371: We Are What We Pretend To Be.

Navigating and understanding the game of life... and the game within the game. 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 371 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful of what we pretend to be. There's a little quote from Kurt Vonnegut.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  One of my favorite authors. Ah, look, that's kind of a weird thing to say because I don't have like this big list of favorite authors. Sure. But he's one of the authors that I actually do really like a lot. Kurt Vonnegut, born and raised in Indianapolis, went to Cornell University, got kicked out of ROTC because he had bad grades. And he was a little over the top with his satire in the school newspaper. So that kind of tells you what kind of a dude he was. But then he, he didn't want to get drafted, so he withdrew from college to go get enlisted in the army. 1943, got captured during the Battle of the Bulge. Prisoner of war in Dresden, of course. This is, this, I'm just giving you a basic background if you don't know this stuff.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  While he was a prisoner of war in Dresden, Dresden got firebombed by the Allied forces. 25,000 civilians were killed and the place was just a wasteland. And he had survived, they were being held as prisoners of war in this slaughterhouse and he went into like the meat locker of the slaughterhouse. Which is where the book Slaughterhouse Five comes from. Anyways, he survives the war, becomes a reporter.

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  Wrote a bunch of really good books, very funny, dark humor. Cat's Cradle book, Welcome to the Monkey House, Slaughterhouse Five, which I already talked about. But this quote that he, he gave, which is, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful of what we pretend to be."

• 1:49Jocko Willink?

  It reminds me of this idea that we've been talking about for the last two podcasts. And if you haven't listened to Podcast 369 and 370, then just stop and go listen to those first and then catch up here. But we've been talking about this idea of the game. And there's multiple games and you can go get that information from those other two podcasts. Also kind of reminded me of this idea of Sam Harris and I were talking one time and he said, "You can't pretend to be brave." Because if you're scared and you're like, "Well, I'm really scared, but I'm going to pretend to be brave." Well, and then you go and do brave stuff. Well, you're not just pretending, you're actually brave.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  But we have, so that's kind of along the same lines somewhat as be careful what you're pretending to be because that's what you are. And that's reminded me of what we've been talking about. You have to be careful of what game or what games you play because you can quite possibly become those games. More importantly, the game that you play can become your life. So we did those last two podcasts about this 369 370 and we were getting a bunch of feedback and questions and comments and whatnot. And so I reached out on social media on the interwebs to get some,

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  get some of those questions, get some of that feedback on those two podcasts. And I want to go through those now just because a bunch of people want, you know, we had had some stones we didn't turn over yet, had some angles we hadn't seen. So first one out of the gate from Sarah Armstrong. What's up Sarah Armstrong? She said, "Observation. If your win involves the participation of other people, make sure you are not setting yourself up for disappointment by setting unrealistic expectations for others." Yes, this is true. This is factual. That we did a early podcast where I talked about the fact that I don't have a bunch of high expectations for

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  other people. Yeah. Because if you set other people with a bunch of high expectations, you're counting on them. It's there's a decent chance you're going to get let down. And why do that? Why not take ownership of what's going on yourself? So that's my recommendation. And Sarah Armstrong is right here. We can't, you can't count on others. Look, they can be part of the plan, but you better have a backup and you better, you better not have a single point of failure, be relying on some other human. Because you're, there's a decent chance you're setting yourself up as Sarah says for disappointment. So don't expect too much, if anything, from others. Someone else, next one. This is from, from Bizzle Fitness.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if I'm going to cover all these weird handles. That people have different call signs.

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  Really enjoy these last two. I'd like to hear your thoughts on two related aspects to this. Pitfalls and opportunity costs. That's number one. And two, balancing multiple games. Easy example, the folks that get old and either wish they had worked less or spent more time with their family, or those on other extreme who wish they had done more with their lives. Yep, there you go. So first, for the pitfalls and opportunity costs.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  And as I went through these, we're going to come into, we're going to start hitting into a common theme in a lot of these questions. And that is investment and return on investment. Right? So a pitfall in any game that you play is you can lose.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  So when you get on the field or you engage in a game, there's a chance you're going to lose. So what that means is you have to be careful with what you invest into that game. And you have to hedge your bets and you have to have contingency plans. Now, what's interesting about this is like the whole idea of like 100% commitment, which is sort of a,

• 6:00Jocko Willink?

  like, do you hear this about SEAL training? Like you have to have no backup plan or officer and a gentleman, you know, officer gentleman?

• 6:08Speaker 01

  I got no place to go. I got no place. I got nothing else.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of a positive thing. Like I have no backup plan. Oh, I'm going to start a business and I'm just, I'm putting everything, every out, every penny I have into it. And if it fails, I'm just done. I'm going to be in the streets, right? And therefore I'm going to go extra hard to make it work.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  If you have to do that to yourself psychologically, okay.

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  If you don't have to do that to yourself psychologically, and you can set yourself up to have a backup plan, if your primary plan, like SEAL training, there's a decent chance that you're not gonna make it through it. Cause you got hurt, cause you got injured, cause you got sick, cause you didn't, you thought you were tougher than you are and you quit. All those things happen, they happen to 80% of the people that go there. So having a backup plan, as long as you don't use that as you're out. Now, look, if you're gonna use that as you're out, yeah, it's gonna let you down. If you're gonna work hard in your business, but at the end of the day, you're like, you know what? I can still just go back to my old job and I still have my house, so I'm just gonna go back to my old job and go move back and just continue on. As opposed to being like, no, I'm gonna gut through it, cause I have no, nowhere else to go. You can see the dichotomy there.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  I would hope that you have the internal fortitude to push on and not just hit the escape hatch when it comes up, right? What did I hear? Some weird experiment? I forget where I heard it. Like they were drowning, was this at Jordan Peterson the other night? They would drown, if you take a chicken or they, or a rabbit or something, and they would drown it. And

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  they would hold it, they would make it tread water, that's what it was. They would make a rabbit tread water. And I, I heard this on a podcast or something. I think, I think, anyways, I heard it on a podcast. You take the, the rabbit and you put it in the water, or a rat, I think it was a rat. You put in the rat in the water, and it can tread water, and it treads water, trying to live, trying to live, trying to live. And then right as it goes under, for the last time, you pull it out of the water.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  And that takes about 15 minutes.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  And then if you do it with those same rats again, they'll tread water for like, it was something like 60 hours. Because they think at any minute, they're gonna get pulled out of the water. But if you take a fresh rat, it's still only gonna make it 15 minutes.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  So if you, if you have the type of personality where you're just gonna give up and go back to the easy way, then I get it. You know, like, don't, maybe you don't have a, a backup plan, cause you wanna trap yourself where you have to keep going forward.

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  That's a real thing, man. That's a real thing.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Wait, so that rat's experiment, what did that, what was that conclusion there that like?

• 9:04Jocko Willink?

  The conclusion what?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  If you got some hope, you're just gonna hang on for till, yeah.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  Hope will make you hang on. Hope will make you hang on.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so-

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  But it totally makes sense, right?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and almost at the same time, which is like equally, if not more significant, the lack of hope will make you just be like, hey, I'm kinda done.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  Ten minutes, bro. There ain't no getting out of this.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you literally have plenty of energy left to stick it out for, you know, however long, but the lack of hope just pushes you right under.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So, uh, to be honest with you, my, my lean is towards like, yeah, you should have contingency plans. You should have backup plans. You should hedge your bets. You should say, oh yeah, I'm gonna try this new business, but I'm not gonna quit my old job until I've got it up and running. Now, there's probably a subset of people that can't do that, and they're like the rat that just is gonna give up after fifteen minutes. You know what I mean? And they're just done.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't you feel that like, if you do, if you draw the parallel, like where someone, I don't know, what are you, what were you talking about, like, starting a business?

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Starting a business. Oh yeah, I wanna leave my job, I'm gonna start a new business.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so basically, the equivalent, kind of, I guess, in a way, is, yeah, you, you start your new business, you buy the website, it's the first step.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  Get that URL.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Get the URL. And then, you know, you start it in whatever way, but you hit a roadblock so hardcore that you don't have that hope. You do literally don't see it going anywhere. Like, literally in your mind. Regardless of how it would, you know, like, that'll, that'll kinda do the same thing. It's like, oh yeah, just drowned. Just, I'm just gonna drown myself because I lost the hope, you know? Rather than, oh, this is just getting really hard, or, you know, this obstacle is like, it's big and I don't have the energy, you know? It's more about, oh yeah, I don't see it going anywhere.

• 10:45Jocko Willink?

  If you already quit your other job, then maybe that pushes you, right? Maybe you have, you, you have no other choice. It's a little bit different, because it's like you have no other choice. It's not about hope anymore. It's like you have to hang on.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  What else are you gonna do?

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, I get it. That is a pitfall, is the pitfall of all these different games, is if you play these games, you can lose. And that means you need to, in my opinion- Don't over invest. This is why we have the iterative decision making program process. This is why we make little steps. We don't just go, you know what? I want to start my own business, quit my job, give up my health insurance for my family. Can't pay the rent next month, whatever, but I'm going to start my new, I'm selling widgets. We're going to go for it.

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  And you're going to work hard to sell those widgets because you've got a family to feed and you want to pay your mortgage. But guess what? There's a chance that that thing just was a bad plan and no one wants your stupid widgets. And now you're out of a job. You don't have health insurance for your kids. So why not take iterative steps?

• 11:43Jocko Willink?

  The other thing is the opportunity cost for sure.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  How much can you invest in winning a game, right? How much can you actually afford? What? And then what's the ROI? When you're playing this game instead of that game, what's the ROI on the game that you choose? And is it worth it? What if you win that game? What if you lose that game? You have to track risk and you have to track ROI.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  There, this is stuff that you need to think about. You need to think about the risk in the game. And what the ROI is, should you win? And then what the cost is, should you lose? And this is to do with anything. Look, we're talking about the game. This is anything, anything that you are planning on doing. You're planning on getting in a relationship? Okay, cool. What's the ROI? What's the risk? Oh, she comes from a great background. She's got a squared away education. She comes from a stable family. She's got a very even temperament. Okay, cool. That sounds pretty positive. When you start seeing red flags in there. Now you know, she starts saying, okay, well, there's some risk here. There's some risk there.

• 12:51Jocko Willink?

  So think about those things.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  And make logical decisions. But when you make logical decisions, you still have to put emotions into the calculus. Because if you're doing, if you're, if you're going to start this new business and you're totally passionate about it and you love it. And you might make less money, but you're, you love doing it. That might be better than you, you're making more money, but you hate your freaking life. You hate your job 12 hours a day. You hate. So you have to take emotions and put them into the calculus.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. The other question there was how to balance multiple games that we're all playing. We'll prioritize and execute, right? And again, what's the ROI and the risk per game in all these different games? There's some games that you really have to pay attention to.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  What do you want? What do you actually want?

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  What is actually going to give you fulfillment? And you can't lie to yourself because there's people that lie to themselves about what's going to make them happy.

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  About what is going to give them fulfillment. And if you lie to yourself throughout your life, that's when you end up on your deathbed to again, going back to bizzy fitness's question. That's when you go to your deathbed and you're like, man, I didn't care about all this money. Or man, I didn't care about what, you know, this

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  going up the chain of command in some, in the military or in some company or getting, you know, I invested all my time into jujitsu. And like, I knew I wasn't going to be a champion. I wasted all, whatever. I don't know what it is. Seems like a hard one.

• 14:41Jocko Willink?

