Jocko Podcast - 114: How to Lead and Win with Leif Babin.

Episode Date: February 21, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:03 - Leif Babin 0:07:20 - How often does Leif Disagree w/ Jocko's commands?   0:22:51 - The evolution on Echelon Front. 0:31:01 - How to control rumors and gossip in an organization. 0:37:07 - Benefits of The Muster. 0:51:59 - What would Leif and Jocko have done differently in the past? 0:55:18 - Advice on restarting your life after the military. 0:58:10 - Jocko's most impactful strategy on Leif. 1:04:17 - Las Vegas stuff. 1:11:08 - Daily non-negotiable habits.  1:17:28 - Thoughts on the policy that the ship's captain takes all the blame. 1:25:00 - Self talk for clear thinking. 1:35:28 - Injury rates in Jiu Jitsu. 1:44:36 - How to promote healing when tragically losing a team member. 1:47:55 - What to do if you Jiu Jitsu coach/instructor is a "know it all" 1:54:29 - Staying focus when having bad days in the field. 1:58:46 - Getting into trouble as a teen (before the military). 2:03:01 - How did the enemy in Ramadi match up against US Special Forces? 2:11:53 - How Does the Navy Prepare you to Lead? 2:20:03 - At What point did The Extreme Ownership Enlightenment Occur? 2:35:32 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, THE MUSTER 005 in DC. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and Jocko Soap. 3:00:03 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 114 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And tonight we have a guest on the podcast for the fourth time. The fourth appearance, which is no surprise, really, because this is a guy that I went to war with, started a business with wrote a book with I actually

watched him get married and have kids and buy houses and go from a let's say a wild single man going to live a Friday night like it was his last night ever to a guy

with a diaper in one hand and a bag of cheddar bunnies in the other hands trying to tame his son who at one years old was like a hard-headed borderline psychotic version of himself and I also saw this guy in much harsher environments and in some of the most challenging situations I saw him bear the incredibly heavy weight of leading men in combat and also the crushing weight of losing some of those men. I still see that weight on his shoulders and I see it in his eyes and I wish I could take some of it away but I can't and as we learn in the SEAL teams

We don't complain. We shoulder our share of the weight. We shoulder our share of the burden and we drive on. And I've seen him stand up when I needed him to stand up when what I was asking for was more than I could have asked or should have expected from anyone. and I watched him time and time and time again Move out move out into the darkness

Toward the unknown toward the violence toward the enemy Whose mission was to maim or to kill him and his men But he went and he went every time and he went without fail and his name is lay Babin and if you want a more thorough background of Laif you can listen to the other times that he's been on this podcast he was on number 11 number 34 number 65 you should listen to those first before you listen to this one you can also read the book that we wrote it's called extreme ownership it's about our experiences in combat and the leadership lessons we learn there but for now here we are once again and Laif

Welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me home. And we had a couple different options on what we were going to do this time around and Tweet it out if anybody has any questions and we got a lot of questions So I know I can answer questions We'll just say in a really in a very in-depth manner from time to time Sure, and we got a lot of questions. So I You know, we just took down a bunch of the questions and

and I'll read through some of them and we'll try and burn through a bunch of these questions that we got from everybody. Let's get some. We ready to get some. Like I said, Leif is always ready to get some,

which is a good thing. Stand by to get some. Stand by to get some. For people that don't know what that means, and we often put that out on social media, I don't think people recognize what that actually means to us. We knew, we would say this all the time

in combat or in training scenarios when you knew that, I mean, it was about to go down. Bullets were going to be flying around. Exposure could be going off. And you hear someone very clearly over the radio, just in a real convoys come up and be like, standby to get some.

Yeah. So we get a chuckle out of that every time. Always get a chuckle out of that one. Yeah, that's a, it's a true statement, though, right? You know you're going to get some. But when you could say it in that manner, you know, when you should be like, you know, standby to get some. And people are like, stand by to get some.

It's pretty awesome. I was on my first deployment. and we were driving driving south from Baghdad and we got ambushed and we were in like a five or six vehicle convoy and the ambush hit the tail end I was in the number two vehicle as normal for

you know the for platoon commander at the time I'm in the number two vehicle the tail end of the ambush gets ambushed or tail end the convoy gets ambushed and but I mean it's very clear It's RPGs are going over the convoy and explosions and machine gun fire and and it's really obvious We're getting ambushed and but we're on a highway and we're moving fast so we you know it's You know I was like a push through you know what I mean like we didn't stop it all didn't even hesitate

And then we continued down the road and and and I asked for the you know like up count from the rims like up count and And so it was you know I hear like vehicle six is up and vehicle five is up and the vehicle four is up and and and it gets the front and I'm like roger We're up keep rolling and then another maybe another minute goes by and My platoon chief great guy is in the back vehicle Rear you know in the rear vehicles because that's how you break you know break it up so if something happens He's in control there and and he comes up in the radio and he's like he's like Hey sir just just want to let you know him we got ambushed you back here. Did you know that? And I go like this Roger

We got back we had a good laugh about that one but it was pretty good times so awesome yeah all right get into some questions this is a question that actually came a very similar question I had when it when I had Tony on and most of these questions because I said these questions are for layf coming on the podcast so most of them are directed at you and I'll chime in or whatever if I feel the need but you like that so here we go first one layf how often did you disagree with Jocko's commands and how many times did you actually let him know? Also, how did you handle either situation? So there you go.

I disagree with Jocko every minute every day. Listen, we actually, we had a, it's a great question. And look, Jock and I are different people. We have different views of the world. We have, there were, there were times when, you know, his job was, your job was strategic and you're looking in the bigger strategic picture. My job was tactical. I'm looking at the tactical picture. sometimes you can make a tactical decision that could impact the strategic mission. And it was very rare, though, that we ever had any kind of disagreement on those things. I think, you know, there were a number of times when what I always liked about Jocko, and I think, oh, he's this big, intimidating guy.

I remember our commanding officer, actually, we were talking to him. And, of course, he loved our task unit, and he was like, yeah, you guys have some bruises. He was talking to me and the Delta Platoon Commander and said, you got to do what Jocko says or he'll choke you out. And we were kind of laughing about that because we were training Jiu-Jitsu every morning. We're like, man, I've been choked out by Jokko hundreds of times. It's not even a threat anymore. But it was never, we never did what you said because it was fear or intimidation

or like we have to do what he says because he's in charge. What I always loved about you and your leadership was that I knew that I could push back on stuff and you were going to listen to me. And it was interesting for me to see that as, you know, we built a relationship. I could come in and be like, hey, I think we ought to do this. And very rarely would you, you would never say like, no, do it this way because it's my way. But even very, very rarely would you say, sometimes you might be like, well, we want to go in this direction. Here's why we want to do this.

But most of the time, you would actually just say, hey, we'll talk me through that. Okay, how's I going to work? and you would give me the opportunity and others in the between the opportunity to come up with a plan and kind of analyze it and look at it and give it a shot. And so that's that's where I always loved about that. I mean, a couple of disagreements that came up, you know, for me, something that we talk about all the time, you know, with our business echelon front, when we're talking to talking to companies and leadership teams, going to the workup cycle. You know, we always talk about people want to hire folks and just kind of let them, let them run. and, you know, people won't say, hey, give them, give them the opportunity to go out and succeed. And a lot of bosses want to kind of, you know, just, hey, I'm really busy, hire someone with experience, put them in position.

You kept really, really tight rains on us. And initially, that was super frustrating to me. I mean, I remember being in our Mount training, military operators, urban terrain training, for folks that don't know what that means. We're in the mock cinderblock city, and we've talked about that on the podcast and talked about that often here for other folks at other podcasts. but that was, I wanted to plan these things. I'm the platoon commander and I want to be in charge. I remember you saying, hey, we should do this or let's plan it this way. And I remember wanting to kind of push back against that.

And oftentimes, but I recognize, like, as we're going along, you're actually training me and giving me the, the, giving me the opportunity, you've done a whole bunch of these operations that I hadn't done any of those operations previously. So you were teaching me and mentoring me. and once we got to the battlefield, you just unleashed us to get after it. And a couple of times I do remember some pushback where you came up and gave me some direction and, you know, where you said,

hey, why don't you try this or do that? And one of those times in particular was when I was, you know, when I was trying to get, I remember a number of times, and one of them out in our desert training facility out at what we call Land Warfare. And I'm trying to get the platoon to, to pull back to a position and we're trying to patrol out. And you gave me, you told me to actually,

you know, stop trying to put a bunch of detail information out of the radio. Like use verbal commands, do it this way. And I, you know, immediately my ego getting the way I was in a, it was frustrating because the team wasn't doing what I want them to do. That's like step number one in the frustration. So my team isn't doing what I wanted to do. So automatically my meter is kind of starting to get pegged in like, you know, the red, no one's listening to me.

So when Jocko comes up to give me some direction of like, hey, you ought to do this. My immediate pushback is like, no, I'm not going to do that. And I didn't say that, but I just, I was like, I kind of bristled a little bit. I remember kind of bristling that. And I was like, okay, let me think about it. What do we, you know, he hasn't told me wrong before. And I was like, let me give that a shot. He's like, okay, I'll do that.

Use verbal commands, get everybody moving. And you do that over and over and over again throughout multiple training scenarios. And then on the battlefield as well, where that's what built up trust. So when you did tell me to do something, I was like, I'm going to give it a shot. And it worked. Yeah. It worked like magic.

So just to expand on that a little bit, the verbal command thing is so you get guys that there's a bunch of people, you know, you got, you got a opportunity. We'll just take this case. You got a platoon to 16 guys. They're in various terrain features. One guy's in a little, in a little ravine. One guy's up on a little null. Another guy's behind a shrub. So there's a little bit of dispersion with your troops.

And you want to get them to do something. You want to get them to fall back or you want to get them to muster where you are. And maybe the shooting stopped or whatever. But you want to control all these people at the same time and so what you think is hey I'll just get on the radio and I'll tell everyone Hey everyone I'm back about a hundred meters back there's a little piece of terrain sticking out there's a rock by it I'm behind that rock and if you guys start peeling back here to the northwest at about zero nine zero degrees That's where you're flying me. Okay, so now what does that come across like on a transmission for a guy that's shooting a machine gun? He hears like

Come back That's what he hears He doesn't hear anything And so and you've given this long complex Direction And what you really need is Hey everyone Fall back here now

That's what that's what they need to hear And so then you do it And you realize that now We have a thing in the SEAL teams Where you pass the command And so when you hear a loud verbal command Everyone passes it Now everyone heard it

And now everyone comes back to your position But this is the essence Of the book Extreme Ownership This is really the essence of simple like it's simple clear communications and that's one of those things that Once you learn it you're like yeah If I if my people if my team isn't doing what I want them to do not that they don't want to they don't even know what do you want to do Because you're giving it in such a complex way I said I gave that council

Hundreds of times once I was running the training on the West Coast I gave that council a hundred times like hey man just tell everyone a Simple command right now to get him do something so that holds true and I'll tell you another situation I'll tell you another situation where you you kind of disagreed with me and we we were working with the company I'm not going to mention the company's name We were working with a company and there was a scene of a Like a mid-level but a somewhat senior leader and You didn't like him and the reason you didn't like him because he wasn't really that confident he he had messed some things up And his whole his division was suffering a little bit and You were you were kind of like hey jaco we should talk about

getting this guy fired. Well, it wasn't that he was, it just wasn't that he was competent, his division was suffering. Like, they were like, hey, what's the, this guy is dragging us down. This is a major issue.

And, and I was, we were getting massive negative feedback that was impact on the team, particularly from a guy who was supposed to be, uh, the knowledgeable guy that was able to,

to groom and mentor the, the junior leaders, you know, underneath him. Uh, and, you know, I thought,

man, why should they keep this guy? This is he's actually dragging the team down. And you said, well, strategically, it, if they get rid of this guy, it's going to, it's going to actually have some impact of the strategic mission they're trying to do. The senior leaders were going to, you know, maybe question what was going on there if you remove a key leader from them. So strategically at that point in the company, that individual who was, you know, again, we'll just say incompetent and also unliked, he had really, really good political. and relationship connections with the, we'll say a parent company,

but the people that controlled the funding. And so we could get rid of this guy, but all of a sudden, all these people that were funding this company, there was gonna be problems. And I was like, hey, if we get rid of that guy, we're gonna cut a lot of relationship cords. So, let's try and find a way to mitigate as much we can.

And we disagreed upon it, but basically, you know, you fundamentally got the other leader in that division to figure out how to work with the guy and got him trained up. And then that guy took enough control that they mitigated the non-performer kind of out of the picture. And it worked out well. And I think the lesson there is that, you know, like I mentioned earlier, you can win the tactical battle and lose this strategic war. And you certainly don't want to do that. I think you've got to recognize it when you're, whether it's terminating someone or making decisions. I think that's where we had you know you had that strategic picture in mind and I was focused a little more on the tactical side

So you got to you got to keep you can make the right tactical call and can have some real strategic consequences You know the cascade and cause you a lot more problems I think though that the my true answer to this question on our most fundamental Disagreement came on Patches and That was Jock was understood as seals that we needed to be squirted away We wanted to be stormtroopers in T.U. Bruiser. That's what we wanted to we wanted to all look the same. We wanted to have you know square away haircuts, square away uniforms, everybody in the same same gear. That's hard for seals because Seals often want to just kind of wear a you know mix and match of uniforms and kind of whatever gear they want to look cool straight up long hair, beard, all those things. You recognize we needed to when you do that and and

guys can get out of control. We have all these patches made that are you know that are like look at these cool guy. I got patches all over me and and and And that's seals are some of the best you know the biggest offenders of that so jocco was like no patches Yeah and just to expand on this a little bit more but the strategically from the army from the Marine Corps the army in the Marine Corps when they look at someone that's not in a square to you squared away uniform they think to them they think to themselves hey if this guy can't even wear a square to way How can he operate out in the battlefield and that that's what what they think and good for them because it's a true statement if you've got someone that can't mind some some details and look squared away Then how can how can I expect them to do their job well now in the SEAL teams and really in all soft communities, there's some absolute laxity when it comes to uniform requirements.

That's why you see pictures of guys doing this, you know, dressing out a uniform and mixing a match in uniforms. It's the way it is. And you know what? In my, in my deepest knowledge, I know that you can have, and this is a classic military quote is, you know, an inspection ready platoon has never passed combat and a combat ready platoon has never passed inspection.

It's a commonly known thing that I understand and I get. And but especially we're new in the battle space. We're just showing up here. We got, you know, Marines and Army soldiers and senior leadership that we're going to be working for. And I say, okay, we're going to make a good, this is a base, fundamentally, we're going to make a good first impression. We're going to look squared away, which means we're going to, you know, have squared away haircuts. We're going to blouse our boots and we're going to wear a normal looking uniform, which means we

don't have crazy looking patches that that make us look different, right? Because that's the thing that you're saying. The thing that you're saying is, look at me. That's what you're saying. Look at me. I'm cool. That's what a patch is. It's, hey, look at me.

I'm special. And obviously, I don't like that attitude. And so here we go back to the patches. So we, I mean, when you told me, we were on board with everything on the same page. And we saw an eye on so many things. It's certainly me and the Delta Battalion Commander with you, absolutely. And, but that was, I don't know why, but for one reason, we got together and I was like, we designed our own patches. When you say we, you mean you and the Delta Battalion Commander, we, me and the Delta Battalion Commander, we, we're going to design some batches for Tasking and a bruiser.

And I don't know, I don't know why if we just had an idea that this was going to be a historic unit. This was going to be something we wanted to be a part of, but we felt like we needed Tasking a patched. And I felt like you secretly wanted us to have them, even though you told us. not to do it. So I was like, we designed these patches. One of them, I used the Lord Humongous from the Road Warrior for one, and the other one we had a, we had a big cow skull, and it was, so we had these two patches. We went out, we had them made. So we, I secretly had them shift. I secretly had them distributed to, to both platoons, and we keep them in our shoulder patch pocket. And we'd be, so we'd be in a convoy, ready to roll out. Jock will come out, see everybody off,

shake hands with everybody and we'd be launched on the operation and we'd come up over the radio my leading pet after come up with the radio and be like patches on everyone went pull the patches out slap the patches on and then we although we got busted when there was an embedded reporter with there was an embedded reporter um with one of the units we were working with and there were some photos of patches so we got busted although you didn't you didn't come down on me hard like that you just well i just because you mentioned that we had this conversation on text the other I'm actually I just pulled up my phone to read this text back and forth. We were just talking about you were basically saying, hey, you know, you let's not forget

you didn't want us to wear patches. And then I wrote back to you, hey, don't forget that while I was outwardly disapproving inside, I was smiling, knowing that a little rebelliousness is important, is important for leaders to possess and that a spree decor trumps compliance and uniformity. Oh, that's an actual text conversation. We were having that's kind of jacked up, isn't it? But my point is like you know, obviously it meant something to you and it was bringing the team together It's like when you go through boot camp and the drill instructors will let you get away with something because they know it's unifying the team and that's what it was for me

I was like. I was like, okay and also how much leadership capital am I going to expend? Because even though I just made it sound like it was a big deal with that And also we had earned a good reputation. It wasn't a first impression anymore. It was like the impression had been made and the impression was solid and so now it's like oh, Yeah, these guys are these guys. Oh yeah, they're actually a unit identifying patch. So we actually, and we gave that patch to the brigade commander. Yeah, we departed, which was awesome. And I'm very proud to say that, uh, there's not a whole lot up on the wall in the jaco

gym, but, uh, in the garage there. But, uh, but there is a TU bruiser patch. There is indeed. With Lord Humongous represents. There's a seven echo from my, for my echo platoon at team seven. And there's a seal team one patch. I mean, a sticker. That's my, that's my, uh, wall of it.

glory stapled to the wall awesome all right next question since that's one question we're 20 minutes deep you got to like that all right next question can you discuss the evolution of echelon front was the company ready for the explosive popularity of extreme ownership what kinds of challenges have you faced we face all kinds of challenges and the same challenges that that any business faces certainly and you know for for us it's been learned to the fire hosts. It's been an awesome experience. I mean, I think just like any, just like our combat experience, we would adapt to the battlefield. We learned. We educated ourselves about things that we

didn't know about and, and we've grown. I mean, I don't think anyone could, I don't know if we could have predicted just how, you know, widely disseminated the book would be or, or, you know, the popular of the things that we're talking about. We knew they were powerful. It's the whole reason we wrote the book because there was a massive demand signal for it. And, and I think, you know, as we work with companies now through our company, Eschleon Front. I mean, there's just, we're able to go and, and deliver some impact to these teams in a way that other people aren't able to do. Because most of the folks in that space are, it's a feel good thing.

