Order of Man - JOCKO WILLINK ｜ Leadership Strategy and Tactics

00:00:00.000 I don't care in what capacity you're showing up in life. You are a leader and whether you realize

00:00:04.940 it or not, you are having an influence on those around you. Whether you're trying to secure a

00:00:10.120 job promotion, lead your team and coworkers to success, manage a home, or get your kids to do

00:00:16.340 their chores, your ability to learn and implement the strategies that Jocko and I share today

00:00:21.280 are critical. Jocko Willink, a man who needs no introduction, and I sit down face-to-face to

00:00:27.380 discuss what it means to be a leader, considerations when raising kids right, striking the balance

00:00:33.080 between opposing leadership methods, Jocko would call that dichotomies, and very specific leadership

00:00:38.900 strategies and tactics. And if all of that isn't enough, we also talk a little bit about his new

00:00:44.180 hobby, archery, and of course, beards. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your

00:00:49.940 fears, and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time,

00:00:55.540 every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is

00:01:02.180 your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all

00:01:07.880 is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is

00:01:13.360 Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the founder of this podcast and the movement that is Order of

00:01:18.440 Man. I want to welcome you. Regardless of how long you've been listening, this is a conversation

00:01:22.920 and a movement to reclaim and restore masculinity. It's my job to reestablish what it means to be a

00:01:31.680 man and then reestablish the institutions and the environments that we need to more fully step up in

00:01:38.240 the walls of our homes and our businesses and communities and every other facet of life that

00:01:42.080 you're showing up as. So specifically within this podcast, we have interviews with some of the most

00:01:47.420 successful and amazing men. These are entrepreneurs, New York times, bestselling authors,

00:01:52.860 scholars, athletes, warriors, any man who has a successful story and interesting and unique

00:01:58.360 perspective into how he's been successful. It's my job to bring those guests to you. And of course,

00:02:03.020 I've got a great one lined up for you today. A four Pete repeat guest on the podcast, Mr. Jocko

00:02:08.900 Willink, who I will talk about here in a second before we get into that, because I do want to jump into it

00:02:13.400 fairly quickly. I want to make mention of our show sponsors. And of course, my friends got to spend a

00:02:19.260 lot of time with them last week at origins immersion camp, which is a week long Brazilian

00:02:24.560 jujitsu camp. I don't think they had the dates for next year, but I'm telling you, and I will let you

00:02:29.200 know when those are, you're going to want to register for that very, very quickly. Cause I had just had an

00:02:33.280 amazing time and compounded a lot of jujitsu learning and strategy and tactics from not only Jocko,

00:02:40.200 but other experts there as well. Pete Roberts, uh, Alexei Dedeco. A lot of these guys were here to

00:02:45.280 help and give us some support guidance and instruction, but outside of what they're doing

00:02:51.000 with jujitsu, it's raining outside right now. It's getting a little cold here in Maine. At least

00:02:56.040 it is for me, not for a Mainer necessarily. And I've got my denim on today and I've got my boots on.

00:03:02.560 I was excited to bust these things out because they're both made by origin. Origin has a brand new

00:03:07.900 denim line. They are some of the most comfortable, sturdiest pair of jeans that you will ever own.

00:03:13.840 And in addition to that, I've got my boots that I made several weeks ago. I actually got to sit down

00:03:19.180 and make them in the factory itself. So if you're interested in some new denim, American made denim,

00:03:24.840 all right here, made and manufactured in Maine. Uh, and then also their boot lineup, which should be

00:03:29.920 available very, very soon. Head to origin, Maine.com. Again, that's origin, Maine as in the state,

00:03:35.640 Maine.com and use the code order or D E R at checkout. And you'll get your discount there.

00:03:42.160 All right, guys, enough of that. Let's get to Jocko Willink. Um, this is again, a man I've had on

00:03:47.380 four separate occasions on this podcast and someone for most of you listening doesn't really need an

00:03:52.980 introduction. I actually talked with someone the other day who did not know who Jocko was. And

00:03:57.120 quite honestly, I was a little, a little surprised. Uh, he served as the Navy SEAL commander for the most

00:04:02.820 highly decorated special forces unit of the Iraq war. Uh, since leaving the military has gone on to

00:04:08.120 lead one of the most recognizable and effective leadership companies in the world with his, uh,

00:04:14.040 his brother in arms, Leif Babin it's called echelon front. And then on top of all of that,

00:04:18.960 if that isn't enough, he's written eight books with his most recent being leadership strategy and

00:04:23.280 tactics field manual, uh, which should be available in January. I believe it's available for pre-order now.

00:04:28.980 Uh, and then his other books include extreme ownership, um, dichotomy of leadership, way of

00:04:33.980 the warrior kid series, which my, my boys, my two oldest boys love, uh, among others. And I'm honored

00:04:39.580 to call this man, a friend. Uh, I'm proud to be able to share our conversation with you today.

00:04:44.680 Jocko. What's happening, man. Good to sit down with you again. Indeed. We're just going to make

00:04:48.120 this an annual occurrence. Sounds good. It's a, it's a new tradition. How long have you been

00:04:52.920 involved with, uh, with immersion camp? Is it a couple of years or have you been, is this your third

00:04:56.380 year now? I think this is my third year now. Okay. Yeah. This is amazing. I think it might

00:05:01.380 only be my second though. Okay. Yeah. I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. And to see how

00:05:06.220 many, uh, Oh no, it is my third year. The first year we were at a different camp. And then last

00:05:10.220 year we were at this new camp and we're at this. Oh, that's right. It was across the, across the

00:05:13.580 last time I had a buddy that actually went to the wrong camp last year. Cause he pulled up the address

00:05:19.480 for the camp from the previous year. And it was like 2 AM calls me up. He's like, where are you guys at?

00:05:25.240 I'm like, just down the road on the left. He's like, I see nobody. And we found out that he was

00:05:29.400 across the lake. Yeah. That's, that's a, not a good situation for him. Yeah. So we, we got him.

00:05:34.500 We picked him up. All was well. Good. Yeah. What do you think about the camp so far? It's awesome.

00:05:39.860 Yeah. I wish that they were, I wish I was, you know, 12 years old and I was just here for the entire

00:05:46.100 summer doing this for summer camp. That would be cool. This is an amazing camp. I mean, it really is.

00:05:50.740 I know I brought my, uh, well, you met my family, my kids and they came out here and they were like,

00:05:55.020 they were in heaven. Forget about Disneyland. It's like come to the lake, come to camp, hang out

00:05:58.700 over here. But if you could do this as a kid, if you had, you know, whatever it is, eight weeks of

00:06:04.520 just jujitsu and I'm sure you could throw some other cool stuff in there, but that would be really,

00:06:09.420 really good for kids would really like that. Yeah. I think so. And I think it's something that's

00:06:13.340 probably needed the physicality, the, the contact, the toughness, the grittiness, the mental

00:06:20.320 resilience and fortitude that it seems to me that less and less kids are getting these days.

00:06:25.920 I don't know. I think, I think, uh, you know, well, with my kids and the kids I see my,

00:06:30.680 my kids hanging around with, there seems to be plenty of that.

00:06:33.900 Well, and, and, and that's a good point. And that's, that is an indicator to me that

00:06:38.820 you're introducing that into their lives or you have the right people around you.

00:06:43.560 I guess maybe we just all kind of merged together because everyone has the same kind of interest,

00:06:48.920 but you know, jujitsu and wrestling and surfing and just general being outside, getting after it

00:06:55.220 seems to be the normal for, for the kids that my kids are worth hanging out.

00:06:58.980 Yeah. Yeah. I know it's been a big change since we moved here to Maine about three months ago now.

00:07:05.620 Um, I mean, we just kick them outside and they run around the other day. We had these, we had

00:07:10.320 these, uh, hatchet targets that we had made for one of our events. And the other day I looked outside

00:07:15.400 of the window and I saw my boys tearing it apart. And at first I was like, Hey, I was going to yell

00:07:19.140 out. I'm like, don't tear those boards apart. And I'm like, no, that's actually what they should be

00:07:22.080 doing. Cause they were making a fort. Yeah. Break stuff. Exactly. And build something else.

00:07:26.100 That's what they did. They tore it apart. They grabbed my screwdriver from downstairs. My drill

00:07:29.500 tore it all apart, built a fort. They were hanging out, roughhousing with each other. It's good to see.

00:07:33.900 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's pretty normal. Yeah. Well, it should be. I think that's the,

00:07:38.960 that's the avenue these kids need. Yeah. I was when my, my son had like a kid sleep over his

00:07:44.480 house and they slept outside and we live in California, but they slept outside in a tent

00:07:48.540 out in the yard basically. And then I woke up in the morning and you know, worked out or whatever.

00:07:53.580 And I was inside talking to my wife and then I go outside in there. They had built a fire

00:07:57.180 and they were cooking bacon. They were just, they just put it on a rock. No, no. They had,

00:08:02.500 they had got a pan. Oh, okay. Yeah. On the fire and pan. And they were cooking. Yep. They

00:08:06.340 were cooking bacon for themselves and a little fire in the backyard. So that's got to be against

00:08:10.100 some sort of ordinance in California. Who cares? Get it done. No one said anything. So we're good.

00:08:15.880 And besides, you know, you need bacon. That's it. That's clearly bacon. Yeah. It wouldn't be

00:08:21.980 camping if you didn't have that. Exactly. For sure. So you've got a lot going on, man. As always,

00:08:26.920 you've got, you've got a new book coming out soon. I think it's in January. Yeah.

00:08:30.380 So it's coming out until January. How often do you write? Are you writing every day? I think we

00:08:34.140 talked a little bit about this a couple of years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I'm either writing or editing

00:08:38.260 every day. Is that something that if you always enjoy, do you, well, I should ask this. Do you

00:08:43.120 enjoy that process now? For me, writing is just the mechanics of getting the things that I have in

00:08:52.000 my brain onto paper. So it's not, it's not something that I'm all excited because I get to write this

00:08:57.160 thing because the, the process of, of thinking about it has already taken place in my head.

00:09:02.420 So now it's just a mechanical drill. It's just a, it's literally like a mechanical drill for me to

00:09:07.140 put the words into the computer. Right. So I do it for like an hour. I try and, I try and only write

00:09:14.380 for an hour at a time because other than that, I'm, I don't like it after that, you know, because

00:09:19.400 sitting at a computer is not never fun. And, but you have to do it. You have to do it. And there's

00:09:24.840 times where I force myself to write or like, if I have a podcast, I forced myself to make the podcast

00:09:31.700 and that's just the way it is. And if you don't force yourself to do it, sometimes you're going

00:09:37.320 to miss out on a lot of good stuff. You know, I've, I've written some stuff that's, that's good,

00:09:42.140 really good stuff that I really like myself. And I know for a fact that I sat down and forced that,

00:09:49.520 that information out of my brain, you know? So it's better when like writing a book, I already

00:09:55.480 have the basic outline and I'll have that written out. So for instance, if I'm writing one of the

00:10:02.180 kids books, I have all the chapters already done. I already know the story. The chapters are done

00:10:06.020 and I have one, two, maybe three sentences at most of what each chapter is about. And then,

00:10:12.000 so when I sit down, I already know what I'm writing. I mean, I know what's going to happen

00:10:15.540 and I just have to put those words. For the leadership books, the same thing. I will have,

00:10:20.880 you know, one, two or three sentences. Oh, this is what this section's about. So boom,

00:10:26.240 I sit down and I start writing and that's that. It's just, it's just, that's how it goes. So

00:10:31.920 do I like it? I don't hate it. I hate it. If, if I ever got backed into a corner, if I'm behind

00:10:39.560 on something and I have to write for two or three or four hours, that's, I don't like that.

00:10:44.740 But doing an hour is fine. Right. Yeah. I'm glad you talk about that. Cause I think there's a lot

00:10:50.060 of people who believe that if it's the right path, that it's supposed to be easy or they won't

00:10:54.800 ever have a problem or they won't ever lack any sort of motivation or discipline to get the thing

00:10:59.300 done. And I've found that even though I feel like I'm on the right path, there's days where, yeah,

00:11:03.960 I have to force myself to do a podcast or to send out emails or to sit down and write a few words or

00:11:09.820 send an email out to people, even though it's on the path that I feel like I'm supposed to be on.