  But you know, you know what I'm saying?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  There's people that, there's people that reach a point in jujitsu where they're like, oh, you know, I, I don't want to do this anymore.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  That happens.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, fully. And I guess with jujitsu, I felt like, and there's, I went through mental stuff like that too, where I felt like the whole reason that I liked jujitsu is like to be able to get into a competition, like in almost like, like a combat sport and win. It made me feel good about myself, kind of a thing. And then after like a few, you know, like years of

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles with the psychological reveal.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  But after years of competing, and then when I got into like my career and then eventually kind of got married or whatever. I was like, wait.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  Kind of got married?

• 15:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna give you a chance to say that correctly. So that we don't get any grief from

• 15:33Speaker 01

  I was gonna say

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  the person that you kinda got married to.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, I kinda got other responsibilities, so to speak, even though like jujitsu is a responsibility. That's why I say kinda. Anyway, you get married, start having like kids and stuff. It puts it into perspective like, hey, sure, I'm always gonna go to jujitsu, but why don't I feel the same way? And I'm like, oh, wait, it puts into perspective, there are more important things than winning jujitsu tournaments.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  So you looked at the ROI of, you know, training seven days a week, three hours a day. And you were, and the ROI of investing time and effort into your family and the ROI of investing time and effort into your career. And this is exactly what we're talking about. You had to prioritize and execute. You know what? Seven days a week, three hours a day? And my ROI on that is I'll feel good about a competition.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:25Jocko Willink?

  But the ROI of investing in my career is I can get money, I can get stability, I can take care of my family. And by the way, that's the other thing, my family, there's the ROI of, you know, raising my kids and the smile on my wife's face, all those things. And you weigh those out and you were honest with yourself and you prioritize those things in the correct way. So that when you're on your deathbed, you're not like, man, I really wish I would have trained jujitsu more. Or you're like, boy, I'm glad I won that tournament.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, even though my wife left me and my kids don't know me, I'm really happy I won that tournament and I got a coral belt in jujitsu when I was 68.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was, that was kind of the thought really where it

• 17:09Jocko Willink?

  You went through this, you went through this with your, with, with these things in your life. You actually did this protocol and we talked about this, we talked about that being honest with yourself. That was sort of the underlying theme of, I think, 370, the, the last one was like, you have to be honest with yourself about these games. And in this podcast, as I read through these questions, the specific thing is you need to be honest to yourself about the investment you're willing to make and what the return is. And is it worth it? And is it what you really want?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause if it's not.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've seen this happen with fighters too, like fighters reach a certain point where they say, you know what? I mean, like I just, um, I don't want to do eight week camps where I can't see my family and God or whatever. Happens with people in the military. They're like, you know what? I've done my 10 years. I'm not committed to the job anymore. I don't want to do it anymore. And they get out and they move on to something else. The ROI, they have to be honest with themselves. I've also seen people lie to themselves.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:14Jocko Willink?

  About these types of things. And by the time they get out of the military, they realize that they were pursuing something because they were basically caught in that ecosystem. We talked about that on one of the other podcasts.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  It's like, man, that's so true.

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  The other thing that weighs into this, like, just to, just to kind of get precise on what you just said, you knew you actually weren't going to be better than everyone at jujitsu. You weren't, you weren't going to be the world champion.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:39Jocko Willink?

  You were going to be good. You're going to be good at a particular, you'd be in the top three or five in, in a gym. You weren't going to be the number one, even in that particular gym. And you definitely weren't going to be number one in the state of California, or certainly not in the world. If you would have had that maybe potential, now all of a sudden the ROI becomes, oh, it's a little better ROI. I can actually be a champion. I can actually start a school. I can have whatever. You can make a living from it. Now there's other things that come out of it. You, you weren't in that situation.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So, and that's a good point because you don't really, well, then again, I don't know. I can only speak for myself, but I didn't really think about that until I got my eyes kind of opened where I'm like, oh, wait, there's all this other stuff that I can be like, kind of, I could see a path to legitimate success over here, but then in jujitsu, if I even like, think about it like that, which I never really did. I just was like, I liked training and winning and then doing the tournament or whatever. But then if I look at like a more, a long-term path, you're right. I was like, ah, I'm not even close to these, like the real dudes, you know? So I'm like, oh, why would I do this?

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  Nice thing about having Dean Lister in the gym where you're like, bro, this guy. And Dean Lister, you know, he was number one in the world at certain times, but a lot of times he's getting beat by other guys. So you're thinking, well, this guy's destroying me. So where am I? I'm going to be like, Third or fourth or fifth in my gym.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And keep in mind, I'm in my thirties at this time. Let's face it, you know, but the point is I was, I didn't, my eyes weren't even open to that. It was just like, it was part habit, part payoff, going to the gym and learning cool stuff or whatever. But will you, just like how you said, that ecosystem, you get blinded by just that ecosystem. Cause you're just in it, you know? And then so other things opened my eyes or whatever. And then you can see, you know.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  For me, the jiu jitsu is just a, the ROI on jiu jitsu is the personal, like the good feeling when I get done training.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:29Jocko Willink?

  And especially when I kind of go to war, like when I'm having wars on the mat. It feels good, get done, like you just know you pushed. You, you got tapped, you tapped, whatever, it doesn't matter, but you, you, you, you struggled, you went to war. In, in, in that arena.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  That makes sense. BJ Penn actually said on this podcast, it's called Mind Pump, he was on this podcast. He was a, he was like, I, I train for my mental health. And I was like, oh, that's so true. Because really that's essentially what you said. It's like, you go in, it's like, it's therapy in so many different ways. You, it's the kind, it's so good where like just the activity. And I found that even when I go and I don't have hard training, or I do have hard training, to me, it's all the same. At the end, I mean, look, if you have a bunch of super duper easy trainings in a, in a row. And you're like, frick, I wish I, okay, there's that. But you go to jiu jitsu, unless you get injured, which I had before. But if, unless you get injured, you go home, you can feel better.

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Even if you really didn't feel like going, which is a lot of the time. But if you get yourself, it's like any workout, you know? But jiu jitsu has those extra elements of like, I don't know, something that like fulfills you or whatever.

• 21:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, my, they made that, uh, they made that video at Origin of my daughter talking about it. And she was just like, once she realized how good it made her feel. Mentally, that's when she was like, oh, I can, I should do this all the time. And it happens when you withdraw from it and you're like, well, I don't know, I feel that good. And all of a sudden you do, you're like, oh.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I feel like.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  So the ROI on that level for me, jujitsu, this just, this just, this just devolved into just a pure jujitsu discussion. But it applies to everything. It applies to checking the ROI on the game. Whether that game is you're going to get focused on getting involved in, uh, you know, your, your thing at work, like where's it go? That's someone people get caught up in. They get caught up in like, oh, I'm in this job. I'm in this corporation. And I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it to the next level. I'm making it to the next level. Okay, that's cool. As long as that ROI is real. As long as you're like, oh, if you're like, hey, I'm just doing this because the pay is great and I can take care of my family and I'm going to get promoted and get more money. Okay, cool. Cool. Work hard and that all works out.

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  If you're thinking, oh, I want to, I want people to call me. I want to be the VP. Right? I want to be the EVP.

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

  And then you think that's going to make you feel better. And if it does, cool. That's fine. That's awesome. Like, hey, you rose up. You were in a big company. You were running a big department. You had a lot of responsibility. You're taking care of a bunch of people. That is totally legit. As long as you're telling yourself the truth. If you're lying to yourself, that's when it becomes problematic. That's one thing that's so cool about Echelon Front is I work with so many different people. Like there's people that do, you can name it. And they're totally into it, man. And it's awesome. Like I want, I love to work with people that whatever they're doing, whether they're digging ditches, but they're doing it safely and they're doing, you know, doing huge contracts and it's awesome. They're running big companies. And it's cool. They love doing that stuff. Or they're, you know, making a product or they're providing a service, but they're into it.

• 23:39Jocko Willink?

  They're in the right game.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  And I hope that if you're listening, you can do an honest assessment of yourself and make sure that that game that you're in is the right game for you. And if you're doing something that you say, oh, I don't care about my clients. If you don't care about the people you're, that you're serving, or you're providing service from, that's not a good indicator. If you're working with people you don't really like, or you don't really want to take care of, that's not a good indicator. So be honest with yourself and make sure that the game that you're in from a work perspective is the right game. That's a lot more common problem than I'm into a, you know, jujitsu is an example, but any hobby that you're into. Like you invest a bunch of money into. Archery. You wouldn't invest a bunch of money unless it was unless you liked it unless the ROI was good. Yeah.

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  So the hobbies are a little bit easier to just, I'm not going to do that. Yeah. Actually, the hobbies are the opposite where you should be doing it, but you're not. You, you know, you, you, you know, you should be training jujitsu. You know, you should be lifting weights. You know, you should be running or doing whatever thing it is because you know, it makes you feel good. But you say, ah, you know.

• 24:45Jocko Willink?

  Right? You forget about the ROI. You forget about the return. You only think about the investment. Well, you know, I've got to get up early and do this before I go to work. And that's kind of a pain. You only you focus on the investment. You don't focus on the return. The return is your health. And that's where you should focus. That's why measuring the investment and measuring the return on investment of what you do in the game, whatever game it is, that's why I'm trying to get you to pay attention to that.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  All right. Next one, Carter Royce. I guess Carter Hoist, maybe if he's from Brazil. If everyone on a team has a different overall life game slash goal, how do you work to align these different perspectives into one that benefits the overall team? And this is work, relationships, community. Here's the, here's the cool thing about this. Living well, doing good and helping each other. Generally speaking, helps, helps ourselves as well. It generally, so when you're talking about interacting with other people, whether it's at work, whether it's in your family, whether it's in your community, if you help other people, it's going to help you.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  And if everyone recognizes that, then we're all aligned. So if, if I help Echo, if, if you and I work together, and if you work hard and so you provide a good service to our clients,

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  I benefit. You benefit, I benefit, and we both know that. At Echelon Front, okay, so take Echelon Front, we got a bunch of instructors there. The better each individual instructor does, right? The better JP does, the better Leif does, the better I do, the better Dave does, the better each individual instructor does, providing the service for the client, the better that individual does. And the better Echelon Front does. Because people call back, say, we want JP to come again. Yeah, he's great. We want him to come and do a four day workshop. Like, that's what happens. So guess what? JP makes more money. Echelon Front makes more money. The client gets taken care of. So that's the way it is with most in your family.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your, your kid is, you, you take, you, you get your kid to study. You know, you talk, you explain to them the why they study hard. They get better grades, they get better grades. That's beneficial, not just for you. You'd be like, hey, Mike, it's a straight A student, right? You get to brag, cool. But also your kid gets a better life. They get into a better school, they get a better job. All that stuff happens. The family's doing better because now I don't have to rely, my kid's not relying on me for that, for that, you know, kicking down some, some money because they don't have a good job.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  How does alignment roll into that? Because like, how he's asking, like, everyone has a different overall game and goal.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, what I'm saying is, if you're part of a team, because he's talking about an individual, a team, whether that team is a family, a company. If we, you know, at my family, if I say, hey, listen, we got to do a better job with not spending so much money. We're wasting money on this, we're wasting money on that. People are going buying a cup of coffee that costs $3, it's, it's hurting us. We need to tighten it up. So when I say that to the whole family, the whole family realize, oh, I need to spend less money. Guess what? We end up with more financial security because we're not wasting a bunch of money. And that means we can, you know, get that new roof that we need because our roof is leaking. Like, this is what happens.

