38: BOOTS. How to Effectively Navigate Life, Land, & the Battlefield. Infantry Columns, On Patrol, The Beloved Captain, Jocko Academy for Young Troopers, The Warpath.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:20 - Jocko takes his kids on PATROL / Land Navigation. 0:54:00 - The Beloved Captain 1:23:56 - Dope Internet and Onnit Stuff 1:28:56 - Leader has High Standards, but no Respect from the team. 1:39:18 - Denying your boss's hand shake with tact when you have no respect for him. 1:48:36 - Jocko's Academy for Youth? 1:59:20 - Hesitations on a new High Position. Questioning if you're good enough for it. 2:06:44 - Taking ownership of "mixed messages" to your group from other leaders. 2:12:19 - What is "The Path"? And where it leads. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is Jocko Podcast, number thirty-eight. With Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. We're foot, slog, slog, slog, slogging over Africa. Foot, foot, foot, foot, slogging over Africa. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war. Six, seven, eleven, five, nine and twenty mile today. Four, eleven, seventeen, thirty-two the day before. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  There's no discharge in the war. Don't, don't, don't, don't, look at what's in front of you. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. Men, men, men, men, men go mad with watching them. And there's no discharge in the war. Try, try, try, try, to think of something different. Oh, my God, keep me from going lunatic. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war. Count, count, count, count, the bullets and the bandoliers.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  If your eyes drop, they will get on top of you. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war. We can stick out hunger, thirst and weariness, but not, not, not, not the chronic sight of them. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. And there's no discharge in the war. Tain't so bad by day because of company, but night brings long strings of forty thousand million. Boots, boots, boots, boots, moving up and down again. There's no discharge in the war.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  I have marched six weeks in hell and certified it's not fire, devil's duck or anything, but boots, boots. Boots, boots, moving up and down again, and there's no discharge in the war.

• 2:37Jocko Willink?

  Good evening, Echo.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Good evening.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  That's a poem. That's a poem

• 2:47Jocko Willink?

  called Infantry Columns by Kipling. Richard Kipling,

• 2:55Jocko Willink?

  who we've actually read before on the podcast. He was a British correspondent, he was an author, he was a poet. He was a patriot, a British patriot.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  And he was actually also critical of war. And paraphrased from a book by a guy named David Gilmour, The Long Recessional, The Imperial Life of Richard Kipling. Kipling was deeply critical of how the war was fought, and by the way, he's talking about World War I, of how the war was fought by the British Army as opposed to the war itself. Which is kinda like Hackworth. Hackworth was more opposed to the way we were fighting in Vietnam than he was opposed to the actual war itself.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  And he complained as early, this is Kipling complained as early as October of 1914 that Germany should have been defeated by now. And something must be wrong with the British Army. Kipling was shocked by the heavy losses that the British Expeditionary Force had taken by the autumn of 1914 and blamed the entire pre-war generation of British politicians who he had argued failed to learn the lessons of the Boer War. And as a result, thousands and thousands of British soldiers were paying with their lives

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  for failures in the fields. And so there's some definite complexities to Kipling, and it actually goes a little bit further and deeper with these complexities, and there's a reason I started off with that poem.

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  And that poem, it is pretty much attributed, the idea of that poem, which is obviously about marching long distances, and it's attributed to a series of forced marches that were led by, in the Boer War, which were led by Field Marshal Lord Frederick Roberts, who led 60,000 men on forced marches during the Second Boer War in South Africa. He led these forced marches that were almost 1,000 miles, 950 miles from Cape Town to Transvaal. And so that's kind of where this poem comes from, about how maddening it is to march and how hard it is.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  But the interesting, the other interesting piece of this is that Lord Roberts, Lord Roberts, who led this march, was actually personal friends with Kipling. They were, they were close friends. And Lord Roberts was Commander in Chief of the Army during World War I. And at Kipling's request, at Rudyard Kipling's request, Lord Roberts allowed Kipling's son to be admitted to join the Irish Guard. He had some kind of a health problem. And so Kipling, Rudyard Kipling called him up and said, "Hey, my son's got a little health issue,

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  but he needs to get in the game." And Lord Roberts worked it out, you know, Commander in Chief of the Army, and got him, had him admitted to the Irish Guards. It was actually his eyesight, he had poor eyesight.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  And so the

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  the horrible piece, I guess, of that is that, as I mentioned the first time,

• 6:40Jocko Willink?

  we read a Kipling poem on here, is that Rudyard Kipling's son,

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  John Kipling, was killed in September of 1915 at the Battle of Lus, where the British suffered 60,000 casualties in three weeks of fighting. 60,000 casualties.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  His body was never identified. And he is one of the 20,000 British dead that are commemorated by the Loo's Memorial. And while his body was never found, there were accounts that he was last seen slogging through the mud blindly. After a violent shell explosion had ripped off his face. And there's further connections and one of the lines in the poem is that there's no discharge in the war.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  And this is actually from the Bible. Ecclesiastes 8:8 says, "There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit. Neither hath he power in the day of death, and there is no discharge in that war." So what he's saying there is no man hath powers to power over the spirit to retain spirit, meaning you can't keep your soul. When it's time for your soul to go, you can't keep it. And then neither hath he power over the day of death, obviously you have no power to overcome death.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  And there is no discharge in that war, and that is that this ultimate struggle between life and death, that war that we fight for life itself, there's no escape. You can't get out of it. There is no discharge from that war. And maybe a little heavy way to start the podcast. But that poem also has a special meaning to a certain group of people in the Navy. And those of you that know what I'm talking about there. You know what I'm talking about there. And it's a poem

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  that I thought of often in my career, especially when I strapped on my gear and heaved on an overloaded rucksack for a long patrol or march. And when you do that.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  Any soldier or military man will tell you this, that when you do that, that is one of the most demanding parts of the job. The ruck march, the long patrol, the hump, the little walk, the forced road march. And even though you're with a group of people when you do that, when you're marching, you're very much alone. You're alone with your thoughts. And there's things that you gotta think about. You gotta think about your field of fire. You gotta think about your navigation. You gotta think about rally points. You gotta think about head counts. You gotta think about terrain feature.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  You gotta think about the enemy and booby traps and IEDs and all that stuff. But even with that, there's still a lot of empty space to fill up inside your head. And I recently took my kids out on patrol. And I guess to be grammatically correct, it was a hike in the civilian world. But in my mind, it was a patrol. It felt like a patrol. And you know, it's the same thing. I mean, essentially you're moving from point A to point B. You set security when you get there.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  You set your layup point, which civilians call like a campsite. Then you sleep and then you wake up and then you do it again. And as I did that patrol, and since it had been a while since I had done a patrol and because I was also watching my kids on their first patrol, I got to kind of revisit my little relationship that I have with patrolling over the years. And Also, as I saw them suffer and learn through their first patrol. I got to think into everything that I'd learned over the years from patrolling.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  And in doing that, I realized how much patrolling had taught me. So, I'm there, I'm walking, and I'm thinking about all these things that I learned. Because again, when you're patrolling, you've got time. Even if you're thinking about navigation, you're thinking about all these things. It doesn't matter, even every piece of the job that you're focused on, it doesn't matter. There's still space to fill. And that's what happened. My, you know, your mind starts to think about all these things. And it dawned on me how much patrolling and marching had taught me. And, and how it's really a fundamental component in everything that I did in the SEAL Teams and in the military.

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  And like leadership, there's some fundamental principles that apply universally to so many things in life. And also, just like leadership, there's a certain aspect of patrolling and navigation that is as much art as it is science. And the science, of course, is relatively easy to teach. But the art, as always, the art is hard to teach. And finally, with this, this idea of navigation, of moving from point A to point B, which includes plotting a course and picking waypoints along the way and identifying it and avoiding obstacles

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  in route and how to overcome unexpected obstacles and how and when and where to rest and everything else that navigation and patrolling includes. And all those things are things that you face as you navigate life.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  And as you set goals, as you establish where you're going. So, I wanted to take a closer look at land navigation and how it relates to leadership and life. And, and digging in, I looked at, I looked at some of the information out there, some of the, some of the field manuals. And it's, it's...

• 13:52Jocko Willink?

  I learned from people, right? And I didn't learn from a book. And as I went to the books, I was hoping that I could find what I had learned from people, but I didn't really find it. I found pieces of it, glimpses of it, but nothing like what I was taught by the guys that raised me in the SEAL teams. And, you know, I looked up the Army FM 3 Tac 25 dot 26 map reading and land navigation. And it's a thorough document. And it's very heavy on the scientific side, the actual technical skill of it. Like how to set declination in a compass and how to orient the map and with the contour line, all the basic tools are in there. And there's some good quotes. And one of the quotes had said,

• 14:38Jocko Willink?

  "Today, the complexities of tactical operations and deployment of troops are such that it is essential for all soldiers to be able to read and interpret their maps in order to move quickly and effectively on the battlefield." Okay, can't argue with that. You gotta know where you are. And if you ever heard me say this, I always used to ask the young SEAL officers, what's the most important piece of information you need on the battlefield? And they would say where the bad guys are, or how many guys you have, or how many enemy there are, or anything like that. They'd have a bunch of different ideas. And I would say, no, no, no, no, no. The most important piece of information you can have on the battlefield is where you are. You gotta know where you are, otherwise nothing else matters.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  And then I looked at a book called The Last Hundred Yards, which we actually covered on this podcast, podcast number three. And it goes through a section which is describing, it's talking about GPSs and how now we've got GPSs.

• 15:39Jocko Willink?

  And the GPSs can be unreliable and you can't count on them and all this stuff. And that's kind of true. It was even more true when that book came out, which was in 1995, and there was less satellites in the sky and the GPS receivers weren't as good and the encryption methodology wasn't so dialed in yet. So the GPSs were less accurate back then. And they were also still Pretty big, they were these big contraptions and even in 1993, 1994, the GPSs that I carried were big, heavy things. Basically, you had to assign a person to carry them. And now, of course, they're tiny. They're, you know, everybody's got, um, you know, a GPS

• 16:21Jocko Willink?

  on your iPhone or whatever smartphone you're using that are a thousand times better than the one I used to carry on my back. And they're also very accurate and reliable now. And the military's come to rely heavily on them, perhaps, perhaps a little too much. And I'm not gonna be a guy that's like a stick in the mud that says, hey, don't evolve, don't learn anything because technology's awesome and you have to take advantage of it. But I also do think there's a need to remember the old ways. And I remember when GPS first came out and I was coming into the SEAL Team and they

• 17:02Jocko Willink?

  had this thing. And I remember this, this officer's, this officer in particular said to me, you know, hey, all I need to do is, all we need to do is carry this thing and, and, you know, we'll know exactly where we are at all times. And he hands me this, you know, 20-pound brick, but big box thing. And I kind of said, hey, man, all I need to do is carry this map and compass and I'll know exactly where I am at all times. It's called land navigation. I wanna learn it. But nowadays, uh, the GPSs are awesome and we definitely rely heavily on them. But, but it is, it is piece of the last 100 yards

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  that definitely emphasizes that you have to know how to land nav, which is good. But, like I said, when I looked through these books, none of them gave me the same clear level of instruction that I learned about land navigation and patrolling when I first got into the teams back in the day. And again, these instructions and this methodology and some of these basic principles of patrolling and land nav, they stuck with me and are really fundamental building blocks of how I ended up doing everything that I do.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  And they're really the basis of the attitude that I had that was very beneficial in leading me to having success in other areas, which was awesome. And so, again, here I am and taking my kids on their first patrol. It made me realize this so clearly. And as I was thinking about it, I was like, you know, I'm going to talk about this on the podcast. Because these are lessons that I learned that I actually forgot that I learned. You know what I mean? These are lessons that are so embedded that I forgot that I thought about them. But I think about them all the time. And then while seeing my kids do this, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, there they are. They're learning this right now for the first time.

• 19:05Jocko Willink?

  And so, to go through some of those things, some of those principles, the first one is planning. And, you know, this gets, of course, everyone knows you've got to come up with a plan. But doing a detailed map study and identifying the obstacles that you're going to have to get around. And there's a couple of different methods that you can use for land navigation. One of them is called dead reckoning. And dead reckoning means you get a compass bearing. From point A to point B is, you know, you're going to be traveling on 270 degrees. So you put your compass on 270 degrees and you march. You go in a straight line. Don't let anything take you off that line. Head down and go. And that's called

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  dead reckoning. And that's, obviously, can be very problematic, because if in between you and where you're going is a giant mountain, or a, you know, a bunch of rivers, or whatever, you're going to have to go through all those things. And you're going to get, you're going to get worn out, you're going to get tired. It might be not tactically advisable to go through those areas. And so, the better form is called Terrain Nav or Terrain Association. And when you're doing that, you actually look at the map and you study what the, what the ground is going to do. And so, if there's a big mountain, you can skirt around the bottom of the mountain. And then you get to the other side of the mountain, and there's a ravine that's, you can follow that ravine around till you get to a certain point on the ravine where it- cuts far to the north and you can you can head in the other direction to towards your

• 20:34Jocko Willink?

  target so it's this it's a method of really knowing the terrain that you're going to be on and it's infinitely more effective than dead reckoning so if you think about this from a perspective of you have a mission that you're trying to get done well how are you going to get there you know how are you going to get this mission done are you going to just put your head down and absorb any impact that you take and and apply more pressure or you're going to be smart are you going to study the terrain and take a look and figure out the best way around those obstacles

• 21:09Speaker 02

  those dead reckoning and terrain association you the terrain association you don't like let's say go around the mountain and then try to get back on the dead reckoning course you're just using the terrain

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna use the terrain the whole way

• 21:25Speaker 02

  and in reference oh yeah

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  you'll know when you do your map study you'll know that you're gonna go skirt around this mountain you're gonna go down a ravine then you're gonna cut over by this open field you're gonna hold along the wood lines when you get to the end of the wood line there's gonna be a fence you're gonna step over that fence once you get to the fence you're gonna follow the fence for you know uh uh until you hit another big terrain feature like another hill and then you're gonna follow the the the base of that hill until you get to a stream and so you're gonna know exactly where you're going the whole time

• 21:59Speaker 02

  right

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  and you can imagine how much more effective this is I mean you don't have to look at your compass you are taking advantage you're you're gonna patrol in areas where you have a tactical advantage too so it's just a a much much better way to do things so a lot of times I think people um you know they hear the big uh the big navy seal like oh we're just gonna get it done

• 22:21Speaker 02

  yes stay on the course

• 22:22Jocko Willink?

  you just stay on the course right no well staying on the course means I'm gonna reach my objective it doesn't mean I'm gonna drip pound my head into the wall without thinking

• 22:31Speaker 02

  right right

• 22:32Jocko Willink?

  so that's what terrain features do for you and and there's also some terrain features that are interesting You can use reference points that keep you from going too far. So you can know, hey, if we hit this main highway, we went too far. We know we missed our target, we missed our turn. If we hit this river, we know we went too far. If we hit this ridge line, we know we went too far. So you're going to set those up for you. And they're going to confirm where you are. And also, you're going to use those as reference points. So you're going to tell your whole team. So your whole team is going to know. Hey, we made it this far. Oh, there's the big river that we're turning left at. Okay, we turned left.