You're out there to talk about, hey, you guys, you're great, and let's harness your inner potential and all this kind of stuff. And I laugh when people call us motivational speakers, because I say, look, motivational speakers tell you how good you are, and we're here to tell you how much you know. suck and you got to get better if you want to win so um that's what we do and i think it's the same same way that that that broadly honest assessment of yourself your team the same thing that makes you know seal unit successful in the battlefield and other military units is the same thing that we're

doing now with our company certainly you know all the challenges of of bookkeeping and and and uh you know the building processes and and and paying taxes and i mean just the you know regulatory environment those things that make it hard for any business launching but just like on the battlefield where we could either bitch about the paperwork or we can figure out a way to most efficiently get it done so that we could actually go accomplish the mission, which you instilled in us like, hey, I can

complain about it all day or I can figure out a way to get this done and make it happen because that's what it requires to do and that's what we've done with our business. And it's been awesome. And frankly, what I love is working with leaders and so many of the folks that contact us that want to work with us, they're already doing well and they want to do even better.

And it's just so much fun to work with folks who want to just constantly grow and learn, and we grow and learn all the time from them. Yeah. Yeah. I think you hit it all. Next question. In battle, having the high ground is crucial.

How do you see this principle applied to the business world? And I've answered this question before with the statement, take the high ground to the high ground will take you. So business world. Okay, well, tactically, what do you think? think why do you the high ground well I think that's that's the real question right the why is the high ground important and obviously you know out of thousands of years of military history the high ground's always important by the way I did have a I did have a training instructor

a few years ago my my seal team days who we had he said look at your high speed altimeter watch and and you get get down behind something so he was basically telling us like if that thing's going up you're wrong that should things should be going to down, he was telling us to take the low ground, which was, uh, which was kind of laughable. So, out, out doing thousands of years of, of military history, always take the low ground. No, don't do that. You want to take the high ground. The reason is because tactically, if you're on the high ground, you, you have got a better shooting position. You can shoot down on people who can't hide very well because you, you, you're above them, which is why it was awesome for us to be in, in

buildings. And if we could get a three or four story building in this, you know, in the city of Vermont, the urban environment, it was awesome. It's no different in the business environment. And what you have to do is just identify the key terrain. What is the key terrain? The high ground is key terrain. So it doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you're going to go climb to the mountain top because that's where you want to be.

But if that ridge line that's on the high ground gives you, you know, tactical advantage on the battlefield, it's the same thing in a business world. If you're a retailer, you know, where's that key terrain? Where's the intersection that you want to be that's going to give your business the best you know, the best chance to succeed. If you're, you know, any space, I mean, there's, there's key terrain that you can identify where you want to be a part of. If it's, if you're a private equity company, you're trying to get, break into some new,

you know, some new technology or a new, new particular industry, that's, that's key terrain. You need to be focused on that and identifying that is critical, why it's important. And everyone's going to be going to be going to be vying for that. And you want to be aggressive. You want to maneuver, because if you get there first, you're going to be a lot better. position. It's flank or be flanked. We always say, you know, you're a maneuver on the enemy or they're going to maneuver on you. So what you don't want to do is wait for somebody else to get in a better position. And then you actually have to fight your way out of that. It's not good. Like in jujitsu,

you don't want to wait to someone's going to mount you. That's not a good place to be or take your back, right? You want to try to prevent that before you can get there. And if you can do that to them first, then you're in a much better position. I think it's no different in the business world. I was working with a company the other day. And basically what they were saying was that their competitor was lying about them to to as they're trying to to close accounts their their their competitor would go in the field and say oh yeah this this this company are this to this company they don't do it right and they don't have these accounts and they're they're going out of business and everything's

bad so there's there's their competitors were out there lying about them and you know the sales leader said you know I don't I don't want to stoop to their level you know and and start throwing lies out there about them or making accusations I think that's you know I said Well, no, you don't want to take the low ground. You want to take the high ground. And he said, well, yeah, but at the same time, what are we supposed to do? And I said, well, you actually have the most powerful weapon in this fight. The weapon that you have is the truth. You have the truth. But you're not getting the truth out there. I said, what do you do? When you do close the account? What do you do? How do you publicize it? And he's the cool. We really don't. And I said, well, do you do a press release when you close a big account? No, we don't do that. Do you advertise it anyway? No, we don't do that. I said, so the most powerful weapon you have is the truth. And you're not, you to like, you to You need to have a propaganda arm at this company that's going to go out there and explain that all the wins and what the truth really is and that will be more powerful and then you can maintain the high ground and by the way when those other companies are out there lying about you and then people find out it makes them look even worse So they they've broken their trust with with the potential client so yeah always take the high ground always take that ground it might not win you the short-term battle and business right you know you see you see companies you know like a I can sell you this thing

right now I can I can paint repaint this thing put a fresh coat of paint on it and sell it to you that's not the high ground right that's the low ground because it's gonna it's gonna fail you because on what's underneath the hood is crap so that might win me you know that one sale but what's gonna happen in the long road taking the low ground you're gonna you're gonna put on yelp that you got a crappy deal and I did you know I repainted something and sold it to you and it wasn't worth it And now that reputation is going to spread and it's not going to help you. If you take the high ground, hey, here's what's going on with this vehicle or whatever you're selling.

Take the high ground. The cool thing about that is we see so many leaders and some of the most successful people we do that recognize how important that is to build relationships. And they're willing to lose a sale or lose to send someone to a competitor just to make sure that person gets exactly what they need. And they're building a relationship. So that means more business gets sent to them as a result. It's what you started talking about. It's a strategic win as opposed to a tactical wind. And that's what you've got to be focused on.

And that's really as a leader. That's what you've got to be looking at. You got to be looking at your front line people and making sure that they're not just out there trying to win every little tactical battle, but they're going backwards strategically. So keep that in mind. That's why you have to detach. That's why you have to stay out of the weeds. And when you get in the weed, you've got to step back out of them.

Because otherwise you lose track of that and you're going to end up in the low ground before you even recognize it. All right, next question. How do you control rumors and gossip within an organization? That's pretty easy. You just talked about being, you know, getting out there with the truth and you're propaganda armed outside your company. It's no different inside your company.

You've got to make sure that people, it's interesting that when you work, we work with leaders sometimes. You see people that I, well, I don't want to share this with my people, you know, because I don't know what they might think. Like, they're thinking something that may be totally not true. They're not just sitting there not thinking anything because you're not sharing it with them. They're coming up to their own conclusions, which may be completely false or opposite. But like we say in the Navy all the time, you know, perception is reality.

That becomes reality. So you've got to, you can defeat the gossip and rumors by actually just sharing the truth, be open with people and being first out there with a message so people get it and understand it. And even when horrible, bad things go wrong. Extreme ownership, right? If you take ownership for that and say, hey, listen, this happened, here's what we're doing to fix it. Here's what we're doing to turn things around. It's going to be people, people are not going to lose respect for you in the organization. They're actually going to gain respect for you as a result, something we talk about all the time.

So don't be afraid to do that. Again, just get the message out there and be transparent and talk to folks. If you don't tell people what's going on, they're going to make up their own ideas of what's going on. And the thing that I have to I have to We have to we have to take this Just a little bit further right Just a little bit further

Because we talk about transparency right And that word gets thrown around all the time And Of the idea that you're just gonna The idea that you're just gonna tell everyone Exactly what's going on And that sounds great And it's like hey I'm a fully transparent leader

And I'm gonna tell everyone's going on But there's times where you actually Don't want to do that There's times where You have to maneuver and you have to be tactful and some of the things that you might tell someone Actually is not the right thing to do now I'm I'm not saying we're we're gonna be dishonest with our people I'm not saying that and I'm saying that transparency is great thing but I mean just on a personal level If Laif's Lief's uh working for me and he's not doing he's doing something horrible

Is the best way to go about that to fully true full transparency is hey Leif you're doing horrible at this Is that the best way to do it? In front of the entire team, right? It's full transparency, right? Hey, I'm fully transparent. Okay, everyone, welcome to the meeting today. By the way, I just wanted to point out that Laifte missed his numbers again, and he's a loser. That might be what I'm thinking.

That's fully transparent. Hey, guys, just be it. And you love this too, right? Just being transparent. Laf's a loser. He missed his numbers again. And you know what? I'm actually thinking about firing him, just in case anyone was wondering.

So that's for transparency. I'm probably going to wait to close the business Friday. Did I do a good job? Right? So let's not get carried away, right? You know, what is the smart way? The smart way is to maneuver. The smart way is to say, okay,

Leif's not doing what he wants, what he should be doing. If I go and accuse him of failing, what's his reaction going to be? How is it? So what do I do instead? Instead I go, I want to take ownership of it. And so instead I say, hey, Leif, you know, hey,

comes in my office. I want to talk to you about a couple things. So he comes to my office, so I'm not in a public place. And now it's, hey, Leif, Hey man, I noticed that you, you know, you missed your numbers, and I'm thinking that maybe I'm not giving you the kind of support that you need to get where you need to be. Is there anything else that you need from me so that you can win? Again, inside, sure, I'm thinking, Laif, you pathetic loser, you missed your numbers again, right?

But I'm not going to do that. So the full transparency thing, I get it. And it makes sense. but we do have to consider the tertiary and the secondary and tertiary effects of the things that we say, especially as a leader. What you say has a lot of impact as a leader. And sometimes I see leaders, they make a little off-the-cuff remark about something. You know, oh, that won't matter. Oh, okay, so it doesn't matter.

So this little thing, you know, hey, hey, boss, we wanted to get this task done by this date. Is it still important? Ah, it doesn't matter. Oh, okay, so it doesn't matter. So what I was working on for last month and a half doesn't matter. Okay, cool. I was fully transparent. So just be careful.

Use tact. Use your brain. Yeah, that's 100% correct. I think, you know, what I was trying to explain in the first situation is, I mean, I was having a conversation with a leader that we work with who was, you know, telling me that there was a key leader in his team that didn't want to share with any of his key leaders that they, you know, they, they didn't want to share with the key leaders that they were, they were having some issues. having some dire straits, getting to a point where they're wondering, hey, I don't know if we're going to make payroll. You know, a few months from now,

if we don't turn these things around, but I don't want to share that with them because I don't want them to panic. And when I heard that, I was like, what kind of panic are they going to have when they find out that they can't make payroll, but no one told them about it and they thought everything was great.

So the panic is going to be 100 times worse. And that's the kind of transparency I'm talking about where you're like, listen, you need to go and have a direct conversation and say, guys, here's where we're at. And that should be something to help get them in gear. To be like, listen, we've got to, we've got to hit these numbers. We've got to get things going again. We've got to turn performance around or this is where we're going to be next quarter if we don't do that.

And I think those, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about where you're not keeping the secrets is not helping you out. Because by the way, everyone knows the numbers, right? So they know, they already probably know you're in dire straits. And they're thinking, well, I better find a backup job and they're going to leave. And now you're an even worse rate. So yeah, absolutely. You don't need to hide information from the team. All right.

You know what? We actually have like a few questions on the muster that people asked. One of them was, one of them was, why should I come to the muster? What do you think? Why should you come to the muster? By the way, the muster, in case you don't know, the muster is a leadership. Event is it seminar gathering gathering. Oh, okay I like it again. I go with that leaders So the muster is a a leadership gathering where we get together and we talk about leadership and we have them twice a well this one we're having twice here

But anyways why should someone come to the muster? What do you think? What I love about the muster is Well, you have to understand that we talk to hundreds of, we've actually worked with, we talked to thousands of leaders over the last six years that we've had this company, Eschelon Front, worked with hundreds of companies and about every industry you can imagine. And we speak at a lot of leadership conferences. We speak at them all the time. And there is nothing like the muster. There just isn't anything out there like the muster. Nothing even comes close. And the reason I love it, I mean, I just get super excited to be there and be a part of that stuff. And I even use words like magical. to describe it on previous podcasts, which I took some heavies for. Took a lot of heavies for out there. It was pretty magical, I guess. There were some pretty good, like, Disney.

Disney memes going there. That was pretty good. But the reason the muster is so amazing is, it's just different from anything else that we do. And when I think about what really makes the muster different, it's the people that are there. It's the content that we're talking about, and it's the impact that it has.

And, you know, so who comes to the muster? The reason that's so awesome is that there are leaders from all over the place. And these leaders are hell-bent on dominating their universe. I mean, these are people that are there. They're in the game. And they're from every type of business,

every type of industry. I mean, we have entrepreneurs, we have senior executives from major companies. We have mid-level managers. We have frontline leaders, and we have people who really aren't even in a leadership position,

maybe with no direct reports, but are aspiring to be that way and grow and learn. We get police and firefighters and other law enforcement. enforcement officers, members of the military, I mean, they're serving out there on our front lines of the home front and abroad. And these are the most committed people I've ever met. You know, it's, it's one way to quantify this or when we're at the muster, the like the hotel staff will, will come up and they'll be like, oh my God, this is crazy.

Because for instance, the doors to open to actually get in the morning of the muster, they open at 8 o'clock, right? or I guess 715 or 745 because it starts at 8 745 the doors open up and most I mean like you said we go to these conferences all the time everyone's listening to been to some kind of conference and it's you know people are meandering around and they're coming in late they don't really care at the muster it's like the doors open at 745 everyone's out in the hallway and we're out in the hallway hanging out with everyone at you know 7 o'clock and that's after we do a 445 PT in the morning we do because we do a little get some And that's another thing.

Like the hotel people, we're clearing it with the hotel. We're just letting them know, like, hey, there's going to be a large gathering of people in front of the hotel in the morning. And they're like, well, what time? And we're like, oh, 445. And they say, well, like, how many people? And we're like, well, there's 450 people here. So there's going to be about 450 people here.

And sure enough, there it is. And that's what the whole muster's like. Oh, we say, hey, we're going to restart in 10 minutes. And everyone goes out and they come back in in 10 minutes. Everyone's seated ready to rock and roll. So that's the, and that's, it's funny. to hear that from an outside perspective because we're in it but the hotel people always make comments about they say hey we've we've we never you know Kyle say hey I've been I've been

running conferences here for 22 years I've never seen a group of people like this so that that to me shows you what kind of people show up at the muster when the and when the doors open it's just bum rush in there to everyone wants to be in that front row you know and engage and they can and not just so they can uh you know so they can actually ask questions so they can actually engage with us. And that's what I love about those folks. I mean, they just, they're not there to feel good about themselves, right? They're there to take a hard look in the mirror and learn and grow and get better and so they can better and be more effective leaders so they can lead and win in their teams, whatever they happen to be doing. Now, so you just kind of talked about the other question

was who comes to the muster and it's really every different type of leader. The, another question that we got about the muster is what do we talk about at the muster? For what that's the other piece that I really like about is is content right it's it's content that That that we talk about and of course I love telling war stories as you all know from listening this podcast We like talking about war stories we like talking about our time in the teams and And even when you just you put that photo up there of You know of us and Ramadi from back of the day and you know just it just brings back great memories I mean those will always be

Some of the absolute best times of my life certainly some of the worst times in my life as well. But mostly some of the absolute best times of my life. And so we get to talk about that, but not just in a way that's a cool story, but it has impact. And I think taking the combat leadership lessons that we talk about from extreme ownership and applying them directly to people's lives and what they do and how to overcome their challenges, that's what it's about. It's super engaging.

And for us, you know, for me and jogging, this isn't a, this isn't a very important. This isn't a the standard leadership conference where there's like 40 different speakers and the the main folks kind of get up there and spend a few hours. I mean, we're there the whole time and we're there to engage with leaders. It's me, it's Jocko, it's Dave Burke, it's JPM, it's JPM, from our Escalonnell from our Escalon front team. We're there. We're the guys on stage. And even during the breaks, we're talking to leaders that are coming up and asking questions. We're engaging with them in Q&A.

No green room, by the way. There isn't a green room. There isn't some place we're hiding behind the curtain. There isn't somewhere in the back where Leif is. getting cucumbers put on his eyes take a load off sir sipping uh sipping my jaco white tea pinkie up look and that's the you know these these folks are there to get their questions answered and to ask hard questions the the thing that you really we really get granular on a lot and that's that's what it is you're taking like you understand the principles it's like it's like

learning a jihitsu move from one person and They teach you a fundamental basic move and you're like okay, I understand that and then Compared to okay now you're gonna get a private lesson like that's like in a class, right? You hey, this is the arm lock Then you get a private lesson with someone that goes in and adapts the technique to your body style to the Opponents that you're facing the adjustments that you need to make that's the kind of granularity we get because the The more you see these different angles and the other great thing is because with all these different people that you got there and we do group exercises where now you're sitting down And we purposely don't want people to sit with with industries that they already work with so in one group

You'll get a CEO you'll get a firefighter you'll get a Startup business owner you'll get a mid-level manager and you'll get it some you know Regular corporate EVP and they'll all be sitting at the same table and We'll give them a problem. We'll give them a task and they'll come up with a solution and they'll relate it to how it affects their lives and their business and when you see stuff from different angles like that and And you're all applying we're all speaking the same language because everyone there's obviously read the book everyone understands the everyone understands Fundamentally what the principles are but now we're getting to see how they impact people's businesses and lives and leadership roles From all these different perspectives and it just makes you that much better That's why during these exercises

Like I'll also come to float around to these different tables and listen But the first table I'll get to I'll be like oh man these guys are you're I'm sitting there learning because you got like I said You got a firefighter that's explaining to a CEO what you do in a situation where your team has decided that they're not going to follow this procedure anymore. And they have good reason why they don't want to. Like it's one thing when your team doesn't follow the procedure and you say, hey, you've got to follow this procedure.

And they say, well, why? And you say you explain it to them. And they go, oh, okay, that makes sense. But what about when you tell them to follow the procedure and they have a reason that actually makes sense? Then what are you going to do? Well, that's what you learn at the muster. That's where you make the progress.

So that's good. One last question that we got about the muster is what kind of impact do you see from people that have been to the muster? The impact is obvious in that the number of people who are there that are talking about how they just got promoted, you know, or they just got put in this position of greater responsibility and authority on their teams. Are they been recognized for their exceptional performance? Or the folks who've come back from that and we hear about it on social media or reach out to us via email or come back to a muster and talk about that from what they, you know, what had happened to them previously. The number of leaders who come and see what we're doing and bring their teams. You know, that's what's pretty awesome. I mean, that to me, when a CEO from a company comes, checks out what we're doing and brings 25 of his team members back to be a part of that because he recognizes the impact that can have to his.

to his team and will have. And it's just, it's awesome to see that. I mean, these are the most, again, the most committed people you could ever be around.

