262: The Winning Lessons and How to Apply Them, from The Manual, "Fighting On Guadalcanal"

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:05 - "Fighting on Guadalcanal" 1:27:48 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:38:42 - How to stay on THE PATH. 1:58:23 - 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 262 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Colonel Merritt A. Edson, United States Marine Corps, for service as set forth in the following citation. For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion with parachute battalion attached during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on the night of 1314 September 1942.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  After the airfield on Guadalcanal had been seized from the enemy on August 8th, Colonel Edson, with a force of 800 men, was assigned to the occupation and defense of a ridge dominating the jungle on either side of the airport. Facing a formidable Japanese attack which, augmented by infiltration, had crashed through our front lines, he, by skillful handling of his troops, successfully withdrew his forward units to a reserve line with minimum casualties. When the enemy in a subsequent series of violent assaults engaged our force in desperate hand-to-hand combat

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  with bayonets, rifles, pistols, grenades, and knives, Colonel Edson, although continuously exposed to hostile fire throughout the night, personally directed defense of the reserve position against a fanatical foe of greatly superior numbers. By his astute leadership and gallant devotion to duty, he enabled his men, despite severe losses, to cling tenaciously to their position on the vital ridge, thereby retaining command not only of the Guadalcanal airfield, but also of the 1st Division's entire offensive installations in the surrounding area.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  Signed Franklin D. Roosevelt.

• 2:27Jocko Willink?

  And that is an example of the level of heroism that was required to achieve victory in the Battle of Guadalcanal, which lasted from August 7th, 1942 until February 9th, 1943, six months and two days of just absolutely brutal and savage fighting. And we've covered some of that in several books on the podcast. And we even had Dean Ladd on the podcast, who received a battlefield commission on

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  Guadalcanal and went on to fight at Tarawa and Saipan and Tinian. But I recently received a copy of a book from a podcast listener by the name of David. I guess I'm a little cautious about giving out full names because I don't know, you know, don't know the background. So a guy named David, he sent me a book. Well, it's actually not a book technically. It's a Fleet Marine Force Reference Publication FM, FMFRP 12 TAC 110. The title is Fighting on Guadalcanal. So thank you, David, for sending that to me. And, and the book is filled with all kinds of layers.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  One of them being the Medal of Honor citation that I started with. There's, there's an additional layer in this, which is that this, that this Fleet Marine Force Reference Publication was put together by a guy named Colonel Red Reader, who was West Point Class of 1926, who led the 12th Infantry Regiment, who in the D-Day. And he eventually was wounded and he received the, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. And he retired in 1946 and then he worked as the Athletic Director back at West Point and eventually became an author. And he wrote a bunch of books, including a memoir, which is called Born at Revelry.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  So I'm sure at some point we will cover that book on this podcast. But for tonight, I wanted to. I wanted to go to this book, which, which is what I'm guessing is sort of the beginning of Colonel Reader's writing career was to put together this, this manual fighting on Guadalcanal. And it's the direct lessons learned and let's get right into it. So. Here's the foreword. To secure the point of view of the fighting men in the Solomon Islands, Lieutenant Colonel Russell P. Reader, Jr., and that's who I just mentioned, of the Operations Division

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  of the War Department General Staff was designated as my personal representative. He reported to Major General Vandegrift, United States Marine Corps, and Major General Patch, U.S. Army on Guadalcanal and discussed with many officers and soldiers their experiences in jungle fighting against the Japanese. The stories of these men, as told to Colonel Reader, have been printed for your information. The American Marines and doughboys show us that the Jap is no Superman. He is a tricky, vicious, and fanatical fighter, but they are beating him day after day. Theirs is a priceless record of the gallantry and resourcefulness of the American fighting man at his best.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  Soldiers and officers alike should read these notes and seek to apply their lessons. We must cash in on the experience which these and other brave men have paid for in blood. So that's what this book is. There's an opening note from Major General Vandegrift.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  Just a very famous commanding general, the first Marine Division. He says, "I desire to thank General Marshall for the message which he has just sent me. I pass this message of congratulations on to my men. My message to the troops of General Marshall's in training for this type of warfare is to go back to the tactics of the French and Indian days. This is not meant facetiously. Study their tactics and fit in our modern weapons and you have a solution. I refer to the tactics and leadership of the days of Rogers Rangers." So, there you go. Already, we're talking about, we gotta make some things a little bit different.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  We gotta, we gotta look at the way we used to fight. And if you think about that attitude of fighting with the Rangers, with Rogers Rangers, with the French and Indian War, you know, this is the big difference between, you know, the way the British wanted to fight, which was, we're all lined up. We're standing in ranks and we're gonna shoot, and then you shoot, and then we shoot back at you. We're not doing that. You know, that's, that's how we won the Revolutionary War, because we're, we're gonna fight a different way. The early form of maneuver warfare. So, that's what this book is. This is a bunch of just short anecdotal quotes from a bunch of Marines mainly about what their experiences are on Guadalcanal. Bunch of great information.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  Gunnery Sergeant H.L. Beardsley. Company G, 5th Marines. "I've been in the Marines 16, I've been in the Marines 16 years, and I've been in three expeditions to China and five engagements since I've been in the Solomons. I will say that this 1942 model recruit we are getting can drink more water than six old timers. We have to stress water discipline all the time. They don't seem to realize what real water discipline is. We have too many NCOs in the Marines who are namby pamby and beat around the bush. Our NCOs are gradually toughing, toughening up and are seeing reasons why they must meet their responsibilities.

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  Respectfully speaking, sir, I think that when officers make an NCO, they should go over in their minds, what kind of NCO will he make in the field?" Water discipline. There's something you don't hear very often. You gotta go deep into the field before you start talking about water discipline. Because guess what? And I don't know, when did the word hydrate? Do you remember pre the word hydrate?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yes, I did.

• 9:07Jocko Willink?

  Right? Hydrate was a new thing. It's a relatively new thing.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, as far as the expression hydrate.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  I think even the idea, because when I was a kid, we didn't, we didn't have the word hydrate. Because hydrate seems like a proactive thing.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like, like, like you're gonna get ahead of the curve. Right? You're gonna, like, yeah, you need to hydrate. You need to stay hydrated. Hydrate or die.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Sure, I'd never heard that.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  Hydrate or die. That was the, that was the camelback. Remember camelback? That was their expression. Hydrate or die. Like the camelbacks, the things with little hose coming over.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was, oh, camelback the brand.

• 9:41Jocko Willink?

  The camelback the brand had the expression hydrate or die.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  So, but, but let's face it, what we're saying here, and you never hear this. He's saying, don't hydrate. If you hydrate too much, you're gonna die. You're gonna run out of water. You need to have water discipline. That's, that's a totally different mindset. Now, I will tell you, when you're going out on a long, like a desert patrol, where you're not gonna get a water resupply. You gotta have some water discipline.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  That makes sense.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  You know, these guys fought when they needed to have water discipline big time, but it's, it's interesting to hear that attitude. You don't hear, you don't hear that anymore. Everyone's all about hydrate, hydrate. It's a different mindset. I'm sure maybe, maybe there's some doctors that will approach us and kind of give us the real deal on that.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it makes sense because you have two different scenarios. Like, yeah, if you have the luxury to be able to just hydrate at will, then oh, yeah, hydrate or die for sure. But, you know, water discipline, that idea kind of seems like it would be under maybe two specific circumstances where you don't have a lot of water just to go.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  Have, have you ever not had water?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  Like, where you were almost gonna go down?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Straight up dehydrated.

• 10:58Jocko Willink?

  What happened?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Uh, well, it was heat, uh, exhaustion.

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  So, the thing is, I had water, but I didn't get enough water.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay. What was the scenario?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Football.

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Bruh, so there was like a Gatorade thing on the side.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, automatic, yeah, yeah. Yes, sir. I was not out of water.

• 11:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  My body was out, like, low on water.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  Can you get, can you get heat, whatever, heat, yeah, you can. You can get a heat casualty while you're drinking water.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  So, so you were saying you were kind of close to that. I guess that's different from just straight up dehydration.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Well, dehydration is like levels, right? Like you're, they say you're 2% dehydrated if you're even thirsty for water. That's what they say. But, so, yeah, you know, it depends on what you're trying to say, you know.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  Man, we're gonna get some feedback on this one. I can tell you right now.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Makes sense. But the, you know, in the field, you're talking about a situation where there's two elements where limited water, you don't have unlimited water because you can't carry unlimited water. And then you still have to function in the event of unlimited water, or not unlimited.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  And let's face it, so, there's been, there's been a lot of times where I was thirsty, right, in the field. There's one time where I was in like a little bit of a bad situation where I could start feeling like, oh, this could be a problem. And we were out, we were out in the Ozarks in Arkansas, doing this big land warfare problem. And we, we were expecting, you know, we had planned, you know, there were streams you could see on the map. And there was a couple, so we, you know, okay, we'll be able to go this far and we'll be able to get water from the streams and purify it.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  And then we'll go another distance and we'll get some more. Well, the first, like, two or three streams that we came across were empty. They were dried up. And so I was running danger close on water. And I'll tell you, not having water, to me, is the second, the second worst feeling in the world. The worst feeling in the world is don't, don't have air. But the thing is with don't have air, that's only a bad feeling for like 30 seconds and then you're passed out. Then you're done. Not have water is, it takes a while.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:12Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And when you try, when you go too deep in the red zone there, it's not like you can just drink water and get out. Like air, a lot of times, like when you're like, let's say you're in the red zone air, but you can still recover. You just take a huge breath and you're on the road. Recovery. But water, you get like a for real heat exhaustion or a. He'd stroke his death, but like exhaustion, like a for real one, uh, and you drink water, you'll just throw it up.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Cause your body can't really take in that kind of water yet. You gotta do the IV thing. You gotta do this big process, you know? So, oh yeah, no water, it's shit.

• 13:44Jocko Willink?

  So, I, I'm sure someone will contact us and tell us like what the, there's gotta be some minimum protocol. Cause that's the thing that I have, you know, you, you gotta have some kind of minimum protocol. Like what's the minimum amount of water you need?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  I hate being thirsty. I would carry a lot of water.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Really?

• 13:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would carry a lot of water. But you know, you know, you just made me think of, you know, when you're caught in a triangle or something, or you're caught in a guillotine and you get out.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  And like how good it feels to, oh, it feels so good. Feels so good.

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  I guess it's really triangle. Triangles are hard to breathe, but like a guillotine and a gee choke. You're like having a hard time breathing.

• 14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's like a good rear naked, you know, you're not, it's a different, you don't, you don't feel all panicky.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're still taking breaths.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:30Jocko Willink?

  You're still like, oh, good, I'm good. Good night.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  You're right about the guillotine there, cause I think there's two elements in the guillotine defense that makes you not breathe. So like one, it's pressing against your windpipe, so you can't hardly breathe. But another one, you're trying to tense your neck to resist like that, that torque. So when you tense your neck, it's like harder to actually take a, take a deep breath, you know? So it's like those double things.

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  I've been training with Dean, Dean List.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  Dean Lister for a long time, twenty five years. He showed me some guillotine defense the other day. And I was like, bro, you waited twenty five years to show me this guillotine defense? I couldn't guillotine him. And then he couldn't guillotine me, show this defense. I'm like, well, why, why, why, why wouldn't you show me that? Why would you not show me that, bro?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's probably like he has so many.