• 23:14Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Next thing we're going to hit is a wood line. Oh, here's the wood line. So everybody knows. And so imagine if you're, again, think about this outside the the parameters of land navigation and patrolling. Think of it in a regular business. Or any situation where you're trying to get a team to do something. If you lay out the course for them and you plot out what the obstacles are and you explain to people where they're going to be and how how important it is that they need to get there and what we need to be looking out for. Imagine how the team feels. The team knows where they are. They understand where they are. When you're doing Dead Reckoning, the back of the, the guys in the back, they have no idea where they are. I've been that guy. I've been that guy in the back of a, of a patrol and you just have no idea where you are. You have no idea how much further to go. You just got your head down.

• 23:58Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're slug, slugging along with your weight and it's a nightmare. Whereas I've been on good patrols where I'm in the back, but we got a really good brief and I'm like, oh, there's that mountain. Oh, there's that ravine. Okay, we should be coming to that stream soon. Oh, yes, we're at the stream. So you know where you are. And when you provide your team with that kind of clarity on the course that you're planning to take, it's going to make them so much more aware of what's happening. And the more aware they are of what's happening, the better performance you're going to get from them.

• 24:26Jocko Willink?

  The other thing is as you're doing this, you do something called a pace count, which is your, as you walk, you know how many paces it takes you to get 100 yards. And there's some Kentucky windages there as well, because we're going uphill or downhill. You can, you can work out these different, you can get pretty accurate. So you can know that, hey, when I take left, when my left foot hits the ground, on average, when I'm wearing 100 pounds. It's eighty-six paces for me and I just went a hundred yards. So that's, that's, you'll know that. And so then what you're doing is you're constantly checking. It gives you another, it gives you another reference point. Because if we're supposed to hit, uh, you know, a stream in three hundred yards,

• 25:09Jocko Willink?

  and I know we've marched six hundred yards, something happened. Right. Time for me to stop. In fact, at four hundred yards, I'm probably gonna stop and say, okay, let's do a quick map study. So you wanna double check these things. And in a business world, this could be some kind of a timeline that you've set up. So you're like, hey, at, at, you know, forty-two days, we should be here on this project. Oh, we're not there yet? Okay, what's the problem? What did we miss? Why aren't we getting it done? So that gives you two sort of methodologies to confirm where you are so you can triangulate your position, which is smart. What'd you call it, Kentucky what? Kentucky windage. What does that mean? It's- Like the give or take? It's, you know, it's just, uh, it, it comes from shooting. Oh, gotcha.

• 25:51Jocko Willink?

  And you would normally dial in your site to get you specifically, let's say, you, you think six hundred meters. Right. But then there's a strong wind blowing, so maybe you're gonna hold off to the left a little bit. Cause it's windy in Kentucky or something. I think it's just shooting. The, the, maybe the shooters in Kentucky had a- They made it up. They were real accurate. So they had to pull in a little Kentucky windage. Gotta accommodate for that. Yeah. Gotcha. Chicago windage. No, no. Well, cause it's kinda windy, you know, so- Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but no. It's, it's, it's Kentucky windage. It's my brogino. Pretty dope. So, yeah, like I said, in life, plan, study the route that you're going to go. Think about the obstacles, how are you gonna avoid them?

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  What do your goals look like? What do your smaller goals look like along the way? The little reference points. So you got somebody, you assign somebody the big project? Okay, what are the little things? Or you got something in your life that you're trying to accomplish? What are the little goals you gotta set for yourself so you can get, keep a reference point along the way? And what's the timeline you're gonna meet those on? Yep. That's how you stay on track. And, you know, what we actually did, we did something called pace notes. And what pace notes were. And, and I learned it for, for foot patrols. And we ended up using it even more. When it came to vehicle patrols and I, I realized that, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago or something, we started sending guys to a rally driving school. So I could learn how to drive rally racing cars.

• 27:21Jocko Willink?

  And that's, they, that's been the way they always done pace notes in rally racing. So you, so what's cool about it is when you do pace notes, you're writing down specifically, this is the terrain feature, this is what I'm seeing, this is how far away it is. This is the next terrain feature, this is what I'm gonna see, and this is how far away it is. So you can actually track that. Now, we got so detailed with that. On, on vehicle mounted patrols, we would actually just. Take the map and blow the map up so we'd see exactly what it looked like at that intersection or at that juncture or at that city block. So we could see what the buildings would look like, so we'd be looking for.

• 27:57Jocko Willink?

  So that's pace notes and it, and it, it's almost like a rehearsal, you know, it's almost like a rehearsal because you can, you can walk the whole team through. And they can get a visualization of what they're gonna see and how they're, how it's gonna look. And the other, the other piece is. That I said is you gotta share that plan and explain it to everybody. So everybody's on the same sheet. And, and I did this, well, I explained it to my kids, you know, and I said, okay, here's what we're gonna see. We're at this area here. We're gonna go across some flat ground. We're gonna start hitting some little terrain features here. It's gonna go up and down and up and down. That's gonna tell us that we're here. And. Not only does it help them know what's going on, but now I'm talking through it.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 28:34Jocko Willink?

  And that helps me because it helps to teach things because when you teach something, you become more proficient at it. That's one of the good things about teaching anything. You know, you wanna get better at something, teach people how to do it. It makes you better. You wanna teach that arm lock or you wanna get better at the arm lock, teach the arm lock. You'll notice all kinds of little details about it.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Right. It's so hard to teach, like if you're not used to teaching, should we jump in there and teach? Cause you're just used to doing it. And a lot of that stuff you just do without thinking about, okay, what exactly am I doing in this detail? You just do it. I mean, you know, muscle memory and like, there's all these little factors that, that facilitate you doing something that you don't even think about. And then try teaching, you're like, oh, you kinda do this. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa. You know, you don't even know what you're saying.

• 29:12Jocko Willink?

  You know Greg Train always throws out little details and I go, oh, that's a good little detail. And he has something that I do, but once he points it out or teaches it, and he'll be teaching something basic that I know and I'm good at.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:25Jocko Willink?

  And he'll say, oh yeah, and then I put my foot on the hip here to stabilize this and I go, oh, I do that. But then when you start thinking about it and you focus on it, it makes you that much better at it. And that's the same thing that's going to happen here when you actually brief your team and tell them exactly what to expect. Now again, this doesn't mean that you're going to say, hey, this is exactly how it's going to go. Cause you've got to give the caveat that, hey, this is our plan and we might have to deviate from this plan and that's okay. We're ready to do that. We're adaptive.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  But when you talk through it, it helps you and it helps them.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's funny. Greg Train is the reason I ran into, he was like, he's teaching or whatever. And then he just all of a sudden bust out, hey, I could teach him that move that you do. And I was pretty good at that move. I started teaching.

• 30:07Jocko Willink?

  What move is it?

• 30:08Speaker 02

  It's like, it's a guard pass that I do sometimes. And Brian, teaching it, I don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm like doing it all good, but then everyone's like, oh, all right, you know, I am a poor teacher.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's something you can work on, I guess, starting now. Take over the podcast.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  I'm more comfortable avoiding it.

• 30:28Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Uh, now, now the next piece that I was thinking about on patrolling. And that I saw my kids go through and that I went through as a young SEAL. Is you start questioning or you start going through this process of what do I need to bring with me? What do I actually need to bring with me? Now, when you don't have to carry it, or when you don't know what it means to carry it, carry it. When I say carry it, I mean, put it on your back and bear the weight of that item. When you don't have to do that, you want to carry everything. I'll just carry everything, the warm sleeping bag and the whisper light stove and the extra food and the comfort gear and all this stuff.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what you do when you, when you don't have to carry it or when you don't think about carrying it or you don't know what it feels like to carry it. But when you have to carry it, you get down to what you need real quick, to what you actually need real quick. Totally limited on the food.

• 31:30Jocko Willink?

  You're not gonna, I never, I never heated a meal in the field unless it was like um, snow on the ground, a winter warfare scenario. I never heated a meal on the ground. If it was, never, never heated a meal. Cause that means you had to bring a fuel and a whisper light and all this stuff. Yeah. And I never, I was a radioman, so I had to already carry a radio. Yeah, yeah. And then I got used to that. So by the time I was an officer and I wasn't carrying a radio anymore, I just said, oh, it's gonna be lighter than everybody else. Yeah. Um, comfort gear? No. No, we, we won't take that. And

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  you need, you need to get, you need to bring enough comfort gear that you can actually sleep and survive. I mean, you need to bring a ground pad or whatever. Hmm. Um, but you know, we used to say, little saying was, travel light, freeze at night. That, that was my saying for sure. Travel light, freeze at night. And I'll tell you, I got my indoctrination to freezing at night and traveling light. When I first checked into the team, I went to a comm school, communication school, a SEAL communication school. So you're gonna learn how to be a radioman in the SEAL teams. And I had this, this old chief that was running the uh, running the, running the training. And I was a fired up new guy. I didn't even have my trident. So I was just

• 32:52Jocko Willink?

  a brand new guy. Didn't even have my trident. I was at the team and they sent me to this school. And so this chief, and I actually went with another new guy, who is, who's a great guy. And we went out there, total new guys. Neither one of us had our tridents. We had graduated from BUDS a couple of months ago, or from airborne school, whatever. So we showed up, it's winter time. And we show up and, and the end of this school, you go through a, a field training exercise. And it's, I wanna say it's five days in the field. It's like Monday through Friday in the field or something along those lines. And you are basically doing the reconnaissance mission and they give you really good targets to look at and you're gonna look at and you're gonna report back with all this information. And then you're gonna move, they're gonna move you every couple hours. They give you directions to a new point to move to. So.

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  We're doing, we're, we're getting ready for this FTX and I'd never spent much time in the field and the guy that's running the course. You know, he's having fun with the new guy and he's like, hey, Willink. And I said, yes, chief. And he goes, you know what? You think you're hardcore? And I go, I'm trying to be hardcore. And he says, if you're really hardcore, you don't need a poncho, you don't need a sleeping bag. Or a ground pad, you just go out there with a, with a poncho and a poncho liner. And I was like, okay.

• 34:07Jocko Willink?

  No problem. So sure enough, I go in the field with a poncho and a poncho liner. And actually, I, I, actually it was a bivvysack, which is a Gore-Tex, it's like a Gore-Tex sleeping bag, just a thin Gore-Tex. Shell and a poncho liner, which is something that's been around forever. And it's just a very thin.

• 34:27Jocko Willink?

  Thin. Yeah, like a tent. Blanket. No, it's not even a tent. It's like a blanket. It's like a blanket. That's what it is. Oh, the liner. It's a very thin, it's yes, it's a very thin liner. It's what is the poncho liner. And so I had, those are the two things I had with me. And, uh, and my buddy took the same. So we were like, oh, oh, that you need to be like that to be hardcore? Cool. I'm hardcore. How cold was it? Like? So. We are going into the field. We are inserting in the field and the sun is going like we inserted right at dusk as we're inserting in the field. It's raining. Right as we get on the ground, it turns to sleet. And then two hours into the night, it turns into snow.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  So. We freeze. I mean, we freeze. We're just, we can't sleep. And the, the funny thing was, was that we couldn't sleep. We literally couldn't sleep. It was too cold for us to sleep. And you, and the guy had set it up. So you had to make a communications window. You had to make communications. It was about every three or four hours. And so, and if you missed a communications window, if you missed it, that was, you know, you got, your grade went down or whatever. You got points subtracted. So all the other guys who were experienced seals that knew how to live out in the field better than we did, they all were super comfortable. They all went out there and had sleeping bags and ground pads and all that and they slept through their comm windows.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  At least some of them, they didn't sleep through all of them, obviously, but occasionally they'd sleep through one after four days, three days, whatever. And so we were the only pair that made all of our comm windows because we couldn't sleep.

• 36:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, yeah, we'd just be standing up, just standing up, standing by a tree, doing burpees. Out, out, just trying to survive, yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  So that was, um. That was one of the lessons on, on learning how to travel light, freeze at night. Now that was a little too much. I, I, I should have, the thing I needed was a ground pad. You need a ground pad when you go in the field.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  So travel light, freeze at night is kind of like a, a warning or is that like?

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  That's the deal. That's what you do. Oh dang.

• 36:33Jocko Willink?

  It was my methodology and it's, it's a methodology of a, a portion of guys in the military. That are, that are on the, would rather be on the hard side.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  Right. So I'm gonna also, I'll freeze at night so I can travel.

• 36:46Jocko Willink?

  Travel light, freeze at night. Cause you're gonna be more effective when you're, when you're lighter.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Except at night.

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  I mean, of course, if you're exhausted, that's why, that's why there's gotta be a balance there. We should have brought ground pads on that operation, that, that training operation for sure.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  Cause we froze. And, and like we got trench foot legit and the guy that was with me had legit trench foot when he got out like.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  What is that? Like frostbite kind?

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  No, it's when your feet, cause, cause this, a part of this op, part of this training operation took place in, in like a swamp.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Oh dang.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  So it's freezing in the swamp and he got legit World War One style trench foot. I had it too, my, not as bad as him.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  But what is that?

• 37:24Jocko Willink?

  It's just your feet getting numb and rotted and, and jacked up. Yeah. Good times. So, so again, how do we apply this to life? And, and I think. If you, if you look at what you want versus what you actually need. And imagine if you had to carry everything that you owned. Now, of course, that's not possible, but I think this is this whole like minimalist attitude that's that's kind of getting popular right now that it's getting popular in the civilian world right now, but in the military, we've always valued that. And it's one of the cool things about going away on deployment.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  For me, I always loved this feeling. When you went away on deployment, you could only take and we as as SEALs took a lot of gear with us, but there's a limit. You took, you know, five or six kit bags, you know, five or six big duffel bags, basically filled with gear and that's it. That's it. That's all your gear. That's all the gear you have. And so honestly, to me, that that always felt good. That is what I got. This is everything I have. And you know, as a young SEAL, that was basically you could fit all your gear in those six bags. And then everything you own in the civilian world, you could fit in two more bags. And we live that like I live like that with my buddies back in the day, we lived like that for a long time. Oh, you we can go on deployment tomorrow. We just put all of our stuff at home in a kit bag. We can load our stuff up and we can be ready to go.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like we're the uh military guys are kind of like the OG minimalists.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:58Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Good, man. I gotta teach Sarah this stuff.

• 39:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, people start to hold on to stuff.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Especially the part where if you or when you carry it, you realize how much that you know, that part where you're talking about. Once you know the weight of your own stuff, you think twice before.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in a civilian world, we start thinking about the cost of that gear. And what does that mean over time? And how much of usage are you getting out of it? Now, the thing that I hang on to, there's a couple of things that I'm a little bit of a hoarder on. One of them is t-shirts.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not mad at that. I'm like that.

• 39:30Jocko Willink?