00:11:14.740 Yeah. I don't think anything that's worth doing is really going to be easy all the time.

00:11:19.380 Right. Right. Cause then everyone would be doing it, I guess.

00:11:21.560 It might be fun for an hour or something.

00:11:23.680 Yeah. But the, it does at the end result, you know, there's nothing better for me.

00:11:28.340 And I think this is actually just a broad statement about my whole life at this point in my life.

00:11:33.480 There's really nothing more gratifying than the little kids that, you know, whether a parent comes

00:11:40.240 up and shows me a video of a little kid that's doing his first pull up or a little girl that's

00:11:45.680 taking jujitsu or a little kid that's studying flashcards, that's about as good as it gets.

00:11:51.000 Because to know that this little kid is on a good trajectory for their life that I had something

00:11:57.180 to do with is that that's really good. Cause you know, I meet adults all the time that are like

00:12:01.100 that. Cause we, we teach leadership. So it's like, oh yeah, we really helped the business. We turned

00:12:05.200 around and I've been promoted and we took over this, this sector of the business, or we moved into a

00:12:09.560 new area of operations or whatever they're going to say. And they're, they're super happy about it.

00:12:13.200 And that's awesome. Sure. But it's when it's coming from a little kid, it definitely feels

00:12:17.540 it, that that's, that's a pretty good feeling for me. When you started Echelon Front, was that your

00:12:24.660 first venture outside of the military? Yes. So when you started Echelon Front, did you have any idea

00:12:31.340 that it would start going down this path of writing kids books and some of this, is this something that

00:12:37.560 was ever on your mind? No. How did it evolve into that? How did it evolve into the whole kids books?

00:12:43.020 Maybe it evolved into the right word, but how did that come about? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Because

00:12:47.300 I was in the military and I was, you know, a few months from retiring and a guy asked me if I wanted

00:12:54.660 to talk, a guy that I knew, he was a CEO of a big company. He asked me if I could talk to his,

00:12:58.160 his executives about leadership. I went and did it. When I got done, he came up to me and said,

00:13:03.840 Hey, I want you to talk to all my divisions. Cause he was a little bit surprised, I think,

00:13:08.500 because, you know, he probably thought I was going to get up and, you know, do whatever.

00:13:13.380 A stereotypical vision of what a Navy SEAL is going to do with a group. Right. When I didn't,

00:13:20.540 I talked about actual leadership and how you can transform an organization through leadership and,

00:13:25.600 and that kind of thing. And so when I got done, he, he had a little bit of a surprise look on his

00:13:29.620 face. Maybe he had low expectations, which is fine. But then he said, Hey, I want you to do this for

00:13:33.400 every division. I started going through his divisions and doing, you know, teaching them leadership.

00:13:38.940 And then at one of those divisional meetings, the CEO of the parent company was there. When I got

00:13:43.280 done, the CEO of the parent company, he came up to me and said, I want you to talk to all my CEOs

00:13:47.140 cause he owned like 45 or 50 companies. And I said, cool. Then I did that. And as soon as I talked

00:13:53.540 to 45 or 50 companies, whatever it was, a bunch of those CEOs came up to me and said, Hey, can you

00:13:58.960 come and talk to my company? Can you come and talk to my company? Can you come and talk to my

00:14:01.500 company? And that, at that point, Leif, my business partner at echelon front and my, you know, my

00:14:07.440 brother and my former platoon commander that worked for me at, at seal team three tasking a bruiser.

00:14:11.900 He was, he just gotten out of the Navy and he was like looking for the next thing he was going to

00:14:19.340 do. He was thinking about going to law school and I don't know if I talked him out of it, but I

00:14:25.120 might've talked about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. He got into,

00:14:29.320 I forget which he got into a really good law school. He was going to go and, and then, you

00:14:34.180 know, I don't know. I forget the, the, the actual story, but you know, he came to a decision that

00:14:40.220 that's probably not going to be like, he didn't actually want to be a lawyer. You know, it just

00:14:43.300 seemed like, okay, what do you do? You know, he's, he's went to the Naval Academy. He was in the

00:14:49.800 surface fleet. He was in the seal teams. You know, he was a, he was a platoon commander. He was an

00:14:54.680 executive officer. I mean, he was, had a great career, but then he had gotten out cause he had,

00:14:58.540 you know, he'd gotten married and all that. And so what was he going to do? And it seemed

00:15:03.420 like, okay, well, you can either go get your MBA, go to law school, you know, kind of like

00:15:06.560 that, just kind of the standard path. Yeah. And luckily the timing was good. And I, all of a

00:15:13.960 sudden I had to demand to, to do more of this. And, you know, I said, Hey man, let's, you,

00:15:19.620 you want to come and get some? And he's like, check, you know? So, so that's, and then from

00:15:24.000 those, from those events that we were doing, boom, we start going and, and we start having

00:15:29.660 a high demand. And well, the cool thing was zero advertising of any kind, right? We didn't

00:15:34.460 spend one single penny on that. It was all word of mouth. And then from all those events

00:15:41.060 that we were doing, people were asking us, do you have the stuff written down anywhere?

00:15:44.800 Do you have a document, you have a manual you can give us? So we wrote down kind of the, the,

00:15:49.320 the general ideas, which I had actually already done done in the SEAL teams. I had already put

00:15:53.800 together the leadership doctrine for the SEAL teams. That was your role, right? Yeah. That

00:15:58.420 was the last, the last thing I did. Yeah. So they were, they were, they were make, they were making,

00:16:02.680 there was a guy that had been appointed to make more doctrine for the SEAL teams because we didn't

00:16:05.980 have any. And I did a lot of contributions to the leadership portion. And so I'd already kind of

00:16:12.640 done it once. And then Leif and I got together and like, Hey, here we go. We get to, you know,

00:16:17.500 talk about these principles that we used and, and describe. And then that got to a literary agent,

00:16:24.200 literary agent said, cool, you know, this is a, this is a book and you never know how good a book

00:16:28.460 is going to do when it, when it goes to the, to the market. Literally no one knows, right? No one

00:16:32.560 knows. And there's no, you have no control over it. The, the, the public is its own random entity.

00:16:40.520 And, you know, so we, I thought, okay, well, we'll probably be giving this book away to people

00:16:48.240 after we talk to them, you know, that's kind of what I figured, you know, you, you, you do the

00:16:51.680 best you can, but you know, I don't have, I don't, I'm not arrogant enough to think that I, I'm going

00:16:57.060 to write something that all these people are going to want to read, right? So, you know, the first,

00:17:01.680 when you write a book, the, I asked, we asked the publisher, I said, you know, what, what is,

00:17:09.920 what's a successful book? We had no idea. And we, you know, cause you've written a book, but

00:17:14.620 when you think bestselling book, you know, people might think that means a million copies or whatever.

00:17:21.600 Yeah, you don't. Yeah. And cause I just had no idea. Right. And I mean, the closest thing I would

00:17:25.100 relate to it growing up as a kid, like, oh, if a, if a, if a record was successful, if it was a gold

00:17:31.300 record or a platinum record or whatever, then, you know, it was a million copies. So I figured

00:17:36.460 something like that was the number. Well, actually a successful book is 20,000 copies.

00:17:42.040 Significantly less than a million. If they say, so we asked him, said, what's, what's, you know,

00:17:46.140 he says, if this is successful, you know, we can look at two and I'm like, what's successful?

00:17:49.300 And he says, you know, if you, if you get to 20,000 copies sold, that's a successful book.

00:17:53.900 How quickly did you get there? Oh yeah. We got there fast. We, we sold that in,

00:17:59.320 I think it might even been, I forget the numbers for each individual book, but yeah, we, we, we

00:18:05.480 completely blew that out of the water and we sold a couple million copies of that book. And, and then

00:18:10.020 the other books as well. Yeah. So that was all, that was all good to go. Now,

00:18:18.160 while that book was getting ready to be released, I already had way of the warrior kid in my head

00:18:25.760 outlined. Really? And I'd actually written two chapters and the rest of the chapters kind of

00:18:30.780 like a book proposal. Do you mind if I interrupt you with that real quick is, is why was that in

00:18:35.760 your head? Cause that, I mean, I, I understand there's crossover for sure, but why have this

00:18:42.120 extreme ownership and then this other project that is related in a way, but different in your head?

00:18:47.480 Just FYI, there's so many projects in my head at any given time that, that literally I'll never

00:18:53.820 be able to do them all. And that actually bothers me. There's, there's like great, not even, I don't

00:18:59.280 know if they're great or not, but there's things in my head that want to get out and I know I won't

00:19:03.540 have time to do them all. And I, and I, and it's, it's, it bothers me, but you know, some of them

00:19:08.960 bubble to the surface. And that one, if you think about way of the warrior kid, how no one had written

00:19:14.920 a way of the warrior kid book is completely crazy. The book is a good point. Now that you say that.

00:19:20.980 Yeah. It's even when I originally started telling my close friends about it, one of my, one of my

00:19:28.520 really good friends, who's a civilian, but he's a writer in the civilian sector. And he said, I

00:19:34.060 cannot believe you thought of this. This is ridiculous. You know, he was just beside himself

00:19:38.640 and that's kind of the way I felt too. So anyways, I present this book to my publisher and my publisher

00:19:45.320 is like, Hey, look, you know, you're a leadership guy, a military guy. This is really kind of

00:19:50.840 for lack of a better word off brand or whatever they say. Right. And you know, you don't really

00:19:57.380 want to do this right now. And so I was kind of, I didn't really know what to think of that. So

00:20:04.500 anyways, I kept writing it and then my publisher said, my publisher. Okay. So then here's what

00:20:12.360 happened. I started working on the discipline equals freedom field manual, which is cause

00:20:17.340 then I had started the podcast and then I started realizing, Hey, people really need this kind

00:20:21.800 of basic information about what their, what, what, not what their operating system should

00:20:28.240 be like, but at least what mine is like so that they can go, okay, I get what he's doing

00:20:32.660 here. Maybe that's not me, but I can at least take a step in that direction. And the reason

00:20:35.640 I knew that was cause people were all the questions that I was getting all the time. So I said,

00:20:39.140 okay, I'm going to, I'm going to write this discipline equals freedom field manual and I'm

00:20:42.420 just going to publish it myself. So I don't have to deal with the publishing world. And so

00:20:47.400 then my, my editor at my publishing at, at the, at the publishers, I don't want to say my

00:20:53.360 publishing company cause that's my publishing, but the one I was working with and I still am

00:20:56.860 working with them, but they, he, you know, he listened to my podcast all the time and

00:21:02.520 you know, he would send me a text that would say, Oh, that was such a good podcast. Oh,

00:21:05.800 that was awesome. And so finally he sends me one that says, you know, this, these podcasts,

00:21:10.840 this information that you're putting out, it's another book. And I said, I wrote back like,

00:21:14.380 yeah, I know. And I'm putting it together and I'm going to publish it. And he's, he, you know,

00:21:19.200 he says, call me, call me. And cause he's completely freaking out now that I'm going to

00:21:24.780 like self publish a book. That's what he's worried about. Oh yes. And he says, you're a New York

00:21:31.100 time, you're a New York times bestselling author. You are not allowed. You can't do this. This is

00:21:35.000 crazy. And so I, so, you know, we, we talk on the phone and I said, cool, you want to publish

00:21:40.520 this book? You publish my kid's book. Right. And he was like, okay. And he actually sent way the

00:21:46.820 warrior kid to this really powerful children's publisher inside the same company. Um, and she

00:21:54.680 read it and they like made an offer to me 20 minutes later. Is that right? Yeah. She really

00:22:00.280 loved it. Boom. So that was that. And that's how the kids, that's how the kids book kind of started.

