

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  You got into both.

• 5:38Leif Babin?

  Proud to be in army school.

• 5:39Jocko Willink?

  Look at you overachiever.

• 5:43Leif Babin?

  I had to go, I had to go to the SEAL, the SEAL route, man. That was a go.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  You, that's a rough gamble, right?

• 5:51Leif Babin?

  It was a rough gamble and it paid. It was a very poor gamble when I graduated and I didn't get selected for the SEAL program. I could tell you, I was like, I should have gone to West Point. I'd be in the army. Um, you know, I'd have all those opportunities in front of me.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  That is the, that is the, that is the worst luck that the, it happens that the SEAL teams is in the Navy. And if you don't, if you want to be a SEAL and you don't make it into the SEAL teams, you're in the Navy because you probably don't want to have the type of job that a regular Navy dude has. If you want to be in the SEAL teams. Would you concur?

• 6:22Leif Babin?

  Oh, definitely.

• 6:23Jocko Willink?

  I mean, if you, if you want to be in the SEAL teams, that means you want to be shooting a machine gun and running around in the streets or the jungle or whatever. You don't want to be on a ship. You know, working in an engine room or, or, you know, driving a ship.

• 6:37Leif Babin?

  Standing bridge watch.

• 6:37Jocko Willink?

  Standing bridge watch or whatever. And those are cool jobs too. Different people like different jobs, but those are two almost totally different types of jobs. Whereas, A, if you tried for special forces and you didn't make it, you'd still be an infantry guy and that's still the similar thing. But you just rolled the dice big time.

• 6:56Leif Babin?

  I did, but it, uh, it worked out. And, you know, you gotta trust, i- i- in fact, had I gotten selected for the SEAL program right out of the academy in 1998 when I graduated, I'd have never been a tasking bruiser. I would have not been Charlie, but to the commander, I would have done my OIC probably at least a year or two or three prior to that, as, as a lot of the guys who were my, my same year group. Um, so, you know, that's, uh, the good Lord has a plan and you gotta distrust in that plan. And, uh, had I actually not, had I gotten selected for Marine Corps, I obviously never had a chance to be in the SEAL teams either. So, um, look, West Point's an awesome school, man. It was a really, really agonizing decision for me because I got, I got picked up for West Point in, uh, in, in like, it was like probably January, February of my senior year.

• 7:41Leif Babin?

  And then I got, I found out I got, I got an appointment. So I accepted it and then I didn't find out until like April that I got into the Navy. So it was, uh, you know, it was, it was, it was a big gamble for sure, but hey, man, it's a, it's an awesome, uh, obviously there's a great rivalry between West Point and, and, you know, Army and Navy. Everybody knows the football games and, but, uh, I am one of the, the things we're most proud of, obviously in tasking bruiser was being the, the one, one AD Army SEALs as they call this. And, uh, so good on General Clark. One thing that, that I just wanted to say when you read that quote, I'm fascinated, you know, uh, to, to, to listen to this as well, because I have used that quote, an organization

• 8:23Leif Babin?

  does well only those things the boss checks, probably a thousand times since teaching the junior officer training course up through what we do now with Ashlan Front. And I did not realize it came out of this book.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, don't you usually attribute it to.

• 8:35Leif Babin?

  I was attributing it to Hackworth. Yeah. I think I just misremembered that. He, he, he obviously was giving credit to General Clark and I clearly did not remember that and I've not done that right.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, so he went to West Point, so enlisted, World War I, went to West Point, World War II, commanded the fourth armored division in Patton's, Patton's third army.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  Battle of Ericourt, Battle of the Bulge, Distinguished Service Cross, and Three Silver Stars. Also in Korea. Ended up with forty-five or so years of service.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  Not only leading troops, but also he oversaw a bunch of training schools and training commands.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  Died in nineteen eighty-eight at age eighty-six. And I wanted this book. I searched for this book for years. I I wrote an email to the publisher. This publisher still exists. I'm gonna call him out right now because I'm sure someone will I'll reach out to him. I think it's Stackpole Books. They still exist. And we've covered other books of theirs on this podcast because they they print a lot of military-type books. I think The Clay Pigeons of Saint Lo. We covered that on this podcast and a few others that are in the queue. I reached out to him, sent him an email, "Hey, I'm looking for this book. I see that you used to publish it." Nothing, never heard, nothing back.

• 9:56Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, like you said, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The About Face, the new, the new version comes out, and I search on on Amazon. Once a month, I'll search and see it because they, they would have this book. They have it listed in there. That's how I knew the publisher was. But they would have it in there and not available, not available, not available. For years, it's been not available. It popped up. It says, "Available one copy." Three hundred dollars, bro. Three hundred dollars. This is, and I'm only holding a photocopy right now. It was three hundred dollars. This thing is a hundred and seventeen pages. It's like, uh, I don't know, six by eleven. It's small. It's this little book. It showed up in a little tiny envelope. I was super stoked. And

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  as you might imagine, like you said, it's filled with lessons, filled with the obvious roots of hackworse theories around training and leadership, which I stole, as you already.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  rightfully accused me of stealing many things from Hackworth as I fully admit all the time that I stole, I used, passed on to everyone I could, still try and pass on, still try and pass on about face, still trying to pass in what we do at Echelon Front, try and pass on these lessons. So.

• 11:06Leif Babin?

  You know what? I don't think you can actually use the word steal because they're freely given in the same way that like when people are like, hey, do you mind if we like talk about extreme ownership with our team? Like, no, I actually don't mind. In fact, that's what we wrote the book for. That's why Hack, I'm sure that's why Hack wrote the about face. And I'm sure, obviously, that's why General Clark wrote what he wrote. So it's not stealing, it's freely given. And I think the, as we have often said, that we didn't learn anything new. We just, we just maybe package it a little bit differently or use a different term than maybe others use.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  It's always good when, it's pretty common for, you know, me to do an initial client call with a company and they'll be, you know, give me a brief on their company and they're like, oh, our company values are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, extreme ownership. And they're like, hey, we hope you don't mind. We're like, the exact same thing. I say you can't steal what's free. So, and I try and give Hackworth credit. Yeah. But I guess you're right. Can't steal what's free. But what we can do is we can take it and we can try and pass it on. So without further ado, I present to you at long last, Guidelines for the Leader and Commander.

• 12:21Jocko Willink?

  There's, I'll have to show it to you later. There's a little, there's a little signature. I don't have it in a photocopy. There's a, it's written, there's a little, you know, somebody gave it to someone. Someone gave it to like the Command Sergeant Major or something like that. All right. So here we go. Dedicated to

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  the ground combat soldier. The paramount concern of the army is the ground combat soldier. He is the focal point of all our efforts organizing, equipping, training, sustaining, and supporting him so that he can perform his indispensable role in combat is the army role. The role is equally significant in any kind of war, hot or cold. It is just as important in general war as it is in limited war. For our nation to entertain any notion to the contrary would be dangerous. The danger could be social as well as military.

• 13:18Jocko Willink?

  More than any other category of personnel in the armed forces, the ground combat soldier comes from the general populace. He is the private citizen under arms, the clenched fist of his people.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  I think I'm just rolling with that from now on.

• 13:35Leif Babin?

  That is the greatest description of a combat.

• 13:39Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 13:40Leif Babin?

  Of a combat soldier I've ever heard in my life.

• 13:42Jocko Willink?

  The clenched fist of the people.

• 13:44Leif Babin?

  Why, why is this the first time I'm hearing this? That's the one thing I'm, I'm just remiss about.

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Me too.

• 13:52Leif Babin?

  We could have, we could have put that up as like a poster for Tasking the Bruiser.

• 13:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, I think, I think I used, and you may have heard me use this, in fact, I know you did, the sword of destruction. I use that to describe sort of what our methodology was, especially in cleaning out insurgents and how, hey, everyone wants to be, everyone wants to make friends and, and win the hearts and minds and that's all definitely important, but that really comes, and this is, this is when I would use this line, that would come after the sword of destruction has been wielded on the insurgents or the bad guys. I think the fist of the people is better. We're going with it.

• 14:34Leif Babin?

  The clenched fist.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  The clenched fist of the people. Back to the book. It is by no idle chance in the history of mankind that the course of democracy parallels the importance accorded to the ground combat soldier in the military forces of nations. It is no exaggeration to say that the basic freedoms we now enjoy are closely related to his ascending importance on the battlefields since the Battle of Cracy. Nor is it an exaggeration, in my opinion, to say that the preservation of those freedoms will continue to be oriented by his place in the sun.

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  Only when men from all of the people are willing and ready to fight and die for freedom, does freedom have meaning for them. Only then does democracy thrive.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  That is the inexorable lesson of history. These are important things to be reading right around this time in the world. Because what percentage of of the populace actually is in the military, 1%? So there's not a lot of people that seem to step up and be ready and willing. And what does that mean? That means they don't understand what the price is, don't understand what the cost is. And what he's saying here is

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  freedom is only safe when there's people that are, when there's all people. He's saying all people, by the way, all people have to be ready and willing.

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  It's heavy.

• 16:08Leif Babin?

  Well, you also have to think about his perspective, though, right? I mean, I think in America today, obviously, we've been at war for a long time since 9/11. And but there really, there isn't an existential threat in the way that would he was living with. World War I, you've got this expanding empire. Now, World War II, you've got, you've got the Japanese and Germans. I mean, there's, the world was truly at stake and, and it was everybody, all hands on deck, even those that couldn't serve, who weren't medically qualified or whatever, like they're, they're, you know, they're, they're doing

• 16:41Leif Babin?

  everything from blood drives to, you know, collecting tires, all that kind of stuff is going on back here. Bond drives, you know, support the troops. Yeah. You know, the Rosie the Riveter, I mean, ladies out there turning wrenches and building planes and tanks and all that stuff. So I think that was, I mean, our country hasn't experienced that probably since, since World War II. But I think living through that probably gave him a unique perspective.

• 17:08Jocko Willink?

  This also ties in, continuing on. Beguiled by the mechanical marvels of an age, it is easy for people to forget the true character of the ground combat soldiers in war. When free men have been so beguiled in the past, they have slipped back into slavery.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  For the ability of the ground combat soldier to play his part in the social scheme of things depends upon the part he has given in the military scheme of things. Again, we, we, we can very easily think about the fact that, you know, this war is a technical thing and you don't have to, you don't have to put boots on the ground and that whole idea that technology can eliminate war. And you and I were talking the other day that there's, there's some people that, hey, God bless them, they have a positive attitude that we as a species can evolve to a point where, you know, we don't have war anymore. And that's a very positive thought. Think we would all agree that that would be a great thing.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  It's probably highly unrealistic because there's always going to be somebody, no matter how nice you are, there's always going to be somebody that's going to try and take a couple extra dollars from you, Echo Charles. Yes, sir. You have to defend yourself. I understand. Even if you're super nice. Yes. You might have to fight. I understand.

• 18:38Leif Babin?

  I don't, you can't study history and believe that we're on some greater trajectory and mankind is above war or conflict or evil or darkness. And it's the thing I love most about this podcast is reminding people of the darkness. You can't appreciate the light if you don't know the darkness. And, and I think that's, that's the most powerful thing. And I think only if you experience what General Clark has experienced, do you, do you fully get and understand that?

• 19:04Jocko Willink?

  I answered a question on the podcast a long time ago. A guy said, you know, you keep talking about training jujitsu, but I don't even like to fight. Why should I train jujitsu? And I said, if you don't like to fight, you are actually the premier person that needs to train jujitsu. And if you don't like war and you don't want to go to war, then you should train and prepare and be ready to go to war and then hopefully you won't have to. And if you do, it'll be swift.

• 19:30Leif Babin?

  The other thing that, that quote reminds me of is that we get asked, how often do we get asked about, you know, talk about some training or Bud story, you know, from the SEAL basic training program? And we don't even talk about that stuff because I think people.

• 19:47Leif Babin?

  I mean, the, I, I'm trying to explain to people that the, the, the, the physical nature of combat operations is so much more, you know, more difficult than anything in training. And then, then the emotional, you know,

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, the physical, yes, but the mental and emotional isn't even comparable thing, right? Like, it's not a comparable thing to say, "Well, you know, I was really wet and cold during SEAL training compared to I was waiting to suck start an IED 17 nights in a row." You know, like, that's definitely more mental stress than, "Hey, you're gonna have to go hit the surf again, who cares?"

• 20:29Leif Babin?

  No question about that, but what I'm, I'm talking about the physical nature of it. So, we're, we're talking about the ground combat soldier here, and this is, you know, I, I'm thinking about, you know, one of our SEALs, I mean, you, you certainly know him well, was one of my most awesome guys in Charlie Platoon, su- just a physical, you know, stud, awesome dude, who's like going down with heat exhaustion and like can't, can't continue forward. And I'm having like, "Give me your machine gun, take my, you know, my rifle, my M4, we gotta move, man, we can't stay here, we're gonna get, we're gonna get hammered." And we knew we were gonna get, we're gonna get ambushed at any second. So, it was, uh, just the, the physical nature of that. Like, I can't physically continue because I'm carrying, you know, 80 pounds of gear on this patrol and it's 117 degrees

• 21:14Leif Babin?

  right now, and, and I got a little behind the hydration curve, uh, because we've been out here for 48 hours doing this kinda stuff, and I'm going down with heat exhaustion. You know, so, I think that's something that people, when you're talking about technology and riding in vehicles or flying an aircraft or shooting missiles and there's, there's just no getting around the, the guys carrying a rucksack, you know, a heavy rucksack with gear and going on foot. And Ramadi was unique like that for us, cause if you drove into those areas, you were gonna get blowed up. And, uh, it was, it was a good reminder of the physical nature of, uh, of, of war. And I think, you know, what he's talking about

• 21:57Leif Babin?

  with the, the ground combat soldier is, is exactly right.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  It's just, it's just savage. Like, it's just- You know, whenever you put on, you know, like at the beginning of land warfare training and you haven't put on a rucksack and whatever two months because you were coming back from deployment and then you go on leave and whatever. And you get out to the desert warfare training facility. And you put your gear on for the first time and you're like, yeah, the first. It's one of those things where the first like 20 minutes. You're just thinking this completely sucks and then it just sucks so bad that the suck kind of numbs out. But it's just savage. It's just, it just. It's just a constant level of pain.

• 22:40Leif Babin?

  And no, no matter how good of shape you thought you were. I mean, that guy was just talking about was in awesome shape. He was a great, you know. Physical specimen, like awesome dude, trained hard all the time. One of the best seals I know. I mean, it happened to me. I remember Johnny Kim was patrolling into position. Johnny Kim was like, here's our corpsman. He was like, hey, uh, Leif, you doing okay?

• 23:01Leif Babin?

  I'm like, uh, I don't know, man. You know, I was like super pale and he could see that I was. And I, I just, I was dehydrated and we're already smoked. We've been up for 24 hours. So he like gave me an IV and you know. To just help me, help me recuperate. And we were in good shape. I mean, we trained hard. We were already acclimatized. It's just. It was, it was hard. It was physically difficult. All those emotional things are absolutely the case, but it was a, it was physically hard. And probably the best, Dave Burke talks about this too. Good deal, Dave Burke. Running with a pallet of water between where you were back at Cop Falcon, we were in a sniper overwatch position, like 300 yards down the street.

• 23:43Leif Babin?

  Carrying on a, on an Israeli stretcher with like pallets of water. And MREs, which probably, you know, probably weighed like 200 pounds. And running as fast as we could with that and all our combat gear for 300 yards. Dave, Dave Burke was just. He was like, hey, we're like, let's go. And we're just running and it was, it was awesome.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  I did a delivery run to you guys down there.

• 24:06Leif Babin?

  You did. Yeah. You brought some water too. Cause we were just, we were just baking on the rooftop and nothing to.

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's like even just that, even just sitting there baking on a rooftop for three days. Just, just getting dehydrated. It's everything sucks. As to quote, to quote Tony, everything sucks.

• 24:23Leif Babin?

  Everything sucks. Nothing worse.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  All right, back to the book. It will be a sorry day for all mankind. In this supersonic nuclear age of ours, should the ground combat soldier ever be deprived of his rightful place in the hearts and minds and military forces of his people?

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  In our efforts to avert this danger, a one-army attitude must pervade all ranks. The ground combat soldier is not a guardsman, nor a regular, nor a reservist, nor a selecte. He is simply the American fighting man on the one-army team. I appeal to every member of the team, civilian and military, to give his cause the enthusiastic support merited by its vital importance to our country. Bruce C. Clark, General, U.S. Army. There's the intro. We're already off to a good start. I'm the next copy that's up for 300 bucks on my end. I gotta figure out what I'm gonna do.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure Stackpool will reach out, but if they don't, I'm just gonna publish this thing. Jaco Publishing. Jaco Publishing's coming in hot with the PDF.

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  Publishers forward. These guidelines were written by a leader and commander out of the wealth of experience gained by him in leading and commanding troops from a squad to an army group. These guidelines were prepared for the benefit of the of other leaders and commanders in the U.S. Army in order that they, in turn, may make use of his counsel and experience. So as you said, he wrote this for us. General Bruce C. Clark has probably had more command duty at more command levels than any other officer in the U.S. Army, living or dead.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  He served more than 40 years in all grades, from private to four-star general. Known as the most effective trainer of modern times in the U.S. Army, as well as an outstanding combat commander, General Clark here specifies the methods he has used with outstanding success in management, training, in soldier management, and in leadership and generalship. What do you think? Not exactly a lightweight? Not exactly a lightweight.

• 26:48Jocko Willink?

  And there's a picture in here says the ground combat soldier, the focal point of all our efforts. You know what's cool, go ahead.

• 26:54Leif Babin?

  Well, I was just gonna say, as you're, as you're saying that, you know, I'm, I'm sitting here, I'm thinking about my experience in Ramadi and, you know, our combat experience, three deployments to Iraq is just absolutely nothing compared to what someone who fought in World War I, World War II, and Korea. I mean, it's, it's just, it just, I'm so humble when I read about people's experiences and realize, oh, I, I, if I think I, I thought, I thought I saw some combat and oh, that was significant for the Iraq wars. Like, man, it's absolutely nothing. All the, even the physical hardships I'm describing just pale in comparison, you know, to, to battles and, and just what, what General Clark experienced and so many have experienced throughout the,

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Leif Babin?

  the ages.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  We often joke about the fact that just what we experienced compared to what these guys went through. When we had Dean Ladd on the podcast, who got gut shot rolling into Tarawa, 500 yards from the beach. There's no possible way he should survive that. And by the way, what was really crazy is that was like, he did, after he got done with that, he had already done the one of the other islands. He goes into Tarawa, gets gut shot. Two of the Marines disobey all orders and actually grab him and bring him back to a boat. He gets somehow miraculously saved. He goes back to Hawaii and then six months later, he's back going on another island campaign.

• 28:19Jocko Willink?

  It's like, oh, you got gut shot, but you survived. It's cool. You're, you're in the game. Yeah.

• 28:27Jocko Willink?

  America, what?

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  All right, chapter one.

• 28:34Jocko Willink?