And they just, they leave there with the knowledge to directly apply things to solve problems. And they learn from us. They learn from each other, just as you said. And part of that, too,

I think is a recognition that these kinds of problems that I'm having are not unique to me. They're not unique to the market that I'm in. They're not unique to my industry, but they're leadership problems. And they apply everywhere. And I'm,

trying to get a diverse group of people to focus their efforts to, and mutually support one another, accomplish a mission just like everybody else in every other industry in the business world. As a first responder, the military, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing and these same techniques apply everywhere. And it's just, that's why it's awesome. I love the muster and I can't wait. I can't wait to meet those folks. And that's why so many people come back again and again and again.

And it's just an awesome event. It's the best thing that we're a part of. And frankly, if you don't want to have that good look in the mirror, that hard look in the mirror at yourself and answer some tough questions about where you can do better, you probably shouldn't come because it's not for you. It's for people who are eager to destroy their competition and dominate the universe. And that starts with looking at themselves and taking ownership and solving problems so they can win. Yeah. It's interesting because if you think about it, I was talking about this. Yesterday like every problem that you have in an organization is going to be solved by leadership

That's it that's it. That's what it's going to get solved by every problem that is in an organization Is going to be solved by leadership. I don't care if it's because you're missing numbers I don't care if you got bad process I don't care if you got wrong people in the wrong positions All those problems are all about leadership because if you've got a bad process there's a leader that's allowing that process to be in place If you've got bad people then there's a leader that's not Either training those people or getting rid of those people and if you're P&N is upside down there's a leader that is not paying attention to the numbers so all these problems are going to be leadership problems so if you want to improve your business well then what

you need to do is improve your leadership now I will say this as well I just got to make like a little caveat here because you just talked about the value of it if you're out there in the world and you can't afford to come to the muster which I understand the muster is expensive it costs us a lot to put together I had somebody hit me up like hey it sounds like you care but more about making money I was like no no we we definitely want to make money That's what that's what we we are business and we need to make money and we need to pay our team and so yeah We are we're gonna make money and the muster is expensive it costs a lot of money if you can't afford to come to the muster Don't come to the muster if you can't don't go out and borrow money to come to the muster

No, you you you're not you know don't skip a mortgage payment so you can come to the muster That's not a good idea What you do is you implement some financial discipline you start saving money you put it together and you can come to the next muster By the way if you You can't afford to muster, you can get a book called Extreme Ownership. It costs 1697 on Amazon. That's fine. This podcast is free.

There's 400-something hours of us talking about this kind of thing. So you can do that. Like I said, if you can come to the muster, that's when you're going to get basically a private jujitsu lesson. You're going to learn really granular things. You're going to get the interaction face-to-face. You're going to get to ask the specific questions about your world, and you're going to interact with people that are on the same path as you.

That's awesome. If you can come, come. We'll see you at the muster. That no green room thing. Mm-hmm. And we've talked about that before. But that's a big deal. That's a bigger deal than it might seem.

Because you know how like how you said, like, okay, you have a Q&A part or, you know, like you have a specific question. Like, hey, that was cool what you just said. But what about that? You know, like some people have questions. So during the break, when most times like at these conventions or whatever they got, you know, the people, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, say they're what they have to say and then they'll go and they'll disappear straight up disappear they're going to get cucumbers on their eyes yeah whatever grapes whatever and um but here it's like people like hey that question that i had now i can go run and go go grab laif or joc or whatever and

ask it like personally yeah it's what we have when during the break layf and i were on stage yeah with the break we say okay take a break come back in 12 minutes we step down off the stage and we stand right there and people just come and ask us more questions and we continue talking and And sometimes somebody asked such a good question. We're like, bring it back and we'll go back on stage and say, hey, someone just asks this question. Here's the question. It's a great question. It's a problem.

Yeah, the whole time. The whole time. Yeah. Even the kind of in the, and this would happen to me a lot for some reason. They think I know, well, I guess I kind of know a little bit. They come and ask you the leadership questions. Like in the hallway. Like in the hallway, you know.

And he's like, by the best thing to do in that situation is you want to just kind of cruise a little bit. Yeah. I was going to say that's one of the other primaries to come to the musters. Echo Charles is going to be there. And one of these days, we're going to get you on stage for a keynote presentation. Sure. And it's going to be awesome. Yeah.

You're going to be right in your comfort zone. Getting flanked. All right. Moving on. That was the three questions about the muster, but they got asked. So here, knowing what you know about war and the teams, if you could go back in time, what would you have done differently? Man, I wish I could go back in time.

Dave Burke and I were doing an event. earlier this week and he was he he he said you know I'm glad I'm not Ramadi I know Leif probably wished he was in Ramadi 100% I would go there right now let's go and look it's

what I would do differently is the recognition that we were super aggressive we took a lot of risk what I would do differently is I would actually be even more aggressive I would be a hundred times more aggressive I would be putting up you know, a concept of operations brief for your approval to send up the chain to swim across

the river and hit targets and, you know, put in some cyber overwatches and just completely ruin the bad guys program going on in South Central Miami when they had a complete freedom movement before they had any expectation that we could be there before anybody could get to us. And I think they would never see it coming, which means that we would have more impact and it would actually be safer for us because they wouldn't be expecting it. So they would probably hammer us, but we recognize that we could get away with a lot more than we could. And looking back on it, I just, when you come into an area and they're like, hey, don't go in there.

You're all going to get killed. You want to be cautious. You don't want to just jump into things. You want to mitigate risk you can control, certainly. But we recognize we could get away with a lot more than we thought we could. And more often than not bring guys home. And of course, that's the one thing I would change, obviously, if I could change. If I would trade places with Mark Lee and Ryan Job in my platoon in a second,

I'd trade places with Mike Monsour and Delftoon in a second. And I wish I could do that. And I can't. But that is what I would change. But I certainly would, if we could go back there again, we would be even more aggressive and we'd have even more impact. There's a term that they used to say in the teams. I don't know if you ever heard it.

You probably did when we'd be doing special reconnaissance training. And guys would say trust your camouflage. Did you ever hear that expression? You may not have. I don't believe so. So what it was was when you got good at putting your camouflage together, you could really get aggressive in getting up and observing a target. Because if you trust your cammy paint, your gilly suit, and putting yourself together well, the enemy's not going to be able to see you. But it's really weird to be, you know, 40 meters from a target that you're looking at.

And there's a guy walking around and you feel completely naked like they can see, but they can't see you at all. They can't see you at all. And so it takes some time to learn to trust your camouflage. And I think, you know, obviously hindsight is 2020. And when you look back at your body, like, you look back and you think yourself, we could have done this. We could have done that. We could have gotten closer to that target. We could have done more things because our hindsight is 2020.

And also we learned over time to trust our camouflage. And the longer we were there, the more aggressive, you know, operations took place. But yeah, that's, hindsight's 2020, isn't it? That it is. Okay. Advice on restarting your life after the military. I think you just got to figure out what you want to do.

Yeah. You got to figure out what you want to do. I have a new mantra that I tell people now. It's, find your next mission. And that's what you got to do. And I got really lucky because we got right into this. And you're the same thing. Like we went right into a new mission.

And so any time to kind of Wander around and look around and figure out which direction to go and by the way When you're wandering around and looking around to find out which direction to go You're going to get pulled in a direction and that direction is probably going to be the path of least resistance It's not going to be a good path We certainly know it's not going to be the path So when you come out when you get out of the military Man have a mission figure out what your next mission is going to be

But I would disagree with there in that it wasn't that we got lucky right in that and that if you think about what we're doing now This is what we like to do And this is what we brought lessons back from Mardi that we translated and gave to the next generation of SEALs and saw the impact that was happening. I mean, when you came back from MAD, you could have had any job that you wanted to, and you said, I want to go run training detachment

because I want to make sure that the next seals that are coming through this training and going forward to places like a Rack-Afghanistan are ready. You chose to do that, and I was running a training program. I didn't want to be anywhere else in that. It was awesome, and I recognized how powerful that was, and the kind of reward it brought to me to see these young officers go out there that I put through training and succeed on incredibly difficult, dangerous battlefields in different areas that I'd been to. So, you know, we took that and recognized, like, this is something that is useful.

It has impact and that we can do for others. So I think that's, it was absolutely not the path of least resistance. And I got, you know, we had job offers that people thought, people thought I was. Completely crazy a buddy mine. I was like come work for me. We'll pay you know this huge salary that was you know triple what my Navy salary was And I said I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna start my own business I mean he looked at me like I was nuts Yeah, we were talking about yesterday because we weren't making a lot of money at the beginning of that Shalon front now were we yeah Yeah, we were we we had to put together we were writing checks and paying for things and

Traveling on our own dime to to go and talk to companies and for free for free or for almost nothing yeah and I think that's and that's really it is it's finding your mission like this is what I can do and this is this is what I like to do and and I'm gonna figure out a way to do something that is useful it impacts people and I think that's that's really key is finding that next mission for sure next question I like this question this this question made me think that whoever wrote this question has a good feel for like kind of the whole thing here so the question was is this question to Laif, what's Jocko's

most impactful strategy on you when he says Leif gets real fired up? Definitely someone who's been listening to a lot of podcasts. Or maybe he's coming to the buster. I heard us speaker talk before because Jocko talks about

angry Laos. Angry Laif. I can get angry. That's like hot head, right? Basically. Be a little bit of a hot head. I can definitely be a hot head. You can be a lot of bit of a hot head sometimes. I can't. And usually, I mean, I I'd like to think that it takes me I don't immediately spin up on things

but once I get spun up I get really spun up and I don't know if you disagree with it. No no I agree I was going to ask you is how's having two kids For sure That that teaches you some temper control Big time, big time and it and particularly

When there's there's timelines that you're trying to meet and we're trying to run a business Kids don't have a timeline They don't know They don't know They just do Oh the timeline is now I want some crayons

now. And what I've loved is I love spending time with my son and my daughter and they're awesome kids. In particular, my son now, he's three, he's old enough to kind of, you know, he's in the game. Yeah, we'll go somewhere and do something fun or we're hanging out and it doesn't matter if that's five minutes long or five hours long. Like when it's time to leave, it's level 19 meltdown every time, right? And I'm waiting for the time and he's like, dad, thank you for the time. This is really fun. It doesn't happen. So yeah, that actually instills in you some patience. Some patience, but it's the, we always talk about red flags, and that's something that I learned from you,

and that I know you were looking at for me to see like, oh, some red flags are going off. Red flags are those things that, as you talk about often, you recognize in yourself, like, okay, I'm getting spun up right now. I need to take a step back here and throttle back. I knew throttle back here because I'm getting spun up. So with kids, I got to look at it as, you know what, is good because I know that something that it's in my nature that I can get spun up so with kids

I got to relish that opportunity to say this is a training opportunity for me to be outside my comfort zone to say oh you know what I feel myself getting spun up I'm going to practice detaching and spinning down and not not reacting in a way that I might otherwise would have and I think it's a great it's a great tool there really for me I think what the when jaco would sense that in me and we've talked about a number of times when that's happened here on the podcast that that I was getting spun up. You know, we talked about,

you know, previous, uh, in previous podcast about cancel the op and some of these things where I, you know, I just, uh, I would,

I would get fired at life. And get angry. And you, what most people would have done in that situation, what I probably would have done to a subordinate leader is get is, is, is get spun up as well. And like you yell at me now I'm going to yell at you,

but a little bit louder. Exactly. And how we're going to ramp up and it becomes like the battle of wills. And, and how you handle that, you handle that acceptually well. with me was generally you would what you would never get spun up you would just be very calm in your response and you would ask questions or in some cases you would just start

chuckling like like laughing about it like hey man you get spot and not not in a way that was condescending you're like look at you you idiot yeah it was in a way of like you don't want to laugh at people when they're getting mad yeah it was in a way like hey man take it easy and then you start laughing about it was and then it just that was something that was but would you ask questions in a way that were hey well why why do you think that's or those things that was powerful as well to me that wasn't it wasn't like hey well why are you doing this or why won't you listen to me and it was that always allowed me to kind of take a step back and recognize okay so so I

think you you got to make sure you see a red flag and somebody else they're getting spun up and they're really emotional you need to be unemotional and you need to you need to check your ego to do an end around I'd never see anybody do that before you did exceptionally well against me and and I learned a lot from that because I recognize like I gotta do that better and it never it just doesn't benefit you from getting spun up and angry and I'll tell you one thing that's Another little thing that I noticed that I do for sure is if someone comes at me and they're super mad about something I can't just be a hundred percent calm Because if if you come in the room and you go jocco this crap the

We're getting told to do this thing over here. This is total crap. We shouldn't be a told to do this And if I go Leif just calm down it's not that big of a deal. Like right there, I've already taken, right, because you're like going, what are you talking about? I try that with my wife, Jenna, at times. It doesn't work very well. The opposite. What you have to do is you have to be, you have to show some, uh, uh, we'll call it a diminished reflection of the emotion that they're showing. You want to, you want to take a little off of it, but, you know, oh, my, are you serious? They're telling us to do that. Oh, man. That's,

that's, that's crap. All right. Let's, let's find out what's going on. So now, instead of being against you, now all of a sudden, I'm on your side. I've calmed down a little bit. I've, I've Brought you down a little bit, but you at least recognize that I'm on your side because if I just if I just say they've calmed down Getting mad is not gonna help like you're gonna get even matter or if I say you need to think about what they're saying No, no, no I need to join your side first Once I'm on your side now we can talk and we can move through the problem effectively So you might want to just show a little diminished reflection of the per of you know if someone's really sad about something Okay, you know you can't just be like hey, it's not that big of a deal like you know I got girl I got kids right I got I got I got I got

teenage girls and you know they get sad about stuff um and i can't just you know i've tried it before like don't worry about that it will mean nothing in three years i've done that by the time you graduate high school you don't even think about that anymore stop how does that work it doesn't work good because you realize that that's the whole world to them so you know instead you got to say ah man i can't believe that happened you know that's that's that's sad you know but the good thing is here's some good points about it maybe you know what i mean so just don't be completely emotionless because then the person can't relate to the you and if they can't relate to you You're not gonna be able to talk about it if you can't talk about it you're not gonna make any progress on the subject

Be careful with that one all right Want to hear more HDH in Vegas do we talk about the HDH hands on one of the other podcasts? Yeah, we talked about it So a hundred dollar hands in Vegas Listen to podcast 11 if you want to hear about Mark Lee Sar our shenegas in Vegas. We did have There were there were a couple good stories of Vegas and we you know You know, we, that was a crazy boondog trip, but one of them that I did remember well was we had this giant convoy of Humvees. And we were coming up to a major intersection just off the Vegas trip, a red light.

Because we were driving, just so everyone knows, we were driving, we drove the Humvees to a range to do work up in that area. Is it an Air Force range? Nellis, Nellis Air Force Base. So it was a Nellis range where they do training up there and we had taken the Humvees from one base on civilian road. to another base and we'd spent the day training there and now it was time to come back to base so we're back on civilian roads again in a in a convoy of Humvees what five trucks probably so five Humvees and we had done a drill where we had the we I was always big on you train how you fight right so that means if we're driving Humvees guess what we're doing we're mounting weapons we're gonna we're gonna be ready to get after it if we have to not that we're gonna have to get after it in Vegas but we're gonna we're gonna test things because if you're not used to swinging that gun around up in the up in the turret, then you're not used to it. So you've got to practice. So we were basically in full

kind of kit. I think we actually had the whole task in us. I think we had like eight or 10 humvees. It was a big, bigger convoy. But yeah, so we come up to, we're coming up to a red light. The red light starts to turn yellow and the lead, the lead navigator. You know, this is a major intersection. You know, two

four lane roads that are coming up to he gives the command blow through, which means that we're just, if you get, you're an ambush and people are shooting at you and you're just gonna keep rolling and he says blow through So we literally have the entire convoy behind him like running this red light in a major major intersection Yeah, I was like we're gonna be standing tall for yeah Yeah, I was gonna be standing tall on that we don't want to do that

Because in like in Iraq you wouldn't stop at a red light or you wouldn't stop at a stop sign you You know you obviously the lead vehicle would check close enough and then you you you're traveling really tight You make sure there's no cars coming but yeah, you're just gonna blow through you're not gonna stop and so that the other call came out to blow through. So which would have been a fight? Well, luckily we had some heads-up drivers that stopped at their green light and saw us coming. Or maybe they were intimidated by guys with 50-k-all machine guns and the turret. But definitely, you know, that's one of those things where it's hard for guys to turn it off sometimes. And when you're doing tactical driving on the

range, as if you were in a combat scenario and now of a sudden you're on the street. Yeah. Again, this is hard. I should have been said, okay, guys, we're going back on civilian Roads stand down you know what I mean I should have said that but I didn't say that because I'm dumb and I well we we we we made the assumption which turned out to be false that people would automatically know that and they didn't so so we had to tighten that up but that was just one lesson learned from our our biggest trick that was shenanigans yeah it's good times I'm surprised I didn't get in more trouble for that one of the one of your guys we were in a he was a designated driver we're in a Navy van and we

go from one place. We knew someone and we were out in town and we went from there to downtown to go to, you know, the bars, right, in Vegas. We're pulling into a parking garage. And you know they have that metal pipe that says, you know, six foot two inch clearance or whatever the clearance was. It was a very low parking garage. So he's got this big Navy van.

We come in and we kind of hit that. And I'm sitting in the back. And you know what? This is a classic example of a decentralized command. I'm not going to step on the toes. The guy's the designated driver. I was a few drinks or whatever, but I wasn't definitely wasn't intoxicated and And but I see oh like I look out and I see we we kind of hit that thing and so We go around the corner and then we start to actually enter the the parking garage and as we go underneath the first concrete

The the it's you can hear it. It scrapes against the ceiling But it scrapes hard and the vehicle comes to a stop and what does it? The driver do again this is the designated driver what does he do he starts pressing down the gas He's just gonna power through this I'm in the back I go dude blow through I'm like dude What are you doing stop what are you gonna rip the roof off of the vehicle like back out of here in leave He's like well I thought I could have made it Oh man one one good team guy shenanigans that we were talking about was me you and the Delta platoon commander rolling

rolling up to Santa Barbara I think you actually came up to me and said Tenacious D are you in? Go see tenacious D yeah so for those of you may not know Jocko is a huge tenacious D fan the D the D I think that's how it came out you're like the D they're in Santa Barbara let's go Road trip road trip road gig road gig so we jumped in yeah of all the things that you gave me you gave me a copy of a about face

by David Hackworth when we were working together to you, Bruiser, at the end of our tour together, and you gave me the set to the DVDs to Tenacious D. There you go. And the Dove.

