91: How to Win Back Authority. What to Think About When You Don't Feel Like Getting After It. Being a Renegade Leader. What to do When You Can't Get Through to Someone. Balancing Decisiveness w/ Carefulness.

This is Jocko, podcast number 91 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

And we are rolling straight into Q and A today, so questions from the interwebs. Echo, Charles. Go.

Go.

Okay, first question.

Jocko. I've just finished About Face, the book. Amazing book. Interested how you modeled your style on Hackworth, though? Hack was a renegade and always bending the rules to break to the breaking point. But in extreme ownership, you talk about, for example, not pushing back on higher command when it came to Iraqi troops. Have listened to podcast two, but was hoping you could go into it a bit. Amore.

Yeah, so I guess that that's a good question. Hack, he was kind of considered a renegade, but. But also he was also a total company man. You got to realize that there's that dichotomy there. There's a guy that Hack loved the army. He loved the army. He wanted his uniform would look super squared away. He followed all the rules and regulations that. And he supported the leadership all the time when the leadership was right. And that's what makes him a good renegade, in my opinion. And I was very much the same way. I was all about the Navy, you know, I was all about the dames. As a matter of fact, Tony. You know what Tony used to say? It was a little thing we got going in TU bruiser that spread around. But of course, it came from Tony first, which was all Navy all the time. We'd just be joking about, you know, I think. I don't know what originally caused it, but, like, guys would make fun of me because I would wear, like, jungle boots or danner boots out to on liberty with a pair of, like, old jeans. Yeah. Because when you're. When you're like that kind of old, just raised in the teams, you don't even know any different, and you're like, oh, well, I'm going out and I need to wear shoes.

Cool.

Where's my jungle boots? That's what you end up like. And you're into it. You're not. Like, you think it's good. You think it's normal. Like, this is the way things are.

That's how. Yeah.

And so I supported the teams, and Hack supported the army, of course. But this is the thing. If the leadership was wrong or there was something being passed down that was wrong, and it was a big wrong. Like, if it was little, I wouldn't be like, oh, man, this is crap. They're making us wear a different pair of shorts now because, like, that would happen like some new commanding officer. Would come in and change some thing, right? And some guys, we'll go, oh, man, why we gotta do that? It's like, dude, be quiet. You know, Just be quiet. You know, they're giving you new shorts. Where are the new shorts? You know, oh, they're telling us we can't wear baseball hats anymore.

Cool.

Don't wear baseball hats. And some guys would go, man, they're. Who cares? It's like, I don't care what I'm wearing on my head, you know, like, oh, you want to issue us different ball caps? Fine, whatever. But then if it was a larger issue then, or obviously if it was something that was, like, actually wrong, like criminally wrong or morally wrong or something like that, then, yeah, I'd be like, no, we can't do that. So the reason that I didn't push back on Iraqi troops and working with Iraqi troops when we got to Ramadi was because as I looked at it, I realized that it was the right thing to do. And, yes, it was going to be more dangerous. And yes, it definitely took us out of our comfort zone. But as I explain in extreme ownership, if we didn't train those people up, if we didn't train the Iraqi soldiers and take them out and get them fighting and get them squared away on the battlefield, then Americans would have been doing it forever. So it was. The correct call, was to do that. Now.

I've talked about the same thing. When they told us a ratio, they gave us a ratio of how many Iraqis we had to have. For every one Iraqi we had to have. I don't know what that. I forget what the number was. Seven or. For every one SEAL we had to have seven Iraqi soldiers. They said that. Something like that. I forget what the numbers were. And I said, that doesn't make sense to us because sometimes we only have 10 guys to go out, and there's no way I'm sending only one seal with 10 Iraqi soldiers. Not doing it. Need a corpsman, need a radioman, need a machine gunner, need a leader. Like, that's what I need.

So.

And when I pushed back, because I didn't push back against ball caps and because I didn't push back against some stupid uniform change, they were like, oh, yeah, well, that actually makes sense, Jocko. We don't want you to go in the field with only one seal. So I would clearly push back if it was something that didn't make sense. Same thing with, like, the martial arts training that they had us doing in the. In the late 90s and early 2000s, it was not good. And I was told everyone, hey, this is not smart. This is not good. This training is dumb. We need to do other training that's better.

And same thing. You know, things go, oh, like here's another, like, stupid example. They wouldn't want to issue a platoon the radios you were going to take on deployment because they didn't want you to break them or whatever. And so they'd issue not enough radios for everyone. And so now everyone doesn't know how to operate the radios. And you're basically operationally testing the radios while you're going through your work. So I said, hey, this is garbage. Issue everyone radios. That's how we operate. That's how we need to train.

Gotcha. So in the training, they wouldn't issue the radios.

Yeah, there was like a time period where we were low on radios. They said, we're keep these radios for deployment. That doesn't make sense. I got a good idea. Buy more radios.

Yeah.

So, you know, those were things I'd push back on. And you were always pushing back on the type of training that was going to happen and who was going to. How you're going to run the training. So.

When something. When it made sense to push back, I pushed back, just like Hackworth did. Now, Hackworth did it on a massive scale because he eventually pushed back on the way the war in Vietnam was being run. And had I been smart enough and the war didn't take the shift that it took, and we didn't move towards counterinsurgency, and we didn't make those adjustments that Colonel McFarland implemented in Ramadi. Maybe, maybe I doubt it. Maybe I would have been smart enough to say, hey, we're not running this war. Right. We need to do something different and run up the chain of command. But. But at the time, you know, Colonel McFarlane made great decisions. He led, he had a great plan, a great strategy, so I was 100% on board. But if, you know Hackworth, that didn't happen. They were not fighting correctly against the Vietnamese and they were taking massive casualties for a hill that two days later they give back. And so he was saying, what are you doing? And the other thing, you know, when he took over the hardcore battalion, they were fighting for months and they had literally killed almost no enemy. I think it was zero. I think it was actually zero enemy, and yet they had taken all kinds of casualties themselves. And so he's saying, wait, this is wrong, this is wrong. So I think that's what being a leader is. You support the stuff. You support the command. Yes, of course. You support the command when it makes sense. And as long as it makes sense. And normally it's gonna make sense. You know what I mean? Normally it's gonna make sense. Not like the. The admirals and the generals are saying, hey, how can we lose this war? Let's come up with a stupid strategy. No, they're doing the best they can. So it's not like it's a regular occurrence. I mean, like I said, when I was working for Colonel McFarland, he was a smart guy. He was a brilliant guy that had a great strategy. I'm like, okay, awesome. I'm here to support.

And I'll tell you, when I did, and this is. I think this is important, is that even though I was kind of a renegade and I was more rebellious when I was a kid, obviously I was a. I was young when I got the SEAL Teams. And so, you know, we would push all those things that I said, oh, we got to do this. That was me when I was a E4 in the SEAL teams. You know, why do we got to do that? We should just be able to do whatever we want. You know, we were just stupid. But as I got older, I realized that you need to come across as a renegade to come across as a big rebel. That doesn't. Well, immediately when you go and push back on something, everyone just dismisses you. Oh, yeah, Jocko, he's just a loudmouth. He just pushes back against everything. He wants to do everything his way. No, you want them to say, oh, wow, hold on a second. If Jocko's pushing back against this, then this must be something wrong here, because he doesn't push back against stuff. He toes the line all the time. So we should listen to him. That's what you want to build. That's what I did my best to build. And that's how. I think it would be comparable to the way Hackworth led and the way that I tried to. Obviously, I know Hackworth, but I stole as much as I could from him. And the weird thing is, I'll tell you this. I always say I stole from him, but it wasn't like I was sitting there reading the book and going, I'm going to do what he did here. I think it was just absorbed. And even. Even the naming of Task Unit Bruiser. Like, when I did it, I wasn't thinking, this is what Hackworth did, but it was real obvious that that's where I got it from. Like, I didn't think I'm gonna rename this and we're gonna turn this thing around based or we not turn it around, but we're gonna build this based on. No, I was like, you know what? We're not gonna be task Unit Bravo because that sounds lame. We're gonna be tasking it Bruiser, because that sounds awesome.

You.

And, and. And then later, you know, I look back, I'm like, oh, God. That's what. That's exactly what Hackworth did. I obviously stole it from him.

Yeah, yeah.

So appreciate it, Hack. But that's what I'd say. Be a renegade. But that should be, that should be in the background. That should be in the back of your mind. In the front of your mind should be, hey, I'm. I'm. I'm a supporter of what's happening.

Yeah. Kind of like the willingness to be a renegade if you have to. Yeah, yeah.

If you have to. And believe me, I've known all kinds of good seals that were to renegade.

Yeah, yeah, that's just like I'm a renegade.

Yeah, they're just straight up, hey, I'm a renegade. And you know that just the only guys that could get away with that were guys that were so ultimately operationally squared away.

Yeah, yeah.

That people go, yeah, you know, he's kind of a maniac, but dude, he's really, really good and really tactically sound and all that. And they could they make that happen. Now as you get more and more senior.

Homie, don't play like that. After a certain point, it's done and you've got to get. You've got to play the game. That's what you got to do. As you get more senior, you got to play the game. And from like your subordinates viewpoint, if. If they looked at me and go, oh, jocko's just playing the game. He's just doing. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Because this way gives me more ability to control everything that's going to impact you people that work for me. So yes, I'm going to play the game so you don't have to. Yeah, you're welcome.

So yeah, Jack, makes sense.

Next question.

Jiu jitsu. Bjj Jiu Jitsu during your time in Iraq, if you like, please paint me a picture. How to imagine a BJJ class from you as an active soldier. Did you have a GI mats? And how would it differ from a quote unquote normal class?

So yeah, I always brought mats with me. Starting with 1998, I think is when I started bringing mats with Me, how.

Do you bring mats? Do you just be like, hey, in.

Military transport you build something called a pallet. So you get a big pallet and they're like 8ft by 8ft, they're pretty big. And you put stack all kinds of stuff on them. And you know, you got your weapons, whatever you like. You got your engines, you got your motors. You got your motors, you got your boats, your zodiac boats. You've got paddles, you got all this. I mean, all the equipment. Everyone's personal gear is on there, their op gear, their body armor, it's all on these big pallets. And when you go on deployment, you'll have eight pallets, eight of these giant pallets. And so on some of those pallets there would be mats.

So who is it up to, though? You know, you're talking about weapons and Zodiacs and stuff. And, and then that's like, who's it up to?

Well, whoever's in charge. Which. Which a lot of times was me. So then it made it real easy.

Yeah.

And, and even if it wasn't me, I mean, everybody, you know, if people are bringing something to help everyone get better. Yeah, you know, people. Yeah, that's cool.

So is it like an approval process? No, man. You could feel like this is what. Bro.

There was guys bringing all kinds of crazy things, man. I remember guys. Oh, you know, you guys would bring surfboards. I mean, they'd pack their surfboards on pallets, they'd pack weights and squat racks and anything that you want. If you're going on a six month deployment to a remote location. Yeah. You're gonna, you're gonna load out a squat rack and a bunch of bumper plates. And if that remote location has waves, you're packing surfboards. If it has, if it has, you know, rock climbing, you're gonna pack rock climbing gear. Yeah, that's. I'm telling you, this is one of the things that it's really hard to the SEAL teams. It's really hard to have that. I think we, I think in the. We in the SEAL teams have that better than most people is just this, this autonomy to kind of make things happen and do kind of cool stuff.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying no, no one ever gets to do that. But, you know, I don't think a regular army unit or regular Marine Corps unit would be putting, you know, seven surfboards on their.

Yeah. So where's the, where's the limit though? Like, so what can I, let's say? Me. We're going. Can I get a, a TV. Can I get a TV? TV's like big screen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just, it also depends on where you're deploying, what you're doing, what the mission is. Cuz, you know, my first time to Iraq, we didn't have much of any of this stuff obviously. Right. We just had our op gear basically. And. But the second time, the second time I went to Iraq, we brought more, but we actually had to weld a squat rack. It's pretty awesome. There's a, there's a Marine that, there's a great Marine that was with us and he ran, he manned the radios and he was just an awesome guy. And he was, he was a Marine, but he was, there was Marines across the river and so he was supposed to keep continuity and he got assigned to us anyways. Awesome guy. And he knew how to weld. He was from a farm up in Montana or something, so he knew how.

To weld and he had the gear.

And we didn't have a squat rack. And so our Seabees, because there was a bunch of Seabees with us too, they were able to like just come up with stuff. They make anything happen. My head CB was just. Could CBs build things and they also acquire things. Let me put it that way.

CB is combat builder.

It's a combat engineer battalion. It's construction battalion. That's what it is. So it's CB for short. But it's the CBs. And so yeah, they build things and they also are very good at acquiring things. Things just show up at your, at your base. And my guys were awesome at acquiring things. And we didn't have a squat rack, which is, which is crazy to me to be have no squat rack.

Right.

Why, why don't you have a squat rack? So yeah, it's ridiculous. This, this Marine welded a squat rack. Now here's the interesting part. The squat rack, he was, he was tall. He was like maybe 64 or 6 5, maybe not that tall, but he's a Marine guy, the Marine welder. So on this squat rack there was, you know, there's adjustable things to put the bar on. Well, this didn't have adjustable things. It just had two hooks. And there was one hook at his height or one set of hooks at his height and one set of hooks at my height. Everyone just had to figure it out from there.

But yeah, so yeah, you could bring that if you wanted to. And so yes, we brought mats. I brought mats on that deployment. And both, actually, both my deployments to Iraq brought mats and Then one of the classes, like, well, generally you're training with people that don't know anything. And I would have trained with them in the workup, you know, so they're starting to learn and they're like, you know, low level white belts or mid level white belts or even high level white belts. I don't think we. I even had one blue belt on either one of my deployments. And the good thing is they're team guys. They're athletic, they're strong, they're in good shape, they want to learn, so they learn fast. They're tough, they're, like I said, strong and athletic. So you're going to get good roles. I mean, the more you teach them, the better the roles. Get talking about GI or no gi, we never. I never traveled with a GI for the military, I don't think. And what I started wearing almost all the time was cami pants and a T shirt. And what's cool is I did that as soon as I started jiu jitsu. I was training with other seals that were in cami pants and a T shirt because it didn't make sense to wear like a cami top. And so what's cool is, without even knowing it, when no one was training no gi, I was actually training no GI because I was just training with guys with T shirts on. Now they were wearing pants, but anyway, so, yeah, that's what we'd wear. Cami pants and a T shirt. Would we occasionally put on op gear? Occasionally, but. But not. Not very often.

The other thing you got to watch out for with, with my former organization in the Seagull teams is there's guys that would go nuts like, they didn't want to tap because you get major egos. And so guys could occasionally go psycho sometimes when I'd. When I'd pit certain people against each other, sometimes I'd have to basically officiate, slash be a safety officer to make sure that no one actually got killed because they'd be trying to kill each other and no one wants to tap. And you have to be like, hey, man, you can't. You know, you're about to. Your arm's about to get broken. Stop. So you had to do some of that. And I'm, I'm. I am a bit of an instigator.

Yeah.

When it.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, you see it now. I still do it on the mats today. You know, I mean, if, if there's two guys that are going hard against each other, but maybe they're not going super Hard.

Yeah, yeah, they could go hard.

It's real easy to escalate that.

Yeah, I know.

And so, and so I would escalate matches between guys as well.

And.