00:22:05.960 And then from there it was, I made the second kid's book and then discipline equals freedom came

00:22:09.380 out. And then the kid's book came, I think the kid's book came out first anyways, before discipline

00:22:16.160 equals freedom. Cause I think that's right. I think I told him this, the kid's book comes

00:22:19.540 first. Yep. And then, you know, so that was in the kid series and then Mikey and the dragons

00:22:25.820 was one of those ideas that popped up and into my head. And do you remember reading Mikey

00:22:30.680 and the dragons last year? I do. That was a crazy experience for me because we're sitting

00:22:35.020 in the chow hall over here and you've got all these guys, these bad-ass guys and we're sitting

00:22:39.980 around and you're reading a kid's book. Yeah. But I got to tell you, man, to like, to see

00:22:44.980 you read it and how much energy you had in reading it, like you were into it. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you

00:22:51.080 told us, you're like, don't take video. And I don't know if anybody did or not, but there might

00:22:55.860 have been something leaking around. I don't know, but it was pretty cool to have you read that kid's

00:23:00.620 book. You know, I have, I have people on a regular basis that say, you know, especially dads,

00:23:05.640 they'll say, you know, I, I, I cried when I read the letter from the king. Oh, for sure.

00:23:11.700 Yeah. Because that's, you know, you think about that, that's, that's what it boils down

00:23:15.380 to. You know, if you're, your job as a dad, you leave like, this is what you leave. These

00:23:20.980 are your instructions to your kid. And that's kind of going to hit anybody when they, when

00:23:24.620 you start thinking about what you leave behind, because you leave behind a bunch of thoughts

00:23:28.960 and a bunch of attitude. But you, if you try and cap encapsulate all that into one letter,

00:23:34.260 that's what that is. Right. And it's a pretty good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so anyways,

00:23:39.780 that's where the kids books. And plus, obviously I have four kids. So I've been through all these,

00:23:44.580 you know, all the trials and tribulations of raising kids and the little things that I did

00:23:49.680 with my kids, the things that I did well, the things that I didn't do well and taking the,

00:23:55.020 the things that I learned from the SEAL teams and really seeing how well it applies to, to being a

00:24:01.100 kid, to raising a kid, how these simple principles and these simple attitudes to help kids so much.

00:24:07.120 So it was in there, it was in the brain and I had to let it out.

00:24:10.280 I like it, man. I, I mean, I can tell just from you having met my kids the other day and seeing

00:24:15.160 you interact with other children, there's something there. Yeah. I made it that post on Instagram.

00:24:18.960 Like he's almost smiling. Yeah. I think he smiles around kids.

00:24:22.600 Yeah. I do. I do smile around kids cause kids are, are better than adults generally. Yeah.

00:24:27.800 Yeah. We haven't, I say we, they haven't been, uh, uh, well, what's the right word? They haven't

00:24:34.260 been indoctrinated into some of these other things that, uh, we get into at times or the

00:24:38.840 things that we worry about that they frankly don't worry about or aren't a concern there.

00:24:42.260 Yeah. Kids minds are open. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So you start, you start writing these kids

00:24:49.700 books. You've got these other books. My, my, one of my thoughts is how you seem to be somebody who

00:24:55.440 does what you want to do. You know what you want to do. You do it. How much consideration,

00:25:01.340 uh, do you pay attention to when it comes to the way it's going to be perceived or received from

00:25:08.300 other individuals? Is that a factor? Is that something you think about or is it, Hey, I'm just

00:25:12.780 going to put my stuff out in the world. And if people like it, cool. If not cool. Yeah, no,

00:25:17.400 I'm not too concerned about what other people are thinking. I mean, you know, the, like with the

00:25:26.460 podcast, everyone's got their little formulaic things on how to make a good successful, successful

00:25:33.200 podcast. And I don't follow any of them, you know? So that's one example. The, I don't really care.

00:25:40.360 I'm not, I'm not too concerned about it. You know, to me, I'm just doing what, what I think feels

00:25:45.620 what I do. I'm doing what I want to do basically. That's what it is. I'm not doing what other people

00:25:50.540 want me to do. I think that comes. Yeah. I think that, uh, that sense of confidence and knowing

00:25:57.580 what you want comes across. And that's probably one of the reasons that it's so attractive to

00:26:01.560 people is because they see somebody who's living life on the, on his terms. And in a lot of ways,

00:26:07.420 a lot of people don't have that, you know, they feel like they're beholden to a job or to their

00:26:11.280 spouse or to society or a million of other things, which is why I think people.

00:26:16.600 Yeah. And I mean, in a way you are beholden to your spouse and your job and, you know,

00:26:22.120 your family and those, those things are, are kind of good, but.

00:26:25.660 Well, if, if you, if you volunteer for those things, right? Like, like I, I have a responsibility

00:26:32.920 to my wife and kids because I signed on the dotted line that says I will be responsible for my wife

00:26:39.200 and kids. So that's a choice I made. That isn't something that's just by default, something that

00:26:44.040 happened to me. I think a lot of people think that is that this circumstance happened to me and I

00:26:48.620 don't want to be in this situation and now nothing I can do about it. So I'll just throw up my hands

00:26:52.380 and live life the way, you know, again, quote unquote, I'm supposed to. Yeah. Check. Yeah.

00:26:58.340 So you're, you've got a new hobby now. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, we got really lucky and, and

00:27:04.120 John Dudley, who's one of the best archery individuals and one of the best archery hunters

00:27:11.700 probably in the world. Right. I would say yes. He, he's friends with Joe Rogan. I'm friends

00:27:17.180 with Joe Rogan. He saw me on Joe Rogan's podcast. I met him randomly in an airport in New Jersey.

00:27:22.660 We were laughing about that. Oh really? And I didn't really know who he was. And you know,

00:27:27.900 it was kind of a normal, like someone says, Hey Jocko. And so I turn around and he says, Hey,

00:27:32.720 I'm John Dudley. I'm friends with Rogan, blah, blah, blah. We have a quick conversation,

00:27:35.620 but anyways, to make a long story short, he's a great guy. I mean, he's, he's just a great,

00:27:42.420 great guy. And he wanted me, he thought I would really like archery and bow hunting.

00:27:49.420 So why, what, what was his thought? I don't know. I don't know. He just thought it'd be,

00:27:53.780 he thought I'd like it, you know, cause I guess cause I was in the military and I like,

00:27:57.800 you know, shooting things obviously and, and sneaking around in the woods. That's what I'm

00:28:02.520 wanting to do and done my whole life. Right. So he kind of put two and two together.

00:28:05.920 That doesn't take a rocket science to figure out. And so he thought I'd like bow hunting when he was

00:28:10.500 doing an event in San Diego, California. And so when he was out there, he built me a bow and he

00:28:16.520 brought it out there and he gave me a three hour private lesson in introduction to how to shoot a

00:28:23.180 bow. And that's, that's what happened. And then, you know, I've spent the last, and I,

00:28:27.700 I, unfortunately I was injured for, for a good chunk of time, but then as soon as my elbow healed

00:28:33.900 up, my knee healed up and I could start really my elbow. Cause if you've ever heard me say,

00:28:39.120 when people say, what do you do when you get injured? I always say, you do what you can.

00:28:41.920 Well, when you're, when you can't use your left, I couldn't fully extend my left elbow.

00:28:47.560 And there wasn't, there was, there was really just nothing I could do to, to, to shoot a bow

00:28:54.800 or to get better. Yeah. You're not going to be able to extend your arm. Now maybe if I had some

00:29:00.680 permanent, you know, disability where I had to reconfigure and figure out a new way, then,

00:29:05.240 then learn some, you know, yeah, adapt. Then maybe that's different, a different story for me,

00:29:09.560 but to say, okay, this is what I should be doing and I can't do it. I need, just needed to wait until

00:29:13.700 it healed. So finally when that was healed up, you know, I started, started shooting all

00:29:17.480 the time and ended up going to the, the archery challenge, the total archery challenge. And,

00:29:23.280 you know, we had a great time at that. And then we're going on a bow hunt here in, in October

00:29:29.300 for elk in Utah. How are you feeling about it? I'm super, super excited about it. You know,

00:29:34.720 I'm, I think it's, I'm getting like the, there's no better way. This is the ultimate first class

00:29:43.540 experience that I'm getting my whole. Yeah. If you're going to do it, you're doing

00:29:47.400 it right. It's totally ridiculous to, to learn directly from John Dudley, to have John Dudley

00:29:52.640 build, build me a bow and build all my arrows and then personally coach me and then personally

00:29:59.620 take me out in the hills and shoot 3d targets and coach that whole thing. And then personally

00:30:04.420 take me on an elk hunt in one of the best places in the whole world to hunt elk. It's a ridiculous

00:30:11.820 first class experience that, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm just kidding. It's, it's, it's awesome. Yeah.

00:30:19.000 You said lucky, but I don't know if it's luck. I mean, I think a lot of what you've created up to

00:30:23.420 your life has created these opportunities, right? Without some of the things that you've done in

00:30:27.320 the past, you wouldn't maybe have the same opportunities that you do now.

00:30:30.880 Yeah, sure. And, and I'm, I'm lucky that I'm lucky that I had the chance to create,

00:30:36.060 you know, a bunch of these opportunities for sure.

00:30:37.720 Why do you, why do you say that? Like, why do you use that word? Lucky?

00:30:40.720 Well, I'm lucky to be here, you know, here alive America or what?

00:30:44.800 Yeah. All of the above. Yeah. Lucky to be here. Lucky to, you know, be alive. Lucky to

00:30:51.420 live in America. Yeah. Been lucky, lucky. You know, I've got, I had things happen in my life that were

00:30:58.840 luck, you know, like that put me in the position that I was in where I had the opportunity to learn.

00:31:03.880 I had the opportunity to, to milk people's brains around me and, and absorb things and then take

00:31:11.080 the things that I learned and was lucky enough to be in situations and places in the world that,

00:31:16.620 that I had the opportunity to put those things to the test. And then when I got done with that,

00:31:24.000 I had the opportunity to go and teach those things and really solidify and crystallize them in my own

00:31:29.040 head and see how they impacted other people over and over and over again. So, so there's luck,

00:31:33.580 man. I mean, and I get it. Like you make your luck and I believe me, I'm a believer in that

00:31:38.320 because I'm a hard worker and there's no luck in hard work, but you know, there's, you, you, you're

00:31:45.040 lucky, you know, you were, you were, you were in combat overseas, right? There's no chance. I mean,

00:31:51.360 there's no, there's no doubt that if you're, you can get unlucky and you can get killed or you can get

00:31:55.160 severely wounded and you can get lucky and you can be okay. And so that's what it is. You know,

00:31:59.860 you have to, you have to at least give a little credit to luck. You make your own luck of course,

00:32:04.300 but that's where that dichotomy comes in though. Right. I mean, I, and I like that approach cause

00:32:08.920 you seem pretty even keel with that. Cause a lot of guys are like, there's no luck ever. Like, well,

00:32:12.500 you know, there's some fortunate events that you can capitalize on or, or not or miss. Yeah.

00:32:17.300 Right. But then there's some things that you create too. I can definitely see both.

00:32:20.140 You know, uh, you were talking about my new book, but I can't, I talk a little bit about how I

00:32:24.180 learned what I learned and, and the lucky parts of that, you know, having certain leadership that I

00:32:31.660 worked for good and bad. I was actually lucky. I had bad leaders sometimes because it woke me up

00:32:36.780 and made me start observing when I was really young to say, why don't I want to follow this guy? Why

00:32:40.920 does everyone not like this guy as a leader? What's going on with this person? And then get a good

00:32:45.260 leader, get lucky enough. Cause you know, it's a roll of the dice, what your, what your platoon

00:32:49.080 commander's like in a seal team. It's, you know, people might think, Oh, everyone's great in the

00:32:52.900 seal teams. No, you get people that are bad leaders. You get people that are good leaders.