There you go. That's the dichotomy of leadership right there. Hackworth, about face, the Tenacious D. Yeah. So we found out Tenacious D was having a concert up in Santa Barbara. You know, we're all stationed here at San Diego

and we jumped in Jaco's Dodge, 1997 Dodge Grand Caravan 1997 A lot of people just called it The Pimp wagon Because it was hard to keep the ladies off When you're rolling in

The window was taped shut On the driver's side It's rigors tape shut You're not getting in there No, that thing was shut Because the little electrical thing broke So we're cheap bastard So we're not gonna spend the night up there

I think we actually had work to do Maybe the next day So we jump in the van I think you drove up there We rock out to the Tenacious D concert in Santa Barbara. We bought Jocko a T-shirt. We still got it. The Sasquatch is real.

The Sasquatchee is real. And I remember driving back at about, there was about 3 o'clock in the morning. We were like passing through Camp Pendleton as kind of where our ranges are there. As on the way back down, we just acapello singing to every Tenacious D zone that we knew by heart. We're going to make a new band. It's going to be called Acapello D. That was a good time. Yeah.

Yeah, that was pretty fun. All right. Tenacious D. What are your daily non-negotiable habits, Wafabin? My daily non-negotiable habits. Usually I want to sleep in about 10.30, 10.30 a.m. Labin style. Just eat some donuts.

Listen, I mean, at the end of the day, discipline equals freedom. It's a mantra that I learned from you and that it's just absolutely true. And if you got to, you got to get up in the morning and work out on the, there's some days, frankly, I can't do that because life gets in a way, whether I'm, if I'm traveling or my, my kid wakes up early and I know, you know, I've been out of town and my wife wants to get a workout out and before the day starts. So I'll take the kids so she can do that and we can, we can rotate out. You know, so I can't tell you that always happens, but you got to get up early. You got to work out and you have to prioritize an SQ.

and having that checklist that you put together the night before about what you want to do, and what's important is absolutely critical. Otherwise, you lose it. And for me and Jocko and for all of us in our team on Eschlon Front, when we get away from the things that we talk about to people, we're human beings like everybody else, and we can get pulled in different directions.

When we get away from those things, it doesn't work. Things start to fall apart. You lose track of where the priorities are. If I can't regularly detach, that's something I have to really focus on to do, is to regularly detach. If I'm grinding on something for two or three or four hours at a time, sometimes it's easy to miss other things that are coming up.

And I've got to make sure I pull away from things, kind of think about the prioritizing NICP's, figure out if I need to reprioritize and so I don't get target fixated on one thing and keep going. But I think for me, you know, what I want to do is I try to make time to spend time with my family as much as I can as well. And obviously there's a lot of work to do.

There always is. and it's you know those things the the one when when I can stay consistent on getting up early in the morning getting a workout in you know stay focused on a list that I have from the night before that I'm falling through all the things that you talk about that's I'm I'm performing better than I ever do all the time it works at the end of the day there's what works and there's what doesn't work yeah that's how you win check tell us about a time you were annoyed with Jocko or his intensity.

Anoyed with Jocko or his intensity. You know what? We got along pretty damn well together. And I think there's not there's not really any time that comes to mind that I was annoyed by you. Except for maybe, you know, what we mentioned earlier, right? When the times went initially we were working together

and you're looking over my shoulder and telling me to do, hey, we should do this way. Let's plan it like that. I definitely got annoyed from that time. I felt like I want to run my, you know, everyone's trying to tell me what to do here and Jocko's looking over my shoulder. I want to run my team, just as I explained earlier. And I didn't realize until later, like what you were doing.

And like, hey, you're passing a lot of great information. I see that all the time, actually, with people. Because if I could have detached from that situation, I would have recognized like, hey, I'm a new Platoon Commander. I've never been a Petitin Commander. Jocco was just a Battalion Commander. He had a highly successful Battalion Commander tour. He had a historic deployment where he did a whole bunch of operations.

And he's got a ton of lessons learned. So what an amazing opportunity to learn everything from him. But that's not the way you approach it, right? It's like ego my ego. And I see it all the time. There was a leader I was dealing with where I was talking to a member of the board for this particular leader who was constantly bucking against the you know this guy's and it's amazing to me though to see like hey the CEO of this company who's pushing back in September the board like he should be so thankful that. I'm the member of the board has who's got massive amounts of experience, extraordinary success, is there to mentor and train him, and yet he doesn't want to listen to that guy. I want to do it myself. You're always over my shoulder. Instead of being like, hey, man,

open up the legal pad, let's take some notes here. I want to pick your brain for everything. I want to, you know, it's, and I think just recognize if you're feeling that way and you're frustrated with somebody who's looking over your shoulder, then you need to take advantage of the situation to learn from them.

and certainly build up trust. The way to get out of that situation is the buildup trust to show that you're learning, you're growing, and that you don't need someone to look over your shoulder every second. And usually that comes even after we got forward and you just unleashed us on the battlefield, I would always come to you and be like, hey, Jocka, what do you think about this?

We're going to do this situation. I wasn't looking to you to tell me what to do, but I was running things by you, and we do that all the time now, that's on front. I call Jock up and say, hey, here's what's going on, I'm working with this leader. You do the same? I mean, we talk about these things all the time. And that's actually that what's interesting about that is that in the last six months, that idea has really become formalized in the tank, which is where we take the companies that we're working with.

And we, whoever's working specifically with a specific company on the ground is coming back to the tank, all the echelon front team. And we get on the call or the Skype or the conference room and we go to. through all the issues that all these different companies are happening. And that's where we solve the problems is in the tank. So that way we get everyone's input and not only do we give the best solution to the client, we also all learn from it so that we have that solution in our head. So we all get stronger and better. So that's that's one of the evolutions in Ashlawn Front. That's pretty awesome to see is what started off as just like how we would run T.U. Bruiser, which is, hey, we're going to bounce ideas off each other and, hey, I don't know how

to solve this problem to you or, hey, I don't know how to do this operation to you or this is What I think what do you think which is the way a team should work together and now what we do is we get to do that for other companies Use the same brain power use the same methodology and it's it's awesome to do and it's awesome to see it is awesome The tank. Yeah getting in the tank All right Leif you were for those of you don't know Leif was a ship driver for how many years? So lay for the Naval Academy didn't get picked up for Seal teams right out or didn't get picked up for buds right out of the Naval Academy so he had to go to a ship Here's a question about not about that specifically, but Leif, what are your thoughts on a ship's captain being relieved of command and what to do if you are involved? And he would like to know from the ship's captain's perspective that is being relieved because of the mistakes of your crew or if you're in the crew and the captain's getting relieved even though you made the mistakes. What are your perspectives on that?

Well Look Just to give people some background on that I know I've talked about my background on podcast 11 But it was I never wanted to be a ship driver I wanted to be a seal That's why I went to the naval cammy I got thrust in that position

Looking back on it It was it was an amazing opportunity for me As a young man to have To be in those leadership positions And I enjoyed my time On the ship How much is a warship cost to build? Billions

A couple billion dollars It's crazy So you're sometimes You're the guy right You're a lieutenant J.D on the bridge of a $2 billion ship and you're in charge of all that. Yeah, and when you're the officer of the deck, you're the guy in charge. The captain's asleep in his cabin and he's got full faith and trust in you and you're running

the ship. And so there's the question right there. Sometimes the captain's asleep in the cabin and he runs and the crew runs the ship aground. The captain gets fired. What do you think about that? That is the Navy way. It's always been that way. And I think it's 100% correct because there are no bad teams.

bad leaders. And I think that if you have, even if the captain wasn't in direct responsibility, it's his job to train that team. It's his job to mentor that team. And if he's got questions about whether or not somebody has the capability to do that job, then they shouldn't be in that position. It's up, it's up, it's up, it's up, it's up to the cap. Now, the captain can't be everywhere at once, so it's decentralized command. He has to rely on his leaders. But it's, It's definitely I think ultimately The captain is responsible

And that's really what extreme ownership is about I had a client asked me a question yesterday Have you ever sent anyone To do something that they weren't ready to do? And I thought about it for a minute And The first thought was Well of course

The second thought was no The real answer is it's gray area Right Did I ever send somebody to do something that they weren't 100%. If I put this quantification on 100% ready for it? All the time. All the time.

How often did I send somebody to do something that they weren't capable of doing? The answer is zero. In other words, if you weren't capable of doing this and I didn't trust that you could make it happen, I wasn't going to let you do it. That'd be irresponsible for me as a leader to let a subordinate go and do something that they're not ready to do. That's it, period. Or they're not 100% ready to do. No, not 100%, but they're not capable of doing. But I mean when we first got to Ramadi in your mind

You probably weren't a hundred percent ready to go out there and execute Particularly because we've been training for a mission with just seals You know for for for for roll-up assaults for direct action raids you know at night time and all of a sudden we're shifting to daytime Canter Surgency operations working with Iraqi soldiers Completely different mission yeah broken up in all these different units we hadn't trained we hadn't trained like that in a violent war zone by the way But I you know I had Trust that you were completely competent and capable of doing that and if I didn't think that and I didn't think you were competent or I didn't think you were capable Then I would I would be a bad leader if I said yeah go ahead and go go do that and and and then I answered the question further to this client

I said there was two people from task unit bruiser that didn't go on deployment with us Because they weren't capable of doing that job so yes you as a leader you're responsible and I was thinking about this There's been times where Navy ships have run aground and the captain wasn't even on board He had flown to somewhere to go do a meeting somewhere the ship runs the ground Guess what still getting fired because you left someone in charge that you left that team you didn't train him well enough And you can make all the excuses you want I wasn't there. Yeah well guess what you're still getting fired because you were responsible for that team So I think part of that too is the understanding you know what no bad teams only bad leaders That with the chapter two we wrote you know in extreme ownership is is about the part of that is I have seen some people that misinterpret that right to say well I got a bad leader so the team's

not good. That's not an excuse. So when we're talking about leadership, we're talking about leaders at every level of the organization. So, so, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're a department head on that ship or a division officer or a division chief, and you say, oh, I got a bad, I got a bad commanding officer. It's all the commanding officers fault. Our ship doesn't, does it perform the way it should. Whatever your team is, that's not an excuse. You got to do your utmost to get your team ready to train others around you and lead that team as much as you possibly can. You don't have to be the senior guy in charge. And off of some of the best units we worked with

and were part of the senior guy, he may not been the guy driving the operations, but he allowed his leaders to go out and execute and make it happen. So leadership, we're talking leaders at every level of the organization. It's not an excuse to put the blame on the boss. You got to step up,

you got to lead and own your team, solve problems, get better, learn for mistakes, and make it happen. What does it mean when a ship runs a ground? I mean literally it hits dirt. Oh, that's what it means. Yeah.

Well, in this case, we're talking ship collision. Yeah, this is. So running aground is one thing. The, you know, and there's an argument, there is an argument to be said, like, because some of our greatest leaders, like Admiral, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, who was the hero of the Pacific War, was, I've quoted him, you know, on this, on this podcast previously, he was the commander-in-chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. So he was, he was the person responsible for the entire war.

effort against the Japanese in World War II and that victory, a massive effort, obviously, in an extraordinary turnaround from disaster to a victory. He actually ran a ship aground as a junior officer. So there's, you know, there's an argument to be made that there is no, you know, the flawless performance. It doesn't exist. And people make mistakes you can learn from it. You know, as far as ships running around, you know, that's one thing. I think, you know, you can make a careful evaluation. What we're talking about here is specifically that ship collision. And, you know, those should not happen. That just, that should not happen.

I understand how easily that can happen. Because it, there's a, these are huge machines that go very fast. And you're out on the ocean with other, other ships that are moving around. And there's a whole lot of dangerous things that are happening. And it takes, some of those big ships takes miles to stop them. Like even if you see and you go, okay, hit all full breaks right now. It doesn't matter. It's, you're still going to hit.

Absolutely. You know you're going to get hit for like 10 minutes. Yep. You know it's, you can't stop it. Just brace for impact. Yeah. But if you've got the right team in place, they know what they're doing, you know,

there's all kinds of safeguards in place. And if that team's properly trained, like that should not happen. It should not. It's like you should be able to, the airplane should land safely. All the horrible things that could go wrong when you're flying in an airplane and landing in a crazy airport like JFK or, you know,

or LAX. You were born into Hong Kong? Yeah. That's a doozy too. Yeah. So those kind of things that are crazy. So, but there's a lot of things that go wrong.

But if it's done properly and safeguards are in place, you're going to be fine. So, so, but there's, again, it doesn't. It doesn't mean that you know we expect flawless performance that no one's ever going to make mistakes. I think if a mistake isn't that bad it should be forgiven But there isn't there it just isn't an excuse of like well it wasn't me somebody else on my team did it That's the opposite extreme ownership it doesn't work Doesn't work

Check Next I this is for life well I guess yeah, it is for life I heard you say it is important to think I heard jaco say this too How do you think? How do you think? Meaning how do you talk to yourself do you ask yourself questions? Do you think by talking to others? What do you believe is the most valuable method for becoming a clear thinker and communicator? That's a deep question. I actually think it's pretty easy to answer it. It is easy answer. I think I can answer in one word Go Detach. That's that's that's how I think

You can't you got to step out you got to step back mentally. You got to step back look at what's going on and think of And that's where you can think about it. That's where you can figure out what's going on. If you can do that, you're there. If you can't do it, you don't even know you're not doing it. That's the problem. When you're not detached, you don't even know you're not detached. You're in the storm and you don't even know it.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But I think, you know, for people that maybe don't fully understand what that means, right? This idea of the tax, which you've obviously talked a lot about on here, which is such a key thing for decision making. It's the, I think the key thing. there is to make sure that you're not you're not clouded by you know this emotional attachment to plans which we often talked about with our leaders in the SEAL team so I'm emotionally

invested in a plan that I came up with I spent hours or days or weeks or months you know involved in and I want that to succeed of course but but is that you know I got to have that realistic assessment and that's what the detachment really requires is that you pull yourself not just physically away you know out of the weeds or to say okay let me think about this in the strategic picture, but you really, you take away that emotional investment that you have to maybe, whether it's a plan, sometimes it's a team member as well. And if you have, you know, someone that you just have a close relationship with, that you know, whether they're a relative of yours or you've had a long standard relationship with and that maybe you've gotten too close to them and you can't see that,

that, you know, they become more important than the mission and they're dragging the rest of the team down. You're not making the call either tighten them up or let them go. If that's the right case. So I think what that really requires is you got to emotionally pull back. It's a mental thing to really have a brutally honest assessment of the situation that's independent from any kind of previous bias that you might have had. That's interesting there because even if you know like, oh yeah, I'm going to detach. It's not that easy. Yeah, like you can't just go through the motions. You can't be like, hey, I'm going to detach.

I'm detached right now. Meanwhile, you're just like I said, clouded by the emotional part that you're like kind of one foot in emotionally. So you're technically not detached. So it doesn't work. You know what else is a good way to think is to listen. Do listen to what people are saying. I've been thinking about how more, how he said, if you listen, you know twice as much.

You know everything that you know and you know everything that the other guy knows. That's a great thing. But if you're sitting in a conversation, I mean, from a business perspective, if you're in a meeting and there's a conversation going on, if you're in the conversation, you're talking, you're adding your piece, well, then you're not detached. You're in it. But if you sit back and you listen and you hear what's going on,

you can assemble, you know, thoughts better. So, all right. Next, when can we expect any books to come out by either of you? And what are they going to be like? Extreme ownership or way of the warrior kid? So I also had a book out called Discipline Equals Freedom. It's a field manual, by the way. Sure.

You familiar with a field manual? I am. You claim to be familiar with field manual. My favorite kind of manual, yeah. Okay. Way the Warrior Kid, too, is coming out in April. It's called Mark's Mission. And we are in the process of writing, Leif Babin.

Tell me about that. Yes, we are. We're getting after a second book right now. It's a follow-on book to Extreme Ownership. And I'm super excited about it. It's going to be in the same format. We talk about combat lessons learned on the battlefield or in training and then a principal,

and then it's application of the business world in the same format as extreme ownership. And what it really is is it's to answer all of the questions and difficulties that people have from applying the principles. We get these common questions all the time of like, okay, I'm having this issue. Okay, you said take ownership here, but what does that really mean and how do I apply cover move to my team?

It's going to dive much deeper into that. And it's going to be also going to be coming out fall of 2018. How do you feel about writing a sequel? It's not a sequel. It's going to be a standalone book on its own. It's going to be good. Okay, I think it's nerve-wracking. Because you know what?

Have you ever seen the movie Jaws? Yes. That's one of my favorite movies. Have you ever seen the movie Jaws too? Yes. We got issues with Jaws too. We got issues. Yeah.

And this is what I think. So I think, again, I'll call it luck. Maybe not. But I call it luck. Luckily for us, this book has sold really well. That if we would have written a sequel a year after this book came out, it would have been Jaws 2, to be honest with you. But luckily, because now it's been two years since this came out. So we've had, and by the way, a follow-up year, if we were to release a book, if the publisher's going, release another book, release another book, we'll pay you more money.

That's what they do. They want you to release another book now. We got some hype from this book. We'll get another one out there and Leif and I were like well no not right now Just stop And we'll let time that we write another book well I did write another book, but they're not the same Right we don't we want we don't want to make Jaws too So we let time go and guess what we were doing all the time that we that we had passed right? We weren't sitting around no we were working with more companies We were working with more military units We were working with police we were working firefighters we were having the muster we were learning more and more lessons and we were

getting feedback from this book and saying okay I see some threads and at first it was one little thread and it was another little thread and now of a sudden all those threads come together and you get something you get you get you get a fabric and that's what we waited for is let's get something that is a woven fabric that's going to be strong like Kevlar so the next book that we got coming out I disagree with you that it's a standalone book I don't think it's a standalone book Are you gonna retract your statement? I'm gonna give you a chance You should

I do retract my statement Because it is I mean the new book I thought you were setting me up for an ambush there No You just died out there No It's it I'm sure you could read the new book

On your on its own But you shouldn't You should read Extreme Ownership first And then you read the new book And when you read the new book It's gonna again all those threads Are gonna weave together And and and

they're going to be the perfect. It's going to be, they're going to compliment each other in an amazing way. I think that's, in that method, or from that perspective, absolutely. I think absolutely it is,

it is a sequel in that perspective. It will be written in a way that, that you can read it as a standalone book for, for sure. It will certainly reference, you know, the things that we talked about in extreme ownership

and the foundational principles of home with that, that's written. I think there are a few exceptions, though, to your jaws analogy. A lot, actually. Yeah. Oh,

I mean, I can think that Indiana Jones, the Temple of Doom. Yeah, Terminator. Yeah, Terminator 2, Judgment Day. But it does have a lot to do with how you said, hey, let's wait a little bit. Yeah, that's true. You can't just start, unless the whole story that you on purpose are going to do it. That's the difference because if you just, oh, we had a hit movie. Make another one right now.