• 15:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And you know what? He has so many things, but he also, he just thinks that everybody knows everything, kind of. You know, so if you don't ask him about it, and the only reason he was showing someone else, and I'm like, what's that defense? He goes, oh, you just do this here and put this hand here. And I was like, you, you never showed me that.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, oh, oh yeah, it's real obvious. You feel like an idiot. All right. So there you go. Water discipline.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  Next, I have just been promoted from First Sergeant. This is Sergeant Major B. Medsker, 5th Marines. I have just been promoted from First Sergeant. In the firefighting, the Marine First Sergeant helps the company commander. He checks up on the company as a whole, even down to checking on the evacuation of the wounded. I was able, I was available to the company commander for any emergency orders during the firefight. Teach your soldiers, sir, that when a man is hit in the assault, to leave him there. Too many of our men suddenly become first aid men. Your men will have to be rugged and rough. And to win, they must learn to disregard politeness and must kill.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  So, a couple of things there. First of all, I'm going deep on this. So, first of all, this is what I used to, when I used to teach, when I used to teach the young SEALs about leadership. I would teach roles and responsibility for every individual person inside of a platoon. From a leadership perspective, fire team leader, squad leader, platoon leader, task unit leader, or company commander level. And the senior enlisted guy, which is the, which is what he's, you know, he's, he's the company First Sergeant. And what you want to do, and the way I used to explain it to guys, and it's the exact same thing that he's saying. You want to be the action arm for the leader, for the commander, right? So, the commander, so, so basically, you're the guy with all this experience.

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  But if, but if the, if something's going wrong, like you got a problem, you gotta be the guy that the company commander can look at and go, says, "Go solve that problem." And you have the capacity to do it because you're not assigned any specific role. So, you should actually do your best to keep your company, to keep your company First Sergeant, like, free from direct responsibility so that he can, he can be your action arm to go make things happen. That's, that's number one. Number two is prioritize and execute, right? Everyone wants to help out the wounded guy? You can't. You gotta win first. You can't, you can't do that. And then, I mean, let's face it, this is total war.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  And these guys are just in a different level. You, you gotta disregard politeness and you gotta just kill people. That's where we're at.

• 18:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what's so interesting about about with the old breed by Eugene Sledge. And in the in the HBO series, The Pacific. They portray Eugene Sledge. He's kind of like this. Very nice, very polite guy. That's how they portray him. And then you see videos of the real guy, the real Eugene Sledge. And that's exactly what he's like, you know, he's kind of like a southern gentleman, young, very nice, very kind. And, you know, those guys were getting thrown into this savagery. And and that's what this that's what this that's who this message is for. You got to disregard politeness and kill. Now, Eugene Sledge, we should probably, we should probably do that book again. But Eugene Sledge, you know, he had to.

• 18:52Jocko Willink?

  He had to put some things in check himself and he watched guys ripping Japanese soldiers teeth out that were gold and like, you know. Pissing on the and and he saw crazy stuff and he had like a line that he didn't cross over. But he also understood it. So even a guy that's as. Nice and and good of a person, which Eugene Sledge apparently was. Even he realized like this is this is next level. This is another situation. This isn't normal. Platoon Sergeant H R Strong. Company A, Fifth Marines. Some of my men thought their hand grenades were too heavy.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  They tossed them aside when no one was looking. Later, they would have given six months pay for one hand grenade.

• 19:40Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Short term versus long term.

• 19:44Jocko Willink?

  Got to carry that little extra weight of the hand grenade.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  Platoon Sergeant F T O Farah. Company B, Fifth Marines. After the Japs had been located, my platoon has gained the element of surprise by moving in fast with bayonets and hand grenades. In turn, they have surprised us. By being in a defensive position on the reverse slope of a ridge. I think the snipers look for bar B A R men. And then Colonel Edson. Said, no doubt about this in one engagement in one platoon, every B A R gunner was hit. So.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  This idea that you could locate them, this is sort of like in jujitsu when you get, let's say you get the mount position, you immediately go for the arm lock. Sometimes that's enough to do it, right? Whereas if you get mount and you're like, okay, I got the mount. That person's going into defensive position and now they're going to set up for it. And so what he's saying is if they locate the Japanese, immediately they, they, they go at them with grenades and bayonets. Which the good thing about grenades and bayonets is now you're, they can't really locate you because of your, because of your muzzle flashes and where you're shooting, you're just getting in there with grenades and bayonets. Which is, you know,

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  you think about modern warfare. You don't think of the tactic of, hey, when we make contact, we're going to immediately attack with bayonets and grenades. That's what kind of war this was.

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  Platoon Sergeant R A Zolo. Company C, 5th Marines. Sir, I would like to tell you that, that a man's keenness or dulness of eye may determine whether or not he will live. 10 men in my platoon were killed because they walked up on a Jap 37mm gun. I went up later after the gun had been put out by our mortars to help bring back the dead. The Japanese gun was so well camouflaged that I got within four feet of the gun before I saw it.

• 21:47Jocko Willink?

  Corporal W A McCluskey. Company D, 5th Marines. Sir, the other day on Bloody Ridge, riflemen protecting our light machine guns pulled out and left us. We were doing okay at the time, but their pulling out caused our whole outfit to withdraw. I think the men in these rifle companies should receive some training in the work and in the mission of the machine gun company. They should be able to act more intelligently. What does that mean? You should have your team cross-trained. No matter what business you're in. Well, no matter what kind of team you have, you should cross-trade.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  And the interesting thing about that, and we've read that, we've read about this before.

• 22:28Jocko Willink?

  When people see other people running away, you've got a pretty good chance that those people are going to run away too. This is just mob mentality.

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  Second Lieutenant Andrew Cheesick, 5th Marines. I think that in the regimental supply, there should be extra canteens. So when the out, when an outfit gets in a place like the Table Plateau, where there is no water, an extra canteen of water can be issued. Sir, this would be really, this would really help our men stay in there.

• 22:59Jocko Willink?

  And, and what's interesting, this is all like done like an interview. So that's why they keep saying things like, sir, they're talking directly to this guy. And he's just putting the quotes in there. They're talking to Colonel Reader.

• 23:09Jocko Willink?

  Marine Gunner ES Rust, 5th Marines. I hate to admit it, but it's the truth. When we got here, a lot of our young men were confused at night. They were not used to the jungle at night. They could not use their compasses at night. And we did not have enough compasses. We have learned that when we get off the beaten trails, it seems to confuse the Japs and we have better success. So what does that mean? You gotta train at night. Platoon Sergeant J C L Hollingsworth, Company H, 5th Marines. When we moved around on these jungle trails, we have learned to have men at the rear of each platoon who carry light loads so they can quickly, so they can get their weapons into action quickly to help overcome ambush fire from the rear.

• 23:50Jocko Willink?

  That's.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 23:55Jocko Willink?

  What you want to do as a human, as a human that's strategizing in the world is you want to have an element that's flexible and can move quickly to help you overcome situations. So whether you're in business, whether you, whatever situation you're in, you want to have a specific element that is designed to move quickly and give support where it's needed.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  Could go left, could go right, could go north, could go south, could go east, could go west. Why do you, why do you need that? Because you can't predict the future.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  So you should design your plans so that the, the design of the plans is inherently flexible.

• 24:44Jocko Willink?

  Put the big rugged men into the heavy weapons company. I'm just throwing that out there for all the young men going in the military. They're gonna saddle you up with that pig gun and you're gonna carry it. Get some. Some of our new men were so scared of our hand grenades when they first, when they were first issued, that they jammed them down the cotter pin. Later, in action, they could not pull the pin.

• 25:11Jocko Willink?

  I noticed as I get, and I pointed out, pointed this out to my platoon, that when a man gets hit, the men close by get to yelling corpsman, corpsman, corpsman. They get so excited sometimes that they actually forget to use their own first aid packets. In first aid training, teach correct use of injecting morphine and procedure of tagging. Cause what are you gonna do when the corpsman gets hit?

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  I'd give seventy-five dollars for a pair of tennis shoes to rest my feet and for use in night work.

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  Classic.

• 25:45Jocko Willink?

  I have only been in the Marine Corps for years, but I have learned that you have got to develop a sense of responsibility in the men wearing chevrons. Right? You've gotta develop that responsibility. In action, we have had unauthorized persons yelling cease firing or commence firing. This caused confusion.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  Platoon Sergeant George E. Aho, Aho. Company fifth, Company F, fifth Marines. I put five years in the US Army before joining the Marine Corps. Sir, I like the Marines better than the Army because the average Marine officer is closer to his men than the average Army officer whom I observed. We have comradeship in the Marine Corps. Also, the Marine enlisted men are more Spartan-like. I believe, sir, we baby our soldiers too much in peacetime. I hope we are not doing this now.

• 26:38Jocko Willink?

  And then here's a, here's a comment from, from Colonel Reader here.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  I asked Colonel Edson, and Edson is the guy that we read the Medal of Honor citation from. I asked Colonel Edson, what kind of a Sergeant Aho was? And he told me that he was one of the outstanding men in his regiment and that he was a very rugged individual. I heard that. I was like, hmm, I can picture this dude, you know? He gets described as, you're in Guadalcanal with Marines. And you, in that environment with the toughest bastards in the world, you get, you get described as a quote, "very rugged individual." You know, George E. Aho, Platoon Sergeant, Company F, 5th Marines, doesn't play around.

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  He continues on, "In our training for this jungle warfare, we had a great deal of work in hand-to-hand, individual combat, use of knife, jujitsu, etc." Let's face it, when I read that, I got very, very, you know, we were feeling good about it.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Wait, what's the year on that?

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  1943.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, uh, that's the tradition, jujitsu. It's not the present.

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Well, maybe it is actually, because 1925, that's when it.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but this is pre-Judo. No, it's not pre-Judo. So it's jujitsu. Let's, let's take it for what it's worth. Anyways, your excitement's gonna go down, just like mine did, because he says this. "With the exception of bayonet fighting, we have not used this work. I've been in many battles since I hit the island, and I've never seen anyone use it." Okay, so, did some hand-to-hand training. Well, I think maybe just out of sort of GP, I would have found a way to get my, bring the jets. Every man should have a watch. That's a good one.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  Just to kind of let you know. I mean, think about, you're going to war, and you don't have a watch.

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  "Our battalion commander, Major Walt, wants every last man in our battalion to know as much as he does about the situation. It pays."

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  Think about that. You're in a leadership position, you should try and get every last man in your team to know as much as you do about the situation. It will pay off. He also says this, get rid of gold bricks. It's better to be shorthanded, having good men around than having a lot of undependables.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  You familiar with the term gold brick?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  No. Not in this context, anyway.

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  What context are you familiar with it in?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  A regular gold brick.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  Which is?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Like a gold bar.

• 29:21Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it, got it, got it. So that's the difference. A gold bar is made of gold. A gold brick is a brick painted like gold.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever seen The Big Lebowski?

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, but like once, a long time ago.

• 29:36Jocko Willink?

  The term is heavily used in there. Gold bricker. Yep. So a gold brick is, it looks like good?

• 29:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're just here for show, kind of. No utility. Yeah, all show, no go, all that kind of.

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. Man, I got a book I just read for this podcast that we'll be covering in the future, but there's a guy that shows up in the Korean War. And he's all squared away and he's all, he's all like right and tight. Everything's good to go. And the older combat vets are like, hmm, I don't think so. And then one younger guy that's kind of, that's a badass, that's actually writing the book, he says, oh yeah, this guy's going to be good to go. And sure enough, the older veterans that were looking at him, he was suspect. He was, they were suspect because he was like, everything was kind of perfect. Kind of like that conversation we had the other day about, you know, music and everything being perfect. And if it's too perfect, it's not real. Well, that's kind of the impression these guys got. Oh, this guy's totally perfect. Well, guess what happened when the bullets started flying?

