Jocko Podcast - 265: Don't Get Beat by Not Knowing You're In a Competition, MCD 1-4, w/ Dave Berke. Pt.2

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

0:00"00 - Opening0:38:34 - MCDP 1-4 Competing, Chapter 2. 2:02:09 - Final thoughts and lessons.2:05:31 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:22:18 - Closing GratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 265 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So last podcast, we introduced Marine Corps Doctional Publication 1-TAC-4, which is called competing.

And, of course, we only made it one chapter deep because, well, there's a lot to go into. And so we're going to continue on. But first, we're going to take a little tangential. trip into my head a little bit. So in reading that manual, and as I talked, and I talked about this, I started correlating competing with influencing. And you take that one step further, which isn't a very big step. What is influencing?

Influencing is leading. That's what you're doing. So one of the main things that I liked about this Marine Corps concept of competing was this idea of this continuum of competition that they present in this book. It goes from pure peace on one side, just pure peace. And then it starts to move to the right. It goes to economic competition and then classic diplomacy and then political warfare. And then there's this gray zone and you get into hybrid war.

And then you get into the threat of violence. And then you finally cross what they call the violence threshold. And then so you're now you're using violence. And then even violence has a place that expands on this continuum. It goes from conventional war and then it keeps going further and further to the right to you get to total war where one side is using any and all means necessary to completely destroy their enemy. And so with that, I started thinking about the continuum of influence or the continuum of influence or the continuum of leadership that we have to use every day to lead and influence people and and it draws some very

interesting parallels to the continuum of competition at the Marine Corps talks about and there's one specific mark in there that really showed a lot of similarities to me so if we look at this continuum from the beginning like on the far side you have someone that you don't care about. You don't care what they're doing. You're not trying to influence them. You don't want them to do anything at all. You just don't care. They're off, they're like off the spectrum. I guess they're touching it, but they're not on it yet. So we don't have to worry about them. We don't care what they're doing at all. Now, as soon as you cross that first little threshold, well, now you've got someone that you want to influence.

You want them to follow a plan or you want them to execute an action or you want them to executed behavior. So now we're on to the continuum of influence or the continuum of leadership. So what does it start with? Well, it starts with we're trying to build a relationship with that person. That's where we're going to begin. And well, it's interesting. What's the best way to start building a relationship with someone? Oh, you let them start to influence you. So as soon as you're saying, oh, hey, that's a good. Hey, I like that. I like what you're doing. And you know, there's that you've heard of this thing mirroring. Have you heard this? Yeah. So mirroring is the physical. Oh, if Dave's sitting with this hand on his, on his cheek, then I do the same thing.

And it's a little indicator. I'm allowing you to see that you're kind of influencing me and it's a positive thing. So that's the, that's the base thing right there. A physical, actual mimicry of what you're doing, mirroring what you're doing. And that's my first way of showing you that I'm allowing a little influence. So now that's start to build a good, a good rapport between us. So that's, you know, like the lowest level. And then what am I going to do?

I'm going to listen to what you have to say. And so I'm starting to build this relationship. and people don't think this way. People miss this, right? People don't understand that when I mirror you and when I listen to you, I'm actually starting to gain influence. People totally miss that all the time.

They completely miss that. But that's level one, right? It's an incredibly important level, but it's level whatever. 0.008 or whatever that number is. So we're just listening. We're letting them model, we're mirroring their behavior a little bit.

Eventually, as we start to escalate, we start to model our behavior for them a little, but we start acting a certain way. We're not asking you to do it. We're just doing it. And we're hoping that that influence rubs off on the other person. And now they start to do the same thing. And this is another thing that you can do.

You do it subconsciously. Maybe you do it consciously. But, you know, people are in a line at a grocery store. and a new line opens up and if no one sees it, if no one sees it, you can just walk over to that line and then people see it and they kind of model your behavior and you're kind of influencing how much people

that you don't even know. But it's just a way of modeling behavior and setting, this is what we hear all the time, right, set the example. Set a good example. That's a good way to lead for sure. That's outstanding. Eventually, though, maybe that's not enough, right?

maybe we're trying to influence someone to do something, either follow a plan, adjust their behavior, take a certain action. If we're trying to get someone to do that, and they haven't really followed our modeling, now we've got to start escalating and going a little bit harder. So what's a little bit harder? Well, asking good questions, asking earnest questions. Oh, hey, Dave, why do you do this like that? And it's just a way.

And then listen. So that as Dave explains to me why he's doing something a certain way, maybe it reveals to him because now he's looking at it from a detached perspective. That's an amazing thing about asking someone a question. When you ask someone a question, it detaches them from what they're doing. That's what makes it such a powerful tool. Because when Dave is just sitting there with his pen and he's fiddling with his pen, he's not even noticing that he's doing it, which he's literally doing right now. But as soon as I say, hey, if I didn't want him to do that, if it was blurring the camera or something, hey, hey, why are you? you why you keep fiddling with that pen? He has to detach to actually figure out why he's doing it,

which is a great thing because we always want people to detach and see things from the outside. So just asking an earnest question is a really good escalation on this continuum that we're going through. Now, that little question and answer session that we're having kind of leads to a discussion where we're actually having a discussion. Well, you know, sometimes I just like to fidget it makes me think, oh, that's interesting. So we can have an actual conversation. And that whole discussion that we're having, if I'm utilizing this correctly, I'm guiding you.

I'm guiding Dave, in this case. I'm guiding Dave to discover what I'm trying. I want you to discover the fact that, hey, if you're fidgeting with that pen, people aren't even paying attention to what you're saying and it's making noise on camera. But I want you to discover those things. And I want you to actually tell me about them

because then it comes from you. and that's infinitely more powerful. So, but sometimes it doesn't work. And sometimes even though someone detaches, they just don't, they can't get far enough away from that thing. So where does it go from there? Well, now I'm gonna maybe offer an indirect little statement about what's going on.

You know, just a little, you know, do you think, do you think it's distracting when you do that? If someone's watching you, I have, you know, I've always found that distracting. If someone's talking, to me but they're fidgeting you know so now I'm just I'm going a little it's indirect but it's still is I'm starting to put a little bit more pressure with that statement and of course now what I'm going to listen to what you have to say and so where does it escalate from there now Dave

still not still not paying attention to one of them he's still just sitting there fidgeting with a pen and it's distracting to everyone it's making noise and it's messing up the focus the cameras all kinds of problems but Dave doesn't care or whatever he hasn't he hasn't seen it yet so then maybe we escalate a little bit more and now You know, it's my metaphor is about to lose a little bit of traction because that's such a minor thing that this next step, well, to say, hey, why don't we make a pro, like a pro and con list about fidgeting your pen, right? Now, if we were talking about, you know, going into a new market area with a business and you were like, hey, we're going, we're going, we're going, and I had tried to influence you and I tried to ask you questions about it and I couldn't get you there. Then my next escalation might be, hey, why don't we do a pros and cons on that? I'm still not coming at you.

I'm just asking, like, hey, why don't we do some pros and cons? That way, once again, what am I doing? You're going to have to detach to you a pros and cons list. That's one of the benefits of doing a pros and cons list. It detaches you, take some of those emotions away. And now we're sitting here saying, okay, Dave is detached to say, well, these are some positive things. It helps me think. It gives me something to do with my hands.

or let's go to the market area. Hey, here's the positive things about the market area. We don't have any stores there. There seems to be a decent market. Here's the cons. It's high rents in that area, whatever. So now you can start to reveal, you reveal. Instead of me revealing you, hey, man, the rents over there are ridiculous.

Instead of me revealing that to you, which offends you, in general, it offends people, to just tell them anything. It's much better when you tell me. Now all of a sudden it's your idea, and this is a beautiful thing. So that's like sort of the next thing. So another little level of escalation that you could do on this continuum where I'm moving in that direction. I'm still trying to indirectly influence you. And maybe the next thing I do is offer some kind of a bargain, some kind of a negotiation where I say, hey, you know, maybe now is not the right time to go in that market area.

Maybe we look at it next quarter. So it's a little negotiation to try and see if I can get you. to think a little bit more about it. It's just a negotiation. And look, maybe you go, yeah, yeah, because maybe you saw just enough. Maybe you saw, maybe it just revealed just enough of the problems that you're going,

yeah, you know, maybe we do, you know, do this. Maybe we, maybe we went to the next quarter. Yeah, yeah, we can do that. And there's another little technique that's going on there too, which is I'm giving you an out, right? Yeah, we'll wait to next. Yeah, that's probably a good idea, right? So you are sort of, you start to see some of those issues,

but you don't want to concede that your idea was not good. So instead you just concede that we'll just push it off a little bit, but it's still a good idea. So that way your ego remains intact and it's all good. But maybe you didn't catch that. So now we're going to start to brush up against, we're starting to brush up against me being just direct with you, which is revealing some shortfalls. Like just saying to you, hey, you know, the rents in that area are really high. And by the way, two similar businesses went into that market. and both of them washed out. And that happened in the last 18 months.

Those are real concerns. And even when I do that, so now I'm showing you, those are no longer things that you revealed. Those are now things that I'm telling you. So this is a transition. And I'm sure you're tracking this, but this whole thing is interlaced with leadership capital. This whole thing is interlaced.

So the other ones, when I allow you to reveal something to me, my leadership capital goes up. When I tell you something, my leadership cap takes a little. It takes a little bit of it. Not nothing crazy, but we're not neutral, right? Some of those in the middle might be neutral.

So I'm still going to give you an out. You know, when I say, hey, you know, two other companies have gone in their last 18 months. And so maybe we should. And I give you some kind of an out. You know, maybe we wait another year. And I give you some kind of an out

where you go, yeah, you know, that's probably a good idea. So we're still, we still have a possibility that you kind of see what a good move is. And you're kind of on board with what I'm saying, which is what I'm trying to do this whole time is I'm trying to influence you, right?

Trying to lead you, trying to influence you. Then it's just straight up. I'm just going to tell you what the shortfalls are. And if that doesn't happen, you know, offer them another option. What's another option to their plan? What's another option to their behavior? You know, hey, maybe putting stores directly in that neighborhood

How about this one that's four miles to the north? So yeah, you know, that's also a good neighbor. So I give you an out. I give you an option that still kind of gratifies your ego and your idea. But at the same time, it moves you in a little bit of a direction where I want to go. So we're still doing all right. And then the kind of the final sort of indirect way is, you know, hey, Dave, why don't we put one in this market area over here now?

and then next time we'll put one in this marketer that you want to go into. So again, a lot of these are just kind of bargaining and kind of repetitive, but they're all different levels of bargaining from, hey, we do this later to, hey, we will do this or we hold off. There's a bunch of different ways to bargain through it. And then eventually, so now you go through these methods, these attempts to discuss something or to influence someone, and every one of these attempts, is an indirect attempt.

Every one of these attempts is me trying to get you to kind of come on board with what I'm saying without, by your own, by your own volition, right? It's your choice that you say, yeah, you know what, we should do this later. Or yeah, you know what, that market area to the north is good. So all those are your choice. Every one of these I'm giving to you, every one of these attempts. But we might fail, even with all those attempts. And then at some point, you know, so in the Marine Corps, what they do is they go through

this whole continuum and then they get eventually to this point where they cross the threshold of violence. So what does that look like in influence? What does that look like in leadership? It's the threshold of going from indirect to direct. And now I am absolutely, it's going to cost me leadership capital. At this time, it's now going to cost me leadership capital, which, hey, look, there's times we have leadership capital in the back.

And if I've been working with Dave for five years and we've done a bunch of stuff and it's all gone great and he's risen up through the company and all of a sudden I got to call in some chips and say, hey man, you know what? We're not doing that. And he goes, got it. You know, that I'm not saying it doesn't cost me something, but I can afford it. But when you cross the threshold of from indirect to direct, now of a sudden it's definitely going to cost you. Like I said, you might have money in the bank, but you might have leadership capital in the bank, but it's going to cost you. So now, now is when we're saying, hey, you know what? But we're going to have to, we cannot go into that market area.

Again, this is the most gentle way to do it. It's we. You know, it's us. It's our team. I'm on your side. You know, we, we can't go into that market area right now. And, you know, then the response could still be, you know, if Dave's, if Dave's my subordinate and Dave start, you know, he, most people get the, hey, we can't go into it.

Most people get the hint. And by the way, we'll get to this. The number of times that I make it in across the threshold of direct. is so so minuscule. I can't remember times. So most people by the same say, look, we cannot do that. We cannot go to that marketer. They go, ooh, Jocco's got a pretty good.

