Jocko Podcast - 160: Live in NYC. Humbled and Mystified.

Episode Date: January 16, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening: A Letter to Seth Stone. 0:42:31 - Rough transition to Q and A. 1:34:51 - Q and A from the Audience. 2:19:08 - Closing.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 160 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. October. I'm going to head your way and see you today. Though sometimes I wonder why I should. Sometimes you don't seem to care. That makes me mad, brother.

And then when I see you, it doesn't really. make me feel any better. Should it? Is that what this is for? It doesn't seem to be. It actually just makes me remember the way things used to be. It makes me wonder why things turned out this way. What did I do wrong? Should I have done something different? What could I have said? You never let me down, ever, but now you won't even talk to me. I was. I was. looking at some of the things you wrote to me in the past. I opened up in the email. In it, you wrote, I feel it again, washing over me. The descent into degeneration and disintegration, the smell of filth, black water mixed with blood and gunpowder and shit. The American soldier

covered in filth, 11 months into a 16-month deployment. The insurgents. Grown. men hiding behind children, women wailing over the dead, explosions and screams and fragments of concrete flying through the air. And frogmen enter the scene to take the hand of the American soldier and pull him from the whirlpool. To set his feet back on the rock and speak words of hope, we are the prophets of doom and destruction. We enter an area and take back the lost pride. of America. We redden the stripes, blue the field, and make the stars of our tattered and humiliated battle-ents and shine once again. We hold it high. We carry a nation on our shoulders, and we bring the enemy to its knees. We do not live in fear of death or wounding or even worse

rejection by the country we love. I feel my mind coming apart and the old sleeping animal coming out. I tried to keep it inside, but it cannot help but attend the call to battle. Originally wrote that to me, I thought to myself, yep, he's there again, where he should be. I knew it wouldn't last forever, but where are you now? Now you seem distant. In my head, I can see you smile. I can hear you laugh. But it's only in my head. I was surfing the other day. It was one of those days.

Solid swell, no wind. Tide was low and the sky was clear and bright. Kept looking out. Toward the outside. Where you used to sit and wait for the big set waves, I thought I saw you a couple times, but it wasn't you. I heard someone paddling behind me. Must be you, I thought.

No. Nothing. No one's there. Bone out here. Everything is the same, but nothing is the same. Everything has changed, but nothing is changed. Does anything ever change? Look at the waves as they approach the shore.

Each wave formed through random combinations of wind and sea and pressure, and each one completely unique. When they break, they're gone forever. And another one, they are all different. They're all the same. It's in the future, and I see some of the future in the past, and I begin to wonder which is which. How did I get here? Where am I going to end up?

I look at some more of your writing. You are telling a story, writing a story about a man, about God, about life, about death. And this is what you wrote. I am ready to go, he thought to himself. But for you, I wait for the appointed time. Thy will, he said to himself, and closed his eyes and placed his hands on the pages, as if there was some strength there, and he prayed. While he prayed, he also thought of past times,

and exhaled Russ from the evil one, he muttered, and he thought of all the reasons he had no right to say this prayer. He steadied himself, opened his eyes, and looked out into the first light of the morning. He saw a face not his own looking back at him from the window and disappear. But he was not startled. This kind of thing was normal. I'm ready for you, he thought to himself. While he ran that morning, he did not think about anything.

His mind retreated deep into itself, or perhaps it shut down altogether, and he wore no expression. He only looked out at the sea and watched as the seabirds glided above the undulating plane of water, moving close above its surface, but managing somehow not to touch it. At home, he heaved weights around on a small concrete slab. His routine effortlessly recited and at the same time painfully undertaken again without thought or care. Every single. morning the same, marking off time until an appointed end, his final rendezvous. Is that what we are doing here? Marking off time until an appointed end? My memory plays tricks on me. How many days do I actually remember? And what good is a day that I can't remember? Did it exist? I want to remember every day,

but I can't. I let some of them go, and I hate that. I want to remember and re-remember the times we had together. He played songs on the guitar. But I can't hear them anymore.

They are gone. I can't recreate them. I'm not good enough. Play them again. One more song. Here is some more of your writing. I am God's messenger.

I am a chieftain of Michael the angel. He has granted my request to help you, for it is you who are doing the bidding of the king. We have heard your many prayers. They burn before us day and night. Yes, heaven is full of the fragrance of your prayers. And I bring glad tidings from the Lord of Lords. He is preparing his mount to ride here, but there is still more to be done on earth before he wields his scythe and sword upon it. Lord's wants to help you reap the spirits against whom you are warring. Satan has asked to have you. We will not let that happen. Always have a choice. I have come a long way, though. I came when we heard your last prayer. You will not be turned. And God was on your side. But if God was on your

side, how did you end up like this then? How could you do this to me? What about me? Yeah, I know. I'm being selfish, but what about me? You know what? I'm not going to see you today. You can wait after everything I did for you. After everything we went through together, I pride myself in keeping control of my emotions.

But I got to admit, you had me break down a little bit for a while. Do you see that? You're probably laughing at me. So I'm going to come up and see you today. Is that cool? I mean, it's supposed to be cool. If nothing else, just to say goodbye. I'll bring you a beer or two.

I don't even drink anymore. But you know what? If you crack one open with me, I'll have one with you. Like old times. And when we made it, we made it. As crazy it seems, I was actually. never that worried about you. Maybe you were blessed.

Maybe you were lucky. Maybe it was both. But whatever it was, it worked. You even wrote to me during your next deployment. This is what you wrote. All I interject is my part, the firing and yelling part. But the bullets do not hit me. They never hit me.

They passed through me like a miracle. Two days ago, we drove through a village and knocked all the power lines down. and it was night and the sparks were like incoming RPGs. I wished they were and braced and the IEDs won't come either. They won't hit me. It's like I'm being capitalized the P in protected. You believed it was a higher power, rightly argue with you on that. Why did this happen?

Where did that protection go? Did it abandon you? Like you abandoned me? What am I supposed to do now? I'm not going to see you today. It's a new year. Let's try this again. Time heals all wounds, they say.

So we should be good now, right? I should be over it all by now. I'll come see you and at a minimum say goodbye. Just say goodbye. Just tell you that's it. No hard feelings. Don't take it personally. I've decided I'm gonna go ahead and proceed on down the path without you alone and I'm used to being alone

No big deal I kind of like it, but even I have to admit it was nice nice to have someone to talk to Nice to have someone to talk to without even talking a nod a smile No one is smiling back anymore no one sometimes I look up at the night night sky. That can approximate a smile. I see a smile in the sunset. I don't know why. I try to milk what I can out of every day. I should be cursing the sunset. That sunset means another day is gone. I should be cursing it, but I don't. I take a few minutes when I can and I watch it. Good night, Al Huey. Good night, Chesty. Good night, stoner. Maybe there's some relief.

that the day is gone is at it, that part of the race is over, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. When my oldest daughter was little, he would watch the sunset over the ocean when we'd get the chance. And she was at that age, when she was only just starting to talk, she could just say a handful of words. When she wanted a drink of milk, she would say nook. When she wanted to go on the swing,

She would say, Ving! When I would throw her up in the air and catch her, she would laugh, and she would giggle, and she would say the word again. And she and I were sitting on the seawall. It was autumn, and the sun was leaning towards the south, and we watched, and she watched, in the sky red and yellow and orange, like fire and the water ignited.

It burned black and the sun disappeared into the ocean and she looked up at me and she said again. She wanted it back. But I couldn't do anything for her. I can't stop the clock and I can't bring back a day. Not one single day, not one single minute you get what you get. And that sunset will keep a man's ego in check, especially when you're complete lack of control. disappoints the little angel sitting on your knee. I told this situation either.

And I don't want to face that. I don't want to say goodbye. I can wait in time. Rebirth. Winter swell fades, but the water warms up. The days get longer again. I look at more of your words. They read,

He found a sleeping spot. Happy and excited with anticipation, he thought of the glory which was to come, and he slept tranquilly and did not dream. Midnight sky held no trace of trouble, almost no clouds. Only a wisp of silver gray near the moon that seemed to be something beautiful for the humans below to look at as an omen that something good might happen

as some kind of sign that heaven awaited it, the good thing. What am I supposed to do with that? You set me up, you know. with thoughts of the good thing. Because there we were. You know we were headed in the right direction toward the good things. When you listen to me, things worked out always.

Right? You know it. When you listen to me and you put your damn heart in check, things worked out. It's your problem. You listen to your heart too much. You know. this, let your emotions get a hold to you. You know it's true. I told you a thousand times,

10,000 times, and you tried to listen. And you did listen sometimes. But your heart couldn't be completely subdued. It was too strong. Too strong for its own good. And yeah, I know. I know That's what makes you, you. Fine. You should have listened. And now I am here and you are there and there's nothing I can do about it. July. Fledged summer now.