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  He had a, he had a trick knee. And all of a sudden he couldn't

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  Get after it.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  So to me, that right there, gold brick.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  Corporal J S Stankas, Company E, Fifth Marines. Unnecessary firing gives your position away. And when you give your position away, here, you have to pay for it. Man, I went on like the

• 30:57Jocko Willink?

  Crazy, I've gone on crazy tangents about giving away your position, unnecessary firing. And I'm not talking about combat, I'm talking about in conversations, in leadership situations, where you give away your position. You take shots at Echo. Echo says, you know, I'd like to use this plan over here. And I go, that plan doesn't make any sense. And now all of a sudden, you know where I stand.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  Why would you do that? Why wouldn't I say, well, explain to me more about your plan?

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  And then ask you a question about it? Because if I, if I give my position away, all of a sudden, you're, you're not even, you're already like defensive. I'm causing problems. Why do that? And by the way, you might now attack me because I just gave my position away. Now you might start throwing shots at me. So when you say, here's my plan, and I say, your plan doesn't make any sense. I just gave my position away. I don't think your plan makes sense. There's my position. Whereas if you say, here's my plan, and I say, why do you want to put guys over here? Or why do you want to move this over here? And you start answering my questions. I haven't given my position away. You're not defensive. You're trying to explain it to me. Maybe your plan makes sense, but I just didn't understand it. So don't give your position away. Not in Guadalcanal and not in the meeting with your, with your team.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  The men in my squad fire low at the base of trees. There's too much high firing going on. I have, I have observed Japs often get short of ammunition. They cut bamboo and crack it together to simulate rifle fire to draw our fire. They ain't supermen. They're just tricky bastards.

• 32:35Jocko Willink?

  Second Lieutenant H M Davis, Fifth Marines, in parentheses, promoted on the field of battle. Do you understand what that means?

• 32:44Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you understand that there's enlisted guys in the military and there's officers? So basically enlisted guys have not gone to college. The officers, well, I guess the enlisted guys may have gone to college, especially nowadays. There's a lot of enlisted guys that have gone to college, but the, in these days, most likely the enlisted guy hadn't gone to college. So they went through a regular training pipeline and you're sort of the workforce of the military. Then the officers, they've been to college and they've been through some kind of a training program to make, put them into a leadership position.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Is that kind of like at a company, the difference between a guy who has a great resume, degree, blah, blah, blah, comes in at a certain high position versus the guy who worked his way up through like the mailroom?

• 33:24Jocko Willink?

  So, so.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  A little bit, but let's say a construction site, you've got a guy that went to college for civil engineering and he's, he's overseeing the whole project, right? And he's, he got his degree three years ago. But then you've got a guy that's been working construction since he was 14 years old. And now he's been doing it for 28 years and he's the foreman, or he's any of those people in between. That's, that's kind of the breakout. So

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  to get promoted on the field of battle, battlefield promotion, to be, get commissioned is, it's pretty powerful. That means that when all this mayhem was going on, they skipped you through like entire, an entire spectrum of promotions to the next completely different level. It's hack work actually in Korea. Got battlefield promoted. Like you're so good, we're going to take you, we're going to put you in charge.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  So it'd be like if, it'd be like if you showed up as the, the brick carrier and you did such a good job and then they said, well, you can start putting, but you did that and you did something else. And then next thing they promoted you to the, to the guy that was the civil engineer, put you in charge of the whole project.

• 34:37Jocko Willink?

  So that's, so when you hear about second lieutenant HM Davis, fifth Marines promoted on the field of battle, we're talking about full legit. He says, travel light. For example, to hell with all the mess equipment. We used our mess cup and spoon for the first 15 days here and enjoyed our chow. You don't have to live like a gentleman in jungle warfare. Our mess equipment is too bulky for this type of warfare, makes noise. There you go. And then he says this, not every man can lead a battalion. Find out who can lead your battalions before you go into combat areas.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  And then Colonel Edson, in parentheses, remark by Colonel Edson says, "I would like to concur in that statement." So the Medal of Honor recipient, the commander of that battalion, he says, "I'd like to concur with that."

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:33Jocko Willink?

  There's something that's so pure and just unmercifully beautiful about combat when it comes to like, "Hey, we can't afford to play around." It's kind of cool. When I was in Sri Lanka, which we covered on like Podcast 3 or something, working with those soldiers that were fighting against the Tamil Tigers. And if they had someone that was good, they'd be like, "You're promoted. You're going to be in charge." If they had someone that bad, like, "You're not in charge anymore." They didn't care about anything. There was no HR department. There was no, "Hey, we're going to document what mistakes you made and we're going to counsel you." They're like, "No, you made like five bad calls in a row, you're done."

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:15Jocko Willink?

  And you, young recruit that's been doing great, you're in the game. We're putting you in charge. It was very cool. And that's what happens in war. Doesn't so much happen in peacetime. "In an advanced, in an advance in the jungle, it's hard for a platoon leader to keep control of his men. Corporals and their men must be taught to act individually." It's a little something that we like to call decentralized command. You are not going to be with everyone. You can't control them. It doesn't work.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Platoon Sergeant C.M. Fagan, Company I, 5th Marines. "I haven't been fired at many times by snipers and I haven't seen one yet." I threw that in, there's a lot, I skipped over some of these, but there's a lot of people complaining about snipers.

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  "The sabers which the Japanese officers carry have proved to be worthless. I killed two Japs who came at me with sabers and I got them first by shooting them."

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  You remember that scene in Indiana Jones?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yes, I remember all scenes. Which one?

• 37:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, some guy comes out and he's swinging a sword around like kind of a, uh, real skilled. Like, hey, I got the sword and we're gonna fight. And, and, uh, Indiana Jones kinda like shrugs his shoulder and just pulls a pistol out and shoots him. That's what I, when I heard this, I was like, well, yeah, if you got a gun, he's, he's making a statement. Hey, a gun is better than a saber.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, thank you.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  The-

• 37:48Jocko Willink?

  We agree, but this isn't new.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yes, kinda obvious on that one. The, that scene, Indiana Jones?

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Hey, you asked for it, so here you go. The, uh, that scene, in real life, they were gonna have, or, or the original script or whatever, they were gonna have this epic kinda battle, sword battle. But Indiana, or Harrison Ford, had to use the bathroom real bad.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  So he pulled that out as a little improv. They just kept it.

• 38:13Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 38:14Jocko Willink?

  Good to know.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:16Jocko Willink?

  Never mind the Battle of the Water Canal. Let's hear about the bathroom battles on the set of Indiana Jones.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  It's different, you know, I have a seatbelt.

• 38:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, then he says this, "But I wished I had in reserve a good jungle knife." I don't mean, I don't mean a BOLO, which we should have for cutting trails, but a knife with a 12-inch blade of good steel. We could use this against the, these japs as well as cutting vines that catch us at night. And then it says, "Note, many men expressed their wish for a jungle knife such as described here. This desire is being omitted in further remarks to avoid repetition." So everybody was like, "Give us a big ass knife."

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  Corporal Fred Carter, Company I, Fifth Marines. "On the river, we got to firing at each other because of careless leadership by the junior officers. We had a little blue on blue situation. We are curing ourselves of promiscuous firing, but I should think new units would get training to make the men careful." There you go. This guy's had a little blue on blue situation, and he's saying, "I should think new units would get training to make the men more careful." Yeah.

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  That's what I did when I had a blue on blue friendly fire situation, came back and said, "I'm gonna train people so this doesn't happen to them."

• 39:43Jocko Willink?

  We learn not to fire unless we had something to shoot at. Doing otherwise discloses your position and wastes ammunition.

• 39:51Jocko Willink?

  He says, "I have been charged twice by the Japs in bayonet charge. Our Marines can out bayonet fight them, and I know our Army men will do the same."

• 40:03Jocko Willink?

  And then note by Colonel Edson, "Incidentally, in the last push, we executed, we executed three bayonet charges."

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant OJ Marion, Company L, 5th Marines, a platoon guide. "You crawl in the advance unless you are to charge and make it. The, the reason for this is that all men hit are hit from the knees up, except for ricochets. We have crawled up to within 25 yards of a machine gun firing over our backs. The Japs don't depress their machine gun. Men get killed rushing to help a wounded man. If the wounded man would crawl about 10 yards to his flank, he can generally be aided in safety as the Japs seem to fire down lanes in the jungle." Colonel Edson said, "We have taught our men that the best way to aid a wounded man is

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  to push ahead so that the wounded man can be cared for by the corpsman."

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  The men have been, the men have to be trained individually for when the fire starts, the corporal can't see all of his men. And further, when the order for an attack is given, any number of men are unable to see the man on his right or left. You, so you see, sir, it takes guts for the men to get up and move forward when the signal is given. The men have to depend on, on, on one another and have confidence in each other. So again, you can see these guys, have you ever been triple, I guess you have, triple canopy jungle, like real thick jungle? Yeah. Yeah, obviously. It's really, you can take five steps and you can't see another person, you know? And that's what these guys are seeing for the first time.

• 41:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, not for the first time, but they're seeing, hey, somebody gets five feet away from me, I can't see him anymore. They have to know how to act on their own. They have to be ready to utilize decentralized command. He says, "I was in one advance when the Japs let us come through and then rose up out of covered foxholes and shot us in the back." The best cure for that is rear guard looking towards the rear. Corporal F- Corporal FR McCallan, Company L, 5th Marines. "Sometimes the information doesn't get down to us and then we are really in the dark. When we get the orders and information, we can get in there and pitch better."

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  Again, make sure you keep your people informed. "My platoon is the best one in the company because we are all like a baseball team. Our lieutenant is like the captain of the team. He is close with us and we like him and yet respect him. We have a wonderful platoon. I'm not bragging, that's a fact." And then here's the note in parentheses. "When I read this to Colonel Edson at the end of the day, he was so delighted that he sent a runner to find out who Corporal McCallan's platoon leader was." Give that guy a promotion. And here's the interview with Colonel Merritt Edson himself, and again, this is the, this

• 43:12Jocko Willink?

  is the guy who received the Medal of Honor that I read at the beginning of this podcast. He says, "If I had to train my regiment over again, I would stress small group training and the training of the individual even more than we did when we were in training." So there you go. Everyone is stressing that people need to be able to think for themselves and make things happen. "There must be training in difficult observation which is needed for the offense. It is my observation that only 5% of the men can really see while observing."

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  What's crazy about that is they do drills, especially do them in sniper school where they put like stuff out in a field. Like a canteen and a knife and a notebook. They put all this stuff in a field. And then they give you, then they, then they bring you out to the field and you get to sit in position. You gotta look and you gotta see, you gotta they have it kinda hidden, partially hidden. So they'll put 10 items out there and you gotta sit there with your notebook and you kinda gotta write down all the items that you can see and what their location is. And somebody that's really, and there's different, people have different levels of skill at actually observing things. So some, some people get, oh, they get nine, they get eight, they get 10. Some people see like three or four things.

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  So to actually train for that is important. The other crazy thing about this is I was talking about this on EF Online the other day.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  It's hard. It's hard to see and sometimes things that you think are so obvious. Other people aren't seeing. And sometimes if you think what you're doing, no one can see. They can all see it. So if you think you're making some little tactical move that no one's seeing, you're wrong. You're making, if you're making some little maneuver.