  Now, now, some people might be thinking, hey, Jocko, you wear the same freaking t-shirt every single day, which is true.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  But I have, you know, old t-shirts that are just, I just, I just, I, because I wear my t-shirts a lot when I wear them. It's hard for me to part with them.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Brad, better that than shoot. You're like the

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  I have, I have, uh, I have a ton of old jujitsu t-shirts. From like when I used to go to schools, I used to travel. I used to go, oh, yeah. And they'd give me a t-shirt.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  And I have all these old school t-shirts off schools that don't even exist, or schools that got really big or whatever. Or just competitions that I did, you know, when you got those old school t-shirts. And I'm not, I don't wear them anymore, but I

• 40:10Jocko Willink?

  I was thinking, you know, what I could do is inventory them, take pictures of them and put them on the interwebs and then throw them away.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  What do you mean? Oh, like a, like a, like an archive?

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Cause, because there's some, it, it triggers memories that are.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. It's like memorabilia.

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Like baseball cards.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  Because you like to, uh, it, it triggers the memory of those times of, of that event. Yeah. Otherwise, you're not thinking about it. And there's a problem with that. I'll tell you, I realize this from my experience, uh, growing up, you know, I grew up in, in New England and I don't go home. Didn't go home at all. I hardly ever go back to the town where I grew up. Hmm. And the people that I know that are still there, they remember all this stuff from when we were kids. They remember this event and that. Remember when this happened? And I honestly don't remember. I, I just don't remember it.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 40:57Jocko Willink?

  And I think the reason is because I went away from there and I never went back. And so I have nothing triggering, triggering those memories. I don't see the schoolyard where the fight happened. I don't see the.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't see the, the road where the car flipped. I don't see that stuff.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:12Jocko Willink?

  And so I don't remember it like they do. They, they're there all the time. Oh yeah, I remember when little Johnny get, you know, you.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:18Jocko Willink?

  It's like, no, I actually don't remember that. So with some of this memorabilia, as you called it.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 41:24Jocko Willink?

  If every time I look at it, I go, oh yeah, that was a cool tournament or that was cool training with those guys or whatever. So I have a bunch of jujitsu t-shirts that I, I have a hard time getting apart.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  That's all.

• 41:34Jocko Willink?

  Partying with.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:36Jocko Willink?

  I was thinking of taking them to the gym and framing them and hanging them up.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Jocko's t-shirts?

• 41:40Jocko Willink?

  No, not Jocko's t-shirts.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  For you.

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  But they're old school t-shirts. They'd be cool to have those old t-shirts. And if you, if you got my t-shirts, Dean t-shirts, Jeff Glover's t-shirts and put them up in there, that'd be sick.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or even the, and the poster. Remember Best of the West? Remember that tournament? Yeah. That was a good one.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  It was a good tournament.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  It's just gone.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  So

• 42:01Jocko Willink?

  that's it. You go through this checklist, back to the subject here. You go through this checklist of what you actually need. And, and again, when you're, when you're in a business, you gotta look at what you, what, what do you need to complete this operation? What do you just want? Cause it'd be nice to have.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  And separate those things. Separate those things. You can actually put them in those categories, you know? Need, want, nice to have, right? And then you go through, okay, let's, let's concentrate on what we need first. And then we can see if there's anything that we want. And then by the way, if there's a nice to have, we can throw in there. Okay, fine. But to go in there and just buy everything on that list or, or command everything on that list because you think you're gonna need it? No, wrong answer, wrong move.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a lot of times people, and of course, I'm not talking about, well, maybe it applies, or it does apply to business, but just in life, what you need and what you want, you know. A lot of times, what you want doesn't even facilitate what you need. You know how like you'd be like, "Oh, hey, I, I don't need faster internet, but I kinda want it, but the faster internet is gonna facilitate my work." Well, let's say you do, you know, you need the internet. At least that's something, sometimes, people will get stuff that they want, that's just straight up no function.

• 43:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh yeah, for sure. Not in my family.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  I know, man.

• 43:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't like things without function. I don't like them. Don't like them.

• 43:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, so again, back to this, once you've decided on what you're gonna bring or what you're gonna need, then it's time to start the operation, or it's time to start this movement. And even from the start, you gotta check, confirm where you are, make sure you know, then you get started. And I had this first reminder when I did this little patrol with my kids, cuz I just, "Oh, we're good to go, it's a little trail, start walking." We started walking. I didn't keep a pace count. That's ridiculous, that's embarrassing to admit. Didn't keep a pace count. And I wasn't really paying attention, and we were just kinda talking and, and having, yeah, we were just talking and moving and kind of getting used to it all, and hey, how's your backpack feel and all that stuff. And all of a sudden, I go, "Wait a second, where are we? Where are we right now?"

• 44:11Jocko Willink?

  Cuz I, I had told them that, "Hey, we're gonna be looking for this trail that goes up." And we talked through it, and we pulled out the map, and we started doing a little study, and my son was like, immediately with, "Oh, we went too far, we missed it, I know it's back there." And my daughter wouldn't commit either way, and I said, "Okay, let's do an assessment." And so, we assessed and realized that we actually hadn't gone quite far enough, so we went a little bit further. But, my point is that, you gotta check yourself. You gotta check yourself and check your team consistently, not constantly, right? That's micromanagement, but consistently. And you also have to Watch out for target fixation.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  Which is trying to go too fast. Like, oh, you're just trying to get to that to the end point without going by your little waypoints along the way. That is a way to get yourself lost. Cause you're driving and you don't, you're not looking for your reference points and you'll lose the bubble. So you gotta detach a little bit and stand back and pay attention and not be all crazy about that, you know, for, you know, every 500 meters, maybe every, you do a quick check, every thousand meters, you're gonna do a little bit of more accurate study.

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's gonna keep you, uh, keep you in line. And if you are out of line, you're only gonna be a little bit off track. You're not gonna be 12 days of work or two hours of, uh, walking off track.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it makes perfect sense too, especially with going by all these reference points. The target fixation, you're just, you got one reference point and it's probably not even that accurate because really just by the nature of the whole deal, the map, the one reference point that you do have is the furthest thing away, literally. So you only have that one for that. If you have all these other reference points, you get off track, one step, two steps, three steps, you still got like a bunch of reference points. You just, oh, all right, let's backtrack all these reference points there to support you.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's how you do it. And that's again, that's when you're planning something with a team and a business, you gotta have some reference points along the way to help you get towards your goal. Cause your goal is far off in the distance. So you gotta plan about how you're gonna get there.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  If you have a, if you edit video or use Photoshop, it has, when I first started, it has this history. Little box. So every move you make, it records it.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty cool.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Delete, delete. And then you have control, which is save, but not, that's something else. But yeah, each one, so you can literally go, oh, wait, it's a reference point with every single move.

• 46:49Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  So you can go up, oh, let me go all the way back, you know, 25 moves to when I erased this little thing, boop, and let me start from there.

• 46:57Jocko Willink?

  Can you bring one thing back that's far up the chart?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. The, here's the only thing, it's like, but it's like a little, like a fork kind of, so like, let's say you go back in time, essentially, you go back like five moves and then you make a different move. It, that one discourse, yeah, it's gone.

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  That's why I'm time traveling. Yep, exactly right. Time travel. Alright, so when you get out on patrol now,

• 47:22Jocko Willink?

  discipline is paramount. Sure. For instance, you gotta stay hydrated, you gotta keep track of your gear, you gotta keep track of your pace count. You don't let your gear get out. You don't take out your gear like, oh, we'll stop for a second, so I'm just gonna pull everything out of my rucksack and lay it all over the place. No. You gotta keep it tight.

• 47:41Jocko Willink?

  You don't rush over obstacles. So for instance, oh, you know, there's a little log and I gotta, there's a log going across this trail and I gotta step over the log. Well, I step up on top of it and then I'm just gonna jump off because it's a little easier. No, you don't just jump off because that's how you sprain your ankle. That's how you blow out a knee, which is, you know what? You're playing a basketball game or you're on the jiu-jitsu mat and you, and you twist your ankle? Cool. Walk to the side, put some ice on it. You're,

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  you know, ten kilometers out in the middle of nowhere and one of your kids sprains an ankle? You're in, you're in trouble. You're in trouble. And if you're out on patrol in a military situation and you get somebody that gets a sprained ankle, you're in even more significant trouble. So you gotta have the discipline to slow down. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Watch your footing, watch for danger, watch your field of fire. Pay attention to the first person that's in front of you and the person that's behind you. And that's how you're doing your communications. You gotta keep your communication up the whole time. So again, you can go right to any business, any

• 48:52Jocko Willink?

  project that anyone's working on. It's all the same thing. You gotta be disciplined. You gotta keep track of things. You gotta keep your communication going between your team members by passing whatever signals you gotta pass.

• 49:05Jocko Willink?

  When you get to a layup point.

• 49:08Jocko Willink?

  Where, when you're gonna actually stop and, and basically camp out, I hate saying that. Cause in the, in the, in the SEAL teams, it's derogatory to say. Camp, oh, right. This looks like a campsite. Yeah, yeah. So you never wanna have anybody say that. So I wouldn't let my, when I went on patrol with my kids, I was like, no, we're not camping. We're doing layup point. But you guys are camping out, that's. No, we're not. So this, wh- wh- when you get to a layup point where you're gonna stop, you don't just flop down and turn into a pile of crap. And this is true, again, with a business situation. You reach one goal, you don't just like flop down and say, ah, we did it. High five, uh, office party. No. You can, you can order a pizza maybe, but you're not ordering booze. You know what I'm saying?

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  You've still got stuff to do. So you don't camp out. You have to remain tactical. You have to remain disciplined. You have to quietly assume your security position. You gotta then be quiet and make sure you are as alone as you think you are. Then you gotta pick out some landmarks. Once you get to your little layup point, you gotta, you gotta make that your home. You know, you gotta look for some landmarks or some, somewhere where you know where you are. And then you confirm your position. You know, you take a triangulation with your compass. Maybe even break out your GPS, get a little double confirmation. And then, once you've got everything set, then you can take a little breather.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  But what you don't do is get to the finish line and just flop down and, eh, we made it. Right. You never wanna do that. And the other piece, this is something I thought about a lot while I was on this patrol with my, with my two kids. I went with two out of the four kids.

• 50:46Jocko Willink?

  When, we kinda have a standard in, most militaries do this. You're gonna, when you're, when you're doing a patrol, you're gonna move for 15 minutes. I mean, you're gonna walk for 15 minutes and you're gonna rest for 10. Then you walk for 15 and rest for 10. Walk for 15. And that's kinda the standard.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  And I can tell you that if you aren't careful, it can be hard to start up again. Yeah. And you get tired legs and you get sore shoulders and you get hunger and you get thirsty. And it's easy to let 10 minutes turn into 15 minutes and turn into 20 minutes and turn into a half an hour. That can happen very, very easily. And this is the thing you gotta remember. While you are resting, you are getting no closer to your target. There is no progress that is being made. And by the way,

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  the only person that is going to move you toward that target is you.

• 51:51Jocko Willink?

  You're the only person that's going to move you towards that target. You're not going to get carried. The target's not going to move to you. You are the only person that's going to move to the target. And if you don't move, you will never get there. And the faster you get there, the better off you're going to be. Now, again, this doesn't mean that you're simply grinding yourself and your team into the dirt. There are rest periods involved there. You have 10 minutes of rest, you have 50 minutes of work. So I'm not talking about smashing your team.

• 52:19Jocko Willink?

  But you absolutely do have to drive your team. Because there will be no progress in the comfort zone. There will not. Inside the comfort zone, there's no progress happening. There's nothing happening. And when you're patrolling with a rucksack on, it is not comfortable.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  It's not comfortable, it's not easy. And that is one of the things. That's why this discipline of keeping moving and continuing to push the pace is so powerful. And that's the same thing with any goal. Obviously, the correlation here is that any goal that you're going for, you have to keep moving toward it. You have to stay on the path.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  Do you have to rest? Yes. But you have to go. You have to go down that path.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  And that is another one of these principles, and all these principles. They really apply to everything that I did in my SEAL career, regardless of what I was doing. The same things. Planning well, setting goals, knowing what they look like, staying disciplined on everything, on every type of mission, on every task, every job. That is what I always did.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  I didn't take it easy. Did I rest? Sure, of course, I rested. But did I cut corners?

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  Did I take the easy way? Did I slack off?

• 53:56Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 53:59Jocko Willink?

  No, I did not. I held the line. Now, from a leadership perspective, all this talk of marching and patrolling made me think of a short story called "The Beloved Captain", which I was recently introduced to by the wife of one of the finest leaders I've ever worked for,

• 54:29Jocko Willink?

  a guy named General Sean McFarland, who was the Colonel at the time who was commanding the 111AD, the 1st Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, otherwise known as the Ready First during the Battle of Ramadi. And I recently saw General McFarland's wife at a memorial event that we did for the 10-year anniversary of Mark Lee's death.

• 54:56Jocko Willink?

  And she told me about this story. Again, it's called "The Beloved Captain", and it lays out some fundamental leadership principles. And when the general's wife told me that he kind of referred to this story himself for guidance, I figured maybe it'd be the kind of guidance we could all use. And the story is written by a guy named Donald Hankey, who served with the British Army in World War I. A volunteer who enlisted at age 29. Despite having served as an officer when he was younger, he enlisted

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  to go fight, and he eventually regained his commission.

• 55:48Jocko Willink?

  And in both as an enlisted guy and as an officer, he fought on the front lines.

• 55:58Jocko Willink?

  And he wrote this story, which is called, as I said, "The Beloved Captain".

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  He came in the early days when we were still at recruit drills under hot September sun. Tall, erect, smiling. So we first saw him, and so he remained to the end. At the start, he knew as little of soldiering as we did. He used to watch us being drilled by the sergeant, but his manner of watching was peculiar to his own. He never looked bored. He was learning just as much as we were, in fact, more. He was learning his job, and from the first he saw that his job was more than to give us the correct orders. His job was to lead us.

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  So he watched, and noted many things, and never found the time hang on heavy, heavy on his hands. He watched our evolutions so as to learn, to learn the correct orders. He watched for the right manner of command, the manner which secured the most prompt response to an order, and he watched every one of us for our individual characteristics. We were his men. Already, he took an almost paternal interest in us. He noted the men who tried hard but were naturally slow and awkward. He distinguished them from those who were inattentive and bored. He marked down the keen and most efficient among us.

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  Most of all, he studied those who were subject to moods, who were sulky one day and willing the next. These were the ones who were to turn the scale. If he could get these on his side, the battle would be won. So here's this leader. Very important for him to learn about his men, and know his men, and study his men. We have heard this before.

• 58:05Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. For the first few days, he just watched. Then he started work. He picked out some of the most awkward ones and accompanied by a corporal marched them away by themselves. Ingenuously, he explained that he did not know much himself yet, but he thought that they might be on, might get on better if they drilled by themselves a bit and that if it helped, if he helped them and they helped him, they would soon learn. So there's some serious humility going on there. He's like, hey, I don't know that much. You guys don't know that much. Let's help each other. Let's build a little team here. His confidence was infectious. He looked at them and they looked at him and the men pulled themselves together and determined to do their best.