And they feel a little bit of it. They feel that direct. And they immediately say, okay, I got it. I see where we're going with this. It's not happening. Of course, sometimes doesn't work, right? And sometimes you say, no, this, this is what we are doing. We are not going in there and it can even escalate to no Dave you cannot open up another store in that now this is direct

This is it I'm ordering you because I'm the boss. I'm ordering you. We will not go into that market area We are not going to build a store there and then you will not do that so this is a direct thing It's not even me anymore. It's not even us. It's you and then what? So what happens after that? What happens after that is now you now you now you Now you have to have a stick, right? Out comes this because we had the carrot out for a while. And some of those bargaining can be carrots. Hey, Dave, you know, if you can hold off on that market area,

I'll give you this other market area over here. That's a carrot. I use that carrot. I didn't mention it, but yeah, that's another indirect way. If I can draw you away from this bad area to this other area with a carrot, that's positive. We just got a bunch of intel that this other market area is really starting to ramp up. Why don't you put something there?

All of a sudden you go, oh, yeah, okay, I didn't know that. cool you jump on that carrot well now when you don't when you go through this escalation now at some point I have to get out a stick and say if you try and open up something in that market area I'm actually gonna remove you from that position or I'm gonna dock your pay or whatever the whatever the punishment becomes I'll write you up whatever it's gonna become and that's sort of where we get to you know theoretically in the business world of the highest level of escalation is like I'm gonna fire you right if you don't do what I'm telling you to do

you are going to get fire I'm going to fire you and of course you go outside the business world you go into the into the streets as they say well there's the there's the threat of violence comes next which is hey you either get you either move your car out of my parking space or I'm going to punch you in the head that's a threat of violence and what happens after that violence I grab you I put you back in your car and I you know, say you better back out of this thing right now. And if you really want to take this to the next level,

the ultimate is the existential threat, which is if you don't do what I'm telling you to do, I'm going to kill you, right? So, and it's important to, it's important to understand that that's there. And I'll tell you why. Because a lot of people, they want to start, they want to start this continuum,

at the threat. That's where they begin. That's where they begin with their employees. They start with, this is what you're going to do. That's where they start. And once you, once you cross,

here's the thing, so once you cross that threshold of direct or overt, that's another good word, overt leadership, meaning I'm telling you exactly, this is totally overt. There's no,

there's no influence happening there. It's just me telling you what's going to happen. And when we do that, when you, start out there you just don't have anywhere to go you don't have anywhere else to go so the lower you are on the continuum the better off you are as a leader and in fact if you go negative if I go if I'm your boss Dave and I go negative and I

actually let you influence me and I say you know what Dave that looks like a great market area I didn't even think of going in there let's let's do it my I'm gaining more even more leadership capital so it's even better If I'm in the negative, if I'm in that other chart where you're actually influencing me. So if we can do that, then we don't ever have to get to that threshold. And I, like I said, I, the amount of times

I've crossed that threshold in my life from a leadership perspective is freaking tiny. And I'll tell you where, let's just throw out one place that happens all times, it happens with kids all the time, right? kids all the time it's it's clean your room why because I said so there you go yep you just went right to the hey direct overt I'm gonna order you what to do a horrible thing to do what happens with employees happens up and down the chain of command and here's what's

interesting when you are you when you cross the threshold of direct and you cross the threshold of overt you, there's a, there's a equal and opposite reaction. Right? So every time you bark at someone, they might do what you said, but there isn't an equal and opposite reaction that they are looking for you to fail. They're looking to sabotage. They're looking to cause problems.

The stronger the orders, the more you yell at somebody, the stronger that backlash is going to be. That's the reality of the situation. and a lot of people, a lot of people need to think about this. So in the same way that the Marine Corps put together this manual to let everybody know that they're competing all the time, you should also know that there's a continuum, that you're on a continuum of competition all the time. And there's also a continuum of leadership.

And by the way, it's up and down the chain of command too. And I'm not going to like dig deep into this right now. We'll do it later. but when you talk about up the chain of command, there's a continuum as well. It starts off with just compliance, right? Dave tells me to do something. He's my boss.

Cool, I do it. What's the next level? I question what he's saying. Hey, Dave, why are we doing that? What's the next level? Hey, Dave, I don't think we should do that. We get some resistance going. Then we get to objection.

This is a bad idea. And then we eventually get to refusal. And then we get to mutiny. So there's a continuum there as well. And there's some people that start off, you know, So if they don't have a, if they're not thinking strategically, they go right to this, this doesn't make any sense. That's where, that's where they go right to. They're jumping right there.

And now all of a sudden, what are they going to get back? An equal and opposite reaction, which says, shut up and do what I told you to do? So we don't want to go to war. We want to build relationships. We want to build relationships with other country. Other nation states, we want to have relations. We don't want to go to war. War costs us money and lives.

We don't want that. We don't want to go to war with our employees. We don't want to go to war with our teammates. If you recognize this continuum, you can start to say, oh, I see what's going on. I'm escalating. How much am I going to escalate? What's the next lowest minimum step I could take in my escalation?

So that's what we need to do. We need to pay attention to that. I don't have to do this. I can barely think of times when I've had to do this. And why is because I listen to what other people have to say. I dig in. I mean, I say, don't dig in to my position.

I don't think my position is infinitely better than yours. I think probably if you and I both want to kill bad guys and win the war, our ideas are going to be pretty close. I think if we both want to take care of our clients and make profit, our ideas are going to be pretty close.

They're going to be pretty close. Close enough that I can be fairly agreeable with whatever it is someone else wants to do. But it's a continuum that we have to pay attention to. Just like competing. What do you got, Dave? You over there taking notes. I was just thinking, I mean, I'm listening to what you're saying and I'm making the connection.

And you're using, you're using examples that I actually get to live. I lived in the military, but I get to live that now too because I have relationships with the clients we work with. I have relationships inside an echelon front. I have relationships in different ways, even with you. And there are times that you and I are working together. There are times that you're helping me almost in a support role with a client, and there's times that you're the CEO of the company. I'm running one of the departments. As you're talking about that, I'm picturing this continuum.

Like, okay, where's the threat of violence? Where does physical violence? Where does war come in? The more you make deposits or the more you take the indirect approach, the more you get to keep doing that. And the more you go to the direct threat, the more you have to use that. And just the idea of the recognition is that, and I'm just thinking of those terms of the more indirect you are, the more leadership deposits I make, the more that's the technique I get to use. Because the more I let you influence me, the more likely you're going to be doing the things you want

to do that help us get to the end state. And I never have to, I never have to move down that, I almost never have to move down that continuum. I'm trying to think of a time where, I'm trying to think of a time where you had to escalate in a way that I recognized. And I've been working four years. Now, I'm not saying that that hasn't happened. I'm not saying that the escalation hasn't occurred, but it's, I can't think of a time where I went, oh, damn, I kind of pushed him up the stair step. So it has been subtle enough. The times, however many times has happened, but the reason it works, even those subtle escalations, the reason they work is because that's the technique you always use. So, so the, the, you know, the,

The idea of the threat of violence, especially if that's your first move, it's so limiting. It gives you so few options after that that it's such a bad, it's not a bad first move. It's even a bad six or seventh move. I think there's this idea that there are so many things. And I think the part of that as a leader is that I want to avoid war as well, even if I'm the boss, even if I'm in charge, that's not what I want. And I think the way you close it was because the equal and opposite reaction. And the satisfaction of knowing you're going to win is not, should not be. be enough to make and I as a parent makes the most sense I know I'm going to win that war with my

kid if I tell my kid to clean his room because I said so he is going to clean his room. Yep. What a great victory. Yeah and and yeah for how long until the reaction from him becomes so big and so violent that I lose all influence over him. Yeah the the other thing is as I brush up against hey well maybe it's the time maybe it's the time to go direct in this. situation. Most of the time I have to weigh that against, okay, well, what does that get me strategically? Right? Where does that get me strategically? If I've got to say, you know what, Dave, this, you need to, you need to do it this way from now on. I want you to use this font on the powerpoints, right? Whatever, whatever thing you want to come up with, where does that get me strategically?

All you have to do is take one step back and say, wait a second, where does that get me strategically? Does that improve my relationship with Dave? Does this make him want to do a better job? Does this, You just have to take one step back and you go, oh, yeah, this is dumb. This is a dumb move. What I should do is be a better influencer, have a better relationship, explain myself better, do some bargaining, talk about it. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the font that he's using is actually better for these.

And by the way, has he picked a font that's illegible? Right? Has he picked a font that's illegible? Is it, is it Cyrillic? Is that the right word? I don't know. Cyrillic, is that the right word? Like the Russian?

Yeah. Is he picked a font that is illegible in English? Right. And then I kind of have to make a stand. But if it's legible, if people can read it, why am I freaking out? The answer is I'm stupid. I want to waste my leadership capital on something that doesn't matter. But by the way, up and down the chain of command, because if I said, hey, Dave, what do you think of that font?

You know what you'd say to me? You're like, well, I've been using it, but what does it not look good? And I'd say, well, I don't know. It's a little bit unclear from a distance. you'd say, oh, I'm going to fall on my sword about this font. No, you'd actually say, oh, well, which one have you been using? And I'd say, oh, I've been using Ariel because it has sharp edges, which I like. And you'd say, hmm, oh, click down, drop, drop the menu.

There's Ariel. You click on it. Yeah, you're right. That does look pretty good, Jock. And I go, gee, thank you. And you say, you know what, I'm going to change all my briefs to Ariel. Because just vice versa, I'm not sitting here telling you you. Cyrillic fonts that can't be read by English-speaking humans.

So what do we do? I'm offering a little suggestion and you're going, oh yeah, that's a great suggestion. My leadership capital went up, your leadership capital went up, it's a beautiful thing. Or we can have World War 7 about a font. It's such a tactical loss for you to say, It's first of all, it's a tactical loss from you to say, you need to change this font. This, you need to use aerial because that's what I use. Yeah, okay.

Great. Oh, hey, by the way, it's different. That font's different on other systems. And now it looks like just a horrible thing. If you're smart, you go, hey, oh, you like Ariel. Cool. Got it. We're moving forward.

Be surprised. Be surprised. All right. It's interesting, isn't it? It's interesting how these. you kind of use the pan fidgeting example on Dave over here, but you literally did me like that. Did I really?

Yeah. We have it. Remember, I was clicking the pan? Yeah, long time ago. Yeah, yeah,

yeah, online. Oh, you need to post it then. And you went, I did post it. I know what I said. I said,

do you think the mic picks up that noise? Yeah. Do you think the mic's name? And you know what you said. You said, no. I don't think so.

But you didn't dig in. No. No. But then you kind of clicked it a couple times. while we were just quiet. And you know what you heard? Click, click, click, click, click, click. And then I laughed.

Yeah. And I did it. It was weird. It kind of was, it was almost like in not slow motion, but kind of like I could slowly, within the span of I would say maybe six seconds, I slowly picked up on what you're doing there. Like why you said it like that. Like you're saying, hey, stop doing the clicking. Just stop clicking.

That's what you're saying. But you said it in this way. Hey, do you think that that's going to happen? And the way, the tone, everything, like, you could tell you knew what you were doing with the way you delivered that question. Here's the no kidding. The no kidding. When I asked you that question, I was earnestly asking that question. Like, do you think that's going to show up?

Now, it's an earnest question. Do you think that clicking is going to show up on this podcast? It's an earnest question. I probably had a pretty good suspicion because I can freaking hear it through my headphones for 15 minutes. But you've got to detach from those emotions. And you've got to ask an earnest question because maybe if it's not going to show up, why am I worried about it? I'm not going to let it bother me.

If it's not going to show up, it's not going to be on the audio, then who cares? I'm not going to care about that. If you want to click your pen all day, cool, it's not bothering me. It's not going to be on the, we're good. So it's an earnest question. But, I mean, it's, we did know the answer. Yeah. Kind of because we can hear it.

You know, it's kind of interesting, we'll say. Because, you know, I did kind of say, no, I don't think so. I forget exactly what I said. replay yeah but I feel like if I remember correctly I was kind of at least at the very least implied that like no no no it's all good almost for just for a split second though the thing is that was a version of me like defensively I was about to say that was a instinctual defense instinctual exactly like that instinctual defense yeah yeah and then but I was so it was so not like just natural yeah but it was so not called for like on a like a primal

level, if you will, like it was so not helpful that I felt that it was so not called for it. I don't have to dig in on clicking the pen. Let's face it, like I know that it's like a habit, you know, I mean, clicking pens is a habit. And then what made it additionally interesting, just that little

teeny tiny interaction was that I was like, oh man, I do it like out of habit, right? There's the excuses like trying to explain like, oh, I do out of habit. And then instead of you saying, oh, that's no excuse or whatever, you were just like, oh, and then you grabbed like the nearest non-clicking pen and just simply gave it. Bargaining with options.

Advanced, well, advanced. That was the carrot, right? The carrot, like, oh,

maybe deviate your attention from that. Yeah. There you go. Effective. You know, the things that fall into the category of indirect and direct, like the techniques you can use can actually, I was thinking about that conversation,

can actually change. If early in a relationship, a relationship that doesn't have a lot of mutual respect or you don't have any of that leadership capital built, you can say, hey, Dave, don't click your pen. And I'd be like, okay, I'd probably comply, but in my mind, I'm like, dude, what's the deal? And I might have that natural, that little reaction,

that little ego hit, and then that little resistance or even maybe a little resentment, whatever it is. And this is a small example, but it would fit in the category of direct. I don't naturally like that. But over time, if you've actually done the things you were just talking about, then you've built enough capital.