And then, you know, I just roll with everyone. So. Yeah. What would the class be like? Would teach some moves, just like a regular Jiu Jitsu class. Teach some moves, go over some stuff and then roll and that's it. Pretty simple. Good times.

Yeah. I found that if you can do little drills with yourself, if you go. If you're a high level guy and you're going with a white belt, especially if they're athletic, what you do is, you know how like when you roll with a guy who's maybe one level, give or take from you, you, or let's say they're one level lower, you'll kind of slowly put yourself into better or worse situations. You won't go all out or nothing like that. Yeah, but this is kind of counterintuitive if you go with like a, like a beginner. Beginner, but they're athletic. What you do is you try to. You think of a finish or position.

Do that.

Yeah. As fast as you possibly can. Oh, so if you're like, okay, I'm gonna start on the bottom.

So you're gonna force them.

I'm gonna. No. Well, depends on what fast you get.

You don't have to force it. Yeah, but you have to force an arm lock. If you say, I'm gonna finish this with an arm lock, you'll have to force him into that position somewhat.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can set it up, sure.

Yeah, exactly right. That's what that's really the drill is. You gotta set it up. Given what he does. And he could be retreating the whole time. Sure. It's. So it's gonna take longer. It's just, that's just how Jiu Jitsu is. But that's the drill in your head rather than, you know, let's say an intuitive method to roll with a white belt is let's just go light. Let's see what he does. Let him even get a good position on you, and then I'll work out or whatever. But no, don't do that. Be like, okay, I'm gonna treat this person like a person that I have to in real life subdue with. And you choose whatever.

That's a good game to play, actually. That is a good game to play.

And then you get real good at that, like going from one thing and.

Then it's also, I don't play that game very often. I don't know what. There's something that snaps in my head sometimes where I'm like, okay, I'm going to just smash this person. But, you know, sometimes I'll be watching the clock, and when there's 40 seconds left, I'll be like, all right, I'm going to try and submit this dude in the next 40 seconds. Or this is when I'm going against someone. That's good. You know what I mean? That's. Honestly, I do that with you sometimes where you can feel me chilling, and I'm all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, wait, there's only 30 seconds left. And I have to go super hard to try and get you. And sometimes I don't give myself enough time. And so then I have to learn to get better.

Yeah. And. Yeah. Me saying that. Agreed. I don't do that in training because what I normally.

My lazy instinct is I always go just enough better than the person I'm going against to maintain and eventually finish them.

See, and that's good because you give the other guy good training.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the point with not. You don't want. If you go in regular jiu jitsu class and you're like, you know, upper belt mean, like purple, brown, black belt, and you go against a white belt, you get paired up with a white belt. I'm not saying necessarily to do that all the time, because it's kind of. You kind of. It's a relationship you have with your training partners. So if I'm like, okay, every white belt I go against, or any beginner, I'm just gonna go as hard as I can. It's like, bro, what are you doing to the guy? Sure. Good sharp.

That's why. That's why. For what you're saying, for blue belts to do that is not good for blue belts to do that. White belts, they don't have the skill.

Yet to really do what you do.

It should be like, purple belt, brown belt, black belt. That's going to be like, okay, I'm going to test my efficiency on making this happen really quickly.

Yeah.

Blue belt against an athletic white belt is going to be. Is going to be World War Seven.

Yeah. Yes, true. That's.

And there's injuries that are waiting to happen.

Yeah.

Because a purple belt generally is not going to get injured, not going to generally injure someone from being in a bad position. Blue belt, white belt, maybe could be some bad scenarios.

Yeah. And so really the point in doing that is, like, in a scenario like Your situation where you don't have anyone to train with except for beginners that are all athletic and hungry. So it's like, okay, what do I do? You know?

You know what's cool? I would come home from deployment better at Jiu Jitsu than when I left. For sure. That happened on every deployment. When I came home, I was better at Jiu Jitsu than when I left, but not only better than I was, but I was in keeping with the standards of the guys I was training with.

Yeah.

So, you know, I'm rolling with Dean before I leave, and I come back and I am now doing better than I was against Dean before I left, where he's been here training the whole time. So that. That says to me, that is an effective way to train. You know, you just. You just. And so that's why there's really no excuse. A lot of people ask, you know, what should I do? I live four hours away from the closest gym, man. Get some friends, put some mats on the ground, watch YouTube, and start training with each other. And occasionally, when you get the chance, go somewhere to a school once a month, once every two weeks, so you can learn.

Yeah, yeah. And I think in your situation is kind of a. Not necessarily unique, but kind of a specific type of situation where you have all the fundamentals essentially down. So, you know, like habitual stuff, stuff that you just automatically do with certain techniques, which is the correct technique, you know? So you can. I think that you'll benefit more in that way where you can train with beginners entrance.

But I'm talking about when I was a blue belt myself.

Yeah.

I still got a lot better when I would be on deployment.

Yeah.

When I was a purple belt. When I was a brown belt.

Yeah. Still. Still. It's just like a little. Just a smaller version of that idea where if you're a beginner and you're like, okay, I've never taken Jiu Jitsu. I'm gonna start on YouTube or whatever. I don't think you can benefit from those situations.

Oh, no, you can benefit from. Not as much, you can't. Yeah, definitely not as much. But you can benefit. You can definitely benefit. You can definitely benefit. Yeah, it's better. It's a thousand times better than not doing anything and not training.

Oh, yeah.

And if you got one person that has that gift of being able to, like, understand what's happening, maybe you got a wrestler in there, bro, that's gonna help you so much. Or maybe you got someone that did judo. Me, that's gonna help you so much. But even if you don't, you just start looking at it and saying, okay, what's happening in this? What's happening right there? Okay, try that arm lock on me and you get some of those good YouTube videos that really break things down. Well, yeah, you can learn a lot. I think you can. Because I didn't have to learn that way. Luckily.

Yeah. Yeah, luckily you got to train with the best guys in the whole entire world. So, you know, hey, you know, teach their own idea, actually. Yeah. Actually Hodger Gracie, who's, you know, we. Not even arguably top three all time.

Yeah.

Ever. He. And he was actually telling me, he's like, I don't have like a team of world class guys to train with. He's like, sometimes I train with Braulio sometimes because he's in English in England. Yeah. So he has like, he's like, I only train with my students and who are good and they give awesome training, but they're not. I don't have world class training partners. Like, my opponents do kind of thing and the results kind of pretty amazing. Yeah. So man. To kind of teach their own. But all these things. Yeah. Can be beneficial even. Even if they don't necessarily seem like it at face value.

You know what I think actually this is leading to is like, you get what you make out of it, Right?

Exactly.

And there's people in the UFC that have done the same thing that came from some random camp and they're training hard and they go and win the. Conor McGregor, he didn't come from Greg Jackson, he didn't come from American top team. He came from their school with Kavanaugh and obviously they're doing something right. But same thing. He didn't have the highest level guys to train against. He trained. I'm not saying slagging off their. Their training partners, but it's not. It wasn't a known camp when he came around.

Right, right.

He. He's so. He's a guy like that Max Holloway, he's out in Hawaii. Right. He's training hard, but he's coming out here winning the UFC championship based on, you know, his training partners. So I think guys that actually understand what they need to do, they do it. They get it done. They don't make any excuses. They don't even want any excuses.

Yeah, yeah. But at the end of the day, that's it. Right?

Check.

Next question. With life decisions, is it better to be decisive and take actions to move forward, even if sometimes those decisions are wrong, as opposed to being paralyzed by indecision and fear, thus getting maneuvered on by life. I ask this because I struggle with life decisions and have trouble committing to one path due to eclectic interests. After listening to your podcast, I'm thinking it's better to be aggressive and maneuver on the battlefield of life as long as I'm prepared to adapt, rather than sitting around and letting circumstance dictate my actions.

Well, it sounds like he kind of answered his own question there, which is good. Yes, it is better to be aggressive. It's better to be decisive. This does not mean burning bridges. And I think we've talked about this before. It doesn't mean that you just. You just say, I'm quitting my job right now because I'm gonna go start a new life as a. Whatever your new job is gonna be.

Right.

I'm gonna start a business selling widgets, and I'm just gonna go all in because I'm committed.

Sure.

Well, you, you know, how long does it take to produce those widgets and what. You know, so there's a lot of issues with that. You know, it's. There's a way, though, to. To mitigate risk on your decisions. And actually, at the. At the camp we were in up in Maine, there was a lot of guys that were, you know, listen to the podcast, and one of them, really good, really good guy, he was talking to me about his business and the business, which I'm not going to go into any details, but he's basically saying, look, I got this business. It's going well. I want it to do better. And I'm kind of weighing this decision between bringing on. He says, I want to bring on, like, six people to really help expand and grow and all that stuff. He said, but if I do that, and we have a couple rough, you know, if we hit some bad luck, I might be upside down and not be able to handle it. And what I really am scared of is, like, that's not just me, but it's now it's my family. I got a wife and I got kids, and now I'm hedging the comfort and safety of my family, so I don't know what to do. And I said, okay, well, do you have to go all in? Right? Do you have to turn around tomorrow and go, you know what? We're going all in. I'm gonna hire these six people, we're going to expand, and hopefully, if everything goes right, will do really well. You don't have to do that. You don't have to put that much on the table. Instead, I said, well, how many people do you actually really need right now? And he said, probably one or two. And I was like, okay, why don't you bring on one and start to see where that goes and be prepared to look for another person to bring on two. And then as those two people work out and you're starting to fill their labor every day and they have work to do because you're expanding. Cool. Bring on three. And guess what? If you hit a hiccup and things start going sideways for whatever reason, that's cool. You don't have those additional four people or three people on board that you're paying payroll to every month, which is normally what kills businesses or one of the common things that kills businesses. So it's the same. So that's a good example. Right? And he thought to himself, and he looked at me, said, absolutely, I'm gonna go do that. And so he's probably back at his job right now, running his business and probably hiring a person to start expanding, not hiring six people and putting all of his chips on the table, where it's a cool gamble. Let's say the percentage of winning is 70%. You're like, yeah, I'm just gonna do it. There's a 30% chance you lose. And now your family has no house and no food, so that's not what we want to do. So why not just put some of your chips on the table and you can still win and make a little bit. You still, you still improve your position. So we got to do that with life too. Like I said, you don't quit your job to start building widgets when you don't know what you're doing. You got to. Why not just build the widgets in your spare time?

Yeah. See what else.

Yeah. Start putting those things on the Internet. Start seeing how they sell. Start getting a little income from them, let them grow. And then finally, when you feel like the balance start to tip, maybe there'll be a last minute jump where you'll be like, okay, now I'm gonna go for it. But what you're committing to is something solid, something tangible, and something that's making money. Right. We're not jumping in and committing to something that's an unknown. We're gonna commit to something that's known. And I think it's important to note that that right there is not a lack of commitment. And this is, you hear these, like, you know, people on the interwebs, they'll be like, you know, why you haven't made it yet because you haven't committed 100%. That's why you, if you want to do it, you gotta commit with everything you've got. Well, and so what people think is, okay, well, I'm just gonna quit my job because I'm gonna go for it, I'm gonna commit and then I'll be successful because told me if I committed I'd be successful. It's actually not true. You can be a thousand percent committed to something and you can still fail. I got bad news for you. That's the reality. You know, that's the reality of. Do you think the people at BlackBerry weren't committed to their game? You know what I mean? You know, but what happened to BlackBerry? It's, it's, they were committed, but they made some bad decisions. And guess what? Now BlackBerry's not really in the game anymore. Well, I think they changed games. I'm not 100% sure. But.

People think that because you didn't quit your job and go all in and put all your chips on the table that you're not committed. And I actually don't agree with that. And I'll give, here's my example. If.

Okay, I think that commitment is actually harder to do when it's a long term commitment that you're going, okay, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay at my job, but I'm gonna work three hours a day on this other thing. I'm gonna be manufacturing, I'm gonna be making my widgets three hours a day. When I get home at 10 o' clock at night, I'm gonna go until 1 o' clock in the morning making my widgets. That's commitment. It's actually smart commitment. It actually in some ways takes more commitment to do that than it does just to quit your job and say, I'm all in. Because now you're holding, you're balancing all these different things, you're carry, you're shouldering more of a burden. So that actually takes more commitment. The problem is that people, they get weak. And after the fourth night of making widgets at 10 o' clock at night, they go, yeah, I'm good, it's cool, I have a job, I have a job. And so that's weak. An example would be what if you could get in.

Excellent physical condition in three hours, but it was just like the hardest three hours that you could imagine. Think about that. And your body would transform from whatever crap condition you're in right now into a specimen. And it's gonna take Three hours of just hell.

How many more people would be in amazing condition?

I think a ton more. Because committing for three hours to something, even if it was gonna be super bad, people would be able to do it. What takes more commitment and the reason everyone's not walking around like a perfect specimen is because it doesn't take three hours. It doesn't take three weeks, it doesn't take three months. It takes a daily grind that goes on for years that you have to hold the line on, on the way you eat, on the way you exercise, on your life. And that takes real commitment.

Yes.

So it isn't a lack of commitment. It's planning. It isn't a lack of commitment. It is mitigating risk. And don't confuse again. I think that the person that commits to something and still maintains this other income stream, for example, that person is at least as committed, if not more committed, than the person says, you know what? Screw it. I'm going all in over here. I'm forgetting about, you know, quitting my job. That's not a smart move.

Yeah.

And it takes more. That's actually an easier. Well, that's my point. It's easier in many ways to go. You know what? I'm quitting this day job. I'm quitting my 9 to 5. I'm sick of that cubicle. I'm sick of that construction site. I'm just going all in over here. That is an easier move. That takes less commitment than saying, I'm going to shoulder the burden of working 15, 18, 20 hours a day for the next two years until I can get this thing stood up enough to where I can execute it.

Yeah. Yes. It's almost like people are conflating the commitment. You know, it's like they almost. People want to. Want to do a big show of commitment by quitting their job, but it's more of just a show of commitment.

It's a show of commitment.

It's either you're committed or you're not kind of thing. And then so a lot of times with these big shows of commitment comes just an immense amount of stupidity, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Meanwhile, you can either commit or don't commit, you know. Yeah, sure. If you don't quit your job and you make widgets and you don't commit. Sure. It's like, all right, you got, you can facilitate your non commitment. Yeah, yeah, I dig it.

Your. Your real job, your 9 to 5 job is an enabler to you not committing.

Yeah.

Fully.

Yeah. But by no means is that, you know, Proof.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's important to note that don't confuse. And this is another mistake. So people make mistakes on either ends of the spectrum. The other one is don't confuse planning and mitigating risk with not taking action, because that can happen, too. You have to make things happen every single day. That's what you have to do. If you don't take action, if you don't move, which is what this guy's asking about, then, yeah, you're paralyzed, and you're never gonna get anywhere. But all you have to do is chip away at that thing. You gotta make a little bit of movement every day.

Yeah.

You wanna write a book. And this is something I'm familiar with now, because I'm writing books. I'm writing another book right now.

Hell, yeah.

And you know what I got to do? I got to chip away at that thing every day. Every day.

Yeah.

Every day.

There's your commitment.

Thousand words a day, 45 minutes, maybe an hour. That's what it takes. And guess what? If I can't get that hour for whatever reason, guess what? I'm gonna get to 20 minutes. I'm gonna get 30 minutes. I'm gonna get something to get in there. I'm gonna do work because I'm gonna be close to my goal than I was.

Yeah.