• 28:19Jocko Willink?

  So when you're all working together, it's very rare that something that helps the individual doesn't help the team. Right? Because, because then why are you part of, why is there a team? Teams are meant to achieve a goal. Whether that's a business, whether that's a family, whether that's a sports team. You know, if Echo, if you and I are part of the same company and you and I are supposed to make widgets and you make 10 a day and I only make five a day. The fact that you made more than me is actually good for you because you're going to get your bonus. But it's also good for me. I don't want to like undermine you.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  Because then all of a sudden, we're not getting as many of our widgets made and now we don't have as many to sell. And now some other place can come in and get a market share from us and that's a problem.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:14Jocko Willink?

  So for this, when you, when you climb the ladder of alignment, which I talk about a lot at Echelon Front, you and I might be competing to make widgets, right? You, you, you and I are getting a bonus based on how many we make and whoever makes more gets a better bonus. We're competing.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:35Jocko Willink?

  But as soon as we go up one level, up the, up the ladder of alignment. And I say, hey, I don't want to actually like steal some of your parts for your widget. So you can't make as many or so your widgets don't meet the quality.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:50Jocko Willink?

  And now someone out in the marketplace buys it and it doesn't work, right? And now they complain, they put it on Yelp and now our sales go down.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:57Jocko Willink?

  So when you go up and say, hey, look, even though we're competing against each other, so you can make more widgets and still maintain quality. Even though we're competing against each other, if you go up one level, we're actually working together. Because if we provide good widgets and we make a lot of them, there'll be more to sell. We can lower the price a little bit, which means we can sell even more. We can drive some other people out of the market. Like that's what's happening.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  So climb the ladder of alignment a little bit, go to a higher place where it's like, oh, we are on the same team.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I always listen to that when you say climb the ladder of alignment. Cause you know, people, that's like one of the main questions that people ask you in my, when I, I mean, in my experience, they'll be like, hey, what do you do when we're not aligned? And this person has a little separate agendas, right? And so I'm thinking, wait a second. Yeah, that's obviously a common problem. So why is it always that's like, not that simple, but why is it always? Like you always have that same solution and it makes perfect sense. So I'm still thinking, why the hell is it still a problem like that much?

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  Because people mistake agendas for alignment. They, they mistake the fact that you and I are competing to who can make more widgets. They mistake that fact that we're competing and we're, we're actually trying to go against each other with the fact that if you go up a few levels, we're actually both trying to do the same thing and move in the same direction.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I've realized slowly but surely the jam up comes when someone invokes their short-term agenda at the expense of the long-term agenda, even for themselves, by the way.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  And when that happens, so I steal some of your parts.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  And I mess them up and I put them back in your bucket of the widgets you're assembling.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I can look better.

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  So I look better.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  And all someone needs to do is pull me aside and say, hey, Jaco, we got, you know, we saw that, we saw what you did.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  Let me ask you this, Jaco. If, you know, someone buys one of the parts that Echo made, one of the widgets that Echo made, it doesn't work, what's that going to do to our reputation? Now they're going to want, not going to want to buy the ones that you made either. Oh, now we're not selling as many of these things. Oh, now in order to cover our margin, we got to raise our prices. Oh, now that we've raised our prices, the competitor comes in and is looking even better with an even lower price. Oh, we're getting driven. See what I'm saying? All you have to do is pull the thread on it and you realize that. Occasionally, it's so rare, and usually this is what I say, it's so rare that people are actually not aligned.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  Once you go high enough. Look, we can be aligned, even in a SEAL platoon, it's like you have, you have Seth in, in Delta Platoon and Leif in Charlie Platoon. They're, they're competitive against each other. You know, they both want, we only got, you know, seven of the new weapon sites, the new high-speed weapon sites. Leif wants them all. Seth wants them all.

• 32:47Jocko Willink?

  And if they're going to steal them from each other.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  That's bad. But if I say, hey, guys, who's got a mission that more requires these sites? And life's like, well, you know, Seth's doing this. These patrols over in this area that's further ranges. They could probably use them. Okay. As soon as you go up a level. The problem gets solved. Occasionally, very rarely. Echo. Actually wants to start his own widget business. So he's doing things that legitimately are not aligned. He's making parts that are not, he's making widgets that suck. And they're gonna go out in the market, we're gonna have a bad reputation, he's gonna go, I started Echo's widgets and we make the highest quality. So occasionally, you can have people that are truly not aligned. At the top of the alignment ladder of alignment, they're not aligned.

• 33:37Jocko Willink?

  This is what I always ask people. I ask companies like, okay. Who here doesn't want the company to be profitable? No one raises their hands. Who here doesn't want to take care of the people on your team? No one raised your hand. Who here doesn't want to take care of your customer? No one raises their hand. So there, all of a sudden, everyone's aligned. Everybody wants to make money. Everybody wants to take care of their team and everyone wants to take care of the customers. Everyone's aligned. No one goes like, well, I'd actually like to screw over the customers. Or like, hey, I actually, I actually want my team to, to be in a bad, bad position. Or I want the company to lose money. That's not happening. Same thing in war. What do we want to do? Kill bad guys, keep our guys safe and win the war. Okay. Who do, who here wants to get their guys killed? No one. Who here doesn't want to kill the bad guys? No one. Who here wants us to lose? No one. So we're aligned.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  You might be thinking we should attack from this direction. I'm thinking we should attack from a different direction. But. One of us is right, one of us is wrong. It's not that we disagree on what we're trying to achieve. So we're aligned, we just have different ideas. And that's all there is to it. And it's the same thing here when it comes to these various games that we're playing.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that um and JP tells a good story about this. But that that's a good point where it's like, yeah, you might have two different ideas. But once you kind of realize how aligned you really are, you start to be like, wait a second. Let's really hash out who has the better idea, whether it's you or me or whatever. But it puts it into perspective that much more. So and that's what happened to JP, according to his story about you guys, you know, when he came back. You know, he has all these like important missions and all this like big huge impact. He's maybe he comes back and then he has to be like an instructor, which he thought was like not the. It was like a misuse of his his value or whatever.

• 35:12Jocko Willink?

  It was a danger to society. It was a danger to Bud students, I can guarantee you that.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  And then I can.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  Freaking JP in Ramadi.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Angry.

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  As the lead sniper. And then whatever, two weeks later, he's like standing in front of Bud students. That's not a good transitional period for JP to know at 22 years old.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  You realize that's literally when I met JP.

• 35:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Like right when he got back. Yeah, that's when I met him for the first time with.

• 35:37Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you meet him?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  With Kate Nuts at sushi, yeah. He was like. But um, but he makes a great point where he's like, he was so mad. He even admits like, I was so mad. I should be over there doing this, you know, killing back. And he talks to you one time and you're like, hey, that was your mission then. This is your mission now. We're fighting. You're doing this. You're going to train these guys so we the best you possibly, possibly, possibly can. So they can be good enough to go over and we never have to go to free no again. Boom, just like that. Put back into perspective, alignment revealed.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  Alignment revealed. So there you go. There you go, Carter. Hope that helps. Next one, easy money dude.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  Check. How do you identify what games are worth playing or games to avoid? Again, this is this is a study in return on investment. And it's not just return, it's return on investment. So it's what are you going to have to put into this thing? And what can we possibly get out of it? And what are the risks involved? And then you just have to be honest with yourself. Just be honest with yourself. You're looking at some some game. Want to get involved with a girl, want to start a new business, want to get involved in a club. You know, there's like a, you know, Rotary Club or whatever. Want to get involved in that thing. Want to get involved in some volunteer organization, whatever it is. What do you have to put into it? What's the return going to be? And what are the risks involved?

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  And be honest with yourself.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Did you know that Seinfeld had nine episodes and they were like at the top of the charts and then he just stopped?

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean he had nine episodes?

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Or nine episodes, sorry, nine seasons. Yeah. And it was number one and he just stopped and they're like, what the hell? They wanted him. They were gonna pay him crazy amounts of money for a 10th season.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  So why didn't he do it?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Because of this. He identified the game worth playing because he looked back. He said, I'm not married. I have no kids, nothing. All I'm doing is this show, no matter how successful. It was like, that's not worth it anymore as far as my life, the games I'm playing.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Perfect example. He had to look at it. He's got this game. He knows what the investment is. It's his time. It's his effort. And he's putting everything into it and he's already achieved. He's gotten what he, what the return that he's gotten. He's like, you know what? I got enough money. I got enough fame. I got enough credit. You know, street cred from who gives street cred? Comedian's cred or something? I don't know.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Well, it was, it's literally one of the, if not the most successful sitcom of all time. So that's like, that's a big deal to be like, oh, I'm done.

• 38:08Jocko Willink?

  Did you watch that show a lot?

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  Like all of it?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Pretty good?

• 38:14Speaker 01

  I think so, yes. But it relates to like all the little everyday things in life and at like point, it's, yeah, it's pretty good. It's very smart.

• 38:22Jocko Willink?

  I've watched, I've watched probably, I've watched some of them, probably like 20 of them or something like that. But if there's nine seasons, I'm really not even scratching the surface. But that's a great example. He looked at it, measured the ROI and said, okay, cool. I'm done. And there you go. Good, good, uh, good metaphor there. Next one is from that Jake Denham. Denham? Something like that. How did you learn about real estate investing?

• 38:51Jocko Willink?

  A guy told me, a guy, a guy in the SEAL teams that I work for was like, yeah, you know, I bought, I bought houses. And they increased in value over time. I don't know how he said it specifically, but that, but that's basically what he said to me. He probably said something like, you know, I bought this house eight years ago. He's older than me. I bought this house eight years ago for 150 grand. It's worth like 400 grand now. And I must've been like, hmm, like the slow turning like things coming together. And the other thing in this one I did remember, he was like, because he rented these houses out. He's like, someone else is paying my mortgage. And that seemed very smart. And I realized that I was one of those people that was paying someone else's mortgage.

• 39:34Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't like that. So started buying houses, you know, one at a time, buy a house. Soon as I had that house was kind of settled in and then bought another one and just tried to hold on to them. And that's what I did.

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's how I that's how I learned about real estate investing. I took some really simplistic phrases from a dude that was telling me what was up. And just saw the game. I I saw the game. That's, let's bring it back to this, right? I saw that this guy had bought a house for a hundred grand and now it was worth three hundred grand in like a seven year period. But more that seemed cool. More important, I realized that someone else was paying for that house. Yeah. And I realized where I was on the board, on the game board, right? I was paying rent, bro. I was paying for someone else's house. How would you feel if you're like at a bar? And like you're sitting there drinking your beer.

• 40:33Jocko Willink?

  And then the bill comes over and you're signing it and you're signing there's some other go dude, he's having like hors d'oeuvres, he's having. Bottle service. Bottle service and they're like, yeah, you're, here's his bill. You'd be pissed. You wouldn't stand for it. But we stand for that with when it comes to where we live, we basically stand for it. So once I realized where that's a good example of, oh, there's a game. I didn't even know I was part of the game. I didn't know I was part of the game. I thought that's just what was happening. You gave me the bill, I signed it. I didn't know this guy was over here with bottle service. You know, I'm paying for his bottle service. That's what you're doing. You're buying someone a house when you're paying rent. Look, are there times you got a rent? Sure. You go to you take a job, you're in a job for a short period of time. You're only going to be in this city for a year and it's you. You don't know what's going to happen in the market. I'm not saying go run out and buy a house tomorrow.