What falls as indirect or influence, that actually can expand. You can say to me right now, hey, don't click that pen. And I'm going to have no reaction to it because I'm going to think, oh, he's only telling me that for my own benefit, for the benefit of the, I'm not going to have that reaction. So that what appears to be a direct, that you're saying something directly to me, I don't even register that as a direct thing. That actually fits in the category of, at a minimum, there's no withdrawal there. So even the things that you do, as little as they are, the options for,

indirect leadership actually can grow things that would normally be outside there where I would have some sort of problem with you saying that. We're at, I think, muster three. And you go, hey, when you're doing Q&A, you say, I think you said something like, you say, uh, in between, don't do that anymore. And the way you said it didn't bother me at all. But it could be that if you have that conversation with somebody and you don't have any leadership capital build up, they might not like that. So you being able to say that to me is a function of the trust that we have, the influence that we've shared and the amount of leadership capital you have that you can actually kind of be direct and it doesn't bother me that it would in a way that it would

had just come on, you know, day one, be like, I don't like the way you talk, do it differently. And I'm not going to like that no matter who I am. So even what you can do, what you can get away with in a sense of what is still a leadership capital deposit, that will grow. as well. Yeah, that's, that's why it's all interlaced with leadership capital. Because if you start off day one by saying, I don't like the way you talk, that's, you just went into a deficit immediately. And now you've got to dig your way out of that.

That's why it's totally interlaced with leadership capital. Because the more leadership capital you have, the more when you need to. Now, if I said, hey, Dave, you're saying, uh, when you talk. And hey, Dave, this answer was bad. And hey, Dave, the way you presented this, your slides, were all, they didn't look good and hate. And I just started everything was negative. Well, I'm eventually going to run out of leadership capital.

I'm going to start going in a bad way. And your, your attitude is, all Jocko does is just tell me what I do wrong. And I guess I can't do anything right. And I guess I just don't even need to be here. And I need to go look for another job. It just, you know, because I've expended all my leadership capital. So it's completely intertwined with leadership capital. Completely intertwined with leadership capital.

But just like people, you know, I said this on EF, online the other day. People usually think they have more leadership capital than they do. They usually think they're just rolling deep in leadership capital. In their own little heads, they think, of course. So I always kind of treat every situation as if, okay, you know, I'm lean. I'm running lean. It's going to be lean Christmas, as my parents used to tell me, going to be lean Christmas.

So I always think I don't have leadership capital to spare because also What if I really need leadership capital tomorrow? What if tomorrow I go hey Dave? I know it's your Your your 10 year anniversary your 20 year anniversary or whatever and I know that you're supposed to go to the mountains with your wife for three days and we just had a client call and you now have to go to Oklahoma to talk to them and I might have to do that tomorrow And that's the way it is. So am I really, how much, how, where do I want that account? Right? I want that account to be as built up as I possibly can.

So that means I'm not going to waste leadership capital and little things that don't matter. Not going to happen. Yeah. That's why the default, no matter where you are, should almost always be, almost always be on that side of that. The default should be on that side of the spectrum. Yeah. And it's weird too because you have the, you have the threshold of violence. We have the, on the continuum, on the war continuum,

on the competing continuum, there's a threshold of violence. There's actual real violence with influencing people. Like you have to admit that, that you can push people around and you can smack them and you can beat them up. There's a threshold of violence on the influence, on the influence continuum.

Before that, there's one between direct and indirect. So you cross that one, which is a huge one. That's like the big one. Now, of course, I guess the threshold of violence is a big one too on influence, because now you're getting charged with assault. Or murder. Or murder, depending on what level of violence you took or do.

So it's important to think about these things. And with that, we're going to jump into this whole thing, man. I mean, I just like have just been thinking about this nonstop, which is pretty normal for me to think about these things nonstop. So competing. U.S. Marine Corps, brand new. manual one tack four it's called competing last last time we covered chapter one this time we're covering chapter two this one chapter two is called the theory of competition and it

says competition as an active policy as states engage in competition or try to shape the competitions ongoing among the range of state and non-state actors involved in areas of interest to states they develop policies frame to frame order and apply resources to this activity Marines need to understand policy how it's developed and how it relates to ongoing competition my little note here just says what are you doing this is me making notes to myself what are you doing what are you doing where are you at do you know what you're what competition are you in you know I had a it was an early it was a pretty early podcast I don't know which one but when I started talking about what game are you playing

and you can be playing the wrong game with your life. And if you're looking up and you're like, man, I'm doing everything I can, but I just, I'm not putting any points on the board. Well, if you're playing soccer, you might not be putting any points on the board because there's only one goal a game or three. Maybe you should be playing basketball where you can score 48 points a game. So with this competition, what are you competing in? And who are you competing against?

goes on Marines are frequently asked to provide input to policymakers as they deliberate Understanding the larger context around policy decisions helps Marines determine the broader intent Beside behind specific decisions which in turn helps us make sound supporting plans what does that mean everyone should know why they're doing what they're doing Like war Marines should think of competition as serving policy since we acknowledge competition as an enduring condition. That's a great, that's a great phrase. I want to adopt that one. Enduring condition.

It's just ongoing. It's forever. In internal relations, then we need to take an equally long view when it comes to policy as well. U.S. vital interests have remained relatively stable over time. For example, since World War II, they've been framed in various ways while consistently calling for the maintenance of our constitutional values. protection of the American homeland and people, promotion of American prosperity, and the advancement of the American influence in the world. The contemporary environment will affect these specifics of policy,

but the enduring foundation for it consists of stable interests such as these. So the reason I, and again, sometimes I look like, oh, we can kind of breeze over this part. Then I say, no, you can't. Because if you think about your life, okay, you can think about your business, for sure. What is it that your business is trying to do? Like, do you think a Marine wakes up in the morning and says, okay, today I'm going to maintain our, maintain our constitutional values? Is he saying, all right, I've got to protect the American homeland of people?

We kind of, we kind of know that one. Promotion of American Prosperity. So there's these things that are so big, such big strategic goals that they shape every decision that you make. They should. The advancement of American influence around the world. If a Marine goes out and does something stupid in name a foreign country, goes out and acts like guns, gets drunk and act like an idiot, has he helped the advancement of American influence in the world?

No, he hasn't. And that's what he's going to hear from his commanding officer. You just made all Marines look bad and you just made America look bad by getting drunk and getting in a fight or whatever you did that was stupid. And that Marine can't deny that. He says, Roger, sir. It was a bad move. If that Marine would have been thinking a little bit more strategic,

maybe he would have maintained a little bit more level head on the beers. You know, I had a Marine one time. I was on a ship. I was on a ship and look, we know we we know that I love the Marine Corps. I was on a ship and when you'd pull into port, you have to get in line to get off the ship. And sometimes it'd take an hour or two hours. So what we would do is we'd work out as soon as we got as soon as we'd, as soon as we hit the pier,

we would work out. This is like 1990, whatever. We'd hit the pier, work out. And by the time we got done working out, took a shower, then you could just walk right off the ship because all the Marines were already gone. So one time I did that.

Like me and my buddies, we got, we hit the pier, we start working out, we get done working out, take a shower. It's been an hour and a half. We come walking up to leave. So these guys have been off the ship

for an hour and a half. They are carrying a young Marine back onto the ship just completely brain dead from alcohol. So you got to be careful out there. But so, so when you look at,

if you look at the Marine Corps has these kind of broad things that they're saying, this is what we're doing. What do you have in your life? What do you have in your business? What do you have in your business? Okay, just like that young Marine, if he's led well, he's going to say, you know what?

The whole Marine Corps is relying on me to make America look good. Got it. That's what a good Marine is going to say. If you're running a business and you got a cashier, I've been using cashiers a lot. Because you know why? Because they're front line and they're interacting with people. If you got a cashier that treats a customer bad, he's making the whole company look bad.

If he doesn't know that, okay, then what about your life? What are you trying to do in your life? What are you trying to, where are you trying to go with your life? What's the broad, what's the broad strategic mark that you're trying to make? Do you have one? Do you have one? And if you don't have one, how are you making decisions? You're making decisions with no steering whatsoever without a compass.

So these are enduring interests. Enduring interests provide Marines a potential source of competitive advantage. Adhering to our values, when done as part of a comprehensive sense, strategy can serve to attract others and work in harmony with Marines with what Marines learned from an early age values such as freedom of expression and press freedom can help frustrate the plans of some competitors positive some interests such as increasing American prosperity also help attract allies and partners this is especially true when we can when we can show how our interests align with

theirs and that interesting if we can work together we're going to be better off. We're stronger together. We're stronger together than we are fighting each other. Domestic politics affects the policy decisions of almost all competitors and the resulting character of nearly all competitions. Everything you do, everything you do impacts the competitors and the competition itself. As mentioned in chapter one, there are often multiple centers of power in each nation

and the struggle amongst them often creates ambiguity in the minds of outside observers. These struggles affect internal politics and often drive or limit current policy choices. This is true in the United States. For example, when we see the deliberations on national policy among three co-equal branches of the government, in other less open societies, domestic considerations, have major impact on policy, even though these considerations are often harder for outsiders to understand. This happens in businesses a lot. You've got some people with different.

ideas of how we're going to get where we're going, sometimes unfortunately even disagree on where they're going, which is bad. And that's something with all the political mayhem that we're facing in America right now. I guess maybe mayhem's, well, with what we're facing right now, we'll just call it,

we won't put a, we won't assign a word to it because different people assign it different words. We'll say that there's disagreements in America right now. But this is what, this is, this is a democracy is going to be messy. But you're going to get a better result in the end. So if you, if you have a platoon where, hey, I'm going to take input from the troops. So they're going to let me know.

And sometimes they're going to argue with me about some stuff or not argue, but we're going to disagree about some things. Now, if it turns into an argument, we start fighting, that's bad. But for, for my point man to say, hey, Jocko, I don't think that's a good route to get into the target. and me to say, well, why not? And for us to have a discussion about that's a totally positive thing and we're going to come to a better conclusion. That's what's supposed to happen in a democracy.

We have a discussion, but we're both trying to get to the target. My point, man wants to get there. I want to get there. In America, we got, what are we trying to do? We've got a hope that we are aligned enough that we say, oh, we want our economy to get better. Okay. Can anyone, does anyone disagree with that?

All right. Maybe we disagree on how we get there. But at least we have this one thing that we know we're moving towards and you can say that a bunch of what do we want There to be poverty in the country Is there anyone that says yeah what I really think we need in America is more poverty? No, no one's saying that There's not one person that saying we need more poverty in America So no matter who you are you're saying yep, you know what? We don't want poverty. We want less poverty Great now you might think we get there one way someone else thinks you get there another way. Okay, let's figure out what those things are and then we can discuss how

we get there but it's okay if we disagree because we're just trying to find the best solution and when Dave's solution is different to me than me than how we to how we get to the target and he's the point man and I say shut up we're going my way and he goes no we're not that stupid and all of a sudden we're in a fist fight our platoon is falling apart so what we do is we listen to each other and we look for the best possible solution and maybe you know as you I always try and just agree with the other person what does that mean does that mean I just always bow down and say, oh, you know what, Dave?

Yeah, I can't make any decision, so we're going with that Dave says. No, because Dave wants to go one way that I think is going to take an extra 15 minutes. The route that Dave chooses, as the point, man, is going to take an extra 15 minutes. So you know what? We're not doing it that way. We have a seven-hour patrol. My way is going to take seven hours. Dave's way is going to take seven hours and 15 minutes.

We're doing it my way. No. Actually, Dave, you know what? Your way sounds great. Why? Because I already said, I just, in that moment, I saved 30 minutes of you and I arguing about it. And now we can focus on something more important. And by the way, we're still getting to the target. And by the way, there's so many unknowns on that route that I don't know and you don't know and no one can know.

And so I'm actually arguing about something that I have no idea. Where are the landmines? Where is the, what is the actual terrain like? How tall is that little cliff that I see? Is that something we can get up or do we need to bring ropes? And all of a sudden it takes 45 minutes just to get up that little thing. we got to carry extra gear. I don't know any of that.

So guess what? Am I going to argue with you for 15 minutes of difference? No. Sounds good, Dave. So why don't I have to, why can I let Dave do whatever? Why can I almost always say I'm going to go with someone else's plan? Because I work with Dave for long enough. And by the way, I actually taught Dave land navigation.