• 45:17Jocko Willink?

  To get the promotion or whatever and you think that it's all good, no one can see it. You're wrong. Everybody can see it. Everybody can see it. You know who can't see it? You can't see that they can see.

• 45:33Jocko Willink?

  The offensive is the most difficult to support as you cannot tell exactly where your troops are. So scary. Whether the Japs will continue to fight as they do now, I don't know. They defend on the low ground in the jungle. They dig standing trenches extremely well camouflaged. And then he goes into some really like tactical level stuff, talking about the need for a rifle grenade, the need for a knee mortar.

• 46:00Jocko Willink?

  Why that would be good because it gives the platoon commander kind of at hand weapons.

• 46:06Jocko Willink?

  He says this, "I suggest that you have maneuvers with ball ammunition," which is basically, "do maneuvers with real bullets." And then he says, "Even if you get a few casualties."

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  I was like, dang. Now, in the SEAL Teams, we do live-fire training all the time. And not only that, we do incredibly complex maneuvers with live-fire.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  And it's so beneficial that you're just used to it, you know, you're used to it. You really learn about paying attention and safety and how to keep your distance and all those really important things.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  But if you, the other thing I will say, we got, when I first came in the Teams, that's all we did was live-fire. And it was sort of like a "the thing." You know, it was sort of like, "That's as good as it gets." Like, "We're doing live-fire." It was one of those things. And it was. You know, you'd go, "Wow, it's live-fire." And you'd do so much of it that it became, so it wasn't really, it was just normal, right? Live-fire was just totally normal. It's how you operate. But once we got sim munition and like the high-speed laser tag systems, that's when you got, you have to do both, but that's when you got good at actually combat. Because when you're going live-fire, you're not going against anyone but paper targets. So they don't move. But you have to do it.

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, so he goes into more details about the kind of boots that they have. And he says the same thing that everyone's been saying. "In your training, put your time and emphasis on the squad and platoon rather than on the company battalion or regiment." So, "Train at the lowest levels."

• 47:56Jocko Willink?

  "Your principle of the command post up and to the front is certainly true here. In your scouting and patrolling and your training in patience, which you should have, have the men work against each other." So he's saying the same thing. You have to do something where you're actually going against other humans, not just against paper targets. Same thing for squads and platoons and their problems. Develop better snipers. He goes on to a bunch of things. Uh, "Smoking lamp, once the smoking lamp goes out and it gets dark, you have to be quiet."

• 48:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, he goes into this example. In the Raiders, we adopted the custom of dropping all rank and titles. We use nicknames for officers, all ranks. Use these nicknames for us. We did this because the NIPS caught on to the names of the officers and would yell or speak at night. This is Captain Joe Smith talking, A Company, withdraw to the next hill.

• 48:55Jocko Willink?

  So we adopted nicknames with code words. Captain Walt became Silent Lou. My nickname was Red Mike. An example of the use of these nicknames as code words is one night, the Japs put down smoke and they yelled gas. We were too green at the time and two of our companies withdrew, leaving A Company exposed on two flanks.

• 49:20Jocko Willink?

  He says, a value of night training is that it lets men learn the normal noises of the woods at night. Woods are not silent at night. He says, the Japanese is no Superman. He has the same limitations that we have. They have the advantage of experience. With proper training, our Americans are better as our people can think better as individuals.

• 49:42Jocko Willink?

  Encourage your individuals and bring them out.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  So this is any team. Right? You either train your team to think or you train them to obey.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  And certainly the Japanese leaned toward what they wanted was obedience.

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  Both our riflemen and machine gunners must be taught to shoot low. Well, I can tell you that's what I got taught too. Shoot low.

• 50:15Jocko Willink?

  This leadership business resolves itself down to being hard boiled. By that, I mean getting rid of the poor leader, even if you like him personally. Because this is a life and death affair. This goes right on down to the non-coms.

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  You can see they just, there's no, you could allow no slack for poor leadership. Like, you know, it's peacetime. I can tell you, when, when I first got to the, to the

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  the amount of SEAL officers that got fired when they were in a SEAL platoon was very, very small. Very small number of SEAL officers that would get fired. And then after the war started, it would happen. It's a would happen. It was not like it happened often, but it happened a lot more, happened a lot more. Because you'd be looking going, this isn't just a deployment over to, you know, train someone or, you know, this is gonna be, we're going to war.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  So that was, um, that was Colonel Edson.

• 51:30Jocko Willink?

  Now we get to Major Lou Walt, commanding officer, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine. And there's a note from Colonel Edson. Colonel Edson told me that Major Walt was one of his best leaders and one of the best men he has ever seen in action. Major Walt was a young man of about 35 years of age. He's extremely rugged and looks like a fullback on a football team. I talked to him over 20 minutes before I was able to make a single original note as his ideas seemed to echo Colonel Edson's. So that's pretty cool. You got the, the battalion commander saying all the same stuff that the regimental commander was saying.

• 52:14Jocko Willink?

  Here's a little report that Major Lou Walt gives. At 6:30 PM, they smoked our two right companies and when the smoke had enveloped these two companies, they broke out. They came out in mass formation, 20 abreast, yelling, bayonets fixed, automatic weapons working, rear ranks throwing hand grenades. They were trying to escape to the sand pit at the mouth of the river in order to cross the river to get back. Our right front company had just completed a double apron barbed wire fence. When the Japanese hit the left flank of the right company, they killed nine out of the first ten men, nine out of the first eleven men they hit. Then they hit the barbed wire.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  Two of our heavy machine guns opened up, shooting down along this barbed wire fence and dispersed their attack. It got dark quickly like it does here. There was smoke, Japs and Marines all mixed up. Three Jap officers were swinging their two-hand swords. There was hand-to-hand fighting all night long. We mopped them up at daybreak. We killed seventy-eight Japs, they killed twelve Marines and wounded twenty-six of us. The Jap has a great deal of respect for our hand grenade, and it is a valuable weapon to us. Do you ever practice throwing it in wooded country?

• 53:42Jocko Willink?

  Scary throwing grenades in the woods.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:46Jocko Willink?

  Because you can hit a tree, you can hit a branch. He says, and this is always a common theme about the Japanese, "The Jap is not an individual fighter. He won't fight with a bayonet unless backed up with a dozen other Japs." Here's where we get to is pure leadership. As in the basic field manual, each man should know the objective. I make my platoon leader designate an objective every one hundred yards in the jungle, and they work to it and reorganize. They don't push off for the next objective until they get word from the company commander. This method, we have found, ensures control. I control my companies exactly the same way. I set up objectives for each company.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  When the companies reach their objective, they report. After the reorganization, we go ahead. I think reserves in the attack should be kept up close so they can be committed immediately.

• 54:47Jocko Willink?

  Platoon Sergeant C.C. Ardent. And there's a note in here, it says, "When Colonel Edson sent for his best fighters, he did not include Platoon Sergeant Ardent. After I got through talking to these men, two of them came up to me and said, 'Sir, you did not see Sergeant Ardent. He has more patrols and does more scouting than any man in the regiment. Could we get him for you, sir?'" And so here we got C.C. Ardent. And he seems like the kind of guy, when I was reading this, I was like, "I know this kind of dude." So here's this dude. "I practice walking quietly over rocks, twigs, grass, leaves, through vines, etc. I practice this around the bivouac area.

• 55:30Jocko Willink?

  I received instructions in scouting and patrolling in Quantico, but I still practice this around here in the bivouac area. I believe because I practice, this is the reason I am still alive. Some of the other NCOs laughed at me because I'm always seeing how quietly I can walk around because I go out and practice on my own. But they have stopped laughing because I have been on more patrols than any man in the regiment and I am still alive.

• 55:59Jocko Willink?

  When I am scouting and come to an opening in the jungle and have to cross it, I generally run across it quickly and quietly. Going slow here may cost a scout his life. Different types of terrain calls for different methods." So, I totally know that guy. Just obsessed and I love it.

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  Go ahead.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  You think of like jiu-jitsu guys do that too, you know? You know, guys?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Like they stand up and they do like a technical stand even though, you know?

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  They're keeping it real.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Or when they give you a hug, they like fish for underhooks. Like they're always doing that thing, you know?

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. But I think this is the guy that's like, stand, you know, not just that. This is the guy that's... And, and you know, I, when I, when I first got in, actually, the whole time I was in, it was like, "Okay, I gotta do this again. I need to do this better. I gotta get better at this."

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  But I, I, I did that kind of in a broad way, right? Like I want to be good. Like I kind of wanted to be good at everything, you know?

• 57:08Jocko Willink?

  Whereas it'd be like someone, whereas there's some guys that would get really into one thing.

• 57:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, it'd be like someone that just works on, you know, deep half guard. They just get obsessed with deep half guard and that's what they're working on. Like that's all they're drilling. That's all they're doing.

• 57:30Jocko Willink?

  This is Colonel Amor L E R Sims.

• 57:40Jocko Willink?

  Commanding Officer, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division. And he says, "Is the army stripping down to essentials in equipment? Teach not to waste ammunition. Learn to make every shot count. Try to get the Japs on the move. Keep them bouncing around. Don't let them get set. When you let them get set, they're hard to get out." This is such a good philosophy to have when you're ever you're in a competitive moment against another person. Or against another business or against another team. Don't let them settle. Don't let them, you know, like we talked about earlier, you get them out and go for the omlock.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  Look, sometimes you think, well, get there in established position. I get it. I get that philosophy. But if you can and you can get there and you can go for it, you're gonna catch them off guard. Don't let them prepare, go.

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  He says, "Our battalion commanders in the Seventh Marines know that in reporting information at once, and if they need help to ask for it and not just try to bull things through, that they are enabling regiments to act as a team in the right manner and in the right direction." So he's saying, "Listen, the battalion commanders knew that they needed to get the information, the correct information, up the chain of command as quickly as they could so that they, so that the chain of command, the senior leadership could support them. And if you needed help, you needed to ask for it."

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  A regimental commander cannot be impatient. Don't push your battalion commanders unless you feel there is reluctance on their part. Our great leader, General Vandegrift, gives me a job and lets me handle the situation with a regiment in my own way.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  He is not impatient with me. Impatience would ruin the best plans.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  A mapped plan may not turn out to be feasible, so we have learned here not to be impatient.

• 59:41Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, "It has been impressed upon us here that the logistics have to be correctly planned. The science of logistics turns out to be your life. Logistics wins wars."

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  Here's a thought I would like to leave you with, the regimental commanders. Pick your officers for common sense.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Basic field manual knowledge is fine, but it is useless without common sense. Common sense is of greater value than all the words in the book. I am too deep, so that's a statement right there, right? Common sense. Isn't that amazing?

• 1:00:22Jocko Willink?

  Promote and put in leadership positions, people that have common sense. Then he says, "I am too deep in my battalions in regard to battalion commanding officers." That is, each one of my battalion executive officers is a potential battalion commander. The reason for this is if the battalion commander gets killed or sick, I won't be caught out on a limb.

• 1:00:43Jocko Willink?

  He says, "I make my staff officers get out of this CP." Not to snoop, so they go, get out of the command post and go to the front lines. And he does that, quote, "Not to snoop on the troops, but to help the battalions and equate themselves with the general situation." Insist on night training, but don't train day and night. If I were training my regiment again, working seven days a week, I would train three nights and four days.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Our orders to our Marines on the perimeter defense are, this is, this is kind of epic. Our orders to our Marines on the perimeter defense are, you stay on your position and do not pull back. If they bust through you, we'll plug up the hole, but you stay there.