• 41:17Jocko Willink?

  You need to understand what's happening. But if you know you're going to be somewhere for a longer period of time.

• 41:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you can afford to buy a house, go buy a house.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  So I realized that. That's what realized, that's what made me realize it's one of the earlier games that I checked into. Um, another question from him is how to know when you're playing the wrong game and it's time to quit? Or switch games. Okay. ROI, right? Uh, measure the ROI. What are you getting out of this? If you're gonna get a lot out of it, but it's a lot of effort, okay, well, is it worth the effort? Is it worth the investment? Time, money, leadership capital, whatever the thing is? Family? Is it going to be worth it? Or is it not? And so you, when you figure out the risks and you figure out the investment and you figure out the return, you may or may not get based on those risks. Okay, then you can make a decision.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  We also, now, what's interesting about this question is we're in the game. He's saying you're playing the wrong game. So now what we have to do is we have to do an honest assessment of our trajectory in this game, right? How well am I doing? Am I making progress? You know how now in the UFC, when you watch the UFC, they have the odds? They show the odds after each round.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Oh damn.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so now that's a new thing. I don't know how new it is, but it's a few years old, but like, oh, Echo really did great in that last round against Jaco. His odds of winning now just went up.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Oh damn.

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Jaco just came back and had a great round and plus Echo was like stunned at the end of the round. It looks like he was gonna get knocked out. He got saved by the belt. Oh, Jaco's odds just went up for the last round a lot.

• 43:02Jocko Willink?

  You have to do an assessment and see where you're at, right? And see what is your trajectory of what's happening. It's kinda like what you said you did with your jujitsu career. You're like, okay, I'm 30, whatever, you're 34 years old. I'm the seventh best guy in my gym, which is not bad, but let's face it, we're one gym. Okay, and I'm making progress, but so is everybody else. Okay, where, where am I at? Where am I going with this? Same thing with a job, you know? Okay, I've been at this same job. I've been in this, this position for, for four years. I haven't been promoted in the last three years. I don't have a good relationship with my boss.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  This does not seem like it's a good fit for me. So you've got to do an honest assessment of your trajectory. And

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  make a decision.

• 44:01Jocko Willink?

  One thing that you can do is you can kind of mitigate risk, right? This is a story I've told a few times, but Greg McIntyre.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Sure. Greg Train.

• 44:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Greg Train. At a certain point, Greg's a badass. He's a freaking great wrestler. His jiu-jitsu solid. He's a great athlete. He's a good boxer. And he was kind of, he was, he was starting in the MMA scene. And he had, like, he had real legit potential in MMA. Cause he's a great wrestler, tough as nails, strong for, I mean, he's freaking 150, 155 pounder. He's strong as hell. So Greg Train actually asked me, and this was like, probably 15 or 20 years ago. This is a long time ago.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:43Jocko Willink?

  This is probably 20 years ago. He was like, what do you think I should do? Should I just dedicate my whole life right now to MMA?

• 44:55Jocko Willink?

  Or should I keep training, but also he wanted to get a degree? He wanted to become an x-ray technician. That's what he is, right?

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:02Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, listen, bro. How many hours a day can you train? Legitimately. And I, I said, can you train 16 hours a day? And he said, no. I said, no one can train 16 hours a day. How many? If you really train hard, how many hours a day can you train? Including recovery, like the whole nine yards. He's like, I don't know, maybe four or five, right? That's like training, conditioning, recovery. Maybe you do six, maybe you do six. Okay, you're going to work eight hours a day. You sleep eight hours a day.

• 45:33Jocko Willink?

  That's 16 hours, right? You got plenty of time to train and you can still have a backup to MMA in case you go to wrestling practice tomorrow and blow your knee out, which can happen on any given day. And so he played both games, you know, and, and he, he, you know, he had a good run at MMA. He also ran into some problems that were tough to deal with. And so he mitigated the risk, played more than one game at the same time. And when the MMA thing dried up, guess what? He still had a cool career, making good money, beautiful family, taking care of them, house like the whole nine yards.

• 46:16Jocko Willink?

  So that's a situation where he didn't necessarily quit the other game. But he, he, he mitigated the risk by playing multiple games at the same time.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  So there's this thing called the sunk cost fallacy. It's like.

• 46:33Jocko Willink?

  I got it in one of these questions.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Cause that's a factor. And I'm thinking back to my bouncer days where, you know, I, you know, kinda, you know, I spent a few years there and like, and I remember one time my brother Jade, he goes, he goes, hey, you ever thought about getting another job? And I was offended. I was like, bro, all the stuff I learned, all the friends that I made, all this stuff, like basically all these commitments that I've made over the years and accumulated all these little, you know, results or whatever, kinda kept me in there. Kinda like, hey, if I get it, if I start all over, it's kinda like, what about all that, what I put into?

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  That, given the circumstances.

• 47:08Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, you probably just gave the most shallow example of sunk cost fallacy. Because honestly, yeah, because if you think about it, I mean, what is that really? Like you didn't, you, you, look, you, you made some friends, you had a, moved up the chain where you were now like the shift lead or something like that. Which probably took you six months or something.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  When you get to people that are in legit sunk cost, oh, it's like, oh, I went to, I went to undergrad, I got my pre-law, I went to law school. I did my freaking time as a clerk and went up through the chain of command and now I'm a lawyer. It's been eight years. I've invested $450,000 and I freaking hate it. I hate this job. That sunk cost.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:51Jocko Willink?

  Where they go, dude, do I really walk away from this right now? That's where people have to, that's where the sunk cost makes people stick with the same crappy job that they don't like. For a long period of time, which I recommend definitely watching out for.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Well, you, well, you know, the, the common example of sunk cost is the movie theater one, which is more shallow than mine even.

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  Do you, you already paid for the movie?

• 48:13Speaker 01

  You go to the movie, you go through halfway, three quarters and you're like, I might as well finish it, you know, I'm, I'm here. You know what I'm gonna do? Walk out of the movie? I already paid, you know that, you know, but no, bro, walk out.

• 48:24Jocko Willink?

  I, what I do in a movie sucks. I just go to sleep, bro. I feel so like comfortable sleeping in theaters.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Have you?

• 48:32Jocko Willink?

  When my kids were little, we'd go to see like one of those kids movies.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and look, there's some really good kid, kids movies, but a lot of times they just, they're just not good. Uh, Incredibles.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good.

• 48:44Jocko Willink?

  The Incredibles.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  That was a good one, man.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  Moana. I don't think I made it through that.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Bruh, come on.

• 48:53Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if I made it. There's a lot, a lot of them that.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  There's some cool ones for sure.

• 48:56Jocko Willink?

  So, but most of them going to sleep. I haven't walked out of a lot of movies.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Well, that's different. So like.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  You walked out of a lot of movies?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  I walked out on the one with Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke.

• 49:07Jocko Willink?

  I don't even.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I even forget what it was. I remember he, there's a scene.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  It, it didn't seem like your kind of movie, you know, but, but keep in mind, I think when you walk out of the, like you can't just tell the kids, hey, I'm bored. With this kids movie. So, you know, so of course falling asleep. That's like, hey, that's a good.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of a joke in my family that if like when we, when they would know. I'm just going to sleep. Snore and embarrass them.

• 49:36Jocko Willink?

  So again, this boils back to, we have to pay attention to risk, investment and return on investment. And we have to do an honest assessment. If you're in the game, you gotta check your trajectory honestly. And look, you, Echo looked at his trajectory and said, you know what? I'm kind of a shift lead now. I got these friends. I could, I could get beer, you know, whenever I want. I'm, I'm head of the line privileges at these other clubs. I kind of. Right?

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  But he had to look at a longer term trajectory like, okay, where am I going to be in five years? And all you have to do is meet that one person that's like been been in some position that you're in, but they've been there for seventeen years.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:15Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, oh.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  So there's like one more element involved in that exact thing right there. So, you know, when I started over there at the club, I was twenty three, just turned twenty three. So, you know, you see a guy who's like forty, you're like, oh, well, I'm only twenty, that's like that's two decades from now, you know, like, bruh, I'll be, you know, whatever. You don't even think it's so far ahead. But then when you, uh, after a while you get old, actually, it's not like forty, it's like you see a guy who's thirty. You're like, oh, I'm not gonna beat that. That's like seven years, it's forever. It's like a third of my life, right? Yeah.

• 50:47Jocko Willink?

  What's he doing here?

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and yeah, to be honest, you don't even apply it to yourself because that's just him and too bad. I mean, I guess, cool, up to you, that's your life, you know, whatever. And then you start reaching twenty eight, twenty nine and remember back, wait a second, I was looking at that one thirty and that's next year. So you're like, dang, that's when it hits you. Yeah, for sure.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  It's real, bruh, it's real.

• 51:08Jocko Willink?

  That's when you realized you were, uh, stationary. You were running on a treadmill that wasn't getting you anywhere.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Um, in a certain lane, for sure.

• 51:15Jocko Willink?

  Wrong game.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  I was in the wrong game. But here's the thing though, like, I don't want to paint this picture like he was all shit because to be honest, like, I learned so much, which I didn't even realize, by the way. I learned so much just dealing with people under certain types of circumstances. You're like, ah, you know, like, but yes, like after a while, you kind of hit the wall in that regard where you're like, well, as far as a career, because really, when you reach thirties, that's like, if you're not in it, you're kind of like looking out for one, you know?

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't think that was. Think about opening your own club?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  And then what happened with that?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  It was just thought, you know?

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  It just didn't even, it didn't formulate.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Well, me and Sarah started dating, then, you know, when you have like a girlfriend who has a, well, I don't know. In my case, I had a girlfriend who had like a for real job and she was making like for real money, like adult money. You know, it's like.

• 52:06Jocko Willink?

  What was she doing?

• 52:07Speaker 01

  Property management.

• 52:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, check.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  So you kind of compare it, you know? I was like, yeah, I'm what I'm gonna open a nightclub and be up all night still, you know? And I gotta wake up at like eleven, noon. Meanwhile, you know, I'm like thirty five, forty years old, doing that all the time, like as a routine, I'm like, eh. Which is would be cool, but I just contrasted it to

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is very important that you were able to detach and do an assessment and look at the game of like nightclub ownership and what does that entail? It means I gotta be there. Like you looked at the game and you had a good comparison to look at Sarah's game and be like, oh, look, we're going to be playing two different wildly different games. That's if the Venn diagram doesn't overlap very much. Like we'll see each other for, actually we won't even see each other at night because she comes home, you're at the clubs. You know, that's okay.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, like a couple of nights on me. Yeah.

• 52:55Jocko Willink?

  So you you measured the trajectory, the ROI, the possibilities, and you saw that it wasn't good.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:01Jocko Willink?

  Good job, Echo Charles. Next question is from Levi Mix. I don't know. Levick Mix. He says, how do you play the game and trust that you're able to make competent decisions that are congruent with your growth? For example, I've grown in almost unfathomable ways over the last year, but I still have mindsets from who I previously was when making incompetent choices.

• 53:31Jocko Willink?

