Jocko Podcast - 251: Set The Standard. Set The Example. How to LEAD. "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander" (Gen. Bruce Clarke), with Leif Babin.

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:12:18 - "Guidelines for the Leader and Commander", General Bruce Clarke 2:15:49 - Get a routine. How to stay on THE PATH. 2:58:55 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 251 with Echo Charles and me, Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is my brother Laif Babin. From podcast 11, first guest ever on the podcast, 34, 65, 114, 114, 114, and 138. And obviously, Leif was in task unit, Bruiser as the Charlie Platoon commander. In the Battle of Ramadi, we wrote Extreme Ownership. We wrote the dichotomy of leadership together,

and we have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front. And I, at one point in my life, gave him the book that I've been reviewing for the last couple episodes that I wrote the new forward to. The book is called About Face. And we're going to talk a little bit about that, but then we're going somewhere else. Leif, thanks for coming back on, man. Thanks for having me. Last time you're on was 2018. 14 August 2018

The world has changed drastically since then That's that's that's that's kind of crazy It's crazy that as much as I see you We just didn't coordinate for another podcast in Over two years That's uh apparently uh Did you say everything you had to say on the first five Apparently so that's just the way it is

You were telling me about about face in the Battle of Ramadi me kind of saying hey check this out check out this section what were you thinking around I'm reading you about like the South Vietnamese army and how corrupt they were whatever like all these different examples yeah I mean just I thought it was so awesome that this new you know this new book with the new Ford written by you you know for about face the new the new version of it that's out with the new Ford and I remember

to stately coming back from operations in in Ramadi multiple times probably at least four or five different times I could remember where I'd like walk into the your office in the tackle operations center at the camp Mark Lee and you'd say hey listen to this and I was like okay and you bust out the book you'd open it up to like a highlighted section read the section and it was mind-blowing because it was just like it was written about the operation that I was just on like an hour ago and instead it was written 40 years before about Vietnam and it was it was pretty pretty eerie And I never realized all the influences until later when you gave me a copy of the book, which is the one thing that you gave to me and you gave the Sestone, the Delta Platoon Commander,

when we finished Tasking and Bruiser, we came home. I still have that book. It's dated January 2007. We just been home for two months at that point. But now going through that book, I realized, like, where you got, you know, renaming Tasking a Bruiser, you know, all those things. Like there's so many things that came from that. So it had so much influence on you and through you on me and everybody in Tasskinor

and then every generation afterward. That's crazy. Now, in that book, in the book about face, there's two quotes that always bothered me. Here's the first one. Men in battle, men will do in battle what they have been in the habit of doing in training. General Bruce Clark, one of the U.S. Army's greatest training generals, had written in his then recently published guidelines for the leader and commander. So that's the first quote that bothered me.

The second quote that bothered me was this quote. The troops responded well to hard, hands-on, repetitive, but still interesting work. They may not have wanted to go to Vietnam, but they sure as hell didn't want to die there. So they even flocked to off-duty classes like Recondo. Meanwhile, I established the requirement that all officers and NCOs in the battalion read and carry on their person. General Bruce Clark's guidelines for the leader and commander. As far as I was concerned, the finest little handbook on leadership and training ever written. And adopt as their own philosophy, the one that I'd learned from a fine.

by seven card which I still had issued to me in Clark's seventh army in Germany which stated an organization does well only those things the boss checks end quote so why did those two quotes bother me they didn't bother me because I didn't agree with them obviously they bothered me because I could never find this specific book called guidelines for the leader and commander and I always searched for it I would Look, and you know, these days you can pretty much find anything online, especially like a lot of the old manuals that I read, old army manuals on, you know, they've been out of print for a long time, but you can go find a PDF. Somebody uploaded it. This thing has been nowhere forever. And here I was learning from this book that Colonel Hackworth wrote, but I could never find the book that Hackworth learned from. And that did not make me happy. So, so who was this guy? General Bruce Krak. Bruce. Bruce. Clark. He was in World War I, World War II Korea. He enlisted in 1917, ended up going to West Point. Hope you don't hold that against him, life. Good to go. I turned down my appointment to West Point, but it's a great place. You got into both Army School. Look at you overachiever. I had to go to the seal the seal route, man. That was the goal. You, you, that's a rough gamble, right? It was a rough gamble. And it paid, it was very poor gamble when I graduated and I did. didn't get selected for the SEAL program.

I could tell you, I was like, I should have gone to West Point. I'd be in the Army. You know, I'd have all those opportunities in front of me. That is the, that is the, that is the worst luck that the, it happens that the SEAL teams is in the Navy. And if you don't, if you want to be a SEAL and you don't make it into the SEAL teams, you're in the Navy. Because you probably don't want to have the type of job that a regular Navy dude has, if you want to be in the SEAL teams. Would you concur? Definitely.

I mean, if you, if you want to be. be in the SEAL teams, that means you want to be shooting a machine gun and running around in the streets or the jungle or whatever. You don't want to be on a ship, you know, working in an engine room or, or, you know, driving a ship or standing bridge watch or whatever. And those are cool jobs too, different people like different jobs. But those are two almost totally different types of jobs. Whereas, hey, if you tried for special forces and you didn't make it, you still be an infantry

guy and that's still the similar thing. But you just rolled the dice big time. I did, but it worked out. And, you know, you got to trust. In fact, had I gotten selected for the SEAL program right out of the academy in 1998 when I graduated, I'd have never been a tasking a bruiser. I would have not been Charlie Button, Commander. I would have done my OIC probably at least a year or two or three prior to that as a lot of the guys who were my same year group. So, you know, that's the good Lord has a plan and you got to just trust in that plan.

And had I actually not had I gotten selected from Marine Corps, I obviously never had a chance to be in the SEAL teams either. So, look, West Point's an awesome school, man. It was a really, really agonizing decision for me. Because I got picked up for West Point in like, it was like probably January, February of my senior year. And I found out I got an appointment. So I accepted it.

And then I didn't find out until like April that I got into Navy. So it was, you know, it was a big gamble. for sure. But hey man, it's an awesome. Obviously there's a great rivalry between West Point and, you know, Army and Navy. Everybody knows the football games. But I am one of the things we're most proud of, obviously, in Tasking a Roosier was being the 1-1 AD Army SEALs, as they call this. And so good on General Clark. One thing that I just wanted to say when you read that quote, I'm fascinated, you know, to listen this as well, because I have used that quote, an organization. does well only those things the boss checks probably a thousand times since teaching the junior officer training course up through what we do now with that shalom front and I did not realize it came out of this book I was going to say don't you usually attribute it to hackworth I was attributed to hackwood yeah I think I just misremember that he he obviously was giving credit to general Clark and I clearly did not remember that and I've not done that right yeah so he went to west

point so enlisted World War I went to West point world war two commanded the fourth armored division in Patton's third army battle of era court battle the bulge distinguished service cross and three silver stars also Korea ended up with 45 or so years of service not only leading troops but also he oversaw a bunch of training schools and training commands died in 1988 at age 86 and I wanted this book I searched for this book for years I wrote an email to the publisher this publisher still exists I'm gonna call them out right now because I'm sure someone will reach out to him I think it's stackpole books they still

exist and we've covered other books of theirs on this podcast because they they print a lot of military type books I think the clay pigeons of st. Lowe we covered that on this podcast and a few others that are in the queue I reached out to him and sent an email hey I'm looking for this book. I see that you used to publish it. Nothing, never heard, nothing back. And then, you know, like you said, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The about face, the new, the new version comes out. And I search on Amazon once a month. I'll search and see it. Because they, they would have this book. They'd have it listed in there. That's how I knew the publisher was. But they would have it in there and not available, not available, not available. For years, it's been not available. It popped up.

It says available one copy. $300, bro. $300. This is, and I'm only holding a photocopy right now. It was $300. This thing is 117 pages. It's like, I don't know, six by a left. It's small.

It's this little book. It showed up in a little tiny envelope. I was super stoked. And as you might imagine, like you said, it's filled with lessons, filled with the obvious roots of hackworth's theories around training and leadership, which I stole, as you already rightfully accused me of stealing many things from Hackworth,

as I fully admit all the time that I stole. I used, passed on to everyone I could still try and pass on. Still try and pass on in about phase, still trying to pass on what we do at Eschlam Front, trying to pass on these lessons. You know what? I don't think you can actually use the word steal because they're freely given in the same way that like when people are like, hey, do you mind if we like talk about extreme ownership with our team?

We're like, no. I actually don't mind. And in fact, that's what we wrote the book for. That's why Hack, I'm sure that's why Hack wrote the About Face. And I'm sure, obviously that's why General Clark wrote what he wrote. So it's not stealing. It's freely given. And I think, as we have often said, that we didn't learn anything new.

We just, we just maybe package it a little bit differently. Yeah. Or use a different term than maybe others used. It's always good when, it's pretty common for, you know, me to do an initial client call with a company. and they'll be, you know, give me a brief on their company and they're like, oh, our company values are, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, extreme ownership.

And they're like, hey, we hope you don't mind. We're like the exact same thing. I say, you can't steal what's free. So, and I try and give Hackworth credit. Yeah. But I guess you're right. Can't steal what's free. But what we can do is we can take it

and we can try and pass it on. So without further ado, I present to you at long last. guidelines for the leader and commander I'll have to show it to you later there's a little there's a little signature I don't have it in a photocopy there's a written there's a little you know somebody gave it to someone

someone gave it to like the command sergeant major or something like that all right so here we go dedicated to the ground combat soldier the paramount concern of the army is the ground combat soldier he is the focal point of all our efforts organizing, equipping, training, sustaining, and supporting him so that he can perform his

indispensable role in combat is the army role. The role is equally significant in any kind of war, hot or cold. It is just as important in general war as it is in limited war. For our nation to entertain any notion to the contrary would be dangerous. The danger could be social as well as military. More than any other category of personnel in the armed forces, the ground combat soldier comes from the general populace. He is the private citizen under arms, the clenched fist of his people.

I think I'm just rolling with that from now on. That is the greatest description of a combat. Yes. Of a combat soldier I've ever heard in my life. The clenched fist of the people. Why is this the first time I'm hearing this? That's the one thing I'm, I'm just remiss about. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Me too. We could have, we could have put that up as like a poster for tasking a bruiser. You know, I think, I think I used, and you may have heard me use this. In fact, I know you did. The sword of destruction. I use that to describe sort of what our methodology was, especially in cleaning out insurgents and how, hey, everyone wants to be, everyone wants to make friends and win the hearts and minds, and that's all definitely important,

but that really comes, and this is when I use this line that would come after the sword of destruction has been wielded on the insurgents or the bad guys. I think the fist of the people is better. We're going with it. The clenched fist.

The clenched fist of the people. Back to the book, it is by no idle chance in the history of mankind that the course of democracy parallels the importance accorded to the ground combat soldier in the military forces of nations. It is no exaggeration to say that the basic freedoms we now enjoy are closely related to his

ascending importance on the battlefields since the Battle of Cresi. Nor is it an exaggeration, in my opinion, to say that the preservation of those freedoms will continue to be oriented by his place in the sun. only when men from all of the people are willing and ready to fight and die for freedom does freedom have meaning for them only then does democracy thrive that is the inexorable lesson of history these are important things to be reading right around this time in the world because what percentage of of the populace actually is in the military one percent so there's not all lot of people that seem to step up and be ready and willing.

And what does that mean? That means they don't understand what the price is, don't understand what the cost is. And what he's saying here is, freedom's only safe when there's people that are, when there's all people. He's saying all people, by the way, all people have to be ready and willing.

It's heavy. Well, you also have to think about his perspective, though, right? I mean, I think in America today, obviously we've been at war for a long time since 9-11, but there really, there isn't an existential, threat in the way that he was living with World War I. You've got this expanding empire. Now World War Two, you've got the Japanese and Germans. I mean, there's, the world was truly at stake. And, and it was everybody all hands on deck, even those that couldn't serve who weren't medically qualified

or whatever. Like, they're, you know, they're, they're doing, uh, everything from blood drives to, you know, collecting tires, all that kind of stuff is going on back here, bond drives, you know, Liberty Gardens. Yeah. You know, the Rosie the Riveter. I mean, ladies out there turning wrenches and building planes and tanks and all that stuff. So I think that was, I mean, our country hasn't experienced that, probably since World War II. But I think living through that probably gave him unique perspective.

This also ties in. Continuing on, beguiled by the mechanical marvels of an age. It is easy for people to forget the true character of the ground combat soldiers in war. When free men have been so beguiled in the past, they have slipped back into slavery. For the ability of the ground combat soldier to play his part in the social scheme of things depends upon the part he has given in the military scheme of things. Again, we can very easily think about the fact that, you know, this war is a technical thing and you don't have to put boots on the ground

and that whole idea that technology can eliminate war. And you and I were talking the other day that there's some people that, hey, God bless them. They have a positive attitude that we as a species can evolve to a point where we don't have war anymore. And that's a very positive thought.

I think we would all agree that that would be a great thing. It's probably highly high. unrealistic because there's always going to be somebody, no matter how nice you are, there's always going to be somebody that's going to try and take a couple extra dollars from you, Echo Charles. Yes, sir. You'd have to defend yourself. I understand. Even if you're super nice, yes.

You might have to fight. I understand. You can't study history and believe that we're on some greater trajectory and mankind is above war or conflict or evil or darkness. And the thing I love most about this podcast is reminding people of the darkness. You can't appreciate the light if you don't know the darkness. And I think that's the most powerful thing. And I think only if you experience what General Clark has experienced,

do you fully get and understand that? I answer a question on the podcast a long time ago. Guy said, you know, you keep talking about training jiu-jitsu, but I don't even like to fight. Why should I train jihitsu? And I said, if you don't like to fight, you are actually the premier person that needs to train jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu. And if you don't like war and you don't want to go to war, then you should train and prepare and be ready to go to war and then hopefully you won't have to. And if you do, it'll be swift. The other thing that that quote reminds me of is that we get asked, how often do we get asked about, you know, talk about some training or bud story, you know, from the seal basic training program. And we don't even talk about that stuff because I think people, I mean, the, I, I, I, I, I,

I'm trying to explain to people that the physical nature of combat operations is so much more, you know, more difficult than anything in training. And then the emotional, you know, I was going to say, the physical, yes, but the mental and emotional isn't even comparable thing, right? Like, it's not a comparable thing to say, well, you know, I was really wet and cold during seal training compared to I was waiting to suck start an IED. 17 nights in a row, you know, like that's definitely more mental stress than, hey, you're going to have to go hit the surf again. Who cares? No question about that. But what I'm talking about, the physical nature of it.

So we're talking about the ground combat soldier here. And this is, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, one of our seals. I mean, you certainly know him well with one of my most awesome guys in Charlotte Batoon, just a physical, you know, stud, awesome dude who's like going down with, you heat exhaustion and like can't can't continue forward and I'm having like give me your machine gun take my you know my rifle my m4 we got to move man we can't stay here we're going to get we're going to get hammered and we knew we're going to get we're going to get ambushed at any second so it was uh just the physical nature of that like I can't physically continue because I'm carrying you know 80 pounds

of gear on this patrol and it's 117 degrees right now and I got a little behind the hydration curve because we've been out here for 48 hours doing this kind of stuff and I'm going down with heat exhaustion, you know, so I think that's something that people, when you're talking about technology and are riding in vehicles or flying an aircraft or shooting missiles and there's just no getting around the guys carrying a rucksack, you know, a heavy rucksack with gear and going on foot. And Rommadi was unique like that for us because if you drove into those areas, you know, is that you were going to get blowed up. And it was a good reminder of the physical nature of war.

And I think, you know, what he's talking about with the ground combat soldier is exactly right. It's just, it's just savage. Like, it's just, you know, whenever you put on, you know, like at the beginning of land warfare training and you haven't put on a rucksack in whatever, two months because you were coming back from deployment and then you go on leave and whatever. and you get out to the desert warfare training facility and you put your gear on for the first time and you're like, yeah.

It's one of those things where the first like 20 minutes, you're just thinking, this completely sucks. And then it just sucks so bad that the suck kind of numbs out. But it's just savage. It's just a constant level of pain. And no matter how good of shape you thought you were, I mean, that guy was just talking about was an awesome shape.

He was a great, you know, physical. specimen, like awesome dude, trained hard all the time. One of the best seals I know. I mean, it happened to me. I remember Johnny Kim, while I was torn into position, Johnny Kim was like, you know, here's our corpsman. He was like, hey, uh, Leif, you doing okay?

I'm like, I don't know, man. You know, he's, I was like super pale and he could see that I was, and I just, I was dehydrated and we're already smoked. We've been up for 24 hours. So he like gave me an IV and, you know, to just help me help me, help me recuperate. And we were in good shape. I mean, we trained hard.