  Part one is leadership and command. Chapter one, command responsibilities. Introduction. When an individual assumes command of a unit, large or small, he steps into one of the most interesting and the most challenging assignments a member of the armed forces can have. Here is a job into which a man can sink his teeth. Here is a job where initiative, originality, hard work, fidelity, and human understanding can pay off in the richest dividends. This chapter includes many matters that are connected with the ability of the commander to train his unit. So it's interesting, what extreme ownership, we close out by saying this is the most challenging endeavor a human can. Leadership is the most challenging endeavor a human faces and therefore the most rewarding.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  I swear we didn't steal that from him, even though he just said the exact same thing, even though he wrote a lot earlier than us.

• 29:26Leif Babin?

  You know what, you know what it is though, like as when we talk, we talk with leaders all the time and they say, "Hey, we're already doing a lot of these things you're talking about." And, uh, and what the, the reason for that is because there's what works and there's what doesn't work. So, no matter what you call it, you know, we, we gave a little framework around extreme ownership, the laws of combat, but, if you, if you're in a leadership position, you're gonna, uh, you're gonna figure out what actually works and that makes me think about this, you talk about psychology a lot and, and not, not in like psychological terms and you know, like clinical terms, but in like trying to get people to do what you need them to do to accomplish a mission and win. And that's exactly it.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  Human nature. It took me, I don't know how many podcasts, must've been around, I don't know, but at some point I said, "Yeah, this is a podcast about human nature." Really, that's what it's about. It's about human nature and where human nature is most revealed is in war or in atrocities or human suffering or human struggle. That's when, that's when human nature is revealed. And you know,

• 30:32Jocko Willink?

  we had this conversation and I don't know when, but I remember telling you in Stoner and being like, "Hey, look, when we go on deployment, people are gonna go crazy." And look, I didn't mean, "Hey, these people are gonna..." But you know, when you talk about senior leaders or, you know, people are gonna start feeling pressure and people do crazy things. And I saw that from my first deployment to Iraq where I was, I was thinking, "Wait a second, this is just like, people are going crazy." So that's something that happens. It's, it's just, human nature is revealed. And if you're...

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  If you're, let's say you're nervous about things. Let's say you're a nervous type of person. You're scared of something. What's that gonna do in combat? It's just gonna get worse. Let's say you're worried about things. What's gonna happen in combat? You're gonna be even more worried. Let's say you have a tendency to focus on things that don't really matter. You're gonna do that even more in combat. It's like everything, your human nature gets exposed.

• 31:33Leif Babin?

  To quote you, it's combat is life amplified and intensified.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 31:38Leif Babin?

  And I think that's a hundred percent true. It's a hundred percent true. And it's like that friend that tells you like they go crazy when they drink. And you're like, no, you're actually just, when you drink, you actually are crazy. You're able to keep it contained until you put the alcohol in you.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  No, you actually are crazy and it just comes out. Yes, very similar. Here we go. Back to the book. So you want a command. How often have we heard an officer say, I'd do anything to get a command? Have you ever wondered if he really meant it? Have you ever wondered if you really would make a good commander? We have often heard the expression, a good commander is born, not made. This is interesting. So he's saying, hey, we often hear, a good commander is born, not made.

• 32:31Jocko Willink?

  You know how nowadays they say, you know, actually anyone can be a leader? I shouldn't say it in such a sarcastic voice. People say, look, anyone can be a leader. You can learn. What I talked about leadership strategy and tactics is it's both. Like you're gonna get some natural qualities for sure, some other things you're gonna have to work in. So he says, we often heard the expression, a good commander is born, not made. He says, this is not entirely true. By exercising certain principles, the vast majority of officers can become good commanders. There you go. He agrees with me.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  Let us see if considering the following 20 questions will provide us with some guidelines. If the answers to these questions are yes, the potential commander's statement is sincere and he should fight to get it and should be given a command. He will never have an assignment that will give him greater satisfaction or one that will enable him to contribute more to the army and to our country. So here's the 20 questions.

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  Is the officer seeking command duty willing to devote all hours of day and night, seven days a week to his command? Is his wife willing to take an active role in helping to make a happy army community in their unit area? Is his family willing to be secondary if necessary to the company battalion, group, regiment, combat command, brigade, or division?

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm so glad he wrote that because I still have people that will call me out because I'll say, hey, when I was in the teams, the teams came first. The teams were more important than my family and I'm sorry, but you have to take care of your guys. You have to.

• 34:21Leif Babin?

  You mean when you would say things like, uh, I'm gonna go home and see this woman and these kids that live at my house?

• 34:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 34:30Leif Babin?

  And just for the record, Jago was, Jago's a loving husband and an awesome dad, uh, but we knew that was a joke. It was pretty funny.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  Is he willing to learn, teach, stress, and live with the fundamentals necessary to make his unit good and believe his great talents for bigger things are not to be wasted? Does he like to be with young people? Can he live with their energy, points of view, and problems they create? Is he willing to take the hard knocks that come from carrying the responsibilities for the failures of his subordinates? Do we get to pass these things on? Echo Charles? I don't think so. No, we don't.

• 35:10Leif Babin?

  Sounds a little like extreme ownership.

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  It certainly does. Can he juggle at the same time all the balls of training, maintenance, tests, administration, inspections, property, communications, messages, supplies, athletics, marksmanship, discipline, and public relations without dropping any of them?

• 35:26Leif Babin?

  Prioritize and execute.

• 35:28Jocko Willink?

  Is he able to do many things concurrently rather than being a consecutive doer? Can he manage a complex job?

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  Can he receive and carry out orders? Can he follow orders as well as give them? So number eight there, is he able to do many things concurrently rather than being a consecutive doer? Opposite of prioritize and execute. It's like I'm gonna, I need to be able to do multiple things at once. Here's what's interesting. I highlighted that and I started, I was thinking about it as I read through the rest of the book. He starts to go into a delineation and a bifurcation between, between the title of the book, leader and commander. And what he starts talking about is when you're a leader, squad leader, platoon leader, at company, it changes to commander. And now what you have to do is realize that you've got a, you've got to be able to task people to do things, right?

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be able to delegate. And so as a, as a leader, it's like prioritize and execute. As a commander, yes, you're going to prioritize and execute, but you're going to prioritize, delegate, and then have other people doing multiple things at the same time. I mean, when we would go on an operation, for example, did we say, okay, right now, we're only going to set security. We're not going to do sensitive site exploitation. We're not going to do a search right now. We're only going to set security. No, we set security. Then we start interrogating prisoners. We start searching. We start organizing our, yeah, there's multiple things that you're doing at the same time. So that's different than, hey, we've got, we've got, we're getting attacked with multiple problems right now.

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  We need to focus on the biggest problem. And it also starts to lean into talking about delegation and how, and you know, I've always said, even when I explained prioritize and execute, I say these words. Once you've got that prob, that first problem solved, or you've got it going in the right direction, then you can move on to the next problem. So if I, look, if we're getting a contact from the south and I go, Leif, take your platoon, go, go start knocking those guys out. I don't even worry about you anymore. I'm good. Like I might check in with you five minutes later to make sure you're good, but meanwhile, what am I doing? I'm saying Seth, all right, continue the assault on this building, right? It's not like I'm saying, everyone, Seth, everyone online. No. If you can handle it, you handle it. Another way I used to explain this is,

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  Let's say you're building a building and you've got to get one of the rooms electrical done because they're going to put drywall in that room today and you've got 10 electricians on site and the room is small. Does that mean you take all 10 of your electricians and you pack them into that room and put them all to work? No, because it's there, you don't need that many. You need four guys in there. That's the fastest and most efficient you can get it done. So you take those four guys, you put them in that room, you take the other six guys and they can start doing something else. You don't just say that's the number one priority. Everyone just sit in there and do nothing. Four guys do it and everyone else watch them. No, you handle the problem, you get it moving in the right direction, then you move on to the next. Then you can take the remaining resources and apply them to the next thing.

• 38:37Leif Babin?

  That makes me think about target fixation, which is what we talk about with extreme order, with prioritize and execute, which it's really easy. Like this is the priority, get so focused on that. But I mean, the example you just gave, like Leif, take your platoon and hit that target to the south and then Seth, you continue the assault. Like you wouldn't even say Seth continued the assault because he's gonna, he's gonna do it. And, and you talk about how your greatest goal was to go out in operations and not say anything. And I used to think that like, that was like, I wanted to be the leader, like the, you know, John Wayne sans a Vajima with my helmet on sideways and my gun at high port as my finger is pointing, you know, like the plastic army man with a finger pointing and is the

• 39:19Leif Babin?

  leader with this, his, his gun at high port pointed to the sky. And I, so many times Ramadi in the middle of a big gunfight where you're like, I'm not saying anything at all. My, my team's doing what they need to do. The fire team leaders are running their guys, the squad leaders running their guys, the leading petty officers doing his thing, the chiefs doing his thing. I can think two steps ahead. So, I mean, that's, you have to be able to do that. That's decentralized command. And when you had a team that's running that, then you can, you can handle 12 or 15 problems at the same time because each of the teams is doing their thing.

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to a client today and he was talking to me about how he sometimes has meetings. He'll have eight blocked meetings a day or 10.

• 40:04Jocko Willink?

  That he has to go to and he gets done, he's like, yeah, I know I got this meeting, this meeting. And I had him pull up his calendar and he's talking me through each one of these meetings. And I said, um, what's wrong with you? Like, what is wrong with you that every, like each one of your teams needs to talk to you every single day? That's crazy to me. That's crazy to me. That's not decentralized command. That is centralized command. So you aren't giving the people the right direction. They're not hearing what you're saying. They don't have the guidelines. You haven't given them the trust. You've been an easy, but there's a, there's a bunch of reasons why it could be happening, but it shouldn't be happening. You shouldn't have to attend those meetings all day long, every day.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  Cause that's not decentralized command. It's not efficient. What happens if you aren't in those meetings? Well, the guys won't know what to do. Okay. Well, there's your problem. Give them the guidance and let them run.

• 41:01Leif Babin?

  And if you're down in the weeds trying to solve those problems, which is what you're doing in the meetings, then you can't. Who's actually taking a step back? I mean, that's, you know, when you wrote in that, the decentralized command chapter and extreme ownership that. I mean, we, we, that would have been a horrible blue on blue situation that happened if you were down in the weeds trying to tell, you know, Stoner. Seth Stone had to run his platoon, you know? Um, that's just the way it is. So I, I think that's your job as the leader should be to take a step back and think strategically. The, the next step, the next step after that, and you can't, if you're down in the weeds, make it, make it exactly. And, but you can also see where people need help and you could step in temporarily. When you take a step back and you got teams actually handling those problems, which you did all the time.

• 41:43Leif Babin?

  As a ground force commander, when you're like, come over, you walk in the house after we call target security, walk in the house, what's going on? Check in with me. I'd give you a quick update on what's going on. You, you kind of, then you'd move to kind of where you were needed, you know? Where, where people might need more resources or, hey, we need some more guys outside, you know, can we, can you guys spare a fire team? Or, hey, we need more guys in the house. Let's bring a fire team in, you know, or whatever it may be.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yep. Got to do that. Um, continuing down this list. Can he receive and carry out orders? Can he follow orders as well as give them?

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  Hmm. Can he stand tough competition from like units and still retain a spirit of cooperation and teamwork with them?

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  Enemies outside the wire. Is he physically and emotionally fit to carry the load?

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  That's what you and I just talked about. I talked about the mental side. You talked about the physical side. They're both freaking grueling. Does he have the courage to make and stand by tough decisions? Are he and his family willing to live in a goldfish bowl? Where their actions are closely observed by both subordinate and superior? Is he still enthusiastic and cheerful? When confronted with seemingly impossible tasks to perform with inadequate means? Is he willing to leave a warm office to check and supervise training, maintenance? And many other activities of his unit? Is he willing to take responsibility himself? And correct the situation? Rather than blame it on the staff of a higher headquarters?

• 43:17Jocko Willink?

  Or on a subordinate? When things go wrong in his unit? Man, we owe this guy some money.

• 43:25Leif Babin?

  That's pretty phenomenal. You know what? It's so humbling to hear that too. And it also doesn't. He's capturing the burden of leadership so well. You know, by obviously someone who's been and lived it, you know, at a multitude of levels. And I think so often we talk to like frontline troopers or frontline, you know, leaders are like, if I was in the senior ranks, bet everything would be great. And they don't fully understand the burden of leadership. And that's, that's a tough thing. Not, not everybody can do that. And there are a lot of people that don't want that. And I think once they get there, they realize like, maybe that ain't for me.

• 44:00Jocko Willink?

  Next, is he willing to do the best with what he has? Even though what he has seems inadequate? Is he confident he can produce a superior unit with the usual run of manpower?

• 44:13Jocko Willink?

  Can he inspire personnel to produce outstanding accomplishments? Is he willing to take a chance on being relieved? For attaining only mediocre results? Does he really want command? Rather than just to get command on his record? And I just realized he's got like a lot of these 20 questions. There's like three or four questions in each one. He snuck some in on us. But what a, what a great, what a great outline. Just to, just to check yourself.

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  And see where you're at. See how in the game you are.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  Next, what does the soldier expect from his commander?

• 44:56Jocko Willink?

  Having dealt with the prerequisites of command, so that's what we just did. I offer these thoughts on what soldiers look for in their commanders regardless of branch of service.

• 45:09Jocko Willink?

  Honest, just, and fair treatment. Men admire a strict officer if he is also just. An officer who tries to be a good fellow loses his grip early. An officer cannot be expected to know everything. He cannot bluff his men and retain their respect. When he does not know, he should say so and then find and announce the answer. Like, I'm laughing as I'm reading this, you're laughing as I'm reading this. This is like, straight out of leadership strategy and tactics. Just, it's crazy to sit here and read this.

• 45:43Leif Babin?

  You ask that question all the time, like, who's got it all figured out? Who has all the answers? Nobody. So why would you even try to pretend like you do? People, and then we get that question from leaders, like, well, they'll lose respect for me. You know, if I act like I've got to pretend like I know it all, and like, no, everyone knows you don't know it all. So, they know you don't know, and if you're pretending, they're losing respect for you. If you can actually admit you don't know, and take ownership, then, if a mistake or whatever happened, then obviously their respect is going up.

• 46:12Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you another tricky situation that this offers some insight into, and it's not, it doesn't offer a definite answer, but I've seen leaders backed into a corner where, you know, Leif screws something up, and whatever the mitigating circumstances were, you know, I say, you know what, though, Leif, I gotta punish him. You know, Leif didn't finish the project on time, I'm writing him up. I told him I was gonna write him up, I'm gonna write him up, and you know, you come to me and say, hey, boss, I get it, it's my fault, here's some mistakes that I made, and I go, yep, doesn't matter, I'm writing you up. And I feel like I'm gonna lose respect of people if I don't, like, drop the hammer on you. And the fact of the matter is,

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  you don't, if you're a reasonable human being, and you listen to the mitigating circumstances of a situation and say, you know what? I really hope that this doesn't happen again, Leif. There's no possible way if this happens again, I'm gonna let you off the hook. But you came to me with a plan on how you're gonna fix these things. Don't ever allow it to happen again. Your respect for me doesn't go down. People don't think, oh, Jaco's weak. They think, hmm, we got a boss that's gonna take care of our people. Now, look, if you have somebody that's just out of, you know, does something totally off the wall, of course. Punishment must be dealt out, but it's not weak to be reasonable. I guess that sums it up.

• 47:41Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of punishment, a commander should administer punishment in an impersonal way and to a degree that fits the circumstances and the offense. When a man pays his debt, the commander should forget the incident.

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  You gotta keep that thing in mind, though. Like, you might have a repeat offender. You know, I get it, bro. I get you, General Clark, but that one, you know?

• 48:03Leif Babin?

  You know what? I think what he's saying there, what I interpret that as is, is what you talk about in the first chapter of Extreme Ownership, this horrible blue on blue situation that was tragic, that was terrible. And the, you know, our commanding officer's coming to, you know, find out what happened and we think, okay, man, they're probably gonna fire someone for this. And there's a lot at stake. And then you talk about by taking ownership, by implementing a plan to make sure that never happened again, the boss actually, his trust increased in you rather than decreased. So, I mean, I think when people take ownership and they implement a solution to make sure you see, hey, they're fixing that problem. You are gaining trust in them, even if something bad happens. So it's not that you're, it's not that you're forgetting about it, but you're certainly like, you're not holding it against them.

• 48:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I think that's the key thing, isn't it? Yeah, it's not the literal term, forget, but, you know, I'm not gonna look at you and go, well, you know, I don't know, Leif, last time you didn't quite do what I needed you to do. No, it's like, hey, you, you made your mistake. We figured out what the punishment was gonna be. You did your time for your crime. We're gonna move on, and I'm not gonna hold it over your head. That being said.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  You know, I'm paying attention, making sure you're not a repeat offender. Courage, every man experiences fear in a crisis. The commander cannot show it. He must fortify himself by learning to control his emotions. This is crazy to read. Consideration do them, so this is again, this is all under the topic. What does the soldier expect from his commander? Consideration do them as mature, professional soldiers. Regardless of age or grade, soldiers should be treated as mature individuals. They are men engaged in honorable profession and deserve to be treated as such.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  Military courtesies start between officers. Observation of these courtesies between seniors and subordinates is not belittling to either. They are evidences of the alertness, pride and good manners of your men. The commander's rank should be used to serve his subordinates. It is not a reward and is not a license to exercise idiosyncrasies. Rank has one object to enable the officer to fulfill his responsibilities. Subordinates expect the commander to play his part according to his position. They do not begrudge him his rank. If he uses them, if he uses it in the interest of his subordinates and superiors.

• 50:32Jocko Willink?

  So if you're using your rank in the interest of your troops, we're good. If you're using it for yourself, we got an issue. We got a problem.

• 50:41Leif Babin?

  You know, that part about the professional, these are professionals, treat them like professionals. It reminds me of our experience in Ramadi, working alongside US soldiers and Marines. And something you always said about, these guys are true professionals. They are, they are awesome professional warriors that we were privileged and honored to work alongside. And it was interesting how there are some special operators that did not treat them that way. Cause they felt like, oh, they were special and they went through some, you know, specialized training and they were part of a specialized unit and they had better gear, whatever. And, and how like they created all this bad blood just by not treating people freshly. And it was, you know, I just remember, you know, meeting some of those young Marines and soldiers.

• 51:26Leif Babin?

  When we first arrived there and they just. You know, they were looking at us like, oh, man, the SEALs are here. And they'd look at our short-barreled little rifles and our cool gear. And we had better night vision, all this, all this, this stuff. And I'm, I'm looking back at these, these young privates thinking, man, these guys have fired more rounds with their weapons than all of us put together in the entire task unit are ever going to fire in our entire careers in, in the SEAL teams. I mean, that's how much combat they were seeing. And it was just what an honor and privilege to be. I mean, they were, they were absolute professionals. And that served us well by treating them accordingly.

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's like one of those little golden rules. Why, why is this so hard? Treat people with respect. Treat people with respect. That's it. Treat people with respect.

• 52:18Jocko Willink?

  Personal interests taken in them as individuals. Again, what does a soldier expect from his commander? Personal interests taken in them as individuals. A good officer will know the names, background, and individual characteristics of his men. He must have a genuine personal interest in them, or they will not have it in him.

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  Each individual has problems. There is no easy way of getting a grip on men than by helping them solve their personal problems that give them great concern. An officer should not, however, be too familiar with his men. Good soldiers do not expect it and usually resent it. It is not necessary to call soldiers by their first names, even if the officer sleeps in the same foxhole with them.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  Close, but not too close, as we like to say, the dichotomy of leadership.