• 1:01:30Jocko Willink?

  And then he says, this regiment can out yell the Japs, out fight them, out bayonet them, and out shoot them. This yelling, as in hand to hand action, is important. It's like a football team that talks it up. The Japs yell at us, Marines, we're gonna kill you. More blood for the emperor. The Marines yell back, you blank blankety blank blank blank, that's what it just has, has little underlines, you blank blankety blank blank, we'll kill you Japs, more blood for Franklin.

• 1:02:10Jocko Willink?

  They're just yelling at each other. You know, that was like when we had Cowboy on.

• 1:02:19Jocko Willink?

  And Cowboy could hear the North Vietnamese Army commander yelling, hey, get ready to, get ready to assault. And he's telling, telling Lynn Black, here they come. He just gave the order to assault.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Sometimes that's how right, like if you're close, I think it was Leif, who said when they were like in a gunfight and they were so close, they were, they were yelling at each other.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, you could definitely hear people talking. Yeah, yeah. I'll have to ask Leif, like what particular instance that was.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, I saw a video, it was online, of some fire, some army guys, I think in Afghanistan, they were, it looked like a kind of a jungle.

• 1:03:04Jocko Willink?

  There's parts of Afghanistan that look like that.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like not a thick, you know, but like it was like trees in there and they were in a gunfight and they were, you could hear them yelling at, and I think there, it was in a different language and stuff and they were just same deal, blankety blank blank. And but it's crazy because in football, yeah, that's how too. You know, it's like, it's all talking trash the whole time. Even the referee is saying, hey, be quiet, be quiet. No fa, the referee is no factor because he can't do nothing for you. He's talking and everyone's yelling at each other, right? And depends, certain teams are more hostile than others or whatever. Um, just depends on the personality of the team. But yeah, that goes on, but it's all like. It's all within like sportsman like, you know, some of it's funny, some, some of it's like kind of me, you know, so there's, there's a certain, it's, it's kind of the culture, you know?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  But it's crazy to understand that like this guy is trying to straight up kill you and you're trying to kill them. So that blankety blank blank is like the real deal, you know?

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  This next section is about the commanding officer of the first battalion, seventh regiment, US Marines, first marine division. You might know who that is. It's Lieutenant Colonel Louis B. Puller from podcast 121. We went through his book, which is called Marine. In podcast 122, we talked about his son, Louis Puller Jr. So if you want to check out those podcasts, there is, that's a podcast that will stay with you. I'll put it to you that way.

• 1:04:42Jocko Willink?

  So what he says, this is one of the most, yeah, this is the most iconic Marine of all time. Chesty Puller. And he says, and this was kind of cool because like this is, it's cool because the way this is written, you can tell that this guy was taking notes. Like there was someone there sitting there writing down word for word, what these guys were saying. So this is Chesty Puller talking and he says, "In handling my companies, I take the company commander's word for what is going on. You have to do this to get anywhere. In order to get a true picture of what is going on in this heavy country, I take my staff, I make my staff get up to where the fighting is. This command post business will ruin the American army and Marines if it isn't watched. Hell, our platoons and squads would

• 1:05:27Jocko Willink?

  like a command post in the attack if they are not watched. As soon as you set up a command post, all forward movement stops."

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one. It's a good one to think about mentally for you, for us, for me. Right? As soon as you set up a command post like, okay, I'm good. I'm good in this spot. Forward progress stops. Don't do it.

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  He says, "The walkie talkie the Japs have operates." Why can't we have a similar one?

• 1:06:07Jocko Willink?

  And then he says this, "To hell with the telephone wire advancing with the troops. We can't carry enough wire. We received an order. This advance, the advance will stop until the wire gets in. This is backwards."

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, because they didn't have good radio communications, they would run a wire, an actual wire, so they could talk to each other on these little field telephones. Well, obviously, it's not easy to run that wire out there. And you'd see, you ever seen, you know, movies of guys, they got the little wire and a reel to run it out, avoiding getting shot? I mean, it's a total nightmare. But then you get these commanders saying, "Hey, don't advance anymore until you get the wire position." And Jesse's like, "Look, we know where we're going.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Let us go." He said, "The staffs are twice as large as they should be. The regimental staff is too large. I have five staff officers in the battalion, and I could get along with less. The officers have to dress and look like the men. One time, the commandant of the Marine Corps asked me why our patrols failed in Haiti. I replied, "Because of the officers bedding roll." In Haiti at that time, the officer had to have a pack mule, and the enlisted men saw the officers lying around in luxury. The patrols were actually held up for this pack mule. Your leaders have to be up front. Those that won't get up there and are not in physical shape to keep up with the men will cause plans to fail."

• 1:07:37Jocko Willink?

  It's okay to say that an outfit cannot be surprised. But it is bound to happen in this type of warfare. So therefore, your outfits must know what to do when ambushed. So he's saying like, hey, look, you can say, hey, we're not going to get surprised. But guess what? You are. So you better know what to do. Then he says, calling back commanding officers to battalion and regimental CPs to say, how are things going is awful. That's his statement. That's a complete statement. If you call me back from the front line to say, how's it going?

• 1:08:10Jocko Willink?

  It's awful.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  Each company is responsible for its flank. This is a time-tested and proven formation which worked. If attacked from the flank, face and adjust. A good little. Good little thing to think about.

• 1:08:28Jocko Willink?

  In marching or in camp, I just noticed like now that I'm reading Chesty Puller, I'm getting more fired up. I'm channeling Chesty. In marching or in camp, I think I'm doing what I think he sounded like. In marching or in camp, we've learned here that you must have an all-around defense. There you go. He's just making statements. He's not even, he's just, he's just rattling things off. We need more entrenching shovels. Give shovels to the men who have wire cutters. You need both the wire cutter and shovels. I wish we had, had the M1 rifle and when we get relieved from Guadalcanal, I'm going to make every effort to get it.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  I consider it my imperative that the Army and Marines be equipped with knee mortars and only carry one type grenade. Have the hand grenade fit in the knee mortar and be of use as a hand grenade and also as a rifle grenade. You need a rifle grenadier in each squad for use against enemy machine gun nests.

• 1:09:31Jocko Willink?

  I didn't, and some of the other guys, I kinda skipped through some of their, when it gets, starts getting real granular, but I wasn't gonna skip Chesty Puller, cuz, cuz Chesty Puller.

• 1:09:43Jocko Willink?

  The following is the result, and so that's it, that's, that's what we get from Chesty, but then, the following is the result of a conference with five of the best NCOs in the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines. These NCOs were selected by Lieutenant Colonel Puller.

• 1:09:59Jocko Willink?

  Here's some comments from them. "The Japanese fire is not always aimed, it is harassing fire and scares recruits. Get the recruits so they are used to overhead fire. Japs who have infiltrated signal to each other with their rifles by the number of shots.

• 1:10:16Jocko Willink?

  We get these birds by constantly patrolling."

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  He says if, one of the guys say, "If you shoot their officers, they mill around," talking about the Japanese. "If you shoot their officers, they mill around. Their NCOs are poor. You can tell they are officers by their sabers and their leather, leather puttees." Which is like some kind of legging. I had to look that word up. Puttees. P-U-T-T-E-E-S. It's like a legging. But this is, again, this is something that you hear a lot about the Japanese, is that once their officers are dead, they, cuz they're very centralized command, micromanaged, so if you killed their, if you killed their officers, all of a sudden the, the rest of the troops are just kinda milling around, they don't know what to do.

• 1:11:04Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Shepard, 7th Marines, also promoted on the field of battle. We salute you Lieutenant Shepard. "I would stress in training teamwork between the leaders and all units, liaison between support plans and all leaders, liaison between artillery and the infantry. If I were training my unit again, I would really have some high-class patrol training. I would do everything with these patrols I could possibly think of to include losing them and making them go across country without maps or compasses."

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  The Japanese do a lot of yelling at times and at other times they are deadly silent. One night, some Japanese got in our marching column. We discovered them and bayoneted them.

• 1:11:50Jocko Willink?

  At another time, I heard, I myself heard a Japanese yell in good English, K Company forward.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  The Japs don't like our men yelling back at them.

• 1:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay, next we get to Master Gunner Sergeant R.M. Fowl, 7th Marines, and he's 24 years of service. He said, "We learned not to get excited or go off half-cocked where there's noise. The Japanese make noise to mislead us. They shot off some firecrackers at the start, but we have learned that where the noise is, he ain't. You never hear him move. He sleeps in the daytime and does his work at night.

• 1:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Officers and NCOs during shouting should move around and talk to the men, quiet them down. If you don't do this, some of them will walk around with their fingers on their triggers, and they get to imagining things. And along this line, we learned to post double sentinels, one man to quiet another." Sheesh. Imagine that. You gotta, you gotta put two people on watch because you got, one of them's gonna freak out.

• 1:13:02Jocko Willink?

  All my time in the Marines, I've seen men bunch up. And I've talked about this and make my NCOs talk about this all the time. The men seem to fear separation. I talked about that in Leadership Strategy and Tactics. I got a whole section called "Don't Bunch Up."

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  And I don't, didn't just talk about it from the battlefield perspective, but what happens is, the way I, the reason I had to talk about it in there is because, yes, people bunch up on the battlefield and they do it because they're, they're afraid. And because you want to hear, you want to be close, like, "I want to get to you to hear what you have, what's going on." But what happens in, from a leadership perspective, is people bunch up mentally in, from the, so, Echo, you have an idea. I like to crowd in with your idea and put my ideas in there. We, we all want to get together, we want to talk, we want to give our input. It's like, man, give that person some space. Let that plan develop a little bit. Don't bunch up, don't crowd it.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  This one says, "The Japs are man monkeys and they run around considerable. In order to compete with these man monkeys from Japan, you gotta be in excellent shape and you've gotta be tough."

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:14:13Jocko Willink?

  "We can lick them and we are doing it all the time, sir." So, yeah, you're saying they're like in great shape and they're able to move around through the jungle very quickly. Well, I suppose it's like when, uh, when Joe Rogan calls some fighter like a gorilla or whatever, right? Yeah. Or a monster.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, monster, animal. He's like as an animal.

• 1:14:34Jocko Willink?

  Check. Man monkeys. Lieutenant Colonel Frisbee, Executive Officer, 7th Marines. "I hope the army is being toughened up. We toughened up by bivouacking, not camping at the combat ranges. We lived at these combat ranges in order to teach platoons to keep off the road. We made platoons march in the field alongside the road when they moved from one combat area to another."

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Hey, what's bivouacking?

• 1:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, sleeping in the woods. Not camping, but you know, setting up a small area to sleep in. You're not like put pitch in a tent. It's like a, uh, just a makeshift sort of, "We're gonna sleep here."

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Like not even a camp, like less, so just kind of for sleeping for rest. But it's not like in a bad way or necessarily a good way, more just like to get sleep.

• 1:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Like, "Hey, we've been patrolling. All right, we're in a good spot. Hey, we're gonna bivouac here for the night." Okay, you know, half guys on security, other half guys get, you know, put your head down, get some sleep.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Probably a good defensible position.

• 1:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Here's Lieutenant Colonel NH Han Khan.

• 1:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Second Battalion Seventh Marines and by the way Medal of Honor from Haiti.

• 1:16:02Jocko Willink?