00:32:55.680 And so I, I went really, really, really lucky in one case in particular, I had a really bad leader

00:33:00.640 and we had a mutiny and he got fired. I remember you saying that last time. And then I had a really

00:33:06.060 good leader. And so that's an example of, I was really lucky that that happened. Cause if I would

00:33:10.560 have had a mediocre leader that didn't get fired, I would have thought, okay, that's how you lead.

00:33:14.640 And it seems to work. And so, okay, there's my example. Right. And, and like I said,

00:33:19.000 there's luck involved in the fact that I got this really bad guy and then this really

00:33:22.860 good guy. And I got to see the contrast and the contrast of two different, two different

00:33:26.740 opposing things makes it really obvious. The Delta between these things, you go, Oh,

00:33:30.860 wow, this is really different. Okay. Now I understand. But do you think, well, let me ask

00:33:36.280 it this way. There has to be some level of awareness between the difference of the two leadership

00:33:41.220 styles. In this case, for example, a lot of people, I don't think have that awareness and

00:33:44.360 they don't put the two things together. Have you always had that?

00:33:47.660 Yes. And that you're right. That is not luck. I was, I was attuned to it. And the,

00:33:51.920 and the more I paid attention to it, the more attuned to it, I got.

00:33:55.800 Sure. Yeah. It's a skill I imagine, right? Something you develop is being aware, trying

00:34:00.820 to figure things out, wondering why this is going the way it is. A lot of people aren't

00:34:04.280 asking those questions.

00:34:05.380 And actually, and this is another thing I talk about in my new book is

00:34:07.740 I wasn't really that great naturally at anything, any normal skill. So in the SEAL teams, you know,

00:34:16.260 there's guys that are really good shots. There's guys that are really fast. There's guys that are

00:34:19.020 really strong. There's guys that are great, you know, parachute jumpers are great divers.

00:34:24.160 And I was, I was good at everything. I didn't really have any major weaknesses or shortfalls,

00:34:29.300 but you know, in a SEAL platoon, you know, you're doing pistol shooting. And I might, if we do a,

00:34:34.900 if we do a little competition, I might get fifth in the platoon of 16 guys. I might get third,

00:34:39.920 I might get seventh, whatever. You know what I mean? Like I wasn't the guy that was like number one,

00:34:43.100 right? Cause then the number one and two guys are number one and two every single time

00:34:46.220 with on a run. Like there's guys that I might come in, you know, eighth or 12th or whatever.

00:34:52.520 So the thing that I realized was, Hey, those are good skills to have, but I, that made me pay

00:34:59.880 attention to other things that were going on. And what I realized the thing that I, I could actually

00:35:03.720 do pretty well was, was lead. It was, and really it wasn't, I didn't jump all the way to, Hey,

00:35:11.800 I can lead. Well, cause the first thing was I, I realized that I could take a step back and I

00:35:15.700 could look at what was going on and then I could figure out what to do next. I didn't really think

00:35:19.760 that was leadership. I thought it was just a tactically, Oh, I know I'm good at making calls.

00:35:25.180 Sure. I'm good at assessing system, making a call. I didn't really think of that as leadership

00:35:27.840 because you know, I was a young E4 and a SEAL platoon, you know, a new guy, it doesn't matter.

00:35:33.300 And then, so that was assembled with the fact that I started realizing, Hey, when, when I

00:35:40.880 interact with other people, I kind of can get a feel for what they're thinking. And that's a really

00:35:46.420 good thing to, to be able to understand what people are thinking and then how to kind of get

00:35:52.400 them to see what you're thinking and maybe even agree with what you're thinking. So all those little

00:35:56.900 things, eventually I looked down at my, you know, past and said, Oh, all these things, you combine

00:36:01.980 them all together. That's, that's leadership. And that's something that I, I might not be great at

00:36:07.120 it, but I'll tell you what, I'm better at that in comparison to where I would rank as a pistol shot

00:36:13.480 or a rifle shot. So let me focus on this. Let me pay attention. Let me continue to learn. And,

00:36:19.000 and I also realized, especially from that good and bad SEAL platoon leader, that that's, what's

00:36:24.400 going to be the most impactful thing in a SEAL, in a SEAL platoon is that, that if you have a good

00:36:28.520 leader, it's going to be good. Doesn't, Hey, everyone's going to be able to shoot, you know,

00:36:31.580 no one's going to miss the target. At that stage, you're working with the best of the best.

00:36:35.920 Yeah. No, we're not worried about people missing the target. We're not worried about people not

00:36:41.280 being in good enough physical condition to go for the patrol, you know, but if you have bad

00:36:46.540 leadership, yeah, you can have some problems. No doubt. There's people out there, a lot of people

00:36:52.940 who believe that you're a natural leader. And you're kind of talking about that now is that you have some

00:36:56.900 natural talents and abilities that lend to that fairly well. Was there ever a point in your time

00:37:03.060 where, or in your life where you felt like a little bit of an imposter or you, you, you aren't

00:37:09.220 worthy of the leadership position that you're in, or you felt uncomfortable in those situations?

00:37:12.920 Of course, there are situations like that, but I actually recognize that. And I tell this to people

00:37:21.500 all the time. Like if you feel like you're not ready to lead or you feel like an imposter, then

00:37:26.940 that's actually a good thing because that means you're humble enough to say, okay, I need to pay

00:37:30.020 attention. I need to listen to what other people are saying. I'm not perfect. I can probably make

00:37:33.840 some mistakes and I probably will make some mistakes and I will make some mistakes. So I felt that way from

00:37:39.640 time to time, but I realized that, Hey, it's okay. That's you keeping yourself in check.

00:37:44.620 Yeah. When I got to Iraq on my very first deployment to Iraq, my, the, the senior enlisted

00:37:50.680 advisor who showed up a little bit before me, that he's a great guy and he's a great friend of mine.

00:37:55.880 We grew up together as E-5s at SEAL Team 1, but now he was the senior enlisted advisor and I was a

00:38:00.940 platoon commander and he was the task unit senior enlisted advisor. So when I showed up, you know,

00:38:06.500 he had been on the ground for a little while and he had done the pushup. So he had some combat

00:38:10.880 experience, which none of us had. And so we got there and like the first night that we were there,

00:38:16.220 we got spun up to go and look for a mortar team and we launched the vehicles. And, you know, at the

00:38:23.220 time I was kind of saying, okay, this is, this is, you know, pay attention to what's going on. And I

00:38:27.140 felt, I felt like, I don't want to say I fell out of my league, but I was okay, you know, here we go.

00:38:33.160 And when I got back, we went out, we didn't find anybody. We came back and, you know, he said to me,

00:38:38.120 I wanted to get you outside the wire, you know, basically like there was a mortar launch. We were

00:38:42.080 never going to catch this guy, but he just wanted to get, get me outside the wire. And at that point,

00:38:48.640 even on that first mission with, I'd never, you know, done anything that real before. Cause I'd done

00:38:55.600 little shipboardings and stuff like that, but no, I'd never done any land warfare combat operations.

00:39:00.200 And I was out there and I was like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm ready for this. It wasn't this overwhelming

00:39:04.600 thing. And I, I felt comfortable, man, we trained hard and I paid attention and I listened to my,

00:39:10.800 my elders in the teams to be ready for that moment.

00:39:15.080 Gentlemen, I'm interrupting you real quick. I know, but I do have to hit the pause button because

00:39:18.840 obviously we're talking about leadership on today's podcast. I want to offer you an additional

00:39:23.980 resource. If you're looking to up your, uh, your leadership effectiveness, it's called the iron

00:39:28.340 council and it's a brotherhood of men working together to really achieve maximum results in

00:39:33.640 our lives. And a lot of what we discuss is centered around the third pillar of masculinity preside,

00:39:39.220 which is synonymous with leadership. Uh, most of the institutions that have served men and

00:39:44.640 offered a place for them to band together. Uh, I feel like have been on the decline. And while all

00:39:49.420 of that is going away, the order of men and the iron council is rising up instead. And we're

00:39:54.400 dedicated to giving you the tools, uh, the resources, brotherhood, camaraderie, accountability,

00:39:59.760 everything that you need to step more fully into the man that you have a desire to become.

00:40:05.980 So if you want to learn more and you want to consider banding with us and figuring out

00:40:10.300 what we're all about, then head to order of man.com slash iron council. Again, order of man.com

00:40:17.220 slash iron council. You can pause right now and do that, or you can check it out after the show.

00:40:21.820 Uh, but for now we'll get back to my conversation with Jocko.

00:40:26.180 I think it's a great point in, in that if you're worried about being an imposter,

00:40:30.860 it's probably a pretty good indicator that you care about being there for sure. For sure.

00:40:35.100 Because if you were indifferent, that's a, uh, either a sign of arrogance or indifference.

00:40:40.660 And I think both are a problem. Yeah. I can tell you all the time when I was running

00:40:43.760 training for seal platoons, any platoon commander that thought he deserved to be there usually sucked.

00:40:49.640 And the guys that were asking me questions and wondering, you know, Hey, I could, what can I do

00:40:55.360 better here? Those are the guys that were awesome. And that was, that was always the truth.

00:40:59.500 Maybe every once in a while you'd get somebody that was a little bit cocky, but still just was,

00:41:06.100 was a good leader and a good operator. That was very rare. That was very rare. And occasionally you'd

00:41:11.420 get a guy that was nervous because they sucked and they, and they, and they knew it. Yeah.

00:41:15.980 They knew that. And it was hard to correct them because they didn't have the, they didn't have

00:41:19.420 the capacity to lead in that domain. How do you take an individual like that

00:41:26.060 and recognize that? And when do you know, okay, this is somebody we've got to make some changes

00:41:32.040 with, or this is somebody we have to develop. Yeah. And well, this is the most interesting

00:41:36.120 part of that. If the guy's not humble and they're not good tactically, they're not going to change

00:41:42.340 and you might as well just fire them because they're shut down because they're not going to

00:41:45.080 listen to you. They think they already know everything. If the person's humble, then you

00:41:47.800 can work with them and try and get them up to speed. And hopefully they can, they can overcome

00:41:52.400 some of their weaknesses. Hopefully you can put some people around them that are better at some of

00:41:56.560 their soft or weak areas. And then you can get them up to speed and they work out. Sometimes people

00:42:01.640 just can't do it. You know, sometimes people can't do it. Just some people get overwhelmed by

00:42:07.720 whatever's going on, right? There's, there's, you go into a room, there's lots of shooting going on.

00:42:12.820 There's mayhem, there's people screaming that that's can be overwhelming for people. Now you

00:42:16.760 can get better at it over time, but some people, they start at such a low level of being able to

00:42:20.920 handle that kind of thing that they don't get to where we need them to be. And they would get,

00:42:25.320 they would get fired. It's, it's interesting with your position in the seals, because at some point

00:42:31.800 you may not be able to fire as easily, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, as easily as somebody in the

00:42:37.360 civilian space that's working for you. But I imagine a lot of that's weeded out by the time

00:42:42.180 they get to the level where you're working with them. Is that, is that accurate?

00:42:46.900 I mean, sure. You, you, you know, in the beginning of seal training, you all kinds of people get

00:42:51.960 weeded out. And then when you get to the seal teams, less people get weeded out, but they still

00:42:56.280 get weeded out. And the thing is in the civilian sector, and we work with civilian companies all the

00:43:00.080 time, you can't just fire people in the civilian sector. That's what I thought. I thought,

00:43:03.860 it's funny. I thought, Hey, in the civilian sector, obviously if you work for me and you're

00:43:10.360 going to fire, yeah, I'll just fire you. And this, and, but that's not true. If you work with

00:43:14.660 companies, guess what? They've got HR. You can't, you literally can't fire people. You've got unions,

00:43:18.600 you've got all kinds of reasons why people can't, can't get fired. And then the civilian people

00:43:23.080 thought, well, you know, it was easy in the military because in the military, you can just fire

00:43:26.720 you in the seal teams. You can just kick them out of the seal teams. It's the same exact things.

