429: How These Laws of Combat Leadership are The Framework for Leading Your Life

Exploring the 4 Laws of Combat as a framework for life and all relationships. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 429 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  There is no single inoculation to establish good leadership for the individual or within an organization. You can't read one book, attend one seminar, or listen to just one lecture and suddenly be ready for any leadership challenge. Striving to become a good leader or to build good leadership inside of an organization is a campaign, a continual process that never stops. Like any skill, leadership takes practice. The more practice is put into leadership, the better the results and the better leadership capability. Leadership can be practiced by reading about leadership principles, discussing leadership

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  scenarios, role-playing, reviewing case studies, and a variety of other methods.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  Remember that there isn't always a clear answer to your problems. Leadership is not a scientific formula. Inherent in leadership are human beings, each with their own personalities, idiosyncrasies, opinions, egos, and agendas. It doesn't take only one standard process to lead. It takes skills. It takes practice. It takes knowledge and patience and compromise and perseverance. But the more you know, and the better you understand leadership, the better leader you will be. Whatever challenges you may face, leadership is the solution.

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is part of the intro from the companion workbook for the book Extreme Ownership, which was written by myself and Leif Babin. And we publish this through our consulting company, Echelon Front, and

• 1:59Jocko Willink?

  We put this workbook together in response to a high demand signal from people and from clients who wanted more tools to help their leaders at their companies and at their teams to become better and more effective in their roles. So we put this workbook together to help leaders facilitate training within their organization. And we work with a lot of companies that this workbook has now become an integral part of their leadership development programs. They use it alongside the Extreme Ownership Academy, which is our online training program.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  And it's been very effective. And, and why has it been effective? It's, it's effective because it's based on thousands and thousands and thousands of hours training leaders. I mean, you think about all the, you, I mean, you've been, we've been doing this podcast for eight years. Echelon Front's been around for, I think 12 or 13 years. I was doing this in the SEAL Teams for more years. And then you multiply that, then you add Leif, then you add Dave and JP and Jamie and the rest of the team at Echelon Front, and we're all constantly giving feedback and getting feedback and what's effective in transferring this information and making people

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  better leaders. So we've distilled what works and what doesn't, what's important and what's not, where to focus to help leaders become better leaders. And we put this book together to sort of help out, but I just wanted to, I was reading through it this weekend. And as I read through it, I was like, there's some stuff in there. It'd be interesting to convey to everyone. And so I guess that's why I highlighted some of it and thought, let's go, go through some of this on the podcast and then people can get there. And by the way, on this book, it is available on Amazon. It's the official Echelon Front Companion Workbook for Extreme Ownership, Learn,

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  Lead, Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. There is the rip offs on there. There's like fake ones, knockoff ones. Um, if you look at the reviews, you can distill, if you look at the one star reviews, that some of them will be like, this is sucks. I don't know what this is. It's a bunch of grammatic errors. Don't buy that one. Buy this one which has good reviews. And um, so with that, let's get into some of this stuff. It's a good summary. Here's the other reason why I was thinking about this. I was thinking about this, so the reason as I read this, I was like, man, this is the kind of stuff. You ever get like an arm lock class in jujitsu from Dean Lister?

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, dude, like I forgot about that. Yeah. Or he teaches some sweep and you're like, oh, I wonder why that never worked. Oh, it never worked because you didn't do this little thing. Yeah. And I feel like leadership is the same way where I feel that way. A little time goes by and you kind of forgot that little detail and then you stop using that move because it didn't work that time. And then the next thing you know, you look up and it's just out of your, it's out of your, your repertoire. Yeah. You're not using it. Yeah. So you gotta be careful of that. Um, first section here, leadership, the most important factor. This is a little synopsis of the Battle of Vermont prior to this, but we say this, when we talk about leaders, we are not only talking about senior leaders, we are not only talking about leaders in charge of 500 or 500 people.

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  We are not only talking about leaders in charge of 50 people or five, we are talking about everyone. Everyone is a leader, even the frontline soldier, sailor, airman or marine that takes ownership of their part of the mission and executes. It was leadership at every level that brought victory in the Battle of Vermont. And it is leadership at every level that brings success to any company or team. So when we talk about leaders, no matter where you are in the hierarchy of your organization, we are talking about you.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  So sometimes people don't think of themselves as a leader for whatever reason.

• 6:11Jocko Willink?

  But if you interact with other human beings, you're a leader and this is.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  This is so important. Leadership is a skill. It's a skill that you can learn. It's a skill that you can get better at. And if you think you're just going to be naturally good at it. It's a problem. Now, listen. I just answered this question talking to a company the other day. Are there, if we're playing basketball, are there some people that are naturally six foot eight? Yes, there are. Do they have an advantage in basketball? Yes, they do. Hundred percent they do.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  If a six foot eight, six foot eight person. Doesn't have, never played basketball before and has to play against someone that's. Five eleven and that five eleven person's been playing his whole life. Who's going to win? Five eleven. Five eleven all day. Have you ever seen? A guy they call the professor? The professor or the basketball, street basketball? Yeah. Yeah, he's probably five eleven is my guess. And he schools people. Yeah. Cause he got a good jump shot. He's not to mention he's got like the sickest dribbling skills. But there you go. Take a six, eight guy, huge natural advantage. But the professor is going to light him up all day. The other dude might not even score a single point in like a game to eleven. Might not even score a single point.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  The professor is going to win. So take that and put it in bass, put that in leadership. In leadership, there's going to be some people that have some natural ability. They're charismatic, they got a loud voice, they're articulate. They're smart, like all those things are helpful. But if you take that person that's smart, charismatic and articulate. And they don't have any leadership skill, they're not going to be leading very well. Maybe they can lead a little bit better than someone that has none of that. But if that person that has none of those natural gifts. Trains and studies and practices the skills of leadership, they'll get better at it. And leadership applies.

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  Up and down the chain of command. If you're a, right now, if you're listening to this and you're a plumber in a company that has 47 people in it, and you just got hired last year, and you really are at the bottom, the bottom rung, you're a leader. And the way you interact with your other plumbers, the way you interact with your boss, that takes leadership. The way you interact with the, the, the family of the, the owners of the house that you're working on, that's leadership. It's leadership when you interact with them.

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  If you're a mid-level manager, you're in a leadership position, obviously. If you're a senior level person, obviously you're in a leadership position. But no matter where you are in that chain of command, you have to use leadership skills. And that means you need to know what those leadership skills are. So, that's what we're doing. So, there's a little introduction section that, what's cool about this book is it breaks out like these implementation questions that you're going to use to facilitate discussions. And one of them here for this opening is, in Ramadi, SEALs, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Iraqi soldiers worked in close cooperation. In what ways does your team cooperate with other teams to accomplish the

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  mission? Good thing to think about. And here's an important part of this.

• 9:34Jocko Willink?

  In any endeavor, in any valuable endeavor, a group of people is going to be better than one person. And you might even think of an MMA fighter, they're going to the cage by themselves, right? Sure. But if it wasn't for that team, if it wasn't for that coach, if it wasn't for those training partners, if it wasn't for that nutritionist, if it wasn't for that physical therapy guy, there's a whole bunch of people that honestly, they wouldn't even make it to the cage if they didn't have. So, you have to work together with other people. That means putting your ego in check, that means listening, that means subordinating your own ideas to

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  other people's ideas and listening to what they have to say. Because let's face it, dude, you get around like a, an MMA fighter that thinks he knows everything?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  Ain't gonna work.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Jocko Willink?

  Going fast forward a little bit, and it does, look, I'm skipping all, over all kinds of information that's in the book. I'm just gonna hit some of these highlights that stood out to me as I read through it. The, the first part here is winning the war with, and this, this all matches up with the book Extreme Ownership. So, chapter one, Extreme Ownership, here's the little review section. There are no excuses, there is no one else to blame. On any team, the leader bears total responsibility for the performance of that team. This applies to everyone, no matter where you are in the rank structure of your organization. When we say leader, we mean leaders at every level, from the most senior leaders at the top of an organization to mid-level management to frontline leaders, right down to the frontline trooper or individual contributor. We're talking to you, you own it all. Total responsibility, particularly for failures, is a difficult thing to accept.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  When things go wrong, or something bad happens, it's easy to find someone or something else to blame, such as bad luck, circumstances beyond your control, or the poor performance of others. But when you blame someone or something else, who solves the problems? No one. Therefore, the problems persist, they get worse, and the team's performance suffers. But when you take ownership of problems, examine what more you could have done to improve the situation and implement a solution going forward, the problems get solved. That is the power of Extreme Ownership. All right, so I want to apply this, look, we're talking about leadership, we're talking about business, we're talking about life.

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  I want to apply this to us as individual human beings. Because

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  if things aren't going the way you want them to go in life, and you think it's because of your boss, your parents, your teacher, your coach, your siblings, your friend group, like, all those things, all those people that are holding you back, if that's what your mentality is,

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  you're, you're kind of screwed.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  And no one, this is really hard. I'm saying this like I hesitate as I say this. But this, quite frankly, this is sort of the premise of extreme ownership. Because the minute you say, you know, my boss doesn't like me. That's why I don't get promoted. Okay, well, don't do anything. Because it doesn't matter because your boss doesn't like you, it doesn't matter. You know, my, my team, they're, they're not as qualified as the other team. That's why we keep failing. Okay.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  Just, you know, go through life. Well, you know, my friends, they always just want to go out and drink and like, they're just not into the healthy lifestyle. Okay.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing?

• 13:18Jocko Willink?

  It's, and this is the thing, man. It's so easy to fall down this path. So easy to, so many people make that mistake. Of blaming someone else. You can blame something else. But most of the time, when I see people that are, aren't on the best, in the best circumstances in their life. Most of the time, it's they're blaming other people. My boss, my coach, my peers, my team, my wife, my husband. My mom, my dad, my brothers, my sisters, my family.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  You name it, my teachers, whatever. But it's not my fault. It's everybody else's fault. And therefore, I'm just a victim of what's happening.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  Just, I'm just a victim of life.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  This is counter to the idea of extreme ownership because if you take extreme ownership, it's like, oh, my boss doesn't like me, what can I do to improve that relationship? My team isn't performing well, how can I help them improve their performance? My coach doesn't put me in the game, what can I do to get my coach to see that I'm worth putting in the game?

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  My wife is complaining that we don't have what we need, what can I do to get us what we need? And this just goes on and on and on and on.

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  But what I think, what I think, why I think this happens is because we all inherently know that we can't control other people. We inherently know that. Look, you can, you can influence them hopefully, but we inherently know that we really can't control other people. So therefore echo Charles, when you say, you know, coach doesn't like me. And it's, it's real easy for me to go, oh, man, that sucks because you can't control your coach. So therefore I sympathize with you. And now I kind of give you the out as well that you're not getting any playing time because coach doesn't like you and there's nothing you can do about that. You're just cursed.

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  It's all a big acceptable lie.

• 15:20Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of this in your life. Please do me that favor and be careful of this in your life. If you're blaming other people, if you feel that coming out of your mouth, stop it. Don't let those words come out of your mouth. That's the root of the problem.

• 15:39Jocko Willink?