  I think what you need to do is take a step back in a beautiful way, and I'm probably going to say this a bunch is

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  when you want to detach and you want to assess what's happening, take a step back, write down what's happening. Write down like when you got to make a decision, write down the pros and cons. That's why pros and cons lists are good. It's not good because you don't know it. It's good because it makes you look at it from a detached perspective. You get to see, you keep it all in your mind, you're in it. When you take, when you write it down, you're like, hey, here's what's good. Here's what's bad. Oh, my gosh, the bad really outweighs the good. Okay, cool. Because you were able to take a step back. So writing things down, when you come up to a decision point, hey, wait a second, let me just, let me just go over. What are the outcomes that I could get from making this decision? How is this going to go? And then

• 54:27Jocko Willink?

  Try and answer those questions without letting your emotions get involved. Again, not, not void of emotions. Put the emotions in the calculus. But don't let that drive the entire decision. And then of course, make iterative decisions and then listen to the feedback. To make a little small decision in the direction that you think is right. And then pay attention to what the feedback is and make sure that it was the right decision. If it's not, then change it.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Do you, and this is kind of a weird hypothetical question for you. Do you, let's say, your thirty, thirty year old self, still in the military, right?

• 55:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, hell yeah. If that thirty year old Jaco saw your Jaco right now and would like watch you and whatever, would, would the thirty year old Jaco be like, oh shit, he's a different person? Or would he be like, okay, he's just like older and wiser?

• 55:18Jocko Willink?

  I think he'd be like, uh, yeah, the, that, oh, I see the conclusion of that idea, the way it developed. I see. Like, it's kind of cool. Like, when I look back at my career in the military. I don't say, you know, from a leadership perspective, here's this horrible thing that I did, and it didn't work. Usually, I'm like, hey, here's what I did. And this is why I did it. And it still makes sense. And that goes back to when I was thirty years old. Now, there's things where I go, ah, you know what, could have done that better. But I can see that the trajectory of the way I was thinking was just not fully formulated yet. But I wasn't doing anything that was like one eighty out.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, it was like, oh, yeah, I really hadn't, I really hadn't quite gotten to this conclusion yet.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:05Jocko Willink?

  Or I hadn't evolved that thought pattern yet, but it was going in the right direction. So I think if my thirty year old self would go, oh, yeah, I can see where that, where you got that from.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  Something along those lines.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Cause I make, I'm kind of, and I'm sure it's like, you know, the slow burn of you changing in whatever way you changed since, even before, you know, back, back in the day when we were like training, I was competing and you were, to me, it feels like you're the same person, like literally same talk trash person, except now you talk about leadership too, you know, like aside, but.

• 56:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what's funny is when you and I were training, I was talking about leadership, just not to you.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  Like, I mean, I was already, you know, that's, that's what I was doing.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Do you know, and I think I told you this. Actually, you already know this because you were part of it. The first video I made for money was with you. Actually, the first like five videos, I mean, money was it. But um, you were talking about leadership to some teachers. It was like we were making this DVD or something. And it was for teachers and I so I came across that, all those files. And I was listening to it and it's all like underdeveloped Echelon Front stuff.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  It's so funny. You're all young.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  But anyway, my point is, yeah, like you, it doesn't seem like you changed at all.

• 57:21Jocko Willink?

  No, and like the principles that we talk about, like when you're talking about that, those principles are the same. The same thing. Um, there's not been, there, there might be like I have, might have a better way of explaining something. Showing a different angle for sure.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Your way, you are actually are a lot different. It just doesn't seem, it doesn't feel like it to me, like day to day. But yeah, if I were to, if you were to like rewind and even watching those videos, I'm like, oh, this is like young Jaco. But you're still the same Jaco, but you changed a lot, but it's not like I'm comparing it to myself like when I was like 25 or something. Bro, my 25 year old self would barely recognize me now.

• 58:00Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's true. I think with everybody and if you like my 25 year old self was definitely wild. Like was a little bit out of control and was uh, kind of a maniac. And I remember, I remember when we were on with uh, with uh, Jim Conkle and Charlie Plum and they were like talking, these guys are like just, I don't want to use the word saintly, but kind of saintly, like heroic dudes.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:28Jocko Willink?

  And they were kind of like throwing me in, you know, with this sort of uh, elevated kind of virtue. And I was like, hey, guys, I just want to make sure like, I was a maniac when I was younger. And so let's not get too crazy with that stuff.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  I remember that.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  But uh, but yeah, I mean, the, the principles and also, you know, you explain something and then you explain it again. And you see, oh, that was a little bit better. So you get better at explaining stuff over time, especially going from explaining stuff to guys in the teams where you're just using pure. Military examples and then as I work with more and more companies like, oh, here's another civilian example. Here's another business example. Here's a family example. And you start to be able to be able to tap into these other ways of explaining things that are that are easier for some people to understand.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Makes sense, yeah.

• 59:24Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. Uh, next one. DDeGarmo4. Thoughts on how your concept of the game matches and or contradicts Simon Sinek's finite or infinite game concept? And that's, that's a good question, obviously, using the term game. And there's gonna be, let's see where that ends up. And, and one thing that's interesting about this is that idea of finite, finite versus infinite games is actually from a guy named James Kars, who is an American philosopher. Uh, academic guy from NYU and he wrote a book

• 1:00:06Jocko Willink?

  in 1987, that's called Finite and Infinite, Infinite Games.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  But as far as the concept goes, it's, it's not so much that they match or they contradict what we've been talking about. It's, it's not that they match or they contradict. Uh, so to give you the definition here, a finite game is like any game that has

• 1:00:32Jocko Willink?

  parameters around it. So I always say chess, like chess, you have 64 squares, you've got 16 pieces per side. They can only, the pieces can only move in certain directions, right? It's a finite game. Basketball. Uh, there's a court, there's a ball, there's a number of steps you can take when you're not dribbling. There's a height of the basket, there's a number of points that you get for a shot when you make it, depending where you are. So, so all those things are, those are finite games. And what, one of the reasons like, uh, that I originally thought of this.

• 1:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Myself, I'm not trying to say I thought of the idea, was chess. I heard, I think Lex Friedman, maybe it was Lex, but someone talking about the fact that that a computer can win in chess because it's a finite game. So there's a number of moves and if you can, you can get that thing to run out the eventualities of each move and come to the best move and it can beat a human. Infinite games that have no rules, they're, a computer might not be able to win because it's not going to be able to do something that's totally unexpected. It's not going to have the creativity that's needed. Now, look, we got AI coming and chat GPT and all this stuff.

• 1:01:48Jocko Willink?

  So it's gonna, but it's gonna take some sort of

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  really revolutionary technology for a machine to beat a human in an infinite game. An infinite game is like life, right? There's no rules. You can move, you, a total war.

• 1:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Total war. This is a war where you're like, this is for our survival, which means we're going to do whatever it takes. There's no rules.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  For as long.

• 1:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for as long as it takes, no rules. Street fighting for survival. Like that's sort of an infinite game because if you grab a bottle, you can smash it on the dude's head and cut his throat open. Uh, if you get a chance to slam them, their face down, if you have a weapon, you put, like, it's sort of just, hey, whatever you got, you can bring it into the game. And so you could have a computer that's like, oh, I'm gonna, I will, the first move I would do would be a throat punch. And then, cool, I put two bullets in his head because I was carrying a gun, like I win, infinite game.

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  So finite games, and here's the thing, finite games are generally the smaller games and infinite games are the bigger ones. So what you want to win, what you want to win at is the infinite game. And by the way, this

• 1:03:05Jocko Willink?

  For me, life is an infinite game. Obviously, you can go anywhere. But more important to me is there's degrees in between finite and infinite, right? That is that most games, most games have some level of rules. And where those rules are, you can have, some games are very strict. Some games are very, very, very loose. There's very limited rules. Business has rules. Business has laws. But you can actually go and you can change and you can disrupt. Like, that's the big thing, right? When I disrupt the industry?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  It's because you were playing a finite game, making your widget. And all of a sudden, I realized that I could make my widget that does something radically different to yours and what yours does. And all of a sudden, you're out of, you're out of business, man.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  So, when you can recognize that, when you can recognize what the rules are, and generally figure out, okay, those rules apply, but do I have to follow them?

• 1:04:10Jocko Willink?

  And, um, the same thing with like families, like there's a wide, there's a wide variety of ways people live as families, right? Just take a city versus, hey, this family lives in a city, this family lives on a farm. This family lives in a van and surfs up and down the California coast. They don't have jobs. They have whatever. They sell bracelets on the seawall. It's a real thing. Like, there's families that that's what they do. They surf and they sell bracelets on the seawall, right? That's a, that's, now, the other person that's playing the game is like, making a bunch of money working at a hedge fund trying to afford a place in Malibu so the family can surf. He can only surf every once in a while. Who won the game?

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Who won the game? I don't know, dude. No, this guy's, he doesn't just surf at Malibu. This other dude's in a van. He's going, he's going to Rincon, he's going up to Santa Cruz, he's coming back down to Dago, he's all over the place. This other dude, he's actually working most of the time.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when he's getting an opportunity to surf, he's kind of at Malibu because that's where he invested all of his money into a house there.

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  So, who won that game? Well, if you take the infinite game, well, well, what was the goal? Was the goal to make money or was the goal to surf?

• 1:05:32Jocko Willink?

  So I think the important thing here is yeah, there's infinite games. And yes, there's finite games. I think the important thing is to make sure you understand what the rules are. And if possible, figure out if there's a way that you can disrupt those rules, overcome those rules, break those rules, for lack of a better word. No, look, if there's a legal rule that you're going to get arrested for, you're going to lose the game. That's not what I'm talking about. But if you can figure out a way to revolutionize the way something is being done, like, you know, you always hear that story about the freaking guy that figured out a better way to do the high jump. Right? Fosbury. Fosbury flop. This guy changed the game.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Right? He didn't, he didn't, he changed, he viewed the sport and figured out a way to do that. That's within the rule, the technical rules, but it's way outside the, the physical standards of the way the game was played. Totally different. That's a good example. So don't be limited by the rules. See if you can see, I don't know, the thing is, see if there's a bigger game you can play. Kind of what we just talked about, like, oh, you're a bartender or you're a, a bouncer? And you're the head bouncer? Is there a bigger game you can play? Yeah, you can, you can open your own bar. Okay, well, that's kind of cool. Now you're not worried about the hierarchy of the bouncers.

• 1:07:01Jocko Willink?

  Now you're in the next level game. But then the next level game is your new franchises. Well, now you got a bunch of these, you see what I'm saying? So I'm always looking and you should always look for, if that's what you want, is there a bigger game that you can play?

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  And don't get stuck in a game that you could possibly be losing, where you could just be playing a bigger game.

• 1:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if you're trying, you know, you, you trying to be the best restaurant in, the best cook in your restaurant, why not just open your own restaurant? Try to be the best electrician so you can get promoted. And manage a crew. Well, why not just start your own company? That being said, what if you are an electrician, but you what you really want to do is focus on your family? Cool. Then you stay working at a bigger company because no one call, you know, you know who they call when something goes wrong? And you own a business, they call you. It's your business. I own a lot of businesses, man. The calls come in 24/7. The calls come in 24/7.

• 1:08:03Jocko Willink?

  I realized that when we opened Victory MMA and Fitness. I was like, oh, there's something wrong at the, oh, instructor didn't show up. Cool. I'm on my way. You know, like, that's the way it's going.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Jocko Willink?

  So, that's the way that I think that works.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  With the finite, I don't think, so my point is, I don't think it matches or contradicts what James Karss said about finite and infinite and what, what Simon Sinek, he talks about it as well. Simon Sinek does. He talks about the finite infinite game concept. But this, what we're saying doesn't match or contradict is just part of it. It's just part of it.