00:43:29.820 You have to document, you have to counsel, you have to, and think about what you're doing. When

00:43:34.240 you fire somebody from a seal platoon, especially from, from an officer in a seal platoon, you're

00:43:39.080 ruining their life. It both officer and enlisted, you're ruining your, their life. If you kick

00:43:44.120 someone out of the seal teams, yeah, it's going to follow them around. Well, they're, you know,

00:43:48.700 people don't come into the seal teams and that wasn't their dream and their goal for their life.

00:43:52.960 I mean, I would say there's a large percentage of people in the seal teams. That is their,

00:43:59.120 that is their goal. There's no beyond goal that just, Hey, I want to be a seal. That's life.

00:44:05.640 And that, that was me. What did I want to do? I just wanted to be a seal. That's what I wanted

00:44:09.500 to do. If I didn't make that, it wasn't like I said, well, I want to be a seal or do something

00:44:14.540 else. No, it's just, I just want to be a seal. So when you fire someone from the seal teams,

00:44:19.020 you're ruining their life. You're taking away their paycheck. You're taking away their

00:44:22.520 mortgage. You're taking away their retirement and you're destroying the dream that they've

00:44:28.180 had their whole life. So it's a gnarly thing to do. And we did it. We did it on the regular

00:44:32.880 and the, the problem with you, you have to do it because if someone's a bad leader and

00:44:41.500 they take troops into combat, there's a chance they're going to get themselves or other people

00:44:47.140 killed. And you just can't, you can't just, there's just a no, you just have to get rid of

00:44:51.340 them. Well, I mean, that's one of your principles you've talked about. I think it was in extreme

00:44:54.240 ownership is the missions first. Yes. And you covered, you went in depth with dichotomy

00:45:00.520 of leadership, right? So expand, expand. The mission is first. Yes. And if you decide that

00:45:05.860 your mission is first and we're going to get this mission done and then you sacrifice, you

00:45:09.400 know, half of your platoon to accomplish the mission, well, then you actually can't do any

00:45:13.840 more missions. Right. So you didn't make a good call. So you have to, you have to balance

00:45:18.180 executing the mission and at the same time, take care of your troops.

00:45:21.460 Yeah, no doubt. How is a leadership strategy and tactics, the field manual, how is that

00:45:26.080 different than some of the other leadership books that you've written already?

00:45:30.160 The big, the big difference is, you know, when you, when you read dichotomy or you read

00:45:36.460 extreme ownership, we are really spelling out the principles of, of what the core principles

00:45:44.080 are of how you operate as a leader. The problem with it is, or not, not the problem, but that's

00:45:51.840 what you get. You get these principles, these really profound principles that we have now

00:45:56.540 tested in every single industry in the largest companies in the world. I mean, the most valuable

00:46:03.820 companies in the world. And at the same time, little tiny companies and individuals. So we know

00:46:08.940 factually that these principles work and they work well, but where some people, many people

00:46:18.960 have a hard time translating the principles to what they're doing right now today to applying

00:46:25.060 those principles. So if you imagine, you know, I think of the, on the cover of the few of the

00:46:32.000 new field manual leadership strategy and tactics I took, and I put the, the, the symbols from

00:46:37.760 the FM one-on-one tack five tack one, which is operational terms and graphics, which is,

00:46:43.400 it's sort of like the X's and O's you might see on a football, on a play, right? Where do you

00:46:48.940 actually move the people? And, and the reason I use those, cause that's what they, you know,

00:46:53.300 we use those in the military. This is where a platoon is, or a fire team is actually going to set

00:46:57.800 up. This is how we're actually going to maneuver on the battlefield. And that's my way of saying

00:47:02.400 this book is about how you actually maneuver. Like we get cover and move. We get that. How do

00:47:08.560 you actually do that? Some people can make the translation, but most people, many people I've

00:47:14.480 found, I should say, have a hard time with that. And how do you translate that in it? And there's

00:47:18.820 really simple things, really simple. So, so the book has about 80 chapters, about 80 chapters in the

00:47:27.280 book. And they're all pretty short, obviously. And because it's 80 chapters, but really straightforward

00:47:34.260 things that you face as leader. Like, how do you step in as a new leader? What do you do?

00:47:40.580 Think about that. Yeah. Like you just got promoted, right? You're going to take over a division of a

00:47:46.260 company with 18 people in it. What do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What are the steps?

00:47:51.580 So that's the kind of thing. I've got one on, you've got a boss that is indefensible. Like,

00:48:02.040 like they're doing things that make no sense whatsoever. How do you handle that with your

00:48:06.080 troops? What do you do? Because we're going to support our boss, but what if our boss is doing

00:48:10.120 things that are indefensible, right? So, so there's another one. I've got one about,

00:48:15.820 about going overboard. So, you know, you read, you read as an employee, is that what you're

00:48:23.120 saying? No, as a leader. Oh, as a leader. So, so I'm a young guy. I come in and I want to be a

00:48:27.700 leader and I read extreme ownership and I read the dichotomy leadership and I go in and I'm like,

00:48:30.740 Hey guys, this is about leadership. I'm the leader. You know, we're, you know, listen to what I'm

00:48:35.640 saying. This is how we're going to operate. And you go overboard. And I guarantee you that offends

00:48:42.240 people. It offends people when you act like that. Um, yeah, I talk about how to be chosen to lead.

00:48:48.380 Like, what do you do if you're in a division or you're in a department and you want to be chosen

00:48:53.780 to lead? How do you do that? What do you do to make that happen? I got one on knowing when to quit,

00:49:01.640 right? When do you quit? And, you know, I talk very plainly about the, probably the most commonly

00:49:09.640 referred to seal mantra, which is never quit. Never quit. Sure. That's great. Guess what?

00:49:17.260 And the way I described it in the book is I explained that, you know, you get a young seal

00:49:20.780 platoon commander or a young seal assistant platoon commander is coming straight out of seal training.

00:49:25.580 He has said, never quit 10,000 times out loud to his team, to his, to his, to his buds class.

00:49:34.040 He said it in his own brain brain a million times in this suffering moments. He's never quit. Never

00:49:40.760 quit. Never quit. Now we take him, he gets to my training and I put him in a situation where it's

00:49:48.240 going to be bad for his platoon or his assault force, where they're going to get killed. They're

00:49:52.500 going to be assaulting, you know, down a hallway with a barricaded shooter. And, and I got to see

00:49:57.340 this over and over again. Cause I would run this exact drill. You created them. Yeah. Oh,

00:50:00.540 I created it here. You're going to go, okay, you got to clear this building. They enter the building.

00:50:04.000 There's a barricaded shooter at the end of a hallway. Hey, two guys go, they get killed by

00:50:07.880 paintball. What is the, what is the assault force leader do? Two more guys go. What happens to them?

00:50:12.800 They get killed. What does the assault force leader do? Two more guys go. What happens to them?

00:50:16.860 They get killed. But guess what? His attitude. I'm never going to quit. Right. We're never going to

00:50:20.660 quit. Gets everyone killed, including him as the last man. Like, okay, everyone's dead,

00:50:25.060 but I'm going to make a charge. I'm never going to quit. And now he's killed his whole platoon.

00:50:29.120 Hmm. That is not what we want. Right. And it's not what you want to do in life.

00:50:34.220 And it's not what you want to do in business. You have to assess what you're actually doing and say,

00:50:39.380 okay, you know what? This plan that I came up with is not good. It's not working. And we need to stop.

00:50:45.160 And you know, in this scenario that I, that I described in the book, I would sit there. I'd let

00:50:51.020 them die. Of course, the first time I'd let, just let them die. That's the point of the exercise.

00:50:54.540 That's the point of the exercise. Very rarely would someone say, this is stupid. Stop.

00:50:59.360 Because our attitude is drilled into us so hard to never quit. When the reality is of someone that

00:51:06.240 was good, or once I'd run this drill form, I'd say, listen, you just got everyone killed. You,

00:51:10.560 you failed. And that's not good. Next time, detach, take a step back, look around, see what other

00:51:17.580 options are. Cause it's really easy. Guess what? All you have to do is exit the building, go around,

00:51:21.600 throw a, throw a, throw a grenade through the window and send two guys into the window after

00:51:25.340 grenade and a couple of flash crashes go off and you kill the barricaded shooter. And then you clear the

00:51:28.840 building. It's that easy. And the answer is so obvious. Yeah. It's so obvious that people miss

00:51:34.020 it. I noticed this the other day at here at camp, I was watching a couple of white belts that we had

00:51:38.620 taught a move to. You were probably watching me. It may have been when I, because I know what

00:51:43.000 scenario you're talking about. I don't know if it is or not, but keep pushing, right? No, no, no.

00:51:47.120 This is different. This is, I was watching, we had taught a move and I was looking and there was

00:51:50.800 this, this pair that was doing this move and something was wrong. And I was looking at him saying,

00:51:56.040 what is wrong with this move? And they, the problem is they were doing completely wrong.

00:52:01.200 They were doing it so wrong that I couldn't even see because I was trying to overlay this one move

00:52:07.320 and they were doing, it was unrecognizable to me. Even though the answer was right in front of my

00:52:11.140 face. And I literally took a step back, like a half a step and just watched it one more time.

00:52:14.680 And I go, Oh, you guys have got your grips wrong. Sure. And you're, you're moving in the wrong

00:52:19.300 direction. Instead of moving towards the grip, you're moving, you've got the wrong grip and you're

00:52:23.220 moving the wrong way. Yeah. Towards the grip instead of away from it. It was just completely

00:52:26.960 wrong, but I had to step back and look at it. Same thing. You know, you've got these scenarios

00:52:31.120 unfolding. If you stay immersed in them, you're not gonna be able to see what's going on. And that's

00:52:35.560 what happened to these guys. So, so that's the thing like when to quit, you know, things like how

00:52:39.760 to punish people, right? How, if you're, if you are a boss, how do you punish people? And I start off by

00:52:45.020 saying, look, I almost never had to punish people. Literally almost never did I have to punish

00:52:51.080 someone. Same thing with like my family. I don't have to punish my kids. I shouldn't say never,

00:52:56.200 but very rarely do I have to punish my kids. If I have to punish someone, I'm pretty disappointed

00:53:01.880 in my own leadership. There might've been some issues leading up to that, that got to that point

00:53:06.220 that you could have addressed a long time ago. 100%. It's, it's definitely my fault. If I'm punishing

00:53:09.940 someone, it's, I made a mistake somewhere. Now, do you get someone that is bad and they knowingly

00:53:18.860 violate rules and regulations? Yeah. I have one of, one of my four kids is like that every day

00:53:23.900 of my life. Yeah. Yeah. So, and those kids, they, they might need to get punished. A guy in a platoon

00:53:28.960 might, a guy in a business might need to get punished. But generally, if you, if you are doing

00:53:33.860 a good job as a leader, then you don't have to punish. Okay. Sometimes you do. Okay. Then how do

00:53:38.920 you administer, you know, how do you administer that punishment? Figure that out. I got a whole section

00:53:44.400 on ultimatums, ultimatums in all different directions, right? If you work for me and I

00:53:50.420 say, I want this project done by Thursday and, or you're fired, right? What do you do? What do you do

00:53:57.260 on the receiving end of that? Right? What do you, and then here's the, here's the reverse. Hey,

00:54:03.180 if I don't get promoted, I'm quitting. Okay. That's an ultimatum going up the chain. Man,

00:54:07.660 what do you do as a boss? How do you handle that? Sure. So I talk about, I talk about those kinds of

00:54:12.740 things. Um, I even talk about like, when do you yell as a leader, which you can probably guess,

00:54:21.480 I almost never yelled at anyone. Once again, if I have to yell at someone on my team, well, then

00:54:29.080 I've made a bunch of, a bunch of mistakes for me to have to yell. If this doesn't count

00:54:34.300 we're in a machine gun fight and I've got to yell. So people hear me, this is, this is, I'm

00:54:38.460 emotionally yelling. Occasionally. Do you have to do it? Yes. Occasionally you do have to do it.