  Take ownership. Little section here, fast forward. What isn't extreme ownership? Simply saying that something was your fault or apologizing for a mistake is not extreme ownership. Words are not magic and they don't make problems go away. As a leader, you have to accept responsibility, genuinely seek a solution and implement that solution to ensure success. That doesn't mean you allow your team to sit around and wait for you to solve all the problems. The most successful teams demonstrate a culture of ownership up and down the chain of command, where everyone steps up and works to solve problems, or at least their piece of the overall problem. Such a team will constantly learn, grow and improve performance with extreme ownership

• 16:22Jocko Willink?

  embedded in the culture of your team, you will become unstoppable. As Echelon Front instructors, we constantly witness people point out how others need to take extreme ownership.

• 16:34Jocko Willink?

  Though many don't realize it, by focusing on how extreme ownership applies to everyone else, you're blaming them for all the problems. If you find yourself saying, my boss really needs to hear this, or I'm really doing great, but my, but the other people on my team need to improve. Then you are demonstrating the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme ownership isn't about anyone else. Extreme ownership is about you. Rather than try to force others to change their behavior, focus on the one person you can actually control, which is you.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  Very important.

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  I know it seems hard. It seems hard when you look in the mirror and you have all these problems in your life. Seems hard to look at that mirror and say, these problems are my fault.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, there's an additional

• 17:27Speaker 01

  challenge we'll say. Of course, there's that part of it where it's like, I don't want to have to admit it to myself that this is because of me, you know, like that is hard for sure. Another hard part is not like, it's almost like a genuine not knowing, not realizing it. So, and all you gotta do is look though. It's like one of those things where, um, like you ever been playing like, I don't know, cards or dominoes or something, you know? You used to play dominoes right back in the day.

• 17:53Jocko Willink?

  No, spades.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Spades, okay, okay, okay. You ever, you ever been like, I don't know, thinking of something or whatever and everyone's just sort of, and you're like, man, this game is going really slow. Like this freaking like, bro, go, whose turn is it? You know, you look around and it's like, and everyone's looking at you, it's your turn. It's been your turn for like a while, you know? It's kind of that feeling where, cause you genuinely, you know, where they got distracted or whatever, whatever. You genuinely didn't know it was your turn until you kind of just, all you gotta do is kind of fix your mind and be like, wait a second, this is my turn. And then you, and those little incidents get revealed so often where it's like, yeah, you know, I did all that I could do. And you know, and it's still not working, you know, like I'm, I'm just waiting on this person, you know, kind of a thing.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  It's like, wait a second, there's still something you didn't do. Just let that person know it's on them now or whatever, like whatever. They're always constantly being revealed in my experience. I don't know. You're more of an expert on this stuff than me, but that's what I found to be like, one of the challenges too is it's like, shit, I, I didn't realize that one little thing. That's my responsibility too. It's like, so you gotta, in a way, remind yourself that it's like literally all of it is your responsibility. There's no such thing as waiting on the next person to do their part. There's no such thing in the, with this approach, you know?

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The other, I got, um,

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  I heard a quote from the movie The Matrix. Have you seen this movie?

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I have.

• 19:16Jocko Willink?

  You like that movie a lot?

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I do.

• 19:18Jocko Willink?

  So Morpheus.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 19:21Jocko Willink?

  He says to, what's Keanu Reeves, Keanu Reeves' name?

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Keanu Reeves' name is Neo.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so he says to Neo in the movie, "I can't tell you what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself." And that's like, wait, you know, hey, no one can tell you what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is one of those things where if I try and tell you like, "You need to take ownership, Echo." It's not that effective.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:50Jocko Willink?

  Because you might get mad. You might be, "What are you talking about? How am I supposed to control my wife? Or how am I supposed to control my boss? He just doesn't like me." You, it's only, you have to have a moment of clarity. So what I want to do is ask you earnest questions and say like, "Well, if, why doesn't your coach not like you?" Like, do you think there's any way you could improve that? Do you think there's anything that you're doing that causes him to not like you? You showed up to practice late. What do you think he thinks of that? You know what I mean? So I can ask you questions, but like all truth, it is much better if the truth is revealed to a person through themselves and not through other people. And it's the same with extreme ownership. It's better if it, people realize it for themselves than if it gets imposed on them.

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  Imposing extreme ownership on to other people is not an effective move. "You need to take ownership." That right there is already off to a bad start. "I need to take ownership."

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So how do you? And I, because I think you're, so you're, you're a consultant, we'll say, right? That's your consultant. So you, the way you can tell people.

• 20:55Jocko Willink?

  Factually, yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Factually, oh yeah. So you can tell people why, because you're not in the situation with them.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  Even with them?

• 21:01Speaker 01

  You're still doing it.

• 21:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm like, so you're the CEO. And you're like, you know, my, my VP of Operations, he's just not getting the job done.

• 21:14Jocko Willink?

  Who does he work for? Well, he works for the CEO. Who does the CEO work for? Well, he works for me. Okay, so who's responsible for the CEO? Well, I am. So who's responsible for the VP of Ops? Well, I am. So when someone's not doing what they're doing, whose fault is that really? Well, it's you. You're the CEO. So what are you gonna do? You gonna point your finger down at them? And cross your fingers and hope that they get better? Or are you gonna go and talk to them and say, hey, what resources can I give you that you can get this job done? Hey, what are, what are, what am I not providing you with? So that we're hitting these targets that we need to hit, or getting these projects done we need to get done? So even from the position of a consultant,

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  I still want the truth to be revealed to someone from themselves, not from me. Not to mention, it's just a better lesson. You can understand things more clearly. Like if I wanted you to feel what an armbar was like, and I just kind of explained it to you. Let's face it, you ever had someone show you a move and you're kind of like, eh, I don't know if that would work? And then they do it too, and you're like, well, damn, it works.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes.

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  And then you get it on someone? So that's what we want to do. We just don't want to tell them about it. We want to show it to them. We want them to feel it. So.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right. So now that I'm seeing, I'm having a moment of clarity myself. So even you being the consultant, and them being the consultee or whatever,

• 22:42Speaker 01

  that relationship right there is a little bit of a team relationship. Where it's like, hey, you have a job to do, and you, and there's levels of effectiveness, right? Where you have to be effective.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  It has not as much to do with their business, but your business with that CEO kind of a thing. So you, so now you can always ask yourself, hey, was I effective or ineffective, right? And if I'm ineffective, that's your fault.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  That's my fault.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So it's all the same, the same deal.

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  Same deal, no matter where you're at. And by the way, I could be talking to the CEO of some company. I could be talking to my daughter.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  And saying, well, you know, hey, daughter. You need to have a different attitude about this. Okay. So now I'm just imposing a good attitude on them. You ever seen that thing? There's a bunch of memes about it, but it's Jason Bourne, but he's not playing Jason Bourne. He's playing some other character, but the kid, there's, he's talking to a kid. Yeah. Oh, Matt Damon. Yeah. Yes, but it's, it's Matt Damon. He's talking to a kid and the kid's like, I don't have the same dream. The dad's like, it's a good dream. Yes. And that's imposing. Yeah, yeah, fully. And if you impose even a good dream on your kid, like putting a squat rack in their bedroom or putting, uh, pull up bars in their bedroom or putting Jiu Jitsu mats in their bedroom. Yep.

• 24:02Jocko Willink?

  Which by the way, I did all three of those. I know I didn't do squat rack, but I definitely had pull up bars and Jiu Jitsu mats in the bedrooms. Yeah. If you do that and you try and pose that dream, the kid's gonna lash back at you. So we're not imposing. Yep. But do we ask good questions? Yes, we do. Wouldn't it be good if you knew how to, wouldn't it be good if you were stronger? Well, yeah. How do you think you get stronger? I don't know. I guess you gotta work out. Well, how, when do you have time to work out? Well, I really don't have time to work out. What if we had a pull up bar in your room? Same. And a squat rack. Yeah, the squat rack. You see where I'm going with this?

• 24:41Jocko Willink?

  All right. There's a little implementation section here wherein they ask questions. We ask questions. Where in your world do you see opportunities to apply extreme ownership? Here's another one. Take a hard look at yourself. Where are you making excuses and why? That's a good one.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  It's weird. Like at it, you've been at Echelon Front meetings. And when someone makes an excuse, it's like you can hear a pin drop.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I see how it is. Yep. What did Jamie, Jamie just, oh, she, she recorded a question or something at an event that she was at. And she said, yeah, you know, there was a lot of people there and I was at a table, so the recording might not be that clear. And I was like, oh, already making excuses, huh, Jamie? You see what I'm saying? Even though like a legitimate thing where I'm, no, no excuses. Yeah. You should have done a better job.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  All right. Are there scenarios where you are frustrated with other people? Do you find yourself casting blame? It is such a relief to you in life. If every time you want to blame someone, you just say, okay, what can I do about this? Instead of saying you Fred didn't get his stuff done on time, instead of saying that, instead of saying, how can I help Fred get his stuff done on time? It's a complete 180 attitude adjustment. And it's, it's infinitely more positive and better.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. There's, then they have this section of immediate action drills. This one here says, on what specific task, project or problem will you take ownership to help your team or organization win and help build a culture of extreme ownership within your team or organization? So you can take notes and then you go and activate on that. This is by the way, so this, this workbook goes through the chapters of extreme ownership, the book. Chapter two, no bad teams, only bad leaders. One of the most fundamental and important truths at the heart of extreme ownership is the recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders. Leadership is the single greatest factor in any team's performance. Whether a team succeeds or fails is all up to the leader. The leader's attitude sets the tone for the entire team. The leader drives performance or doesn't.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  This applies not just to the most senior leader of a team, but to everyone all the way down to the front line. Anyone on the team can step up and lead, solve problems and collaborate to get the rest of the team moving together in the right direction. The pushback on this is, you know, well, yeah, but I got a freaking total knucklehead on my team. Or yeah, these three guys on my team, they suck. Okay, why are they there? Why haven't you trained them? Why haven't you given them the proper compensation or incentivization? Why have you given them responsibility that they can't handle? Why haven't you given them mentorship? You see what I'm saying? Like, it's just so obvious. If you take one step back, it's real obvious. One step back and say, hold on a second. These three guys that I'm complaining about work for me. I haven't trained them.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  I know, can I bark or, oh, you barked orders at them and they didn't listen? Okay, guess what? You're being an ineffective leader. You threatened them and now you think they're going to perform? Well, no, they're out trying to find a different job while they're still sucking money off of you. Cause you've developed a bad relationship with them. It's you, it's you, it's you, it's you. Fix that.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  What other, what other things, what other excuses do people make about their teams? Oh, they're a bunch of new guys. Okay. Again, why, why haven't you trained them yet? Why haven't you started giving them the experience? Why don't they know the why of why they're doing what they're doing? Like, this is all real simple. But people make this excuse all the time. Well, what if you get assigned people that you, you don't have any choice on who gets hired? Okay, so what are you gonna do with them? You gonna counsel them? You gonna give them proper mentorship? You gonna give them proper training? If they're truly subpar performers, have you done the proper steps to get them moved from that position? Oh, but it's the, it's you, oh, it's the boss's son and I could never fire him. Okay, well, what are you gonna do with him? How about you build a good relationship with him and let him see that he has a really great future if he can apply himself?