• 1:08:49Jocko Willink?

  Next question. This is also from Levick Mix. How do you with intention periodically check your progress within the game you're playing? Look, you got to detach. You got to take a step back. You've got to track what's happening. You got to write down your goals and see where you're at.

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  In order to do that, you better schedule it because time slips by and next thing you know, you look up and you've been in the same game for nine years and you realize you haven't been making progress. So you need to schedule those reviews periodically.

• 1:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Once every quarter, where am I at?

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  In the military, they, in a military, they have a position called future operations, which is someone that focuses on the future. You have to put someone there because if you don't put someone focusing on the future, then everyone just focus on what's going on right now. So pay attention to that.

• 1:09:39Jocko Willink?

  The same thing that we have to do with our lives. You have to become, you have to, you have to set aside time and make yourself the reviewing officer of your progress. Otherwise you'll look up in four years and you'll realize you haven't moved and you hadn't made progress.

• 1:10:01Jocko Willink?

  Next one.

• 1:10:03Jocko Willink?

  How do you know which games are important ones and which ones you can ignore? Again, real quick. You gotta, okay, you've got to understand what you value. This is important. Cause we talked about return on investment. We talked about what you need to put in. We talked about what you're going to get out. You actually have to be honest with yourself about what you value. And you should probably write down what you value. Cause if you value money or you value property or you value family or you value friends or you value free time or you value surf trips to, to Baja. And that's what you value. You better write that down. Because otherwise you might be playing a game where what you're getting rewarded with isn't something that you value. Hey, we're going to give you a promotion and a new title. I don't give a shit.

• 1:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Right? Hey, we're going to give you a new freaking BMW company car. I don't care. I want a BMW company car. I want to surf. Or I want to do jujitsu. So, so make sure you know, so if you want to know which games are important ones and which ones you should ignore, you need to figure out what you value.

• 1:11:07Jocko Willink?

  And then run the ROI and the risk to see if you're getting what you value from this game.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  Kobe Sab. Next question. He says, I stopped lying to myself about my past, my regrets and my failures. What then? Do I need to try to make up for lost time? Or is it just about mindset going forward?

• 1:11:34Jocko Willink?

  Uh, well, we all should try and make up for lost time. Problem is we can't. It's already gone. It's already gone. The lost time is gone. It doesn't matter. So, no, we're not going to focus on that. We are going to go forward doing as much as we possibly can. If you focus on the past and you focus on the lost time and you focus on the regrets, you're wasting time and energy on things that don't help you and don't move you forward. So, we're not doing that. Good thing you stopped lying to yourself. Good job. You know, you made some mistakes. You made some adjustments. Move forward. That's what we're doing.

• 1:12:20Jocko Willink?

  Next one. Rui D Ra J.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  If games are about winning, what is the best way to set metrics for winning the game? And how important would that be?

• 1:12:38Jocko Willink?

  Games are about winning. What is the best way to set metrics for winning the game? And how important would that be? Well, look.

• 1:12:47Jocko Willink?

  The biggest problem here that we're talking about is that people don't know that there's a game being played. Once you recognize that there's a game being played, then yeah, you got to define what winning is going to look like. And you do that by detaching and looking at it. And again, going back to understanding what you actually value. And once you know what you value, and once you see what winning looks like, then you write down the objectives of what that winning is. And then you figure out what the strategy and tactics are to achieve those objectives and victory.

• 1:13:19Jocko Willink?

  Just like land navigation, one of the earlier podcasts we did, you have to know where you're going. You have to know where you're going. If you don't know where you're going, you got issues. And then you got to track your progress and see where you are. And then see where you are in relation to where you're trying to get to.

• 1:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Again, you have to define winning. You have to set the metrics because for Echo, winning might be

• 1:13:47Jocko Willink?

  getting to ski 100 days a year, or getting to snowboard, sorry, bro, 100 days a year. For me, winning might be making a ton of money. So we're doing two different things.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  So you have to figure out what winning is. In order to figure that out, you have to know what you value.

• 1:14:10Jocko Willink?

  Next one. Um, this is from Zach Hedley, Hedley. Possible to address being taken advantage of by those who know the game better. It's a tough lesson, but it happens often, especially to young people. Can you get taken advantage of by people who know the game better? 100%.

• 1:14:33Jocko Willink?

  100%. That's why we're talking about this. Cause there's nothing worse than being in a game. With someone that knows the game and you don't, you know, or they know the game better than you. Or you don't recognize that you're in a game. So when you get in a fight with someone that knows jiu jitsu and you don't, you get smashed. We came home from deployment. And. There was, you know, discussions and debates about what we were doing and the types of mission we were doing. And one, there was one particular senior officer. And. I told Stoner and Leif, I said, hey, do not get into a debate with this guy. About our deployment.

• 1:15:18Jocko Willink?

  And they were like, why not? And I was like, cause he'll beat you. He'll beat you in a debate. He'll beat me. Like, I'm not going to debate this stuff with him. He. He, that's what he does. He's one of those people. That goes around and when you step into the arena with someone that debates all the time. You're not going to do well. It's like when you see the college kid getting a debate with Ben Shapiro. And he's got 74 facts that he rattles off. Because he had this argument at nine other places in the past two weeks. So they're getting in the ring with him. It's not, you know, like they're not, it doesn't end well.

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  So. That's why you have to do an honest assessment of yourself. And you have to recognize that if someone is beating you in the game and you can't contend with them, you better find an exit strategy. To get out of that game. Unless you go, okay, you know, I'm going to take some hits here, but I'm going to learn. That's okay. As long as you recognize that and you don't get taken advantage of the point where you get left, you know, left for dead.

• 1:16:26Jocko Willink?

  Next one's from Logan Buell, B U H L. How often should you be assessing if you're winning the long game? How should you view the small games that seem meaningless that involve or impact? Look, we should be thinking strategic all the time, all the time. We should be thinking about the long game all the time and we should not be playing games that don't move you towards this strategic goal.

• 1:16:49Jocko Willink?

  Does this mean don't, don't uh, ever watch a TV show because it's not helping your strategic goal? Well, no, if you, if you need a little downtime and the TV show helps you relax, cool, go ahead, watch your freaking show.

• 1:17:09Jocko Willink?

  But that's not a game, right? That's a break and it's a strategic, it's a tactical break that's going to actually going to give you, you know, allow you to refresh your mindset and be ready for work and blah, blah, blah. Now, look, if you're watching freaking Netflix six hours a day, you got issues. We're not doing that.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:17:28Jocko Willink?

  So you should be thinking all the time. This is very, this is a really good question. Of course, we address this question a lot.

• 1:17:35Jocko Willink?

  Think about the games that you're playing. And if you're playing games that don't help your big game, your strategic game, you should not be wasting time with them.

• 1:17:47Jocko Willink?

  That's it.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  That's it.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  All of your games that you're playing should help your long-term strategic goals.

• 1:17:57Jocko Willink?

  And, and look, if you got time and you happen to love freaking backgammon and you get some satisfaction by playing backgammon and you want to go play that literal game and you do it, you know, once in two hours on Sundays with your little friends, cool, that's nothing wrong with that, that's cool, have fun with that.

• 1:18:18Jocko Willink?

  That's fine, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your doing things, you're going out Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, going out looking for a girl, going out looking for a dude, right? And that's what you're doing Thursday, Friday, you're drinking, but you're in that game.

• 1:18:37Jocko Willink?

  You're wasting money, you're hurting your health. And by the way, if you think you're going to meet the love of your life, there's better ways

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  than in the pub. Now, I did happen to meet my wife in the pub.

• 1:18:54Jocko Willink?

  So I guess there's a little except maybe, you know, but we're not going to dedicate. We'll be careful about this one. We're going to be careful about that one.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna be careful.

• 1:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Hey, at a certain point, the ROI, right? Okay, so this is what will happen. You do, you've been doing this Thursday, Friday, Saturday night drinking, spending money. Year. Two years, two years, you're looking around going, hold on a second here, man. Three years, you're like, wait a second. I haven't made any progress. Then it's time to may assess what the hell you're doing. So those tactical games that you're playing, they've got to support your long-term strategic goals. That's it. A long game.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  I like the idea of like little, like you mentioned backgammon, right? Where, which is funny. I don't know. That's a, that's a total Jaco example.

• 1:19:43Jocko Willink?

  I don't even like, I don't even understand backgammon.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:19:47Jocko Willink?

  It's weird, bored with like a long triangles on it, right?

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're fun. But no, a lot of those, especially the old school like board games, they're actually good little micro like exercises for your mind. So like, you know, you, you subscribe to Dr. Luke, right? Dr. Luke on Instagram, on his thing. So he, he, man, he'll put out some really good stuff, little tidbits, right? So one of them was this thing about balance. Where he's like, yeah, just work on your balance. And they think he's like on a curb or something. I don't know. I forget what he was doing. But he was like, just talking about balance, physical, your physical balance, proprioception, just about. So it's like, yeah, if you improve that, that decreases all cause mortality.

• 1:20:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:28Speaker 01

  Maintaining, you know, that, that, and it has a lot to do with like, you know, your, your neurotransmitters and your neurons and stuff like that in your brain. I don't know, above my whole thing, but nonetheless, he explains it real simple. And it's like, man, if you think about it, especially those old school games, like that's kind of what they do. If you, if that's your downtime, like backgammon, it's like, well, that's kind of a solid one.

• 1:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Running numbers in your head or something?

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  There's strategy, there's bath, there's like all these little things that give your brain this good, this good, essentially exercise for your brain.

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, all those things, all those things are important. You know, learning new things. They say that's really important. You know, just for keeping your mind fresh.

• 1:21:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, if if you're me, if you're stressed out and you need to know, you know, the current champ of backgammon, you know, and you're following his life and maybe that could go into toxic, you know, the toxic zone for sure.

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  As far as Bro, if there's someone that's wrecked their life playing backgammon, I want to meet him.

• 1:21:30Jocko Willink?

  If there's someone that went too hard in backgammon.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think I think like in a way, it's kind of, it's a lot like surfing is, you know, when you take a break from the grind, you know, stuff that you need a break from, and then you go like do something like surfing where it's obvious, well surfing is conducive to your life. It's not like sitting on the couch, watching reality TV or something like that.

• 1:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Balance.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  Exactly right. But playing games, certain games are the same exact thing, just more for your brain.

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  What about video games?

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on what video game. They say you go deep, you can go deep looking into that, that you'll see, you'll find all kinds of benefits with certain kinds of games.

• 1:22:05Jocko Willink?

  What kind of games are good for you, video games?

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  I don't know, I didn't go that deep, but every once in a while, you'll see little articles on like how I can.

• 1:22:15Jocko Willink?

  That was the least depth ever.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, that's true. But no, you know, you can like find articles or whatever that will say, oh, benefits of playing video games. They don't have like, you know, hand eye this and that. And then, you know, then you find out, yes, it's certain kinds of games. And then you have all these secondary benefits as well, like, you know, especially the like the shooter games that you're connected to your friends or whatever in other like, you know, towns or whatever, or the internet. You ever play that stuff?

• 1:22:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess there's a little secondary benefits of that.

• 1:22:44Jocko Willink?

  Social connection.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like that.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was weird during COVID when kids were like. The parents were were saying, hey, don't play video games all day. And they're like, but this is the only way I have friends, right?

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:57Jocko Willink?