00:54:43.060 I probably yelled. I think, I think in the book I say, you know, you could count on one hand. I

00:54:49.400 think the reality is, I think I yelled twice. Is that right? Yeah. When I was in a, when I was in a

00:54:55.600 leadership position in a platoon or a task unit, I think I yelled twice and it might actually,

00:55:00.520 I know one time for sure. And Leif was with me. I wasn't yelling at Leif, but Leif was with me.

00:55:06.420 And you know, he, he, he, he tells the story funny because I needed to yell. Obviously I hadn't made it.

00:55:12.840 I hadn't made my point to, to a couple individuals and I did, I did make the point and it was a

00:55:18.860 calculated thing. And I talk about that in the book too. I wasn't yelling. Cause I was mad. I was

00:55:22.100 yelling. You didn't lose control. I yelled because I needed to get through some thick skulls

00:55:27.520 that this behavior was wrong. So I yelled. So those are the kinds of things, those kinds of

00:55:33.480 really tactical, tactical scenarios and, and how you actually maneuver on the battlefield of

00:55:41.140 leadership. That's what, that's what this book is a little bit different, you know? And of course

00:55:46.860 you have to put these things together, right? You've got, you've got the leadership strategy

00:55:51.340 and tactics. You've got to understand the principles so that you can make the tactics happen.

00:55:55.520 Right. But that's what, that's the, that's the big difference on the book.

00:55:58.340 Did you, uh, did you get these scenarios? Cause you said you had roughly 80 or whatever it is.

00:56:02.780 Obviously there's significantly more than that in life. Do these primarily come from listeners,

00:56:08.500 readers, people who are asking these questions, questions that keep getting brought up over and

00:56:12.200 over again. Almost all of them are somewhere on the podcast. Someone said, Hey, what do I do?

00:56:19.980 What do I do when my boss gives me an ultimatum? Right. How many times did I get that question?

00:56:23.300 I'm sure. Right. And what's what, this is another thing that drove me to write the book is

00:56:27.680 three years ago when I had 22 podcasts, I could say, Hey, go listen to the podcast. You'll learn

00:56:34.900 about leadership right now. If someone takes over a leadership position, I can't say, Hey,

00:56:40.080 go listen to this 500 hours of content to get your answer. Right. It's not, not cool to do that.

00:56:48.020 So I had to, for people that had these tactical questions about what strategies they should use,

00:56:55.300 I had to put it together in a, in a volume that's short enough. It's highly indexed. So you can just

00:57:02.520 like look up and you can just say, you know, here's my problem or whatever. Right. Right. Right. You

00:57:08.060 know, um, somebody just called me a manipulator. What does that mean? How do I, am I manipulating

00:57:12.060 people if I'm doing this? Okay, go look up manipulation, read it. You're good to go. Here's

00:57:16.400 what happens. You're not going to read the entire thing. You don't need to read the entire thing

00:57:19.940 through. Yeah. I guarantee people will, because I also set it up in a way I kind of start off

00:57:24.220 telling the foundations of how I learned what I learned. And so that, that kind of lays the book

00:57:28.280 out. But once people get through it one time, they're going to, they're going to go use it as

00:57:33.720 a reference as a field manual. Yeah. So that's what it is. I think it makes sense that, you know,

00:57:37.420 from the outside looking in that you'd release this book now because you've, you've done a great job

00:57:41.340 with the podcast and the other books, setting the foundation and the 30,000 foot view and the,

00:57:45.680 the, the thought process behind it. Now it's like, okay, now that we have this base of why

00:57:51.700 we're doing what we're doing now, let's implement that. Cause I think a lot of people build that

00:57:55.340 backwards. So just go, go, go, go. And they don't know why they're doing it. And we'll figure it out

00:57:59.080 along the way. And obviously there's a lot of collateral damage that comes with that.

00:58:02.360 You got to know where to move the X's and O's.

00:58:04.200 Sure. What do you attribute your, your level of success? Because not to take any way,

00:58:10.260 anything away from you and what you've created, but there's a lot of people who are great leaders.

00:58:15.460 And have done wonderful things and achieved a lot. And yet I look at you as, as someone who's

00:58:21.000 created amazing, amazing success. What do you attribute that to?

00:58:27.360 Number one is I'm a hard worker straight up. And when I was in the SEAL teams, I was not,

00:58:33.500 like I said, I wasn't great at anything, but I was a hard worker and I would get to work before you

00:58:38.080 and I would stay at work after you. And if you were good at something naturally,

00:58:42.460 I would put in the work that I could actually compete with you. I might not ever get better

00:58:46.580 with you, but I'll, I'll at least be able to hang. And so I'm working all the time. And I think

00:58:52.560 when you work all the time, you, you have a better chance of doing things that are going to,

00:58:59.000 well, I mean, just, just the volume of things that you're going to do is going to be higher than

00:59:04.040 a normal person. I mean, how often do you put out your podcast? Three, three times a week,

00:59:08.220 three times a week. So I put out one podcast a week. It takes me between 10 and 20 hours to

00:59:17.060 prepare the podcast. Oh, I know the level of preparation that you go through. Yeah. I've

00:59:20.880 seen some of that. And so when I know for a fact, there's not too many people that could do all the

00:59:28.440 things that I'm doing and at the same, and then get home from a three-day trip where you're sleeping

00:59:33.900 minimal hours and you're working with a client and then you get home and it's Friday and you go,

00:59:40.300 you, you eat some dinner with your kids and then the kids are gonna, whatever, go and, you know,

00:59:46.300 walk, walk to the beach or whatever. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go,

00:59:49.880 I'm going to go do podcast prep. And then the next morning I'm going to work out and I'm gonna do

00:59:53.080 podcast prep while the, while the family's doing what they're doing. I'm going to, you know,

00:59:57.280 that night my wife's going to be looking at me like, Hey, you know, do you want to, um,

01:00:03.760 to take a walk or something? Nope. I'm going to be working. That's the way it is. So

01:00:07.940 we're getting on a plane, you know, when people get on a plane and it's like, cool,

01:00:12.380 I got some time to veg out for me. It's okay, cool. I get to read a book. I get to read and

01:00:16.900 highlight and go through a book. So I think it just, that's probably the number one thing is I just,

01:00:21.940 I just work hard. I work. Why is this, uh, why is this so important for you?

01:00:27.780 Well, like I said, I got a lot of things in my head that are, that want to come out.

01:00:31.440 And the other thing is now just like any leadership position, if for me, when I'm in a leadership

01:00:38.660 position, I know that everyone on the team is counting on me to do a hard, do, do a good job.

01:00:46.300 Everyone's counting on that. I'll tell you right now, there's, there's, that's what I feel now.

01:00:51.340 There's people that are counting on what I'm doing. They're, they're relying on it. They're

01:00:55.940 counting on this podcast to come out. They're counting on a book to come out. They're counting

01:00:59.780 on all the things that I'm doing. They're counting on it. And I don't want to let people

01:01:02.940 down. You know, there was a early on, probably less than a year into the podcast. I had, I was

01:01:10.100 saying to echo, I said, Hey man, I don't know if I can maintain this pace of doing a podcast

01:01:15.720 every week. We might have to go to one every two weeks because I just, I mean, I just don't

01:01:19.580 have the time. And he was, you know, he would definitely didn't like that idea, but he understood

01:01:26.080 it because he would see what I'm doing. And you know, I'd come home on a Friday night and

01:01:32.160 I'd be leaving on Saturday and I would, we'd go record like, Oh yeah, that's just the way

01:01:37.340 it was. And it's the way it is. I floated that idea past a couple people that the first

01:01:44.840 guy I floated it past was actually a client that echelon front was working with. And we

01:01:48.680 were driving to a site where they had a project going on. And as we're driving, you know, we're

01:01:54.100 just talking about stuff. And I said, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about maybe going

01:01:56.920 down to one podcast every two weeks. And his reaction was so bad. Really? You know, he was

01:02:05.040 kind of like, you know, I mean, if you're going to do something like you, you gotta, you gotta

01:02:11.800 let people know. I mean, you gotta give people a heads up. That's, that's not, that's

01:02:14.740 not going to go over well, you know, for people that are good. And I, and when, when

01:02:18.160 I got that reaction from him and this guy, this guy is a squared away leader in a big

01:02:24.040 giant company, very, very successful. And when I saw that reaction from him, I said, this

01:02:31.240 is bigger than you. This is bigger than your, your, their, your own life is, is not as important

01:02:41.160 as everything you've got going on. These people, you know, are counting on this and, and

01:02:44.580 you need to deliver.

01:02:45.580 You said something the other day is we had the opportunity to shoot some arrows together.

01:02:49.200 And, and you said, I think I said something to the, to the effect of, I can't imagine you

01:02:54.540 get much time just to do these types of things alone. You're like, doesn't matter. And to me,

01:03:01.080 I heard what you're saying now, which is you signed up for this. Like you voluntarily thrust

01:03:06.760 yourself into this and you've accepted the reality that you've got to give your time and

01:03:13.460 attention. It seems like, yeah. The only part that I would say is, is I would counter is that

01:03:20.540 I voluntarily thrust myself into this. I didn't, I, I didn't predict that this was what was going

01:03:27.220 to happen. I predicted, Hey, you know me. Okay. I wrote a book. Cool. Right. It'll be a good

01:03:31.820 experience. It'll be cool. Yeah. You know, or Hey, I'm going to make a podcast talking about

01:03:35.980 things I like to talk about. That's cool. I, I, that's kind of what I thought. I didn't,

01:03:39.820 I wasn't really aware of the direction that where things were going to go. And, and to your point

01:03:46.180 that you asked me the other day, like, Hey, does that get hard when people want, cause people want

01:03:49.640 to talk to you, people want to ask you something. And it's like, no, like that's what that, that's

01:03:53.860 what it's become. Cool. I'm like happy to be able to be in this position and try and help people

01:03:59.780 out and learn from them and teach what I know. So it's all good.

01:04:04.020 It seems to me that you understand that that's part of, even though you're probably

01:04:07.820 energized to some degree that, that you realize that's part of the price to pay for being able

01:04:12.540 to pursue this avenue that you've been able to do. Is that wrong?

01:04:16.960 I guess it's weird. You know, people ask me, you know, I was, we, we talk about planning,

01:04:22.860 right? You got a plan and, and that's how you run a military operation. That's how you run a business

01:04:27.340 operation. You got a plan and you know, you've got to have your, your short-term plan and your

01:04:31.540 long-term plan and your strategic overall plan. And the, the, the sad truth is this,

01:04:37.700 what I'm doing right now was not planned. This is just the result of a window that opened up

01:04:43.820 and people started to see what was going on. And, and the more that once they saw, they open,

01:04:48.760 you know, it got more and more open. So it's a little bit random that I'm here. It wasn't,

01:04:52.220 it wasn't planned is what I'm saying.

01:04:53.760 Yeah. I get that. And I don't even know if you could, I don't know if, I don't know if I could

01:04:58.800 plan, you know, like, uh, you know, Tim Ferriss, who's, who's a great guy. He's been great to me

01:05:06.440 and he's, you know, he's a funny guy. We have a good time, but like his, the things that he did,

01:05:13.280 you know, like one example is like AB testing on stuff. Right. And I, you know, when I was reading

01:05:18.880 his book and he's talking about AB testing and how we figure out what things are like, I'd never did

01:05:23.020 any of that. Right. So that would be what a good plan would be. Right. And Tim Ferriss, obviously

01:05:28.360 he planned and he's been very successful with that. I didn't do that. I just kind of did what

01:05:33.320 I'm doing and it turns out to be successful or it turns out to be, it turns out that people dig it.

01:05:37.380 So it's kind of weird. It's kind of counterintuitive. You would think that I had this big,

01:05:42.820 you know, overarching goal to make these things happen and I'm going to get, you know, it's like,

01:05:47.300 no, I'm going to do what I like to do. And I happen to live in a day and age when it can be

01:05:52.960 easily propagated throughout the world through a free podcast. And there you go. Here it is.