We were already acclimatized. It's just, it was, it was hard. It was physically difficult. All those emotional things are absolutely the case. But it was a, it was physically hard. And probably the best, Dave Burke talks about this, too. Good deal, dude. Good deal, Dave Burke.

Running with a pallet of water between where you were back at Cop Falcon, we were in a cyber overwatch position, like 300 yards down the street, carrying on an Israeli stretcher, with like pallets of water and MREs, which probably, you know, probably weighed like 200 pounds and running as fast as we could with that in all our combat gear for 300 yards.

Dave, Dave Burke was just, he was like, hey, we're like, let's go and we're just running. And it was awesome. I did a delivery run to you guys down there.

You did. Yeah, you brought some water too because we were just baking on the rooftop and nothing to, yeah. Like even just sitting there baking on a rooftop for three days,

Just getting dehydrated. Everything sucks. To quote Tony, everything sucks. Everything sucks. It's nothing worse. All right, back to the book. It will be a sorry day for all mankind.

In this supersonic nuclear age of ours, should the ground combat soldier ever be deprived of his rightful place in the hearts and minds and military forces of his. people in our efforts to avert this danger a one army attitude must pervade all ranks the ground combat soldier is not a guardsman nor regular nor a reservist nor a selectee he is simply the American fighting man on the one army team I appeal to every member of the team civilian and military to give his cause the enthusiastic

support merited by its vital Importance to our country. Bruce C. Clark, General, U.S. Army. There's the intro. We're already off to a good start. I'm the next copy that's up for 300 bucks. I've got to figure out what I'm going to do. I'm sure Stackpool will reach out.

But if they don't, I'm just going to publish this thing. Jocko Publishing is coming in hot with the PDF. Publishers Forward. These guidelines were written by a leader in command. out of the wealth of experience gained by him in leading and commanding troops from a squad to an army group These guidelines were prepared for the benefit of the of other leaders and commanders in the US army in order that they in turn may make use of his counsel and experience. So as you said, he wrote this for us General Bruce C. Clark has probably had more command duty at more command levels than any other officer in the U.S. Army living or dead.

He served more than 40 years in all grades from private to four-star general, known as the most effective trainer of modern times in the U.S. Army as well as an outstanding combat commander. General Clark here specifies the methods he has used with outstanding success in management, training, in soldier management, and in leadership and generalship. What do you think? Not exactly a lightweight. Not exactly a lightweight. And there's a picture in here It says the ground combat soldier The focal point of all our efforts You know what's cool, go ahead

Well I was just because as you're saying that You know, I'm sitting here thinking about my experience in Ramadi And you know, our combat experience Three deploy points of Iraq Is just absolutely nothing Compared to what Someone who fought in World War I, World War II and Korea I mean it's it's just it just

I'm so humble when I read about people's experiences And realize oh I if I think I I thought I saw some combat and oh that was significant for the Iraq war. It's like man, it's absolutely nothing. Although even the physical hardships I'm describing just pale in comparison, you know, to battles and just what General Clark experienced. It's so many have experienced throughout the ages. We often joke about the fact that just what we experienced compared to what these guys went through. When we had Dean Ladd on the podcast who got gut.

Got shot rolling into Tarawa 500 yards from the beach. There's no possible way he should survive that. And by the way, what was really crazy is that was like he did, after he got done with that, he had already done one of the other islands. He goes into Tarawa, gets gut shot. Two of the Marines disobey all orders and actually grab him and bring him back to a boat. He gets somehow miraculously saved. He goes back to Hawaii and then,

Six months later he's back going on another island campaign. It's like, oh, you got got shot, but you survived. It's cool. You're in the game. Yeah. America. What? All right, chapter one.

Part one is leadership and command. Chapter one, command responsibilities. Introduction. When an individual assumes command of a unit, large or small, he steps into one of the most interesting and the most challenging assignments a member of the armed forces can have. Here is a job into which a man can sink his teeth. is a job where initiative, originality, hard work, fidelity, and human understanding can pay off in the richest dividends. This chapter includes many matters that are connected with the ability

of the commander to train his unit. So it's interesting. Extreme ownership, we close out by saying this is the most challenging endeavor of human, leadership is the most challenging endeavor of human faces and therefore the most rewarding. I swear we didn't steal that from him. even though he just said the exact same thing, even though he wrote a lot earlier than us. You know what it is, though? Like when we talk with leaders all the time, and they say, hey, we're already doing

a lot of these things you're talking about. And the reason for that is because there's what works and there's what doesn't work. So no matter what you call it, you know, we gave a little framework around extreme ownership of the laws of combat. But if you're in a leadership position, you're going to figure out what actually works.

And that makes me think about this. You talk about psychology a lot and not, not in like psychological terms and, you know, like clinical terms, but in like trying to get people to do what you need them to do to accomplish a mission with. And that's exactly it. Human nature.

It took me, I don't know how many podcasts must have been around. I don't know, but at some point I said, yeah, this is a podcast about human nature. Really, that's what it's about. It's about human nature. And where human nature is most revealed is in war or in, atrocities or human suffering or human struggle. That's when that's when human nature is revealed.

And you know, we had this conversation and I don't know when, but I remember telling you and Stoner and being like, hey, look, when we go on deployment, people are going to go crazy. And look, I didn't mean, hey, these people are going to, but when you talk about senior leaders or, you know, people are going to start feeling pressure and people do crazy thing. And I saw that from my first deployment to Iraq,

where I was thinking, wait a second, this is just like, people are going crazy. So that's something that happens. It's just human nature is revealed. And if you're, if you're, let's say you're nervous about things. Let's say you're nervous type of person. You're scared of something. What's that going to do in combat?

It's just going to get worse. Let's say you're worried about things. What's going to happen in combat? you're going to be even more worried. Let's say you have a tendency to focus on things that don't really matter. You're going to do that even more in combat. It's like everything, you're just, your human nature gets exposed. To quote you, it's combat is life amplified and intensified.

True. And I think that's, that's 100% true. It's 100% true. And it's like that friend that tells you like they go crazy when they drink. And you're like, no, you're actually. just when you drink you actually are crazy you're able to keep it contained until you put the alcohol in you no you actually are crazy and it just comes out yes very similar uh here we go back to the book so you want a command how often have we heard an officer say i do anything to get a command

have you ever wondered if he really meant it have you ever wondered if you really would make a good commander we have often heard the expression a good commander is born not made this is interesting so he's saying hey we often hear a good commander is born not made you know how nowadays they say you know actually anyone can be a leader I shouldn't say in such a sarcastic voice people say look anyone can be a leader you can learn what I talked about leadership strategy and tactics is it's both like you're going to get some natural qualities for sure some other things you're going to have to work in so he said says, we often heard the expression, a good commander is born, not made.

He says, this is not entirely true. By exercising certain principles, the vast majority of officers can become good commanders. There you go. He agrees with me. Let us see if considering the following 20 questions will provide us with some guidelines. If the answers to these questions are, yes, the potential commander statement is sincere and he should fight to get it and should be given a command. He will never have an assignment that will give him greater satisfaction or one that will enable him to contribute more to the army and to our country.

So here's the 20 questions. Is the officer seeking command duty willing to devote all hours of day and night seven days a week to his command? Is his wife willing to take an active role in helping to make a happy army community in their unit area? Is his family willing to be secondary if necessary to the company battalion group regiment combat command brigade or division? I'm so glad he wrote that because I still have people that will call me out because I'll say hey when I was in the teams the teams came first The teams were more important than my family and I'm sorry But you have to take care of your guys. You have to you have to you mean? when you would say things like,

I'm going to go home and see this woman and these kids that live at my house. Yes. And just for the record, Jago was, Jago is a loving husband and an awesome dad, but we knew that was a joke. It was pretty funny.

Is he willing to learn, teach stress, and live with the fundamentals necessary to make his unit good and believe his great talents for bigger things are not to be wasted? Does he like to be with young people? Can he live with their energy, points of view, and problems they create?

Is he willing to take the hard knocks that come from carrying the responsibilities for the failures of his subordinates? Do we get to pass these things on? Echo Charles? I don't think so. No, we don't. Sounds a little like extreme ownership. It certainly does. Can he juggle at the same time all the balls of training, maintenance, test, administration, inspections, property, community?

Messes, supplies, athletics, marksmanship, discipline, and public relations without dropping any of them Prioritize and execute is he able to do many things concurrently Rather than being a consecutive doer? Can he manage a complex job? Can he receive and carry out orders? Can he follow orders as well as give them? So number eight there is he able to do many things concurrently? Rather than being a consecutive doer opposite of prioritize and execute. It's like I'm gonna I need to be able to do multiple things at once. Here's what's interesting. I highlighted that and I started I was thinking about it as I read through the rest of the book, he starts to go into a a delineation and a bifurcation between the title of book, leader and commander. And what he starts talking about is when you're a leader,

squad leader, platoon leader, at company it changes to commander. And now what you have to do is realize that you've got to you've got to be able to task people to do things, right? You've got to be able to delegate. And so as a leader, it's like prioritized and execute. As a commander, yes, you're going to prioritize and execute, but you're going to prioritize delegate and then have other people doing multiple things at the same time. I mean, when we would go on an operation, for example, did we say, okay, right now, we're only going to set security.

We're not going to do sensitive site exploitation. We're not going to do a search right now. We're only going to set security. No, we set security. Then we start interrogating prisoners. We start searching. We start organizing. There's multiple things that you're doing at the same time.

So that's different than, hey, we've got, we're getting attacked with multiple problems right now. We need to focus on the biggest problem. And it also starts to lean into talking about delegation and how. And, you know, I've always said, even when I explain, prioritized, and execute, I say these words. Once you've got that first problem solved or you've got it going in the right direction, then you can move on to the next problem. So if I, look, if we're getting a contact from the south and I go, lay, take a platoon, go start knocking those guys out. I don't even worry about you anymore. I'm good. Like I might check in with you five minutes later

to make sure you're good. But meanwhile, what am I doing? I'm saying, Seth, all right, continue the assault on this building, right? It's not like I'm saying, everyone, Seth, everyone online. No, if you can handle it, you handle it. Another way I used to explain this is, let's say you're building a building. And you've got to get one of the rooms electrical done because they're going to put drywall in that room today. And you've got 10 electricians on site and the room is small. Does that mean you take all 10 of your electricians and you pack them into that room and put them all to work? No.

Because you don't need that many. You need four guys in there. That's the fastest and most efficient. You can get it done. So you take those four guys, you put them in that room, you take the other six guys, and they can start doing something else. You don't just say, that's the number one priority.

Everyone just sit in there and do nothing. Four guys do it and everyone else watch them. No. You handle the problem. You get it moving in the right direction. Then you move on to the next. Then you can take the remaining resources and apply them to the next thing.

That makes me think about target fixation, which is what we talk about with prioritizing, with prioritizing, which it's really easy. Like, this is the priority to get so, focus on that. But I mean, the example you just gave, like, Laif, take your platoon and hit that target to the south and Seth, you continued the assault. Like, you wouldn't even say Seth continued the assault because he's going to, he's going to do it. And you talk about how your greatest goal

was to go out in operations and not say anything. And I used to think that like, that was like, I wanted to be the leader, like the, you know, John Wayne Sanz of Iwojima with my helmet on sideways and my gun at Hypoort as my finger is point. You know, You know, like the plastic Army man with a finger pointing and his leader with his gun at high poor point of this guy. And so many times, Romani in the middle of a big gunfighter where you're like, I'm not seeing anything at all. My team's doing what they need to do. The fire team leaders are running their guys, the squad leaders running their guys, the leading petty officers doing his thing. The chief's doing his thing.

I can think two steps ahead. So, I mean, you have to be able to do that. That's decentralized command. And when you get a team that's running that, then you can, you can, you can, handle 12 or 15 problems at the same time because each of the teams is doing their thing. I was talking to a client today and he was talking to me about how he sometimes has meetings. He'll have eight blocked meetings a day or 10 that he has to go to. And he gets done.

He's like, yeah, I know I got this meeting, this meeting. And I had him pull up his calendar. And he's talking me through each one of these meetings. And I said, um, what? What's wrong with you? Like what is wrong with you that every, like each one of your teams needs to talk to you every single day? That's crazy to me.

That's crazy to me. That's not decentralized command. That is centralized command. So you aren't given the people the right direction. They're not hearing what you're saying. They don't have the guidelines. You haven't given them the trust. You been an easy, but there's a bunch of reasons why it could be happening, but it shouldn't

have to attend those meetings all day long every day because that's not decentralized command. It's not efficient. What happens if you aren't in those meetings? Well, the guys won't know what to do. Okay, well, there's your problem. Give them the guidance and let them run. And if you're down on the weeds trying to solve those problems, which is what you're doing in the meetings, then you can't, who's actually taking a step back?

I mean, that's, you know, when you wrote in that the decentralized command chapter in extreme ownership that, I mean, that would have been a horrible blue-on-blue situation that happened. and if you were down on the weeds trying to tell, you know, Stone or Seth Stone had to run his platoon, you know, that's just the way it is. So I think that's your job as the leader should be to take a step back and think strategically the next step, the next step after that. And you can if you're down on the weeds, making things out. And but you can also see where people need help.

And you could step in temporarily when you take a step back and you got teams actually handling those problems, which you did all the time as a ground force commander when you're like, come over. You'd walk in the house after we call Target Security, walk in the house, what's going on? Check in with me. I'd give you a quick update on what's going on. You kind of, then you'd move to kind of where you were needed, you know,

where people might need more resources or, hey, we need some more guys outside. You know, can you guys spare a fire team? Or, hey, we need more guys in the house. Let's bring a fire team in, yeah, or whatever it may be. Yep, yep, got to do that. Continuing down this list, can he receive and carry out orders? Can he follow orders as well as give them? Can he stand tough competition from?

like units and still retain a spirit of cooperation and teamwork with him. Enemies outside the wire. Is he physically and emotionally fit to carry the load? That's what you and I just talked about. I talked about the mental side. You talked about the physical side. They're both freaking grueling. Does he have the courage to make and stand by tough decisions?

Are he and his family willing to live in a goldfish bowl where their actions, are closely observed by both subordinate and superior. Is he still enthusiastic and cheerful when confronted with seemingly impossible tasks to perform with inadequate means? Is he willing to leave a warm office to check and supervise training, maintenance, and many other activities of his unit? Is he willing to take responsibility himself and correct the situation rather than blame it on the staff of a higher headquarters

or on a subordinate when things go wrong in his unit? man we owe this guy some money that's pretty phenomenal you know what it's so humbling to hear that too and it also doesn't he's capturing the burden of leadership so well you know by obviously someone who's been and lived it you know at a multitude levels and I think so often we talk to like front line troopers or frontline you know leaders are like if I was in the senior ranks but everything would be great and they don't fully understand the burden of leadership and that's that's a thing not it not everybody can do that and there are a lot of people that don't want that and I think once they get there they realize like maybe that ain't for me next is he

willing to do the best with what he has even though what he has seems inadequate is he confident he can produce a superior unit with the usual run of manpower can he inspire personnel to produce outstanding accomplishments is he willing to take a chance on being relieved for attaining only means Mediocre results does he really want command rather than just to get command on his record and I just realized he's got like a lot of these 20 questions. There's like three or four questions in each one. He snuck some in on us, but what a what a great what a great outline just to just to check yourself and see where you're at see how in the game you are next. What does the soldier expect from his as commander. Having dealt with the prerequisites of command, so that's what we just did, I offer these thoughts on what soldiers look for in their commanders regardless of branch of service. Honest, just, and fair treatment. Men admire a strict officer if he is also just. An officer who

tries to be a good fellow loses his grip early. An officer cannot be expected to know everything. He cannot bluff his men and retain their respect. When he does not know, he should say so, and then find and announce the answer. Like, I'm laughing as I'm reading this. You're laughing as I'm reading this. This is like straight out of leadership strategy and tactics. Just, it's crazy to sit here and read this.

You ask that question all the time. Like, who's got it all figured out? Who has all the answers? Nobody. So why would you even try to pretend like you do? People are, you know, and then we get that question for a leader. They're like, well, they'll lose respect for me.

You know, if I act like I've got to pretend like I know it all. I'm like, no, everyone knows you don't know at all. So they know you don't know. And if you're pretending, they're losing respect for you. If you can actually admit you don't know and take ownership, then it, you know, or whatever it happened, then obviously their respect is going up. I'll tell another tricky situation that this offers some insight into. And it's not, it doesn't offer a definite answer.

But I've seen leaders backed into a corner where, you know, Laif screw something up. And whatever the mitigating circumstances were, you know, I say, you know what, though, Leif, I got to punish him. You know, Leif didn't finish the project on time. I'm writing him up. I told him was going to write him up. I'm going to write him up.