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  Like, what are you doing?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  What are you doing?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  So true. Like the, and, and obviously I'm thinking of it in terms of more day to day. So I have a teenage son. And back in the day when we first started assigning chores, right? That's part of the, part of the process, right? Chores. So ideally you want it to the point where you don't even have to tell them, right? It's just routine. You tell them when the trash gets full, he takes it out.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  Look at that coach Charles, he's paying attention at that muster. Okay.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  That's the goal, right? And so it's easy, or if you don't pay attention, you can find yourself getting frustrated that he doesn't do it like right away.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, whose fault is that?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Exactly right. So, and luckily internally I, I go through the thing, but externally I'm doing the right thing. It's like, okay. I can feel frustrated like, oh, he didn't take out the trash, or he forgot. Freaking teenagers, you know, always in their phone, blah, blah. You can say this whole, all this stuff about how it's the teenager's fault and this, that's why it's hard and all this stuff. That's why it's not being effective right now, right? But I'm like, wait a second, let me, let me, let me go to the scripture and be like, okay, what is this? So it's like, and it gets real simple too. That's, that's kind of the good news where. I'm like, okay, I ask myself earnest questions, right? Just to go through the motions, just to clarify it is like, okay. So, under what circumstances would he take out the trash? Like, under what circumstances? Well, let's say he forgot, right?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  So how about, there's a super easy fix for him forgetting. Remind him, super easy, right? So I'm like, cool. So, um, so, and I'm talking about like trash night, right? You know, where you put out the bins and the thing that's every week, right? Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. So, if he forgets, it's like, it's kind of a big deal, you know?

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  Overflowing trash now for one week, by the way.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  One whole week, exactly right. And don't let it be Christmas time, you know, it's like, it gets worse. So, so what I'm saying is the outcome is important. So, I'm like, all right, well, how about this? I'll set a reminder, I'll remind him, I won't get mad at him. Like, me getting mad at him is less effective in him remembering to do it than me reminding him. Me reminding him is 100% effective for it, for having him not forget, is what I'm saying. So I set a reminder on my phone every week. So every week I'm reminding him if he did it or not, didn't do it, I'm reminding him. I'm doing every single thing I can to have him not forget. I'm not focusing on, hey, try, try, all this stuff.

• 30:56Jocko Willink?

  Honestly, you're kind of holding his hand at this point.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  In a way, yeah, but if you remember correctly, you had to hold my hand, not had to, but you, you chose to use this, uh, this protocol on me. I'll, I'll remind you in a sec. So, but it was very quick, very quick, that I was, I would text him, I'll get the reminder and I'd just text him on his phone. Cause it's probably on his phone or it has it nearby, right? And if there's no, if there's no response on it, I'll do it again to make sure that night he's, I'm gonna get a response.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  So, it was really quick where he would text me back, said, already done, already done, already done, already done, already done. Now, I don't think, I can't remember the last time I text, I still do it.

• 31:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Just cause, what about the trash?

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  So I'll text him, hey, I'll like text him trash night, and he'll text back, already done. Every single time, I don't even remember the, the last time he was like, you know, okay, trying to do it.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  My, it's good, obviously, but.

• 31:51Jocko Willink?

  If you have to, you shouldn't have to think about that anymore. Now you're looking down and in instead of up and out, you know what I mean? Like there's, we broaden that, if we broaden that analogy a little bit. All of a sudden, we're at work and now you gotta remind someone to load that piece of gear. Hey, load the gear, load the gear, load the gear, like it becomes your responsibility. You're still responsible for it. You see what I'm saying?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 32:10Jocko Willink?

  So we're gonna train some people. How do we train them? I can tell you a real easy way. Oh, you didn't take out the garbage? Guess where it's gonna be? In your room.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? He'll never make that mistake again.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  So this was my protocol.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  It wasn't to put the garbage

• 32:30Speaker 01

  in his room.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It was, hey, you set a reminder on your phone.

• 32:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  And then periodically checking on that reminder. Nonetheless, and I don't know if he has a reminder or not. What I do know is that he doesn't forget anymore because that was really the problem. You know, these teenagers forget.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  What protocol did I use with you?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  We were driving and this isn't the first time I told the story. So we're driving, um, and I think I was doing the, the navigation as well. And we're driving up to, I think it was like a steakhouse or whatever in LA. And then I took a wrong turn. And you had asked earlier, hey, you want me to navigate or what? I was like, no, no, I got it all good. And then I took a wrong turn. Then you sprung into action and was like, no, no, no, no worry. I got it. Super nice about it. No, I got it. And then you were telling me like the way you were micromanaging the turns. You were like, okay, it's this turn up here. This turn is right. It's gonna be up here, right on the right. Um, I see the turn. Yeah. There's literally a light where I see it. And then you're like, oh, about a hundred more feet. And then we get to there. It's right here. Almost like it was a joke, but I don't think you were joking.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  I think you were like making hundred percent sure that I wouldn't make another wrong turn. That's what it felt like.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's how, right? Held my hand through the turns.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Now you come loaded, preloaded with the nav system. Probably a lot of that was, uh, let's say leftovers from being in the SEAL teams. When we had like a full protocol for approaching a turn.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  That's funny, cause that's exactly what you said, I think, the last time I brought it up.

• 33:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  Good.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Hey, it was effective.

• 33:57Jocko Willink?

  It'd be like, right turn coming up 400 yards. Or actually be meters. 400 meters.

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  Right, right turn, 200 meters.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:08Jocko Willink?

  Right turn coming up. Right turn, right turn, right turn. And boy, everyone knew what was going on.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, very effective.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  Um, all right. Fast forward a little bit, the best teams are constantly looking to improve, add capability and push the standards higher. This attitude starts with the individual and spreads to each of the team members until this becomes the culture, the new standard. The recognition that there are no bad teams, only bad leaders comes from taking extreme ownership. This mindset enables leaders to build high-performance teams that dominate on any battlefield. One of the questions here is, what are the standards for your team and organization? Isn't it interesting that I can go into a, uh, an organization, a team, a company and ask about their standards and they won't know?

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 34:57Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it funny that families have that? You can go into a family and ask about like, what are the standards here? Oh, like. You, oh, you get Cs on your report card, you get Bs on your report cards, that's, is that? Is that part of the standard around here?

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  No. As.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:21Jocko Willink?

  There's real easy standards to set.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Did you get As in high school?

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  I got As in college.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, and I get it, I get, the point is, I, I, obviously, I agree. Um, or I, I don't see it in my mind to disagree with that at all. Um, but the grades thing is funny because I remember my mom and my dad would be like, hey, you should never be getting anything lower than an A, never. And of course I got many times lower than A, many, many times. And, but they would always say that, and I was like, well, like, what grades did you get in college or high school, sorry, high school? And, um, they didn't get good grades in high school.

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And on top of it, that wasn't part of the family culture, like academics, you know?

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  Thing.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would just say it.

• 36:04Jocko Willink?

  See, they can't just say it.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:06Jocko Willink?

  Like, and, and I, no kidding, when I went to college, I got straight As.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  And so then when I would talk to my kids, like, this is what you need to get, like, it's, you win.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  This is a game, you have to win.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:17Jocko Willink?

  Win by getting an A. It's against the teacher, by the way.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  What's it, oh, the game is against?

• 36:22Jocko Willink?

  The game is against, the students, they're not even in the ga, most of the students aren't even in the game.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:27Jocko Willink?

  Don't worry about the other students. Worry about the teacher.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  The teacher is your, your enemy. You need to get an A.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  Is that hostile?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit hostile. But eh, to me, if it works, it works because that's a, that's a fun little, and I see how you would have that attitude in, in college where it's like, like this teacher or this institution is not going to defeat me with their lower grades.

• 36:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  You know, I'm going to defeat them with perfect, a perfect score, kind of a thing. It's a good way to approach it for sure.

• 36:53Jocko Willink?

  But hey, here's something else that I told my kids is have a good relationship with your teachers.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:01Jocko Willink?

  Because there's going to be times where like you got a eighty nine point five.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  Or maybe an eighty nine point four nine. You know what I'm saying? Good relationship, that's an A. Bad relationship, that's a B.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  And that's no joke.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  That's life. That's learning about life.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  You're absolutely correct, by the way.

• 37:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Ah, ah, yo, you disrupt class, you cause problems, you have a bad attitude. That, that's a B.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:29Jocko Willink?

  Best case.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:31Jocko Willink?

  If you're doing right, no factor. A.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Bruh, it's, it's so true. And this is high school, college, where I remember one time, okay, so I got an F in a college.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  What was it? F, uh, criminology or something like that. And it wasn't the, it wasn't because of the class, it was because of the time. So it was like, I don't know, seven thirty, eight o'clock. I don't know, whatever. It was in the morning that, you know, let's just say I was struggling to, to, you know, to make it on time. So anyway, I figure I play football, get some, you know, I'll get some leeway on my, my F, right? At the end of the semester too. So, you know, I write him a letter, whatever, email, whatever. And um, I was like, you know, I, you know, I was just hoping maybe I could, you know, do something to make up this and, you know, do that and whatever, you know? You can't, what can I do to bring my grade up to passing? Bruh, I get an email back, like a, you know, day or two later, saying like, oh, you know, after review, I reviewed like your attendance and like you

• 38:27Speaker 01

  literally didn't or failed to show up more times than you actually did show up and like all this stuff. And it said, it doesn't seem like you made any effort to get a passing grade. So, um, so no, I'm not going to give you that opportunity. And I thought about it, I was like, woof.

• 38:43Jocko Willink?

  Ferris.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Bruh, makes sense. Yeah.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  That makes sense fully. And so when you think about it, I had no relationship with this teacher. Like at all. So to me, it was just, yeah, just another kid or whatever. I don't care what play sport this guy plays or whatever. Just another kid wanting basically a free out. But zero work throughout the semester. Meanwhile, everyone else is in here.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Let alone sit in the front row and do, you know, do the right thing and really make an effort and display, making an effort to learn. But this guy didn't even show up.

• 39:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  You know, half the time or more than half the time, which is, which is crap.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So form good relationships with people. With your boss, with your subordinates. Cause by the way, how often you run your, you go to your subordinate, it's like, hey, we really need to get this done. Can you help me?

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  If you've been a jerk to your subordinate, he ain't helping you out. That's not happening. Your peer, hey, can you cover for me on this? No.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:34Jocko Willink?

  Form good relationships with people.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:38Jocko Willink?

  Next chapter, believe. Without belief in the mission, nothing is possible. A leader needs to believe in the mission in order to convince and inspire others to follow them and accomplish that mission. Leaders must understand and be able to explain how the team's actions are part of something greater than themselves and their own personal interests. This is not to say that belief in the mission is something that magically makes things happen. Nothing is possible without belief, but belief by itself accomplishes nothing. Action must be taken and that is what belief is. Seeing the actual pathway to victory. This is a, something that I would say got, became more and more clear from the echelon front perspective.

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  Is like, you gotta believe in the mission. That's cool. You do, but just saying you believe in the mission doesn't make the mission come true. Action has to be taken. Uh, they got some questions in here. What is your mission? How often do I go to talk to a company? Hey, what's your guys' mission? They don't know. Frontline doesn't know. Sometimes even the, one time I had a conglomerate of seven different companies, all under one umbrella. And the CEOs of those seven companies and the COOs of those seven companies with the CEO of the overall umbrella company. And I said, what's the mission of this organization? They didn't have one.