That's the way it is.

Yeah, man. And I think you got to see.

That live, didn't you?

Yes. You know, honor, like, it was my honor.

That's.

But that's where it happens. Where else is gonna happen? Right?

Yeah.

We were flying back from Maine. I was, you know, Echo's cruising. Good.

Yeah. I think I fell asleep a couple times.

Yeah. Yeah. You were kind of in and out, but I was. I was hammering. I was. I was doing what I have to do, because if I don't do it, then. When's that? When I'm get that hour. That was. That was four hours I had right there.

Yeah.

Flight.

Technically, five.

Yeah. Couldn't get my computer out for the first little bit.

Oh, yeah.

They didn't let you, so whatever.

Oh, good, bro. Yeah, I was kind of. At times, I was peeking over your shoulder, like, reading. Oh, let's go. Writing over here. And then I see. What was it? I saw the name Kenny Williamson in there. Oh, no. I know what Jocko's writing right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

To. That's good, man.

Being composed.

Yeah. I think that all that sounds, like, kind of obvious, you know, when you're saying it, I'm like, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Got it.

Yeah.

Or you know, or at least the part where it's like, it's a daily thing, like you gotta have a progress, you know, like you gotta take that step, you know, do it. Sounds obvious, but, man, how many times I know this, like my friends and, you know, whatever you go on, I don't know, online or whatever and you see people complaining about, you know, stuff never happens for me, you know, fml, you know, FML means Yes.

Stuff never happens to you. That's right. And stuff never happens for you. That's right.

Yeah.

That is life. Yeah. That doesn't happen for you in life.

Yeah.

You got to go and make it. You know, I've explained to my kids, you want to make money, you have to take that money from someone else. You have to take it from them. People aren't just gonna walk up and give you money.

Yeah, right.

That doesn't happen. That's never happened to me in my life. No one has ever walked up and given me money.

Yeah, me neither.

You got to take that money. They got to give it to you. You got to make them. You got to take it from them. Yeah, they want that money too. So what are you going to give them that's going to make. Allow you to take it from them? Yeah, that. That. So. Yeah. Guess what? Nothing's. Nothing happens for you. That's right. Nothing does happen for you. You have to make it happen.

Yeah.

That's the default aggressive mindset that you are going to make things happen. You're not going to sit around and wait for things to happen. It's not going to happen. Yeah, it's not gonna happen. Oh, well, guess what? I read a story about this such and such a person, and they just walked into this agency and they thought they did a really good job and now they're famous. Okay, that's great. Base your life on that percentage chance of happening. It's not happening. I actually look at that and just think the chances of anything like that happening to me are zero. Nothing good is gonna happen to me like that. That I'm just gonna get a good deal like that. It's not happening. Zero.

Yeah.

So if, if, if you're gonna get it, you're gonna have to make it happen.

Yeah.

Next question.

That should be the red flag right there then. Right? Basically, for the, for someone who's like, nothing, you know, when am I gonna get my big break or, you know, nothing happens for me kind of thing, that should be the red flag. Right? One. It's like, yeah, yeah.

As soon as you're talking about the fact that you're not. That things aren't coming to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That should be a real big red flag. Nothing is gonna come to you. Not happening. Not happening. You gotta go and make things happen. And once you have that attitude, I'll tell you what, it's a game changer. Yeah, it's a game changer. Once you realize that that book that's so good, that's in your head is not gonna write itself, Once you realize that widget that you have this plan for isn't gonna build itself, then you'll realize, like, okay, I'm gonna have to make these things happen. And even then, guess what? You can make a widget that no one wants to buy, and you can write a book that no one wants to. No one wants to read. And if you're not okay with that, which is another thing that happens, people say, well, you know, no one will like it. Okay, well, if that's what you think, well, then don't even write it. Unless you want to write it for yourself. Then write it for yourself. And cool. Be proud, be stoked, be happy.

Yeah, it's interesting, let's say, about a book, right? For example.

This kind of reminds me of where, you know, how. Let's say I don't know, me, let's say, oh, I'm a pretty good writer. In fact, I even wrote a book before. Whatever. And then my friend on Instagram, Facebook, whatever, someone, my neighbor, whatever, they write a book and they. They release it, and then they write another one, and let's say it's not even really that good, but it's out there. They're like, look at my new book. And, you know, they got people support. Oh, that's awesome. You wrote a book. And I, meanwhile, I'm like, kind of sour grapes a little bit. I'm like, I'm a better writer than that person. Meanwhile, I didn't write any more books. I'm over here.

Oh, you wrote one?

Yeah, yeah, I wrote back in the day. Long time ago, you know.

But, you know, I'm in it. I'm saying I'm in that arena, you know, and I'm kind of in my mind hating on this. Well, there's people.

There's people that hate on them that never even wrote a book in the first place. Oh, man. I'm a better writer. I'm a better film guy. I'm a better. I'm a better fighter, whatever. All kinds of people doing that. All kinds of people that that will just be saying, you know, I, I, I was a better, whatever fighter, jiu jitsu player, carpenter, whatever, you name it.

Yeah. Meanwhile taking no action.

Software engineer. I could have done that. Why didn't you?

Yeah, exactly. Right.

I'll tell you why. Because you weren't committed.

Yes.

And the commitment that we're talking about is at night, late at night.

That's potentially.

Or early.

Or early in the morning or in the middle of the day, whatever. You know, it how you said, like, you're, you're not doing these enormous shows of commitment. Like, either you're committed or you're not. And if you're committed, it's going to show itself by your action. You know, a lot of these people. Again, back to the. The guy who's like, hating on his neighbor doing quote unquote, mediocre work, like, oh, that's John. That's not that good.

You know what? This just made me think of this. Sometimes you'd meet a guy that was say, I'm going to SEAL training. And, and they'd kind of be brag about it, and you could see in their eyes that that right there was good enough for them just to be like, I'm going to SEAL SEAL team training.

Yeah.

You know, no one calls it SEAL team training, but that's the kind of person. Because they just want to. And you, I'd hear guy, you know, guys saying that, yeah, I'm going to SEAL training. The guys that generally have a better chance are guys that, you know, you say, oh, what are you doing in the Navy? And they say, oh, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, just got done with a school and I'm starting hoping to go to SEAL training. You know, you have to pry it out of them.

Right.

That guy's a better chance. The guy that's already bragging.

Yeah.

Basically indirectly bragging because he's implying that he's gonna make it. Those guys gonna have a little bit more of a rough time now. This doesn't mean they're not. This doesn't mean don't be confident.

Yeah.

But that's what I'm saying is some people that are like, I'm going for it, they're happy with just saying, I'm committed. I quit my job and this is what I'm gonna do. They're happy to let everyone know that.

Yeah.

But what they're not happy to do is grind. That's what they're not happy to do. And that's where, that's where you, that's where you make your money. Right. Or where you make your goods or where you become successful.

Yeah, there is. Who was it as Listen. Doesn't matter. But I was listening to somebody and they were talking about, like, commit.

Like people have goals. I want to be a singer or whatever. I want to be a CEO.

That's wondering.

I want to be a CEO.

But you can form up an LLC today and you can become the CEO.

Exactly. Right. So that's kind of. That's part of the point right there. It's like, okay, you want to be CEO because you see all this cool stuff on wherever about being a CEO, but really what you're pursuing isn't necessarily being this. It is. But what you're pursuing, where you're gonna end up and where you're gonna find success as CEO if you're pursuing that day to day of being a CEO. It's like I said this before, and it's. It's. On the surface it's lame, but it's. It's actually really accurate. Like, if you want to be a gangster, you have to do gangster stuff every day. It's not just like posing with your guns. It's like you got to kind of. You got to put in that work kind of thing, you know? So if you're going to be like, you can't just be Jocko and start a podcast and just in, you know, put out a book and that's it, and start collecting money. It's not like that. You got to. You got to go through, you know, however old you are, that many years.

There'S other steps involved.

Yes, exactly. Right.

And I used to joke about, you know, because when we started Echelon Front, obviously, which is me and him, and we'd see some other guy out there and he'd be like, CEO of something, and we'd be saying, well, that guy's the CEO, and you look at their company and the company has them, the only one person or three people, bro, that's more to it than on the CEO. Hey, I'm the CEO of Jocko Podcast.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? No. It's just you and me. There's no CEO going on here. Yeah, we're cruising too hard.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that deal. You gotta focus on the right things as opposed to the wrong things.

Check.

Next question.

Jocko, I coach high school football. What should I do with the star athlete who segregates himself and won't participate in hard drills? Or won't participate hard in drills?

Yeah. Now this One, I actually thankfully remembered that I said I would do this because when I got this, this is a Twitter question. And I responded to this Twitter question in one word. So, you know, he says, I got this guy, star athlete, he won't participate in drills. What should I do with him? I responded in one word, bench.

I saw that.

So, so of course, you know, then people start saying, well, you know, it's. And I was like, yeah, I know, we're on Twitter, right? We're on Twitter. There's more to it than what's happening. I just answered 798 questions and this was 799. So not going to go into full detail, but then as people were kind of chiming in, I was like, okay, I'll answer this on the podcast so we can go into it a little bit more. Because yes, you're a coach, you're a leader, and obviously I talk about this all the time. Leadership is a nuanced thing. It takes balance, it takes maneuvering, it takes chess playing, it takes mental jiu jitsu takes all those things, right? So the obvious answer of just like bench, that's my meathead answer. And fundamentally we'll get to it, but. And fundamentally that may be the result, but let's dive into it a little bit more. Who's the kid? What's his deal, what's his background, what's his attitude, where's he coming from, what's his family like life or what's his family life like? What is.

What'S his past performance, what's his record, what year is he in school? I mean, there's all kinds of things we need to know, right? So now once we've sort of figured out what he like now, that any one of those things, any one of those variables is gonna, is gonna change our course of action a little bit. Because being a leader doesn't mean you get to follow cookie cutter results or cookie cutter solutions to things, right? You're dealing with human beings and every single human being is different and every single human being has a little craziness to them that you cannot predict. So we're dealing with a kid, guess what, a 16 year old boy. That kid is even more unpredictable and even more crazy than most, right? Because he's got testosterone flowing through his system. He's chasing girls, he's just going crazy. He's not secure with himself yet. He's got zombies, zits on his face. You know, he's got things going on, he's got issues. And so this kid's crazy. And we're trying to deal with him now. Most kids can get. You know, they get through that, and they're still participating with the team. This kid's not. So one of the first things, I always say this, you got somebody that's not stepping up in the leadership position or they're not wanting, you put them in charge of it. You know, you say, hey, Echo, I want you to run this drill. I think the way I'm watching you perform on the field, I think you could really lead this drill. Well, I want you to lead this drill and show these guys what's up, Right? Oh. So you know what I mean? Like, you got a little fired up face on your look just there. So that might take his attitude. And now instead of me saying, hey, Echo, you got to do this drill like everyone else, I already know that you don't want to do that, so I'm elevating you a little bit, giving your ego a little push, a little massage, and maybe you feel good about that now. And I say, hey, you know, you can run this drill faster than anyone else. I want you to lead it. I want you to show them how to do it. I want you to make our team better.

Boom.

All of a sudden, you're getting a little fired up. So that's. That's one solution type, right? I'm just getting kind of broad solution types. Another solution type is. Is. And this is real easy. Real easy is when you're talking to someone that you want to improve their performance, you don't go to them and say, hey.

You need to get better. Because you're just. Right now, you're letting the whole team down, and you're just. You think you're all good. You think you're so good that you don't need to coach. You don't need to run drills with the team. You need to run drills with the team. Now your attitude is, what are you talking about? So instead of saying that, I again, I'm going to ego you up a little bit and be say, hey, man, I'm going to talk to you. I got to talk to you. Because I see so much potential with you, with your game. I see your athletic ability, and I see the way that the other guys on the team look at you. You might not sense it. They look up to you, your leader, whether you want to be a leader or not. And the potential that you have as an athlete is not going to come to fruition unless you at least get some of your potential as a leader in Line. So the reason I want you to run these drills isn't to make you better. I already know you're good. I already know you're good at the drills. The reason I want you to run these drills is because I want you to be even better. I want you to reach your potential. And by the way, you helping run these drills is going to make the team better. And the better the team does, the better you're going to do, the more scouts we're going to hear looking at you.

So there's that. And obviously I'm going to explain to him why the drills are important for him and for the team and for him and the team together for everyone to reach their potential. So those are, those are good too.

And I guess overall, broadly what I'd be doing this whole time is talking to the person, talking to the individual, trying to figure out.

What his reasons were for not wanting to participate in the drills and then countering those reasons with logical answers.

And saying, hey, here's why it's important and explaining it to him. And then eventually you're going to get to a point where my coaching, my explaining, my maneuvering, my mental jiu jitsu, none of it's worked. And he's still telling me I'm not running the drills. I don't need to. Cool. Bench. Next question. You know what I mean? Well, you played ball. What do you think? Yeah, because I didn't play football.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I would, I would think, and I'm trying to put myself in the mindset. Back when I was in high school, I remember going into my senior year. So you have, we had some kind of summer training. So it was really like high school summer training. No, no, no, that was, that was for fall. Okay. And that was like a camp situation, but no, summer training, which was like after spring and stuff. And what they'd call it, they call it technique sessions. And all it was was like, you know, I played in high school, it was kind of like a slap back, which is a hybrid running back, wide receiver type. And so the technique sessions were just kind of passing drills and, you know, just hand stuff and maybe even some footwork. But it was kind of fun. It was just, you know, the quarterback was there and the receivers and the running backs and you catch passes, run routes and stuff and you know, for like, I don't know, 45 minutes, hour. And so I remember going into my senior year and they're talking about, yeah, technique sessions this year, whatever, whatever. And I remember I was Just talking to Jade, my brother, and I was like, yeah, technique sessions. It's the kind where if you don't go, you don't get in big trouble or nothing. It's just strongly encouraged, you know, that kind of thing. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to those kind of. Because I was real. I had done.

You were the man.

I had done well as a junior and I knew that now as a senior, I'm really gonna do well. Whatever, whatever. That's. That was my little thought. I don't need to go to those. So I was like, I was like, yeah, I'm not going into those with this kind of tone that like, that's for people who are trying to train, get better me, I'm already dope kind of thing, you know? And Jay goes, He goes, oh yeah, like super sarcastic, like almost offended. He was like, oh yeah, because you don't need that, huh? And. And then he said, yeah, cuz you're just so much better than everyone else. Actually, I think he said both of those. And I was like, bro, it hit me really hard. I was like, dang that. He's right, man. Even if, Even if, like, even if I really believe, which it's dumb to believe that I won't benefit from that training. Even if it's like, I'm just like, yeah, I'm better than you. My whole team, by the way. Yeah, the team sport. We all work together to win this stuff. You guys. I'm better than all you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's. That's the feeling I had to hit me real hard. I was like, I didn't miss any of them. No, man, I'm committed to this. So there was that. So in that, in that mindset, right? Going in. Because that's probably what it is.

Yeah, it might be just that.

And it makes sense like where in your mind, if you don't get it brought to your attention, like, that's really what it is. I don't need to do these drills. I'm scoring touchdowns every single game. Why am I doing these drills that all these non touchdown scoring people are doing, you know? Yeah. Just put me in when it's time to score touchdown. Kind of an attitude, you know, that's probably what it is. Or making tackles or whatever the position is. I don't know. So just like how you said, make him kind of in charge of it. Kind of like this guy, I don't know, let's say his name is Jim. I don't know, Jim, you know, take These guys and show them how it's done kind of thing in practice. Because practice is.