And, you know, you come to me and say, hey, boss, I get it. It's my fault. Here's some mistakes that I made. And I go, yep, doesn't matter. I'm writing you up. And I feel like I'm going to lose respect of people if I don't, like, drop the hammer on you. And the fact that matter is, you don't, if you're a reasonable human being and you understand, you, you listen to the mitigating circumstance of a situation and say, you know what? I really hope that this doesn't happen again, Leif, there's no possible way if this happens again, I'm going to let you off the hook.

But you came to me with a plan on how you're going to fix these things. Don't ever allow it to happen again. Your respect for me doesn't go down. People don't think, oh, Jocco is weak. They think, hmm, we got a boss that's going to take care of our people. Now, look, if you have somebody that's just out of, you know, does something totally off the wall, of course. Punishment must be dealt out. But it's not weak to be reasonable.

I guess that sums it up. Speaking of punishment, a commander should administer punishment in an impersonal way and to a degree that fits the circumstances and the offense. when a man pays his debt, the commander should forget the incident. You've got to keep that thing in mind, though. Like, you might have a repeat offender. I get it, bro. I get you, General Clark, but that one, you know?

You know what I think what he's saying there? What I interpret that as is what you talk about in the first chapter of exchange ownership, this horrible blue-on-blue situation that was tragic, that was terrible. And, you know, our commanding officers coming to, you know, find out what happened and we think, okay, man, they're probably going to fire someone for this. And there's a lot at stake. And then you talk about by taking ownership, by implementing a plan to make

sure that never happened again, the boss actually, his trust increased in you rather than decreased. So, I mean, I think when people take ownership and they implement a solution to make sure you see, hey, they're fixing that problem, you are gaining trust in it, even if something bad happened. So it's not that you're, it's not that you're forgetting about it, but you're certainly like, you're not holding it against someone. Yeah, and I think that's the key thing. Yeah, it's not the literal term forget, but, you know, I'm not going to look at you and go, well, you know, I don't know, Leif, last time you didn't quite do what I needed you to do. No, it's like, hey, you made your mistake. We figured out what the punishment was going to be.

You did your time for your crime. We're going to move on, and I'm not going to hold it over your head. That being said, you know, I'm paying attention, making sure you're not a repeat offender. Courage. Every man experiences fear in a crisis. The commander cannot show it. He must fortify himself by learning to control his emotions. This is crazy to read.

Consideration do them. So this is, again, this is all under the topic. What does the soldier expect from his commander? Consideration do them as mature professional soldiers. Regardless of age or grade, soldiers should be treated as mature individuals. They are men engaged in an honorable profession and deserve to be treated as such. Military courtesies start between officers. observation of these courtesies between seniors and subordinates is not belittling to either.

They are evidences of the alertness, pride, and good manners of your men. The commander's rank should be used to serve his subordinates. It is not a reward and is not a license to exercise idiosyncrasies. Rank has one object to enable the officer to fulfill his responsibilities. Subordinates expect the commander to play his prospicities. according to his position. They do not begrudge him his rank if he uses it in the interest of his subordinates and superiors.

So if you're using your rank in the interest of your troops, we're good. If you're using it for yourself, we got an issue. We got a problem. You know, that part about the professional, these are professionals, treat them like professionals. It reminds me of our experience in Ramada working alongside U.S. soldiers and Marines. And something you always said about, like these guys are true professionals. They are awesome professional warriors that we were privileged and honored to work alongside. And it was interesting how there are some special operators that did not treat them that way

because they felt like, oh, they were special and they went through some specialized training and they were part of a specialized unit and they had better gear, whatever. and how, like, they created all this bad blood just by not treating people freshly. And it was, you know, I just remember, you know, meeting some of those young Marines and soldiers when we first arrived there and they just, you know, they were looking at us like,

oh, man, the seals are here. And they'd look at our short, barrel little rifles and our cool gear. And we had better night vision, all this stuff. And I'm looking back at these young privates, thinking, man, these guys have fired more rounds of their weapons. And all of us put together in the entire attack,

unit are ever going to fire in our entire careers in the SEAL teams. I mean, that's how much combat they were seeing. And it was just what an honor and privilege to be. I mean, they were absolute professionals. And that served us well by treating them accordingly. Yeah. It's like one of those little golden rules. Why is this so hard treat people with respect?

Treat people with respect. That's it. Treat people with respect. Personal interest taken in them as individuals. Again, what does a soldier expect from his commander? Personal interest taken in them as individuals. A good officer will know the names, background, and individual characteristics of his men. He must have a genuine personal interest in them or they will not have it in him.

Each individual has problems. There is no easy way of getting a grip on men than by helping them solve their personal problems that give them great concern. An officer should not, however, be too familiar with. as men. Good soldiers do not expect it and usually resent it. It is not necessary to call soldiers by their first names, even if the officer sleeps in the same foxhole with them. Close, but not too close as we like to say. The dichotomy of leadership. Yeah. You know, the expression, and I, I didn't ever hear anyone say this. And I started saying it a little while ago. I don't know.

Maybe it's not, I don't know, I'm not trying to take credit for something. But you know, you know the term that we'd say in the teams, which was take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you. Which means, hey, when you get done with a dive, you take your dive rig and you do the proper maintenance on it. When you get done with the parachute jump, you take your parachute, you do proper maintenance on it. When you get done with a firefight or operation, you take your weapon and you do the proper maintenance on it. You take care of your gear and your gear will be there to take care of you. Same thing with people. You take care of your people and your people will take care of you.

That's true. as you're saying that, I'm thinking about some of those text messages that you've sent Echo Charles. Those things are going to become public, I think. Yeah. Might tell a different story in a little way, but yeah, man. Why is it so hard for people to respect people?

Just no respect whatsoever. My text messages to Echo Charles, they do have a high level of disrespect. And this also brings to the fact that I believe, I believe, I'm not 100% sure. I believe that I have a certain guard passing technique. Yes. That is called the disrespect.

Literally. That I actually named because of you, because I would use this guard pass, and it's so disrespectful that you would, you would feel disrespected. I know. Did you think of that name? No, you did.

I remember very vividly. Expand. I like this. You don't have to. It's just very disrespectful. That's it. Yeah. I think that's a good question.

You know, is it that hard to to be respectful? And apparently it is sometimes. So, yeah, man. There's a fine line between Jess and disrespect. And maybe a little more of a gray area. Yeah, it gets blurry sometimes.

Yes, sir. Find some good screenshots and let's post some Jocko echo texts. I think that'll be fun. Okay. Back to the book. There is nothing wrong today. With the following instructions written by Baron von Steuben at Valley Forge and published by the Continental Congress.

Instructions for the captain. A captain cannot be too careful of the company. A captain cannot be too careful of the company the state has committed to his charge. He must pay the greatest attention to the health of his men, their discipline, arms, accoutrements, ammunition, clothes, and necessaries. His first object should be to gain the love of his men by treating them with every possible kindness and humanity inquiring into their complaints and, when well-founded, seeing them redressed.

He should know every man of his company by name and character. He should often visit those who are sick, speak tenderly to them. see that the public provision, whether of medicine or diet, is duly administered, and procure them besides such comforts and conveniences as are in his power. The attachment that arises from this kind of attention to the sick and wounded is almost inconceivable. It will, moreover, by the means of preserving the lives of many valuable men. So there you go.

what a what a what a incredible thing to be able to read instructions for a captain for a valley forge that's powerful man it's humbling as well too i think about all of my shortcomings and how much i could have used that guidance directly you know prior to being charler battoon commander or you know even not like just reviewing that and thinking about it and It captures, I think, like I said, the burden of leadership in a massive way and all that's required of you, which is a lot. Everything, 100% all the time. And if you take care of your men, your men are going to take care of you. And if you have this, if you have this inconceivable attachment, what that does is preserves lives.

So when you are a tight unit You know, I've often said that you know The thing that makes a seal platoon strong Is just the bonds that you have Like that's the that's the difference That's what that's what's gonna make the difference In any military you're not just the seal I mean I can talk about the seal platoons because I've been in them But any military unit

What is it that makes a really strong unit? It's how tight they are And what makes people tight? You take care of them That's it It goes on instructions for the lieutenant. He should endeavor to gain the love of his men by his attention to everything which may contribute to their health and convenience. He should often visit them at different hours, inspect their manner of living, see that their provisions are good and well cooked, and as far as possible obliged them to take their meals at regulated hours. He should pay attention to their

complaints and, when well-founded, endeavor to get them redressed, but discourage them from complaining on every frivolous occasion. So for the captain and for the lieutenant, what are you trying to do? You're trying to build relationships with your team. You're trying to take care of your people. And by the way, those are the instructions. Not one, that's it.

Next, go. I was just going to say, I think that's the most profound thing to me. You know, as you'd think, if Hackworth is saying everyone, every officer should be required to read this, you would think it's going to be talking about tactics.

You would have how to set up, you know, a base of fire. your assault elements or, you know, how to position your troops. And it's not that at all. It's all about building relationships with your team, you know, what's required of you to actually be a leader. It's how you, you know, how you manage a lead.

And that's pretty phenomenal. And we, you say that all the time, something that we talk about often, which is the hardest parts of combat leadership is always the human aspect, not the, not the tactics. That's the easy part. Yeah. That's, you know, when I wrote the forward for about face, you know, and he turned. You know, he turned against, he said, hey, we can't win this war if we keep fighting like this. And, and, you know, they asked him, they asked Howard Tucker in that interview, that famous interview, you know, he gets asked, could you, could you, could you become, are you too emotional about the war in Vietnam?

and Hackworth says one couldn't have spent the number of years I spent in Vietnam without becoming emotionally involved. One couldn't see the number of young studs die or terribly wounded without becoming emotionally involved. I have just seen the American nation spend so much of its wonderful great young men in this country. I have seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the nation being split asunder and almost being split apart and almost being split asunder because this war, and I'm wondering to what end it will lead to, end quote. You know, like that's a guy that loved his troops. I can only imagine that burden, you know,

with 58,000 dead in the Vietnam War, 58,000 U.S. troops kill. And because even at the tiny fraction of that number, you know, that we've experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq, coming back from Iraq, when we came back from Ramadi, I think one of the hardest things for me just, after having lost Mark with Ryan was blind. mind, Mikey, you know, we lost Mikey in Del Paltoon.

And a good friend of mine who's hopefully going to be on this podcast with you sometime, Elliot, who was severely wounded. And he was in Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio, which is the primary burn care facility for all of the U.S. military. And so I went and spent a bunch of time with him there. And from December for, you know, really through much of like 2007, back there regularly and trying to, you know, just help him and support him and his family wherever we could. And just witnessing the, those burned victims in there, you know, when IDs

that were causing, you know, the enemy's most valuable weapon and you're walking into those those ICU rooms and you're seeing young soldiers and Marines with no lips, no noses, no ears, just face, you know, faces burned off. It was one of the most horrific things. I've, I've, I've, I've ever had to experience. And when I would hear people on the news talking about the war and pontificating about the blood and treasure that we'd spent,

and they had no inkling of just how deep and personal that was, you know? And again, that's just a fraction in the Iraq War of what Packworth experienced in Vietnam. I can only imagine, you know, for him and for every other Vietnam veteran out there, what that was like.

But there's no way to not make that personal. Yeah, and you can see the root of that is, you know, it's the same route. Like you said earlier, these things that you uncover over time, you know, if you take care of, if you love your troops, that's going to be, that's what it's about. And Hackworth knew that, you know that, I know that, General Clark knew that. That's the way it is. It goes on here, loyalty. loyalty to superiors and subordinates is a basic requirement. Criticism of a commander's superiors in front of subordinates lays him open to the same treatment.

He should stand up for his men as he expects them to stand up for him. You can almost see Hackworth's life unfold, right? Like you can see that statement in everything that he did. An officer's presence when the conditions are unpleasant and when the going is tough, sharing the situation of the men means a great deal to them. Pick up the brass. The commander should act as a buffer between superiors and subordinates. He should protect his men from harassment that comes from above but still get the job done. Yeah, I know sometimes I would pull back the curtain for a few minutes and, like, show you what was happening about.

above me in the chain of command on all different fronts. And look, everyone up above me in the chain of command doing their job, but it's pressure and it's kind of maddening. And sometimes I would be asking you for something and you'd get pissed off about it. You know, what the hell you need this for? And I'd say, come here for a minute. Let me take a look behind this curtain for 15 seconds.

You look back there, see that sausage getting made and say, okay, I'm good. I'll get you what you need. I'm out. Thank you. You always did a great job of screening us from that. And, but I think that was very valuable for me because it gave me a new perspective. I, you know, like, oh, they're asking us for this.

You know, I'm getting mad about it. And then I realized, like, how much you're actually screening out, you know, of that harassment. Like, hey, I'm keeping these guys off your back so that you guys can go do what you need to do. Next, that there needs be anticipated and met. A good soldier has needs, both spiritual and physical. a commander should do everything possible to anticipate and meet those needs. At the same time, he should provide all the comforts and privileges practicable. This is not meant to imply that he should coddle his men or treat them as babies.

Like, how beautiful is this dichotomy? Just when you think, oh, maybe he's a little off track here. Maybe I'm a little bit. No, this does not mean to imply that he should coddle his men or treat them like babies. Such things is a hot meal when it is not expected. unit parties, liberal past privileges, and good recreational facilities are more to the point. Next thing that the soldier expects from his commander to be kept informed and told the reason why. The commander should keep his men informed at all time.

Tell them the reasons behind decisions affecting them. Many jobs seem purposeless unless the facts behind them are known. He should continually take action to offset rumors and speculation by giving them. giving his men all the information he can. Yeah, we owe this guy money, dude. We owe this guy money. You know what, though? You're probably, I mean, obviously there's a direct influence, right?

Through David Hackworth, you know, in about phase from General Clark. I think you could go back to the Greek hoplites or the, you know, the Roman legions and probably find some centurion who's riding the same stuff. I mean, they're learning the same stuff. It's some different aspect, a different terminology, a little bit different, you know, a vastly different era, millennia apart. But it's human nature, as we just said, hasn't changed. And I bet there would be something very similar. And just to make sure everyone realizes we're not just talking about war.

We are talking about leadership. We're talking about leadership and business. You need to tell your people what's going on and they need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. I'm talking about your family. They need to understand what's going on and they need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Any situation where you're interacting with other human beings, these rules apply. And they apply to the point, why do we know that they work? Because they've been tested.

We tested them, but these guys test them at even crazier conditions, harder conditions, three freaking wars. And that's one of the most common things we're getting at Eschon Front these days is questions about managing. the family schedule and how do I work from home with so many people still working from home. You know, it's, those are, those are like a good bulk of the questions are about that. And that's directly applicable. Well, the other thing that's been interesting is when COVID hit, you know, most of the companies that we work with are good companies that want to be awesome. We do get some companies that come to us sometimes against their will brought to us by the board or whatever that we are going to fix them, help fix them. Most of the companies we work with are good companies that want to do better.

When COVID hit, so these companies aren't companies that are struggling. These are companies that just want to do better. And so they would implement the principles that we talk about. Implement cover move. Implement simple. Prioritize next year, decentralized command, default aggressive, you know, extreme ownership. So they implement these things.

And yes, they're absolutely starting doing better. And we watch them and we get feedback from them and their profits go and they become more efficient and more effective and they start taking market share. Everything that goes awesome. And it's cool. And everyone goes, hey, yeah, that's great. And we're super excited about it. When COVID hit and all of a sudden there was companies that were in dire situations

and were able to utilize the principles to survive, yes, but also start to actually go on the attack and thrive, that was pretty epic. Because it basically was like, did you ever pull a reserve parachute? Never had. Yeah, I only did it one time. And all the other times, I'd be like, yeah, cool. You know, I'm glad I got a reserve on. The time that I pulled it, I was like, this thing's freaking awesome, bro. Thank you for packing this thing correctly.

Case of beer to the rigor, you know? Because normally it's just like, yeah, yeah, it's work. You know, it's on there. It's all good. And that's kind of what companies are. Okay, we're doing really good. Hey, our profits are up, all these positive things. But all of a sudden when they're faced with real hardships and challenges,

they're like, what should we do here? Prioritize next few. Oh, yeah. Okay. Or die. Yeah. They no longer exist. Exactly.

Hey, you know, we've got this going. We got all these people working at home. What should we do? This is decentralized command. Yeah, we've been doing that. Well, yeah, now you need to do it harder.

You need to make sure everyone understands what the mission is, what the goal is, what the end state is. You need to communicate with them. They need to understand why they're doing what they're doing. Can you make that happen? Yes, we can. Okay. Execute. You know, that makes me think there was an educator.