So when Dave comes to me and he says, hey, here's how I think we should go. There's a 98% chance that it's pretty freaking close to what I would do in the first place. And by the way, either way, we still get to the target, which is where we're going. Back to the book. For United States Marines, understanding current policy relies in part on understanding the interplay between domestic politics and our enduring vital national interests. Shouldn't everyone just kind of have enduring vital interests for their family, for their business, for their life? Shouldn't we all have those things? Yes, we should.

As a nation, yes, we should. aspects of domestic politics like the election cycle and contemporary societal issues affect current policy. These aspects are typically felt by Marines through such things, resourcing decisions, guidance on the composition of the force, and specific direction to focus particular national interests or particular competitors. You should know the story about what's going on. That whole thing right there, hey, Corporal Smith that just heard me read that that said, hey, bro, I'm not I'm not tracking what this means is you need to Know it's just just understand what's happening in the world and understanding that what's happening in the world is going to sort of guide what the Marine Corps is doing International competition particularly among nations plays out over a long timeline. Oh, what timeline is that life?

Pursuing the goals put forth by the Constitution and its amendments has been an enduring vital interest of the United States since the day became effective in 1789 This contrast with our desire to bring war to a conclusion as quickly as possible. Marines need to understand this distinction. Competitive advantage. Advantages is relative to a competitor when one actor is able to do something better than its rival or rivals. Check. We get that. What's that?

Corporal. Terminal Lance. That's what we should be using terminal lance. That guy's legit. Terminal Lance is a, he's a cartoon. And he's actually a whole book, too. Terminal Lance props. A business enjoys, it's interesting.

Here we go back to a business. A business enjoys competitive advantage when it can sell a product at a lower price than other businesses, assuming other factors like quality stay the same. Nations also have relative competitive advantages, also referred to as comparative advantages. Historically, the innovative culture in the United States helped bring it new goods and services to the international marketplace faster than others. The cost of labor in some countries is lower than others, which makes them more attractive for labor-intensive manufacturing businesses.

It follows them that we must understand our potential rivals if we are to develop and maintain a competitive advantage against them. Gee, we must understand our potential rivals. Sun Tzu, are to war. Know who you're fighting. The United States has many competitive advantage. Oh, by the way, obviously, this is something that we're doing all the time at origin. right where there's we're competing against nations that make the same basic product that we make

but they're doing it with slave labor or they're doing it with someone that's getting paid you know in horrible working conditions and so we've had to find ways and we continue to find ways that we can compete with them and not only we're competitive we're better because our product ends up better and because we're here now now you get into shipping and what is it cost to ship things from overseas. What does that do to the what does that do to the whole picture? So we're we're figuring out and we have figured out how we have a competitive advantage, even though we take care of our workers, which we actually also feel is a competitive advantage. Taking care of your people is a competitive advantage because now your people care about the product

that they're making. They want to do a good job, not not slaving in a sweatshop. Instead of looking at slave labor as an advantage, I look at as a disadvantage. We've got the advantage because we have a better workforce who care about the company. The United States has many competitive advantages in international competition. The world's largest economy and an international financial system that uses the dollar to make transactions are strong economic advantages. Yes, the enduring U.S. interest in freedom of navigation on the seas attracts many partners because free navigation reduces the overall cost of trading between nations. The U.S. higher education system attracts students from all over the world. The list goes on and on. But these illustrations show that

we should look for a nation's competitive advantages among its enduring qualities, such as values, interest, and culture. And this is what you need to do. So how does this tie into everybody? What about your business? What about your business? How do you have the culture and do you have the values inside your business that are actually competitive advantages? Do you have that? If you don't have that if you don't have values if you don't have a culture that's a competitive advantage you're wrong the competitive advantages in the military component of Dime are naturally of great interests to Marines since World War II the United States made the use of several military advantages such as the Joint Forces of ability to project and sustain

power globally, its skill at operating across domains, and its expertise and precision, targeting, and strike. The U.S. military's principled professionalism can also present distinct advantages. For example, when it's properly contrasted with competitors seeking to extend a authoritarian government without regard for rule of law or protection of civilians. So that's a huge advantage that we have, is that we have military professionals. That's what they do. And it's also an advantage, as far as I'm concerned, that we have reserved. that come and serve in Iraq come and serve in Afghanistan that go for the weekend and see how the military is doing and take their

civilian expertise into the into the reserve unit or the National Guard unit for the weekend We have both those and there's advantages to both of those Talking about that I think it was the Guadal Canal recent podcast We're talking about how some of the reservists where the people that said hey that's a dumb idea we don't I want to do that. Some of the, because they hadn't been indoctrinated as fully as somebody that had been, you know, an infantry officer for 18 years. And he's looking at the problem going, hey, I know how to solve this problem.

It's in the book. I know what to do. And some reservists is like, hey, bro, I hunt in Tennessee. And that doesn't make any sense. So we use this as a competitive advantage. I'm just thinking this whole time about the connection between these military examples. and I'm going through my head, things that I remember as a Marine and how closely connected they are to just everybody's,

everybody's life in both business and in life, just the connections to your family has, you have long-range plans for your family. You have these strategic long-range plans for family that's really no different than I think they call the enduring values of the country that you need to keep in mind that might actually change or influence the smaller things that you do. Yeah, and that's something I've been hitting on a lot.

The fact that culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command. Culture is the ultimate form of decentralized command, where now we have a cashier that knows how to treat a client, knows how to treat a customer, because understands the culture of the company. Now we have a Marine that can be out in town, can see a situation unfolding and knows what decision to make just based on the culture of the Marine Corps,

of the SEAL teams, of the Army, of the 82nd Airborne, of the 101st Airborne Division, if you have that culture correct, that soldier, that Marine, that cashier, that frontline salesperson, they know what decision to make just based on the culture that you have inside the organization. Totally. And that's a two-way street, too, because if I'm running a grocery store and I've got a cashier, I'm not going to spend all day, every day just talking to that cashier about long-range strategic things for the company.

I actually need that person up there ringing up customers as are coming through. but if I don't, if I is as the CEO of that grocery chain or the CEO of that company, don't think that that cashier can't make a strategic, a tactical decision that has massive strategic implications and I lose sight of the fact that they actually do at certain intervals, need to understand how what they do affects the big picture, then I'm actually set myself up for failure. Any Marine that's ever been to Okinawa knows that when the Marine goes out in town steals a car and runs into a fire hydrant. That Marine doesn't just get in charge. for sealing a car. That is an international incident that undermines the relationship between

two countries. And it happens all the time. And if you don't think you're young folks that are doing these very tactical things, don't have to have some connection to the big picture enough to guide their day-to-day decisions, you are setting yourself up for long-term failure. And that works both ways. That cashier has to know, hey, I've got to treat this customer with some respect because if I don't, it's going to go on Yelp, it's going to go on YouTube, is going to go on Instagram or whatever that might be, and I could take down the whole company if I'm not careful. You don't want to create paranoia,

but they have to understand those small, appearing to be small tactical things can actually influence the entire organization, and they have to be able to make that connection. If you are in a situation like that and you're employing frontline troops to carry out these sort of tactical day-to-day things, it's pretty easy to end up in the, in the job market, the people that you're hiring, the human capital that you have available to you,

it's pretty easy for them to be, hey, actually, Dave, CEO, Dave Burke, I actually don't really care about the company that much. And if you fire me tomorrow, I'll go get another minimum wage job somewhere else and I don't really care. And so you sitting here tell me about how we can have a strategic loss at your company

because I don't treat a client right, whatever, right? So what do you do then? And what you have to do is you have to, you have to then, you have to then explain to people that when, that they have strategic goals in their life, that they need to have some kind of a path that they're going on. That, hey, listen. Listen, echo Charles. I know you don't really care about working here.

That's fine. I get it. Listen, at a minimum, if you do a good job here, if you work here for six months, you work here for 10, 12 months. I don't know how long you're going to work here for. When you leave, I can give you a recommendation that'll get you a better job somewhere. That'll put you on a better path. And that's all I want.

Look, I know you don't necessarily care about my company here. You don't like flipping burgers. I get it. But guess what? When you get done flipping burgers here, you can go get a job doing something that's a little bit better. So I don't, this isn't just about me and the company here, Jocco's burgers. Look, I'm going to be selling burgers for a long.

long time that's what I do I love burgers I know that this isn't your life goal guess what what is your life goal where is it where are you at because I can promise you this if you take care of me here some point you're gonna leave I expect that you got a lot of potential when you leave here I want to leave I want you to leave on the best foot possible set up for a long-term better situation I don't want you flipping burgers forever but if you flip burgers well that's the path to not flipping burgers which is really interesting one time I said There was a person that talked about, do I really need to learn jihitsu if I don't like to fight?

And I said that you actually should learn jih Tzu more than anybody else if you don't like to fight. Echo, if you don't like flipping burgers, you more than anyone else should say, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be the best burger flipper that I can be because that's going to allow me to step up into the next round. Because if you can't flip burgers, bro, how can I expect you to do? anything else you're definitely not stepping up to salad bar and if you can't handle salad bar you know you're not gonna be the day day opener right and if you can't be the day opener you're not gonna be the general manager if not the store manager then the general right you see where this goes and by the way if you

don't want to get in the restaurant business that's fine too when you go to work at a at a at a mechanics shop you want to be one to be an automotive mechanic and that's where you want to go what do they what do I what do I tell them when they call here to say could echo Charles flip burgers effectively and efficiently and reliably and I have to say no he couldn't he was late on a regular basis or whatever what if I say hey you know what echoes he was totally reliable good to go great attitude yeah if you if you look to hire somebody that's going to be able to be a real bonus inside your organization echo Charles the guy that's what I

want to do for you But you got to at least you got to do a little something for me too. So if you're running it, if you're working with that, those kind of entry level positions, sure, show them the strategic for the company, for the business, but also show them strategically. Because look, kids don't get that these days. Never mind. These days, I didn't, you know why I ended up doing okay in life is because I joined the Navy. And they were like, do this.

And I said, Roger, wanted to be a good seal. Just that enough, that guidance, that goal was enough for me to like, keep me out of trouble, keep me from being a total idiot. I was a partial idiot plenty of times. Kept me out of being a total idiot. So when you have the opportunity to show somebody, show a younger person, hey, what you're doing right now is connected to the future? You might want to think about it.

Here's what is your future. Oh, okay. Well, you want to be whatever you want to be. First step is flipping burgers. And that's okay. Flip them good. Don't burn them. Keep them together.

Note that these competitive advantages exist across the competition continuum and not only in the time of war. We conduct exercises in part to demonstrate that the United States has a military capability. It could use if necessary. The existence of these capabilities can impose cost on a potential rival because the rival may need to expand resources if they want to. overcome or negate a US competitive advantage as the rival pursues their goals. So you're you're making other people pay another little little plug for the Marine Corps.

Hey you got to have us you got to have us well trained and you got to have us well prepared for battle because that makes everyone else it imposes a cost on everybody else which is a positive thing. The court needs more exercises. Yes. When viewed from this perspective we gain an insight into how a military competitive advantage can help us compete with a rival. Also note that it needs to be a conscious decision on when and how to reveal our most sensitive competitive advantages. At a minimum, we should leverage such revelations for advantage

in the information element of power. Other capabilities might be cloaked in secrecy and so there you actually needed to be used. So there you go. Awesome. Right? Don't just reveal the special move that you have to kick someone's ass. Yeah, man. We're celebrating, I think, at least I am. This is the anniversary of the kickoff of Desert Storm. Just, I think it was, well, when we're going to, it's called it January 17th, 1991. That was the kickoff of Desert Storm. And, you know, I was kind of a kid wanting to be a pilot.

And that was the big reveal for us on that one that people to understand is the stealth fighter. And all of a sudden, like, there's this big AAA and anti-aircraft system. And it's going to be the most robust air defense system ever. and night zero in Iraq and all of a sudden things just are blowing up in Baghdad and nobody has any idea why they're just sitting there watching things blow up there's nothing on radar there's nothing out there

as far as they know except they can hear airplanes flying overhead because the jet engines are making sound and then things are just blowing up and we're basically told the world oh by the way we hated to have to do this but if you're wondering this is what we can do you might want and that that's 30 years ago

our competitors are just just now I think the amount of time and money invested in them trying to build stealth technology, which has been a huge race and a big competition. We showed that to the world on day zero of the war. And as a pilot, obviously, we think about that too as the competitive advantage makes other people go, well. Maybe it's just not worth going to war with them. Maybe this just isn't worth it. Maybe this investment we're making is not worth it because the outcome, they can do things we didn't even know exist.

So the revelation of that when carefully placed in time well can be a huge advantage. Yeah, not to mention they had no time to adapt to it. Because if we would have told them, they would have figured out some methodology or at least attempted to figure out a more accurate radar or some kind of a defense system that could spot these aircraft overhead. Yeah, that's a great example of how you do it. It happens in jih Tzu, too. Like, if you have that move that you're pretty good at and you go for it, it's not a surprise anymore.