Jaws 2. Yeah. That's a good title. Jaws was a hit. Let's make another one. We'll call it. Jaws 2. Yeah.

If they would have waited, like Terminator, they waited like, what, eight years or so. Then it's like, okay, a lot of things are updated, a lot of new stuff. They figured out like how you were saying the boom Terminator 2 just as good aliens Aliens was that pretty quick afterwards though the second movie aliens crossed the first movie really So I I'll to be totally honest it's a gamble though no I actually I don't know because I'm I'm halfway a little bit more than halfway done with my writing part right before we start editing each other I think I think we might have an a sequel that's better I don't know I have a Suspillar that the sequel is better possibly better I think so too it's been it's super fun to write

you know as we're doing it and I think as you said our knowledge is so much more now I mean we our knowledge of the business world was was you know we've been working for a couple you know two or three years in the business world at that point but but now we've got double more than double that and and and the reach and expansion of of what we've been doing since the release of extreme ownership is it's it's a hundred X what we were doing you know previously so that's just given us it's been a massive education and our knowledge of how to apply these things across the spectrum. Yeah, is incredibly so much, so much deeper than it was previously.

And I'm excited about it. Yeah, it's going to be good. Next question is, how long does it take to prepare for a muster? And when we read this question earlier, I thought it was the person asking how long it would take this individual, me, or whoever, a person out in the world to get ready to go to the muster. Oh, yeah. And the answer to that is it doesn't take you any time. You just, I mean, you should read extreme ownership for sure, but there's no like big physical There's physical things that you do with the muster, but they're scaled that anybody can do them.

So it's really you don't need to do any major preparation other than put your ego in check. I think the biggest preparation you need is to Look at yourself in the mirror and write down with it where you're weakest and where you need to work. I mean, that's what we want to talk out. I don't care where you're doing great. We're not there to patch you on the back. We want to care like where you can get better and everyone can get better. Certainly you can prove all the time and I think that's what you need to do. I thought this question was about how we prep for the muster,

which is substantial. It's always about it. Which is substantial. Always about Leif. All about me all the time. Yeah, it is a ton of work to prepare for the muster. Which is, it's fun. Yeah, it's fun.

It's great. We enjoy it. Random question. In your experience, have you had or do you see high injury rates in Jiu-Jitsu? Want to start rolling again, but don't want to disrupt progress on the barbell. Barbell. Oh, yeah.

Sure. What was that bench or something? It's possible I am being a weak suck, although not probable. Risk assessment. What do you think? Can you get injured in Jiu Jitza? Yeah, just like you get injured in Jiu. Actually, you'll get injured playing basketball quicker than Jiu Jitsu.

That's very likely. As far as injured goes. Yeah. I will I the the key part about this question for me is you want to keep making progress on the barbell right Yeah, so you want to keep getting stronger. That's cool. I want you to be stronger But if you're super strong you know how to fight I got nothing for you yeah, that's a deeper thing too and keep this in mind knowing This goes for any physical activity like if your goal physically is this thing and then you start going Hard in another direction it could very well take away from oh it's gonna take away you're you you're not gonna

reach your maximum potential as a weight lifter yeah if you're doing jiu jitza or swimming or something or whatever yeah yeah you got to find the balance but I mean what's the most important what's a more important skill to have yeah be able to snatch big weight or be able to defend yourself in a street fight yeah hey the snatching big weight's gonna help you defend yourself yeah big too we we appreciate that we're fans yeah but prioritize yeah now what's interesting is on a daily basis, I always work out, but I don't always do Jiu-Jitsu because you can't, you need someone to train with.

You know what I mean? Like you need someone to do J-Jitsu with. You can't do J-J-J-J-J-J-J-U by yourself. So sometimes you don't have anyone to train with. Look, I think from my perspective, as a white belt, it's, it's, I've trained enough. You've got to be getting close to that Blue Belch. Well, I got a lot more work to do. Certainly a lot more work to do. It's not up to him anymore. Yeah, that's true. You guys have inspired me. I'm training, training hard. Got a great place. I'm down in Texas now, Jean-Jot Machado, Austin's awesome.

That's what Todd White, right? Yeah, Todd White's awesome guy. Yeah, if you're an awesome. And the type of people that train in there, I mean, it's, and that's what I like about, and that's, that's, you know, same thing in the place I've trained in New York. It's just, that to me has, I think if you're constantly getting injured all the time, like you're not training with the right people. And you're not training in the right manner of something that I learned years ago

when I was on the boxing team in the Naval Academy, me and my buddies, you know, who were kind of scrubs, we didn't try. travel with the team, but we just beat the piss out of each other every, every day. And no one could breathe out of their nose and everyone had black eyes. And then you watched the guy who was, the guys who were really skilled, they sparked, but they were working on form. You know, they weren't just knocking each other's heads off every punch, every time, you know, every single day.

And I think that's where you have to, it's great to train hard, but I think you need to train smart. And I think you need to, the biggest thing, I'm guessing this person is probably, hasn't trained that much so that they, they spin up. Dave Burke and I were just rolling, you know, here at Victory last night. And I was, I was telling Dave, you know, Dave, he's made some progress. He's been training out in Virginia. I was like, cool, man, you're doing good.

But he gets so amped up that he can't detach. So he can't detach because he gets so amped up. And I realize I used to just be in that. I've trained enough now. I still might be the white belt sheet, but I've trained enough now to know that I've got, I've got to throttle that back because it's, you know. You get so focused, right? I'm gonna focus on my one little white belt,

Americana I'm trying to get it. You know, our arm bar versus versus like, no, detach and think for the four or five. Yeah, he gets out, dude. Yeah, he gets up a little bit. So you train with him? Yeah, we did like, yeah. So he, it was funny because we're rolling around.

I mean, it is, uh, and at one point, I'm, I'm like laughing him because he's literally like, you know, that kind of breathing like Dave. In his defense, though, come on. Like, you know when you breathe, when you hear somebody breathing hard like that, Typically it's like when you're they're writing your ear so it's it sounds way more intense They're what about the time it could have been also because I had a little little little elbow pressure what about the time period when you're in like kind of starting jiu jitzu and Dave Burke might be in this situation right now It's it's the very early in jiu jitzu where in your mind

You think like you know what like I'll be able to I think I'll be able to get like jocco, right? Sure like I'll be like like like a man if I I'm I think they learn some little move and they're like oh if I throw this a jocco at the right time yeah yeah yeah this black belt the right time I'll be able to get him yeah you know what I'm saying yeah you have that bought in your brain oh yeah for sure I had that with Dean one time it yeah I mean but what what when you're amped up to that level though you know and yeah you're thinking that like no one can tap me or and I don't think Dave's is in that in that mode he's he's learned enough maybe to be be beyond that but it's it's when you're that amped up your chances of

of getting injured are way worth, you know, just more significant. And it's why, you know, if you see a brand new white belt coming, I'd much rather roll with brown belts and purple belts and blue. Even though I know they're going to, you know, they're going to get the best of me. I have a much less chance of getting injured than just the death match with some white belt who's, you know, who doesn't even know, you know,

anything. And so I think you've got to be smart about who you train with. And that's what I love about, you know, John Zappa Machado Austin with Todd White and his guys there. They're super, you know, they're very knowledgeable. They pass on stuff, but they're humble. Just like folks here at victory. I mean, it's, and I think when you're training with the right people, they're like, oh, cool, you got me in an arm bar.

You got me to come or that. That choke was great. Show me how to do that. And it's a, but it's a humble learning environment where, you know, you're not there to injure people. You're not there to get hurt. And I think it's, sure, you're going to get tweaks and bumps and bruises. But I think there's, you know, if you're training smartly and training to learn, then the chance of getting injured, the probability is much less. My boy, Todd White, he's like old school.

Jiu-Jitsu guy. Me and him were on the circuit back in the day. The competition back in the day. He was an old L.A. Jean-Jacques guy. And by the way, he listens to the podcast, by the way. Yeah. L.A. That's what all the tournaments were.

Fully. Yeah, they were back in the day. All right. Addition to that, the Jiu-Jitsu, even, like, I wouldn't want to paint the picture that, like, all white belts are going to increase your chance of injury. It's kind of a specific type of person to roll with that will increase. That will increase your chance of injury. And that's like a guy who's strong may or may not have like this ego where you can't tap me and I'm going to try to kill you every single time.

For sure. And he has like an element of like legitimate strength and athleticism on top of it now. So you got to put all those together. Like you go into a typical gym, you take all the white belts. You may not even have a guy like that. That's true. It's possible. The probability of a guy being like that is pretty low.

I'm not saying it's zero. I disagree. There might be higher problem. Not pretty low. Depends on what? What changes that, though, in my opinion? What changes is the, is the black belt instructor. So someone is like, oh, you want to get tough for that guy over there?

Well, let me, I'm going to impose some humility on you. It's called regulation. It happens. Yeah, which is yet another factor that kind of contributes to the overall safety of it. And I'm not saying low, like they're rare, nothing like that. But I'm saying if you take a just, I don't know, some random class. a new white belt spazzy strong maybe may or may not be young with like a huge ego

maybe one guy me you won't get a class full of those you know so your day to day rolling is is pretty safe you know I mean yeah you do need to pick your training partners carefully yeah for sure but to this guy though here's I mean look echo and I go way back I think I probably knew echo even before Before you did, Jacqueline, in our surface warfare days, our good friend, Cake Nuts, who's a mutual friend and others that we've worked with.

In fact, Echo was, he was a bouncer downtown. Everyone knows because he talks about it. He had to put it with all our shenanigans and back in the day. Keep you out of trouble. But I remember coming in here and training at Victory and Echo was a blue belt and showing me and Cake Nuts like some moves.

And because I kind of had this mentality of the guy who asked this question, I was like, you might get injured and I was focused on other things and I trained here all the time and a lot of times I'd be here to work out and I do stand up and I never trained Jiu-Jitsu

like I should have, never stuck with it consistently, didn't have the discipline to do that for whatever reason I get pulled in different directions and here we are 10 or 12 years later and echoes a brown belt she knocking on the door of getting his black belt and I'm still a white belt.

What door is he knocking on? I'm not knocking on here and no door. door getting knocked on that's not a thing I don't think about here silence out there so don't be that guy I think I would make the time to train pretty good so yeah for sure all right losing a teammate both military and civilian world happens how do you assist and promote healing and growth within a team that has lost a pivotal member what do you do when the emotional toll leaves your guys unfocused and is creating unacceptable risks

Yeah, you know, I've talked about this before, and I think, obviously, this can happen. This is part of life is death, and people are going to die, and you obviously, we're all going to deal with it. They're all going to face it at some time. In a work environment, how do you deal with it? One of the things that I always say is get back to work, right? Yes, you're going to mourn. Yes, you're going to have your memorial services, and then you've got to get back to work. and I think if you let people

if you give them too much time off if you let them sit around they're gonna get unfocused they're gonna start thinking about you know they're gonna start thinking about things that are not good to think about because we want to yes we want to mourn we want to do the we want to remember

but at the same time and I say this all time we don't want to dwell you don't want to dwell in the past you want to remember but don't dwell so I say get back to work Going back to what we talked about earlier find out what your next mission is going to be you have more of a reason to achieve your mission Because you lost someone that You lost someone that can't and that can no longer carry on with their mission

So for them carry on with your mission go forward don't dwell on the past Anybody that you lost that you cared about what would they want you to do would they want you to sit around and and sulk and look at the ground? No, they'd want you to do and get your gear, get your mindset straight, and get back after it. So that's what I recommend. I think that's exactly right. And I think getting to work, the reason that's important is if these people, if that person died, you know, and for the guys that we lost, like if we just, if we just gave up and walked away, that means they died in vain for nothing.

And we're not going to do that. We're going to double a triple, quadruple down on that mission to make sure that we win, that their sacrifices weren't in vain and I think that's helping the team understand what you're accomplishing and why they're doing what they're doing is incredibly important and we wrote about that

in extreme ownership and talk about it all the time that understanding why and briefing the team and helping them understand why is critical but yeah focus on accomplishing that mission is what you got to do I think the other thing too is

you do everything you can to take care of that person and their family take care of their family and help them out and you know that's an obligation that never goes away that you're always going to have. And that's extremely important. And something that's helped me through, you know,

those difficult losses is by serving others and trying to look out for others. And I've got to do that even more than I do. You know, another thing that can help out in those dark times is a little bit of jiu-jitsu, to be quite frank with you. Next question is about jih Tijuana again. My BJJ coach knows it all. The problem is he's a know-it-all.

condescending insulting derogatory comments to students while classes in session option a stay option B go to a school down the road with less experienced but much more mature minded teacher what would jaco do what would Laif do what would Echo do I would probably move okay fair enough it's straightforward depends how much maybe not that straight forward depends how much less experienced though yeah okay See, but, but purple belt, brown belt. I move. If I'm just beginning, white belt, whatever, yeah, move.

Okay. Leifabin. Yeah, look, as a white belt myself, like, I learn from, there's amazing purple belts and brown belts out there, you know, I've learned a ton, you know, from you, from you, from you, actually show, show me stuff, and you, you have a great knack for teaching, which is good, you know, people, some people just don't have that as, as much. And I think, yeah, I think that's, if you're at the white belt level, that's, that's great. So I think that's Jaco apparently disagrees. I know, bro, this guy. Echo's a very good teacher.

That is, echoes. You can see him swell up a little bit when he gets that. He gets that. He loves it. Look at him. Hey, Leif said it. Yeah. Just seeing.

He's like, impartial. Listen, that's because I've been, you have taught me things? I imagine you haven't taught Jocko things in that way. But, and even if he would, yeah, you should. You should go for that. Maybe we should do that right now. Kuma T. But look, yeah, I think you can learn from a lot of different people.

Real down. One thing you just can't make sure is you can't make it, you make sure it's your ego getting in the way. And when someone's really coaching you saying, hey, you need to do this, you need to get better, and you just don't like the manner in which they're doing it public or whatever, you might need to put your ego in check and just say, okay, I don't know everything.

Of course you don't. Let's learn. If it's over the top, then yeah, absolutely. You should go where you can learn best and the quality of the people around you that you're rolling with us we talked about earlier. I mean, that to me is everything

and that's what I love about Jiu-Jitsu is just such a diverse group of people. When you get at a great gym, you're training at it, and just folks are working together and learning together and they get the best of you and then they're willing to show you

about how they did that or some things you should think about. Keep it a secret. Old school. My opinion on that is, yeah, I agree with you guys, but at the same time, I'll say this. One of the things you've got to learn to do

in life is you got to learn that you're not going to get along with everyone and not everyone's personality is going to mesh with yours that doesn't mean you throw away the baby with the bath water sure you see what i'm saying so there might be a guy that he's not a good teacher he treats people like crap but he's got really good information and he's you're learning a lot and you're going to take as much knowledge as i can from that person i'm not just going to walk away because i don't like his attitude you know what you're going to have people that you work for that have bad attitudes and you're going to have people that work for you that have bad attitudes you're going to have to learn to deal with it. You're going to have to learn how to get as much

out of them as you can. Out of everybody, as a leader, everybody that you got, there's people that aren't going to be good at this, but they're good at. Okay, well, let's capitalize on what they're good at. So this guy, very knowledgeable, kind of a jerk. Let's capitalize on the fact that he's very knowledgeable. Put your ego in check, show up there.

Take the knowledge from him. Yeah. And then in years to come, you pay him back, you pay him a visit. Yeah, I've, uh, I dig it. Sure. And I think, but overall big picture. But yeah, if, yes, if you're getting the knowledge. See, you're, you emphasizing your life cruising.

No, no. I emphasize in my life getting after it. So, that's true. Therefore, you're at that, you're like, oh, this guy doesn't cruise hard enough. Right, right. We might be coming from too different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I dig it.

And, but I think at the end of the day, if how you said the guy, yeah, he's not saying cool stuff or he's saying stuff that's not cool or whatever, but you're still getting the information then, okay. You know, and also, just like with Jordan Peterson, like, like, you know, It pays off in life to have thick skin. Like you're going to be successful. Like that's one of the ingredients for success. They dig it. So if you're getting the information for sure. But a lot of times with the know-it-all situation, which is the words he used, I've been in that situation like a few times where it's like, I see what you're doing there.

And being the guy who's kind of had some experience, I'm thinking like, I don't, the circumstances that you're talking about, that's not going to work. And I know that just from experience or whatever. But this guy's a know at all and no, no, I know you don't know kind of attitude or whatever and If that's the way the whole teaching experiences and learning quote unquote learning experiences I think no I think more benefits would be Gathered elsewhere. Yeah, it's interesting when late from you were talking about yeah you use your kid as a Test for yourself to calm down and get more mature and detach and all that that's good advice I'm basically doing that all the time like when I when I meet someone that that is that is rubs me in the wrong

long way I always look at that like okay cool I'm gonna form a relationship with this person become their best friend and see if I can get through this make it happen yeah so that's maybe what I do with that jih Tzu tripple yeah by by the way I'm taking all this knowledge from him so I can formulate it into goodness again if you get in the knowledge yeah good man good but as a white belt it's like come on bro you get it you you want to get the best teaching learning overall jiu jiu jitza experience possible that's where you know like as a new beginner white belt or whatever I'm gonna come in and then just get insulted by a know-it-all or whatever.

Like, I don't know, even know if I like J-Jitsu now. Yeah, kind of thing. And you run that risk. Oh, it's not good for business, that's for sure. Yeah, so of course, hey, you're Jocco. I get it, man. Leif gets it. But we're not all Jocco.

When someone says, like, or is a know-it-all, and I'm supposed to trust this person to teach me J-J-Jitsu because, you know, for all the great reasons, we take J-J-J-J-Zu, and I'm trusting this person, and they're going to be like how this guy explained. I don't know, man. I don't know. Big question mark right there.