Remember on Eiff online a few weeks ago as they were about to go. go back to school, you know, in her state or her district. She was an educator. She was talking about how crazy it was and how much uncertainty it was. And you said, we didn't learn this stuff in a Boy Scout troop. You know, how this, we learned this on the battlefield. It was crazy. It was chaotic.

There was a lot at stake. There was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen. What you need to do is prioritize and execute. That's where this came from. And I think I know it's getting crazy in that sixth grade classroom. And I'm telling you. this is going to work. And it did.

And she came back and gave us a great sit wrap about how it was, she was implementing that and moving forward and doing great. Legit. Next thing that the soldier requires is a well thought out program of training, work, and recreation.

The commander should keep a balance between training and recreation. Too much of either becomes a drag on the men. Logical progression of training helps keep the men from becoming confused. Yeah, this is exactly what we wrote about Dichotomy leadership. Train hard but train smart.

You can smoke people. You can crush them to the point where they're not getting any benefit anymore. Next, demands commensurate with capabilities. Neither too great nor too small. A commander should not overload his men with unnecessary work. On the other hand, letting men become bored because they are not working enough is just as bad. Neither men as individuals nor units should be expected to accomplish impossible tax. What is that? What are you saying? You got to balance that dichotomy.

It sounds like General Clark had the same experience with his soldiers that we always said like a board team guys like the most dangerous thing in the universe because they're going to figure something out to go cause trouble or create mayhem. Because rock fights. That was when I was a young team guy, if there wasn't, if we weren't being told to do something like sitting around waiting for something, there was a rock fight happening, you know? All of a sudden it was just hits you in the leg with a rock from 20 yards and it's a rock fight. or actually actually it wasn't rock fights there was a couple of those but mostly you're not talking about like tossing a pebble

you're talking about like it was it wasn't rock fights that's when I was a kid when I was a kid there was rock fights and I don't know what you're even thinking when you're having rock fights but we had we had BB gun wars yeah we had BB gun wars too shoot your buddy in the leg with your

we had the BB gun wars if you got shot Red Rider BB gun if you got shot you had to take off one layer of clothing by the way zero eye pro It was just the dumbest thing ever. What's that? I got hit in the face one time. I came home one time and my eye swollen so shut.

And my dad was like, son, what happened to you? I got hit with a spear. We were having spear wars. There you go. Sharpen sticks throwing them each other. And it hit me. Of course. It missed my eye by like three millimeters.

My dad was like, you're an idiot. Don't ever do that again. Anyway, rock fights. Oh, yeah, not rock fights. Hucking rocks at objects. It'd be like, hey, who can hit? that. So I guess it's similar to the pebble, but it'd be like, hey, who can hit that lamp over there, you know, that street light or something? We'll start saying their hucking rocks

at it. Speaking of board team guys in rock fights, so my first appointment before we worked together in Tassian Bruiser in 2004, so after your first appointment of Iraq, one of our super solid team guys, you know, in our platoon was throwing rocks through the window of, uh, and got in all kinds of trouble because he damaged this smash and shattered a window of, of this like, former Saddam Palace and they literally like like pulled an award for him. I made it crazy. This this palace had a J-dam dropped to the middle of it. It was completely like for some reason they got all upset that he like shattered the windows. What's the J-dam? A giant bomb dropped from the sky. It's a it's a it's a GPS guided bomb. Gotcha. You have to be something

ammunition joint direct attack munition. I believe. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have to ask a good deal, Dave. Where's Dave when you need it? Good deal, Dave. You know what? There weren't too many times in Tasking a Bruiser

where we had board team guys, because you always had us busy doing stuff. But the one time that we did let it go, the Andrew Paul got volunteered to demonstrate the new tasers that we got. Oh yeah, I remember that. And Chris Kyle tased him and everyone sat around filming it and laughing.

Andrew said that was the worst experience. this entire life. The cool thing, there was a safety officer there that someone made, like we put out the jihitsu mats because this was, remember we're doing jih Tzu in the morning in the high bay there? And I forget, you know, I heard someone came like, hey, Jocko, they're about to taste, Andrew Ball.

I'm like, up doing work. I'm like, all right, I better go. You're like earmuffs? Did you go check it? I don't even remember. It might have been one of those things where I was like, all right, let the boys do what the boys are going to do. Maybe I just saw the video.

Yeah, I think you probably saw them. I saw that there was a mat. They took our green, they were actually my mats. They took them, put him down underneath. So he fell face down on a freaking mat, thankfully. Yeah, that's a board team guy's bad. Didn't he say he was going to fight through it? I think so.

He did not fight through it. Andrew Tall is a tough, tough dude, but that taser took him down. All right. Back to the book. guidelines to orders. Give orders, this is ridiculous, give orders in a manner which indicates you expect compliance. Do not issue orders, you cannot enforce.

Give clear, complete, correct orders and follow them up. I mean, the reason I said this is ridiculous is because it's just crazy that what the actual verbiage that we use when we brief is, you know, give simple, clear, concise guidance. And here they're saying clear, complete, correct. only by long and careful training can the commander achieve perfection in giving orders ambiguity vagueness and incompleteness of orders are to blame for the most disobedience and failure to comply which is when I say if your team isn't doing what you what you want them to do the very first person you should check is yourself and here it is and yet that's so hard

for any of us to do right you get frustrated with the person for not doing what you wanted to do. And instead of actually looking at yourself and saying, hey, okay, obviously, I wasn't clear. I could have done a better job. The words of an order indicate what is to be done. The manner in which it delivers generates the spirit in which it will be carried out. Oral orders should be repeated back. Failure to do so will most assuredly result in a grave misunderstanding.

Only by long and careful training can men learn to receive, obey, and pass on orders to others. Lack of orders does not relieve a commander from acting. You must strive to maintain a complete picture of the situation so you can take suitable action in the absence of orders. It is a wise officer who refrains from criticism until he can make logical, constructive, suggestions. An officer should be as good as his word. He should not make promises he cannot keep or make decisions. He cannot support. Just perfect guidance on how you tell people what it is you want them to, how you give orders. The combat commander. Positive leadership. Battle appears to add peculiar problems to command, but when further analyzed, the problems are merely magnifications of those present

and training. The great difference between combat and training is the presence of danger and confusion in combat. These two obstacles can be overcome only by positive leadership and by developing a positive and automatic reaction in the individual soldier. That's cool. It's cool that it says this, like we absolutely added confusion, massive amounts of confusion into our training to simulate the, we couldn't, you know, you can't shoot people obviously during training. You can't add that element of danger, but you certainly can add some freaking confusion. Yeah, the term I think I always used was chaos and mayhem, you know, like activate chaos and mayhem. And your trade ad instructors were awesome at doing that.

They were very awesome at doing that. These positive traits of the commander and of the soldier are acquired during training, training in peace, training in wartime before combat, training during battle, and by mental factors not easily described. Desire to overcome the enemy, devotion to country and to organization, and personal devotion to the commander. When a disciplined unit is spurred by the mental drives mentioned, it fights not only well, but brilliantly. Those are some awesome things to strive for. The willingness to overcome the enemy, devotion to country and organization, and personal devotion to the commander. Battle is fought for real money and for keeps. Battles are won by teamwork, not by individuals acting alone.

The only teamwork that can stand up under the confusion and constant danger, feeling of fear, and physical exhaustion is the battle of instinctive teamwork. Success in combat is due largely to endurance on the battlefield. The day after day strain of living in the dirt, of going without sleep and food, of the constant threat of the constant threat of death will cause the man who is physically or mentally weak to quit. Fatigue makes cowards. men in good physical condition are the last to tire. I would definitely agree with that for sure. You know what though, man? I was just thinking about that going through the strain and stress of like,

I think, I just think about the support of the team. You were talking about the bonds between teams and relationships. And just that attitude. You know, you talk about the respect of the commander and, you know, obviously, you know, we always, no one ever wanted to let you down. down into you bruiser, clearly. But I think understanding the mission and just like looking at another guy

that you could be under fire in a crazy situation. And, you know, I look at like Tony, Tony, be like, look back at you or, you know, even that situation I said earlier where Dave Burke and a couple of other, you know, of our guys ran down to grab the pallet of water, like interacting with you or when you came down, you know, for delivery,

you know, to resupply us. You know, you're just showing up for just a few minutes, checking us out, seeing how things are going, And I think just the look in your eye, like, hey, cool, how things going down here, it's no matter what the physical strain is on you, you know, or what you're going through or mental strain, it's, it's, I think that support of your teammates around you and like the attitude, particularly the kind of attitude of humor in, I think, the midst of some really dire situations, I think was always super helpful for us. Yeah. that the attitude that people have and I would love to tell you it's leaders but as you know full well it's not just leaders it can be anyone in the platoon anyone on a team anyone in the organization

when things are going bad and someone says dude we got this you know or whatever someone instead of saying oh you know hey we got to roll out again you got to be kidding me someone goes good let's bring it you know like that little thing The best example, I'm freaking power, man. There, it is. And the best example I can think of is we wrote about in the planning chapter of extreme ownership, which, you know, me and everyone else is jocked up.

We're about to launch on that hostage rescue operation. And me and you're sitting in there and butters our, you know, Intel incident comes rolling in and goes, they got IDs buried in the yard and Boker machine gun positions of the house. And you just looked at me and with this big smile on your face, like, I guess you guys are going to get some. And I was like, I guess we are. I mean, that's, and that attitude, instead of being like, you know, if you look to me, like, oh, no. Yeah, do you think, you know, maybe we shouldn't go on this?

You know, it was like, no, you just started, you were like smiling and laughing about it. Look, obviously we'd plan and put contingencies in place. We weren't being callous about it. But it was, that attitude was contagious for everybody. You know, or Mark Lee rolling out on the, as the lead turret gunner. You're like, Mark, do you feel lucky tonight? Like, everybody's a winner, you know? So pay attention to that.

Because it's real easy. It's real easy. It's real easy to let that bad attitude come out and you need to just stifle that thing. You just need to stifle it. And anybody that wants to talk to me about being transparent and showing your feelings, I'll say no, no. Actually, just be quiet. Just shut up.

And what you need to do is you go, oh, this is going to suck. And I'll look at Laf and say, this, you guys are going to get some. Watch this. Let's go bring it. The importance of endurance on the battlefield is underlined by Grant's philosophy, the idea that in every battle there may come a moment when each side is fought out and ready to quit. And the belief that in such a moment victory will go to the side which is able to make one final effort. In the heat of a firefight, the poor commander will not be able to lead men into danger to make them attack or keep order when he and his men are under hostile artillery fire. He won't be able to execute his plans.

Instead, his men will forget teamwork and follow their own plans in fighting for survival. Therefore, you must take every opportunity to make your men confident in your ability to command and of the skill and toughness of your unit. Unit morale, the prospect of entering battle puts every soldier under severe nervous strain. Dangers, real and imaginary, are thick around them. The commander can overcome much of this strain and, strengthen the mental endurance of his men by teaching them in advance what to expect. An event foreseen and prepared for will have little harmful effect. You were talking about the Grant's philosophy there, and I was thinking about Chamberlain at Gettysburg.

We were just at Gettysburg for EF Battlefield. I mean, he and the 20th May charged, fixed band-hats and charged down the hill in Little Roundtop. That was the absolute last it ever. They didn't have any ammo. I mean, it was, it was, it was, you know, millimeters close to, to losing that battle. And that would have changed the entire tide of the battle, you know, if a little roundtop had been taken.

So I think that's such a phenomenal example of, to me, that's that default aggressive mindset of like, hey, okay, we're going to be default aggressive to continue this. And that one last bush is going to change the entire outcome. There's a famous boxing match with Muhammad Ali, And I want to say, I want to say, I can't remember which match it was, but it is a brutal boxing match. And at one point, both fight, Muhammad Ali's all beat up and whoever he was fine. I forget, it was an incredible fight.

But he gets back to his corner and he's telling his corner, cut him off. He's done, cut my gloves off, I'm done. And basically his corner's like, you got, you know, you got to keep going. they look over and the other guy didn't answer the bell. So like that's where it's at. Like if you, you can give up right there, that's something to think about. You know, like, can you just go a little bit more?

Can you just go a little bit more? Back to the book. In combat, you really see the critical importance of high morale and a spree decor. Moral must be high enough to stand the shock and boredom of combat. You know, actually before I continue here, I wanted to say this, that thing about giving people a heads up,

about what they're going to face. Like that, you know, you're going to, like, if you, I've had fighters where they're, they got their first big, they're on the big stage. Maybe they're in the UFC for the first time or whatever. They get nervous and they don't know what that is. No one ever told them, hey, man, you're going to feel, you know, you're going to feel sick. You're going to feel butterflies. Tito Ortiz, you know, Dean used to corner Tito a lot.

And Tito, and they just had a show about Tito versus Chuck. And one of the scenes, you can see it's Tito. He's right about to walk out and he's throwing up, just viciously throwing up. And I remember Dean telling me, Tito would get so nervous before fights that he would just start throwing up. But he understood what it was. Now imagine you, you're just going into your first fight and all of a sudden you start, you want to throw up. And someone just be like, hey, just go ahead and throw up. Just get it out.

You know, just go, just get it out of your system. It's the same thing in combat. You've got to say, hey, listen, you're nervous. It's okay. If you're jittery, if you feel sick, if you, whatever, it's okay. That's just your body, you know, focus in its energy towards where it needs to be focused to. It's perfectly fine.

But if you don't know that, it can be a problem. Back to the book. So morale must be high enough to stand the shock and the boredom of combat. Every man must be strong, must strongly believe that what he is doing is, right he must have supreme confidence that he can deal with any situation that he is a better fighter than the enemy a spriticor's unit morale every man must feel that his unit is a superb fighting unit and that he like the rest will sacrifice even life itself for the unit the spirit is often the difference between mediocre and

superior armies it was strong in the robin legions and the French troops under Napoleon recognize though that the commander must inspire beyond a group a spree. Only deep personal convictions springing from the identification with the cause will drive a man forward when his unit is destroyed or scattered. Personal example, the commander should be a model soldier. He must master the technique of war as it fits his assignment. He must improve and expand his technical knowledge. The commander must strive to make it possible for every soldier to say truthfully, the old man knows,

the old man always knows the right thing to do. In addition, he must exhibit daily, a fine example of stamina and courage. Besides his own example, the higher commander is also represented by his staff officers. They too must reflect the superior qualities of their commander. Above all, set the proper example.

Leading by example, there you go. the model soldier soldier's morale show me a unit that is well run properly trained and ready for combat and I'll show you a unit with high morale no commander will readily admit that his unit's morale is anything other than excellent I wrote the leadership

strategy and tactics people always ask you how do I improve do hard things you want to improve morale do hard things as we compare units however it is often obvious that morale in some units is more excellent than in others what is morale our manual on leadership defines morale as the mental and emotional state of the individual. Although it is a complex and intangible quality, the manifestations of its absence in a unit can be detected readily

in the form of poor appearance of the individuals and unit area, poor discipline and a low state of training. That's something that, I mean, obviously Hackworth immediately applied that, you know, to the hard, from the hard luck to the hard luck to the hard core battalion and I was thinking about that with Taskin a bruiser something that we talk about often which is you know the the initially we were working harder than everybody you know the people we're working hard than we were preparing for scenarios that we the guys that have been to Iraq previously like what man why are we training for this crazy multi casual scenario you know that we didn't experience anything like that on the on the battlefield or when the instructors were saying

you guys are good to go and we say you know what we need to do a few more runs and there was grumbling around that. People were saying, hey, we're working harder than the, you know, we're coming in early, we're staying late, we're not taking the night off and going out and drinking beers in town. We're actually planning and training and preparing, you know, and it's interesting

to think about how those complaints just faded away as our performance increased. And I mean, that was morale. That's morale increasing to say, hey, we're tasking a bruiser. Hey, why are we working harder than, you know, these other tasks are because we're tasking a bruiser, that's why? Because we're striving

better than everybody and that's what we're going to do and that's yeah I mean that's that's awesome one-o-one more stuff I stole from hack hack with 101 several adjuncts to morale chart three good management we all like to be in a unit where things run smoothly where things are planned where men do not have to hurry up and wait adequate information men like to be kept informed ahead of time of things that affect them or are apt to affect them it's far better for the commander to keep his men informed that have the men seek to get such information from rumors. High state of training.

If a unit is not well trained, it's men know it. This fact shakes their confidence, especially if they anticipate the possibility of using that training in a critical situation. Chances for advancement. Progress is morale raising to all men. Knowing that advancement is possible and that excellent performance and preparation lead to promotion helps morale. Good physical and mental condition.