• 53:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, the, the, the expression, and I, I, I didn't ever hear anyone say this. And I started saying it a little while ago. I don't know if, maybe, maybe it's not gonna, I don't know. I'm not trying to take credit for something. But, you know, you know the term that we'd say in the teams, which was, take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. Which is, means, hey, when you get done with a dive, you take your dive rig and you do the proper maintenance on it. When you get done with a parachute jump, you take your parachute, you do proper maintenance on it. When you get done with a firefight or an operation, you take your weapon and you do the proper maintenance. You take care of your gear and your gear will be there to take care of you. Same thing with people. You take care of your people and your people will take care of you.

• 53:52Leif Babin?

  That's true. As you're saying that, I'm thinking about some of those text messages that you've sent Echo Charles.

• 53:58Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 53:59Jocko Willink?

  Those things are going to become public, I think.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, might tell a different story in a little way, but yeah, man.

• 54:05Leif Babin?

  Why is it so hard for people to respect people?

• 54:08Jocko Willink?

  Just no respect whatsoever. My text messages to Echo Charles, they do have a high level of disrespect. And this also brings to the fact that I believe, I believe, I'm not 100% sure. I believe that I have a certain guard passing technique.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:27Jocko Willink?

  That is called the disrespect.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  That I actually named because of you, because I would use this guard pass and it's so disrespectful that you would, you would feel disrespected.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  I know.

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  Did you think of that name?

• 54:40Speaker 02

  No, you did. I remember very vividly.

• 54:44Jocko Willink?

  Expand. I like this.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  You don't have to. It's just very disrespectful. That's it. Yeah. I think that's a good question, you know? Is it that hard to be respectful? And apparently it is sometimes. So, yeah, man.

• 55:01Leif Babin?

  There's a fine line between Jess and disrespect and maybe, maybe a little more of a gray area.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it gets blurry sometimes, yes, sir.

• 55:09Jocko Willink?

  Find some good screenshots and, and let's post some, some Jaco Echo texts. I think that'll be fun.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 55:19Jocko Willink?

  Uh, back to the book. There is nothing wrong today with the following instructions written by Baron Von Steuben at Valley Forge and published in the continent, published by the Continental Congress. Instructions for the captain. A captain cannot be too careful of the company. A captain cannot be too careful of the company the state has committed to his charge. He must pay the greatest attention to the health of his men, their discipline, arms, accoutrements, ammunition, clothes, and necessaries. His first object.

• 56:02Jocko Willink?

  Should be to gain the love of his men by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity, inquiring into their complaints, and when well-founded, seeing them redressed. He should know every man of his company by name and character. He should often visit those who are sick, speak tenderly to them, see that the public provision, whether of medicine or diet, is duly administered, and procure them besides such comforts and conveniences as are in his power. The attachment that arises from this kind of attention to the sick and wounded is almost inconceivable. It will, moreover, by the means of preserving the lives of many valuable men.

• 56:50Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. What a, what a, what a incredible thing to be able to read. Instructions for a cap, for a captain from Valley Forge. That's powerful, man. It's humbling as well, too. I think about all of my shortcomings and how much I could have used that guidance directly, you know, prior to being charlie platoon commander, or, you know, even now, like just reviewing that and thinking about it. And it captures, I think, like I said, the burden of leadership in a massive way, and all that's required of you, which is a lot. Everything, 100%, all the time. And if you take care of your men, your men are

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  going to take care of you. And if you have this, if you have this inconceivable attachment, what that does is, is preserves lives. So, when you are a tight unit, you know, I've often said that, you know, the thing that makes a SEAL platoon strong is just the bonds that you have. Like, that's the, that's the difference. That's what, that's what's gonna, that's gonna make the difference in any military, you know, not just the SEAL, I mean, I can talk about the SEAL platoons because I've been in them, but any military unit. What is it that makes a really strong unit? It's how tight they are. And what makes people tight? You take care of them. That's it.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  It goes on, instructions for the lieutenant.

• 58:22Jocko Willink?

  He should endeavor to gain the love of his men by his attention to everything which may contribute to their health and convenience. He should often visit them at different hours, inspect their manner of living, see that their provisions are good and well cooked, and as far as possible, oblige them to take their meals at regulated hours. He should pay attention to their complaints and, when well founded, endeavor to get them redressed, but discourage them from complaining on every frivolous occasion. So, for the captain and for the lieutenant, what are you trying to do? You're trying to build relationships with your team. You're trying to take care of your people.

• 59:01Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, those are the instructions, not one, that's it.

• 59:08Jocko Willink?

  Next, go.

• 59:08Leif Babin?

  I was just gonna say, I think that's, that's the most profound thing to me, you know, as you think, hey, if Hackworth is saying, everyone, every officer should be required to read this, you would think it's gonna be talking about tactics. You would think, how to set up, you know, your base of fire and your assault elements, or, you know, how to, how to position your, your troops, and, and it's not that at all. It's, it's all about building relationships with your team, you know, what's required of you to actually be a leader.

• 59:37Leif Babin?

  It's, uh, how you, you know, how you manage and lead, uh, and that's, that's pretty phenomenal. And we, you say that all the time, something that we talk about often, which is, the hardest parts of, of, of combat leadership is, is always the, the human aspect, not the, not the tactics. That's, that's the easy part.

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that's, you know, when I wrote the foreword for About Face, you know, and he turned, you know, he turned against, he said, hey, we can't win this war if we keep fighting like this. And, and, you know, they, they asked him, um, they asked Howard Tucker in that interview, that famous interview, you know, um, he gets asked, could you, could you, could you become, are you too emotional about the war in Vietnam? And Hackworth says, one couldn't have spent the number of years I spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn't see the number of young studs die or terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved.

• 1:00:38Leif Babin?

  I have just seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful, great young men in this country. I have seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split asunder and almost being, uh, being split apart and almost being split asunder because of this war. And I'm wondering to what end it will lead to, end quote.

• 1:01:00Leif Babin?

  You know, like, that's a guy that loved his troops.

• 1:01:06Leif Babin?

  I can only imagine that burden, you know, with 58,000 dead in the Vietnam War, 58,000 US troops killed. And, uh, cause even at the tiny fraction of that number, you know, that we've experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming back from Iraq, when we came back from Ramadi, I think one of the hardest things for me, just after having lost Mark, Ryan was blind, Mikey, you know, we lost Mikey and Del Platoon. And a good friend of mine, who's hopefully going to be on this podcast with you sometime, Elliot, uh, who was severely wounded and he was in Brooke Army Medical Center in San

• 1:01:45Leif Babin?

  Antonio, which is the primary burn care facility for all of, all of the US military. And so I went and spent a bunch of time with him there. And from December for, you know, really through much of like 2007, back there regularly and trying to, trying to, you know, just help him and support him and his family wherever we could. And

• 1:02:07Leif Babin?

  just witnessing the, those burn victims in there, you know, when, when IEDs that were causing, you know, the enemy's most valuable weapon, and you're, you're walking into those, those ICU rooms, and you're seeing young soldiers and Marines with no lips, no, no noses, no ears, just face, you know, faces burned off. It was, uh, one of the most horrific things I've, I've ever had to experience. And then when I would hear people on the news, talking about the war and pontificating about the blood and treasure that we spent, and they had no inkling of, of just how deep and personal that was, you know?

• 1:02:48Leif Babin?

  And again, that's just a fraction in the Iraq War of what Pakworth experienced in Vietnam. I can only imagine, you know, for him and for every other Vietnam veteran out there, what that was like. But there's, there's no way to not make that personal.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can see the root of that is, you know, it's the same root. Like you said earlier, these things that you uncover over time. You know, if you take care, if you, if you love your troops, that's gonna be, that's, that's what it's about. And Hackworth knew that, you know that, I know that, General Clark knew that, that's the way it is.

• 1:03:32Jocko Willink?

  Goes on here, loyalty.

• 1:03:36Jocko Willink?

  Loyalty to superiors and subordinates is a basic requirement.

• 1:03:43Jocko Willink?

  Criticism of a commander's superiors in front of subordinates lays him open to the same treatment. He should stand up for his men as he expects them to stand up for him.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  You can, you can, you can almost see Hackworth's life unfold, right? Like you can see that, that statement in everything that he did.

• 1:04:06Jocko Willink?

  An officer's presence when the conditions are unpleasant and when the going is tough, sharing the situation of the men means a great deal to them.

• 1:04:16Jocko Willink?

  Pick up the brass.

• 1:04:19Jocko Willink?

  The commander should act as a buffer between superiors and subordinates. He should protect his men from harassment that comes from above, but still get the job done.

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know sometimes I would pull back the curtain for a few minutes and like, show you what was happening above me in the chain of command on all different fronts. And look, everyone up above me in the chain of command doing their job, but it's, it's, it's pressure and it's. It's kind of maddening and, and sometimes I would be asking you for something and you'd get pissed off about it. You know, what the hell you need this for? And I'd say, come here for a minute. Let me, why don't you take a look behind this curtain for 15 seconds? You look back there, see that sausage getting made and say, okay, I'm good. I'll get you what you need. I'm out. Thank you.

• 1:05:11Leif Babin?

  You did, you always did a great job of screening us from that and, but I think that was very valuable for me because it gave me a new perspective. I, you know, like, oh, they're asking us for this. You know, I'm getting mad about it. And then I realized like how much you're actually screening out, you know, of that harassment. Like, hey, I'm keeping these guys off your back so that you guys can go do what you need to do.

• 1:05:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next, that their needs be anticipated and met. A good soldier has needs, both spiritual and physical, and the commander should do everything possible to anticipate and meet those needs. At the same time, he should provide all the comforts and privileges practicable.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  This is not meant to imply that he should coddle his men or treat them as babies. Like, how beautiful is this dichotomy? Just when you think, oh, maybe he's a little off track here. Maybe I'm a little bit, no. This does not mean to imply that he should coddle his men or treat them like babies. Such things as a hot meal when it is not expected, unit parties, liberal past privileges and good recreational facilities are more, more to the point.

• 1:06:18Jocko Willink?

  Next thing that the soldier expects from his commander to be kept informed and told the reason why.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  The commander should keep his men informed at all time. Tell them the reasons behind decisions affecting them. Many jobs seem purposeless unless the facts behind them are known.

• 1:06:39Jocko Willink?

  He should continually take action to offset rumors and speculation by giving his men all the information he can. Yeah, we owe this guy money, dude. We owe this guy money.

• 1:06:52Leif Babin?

  You know what, though? You're probably, uh, I mean, obviously, there's a direct influence through David Hackworth, you know, and about face from General Clark. I think you could go back to the Greek hoplites or the, you know, the Roman legions and probably find some centurion who's writing the same stuff. I mean, they're learning the same stuff. It's some, some different aspect, a different terminology, a little bit different, you know, a vastly different era, millennia apart, but it's, it's human nature, as we just said, hasn't changed. And, uh, and I bet there would be something very similar.

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  And just to make sure everyone realizes, we're not just talking about war. We are talking about leadership. We're talking about leadership and business. You need to tell your people what's going on and they need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. I'm talking about your family. They need to understand what's going on and they need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Any, any situation where you're interacting with other human beings, these rules apply. And they apply to the point, why do we know that they work? Because they've been tested. We tested them, but these guys tested them in even crazier conditions, harder conditions, three freaking wars.

• 1:08:06Leif Babin?

  And that's, that's one of the most common things we're getting at Echelon Front these days is, is questions about managing the family schedule and how do I work from home? But, you know, with so many people still working from home, you know, it's, uh, those are, those are like a good bulk of the questions are about that. And it's directly applicable.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, the other thing that's been interesting is when COVID hit, you know, most of the companies that we work with are good companies that want to be awesome. We do get some companies that, that come to us sometimes against their will, brought to us by the board or whatever, that we are going to fix them, help fix them. Most of the companies we work with are good companies that want to do better. When COVID hit,

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  So these companies aren't companies that are struggling. These are companies that just want to do, you know, better. And so they would implement the, the principles that we talk about, implement, cover, move, implement, simple, prioritize, next year, decentralized command, default, aggressive, you know, extreme ownership. So they implement these things and, and yes, they're absolutely start doing better. And we watch them and we get feedback from them and their profits go and they become more efficient and more effective and they start taking market share. Everything goes awesome. And it's cool. And everyone goes, hey, yeah, that's great. And we're super excited about it. When COVID hit and all of a sudden there was companies that were in dire situations and were able to utilize the principles to survive, yes, but also start to actually go on

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  the attack and thrive. That was pretty epic because it basically was like, uh, have you ever, did you ever pull a reserve parachute? Never had. Yeah. I only did it one time. And all the other times I'd be like, yeah, cool. Yeah, I'm glad I got a reserve on. The time that I pulled it, I was like, this thing's freaking awesome, bro. Thank you for packing this thing correctly. Case of beer to the rigor, you know? Cause you, because normally it's just like, yeah, yeah, it's, it's work, you know, it's on there. It's all good. And that's kind of what companies, you okay, we're doing really good. Hey, our profits are up. All these, all these positive things. But all of a sudden, when they're faced with real hardships and challenges, they're like, what should we do here? Prioritize next year. Oh, yeah. Okay. Or die, or they no longer exist.

• 1:10:10Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. Hey, what, you know, we've got this going. We got all these people working at home. What should we do? This is decentralized command. Yeah, we've been doing that. Well, yeah, now you need to do it harder. You need to make sure everyone understands what the mission is, what the goal is, what the end state is. You need to communicate with them. They need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Can you make that happen? Yes, we can. Okay. Execute. You know, that makes me think there was a, there was an educator, remember on E F online, uh, a few weeks ago, as, as they were about to go back to school, you know, in her, in her state or her, uh, her district. Um, she was an educator. She was talking about how crazy it was and how much uncertainty it was. And, uh, and you said,

• 1:10:47Leif Babin?

  We didn't learn this stuff in a Boy Scout troop. You know, how this, we learned this on the battlefield. It was crazy. It was chaotic. There was a lot at stake. There was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen. What you need to do is prioritize and execute. That's where this came from. And I think.

• 1:11:03Jocko Willink?

  I know it's getting crazy in that sixth grade classroom. And I'm telling you, this is going to work.

• 1:11:09Leif Babin?

  And it did. And she came back and gave us a great sit rep about how it was. She was implementing that and moving forward and doing great. Legit.

• 1:11:18Jocko Willink?

  Next thing that the soldier requires is a well fought out program of training, work and recreation. The commander should keep a balance between training and recreation. Too much of either becomes a drag on the men.

• 1:11:29Jocko Willink?

  Logical progression of training helps the, helps keep the men from becoming confused.

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is exactly what we wrote about dichotomy leadership. Train hard, but train smart. You can smoke people, you can crush them to the point where they're not getting any benefit anymore. Next, demands commensurate with capabilities, neither too great nor too small. A commander should not overload his men with unnecessary work. On the other hand, letting men become bored because they are not working enough is just as bad. Neither men as individuals nor units should be expected to accomplish impossible tasks. Yeah. What is that? What are you saying? You got to balance that dichotomy.

• 1:12:08Leif Babin?

  It sounds like General Clark had the same experience with his soldiers that we always said like a bored team guy is like the most dangerous thing in the universe. Cause they're going to figure something out to go cause trouble or. Because. Create mayhem.

• 1:12:20Jocko Willink?

  Because rock fights. That was when I was a young team guy. If there wasn't, if we weren't being told to do something like sitting around waiting for something, there was a rock fight happening. You know, all of a sudden someone just hits you in the leg with a rock from 20 yards and it's a rock fight. Or, or actually, actually it wasn't rock fights. There was a couple of those, but mostly.

• 1:12:40Leif Babin?

  You're not talking about like tossing a pebble.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  You're talking about like. Hucking, no, what it was, it wasn't rock fights. That's when I was a kid. When I was a kid, there was rock fights. And I don't know what you're even thinking when you're having rock fights, but.

• 1:12:52Leif Babin?

  We had, we had BB gun wars.

• 1:12:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we had BB gun wars too.

• 1:12:55Leif Babin?

  Shooting your buddy in the leg with your.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  We had the BB gun wars. If you got shot.

• 1:12:59Leif Babin?

  Red Ryder BB gun.

• 1:13:00Jocko Willink?

  If you got shot, you had to take off one layer of clothing.

• 1:13:02Leif Babin?

  By the way, zero Ipro. We were like, it was just the dumbest thing ever.

• 1:13:06Jocko Willink?

  What's that?

• 1:13:07Leif Babin?

  I got hit in the face one time. I came home one time, my eye swollen so shut. And my dad was like, son, what happened to you? I got hit with a spear. We were having spear wars.

• 1:13:18Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:13:18Leif Babin?

  Sharpened sticks throwing at each other to hit me. I mean, it missed, it missed my eye by like three millimeters. My dad was like, you're an idiot. Don't ever do that again.

• 1:13:29Leif Babin?

  Anyway, rock fights.

• 1:13:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, not rock fights, hucking rocks at objects. It'd be like, hey, who can hit that? So I guess it's similar to the pebble, but it'd be like, hey, who can hit that lamp over there? You know, that street light or something. Well, start standing there hucking rocks at it.

• 1:13:42Leif Babin?

  Speaking of board team guys in rock fights, so my, my first deployment before we worked together in Tassie and Bruiser in 2004. So after your first deployment to Iraq, one of our super solid team guys, you know, in, in, in our platoon was throwing rocks through the window of, uh, and got in all kinds of trouble because he damaged this smashed and shattered a window of, of this like former Saddam palace. And they literally like, like pulled an award for him. I mean, it was crazy. This, this palace had a JDAM dropped through the middle of it. It was completely like, for some reason they got all upset that he like shattered the windows. What's a JDAM? Uh, a giant bomb dropped from the sky. It's, it's, it's a, it's a GPS guided bomb. Gotcha.

• 1:14:28Jocko Willink?

  Joint, something ammunition?

• 1:14:31Leif Babin?

  Joint direct attack munition, I believe. I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I'll have to ask good deal Dave.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Where's Dave when you need him?

• 1:14:37Leif Babin?

  Good deal, Dave. You know what? There weren't too many times in Tassie and Bruiser where we had board team guys. Cause you always had us busy doing stuff, but, uh, the one time that we did let it go, um, the Andrew Paul got volunteered to demonstrate the new tasers that we got.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 1:14:57Leif Babin?

  And Chris Kyle tased him and, uh, everyone sat around filming it and.

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  Laughing.

• 1:15:03Leif Babin?

  Andrew said that was the worst experience of his entire life.

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  The cool thing, there was a safety officer there that someone, someone made, like we put out the jujitsu mats. Cause this was, remember we'd do jujitsu in the morning in the high bay there? And I forget, you know, I heard someone came like, hey Jaco, they're about to tase Andrew Paul. I'm like, up dude work. I'm like, alright, I better go.

• 1:15:24Leif Babin?

  You were like earmuffs? Did you go check it out?

• 1:15:26Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't even remember. It might've been one of those things where I was like, alright, let the boys do what the boys are gonna do. Maybe I just saw the video.

• 1:15:34Leif Babin?

  Yeah, I think you probably saw the, I saw the video.

• 1:15:36Jocko Willink?

  But I saw that there was a mat. They took our green, they were actually my mats. They took them, put them down underneath. So he fell face down on the freaking mat, thankfully.

• 1:15:46Leif Babin?

  Yeah, that's a board team guy's bad.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  Didn't he say he was gonna fight through it?