• 41:01Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, yo, it's no wonder you guys aren't aligned. You even know what you're doing. Uh, do you fully believe in that mission? If you don't fully believe in the mission, you gotta ask why. You gotta ask why.

• 41:14Jocko Willink?

  If, if, if your boss says, hey, we gotta, we gotta rebuild this thing and you're like, why are we building this thing? This doesn't make any sense. Ask the question. Ask the question because there's a chance that your boss was, I just thought it wasn't working. No, it's working. Okay. Then we won't rebuild it. So you have to ask the question, understand why you should believe in this mission. And then what does your pathway to victory? They have a bunch more questions. I'm going over some of them. What does your pathway to victory actually look like? This is very important when you're in a leadership position to be able to act, to, to diagram out what the pathway to victory looks like. A realistic pathway, not science fiction, but a real pathway of like, hey, listen,

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  if we want to grow to this size, we need to add this many people. Last year we added this many. This year we're going to add, like, if you're a gym owner, you're like, okay, we want to make this amount of money. That means we need this many members. Okay. Last year we had this many members. We grew to this many. Here's some things that we can do to add a little bit more than that. And here's how we can get there and here's what that'll look like and this will get us to where we want to be. But if you say, hey, right now we have seven gym members and we want to get to a thousand by next year. And you're like, well, how are you going to get them? How are we going to get there? Whoa. And you, you have to have a realistic goal. Can't be stupid.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  Good questions there. And then there's an immediate action drill. I'm going to skip that one. We go to, go to chapter four.

• 42:45Jocko Willink?

  Check the ego. Often we get asked, what's the greatest quality in a leader? The answer is humility. The biggest killer in combat, in business and in life is ego. Whether you're leading a SEAL team engaged in urban warfare, flying a fighter at super sonic speeds. Dave Burke. Leading teams in a high pressure industry or leading your family, ego clouds and disrupts everything. Checking your ego is the key to success. It is simple to say, not easy to do. When you can't keep your ego in check, you don't listen to anyone, don't evolve or get better, don't adapt or implement new technology and new methods, don't respect the competition, get complacent, can't self-assess. When a SEAL leader gets fired, it's almost never because

• 43:27Jocko Willink?

  they are tactically unsound, physically unfit, unable to read a map or otherwise incompetent. When I see a leader gets fired, it's almost always because they lack humility, they can't check their ego. No matter how obvious they're failing or how valid the criticism, they won't listen. They refuse to accept responsibility, they refuse to implement guidance or move to or and direction to improve. These leaders are incapable of conducting a realistic, honest self-assessment to examine their own mistakes and failures. They cannot be taught. Therefore, they never improve, their problems persist, often growing and eventually getting, they get fired. SEAL leaders, regardless of their innate talent or skill, who are willing to listen and show the humility to take ownership of their performance of their team, excel.

• 44:11Jocko Willink?

  Keep your ego in check.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  The implementation section, and there's more detail in each one of those sections. I'm not reading the whole thing. You can get the book and this is what the book looks like if you guys are wondering.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  It says on it, the official companion workbook, it's got the echelon front symbol on it. Then it says extreme ownership, then it says learn, lead, win. And then it says Jocko Willink and they fatten. Here's some things, what, questions, what are the red flags or self indicators that you use to recognize when your ego is flaring up, frustration, anger, jealousy? When have you noticed that? Guess what? Whenever I have a negative emotion of any kind, I'm pretty much sure it's my ego.

• 45:02Jocko Willink?

  It's just the way it goes. Like a negative emotion hits me, I start getting pissed off. I'm like, oh, that's my ego. Start getting jealous, it's just ego. Start getting frustrated, it's just ego.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  Negative emotion, I don't know, I'll have to like drill down and talk to a psychologist about this. Sure. But much negative emotion is ego. It's maybe not like sadness, but anything that has some hostility to it.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  I wonder if there's, I wonder if they break down emotions into like, um, like aggressive emotions and like passive emotions.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:39Jocko Willink?

  Like passive would be sad, depressed, uh. And then the other ones, the aggressive ones would be like anger, jealousy.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, even like.

• 45:52Jocko Willink?

  Frustration.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Even like positive aggress is like when you're fired up, you know, like, well, I don't know, fire. Yeah. Slang term, but you understand the feeling, you know, when you're excited and fired up to do something.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  Amped.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And then what would be like a passive hap, like a content or?

• 46:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, like.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  That's like, that's like you watch your kid get a good wave.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 46:16Jocko Willink?

  You feel good about that. Yeah. But it's not really anything that you're doing.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  But you're just kind of stoked.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 46:22Jocko Willink?

  So passive and, and active or a gr- I guess it's just passive and active.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  But no, no, it's not that because it's like passive and it's aggressive. There's like an anger. There's a hostility.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 46:35Jocko Willink?

  About one series of emotions.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  A lot of energy behind it.

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  Here's another one. When have you let your ego drive your decisions and cause a problem?

• 46:45Jocko Willink?

  The list is long.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:48Jocko Willink?

  What are you going to do next time your ego flares up? Learn to detach. How does that sound? Ego, huge. There's a whole section on ego. Uh, part two, it's part two of Extreme Ownership, the book. It's part two of this notebook. The laws of combat. You guys probably know what these laws of combat leadership are. The laws of combat are actions and behaviors employed by the best leaders and the best teams we have observed. Anytime a team struggles and falls short in their execution or goals, we can look at that team and observe they are in violation of one or more of the laws of combat.

• 47:23Jocko Willink?

  The laws do not stand alone, but rather they are mutually, they mutually support one another. All four laws of combat are required to operate at the highest level as the lea- as a leader and a team. Let's break down each law of combat. That is so, it's crazy. So I wrote down the laws of combat for the first time. And after I'd put like.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  Five more task units. Taught them the laws of combat. Now I'm watching them. By the time I got to the sixth task unit, I'm like, listen, when you guys screw up, it's gonna be one of these things right here. Nothing, you're not gonna do anything that's not on this list. Four things, gonna be one of these four things you're gonna mess up. However, if you do these four things and you do them correctly, you're gonna be GTG, good to go. They're not easy, but I'm telling you, they'll work. First one, cover and move. Cover and move is a gunfighting tactic. It's the most fundamental and perhaps the only true gunfighting tactic that exists. At its core, cover and move means every member of a unit works together, mutually supporting one another for the singular purpose

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  of mission accomplishment. In a gunfight, one group provides cover to keep the enemy's head down so the other group can advance to a better tactical position. Then the two groups swap roles with the group who first moved, now providing cover fire so this, the other group can move.

• 48:42Jocko Willink?

  The principle, this principle also applies to businesses or organizations with different departments and functions, all working toward a common goal. The best organizations find ways to work together and support each other. They do not compete against each other or operate independently. If a team, if elements of a team forsake this principle and prioritize their own success over that of the team, the results can be catastrophic to the team's overall performance. Every single business is gonna have multiple departments, multiple divisions that are required to achieve the mission.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, we have a podcast. I have to come up with the material, you have to press record. If you didn't press record, right? If you didn't press record, take those SD cards, upload them, save them, or whatever it is you do. I'm sure that's gotta take at least 15 minutes. It needs to be done. But hey, if you didn't do that, the podcast wouldn't get posted. If I didn't come up with what the hell we were gonna talk about, what would we talk about? Freaking groceries?

• 49:50Jocko Willink?

  Mario Brothers?

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  So we each have our role. Yes, sir, we do. We stick to them.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  That's called the cover move. Yes, sir. Same thing in any organization. You got sales, you got operations, you got marketing, you got logistics, and all those independent little elements of a big organization have to support each other. And you know what? If you're in a small organization, sometimes you're doing two or three of those. You wear two of the three of those hats. If you're in a really small organization, you might be wearing all, you might be a one man team for a little while, right? Even the podcast, you and me for a long time. Now we got some support, got some help, not big, it's not like a huge team, but we got a few other people that help, very beneficial. So you might be in an organization where it's small

• 50:44Jocko Willink?

  and you might wear two or three hats. A big organization, you might only wear one, but you better, you better support and understand the other people in the other departments, better cover and move with them. Otherwise, there's going to be problems. Some implementation questions here. Who do you cover for? Who covers for you? In what areas can you provide better support to others? What a good question to ask. How can I be more helpful to the rest of my team? Chapter six, simple. Combat, like anything in life, has inherent layers of complexity. Simplifying as much as possible is crucial to success. When plans and orders get too complex, people will not understand them. And when things go wrong, which they

• 51:24Jocko Willink?

  inevitably will, this lack of understanding can lead to a disastrous outcome. Plans and orders must be simple, clear, and concise. The principle isn't limited to the battlefield.

• 51:40Jocko Willink?

  The business world is also complex. Keeping plans and communication simple is key to the success of any team in combat business or life. The best leaders build plans that everyone can understand all the way down to the lowest level in your organization. The simplest plans are the most genius plans because your individual contributors and frontline supervisors can go out and execute them. There it is. Got to keep things simple. I, this is one of the laws of combat that I wrote down. You know, you'd heard keep it simple, stupid. That's like a military term, kiss. But I was like, yeah, maybe this is ah, and you go back through. Hundreds of years of military philosophy and they all say you gotta keep things simple. Implementation, what's the mission of your organization? Second time we're seeing this question.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  Often people don't know. Does everyone above and below you in your chain of command understand what that mission is? How do you know if they do? You ask them. You ask them.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  Here's the immediate action drill for this one. Where do you need to simplify your communication?

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  What steps will you take to improve on your communication up, down, and across the chain of command? In your job and at home.

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  Here's a little

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  thing that I was, when I think about this, write down. If I'm going to talk to a group, if I'm going to talk to my team, I'm going to write down four bullet points before I go and see them. And I'm going to put little boxes in front of them that I'm going to check as I cover them to make sure that I've communicated them. So write down something before you speak it and then go speak it. The other part of that is, once I speak it, follow it up, especially with a traceable email. You know what I'm saying? Uh, you definitely want to be able to understand and have a record of what you've told people. And a good way to do that is to follow up. Hey Echo, I want to talk about these three things we're going to do, A, B, and C. You got it? Yep, I got it. Cool.

• 53:36Jocko Willink?

  That afternoon, hey, just wanted to follow up, make sure you understood. This is an email. Want to make sure you understood A, B, and C is what we're doing. Does that make sense? Yep. Got any questions? Nope. Can you explain it back to me in your own words? Yep. We're going to do Alpha, Bravo, Charlie. Okay. Yep. You understand. Cool.

• 53:52Jocko Willink?

  It's very beneficial, especially if you have a wide range of things going on. You know, if you're more senior leadership position, having a follow-up of email. So you can go back six months and be like, no, what did I tell that person? They're saying that I said this? Hold on. Here's a re-mail. Here's your response in your own words. You understood perfectly well. Now you're trying to shuck and jive.

• 54:20Jocko Willink?