  It pays in the attack in the jungle to use the heavy machine guns. There is a difference of opinion as you have noticed on this matter. It's hard work, yes, but don't overlook the value morale and otherwise. And don't forget about the high rate of fire. If you ditch the heavy machine guns and substitute the lights in their place. You must remember that you will be up against the Japanese machine guns.

• 1:16:29Jocko Willink?

  As we all know, I'm a huge fan of machine guns. Yes, sir. And and apparently so is Lieutenant Colonel. Be careful about withdrawing the men unless all the men know what it's about. If you don't do this, you're liable to make the men panicky. We already talked about that. Mob mentality can happen. You must realize that there is such a thing as not attacking when ordered to do so.

• 1:16:53Jocko Willink?

  We have got to get to a point where the men go ahead when ordered and damn the hindmost. Corporals must be indoctrinated with leadership to overcome this and all ranks have got to have the hate.

• 1:17:10Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, this is a different time, man. You're going against a different enemy.

• 1:17:15Jocko Willink?

  We're talking about you have to hate the enemy. That's where we're at.

• 1:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Here's a conference with three second lieutenants and five old NCOs of Second Battalion Seventh Marines. The basic principle of leadership in the US Marine Corps is that the individual is told of his responsibility in different situations and is held to it.

• 1:17:43Jocko Willink?

  You got to have confidence in each other. When signals to move forward are given, you must have confidence that the men next to you will move forward, even if you cannot see them. We have that kind of confidence in this battalion.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  There's a quote here which I am in full agreement with. It says, "We love the heavy machine gun, period."

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  We have two American Indians we use as talkers on the telephone or voice radio when we want to transmit secret or important messages. It's awesome.

• 1:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Be mean and kill them. Kill them dead. Our platoon, our motto in this platoon is no prisoners.

• 1:18:37Jocko Willink?

  Second Lieutenant D A Clark, Seventh Marines.

• 1:18:42Jocko Willink?

  Promoted on the field of battle. This officer was interviewed in the hospital where he was recuperating from wounds.

• 1:18:49Jocko Willink?

  We have a lot of trouble in my platoon with water discipline. We also have trouble with men bunching up in order to talk to each other. They seem to do this even though it means death.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  Major Buse. Assistant G three on the general Vandergriff staff. We have had to multiply our unit of fire in hand grenades by five. The yellow color on hand grenades is poor. Why can't they just be painted black? As the yellow color enables the Japs to throw them back. You ever seen that color combination? It's in a very, it's very common in the military. It's like an olive drab, but then the writing is in yellow. And like even the grades, no one listened to this guy because the grenades still have like a yellow band around them. It's, it's, it's not like a bright yellow, but it's definitely a yellow.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Wait, why is that? Why is it yellow?

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  That's just how they mark them. I mean, there's, there's no particular reason.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  It looks kind of dope.

• 1:19:51Jocko Willink?

  I almost actually leadership strategy and tactics almost went, in fact, the reason I didn't go, because it's olive drab. The reason I didn't go that same exact yellow is because you couldn't really read it clearly enough. That's kind of a bummer. I should have just stuck with it, huh?

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, like claymore mine, do claymore mines are they yellow?

• 1:20:09Jocko Willink?

  Like where it says front towards enemy?

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:11Jocko Willink?

  Actually, yeah, yellow.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  Some are, I think.

• 1:20:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. So it's very, it's the common thing.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  It's the common stencil color is this olive drab green and it's a faded yellow. It's like a drab yellow.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  He says this, "I am being sent back for arrest. We have been in action continually here from August 7th, 1942 until this date, November 26, 1942. What we all marvel at is how General Vandegrift can stand it so much better than we do. It must be his character." We'll have to do like a full-on podcast on General Vandegrift. Major Ben J. Northridge, CO, 2nd Battalion, 164th Infantry. "If I could train my men over again, I would put officers and men in slit trenches and drop

• 1:21:08Jocko Willink?

  bombs nearby to overcome fear. We were all scared to death at first. Let's overcome this fear. How about firing some captured 25 caliber ammunition out of captured rifles to let officers and men know the sound? Also captured JAP machine guns, ammunition out of their captured machine guns." Got to get used to that sound. Luckily, we do. I mean, luckily, we have AK-47s. We can do that. No problem, no factor. We know what that AK sounds like. Lieutenant Colonel Frank Richards, CO, 1st Battalion, 164th Infantry. "If I were training my battalion again, I would have training in patience. I would have

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  patrols wait for the enemy to expose himself. They move around too. They have to relieve themselves and they have to get food. I would have the men in this patience training be made to sit still for hours at a time." Captain John A. Gossett, CO, Company H, 164th Infantry. "Teach the men the capacities of the hand grenade and handling men."

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that crazy dude that this guy is here in Guadalcanal? And here's the two notes that he's got. He says, "You gotta learn the capacities of hand grenades and how to handle men. I thought I knew how to handle men, but since I've been here, I have revised my ideas as I have learned a great deal. I have learned the primitive, rough and tumble way. You can't pat all men on the back. You have to be rough with some men in order to get results. It is not my nature to be rough, but I am forcing myself and I have learned which of my men I can pat on the back and which I have to deal with in the hardest manner."

• 1:23:04Jocko Willink?

  Everyone's the same, everyone's different.

• 1:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Captain John A. Dawson, commanding officer, Company B, 164th Infantry.

• 1:23:17Jocko Willink?

  "If I could train my company again, I would have some maneuvers on which the men were deprived of food, water, and comforts in order to find out which NCOs and men can't take it. I would relieve these people. This type of maneuver would teach men to know and expect hardships. It will lessen the shock when they come up against the real thing in the presence of the enemy.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  It is important that the entire squad know how to operate the BAR, not just two men. Reason, think of the BAR men who are wounded, get killed, and become sick and have to be evacuated." Again, cross-training.

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant John S. Graves, Platoon Leader, Company C, 164th Infantry. "The biggest thing I have learned since I hit this island is that leadership and initiative is so important here. The platoon leader can only be in one spot at a time and men must be trained to act correctly on their own. I've never seen this type of training."

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  Yes, decentralized command.

• 1:24:28Jocko Willink?

  That's just post that on your brain.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant W V Damas, squad leader, Company C, 164th Infantry. Sir, I would like to say that there is no place for recruits here. We need trained soldiers who have initiative and and know what is the right thing to do. The jungle is so thick that squad leaders cannot get around all of the time to see men and tell them what to do. This is the common theme.

• 1:25:04Jocko Willink?

  This is Colonel B E Moore, commanding officer, 164th Infantry. Note, when I saw Colonel Moore, he was interviewing a patrol and patrol leader who had just come back. They had been on a reconnaissance for 15 hours. The patrol leader had been met at an advanced position and as he had valuable information of the enemy, he was conducted by jeep to the observation post of the artillery where he directed artillery fire, then returned to the Colonel where he made his report. The patrol and its leader were nearly exhausted. Colonel Moore had on hand a small sample bottle of brandy, which he issued one small sample bottle to each two men.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  He made them dilute this brandy with water in their canteen cups. It was noticeable that this helped them. The following interview took place after the patrol had been dismissed. One could not be around Colonel Moore very long without realizing that he is a leader and regimental commander in every sense of the word.

• 1:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Taking care of his people.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "The greatest problem is leaders, and you have to find some way to weed out the weak ones. But platoon leaders, who cannot command, who cannot foresee things, and who cannot act on the spur of the moment in an emergency, are a distinct detriment."

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  Leadership.

• 1:26:44Jocko Willink?

  And this is the last thing we're gonna read from this book. He says, "Many of the junior leaders have not used their heads at times. In their training, I recommend you put them up against situations where they must use their heads."

• 1:27:04Jocko Willink?

  He says, "The good leaders seem to get killed. The poor leaders get the men killed. The big problem is leadership and getting the shoulder straps on the right people. Not one man in 50 can lead a patrol in the jungle. If you can find out who the good patrol leaders are before you hit the combat zone, you have found out something. I have had to get rid of about 25 officers because they just weren't leaders. I had to make the battalion commander weed out the poor junior leaders. This process is continuous. Our junior leaders are finding out that they must know more about their men."

• 1:27:43Jocko Willink?

  The good leaders know their men.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  The good leaders know their men. Obviously, that's not new. We've heard it before. In fact, we've heard all this before. And what's crazy is they'd all heard it before. Right? Like, these principles have been around. These principles have been around forever. But they still made mistakes. They still had to relearn those lessons, and they still had to make every effort,

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  like this manual, to pass those lessons on.

• 1:28:31Jocko Willink?

  And what should we do? Well, what we should do is we should make our best effort to receive those lessons, remember those lessons,

• 1:28:44Jocko Willink?

  just as we should remember these brave men who learned these lessons in blood.

• 1:28:57Jocko Willink?

  What do you got Echo Charles?

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  I always like, so there's kind of two ways you can go with like all of this stuff where it's like you hear it over and over and over again, right? Which should sort of reinforce it. So you kind of got to be careful to not regard it. I guess maybe this happens subconsciously sometimes where you just, you know, you hear something over and over again and then it just becomes sort of just noise like I already know that.

• 1:29:24Jocko Willink?

  You know what's weird about me?

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know a lot of things.

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  When you say that, like I can't relate to it because every time I hear these things, I'm like, there it is.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:29:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, there it is. It's a reinforcement. It's, it's, it's, I'm hearing it again. It's a little bit of a different angle, but I know what that means. You know, like that last little section is so crazy to read that. It's so crazy to read that. This guy is saying in training you, I recommend you put them in situations where they must use their heads. I teach that all the time at Ashlam Front. We like, oh, you want to train your leaders? You got to put, you can't give your leaders problems that there is a rote memorizable solution to. You actually want to make them think. I always bring up a story with the Germans. The Germans would give their subordinate leaders in training, they would give them problems that could only be solved if they broke the rules.

• 1:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Which means there's no format to what they're getting them to try and do. So how can you get your people? You need to put your people in situations where they need to think. So every time, look, and this is lessons that I've taught before, but I hear it and I'm like, there it is.

• 1:30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe because you like apply it maybe often, or maybe it made like such an impact for because of like your experiences and stuff. Or maybe both, I don't know, but so it's always sticking with you. So you're always like looking to like reinforce, to make it better, to improve on this very thing that you're actually practicing.

• 1:30:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what's interesting? So my last three years in the, in the teams, I was running that training. And so I got to see, and I always say that the training that I ran was the best leadership laboratory in the history of the world. And I would be willing to go toe to toe on anyone that thinks that they've seen a better, well, not, not, not to fight them, but I would be interested. If there was someone else that says, oh, we did, we had a leadership situation where this is what we got to see. And therefore we have a really good understanding of, of leadership as well. I'm sure there's other things that are out there. I'm telling you, the, when I was running that training, it was freaking awesome.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  Because you're seeing platoon after platoon after platoon after platoon with different leadership. You could see the good leadership versus the bad leadership. You see what worked, what didn't work. It was the best leadership laboratory. And I, I, I learned that I got to take the lessons that I learned and see them applied. And when they, when they applied them well, then things would go well. If they didn't apply them well, things would go bad. It was so obvious. It was so obvious. And what's interesting is now at Echelon Front, I kind of get to do the same thing because it's, hey, I work with a business. Here's what's happening in their market. Here's what's happening in their expansion. Here's what's happening as they grow. So we get to see, oh, here's the leadership. Here's what you need to do.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  And then I, it's like, this is the mistake that you're making. This is where you need to move. And so I, like you said, I, I'm very lucky because I continue to get to work directly in this environment that I've been completely and utterly.