• 1:15:54Leif Babin?

  I think so.

• 1:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he did not fight through it. Andrew Tall's a tough, tough dude, but that taser took him down. Alright, back to the book. Guidelines to orders.

• 1:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Give orders, this is ridiculous. Give orders in a manner which indicates you expect compliance. Do not issue orders you cannot enforce. Give clear, complete, correct orders and follow them up. I mean, the reason I said this ridiculous is because it's just crazy that what the actual verbiage that we use when we brief is, you know, give simple, clear, concise guidance. And here they're saying clear, complete, correct. Only by long and careful training can the commander achieve perfection in giving orders. Ambiguity, vagueness, and incompleteness of orders are to blame for the mo- for most disobedience and failure to comply. Which is, when I say, if your team isn't doing what you, what you

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  want them to do, the very first person you should check is yourself. And here it is.

• 1:16:58Leif Babin?

  And yet that's so hard for any of us to do, right? You get frustrated with the person for not doing what you wanted them to do. And instead of actually looking at yourself and saying, hey, okay, obviously I wasn't clear. I could have done a better job.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  The words of an order indicate what is to be done. The manner in which it delivers generates the spirit in which it will be carried out. Oral orders should be repeated back. Failure to do so will most assuredly result in a grave misunderstanding. Only by long and careful training can men learn to receive, obey, and pass on orders to others. Lack of orders does not relieve a commander from acting.

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  You must strive to maintain a complete picture of the situation so you can take suitable action in the absence of orders.

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  It is a wise officer who refrains from criticism until he can make logical constructive suggestions. An officer should be as good as his word. He should not make promises he cannot keep or make decisions he cannot support.

• 1:18:16Jocko Willink?

  Just perfect guidance on how you tell people what it is you want them to, how you give orders.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  The combat commander. Positive leadership. Battle appears to add peculiar problems to command, but when further analyzed, the problems are merely magnifications of those present in training. The great difference between combat and training is the presence of danger and confusion in combat. These two obstacles can be overcome only by positive leadership and by developing a positive and automatic reaction in the individual soldier.

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  That's cool. It's cool that it says this, like, "We absolutely added confusion, massive amounts of confusion into our training to simulate..." We couldn't, you know, you can't shoot people, obviously, during training. You can't add that element of danger, but you certainly can add some freaking confusion.

• 1:19:10Leif Babin?

  Yeah, the term I think I always used was chaos and mayhem, you know, like activate chaos and mayhem, and your trade instructors were awesome at doing that.

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  They were very awesome at doing that. These positive traits of the commander and of the soldier are acquired during training, training in peace, training in wartime before combat, training during battle, and by mental factors not easily described. Desire to overcome the enemy, devotion to country and to organization, and personal devotion to the commander. When a disciplined unit is spurred by the mental drives mentioned, it fights not only well, but brilliantly.

• 1:19:49Jocko Willink?

  Those are some awesome things to strive for. The willingness to overcome the enemy, devotion to country and organization, and personal devotion to the commander.

• 1:20:06Jocko Willink?

  Battle is fought for real money and for keeps. Battles are won by teamwork, not by individuals acting alone. The only teamwork that can stand up under the confusion and constant danger, feeling of fear and physical exhaustion, is the battle of instinctive teamwork. Success in combat is due largely to endurance on the battlefield. The day after day strain of living in the dirt, of going without sleep and food, of the constant threat of death, will cause the man who is physically or mentally weak to quit. Fatigue makes cowards. Men in good physical condition are the last to tire.

• 1:20:52Leif Babin?

  I would definitely agree with that, for sure. You know what though, man? I was just thinking about like going through the strain and stress of like, I think, I just think about the support of the team. You were talking about the bonds between teams and relationships. And just that attitude, you know, you talk about the respect of the commander and, you know, obviously, you know, we always, no one ever wanted to let you down, T U Bruiser, clearly. But I think, understanding the mission and just like looking at another guy, you could be under fire in a crazy situation, and you know, I'd look at like Tony, Tony, like, I'd look back at you, or, you know, even that situation I said earlier where Dave Burke and a couple other, you know, if our guys ran down to grab the pallet of water, like

• 1:21:37Leif Babin?

  interact with you, or when you came down, you know, for a delivery, you know, to resupply us, you know, you're just showing up for just a few minutes, checking us out, seeing how things are going, like, and I think just the look in your eye of like, hey, cool, how things going down here? It's no matter what the physical strain is on you, you know, or what you're going through, or mental strain, it's, I think that support of your teammates around you and like the attitude, particularly the kind of attitude of humor in, I think, the midst of some really dire situations, I think was always super helpful for us.

• 1:22:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Leif Babin?

  That the attitude that people have and I would love to tell you it's leaders, but as you know full well, it's not just leaders. It can be anyone in the platoon, anyone on a team, anyone in the organization. When things are going bad and someone says, dude, we got this, you know, or whatever. Someone instead of saying, oh, you know, hey, we got to roll out again. You gotta be kidding me. Someone goes, good, let's bring it. You know, like that little thing. The best example. Power, man. There it is. And the best example I can think of is we wrote about in the planning chapter of Extreme Ownership, which me and everyone else is jacked up. We're about to launch on that hostage rescue operation and me and you were sitting in there and Butters,

• 1:22:58Leif Babin?

  our, you know, intel ensign comes rolling in and goes, they got ITs buried in the yard in Booker machine gun positions of the house. And you just looked at me and with this big smile on your face like, I guess you guys are gonna get some. And I was like, I guess we are. I mean, that's and that attitude, instead of being like, you know, if you'd have looked at me like, oh no, yeah, do you think, you know, maybe we shouldn't go on this? You know, it was like, no, you just started, you were like smiling and laughing about it. Now, look, obviously, we'd planned and put contingencies in place. We weren't being callous about it, but it was, that attitude was contagious for everybody. You know, or Mark Lee rolling out on the, as the lead turret gunner, like, Mark, you feel lucky tonight? Like, everybody's a winner, you know?

• 1:23:40Leif Babin?

  So pay attention to that because it's real easy. It's real easy.

• 1:23:47Leif Babin?

  It's real easy to let that bad attitude come out and you need to just stifle that thing. You just need to stifle it. And anybody that wants to talk to me about being transparent and showing your feelings, I'll say, no, no, actually, just be quiet. Just shut up. And what you need to do is you go, oh, this is gonna suck. And I'll look at Leif and say, this, you guys are gonna get some. Watch this. Let's go, let's go bring it.

• 1:24:17Jocko Willink?

  The importance of endurance on the battlefield is underlined by Grant's philosophy. The idea that in every battle, there may come a moment when each side is fought out and ready to quit. And the belief that in such a moment, victory will go to the side which is able to make one final effort. In the heat of a firefight, the poor commander will not be able to lead men into danger, to make them attack or keep order when he and his men are under hostile artillery fire. He won't be able to execute his plans. Instead, his men will forget teamwork and follow their own plans in fighting for survival. Therefore, you must take every opportunity to make your men confident in your ability

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  to command and of the skill and toughness of your unit. Unit morale, the prospect of entering battle puts every soldier under severe nervous strain. Danger, real and imaginary, are thick around them. The commander can overcome much of this strain and strengthen the mental endurance of his men by teaching them in advance what to expect. An event foreseen and prepared for will have little harmful effect.

• 1:25:34Leif Babin?

  You were talking about Grant's philosophy there, and I was thinking about Chamberlain at Gettysburg. We were just at Gettysburg for EF Battlefield. I mean, he and the 20th Maine charged, fixed bayonets and charged down the hill in Little Round Top. That was the absolute last ditch effort. They didn't have any ammo. I mean, it was, it was, it was, you know, millimeters close to losing that battle, and that would have changed the entire title of the battle, you know, if Little Round Top had been taken. So I think that's such a phenomenal example of, to me, that's that default aggressive mindset of like, hey, okay, we're going to be default aggressive to continue this, and that one last push is going to change the entire outcome.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  There's a famous boxing match with Muhammad Ali, and I want to say, I want to say...

• 1:26:28Jocko Willink?

  I can't remember which match it was, but it is a brutal boxing match. And at one point, both fight Muhammad Ali's all beat up and whoever he was fighting, I forget it was it was an incredible fight, but he gets back to his corner and he's telling his corner, cut him off. He's done. Cut my gloves off. I'm done. And basically his corner's like, you got, you know, you gotta keep going. And they look over and the other guy didn't answer the bell. So like, that's, that's where it's at. Like if you, you can give up right there. That's something to think about, you know, like, can you just go a little bit more? Can you just go a little bit more?

• 1:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. In combat, you really see the critical importance of high morale and esprit de corps. Morale must be high enough to stand the shock and boredom of combat. You know, actually, before I continue here, I wanted to say this. That thing about giving people a heads up about what they're gonna face. Like that, you know, you're gonna like if you, I've had fighters where they're, they got their first big, they're on the big stage. Maybe they're in the UFC for the first time or whatever. They get nervous. And they don't know what that is. No one ever told them, hey, man, you're gonna feel, you know, you're gonna feel sick. You're gonna feel butterflies. Tito Ortiz, you know, Dean used to corner Tito a lot.

• 1:27:57Jocko Willink?

  And Tito, and they just, they just had a, a show about Tito versus Chuck. And one of the scenes you can see it's Tito, he's right about to walk out and he's throwing up, just viciously throwing up. And, but I remember Dean telling me, Tito would get so nervous before fights that he would just start throwing up. But he understood what it was. Now imagine you, you're just going in your first fight. And all of a sudden you start, you wanna throw up. And someone just be like, hey, just go ahead and throw up, just get it out. You know, just always get it out of your system. It's the same thing in combat. You gotta say, hey, listen, you're, you're nervous. It's okay. If you're jittery, if you're, if you feel sick. If you, whatever, it's okay. That's just your body, you know, focusing its energy towards where it needs to be focused to. It's perfectly fine.

• 1:28:43Jocko Willink?

  But if you don't know that, it can be a problem.

• 1:28:48Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. So morale must be high enough to stand the shock and the boredom of combat. Every man must be strong, must strongly believe that what he is doing is right. He must have supreme confidence that he can deal with any situation that he is a better fighter than the enemy. Esprit de corps is unit morale. Every man must feel that his unit is a superb fighting unit and that he, like the rest, will sacrifice even life itself for the unit. The spirit is often the difference between mediocre and superior armies. It was strong in the Roman legions and in the French troops under Napoleon. Recognize though, that the commander must inspire beyond a group esprit.

• 1:29:28Jocko Willink?

  Only deep, personal conviction springing from the identification with a cause will drive a man forward when his unit is destroyed or scattered.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  Personal example. The commander should be a model soldier. He must master the technique of war as it fits his assignment. He must improve and expand his technical knowledge. The commander must strive to make it possible for every soldier to say truthfully, "The old man knows, the old man always knows the right thing to do." In addition, he must exhibit daily a fine example of stamina and courage. Besides his own example, the higher commander is also represented by his staff officers. They too must reflect the superior qualities of their commander. Above all, set the proper example.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Leading by example, there you go. The model soldier. Soldier's morale. Show me a unit that is well-run, properly trained and ready for combat and I'll show you a unit with high morale. No commander will readily admit that his unit's morale is anything other than excellent. I wrote in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, people always ask me, "How do I improve?" Do hard things. You want to improve morale? Do hard things.

• 1:30:55Jocko Willink?

  As we compare units, however, it is often obvious that morale in some units is more excellent than in others. What is morale? Our manual on leadership defines morale as the mental and emotional state of the individual. Although it is a complex and intangible quality, the manifestations of its absence in a unit can be detected readily in the form of poor appearance of the individuals and unit area, poor discipline, and a low state of training.

• 1:31:27Leif Babin?

  That's something that, I mean, obviously Hackworth immediately applied that, you know, to the hard, from the hard luck to the hardcore battalion. And I was thinking about that with Task Unit Bruiser, something that we talk about often, which is, you know, the, initially, we were working harder than everybody. You know, the people, we're working harder than, we were preparing for scenarios that we, the guys that had been to Iraq previously, like, why are we training for this crazy, multi-casual scenario, you know, that we, we didn't experience anything like that on the, on the battlefield, or when the instructors would say, hey, you guys are good to go, and we'd say, you know what, we need to do a few more runs. And there was grumbling around that. People were, people were saying, hey, we're working harder than the, you know, we're coming in early, we're staying late, we're not taking the night off and going out drinking beers in town.

• 1:32:11Leif Babin?

  We're actually planning and training and, and preparing, you know, and it's interesting to think about how those complaints just faded away as our performance increased. And, I mean, that was morale. That's, that's morale increasing to say, hey, we're Task Unit Bruiser. Hey, why, why are we working harder than, than, you know, these other task units? Because we're Task Unit Bruiser, that's why. Because we strive to be better than everybody, and that's what we're gonna do. And that's, yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's awesome.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  101. More stuff I stole from Hack. Hackworth 101.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Several adjuncts to morale. Chart three, good management. We all like to be in a unit where things run smoothly, where things are planned, where men do not have to hurry up and wait. Adequate information. Men like to be kept informed ahead of time of things that affect them or are apt to affect them. It is far better for the commander to keep his men informed than have the men seek to get such information from rumors. High state of training. If a unit is not well-trained, its men know it. This fact shakes their confidence, especially if they anticipate the possibility of using that training in a critical situation. Chances for advancement. Progress is morale raising to all men. Knowing that advancement is possible and that excellent performance and preparation lead to promotion helps morale.

• 1:33:32Jocko Willink?

  Good physical and mental condition. Good physical condition goes hand in hand with good mental condition. These two elements are basic to achieving good morale. Good administration. Men like to know that their pay and accounts and individual records are correct. Confidence and equipment. Ours is the best equipment, best-equipped army in the world. Confidence in commanders. Men expect their commanders to know their jobs, to share the hardships with them, and to take a personal interest in their problems. You will not know whether a particular officer or soldier has a problem until someone has heard his case. A willing ear will gain much confidence. Comfortable quarters, I'm paraphrasing some of these. Mess.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  Good food. Mail service. Medical attention. Post-exchange facilities. Leaves and passes. Religious services and character guidance. It is especially important that a army be made up of mostly young soldiers be provided with facilities for religious services in accordance with their preferences. A program of character guidance will help to continue in the service the wholesome influence of home and community life.

• 1:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Awards and letters of commendation.

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  Standards. Soldiers like to be in a sharp unit. They appreciate achievement of high standards in discipline, dress, housekeeping, police, maintenance, training and athletics. The lift in morale that comes from impressive and well-executed military ceremonies is an important factor.

• 1:35:03Leif Babin?

  That kind of reminds me of like, uh, group PTs, you know, at the team. And everyone like hates group PTs, like grumbles at group PTs. And then you get together and you do some awesome workout together. And afterward, you're like, that's awesome. That was great.

• 1:35:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, um, we just got some little help from external sources that it was, we'll move on to this in a second. We just got a little, some little help from external sources that it was Ali Frazier when that fight happened. When that fight I was talking about earlier happened. And it was Frazier, his Frazier's corner was basically saying, you're done. And Ali's was over telling his corner, cut him off. I'm done. And Frazier's corner said, you can't, you're done. And that was it. Ali, they, Ali's corners, you know, was, no, you can't cut off. You're fighting again. You're fighting more. And he decided to stick, you know, that was it. He won. For an ex, he, he held on for an extra three seconds.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  And got the victory after a 15 round war. It was in the, or a 14 round war going into the 15th round. But I like that. Like what I know, look, I know I'm not the most talented and gifted person in any way, shape or form. But I know that I'm, I, if someone's have, if I'm having a hard time, I know someone else is too. And I know that I will answer the bell. And I know that's gonna, that's gonna be a problem. It's gonna be a problem for somebody.

• 1:36:30Leif Babin?

  You know, that, that's, I think for a lot of us, it like, it's kind of human nature to focus on yourself, you know, and think, oh, if you're having a struggle and it's, you know, it's, you something you talk about, whether it's, you know, discipline goes freedom, waking up, you know, at the alarm early in the morning. And how it's like, you're a human being. It's hard for you. It's hard for anyone to do that. But it's, we kind of like to think, oh, it's harder for me. Without the recognition of like, man, this is, it's hard for everybody. And if I could push a little bit harder, it's going to give me the advantage. I figured that out in Hell Week for me. I wasn't the fastest runner. I wasn't the fastest swimmer. But like by like day two of Hell Week, everyone is crushed. I was like, dude, I'm good to go. Like all of a sudden, I can, I can hang with guys that were way faster runners than me.

• 1:37:14Leif Babin?

  You know, they were, they were hurt more and, and, and it's like even the score. So I, I think that's, that gives you a pretty huge advantage if you can keep grinding in the tough times.

• 1:37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, that with that, the normal face philosophy helps so much because it jumped like, and I'm obviously thinking about like a jujitsu situation or whatever, where you're competing against someone directly. Where if they're gassing or whatever, they're, they're in a state of extreme adversity, we'll say. And they interpret, because just like how you're saying, Leif, how you're like, hey, we're so focused on ourself. I'm focused on how tired I am. I don't know how tired this guy is. All I have really is, is external, what he's doing or, or looking like. But if the other guy's just like cruising in his face, like he's really comfortable, you're like, man, I can't compete with this at all. So now you want to give up even more.

• 1:38:01Leif Babin?

  You can never, like the, the joke about normal face is no joke, man. It really isn't. It really truly isn't. And you talk about, you talk about, um, you know, like when, how many times have you seen me? Like we're doing jujitsu, or even not you training with me, but me training with anybody, me training with Dean Lisch. You know, training with somebody that's better than me, that's giving me a run. Have you ever seen like a look on my face of just like despair?

• 1:38:26Speaker 02

  No. So, and I, and I, and I told this story probably more than once before already on here. But there was a time where you were rolling with Dean and, you know, hey, with all due respect, he was, he was kicking your ass pretty bad too. And I was like, dang, seeing Jock over a kid. And you guys were going hard. That's the thing. And that's the part that really like stuck with me. I'm like, man, I would be gassing right now. Like hardcore, you know, you scrambled and you scramble again, you scramble again, you scramble again. And then you kind of rest of it, but you guys weren't even doing that. I was like, man. And you were getting your ass kicked. So I'm like, Jocko's in a world of hurt right now. Then he had you in Mount Double Snow Angel. And I'm like, I would be, I was feeling literally like physically claustrophobic because of how tired I was like empathetically getting from watching you guys.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  And like how your arms were or whatever. I was like.

• 1:39:14Jocko Willink?

  Man, I don't know how he he can even take that or whatever. And then you ended up sort of getting out and the round ended. And I was looking at your face and you're just like, kind of like, that's what you do every day kind of thing. I was like, I don't, that's what I knew is like, oh, okay, this kid's a little bit different than the normal person, you know?

• 1:39:30Leif Babin?

  You do that even when, uh, probably the lowest point that I've seen you, um, when Seth Stone and I came to visit you in the hospital after your neck surgery. And we went and bought you a big like Danny's slam burger, you know, like double cheeseburger, like, we're gonna go, let's go see Jaco, he just had his surgery. And, uh, we roll up there and you were just in, and you were like normal, I, I knew you were hurting back because you did like, like, just set it down over there. But you were still like normal face and, and I don't know what you looked like before we walked in there, but you definitely turned on the normal face.

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:04Leif Babin?