Campfires and guitar on the regular. Where are you at? And let me ask you something. If you aren't going to come around, then can you just let me be? I don't want you in my head right now. I don't want to get dragged back Every time I strum a chord We were traveling up the coast

You and me Lazy days Surfing by day Playing on the Git boxes at night We were looking for bigger waves The kind of waves that get the blood flowing As well as I We were looking for

That moment when nothing else matters That moment that is sourced directly from the battlefield. Hard to find anywhere else. So we try and get close to it. Jiu-jitsu, surfing, whatever,

but it's hard to replace. Maybe it can't be replaced. Maybe it just is what it is. I think I understood that. I'm not sure you did. I was able to rationalize it, figure out, detach from it. See it from the outside.

Before that trip, up the coast. You had written me these words. Send us. We are thirsty for screams and gore and hell and dirt and shit. We will hack our way through scores of bodies, form them up in a pile, and burn them so we can kill by the pyre light. Somebody spread the good news that the killer's teeth are sharp and their guns are clean and their souls are dead, so no one needs anything but victory and sacred deference when it is done. You see, that was your heart talking again.

The same heart that wrapped around a girl you met, the same heart that brought my kid's birthday presents, the same heart that was broken by the loss of our friends, a heart capable of both devotion and destruction. and destruction. I told you to let it all go. Control everything. A year has passed, or was it yesterday?

Time seems like a trick, but the trick is on me because it's no trick at all. Time does not waver. It does not relinquish. It isn't tricky. It just is. And it is moving on without judgment and without mercy,

and it will keep moving. I am coming up to see you today. have to say goodbye. I can't do it like this anymore carrying you around in my head, bringing back the past so often that it's interfering with the present and the future. That's not right. That wasn't part of the deal. You're still there. I left you. I brought you a beer and some wax for your board and a guitar pick, even though you play better without one. I already went and saw Mikey and Mark. I save you for last. That's the way it is.

You were the last to go. It's the way it always ends here. It always ends like this. And I will end up here too, but I didn't know you'd end up here so soon. Here's your beer. Poured in the grass for you. I'll put this bar of surf wax on top of your gravestone,

etched in that white granite rock. Seth A. Stone. Commander, U.S. Navy, Afghanistan, Iraq, September 17th, 1976, September 30th, 2017, silver star with oak leaf cluster, bronze star, metal with valor, faithful warrior. I always tell everyone to carry on, to mourn, but not to dwell, but now, I'm dwelling myself. And I know I shouldn't. You know I shouldn't.

Thought long and hard about it. And I was going to say goodbye. But I'm not going to say it. You're still with me. You're in the ocean and in the sky and in the earth beneath my feet. You're still with me. And I'm good with that. Here's one more thing you wrote.

I fought the enemy as good as I could. I lost myself. but in doing so I found myself. It is a path. You have to work your own one out. It is a struggle. I have listened to the truth. I am humbled and mystified by this life we live.

But you this, my brother, I am humbled and mystified by this life too. And I am going to keep on living it. I can't stop the sunsets and I can't bring them back. But I can make them count is what I am going to do. And I am going to make it trying to make it count. We're doing this gig here tonight. So we are. Yeah.

Yeah. We call this a rough transition. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So everyone, that's here, our first live podcast. Thanks for everyone, for, thanks to everyone for coming down. As I thought about what to talk about tonight,

I went down into a pretty heavy subject. And you know, that's part of what this whole thing is. thing is. All the people that have reached out to me over the last few years, you know, that were able to overcome some tough situation because of the podcast. And it's the same with me, the same lessons that we've learned from the podcast, from books from having people on it's the same we get the benefit of two I get the benefit of that too and here we are so thanks for coming echo Charles thanks for

pressing record and stop by the way you got it's it's a whole it's a whole thing and one of the main things and one of the main reasons I wanted to do a live podcast is to actually see everyone and give a chance for you to see us and for you to see what we do and what it looks like. And this is pretty much what it looks like. Yeah. I mean, we're sitting in a small room and we press record and this is what we do. And it's great to have everyone here and to see your faces.

And I've talked about this before. I mean, when I'm recording, I'm talking to you. You know, I'm talking to the people that I've heard from over the past few years. I know you're listening. And even from day one, I wanted to, when people put on their headsets, I wanted them to think like, okay, yep, this is, we're going in. This is it. Like, it's on. And I don't want you to waste your time.

I don't want to waste your time. So that's why we're doing this tonight. I thank you all for coming. I also want to take advantage of the fact that you're here to do. some live Q&A, which is very fun for me to do. I enjoy doing it. And we did solicit questions from the ticket sales. Did I just escalate that?

Yeah. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. We did that for ticket sales. And so we've got some of those questions here. And we'll start off with a couple of those. And then we've got, you can bring the Q&A lights on. And then we've got some folks out there, volunteers with microphones,

and then once we'll open it up, and we're going to react and answer some questions. And I know some of you were waiting to get a picture and get some stuff signed before this started, and we'll finish this, and we'll wrap up that for everybody here. So it's awesome that you all are sitting here. Appreciate you coming down. And let's do a little Q&A. Yeah, yeah, all right. Yeah, it's interesting because usually we just sort of see the cameras.

You know they're on the other side of the cameras. But you just see the camera. Now it's like, oh, you actually see the people. It's different, man. It's different. So, all right. First question. Teen observation.

Well, you see him saying? Like, now I look in the camera. Like, oh, okay. You see them saying? I'm just saying you see the people. Awesome. Well, let's not blow it anymore. First question.

We can't edit out your stuff right now. All right, Jocko. What impresses you the most when you're considering to work with someone or hire them to be part of your team? This is a question that gets asked all the time. Everybody wants to know who to hire and what do I look for. And obviously, I look for someone that's humble. and I look for someone that's balanced. And really, you know, it's one of those things where as much as you can before you hire someone,

get to know them. And the advice we give people an echelon front all the time when they're looking to hire someone is we say, look, if you can, hire them temporarily, bring them on as a contractor for 90 days. You have to see them in the environment that they're actually going into, they're going to be working in before you know what they're really going to be like. because just like going through, they screen people like crazy to go into SEAL training and they can't tell who's going to make it

and who's not going to make it. They just can't tell. And you work with people in the SEAL teams and you think you know what they're going to be like when you're going to combat, but you just can't tell. You can have a decent idea, but you just can't tell.

And so if you get the opportunity or the best way to do it is try and bring people on board in a temporary manner so you get to know them better and then once you know them, you can either hire them or you can get rid of them easily. Next question. Makes sense.

All right, Jocco, for a new entrepreneur or someone new to a leadership position who is meeting with their employees or direct reports for the first time, what are some key things to address during that initial conversation? As soon as you meet someone that's going to be working for you, you're immediately making an impression. We want to make a good impression. We also don't want to go, okay, it's a dichotomy because you're immediately building a relationship with them, but you can't go overboard and be all buddy-buddy with them.

That's why I followed the Hackworth model, and I actually took that to the next level. Hackworth wouldn't like laugh and joke around with the troops for six weeks. I up that to eight weeks because I'm a little bit more hardcore. So you, but one thing that's good out of the gate is put out some brief general guidelines, like some of the most broad guidance that you can possibly give, which is, hey, look, here's what's important to me. We're going to do a great job. We're going to work hard.

And this is our mission, and this is what we're going to focus on. And that's it. You don't need to come out of the gate trying to show everyone that you're the man. You don't need to do that. Guess what? You're the boss. You actually de facto are the man. So don't run around and try and prove yourself out of the gate.

Get to know them. Let that relationship build over time, and that's where you're going to end up in the best situation. Makes sense. You sort of did that to me even as friends. Like this. Like here, here. Good to meet you. Here's you.

Good to meet you. Eight weeks. Just like that. Next question. Yeah. Well, it's funny too, because now we're not. when I meet people like tonight, I'm all nice to everyone now. Yeah, yeah.

You changed, bro. You changed. But if I was going to be like getting in the game with them and somehow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Fuck.

That eight-week probationary jocco, period. Who are some of the well-known leaders today who you believe best exemplify extreme ownership, be it in politics, military, or business? Military, you know, obviously I like Mattis a lot. As a matter of fact, I like Mattis. Yeah. Thank you. General Kelly, same thing.

Yep, Ann McMaster, same thing. All those guys are awesome. Colonel McFarland, or General McFarland, who just retired, who I worked with Foreign Ramadi, who was awesome. So there's a lot of really good military examples. The business examples, there's a Moolali who turned around Ford.

There's a great book called American Icon, and it's a great leadership book. I actually was going to cover it, but I never did, because it's hard to cover books about business. compared to books about combat. But it's a really good book, American icon, great ownership, great attitude.

And politics, this was a super hard one. But then I just thought, oh, Dan Crenshaw. What up? And really, just the way Dan, since he's taking position, like he's just doing a great job. It's very cool to see. So, yeah, there you go.

What else? Go to four. Cool. Hi, Jocko and Echo. I recently read the book Marine, The Life of Chesdy Puller, and in the book, Chastey references and the unnecessary loads of administrative paperwork that was required to be prepared for the military. I also recently remember on a recent podcast you recalling a situation in Ramadi where your platoon leaders were not thrilled to fill out required paperwork.

I'm a squad sergeant in a prominent American police department, and I'm experienced the same dilemma. The micromanaging and oversight is extreme, and it's taking a toll on the morale of the officers citywide. The tedious paperwork and constant micromanaging is preventing good cops from being proactive. I feel like the job, quote unquote, has changed beyond recognition.

