Leadership Training Fundamentals with Navy SEAL Jocko Willink: Service Drive Revolution #6

Welcome to the Service Drive Revolution podcast with your hosts, Chris the Bulldog Collins and Gary Daniel the G Man.

Welcome to Service Drive Revolution. I'm your host Chris Collins and my co host Gary Daniels, better known as gman. Now recently Gary and I went to San Diego and interviewed Jocko Willick, who's going to be a speaker in our upcoming Top Dog event here in Los Angeles where the top service managers and advisors from all over the country get together and workshop for a couple days. And now, if you don't know about Jocko, he was a Navy SEAL for two decades. He fought in Iraq where he was highly decorated. And his unit there was Task Unit Bruiser, which was instrumental in retaking and stabilizing the city of Ramadi. And just on top of that, just a cool name, Task Unit Bruiser. And after Iraq, Jocko became an officer in charge of the Navy Special Warfare Detachment for three years where he oversaw the training for all the West Coast Navy SEALs. And from his work in Iraq, he was awarded numerous medals, including the bronze and silver stars. Now how we came to know Jocko is by reading his, his book, which is a New York Times bestseller. The name of it is extreme ownership how U.S. navy SEALs lead A& Win. And it's an amazing book. Best book on leadership I think I've read in the last five years. And if you haven't read it, it's a must read. And Jocko currently has a company called Echelon Front where they do leadership and consulting for businesses. And that's, it's, he makes parallels in the book and in, in his leadership training from the battlefield to, to business and in the stories and the analogies are amazing now it's hard to not appreciate. On top of the great leadership training and everything that we learned from Jocko, it's also hard not to just really appreciate the fact that guys like Jocko are out there representing our country and sacrificing what they do because it's not about money and it's very selfless and love of country when they serve in the military at the level that they do. So we owe him a huge, you know, a huge amount of gratitude for that also. And everybody else who serves, it's a, it's, you know, awe inspiring that these guys are out there protecting us. So you're going to enjoy this podcast. Jocko was very generous. We learned a lot from him and it was a lot, lot of fun. So enjoy.

Hey, welcome everybody to the podcast with the world famous Jocko and G man. Jocko, you're Kind of like Madonna in that you're. It's kind of one name really. Jocko.

I guess there's not that many jockos in the world.

No.

Yeah, it's a brand. It's a brand now.

Jocko and then G man. I recently got my cholesterol back. Do you have your cholesterol checked regularly?

I haven't had it checked in a while, but I eat and live pretty clean so it's not like a huge factor for me that I'm thinking about all the time.

So we consider tequila a food group and so we're getting checked quite frequently.

You need to have it with every meal. It's got to be.

We have tequila right over there actually.

Yeah. So I started working with Chris in the office and he's got this doctor, Dr. Lau and Dr. Lau's like a. His whole goal is to, is to make, and he's only for men and to make your everyday the best day possible. So he doesn't want you to have bad days and so he runs this blood panel on you and then he'll go through and figure out ways that you can kind of improve your chemistry. And so he runs a panel on me. When I first got there, it was pretty, it was pretty bad. And so he gives me this regimen and everything. I start working out with Chris every day. We go to, every morning we go to the gym. So I'm working out, I'm eating right. I'm losing weight. I was on the road for two years so I put on like £25 and I was eating French fries with every meal. French fries and hamburgers with every meal.

I, I don't, I can't even laugh at that.

Oh, it's bad.

I can't even laugh at that.

I don't like that at all.

I can laugh at it.

So anyway, so all right, so I'm in my. I got the best wife on the planet. So she gets up at 4 o' clock in the morning and presses fresh juice for me, fresh vegetable juice and puts them in these mason jars, packs it, protein shake and you know, it's.

Like, packs my ginger and like beets and like everything. It smells like it's, you know. Yeah, good for you.

I've been feeling good. I'm getting in better shape. I feel better. I start riding my bike again. Things are going well. So I get my next blood test which I think is going to go well. And this time I'm on the phone with Dr. Lau and Dr. Lau's like, I just, I Can't believe it. He goes, you, like, we got to do something. Change your diet today. Like, you gotta stop eating Carl's Jr. You gotta stop. You gotta get on the treadmill. He starts telling me all this stuff. I said, Whoa, whoa, whoa, Dr. Lao. I, I'm. I'm drinking vegetable juice three times a day. Like, I, I'm eating clean. I don't, I don't understand. He goes, well, when I look at your blood, what I see on the other side of the phone is a guy that's 300 pounds and eats Carl's Jr. For lunch every single day. Like, oh, my God. So I don't know.

So my, my theory is that he should go the other way. And his blood type probably answers to milkshakes and cheeseburgers better. And the healthy stuff is what's killing him. But, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. I cut all that stuff out. My cholesterol didn't move.

When you say you cut all that stuff out, what did you cut out?

I stopped eating. I mean, really stopped eating out. Stopped eating French fries and burgers every day and started eating more chicken, you know.

Vegetables, brown rice, pasta.

So just FYI, you might want to check into cutting out all those carbohydrates when you say brown rice and pasta. That stuff is not good for you.

Yeah, he eats a lot of carbs.

I do. I'm probably still eat too many carbs.

Do we drink too much?

Yeah, yeah. And the alcohol thing too.

That's, you know, it's not good. We need to go on a, on a fast on that, I think.

Yeah.

So we're super excited, jocker, that we have you at our top dog event this year. And I was telling you, we give your book away. We have a stack of them in our office. When people come in, we give them away. Best leadership book I've read. And I mean, you know, five plus years. And the thing that got me when I started reading the book, the thing that got me is the way that you wrote it is like you, you give an analogy from war, and then you relate it to a business lesson. And the thing that I got right away in it was like, we're such pussies in business because the first story you tell is life and death. And then it's like, oh, yeah, and in the boardroom. And it's crazy how leadership.

How terrible leadership is nowadays and how it's life and death really, when, when you're talking about it in your book.

Yeah. You know, and I usually have to explain that to people. When we start working with customers that we work with. And for me, customers are businesses that, that want help with their leadership and management. So when we start talking, a lot of the. A lot of times they'll thr something at me along those lines. Such as? Well, you know, when you were overseas, you were dealing with life and death, and, you know, we're just dealing with, you know, paychecks. And I always throw back at him that, well, we were dealing with lives, but you're dealing with livelihoods, you know, and, and so if I take away your mortgage payment and I take away your ability to feed your kid, I mean, that's. That's your life. That's what you do. So even though it might not be as extreme as life and death, you know, it is a person's livelihood, and it's how they make their money. It's how they pay their mortgage, it's how they feed their kids, it's how they take care of their family. And so when you take that away from them because you failed as a business leader, that has a huge impact. And why. That's why that's what causes stress in business, you know, that's what causes stress in business. That's what causes stress in combat from a leadership perspective. In combat. What worried me was something happening to my guys. That. That's what worried me wasn't. Wasn't about me like, oh, I hope I don't get wounded. I hope I don't get killed. I didn't care about that. What worries you is, can you take care of your guys? Are they going to be.