  When, uh, you know, and I knew you had to be in massive pain, you just coming out of neck surgery, you know, had all these, these, this nerve issues and, uh, they had you on a bunch of, you know, drugs and stuff, but you even still were normal face.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, I was freaking getting neck surgery because of Dean Lister, that's what the deal is. But it's a real thing and, and also, I mean, look, Leif, you've come to me with many times with all kinds of, uh, you know, bad, bad news, you know, whether it's just, hey, you know, whether even it's just something stupid, like I'm thinking of some dumb stuff like, uh, you lost some gear, right? Some, let's say some critical gear, which you did, or your platoon did, which means you did.

• 1:40:40Leif Babin?

  I did.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  Like, you know, you come to me and you go, hey, hey, boss, uh, we lost this, that, and the other thing. And I go, okay, well, looks like we're gonna have to fill out some paperwork, right? Like, it's a real thing. And if I can't control my emotions because you lost a piece of gear, your platoon lost a piece of gear, like, how am I gonna react in the future?

• 1:41:02Leif Babin?

  And by the way, when you're saying I lost a piece of gear, like, we're talking about, like, I'm coming and telling you I lost a $15,000 pair of like PVS 15, like night vision goggles.

• 1:41:12Jocko Willink?

  Which can be used by the enemy.

• 1:41:14Leif Babin?

  Yeah, which is a big deal. Or we lost a, uh, a kick 13, which is, you know, uh, a cryptologic device that, uh, you know, that we use for radios. It's.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  A, a cryptological device that when you lose means the entire country of America has to update their cryptological loads.

• 1:41:35Leif Babin?

  Which is a giant deal. And so for Jaco to just give you the normal face on that, it's actually the worst. It's like your dad telling you he's, he's, uh, he's not angry. He's just disappointed. I mean, it's actually the worst. Cause if you were like, dude, are you kidding me? You know, like I would be, look, it was, it would be desirable when Jaco's like Roger and just looks back at you like,

• 1:41:58Leif Babin?

  doesn't he, can't he just be angry?

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  Doesn't it give you like a, maybe it's on the other side of like your brain or something, but doesn't it give you like a big sense of comfort? Like, okay, at least this is manageable. Like it's a big deal, but at least it's manageable because like if you're already kind of freaking out for whatever reason. And you bring it to him, who's like part of the reason you're kinda apprehensive about the whole thing, to say the least. And he doesn't freak out. So it's like, it feels like in your mind, you're like, okay, maybe this, this whole chaotic situation that just emerged is kind of manageable more.

• 1:42:34Leif Babin?

  Well, I mean, look to me, there's, there's, there's definitely like, it's, it's, it's more difficult to handle a boss who's like, doesn't freak out about it, right? When you're like, cause you don't want to let that boss down. You, you want to let that boss down. You're like, hey, man, it's like Roger, you know, and, and it's, it's a,

• 1:42:52Leif Babin?

  it's, it's, it's harder. It's more, but I guess to your point, I go, it's, you're gonna, I'm gonna actually fix that problem. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again. Whether if you do, if you flipped out about it and, you know, yelled and screamed to me, then that's my punishment. Whereas the punishment, the punishment for me is knowing like, it's constructive. Cause I know like, I gotta get this fixed. We can't let this happen again. This is a massive issue. Hey, okay. I know we're gonna send out a message and tell the entire US military and, you know, Department of Defense.

• 1:43:22Jocko Willink?

  Send out a jackass message.

• 1:43:23Leif Babin?

  Yeah. And so you know what? I'm gonna start writing the message right now. Let me do it. Let's get some.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's, that's, uh, that's probably not the best example I could have picked. Cause as I'm thinking about it, what you're saying is accurate. Like it's, it's more tormenting for me just to be like, all right, cool. Roger, you know? As opposed to being like, I can't believe you did that. Cause now you can be like, God, Jaco's such a jerk. And it's almost like, you know, we can have a little spat over it as opposed to me just late, uh, just.

• 1:43:56Jocko Willink?

  saddling you with unbearable guilt for letting me down.

• 1:44:00Leif Babin?

  But it's that, look, the, the reality is it's gets the problem fixed. It gets the problem fixed. I mean, with, it's not unbearable guilt. It's like, okay, we can't let that happen again. This is a huge deal and we gotta get, we gotta, we gotta, I'm gonna make sure this doesn't happen again, which is gonna be better for me, gonna be better for you, gonna be better for our team, gonna be better for everybody, rather than like, oh, I, okay, I got yelled at, you know, and, and that's the end of it, you know?

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And even like when they flip out on you or something, you're like, yeah, I messed up, but like, he didn't have to flip out on me like that, you know? So it kind of like, not justifies, but it kind of

• 1:44:37Leif Babin?

  Yeah, it gives you, it gives you a cause, right? Yeah. Leif freaking just lost his mind with me on that. You know what I mean? And you go back to the platoon, you go, dude, Jaco just totally freaked out. He's freaking out about this. That guy turns a mountain into a mole every time, right? All of a sudden it's me against you.

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:54Leif Babin?

  And then it turns into me against your platoon. So it's just all bad. One thing I will say about normal face, and I could say this because anybody that knows me knows that I'm probably the worst.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  One of them, yeah.

• 1:45:05Leif Babin?

  The worst normal face guy ever. Like it is a real struggle for me to like maintain normal face.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's funny because I, I mean, you, yes, it is not a strength of yours, but you are better now because man, back in the day, it was just like, I would be looking at you going, oh, this is

• 1:45:24Leif Babin?

  My face is getting red.

• 1:45:26Jocko Willink?

  Turning red, just clenching your teeth. I'd be like, oh, check, Leif's getting spun up. This ought to be good. I'd be thinking like, please, please don't say anything until the boss leaves or whatever. I, I, I'll handle it, dude. You don't have to say anything. And yeah, that would be good.

• 1:45:42Leif Babin?

  But what I was gonna say is this is a great example of discipline equals freedom, right? And your kids, well, we know, I mean, I've known them since they all were super little and watched them growing up and you have helped them, you know, trained them in that, like, like help, you're practicing that. And it's something that you gotta practice. It's something you have to, you can get better with reps, even if you're not naturally good at it like me, you can definitely get better.

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  With reps and so I've improved. I got a long way to go still, but I think you gotta be thinking about it all the time. And that's, you know, we've talked about on the podcast years ago, when I was here, like you're the chaos at home. I got young kids at home. That's a great example to like, accept that as like a, okay, I'm not going to spin up. This is a good chance to practice normal face right now. When I'm upset or I'm frustrated, we're not getting out the door for the road trip, or whatever it is that we all get, I get spun up about all the time. And it's a, if you accept that as like a training opportunity, then you're, when you actually need to use normal face, you will actually be much better at doing it.

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  Bro, you, you mentioned like training and the kids and stuff. The whole reason it's called normal face is because it's an actual game that this guy plays, played whatever with the kids with the, it's like a, what is it, the wrapping paper? The wrapping paper. Cardboard leftover from the wrapping paper, the tube.

• 1:47:00Jocko Willink?

  I've witnessed the normal.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  You've seen it?

• 1:47:02Jocko Willink?

  You don't have to explain.

• 1:47:03Speaker 02

  Oh damn, okay.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  I did it too. We had a guy that showed up in Ramadi, a new guy, who's a great dude, but he showed up and he's a happy guy.

• 1:47:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  And he had a, and he would smile all the time, right? Uh, we're talking private pile, you know? And so I'd look at him and go, hey, you can't be walking around like smiling like that. You're a freaking team guy. You need to represent. We, we are task unit bruiser, not task unit freaking smiley. So I played normal face with that guy. You know what I'm talking about? Okay. Yeah. And it was so funny because I mean, I was laughing so hard because he could not even come close to not smiling. And the more I did it and the harder I hit him, the harder I was laughing. He was laughing. It was pretty funny.

• 1:47:47Leif Babin?

  One, one normal face game I'm thinking about was, um, was your oldest daughter, uh, when she was probably, probably seven, maybe. And we were at your house and, uh, on the pull-up bar in the garage. Do you remember that?

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:48:01Leif Babin?

  And you're like, Get up there and show Leif how many pull-ups you can do. So she gets up, she cranks out some pull-ups, like awesome. And then, you know, maybe she wasn't even seven because she was way off the ground. You know, you like lifted her up there to get there on the full-size pole bar.

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Freaking.

• 1:48:15Leif Babin?

  So she's like four feet off the ground and, uh, and you were like, and you were like, I will not catch you. As she's hanging on the bar, like, I will not catch you. She's like, dad, dad. You're like, I, meanwhile, your, your hands are like right there, ready to catch her. Yeah. But she can't see him. And I was just like, and, but you know what? She actually was like, you, you could see up initially, she was like, dad, dad. And then, then she was like, she just went like normal face. And then she dropped off, you caught her. It was like.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, you also have to train your kids to deal with just unknown terror.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  Falling, breaking broken bones. Oh, sorry, kids.

• 1:48:59Leif Babin?

  That's the way it goes. She turned out all right.

• 1:49:01Jocko Willink?

  Great. She's outstanding. Uh, yeah. I, you know, it's a learning process, you know, you, you learn, you learn about, you know, you learn about controlling your emotions, life. I've learned a lot about parenting.

• 1:49:13Speaker 02

  I feel like, uh, with the kids practicing or taking opportunities to practice normal face, 100% of the time is a good method.

• 1:49:22Jocko Willink?

  It's a good method and it is a great thing. Like no joke, it is a great thing for a leader to be able to control your emotions because your emotions, we already talked about this. If I'm panicking, if Leif reports to me some news and I panic, he's going to panic, everyone's going to panic. It's going to be mayhem. If he sees me go, all right, all right, got it. You know, it's like, okay, you know, I've had like at the muster, you know, the muster's, uh, there's, there's timelines and there's, you've got to be at a certain place at a certain time, you know, and I've had Jamie come up to me, you know, the so-and-so, we don't have any of that stuff yet. It's like, okay. And you can see that she's kind of panicked about it. You know, we don't have the labels for the whatever to pass out stuff.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  And I go, okay, we'll pass them out tomorrow. And she's like, Okay, you know, just like it's all good.

• 1:50:11Leif Babin?

  But that that's an awesome thing, man, and that's powerful. I mean, you and I were just talking about this today, right? With some some echelon front stuff and and and our strategic growth and and things that I was really spinning up about and and really stressing on. You're like, it's not that big of a deal, you know, and that is that's something that is that perspective, you know, when someone's immersed, when someone is immersed in the details of things and they're like, it's the weight's bearing down on them. We're like, man, this isn't gonna happen. It's really easy to get stressed out about that. So it's a powerful thing, man.

• 1:50:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that also, you know, falls into some implied intent, right, of me and leaving you with the impression that something needs to be perfect because, well, you know me, like, hey, I like things to be squared away. And then all of a sudden, you've got something that's not squared away, and you start trying to fix this problem. And it's you're investing more than it's worth into the problem. And it's because I am giving you the wrong implied intent that, hey, you know what? If it's that much investment, I don't want you to make that much investment of time into something that's really not gonna have a massive impact strategically. So like, I gotta do a better job of going, oh, you know, let me know if something's a struggle. Where have I done this before?

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, if it's gonna, this would be really cool to have. It'd be really cool if we executed this. But if we can't, don't worry about it, you know, don't invest more than X amount of hours. Hey, go look at it for two hours. If we can't do it, you know, we won't do it. No factor. It'd be cool if we can, but let's not, let's not lose sleep over it. Whereas, you know, it's like, once again, going back to Gettysburg. What I need to remember is if if General Lee tells Stonewall Jackson to do something, he's gonna freaking do it, and he doesn't care what price he has to pay to accomplish that mission. Well, if I if I mention to you, like, hey, this would be cool to have, and you're like, cool.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  And now now all of a sudden, you're paying the ultimate price to make something happen. And you look up, you know, three weeks later, and you've spent money and time and and it's like, you're like, I got it done, or or maybe we can't execute what your vision was. It's like, oh, okay, cool. Don't worry about it. It's like, that's not a good normal face, you know, it's a little bit too much. So, uh, yeah, it happens.

• 1:52:35Leif Babin?

  The final thing I'll say about normal face is, um, I love that my kids now have been influenced. I'll be like, we call it Jaco normal face. So when you, when you say,

• 1:52:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, we pretty much brand everything as Jaco around here. So we're good with that.

• 1:52:47Leif Babin?

  I say execute Jaco normal face and they, they're like be smiling for a picture and they're like,

• 1:52:52Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 1:52:53Leif Babin?

  It's on cue. It's awesome. My one year old, not so much yet, but my four year old and six year old, they get some.

• 1:52:59Jocko Willink?

  That's legit. That's legit. Um, all right. Back to the book. Chart number four, evidence of morale. So we were on this whole thing talking about morale. And this is evidence of morale and discussing the subject of morale with visitors. I often ask and am asked, what do you look for in a unit or in order to gauge the morale? Since morale is influenced by so many factors, there are naturally many indications of the state of morale. The things I note quickly in sizing up a unit include, I'm going to burn through some of these, saluting, dress, good housekeeping, pride, pride, I'll go into that one a little bit. Are the men eager to show their accomplishments? Do they point to their unit's history with pride?

• 1:53:43Jocko Willink?

  Do they have something good to sell and try and sell it?

• 1:53:48Jocko Willink?

  Participating in charities, athletic program and supportive teams and athletic program enthusiastically supported is always a favorable indication of morale. Church attendance, soldiers' deposits and other savings. A man who saves his money each month is banking on his future and is well, it is usually a well adjusted and confident soldier. When there are many such soldiers in a unit, there is a depth of stability in the organization, but commanders should not attempt to coerce the men to participate in this program.

• 1:54:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, just for, for, for all leaders, really, this is probably one of the things when I look back at my military career that I did a pretty horrible job of. And that was that I never said, all right, guys, here's what you should do with your money.

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  Here's some, here's some moves to make, you know, here's some things that you should do, here's some things that you shouldn't do. So just if you're a leader, especially if you're a military leader, look, when you're a milit- when you're a lot of kids that joined the military, myself included, hey, when I got to the teams and I was an E4 in the teams, I was the richest person in the world. And you know, I got that paycheck every two weeks and I was ready to rock and roll.

• 1:55:02Leif Babin?

  Making it rain.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it was great. And you know, I, I really wish somebody along the way would have said, hey, man, that's cool. You know, you're gonna make whatever, $5,000 this month.

• 1:55:16Jocko Willink?

  You know what? I know you like to get after it and, and go have a good time and you should. And you should do that with $4,000, not with $4,999.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  So if you're in a position where you can help people plan their economic future, please do that.

• 1:55:33Leif Babin?

  You know what?

• 1:55:35Leif Babin?

  It's funny that you're actually saying that because you, you of, of all the people I worked with in 13 years in the Navy, like you're the only one that did that. And maybe not on like a, on like a, you, you didn't like have a presentation to the entire task unit. You know, maybe you could have done something like that.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  We should have.

• 1:55:52Leif Babin?

  But you had a lot of direct interaction with a whole lot of people and, and helped direct them and you know, our, our influence, our, our encouragement to do something, you know, uh, go in the right direction.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think to your point, I think guys that were close to me, I would be like, hey, bro, what you need to do is this. And so that's cool, but it, you know, I should have been doing it for everybody and I didn't. And the reason is I didn't really care about that stuff, honestly. I didn't really think about it. I didn't really think about that. I just thought about, hey, we, we just want to be good frogmen and a good task unit and a good platoon. You know, like that's it. That's what we're here for. So I should have been thinking a little bit deeper about that, but if you're in that position,

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  do it.

• 1:56:35Jocko Willink?

  Enlistment and reenlistment records, AWOL. When such offenses are reasonably easy to commit and the number of offenses is low, it is indicative of high morale. Size of sick call, court martial rates, incidents and accidents, complaints about the inspector general.

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  This is another classic thing, right? So complaints to the inspector general, oh, sorry, this isn't complaints to the inspector general. Later in the book, Leif, he talks about how you should be open and ready to being inspected. Like if you, everyone hates inspections and doesn't want the commander to come down. And he says, you should be waiting for that. And it's very similar to our attitude in Ramadi, which, which I absolutely stole from the XO of the first of the 506th, or sorry, the, yeah, the XO, the first of the five, the ops officer from the first of the 506th, who as soon as we got there, there was an investigation happening. And he, and I was like, yeah, what do you get investigated for it? He goes, oh, this, that, and the other thing, or this thing.

• 1:57:40Jocko Willink?

  And I said, oh, is that, how's that going to work out? He goes, I love it when we get inspected. He goes, I want them to come and inspect and see what we're doing and see what it's like down here and see what it's like to live down here and let them understand what's going on in the front lines. And I, I absolutely adopted that policy. And what's cool is what he says in this book is, you know, you, why are you afraid of being inspected? You shouldn't have nothing to hide. So if you're, if you're afraid of being inspected, that's the problem. And let's fix the thing so that you can be open to being inspected.

• 1:58:16Leif Babin?

  You know, we, we talked about that in Extreme Ownership, right? Leading up the chain of command and how we invited our commander to, to come down and see what we're doing and invite our operations officer and their staff to be there. But that's, it's a complete opposite though, of what everybody else.

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:31Leif Babin?

  Everybody else's mindset was like, get the boss man away. We don't want him around here. We want to be able to, and, and what they wanted to be able to get away with was like really miniscule stuff, right? Like uniforms around the camp, like attendance at meetings, little things that don't really matter. And, and yet what we gained by having them come out and visit us was. A deep understanding of our mission, how we were mitigating risk, what resources we needed. Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's a no brainer and yet nobody does that because they don't want the, the scrutiny of the big boss man.

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  Wrong attitude.

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Next section, outside influence on morale. The factors and indications of morale covered so far concern things generally within the control of the commander, but there are influences on the morale of the soldiers, especially those on duty in a far off land, which stem from attitudes of officials, the press, radio commentators and public at home. The soldier should feel that he is needed and that his sacrifices are the of immediate and long range benefit to his country, his home, his family and himself. He should feel that his unit is in, is as important to him as his family, that he is just as important to the unit.

• 1:59:47Jocko Willink?

  He will feel that importance as long as the people at home feel it. He is sensitive to public opinion at home and because of good radio newspaper and mail facilities isn't constantly aware of attitudes at the home toward the importance of his job.

• 2:00:04Leif Babin?

  That's an interesting perspective compared to.

• 2:00:06Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 2:00:07Leif Babin?

  All, you know, if we were reading newspapers and watching TV, you know, the particular in 2006, the Iraq war, it was just constant negative coverage, quagmire, we can't win, you know, this is terrible. Uh, we just had to tune that stuff out.

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's, it's even more pronounced now with social media. Uh, do we, do we have social media? Was there social media for us in, in Ramadi?

• 2:00:33Leif Babin?

  It was like MySpace. And actually I do remember Mark Lee used to always come back and get on Facebook.

• 2:00:38Jocko Willink?

  So it existed.

• 2:00:38Leif Babin?

  Yeah. Facebook existed, but it was not, I think it like MySpace was still like the dominant, uh.

• 2:00:46Jocko Willink?

  2006 echo, where were we at social media wise 2006?

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  Life is correct. Yes.

• 2:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Just kicking it with MySpace.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  Between MySpace and.

• 2:00:53Jocko Willink?

  I thought MySpace was like a music something.

• 2:00:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. You could put music.

• 2:00:57Jocko Willink?