Yeah, imagine. Imagine if you say, I'm not going to go. This coach came up and he said, hey, Echo, are you. You know, you missed two practices and you're like, yeah, you know. And he was like, hey, man, I need you to set the example and really show these guys how it's done. And you're not even showing up.

Yeah. Even in me. Me back in those days, if. If you would have left out that, like, you didn't show up part, leave that part out, that would have compelled me way more. Like, if you're like, you, man, you're. You're over here as a junior killing it. And now it's about to be your senior year, you surely guys how it's done, I'd be like, hell, yeah, I will. You know, because it's like feeding the ego kind of thing. And boom. I would. Oh, yeah, big time. Take charge in.

Pop Warner football, which is, you know, younger guys in. I played for the Koloa Rams.

Dang, they sound ruthless.

They are. Still are, by the way. And so my coach's name is Coach Scoville. And he had this kind of. It's kind of like a policy kind of the thing where when you do jumping jacks, when you do, you know, drills, like they call them grass drills, it's just like, oh, you do this stuff. You roll. You do these things. And while you do this in practice and even before the game when you're warming up, you yell as loud as you can. That's it. You yell. Little kids just yelling. Getting that for his reasons. And it worked, man. We're good. And so what I would do is I would try to be the. Like, yell as loud as I possibly can to be the loudest guy.

During the entire. Whatever you're doing. You're just yelling the entire time.

The drills.

Yeah.

When it's your turn, not. Not if you're standing, you know, stand up in line.

Got it.

And then the front three guys go, yeah. So the coach stands in front of three guys, three lines, and the guys in the front are doing the drill. So he holds the ball and you go, ah. And you just basically shuffle your feet and he goes like that. Then you turn, then you come back and he goes this way. Turn. And then he goes down. Then you basically sprawl, you know, boom, stand back up and ah, you know, and then he goes, okay, like that. And then the three guys run. Now it's the next guys Got it. You see, I'm saying so. And when you're running, you gotta yell too.

So that's good cardiovascular work.

Yeah.

To be yelling because you can't breathe as much.

What it does is gets you in the habit of just going hard, hard every play, you know, and when you're done, you don't have to yell. You're cruising, you're resting, getting ready. And when it's go time is go time. And habitually that's how it was, man, it really worked. And so anyway, when I would yell is that. And the coach would do this to a lot of kids, when you'd yell super loud, you know, you can just see here, that guy yelling above everybody, he would give that guy attention. Look at this guy, he's getting nuts. Yeah, look at this, look at this guy. And now the next guy, he's gonna try to out yell that guy and go harder, go harder. So it's that same idea, you know, you give that guy props for working hard or showing everybody how it's done kind of thing. And it's like, Ben, he's gonna keep that shit up and everyone's gonna want it. In fact, Jeff did me like that this week in training. So I go in and just like, okay, after training, it's like, everybody, you know, Jeffrey Glover. Glover, yeah, he, you know, you do some push ups or he'll make you do some push ups or whatever. And he's like, okay, do the triangle drill. You know, when you're on your back, you rock back, you do a triangle, you rock back again. Go triangle the other side. So all levels are in there. Beginners as well. And so I'm doing it and he goes, oh, everybody in the middle of. He goes, stop. Watch how Echo does it. And I'm like, if I didn't see what was going on here, I would feel really empowered to just like show everyone how. And, you know, so he successfully pulled that off as far as the feeling in my head to a grown adult that know.

Because you were you doing them.

Yeah, I was doing it with everybody. And he paused the whole class and said, watch how he does it, you know, so it's exactly.

You stepped up your game a little bit.

Yeah, you know, my technique showed everybody, you know. Yeah, no, it's good, man. That works. Then like. And the point there is even if you know that that's what they're doing to you, it's still kind of works.

Yeah, he. If you were the type of coach that had already had this happen before and like, you just benched guy in the, and the coach had the reputation that you don't play around, this wouldn't have happened in the first place, really, would it?

I agree. I think so.

So you, you may have to set the example at some point.

Yeah. The only drawback of that potentially is you could. Because in high school, a lot of the times, like you can have one or two guys on the team, sometimes even one guy on the team that'll dictate the outcome of the game, where if this guy's playing, you'll probably win, if he's not, you'll probably lose. And you have those dynamics in high school. So if you run that risk where, I mean, unless you, if you're looking at a bigger picture.

Well, I guess this is a bad example. If the guy, if you, if you as a coach run things in a certain way where you have, where you don't allow any slack.

Yeah.

Then the probability of this occurring is gonna be less.

Yeah, it can be done for sure.

It's a funny story Leif tells sometimes is we were doing desert training and long story short, there's an opportunity to have guys take a break and go to town and have some beer and get a good meal before the field training exercises start. And that's normal what everyone does. But we didn't do that. We didn't take a break, didn't go get food, didn't go get beers, nothing. We just got after it more. And I didn't really think much of it, but Leif was like, yeah, of course we wanted to go, but no one, no one wanted to ask you.

Yeah.

Because it was just like, yeah, no slack. We're not, obviously we're not. We're out here to train and get some. We're not here to, you know, go into town and drink a beer.

No.

And it's kind of funny looking back, but I think that, that you can establish yourself as a type of leader that's just not gonna allow, like, what are you talking about? You don't want to do the drills. Oh. But it starts with the little things, like who knows what. This kid, you know, maybe he didn't want to put on his practice jersey and he wanted to wear this, you know what I mean? Just like little things. Little things build up. And eventually he seemed just like a normal kid. Just like a five year old that pushes the envelope with everything. Oh, yeah, maybe I can't get away with that. Well, what can I get away with? Can't get away with that. What can I get Away with. People like to push the envelope. Yeah. No slack.

Yeah.

But you can go too far with no slack. Of course.

Yeah.

And you now. Now everyone hates you as a coach.

Yeah.

Because you just don't understand. You don't listen, and you're a jerk. Yeah. You've. You've gone too far in one direction or you've gone too far in the other direction. Balance dichotomy of leadership. Get some.

Yeah, that's true.

Next question. Jocko, have you ever had a person you couldn't get through to, something that you couldn't manipulate? Then what. What do you do when you can't get through?

Well, yeah, of course I've had people that I could not get through to. And generally speaking, these people are, like, level 12 arrogant. That's. They are giant ego. That's what causes this. There was quite a few SEAL leaders that I dealt with. I shouldn't say quite a few. There was several SEAL leaders that I dealt with that were like that. And of several business leaders that I've dealt with that were like that. In podcast number five, I read that counseling letter, corrective measures to a guy that was really arrogant, and despite that letter, he did not change and he got fired. So what do you do when you got someone that you can't get through to you? You fire them. That's if they're. If. And here's what you got to do is what. What makes that tricky is that some people.

And this may. This. This will make people freak out. There's some people that. They're such good performers that even though they're slightly negative on maybe their team participation, but they're so good that. That it offsets their negativity. Right? And that happens. It happens. You know what happens with sales people? Salespeople are. In order to be in a sales position, you got to be confident, you got to be aggressive, you got to be somewhat arrogant. Right. You got to believe in yourself. And so some salespeople take that to the extreme, where they're just like, I don't need to listen to what you're telling me. The new procedures are. Screw that. I'm the one that's doing the big dollars over here. How about you follow my procedures, boys? Right? So that happens. Well, then what you got to do is you got to look, is this guy producing so well now that can create problems within the team, and you have to balance those things. Is this guy. Is the negativity that he's creating offset by the awesome productivity that he's doing? And Furthermore, if the guy's that good, hey, maybe we should be modeling some things after them. I got no problem with that. If you're the best performer, cool. I want to imitate you. I want to get my people to imitate you. So that happens. The other place where you might see it a similar situation is a leader that does really good with their relationships down the chain of command, for instance, but really has bad relations up the chain of command. So again, you got to ask yourself, okay, if I fire this leader, how many of these people that he has great relationships are now going to leave? And what kind of detriment is that to the team?

That can also happen with someone that's doesn't. That treats their people like crap. But up the chain of command, everyone thinks he's great and, and he's getting the mission done, by the way. Right. He's a slave driver, and he's creating total animosity between him and his team, but he's accomplishing the mission. So now what do you do? There's a risk everyone could quit. There's risk you could fire him, and now you don't accomplish the mission anymore. This is why leadership is hard, and this is why you have to balance everything. You have to balance those things. But talked about it a bunch of times. If you get someone, you coach them, you mentor them, you do everything you can, you flank them, you do jiu jitsu, mental jiu jitsu on them, you try and get them squared away, and eventually if you can't, you weigh against, you know, how it's going to affect the situation, and then in many cases, you got to let them go. And we fired. You know, we fired. I saw plenty of seals get fired from leadership positions. And, and same thing with, you know, obviously we work with consulting businesses. We see all kinds of people getting fired because they're either not capable of doing their job, they're too arrogant, and they don't recognize that things are going sideways, and they're just thinking that they're doing everything perfect. No, that's not going to work out well for you.

Yeah. What did I think it was? Leif? He said.

Someone asked him, you know, when do you know, when's that line where it's like, when it's time to fire someone? Yep. And he was like, in a nutshell, there's a lot to it. But in a nutshell, which I thought was dope, he said, it's, you know, you're at that point where, where you fire someone when, when you don't Feel bad about it.

Right, Right.

So it's like, yeah, you tried everything.

Tried everything. And. And there's also people, which there's some validity to this, that say the first time you think you should fire someone, you should fire them. That's the other end of the spectrum. Right. And what that means is when you're looking at someone and you're going, man, okay, I can save them, I can help them. That's the kind of advice you give to someone. That's. That's a. That's got a maternal instinct, right. That you meet someone, hey, I know this guy's just a good guy, and everyone on my team is great, and everyone's going to do a great. You can't tell that person what Leif and I normally tell people, which is when you feel good about it, you should fire them, because that person will never feel good about firing anybody. Just about. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, he just know he's gonna bake it. No, he's gonna come around. You know, I. And then they. Then they start playing the. The extreme ownership game.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, if I would have given Echo a better direction, he would have been able to do this. It's my fault. I've given to echo 17 iterations of this, and he still didn't complete it correctly. He's fired. That's the way it works. Right? There's. Yeah, there's a balance.

So that spectrum of. Of, you know, being within the confines of being justified, firing somebody, a certain type of person, you got to say when you don't feel bad about it.

Right, Right.

That's like a fire heavy type dude.

Right. But there's also someone. The reason you shouldn't feel bad about it is because I've done everything I can do to help you, which takes work, it takes effort, it takes tact, it takes hard conversations. Because it's hard for me to go and say, echo, you know, I've been. I've been looking at your videos lately, and they're. They're not really what we're looking for. Right. I don't want to say that to you. You know, it's uncomfortable, and we're kind of like, you know, we. We want to get along. So instead I'm like, yeah, Echo, that. That video was good, man. Yeah, it's good. But I'm not telling you the truth. And then over time, our videos aren't looking good enough. And eventually I say, you know what? You know, we're. No one's buying our videos. Anymore. And we haven't gotten any new contracts, so guess what? I'm gonna have to let you go. And you're like, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? You said all the videos I made were good. Now you're firing me. Maybe you need to become a better salesperson. Whereas if I had the hard conversation early and said, hey, Echo, you know, I know you're creative, and I appreciate that, but we also need to get the message across for our clients. I'm obviously fabricating a business where we're making videos for clients, which I know we don't really do a lot of anymore. Occasionally you do it, but. But yeah, you gotta. You got to.

Have the hard conversations earlier. If I'm the type of person that doesn't like to have the hard conversations, once again, I never feel good about it because I never. I never gave you any advice. So it always feels bad for me to fire someone.

Yeah.

But if you're following good leadership tactics, then absolutely true. When you get to a point where you got to fire somebody, you won't feel bad about it because, you know, you've done everything you can. You know, you've coached them, mentored them, and you know that if you keep them on board, you are negatively impacting your team, which is bad.

Yeah. And then go down to the other side of the spectrum, still within the confines of being justified in firing somebody, by the way. But on the other side of the spectrum, you get how you say that. What do you call the maternal instinct type?

Maternal instinct.

The person who can. Like, they're just super hard on themselves, maybe, or they're, you know, like, even if you did do everything you can, you still. Like, I could have done more, you know, so it's my fault, not his.

I feel like I let them down as a leader.

Yeah.

You gave them 17 counseling chits.

Yeah.

You know, they don't belong here. They can't do their job. Stop.

Yeah. Meanwhile, they're going home laughing at you or whatever. Yeah. You get that kind of personality. So it's kind of like how you say, you got to balance it. You got to be like, okay. You got to recognize, like, okay, what kind of person am I? You know? Or what kind of person is this other person kind of thing. And if they're those maternal instinctual. For lack of a better way of putting it, person, then what was it the first time you feel like you should fire him, you should fire them. You. You hang out on that side of the spectrum. You got it. Yeah.

Next Question. How do you regain respect from your employees after you've come across as too nice? My husband and I are business owners with 45 employees in a small software firm. Since adding more employees in the last 18 months, the culture is changing. I blame our easygoing attitude. Increasingly, there is an attitude problem where negative pushback has become almost a daily occurrence. How do we lead our way out of this?

Okay, well, this is a rough one.

Not by no means. I shouldn't have even said it's a rough one. It's a challenge, right? You have to hit the reset button for sure. And you gotta let people know that things are changing. Now, I would straight up have a meeting that you.

Sit everyone down and say, hey, here's what's happening. We are growing. And as we grow, we are going to have to evolve. Just like a person. As you get older, you have to evolve. You have to become more mature. And here's some of the things that we're gonna have to tighten up, right? Is.

Instead of, you know, everyone's just, hey, if you come in and you want to go, you gotta, you know, it's your kid's birthday. Oh, yeah, no problem. Day off, you say, look, that's not happening anymore. We will do our best to let you out for your daughter's birthday. We will do our best to let you go take care of family members when they're sick. We will do our best to give you bonuses that you've become accustomed to. We will do our best to give you raises annually. We will do our best to continue to take care of you. But none of those things are guaranteed at all.

We are trying to be profitable. In fact, we have to be profitable in order to continue as a business. On top of being profitable, in order to grow, we have to reinvest in the company. We have to take the money that we make, and we have to put it back into this company in order to grow. And we are going to grow. That is our goal. And in order to grow, we are going to have to put procedures and standards in place now that will allow us to maintain some control and efficiency as we grow. If we don't do that, we're gonna fall apart.

So that is what we need to do. Now. Why do we want to grow? The reason we want to grow is because we want to be bigger. We want to create more opportunity for everyone sitting in this room. We're not trying to grow for us. We're trying to grow for everyone. The more opportunity everyone has to advance in leadership to make More money. That is what we are trying to do. But we can only do that if we, as we grow, we evolve and become better and become more efficient and become more standardized in the next 18 to 24 months. That is what we have to do as a company.

So I would have a meeting and say something like that, something along those lines, lay down the law a little bit. Now also, then you have to change your attitude. You have to somewhat change your attitude because you are Mr. Nice Guy. That's how you ended up in this position. The husband and wife team, Mr. And Mrs. Nice Guy. And.

You can and should be nice as a leader. I understand that. But at this point, the team needs to get tightened up.

And so you're going to have to impose some discipline on them.