I'd appreciate your advice on how to approach the bullshit paperwork and increase the morale of my cops. Thank you for you. your time. Okay, so what would I do in this situation? First of all, I am going to be awesome at the paperwork. I'm going to do it so well that because if you blow off the paperwork, then you go to your boss and say the paperwork and it's not any good. The guy looks at you and says, oh, you know what? you don't even know how to do the paperwork? How do you know if it's hard or not? So what I'm going to do,

I'm going to start building a case. That's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to start building a case. That's what I'm going to do. So I'm going to do the paperwork. I'm actually going to log down how many hours I put into the paperwork. I'm going to follow that paperwork and see where it goes and see if anyone actually reads it. Right? Because if I can go to my boss and say, hey, I spent 28 hours a week filing this paperwork and no, not one single person read it. And then you take the manpower of everyone in the department.

And then what you do is you actually build a case. When you go in to talk to the boss, you should have a full magazine of ammunition. to combat this paperwork that you're being forced to do. You have to be able to explain it to them in a rational, logical manner. And you can't make any headway against your boss if you are trying to fight from the low ground. The low ground is, well, I don't really turn into paperwork and I don't really do the paperwork,

and I think the paperwork is crap. Then they're looking down on you. What are you talking about? How are you dare you say that? You don't even do it. You don't even know what you're doing. it. You got to get on the high ground. How do you get on the high ground? You get all that stuff done to the best of your ability. You log down the hours it takes. You get your whole

little team doing it. And you tell your whole team, hey look, I know this is painful right now. Everyone in this squad, everyone in this platoon is going to do all this. We're going to log down what it takes because I am going to bring a solid case up the chain of command of where we need to limit this paperwork. This is a long war situation. You know how long it took it took to build up all that paperwork, it took years. It took 20 years, 30 years for that to happen. I used to joke about the Navy and the SEAL teams, the range, our range procedures are super loose. We go out there and we shoot like crazy and do all kinds of really dynamic things. And we'd sometimes go to a Marine Corps range and it was like everything was super tight.

And I would tell my guys, I'd say, look, that's because that happened over years. One mistake happens. How do you stop that mistake from happening again? put a rule in place that stops it. Another mistake happens, put another rule in place. Another mistake happens, put a piece of paper to stop it from happening again. And eventually you end up with a range that's barely even usable. So that's what happened in this department. There was little things that happened over time and they build and they build upon themselves

and the next thing you know you can't even recognize what your actual job was. So we have to, so that took 20 years to happen. You're not going to undo it overnight and you're definitely not going to undo it from the low ground. You have to get the high ground. You have to be a performer. If you're not a performer, you have no say. Do your job.

Do it well. Fight the long war. Fight the long war. I'm all of a sudden thinking, like, maybe we need one of those little applause tracks. You know, when I answer a question. Yeah, yeah. When it's good, man.

It's good. All right. Next question. What book has had the biggest impact on you and is a must read? Yeah, about face, Hackworth. Thanks for coming. Welcome to the club. All right, good one. Okay, next first.

Good morning. Was that like an a rock and roll band just lets the crowd sing the chorus? A little bit, a little bit. If you did not join the military, what do you think you'd be doing right now? I think I would have ended up either in the police department or a firefighter. That's what I think I would have done. If I couldn't have gotten into the military, that's probably what I would end up doing. Why?

Just because I had the urge to serve and do something physical and do something where I'm helping protect people. I think that's why. So I know there's a lot of cops and firefighters here, so thanks for what you do. What is the relationship between humility and vulnerability? The relationship between humility and vulnerability. Okay, interesting. And there's an interesting dynamic that you get going on when you're humble. Okay, so let's think about what happens.

When you're humble, when you're humble, you expose your. your vulnerabilities. But what's cool is when you expose your vulnerabilities, they become less vulnerable. So that's why being humble is a win. Because if I'm taking over a position and I don't know how to do one of the jobs, if I hide it, it's haunting me. And it's a weakness Because as soon as it gets exposed, I'm going to look like, you know, weak and a loser. But if I have a vulnerability and I'm humble enough to expose my vulnerability and say, hey, you know what, guys, I haven't actually done this before. My old unit, we didn't never did this and I don't know how to do it. Can I get some help here?

There, I'm being humble. I'm exposing my vulnerability. And all of a sudden, it's not a vulnerability anymore because my team actually knows it. And guess what? then I get to practice and learn about the thing that was making me vulnerable. Yeah. So making yourself vulnerable is fine. And if you want to kill your vulnerabilities, you have to be humble enough to expose them voluntarily.

Voluntarily exposing your vulnerabilities is infinitely better than hiding them and letting them be uncovered by them. you know in the seal teams that that's what it is it's it's animals like everyone else in your platoon if you have a vulnerability and you hide it

and then they get it like they're coming at you with daggers with knives and they're going to so if you say hey this is the situation expose those vulnerability be humble enough to do that

you'll be in a much better position Yeah, and it seems like the leader, like if you're the boss and you're trying to make like, oh, yeah, I know everything. And then, like I said, they find it, you look way more stupid.

Like, in the beginning, it feels like he looks more stupid in the beginning, I would think anyway. Like, oh, I'm the boss. Supposed to know all this stuff. Yeah. I think the key point of that is way more stupid. Yeah, man.

You don't want to look like that. I don't think so. Anyway. All right. I'm going to go back to this other one. Three dinner guests living or dead, and why? Three dinner guests living or dead. Mark Lee, Mike Monsor, Ryan Job.

How did you get the nickname Jocko? I answered this on Facebook Live. Not fully, though. No, fully. Anyways, before I was born, my dad wanted me to be a jock. My dad's name is John. My dad's nickname is John O. My dad wanted me to be a jock.

My mom calls my dad John O My dad said I hope he's a jock My mom said A jock O You see I don't think you said that whole thing Yeah no that's the deal

And then actually when I said that My mom said actually My dad was nicknamed John O not by her but by his family because he was named after his uncle whose name was John Oglethorpe or something like that.

Gotcha. So there you go. Yeah, man. It goes deep. There you go. All right. Question for Jocko. Do you teach your wife about being strategic and how open is she to...

How open is she to having her husband be her teacher? That's a good one. That's a... That's a good one for who? For... For ruining my husband. life. It's a good one for me. For sure. Okay.

First of all, let's assess this. How many people, just people, we're not even talking spouses, how many people are just super open to being taught? Like if I was like, let me teach you a little something here. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that already starts off on a bad footing because it implies that I know

something. You don't know. I can help you. Yeah. Your, you're in to me you lack the supreme knowledge that I have yeah clearly I must instruct you in strategic ways right okay and if that's not offensive to someone it is offensive to my wife so do I sit around and you know try and teach my wife you know here's the deal here's the deal when we're dealing with our kids I I absolutely do this now that I think about it. I'll say to my wife, hey, listen, oh, the boy's doing this and you're trying to do this, don't do that.

All you're doing is, you know, it's, oh, he wants to get all crazy? Cool, do this. You're trying to come back. I used to tell this when the kids were really small, because she's super nice and concerned and wants to make things right and wants to win arguments. which when you're trying to win a logical argument with a four-year-old, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. And I say, look, you're arguing logic with a four-year-old. So I think there's an appropriate time to do it.

You have to be careful that you're not trying to, you know, be the superior human. Oh, Mr. Strategy, you want to teach me something about kids? Yeah, yeah. So take it easy. And all that being said, I do have strategic conversations with my wife. about the family team, right? Like we're a business. Like your house and your family is a business.

You have income, you have expenditures, you have long-term strategic goals. So those kind of things we talk about. And I'm the one that sort of is usually saying, hey, what about this strategic goal? What are you doing over here? What do you want to do with that? So we have those conversations,

but not so much me saying how, but me, you know, us figuring out where we're going together. together. Live. Does she ever like teach you how to be strategic in any way, like be more sensitive or anything like that? For real. Bro, you serious?

No, actually my, the cool thing about my wife is she knows me really well and accepts this whole deal. Yeah. She accepts the shortfalls. She knows that she got what she got. She rolled the dice. Hey, sorry. Yeah, yeah.

All right. There you go. Next question. Can you share how someone that is introverted and has social anxiety can become a leader? I mean, first of all, if you've got social anxiety, you need to go through that exposure therapy, which is what I wrote about in Way of the Warrior Kid that I didn't know I was writing about. I didn't know as an actual psychological methodology until Jordan Peterson was. explain to me that, well, what you do with someone in this situation is you give them small

exposure. It's like, oh, that's what happens in the way of the warrior kid. I'm smarter than I thought. So you can do the same thing with this social anxiety. You know, you start talking in front of small groups, you grow, you get out and hang out with people and you continue to do that until you get more comfortable. So you can, you can sort of overcome that. And it's the same thing with being introverted. Now, there are leaders that are more introverted. But what you have to do is you have to bring people onto your team to complement that area where you're a little bit weak. So if you're a leader, guess what you have to do? You have to communicate to other human beings.