You go down the street and train. Yeah, I would rather get 99% of the knowledge from a good purple belt than 5% of the knowledge of a know-it-all guy. Okay. There's a clean argument for that. Next question. This is from VJ Normal Kumar. He's been in the game for a long time. Got a lot of listeners.

Do you know we got a lot of listeners in India? You know that? Yeah, actually, I talked to Vijay. from time to time online check so he says you must have had good days and awful ones in the field how did you manage to stay focused despite the ups and downs how did you win over the darkness also what was your workout like when you guys were engaged in the field and probably tired two questions there i think how you manage the ups and downs is is you got to stay focused on what the goal is, you know, and I think we talk about that, how the recognition, you know,

when we came back from that deployment and you put that slide together about the battle of her body, they kind of capture on this map, you know, the areas that we'd taken back. And even though I'd planned and led those operations, you know, so many of those operations, I've been intimately involved in the planning and leading those ops and then writing, you know, post-operational summaries and all the reports that we had and was involved. And so the battalion and brigade level meetings, you know, for that whole strategic plan, I didn't really have a fully grass, just, I didn't put it all together in that way. And when you, when I saw that slide that you put together that showed, you know, the red enemy held areas of Vermont and all of a sudden blue

circles going in, the U.S. bases that were put in, that we were often the lead element on the ground for, it put it all together for me in a way that I had not seen before it. And I recognize I had to do better job with my guys of doing that too. And I think that's something that for every leader, that's where that detachment comes in to be able to think, okay, help me understand what this is all about through the dark times, through the rough times, so I can focus on what the strategic goal is. And so I can help the team understand that as well. And I think that's something that, you know, if you step back from the details, kind of think about it so that you can understand it and then impart that to your team, so they get

to understand it. It enables them to slog through when it's really difficult. And it's, It's dangerous or they've got some real challenges ahead, but they can stay focused on that that goal You also got to remember what it feels like to do the right thing For me like I know what it feels like to not do the right thing and I don't like that feeling Later right it feels good right now to not do the right thing because you're like oh cool bag of Cheetos And I'm gonna get some right you know what that feels good right there you know what it feels like later You know you went off the path and that's not good So I just always think okay, well I'm gonna I'm gonna suck it up now

Take the take the problem now take the hard path now because I know later it's gonna pay off I'm gonna feel better in the long run Pay now pay later pay now or pay later that stuck with me when you said it was good yeah yeah I like when you pay now and pay later sometimes you do that Sometimes pay the man now and then pay the man later and and then hey he asked about workouts too While we're in the field and and this is a good one because you know like firefighters right firefighters are on duty for 24 hours so that means they're gonna get a workout in at some sometimes they do more than that but they're doing 24 hours on on on duty Where they're at the station waiting for a call are you gonna do? Oh

Uh, let's say one of the workouts from this vehicle's freedom field manual are you gonna do the three sets of 20 rep squats with 20 minute rest in between I think they call those widow maker are you gonna do that if you if if if if within like 15 minutes you might be called on on to carry a kid down a ladder, don't do that workout then, because you won't be ready. And that's kind of the attitude in Ramadi. It was like, yeah, we trained hard, certainly.

You know, we talked about that on podcast 65, the things they carried and how we had to be. We had to train hard, but you had to always hold a little back because you never knew when you're going to get the call, and you certainly, after a big blowout squat workout like that, I mean, you weren't going to be able to run through the streets and run upstairs and drag your 215-pound buddy

with 60 pounds of gear on, you know, for 50 yards across the open street while shooting with the other hand. So, I mean, those are the kind of things where you got to be ready for that. And you could, you had to leave a little reserve in the tank just in case, because we got often, oh, we don't have an opt-night. Oh, we do have an opt-onite. Get ready. Oh, yes, you do.

Right on. Yeah, so leave a little in the tank. That's a good way of putting it. Okay, here's a good one. Next question. This is for both of you. Did either of you ever get into Syria? trouble as a teen before joining the military or were you always exceptionally

disciplined from a young age there's rafabbat mean exceptionally disciplined from the young the reason I'm laughing if my if my parents are listening to this and they're probably laughing hysterically right now so as as are mine this is yeah I got in all kinds of trouble all kinds of trouble all the time I was a total wild man I'm didn't you shoot your brother with an arrow in the leg or something I know he stabbed himself. Oh, God. He stabbed me.

So we used to shoot each other with BB guns, though, in the legs all the time. That was, and we threw spears at each other. Oh, yeah. You know, in high school, I drove around with an old beat-up pickup truck, and I heard it from my, my uncle who had inherited from my grandfather and smash road signs and just knucklehead stuff. And, and, uh, yeah, I was a complete idiot. And, uh, but, uh, you know, in the military helped square me away, certainly.

And it was, uh, I'm lucky that I didn't do something that caused me to have, you know, lifelong injury or death or damage you know I think or do something that you get a bunch of trouble for for sure that would have changed your trajectory preventing me from going to the naval can prevent me from going to the military and and and would have that would have redirected my my whole life so I think you know if you're in that stage and you're you're a wild teen you need to think clearly about the long-term consequences because you definitely can pay the man now and pay later in that situation for sure one of the things that we do as as young

Boys I'm speaking from a boy perspective because I'm not a girl and when I was growing up and with the way I look back on it now a lot of the stuff that we did Dumb stuff that we did as teenagers was we were testing each other and we were trying to prove ourselves Like I'm tough watch me do this like I'm it's almost it's almost like if you go instinctually as a tribe member You're proving that you're willing to sacrifice you're willing to take risk and sacrifice that's what you're proving to your peers like I'm gonna like what you just said pickup truck I'm gonna drive down the road and I'm gonna I'm gonna run over this sign well okay it's funny but you're also proving to your friends that you don't really care and you'll take risk and you'll do things for the tribe that's kind of what you're proving so I think again I I I don't want to sound like going back to the same broken record but if you want to get your kid

or if you're a kid and you want to prove yourself guess what you can do you can go take jihitsu you can learn how to fight for real you can learn how to defend yourself you can learn how to take care of your tribe take care of yourself take care of your family you can do you can learn how to beat up other people which is an important thing I wish I would have known it when you know jihad too you have less of a chance of getting into a fight because the way you act is different you don't act like a jackass because you realize that you might get stabbed and so you act respectful to people and people can tell that and you're respectful back to you so yeah it's just another

thing I think helps out a lot with kids because I think boys are always trying to prove themselves to each other and to themselves that you're tough and that You're brave. I'm trying to prove that all you know how many that's just this is survey How many times did you jump off the roof of you know buildings? A lot. Yeah, it's like why are you doing that we actually used to go when I was we'd go fishing on the oil rigs off the coast Go deep sea fishing you might run 40 or 50 miles off and You're not supposed to get on the rigs. There's all these signs and stuff but we totally get up on the rig and just jump off of 60 feet off the top of the rig which was awesome it hurts a little bit But it was good times.

But we do things to prove that we're tough. I did a lot of dumb things when I was a kid, and most of them were to prove to myself and to my friends that I was tough and that I was committed, and then I would take risks, which are all- That was crazier than that. Which are all positive qualities, right?

That you want, like, when we're in the teams, what kind of guy, what kind of teammate do you want? You want a guy that's aggressive? You want a guy that will take risks if he needs to? You want a guy that's committed? That's what you want. So in these little weird tribes that we have as teenagers, that's what are you going to do to prove? Let's go get a fight with somebody.

Let's go beat someone up. You know, all those dumb things that you do. So be smart. Be smart. Neither one of us were model children to say, to say the least. All right, Leif, next one, Leif. First off, thanks for picking up the spear. I'm interested to hear more about the Mujahideen in Ramadi.

How did they stack up against U.S. forces? Was it like an NFL team playing against the high school team, or did they have tactics? training and discipline equal to our own? Well, first of all, I appreciate the thanks, but it was an honor for me to carry the spear. And as we said, we'd go back there in a heartbeat, certainly. This is a great question. It's a great question. I think it really gets to the heart of what we talk about all the time is the greatest

quality in a leader, and that is humility. And when you look at the Mujahideen, or the Muge, as we call them, right, the enemy fighters who control Ramadi. There were several thousand of them by U.S. intelligence reports, estimates, who controlled two-thirds of the geographic area of the city when we first arrived in the spring of 2006 with Tasskinabruiser when Jocke and I were there. And, you know, we were showing up. Our seals are some of the best shooters in the world. There's some of the best combat troops in the world.

We have a highly screened group of guys who've been through all the seal training pipeline that's a year and a half long, probably at a minimum. And then we've worked together for almost a year as a seal platoon. We've got guys with extraordinary physical fitness. We go to these awesome shooting schools. We train together. We have the best budget and gear that all the giant special operations, you know, budget can buy. The best training and equipment. And so when we get over there, we're ready to go.

And pound for pound, if you take, you know, a seal operator from Charlotte Baton versus one of the Muge fighters that we're going up against, that seal operator can do hundreds of push-ups. He can do hundreds of pull-ups. That's NFL versus grade school. Exactly. And that, you know, the Muge fighter, he has virtually no training. He probably can't do 10 push-ups. He's, he has none of the gear, an awesome gear that we have.

And so it's pound-for-pound. It's not even comparable. And yet, to think about this from the reality perspective, right, in my opinion, in Charterly-Patoon, we had 16 seals, and five of those guys were brand new, straight out of training. never been, never been to combat before, never been, never deployed to Iraq, five of us. And we're going up against the enemy that has had three years, at that time, three straight years of nonstop real world combat experience. And so the, the experience level is not even comparable. When we're going up against these guys, they know the city, they, I mean, and they're able to use our weaknesses against us, whereas we got to carry all the heavyweight and, you know,

the body armor and the helmets and, and, and we're not acclimatized to 115 or 100, You know 20 degree high during the during the day in the heat of the summertime they are and they live there and they don't have to carry water on them And they don't have to carry body armor and helmets and they they they can just throw a backpack with seven RPG rockets and a in a rocket tube and roll out with their flip flops and knock off Adidas track suit which is what they generally wore and And and you know are their belt fed no Russian machine guns that they used they weren't near as good as the ones we had but they were they were deadly and they could use them and they could shoot and and and and so you can could never, ever, ever take those guys for granted. And I think that's the, if they would always be looking to probe weaknesses, and they weren't there to fight us head to head. They would try to take advantage of our weaknesses.

They were very good at analyzing a situation, looking at a weakness and taking advantage of that weakness and probing for them. And if you ever took them for granted, I mean, they were going to, you were setting yourself, they might hit you hard anyway. And you might lose guys, even if you were prepared, but if you weren't prepared and you started taking for that and for granted you started get complacent and not respecting them as an enemy then then you were gonna fail and they kind of I mean for lack of a better word they they cheat too that's the thing right sure you guys

have rules of engagement like all this stuff and they just straight up and and what's I would say even more important than that is they don't have value for for human life they don't value their own lives they're they're literally suicide bombers and so that you know They could lose five they even want to die. Yeah, they want to achieve martyrdom in many cases and so You know them dying is is not a huge impact and then obviously for for Americans and American soldiers and our friends It's it's it's epic and and crushing loss of life every single time and so that is the the biggest difference is that

We have to It's like Being it's like you know he says it is what he says he says it's his NFL versus high school team right? Well the the if the NFL Should destroy that team right completely destroy it But if the high school team scores a single point they kick a field goal Yeah, they get lucky and kick a field goal that's it that's a win and that's that's that's that's that's crushing and that's kind of what it's like They're not gonna win they're not gonna win the game But even when they put a score on the board

man, it's crushing. And one thing that, you know, as I think about it, too, that what was unique about that tasking and bruiser deployment to Romani in 2006 was, you know, I deployed three times to Iraq. I had quite a, you know, Giaco made multiple deployments to Iraq. We, a lot of, you know, we had a handful of guys have been there multiple times, the guys who went later Afghanistan and, and elsewhere around the world and saw significant combat operations.

But what was unique about that was we were, we were going on foot. Do you want to drive because you get blown up with these, you know, horrific IEDs or going to destroy your vehicle? So we park our vehicles. We had to carry everything on our backs and walk into deep, deep into enemy territory in place where we knew that it was very unlikely that tanks could even get to us to help us out in some cases. And if they were going to try to come in, they might very well get blown up and kill. So what was interesting about that is we might have eight or ten or, you know, seals.

Sometimes it may be it was 20 seals. But that's a fairly small group. You know, we had some Iraqi soldiers with us, but we didn't count them when it came to, they didn't count when it came to, hey, who's going to actually be able to defend this position? But I had to have the expectation that, that we might very well have 50, 60 enemy fighters surrounding our position, attack us, and they could easily overrun us. And what was unique about that, the point was we didn't have dedicated air support. We didn't have a dedicated quick reaction force that was going to come out and help us that only was supporting us,

unlike, you know, some other seal combat operations that have happened elsewhere. And it was or on other deployments that I was on and we were on our own we we had to plan for that and and you had to recognize that they could they would absolutely bring it and they would try to kill you overrun your position to kill everybody capture someone and that was a real possibility that we had to be we had to recognize could happen at any time and we had to be ready for well just to just to state a statement of fact on top of what you're saying the the enemy did the enemy did overrun friendly positions multiple times while we're there and kill dozens of people and some of those you know some of those heavily fortified ECPs would get completely overrun attacked overrun vehicle born ID so it yeah it wasn't like this could happen this is actually happening well while we were there friendly positions got overrun by the enemy and so yeah it was not just it could happen but it is happening and it's a it's a it could happen to us tonight tomorrow night whenever yeah they were good they used cover move I mean

They laid down fire and supported each other. They put together plans. They had combined arms. They had combined arms. You know, they'd come in with the machine gun fire and then the RPG fire and the mortar fire. And then all of a sudden there'd be a VBID. That's what they'd do. And there were different levels within there as well.

I mean, sometimes you get shot at it. It was kind of a spray and prey, someone dumping an AK in your direction. And then other times you'd have multiple belt-fed machine guns hitting you that were, you know, coming through a little, you know, three-by-four-foot window from 100 yards away. and they're coming inches over your head and you're looking at each other like, man, these guys know what they're doing. So you could tell when, you know, the guys who've been there for a while

maybe come from elsewhere, they brought it. And you could never take them for granted. And also, luckily for us, even though we might not have a dedicated QRF, we had the best damn QRF in the world, which was the 1-1-A-D, and they were awesome and never failed to come and save the asses of T.U.

They braved those roads over. and over and over and over again jumping in their tanks taking such tremendous risk or driving and home these down these horribly dangerous roads we didn't want to drive to come help us out and they did that all the time they were they were awesome and we couldn't done any of our operations without without them next question and this is actually a good question it's it's how did the naval academy and actually a lot a lot of listeners at the naval academy and a lot of listeners at west point um i hear from them and actually i got sent that's show you the hell I got sent somebody sent me a hand-painted navy football helmet pretty awesome with a warship on it Yeah, I'll show it to you this afternoon. So thanks for sending me that by the way It's awesome So like like I said a lot of listeners we've had Brian Stan on you know he talked about his experiences there and a lot of leadership he got

From the Naval Academy was actually from playing football when you listen to him He's playing football at the Naval Academy which was was a challenge for him But he learned a lot of leadership lessons there how did the Naval Academy? How did the Naval Academy? prepare you to lead. Well, first of all, I love my spirits of the Naval Academy, and for me, that was all about the people that I served with, you know, and the folks that I met and the things that we went through together. I got in a lot of trouble at Naval Academy.

I struggled with my grades, something we talked about previously. I had a big conduct record because I still did some of those knucklehead teenage things and rebelled against authority. But frankly, you know, look, there's great people there. You know, there's great people on the staff. I've got a very close friend. There's a battalion officer now, and it's awesome to have good people there that are passing lessons on to, you know, to those young midshipmen as they graduated. And for every academy or RTC union, you know, for that matter.

I saw, you know, because you have such a wide swath of officers from all different, you know, from all different, you know, Navy Marine Corps. I mean, every kind of different branch within those services as well. And also you have a midshipman leadership hierarchy. So you've got someone who, because they made good grades or had a good conduct, wherever got promoted into this kind of make-believe position. Did you see that right there? A little bit of, you know, a little bit of anger about that one right there. Just because they got good grades or they didn't have a good conduct.

They were a thin conduct record. They're going to be in charge of me? Listen, there were some resentful. This is a new life. I just met a new life. Resentful life. I'm actually not at all resentful. I can tell you, I had some good friends.

friends who were in those positions and it was great for them you know good good for them it's it's kind of it's just it's funny looking back now because it's completely meaningless right when you're do you have a regimental commander there yeah yeah is that guy in charge of all the students yeah there's there's there's there's there's a regiment brigade you know battalion at oCS they have it too that when I was at OCS I was the man I was called I was the regimental manager so so no wonder he's a little sense of this is a little sense of this redcom coming in hot oh they also called the Five bar because you're the only person with five bars on your little uniform

Did they did they call you captain big time? No, they called me all president a president of my class too we had a good time at OCS so so now now we see the sensitivity there yeah listen I you know great we maybe you should have studied hard back like I meet some kids now or I hear from I get I get correspondence from people at the Naval Academy and like I can see that they're in the game I can see that they're like oh this is going on and I'm gonna like you know what I'm saying like you think you could have been you could have had that no question about it now would it have mattered at the time i don't know you know failure as we say is often the the best teacher look i made i made great grades

in high school and did well my SATs and aces without with almost no study uh i got super uh i i didn't have the discipline that was in place uh once i got to the naval cabin that structure it was it was difficult for me it was very hard for me as i went into a system engineering program and and those sort of things so i struggled with that so that could have helped me if somebody If I had to learn discipline equals freedom at a young age and recognize the power in that, I'd be way, way more ahead, you know, in life. And we all for sure. What about playing the game?

Yeah, and playing the game as well, right, that I'm going to buck authority of like, you know what, actually it's going to be a lot worse for you. If you just, you know, even from a just personal perspective, not only worse for you, but for your squad or for your, you know, these folks that you care about if you just build a better relationship with the folks above you instead of being the, you know, hard-headed argumentative guy, for sure. It would be way better for me. I don't know when I figured that out.

I mean, it was definitely in my enlisted time. I started figuring out that, oh, I'm working for a guy, and I can either make my life, I can either tell him he sucks, and then my life is going to suck, or I can figure out how to work with him, and that's going to make my life better. And by the way, it's not just going to make my life better. It's going to make us do a better job as a team.