  That was the thing.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  We I don't have video game like console at my house. So that wasn't happening at my house.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause we don't have that stuff. But I saw other parents were saying that to their their kids were like, they were talking to me about it like, well, do you feel bad with your kids not with your kids playing video games? Like my kids don't play video games.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Cause we don't have the thing.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. But and not to say that that's ideal. Um, you know, not necessarily.

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  No, maybe it was bad. Maybe I should have given them more social connection. But you know, come on.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I don't think you can. And again, I don't know, Brad, I'm not a psychologist. You know this about me. That where I I would, but I do think that social connection is gonna be most optimized person to person, I would think.

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  That's why.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  More so than through a screen.

• 1:23:38Jocko Willink?

  That's why the jujitsu is good.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  I think that's one of the many, many, many benefits of it. Yes.

• 1:23:42Jocko Willink?

  It's weird, man. Jujitsu is connected.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45Jocko Willink?

  Big time. Like it's, you're like, connected.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  You ever in your difference? So I don't know. But.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  You're smashing someone like and they're smashing you.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  It's it's it's a radical thing.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  So you know, when you meet someone and like you shake their hand or whatever, and then let's say you're just standing somewhere. It's like, you don't know them that good. So you're kind of trying to keep your boundaries, you know, the bubble, you know, the phys, you know, the bubble, right? You're, what do you call it? Personal, personal space. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. But you know, when you meet someone new, you want to respect personal space a little bit. You're more sensitive to that, I guess, you know? Bro, when you roll with a guy in jujitsu, like, it kind of just dis, it's like they don't even, you don't even have a bubble anymore. You don't have personal space. Even like when you're not rolling, it's funny. So like, like you or like the guys who I always roll with you, Greg, Noah, like these guys like, I remember one time I was talking to Noah and I was like, bro, I'm really close to Noah right now. It's almost like I couldn't engage it because I'm so used to rolling with him, you know?

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  So like the personal space is like completely gone. And I think it's in a good way. But I guess that could depend on who you are.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Check. All right. So yes, long game all the time. Uh, Caleb Smith, five, four, seven. How do I, how, how do, how do know? How do I know when it's time to quit the game? What are the symptoms of a game played that ultimately lead to the inevitable loss of time, money? Uh, go goes back to what we talked about ROI. Be honest, honest assessments. This is the sunk cost fallacy, right? This is exactly what you brought up earlier.

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so again, some of these questions are a little bit repetitive, but I want to add some items to them. This one here, if you want to know when it's time to quit the game and what are the symptoms? It can be good in some scenarios to set up triggers

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  for action. And this is the example of this is like, you know, when guys are climbing a mountain like Mount Everest or whatever? And they say, hey, if we haven't gotten to this point by 10 o'clock in the morning, we're turning around and going back. There's no, we're not debating it. There's no, there's no emotion around it. 10 o'clock, if we're not here, we're turning around, we're going back down. You can do that with the game that you're going to get involved in. You can, hey, I'm going to only spend this amount of money. I'm only going to spend this amount of time. I'm going to, at least if I'm not making this kind of return on investment, like, hey, I'm going to start driving, you know, Uber at night. And that way I can get some more money, you know, for, for my down payment on my house.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, then you realize that your ROI, driving around your Uber is not as much as you thought it was going to be. Hey, I'm not even meeting the minimums. This isn't working. I'm not going to do it. So figure out what the minimum required return is, figure out how much time you're going to invest and put a cap on that. Figure out how much money you're going to invest and put a cap on that. And then you, and then you have the actions in places you're going to take.

• 1:26:43Jocko Willink?

  So when that happens, that event gets triggered, hey, I'm going to, you know, invest in trying to start up this little company. If I haven't, you know, if I don't have 20 clients by the first three months, obviously there's not a market for it and I'm going to stop. Okay, cool. And then you stick with it. Look, if you get to 19, you're like, well, I'm close. Okay, cool. You know, you can, you can make a little adjustment. But if you're 13, it's been three months and you thought you were going to have 20. And you've made a bunch of adjustments trying to figure out the market and you're not there. Okay, you need to walk away. So that would be the thing to set up. So that you recognize the symptoms prior to, because otherwise, if you don't have triggers in place,

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  that's how you end up at the top of Everest. You're out of oxygen and it's freaking dark and you're gonna die. That's how you end up without any money left in your bank account and you don't have a successful business and now you gotta sell your house. This is how it happens. You don't put triggers in place and it causes problems.

• 1:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, next one, Chadida, Chadidia, or maybe it's Chad Idia? What direction do you go if you realize the games you are playing are unwinnable, but you don't have the ability to leave? And if you did, you don't know the game to take on next, asking for a friend.

• 1:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Listen, when we get into a game that's unwinnable, we don't have the ability to leave. Okay, we'll figure out an exit strategy. You can leave a game, right? You can figure out, okay, this job, I've been here forever. They pay me good money, but it's absolutely awful. I'm never getting promoted and I don't want to do it anymore. Okay. You can't leave tomorrow. You can't leave next week. You can't leave in a month. But you can over time, a year, two years, three years, figure out an exit strategy.

• 1:28:34Jocko Willink?

  And make a move. We're not doing brash moves, right? We're not making emotional decisions. We're gonna take our time, how to get out of this game. And then also take our time figuring out what game to play next. To do a class on, uh, knitting. And you're like, dude, this is awesome. I love the way this feels to make the scarf and like, I want to do sweaters and okay, well, go do some more of that. Maybe you're gonna end up selling sweaters on Etsy.

• 1:29:06Jocko Willink?

  Cool. Or you take a knitting class, you're like, this is monotonous and I hate it. Okay, cool. Well, let's take some time to figure out the new game. Little iterative decisions and also multiple reconnaissance probes. There's so many opportunities out there in the world. There's so many of them and not all of them are good opportunities, by the way. Some of them might seem cool, but they're a lot harder than they look like. Some of them are harder than they look like, but they're not that bad. And you can make some good money and you can be gratified by doing it. So do multiple reconnaissance. Like, oh, you like knitting? Cool. Try a little bit of knitting. You also like making candles? Cool. Make some candles. You also like pouring concrete?

• 1:29:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, let's see what's going on with that. Maybe on the weekends, you start pouring a little concrete, doing some little projects for people for real cheap. And you realize you're good at it. Maybe you realize you suck at it, which is also possible.

• 1:30:03Jocko Willink?

  So do reconnaissance of multiple opportunities that are out there.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Then you make your decision. And then you have that exit strategy to execute.

• 1:30:17Jocko Willink?

  Next one is from Renee Christine.

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you can talk about the thought process you go through in order to turn something hard into a game. Yeah, when I'm doing something really hard, I'm going to find some little achievable goals. Little achievable goals that lean towards a strategic victory.

• 1:30:38Jocko Willink?

  Maybe set up some rewards for me, for my team. And then execute on those little things.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  I think

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  that

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  that mindset of like, I'm literally going to have fun with this thing that sucks goes a long way.

• 1:30:58Jocko Willink?

  So I don't have, that's my process. Like, oh yeah, this sucks. You know, another thing is this sucks and I'm never going to let anybody know that I think it sucks.

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  I'm doing something horrible, but I'm never going to tell anybody. And I'm actually going to make them think I love it. They're going to think I'm crazy. I kind of have fun with that. That's fun for me. I just turned it into a game.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  That's such a good game. So.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  So when I swim in the pool, my kids.

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  And nowadays, it's kind of colder than normal.

• 1:31:27Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Okay, look, cold, that means a lot of different things to different people. I understand, and I'm from Coi. So I understand that going into this story.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  For you, it's like s- under seventy.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  So I would say it's about fifty-five degrees.

• 1:31:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  It's cold.

• 1:31:40Jocko Willink?

  That's cold, yeah.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Legit cold.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  So I jump in. My daughter can stand cold, like she don't care.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  Cold does not bother her. Here's the thing, my son, he don't like that.

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  He doesn't like cold. So we'll jump in and I'll jump in first, and she'll be like, is it cold? I'll be like, oh, it's so warm. Meanwhile, I'm like, bro, this motherfucker is cold. And I'm like, oh, it's so warm. It's almost too warm, you know, like that kind, right? And they're like, I'll believe, and the more convincing I can be, meanwhile, I'm trying not to shiver, you know?

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  And it's like, it, it almost like physically feels warmer.

• 1:32:08Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  Like, it's like the game kind of filters in the, the bad stimulus, turns it into like a different stimulus. Brother, that's a good one.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  There to act like, oh, this isn't even a fa- like, what? I didn't even notice.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  And Buds, they would say, false motivation is better than no motivation. Cause it's kind of true, right?

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  It is. It's absolutely true. There's a girl, a lady named Jane McGonigal. She talks about gamification. It's an actual process where you take hard stuff, you turn them into little games, and you get through them. Like, you know, you, you thrive, whatever. And she did it because she had a illness. I forget the illness. And she was like, hey, I'm going to turn this whole thing, this is my whole recovery process, which was a super arduous process. I'm going to turn this recovery process into a series of games. And that's how she started on the path of like, understanding gamification. But um, there's an actual process to it. And it's like, apparently it's super, super effective.

• 1:32:59Jocko Willink?

  Let's do one more, and then we're, we'll go and do another one. Um, because I got a bunch more of these things to cover. But let's do one more. This is kind of a, a little bit of a chunky one.

• 1:33:11Jocko Willink?

  This is from Santos Carlos the Third.

• 1:33:17Jocko Willink?

  When solid, honorable, hardworking men refuse to play the game because, quote, "there shouldn't be a game."

• 1:33:27Jocko Willink?

  How to navigate the dichotomy and dogma around progression as tenure versus progression through experience. This is a little bit tricky of a question to understand, but I'm gonna do my best with it. And there's, he says, context. Some of the most knowledgeable, talented, and experienced people I've worked with were both years and decades younger in tenure. However, they spent so much time consistently exposing themselves to challenging problems, they progressed well beyond the 99 percentile, anyone their age.

• 1:34:08Jocko Willink?

  So that's the, that's the dogma around progression as tenure versus progression through experience. So it's time versus, it's really about effort, because experience is sort of wrapped around time. So to answer that, uh, people that engage and train and practice and challenge themselves will get better than people that don't.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  The, and, and so there's a dogma. He's like, the dogma around that. And I think what he's trying to ask is like, the negative, what the negative impression of people that work really hard, don't have much time, but they're excelling. That's what I'm getting from this question. I hope I've, I hope I've got it. Uh,

• 1:34:54Jocko Willink?

  the reason that that sometimes hurts people that are like, let's say Echo checked on board, he hasn't been here for very long, but he's really kind of kicking ass. And yet I kind of hold it against him. Why is that? There's a decent chance

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  that Echo, Echo has the, he's exposing himself, he's training hard, he's putting himself in challenging positions. So he's learning a lot, he's doing really well, but Echo doesn't have the maturity and tact to remain humble. So you end up creating an antagonistic relationship with me because I'm looking at you like, oh, he's just one of these people that's trying so hard. And I'm gonna look for every little opportunity to hurt your progress.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  So if you want to overcome the way that works, or you want to help someone, you know, you get some new guy on your team that checks in, that is really doing a good job, but is rubbing people the wrong way. Just talk to him about staying humble. And talk to him about the importance of building good relationships. And that will be helpful. So I hope that answers the first question. Again, these are a little bit, uh, a little bit, I didn't quite fully understand them. The, the second question is an observation more than a question, but it's interesting how many miss the opportunity of chasing forward looking asymmetrical opportunities,

• 1:36:15Jocko Willink?

  opportunities with limited risk, but potential huge upsides and a relative solid likelihood of success. Why is that? So why do people miss opportunities? That have low risk? And I think there's a couple of reasons. Number one is failure to recognize, like they just don't see them. And because they don't detach and so the opportunity is right in front of them, they don't see it.