And sometimes you have to communicate to other human beings in large groups. That's what happens. That's what a leader does. Sure, sometimes it can be on the phone, sometimes it can be on an email, sometimes it can be in radio over the radio. But there's times where you're going to have to communicate. to the people that you're leading. So if you're super introverted and uncomfortable with that,

and it's a challenge, you're going to have to overcome that challenge. Yes, you can get better at it through practice. But some people are not going to ever get a really comfortable, some people are never going to get really comfortable talking in front of a group. And so what you do in that situation is you bring someone in your team that is really good at it. That is really good at it. And then when it's time to address the troops, you as the leader stand up and say, here's the two things I'm worried about on this operation.

Here's where we're heading. And now Bill's going to brief you on the details of the plan. And that's fine because Bill's a loud mouth and Bill's going to get up there and communicate really clearly and that's going to be great. And you still gave enough as the figurehead and as the leader of the organization that people go, okay, yep, we heard from Jocko, you know, he put out the word, he didn't say much, it doesn't even seem like he has to. We hear where he's coming from. So you just have to build a team that's going to complement your weaknesses. And, you know, generally if you're

introverted, well, that means you're good at some other thing that that loud mouth isn't good at. Right? The loud mouth is like, who's going the front door, kick it down. And he doesn't have any sort of tactical sense of how to run an operation smoothly. So, you come up with a good plan and then you brief it to Bill, loudmouthed bill, and then you say, Bill, we're going to brief the troops and then you make it happen. So you have to do a little bit of both. You have to improve your personal skills, which you can do through exposure and practice. Don't get up and talk about things that you don't know.

Get up and talk about things that you do know that you are comfortable with and you practice. And while you're practicing and while you're getting better at that, you also build a team where you complement your own weaknesses. And we all have leadership weaknesses, and you've got to build teams that can compliment that. Agree. I'm glad. Next question. How can one guide or lead a leader above you, especially when you're many links away on the chain of command?

Or many links, what, down the chain of command? Oh, so you want to guide a leader that's far away from you in the chain of command? Yeah. Yeah. you got to build a relationship with that person. That's what you've got to do. In fact, leadership is about building trust and building relationships with people.

Trust is leadership and leadership is trust. And relationships are trust and relationships are leadership. These are like the trifecta of becoming a good leader. You build trust with people, you build relationships. And in a situation like this, if you and I don't know each other very well, and I come up to you and say, hey, I think you should do this.

I mean, what's your reaction? If you just approach someone that you don't have a relationship with and then you start telling them how to run things, that's offensive. That's offensive to like most human beings. I have to get to know you. I have to see what kind of approach is going to work for you. Because you might be the kind of person if I know you a little bit

where you're like, you know, I'm really working on my leadership. What do you think I could do better? That's great. Then we open the door and we can move forward. You might be the kind of person that I have to flank. You might be the kind of person that you won't listen to me, but I say, oh, you should check out this book that I read, or whatever. There's ways to do it. But to look at a target and know how you're going to attack

the target without knowing anything about it, without having any intelligence on it, that's not going to be effective. So we have to actually gather some intelligence about the target. We have to, and the way we do that is by building a relationship with it, by getting to know that person. once you know the person, then you can start to infuse and shift and mold and sculpt and influence the way that they lead. You have to build that relationship to kick things off. Next question. I'm not in the military nor am I a firefighter or law enforcement. I'm an air traffic controller here in the New York area.

And I found myself in several leadership positions without, within our union. Since I read extreme ownership, I've tried to implement this and the ideals that come with it. Overall, I believe it's been a success and of course still a work in progress. Specifically, the communication aspect of ensuring our people know why are we doing, why we are doing something and how it affects them as it has been the biggest influence and game changer in my opinion.

Unions typically come hand in hand with, what about me, attitudes? And we definitely have that within our ranks. This is something I've been trying to tackle with both new air controllers, new controllers and older ones, and I think I'm making headway slowly but surely. Thanks to you in life. My question is this. Have you ever had direct experience dealing with unions and this particular mindset? Is there any advice you have specific to labor unions that could make this more efficient?

Yeah, well, we work with businesses all the time, and we certainly work with businesses that are involved with, or that either are unionized or partially unionized, and yeah, this is something that can be very, very common. And the reason it can become very, very common is because the union is an organization, right? And the company, the corporate, the headquarters is a separate. organization. And so what happens is as we let these two elements grow, they tend to grow apart. And they tend to start looking out for themselves. And that becomes problematic. It becomes problematic in any organization where you've got the union on one side and what the union starts looking out for is what's good for them. And what corporate is looking out for, what headquarters is looking out for is what's good for them. And what happens is we stop talking about. talking to each other and what we fail to realize is that both those entities have a common goal. They have a common goal and the more we work together to achieve that common goal, the better

the better off both entities will be. So what this boils down to and where I would focus step number one in this, this is a long fight, this is a long war, is trying to make sure that the union side, because you're talking about from your position in the union, the union side understands how working with corporate headquarters, how working with them will benefit the individuals in the union in the long run. So, and a great book to read about this is that book I mentioned earlier with Mulali, American icon. And what he told the unions was, hey, listen, I get it. You want your hourly wage to be

$76 an hour. You want to take care of the union. That's awesome. Let me tell you what's going to happen in 18 months if we keep paying that. We're not going to have a company anymore. Here's the numbers. Here's how it's going to work. And they lowered down their hourly rate to $55 dollars an hour. That's a huge cut. And you can imagine the union thinking, no, that's, we lost. We lost. But Mulali did a great job of saying, no, we lose if we don't come together. We lose if we don't try and achieve our actual mission, the mission that we're all focused on, which is making great cars and being a profitable company. So same thing here. Make sure that the areas that overlap the common mission, make sure that everyone understands how achieving the common

mission benefits both parties. That's it? Makes sense. Next question. I've been a police officer. You guys wrote some long questions for Echo Charles. Sir Reid. Well, in that. He's been studying him for four hours. I've been a police officer for about four years. I consider myself to be proactive and try to get after it every day, much like many of my brother and sister law enforcement officers. Recently, I switched to a bigger agency with a bit of a different mission. I still try to be as proactive and as thorough as I can in everything that I do. But I've noticed that many of the frontline supervisors in this agency want officers to be reactive

rather than proactive. The supervisor in particular has told me to stop working so hard and get salty. suggesting that I lower my morale. The question is, how do I build a relationship with these supervisors while still being proactive and working hard? So this is what I did when I got to SEAL Team 1. I was this guy right here. I was fired up.

I was, hey, oh, we're doing an obstacle course today? Cool, I'm going to wear my rucksack with a 40-pound sandbag in. it and all the guys that were older were you know looking at me like dude pump brakes and you know of course what did I think those guys are hardcore those guys are weak that's what I was thinking and then you know I thought to myself okay how can I how can I have influence over them how can I have influence over the platoon that I'm in can I have influence over the platoon that I'm in if everyone that's in my platoon doesn't like me. Can you? If everyone in my

platoon doesn't like me because I'm super hardcore, then are they going to steer it all in my direction? No. The answer is no. The answer is no. In fact, they're going to isolate me. In fact, I'm going to have no influence over my platoon. And that's a horrible thing. So what did I do? Did I just go, okay, cool it looks like donuts is the deal no I didn't do that at all but I conformed right I conformed and people think oh that's weak you shouldn't conform look you are not the priority you as an individual are not the priority in a seal platoon you're not the priority is the platoon.

The priority is the mission. And if we're going to execute a mission, we need to be very tight as a team. So if I put my personality above the unity of the team, I'm hurting our capability of accomplishing the mission, especially if I realize that guys need to train a little bit harder and instead of actually doing, something that's going to move them in that direction, they reject me, and now I'm outside

the brotherhood, the circle. And now I haven't moved them in any right direction at all. So now there's one guy that's in really good shape, me, and everyone else is going in the other direction. And I have no influence over them. That's just terrible. The mission is the most important thing. In order to most effectively execute the mission, we have to have the best possible team. In order to have the best possible team, we have to have trust and relationships inside the team. If I violate that, I'm taken away from the team. I'm taken away from our mission capability. Now, of course, if there's someone that's grossly out of shape or out of standards, Yeah, I'm going to try and tighten that person up.

But again, if someone's completely out of standards and all I do is attack them, what's their reaction? It's to step away from me, to reject me. But if I say, hey, man, you know, I know you got a lot of experience and I'm 19 and so I just got a bud, so I'm in pretty good shape. But like, can you teach me some of the tactics that you know? And all of a sudden I'm building a relationship with them. and then I say, hey, do you want to go for a little jog with me after work? And, you know, that guy's done eight deployments and he's tired and he's old, but he wants to be back in shape because we all want to be in shape.

And he goes, okay, a short one. And we're moving in the right direction. So that's what you need to do. You have to back off a little bit. You have to find balance. and you have to focus on the team. And it's better to have the whole team, it's better to have 20 people

that move a little bit in the right direction, then have one person by themselves that's going in the right direction and everyone else is going in the wrong direction. So that's what you need to do. Take the sandbag out of your rucksack a little bit. And, you know, I ran with jungle boots on. I did all this stuff.