• 58:51Jocko Willink?

  So he formed relationships here.

• 58:55Jocko Willink?

  Their best surprised themselves. His patience was inexhaustible. His simplicity could not fail to be understood.

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  He's keeping them simple, so simple that they could not fail to be understood. His keenness and optimism carried all with them. Very soon, the awkward squad found themselves awkward no longer. And soon after that, they ceased to be a squad and went back to the platoon. Then he started to drill the platoon with a sergeant standing by to point out his mistakes. Of course, he made mistakes and when that happened, he never minded admitting it.

• 59:37Jocko Willink?

  Some extreme ownership going on. He would explain what mistakes he had made and try again. The result was that we began to take almost as much interest and pride in his progress as he did in ours. We were his men and he was our leader. We felt that he was a credit to us and we resolved to be a credit to him. There was a bond of mutual confidence and affection between us, which grew stronger and stronger as the months passed. He had a smile for almost everyone, but we thought he had a different smile for us. We looked for it and were never disappointed.

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  On parade, as long as we were trying, his smile encouraged us. Off parade, if we passed him and saluted, his eyes looked straight into our own and his smile greeted us. It was a wonderful thing, that smile of his. It was something worth living for, when worth working for. It bucked one up when one was bored or tired. It seemed to make one look at things from a different point of view, a finer point of view, his point of view. There was nothing feeble or weak about it. It was not monotonous, like the smile of Sonny Jim. It meant something.

• 1:00:59Jocko Willink?

  It meant that we were his men and that he was proud of us and sure that we were going to do jolly well, better than any of the other platoons. And it made us determine that we would.

• 1:01:15Jocko Willink?

  When we failed him, when he was disappointed in us, he did not smile.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  He did not rage or curse. He just looked disappointed and that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done.

• 1:01:37Jocko Willink?

  Point we've talked about on here many times. That guy that's yelling and screaming.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Not getting respect.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  That has a lot to do also, actually probably everything to do also with, remember who we were talking about? Use the carrot, not the stick, you know?

• 1:01:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  So that's basically, I mean, you know, on top of the bond, or it could be a kind of the same thing where when they look for that approval, which we all do with our friends especially, they're not looking to avoid him getting mad. They're looking to make him happy because of that, you know, how that feels or how good that is. So he doesn't have to get mad, he just has to basically go to zero. He doesn't have to go negative 10 on him. He goes to zero or one, they're like, dang, I'm gonna get back to that 10.

• 1:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's such great language. He just looked disappointed and that made us feel far more savage with ourselves than any amount of swearing would have done.

• 1:02:34Jocko Willink?

  And I had a boss like that one time. Our whole goal in life was just to, just to make, make him look good and, and have him say, "Give us a smile and do a good job." And we were all fired up. Yep.

• 1:02:49Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. He made us feel that we were not playing the game with him. This is if they messed up. He made us feel that we were not playing the game by him. It was not what he said. He was never very good at talking. It was just how he looked. And his look of displeasure and disappointment was a thing that we would do anything to avoid. The fact was that he had won his way into our affections. We loved him. And there isn't anything stronger than love when all's said and done.

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  He was humble too. If that is the right word, and I think it is. No trouble of ours was too small for him to attend to. When we started route marches, for instance, and our feet were blistered and sore, as they often were at first, you would have thought that they were his own feet from the trouble he took. Of course, after the march, there was always an inspection of feet. That is routine, but with him, it was no mere routine. He came into our rooms, and if anyone had a sore fit foot, he would kneel down on the floor and look at it as carefully as if he had been a doctor. Then he would prescribe, and the remedies were ready at hand, being borne by the sergeant.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  If a blister had to be lanced, he would very likely lance it himself then and there, so as to make sure that it was done with a clean needle, and that no dirt was allowed to get in.

• 1:04:25Jocko Willink?

  There was no affectation about this, no striving after effect. It was simply that he felt that our feet were pretty important, and that he knew that we were pretty careless. So he thought it best at the start to see to the matter himself. Nevertheless, there was in our eyes something almost religious about this care for our feet. It seemed to have a touch of the Christ about it. And we loved and honored him the more.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Literally getting down on his hands and knees and caring for the feet of his men.

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  And you know, you can imagine the leaders that would, that would see this as being beneath them.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  And maybe even thinking in some way that this would make them look bad. Right. But you can see, obviously, he's comparing him to Jesus.

• 1:05:26Jocko Willink?

  So I think it was a...

• 1:05:30Jocko Willink?

  I think it had a good effect on the men.

• 1:05:35Jocko Willink?

  We knew that we should lose him.

• 1:05:39Jocko Willink?

  For one thing, we knew that he would be promoted. It was our great hope that someday he would command the company. Also, we knew that he would be killed.

• 1:05:53Jocko Willink?

  He was so amazingly unself-conscious. For that reason, we knew that he would be absolutely fearless. He would be so keen on the job and hand and so anxious for his men that he would forget about his own danger.

• 1:06:11Jocko Willink?

  So it proved. He was a captain when we went out to the front. Whenever there was a tiresome job to be done, he was there in charge. If ever there were a moment of danger, he was on the spot. If there were any particular part of the line where the shells were falling faster or the bombs dropping more thickly than in other parts, he was in it. It was not that he was conceited and imagined himself indispensable. It was just that he was so keen that the men should do their best and act worthy of the regiment.

• 1:06:48Jocko Willink?

  He knew that fellows hated turning out at night for fatigue when they were in a rest camp. He knew how tiresome the long march there and back and digging in the dark for an unknown purpose were. He knew that the fellows would be inclined to grouse and shirk, so he thought that it was up to him to go and show them that he thought it was a job worth doing. And the fact that he was there put a new complexion on the matter altogether. No one would shirk if he was there. No one would grumble so much either. What was good enough for him was good enough for us.

• 1:07:28Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta, gotta get out there. And I've told stories about picking up brass and doing the, taking the bad watches, all those things. And this is a exact commentary about that. Just because you're in a leadership position doesn't mean you don't get to do the hard stuff, or you don't have to do the hard stuff. It actually means you do the hard stuff.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Bro, I was talking to Jade a few days ago, and, you know, he's the boss of his company and stuff. Um, and man, pretty much every word that's coming from that is like, man, it's reminding me of this where,

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  like, there's certain people in a group that can do that, that can go and like, you know, they'll wash your shoes and you don't automatically have that respect. And in some cases, you'll have less respect if like,

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  sure, like they're kissing your butt and they don't have anything to look up to, you know, or, or, you know, these, these kind of guys or whatever.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  But the point is, as the leader, or the boss, or the dad, or whatever, like, everyone in the group is, is watching you. People are watching. So if you're like, you can be like, hey, you can make 10, 20, 50 great moves. And then, but let's say you just kind of come in late every day or something like that, or like you're undisciplined or some, yeah, they're watching. So they're like, mm, okay, I see that. And they're not being critical necessarily. They're just watching.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Or are they?

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure, I mean, it can go conscious or even subconscious. They could be, yeah, they could be getting critical, but, man, they're watching. So when you're like, when, if they see you slack off, they're like,

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  It's okay to slack off.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, all right. Okay, okay, that's what we're doing.

• 1:09:09Jocko Willink?

  You're leading. If you're from a leadership position, you're slacking, your followers are going to slack. There's no doubt about it. Let there be no doubt.

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, you lose your temper, or even, even if like you think no one's paying attention. You know, your kid i- is cruising with you, whatever, you're on the phone with, I don't know, the cable guy. And you know how they schedule that, you know, between these two, and you're mad or whatever.

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  I'll be there between nine AM and nine PM.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Or nine AM the next day or something. And you lose your temper on the cable guy, probably he's watching. We're like, oh, okay, that's kind of what, how it is, like, that's how we do it, kind of thing, you know? Probably people are watching. So, yeah, this guy where he's doing the hard stuff, you know, the

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  The most dangerous stuff.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  The top level stuff, bottom line, he's doing it all. People are watching and they see it, so they're like, man, that's the way to roll.

• 1:09:54Jocko Willink?

  I mean, literally, something that they didn't think, digging in and move, moving at night and digging in. I- you know, for an unknown purpose, they, they, he knew that they weren't fired up. As soon as he showed up and started doing it, they all realized, okay, if it's good enough for him.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Yup, that's how we're rolling.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  It's good enough for us. And they're back to the book, what was good enough for him was good enough for us. If it were not too much trouble for him to turn out, it was not too much trouble for us. He knew, too, how trying the nerves, how trying to the nerves it is to sit in a trench and be shelled. He knew what a temptation there is to move a bit farther down the trench and herd together in a bunch at what seems the safest end. He knew, too, the folly of doing it. And that there, that it was not the thing to do, not done in the best regiments.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  So, he went along to see that it did not happen, to see that the men stuck to their posts and conquered their nerves. And as soon as we saw him, we forgot our own anxiety. It was, move a bit further down, sir, we are all right here. But don't you go exposing yourself. We didn't matter, we knew it then. We were just rank and file, bound to take risks. The company would get along all right without us, but the captain, how was the company to get on without him?

• 1:11:19Jocko Willink?

  To see him was to catch his point of view, to forget our personal anxieties and think only of the company and the regiment and honor.

• 1:11:30Jocko Willink?

  That's an interesting concept. Is that your, this leader's presence actually opened his trooper's minds to what he saw. Yep.

• 1:11:44Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  "There was not one of us but would gladly have died for him. We longed for the chance to show him that. We weren't heroes, we never dreamed about getting the Victoria Cross. But to save the captain, we would have earned it ten times over. And never have cared a button whether we got it or not.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  We never got the chance. Worse luck. It was all the other way. We were holding some trenches which were about as unhealthy as trenches could be. The Boches, which is a slang term for the Germans. The Boches were only a few yards away. And were well supplied with trench mortars, we hadn't got any at the time. Bombs and air torpedoes were dropping round us all day. Of course, the captain was there. It seemed as if he could not keep away. A torpedo fell into the trench and buried some of our trap, chaps.

• 1:12:53Jocko Willink?

  The fellows next to them ran to dig them out. Of course, he was the first one.

• 1:13:01Jocko Willink?

  Then came another torpedo in the same place. That was the end.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  But he lives.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Somehow, he lives.

• 1:13:16Jocko Willink?

  And we who knew him do not forget. We feel his eyes on us, we still work for that wonderful smile of his. There are not many of the old lot left now, but I think those who went west have seen him. When they got to the other side, I think they were met. Someone said, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  And as they knelt before that gracious pierced figure, I reckon they saw nearby the captain's smile.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Anyway, in that faith, let me die if death should come my way.

• 1:14:03Jocko Willink?

  And so, I think,

• 1:14:07Jocko Willink?

  shall I die content.

• 1:14:16Jocko Willink?

  And, die he did.

• 1:14:21Jocko Willink?

  Donald Hankey, who wrote that story was badly wounded in the Battle of Ypres on July 30th, 1915, and after recovering from those wounds, he went back to the front, including action at the Battle de Somme.

• 1:14:42Jocko Willink?

  And later, preparing to go over the top at 1:30 in the afternoon,

• 1:14:50Jocko Willink?

  on October 12th, 1916. Lieutenant Hankey was reported to have told his men, "If wounded, blighty. If killed, resurrection."

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  And blighty was a term that basically meant million dollar wound, which we've talked about before on this podcast. The million dollar wound is, hey, you get shot, it gets you off the front, but it doesn't kill you and it doesn't maim you for life. It's a million dollar wound, and that, the Brits called that a blighty. And so, at 1:30 in the afternoon on October 12th, as his guys are getting ready to go over the top, he tells his men, "If wounded, blighty. If killed, resurrection."

• 1:15:37Jocko Willink?

  So you boys have nothing to fear.

• 1:15:41Jocko Willink?

  Shortly thereafter, he was killed. He is said to have been buried near the spot where he fell, although the grave was never found.

• 1:15:57Jocko Willink?

  But, we do have his words.

• 1:16:02Jocko Willink?

  So, let us heed those words,

• 1:16:08Jocko Willink?

  as we try to lead others as well as he did, as well as we can,

• 1:16:16Jocko Willink?

  as well as the beloved captain.

• 1:16:27Jocko Willink?

  With that,

• 1:16:32Jocko Willink?

  it's been some time since we've done some questions for the internet, so we can

• 1:16:40Jocko Willink?

  move to those questions.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  Sounds good.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  After

• 1:16:49Jocko Willink?

  after hearing a story like that, it's

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  it's always tough for me to remember that when you hear one story like that, you've got to remember that there are thousands and thousands and thousands of stories like that

• 1:17:10Jocko Willink?

  of war and of leadership

• 1:17:16Jocko Willink?

  and of sacrifice.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  And if we don't do our damnedest to learn from those lessons and apply them,

• 1:17:33Jocko Willink?

  I question whether we even deserve to have this life.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that about this this story, beloved captain?

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Like, that's such a clear demonstration on how to be where these guys would would follow this guy basically into fire. They could probably watch him walk into a pit of fire and they'd all follow.

• 1:17:57Jocko Willink?

  They did.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Think about it. They did. That's what World War I was.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:02Jocko Willink?

  Stand up, go, follow me, we're going to die.

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if this guy's mere presence can make these other guys follow him like that in these type of situations, like if more people would be like this guy, you know?

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  In normal life, I mean, it'd be a breeze to have people, you know, listen to you and you guys get some stuff done.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  And, and how much of the stuff that the beloved captain does is counterintuitive of what people think of a military guy. I mean, almost everything in there. He's admitting his mistakes. He's figuring out who's awkward and admitting to them that he's kind of messed up too. He's getting down on his knees and, and basically being almost submissive to his men in order to make sure that they're healthy. He's taking all the hard jobs. He's smiling and developing these strong relationships with his men. Like every one of those things is almost counter to what people think, uh, um, a big, tough military leader is.

• 1:19:11Speaker 02

  The drill sergeant.

• 1:19:11Jocko Willink?

  The drill sergeant leader. Like, no. And, and so I see people in the civilian sector that end up in the same way. They think, they think that that's how you lead because they've seen it in a movie. And that is not that, that, that hyper aggressive mentality is, is ineffective with human beings. And actually, there's a question here, so we'll probably talk about that some more. Um, but, but that's why I always make it perfectly clear that I'm all about being aggressive. Yeah, I'm all about being aggressive, but being aggressive towards your mission, not towards people. I mean, unless the person warrants aggressiveness, which does happen from time to time. That's called a fistfight.

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  You know that part you noted where his mere presence kinda, um, not imposed, but

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  Impacts.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  Impacts their perspective where it's like, it's kind, it's basically him walking in to, to whatever the, the situation and them just kind of automatically, hey, what, what's he seeing?

• 1:20:11Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  You know, they're, they're, they're so just kind of into them.

• 1:20:13Jocko Willink?