Good physical condition goes hand in hand with good mental condition. These two elements are basic to achieving good morale. Good administration. Men like to know that their pay and accounts and individual records are correct. Confidence and equipment. Ours is the best equipped army in the world. Confidence and commanders. Men expect their commanders to know their jobs, to share the hardships with them,

and to take a personal interest in their problems. You will not know whether a particular officer or soldier has a problem until someone has heard his case. A willing ear will gain much confidence, comfortable quarters. I'm paraphrasing some of these. Mess. Good food. Mail service.

Medical attention. Post-exchange facilities. Leaves and passes. Religious services and character guidance. It is especially important that an army be made up of mostly young soldiers be provided with facilities for religious services in accordance. with their preferences. A program of character guidance will help to continue in the service the wholesome influence

of home and community life. Awards and letters of commendation. Standards. Soldiers like to be in a sharp unit. They appreciate achievement of high standards and discipline, dress, housekeeping, police, maintenance, training, and athletics. The lift and morale that comes from impressive and well-executed military ceremonies is an important factor.

That kind of reminds me like group PTs, you know, at the team. And everyone like hates group PTs, like crumbles, like group GPs. And then you get together and you do some awesome workout together and after we're like, that's awesome. That was great. You know, we just got some little help from external sources that it was, we'll move on to this in a second. We just got some little help from external sources that it was Ali Frazier when that fight happened. When that fight I was talking about earlier happened. and it was Frazier his Fraser's corner was basically saying you're done and Ali's was over telling his corner caught him off I'm done and Frazier's corner said you can't you're done and that was it Ali they

Ali's corners you know is no you can't caught up you're fighting again you're fighting more and he decided to stick you know that was it you want for an X he held on for an extra three seconds and got the victory after a 15 round war, or a 14 round war going into the 15th round. But I like that. Like when I know, look, I know I'm not the most talented and gifted person in any way, shape, or form. But I know that I'm, if someone's having,

if I'm having a hard time, I know someone else is too. And I know that I will answer the bell. And I know that's going to, that's going to be a problem. It's going to be a problem for somebody. You know, that's, I think for a lot of us, like, it's kind of human nature to focus on yourself, you know,

and think, oh, if you're having a struggle and it's, you know, it's something you talk about, whether it's, you know, discipline, waking up, you know, at the alarm early in the morning and how it's like you're a human being. It's hard for you. It's hard for anyone to do that. But it's, we kind of like to think, oh, it's harder for me. And without the recognition of like, man, this is, it's hard for everybody. And if I can push a little bit harder, it's going to give me the advantage.

I figured that out in, um, hell. week for me. I wasn't the fastest runner. I wasn't the fastest swimmer, but by like day two of hell week, everyone is crushed. I was like, dude, I'm good to go. Like, all of a sudden, I can I can hang with guys that were way faster runners than me. You know, they were hurting more and and it's like even the score. So I think that's, that gives you a pretty huge advantage if you can keep grinding in the tough times. That, that, with that, the normal face philosophy helps so much Because it jim, like, and I'm obviously thinking about like a jiu-jitsu situation or whatever, where you're competing against someone directly, where if they're gassing or whatever, they're in a state of extreme adversity, we'll say. And they interpret, because just like how you're saying, Leifoy, you're like, hey, we're so focused on ourselves.

I'm focused on how tired I am. I don't know how tired this guy is. All I have really is is external what he's doing or looking like. But if the other guy's just like cruising in his face, like he's really comfortable, you're like, man, I can't compete with this at all. So now you want to give up even more. You can never, like the joke about normal face is no joke, man. It really isn't. It really truly isn't.

And you talk about, you talk about, you know, like how many times have you seen me like we're doing jiu-jitsu or even not you training with me, but me training with anybody, me training with Dean Lisch, you know, training with somebody that's better than me, that's giving me a run. Have you ever seen like a look on my face of just like despair? No. So, and I told this story probably more than once before already on here. But there was a time where you were rolling with Dean and, you know, with all the respect,

he was kicking your ass, like, pretty bad too. And I was like, dang, seeing the jocco over a kid. And you guys were going hard. That's the thing. And that's the part that really, like, stuck with me. I'm like, man, I would be gassing right now. Like hard core. You know, you scrambled and you scramble again.

You scramble again, you scramble again. And then you kind of rest of it, but you guys weren't even doing that. I was like, man. and you were getting your ass kick so I'm like Jacko's in a world I hurt right now then he had you in Mount

Double Snow Angel and I'm like I was feeling literally like physically claustrophobic because of how tired I was like empathetically getting from watching you guys and like how your arms were

or whatever I was like man I don't know how he he can even take that or whatever and then you ended up sort of getting out and the round ended and I was looking at your face

and you're just like kind of like that's what you do every day kind of thing I was like I don't know that's what I knew is like oh okay this kid's a little bit different than the normal person you know you do that even when uh probably the lowest point that i've seen you um when Seth stone and I came to visit you in

the hospital after your neck surgery and we went and bought you a big like danny slam burger you know like double cheeseburger like we're gonna go let's go see jaco he just had his surgery and uh we roll up there and you were just in and you were like normal I knew you were hurting back because you did Like, just set it down over there. But you were still like normal face. And I don't know what you looked like before we walked in there. But you definitely turned on the normal face. Yeah.

And I knew you had to be in massive pain. You're just coming out of neck surgery. You know, I had all these nerve issues. And they had you on a bunch of, you know, drugs and stuff. But you even still were normal faces. Well, I was freaking getting neck surgery because of Dean Lister. That's what the deal is.

But it's a real thing. And also, I mean, look, Leif, you've come to me with many times with all kinds of, you know, bad news, you know, whether it's just, hey, you know, whether, even it's just something stupid, like I'm thinking of some dumb stuff, like, you lost some gear, right? Some, let's say some critical gear, which you did. Or your platoon did, which means you did. Like, you know, you come to me and you go, hey, hey boss, we lost this, that, and the other

thing. And I go, okay. Well, looks like we're going to have to fill out some paperwork, right? Like, it's a real thing. and if I can't control my emotions because you lost a piece of gear, your platoon lost a piece of gear, like how am I going to react in the future? And by the way,

when you're saying I lost a piece of gear, like we're talking about like, I'm coming and telling you I lost a $15,000 pair of like PBS 15, like night vision goggles. Which can be used by the enemy. Yeah, which is a big deal. Or we lost a kick 13,

which is, you know, a cryptologic device that, uh, you know, that we use for radios. It's a cryptological device that when you lose means the entire country of America has to update their cryptological loads, which is a giant deal.

And so for Jocko to just give you the normal face on that, it's actually the worst. It's like your dad telling you he's not angry. He's just disappointed. I mean, it's actually the worst because if you were like, dude, are you kidding me? You know, like I would be, look, it would be desirable when Jock was like, Roger and just looks back at you like Can't he just be angry? Doesn't it give you like a

Maybe it's on the other side of like your brain or something But doesn't it give you like a big sense of comfort like Okay. At least this is manageable. Like it's a big deal but at least it's manageable Because like if you're already kind of freaking out for whatever reason And you bring it to him who's like part of the reason You're kind of apprehensive about the whole thing to say the least

and he doesn't freak out. So it's like, it feels like in your mind, you're like, okay, maybe this whole chaotic situation that just emerged is kind of manageable more. Well, I mean, look, to me, there's definitely like, it's more difficult to handle a boss who's like, doesn't freak out about it, right? When you're like, because you don't want to let that boss down.

You want to let that boss down. You're like, hey, man, it's like, Roger, you know, And it's a, it's, it's harder. It's more, but I guess to your point, I go, it's, you're going to, I'm going to actually fix that problem. I want to make sure it doesn't happen again, whether if you do, if you flipped out about it and, you know, yelled and screamed to me, then that's my punishment. Whereas the punishment for me is knowing like, it's constructive because I know like I got

to get this fix. We can't let this happen again. This is a massive issue. Hey, okay, I know we're going to send out a message until the entire U.S. military and you know, Department of Defense. Send out a jackass message. Yeah.

And so you know what? I'm going to start writing the message right now. Let me do it. Let's get so. Yeah. You know, that's, that's probably not the best example I could have picked.

Because as I'm thinking about it, what you're saying is accurate. Like it's, it's more tormenting for me just to be like, all right, cool. Roger, you know,

as opposed to be like, I can't believe you did that. Because now you can be like, God, Jocco's such a jerk. And it's almost like, you know, we can have a,

little spat over it as opposed to me just late just saddling you with unbearable guilt for letting me down but it's that the reality is it gets the problem fixed it gives the problem fixed I mean with it's not unbearable guilt it's like okay we can't let that happen again this is a huge deal and we got to get we got to we got to I'm going to make sure this doesn't happen again which is going to be better for me got to be better for you got to be better for our team gotta be better for everybody rather than like oh okay I got yelled that you know and and that's the end of it you know yeah and even like when they flip out on you or something you're like yeah I messed up but like he didn't have to flip out on me like that you know so it kind of like

not justifies but it kind of less yeah it gives you it gives you a cause right yeah life freaking just lost his mind with me on that you know what I mean and you go back to the platoon you go dude jaco just totally freaked out you He's freaking out about this. That guy turns a mountain in a mohilo every time. Right? All of a sudden it's me against you. And then it turns into me against your platoon.

So it's just all bad. One thing I will say about normal face, and I could say this, because anybody that knows me knows that I'm probably the worst. One of them, yeah. The worst normal face guy ever. Like, it is a real struggle for me to, like, maintain normal face. It's funny because I mean you, yes, it is not a strength of yours. but you are better now because man back in the day it was just like I would be looking at you going

oh this is my face is getting red just turning red just clenching your teeth I'd be like oh check lame's getting spot up this ought to be good I'd be thinking like please please don't say anything until the boss leaves or whatever I'll handle it dude you don't have to say anything and yeah that would be good but what I was going to say is this is a great example of this when it goes freedom right And your kids, I mean, I've known them since they all are super little and watched them growing up. And you have helped them, you know, train them in that, like help. You're practicing that. And it's something that you've got to practice.

It's something you have to, you can get better with reps. Even if you're not naturally good at it like me, you can definitely get better with reps. And so I've improved. I've got to go still. But I think you've got to be thinking about it all the time. And that's, you know, we talked about on the podcast years ago when I was here, like, The chaos at home. I got young kids at home.

That's a great example to like accept that as like a, okay, I'm not going to spin up. This is a good chance to practice normal face right now when I'm upset. I'm frustrated. We're not getting out the door for the road trip or whatever it is that we all get. I get spun up about all the time. And it's a, if you accept that as like a training opportunity, then you're, when you actually need to use normal face, you will actually be much better at doing it. Bray, you mentioned like training and the kids and stuff. whole reason it's called normal face is because it's an actual game that this guy plays played

whatever with the kids with it it's like a what is the wrapping paper the wraping paper the wraping paper the the cardboard left over from the wrapping paper the tube i've witnessed the normal he's here you don't have to oh damn okay i did it to one we had a guy that showed up in ramada a new guy who's a great dude but he showed up and he's a happy guy yeah and he had and he would smile all the time, right? We're talking private pile, you know. And so I'd look at him and go, hey, you can't be walking around like smiling like that. You're a freaking team guy. You need to represent. We are to ask you to Brouser, not task unit freaking smiley. So I played normal face with that guy. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, okay. Yeah. And it was so funny because I mean, I was laughing so

hard because he could not even come close to not smiling. And the more I did it and the harder I hit him, the harder I was laughing. He was laughing. It was pretty funny. One normal face game I'm thinking about was your oldest daughter when she was probably seven maybe. And we were at your house and on the pull-up bar in the garage. Do you remember that? No. And you're like, get up there and show life how many pull-ups you can do. So she gets up, she cranks out some pull-ups, like awesome. And then, you know, maybe she wasn't even seven, because she was way off the ground. You know, you like lifted her up there to get there

on the full-sized polar bar. So she's like four feet off the ground. And you were like, and you're like, I will not catch you. As she's hanging on the bar like, I will not catch you. She's like, dad. Dad, you're like, meanwhile, your hands are like right there ready to catch her. Yeah, but she can't see them.

And I was just like, but you know what? She actually was like, you could see up initially she was like, Dad, Dad. And then she was like, She just went like normal face and then she dropped off you caught her. It was like yeah. Well, you also have to train your kids to deal with just unknown terror Fawley Breaking broken bones Oh, sorry kids

That's the way it goes she turned out all right Great, she's outstanding Yeah, I you know It's a learning process. You know you learn you learn about you know you know you learn about you know you You learn about controlling your emotions life. I've learned a lot about parenting. I feel like with the kids practicing or taking opportunities to practice normal face, 100% of the time is a good method. It's a good method.

And it is a great thing. Like, no joke, it is a great thing for a leader to be able to control your emotions because your emotions. We already talked about this. If I'm panicking, if Laif reports to me some news and I panic, he's going to panic. Like everyone's going to panic. It's going to be mayhem. Yeah. If he sees me go, all right, all right, got it.

You know, it's like, okay. You know, I've had like at the muster, you know, the muster's, there's, there's, there's timelines and there's, you've got to be at a certain place at a certain time, you know, and I've had Jamie come up to me, you know, the so-and-so, we don't have any of that stuff yet. It's like, okay. And you can see that she's kind of panicked about it. You know, we don't have the labels for the whatever to pass out stuff.

And I go, okay, we'll pass them out tomorrow. And she's like, Okay, you know, just like it's all good. But that's an awesome thing, man, and that's powerful. I mean, you and I were just talking about this today, right? With some, some, with echelon front stuff and, and, uh, and our strategic growth and things that I was really spinning up about and really stressing on. You're like, it's not that big of a deal, you know, and that is, that's something that

is, uh, that perspective. You know, when someone's immersed, when someone is immersed in the details of things and they're like, it's the weights bearing down on them. We're like, man, this isn't going to happen. It's really easy to get stressed out about that. So it's a powerful thing, man. Yeah, that also, you know, falls into some implied intent, right, of me and leaving you with the impression that something needs to be perfect because, well, you know me.

Like, hey, I like things to be squared away. And then all of a sudden you got something that's not squared away. And you start trying to fix this problem. And it's, you're investing more than it's worth into the problem. And it's because I am. giving you the wrong implied intent that, hey, you know what? If it's that much investment, I don't want you to make that much investment of time into something that's really not going to have a massive impact strategically.

So, like, I've got to do a better job of going, oh, you know, let me know if something's a struggle. Where have I done this before? Like, hey, if it's going to call, this would be really cool to have. It'd be really cool if we executed this. but if we can't, don't worry about it. You know, don't invest more than X amount of hours. Hey, go look at it for two hours. If we can't do it, you know, we won't do it.

No factor. It'd be cool if we can, but let's not lose sleep over it. Whereas, you know, it's like once again going back to Gettysburg, what I need to remember is if General Lee tells Stonewall Jackson to do something, he's going to freaking do it. And he doesn't care what price he has to do it. to pay to accomplish that mission. Well, if I mentioned to you like, hey, this would be cool to have and you're like, cool.

And now all of a sudden you're paying the ultimate price to make something happen. And you look up, you know, three weeks later and you've spent money and time. And it's like, you're like, I got it done. Or maybe we can't execute what your vision was. It's like, oh, okay, cool. Don't worry about it. It's like, that's not a good normal face. You know, it's a little bit too much.

So, yeah, it happens. The final thing I'll say about normal face is I love that my kids now have been influenced I'll be like we call it Jocko normal face So when you say You know we pretty much brand everything as Jocker around here So we're good with that I say execute Jocker normal face

And they're like they're like being smiling for a picture And they're like boom It's on cue it's awesome My one year old not so much yet But my four year old and six year old They get some That's legit That's legit

All right Back to the book Chart number four, evidence of morale. So we were on this whole thing talking about morale, and this is evidence of morale. In discussing the subject of morale with visitors, I often ask and am asked, what do you look for in a unit in order to gauge the morale? Since morale is influenced by so many factors, there are naturally many indications in the state of morale. The things I note quickly in sizing up a unit include, I'm going to burn through some of these, saluting, dress, good house, keeping pride pride I'll go into that one a little bit are the men eager to show their accomplishments

do they point to their unit's history with pride do they have something good to sell and try and sell it participating in charities athletic program and supportive teams an athletic program enthusiastically supported is always a favorable indication of morale church attendance soldiers deposits and other savings a man who saves his money each month is banking on his future It is usually a well-adjusted and confident soldier. When there are many such soldiers in a unit, there is a depth of stability in the organization, but commanders should not attempt to coerce the men to participate in this program. You know, just for all leaders, really, this is probably one of the things when I look back at my military career

that I did a pretty horrible job of. And that was that. I never said, all right, guys, here's what you should do with your mind. money here's some here's some moves to make you know here's some things that you should do here some things that you shouldn't do so just if you're a leader especially if you're a military leader look when you're a when you're a lot of kids that join the military myself included hey when I got to the teams and I was an E4 in the teams I was the richest person in the world and you know I got that paycheck every two weeks and I was ready to

rock and roll making it right oh it was great and And, you know, I really wish somebody along the way would have said, hey, man, that's cool. You know, you're going to make whatever, $5,000 this month. You know what? I know you like to get after it and go have a good time, and you should. And you should do that with $4,000, not with $4,99. So if you're in a position where you can help people plan their economic future, please do that. you know what?