And it didn't take me very long to realize I was not doing the right thing, not making my team stronger. I was isolating myself and stopped it. So this guy, he should like, what, start acting just a little bit salty? Or, you know, or, you know, lower his morale appearance a little bit, like, to kind of fit in, so to speak. Yeah, do? You want to be part of the team. Yeah.

If you're not part of the team, you don't have any influence. If you don't have any influence, you can't move the team in the right direction. If you can't move the team in the right direction, the team is less mission capable. That's what you're there for, is to make the team more mission capable. Every moment that you don't do that, you're doing something wrong. So, yes, you don't have to show up. I mean, just imagine, I was a new guy at Steel Team One. We show up to run the O course.

The obstacle course is a really hard obstacle course, and I show up with a rucksack on with a 40-pound sandbag in it, as a new guy. You know, of course, people are like, oh, that's fired up. But people were like, okay. Ooh. Yeah, yeah. Oh, you're 19 years old, and you just got out of buds.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Makes sense. We don't like you. Yeah. So. So it's kind of like steering like a big van, right? You can't just start making big turns with a big, otherwise the thing's going to,

going to tip over a little bit. So you'm saying, no, you got to like, you can't, if the, you got to, you got to go slow is what I'm saying. Okay. You guys understand. Anyway, next question. Sure. Apparently, apparently the van thing was ahead. Yeah, it was correct.

That's why. Some of you that didn't understand it. So we understood it's like a van. It was correct. Yes, exactly. Same thing. Outstanding. Anyway, my wife and I have four young boys between ages three and seven.

We're both running successful, busy careers. My question is, how do you forge a meaningful, connected relationship that instills discipline and leadership with your kids while balancing today's demanding 24-7 corporate environment? Here's a couple of things. make time, you have to make time. You have to make time where you're not looking at your phone. You're not looking at your emails. You have to set a good example. And I think the most important thing here for kids age three to seven, you have to make sure that they understand that what you're doing and why you're doing it. They have to understand, look, you know this house we live in?

We have to pay money for this house that we live in. You know the food that we eat? We have to pay money for that. And in order for us to have a secure future where we can still have a house and we can still have food, we need to make sure that we have money for the future. That's why mom and dad works so hard. It doesn't mean that we wouldn't love to sit around and play with you guys all day. We would love to do that. And every chance we get, we're going to do it.

But we have to be able to pay for the things we have. And we have to be able to pay for our future. And that's why we're working so hard right now so we can have. more freedom and more time with you in the future. So they have to understand why you're doing what you're doing. And I'll add this. So do you. So do you.

You have to assess why you are working so much that you're taking time away from your family. If you're working so much and taking time away from your family so that you can get the Mercedes These S class instead of the Lexus, ask yourself, is that why you're doing it? And what has more value? The S class or the dance recital? Keep yourself in check. Yeah, it makes sense too. And you kind of got to tell the truth to yourself.

Because you know how like you could answer the email later or at another time, not dinner time or whatever. You know, but you kind of got to be truthful. That's what I've found. Anyway, it helps. That's why you don't return my emails on time. Next question. Was there a time during your service in the teams that stood out above the rest? And would you mind sharing a brief story not before heard on your podcast?

Well, obviously, the time in the teams was being in tasking a bruiser, being in the Battle of Armadi. That's pretty straightforward. something that I haven't I don't think I've talked about on the podcast but it it definitely is something that I remember very clearly and that is when when SEAL Team 5 came in to take over for us and so this was in October of 2006 and SEAL Team 5 a task unit from SEAL Team 5 came in to take over for us and we're doing the turnover with them meaning we're explaining to them the battle space and it takes a couple days for all of them to arrive they arrive in bits and pieces and so we're doing the turnover

but once they were all there I did a turnover brief with them the whole group and as a matter of fact Marcus LaTrell was in this group and this was after he had gone through what he'd gone through and you know I just saw Marcus the other day and we were talking about this I couldn't believe he was in Ramadi after what he'd went through and this was not long after there he was in Ramadi as a platoon leading petty officer and it was his group of guys and I remember one thing I just I just remember was looking at them and I was telling them you are going to take casualties and that it's sort of like that thing you see in the movies or I've talked about it read it in

books about Vietnam where you had guys that were coming in country and they got new camouflage uniforms on and they're all clean cut and there's the guys that are getting ready to go home and those guys at that time seals deploying into a situation, seals deploying a situation, they're kind of unknown. At least up until this point, it was like, okay, well, we're going, we're going to do missions, we don't know how bad it's going to be, it might be bad, it might not be. That sort of was the standard.

Those guys that were coming into Ramadi that relieved us in Ramadi, they knew, and the senior enlisted guy is one of my very good friends. Those guys knew 100%. They went to Mike Montsorre's funeral. and then got on a plane and came over, they knew 100%. And so for me, I won't forget looking at this group of guys that were about to start a six-month deployment and telling them, you are going to take casualties.

And that was just a blunt, honest truth. And they did take casualties. They didn't lose anyone. They had no one killed, but they took some very, very severe casualties and did a great job, great group of guys, but that was a harsh reality to walk into for sure. Roger. All right, we'll do one more of these questions before the live.

Yeah, and we'll go live. People. What was your first combat mission, and what was your role? So, 2003, I deployed to Baghdad as a SEAL platoon commander, and the senior enlisted guy of my task unit was already in Baghdad waiting for us. And this guy is an incredible guy, just, as a matter of fact, his wife tells him and me that we're soulmates. She's jealous. But anyways, this guy, just an incredible guy, but he had been on the ground for a while.

And he'd done the push up into Baghdad with the Marines, and then he'd come home, and then he was back over. And so he was waiting for us. And it was my platoon. We show up. And I remember we hit the ground. I don't even know how long we'd been there, but it wasn't long. It might have been like the night we got there. And there was mortar teams that were mortaring our base.

And they had been for a few days. And so this guy, a couple mortars went, I think, anyways, whatever happened, he comes in like, you're taking your guys out right now. You've got to take your guys out and go and see if you can find where these things launched from. And I was sort of not ready for that. You know, we've been there for four hours. You're taking your guys out. And you know what I said?

Roger that. and you know I talked to him later like later that night he goes yeah I was just trying to get you outside the wire and gets on I was like how about you give me a heads up next time so that was it I was just running that little vehicle thing and we went out look for bad guys we didn't find any and came home but that was the first kind of exposure outside the wire in bagdad not a very exciting story sorry there we go all right um so we got some folks running around with microphones And does anyone have any questions? Okay, see a couple hands anyways. I'm gonna take this thing off so I can sort of move around and see you and our mic people, I'll point to you and we'll find somebody.

All right, let's go. You right there, black sweatshirt. I was just trying to get him to call on me, but he wouldn't wait until he took your order. So, you got a good team here. So you were talking about child-bearing before. before. So. Not me personally, but. No, you had to.

You were cornered. Any thoughts about having a child rearing book come out? Like a team child rearing book? You mean how to raise kids? Well, yeah. Childbearing. Yeah. I mean.

Maybe not. Maybe this is a bad idea. No, no, no. I'll tell you what. I wrote a couple books, one's called Way of the Warrior Kid. and one's called Mark's Mission. I read them. Okay, yeah.

I mean, the amount of people that have come back to me and said, like, as a dad, as a mom, thank you for writing this book because every time I read it, I learn. Now, that means that I'm basically saying, hey, you need to learn. You need to parse the lessons out of here. So perhaps I could be more straightforward. And also, hey, I'm no perfect parent by any stretch. But one thing that's good about putting the ideas on paper is I would start to clarify things myself. And I would start looking at mistakes that I made and say, okay, here's a clear mistake.

I didn't really recognize it before. But now that I'm detached, I'm looking back at it. So yeah, not a bad idea. Yeah, finances, everything, just how to discuss with your kids. Like all of these things are really important topics. And I think the extreme ownership perspective could be a great addition. Awesome. Thank you.

I'll buy it. Question over here. You. He's leaving it. I like to come prepared. Good evening, Jocko. Good evening. What lesson do you wish you'd have learned earlier in life that you now know?

It is discipline equals freedom. I mean, that is the thing that when I connected that together in my head, the fact that that applies to absolutely everything, that's the biggest lesson that I wish I would have learned earlier in life. And if I would have figured that out, then I would have been doing a lot better, and I would have done a lot better, and I would have been a lot better of a person. The thing that I try to tell kids, I try and tell them that for sure. But the other thing that I think kids miss is kids, and this is something that I completely

missed as a kid. The actions that you take now affect your future. That sounds so obvious. But when you're 14, you just think, no, nothing I, you know, my life is only another 20 minutes. So what I'm doing right now doesn't really matter. So when I talk to kids, I try and explain to them the discipline equals freedom, and then I try to explain to them that what you're doing right now really will have an impact to where you are in the future.

And I don't know if you listen to that podcast that I do, the Warrior Kid podcast that I did number 19 about my friend Jeff. And I talked about it on the adult podcast as well, but, you know, it's a classic story. I had a best friend when I was little and we separated friendship. We were still friends, but we drifted apart. He started getting into party and getting into drugs and all that, and I didn't. And his trajectory in life just went down. And I joined the Navy, which was great, and it put me on a good path almost involuntarily. But he ended up killing himself.