  Hey, let me, let me move this weapon because it's in a bad spot. Let me, let me pick up this stuff up over here. That is completely right. Completely right. I was on a ship one time and I thought it was about the, the commanding officer on a ship, there's something called the one MC, which is a basically a Speaker that goes throughout every portion of the ship. Everyone can hear it. And this commanding officer gets on this gets on the one MC and he's going to make a speech, right? Because that's what commanding officers do sometimes. And he says, I thought he was going to make the most epic speech because he said, not the most epic, but I thought he was going to say something pretty powerful.

• 1:20:48Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:20:48Jocko Willink?

  He says, um, he says, hey, when you, when, when, when you see a piece of trash on the ship, and when I see a piece of trash,

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  I thought he was going to say, when I see a piece of trash, man, I go and pick it up. And he said, he said something along the lines of when I see a piece of trash, I'm frustrated that nobody picked it up. And think about the, the impact of those two statements. If he said what I thought he was going to say, which is, hey, when I see a piece of trash on the floor, I go over and I pick it up and, and put it away or throw it away. And then I make sure there's no other trash near it because I want this ship to shine. That's one thing. He's, he said, hey, when I see a piece of trash on the ship, I get so frustrated that you aren't cleaning it up. And I was so let down at that ship that that commanding officer said that of that ship. Uh, but to your point, if you know, it's like the, the reason I thought of that is because you can see

• 1:21:43Jocko Willink?

  when, even when I've been in, you know, the commander of a unit of some kind, and I would see when I walk in unexpected, there's like a change, you know? And it's not always, you know, sometimes I've seen it where guys, the commander walks in and it's people are doing that because of fear.

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:21:59Jocko Willink?

  Right? And that's not, that's not what we're looking for.

• 1:22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:02Jocko Willink?

  You want to say, oh, the boss is here. I don't want him to see that this is going on. I don't, you know, this is, we shouldn't be doing that. We should, and that's, you're right. That is a real powerful, real powerful thought that he puts in here about how, when, when the boss comes around, when the commander comes around and you, and it actually provides the troopers, the ability to see what he's seeing and how powerful that is.

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  Well, one time, uh, Jada, I forget what he, he had to do this thing where it's like, it was like a tense thing. And he was just, he was telling, uh, he's talking to Sarah about it. And he's like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave like right after that, cause I don't wanna have to face like some awkwardness or something like that. And then, um, and once Sarah left, I was like, eh, I'm gonna tell Jocko that you're gonna do that. And he's like, all like, he knew I was joking, but he was like, ah, you know, kinda like, what would you think about that? You're not even his boss, by the way, obviously, but it's kinda like that thing, you know, like, hey, what would, like, um, you ever watch, remember Commando?

• 1:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's not, uh, uh, yeah, go ahead.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  The part, there's this part, right, where the story behind Commando is one of his, his guys that he trained and stuff, um, went rogue, went bad, came back and they thought he was dead and he comes back and he helps, you know, then, you know.

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Great, great story.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's dope. Anyway, um, so this, this bad guy now, he, you could, you could tell he still has all this admiration for, for, his name's John Matrix.

• 1:23:31Jocko Willink?

  For Arnold?

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, for Arnold, cause he's like, he's walking around the compound that he's kinda like, you know, and all these guys are like, talk tou- talking tough and stuff. So he goes to the, the other boss that he's now working with, um, he's all, it's, it's funny to hear your men talk tough, it makes me laugh. If Matrix was here, he'd laugh too, you know, kinda like he's, it's almost like him and Matrix are on the same team still, you know? He knows how he would see that, you know, it's kinda that same thing.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  Presence. Awesome. Uh, so

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  wrapping that rough transition, people wanna support the podcast, how they gonna do it? Echo Charles?

• 1:24:14Speaker 02

  Well, one way, the way I like to recommend, one of the many, is by supporting yourself at the same time on its supplements and Warrior Bars, on it.com/jaco get 10% off.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Before this podcast, I'll make it short, before this podcast, when I get, um, uh, Shroom Tech,

• 1:24:43Speaker 02

  I didn't get 10% off.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Now you can get 10% off. Or if you shop at Amazon, click through our websites is another way you can support the podcast. Click through our website's Amazon link.

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Our websites, that's Jaco Podcast dot com and Jaco Store dot com. There's a little thing you can click on.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  Yep. Yep. And you can support that way.

• 1:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Does it cost you anything?

• 1:25:06Speaker 02

  Doesn't cost you anything.

• 1:25:07Jocko Willink?

  No, it does not.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  It barely costs you time, barely. Really, the thing is remembering to go there.

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Speaker 02

  So that's kind of the thing.

• 1:25:16Jocko Willink?

  A good solution to that.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Yes, which we do have now.

• 1:25:19Jocko Willink?

  Little Trooper Tool.

• 1:25:20Speaker 02

  Trooper Tool is what it's called. It's this cool little thing and it's on the website as well. It says, uh, Trooper Tool Chrome Extension. Boom. Click on it. It puts a little icon on the top of your browser and it automatically affiliates your Amazon experience with, with us. Support passively. Passively, no, passively as opposed to actively. No, no, it's aggressive.

• 1:25:47Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  But it's not. Yeah. Alright.

• 1:25:51Jocko Willink?

  Passive means you didn't do anything.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  It's not.

• 1:25:54Jocko Willink?

  We have, we have troopers out there that are aggressively shopping on Amazon to support the podcast and I dig that.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  Yep. And I read that sometimes.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  My friends on Twitter. They'll send me like a screenshot, boom, of their Trooper Tool or their, or their little purchase.

• 1:26:13Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  Like, "Hey, I bought this duct tape. Here's my thing." And it's a screenshot.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Nope.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really makes me feel empowered and I'm not joking.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, it does, it does help the podcast.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate it.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  Fully. Um, subscribe to the podcast, of course, iTunes and then on YouTube as well. I'm slowly putting more videos. I'll put a few and keep putting more.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  So you're not just stuck watching the podcast, which is cool too, by the way, if you're into watching it, um, and listening as. Sometimes like people will put it on their screen as they work out, you know, so they can kind of watch, listen, workout, watch, listen, you know? It's a good little, little formula. Anyway, yeah, YouTube is a good one as well. And of course the Jocko Store. If you like, you know, shirts and whatnot, coffee mugs, stickers, um, they're pretty cool. I've got some great feedback.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  One announcement.

• 1:27:13Speaker 02

  We have women's stuff coming out in about, what, a week or two? So, yeah.

• 1:27:22Jocko Willink?

  To all the, uh, female troopers.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 1:27:24Jocko Willink?

  Who have been pressuring.

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  Strongly recommending, we'll say, consistently, strongly recommending. Yup. Yeah, they're good ones. Uh, I chose three colors. You're gonna have to wait and see which ones they are. Um, and when they do come out, give me more feedback. I wanna narrow it down to the, the stuff that we all want.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  So, yeah, go do that. Chocolstore.com. There's some cool stuff. If you like it, boom, get one or two or however many, and that supports as well.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  And plus, that means I don't have to buy my wife anything.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll just give, yeah, I'll send one home with you.

• 1:28:00Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Podcast t-shirts.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  That's actually one of the good reasons I like managing this stuff. I don't have to, not that I really buy shirts that much anyway, but I have a bunch of shirts now.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  Plus, maybe my daughters, too.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, perfect.

• 1:28:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so we're good.

• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  Yup, good to go. Everybody's good to go.

• 1:28:15Jocko Willink?

  Are they regular, are they the same design, or is it something new?

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  Uh, it's, they're, yeah, they're more or less the same, but they're, you know, this is, they're basically the women's version.

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:28:24Speaker 02

  Of what we got. Uh, I started with a discipline equals freedom. I might just do one for women, cuz let's face it, like, we all get, get after it in pretty much the same way. Except for every once in a while, women get after it in a different way. Every once in a while. So it might be worth it to give them a little something different, something special. Just my opinion, I don't know.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  Alright, there you go. That's always the support.

• 1:28:52Jocko Willink?

  Support that podcast, you boy.

• 1:28:54Speaker 02

  And with that, question number one.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  "I am a Marine Corps vet, only four years, and I recently hired another Marine. He had a great reputation and a lot of experience as NCO leader, gunny sergeant. But he's not doing well in our company. He only seems to lead through fear slash authority. It isn't working. He has high standards, which I like, but he's not gaining the respect of his team or the rest of the company. What's going on and how can I fix it?"

• 1:29:31Jocko Willink?

  This is kind of a classic case and unfortunately, it's an unfortunate case too. And what we have here is an example of a guy that's probably pretty charismatic. He's probably pretty aggressive, he's probably pretty loud, he's probably pretty authoritative, he's probably pretty smart, he's probably physically impressive. In other words, he's probably got a lot of natural, good leadership traits. And I surmise, in a situation like this, that this is the type of person that took the basics of what the military taught him and utilized it to lead. And so what he did was he used imposed discipline.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  That's what got used on him and that's what he used. So it's the things that we just talked about. It's intimidation, it's the whole thing with maneuver warfare versus attrition warfare that the military still teaches, unfortunately. That the job of leaders is to obey orders and ensure orders are obeyed, okay? That's, that's what the military unfortunately, in some cases, teaches. And you can go through your career and that's what you can kind of learn, or you can have some good leadership inside the military that teaches you the better way, the way to actually lead. And so, but if you're, if you're raised that the way, that your job as a leader is to obey

• 1:31:01Jocko Willink?

  orders and ensure that orders are obeyed, if that's your job, how do you do that? Well, you do it through blunt force trauma. That's how you do it. And as I've said before, that does work for a time period. It does get the job done. It's micromanagement. And fortunately or unfortunately, in the military, you've got people that rapidly cycle through leadership positions. And so it's not like you are permanently in charge of the same group of people. So you can kind of get away with it because you do a workup and the workup is stressful and then you go on deployment, the deployment's only six months long and by the time you're... Done, everybody hates you, but it's okay, you're moving on to your next job.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  And so that's how people survive. And what really hurts about this is because they survive that leadership position, it actually reinforces that type of leadership behavior, which is not good. But what they do is if, if, let's say you do, it's just an American kind of mindset of, hey, if some is good, more is better. And so they take this, this attitude and they become more, more aggressive. They impose more discipline. They raise the standards to ridiculous level where it's no longer even sensible.

• 1:32:24Jocko Willink?

  Where things just become stupid. Like we used to say, so I don't know why they called this, but in the military, they called the push-up position, the front-leaning rest. Sure. Front-leaning rest. I don't know why. But I, and then they also use the term forward-leaning, meaning, hey, we want to be ahead, we want to be ready, we want to be prepared. And I used to say, let's not be so far forward-leaning that we're in the leaning rest. Meaning that we're leaning so far forward that we're wasting our energy and getting tired. And so at a certain point, it can become stupid. An example of this would be like, um, like the uniform inspections. Like, okay, you gotta have a squared away uniform, you know, you gotta be able to break out your uniform, look sharp. Well, if you do that every day, you're wasting time because it's not the most important thing.

• 1:33:10Jocko Willink?

  It does have a level of importance somewhere on the hierarchy of important things, not real high. But there's some people, if you're a strict military disciplinarian, you might think, I need to have a uniform inspection every single day because my guys are gonna look the best. And so you got a bunch of guys that not only are they wasting time prepping their uniform and paying for them to get dry cleaned, and they're actually using their uniforms so much, their dress uniforms so much that they're providing wear and tear on it. And so it's just, it's just stupid. Doesn't make any sense. So, that's, that's what they do. These leaders that have been raised like that, they start to do it even more,

• 1:33:49Jocko Willink?

  and it just, it defeats its own purpose. And most important is that these leaders start to stifle free thought from their subordinates. And eventually, and this is even more critical, eventually they begin to stifle free thought from their own brain.

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  And that's likely what happened in a situation like this. And you know, you got a guy that again was raised in this attitude and he took that attitude and he amplified that attitude and that is how he was successful and he amplified it even more. And he ends up, now he breaks out of the Marine Corps. Well, now it's not just a six month deployment. You gotta lead people for years and years and years and you gotta go through different various projects and all these personalities and, and it's a more sensitive environment because it's in the civilian sector and lives aren't necessarily at stake. And so what do you need to do?

• 1:34:46Jocko Willink?

  What, what you need him to see, so now I'm talking to the leader that asked this question. What, what can you do to help? Well, what you need that former Marine gunny sergeant to do, what you need him to see is that the next level of leadership, the next progression along the spectrum of leadership is not more of all that.

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  It's actually less. It's not more imposed discipline on your troops. It's actually less. It's the troops having free thought and self-discipline. And it is not you leading more. It is actually you leading less. It is not you taking more ownership. It is you taking less ownership and your troops taking more ownership. It is him giving guidance, giving commander's intent and then stepping back. It is him not being the focus. Cause a lot of times when you're in a leadership position, that can be an ego feeder.

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden you want to be the center of attention. You want to be in the spotlight.

• 1:36:04Jocko Willink?

  But you don't want to be that. You want to be less of that. And it's, and I'm telling you, so that's what you gotta do. You gotta open his eyes to what the next level of leadership looks like. He's never had that opened for him. And I'm gonna tell you right now, it's gonna be hard to get him there. Because there's a good chance that he's a hard person to coach because he's been successful with the techniques that he learned and he has experience. And he's, and that, that experience has strengthened his resolve and his belief in his leadership technique. It's, it's, it's a tough situation. So you're likely gonna have to take an indirect approach. And so, for instance, here's a good one.

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, I was wondering, you know, who, who's gonna take your place when it's, you know, when it's time for promotion? Who are you grooming to fill your shoes? Cause guess what? He's not grooming anybody.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Or you ask him how much time he's spending looking up and out at what's going on in the strategic as opposed to down and in at his own little element.

• 1:37:14Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing that you could do is assign him some higher level projects that actually pull him out of the micromanagement weeds.

• 1:37:25Jocko Willink?

  And maybe even put him on projects with people that don't micromanage. And, and good leaders that lead in a good way, put him on some kind of project with them so he can see what that looks like.

• 1:37:40Jocko Willink?

  And obviously, these are just some suggestions of approaches because you're probably gonna have to, you'll, you'll have to adapt those and figure out exactly how to walk him through to the end state. Which the end state, the commander's intent from me is you want to teach him what the next, what the next level, the next advancement of leadership

• 1:38:08Jocko Willink?

  skill for him is. And it's something that's the opposite of what he learned. So.

• 1:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Good challenge.

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, that, that leading from authority thing and fear and authority.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  It's almost like it's so black and white where when someone does that, it's so clear.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  It's very clear and it's very addictive for the person because there's immediate gratification. I told you to do it. And so they do it and then, okay, see, it worked.

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  It kinda takes less work too, a lot of the time.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  It totally takes less work. You don't have to invest in relationships. You don't have to invest in, in, indirect approaches on things. Of course, it takes less work. It's, it, it's real simple.

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. You can kinda give in to your temper sometimes too.