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Engaged in for, you know, I mean, for a long, long, for decades. And, and, and yet, that I guess maybe that's why when I see these things.

• 1:32:44Jocko Willink?

  I think to myself, like, yes, like, I get it just, just more reinforcement. And, yeah, so.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Do you like it?

• 1:32:55Jocko Willink?

  What?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Like, straight up, like, okay, so we'll, we'll call this maybe oversimplify, simplifying it, leadership, right?

• 1:33:02Jocko Willink?

  Do I like it?

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  Are you serious right now?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  I am, man.

• 1:33:05Jocko Willink?

  I absolutely love it.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:33:07Jocko Willink?

  I love it. And you know what? I love it in the way that, what I love about it is it is a continual challenge to, it's, it's, it's, it's solving a problem. And getting the gra, it's, it's kind of like jujitsu in that you get out there, you learn a move, you see a move, you use the move, it works, it doesn't work, you make adjustments on it. It's a very similar thing. But yeah, I love it because it's super complex and yet it's super simple. Right? And the gratification

• 1:33:43Jocko Willink?

  is, is extraordinary because people, you know, like, people say, I did what you just told me to do, you know, I did it in the last meeting and Fred's on board now. And you're like, that's awesome. And, and this was a problem for, for someone that was a legitimate, not, not just a challenge, but like a threat to their lifestyle, right? A threat to their business, a threat to their corporation. And you're like, hey, here's this, here's, okay, do this, report back, let me hear what you got. Okay, here's the report. Okay, here's the reaction I got. Okay, good. That means continue moving in this direction. Oh, no, that means go over in this direction. So to be able to, to be able to be lucky enough

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  to take all these lessons that I learned and be able to apply them on a daily basis, it's ridiculous. It's freaking awesome.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Cause like, it's.

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  Do you like leadership?

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  Well, I, I, I knew the answer and maybe it was kind of a semi rhetorical question, but, uh, if. Because some people, they don't, they don't like it. They, they see it as a necessity and stuff like that, but they don't really like it. So and it's a spectrum for sure. It's like sales, you know, like sales, for example, where some people, they just love it. And every little tip, every little thing, every little like established, like element of, of successful. They're all upon, they're all about it.

• 1:35:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Well, people can be into all kinds of stuff, right? Jiu Jitsu, guitar, drawing.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:12Jocko Willink?

  Reading, I mean.

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if there is a certain philosophical element that has like withstood the test of time and the reading here, reading there, man, it's going to reinforce their thing. They're going to be into it and it's going to be just in their head. They're going to apply it any chance that they get, even if it's this much of a little development.

• 1:35:30Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  They're going to apply it, boom, it's ready, it's down because they enjoy it and that's part of their jam. But if, let's say you don't really like, you find it's like a, like a chore or whatever, right? You know, there's certain introvert type people who are in a leadership position who kind of don't like it. They'd rather someone else deal with the people or something like this, right?

• 1:35:49Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  And then, so those are the ones that might be, I don't know. But they might be the ones that are going to be making these mistakes over and over again, because they're not consciously, like actively trying to implement these lessons that are just in someone like your case, just straight up being reinforced.

• 1:36:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  But for them, it's, it's almost like not even getting it. It's kind of like, yeah, I heard that before, whatever. I heard that before, whatever. I'm too busy like not caring almost in a way. Like I'm too busy like caring about the things that I care about and like.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think, I think where, oh, there's a lot of misconceptions and I, I wrote about this in Leadership Strategy and Tactics.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  But here, it's, it's on like the cover flap or whatever.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  Leadership is the most challenging of human endeavors. It is often misunderstood. It can be bewildered, mystify and frustrate even the most dedicated practitioners. Leaders at all levels are often forced to use theoretical guesswork to make decisions and lead their troops. It doesn't have to be that way. There are principles that can be applied and tenants that can be followed. There are skills that can be learned and maneuvers that can be practiced and executed. There are leadership strategies and tactics that have been tested and proven on the battlefield, in business and in life. So that's what I think people miss out on. Is they miss out on the fact that it's not, it's, it's kind of like any,

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  any skill set that you want to learn. You want to learn how to play guitar, you've got to learn the chords, you've got to learn notes, you want to learn jujitsu, you've got to learn an arm lock, you've got to, you want to learn how to play basketball, you've got to learn how to dribble. You couldn't expect, why would anybody expect that they could walk out on a basketball court without ever practicing and be good at it? Now, what, now, let me ask you this. Have you ever watched

• 1:37:42Jocko Willink?

  uh, some, like a skateboarder, or a BMX guy, or a mountain biker, or a surfer and been like, oh, that looks, you, you think in your weird mind that you could actually do what they're doing, right?

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  Not the skateboarding guys, but yeah, the other guys.

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, skateboarding guys are crazy. But, but you think, oh, like, oh, I, I can see myself doing that. So I think people look at leadership sometimes and there's things that are happening, oh yeah, I would do the same thing or whatever. It, it looks easier than it is.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  And so you have to be careful of that. And maybe that's why I continue to enjoy reading and learning about it because I see how hard it is. I see every day what a challenge it is for people. So if I can take one thing away from a book that I can use as a tool to help someone else maneuver through a challenging leadership situation, I, I, I love it. I love adding that capability.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense to me.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  So, speaking of learning and improving and getting better, uh, what other suggestions might you have for us?

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:38:52Jocko Willink?

  Mister?

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, kinda like me.

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  Echo, Zane, Charles.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  Kinda like me saying, hey, exercise will help improve every other aspect of your life.

• 1:39:03Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Unlike any other thing or whatever.

• 1:39:05Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  You know that thing? Sure, I'll say it over and over again, whatever.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Helps reinforce it. Hopefully, hopefully it doesn't become noise.

• 1:39:14Jocko Willink?

  I'll give you some credit right now for taking what I just said, which is a was a pretty meaningful moment. And what you just said is you're gonna continue to read the same stuff over and over again on the support section of the podcast.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  What's good for the goose is good for the other guy. You understand what I'm saying? Anyway, we're working out. That's gonna improve your life. Health, fitness.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  What if you just tried to say things in a different way sometime? Like maybe people would be more interested in it.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  It's possible. It's possible. Nonetheless, we are still working out regardless of how I say it. I worked out today, did squats. What?

• 1:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, good job. I had pull-ups today.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  By the way, we're in the process of the, let's call it the new garage gym of justice. We are probably two months out, maybe right now. So we're getting there.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If anybody, if anybody, you know, maybe a year and a half ago, there was a transition where I was, I moved into a temporary holding facility for myself. And that meant a temporary workout facility in my home. And that was all a strategic move to long-term have a much better sort of

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  facility. Yes. So we're getting there. I'm looking forward to unveiling that. I might even do, you know, the, um, I'll get people that say, hey, show us your gym.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  Gym tour.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Like gym tour. I'll tell you what, I will, when I, when the new gym is complete, or at least like when it's kind of getting close, we'll do a little, we'll do a little, um, facility tour.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you're thinking?

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  So what are you gonna do? Or you're saying a month or two months ish?

• 1:41:06Jocko Willink?

  Two months ish, maybe, maybe three, maybe two and a half. No, maybe two. We should be, we're getting there. We're getting close.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  There you go. So improvements across the board, straight up. Facilities, personal health, all that stuff.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're looking for.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  So what we're looking for is what we're going for. Anyway, we've got supplements for you if you need them, which you know, need, you know, that's a spectrum. But this thing will hundred percent help you.

• 1:41:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and said, say that you pro, you need, you need to get joint warfare and krill oil for sure.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm not sure of it. Well, if you're listening to this podcast, which means you're getting after it, right? Okay. If you're not listening to this, which we don't care. You're, then you don't need it, right?

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:41:50Jocko Willink?

  You legitimately don't because you're like on your own program. You're probably watching TV. You don't need joint warfare and super krill. If you're to, to, to strengthen your thumb to press the remote control.

• 1:42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit different.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you, you can just get whatever, more, more french fries, more Cheetos. That's what you can get. If you're in the game, you may want to get super krill. You may want, yeah, you should, you need to get super krill. You need to get joint warfare. And the reason I say need is because if you don't take it, you have issues.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  You will have issues.

• 1:42:22Jocko Willink?

  That's it. Don't just get, get away from the issues.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like one of those things like you ever play, uh, you played soccer before, right? Soccer, baseball, football, right? You, you wear a certain kind of shoes called cleats. Really cleats. So when you, when you go play, when you suit up, you put on your cleats. You don't put on tennis shoes. I mean, look, is it possible to put on tennis shoes? Do you need cleat? That's the thing. Do you need cleats? Depends on what you mean by need, right? Exactly. And that's exactly what I'm saying. So.

• 1:42:53Jocko Willink?

  Clarification accepted.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Look, if you want to stay on this path and not worry about your joints giving out on you and they can, oh, they can get, give out on you for sure. They can bother you, ache. They can ache when you're not even exercising straight up. They can. But if you don't want to worry about that kind of stuff, that's when you take the joint warfare and the super krill oil. Hundred percent. Just take it every day like I do every single day so far since our last talk anyway.

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  Glad you've tightened it up.

• 1:43:20Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Also. Discipline and discipline go kind of the same thing, just different delivery.

• 1:43:27Jocko Willink?

  Different modalities of delivery.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Big time. So, yeah. Oh, you know, the powder, there's a powder, there's a pill, there's the energy drink. I'm just calling it energy drink. Healthy energy drink.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Even though it's barely related to the common, what's commonly considered an energy drink. Cause when I think of energy drink, I think, oh, massive amount of sugar, massive amount of caffeine, massive amount of chemicals.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  To keep it from going, getting spoiled.

• 1:43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what I think of when I think of an energy drink and I think of a pink, orange and yellow can that it's in.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, silver, maybe.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I think of. So that's an energy drink. Now it is very strange to say that what we have, which has no sugar, it's sweetened with monk fruit. It's got 95 milligrams of caffeine. So it's got caffeine in it, but that's the same as a cup of coffee. It's not some crazy amount that gets you all psycho jittery and you have a big crash from. And there's no preservatives in it because we pasteurize it. So what we're really talking about are two totally different things. One of them has a bunch of bad stuff in it. The other one has a bunch of good stuff in it.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  So, so why are they both called energy drinks? I'm not a hundred percent sure. One of them should be called an energy drink. The other one should be called poison.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Next question.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  Not to get too analytical on here, but I think I know why. Because you and you know, some of us, we think of energy drinks, not as what the whole energy drink. We just think of the stigma, not just the stigma, but the stigma is a very significant portion of it. And rightly so, by the way, you put some, if there's some stuff that's straight up bad for you, that should mean something.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  That's what I think. So, you know, you think about those kinds of things, or at least so like I said, but.

• 1:45:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, you know, they're like hippie people that will say like, oh, that's bad energy.

• 1:45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's different.

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  So now I'm kind of feeling like there's such a thing as like bad energy drinks. That drink has bad energy. We got the good energy.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  And that, to me, that's in play too. I think so. So, you know, if you consider the stigma of energy drinks and it's not an unfair stigma. It's not, it's fair.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  It's accurate.

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Fair stigma. If you consider that and you associate it with the word energy drink, yes, when you look at Jaco, Discipline Go, Citrus Psycho, Jaco, all these flavors, if you look at that,

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  then yeah, they're not going to be very similar in that way. Cause we don't have the stigma over here.