  All right, chapter seven, prioritize and execute. We've all been in situations where countless things need to get done at once and we feel overwhelmed. Often these problems compound in a snowball effect where every challenge is complex in its own right, each demanding attention. In combat, even the greatest battlefield leaders cannot solve multiple problems simultaneously. Success begins with determining the highest priority and then executing on that priority. Leaders must recognize their situation, analyze numerous problems, decide which problem is the biggest priority and respond. Their response should focus whatever resources necessary to accomplish the one objective or solve the one problem that will have the biggest impact on the situation. Once the highest priority is handled, move on to the next priority

• 55:01Jocko Willink?

  and execute on that. Continue this process until all problems are resolved. If you don't know what to do, you must detach. Of course, we know about detach. That means relax, look around, make a call, take a step back, talk about it all the time. Just as in combat, priorities in business and life can rapidly shift. When this happens, ensure that you communicate that change to the rest of the team, both up and down the chain of command. In stressful situations, teams will often get fixated on a single target or priority, even after higher priorities arise. Leaders and team members alike must maintain the ability to quickly reprioritize efforts and adapt to their constantly changing battlefield or environment. The implementation section, first question, what are your top

• 55:43Jocko Willink?

  priorities? And it's, once again, it's shocking that sometimes people don't have any idea what their biggest priorities are. Inside of a company, inside of an organization, inside of a team, inside of a single department. What's your priority? Is it to save money? Is it quality? Are we trying to find a balance between the both? But if we have to make a decision, what are we doing? Oh, well, the company's going to go out of business if we don't make some money. Okay, so we need to cut corners a little bit on quality. Oh, we're getting a bunch of complaints about our quality. We're going to go out of business if we don't improve. Okay, so now we're going to focus on quality. You see what I'm saying? People don't even know what it is. Do you get clear priorities from your leadership? If you don't, you should be asking that question to figure out what the hell is going on.

• 56:25Jocko Willink?

  Very important.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Real quick, back to the simple. So, well, how do you?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  How, I mean, I can kind of imagine, how do you, if, let's say your boss or someone who's, who's, who's giving out, what do you call it? Freaking, not demand.

• 56:40Jocko Willink?

  Assignments.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Assignments or whatever.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  What if they're not, what if they're always complicated and they just have this habit of like, you know, like they, you know, they explain something and they, then they explain this unnecessary history behind it and how they feel about every step of the way. Like all this unnecessary, it's just much too complex, to the point where it's like a problem. How do you approach?

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  So, as the next subordinate leader in the chain of command, I'm going to take what they say. I'm going to bulletize it into simple, clear language. I'm going to give them a read back. So is that what they're telling them, is, is what they're telling me confusing me?

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah, so I'm going to be taking notes and you're going to talk to me for 38 minutes of history and preferences and your little emotional feelings about things. And when you get done, I'm going to say, hey, boss, great, got it. I just want to make sure I understand. You want me to A, mow the entire lawn. B, rake up the clippings from the grass. C, you want me to edge the sidewalk out front. And D, you want me to pick up all the pine cones? And you go, yeah, that's what I want done. I say, great, got it.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  So basically you're simplifying it.

• 57:56Jocko Willink?

  Simplify it. And by the way, you can, you have to practice simplifying things. And you can get a lot, you get better at simplifying things over time. It is a skill set to simplify things. It's a skill that can be improved. Some people have a natural, certain natural level. But even if you're not great at it, you can get great, you can get better at it.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So would you, let's say I, for, let's say instead of that approach, I worked on maybe asking him to simplify it. Is that like, is that counterproductive as far as like?

• 58:26Jocko Willink?

  There are. A a great number of people. Who are not good at simplifying things. Yeah. And it'd be like me asking you to get taller. Okay. You know, Echo, can you just be like, can you be six, three? Yeah. And you're like, well, no. So if there's there's some people, operation complication, you know what I mean? Yeah. You ask them, ask them to simplify something and they'll literally say, there's no way you can simplify this. This is a complex problem. Gotcha. Yeah. Not a good situation. Hmm. But it's it's not that big of a deal, though, because that's what we're here to do. We are here to simplify. That makes sense. That's what we're doing. Mm hmm. As a leader.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  The last of the combat, the laws of combat leadership, chapter eight, decentralized command. Decentralized command means everyone leads. The fourth law of combat requires leaders at all levels to understand the overall mission, the commander's intent, and know that they are empowered to make decisions about the key tasks necessary to accomplish that mission. To do this, team members must clearly understand why they're doing what they're doing. In order to lead, everyone must understand the mission, the end state, which they are working toward and the parameters within which they can make decisions and outside of which they cannot. The most important thing for everyone to understand is why? The purpose of their actual task. This is also known as commander's intent. The underlying goal of the task or mission.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  So decentralized command, everyone is going to step up and lead. You're not going to be able to place each machine gunner in a security position. They're going to have to do it themselves. The squad leader can check it out. Here's some questions about decentralized command. Explain the why behind your mission or key task. Does everyone on your team understand the why? Can you help explain it to them?

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Do people on your team take projects, tasks and run with them? Or do they wait for specific direction from leadership on what to do? That's a really good question. Do you have people that are stepping up or not?

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  In what areas are you being the easy button for your team or your peers by making the decisions or solving problems for other people rather than teaching and training them to act for themselves? How do you prepare your subordinates or junior personnel to lead if you are an individual contributor? How do you prepare yourself to lead?

• 1:00:49Jocko Willink?

  So here's like a little thing that I used to ask a troop commander.

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  They'd be out there, be chaos on the battlefield. And I'd say, imagine if each one of your fire team leaders was doing something smart right now.

• 1:01:08Jocko Willink?

  What if they all knew what you were trying to accomplish and they were all doing with their little four man teams or five man teams? What if all of them, without you saying a word, was working towards that goal? How hard would your job be? And they'd be like, it could be easy. Why isn't that happening?

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a game changer when people start to step up and lead. When a subordinate person steps up and takes over a task or part of the mission. It's a game changer.

• 1:01:40Jocko Willink?

  They won't do it instinctively. Most people won't. Some people will, but most people will not do that instinctively. Most people will, they're gonna follow. Pack animal.

• 1:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Humans are pack animals.

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  They're like dogs, the alpha dogs. Like you're gonna have some alpha dogs that are gonna be like, hoo hoo. They're gonna make things happen, but a lot of them are just gonna wait, waiting to be told what to do. You need to train them, just like you need to train a dog.

• 1:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Train them so they're gonna step up and make things happen.

• 1:02:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. Are you micromanaging? I asked a group, I asked a group of leaders the other day. Who in here is a micromanager? None of them, no, one of them raised their hand. I was like, okay, we got liars in here. Cause when you're sitting in a room with a, with a group of leaders, they have the natural instinct to micromanage. Cause they wanna control everything. That's how they got new leadership positions. Step up, wanna control, wanna make the rules. That's what people are like. So they're all in there like, no, I don't like to micromanage. Liars.

• 1:02:42Jocko Willink?

  Part three of the book, we're done with the laws of combat leadership. Part three is sustaining victory. Chapter nine, plan. Good planning is crucial to the success of any operation, project or task. Leaders must understand the mission. They also need to ensure their people understand the mission as well. What we call commander's intent in the military is really just a strategic purpose behind the tactical operation. Another term for understanding the why behind a mission tasking. Understanding the commander's intent is what allows subordinate leaders and frontline troops to develop effective plans and make good decisions on the ground in real time. If you're a frontline trooper, ensure you understand your commander's intent. If not, ask what it is.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  When building a plan, leaders should delegate as much as possible of the planning process down to subordinate leaders and their teams. Giving frontline troops ownership of the plan helps them understand the reasons behind the plan and reinforces their belief in the mission.

• 1:03:41Jocko Willink?

  Let the team plan.

• 1:03:44Jocko Willink?

  The task for a successful, the test for a successful brief is simple. Do the team and supporting elements understand it?

• 1:03:53Jocko Willink?

  Direct quote. I, you know, as a running a troop through land warfare. And they gave like one brief for an FTX and it was terrible. And they give another brief for an FTX and it was terrible. And finally, the troop commander tried to freaking catch me. You know, came up with the, the gotcha question. The big gotcha question. He's like, what, he goes, dude, on these briefs, what are you even looking for? Like what makes a good brief?

• 1:04:25Jocko Willink?

  And he thought I wasn't going to have an answer.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, oh, a good brief is when your troops understand the mission and how it's going to be executed. Can we make that happen? Cause I'm pulling your boys aside afterwards, but like, hey, do you understand what the float of the target is? They're like, I have no idea. Do you understand what vehicle you're in? I think I know. Like, that's not clear. If you don't know what vehicle you're getting into, you got problems. You got problems, son. So what makes a good brief? The team freaking understands it. That's a good brief.

• 1:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Trying to freaking catch me. Catch me sleeping. Uh, planning checklist, does everyone involved understand the commander's intent? This will help them make decisions and support the long-term strategy. Are the frontline employees in charge or assisting with developing the plan? Is planning decentralized? Do these people have the resources that they need to succeed? Do the people executing have ownership of the plan? Remember, giving them ownership will drive them to solve problems that come up and ensure success. Are senior leaders focused on strategic objectives rather than getting bogged down in the details? Are leaders acting as tactical geniuses in order to improve the plan? Tactical geniuses. Shut the up.

• 1:05:47Jocko Willink?

  Is the plan simple? Is the plan being communicated in a simple way? Does everyone involved understand the plan so they can execute? You get those genius questions? From the big boss man? You hear them talking and everyone's just thinking, dude, what are you doing? Why are you asking these questions?

• 1:06:09Jocko Willink?

  I got a good idea, don't say anything. Hey, is someone gonna die? This is like a catastrophic or is this even like a very significant problem? You're like, hey, can you? Hey, can you, can you explain to me exactly how you're getting on the roof of that building? Like it's a two-story building, like what are you talking about? We're gonna climb up there. Like no one's gonna die. Uh, can you explain to me how you're gonna spend that, uh, that, that extra $2,400 in marketing expenditure? Uh, in the next quarter? Like dude, that you're, you're, you're burning up leadership capital with that question. It's not helping anybody. You don't know. They don't, they know, let them trust them.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  Is the plan simple? Is the plan being communicated in a simple way? Does everyone involved understand the plan so they can execute? Does the plan mitigate risk and include contingencies for when things inevitably change? Is there a DB, a debrief process, process in place to learn after executing the plan?

• 1:07:08Jocko Willink?

  Here's a question. How do you encourage questions and discussion among your team to ensure that everyone fully understands the plan, the mission, and the key tasks they must accomplish? Boy, you really have to work to establish a culture of questions. You really have to work at it. People don't like to ask questions.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:07:29Jocko Willink?

  Look, some people do, like freaking Fred over here who's got like the dumb question about everything.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:07:34Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Jocko Willink?

  But most people, they don't, they're embarrassed to ask questions. They got trained to not ask questions in school.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Rather get an F on the test than like ask like, hey, miss, miss Jones, how do I do this math problem? They'd rather fail the test.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Jocko Willink?

  Lot of kids, lot of humans.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:53Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta train to have a culture of questions. You gotta train for that.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, a good, a good one, it's just a one liner that you use sometimes. When you say, uh, what did I miss? Instead of like, anything else, you know? Like, is there anything else? You say, what did I miss? Almost like, hey, it's just assumed, like I missed something, so like, help me out by, you know, by, by chiming in kind of a thing.

• 1:08:16Jocko Willink?

  And I'll usually chime in with someone's name. I'll be like, what did I miss? Dave.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Like Jamie, what did I miss?