I'm not saying you're not going to get it, but it's not a surprise. And now the person's expecting it to come. So if you're going to do it, might want to hang on to it just for you know, a little bit deeper into that role. Let that person be breathing hard. Let the O2 start to lack. All types of competitive advantages can atrophy. However, they all need appropriate practice, exercising, and improving if they are to remain advantages in the dynamic environment of international competition. Just you can't take you can't rest on your laurels ever.

You can't rest on your loyals ever. Competitors as systems, competitors are complex adaptive systems. Again, this competitors are complex adaptive systems. I guess we kind of need to say it, right? We need to make it clear. And then, but it does make it even more clear, meaning they have many parts and these parts interact with each other in nonlinear, often unpredictable ways. Consider Iran's national security decision making structure.

To some outside observers, it may appear to function as a strictly hierarchical. organization with all important decisions being made by the Supreme Leader and President at the top of the pyramid. However, the real story is much more complex. Much of the Supreme Leader's authority comes from informal relationships. He has with top commanders in the national security infrastructure and through the presence of his clerical representatives in military organizations. Even though the president is the chairman of the Supreme Council for National Security, his power ebbs and flows because the Supreme Leader is the commander in chief and may bypass the president. through his informal relationships. So even in that, like they said, very strict,

what appears to be a strict hierarchy, all over the place. Guess what's more important? Relationships. Relationships are more important in the chain of command, even in an autocratic country like Iran. The military structure itself can act in unen predictable ways, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

They've developed significant and separate. political power based on its financial resources because it controls many businesses in almost every sector of the Iranian economy. Each of these power centers, among others, jockeys for power inside Iran, working to advance their own internal or domestic interests. So it's complicated. It's complicated. And you know what's crazy when you see like video, you ever seen videos of in era pictures in Iran in like 19, whatever, 1973? This is totally Western. eyes. Totally. Looks just like everything's good to go. Skipping forward a little bit. Developing a model of how a competitor's system fits together helps identify their competitive strengths and weaknesses.

At a basic level, each of these systems consists of people, ideas, and things. The people make the system work. They also analyze its performance over time because they are also responsible for sustaining or improving the system's competitive advantages. The idea of the system's, of the system are found in the goals it pursues and in concepts it processes it and processes it uses to operate in the world Mao famously stated politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed this quote suggests a mindset that blurs the lines between peace and war the mindset this idea creates may give a competitor an advantage in operating near the threshold of violence. So that's that statement from Mao is sort of the same thing that this whole

there's a continuum right you got politics which is just war without blood and then at some point you turn it into war now we got politics with bloodshed but I'm gonna dig into this one a little bit. Ideally there are things then added or created to support the people and the ideas within the system so we're talking about people ideas and things with this in mind within the system helping it achieve its goals with this in mind we can look at a competitor system and create a model of how it fits together where it is strong and where it is vulnerable. Finally, after creating this model, Marines must remain discipline in its use.

Models are useful but imperfect. They are theories about the systemic structure of arrival. We need to remain alert for opportunities to improve our models as we learn more about how our competitors operate in the real world. Now, this is the thing that I, so they talk about this simple people. ideas and things. Like that's sort of what a competitor's system is. And I added some, well, this is up for debate, but I'll throw it out there for you. People, ideas, and things. That's sort of what you judge how your competitor is going to operate. I think perhaps there's possibly one more

that needs to be added. And it may be covered by people and it may be covered by ideas and it, not things, but a little bit. That is the idea of execution or taking action. So you can have people, you can have ideas, and you can have things. But if you can't execute, then you're dead in the water. Now, you could say that it's people that need to make things execute. So, okay, I get that. But I just felt the need to kind of call that out.

because when I look at a competitor, I think about, yes, they got these people, yes, they got this team, they've got these ideas, okay, they've got some competitive advantages there or disadvantages, and they've got things, they've got things. But all three of those things without execution, to me, I'm not even worried about you. I'm not even worried about you if you can't execute.

So, I don't know. Am I reaching to you, am I not giving enough credit to people? Possibly. Yeah, I mean, I guess that you could dig into deeper on what they mean by that. But when you said it, the first thing that went into my mind works in the opposite direction too

is that, hey, they might not have the best most well-trained people. And maybe their tools are kind of outdated and their systems aren't so great because they're antiquated and maybe they don't have big budgets. But if these people have been executing and what brought me to is how many times

you've said on this podcast is who we were fighting in Iraq. Who we were fighting against al-Qaeda. Their things, their things were garbage on paper compared to ours. Garbage. They were rusty. They were old. And there are people.

And I don't mean it like there are people like something wrong with their people, but they didn't have the training we had. They didn't have the resources they had. Their people weren't invested in the way that we invested in our people. But you know what they had been doing? They'd been executing for a really long time. So that piece, and maybe somebody could say, well, that's what people is and might be missing that.

But I'm thinking of people like, I know what American Marines and soldiers. I know what those people are. And it's really easy to look across and go, those people, those people, and just dismiss what they are. But those people had been executing and they were really good as a result. And offset where we thought we had this big advantage. Look at our gear. Look at our training. On paper, it should have been a one-sided affair.

If you measured it with those things. And what they weren't measuring was the value of the, I think, think what you're saying is the execution. Yeah, and even what you just said, like, if you take a group of Marines or you take a group of soldiers and they have training and it's all good, but look, if they don't execute and you could say, well, a Marine is going to execute. We know that's actually not true. It's a good ideal.

We could say a soldier is going to, a soldier with a platoon leader is going to execute. Not necessarily true. Not only. So to me, it's almost like a fourth thing that does make sense in there. Yeah, I actually thought that the third one was going to be the execution, people, things, and... People, ideas. Ideas and execution. Yeah.

So it's almost like in listening to you guys, and you said a good thing. You said, Dave, said on paper. Because, like, that's kind of really what that whole thing kind of seems like it is. Because, okay, so you got people, ideas and things, but people and ideas is, it's almost like people is what you can do. and then execution is what you will do. So again, on paper, where you have this capability, you have this many people with this capability, with these tools and what they can do with these tools.

And then, but then just like I said, it doesn't mean that they're going to do it. You know, like just you guys say default aggressive. It's like that's that third kind of thing that you have to implement to create this execution. You ever seen an MMA fight that was about to happen? and on paper that fighter A

should destroy fighter B and what is the problem when he loses? The problem is he doesn't execute. Yeah, the good and not to go too deep into the MMA thing so remember cowboy, Soroni and Connor McGregor, right?

So you have like, Soroni is an executor guy. He executes, he executes. But then Connor is like a cerebral guy. Like he'll play up stuff before the fight as well to kind of create that third man in the ring. And that third man in the ring in this case was to get in the way of execution.

And there's like a video on it that theorizes this where Conne McGregor was usually he's talking trash to the guy, telling him basically how much like junker of a fighter than he is or whatever. But it was the opposite this time. It was like he was saying, oh man, I respect him. And it was friendly. It was really friendly actually. So it theoretically created this mindset on Donald Seroni's in his mind that it's like, oh, that and it kind of took away from his execution instinct you know so he was like oh it's it's like oh

it's not as we're kind of bros bros in a way you know it's like super respectful fight and then you see connor how he came out in the fight all crazy and it's almost like he almost in a weird way surprised him with how hard he was executing on a guy who usually executes but that element didn't seem to be there as much you know so it's like man that execution part of it but that's a huge huge deal Yeah. And just props to Cowboy, props to Connor. Cowboy, dude, he, he's got some scraps. Nope.

And he does 8 million other things. Yeah. I wrote something down as you were getting to the, you know, connecting those two paragraphs. And it's, it's really interesting to hear the conversations you just had and that adding that additional piece. I wrote down in my margin here, you don't know. And so this model, this thing that we create and the military does this, all that.

We can create models for everything. And we're like, hey, I'm going to run a thousand simulations against my machine. And we do models for everything. We create this. And it was saying, like, hey, don't rely on that model. That's even more evidence. The you don't know, we can create a model that can be useful for what competition is going to be like, what we think the economy is going to look like, and we can look at history.

We can create a whole bunch of things that help us make decisions, but at the end of all that you don't know. You don't know. And so if you don't know, how useful is it getting back to the first thing? How useful is it to dig in on your way of doing it? If you really don't know, and that's really what this is saying, even I could say, Jocko, I've run the numbers. I've done this analysis. I've compared to these last three rollouts to these different. I could give you a thousand reasons why this is the answer.

And at the end, I should say, but I still don't know. because you don't know. And that's really part of what this is saying too. And the piece in there, when you talked about the implementation, that's where the execution, where it's all going to happen. So not knowing and acknowledging you don't know is also a really powerful thing is you're building this framework in your mind of how things are going to be. Yeah.

It also, that introduces the idea of, I know what you think is going to happen. And I'm not going to allow that to occur, which is, you know, what game you think, if I can convince you that, all right, Dave, you and I are going to stand up and you see, this is like the, the most lame example, but, you know, someone that's like, oh, you know, some wrestler that's like, no way, I'm going to, I'm going to knock him out. I'm going to knock him out.

I'm going to knock him out. And he's trying to convince the other person that, like, we're going to stand and fight so you don't have to worry about your ground game or whatever. And then he goes out and takes him down and does what he's going to do. it's what game are you going to play like I'm going to get you out of your game uh that's what i'm going to do take away your competitive yeah actually uh Jeremy Stevens against pedis Anthony pettis and you know Anthony pettis is a striker primarily and I was cornering Jeremy on that fight and Jeremy's got you know fists of lead and he knocks people out

And he might not be the most technical striker. I'm not saying he's not technically. He's not, I would say he's not as technical as Anthony Pettus was at that time. And so we're going into the fight, Jeremy definitely going into the fight, thinking, hey, it's, you know, cool. I'm going to stand up. I know I can take a punch and I'm going to connect at some point with Pettis's chin and I'm going to win. What did Pettus do? Came out?

Took him down. And it was a surprise. Surprise to me. Surprise to Jeremy. and that's the way it went, but he changed, he did what we didn't expect him to do, which is just a brilliant move, right?

So all the things that you think you know don't happen. Had another fighter was like, hey, aren't you going to work ground game? And he's like, I can't, I'm not going to get taken down by this guy.

And I said, man, you better at least, you know, work to get up off your back. I'm not going to get taken down. He's not good enough of a wrestler to take me down.

He's a striker. Okay, cool. What happened? This is after the lessons learned, right? The lessons earned from Jeremy's, you better be ready for whatever. You better train to fight. Because you can't predict what the enemy.

What you're saying, Dave, I can't predict what the enemy is going to do. Can't predict it. I don't know what the enemy is going to do. I might think one thing, but I can't. That doesn't mean I can blow off every other possibility at all. What I need to do is be prepared to fight. You know, the closest thing that they say in this is performance.

They kind of, I'm trying, I like dug through this, like, where am I missing it? Maybe they are talking about execution. I just don't see it. Like the closest I think they have is they say analyze, you know, the opponent's performance over time. So you're sort of talking about execution. Maybe he doesn't really do it. But I think maybe an additional item to assess your opponent is necessary. And that is people, ideas, things, and execution.

We also look at our own system to increase our competitive advantage. or create new ones. For example, do the people in our system have their necessary skills and aptitudes required to sustain our competitive advantages? Do they have the skills to build new ones? At a national level, does the target population for our recruiting efforts have the right education? In a similar way, can we look at our ideas? Do our operating concepts give us an advantage and things? Does any of our equipment provide overmatch to evaluate our competitiveness of the system?

Again, to me, we can check the ideas, we can check the things, we can check the people. I better check the execution because none of this stuff matters without execution. It's not always true that the organization with the newest or most equipment wins the competition. Quote Dave Burke. Sometimes aside that is able to combine adequate material with innovative new ideas becomes the winner. From this analysis, we can then increase our existing advantages or create new ones as deemed necessary. Means in competition as similarly described in war fighting the highest level of competition involves the use of all the elements of power Marines are primarily concerned with the military aspects of competition, but we must not consider it an isolation from the other elements of national power

War fighting states quote the use of military force may take any number of forms from the mere deployment of forces as a demonstration of resolve to the enforcement of a negotiated truth truce to general warfare with sophisticated weaponry. Here we see the alignment between our war fighting and competition doctrines start to emerge. So the whole point of this thing. In war, we impose our will on our adversary. Their cooperation is not required. Going back into influence and leadership, right? In competition, we make use of military force to attract or coerce.

When using attraction, we use incentives. Talking earlier about the carrot, we use incentives to induce a rival or other political actor to adopt a position favorable to us or otherwise allow us to reach our goals. And you know what? Sometimes when I'm talking about leadership, I talk about efficiency. And sometimes people think the most efficient thing for me to do

is say, Dave, you need to use this route to get to the target. And people think that's the most efficient. Hey, and it's really hard to see past that. Because clearly, if I have to say, you know, hey, Dave, well, how do you want to do it? And we have to have a discussion about it.