• 1:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  No stigma, energy drink without the stigma, how about that?

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  There you go, boom, look at that one on, go to Jaco Fuel.com.

• 1:46:13Jocko Willink?

  You like that one?

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, Jaco Fuel.com, that's where you can get it, that's, that's part of Origin Main. Yeah. Dot com, it's all kind of the same deal. You can also get them at Wawa, the energy drinks, the stigma, the unstigma, stigmaless, energy drink at Wawa and the Vitamin Shoppe as well. Also Molk.

• 1:46:33Jocko Willink?

  Molk.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  Don't forget about Molk.

• 1:46:35Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin D3, Cold War, Jaco White Tea. I'm actually drinking some of that white tea right now, drinking some of that. And I'm drinking a Discipline Go, so I'm kind of getting after it. Vitamin Shoppe, Wawa and OriginMaine.com. Also got some, we, we talked about jujitsu a little bit today. Fortunately, let's say it was not required to be put into use in Guadalcanal.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:46:56Jocko Willink?

  Right? Luckily, we stayed, we had our bayonet, we were able to just stab people in the neck and didn't have to choke them. But had it been required, we're happy that people were trained in jujitsu.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:47:07Jocko Willink?

  And we, even if we don't have to use it, even if you don't have to use it ever in your life, in a real situation, believe me, you're going to want to have it. So train some jujitsu and when you train jujitsu, you're going to want a gi to train in. You're going to want a rash guard to train in and you're going to want those things to be made in America. And you're also going to want them, like, you're going to want the best possible ones that you could get because you're kind of making a commitment in your life to jujitsu. You're going to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know what? We're going to do this. We're going to gain a skill that will help me in all aspects of my life.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Do you ever, or you know how like you look at yourself and you kinda have like a little bit of an identity?

• 1:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Varying levels of identity, whatever. Do you, part of that identity, are you like a jujitsu person?

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  For me, me?

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:58Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I would say yes.

• 1:48:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but see how you just said, I would say yes, some, cause it's a spectrum for sure and not one, and one is not better than the other, by the way.

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, the reason I said that is because, and we've talked about this on the podcast, if it wasn't, here's why, I actually, it's just a yes, because if it wasn't for jujitsu, I wouldn't have be where I am, because I wouldn't have been able to figure out a bunch of stuff.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:48:23Jocko Willink?

  Like jujitsu, for me, the physical part, the knowing how to submit people, or whatever, that is, as far as what I got from jujitsu, this is gonna sound crazy, that part, the actual being able to fight and beat people up, of all the beneficial things I got from jujitsu, that part is 20%. The 80% benefit that I got from jujitsu was an understanding of the world.

• 1:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Now, it ties into combat, it ties into leadership, and that, those things also participated in, in providing me with that 80%. But the jujitsu was the factor that allowed me to see it.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:04Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, that makes sense. I, I think I would agree with that.

• 1:49:08Jocko Willink?

  So yes, I'm a jujitsu person.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, uh, yeah, I feel like if I, if I look, my identity, I'm not, not a jujitsu person, but I'm not like, I'm a jujitsu person, you know, like if I, if you meet someone, someone's not gonna be like, oh yeah, that's a jujitsu guy, that's not the first thing they're gonna say.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  You're not known as a jujitsu guy.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:29Jocko Willink?

  But people know you do jujitsu. Everybody knows you do jujitsu, even though they also.

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  They also know you do other things.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Other things, yeah, that are significant. I think that's why you, when I look at you, I don't see, okay, jujitsu guy, even though you're a straight up jujitsu guy.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say like I.

• 1:49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, not a jujitsu, but then because you have all these other things that you have like straight up, like for lack of a better term, significant prowess like in, you know?

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  I don't know about all that. I don't have significant prowess in jujitsu even. I'm still working on that one.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  What is prowess really?

• 1:50:02Jocko Willink?

  Like doing good at?

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there you go. Okay.

• 1:50:04Jocko Willink?

  Were you worried?

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think that, yeah, did I've totally missed these. Anyway, I think that might be the first time I've ever said that out loud. The word prowess, nonetheless, nonetheless.

• 1:50:14Jocko Willink?

  That discipline go kicking in, getting them brain cells working.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Whether you wanna be a jujitsu person or just have jujitsu be part of your life.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  You should definitely make it part of your life. You're gonna need a gi, you're gonna need rash guards. Go to originmaine.com and unfortunately for all of us, we can't just walk around in our gees.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  Unfortunately.

• 1:50:36Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately. So you gotta get other clothing. You can also get that other clothing at originmaine.com. Jeans, American made boots, American made jeans with American denim rivets that are from America. Oh, guess what? Everything I'm talking about, without compromise, made in America.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  Even the brass buttons.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Even the brass, the brass what?

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  Buttons.

• 1:51:00Jocko Willink?

  The brass buttons.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Bruh, those are significant. Try look at them. They're like.

• 1:51:04Jocko Willink?

  They're legit.

• 1:51:05Speaker 01

  Kinda legit.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  I mentioned the rivets. I didn't mention the brass buttons.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  Originmaine.com. You're good.

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Also, speaking of other clothing, Jaco's store, it's called Jaco's store. That's where you can get t-shirts, hoodies, hats, all discipline equals freedom. Good. All this stuff to represent while you're on the path.

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Heartburn jamming me up.

• 1:51:31Jocko Willink?

  Got that covid cough, homie.

• 1:51:32Speaker 01

  See, I knew you were gonna say that. Anyway, also on the T shirt, also on Jaco's store.

• 1:51:41Jocko Willink?

  I was, I, we, I know we're, we're over covid now, but when, when, when I had covid and then you had covid, I was a little bit happy because I was like, cool, we can still record podcasts. We can't have any guests, but at least we can still go in there and record. No factor.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, this is true.

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  Little bit happy, you know, no offense, like, you know.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Covid plus covid doesn't equal more. It cancels itself out, right? Kind of thing. Alright, well, I'm clear. We're all clear. Nonetheless, Jaco's store, also on Jaco's store, we have a T-shirt club. Working title. T-shirt club. Get a T-shirt every month. Different, varying levels of layers on these T-shirts. They're inside, they're, they're, they're Easter eggs in the shirts, in the, not literal Easter eggs, but Easter eggs, the expression Easter eggs, stuff that like, if you listen, you kind of know, you know. Anyway, interesting shirts. You get one every month. It's a cool club. Check it out if you want. Jaco's store dot com. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. I think it's important. Varying levels of importance.

• 1:52:44Jocko Willink?

  At Jaco's store, can't you also just get rash cards and just like a T-shirt, like this T-shirt that I'm wearing? Hardcore Ricondos?

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Yes, you can. Fully.

• 1:52:51Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you don't have to like go on there and join the club.

• 1:52:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no, not at all. That's an optional club right there that we made. It's a good club. I mean, people have seemed to like it so far.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  Maybe if anyone, look, let's face it, Echo tried to come up with like, hey, we'll just call it the T-shirt club. Okay, oh, that's good. If anyone can come up with something better than that, which I'm sure most people can, please let Echo know that you have a better name, you know, even if it was called like the Picklehead Club or whatever, people would be like a little bit more into it.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I don't know what the Picklehead Club, but I, I do agree. I see what you're saying and I, I, I can't disagree on that one.

• 1:53:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, alright, cool.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  We'll bring the people together. Also, yeah, so subscribe if you haven't already and leave a review if you're in the mood. And go ahead, be creative with a review if you want. It's good. These are all, all good things. Also, got some other podcasts.

• 1:53:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep, we got some other podcasts, Jaco Unraveling Podcast, we got the Grounded Podcast, we got the Warrior Kid Podcast, and also if you wanna, if you wanna join and support, kind of at the next level, you can go to JacoUnderground.com where we have a sovereign, a sovereign virtual land that we rule, and that cannot be taken away from us, no matter what happens. So if you wanna support that, we got some extra things going on there, we got some, we got some alternative podcasts that we're doing, we got little Q and A,

• 1:54:27Jocko Willink?

  if you're in there, you can go to JacoUnderground.com and join that, so we can connect. Check it out. And you can also check out YouTube videos that Echo Charles makes, and you can give him some feedback on, in the comment sections. I saw a comment the other day that said, "Does Jaco read these comments?" Here's your answer, yes, I read the comments. The reason I read the comments is so I can attempt to give Echo Charles feedback about the level of explosions, fires, smoke, tanks, eagles, aircraft, that he puts in the videos.

• 1:55:07Speaker 01

  Yes. Explosions are kinda like banana cream pie. You're not gonna eat banana cream pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You just have one piece of banana cream pie after dinner, maybe. See?

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, see, I see, you understand. I see the look on your face, ready, you understand. I'm doing, I'm avoiding carrying on with this topic. Subscribe to, subscribe to the YouTube channel called Jocko Podcast.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Boom, there you go. Good. Also, Psychological Warfare, um, look into that one. If you're having moments of weakness, look into this. Psychological Warfare is an album with tracks. Jaco, each track is Jaco telling you, explaining to you, the methodology, the tactic to get past that moment of weakness. Easy, with ease, 100% accurate, and-

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  Effective 100%. That's what psychological or fear is. You can get that wherever you get MP3s.

• 1:56:08Jocko Willink?

  You can get some visual reminders of the path by going to flip side, flip side canvas.com Dakota Myers company, awesome company, makes really cool stuff to hang on your walls. Got a bunch of books, bunch of books, leadership, strategy and tactics field manual. I talked about it today about face, David Hackworth, which I wrote a forward to decode the evaluation of protocols, the discipline equals freedom field manual, brand new version out. Way the warrior kid for field manual. Get it.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  We have the warrior kid, one, two, and three. That's the whole series. Mikey and the dragons, extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Also have echelon front leadership consultancy, where we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that.

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  We have EF online where we do leadership consulting, live, online. We have leadership courses. So if you want to get deeper into the principles that we talk about here, you can go into that online training program and improve your leadership skills. Go to EF online.com. I'm on there all the time. So is the rest of the echelon front team. We have the muster coming up in Phoenix, March three and four, Orlando, May 25th and 26th, Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. Those are our 2021 dates. Go to extremeownership.com. If you want to go to that EF Overwatch, if you need executive leadership inside your company, go to EFoverwatch.com. And if you want to help

• 1:57:40Jocko Willink?

  service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, then check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, then go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org.

• 1:57:57Jocko Willink?

  And if you didn't get enough of my belligerent beliefs,

• 1:58:03Jocko Willink?

  or you need more of Echo's speculative speculations, then you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, which just Echo, I'm talking about what you call

• 1:58:17Jocko Willink?

  the Gram, and on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. I'm also on Parler now, by the way. Okay. A new platform. And I am at Jocko Willink.

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  And thanks to all the branches of service, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard. Thank you for fighting battles out there so that we don't have to. And thanks to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all first responders. Thank you for providing us protection here at home. And to everyone else out there, look, we heard these lessons before.

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  Remember them.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  You know them. Be disciplined. Take initiative. Train your people.

• 1:59:12Jocko Willink?

  Train your people from your frontline troops to your senior leaders. You want them to take initiative. And practice so you get better. Make sure the team knows the objective. You know these things. Remember these things.

• 1:59:29Jocko Willink?

  Remember these lessons and also remember where these lessons came from.

• 1:59:35Jocko Willink?

  And remember the men who sacrificed everything

• 1:59:41Jocko Willink?

  for us.

• 1:59:44Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.