  So, so, so MySpace was legit social media back then.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  Yes. And before that too.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  And before that.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's 2007, you said?

• 2:01:05Jocko Willink?

  2006. What year did, what year did Facebook come to prominence?

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I don't know the exact year, but that's when, you know, when it was, it was rolling for sure. But MySpace was still going on as well.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  But there was a lot less people on all these things. You know what I mean? I mean, now it's, now it's the, now it, it has replaced.

• 2:01:24Leif Babin?

  It's pre-iPhone, so you couldn't access it with your phone. You could only access it through the, you know, your, your computer.

• 2:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was like barely like right when pictures to the internet started going. Like, like not all phones had cameras and stuff like that.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  So, bottom line, we gotta pay attention to the influence on morale from outside our organization. Pay attention to it. This next section is called Junior Officers Conferences. And, and it says, "There are always many newly commissioned officers, fine officers in the Army. They have come from many sources. Some of these young officers have demonstrated outstanding ability in combat. Others have not had this experience. Few of them have had the time or opportunity to become fully indoctrinated with the duties and responsibilities required of an officer. The standards and responsibilities of an officer are, in many respects, more exacting and more difficult to discharge in peacetime than in combat. Consequently, officers' conferences should be conducted for all junior officers

• 2:02:26Jocko Willink?

  to review the duties and responsibilities of others." So what am I, what am I saying? What he's saying is that, look, you should meet with your, your subordinate leadership

• 2:02:35Jocko Willink?

  and educate them and teach them. And I often ask this question to clients.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  I say, "Has anyone here had a person that invested in them personally?" And, you know, most of the time, especially when I'm talking to leaders, most of the time, people will raise their hand and say, you know, "Oh, yeah, you know, I've had, I had this person that took me under their wing," or, and I, and I, then I say, "Well, how does that, how did that make you feel?" And obviously, everyone says, "Oh, yeah, that makes you feel great. Makes you feel like you can do well, and it's a person that's encouraging you." And then I say, "How many people are you doing that for right now?" And like, there's less hands, right? And so we take this investment of the people that raised you, like the people that raised me and the teams, right? What if I take that investment, I just hold on to it and don't give it to anybody else?

• 2:03:27Jocko Willink?

  That's horrible. And it's not continuing to grow the capabilities of the community.

• 2:03:33Leif Babin?

  There's, there's, there's something deeper there that I, when he, he said... Roles and responsibilities. So you're reviewing roles and responsibilities with them. And I think that's something that, you know, the Jaco brief that you would give in like the junior officer training course, when I was running training for two years, I ran training for all SEAL officers who are graduating from our, our basic training pipeline. And you came in, we'd have you come in and give the Jaco brief. And it was the same thing that you briefed to the, the task units and platoons going through the workup. And I think one of the most important parts of that was the roles and responsibilities. So I, it's great to mentor. I mean, you're right. People don't invest in their people. I agree with that a hundred percent. But I think a lot of people don't know how to mentor people. And what he's saying there, I think, was just if

• 2:04:16Leif Babin?

  you've got to make their roles and responsibilities clear. And you broke down, I mean, it was, it was, it was shooter, you know, your job is to make things happen, you know, get default aggressive. You have, you have it listed out all the way, fire team leader, you know, take your four guys, lead your fire team, support your squad leader. You had the squad leader, then you had the platoon commanders, you had the assault chief, you had the, you know, assault force commander, the ground force commander, et cetera. And that was a really powerful document, so much so that I've had several, several very successful SEALs, including good friends of yours who have reached out to me and said, hey, can we get a copy of that?

• 2:04:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:55Leif Babin?

  Because, because it really, without breaking that down, enables you to execute with confidence. If you know what your roles and responsibilities are, then you can actually step up and execute with confidence. And I think that's a, a really, people don't define that. You define it a way where it was easy to understand and enable people to execute. And I think that's a great, that's a key thing to mentor people on.

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  One of the key parts of that, when I would get done talking about what the roles and responsibilities of everyone was, I would say, okay, now that you know your roles and responsibility, you also have to understand the person below you and the person above you of the chain of command. You have to understand what their roles and responsibilities are. And if you have to, you have to either ascend or descend into the situation where you can solve a problem and do their job. As soon as you get a problem solved, you can't get stuck there. You have to elevate yourself up to the next position. The last thing that I would start saying to guys once they were done with JOTC, now I'm talking to platoons, is I would say, listen, and I would usually say this just to like the head shed. I would say, listen.

• 2:05:59Jocko Willink?

  Here's the roles and responsibilities. I don't actually care who does these things, but you better figure it out because sometimes you might have a platoon chief that hadn't been in the teams for a few years and he had some platoon commander that had just gotten back off deployment, or you'd have, whatever the case may be, maybe the LPO just got done teaching assaults out at, you know, at trade at, and now he's in the platoon, or just got back from land warfare. So he's going to really know how to do that job. So I'd say, listen, it doesn't really matter which one you have. Now I'll tell you, basically, and this is what I always say, basically enlisted guys,

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  you're the tactical experts, you handle the problem that you got at hand. Officers, you need to figure out what the next move is going to be. And that, that was the general thing. But then I'd say, listen, if this officer, like, doesn't have any experience whatsoever, and maybe the LPO is kind of badass, and the chief is, I'd say, listen, listen, officer, you need to look to your chief, and he needs to elevate a little bit and figure out what's going to do next. So, and that, well, the reason that happened was because as I put more and more platoons through training, I saw that some platoons, they just didn't, they, they had a mismatch. They had some prior enlisted officer that was freaking just a badass, knew everything, or they had a, a, a

• 2:07:25Jocko Willink?

  chief that was, you know, been out of the loop for a while. And so, okay, but the LP, like I said, so eventually, I would say, listen, I don't really care how you guys break these up, but you have to know who's responsible for what. And one man cannot do all these jobs. It's, it's not possible for one man to do all these jobs. I've seen some badass SEALs with tons of experience come through here, and they might be able to pull it off for an op or two ops, and then something's going to happen, and all of a sudden, it's going to be overwhelmed, and other people have to be able to back them up. Not to mention, if somebody's doing all these jobs, I'm going to kill them. And you better figure it out. I remember the don't get stuck there in all caps. Don't get stuck there. The slide.

• 2:08:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, okay. So the reason I wanted to cover this section is because it says this. So we're talking about these junior officer conferences. These conferences should be conducted by commanders themselves and on an informal basis. Lieutenants in separate companies and detachments may be invited to join groups from units commanded by a field grade officer. Groups should not be too large. Preaching should be avoided. I read this whole section, just so I could say that preaching should be avoided. These conferences can well, can well be the means of improving the unit team. Under the coaching of its captain, the unit commander, these conferences may consist of one hour meetings. He goes, he goes into some detail about how to do it.

• 2:08:48Jocko Willink?

  But the fact that he's saying, look, you're not bringing people in there to preach on how to do things. You're bringing in there to educate, to have discussions. And he's got the whole topic of discussions here, military courtesy, personal standards. Military discipline, promotions, unit history, esprit de corps, accomplishments, missions. Uh, troop information, morale, self-education of officers, professional publications. Responsibility for five. He's got everything, security classification, use and misuse of military vehicles. So basically it's like, tell the guys what's going on. That's what he's saying. You have to tell people what's going on.

• 2:09:30Jocko Willink?

  And then he's got this. Commander's checklist for success. And this, we've already been going for a while. So this will probably be the last thing we cover.

• 2:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Every commander at every echelon should maintain a continuing checklist to be left for or given to his successor to command. This checklist should contain items of value that will assist the new commander in becoming familiar with his command more rapidly. Than if he had had to uncover the same items over a period of time. Such items must consist of. One, significant strengths and weaknesses of key officers and non-commissioned officers in the command. Boom.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it weird that we might be in charge of people and know that we would have to turn this over and not keep track of like who's what strengths and weaknesses are? Next, important policy matters announced by senior commanders and not contained in SOP or directives. So you're tracking this stuff. A good turnover is such an important thing to do. And what I think is important about a turnover? It's great to have it to turn over to the next unit, but what it does is it forces you to actually think through how you are operating. And when you force yourself to think through how you're operating, you define it, you refine

• 2:10:52Jocko Willink?

  it, you codify it, and now it becomes stronger. Just like when you, just like when you write down these principles, just like when you formulate a standard operating procedure and you, just like when you teach a jujitsu move or you write out how you do, anytime that you study what you're doing, you will get better at it. And that's what this commander's checklist for successors, I said successor, it's for successors, for someone that's going to take your place.

• 2:11:18Leif Babin?

  That, you know what? Part of that too, I think is, yeah, that self-analysis you're talking about is like, hey, what did we screw up? What did we learn from it? I remember giving a turnover one time on a follow-on deployment and when the new unit came in, the new SEAL, SEAL unit taking over for us, and one of the, one of the senior leaders was like, this is a great turnover. You know, you guys were giving here, I really, this is one of the best tours I've ever seen. I'm like, why, like, why did you say that? It kind of caught me off guard. I was like, why do you, why do you say that? He's like, because you're telling us all the stuff that you screwed up. And it was, it's, it's really, you know, when you have a unit turning over thinking like, people are coming in like, get these idiots out of here, we're going to take, take over, even though we've been there for six months, learning.

• 2:12:03Leif Babin?

  And I was like, man, how, how are you going to learn from us to continue the mission and be more effective if we don't tell you what we screwed up? But clearly, he wasn't used to that, and most people weren't doing that. And I think that thinking deeply about it, and if you care about the mission, then you want, you want the people to be successful. I mean, we tried to set up the next SEAL team.

• 2:12:22Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:12:23Leif Babin?

  You know, Steve Ward and his guys, certainly.

• 2:12:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Speaking of Steve Ward. He can be coming on the podcast sometime real soon. Uh, names and personalities of individuals outside the command with whom it is necessary to associate and do business, areas of training, weaknesses within the command. So reporting the weaknesses like you just talked about disciplinary matters, security matters, critical equipment shortages. So that's the, that's that section. And here's the last thing we'll cover vigilance.

• 2:12:56Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, we're, we are on page 13 right now. So

• 2:13:02Jocko Willink?

  yeah, we are on page 13 of this book. There's 117 pages. We're on page 13. A unit operational readiness status, status must be ready for immediate employment at all times regardless of how well a unit has been trained. The commander cannot allow it to become lax and let down its guard. World War II and the Korean conflict were started by surprise attacks on Sunday mornings. These surprises remind us that we must be ready for anything seven days a week, 24 hours a day. We cannot relax our vigilance.

• 2:13:43Jocko Willink?

  In any way that would contribute to disaster.

• 2:13:53Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Like I said, that is the first 13 pages. I'm only, I'm only two thirds of the way through my second. Just getting warmed up. Sniper. Just getting warmed up. Look, I'll, I'll get to the rest of this. I'm sure I'll, I'll cover this thing. Um, but it's just incredible to see how these principles remain the same over time. And it's so intriguing. To uncover the roots of Hackworth and about face and thereby the roots of me. And of you and of extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership and leadership strategy and tactics. There is a thread you can trace through all these books.

• 2:14:38Jocko Willink?

  You gotta know your roots and the better, the better you understand. Yes, history, but the better you understand the origin of ideas and principles. Then the better you understand those ideas and principles themselves.

• 2:14:56Jocko Willink?

  And the better leader and person you will become.

• 2:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  What do you think, Leif?

• 2:15:07Leif Babin?

  I think that's outstanding. I think that's incredibly eye opening and um. It's because I've read About Face in detail and and you know, I was flipping through my copy. This week, uh, as I was kind of organizing stuff in my, my home office and. Looking at just the, you know, the tabbed and underlying pages and the, I actually had to, I put packing tape along the binder. Because it's been so just, um, it's been so from overuse, it's just been torn up and, and I had to reinforce it. Um, it's awesome to, to understand where Colonel Hackworth got some of these ideas, uh, and.

• 2:15:45Leif Babin?

  And I look, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure also, uh, you know, that these were learned from, from mentors, you know, and, and from generations. Uh, as well, but, uh, incredible stuff, definitely.

• 2:15:59Jocko Willink?

  Making us better.

• 2:16:01Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles.

• 2:16:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of getting better.

• 2:16:05Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:16:06Jocko Willink?

  You, you have any maybe, I don't know, suggestions?

• 2:16:09Speaker 02

  Sure, I have a few now that you mention it. Actually, I think that's, uh, interesting, your, that book. That you finally located. It was like a little treasure hunt. You know, the kind of guys who like they look for treasure that might not even exist. You know, that kind of guy? That, that was you. You're like, oh, it doesn't exist. See what I'm saying? You only got hints of it through Hackworth.

• 2:16:31Jocko Willink?

  I have, I have access to all kinds of like, I pay, you know, these various websites that offer all these ancient PDFs. I mean, I got the most, the dumbest subscriptions and I've been scouring these things for years.

• 2:16:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Nothing, nada. And how crazy is it? That the month that this version of About Face comes out, I freaking find this thing. There's one copy of it on Amazon and I have it.

• 2:16:58Speaker 02

  It was meant to be.

• 2:17:00Jocko Willink?

  I have it. It's legit.

• 2:17:02Speaker 02

  Jaco got his treasure.

• 2:17:04Jocko Willink?

  I have the ARC.

• 2:17:07Jocko Willink?

  Which is the advanced readers copy. Of what? So, so an advanced readers copy, no, I don't have it of that book, but an advanced readers copy. When a, when a book is gonna come out. They release, they'll print like. They'll print, how many, how many ARCs do you think they print in current days? I have no idea. Hundred. A hundred thousand? No, no, no, advanced reader copies, uh, what are they called, galleys? Oh, I got you, I'm sorry, yeah. How many do you think they print? Like, like for instance, for, for Extreme Ownership, I think I got six and you got six. Like that, and then they printed some to send to whoever, but we're talking absolutely. A few dozen. Yeah, absolutely less than fifty, right? Less than fifty.

• 2:17:50Jocko Willink?

  So, we were at the muster and a guy named Tobin came up and he goes, I have something for you. And he gives me like a brown paper bag. And this is just weird because it's hard to even understand this. If, if you don't understand what an ARC is and understand how rare they are. That, you know, look, you get an, like, I love first editions, like, I love first edition of About Face, but there's gotta be a hundred thousand of those things floating around, right? You know, you might like the first edition of Extreme Ownership, you know, we always joke about it, but there's hundreds of thousands of copies of the first edition of Extreme Ownership. There's only probably less than fifty ARCs of Extreme Ownership.

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  And same with the rest of all of our books. Well, so I'm at the muster and this guy comes up to me and he goes, yeah, I wanted to give you something. And I go, oh, awesome, appreciate it. And people give us a lot of cool stuff all the time, you know? And he hands me this paper bag and I open it up and there's a plastic, there's a book in plastic, just a plastic bag. I pull it out and I look at it and it's in a version of About Face that I've never seen before. And it's thinner than normal. And I go, what is this? And I pull it out of the plastic and sure enough, it's an unedited advanced reader's copy of About Face, signed by David Hackworth. This thing is priceless to me, right?

• 2:19:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so, he's out there, I actually owe him copies of About Face, of, of this new version, but guess what else I'm sending him? A R Cs of Extreme Ownership. Because they gave us about six each. I have all of mine.

• 2:19:38Leif Babin?

  I have mine as well.

• 2:19:39Jocko Willink?

  You want to know why? Why do you have yours? Why did you keep yours?

• 2:19:44Leif Babin?

  Uh, I, I think I, some of them I intended to send to people and, and they didn't get sent. And some of them I just thought would be kind of cool to hang on to.

• 2:19:51Jocko Willink?

  I only kept, uh, first of all, I didn't know that it was a big deal. I didn't know that this is, this whole thing, you know? We didn't know what the hell we were doing when it came to writing. So we didn't know what the hell we were doing. So they send us these things and I'm like, yeah, whatever. Well, I didn't, they're like, you could send them to, you know, the influencers that you know. Yeah. Well, I'm like, and so what I'm thinking is there's misspellings in this. There's some things that we edited out. I said, I don't want anyone to see this. And I just put them right in my, I put them in, you know, in like a drawer somewhere. And then, I don't know, a few years later, I started, as I, actually, as we started doing the podcast. And I started getting more into getting various books.

• 2:20:35Jocko Willink?

  And I always liked the first edition thing. But then I realized at some point that there was something better than the first edition. And that was the Reader's A R C.

• 2:20:45Leif Babin?

  I got, I got something better than the Reader's A R C. And that is the, uh, the Word Document Manuscript.

• 2:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20:53Leif Babin?

  Which we got, we've got the edit, all the edits, like just the crazy edits that we went through.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  You, well, that was crazy too, because we, you, were you in New York? Yeah, you were in New York when we wrote Extreme Ownership. And we had to edit that thing. And I remember spending four hours on the phone going through final edits. We'd be like, all right, page, page 64. Hey, you said this, what do you think? And you'd be like, oh yeah, we need, you know, so we would just sit there and manually go through for hours on the phone, these stupid edits, you know? And what's, what's interesting is, and we were talking about this the other day, there was one of the last edits that we did, we kind of got out the freaking, the clenched fist of editing and just started cutting stuff, you know? We started getting rid of stuff. That was pretty. That was pretty cool.

• 2:21:39Leif Babin?

  You know, it'll be interesting to see, uh, you know, I, I think particularly if you think about decades from now, what that might be like. A friend of mine showed me, you know, obviously that stuff becomes quite valuable to collectors and the people that know, you know, it's meaningful to people that it has, uh, that understand the value of what it is and how rare it is. And, uh, a friend of mine had showed me a copy of, of, it was a biography of Stonewall Jackson. And he was like, he handed it to me. It was, I was old and kind of brittle. I felt like it was going to fall apart. I opened it up and it says, G. Patton. Dang. It was, it was Patton's personal copy, totally annotated, like noted, like all the notes in the margins. Uh, you know, something that General Patton went through and, and noted. It was pretty, pretty awesome.

• 2:22:22Jocko Willink?

  That is awesome. I have all the books that I've covered in the podcast with all the tabs and notes and red lines and highlights and everything. And it's freaking cool to sit there and go back, because I'll go back and look at a book that I, you know, I already covered on the podcast. I'm like, I didn't even come close to getting like everything out of this that I need to get out of this, you know, with the old breed, especially the early podcasts where we would not, they weren't as long. And, and now I look at, I go, man, I go, we could dig right back into that thing, right back into that thing.

• 2:22:57Leif Babin?

  You did, you did, speaking of Patton, you did War as I Knew It as well, which I gave you that copy.

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  You gave me that copy. Yeah. It's signed by Leif Babin.

• 2:23:08Leif Babin?

  Not by General Patton. Not quite as valuable.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  I have a copy of War as I Knew It, and it is signed by Leif Babin. And I am damn proud of that.

• 2:23:20Leif Babin?

  Disappointing.

• 2:23:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When you posted the copy that I originally gave you of About Face the other day, and, you know, it had my, uh, my, you, because you made me sign it. You were like, hey, bro, you need to sign this. And I was kind of like, whatever, whatever. What are you talking about?

• 2:23:36Leif Babin?

  I was like, bro, you give somebody a book, you need to sign the book and I'll put a date in it, you know?

• 2:23:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I'd never give presents to anyone and so, or gifts of any kind. And I'd, I'd never given anything to anybody, really. Have I ever given you anything, Echo?

• 2:23:50Speaker 02

  Books.