• 1:38:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh yeah. Your temper's a little bit of a tool with that kind of, the problem is, over time, these, that type of leadership doesn't work.

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:39:07Jocko Willink?

  You wanna be the beloved captain who never lost his temper, who never yelled at his men, and yet who would follow him into the fires of hell.

• 1:39:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  Next question.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  If you had a leader at work who you did not respect and know is ineffective, and you've communicated that to him, yet when they see you,

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  they try to shake your hand,

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  how would you react? And how would you deny their handshake offering?

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  Appreciate the feedback, sir.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  So, um, okay, this is just off, off the mark, right? I mean, I hope, I hope, I hope people realize that this is, no, it's okay. I mean, I understand the reason I put this in there just because this is what we talked about earlier where you think, man, I'm holding the line.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  And I'm, I'm holding the line and this is my expectations of a leader and you don't fit it. So I'm gonna, number one, I'm gonna tell you. Number two, if you try and shake my hand, you're not getting it.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:40:07Jocko Willink?

  So, that's what we call an adversarial relationship and is not what we want. How, let me ask you this. How is this going to help your cause to have an adversary relationship with your boss? How does it help your cause? Is he gonna listen to you more or less? Is he gonna support you more or less? Will he give you what you want more or less? Which one? You won't shake his hand?

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  And, and you think he's gonna support you in any way? No. And furthermore...

• 1:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Is he, if you have an adversary relationship with your boss, is he more likely to promote you into a position where you can have more control over decisions for the team and for your own future? What do you think the answer to that is? Negative.

• 1:40:53Jocko Willink?

  All those answers are obvious. This

• 1:40:58Jocko Willink?

  whole concept is wrong. Our job

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  is to build a relationship with our boss. And honestly, with everyone else for that matter. That's what we're trying to do. Straight up disrespecting the boss, or again, anyone is not going to help our cause. It's going to hurt it. Now,

• 1:41:22Jocko Willink?

  this doesn't mean that we're kissing ass. This doesn't mean that we're folding. It doesn't mean that we're weak. This is, this is, this is the challenge for me to convince people that want to be strong leaders, that this doesn't mean that you are weak. It actually takes more strength to control your emotions. It takes more strength to remain professional. It takes more strength to focus on the long-term win and not the short-term frustration. It takes more strength to keep your ego in check. And I would say that this whole question is a good,

• 1:42:07Jocko Willink?

  is, is an indicator to me, I might need to check my own ego. Okay? Am I critical of my boss?

• 1:42:15Jocko Willink?

  Am I critical of my boss because I'm a little bit jealous? Is that possible? Am I critical of my boss because I think I deserve the job more than they do? Do I think that my boss got lucky? Or he, he's a brown-noser? Or he's favored some way? That's why he got it? And I'm going to be bitter about it? And therefore, I'm not going to respect him? All those right there? Ego talking. Right? Full-on ego talking. So, you gotta put the ego in check. You gotta support the boss. And you gotta support the team. Then that's the best way to support the boss and support the team. And the obvious caveat to this is,

• 1:42:56Jocko Willink?

  if the boss is doing something that's illegal, or immoral, or unethical, then, fine. Yeah, of course, absolutely. You can call him out. You can deny his handshake, you can report him up the chain of command or to the authorities. Because if you're part of what he's doing and you know it, then you're complicit in the activities. So, you're at risk anyways.

• 1:43:20Jocko Willink?

  And it's the right thing to do. So, obviously in those cases, yeah, you, you can hold your ground. But barring those extreme circumstances, what you want to do with your boss is build the relationship. And again, it's not just your boss, it's your peers, it's your chain of command up and down. You want to build those relationships instead of breaking them.

• 1:43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it seems, it's a little fun, not funny, it's interesting how, when you lay it out and I'm sure a lot of, maybe even, um, when he's listening to this, just hearing this question out loud, it seems obvious, you know? But really you're trying to think about yourself in this situation.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  Where, yeah, you don't like this guy and maybe he said some stuff to offend you even and you don't respect him, obviously. So, yeah, like you don't want to shake this guy's hand, like how you feel is a lot of times what dictates your behavior, you know? Towards people and just otherwise. Um, so when you're in the situation, it's, it's kind of like, it's so hard to be like, "Yeah, I don't respect his whole methods, I don't like any of this stuff, he's going to come shake my hand." It's so hard to be like, "Sure, and, and do what you're talking about."

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  It can be.

• 1:44:32Jocko Willink?

  Put your ego in check, put your emotions in check.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:34Jocko Willink?

  Put your attitude in check and just go, "Hey boss, how's it going today?"

• 1:44:38Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  "Everything's going good here."

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:42Jocko Willink?

  "Appreciate the support you've been giving us, I, there's one decision you made, I was kind of wondering about, I'd love to get, love to pick your brain on at some point." "Oh, really?" Whereas if I just go, "I don't want to shake your hand."

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  "I hate you."

• 1:44:54Jocko Willink?

  "I basically disrespect you and I hate you."

• 1:44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  "And I, and what you, the decision you made over here was wrong, is he going to listen to me?" There's no chance.

• 1:45:01Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  There's no chance, you're going to wait, you're going to lose the argument.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Me? When I go in there and I say, "Hey boss, how's it going?" Yes, yeah, no problem. "Hey, I have one thing I wanted to pick your brain about, this decision you made over here." "Is he gonna listen to me?" "Got a better chance." "Still might say no, but guess what? I'm fighting a long war." "I'm gonna outlast him, I'm gonna outwork him, I'm gonna outmaneuver him."

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:20Jocko Willink?

  "My boss is gonna do what I want him to do."

• 1:45:22Speaker 02

  I know, man, yeah, you gotta keep that in mind, man.

• 1:45:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  Cause when you're in it, when you lose that little battle, cause really that's what it is. When you're shaking your hand and you're like, in your head, you're like, "I hate you." "I don't wanna shake your hand." "Freaking, get your hand out of my face, your whole existence of your hand in front of my face is, is an insult." "That's what you're thinking." "So, if you shake it, you lost that battle." "And that, that's bad right there, for you." "That's, it feels bad."

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's very, very immature.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it, it just feels right at the, at the time.

• 1:45:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if you let your emotions get all crazy, if you're not being strategic, if you're not thinking about winning.

• 1:45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and by no means am I saying that's right.

• 1:46:00Jocko Willink?

  Playing the game correctly.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  I know, that's, but the point is, when you say it out loud, it's like, "Oh my gosh, it's so clear."

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  You know what, I'll tell you this, you know what, you, you, you just indicated to me, something very obvious, is that, over time, you know how over time you get to, okay, you go for a hard workout and you get to, you look forward to the feeling afterwards of that, "Yeah, I did this hard workout, there's endorphins or whatever." I'm gonna tell you, at some point, I developed some sort of attitude where, when I, when I control myself and I make a good strategic move, it feels just as good. It feels way better than the short-term, "Aw, man, I really told him." "No, no, wrong answer, you lost, you won the battle, lost the war, idiot." "That's what I feel like if I make that mistake."

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Right, that's absolutely correct, only you've, you conditioned yourself to the whole process, you know? Cause you probably went through it a few times, tasted the fruits, you know, of winning the lot. But, so it's just with experience, exactly right, exactly right. So, a, and there's ways you can kinda do that to yourself, like, I do, if like, even if you have in, like, in re, ultimately, when, when you boil kinda your whole way of thinking down, when you do have an ego, that you think is like a functional ego, but use that ego to win the long war. So, like, kinda like what I did with getting mad, it's like, no one can, like, my, like, no one's gonna tell me I have low self-esteem, cause really, you know, anger, anger issues is usually because of low self-esteem. So, in this case, you could be like, "Hey, if you ever..."

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  facilitate that adversarial relationship where you don't shake his hand or you're like you wanna as he said you've communicated that to him you have a leader that you don't respect and you know is ineffective and you told him okay so keep that when you say stuff like that consider that as like your weakness like just tell yourself that what it is say that's your weakness for forgetting the long war

• 1:47:53Jocko Willink?

  and for and for showing your cards that much

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  showing your yes yeah just it's this little internal thing you tell yourself and then just like how you were saying where you feel dumb

• 1:48:03Jocko Willink?

  if your ego can't handle that can handle all that then I'll go back to my point that I said this doesn't mean you're weak

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  right

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  it means that you are winning

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  yeah but flip it around as far as what you tell yourself like you know it feels weak to lose a small battle I understand but flip it around and say hey

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  saying is no

• 1:48:20Speaker 02

  if you win it at the expense of the long that means you're weak say that to yourself and it'll get easier you know you'll condition yourself

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  if you lose the long-term battle you're even more weak

• 1:48:31Speaker 02

  yes that's the big weakness right there

• 1:48:33Jocko Willink?

  weakness alright

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  next question for the podcast

• 1:48:42Speaker 02

  what would a Jocko school for boys and girls eight to sixteen years old this should be interesting what would that look like schedule subjects physical education

• 1:48:53Jocko Willink?

  so first of all I would love to do this and I seriously one day I I may do this

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  Lord of the flies

• 1:48:59Jocko Willink?

  yes um uh I I actually really do relate to kids for some reason and I think a school I think I think I could develop a school that would be awesome and outstanding and would produce really stable strong

• 1:49:20Jocko Willink?

  mentally capable

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  Children for the world.

• 1:49:27Jocko Willink?

  So, and so I was so happy when I saw this question and I've actually looked and I've actually, I've actually pondered the ideas of, you know, buying a, buying a piece of property, you know, what it would cost, maybe getting some investors together that we're going to build a, I mean, I've literally, I've actually looked for property, which is something I do all the time, but I've looked for property and said, okay, this would probably work. So.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  Like a, like almost like an extension school, like in a little.

• 1:49:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, like, like an academy, like a school that you go to and you, and we, we, what we could probably do is do like a, instead of a, hey, you're going to go here from sixth grade to graduation, you go for like one year. You go one year here, you go back to your regular school. After you've been in the school for a year, you're going to go back to your regular school. You're going to totally dominate. You're going to be number one. You're going to learn so much more. It's just going to be awesome. So we wouldn't need to bring, we wouldn't need to bring these young, these, these children into the school for, for the entire time because, you know, you could go out, back out into the regular world and

• 1:50:33Jocko Willink?

  overlay what you learned at the academy and you would just dominate. And so, um, yeah, maybe I'll end up doing that someday. And the schedule, I mean, I didn't spend that much time on it. And it doesn't really even take that much time to figure out because you know what we're doing. We're waking up very early in the morning. We're doing a hardcore PT, some kind of sports, a variety of sports. Guess what? We're playing every sport, you know, baseball, basketball, swimming, football, soccer, wrestling, judo, boxing, and we're going to do a little bit of everything. That's going to happen really early in the morning. I mean, obviously we're getting up at 4:30. We are up before the sun gets up. I mean,

• 1:51:14Jocko Willink?

  that's the way it is. And then we get the knowledge. So we go into the classrooms, the classrooms, we, I would, I would get instructors that were full on engaged in what they're doing, just in the game that love their subject and that can relate.

• 1:51:32Jocko Willink?

  It's the world and most important, because I think this is what's lacking sometimes. Most important, through all the different knowledge courses or all the basic knowledge, there would be a common thread that connects them all together because that's what I think people are missing that a lot. I think we miss that, that underlying theme of, uh, through our educational system. But I think when you connect everything, they're more powerful. Like when you connect math to science to history to English to foreign language and you connect those to art and music and you connect, there's some, there, because there are all those things. If you look at history, all those things are connected. They're all

• 1:52:17Jocko Willink?

  connected, but we don't make the connections. Right. And when you don't connect things, they're weaker. So I would, I would force, or I would, you wouldn't have to force it. You don't have to force it. I would, I would foster that thread through everything so that everything made sense. You know? In a big picture. And that way, when you get granular, you're tying it into this overlying theme of civilization and the movement of the way things go through civilization. Now I'll tell you another piece of this. You would learn vocational skills at my school. A hundred percent. You would learn carpentry. You would learn how to do electrical wiring.

• 1:53:01Jocko Willink?

  You would learn plumbing. You would learn automotive and motor repair. You would learn all those things. And guess what? Are you going to take those courses? Like I said, this, this court, this school would probably only be a year long. That's fine. Because guess what? You know how long it takes to learn basic carpentry? Not real long. Are you going to be a skilled carpenter? No, but I'm not looking to build skilled carpenters. Are you going to be ready to rewire a giant building, a commercial building? No, but could you rewire a house? Likely. It doesn't take that much time to learn that. You won't be skilled at it, but you will have the knowledge. Same thing with plumbing and, like I said, the automotive. So I, so you would learn those vocational skills because we have people

• 1:53:44Jocko Willink?

  in America right now that don't know any of that stuff. And that's jacked up.

• 1:53:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, even like when I was young, uh, my dad used to make us change our own oil. You know, you can, you can go anywhere. It takes like in whatever 50 minutes. But he's like, no, you change your own oil. You gotta know what to do with the oil. You know, there's this little process. You can't just be rolling around and change flat tire. Even now I have AAA. I don't, I don't call AAA for a flat tire. Because, so I hadn't got a flat tire in a long time. I got a flat tire one day. And actually recently I've been getting kind of flat tires. Nonetheless. But I change them every time. Cause when I first got it after not having a flat tire for a while, I thought, oh man. Do I even remember how to do this?

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  I, of cour-, I did. I remember how to do it. It's not that hard. Just like I said, so. There are people who don't know. They get a flat tire and they're, they're lost. They're lost. Yeah. They only, they have AAA or whatever. Sure. They get saved.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  But if they can do it them, themselves, you know?

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  So, at my school, you would learn those vocational skills. And then on top of that. You'd learn basic survival skills. Little hunting, little fishing, little gardening and planting and how to grow things, grow food. And your basics, water, fire and shelter. You'd learn those. So you'd be able to survive in any environment, any situation. Obviously with all those survival skills and the vocational skills and even the classroom knowledge skills. There would be a, a. System of team building. Where you're going to be doing things together as a team.

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Not only for your classes, but also cleaning the place. Working together. See, I mean, that's what they do in, in military boot camps. All you do is clean. They turn cleaning into like a team building exercise. So we would do that.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  Uh, people would be in simple uniforms, you know, nothing too fancy. Obviously, the nighttime. Would be the study of the martial arts. And you would learn the basics of jujitsu, boxing, Muay Thai and wrestling.

• 1:56:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's what my school would be like. And there'd be some real discipline there and there would be real achievement. And I think that anybody that spent one year in that school right there would have a infinitely greater chance of success and domination in whatever they field they chose to go into and when they went back to their school, to their regular school.

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny, at first, at first thought, when I'm, you're, I'm kind of picturing this stuff or whatever, and I'm sure I'm not the only one listening to this, where you'd be like, oh shoot, that probably, that's a hardcore school, you know, they gotta be ready to, to get.

• 1:56:37Jocko Willink?