01:06:00.180 That's kind of the point that I was alluding to earlier is, you know, you talked about doing what

01:06:04.760 you want to do, not taking into consideration as much as what, you know, what other people want

01:06:09.080 you to do or living somebody else's life. And that's kind of the point I was making is that,

01:06:12.600 I mean, I look at it, I'm attracted to it, but, but someone may not be, but this seems like it's just

01:06:18.520 not a factor. It's like, we'll just find the right people who are attracted to what we're doing.

01:06:21.440 And if they're not, then that's, that's okay too. Yeah. It's, it's one of those dichotomies.

01:06:25.420 And I actually talk about this in the new book as well is like, don't care. And it's weird because,

01:06:31.680 you know, you, as a leader, you don't care, you, you can't care. This might make the troops mad.

01:06:37.100 If I do this, you can't care about that. At the same time, you absolutely have to care of,

01:06:43.420 you know, if you're, if you're developing an antagonistic relationship with your troops,

01:06:47.800 that's not good. So you, you can't care about what they think, but you have to absolutely

01:06:52.620 care about what they think. Sure. And that's the reality of leadership.

01:06:57.200 And that's why I think it's so hard. Cause one of the things I wanted to ask you about is,

01:07:00.660 you know, with this, we've had thousands and thousands of years of leadership training and

01:07:06.180 information, right? This isn't new stuff necessarily, but it's also something that we

01:07:12.500 don't fully comprehend and understand and even apply in our lives. I mean, you're not

01:07:17.640 teaching new things necessarily. Yeah. I was working with a really, really, really big

01:07:25.000 individual business leader, um, in the world. And I, I was going to work with his company and

01:07:34.860 small portions of his other companies. And, but first I, we, we, we sat down and ate some food and,

01:07:40.060 and he was just kind of grilling me about stuff and asked me a question. We were just talking,

01:07:43.620 but, but one of the things he, he kind of said, it's like, you know, you're, you're in this world

01:07:47.720 now of leadership consulting, right? And there's so many people. And he says, he says, you know,

01:07:53.720 kind of like, what is it that you do that, why are you rising to the top of this thing? Why is your

01:07:59.400 company echelon for, why is it, why is it rising to the top of, of this? And we were, I was about to

01:08:05.440 go and talk to his team. And I, I didn't, you know, I didn't say it in an arrogant way, but I

01:08:10.620 basically got across to him, just wait until, you know, let me talk to your team and you'll kind of

01:08:15.060 see what it is that's different. And, you know, he kind of said, okay, you know, I get it, you know?

01:08:19.880 And, and then we, when we got done, um, you know, we talked afterwards and he's like, okay,

01:08:25.240 I get it. I see it. You know, the way we're explaining things, the, the examples that we give,

01:08:32.340 the way that we understand the dynamics of teams. And it's just, it's just no,

01:08:39.180 at echelon front, we package this stuff together in a way that people can understand it in a, in a

01:08:45.940 more holistic way now than really anyone's ever done. And part of the reason is, and this is the,

01:08:54.780 to me is the most important part. We say leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.

01:09:02.340 We believe it, but beyond believe it, we actually know it to be true because you've lived it.

01:09:08.600 We've lived it. We actually know without a doubt that leadership is the most important thing on

01:09:14.800 the battlefield in business and life. Like I know that 100% and there's not too many things that I

01:09:20.480 claim to know a hundred percent. I know that 100%. So when we're, when you get someone that goes and

01:09:25.800 someone not from echelon front, some other leadership consultancy that says, Hey, here's leadership and

01:09:30.720 here's how it can help you. And, and, and, and, and they give their cut, right? I don't really see

01:09:36.580 people that have the fundamental core belief and understanding that we absolutely know to be

01:09:44.800 factually true and undeniable. And that is that leadership is the most important thing. So if you

01:09:49.940 don't really believe that, if you don't, if you don't really believe it, if you haven't lived it,

01:09:53.780 it doesn't come across that way. And if it doesn't come across that way, well, then,

01:09:58.580 then people don't receive it the same way. And so that's, that's, I think one of the,

01:10:03.360 one of the key differences of why we're taking things that are thousands of years old, in some

01:10:08.880 cases, hundreds of years old, you know, you cover and move is, is a little bit more modern, but

01:10:14.300 even that, you know, you used to have archers and Calvary going in. So they're all,

01:10:18.860 they're all old principles, but, and we've, we said that in extreme ownership, you know,

01:10:23.920 we said it like, Hey, we didn't make this stuff up. You can find this stuff in, in throughout,

01:10:28.340 throughout history, but we did take it and we did break it down into a way that people could

01:10:33.520 understand it. And we've actually seen and live through the results. And now we've seen the live

01:10:38.200 through the results, not just on the battlefield, but through multiple businesses, not only businesses

01:10:42.520 that we work with, but like businesses that I own, right? Businesses that I own. I see,

01:10:47.100 I got asked this question the other day is the same question. It wasn't yours. You said,

01:10:51.660 how did I, how have I been so successful? But someone asked me a similar question, which is

01:10:56.360 how are these businesses that you have so successful? And I was surprised that the question

01:11:03.260 got asked because the answer is real obvious. You know how the businesses that I run are so,

01:11:07.340 or that I own are so successful. We follow the principles that we talk about all the time,

01:11:12.020 we use, you know, we, we cover and move for each other. We, we keep things simple,

01:11:17.740 right? We, we prioritize and execute and, and attack the biggest problems that we got. We use

01:11:23.300 decentralized command and then we balance all these dichotomies and we take ownership. Like

01:11:27.280 that's what we do. That's what we do every day. So the businesses that, that I own, that's what's

01:11:33.300 happening at the businesses. And therefore the businesses do well. It's, it's, it's pretty awesome.

01:11:38.680 It works. Exactly. And that's, you know, it's great to see that with origin and Pete, my, my,

01:11:44.400 my partner at origin, like, you know, he, he took extreme ownership and, you know, got it to his

01:11:50.860 troops and his leaders, his subordinate leaders and the leaders at, at origin and, and they're into it

01:11:55.440 and they get it. And those are the kinds of things. And Pete's the same way, you know, Pete's Pete gets

01:12:01.200 it. And, you know, he had, you know, Pete's been through a lot, you know, and he's run businesses

01:12:05.880 before he's had businesses fail. So he's been for, he's learned a lot. The, the, the school of hard

01:12:11.240 knocks. Right. And, but, but what's good about Pete is since he's been through all this stuff,

01:12:15.580 when he, when he read extreme ownership, when he went to the muster, he could apply what he's

01:12:22.040 already been through. So he had like immediate understanding. He knows that leadership is the

01:12:25.440 most important thing. He's seen it go in both directions. So, so there's examples of, Hey, how

01:12:31.260 these things work and, and why they work. They work because we follow the principles that I talk

01:12:35.860 about all the time. So just do it. Yeah. Um, yeah, I could see how that would, would definitely

01:12:42.220 be valuable to you. You know, it's interesting because we live in this society where you can

01:12:47.540 just throw your stuff up on Instagram or whatever else and say you've done everything, but you talk

01:12:51.800 about living it. Not only have you lived it, you've lived it at quite literally the highest stakes

01:12:55.540 possible. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's what combat is. Yeah. Combat is the, is the ultimate

01:13:00.940 consequences one way or the other. How do you decide what, cause you, you talked about earlier

01:13:06.140 having all these ideas and you're never at a loss for things you want to do and get out there into

01:13:09.600 the world. How do you decide what to pursue and when? It's, it's, it's a challenge. Uh, you know,

01:13:16.620 I, I have to look at the, I have to look at the ROI. And when I say ROI, I'm not just talking about

01:13:21.700 the financial ROI. In fact, that's pretty low on the spectrum. I have to look at the ROI on what,

01:13:26.480 um, you know, what, what, what this is going to bring me and what it's going to bring. You know,

01:13:31.240 when I talk about the return on investment, I look at it from, not from my, not from what's going to

01:13:35.140 bring me, what it's going to bring other people. So if I look at, you know, way, the warrior kid,

01:13:40.780 I I'm thinking to myself, that's going to help a lot of people. I'm going to do that. If I say,

01:13:45.120 you know, Hey, when we started deciding to make supplements, I'm like, okay, what's the ROI on this?

01:13:50.740 Not in terms of, Hey, what's this going to make me, but what is this other people? What, like,

01:13:57.640 how can this help other people? Cause in my opinion, if you're, what you're doing is helping

01:14:02.260 other people, the ROI financially is going to come. That'll take care of itself. That'll take

01:14:06.160 care of itself. So that's kind of the lower priority for me. If I know, if I make good things,

01:14:10.940 it's going to help people and you know, things will work out in the end. So when I'm looking at

01:14:16.220 things, I look at, okay, how is this going to help? How is this going to help people? And if it's

01:14:20.100 going to help people, the one that's going to help the most people, that's what I'm going to do.

01:14:24.660 Then that's the same thing with that, when, you know, with echelon front, like, okay,

01:14:27.520 I know leadership can help and change and, and transform companies and businesses and teams.

01:14:35.000 That's a huge ROI for people. That's where I started. Yeah. Yeah. It seems like you've got a

01:14:41.040 lot on your plate and to be able to balance that is something I look at and think, man, that's pretty

01:14:44.380 impressive with everything that you've got going on to be able to balance these things and having the

01:14:48.000 right orders and the right priorities and manage those things effectively.

01:14:51.020 Yeah. Well, I got awesome, you know, I got awesome people that I work with all the time,

01:14:54.620 you know, whether it's Leif and the rest of the guys at echelon front, you know, JP, I know you've

01:14:58.460 got, you've had JP on here before, but coming on this afternoon. Yeah. JP is running giant swath of

01:15:03.800 stuff at echelon front. Why? Cause that's what JP does. And you know, JP, JP, I will trust him with

01:15:13.260 anything, you know, like, Hey, JP, if I, if I need something done, I know a hundred percent JP is

01:15:17.900 going to make it happen. And so when I, when I have a bunch of people like that, I mean, it becomes

01:15:22.380 very easy. The challenges that you're talking about become very easy because I got, I got my friends

01:15:28.600 and my bros that are actually making it happen. Yeah. Makes it easy life for me. Yeah. How do you

01:15:34.080 determine, cause you've got a great crew, JP, of course, and, and Dave and Leif and Mike and everybody,

01:15:40.080 how do you determine who you're going to bring into, into the fold, if you will?

01:15:46.100 That's a good question. You know, at this point, we're still kind of with our, our,

01:15:52.800 at this point, we're still with our, you know, our, our brothers in arms at this point. So it's,

01:15:59.780 it's going to have to transform at some point where we start bringing in people that weren't with us,

01:16:07.120 that, that didn't serve with us. And you know what, that's fine. I mean, I never worked with Pete.

01:16:13.140 Pete was never even in the military, but you know, Brian from, from origin labs, he was never in the

01:16:18.840 military. These are guys that I met and, you know, you have that process of feeling out and, you know,

01:16:25.900 for, for, for Pete, you know, I was looking at Pete's track record at what he had done and where,

01:16:30.660 you know, where his, where his passion was and what he cared about. And when those, when,

01:16:36.340 when you have someone that cares about the same thing that you care about and when those are

01:16:40.060 aligned, everything gets pretty easy. And Pete is a big personality. And, but you know,

01:16:47.560 Pete puts his ego in check. We, Pete and I have conversations that, that are, you know,

01:16:51.800 we're making big decisions and it takes us, I would say three minutes to have a conversation,

01:16:58.320 but a lot of times we're actually making legit decisions in text. Hey, what do you think of this?

01:17:03.360 Um, I like it go. Or, you know, he'll say, this seems bad. And I'll say, agreed, you know,

01:17:11.480 stop or whatever. Or, you know, I'll say to him, Hey, this, I don't like this. And he'll say,

01:17:17.260 call me. Right. And he'll say, here's what's going on. Give me some backstory. Oh, got it.