• 2:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. So I, yeah, I've given you some books. I just gave you the, I just gave you About Face.

• 2:23:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so anyways, but when you asked me, I was kind of, I don't come from the background of giving things.

• 2:24:03Speaker 02

  In the, in the, in the, on the scale of gift givers, like Jaco is, if you know, 10 is greatest, one is the least. Um, Jaco is like point zero two.

• 2:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Jamie Cover and Move Cochran sent like my, sent my oldest daughter flowers for her birthday, whatever, a year ago or something like that. From me. And my daughter did not even remotely believe it for one second.

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:29Jocko Willink?

  She was like, who did you get to send me flowers? And I was like, uh, uh-oh, Jamie. I can't lie. Can't lie to my daughter. Uh, so there you go. Pretty cool. So I did sign your book. And, and then we just, we just re, we reenacted the signing of the book and I put the same thing. So there you go. Alright, Echo Charles, speaking of getting better.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:24:51Jocko Willink?

  You said, oh, then you, you started asking us, of course. Do you have any more questions?

• 2:24:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:24:55Jocko Willink?

  For the crew here?

• 2:24:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no. That was more of my, that was my takeaway. That's how I was regarding this book the whole time. Like, that's your little treasure that you found finally after your journey, you know?

• 2:25:06Jocko Willink?

  I wonder what's gonna happen now. Like, once this comes out, is, is Stackpole Books gonna reissue it? Or is Jaco Publishing?

• 2:25:15Speaker 02

  Somebody's gonna dig their, like, grandfather's copy out and, uh, there's gonna be nine of them on the internet.

• 2:25:21Jocko Willink?

  I'll buy them.

• 2:25:21Speaker 02

  750 bucks.

• 2:25:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'll buy them. Do you know how much a, uh, uh, old hardcover copy of About Faces, like, they were on, they were on Amazon the other day. Now you can buy it, they were 200 bucks?

• 2:25:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:32Jocko Willink?

  200 bucks? I have 20 copies.

• 2:25:37Jocko Willink?

  Alright, there we go.

• 2:25:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. Alright, getting better, right? We're on the path, okay. We're getting better, even if we're good, by the way. Like, you know, what do you call?

• 2:25:47Jocko Willink?

  We're maintaining vigilance?

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  Yes, big time, for sure. Um, but anyway, on the, on our road of improvement for improvement is what we're doing. Okay. We're working out every day. Alright, Leif, not to put you too much on the, on the spot, but you work out every day?

• 2:26:04Leif Babin?

  I try to.

• 2:26:05Speaker 02

  Okay, so that was my answer too, which you know, that that's a non-answer by the way, because there's varying levels of try, not to say that that's, you know.

• 2:26:14Leif Babin?

  Yeah, listen, the the goal is work out every day. Um, sometimes I achieve that on a, you know, on a weekly basis. Cool. I knocked it out. Other times, you know, life gets in the way. But uh, every uh, every, the days that I miss workouts, it's, it's deeply regretful. And when you don't do that, it's, it's a problem.

• 2:26:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and I actually, you gotta kind of be honest with, where if that's the goal, like for real goal, you know, to work out every day, that is a good thing, as opposed to, you know, like, hey, I'm gonna try to work out this week. You know, there's a difference is what I'm saying. So, hey.

• 2:26:46Leif Babin?

  Well, there's a big difference between I'm gonna try and work out every day, and I'm going to work out every day.

• 2:26:51Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yeah. And then.

• 2:26:53Leif Babin?

  If you want to talk about just keeping it real.

• 2:26:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, and as far as better and worse goes, for sure, for sure. Anyway, so when we work out every single day.

• 2:27:03Leif Babin?

  Oh, is this a conversation we're gonna have with Leif and Jaco? Is that what's happening? Because that's what I'm feeling.

• 2:27:07Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think it's wildly unnecessary to have it with you at this time, you know? I'd rather tell you how your joints will jam you up if you let them. I'm not gonna talk too much about this right now. I don't even, I don't think we should, anyway, I don't think we should even think about it that much right. It, at all. Joints should be a thing you don't think about. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:27:29Leif Babin?

  Good point. I see where you're going with this, and I like it.

• 2:27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, what should we be thinking about? Gains, obviously.

• 2:27:35Leif Babin?

  Yes.

• 2:27:36Speaker 02

  Yes. So let the joints just be joints, you see what I'm saying? Anyway, so if the joints are uh, monopolizing your attention, here's what you do. Boom, Jaco Fuel Joint Warfare. These are for your joints.

• 2:27:45Leif Babin?

  For sure.

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  Super Creole Oil for your joints.

• 2:27:48Leif Babin?

  I take both every day, for sure.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  Every day, right?

• 2:27:50Leif Babin?

  You know what, actually, I, I had, I had an eye surgery recently, and so I had to stop taking it for a little bit, and like, I know it. It, what's crazy about those is when you stop taking them, like.

• 2:28:00Speaker 02

  Why'd they stop taking, why'd you, why'd they take, stop taking them?

• 2:28:03Leif Babin?

  They, they didn't actually tell me to, but like, I, I just, you know, I just, uh, I just didn't take them for like three or four days, you know?

• 2:28:09Speaker 02

  Oh, because you were like laid up and whatever?

• 2:28:11Leif Babin?

  Not really laid up, but just, just like, I, I, I got out of it.

• 2:28:15Speaker 02

  You were off your routine?

• 2:28:16Leif Babin?

  I was off my routine, yeah. And uh, and it was, it was, like, I, I feel it. I definitely feel it, and uh, and there's. It's uh, it ain't just the, it it's real. It really is, man. You feel the joints uh, and and I think both both Kriollo and Joint Warfare are awesome.

• 2:28:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then it just keeps you kind of boom on the path in that way. So boom, yeah, don't worry about joints anymore. You don't have to, is what I'm saying. Anyway, another thing you don't want to be worrying about is getting sick. Cause that's one of those things, let's face it, we're not every day like fighting to boost our immune system or something like this.

• 2:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we are.

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  Maybe not consciously.

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  Okay, so when you wake up.

• 2:28:58Jocko Willink?

  This is gonna be rough.

• 2:28:58Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, well, yeah, well, you brought it up. You brought it up. You brought it up, Jaco. So at 4 a.m. whenever you wake up, are you like, okay, let me get this immune boosting scenario cracking right now?

• 2:29:11Jocko Willink?

  It's part of my routine.

• 2:29:12Speaker 02

  It's consciously part of your routine?

• 2:29:14Jocko Willink?

  Consciously part of my routine. I have my supplements lined up when I go in to brush my teeth in the morning.

• 2:29:22Speaker 02

  Doesn't count.

• 2:29:22Jocko Willink?

  I do what I'm supposed to do.

• 2:29:24Speaker 02

  Totally doesn't count.

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  When I go in to brush my teeth at night, I do what I'm supposed to do. That includes both brushing my teeth, taking my supplementation and flossing, which I never flossed until I joined the Navy. They told me to floss. I started flossing.

• 2:29:34Speaker 02

  Alright, cool, cool.

• 2:29:36Leif Babin?

  Do you take supplements pre-workout?

• 2:29:37Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:29:39Leif Babin?

  What are you taking?

• 2:29:40Jocko Willink?

  I take three Super Krill, three Joint Warfare and vitamin D.

• 2:29:44Speaker 02

  Oh, like for the pre-workout, you mean? Like for the workout?

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  No, it's but I.

• 2:29:48Speaker 02

  It's different.

• 2:29:49Jocko Willink?

  Not for the workout.

• 2:29:50Leif Babin?

  No, but prior to.

• 2:29:51Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I do, yeah.

• 2:29:52Speaker 02

  Is that what you're asking? Like, is that when you take them? Rather than do you take something before the workout for the workout?

• 2:29:58Leif Babin?

  Yeah, well, I'll slam some discipline go usually before the workout, but I definitely uh, yeah, usually the, no, it's it's good. I just, I just was curious.

• 2:30:08Jocko Willink?

  I I do. I take it every morning. It's part of my routine and then at night. And we had this whole guy, I do not want to talk about this right now, but Echo did not have a routine and therefore he would miss.

• 2:30:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:30:20Jocko Willink?

  Just like you just said, Leif, you got out of your routine and you miss. Like, that's a real thing. Set up a routine, follow it.

• 2:30:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's the thing.

• 2:30:28Jocko Willink?

  And then vary it sometimes to make sure the terrorists aren't tracking you. All good.

• 2:30:33Speaker 02

  Side note, yeah, good idea. Yeah. And when you fall out of the routine workout or taking the, you know, the supplements, supplementation, as we like to say, um, that can sort of become the routine. See what I'm saying? Or part of it.

• 2:30:46Leif Babin?

  It is.

• 2:30:47Speaker 02

  Not even thinking about it. All right. Well, anyway, back to the immune system thing. So technically you're just like, hey, I'm going to go ahead and take this stuff. So I don't have to worry about my immune system kind of thing. You're not consciously wor- look, I'm not splitting hairs here, but it's significant. It's what it, it's significant. That's what I think. Anyway, immune system, my ultimate point with that is you don't have to worry about that either.

• 2:31:10Leif Babin?

  No.

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  Vitamin D3.

• 2:31:13Leif Babin?

  And Cold War.

• 2:31:14Speaker 02

  From Jaco Fuel. And Cold War, boom, the combo. Now you're really not worrying about it. Anyway, also, after you're done not worrying about these things, you don't have to worry about now, let's start with the conscious stuff. Okay, we got discipline, right? Good. Really good. Helps you think. I would say think, but here's what I noticed about this, about discipline, where it's one of those ones where you know how like when you go somewhere, like you always want to have a little drink going, whether it be water or whatever. I think this is the best thing for that.

• 2:31:45Leif Babin?

  I agree.

• 2:31:46Speaker 02

  Maybe not before we go to bed or whatever, but technically that's it. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I saw you pound that, by the way. I watched you.

• 2:31:54Leif Babin?

  I just crushed two of these. Dude, this is my new, the-

• 2:31:56Jocko Willink?

  You are notably smarter this entire podcast. I noticed it.

• 2:32:02Leif Babin?

  Are you saying the bar wasn't very high?

• 2:32:05Leif Babin?

  I, I gotta say, I am not a sour apples, sour apple guy. Like I, if I was a kid eating Jolly Ranchers, like I would leave the sour apples there, unlike JP to know. Uh, sour apple sniper is legit. That is, it's awesome.

• 2:32:21Jocko Willink?

  My family actually is all over the map. Uh,

• 2:32:25Leif Babin?

  I mean, don't get me wrong. Dax Savage.

• 2:32:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is Dax Savage your go-to?

• 2:32:28Leif Babin?

  Dax Savage has been my go-to for a while, but, uh, uh, but sour apple sniper is, uh, is awesome. And, uh, I gotta give, I gotta give JP credit for that. It's legit. It's awesome.

• 2:32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, those are kind of with your family on that one where here's what I found, and this might be the case for others. It's the only reason I'm mentioning it. So remember, yeah, when it first came out, I was like, man, this is the best one. A little bit better than Jaco Palmer.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 2:32:50Speaker 02

  Straight up. Nope. So that's what I thought.

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  I hear a lot of that. And you know what's funny is people like say it to me, like you're all, in either one of two ways. One is like, I know I kinda like the sour apple sniper like they they kind of ashamed to tell me and then the other ones like sour apple sniper is way better.

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what you get.

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so but I did find out there's like a deeper game within the game. It was it was probably better.

• 2:33:16Speaker 02

  Probably better because it was new, straight up. Because I I kept pounding them.

• 2:33:22Jocko Willink?

  Sweet.

• 2:33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:23Jocko Willink?

  Here and I'll tell you something else, just just to just to uh people might be thinking about this. I want to drink this stuff all day long. Uh I want to drink Jaco Palmer. I want to drink it all day long, but it does have caffeine in it 95 milligrams caffeine. So I don't want to drink seven discipline goes. So we are making a discipline go type drink that doesn't have any caffeine, but and it's uh it's gonna be a ginger ale flavor, a ginger flavor. And I've already approved the taste of it. And it's really it's it's really good. And what's cool about it is it's it's on the sweet

• 2:34:04Jocko Willink?

  side. I have to admit, the sour apple sniper kinda started making me.

• 2:34:09Speaker 02

  Like.

• 2:34:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, started leaning me a little bit more sweetness. So the ginger

• 2:34:14Jocko Willink?

  is it's it's nice sweet. But here's what makes me think about it is at night, you know, you get done with eating your tomahawk steak.

• 2:34:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:34:20Jocko Willink?

  And you have a little sweet tooth, but you're too full for a milk. Cause let's face it, we could go just straight to milk, get your dessert on, but you're a little bit full. The tomahawk was bigger than normal, but you want to have a little a little sweetness.

• 2:34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Crack it open.

• 2:34:35Speaker 02

  Boom, there you go. Decaf.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, decaf. So we're working it.

• 2:34:39Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Well, there it is. There's also discipline powder. By the way, Leif, you mentioned pre-workout. That's my go-to pre-workout, too. The discipline powder with water most of the time.

• 2:34:48Jocko Willink?

  We actually were talking about this like that I the the discipline powder is awesome. What flavor do you like? Lemon lime. Dang. Interesting. Legit. Cause Jaco Palmer.

• 2:34:59Jocko Willink?

  Powder is freaking legit. The other day it was super hot here in SoCal. It is good. And I made, I mixed up a pitcher. Like you do in, like they do in the, like they do in Texas, bro. A big glass pitcher. I filled it up with ice, put the Jaco Palmer in there. And it was a huge amount and I just drank that thing all day. It was freaking awesome. So get your Jaco Palmer on. Oh yeah, agree. My recommendation. Also, you know, you know what, what's cool about that? I think with the powders you can, you can dilute a little bit, you know, so you can, you can, you can have the entire pitcher. I have a problem, like many Americans. The problem that many Americans, myself included, have is simply stated, more is better.

• 2:35:42Jocko Willink?

  So, so I like mix these things. What's these things called? Deco? These, these glass things? Travel mugs? No. Wait, what do you mean the glass? Tumbler, a tumbler. So I get these tumblers and you know, let's face it, you only need two scoops of discipline into one of these tumblers. Well, in your case, two of these tumblers. I will no doubt put, I will no doubt put four scoops in there. More is better. And it doesn't need it, but you know, you just think, I might as well just get that extra little later. I know it's going to be a good time at the muster when we've got a tumbler up there on the stage mixed up and you get, you're, you're drinking at the bottom of it. You're just getting all powder. Let's get some. We're about to fire this thing up. Pure get some. Yeah, that's, you know, okay, let's just talk about that for one second.

• 2:36:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay. The early musters where we were disorganized on the backend, we, we, we had a lot of stuff to learn. And so we would sleep not at all. I remember the New York muster, we slept a one hour, one night, if that. And the next night we got like an hour and 45 minutes. And everyone says, you're cognitive, if you sleep less than five hours, it's like you're drunk. Have you ever heard that? If you sleep less than five hours, it's like you're drunk. You're a hazard to humanity. Meanwhile, you and I are, are up on stage for seven straight hours that day. Answering questions, you know, people are coming at us with all kinds of leadership problems. And I didn't hear you up there going, I'll tell you what, you son of a bitch.

• 2:37:12Jocko Willink?

  Like, how do they come up with that? Who's the scientist that says like, well, you're drunk if you slept less than, you know, and look, I'm not trying to get crazy here. And you know, for everyone that freaks out about this, in Discipline = Freedom Field Manual, I explain, sleep is necessary, I get it. Uh, it's good for you, it's healthy. I tell everyone, get as much sleep as you can. I'm totally down for the cause. Sleep, it's great. But to go and say, hey, if you don't get eight hours, you're a drunk. You're, you're an equivalent of being drunk and on acid.

• 2:37:42Leif Babin?

  Think about in Ramadi, man. We're launching on, on Cop Falcon. You know, we're going into south central Ramadi. Neither you or I had slept at all.

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:50Leif Babin?

  We were up, we've been up for 24 hours at that point. And we're launching on an operation where we're going to be out on the battlefield for 48 hours. So it was like, what do you do? Like you, you just power through?

• 2:38:01Jocko Willink?

  BTF.

• 2:38:02Leif Babin?

  You just BTF. There's, I mean, you know, when we, when we got into position and I got security set, like I tried to take her down for an hour, you know, just to try to get a, get some shut eye. While I could, while it was dark, before the sun came out, we knew we were going to get it on as we got attacked. But life requires that you're going to have some sleepless nights and you gotta be able to get some. And, uh, and you can get some more if you have some little bit of discipline on, a little bit of discipline, go, whatever. Had we had some discipline go on the Cop Falcon op, would have been that much better.

• 2:38:31Jocko Willink?

  I think Ramadi would have been secured a lot quicker.

• 2:38:35Speaker 02

  I, uh, I think the drunk reference comparison was like when you're driving.

• 2:38:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay. So now if they take, oh, the number of actions that happened from people that are drunk to the number of people that fall asleep at the wheel. Okay, cool, got it.

• 2:38:46Speaker 02

  In a way.

• 2:38:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 2:38:48Speaker 02

  In a, in a way, being like overly tired driving could, then again, I don't know.

• 2:38:53Jocko Willink?

  Could be worse.

• 2:38:54Speaker 02

  Everybody's different.

• 2:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause people fall asleep at the wheel.

• 2:38:55Speaker 02

  Cause then you can't control it. You get to a point where you can control it. Like being drunk, cause it's, you know, let's face it. Sometimes when people are drunk behind the wheel, they get like more daring and aggressive. So they'll, you know, it's less that like, oh, they're drunk and they, uh, drift and crash.

• 2:39:12Jocko Willink?

  You're saying it's their attitude more than their motor skills.

• 2:39:15Speaker 02

  Speeding, there, yeah, this. And then sure, a lot of times you can't react as fast.

• 2:39:19Leif Babin?

  But you're talking about lack of sleep. So it's kind of like leaving nylon at, uh, At like two o'clock in the morning for the Red Bull run.

• 2:39:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:39:27Leif Babin?

  And had we had some discipline go back then, we'd be that much better.

• 2:39:31Jocko Willink?

  We would have been no sugar.

• 2:39:32Leif Babin?

  Away. We'd have been good to go.

• 2:39:34Speaker 02

  Yep. So, hey, you know, and again, not to split hairs, but you know, these things sometimes, you know, you add a little nuance, little explanation. They start to make more sense. Was what I think is what I believe.

• 2:39:45Jocko Willink?

  What else we got? Jocko White Tea, Warrior Kid Molk, Molk. What else? Anything else?

• 2:39:50Speaker 02

  Jocko White Tea.

• 2:39:51Jocko Willink?

  But a bunch of cool stuff.

• 2:39:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:52Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you can get them at originmaine.com. You can also get them at the Vitamin Shoppe. And

• 2:39:59Jocko Willink?

  you can get them at a little place called Wawa in Florida and the Virginia area. And by the way, if you're in those areas, go get some.

• 2:40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:07Jocko Willink?

  Go into a Wawa.

• 2:40:10Jocko Willink?

  Clean it out.

• 2:40:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a different situation. Like I mentioned before, is it? Cause look, online, even if you gotta go, I mean, Vitamin Shoppe's not as convenient. Store-ish, like they're not everywhere or whatever, but it's a different situation. You gotta go on there. You gotta make it a point to stock up and all this stuff. Brad, now you can just grab one on the go. It's way different.