It's funny that you're actually saying that because you of all the people I worked with in 13 years in the Navy like you're the only one that did that. And maybe not on like a on like a, you didn't like have a presentation to the entire task unit. You know, maybe you could have done something like that.

I absolutely should have. But you had a lot of direct interaction with a whole lot of people and helped direct them and you know our influence or are encouraging to do something, you know, go in the right direction. Yeah, I think to your point, I think guys that were close to me, I would be like, hey, bro, what you need to do is this? And so that's cool.

But, you know, I should have been doing it for everybody, and I didn't. And the reason is I didn't really care about that stuff, honestly. I didn't really think about it. I didn't really think about that. I just thought about, hey, we just want to be good frogman and a good task unit and good platoon. You know, like, that's it. That's what we're here for. So I should have been thinking a little bit deeper about that.

But if you're in that position, do it. Enlistment and re-enlistment records, AWOL, when such offenses are reasonably easy to commit and the number of offenses is low, it is indicative of high morale. Size is sick call, court martial rates, incidents and accidents, complaints about the inspector general. This is another classic thing, right?

So complaints to the inspector, Inspector General, oh, sorry, this is complaints to the Inspector General. Later in the book, Lafey talks about how you should be open and ready to being inspected. Like, if you, everyone hates inspections and doesn't want the commander to come down, and he says, you should be waiting for that. And it's very similar to our attitude in Ramadi, which, which I absolutely stole from the XO of the 1st, the 506th, or sorry, yeah, the XO of the 1st, the 5th, or the officer from the 1st the 506 who as soon as we got there there's an investigation happening and he and I was like yeah what do you get investigated for it he goes oh this that and

the other thing and or this thing and I said oh is that how's that gonna work out and he goes I love it when we get inspected he goes I want them to come and inspect and see what we're doing and see what it's like down here and see what it's like to live down here and let them understand what's going on in the front lines and I I absolutely adopted that policy And what's cool is what he says in this book is, you know, why are you afraid of being inspected? You shouldn't have nothing to hide. So if you're afraid of being inspected, that's a problem.

And let's fix the thing so that you can be open to being inspected. You know, we talked about that in extreme ownership, right, leading up the chain of command and how we invited our commander to come down and see what we're doing and invite our operations officer and their staff to be there. but that's it's a complete opposite though of what everybody else oh yeah everybody else's mindset was like get the boss man away we don't want them around here we want to be able to and what they wanted to be able to get away with was like really minuscule stuff right like uniforms around the camp like attendance at meetings little things that don't really matter and and yet what we gained by having them come out and visit us was a deep understanding of

our mission how we were mitigating risk what resources we needed I mean, it's a no-brainer, and yet nobody does that because they don't want the scrutiny of the big boss, man. The wrong attitude. Next section, outside influence on morale. The factors and indications of morale covered so far concerned things generally within the control of the commander, but there are influences on the morale of the soldiers, especially those on duty in a far off land, which stem from attitudes of officials, the press, radio commentators, and public at home.

The soldier should feel that he is needed and that his sacrifices are the of immediate and long range benefit to his country, his home, his family, and himself. He should feel that his unit is as important to him as his family, that he is just as important to the unit. He will feel that importance as long as the people at home feel it. He is sensitive to public opinion at home

and because of good radio newspaper and male facilities is constantly aware of attitudes at the home toward the importance of his job. That's an interesting perspective compared to. Totally. If we were reading newspapers and watching TV, you know, particularly in 2006, the Iraq War, it was just constant negative coverage.

Quagmire, we can't win. You know, this is terrible. We just had to tune that stuff out. Yeah, and it's even more pronounced now with social media. Did we, do we have social media? Was there social media for us in,

in Ramada? It was like MySpace. And actually I do remember Mark Lee used to always come back and get on Facebook. So it existed. Yeah, Facebook existed, but it was not,

I think, like MySpace was still like the dominant, 2006, Echo, where were we at, social media-wise? 2006. Life is correct, yes. Just kicking it with MySpace?

It's like between Myspace and Facebook. I thought MySpace was like a music, something. Yeah, You could put music on your deal. So MySpace was legit social media back then. Yes. And before that too.

And before that. Yeah. It's 2007, you said? 2006. What year did Facebook come to prominence? Oh, I don't know the exact year, but that's when, you know, when it was rolling. It was for sure. But my space was still going on as well.

But there was a lot less people on all these things. You know what I mean? I mean, now it's the, now it has replaced, I mean, pre-Iphone. Yeah. So you couldn't access it with your phone. You could only access it through the, you know, your computer. Yeah, that was like barely like right when pictures to the internet started going. Like not all phones, head cameras, stuff like that.

So bottom line, we got to pay attention to the influence on morale from outside our organization. Pay attention to it. This next section is called junior officers conferences. And it says there are always many newly commissioned officers, fine officers in the Army. They have come from many sources. Some of these young officers have demonstrated outstanding ability in combat. Others have not had this experience. Few of them have had the time or opportunity to become fully indoctrinated with the duties and responsibilities required of an officer.

The standards and responsibilities of an officer are in many respects more exacting and more difficult to discharge in peacetime than in combat. Consequently officers conferences should be conducted for all junior officers to review the duties and responsibilities of all so what I what am I saying? What are you saying is that look you should meet with your your subordinate leadership and educate them and teach them and I often ask this question to clients I say has anyone here had a person that invested in them personally and you know most of the time especially when I'm talking to leaders, most of the time people will raise their hand and say, you know, oh yeah, you know, I've had this person that took me under their wing or and I, then I say, well, how does that, how did that make you feel? And obviously everyone says, oh yeah, that makes you feel great. It makes you feel like you can do well and it's a person

that's encouraging you. And then I say, how many people are you doing that for right now? And like there's less hands, right? And so we take this investment of the people that raised you Like the people that raised me and the teams, right? What if I take that investment? I just hold on to it and don't give it to anybody else. That's horrible. And it's not continuing to grow the capabilities of the community. There's something deeper there that I, when he said roles and responsibilities.

So you're reviewing roles and responsibilities with them. And I think that's something that, you know, the jaco brief that you would give in like the junior officer training course when I was running training for two years. I ran training for all seal officers or graduating from our. our basic training pipeline. And you came in. We'd have you come in and give the Jocko brief. And it was the same thing that you briefed to the task units and platoons going through the workup. And I think one of the most important parts of that was the rules and responsibilities.

So it's great to mentor. I mean, you're right. People don't invest in their people. I agree with that 100%. But I think a lot of people don't know how to mentor people. And what he's saying there, I think, which is if you've got to make their roles and responsibilities clear. And you broke down.

I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was, uh, shooter, you know, your job is to make things happen, you know, get defaults aggressed. You have, you have it listed out all the way, fire team leader, you know, take your four guys, lead your fire team, support your squad leader, you had the squad leader, then you had the battoon commanders, you had the assault chief, you had the, you know, assault force commander, the ground force commander, et cetera. And that was a really powerful document, so much so that I've had several, several very successful seals, including good friends of yours.

who have reached out to me and said, hey, can we get a copy of that? Yeah. Yeah. Because it really, without breaking that down enables you to execute with confidence. If you know what your roles and responsibilities are, then you can actually step up and execute with confidence. And I think that's a really, people don't define that. You define it a way where it was easy to understand and enable people to execute.

And I think that's a great, that's a key thing to mentor people on. One of the key parts of that when I would get done talking about what the roles and responsibility if everyone was, I would say, okay, now that you know your roles and responsibility, you also have to understand the person below you and the person above you of the chain of command. You have to understand what their roles and responsibilities are. And if you have to, you have to either ascend or descend into the situation where you can solve a problem and do their job. As soon as you get a problem solved, you can't get stuck there.

You have to elevate yourself up to the next position. The last thing that I would start saying to guys once they were done with JOTC, and now I'm talking to platoons, is I would say, listen. And I would usually say this just to like the headshed. I would say, listen, here's the roles and responsibilities. I don't actually care who does these things, but you better figure it out. Because sometimes you might have a platoon chief that hadn't been in the teams for a few years, he had some platoon commander that had just gotten back off deployment, or you'd have,

whatever the case may be, maybe the LPO just got done teaching assaults out at, you know, at Traydet, and now he's in the platoon, or just got back from Land Warfare. So he's going to really know how to do that job. So I'd say, listen, it doesn't really matter which one you have. Now, I'll tell you, basically, and this is what I always say, basically, enlisted guys, you're the tactical experts, you handle the problem that you got at hand. Officers, you need to figure out what the next move is going to be. And that was the general thing.

But then I'd say, listen, if this officer, like, doesn't have any experience whatsoever, and maybe the LPO is kind of badass and the chief is, I'd say, listen, listen, officer, you need to look to your chief and he needs to elevate a little bit and figure out what's going to do next. So, and that, well, the reason that happened was because as I put more and more platoons through training, I saw that some platoons, they just didn't, they had a mismatch. They had some prior enlisted officer that was freaking just a badass and knew everything, or they had a chief that was, you know, been out of the loop for a while. And so, okay, but the LPL, like I said, so eventually I would say, listen, I don't really care

how you guys break these up, but you have to know who's responsible for what. And one man cannot do all these jobs. It's not possible for one man to do all these jobs. I've seen some badass seals with tons of experience come through here. And they might be able to pull it off or an op or two ops and then something's going to happen. And all of a sudden, it's going to be overwhelmed and other people have to be able to back them up. Not to mention, if somebody's doing all these jobs, I'm going to kill them. And you better figure it out.

I remember the don't get stuck there in all caps. Don't get stuck there. The slide. Okay. So the reason I wanted to cover this section is because it says this. So we're talking about these junior officer conferences. These conferences should be conducted by commanders themselves and on an informal basis. Lieutenants in separate companies and detachments may be invited to join groups from units commanded by a field grade officer.

Groups should not be too large. Preaching should be avoided. I read this whole section just so I could say that. Preaching should be avoided. These conferences can well be the means of improving the unit team under the coaching of its captain, the unit commander. These conferences may consist of one-hour meetings. He goes into some detail about how to do it. But the fact that he's saying, look, you're not bringing people in there to preach on how to do things. You're bringing in there to educate to have discussions. And he's got the whole topic of discussions here, military, courtesy's personal standards, military discipline, promotions, unit history, espriticor, accomplishments, missions, troop information, morale, self-education of our officers,

Professional publications Responsibility for fun he's got everything security classification use and misuse of military vehicles So basically it's like tell the guys what's going on That's what he's saying you have to tell people what's going on and Then he's got this Commander's checklist for success and this we've already been going for a while so this will probably be the last thing we cover Every commander at every echelon should maintain a continuing checklist to be left for or given to his successor to command.

This checklist should contain items of value that will assist the new commander in becoming familiar with his command more rapidly than if he had had to uncover the same items over a period of time. Such items must consist of. One, significant strengths and weaknesses of key officers and non-commissioned officers in the command. Boom. Isn't it weird that we must.

might be in charge of people and know that we would have to turn this over and not keep track of like who's what strength and weaknesses are. Next, important policy matters announced by senior commanders and not contained in SOP or directives. So you're tracking this stuff. A good turnover is such an important thing to do. And what I think is important about a turnover, it's great to have it to turn over to the next unit, but what it does is it forces you to actually think through how you are operating.

And when you force yourself to think through how you're operating, you define it, you refine it, you codify it, and now it becomes stronger. Just like when you write down these principles, just like when you formulate a standard operating procedure and you, just like when you teach a jihitsu move or you write out how you do. Any time that you study what you're doing, you will get better at it. And that's what this commander's checklist for successors, I said successor. It's for successors. It's for someone that's going to take your place. That, you know what? Part of that, too, I think is, yeah, that self-analysis you're talking about is like, hey, what did we screw up? What do we learn from

it? I remember giving a turnover one time on a follow-on deployment. And when the new unit came in, the new seal unit taken over for us. And one of the, and one of the, you know, one of the senior leaders was like, this is a great turnover. You know, you guys were given here. Really, this is one of the best tours I've ever seen.

I'm like, why, like, why did you say that? I didn't kind of caught me off guard. I was like, why do you say that? He's like, because you're telling us all the stuff

that you screwed up. And it was, it's really, you know, when you have a unit turning over thinking like, people are coming in and like, get these idiots out of here. We're going to take,

take over, even though we've been there for six months learning. And I was like, man, how are you going to learn from us to continue the mission? to be more effective if we don't tell you what we screwed up.

But clearly he wasn't used to that. And most people weren't doing that. And I think that thinking deeply about it. And if you care about the mission, then you want the people to be successful. I mean, we try to set up the next deal team. For sure. You know, Steve Ward and his guy certainly. Yeah.

Speaking of Steve Ward, he can be coming on the podcast sometime real soon. Names and personalities of individuals outside the command with whom it is necessary to associate new business, areas of training weaknesses within the command. So reporting the weaknesses like you just talked about, disciplinary matters, security manners, critical equipment shortages. So that's that section. And here's the last thing we'll cover. Vigilance.

And by the way, we're, we are on page 13 right now. So, yeah, we are on page 13 of this book. There's 117 pages. We're on page 13. A unit operational readiness status must be ready for immediate employment at all times. Regardless of how well a unit has been trained, the commander cannot allow it to become lax and let down its guard. World War II and the Korean conflict were started by surprise attacks on Sunday mornings. These surprises remind us that we must be ready for anything seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

day we cannot relax our vigilance in any way that would contribute to disaster so there you go like I said that is the first 13 pages I'm only I'm only two-thirds of the way through my second just getting warmed up just getting warmed up look I'll get to the rest of this I'm sure I'll I'll cover this thing but it's just incredible to see how these principles remain the same over time and it's so intriguing to uncover the roots of Hackworth and about face and thereby the roots of me and of you and of extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership and leadership strategy and tactics there's a thread you can trace through

all these books you got to know your roots and the better the better you understand And yes, history, but the better you understand the origin of ideas and principles, then the better you understand those ideas and principles themselves. And the better leader and person you will become. Crazy. What do you think, Leif? I think that's outstanding. I think that's incredibly eye-opening. and it's because I've read about face in detail

and, you know, I was flipping through my copy this week as I was kind of organizing some stuff in my home office and looking at just the, you know, the tabbed and underlying pages. And I actually had to, I put packing tape along the binder because it's been so just, it's been so from overuse. It's just been torn up and I had to reinforce it. It's awesome to, to understand.

understand where Colonel Hackworth got some of these ideas. And look, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure also, you know, that these were learned from mentors, you know, and from generations as well. But incredible stuff, definitely. Making us better. Yes, sir. Echo Charles. Yes.

Speaking of getting better. Mm-hmm. You have any maybe, I don't know, suggestions? Sure. Have a few now that you mention it. Actually, I think that's interesting, that book that you finally located. It was like a little treasure hunt. You know, the kind of guys who like, they look for treasure that might not even exist, you know, that kind of guy?

That was you. So you're like, oh, it doesn't exist. See what I'm saying? You only got hints of it through Hackworth. I have, I have access to all kinds of, like, I pay, you know, these various websites that offer all these ancient PDFs. I mean, I got the most dumbest subscriptions and I been scouring these things for

years. Yeah. Nothing. Notta. And how crazy is it that the month that this version of About Face comes out, I freaking find this thing. There's one copy of it on Amazon and I have it. It was meant to be. I have it.

It's legit. Jock got his track. I have the ARC which is the advanced reader's copy. So in advanced readers, no, I don't have it of that book, but in advanced readers copy, when a book is going to come out, they release, they'll print like, they'll print, how many ARCs do you think they print in current days? I have no idea. 100,000?

100,000? No, no, no, advanced reader copies. What are they called? Galley's. Oh, I got you. I'm sorry. Yeah. How many do you think they print?