01:17:22.060 I didn't know that. Cool. You know what I mean? And so neither one of us, you know, we, we will,

01:17:28.460 we don't agree on everything. We agree on a lot to be honest with you. I don't make it sound that

01:17:32.420 bad, but we, we agree on almost everything. As a matter of fact, he sent me a, he sent me an email

01:17:37.280 the other day. It was, you know, probably two pages worth of email. And, uh, and I sent him a

01:17:43.040 text, like, you know, very quickly thereafter, faster than someone could have read that email.

01:17:47.940 Cause, and then we talked later. I said, I said, Hey man, I'm like, I'm glad you sent me that big,

01:17:52.240 long email. I said, I read that thing in 15 seconds. Cause I, every paragraph I read one line and

01:17:56.600 knew exactly what you were going to say. I was a hundred percent agreement and boom, go.

01:18:00.500 So yeah, that's, we, like I said, so at echelon front, you know, we're, we're at a point now where

01:18:05.580 we're starting to look at some other, you know, people coming on board and where we're going to

01:18:10.140 have to, when we want to, because we work with people all the day, all the time, whether they're

01:18:14.160 in other military branches or civilians that are actually doing a great job using the, the,

01:18:20.300 the principles that we taught them to execute. And that's nice because some people, you know,

01:18:27.960 they don't, they have an aversion to the military mindset and they don't understand that the good

01:18:33.080 leadership, whether it's in the military, just because someone has a shaved head and a uniform on

01:18:40.120 the, the, the leadership principles are the same as somebody that's running a dang

01:18:45.120 marijuana dispensary in wherever in Denver or whatever in Maine. Like Pete and I are actually

01:18:51.940 wondering when we're going to get you to grow a beard. Yeah. I probably won't be growing a beard.

01:18:56.700 I mean, for me, it's just a, it's just the same thing with hair. It's just a pragmatic thing. You

01:19:01.560 know, I, I don't, I don't really care about how I look. And the only thing I care about really is

01:19:07.160 just winning. And so it was hair and a beard will not help me. I told Pete, I was like, no,

01:19:13.300 cause I don't know how I got talking about him. We were talking about it. I'm like, no,

01:19:16.020 he would even grow a beard. I'm like, he would use the term tactical disadvantage.

01:19:20.780 Yeah. Yeah. And it is. I mean, if you think about getting in some kind of a fight, I mean,

01:19:24.240 somebody grabs ahold of your beard, that's going to be a real problem.

01:19:26.400 Yeah. I lose a little bit every time we, I think the real question is when are you shaving your

01:19:30.400 beard now that you're training jujitsu, you know, that's gotta be a bit of an issue.

01:19:33.800 It's definitely a concern and a thought. I'll leave it there for now.

01:19:38.040 Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's always, you know, when I started getting a crew cut,

01:19:43.300 that was sort of a thing like, Hey, guess what? I'm not really too concerned. I'm not

01:19:47.540 trying to hide anything and B I don't really care. Yeah. I want to ask you about social media

01:19:54.440 because you've done some interesting things with social media over, I don't know, maybe the past

01:19:58.920 month or two where you seem to me like, I don't know if loosened up is the right term, but you've

01:20:04.460 shown maybe a different side of things than you have in the past. Would you agree with that?

01:20:08.300 Yeah. Uh, I'm sure you're, you're talking about the fact that I posted some videos of

01:20:13.300 me making a salad. That was one of them, which was hilarious. Mixing up a milk, me shooting

01:20:19.780 my bow and arrow. Yeah. I don't know. I think that's about it. I think you were playing around

01:20:23.400 with your son one day or something. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then my son. Yeah. Uh, that was just

01:20:28.040 funny. Uh, yeah. My, my daughters are home from college and you know, they sort of, they're

01:20:34.160 sort of like, Oh, you got to put this on there. That'd be so cool. Cool. Whatever. Do it.

01:20:38.380 Yeah. No factor. Um, you know, I'm, I'm, I am the way I am, you know? And, and as you

01:20:44.560 know, you can't fake a personality for 500 hours of, of talking on the, on the internet,

01:20:49.080 you know, like be quite the feat if you could, but yeah, you can't do it. Right. You know,

01:20:52.260 that's something Joe Rogan's pointed that out multiple times, you know, and that's, you can't

01:20:57.440 do that. You know, you can't do that. You could try, but it's people are eventually going

01:21:00.420 to see through it or you're going to come across as fake or you're going to burn out

01:21:05.220 and fade away into obscurity. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, so you, you know, you are who you

01:21:09.620 are. And if people have the impression that I'm, you know, walking around all, all the

01:21:14.320 time, you know, carrying a kettlebell in one hand and, and a pistol in the other, you

01:21:20.000 know, that's just unrealistic. Sure. Uh, I have a wife and four kids, you know, I have

01:21:25.480 to do normal human things like make lunch when my wife's, you know, not around or

01:21:30.120 whatever. And, and that lunch videos was good. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's

01:21:36.980 cool. Um, but I didn't really think too much about it. It's not like I have some grand

01:21:40.980 master plan. I think it just came from my, uh, really my middle daughter was, was saying,

01:21:45.760 let me, let me, you know, let me shoot the, let me, let me film you doing that. That's

01:21:48.940 so funny or whatever. That's kind of where it started. I like it. All right. I'm going to

01:21:52.640 let you go. We got things to do. Um, I do want to ask you a question. I've asked you this.

01:21:55.660 I think this is fourth, fourth time we've had the conversation on the podcast, but I've

01:21:59.560 never not asked somebody what it means to be a man. I don't know what I've said the other

01:22:04.200 times, but I'll say, do what you're supposed to do. Pretty straightforward. A man does what

01:22:13.040 he's supposed to do and we all know what we're supposed to do. So go do it. Right on. We'll

01:22:18.220 leave it there. Right on. I would ask how guys connect with you. I actually talked to somebody

01:22:22.120 who didn't know you the other day and that boggled my mind. So I was going to say, how

01:22:25.500 do we connect with you? But the guys know where to go, but the book comes out January

01:22:29.340 20th, I believe January 20th. Um, pre-orders. I think it's available for right now. Anything

01:22:35.540 else you want to mention? Listen to the podcast. Yeah. I got a podcast called Jocko podcast.

01:22:40.920 I got a kid's podcast called warrior kid podcast, which is, which is people are super stoked on

01:22:48.460 that. And I don't put them out as often as I should. There's 20 something of them right now

01:22:54.520 and I'll try and put out more, but it's challenging. I write a story for each one, which is, which

01:23:00.560 takes a little bit more time. I'll go back. I do some Q and a as well. So anyways, yeah,

01:23:04.440 there's a warrior kid podcast. Really good. The, some of those warrior kid podcasts, I tell stories

01:23:10.360 from uncle Jake when uncle Jake was a kid. And my goal is to explain to kids how uncle Jake got his

01:23:18.960 values through very simple parables where they can understand, Oh, you're not the center of the

01:23:26.580 universe. Oh, you should be prepared. Oh, you shouldn't make fun of other people. You know,

01:23:31.240 there's these kinds of simple things that, that kids should know. And so that's the warrior kid

01:23:39.520 podcast. How many kids call you uncle Jake? A lot, a lot of kids call me uncle Jake. A lot of kids

01:23:45.660 call me uncle Jake. They think I'm uncle Jake, you know? So it's all good. I, I, and on the podcast,

01:23:50.280 on the warrior kid podcast, I kind of leave it in the air a little bit as to, you might, as I might,

01:23:56.640 I just don't, I don't clarify one way or the other because you know, that's what the kids want to hear.

01:24:00.280 They want to hear, they want to hear uncle Jake. You'll hear my voice is different when I do it just a

01:24:04.740 little bit different. It's, it's aimed at kids. So I talk a little bit, just in a little bit of a,

01:24:09.020 a little bit of a nicer voice that the kids can, Oh, this is, must be uncle Jake talking.

01:24:13.280 Just have a little bit different tone to it. Cause the, you know, when I talk to kids, I want to,

01:24:17.540 you got to put a little bit of a, a little bit of character on the voice. So it keeps them a little

01:24:22.140 bit more engaged. So, and I've never really thought about that until right this minute.

01:24:25.280 Cause I'm thinking, why did I actually, why do I do that? Well, that's the reason. Cause I want

01:24:28.240 kids to be more engaged and be able to listen. Well, it's a, it's a leadership principle.

01:24:32.400 Yeah. You got to be able to communicate effectively with your audience.

01:24:35.160 Yes. You got to, got to know that audience. So, so I think that's about it. Yeah. I got

01:24:38.720 some books and, and hopefully go change jujitsu and do what you're supposed to do.

01:24:45.620 Right on. We'll sync it all up. Jocko. I appreciate you. Appreciate our friendship.

01:24:48.720 Appreciate you imparting your wisdom on us and looking forward to getting some more

01:24:52.060 rolling in this week. Right on, man. Awesome. Thanks.

01:24:55.560 Gents, there you go. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jocko Willink as much as I did.

01:25:00.260 Of course, had the honor to, to sit down with him and really hash some of this leadership stuff out.

01:25:04.820 I know it's important for me. Obviously it's important to him and he's, he's made a career

01:25:09.160 in a life of teaching these leadership principles and strategies and tactics. And I know it's important

01:25:13.800 to you as well. You want to lead effectively in your family and influence your kids powerfully

01:25:18.680 and your wife powerfully. You want to be a leader within your, your business and you have projects

01:25:24.100 and teams that you're trying to lead. And you're trying to coach kids in the community. You,

01:25:27.620 you are all doing wonderful things. Utilizing the strategies and tactics will really help you

01:25:33.380 take that leadership to the next level. And it's not really so much about you as the leader.

01:25:37.960 It's about achieving the ultimate objective, which is raising self-sufficient kids, which is having a

01:25:44.500 deeply and powerfully committed and intimate relationship with your wife. It's business

01:25:49.100 success. It's success on every front. And if you are interested in doing that, of course,

01:25:54.100 read Jocko's books, consume his information, and then go pre-order a copy of leadership strategy

01:26:00.560 and tactics field manual, which will be out and available in January. Uh, outside of that guys,

01:26:06.740 again, uh, make sure you check out origin at origin, main.com for your denim and your boots.

01:26:12.620 They've got hoodies as well. As the weather starts to turn and get a little cold, you might want to

01:26:15.980 check out what they're up to. And if you're interested in getting into jujitsu or you are

01:26:19.620 involved with jujitsu already, now make sure you check out their geese and their rash guard.

01:26:24.300 They have a brand new gear called the rift, which is, uh, pretty amazing. Actually, it's

01:26:30.600 different fabric and different cuts that fits and works just right with your body. And then they have

01:26:36.020 a, uh, brand new rash guard called the four horsemen, uh, which is a, uh, a pretty cool rash

01:26:42.020 guard too. So anyways, check it out. Origin, main.com and use the code order or D E R at checkout.

01:26:47.040 And you'll get a discount there guys. I want to leave you by telling you that I appreciate you.

01:26:51.020 Uh, it doesn't go unnoticed that I could not do this without you, that this work is important to

01:26:55.820 me. I've made a life of teaching you what you need to know. And of course, figuring out what I

01:27:01.260 need to know to be a better man. And I'm honored that you would decide that you would voluntarily

01:27:05.840 decide to listen to the podcast, consume the information we're sharing, uh, step up more fully

01:27:11.280 in your lives and want to let you know I'm inspired by what you're doing. I'll be back tomorrow for my

01:27:16.200 ask me anything with Kip Sorensen. So make sure you check that out. And of course, Friday for your

01:27:20.380 Friday field notes. Last thing, guys, we are doing a lot more on YouTube. So if you want to go check

01:27:26.820 out YouTube and the order of man channel, uh, head to youtube.com slash order of man. And you can see

01:27:33.260 this video I did with Jocko live. All right, guys, that's all I've got for you. We'll see you

01:27:36.980 tomorrow. Go out there, take action, become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to

01:27:41.360 the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were

01:27:46.340 meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

01:27:50.400 you

01:27:52.460 you

Order of Man - September 03, 2019

JOCKO WILLINK ｜ Leadership Strategy and Tactics

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