It takes us another seven minutes before I finally comply with actually what you want to do. And that seems a lot less efficient. Yeah. But the efficiency comes out tenfold in the field and in the execution. Let's think about the execution. It's because as a leader, you have to recognize that what you're doing is not getting 2.8 to point in this patrol. That's not what the actual goal is. That might be this little mission,

this little fact about what you're trying to do is create a leader that at some point can go fight a war for you independently without you being there in a way that reinforce it. So it's this recognition that's not even what you're trying to do. And it's that mirage of this is the best way to get it done. I get in your face to tell you what to do and look what happened.

He did it. Mission accomplished. That is only true if the only thing you're actually doing is getting from point A to point B, which simply is not what you're doing. That's not what you're doing. That's zero percent of the time. Zero.

It's not what you're doing. When using coercion, we compel a rival to take an action in our favor or to stop taking an action that's not in our favor or we make use of military force to deter a rival from taking action in the first place. For both compelance and deterrence, our goal is to use the threat of military force to achieve our desired outcome. For this to be the case, our competitive advantage must be clear enough to our rival,

that it affects the decisions they make. What's interesting about this is, when I'm your boss, Dave, I have to remember that when I'm talking to you, there is the threat of me being able to fire you. I might not even say a word about it, so I have to kind of consciously mitigate that threat so that you will push back against me

so that you will understand that I'm open to your ideas. I have to consciously do that. So I'm not just compliant. Yep, because that threat's there. And sometimes we work with companies where people are just scarred. No one will say anything back to the boss because the last boss was a tyrannical idiot that barked at everyone and told them what to do and fired half the organization and everyone was scared all the time to make a move. And that's why, by the way, that's why we show up there because the business is failing because there's total centralized command and it doesn't work.

So you've got to use the threat of military force for this to be the case. our competitive advantage must be clear enough for arrival to that it affects their decisions. Note that a competitive advantage does not necessarily equal military superiority, a competitive strength of will, along with non-military tools of policy are part of the equation too. Attraction. Political actors often use various forms of attraction to achieve their goals. To attract someone to, to, to attract someone is to induce entice or persuade someone into doing something. And a negotiation is to reward or incentive for someone to make a choice that favorable to us. We can say that then that attraction is the counterpoint to coercion.

Instead of using pressure to help our goals, we use some type of reward instead. Okay, carrot, stick. That's what we're talking about. Marines participate in attraction strategies all the time, demonstrating our professional commitment to our national values when conducting bilateral training. In recent years, for example, as part of U.S. larger U.S. attraction strategy, Marines provided training on amphibious operations to an important ally Japan. Check. That's what the Marines are doing all the time. That's what the entire military is doing all the time.

That's what we need to continue to do. We get into coercion. Fast forward a little bit. Political actors often use coercion as a way to achieve their goals. To coerce someone is to pressure, intimidate, or force someone into doing something or to reach one goals through the use of pressure, threat, or force. There's a big difference in jiu-jitsu between attraction and coercion. attraction is like you get someone to defend their neck so that you can take their arm.

You can also force them to put themselves in a certain position. I guess that one is a little bit of a bad example because you kind of have to defend your neck. So you're coercing them to get those hands in position. It does this by influencing the adversary's will or incentive structure. It is a strategy that often combines the threat of force and if necessary the limited controlled use of force with positive inducements. coercion has two forms, compelance and deterrence. Compellance is a threat intended to make an adversary do something to take a specific action. Deterrence is a threat intended to inhibit an adversary from taking a particular action to prevent it from even getting started.

In both cases, the target of coercion must be cooperate, must cooperate because the target must decide to comply with the goal of an actor who is applying the coercion. this cooperation is not friendly or willing, but still must exist for coercion to be effective. Not friendly, not willing. So just to kind of be clear, so the coercion positive and negative or the, so courage in like, oh, okay, I'm going to force this guy or intimidate this person to do something versus, not versus, but on. And then additionally, the other coercion method is to intimidate them to not. not do something? Yes. Okay.

Yep. Either compelling them to do something or you're deterring them from doing something, but you kind of have to participate in it. Right. Like you got to quite like, um, like, you know, I don't know, the security guard or something. Like, hey, don't tell on us or don't, whatever, because we're going to go in this back door to rob the bank or whatever, you know, right?

Like so if I'm a bank robber, I want to go rob the bank. I know the security guard. I'm going to say, hey, I'm going to, we're going to rob your bank. Don't stop us. or else we're going to kill you or whatever. Okay, yes, that's coercion. Yeah. To force him to not do something.

Right, but he, but the point here is that he has to, he has to be willing to do it. Right, right. You're not just for, you could, you could tape his head up where he can't even talk or move.

Now, it doesn't matter whether he's willing or not. He's not doing it. Right, but I'm saying, remove that ability. Before the bank robbery, it's like in the planning process,

you know, maybe the bank, not bank robber, but the security guard is my neighbor or something. And then I'm going to be like, hey, we're going to rob the bank on your shift so you can't call the cops or you can't sound the alarm or whatever

or we'll kill you or whatever It's coercion. Yeah, yeah. It's also a bad plan. Yeah, I would think so. But now he's going to tell on everybody before it happens. Not if I coerism correctly.

You seem to me saying. You better have like his child in the trunk of your car forever. See, it's not going to do that. Yeah, you're right. You're right. The idea of using coercion.

version in a competition can be misleading if we do not identify the assumptions that support its use. It's often assumed that a stronger nation can naturally coerce a weaker one into doing what it wants. However, this assumption may not be true if the weaker nation is willing to absorb but more punishment than the stronger one can or will deliver or stay committed to its goals over a longer period of time. This is one of the things that we always have to think about this is. is in the Vietnam War when we tried to say, you know what, we can kill 150 of them for every one of us that they kill.

And we said, that's a win. How do we lose that? I'll tell you how you lose it. Those 150 mean less to the communist government than the one does to the American people and the American government. Yeah. When your model places the same value on people

for your enemy as it does for yourself, we've run, nobody would tolerate this. We would never tolerate this loss. I'm like, well, they will. And I was thinking the same thing. I was thinking of when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And again, how lopsided that appeared. But in terms of the interest on what they were willing to endure and how long are they willing to endure it?

And sooner or later, it's like, hey, we're not, we just, we can't do this anymore. Yeah, we're done here. We're done here. It says the next, we call this asymmetry of interests. In this case, the weaker nation has the more powerful desire to achieve its interest than the stronger nation. This is, you have to watch out for this. So you have to watch out for that from as a leader when you're working with a subordinate and you start to escalate through the continuum of influence and you don't recognize

that maybe they don't care if they get fired. And all you think, you know, one more word out of you and you're going to get fired and they don't care. The example as a parent with kids probably resonates with a lot of folks. because as you know, certainly as your kids get older, that threat of violence becomes so much less use. Like, hey, if you do this, I'm going to, I'm going to ground you. Like, okay, I'll just sneak out.

If you sneak out, I'm going to take your car away. Cool. And the willingness for them to just outlast you on principle alone or the willingness to endure whatever you are going to impose on them, you have to calculate in your mind what they're willing to endure. So you want to hear about some miscalculation? So my My son had gotten a little out of line

This is when he was young And he was in a very Oster, I put him into a very austere environment To get him to coerce him to Understand what he had done wrong And how we don't do this kind of thing And

It was really strict And it's not And by the way It's no fun for your for the parent right We don't want to be strict. We want to like have fun and it's all good and we want to buy toys and we want to just, but you, but when you go austere, then you're not doing any of that and it's not fun. So over time, as, you know, he was straightening out and he's probably like seven. And eventually, you know, he had

gotten, you know, some toys back and then he had gotten, you know, his, you could use a pillow again in his bedroom and, you know, those kind of creature comfort started coming back. And then a you know, two, three months later, I, he's, you know, something, some little spark of like, wait a second. And what I called this, because he was young, I called this, you know, I have to be strict with you. So then I started being less and less strict. He started getting some of these privileges back. And then one time he started stepping out of the line a little bit.

And I said, hey, am I going to have to get strict with you again? and he said something along the lines of like, I think maybe you should so that I can be tougher. I was like, God. I was like, I did not. I was, I didn't want to be strict with it. I wanted to like, let's go back to party time. Yeah.

Let's go back to freaking, you know, playing with toys and having a good. He says, maybe, maybe you should so I can be tougher. And I was, damn it. He just won the test of wills you won. Like, hey, you can take, go ahead. You should. Actually, actually, actually went one level deeper. Like, you should.

It's in my best interest. Yeah, it's in my best interest for you to do that. Let's do it immediately. Oh, man. So you got to pay attention. The kids will come at you, man. They'll come at you. Psychological warfare.

Information. Information plays a special role in competition. Narratives play an important part because they are what gives meaning to a set of facts. For example, two competitors may both desire to possess a particular island. One of them may have a narrative that explains their claim to the island on the basis of historical ownership. The other may have a narrative that says some of the people that currently use the island and current possession makes their claim stronger. Two narratives compete with each other to give facts and meanings. I got a good question on EF Online the other day.

I think it was EF Online. It might have been a client. But it was along the lines of, hey, how do we develop this culture? And my answer was you need to tell the story of what's going on. And we talked about it on this podcast. Yeah. The Marine Corps. The Marine Corps tells the story.

Yeah, that's how I was going off on the last podcast about the squad leader makes a difference. That thing is primed and ready to rock and roll on the podcast. So the narrative that you tell, the information that you put out there was just so important. Demonstrating a capability and exercise and then thinking so that it affects a competitor's is another way Marines use information. Leaders determine what capabilities to reveal and when to reveal them as part of a large approach. However, much is specifically revealed publicizing adherence to high standards in realistic training can help sustain the Marine Corps's reputational advantage and affect the thinking of our nation's competitors. Once again, the Marine Corps with this manual is increasing their budget.

It's attraction for the DoD is what it is. Marines need to understand the impact of culture when they use information as a competitive tool. Cultural differences affect how narratives are interpreted by various audiences. One message might be understood in one country in a way that is significantly different from how it is understood in another. Marines must account for this and focus the narratives we use so that our target audience understands our message the way that we intend.

Yes. Know the story. Know the story going back to the unraveling podcast. What is your story? No people's stories. The spectrum and styles of competition. The next section. The usual condition of internal relations is one of competition across the elements of national power.

Below the violence threshold, we typically see activities from the non-military aspects of national power. For example, economic competition is seen at the national level in the struggle for market share, industry or the effort to negotiate favorable terms in a trade agreement. Escalation on the spectrum, we might see sharper economic acts like industrial espionage, the theft of an intellectual property, use of sanctions. What's interesting about this is how often do we go to war? Right? Like if you think about all the interactions that America has globally for the last

two hundred and forty fifty years, all these interactions, all these interactions, all the the time are constantly happening, tariffs and sanctions and tax, all these things are happening all the time. And very seldom do we actually pull the trigger and cross into the threshold of violence. And that's, we should do that as, as, as, as infrequently as possible, obviously. And you should assess your own leadership in the same spectrum. How often do I have to use direct leadership? It should be extremely infrequently. Repetitive actions can also move the line up or down over time. This is about how you kind of move up

and down these continuums all the time. Gradualism and salami slicing, which we talked about the last one, competitors use these activities in an effort to achieve their aims without provoking a state of war, or even a strong reaction.

In addition to competing through attraction, coercion and various forms illustrated above Marines can also compete by imposing costs. We impose cost on arrival when we develop a credible capability and a rival must spend resources in order to try and counter it. For example, the Department of Defense has experienced increasing cyber attacks in the past decades. This has imposed costs because the Department of Defense has to spend time and money to develop civilian training to counter those attacks.

We can also, fast forwardly, we can also impose cost during a war when we first forced the adversary to divert resources from their preferred actions in order to counter one of our capabilities. And then we get into the threshold of violence. The threat of violence and violent acts are competitive tools in international relations. The goal of posturing is to affect the decision making of the target to make them so fearful of the damage they might receive if the posturing escalates to violence that they submit and let the posture achieve their goals. And it places one into a favorable position should violence follow. Just think about that psychologically. If we start to think about the continuum of influence or leadership and you start using direct influence, that's what you're doing. You're crossing over that threshold where people are forced to submit.

That's why you get the equal and opposite reaction. In some cases, the posturing briefly crosses the threshold and violence occurs to demonstrate the resolve of the actor. This brief use of violence still has the same. same aim which is to affect the target's decision. Many actors intentionally try to obscure or confuse exactly where this threshold lies. Oh man, that's a good one, right? Where is that threshold? You ever, you ever known someone like that just crazy eyes, like a crazy eyes person?

How about your bar, you're bouncing at a bar? There's some people where you don't know where the line is. They could shank you at any moment, right? And now you have to contend with that. Yeah. And there's people that proactively, proactively prop up that image, right? Yes, they do.