So it's interesting when you pick up on that in life. And obviously, if I would have been going to the Naval Academy at 18, you know, I was a knucklehead. You know, I would have been in the same boat of, like, oh I'm gonna stick it to the man right I mean I'm still listening to tenacious D at age whatever and we're still sticking it to the man well I'll tell you the people that I really like

like my upper class man I really like we have some that are you know still serving the seal teams and and are great guys that help influence me and I expected when I showed up there I wanted to be a seal I wanted to go to war that's what I wanted to do and it was very hard for me to recognize that like not everybody wanted

to do that it was exactly like me it was so it was you know that some people were a little more academic or wanted to be on the intelligence side or wanted to be, you know, they wanted to drive a ship or they wanted to be on a submarine or that, you know, those things that, you know,

fly a plane. I mean, top gun had come back, you know, we had a whole bunch of people that wanted to be, you know, pilots that had gone to school. So it was interesting, people were a lot different than I expected. And some folks didn't quite have the,

the warlike mentality that, that I expected everyone might have, you know, going into that environment. But there's no question that if I had done a better job of, you know, you call it playing the game, just seeing, you know, detaching and seeing like, hey, listen.

Thinking strategically. Yeah, thinking strategically. We want to see, yeah. We don't want to say play the game because that sounds too easy. I want to build relationships. Devious. That is it.

Too devious. Not, I didn't recognize that it was not in my benefit or the benefit of the people around me to, to create antagonistic relationships. And so rather than de-escalate those situations, I rebelled against them and pushed against them, and it was a struggle for me. Yeah.

And it took me a long time to figure, that out. That being said, though, you know, there's, the naval cabs no difference than anywhere else. There was great leaders there who mentor people and trained people and represented, you know, folks well that were both officers on the staff and enlisted on the staff as well as, you know, as midshipment. So, but I think what was a lesson for me and looking back on it now that I recognize, it's great to identify who you don't want to be. And if someone does something that's looking out for themselves or throws people onto the boss or, you know, those leaders that you start losing respect for, it's great to actually identify.

that and that's a good lesson to learn to say okay good I want to make sure I don't be that that way but what what I have learned is that I can't be we talk to leaders about this all the time and I get people like what do you do you know when your boss it just isn't a good leader you're like guess what the SEAL teams is one of the most highly screened organizations in the world what's a what's the percentage of senior leaders that I work for that I had respect for that I'd go and work for again you know that's maybe maybe 20 Maybe 20% of the people I work forward during my time and guess that's about average as you talk to people

You know it's about average in the business world it's certainly at the naval cab any of those places So if you're expecting that there's most of the world out there is not going to be a good leader They're not going to be a good leader and that doesn't matter and that shouldn't affect your performance You should be able to do you know something that I learned from you which has probably been the most helpful thing that you ever taught me was that I should try to have the same relationship with with every boss You know whether I had deep respect and admiration for them or whether I despise them and thought they were, you know, egotiac who, you know, or a coward who, you know, could mitigate risk.

So, and that it's in my benefit and my team's benefit to build that relationship with, with my team. And that was, that was a lesson that I had not learned then. So, yeah, those negative, those negative lessons learned were good for me. And also, I would have had less negative lessons learned if I'd have figured this out earlier. Yeah. Same. And really, we got time for like one more question.

But it's almost the same vein, so I think it's a good question to ask. It says, Leif, at what point did you become enlightened to extreme ownership and how did you respond to the philosophy? Kind of the same vein of what you were just talking about. Exactly. I mean, I clearly didn't have that fully at the Naval Academy,

but I started to understand through the kind of school of hard knocks and fall on my face and getting in a much of trouble and realizing, hey, it doesn't benefit me to rebel against authority or not do what I'm told or be seen as, you know, is someone who's, you know, doesn't respect the rules or whatever. And I think I started to learn that a little more in the surface fleet because my goal, I went out circle. It was crushing to me to not be selected out of the Naval Academy and to go into the SEAL program.

So as I went out and served on a couple different surface ships, I recognize like the, what is the pathway for me to the SEAL teams? My lifelong dream, that's all I want to do. And it was be the best freaking surface warfare officer. Because now you got to just so everyone knows, now you've got to earn a recommendation to go and do this. So if you're not the best fleet officer you could possibly be, someone's going to go, why would you send to the SEAL teams and you're not even doing a good job here, no. So you got to earn a reputation. You also have to, and a recommendation for sure.

So you have to build that trust with your bosses and you have to get qualified. So they've got to trust you and you have to achieve that qualification. You're not even eligible until you achieve your warfare qualification. So when you report aboard a ship, you have to do certain qualifications that, Say okay, yes, you are now a surface warfare officer a qualified surface warfare officer. There's a bunch of boxes you got to check and and And those boxes are you got to learn all kinds of information about all the the hundreds of different systems and until you get that you're not even gonna get you're not even gonna get that you're not even eligible So you had to just you had to get so I had to embrace it and that and that helped me and I still had frictions Certainly and and but I started recognizing like what works and what doesn't and but it wasn't really until

tasking a bruiser. That's where you really quantified that for me. And, you know, as we were going through, I was in my second platoon, so I'd already been through a previous platoon. And I didn't even realize, like, in that second, the second platoon,

as we were working at tasking a bruiser with Charlie Boutoon, I was like, man, we're good. We're performing well. And when we started having, you know, a few months into the workup cycle, we'd have, you know, training instructors be like,

you guys are the best tasking that we've ever seen come through here. And it was interesting to me because I was like, Well, I don't really, I mean, we have some amazing guys in this task unit, but I had amazing guys in my last task unit too. We had very talented. So it's not really the talent factor that broke us out.

You know, and I didn't even realize, it certainly wasn't that we didn't make mistakes because we made all kinds of mistakes in Task Unit Bruiser. And, you know, disastrous training operations where we had to come back and revamp our training process and make sure that we dialed in standard operating procedures, just what training supposed to be. Exactly. And. Right. Exactly.

That's the difference, really. Yeah. And that was it. It was this idea that we now call extreme ownership, which is we're going to take ownership of this. And instead of being like, hey, we're going to push back against people that are telling us we need to be better, or we're going to maybe even deny that we're as bad as we are,

we're going to take a brutally honest assessment of ourselves. And that's one thing that really stands out to me as I think about it. Do you remember our debriefs? The training instructors, they usually have super lengthy and critical debriefs. We would debrief ourselves after a run because they let the, they let the platoons and the task units go first. and so often

it was the only time I ever saw it my nine years in the SEAL teams that most of the time we would get done debriefing ourselves and the training instructors

did not have they had either nothing to say or maybe just a couple sentences and that was it yeah because we'd rip ourselves to shreds because we were that was such a brutally honest assessment

of and sometimes they'd be like hey I actually thought you guys did pretty good shut up we're working and that's actually you told us You told them, right? Yeah.

I say the worst thing, you don't ever tell my guys that they're doing, you know, they're amazing. That's the best friend they've ever seen because that allows us to not get better, to not grow, to get complacent. So we always did that. And I think that's, I was starting to, I recognize just how powerful that was to our performance. So, again, we were never flawless. We always made, we made mistakes, but we learned from those mistakes. We got better. We grew all the time.

And we were able to run circles around everybody else as a result and deliver some exceptional performance on the battlefield. With that attitude and that's you know that that mindset and attitude is is the game changer That's why we call the book extreme ownership and it's what we impart to people as we as we see in the business world and it there's at the end of the day is what works And there's what doesn't work but that T tasking a bruiser and working with you and recognizing what that is and how powerful that is That's that's made all the difference it's crazy to see and I'd see this all the time that well you just think about what you're saying When that when the training cadre for instance tells you Hey, it took you guys a long time to get a head count. Meaning you're on the target and you want to leave the target.

Before you leave the target, you've got to know that you've got all your people. So you want to get a head count. So the training cadre says, hey, it took you guys a long time to get a head count. Now, you can do one of two things here. You can say, okay, that's criticism. How could we get a faster headcount? Hey, guys, anyone ever done this a different way? Yeah, I've used this process in the past.

It works really good. Okay, let's try that. Oh, that worked better and we do this one little thing. It can be even a little bit faster. Okay, let's rehearse it. Let's actually try and rehearse it. Okay, boom, now we're getting really good. So we take that and all of a sudden the next time we go out, we do a little bit better.

And then we've modified a little bit more and all of a sudden we can get a head count in 15 seconds instead of four minutes, which is a huge difference when you're trying to leave a target. So that's one attitude to have. That's like we're going to take ownership of the problems. But I would see this all the time, which is, hey, guys, your head count was a little slow. And guys go up wasn't that bad Wasn't that bad It only took us four minutes Four minutes is not that big of a deal

Like or like that guy's saying that right now But I'd like to see him get a head count Faster than that And we did it as fast as we could do it Everyone counted as fast we could And we made it through the first time That took us three minutes And they're gonna say that's not good enough

Hey don't worry about that And so you're gonna stay on that pattern And you never get better And you're never gonna get better And it's because you're not looking You're not accepting criticism from the outside. And it's like, when we see that with leaders now, I

start laughing about it. Dave and I were just working with a team and we had that, it comes up all the time. And it's funny when you see people pushing back against some real constructive criticism. And my question is always like, okay, I said it just, you know, that battle of ego is there. I look at that and say, okay, what you're telling,

just let me understand. You're telling me that you are at absolute optimal performance. You can never improve in any way. Is that, is that what you're saying? And obviously, then they recognize, like, of course not. So that kind of opens the door of, yeah, you can approve, and you should approve. And if you're not, what you taught me is not only should you improve, I think the big lesson that I learned from you and that we now teach here with Eschon-Fron is that not only should you improve,

but if you're not trying to do better, if you're not doing everything you can to have the most efficient and effective headcount that you can and improve in every aspect of your game all the time, that you're actually failing. as a leader and you're failing your team. And I think that's a very fundamental difference of looking at it. That it's not just, no, I should be doing that. But no, if I'm not doing that, I'm a failure as a leader and I'm failing my team.

Yeah, and all this is weird, you know, talking about this headcount thing, it's a great example. I'm surprised I haven't talked about it very much because it's a really big deal. Like, for instance, when you leave a target, you can't leave until you know that you have all your guys. So you gotta get a head count.

And there's multiple different ways to get a head count. And the easiest way is you use decentralized command and every little team counts there three or four guys and they go yep one's up two's up three's up and and they report in up one level and by the time I would need a head count I'd look at Laif and and the Delta platoon commander and I'd be like hey are we up and it would take them ten seconds they'd like we're up the way the worst way to do it which I would also

see would be you would literally count from from the lowest guy there's 36 guys in the troop and someone would say hey head count and the back guy would go 36 35 and they would you'd have assigned numbers 35 34 33 32 hey who's 31 who's 31 oh over here wait you're 31 no I'm 32 well did you count and see they it takes three minutes four minutes and and yet it's like well that that's a very sensible way on paper to do it because you know you're gonna have all your people but in reality doesn't work and and that's that one and so this is that one little thing right

this one little thing one little improvement you can make but but that's not the only improvement you can make you You can improve every little thing that you do. And every little thing that you do in a team, everything that you do as an individual human being, you can make it just a little bit better. And the minute that you're sitting back and you're going, you know what, I'm not going to make this change anymore. I've reached my pinnacle of performance in this category.

The minute that you do that is not just one category that you're slacking off on. It's all of them. I was telling you guys the other day, I'm like, you know, when you see me post a picture in the morning and saying again, I'm getting up. I'm not getting up at 430. If it says 435, that means I got up at 430, and I got out of bed and I went in and I took a picture of my watch and I posted. When I'm posting it at 408, that means I woke up and I was like, I got to get busy.

It's like, it's not an alarm clock. I've got to get, I got to go do. I got to go make these things happen. I got to look and see where I can improve my method for getting a headcount. How can I make it that much faster? That one little thing. And when you look at your array of what's your going on in your business, And it's also in your life too.

What can you do a little bit better? You attack those problems. You accept the criticism when it comes at you, which is so hard for everyone to do, myself included, you accept the criticism. You listen to it. And then you modify and you make these little iterative changes. And at the end, instead of being a decent task unit

or instead of being a decent person or instead of running a decent team, you can be the best. And that's only happens. if you take ownership of what's going on in your world with that echo charles yes speaking of taking ownership trying to get better yes maybe you can help us out with that a little bit i don't know yeah that's that's interesting though like where when you put it into perspective right the extreme ownership because you know how you say the biggest or one of the biggest best qualities of a leader is humility humility yeah you see the tie in right now right more so even yes because

Because you figure, okay. So you have a little bit. Another stripe. Another stripe on the leadership white belch. There you go. So you get a team of people, all different, you know, personalities, whatever, egos, different varying levels, right? So for little, there's going to be all these little problems. No one's perfect.

No one's optimal, right? That's kind of the goal, even if it's unattainable perfection, right? That's kind of the goal, optimal. Then you have a team with however many mistakes they make. And then as they train, perform, all this stuff, all the little mistakes get pointed out. And it's almost like this self-correcting organism. We hope it is.

Like, that's why. Yes, you hope it is. So like if you compare it to like a machine learning situation, it does that because it doesn't have an ego. It doesn't take things personal. It's kind of like, let me just solve all the little problems. And then that's why they can grow and exponential rates, right? The thing that's awesome about that though is that you get,

and I think what you're talking about is building the culture, right? So you get if the leader's doing that and you get the team doing that once people recognize like hey look how much better we are at head counts Yeah even if I resisted that then you start getting junior leadership Who new you know front line troops new guys who you know they come up with an idea Hey here's a way we can do this a little better They're solving problems that you don't even see yeah it's a I was saying that the other day you know I was I was in a training situation the other day and I saw things go bad for this group it was a military group and and and things are going bad They were they all dropped the ball they all kind of didn't drop the ball but there was slack there was slack

And I was thinking to myself I wouldn't see a young new guy machine gunner not get in a good position I would never see that with my eyes because the guy that was immediately senior to him would would straighten him out There would be no slack right there there be no slack you get straightened out so by the time I show up and I look around Everyone's doing amazingly well Everything's the way it shows It's not quite optimal, but it's damn close and why is that it's because what you just said Leif it's because every Leader every individual leader and every person is is adjusting and making things making adjustments that I'm not even seeing

And why are they doing that number one because they're all humble enough to look that they need to change things and number two Everyone in the group has their ego in check so when someone says hey shift your field of fire a little bit to the west The guy doesn't say why yeah no he goes I wonder why oh I see because he's got another guy over there that's Covering that feel if I got it got it boss. That's that's what that's it now we have like like a machine That's just improving all the time. Yeah, which is what we're going for and if you lack humility in any in any one of those levels You're you're you're gonna slow down that machine's progress that process Fully does. Yeah, so it's weird when you look at it from the big picture, you know and you see like just like are you saying when you kind of mentally compared your current team with you know teams in the past like oh there was talented guys on the other on the other on the other teams that I was on to But you kind of

Understand and recognize that one factor is that everyone's kind of humble and it's always constantly like what can I do better right here with my You know situation in my own little world here but everyone's doing that so it's like this if you if you kind of collectively consider this group They're just boom boom So self self and I'll take it one step forward just just one step further just so everyone can think about how to implement this in your world The way you implement it isn't by saying guys the head count will slow you need to fix it it's not by saying hey the approach the target was too loud you need to be quiet that's not how you fix the problem you say hey guys our head count is taking too long I need to come up with a

better way to do it I need to I need to I need to figure this out or hey guys we were too noisy going to the target I need to make sure that you have the gear that you need and I need to make sure we all understand how important it is to be quiet going to the target. I think I was too loud right I think I was too loud now everyone says to him he's blaming himself for being too loud but I'm the one that was over back there my drop my canteen it made a bunch of noise in the rocks that was my fault I'm gonna tighten myself up yeah as opposed to blaming everyone and we talk about this all the time the minute you're blaming everyone

everyone's just you know they're looking for excuse they're blaming you you don't understand how hard it's to carry that canteen quietly and I was thirsty because I've been carrying the machine gun and I need to get water right there I was gonna get dehydrated they're just making uses you know and the machine can't self-correct machine can't self-correct can't do it just stays in the one inefficient ineffective place mode speaking of machines machines need oil hmm not necessarily krill oil but we need krill oil if you did if you if you did no already jaco jaco has supplements good news I just took my jaco krill oil

this morning gets up me too always every day don't forget um can't slack on that thanks for bringing me some krill oil in New York to by the way yeah that you still owe me a bottle for them yeah no problem I know a guy his name is Jocko and the krill oil is called Jocko super krill and joint warfare by the way which is another joint supplement you know maintain the physical capabilities of your body I said don't forget to take it and don't run out by the way I ran out before but if you're running out there is a subscription option By request

Yeah, you get it what every month You can get it every month every two weeks This was cool though Because the indicator Was When people order Crile Oil Joint Warfare Guess what they do

They order more Yeah And then they order more And so then the request were Can we just put it on subscription? So is there a I mean I just take three of them Three of each boom

But I'd never read like How much should I be taken Because it's a little bit more like strong Right like this more I'll tell you what I take I take three of each in the morning and I take three of each I know that's good and that's fine but what is the recommended deal you're also talking the guy that you know orders the 40 ounce steak too more is better yeah after 48 hours I think the recommended I would say I would say depending on your weight but I'd say like two and two take two of each in the morning two of each at night and also you can do this okay you can also do this you can also you know see where you're

at right like you know what it feels like when you haven't been taking you're like yeah so then up the dose that's what I didn't I've been real real confident with where I'm at yeah me two three and three for me not twice one one time three and three and three and three and three subscription though that's good I like that option because I I run out and and then and then it takes you know days too late yeah and you well that's what that's what sucks is it takes like three days right three days you're like I'm oh I haven't been taking it and then you got to get back on it and it takes another couple days it's whack yeah get a subscription if you're into

it well can you get that anyways oh like that well there's more stuff what yeah yeah if you want to go get it right now origin main dot com that's where you get it also at origin main dot com also jaco supplement it's called discipline it's a pre-mission cognitive enhancers micro dose of caffeine if you're into it just like jaco white tea layf you're all Just in the bottle. Just sampled some. It's tasty.

Yeah. See, tasty, which is, I mean, maybe it's... Yeah. I mean, again, I know I said it before, but it doesn't seem like you're all, like, focused on taste. Because you're not focused on looks. No. See what I'm saying? Not at all.

Yeah, but you like to taste good stuff. Yeah, yeah, here to win. And make sure stuff tastes good, apparently. But it is good stuff. I take that one every day, too. When do you take it? Morning. Now.