Like, for instance, for extreme ownership, I think I got six and you got. six like that and then they printed the sum to send to whoever but we're talking absolutely a few dozen yeah absolutely less than 50 right less than 50 so we're at the muster and a guy named Tobin came up and he goes I have something for you and he gives me like a brown paper bag and this is just weird because it's hard to even understand this if you don't understand what an ARC is and understand how rare they are that you know look you get like I love first a dishes like I love first a dish of about face but there's got to be a hundred thousand of those things floating around right you know you might like the first

edition of extreme ownership you know we always joke about it but there's hundreds of thousands of copies of the first edition of extreme ownership there's only probably less than 50 ARCs of extreme ownership and same with the rest of all of our books well So I'm at the muster and this guy comes up to me and he goes, yeah, I wanted to give you something. And I go, oh, awesome, appreciate it. And people give us a lot of cool stuff all the time, you know. And he hands me this paper bag and I open it up and there's a plastic, but there's a book

in plastic, just a plastic bag. I pull it out and I look at it and it's a version of about face that I've never seen before. And it's thinner than normal. And I go, what is this? And I pull it out of the plastic and sure enough, it's an unedited, advanced. to readers copy of About Face signed by David Hackworth. This thing is priceless to me, right?

So he's out there. I actually owe him copies of About Face, of this new version. But guess what else I'm sending him? Lade on me. A-R-C's of extreme ownership. Because they gave us about six each. I have all of mine. I have mine as well.

You want to know why? Why do you have yours? Why did you keep yours? I think some of them I intended to send to people and they didn't get sent. And some of them I just thought it would be kind of cool to hang on to. I only kept, first of all, I didn't know that it was a big deal. I didn't know that this whole thing. You know, we didn't know what the hell we were doing when it came to writing.

So we didn't know what the hell we were doing. So they send us these things. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. Well, I didn't, they're like, you could send them to, you know, the influencers that you know. Yeah. Oh, I'm like, and so what I'm thinking is there's misspellings in this. There's some things that we edited out. I said, I don't want anyone to see this.

And I just put them right in my, I put them in, you know, in like a drawer somewhere. And then, I don't know, a few years later, I started as I actually, as we started doing the podcast and I started getting more into getting, various books and I always liked the first a dish thing but then I realized at some point that there was something better than the first a dish and that was the reader's ARC I got I got something better than the readers ARC and that is the the word document manuscript oh yeah which we got we've got the edit all the edits like just the crazy edits that we went through you well that was crazy too because we were you in New York yeah you were in New York when we wrote extreme ownership And we had to edit that thing.

And I remember spending four hours on the phone going through final edits. We'd be like, all right, page 64. Hey, you said this. What do you think? And you'd be like, oh, yeah, we need a chance. So we would just sit there and manually go through for hours on the phone, these stupid edits, you know. And what's interesting is, and we were talking about this the other day, there was one of the last edits that we did, we kind of got out the freaking, the clenched fist of editing and just started. cutting stuff, you know, we started getting rid of stuff.

That was pretty, that was pretty cool. You know, it'll be interesting to see, you know, I think particularly if you think about decades from now what that might be like, a friend of mine showed me, you know, obviously that stuff becomes quite valuable to collectors and the people that know, you know, it's meaningful to people that it has, that understand the value of what it is and how rare it is. And a friend of mine, it showed me a copy of, it was a biography of Stonewall Jackson. and he was like he handed it to me

I was old and kind of brittle I felt like it was going to fall apart opened up and it's this G Patton dang it was it was Patton's personal copy totally annotated like noted like all the notes

and the margins you know something that general Patton went through and noted it was pretty pretty awesome that is awesome I have all the books that I've covered in the podcast

with all the tabs and notes and red lines and highlights and everything and it's freaking cool to sit there and go back because I'll go back and look at a book that I already covered on the podcast I'm like I didn't even come close to getting

like everything out of this that I need to get out of this you know with the old breed especially the early podcast where we would not they weren't as long and now I look at it I go man I'd go we could dig right back into that thing right back

into that thing you did speaking about you did Boers I knew it as well which I gave you that copy You gave me that copy. Yeah. It's signed by Leif Babin. Not by General Patton. I have a copy of war as I knew it.

And it is signed by Laf Babin. And I am damn proud of that. Disappant. Yeah, when you posted the copy that I originally gave you of about face the other day. And, you know, it had my, because you made me sign it. You were like, hey, bro, you need to sign this. And I was kind of like, whatever. Whatever.

What are you talking about? I was like, bro, you give somebody a book. You need to sign the book and I've put a date in it, you know? Yeah. I'd never give presents to anyone. And so, or gifts of any kind. And I'd never given anything to anybody. Really.

Have I ever given you anything, Echo? Books. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I've given you some books. I just gave you the, I just gave you about face. Yeah. All right. So anyways, but when you asked me, I was kind of,

I don't come from the background of giving. Things in the in the in the on this the scale of gift givers like jaco is You know ten is greatest one is the least Jaco is like point zero two Jamie Cover and move Cochran Sent like my sent my oldest daughter flowers for her birthday Whatever a year ago or something like that from me

And my daughter did not even remotely believe it for one second. Yeah, she's like who did you get to send me flowers and I was like Oh, Jamie. I can't lie. Can't lie to my daughter. So there you go. Pretty cool. So I did sign your book. And then we just re-enacted

the signing of the book. And I put the same thing. So there you go. All right. Echo Charles. Speaking of getting better. Yes. You said, oh, then you started asking us.

Of course, do you have any more questions? No. For the crew here? No, no. That was more of my. That was my takeaway. That's how I was regarding this book the whole time. That's your little treasure that you found finally after your journey, you know.

I wonder what's going to happen now. Like, once this comes out, is stackpole books going to reissue it? Or is Jocko publishing? Somebody's going to dig their, like, grandfather's copy out, and there's going to be nine of them on the internet. I'll buy them. $750, yeah. I'll buy them. Do you know how much an old hardcover copy of AboutFaces?

Like, they were on Amazon the other day. Now you can buy it. They're over $200. Yeah. $200. $200. I have 20 copies. All right.

There we go. Yeah. Okay. All right. Getting better. Right. We're on the path. Okay.

We're getting better. Even if we're good, by the way. Like, you know, what do you call? We're maintaining vigilance? Yes, big time for sure. But anyway, on our road of improvement for improvement is what we're doing. Okay. We're working out every day.

All right. Life. Not the problem. put you too much on the on the spot but you work out every day i try to okay so that was my answer to which you know that that's a non-answer by the way because there's varying levels of try not to say that that's um you know yeah listen the goal is work out every day um sometimes i achieve that on a you know on a weekly basis cool i knocked it out other times you know life gets in the way but uh every uh every the days that i miss workouts it's

it's deeply regretful. And when you don't do that, it's a problem. Yeah. And actually you've got to kind of be honest where if that's the goal, like for real goal, you know, to work out every day, that is a good thing as opposed to, you know, like, hey, I'm going to try to work out this week, you know, there's a difference is what I'm saying. So, hey, man. Well, there's a big difference between I'm going to work out every day and I'm going to

work out every day. Yes, sir. Yeah. And then. If you want to talk about just keeping it real over here. Yeah. And as far as better and worse goes for sure, for sure. Anyway, so when we work out every single day.

Oh, is this a conversation we're going to have with Laif and not Jocko? Is that what's happening? Because that's what I'm feeling. I think it's wildly unnecessary to have it with you at this time. I'd rather tell you how your joints will jam you up if you let them. I'm not going to talk too much about this right now. I don't even think we should. I don't think we should.

Anyway, I don't think we should even think about it that much at all. Joint should be a thing you don't think about. You see what I'm saying? Good point. I see where you're going with this, and I like it. Yeah. What should we be thinking about? Gains, obvious.

Yes. Yes. So let the joints just be joints. You see what I'm saying? Anyway, so if the joints are monopolizing your attention, here's what you do. Boom, Jock Fuel Joint Warfare. These are for your joints. For sure.

For sure. I take both every day for sure. Every day, right? You know what? Actually, I had an eye surgery recently, and so I had to stop taking it for a little bit. And, like, I know it. What's crazy about those is when you stop taking them, Like, why did they stop taking?

Why did you, why did they stop taking them? They didn't actually tell me to, but like I just, you know, I just, uh, I just didn't take them for like three or four days, you know? Oh, because you were like laid up and whatever? Not really laid up, but just like I got out of it. You were off your routine. I was off my routine. Yeah.

And, uh, and it was, it was like I, I feel it. I definitely feel it. And, uh, and there's, it's, uh, it ain't just the, it's real. It really is, man. You feel the joints. Uh, and, uh, it's, uh, it's real. And I think both Carillo and Joint Warfare are awesome. Yeah, man, it just keeps you kind of boom, on the path in that way.

So boom, yeah, don't worry about joints anymore. You don't have to, is what I'm saying. Anyway, another thing you don't want to be worrying about is getting sick. Because that's one of those things, let's face it. We're not every day, like, fighting to boost our immune system or something like this. Maybe we are. Maybe not conscious. I know I am.

Not consciously. Okay, so when you wake up. I can see this is going to be rough. Oh, yeah. Well, you brought it up. You brought it up, you brought it up, Jocko. So at 4 a.m. whenever you wake up, are you like, okay, let me get this immune boosting scenario cracking right now?

It's part of my routine. It's consciously part of your routine. Consciously part of my routine. I have my supplements lined up when I go into brush my teeth in the morning. It doesn't count. I do what I'm supposed to do. Totally doesn't count. When I go into brush my teeth at night, I do what I'm supposed to do.

That includes both brushing my teeth, taking my supplementation, and flossing, which I never flossed until I joined the Navy. They told me to floss. I started flossing. Cool. Do you take supplements pre-workout? Yes. Yeah, me too. What are you taking?

I take three super krill, three joint warfare, and vitamin D. Oh, like for the pre-workout, you mean? Like for the workout? No, but it's different. Not for the workout. No, but prior to. Yes. I do.

Is that what you're asking? Yeah. Like, is that when you take them rather than do you take something before the workout? for the workout. That's two different questions. I'll slam some discipline go. I'll use it before the workout. But I definitely, yeah, usually the, no, it's good.

I just, I just was curious. Yeah, I do. I take it every morning. It's part of my routine. And then at night. And we had this whole, I don't know, do not want to talk about this right now, but Echo did not have a routine and therefore he would miss.

Just like you just said, Leif, you got out of your routine and you miss. Like that's a real thing. Set up a routine. Follow it. Yeah, and then vary it sometimes to make sure their terrorists aren't tracking you. All good. Side note, yeah, good idea, yeah.

And when you fall out of the routine, workout or taking the, you know, the supplements, supplementation, as we like to say, that can sort of become the routine. You see what I'm saying? Or part of it. It is. Not even thinking about it. All right. Well, anyway, back to the immune system thing.

So technically, you're just like, hey, I'm going to go ahead and take this stuff. So I don't have to worry about my immune system kind of thing. You're not consciously, look, I'm not splitting hairs here, but it's significant. It's significant. It's what I think. Anyway, immune system, my ultimate point with that is you don't have to worry about that either. No. Vitamin D three.

And cold war. And cold war. Boom, the combo. Now you're really not worrying about it. Anyway, also, after you're done, not worrying about these things you don't have to worry about. Now let's start with the conscious stuff. Okay, we got discipline, right? Good, really good.

Helps you think. I would say think, but here's what I noticed about this, about discipline. Where it's one of those ones where, you know how like when you go somewhere, like you always want to have a little drink going, whether it be water or whatever. I think this is the best thing for that. I agree. Maybe not before we go to bed or whatever, but technically that's it. Yeah.

Anyway, yeah, I saw you pound that. I watched you. I've brushed two of these. Dude, this is my new... You were notably smarter this entire podcast. I noticed it. Are you saying the bar

wasn't very high? I got to say, I am not a sour apple guy. If I was a kid eating jolly ranchers, I would leave the sour apples there, unlike JP to know.

Sour apple sniper is legit. Yeah. It's awesome. My family actually is all over the map. I mean, don't get me wrong. Dax Savage. Oh, is Dax Savage your go-to? Dax Savage has been my go-to for a while.

But Sour Apple Sniper is awesome. And I got to give JP credit for that. That's legit. It's awesome. Yeah, I'm kind of with your family on that one, where here's what I found, and this might be the case for all this. It's the only reason I'm mentioning it.

So remember, yeah, when it first came out, I was like, man, this is the best one. A little bit better than Jocco Palmer. What? Straight up. Yep. So that's what I thought. I hear a lot of that.

You know what's funny is people like say it to me. Like you're all in either one or two ways. One is like, you know, I kind of like this. How about Apple Sniper? Like they're kind of ashamed to tell me. And then the other one's like, Soutre War Ipsniper's way better. Yeah, yeah.

That's what you get. Yeah. Yeah. So. But I did find out there's like a deeper game within the game. It was, it was probably better. It was probably better because it was new, straight up. Oh.

Because I kept pounding on them. Plus it's sweet. Yeah. And I'll tell you something else. Just to people might be thinking about this. I want to drink this stuff all day long. I want to drink Jocco Palmer. I want to drink it all day long.

But it does have caffeine in it, 95 milligrams of caffeine. So I don't want to drink seven discipline goes. So we are making a Discipline go type drink that doesn't have any caffeine. And it's going to be a ginger ale flavor, a ginger flavor. and I've already approved the taste of it. And it's really good. And what's cool about it is it's on the sweet side. I have to admit,

the sour apple sniper kind of started making me. Like that. Yeah, started leaning me a little bit more sweetness. So the ginger is, it's nice sweet. But here's what makes me think about it. Is that night, you know, you get done with eating your tomahawk steak. Sure.

And you have a little sweet tooth. But you're too. full for a mulk. Because let's face it, we could go just straight to milk, get your dessert on, but you're a little bit full. The Tomahawk was bigger than normal. But you want to have a little sweetness. Crack it open.

Boom, there you go. Decaf. Yeah, decaf. So we're working it. Okay. Good. Well, there it is. There's also discipline powder. By the way, Leifie mentioned pre-workout, that's my go-to pre-workout too, the discipline powder with water most of the time. We actually were talking about this. The discipline powder is awesome.

What flavor do you like? Like lemon lime. Dang. Is it legit. Because jaco Palmer powder is freaking legit. The other day it was super hot here in SoCal. It is good. And I made, I mixed up a pitcher like you do in, like they do in the, like they do in Texas, bro.

A big glass pitcher. I filled it up with ice, put the jaco Palmer in there. And it was a huge amount. And I just drank that thing all day. It was freaking awesome. So get your jocco palmer on. Oh, yeah. Agree by my recommendation.

Also, you know what's cool about that? I think with the powders, you can you can dilute a little bit, you know, so you can you can you can have the entire picture. You know, I have a problem. Oh, good. Like many Americans, the problem that many Americans, myself included have is simply stated more is better. So, so I like mix these things. What's these things called? Deco these glass things travel mugs?

No. Wait, would have been the glass? Tumblr? A tumbler. So I get these tumblers. And you know, let's face it, you only need two scoops of discipline into one of these tumblers. Well, in your case, two of these tumblers. But I will no doubt put, I will no doubt put four scoops in there.

More is better. And it doesn't need it. But, you know, you just think, might as well just get that extra little later. I know it's going to be a good time with the muster when we've got a tumbler up there on the stage mixed up. And you get, you're drinking at the bottom of it. You're just getting all powder. Pure. Let's get some.

We're about to fire this. thing up. You're get some. That's, you know, okay, let's just talk about that for one second. Okay, the early musters where we were disorganized on the back end, we had a lot of stuff to learn, and so we

would sleep not at all. I remember the New York muster we slept a one hour, one night. If that. And the next night, we got like an hour and 45 minutes. And everyone says, you're cognitive if you sleep less than five hours, it's like you're drunk. Have you ever heard that?

If you sleep less than five hours, It's like you're drunk, you're a hazard to humanity. Meanwhile, you and I are up on stage for seven straight hours that day, answering questions, you know, people are coming at us with all kinds of leadership problems. And I didn't hear you up there going, I'll tell you what, you son of a bitch. How do they come up with that? Who's the scientist that says like, well, you're drunk if you slap less than it. And look, I'm not trying to get crazy here.

And you know, for everyone that freaks out about this, and discipline equals freedom field manual, I explain sleep is necessary. I get it. It's good for you. It's healthy. I tell everyone, get as much sleep as you can. I'm totally down for the cause.

Sleep, it's great. But to go and say, hey, if you don't get eight hours, you're a drunk, you're an equivalent of being drunk and on acid. Think about in Ramadi, man. We're launching on cop Falcon. You know, we're going into South Central Ramadi.

Neither you or I had slept at all. Yeah. We've been up for 24 hours at that point, and we're launching an operation where we're going to be out on the battlefield for 48 hours. So it's like, what do you do? Like you, you just power through. You just BTF. You just BTF. I mean, you know, when we got into position and I got security set, like I tried to take her down for an hour, you know, just to try to get a get some shut eye while I could while it was dark.