And, you know, it was drugs and it was alcohol and it was just bad. But while I was going through buds, he killed himself. And what I tried to explain to the kids on the Warrior Kid podcast, It's like the decisions that the little decisions that you make, they matter. They add up. And you have to connect those dots. Otherwise, you don't know where you're going to end up. And it might be bad.

Cool. You got your hand up quick, bro. Good job. How you doing? How you doing, Jocko? So first, I'm going to say thank you for being here and continually to inspire us all. I really appreciate it. So a little backstory.

I'm currently a detective in a police department in New Jersey. And sitting number one on the sergeant's list, looking to get promoted about March or April. So my question is, I'm going to be the youngest sergeant in the department and not with a lot of experience. Now, I've never had an issue in the department doing pretty well. And as soon as that list came out, and I was number one, the tension just rose. Look at this kid less than five years on the job, you know, in his 20s, and they already want to see me. fail before I even got to the position. So I'm trying to mentally prepare myself in that role when I already know that it's coming against me. So what's your best advice for someone that is

going to be, you know, in this position of, see, I always look at every position as a leadership position, but now structurally I'm going to be their supervisor. So what's your best advice to me going into that situation? Yeah, and this is the same exact situation that military officers get put into. Military officers in the SEAL teams, in the Marine Corps, in the Army, and the Navy, you're a kid that comes out of college, you have zero experience and you get put in charge of a department on a ship or you get put in charge of a platoon. And all of a sudden, you're a guy with zero experience and you got a platoon chief that's been in for 16 years. That's the way it works. And so I've had to have this conversation over and over again.

and what we're going to do is number one we're not going to act like we know everything even if you do know more even if you have things more figured out than these guys if you go in there and act like it guess what they're going to do they're going to reject you who is this young whippersnapper young buck thinks he knows everything he doesn't know about this he doesn't know about that they'll sabotage you to make you look bad but if you go in there and you're humble i'm not talking about being a

pushover i'm not talking about being weak but i'm going to lean towards being humble. I'm going to lean towards listening to what they have to say. I'm going to lean towards saying, hey, you know, I've never handled a case like this before. Do you have any perspective? You can you help me out with this? Instead of, hey, this case is mine. Let me show you how it's going to be. That right there, you're taking a relationship in a negative direction. We want to, we want to build a team and we want them to, we want to get their respect. How do you, how do we get their respect? We get, we actually get respect as crazy as sound. We get respect by being humble.

So if Echo, if Echo's working for me, I show up, he's more experienced than me, and I show up and I say, all right, here's what we're doing, here's how we're doing this mission, here's how it's going to be, my way. And I think he knows what's up now. He knows he sees, I'm the boss. What's he actually thinking? Who's this idiot that's had the job for three days? And he thinks he's going to tell me what to do, and he's going to resist it.

He's going to sabotage. He's going to, and we're going to have a bad relationship. But if I come in and say, hey, Echo, really great to meet you. You know, I'm just checking in here. I was looking at your, I was checking out your record. You've been here for a long time, man. You really nailed some big cases. That's awesome.

I'm looking forward to working with you. I'm looking forward to learning a lot from you. And boom. What's his attitude towards me now? Hey, this kid's pretty humble. Again, I'm not coming in saying, I don't know anything. Can you please, you know, show me. the way, oh master. No, I'm not talking about that. But just a nice, respectful, humble way of

treating people, study, show up earlier than they do, know the nomenclature that you're supposed to know, ask good questions, listen to the feedback. And I've talked about this on the podcast. If he comes up with a plan, and I think I have a better plan, but he's got a plan that's pretty solid. Whose plan am I going to pick? I'm going to pick his plan. I'm not going to force my plan down his throat. It makes our relationship go backwards. It makes him think that he needs to compete with me. I don't want him to come. Hey, Echo, this is your plan. You come up with it. You make it happen. Echo always jokes me. He's like, I know you do this stuff to me. And he's like, and it still works. And I do. You know, I do. It's like, hey, if he can come up with a plan,

I would rather we execute his plan because then he cares more about it. It's his. So, Stay humble, listen, work hard. Appreciate that. Thanks for your service, brother. Thank you. Front row shot it up quick right here. You got that thing up quick. A game.

All right, first of all, Jago, thank you for being out here in New York. It's great to finally see you live. I just want to get your perspective. You already elaborated some on communicating as a family. You said you're going to put some more content out regarding that stuff. Hold on a second, bro. My hearing's not great. slow down, hit it with me again.

All right, quick and simple. Top three rules on raising kids from ages three to nine, really getting that sort of attitude instilled while they're still young. So not about the family, like dynamic, not about managing just the kids' attitudes. Yeah, it's with kids. First of all, you've got to remember, and this is the hardest thing for parents to deal with, is your kid is not going to be who you want them to be. They're just not.

They're humans. If that was the truth, all of my kids would be the same type of kid, and they would all, you know, you could just, here's what they all do. They're not. They're not. Your kids are going to be different. And your kids are going to be different from you. They might be a little bit better than you at some things. They might be worse than you at other things.

So what you have to do is, first of all, get that idea out of your head. That being said, you can definitely provide guidance. and you can definitely put them in, guide them in the right direction. But what you don't want to do is

make every decision for them. What you don't want to do is only let them do what you tell them to do. They've got to learn to make decisions. Otherwise they can't go into the world and fend for themselves. They've got to suffer consequences of their bad decisions. Otherwise they can't fend for themselves in the world.

So you have to I've said this before, you have to let them brush up against the guardrails of failure. You have to let them tie their own shoe. You have to let them spill the milk. And the more you make or allow them to do for themselves, the better human beings they're going to be. The more that you do for them and force on them and impose on them, the less they're going to know for themselves. the more they're going to rebel against the values that you're putting forth to them. Again, it's a dichotomy.

And I'm not saying, hey, let your kids do whatever they want. When they go outside that box, give them a nice big box, when they go outside of that, you've got to bring them back in. And you've got to explain to them why you're bringing them back in. They've got to understand that the reason they're not allowed to play in this area is because there's bad people there or there's danger there. It's not just because I said so. So you develop these relationships with your kid.

You guide them, but you don't direct them. And you let them be as much of a leader as they can be. And that's the best thing you can do for them. Thank you. Can I add one more thing to that, which actually Jocko opened my eyes to this? And your kids are always watching you. Like always what. So if you're yelling at mom or yelling at people on the phone

or I don't know, doing stuff, you're doing stuff that you don't want them to do. You can say, hey, don't do this. They'll be like, cool. But once they kind of get the opportunity, they're like, I guess this is kind of how, because dad does it, especially with the yelling thing and losing, like, how do you deal with stress and stuff?

Bro, they'll jump right on that. That's what I really noticed when actually, when he opened my eyes to it, I was like, oh, okay. You know when, you know, sometimes you get kids or your kids, how many kids do you have? Oh, okay. All right, well. You're planning ahead.

Okay, all right. There you go. We'll keep this in mind then. Because a lot of the times you're like, oh, you're three-year-old. You'd be like, dang, where did they, how did they pick that up? I didn't teach them that. And the thing is you probably will have taught them that just by doing it on your own, you know? Yeah, so they're always watching you.

So that helped me, I think, a lot. Two kids, by the way. Tighten your game up a little bit around the kids. Let's see. Really tall. hand back there you thank you so a very specific example then my son he's three I would love for him to get into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu just like me which I also got into thanks to you two gentlemen thank you very much so how do I

encourage him without pushing him without you know just getting him into it really you have to make it fun you have to make it fun and it is much better for it to be fun once a week than for them to hate it three times a week. The kid that hates it three times a week and you think I'm doing them a favor, or I'm doing her a favor because I got her in there whether she likes it or not.

She's three years old, bro. The best possible thing you can do is not make them train jujitsu right now. It's make them enjoy jujitsu right now. I did not do this well with my kids. I didn't. It's horrible. when my, especially my daughters,

my daughter, when they were very young, it was Jiu Jitsu, Jiu Jitsu, Jiu Jitsu. We were doing, they were doing Jiu Jitsu six days a week. They were like six. And that was, that was part of it. Let me tell you what I did, that's worse. What's worse is,

I was like, okay, you're also going to compete because competing makes you better. And it gets worse. Because then it was, oh, when I take you to compete since I'm the coach, I'm going to put you in a higher weight class. I'm going to put you against older kids. And you know what?

If you lose, look, if you lose, it doesn't matter because you're going to be tougher. So go out there, do your best. If you lose, don't worry about it. It's going to make you tougher. So my daughters go to compete in Jiu Jitsu tournament, Jiu Jitsu tournament, Jiu Jitsu tournament. What happens to them? They get beat. They get beat by someone that's older.

they get beat by someone that's heavier? Is that fun? That sucks! What do I think? What does idiot think? Oh, you're getting tougher. And so by the time they were 10, it was like, I don't want to do any of this crap anymore.