In order for there to be freedom in the future. Surprisingly right. But we know that now. I had a friend who was a platoon commander, and he was. He worked with me and I knew him. And when he was a platoon commander, he was a real nice guy, super nice guy. When he was a platoon commander, he was a nice guy, super nice guy. Things didn't work out good for him because I don't know that. I don't specifically know what happened, but I know that things didn't go great. And when he talked to me about it. Because the thing is, when I worked with him, we were all bros. And I was a young enlisted guy, but we know we were all bros, but we all had that level of respect. Hey, you know what? We can go out and have a beer tonight, but tomorrow morning when we get to work, I'm in the game and I'm, you know, I'm. I'm toeing the line. And that's pretty much what we were all like, all of us enlisted guys working with this guy. And when he got to this new place, new command, all of a sudden it wasn't like that anymore. And he was blowing out with people. And when you get back into work, they wanted to bro out at work. And it was like, well, we don't need to listen to you. We were having beers with you last night. And that's what he told me. He said, you know, I. I was too nice of a guy, and I didn't get the respect that I needed to be able to effectively run the platoon. And it was not good. And he said something to me, too, which I guess I instinctively knew, or maybe I didn't, but it stuck with me. You know, it's real easy to give more slack to someone when you have them On a tight leash. Right. It's real easy.

Yeah, yeah.

It's hard to do the other thing. It's hard to. Well, listen to this. When I have you on a tight leash and I give you a little bit slack, you're happy. You're like, oh, look at Jocko. He trusts me. He's let me go a little bit.

Yeah.

When I give you all kinds of. All kinds of slack, and all of a sudden I have to tighten it up, I start pulling on the leash. Well, guess what? It chokes your neck. It chokes you. And I start bringing them. And the further I got to pull you back on in, the longer you're choking for. And so by the time you get back to me, you're ready to bite.

And so that's what you have to do. You don't walk in and put the dogs out and let them run wild to the end of the leash and let them run wherever they want and then try and pull them back in. Because when you let him go, by the way, you're thinking yourself, well, you know, this is a good dog. So when I let him run around, he's not going to do anything wrong. He's going to be a perfect saint when there's a chance that that's going to happen, and there's a chance that that's a good dog. And you let him run around and when you say come back, he comes back to you. There's also a chance that he's not a good dog. And when he gets out there, he starts running and start biting people or running in the road or doing whatever bad dogs do. And so what do you have to do? That dog is you got to pull him back to you. And it's actually worse because we already know this is a bad dog. So now when you pull him back, he's pissed and he's going to bite you. Whereas a good dog wasn't doing anything bad in the first place. And when you pull him back in, he looks at you and goes, hey, I must have gone too out of control. I'm sorry. I'm back in line now. You see what I'm saying? There's a. The way the whole thing unfolds is bad, because the bad dog, he's a bad dog and he's doing bad stuff. When you give him slack on the leash and when you pull him back, he's gonna snap at you. The good dog, you give him all kinds of room on the leash, he's not doing anything good. And when you pull him Back he goes. He goes, oh, sorry, I didn't realize I was doing something out of line. Master. Sure, I'll keep it in check now. And you can give me more slack if you want. Or not. Doesn't matter. I want you to trust me. Meanwhile, the bad dog, he's just, like, growling. He's pissed.

So that's going to be a hard one. Like I said, it's not impossible. But the big thing you got to do, I think in this situation, you got to be clear. Here's what's going on. You could even potentially, I don't know how well you are of a speaker interacting with people. You could even say something along the lines of, you know, hey, look, we've been running this real loose, and I've been real. You know, we've been doing everything we could to run this as loose as possible, but we got to tighten it up. I think that's. I think you could say that because you don't want to say, look, I've been being nice and I can't be nice anymore. That. That comes across wrong. But to say, look, we've been running it real loose here, and we've been trying to give you guys as much freedom as we can, and we still want you guys to have freedom, but we got to put some parameters in place that are going to. That are going to allow us to run this business efficiently as we grow and as we scale. You can quote me on that one, by the way.

Yeah, makes sense when you say be clear and consistent, you know, like how, you know, some people, they'll implement rules, and I'm speaking from an employee standpoint where I'm looking at the boss when they're trying to put in new rules to tighten it up, so to speak. Because in the nightclub industry, that tends to. To happen, you know, managers bro. Ing out. I like the term bro out, by the way.

You never heard that? Have you never heard that before?

I don't think so. Not that I can remember.

But that's interesting. I thought that was pretty common vernacular, especially amongst a bro like yourself.

Bro out. Bro in. Out with them. Yeah. And the nightclub managers tend to bro out with people or, you know, bro out with girls or whatever. The waitresses, whatever, whatever.

I don't know if you can blow out with girls.

Yeah, I know that's kind of caught yourself. There's probably a different word for it, group of words, whatever. But nonetheless, that tends to happen. So, you know, sometimes, same situation, you know, you get nightclubs in disarray as a Business, you know, then they got to tighten it up and apply more rules, and now you gotta, you know, whatever with the clock ins. It's like just little rules.

Yeah. And negative attitude.

No.

All these rules.

All these damn rules. Yeah. I'm a late person, so the whole clock in thing, anyway, long story, but.

So when the manager would implement the rules, but they don't follow the rules, you know, it's. Man, it. They just won't take. And people get more mad. But when you see. There is this man, and he died too, unfortunately. Joel. He was. He was. He was our boss for. For a while, and he. He had to kind of do that, like, implement new rules. But this was a guy he would bro out with you, but, like, it was weird. He did this weird kind of balance where he would break some rules, but then he'd follow rules. But the rules that he broke, he wouldn't care if you broke them kind of thing. These are all small, teeny, tiny rules, by the way. But he was a real consistent person, you know, where if he wanted something done, we were all doing it, including him, you know, And I remember thinking, man, this. I really like this guy in that way as well, where he's telling us to do stuff, but he won't, like, because there's other managers. Oh, man, I could go into it, man, where there's other managers, and they were straight up, like, I'm the manager here at this nightclub, and everyone worships me. And it's a weird dynamic in nightclubs anyway. And they wouldn't follow the rules at all, you know, but you had to, because you're the employee, you know, kind of thing. But, yeah, when you're a manager. And again, from employee standpoint, and. And I see my boss following the new rules consistently.

Yeah.

It's so much easier to sign on. It's kind of like, okay, that's what we're doing. I dig it. And, yeah, if you combine it with, like, what you said being clear, oh, I'm down. I'm down for the change. I get it, man. I get it. Yeah. Next question.

Jocko. No bad teams, only bad leaders. And always the same relationship with each boss.

Yet you also staged a mutiny. How do you reconcile that?

Okay, so what he's talking about, obviously, no bad teams, no bad leaders, is from extreme ownership. And it's actually from before that. Napoleon said the same thing. Hackworth said the same thing. We changed the words a little bit, but so that's. And then the other thing he's talking about is that I Always say, I have the same relationship with every boss I've ever had, whether they were stupid or smart or whether they were aggressive or passive, whether they were big ego or humble. I always had the same relationship with all of them. That is, they trusted me and they gave me what I needed to do to do my job. So how do I reconcile then? Then he's talking about staged mutiny. Because we had a kind of a mutiny in one of my platoons back in the day when I was a young enlisted guy. And so how can you do that, right, if I had all these great relationships with all my bosses, but I staged a mutiny. Interestingly, I actually had a decent relationship with a guy that I staged a mutiny with, now that I think about it. So to go back to the earlier question while talking about being a renegade and, you know, being a rebel, and like I said, you have to rebel when it is necessary. So. And also for the mutiny that is in question, I need to make it clear here. I didn't stage the mutiny. It wasn't me. It was kind of a group effort that was somewhat led by the leadership of our. The enlisted leadership of our platoon. And it was a movement that I certainly supported and was on board with. And we were kind of the E5 mafia in that platoon.

Sure.

Yeah. So we were kind of had the voice of the people, right. Me and a certain group of guys, actually, from my bud's class who were all kind of. Yeah. Kind of just fired up about things.

And.

You know, I. It wasn't like. The thing is, it wasn't like the platoon commander had a couple weaknesses, right. And maybe he wasn't the best at tactics or maybe it wasn't that, you know, he wasn't the best shot or anything. Like, wasn't the best athlete. No, he was a good athlete.

He.

Tactically, he was, like, marginal.

But what he didn't have. Talk about this all the time. What he didn't have is he didn't have any humility at all. And so he wasn't listening to anyone that was giving him any input, including, he had very experienced senior enlisted advisors. So the platoon chief and the platoon LPO were awesome guys, very respected SEALs. One of them had been in the first Gulf War on the ground, getting after it as much as he could. So these guys were experienced, and the senior chief was a really, really smart guy.

And this guy wasn't listening to him.

And so you had somebody that in the situation was it would have been bad for the platoon to have this type of leader in There and now think about this. If it's bad for the platoon, then it's bad for your mission.

If you don't have a good platoon, you can't execute your mission well. And that's the bottom line to this question. That is how I reconcile this. How does this situation affect the mission, affect our ability to accomplish the mission? How does it do it? If we have a bad leader and it makes us a bad platoon, then we're not going to be able to accomplish our mission. And therefore I need to help get rid of this person. Because my number one thing that I'm trying to do is be good at my mission.

And.

Obviously a more unified team is going to accomplish the mission more effectively and more efficiently, period. So.

That, you know, that is why it is so important for people to understand the mission and the goal and the commander's intent. Because all of your decisions.

Are based on and guided by that understanding of understanding what the mission is.

So you need to put the mission first all the time to make the right decision. Now as soon as I say that, what pops in your head? Oh, Jocko, you care about the mission more than you care about your men. Not true. Because think about this. If you are executing your mission effectively, you are taking care of your men. That's in the business world and it's in the battlefield. Because in the business world, if I'm executing my, my mission effectively, guess what we're doing? We're making more money, we're being more profitable, we're gaining more clients, we're growing. And therefore I'm taking care of my employees because I'm keeping them employed and making them more bonuses and making them more money and offering them more leadership opportunities in combat. Same thing. If we are good and I execute my mission effectively, guess what? We've mitigated risk.

In the best possible way. The more we mitigate risk, the more people are alive, the less casualties we take. So if I'm doing everything geared towards the mission, then, then I am taking care of my men. Cuz by the way, if I'm running a mission with heavy casualties, what about my next mission.

Right? So if you're my boss and you tell me to charge this machine gun nest with my guys and I say boss, you know, we shouldn't do that right now you carry out the mission. Okay, well who's gonna do the next mission, right? There's not unlimited guys here, so you can't do it. You can't run a mission after you've taken heavy casualties. Just like you Can't. If you, as a business person, if you expend all of your capital on one project, well, guess what, you can't do the next project. So, good job. You accomplished the one mission, but you can't accomplish anymore on the battlefield. If you incur a bunch of casualties for one mission, you can't accomplish anymore. So in both those cases, the more effectively you. You handle the mission, not just the one mission, but your broad mission, your strategic mission. The better you do that, the better you are taking care of your men and the better you're taking care of your people in the business world. So.

And on top of that, on top of that, 99% of the time, your mission is aligned with the best thing for your people. That's what I'm saying. 99% of the time, if we make more money as a company, it helps all my people. If we accomplish missions in the most effective and efficient and take the least casualties, that's the best thing for my people.

So back to the question. How do I reconcile these things? I look at how I can best accomplish the mission and if it best accomplished the mission to rebel against what's happening. There's some cases where I might not. You might be my boss and I might not like you, but you've got a great relationship with the army commander, and we're working in their battle space. Would it make sense for me to throw a mutiny and get you fired? No, It'd make no sense whatsoever. It's going to be better for our mission if I say Echo sucks, but I'm going to listen to him and we're going to massage this thing or make things work because he has such a good relationship with this army commander that he's making things happen.

So I might not do it. I might not stage a mitt mutiny, not based on the fact that you that your level of sucking, but based on the fact that what's more important to me is that we accomplish our mission. And if you have a good relationship with the army commander, I'm gonna keep you around.

If you were. If you were in a business situation and you had. You were not doing a good job, and you're one of my subordinates, you're not doing a good job, but you have this great relationships with all these clients.

And we're accomplishing our mission well because you've built these great relationships. Am I just going to fire you because I think you're doing things? I think you're a crappy leader of your men? No, actually, I'm not what is best for the mission. Now, I might have secondary and tertiary plans to move you into position where you don't have to handle the operational things that you suck at. And I might put you in a position where you're just going to become a biz dev guy, where you're out there meeting and greeting people because that's what you're good at. I might make that happen. But I'm not just gonna go, echo's a bad leader. Fire him. Throw away the skill that you do have. And now we're not accomplishing our mission because I ruined all the relationships. Because now you go to all these. All these other partners that we have, and you're going to. Yeah, Jocko fired me. He's pathetic. He doesn't realize what we're doing here. I'm going over to this company. Come with me. Bring your business over here with me. So you reconcile it by looking at the mission. And the mission is almost always aligned with taking care of your people. And taking care of your people in the sense of.

Imposing discipline or not imposing discipline. It is being disciplined and making them work and giving them, training them hard, pushing them. That is generally what taking care of your people is. Taking care of your people isn't. Hey, you know what, Echo? Oh, you know, don't worry about that video that you owe to the client. I know you. I know it's your daughter's birthday. You go ahead and go home for the day. Am I taking care of you if I do that?

No, sir.

Am I taking care of you? No, I'm not. I'm actually hurting you because now we got a bad reputation. We delivered the video late. The company passes word to the next company. It says, hey, you know, those guys are. Their video is okay, but it doesn't matter because it was late. Now, that's the reputation we have. Now, fast forward six months. We're downsizing. I don't need you anymore. I'm gonna make the. You know, I don't need four video makers. I only need one, and you're not the one. You see what I'm saying? So I'm not taking care of my people if I focus on the mission, which is. Hey, Echo, I apologize. I know it's your daughter's birthday, but guess what? We owe this video. We got to get it done, and you got to get in here and make it happen. Am I taking care of you then? Yes, I am. I know it doesn't feel that way, but yes, I am.

Yeah. Yeah.

I did.

Making sure they're equipped, capable, and.

Treated fairly.

Yeah, Yeah. I said impose discipline on them.

Yeah.

And like, that doesn't work.

Yeah.

But what you have to do is you have to impose discipline.

Yeah.

Make sure there's the dichotomy. There's the dichotomy.

Yeah.

Because you don't want to say, echo, you will come in and make this video. I'm imposing this on you. I'd be like, echo, we owe this video. We said we're going to turn it in. Let me tell you the ramifications. If we don't do this, here's what's going to hurt. It's going to hurt. This, this, this, this, and this. It's going to eventually could end up with you not having a job and me not having a business.

Yeah.

Do you like the sounds of that? No. You don't?

No. You might be the wrong guy to ask about this. Maybe you're not. I don't know. But what do you think? So you mentioned missing my daughter's birthday. I didn't miss my daughter's birthday, by the way.

Did you say you did or did not?

Did not. But my son just had a first birthday. I did miss that, but it's his first birthday, so I've always thought. This is before I had any kids with any birthdays, that. The first birthday, that's for the parents. It's not for the kids. You know, he doesn't remember his first birthday. He never will.

I'm definitely going to be the wrong person, but keep going.

So. So missing birthdays, is that like a bell curve? Like, okay, one first birthday, age one, you can sort of miss that. Age zero, you can't really miss that. Meaning when they're born.