Before the sun came up, we knew we were going to get it on as we got attacked. But life requires that you're going to have some sleepless nights and you got to be able to get it. some and and you can get some more if you have some little bit of discipline on a little bit of discipline go. Had we had some discipline go on the cop falcon. I think Ramadi would have been that much better. I think Ramadi would have been secured a lot quicker. I think the drunk reference comparison was like when you're driving.

Yeah. Okay. So now if they take, oh, the number of actions that happened from people that are drunk to the number of people that fall asleep at the wheel. Okay, cool. Got it. In a way. Yeah, I got it. In a way being like, like.

Overly tired driving could then again, I don't know could be worse Because people fall asleep with the wheel because yeah, and you can't control it You get to a point where you can control it with like being drunk because this you know let's face it Sometimes when people are drunk behind the wheel they get like more daring and aggressive So they'll you know it's less that like oh they're drunk and they drift and trash You're saying it's their attitude more than their motor skills They're speeding there yeah this and then sure a lot of times you can't react as fast Just talking about lack of sleep.

So it's kind of like leaving Nylon at like 2 o'clock in the morning. The Red Bull run. Yep. And had we had some discipline go back then, we'd be that much better. We would have been no sugar. We'd have been good to go. So, hey, you know, again, not to split hairs, but, you know, these things sometimes, you know, you add a little nuance, little explanation.

They start to make more sense. It's what I think. It's what I believe. What else we got? Jock white tea, warrior kid, mulk, mulk. What else? Anything else? A bunch of cool stuff.

And by the way, you can get them at origin, main.com. You can also get them at the vitamin shop. And you can get them at a little place called Wawa in Florida and the Virginia area. And by the way, if you're in those areas, go get some. Yeah. Go into a Wawa, clean it out. Yeah, it's a different situation. Like I mentioned before, is it?

Because, look, online, even if you got to go. I mean, vitamin shop's not as convenient storage. Like they're not everywhere or whatever But it's a different situation You got to go on there You got to make it a point to stock up and all this stuff Brad now you can just grab one on the go It's way different

Here's what the folks at Wawa are wondering Who wants this stuff? Should they put it in every store in America That's what they're wondering Or every store that they have If you want to You can support the cause Just clean them out

Let them know We want We want It is in demand It is in demand I suppose that goes. All right. Also, yes.

Okay, you mentioned origin main.com. That's where you get, can get Jocko fuel, which is all of this stuff. Also at origin main.com is jiu-jitsu stuff, geese, rash guards, some shirts on there. And also, of course, jeans and boots, American made. Delta denim is back in the game, by the way. If you were waiting on Delta jeans, they're back and we got more denim. So we're good. Very good.

Also. I got my Lincoln boots getting broken in right now. Nice. They're legit. Nice. What do you mean Lincoln boots? That's the one with the toe cap. Oh, that's the model.

Did you request the toe cap? Or did you just get it from Pete? He just sent you what he wants. Yeah, you got to watch out, dude. Pete is sneaky. Pete tries to tries to impose his will on you. Like, I was like, no, I don't want the toe cap.

I was like, eh, no, don't give me the Lincoln's. Just give me the regular ones. And he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what shows up at my house? The regular ones and a pair of Lincoln's. And I'm like, bro. He does these little sneaky things And he thinks he's getting one over on you

That's the thing Pete we're tracking bro We are tracking he likes to do that I like the tow cap, it's good Oh, oh here's another thing he did to me I said hey bro I wear white geese I wear white geese

So you know this was pretty early Into the whole merger and he's like He's like oh yeah yeah definitely What does he send me And I said you know what in a stretch maybe a black guy why is that by the way tradition it's the tradition it's the tradition the first gee he sends me no shit it's blue the only color I said hey look

don't send me a blue guy I wear a white guy maybe I get it black you know what the you know what the most popular color to get ghi is in the like just at origin oh it which means yes in the world black yeah it's black yeah which which to me white was the tradition That's what we do. We keep it true dish. But let's face it. What's the facts? The facts is everybody wants to be a ninja.

That's what it is. They're having a little. Yeah, it makes sense. For me, I want to be Charles Bronson in the movie, The Mechanic. They're wearing white geese. And that's what I always refer back to in my mind. Some of my training partners and instructors, I've sent them as a gift, origin riff ghee and the we are I think we're six for six for black yeah the black riffs yeah

did you request white uh no no I said tell me what you want oh okay oh yeah yeah there you send me a black one yeah well that's that means a lot coming from Todd white right because he's an artist he understands the color palette yeah you know what I'm saying he's down there thinking what will look good the I got to say though on the for the riffs we've got we've also got six out of six, like, outstanding reviews as well. The Rift is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of junk, not the Ghee, but the situation, because, you know, a lot of us,

we have more than just the one Ghee, you know? So you do the Rift, now all those other geese sort of seem obsolete a little bit, you know, like you don't want to put that dumb thing back on, the old ones, you know? Yeah, it's, uh, that's just how. It's like the new iPhone. When you get the new iPhone, you're kind of like, well, this is old. Well, it happened with the iPhone. Not the six the 11

No seriously The iPhone 6 you're like oh you know it's okay and the battery would run out the pictures sucked and all this stuff I was with I was with Joe Rogan like last year and we were we were taking pictures of the sunset While we were hunting His picture looked freaking he had an iPhone 11 it looked brilliant filled with colors it looked like a freaking national Geographic picture because we were taking a picture the sunset so you could see like like the mountains and then there was the horizon and then there was the sky, all beautiful colors.

My picture just looked like black on the bottom and white on top. And I just said, I'm an idiot. They call that dynamic range. Yeah. So what you're saying is you don't realize that you don't realize how good something can be until you actually try out the new one.

And I think it liked tasking a bruiser. I was like, I thought we were pretty good in my first task in it until we were in bruiser. And like, actually we weren't that good. Tasking and Bruiser's better. And the rift is definitely like the, Yeah, like, okay, I'm not really anything else. It's kind of, it's kind of a game changer.

But Pete, I don't think he's sneaky. I think, well, he's sneaky. No, I think he's like smart. He's in that way because, look, I was with you with the geithing. Big difference. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I agree with this difference. So the, the ghee, right?

So I wasn't down for the other color geese either. All I had was white for a reason. Bro. Like I'm like, because you're one of my black belts. One of the people. Yeah, I, yeah, it was true. But here's what Pete was thinking is my hypothesis. He was like, look, I get it.

They like the white guy. That's the tradition. You can't argue with that. But they just haven't felt the power, the pleasure of the black key. They just, if I can get them to somehow feel what I'm feeling about this. Okay. So he'll give you a free one. You'll be like, I can't wear this thing.

And you put it on. You're like, maybe I can't wear this thing. Maybe I am a ninja after all. Right. Pete is successful. Boom, did that with the boots for you. Pete gets some level of credit for his sneakiness. But just so you know Pete Roberts, listening to this, I'm seeing your

moves, bro. I'm seeing your moves. You're not getting anything by me. I get it. Keep it up, Pete. Keep it up, yes. 100%. Also, what do we have? Okay, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko store. We got some new stuff on there. By the way, hoodies are back in. By the way. That was a big...

Hey, look at this. For winter time. Yes, sir. Yes. You know the last season? You know when we got sweatshirts? May. Oh, yeah. We're trying to, you know, tighten things up a little You know what I'm pretty stoked about at the jaco store is the board shorts. Yes, sir.

Yeah, those kind of are coming for fall, winter, too, which is kind of off beat. But hey, man, hey, look, we're happy. It's a process. Look, look, I've been asking for him for three and a half years, so I'm glad we're, I'm glad they're there. There we go. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, they're pretty good. They run a little bit loose, though, the board's shorts, a little bit loose.

That's run. That's good. That's good for me. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, you got to squeeze the tree trunk leg. into, you can't be doing the skinny jeans, skinny board shorts.

It doesn't work. You know, you want to give yourself a little bit of room. Yeah, and some stuff on there coming up too as well. So if, also we have an email list on there. If you want to sign up to get notified, what he called notifications for new stuff. But you didn't know the word notification. Is that what just happened? No, I was about to say like, if you want a notify, you know how you use the wrong word for the wrong context.

Anyway, it was just, what do you call? Dotting my eyes crossing my teeth. I like it. Unless Jocco store.com, you want to represent while you're on this path. That's where you do it. Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on your iTunes and wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah.

This is not the only podcast we have, by the way. We also have Jocco unraveling, which I do with Daryl Cooper, martyr made fame. Of martyr made fame. There you go, Daryl. Grounded podcast, which is about Jitia Warrior Kid podcast. We got some a little bit of time. I'm going to squeeze in some grounded,

some Warrior Kid podcast in the near future. We got a YouTube channel. And if you want to subject yourself to videos where Echo Charles has complete creative control to make everything blow up, everything catch on fire, then you can check it out. And the only, and if it's long as it's a video less than five minutes, minutes, there may be cool stuff.

If it's a long video that actually would be nice to see some effects in, they won't be there. No. Okay. Anyway, yes, and you can see what life looks like if you're not, or if you're intrigued by his Texas Batman persona voice-wise. Good times. Appropriate way to put it. We got something called Psychological Warfare.

It's an album with tracks that I talk to you about overcoming your moments of weakness. You can get that on any MP3 platform out there. In the world. It was the number one selling spoken word album for 11 months on iTunes. And it makes sense. It makes sense because it's not just artistically good or whatever. It's effective functionally. How many spoken word albums are there?

A ton. The question is a ton. Yeah, there's thousands. I will say this. There's something in the universe where sometimes you know how you're like, if your Bluetooth's on your phone and just randomly sticks up with your car. and like at my kind of darkest or lowest moments like it seems to like sink up

and just randomly select and it's Jocko's voice and it's usually at max volume everything happens for a reason you have that moment of weakness creeping in or you're probably heading to the donut shop when you know that thing comes on also flipside canvas

my brother Dakota Meyer flipside canvas.com he's making graphic representations of the path and other basically cool stuff I know you just We got some coming to the office Bad ass stuff coming from flipside

Which one you guys? We've got We got good Check And we've got dis when equals freedom We got all kinds of We got default aggressive And we've got

A bunch of posters As well of the muster And of echelon front You know Impacting with troopers You mean you didn't get a poster That had like An outstretched hand on the cliff

And another hand going to it And it says underneath teamwork. You know those posters like the freaking you mean like the corporate posters. The wolf howling and it's his leadership on it. Yeah.

Those posters. At Flipside Canvas, we do not sell those posters. We sell posters that are, that can only be described with one word. Legit. So there you go. The posters are legit.

And Dakota and Mandy on the team are awesome. Awesome to work with. We got some books about face. First a dish with the forward by me, which is just freaking an honor to be able to do. We got the code, the evaluation, the protocol, leadership strategy and tactics, field manual. Warrior Kid, Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three.

By the way, Way the Warrior Kid, four. You can pre-order it right now. It's called Way of the Warrior Kid. The Warrior, do you know what the name of the new A Warrior Kid is? You might know. Yes. Do you know what it is? I do not. It's called the Way of the Warrior Kid for Field Manual. Premises, the last day of school. You know, Mark's been having some hard years, but

now he's kind of getting dialed in. Last day of school, kid comes up to him and says, hey, you know, I've never really talked to you before. And I notice, you know, you wear that warrior kid. I see you doing pull-ups with your friends. And this kid's kind of shy. And he says, I really wanted to be a warrior kid like you, and now it's too late because I'm moving away. And I just, I wish I could have hung out with you. And so Uncle Jake shows up, and Mark tells Uncle Jake about this and says,

you know, hey, I feel really bad. This kid's moving away. He wanted to be a warrior kid. He was too shy to say anything. And he just wanted me to help him, but I don't know what I could do. And Uncle Jake says, I know what you can do. write him a field manual on how to be a warrior kid. So there you go.

And it's the same, let's say, shape and size as the discipline equals freedom field manual. You may notice some similarities when it comes to the layout. Just the layout of the cover. It's funny. John Bozac, the artist, the designer. Whenever I say like a good idea, he always says,

I think you might be on to something there. So I was explaining the cover. Warrior Kids in Bel Air and he goes, I think you might be on to something there. So, yeah, so Way the Warrior Kid 4 is available. Mike in the Dragons, which has been described as the greatest children's book ever written. That's what I've heard.

Sure. I mean, I'm not, look, I wrote it. I don't want to be out of line here, but apparently a lot of people think, a lot of people think. A lot of people think. And the discipline equals freedom. Field manual. Oh, by the way, there's a new version of that coming out. You know what it's called? Mark 1, mod 1. Do you know what that means? Kind of, yeah, some cameras are like that. This way. You go Mark 1, Mark 2, Mark 3.

So this is the first modification to the original Discipline Quas Freedom Field Manual. There's a bunch of new pages in there, wrote about a bunch of new things. So you can check that out. And then, of course, there's a little book called Extreme Ownership that I wrote with my brother, Laif Babin. And the follow up to that book, which is called the dichotomy of leadership, the things that we heard us talking about today, if you want to see how to take those things and apply them to what you're doing in life, whether it's your business, whether it's your first responder, whatever you're doing. Whatever you're doing if you're interacting with other human beings, get to the source. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership.

Ashland Front. What's up with Eshlam Front? What do you got? Got a lot going on with National Front, working with leaders all the time. You know, and as we talked about, it's just been phenomenal to watch them, particularly through these tough times of, you know, some economic turmoil through COVID lockdowns and unrest across riots across America, et cetera. Like, it's been awesome to see companies take and apply those principles.

And so we've got some great stuff going on the Ashlandfront. I think particularly for EF Online, we have redesigned that thanks to the great Echo Church. who puts a mastery behind that for our landing page and design and set up. And we've streamlined the process of log in on that thing. And we've got troopers from, I think, I'm glad you get the great echo Charles. I seem to end up with the average Echo Charles over here. I think we're wrecking.

Are you happy with that? Is that a good joke? Oh, that's joke. Cool. I think we have 46 countries around the world represent. Yeah, EF online. What we're doing is we're, look, our goal, our mission at Eshlam, front is to teach the leadership lessons that we learned on the battlefield that we translate into

everyday business, everyday life, how to lead, how to lead up and down the chain of command. It doesn't matter if you're, it doesn't matter if you're the CEO or a frontline person that's not in charge of anyone. When you are interacting with other human beings, you are in the leadership position. You can, you can do things to improve the mission. You can do things that will improve your station in life. go to eFonline.com. We got courses about this stuff.

We do live training all the time. If you want to ask me a question, if you want to ask Laif a question about something he said today, go on there. Go to eFonline.com for that. We are standing by to help spread the word.

We have the muster. The muster is, there's only one this year due to COVID. And there is going to be in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd. third and fourth. I just did a gig and there's 500 people there. There's social distancing happening.

So it's going to be something like that. We'll take precautions, but the muster's on. Yeah, the muster's on. And we're super excited to meet with troops. It's been such a bummer to have to have canceled two of them. Yeah. But I'm really excited to have this one here in December Dallas. Here's another bummer is that since we canceled the other two,

most people at the other two transferred their tickets to. this one, which means it's going to sell out like they always do. So if you want to come, just try and register early. It's extreme ownership.com. And we also have EF. Overwatch. From day one, we've had people asking us, hey, where can we get people that understand these leadership principles? Eventually, we started this company, EF. Overwatch. Go to EF.Overwatch.com. We got Mike Sorelli at the helm. If you heard him on podcast 244, him and George Randall, they, they geek out about hiring and getting people into companies, taking leaders, military leaders that understand these

principles, train in these principles, and then show up at companies and help you lead your company to victory. Go to, go to EFoverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members, active service members, retire, you. service members, their families, gold star families around the world, then you can check out Mark Lee's mom. She has a charity organization. Mama Lee, if you want to donate or get involved, then you can go check out America's mighty warriors.org. And if you're a masochist, if you like pain and you just want more of my discordant declarations, or if you want

more punishment in the form of Echo's disoriented diatribes or you want to get some more of Laifes prolonged proclamations than you can find us on the interwebs. Laif is on Twitter at Laif Babin. He's on Instagram, which Echo will only refer to as the gram at Real Laf Babin. And he's on Facebook at Laf Babin. And of course, Echo is at Echo Charles. and I am at Jaka Willink. And thanks to General Bruce Clark

for your service to our great nation, for your leadership and guidance that continues to have an impact today. And thanks to all of our service men and women who are out there, leading and also having an impact in the world by protecting our freedom. And of course, to police and law enforcement and firefighters, and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all other first responders thank you for protecting and keeping us safe here at home and to everyone else out there remember these lessons from general clark remember that the commander

must be a model soldier he must master the technique of war he must expand and improve his knowledge He must exhibit daily stamina and courage and above all, he must set the example. And you set the example every day by going out there and getting after it. Until next time, this is Laif and Echo and Jocko. Out.