  And now you, now you wanna go.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  Well, when you think about it, it probably wouldn't be that hardcore. In fact, it'd probably be kind of fun, given your approach to, you know, teaching or in leading and stuff like that. Cause man, I remember when I, it was like when I first met you. I met you and you don't remember when I first met you, but, um, so I kinda knew you or whatever a little bit. This is back at the boxing club. And you came in, the first time I saw your kids, Thor, like Thor and I think one of his sisters, I forget, I don't know which one, I forget. They were just little kids. And you had brought them or whatever.

• 1:57:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:57:08Speaker 02

  And they come in the door and they just start running around like, this is a big playground, right?

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Psychopaths.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, hitting the bags and doing all this stuff, right? And then you, you had this look on your face, kinda like, you, it's almost like you had control of the situation, but you were just gonna let them be them, kinda thing. And I remember just kinda, kinda looking at like, oh, this is interesting. I've never seen Jocko and his kids, you know, so let me, so I was kinda just watching, so.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Decentralized command.

• 1:57:32Speaker 02

  It was real, in a matter of speaking, yeah. So, um, jujitsu started kinda going on and I think you're, you might've even been teaching. I don't know, you were involved in some way. And, um, they got loud real quick and it kinda was like, for lack of a better term, kinda distracting. And you, like, kinda stopped what you're doing, you were like. You can't stop that like real, real mean and then I was like, let me see like how they react. You know, I look and then they stop. They look at you like just, just for maybe almost two seconds. They look at you, they look at each other like that and they just start laughing and keep going. And then like you kind of started laughing at the same time. I was like, oh, I see.

• 1:58:13Speaker 02

  Like you're probably strict, but it's not that's they're kids, you know, they're doing kid stuff.

• 1:58:19Jocko Willink?

  We want them to be.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  They're not breaking nothing. Yeah. So it was like, it's almost like they knew and then they knew beyond that. You know, like they knew what was ultimately up. That was interesting.

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, who knows? Maybe we can put this school together at some point. I know there's a lot of people that would love to send their kids to a school like this on every end. I, I would, obviously I would send all my kids to school like this tomorrow if it existed.

• 1:58:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:44Jocko Willink?

  One year of the academy.

• 1:58:47Speaker 02

  That's what it's called, the academy.

• 1:58:48Jocko Willink?

  I think it would have to be.

• 1:58:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  A big part of it, and I'm sure this would, I'm sure this would be, would be implemented in the whole system is how the teachers and instructors are treated.

• 1:59:04Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:59:04Speaker 02

  You know, like, because I think that's a lot of the time anyway, like one of the many issues. You know, when, when issues come up in education, it's like, how are the teachers regarded?

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:16Speaker 02

  In that situation. Yeah, man. Yeah, good. Sign me up. Okay. Next question. I'm about to accept a position across the country after changing the IT field I work in. I've just been accepted for my first job and in this type of position with the amount of responsibility I'll have. And I'm not, or I'm having some issues and some hesitations on if I'll be good enough. Have you ever been in a position before where you tried to bite off more than you can chew professionally? How do you approach it? And is there ever a time where you think it's best to bow out and quit? And if so, how do you know when that point is?

• 1:59:55Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, actually, most people get hired into leadership positions they haven't been in before. The SEAL Teams is all about that. You get promoted, you do that leadership job, and just as you're getting the hang of it, you get promoted again. So, there's nothing abnormal about feeling that you aren't quite ready for a leadership position. And the reason that some people fail when they get to these positions that they're not ready for is because they're nervous that they're gonna show that. And so they try to hide it. They're afraid to ask questions, they're afraid to say they don't know, so they end up looking scared and stupid.

• 2:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Which equates to looking incompetent. And I mean, even just with the beloved captain, they actually kicked off. There's a reason this guy included those statements in there, that he asked questions and asked for guidance and admitted his mistakes. There's a reason that he was beloved. That is one of the reasons.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  And... So, so, so, that's what you gotta do, is be okay with it. Don't try and hide it. Now, to bow out and quit, I have not done that. But there's no reason to, because if I don't know how to do something, I have no problem asking for help up and down the chain of command. Up and down the chain of command. Nothing wrong with that.

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  And I've said this before, that what, what you're feeling, um, person that asked this question, what you're feeling, that you aren't good enough and that you don't wanna blow it, those are actually signs of humility. And it's okay, those are good. I've felt those feelings my whole career, and I still feel them now. And when I was in the SEAL Teams, I would over-prepare for things, and it wasn't because I thought I was gonna dominate, it was because I thought I was gonna fall short.

• 2:01:59Jocko Willink?

  And even, I was telling you, I prepared for the podcast all yesterday, I thought I was good, literally had printed out my notes, woke up this morning, worked out, and I was like, "No, I'm not ready." I over-prepare for this. Why? Because in my mind, I'm feeling that I'm gonna blow it.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  And I don't like that.

• 2:02:20Speaker 02

  Bro, there's a thing, it's like a for real thing, it's called imposter syndrome, you ever heard of that?

• 2:02:26Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  But it's this, and I think, you know what I think, I think everyone has it, whether a teeny tiny bit or a lot, it's where, it's basically you feel this, you feel like, I'm really, like on the inside, like I'm really not this good. You can be like champion of the world on the inside, you're like, it's just a matter of time before they find me out. You know, I, I don't know, I don't deserve to be here, whatever.

• 2:02:46Jocko Willink?

  That, I wish more people would have that. Because there's a lot of people that I know that have been in leadership positions that feel that they have the divine right.

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:02:56Jocko Willink?

  To be there.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  A lot of times if they'll have it, they'll behave in that way.

• 2:02:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, they absolutely do. That's why they fail.

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 2:03:03Jocko Willink?

  So, rehash, as always, bottom line, be humble. Study and learn what you can, ask questions, and if you don't know something, admit it. Now, I had to make this note, and I'm cautious to even say this, but I do have to say it.

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  Asking questions doesn't just mean putting your ignorance on clear display all the time, okay? When you ask questions, make sure you are asking thoughtful, meaningful questions. If, in fact, if you can find out the answer on your own, do that. If it's something that you can refer back to, and you can look up, and you can go back, and you can check out the org chart, and you can see where that department is, or you can find out who's running that project without having to ask that question, do that. Because contrary to popular belief, there actually is, in fact, such a thing as a stupid question. And you can get away with it sometimes, so you don't need to be hyper paranoid about it.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  But you, also part of leadership is confidence in up and down. So you gotta have some confidence, and your people have to have some confidence in you. And if, if you don't know anything. And you can't figure it out for you can't figure out some portions of that on your own. That's not a good sign. Because I just expect if you're gonna be in charge of me, that you couldn't look that up. You didn't, you didn't review this before you came in here. I know you don't know my job, but you should at least know what the requirements of my job are. You should at least know what the outcomes at a strategic level of my job are, right? You see what I'm saying? There's a difference. So you don't have to go in there and be

• 2:04:58Jocko Willink?

  overly humble. You don't have to go in there and be overtly blank, uh, uh, wide open with what you, with what you don't know. Because again, I was cautious to make this note because this doesn't, I, you should feel comfortable enough saying, hey, I don't know how to do this. Or, hey, can you explain that the way that works to me? Can you explain what this project? You know, what this project entails? There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you go into a room and you accidentally ask a question of something that everybody legitimately should know, you're gonna look stupid.

• 2:05:38Speaker 02

  That's a mistake.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  That's a mistake. And so don't do that. It's okay. Be humble, ask questions, but ask thoughtful questions, meaningful questions that you don't know because it's it would be pretty difficult for you to know the answer.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, it kind of seems obvious when you say it out loud where you're not gonna know everything.

• 2:06:00Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:06:00Speaker 02

  So that makes sense, but bro, you gotta know something. You gotta be there for a reason. You can't be like, hey, I don't know nothing. I shouldn't be here.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  And that's another thing from the beloved captain where he says for a few days, he didn't do anything.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Jocko Willink?

  Guess what? If you can observe for a few days, you're probably gonna answer a bunch of questions just from observation and taking notes and getting back and maybe conferring with your trusted agent or your senior enlisted guy or your your superintendent, you can confer directly with them and keep that, build that relationship while you're garnering information.

• 2:06:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't be that guy.

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  Try not to.

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Yes, try not to.

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  Try not to.

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  Jocko, how do I take ownership of mixed messages to the people under me from the other leaders in my group?

• 2:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Pretty straightforward question. I like it. Well, first of all, you have to address this straight up with the other leaders in your group, because if you aren't aligned as a leadership team, this is gonna hurt the cause. It is absolutely gonna hurt the cause. This is critical, and it's gonna be hard. And there are some things in your group that people do not agree on, and that is why they are undermining the messaging. Or why they're giving out different messaging because they don't agree with it. They don't have the courage to stand up and say, "Hey, I don't agree with this right here, so let's do it a different way. Here's my thoughts." They don't have the courage to do that. So what do they do? They just sit back, and then when it comes time to put out the word, they put out the mixed messages. And it's a bad situation, and you actually have to lead here.

• 2:07:39Jocko Willink?

  That's what you have to do. And it shouldn't actually be that hard, because what you're asking for is something that anybody can tell is important. So you know, you say to your leadership team, you go, "Hey, guys, our message to the troops needs to be aligned, and right now it isn't. We need to fix that." Is there anyone on your leadership team who's gonna disagree with that? No, they won't. That's not what they disagree with. Everybody knows that the leadership team has to have an aligned message. They have to be on the same sheet of music. And that's what you need to do. And again, it's gonna be a hard conversation. It's gonna bring out... That statement should bring out the conversation of what people don't agree on and why they're sending missed messages.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, if you cannot get them aligned, it is a serious problem. But if you can't, the best thing you can do is mitigate.

• 2:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Mitigate that to your team by becoming the trusted voice. So with your team, you want to become the trusted voice. Now, this doesn't mean that you're going to go out and undermine your other leaders. And say, "Echo came in here, he doesn't know what he's talking about." No, no, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm never, almost never talking about undermining another leader or a leadership team. What I'm going to do though is I'm going to translate. I'm going to say, "Hey guys, our job on this, I know Echo said that, here's our job. Here's what our focus needs to be. Here's the way this translates for us." So I'm not disparaging you and I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm simply honing the message for my team.

• 2:09:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, you still, even when you do that, you're mitigating that as much as possible. You still have to maintain the critical goal of getting your leadership team aligned. And one other little tool to help make that happen is to present their words back to them.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  And you say, "You know, I wrote down what you said to the team this morning and I just wanted to go through that with you and break it down a little bit." And then go through it line by line and have the hard conversations and make the tough decisions. You've got to make the tough decisions.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  And also, give a little. Seed some points, right? Be flexible, but unify. Unify the message. And there's a worse, not even a worst case scenario, but there are scenarios where Echo and I cannot agree on the message and we've got to go up the chain of command. Now, I would never want to do that. I would never, ever want to say to my boss, "Hey, Echo and I can't agree. You need to make the decision for us." To me, that's a total failure. It's a failure in my leadership that I can't get us on the same sheet of music. So, I don't, I can't even think of any time that I ever did that. Went to my boss and said, "Hey boss, I can't, you know, I can't come to a conclusion here with the other tasking of commanders."

• 2:10:47Jocko Willink?

  Or I can't come to a conclusion with the other platoon commanders, or I can't come to conclusion with the my squad about how we should do this. I've never done that. So you should be able to, if you're right, you'll win the argument. And if you're wrong, then you change your mind. So it's not that, it's not like this ultimate, not like I'm saying I'm great. I'm just saying if you're right, then you'll win the argument. And if you're wrong, then you'll change your mind. So it's not that hard. So that's what happens, needs to happen here with the leadership team. We've got to find out who's right. And people that are right need to convince the people that are wrong. Now you need to check your ego, obviously. Across the board, every team, everybody on the team's got to check their ego, because a lot of people will be holding on to their idea because it's their idea.

• 2:11:31Jocko Willink?

  And they love their idea.

• 2:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're egotistical.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  And that's how I would deal with mixed messages coming down the chain of command.

• 2:11:45Speaker 02

  I'm gonna go ahead and just say it, that that could have been one of the best lines I've ever heard. If you're right, you'll win the argument. If you're wrong, you'll change your mind. That's a good one.

• 2:11:56Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one.

• 2:11:57Speaker 02

  You just make that up?

• 2:11:58Jocko Willink?

  I did just make it up, yeah. I mean, I guess it's something that I've known, but.

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:04Speaker 02

  That's what makes it so good, because you kinda, kinda seems like, oh yeah, you know, right? But that's never the case. But if you're being on the up and up, there it is right there.

• 2:12:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Echo likes that one. We got time for about one more.

• 2:12:21Speaker 02

  I don't see why not.

• 2:12:24Speaker 02

  Jocko.

• 2:12:27Speaker 02

  You often talk about being on the path. What path is that? And where does it lead?

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  Ah, yes. The path.

• 2:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, I can tell you what path I'm on and what path I strive to stay on.

• 2:12:50Jocko Willink?

  And that is the warpath. That's the path I'm on.

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  The warpath, a path of war.

• 2:13:03Jocko Willink?

  Cause to me, warpath means moving toward a battle. A fight towards war.

• 2:13:14Jocko Willink?

  And that is what I am doing, and that's what I've always been doing.

• 2:13:21Jocko Willink?

  Whether it was the actual war against our nation's enemies,

• 2:13:28Jocko Willink?

  or the war against my own weaknesses.

• 2:13:34Jocko Willink?

  That is what I am doing.

• 2:13:37Jocko Willink?

  Preparing.

• 2:13:40Jocko Willink?

  And sharpening my sword, and honing my skills, and maintaining the unmitigated daily discipline

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  in all things.

• 2:13:55Jocko Willink?

  And the warpath is just that, it's a path. It's a route, it leads somewhere.

• 2:14:05Jocko Willink?

  And so you ask, okay then, where does it lead?

• 2:14:11Jocko Willink?

  And, yes.

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it can lead to war. And that's fine. In fact, I am waiting.

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  And I am ready.

• 2:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Because the warpath is a war against weakness, and so it leads to strength. It's a war against ignorance.

• 2:14:44Jocko Willink?

  And so it leads to knowledge.

• 2:14:47Jocko Willink?

  It's a war against confusion.

• 2:14:52Jocko Willink?

  And so it delivers understanding.

• 2:14:59Jocko Willink?

  And the path, the war path, leads to

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  control and leads to ownership of your life.

• 2:15:15Jocko Willink?

  And that, to me, is the war path. The path of fire and adversity, the path of blood and of sweat and of suffering.

• 2:15:28Jocko Willink?

  The war path is the preeminent path of discipline.

• 2:15:36Jocko Willink?

  Which is why it leads to freedom.

• 2:15:42Jocko Willink?

  And beyond that,

• 2:15:46Jocko Willink?

  in the end,

• 2:15:49Jocko Willink?

  the war path, it leads

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  to peace.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So, thanks to everyone out there for taking the time to listen to this, this, this little podcast we put together. And if you like it, and you want to support it. Echo?

• 2:16:20Speaker 02

  Nah, do they do that? If you're in the mood.

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  If you worked out.