And it got to a point where I was like, okay, look, this is ridiculous. I realized the mistake that I had made, and I just had to back off. And luckily, my son, made it through that time period where he kept training all the time and became very good at jiu-jitsu and wrestling but with the girls i i didn't do it right so find a good school where the jihitsu is fun don't force it down their throat let me tell you one more really

quick story my son had a friend who was like you know his run-in-mate and when he was six years I said, we'll bring your son to Jiu-Jitsu. Let him try it. He tried it at six years old. He tried it one time I don't like it. Got choked. He cried it at age seven. Hey, we'll try it again.

Didn't like it, hated it. Tried it at age eight. Didn't like it. Hated it. Age nine, his dad trained. His dad had started training. He kind of got the look at like, oh, that's pretty cool. By the time he was nine and he tried it, he liked it.

And he liked it because he liked it. And he was then old enough to make decision and want to train and started training hard and he got good really quick. It wasn't like, oh, he missed those four years of training. They didn't make a big difference, is my point. They don't make a big difference. So the most important thing you can do as a parent is make it fun for your kids. Make working out fun. Make jujitsu fun. Make school fun. Make these things enjoyable. Make let them win. You know, put them in positions where they're going to win. And I'm not saying every time because you do have to learn how to lose let them learn to lose when they

occasionally let them learn to lose when they get a little older but make it fun for him that's the key I'm gonna eventually get balcony up there but I guess you in the back go Jacko my question's on the other end of the spectrum for the police officer I'm a battalion chief in the fire department 28 years on the department how do I relate to the 19 year old? Can you relay a story that you worked with, a 19 year old new seal? And you're trying to get what to happen?

I want to develop that relationship with them. You talked about the relationship above me as a leader. How do I develop that relationship for the newer people below me? The best way, okay, when we saw talking about relationships, and I mentioned this earlier, what a relationship is is a relationship is trust. And that's what a team is.

A team is a bunch of people with a relationship that all trust each other. How do I develop trust with someone that's below me in the chain of command? What I did, this is what I did to make this happen. As a platoon commander, as a task unit commander, as I was in charge of training, is those young guys that are coming in, I gave them responsibility. I put them in leadership positions. I remember the first time I took over a platoon where the platoon commander got fired, and we had a training operation that night.

night and I said I said to the platoon chief I said hey who's like a squared away really junior guy and he gave me a name and I said okay he's gonna run this mission tonight and the platoon was like whoa wait what are you talking about this kid's gonna run the mission yep and all of a sudden what's the kid thinking wow this guy trusts me to do this I'm gonna do a good job for him and since he trusts me I'm starting to trust him and the The more you do that, the more you push down that responsibility and you let people lead and you put trust into them, the more they're going to trust you. As long as when something does go wrong, you don't chop their head off.

When something does go wrong, you say, hey, look, let's take a look at it. Let's see we can learn from it. And you know what? Probably my fault because I didn't give you very good guidance. So let's learn from it and we'll try it again. You know what? You're going to run the same mission tomorrow night. I know you can do this.

That's how you build that trust up, and that's how you build a team. Hand came up quick right there. It's amazing that you can tell who I'm pointing at. Jocko, ECHO, thank you for everything that you've given us. Acknowledging that we all have secrets, Jock, what would you need to see happen that would change your mind about a run at public office? Let me finish. What would be that trigger event to make you say, okay,

Public office, stand by to get some. I'll finish from saying, quite frankly, you have a nation of troopers, both foreign and domestic, that believe and know that you're qualified to lead and ready to lend their support. What would it take? There is a line somewhere. There is a line somewhere where I would feel like, okay, the country needs me. me. It's a pretty distant line. It's, it's, it's, that world is so, I don't want to use the word corrupt, but, but, but, but, because that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about like

that kind of corruption and there's corruption for sure, but, you know, you compare the corruption that we have to the rest of the world and it's very nice. But there's a different word that I can't quite capture. There's dishonesty, there's, I don't mind the chaos, some selfishness. Here's what it is. I think in order, I like, I like when things go wrong. And I know that sounds crazy. One of my biggest problems is that I get, when the, things are going good I get really bored pretty quickly and I just like oh yeah that's cool oh we hey the business is doing this like my business like hey we're doing this and I'm like oh that's awesome we're going right there okay cool what can I look at next like I get I get kind of bored

when things are going well and when things are going bad I love it I really like when things are going bad and so in the government things don't get that bad And for me to put my time and effort towards something all the, you know, really focus, I would get bored very quickly because you know how to be like, hey, you know what? We're not doing too bad. And so until there's something bad that I feel like, okay, it's time, that's kind of what would make me roll in that direction. It seems like a miserable life to me. It seems like a miserable life. it seems like a life where you're constantly putting up a facade and I don't have the desire to do that.

You know, I never got interested in going into the CIA or anything like that because I never wanted to live that kind of life. And I'm not saying it's bad. I mean, the guys worked with them and they're awesome, but it's just not me. And I don't like to live that way. And it seems like there's a lot of that except the fact that if we got into a position as a nation where things were really bad and we needed some,

we needed to take action then I feel like I would step into it but man I hope we don't get there. Let me put you that way. I hope we don't get there and I don't think we will. But I appreciate that's our porch and I'm sorry. Red jacket.

First off, thank you for everything you do and then my question is who were your role models growing up? and like what qualities did they have? Well, my first legitimate role models that I looked at and said, okay, that's a person that I can emulate. That was when I got to the SEAL teams. Up to that point, I was looking, I was a confused kid

that was looking at this, you know, this person and that person, but I didn't really, but even the, even, I wasn't confused enough to be like, oh, I'm going to be like that person and follow what they're doing. I would look at people like, oh, that seems pretty cool. That seems pretty cool. And so it wasn't until I got into the SEAL teams and there were some people that you instantly When I checked into SEAL Team 1 I'm like

That guy's awesome I'm gonna that person right there is awesome I'm gonna do my best to emulate that person And there was probably five or seven people at SEAL Team 1 When I got there that I stole as much as I could In terms of how to behave And that was it

You know a guy named Master Chief Fackety Who was super just ultra professional and everything. And I was like, he's so professional, no one can say anything to him. He's a professional. Like, I'm going to be like that. There was a couple other,

there was other guys that, unfortunately, Master of Faculty died, so I'm using his name, but other guys that I just looked at and said, wow, that guy's awesome. So I didn't really have, like, those kind of role models until I got to the teams, you know?

Okay, balcony. Is there anyone on the balcony microphone style? Right there. Up in the cheap seats. Jock, Echo, thank you for your podcast. Jock, thank you for your service. And ECHO, thank you for the work that you work with Jocko and doing the podcast. Also, thank you to the men and women of the service, present, future, and past. I come from a corporate environment working and doing IT support.

Now, my recent role was where I was responsible for supporting 40 to 80 people. pretty much solo and with that i had a manager remote you know i had a good working relationship with him he's former military so he would tell me to do certain things within an environment which i would do but then his manager would come down and visit and sometimes give me contradicting situations or orders so what do you do when you have your boss telling you one thing his boss your boss's direct response report telling you do something contradictory yep that's pretty straightforward if my boss is boss comes to me and tells me to do something, I'm like, hey, I just want to make sure that you know that this is what I've been told to do. And then they say, yeah, I don't care what that guy says.

And you go, okay, Roger that. And then he leaves. You go, hey, direct boss, here's what's going on. Boss came down and told me to do this. I'm here. I work for you. You're my boss. And I want to tell you what's going on. Do you want me to proceed or do you want me to stop? I want to keep you informed. Here's why. I want to do the right thing. And this is what's going on. So just take the information from the boss. The boss's boss. Got it. Have you told, you know, my boss that?

Nope, don't care. Okay, you don't care, fine. Hey boss, your boss is telling me to do this. I want to let you know what's going on. It's obviously a tenuous situation because then this guy up above the higher guy in the chain of command, I go, this, you didn't do what I told you to do. Hey, look, I'm just trying to make sure everyone's informed.

and that's the way things run smoothest if everyone's informed I'm here to support can you guys talk to each other so I know what I'm supposed to be doing down here

you got to kind of be the person that connects the dots here to the best of your ability no problem let's say you're in an organization and you really want to see it succeed but it's being led by someone

who is not only steering it in the wrong direction, they're doing it deliberately, and you're not really sure if you can negotiate with them. What would your course of... My course of action, if there's someone above me in the chain of command that's steering us in the wrong direction, I'm going to do my best to influence and persuade them. If I can't do that, I'm going to do the best to mitigate the risk down the chain of command and the strategic risk. I'm going to do my best to mitigate it. And while I'm doing that, I'm going to try and inform the other people around that person.

of the situation that's going on. I'm going to build relationships with the C-O-O, with the CFO, if it's the CEO you're talking about, or if it's the battalion to whoever it is, I'm going to build some relationships with other people so we can get that person under control. The other thing we have to remember is sometimes at the bottom, we don't understand what the real strategy is.