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.

• 1:08:24Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Like it feels different, because you, you know how like, um, in going back to maybe a high school scenario, whatever, wherever, where someone's like, uh, any questions?

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  No one asks.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz to like, and I was, I'm one of those people that I'm like, shoot, if I for real don't have a like real, like question, I'm not gonna ask these questions, I'll figure it out later, you know, and maybe ask somebody else on the DL or whatever. Cuz.

• 1:08:50Jocko Willink?

  Bro, that's even if you ever showed up to class.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  If I showed up to class, that's right. But, but it, cuz when someone's like, cuz you can take it so many different ways, sometimes it almost feels like a challenge, you know, like, who dares ask me a question? You know, sometimes it feels, sometimes it's not that, but it feels that way even, you know, so there's just so many different ways to take it. And it's like, it feels like you put yourself at risk, you know, when you're asking these questions, like at risk of looking dumb first off, with like, the question you're about to ask, and that's how it feels on the inside, even when people say, um, there are no dumb questions. It's not always true. There are some dumb questions and even even if the teacher doesn't think it's a dumb question. Your peers could think it's a dumb question because let's face it, man, when someone's asking dumb questions.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Let's say even two in a row, everyone you feel it, you feel everyone, oh, this guy and you don't want to be that guy. So like you're just sort of scared in a way, you know, so you're just like, all right, I'm not gonna ask. But like I said, if you can pull that, pull that off like how you do where you're like, hey, what did I miss? You know, it's like a very welcoming like environment of question asking, you know? Or at least additional necessary contribution.

• 1:10:03Jocko Willink?

  I saw somewhere that this was bad, but I don't necessarily think it's bad. Another term is, uh, does that make sense?

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Like, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Hey, does that make sense?

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I forget. I heard something negative about that.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  But I still use that sometimes where I'm like, hey, does that actually make sense? Does that make sense?

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess. See, if you say it like that, yeah, it's more welcoming for sure. But a lot of times, because it could be essentially, does that make sense? Like, you know, the kind in passing, you know, or you know what people say, know what I'm saying? Like they say it's almost like rhetorical, you know? But even if it's not rhetorical and they kind of just say it normally, we'll say.

• 1:10:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're saying when people use, oh, or yeah, either a challenge or filler.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:53Jocko Willink?

  Like a filler or just like, oh, does that make sense? Does that make sense? Like they're not, they don't really mean it.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Exactly, right.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Not be problematic. Maybe that's what I've heard about it that is bad.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Well, I would imagine that actually this part, now that I'm thinking of it, is probably even worse. Is if they're like, does that make sense? Right? Where it's kind of like, wait, you you frame the question like now I gotta like basically confront you and say, no, that doesn't make sense. So unless you have a really good relationship with a person, you'd be like, oh, wait, no, not yet. Because now if I say, no, it doesn't make sense, even though you just spent your hard, you know, your time, your valuable time explaining it to me, now I gotta come back with this doesn't make sense? And challenge you now, kind of a, it's like a micro thing, but it's still, that's the dynamic it feels like.

• 1:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Be careful that setup. Got to use a good setup in that scenario.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. So almost like flip it around like how how you would do with the with the whole, what did I miss? Almost flip it around like, um, like. Like, I don't know.

• 1:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Did I explain that in a way that it makes sense?

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, does that make sense? Cause I feel like I might have like bumbled through a little bit. Does it make sense what I said? You know, something like that.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, something.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  A little more earnest question.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that something that their answer, if it's no, isn't like challenging. Cause you know how like people on stage sometimes will do that too, where they'll be like, hey, are you guys following me so far? Like in this way where if you say no, you're the bad guy. Kind of a feeling, you know? So if you can say it where if you say no, you're kind of the good guy and you're helping. If, if that's the feeling you're left with, I think that's going to be the, the more productive one.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 10, leading up and down the chain of command. One of the most important jobs of any leader is to support your immediate leadership. Oh, does that mean you're supposed to be a kiss ass? No, means you work inside of a team. The boss is in charge of the team. You're trying to help the boss get the job done. That's what we're talking about. The senior leaders of a team must always present a united front to the team. A public display of discontent or disagreement with the chain of command undermines the authority of leaders at all levels, including yours. This can be catastrophic to the performance of any organization. Does this mean you always say yes? Does this mean you're a yes man? No, it doesn't mean that.

• 1:13:01Jocko Willink?

  It means I'm not disgruntled.

• 1:13:04Jocko Willink?

  It means I'm not disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing. If I have questions, I'm going to ask questions. If I don't think the pathway that we're taking makes sense, I'm going to explain why I think that.

• 1:13:17Jocko Willink?

  But there's people that instead of logically addressing something that doesn't make sense to them, they just try and undermine freaking Echo's plan is stupid. This doesn't make any sense. Why the hell are we doing this? All those things are bad. But to say, hey Echo, I'm not sure I understand why we're doing it this way. There's nothing wrong with that at all. But for me to go back with the team, be like, this is stupid. I don't know why the hell we're doing it this way. Those are two totally different things. One, hey Echo, can you explain to me why we're doing it this way? Cause I, I don't understand why this is going to be more efficient. That's saying the same thing as me going back to the boys and say, I don't understand why the hell we're doing it. There's one word I'm going to put in there, hell. Understand why the hell we're doing it this way. It doesn't make any sense.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  And one is perfectly, one is actually your duty to be like, hey, I'm not sure I understand the why we're doing it this way. Can you please re-explain it to me? That's your duty. The other one is mutiny. It's bad, undermining.

• 1:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Goes on to talk about important, important, important form of leadership. We call leading up the chain of command. This entails building relationships with your leader so you can engage directly with them in order to obtain the decisions and support necessary to enable your team to accomplish the mission ultimately win.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  A leader must deliver the most critical information necessary so that his or her boss can make decisions promptly and enable the boss to allocate the support necessary to accomplish the team's mission. Build a relationship with your boss.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  That's a, I mean, I don't know how you guys, I mean, of course, all this stuff is important, but I've realized that I had underrated that notion. To me, that was a very underrated notion, building relationship.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  And then how you say relationships are stronger than the chain of command?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  So that goes so deep. So, and I, okay. So my, my daughter, she had this like field trip. I guess a lot of San Diego schools do this where they go and you know, Star of India, right? They go and they sleep and they sleep over there and they do that thing. Have you heard of this?

• 1:15:24Jocko Willink?

  My son did it.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know,

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  My son got a freaking like gnarly splinter under his fingernail.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Torture.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  Like torture. So hopefully she didn't get that.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. But you know, it was, it was a ordeal for sure. But you know, I see some, so anyway, they, uh, they have the parents write a letter kinda in from this position of like, let's say you were living back in those days, right?

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  And you know, you write a letter and you, and you know, cause they went,

• 1:15:52Jocko Willink?

  I miss you so bad. I hope everything at sea is going well.

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Along those lines, you can, you can,

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  but you know, you're playing the role. She's 10. So you know, whatever.

• 1:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  And so in the directive, fully. So they send us the directions for like, just write a letter like this. You can say whatever you want. Something like, cool. Here's an example letter. And I'm like, cool.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  But I didn't say that kind of stuff. I said, oh, let me, you know, almost like, hey, I might not see you again. So here, know this for life, right? And I thought one of them was like, relationships are stronger than any rule or law. Which is kind of, I was gonna say chain of command, but she didn't know what that means. So. Um, and then, so she was like, all right, cool. So when she comes back from the thing, she's, I was like, oh, did you read the letter? I'm all excited, you know? She's like, oh, yeah, I read like the first two sentences and, and she did, she didn't get what we're doing, what that part of it was. She was like, oh, yeah, because the people say, oh, here's some letters from your parents. So she started reading. It's like, my dad would never write this because I'm going back. I played the role. I'm like, hey, you know, something about the genes being developed and like all this stuff. And she's like, my dad didn't write this. This looks like an AI chat. Wait, the genes being developed?

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, you know, like, um, denim was invented by Levi Strauss or whatever, like in this time. They're like, hey, you can draw on this to tell them what's going on back home and in the world, you know, kind of a thing. So I included some, some stuff, whatever. Bro, you just need to say like, hey, miss you. No, I went hard. You know, I took it on as a creative project. So I did that. She read the first two sentences and was like, oh, this is like chat GPT wrote this or something. And didn't read the rest of it. I was like, ah, it's too bad. So I was like, well, you didn't read this. So let me tell you. So I told her that. Relationships are, you know, stronger than any rule or law. And she's like, what does that mean? So I'm like, cool. Think about if you, uh, you know, you committed a crime. I don't know. And you're about to get sentenced by the judge. What if instead of just some judge who was there to sentence you?

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  That was like your neighbor or your friend, someone who's like your friend. You think you're gonna get a big, bigger sentence or smaller sentence? And she's like, oh, yeah, if I know him, a smaller sentence. I was like, yeah, but so you see how a relationship with someone can affect the rules. You know, good or bad or whatever. She's like, oh, yeah, it's true. So I kind of thought of it too, where it all comes together and all these little sayings, you know, how like you guys be like, hey, there's nothing good that's come out of a bad relation or an antagonistic relationship. And it's like, dang, I don't know that I can consider one single exception to that. And unless you're going short term, if you're going short term, that's different, but the, but that's not part of the gig though. Or if you had like a bad relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. And then yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  He gets rolled up and you're like, okay, see, I told you guys that guy hated me.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Well, it depends though. So in you, in you, you don't say bad, really. You guys say antagonistic relationship, which is kinda different. Bad is just broad, you know?

• 1:18:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Where it's like, yeah, uh, if you had an, if you had an antagonistic relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer versus you had a good relationship, but you weren't like, you were civil, you know, whatever.

• 1:18:52Jocko Willink?

  Maybe he gonna chop you up now and eat you.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Or less likely to. Yeah. If you guys are cool. Put it this way.

• 1:18:58Jocko Willink?

  Did he chop up? Did he kill people that, uh, did you watch that documentary on him or the movie about him? Or whatever?

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  I, no, not the one.

• 1:19:04Jocko Willink?

  There's like a whole, like, uh, series about him, but I free, I don't know if he ran, I think he randomly targeted. I don't think he was killing and eating people that he knew. So it'd be better to have a relationship with him.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You can't just kill your, your bro or whatever. No, I think a lot of it was like a sexual thing too, you know, where he'd like, like be into the person and that's part of his like gratification or whatever. I don't know. I didn't see the, the document. I saw, I saw like mini docs. Anyway, nonetheless, back to the relationship. Think about it. If you have an antagonistic relationship with Jeffrey Dahmer, can be the worst person, the person you want to stay distance from. But let's say you have an antagonistic relationship versus someone who has like a cool relationship. And just like how you guys say, you don't have to like each other and be bros. You just have to have a good relationship. Can't be antagonistic. I don't know, man. I don't know if I can think of an exception.

• 1:19:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. True. So you told your daughter that amongst other things?

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I didn't say the Jeffrey Dahmer part.

• 1:19:58Jocko Willink?

  No, no. Was there a closer to this thing? Or you're just saying that that was a key component that you told her?

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. The relationship.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Good one. That's like I told my kids about the teachers. Hey, they're your enemy. Be friends with them.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Jocko Willink?