Go, go, go talk to the military people.

I know, bro. I know, I know. Yeah. No, you're right. And I'm saying if you have the options and, you know, we're speaking in terms of.

Okay, if you have the options, sure. Go to the.

No, no. Well, I mean, you sort of have, like. In terms of, you know, we're at this company. You're my boss, I'm the video maker. Hey, Echo, you know, we gotta get this video done. Whatever. I don't know that. Maybe even an extreme case. I'm saying, in a general sense.

Which birthdays are more expendable, that's ultimately the question. And it doesn't necessarily mean in this.

Yeah. I'm gonna tell you right now, as a guy that was in the military for 20 years, the birthday, if you're there It's a luxury. If you're there for Christmas, it's a luxury. If you're there for Thanksgiving, it's a luxury. I missed all kinds of that stuff all over the place. Just like a big Joe, you big. You know, you're just not gonna be there.

Okay, so now.

Mm.

We're not in the military.

Uh huh.

No. And it's less about missing them or not missing them. Okay. So at the end of the day, no matter what birthday, even right now, you're thinking if you miss them, no huge deal.

No, I mean. And if I actually thought it was a huge deal, I would have to choose an entirely different lifestyle and life.

Right.

Right. And I'll tell you what. My kids know.

Yeah. Yeah.

And they've always known.

Well, okay. Okay. So guess what?

Someone's out there getting after he's named. He's named my dad.

Yeah. No, no, no. Okay.

He missed another birthday. Don't care.

I get you. Yeah. No, you're. I dig it. And. But that's kind of, in a way, I mean, not to be too specific in split hairs, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I mean, not even necessarily. You and your specific situation.

Which are the most important births.

Exactly.

Right.

On the spectrum of value.

5 through 11.

5 through 11 are. Have the most weight.

Most weight.

Okay. So not zero. Not when they're born.

No.

So if you. If you miss the birth of your child because you had to work and I'm not saying military, I'm saying because you were trying to finish some report or something or whatever or.

Yeah, don't do that. You try and be there.

Okay, so. But comparatively speaking, the. The birth of your child compared to the fifth birthday. You say fifth birthday is more important.

Yeah. Because they don't remember anything from 0 to 4.

Right.

That's just a big blue.

Dang. That's a good point. And that's.

This a big buzz, like nothing happening.

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

Like all those sounds like all those parents that you take your kids. And I did this too. Actually, I didn't. I did it with my first kids, my wife. Like we're gonna go to take the girls to Disneyland.

Yeah.

And I'd say, oh, okay. Walk around at Disneyland, which is pretty close to a living hell to me, actually standing in lines in the Anaheim summertime, like just baking. And yet, you know, here's the deal. The girls are just so excited the whole time and so happy. Me. No. So now I haven't been to any of those things in a Long time.

Actually, I went with a business group and walked around.

Where? Disneyland?

Disney World.

Dang.

And I was like, you've got to be kidding. Kill me now. But this is the thing. The kids don't remember it. You can show them pictures and they go, oh, that's cool. You could stage those pictures like a moon landing.

Just set them up and be like, oh, yeah, Cinderella, whatever you're saying, be.

Four or five before five years old. Okay, actually, men, that's a good point. Because when I say now, I'm sure.

There'S developmental things happening when they're. When you do things, when you participate in activities with your kids, obviously.

Yeah, but they're not 0 and 5.

Yeah, but you know, you could. You could probably. It'd probably be more developmentally helpful for you to spend a day with them, you know, coaching them in jiu jitsu, or coaching them in boxing, or coaching them in Muay Thai, or coaching them in shooting or coaching them in archery or coaching them in hunting small animals or coaching them in how to do combat trauma care. Just like general things. Yeah.

Four year old. Yeah, you're right. You're right. Yeah. Yeah.

That's as opposed to like, hey, go to Disneyland. Look at.

Yeah, that's not the question is like the birthday thing. So. So only because you mentioned.

Because by 11, they don't care anymore. By 11 they don't care.

Oh, okay.

Well, my kids were all like, oh, my birthday don't care.

Yeah. So, man, that's a good point.

We have a rule. You get to picture where you go for dinner on your birthday night. And in the last, like five birthdays, we haven't even been able to pull that off successfully.

Yeah. So obviously it's gonna be what. What the group is used to. But as far as the kid you missing the birthday for, you know, for the kids.

When I was a kid, you know what? I used to pick, because that used to be in my family too. We get to like pick dinner, you know, I used to pick.

Yeah.

Chicken patties.

From where? Oh, just from the store.

Just get some chicken patties. I used to love those things. Dang.

Yeah. I remember in school I went to Koloa Elementary School. I used to love the chicken patties there.

Yeah, they're dope, the chicken patties.

I used to like chicken McNugget. Like a big flat chicken McNugget.

Yeah. And I didn't even like. I didn't like steak until I was in the days because. Because we didn't have a lot of steak. Growing up. Because steak is expensive.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. Especially that ribeye.

Yeah, especially that ribeye. So we didn't have steak. We had chicken patties. Tasted good to me.

Pretty dope.

And sometimes. You know what else? Of course, you want McDonald's when you're seven.

Sure.

Everyone's go get some fries and a shamrock shakey.

We try. I had told. Because you know I love mint chocolate chip, right. So I had told all my kids about the. The original mint chocolate chip milkshake was the Shamrock shake at McDonald's back in the day.

Oh, yeah.

Which they'd have around St. Patty's Day. Which by the way, isn't around my birthday. But it just came to my mind.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

So when I was a kid, we had shamrock shakes. St. Patty's Day, they're mint shakes. And when I was a kid, they were amazing. And I was so. And I hadn't had one in 30 years, maybe 40 years. Hadn't had a shamrock shake. And I saw a little advertisement. I said, oh, kids, guess what? These are like mint chocolate chips. Milkshakes. But there's no chocolate chip, so it's just smooth mint ice cream milkshake from McDonald's. Yep. And I sent my daughter out to go get us all. Go get us all shamrock shakes. Brought them home. They were disgusting. They were nothing like what they used to be. So. McDonald's, I gave you a shot.

Sorry. Yeah, I'm surprised you gave him a shot.

I am too. But it's been 40 something years since I had a shamrock shake and I remembered them. So I figured we'll go with it. Maybe it's disgusting.

Yeah.

They're probably not even my kids like them. Not even my 8 year old.

Dang.

Who just, you know, is an 8 year old that just looks at things and say, that's ice cream. I want it. She didn't even like it. None of them. No one. We. All they were discussing. We threw them all away. So don't waste your money.

Yeah. Don't waste your money. Yeah. Don't waste your money on McDonald's. That's my personal recommendation. Yeah.

Period.

Shamrock shake or otherwise.

Or otherwise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not help. Not help. Not helping you in any way.

Did you know that? They just. I mean, it's gonna sound obvious now that I'm saying it out loud. They add the green coloring to it to the ice cream to make it green.

Well, yeah. Yeah. When you get briars, it's white.

Yeah.

I get chocolate chips.

Me and my wife and whatever family the family goes to. Or the Oregon coast. That's where the Tillamook Cheese factory is. Wait, cheese? Yeah, Till. Milk cheese. The. The actual big factory. And you can go on little tours and they give you ice cream. Like, okay, I want that mint. Mint chip, of course. And they give it to me and they hand it to me. I'm like. The first time I see. I was like, hey, that's not mine. That's obviously just the regular chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chip.

Don't want it over here.

And I for real said that. I was like, oh, I ordered the mint. And he goes, oh, yeah, that's mint. And then it all kind of came to me like, oh, yeah, I'm pretty dumb for.

If you get Breyers. Breyers is white. Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is the preferred brand, to be quite honest with you.

Is it. Okay. All right.

Well, at least. At least the ones that I've tried.

Yeah. So. So back to the birthday thing. If you miss the birth of your child, technically, you're right. Technically for the question, because I'm talking about, like, how upset or how much.

Oh, the kidney's not affected at all.

At all, really. But here's the thing. It, like, as a cohesive family, that might be a thing if you have the option. I'm saying if you're overseas. Come on, man, let's face it. That's a legit. You know. But if you have the choice, so you miss the birth of your child, that's more of like a family thing. Like. Okay, but that's not what. That's not the question because so is the first birthday the first year birthday. That's kind of. It's for the adults. Yeah, it's for the other people.

So the second, third, fourth, and fifth, not the fourth. In my experience. Maybe they're in the game a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah.

What you do is condition them that they don't expect anything good.

Yeah, I guess, you know? Yeah. Life sucks, man. Life sucks. Nothing special about your stupid birthday, everybody. There's a bunch of people born that day, a bunch of people born tomorrow, a bunch of people born yesterday. Get over yourself, kid.

Concur.

Four years old. I know a bunch of people who turn 4.

Anyway. Agree. I think that age 2 all the way to.

21. That's my opinion. Those are ones that if they want you there, you. I don't think that happened.

I think your daughter's gonna want you around at her 21st birthday.

She better. Cabo.

What are you gonna say? That she's not allowed in Cabo. She's not allowed.

Check anyway.

Yeah.

Jocko, what do you think about when you don't feel like getting after it?

You know.

I put this out the other day, and.

I think it's important. All right, so Rome wasn't built in a day. We all know that. Everyone hears that. But Rome also didn't fall apart overnight either.

It took hundreds of years for Rome to reach its peak, but it also took time, hundreds of years for Rome to decay and fall apart.

And that is representative of life, because you don't achieve worthwhile goals quickly or easily. They take time, they take struggle, they take relentless pursuit day in and day out. That's what it takes.

But also, things don't usually fall apart quickly either. At least at first. It's a slow process. A little slip here.

A little setback over there, a little wearing down of discipline and will over time.

That's the thing. Success and failure are generally slow processes.

Either slowly building things up or gradually tearing them down.

And that's why I say you've got to pay attention.

You have to watch. You have to watch every single second.

Because those seconds.

They turn into minutes.

And minutes turn into hours, and hours turn into days, and days turn in to years.

And so that second.

That second that just went by, that counted.

And so did that second, and so did that one. And in those precious seconds, you were either building.

Or you are decaying. You are either gaining ground.

Or you are losing ground.

In that second.

And in every second.

Every second counts.

So make every second.

Count.

And I think.

That'S all I've got for tonight.

So, echo of people.

Want to make it count for this podcast.

Maybe you could tell them how they can go ahead and do that if they want to.

Sure, Be happy to. Actually, we're talking about origin.

Why did Pete choose origin as the name? He told the story. Right.

Must be slacking on the listening on that one. Nonetheless, makes sense because the origin of all the gear is here in the US Just happens to be. But that's a big thing, the origin. So what do we make geese out of? Say, cotton? We'll just take the cotton, grow the cotton in the U.S. what do they do with the cotton?

Turn it into yarn.

They do. Yeah, yeah. Stuff.

Dye it.

Yeah.

Turn it into a fabric.

Yeah. Various forms. Yeah. And they do all of that. They don't import it, you know, from wherever, you know, some undisclosed American hand. Yeah. Anyway, so maybe that's why it's called origin, because the origin is a significant Thing. Right. Anyway. All right, cool. So Origin. What is Origin? Origin is the best gear in the world, straight up. Objectively. Not subjectively. Objectively. I got proof. Boom. So I got a gi. We went to this Origin immersion camp for Jiu Jitsu. Origin. Jiu Jitsu immersion camp. Good fun.

By the way, that was your first time in the Origin gi, wasn't it? Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. I saw you with yours.

It was cool. Yeah. So cool. Camp got the gi.

Then I come home, got two, by the way. Actually, I got two key tops, one pair of pants.

Come home, made me want to train more in the gi, by the way, I thought. I don't know if it was the GI or the camp or both. Probably both. Yeah. Anyway, so this whole week, I train gi, and every single time I went in, someone mentioned the gi, and it's not like it's pink or something like that. When they're like, hey, see, I'll put on this gi. Yeah, it's normal. You can get the blue. I had the. I have the white one. And everyone, it's like, oh, what's that? Jeff Glover was one of them. And this is a person who's like, you know, if he says that, it's something. It's not like some, you know, fashion person. If I don't like that logo or that's a cool, you know. Anyway, he was someone who knows. Anyway, everyone asking, like, what up with this geese? Like, going to the spiel made here. I might have lost somebody because it took real long saying it, but nonetheless, it's dope. And then another one was Jeff Higgs. We know who that is.

Higgsy, do you know who that is? I sure do.

Yeah. Yeah. The person that Jocko talks about when he first started to get introduced to.

Jiu Jitsu, the guy who reintroduced to Jiu Jitsu.

Yeah.

He and I got introduced to Jiu Jitsu together. Then he went out and trained hard.

Yeah.

I think it was the day he got his purple belt. His purple. I was a little white belt. I mean, we trained with Master Chief Bailey overseas for, like, three months. And then we came back. We were in different platoons, but he started training for real with Fabio Santos. And the day he got his purple belt. I'm pretty sure it was the day he got his purple belt. He came to my house and was like, let's go train. And I said, oh, yeah, so think about purple belt versus white belt. He annihilated me.

Yeah.

And, you know, triangle arm lock.

Yeah.

You know, everything. Rear naked joke.

And he's kind of tall, too.

Yeah, he's tall, strong, putting, beat down.

Bony.

Bony, like in terms of when he's impacting you with his elbows.

Yeah, yeah.

Real bony.

He's hitting you.

Yeah, he's got the bones.

Yeah.

Cutting. Yeah, he's like his triangle feels like it's gonna cut your head off. Because he's bony. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He knows some good judo too, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he. And he's got a real. He's got a real.

He's always in touch with the whole idea of using this to effectively defend yourself in a street scenario. He's always in touch with that.

Yeah.

He always adds in a little. And if you're in the street, you could do this right here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he did that. I went up to Studio 540.

Yeah.

For various. I had to train at 10am I had some stuff I had to do. And then they're only doing no GI at the V, so Studio 540. Higgs is teaching the class. Rob Zapps, he's the owner or whatever. Even he mentioned the gi. He was like. He's like, what GI is this?

Yeah, well, it's. Because it's a different material. Especially not. Only specially made, specially woven, specially designed for jiu jitsu.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's that origin stuff. Don't worry about that. And he's like, oh. He's like, I think I might have one. You know, he's the kind with like, yeah, 1,000. Yeah, I think I have one of these or whatever. I was like, you don't have this one, bro. And I just kept walking, you know? Anyway, then afterwards. It was afterwards when Higgs was like. He's like, this is the. I think he even said, this is the most interesting. And he was like, rubbing it in his fingers, you know, when he grabbed my sleeve. This is the most interesting GI I've ever seen. Something like that, you know, went into my.

That's the Axiom Ghee.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With the gorilla weave.

Yeah.

Because they have a normal pearl weave, which looks like little tiny pearls, right?

Yeah.

American pearl. But the Axiom, that gorilla weave is. Or is it the Dragon weave? They both look very similar. Yeah, but they're both cool.

Yeah. One of them looks like. Like, it's like. I'm not going to say velvet. I'm not going to do that. But it looks like that, you know?

No, it looks like diamonds.

Which one was the one? Remember, we were. And we're in there Saying like. Like, I was like, dang, this looks super luxurious. That's not the one I have, by the way. It was like this other one. I don't know which one was which. But nonetheless, people seem to like the gi. And the pants are dope. It has the. It's like. You can choose drawstring, but it has the, like, you know, like surf shorts.

Yeah.