• 1:36:41Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's the old experiment where the freaking gorilla goes walking through the people that are throwing the basketball and like no one sees it. Cause they're in, they're watching the counting the numbers and they don't see this obvious thing. So there's a failure to recognize because people don't detach enough. And then on top of that, sometimes they see the opportunity, but they don't want, even a limited risk.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  They don't want to take. Even a small risk with a big reward, they don't want to take it. We see that all the time. Humans don't like, humans tend to not want to take action and humans tend not to want to take risk.

• 1:37:20Jocko Willink?

  I, it's not all humans. Let me, let me rephrase that. There are many humans that don't like to take action and there are many humans that don't like to take risk. And so when they're presented an opportunity, but they're gonna have to do something a little bit different and they're gonna have to take risks. They're like, I'm gonna just keep doing what I'm doing.

• 1:37:38Jocko Willink?

  So I think that is why that happens. So there you go, Santos. I hope I was able to kinda

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  get those for you. And with that game for this time, I guess we're gonna have to do one more podcast about the game, the game, the games. Here we are. In the meantime, if you want to play the health game, the fitness game, the being better game, the stronger, faster, better game, better get in the Jaco Fuel game. Jaco Fuel.com. We got milk. Which is, we got ready to drink milk right now, which is fire.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Different level.

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, fire, fire.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  Slaps.

• 1:38:15Jocko Willink?

  Big time. Oh, it slaps big time. You, you open your fridge, maybe you could, you know, have a piece of steak, maybe you could have some mozzarella.

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:38:25Speaker 01

  Hell yeah, mozzarella.

• 1:38:26Jocko Willink?

  Mozzarella with the virgin olive oil on it.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Oh, what, those little things?

• 1:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, put a little basil on it. Yeah, that's the kind of thing.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  Sarah made those the other day, like two days in a row. Yeah, those are good.

• 1:38:39Jocko Willink?

  But there's a, I'm look. I'm gonna put myself on report for being lazy.

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  But there's like, you know, you're cutting basil leaves, whatever, getting the oil out, you're making a plate out. That milk is just sitting there, ready.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:52Jocko Willink?

  Thirty grams of protein, ready to go down the hatch. Tasty, tastes better than mozzarella.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:58Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this is a given. So we got the ready to drink milk, we got the powder milk, we got joint warfare, super krill.

• 1:39:08Jocko Willink?

  Um, Cold War, got it all. And we got the energy drinks.

• 1:39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  We got the energy drinks. So, but these aren't the normal energy drinks that make you sick and make you diabetic and are poison.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:39:20Jocko Willink?

  These are not those.

• 1:39:21Speaker 01

  In the store or these in the health department?

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Bro, this is a good point. The, you, when you go into a store, when you go to vitamin shop or vitamin shop, they're there and pretty easy to find. But when you go into like a military commissary, you go into Hanaford, you go into HEB or Murphy's or, or Meyer.

• 1:39:39Jocko Willink?

  In some of these stores, they're in like the health and wellness section. They're not in the energy drink section. So just be advised.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of interesting, right? What's the, I mean, the conundrum, right? From a store standpoint or from a, what do you call customers?

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, from a customer's, well, from a store standpoint, they're like, oh, well, this energy drink we'll put over in the energy drinks section. Cause it's, it's all these are the same.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  But we also have a health and wellness, things that make you better.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  And we know where this belongs.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:06Jocko Willink?

  So they're kind of right.

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  They're right. Either way, they're right.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  It would be nice if they could give the consumer the visibility on like, oh, I have a healthy option that I can go to here.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I guess it kind of depends, right? Ideally both, but you know, then logistically, right? Kind of, kind of, but yes, look, if I go in, I don't know. I don't know about the goes yet. I go in, I just want an energy drink, you know, I want the sugar free. I'm just gonna go, you know, I go and then I see the new go sugar free, all the good stuff. It's, it's good for you. It's like, bro, I'm choosing that one all day.

• 1:40:37Jocko Willink?

  All day.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Energy drink. But at the same time, if I'm like, bro, I'm, I'm not down for energy drinks now. I'm down for the healthy one, healthy stuff, the kombucha. Or whatever. I don't know what are the healthy, other healthy things. But anyway, and then they're gonna see that boom, they're gonna grab that one as well. See what I'm saying? So they gotta be there. So.

• 1:40:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The, the hard thing is, is like you get into this business. That's all that shelf space is like accounted for. It means something. It's like every little slot that they have in any of these stores. Has value. There's a value at slot. So they're like, hey, look, bro. We can't put you in both of what you want. The whole, you want this to be, what do we put in the meat section too? You know what I'm saying? Why don't we put in the produce?

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, yeah, it's.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  So it should be in the produce section. Kind of.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Kind of. So I'm looking for orange juice.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  But the stuff, uh, we got the freshly squeezed. That's what I'm looking for. If you go in the juice section.

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  The ones with the pulp.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  I don't. My wife does. I don't. But you go in the juice section. There's three juice sections, by the way, in the supermarket. Yeah, you don't know that because you don't go to the supermarket. But so you go in the juice section with a great, um, like in the refrigerator-ish section. So there's your, uh, what do you call them? I forget the brands offhand, but.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  Welch's.

• 1:41:54Speaker 01

  There's some Welch's in there.

• 1:41:55Jocko Willink?

  Tropicana?

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  Tropicana, yes. Simply orange, simply grapefruit, all these juices, right? There's that section. It's the refrigerator. Or you can go to the cranberry juice, the cran grape, the cran, cran apple. The lemon juice, that's in a whole, that's in the aisle. It's a different section. And then if you want the freshly squeezed.

• 1:42:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're over in like the organic area.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it's like in the fruit and vegetable section, kinda. It's weird, right? So it's like, it's kinda one of those things. You kinda gotta know what you're there for and know who you're providing for at the same time.

• 1:42:27Jocko Willink?

  And we gotta do a better job of letting you know to take a look around, maybe ask the clerk, the stock person.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Ask somebody, you know.

• 1:42:34Jocko Willink?

  Say, hey, where's this, where's the, where's the go at? Where's the Jaco fuel at? So there you go. You can get it at Jacofuel.com. You can get it at Wawa. You can get all these places. You know where you can get it. Go get it. Make yourself better. OriginUSA.com. Gis, boots, jeans, rash guards, all made in America. Not made by slaves.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:58Jocko Willink?

  There's actual slavery in the world right now. It's happening.

• 1:43:02Speaker 01

  Literally. So.

• 1:43:03Jocko Willink?

  Literally.

• 1:43:04Speaker 01

  So Pete, our boy Pete was on Andy Frisella, uh, Real AF, the podcast, really good, like, and he, uh, that was a good podcast, by the way. Um, he's, he put it a really good way. I don't think I've ever heard this before. Um, he was like, hey, yeah, you know, like America, yeah, we ended slavery, but slavery didn't end. We just, we just shipped it offshore. Is what I'm saying? So like, we're letting the out of country slaves do the, a lot of the work now. I'm like, dang, when you think about it, brother, it's true.

• 1:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's a hundred percent true. It's a hundred percent true. Uh, we don't want that.

• 1:43:39Jocko Willink?

  We don't want that. OriginUSA.com. End slavery. That's what we're doing.

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Get on board jeans, boots, hunk gear, the hunk gear, let's face it.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  You can't not wear that. Every time I see your dumb ass.

• 1:43:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're just wearing it. That's what we're doing. Uh, the hunk gear. So check that out also. Apparently I have a store.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  It's called Jaco's store.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, yeah, that's when you want to represent this whole path, the source. That's what it's called now, the source. Uh, yeah, discipline equals freedom, you know, good, all these things. They represent certain mindset, I guess you could say, I don't know. Check it out. Jaco's store. It's where you can get some. So we have a shirt locker as well, subscription service, different designs, a little bit funner from time to time. Sometimes they're darker. But it's a new design every month.

• 1:44:29Jocko Willink?

  Little bit more emotional, one direction or the other.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  Apparently. Yeah, from time, yeah, we switch it up for sure.

• 1:44:36Jocko Willink?

  Do you feel good when you nail it?

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  And you get the good feedback?

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:41Jocko Willink?

  Even from me when I go, yep.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:44:43Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  The answer is yes, I do like that a lot, for sure.

• 1:44:47Jocko Willink?

  Uh, Jaco's store.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget about Jaco Underground.com. There's, there's censorship, there's control of the platforms, there's drama out there. We're not in the drama. Look, we're doing our job. But if somebody wants to ban us, they could do it tomorrow. We don't control their platforms, but we control ours. Jaco Underground.com. If you want to go check that out, you can listen to this podcast, some other podcasts that we do on there. It costs $8.18 a month. If you can't afford it, it's okay. We still want you in the game. Email [email protected]. We got a YouTube channel, Origin USA has a YouTube channel. We've got Psychological Warfare, Flipside Canvas, got a bunch of books, you know what they are. Echelon Front, it's our leadership consultancy. And don't forget that we have online training.

• 1:45:31Jocko Willink?

  We have online leadership training, online life training, Extreme Ownership Academy. Take ownership of your life. Go to extremeownership.com. I'm on there. Mondays doing live Q and A. You want to ask me a question about your business, about your life, about jujitsu, about your, your boss, about your employee, about your husband, your wife? Come and ask me. Extreme ownership.com. There you go. There's a bunch of courses to take as well. And also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization, which is awesome. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. And don't forget about another.org Heroes and Horses.

• 1:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Micah Fink up there. And where is he right now? Oh, he's, he's horseback in the mountains, in the wilderness with some veterans, helping find their souls. So go to Heroes and Horses.org if you want to help that out. We're on the interwebs. Echo's at Echo Charles. He's back on Twitter after he freaking made a rookie mistake.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  It was a hard time for everybody.

• 1:46:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Rookie mistake.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  For a computer guy.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, brutal.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  It can happen to anybody, I guess.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Even the strongest have their moments of fatigue.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  And you just got mentally distracted?

• 1:46:50Speaker 01

  It's a metaphor.

• 1:46:52Jocko Willink?

  But that what happened?

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  That was fatigue.

• 1:46:54Jocko Willink?

  You were tired?

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  That was fatigue.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  Legit?

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  Hey, man, the best of us get caught slipping.

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  Would you rather admit, would you rather admit being tired or dumb?

• 1:47:04Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:47:07Jocko Willink?

  All right. Well, Echo Charles is back on Twitter. He feels like maybe he's lost some of his clout in the social media world because he has 19 followers now.

• 1:47:21Jocko Willink?

  I'm at Jocko Willink. Hey, listen, when you go on there, just watch out for the algorithm. That's not a game that's going to help you. That's not a game that's going to help you. The algorithm game is going to win. Don't let it. And thanks to all the military members out there worldwide, protecting our way of life. Thank you for your continued service. And thanks also to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home. And to everyone else out there, remember, there's a lot of games being played. You are playing them.

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  So pick the right games to focus on. Don't waste time on games that don't matter.

• 1:48:05Jocko Willink?

  And when it comes to the games that do matter,

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  play to win.

• 1:48:12Jocko Willink?

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