It's a good move. What, where you have, you might think that's a good move as a leader. But what you're really doing is now what you're doing is you're inducing more fear. And now people don't know when you're going to lash out. And so now they're on eggshells and they're, afraid to speak up and speak out and it's a problem. This has been, oh, they do this to cause enough ambiguity and hesitation that they can

achieve their aims with little or no interference. This has been true historically and will likely increase in the future. Some rivals use capabilities like certain cyber and space activities that have destructive effects but fall short of some definitions of violence and effort to obscure whether or not they would have crossed the threshold as a push in the envelope. In support of U.S. goals, Marines perform missions on both sides of the five. violence threshold. In some cases, Marines were introduced into situations below the violence threshold, but then a political group performed a violent act against U.S. interests.

The disciplined response of the Marines then occurred above the threshold of violence, but the violence was limited and did not reach the level of conventional war. Following these brief periods of violence, the competition again fell below the violence threshold in most cases. Now we get into decision-making, initiative, and response. You might just call that whole thing execution. I'm not 100% sure, but you might. Marines are taught that decision-making is essential since all actions are the result of decisions or of non-decisions.

It's so powerful to paint things so clearly. This is whoever wrote this opener right here. Because you know you how many people wrote this book Dave six six yeah six the person that wrote this section gets a little bonus credit Marines are taught that decision making is essential since all actions are the result of decisions or of non-decision If we lack the will required to make a decision then we have willingly Surrendered the initiative to our foe if we consciously postpone taking action for some reason this is also a decision so there you go boom that's the little section you got to highlight terminal lance out there this is what where's what we're talking about initiative is in

is it is as important in competition as it is in war gaining the initiative means our competitor must react to us we can gain it by presenting a dilemma to our competitor and also by setting the tempo of the activity taking place brian stan when he was on He was operational tempo. He loved, he, like, he, what, you know, everyone's got their move, right? In jiu jitza, everyone's got their, you know, they got that guillotine, they got that Camura, they got that heel hook. When Brian Stan was on here, I, I just remember him just talking about that operational

temple where it's going to, you know, that's what this guy's talking about. Setting the tempo of the activity. Marines must assume that potential competitors understand initiative as well as we do. thus they will take actions in order to gain the initiative. Many competitors also seek to create ambiguity about their actions, which leads to a problem of attribution. If we are not certain who performed a certain action, then we cannot attribute that action to any particular actor.

This often delays our response and slows our tempo. Conversely, if we improve understanding of our competitor, we can be primed to attribute their actions in ways that slow their tempo instead. It's to know that and to be able to recognize, oh, this isn't just, it's not just that I can't figure out exactly who did this. It's that I am now, my oot loop is slowing down right now. Because I think they did it, but I can't be sure. While competition essentially always exists, its intensity varies over the course of time. We must also understand that the long timelines involved in competition mean decisions and actions sometimes play out over months or

years, even decades in some cases. This often results in opportunistic behavior as rivals take advantage of conditions to achieve their strategic goals without crossing the violence threshold or crossing it briefly and then returning below the threshold before triggering a war. Opportunity is often created when conditions suddenly change or temporarily, such as when a pandemic strikes, a pandemic strikes, which is interesting. I don't know if they wrote this before or after. I get they, they probably slid it in there.

You think they slid it in there? Yeah, I think this was drafted like this last year. Yeah, they slid it in there. Such as. This diverts attention and resources, which creates a gap for an alert competitor to exploit. Having no fixed timeline for achieving goals plus opportunism also leads to incrementalism, which is the effort to achieve a goal by adding together a number of small steps taken on a path toward it.

achieving our goals in competition requires action which comes from making decisions therefore what Marines are taught for war fighting serves them well here provided they also apply judgment in recognizing how timelines can differ between war and the rest of the competition continuum so this idea of incrementalism is something we you got to be on the lookout for you got to be on the lookout for that slow creeping maneuver that your enemy's making and at some point you've got to draw the line what I recommend is instead of drawing a line you what you do is you incrementally respond so when echo makes a little maneuver that's a little bit offensive to me I just don't say well he hasn't really

crossed the line I actually give him a little bit of a check little check that's a little check so from a leadership perspective what does that mean it means when Dave when Dave decides he's going to spend a little bit too much money on the on the on the on the company credit card I don't just go well man I don't really he didn't really cross the line I might say hey Dave I see I see I see got it some expenses here that are what is this what did you buy just just just check just checking oh yeah you know I just needed some some oil for my car okay but for your car yeah well Okay, was that for a company trip? No, no, no, hey, I'll change.

I'll talk to. You know, we'll get it straight now. Okay. Because you're trying to incrementally see if you can start putting real stuff on the company credit card. No, you can't. But if I don't check you, if instead I draw a line in the sand, well, now all of a sudden, you've developed a pattern and you've gotten a habit and you could actually come back to me and say, well, I've been doing this for a while. I don't want any of that. So I'm going to check.

you am I gonna check you with a with a hockey stick across the face no I'm gonna give you a little just a little I'm here I see what's happening I don't draw a line in the sand because on a line in the sand can be offensive and why did you break a rule if you knew the rule was there if you broke a rule, I probably did a bad job of explaining that, hey, man, company credit cards, we use them for company business. And what we can't do is we can't have a bunch of little charges adding up over time. And then we look up and we have lost a bunch of money and spend it on things that don't really

benefit the company. So anything that you think you're using for your personal gain or for your personal life is not allowed. So that's a little bit of a line, but I'm not, I'm not smacking you with it. I'm showing it to you. And you've got, you have options when you take that approach. You can, there's a lot of different things you can do in there. And the problem with the line is that that basically commits you to a response to a course of action,

that you, it's really, really hard to maneuver away from that. And if you're using the line, like, hey, if I just draw the line, then Jocco's not going to cross the line. And I use it more as a tool to keep you from doing it than it's actually what I'm really willing to do. You have almost no maneuver space there. And you talk about this all the time. You want to keep as many options as much maneuverability as you can. And that line takes all that away from me. And if the line is just a tool to get you to comply and that person, this is talking about an adversary.

This is an alert adversary looking for ways to commit you that limits, anything that limits your options. And certainly I know this about the Marine Corps is something we don't want. Isn't it a beautiful thing when the line is implied with such strength that I never even said it, but you knew not to cross it? How many, how many, how many charges have you made on your company credit card for your personal gain? The answer is zero, right? And not doing that here.

And not out of fear of compliance either or, or compliance based on fear, but out of a recognition of why that actually is what you should be doing. And, you know, there's some things inside here that. translate perfectly. And there's some things you actually kind of have to think about because there, this, this publication of this, this manual is, is really in a lot of ways talking about competitors. And there's the, there's a component there that directly, that aligns well when you're competing with, you're running a company, there's a competitive company. But the connection to the leadership piece to your people, you got to kind of translate that a little bit. You don't

want to go to war with your people. Your goal isn't to set that line to establish your authority so they comply. You want to avoid that at almost all costs. But you need your, it's the same thing with my kids. Do I want my son to know that there's a line? Yes. He and he knows. He almost, well, it happens, but he doesn't cross that line very often. I'm not forced to respond in a limited way very often. But I want him to know that. Yeah. So let's say there was a street in front of your house really busy. Would you put the line that your son, when he's four years old, would you put the line at the street? No. Hell no. You'd put the line a little further back. And would you, would you then escalate like, hey, you can't go past this? This is, this is 20 yards from the road

where you could get killed. That's what we do. Yeah. Now, even the, even the actual line where you're going to like give significant punishment because you have to because you have to you have to you have to impress upon the kid like my uh my dog kid dog my dog i have this at my house if my dog goes out off my front porch he's going to be on a street where there's cars right i gave him hard corrections when he was a puppy that dog doesn't leave there he knows what's up he knows that he Can't do it. So that's where the line and the but the line isn't it he could go off my porch and go another 15 yards before he'd actually get hit. Yeah. But I don't give him that extra 15 yards. I give him like okay here it is. Don't go don't go across this line and he's been

trained and he understands it. So that's what you got to watch out for. And your dog might not ever make this connection. But the obvious goal with your people is that the recognition is that it's in their best interest. You're trying to help them. And that's the piece of like, hey, when you're talking about your adversaries and you even talked a little bit

about coercion, in some way, we're actually even with their adversaries basically trying to say, hey, don't do this. This is in your best interest. Please don't do this. Or, hey,

I'm going to really need you to do this. But from a leadership standpoint, all those things, even those lines that you draw, the ideal situation is you as a leader is actually what's in their best interest and they're pushing against it, you might want to find out why they're pushing against that.

Anyway, I just think that that connection of what's in their best interest and that line. I mean, you want to be able to maneuver as much as possible all the time and keep as many options open as possible. And so that line should be, just be real cautious about drawing that explicitly.

And if you do, if you can get them to understand why that's there, that's so much more powerful than it's just, hey, I'm going to hammer you if you hit across this line. Yeah. The why is huge. And if they don't understand why, then it's an arbitrary thing that you threw up there. And look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have that. Because if people, you should absolutely have lines where, hey, you crossed this line.

You made it as ethical mistake. You did something that's actively freaking criminal. You're done. That's where we're at. Just so everybody knows, you do something like that. You're done. Period. End of story.

There's no, there's not even discussion. So don't do that. Getting into the conclusion, like war, competition serves policy, but usually does so over longer spans of time. These long timelines lead us to look for policies, aims in our enduring national interests with aspects of these interests emphasized by current state of domestic politics. Again, apply that to your personal life. Apply that to your business.

What are you trying to do? What are your enduring interests? attraction is important concept in our theory of competition it uses incentives and rewards to get another political actor to act differently in ways that are aligned with our interests that's what we're doing as a leader we're using attraction we're using coercion we're using the stick we're using the carrot what do we want to use we want to use the carrot as much as possible and you know what we want them to think they found that carrot coercion is another important component of our theory, it takes two forms,

compelence to cause a rival to take action favorable to our goals and deterrence to cause a rival to not take action. That's what you were asking earlier, I think, Echo. I don't know if I gave you that clear of an answer. In war, we impose our will on an enemy. With coercion, we need our rivals cooperation because they must decide to comply with our wishes, even if their cooperation is unwilling. The existence of the Marine Corps is a coercive tool for the nation if its competitive advantage is made clear to a rival.

Competitors act like systems. They have many parts that interact with each other in complex, often unpredictable ways. This also means competitors have strengths and weaknesses. As competition unfolds over time, the rival systems can sense what their competitor is trying to do and adapt or evolve in an effort. to improve their competitive advantage. It's always adapting. These will often blend the threat of violence or the use of violence itself

with other tools to gain an advantage. This constantly shifting mixture can get confusing, which is part of the goal. Competitors often intend for this confusion to help them reach their goals by causing their rivals to hesitate. This also helps them gain the initiative so that they can set the pace, the tempo.

for the competition. We're two hours deep right now. I'm not even getting in. We're at the chapter three's next. You know, something that I say, and I think you and I discussed this the other day on the phone, Dave. The best way to win is when the enemy doesn't even know they're fighting, right?

What Sun Su was the supreme, what Sun Su said was the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without, fighting. That's what we're trying to do, to win, to influence Dave, without Dave, even knowing that I influenced him. I want to maneuver my ideas into your head so that you think they're, they're your ideas. I want to preemptively remove your will to fight before you even think you should be in a fight. Before, before you even think you should be putting up resistance. You already are thinking that you don't want to resist. That's my goal. I want to make you a champion of my cause as if it were your own cause.

That's what we're trying to make happen. And by the way, what makes this easy or what makes this and actually makes it easy is when my cause is your cause because you're, it helps you. If I'm over here trying to convince you to do something that doesn't help you, man, it's freaking hard. But when I can align my goals with your goals and I can give you ownership, that allows these strategies and tactics for you to get on board with what I want you to do and you don't even know that I'm trying to make you do it.

So it's one of the most important things about this manual, simply making you aware that you're competing and you have to be aware that you're also influencing all the time and you're on that spectrum. And you're on that continuum and you're either gaining leadership capital or you're spending it. And if you do it right, people are on board. And the deeper part of that is you are actually propelling them towards victory for them. If you do it right, you're propelling them towards victory and they are happy to be moving there. And if I'm trying to get Dave to do something that he's resistant to and it's going to help him in the long run, it's going to help us in the long run, why is he resistant?

I need to listen to him to see what his resistance is. Why is he resisting? That's what we're doing. We're on a constant continuum of influence. Yes, we're competing, but we're influencing as leaders. Echo. We're also competing, obviously. Sure.

We want to stay competitive, right? In a multitude of ways, we'll say. Any ways that you can recommend for us to maybe maintain or improve our competitive advantage in the world? What do you think? What do you got? Advantage. First one, which I think kind of goes unnoticed and you do good job in reminding us from time to time is what game are you playing. So isn't that like kind of one of the questions you used to always get like what motivates you?