Where they have the Velcro boom. And it's like fitted. They go in sizes, like, of your waist. It's not just like, which. Actually, I'm not against the whole a one, a two, a three. You know, I'm not against that. It's actually. It's fine. It's cool. Super simple. But this is good. It's like, when you get it, you can order your pants size.

Mm.

Boom. So, you know, when you put it on, it's gonna be dope anyway. And it is dope. And, you know, the public responded in that way as well, so.

Oh, also rash guards, T shirts.

Yeah.

We're gonna make a bunch of other stuff.

Yeah, yeah. There's some cool stuff on there. And the point is. Really. Sure. I'm talking about the gi. Why? Because I was all up in that GI this week, and it's fresh on my mind. And it's, you know, one of those things that sticks in there. Also at the camp, you know how, like, when you give your laundry. I only had that one.

Yeah.

So you give your laundry.

You.

You're out of gi. You can't go to the next session unless you get another gi, which is kind of. I wasn't really about that, but So I would use them twice in a row. And they dry surprisingly fast.

It's not even a surprise they dry Fast. They're not 100% cotton. They got polyester, I think, in there. With silver coated, they. No, I'm not kidding. It's antimicrobial silver coating on it.

Yeah.

Not like silver. You can see it.

Yeah.

But. Yeah, that's why silver.

That's the thing.

That's the same thing with mine. When I pulled mine. When I pull mine out of the washing machine after the spin cycle, it's almost dry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like a pair of sheriff shorts. Basically.

Yeah.

But dang, it feels comfortable.

Nice. Yeah. So, yeah, man. Anyway, so. Yeah. Or origin. Maine. Like the state. Maine. Not M A I N M A I N E. Sooriginmain.com. going there. There's a lot of cool stuff on there, man. A lot of it. So, yeah, check that one out. That's the Best gear in America. All made in America. Best gear in the world. All made America. Also, Jocko has some supplements. So.

Still on origin. Main calm. Right. There's a part. And I was. Because I was looking for. You go on the top.

Yep.

And it says labs. Yeah. You click on there. Boom. That's where all the supplements. Super krill. Because normal. You mean.

You mean Jocko Super Krill.

Super Krill. You couldn't just do the krill oil. You couldn't.

No, no, no. I got super curl.

Yeah. Super krill. Why? Why get krill when you can get super Krill?

One of those deals Superkill's got.

All right, cool. There you go. And you know.

Joint warfare, which is, you know, a blend of joint, supplement, refurbishing.

Yeah, yeah.

Furbishing is. Furbishing. A word. Refurbishing. Right. But the refurbishing is just doing it again, right?

Yep.

Refurbishing.

Yeah. And that's got the things that I always take. Yesamine, curcumin, chondroitin. And the chondroitin is in the form of sea cucumber.

Sweet.

That's where it comes from.

Sweet.

So. Yeah.

Well, the legit. The interest. Not interesting. I guess you could call it layers. Is this is exactly what you were taking for years.

Yeah.

And you were like, hey, guess what? Origin in the house. Let's just make that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, sometimes I'd have to combine different things. Before.

Yeah.

But now I don't have to combine anything anymore.

They're already combined.

Yeah. We're gonna combine it into one deal.

Yeah. Boom.

It's warfare.

Joint work against.

Against joint weakness.

Yep. It's a good idea, too, by the way, because now I got two. Kid. Remember when I told the story like, you know, when you wake up.

Yeah.

And my daughter.

You told that story many.

Yeah. I'm gonna tell it again. So she used to jump on my back when I get up. When you're right, when you wake up, that's your least warm. That's when you're trying to warm up and get. Do physical stuff. The least warm you'll ever be just in everyday life is when you wake up.

Yeah. Those first 12 burpees are hard.

When you. Yeah. Or before you do the burpees. That moment. So this is the exact moment when my daughter, you know, 40 pounds or so, jumped on my back. My shoulders. My back. Or my shoulders, whatever she chose. And, you know, after I took krill for, I think it was like five, six days. Boom, I could easily do it I didn't have to, like, focus on my form, nothing like that. Now I got two kids and my daughter, who's older, is heavier. So not this morning. Yesterday morning. I go wake her up for school or whatever. I already have my son. He weighs. I don't know how much he weighs, but he's one. I have him. She still wants to jump on my shoulder. I have him because he's like, oh. And then he sees her jump on his sleeve. So basically, I'm the. What do you call it, the vehicle that they're riding on early in the morning. By the way, still no problem. Still going strong. So, yeah, man, that's it. That's a joint warfare situation right there. And krill, super krill, get on it. You'll be glad you did. Also, check out on it.com jocko. This is where I get my kettlebells. And I meant I mentioned this. I got the gorilla ones, 72 pounds. So I'm cruising, right? Not lifting, cruising. And Jade comes. My brother comes, and I was like. I was like, yeah, go check out this new kettlebells I got and goes, oh, yeah, those are cool. I say, go ahead, pick them up. He goes, like, kind of heavy, you know, but I've been doing kettlebell. So I was like, now let me show you. Not even warmed up nothing.

Speaking of krill oil.

Yeah, it was actually really the krill oil springing into action. Really.

Boom. I do it. And you know, had to show them what up. Nonetheless, that was done with those kettlebells, which are dope, by the way.

I'm not gonna say get the designer ones. I'm not gonna say that. I think you should, but I'm not gonna say to do that. I say, go there. On it.com/jocko, check it out. You like something, get something. They got cool battle ropes and any kind of exercise stuff. Like the new stuff, functional.

Training equipment. Keep your workout interesting. If you care about your workout to being interesting. Unlike Jocko, Jocko doesn't care about that stuff. Don't get addicted to the interesting information like I did. I think I'm past that addiction now. But, you know, you do run that risk. On it dot com. Jocko. That's a good one. Also good way to support is when you're buying these books that Jocko reviews. We didn't review one today, but, you know, in the future, Jocko might. And it has in the past.

We organize these books by episode on jockopodcast.com. go on the top click on books from podcasts Boom. All in order.

To support the podcast. Click through there to get them. Boom. It takes you to Amazon. Supports the podcast that way. Also, if you're doing any other shopping, hey, feel free if you're gonna buy a new video camera. In the event of your video camera breaking on the plane, when you check your luggage and the video cameras in there, you want to get another one. Boom. Get it through there. All good. Big, big support on that one.

What?

It seems like an opportune time to talk about your other video camera.

Sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. Actually, it's a good story, though.

Yeah.

It's not like a tragic story, which it kind of felt like when you mentioned it, I was like, oh, it brought me back. Okay, so.

Here'S a story.

We go to Maine, Right. Technically, we go to Boston, then drive to Maine. Right. So, you know, to draw. To drive to. We rent a car. Well, you know, the car rental place. And I have three bags. Well, you have what, one, two.

Yeah, two bags.

So five bags.

My computer bag and my suitcase.

Yeah. So five bags total. I have a big bag with equipment in it. Suitcase with, you know, jujitsu stuff and clothing, whatnot. And then the third bag, which was the carry on bit. Pretty big, you know, most important, has a. Has an important camera in there that I use. My. My favorite camera I have ever had. Really good camera. Has some value to it, we'll say.

And it's a red camera.

Yeah, it's red. Epic. Epic W. Technically, red epic.

W. Yeah, it's. It's a awesome camera. Is it the best you can buy? Is there one more?

It depends on what you mean by best, but it's. It. Yeah, there's one sort of level.

Okay, well, I'll put you this. It ain't cheap. No, it ain't cheap at all. In some places in the country, you could buy a house for the cost of this camera.

Yeah.

So it's an expensive camera.

Yeah. And.

And you'd think, like, okay, Echo's gonna take really good care of this. Yeah.

Which I do. Really? That's why I carry it on.

Yeah.

Boom. Boom.

You know, doesn't even trust anyone touching it. He's gonna carry it with him.

Yeah.

Okay, continue.

So, boom, we get in the rental car. We got. Apparently got five bags to account for. Was there. There was no. There was some kind of confusion. You know what happened. Yes, there was. Yes. Remember? Because remember when you. We were getting in what was like an expedition or something like that, and now those new ones have that automatic tail door that Goes up.

Yeah.

And you know what it was? I think there's like a sensor under the bumper that if you, like, put your foot under there, it closes. Like if, you know, like a hands free, closing the door situation.

So the thing started closing on me.

Yeah.

And the girl, the rental girl was trying to save me.

Yeah.

And she couldn't.

Yeah.

It was too strong for. Which was kind of funny because I didn't even care. And I just kind of like put my back into it and stopped. But I was watching her kind of chuckling. She's trying to stop it. And it wasn't stopping. It was. She was looking and she had a look on her face like I was about to die.

Yeah.

Like Indiana Jones. I was gonna get my head cut off by the door slamming shut. And I was just kind of like laughing at the whole situation.

Yeah.

But that caused some confusion apparently.

It was like. It was like a little micro emergency that happened. And so I was like, boom. Flustered. But wait, what? All the bags are in or not? And we're trying to fit. Remember? Because we. You were trying to get the seats down.

Anyway.

There's like maybe three quasi major things going on.

And, you know, for the sake of story, I'm just gonna continue. So. Boom. We get it all.

I apologize to everyone for asking.

We get it all loaded. And at one point, like, we were like halfway up. This is a three hour drive, by the way, if we don't stop. And we did stop, stop. So it was like five hours or something like that. So we stop. And I remember, hey, I got fried.

Chicken, by the way. It was good. It was really good.

I love.

I loved it. Yeah. I was stoked.

Nonetheless. I had a thought and it was. Literally lasted three seconds. Like, I don't really remember putting my camera bag in the car, but what I'm gonna do, not put it in the car. It's like the most important bag. So whatever. So we just continue. We get up there and right as we pull into like park.

Now we're talking like four hours later, we're in the back country of Maine.

Yeah. Like, not even knowing. First time there, by the way. Which I don't know what that even means, but either way, we're there and.

I'm all pumped up.

Yeah.

Even though I couldn't roll because my rib. I was stoked to go in and see everybody and hang out.

Yeah. You can see everyone roll.

Everyone's inside the light of the gym.

Yeah.

So they can't see that we're outside.

Yeah.

So I'M all. But I'm stoked.

So it's. Yeah. The beginning of the day deal, the whole thing. Venture, if you will. And right as we kind of rolled to a stop, I'm thinking, man, did I. You know how you kind of count. We're here and now you start to account for it. And I don't remember that stuff. So the first thing I do, I look in the backseat, because that's where it would have went. Not there. And I look in the back, not there. And, you know, you get that cold feeling that just rushes over your body, like, oh, my God. So I'm like, man. So whatever I tell you. And you're like, oh, you know, get on the phone, you know, call the airport. And bruh, you ever tried calling the airport for something? Yeah, okay.

I told you this afterwards. My opinion was at that point, I was like, that thing's gone. 100%. 99. Gone. Yeah, 99.999%. You're never going to see that thing again. I had already cut it away emotionally and detached from it, and I was kind of throwing you bones, like, oh, yeah, call the airport. Maybe they can help you.

That was actually nice of you because you really. You seem like you care not necessarily about the camera necessarily, but you cared about me, you know, like a really.

I thought that thing was gone. There's no chance you're getting it back. Get over it.

Yeah.

And I was a little bit. I said, you know, is there podcast recorded that you don't have copies of on there? And you said, no, they're all uploaded. I was like, good thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

Because we're never gonna see that thing again.

Yeah. And I was thinking, I'll see it again in three months maybe when they finally recover it from Austin. Found from the Boston airport, by the way.

Or I get my insurance money for it down the line and then I gotta go read, go through the purchase process, which is a thing.

Big gut check.

And. But we don't have it for this trip for sure. And later on I found out or realized that we have the podcast, like SD cards in there. So. Well, we. I guess we could have just bought some. Anyway. Nonetheless, we get there and I'm calling the airport, and right when the airport recording picks up, I just get this feeling like, oh, my gosh, I'm just completely going through the motions right now. No one's gonna pick up and be like, sure, I'll look for it. Yeah, I got it. No, that's not gonna happen. But I keep calling. I'm Like, I'm not gonna be the guy who didn't do everything. Everything I can. So I'm calling it. Whatever. Meanwhile, we gotta go talk to Pete. We gotta. You know, all this.

And actually, you released me. You go, hey, man, go ahead. I'll make these calls. And I was like, okay, cool. You hang out. Just make this totally worthless effort because you're never seeing that thing again. I'll go hang out with people.

Yeah. So after, like, a few minutes that I go in, I'm like, you know what? Let me. Whatever. Let me kind of cut it away as you're saying. Let me at least embrace the. You know, what we're doing. Go in. And you kind of casually, in a way, mentioned like, hey, there's some guys from the. The police department.

If that came across casually. Casually, I shouldn't have made it come up because I met a bunch of guys. You know, everyone's saying hi, and a couple guys, you know. Yeah, we're cops in Revilla down in Massachusetts. And, you know, right by Boston.

Yeah. Right next to it.

And I met them. And then you strolled back in and you met a couple people. And then I said, you talk to anybody? Well, yeah, I talked to this. And they're gonna. Look, whatever. I'm thinking, yeah. Things gone. And I said, you know, if there's anyone in the world that could, like, make something happen right now, it's cops.

Yeah. So it's.

It's Boston cops. Revere cops. And I just said. I said, bro. And I was a little. This is my ego. I was embarrassed for you. I felt bad that you had to go and tell somebody that you lost this.

Yeah.

Sick camera. And so I just said, hey, man, those guys over there, they're cops. And if there's anyone that's gonna get this thing back, it's them.

Yeah. And I'm thinking, you know, the whole story where, like, did you see this?

So did you not think that they were gonna be able to help?

I thought that they'd be like, oh, you lost your bag. Like everyone does every single day at that airport. Oh, we're cops, bro. We have crimes to solve.

Yeah.

No, I'm not gonna go get your stupid.

My attitude of that thing being gone actually changed as soon as I connected this to myself. Oh, they're cops. We're gonna. We're gonna turn this over to them, and they can make things happen.

Yeah, that. That's good. And you. And even me, when I was like, okay, I'm gonna mention it to these cops and these Cops are gonna be like, diva. Like, what. What do you think our job is, you know, to go recover your lost luggage, like, three hours away, by the way. No. So I'm like, you know what? Jocko said to do it. I'm just gonna do it. This is another go through the motions thing. So I kind of timidly go, Dennis and Nate, they were there. They just rolled or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I lost the bet. And they were like, like what? It looked like like, they kind of were into it. I was like, oh, this is promising. You know, like they actually care. Cuz I was thinking they'd be like, man, that's a sad story, bro. I'm gonna go talk to Jocko again. You know, kind of thing. I thought that was gonna happen. And they were like, no, bro. They get on the phone.

Yeah.

And they're like, what did it look like? Boom. One more question. Like, oh, where. Where'd you leave it? Okay. Boom. Back on the phone. Back on the phone. These two guys. I'm like, oh, this is. It's starting to kind of look up. And he's like, okay. So they hang up the phone. He's like, just a waiting game now. Just a matter of time. I got this. I got this guy. I'm like, for real? They're like, yeah, man. Just waiting in. So we're talking.

They called. They called all their bros out there, and there was, like, a force of troopers to get in there. Had that thing recovered in what, 20 minutes?

20 minutes. So they hang up, and they're like, just a matter of time, bro. And then we just start talking about other stuff.

Yeah.