• 2:40:27Jocko Willink?

  Here's what the, here's what the folks at Wawa are wondering. Who wants this stuff? Should they, should they put it in every store in America? That's what they're wondering. Or every store that they have. If you want to, you can support the cause, just clean them out.

• 2:40:44Jocko Willink?

  Let them know, we want, we want.

• 2:40:46Speaker 02

  It is in demand.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  It is in demand.

• 2:40:50Speaker 02

  All right. Also, yes. Okay. You, you mentioned originmaine.com. That's where you get, can get Jocko Fuel, which is all of this stuff. Also at originmaine.com is Jiu Jitsu stuff, Gi's, rash guards, some shirts on there. And also of course jeans and boots. American made.

• 2:41:05Jocko Willink?

  Delta denim is back in the game, by the way. If you're waiting on Delta jeans, they're back and we got more denim. So we're good.

• 2:41:12Speaker 02

  Very good. Also.

• 2:41:13Leif Babin?

  I got my Lincoln boots getting broken in right now.

• 2:41:15Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:41:15Leif Babin?

  They're legit.

• 2:41:16Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:41:17Speaker 02

  What do you mean Lincoln boots?

• 2:41:18Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the one with the toe cap.

• 2:41:20Speaker 02

  Oh, that's the, that's the model.

• 2:41:22Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you request the toe cap or did you just get it from Pete? He just sent you what he want. Yeah, you gotta watch out, dude. Pete is sneaky. Pete tries to.

• 2:41:33Jocko Willink?

  tries to impose his will on you like I was like no I don't want the toe cap I don't you know I was like I don't don't give me the lincolns just give me the regular ones and he goes yeah yeah yeah and what shows up at my house the regular ones and a pair of lincolns and I'm like bro he does he does these little sneaky things and he thinks he's getting one over on you that's the thing Pete we're tracking bro we are tracking he likes to do that

• 2:41:59Leif Babin?

  I like the toe cap it's good

• 2:42:00Jocko Willink?

  oh oh here's another thing he did to me I said hey bro I wear white gees I wear white gees so you know this was pretty early into the whole thing merger and he's like he's like oh yeah yeah definitely what does he send me and I said you know what in a stretch maybe a black gee

• 2:42:19Leif Babin?

  why is that by the way

• 2:42:21Jocko Willink?

  tradish

• 2:42:22Leif Babin?

  it's the tradish

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  it's the tradish the first gee he sends me no shit it's blue the only color I said hey look just don't send me a blue gee cause I I wear a white gee maybe I get it black you know what the you know the most popular color gee is

• 2:42:38Leif Babin?

  in like

• 2:42:39Jocko Willink?

  at origin which means yes in the world

• 2:42:42Leif Babin?

  black

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  yeah it's black which which to me white was the tradish that's what we do we keep it tradish but let's face it what's the facts the facts is everybody wants to be a ninja that's what it is they're having a little

• 2:42:58Leif Babin?

  yeah makes sense

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  for me I want to be uh Charles Bronson in the movie The Mechanic they're they're wearing white gees and that's what I always refer back to in my

• 2:43:08Leif Babin?

  some of my training partners and instructors I've I've sent them as a gift a origin rift gee and the we are I think we're six for six for black

• 2:43:20Jocko Willink?

  yeah

• 2:43:20Leif Babin?

  the black rifts

• 2:43:21Jocko Willink?

  yeah did you request white

• 2:43:24Leif Babin?

  no no I said tell me what you want

• 2:43:27Jocko Willink?

  oh okay oh yeah yeah there you go

• 2:43:29Leif Babin?

  send me a black one

• 2:43:30Jocko Willink?

  well that's that means a lot coming from Todd White right because he's an artist

• 2:43:35Leif Babin?

  he understands the color palette

• 2:43:37Jocko Willink?

  yeah you know what I'm saying he's down there thinking what will look good

• 2:43:41Leif Babin?

  the I gotta say though on the for the rifts we've got we've also got six out of six like outstanding reviews as well the rift is ridiculous

• 2:43:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's it's kinda junk, not the gi, but the situation, cuz you know, a lot of us, we have more than just the one gi. You know, so you do the riff, now all those other gees sort of seem obsolete a little bit, you know, like you don't want to put that dumb thing back on. The old ones, you know?

• 2:44:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:06Speaker 02

  But that's just how.

• 2:44:07Jocko Willink?

  It's like the new iPhone. When you get the new iPhone, you're kinda like, well, this is all, well, it happened with the iPhone.

• 2:44:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, not the six, the eleven.

• 2:44:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, seriously. The the iPhone six, you're like, oh, you know, it's okay. And the battery would run out and the pictures sucked and all this stuff. I was with, I was with Joe Rogan, like last year, and we were, we were taking pictures of the sunset while we were hunting. His picture looked freaking, he had an iPhone eleven, it looked brilliant, filled with colors. It looked like a freaking National Geographic picture. Cuz we were taking a picture of the sunset, so you could see like the mountains, and then there was the horizon, and then there was the sky, all beautiful colors. My picture just looked like black on the bottom and white on top. And I, and I just said, I'm an idiot.

• 2:44:54Speaker 02

  They call that dynamic range.

• 2:44:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:56Leif Babin?

  So what, what you're saying is you don't realize, that you don't realize how good something can be un- until you actually try out the new. And I, and I think, uh, it like tasking a bruiser. I was like, I thought we were pretty good in my first task in it, until we were in bruiser, like, actually, we weren't that good. Tasking bruisers better. And the riff is definitely like that. You roll it, you're like, okay, I'm not rolling anything else.

• 2:45:16Jocko Willink?

  It's kinda, it's kind of a game changer.

• 2:45:18Speaker 02

  But Pete, I don't think he's sneaky. I think, well, he's sneaky, but I think he's like smart. He, in that way, cuz look, this is what I was with you with the gi thing.

• 2:45:26Jocko Willink?

  Big difference.

• 2:45:27Speaker 02

  I, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I agree with you, there's a difference. So the, the, the gi, right? So I wasn't down for the other colored gees either. All I had was white, for a reason.

• 2:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 2:45:36Speaker 02

  Like, I'm like.

• 2:45:37Jocko Willink?

  Cuz you're one of my black belts.

• 2:45:39Speaker 02

  One of the people, yeah, I, yeah, it was true. But here's what Pete was thinking, is my, uh, hypothesis. He was like, look, I get it. They like the white gi, that's the tradition, you can't argue with that, but they just haven't felt them. The power, the pleasure of the Black E. They just, if I can get them to somehow feel what I'm feeling about this.

• 2:45:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:45:56Speaker 02

  So he'll give you a free one. You'll be like, I can't wear this thing. And you put it on, you're like.

• 2:46:00Jocko Willink?

  Feel like a ninja.

• 2:46:01Speaker 02

  Maybe I can.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Maybe I am a ninja after all.

• 2:46:03Speaker 02

  Right. Pete is successful. Boom. Did that with the boots for you.

• 2:46:06Jocko Willink?

  Pete gets some level of credit for his sneakiness. But just so you know, Pete Roberts, listening to this, I'm, I'm seeing your moves, bro.

• 2:46:15Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:46:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm seeing your moves. You're not getting anything by me.

• 2:46:18Speaker 02

  I get it.

• 2:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Keep it up, Pete.

• 2:46:20Speaker 02

  Keep it up. Yes. Hundred percent. Also, what do we have? Okay. Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store. We've got some new stuff on there. By the way. Hoodies are back in. By the way, that was a big.

• 2:46:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Look at this. For winter time.

• 2:46:33Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yes.

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, the last, last season, you know, when we got sweatshirts?

• 2:46:38Speaker 02

  Made.

• 2:46:41Speaker 02

  Well, we're trying to, you know, tighten things up a little bit.

• 2:46:44Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm pretty stoked about at the Jaco Store is the board shorts.

• 2:46:48Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yeah, those kind of are coming for fall, winter too, which is kind of offbeat. But hey, man, hey.

• 2:46:54Jocko Willink?

  We're happy.

• 2:46:54Speaker 02

  It's a process.

• 2:46:55Jocko Willink?

  Look, I've been asking for them for three and a half years. So I'm glad we're, I'm glad they're there.

• 2:47:00Speaker 02

  There we go. Yep. Exactly. Right. Yeah, they're pretty good. They run a little bit loose, though. The board shorts. A little bit loose. They run.

• 2:47:07Jocko Willink?

  That's good. That's good for me.

• 2:47:09Speaker 02

  Yep. Yep. There you go. Yeah.

• 2:47:11Jocko Willink?

  I don't, you gotta squeeze the tree trunk legs into, you can't be doing the skinny jeans, skinny board shorts. Doesn't work.

• 2:47:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point. Thank you.

• 2:47:20Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of room.

• 2:47:21Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, and some stuff on there, uh, coming up too, as well. So if, also we have an email list on there. If you want to sign up to get notified, what do you call it? Notifications for new stuff.

• 2:47:33Jocko Willink?

  But you didn't know the word notification. Is that what just happened?

• 2:47:36Speaker 02

  No, I was about to say like, if you want a notify, you know how you use the wrong word for the wrong context? Anyway. What do you call it? Dotting my i's, crossing my t's. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:47:47Jocko Willink?

  Like it.

• 2:47:47Speaker 02

  Unless, um, jacostore.com. You want to represent while you're on this path? That's where you do it.

• 2:47:54Speaker 02

  Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on your iTunes and wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 2:48:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. This is not the only podcast we have, by the way. We also have Jaco Unraveling, which I do with Darryl Cooper. Martyr Made Fame.

• 2:48:11Jocko Willink?

  Of martyr made fame. There you go, Daryl. Grounded Podcast, which is about Jiu Jitsu Warrior Kid Podcast. We got some a little bit of time. I'm gonna squeeze in some grounded, some Warrior Kid Podcast in the near future. We got a YouTube channel. And if you want to subject yourself to videos where Echo Charles has complete creative control to make everything blow up, everything catch on fire, then you can check it out. And the only, and if as long as it's a video less than five minutes, there may be cool stuff. If it's a long video that actually would be nice to see some effects in, they won't be there. Okay.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  Anyway, yes, and you can see what life looks like if you're not, or if you're intrigued by his Texas Batman persona, voice wise. Good times. Appropriate way to put it.

• 2:49:04Jocko Willink?

  We got something called Psychological Warfare. It's an album with tracks that I talked to you about overcoming your moments of weakness. You can get that on any MP3 platform out there in the world. It was the number one selling spoken word album for 11 months on iTunes.

• 2:49:23Speaker 02

  And it makes sense. It makes sense because it's not just artistically good or whatever, it's effective functioning.

• 2:49:31Jocko Willink?

  How many spoken word albums are there?

• 2:49:33Leif Babin?

  A ton is the question.

• 2:49:34Jocko Willink?

  A ton. Yeah, there's thousands.

• 2:49:36Leif Babin?

  I will say this, there's something in the universe where sometimes you know how you're like, if your Bluetooth on your phone and just randomly syncs up with your car and like, at my kind of darkest or lowest moments, like it seems to like sync up and just randomly select and it's Jaco's voice and it's usually at max volume.

• 2:49:54Jocko Willink?

  Everything happens for a reason, bro. You have that moment of weakness creeping in or you're probably heading to the donut shop when you hear that thing comes on. Also Flipside Canvas. My brother Dakota Meyer, flipsidecanvas.com. He's making graphic representations of the path and other basically cool stuff.

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  I know you just, we got some coming to the office. Badass stuff coming from Flipside Canvas. Uh, we've got, uh, we've got good. Check. And, uh, we've got discipline equals freedom. We got all kinds of, we got default aggressive. This is going hot. And, uh, we've got, uh, a bunch of posters as well of the muster and of Echelon Front, you know, and backing with troopers. You mean, you didn't, you didn't get a poster that had like an outstretched hand on the cliff and another hand going to it and it says underneath teamwork?

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  You know those posters, like the freaking, uh, You mean like the poster with the wolf howling and it says leadership on it? Yeah, those posters. Uh, at Flipside Canvas, we do not sell those posters. We sell posters that are, that can only be described with one word. Legit. The posters are legit and Dakota and Mandy on the team are awesome, awesome to work with.

• 2:51:14Jocko Willink?

  We got some books about face. First edition with the forward by me, which is just freaking an honor to be able to do. We got the code, the evaluation, the protocol, leadership, strategy and tactics field manual. Warrior kid, way of the warrior kid, one, two, and three. By the way, way of the warrior kid four, you can preorder it right now.

• 2:51:41Jocko Willink?

  It's called way of the warrior. Do you know what the name of the new way of the warrior kid is? You might know. Yes. Do you know what it is? I do not. It's called way of the warrior kid for field manual. Premises, uh, the last day of school, you know, Mark's been having some hard years, but this, but now he's kind of getting dialed in. Last day of school, kid comes up to him and says, hey, you know, I've never really talked to you before and I, I noticed, you know, you wear that warrior kid. I see you doing pull ups with your friends and this kind of kid's kind of shy and he says, I really wanted to be a warrior kid like you. And now it's too late because I'm moving away. And I, you know, I just, I wish I could have hung out with you.

• 2:52:23Jocko Willink?

  And so Uncle Jake shows up and, and Mark tells Uncle Jake about this and says, you know, "Hey, this, I feel really bad. This kid's moving away. He wanted to be a warrior kid. He was too shy to say anything and he's, you know, wanted me to help him, but I don't know what I could do." And Uncle Jake says, "I know what you can do. Write him a field manual on how to be a warrior kid." So there you go. And it's the same, let's say, shape and size as the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. You may notice some similarities when it comes to the layout, just the layout of the cover. It's funny, John Bozak, the artist, the designer.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  Whenever I say like a good idea, he always says, "I think you might be on to something there." So I was explaining the cover.

• 2:53:15Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid's in the hearing, he goes, "I think you might be on to something there." So, yeah, so Way of the Warrior Kid Four is available. Mike and the Dragons, which has been described as the greatest children's book ever written. That's what I've heard.

• 2:53:30Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:53:30Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I'm not, look, I wrote it. I don't want to, you know, be out of line here, but it apparently, a lot of people think, a lot of people think, a lot of people think. And the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, oh, by the way, there's a new version of that coming out. You know what it's called? Mark one, mod one. Do you know what that means?

• 2:53:49Speaker 02

  Kind of, yeah, some cameras are like that, so I go mark one, mark two, mark three.

• 2:53:53Jocko Willink?

  So this is the first modification to the original Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. There's a bunch of new pages in there, wrote about a bunch of new things. So you can check that out. And then, of course, there's a little book called Extreme Ownership that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. And the follow-up to that book, which is called The Dichotomy of Leadership. The things that you heard us talking about today, if you want to see how to take those things and apply them to what you're doing in life, whether it's your business, whether it's your first responder, whatever you're doing, whatever you're doing, if you're interacting with other human beings, get to the source.

• 2:54:35Jocko Willink?

  Extreme ownership in the dichotomy of leadership. Echelon Front, what's up with Echelon Front, Leif? What do you got?

• 2:54:41Leif Babin?

  Got a lot going on with Echelon Front. Working with leaders all the time. Uh, you know, and as we talked about, it's just been phenomenal to watch them, particularly through these tough times of, you know, some, some economic turmoil through COVID lockdowns and unrest across riots across America, et cetera. Like it's been, uh, it's been awesome to see companies take and apply those principles. And, uh, so we've got, got some great stuff going on at Echelon. I think particularly for EF Online, our, we have, we have redesigned that thanks to the great Echo Charles, who puts a mastery behind that for our, uh, our, our landing page and design and setup. And, uh, we've streamlined the process of logging in on that thing. And we've got troopers from, I think-

• 2:55:21Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you get the great Echo Charles. I seem to end up with the average Echo Charles over here.

• 2:55:27Leif Babin?

  I think we're reckoning, uh-

• 2:55:28Jocko Willink?

  Are you happy with that? Is that a good joke?

• 2:55:31Leif Babin?

  Oh, that's okay. I think we have 46 countries, uh, around the world represented right now.

• 2:55:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, EF Online, what we're doing is we're, look, our goal, our mission at Echelon Front is to teach the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield that we translate into everyday business, everyday life. How to lead, how to lead up and down the chain of command. Doesn't matter if you're, it doesn't matter if you're the, the, the CEO or a frontline person that's not in charge of anyone. When you are interacting with other human beings, you are in the leadership position. You can, you can do things to improve the mission. You can do things that will improve your station in life. Go to EFOnline.com. We got courses about this stuff. We do live training all the time. If you want to ask me a question, if you want to ask Leif a question about something he said today, go on there.

• 2:56:20Jocko Willink?

  Go to EFOnline.com for that. We are standing by to help spread the word.

• 2:56:29Jocko Willink?

  We have the muster. The muster is, there's only one this year due to COVID. And there is going to be in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. I just did a gig and there's 500 people there. There's social distancing happening. So it's going to be something like that.

• 2:56:51Leif Babin?

  We'll take precautions, but the muster's on.

• 2:56:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the muster's on.

• 2:56:54Leif Babin?

  And we are super excited to meet with troops. It's been such a bummer to have to have canceled two of them.

• 2:56:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:59Leif Babin?

  Uh, but I'm really excited to have this one here in December, Dallas.

• 2:57:02Jocko Willink?

  Here's another, another bummer is that since we canceled the other two, most people at the other two transferred their tickets to this one, which means it's gonna sell out like they always do. So if you want to come, just try and register early. It's extremeownership.com. And we also have EF Overwatch. From day one, we've had people asking us, hey, where can we get people that understand these leadership principles? Eventually, we started this company EF Overwatch. Go to EFOverwatch.com. We got Mike Sorelli at the helm. If you heard him on Podcast 244, him and George Rannell, they, they geek out about hiring

• 2:57:45Jocko Willink?

  and, and getting people into companies, taking leaders, military leaders that understand these principles, train in these principles, and then show up at companies and help you lead your company to victory. Go to, go to EFOverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members, active service members, retired service members, their families, Gold Star families around the world, then you can check out Mark Lee's mom. She has a charity organization. Mama Lee, if you want to donate or get involved, then you can go check out AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 2:58:24Jocko Willink?

  And if you're a masochist, if you like pain and you just want more of my discordant declarations, or if you want more punishment in the form of Echo's disoriented diatribes, or you want to get some more Aleph's prolonged proclamations, then you can find us on the interwebs.

• 2:58:50Jocko Willink?

  Leif is on Twitter @LeifBabbin. He's on Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as TheGram, at @RealLeifBabbin, and he's on Facebook at @LeifBabbin. And of course Echo is at @EchoCharles. And I am at @JockoWilling. And thanks to General Bruce Clark for your service to our great nation, for your leadership and guidance that continues to have an impact today. And thanks to all of our servicemen and women who are out there leading and also having an impact in the world by protecting our freedom.

• 2:59:28Jocko Willink?

  And of course, to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all other first responders. Thank you for protecting and keeping us safe here at home. And to everyone else out there, remember these lessons from General Clark.

• 2:59:53Jocko Willink?

  Remember that the commander must be a model soldier. He must master the technique of war. He must expand and improve his knowledge. He must exhibit daily stamina and courage. And above all,

• 3:00:10Jocko Willink?

  he must set the example.

• 3:00:14Jocko Willink?

  And you set the example every day by going out there

• 3:00:20Jocko Willink?

  and getting after it.

• 3:00:23Jocko Willink?

  Until next time, this is Leif and Echo and Jocko.

• 3:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Out.