Pre. Pre-day life pre-day man You know why the way I see it is like there's no caffeine or there's not like huge amounts of caffeine So it's like okay if I'm gonna micro dose yeah I rip that off from Tim Ferriss what microdose they talk about microdosing LSD and microdosing Psycho drugs and whatever sounds cool that's not really my thing yeah yeah I'll take a little microdose of caffeine Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure but give you a little glimpse into the spirit world I don't think you to do it Well the LSD might yes for sure

The 20 reps quads will do it Oh That's what you're definitely Yeah Yes Come and get some of that sometime I just figure the like the cognitive Enhancing nutrients

I figure that's like a thing That's not like a drug Right It's nutrients so let's take it every day So your brain is just generally more capable That's just what I figure I don't know

He's answering all these good questions They got the discipline Maybe. The neurons are firing. I've been on it. That's why I got those stripes. 19% increase in performance. Yeah.

Thanks for, and the rashcards to do that, by the way. Also, anyway, get them at origin, mane.com. Also at origin, mane. dot com is where you get your key straight up. You get an origin key? I do have an origin geese, and they're awesome.

I get comments on it all the time. They're great geese. They're super lightweight, but they're super strong. And, yeah, definitely my favorite. I'm looking to get another one mine too and made in America by the way Brian emailed me yesterday You might think that's the best thing about origin geese that it's just made in America But then it's not because you get the gie and you realize that yeah it's awesome Yeah because if it was made in America and then you were like cluster full baker or something

I was rolling the other night I was rolling in the deaf geese Yeah, yeah yeah you the interesting thing we obviously we know I'm not a fashion guy right well I mean clearly I'm not a Yeah, we know that big time. We could, Laif can tell, you want to see your stories, you can tell Leif to tell stories about my fashion escapade. In your 1987, Tapered jeans, Danor combat boots. Hey, that's how I roll. But when you put on the deaf geese, everyone says something. Why is that?

It's just because it looks, because it's not flashy. It just says discipline goes freedom. And then it says get after. On the back. That's, every time I walk by people, when I'd walk by, then I'd hear him going, get after it. Yeah, yeah. And you know what Pete is like that though? What he has like an element of fashion in his stuff?

No, I know I gotta put him in check on that Yeah, I got to go back and forth a little bit like hey you gotta put that in check. You want to because he made some He made some spats. Oh yes, but which is an approved term now. Yes Leif compression pants Compression pants tights is what supermen would call them Spaddened But anyways he made some of that work is that like jaggings? No that's way too far their jeans with They're like it's, I know this because my daughter has some and it says, Jay.

It's like, what's teenage girls, you don't know what jaggings are? No. They're like leggings slash jeans. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, Pete has more fashion sense because he's got that whole design thing going on. Yeah. Like, he's a designer.

Yeah, yeah. He's a creative. I know you're listening, Pete. You know you're all designing stuff up there. Me, I'm like, make it black. Yeah, yeah. What can we add to it? More black?

And what kind of shape do you want in the waistline? I don't know about that kind of stuff. But Pete's like, oh, don't worry, I got it. Yeah. And that's why. Until he designed the multi-colored spats. Well, that's just like just taking in a different direction. I can't even, I can't even, I have to put myself in check here.

Because I realize that that is beyond my domain of competency right there. That is way beyond my domain of competency. So if you want to get those spats, go for it. Dang it. But to Pete's credit, guess what they have now? Black. Black spats. There you go.

If you need them, you can get them. Boom. But even his even the other geese though people before I got the deaf one People would be like oh that's a nice gie well what's really interesting is when you see the weave Yeah, weave is what makes it Gorilla weave yeah, but there's like this little pattern in the drag and actually the first one of the first ones I actually held was yours life Because you've you've had that origin geve for a long time Yeah, because you asked me a long time ago before I was even with origin you're like hey what kind of geishish

I said get a damn origin gig Yeah you're like this amazing awesome company you would tell me about it and yeah You know they went and got I went ball one. It's good. And I was like, oh, damn, this thing is nice. But yeah,

there's a pattern. All right, cool. We get it. Sorry. What I'm just saying, even though you don't care about the fashion, Pete will sneak it in there

just for like the perfect amount of fashion. I got to watch out for Pete. Settle fashion. It's good. Keep it up, Pete, I think. Also some rash guards there. All Made in America and some other stuff.

Check it out. If you like something, get something. OriginMane.com is the website. Also, on it. Dot com slash chalk. On it,

this is where I get my kettlebells. Kettlebells? I like kettle bows. Yeah. So I got the whole set, primal bells, all that stuff. Also, maces and other workout stuff, if you want to, you want to switch it up. You don't want to do a boring workout anymore or you're bored with your workout. Switch it up on it.com slash chaco.

Check out the workout. It's good. Get something. Also, when you buy extreme ownership, way the worry kid, or any of the books, Jocko may or may not review on this podcast. Don't worry. I organize all those books. I made a shirt, too, by the way. It's a whole other story.

I'll go into that later. But I organize all the books by episode, by the way. Get them through there. Good way to support. It'll take you to Amazon, get your book, get whatever else you're getting, and, you know, carry on. Lawn mower. I never noticed that lately. A lot of lawn mowers.

People buying lawnmowers. Ready for spring. Yeah. Through the Amazon, click through. Yeah. I think I'd say that. Good way to support. Can you buy a driving lawnmower?

Because when I think lawnmower, I think driving. On Amazon, you probably can. Probably. John Deer. Yeah, something like this. I bought a leaf blower and I'm not joking There you go my daughter plays with it Rechargeable ones can you get an 84 millimeter recoil this rifle? Carl Gustav no I don't think so No, no you gotta go somewhere else at home

That is the damn shit one of my buddies was asking me the other day he was gonna go shooting and and he's a he's a British guy And his name is English pizza and Sure, and English pizza he's like I'm gonna go shoot night You call him English Peter? That's his nickname. English pizza. P-E-T-A-H. English Pita.

And English Pita was going to go shooting with someone. And he says, hey, you don't want to go. He says, hey, I'm going to go shooting. Would you like to come? Maybe we could work on some covered move. And I was like, I was like, I can't make it. And then I saw him later. And I said, oh, how was the shooting?

He says, oh, we didn't get to go, mate. Couldn't go. And I said, oh, that's a bummer. I said, you're going to like it. And he goes, I really want to shoot is like the RPG. And I was like, That's gonna be a little tricky to get So I don't know

We can check Amazon for our beach Backblastery clear Yeah, let's get some Yeah, Amazon I don't think they provide That kind of stuff But if they do, hey, whatever You know, when you buy your book

Buy one of those, cool Also, subscribe to the podcast If you have it already Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play Spotify You know Spotify? I do There's some more

You know what? There's a bunch of other podcast And I don't even know what their names are. I need to start tweeting the the locations of those I got to figure them all out. Yeah, well and there's a bunch. Yeah, and they're coming out with new ones. It's like this. You'd think we kind of said before you'd think oh iTunes, right? That's where podcasts are, but podcast is a podcast. Yeah. Hey, what's interesting? And I haven't seen this factually or I don't know where the number came from. So like two years ago, 18% of America was listening to podcasts. 18. 18. Like when we started, that's the number I got. I was. I was like researching, oh, how many people are listened to it?

Right now, so it's been two years, 48% of America is listening to podcasts. And that right there is explosive growth. That's pretty amazing, because it's a great medium. Yeah. Yeah, it's like kind of like having a conversation. Well, I guess it depends on the podcast, but yeah, I agree fully. So yeah, subscribe if you want.

Good way to support. Also, YouTube. Subscribe to YouTube if you want. If you're interested in the video version of this podcast, wherever guest Laf Babin, the guest episodes, that's when people watch them. Typically mostly mostly yeah well I don't yeah not even really mostly I'm just saying we see more people watching the episodes with with guests I want to see what they look like apparently

Yeah unless if you're interested in that and excerpts if you don't want to necessarily watch the whole podcast You watch just like little clips of it or whatever you want to share them with your friends whatever We provide that as well also Enhanced excerpts that's what we're calling them now okay some of that too anyway various video types on there and you've seen you've been a little bit more your You're throwing more punches now. You let your hands go a little bit. A little bit more, yeah. Let them go more.

Yeah. We're going to keep that going. So, yeah, there'll be more clips to choose from, you know, you don't listen, more watch, whatever. Yeah, so yeah, subscribe. Good way to support. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocco store, of course, jocco store.com. That's where you can get.

Discipline equals freedom shirts. Victory MMA shirts. Someone Jocco wears every day while we do the podcast and otherwise. And, you know, get out. Anyway, there's shirts on there. There's podcast shirts. Jock gear shirts. Also rash guards, also hoodies, also hats.

Did you mention a new shirt? Is there a new shirt? I mentioned a new shirt. Is it out? Because I haven't approved or seen anything lately. No, you'll approve. It's good. Unauthorized.

Yeah, yeah. It's in the limbo right now, but I'm very, we're confident. It's like the patches. He secretly wants you to do it. Yeah, yeah. No, this one he's going to openly. I think you'll approve because there's no colored shirts. Okay, good.

Approved. And then, you know, actually it's called Back to the Book. Oh. No surprise. We talked about it before. But I think it's coming along with a few layers on there. And, you know, I'm going to go ahead and offer it. Offer it up.

Yeah, you can't release it until there's enough layers. Yes. No, yeah. Layerless shirts are unapproved. Who has the most? The shirt that I designed is the most layered shirt. Is that correct? Yes.

I think quantity of layers. That's good. You submitted quite easily there. Yeah, it's true. The truth. You have the what do you call. it the gift of truth or what it was it I don't know you know when when they're like hey what if

our competition is gossiping about us you have the oh yeah they have the big weapon yeah the weapon is truth the high ground yeah so you got numbers on your side nonetheless jocco store.com that's where you can get all the cool stuff check it out if you want something get something also psychological warfare if you know what that is it's an album with tracks jaco tracks when you run into those moments of weakness and your

Campaign against weakness. Speaking of which, so I'm getting in my car. You know, I've got thousands of songs on my iTunes. I get in my car. You know how to have my Bluetooth on and you realize it, but it just automatically synced up to my trucks. I jump on my truck. And I didn't realize the radio was at kind of a high volume, apparently.

I think my kids would probably scream into the backseat, so I'm playing like some kid tunes. But I get in there. I get in there and all of a sudden it's like, Jocko's voice. I mean, I get it. I'm not paying attention backing up and it's like,

it's kind of like, where does discipline come from? And of all the random, you know, thousands of songs that I have on my iTunes, like that comes up. I was like, what are the odds? And it was actually something I needed to hear at that moment.

And to remind me to get back on the path. So there you go. That is something that's extremely helpful. Perfect. And the universe. The universe aligns. The universe of the lions. You can thank Echo Charles for that.

Because Echo Charles originally said to me, like, hey, what do you do here? And I answered him, some question. It was like, when I skip workouts. Yeah, what do you? He's like, well, how do you not skip workouts? And I was like, I, blah, but, but, but, but he's like, bro, we need to record that and put it out so people can listen to it. And he's like, and you should answer the rest of them. You should be like, what, how do you get out of Benzor?

So I was just like, all right, ask me the questions. And that's where it came from, Echo Charles. Yeah, a little additional thing where, you know how the kind, I don't know if you've run into this where you're like, I have, I'm confused or, I'm confused or, I don't have the answer for this thing. So I'm going to ask Jocko. What is just what does he think? Right as you're asking him, you're like, oh, I know what he's going to say already. Right.

So this one, he was like, I was like, oh, I know what this guy's going to say right now. He's just going to say, stop being weak or something like that. So it's more like, I get it. Stop being weak. Okay. But there's a little bit more to that like, what do you say? Like, what do you think or whatever? You know?

I'm like, all right. Yeah, we're going to record that. And these Jocco tracks, they have it for anything, not just skipping workouts. for procrastination, getting up early, all this stuff. So it's kind of like, even if your volume's not turned up, it's kind of like Jocco's actually telling you, like how to not skip the workout. It's good.

It's encouragement. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's funny is how come people are always like, oh, you should make a thing of you yelling at me to get out of bed. Yeah. You know, I'm not a big, yeller. That would work, but it would only work like a few times.

After a while, it's kind of like, oh, you know, I'm like, cool. Shut him up. According of jocco yelling, but if you're, you know how like you're talking like, you know, so like it's kind of like you're explaining You know like this is this what's going on this what you kind of thing? It's enough a reminder of like hey Get back on the path. Yeah, go. There you go. But yeah, good one get that one on iTunes, basically anywhere where they sell MP things. Yeah. Yeah. It's available Psychological work for it with support the also when you're on Amazon you can get jocco white tea now the good thing about there's some good things and bad things about jocca

of white tea the bad things or is you got to mix it up with hot water that can take a little extra time the good things is Once you drink about a half a cup of white tea this is what we're finding now when you drink about a half a cup of white tea You are then able to deadlift 8,000 pounds a lot of people are wondering how much you had to drink and the answer is you can drink a half a cup And you're there so you can get jocco white team and it's also legal Which a lot of people are trying to get it outlawed right now by you know the athletic commission and the Olympics. They don't want people breaking all the records and everything. So, yeah, they're trying to just ban it.

But get it while you can, right? Get it while you can before it gets banned. Before it gets banned and then you're just done. Also, some books, the books that I read on the podcast for sure, there's also a book called, a lot of the books I read on the podcast are for adults, clearly. A lot of them are very, you need a mature audience. But kids also need to know how to get on the path. Am I right?

You got kids. You got kids. Kids need to know how to get on the path. How are they gonna get on a path? Well Number one they can get the book Way the Warrior Kid and They can get on the path with that and now there's another book coming out. It's way the warrior kid Two Sequel sequel the sequel could it be but Jaws 2 fail?

There's always that chance if I would have listened to my publisher Yeah, because what do they want to do? They want you to churn out right? I Hey, you got a little bit going here. Let's get another one. Let's ride the wave, right? And by the way, let us help you shape where we think we this could go. Oh, so you just want to take it down that path.

No, we're not going down that path. Life's hard. Mark's going to face some more struggles. And he does. Luckily, he's got an Uncle Jake. Comes and help him out. Way of the Warrior Kid, Mark's mission. You can pre-order it right now.

It comes out. April 24th is the date that it comes out. You can get that also if you're an adult you want to get on the path stay on the path be on the path Move down the path you can get a book called discipline equals freedom field manual Which echoes apparently knows all about field manuals my favorite kind of man Yeah favorite kind of manuals this is gonna help you stay on the path that's what it's gonna do Not only what you should think about in a section called thoughts but also the actions you should take if you want to proceed to get stronger

faster smarter and all around better and if you want the audio version don't look for it on audible because it's not there this is an album also with tracks and it's available

in MP3 format from Amazon music from Google Play from other MP3 platforms and actually Leif what you talk a little bit about I don't know

a couple books We rode a little company we got, maybe a little event that we're doing. First and foremost, if you want to dive deeper in the leadership principles that we've been talking about and referencing, get extreme ownership. We have people ask us like, hey, where did you make mistakes in your career?

We wrote a whole book about them. That's what extreme ownership is about. The mistakes we learn on the battlefield, the things that happen to us, what we learn from them, and then how that principle applies to business in life. So go get that book on Amazon or anywhere that you can buy books,

and if you're like me and you're super busy and you don't have a lot of time to read, then you can get the audible book. The audio book, it's on audible, it's on anywhere, and get that version. And we read it, by the way. We read it. James Earl Jones wasn't available.

Texas Batman was. We had to read it. I didn't realize it was the Texas Batman until people were listening to this book. Yeah, yeah. That's where that was born on social media. I hear good things about the audio version, though. Straight up.

There's little surprises in the audio version That once again we didn't listen to our publisher Our publisher was like well that's kind of weird to put that Well we well what would you rather hear for a gunfire? You know me going pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop Or would you rather hear gunfire? What would you rather hear for? Caboom or would you rather have explosion? What would you rather have for the call to prayer?

Leif talking about the call to prayer coming because it's you can be pretty eerie in those situations Or would you rather actually hear it So there's what would you call that? audio theater. Sure. You make it into like that? Yeah. Audio theater.

Okay. And they did a great job with that with the audio book. So get that. That's certainly an option as well. And if you have a company or you want to work with us, Eschlawn Front, that's our company, Eschlawn Front. And if you're looking to implement these leadership programs into your team, learn from us, learn those same principles that we talk about, then that's what we do at Escalon Front.

is we we come out and work with your team. We come out and work with your team and get these principles applied to your particular challenges so that you can lead and win on your battlefield. And that's just that what Escalon Front is, it's our company, it's Jocko, it's me, it's Dave Burke, it's J.P. D.N.L.

guys that you know from this podcast and a whole team of folks, as Jock talked about the tank where we talk about these leadership problems, we solve those problems, and we help you lead. win. And that's awesome. We love that. So if you're interested in working with us, go to echelonfront.com. And of course, the muster, which we talked about, this is the ultimate

leadership conference. And we've had four of these so far. Every single one of them have sold out. Every single one of us sold out. So don't wait. If you were interested in coming, we're only doing two this year. We're only doing two. We're only doing two. We're only doing two this year. We're only doing two this year. And that's in Washington, D.C., May 17th and 18th, and that's in San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. And that's it. If you want to come and be a part of the muster, go to extreme ownership.com and get registered. And we'll see you there. And until the muster, if you want to kind of continue this conversation that we're having right now,

you can find us continually conversing on the interwebs. on Twitter On Instagrammy And on da thing Leif is at Leif Babin Echo is at Echo Charles And I am at Jocka Willink Echo Charles anything else

No Self-correcting machine That's what happens when you start doing the extreme Ownership thing That's the added layer I gathered from today Legit I like it Thanks for help in clarify Always good to see you

Thanks for having me. Maybe not always, but. Dave, any closing thoughts? Good to be on again. Looking forward to the next time. I suppose we'll do one more of when we're up at the muster. We'll talk more, maybe we'll talk more about, probably talk a little bit about extreme ownership.

Maybe we'll talk a little bit more about the new book, which would be done for the most part by then. Awesome. Obviously, thanks for coming on. Thanks to everyone out there, especially those of you who are out there in uniform, who have basically said, I am willing to give everything I have for freedom.

We're here today because of you. So thank you. Thank you to the police and the law enforcement and the firefighters and the paramedics and the rest of the first responders that do their job every day, every day, to make sure that we are safe here at home. and everyone else out there that's listening and sharing and supporting this podcast.

Thank you. But don't just listen and don't just support and don't just share. But instead, wake up every day with a mission. Wake up every day with a goal to be a little bit better than you. you were yesterday and become the self-correcting machine. That's not going to bring you to perfection, but it's going to bring you to a place that's a little bit closer. To get out there and get after it. And until next time, this is Laif and Echo and Jocko.

Out.