Yes, I used to get that one a lot. Yeah. And still kind of a question like that you kind of got to ask yourself a lot of the time. Like because it kind of seems like, okay, so like getting in shape, right, for example, or being in shape, staying in shape, whatever. Right. Like for some, for the average person, whatever that even means because I don't know what that actually even is. But to wake up before 30 and do. And it's not like you're waking up in 4.30 and doing like a, you know, a stretching routine for 10 minutes.

Like, right, you're kind of going hard, you know. We're going hard. And that's every single day. Not to say you're going full speed every single day. Yeah, but I'm just saying your routine is like the average person is not going to do that, you know? So you're over here going going hard. But why, you know? Competitive advantage.

Seeking a competitive advantage. Exactly right. So what I'm saying is in your head, it's there. you know but I think in like all of a lot of our heads it's like man it's not always there like we got to kind of get reminded everyone so you know just to confirm things in the world you know in discipline equals freedom field manual I'll talk about like how if you exercise you'll be sharper right mentally sharper and then hearing that chess player the other day Gary Kasparov talk about how if you're in shape it's going to help you win at chess yeah I'll I was like, keep working out people. Yeah. Keep working out people. That's what you need to do.

Yeah. And you're kind of always, your mind kind of seems to be anyway, always kind of in that zone where it's like you're kind of looking for some kind of advantage or something to add to, you know, your deal or whatever. But for the average person, I think some of us don't do that all the time because we kind of forget or maybe to get distracted or whatever. Maybe that's the same thing. But where that's why people, they'll work out less, more things going on.

all this stuff right so they forget yeah yeah you got that let's face it if you pour all your efforts into your job your family and your physical health are gonna fall if you pour all your efforts into your family your job and your physical health is gonna fail if you pour all your efforts into your physical health your job and your family are going to fail yeah so we have to be balanced. If you let the physical one fall apart, that's going to negatively impact the other. Actually, they all impact each other, right?

They all impact each other. But let's face it, as you pointed out on one of the earliest of these podcasts, the physical one will help you across the board in all aspects of the game. So in a way, maybe the best game, the game. The game straight up. In a way, the best way, the best strategy, you know, instead of pouring everything you have into your X, Y, Z, whatever one thing. you align them all and understand that they're all this,

what do they call it in business, vertically integrated or whatever. Right? Just called the path. The path. Yeah, same thing. So look, I'm going to exercise,

be capable of do jiu-jitsu. I'm going to improve all my applicable skills. So I can be a better, whatever those things are, whatever you are. I think I know where you're going with this. People should get supplements from originate. Is that where you're going with this?

I think I think I just saw a little, A little connection getting made. Yeah, and thank you. Because I was thinking, starting to think, like, hey, if we're going to make that connection in a minute, maybe two minutes, I'm down. I'm down. I'm down. See that kind of artistic maneuver, the intellectual sharpness as you bring it in for the big win. And all of a sudden, you're talking about how we're going to get some supplementation.

I'm hype on that. Okay. And when we start going 12 minutes and we're talking about alignment and vertical integration. This is an important thing. Okay. I'm just saying. Now, you did have one. person respond on social media that they are listening right now so that person is happy that

you're going down the path of whatever you're going down hey look which is fine oh all right well hey better to be um over informed than under informed okay so hey look day i don't know if we can make that necessarily a blanket statement because because i think there's people that are right now questioning that statement in this scenario that we're in at this moment hey thanks for helping it alone okay you know you're your little bump little push you do a great job little influence little influence I'm a little influencer. Little influence. Anyway, all right, cool.

We're here trying to compete, stay competitive, improve, and maintain our competitive advantage. Okay, look, we need supplementation. See how quickly that worked? Yeah, I kind of set you up like, hey, how can we maintain competitiveness? You said, boom, and you were there. I know, man, it seems like my idea too.

There wasn't a 14 minute, the seed in my head and man, that was like, man, the best idea ever came up seemingly. It does a good job. Yeah, anyway. So I'm taking down. Discipline and discipline go. That's probably why my brain is so sharp.

Let me let me say something. Because even as you're talking about this, people are thinking, okay, what does this all mean? Here's what? Here's a bonus thing because we repeat a lot of the same stuff, right? Sure. We certainly seem to repeat. What are you right now? Nothing.

Just continue, please, with your thought. You're making notes. That's using this indication of something. Are we editing stuff out? Please continue. Are we editing things? You can edit it out. Uh-huh.

Check us out. I got good news. Everything that you're about to talk about is available with free shipping at origin, main.com. If you get a subscription. So if you want,

what do you take every day? All of them. Joint warfare. Okay. Super cruel oil, vitamin D discipline in some form. Okay. Every single day.

Dave, what are you on daily? Cold War. What about, what about krill oil? Vitamin D. So I guess I have to remember, I have such a stash

of this that I forget. Jeez. So I am, I'm almost ashamed to say that. But the only one I don't have a huge stash of is Cold War. I think you said vitamin D. Maybe that's what you were alluding to. Wait, what did I say? You said vitamin D.

Yeah. I say Cold War. That one is now, that one is now on regular shipping. Okay. 30 days. So if you go on that, if you subscribe. Yes. And of course, go.

Then you get free shipping. Yeah. Which is pretty awesome. Yes, sir. So if you want to get any of these items on a regular basis, which we recommend you do, get subscription. That's the deal. Get a subscription and you get free shipping. Okay.

Done. So let me go down the list. These are all beneficial things. Maintain the competitive edge joint warfare for your joints. Don't worry about that stuff. You don't have to worry about your joints anymore. Super crude oil, same deal. General health, other benefits.

Vitamin T. Three is another one. Also, Cold War, this for immunity and other health benefits. Better to have health benefits than health. Detriments. You got that, right? Your facial expression said, I don't know what to say. And then you pulled it off.

Credit. Negative. Credit. Credit. You understand what I'm saying. Credit. Anyway, back to the supplements. Discipline and discipline go.

So discipline the powder for your brain, for your body. Discipline go. Just on the go quicker delivery system capsules and also the energy drink form it's a healthy energy drink by the way if we didn't already know Even though we do that is those are the facts also milk for extra protein form of dessert Super delicious tasting protein as a Dessert yeah you could say extra protein or you just say oh if you want also want a dessert cool you can get some milk You get them at while you get the drinks you get the the the ready to drink the cans At Wawa all the Wawa's by the way

they're in there. And vitamin shop, so you can get them there or you can get them at origin main.com. And if you get a subscription, there's a little issue with the Wawa scenario. What is it? I got a lot of videos of people just going in there

and cleaning it out. So people are going there with coolers. Go into the shelves of Wawa and empty every can. So be warned. Yeah. They're getting after it. People are getting after it.

But the great thing is we started off in Florida. Yeah. And it was sort of a test run for Wawa. And everyone went after those. Went after those. Zismos and Wawa. And just almost like less than a month into it,

less than a month into a three-month trial, Wawa came to us and said, we want you in all the stores. So thank you for getting after it. And Wawa's going to deliver. Wawa was also in the game because they get tagged a lot from people at their shopping allows and they always get a good reply.

Awesome. Interesting that. Yeah, I saw that with a guy with the cooler. It was like a bin. And he was like, boom. And I was like, hmm,

that's interesting. I don't think I've ever been really that compelled to do that with it, with a, like a drink or whatever. I'm saying, under what circumstances would I be? And then I thought back to it was like maybe, like four days or so before where I texted be little with the emergency scenario

because I was only on my last one. This one. Okay. There's the thing. They'll send it. They'll send it. Because usually I don't go to my last one. But what if I'm on my last one and I'm like, wait a second, I can go to Wawa and restock. You see what I'm saying? Then you're bringing a cooler.

So it makes sense, exactly, right? That's another good reason. If you're on a subscription, that day doesn't come. That day does not come. And we don't want that day to come. Nope. So yes, you mentioned origin, maimat.com. That's where you can get it as well. Also in origin, maine.

dot com you can get jiu-jitsu stuff gear geese rash cards that kind of stuff also shirts and sweats and cool clothes as well this is all American made stuff by the way big deal yeah huge deal

competitive advantage competitive advantage to have not slave labor but awesome people yeah you you mentioned that like slave labor like when you kind of you know the front end of the slave labor situation right You just be like, oh, yeah, we'll just make it super cheap, you know.

These guys are making it and we can sell it for hire or whatever. But if someone cares about what they're doing on every step, you know, like manufacturing, like, okay, my job is to do this and to do this and to do this and I'm going to just do it. But I care about doing it. Brow, that's way better. Like quality-wise in every capacity and sustainable. Yeah. So, yes, that is a competitive advantage. What if everyone on your team cared about what their job was?

I'm going to go ahead and say you just nailed that. Sure. I agree that that is the case. Unless, back to how we can all support ourselves. Jocko the store. It's called Jocco store. This is where you can represent your apparel while you're on the path, maintaining your advantage competitively.

We have shirts and hoodies and hats. They all say discipline equals freedom or something along those lines. Good. Good. Same thing in a way, kind of. Part of discipline anyway. You understand what I'm saying. Some good stuff on there.

There's a T-shirt club. It's called this shirt. Locker, S-H-U-R-T. Thank you to whoever made that suggestion. Yeah, that's a good one. It was a lot better than the other name that we had been using here. The thing is, to be honest, like, the more I think about it, the shirt locker is like, it didn't even matter what the name was before. That one would probably be better because it's like perfect.

That's the perfect name, the shirt locker. Yep. And that is also a subscription scenario where you can get kind of different types of shirts from us. A little, not hardcore discipline equals freedom stuff, but some fun. stuff. It's a cool. It's a cool little deal. So look into that. If that's for you, do that, man. jocco store.com. Uh, subscribe to this podcast. Um, you can also join us on the underground. Go to jaco underground.com. It's alternative podcasts, some amplifying information, some behind the scenes,

some Q&A, some live stuff. And we're going to, we're going to actually record yet another underground podcast right now. about going into some other facets of these discussions. And the reason we're doing that, we don't, we need to have an alternative platform. We don't want to take on sponsors where we have to say what they say us, say what they tell us to say. And then also not say what they tell us not to say. We don't want to do that.

We definitely don't want to have anyone critiquing, certain people on this podcast talk about the items that we're discussing. Oh, Dave, you like that. Oh, no. Look at Dave. Look at you. All right. Hey, it costs $8.18 a month.

Or you can email, if you can't afford $8.18 a month. By the way, this is what supports this podcast, too. But we don't want to have the Jocka podcast behind a paywall. I always say firewall. And you like correcting me right before I even said. it, which is good because I saw you. Right, my mouth. Lipsink.

Is that that? Yeah. Lipsink. Yeah. Well, a firewall is an actual thing. Yeah. In like programming or something like this.

Okay. Well, we don't want to put it behind a paywall because we want everyone able to hear it. And so that's why. $8.18 a month. If you can't afford that, it's okay. Email assistance at jaco underground.com. And we will take care of you. We also have Jocko unraveling podcast.

We have the grounded podcast. We have the Warrior Kid podcast. We have a, YouTube channel where Echo puts his legit videos. A lot of those, most of the good ones are ones that I'm the assistant director on. And you'll notice a trend there. The good ones. Psychological warfare album on iTunes.

If you need a little help getting over a little, whatever moment momentary weakness. Maybe permanent weakness. Yeah, maybe. You'd be listening to that thing a lot if you have like permanent weakness. So you get that on any MVP. You also got Flipside Canvas.com, Dakota Myers company. Got a bunch of books, leadership strategy and tactics field manual. That's ready for you.

All the answers are in that book. What do you think, Dave? Yes. The code, the evaluations, the protocols we got about face with I wrote the Ford. Honor to be able to write that. Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. Way the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four, the way the warrior kid field manual is out. Mikey and the Dragons and Extreme Ownership and the Dicotomy of Leadership.

We also have a leadership consultancy called Echelonfront. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. We have EF Online where we have courses you can take on leadership. We have live interactions there. Go to EFonline.com. We have the muster in 2021, which is our leadership conference. Go to Extreme Ownership.com for details. We're making some adjustments on that right now on when those are.

going to take place. EF. Overwatch, executive leadership for your company. Go to EFoverwatch.com. If you want to help service members, active service members, retired service members, if you want to help Gold Star families and service members' families at large, then you can check out Mark Lee's

charity organization, mom and Lee. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you didn't get enough of my severe circumlocution, or you need more of Echo's befuddled bulletins or Dave's exhaustive explanations. You can find us on the interwebs.

On Twitter, on Instagram, which obviously Echo only refers to as the gram. And on Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Equit Charles and I am at Jocco Willink and thanks to all the military personnel out there in all branches of service in uniform around the world keeping us out of harm's way by going into harm's way yourself and also thanks to police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics, EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all first responders we thank you for the same for going into harm's way to keep us out of it and to everyone else out there you You are somewhere on that continuum. Competition continuum, on the leadership continuum, on the influence continuum. It's happening every moment of every day. So don't lose track of that and don't get beat without knowing you're competing.

You are competing. So stay in the game by going out there and getting after it. Until next time, this is Dave and Echo and Jocko. Out.