And so my first thing is like, hey, boss, can you explain to me why we're doing this? because it doesn't seem right to me for the following reasons. I want to be able to support what you're saying. Can you tell me why we're doing it this way? So sometimes they say, oh yeah, it's because of this. I should have explained that. Sometimes they say, wait a second,

what do you mean my strategy is not working down on the front lines? They don't know. No one's telling them. So you have to communicate with them to make sure that they understand, to make sure that you understand what direction you're supposed to be heading and to make sure that they understand why it's problematic on the front lines. If all of that fails and they're just looking, telling you to be quiet and they're moving forward in something that's going to really be detrimental to the organization, we've got to start trying to figure out how to flank that person and building alliances with people that can try and get us going in the right way. Thank you.

And of course, there's situations where, you know, especially in the business environment, like if you're in a ship and the ship is sinking and you've sounded the alarm and you've tried to, you know, there's situations where, you know, especially in the business environment, like if you're in a ship and the ship is sinking and you've sounded the alarm and you've tried to. You've tried to plug the holes and you've told everyone and they're still just staying on board the sinking ship without making any corrections. There are times we've got to go, you know what, this ship is sinking and I'm not going to stay on it. That can happen. You can't save every sinking ship. You can't. And you've got to know when it's time to go, okay, I'm going to take the lessons learned and I'm going to go somewhere else. Thank you.

Yes. Hi. First, I want to thank you because I am a stage four cancer survivor. And in my darkest hours that a lot of people can't comprehend, you were there with me. Your voice, your everything, still to this day. I mean, discipline equals freedom is a common phrase in my family. Over the most monumental to the most ridiculous things like letting the dog out at the same time. You know, so I want to thank you for that. With that being said, I have at one point planned my own funeral. Didn't think I was going to be here for my kids.

You know, the worst part of anybody's dreams, you know, nightmares. And then to be at the place where I am right now and not knowing, obviously, I'm young and, you know, what the future holds, nobody's naive, how you've been in those similar positions, just not health-wise, but, you know, facing death and everything else. How do you switch from that mindset of, like you said, when things are going really bad, I'm freaking awesome. Like, I kick ass. Like, I really do. And then when things are kind of calm, I'm like, what do I do now? Like, how am I going to, you know, even when you were just saying, like, your last line, sometimes I think, like, you just speak to me. It's so creepy that, like, my last came to, my last

chemo was Friday. I shouldn't be well today, but I am because I knew I had to be here. You know, so it's like stuff like that. And then when you said that, you know, at the end of your podcast that, you know, I'm going to live life. I'm going to live my days. How did you get from that transition from, you know, possibly, I don't know if I'm going to come out of this battle. I don't know if I'm going to come home to, okay, I'm here. Life's freaking great. Let's party. And then in between. Like, did you have any, like, how did you do it? How did you get from the darkest places to the brightest places and then bring everything. My problem is I want to bring, I've learned my lesson.

Like I've learned what I had to have learned now and now to bring it forward with me, but not to let it define me, if that makes sense. For me. And I actually gave this answer to Sam Harris. Because Sam Harris said to me, you know, Jocko, you've, You talk about combat as your fondest memories and the best thing that's happened in your life. It's the high point of your life, which is all true. And he said, but then you talk about war being awful.

So which one is it? And I said to him, I said, have you ever known anyone that has had cancer? terminal cancer and made it through have you ever known anyone that's happened to and he's like yes and I said when you talk to them many times

they say I'm glad that this happened to me number one because it proved I could take it number two it's better me than one of my kids and number three now that I know how darky can get I truly appreciate the light in the world. That's what combat is and was for me.

That's what it was. It was dark and horrible, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, just like you wouldn't wish cancer on anyone. But if I can give them a little knowledge, a little bit of a glimpse into what it is, Just like when you stand up here, people clap. When you said that, people are clapping because they get to see a little bit of it.

And they go home tonight and they think, oh, what about that girl? What about that girl? She's fighting. She's living. And I'm going to live too. That's how I look at things now. I don't pretend to have. the cognitive capacity to comprehend the mysteries of the world.

But maybe you're right. And maybe you're here to let us know that it can get dark, but it will get light again. Absolutely. And thank you. Awesome. Awesome. You.

Yes. Hey, Jacko, thanks for being here. I've been in the Army for three years now, and for the past year I've been thinking about putting in a packet for Special Forces selection. So I guess I just wanted to ask you to talk a little bit about when you joined the SEAL teams and what did you do to physically and mentally prepare yourself and generally why did you decide to join? Man, I wanted to do that since I was a little kid. little kid when I heard that this I heard that the Seals was the toughest training and that's not the necessarily true thing all the training is hard there's the special forces the Marsock units the Raiders the Air Force PJs and CCC is it it's everyone's

got their awesome special operations units and the training is all hard and all of them when I heard that the Seals is the toughest training I said okay that's what I want to do what do you do to get ready for? You know what you've got to do to get ready for it. You know, Army, guess what? You're going to be humping a rock. You're going to be doing forced marches. You've got to be able to run.

You've got to be able to do push-ups and pull-ups and dips and rope climbs and obstacles. That's what you got to do. You've got to train hard. You've got to train as hard as you possibly can. And then you have to tell yourself that you're not going to quit no matter what happens. No matter what happens, you're not going to quit. no matter what happens. Because they're going to play little psychological games on you.

Like, let's say they go, oh, he's in good shape. He's, you know, we can't really touch him physically. He's in really good shape. So now you know what they're going to do? They're going to say, oh, you know, you failed this academic test. You're not smart. You're not really smart enough. I mean, you seem like a good guy, but you're not really smart enough.

You're the kind of person that will get someone killed because you're going to make a mistake. They're going to start attacking you psychologically. Or if you're psychologically strong, but you're physically, week, they're going to be like, hey, you're the kind of person that won't be able to carry me in our combat. We don't want you. They're just saying that. Don't quit. That's it.

Don't quit. Go get some. All right. Think one more. Yeah, we're looking. I want to have some time to hang out, sign books. We've got to be out of here by 11. So we're getting close.

Go ahead, man. Front row. Jacko, thank you for speaking. Just a quick question. I work in a corporation here in New York and one of the toughest things with being an analyst here is just the fact of like when you actually escalate or you know which kind of feels like defeat, but also at the same time you want to make sure you loop in somebody else to know what's going on. So I just want to ask you about that. Thank you. For me, I look at a problem. If I think I can contain the problem, then I'm going to try and contain the problem. I recognize and I weigh the risk of if this is wrong, what's going to happen can i manage that can i control it can i absorb the impact of that if i can't absorb the impact of it then i know it's like okay this i need to bring this up i need to send this up the chain of if it's something that i know i can absorb the impact of and i can explain myself

and it will be sense and it won't have been a strategic loss or a major error then i'm going to try and hang on to it and in the beginning i'm going to be i'm going to err towards sending it up the the chain of command. As I start to trust myself and I get better at my job, I'm going to hang on to more. But again, I'm always going to weigh, is this something that I can contain or I can absorb if it goes wrong? And if it's something that I can't, hey, I'm going to run it by somebody. So I think it's, you just got to weigh that out. And once you weigh that out, make a decision and live with it. All right. Go, one more. Here? Microphone? Anyone?

Is there a mic right there? As somebody who's recently proposed to somebody who would like to spend the rest of my life with, as somebody who's married and has, from my knowledge, gone away for extensive periods of time from their partner, what is your tips to building a mortar-proof marriage that's going to last all? long time. Yep. The first thing I'll say is you know you want to develop the you want you want to make sure and encourage your wife to be emotionally independent. Emotionally independent because there's going to be times when you're not around and if they're dependent on you emotionally you're not there they're going to they're going to be hurt and they're not

going to be able to handle it. So you want to help them build that resiliency where when you're not around, they know how to handle things independently like the broken water heater and the flat tire. They can do that. And you go through those things. You build that confidence with them. And then also the emotional independence where what they have is trust in you that you're gone but you're coming back and you're going to be there for their. them always that's number one number two is straight up extreme ownership that's what it is when something is going wrong in your marriage it's your fault it's your fault the minute you turned your wife and you say you shouldn't have done this you're wrong and you're taking that

relationship in the wrong direction. When you say, hey, look, I'm trying to figure out how I made you do what you did. I don't want to let that happen. So taking ownership, when things go wrong, that's what you've got to do. That's what you've got to do. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. And with that, once again, I can't thank you all enough for coming tonight. and I know that you're just not here tonight. I know that if you're here tonight, you're here all the time. You're with us.

You're supporting us. You're supporting. Everything that we're doing, you're supporting. You're representing. Representing. Representing. With the store, with the Jocco store, with the origin.

You guys are in the game. You're getting the books. And most important, you're listening. And you're with us. And the podcast, it's a lot of work it's a lot of work a lot of work goes into it

but I get more out of it than anyone I get more out of doing this than anyone and the thing that drives me to keep doing this is not just what I get out of it but also that you all are there

and that you all are listening and that you all are sitting there with us and that you guys are hearing the same thing that I'm hearing and you're learning the same things that I'm learning. And I know that we're together. And I know that that sounds kind of weird, that sounds kind of crazy. but we are. We're together. We're hanging out.

We're moving forward. And together, we're stronger. And even though we aren't strong enough to bring back days, and even though we aren't strong enough to bring back the sunset, at least we can sit here together. And we can be humbled and mystified by this life. And together, we can go out all we've got for tonight. So thanks for coming down.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out. Thank you. Thank you.