You know, kind of teasing me a little bit. Whatever. I deserve it. Probably even ten times that, but. And then we're talking about other stuff. Boom. His phone rings. He's on it. He's like, is it a mind shift bag? And all this, describing it. I don't even know that's how it. I'm like, yeah, I think so. Go inside. And he's. Any. Any. Bust out my laptop or whatever. It's matching the description. And in my mind, I'm like, there's no way he found it. Like, a cop's not gonna just roll into the Logan Airport. Yeah. And find my bag. No way that's gonna happen. But sure enough, he's like, oh, yeah, fragment. Because it has a fragment sticker on my. On my laptop. He's like, fragment. I was like, that cold feeling turned into just warmth and love and rainbows on this guy. I was like, that's the one they were like. And, you know, they're kind of. They didn't actually high five, but they're kind of like, almost like, you know, this is this little task. They kind of bonded it. And just like that, 20 minutes, man, it.

And then. And then who drove it up?

Robbie. Yeah, that's his name, right? Robbie. Yeah. I owe him a role. Actually, there was another guy, Callahan, who is the guy who went and grabbed. So it was like a coordinated deal, man.

Yeah.

And, man, that was like the. One of the more heroic things that has happened to me in. In the recent past.

So. Got the camera back. Got the camera back and the computer.

Yeah.

And we're good.

So in the event. So the point is, in the event of you shopping for camera, you can't get a red camera on Amazon, but if you want to get like a Sony HD Handycam, you know, or whatever you're using because it broke in the luggage, I'm not saying that happened to me. I'm just saying if that ever happens, you want to get another one, boom, you can go through there. Jockostore.com click through.

And thanks to everyone that got that camera back. Yeah, much appreciated. And the laptop with all kinds of videos and important stuff on it.

Yeah, actually, there's rocks, but yeah, man. Dennis and Nate, the primary guys. Mr. Callahan, I didn't meet him, but he's. Because he recovered that. And then Robbie, I owe you a role. Owe you two roles. I owe you a lot.

Yeah.

The man, he's the one who delivered it so big up to all of them, big time.

So also back to support of Jocko podcast. Subscribe to the podcast, itunes, Stitch or Google Play. It's a good way to support kind of. Kind of, kind of obvious, like, oh, yeah, you subscribed already. But some people, maybe they didn't. Maybe they're just kind of maybe wish, not wish wash, but, you know, kind of still on the fence. But yeah, man, do it. Blue trigger. You can unsubscribe if we're not delivering value. I don't like to use that expression, adding value, because everyone uses it, thinks it's cool. I thought it was cool. Nonetheless. If we're not adding value, you can unsubscribe if you want. Also subscribe on YouTube. What's the recent development? Oh, your book.

Freedom Field Manual.

Field manual, which you'll talk about later. Yeah, we put a video on there, kind of little summary.

I was real excited to see that video come out.

Yeah.

And I was. We, you know, we were Texting back and forth. And you said, well, how about, you know, we. I'll put it out tomorrow, but it's ready. And I said, just put it out now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then you said, launching in three, two. And then there was. And I went to my YouTube on my phone, and I was refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. And I wanted to catch it. Like, the first person to catch it. I'm refreshing, refreshing. And this happened. I got a ping from my mail on my phone, and I switched to mail, and it said, jocko Podcast has uploaded a new video.

So that's one of the benefits of subscribing to the YouTube channel. If something comes out, you can have it email you if you want it to. You can have it email you when something new comes out. And otherwise, there's no way you'd know.

Yeah.

So if you.

If you care about that kind of stuff, which, you know, it's one of those deals where. Yeah, sure. You get the video version of the podcast. If you care what we look like. Just fine, actually. People play it on their tv, like in their little home gym or something. Yeah. Which school? It's kind of like we're all there together, you know?

Yeah.

And then. Yes. Some excerpts in there.

The video that you made for the book.

Yeah.

I think it might be your best video ever. It might be. I think it's up there, man.

I was. Yeah, I was talking.

It's real good.

I was talking to somebody on Facebook and they're like, oh, hey, that video is cool. And I thought about say, oh, man, thanks for that. But I thought about. I was like, wait, Jocko kind of did all the work. Really. You know, you're the one working out your words. You saying the words I said. All I did was, was put some cool music and some words on there.

Yeah, but you made all that other stuff happen in there, the words and the way it's all coordinated together and all that stuff.

So put some lights on there. Nonetheless. You know what? To be honest, I'm. I like how it came out, too. Yeah, it was good. Very, very.

The best one.

Hey, man, you know, it depends on what you mean by best. You know, I don't know.

Impactful.

Sure.

It's a good one.

I liked it. Yeah, it was.

But if someone wasn't subscribed to the YouTube channel.

Yeah.

They might not never know that that video exists.

That's true.

And that. That. That hurts.

Or no Facebook or no Twitter or no nothing. So. Yeah. So choose your. Your. Well, that.

I tweeted that One out. But I don't always tweet out when something comes out.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

You know.

Yeah.

Don't always do that.

Sure.

So if you subscribe, you'll know, regardless of what my actions are.

That's true. And, you know, choose whether or not you want to alert. You know, sometimes you don't want that alert every single time, but sometimes you do. You know, I'll put some deleted scenes on there as well. Anyway, nonetheless, yeah. YouTube channel. We have one. And it's cool. I think it's cool. Chocolate thinks it's cool.

I just got a little thing. YouTube kind of changed their look on YouTube. I don't know if you noticed that.

Well, I. It's hard for me to judge because I have YouTube Red now.

Oh, yeah.

No ads.

Nonetheless, I like that. Ads, actually. They did good. Good thing with the ads now. Now you can click like, I don't like this ad, or you can give that. So you can kind of narrow down the ads. You see, I like the movie trailer ads.

You know, like, I don't like any ads.

Yeah.

I watch what I want to watch. Everyone else get away from me.

Yeah, yeah, I dig it. And I dig it fully. Nonetheless, point there is subscribe. Subscribe to the YouTube channel is a good way of supporting the podcast if you want to. Also, Jocko is a store. It's called Jocko store. Jocko store.com, of course. Very creative name, by the way. I guess technically I came up with the name.

Yeah, you did.

Just store is your store. Jocko Store.

I concurred with the name.

Yeah. So what do we have on the store? If you don't know already? We've got shirts on there, rash guards, travel mugs, some bumper stickers, patches.

Hats, ball cap hats.

Not like, did you bring mine today?

Top hats.

You don't look like you did.

Yeah, no, I did yours, Servo.

You owe me nine.

Yeah. Nonetheless, they're on there. Jocko store dot com. I guess technically you could go to your own store and get a hat or nine hats, as the case may be.

Okay, I'll do that today. Thank you. Appreciate it.

If you want. If you want some women's stuff on there, some hoodies. We want to get a thicker hoodie. That's what we're doing, right? Yeah, I know. You said it.

Yeah.

A bunch of times, but, yeah, we'll work on that. So there it. Boom. Hoodies.

I think.

What. What's the next move? What's the next thing?

Winter hoodie.

Winter hoodie.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it should be.

I think I'm gonna put a warrior kid rash guard on there, too. For. For warrior kids doing. No GI Jujitsu or even gi. You know, you wear the rash guard on your geese sometimes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that'd be dope. All stuff, nonetheless. Jocko store. That's where you get Jocko stuff.

It's pretty cool. So I'm not saying to buy something. I'm saying go on there, check it out. If you like something, get something. Good way to support. Also psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is. It is an album with tracks. Jocko tracks. It's Jaco saying stuff to you. So if you listen to it, it's not like a story, right? Like a lot. You know, a lot of times it's not music. Obviously. It's not Jocko singing hardcore, which you do from time to time, by the way. You ever write. And here's a kind of a rhetorical question. Okay. Have you ever ridden? Not you, Jocko, but the people out there. Have you ever ridden with Jocko for five hours, three to five hours in a car?

No.

Okay. Let me tell you what it's like. Part of what it's like. It's Jocko drumming. Even in the airplane, by the way. Drumming on. What do you call that? The handle in the door. Like you're doing, like, drums and then singing under his breath. Hardcore stuff. What else were you singing? He was like Tom Petty or something. It wasn't Tom Petty. It was something. Anyway.

I have no idea.

Yeah, but it was songs.

All I know is occasionally I'd look at you and you'd be looking like, can you please stop?

Yeah. Yeah.

Which I got a kick out of. Yeah, do it more.

Yeah. Or. Or stop the car and, like, get out or something.

Yeah, you get out and walk.

Yeah, yeah.

Playing drums.

That was the look for sure. Yeah. Wait, no, you get out, stop playing drums and get out. That was the look. Nonetheless. These tracks are not that there. Him, Jacob talking to you, telling you pragmatic ways to get over your current weakness. What weakness? Okay, so let's say you're trying to stick to a good diet, right? Trying to wake up early or all.

Of the above at this moment, actually.

Yeah.

Currently coming up on 48 Hours right now.

Currently.

Yep. Feeling good, too.

I guess technically, I'm fasting, too, because I ate a salad.

Oh. Hardcore workouts yesterday and today. Rolled last night. 70% ribs a little tweaked still, but Andy Dean light rolls, little bit with Nam I think that was it. But yeah.

No, fasting the whole time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dang.

Yep.

So technically, am I fasting if I ate a salad at like 11:45 last night?

Well, yeah.

And that was it. I drank some coffee.

Yeah.

Fasting, right? Fast.

24 hour fast.

No.

Oh, 12 hour fast. No. Yeah, fasting. No credit.

Is there such thing as an eight hour fast?

I think that's just life.

It's like.

No, if you're not doing. If you're not doing at least 12 hours.

Okay. 12 hours is the cutoff for calling it.

I don't know what the cut off is. I'm not a doctor. Yeah, but even a nutrition guy.

Well, you're fasting right now currently.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What if, like, you just didn't eat yet?

Whatever, then I just didn't eat yet. There's a difference.

Yeah. So what's the difference? That's the question. I don't know. Hey, you're a man of humility. You say you don't know when you don't know. I like that. Nonetheless, back to psychological warfare. If you're trying to stay on the fast or wake up early every morning, you know, or stick to the diet.

Stay in the program, whatever, in whatever way, ways that you have opportunities to. To slip.

This is an album with tracks that tell you why you shouldn't slip on. Your waking up early, your diet, your working out, my whole thing, you know, like I've said before, if I don't feel like working out, I kind of tend to be like, oh, maybe I'll rest today or maybe I'll do it later, you know, that whole thing.

Not good.

Yeah, this helps with that. It'll just tell you, like, why it'll how. In a nutshell, tells you the benefits of not slipping and the repercussions of slipping. That's in a pragmatic way. But it's Jocko telling it to you, so it works 100 of the time.

My experience, speaking of fasting, people ask me this all the time. When you're fasting, do you eat anything? Yeah, I do, actually.

Sunflower seeds.

Sunflower seeds. Because it takes you like 37 minutes to have one little tiny seed to get it chewed up. And so it's. But they're. But they're good because they keep you occupied. Bite and you're chewing and they taste good and blah, blah, blah. Sometimes I'll grab a handful of nuts, just mixed nuts. Just maybe one in the morning, maybe one at night. Yeah, one handful. And Jocko, white tea.

Boom.

That's the, the things. Now, sometimes I won't eat the nuts, but I don't know. I, I, I, I, I'm.

You got to be careful that you don't have 13 handfuls of nuts.

Yeah, because that's like, I'm just talking.

Like a handful of nuts. Right? But Jocko White tea, I have that for sure. And you know what? If you call me now or you want to put like, oh, you weren't really fasting because you have Jocko white tea and you have a handful of nuts. I mean, if you think about the amount of calories that I burn on a daily basis, a handful of nuts is basically insignificant. But whatever. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. That's okay. I'm just telling you what I'm doing. I'm not telling you to do it. I'm not telling you to copy what I'm doing. I'm just telling you what I'm doing right now. Don't imitate me. Go find a professional to talk about fasting. I'm just telling you what I'm doing. Jocko White tea, let me tell you, tastes good, feels good, and increases your deadlift about 12 fold or so. Yeah. So that's real good for you. You can get it on Amazon. Also on Amazon, you can get some books. Extreme Ownership, Combat Leadership. I appreciate everyone that gets it for themselves and then gets it for their teams and sends pictures of 47 extreme ownership copies stacked up. I got something else for you that's awesome. Get it for your business associates, people that you work with, but they're not in your company. You get it for them, and that's going to improve everything in your world, too, because then they start taking ownership of problems and everything, everything gets better. So, no. And I've had a lot of people that have said, hey, I gave this to this person. I gave this to this partner that I used to have, and now he's got his own business, but we're working together, and I gave him the book, and now we're working together even more. So there's a good idea for you. Way of the warrior kid. This is awesome. At the Origin camp, a bunch of people from all over the Northeast brought their kids up to meet, hang out, get a signature and all that. And what's cool. This is what's cool. Kids tell the truth. You know what I mean? They don't even, they're not aware of. They don't care about your feelings at all. And it's awesome to. You know, I always say to kid, oh, did you read that book? And they go, yes. I go, how'd you like it? And they all say, oh, I love it. It's awesome. And we know you're Jocko, and thank you for writing it. And those kids are getting stronger and smarter and tougher and better. So you want to help out kids that, you know, get them this book right here. Discipline equals freedom. Field manual. That's what it is. It's a field manual. For those of you that don't know what a field manual is, in the military, a field manual is the instructions on how to do something in the field, whether it's attack a strong objective or whether it's do a reconnaissance or how to conduct a patrol. The field manual gives you the instructions on how to do that. And that's what this is. The discipline equals freedom. Field manual is a field manual on how to implement discipline into your life. There's zero amount of fluff in here. There's zero. There's nothing in there that you're gonna say to yourself, well, I think Jocko might have just thrown this in here for, you know, kind of take up some space in the pages. Didn't happen. Rather not do it. Rather burn the whole book. Don't care about that. The book's not long enough.

Cool.

Read less.

So that's what it is. Get it from your local bookstore. So go down to the neighborhood bookstore and tell them you want this book. Or you can get it from Barnes and Noble, you can get it from Amazon. Let them know what's up.

It's in the get after it section of your local bookstore, if they have one. If they don't have that section, they need it. So they can put this one book by itself in there. Getting after it. Your video is awesome, by the way. Thanks, Jocko, for your business. If you need help aligning your leadership and improving the way that your whole team leads together, check out our leadership and management consulting company. It's called Echelon Front me, Leif Babin, JP Donnell, Dave Burke. You can email infochelonfront.com finally, the muster. September 14th and 15th. I'm pretty sure it's sold out by the time this podcast comes out. We've been able to squeeze a couple more people in at each of these. Even when we were sold out, we got in like four more people, three more people, seven more people.

Check. Might be completely sold out, but extreme ownership dot com. And if you want to, we're gonna pretty soon get the dates for the 2018 musters going so start looking to that and get registered as early as you can. And until the muster, if you happen to want to keep cruising with us kind of hard, we are on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and.

Echo is at Echo Charles. And I am at Jocko Willink. And finally, to the military members out there.

Sitting on some forgotten barricade holding the line to protect us.

Thank you to the vets that stood on the wall and did their time.

Thank you.

To the police, law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs, other first responders, thank you for what you do day in and day out.

And to the rest of you.

With goals and dreams, aspiration.

Make sure you remember.

That seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into days.

And days turn into years.

So make those seconds count.

All of them.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

Out.