• 2:16:30Speaker 02

  I know you heard this before, but if you work out and you want supplements that actually work, because the supplement industry, and you probably know this, bro, they can put whatever they want in it.

• 2:16:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's no regulation.

• 2:16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. You can, I don't know if it was a documentary, it's something like that where a guy just put chalk. That's all it was, chalk. And there, he was like, hey, look, protein powder, sell it. And either he found there was like, there was no, like, regulation saying he couldn't do it technically. Anyway, um, this is, it's a whole long thing. Nonetheless, if you want for real ones where you can see-

• 2:17:01Jocko Willink?

  That's actually not a bad product idea. We could make protein powder that you can use as chalk on the bar. So you could be chalking up- And then eating.

• 2:17:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, good. No, not. Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we need to get on it to make the protein powder chalk up.

• 2:17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's that's a little bit different from what I was kind of saying, but nonetheless, if you go to on it dot com slash Jaco, you can get 10% off their their supplements. Anyway, my point being with that story is that their supplements are all like legit. And you can even read like about it, like the krill oil. I said this before, I feel like I said this before, but you can see like how they harvest them. They use like eco-friendly boats. Like it's like, it's basically the ones.

• 2:17:46Speaker 02

  Like the engines are like eco-friendly and you know, like that kind of stuff. Anyway, I was watching it. You can get addicted on there. But um, yeah, all legit. Um, warrior bars. I feel like we haven't really talked about.

• 2:17:57Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I got asked by somebody on Twitter the other day, what, you know, hey, my joints are hurting. What should I take? Take krill oil.

• 2:18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02Jocko Willink?

  That's it, man. Take krill oil. Yeah, I've been using krill oil for a really long time. I'm forty-four years old. I'm almost forty-five years old, actually. And my joints are doing solid and knock on wood. Um, you know, I I had some joint pain in the past. And when I started taking krill oil, I'm talking ten, maybe even longer years ago. Um, the it's I I definitely attribute it to helping me and also also the glucose to me.

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:18:35Speaker 02

  And that's saying a lot because you're big. You're you're a big guy, two thirty.

• 2:18:41Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not exactly flexible. I'm not the most flexible person.

• 2:18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  And I do.

• 2:18:49Jocko Willink?

  I I do heavy duty stuff. I mean, I get after it.

• 2:18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:53Jocko Willink?

  Not not as much as I want to and not as much as I should, but I try. I I try to to work out hard. I train jiu-jitsu, I surf, I run, I sprint, I just do all kinds of activities. And before, up until several years ago, I was um, in the military. I was in the SEAL teams. And I was running around doing all that crap for my whole life. And so, yeah, I would say order up some krill oil.

• 2:19:23Speaker 02

  Bro, just saying, just doing jiu-jitsu alone, especially as much as you do it, that alone, old, young, whatever. Just doing and you're like, my joints are fine. If you're in that situation, that alone.

• 2:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and and the krill oil for sure. And also, I believe that working out, period.

• 2:19:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:19:41Jocko Willink?

  Is very helpful in staying injury free.

• 2:19:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Because I always work out and therefore I'm always moving and therefore my joints aren't getting rusty.

• 2:19:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:19:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, but do both.

• 2:19:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  Do both.

• 2:19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you know, I I do get injured, you know, I had the finger injury, which is a better, pretty good right now. I had, um, I had my shoulder got tweaked a little bit.

• 2:20:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's not.

• 2:20:06Jocko Willink?

  Situation that can stop me from rolling.

• 2:20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's not the kind, hey, I should have took more krill oil. Yeah, it's not that. It's like, it's like when you wake up or when you, when you're like, hey, I'm gonna go out, you start working, you're like, oh dang, I gotta warm up some more, some more, you know.

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  And I take just FYI, I take three of the 500, um, milligram.

• 2:20:25Jocko Willink?

  What are they capsules?

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:26Jocko Willink?

  In the morning and three at night. So that's, that's like 3,000 a day.

• 2:20:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, dang. Well, hey, there you go. Then do that then. I mean, like I said, you're a big tank that needs more krill. Anyway, yeah, it's good. And from on it, you know, you're getting like the good, the good on.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  You know, you're not getting the.

• 2:20:43Jocko Willink?

  It's the clean stuff.

• 2:20:45Speaker 02

  Mass manufactured, you know, the one from the corner store.

• 2:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Krill.

• 2:20:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, it's good. And you get 10% off.

• 2:20:53Jocko Willink?

  Which is also good.

• 2:20:54Speaker 02

  On it slash Jocko.

• 2:20:55Jocko Willink?

  And you're supporting this podcast.

• 2:20:57Speaker 02

  Bro, it's a, it's a win, win, win.

• 2:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:20:59Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of supporting this podcast, amazon.com click through. It might be the best way.

• 2:21:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if it's the best way.

• 2:21:09Speaker 02

  I would say it's another way.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  Another way.

• 2:21:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:11Jocko Willink?

  Which is very effective, which has definitely helped support the podcast.

• 2:21:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't cost anything. It's real easy to do. You just click.

• 2:21:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, yeah, that's good. Yeah, the key thing to that one is remembering it. Remembering to do it.

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Trooper Tool.

• 2:21:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, Trooper Tool, we got that. So go on the Chrome extension. Trooper Tool Chrome extension. If you haven't put that on your browser and you do want to support the podcast through the Amazon situation. Put that on there. It's easy. Makes it like super easy. Efficient. Aggressive. Active and efficient.

• 2:21:45Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I like your attitude.

• 2:21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can support that way. And then, um, obviously the pod is subscribe on iTunes and the YouTube. Which I'm putting more videos on there. Starting to, and it's gonna pick up too. I gotta. Some more content I'm gonna put up for sure. And then, um. The Jocko Store, if you like shirts and whatnot, if you like them. Get one of those. And we have women's coming out.

• 2:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Is there anything else you have coming out?

• 2:22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:17Jocko Willink?

  It's a secret.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  You know, I, yeah.

• 2:22:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:22:21Speaker 02

  Actually.

• 2:22:22Jocko Willink?

  If you're signed up for the. If you're enlisted in the. What is it? The Insider Trooper email? Then you can find out what else is out there. What else is coming? What else is on the horizon?

• 2:22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:34Jocko Willink?

  Cause we've had a lot of people ask for this item.

• 2:22:37Speaker 02

  What? Give me a hint.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  Rash Guards.

• 2:22:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you do jiu jitsu, rash guards, um.

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  Some people don't do jiu jitsu and they still wear rash guards for like working out.

• 2:22:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, working out or, um, or diving.

• 2:22:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or.

• 2:22:53Speaker 02

  Or surfing. What they're originally for. Yeah, yeah, fully. I use a surfing rash guard a lot of times for jiu jitsu.

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  You do.

• 2:22:59Speaker 02

  We have the rash guards coming out and then if you, if you're into the gi. We have some patches too.

• 2:23:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you got the patches coming out, Chabola.

• 2:23:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they're good. Cool. Basic, the way we like them. But yeah, anyway, JacoStore.com, that's, you can see all the stuff and, um, yeah, if you, if you want to be on the insiders list, I don't spam. People or send you like stuff just for the sake of sending stuff. I don't do that. In fact, I kind of under send stuff.

• 2:23:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, people don't want to be bothered. If, if you're going to send something, make it be important.

• 2:23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, at least something that I honestly think that you'd be interested in.

• 2:23:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:23:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, honestly, I'm gonna put some thought into that. So yeah, there it is. That's the way.

• 2:23:41Jocko Willink?

  Now, in the very, very near future.

• 2:23:45Jocko Willink?

  Like I'm talking maybe a week.

• 2:23:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  And it's by early September, two thousand sixteen, you will be able to order Jocko White Tea.

• 2:23:54Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:23:55Jocko Willink?

  Pomegranate. And you'll be able to order it from Amazon, which is good to go. And I got my first batch in. Matter of fact, I'm drinking a little bit of that stuff right there.

• 2:24:05Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 2:24:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:06Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 2:24:07Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it definitely puts you in the zone. Little place I like to call the assault zone. Gets, gets you there. So look for it. This is, this is, you know, if you heard that first podcast with Tim Ferriss and he was like, what is this? Adrenaline filled drink. It was white tea and white tea is not loaded with caffeine. There's other stuff in there. There's magic in there. There's antioxidants in there and it tastes good.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  And anyways, so that's coming. You'll be able to order it. We're kind of wondering, I'm kind of wondering to see if people want Jocko White Tea. I think they do.

• 2:24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:45Jocko Willink?

  And we will find out shortly. I know I do.

• 2:24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it, it's, that's an interesting thing. Because, you know, like just kind of on the surface, we'll be like, hey, fuck, what's Jocko into? It's not like, you know, something crazy. It's like something, let's face it, it sounds kind of delicate, you know? White tea.

• 2:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, when you see the can that it comes in.

• 2:25:07Speaker 02

  It's not delicate.

• 2:25:07Jocko Willink?

  It's not delicate.

• 2:25:08Speaker 02

  It's hardcore.

• 2:25:09Jocko Willink?

  It's weird because I was trying to think of where I discovered it and I actually don't know. I actually can't remember how, why I drank it for the first time. But when I started drinking, I was like, oh yeah, this stuff, it feels good. Especially when you're under stress or there's a lack of sleep or you need to be mentally sharp. It's the deal.

• 2:25:30Speaker 02

  Bro, you can mix white tea with, it'll mess up the taste, but you mix Jocko White Tea with Alpha Brain.

• 2:25:38Jocko Willink?

  I've done it. I've done it, I've done it, I've done it here in the podcast. Yeah, it doesn't mess up the taste. It tastes good. Dang, alright. Well, the white tea is, is a, it's not like this super harsh taste. It's a... Yeah, super mild. It's a, it's a, not mild, because you can taste it. You can kind of feel it too. Light. Yeah. Light but heavy. It's a, I don't even know how to describe it. It's just not a, it's not a heavy taste. Yeah. So you can mix it with a lot of stuff. Um, and you can, like I said, you can be able to get that on Amazon. So you can click through, you can get it on Amazon. You can also go ahead and buy the little book called Extreme Ownership when you're there. I highly recommend.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And you can get that anywhere. Anywhere they sell books. You can buy the hardcover. You can buy the digital audio format, which my brother Leif Babbin and I actually read. You can get it for your people up and down the chain of command, your friends, family. Whoever it is that you think needs to get on board with the program, get them a copy. That's kind of a good initiator for them. And also, October 20th and 21st in San Diego, we are having the Extreme Ownership muster. That is also Leif Babbin and myself. We're gonna be getting granular, granular with the combat leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield,

• 2:27:01Jocko Willink?

  and how you apply those lessons in your business and in your life.

• 2:27:10Jocko Willink?

  Now, that event is gonna be extremely interactive. It's, we're not gonna be hiding behind a curtain. We're gonna be out front with the troops. If you've got questions, we are gonna answer them. If you've got something you need, we're gonna talk about it. If you've got a problem, we're gonna come up with a solution. I say "we" because of "we." We're gonna work together. We're gonna learn. I can't wait to see how much I'm gonna learn with the, the list of people that are coming is awesome. Every industry you could imagine, every level of leadership you can imagine, it's just, it's really gonna be fired up. And Leif and I have been hammering out the schedule,

• 2:27:49Jocko Willink?

  and there's so much material and so much good information and so much good content. It's gonna be awesome, and I cannot wait to kick it off.

• 2:27:58Speaker 02

  Or is jujitsu part of the schedule?

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu is not on the schedule, but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna basically have a jujitsu situation happening at the gym. So the event is Thursday, Friday, so maybe it's gonna be Wednesday night if people come in early, maybe it's gonna be Saturday if people want to stay, or Sunday if people want to stay the weekend.

• 2:28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, or just have them like where they're like, you know, welcome, come to the gym, you know, like these are the things from the muster.

• 2:28:26Jocko Willink?

  Or maybe I could just bring some mats to the hotel and do some kind of a, but no, then we gotta.

• 2:28:32Speaker 02

  The gym is way better because it's like that, it's one of the best gyms.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Gotta bring people to the gym. So yeah, if you want to get the jujitsu together, we are going to get the Jimmy and I train jujitsu. I'm in San Diego, I'm training. So we'll be in San Diego, we will be training. We might not be able to do it Thursday night because it's a packed schedule. Doesn't end until late at night, but either Wednesday night or probably, probably once the muster's over. Because heading into the muster, I'm gonna be like in the game. And actually, I think I'm gonna, I have an event earlier in the week. So probably gonna be the weekend. If you want, if you want to get your jujitsu on, stay the weekend. Go home Sunday afternoon, get a red eye flight back to the East Coast or whatever. And or if you're out here, just go home Sunday night.

• 2:29:19Speaker 02

  And that's kind of, um, just muster, no muster. People come in and they're like, hey, I want to come in the gym. Guys have come, this guy Max, I just, I just met. Um, him and his girlfriend, his wife, um, I forget if they're married or not, but they came in and he was like, hey, um, you know, I just came in, whatever. Um, so yeah, people just come in and they just let them in too, of course, you know?

• 2:29:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, also, hey, look, I know that the muster's expensive. And in this situation, guess what? It costs money to put it on. It costs money for the hotel room, the event, the event room, the food, the AV equipment, the security, the logistics, all that stuff. It costs money. And the reason that we're investing in it is because we want it to be the best. We want it to be the best event.

• 2:30:09Jocko Willink?

  That you have ever been to. That's what I want. That's all. And but that does cost money. And so if you can't afford to come out to it, you know what? I apologize, but the podcast is free. The book is 20 bucks. Um, get what you can out of that. But if you can't afford to come out, come on out because you being there is gonna make us all better because every single person that I get so many responses on Twitter. I get so many stuff, so much stuff through through the social media that I'm learning from everyone here. So anybody that can come out and participate

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  and ask that question or give that scenario or give that piece of input is gonna make us all better. So come on out and get some. And as always, if you want to continue this conversation, you know where you can find us all up on the interwebs, Twitter, Instagram, and that Facebook.

• 2:31:21Jocko Willink?

  It's Echo at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and finally to you, to those of you out there in the battle, our military guys in Iraq and in Syria, fighting against a truly evil and abhorrent enemy. Stay sharp, stay focused, and be aggressive. It'll keep you alive. To the police officers who are suffering through a hard times right now, verbal and physical attacks,

• 2:32:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna tell you, take the high ground in both those cases. Detach from that negativity and do your job to the best of your ability, be smart, and stay safe.

• 2:32:23Jocko Willink?

  And of course, the firefighters and the emergency medical teams

• 2:32:28Jocko Willink?

  that keep us safe, keep us healthy, and come to us in our time of need. You all stay vigilant and train hard.

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  And to the rest of you troopers out there, all over the world, doing what you are doing. Make sure you do that thing with every ounce of effort you got.

• 2:32:58Jocko Willink?

  And make sure you stay,

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  stay on the warpath

• 2:33:07Jocko Willink?

  and get after it.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

• 2:33:18Jocko Willink?

  Out.