  They like be, have a good relationship with them. Otherwise that eighty, eighty nine point four, nine.

• 1:20:18Jocko Willink?

  Implementation. Where can you provide greater support to your leadership? That's a good question to ask yourself every day. How can I do a better job? Well, can you just start building a better relationship with your boss, with your team? Trust, Listen, Respect, Influence, and Care.

• 1:20:33Jocko Willink?

  Chapter 11. Decisiveness Amid Uncertainty. Leaders will always be faced with uncertainty. The picture is never complete. On the battlefield, as in every arena of business and life, there is always an element of the unknown. As a leader, you must be comfortable with this. You have to make decisions, then be ready to adjust those decisions quickly based on evolving situations and new information. Don't allow yourself to be paralyzed by fear or indecision, which results in inaction. It is critical for leaders to act decisively amid uncertainty to make the best decisions they can based off the immediate information available. Waiting for the 100% right solution leads to delay, indecision, and inability to execute. Be prepared to make an educated decision based off your previous experiences, knowledge,

• 1:21:18Jocko Willink?

  training, and education. Calculate the likely outcomes and take into consideration all the information available to you. One of the best ways to do this is through small iterative steps in the direction you think is best. Without the complete picture, only move as far as you need, as far as needed to evaluate, reassess, make corrections, and move again. This enables rapid incremental decisions. You can always adjust as new information emerges. Such a series of these small iterative decisions collectively will move the team in the direction you need to go. It enables you to be decisive amid uncertainty.

• 1:21:57Jocko Willink?

  Some implementation questions. Do you delay decisions that you should be easy? That should be easy to make out of fear of being fired or reprimanded? Why do you think that will happen? Another one, fast forward a little bit. In what areas are you hesitant to take action? And you need to be more default aggressive towards solving your problem or seizing initiative? In what areas are you being too aggressive? And you need to detach, properly evaluate the situation, and implement steps to mitigate risks that you can control?

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit to chapter 12. Discipline equals freedom, the dichotomy of leadership. This is chapter 12. This actually turned into two different books. Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual and Dichotomy of Leadership, the next book. We're going to cover that workbook as well because I think these workbooks are really helpful.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  Dichotomy of Leadership Workbook.

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  Dichotomy of Leadership Workbook, yes. There's no Discipline Equals Freedom Workbook.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  Yet.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Yet.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Might need one. All right. Discipline equal, discipline and freedom are opposing forces. Discipline is rigid, structured and controlled. Freedom is the opposite, unconfined and unrestrained. When we think of freedom, we think of doing whatever we want, whenever we want. And of course, this is what we desire, freedom. But if we look closer, we discover that while discipline and freedom are opposing forces, they are closely related. In fact, the pathway to freedom is through discipline. We need discipline to achieve freedom. However, it is also a dichotomy that must be balanced. Excessive discipline can stifle personal and team development and undermine free thinking. Contrarily, without enough discipline, the team will not know what to do in critical situations or how to respond to a crisis. When we strike the right balance, a disciplined team will have structured plans and standard

• 1:23:37Jocko Willink?

  operating procedures in place that allow for rapid and unified execution, but still enough freedom to adjust, adapt and maneuver to emerging changes and contingencies. That balance is dynamic, changing constantly with every person and every team. And as a leader, you must find the balance between discipline and freedom. The dichotomy of leadership is not only about discipline and freedom. There are an infinite number of dichotomies that a leader must balance. A bound, a leader must communicate, but not too much. A leader must plan, but don't get stuck in a planning cycle that never ends. A leader must be aggressive to make things happen, but must not be overly aggressive and take on reasonable risk. A leader must be willing to step up and lead, but a leader must also know when it's time to follow someone else's lead.

• 1:24:23Jocko Willink?

  Implementation. Where do you see room for increased discipline by applying that discipline? What freedom will be possible? Where do you see room for better process or standard operating procedures? Whose job is it to develop standard operating procedures?

• 1:24:39Jocko Willink?

  All very good questions. All very good questions in that last chapter about discipline and freedom. In fact, so many questions about discipline and freedom that turned into two books. All right, I'm going to close out this workbook. There's a section, speaking of books. This, this thing is called, "It's all about you. It's all on you, but not about you." Excerpt from a Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. And this will close it out. "As a leader, there are no excuses and there is no one else to blame. You have to make decisions. You have to build relationships. You have to communicate so that everyone can understand. And you have to control your ego and your emotions. You have to be able to

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  detach. You need to instill pride in the team. You need to train the team. You need to be balanced and tactful and aware, and you have to take ownership." The list goes on and on and make, and makes up this incredibly complex undertaking that we call leadership. And if you do all those things well, if you lead effectively, the team will be successful and the mission will be accomplished. If you do not lead effectively, you will fail and the team will not accomplish the mission. Leadership is all on you. But at the same time, leadership is not about you, not at all. Leadership is about the team. The team is more important than you. The moment you put your own interests above the team and

• 1:26:04Jocko Willink?

  above the mission is the moment you will fail as a leader. When you think you can get away with it, when you think the team won't notice your self-serving maneuvers, you are wrong. They will see it and they will know it.

• 1:26:18Jocko Willink?

  The leadership, strategies and tactics in this book are to be used not so you can be successful. These strategies and tactics are to be used so the team can be successful. If you use them to further your own career or your own agenda, eventually these strategies and tactics will backfire and bring you down. You will fail as a leader and as a person. But if you use these strategies and tactics with the goal of helping others and of helping the team accomplish its mission, then the team will succeed. And if the team succeeds, you will win as a leader and as a person. But more important, your people will win.

• 1:27:02Jocko Willink?

  And that is true leadership. It's a nice little secondary effect. A person, a leader, helping the team win. The secondary effect is, guess what? You win. You win all day. So that's what we're doing. So there you have it. Little coverage of this book. It's important to remember that leadership is not an inoculation. That's what I started with. You don't get one shot. You don't go through a book one time and be like, cool, I got it. Look, you might have some epiphany moments. You might have some things where you recognize like, damn, I gotta change some stuff. But even then, it takes months and years to really

• 1:27:47Jocko Willink?

  be proficient and intuitive about leadership. So you need to continually review. I meet people all the time that study and read and preach these principles and still miss them. Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  You gotta detach. You gotta review. And if things aren't going well, boy, let me tell you something. If things aren't going well, and you're looking at your team, or you're looking at your peers, or you're looking at your boss, you're going, what the hell's wrong with them? You're not doing it right. Things aren't going well, it's not on them. It's on you.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  So there you go, little review, it's part of the world.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  It's true. Yeah, that, you know, like anything where you can, you can read this and hell yeah, now you know. But yeah, until you start doing it like you just like anything really, you know, where you really get the full spectrum. When you do it and you do it more, you do it more and it like constantly, you know, that epiphanies or whatever that you mentioned, brother. That's like a constant thing and some of them, actually, I think you said this already, some of them are is stuff where like, hey, I already knew that. But why haven't I not been like, I haven't been considering that, even though I kind of knew that from before, you know, kind of a thing. So there's like these repeating epiphanies sometimes. But yeah, yeah, it's one of those deals, right?

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Where you, you sit there and you kind of realize, oh, wait, it's, it's my turn, you know, everyone's looking at you, you know. Right there. But that's, that's a good, uh, kind of a, what do you call like a good, um, like indicator, right? When you're like thinking to yourself, especially with those words, like what's wrong with them? What's wrong? Why can't they just get their act together, you know? Oh, that's like a little indicator.

• 1:29:39Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not a little indicator.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of the big indicator.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  The indicator.

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  Kind of the indicator. What's wrong with them? What's wrong with me?

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Jocko Willink?

  That's the question. So that's what we're doing. Uh, we're also lifting.

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 1:29:53Jocko Willink?

  We're also training the jujitsu.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Had some good rolls yesterday.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Where?

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  I was at Legion.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:02Jocko Willink?

  Legion, American Jiu Jitsu up there in Miramar. Rolled into there since my gym kind of caught on fire. So we've been traveling around a little bit, hitting some of the other gyms. But yeah, I had a good, some good rolls up at the Legion. That's what we're doing. They got Jaco Fuel up there too, by the way, which is good. Cause then you can get done training, you lift, then you train, you want some milk.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 1:30:27Jocko Willink?

  Might want some hydrate. I needed hydrate yesterday and I needed milk, needed to do the double hitter. So that's what we're doing, JacoFuel.com. You need greens. Look, you need greens. Get the good greens.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  My loving mother came visited for a few days and she brought up the greens.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  She's a connoisseur. She's a greens connoisseur.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, big time. She said the exact same story, almost like she hadn't told me that already. But yeah, she's been into the greens since like she was young, young, you know?

• 1:30:54Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And she was like, yeah, and the thing about greens is like, they don't taste good. Like that, you just accept that. You mix it up with some, something that tastes good, or you just freaking power through, you know?

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Hey, woo woo. Is there alcohol, like, okay, uh, remember back in the day when you worked at a bar?

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:31:13Jocko Willink?

  Was there ever a time where you were like, oh, I'm gonna do this shot and I'm gonna enjoy it?

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  Oh, like the taste of it? No, yeah, no, no, no.

• 1:31:21Jocko Willink?

  Is there, is there people that are like that? They're like, oh, this tastes so good, like this bourbon?

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's funny, my kid just asked me that exact same question. It's like, what? Or like, do you think it tastes good? Cause it doesn't taste good. And I'm like, hmm. And I go, some people think it tastes good, but I'm like, I don't know if people think it tastes good, like it tastes good. Like Mountain Dew tastes good, to me anyway. But I think bourbon and beers and even like, um, you know, tequila testing and they're like, ooh, it tastes so good. I don't know that it's the taste in and of itself. I think it's the whole experience kind of a thing. So then you have to have kind of this kind of trained and conditioned mind to appreciate all the different things in that experience of tasting this stuff. So I think it's more that. And hey, if you want, if that's what you call tasting good, then yeah, but to me, no.

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  So greens kind of just don't taste good. It's the same thing. You, I guess you would, you'd have to be like, oh, this is so good for me that I'll just drink this thing that tastes like mud.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Until we made our greens.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly. And that's what my mom said. She was like, these ones actually taste good.

• 1:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Which is like, I never experienced that before, you know? So I was like, yeah, there you go.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  And it's good for you. Yeah, hydrate. Uh, got these energy drinks right here. Speaking of tasting good, I think this tastes better. You mentioned Mountain Dew. Hey, look, I'm not a Mountain Dew kind of guy. There's a bunch of sugar and it's terrible for you.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  Type two diabetes, have you heard of that?

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:32:44Jocko Willink?

  It's a real problem. You won't get it from drinking one of these right here at all.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:48Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's no sugar in there.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:50Jocko Willink?

  But there's also no, no chemical sweeteners in there. Sweetened with the good stuff, the natural stuff. That's what we're doing. Jaco Fuel dot com. Check it out. Get on Joint Warfare. Get on Super Krill.

• 1:33:06Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent get on that. Um, yeah, go to jocko fuel.com. You can also go to Wawa Vitamin Shop GNC Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford's, Dash Shores, Maryland, Wake Fern, Shop Right, HEB. Down in Tejas. By the way, in HEB in Tejas. They got cra- they're going crazy. They're like getting after it down there. They're building tanks with Jaco fuel.

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  So go and check that out. Meyer, same way up in the Midwest. They're doing the same thing. Also Wegmans. You ever been to a Wegmans? It's next level. Next level. The next level. And they've got pallets on the floor. I've seen pictures of them. Pallets on the floor. You can roll in there. You can just stock up. Good to go. Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness Shield, small gyms everywhere, Jiu Jitsu, CrossFit. Like I said, it was up at Legion AJJ, American Jiu Jitsu the other day. And they have a nice little fridge. It's stocked. You need to get yourself some Jaco fuel. Hey, did they have some enemy? They had a couple of enemy energy drinks in there. Enemy and all like. Yeah, like they're not the good stuff, you know, the bad stuff. But you know what was looking a little bit better? We were.

• 1:34:18Jocko Willink?

  But hey, if you want to sell this stuff, go to JF sales at jocko fuel.com. And you can sell, if you've got a CrossFit gym, whatever you got, we got you. Also, originusa.com. If you're training Jiu Jitsu, guess what you're gonna need? A Jiu Jitsu gi, or a rash guard, or shorts, or compression pants, spats, as they're sometimes known. Sure. You need, if you're out cutting wood, you might need jeans. You might need double knee jeans. We got, we got stuff that's made in America. Made in the United States of America, which is a big deal, by the way.

• 1:34:55Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. Go to originusa.com and get something that was made with freedom. Not something that was made with communism and slave labor.

• 1:35:06Jocko Willink?

  It's weird. You ever heard that stat that there's more slaves right now than there was like at any time in history?

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Damn. Is that because there's more people?

• 1:35:14Jocko Willink?

  More people, yeah.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  More people, more work to be done.

• 1:35:17Jocko Willink?

  More work to be done, but still, that's freaking heinous.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's bad.

• 1:35:22Jocko Willink?

  No, see, you don't really believe me.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  I don't, I, I believe you as much as I believe you, yeah, for sure. I mean, you told me that right now. It's not like I went and researched it, you know, some credible, um, uh, you know, extremely credible source.

• 1:35:37Jocko Willink?

  Freaking disturbing. Well, some of those slaves are making the clothes that you're, not you, Echo Charles, because I see that you're in the good stuff.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:35:44Jocko Willink?

  But that a normal person might be wearing right now that was made by a slave in a sweatshop. Don't get slave labor stuff. Go originusa.com. Get yourself some freedom.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Yep, true. Also Jaco's store called Jaco's store, also known as Defcore store, the store, defcore.com, jacostore.com, same deal. Same deal. Discipline equals freedom. Um, yeah, you want to represent that, uh, the idea of good, right? Just put a video out, featured the video of the video. Anyway, you want to represent, this is where you can get your stuff, Jaco's store.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  Is that, that's a, that was a third measure video, right?

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, like he was watching your video on the video.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  Third measure?

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  Talk to me about third measure. What's going on with third measure?

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  It's just the, it's a, what do you call it? A repository? Is that the right word? Like somewhere where you put stuff?

• 1:36:35Jocko Willink?

  Stuff.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Of the, you remember Mango Mayhem?

• 1:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Right? The signature flavor from Jaco Fuel Go, right? Um, so when I, when we flipped over from the signature flavors, when we, when we, uh, got rid of the signature part of them, I still had a lot of leftover footage and stuff, just the stuff kind of promoting that, right? With the robots trying to steal my mango stuff. So I had a bunch of leftover stuff and ideas that I was like, hey, it's all here, so. It didn't make as much sense of me posting it on my Instagram because it was it didn't have me in it and stuff like that. It was just a robot doing this, doing that, you know, so I was like, oh, let me just throw these on here. Let me add some stuff and every once in a while I'll get carried away for sure. Maybe spend some extra time on there that maybe I shouldn't, but so I just put them there.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  So it's third, where did you get the name third measure from?

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Well, I think it was like one of these idea, I, you know what, I had it. I had two like domain names back in the day, like I've got them a long time ago and one was third measure.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  What did you get third measure from?

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  If I'm remembering correctly, it was like, you know how you go to like, if you want to solve a problem, you try to solve it and it's not working. And you're like, oh, we gotta go like extreme measures, you know, you know, that idea, right? Like, uh, extreme situations call for extreme measures or whatever.

• 1:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh, you could even say the full measure.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  So it was more kind of that idea, like we tried one thing. Now we had to go to extreme measures and then now even that didn't work. So this is like the third, you know, kind of a thing. Anyway, if I'm remembering correctly, what I was thinking, so I was like, hey, this sounds good.

• 1:38:07Jocko Willink?

  And how is faction C tied to this?

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Faction C was the original, my original marketing, like sections, you know? So, you know, faction just sounds cooler than department. So I was gonna do like, you know, visual effects and stuff was gonna be part of like the service of my company or whatever.

• 1:38:26Jocko Willink?

  This is Fox Point?

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then marketing was gonna be like kind of another one. And then faction C was like the third one, which was kind of like rogue marketing, you know, like stuff that like a marketing person would be like, ah, I don't know if we can put that on here, you know, it was like that, that was the idea. I'm just saying, you know, so that, that, so I don't know.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  From that you created like a whole level of Harry Potter universe.

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  Bro, there's a whole universe going on, yeah.

• 1:38:52Jocko Willink?

  Out there.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  So these are just little hints of it. What you're seeing is just little hints of it.

• 1:38:55Jocko Willink?

  So faction C, third measure, third measure, you can follow it at third measure. And if you're easily offended, maybe don't follow it.

• 1:39:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, some people don't like some of the stuff for sure. Yeah, actually, I think today, cause I posted one today or last night or whatever. And someone was like, oh, why'd you use that garbage song on it? Like they're mad at the music I put on there. So, yeah, you get stuff like that.

• 1:39:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, you had one where it seems like people are using cocaine.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  They have pounds of cocaine, mounds of cocaine on the table. There's people getting shot.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:28Jocko Willink?

  But they're actually just trying to steal some Jaco fuel creatine.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that was, yeah, and keep in mind, they're not people. They're all just robots, you know? Yeah, exactly right. So.

• 1:39:38Jocko Willink?

  So you have no mercy on them.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  You can have no mercy. Exactly right. But the thing is, I try to make them look really hu- like, like a person. Like, they don't walk like a robot. They walk like an actual person, you know, so I guess maybe there's that some personality in there for sure. But yeah, so that one was, yes, it was kinda like.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  And there's, there's a couple, there's, there's a couple of them. What's the old World War II looking robot named?

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, Killzone.

• 1:40:00Jocko Willink?

  Killzone. And then there's The Closer.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the Joker one?

• 1:40:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so he's called The Closer?

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:40:08Jocko Willink?

  Is there, what are their names? What are the forthcoming characters?

• 1:40:10Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know, to be honest.

• 1:40:12Jocko Willink?

  Hey, does The Closer have a different part of his name too? Like?

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, Punchline.

• 1:40:16Jocko Willink?

  Punchline The Closer.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  I think those should be two people.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Two different people.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  Wait, Punchline is one and The Closer is the other?

• 1:40:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause Punchline, I guess, could be the Joker type character.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:30Jocko Willink?

  But, but The Closer's not really.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  Well, isn't that a comedic term?

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  I think it is. I think it is, but you gave him two names.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:37Jocko Willink?

  Not necessary.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 1:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Let's expand. Maybe they could fight each other for who's the punchline and who's got the closer.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Uh, there you go. Third measure.

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, for what it's worth, hey, look, you wanna have some fun? There's some layers in there for sure. It was based on all Jaco fuel stuff. Like the robots trying to steal the Jaco fuel, you know, and then, you know, something like I said, sometimes you get carried away. So forgive me, I, sometimes I'm not a very mature person.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  That being said, yeah, man, enjoy.

• 1:41:05Jocko Willink?

  You're an immature person with some pretty mature skills.

• 1:41:09Jocko Willink?

  So there you go, JacoStore.com. Go check that out.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  Also on Jaco Store, the, the short locker. I don't wanna forget that. So did you see the shirt?

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  I saw you had Action Jackson in it.

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, he's the man. Um, yeah, short locker, new shirt, new design every month.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  It says sugar coated lies and it kinda looks like Krispy Kreme, right?

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Yep, that's the, that's the homage.

• 1:41:28Jocko Willink?

  Lies, lies, lies. Something like that on the bottom.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  Sugar coated lies.

• 1:41:33Jocko Willink?

  Sugar coated lies.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  Well, were you let that? Did you, uh, did you see it and be like, okay, I did, I see what you're saying? You were hyped, okay, right on.

• 1:41:40Jocko Willink?

  It was approved. Fully approved.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Yep, JacoStore.com.

• 1:41:44Jocko Willink?

  There you go, PrimalBeef.com.

• 1:41:47Jocko Willink?

  ColoradoCraftBeef.com. You're gonna need steak in your life. Get a good steak. Get a good steak. I'm, I'm eating like a lot of steak right now because we've got PrimalBeef.com, ColoradoCraftBeef.com. The steak is delicious. So check it out. Subscribe to some steak. Have it show up at your house. Have some, some beef franks show up at your house. Have some damn burger meat show up at your house. All the best, highest quality meat. That's what we're doing. ColoradoCraftBeef.com, PrimalBeef.com. Awesome stuff. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also JacoUnderground.com. Also we got the YouTube channel. Also Psychological Warfare. Also FlipsideCanvas.com. Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Written a bunch of books. The books I talk about today is a workbook.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  Again, it's the Extreme Ownership Companion Workbook. It is the official one. It's got the Echelon Front insignia on it. It says, "Learn, Lead, Win." Don't get one of the junk ones that are out there. Also, I've written a bunch of other books about leadership. I've written a bunch of kids' books. Way of the Warrior Kid, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Mikey and the Dragons. Check those out for kids. Get them on the path. Echelon Front, talked about it a lot today. Go to EchelonFront.com. We can help you inside your organization with your leadership issues. And if you solve your leadership issues, you'll solve all your issues. We also have an online training academy that I mentioned today. ExtremeOwnership.com.

• 1:43:15Jocko Willink?

  Leadership is not an inoculation. You don't learn it in one course. You don't learn it in one book. You have to go to the gym all the time. That's our online gym. ExtremeOwnership.com. Check that out. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star family, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also check out Micah Fink's organization, HeroesAndHorses.org. Also Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. If you want to connect with us, go to Jaco.com.

• 1:43:52Jocko Willink?

  Also, we're on the interwebs, we're on the social media channels. At Jocko Willink, that's me. Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm that's trying to ruin your life, and it will if you let it. And of course, thanks to all our military personnel out there. You all put your freedom on hold in order to protect our freedom, and we are grateful for that. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. You put your safety at risk to protect our safety,

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  and we are thankful. And everyone else out there, the things in this workbook, the things in the book Extreme Ownership, we have to aim them at ourselves. It isn't the other person who needs to cover and move. It isn't the other person who needs to keep things simple. It isn't the other person that needs to prioritize and execute more. It isn't the other person that needs to utilize decentralized command. It isn't the other person that needs to take ownership. It's you. It's you. Focus on you. Change you. You step up. You cover. You simplify things. You prioritize. You utilize decentralized command. You keep your ego in

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  check. You take ownership. And if you do, your whole world and the world of those around you will get better. So go out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco out.